Suggestions and Requests

[ozqar]

Shouldn't we make it that hydro plants can only be built in cities with hill tiles with rivers?

And for solar, shouldn't the limit be that the city is within a certain range of the equator? Not a physicist, but is the effect of air humidity that big that you couldn't build one over grasslands?

Finally, and this might be for after 1.15, it would be really cool if power plants could be built as improvements (outside of cities). Then hydro plants could indeed be the replacement of water mills and so on. They could provide a "power" resource (like other things, but this has already been talked about, these power resources should only supply a certain amount of cities); fossil based power plants could simply generate an unhealthiness effect for the city nearby.

 

[need my speed]

That might not even be a bad idea? Every 'power plant improvement' automatically spawns one 'power' resource (could be invisible, like marshes were, I suppose). And every power-using building requires one (or more) 'power' resources. That way, you can get things like spamming solar plants in the Sahara, a huge power grid that is carefully led back to your main country in Europe - but a grid very vulnerable to blockades, of course; if an enemy seizes the Sinai you'd have a problem (or there might be coastal cities, I suppose).

Would this be too complex, or would this be interesting?

 

[Finbros]

In reality, not nearly all rivers support hydroelectricity, for example you couldn't build a hydro plant anywhere along the lower Mississippi or Danube rivers.

IRL it's mostly a point of necessity, as early USSR proved with all of this Volga Cascade.
Hydro plant can be built even at flat plains - but this artificial lake will require resettling hundreds of thousands of peoples and worldwide correction of maps. (Hello, Rybinsk reservoir)

If damage from hydro plants really needs to be represented, it can be done with, e.g removing one level/reset growth of cottages in banks of the rivers (sunken villages, rebuilding of infrastructure in banks of rivers) or slightly decreasing food production (e.g. -1 food for any five farms), representing farmlands that was lost under water.

 

[merijn_v1]

What about restricting the amount of hydro dams per river length. For every 10 (?) tiles of river, one city along that river can build a hydro plant. And cities must be at least 7 (?) tiles away from eachother. (counting river tiles, not the actual distance between cities) It is a simple and generic rule.

 

[Visard]

Requirement for a Hydroplant could be that the river, where the city lays, has to be connected to a mountain or lake within the city's BFC.

And we could allow workers to create artificial lakes after some late tech.
Artificial lakes could be only built on floodplains and flat grassland by river, and cannot be next to coast or another lake.

 

[Leoreth]

Well that improvement is watermill, modern watermills are small hydro plants. Hydro plant building is something major and represents a system...

I disagree, I would say modern watermills is industry that relies on the river for like cooling, waste disposal and shipping. I was thinking more in terms of an actual dam, a larger improvement that could only be built once per river.

Can we talk about UN resolutions a little? I was playing a Colombia game in 1700 AD. The English AI builds the UN in like 1870 (par for the course) and brings up the vote "Universal Civic: Egalitarianism" I was not given an option to defy, so I was forced to vote no and hope for the best. The vote passed, and I was changed (with no counterplay) into a civic that I did not want. This isn't particularly fun, IMO, and it not a reflection of how the UN works in real life.

Currently the reasoning is that only Security Council (five highest in score) civs can defy UN resolutions. But maybe that should be changed so that everyone can defy them but UNSC civs do not get any penalties from defying.

RFCE has amazingly looking high resolution icons for resources! Worth borrowing?

I don't like most of those.

Shouldn't we make it that hydro plants can only be built in cities with hill tiles with rivers?

I'd rather say next to a peak than hill, but even then what about dams like Aswan or on the Volga? They're basically in flat land.

And for solar, shouldn't the limit be that the city is within a certain range of the equator? Not a physicist, but is the effect of air humidity that big that you couldn't build one over grasslands?

There is a maximum distance from equator, but not a minimum distance to the equator. Is that what you mean?

Finally, and this might be for after 1.15, it would be really cool if power plants could be built as improvements (outside of cities). Then hydro plants could indeed be the replacement of water mills and so on. They could provide a "power" resource (like other things, but this has already been talked about, these power resources should only supply a certain amount of cities); fossil based power plants could simply generate an unhealthiness effect for the city nearby.

