Suggestions and Requests

[Leoreth]

Huge post incoming and it's already been a long day, if I am or have been terse please don't take it the wrong way, I'm just trying to reply to everything so I can't type long paragraphs for every single point, especially when ~50 bullet points with follow up questions get dropped on me.

How is that proof that horses were a large part of Indian society or warfare? Did the Indo-Aryans use horses? Most likely. Did the Vedic society that was built in the Gangetic plains continue to use horses? No. This is quite plain and simple. Besides, with the exception of archery and transportation, it is curious what chariots would have been used for to begin with. If you still don't believe me on horses becoming a mainstay in North Indian warfare with the coming of the Delhi Sultanate, I'll provide you a source. But I think it should be pretty obvious that horses disappeared as the Indo-Aryans integrated into India.

I think you are mistaken about the sort of conversation we are having. I am not questioning your assertions or sources, and frankly I don't appreciate your rhetorical flourishes in this context.

My points are as follows. India should have access to chariots. Chariots require horses. So there are horses in India. It's very simple really.

That's fine, and I'm glad to hear that it will be first on the list. As I said, the Kushans would make a great Civ. Why is Tibet easier than a Central Asian civ?

Agreed about the Kushans. Tibet was easy for a couple of reasons, but mainly it's that they are small and live in an area of the world where they do not get in anyone's way. Also I had a design for their game experience and UHV etc. already on hand when I started with them.

A Turkic civ is much harder to. There are tons of open questions about this, e.g. when they should start, what historical polities they should represent, what their gameplay should be like, how to get the AI to behave as expected for such a civ and so on. We had an entire thread on this subject with double digit pages, you can look it up. That thread actually helped me solidify my thoughts about how they would work, but that was long after Tibet was on the table, and even now there are a lot of open questions.

You like to bring up SoI for compare and contrast but this is a case of contrast. SoI implements civs as polities, DoC doesn't. Both mods have different scopes and degrees of granularity so we cannot simply port over one's approach to game design and historical modeling to the other.

I also don't like arguments like "why is X in the game but not Y when Y was clearly more important?". First of all, often it's arguable what actually is more important. But furthermore that's not the only relevant concern. And it carries the implication that I'm wasting my time or purposely make wrong choices out of historical favoritism or something.

That's fine, don't change the name then, but remove Shanghai. It only makes sense from 1900 onward. For the vast majority of Chinese history it makes no sense. Replace it with Suzhou.

Inertia rule.

I'm not blaming you, lol. I know that are BtS UU. But you can easily change it, especially with SoI having so many rich pickings.

I can easily do many other things as well. I can also only do one thing at a time. Currently I am doing different things.

I don't understand what you mean? What do you not agree with? Currently its silly that Daoism can come out of another civilization, when it is so tied to 100 Schools of Thought period of China's Warring States period. Legalism, Confucianism and Daoism were all competing schools of thought. Having Buddhism as a direct link for Hinduism, means that Daoism being a link off of Confucianism makes just as much sense.

Islam and Hinduism are competing schools of thought in India, what's your point?

I'm again talking about 600AD. Why is Venice a city-state in 600AD? At least have Aquelia if you really want a city there, otherwise Milan makes more sense.

Who cares about Aquileia past 600 AD? Venice is an important city in medieval and Renaissance Europe, so it's on the map.

I said what the point is. So that you can trade, without having a potential enemy use your borders to expand. Doesn't it make sense? Its in the Sengoku mod if you need the code. This way you can trade with civs, without having to give up territorial access. Makes diplomacy a bit more interesting.

How does it make diplomacy more interesting when I get more trade without having to give anything up?

Not sure if you are mixing up points here... but I never said they were the same city. Not sure what you are disagreeing here.

You asked me to rename Toledo to Madrid although they are different cities.

The later start date would give more time for the Cordobans to flourish, and it just makes plain historical sense. Why do the Spanish start so early, when they don't need to. This seems to be a carry over from RFC vanilla.

It's the foundation date of the Kingdom of Asturias. Time compression and inertia rule.

Again I'm not sure if you are mixing up points here (or maybe I am... ), but I'm saying that Jerusalem should not be the holy city for Orthodoxy, Constantinople should be.

