Poll: How is the strength of each Great Person (GPTI Ability)?

[Alpharius]

Sorry, when I originally wrote a comment in the other thread this one wasn't around. My comment about the Great General being overpowered was not due to their assistance to units fighting ability which is good, but to the putting down of Citadels, which is ludicrously overpowered. I can understand why many have probably got an opposite view of this, because as a tool to warmongering it is really impressive but for reality & a more peaceful game it is not.

In reality if a country stole land from another (which is basically what happens here) there would be uproar around the world & some sort of action, whether military or diplomacy would go against any perpetrators, which is the opposite of what happens in game. For instance when Saddam decided Kuwait was his, a world military force brought him down, & would eventually end his reign. When Russia stole Crimea, the vast majority of the world treated them as pariahs. You could argue these two examples are more like countries taking city states in game. A better example would be if here in the UK the government decided our old lands belonging to William the Conqueror were returned to us & marched over to take Normandy. If this happened France & the EU, not including the rest of the world which might as well, would declare war on us, & we would be pariahs. In game if it happened, Napoleon would be angry, but just shrug his shoulders, & the rest of the world would just ignore it.

Gamewise, this is stupid & completely overpowered, & vastly favours warmongers over peaceful countries (exceptions like Portugal) due to them not having enough points to obtain GG in first place. If anyone should be having them are the more peaceful nations to defend themselves, the opposite of what happens in game. To my mind the GG is strong as it is as an extension to your army, & if you are going to have citadels I am not against them taking free land, but against stealing someone elses for no consequence. I have seen games where players have maneuvered their way to next to a city, wherby it is overpowered. To me that is ridiculous.

I know this will not be a popular comment, but in my opinion GG are the most poverpowered GP by far in the game. To the developers, if we are going to keep them as they are, it would be nice to be able have an option to turn them off so if you want to play peaceful you can turn them off. If not that, have Americas ability to buy the land back, or have severe diplomatic repurcussions for using them.

I agree, as it seems most of the game mechanics and ways to achieve victory are heavily tipped towards warmongering. There's almost no incentive to play peaceful other than if you want to challenge yourself.

Coupled with Lebensbraum citadel bombing becomes too gamey for my taste.
I like the idea of being able to "buy back" your tiles stolen via citadels. Another idea I've seen in a different thread is to give warmonger penalties when stealing tiles of another civ.

Would it be possible to reduce the rate of GG/GA acquisition through a World Congress resolution? Attaching it to Global Peace Accords would make sense imo.

 

[Rafs]

Imho outside great merchant they are all in a good spot.

I see talks about great generals but outside Rome you ain't getting tons of those if you aren't warring extensively or autority in industrial onwards. If we limit GG and citadels, does this means non warring civs should get hindered access to their own benefitial GP in exchange somehow? Like if you are devoted to working your specialists but others aren't and thus you are getting more culture/science out of it, should the others that aren't doing so somehow be compensated? This doesn't sit well with me. After all, creating and mantaining an army has both a hammer and gold cost, so it's only fair that people who heavily invest in this can get their GP and it's benefits alongside.
I think what Recursive proposed (being able to DOW whoever citadeled you, ignoring warmongering penalties, and hopefully defensive pacts) is a fair middle ground, and I hope it would be extended to other aggressive actions (spying and proselytizing when you said no comes to mind ). A last resort solution would be removing GGs from your own game, I remember there was a post about this.
For me. stuff like great prophet / religion bombing (which are considered peaceful for all intents and purposes), or spying in general is way more aggravating, it ruins peace and good relationships. I can ignore citadels if they didn't take anything too important, but civs aggressively spamming their prophets and missionaires I honestly wish I could DOW without being frowned uppon when the AI tells me it won't stop proselytizing. I usually end up declaring on them when I feel I can land a good hard blow on them.

Lebensraum citadel bombing is a different beast (should be more related to the policy balance than the GG itself), and victory being tipped to warmongering should be talked about in another thread imho (and FYI, I agree warmongering will help you with all victory conditions).

Maybe a different alternative to citadels if people are so opposed to it would be a permanent reduction to war weariness (similar to attila / honor policy, not reducing the penalties) when you plop the citadel instead of grabing the adjacent land? I think it would good for warmongers and maybe not cause so much grief on peaceful players in an inmediate way.