That might not even be a bad idea? Every 'power plant improvement' automatically spawns one 'power' resource (could be invisible, like marshes were, I suppose). And every power-using building requires one (or more) 'power' resources. That way, you can get things like spamming solar plants in the Sahara, a huge power grid that is carefully led back to your main country in Europe - but a grid very vulnerable to blockades, of course; if an enemy seizes the Sinai you'd have a problem (or there might be coastal cities, I suppose).

Would this be too complex, or would this be interesting?

I think it is interesting, but also too complicated for our current purposes. Although I did consider solar collectors as a late game improvement for desert tiles that simply provides commerce, unrelated to the city power system.

What about restricting the amount of hydro dams per river length. For every 10 (?) tiles of river, one city along that river can build a hydro plant. And cities must be at least 7 (?) tiles away from eachother. (counting river tiles, not the actual distance between cities) It is a simple and generic rule.

That could actually work. My main concern is that it's actually not that easy to determine in game if two cities (or tiles) border the same river. I tried something like that when I wanted make culture spread faster along a river but couldn't get it to work.

Requirement for a Hydroplant could be that the river, where the city lays, has to be connected to a mountain or lake within the city's BFC.

And we could allow workers to create artifical lakes after some late tech.
Artifical lakes could be only built on floodplains and flat grassland by river, and cannot be next to coast or another lake.

Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking.

 

[1SDANi]

Currently the reasoning is that only Security Council (five highest in score) civs can defy UN resolutions. But maybe that should be changed so that everyone can defy them but UNSC civs do not get any penalties from defying.

Yeah, it really makes no sense that the UNSC are the only ones to be able to defy a resolution, where IRL anyone can defy it at the risk of being warred with.

Speaking of which, when these diplomatic institutions or event based wars are waged, shouldn't the declaration not be automatic but instead a choice? I can imagine some players or AI may not want to wage war against a neighbor with a larger military and would rather simply getting a diplo penalty with the other members. Apostolic Palace, The Reformation, and United Nations all come to mind as relevant.

Is this already implemented? I haven't really used the UN too much, and AIs never defy an AP resolution. Speaking of which, why don't they? As for the Reformation, I'm pretty sure I don't pay enough attention to who has which religion to know if the measure's in place.

With Player-AI diplomacy in mind, would it be possible perhaps when Civs are overhauled some AI only single city but historically relevant independent states like the Balkan States?

I've played as the Ottomans quite a bit a few months ago and I found that it's far too easy to invade Italy. IIRC the reason the Ottomans struggled to conquer Italy was due to resistance from the various nations within the western Balkans and their diplomatic ties which brought in empires like Holy Rome and the various ones in Italy to prevent the Ottomans from further encroaching the Balkans.

 

[Tigranes]

Even after one discoveres the tech that enable to remove Jungle -- Settlers cannot settle Jungled tiles which would automatically remove this terrain feature. One has to bring workers and clear the tile before any city can be founded. Can we change this please? Every now and then would be nice to see that Solomon Island with Copper to be settled.

Also will you change Inca's 3rd goal before release? From covering Latin American jungles to no foreign colonies...

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, it really makes no sense that the UNSC are the only ones to be able to defy a resolution, where IRL anyone can defy it at the risk of being warred with.

Yeah, so the reason I initially did that was because with so many civs in the game, I wanted to limit the ability of one civ to prevent an entire resolution from being implemented. But I think the solution I have taken with the Apostolic Palace (a passed resolution is implemented for everyone but those who defied it, instead of failing completely) works a lot better.

With Player-AI diplomacy in mind, would it be possible perhaps when Civs are overhauled some AI only single city but historically relevant independent states like the Balkan States?

I've played as the Ottomans quite a bit a few months ago and I found that it's far too easy to invade Italy. IIRC the reason the Ottomans struggled to conquer Italy was due to resistance from the various nations within the western Balkans and their diplomatic ties which brought in empires like Holy Rome and the various ones in Italy to prevent the Ottomans from further encroaching the Balkans.

I think there were a number of factors that prevented the Ottomans from successfully invading Italy, including the safety of the papacy and the fact that both France and especially Spain considered Italy their sphere of influence. And Venice I guess.

