Puppet vs Annex

Should puppeting be changed/tweaked?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 53.8%
  • No, it's fine as is.

    Votes: 6 46.2%

  • Total voters
    13

ElliotS

Warmonger
Joined
Jun 13, 2013
Messages
2,868
Location
Tampa, Florida
With the most recent patch I think this is a good discussion to have.

As far as I know here are the differences between your options. Please tell me if you notice something I've missed.

Puppet:
  • Science costs increase.
  • Culture costs don't.
  • Cannot purchase with gold or faith
  • Lower unhappiness thresholds than full cities
  • Cannot produce units
  • Cannot choose production
Annex:
  • Increases science and culture costs
  • Need to build a court house
  • Lower time to stop revolution (very helpful in war)
My personal thoughts are that Puppeting cities is pretty useless. After seeing the math I actually can't figure out a good reason to puppet ever.

Even though their happiness thresholds are lower than normal cities, they still tend to cause more unhappiness than any other city.

Additionally new cities only increase total tech/science cost by less than 6% each city after 10 (13% of 226% as an 11th city is 5.7%.) which annexing cities easily covers. And if the city you take isn't able to cover it's culture increase it's not going to cover the science increase, so puppeting it is still a bad choice.

Puppet cities are also anti-synergy with Peity, the courthouse happiness policy and a couple other beliefs. They do have the one 25% production belief in imperialism, but it's too little, too late imo.

Also maybe my most hated fact is that puppet cities never build work boats nor workers and will leave burnt tiles burnt and sea resources unclaimed unless you remember and micro manage them. Very annoying for isolated puppets.

As for what I think could/should be done for puppets:
I think one solution could be that they don't increase culture nor tech costs. This would make it better to puppet versus raze on many terrible cities. It would still provide unhappiness, so it's not like it's just free stuff.

I'd like to hear other ideas, thoughts and suggestions.
 
I think it needs a few tweaks, but I don't know what all tools are available to be pulled here without straight reworking the mechanics around puppet cities.

One possible tweak would be maybe to allow faith purchases (but not gold purchases) in puppet cities, which at the least resolves the piety issue, as well as serving as a minor buff to building beliefs (which seem unfairly banned from puppet cities seeing as how it's connected to the cities religious beliefs rather than governance).

If possible I would have puppet cities have a reduced effect on culture/science costs rather than the all or nothing approach puppet/annex decisions run on.

I'd also say that being unable to control or purchase production in puppets should be kept unchanged as the entire explanation for puppet cities is that you leave the local government in control in exchange for less resistance to your rule over them. Basically a puppet city agree to be loyal to you so long as you don't tell them how to run their city, and Venice is the only civ with enough merchantile savvy to purchase in puppets therefore maintaining their UA and flavor.
 
With the most recent patch I think this is a good discussion to have.

As far as I know here are the differences between your options. Please tell me if you notice something I've missed.

Puppet:
  • Science costs increase.
  • Culture costs don't.
  • Cannot purchase with gold or faith
  • Lower unhappiness thresholds than full cities
  • Cannot produce units
  • Cannot choose production
Annex:
  • Increases science and culture costs
  • Need to build a court house
  • Lower time to stop revolution (very helpful in war)
My personal thoughts are that Puppeting cities is pretty useless. After seeing the math I actually can't figure out a good reason to puppet ever.

Even though their happiness thresholds are lower than normal cities, they still tend to cause more unhappiness than any other city.

Additionally new cities only increase total tech/science cost by less than 6% each city after 10 (13% of 226% as an 11th city is 5.7%.) which annexing cities easily covers. And if the city you take isn't able to cover it's culture increase it's not going to cover the science increase, so puppeting it is still a bad choice.

Puppet cities are also anti-synergy with Peity, the courthouse happiness policy and a couple other beliefs. They do have the one 25% production belief in imperialism, but it's too little, too late imo.

Also maybe my most hated fact is that puppet cities never build work boats nor workers and will leave burnt tiles burnt and sea resources unclaimed unless you remember and micro manage them. Very annoying for isolated puppets.

As for what I think could/should be done for puppets:
I think one solution could be that they don't increase culture nor tech costs. This would make it better to puppet versus raze on many terrible cities. It would still provide unhappiness, so it's not like it's just free stuff.

I'd like to hear other ideas, thoughts and suggestions.

I wasn't even aware that puppets increase science but not culture. Surely that was just a Firaxis oversight? I'll remove science from that.
 
