[R&F] Loyalty and Loyalty Pressure

[bbbt]

So what do we know about it so far:

Loyalty seems to be one per population per citizen in a 'normal' age, varying in dark/gold/heroic ages, with amenities, with specific policy cards and governor placement.

It exerts pressure up to 9 squares away (-10%) per tile.

Do we know what this pressure actually does between different civs? I.e. does it actually subtract from your cities loyalty? Or is it there simply to pull in free cities if they get to zero? If it's the first, I'm not sure what circumstances a city would be come 'free' instead of just 'flipping'. If it's not the first, I'm not clear what besides dark ages would start subtracting loyalty.

Does the pressure also include other 'buckets': i.e. additional loyalty pressure from tourism/religion (if you are the founder and have followers there)/even progress differentials (i.e. +1 pressure per scientific/cultural era in advance of the other or something of the sort), etc.? I'd assume no as they've been pretty separate silos on those things so far.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Do we know what this pressure actually does between different civs? I.e. does it actually subtract from your cities loyalty? Or is it there simply to pull in free cities if they get to zero? If it's the first, I'm not sure what circumstances a city would be come 'free' instead of just 'flipping'. If it's not the first, I'm not clear what besides dark ages would start subtracting loyalty.

Each city gets a loyalty number from 0 to 100. The game adds up the effect of all the nearby loyalty pressures to calculate the net effect on the loyalty number. Things like amenities, governors, raise your loyalty, while nearby foreign cities will lower your loyalty. So for example, if your city gets +5 loyalty per turn from its citizens and -3 loyalty per turn from a foreign city then the net effect is +2 loyalty per turn. So each turn, the loyalty number will increase by 2 each turn. When loyalty hits 0, the city rebels and becomes a free city.

Does the pressure also include other 'buckets': i.e. additional loyalty pressure from tourism/religion (if you are the founder and have followers there)/even progress differentials (i.e. +1 pressure per scientific/cultural era in advance of the other or something of the sort), etc.? I'd assume no as they've been pretty separate silos on those things so far.

Yes there are other things that affect loyalty. From the livestream yesterday, here is what we know affects loyalty:

• Population of city
• Presence of Governor (+8 per turn)
• City happiness
• Population of your cities nearby (within 9 tiles)
• Population of rival cities nearby (within 9 tiles)
• Age loyalty rate (Golden, Normal or Dark) (YT 44:16)
• Bread and Circuses project for Entertainment District that increase Loyalty pressure. (YT 25:38)
  
• Cultural alliance with rival civ

 

[Victoria]

So just Three minuses, there must be more.
I would love to see cities getting WW for the length of time they are at war.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

So just Three minuses, there must be more.

The negative pressure from foreign cities can stack quite a bit depending on how many foreign cities are close by. If your city is close to say two or three foreign cities then it will feel the added pressure from all the foreign cities at once. That alone could be very strong. And if the nearby foreign civ is experiencing a golden age, then you feel even more negative pressure. Or if the enemy civ does a bread and circus project close to you, you will feel a huge negative pressure. So those 3 negative pressure sources can add up quite a bit.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

So it seems that if you eliminate adjacent civs you won't face loyalty problem.

BTW, there's also a policy card "+2 loyalty for garrison unit".

 

[Victoria]

The negative pressure from foreign cities can stack quite a bit depending on how many foreign cities are close by. If your city is close to say two or three foreign cities then it will feel the added pressure from all the foreign cities at once. That alone could be very strong. And if the nearby foreign civ is experiencing a golden age, then you feel even more negative pressure. Or if the enemy civ does a bread and circus project close to you, you will feel a huge negative pressure. So those 3 negative pressure sources can add up quite a bit.

Yup, you are right. I just want to see some negatives against war.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

So it seems that if you eliminate adjacent civs you won't face loyalty problem.

Yep, that would certainly be one way of dealing with rebellion. But I suspect that cities will low happiness will also face negative loyalty over time. So in theory, those cities could rebel and become free cities if you ignored the problem long enough. The difference is that it would be very easy to deal with so I doubt any player would actually lose a city over that in a real game. Whereas foreign cities exert negative pressure would be harder to stop.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

If the mechanism is like this, I think it is encouraging wide play again. Just build as many cities as you can and take enemy's cities! Every city you have will enhance your loyalty while every enemy city nearby will reduce loyalty?

For low happiness? I never experienced that. At least -1, which is almost sure not to reduce loyalty. The key to avoid low happiness is to declare war on and eliminate civs, each peace deal or elimination will reduce war awareness a lot. Only when you are on war frequently you can make peace frequently.

Large war wearness only come from endless wars, instead of 5T flash-shot-and-elimination ones.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

If the mechanism is like this, I think it is encouraging wide play again. Just build as many cities as you can and take enemy's cities! Every city you have will enhance your loyalty while every enemy city nearby will reduce loyalty?

Well but keep in mind that the strength of your loyalty is depending on your city size. So your big cities will be stronger than your small cities. If you have a bunch of small cities on the border next to foreign cities that are bigger, then you might lose your cities, rather than converting the foreign cities.

 

[UWHabs]

So just Three minuses, there must be more.
I would love to see cities getting WW for the length of time they are at war.

Well, WW will affect happiness, which can decrease loyalty, but I definitely wouldn't mind them having war weariness have an explicit negative towards loyalty.

