[GS] New mechanic idea: Authority

[kotpeter]

Authority is a concept that inherently limits your expansion in a meaningful way and makes you reconsider your diplomacy. Basically, it ties your government, governors and diplomatic relations to your empire's happiness.

Authority is a country-wide mechanic; it ties to your civ as a whole, not to any particular city. It has two values, consumption and maximum.

Base consumption value is 0. It increases by 1 for every city you control (if the city has 10+ population, 2 authority consumption instead). Also, every 125 grievances against you (summed up across all other civs) increase authority consumption by 1 (while grievances are present). Being a target of hostile emergency (military or religious) also increases authority consumption by 1, while emergency is active.

Base authority maximum is 2 (from palace). Every government tier increases authority maximum by 2. Every established governor increases authority maximum by 1 if established in a friendly city (if a governor is fully promoted, +3 authority maximum instead). Government plaza adds 2 authority maximum. Also, every active alliance increases authority maximum by 1 for both sides (if alliance is level 3, +2 authority maximum instead). Authority maximum can also be increased by certain policies, great people and wonders (TBD). Certain leaders have base authority maximum increased (TBD).

So how does authority affect you? Here's how it works:

• If consumption is less than or equal to maximum, nothing happens;
• If consumption is greater than maximum, it is added as a negative amenity to all cities. For example, if your authority consumption is 10 and your maximum is 8, all your cities suffer -2 Amenity.

For those of you playing peaceful games with 6-8 cities this mechanic might not change anything. But I do believe it has a bunch of benefits for the game:

• It encourages internal development prior to expansion
• It encourages managing your diplomatic relations with civs (because having alliances helps you develop more cities, whilst being an extensive warmonger hinders your ability to control your conquered cities)
• It makes grievances meaningful in multiplayer

Let me know what you think!

 

[Nizou]

I voted no but I'm not totally disagreeing with your ideas. Your new mechanic is just very original and it would add more complexity in the stability of your empire, which has big lacks (compared to stability in Civ4:R&F for instance). The problem is that regarding how Civ6 works, your version of Aurhority is wayyyy too punishing wide-play. Civ6 lies basically on the idea of "the more cities you have the more you'll be able to win". 1 Authority Consumption for each city would make your empire always rioting. Having few cities is not a viable strategy except with a few civs (hello Maya). The actual Authority would just weaken players and do big **** with AI which usually spam cities so as to fill all the map. Surely reviewing values and I would be more favorable to such mechanic

 

[kotpeter]

I voted no but I'm not totally disagreeing with your ideas. Your new mechanic is just very original and it would add more complexity in the stability of your empire, which has big lacks (compared to stability in Civ4:R&F for instance). The problem is that regarding how Civ6 works, your version of Aurhority is wayyyy too punishing wide-play. Civ6 lies basically on the idea of "the more cities you have the more you'll be able to win". 1 Authority Consumption for each city would make your empire always rioting. Having few cities is not a viable strategy except with a few civs (hello Maya). The actual Authority would just weaken players and do big **** with AI which usually spam cities so as to fill all the map. Surely reviewing values and I would be more favorable to such mechanic

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I think you're a bit exaggerating the effect of authority on wide empires. First and foremost, this is just an amenity reduction. You need to have a whooping -7 amenity to make riots a real threat. Let's put some numbers down:

Authority max value for mid game: 2 (palace) + 4 (government) + 4 (governors) +1 (alliance) = 11. This allows you to manage 11 small cities without being a warmonger. If suddenly 2 of your cities grow, you'll have -2 amenity in all your cities. However, this can be partially offset by constructing entertainment complexes and city parks. Certain beliefs help too.

And even if your authority consumption surpasses its max value, it's still no big deal if you can handle loss of amenities. After all, entertainment complexes and water parks handle all of this pretty well, not to mention national parks and city parks.

 

[AsH2]

As I've posted in Ideas for The Perfect 4X Historical Game, I'd like to tie Authority to active leadership than to be another yield factor..

Spoiler :

..
To keep Micromanaging - for fun, but optional I would use an Authority system that (similar to Old World's Orders) would limit and make you valuate the choices -

give Authority (free hand) to a commander or
use Authority to intervene (micromanage) or
just let it be by either

reject (stop) or
approve (execute) what's been suggested..​

Your choice will both directly and indirectly affect your organization and further leadership.

..

The historical leaders (as we know them) should not allways be there in the main game, but may do grandiose presence during right circumstance - most of the time we'll just face anonymous/generic leaders.

Instead of civ6 preset city governors, I'd like to have a rough variety of characters to present different departments in a civ's organization and factions in general.
Those characters would be the department/faction keeper of whatever experience and knowledge they gain
- eg the military commander-in-chief would hold long lasting "promotions" while troop units may gain themselves temporary buffs during an event (in-between turns).

Add the Grievance system to this and a chart over relations could turn into a dense shrubbery. Though the relevance of factions will fluctuate and major events (like revolutions) will shake the chart like an etch-a-sketch - minor factions may unite in a common enemy or turn idle and built up tensions between major factions will be released in events..

 

[Sostratus]

And even if your authority consumption surpasses its max value, it's still no big deal if you can handle loss of amenities. After all, entertainment complexes and water parks handle all of this pretty well, not to mention national parks and city parks.

You need to account for player psychology.
People HATE directly penalties on certain things they do. For many, an explicit penalty on expansion - increased tech costs, reductions in a limited pool of a resource like Happiness or Authority - is extremely antifun due to psychology, even if the gameplay is better balanced for it. Likewise, people get way more upset about the high difficulty AI's starting units and extra settler than their production and gold bonuses.

You can often implement the same mechanical goal in several ways. For example, you could transpose everything onto amenities - make each city lose the free amenity, have grievances subtract from your amenity pool, have alliances add to it. Then people won't see the "i am being penalized for expanding!!!1!" but the effect on gameplay will be similar.

The reverse is also true; people get weirdly excited about certain kinds of bonuses - like bonus district adjacency- even if it's not as strong as something like extra building yields.

 

[totalslacker]

I like this idea, and it seems like it would be easy enough to calculate the authority score at the beginning of every player's turn with a lua script. I don't know if there is any way to directly affect amenities from the same script. Maybe there could be negative amenity modifiers which are attached via Player:AttachModifierByID() ? Not sure how to remove them though

 

[ZeoLite357]

I think adding another variable to track (alongside all the other yields) is counterproductive, since there are already many things to track, and as mentioned above punishes wide-play far too much. The real problem here is that tall-play needs to be more viable with more civilizations.

In summary, the way to solve this isn't to punish wide-play, but to reward tall-play more by making specialists, population, housing and food more important resources to invest in because they give you disproportionately more Science, Production, Gold and other high-value yields than if you played wide.

 

[Sostratus]

In summary, the way to solve this isn't to punish wide-play, but to reward tall-play more by making specialists, population, housing and food more important resources to invest in because they give you disproportionately more Science, Production, Gold and other high-value yields than if you played wide.

The problem with this is that without a global constraint, wide strategies can also access tall cities and get the best of both worlds. The proof is in the pudding with regards to amenities vs global happiness. Hence people propose stuff like this.

 

[The googles do nothing]

This would be fine as an optional "mode", but i agree with agree with the other posters about the issues this would cause and should be kept out of the base game.

Having said that I would change the amount provided by governments by government type and not by level of government. Autocracy should have more the Classical Republic.