I don't really want to introduce new players to the map just to fill the map with one city nations that all have proactive diplomacy and other interactions with the rest of the world but are by necessity mostly passive. Because it adds a lot of performance overhead and in my opinion busywork for the player. Instead the way to go I think is to a) with variable civ slots implemented, leave open the possibility of some of these minor polities to come into existence when the number of major civs is low and b) make interactions with independent cities more interesting. I could imagine some ways of e.g. establishing trade relations and adding them to your sphere of influence actions. This would make expansion into independents more of an active confrontation with another power, give some reward for not taking independent cities, and even enable another strategy to expand your power without risking expansion stability penalties.

Even after one discoveres the tech that enable to remove Jungle -- Settlers cannot settle Jungled tiles which would automatically remove this terrain feature. One has to bring workers and clear the tile before any city can be founded. Can we change this please? Every now and then would be nice to see that Solomon Island with Copper to be settled.

That's fair, I wonder why that still is the case. I will look into it.

Also will you change Inca's 3rd goal before release? From covering Latin American jungles to no foreign colonies...

No, not before release, but I have made a note to address it later.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Instead the way to go I think is to a) with variable civ slots implemented, leave open the possibility of some of these minor polities to come into existence when the number of major civs is low and b) make interactions with independent cities more interesting. I could imagine some ways of e.g. establishing trade relations and adding them to your sphere of influence actions. This would make expansion into independents more of an active confrontation with another power, give some reward for not taking independent cities, and even enable another strategy to expand your power without risking expansion stability penalties.

For now perhaps you could use spies to interact with Independents? In Civ5 Spies can be used to improve your relations with city states, something similar might make sense for Independents here. If you have a spy in an independent city you are not at war with you could perhaps hire mercenaries there or conduct some sort of pseudo trade mission that doesn't consume the spy?

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

Yeah, it really makes no sense that the UNSC are the only ones to be able to defy a resolution, where IRL anyone can defy it at the risk of being warred with.

can defying UN resolutions result in a war? I never experienced it and thought it only works for congresses

I've played as the Ottomans quite a bit a few months ago and I found that it's far too easy to invade Italy. IIRC the reason the Ottomans struggled to conquer Italy was due to resistance from the various nations within the western Balkans and their diplomatic ties which brought in empires like Holy Rome and the various ones in Italy to prevent the Ottomans from further encroaching the Balkans.

I don't know about the later considerations, but one the Mehmed the Conqueror intended was prevented mostly by his death which eventually led to succession issues and a small civil war in the empire (Sultan Cem issue).

But I think if he had lived more Mehmet II could conquer Rome somehow, he was very ambitious about seeing Ottomans as a successor to the Roman Empire, he even claimed the "Caesar" title, and he was also arguably a capable ruler.
Also remember at that time Spain wasn't even united yet, reconquista wasn't finished; nor there was a strong HRE (Matthias Corvinius of Hungary was at war with Habsburgs, and even captured Vienna only five years after the Mehmed II's embarkment), also Venice got defeated by Ottomans last year after a 15 year war so they were also out of equation.
I don't know about the situation of France at that time, but during the invasion of Italy only ones who could continually fight against Mehmed II in the short term were the local powers like Aragonese and Kingdom of Naples. I think this is also similar to what happens in the game too.

 

[Steb]

Yeah, so the reason I initially did that was because with so many civs in the game, I wanted to limit the ability of one civ to prevent an entire resolution from being implemented. But I think the solution I have taken with the Apostolic Palace (a passed resolution is implemented for everyone but those who defied it, instead of failing completely) works a lot better.

Agreed, this would work better. It should also perhaps be made more explicit, perhaps by labeling the choices:
-Yes
-No, but accept the results of the vote
-No, and defy the resolution even if it passes

While speaking of the UN, may I suggest that the election of the secretary general be with simple majority, rather than with the threshold as it currently is? There are often many AI players who abstain and sometimes there is effectively no UN because the election never reaches the threshold.

I also think it would be more interesting if there were 3 candidates, perhaps chosen from: 1) highest in score, 2) highest military power, 3) host of the UN. (Or second-highest in score, etc. if a player corresponds to both or all of the criteria.)

 

[1SDANi]

1) highest in score, 2) highest military power, 3) host of the UN. (Or second-highest in score, etc. if a player corresponds to both or all of the criteria.)

