Mongolia

[Enrico Swagolo]

What if if Mongolia has many cities and builds many Ger it turns into Germany, and as such your tanks turn into panzers and gers into hanses
However next turn the game checks that you no longer have many gers because they're now hanses, so you are not germany and the hanses turn back into gers and panzers into tanks, so it only works 50% of the time

 

[crdvis16]

Except it doesn't. Even if it's good, you can't demand any heavy tribute from any other CSs for 50 turns IIRC. It's actually detrimental in some cases to have this UA.

If you could always demand heavy tribute and every 50 turns the city state gave more yields and joined you it would be less of an issue, but this is pretty glaring.

Also it's got extremely high variance. Tributing a culture CS gets you an absurd amount of culture that can throw you super far in the lead. Tributing a food or production CS without a wonder (because most of the overflow production is lost) isn't even close to as good, and science is in the middle. Faith might take you from last to first to found on it's own.

The type of city state and timing of it is huge with this ability, far moreso than I'm comfortable with.

I think getting a CS with full buildings/population and a large tribute is enough to outweigh losing the ability to heavy tribute any other CSs.

As for making sure you don't squander the bonus tribute, as a player I will probably enjoy the strategy involved in making sure I can make use of it by carefully selecting who I heavy tribute. A good player would purposely time a production boost with a wonder or otherwise go for some other heavy tribute. I would probably be more worried that the AI would have trouble not squandering the bonus tribute but it's probably a marginal thing anyway- the AI is still getting a free, typically strong city either way.

 

[CppMaster]

What if if Mongolia has many cities and builds many Ger it turns into Germany, and as such your tanks turn into panzers and gers into hanses
However next turn the game checks that you no longer have many gers because they're now hanses, so you are not germany and the hanses turn back into gers and panzers into tanks, so it only works 50% of the time

Snip, snap! Snip, snap! Snip, snap!

 

[ElliotS]

A majority of 4 isn’t ‘very much.’ Changing things to your idea would be a major rework of the Mongols, especially the AI. It’s just not feasible at this stage. The UA stays. If the duration of the cooldown is too long we could drop it to 25. Cooldowns for tribute are already a thing, so this is not a novel or arbitrarily gamey thing.

G

The cooldowns make sense in the way they're done, because you can demand tribute earlier than they finish and it would make no sense to be able to take so much more than they could produce. I can imagine stealing art and then not being able to steal more art because they don't have any left and won't be able to create more for a while.

I can't imagine a city state being so scared of me that they outright join my empire, and then all of the other city states are now not just unwilling to join my stronger empire, but won't even give me a normal heavy tribute.

The two couldn't be more different.

Also we're back up to a 5 person lead on the poll.

because they're now hanses

Ach Hans, run It's the Mongolians!

I think getting a CS with full buildings/population and a large tribute is enough to outweigh losing the ability to heavy tribute any other CSs.

I don't think so, especially because it's supposed to be part of your UA and I'm not sure it breaks even. I would like to hear other experienced player's opinions on this. @CrazyG was strongly against it without the 250% yields boost and seemed concerned about variance, so his opinion would be very valuable to me here.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

An integral part of basically any optimal warmongering/authority early part of the game includes lots of demanding (heavy) tribute from as many CS as reasonably possible as often as reasonably possible (without jeopardizing actual warmongering efforts), to rack up yields from tributes and yields from the Authority policy. The Mongol UA, both current and proposed by Gazebo, prevents such strategies and doesn't offer an adequate alternative strategy. Even with the new UA, I'd avoid playing Mongolia on Deity because I'd be forced into a suboptimal strategy.

@Gazebo , could we as a community convince you if we showed you calculations/numbers that show that you're generally better of being able to demand normal heavy tribute than having the proposed Mongol UA?

 

[Stalker0]

Also we're back up to a 5 person lead on the poll.

I'm all for polls, but you can't get any real results from a poll that has been up for a day (many people do not check these boards every day), and that amounts to "keep the current or anything else that doesn't involve a cooldown". That's not really a strong case for change.

