Puppets building Barracks, Armory etc...

[baronck]

I hate to complain but...

I did readily abuse the bug where I could control what my puppet states were making. Now with the update they produce nothing but useless buildings (Armory, Barracks...). Which puts a drain on my economy.

I had a 5 civ landmass all to myself once i took out the other 4 AIs. Everything was fine first as they were focused on happiness and culture buildings. Now they just go apeshit on Unit production buildings.

A good counterbalance would be allow control of the puppet states, but they cant produce any wonders/units.

Thoughts?

 

[milk steak]

I agree that it's stupid that they build Barracks, Armories, and stuff like Coal Plants which consume your resources.

But I generally counteract that by:
1. Chopping all forests near the puppeted city
2. Replacing everything that isn't a resource tile with a trading post.

I find that this really neuters the puppet city's production while also allowing it to produce a good amount of gold that easily offsets any maintenance occurred.

 

[Syiss_]

There's supposed to be a downside to not taking the happiness hit involved with annexing a conquered city. I consider the extra maintenance to be a pretty minor downside.

A good counterbalance would be allow control of the puppet states, but they cant produce any wonders/units.

There would basically be NO reason to ever annex a city under this setup.

 

[baronck]

Syiss,

if they didnt produce units or wonders, that may sway the way you want to annex them.

building trading post around puppet cities seems counter intuitive and is a broken game fix for a broken game mechanic.

I've been reading about raising these cities. Going to try it tonight

 

[Zhahz]

While I dislike that puppets build buildings they can't use, like the military buildings, it's somewhat like a tax, along with the courthouse. You gain more sci, culture, gold, etc from a city without jacking up your SP costs. For me the happy penalty is trivial - it's more about the SP cost alteration that makes puppets more attractive. That and a lot of my cities will be econ cities anyways, and I usually turn puppets into involuntary econ cities.

Now with the update they produce nothing but useless buildings (Armory, Barracks...). Which puts a drain on my economy.

The don't ONLY produce those types of buildings, they build a variety from all types, but it will drain your econ unless...

But I generally counteract that by:
1. Chopping all forests near the puppeted city
2. Replacing everything that isn't a resource tile with a trading post.

I find that this really neuters the puppet city's production while also allowing it to produce a good amount of gold that easily offsets any maintenance occurred.

...is exactly what I do too. My puppets are usually boosting my econ. I cripple their growth and production by TP spamming every possible tile around them - they still grow and build plenty but it's better paced and they yield a lot of gold.

 

[Syiss_]

Syiss,

if they didnt produce units or wonders, that may sway the way you want to annex them.

building trading post around puppet cities seems counter intuitive and is a broken game fix for a broken game mechanic.

I've been reading about raising these cities. Going to try it tonight

I dont understand what you are getting at. The only reason to annex a city right now is so that you can control what it makes (to stop it from making useless maintenance costing buildings), because as a puppet you already get all of its science and gold. If you make it so you can control the production of a puppet state but no units/wonders, why the hell would anyone ever annex a city instead of puppet? Theres absolutely no reason you would need to build wonders or units in annexed cities, these things can be done just fine in your own built cities.

I don't think you understand the decision you are supposed to be making for annex/puppet. There is a trade off, and its intentional. You can puppet the city to gain its science/gold output (without increasing SP costs), but you can't control what it makes, which means you won't always get the most optimal build order (i.e. maybe it wont make that library/university as quickly as you would want), and it will inevitably start making buildings you don't want at all. This is the COST of NOT annexing the city and absorbing the extra unhappiness that you would gain from having an occupied city. If there is no cost to keeping a city as a puppet, then theres no reason to annex. Being only unable to build units/wonders is hardly a cost, and puppet cities sure as hell don't need to be made even more powerful than they are right now.

 

[Collic]

In another thread someone mentioned they thought puppets producing military buildings may be an oversight. If this is the case, and a patch corrects it, I think many of the problems with them would go away.

I'd also suggest puppets shouldn't be able to build things that consume strategic resources as that's even worse, and almost completely irreversible (as far as I can see) if you can't raze the city in question.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I agree that it's stupid that they build Barracks, Armories, and stuff like Coal Plants which consume your resources.

But I generally counteract that by:
1. Chopping all forests near the puppeted city
2. Replacing everything that isn't a resource tile with a trading post.

I find that this really neuters the puppet city's production while also allowing it to produce a good amount of gold that easily offsets any maintenance occurred.

Calculating the base production of a city is a good place to start if you plan to hold a city for a long time (space/diplo victories). Puppets get worse over time relative to an annexed city because the governor builds are so non-optimal. Neutering puppets is one solution but it leave population in cities without multiplier buildings which really hurts in the later eras.

