New Version - May 19th (5-19)

[Gazebo]

How's that benefitial?

I can't raze my own settled cities. I have to let them be conquered or lose them due to a very bad mismanagement of my economy, so I would not be faring well in any case.
I could conquer a few cities and then raze them all, while in current system I have to do this one city at a time for avoiding extra costs, but this is not intuitive at all.
It's no longer possible to sell many buildings at once in a razing city.

I don't see many ways to exploit this mechanic, especially with all the changes from vanilla, but this would help bad players to keep playing in case they overexpanded too much and also badly wounded wide civs would be able to recover faster.

I didn’t say it was. I’m just saying that was likely their logic.

 

[tu_79]

I didn’t say it was. I’m just saying that was likely their logic.

It looks like sparky found an exploit, after all. So it needs more refinement to avoid exploitation.

 

[Gazebo]

It looks like sparky found an exploit, after all. So it needs more refinement to avoid exploitation.

"Exploit." If it's been that way for 8 years, it's clearly not that big of an issue.

G

 

[Rekk]

It looks like sparky found an exploit, after all. So it needs more refinement to avoid exploitation.

Only because he forgot that immediately razed/liberated cities already don't increase the counter. That's an oversight or bug in his modifications, not an exploit.

 

[chicorbeef]

Only because he forgot that immediately razed/liberated cities already don't increase the counter. That's an oversight or bug in his modifications, not an exploit.

Your first immediately razed/liberated city does increase the counter permanently though. It's what happened to me when playing with 4-cities and then liberating another.

By the way, there is some bug that goes on when you save a game before choosing to annex/puppet/raze a city and load that save. It just automatically annexes (though it doesn't increase the culture/science costs apparently?).

 

[Gazebo]

Your first immediately razed/liberated city does increase the counter permanently though. It's what happened to me when playing with 4-cities and then liberating another.

By the way, there is some bug that goes on when you save a game before choosing to annex/puppet/raze a city and load that save. It just automatically annexes (though it doesn't increase the culture/science costs apparently?).

That's because annex is the default, and the popup is not a 'managed' popup. Not a bug. Y'all just toss that word around a lot.

G

 

[wobuffet]

Re this whole annexing/razing and culture/tech cost discussion:

The actual game rule is secondary. Strictly more important is clearly communicating whatever that rule is through the UI.

 

[civplayer33]

Re this whole annexing/razing and culture/tech cost discussion:

I the game rule is secondary. Strictly more important is clearly communicating whatever that rule is through the UI.

I brought this up like 6 months ago...if we're not getting rid of the irreducible counter it would be useful to have a visible counter somewhere that shows the player what the current multiplier is, because otherwise the only way to know whether the next conquest will increase costs is by closely keeping track of the hidden maximum manually, which is definitely not something the average player does.
Alternatively (or even additionally), some popup window could tell the player that the ordered conquest will increase costs and allow the player to "take back" his order (no idea if that is possible, though).

 

[Rekk]

Your first immediately razed/liberated city does increase the counter permanently though. It's what happened to me when playing with 4-cities and then liberating another.

This reply chain started with @psparky changing the functionality to always be related to your current number of cities. Unless you have gotten a hold of his DLL and tested it to state otherwise, your issue wouldn't happen with his build...?

 

[Rekk]

I just did a test on my modded version, and there is an exploit. You can temporarily set captured cities to be razed which lowers the tech/culture costs, get a policy (would probably also work with tech), then cancel the raze. I kinda wish I didn't know that

I'm considering a further change to make cities being razed count. You would then potentially suffer a penalty for multiple razing cities, but it would reduce as each city was completely razed. I do wonder if I'm digging a hole for myself though.

Unpuppeted Cities you currently own should count, including cities you are currently razing. That's to be expected, and is consistent with a layman's understanding of "Each unpuppeted city you own raises technology and culture costs by X%".

The actual mechanic of "Research and Culture costs are increased by 7% times the maximum number of cities you have ever owned, including that time where you hit your max by conquering a city before immediately puppeting/razing/liberating it" is unintuitive and obfuscated. I think if we can actually change the mechanic to work off the number of unpuppeted cities owned (razing or annexed or settled) at the end of the turn, then we should do it.

 

[Borussia]

If an empire loses 6 out of 10 cities in a war it has other problems than being too strong.
It needs every help it can get.
With the current mechanic that empire will fall behind even faster and has even less chance to recover.
It is a big "lose more" mechanic.

In my current game a civ is perfect example. It had 12 cities and was on equal tech and policy level in medieval era with all other civs. It lost 7 cities in several wars and now when all other civs are in modern or atomic era it is 10+ techs and 5-10 policies behind.

 

[chicorbeef]

I brought this up like 6 months ago...if we're not getting rid of the irreducible counter it would be useful to have a visible counter somewhere that shows the player what the current multiplier is, because otherwise the only way to know whether the next conquest will increase costs is by closely keeping track of the hidden maximum manually, which is definitely not something the average player does.
Alternatively (or even additionally), some popup window could tell the player that the ordered conquest will increase costs and allow the player to "take back" his order (no idea if that is possible, though).

You can technically see the modifier for Culture/Science by looking at the tourism penalty in the tourism window, up to 11 cities.

I would prefer something like if you scroll under Culture or Science on the top panel, it gives you the current modifier. You can make your own conclusions from there.

I guess you could kind of exploit trading cities if it just counted modifiers from current cities, and it could lead to people not caring about losing a city early on while they haven't invested in it too much because the costs will balance themselves out.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Is anyone ever taking Jesuit Education and Faith of the Masses as something they'd want rather than something they're forced to take because everything of value was taken? I feel they're trash, suboptimal beliefs, both overperformed by DotF in the regards of yields and side effects. As the reformation thread didn't pick any fraction last time, maybe the discussion can occur here. I believe they need a yield upgrade of some sort while DotF could possibly get it's yields nerfed back to 3/1. This belief doesn't need a billion Faith anyway.

