Heavy Tribute Rework (DRAFT)

[Stalker0]

this is a draft of a congress proposal I plan to submit, I wanted to circulate a draft version to get some initial feedback.

I have also included a poll. the poll is not official in anyway but gives me a feeling if I'm on the right track or if this needs a rethink.

Heavy Tribute Rework

• Regular tribute continues to work as it does today.
• Heavy Tribute renamed to "Military Protectorship"
  • No more %scaling, you need 50% or more of "current heavy tribute value" to activate.
  • Gain gold equal to 150% of regular tribute.
  • Gain influence with CS = 30 + 20 (era scaling)
  • At any point in the next 5 turns, you may declare a pledge of protection regardless of your overall military power.
    • Pledge benefits unchanged.
  • Imperium (Authority): Military Protectorship influence/gold bonuses increased by 50%
  • Tyranny (Autocracy)
    • Only need 35% to activate Military protectorship (down from 50%)
    • All opponents lose CS influence = influence you gain.

Rationale: This version of tribute operates more as an "engine" rather than a one time gift. This gives military players a way to use their militaries to gain diplomatic (CS) benefits (which long term severely outstrip the benefits of tribute), and so allows military players to enjoy some "peacetime" for a while but still use their militaries to get an edge. The benefits are now smoother, so you don't have to worry about tribute being super strong right at the beginning of the game and then worthless for the rest of time. With this option, you can also now makes Pledges more locally, human players often struggle with pledges at high difficulties due to the massive army spam of AI. This gives players a way to still enjoy the pledge game, by working with their local CS.

 

[CppMaster]

Why no more %scaling? Doesn't it introduce min-maxing? Like, 100% of heavy tribute value would yield you the same as 50%, so there is no point in having it bigger.

 

[azum4roll]

There's no big problem in the current iteration of normal/heavy tribute. Just some numbers need to be tweaked:

1. Minimum tribute% raised to 50%. No more "tiny" gold tribute when you meet the CS. You have to commit to it.
2. Food/Production tribute raised to 100% of gold value, Culture/Science/Faith raised to 50% of gold value. At the same time, heavy tribute extra threshold is lowered to 20% instead of 50%. This is to make it worth heavy tributing at all.
3. Force annexation extra threshold stays at 50%. This way it's effectively requiring 50% tribute score instead of 0% as it is now.
4. Remove tribute score penalty for having positive influence with the CS. So you don't have to declare war on the CS just to speed up tribute.

 

[Stalker0]

Why no more %scaling? Doesn't it introduce min-maxing? Like, 100% of heavy tribute value would yield you the same as 50%, so there is no point in having it bigger.

I guess there is no fundamental reason you couldn't scale it, just increases the gold/influence you get further, as long as the minimum and maximum numbers weren't too crazy different.

 

[Stalker0]

There's no big problem in the current iteration of normal/heavy tribute. Just some numbers need to be tweaked:

1. Minimum tribute% raised to 50%. No more "tiny" gold tribute when you meet the CS. You have to commit to it.
2. Food/Production tribute raised to 100% of gold value, Culture/Science/Faith raised to 50% of gold value. At the same time, heavy tribute extra threshold is lowered to 20% instead of 50%. This is to make it worth heavy tributing at all.
3. Force annexation extra threshold stays at 50%. This way it's effectively requiring 50% tribute score instead of 0% as it is now.

Part of the issue is....the new tribute numbers are bad to the point where I question tributing at all. Why settle for some immediate yields and give up CS friendship/alliances that have much better long term advantages. There is also the diplomacy aspect, right now tributing CS under pledges (which shortly becomes all of them, often with multiple civs) just royally tees off the CS, other CS, and most of the civs in the game.... for a small sum. Its really questionable whether its worth it.

Conversely, with the old version, that early heavy tribute could be really game impacting. You get a solid heavy tribute from 1 Cultural CS early in the game, it can jump start your whole play. But then the benefits crater into nothing.

So the idea here....why not just let war players play the CS game of friends and allies, but using their military as a tool. Let them enjoy the various CS benefits, in a way that we scales much more elegantly.

 

[azum4roll]

Part of the issue is....the new tribute numbers are bad to the point where I question tributing at all.

I raised the numbers. Is it not enough?