Orthodoxy is the first Christian denomination, so until the Schism happens they are representative of all of Christianity.

Constantinople isn't really relevant as a pilgrimage site for Orthodox Christians and wasn't even while it was under Orthodox control during the Byzantine Empire, especially not compared to Rome's role in Catholicism.

The importance of Constantinople in Orthodoxy was a direct consequence of being the seat and capital of the most powerful secular Orthodox ruler, i.e. the Orthodox emperor. That is what my capital comment was getting at.

Again, just because something is the best way to model something in SoI does not mean it's the best way to do it in another mod with a different scope. I know you didn't mention SoI but we all know what you were thinking.

Also you seem to have only replied to some points here. Can I expect to get answers for the others?

What do you expect for an answer? Most of these points were a laundry list of things that could reasonably be changed phrased in a way that sounds like accusing me why they are not changed yet.

The answer is maybe, I don't know, I'll have to think about it but haven't yet, and when I agree I don't know when I'm done with the more important things to get to it.

Sometimes the answer is just acknowledgement.

Considering that the Khitan are Mongol/Manchu, I don't see a problem with this. Especially since so much of Abaoji's reforms in creating the Liao Empire were adopted by later Eastern Steppe peoples. But frankly it doesn't make much of a difference.

Afaik you cannot just equate Mongols and Manchu the way you're doing here.

You are right, China has historically been far more united than South Asia, but China has always had a divide between North (Yellow river and North) and South (Yangtzi and South) China. Most of the time for sure they should be connected. But just like in the 600AD start, there should be no problem with conquering Northern/Southern China, to unite the country. That being said, I'm just calling for a Khitan-Liao/Jurchen-Jin/'Manchu'-Qing type civilization to challenge the control of Northern China.

That's still only something that is relevant during the Song period, so it's not really addressing the core problem in Chinese unity.

What do you disagree with in particular? I can't see why you would be against more flavour. I've already listed quite a few problems with your civic choices, all of which could make a lot more sense if there were a few different civic types for different civilizational clusters.

See below.

If a Central Asian and Inner Asian civ is eventually added, Central Asia should get a due-over, with camels

But realistically speaking, both regions could use a bit more greenery in some areas.

When a civ is meant to live there, I will revisit the area to facilitate that, yes.

Spoiler :

10) Why doesn't Egypt have a proper spawn back like Iran does? Fatimid/Ayyubid/Mameluke Egypt would make a perfect "come back" civ. In fact its strange that "Saladin" (Should be named Salah ad-Din), is the faction leader for "Arabia". Arabia should stop existing after the end of the Abbasids in Baghdad, circa 1258. Salah ad-Din would be the perfect respawn leader for the Egyptians. Again, I could write about this for quite some time, so if you want more detailed ideas, let me know.

11) Why do the Mongols start with Bombards? Shouldn't they start with Trebuchets, weapons which they actually used in sieges, not canon. Just make them start with slightly more trebuchet than they do now with canons.

12) Again... Why do the Mongols start with Slavery, when their obvious go-to would be Tribalism. I understand that there were slaves in the Mongol Empire, but they are not the Ancient Greek/Roman type slave economies.

13) Why does Shenyang become Mukden when the Mongols flip the city? Like I'm seriously asking why, I don't understand why they called it "Mukden".

14) Why do the Mongols start off as the "Chagatai Khanate", seems rather anachronistic, especially as you are building the very Mongol Empire, that the Chagatai would later peal themselves away from.

10) Because it's work to do it, and because I hate the way Iran is implemented and I don't want to repeat it. (Hint: the answer to "why is not X" is always "because I haven't done it" to which the reason is that my time is limited and I had other things to do that are more important. And yes I know what you want to port over from SoI I've played that mod myself.)
11) They need to be able to conquer China. That's more important in the big picture.
12) Again, it's quite condescending when you start your sentences with "again".
13) Mukden is the Manchu name for Shenyang.
14) If that's the case it's unintentional.