 

[ElliotS]

I'm all for polls, but you can't get any real results from a poll that has been up for a day (many people do not check these boards every day), and that amounts to "keep the current or anything else that doesn't involve a cooldown". That's not really a strong case for change.

Yeah, I was very clear that I don't think the poll is super accurate as is. I don't think it's worthless, but I did offer to throw it up in a separate thread for more visibility.

The reason I haven't done so is that I want to find out what we need to do to prove to G that this is a problem. Does he want a poll? Math? Gameplay photos/footage? Discussion? A better solution?

@Gazebo tell me what I need to show you to prove this is a bigger problem than you realize, and let's see if I can find proof or an argument that meets said criteria. (For example if I was shown numbers leading me to believe that the burst of yields and city were superior to what you would otherwise get from heavy tributing I would shut my mouth.)

 

[Gazebo]

The cooldowns make sense in the way they're done, because you can demand tribute earlier than they finish and it would make no sense to be able to take so much more than they could produce. I can imagine stealing art and then not being able to steal more art because they don't have any left and won't be able to create more for a while.

I can't imagine a city state being so scared of me that they outright join my empire, and then all of the other city states are now not just unwilling to join my stronger empire, but won't even give me a normal heavy tribute.

The two couldn't be more different.

Also we're back up to a 5 person lead on the poll.


Ach Hans, run It's the Mongolians!


I don't think so, especially because it's supposed to be part of your UA and I'm not sure it breaks even. I would like to hear other experienced player's opinions on this. @CrazyG was strongly against it without the 250% yields boost and seemed concerned about variance, so his opinion would be very valuable to me here.

Well, I'm a fool. I forgot I added a unique CD for the Mongols, I thought you were talking about the Heavy Tribute CD all civs have. I actually need to confess something about it. I added the mongol CD forever ago because the AI was gobbling up CSs so quickly. I thought they were just playing well somehow. Problem was, the AI (all AIs) was actually cheating and bullying when it wasn't legal to do so! So I added the CD to the Mongols, and then fairly recently fixed the bullying issue but didn't remove the Mongol one. I forgot the Mongols had a unique one. :/

G

 

[ElliotS]

Well, I'm a fool. I forgot I added a unique CD for the Mongols, I thought you were talking about the Heavy Tribute CD all civs have. I actually need to confess something about it. I added the mongol CD forever ago because the AI was gobbling up CSs so quickly. I thought they were just playing well somehow. Problem was, the AI (all AIs) was actually cheating and bullying when it wasn't legal to do so! So I added the CD to the Mongols, and then fairly recently fixed the bullying issue but didn't remove the Mongol one. I forgot the Mongols had a unique one. :/

G

Huh, so what does this mean for their UA or balance? Is the hard CD on the UA going to be totally removed?

 

[Gazebo]

Huh, so what does this mean for their UA or balance? Is the hard CD on the UA going to be totally removed?

Since it counts as Heavy Tribute, it'll function like any Heavy Tribute CD, instead of having a hard 50turn CD added on top of the generic one.

G

 

[ElliotS]

Since it counts as Heavy Tribute, it'll function like any Heavy Tribute CD, instead of having a hard 50turn CD added on top of the generic one.

G

Sounds good, let's try it.

 

[tu_79]

Oh. I posted an issue on Github about tributes overcoming the cooldown. It happens when the player kills all of the CS units, including garrisons. The player is able to demand tribute every single turn.

 

[Gazebo]

Oh. I posted an issue on Github about tributes overcoming the cooldown. It happens when the player kills all of the CS units, including garrisons. The player is able to demand tribute every single turn.

I added a control for min value for a CS such that a CS can never be less than 1/4 the strength of the bully, to prevent over-bullying. It shouldn't be possible in the latest version.

G

 

[pineappledan]

Okay so I 2 consecutive games. Prince difficulty:
First game: My continent was neck and neck, no obvious leader coming out ahead. I had just won a war against the Ottomans before exploration. The new continent is revealed and Mongolia is 3 techs and 8 cities ahead of everyone else in the game, leading by about 400 in gamescore.

