My Two Pence

[Freddy's Mouser]

Hi all, seems like a really enthusiastic group here, and I wanted to share my thoughts on BNW with you in the hopes of sparking a conversation. I should also mention, I have absolutely no concept of what is possible in terms of modding. I hope I don't go over things that have been covered in the past, but there's a lot in this sub-forum.

Firstly, I was a fan of GEM and the way it altered the game. I love Civ V but the enhancements GEM made really made it shine. I also think BNW has the bones of something superb, but is flawed in some critical ways. Hopefully the two can combine to make the perfect game. Anyway:

1. Ideologies - specifically happiness penalties. I've put this first as I think it's the thing the developers got the most wrong. It's a confusing and nonsensical addition to the game and has many detrimental effects not least, it forces you to play the game culturally. I absolutely love the idea of ideologies and think the potential is huge, but having it tied in to culture as it is, makes no sense to me. It should have a massive diplomatic effect, with game long friends suddenly turning against each other when they choose different paths.

I understand that this is a game, and excessive realism can detriment a game, but a game like this should be rooted in reality. How often does a citizen of a western country visit China with it's rich and ancient culture and return to demand their government removes their rights and liberties, and puts them to work in a factory? It makes no sense.

The happiness penalty could work as a tier 3 Freedom policy perhaps, 'Cast off one's chains'? Also, the other ideologies could have similarly powerful tenets in tier 3, for example, an equivalent in Order would be 'Gulags', which serves to crush social discontent, perhaps by providing a modfier in some way, i.e. -3 for every city connected to the capital by railroad.

2. Trade routes to me, are almost perfect in the way they function, with two fairly minor concerns. Firstly, when pirated, one looses the unit entirely. Of course, having trade routes and not bothering to protect them should have consequences, but this is both unbalanced and out of line with the other non-military units in the game. caravans and trade ships are very expensive units at the start of the game, and given the large range of movement, the ships especially, can be very hard to protect. Also, non-mil units such as workers and settlers are now captured, and embarked units are damaged when attacked, as opposed to being completely destroyed. Why should trade units be any different?

The problem could potentially be solved in two ways that I can think of. One, treat trade units as workers; they are captured and taken to the nearest appropriate barb camp. Two, allow a military unit to escort the trade, rendering it uncapturable, unless the barb can destroy the mil unit.

The second problem, is the range. I have a game on the YnAEMP huge map. In the modern era, the farthest I can trade is 60 plots, which is about half way to the east indies (whereas the east india company is an early medieval building ). Granted, it's a pretty big map.

3. I like the potential of the world congress, but I have a problem with the declaration of 'world religion' or 'world ideology'. I think it's unnecessary and unrealistic.

4. I think great works, archaeology and the like are brilliant but we need MOAR!

Anyway, sorry about the length.

 

[Ahriman]

Hi there, welcome to the forum! Thanks for contributing ideas, it's always good to hear from a range of views.

1. Ideologies - specifically happiness penalties. I've put this first as I think it's the thing the developers got the most wrong. It's a confusing and nonsensical addition to the game and has many detrimental effects not least, it forces you to play the game culturally. I absolutely love the idea of ideologies and think the potential is huge, but having it tied in to culture as it is, makes no sense to me. It should have a massive diplomatic effect, with game long friends suddenly turning against each other when they choose different paths.

I understand that this is a game, and excessive realism can detriment a game, but a game like this should be rooted in reality. How often does a citizen of a western country visit China with it's rich and ancient culture and return to demand their government removes their rights and liberties, and puts them to work in a factory? It makes no sense.

I think it makes a lot of sense, realistically. It's really modeling the ideological struggles of the 20th century - when fascism and communism really were very appealing to a lot of people. In our earth, Freedom won the ideological influence war, causing dissidents and then outright uprisings in other countries, by people who wanted democracy.

But there were fascist and communist uprisings in many countries too - like those which created the Soviet Union and Maoist China in the first place.

I also think the unhappiness is good for gameplay; it makes culture and tourism a meaningful gamplay mechanic. I think it's *good* that those can't be ignored.

Chinese government isn't particularly popular at the moment, because China is still poor - but in a lot of democratic countries you will often hear views expressed along the lines of "at least they get things done, cutting through all the red tape and all that opposite nonsense of bleeding heart environmentalists/unionists/lobbyists etc.".

And there is a lot of sympathy by some for a very ordered system along the lines of Singapore - which most certainly counts as Order ideology!

And there was a lot of support - including in the US and the UK - for fascists, back in the 30s. Along the lines of "they make their countries great; they get the trains to run on time". Those ideas were successful for a reason.

