Post patch puppets rock!

[Poomermon]

It seems that puppets don't build useless stuff any more after the recent patch. In my last game I only settled 3 cities and conquered and puppeted the rest. Conquered cities just build happiness, culture and money-buildings and no more useless armories or stables. I didn't need to annex any of them because my 3 core cities could build enough military for my needs and I got a lot more social policies with my small number of actual cities. Before the patch I usually razed every city I conquered and resettled on the spot but now mass puppetry seems to be the way to go. Do others have similar experiences?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They do need to be fixed (at least give 0 culture for social policies)

 

[alpaca]

Mass puppetry was the way to go before, it just made you feel bad that your puppets built loads of crap. They still provide you with a lot of benefit at little cost (in fact, the biggest cost I've perceived is that you can't purchase things and tiles there). I never had trouble making them profitable with building so expensive in hammers they could barely build any.

 

[Revoran]

they need to have a drawback to balance it, ie: puppeted cities only produce half culture for you and/or have a weaker bombard (or no bombard to represent them not fighting very hard for you when you just conquered them).

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

It seems that puppets don't build useless stuff any more after the recent patch. In my last game I only settled 3 cities and conquered and puppeted the rest. Conquered cities just build happiness, culture and money-buildings and no more useless armories or stables. I didn't need to annex any of them because my 3 core cities could build enough military for my needs and I got a lot more social policies with my small number of actual cities. Before the patch I usually razed every city I conquered and resettled on the spot but now mass puppetry seems to be the way to go. Do others have similar experiences?

I've noticed something similar. Good stuff.

 

[Martin Alvito]

They do have a drawback. They don't pack themselves full of Scientists any more. That is a severe problem.

 

[r_rolo1]

They do have a drawback. They don't pack themselves full of Scientists any more. That is a severe problem.

Anyway, and regardless of any penalty they still have, I think they were probably a little too buffed for good balance. The harshest penalty for having puppets was always the fact that they were going to be governed by a horrid AI governor ... if you take that away, puppets are actually more appealing that annex + 30ishs turns of added unhappiness

 

[pi-r8]

You know it's a problem when a puppet city is actually better than a normal city that you settled yourself.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

You know it's a problem when a puppet city is actually better than a normal city that you settled yourself.

No offense, but I think you might need to make your normal cities a bit better. I've had a bunch of puppets and while they're better than they were, they're still not nearly as good as a city I've placed and directed myself.

Also, a drawback to puppet cities is that they're locked into Gold focus mode. So they might be building that Bank you want them to build, but depending on their tiles, they might be building it 4x slower than you would have it build them too.

 

[pi-r8]

No offense, but I think you might need to make your normal cities a bit better. I've had a bunch of puppets and while they're better than they were, they're still not nearly as good as a city I've placed and directed myself.

Also, a drawback to puppet cities is that they're locked into Gold focus mode. So they might be building that Bank you want them to build, but depending on their tiles, they might be building it 4x slower than you would have it build them too.

Not saying they're actually better, it's just that in some situations they can be. They give full gold, research, and culture, without affecting the social policy cost. So if the puppet actually chooses the right buildings (which is usually doesn't) then they can actually be strictly better than a normal city.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

They give full gold, research, and culture for the manner in which they pursue it. You can't direct tile usage (it aims for maximizing gold production, so if you have a tile with two food and four hammers, it will get ignored in favor of a tile with one food and two gold). You can't order specialists.

That's a HUGE disadvantage unless, well, you just want gold. The rate at which they produce culture in such a situation might not even be worth it for the added cost to social policies.

 

[pi-r8]

They don't add anything to the cost of social policies. That was my only point.

 

[Monthar]

Puppets do still build some things that you might not want them to. For instance one of my puppets started building the Apollo Project, when it would have been much faster in one of my regular cities, especially since Puppets are defaulted to focus on gold, thus typically have a low production rate. That's the only thing I saw them building that I didn't want them to build. So perhaps they should be forbidden to build all wonders (World and National) as well as all projects and anything that requires a resource.

I was looking in the XML/AI files that were changed and noticed they just gave the Puppets a -100 chance to build military buildings. I believe that means -100%, ie. never build these.

I also noticed the new list of cities remaining to build barracks, library, university, etc. in order to build the associated National Wonder, includes any puppets that don't have it built even though the puppets don't have to have them built in order to build the national wonder.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that puppet states building Apollo Program and such is probably something that will be tweaked.

 

[the streak]

Puppet cities are not better than regular cities... you can't rush buy, you can't designate scientists, you don't get GPs, you can't direct what they build so with 15 turns per building you may have to wait half the game for them to build something important which you'd have rushed right away.

Their only advantage is the only reason they exist in the first place - to control SP costs.

 

[alpaca]

Puppet cities are not better than regular cities... you can't rush buy, you can't designate scientists, you don't get GPs, you can't direct what they build so with 15 turns per building you may have to wait half the game for them to build something important which you'd have rushed right away.

Their only advantage is the only reason they exist in the first place - to control SP costs.

You have to compare them with conquered cities, though. Conquered cities take a courthouse to set up, which takes 10 turns even in a very productive city and during that time manufacture huge unhappiness. If you just keep them as puppets, you will avoid that and also benefit from a lower SP cost. In some of the non-ICS games I played, this was a thing I seriously exploited. There is another advantage: You can raze puppets later on.

As for the gold focus: I don't see anything wrong with specialising puppets on gold, that's what I typically want them to do. They don't cost me anything except for happiness, and the gold can be used to buy things in my proper cities.

About the AP: I thought puppets won't build wonders or units?

 

[Celevin]

Puppet cities are not better than regular cities... you can't rush buy, you can't designate scientists, you don't get GPs, you can't direct what they build so with 15 turns per building you may have to wait half the game for them to build something important which you'd have rushed right away.

Their only advantage is the only reason they exist in the first place - to control SP costs.

The social policy costs not counting makes up for all their detriments and more.

 

[the streak]

The social policy costs not counting makes up for all their detriments and more.

Puppets have their uses, but they're definitely not what you'd call a better city than a user-controlled one. They're fillers for when you've got your core of good cities set up and don't want to raze the other 100 you just conquered.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

You have to compare them with conquered cities, though. Conquered cities take a courthouse to set up, which takes 10 turns even in a very productive city and during that time manufacture huge unhappiness. If you just keep them as puppets, you will avoid that and also benefit from a lower SP cost. In some of the non-ICS games I played, this was a thing I seriously exploited. There is another advantage: You can raze puppets later on.

As for the gold focus: I don't see anything wrong with specialising puppets on gold, that's what I typically want them to do. They don't cost me anything except for happiness, and the gold can be used to buy things in my proper cities.

About the AP: I thought puppets won't build wonders or units?

Apollo Program and Utopia Project are 'special' because they're not strictly buildings, and can't be rushed or improved with things that effect buildings. Also, multiple civilizations can build them at the same time, so on. I had a problem once where I had a puppet state working on Utopia Project in 75 turns, and I wanted to work on it in my main city in about 20 turns, so I was forced to annex them.

That was pre-patch, not sure if it is still an issue though.

 

[KingMackem]

Is there any way you can stop your puppets growing? I loathe having a puppet gobble up all my excess happiness. I want my cities to grow... not some conquered dogs.