Post patch puppets rock!

[KrikkitTwo]

i disagree. they are allready pretty good as they are now. (tho the AI might be made a little smarter. maybe, so it doesn't choose a 1 food and 2 gold tile over a 2 food and 4 production tile for example.)

and when they are finished building (except the useless buildings ofc.), they should always just build wealth until some other usefull building will become available.

If puppets only built Wealth, that would be a nerf.

No monument/Temple->no new territory for puppet cities*
No Marketplaces/Banks-> only unmultiplied gold
No Library/university->Low science per happiness consumed
No Colusseums/Theaters->Low Happiness .... but they keep growing.

*Puppets would also have to produce 0 culture even if they had WW/French, etc.

 

[aimlessgun]

My highest puppet was 239 BPT. Here's how it got there:

5 Terrain (tradeposts)
35 specialists (33 buildings and 2 from an unemployed citizen)
19 population
9.5 extra population (library)
---------
68.5 base

+50% public schools
+50% wat (siam university UB)
+100% research lab
+50% national college (counts in all cities)
--------
+250%

Total BPT = 68.5 * 250% = 239 BPT

Hrm. The +35 from specialists is the part I'm not experiencing. I have plenty of puppets with Market/Bank/Lib/Uni, but they only use the Market and Bank slots and ignore the science slots. Must find out what's different between our games so I can get my scientists back!

Maybe it's a matter of population? My current largest puppet is only size 12...did you see your puppets using scientists at smaller sizes?

As for the rest, I definitely agree, Maritime fed, order fueled, tradeposted puppets are great money/science. Works even more nicely as Rome since they basically get +25% production all the time.

 

[Rohili]

I don't see puppets as being overpowered. It's just that we have been so used to gold- and resource-draining puppets that we have come to think of puppets as something that should come with significant disadvantages.

Which doesn't make sense, IMO - why should puppets be anything but a good thing? You spent units and effort on conquering them, so you deserve the benefits. It should never be the case that razing a city is better than puppeting it.

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.

Sure, puppets might be generally more beneficial than annexed cities, but it is sometimes better to annex a city. I can think of quite a few situations where annexing would be better:

1) When the city is near the frontlines and you want to produce/purchase units from it.

2) When the city is sitting on very productive terrain and you want to turn it into a wonder factory.

3) When the city is near some useful resource and you want to buy the tile to that resource, instead of waiting for the city's borders to expand.

Perhaps an interesting twist would be that puppets might sometimes revolt and revert back to their previous owner (e.g. if your happiness or culture is too low), whereas annexed cities wouldn't. After all, a puppet regime should always be more insecure/unstable than your own.

 

[wurstburst]

Hrm. The +35 from specialists is the part I'm not experiencing. I have plenty of puppets with Market/Bank/Lib/Uni, but they only use the Market and Bank slots and ignore the science slots. Must find out what's different between our games so I can get my scientists back!

Maybe it's a matter of population? My current largest puppet is only size 12...did you see your puppets using scientists at smaller sizes?

As for the rest, I definitely agree, Maritime fed, order fueled, tradeposted puppets are great money/science. Works even more nicely as Rome since they basically get +25% production all the time.

I checked some of the smaller science cities. They seem to be filling the specialist slots starting with wealth. So, the key seems to be to generate enough specialists to fill all the slots so you get to the juicy science slots.

Is maritime CS the key? I had 7 allied maritime CS throwing food at me. Did that free up the specialists? My puppets ranged in size from 16 to 26. So, population seems to be a big factor.

One other thing. Don't forget rationalism/secularism, which gives 2 science for each specialist. That makes the fact that they don't fill the science slots not as bad.

Just had an ah-ha moment. I was playing Siam - that great abuser of CS. With the extra 50% CS food, I must have been generating a ton of excess food, which freed up my peeps to become specialists. I bet without Siam, I wouldn't have had as many specialists. Will have to try again with another civ.

 

[aimlessgun]

Hrm interesting. So maybe their priority is Gold/Gold Specialist > target food surplus / population > Other specialists?

This is good to know, though in my current game I think I will win via conquest before the puppets get large enough to start using scientists (due to permanent war so permanent unhappy, no growth). Very useful if you war early and then consolidate though.

 

[wurstburst]

I did another similar run with the Mongols. There were only 4 maritime CS, and without the Siam bonus, I grew my puppets up to about 12 size. By 1800AD (when the last of the other civs fell to the Hoard), I was teching about 850 BPT and hadn't gotten plastics for research labs yet (forgot to go that path and did ran through a few useless modern age techs instead). Had 5 non-puppets (took a few on other continents to rush buy in the war effort). Only got the center column of Order, most of rationalism and a bit of Freedom.

Still, easily out-teched the other civs. About 2/3rds of my research was coming from the 20 puppets.

Doing it again, I'd go for Plastics first in the modern age, unless I needed the mech infantry for conquest. In that case I'd go Electronics then Plastics.

So, in a very sub-optimal run, the puppets still deliver plenty of science to out-tech the AI, once you get Communism and they can quickly build all the buildings.

 

[wurstburst]

Hrm interesting. So maybe their priority is Gold/Gold Specialist > target food surplus / population > Other specialists?

This is good to know, though in my current game I think I will win via conquest before the puppets get large enough to start using scientists (due to permanent war so permanent unhappy, no growth). Very useful if you war early and then consolidate though.

I never consolidated, really. Since my growth depended on puppets, I needed to war to grow. There's a few points in the game, where you wait for the next war tech, or clean up unhappiness, but this is not the desired state in IPS (infinite puppet sprawl)!