Loyalty to the Motherland (King) [OPEN]

[raystuttgart]

Just a general remark: the poll requests a binary yes/no decision with nothing in between nor a neutral option.

That is adusted now.
I could not change the existing 2 options anymore though, because there had already been votes.

 

[raystuttgart]

Generally:

Yes, a single City or a Colonial Nation will always either have "more Loyalists" or "more Revolutionaries".

Loyalist rate = 100% - Revolutionary rate
and thus vice versa
Revolutionary rate = 100% - Loyalist rate

Thus you will need to decide strategically (both on City Level and National Level) which way to go.
Each of the 2 alternatives will have advantages and disadvantages.

You can never have full advantages of both sides.
Not having the full advantages of the other side is basically the "disadvantage".

The current advantages of "Revolutionary Rate" will be split up.
Thus making the overpowered "Revolutionary Rate" less overpowered.

So basically currently we can consider 100% Revolutionary rate to be 100% full advantages. (Bonus calculation is simply: Revolutionary rate / 2)
(e.g. 50% Offensive Combat Bonus + 50% Defensive Combat Bonus which I feel is overpowered)

In the future with e.g. 60% Loyalty rate and 40% Revolutionary rate you will not have 100% full advantages because the bonusses would be spilt specifically between the 2.
(In the example you would have e.g. 30% Offensive Combat Bonus + 20% Defensive Combat Bonus)

More brainstorming ideas:
(Effects and balancing of Loyalty vs. Rebellious Sentiment)

Loyalty Effects:
- Immigration of Specialists for "Plot Jobs" + "Cheap Workers" + "Royal Administrators" more likely (Total immigration rate still tied to Crosses)
- Production Bonus on "Plot Jobs" + Administration (only)
- Bonus on Offensive Combat (only)
- Less and lower Tax Increases
- Loyal Cities might rebel if refusing King's Request
- Specific new Python and DLL Diplo Events for "High Loyalty rate Cities"
- Sailing to Africa allowed only if "High National Loyalty rate" > 50%
- High National Loyalty rate might unlock something like "Declaring Kingdom" (new Victory Condition)
...

Rebellious Sentiment Effects:
- Immigration of Specialists for "Building Jobs" + "Experienced Medics" + "Great Statesmen" more likely (Total immigration rate still tied to Crosses)
- Production Bonus on "Building Jobs" + Statesman (only)
- Bonus on Offensive Combat (only)
- More Domestic Demand
- Loyal Cities might rebel if accpting King's Request
- Specific new Python and DLL Diplo Events for "High Revolutionary rate Cities"
- Sailing to Port Royal allowed only if "High National Revolutionary rate" > 50%
- High National Revolutionary rate unlocks "Declaring Independence" (just like now)
...

General Effects:
- Cities where the spilt between "Loyal Rate" and "Revolutionary Rate" is very close (e.g. 50:50) you will have additional chances for Python Event with Revolt (thus the cities should bacially be a bit specialized)
- All of this could be tied in with our ideas for "Civics Concept"
...

Edit:
If we really want, we might even consider a new "Victory Condition" for "Loyal Gameplay"
(e.g. like becoming a Kingdom, similar to what happened in Brazil - which would not even be "alternative history" but something that happened in reality)

 

[Commander Bello]

Thus you will need to decide strategically (both on City Level and National Level) which way to go.

I understand that as being forced to put either statesmen or adminstrators into a given town.
And with that, I don't see that concept working for the AI. Even less taking the above mentioned loyalty effects or rebellious sentiment effects into account.

 

[raystuttgart]

I understand that as being forced to put either statesmen or adminstrators into a given town.

You could try to mix it.
But yes it could lead to unrest in a town if there is too much "political disagreement".

And with that, I don't see that concept working for the AI.

If I am allowed to implement the negative effects "Human only" AI should not get into trouble.
Otherwise we will end up with quite some efforts for AI programming of course.

Even less taking the above mentioned loyalty effects or rebellious sentiment effects into account.

