Congress 2026 (poll inside)

[hokath]

Hello, hello! A few things to discuss.

1. MAGI election
Since I have been elevated to Congress Host, there is one vacant slot for MAGI. These are 3 people who volunteer their time to help moderate the congress sessions.
If you ever thought something like, "why the hell did they let people vote on THAT?!", then this job might be for you!
Interested? Send me a DM.
In December we will have an election if multiple people show interest. That will be in a separate thread.

2. January Congress
Since 4UC integration has taken the -- expected -- very long time, we've rather fallen out of practice with the congress! Indeed, there are probably many people who have joined the community and have yet to take part!
It is my hope -- and I see no immediate reason why this won't be possible -- to have a congress session in January.
Because of the large overhaul of 4UC, and the time since the last congress, I want to place a bit of a one-off restriction on this session and limit it to "balance". Specifically I won't be allowing any major overhaul proposals to give the devs more time to improve stability and fix bugs as we embark on the 5.0 adventure! So things like the integration of big modmods like Enlightenment Era, revamps to the Promotion system, swapping out all the AI with ChatGPT, and really anything that would require speculative changes to the DLL will not be allowed in the first 5.0 session. Hopefully that feels sensible to everyone. The MAGI and I will have to assess on a proposal-by-proposal basis but I don't think it's beyond the wit of man to achieve this.

3. Future of balance
I really enjoy the VP congress and I'm energized to be organizing it as host. It's a lot of work behind the scenes and separating this role from the senior dev position I think is going to free up a lot of time within the team.
However, I know that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. I wanted to have a poll -- non-binding and purely resource-gathering exercise -- on what the community thinks are the preferred way(s) to govern specifically the balance part of VP.
I've listed some options which I'll briefly explain what I mean by them here

i) VP Congress -- what we currently have
pros: high degree of participation and ideas
cons: high numbers of votes take place, vulnerable to bad actors

ii) Design Dictatorship -- what we used to have. The lead dev (or someone they delegate to) makes all decisions, responding to the community and the whispers of the void
pros: singular and joined-up vision of the game
cons: puts a lot of work on one person who must stay engaged

iii) Big-Change Referenda -- similar to (ii) but including congress-style votes on any changes perceived to pass some threshold as "major" or controversial
pros: makes the dictatorship more conservative with changes
cons: makes the dictatorship more conservative with changes

iv) Balance Council -- like (i) but the people who participate are chosen/elected from the player base to fill some finite number of seats, like a parliament
pros: produces high-quality changes (not the same as popular)
cons: becomes political/personal/dramatic

Please feel free to discuss in the thread, suggest other pros/cons or models!
Again, I intend to carry on with the congress, but I think it's healthy to discuss.

 

[jarcast2]

Long live to chairman azuMao Zeroll.

 

[redrum68]

IMO, only making changes passed by Congress has been taken too far especially since 4UC has made it so long in between sessions. I think the devs or a small group of experienced players need to be able to make small balance adjustments outside of congress to keep the game in a balanced and fun state. Also when so many things are put to a vote which often interact with each other and then only a portion of them are passed, it can leave things in an unbalanced state even if each individual proposal itself was fine. I think making some of the small balance adjustments outside of Congress will help let Congress focus on the more interesting and bigger changes.

A specific example, is I submitted a PR to make some minor adjustments to increase Immortal/Deity AI bonuses to make them more competitive in early wars which I don't think is something that needs to go through Congress as its very minor and only impacts a small portion of the community (Immortal/Deity players). Having the community vote on whether the Deity AI should get a starting supply of 12 vs 15 isn't something most players probably care about and just increases the number of votes.

 

[Stalker0]

A specific example, is I submitted a PR to make some minor adjustments to increase Immortal/Deity AI bonuses to make them more competitive in early wars which I don't think is something that needs to go through Congress as its very minor and only impacts a small portion of the community (Immortal/Deity players).

What if the rest of the immortal player base disagrees? Should it be because you said something, and no one else happened to say anything, that we should just change the mod for all of those players?



Now I am a MAGI, so likely some bias here to note, but I do think the VP congress is doing a great job, and the model works well for a number of reasons:

1) Paces balance changes: When a change happens, we have some time before we change again. It gives time to actually absorb the change, debate it, and decide if the new updates are worth keeping, adjusting again, etc.

2) Provides an actual insight into what the playerbase wants.

In the old days, it was whoever screamed the loudest was heard....I know because I was one of those people that liked to scream The congress is a way for the entire community to tell us what they actually want, as opposed to what a few people "think" everyone wants but once we actually get that feedback collected turns out they didn't have a clue.

