Immigration

[Thalassicus]

The situation you experienced was a bug, which should be solved in later releases. The project's currently in a beta testing phase so we'll sometimes encounter bugs and balance issues. I've been going through some difficult RL things lately that have delayed my efforts on this project. It will take time for me to work things out and solve problems.

I apologize for the poor first impression of the idea. I ask you to keep an open mind as I improve the concept in the weeks ahead, so we can give it a real try. Immigration will make happiness useful for something other than golden ages, and tourism helpful before we achieve victory. Migration is an important part of real world history. The immigration rate will be very slow, and controlled by happiness and tourism, so it doesn't get out of hand like the buggy initial build.

 

[Ahriman]

Could you please describe how the immigration effect is intended to work?
That would make it easier to understand and assess, and provide feedback.

[Best of luck on recovery from the flooding, I hope the damage wasn't too serious!]

 

[skodkim]

Well i guess i for one support having some kind of immigration system.

In earlier versions i played with the emigration mod activated and loked the mechanics.

I agree that it shouldn't be too "active" but a citizen moving around once in a while is fine.

\skodkim

 

[Ahriman]

What did you like about it? How did it make you play differently?

 

[Thalassicus]

Immigration gives tourism and happiness more visible impact throughout the game. High happiness and tourism make immigrants more likely to arrive in our nation. If our happiness and culture are high, immigrants are very unlikely to leave our nation. In the early game, before tourism is a significant factor, immigration rewards us for building up happiness beyond what we need to stay happy. It's a more visible and satisfying reward for high happiness than golden ages.

Immigration should currently only happen if America is in the game, and only America should receive immigrants. The effect activates if America has positive happiness and more than one city. The game picks a player with low happiness and high American cultural influence to send an immigrant. Immigration favors a wide and expansionist style of gameplay for America, since America can quickly grow new cities with immigrants.



Choosing an immigrant nation

Immigrants arrive once every few turns. Each point of happiness increases odds by 0.5%, and each city increases odds by 20%. If America has 5 happiness and 5 cities they get an immigrant about once every 16 turns.

The odds per turn = 0.5% * happiness * gamespeed mod * 1.2 ^ #cities

America can only receive immigrants from major civs they are at peace with. Each civ who can immigrate to America calculates a weight based on these factors:

tourism : cumulative tourism influence of America on CivB
culture : cumulative culture CivB has earned

culture weight = 1.1 ^ (10 * tourism / culture)
happiness weight = 1.05 ^ (-1 * happiness of CivB)
population weight = total population of CivB

total weight = culture weight * happiness weight * population weight

The game then randomly selects a civ based on these weights. A player with twice the weight has twice the odds of being selected.


Choosing immigrant cities

The game now figures out what origin and destination cities an immigrant will move. Pioneers move from large low-culture cities to small frontier cities. This favors wide expansionist gameplay with quickly growing new cities. The weights depend on these factors:

base weight (origin city) = (1.2 ^ population) / (log(city culture threshold) + 2)
base weight (destination) = 1.2 ^ (-1 * population)

000% : razing
200% : puppet
150% : occupied
050% : blockaded
050% : capital
050% : garrisoned

The game calculates the weights of the cities, then uses those weights to randomly pick an origin and destination to move 1 immigrant. This is similar to picking a civilization above. Cities with twice the weight have twice the odds of getting selected.

 

[EricB]

Really dislike the immigration system for America. America should play as a wide, expansionist civ. Higher growth means larger cities, which translates to fewer cities. That's not a desired effect for an expansionist civilization. That's good for Tall civs like India.

Expansionist civs need help with production and happiness. America's unique ability should be along those lines.

It is a nice idea, and I do like how immigration isn't dominating the game anymore (hopefully). The previous iteration made the game unplayable and I had to delete Immigration from the mod. I haven't actually played a game with Immigration in a while since that previous experience was horrifying. Strongly advise making America a wide, expansionist civ and not a tall civ though.

 

[Ahriman]

Thanks for describing the mechanics.

The odds of receiving an immigrant are: (2% * happiness * era). Eras start with 0, 1, 2, etc. If America has 5 happiness in the Classical era they have a 0.02*5*1 = 10% chance per turn of getting an immigrant.

This seems like it would be extremely powerful.

Think about comparing happiness vs food yields. In the midgame (Renaissance era), an effect that gives +5 happiness gives you all the benefits of that happiness (sustaining population, golden age points) but is *also* giving you a free citizen every 5 turns.
By the midgame, most cities are around size 12 or so. So look at the food cost of reaching size 13, divide by 5 (I'm guessing it is at least a couple of hundred, so +5 happy ~= +40 food?), you're getting at least that much free food every turn - more if you have cities larger than size 12. And then this is doubled again by the endgame (era = 8).