Well this would require quite a bit of work, but the pay-off would be huge. You could have:

Cluster 1: Japan, Korea, Mongolia, China

Cluster 2: Iran, Arabs, Egyptians, Turks, Cordobans

Cluster 3: Europeans, late North Americans and late Latin Americans

Cluster 4: New World Civs

And you would have civics that align with them. You could cut down on how many civics there are in each branch, but at the end of the day you could have a lot of special features to each civic, which would deepen gameplay.

Just speaking out of my head now, imagine an Empire civ, for China (and later Japan and Korea), that gives extra stability). Or a Exploration civic, which allows settlers to be produced faster for the "Europeans". I mean the opportunities here are endless. If you want I could come up with a mock list of civics for one group. Ideally though, I'd like to know if this would be possible to begin with.

Your particular examples don't sound very evocative if that's the best you can come up with. I assume you haven't thought about it much beyond the initial idea of having culture specific civics, which is fine. Many of my ideas start out like this as well. But it means that you haven't gotten to the part where you need to make all of this actually work yet. Also, don't give things generic names like "Empire" and then accuse others of not understanding the nuances of the term you intended but never communicated.

But I don't agree with your general goal here. I don't think gameplay is deepened when say China can adopt the "Chinese civic" (whatever it would be), because then as China you would probably go ahead and choose the Chinese civic. That's not interesting gameplay because it's not a decision but a foregone conclusion.

The civic system, like units and buildings, should be broad enough to be applicable for all civilizations and eras. The overall game situation and favorable strategy for a civ should align in such a way that the most historically appropriate civics are also the most advantageous. That is what I consider good design, because historicity arises out of context, not of specifically prepared historically "right" choices you are railroaded into.

Does the mod always achieve that and are there no edge cases where the civic system makes no sense? No, but I never claimed the civic system to be perfect or complete. That doesn't mean we should take easy shortcuts that might make things more complicated but not necessarily more interesting.

I highly doubt Leoreth will implement something like this though, considering his track record with civics suggestions...

Also I put a lot of work into creating a civics roster that makes some sort of sense for everyone in my modmod, and it's still far from perfect. Adding unique civics for this or that civ can only make the whole mess even more complicated.

And what exactly is my track record with civics suggestions?

It's easy to bring up edge cases where a system does not work. But fixing the edge cases without disturbing the rest of the system is easier said than done. It's great that you brought up your modmod, because I encourage everyone to take a look into its development thread to see how hard this problem is to figure out even for someone who has declared it his top priority.

For me, it's not top priority, and you came to me with a list of edge cases right after I got a rather wonky system to a state I was somewhat happy with and that I did not want to risk to destroy again. Frankly I take offense at your constant implications that I am being unreasonable in response to your concerns when I think I did engage in discussion with you on the subject to quite an extensive degree. It's not going to make me drop whatever else I am doing just because it's not the one only thing you think is important.

And here I thought your own experiences when stumbling through the issues with messing with this system had taught you some humility in that regard, oh well.

Leoreth, do you have any ideas about how to better represent the internal chinese struggles over the years given that you want no more chinese civs?

Yes! Get the system to a place where internal conflict can be adequately modeled

I can go about it two ways, either take the easy route and work with what the game currently allows (like spawning barbarians etc.) or expand the system to model things in a better way. I've chosen to skip the former and get to the latter as quickly as possible.

The long term solution over the horizon is a civil war mechanic. Which has been suggested and logged by our fearless leader.

That mechanic will come when a major system, such civ slots, is revissited. Do not expect that any time soon. (Though We can only hope that 1.15 may bring some steps in that direction)

Thanks for quoting me on that, this saves me the effort of retyping all of it in another lengthy paragraph. 1.14 already brought us very close. I may be too optimistic here but maybe it's not that much work to free up slots anymore.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

And what exactly is my track record with civics suggestions?

It's easy to bring up edge cases where a system does not work. But fixing the edge cases without disturbing the rest of the system is easier said than done. It's great that you brought up your modmod, because I encourage everyone to take a look into its development thread to see how hard this problem is to figure out even for someone who has declared it his top priority.

For me, it's not top priority, and you came to me with a list of edge cases right after I got a rather wonky system to a state I was somewhat happy with and that I did not want to risk to destroy again. Frankly I take offense at your constant implications that I am being unreasonable in response to your concerns when I think I did engage in discussion with you on the subject to quite an extensive degree. It's not going to make me drop whatever else I am doing just because it's not the one only thing you think is important.

