Is Purchasing Diplomatic Units a Bit Too Easy?

[chicorbeef]

Hey everyone, so I was playing a normal game, been happily purchasing diplomatic units every few turns since the Medieval Era when I realized-isn't it a bit too easy to just go purchase all your diplomatic units as opposed to hard building them?

Purchasing diplomatic units is more efficient influence-wise than building them since you don't have to wait a few turns for them to build before you send it to the city state, and producing diplomatic units for me is a relatively constant process-I very rarely dry up of funds enough to not have enough money to purchase a couple of diplo units after the current batch has went to a city state and been expended. Since most influence bonuses occur empire-wide, the purchase cooldown in a city is not really relevant.

I'm not sure whether the AI realizes this, but I think it might, since it tends to sends diplo units in batches.

Is this a problem? I think this makes it too easy for Tradition empires to churn out diplo units and makes production not that important of a resource for diplomacy, for one. I don't feel as if there is all that much incentive to go Industry as opposed to the other Industrial trees since I have the gold I need for diplo units anyway and investment doesn't affect diplo units.

This is all also really similar to the Civ V Vanilla diplomatic system of hurling gold at city states.

If others feel as if this is a problem, I have some ideas in mind:

-Make it so that you can't purchase diplo units, but can rather only invest in them. This enhances the value of Production and the Industry tree with regards to diplo units.

-Make it so that diplo units purchased with gold have less influence (33-50% probably). This would create an interesting tradeoff-less influence now, or more influence if you have the patience to wait a few extra turns for each diplo unit.

-Increase the costs of purchasing diplo units. Self-explanatory.

-Make it so you can't purchase diplo units or invest in them. Pretty radical but would really emphasize production, which I think is a yield people place rather highly and make diplomacy a more intensive thing to plan.

-Make it so that influence bonuses such as Summer Palace apply only to the city that it is built in.

What do you think? Is this a problem or not, and are any of my ideas on point? Any other ideas/thoughts?

 

[Stalker0]

That’s not my experience. Now yes I can focus all my gold on diplo units but then i won’t have gold to invest in buildings. I never have enough gold to do it all.

Later game diplo units are also pretty expensive. You can drain the bank fast buying a lot of them

 

[chicorbeef]

I feel as if the added efficiency from immediately purchasing diplo units and the freed up production queues outweigh the investment benefit. You could only invest in like 1 building for the cost of a diplo unit anyway, and I don't purchase a whole lot of diplo units in the first place since you're limited by paper rather than the bank.

 

[Grabbl]

I don't think it is too easy, it's a good strategy to buy them for the fast influence, but I see no problem in this. It might be more efficient, but after all, you can't really compare influence with the benefits of a building (influence is much less stable in value), so it is not producing a no-brainer decision.
I agree however that the local countdown is not very influential, only in certain periods when I don't have enough chanceries/wire services. I would not be against changing it to a global purchasing cooldown, similar to Great Persons.

 

[chicorbeef]

That is a good point, though I still think that the fact that I get to clear up production queues by not building a diplo unit (by purchasing it instead) is about as good as investing in buildings in most cases and pushes me towards buying them.

The global countdown seems like a solid idea. That may actually solve my problem by itself now that I think about it, since you'd be forced to build diplo units if you want to reach your paper cap. I think the countdown should probably be about 5 turns though.

 

[tu_79]

Having all your diplomatic buildings in one city (I recommend it not being your capital if you are playing Tradition), really pays off. It's hammer wise cheaper to produce them, and to spend your gold investing in buildings.

You should not rely on diplomatic units to play diplomacy, though. Try to fulfill quests and use your spies.

 

[Owlbebach]

Purchasing diplo units is much less cost-efficient than investing into buildings, i don't know what are you talking about. I mean if you simply spend all your gold on buildings and then build diplo units normally - you will have more buildings and more diplo units. If you have so many gold that you can offer purchasing all necessary buildings AND diplo units - up our difficulty. Also you actually have a delay for buying diplo units, it is 5 turns if i'm not mistaken, so playing Tradition into diplomacy is quite a bad idea

 

[chicorbeef]

So the consensus seems to be that what I'm doing is suboptimal. Interesting. I guess I should look into the hammer/gold ratios of purchasing and investing and see if the math backs this up.

Having all your diplomatic buildings in one city (I recommend it not being your capital if you are playing Tradition), really pays off. It's hammer wise cheaper to produce them, and to spend your gold investing in buildings.

You should not rely on diplomatic units to play diplomacy, though. Try to fulfill quests and use your spies.

Well, I tend to build chanceries and wire services everywhere anyway, so....
Also, when I'm playing Tradition, I don't prioritize investing in secondary cities very much, I just invest in my capital's infrastructure, wonders, diplo units, and military/workers from time to time, and I have the gold to do that. If I wanted strong secondary cities, I'd go Progress/Authority. I do invest in buildings like Public Schools, but I often literally don't build things like defense buildings, I delay military buildings for a long time, etc.

Purchasing diplo units is much less cost-efficient than investing into buildings, i don't know what are you talking about. I mean if you simply spend all your gold on buildings and then build diplo units normally - you will have more buildings and more diplo units. If you have so many gold that you can offer purchasing all necessary buildings AND diplo units - up our difficulty. Also you actually have a delay for buying diplo units, it is 5 turns if i'm not mistaken, so playing Tradition into diplomacy is quite a bad idea

First of all, the delay is local, so when the countdown starts in my cap, I just buy another diplo unit in a secondary city. Even a 4-city empire can rotate like this really well.
That's why I think Grabbl's idea of a global countdown should at least be implemented.