3) Provides consistency to the change process.

This is one of the best aspects. In the old days, we would get a balance change once every 4 months.....or 4 patches in a few weeks. It was all based on G's feelings and motivation at the time. With the congress, we have a schedule. People know when to show up to vote, people know when the next changes are on the horizon. It created a consistent, steady stream of improvement compared to the ad hoc nature of the previous system.

4) Provides a seal of approval on changes.

Like look at 4UC, the biggest change to the mod since its inception most likely. Speaking for myself, I had never played 4UC, had no super desire to do so. The idea of overhauling the entire mod to incorporate that, I would have been a HELL NO under the old system. A few people would have yelled on the forum that its the most amazing thing ever, a few people would have screamed its crazy to consider such a thing....and then what? Whichever direction we went with, people could say "you are going against the community's desires"....because we simply wouldn't know.

The congress allowed us to put it out there and get a very sizable positive desire from the community to move forward with that overhaul. That gives us all the confidence to say "this IS what the community wants", we don't have to guess, we don't have to assume. We created a system to give our commmunity the ability to weigh in, and we can use that to stamp a change with confidence. That is so much better than when G just put their finger in the wind, made an assumption, and hoped the communith would like it.



The congress (like any republic or democracy system) has its flaws, but I think it has been a wonderful step forward in creating a proper change process for the mod, and I would certainly not prefer to revert back.

 

[redrum68]

What if the rest of the immortal player base disagrees? Should it be because you said something, and no one else happened to say anything, that we should just change the mod for all of those players?



Now I am a MAGI, so likely some bias here to note, but I do think the VP congress is doing a great job, and the model works well for a number of reasons:

1) Paces balance changes: When a change happens, we have some time before we change again. It gives time to actually absorb the change, debate it, and decide if the new updates are worth keeping, adjusting again, etc.

I'm not saying that my specific change should be accepted but that its the type of change that the devs or a small experienced group of players should consider. Putting that small and specific to high level AI players change to a complete Congress vote is overkill as its minor and impacts only a small percentage of the player base.

IMO, the pacing and the overall cohesion of balance changes is the main problem and downside of the current Congress model. Having no balance changes for over a year now and having no one that can make some minor balance changes after lots of congress proposals are implemented is hurting the balance and fun of the game.

 

[Stalker0]

IMO, the pacing and the overall cohesion of balance changes is the main problem and downside of the current Congress model. Having no balance changes for over a year now and having no one that can make some minor balance changes after lots of congress proposals are implemented is hurting the balance and fun of the game.

The reason we have not had balance changes is not due to the congress....its due to the MASSIVE overhaul the dev team performed. The idea of doing that AND balance changes right in the middel of implementation was a recipe for disaster.

Now that the overhaul is nearing completion (note that its still not done, its still in alpha phase), congress is looking to start back up, and we can start to roll out that consistent stream of changes again.

 

[Karlos_BR]

I have no strong opinions on how the Congress should be handled, I'm just happy to know that Enlightenment Era is being considered for integration in the future.

 

[redrum68]

The reason we have not had balance changes is not due to the congress....its due to the MASSIVE overhaul the dev team performed. The idea of doing that AND balance changes right in the middel of implementation was a recipe for disaster.

Now that the overhaul is nearing completion (note that its still not done, its still in alpha phase), congress is looking to start back up, and we can start to roll out that consistent stream of changes again.

The massive overhaul was voted on by congress though... and there were plenty of other minor changes done to UI, AI, bugs, etc even while that was being implemented so some minor balance changes like what I mentioned could have been done as well. Either way though I'm talking about being willing to make some minor changes outside of congress so that it doesn't take so long and the devs can ensure a cohesive, balanced, and fun game.

 

[usadefcon1]

To be honest if I had known 4UC would take a year to complete I wouldn't have voted for it. I originally thought we would just take the mod I've been using for years and make it default on, then have community balance that.

Anyway now that we're here I'm glad it's all integrated and I'm looking forward to a new congress. Thank you again to the devs who work so hard on this!

 

[caudheur]

Really like the way it's being handled right now with the congress. The community is both niche enough for the congress to still feel curated and meaningful and big enough for the voting system to be IMHO superior to dictatorship like systems.

Thank you to all of you making this possible, this is a wonderful ship to be part of (even if I'm just a passenger )

 

[msw1]

I am definitely a fan of the VP congress. It is the natural way to have the game's experience be optimal for the majority of players. It also seems unreasonable to have an unpaid volunteer have the burden of having to do everything themselves. And I think if we were voting on who to elect to make decisions rather than voting the decisions themselves, participation would drop enormously. I don't check these forums enough to recognize most names so I know I would probably just abstain from that.