And here I thought your own experiences when stumbling through the issues with messing with this system had taught you some humility in that regard, oh well.

You are not willing or able to listen to rational arguments, that's your track record with civics suggestions.

Edge cases where the system doesn't work can be found in my roster. In yours they make up half of it.

I don't see why I should be humble when I am right and you are wrong, and I specifically fixed what you got wrong.

 

[Leoreth]

Well the difference between us is that I don't get on your case about how I think your civic system is terrible in many ways, or disingenuously claim you're being unwilling to listen or talk. Sorry for even expecting you to reply to this in an adult manner.

What I am getting on your case about is that your snide remarks are misplaced and inappropriate and I'm telling you to lay it off.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I have big, big beef with civil war for a couple reasons that I've beaten like a dead horse over and over and over again with:

1) Gameplay mechanics that force arbitrary punishments instead of punishing players for poor choices are never something I can really get behind. If civil war arises as a part of say, ending a war on an unfavorable peace deal or losing access to a resource because of incompetence, sure, yeah, let's do it. Civil war for the sake of historicity? Well historicity in and of itself is not a reason, these things have a cause and effect. If you just want the effect, what is the point?

2) Civil wars are too scoped in for the scope of the mod. I think it works better in Paradox titles, where a) they occur because you messed up, got too many Bad Boy Points or something, and b) it's real time and you can actually immerse yourself in the situation, living in the moment as opposed to turn based, which has a more detached approach to war. It's actually a weighted decision involved. Don't snatch too many provinces. You generally have a limit. Or you can be a little greedy and take more if you're confident you can deal with the consequences.

3) When I suggest enemy units spawning on territory during a respawn, it is a direct effect that comes out of occupying foreign territory. It is meant to be manageable but it isn't a "lol, scripted screw just cause". Same for dealing with conquerors. All the suggestions I've heard about civil wars have just been "let's add civil wars". I've heard next to nothing about what you can do to get out of it.

4) To be honest. And I really want a show of hands here.
Who has fun when on the receiving end of a troop leak?
Who has fun getting their city snatched in Congress as a little or newborn civ?
Who has fun getting hit by a Blue Shell in Mario Kart after leading the game by two laps and then dropping to 4th place?

I want to legitimately hear if anyone would have fun being on the receiving end of an arbitrary civil war.

 

[ezzlar]

If civil war is something that only happens when you mess up, bad turns into worse. We already have the stability mechanic to handle and punish that.

Conflicts not only happen because of bad times. Disputes over economic gains, fights of the throne, regionalism etc are not at all captured by the stability mechanic.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

If civil war is something that only happens when you mess up, bad turns into worse. We already have the stability mechanic to handle and punish that.

Conflicts not only happen because of bad times. Disputes over economic gains, fights of the throne, regionalism etc are not at all captured by the stability mechanic.

If the stability system is not already an abstraction of civil discontent and turmoil, why do we need civil war at all?
Regionalism is also in my opinion, something that doesn't fit with the global scope of the mod. That's precisely why regional events are covered by Quests & Events.
We have events like slave revolts and power struggles represented through events and imo, they are quite adequate if maybe needing to pop up with more frequency.
Sometimes a text-based representation is a more powerful and adequate one than the ones we can see out on the world map.
They are also generally less of an obscene gesture towards the player and respectful in the fact that even negative ones can be worked past and they aren't game-ending.

And again, would you honestly enjoy having your game ended by a civil war?

 

[ozqar]

I have a very quick point on civil wars, and what might be an easy solution. I'm thinking of the American one as example. What could trigger these events would events such as "our southern cities want to implement the Slavery civic - they will revolt if we don't agree"
Then, you can either change to Slavery or have the Southern cities produce hostile units (yeah, barbarians, why not?) and stop all production and trade income from those regions.

Other similar demands could be "Warlords in X city demand we change move our capital there", "Religious leaders in X city demand we adopt Y religion", and even "Citizens demand we increase our investment in culture and/or science" - of course, if the player agrees they would be able to change back for a certain number of turns.

Every civil war happened for different reasons, which is why each one would have a different demand (or combination).

