Some ideas for VP and/or modmods

[LifeOfBrian]

Edit to add: Let's say you're allied to Singapore (or any City State) and you're at war with Siam. Siam attacks Singapore and your units help Singapore repel the attack. Or perhaps you're not allied to Singapore, but Siam is attacking Singapore and you happen to be at war with Siam, so you kill some Siamese units in or next to Singapore territory. In any case, I think you should get influence every time you kill a CS's AI enemy the same way you get influence when you kill a barbarian unit threatening the CS. That would incentivize and reward you for actively defending your CS allies and reduce the probability that you work hard on defending it while your influence level lowers, only to have some other AI swoop in and become its ally a few turn after the war is over. I see no rationale behind giving influence for killed barbarians and not for AI enemy units.

 

[PlanarFreak]

That's very irrational, not? You want, that urbanization stays, but also want more options to reduce it. If more urbanization options are achieved by buildings, very likely that you build most or all of them anyway, then why even bother with it?

I don't think that's a good argument. Buildings are a concrete cost; any production used on these happiness buildings cannot be used on yields buildings or units. And I think that buildings are a good way to go, given that cities from Roman to Modern times have required public infrastructure such as Sewers, Courthouses, and Police.

For example, Engineering could also give access to Sewers. The current Courthouse at Philosophy could be repurposed for public infrastructure and a building added called Governor's Office that serves the current purpose of pacifying annexed cities. Maybe City Watchmen could be added to Iron Working - I've always thought it odd that Constabulary rolls around in the Renaissance, at which point its primary purpose is counter-intelligence (and in that vein of thought, Police Station should probably be called Investigation Bureau or Surveillance Office).

I would say let them consume +1 gold, increased by every 2 eras, increase base yield by one but decrease GPP generation by one and they should be balanced.

Putting the first argument aside, I think this might be a good course of action. After all, a building such as Sewers would logically have a scaling Maintenance... which would be better placed on the Specialists themselves. Might be complicated to balance and teach to AI though.

 

[PlanarFreak]

Hey, guys and gals, hope you're doing well with all that's going on around the world. Just wanted to share some ideas for Vox Populi and/or modmods (in case they aren't VP material or are too consuming to code). If some or perhaps most of these aren't acceptable by default, perhaps give us an option in the setup to enable those changes to make the game more customize-able. Disclaimer: I usually play on Deity, standard, no ruins, events, research agreements or tech trading. Thanks for all the feedback.

1. Increase the GA modifiers from monopolies to 30% . Currently 25% means 2 extra turns of GA on standard, so you lose 5% for nothing. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
2. Give great prophets more movement points, so they'd be equal to missionaries in that regard. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
3. Give one extra food to (unworked) bananas, they're currently the only bonus resource that doesn't offer any bonus on its own. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
4. Merge the tundra pantheon and the desert pantheon so you'd have one pantheon giving bonus for tundra&desert(& snow, add bonus resources on snow tiles!) tiles with resources. In VP, tundras and deserts are often fairly close to each other, so you'll often end up with not enough tiles of one type for the pantheon to work, but if it were merged, it'd be viable. To avoid making the merged pantheon too strong, we could nerf it somewhat. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
5. Make War Elephants exclusive to Authority tree (opener or one of the first policies), replace ivory requirement with horse requirement. Currently it's too random whether the game itself will have ivory at all and, if it does, whether you'll be able to get it quickly enough to matter – also it makes no sense that one ivory can build you 10 units, but you can build the weaker unit (horseman) only for 1 horse per unit. This would make Authority more appealing vs. Progress/Tradition for early conquering. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
6. Make strategic balance affect all strategic resources, not just iron and horses. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
7. Add more coal to the map, there's too few sources of coal on standard maps. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
8. Make Hagia Sophia buildable only in Holy Cities (like Borobodur). I think non-founders have no special use for a free great prophet. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
9. Change Hubble from a „more science for science leaders“ wonder to a wonder meant for other victory conditions, for example have it grant a huge sum of tourism with all civs. CERN is so late you should be granted win-now assets, for example have CERN grant you free GDRs and/or nuclear missiles. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
   
   
10. Remove free social policy from Ideology wonders, they're currently „more culture for culture leaders“, instead grant them more unique benefits like the ones they currently have. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
11. Stonehenge is too strong, it gives you a free pantheon, a free council and a free shrine's worth of faith; Terracota's culture bonus is too high and the AIs ignore the wonder for too long; Temple of Artemis' food bonus is too strong, it's basically a monopoly bonus; Borobodur is too strong with the extra missionary spread; Oracle shouldn't scale with era and should be nerfed slightly; Slater mill should lose its river requirement because you've already rewarded fresh water starts with water mills and Baths, late game wonders shouldn't have terrain requirements (also Prora and Sydney); Chichen Itza's GA modifier should be nerfed to 30% and it should get some other bonus to compensate for that; Bletchley park should come sooner; usually I already have research labs in my main cities so no need for a free research lab from certain wonders, I'd instead change it to a free medical lab or something like that; Broadway is great, it gives you plenty of culture; make Brandeburg gate a Fealty policy wonder, have Red fort be buildable by militarily weaker civs that took statecraft or artistry. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
12. If the AI you're at war with stops being an ally of a CS, you automatically make peace with that CS (prevents exploit where you intentionally stay at war with that CS so you can deal with it later when you've made peace with the AI). AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
13. If you liberate a CS from another AI/CS, you should be granted a sphere of influence with it (removable only if it's captured again, not by WC). If you liberate it from barbarians, it should be granted open doors policy. That way you'd have more incentive to liberate CS, but still less incentive to allow barbarians to capture CS and only then liberating them. New code needed, but I hope it's not too hard to code that given that we already have open doors/sphere of influence code present.
    
