Critique to the Congress System - Please Read and Discuss

[Rhye]

most of your requests will be fulfilled in the next version. Tomorrow, or more probably Monday or Tuesday.

 

[dh_epic]

Whatever delivers the needed game balance

 

[OzzyKP]

What do people think about giving a diplomacy bonus/penalty based on one's votes in the Congress?

If you vote to give an English city to France, perhaps you could get a +1 with France and a -1 with England. It would make sense at least provided it doesn't unbalance the game.

 

[McA123]

I think that the World Congresses occur to frequently and too many cities are traded for this to be that good of an idea. It looks good on paper, but in the game, you'd be getting -1 with 5-6 nations every congress. And if your friends are the super powers and you vote against them to keep them from getting stronger, there go your friends. you could always abstain, I suppose but it seems kind of silly to me to abstain because you were afraid of voting either way.

 

[Blasphemous]

I think the silly thing is that you can go voting against someone's request and they just don't care. Making the congresses actually affect diplomacy is pretty much a necessary change (though not an urgent one), even though it does mean abstaining will become a much prettier option. That's actually a good thing - only decisions that many are strongly in favor of will pass. Things won't pass just because.

 

[Rhye]

i disagree here.
Voting is the consequence of attitude, not the opposite.

 

[Blasphemous]

But it doesn't make sense for friends to vote against each other and stay friends. If voting against someone makes them angry, you can have beautifully realistic situations such as everybody trying to carve a piece out of say, Germany, and then Germany gets angry at everybody, and you get a world war. Right now superpowers will sit idly by as the world divides their territory between their enemies.
At the very least, America shouldn't be happy with England asking for American cities. (Even if America doesn't get pissed off at France for supporting the request.)

 

[McA123]

Well, both sides of the argument make sense. You can make a fairly good case for either one. It just comes down to personal opinion on the matter.

 

[dh_epic]

I think there might be a middle ground. If a vote succeeds AGAINST a civ, then all the people who voted against that civ receive a diplomatic penalty, and/or every vote that went FOR that civ counts as a diplomatic bonus.

 

[Blasphemous]

Sounds good dh. It would be enough for civs to need to think twice before voting against a friend. AI would need to be adjusted accordingly if that were implemented of course.

 

[McA123]

That seems like a good idea.

 

[Scott Siskind]

I've been playing Rhye's and Fall for a few weeks and loving it, and I joined these forums just to complain about the Congress. It's nice to know that a post is already here.

The Congress has ruined two or three games for me. In my last one, I was Japan, on Monarch level, fighting a really fun war to the death with China. After about twenty turns of fighting, I had managed to barely hold on against their units, the world called a Congress, China asked for (and got) my big mainland strategic muster point city, and proceeded to completely massacre me from their safe position in the middle of my empire.

I understand this may be realistic and may be fair and whatever, but Civ is supposed to be fun. And there's nothing less fun than getting a city through clever strategy, hard work, and sacrifice - only to see it taken away from you the next turn when someone else asks nicely for it.

My suggestion: an option at the beginning, similar to the no culture flipping and no barbarians options: no world congresses. That way people who want them can have them but it's not forced on anyone who doesn't like them.

By the way, I think I might have discovered a bug. Whenever I try to bribe someone, and the game says it fails because I haven't given them enough gold, they still vote for my interests. This could just be a coincidence, but you might want to check that it's the actual bribery rather than the attempt at bribery that causes the attitude switch.

 

[McA123]

You could have refused to let the city go to China. You might have risked war with some other nations, but as Japan you probably would have been far away from them that it wouldn't affect you too much.

 

[Rhye]

Indeed, you should have just refused.

Can you post a save with the bribe bug? It worked fine so far.

 

[Scott Siskind]

I'm actually going to retract the bug report. I tried to replicate it to get a save game and this time they voted against me. I guess it was just a coincidence that happened a few times in a row.

Thanks for the advice on the war against China. Being a terrible cheater, I reloaded from a save and tried it. This time, I kept the city but my defiance of Congress prompted Peter, who had previously minded his own business, to declare war on me. Now my Mongolian colonies are under attack from two directions at once. Conclusion: slightly better than before, but I still wish the World Congress would just go away.

 

[Icmancin]

This has probably been suggested already but here's what I think should happen.

You can choose whenever you want Congresses to happen. I don't have Civ4 yet so bear with me. In the Foreign Advisor/Diplomacy Screen you can select Make Congress. Then it asks for a name of the Congress (say Congress of Paris) and you can invite any people yu want (at least 2 others). All the Diplomacy is done and the Congress ends. At the end of the game where it cycles through events it should say 1640: Congress of Paris is held then all the events that took place in it (Spain cedes Barcelona to France). It should also be possible to Request (or Demand) a Congress when you request a Peace Treaty. This would allow for post-war division.

Completely off-topic I'd like to see the idea to Sever Relation with a Foreign Civ. It would add something new to the game. You could also request other Civs to Sever or Break Off Relations. This could also affect Congresses, perhaps allow the divisions of a losing faction in a war without them having a say (like Versaille).

 

[McA123]

The idea of having congresses happen on a whim seems kind of...unbalanced to me. The player gets to decide when all the congresses are? I think every 25 turns is a better way than that. Oh, and I think it was tried to have it happen after peace treaties and it couldn't be done. If it could though, I think that would be best.

 

[Blasphemous]

The reason it can't be done every time peace is signed automatically, is that it would require every turn to start with a check of diplomatic state and comparison with last turn's check, which would greatly increase loading times.

 

[McA123]

Yeah. I was just saying that if it were possible without sacrificing the short load times, it would be the best way to do things. I think the current system works fine though.

 

[JFJ]

I think that the congress could be something like the G8 summit i.e big nations get toghether and divy up the world. For example, America, Spain and Persia are the top three civs. They meet and Persia, who recently warred with Japan, says "let's give Japan's colony, New York, to Germany." America, Japan's ally, votes no. Spain, Germany's most hated foe, also votes no. Measure fails. Your probably are saying, "how's this like the G8?" In the G8, a bunch of powerful countries get toghether and decide economic policy. If they say that Kenya's beef has mad cow disease, they then ban the importing of Kenya's beef until Kenya shows it has improved. Kenya, unless its in the G8, has no say whatsoeveer. It could refuse to carry out more checks, but then it probably loses it's main market. Maybe in the World Congress, one or two other small nations are invited to even things out. However if you're not invited and the biggest nations vote to hand over one of your territories, you can refuse, but risk the wrath of the greatest nations. Also, you could abstain, and then your spot is given to either the next most powerful nation or another random nation. Also, would it be possible to add client states? I had something else I wanted to say, but i'll just say it later.