Firstly, when pirated, one looses the unit entirely. Of course, having trade routes and not bothering to protect them should have consequences, but this is both unbalanced and out of line with the other non-military units in the game.

It's not really unbalanced in my view - they're not that expensive given the income they can give you. They'll almost always give you a bigger return than any other building or unit would, and usually at lower cost.
And it's not really out of line with settler or worker capture, which also loses you the unit.

Also, non-mil units such as workers and settlers are now captured, and embarked units are damaged when attacked, as opposed to being completely destroyed. Why should trade units be any different?

When other civs take a settler or worker it is often destroyed completely (basically they instantly disband it). I think it's great that there are mechanisms for losing your trade units - they make it important to protect your trade routes, and so finally navies have an economic value. For high rewards, we should have to take some risks (or act to mitigate those risks). I don't have an difficulty keeping my trade routes unpillaged, as long as I plan for where they are going to go.

but I have a problem with the declaration of 'world religion' or 'world ideology'. I think it's unnecessary and unrealistic.

I think these are both useful ways of tying together different mechanics in the game - in particular tying diplomatic prowess into the religion and tourism mechanics. Though there isn't a world religion on earth, there certainly was effectively a "regional" religion in certain parts of the world - Christianity or Islam. And effectively "Freedom" is the world ideology on earth - the universal declaration of human rights is very much a freedom policy, and there are activists in almost every country that produce dissent against non-democratic regimes. And democratic regimes have much more representation in world affairs.

4. I think great works, archaeology and the like are brilliant but we need MOAR!

I think the tilt of the great works towards renaissance art/classical music is driven in part by copyright issues - they don't want to pay license fees for using the Beatles or such. I wonder if the mod has more scope to add more modern things, and to try to add more non-European great works.

 

[mystikx21]

Copyright law for IP issues is rather absurd. The Beatles at least are still (slightly) alive and in theory could produce more works of art for consumption. Someone like Steinbeck, not so much. Yet still protected by copyright protection. I'm assuming we'd be fine to add modern things under some fair-use provisions since there's little or no direct profit involved in the mod. But I'm not an IP lawyer..

I would like to see some non-western objects like the wonders variations that were input before in GEM where possible, yes.

 

[ExpiredReign]

@Freddy's Mouser

Welcome.

Also, non-mil units such as workers and settlers are now captured, and embarked units are damaged when attacked, as opposed to being completely destroyed. Why should trade units be any different?

Because they ARE different. You have no control over the movement of trade units in the same way you do with say a worker. You can assign a destination trade city and that's it.

It is a different game mechanic altogether.

Having said that. It would be good if the trade-route is reduced somehow and a warning is provided to alert you to that fact:

​

"Your cargo-ship to Sidon has been attaked by barbarians losing 1. Send naval units to remove this threat and restore your trade."

So yes I agree. Losing trade units in 1 go sucks.

The solution though maybe in how we play the game not in the game itself.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

Yeah it sucks when you build a road and line of forts to another civilization for trade routes and the stupid caravans decide to take some random path out in the barbarian infested jungle to get there. -.-

 

[agc28]

In my current game, I have established a +14gpt trade with Madrid at roughly turn 70.

I placed 3 triremes between me and Madrid.

I saw an incoming barb galley. My triremes were in range to take out the barb galley. But I couldn't stop it. Because the barb galley was inside Spanish territory, with whom I have no Open Border Agreement.

My cargo ship was still plundered.

See? Having a navy does not help in a situation like this. At all! Even if I had 100 triremes around, I still would have lost my cargo ship.

 

[Ahriman]

Then don't send trade routes to people where who have barbs in their territory unless you have open borders, or accept that sometimes you'll lose the odd unit now and then. They're really not that expensive.

 

[Freddy's Mouser]

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, I've been away from my PC.

Hi there, welcome to the forum! Thanks for contributing ideas, it's always good to hear from a range of views.

I think it makes a lot of sense, realistically. It's really modeling the ideological struggles of the 20th century - when fascism and communism really were very appealing to a lot of people. In our earth, Freedom won the ideological influence war, causing dissidents and then outright uprisings in other countries, by people who wanted democracy.

I would agree with your point to an extent. However, I believe you are suggesting that it's possible it could have happened another way, where Facism or Communism could have become the dominant way. I think that is pure speculation personally, and feel that there should be some acceptance that human nature dictates personal freedom is the default choice.

But there were fascist and communist uprisings in many countries too - like those which created the Soviet Union and Maoist China in the first place.

In the two circumstances you refer to, the first was an uprising against an absolute monarchy, not against a democracy.