As for what triggers them, I'd be happy if there was a random component to that, if they were restricted to a certain time period (a certain amount of turns), and perhaps if they were subject to specific conditions in the game (ie: the player is running a certain civic, there's war, etc). Occupying foreign territory, happiness, and the economy should make them more likely - so they could also be tied to the stability system.

Just my two cents.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I have a very quick point on civil wars, and what might be an easy solution. I'm thinking of the American one as example. What could trigger these events would events such as "our southern cities want to implement the Slavery civic - they will revolt if we don't agree"
Then, you can either change to Slavery or have the Southern cities produce hostile units (yeah, barbarians, why not?) and stop all production and trade income from those regions.

Other similar demands could be "Warlords in X city demand we change move our capital there", "Religious leaders in X city demand we adopt Y religion", and even "Citizens demand we increase our investment in culture and/or science" - of course, if the player agrees they would be able to change back for a certain number of turns.

Every civil war happened for different reasons, which is why each one would have a different demand (or combination).

As for what triggers them, I'd be happy if there was a random component to that, if they were restricted to a certain time period (a certain amount of turns), and perhaps if they were subject to specific conditions in the game (ie: the player is running a certain civic, there's war, etc). Occupying foreign territory, happiness, and the economy should make them more likely - so they could also be tied to the stability system.

Just my two cents.

This...actually satisfies me to a degree.

I genuinely like the idea of a civic switch/religion based civil war mechanic.
Like some kind of (if X religion > Y religion in your cities when Y religion is state religion, then civil war has chance to occur)

One caveat for this I'd suggest is an upper limit on the number of civil wars that can occur during a civilization's lifetime.
Like 1 civil war for historically small civs and 2-3 for large civs (China, Russia, America) and Western Europeans. It'd overstay its welcome if it were more imo.

Civil wars could also be used as a mechanic for great power influence (democracy vs. communism, religious wars of influence, etc.)
America and Russia funding competing groups in Syria come to mind as an example.

That's really all I wanted to hear. A fair mechanic with player input involved.

EDIT: I do think there should be some kind of bonus for coming out of a civil war without losing territory to foreign powers though.

Also, a quick note on the Free Barb Wins topic earlier.
Ignoring the obvious factor in that in vanilla Civ4 you could FOGBUST Barbarians, as well as build the original Great Wall, I think we're forgetting the rubber here because at least in RFC and DoC, we have the perennial problem of BARBARIAN SHIPS being a near 50/50 trade, specialized Barb spawns near specific regions, as well as some civs (Aztecs, Egypt) that would die horribly in the event we remove free Barb wins for players. Think of the Aztecs, Leoreth.

 

[Leoreth]

I have big, big beef with civil war for a couple reasons that I've beaten like a dead horse over and over and over again with:

1) Gameplay mechanics that force arbitrary punishments instead of punishing players for poor choices are never something I can really get behind. If civil war arises as a part of say, ending a war on an unfavorable peace deal or losing access to a resource because of incompetence, sure, yeah, let's do it. Civil war for the sake of historicity? Well historicity in and of itself is not a reason, these things have a cause and effect. If you just want the effect, what is the point?

3) When I suggest enemy units spawning on territory during a respawn, it is a direct effect that comes out of occupying foreign territory. It is meant to be manageable but it isn't a "lol, scripted screw just cause". Same for dealing with conquerors. All the suggestions I've heard about civil wars have just been "let's add civil wars". I've heard next to nothing about what you can do to get out of it.

Don't worry, we're exactly on the same page here. I don't want to force civil wars to establish historicity.

Civil wars will be implemented as an aspect and an extension of the stability system. For example, that can mean that many effects of stability that are currently modeled by collapse to or secession of independents/barbarians would be modeled by civil wars instead. In that case, it's probably less annoying, because you can win the civil war instead of just losing your territory and/or your game.

It's probably good to give some context on how I envision civil wars: given a free slot, a copy of your civilization will spawn that shares the same modifiers etc. Additional mechanics would make sure that they are always on the same tech level and you can only be at war with both or neither of them. In some way, cities and units would be divided between civil war participants. A civil war faction wins once it establishes control over the complete core again, in which case it regains control of the remaining cities and units again. It probably also makes sense to have both collapse if neither manages to win after a number of turns.