It also strongly encourages the American player to play Tall. They want very few cities, to maximize excess happiness, and also to maximize the size of their cities and so increase the value of the extra citizens. (Imagine getting a free citizen every 3-4 turns when your 4 cities are already ~size 25+, and convert that value into free food.)

For a civ where the flavor was supposed to be for expansionism, the flavor is wrong for the gameplay effect.

 

[Thalassicus]

I understand the desire to focus America more on expansionism, but many civilizations throughout history were expansionist. The revolutionary war, history of melting-pot immigration, and success in the space race are more uniquely American. I don't feel expansionism is unique to America.

 

[EricB]

I'm trying to think of a way to constructively keep the Immigration mechanic in the game since you seem to like it so much.

For one, I sure hope that it scales to game speed. I always play on marathon speed so a free citizen every 10 turns or so is quickly going to be overpowering.

I agree with Ahriman that it plays to Tall civs, not wide ones. So, it's an especially bad unique ability for America. Your cities are going to grow so quickly that founding new cities is not an option.

How about making this some type of ideological tenet that isn't unlocked until the Modern Era in the Freedom branch? America's unique ability should be reworked.

 

[mitsho]

America should play as a wide, expansionist civ.

Why exactly though? I'm not saying I necessarily disagree or anything, but why should they? Is it to balance the number of civs? Or 'pseudo'-historic reasons? pseudo because I bet we can make nearly all arguments for all civs I we want to, i.e. New York as the 'tallest' (= huge + apparent center of at least the American TV landscape if not the whole nation). Again, I see that we might want to go wide for America, but we can just as well decide to go another way

As for immigration, I do like the system as a American-only thing. Having it front-and-center may change too much after all. Not sure I have a good proposal for how to make it more wide-friendly if that is wanted, all the rest would just be bug-fixing and number-crunching after all

 

[Ahriman]

Immigrants arrive in small frontier cities, which helps us expand and develop new cities.

Not if I don't have any small cities, which I wouldn't; each new city costs me 4 happiness, which means fewer citizens for my supercities.

The way I would play this mechanic is to have only ~4 cities. I wouldn't bother to build more than a handful of farms (who needs excess food to grow when with any positive happiness I get rapid city growth anyway?), instead, I would focus on villages, trading posts, mines, and mills, generating large amounts of production and gold. The large cities, great science in come and large production would let me power ahead in tech and snag the good wonders, and the gold would let me buy up the city states. Basically, I would manage to ignore the core game economy mechanics and generate supercities, powering my way forward to a space race victory - while of course also devastating the economies of my rivals, because every citizen I gain is one they lose. And there is nothing they can do about it, even if they all have extremely high excess happiness, I still get population, their high happiness only affects which civ gives me the extra citizen, it doesn't stop them from losing citizens at all.

Why exactly though? I'm not saying I necessarily disagree or anything, but why should they?

Because Manifest Destiny and the rush for the West, and frontierism is a central part of American identify and history.

 

[Thalassicus]

That period in history is represented by the migration of citizens along internal trade routes, the second part of the American UA.

 

[Ahriman]

That period in history is represented by the migration of citizens along internal trade routes, the second part of the American UA.

And what is that for? Again, America isn't going to want to play Wide with a frontier and migration to the frontier, the incentives from the immigration are all to play tall, so it isn't really likely to come into play.

And people moving along domestic trade routes from large cities to small ones is not an ability, it is a penalty; citizens in large cities are more valuable (and require more food to generate). So I can avoid that penalty by refusing to settle extra cities. Basically, I will be playing in such a way as to fight the UA.

[Your description of the UA says people will move out of "large unhappy cities", but of course there is no such thing as an unhappy city in Civ5, as happiness is an empire variable.]

 

[mitsho]

So the idea is to a) syphon off citizens from other civs and b) then distribute them in your own empire? I do think this is a good idea in general, though there is the problem of making it worthwhile for wide while not making it overpowered for tall, quite similar to the old Indian UA. I do think that's a worthwhile argument against it, but not a killer one.

Btw. do City States count as civs that may lose citizens?

 

[Thalassicus]

I regret I wasn't active on the forums the past few weeks. I didn't have the free time to post here, and didn't realize there was confusion on this topic. I feel the initial bugs set a poor first impression. We only get one chance to make a first impression, and I'm sorry about that.