Other options to be considered

Best Diplo relations: Best at unifying the UN

Best Economy: Best at sustaining a military, perhaps there could be a resolution to fund peacekeeper units for all member nations that (UNSC nations pay X gold, all nations get Y free units, nonSC nations gain Diplo bonus towards SC nations)

Most cities: Best at rapid mobilization of an army

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

Something that I think should be changed about the UN is that the last civic in each column gets to be the Universal Civic. The Secretary General should also put their own civic to be voted as the Universal Civic.

Also, the Apostolic Palace leaves a lot to be desired.
Here are some ideas I have:
-Have a Crusade against a city that either owns a Christian or Jewish shrine or is a non-Catholic owning a Catholic civ's core area, where all Catholic civs donate some of their units to have the Pope civ spawn an army next to it.
-Inquisition removes non-Catholic religions, maybe renaming the preexisting resolution with that name.
-"Send mission to" (whatever city or civ), where a region within Catholicism's historical area has that religion spread.

 

[Steb]

Something that I think should be changed about the UN is that the last civic in each column gets to be the Universal Civic. The Secretary General should also put their own civic to be voted as the Universal Civic.

Maybe these resolutions should forbid specific civics (Resolution: Abolish Slavery/Caste System/Vassalage etc.; have resolutions only for the outdated or morally wrong ones) instead of forcing specific ones upon everybody. The original BTS civics had a lot of cases where the last civic was meant to be morally superior to the others. That's not really the case anymore.

 

[Ogi123]

Okay I think I found a way to circumvent economy penalty. Key is to not build cottages early, leave it at later more demanding eras and stagger they construction. Works somewhat to avoid penalty in global and digital eras. Do not adopt individualism to early.
I also do same thing with gold buildings, although I don't know if multiplier count or it's just base commerce?
Sufficient to say that I abandoned game at 1990 or thereabout, boring and exhausting gamey solution.
I really think that economy penalty should be set at 0% threshold, so you need decline in commerce to get hit by it.

 

[1SDANi]

Okay I think I found a way to circumvent economy penalty. Key is to not build cottages early, leave it at later more demanding eras and stagger they construction. Works somewhat to avoid penalty in global and digital eras. Do not adopt individualism to early.
I also do same thing with gold buildings, although I don't know if multiplier count or it's just base commerce?
Sufficient to say that I abandoned game at 1990 or thereabout, boring and exhausting gamey solution.
I really think that economy penalty should be set at 0% threshold, so you need decline in commerce to get hit by it.

Yeah this is strange, perhaps recession/depression should be based on a drop in commerce and a new Poor/Bankrupt penalty should be implemented to penalize nations below a certain percent of the world's economy, with different modifiers per nation to prevent small nations from being too penalized.

Also, being a world leader should give a Affluent stability bonus.

EDIT: To be fair though I've never collapsed from economy. Usually Vassal, Civic, and Religion stability are enough to keep myself stable.

 

[Mouthwash]

I am extremely impressed with the new civics. But perhaps tribalism would be a better fit than authority?

 

[Leoreth]

My reasoning behind removing Tribalism as a civic entirely is that it is wrong even for the earliest civilisations in the game e.g. Egypt and Babylonia. Only some civs arguably fit it at all, like the Mongols or later civs from more primitive parts of the world like Congo. But at that point other civics are available that these civs would want to take. Authority is basically a catch-all for all forms of legitimacy that rely on the personal charisma, political skills or military power of the ruler themself.

 

[mysterious_stalker]

I wonder if modding in the Camp unit from the Mongols mod from Warlords (which occasionally spawns certain types of units) to represent the nomadic "barbarians", such as the steppe nomads or all the minor tribes would be a welcome addition. It could work similarly to the barbarian spawns currently implemented, but tied to a place, while not being linked to a specific time period, as it'd just spawn units until it's killed. Perhaps that way, unsettled regions would actually be defended by the native population instead of just letting civs settle there? Maybe it's better to have it as improvement instead of unit (but I'm not sure how it would work). The area I was thinking of the most here was the Don, Volga and Dniester estuaries - historically inhabited by all sorts of nomad tribes such as the Cumans or the Pechenegs and it seems a bit odd to see Russia (and some others settling the Black Sea coast, such as Greece, sometimes Rome or Byzantium) to just occasionally lose the cities they settle there to spawns, while essentially, they're in a foreign territory and I think they should have a bit more issues conquering it. Additionally, there's the Baltic pagans, the Sorbians, etc.
I'm aware there could be problems with it, but it's an idea, better to throw one than not to do so