Revolutions Beyond The Sword

[jdog5000]

Glad you're enjoying it! I've got some pretty significant changes I'm cooking up right now, the long planned revamp of the revolt launching and handling system for one. A new version won't be out for some time though ...

Certainly the wait for a final BTS patch is dragging a bit on the community I think but I wouldn't lose hope ... Firaxis showed from the beginning they were committed to the civ community by designing the game to be so moddable, I'd be shocked if they weren't (slowly) trying to gracefully close out Civ4.

Anyway, things will probably pick up a bit when the last patch is released and again when hints of Civ5 start to circulate ... though I'd personally rather they did something like Alpha Centauri again where they can really innovate, then return to Civ in a couple years with fresh minds. This would also give mods plenty of time to mature before going obsolete.

 

[glider1]

though I'd personally rather they did something like Alpha Centauri again where they can really innovate, then return to Civ in a couple years with fresh minds. This would also give mods plenty of time to mature before going obsolete.

That is a good idea. Innovation and fresh thinking is at the heart of it

In regards of "mods" maturing, the RevolutionDCM merge now tentatively combines "Influence Driven War" mod by Moctezuma with Revolutions 1.42 and Dales Combat Mod 1.5.

Now I can confirm that the combination is stable, but ye gods the court is out in my little mind as to what effect this will have on Revolutions! Perhaps you Jdog might have a better gut feel on that....

Cheers, thanks and enjoy the "emersive" experience of re-engineering Revolutions!

 

[Dom Pedro II]

That is a good idea. Innovation and fresh thinking is at the heart of it

In regards of "mods" maturing, the RevolutionDCM merge now tentatively combines "Influence Driven War" mod by Moctezuma with Revolutions 1.42 and Dales Combat Mod 1.5.

Now I can confirm that the combination is stable, but ye gods the court is out in my little mind as to what effect this will have on Revolutions! Perhaps you Jdog might have a better gut feel on that....

Cheers, thanks and enjoy the "emersive" experience of re-engineering Revolutions!

Well, one thing to consider the possibility that retaking rebel land through influenced driven war should be easier than with non-rebels (and possibly rebels taking parent civ's land). I mean, from a realism standpoint, this makes sense because rebels would be more accustomed and thus potentially more accepting of the parent civ reclaiming control. From the game perspective, it would be one more way that the relationship between rebels and parent civs would be different than the relationship between two totally full-fledged states.

 

[glider1]

Yeah no hurry on a new release as far as I'm concerned. 1.42 is great. I'm faced with two equally good choices this game at least:

1) Continue on with high culture spending and a war as a despot in order to avoid mass rebellion....or
2) Cancel the war and switch to Hereditary rule in order to avoid a rebellion.

If I cancel the war but do not switch to Hereditary rule, or if I stay at war as a despot but reduce culture just 10%, I will get a rebellion. Hmmmm what about if I continue the war AND switch to Hereditary rule??? Doesn't sound right but hey maybe...

This decision making process is great already and I can forsee that there will be more colour, shades and variety if there is a distinction between localised effects and national effects.

Even in 1.42 there is already the possibility to allow the society to domino into rebellion if there is a clear reward that the people do not yet forsee. However as far as I perceive, the difference between 1.42 and the big picture for Revolutions is one of resolution and granularity. This is where you can better judge which regions resent you for localised reasons and which are more supportive.

No hurry because this idea of yours is going to be very very cool.

Good stuff.
Thanks Jdog.

 

[mice]

If I cancel the war but do not switch to Hereditary rule, or if I stay at war as a despot but reduce culture just 10%, I will get a rebellion. Hmmmm what about if I continue the war AND switch to Hereditary rule??? Doesn't sound right but hey maybe...

This is a very uneducated post compare to the knowledge you guys have but ..

isnt Hereditary rule a negative ? Doesn't is tip the scales towards rebellion ?

Also I wonder to what extent wars help keep the masses calm. jdog's pop up says it does, but I usually get in deep with too much war because of money issues not to mention the new cities problems. Better to keep some cash and pay them off. Of course war is necessary and fun.

 

[glider1]

This is a very uneducated post compare to the knowledge you guys have but ..

isnt Hereditary rule a negative ? Doesn't is tip the scales towards rebellion ?

Also I wonder to what extent wars help keep the masses calm. jdog's pop up says it does, but I usually get in deep with too much war because of money issues not to mention the new cities problems. Better to keep some cash and pay them off. Of course war is necessary and fun.

