Puppet states need to add policy costs like regular cities

[Celevin]

I can't stress this enough at all. This is the one issue that's completely shaping my empires now.

Why would I ever want even a SECOND city? It makes no sense whatsoever. Puppet everything, trade post spam the land, and buy all your units. The puppets usually build at least close to what I want. Not to mention I get to build every single National Wonder very easily. The number of social policies coming in like this is completely obscene.

Why am I, as France, getting 3 culture per puppet, but not suffering from higher costs? Each puppet usually builds 1-2 culture buildings. So I'm seeing ~5-10 culture from each puppet city, and as much gold as I'll possibly need. France with Liberty, Commerce, and Rationalism is completely broken.

Edit: Edited out the additive/multiplicative costs part of the post. After some thinking, it's better that it's additive.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Watch the puppets build barracks, military academies, etc. and then rage as you run out of gold.

What difficulty are you playing at?

 

[Celevin]

Immortal / Deity.

Even if they build academies, it's not every puppet that's doing it. For every academy there's 8 other useful buildings, and trade posts everywhere paying for them.

DISCLAIMER
I'm not posting this because I'm having trouble with the game or because this is a useful strategy. I'm posting this because it is stupid that I'd rather have a PUPPET city than a city I built. This part of the game is broken, and makes a couple civs or strats completely overpowered compared to the rest. France is getting policies *faster* from expansion.

 

[Show]

I won't even enter the puppet vs resettling debate

What difficulty are you playing at ? I seriously doubt you will have this much military success with only one city you can rush buy from and one city that can actually build units on command, and this same city would also need to build wonders. I seriously dobt you could have this much success as a 1 city warmonger on diety, especially since napoleon has no early UU, even with Greece I generally have 3 cities(tho you can do with 2).

Also , if you add 1 city to a 20 city empire, the number of cities increases by 5% if you add 1 city to a 1 city empire, the number of cities increases by 100%, makes a lot of sense to me that culture works the same way. Any new city built needs to make at least 30%(the tooltip is wrong btw, the % changes depending on map size) of the best culture city to "pay for itself", if it does, than it's worth building.

I think the other cultural victory strategy of mass-razing/selling cities before buying policies would have much more success.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They probably hould just not give you culture.... ie you get the science and gold... and any resources their culture territory grabs, but no Culture itself for your empire. Same as they don't give you Great Persons (I don't think)

 

[Celevin]

They probably hould just not give you culture.... ie you get the science and gold... and any resources their culture territory grabs, but no Culture itself for your empire. Same as they don't give you Great Persons (I don't think)

It's an interesting idea, but that would make the situation worse I believe. Right now people are ripping their hair out when a puppet builds a barracks. That's only a 1 in 4 chance of happening most of the time. Imagine how frustrating it will be when puppets start building temples that don't give benefits?

I think the other cultural victory strategy of mass-razing/selling cities before buying policies would have much more success.

I posted the strat of going to 1 city. With puppets the way they are, it's even more stupid. Sell your main cities, but keep your puppets. It accomplishes the same thing. For a long while there I honestly thought puppets contributed culture, because it's the smart way to think of how they work.

Another advance notice: All my "strategies" thus far are things I don't want the ability to do. I am posting ways that I think I'm exploiting game holes.

 

[Druin]

They probably hould just not give you culture.... ie you get the science and gold... and any resources their culture territory grabs, but no Culture itself for your empire. Same as they don't give you Great Persons (I don't think)

They do ... my damn puppet-ed Rome slammed out a GS the turn before my cap was going to make my first GE for a free wonder

<BAD PUPPET STATE BAD>

 

[alcaras]

Rarely should you annex a city right off the bat. There's really no reason to unless you need to micro its production. Yes, it'll be somewhat inefficient, but puppets don't count towards the number of cities for policy advancement which is pretty damn huge. This means if all your cities are maxed with culture buildings and then your puppets randomly build a few culture buildings of their own, you'll get policies faster than if all your cities had all the cultural buildings, because the puppet's cultural buildings contribute to your income without increasing the cost.

 

[King Jason]

To the people questioning the difficulty level... seriously?

I haven't tried something like this on Deity, in fact I've only played one Deity game so far but will probably make it the norm due to how easy I find this game to be, but anyway... Something like this could easily be done on Immortal/Emperor and Deity shouldn't set the standard anyway.

Trade post spam pays for unwanted buildings that the puppets built. Average build maintenance = 2-3 gold. Average post income = 2, 3 on rivers. Tradepost all of your puppet tiles and they pay for themselves easily.

In regards to Military success - I've damn near conquered the world with having one city, razing each conquest as I went along, this done on emperor (the last OCC I tried... I play on Immortal now). Smaller, experienced troops can mop the floor with any army and that's exactly the kind of force you develop with one city since the A.I. just flings their units at you like a moron. Toss in the double xp from honor and you'll have Logistic archers and catapults in no time. Spend the beginning of the game leveling up your army, then get into the medieval era and upgrade it and you'll be crushing your opponents with blitz/march horse units and logistic bases Xbows/trebs.

Steamroll.
puppet.
???.
profit.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's an interesting idea, but that would make the situation worse I believe. Right now people are ripping their hair out when a puppet builds a barracks. That's only a 1 in 4 chance of happening most of the time. Imagine how frustrating it will be when puppets start building temples that don't give benefits?

Well it still adds to your territory.

I posted the strat of going to 1 city. With puppets the way they are, it's even more stupid. Sell your main cities, but keep your puppets. It accomplishes the same thing. For a long while there I honestly thought puppets contributed culture, because it's the smart way to think of how they work.

