Critique to the Congress System - Please Read and Discuss

[Elhoim]

I really don´t like the Congress system. It feels like a free give away of cities every 25 turns. I think that we need to debate the reason for it existance, it´s logic. I feel the congress should give cities to civs that should own them, but for some reason they don´t. But there should be strong reasons for the giving. My proposal is that only cities that were owned by a civ AND it has more than %50 of that civ population should be given. Nothing more. The congress purpose is to restore the corresponding nationality to cities, nothing else.

If we put "colonies" in the ecuation, I think the following condition should be added: cities that are far away from the capital AND have no culture connection to it, should be given to nearby civs. For example, a spanish city in Colombia, near the Incas.

I think the conditions should be very hard, so to avoid illogical giving of cities.

 

[Prestidigitator]

I like your ideas Elhoim, especially the first one, where a city must have been owned by a civ and that civ has 50% of the total population in order for the city to be given away.

 

[Rhye]

with your conditions, there will be 0 (most of the times) or 1 city available for request instead of 5/10

 

[Bolleque]

And how many such things happened in history?

 

[dh_epic]

I'm sure that Rhye's system will get working, but we have to be patient. Rhye, if you ARE looking for suggestions to improve the congress, what kind of feedback are you looking for?

 

[Arkaeyn]

Actually, there are many instances of historical nations deciding that they want city and trying to get it, despite not really having any justifiable reason, in a Wilsonian sense. Sweden kept the Thirty Years War going because they wanted a treaty confirming their ownership of certain cities in northern Germany. The Russians worked hard to try to get the English and French to justify giving them Constantinople once WWI was finished.

 

[Bolleque]

Claims were pretty common in history but most of them were fulfilled by war rahter than congress.
If congress decide to transfer a city it could be executed only if the previous owner is very weak and cannot fight back. Having enough military power I f... all congresses debating on my country

I haven't had any congress in my game so it is too early to comment. But I will rather resist.

 

[Rhye]

I'm only looking for bugs.
I think that the concept as I intended works fine.

 

[HÄI]

I like how the Congress works now, it's good fun. I'm also yet to see any meaningful city get "captured" by the congress, only faraway colonies and controversial border city conquests. Me likes.

 

[Appren]

My first meeting with the congress so far was incredibly annoying. Playing a 0.93 game atm, as England.
The first congress happened in 1792, and forced me to give Cambridge, a town founded by me centuries ago, size 17, and situated roughly at the RL Hamburg area, to Germany. Everyone except me voted yes.
This town had 68% English citizens and the rest Germans and I HAD TO GIVE IT AWAY?? No option to refuse? Let them declare war on me all they want, its MY town right?. Also, I had a half dozen or so units in the town that also automatically changed ownership. Surely if I somehow lost a town peacefully, my troops would be withdrawn to my home territory.
Going to reload the autosave before and see if the same happens again.

edit :
On the reloaded game (autosaved the turn before), nobody asked for one of my towns, but Germany asked for Singapore, a size one town FAR away from his country, and he had absolutely no colonies anywhere else.
HC asked for a Spanish town in Argentina and got that, while Japan asked for and got a town on the northeastern Chinese coast, roughly North Korea.

This addition to the game, to me, seems totally unneccesary, flawed and..well, random, only towns where the asking city has an overwhelming majority of the population, or is surrounded by the other nation, should be able to be voted for like this. Also, I cant really see what kind of real world (if any) function this is supposed to emulate, rarely did nations intervene in a way like this (if you wanted an area/town, you'd pretty much have to go to war for it). And especially the fact that I cant refuse to give away the town makes it very unfair. At the very least, if this function absolutely has to be left in game, let the player have the option to refuse, and the country that ask for the town then have the option to declare war.

 

[OzzyKP]

I agree that you should have the option to refuse and risk war. Like when cities flip on civ spawn.

 

[Rhye]

The first congress happened in 1792, and forced me to give Cambridge, a town founded by me centuries ago, size 17, and situated roughly at the RL Hamburg area, to Germany. Everyone except me voted yes.
This town had 68% English citizens and the rest Germans and I HAD TO GIVE IT AWAY??

32% Germans seems to me a good reason for Germany to request it.

 

[Arkaeyn]

What is the logic behind how Civs are picked to join the congresses? My first one took place in Aztec territory, with the Aztecs as the weakest Civ in the game, which seems strange.

 

[Rhye]

- the 4 or 5 best civs that know the world leader, including the leader itself, are invited always, plus some other random (but they still have to be able to contact the leader)

 

[Arkaeyn]

Interesting. I kind of agree, but I think the randomness should be stacked. Say, second place has a 95% chance of invited, then 80%, and last place should be like 10%.

 

[Rhye]

yes it's already that way

 

[FooFight2000]

In my recent game is still saw some odd congress results.

Macau (Chinese city in mainland china) get passed to the spanish. A Incan city in South America went to the Romans.

I think the idea is good, Its just that we need to get these non-sensical cities that transfer to stop happening.

 

[NateDawgNY]

I definitely like the idea, though I tend to agree with Appren about the frustrating results. I was playing a game as Rome and had cities that I'd conqured or founded hundreds of years before the congress and was forced to give them up.

I have a couple of ideas that might help:
1. Since in my case they were cities I'd conqured, let only the civs involved in the conflict vote, and only then at the negotiating table at the end of the war.
2. Also let a civ have the opportunity to refuse, if so, war is declared between the civ that wants it and the civ that has it.

Thoughts?

 

[dh_epic]

I hate to break it to folks, but in a game, sometimes you LOSE. You can't get irritated when something doesn't go your way. If you're unhappy with the result, declare war. Take it back.

On the other hand, looking for truly nonsensical results is important. Saved games would probably help, or at least screenshots.

 

[Rhye]

I hate to break it to folks, but in a game, sometimes you LOSE. You can't get irritated when something doesn't go your way. If you're unhappy with the result, declare war. Take it back.

Correct.
I may add a refuse popup (which means some work to do and I'm not looking forward to it), but you'll end up always refusing if you don't realize that more powerful you are, more they'll strip you down of your cities.