Also, I have games where I do have the money to invest in pretty much everything worth it and buy diplo units without trying too hard on Immortal difficulty, so...

 

[tu_79]

First of all, the delay is local, so when the countdown starts in my cap, I just buy another diplo unit in a secondary city. Even a 4-city empire can rotate like this really well.
That's why I think Grabbl's idea of a global countdown should at least be implemented.

That would be a huge nerf to wide diplomatic game. I don't think it's deserved right now.

 

[Mad Madigan]

I find that I can usually afford to gold-purchase diplomatic units in the Medieval/Renaissance eras, but once I research Ambassadors in the Industrial Era it becomes much more worthwhile to build them rather than buy. The gold-to-hammers ratio for buildings changes over the course of the game, and investing in buildings become more and more worthwhile in the later eras. Once you get Banks built in a city, and doubly if you go with the Industry policy tree, it becomes more and more worthwhile to invest gold in buildings than purchase military or diplomatic units. Especially once factories, public schools, museums, etc. are available the benefits of building investment become substantial. And since investment cost does not scale any more with the # of cities you own, wide empires that naturally produce more GPT can and should reinvest their gold into speeding up building production. Personally, I do not think much balancing is needed for the diplomacy mini-game. So much of the "big ticket" balance items have already been addressed, and at this point all I think that needs further adjustment is fine-tuning of CS quest rewards.

 

[chicorbeef]

That would be a huge nerf to wide diplomatic game. I don't think it's deserved right now.

Well, the current countdown is pretty irrelevant even for a Tradition empire. And if we go by the way of building diplo units, wouldn't wide have a distinct advantage there?

I find that I can usually afford to gold-purchase diplomatic units in the Medieval/Renaissance eras, but once I research Ambassadors in the Industrial Era it becomes much more worthwhile to build them rather than buy. The gold-to-hammers ratio for buildings changes over the course of the game, and investing in buildings become more and more worthwhile in the later eras. Once you get Banks built in a city, and doubly if you go with the Industry policy tree, it becomes more and more worthwhile to invest gold in buildings than purchase military or diplomatic units. Especially once factories, public schools, museums, etc. are available the benefits of building investment become substantial. And since investment cost does not scale any more with the # of cities you own, wide empires that naturally produce more GPT can and should reinvest their gold into speeding up building production. Personally, I do not think much balancing is needed for the diplomacy mini-game. So much of the "big ticket" balance items have already been addressed, and at this point all I think that needs further adjustment is fine-tuning of CS quest rewards.

I never feel as if I am sacrificing a significant portion of my ability to build these buildings by buying diplo units. I feel like a couple extra diplo units ends up having a more momentary impact than, say, speeding up the construction of 2 museums in 2 cities by 3 turns. I relegate a certain amount of gold to purchasing diplo units, maybe build a few when I'm saving up gold for something big, but I feel like gold is what carries my diplo game a bit too much.

I seem to be arguing against a slippery slope right now though, so...when I have some more free time, I'll definitely shake up my playstyle a bit. I found I was able to keep up my playstyle even through the Industrial Era, though I haven't played too many games thoroughly the Atomic Era (I usually either give up because it's too easy or ragequit because of an absolutely unavoidable snowball. With an older version before the yield reduction, I once saw Harun with 45 cities and like 10K+ GPT ahead of me in tech. He won a diplo victory. Yeah.)

 

[ridjack]

(I usually either give up because it's too easy or ragequit because of an absolutely unavoidable snowball.)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this. I always find the course of my games more or less settled by the time the Modern/Information eras come around. I'm either winning so handily that only a constant bombardment of nukes could really stop me, or an AI has snowballed so incredibly hard/I made such horrible decisions early on that there's no realistic chance I'll be able to turn the tides. I think the only nailbiter game I've had in recent memory was OCC Venice when the tourism from my 40 trade routes ended up winning the game.

 

[chicorbeef]

Wow, that sounds like an awesome way to end the game as Venice. If you got DOW'd, that would be gg (or are you talking about Statecraft city-state TR tourism?).

The snowball problem has gotten a lot better recently though, thanks to the work Gazebo and others have put into the AI and the difficulty curve.

 

[ridjack]

Wow, that sounds like an awesome way to end the game as Venice. If you got DOW'd, that would be gg (or are you talking about Statecraft city-state TR tourism?).

The snowball problem has gotten a lot better recently though, thanks to the work Gazebo and others have put into the AI and the difficulty curve.

I did get DoW'd by the last person as I got close. It was close enough by that point that I was able to faith purchase a couple great people and the tourism from Historic Events closed the gap.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I didnt see a problem in the purchase of diplo units. In real, its the last chance of the human to counter the massive diplo spam of the AI.
In my last 3 games with a mate, he tried to play diplomatic with CS, but was annoyed by permanent diplo unit spam of AI. I saw a row diplo units walking along of my border. Every 10 turns 4 or 5 units walked like a duck mother and his childs from their territory to the CS my mate tried to ally. If you have 5 trade routes to a city state, giving 1 influence per turn, it feels kinda useless against 5 60 influence units every 10 turns. Especially if another AI tries to ally the other half of the CS the first AI is not trying to ally.

Its ok, if you disagree, but I would like to see diplo units ONLY available by money, and not by production. Else, the production modifier by handicap is directly proportional to the diplomatic influence. And how do you want to compete with a same size AI which have to pay only 55% of production cost at mid-lategame (in king difficulty)

 

[chicorbeef]

I think it would severely affect the AI's operation if diplo units were only available with money. The consensus here seems to be that the diplo balance is fine right now, and everyone has presented good points, so I'll think I'll leave it at that.