DESIGN: Dale on bells, rebel sentiment & REF

[Dale]

There's a lot of discussion (mostly negative) surrounding how vanilla works out rebel sentiment and the REF. If you're interested in that go read those threads, as I won't talk about it here.

CRS == city rebel sentiment
GRS == global rebel sentiment
SIF == seperatist influence factor

Issues:
1. CRS is placed on population slots not the individual. Does the house become a rebel or the man living inside?
2. GRS reflects every colonist, including the docks and outside jobs with no way to influence colonists in those roles.
3. Politics did not always manifest itself in treason. Some politicians did great work for the King & Country. Not every bell is a treasonous act.
4. Not all discussion on soverienty ended in a revolutionary war. Canada is seperate but part of a larger Commonwealth.
5. REF growth based on one thing, and one thing alone.
6. REF increases increase (the next increase will be larger than this increase).

So to tackle the biggest area within the game, here is what I propose:
1. Each colonist has their own tory/seperatist setting. Either they support the King, or they support seperation.
2. CRS is a reflection of the percentage of colonists in that colony who are seperatists (the inverse percentage indicates torys).
3. Every colonist's sentiment is based on a swinging 'seperatist influence factor' (SIF). If the influence is towards the King they are a tory, and if away from the King a seperatist (ie: if > 0 then colonist is a seperatist).
4. A colonist's SIF is based on the following (settlement based factors influence fortified colonists on settlement plot [eg: soldiers, pioneers] as well as colonists in the settlement):
- Where born: Europe == 100% tory. New World == CRS percent chance of seperatist (so the higher the CRS the more chance of a seperatist being born).
- With no other factors, the SIF is -1 (tory, natural respect of men towards a King)
- +1: King taxes the good of the profession worked (eg: if you can have a tobacco goods party at a tax rise, all tobacco planters and tobacconists will receive the +1)
- +1: King drags you into a foreign war (more on that in later design doc)
- +1: King makes request (quest if comparing to Civ4 BTS - more on that in later design doc)
- +1: refuse to kiss King's ring
- -1: King assists in colonial war
- -1: King grants military aid (diplomacy request)
- -1: King defends colony against Pirates / privateers (more on that in later design doc)
- -1: REF unit being based in that settlement
- +1: for availability to church and school (freedom of religion and education)
- +2: for availability to cathedral and college/uni
- +1: for FF joining (greater / more respected united voice in New World)
- +-2: randomly allocated value on birth as all men are individual with their own stories
5. Bells translate into political points (and other points as revealed in later design doc).
6. GRS to reflect total seperatist percentage, including outside professions and docks.
7. REF to be influenced by different aspects:
- King's attitude to other European powers (external threat)
- GRS (internal threat)
- Linear time-based growth (represents overall increase in military due to increased manpower and defense spending)
- Possible for REF to decrease due to happy European relations and low GRS
8. Settlements with more tory sentiment than seperatist sentiment on DoI go to the King.

Here are some actual examples of what will happen under the above model for politics:
1. King hikes tax rate from 1% to 3%. You choose to take the tax hike rather than having a rum party. All sugar planters and distillers get a +1 to their SIF.
2. King deploys a MoW to the New World to deal with a Pirate who's been attacking you. All colonists receive -1 to their SIF as King defended the colonies.
3. GRS jumps up due to in one turn you receive a FF, the King passes a tax hike on a commodity a lot of colonists are working on, and drags you into a war with Spain (thus destroying King's attitude to Spain as well). King increases REF due to increased internal and external threats.
4. You comply with the King's requests, fulfill a quest for the King and help to maintain good relations between the European colonial powers (thus helping to keep high European relations). King reduces REF due to lower external threats.

I'll add more to this if I think of it, but this should give a good idea of how I want politics to work in AoD2.

