Stalker0's State of the Mod - 1/11/2022

[azum4roll]

Land garrison has 1/2 of its CS added to the city CS. Naval garrison adds 1/4 if there's no land garrison present.

I've never noticed ships not soaking damage as a garrison. Maybe their CS combined with an unwalled city is just so low they get killed instantly with the city?

 

[wabab]

Most of what I see how garrison works now is intended by Gazebo and it works well.

Eh, I think it underpowers naval civs [edit: naval military focused civs, not naval civs in general], except perhaps on certain map types. Positioning your coastal cities well eliminates most of the risk, and since sea tiles have diminishing returns compared to land tiles (can't put improvements on sea tiles, most strategic resources are land based, can't build certain wonders without certain land tiles, among other things), there's little incentive to go with tile ratio skewed towards to non-land tiles.

Which is weird, since historically countries with strong navies tended to be dominant ones (and in later eras even more so).

 

[Closed Sky]

I see no problem with naval civs, they are widely known both as one of the strongest for humans and in AI performance alike, especially Carthage, the Netherlands, Portugal, Polynesia.

Sea resource start is probably the strongest start available for most civs with brutal monopolies like +2 science, +10% science or +2 faith,, all with at least one culture/science for improving the tile, or obscene amount of production for crabs, and great pantheon. Early game bonuses pays a lot of dividend so is balanced against more tiles available to landlocked cities much later.

 

[wabab]

I see no problem with naval civs, they are widely known both as one of the strongest for humans and in AI performance alike, especially Carthage, the Netherlands, Portugal, Polynesia.

Sea resource start is probably the strongest start available for most civs with brutal monopolies like +2 science, +10% science or +2 culture and great pantheon. Early game bonuses pays a lot of dividend so is balanced against more tiles available to landlocked cities much later.

Oh, I should edit that to read naval military focused civs, not naval civs in general.

 

[Closed Sky]

Oh, I should edit that to read naval military focused civs, not naval civs in general.

I think there only one such civ, England. And it suffers from its design along with weak spies as of now.

 

[Fluffball]

I'm not sold on melee ships being unable to capture cities from a quality of life perspective alone. And because i see no real benefit from such a change and no real issues with the way it works now.

What i do find odd is the inability of ranged units to fire when stationed in a city. Yes it does provide a benefit of having two ranged units defending a city but i feel that is balanced by the fact coastal cities are generally much more vulnerable and when this change occured they became even more vulnerable. This was compunded further with the change where land units could only fire on coastal tiles which made having a mixed continental/naval empire much more difficult and in a way more boring, especially in the early to mid game it is not really feasible to field both a decent land army needed to protect your empire from land and a decent navy to fight off naval threats from the sea and therefore reinforced my rule of thumb of not bothering with a navy until corvets and frigates.

Before those two changes it was possible to have a mixed naval and land force and use the navy to support the land army, now you have to pretty much rely on your land army to defend on land so you can at best field a very small navy and a small navy is worse than no navy as it still costs resources to build yet will just get annihilated as it will have not be big enough to fight an AI navy.

I assume this change has something to do with the change to ships not adding defense/CS to a city as probably the simplest way to do that would be to give any ships in a city zero combat ability and thus combat score and therefore may simply be game vs real world issue where gameplay won out.

 

[AndreyK]

I'm not sold on melee ships being unable to capture cities from a quality of life perspective alone. And because i see no real benefit from such a change and no real issues with the way it works now.

What i do find odd is the inability of ranged units to fire when stationed in a city. Yes it does provide a benefit of having two ranged units defending a city but i feel that is balanced by the fact coastal cities are generally much more vulnerable and when this change occured they became even more vulnerable. This was compunded further with the change where land units could only fire on coastal tiles which made having a mixed continental/naval empire much more difficult and in a way more boring, especially in the early to mid game it is not really feasible to field both a decent land army needed to protect your empire from land and a decent navy to fight off naval threats from the sea and therefore reinforced my rule of thumb of not bothering with a navy until corvets and frigates.

Before those two changes it was possible to have a mixed naval and land force and use the navy to support the land army, now you have to pretty much rely on your land army to defend on land so you can at best field a very small navy and a small navy is worse than no navy as it still costs resources to build yet will just get annihilated as it will have not be big enough to fight an AI navy.

I assume this change has something to do with the change to ships not adding defense/CS to a city as probably the simplest way to do that would be to give any ships in a city zero combat ability and thus combat score and therefore may simply be game vs real world issue where gameplay won out.