    
14. Way of the Pilgrim is broken in human hands (intentionally weakening your missionaries before using them - EDIT: See more here - https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...how-would-you-change-it.663940/#post-15947254), I'd change it for example so it'd become a „wide“ GA founder, i.e. it'd give some GAP to all shrines and temples, it'd increase the GA length by 1 turn for every (2? 3?) follower city (with a cap) and give 10% or 15% extra culture or science during GA.
    
    
15. GDs can be expended for influence only when no embassy places are available anymore. In 99% of the time it's better to expend it for embassy, so it's be better for the AI. Less code-heavy for AIs who won't have to decide whether to go for influence or embassy.
    
    
16. Orthodoxy and churches 40% pressure are too strong, they should be changed/nerfed. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
17. Certaing corporations are still too strong, for example Firaxite or Giorgio. Also certain monopoly resources don't make sense, for example why does Ivory grant you the Centaurus corporation? AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
18. World fair should lose the free social policy and increased culture bonuses, they're way too strong compared to other WC projects. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
19. Limit buying mercenary units to 1 per turn per city. Or teach the AI how to buy 10 mercenaries in the same city one by one, sending each off via (rail)roads before buying the next.
    
    
20. Implement a true Casus Belli system, insofar it's possible. If you're caught spying and you promise not to spy anymore, but then you do and you're caught again, or if you refuse to promise to stop spying, you should either be forced to declare war on the spied nation or the spied nation should have an option of declaring a justifiable war (with lower war weariness/warmonger penalties etc.). The same should go for missionary/GP spreading, digging artifacts, stealing territories via GGs or America's UA or declaring war/demanding tribute/attacking a protected city state. We could make it so that for a set number of turns (20? 40?) after such a DoW and/or until you've taken one city from the perpetrator/aggressor, the „victim“ should be exempted from war weariness and warmonger penalties. Remove war weariness/warmongering penalty for injurying/killing foreign troops in your own lands (unless you declared a war that wasn't „justifiable“) - if you're only defending yourself and you're not losing units, why should your people be unhappy or other civs consider you warmongers? You should be viewed as the plucky underdog (even if you're not quite that – see UK in 1940). Code: We already have some code available (for example when you drop a bomb and you touch third-party units, when you get less warmongering via Hunnic UA or policies/tenets), but that would require some new code/AI teaching.
    
    
21. Implement a more dynamic and realistic CS diplomacy system. Currently a CS may be tributed 10 times by one civ without any long-term/permanent effects of that on their relationship. Conversely, one civ can be a CS's ally for 100 turns or it can liberate it without any long-term benefical effects of that on their relationship. Neither is realistic and seems boring because it doesn't incentivize any kind of behaviour towards CS. We already have in-game mechanics for lowering/increasing resting points of influence and increasing/lowering the decay/recovery rate. I'd propose that certain actions yield beneficial permanent effects and certain yield detrimental effects. If you liberate that CS, you'd get a sphere of influence with it that can only be removed if the CS is captured again. If you liberate another CS, you gain benefits (higher resting point and better decay/recovery rate) with all other CS in the game. You gain those benefits also every time you pledge protection, „stand up“ for a CS you've pledged protection to, fullfilled its quest, expended a GD in that CS. You'd gain those benefits for every xyz number of turns you've been their friend/ally. You'd gain big negative permanent effects if you demanded tribute, DoW-ed, stolen territory or directly attacked units/city of the CS; you'd gain smaller negative permanent effects for every time you've done that to OTHER city states (kinda mimicking the „non-aligned movement during the cold war where they were aligned in their non-alignedness). Negative influence shouldn't be limited to only -60, but quite lower if it's the result of your actions (GDs only lower it to -60, not further). That way you'd have more long-term/permanent incentive to „be nice“ to all/most city states. Some new code required, but we already have a lot of it through religious beliefs etc.
    
    
22. Remove faith bonuses from monopolies. After we've lowered the bonus yields from religious CS, this is the only remaining big random factor of volatility in the religion race. The difference between starting next to incense/wine/tobacco vs. starting next to a normal resource is the same as night and day – it's the difference between founding (first) or not founding. Give those resources monopolies other bonuses, change so that temples would give all worked improved luxury resources tiles 1 or 2 faith. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
23. Disable cultural, science and gold processes upon entering the industrial era. The AI doesn't know when to switch most/all of its cities to those for the purposes of rushing a policy or a tech or a GS/GW or simply for ending the game ASAP, and doesn't know the trick of using the gold process in enough cities to bring you above zero GPT, buying what you need from the AI for GPT, then in the same turn reverting back your cities. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
24. Have the benefits from most great persons attrition over time after a grace period of 5-10 turns after its creation. That would help the AI be more competitive vs. the human player that „saves up“ their great persons for the optimal time to expend them. Some AI teaching needed, but we already have „attrition“ for missionaries, so perhaps we could use that code.
    
    
25. Change the tourism system to a more „turn based“, wide-friendly one vs. the current (tourism event) one. Have the great musicians be the (almost – perhaps some wonders/buldings) only source of insta tourism with all civs, but otherwise give more tourism to turn based ones. For example have each current tourism event (finishing a TR, birth of a GP) grant each city a certain number of tourism yields – that way it'll be easier for big empires to compete in tourism and harder for small tradition empires.
    
    
26. Upon declaration of war, have all trade units to enemy cities be transported back to the home cities. Currently the system is a bit wonky, sometimes they get back immediately, sometimes not, sometimes they get pillaged, sometimes not. AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.
    
