Rebalance to early game aggression: Fun read

[godman85]

Here is a rebalance to the early game that buffs war civs AND culture/faith civs while punishing zergfest wars. All changes are based on real world history. Not personal opinion.

1. Warmonger penalty - works completely differently early game now. Will remove warmonger after 45 turns of peace. (pre-renaissance)

The reasoning behind this change is it appears that civs are scared of invisible forces early game even though you have 2 archers and they got 16 units and 3 siege towers...


2. Razing cities now enslaves the citizens and gives temporary gold per turn per citizen for 45 turns. Any population killed in the initial conquer gives 45 turns of 1 gpt per citizen. Razing cities gives a huge diplomatic hit

This allows civs that build massive armies to have those armies pay for their campaign. Additionally all puppeted cities require no gold maintenance for 45 turns.

The classical and medieval periods were known for MASSIVE CONQUEST and EMPIRE BUILDING. Why not give them a way to do it.

3. Army maintenance - Army maintenance is halved in friendly territory. Honor makes maintenance free in friendly territory. Normal maintenance outside of friendly territory and puppeted cities. 2x normal maintenance when over 15 tiles from friendly territory.

This rebalances unit maintenance, punishes far wars as history clearly showed, rewards conquering as history clearly showed, alleviates the cost of new cities to the people conquered AS HISTORY SHOWS. This change helps keep change 2 in line.

4. Roads - Roads can now connect to forts, transforming them into citadels. Soldiers can have their maintenance reduced by half while in a citadel. Upgrades to units can be done at citadels so long as a road connection exists to the capital. The upgrade now happens on the final turn of the upgrade and the upgrade is increased to a minimum of 2 turns + 1 turn for every 10 tiles away from a friendly city.

Roads connected to puppets and citadels are now maintained by the citadel and temporarily by the puppets. 45 turn limit for puppets, unlimited for citadels.

5. Science - having non - period units costs science from the player and AI. Now having basic archers in the medieval period will hurt 2 science per era. Want a reason?

Historically, civilizations with militaries and people with extremely old traditions suffered from it and it conflicted directly with their advancement scientifically.

This means, people that focus on war but go zerg mode must make sure they can upgrade their units with their science because not doing so will slow them down scientifically.

This change is a buff to non-war civs vs the zerg civs. You still must have a modern army though otherwise you will feel the pain too.

Last change

6. Culture and religion now generates modern military for your civilization at no cost but only when DoW'd by someone else. You have to have a high generation of faith or culture to get these bonuses and be in piety or aesthetics. These units have no maintenance cost and disappear after the war is over. They keep their promotions and inbed themselves in culture or faith buildings until the next crisis.

This allows peacful civs to gain volunteers to defend the faith or culture like history taught us. Greece became unified because their culture was in danger. Enemies became friends and no one fought for profit, but for honor. When a culture or religion is in danger of annihilation, heroes will always defend the weak.



These are my changes to make the early game balanced with the new economy system.

 

[Gyra Solune]

...I actually like these ideas. It gives incentive to go to war so long as you're clever and strategic about it. I especially think having specific rewards for razing a city would be cool and make it a viable strategy even if you could perfectly well afford to have another city. Maybe transforming Forts into Citadels is a bit overpowered, possibly just making it so that Forts have those abilities you mentioned. I do think the ability to use Forts and Citadels as air-bases and military stations would be very cool and give you incentive to bring along a worker or two if you anticipate a long, drawn-out war.

 

[salocin097]

I feel turning a fort into a citadel is somewhat OP, maybe have forts with what you said and able to ge constructed out if your territory. Is 6 a bit like a militia? And if you could find someone to make a mod like this this would be amazing.

 

[OmniPotent42]

I like 1 and 2, sort of like 3 and 4, but I don't know if the others are necessary.

The reason that history shows sticking to tradition is harmful to research is because most civilizations ONLY had that tradition and nothing else, whereas modern civilizations can still have tradition and maintain their scientific edge. We can still keep our civil war reenactments and military tradition without suffering in the beakers for it.

As others have said, turning forts into citadels is a bit OP, but the other ideas in #4 are still pretty good.

#6 seems like it's asking for an EZ mode against the AI. There's already a religious belief that allows you to purchase units with , that would undermine that belief. Maybe they could add back in civilian drafting, but the way you describe it undermines gameplay.

 

[Philosophia]

I love all of them except 4

 

[godman85]

I like 1 and 2, sort of like 3 and 4, but I don't know if the others are necessary.

The reason that history shows sticking to tradition is harmful to research is because most civilizations ONLY had that tradition and nothing else, whereas modern civilizations can still have tradition and maintain their scientific edge. We can still keep our civil war reenactments and military tradition without suffering in the beakers for it.

As others have said, turning forts into citadels is a bit OP, but the other ideas in #4 are still pretty good.

#6 seems like it's asking for an EZ mode against the AI. There's already a religious belief that allows you to purchase units with , that would undermine that belief. Maybe they could add back in civilian drafting, but the way you describe it undermines gameplay.

here is a good example.