If the city will take forever to produce a courthouse, leave it as a puppet to avoid the happiness penalty or raze. If the city has enough production to build a courthouse (say 12 turns at normal speed), it is probably worth annexing. The maintenance costs are higher short term with the courthouse but are offset by building or buying useful buildings (market, library, bank, university) vs the usual walls, stable, barracks, armory the governor will build. After 50 turns, the annexed city will be much better - higher net gold and science production and great people points.

Raze and rebuild may be a better option than annexing if there aren't any wonders or infrastructure which survived the conquest. Growing to the happy cap isn't usually an issue if you have a maritime CS as an ally.

Annexing makes no sense for a cultural victory. It is situational for military. Additional troops can be purchased in annexed cities during a continental invasion for example. Without galley chains, its hard to move reinforcements to support an invasion.

 

[biohazard72]

Have enough surplus happiness to annex them when they build a military building. If you don't, it's your penalty for overextending without happiness infrastructure. Puppet states would be much too good if they avoided those buildings.

 

[Roxlimn]

You can always annex it before that happens. In fact, puppeting shouldn't be better than annexing - annex should be the baseline. Puppeting should be something you do for temporary happiness, not a permanent state.

 

[wurstburst]

I've been razing most of my captured cities. If I have a lot of extra happiness, I annex here and there - not a lot though. I find that annexed capital cities is more than enough to digest without adding even more unhappiness. I rarely puppet unless absolutely needed to grab a resource when I'm low on happiness

 

[B-29 Bomber]

Maybe you can choose what kind of city it is(Science, Economic, etc) BUT you can't tell it exactly what to build. This would represent the fact that while puppet states were "Independent" but you still have the ear of the governor. So if you select Science it will put a priority on Science producing cities such as the library.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Puppet commerce cities. Annex production cities once their build order goes south. If you see something naughty like an Armory going in, you know what to do. But they'll usually build good stuff like a Monument and Library first.

If you aren't perma-war, the puppets will tend to build more useful buildings. If you go unhappy, they will build Happiness buildings. If not, they will generally build the best available Culture improvement. But when you're constantly fighting, they start to spam the buildings you don't want.

 

[Zenstrive]

whenever I go positive happy and can manage to annex one city, I always annex. Puppets never create units.

 

[Sir Sir]

whenever I go positive happy and can manage to annex one city, I always annex. Puppets never create units.

You Mongolian warmonger! Always building more units!

 

[pagh80]

There's supposed to be a downside to not taking the happiness hit involved with annexing a conquered city.

Ofc there should be a downside. But having the puppet city make stupid expensive buildings, or using yout strategic resources is a bad solution.

Instead they could have done something simple as only letting puppet cities grow at half speed, and build stuff at half speed.(or 1/4th speed) And then let the player deside which buildings to make.
That would be far less annoying than the current system.

 

[Gangor]

I'd personally like it if once you puppet an entire civ you're able to release it as a vassel

 

[bovinespy]

In another thread someone mentioned they thought puppets producing military buildings may be an oversight. If this is the case, and a patch corrects it, I think many of the problems with them would go away.

I'd also suggest puppets shouldn't be able to build things that consume strategic resources as that's even worse, and almost completely irreversible (as far as I can see) if you can't raze the city in question.

This makes some sense to me. If the puppet can NEVER make military units, and you are allowed to keep them in this status indefinitely, then it seems a bit ridiculous that they should be allowed to make military buildings like Barracks, Stable, etc. Note that I would still allow them to make Walls, Castle, etc., as these are passive military buildings that do not require the construction of units to be valuable (or even plausible).

However, I disagree that they shouldn't be allowed to build things like Factories that consume strategic resources. I would see that as just a bit of the possible downside to keeping them as a puppet. It's not like the issue with them building Barracks, etc., which is just plain bizarre IMO.

 

[The Tollan]

Yes, either puppets should not be unit related buildings or perhaps an investigation should be conducted to see if players should be able to set puppet states to build unit effecting buildings and build units themselves (perhaps with the ability to set whether land or naval based things can be built) without getting too overpowered.

The player should be allowed to tell puppets whether they can or cannot build buildings requiring strategic resources.

 

[KingMackem]

What they build is annoying. Still, it's a breath of fresh air not to have to decide what to build in all my cities à la civ 4.

I'd rather have the ability to control the growth of my puppets more directly (not just spamming TP in their land). I prefer my excess happiness to go to my cities... not some foreign hordes.