[MODCOMP]Immigration Mod

[TheLopez]

I like the idea for this mod, but the current execution leaves something to be desired.

I played with the immigration mod on during my last game with the Great Options Mod, and IMO it just made the game way too easy.

Why? Because within 10 turns of any of your cities going unhealthy/unhappy, an immigrant would leave that city and head towards another one of my own cities. The result of this is that I never really had to worry about unhealthiness or unhappiness in a particular city, because soon enough the people from that city would lave and join another one, making the 2nd city more powerful and simply restoring balance to the first city without me having to lift a finger.

This can even be exploited, as I inadvertantly found out - if you specifically make a high-food city but make it unattractive to live in (eg, don't station any military units in the city, and don't build any +happy/health buildings), it will constantly be growing bigger, spawning immigrants which walk off to your other cities and shrinking again. You could actually get to the point where you have 1 or 2 super-food cities for your whole empire whose sole purpose is to create population, with every other city being set for maximum production and stagnant growth and 'import' all the citizens required from the food centres.

Hmmm.... I didn't think about that, well do you have any idea to prevent this from happening?

Even worse, is that I found brand new cities (settled within the borders of my empire on some extra tiles lying around) would grow to size 5 or 6 within the space of about 15 turns, simply because of all the immigrants coming in from my other cities.

Lanthanide, isn't this how real population behaves? Once there is a new area of settlement people will flock to that area?

Basically this mod lets you automatically redistribute your population around for maximum efficiency, without any cost to the player at all - you don't even have to think about it or do anything, the game will simply do it for you.

I think this mod seriously needs to be rebalanced. As to how to handle this, I'm really not sure.

Please try to think of ways to balance the mod and post them here, I am always open to changes in my mod comps.

 

[Ranbir]

Maybe a maintenance cost based on your total civ population? Or some penalty to population distributing.

Maybe a city loses culture when it loses population into an immigrant unit. Or loses something else, based on maybe it won't just be unhappy people leaving but skilled workers or prestigious people.

If a city generates x number of immigrants, give it a penalty for that?

Or put a cap on how many immigrants can be generated per city per turns or something!

A penalty to your gold income due to extra use of nationwide infrastructure! (all those movement lorries!)

Or, the city that recieves immigrants can undergo a penalty based on a large influx of civilians, who might not straight away find homes to live in, or jobs to work at. So maybe have a chance to create like...certain specialists that might add penalties. These specialists can represent the downsides to mass immigration. Like crime and a greater overall burden on cash. So these specialists, instead of giving +gold etc, give -gold. And since their specialists, they can't be gotten rid of, so a sort of effect of immigration.

Maybe later down the line, they can eventually be removed.

 

[TheLopez]

Maybe a maintenance cost based on your total civ population? Or some penalty to population distributing.

Actually, immigration units increase a players unit maintenance cost.

Maybe a city loses culture when it loses population into an immigrant unit. Or loses something else, based on maybe it won't just be unhappy people leaving but skilled workers or prestigious people.

Actually, you can configure for immigrants to take culture with them.

If a city generates x number of immigrants, give it a penalty for that?

What kind of penalty are you talking about

Or put a cap on how many immigrants can be generated per city per turns or something!

Actually there are already two configurable immigrant caps included in the release one for a civilization and one per city. They are turned off by default.

A penalty to your gold income due to extra use of nationwide infrastructure! (all those movement lorries!)

See note above.

Or, the city that recieves immigrants can undergo a penalty based on a large influx of civilians, who might not straight away find homes to live in, or jobs to work at. So maybe have a chance to create like...certain specialists that might add penalties. These specialists can represent the downsides to mass immigration. Like crime and a greater overall burden on cash. So these specialists, instead of giving +gold etc, give -gold. And since their specialists, they can't be gotten rid of, so a sort of effect of immigration.

Maybe later down the line, they can eventually be removed.

Actually one of the biggest downfalls of alien immigrants is the culture they can bring, this can cause the population of the city to get unhappy and even revolt.