 

[Dale]

I'll add my design notes on the way the REF should work here:

1. King is able to deploy MoW's to the New World to protect shipping from pirates and privateers.
2. The King will no longer transport troops by MoW. Troops will be transported to the New World in galleons.
3. Galleons will be made at time of loading free of charge for the King (they are free to represent existing shipping the King has access too across the Empire outside the New World).
4. The MoW's will escort the first wave of galleons to the New World and then remain in the New World till the end of the war.
5. Once a galleon is unloaded it will return to Europe. (It will not physically re-appear in Europe but be removed from the game when it hits the Europe sea zone).
6. Galleons are non-combatant and are not counted as part of the REF as a whole (so killing all galleons will not result in end of WoI like defeating all MoW's in vanilla does).
7. To defeat the REF you must defeat all land units. Defeating all the MoW's will not result in a win.
8. The waves will consist of the following percentages of land troops: 50%, 30%, 20%.

This is my plan. Replace the MoW transport concept with freebie galleons to transport the troops over. This means waves are more controlled by programming instead of how many MoW's it has. In the end this will result in the King deploying faster, making the 200 turn slow deployment a thing of the past.

However, the player must remember if the King has a REF of 700, each wave is going to be bigger than the waves of a REF of 150.

 

[Wheldrake]

If I've understood correctly, it's going to be a lot harder to raise rebel sentiment.

Most of my population comes from immigrants: colonists arriving on the docks due to cross production, hurried to the docks, or directly purchased from Europe. These guys are going to begin mostly loyal to the king, and I'm unsure under the new system how my bell production is going to sway them over to rebellion.

A significant but still minority segment of my population comes from home-grown colonists, meaning those produced by topping the 200 food barrier in colonies. I usually train these guys in native villages or, later in the game, in schools & universities. Or else they become soldiers and dragoons with the right equipment, and don't count at all towards rebel sentiment calculations (in AoD2, at least). These guys will be predisposed towards rebellion, I take it. But as they tend to be a minority, I'll still need to sway the allegiance of the true immigrants in order to get past the 50% barrier.

Having the REF troops arrive by gallion will give more opportunities to sink incoming troop carriers, while dodging the escourting MoWs. That looks like an interesting part of the game, more fun than going head-to-head with the MoWs themselves. I'm assuming the REF will have access to unlimited numbers of galleons, but each one sunk will mean 6 fewer REF troops to fight off, so it'll really be worth it to try to sink them.

The larger waves of arriving troops should make fighting off the REF forces *highly* challenging. AS things stand, with the right preparation, the REF can never get more than a toe-hold on land. I crush any landing troops, in their first turn on land, with waves of dragoons, and protect nearly all of my coastal squares with 2-3 soldiers, so landing REF forces tend to already be diminished. Having a much larger initial wave will be very tough indeed, which is a good thing.

Be sure to raise the requirements for alternative forms of victory. As things stand in v1.05, I inevitably get an industrial victory long before I'm ready to declare independence, simply because I'm cranking out loads of tools, guns and salable goods from a dozen or so cities. IMHO the alternate victory conditions simply don't work, because the whole point of the game is fighting off the REF at the end.

YMMV, --- Wheldrake

 

[nargulok]

Great idea’s Dale. I really like them. I agree with Wheldrake on the note that your proposed changes might make it more difficult to increase RS if a majority of the population is European born. I would agree that purchased Euro units should be 100% loyal but what about the Euro dissent that causes Europeans to leave intentionally, they should have a lower loyalty.

As part of the testing process it might be necessary to tweak the DoI requirements.

I like the Idea that instead of a GRS being the requirement to DoI that a certain ratio of colonies with high enough RS be the requirement. This could also make having a larger colony be more appealing.

If you have less then 6 cities then all of them would have to have more then 50 % RS. Once you have 6 or more cities then only 2/3 have to have 50% RS If you have 10 or more cities then only ½ have to have 50% RS.

 

[The Great Apple]

My take on DoI:

At the moment when at DoI my main colonies tend to become size 1, with all the citizens fighting. I may keep some guys at the back making guns/horses if I don't have enough when I declare, but all the frontal colonies will be size 1 with everybody fighting. This seems a tad silly to me. Surely if only 50% of your population support independence the ones who don't aren't likely to be too keen to fight.

