Continuous City-State influence levels: initial gifts + gift levels

wobuffet

Barbarian
Joined
Jun 27, 2011
Messages
1,248
I've been working out an idea for adding a sense of historical continuity to City-State relations. Here's what I came up with; let me know what you think.
Summary:
- To be Friends with a CS requires an initial gift of 500 :c5gold:.
- Staying at the same :c5influence:Influence level (such as 30, to stay Friends) costs a certain era-dependent amount of :c5gold: per turn (say, 8:c5gold:/turn during the Renaissance Era). Otherwise, :c5influence:Influence decays (as it does now).
- Increasing :c5influence:Influence (to become Allies, for example) requires larger per-turn gifts (16 or 32 :c5gold:/turn during the Renaissance Era).
- Luxury goods can also be used to pay for gifts at the rate of 7 :c5gold: per turn each.​
INITIAL GIFTS:
Entering into diplomatic relations with any given City-State requires a one-time gift of any one of the following:
- 500 :c5gold:;
- 300 :c5gold: and 1 luxury good for 30 turns; or
- 100 :c5gold: and 2 luxury goods for 30 turns.
This initial gift gets you +30 :c5influence:Influence (i.e., Friend status, assuming you started at 0 Influence) immediately, up to a max of 60. Obviously, a CS will not accept luxuries it already has access to, whether directly or through another Civ.
The first Civ to give an initial gift to any CS gets a 50% discount (i.e., only has to pay 250:c5gold:; 150 :c5gold: + 15 turns of a lux; or 50 :c5gold: + 15 turns of 2 luxes).

PER-TURN GIFT LEVELS:
After the initial gift, :c5influence:Influence is gained through per-turn gifts, which come in the following tiers:
No gift : 0:c5gold: per turn = -2 :c5influence:Influence per turn
....Low : x:c5gold: per turn = +0 :c5influence:Influence per turn
.Medium: 2x:c5gold: per turn = +2 :c5influence:Influence per turn
...High: 4x:c5gold: per turn = +3 :c5influence:Influence per turn

with x (the low cost) depending on your technological era as follows (thanks to Krikkitone for the suggestion!):
lo med .hi .Era(s)
.4 ..8 .16 .Ancient, Classical
.6 .12 .24 .Medieval
.8 .16 .32 .Renaissance
10 .20 .40 .Industrial
12 .24 .48 .Modern, Future

(Luxury goods are worth 7:c5gold: per turn each in credit towards any gift level.)

If, for example, you gifted Silver, Ivory, and Pearls to a CS, you would achieve the Medium gift level and receive a "refund" of 5 :c5gold: per turn (= 7*3 - 16). Every time you decided to ally with a CS and coughed up the initial gift, you'd immediately have a strategic decision to make: rush ahead at the High gift level to get Allied benefits 5 turns earlier, or save money and chug along at the Medium gift level.

This would all give CS relations a sense of history. For example, getting to Allied status would normally take at least 10 turns (of High gifts after the initial gift). Maintaining good relations with CSs would be relatively cheap (say, 8 :c5gold:/turn to stay at 30 or 60 :c5influence:Influence, or presumably less with SPs from the Patronage tree) – unless a bidding war arose between Civs, of course, in which case the Gold and Influence would pour.

Under this system, you would be notified if someone switched to a higher gift level than you (e.g., tries to overtake you as the Ally). In order to prevent annoying games of "tag," maybe gift levels could be locked in for a minimum of 10 turns; cancelling before then would carry a -10 Influence penalty.

It would also be possible to, say, pay 320 gold at once to trickle into a CS at 32 gold/turn over the next 10 turns in order to prevent a scenario like "Crap, I bought a Pikeman by accident and now my treasury's empty and I'm disbanding units because I forgot that I committed to gifting up Cape Town for 10 turns."


OTHER DETAILS:
When a Civ declares war, any Allied CSs would take a turn to join in (in order to give other Civs a chance to react). However, a CS will not declare war on any Civ at same/higher gift level (so you can prevent an inconveniently placed CS from attacking you for up to possibly 24 gold/turn). Being at war with a CS prevents you from giving any gifts, and Influence would drop at a base rate of -3 :c5influence:Influence per turn instead of the standard -2, compared to the current system where you instantly drop to -60 Influence. So if you crushed your CS rival militarily or made peace other way in just a few turns, you wouldn't suffer the full drop to -60 Influence. Dropping to 0 Influence or below, whether for war or any other reason, however, would require you to give the initial gift again afterwards to a build a Friendship/Alliance.