Not really because currently the Human player profits much more from the current overpowered effects of Revolutionary Rate.
(Revolutionary Rate currently gives bonusses on everything.)

 

[Commander Bello]

If I am allowed to implement the negative effects "Human only" AI should not really get into trouble.

Personally, I am against concepts which limit positive or negative effects to just one side. I could imagine others thinking the same.

Not really because currently the Human player profits much more from the currently overpowered effects of Revolutionary Rate.
(Revolutionary Rate currently gives bonusses on everything.)

As the AI currently at least is attempting to place statesmen she is getting the benefits as well. And if she were not, the solution as far as I am regarded would be to teach her that instead of adding a concept with different results for both sides.

In general:
instead of implementing ideas which only benefit one side, the available capacity should be concentrated on improving the AI. That is what will improve the game the most and should take precedence over anything else, correction of bugs and repair of broken concepts of course excluded.

 

[raystuttgart]

Personally, I am against concepts which limit positive or negative effects to just one side. I could imagine others thinking the same.

I know, but it really heavily reduces efforts and risks. (Might also be applicable for the 1. released version only and later improved.)
But if the team feels the concept is worth it, we could also try to code good AI for it that uses the same rules as Human players.

As the AI currently at least is attempting to place statesmen she is getting the benefits as well.

It would do that with "Administrators" just the same. And it would get benefits from those as well.
Both Professions bring benefits. (The current benefits are simply split.)

In general:
instead of implementing ideas which only benefit one side, the available capacity should be concentrated on improving the AI. That is what will improve the game the most and should take precedence over anything else, correction of bugs and repair of broken concepts of course excluded.

We (especially devolution) already do work on AI.
We know that it is important and thus it is one of our top priorities.

But sometimes we also need to implement new features that feel fresh and interesting so community keeps interested.
Implementing stuff like that is also a lot of fun and fun is the most important aspect in modding because it keeps us motivated.

Thus please don't try to tell us every time what we shall do and what we should work on first.
We choose our interest and priorities by ourselves internally. We are grown ups and can decide that by ourselves in.

All you can do really is give your opinion on new feature concepts, make feature suggestions, give feedback on current gameplay or report bugs which influences if we do something at all or need to improve something.
Our internal organization (when to do it, who is doing it, final decision if we do it at all, when we release ...) is our own internal business.

 

[raystuttgart]

I have just adjusted the concept in the start post of this thread.
(There have been several changes.)

 

[rah]

Sounds cool, but I'm overwhelmed just reading about it, let alone understanding it. This would be for expert players only and should be an option in the custom settings so people can choose. Default should be off. And I'm one of those that think human only features aren't great. Sounds like a lot of effort just to flesh out, let alone program and test. I'd rather have all that effort put into making the AI better. That is still the only major weakness to the game in my opinion. Improving that would lead to the greatest return of effort.

 

[raystuttgart]

Sounds cool, but I'm overwhelmed just reading about it, let alone understanding it.

I fully understand that.

This would be for expert players only and should be an option in the custom settings so people can choose. Default should be off.

Technically and considering effort almost impossible because there would be way too many dependencies on base gameplay mechanics.
(Especially stuff like Yields, Professions and Units cannot easily be modded to be adjustable by "on/off" game settings.)

And I'm one of those that think human only features aren't great.

I understand that but it might be an alternative for version 1 (to implement the mechanics themselves)
and AI could be implemented in version 2 (when the feature mechanics themselves work and are balanced properly).

We would need to have a step by step approach for something as big as this.
This could not be done by one single "big bang" release.

I'd rather have all that effort put into making the AI better.

That alone is too boring - at least for me. That is not what keeps me personally motivated for a longer time.
Also I think that community would like to see at least some new features from time to time.

But if community says "We don't want any new features at all anymore." that is fine for me.
But then, please tell me rather now. (I would still help with the current release but after that I would not be modding anymore then.)

And what else should community discuss with us? We want to let community discuss with us and participate a bit.
Most community members are not really interested in detailled technical discussions on bugfixes and AI improvements as we have internally.