Are you just planning on having two states of mind - separatist or tory? No indifferent people?

 

[kaibayashi]

Great idea’s Dale. I really like them. I agree with Wheldrake on the note that your proposed changes might make it more difficult to increase RS if a majority of the population is European born. I would agree that purchased Euro units should be 100% loyal but what about the Euro dissent that causes Europeans to leave intentionally, they should have a lower loyalty.

Surely any colonists that appear on the docks would be 50/50 separist/tory at least, if not more? I guess you could argue that just because they want to live in the new world that doesn't make them seperatist, but it would surely be a factor?

 

[UWHabs]

A good start.

I think Bells should influence RS. So if you're in a town getting lots of bells, you should have the people in that town slowly convert over as well. Something like:

Each unit will gain "Culture" from bells. Each turn in a colony you produce a bell, it randomly goes to one of the colonists in the town. At various levels, colonists will get +1 RS bonuses. You can make this decay over time as well. So, for example:
You have a colony of size 10, producing 10 bells per turn. So, each turn, each colonist gets +1 culture from the bells, which will go towards their rebel sentiment. Say you put your levels at 10, 50, 100, and 1000 bells, but each subsequent level requires a 1 "bell" support" per turn. So, once you hit 10 bells, your colonist gets +1 SIF (I guess I should use your terminology), but after that, they eat up 1 bell per turn to keep them happy. So in the above example, if you size 10 colony produces 10 bells per turn, you have exactly enough to get each colonist to +1, but nothing more, since they eat 1 per turn, and you only make 1 per colonist. Then at 50, they each eat 2. So, given enough time, if a size 10 colony makes 20 bells per turn, each colonist will make it so +2 SIF from this.

Obviously, you have to get the levels settled once you test it out. But this would allow for some "teaching" of rebel sentiment.

With this, I think there should, like in Col1, be a "happy cap", so that once a colony hits a certain size, you need to make sure it doesn't become too tory-friendly. Maybe have that as an inverse of the RS bonus that there is now. If your total town SIF is less than -10, then you get a -25% bonus for all good made in the town for "People don't really want to be here".

 

[Dale]

Please note that a docks colonist with a start SIF of -1, when the random amount is applied (+-2) that it's possible for them to be a persecuted European and start on the seperatist side with +1.

You'll see 20% of colonists starting as a seperatist.

 

[milvang]

I am a bit worried about the micromanagement required for taxes.

Unless I am mistaken the king will tax things that you have stockpiled in your colonies. This means that by storing some goods in wagon trains or ships, you have some influence over what is taxed. In the c4 version of colonization, this isnt much of an issue, because not accepting tax increases doesnt work well, and if you accept the increase, it doesnt matter what goods was taxed. I am a bit worried that using wagon trains to store goods in ends up being an anoying, but effective way to influence your independance support.

 

[The Great Apple]

Unless I am mistaken the king will tax things that you have stockpiled in your colonies.

I can't see anything anywhere that suggests this.

 

[milvang]

I hav not started to look into the code, I guess i should find out where the tax mod code is stored. In any case I have only ever gotten taxed on something I have stocked, meaning I am certain that I have not gotten the option of holding a tobacco party, when there was no tobacco anywhere to throw out.

I have not studied the tax patterns in C4C, but i did pay attention to them in the original, as getting taxed on the wrong thing before you had your custom house could be cripeling, as could losing your option to buy tools and trade goods in europe. I never enjoyed that side of the original, but it was needed for optimal performance.

Anyone know where to look for the tax code to check?

 

[kaibayashi]

I hav not started to look into the code, I guess i should find out where the tax mod code is stored. In any case I have only ever gotten taxed on something I have stocked, meaning I am certain that I have not gotten the option of holding a tobacco party, when there was no tobacco anywhere to throw out.