    
27. Have more distinction between classes of units until the modern times where realistically they get more blurred. Siege units should be extremely brittle to melee combat, much more than they are now, and they should be primarily used against cities and units in cities, forts and citadels (bonuses for that). Archer units should be much less effective against cities/units in cities, forts and citadels than they are now. Melee infantry and mounted units should be much less effective against (walled) cities and units in forts&citadels.
    
    
28. Have Pagodas be buildable exclusively by non-founders. If you capture a holy city, all pagodas in your cities disappear (for coding use existing mechanic from removal of corporation offices). That would help non-founders whose cities get stuck in „no man's land“ where their cities don't have any majority religions.
    
    
29. Have the game be less „all or nothing“ where possible, more granular. Currently if your approval rating is 49% or 41%, you get the same combat malus. I'd prefer if it were more granular, nuanced, for example each % point under 50% you get 1% combat malus. You either steal a technology/great work or not – I'd prefer if the range of success/failure of spies was more on a spectrum/continium, with you getting more yields with more successful missions, and less (or in some cases no) yields when the opponent has more anti-spy protection. You either get a cultural bomb hidden artifact or you get a normal artifact, but the difference is huge – I'd prefer if each hidden artifact gave a small amount of instant culture and a great work/landmark.
    
    
30. Slower unit production/more expensive purchase of units should be a function of war weariness, not of general unhappiness. It's counterproductive when you get dog-piled by AIs so you drop into unhappiness (because you lose luxuries from AIs and CSs) and then you can't produce units to defend yourself even though you don't have any war weariness (yet).
    
    
31. Remove Kilimanjaro, Sri Pada and FoY promotions, they're too strong.
    
    
32. Forts are currently too strong, I'd prefer if they were more useful for defensive purposes instead of getting more buffed by yields. I'd have them buildable faster, grant 5hp when healing, grant 5HP damage to adjacent enemy units, enemy units expend all movement points when entering a fort (this should also apply to citadels).
    
    
33. Make baths universally buildable, but with a later tech for non-fresh water settlements to retain a bit of an advantage to fresh water settling locations.
    
    
34. Range and logistics should be eliminated from the game, they're simply too strong in human hands vs. the AI, for example given 3 siege units with range I'll conquer almost any AI.
    
    
35. City health upon capture should be standardized, it seems that sometimes it's a bit random how strong a city's health will be when you (re)capture it.
    
    
36. City should not be capture-able until you've destroyed the unit inside it. I hate and don't understand losing my city with a nearly fully healthy advanced unit in it. Ships should contribute only one half or one third of its CS to defense of the city, to represent the limit maneouvrability of ships in ports and lack of sailors' prowess in land combat.
    
    
37. CS quests should be more standardized. Firstly by when they appear – sometimes a CS won't give me its first quest until T70 while another gives me one on T50, even though I've met both on T30. So I think CS quests should appear a set number of turns (maybe 5?) after the last quest has been fulfilled or has expired. Also all CS expect hostile ones should give two CS quests at all times, with one extra appearing if you've gone the Statecraft route. All CS quests should expire after a while (maybe sooner for some, later for others) to prevent you being stuck with for example „connect porcelain“ or „build 7 hotels“ for 140 turns as the solitary CS quest from Milan. Certain quests should only start appearing from the Medieval era onwards (for example for mercantile luxuries – glass, porcelain, jewelry or to capture an enemy city).
    
    
38. Have a „non-aggression“ pact as alternative to defensive pacts – sometimes I'll want to make sure I have a „safe front“ with my neighbour without wanting to commit to a joint war if either of us gets attacked. Also, have a „embargo“ alternative to „denounce“, where by embargoing you prevent you and your allied CS from trading (TR routes and trade screen deals) with an AI and its allied CS. Have to option of asking and be asked to make those deals/actions (denounce, embargo, …) with third party AIs. All would allow for a more realistic and nuanced diplomatic game. But I imagine there might be too much new code needed.
    
39. Have GAs also serve as medics, because they're not that useful at the moment compared to GGs that can make citadels.
40. 
    