 

[Fachy]

Lanth, u can decrease the % of people fleeing bad cities. I adjust it to 20% (default is 10 I think?) u can make it 5 or 1 if you like... otherwise what's happening in the mod is basically what happens in real life: Grand Cairo in Egypt contains about 25% of the Egyptian population! It wasn't like that 50 years ago, but because life is "better" in it, and so on...

 

[Lanthanide]

Just because something happens in real life, doesn't mean it is going to be a fun gameplay enhancing idea when modelled in Civ4.

Hmmm.... I didn't think about that, well do you have any idea to prevent this from happening?

One very quick suggestion is that if an immigrant is created, the source city loses 2 population but the target city only gains 1. This means the player is definately losing something in the process, rather than just spreading people around. This may be too harsh, though.

Other ideas are to increase city maintenance for source/target city (or both), for some turns, to represent the strain put on the economy when a mass migration occurs.

As for losing culture - that's no big deal at all. If I have my main food city in the middle of my empire surrounded by a ring of military-producing cities, which is the most efficient kind of setup in this case, then it doesn't matter if the central city loses culture because the surrounding ring will still provide a buffer to the outside world. This is made even less of an issue if the culture is then added to the target city.

Lanthanide, isn't this how real population behaves? Once there is a new area of settlement people will flock to that area?

If that were the case, then all of the little villages around my city would have 50,000+ people living in them. Instead they each have a couple of hundred, possibly up to 1,000, while the city I live in which is less than 1 hours drive by car to any of them, has got 350,000+.

So yes, it may happen, in some cultures/areas, but it doesn't happen anywhere near as quickly as the results in this mod would indicate. And just because it's in real life, doesn't mean it's a fun/interesting addition to the game.

 

[Fachy]

I've got an idea! Why don't we make the immigrant capturable as an enslaved worker?? I love evil ideas (6)

 

[dh_epic]

I'm not sure that immigration can be balanced unto itself without really stretching the realm of realism. It makes much more sense for immigration to automatically solve your happiness and health problems than it does for it to have no real positive impact for you.

Yeah, you could make them more likely to leave your nation, but is that really realistic with language barriers and discrimination? You could add serious relocation costs, but is that fair or reasonable for an automatic mechanism?

I can't help but think that any balance for this component has to come in conjunction with something else. For example:

1. Disease. Immigrants make it much more likely for diseases to spread between cities. Hence, you'd probably want to make sure people are happy at home.

2. Culture spreading and culture corruption. I've brought that up a few other times, where cities transmit culture to one another via roads and rivers. Part of that would be that cities further away from your capitol turn more culture into 'local' culture (unique culture) that erodes your national influence. Immigrants could carry local culture, causing less cultural influence overall.

3. Revised happiness model. If happiness were less of a yes-no question in cities, but more of a sliding scale, with bigger bonuses for more excessively happy people... then there might be reasons that players want to concentrate more population in a single city, or so on. Of course, this depends on how the bonuses work.

These are all very basic ideas, and not necessarily fun unto themselves. It's the intersection between multiple simple systems that makes Civilization fun and challenging.

 

[Lanthanide]

I agree with you, epic. I think immigration is a nice idea that I think Firaxis should have somehow included in the game, but perhaps they couldn't think of a sensible solution either?

I think this mod, as it is currently, is simply too limited in imagination/implementation to be a well-balanced and experience-improving addition to the game at the moment.

I think that if a system like this were to be introduced into the game, other parts of the game would need serious re-jigging as you've suggested, which raises a whole host of problems in and of itself.

 

[TheLopez]

I agree with you, epic. I think immigration is a nice idea that I think Firaxis should have somehow included in the game, but perhaps they couldn't think of a sensible solution either?

I think this mod, as it is currently, is simply too limited in imagination/implementation to be a well-balanced and experience-improving addition to the game at the moment.

I think that if a system like this were to be introduced into the game, other parts of the game would need serious re-jigging as you've suggested, which raises a whole host of problems in and of itself.

Lanthanide, if you think that "this mod is too limited in imagination/implementation to be a well-balanced and experience-improving addition to the game at the moment" then I challenge you to develop something that works better. Mostly from what I have seen from you in your few posts on this thread are complaints on how this mod is unbalanced, "leaves something to be desired", etc., etc.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh but it is people like you who turn people like me off from providing content to the community.