The "quests" could remain in place (at least the Barbarian-related, Natural Wonder, and "find a certain empire" ones), though some might have to be reworked to provide gold credit towards gift levels instead of straight instant :c5influence:Influence boosts. (I'd be pretty pissed if I permanently lost a CS's allied status over some AI fulfilling a silly "Make a Great Merchant!" quest.)

Here's a hypothetical reworking of the Patronage tree and CS-related UAs to work with this system:
Opener: Initial Gifts give +40 Influence instead of +30 (was Influence decays 25% slower)
Philanthropy: 25% off all per-turn gift levels (+25% Influence from Gold)
Aesthetics: Influence decays/recovers towards 15 Influence instead of towards 0 (minimum 20 Influence level with all City-States)
Scholasticism: luxury goods gifted to CSs worth +10 Gold/turn instead of +7 (+25% Science bonus from CSs)
Cultural Diplomacy: CS-gifted resources doubled (CS-gifted resources doubled, +50% Happiness from luxes)
Educated Elite: +67% Happiness from CS-gifted luxuries (occasional Great People)
Finisher: +25% per-turn gift level cost for all other players (other players' Influence drops 33% faster)
and, just for good measure,
Greece's UA: 75% off all Initial Gifts and free innate +2 Gold/turn credit towards every CS (Influence decays at half speed, recovers at double speed)
Siam's UA: as is but buff bonus to +67%, plus military units gifted 67% more frequently (+50% CS yields for food and culture)

With a continuous Influence system like this it'd be impossible to snatch up 8 City-States in order to achieve a blitz Diplomatic victory just before the UN elections. If (and it's a big if) AI Civs could be coached to seize good CS Alliance opportunities and respond to Diplomatic victory threats, it's possible I actually wouldn't mind losing to a Diplomatic victory and/or I wouldn't consider winning by Diplomatic victory "cheap" if I did it myself under this system.

Anyway, please discuss and let me know what you think.
 
Increasing relations per turn instead of instantly would be something interesting to try out. City-States relationships would feel a bit more natural and they would seem a bit less mercenary.
 
I really like that idea, especially since it would allow people to benefit from "selling luxuries" even if the AI was fixed (so as to not pay for happiness that it really doesn't need)

(also, do you mean it to be 8, 12, 24?) I would think 8, 16, 24 would be better.(8 to 16 is still the best bump)

And reworking the first two of the Patronage Tree/UA would be fairly easy....
[The "+20% Influence boost" being a -25% cost for ongoing gifts]
The rest could all remain the same, as they don't have to do with the giftings, but the benefit from CS

So Greece might be
-25% ongoing gift costs
1/2 decline (if no gift)
*2 recovery (when below 0)

(Side note, why are there no Wonders that influence City-State Influence?)

I'd actually remove Bulk gifts unless you are not Friends (so that you can obtain friend status and then just hold it.. otherwise you are required to do per turn... because the Only reason to do a bulk gift is to do a certain Influence level.)

So the UI would be
if at 0 or below
Initial Gift/Make Peace:

once you had that it would be
Gift Luxury:
Retract Luxury:
Desired Gift Level:
(Bulk Gift) available if below 30: (Gold only?)

10 (or 5) turns after you had initiated a new Gift level, or Gifted a new Luxury, a CS pop up would occur and ask if you wanted to continue this relationship. If you say no, then you can Retract or change the Gift level. If you say yes, then the gift level stays and you never need to enter the CS again.

You would still have popups if it had to declare war on you [telling you all the gifts are cancelled],
or was ready to make peace with you, (and you were still above 0... to ask if you would like to renew gifting levels/put in a bulk gift)


Also the "Quests" Should provide staight influence boosts... making them more useful. (also City-States could have a "desired" luxury, that they would pay 10 gpt for... for 30 turns)

As a side note: this would Really boost Arabia, as there would always be a buyer for Luxuries
 
I really like that idea, especially since it would allow people to benefit from "selling luxuries" even if the AI was fixed (so as to not pay for happiness that it really doesn't need)
...
As a side note: this would Really boost Arabia, as there would always be a buyer for Luxuries
Yeah, Arabia would become a CS beast. Maybe to balance other Civs a bit, the National Treasury (the National Wonder requiring Markets) could, in addition to its current effects, double luxury goods accessible to that city only?