41. Edited to add: Have cities heal much more quickly when there's no enemy unit within 3 tiles of the city. It's not realistic nor fun game-wise when your city almost under siege heals at the same rate as when you're at peace or all enemies have been driven away. Often a city won't fully heal in the 10 or 15 turns between the previous war and the new war and to me 10 turns of "peace" should be enough for a city to fully heal, post WW2 Marshall plan style.
42. Have the AI trade their luxury only for one of your copy of luxury (if you have it). Currently it's too easy to deny the AI your luxuries (and with it WLTKD, happiness, ...) while buying theirs for 3 or 5 gpt. If I were the AI, I'd stop selling my luxuries to a player that only bought my luxuries and never sold me any.
43. Change positive diplo modifiers with WC to whether you voted for/against an AI's interests regardless of the outcome. I think it matters when you voted for an AI's resolution or presidency of the WC even if ultimately it wasn't successful - have the strength of the modifier be weighted against how many (of your total?) votes you gave for/against them.
44. Hardcode that the AI will always be angry with you if you've proposed certain resolutions that directly impact them at the time you proposed them: Sanctions, Decolonizations, World religion that isn't theirs, Ban luxury which they have a monopoly on; Open doors/Sphere of influence where they've been the ally at least one turn in the last xyt turns; World ideology that isn't theirs; Sanction a player with whom they have a DoF or a DP etc.
45. Clear up the AI trade logic that will sometimes accept a trade for them to vote FOR a certain a proposal AND a trade for them to vote AGAINST a certain proposal - it makes no sense that they can be bribed either way, they should have a strong preference either way. That is especially problematic when you can sometimes bribe them to vote against their own proposal, that shouldn't be possible imo.
46. Have the holy cities be immune to other religions (like the Spanish UA).
47. Give fealty more bonuses AGAINST other religions (against the active and passive spread of other religions in your cities) to reward those that go the fealty route.
48. Hardcode so the great diplomat can only be expended for influence once all known CSs have had embassies established.
49. New UI for religion - show what the accumulated pressure for each religion in your city is and show how many new supporters you need to start the reformation building. Also, if possible, have the reformation building be buildable even if after you've started building it you dip below the threshold.
50. EDIT to add: Have the pioneer & colonist the option of settling as a puppet city (like the Venice UA), that way you'll be able to claim additional land & resources without incurring extra science and culture cost.
51. If the other suggestions for religion aren't suitable, perhaps we could&should limit the number of missionaries you can have at any given moment like we did with archeologist, that way we could slow/limit the missionary spam. Have it be increased with wonders, religious buildings and/or Fealty to incentivize religious civs going for those.
52. Edit to add: Some ideas for the happiness system, where I tried to be as non-radical as possible
    - Remove unhappiness from urbanization - you're already penalized for using specialists with the evergrowing food consumption by specialists. Alternatively, limit the urbanization the same way other sources of unhappiness and introduce a few more buildings/options to reduce unhappiness from specialists, I think there are too few at the moment.
    - Remove religious distress/unhappiness or add more ways to reduce it -> you're already losing yields (and/or the AI is gaining them) by having fewer and fewer followers of your religion in your cities, not sure why you'd have to be doubly penalized by this unhappiness as well?
    - Increase the base happiness effects of luxuries in the late game
    - Increase the unhappiness removal effect of mid-late game buildings (so have them remove not one, but two or more unhappiness from illiteracy, distress, poverty, ...)
    - Not sure how the median works at the moment, but in my last game as Indonesia all my 7 cities had all the scientific buildings and medical labs, with all the science specialists working and full Rationalism tree, but with a population of around 160, I still had around 80 unhappiness from illiteracy. Perhaps that was because two of the civs were the Maya and Korea, but the other AIs were normal non-science civs. Not sure how that's possible, but if runaways cause a big increase in the thresholds, perhaps we could make an adjustment that the top 2 civs' (by score) yields are, for threshold purposes, replaced by the 3rd civ's values? So if for example Arabia and Songhai are the runaways by score with Portugal as the 3rd civ by score, we would calculate as if Arabia and Songhai had the same yields as Portugal. On larger maps we'd do the same for the top 3 or more civs, depending on the number of civs.
53. EDIT TO ADD:
    - In one of my games, I wanted to sell my vote in favour of making Carthage's religion the dominant one (resolution proposed by Carthage), only for Carthage saying the trade value would be around -300 -> so I'd have to pay them to vote in favour of their religion. The other two proposals were Global Peace Accord and an open door resolution, so it's not like they switched their priority to wanting me to vote against sanctioning them. Are some WC proposals given extra weight (hard code) when the AI looks at it? I think some should, like the Sanction one or the world religion one when the AI's religions is propoes. I'd also considering introducing a seperate diplo modifier for some WC proposal, so the AI would get seperately angry/happy if you proposed repealing their sanction or if you proposed introducing sanctions against them etc.
54. AI is too willing to sell luxury resources to the Netherlands even if that means they lose their monopoly,I think this code could benefit from being looked at.
55. the AI is too willing to sell coal -> even the AIs that denounced me were still willing to sell their coal to me for 8-10 gpt. I think the AI would benefit more from denying me coal to build factories etc. than having some extra gold, especially because they're usually already swimming in gold. So that's something that I hope will be looked at.
56. - I think you should be able to buy great persons even in cities with no majority religion, I don't understand why that's a prerequisite. Given the current state of the religious game and non-founders not being able to buy inquisitors, it can leave a civ, especially non-founding, without the option of buying great persons in the late game. In my game, 5 of my 6 cities didn't have a majority religion, but luckily the smallest city had it, so I could buy my great scientists there. But I still had to spend a lot of faith on buying up a few missionaries just in case that city lost its majority religion so I could then bring it back via missionaries.
57. Some ideas for inquisitors:
    - have holy cities be immune to conversion (Spanish UA code),
    - have inquisitors be significantly cheaper than missionaries even without the Inquisition enhancer (for example have them cost 125 faith vs. 200 faith for missionaries in the beginning), with the latter further decreasing the costs,
    - have inquisitors be purchasable with gold (as an alternative to being purchasable by faith - Zealotry code, that way they'll be easier to use because you won't need to spend faith on it, which is crucial both early on and later in the industrial era onwards),
    - remove the 1 turn of revolt when using inquisitors, but have them increase the city maintenance by xyz gold per turn, scaling with era, every time they're used, or have them increase the unhappiness of the city (perhaps only temporary if permanent would be too harsh or to hard to code),
    - have the holy city spawn 1 free inquisitor per owned city at the start of every era,
    - eliminate religious division as a source of unhappiness completely
58. Edit to add: Let's say you're allied to Singapore (or any City State) and you're at war with Siam. Siam attacks Singapore and your units help Singapore repel the attack. Or perhaps you're not allied to Singapore, but Siam is attacking Singapore and you happen to be at war with Siam, so you kill some Siamese units in or next to Singapore territory. In any case, I think you should get influence every time you kill a CS's AI enemy the same way you get influence when you kill a barbarian unit threatening the CS. That would incentivize and reward you for actively defending your CS allies and reduce the probability that you work hard on defending it while your influence level lowers, only to have some other AI swoop in and become its ally a few turn after the war is over. I see no rationale behind giving influence for killed barbarians and not for AI enemy units.