 

[Commander Bello]

Implementing stuff like that is also a lot of fun and fun is the most important aspect in modding

We choose our interest and priorities by ourselves internally

We (especially devolution) already do work on AI.

Yes, I know.
The result is that one member is hammering new stuff into the mod and lets others care about fixing it later.

As proven while I am typing:

I'd rather have all that effort put into making the AI better.

That alone is too boring - at least for me. That is not what keeps me personally motivated for a longer time.

 

[raystuttgart]

The result is that one member is hammering new stuff into the mod and lets others care about fixing it later.

Are you seriously telling me that I never fixed my own stuff?
Do you claim that you would have been able to implement better features with less bugs than I did?

I have been working on RaR over many years and implemented countless improvements and bugfixes - not only for my own features by the way.
I fixed everything I could and was really very attentious to quality. Every former team member can tell you that.

But yes, RaR was not perfect and after I left there were still minor bugs.
And yes, I could never have done RaR alone without the rest of the team. Especially Schmiddie invested countless hours as well into RaR.
And yes the RaR team after I left still improved RaR and the WTP team has still improved it and fixed many bugs more.

I am incredibly thankful to the current WTP team that they put so much effort into keeping the mod alive and to improve it.
Thousand thanks to you guys again for all your efforts fixing AI, fixing bugs and all the other improvements.

But still there must be some reason why RaR was the most popular Civ4Col mod of its days.
There must be some reason why WTP is built on top of RaR.

And I do believe that one of the main reasons that RaR was and WTP still is popular are the added features.
Who would play RaR if it had not implemented many cool new features?

And yes, I would like to add some new features to WTP and take the majority of effort for that myself - including fixing my own bugs if I can.
And yes, I will need some help with that from the rest of the WTP team but I will also take my share in bugfixes - which I already do by the way.

It is completely up to community and team to decide if they want it.
Every team member is absolutely free to put a veto to every of my feature suggestions and it will be dead.

I don't really care if a few of my ideas are rejected. If this concept for example is rejected, I will fully understand.
I just want to implement some new features - depending on what community and team want.

----

Sorry for this long post.
But it really pisses me off if a player claims that I did not take my fair share of the burdens and efforts to create RaR.

----

But yes, please tell me now if you do not want any new features in the future at all anymore.

 

[lyciummusic]

I would love to see this back, like in original Colonization!

However AI would get sacked immediately as it cannot control settler profession promotion. Measures need to be taken to increase AI revolutionary gain. Maybe sampling different AI cities in a late game for revolutionary percentage and adding a modifier. This would also increase AI production and thus, difficulty though- but it also maybe a general workaround for AI auto profession. A lot of testing would be required for this.

 

[Nightinggale]

Just a general remark: the poll requests a binary yes/no decision with nothing in between nor a neutral option.

I have another issue with the polls. The threads starts with polls and then we debate what we want meaning people vote before they know what they vote for/against.

Apart from that, multiple options for voting is a good idea, particularly if it allows voting something like "I like this subsection of the proposal, but not the rest".

 

[raystuttgart]

The threads starts with polls and then we debate what we want meaning people vote before they know what they vote for/against.

It is still allowed to change your vote in the poll.
I reallized too late that the binary decision was not sufficient with the rough original concept.

 

[Nightinggale]

I fixed everything I could and was really very attentious to quality.

For the record, RaR was fairly stable when I joined. Everything of that size can always be better and it will never be 100% bugfree, but RaR was certainly what I would consider a quality mod. The thing is, game creation (including modding) is a task for teamwork because it requires a whole lot of different skills. Expecting one person to be an expert at every skill needed is too farfetched to be realistic. Ray accomplished something amazing, which is to make a mod, which is well balanced in terms of paying attention to all the aspects needed to make a good mod. In fact it's so good that it's still popular (relatively speaking) despite the game engine being 15 years old (original civ4 was released in 2005) and it attracts modders who wants to work on it. That is an accomplishment in itself.