 

[Txurce]

Is anyone ever taking Jesuit Education and Faith of the Masses as something they'd want rather than something they're forced to take because everything of value was taken? I feel they're trash, suboptimal beliefs, both overperformed by DotF in the regards of yields and side effects. As the reformation thread didn't pick any fraction last time, maybe the discussion can occur here. I believe they need a yield upgrade of some sort while DotF could possibly get it's yields nerfed back to 3/1. This belief doesn't need a billion Faith anyway.

Jesuit Education is my backup to FTGOG. It allows full usage of my faith yields, consequently saves me gold, and gives me those science yields earlier.

 

[psparky]

The 'exploit' I previously posted (about setting captured annexed cities to raze status temporarily to get a policy or tech earlier) only applies to my modded DLL where costs are based on the current city count - it hasn't been around for 8 years

After further examination of the code and some debugging, I believe that the case where the max count gets increased for liberated or immediately-razed cities is a bug, or at least not working as expected. It's also not working like the vanilla game without a good reason that I know of.

The code G posted includes this comment:

// Don't count cities where the player hasn't decided yet what to do with them...

It then tests IsIgnoreCityForHappiness() looking for such cities. This examines a flag set during the popup where you choose what to do with the city.

I have seen that the routine GetMaxEffectiveCities is called (many times) on conquest before the popup appears. On the first of these, the city is not ignored and the max count is increased. Later, it is called during the popup and would then result in the correct number of cities, but the max count has already been increased.

As an aside, I think that the case mentioned by chicorbeef, where when you save a game before exiting the popup you are then not penalized for the city, is probably caused by the flag being permanently set. I'm surprised that G doesn't consider this to be a bug.

I think I have also found a workaround/exploit/whatever for the liberate/raze situation, provided you have previously captured at least one non-capital city. If you set that city to be razed, then capture and liberate or raze another city, then unraze the original city, I think the max count won't be increased. I'm not well placed to test this now, so I would be grateful if anyone could confirm this.

If the liberate/raze case could be fixed, it would still leave the question of whether changing to using the current city count to determine penalties would improve the game from the point of view of a civ that loses one or more cites being able to recover better, both for human and AI players. However, I suspect that fixing the liberate/raze case will be difficult without introducing new problems. Changing to penalties based on the current city count would avoid the need to fix that case, probably avoid the save-during-popup issue, be easier to explain and understand and possibly improve the game. It would, however, need something to prevent to the 'setting captured annexed cities to raze status temporarily' exploit, probably making cities being razed count until they are gone.

Edit: From other current threads, I see that puppeted cities can also increase the count in the same way as liberated or instantly razed cities. I very rarely puppet myself and hadn't seen it mentioned before so I wasn't aware.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Is anyone ever taking Jesuit Education and Faith of the Masses as something they'd want rather than something they're forced to take because everything of value was taken? I feel they're trash, suboptimal beliefs, both overperformed by DotF in the regards of yields and side effects. As the reformation thread didn't pick any fraction last time, maybe the discussion can occur here. I believe they need a yield upgrade of some sort while DotF could possibly get it's yields nerfed back to 3/1. This belief doesn't need a billion Faith anyway.

If I have decent faith generation, I sometimes take Jesuit since it allows me to get Universities in all of my cities faster and that makes a pretty big difference in terms of getting ahead or catching up in tech. Regarding Faith of the Masses, that's a bit more situational but it can be powerful in certain situations. For instance, I might be going wide and grabbed the Parthenon. Then, this can be a tempting option as I can quickly get Amphitheaters up in all of my cities. I will admit that these two beliefs aren't suitable for every game but, if you have good faith output, they can save your cities, especially those with low production, a lot of turns by getting the buildings completed instantly. While the yields from DotF are quite strong, they also require you to invest more turns on constructing your buildings and sometimes the turns saved can make a big difference.

 

[pineappledan]

Faith of the masses is great in a very narrow set of circumstances: It helps make wide Artistry more viable.

If you are a wide empire focused on GAs or GP production (Persia, Japan, etc.) then faith of the masses can be a pretty good pickup. Parthenon would make this even better, but I can’t ever grab it because the AI really prioritized that wonder.

 

[Enginseer]

Is anyone ever taking Jesuit Education and Faith of the Masses as something they'd want rather than something they're forced to take because everything of value was taken? I feel they're trash, suboptimal beliefs, both overperformed by DotF in the regards of yields and side effects. As the reformation thread didn't pick any fraction last time, maybe the discussion can occur here. I believe they need a yield upgrade of some sort while DotF could possibly get it's yields nerfed back to 3/1. This belief doesn't need a billion Faith anyway.

You save a lot of Production and you snowball in Culture / Science appropriately. What's not to like about it?

 

[Aristos]

That's because annex is the default, and the popup is not a 'managed' popup. Not a bug. Y'all just toss that word around a lot.

G

YOU are a bug.

(Come to think of it, you are... if you assume that the "normal" is Firaxis code and development, then you and @ilteroi are certainly bugs in the system. Please more bugs!)

 

[chicorbeef]

Faith of the Masses is great, Artistry or not. I don't always have much of a reason to focus on Defense/Castles. Amphitheatres also buff certain luxuries. A building that costs a lowly 200 Faith that gives +4 Culture, +1 Gold/Culture from baths and buffs appropriate luxuries is a good deal. And it's possible to buy all the Opera Houses you need as well.

Just try it I'll say.