Do you support hard-coding puppets to build walls/castles/arsenals first?

[LifeOfBrian]

When capturing a city and making it a puppet, it can vary greatly when the puppet will decide to build walls, castles and arsenals (defensive buildings). I've seen cases where it never builds them despite being a city on the border, cases where it almost immediately starts building walls, and cases in between.

In my opinion, we should hard-code so that puppets would prioritize building walls, castles and arsenals first, before building any other buildings, insofar the civ has the technology for it. If the owner of the puppet discovers Construction, Chivalry or Rifling "mid-build", i.e. when the puppet is building another building, it should switch to the defensive building and later returning to the previous build.

Puppets are very hard to defend without defensive buildings and there's no point in a puppet building banks, public schools, caravansaries etc. if it'll be (re)captured very soon due to lack of defensive buildings. There are no buildings more important for puppets than defensive buildings.

Would you be in favour of hard-coding puppets like this? Poll included.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Shouldn't puppets be a weaker option? If they build defensive buildings first, then what's the incentive to annex them? They will be easy to fortify due to AI prioritization and then you just let them do their stuff. Once they are fully developed, you can annex and sacrifice practically nothing. If the puppet is in a said important strategic location, then you will have to annex them, build defensive structures and the Courthouse. Warmongering is already one of the easiest ways to play VP. Let's not make it even easier.

 

[Bromar1]

The biggest problem is the randomness. A puppet city deciding to build walls first can make or break an entire war. Either they should always build them predictably or they should never build them at all

 

[Stalker0]

I at least think walls and castle should be first, I can respect leaving arsenals out as they are expensive and not always needed.

 

[youngsteve]

I agree that they should definetly build walls straight away, as really annoying to see your weak city get overun by marauding ranged units you cannot reach. The others depending on the situation. At least you will normally have other non puppeted cities, which is more than Venice has. I remember playing them & having money problems for awhile (I know) due to warring Aztecs, & the puppeted cities cities refused to build anything useful & sat there after awhile building farming whilst I desperately needed defensive buildings. That was a few patches ago though.

 

[DeAnno]

I definitely support autowalls first. Even castles are a big building when they first unlock though, so that's a harder decision. Then again the yields of a puppet are nothing special anyway, so Castles and even Arsenals are a big boom for your buck.

 

[Melchizedek]

No, but I am in the minority that like a certain amout of uncertainty and variability. To puppet a city would necessarily involve accepting the risk of giving the puppet government some meaningful independence.

 

[CrazyG]

I say yes to walls but not the others.

Combat just gets really silly around renaissance era if cities without walls are involved.

 

[randomnub]

If you're at war, puppets could go all the way into defensive buildings. At peace, follow the standard build order. About the 'standard' build order, please make puppets value production buildings (the yields they don't get penalities for) higher, it takes ages for them to build the like of amphitheatres and universities without a solid infrastructure first, for minimal gains.

While we're at this, Merchants of Venice aquiring a city state should not really 'conquering' it right? I mean, they're destroying walls and culture buildings upon use now, that leaves you with very vulnerable puppets as well.

 

[LarryAR]

Walls at most. Want more control? Annex the city.

 

[Stalker0]

haha almost as if to answer this poll, in my current game held on to a puppet for 20 turns. Denmark declares, takes it with a single hit from a ironclad, because I don't even have freakin walls.

 

[youngsteve]

haha almost as if to answer this poll, in my current game held on to a puppet for 20 turns. Denmark declares, takes it with a single hit from a ironclad, because I don't even have freakin walls.

At least you can annext the cities, which you cannot do as Venice. I know you can buy half the cost to build, but sometimes you cannot afford it & they never seem to build anything useful when you need it.

 

[psparky]

I think that rather than hard-coding anything the value of defensive buildings, used by the AI to determine what to build, should be increased. This is because similar problems occur with liberated cities, both those of civs and CS. I'm not sure if the AI knows that in order to build castles etc, it needs to build walls first, so they are more valuable than they might appear based on their own stats. Perhaps the value should increase with era too. From what I've seen in the logs, the value might need to increase by a factor of 10 to 20 for them to be chosen naturally once later buildings are available.

 

[Rafs]

I agree, I think it should at least be high priority (they often start with chanceries, which depending on your situation are not that good and quite expensive). In any case, I think defensive buildings for AI should always be quite high on the priority list, I've had a game where Arabia had arsenals in 4 of their 7 cities, but they left their capital and another big city (with petra) with only wall+castle while I was rocking riflemans+field guns, and not only is your city less durable, it's way easier to tank hits from castle than arsenals with units.
In any case, I believe this will mostly benefit the AI as if you're a player it's easy for you to tell if you think a city will see any action or not as know you more or less up to where you are conquering. I don't know if the AI gauges this and thus annexes border cities to make sure they are not lost during conflicts.

 

[azum4roll]

Disagreed. Just increase score of defensive buildings.

 

[LarryAR]

Isn't part of the challenge to capture a city is to manage the forces needed to keep the city? That is, to leave plenty of force and build or re-build strategic forts and roads as needed. Buildings on the city hex take time, regardless of priority.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Please check out this for a more nuanced poll https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/puppets-and-defensive-buildings-part-2.669043/

 

[cammcken]

At least you can annext the cities, which you cannot do as Venice. I know you can buy half the cost to build, but sometimes you cannot afford it & they never seem to build anything useful when you need it.

Investing in a building as Venice bumps it to the top of the production queue. That's way more control than any other civ has over puppets.

 

[tommytoxen]

I think it works fine-ish as is, the puppet's governor should build whatever the puppet needs the most in that moment. no point building arsenal's if the puppet's unhappiness is through the roof

 

[azum4roll]

Puppets have the same unhappiness regardless (not counting urbanization).