 

[andersw]

I like the congress ... IF there are enough ppl interested on all sides of voting, discussions and coding.
Its also good that the perspective "can the AI handle this" is seen as an important factor.
Mostly I prefer a system that is sustainable, just as a dictator is vulnerable the congress could suffer from overload of suggestions but I dont see why we couldnt change to for example a balance council if it came to that situation.

 

[Hawawaa]

Current style is fine. I don't want one person getting burned out. Even if we only get one vote every 1 - 1.5 years I'll still be happy. Each vote feels like a small expansion. You folks keep raising the bar so keep it up.

 

[Chippy Smith]

I think that any future overhaul level changes to the Vox Populi experience will be a net negative to the Vox Populi experience that I have grown to love. 3rd and 4th was necessary, and I'm not against overhauls that add options or variants to AI, but I personally think overhauls like Enlightenment Era, Religious Victories/Ideologies, and things like More Wonders/Buildings are best left to modmods and not the main mod. Having played with all of them but Enlightenment Era, these overhauls seem like more for more's sake, and serve to move farther away from what "old" VP used to be than the 3rd and 4th UC overhaul. Why not incorporate modded/additional VP compatible civs into VP too if anything can be integrated?

Whichever option enables the dev team to focus on providing better balance, better singleplayer stability, and (as much as CivV will allow) multiplayer stability is what I support. Option 4 or Option 3 seem to best insulate from proposals or changes that serve to distract from the VP I personally enjoy. I would also suggest entertaining another form of the Smogon council style/Option 4, where you allow anyone to submit proposals but only council members vote. The current system is close to this and there's familiarity with it, I think it works plenty well assuming the congress won't turn into a twice a year restructure of the game. You guys are all volunteers who have made a game that is really fun, engaging, and rewarding while remaining relatable. Thank for the hours of fun, the idea of a bicaramel legislature where a lower body of all users draft proposals and higher body of limited users vote passing proposals seems the most "engaging;" Option 4 has a novelty to it.

 

[Recursive]

IMO, only making changes passed by Congress has been taken too far especially since 4UC has made it so long in between sessions. I think the devs or a small group of experienced players need to be able to make small balance adjustments outside of congress to keep the game in a balanced and fun state. Also when so many things are put to a vote which often interact with each other and then only a portion of them are passed, it can leave things in an unbalanced state even if each individual proposal itself was fine. I think making some of the small balance adjustments outside of Congress will help let Congress focus on the more interesting and bigger changes.

A specific example, is I submitted a PR to make some minor adjustments to increase Immortal/Deity AI bonuses to make them more competitive in early wars which I don't think is something that needs to go through Congress as its very minor and only impacts a small portion of the community (Immortal/Deity players). Having the community vote on whether the Deity AI should get a starting supply of 12 vs 15 isn't something most players probably care about and just increases the number of votes.

Your pull request didn't only change the starting unit supply on Deity, it reduced initial Production costs for buildings and combat units by an additional 10% (which is pretty significant) and nerfed the per-era scaler from 10% to 8%.

This doesn't only impact war (since it affects buildings too), doesn't only impact the early game (due to possible snowballing effects by front-loading bonuses), and as a result doesn't only impact early game war. Furthermore since defending AIs would also be able to build faster, how it would affect AI vs. AI matchups is speculative without testing.

Also it affected Immortal, not just Deity - and as I pointed out on GitHub, the community has made five balance proposals for difficulty bonuses via the VP Congress process before, so there was precedent for this.

The massive overhaul was voted on by congress though... and there were plenty of other minor changes done to UI, AI, bugs, etc even while that was being implemented so some minor balance changes like what I mentioned could have been done as well. Either way though I'm talking about being willing to make some minor changes outside of congress so that it doesn't take so long and the devs can ensure a cohesive, balanced, and fun game.

The current system does already have that ability, refer to the VP Congress rules:

Balance Changes Outside the VP Congress
The VP Congress is intended to give the community more control over the changes they’d like to see in the mod, so it is ideal to run balance changes through the VP Congress process.

However, with the approval of a Project Overseer, a balance change can be made outside the VP Congress process by submitting a pull request or pushing code to GitHub.

Project Overseers do not have to give this approval if they don’t think the community will appreciate the change, instead directing the proposer to the VP Congress process.

This retains the ability for seasoned developers to contribute to the mod on their own time and schedule (which is necessary for us devs). Balance changes which are added outside of the VP Congress can still be reverted via proposal in the next VP Congress Session, should members of the community be unhappy with them.