There is also the diplomacy aspect, right now tributing CS under pledges (which shortly becomes all of them, often with multiple civs) just royally tees off the CS, other CS, and most of the civs in the game.... for a small sum. Its really questionable whether its worth it.

It always only affects the CS being tributed, and whoever pledged to protect it. There's currently an AI-to-human only dialogue that punishes the human for pledging, but it could be expanded to human-to-AI with dialogue rework. Then the pissing off should become mutual if the AI insists on the pledge.

So the idea here....why not just let war players play the CS game of friends and allies, but using their military as a tool. Let them enjoy the various CS benefits, in a way that we scales much more elegantly.

Then what's the point of having diplo units?

I forgot one point: remove tribute score penalty for having positive influence with the CS.

 

[Stalker0]

Then what's the point of having diplo units?

They are faster, you can’t move your army to every cs on the map easily, and you can’t just tribute tribute tribute, there is a cooldown to tribute before the tribute penalty resets.

This change would not in anyway stop you using diplo units, you would just need a bit fewer

 

[besset]

I think there are a couple issues with the way tributing & authority works currently that make the mechanic less fun than it could be and the authority playstyle more clunky and counterintuitive at times.

1. If you're going authority, you will probably train more units quicker and focus on clearing barb camps & getting heavy tributes. But "clear barb camp" quests can mess up your heavy tribute plan, making you allied or friendly with CS so that you are unable to demand heavy tribute. Getting friendly/allied CS's is a good thing but sometimes you would rather take the heavy tribute, so completing barb camp quests can actually be detrimental to your game, which feels very unfun and counterintuitive/clunky. You could just avoid clearing some camps but you would miss out on gold. Maybe we could make it so that you can still heavy tribute even if you are allies/friends and make it an authority policy. If that's too overpowered then the heavy tribute yields can be adjusted.

2. Heavy tribute falls off so quickly, it's very hard to tribute after already like medieval era because of more civs having influence with the CS and protecting it. The mechanic feels a bit half baked as a result. Also makes it so that you would rather have friendly/allied CS rather than heavy tributing, because it's stronger in the long run and gives you delegates.
I think you should still be able to relatively easily heavy tribute over the course of the game, it would make it more interesting, especially playing with authority. Maybe we can tweak an authority policy to be able to more easily heavy tribute even if the CS has allies/pledges of protection. So that you still have the ability to heavy tribute over the course of the game and in later eras. If this is too OP then the yields from tribute can be tweaked, maybe in this case depending on how many allies the CS has?

Military protectorship would fix most of these issues. It would make it so you can still make use of your army to get bonuses from CS, even if you are friends/allies. And it would also be a new form of CS interaction that lasts throughout an entire game and all eras. But I would add it as a 3rd option alongside normal tribute & heavy tribute (if possible), because heavy tribute is still an interesting and worthwhile mechanic imo and it's nice for variety. And I would add the tweaks I listed above for heavy tribute to remove the pain points for that specific mechanic. And would be interesting and more fun if either heavy tribute or military protectorship provides science/culture/food/production depending on the type of CS. Numbers would probably have to be tweaked to account for the addition of military protectorship as a third option though.

 

[gabrielsfarias]

adding on what already was said, what would be done to the zulu's ability regarding tribute? maybe make it like morocco plunder trade routes?

 

[Anarcomu]

Another idea : make it so that asking for tribute force a sphere of influence on the city for X turns. The city provide yields, resources, maybe or not military support and delegates ; then it returns back to normal.
CS already under sphere of influence get an extra protection from tribute, and asking tribute to them incur more diplomatic penalty.

 

[der_weihnachtsmann]

i think another problem with tributing is, that pledges of p. are to easy to trigger for multiple civs (especially ai) and have to few downsides. maybe increase the needed proximity or make it that only allies can do it so you have at least the downside that you loose influence if you dont do anything against tributes from your rival who doesn't have to worry about two other pops.

 

[Stalker0]

i think another problem with tributing is, that pledges of p. are to easy to trigger for multiple civs (especially ai) and have to few downsides. maybe increase the needed proximity or make it that only allies can do it so you have at least the downside that you loose influence if you dont do anything against tributes from your rival who doesn't have to worry about two other pops.

In my original version of this, I had made this the only way to pledge. I figured that might be too radical for people that wouldn’t mind a change to tribute but don’t want pledges too altered, so I used this “free pledge option”