In most ways, this would be no different than a dead civilization appearing again in the process of a (partial) collapse.

Already this would have many advantages over the current solution with independents: we wouldn't get this ahistorical picking off of independent cities the AI likes to do, similarly it's harder for the player to benefit from a collapse. Most collapse scenarios would become more interesting and interactive to the player. Many civilizations would spend less time in this collapsed to independents state.

I think civil wars and the stability system are perfect fits for each other. Civil wars make the consequences of stability more immersive and interactive. Stability provides the context, early warning and mitigatability to civil wars.

If we look at the sorts of things we want to model with civil wars, e.g. things like the Warring States Period for China, the link to stability is appropriate as well.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Okay, but seeing how you left out 4) is it safe to assume you were always the one tossing the Blue Shell?

 

[Leoreth]

(Crosspost)

I have a very quick point on civil wars, and what might be an easy solution. I'm thinking of the American one as example. What could trigger these events would events such as "our southern cities want to implement the Slavery civic - they will revolt if we don't agree"
Then, you can either change to Slavery or have the Southern cities produce hostile units (yeah, barbarians, why not?) and stop all production and trade income from those regions.

Other similar demands could be "Warlords in X city demand we change move our capital there", "Religious leaders in X city demand we adopt Y religion", and even "Citizens demand we increase our investment in culture and/or science" - of course, if the player agrees they would be able to change back for a certain number of turns.

Every civil war happened for different reasons, which is why each one would have a different demand (or combination).

As for what triggers them, I'd be happy if there was a random component to that, if they were restricted to a certain time period (a certain amount of turns), and perhaps if they were subject to specific conditions in the game (ie: the player is running a certain civic, there's war, etc). Occupying foreign territory, happiness, and the economy should make them more likely - so they could also be tied to the stability system.

Just my two cents.

A lot of this is in line with what I was thinking as well. We already have categories in the stability system. Instead of the current system of arbitrary crises that I don't like very much anyway, you could be faced with the sort of decision you describe. You would either face some undesired consequence by giving in or you have to fight out the civil war instead.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, but seeing how you left out 4) is it safe to assume you were always the one tossing the Blue Shell?

Mario Kart is better for having the blue shell. But I think I have mentioned quite a few ways in which civil wars would be context sensitive and something you can avoid, and there's the fact that it would replace current mechanisms that are imo more aggravating. It's not about arbitrary punishments or historical railroading (at least not for me, I know that a couple of comments by other posters might have sounded otherwise), so I don't think the blue shell comparison is appropriate. But I hear your concerns. How that applies depends on the details of how it's all implemented, so you'll have to trust me on getting it right

 

[ezzlar]

Nobody having a problem with eternal stable empires that the player creates by playing well? I dont think it is a fair representation of how human societies work.

Edit: I might be wrong. Sometimes during endgame I just run out of things to do...

 

[Leoreth]

Stability system?

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Nobody having a problem with eternal stable empires that the player creates by playing well? I dont think it is a fair representation of how human societies work.

Usually human societies aren't being controlled by a single person with extensive knowledge about both the history and the future of the state they rule and the ability to micromanage everything.

 

[Leoreth]

I think the point is that the purpose of the game is to create some kind of challenge and by extension fun for the player, but I think at some point a game reaches a state where it's run its course and is essentially won.

Throwing someone into a civil war might be a new challenge in this case, but I'd rather err on the TD end of the spectrum and avoid throwing players into such a situation when they would only end up being irritated by it.

Maybe we need a disaster menu like in the SimCity series where people can ruin their own empire on demand

 

[merijn_v1]

Maybe we need a disaster menu like in the SimCity series where people can ruin their own empire on demand

I feel a modmod coming.

 

[Leoreth]

Haha that would be great to have

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Pie's Ancient Europe mod has something like this, if the human player is named Apocalypto or something like that the probability of natural disasters is doubled.

 

[merijn_v1]

I was thinking of the god powers of the Gods of Old mod. But some disasters of PIE can be borrowed as well.

Also, the god powers from Age of Mythology can provide some inspiration. And possibly FFH2 too.