The thing is, RaR would have been worse if Ray would be the ultimate expert, because then it would have likely been too focused on a single aspect since he wouldn't be an expert for all the tasks. Part of what makes RaR (now WTP) awesome is the attention to all aspects. WTP now has some experts who can beat Ray in their field of expertise, but it's an unfair comparison because those experts (myself included) doesn't have to work on the other tasks. We just reuse what Ray already made.

If we take a specific example. Spain has a discount for culture spread. There was a bug where all players would use the human player's bonus instead of their own. In multiplayer, the local player wouldn't be the same on all computers, meaning on one computer, all players would get a discount while another computer would not apply a discount to anybody. We didn't know this, but I had this game, which caused desyncs consistently regardless of human actions because one player was Spain. I went from the desync side, examined it, developed new network code to make the computers communicate to figure out where in the memory the computers disagreed on game state and then investigated the cultural spread. I found and fixed the bug and now I look like I'm awesome and/or Ray look incompetent (that is, if you really want to look at it that way). However network sync code was within my field of expertise even before I started modding. In fact I was involved in my first network desync issue even before civ4 was released. Does that make me better than Ray? At network code, most likely. For modding in general, maybe not so much. For instance al the events. That's something I wouldn't have accomplished. That's because we are all different and we are all better at one thing than another thing.

Bashing Ray for quality is unreasonable. Ray have done much better than can be expected and we should praise him for that, not bash him. The fact that other people have been able to improve and fix issues is something you should be happy about because it means you get the enjoy the combined efforts towards making a good mod.

 

[raystuttgart]

WTP now has some experts who can beat Ray in their field of expertise, ...

That is absolutely true. You and devolution have become much better programmers than I ever was - espcially considering, networing, performace, AI and other real deep programming.

As you said I am an alrounder and can still program as well - thus I could still build new features if you want me to - but of course I will need your help to make them high performant and program really good AI for complex features.
And again, yes I do and will take my fair share of the burden to do improvements (AI and performace as well - as good as I can) and bugfixes.

A team is always way more than powerful than the separate experts on their own.
If we also find graphical modders as good as Schmiddie again, then everything might be possible again.

 

[raystuttgart]

By the way:

The concept for core mechanics has been improved
(see updated start post)

The idea of introducing the new "Loyalty" / "Loyalty Rate" working basically just like "Liberty Bells" / "Revolutionary Rate" has dramatically simplified a part of the implementation.
It will basically just be the counter part to that and we can reuse existing coding patterns. --> Less Effort than the complex computation before.

Efforts for the implementation will mainly depend on the amount of further effects / game mechanics we want to tie into "Loyalty / Loyalty Rate" and "Liberty Bells / Revolutionary Rate"
But this "tieing in of other game mechanics" will make it interesting. We should now have enough game play effects of Loyalty to make it worthwile investing the efforts.
And while investing these efforts we also have the side effect that we can also make "Liberty Bells" a much more interesting game mechanic.

For the players it is now way more consistent and understandable than before.
If the players understand "Liberty Bells", they should understand "Loyalty" as well.

They will need to relearn however that "Liberty Bells" and "Loyalty" would have more game effects than now.
And of course they would need to adapt to the fact that "Liberty Bells" is not as overpowered anymore since it now would have a counterpart "Loyalty" that balances it out.

--------------

But yes, it is still a very complex feature that is a lot of effort to implement, balance and test.
And yes it introduces a lot new game mechanics, several changes to existing game mechanics and more challenge which some players might like and others might hate.

So let us wait and see if we get further ideas and feeback from community.

 

[rah]

Please don't take any comments I EVER have too seriously. If it wasn't for the effort that everyone has put in on WTP, I would have given up playing it years ago. The work is quite appreciated. The fact that elements can still be debated years later is a testimony to all the work to get it this far.
Never give up, never surrender.
Find new features to add. If we think they're not helpful, you'll notice that we're not shy.

 

[raystuttgart]

I currently consider this feature concept to be dead.
I feel there is simply no realistic chance that we might ever work on this.

There is no clear majority in community and also no clear consense in the team.
Probably this feature concept is simply too big, causes too much effort and could have too many side effects.

We have enough other good ideas currently going on anyways.