Resistance Mechanic Idea

[hithere21]

In my recent games I noticed that when I conquered cities it just seemed too easy to incorporate them into my empire. It was pretty much, puppet for a while and then annex while quickly building a courthouse and then BAM! Those citizens have happily adopted my rule with very little unhappiness penalty at all.

I understand that I will be need to manage more cities local unhappiness as they grow but I think simply building a courthouse is too easy to get a city to buy into your occupation and totally wipe out the unhappiness penalty. Rome couldn't just build a courthouse to keep their colonies in order, they had a refined culture, military garrisons, and internal improvements to adopt foreign people into their empire.

My suggestion would be to make the unhappiness penalty for resistance slightly more severe and create a more diverse way to decrease that penalty. Some suggestions would be

Expend a military unit to "suppress" the resistance temporarily.

Have less of a resistance penalty if your culture is influential over the civilization you are conquering.

Have buildings scale down the resistance penalty, make them want to be in your empire. So courthouses, baths, aqueducts, etc. would all decrease resistance until power has been effectively consolidated and there is no more unhappiness penalty.

Just some thoughts, but I would be really curious to see what more experienced members of this community would have to say.

Thanks!

 

[SirMayday]

I think, interpreted with a bit of imagination, the existing mechanics are fine. Influence already reduces the unrest period (to a minimum of 1 turn, instead of vanilla's 0), and remember that each turn (ostensibly) represents multiple years, at least prior to roughly the present date. A city captured in the seventeenth century that resists for just two turns has taken a decade to assimilate into your empire, and even that would take an overwhelming level of net tourism to its home Civ. And if your Civ isn't already quite happy, even a small period of extreme unhappiness may result in spontaneous rebellions.

 

[Galaphile0125]

You should check out JFD's suite of mods, but specifically Cities in Development. I believe that is the mod that has a resistance mechanic. I just played a game with the latest iteration of it and the CBP and worked fine for me.

 

[JFD]

Yeah, take a look at the Loyalty mechanic. Some people say it solves the issues you bring up, that is, makes conquered cities require a big more management.

 

[Fakoleon]

I don't see point about adding more penalty as it work fine as it is.
Don't forget that before build a courthouse, you have X turn of resistance, and 1 turn, based on your current era, can be decade! or at least years.
When you conquer a new city, usually you already have a bunch of building to build, especially early ones, that take one turn to make, and when you have many cities, it's quiet long to manage all that, no need to add more.
Your suggestion about adding military to new conquered city already exist, actually when you put garrison you reduce crime by adding some defense to the city, it's the same idea, but just comes from different source.

I would add that I always play for domination victory, on large scale map, it's true some cities comes to low unhappiness rather quickly after you build a courthouse, but it's more of the one that are already influenced from your civ, you may also have cities with maximum unhappiness (like -18 for 18 pop city), and I find that punishing enough, especially if you add public opinion on top of that, like that game where I had -300 (!!) war weariness in a global total war

 

[XplosiveLun]

May I ask, how relaxing are you in your current difficulty? Because I find that difficulty affects happiness in a large way. At the difficulty that I feel intense, when warmonger is nearby, I have to invest more resources in grabbing their land and producing army. As a result, I have more unhappiness and underdevelopment issue. As opposite to lower difficulty, it is easier to boom and rebuild enemy cities.

 

[hithere21]

I play on King. Maybe its the difficulty then. I just noticed that in a lot of my games I found that I was able to snatch up several cities and my empire wouldn't really be affected by it in terms of happiness at all. When I put in a puppet there would be very little would change.

I also think it has to do with play-style. Sometimes I play warmongerer games but I often like to build a compact civilization and focus on strategic development over military conquest. But I often feel like it is necessary to take several cities in order to keep up with the AI. Which is fine, but I sometimes like a little extra challenge in not only getting enemy cities but also consolidating them and making them useful. I am thinking of the "We yearn to join our motherland" mechanic in Civ 4 where a city you took over wouldn't be immediately loyal to you plus you would have extra maintenance. I get that you still have maintenance penalties in CBP in the form of building maintenance, but I also think the happiness system definitely favors aggressive wide play. Which does make sense, you really don't hear much about small compact nations being dominant on the world stage.

I'll check out those mods you posted. Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[tu_79]

Wouldn't you say that UK, France and [EDIT] Japan and[/EDIT] Germany are small and compact? Compared to other giants like China, USA and Russia, that is.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

Wouldn't you say that UK, France and [EDIT] Japan and[/EDIT] Germany are small and compact? Compared to other giants like China, USA and Russia, that is.

Well right now they kinda are, but when you look at each of those nations "glory days" they did they fair share of conquering.