As a Project Overseer, I rejected your specific change. Other small balance changes have been accepted in the past. I did not provide my rationale nor did I mention the above rule on GitHub however, so for clarity my rationale is that when Gazebo was in charge, he was not willing to nerf Deity until Deity players were telling him it was too hard. Similarly, were I still lead dev, I wouldn't be willing to buff Deity just because one player is telling us it is too easy. I figure the other devs are operating under the same line of thought here, so I followed the "instead directing the proposer to the VP Congress process" rule.

On this topic, @hokath, food for thought: some proposals may only affect a subset of the community who play with specific game options. Previously these have all been lumped in with the proposals everyone votes on, and whether players who don't use those settings choose to abstain has been up to them. I wonder if there might be a better way of doing this.

That being said, I think a lot of people who vote on proposals will read the discussions, and the existing system will allow Deity players the chance to give their thoughts on redrum's (currently hypothetical) proposal, which members of the community could take into consideration before casting their vote.

 

[redrum68]

Your pull request didn't only change the starting unit supply on Deity, it reduced initial Production costs for buildings and combat units by an additional 10% (which is pretty significant) and nerfed the per-era scaler from 10% to 8%.

This doesn't only impact war (since it affects buildings too), doesn't only impact the early game (due to possible snowballing effects by front-loading bonuses), and as a result doesn't only impact early game war. Furthermore since defending AIs would also be able to build faster, how it would affect AI vs. AI matchups is speculative without testing.

Also it affected Immortal, not just Deity - and as I pointed out on GitHub, the community has made five balance proposals for difficulty bonuses via the VP Congress process before, so there was precedent for this.

I'm aware as I submitted the PR But your response here actually discussing the change seems more reasonable than the response I got which was "balance changes should be made in the VP Congress". The PR was my suggestion to address the deity AI being weak to early aggression and it doesn't mean that it couldn't be iterated on or even only part of it accepted. You could decide to only increase supply and not adjust the production discount or only change deity not immortal.

The current system does already have that ability, refer to the VP Congress rules:

Indeed which is why I was surprised at your response to the PR.

As a Project Overseer, I rejected your specific change. Other small balance changes have been accepted in the past. I did not provide my rationale nor did I mention the above rule on GitHub however, so for clarity my rationale is that when Gazebo was in charge, he was not willing to nerf Deity until Deity players were telling him it was too hard. Similarly, were I still lead dev, I wouldn't be willing to buff Deity just because one player is telling us it is too easy. I figure the other devs are operating under the same line of thought here, so I followed the "instead directing the proposer to the VP Congress process" rule.

On this topic, @hokath, food for thought: some proposals may only affect a subset of the community who play with specific game options. Previously these have all been lumped in with the proposals everyone votes on, and whether players who don't use those settings choose to abstain has been up to them. I wonder if there might be a better way of doing this.

That being said, I think a lot of people who vote on proposals will read the discussions, and the existing system will allow Deity players the chance to give their thoughts on redrum's (currently hypothetical) proposal, which members of the community could take into consideration before casting their vote.

Honestly, its a little hard to follow you here. Devs can make small balance changes but then you give little response and point to Congress. As a Project Overseer, you have that power but I'm sure you can imagine that it causes frustration which is essentially the points I'm making here. If the devs currently aren't willing to make small balance changes even if they appear by the rules to have that power, I'm saying that they should consider doing so or change the structure to allow/encourage that. The long period since the last congress and that last congress being only focused on 4UC integration makes not making any balance changes outside it even worse.

Its not just me saying that early game deity AI is quite weak against early aggression right now, a number of other players on the discord have experienced the same and there are a number of play throughs by various players showing it and I think some of the more active devs/overseers can attest to that. I know that you currently have very limited bandwidth due to a real life situation so it might be better to let others that are currently more active in the community review and respond to the PR as it also is quite disheartening for someone trying to contribute to VP to get quickly rejected with little explanation and told to wait months.

 

[azum4roll]

If the devs currently aren't willing to make small balance changes even if they appear by the rules to have that power

We did buff Hakkapeliitta without going through congress. That's a small balance change.

 

[Tekamthi]

I have greatly enjoyed the Congress format despite limited time to participate in recent rounds -- on that note my one "gripe" is that the volume of proposals is sometimes too much, and the changes proposed too theory crafted.

For example, recon changes that have occurred via Congress are, at best, a push to the previous state as far as gameplay goes. Yet they were well supported at voting time iirc. Meanwhile community seems to have picked up hokath recon mod as the favorite configuration -- I wonder how many players are actually using the unmodded VP recon we all voted for at this point?