Line infantry spam vs american minute men. Britain was the world's biggest power and lost alot of their enterprise because they wouldn't adapt to the times. In the end their civilization was set back 2 to 3 generations and caused them to lose footholds all over the world.


But your point is true. Some civilizations benefited from tradition but NEVER in their military.

another case. Shogunate vs Imperialist Japan. We all know how that turned out. It delayed japanese development by like 40 years.


BTW the volunteers are very low in count. They don't spawn alot, they just pop up every now and then if you meet the thresh hold.

#6 must be adjusted by the balance team.

 

[godman85]

I feel turning a fort into a citadel is somewhat OP, maybe have forts with what you said and able to ge constructed out if your territory. Is 6 a bit like a militia? And if you could find someone to make a mod like this this would be amazing.

it is just an incentive to make chokepoints for your empire. Sometimes u don't want a city at a mountain pass but you do want to control it. Now you can make a citadel there but you must sacrifice money to do it.

 

[godman85]

BTW if any modders want to team up. Let me know. I don't do that programming stuff. I simply make awesome ideas.

 

[Bagi]

Many of these rules are too complex and "gamey" if you ask me.

I do like idea of honor making unit maintenance free in friendly territory.

 

[Bad Wolf]

I particularly like ideas 1-3, although maintenance-free units might be a bit OP.

 

[Yzman]

I feel this is going to give too many benefits to warmongers ( ESPECIALLY the player). I hardly ever go to war because it destroys your economy in the game early on ( I have a feeling this is why the AI is less likely to now as well) but with all of these advantages warmonger players will have even more incentive to knock out the competition early.

The problem with this is that Civ doesn't simulate history, nor can it as a game. In the game with these rules, Genghis should and would go on a large world conquest, and may be largely successful. As soon as he conquers the relatively few civs compared to real life, he has won the game.

In real history, this wasn't true. Empires come and fall. Mongolia still doesn't hold the largest empire in the world. In Civ if they do it ( I'm talking about the player especially) they aren't going to lose it. The game has successfully just changed into an early war game and little else matters.

I agree that they could up aggression on some civs but DO NOT make war even more luxurious to the player.

 

[godman85]

I particularly like ideas 1-3, although maintenance-free units might be a bit OP.

its only free if you sacrifice the massive progress from liberty, tradition, and piety

Not so free if you ask me.

 

[godman85]

I feel this is going to give too many benefits to warmongers ( ESPECIALLY the player). I hardly ever go to war because it destroys your economy in the game early on ( I have a feeling this is why the AI is less likely to now as well) but with all of these advantages warmonger players will have even more incentive to knock out the competition early.

The problem with this is that Civ doesn't simulate history, nor can it as a game. In the game with these rules, Genghis should and would go on a large world conquest, and may be largely successful. As soon as he conquers the relatively few civs compared to real life, he has won the game.

In real history, this wasn't true. Empires come and fall. Mongolia still doesn't hold the largest empire in the world. In Civ if they do it ( I'm talking about the player especially) they aren't going to lose it. The game has successfully just changed into an early war game and little else matters.

I agree that they could up aggression on some civs but DO NOT make war even more luxurious to the player.

I understand your concern but I never said these options were final. They need to be tweaked through trial and error.

It helps warmongers but it also HURTS them if they go berserk.

Now having a massive army but not within the right era means their science will be crippled.

Now when they leave their lands and travel long distances with huge armies, they will pay twice as much maintenance.

Now they must set up outpost to deal with long campaigns and razing cities becomes lucrative if the city offers nothing but MAN POWER.

You gotta look at 4-6. They level out 1-3

 

[Yzman]

I understand your concern but I never said these options were final. They need to be tweaked through trial and error.

It helps warmongers but it also HURTS them if they go berserk.

Now having a massive army but not within the right era means their science will be crippled.

Now when they leave their lands and travel long distances with huge armies, they will pay twice as much maintenance.

Now they must set up outpost to deal with long campaigns and razing cities becomes lucrative if the city offers nothing but MAN POWER.

You gotta look at 4-6. They level out 1-3

The last few seem too gamey to me, especially the one where I get free units for not focusing on military. Once again this would play to the player.

AI declares war on me because it is beneficial for him to do so. I have focused zero on military but now get lets say 6 free units. I fight off his foes with my modern army, of which it sounds like under your system would be easy because he will likely have inferior units. Once I fight off his units I take my 6 free units which I still have because the war is still happening, and go and conquer his now defenseless civ. Once he is conquered my units disappear, but I now have 3 new cites or whatever. Lets say I doubled my size. I have no units again though, so once again it may look beneficial to the AI to declare on me...rinse and repeat.

And before it is said, having my units not able to leave my territory would be the ultimate gamey thing and terrible gameplay.

So while I appreciate you wanting more war in the early game, this should be done with alternative AI strategies not with new rules that will break the game.

For example, make some civs that have early units like Aztec, only focus on 1 or maybe 2 cities max, and then declare war to further expand.

I actually saw a recent example of this in my second BNW game. Mongolia built only their capital and then instead of ever building a second city, they just conquered the 2 CS near them.

But this gets to the heart of the problem as well. Want to know what ended up happening to Mongolia? Peaceful Siam who built up their infrastructure in the beginning of the game liberated those CS and conquered Mongolia. The early war hurt Mongolia too much.

