Resettling Captured Specialists?

[bestbrian]

Just an idea I had yesterday and I'm wondering what you all think about it as far as game balance goes. I've seen discussions on capturing unused Great People (I'm for it). But, what about uprooting and reassigning captured settled Great People?

This came to my mind during my latest war with Gilgamesh. Now, I will freely admit that I've gotten a bit anal in specializing my cities since moving up to Emperor, and we all know that this is something that the AI is, frankly, horrible at. So, I've got this one city of Gilligan's that is buggin me to no end. It's got a couple of food sources, and good production, but overlaps slightly with a couple of other cities with excellent commerce potential. It also has FIVE settled Great Generals (Gilligan didn't play nice with Boudica, Toku, and Monty as immediate neighbors). Now, this would be a no brainer Gun Pump (ie: Military Production City) except for one problem - three settled Great Scientists and an Academy. I've run into this situation with the AI on many occassions, and it just really chaps my a**.

Here's my proposed solution: When you capture a city, all settled Great People "reanimate". This will allow you to resettle them in specialized cities. The key is you can only resettle them - no shrines, academies, trade missions, bulbing, et al. I'm thinking that this can represent the "acquisition" of conquered people's technology and methods; sort of like Roman cultural absorbtion, or the dispersion of Nazi scientists after WW II. Also, in earlier Civ games you used to capture technologies when you took enemy cities. That was taken out of Civ IV as being too powerful a benefit for warmongers, but would reanimating and resettlling captured specialists really be that overpowered?

What do you guys think? And how would one mod something like this in (or is there a mod that already does this)?.

Thanks in advance,

B.

 

[smitsk00]

This sounds interesting, but i would worry that it could be overpowered. Would you get all of the GP or just a random percentage? Would the AI be able to do this to you and would this make the AI target your GOP cities? I would imagine that this would greatly increase the usefulness of spies as well. Also, the agressive trait would become a lot better.

 

[smitsk00]

Thats GP, not GOP...I cant stand the GOP

 

[bestbrian]

This sounds interesting, but i would worry that it could be overpowered. Would you get all of the GP or just a random percentage? Would the AI be able to do this to you and would this make the AI target your GOP cities? I would imagine that this would greatly increase the usefulness of spies as well. Also, the agressive trait would become a lot better.

I'm not sure if it's overpowered, since you capture them anyway; this just allows you to move them to someplace else to perform the same function. Say you capture a developed Wall Street city. You lose Wall Street and most of the economic buildings, but you capture two settled GMs. Why not be allowed to move them and settle them in your WS city?

All the settled GP would reanimate. And yes, this would work for the AI as well, but I don't think it would change much. Considering the AI is too incompetent to target them now, I don't see much of a differrence. I don't think it would change multiplayer too much since humans are generally better at specializing their cities and other humans are better at realizing their importance and targeting them anyway. This just seems to be a way to clean up after the AIs mess and give an extra layer of game play.

I don't understand why you think AGG would improve. Could you explain further?

I've got an old game I've been replaying at various points to try different strats and things. One of the save points is the "breakout" war where I go for Dom Vic; I'll play from there and use the WB to give this a try and "loot" the settled GPs in cities I take from the AI.

 

[miked1991]

This could lead to warmongers developing incredibly powerful Wall Street and Super Science cities. In principle I quite like the idea, but its just another layer to give the human an advantage that the AI can't use.

 

[bestbrian]

Well, I can forget about testing it out in WB. Apparently, settled GP don't come up on the Edit City Screen. Pity that.

And I think Miked1991 hit on one of the problems with this - it's just another thing (like tile improvements, city specialization, war, etc) that AI just will not be able to properly take advantage of. Frankly, I can live with that - if it could settle specialists intelligently the first time, I wouldn't want or need to uproot them.

 

[scothed]

To be honest I think there would have to be some sort of chance of the great people escaping. For example, when you capture a city with settled great people each of them could have a chance of escaping to another city of that nation. Also, some of them could be 'killed' in the chaos of conquering a city. And any that remain could then be captured and resettled.

 

[Xellos-_^]

personally i would like to add a ability to the Great Spy to kidnap or bump off unsettle Great People form other players. In addition allow a chance for the deed to fail and/or be reveal and you lose diplo points with the target civ.

 

[ahmedhadzi]

To be honest I think there would have to be some sort of chance of the great people escaping. For example, when you capture a city with settled great people each of them could have a chance of escaping to another city of that nation. Also, some of them could be 'killed' in the chaos of conquering a city. And any that remain could then be captured and resettled.

I think this would be the best solution, with one addendum, the GP which is captured can not be used for starting Golden Age or any other improvement exept to be resettled somewhere else. Because THAT would be overpowered!
OK, so I got GS, bulb and academy, GP I need shirine for Taoisam, GE I will now steal that wonder, all of those are big no no, beacause you didn't earn those GPs on your own.

 

[bestbrian]

I think this would be the best solution, with one addendum, the GP which is captured can not be used for starting Golden Age or any other improvement exept to be resettled somewhere else. Because THAT would be overpowered!
OK, so I got GS, bulb and academy, GP I need shirine for Taoisam, GE I will now steal that wonder, all of those are big no no, beacause you didn't earn those GPs on your own.

Yeah, I stipulated that when I opened this thread that the settled Great Folks could only be resettled, and not for any other purpose. I also like the idea of the Great Folks failing to resettle - sort of like the missionary "fail to spread" mechanic. So, if you wan to root up those two settled GGs and move them to your HE city there's a chance they might not make it - I like that idea.

