CS Pledge to protect

[frktest]

The Human Player can succesfully play with a smaller army than AI and thus be a trustworthy protection for AI; I would propose to lower the Pledge to protect limit from 60% to 40% or better to remove the limit.
That will help a better gameplay for me.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Yea it is very hard for the player to get a pledge on higher difficulties, I agree that some change is needed.

 

[Stalker0]

Realistically this should be a factor of difficulty, and one of the one few things were it should go down in difficulty.

on emperor I can get pledges with proper dedication, ok deity the number of units it takes is insane

 

[Hinin]

The concept of having CS PtP use the same concept as tribute (power relative to distance) seemed a good idea to me when it was discussed : basically, it would require you to have the strongest military within a certain area of the map. With each new global era (same logic as how eras are accounted for in the World Congress), the area would increase (so in the endgame, the top military great powers would be able to create PtP all around the map).

 

[DeAnno]

I don't really like the military requirement as it makes PtP very risky and punishing. If you PtP a CS you like and then the AIs surge a ton of military score right after you can be forced to lose it and make the CS angry. It feels like too much of a commitment to chase a confusingly defined and somewhat arbitrary number with nasty consequences if you fail.

 

[looorg]

While the limit is a bit artificial and not in the human players favor, unless you are already conquering the world in which case you probably don't care about the city-states anyway. There is a difference probably tho as far as the city-states would be concerned in regards to being offered protection from a super power or to be offered protection from the civ with the weakest/lowest military_strength_score. Still it's nice to have friends, just that the reward might somehow differentiate depending on who you are, also then perhaps the blame if something happens to it while under your "protection".

I'm not really sure what it would infer if the limit was dropped to say 40%, as suggested. I imagine that more or less as many civs as possible or could pledge would do so and there would either be an increase in war or world pacification cause nobody wants to piss the others off by attacking a city-state (or trying to bully them etc).

I might not remember this correctly but isn't really all that the pledge does is lower the drop rate (or decay) of your influence with them? Possibly also triggering events when others interact with them? There is no actual real reward, they are not paying out extra yields or some kind of protection fee? It might be more worth it if say you actually got some kind of reward from it while it is maintained beyond the feelz of goodness. So they like you a little more, or hate you less or whatever. I can't really recall a game where this was a relevant factor for the game. This sort of almost links to that previous topic on how do you make taking/liberating/whatever city-states be more significant. Lowering the pledge limit doesn't really do much then. So more people will do it.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

You get higher rewards from CS quests if you PtP them IIRC. I like Hinins idea if it isnt too hard to implement.

 

[Grassland Farm]

I also am not sure how to feel about the way it's calculated. Sometimes, I was 2nd largest army according to "Demographics", at like 80% of the strongest, and I still couldn't PtP because I was at like 54% power of the strongest or something.

Honestly, in some kind of way, anyone stronger than the citystate could technically pledge to protect it and be taken seriously... if we look at the bigger scheme of things even then, it'd just require having an above-average military among major civs.

 

[Valvts]

Maybe there is a way to make the pledge to protect mechanic more interesting? How about 1 pledge per player, and that CS get significant bonuses?

 

[pineappledan]

It makes sense to me that the % military score should decrease with difficulty, maybe from 60% at Prince, decreasing by 5% per level above that, so 40% at Deity?

Otherwise what @Hinin suggested sounds good. If you have X Military intimidation score, or could heavy tribute Y amount, you can also DoP the city-state

 

[Bromar1]

What about -5% if you have an active trade route and -5% if you share religion with the CS?

 

[Stalker0]

You could also do the pledge where instead of military strength you have to give them a unit every X turns to maintain it.

this would also make unit gifting cooler and more meaty.

The draw back might be that you get swarms of units around CS depending on how aggressive the AI embraces it

 

[Recursive]

Easiest solution is to make the human strength mod (from difficulty) and skill rating mod (from successful/unsuccessful combat) apply to CS perception of human military strength as well. I added this for next version.

 

[pineappledan]

Easiest solution is to make the human strength mod (from difficulty) and skill rating mod (from successful/unsuccessful combat) apply to CS perception of human military strength as well. I added this for next version.

will that affect tribute yields? Those are already a little too high.

 

[Recursive]

will that affect tribute yields? Those are already a little too high.

No, it's a special case for PTP's.