Also I find it strange that naval melee units can't attack from city, I believe that naval units both range and melee should be able to attack from city.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, it'd make the rules more consistent, which is a plus

 

[wabab]

Also I find it strange that naval melee units can't attack from city, I believe that naval units both range and melee should be able to attack from city.

Naval units not being able to heal outside friendly territory is another inconsistency that I find puts them at a disadvantage vs. having a land unit army.

I think the core issue here though is simply that early game naval units are too weak/inefficient at taking cities compared to land units, and since early game behavior tends to have strong ripple effects, naval units tend to be undervalued (and underpowered) throughout the entire game.

 

[Fluffball]

There does seem to be a general issue with the early to mid game naval game which has always been there but does seem to have gotten more pronounced with the varous changes to the usability of naval units.

Early ranged naval units in particular but also melee naval units are too weak. This used to be off set by their ability to move-fire-move which meant they could at least kite to some degree. Now it is pretty much, move-fire-die next turn as they have to end their turn next to their target and likely a bunch of land units.
This immensly tips the balance in favour of the AI as the AI can afford to lose units but the human player relies on killing more enemy units than it loses and gaining promotions to negate the AI number advantage so the player can't afford to trade units one for one.

Early naval units struggle to do damage and survive the next turn against even a city which doesn't have walls.

Early ranged naval units do insignificant damage against land units which is a huge disadvantage as the naval units are usually stuck to 1 tile of coast and therefore often can be significantly outnumbered by ranged land units with little hope of actually being able to fight them effectively. The reduced range and inability to fire inland in general only compounds this issue.

Early naval units are for the most part restricted to coastal waters which really restricts the field of combat and also forces them into danger and also means a single city can hold out against an enemy navy due to the ease of bottlenecking and even outside of combat it is too east to get bottled up as even a newly planted city without open borders can cut off access tot the outside or the ability for a ship to return home.

Early on it is extremely hard to get healing promotions on naval units so they can't heal outside of your own borders. This both makes naval warfare very slow (at a time when naval movement is very restricted anyway) as most units probably get one turn of combat before they need to withdraw to heal which combined with their general lack of power means to engage in effective naval attacks you need 3-5 times as many ships as you need in the middle to late game with many of them expected to be lost and most expected to be heavily wounded even if you succeed. This is at a point when units are very valuable in both the fact that they are relatively extremely expensive in resources to produce as well as maintain them and they use up very limited supply cap and even more valuable to the human player.


By the time you get to corvettes and frigates they can usually be produced quite cheaply with or close to having the ability to heal outside your borders, melee ships in particular can start with promotions which make them particularly tanky so they can take a number of hits before needing to withdraw and do significant damage to cities by themselves and importantly survive, while ranged units can manouver themselves into reasonably safe positions both because they can now move away from the coast to limit the ability of land defences to attack them and can attack while keeping tanky melee ships in front of them. Overall mid game ships specifically but also carrying on into late game ships spike dramatically in power to the point where reaching the next tech level of ship first means you can fight with virtual impunity. I feel this massive power spike really highlights how far behind early ships are in general power. There is a much smoother curve with land units where getting a next tech level unit is an advantage but doesn't mean they feel like gods when fighting units of the previous tech level.


All these factors and more combine to make early naval warfare unfeasible to bother with and very easy to defend against for the human player specifically and almost seems like a bit of a trap for the AI as they are inclined to waste resources on sub par units which are ineffective in like for like (AI vs AI) combat and worthless against a human player.

 

[AndreyK]

The spike is there and sometimes I think that mid and late game ships (especially melee) should be nerfed a bit.

 

[Recursive]

More generally, about late game fun and unpredicability, I also remember games where different AIs managed to team up against a runaway and take it down, while now it's maybe easier to have stable coalitions?

I also feel the AI doesn't fight it as much as before in the WC or through war. I remember some patches ago having to manage very complex sessions where travel ban and sanctions or repealing my world religion were proposed at the same time, splitting my votes.

The AI behavior in the World Congress should be more dynamic in the next version. I've added new diplomacy modifiers/mechanics relating to it.

But it does mean they will have bigger negative modifiers with you if you voted against them, which can amount to more DoWs, doesn't it? Or was it handled a different way and they will remember it only when casting their votes next sessions e.g. it wouldn't affect diplomacy outside of congress?

It does affect their behavior outside of the World Congress. Though as of next version they will remember how they voted and this will influence their attitude towards the now-sanctioned player.

 

[wabab]

It does affect their behavior outside of the World Congress. Though as of next version they will remember how they voted and this will influence their attitude towards the now-sanctioned player.