So I don't know the best way to fix the "problem" but I have a feeling it has to deal with the AI having too much to focus on during the early game. There are A LOT of things to consider and war is usually suboptimal and makes you weak compared to a civ that has tech and infrastructure.

You can't give too many bonuses to warmongers early though because you get into the first situtation that I described. I think it has to be fixed with strategy or more early game war options ( maybe more lucrative early war social policies, but I am not sure)

 

[ellgieff]

here is a good example.

Line infantry spam vs american minute men. Britain was the world's biggest power and lost alot of their enterprise because they wouldn't adapt to the times. In the end their civilization was set back 2 to 3 generations and caused them to lose footholds all over the world.

You're talking about the American Revolution?

You know the French won that for the Americans, right? Just saying.

 

[godman85]

The last few seem too gamey to me, especially the one where I get free units for not focusing on military. Once again this would play to the player.

AI declares war on me because it is beneficial for him to do so. I have focused zero on military but now get lets say 6 free units. I fight off his foes with my modern army, of which it sounds like under your system would be easy because he will likely have inferior units. Once I fight off his units I take my 6 free units which I still have because the war is still happening, and go and conquer his now defenseless civ. Once he is conquered my units disappear, but I now have 3 new cites or whatever. Lets say I doubled my size. I have no units again though, so once again it may look beneficial to the AI to declare on me...rinse and repeat.

And before it is said, having my units not able to leave my territory would be the ultimate gamey thing and terrible gameplay.

So while I appreciate you wanting more war in the early game, this should be done with alternative AI strategies not with new rules that will break the game.

For example, make some civs that have early units like Aztec, only focus on 1 or maybe 2 cities max, and then declare war to further expand.

I actually saw a recent example of this in my second BNW game. Mongolia built only their capital and then instead of ever building a second city, they just conquered the 2 CS near them.

But this gets to the heart of the problem as well. Want to know what ended up happening to Mongolia? Peaceful Siam who built up their infrastructure in the beginning of the game liberated those CS and conquered Mongolia. The early war hurt Mongolia too much.

So I don't know the best way to fix the "problem" but I have a feeling it has to deal with the AI having too much to focus on during the early game. There are A LOT of things to consider and war is usually suboptimal and makes you weak compared to a civ that has tech and infrastructure.

You can't give too many bonuses to warmongers early though because you get into the first situtation that I described. I think it has to be fixed with strategy or more early game war options ( maybe more lucrative early war social policies, but I am not sure)

6 O_O. I would give you a free unit once ever 5 turns until you run out of culture cap.

I am not letting an army spawn instantly. Even the crusades required months of recruiting before they could actually move.


btw, you are agreeing that the game is flawed right?

You said war is detrimental.


Nothing in history could be further from the truth. Every single great empire was forged through war. Those who successfully conquered their enemies received PILES UPON PILES of riches.

that is what we are missing which I address. Conquering someone should be 100% rewarding so long as you wern't in a prolonged war. long wars suck. short wars are the stuff poets write about.

 

[Hieschen]

Dear godman

being so happy to go to war, did you ever consider just skipping Civ and going to the Total War Series, you know, some "research", some "building" and MASSIVE war. Can even avoid to fight the battle and let a die roll decide the outcome if the 3D fighting is to bothersome?

Just thinking out lout here as you drive 3-4 threats here that advocate a build up in warmongering to GnK levels again…

Pat

PS you are aware that this is a game, not a historical simulation of what the world could have been, you know with abstractions and all that?


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[godman85]

Dear godman

being so happy to go to war, did you ever consider just skipping Civ and going to the Total War Series, you know, some "research", some "building" and MASSIVE war. Can even avoid to fight the battle and let a die roll decide the outcome if the 3D fighting is to bothersome?

Just thinking out lout here as you drive 3-4 threats here that advocate a build up in warmongering to GnK levels again…

Pat

PS you are aware that this is a game, not a historical simulation of what the world could have been, you know with abstractions and all that?

your condescending tone and terrible reasoning skills frighten me.

These changes I suggested were because there is NO incentive to go to war. I play total war too. You can have a peaceful victory in that.

But with that being said, you must deal with others. You can't play in a sandbox.

Most of the buffs I suggested helps the AI want to war, ESPECIALLY if they are an early game civilization. This somehow disappeared with the addition of BNW.

You are so content on building and diplomacy, you might want to try sim city. It has everything you want without all that pesky war you seem to dislike.

See, I can sound completely unreasonable too.

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[Razonatair]

Stop making topics about the same thing over and over.

 

[ellgieff]

your condescending tone and terrible reasoning skills frighten me.
<snip>
See, I can sound completely unreasonable too.

Bro, every thread you've made on this has seemed completely unreasonable to me. Because no matter how often evidence that argues against your conclusion (there are no early wars, and the game is borked because of it) is presented, you ignore it.

The AI appears to be more sensible about when it goes to war. This is a good thing.

If you draw from history, you need to remember that it's the victors who get to write it. The guys that went to war, and failed? Not a lot of poetry there.