1-3. Sure, sounds reasonable.

4. Absolutely not. I have not seen what you speak of - desert and tundra are hardly ever adjacent. Thematically (and culturally) it makes sense for the beliefs to be separate, and it's probably important for gameplay as well since there will be more than one civ that needs help in the Tundra or Desert (I play on Huge, 20 civ).

5-7, 22, 31, 33. Disagree mostly. I believe that geographic imbalance is important for interesting gameplay, with exceptions for Iron and Horse, which appear too early in the game for players to plan around (the game would be less interesting if two entire continents were missing Horse, unless Dog Chariots were added). For the rest of the Strategic Resources, research to figure where they are and then conquer the land where you find them. Need Oil? Enact Operation Iraqi Liberation and conquer Arabia. Not an imperialist? Make friends with the "City-States" of Kuwait, Qatar, and UAE. For Faith monopolies, I'd be fine changing them to 1 , 1 , but once again I think geographic imbalance is important. Play your start, don't run the same strategy every time. You might as well say the same about the culture monopolies - they get first-dibs on wonders as long as they keep up in tech. For wonders, I think they could be nerfed a small amount but I do not think they need to be removed - Kilimanjaro, 1.5x move speed; Fountain of Youth, +3 Healing; Sri Prada, no change.

9-10. Hubble and CERN could probably use changes; hybrid science/tourism is probably good; a GDR on CERN would be hilarious. I don't think the problem is with the Ideology Wonders, I think the problem is that there aren't more mutually exclusive Wonders. There was a modmod I really liked that added 1 or 2 more Wonders per Ideology, but civs had to choose just 1. It added the same for Policy Wonders.

11. Half/Half. Stonehenge - Disagree. Terracotta - Agree (this scales hard on Huge, 20 Civ), give it more base culture and like 8 :civ5tourism: at Archaeology. Artemis - Disagree, I don't think it's too strong (most others in this era are pretty strong), I think it's neither interesting nor thematic. How about +1 :civ5food: on all camps in the city, and buff the base culture? Slater Mill - Disagree, although Baths should be any city. We need more late game wonders and more terrain requirements in general. Chichen Itza - Agreed. Bletchley Park - Half/half. The free lab sucks, but I don't think it should come sooner, Computers is perfect. Not sure if the Wonder is weak or if it's just a Spies thing in general - gaining Spy levels isn't an endorphin rush. Brandenburg/Red Fort Swap sounds good.

12. No need. It's not really an exploit.

13. Agree somewhat. Sphere of Influence is good, but it should not be World Congress immune. That's the point of World Congress. Also, this option should only be available after World Congress is available, and the option to Open Door should also be available (so Liberate/Annex/Sphere of Influence/Open Door). The Barbarian thing is unnecessary.

14. Wow that's new. Never been a fan of that particular design, rework is probably good. Thematically though I would think that "Pilgrim" would synergize with tall design, not wide. Maybe Tourism/foreign?

15. No need to hard code GDs, just fix AI. It's not a lot of logic, more like a single FOR/IF.

16-17. No opinion.

18. Keep the free policy, remove the % culture.

19. Make the AI better is always a good idea.

20. Interesting, but beyond the scope of Vox Populi. While we're asking for pipe dreams, I want a combination of Stellaris and Endless Legend influence systems.

21. Agree somewhat. I think lowering the cap on negative city state attitude would be good. As well making City-States "pay attention" to other City-States - although only positive for Liberation, not for Sphere of Influence (I think they should be separate options). Tribute and Conquest can have negative effects on all city states once you get to Renaissance or Industrial, and scale harder in later Eras. Influence is a good measure, there don't need to be other "permanent" effects if you can influence bomb to -4000.

23. Make the AI better.

24. Not sure if this is necessary. I think stats are set on spawn.

**25. Disagree,** I like Tourism "pop". My main concern is that per/turn Tourism is somewhat underwhelming to the amount of instant Tourism available.

26. Wild Speculation: I haven't tested this, but in my experience Trade Routes headed **away** from your cities continue moving, but Trade Routes headed **towards** your cities arrive instantly. But I think the best solution is to just end the Trade Route when it makes it back to your cities, before it departs again. More difficult to program than all instantly return though.

27-28. No comment.

29. Good ideas.

30. Haven't experienced that, but sounds reasonable.

32. Agree somewhat. Forts could use some of these tactical advantages, but not all. I particularly dislike "expend all movement", which I think will make warfare a real grind, unless the unit inside gains control of the fort. In actual warfare that's a real concern - the enemy defeating your garrison and using your fort against you (commanders would burn forts and fields in retreat as scorched earth tactics). But I think that'd be difficult to implement. Along your lines of thought though, it would be interesting if forts became Civ6-style Encampments with HP so that siege engines can help destroy them outside of range.

34. Agree. I think Range is not an appropriate promotion, except maybe on naval units. Logistics is probably fine, although the XP needs to be halved (or did that already happen?).

35. I have not paid much attention to this.

36. Interesting, but does not seem to me like there would be a straightforward fix.

37. CS quest improvements (and variety) would be nice.

38. Interesting. These sound doable, although I'd suggest Non-aggression pacts breakable by surprise war (diplo penalty).

39. GAs do sort of serve as medics with their ability to instantly heal the fleet. And given that most ships don't have the Supply promotion, I'm not sure how giving GAs medic would help. Unless they grant Supply? That could be interesting.

42-45, 54-55. The pursuit of good AI is the battle against the forces of darkness!

46-47, 49. Disagree.