And I definitely think that they need some extra negative loyalty if you wipe out the city's original owner. Would hate to see a system where simply conquering the opponent has a massive positive loyalty effect.

And hopefully this time they can actually give ceding cities a loyalty value. If a civ refuses to cede me a city in a peace deal, then I should have a massive loyalty problem with them.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I would love to see Housing & Tourism/Culture levels play a role in loyalty as well. Religion really needs to be a factor too IMHO.

 

[Guru-Meditation]

And hopefully this time they can actually give ceding cities a loyalty value. If a civ refuses to cede me a city in a peace deal, then I should have a massive loyalty problem with them.

This would be a niec and fitting effect. - Besides fixing the issue that atm ceding a city when making peace does absolutly nothing.

 

[bbbt]

Well, WW will affect happiness, which can decrease loyalty, but I definitely wouldn't mind them having war weariness have an explicit negative towards loyalty.

And I definitely think that they need some extra negative loyalty if you wipe out the city's original owner. Would hate to see a system where simply conquering the opponent has a massive positive loyalty effect.

And hopefully this time they can actually give ceding cities a loyalty value. If a civ refuses to cede me a city in a peace deal, then I should have a massive loyalty problem with them.

From the panel shown on the youtube, it looks like the city is getting +3 loyalty for it's happiness level, which is 'happy' (i.e. 1-2 amenities). So -1 or -2 amenities are likely going to be -3. Which doesn't seem like a lot to be honest, that's not going to be much of an impetus against expansion in and of itself (unless they've removed the free amenity per city or something of the sort).

A non-ceded city should definitely be a big negative, I agree. That might be where the garrisoned-unit policy card comes in, to leave troops to keep city from flipping/becoming free cities again (shades of Civ IV!).

Yes, if it remains "oh you conquered the entire civ, now all the cities are ceded and happy" then it will be extremely silly.

Otoh, for a number of more casual players, I can imagine it might be extremely frustrating to the point of being unenjoyable to have conquered cities constantly revert and flip back. Maybe they need to add a per city loyalty bonus as a difficulty modifier to mitigate this.

Or for that matter, making per city amenities bonuses a difficulty modifier instead of a base might solve a lot of issues (including the AI giving away the farm on peace deals). Even if the other AI bonuses were reduced to compensate. I.e. maybe +1/2/3/4 amenities per city to the AI for king/emperor/immortal/deity while the human player has zero, and then equivalent for the human for settler/chieftain, etc. Prince both can have the plus one as is.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

One other thing I thought of. Food deficits should impact on city loyalty. If a city is starving, then their desire to remain loyal to your civilization should wane.

 

[V. Soma]

I do hope modders will have the tools to create modyifing factors to loyalty - lots of great things could be done...

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yup, you are right. I just want to see some negatives against war.

Loyalty depends on amenities and amenities are affected by war weariness. At least this should work in a pretty straightforward way.

 

[NegativeZero]

I really think we'll need to know the bonuses of the other governors to get a full grasp about the loyalty system as they play a key roll.

Amani the diplomat can really shake the loyalty system up by herself with 1-2 promotions. I could see her enabling early-game forward-settling with her +8 loyalty and the Emissary promotion which may flip cities.

However, the value of policy card slots (and wonders which grant them) will certainly increase with Rise and Fall. New Policy cards like "+2 loyalty for garrisoned units" will compete heavily with the usual suspects for time slotted. This can potentially reduce the amount of gold/culture/yields players are currently accustomed to having.

 

[Human Crouton]

Now that we know the scope of the loyalty numbers, how is Radio Oranje's +1 loyalty from trade routes enough to matter at all?

 

[NegativeZero]

Now that we know the scope of the loyalty numbers, how is Radio Oranje's +1 loyalty from trade routes enough to matter at all?

I feel the loyalty from the Radio Oranje is strong for the Netherlands.

Having the ability to shift the amount of loyalty generated by each city with traders seems very powerful to maintaining a stable empire through all eras. Once a city's loyalty starts to slip or to quickly increase a newly conquered city's loyalty, just slap an internal trade route or two in there and everything is stable.

This could free up governors (that are usually on the defensive side of loyalty) to creep disloyalty into neighboring civ's cities increasing the chances to flip cities.
Other civs (as far as we know) don't have bonuses toward loyalty, so their options to dealing with loyalty pressure is much more constricted.

Trade routes are accessible enough to generate thus making a powerful and flexible ability.

 

[Temppu]

Things that I wanna see integrated in the Loyalty system:

(i) Negative Loyalty pressure from foreign citizens. Moreover, this penalty is higher when
- at war with the original Civ of the citizens
- a city is non-ceded
- you wipe out the said original Civ

(ii) Positive Loyalty pressure for foreign cities following your Religion. Moreover, this penalty could be affected by
- Numbers of followers
- Certain beliefs

(iii) Positive Loyalty pressure from ratio of number of foreign Tourists from a foreign city to your cities to the number of internal Tourists from that city to the owner Civ of that city. This effect could be integrated to the Government types, i.e., large ratio with differing Governments would mean an even higher Loyalty pressure.

These mechanics would make Religion and Tourism/Culture more integrated to the other aspects of the game, and would nerf ultimate warmongering. Nevertheless, some of these mechanics require other mechanics that have not yet been presented, such as nationalities of citizens. Hence these additions to the Loyalty system might have to wait for another expansion.