Last, I challenge you, Lanthanide, to take the current state of the mod and make it a "well-balanced and experience-improving addition to the game".

EDIT: Remeber that most of not all of the people who provide content to this community do it for free and for the fun of it.

 

[kiky]

This is very interesting mod. Good work TheLopez

To be honest, I havent try this mod yet (I'm in the middle of a game). But I have some idea on how to make this 'balance' issue.

1. A city get a chance to spawn immigrants every x turn. This would make some of the population on that city not happy for y turn (probably the same calculation as whipping pop).

2. Once this immigrants settle in a city, it has 'delay' effect. They need time to assimilate and get to know new city, etc. Say the population increase come in effect after x turn.

I think with those 2 ideas, one could not exploit this population factory business.

3. If thats not enough, perhaps every immigrants created using 2 population will create 1 population on new city AND an x turn growth speed to a tile with cottage/hamlet/etc

Keep up the good work

 

[RogerBacon]

Yeah, TheLopez. Don't let one negative guy's comments get to you. You've probably got a ton of fans on these forums that would donate an extra kidney for you if you need it.

I like this mod a lot. I've currently commented it out because I set some extra conditions for immigrant spawning and I think my code was causing some of the problems I was seeing. I will get it reenabled when I've had some time to look over the changes I made a little more completely. Lately I've been too involved with updating my Flying Mod.

Roger Bacon

 

[Fachy]

Lopez, why are immigrants invisible? And how come you can't kill your own immigrants (to prevent them from joining your rivals)?

I just tried the mod, and it was horrible I had the highest score and my cities were both happy and healthy, but I've got like 1/2 the population abandoning to somewhere I don't know

Moreover, the stupid immigrant breached a closed border with the mongols, when the configuration shouldn't allow him to do so!!

 

[Lanthanide]

I had no intent of coming in here to say this mod is crap or anything of that nature. I came here to provide some balanced feedback as to why I believe this mod, in it's current state, isn't that great. I was not trying to insult you, or your other work in the slightest.

If no one tells you something is broken, then you'll never know that it needs fixing. Whether or not you choose to do anything based on the feedback I've given is entirely up to you, but you can't solve a problem if you don't know it exists. Then you have to decide if the problem is really worth solving or if things are good as they are, but when someone reports a problem it's only a good thing, IMO - you know people are using your mod and are trying to help you to improve it.

Also your challenge for me to make it a "well-balanced and experience improving addition to the game" is rather pointless. 1) it's not my mod and I have no intention of learning how to mod Civ4 because I frankly don't have the time for it, 2) I've already given you all the ideas I could think of for making this mod better, and 3) I'm certainly not going to go away and spend hours and hours working on this just because you challenged me to after I gave you my honest opinion on your mod.


In the process of making games, tons of ideas get thought up, added in, played around with and taken out because they don't work right, aren't fun or are just too much time/effort for the payoff. You shouldn't be offended if anything you develop ends up in this category, because if anything it shows that you have a lot of creative talent and are willing to take risks, rather than simply approaching problems with blinkers on and not deviating from the beaten track. It also gives you excellent experience for when it comes to designing things - you can use the knowledge you gain to help direct future developments, steering away from impracticle ideas and giving you a better idea of what types of improvements make this game more fun.

I think epic's suggestions were definately on the right track - for this idea to be integrated into Civ4, I think that some of the fundamental ways that the game currently works need to be adjusted and expanded upon. Those sorts of changes can be very detrimental to the game as a whole and require much thought and skill in implementing and testing to ensure that they turn out well - but if you can pull them off then you'll end up with a great mod.

 

[TheLopez]

Yeah, TheLopez. Don't let one negative guy's comments get to you. You've probably got a ton of fans on these forums that would donate an extra kidney for you if you need it.

Thanks for the kind word Roger,

I like this mod a lot. I've currently commented it out because I set some extra conditions for immigrant spawning and I think my code was causing some of the problems I was seeing. I will get it reenabled when I've had some time to look over the changes I made a little more completely. Lately I've been too involved with updating my Flying Mod.

Roger Bacon

What are the extra conditions you added? I am interested in hearing them since they might be good features to fold into the mod. Maybe I can help you debug the issues you are having with your code too...