The second instance is a much more complicated affair, and to suggest it was simply an ideological struggle between democracy and communism is oversimplifying matters. A lot of the support for the CPC came from extremely impoverished rural peasants with promises of better times in the future, from what was apparently a charismatic leader in Mao. Fast-forward ten years (when it's too late) and I highly doubt you'd find much the same level of support for the new regime.

I also think the unhappiness is good for gameplay; it makes culture and tourism a meaningful gamplay mechanic. I think it's *good* that those can't be ignored.

I don't disagree, but as I stated above, I think it should be a facet of the freedom tree, causing unhappiness in Order and Autocracy civs, with the caveat that they get some pretty huge bonuses elsewhere.

Chinese government isn't particularly popular at the moment, because China is still poor - but in a lot of democratic countries you will often hear views expressed along the lines of "at least they get things done, cutting through all the red tape and all that opposite nonsense of bleeding heart environmentalists/unionists/lobbyists etc.".

And there is a lot of sympathy by some for a very ordered system along the lines of Singapore - which most certainly counts as Order ideology!

And there was a lot of support - including in the US and the UK - for fascists, back in the 30s. Along the lines of "they make their countries great; they get the trains to run on time". Those ideas were successful for a reason.

It's absolutely true that certain extreme minorities in democratic countries support ideologies like that; even to this day. However, it is a minority and I would suggest that very few - perhaps none - of the people expressing these views have ever lived under an oppressive regime like the two mentioned above.

It's not really unbalanced in my view - they're not that expensive given the income they can give you. They'll almost always give you a bigger return than any other building or unit would, and usually at lower cost.
And it's not really out of line with settler or worker capture, which also loses you the unit.

I wouldn't know where to begin comparing production to gold, so a more simple comparison is thus. Early in a Marathon game, a trade route will give you around 5 gpt, whereas purchasing a cargo ship costs somewhere in the region of 1600 gold (I have Mercantilism and Big Ben in my current game so I can't check). That equates to somewhere in the region of 320 turns until the cargo ship starts to pay for itself. Which is reasonable, as that leaves well over 1000 turns for it to be making pure profit. It becomes far less so when we begin to protect the routes with military units.

When other civs take a settler or worker it is often destroyed completely (basically they instantly disband it). I think it's great that there are mechanisms for losing your trade units - they make it important to protect your trade routes, and so finally navies have an economic value. For high rewards, we should have to take some risks (or act to mitigate those risks). I don't have an difficulty keeping my trade routes unpillaged, as long as I plan for where they are going to go.

I agree that it's important to make the player protect their rade routes, but my point was that completely destroying the unit is extreme. From personal experience, a long, early sea trade route can be hard to protect even with two triremes, as naval movement is so great. All a barbarian galley has to do is survive long enough to run into your cargo ship and you've lost the unit. If we're protecting the trade route with two triremes it takes 533 turns to make a profit, and it's still very possible to lose it outright.

I think these are both useful ways of tying together different mechanics in the game - in particular tying diplomatic prowess into the religion and tourism mechanics. Though there isn't a world religion on earth, there certainly was effectively a "regional" religion in certain parts of the world - Christianity or Islam. And effectively "Freedom" is the world ideology on earth - the universal declaration of human rights is very much a freedom policy, and there are activists in almost every country that produce dissent against non-democratic regimes. And democratic regimes have much more representation in world affairs.

Yes there were regional religious strongholds in parts of the world, but the vast majority of that wasn't spread through democracy but at the point of a sword. To suggest that there could ever have been a 'world religion' is nonsensical imo. It's reasonable to suggest, that religion in general was at the greatest extent of its power during the medieval period, at which point diplomacy as we know it now was almost nonexistent.

Of course it's possible to suggest that religion could have maintained its power right through to the present day, and one religion could have 'won' over the rest. It's possible to suggest that Communism or Fascism could have won the 'war of ideologies'. It's also possible for me to suggest that if it wasn't through religious oppression in the dark ages we could be commuting to work in hover cars. The point is, where is the line to be drawn? Civ has always in my view, been about establishing a baseline in historicity, and allowing the player (and the AI) to make their own decisions in how to progress from there; whilst of course allowing for the most enjoyable gaming experience. Things such as world religion are possible, but are outside that remit for me.

I think the tilt of the great works towards renaissance art/classical music is driven in part by copyright issues - they don't want to pay license fees for using the Beatles or such. I wonder if the mod has more scope to add more modern things, and to try to add more non-European great works.

It's understandable, I'm sure there are caveats in all copyright legislation for 'fair use'. It depends if the Civ modding community can ascertain whether fair use stretches to this extent. I would say if people can post full albums on youtube, we can get away with a 5 second clip.