50. Not sure how this would impact the current game. It would be nice if such colonies could declare independence though. What if you could establish new vassals instead? Hahaha.

51. Missionaries are already limited by the Faith resource, I'm not sure this is a problem.

52. Agree somewhat. Urbanization: More buildings to serve Urban Needs would be good. I posted some examples previously. Alternatively, unifying Specialist Unhappiness with the current Needs system would be interesting as well, with Specialists amplifying all Needs. Religion: Start building Enemy Inquisitors and delete your religion (a joke). Luxuries: Could be interesting, but not something I'd push for if it impacts balance in a complicated way. Buildings: Same. Another balance problem. Median: The meaning of median already does something similar to what you propose.

56. I agree.

57. I do not find any of these particularly necessary.

58. I like this idea!

Wow I spent way too much combing through this, XD.

e. Properly bolded the stuff I thought was interesting (I was using double asterisks).

 

[Recursive]

Woah. Lots of ideas here. I love it

I'll respond to the diplomacy ideas.

If the AI you're at war with stops being an ally of a CS, you automatically make peace with that CS (prevents exploit where you intentionally stay at war with that CS so you can deal with it later when you've made peace with the AI). AFAIK, no new code/AI teaching needed, just tweaks.

What exploit? What if you declared war on the City-State before the alliance was lost?

Implement a true Casus Belli system, insofar it's possible. If you're caught spying and you promise not to spy anymore, but then you do and you're caught again, or if you refuse to promise to stop spying, you should either be forced to declare war on the spied nation or the spied nation should have an option of declaring a justifiable war (with lower war weariness/warmonger penalties etc.). The same should go for missionary/GP spreading, digging artifacts, stealing territories via GGs or America's UA or declaring war/demanding tribute/attacking a protected city state. We could make it so that for a set number of turns (20? 40?) after such a DoW and/or until you've taken one city from the perpetrator/aggressor, the „victim“ should be exempted from war weariness and warmonger penalties. Remove war weariness/warmongering penalty for injurying/killing foreign troops in your own lands (unless you declared a war that wasn't „justifiable“) - if you're only defending yourself and you're not losing units, why should your people be unhappy or other civs consider you warmongers? You should be viewed as the plucky underdog (even if you're not quite that – see UK in 1940). Code: We already have some code available (for example when you drop a bomb and you touch third-party units, when you get less warmongering via Hunnic UA or policies/tenets), but that would require some new code/AI teaching.

Would require some significant new code to implement in a way the player would understand, but a Casus Belli system is something I'd like to do someday. Less new code to do it behind the scenes, but players wouldn't know how to use it.

Damaging/killing units or attacking cities doesn't generate warmongering penalties. Only declaring war, capturing cities and using nukes does.

Have a „non-aggression“ pact as alternative to defensive pacts – sometimes I'll want to make sure I have a „safe front“ with my neighbour without wanting to commit to a joint war if either of us gets attacked. Also, have a „embargo“ alternative to „denounce“, where by embargoing you prevent you and your allied CS from trading (TR routes and trade screen deals) with an AI and its allied CS. Have to option of asking and be asked to make those deals/actions (denounce, embargo, …) with third party AIs. All would allow for a more realistic and nuanced diplomatic game. But I imagine there might be too much new code needed.

Good ideas, but a lot of work. One day, hopefully.

Change positive diplo modifiers with WC to whether you voted for/against an AI's interests regardless of the outcome. I think it matters when you voted for an AI's resolution or presidency of the WC even if ultimately it wasn't successful - have the strength of the modifier be weighted against how many (of your total?) votes you gave for/against them.

I intend to implement this one day, thanks for the reminder.

Hardcode that the AI will always be angry with you if you've proposed certain resolutions that directly impact them at the time you proposed them: Sanctions, Decolonizations, World religion that isn't theirs, Ban luxury which they have a monopoly on; Open doors/Sphere of influence where they've been the ally at least one turn in the last xyt turns; World ideology that isn't theirs; Sanction a player with whom they have a DoF or a DP etc.

Ditto.

I'd also considering introducing a seperate diplo modifier for some WC proposal, so the AI would get seperately angry/happy if you proposed repealing their sanction or if you proposed introducing sanctions against them etc.

Ditto.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Damaging/killing units or attacking cities doesn't generate warmongering penalties. Only declaring war, capturing cities and using nukes does.

Are you sure? I am pretty sure it does, atleast it's my last point of information.
Gazebo made it that way, that even harming enemy units gives you 50% of the war weariness, you would get if your units would be harmed. Else the huns UA wouldn't make that much sense.
Could you clarify this?

 

[Recursive]

Are you sure? I am pretty sure it does, atleast it's my last point of information.
Gazebo made it that way, that even harming enemy units gives you 50% of the war weariness, you would get if your units would be harmed. Else the huns UA wouldn't make that much sense.
Could you clarify this?

War weariness != warmongering penalties

I can look into not having units killed defensively count against war weariness, that seems reasonable. It would require additional memory, though.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

War weariness != warmongering penalties

I can look into not having units killed defensively count against war weariness, that seems reasonable. It would require additional memory, though.

Ah, I haven't read carefully enough, my fault.
War weariness is such a mystique mechanic, cause there are no real rules shown, nothing which tells me what will cause how much unhappiness.
I think, if a random generator in the background is simply adding unhappiness based on your total empire size, nobody would notice a difference.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

PlanarFreak:

I've seen quite a few games where tundra and desert are separated by one or two tiles. True, for huge maps this could be a problem, but I was thinking about standard maps with 8 civs.

Agree to disagree on the geographic imbalance point, I think it's ok to some degree, but not to the degree currently present in the game.

