Mongolia

I'm in favour of removing annexation via heavy tribute.

 

I'd prefer to keep the annexation and buff it, for example by giving yields to cities or (?) XP to all units or similar things. If we can balance this such that it more or less equilibrates the missing tribute yields, I'd be happy with that.

 

XP to all units sound cool!

 

Lol, Or heavy tribute could just take all the CS's land and reduce its population. Mongolian heavy tribute could basically be a nuke you level on city states to make them functionally worthless beyond their WC vote.

 

Is reducing its 50 turns cooldown to something like 30 counts as buff?

 

Sure it is.

 

In my opinion it is not about Mongolia being to weak. Personally i dislike the design and it seems like i'm not the only one. Annexing CS is not something i want to do really. It is better to leave them and have as allies.

 

Remove a possibility for them to create Great diplomat and you can buff actions arround cs . I think they should get some other bonuses arround their khan(passive ones), which do not be necessarily military ones.

 

I agree a lot with this. Mongolia's UA removes an action I want to do (heavy tribute) and replaces it with an action I don't want to do. If I really want to annex a city state, its not hard to just take it normally.

 

I don't see how sphere of influence on heavy tribute would be sufficiently different from annex on tribute. If losing spheres of influence on losing a war is the part you're worried about that could just be removed and cooldown adjusted to balance. Also being able to bully allies is already part of the code from the tenet of autocracy, so isn't the AI already able to get that?

As it is annexing on heavy tribute is pure anti-synergy with the best backup plan to domination, and this seems like a simple and straight foreward solution.

 

no lol the autocracy tenet just makes it that AI can bully allied city-states since a static bully penalty from being an ally is removed. It doesn't teach the AI any new tricks.

The Heavy Annexation is a strong ability that instantly clears up a CS for your own uses. Find an annoying sphere of influenced CS you just can't repeal? Annex it. You can even use the heavy annexation as a forward base when your empire starts attacking different continents. It is no means weak. The human playing Mongolia are too tame, while the AI plays Mongolia like how it was designed. Not to mention you can easily put down cities that rebelled away into your empire instantly with some units.

 

My main problem with this is that if I bother to move some troops to a CS in order to heavy tribute annex it then I could probably spend a few turns conquering it the old fashioned way (and probably get some experience for my units in the process). So that bonus doesn't really do all that much- it maybe saves me some turns pounding down a city and avoids warmonger penalty (but cmon, I'm Mongolia I'm gonna be a warmonger eventually anyway) but I lose the ability to ever demand heavy tribute. It's probably a net loss IMO.

I like some of the suggestions in this thread. I hope that whatever gets settled upon does pay homage to Mongolia's historical reputation of scaring people into submission and continues to make them an anti-diplomatic victory civ.

So far I think I like the proposal that demanding heavy tribute lowers everyone's influence with a CS by 60 the best. By constantly bullying CSs near your borders you keep them from becoming allies with other civs so that you don't have to bother killing them and you deny votes/yields to other civs. It doesn't really turn Mongolia into a diplomatic civ because their own influence would be in the gutter as well, at least until the Autocracy tenet. This should also be very AI friendly I would think? And it gets rid of using the 50-turn cooldown which felt slightly clunky.

 

Annexation might work for the AI, but for me, I dislike playing as the Mongols and versus the Mongols. Playing as the Mongols, I'd rather have the option of ordinary heavy tribute, i.e. yields (with increased mobility of my units and no extra cool-down, I could demand it more often from multiple city states than most civs), plus getting the CS with very few buildings just means it's often extra burden, and if I really need a CS for its strategic purposes, I'll be able to conquer it in around 5 turns once I have my army in place (which I would have to do in any case to demand heavy tribute), earning valuable XP and getting the option of puppeting and perhaps even fullfilling a CS quest/getting yields for conquering a cty. And playing against the Mongols would be super-fun due to their combat bonuses, but disappearing CS aren't fun, plus Genghis usually overplays his hand and gets hated by the world, or he snowballs when he captures a few early CS.

So I'd be in favour of removing this part of the Mongol UA and replacing it with something different. There are some interesting ideas in this thread worthy of further discussion and feedback from Gazebo.

 

It's not a strong ability because you can literally do it yourself with relative ease for the vast majority of the game by using the declare war button on a CS.

Also if that's the case them my suggestion is even more AI friendly. I think shooting blindly and grabbing any CS they can with a shpere of influence would work better than what we have now, and tributing them would come naturally. If some logic was added that helped them choose the right CS to sphere of influence it would be nice, but doesn't seem needed.