 

[jekke]

I agree with most of the posts here that merchants and generals are the ones that need attention currently more than other great people; yet, they way how I'd adjust them is very different.

I find great merchants to be quite good in the early game; in a coastal capitol with a decent production, great lighthouse + colossus will give you a great merchant pretty early, and a town on a hill with a road will make this tile very decent for a while. It is just the significant yields increase with time that makes towns not so nice in the later game. However, a town with like 10-12 food/10-12 gold in the late game would be ok I believe. So maybe additional +2 food and gold per era would help towns quite a bit.

Regarding the citadels, the whole thing looks very weird to me since in my book, citadels are not about offensive actions such as claiming additional land but rather defensive ones, such as slowing down the movement of enemy troops. So ideally I would like to see citadels work along these lines, for example, make adjacent enemy units lose all movement points or something like this, on top of dealing damage and providing defense bonus.

Of course, I have no idea if this can be coded and how much effort it would take.

 

[youngsteve]

I agree with most of the posts here that merchants and generals are the ones that need attention currently more than other great people; yet, they way how I'd adjust them is very different.


Regarding the citadels, the whole thing looks very weird to me since in my book, citadels are not about offensive actions such as claiming additional land but rather defensive ones, such as slowing down the movement of enemy troops. So ideally I would like to see citadels work along these lines, for example, make adjacent enemy units lose all movement points or something like this, on top of dealing damage and providing defense bonus.

Of course, I have no idea if this can be coded and how much effort it would take.

This is my argument. Citadels are basically a defensive building, & although I wasn't around when the mod was designed, expect that was the original intention. In the game it is the opposite. To get one you need to be warring alot, so instead of Gandhi & Pedro getting them, you have the likes of Attila & Shaka.

One way around this, which might improve peace lovers chances more, is to perhaps have a Great Person when finishing one of the Initial Policy Trees. Perhaps Progress gains a GM, Authority a GE, & this is the controversail one, Tradition gaining a GG. In my opinion a GG should be more as a defensive unit, & this is one way peaceful players could gain some defence from. I know this is not the right place to discuss this, as I am sure Stalker is most likely going to have a poll about policies, but I thought it might be interesting to discuss.

 

[pineappledan]

Personally, I think citadels are fine. The comments re: citadels are overblown, especially the arguments for historical authenticity. There are too many bad assumptions loaded into that idea to take apart in a single forum post.

I do like @recusive’s idea of stealing land clearing or reducing warmonger penalties against you though.

 

[Ranslee]

For the adjustment ones:

Merchant - Towns suck big time. They need scaling into late game (being corporation related sounds great!), and simply better yields (base culture and gold). I think they suck because of gold inflation leaving them behind.

If we go WTLKD route, please choose additive +10% duration instead of a flat amount due to game speeds and China getting permanent empire-wide WLTKD without any effort (it's already relatively easy now).

General - Citadels are too strong. The double effect of land steal + incredible defence is too much and lets warmongers snowball a lot (and they already have the highest snowball potential).

I think we should decouple the effects and allow for either land steal OR building a citadel. Former is offensive, latter is defensive. Lebensraum could be adjusted.

 

[Solic]

It would be cool if great merchants could steer franchises in some way (possibly bypassing sanctions or franchise cap?)

Something like expending a great merchant next to a city, gives a great sum of money, WLTK in every city, and a franchise with the city in question.

This is something that would only work if a corporation is unlocked though, unless some blank franchise could be made that would be replaced when an actual corporation is founded. This blank franchise should thematically focus on gold.

It could also have cool offensive properties like removing any different foreign franchises. This would also allow you to defend yourself against franchises in your own cities. Diplomacy could play into this as well. Problem with this suggestion is that it might require tons of code.

Towns could possibly automatically install a domestic franchise and ward off any foreign franchises.

I don't share the opinion that great generals are that powerful, but a good way to nerf them is to not give any production when stealing tiles. It's very strange they can even outperform great engineers this way.

 

[InkAxis]

I really like the idea with attaching GM to Corporations, it just makes too much sense.