I wasn't even aware that puppets increase science but not culture. Surely that was just a Firaxis oversight? I'll remove science from that.
Actually I believe it was entirely intentional. The explanation I believe was that a larger empire takes longer for ideas and inventions to circulate through. However they're not officially part of 'your culture' so they have no say on government policy. May not be a brilliantly balanced decision, but it makes reasonable sense from an immersion stand-point.
 
I only puppet momentarily before razing if my happiness is negative. Puppets just don't do enough.

Without the science increase I'd strongly consider puppeting though.
 
Actually I believe it was entirely intentional. The explanation I believe was that a larger empire takes longer for ideas and inventions to circulate through. However they're not officially part of 'your culture' so they have no say on government policy. May not be a brilliantly balanced decision, but it makes reasonable sense from an immersion stand-point.

Eh, I think balance-wise it should be gone. And so it is. :)
 
I wasn't even aware that puppets increase science but not culture. Surely that was just a Firaxis oversight? I'll remove science from that.
It was changed back in GnK if I remember correctly, but I think puppets only increased science-costs by half of what normal cities did or somewhere along those lines. Might have been changed again after that, but I remember those puppet-empire strategies died out somewhere around there.
 
Personally I believe puppets should be the exception, not the rule. I like it now where I only use puppets in limited scenarios, and often for a temporary purpose.

Puppets were way too common in vanilla, I lien them more limited
 
Personally I believe puppets should be the exception, not the rule. I like it now where I only use puppets in limited scenarios, and often for a temporary purpose.

Puppets were way too common in vanilla, I lien them more limited

They still will be.

Regular cities don't increase cost too much and tend to cover themselves and then some, which means you're trading a 2-3% culture and science increase for all of the benefits of a non-puppet city. (on account of how annexed cities will produce more culture and science because you can control them.)
 
Personally I believe puppets should be the exception, not the rule. I like it now where I only use puppets in limited scenarios, and often for a temporary purpose.

Puppets were way too common in vanilla, I lien them more limited

The problem with making an option an ultra rare choice is that it might as well just not be in the game.

As ElliotS said, they still will be the rare choice, just not AS rare now.
 
Keep in mind, because you cannot decide what puppets build -and the city AI tends to love "useless" stuff like caravansaries- it's very difficult to control their happiness; in that sense puppets are not free cities at all.
 
Keep in mind, because you cannot decide what puppets build -and the city AI tends to love "useless" stuff like caravansaries- it's very difficult to control their happiness; in that sense puppets are not free cities at all.
Why do people keep saying that caravansaries are useless? They are like my favorite building. :D
 
Haha I get they're not useless, but favorite? That may be pushing it :p
Yeah unless the AIs is trading with you caravansaries don't make you a ton of $$$.
 
Or perheaps Funak is playing Egypt.:egypt:
Personally got Egypt as in my bottom 10 civs and they usually result in a re-roll whenever then actually appear when I random. Everything about them just feels slow and weak.
 
Honestly I think part of my reasoning is that I truly hate puppets, to my mind it was a flawed mechanic to begin with in Civ 5. In previous Civ games you could set cities to a governor if you didn't want to run them. Now, you have to use lesser cities to do the same thing, and I think its a silly choice.

Personally I want Puppets to be something that is tolerated only when its truly necessary (such as a big war when you just need to keep the unhappiness under control), but not something that is actually beneficial long term. I think the current system does this well, and I am loathe to see it changed.
 
I'd prefer to have puppets that contribute as much as a controlled city. I don't mind to not be able to produce units or select next building if that's the price I have to pay for not managing the city.
I think the reduced unhappiness and the increased tech cost were artifices for a crappy AI builder. But now that the builder bot is quite capable, puppets could be made even to controlled cities. The only thing I wish I could do with puppets is setting up the city focus, as if I was putting a governor.
 
I'd prefer to have puppets that contribute as much as a controlled city. I don't mind to not be able to produce units or select next building if that's the price I have to pay for not managing the city.
I think the reduced unhappiness and the increased tech cost were artifices for a crappy AI builder. But now that the builder bot is quite capable, puppets could be made even to controlled cities. The only thing I wish I could do with puppets is setting up the city focus, as if I was putting a governor.
I think the solution to all of that is for someone to make an "Automate city" modmod. Seems hard.

I don't really understand though. Not controlling cities is so inefficient. I suppose it could work on lower difficulties, but you're not going to gain an advantage over the AI if you let the AI control your cities.
 
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