Another advance notice: All my "strategies" thus far are things I don't want the ability to do. I am posting ways that I think I'm exploiting game holes.

It might be better if they had Puppets not contribute Anything to your empire, but not add unhappiness/maintenance costs either.

All they would give you is control of the Territory... and they shouldn't expand that either.

And make them unable to build resource using buildings.

 

[Wi1d]

Heh. I'm still laughing about were all my uranium has been going. I was wanting to save it for a rainy day.

 

[Show]

To the people questioning the difficulty level... seriously?

I haven't tried something like this on Deity, in fact I've only played one Deity game so far but will probably make it the norm due to how easy I find this game to be, but anyway... Something like this could easily be done on Immortal/Emperor and Deity shouldn't set the standard anyway.

Trade post spam pays for unwanted buildings that the puppets built. Average build maintenance = 2-3 gold. Average post income = 2, 3 on rivers. Tradepost all of your puppet tiles and they pay for themselves easily.

In regards to Military success - I've damn near conquered the world with having one city, razing each conquest as I went along, this done on emperor (the last OCC I tried... I play on Immortal now). Smaller, experienced troops can mop the floor with any army and that's exactly the kind of force you develop with one city since the A.I. just flings their units at you like a moron. Toss in the double xp from honor and you'll have Logistic archers and catapults in no time. Spend the beginning of the game leveling up your army, then get into the medieval era and upgrade it and you'll be crushing your opponents with blitz/march horse units and logistic bases Xbows/trebs.

Steamroll.
puppet.
???.
profit.

I was talking about deity which is the difficulty he was himself talking about as he said, and they build much more cities on higher settings resulting in a very significant difference in science output, especially if you have to use your city to build units instead of buildings. I do not think starting to conquer/settle all the way in medieval is particularly viable(or as efficient if you prefer, as everything can pretty much be pulled off a way or another) in this scenario as just settling cities that you would destroy once your empire is on par.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm fine with puppets not increasing social costs.

And I would stop them from building military production buildings (and make them actually
sometimes build some gold buildings, please!).

And make them unable to build resource using buildings.

And this too.

But I would give them a flat -25% gold, hammer, science and culture penalty.
They are too good atm, it is too easy to run your economy on puppets.

There are not enough incentives to annex.

 

[rune42]

I can attest that this does work on Immortal. I "accidently" did something similar with Arabia the other day.(worst Civ to do this with... and with how war-happy the AIs are, theyre a pretty bad civilization, too[its hard to make use of the Bazaar when theres only one AI left... okay, thats enough off-topic rambling])

The key is to only build wonders that add a one time effect. Let the other AIs waste time building all the other wonders and then conquer their capitol. Your own capitol becomes your military producing building. You'll never need to build workers either since you'll be grabbing them from the AI.

SPs need to increase with puppets, and puppets need to stop making military buildings.

 

[Ahriman]

Another possible fix: don't make maritime city state bonuses apply to puppets.

And consider not letting Rome and France-type abilities apply either (though that might be too crippling).

 

[tibbles]

I was wondering about the whining about puppet upkeeps, I always thought they were overpowered. I'm still back at king so far, but I generally only consider annexing 1 forward city, probably their capital, in order to have a forward rushbuy point and manual control of another super city.

I think their benefits would be fair IF the AI in any way would capitalize on their 1 weakness: No military output. I'm assuming they give you the puppets gold on the intention that you pay to buy them defenses. Instead you have this giant mass of undefended cities and the AI just leaves them alone.


I second puppets not giving culture (or penalized culture) is preferable to increasing policy costs. A civ going for a cultural win shouldn't be forced to avoid conquering cities.

 

[Dizzy75]

I'm fine with puppets not increasing social costs.

And I would stop them from building military production buildings (and make them actually
sometimes build some gold buildings, please!).

And this too.

But I would give them a flat -25% gold, hammer, science and culture penalty.
They are too good atm, it is too easy to run your economy on puppets.

There are not enough incentives to annex.

Or the costs of annexation are too high. If they reduced the unhappiness penalty, or made courthouses a lot cheaper, that might work. Even making courthouses expensive but purchasable might make the difference.

Annexing appears to not pay dividends until long after the annexation, which also hurts. Who knows if the game is even going to last that long?

 

[tibbles]

It's outside the scope of any Civ5 puppet balance change and wouldn't work smoothly with 1upt, but if I were designing something similar I'd probably majorly reduce the bonuses of puppets, but give them the ability to ai controlled build troops. Make them upkeep and resource free, but unable to leave the city ring. Kind of like a perma allied city state with an economic benefit.

Ideally IMO they should be balanced in order of desirability:
Annex - largest gain, but not always affordable
Puppet - small gain, almost no penalty
Raze - special case

 

[MaXimillionZero]

I'm only playing on King at the moment, but I really don't see the need for more than 1 or 2 non-puppet cities (including capital). You only need a few units to wage war, which you'll usually get from city states, maybe building one or two in your capital, and can then keep alive for the rest of the game. The only annoying thing about puppet states is building things they'll never use (unit production), but they provide great culture and science so they're definitely worth it. My capital is generally just building wonders non-stop after the initial stages of the game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's outside the scope of any Civ5 puppet balance change and wouldn't work smoothly with 1upt, but if I were designing something similar I'd probably majorly reduce the bonuses of puppets, but give them the ability to ai controlled build troops. Make them upkeep and resource free, but unable to leave the city ring. Kind of like a perma allied city state with an economic benefit.

Ideally IMO they should be balanced in order of desirability:
Annex - largest gain, but not always affordable
Puppet - small gain, almost no penalty
Raze - special case

Well I'd do that... but
1. No building units
2. No Other benefits (culture, Gold, Science, etc)