Well I'm uneducated too so here goes! Hereditary rule is a negative inherently but a positive indirectly because it has counter acting elements. You can partially stabilise the society by garrisoning your army but this only is useful to an extent. If you go to war, you must be successful at it and not get bogged down in a stalemate. I think this issue is worse under Hereditary rule but not sure.

You mention many counter acting revolution elements in your question:
Government civic has an effect
The state of your budget has an effect
The state of your war has an effect
The state of your new settlements has an effect, the size and the distance from the capital as well as how cultured, defended and religious they are.

A common strategy is to not let a city expand to the maximum size if it is going to be a potentially rebellious city. It's population growth should be controlled. I'm not sure but an underpopulated city that could grow but isn't could be bad too.

This is a suggestion on how to play Revolutions:
1) Have an experimental mind set and save whenever you change any Revolutions relevant condition so that you can go back and try another avenue. You have to experiment.

2) The Revolutions mod is missing a manual but at the same time it has the biggest fattest manual ever written. That manual is real history and what is actually going on at the moment too. Take China and Russia today just as two examples.

Cheers and enjoy is my suggestion

 

[Aeven]

Wouldn't monarchy in war time, when going well, provide even more happiness?

 

[mice]

Glider, thanks for your ideas. It remains something of a mystery how to play out a good rev game, and that is a good thing. We already learned how to win the base game of Civ ,and Rev gives us so much more to learn .I like the idea of trial and error using the save function. It opens up options,implications,decisions...

I've been using religion big time, with the inquisition feature. I know you have your reservations about it, but I use it 'till I can control my world another way.

I'mgoing to implement some of the ideas you offered. Thanks.

 

[glider1]

I've been using religion big time, with the inquisition feature. I know you have your reservations about it, but I use it 'till I can control my world another way.

Revolution Inquisition has been handed over to me by Jdog to look after for a bit. I think it's a wonderful idea and a lot of fun, making Theology a much more exciting option in some cases! It's just early days for this variant yet.

@mice
You said:
"It remains something of a mystery how to play out a good rev game, and that is a good thing."

A wonderful thought right there mice. Most profound
There is a distinction between mystery and confusion. The former is good and the latter is bad! To play Rev, it has to be a mystery, but not confusing (this is a philsophical point).

Cheers.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

So, is the separation of local and national effects going to lead to something similar to the "stability" effect in RFC, where an unstable nation will collapse? I'm just curious to see where this is going.

 

[StormLord-711-]

I know most national effects in Revolutions have tended to cause want for some national change, such as a new leader, civic, or religion. I hope it stays similar; I liked the stability rating in RFC, but it always seemed unnatural to me how a low stability rating would cause an empire to either randomly lose control over regions or randomly disappear. I'd like to see something the player has more control over than the stability rating; that is one reason I like the Revolutions mechanics so much better. I do, however, definitely think there needs to be some mechanic to cause an empire to collapse to some extent.

That just set me thinking, if an empire did "collapse", how could we deal with it? It just split up into several individual cities in RFC, but I don't know if that would be historically accurate (the Roman Empire split in half first, and then the western half got taken over by many Germanic tribes, while the Eastern half survived another millennium). Perhaps we could make minor civs that weren't at war with everyone? They would still have to get some achievement to prove themselves and get full civ status along with bonuses.

 

[jdog5000]

In a sense I am adding a stability measure like in RFC, it will vary from 0 to 1000 with 500 meaning neutrally stable. There are two main effects of this national measure:

- Modify rev index calculations in cities, in a stable civ cities will be more forgiving while smaller problems can cause cities to revolt in an unstable civ.
- Determine what kinds of revolts to launch, requests for a new leader or the potential for civil war would be much higher in an unstable civ.

I haven't really decided what kinds of revolts might happen simply because of this national measure, or whether revolts will remain purely city driven like they are now. Either way, it will be a lot easier to determine when a violent revolt should represent a breakaway attempt by some of your cities or an all out civil war for control of everything, something which right now there is little differentiation between.

One of the goals is to decrease balkanization. A stable civ who is doing well will suffer fewer attempts by single cities to break away because the city will recognize the value of being part of a stable empire. Single cities with serious grievances will still make repeated requests for changes, but they will be more inclined to ask for changes to policy than independence. At the other extreme, if things start to go bad for a civ there's more likely to be full blown civil war instead of separate pockets of resistance.

I'm not intending to make stable civs immune to localized issues or make unstable civs always collapse in full-blown civil war but to find some middle ground where those results are more common than they are now.

 

[skallben]

First I have to say that I love this mod.