But for Generals, I really don't see the issue. I think there are only two issues:

• AI handling of it, you should be able to fight back
• Removing the citadel then placing a new one to slowly expand your territory

For the first one, it should be implemented so there are worse diplo penalties for stealing, you should be able to declare war with less warmonger penalties.
The second one is just a bugfix, make it so you can't remove citadels or so that you permanently can't place citadels near where another citadel was - even if that citadel is gone.
Otherwise people are acting like it's broken, if losing maybe 6 tiles (being optimistic) completely breaks the game for you then I'm not sure what to say.
You should never have a city so close to an enemy that they can steal valuable tiles that easily. Now there should be diplomatic repercussions but the ability on it's own is fine.

 

[CrazyG]

I like the idea that towns boost corporations.

 

[Circe]

I kind of like towns myself, usually on a hill or a desert, but not enough to keep working merchants. Always thought maybe they should buff adjacents or vice versa. I like the extra pop idea too. Boosting corporations is a nice flavor, but if it's not a retroactive effect it means most people will ignore or hoard merchants until the proper era arrives. From the other side, I don't think corporations in their current state need any extra help, they're already very powerful.
Lebensraum citadel spam is fun but ridiculously unrealistic. The problem is when you get to the point of carving rival civs into multiple pieces. Maybe placing them need to be limited to a certain number of tiles from a city you control(maybe 5 tiles, the maximum culture border). Making citadels permanent only solves the problem for non-Autocracy ones. AI should be more aggressive about it, including if you do it to their friends or vassals. Once stole half of all Morocco and he was still friendly.
Basically satisfied with the rest. Admiral voyage feels like one of the weaker and more awkward uses for a GP but I don't have any better ideas.

 

[dostillevi]

Regarding citadels, what if the balance was lighter, like enforcing an extra tile between them. Most of the abuse seems to come when several are applied near each other to claim a swath of land or cripple a city.

 

[azum4roll]

Regarding citadels, what if the balance was lighter, like enforcing an extra tile between them. Most of the abuse seems to come when several are applied near each other to claim a swath of land or cripple a city.

That'll stop all counter-citadel attempts though.

 

[dostillevi]

That'll stop all counter-citadel attempts though.

Right, of course. Maybe just make it your own citadels that can't be close to each other.

 

[looorg]

That'll stop all counter-citadel attempts though.

Still it would be interesting if one could increase the distance between citadels. This one tile just is a bit close and sort of annoying. Not as annoying as the creeping-citadel abuse some humans use tho (build citadel to steal land, raze the citadel to build another citadel in the new land to push the border even further -- super abusive). If the land could sort of be temporary to the citadel that could be removed. But then this is mostly a human issue since I have never seen the AI do it. Perhaps they could be thought to do it. Still increasing the distance between them won't remove this but I still think the distance should be increased. It will probably be better. If one sort of looks like how the AI vs AI wars go sometime there is like an Iron Curtain or WWI style defense popped down after a while and it looks quite stupid.

 

[Melchizedek]

I think towns need a late-game boost, although I currently find them useful in the midgame. A few towns along trade routes really help with happiness in cities that would otherwise have too much poverty. However, I could see boosting the culture to match villages and giving them some sort of late-game buffs related to corporations or stock exchanges.

Citadels are fine. The scaling already makes GG points less effective at generating generals the more of them you get. Also, since GG and GA points are accrued through combat not through specialists, there isn't any need to make GGs and GAs exactly balance with the other great people. The investment to acquire them comes in a completely different form, so it isn't apples to apples. As it is, smaller empires can have enough defensive citadels because they still accrue GG points while fighting off invaders. And smaller empires don't need as many citadels as large ones, because they have shorter borders. I don't agree with forms of balance that try to boost civs that haven't invested anything in a certain area of gameplay vis-a-vis those who have. VP is meant to have asymmetrical balance. Symmetrical balance is boring. Why should a peaceful civ be particularly good at fortifying itself? They're good at other things. Being ahead in tech is a huge military boost! If peaceful play underperforms, perhaps it is because we've overbalanced tech and culture to the point where investing more in those things doesn't yield enough advantages to have an equal shot against military civs.

Asymmetric balance would have interesting conflicts between one civ with a sizable tech lead and another with lots of extra generals. Symmetrical balance says "too much tech is overpowered" and also "too many citadels are overpowered" and winds up nerfing everything into sameness.