stability points for civil war /collapse

[xekaltsotos]

Hello,

I have been playing Rhye's and Fall for BTS for some time now (in a Mac) and it is real fun! I usually prefer one of the ancient civs and most of the time none (except Japan) of the early opponents survive to 1000AD or so.

I would like to change this so that it is more preferable for a civil war to happen than a total collapse. That is a few cities becoming independent instead of fragmenting and totally killing the civ. This allows an unstable civ to maintain a core and rebuild instead of totally vanishing.

Has anybody tried it? Could I just change some numbers in the python files?

Thanks!

 

[Baldyr]

Two things to keep in mind:

1. The human player will always collapse to civil war, while the AI will always die. But the AI will also collapse from other causes than instability (losing cities to barbarians, losing too many cities in a short period of time or losing the capital). There might be a good reason for AI Civs not merely fragmenting, as you propose, so there might be more to it that one would expect.

2. Secession are already in place to represent the gradual breakup of empires. Maybe you wanna explore this feature further?

As a sidenote I'm very much sharing your patterns of thought, but I'm not currently modding stability/collapse/secessions. (Although I did on the previous version. Pretty radical changes too, but nothing that is finished and tested or that can be released.)

If you can tell me exactly what you wanna do I might be able to help you out.

 

[Baldyr]

I looked it up and I believe that you have to change two values to always make AI Civs collapse into civil war (as opposed to going extinct) - from bad stability. Look up lines #1280-1283 in Stability.py:

                                                        if (iGameTurn < con.i1400AD):
                                                                utils.pickFragmentation(iPlayer, iIndependent, iIndependent2, iBarbarian, [COLOR="Red"]False[/COLOR])
                                                        else:
                                                                utils.pickFragmentation(iPlayer, iIndependent, iIndependent2, -1, [COLOR="Red"]False[/COLOR])

Change both False values (marked with red - scroll to right in order to see them) to True - but I haven't tried this myself and there could be unforeseen results.

To make the other causes for AI collapse also be fragmentation (not kill) you do the same thing on lines #1087, #1108 and #1153 in the RiseAndFall.py file.

 

[xekaltsotos]

Great! Thanks for the answers, I will try your suggestions later today.

 

[Baldyr]

I do however believe that making AI Civs fragment instead of die causes them to collapse all over again in some number of turns because of losing too many cities. I have no idea how this will play out in practice... (Will the second one kill it off automatically, or would that be situational?)

These things can of course be fixed, but one has to figure out what the issues are before they can be addressed.

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

I know how to solve the second collapse. Give them stability points after they enter civil war - just some temporary ones so they can actually survive OK enough.

 

[Baldyr]

No, that won't do. The second collapse would be due to losing too many cities. The rule is that if an AI loses half or more of its total cities within some number of game turns they will automatically collapse.

But the first collapse would, just as you say, have to be compensated with stability points. Otherwise we might be looking at a third collapse down the road. (Even if the stability collapse thing is a bit quirky as it will only affect one Civ per 40 game turns. So all others would have a free pass.)

I didn't propose a full mod-mod or anything, but rather answered the question in the OP. There will be unforeseen results with any such modding.

 

[Honko]

Hi,

I've tried to do something that is kind of like what you suggested. I changed secessions so if your stability level is "Collapsing" and Nationalism has been discovered, a chunk of 1-4 unstable cities (capped at 1/3 of your empire) secedes together into one Independent group. I also changed the stability threshold for civil war from -40 to -50 so there's more chance for this to happen before a civ collapses. It's a bit more complicated but that's the general idea.

I still have some more tweaks to do (like making it more likely for the chunk of cities be near each other, instead of 4 cities on different edges of the empire), but at least it works, and it makes the game more interesting I think. I'll post the code when I'm done with it if you want.