This is the one I'd think is way more AI unfriendly. I'm not a coder so I'm shooting in the dark, but it seems like it would require a lot of logic to choose who to bully and who to ally.

Getting a few spheres of influence is anti-diplomacy, and opens up the diplo game for the Mongolians.

 

Gaining sphere of influence via heavy tribute might be a little weird if being the ally of the CS then means Mongolia can no longer demand tribute later. I'm not sure if that's how it would work, or maybe in implementation you do something that allows Mongolia to continue demanding tribute even if their influence level is too high. I assume the sphere of influence would be on the same 50-turn counter, too.

It might make Mongolia a bit too diplomatic in flavor and maybe that's not the flavor that fits them thematically? Or maybe it works historically just fine. In terms of filling a role, only Greece also comes to mind as a warmonger/diplomatic civ so maybe having another one would be good. Though I do really like Mongolia being a diplomacy spoiler kind of like Venice- if you're going for diplomacy you have to find a way to deal with them and that conflict creates fun game play.

In any case, either of these changes would be an improvement over the current UA IMO.

 

Remember how strong his UA was when it wasn't on a cooldown. It overperformed most of the time as long as it had city-states to heavy annex. Even when it didn't have a cooldown, them having a fight on city-state borders suddenly had it be annexed out of nowhere. Having it be restricted to a Sphere of Influence is just nerfing Mongolia. 8(at most considering the current cooldown) Sphere of Influences isn't as strong as 8 free cities. Not to mention Sphere of Influences don't work pre-world congress code-wise, so that idea is thrown off the table.

Unless suddenly we want to establish Permanent Alliances with City-States outside of Sphere of Influences, then that's a different detail to discuss on.

 

A simple -60 influence with the city state for all other civs when demanding tribute sound reasonable. That and removing the cooldown.

 

The Mongols are supposed to be a sort of counterpick to diplo civs, correct? We don't want them to be a diplo civ, we just want them to ruin DVs for other people. The problem I have with the sphere of influence idea is that it necessarily makes Mongolia a strong contender for DV. I don't get the feeling we want to pivot Mongolia that way.

So, that gives 2 options: Either they can destroy CSs, or they can erode other player's influence.

People like getting heavy tribute without necessarily getting a whole city, so what about some of these options?:

• When Mongolia demands tribute, All civilizations lose -30 Influence with the target City-State if they are friends/allies, have a pledge of protection, or have an embassy.
  • So, civs that aren't affected if they aren't interacting with that CS, but you could lose 90 influence if you have all 3.
• All civilizations lose 3 Influence every turn with City-States who Mongolia can demand tribute from.
  • So, Mongolia passively erodes other civ's influence if a CS is intimidated by Mongolia, basically a reverse Gunboat Diplomacy
• City States which Mongolia can demand tribute from do not provide votes to the World Congress.
  • Mongolia can passively lock out votes if it can manage to intimidate CSs
• Mongolia steals World Congress votes for 30 turns when demanding Heavy Tribute.
  • So, Ghengis Khan can take votes from a CS's allies and use them himself for the next WC vote, then the votes reverts to the ally for the next vote.

 

Yeah. Taking over all the city states without increasing warmonger score or wasting any time is OP. Taking 1 every 50 turns is really, really mild. It's also way worse late game, while a city state ally is useful all game long.

1- A Sphere of Influence would hurt diplomatic civs the same as taking over the city state.

2- Being good at stopping a VC doesn't make a civ good. Sure you can mess with Venice trying to win WC, but Korea is still going to space and Brazil brand bluejeans are all the rage with your kids.

Remember when Japan had a -50% tourism modifier? That was removed for a reason. It shut down a VC without actually enabling it or offering real counterplay besides the omnipotent "murder them."

As @crdvis16 pointed out "In terms of filling a role, only Greece also comes to mind as a warmonger/diplomatic civ so maybe having another one would be good."

He seemed on the fence, but I think he makes a good point. Why not pivot that way a bit? I think saying that they can only be against diplomacy and can't have any bonuses towards it themselves limits them and creates an unfun dynamic.

Is this idea is impossible code-wise please let me know @Gazebo.

To be clear here's my current suggestion:
When demanding heavy tribute Mongolia can establish a permanent alliance / sphere of influence with a city state once every 50 turns. Mongolia can tribute friends and allies, but still loses influence like normal.

 

That kinda stuff bleeds CSD into CBO. Not the current goal.

G