Re volume: I was only able to properly digest and consider about 1/3 of the proposals in the last round I participated in (I missed the 3/4uc votes almost entirely due to RL)

I also note that managing the Congress process sounds like a major commitment from community members that have double-up as our top mod devs -- if these volunteers enjoy this then there's no concern, but it strikes me that this time might alternatively be used for actual dev work on the project.

I'd like to see more playable prototypes in future Congress -- if the idea is good enough to warrant our attention and consideration, then it's good enough to warrant a mock-up in SQL or lua imo, this should be a qualifying requirement for most proposals

 

[redrum68]

We did buff Hakkapeliitta without going through congress. That's a small balance change.

I think that's a great balance change and at least a step in the right direction. I would love to see more small changes like that to help smooth out balance as some of the larger changes are implemented and played with. I think that's essentially what's been missing especially with the long time since last Congress. Its also a good example of where I think Congress worked well to choose the overall kit for Sweden from the proposals but its almost impossible to get all the small details right as you can only have so many proposals so small balance changes helps to address any small balance issues.

I thought that my PR was along those same lines but I guess not? Maybe it was too large? Or its ok to change UUs but not AI difficulty bonuses? While I realize there will always be some judgement from Project Overseers on what is a reasonable balance change outside of Congress, having some clarity would definitely help.

 

[Recursive]

I'm aware as I submitted the PR But your response here actually discussing the change seems more reasonable than the response I got which was "balance changes should be made in the VP Congress". The PR was my suggestion to address the deity AI being weak to early aggression and it doesn't mean that it couldn't be iterated on or even only part of it accepted. You could decide to only increase supply and not adjust the production discount or only change deity not immortal.


Indeed which is why I was surprised at your response to the PR.


Honestly, its a little hard to follow you here. Devs can make small balance changes but then you give little response and point to Congress. As a Project Overseer, you have that power but I'm sure you can imagine that it causes frustration which is essentially the points I'm making here. If the devs currently aren't willing to make small balance changes even if they appear by the rules to have that power, I'm saying that they should consider doing so or change the structure to allow/encourage that. The long period since the last congress and that last congress being only focused on 4UC integration makes not making any balance changes outside it even worse.

Its not just me saying that early game deity AI is quite weak against early aggression right now, a number of other players on the discord have experienced the same and there are a number of play throughs by various players showing it and I think some of the more active devs/overseers can attest to that. I know that you currently have very limited bandwidth due to a real life situation so it might be better to let others that are currently more active in the community review and respond to the PR as it also is quite disheartening for someone trying to contribute to VP to get quickly rejected with little explanation and told to wait months.

Yeah, my initial response was overly brief and created confusion, hence my more comprehensive reply above to clarify. I can see why it would be disheartening to receive that reply, so I apologize for that.

For the reasons I listed above, your proposed balance change was not small, it was actually pretty significant.

As Stalker said, the reason there hasn't been much in the way of other balance changes is because the integration of 4UC took up basically all of our dev bandwidth for a year. Doing that much DLL and UI integration is a huge effort and the number of devs was barely enough to manage it (kudos to @axatin and @azum4roll in particular for doing a lot of this).

Trying to do regular balance changes at the same time was beyond our capabilities, not to mention it would have unknown impacts on the 4UC proposals that the community voted for.

We did buff Hakkapeliitta without going through congress. That's a small balance change.

We also made a number of other changes, see the Implementation Notes section at the bottom of this post. These small changes tend to be made by devs when there's an issue or a need for a judgement call with something being implemented.

Or they're intended to correct some obvious misbehavior. For example, I made a change a while back nerfing the scrap Gold from units that also have a purchase discount, because it was possible to sell units for more than you paid for them - obviously exploitable.

Because the VP Congress exists to determine what the community wants changed, small balance changes are not usually us imposing our own vision of balance on the rest of the community. This is why azum4roll and hokath have modmods for their tweaks.

There is a lot more latitude with UI and AI changes as those aren't balance changes, and I think it's generally accepted that running every one of those changes through the VP Congress would result in an overload.

When the VP Congress is normally operating, there aren't these kinds of huge delays. 4UC was a unique situation, and also my ability to contribute personally was greatly hindered by my real life situation, which slowed it down further as @axatin needed to pick up my slack.

For this reason, it's normally a more reasonable ask for people to wait for the next session, as the delay before you can make a proposal will be at most 2.5 months (if you had an idea right after the Proposal Phase ended), not over a year.

I will also point to the result of (3-19) Frequency Of VP Congress Sessions, in which the community overwhelmingly decided they wanted more breathing room between balance changes.