 

[Baldyr]

Hi,

I've tried to do something that is kind of like what you suggested. I changed secessions so if your stability level is "Collapsing" and Nationalism has been discovered, a chunk of 1-4 unstable cities (capped at 1/3 of your empire) secedes together into one Independent group. I also changed the stability threshold for civil war from -40 to -50 so there's more chance for this to happen before a civ collapses. It's a bit more complicated but that's the general idea.

I still have some more tweaks to do (like making it more likely for the chunk of cities be near each other, instead of 4 cities on different edges of the empire), but at least it works, and it makes the game more interesting I think. I'll post the code when I'm done with it if you want.

This is actually an interesting idea. I myself made several changes to secessions but it never occurred to me to make clusters of cities defect at once - to the same minor Civ.

This almost makes me think about a third form av disintegration of unstable empires: fragmentation. So before a "collapse" there would be individual cities lost to secessions and chunks of the empire fragmenting off. It almost makes it unnecessary for AI Civs to collapse into civil war, since the death of the Civ will represent the collapse of central government.

 

[nody]

The most important ones: Persia, India and China often suvive until the middle ages, but there are always re-spawns...


@ Baldyr: EDIT: I guess she's only hot with make-up...

 

[Baldyr]

@ nody

Spoiler :

@ Baldyr: EDIT: I guess she's only hot with make-up...

Actually, I don't think that's of any importance. But she isn't a very vain person so she will regularly appear without makeup, wearing huge glasses and whatnot. So I don't think she cares either...

Also, she has a habit of making faces at cameras. Its not very flattering, but typical of Lena.

 

[nody]

@ Baldyr: She is pretty cute, nonetheless, for a German chick.

 

[Baldyr]

@nody

Spoiler :

@ Baldyr: She is pretty cute, nonetheless, for a German chick.

I'm glad you approve.

 

[civ_king]

@ Baldyr: She is pretty cute, nonetheless, for a German chick.

That seems either rasist* or reactionary

*(I'm intentional spelling it that way)

 

[nody]

That seems either rasist* or reactionary

*(I'm intentional spelling it that way)

It's only playfully nationalistic, me being Dutch and Germans are generally not concidered very cute or cuddly people. I guess it's a part of my 'heritage' to think that way...

I guess it's the same how Chinese and Korean people look upon the Japanese???

Ironically, I find Japanese women among the cutest in the world. Sigh... I'm sorry about my off topic rants... I think it's because I'm a horny hermit.

 

[civ_king]

I say reactionary because for some reason people basically think blond hair makes you sexier, I never understood that

 

[nody]

I say reactionary because for some reason people basically think blond hair makes you sexier, I never understood that

I understand that's the case in certain countries where natural blonde hair doesn't occur much, like Arab or East and South-Asian countries.
In my case I find women with dark hair and fair skin very sexy (like Lena!), blonds not so much. Maybe that's because I'm blond myself.

BTW, blond hair in Germany is very common.

 

[LuKo]

Here, in Poland, German women are considered as (probably) ugliest in the whole world. And not because of hair colour ("Helga" is colloquial term for fat and ugly woman). Probably it's connected with nationalism but can't forget my friend talking about German porn... and a guy with putty knife...

Never heard that German men are ugly, though.

 

[civ_king]

Here, in Poland, German women are considered as (probably) ugliest in the whole world. And not because of hair colour ("Helga" is colloquial term for fat and ugly woman). Probably it's connected with nationalism but can't forget my friend talking about German porn... and a guy with putty knife...

Never heard that German men are ugly, though.

I've always wondered, do Poles hate the USSR or the Third Reich more?

 

[nody]

I think Poland, like the Netherlands, France and several other countries have had reasons not to like Germans. 'They' seem to have been a little 'naughty' 70 years ago, IIRC.

But I think that's no good reason anymore if you are born past 1950, which most people are.

Poland has had a less fortunate 20th century than Western Europe, because of the Soviet oppression, of course. So they are allowed to be angry a little longer, I guess.