Post Your VP Congress Feedback Here!

[andersw]

It looks very good so far, I wonder:
Are there a bit too many changes? (well none implemented yet so ... Ill ask that question again in a few weeks)
How does it hold up if we get fewer or more devs?
I dont mind having the votes on first page ... if there were fewer votes and if the votes are moved when poll time is out. With the current amount it should probably stay in its on subforum.
Can we make latest release thread sticky so it doesnt drown in vote posts?

 

[CppMaster]

It's not for the dev (they can choose to do what they like or not), it's for the ppl who submitted proposal to have appropriate expectation that dev can ignore their proposal if they don't like it and only pick up what they like, so don't be ungrateful and question their choice.

Well, yeah, I assumed it's obvious that sponsoring is voluntary. My point was to not forbid devs to sponsor a proposal they don't agree with.

 

[CppMaster]

Are there a bit too many changes? (well none implemented yet so ... Ill ask that question again in a few weeks)

The changes don't need to be implemented during one release, so no problem, devs can just take their time to implement them one by one.

 

[dostillevi]

Limited time right now to respond, but in short I like the congress and think it could be improved with some (significant?) tweaks.
1. Proposals be grouped by devs/respected community members into categories based on their impact to the existing Vox Populi mod. Eg: Rebuilding the happiness model would be major, tweaking the ratios of unhappiness generation might be medium or minor. More impactful proposals should require more significant review and consideration, and possibly a higher "yes" vote threshold than medium or minor tweaks, regardless of sponsorship.
2. I recommend a post-approval phase where changes that impact each other are adjusted for sanity. This can be open for comment, but shouldn't deviate enough from the original proposals to require additional voting. If the post approval sanity check fails, some or all of the proposals would be tabled until the next session.
3. A senate! eg, the congress becomes the "house" and is the general player base. The senate are active modders and devs. The house introduces proposals, the senate critiques them (possibly as part of the sanity check), and can push alternate proposals back to the congress in the next session. This is another kind of gut check on the viability and "goodness" of proposals by people who are intimately familiar with the feel of the game. Can be overruled by some large vote by the player base, as long as the change is sponsored.

 

[looorg]

It's kinda spammy if you move out every single proposal into the main discussion when it's vote time. Wasn't this what that congress folder was for? To keep all this in one place ...
That said it probably needs more curating and something else cause reading and voting in 50+ different posts is a bit of a pain.

 

[Slyceth]

Overall a huge success, congratulations!

I do have a couple of reservations.

Several of the proposals have multiple changes in the same proposal, with only a yes/no vote. Sometimes they are clearly linked, but not always. A good example of the latter is (2) Units Should only Heal at +5HP Within the Borders of a Revolting City. I agree with the idea stated in the title, but not the extra part - If the city is being Razed units within the borders of the city would heal at +20 HP (looting). I think these should be separate proposals or perhaps options that can be voted on separately. While I was voting I had this sort of dilemma on several occasions - (3) regarding nuclear weapons was another one.

[I'm concerned about human abuse of the looting proposal, like raze for a couple of turns to heal my army, then stop. Also, I am doubtful if the AI will be able to use it effectively]

My second concern is for the ratification phase. There are so many big changes that look likely to be made simultaneously (happiness, tech cost, policy reworks, etc, etc.) that it will be very difficult to decide whether a particular change was good or should be reverted. But we will see!

​

That's a contradiction, you can't heal from razing your own city, you heal if an enemy took your city and razes it

 

[Slyceth]

Make a proposal next proposal phase. Just because something is being voted on this session doesn't mention that a new version can't be voted on next session.

Almost all changes end up being modifiable via SQL. Learn how to do that and you can tweak the game to your liking.

I don't want to tweak my game to my liking and I never will. I've talked about how easy it is for me to cheat at the spy coup system with saving and loading, I can't enjoy a game after I adjusted values in an sql file since it felt like cheating. Me and most other people here are looking for a challenging vanilla-vox Populi experience. If there are settings in the game itself that makes changes that don't reduce or increase difficulty that's a different story

 

[XSamatan]

I don't want to tweak my game to my liking and I never will.

Would you be able to elaborate why you ask for changes in the first place? What in your opinion is the difference in you "looking" for changes and making them yourself if the majority would not follow your side of reasoning?

Regards
XSamatan

 

[Slyceth]

Would you be able to elaborate why you ask for changes in the first place? What in your opinion is the difference in you "looking" for changes and making them yourself if the majority would not follow your side of reasoning?

Regards
XSamatan

Because it's too easy to consider that as cheating.

Say I'm playing a game and I want to beeline for the Temple of Artemis but whatever I do, being on a hill, getting the most optimal worker, production focus, tiles, everything but still an ai beats me THE SAME TURN with an unfair bonus they got.

Tell me the difference between me opening up in-game editor (a mod) and hurrying the production by just one turn, and going into sql and making the ai bonus 1% lower.