I hope everyone can give me the patience and time to give this a second try.

Immigration is very simple: it makes tourism and happiness valuable throughout the game, instead of only at the end (former) and one or two golden ages (latter). The happiness problem has been bothering me for years. The tourism problem is something people have talked about very often since BNW released. We can easily fix both these issues with an elegant solution that represents an important part of human history. I'm very excited about this!

 

[mystikx21]

If the fall patch already includes benefits for tourism and influence (that can presumably be tweaked if they are too weak), what is the purpose for this? Happiness and food already interact in a useful way to generate more population or limit expansion. I'm not sure a new mechanic is needed on top of that. If golden ages aren't powerful enough to use happiness for them, limits to generating them (via Great People for example), allowing for surplus happiness to continue to count during, and to improve their effects would be options rather than making happiness do something else.

I'd have to say I agree this is way too powerful with those existing figures. Late-game happiness is very easy to accumulate, and it encourages taller empires rather than wider. There are already lots of incentives for taller right now and adding more seems too constricting on game play styles.

As with the others, I'm having a hard time understanding how it works well for the US under this mechanism. Manifest Destiny is a BIG deal in American history (the westward expansion was tied up in both frontierism/individualism, and the eventual civil war. It's a big part of the 19th century and the early 20th, and perhaps can be viewed as informing post-WW2 aggressive foreign policy as well). I'd rather just use the default UA at this point than some increased migration aspect if that's how it works. The internal trade route population effect might be a decent bonus on top of that, but that could be replaced by a larger food or production bonus. If it moves citizens, I agree it is a penalty not a bonus. The other alternative, if the idea is to have an expansionist empire that has tall-ish cities, is to go to some extra food bonus in the UA or on a UB.

I'd also say the NASA center needs a re-work. It's way too strong with free techs, even with a 4-5 city empire. But that's a very separate issue from disentangling the immigration system into something workable or explaining its basis.

 

[lockstep]

Immigration will make happiness useful for something other than golden ages, and tourism helpful before we achieve victory.

With the fall patch, tourism will be helpful before victory in the unmodded game (small science bonus, substantial espionage bonus, reduced population loss/unrest of conquered cities).

 

[Thalassicus]

I talked this over with a friend and decided I'll remove this for now. I apologize that the bugs gave a poor first impression. I don't want people to feel like they have to leave or disable parts of the mod. I don't know what I'm going to replace it with for America. I don't have enough free time to rework the civ in a good way. I'll try to find something simple I can do, but it will probably be uninteresting.

I feel migration is an incredibly important part of human history Civilization doesn't represent right now. The movement and displacement of human populations had a tremendous impact on our world. This system even represents migration out of war-torn areas, since military civs have low happiness, and immigrants tend to come from newly conquered cities. This is much like how refugees flee warfare in the millions in real life.

I haven't had time to read any recent news about civ.

 

[stackpointer]

For what it's worth, I believe the immigration mechanic just needed some time and adjustments in order to make it work. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it'll get that chance now.


Also, the specific benefits from tourism in the beta patch is as follows:

Spoiler :

Civ V Brave New World Fall Patch Notes
9/30/2013

[BALANCE]

• Tourism: Further Benefits from Tourism when Influential with another Civ
  • Science (from Trade Routes)
    • Familiar: +1 Science per trade route
    • Popular: +2 Science per trade route
    • Influential: +3 Science per trade route
    • Dominant: +4 Science per trade route
  • Diplomacy/Espionage
    • Familiar: Just 1 turn to Establish Surveillance in influenced civ's cities
    • Popular: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 1 level higher than actual rank in influenced civ's allied city states
    • Influential: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 1 levels higher than actual rank in influenced civ's cities and allied city states
    • Dominant: Surveillance boost (from above) plus Spies operate at an effective rank 2 levels higher than actual rank in influenced civ's cities and allied city states
  • Conquest
    • Familiar: -25% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
    • Popular: -50% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
    • Influential: -75% reduction in Unrest time and Population loss
    • Dominant: no Unrest time; no Population lost

 

[mitsho]

It's a pity, but I guess it's better to introduce something when you're prepared to get over the initial rough phase anyways. And then there's the fall patch of course...

As for quick America fixes:
- American UA is that they have a third unique, hereafter the Pioneer Fort (it's liked, known and can be copied over I assume).
- 33% faster Great Persons across the board (doesn't change how you play, but useful I guess), +1 science per city (wide).

I don't like the free buildings in all cities, though I guess it's doable...

EDIT: Does tourism benefits do still all seem to be late game, as you're unlikely to receive any high level before, no?