(also, do you mean it to be 8, 12, 24?) I would think 8, 16, 24 would be better.(8 to 16 is still the best bump)
Well, I wanted "rushing" to Allied status at the High per-turn gift level to end up more expensive than getting there slowly via Medium gifts. 8, 16, 24 wouldn't do that (thus removing a potentially interesting strategic decision: reach Allied status and its associated benefits 5 turns earlier, or save 60:c5gold: over the next few turns?).


And reworking the first two of the Patronage Tree/UA would be fairly easy....
[The "+20% Influence boost" being a -25% cost for ongoing gifts]

So Greece might be
-25% ongoing gift costs
1/2 decline (if no gift)
*2 recovery (when below 0)
Yeah, that would work. On a related note, I've always thought that the Aesthetics SP should make the base 20 Influence level (the "steady-state" level to which your Influence decays or recovers), not auto-jump there.


(Side note, why are there no Wonders that influence City-State Influence?)
That'd be interesting. Thematically, the Wonder should be something trade-related, I guess.


I'd actually remove Bulk gifts unless you are not Friends (so that you can obtain friend status and then just hold it.. otherwise you are required to do per turn... because the Only reason to do a bulk gift is to do a certain Influence level.)
I thought about this, but I think the UI would be less confusing if the Bulk option were just always available or never available. And since it'd be very convenient when trying to rise from Friends to Allied status, I say just always have it.


10 (or 5) turns after you had initiated a new Gift level, or Gifted a new Luxury, a CS pop up would occur and ask if you wanted to continue this relationship. If you say no, then you can Retract or change the Gift level. If you say yes, then the gift level stays and you never need to enter the CS again.
Yes, that'd be a must-have feature. Renewable trade deals in general would reduce gameplay tedium by so much.


Also the "Quests" Should provide staight influence boosts... making them more useful. (also City-States could have a "desired" luxury, that they would pay 10 gpt for... for 30 turns)
For the luxury good quests, I can see that working. But doing this for all quests would make them way more critical than they are now, because you could permanently lose Allied status just because, say, Alex managed to sight a Natural Wonder or find England. That'd be such a :mad: moment.

Thanks for the input! Hopefully a modder can implement something like this once the DLL is out, assuming Firaxis doesn't beat them to it.
 
Yeah, Arabia would become a CS beast. Maybe to balance other Civs a bit, the National Treasury (the National Wonder requiring Markets) could, in addition to its current effects, double luxury goods accessible to that city only?


Well, I wanted "rushing" to Allied status at the High per-turn gift level to end up more expensive than getting there slowly via Medium gifts. 8, 16, 24 wouldn't do that (thus removing a potentially interesting strategic decision: reach Allied status and its associated benefits 5 turns earlier, or save 60:c5gold: over the next few turns?).


Yeah, that would work. On a related note, I've always thought that the Aesthetics SP should make the base 20 Influence level (the "steady-state" level to which your Influence decays or recovers), not auto-jump there.


That'd be interesting. Thematically, the Wonder should be something trade-related, I guess.


I thought about this, but I think the UI would be less confusing if the Bulk option were just always available or never available. And since it'd be very convenient when trying to rise from Friends to Allied status, I say just always have it.


Yes, that'd be a must-have feature. Renewable trade deals in general would reduce gameplay tedium by so much.


For the luxury good quests, I can see that working. But doing this for all quests would make them way more critical than they are now, because you could permanently lose Allied status just because, say, Alex managed to sight a Natural Wonder or find England. That'd be such a :mad: moment.

Thanks for the input! Hopefully a modder can implement something like this once the DLL is out, assuming Firaxis doesn't beat them to it.

The problem with bulk gifts (and ANY bulk influence as you pointed out) is that they become necessary to "Catch up" to someone who is maintaining the 24 gpt and in the lead.

That 24 gpt needs to be a serious commitment.