Can the AI factor their voting behavior for things like Global Peace Accords/Casus Belli? With GPA active (especially if it's the first thing enacted), the diplomacy penalties from warmongering reach like -2500 with some civs, and -800 or so with ones that tolerate it. So if an AI voted against it, then the diplo penalty with them should be lessened (and decay more quickly). Vice versa for enacting CB as well.

On a separate note, sanctions (as well as war) are the only ways to prevent any trading with other civs, but that applies to all civilizations. I always found it weird that if you encounter a far, far away civ, you can some trade with them (not trade routes, but GPT, luxuries, etc.). Maybe there should be some type of mechanic (like having a trade route active or something) so you can't trade with civs if another one is blocking it. Like, for example, naval blockades perhaps? Not sure how that would (or could) be implemented, but that could help solve the whole naval military power imbalance.

 

[Recursive]

Can the AI factor their voting behavior for things like Global Peace Accords/Casus Belli? With GPA active (especially if it's the first thing enacted), the diplomacy penalties from warmongering reach like -2500 with some civs, and -800 or so with ones that tolerate it. So if an AI voted against it, then the diplo penalty with them should be lessened (and decay more quickly). Vice versa for enacting CB as well.

In that case the diplo effect is actually part of the resolution (not incidental to it) and also affects anti-warmonger fervor which is balance-related, so I don't plan on adding this.

 

[youngsteve]

I have always wondered why sanctioned countries cannot trade & do deals with each other, as they would hardly care what the rest of the world think or abide by their rules. You can sometimes have nearly all the civs sanctioned.

 

[Stalker0]

I have always wondered why sanctioned countries cannot trade & do deals with each other, as they would hardly care what the rest of the world think or abide by their rules. You can sometimes have nearly all the civs sanctioned.

A key to me is that the World Congress in Civ 5 is flat out stronger than the real world UN. This isn't an organization that maintains some "influential pressure", their mandates can literally enforce rules across multiple civs. The problem with letting a civ ignore a restriction of a resolution is now you have to ask why they can't ignore other restrictions. Why does banning a lux make it illegal for me, I don't care. Sure you can say I can't build nukes....I'm still going to build them, etc etc.

 

[youngsteve]

A key to me is that the World Congress in Civ 5 is flat out stronger than the real world UN. This isn't an organization that maintains some "influential pressure", their mandates can literally enforce rules across multiple civs. The problem with letting a civ ignore a restriction of a resolution is now you have to ask why they can't ignore other restrictions. Why does banning a lux make it illegal for me, I don't care. Sure you can say I can't build nukes....I'm still going to build them, etc etc.

I can see what you are saying, but it does get silly sometimes. One game, all the civs, including me, were sanctioned with the exception of Morocco who was controlling the WC. Didn't do them much good though, as they couldn't trade with anyone, & might as well have been sanctioned as well.

 

[Grassland Farm]

3. Warfare is weird in Civ 5, you start with a very low military supply cap and early battles are usually the most fun. At some point though, the sheer amount of units makes war a boring task of chipping away at enough enemy units while not particularly caring about positioning or tactical placement. While a lowered supply cap is part of this solution, having artillery units (or range units as well) deal splash damage by default would help. I'd also consider having later game ranged units be capable of an overwatch mechanic, similar to air units ability to intercept. In any event, units seem to die too quickly to earn enough promotions to be valuable, or have too many promotions and be unstoppable. Some type of forced retreat ability, or an ability that Naval warfare and city sieges always felt strange, because you can usually capture cities but are defenseless at holding them. An unintended effect of this is that it's a great way to raze cities—every time you capture a city, you can move your melee naval unit out, have the city be recaptured (lowering its population), then recapture it again (further lowering the population), etc. until you can raze it in a turn or two. Either naval units and land units need to be merged somehow or allow them to switch between different unit types.

I wholeheartedly recommend you: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...arate-naval-supply-simplified-warfare.674584/

 

[Fluffball]

A key to me is that the World Congress in Civ 5 is flat out stronger than the real world UN. This isn't an organization that maintains some "influential pressure", their mandates can literally enforce rules across multiple civs. The problem with letting a civ ignore a restriction of a resolution is now you have to ask why they can't ignore other restrictions. Why does banning a lux make it illegal for me, I don't care. Sure you can say I can't build nukes....I'm still going to build them, etc etc.

Random thought that just popped into my head, maybe it would be interesting if you could ignore a resolution but it would allow any civ to DOW you without penalty. They would get no warmonger hate and at least a significant reduction in war weariness.

This would likely require a complete rewrite of the world congress/diplomacy/warring system though and would much be easier to implement with certain resolutions than others so the current system probably strikes a good balance between gameplay, utility and reality.

 

[Amask]

In Civ IV you could defy resolutions and get a happiness hit from it.