Second game: I had an amazing start. within my first 4 cities I had 3 natural wonders (Krakatoa/Great Barrier Reef), 12 mountain tiles and Goddess of Nature pantheon. This should have been easy with a start that strong.
I am at turn 105 on a game and Mongolia is my closest neighbor. By the second CS conquer, he was already leading our continent by 150 gamescore. By turn 80 he had hoovered a total of 4 CSs, for a total of 10 cities compared to everyone else's 4-5. Temujin then proceeded to set every city on walls ==> unit death carpet. Game.

I can't handle this. I can't see how this can possibly be considered fair.

I'm banning Mongolia for future games until something is done to tone him down. This is two games in a row where Mongolia has been able to simply deathball off of early heavy tributes.
Denmark was overpowered, but at least the AI didn't have a clue how to use him. The AI knows exactly what to do with Mongolia, however, and does it extremely well. Mongolia's secure religion, combined with AI buffs and their UA's tribute snowball shuts down games before they even start.

Well, I'm a fool. I forgot I added a unique CD for the Mongols, I thought you were talking about the Heavy Tribute CD all civs have. I actually need to confess something about it. I added the mongol CD forever ago because the AI was gobbling up CSs so quickly. I thought they were just playing well somehow. Problem was, the AI (all AIs) was actually cheating and bullying when it wasn't legal to do so! So I added the CD to the Mongols, and then fairly recently fixed the bullying issue but didn't remove the Mongol one. I forgot the Mongols had a unique one. :/

If what you are saying here is true, and there is a heavy tribute global CD on all players, it must be 10 turns or less. Otherwise what Mongolia just did in my game shouldn't even be possible.

 

[Rekk]

Tribute cooldowns are per city state, not global. They don't interact with Mongolia's UA at all, since he's only ever going to use Heavy Tribute on a CS once.

 

[TheBigFundamental]

The Mongols seem unstoppable in my games as well, they annex a lot of CS in a short period of time and snowball.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I find it crazy how Mongolia can generally annex a number of CS before Venice gets even one in my games. I think we might need a separate timer for the Mongols to use their UA because they abuse it. This is AI so you can imagine what a human can do.

I don't mind longer time to annex but a bit more yields taken.

An alternative is to have Mongols' heavy tributes cooldown being twice as long as other civs but gets 3 times the yields. I think the AI is capable of that and their snowball will come steadily over time instead of massive benefits very early on.

 

[pineappledan]

Easiest thing is to re-add the 50 turn CD.

Or scrap the conquer on tribute and do a constant bonus for every CS that is afraid of you like I suggested before. This annex on tribute is a nightmare to balance; it should just be done away with.

Gunboat diplomacy is the only thing in the game that gives a bonus on passive CS intimidation. Give Mongolia a passive intimidation to match Zulu's active bonus to tribute.
Give Mongolia yields per turn for every scared CS, unblock tribute on friends/allies, and disable CS's ability to declare war on Mongolia if they are scared.

 

[Enginseer]

I find it crazy how Mongolia can generally annex a number of CS before Venice gets even one in my games. I think we might need a separate timer for the Mongols to use their UA because they abuse it. This is AI so you can imagine what a human can do.

I don't mind longer time to annex but a bit more yields taken.

An alternative is to have Mongols' heavy tributes cooldown being twice as long as other civs but gets 3 times the yields. I think the AI is capable of that and their snowball will come steadily over time instead of massive benefits very early on.

This was already a thing. 50 Turns and it made Mongolia unplayable. The adjustment would be to apply a lesser turn, but Gazebo fully removed it off. In Deity Mongolia can easily become a strong bully and dominate the scene, but in Settler Mongolia is apparently a sitting bird because he can barely force-annex a city-state much less city-states.

 

[Rekk]

One of the issues with the current setup is that it's binary.

If Mongolia has enough military to annex one city state, he generally has enough military to annex all of them, especially early on. This is true for any bully wanting to extract tribute from a set of city states, but the opportunity cost is not being able to use it to conquer cities or defend territory. For Mongolia, moving that sufficiently sized military around to extract tribute is conquering cities, so the opportunity cost is much lower.