Also, 12 gpt for +2 and 8 for +0 means I can go
12 gpt for 10 turns, then 0 gpt for 20 and I have spent 120 gold, instead of the 240 gold it would take just to hold position

So I would
1. Eliminate bulk gifts
2. gpt:influence per turn rates are
8=0
16=1
48=2

So
8 for stability
8 for the next influence points
32 for Fast influence points

And then just have the CS ask about "reviewing your gift levels"
whenever you bump up to "Friend" status or "Allied" status(so if you are only trying to get to Friend status asap, and then drop to 8, you can)
or
when the 10 turn minimum is up

So then the Only way to get bulk improvements is the "Opening Bid" and Missions... but if you are willing to sink Serious money (or 5 or so Luxuries) into a CS, then you can catch up (basically 36 gold/5 luxury turns for each point of influence lead the leader has... assuming they aren't willing to pay as well).

If you could then also See who is gifting the city state at various levels (as well as who the ally is)... it would make diplo victory more interesting... If I have 8 CS allies, my 4 competitors (who aren't going diplo victory, but want to stop me) can all each Seperately target 2 of them (ie any CS would probably only have 2 civs mass bidding for it, the current leader, and the one trying to take them down.)


This way most civs could maintain one or two allies easily (just get them early with the 16, and occasionally spend the extra 48 whenever anyone else tries to take them) However, getting a voting majority would be very hard. (because every single one of your "allies" would have one other civ competing for it.)
 
The problem with bulk gifts (and ANY bulk influence as you pointed out) is that they become necessary to "Catch up" to someone who is maintaining the 24 gpt and in the lead.
I'm not understanding your point with the bulk gifts. I basically don't want there to be any way to increase your :c5influence:Influence over a CS by more than 3 in any one turn (except the Initial Gift, Barbarian-related stuff that is typically irrelevant by turn 100, and perhaps quests issued to all civs at the same time like "Access luxury X", which would have to be reworked to "Gift us luxury X," which all major Civs would have a have a chance to fulfill).

Yes, it would be very hard to overtake a Civ already established as a CS's Ally then. That's the point. The High gift level's per-turn :c5gold: cost is designed to be high enough that 1) it's expensive to try to replace another Civ as Ally, and 2) if challenged, it's always possible, but quite costly and inconvenient, for the already-Allied Civ to keep it as an Ally.

The fact that I can effectively say, "Hey Catherine, I'm making a run at becoming Singapore's Ally! Prepare to pay up or step aside." is the diplomatic content of this proposal. And of course, all the other Civs would be delighted to see you both start pouring money into Singapore (sort of like an expensive game of Chicken) while they spend their money on, say, much-needed buildings.


That 24 gpt needs to be a serious commitment.
I've upped the numbers slightly. The new High cost of 32 :c5gold: per turn is, I would argue, a serious commitment (that's per-turn maintenance on over a dozen midgame buildings). Ten turns of that is 320 :c5gold: – a solid down payment towards rush-buying a unit or building. In war time, paying off two CSs allied with enemy to avoid fighting them your would cost you 64 :c5gold: per turn... easily at least a third of your income until turn 250 or so.

Alternatively, the costs could scale up by era, depending on the most technologically advanced Civ... maybe the original price list of {8 16 32} in the Renaissance and Industrial Eras, {6 12 24} before then, and {12 24 48} in the Modern Era and beyond?


Also, 12 gpt for +2 and 8 for +0 means I can go
12 gpt for 10 turns, then 0 gpt for 20 and I have spent 120 gold, instead of the 240 gold it would take just to hold position
Oops... good catch. I've tweaked the numbers to make that impossible (the big change was that no gift leads to -2 Influence/turn, not just -1).


And then just have the CS ask about "reviewing your gift levels"
whenever you bump up to "Friend" status or "Allied" status(so if you are only trying to get to Friend status asap, and then drop to 8, you can)
or
when the 10 turn minimum is up
Good idea; it'd be great if the game could auto-calculate and manage around those thresholds for you. That'd get tricky if the CS is already allied with somebody else, however, because the result would depend on the allied Civ's reaction to your challenge.