I feel both are equally cheating. If I beat a game with all settings as they were delivered through the installation that's an achievement, I can compare my skills to the rest of the community. If I change something that means I can't compare my skewed results, PLUS my adjustments were balanced on my own findings, while the vox populi default values went through years of rebalancing by thousands of people

 

[HeroOfTheSword]

Overall I think it's great but the one thing I don't like is getting 40 odd email notificaitons about it could there be a way to get one notification of the whole proceedure taking place?

 

[josh4]

I'm actually in awe how well it all works. It looked so messy in the subforums before voting. It is tidy now due to merging options into single threads, among other things.

 

[Rekk]

I don't want to tweak my game to my liking and I never will. I've talked about how easy it is for me to cheat at the spy coup system with saving and loading, I can't enjoy a game after I adjusted values in an sql file since it felt like cheating. Me and most other people here are looking for a challenging vanilla-vox Populi experience. If there are settings in the game itself that makes changes that don't reduce or increase difficulty that's a different story

You want to have everyone play A, because it's cheating if you tweak the game so that it's A?

 

[CppMaster]

Because it's too easy to consider that as cheating.

Say I'm playing a game and I want to beeline for the Temple of Artemis but whatever I do, being on a hill, getting the most optimal worker, production focus, tiles, everything but still an ai beats me THE SAME TURN with an unfair bonus they got.

Tell me the difference between me opening up in-game editor (a mod) and hurrying the production by just one turn, and going into sql and making the ai bonus 1% lower.

I feel both are equally cheating. If I beat a game with all settings as they were delivered through the installation that's an achievement, I can compare my skills to the rest of the community. If I change something that means I can't compare my skewed results, PLUS my adjustments were balanced on my own findings, while the vox populi default values went through years of rebalancing by thousands of people

What if that was an option in advanced settings? Would you also consider it as cheating?

 

[youngsteve]

Can I thank Recursive & team for all the hard work they have done with this mod, & the way they are opening it out so all players of this mod are included in its future & changes to it. Beside not having all the votes in a sub section in Congress forum, I must say it is great how you have put all the proposals together for people to vote on & are still listening to ways to amend proposals & take peoples views into account. Must have taken you lots of work & time to do this.

It is quite amazing the level of support for a mod to a game which is now 12 years old, & shows the potential it had. Hopefully, this mod can carry on its success for a few more years at least.

 

[rkkn]

You want to have everyone play A, because it's cheating if you tweak the game so that it's A?

Well I can give you my feelings on this sort of thing.
If I tweak the game to be easier, it feels like cheating (unless it's something that obviously needs fixing). However, if the community collectively says that this change is fair and good, then it doesn't feel like cheating.

If I'm also sharing in game experiences with other players, then there's an extra factor of feeling like I'm not playing the same game everyone else is. Like I might start posting in that thread about stonehenge/pyramid rush, and then think "oh, but I modded it to be easier, so my experience is invalid" and then delete my post.

 

[ma_kuh]

This is also the case for anyone not playing on deity, or not playing with standard size/standard players, or playing with bonus resources revealed at Agriculture. I don't mean to invalidate the feelings of whether it's the "same game", those are fair. But there are a ton of setup choices you can make within the context of the game that don't constitute cheating but make it easier.

What I don't really get is how tuning down something you feel is too strong is somehow MORE cheating than save scumming, that's a new one to me.

 

[CppMaster]

What I don't really get is how tuning down something you feel is too strong is somehow MORE cheating than save scumming, that's a new one to me.

Yeah, you're tuning it down for everyone, so it's more changing rules of the game than cheating. Save scumming on the other hand is totally cheating.

 

[ma_kuh]

I will say, if the complaint is that AI bonuses make it impossible to get a wonder, and that experience is backed up by multiple people, a proposal to lessen those bonuses would be totally warranted, and leave it to the people to accept or reject that "cheat" (wouldn't be a cheat at that point). Right?

 

[youngsteve]

I will say, if the complaint is that AI bonuses make it impossible to get a wonder, and that experience is backed up by multiple people, a proposal to lessen those bonuses would be totally warranted, and leave it to the people to accept or reject that "cheat" (wouldn't be a cheat at that point). Right?

I think you also need to take into account the level your playing. If your playing on a lower levels & AI bonuses are making it difficult to gain wonders is one thing, but if you are playing on higher levels, particularly Diety, I cannot really see what people are complaining about.

 

[Rekk]

On top of that, all these changes should be either supported by data, or manual tools to give each player so they can adjust their experience where fit, because the opinions of the 24% of "Nay" voters still matters, because they probably pressed "Yay" on another proposal, while both proposals could be implemented in a way that lets you toggle these in-game.

I just said that this is, for the most part, already doable.

We're not going to make an in-game option for, for example, whether City State gift unit XP is based on buildings in the city state's or receiving player's capital, and I feel it is unreasonable to expect us to do so.