I'd be ok with sphere of influence upon liberation being removable via world congress. Why do you think the barbarian thing is unnecessary?

Yeah, I'd be ok with removing the %culture from World fair and replacing it with something else.

Regarding forts, those are just some ideas to make them more tactically advantageous. I'd be ok with some of them or some different ones, just not have them stay the same because they aren't as useful as they ought to be.

GAs as medics - that would address the situation where ships take a long time to heal (unlike land units with medics around them) because they don't have medics like land units have with the scouting line.

Thanks for taking the time!

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Recursive, thanks for the reply. The exploit re: CS is that I'll avoid declaring war directly against a CS so as to not trigger the CS ramafications, but I'll gladly not peace out with them (after they stopped being an ally of my enemy) so I can farm XPs with my units free of danger.

Great to hear about the rest, especially about the casus belli system! And it'd be great to not have war weariness from homeland activities!

 

[PlanarFreak]

PlanarFreak:

I've seen quite a few games where tundra and desert are separated by one or two tiles. True, for huge maps this could be a problem, but I was thinking about standard maps with 8 civs.

Agree to disagree on the geographic imbalance point, I think it's ok to some degree, but not to the degree currently present in the game.

I'd be ok with sphere of influence upon liberation being removable via world congress. Why do you think the barbarian thing is unnecessary?

Yeah, I'd be ok with removing the %culture from World fair and replacing it with something else.

Regarding forts, those are just some ideas to make them more tactically advantageous. I'd be ok with some of them or some different ones, just not have them stay the same because they aren't as useful as they ought to be.

GAs as medics - that would address the situation where ships take a long time to heal (unlike land units with medics around them) because they don't have medics like land units have with the scouting line.

Thanks for taking the time!

Tundra & Desert: It appears that I jumped the gun with my comment. I had been using an older version of the communitas map; in the latest versions, the logic restricting tundra to certain latitude (and made overlaps unlikely) was removed in favor of logic using temperature/humidity metrics. The creator mentioned that they are keeping an eye on it to see how it performs (not sure how long ago that was). So I've seen it in the last few maps I created over the weekend. I still stand by my preference (difference pantheons), but I've yet to see how my terrible start plays out hahaha (1 floodplain, 1 desert in first circle; 3 tundra tiles in the 2nd circle and more in the 3rd).

City-States: I think that the barb thing is unnecessary if the Sphere of Influence/Open Door options became available with World Congress. Before that, leaving the diplomatic options in a more primitive state makes sense to me (only Liberate/Annex). And overall, I'm not worried about players exploiting barb-captured cities (at least, that's how I read your proposal, that you wanted to make sure barb-captured cities didn't give the best option).

Forts: The damage thing was actually implemented with the Motte-and-Bailey Fort in the 1066 scenario, there's a mod that makes it available to all civs with the Engineering technology. So the hooks exist and I think it'd be interesting to add. I don't know the mod's compatibility with VP though, and of course AI will have to be trained.

GA Medics: To clarify, does it apply to ships without the Supply promotion?

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Edited to add: I think to avoid abuse, the system should be changed so that if you sold something to your DoF for a lump sum of gold instead of for gold per turn and the deal ends prematurely (either because one side declared a war or lost access to that resource), you should lose the amount of lump sum gold received that is proportionate to the number of turns left on the deal when it ended prematurely.

So let's say I'm England and I have a DoF with Sweden. 5 turns before our DoF ends, we make a deal where I sell 2 horses or 1 copy of cocoa (for the duration of the deal - 50 turns on standard speed) for a total of 700 gold (lump sum). If for example 20 turns later Sweden declares war on me (we didn't renew our DoF, Sweden became pissed at me and eventually was bribed to DoW me) or I declare war on Sweden or if my horse/cocoa tiles are pillaged by barbarians or enemy units, the deal will end immediately, I will keep all the 700 gold for only 20 turns of giving 2 horses to Sweden.

This could be severely exploited by the human player if he/she wanted to and even if not intentionally exploited, it can still happen unintentionally because the AI doesn't seem to take this into consideration when declaring war and because sometimes the barbarians will spawn next to a CS adjacent to your only source of cocoa, pillaging it. The AI is also very happy to give you lump sum gold and very happy to take payment in GPT, so this situation really only hurts the AI, not the human player.

I think it should be addressed, two possible options are:
- have treasury run a deficit (with automatic selling of buildings or units after a certain limit),
- have the money immediately deducted from your treasury and if it's not enough, then your buildings in your cities (let's say there would be an order from least important to most important, starting with buildings such as gardens in the smallest of puppet cities etc.) would immediately & automatically get sold so it could cover the deficit.

I know it may seem like a minor thing, but in my Deity games I'm usually selling my resources for lump sum of gold because I need the extra income for upgrading my units, rushing wonders etc., so I'll often unintentionally benefit from this. Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Edited to add:
1. When your unit, stationed in a city, fort or citadel, attacks an enemy unit that has a "chance to withdraw from melee attack", it will leave the fort/citadel/city if the enemy unit retreats. That's very unfriendly for defenders and contrary to otherwise behaviour of units in citadels/cities/forts, where the unit never leaves its space when destroying an enemy military unit. I'd recommend we change this so that even if the enemy unit withdraws from melee, the attacking unit doesn't leave its place.