If you could then also See who is gifting the city state at various levels (as well as who the ally is)... it would make diplo victory more interesting... If I have 8 CS allies, my 4 competitors (who aren't going diplo victory, but want to stop me) can all each Seperately target 2 of them (ie any CS would probably only have 2 civs mass bidding for it, the current leader, and the one trying to take them down.)
Yep, you'd need to know this information to make this change work. At the very least, the game would have to let you know, for each CS, which Civ was gifting them at the highest level and what level that was.


This way most civs could maintain one or two allies easily (just get them early with the 16, and occasionally spend the extra 48 whenever anyone else tries to take them) However, getting a voting majority would be very hard. (because every single one of your "allies" would have one other civ competing for it.)
Yeah, this dynamic would be great if the AI (other than Genghis Khan, perhaps) could be trained to strongly prefer having one or two CS buddies. One of my main motivations in envisioning this system was to make a diplomatic victory meaningful (i.e., requiring actual planning, effort, and time to achieve).
 
This is quite an interesting idea. I think I like it. Diversifying the ways in which you can become friends with city states seems good. If you're cash-strapped, then having an alternate path available other than traipsing across a continent to take out another city state is good. The luxury trade-off might be a bit unbalanced, however. 200 :c5gold: off for one luxury, when the reward of being friends is access to more luxuries. If the city state is connected and has a luxury, it's not actually costing you anything in terms of luxuries to become their friend.
 
This is quite an interesting idea. I think I like it. Diversifying the ways in which you can become friends with city states seems good. If you're cash-strapped, then having an alternate path available other than traipsing across a continent to take out another city state is good. The luxury trade-off might be a bit unbalanced, however. 200 :c5gold: off for one luxury, when the reward of being friends is access to more luxuries. If the city state is connected and has a luxury, it's not actually costing you anything in terms of luxuries to become their friend.

Friends don't get luxuries... and you would get 7 gpt for a luxury... the CS maintenance would be 8 gpt (minimum)

I like the idea of costs scaling by eras (they should be Your era.. just like the Benefits from the CS)

say
Ancient, Classical: 4, 8, 16 (300 opening)
Medieval: 6, 12, 24 (400 Opening)
Renaissance: 8, 16, 32 (500 Opening)
Industrial: 10, 20, 40 (600 Opening)
Modern: 12, 24, 48 (700 Opening)
 
200 :c5gold: off for one luxury, when the reward of being friends is access to more luxuries. If the city state is connected and has a luxury, it's not actually costing you anything in terms of luxuries to become their friend.
This was calibrated relative to the 240:c5gold: that you could get from any major Civ already (which is obviously silly, but perhaps hard to fix simply and elegantly). With something like Krikkitone's era-dependent price schedule in place, I don't think this would be much of a problem.


Friends don't get luxuries... and you would get 7 gpt for a luxury... the CS maintenance would be 8 gpt (minimum)

I like the idea of costs scaling by eras (they should be Your era.. just like the Benefits from the CS)

say
Ancient, Classical: 4, 8, 16 (300 opening)
Medieval: 6, 12, 24 (400 Opening)
Renaissance: 8, 16, 32 (500 Opening)
Industrial: 10, 20, 40 (600 Opening)
Modern: 12, 24, 48 (700 Opening)
Agreed. I've stolen your scheme and put it in the OP :).

I sort of like the idea of a flat initial gift though, because the ease of paying that amount of gold would increase over time, sort of representing the increasing amount of trade we've seen through human history. Plus, it would eliminate gamey "I'm about to discover Astronomy, better meet some City-States!" concerns (since it's the only non-"continuous" thing in this scheme), but either would probably work.

One drawback of era-scaled costs would be the oddity/unfairness of the gold situation if two very technologically distant Civs started bidding for the favor of the same CS. Then again, giving technologically superior Civs a slight drawback somewhere in the game is probably a good thing for game balance.


edit: Added this little bit into the OP to add a bit of motivation:
Every time you decided to ally with a CS and coughed up the initial gift, you'd immediately have a strategic decision to make: rush ahead at the High gift level to get Allied benefits 5 turns earlier, or save money and chug along at the Medium gift level.
, although really the biggest motivations are (1) making the Diplomatic victory condition meaningful and (2)
it would allow people to benefit from "selling luxuries" even if the AI was fixed (so as to not pay for happiness that it really doesn't need)
 
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