That being said I need to express the only thing I really dislike about it, namely lone spies keeping revolts alive forever. Im sure you are all familiar with the massive War Weariness that you accumulate over time with a Civ that keeps rebelling on you. Now, every time this particular Civ revolts you can beat them down and have it over and done with.
However there is an exception, being if they decide to not use one or more of their spies for any good. This keeps the Civ alive and the massive War Weariness with it. Not sure if this is a bug or a feature but I think it is over the top, Conquest with Revolutions is hard as it is.

 

[jdog5000]

Good news! In 1.51 I added the following:

- If a rebel has only spies remaining, there's now an extra 10% chance a spy will die every turn so they disappear a little faster

This caps the half-life of a rebel with no military units at 6 turns, less if you engage in counter espionage. Having rebels remain alive for a little while even if they only have spies is an intended feature ... it isn't taken advantage of very much yet, but having the ability to have underground rebellions is certainly an interesting prospect.

 

[IceFire9]

Is there an option to offer a revolting city partial independence (vassalization) when it demands independence? I haven't seen it yet so I assume not.

The rebels might be inclined to accept if they are likely to loose the war, or if their situation if they win is bad, like all ice cities or something (because they realize they can't survive on their own)

Awsome mod by the way.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Is there an option to offer a revolting city partial independence (vassalization) when it demands independence? I haven't seen it yet so I assume not.

The rebels might be inclined to accept if they are likely to loose the war, or if their situation if they win is bad, like all ice cities or something (because they realize they can't survive on their own)

Awsome mod by the way.

That's a nice idea. Maybe an "autonomy" option can be implemented into the game?

 

[jdog5000]

Yes, cities seeking independence will sometimes ask to become your vassal but not if they really don't like you. I'll see where it makes sense to expand this option. Once rebels get to the point of rising up to fight though the only chance to have them become a vassal is through end the war negotiations.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I don't know where else to put this, but I just have a quick comment. I'm not sure how the unhappiness code works right now, but I'm assuming it includes unhappiness from overcrowding when adding unhappiness to the rev index. The thing about overcrowding though is that it's not really something you'd revolt about in the context of civ. "It's too crowded, let's secede from our motherland so that we can be equally as crowded but independent." It seems more like revolts from unhappiness would arise from something the leader did: a choice they made, like sustaining a war, whipping the population, etc. In civ though, if you completely removed unhappiness due to overcrowding, a city would rarely become unhappy. Anyway, I'm not trying to propose a solution or make a suggestion, but just comment on the mechanics of the game.

 

[skallben]

Good news! In 1.51 I added the following:

- If a rebel has only spies remaining, there's now an extra 10% chance a spy will die every turn so they disappear a little faster

This caps the half-life of a rebel with no military units at 6 turns, less if you engage in counter espionage. Having rebels remain alive for a little while even if they only have spies is an intended feature ... it isn't taken advantage of very much yet, but having the ability to have underground rebellions is certainly an interesting prospect.

I understand the concept and it is possible my current position is uncommon, Im not sure. I'll elaborate a bit.
Some time in the 1500s I conquer all of Ethiopia until there is nothing left, them being Native Americans Vassal means I also conquer some of Sitting Bulls cities. Of course, Ethiopian cities doesnt revolt as they now count as Roman(me) after the defeat of the Ethiopians.

Now, to the problem itself; The Native American cities revolted and the rebels rose up as Ethiopia and suddenly all my cities taken from former Ethiopia gets pissed off and it slowly declines down to a Civil War that rages for ages. Since all Native American cities still revolt as Ethiopian rebels even at year 2000, the total accumulated War Weariness I face every rebellion is totally massive. The spies managed to keep this going longer and after some further pondering and very few cases of spies keeping them alive I don't recognize that as an issue, the "problem" is elsewhere - a combination of events.

Really, I don't know what to think about this situation as I don't know exactly which features are intended.

Are rebels from a live Civ meant to rise up as a former one that was vanquished if no war is declared upon rebels mother land?

Are rebel nationality related to proximity to other old Civs or religion/Civics they might have in common?

Is it an intended feature that respawning Civs pushes War Weariness so far and for several hundred turns that there is no other option but to run Police State?



Now please don't take this as overly critic, I have had a great time running Revolutions in the past and I still do except for this ankward position I am in this game.

 

[glider1]

@Jdog
I've got a couple of changes to the "foreign advisor relations" screen that I think might be useful to Revolutions. Could I submit them to the Revolutions quality control department for inspection?

It adds these abilities to the relations screen:
1) leaders now form a circle around the player and so there is more gap between leaders when the number of civs approach 34.
2) You can apply constraints on the association between leaders so that there is not such a bird's nest of lines going to and fro.

Feel free to reject these changes and I hope I haven't re-invented the wheel on what someone else has done to these screens.
Cheers.