2. Embassies from eliminated civs - when an AI gets eliminated, its embassies serve no purposes and they just block the surviving civs from making embassies in those city states. I'd recommend a change where upon destruction of a civ its embassies either get removed from CS OR the civ that holds the capital gets the votes from those embassies.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Crossposting from the modern military thread in the general balance:
I think we should get a triplane/fighter version of land/naval units that don't require any strategic resources or require iron, as some have suggested. Honestly I can't remember the last time I built any triplanes/fighters because I use my oil for landships/tanks or bombers, with the AA units doing the job of stopping enemy air units. The AA units are way too strong, both against air units and against being attacked directly, they should be extremely brittle to being attacked by melee land units, but as it stands now, they can be used basically instead of infantry units with the added bonus of being great against air units.

 

[Recursive]

Edited to add:
1. When your unit, stationed in a city, fort or citadel, attacks an enemy unit that has a "chance to withdraw from melee attack", it will leave the fort/citadel/city if the enemy unit retreats. That's very unfriendly for defenders and contrary to otherwise behaviour of units in citadels/cities/forts, where the unit never leaves its space when destroying an enemy military unit. I'd recommend we change this so that even if the enemy unit withdraws from melee, the attacking unit doesn't leave its place.

2. Embassies from eliminated civs - when an AI gets eliminated, its embassies serve no purposes and they just block the surviving civs from making embassies in those city states. I'd recommend a change where upon destruction of a civ its embassies either get removed from CS OR the civ that holds the capital gets the votes from those embassies.

The code says the player who kills an eliminated player is supposed to receive that civ's embassies. If that isn't happening it's a bug.

Also, it still needs testing, but I've added one of your suggestions re: World Congress diplomacy. AI opinion modifiers are now much stronger (they can go as high as +/- 100 for diplomatic civs) and dependent on how much the AI likes/dislikes your proposal and how many votes you contributed towards their hosting/proposal success/proposal failure, with a multiplier for diplomatic civs. AI now also factors your support of their World Congress interests into their approach and relationship logic.

This should make diplomacy much more strategic, and choice of proposal much more important. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Woo-hoo, that's amazing, thanks, Recursive, for the Christmas gift!

I'll be on the lookout to see what's happening re: embassies, thanks.

 

[azum4roll]

Crossposting from the modern military thread in the general balance:
I think we should get a triplane/fighter version of land/naval units that don't require any strategic resources or require iron, as some have suggested. Honestly I can't remember the last time I built any triplanes/fighters because I use my oil for landships/tanks or bombers, with the AA units doing the job of stopping enemy air units. The AA units are way too strong, both against air units and against being attacked directly, they should be extremely brittle to being attacked by melee land units, but as it stands now, they can be used basically instead of infantry units with the added bonus of being great against air units.

If they don't take strategics or supply, what's stopping you from spamming them once you have airports?

The code says the player who kills an eliminated player is supposed to receive that civ's embassies. If that isn't happening it's a bug.

Also, it still needs testing, but I've added one of your suggestions re: World Congress diplomacy. AI opinion modifiers are now much stronger (they can go as high as +/- 100 for diplomatic civs) and dependent on how much the AI likes/dislikes your proposal and how many votes you contributed towards their hosting/proposal success/proposal failure, with a multiplier for diplomatic civs. AI now also factors your support of their World Congress interests into their approach and relationship logic.

This should make diplomacy much more strategic, and choice of proposal much more important. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

How DARE you vote nay on my proposal to sanction you? I'll now hate you even more!

On the other hand, no more putting one yay vote on irrelevant proposals just to gain someone's trust, I guess.

 

[Recursive]

How DARE you vote nay on my proposal to sanction you? I'll now hate you even more!

On the other hand, no more putting one yay vote on irrelevant proposals just to gain someone's trust, I guess.

More like "how DARE you thwart the machinations of my silver-tongued diplomats! You're opposing my strategic interests!"

You can still put one vote on it if you want. The bonus/penalty is dependent on what % of the total vote was yours, so if you're the only voter, you'll get the full bonus. But if you only put one vote and another civ puts 20, you won't get much of a bonus compared to them. You still do get a bonus, though!

The formula is

extra = max bonus - min bonus

opinion change = min bonus + ( (2x % of the vote you're responsible for, max 100) * extra / 100) )

if AI has diplomat personality or their UA gives them diplomacy bonuses:
opinion change = opinion change * diplomat multiplier / 100

diplomat multiplier = 150 for supported hosting, 167 for supported/foiled proposal

Also, I fixed the exploit where you can get an opinion bonus for putting one Yay vote on a proposal but selling Nay votes against it to another civ. Nay votes subtract from your total of Yay votes and vice versa.

Additionally AI will remember the previous value of the opinion change and will adjust the value accordingly. It's kind of complicated but the gist of it is that you can't erase a history of foiling their proposals by putting one Yay vote on a proposal that would pass anyway; it'll just slightly reduce the value of their "you foiled us" score. On the flipside, repeatedly supporting their proposals will increase the value of the bonus (although it can't go higher than the max).

The modifier will decay over time too.

I think this will serve the AI far more strategically than the old system.

 

[Valvts]

Please someone make white walkers mod! Where you need to survive unending waves of barbarians!

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Azum4roll, the fighter planes that don't need strategic resources would count towards the supply cap.

Recursive, this looks really goo! Will there be any exceptions to it? I mean, I don't think it's realistic for the AI to be angry at you for proposing or voting for/against certain things, like a civ voting against being sanctioned or decolonized, or proposing a repeal of sanctions against it etc.? And will their reaction correlate to the preview we get when selecting which resolution to propose (who would like it and who wouldn't) and/or will we get any new tools for predicting in advance how much will an AI (dis)like our WC behaviour?

 

[Drakul]

I would add that you can buy unique units with faith from military city states that follow your religion and are at least friends. Currently the system is useless since you barely get one unit gifted at all in a game. I like to play epic,marathon and a don't remember anytime that i got more than 1-2 gifted uniques per game.