 

[smitsk00]

I'm not sure if it's overpowered, since you capture them anyway; this just allows you to move them to someplace else to perform the same function. Say you capture a developed Wall Street city. You lose Wall Street and most of the economic buildings, but you capture two settled GMs. Why not be allowed to move them and settle them in your WS city?

All the settled GP would reanimate. And yes, this would work for the AI as well, but I don't think it would change much. Considering the AI is too incompetent to target them now, I don't see much of a differrence. I don't think it would change multiplayer too much since humans are generally better at specializing their cities and other humans are better at realizing their importance and targeting them anyway. This just seems to be a way to clean up after the AIs mess and give an extra layer of game play.

I don't understand why you think AGG would improve. Could you explain further?

I've got an old game I've been replaying at various points to try different strats and things. One of the save points is the "breakout" war where I go for Dom Vic; I'll play from there and use the WB to give this a try and "loot" the settled GPs in cities I take from the AI.

My thought about aggressive was particular to the early game (i.e. before siege) when the Combat 1 promotion helps the most. If you are warmongering early, and the AI gets and settles a GG because you attacked them, you then get to move their GG to your military city. If I warmonger early, I can get 2 (or close to it) GG before siege myself (3 with Imp/GW). With this, you could settle 3-5 GG in a city much earlier. Imagine Toku or Churchill like this.

 

[RQRose]

This entire thread is filled with good ideas! Albert Einstein was smuggled out of Germany by US Spies before the war and the US and Russia nabbed all sorts of Scientists.

I like the idea of them possibly escaping perhaps based on how dominating your invasion forces is, i.e. just barely win the city and there is a much higher chance of them escaping, and including whether you have spies in your invasion force.

I like how they have added espionage but still I agree that it could be stronger. With a powerful intelligence force you don't need to build an army, you can force a larger country to give you theirs (like countries do with the US, oh and then we fight them).

I don't like the idea of the great people disappearing when they resettle because it takes away from the realism. If you fail to capture or settle them they should re-appear in either the previous civilization or the civilization with the strongest cultural influence on their location.

Great people CANNOT just disappear, Einstein would have been tracked to the depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains...in fact he was...

 

[Lemon Merchant]

personally i would like to add a ability to the Great Spy to kidnap or bump off unsettle Great People form other players. In addition allow a chance for the deed to fail and/or be reveal and you lose diplo points with the target civ.

Actually, I think there's a mod that does this, but the name of it escapes me at the moment...

I'll try to find it.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Great people CANNOT just disappear, Einstein would have been tracked to the depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains...in fact he was...

Maybe not disappear, but death does happen on occasion.

 

[DaveMurray]

Great people CANNOT just disappear, Einstein would have been tracked to the depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains...in fact he was...

They can commit suicide instead of having to doing stuff for heathen enemy civilizations.

Not really a big fan of uprooting settled GPs. It gives the human too much of an advantage. Just be happy you got a city with that many settled specialists.

BTW 5 GGs is a lot for a non IMP AI. He must have pissed a lot of people off or gobbled up a pretty big empire.

 

[Woodreaux]

I think settled should be mobile upon capture of enemy cities if and only if they can be moved normally. But if they could be moved, though, you should have to build something which may or may not cost and , like settlers and workers.

It should cost something to introduce an additional efficiency penalty (analogous to anarchy between civic & religion changes) to prevent exploits like shifting a stack of great merchants, engineers or prophets from new city to new city to get them up and running really fast or distributing wonders in an artificially perfect manner.

 

[helemaalnicks]

I don't like it. I don't see settled specialists as settled specialists. If a specialist is settled, he's like emmanuel kant, staying in that city, working on projects, doing "research". You can also, move and settle. Like Leibniz, then settle. Or he can do like plato. Start an acedemy in his own city, starting up more research then ever, by making his students more productive in terms of beakers. You can bomb the great person out of the city, you can't bomb the character out of a city. You can't take the impressive military production out of sparta (say, 450BC), and put it in athens. Just doesn't make sense. Lots of war creates experience. That experience can be put into forces already present, or part of the army can return home earlier, and be sergeants giving training with their years of combat experience. If you take sparta, you've succesfully killed their army. You can't relocate the combat experience to athens just like that. However. The tradition will still be present, and conquered civs tend to be suitable for maintaining such a tradition even after it's been conquered.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I don't like it. I don't see settled specialists as settled specialists. If a specialist is settled, he's like emmanuel kant, staying in that city, working on projects, doing "research". You can also, move and settle. Like Leibniz, then settle. Or he can do like plato. Start an acedemy in his own city, starting up more research then ever, by making his students more productive in terms of beakers. You can bomb the great person out of the city, you can't bomb the character out of a city. You can't take the impressive military production out of sparta (say, 450BC), and put it in athens. Just doesn't make sense. Lots of war creates experience. That experience can be put into forces already present, or part of the army can return home earlier, and be sergeants giving training with their years of combat experience. If you take sparta, you've succesfully killed their army. You can't relocate the combat experience to athens just like that. However. The tradition will still be present, and conquered civs tend to be suitable for maintaining such a tradition even after it's been conquered.

I like that philosophy a lot. That the settled GP add character to the city (like military and Sparta). I, too, am against the uprooting of GP.

Also b/c I would have won a lot more of my previous games a lot sooner

 

[renegadechicken]

I think this is a great idea. Despite good arguments by its opponents, I think this makes good historical sense, and for me it would be quite fun. Though I think that scothed's ideas would be a great balancer, and would definitely like to see that part implemented as well. I can't see how it would hurt anyone else, since if you don't want it you don't have to download it! Great idea, bestbrian!