I have not studied the tax patterns in C4C, but i did pay attention to them in the original, as getting taxed on the wrong thing before you had your custom house could be cripeling, as could losing your option to buy tools and trade goods in europe. I never enjoyed that side of the original, but it was needed for optimal performance.

Anyone know where to look for the tax code to check?

Yeah this is correct, altho hes not actually 'taxing' that good. Not sure about whether the computer includes goods in wagon trains when choosing what to select for the party, but it does always seem to pick something you have a lot of, is valuable, or your trading a lot!

 

[Dale]

The tax party good is the "most traded" good which is not already boycotted, and then it finds the city with the highest stored amount of that good.

So the assumption above is only partly true. It is first the most traded good, then the city with the most stored of that good.

And that's from the code.

 

[Wheldrake]

In a recent game under 1.06, I had the king ask for a tax party on food, and then wood! Of course, I had never traded these things in Europe, and I'd never seen those results before.

It may be that I hadn't traded *any* goods in Europe before that point, as I was trying a new strategy. Can't recall for certain.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

 

[Gliese 581]

I think it's reasonable that people arriving on docks would be mostly "tories". Not so much because of loyalty to the king - I think most common people weren't politically active/curious enough to think about that before the WOI - but because that's what they know, the democratic ideas had been buried for a pretty long time after all before the DOI. It makes sense that you'd have to convince them that "look, we don't need a king to run things proper here".

I'm interested in how you're planning on implementing bells Dale, are they still supposed to increase GRS?

I don't think that huge waves of the REF will be such a problem, remember that the actual number of REF soldiers will be changed from the massive values of the vanilla game (that you often get if you're not exploiting bell generation somehow). With new numbers that balance well with the difficulties there should be no undue problem.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I am just starting to learn the game and so far I only played AoD. I like your ideas here as they would help AoD deliver its promised improvement of the game. Currently the mechanical build-up of rebellion sentiment just favors smaller empire. In my last game once I had enough money I purchased a good number of elder statesmen and stationed them in my settlements raising RS almost instantly and getting closer to the 50% required for DoI too rapidly. So I do find the mechanic depending mainly or only on bells rather unrealistic and makes the game quite shallow.

I agree totally that being born in Europe shouldn't be the same for all colonists you get from there. Purchased colonists should have more loyalty to the king than those on the docks. It shouldn't be left for the random factor.

Bells should still affect CRS but this should depend on who is creating them i.e. if you station someone who is loyal to the king in a city hall he should still create culture but negative CRS. This would make purchasing elder statesmen to create RS in tons not a viable tactic.

I hope the King's AI becomes more intelligent. The king shouldn't always keep raising the taxes indefinitely. There should be times when he actually lower them based on how alarming the GRS is. The idea that he can send MoW to fight pirates is quite good.

At last I'd like to express my appreciation for your effort to make this game better, deeper and more challenging, in short a game worthy of spending time playing it.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

As I've said before in other threads, REF should be partly based on crosses as well as bells. Religious freedom and an increase in emigration from the home country should upset the King.

I see it as using the max of either one. For instance, if a certain number of LBs triggers an increase in REFs, then that same certain number of crosses should do likewise but the trigger for that threshold can only be triggered by one of them (the one that gets to that number first).

 

[Slab2Go]

For what it's worth, having more than 20% of a population mobilise under arms is a little unrealistic. By this I mean armed and moving a long way away from their home town (like 90% of the population armed as dragoons defending the coast).

By the same token, the 'locals' say within 2 squares of their home town should enjoy the effective protection bonus of their home town (because they know the local area making them very hard to beat by traditional European land forces of the time)

Economically, the European King would only send a REF calculated to restore order to 2 or 3 largest cities in the new world. I find the REF in the original civ4 col totally unrealistic, a European king would never willingly expend so much cash & effort to subdue a few riotous locals. However, what he would do is have home troops stationed in all major cities once they reached a certain size 'for their own protection' - a new twist ?