Lopez, why are immigrants invisible? And how come you can't kill your own immigrants (to prevent them from joining your rivals)?

Killing your own immigrants will be a feature in the next release of the mod.

I just tried the mod, and it was horrible I had the highest score and my cities were both happy and healthy, but I've got like 1/2 the population abandoning to somewhere I don't know

Moreover, the stupid immigrant breached a closed border with the mongols, when the configuration shouldn't allow him to do so!!

Do you have a save game you can post so I can see this happening? Were you at war with the Mongols?

I had no intent of coming in here to say this mod is crap or anything of that nature. I came here to provide some balanced feedback as to why I believe this mod, in it's current state, isn't that great. I was not trying to insult you, or your other work in the slightest.

If no one tells you something is broken, then you'll never know that it needs fixing. Whether or not you choose to do anything based on the feedback I've given is entirely up to you, but you can't solve a problem if you don't know it exists. Then you have to decide if the problem is really worth solving or if things are good as they are, but when someone reports a problem it's only a good thing, IMO - you know people are using your mod and are trying to help you to improve it.

Also your challenge for me to make it a "well-balanced and experience improving addition to the game" is rather pointless. 1) it's not my mod and I have no intention of learning how to mod Civ4 because I frankly don't have the time for it, 2) I've already given you all the ideas I could think of for making this mod better, and 3) I'm certainly not going to go away and spend hours and hours working on this just because you challenged me to after I gave you my honest opinion on your mod.


In the process of making games, tons of ideas get thought up, added in, played around with and taken out because they don't work right, aren't fun or are just too much time/effort for the payoff. You shouldn't be offended if anything you develop ends up in this category, because if anything it shows that you have a lot of creative talent and are willing to take risks, rather than simply approaching problems with blinkers on and not deviating from the beaten track. It also gives you excellent experience for when it comes to designing things - you can use the knowledge you gain to help direct future developments, steering away from impracticle ideas and giving you a better idea of what types of improvements make this game more fun.

I think epic's suggestions were definately on the right track - for this idea to be integrated into Civ4, I think that some of the fundamental ways that the game currently works need to be adjusted and expanded upon. Those sorts of changes can be very detrimental to the game as a whole and require much thought and skill in implementing and testing to ensure that they turn out well - but if you can pull them off then you'll end up with a great mod.

Lanthanide, I don't know why I reacted they way I did to your comments, but for whatever reason they just struck me the wrong way. I am open to postive creative criticism, I have had my share of this with other members of the community, Belizan, Lord Olleus, TGA, etc. Anyways, I have calmed down now that I have had a night to sleep and mull over it. I'll look over your criticisms and ideas again and see where I can make changes to the mod.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that most of the things I develop are components and not for use as a standalone mod. The Great Options Mod, Core Edition is for mod makers to use as a starting point to their mods

 

[Saluki]

I like the idea for this mod, but the current execution leaves something to be desired.

I played with the immigration mod on during my last game with the Great Options Mod, and IMO it just made the game way too easy.

Why? Because within 10 turns of any of your cities going unhealthy/unhappy, an immigrant would leave that city and head towards another one of my own cities. The result of this is that I never really had to worry about unhealthiness or unhappiness in a particular city, because soon enough the people from that city would lave and join another one, making the 2nd city more powerful and simply restoring balance to the first city without me having to lift a finger.

I was trying out this mod this weekend that was my opinion as well. Perhaps this issue could be fixed by simply reducing the chance of a city spawning an immigrant. That would allow conditions to remain poor for a long enough time to still need attention, while still generating an occasional immigrant. The mass immigration that I'm getting now would slow down to a more reasonable level. I see that there is a line in the config file to adjust the probability, but I haven't had time to tweak it.

 

[RogerBacon]

What are the extra conditions you added? I am interested in hearing them since they might be good features to fold into the mod. Maybe I can help you debug the issues you are having with your code too...

The changes I made were to eliminate immigration due to unhappiness or unhelthiness if the happiness and good health were greater than unhappiness and unhealth.
I felt your formulas of (good / (good + bad)) created too many immigrants when the city was small and good and bad were close to each other. It was just a quick change though and I didn't really check to see what other effects it would have on the code so the errors are my own fault. I was also adding in some other mods so there could have been some conflict there as well.

Roger Bacon

		if(g_bUnhappyPopulationCausesImmigration):

			iUnhappinessContributionToImmigration = float(float(objCity.unhappyLevel(0))/(float(objCity.unhappyLevel(0) + objCity.happyLevel()))) * 100 * g_iUnhappyPopulationCausesImmigrationWeight
			# RogerBacon: if happy > unhappy then no immigration
			if (objCity.unhappyLevel(0) < objCity.happyLevel()):
				iUnhappinessContributionToImmigration = 0

		if(g_bUnhealthyPopulationCausesImmigration):
		
			iUnhealthinessContributionToImmigration = float(float(objCity.badHealth(False))/(float(objCity.badHealth(False) + objCity.goodHealth()))) * 100 * g_iUnhealthyPopulationCausesImmigrationWeight
			
			# RogerBacon: if happy > unhappy then no immigration
			if (objCity.badHealth(False) < objCity.objCity.goodHealth()):
				iUnhappinessContributionToImmigration = 0

 

[pap1723]

Hey,
Great work on all the MODCOMPS!

Rancir's concerns are probably real, and people will exploit this, however, immigration in Civ is needed.

You asked for ideas on how to fix the problems of immigration...Here is one idea...If an immigrant leaves a city due to unhappiness or unhealthiness, then you have the city have +1 unhappiness for "x" turns (5 maybe?)

It may then cause more immigrants to leave, and then the unhappiness multiplier is cumulative. That way if you are leaving your cities to waste, they will eventually be useless. This however causes you to take action when an immigrant leaves a city.

I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but I think that this might be the best way to eliminate the other problems.

 

[Fachy]

I don't remember if I was at war with the mongols or not...

Sure I have a saved game, but would it work on your computer? I used about 8 mods altogether in my current game! What happens if someone loads a saved game with a mod (custom assets) which he doesn't have?

I still need to understand how the mod works: can immigrants actually leave a city if it's not unhappy or unhealthy? I know the answer to that coz I see them leaving my cities when they were neither unhappy nor unhealthy, just checking if that's a bug or would they simply leave to go to a happier/healthier place?

Is there a way to make them only leave if they're sad/sick OR if the other place has, say, at least 10 more happiness/health? (as in good-off people leave for better-off places)

One more question: If a chinese immigrant went to a size-4 Spanish city, would the city has 20% Chinese population or 100% Spanish as before?

 

[TheLopez]

I don't remember if I was at war with the mongols or not...

Sure I have a saved game, but would it work on your computer? I used about 8 mods altogether in my current game! What happens if someone loads a saved game with a mod (custom assets) which he doesn't have?

Hmmm... thats a good question, my guess is that it wouldn't work.

I still need to understand how the mod works: can immigrants actually leave a city if it's not unhappy or unhealthy? I know the answer to that coz I see them leaving my cities when they were neither unhappy nor unhealthy, just checking if that's a bug or would they simply leave to go to a happier/healthier place?

Immigrants will leave if their unhappiness level is lower than what their unhappiness level would be in a target city. Don't confuse this unhappiness with the unhappiness in the game. The unhappiness level is comprised of many different vectors: Happiness, healthiness, etc.

Is there a way to make them only leave if they're sad/sick OR if the other place has, say, at least 10 more happiness/health? (as in good-off people leave for better-off places)

Yes, see post number 60.

One more question: If a chinese immigrant went to a size-4 Spanish city, would the city has 20% Chinese population or 100% Spanish as before?

Yes but only if the mod is configured to have immigrants carry culture.

 

[Fachy]

Well then Lopez, I think you should really put a minimum difference with that happiness thing! I mean, you won't travel across the globe for $100 increase in your income right? I suggest 5 total happiness & Health for them to move! Post 60? Ok lemme check

Could having excessive Chinese population in a Spanish city cause riots or flipping? And I mean away from having excessive Chinese culture in it

Btw, is it normal that every few turns the mod gives me a report about python files? Line so & so has so & so, or does this mean it has an error?