Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
:Commodore Perry intensifies:
Yes, there is.
Any plans for introducing this feature into the regular game without having to open the Worldbuilder similar to stability maps?
Suggestions and Requests
- Thread starter Leoreth
- Start date
Any plans for introducing this feature into the regular game without having to open the Worldbuilder similar to stability maps?
#2. there's no scripting required here - just adjustment of the stability map. I find it baffling that controlling Byzantine Carthage, the very place that saved the Empire's ass in the 600s, produces instability, whereas conquering the Moorish capital of Cordoba (an area Constantinople controlled for the briefest amount of time following the collapse of the WRE and with no more than a tiny military presence) and developing it to a 20 pop city is a-ok
#3 you're right. however, allow me to explain my reasoning a bit. It's not just to "represent" something, and it can be made to impact not just the flavor of a Byzantine game.
The current start with the Moors is not so much a 'conquest' of Visigothic Spain, as it is a settlement and development project, pending the Spanish spawn and counterattack.
Now imagine those Barbarian (Visigothic) units, after taking out whatever the Byzantines have on the coast (can be 1-pop cities that they auto-raze, can be just a bunch of low-health units trapped there, whatever) are told to stay near the Spanish spawn. Once the Moors spawn in southern Hispania, they have of course the option of sitting tight and just developing Cordoba. However, if they do so, those Barbarian swordsmen will flip to the Spanish upon their spawn, making them all that much stronger - and it makes sense, when you think about it. If the Moors had simply sat in southern Spain doing nothing after killing the Visigothic King, eventually the new Spanish polity that was bound to form to the north would be that much more powerful, on account of not having been previously conquered.
In the above scenario though, the Moorish A.I. will attack and kill the Barbs because that's what the A.I. likes to do, whereas any human playing as the Moors now has the incentive (and it's almost like a race against the clock) to actually use his military units prior to the Spanish spawn, and defeat the rest of the Visigoths before they go over to Isabela. It will feel a lot more like a Conquest of Spain
#4 that's a shame, the current system of Arabic spawn is pretty bad.
#8 Great.
on a related note to #8, I just noticed that the Spanish, at a certain point, get an extra spawn of units and an automatic Declaration of War against the Moors (I was suzerain of the Moors). The Portughese offer to buy up your African colonies, and if you refuse they get a bunch of musketmen spawned near them, in order to conquer them. I believe the British have a similar event regarding India, and there are probably many others as well.
The Viking civ OTOH is incredibly, incredibly passive, and never does something more spectacular than consistently settling Dublin and now and then taking Hamburg. Wouldn't it make more sense, instead of having the units mentioned at #8 be Barbarian, for them to belong to Ragnar? Maybe get an event after beating them back once or twice that enforces peace and gives the Byzantines a couple of Varangian infantry units in exchange for a sum of gold?
Lastly, I'd like to once again thank you for an awesome mod.
citizenofdoom
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2017
- Messages
- 360
i have a 400 millions people city :3 - Luoyang - Chinese Classical Republic The Population System is Wrong.
how is adjusting the stability map scripting ?
Didn't want to address that particular aspect, but Byzantine history is 330 to 1461 of which they held Tunisia only until the 7th century, hardly the majority of their existence. In addition, it can easily be argued that Justinian's reconquest presented an overextension of the empire exactly like what the stability system is supposed to represent. This is actually one of the rare subjects where I read an entire book on (Treadgold) so I feel pretty confident in my assessment.
And again, please take a step back. You're asking the mod to represent a subject you are likely more knowledgeable/invested in in more detail than anything else. This is not how the mod works.
And again, please take a step back. You're asking the mod to represent a subject you are likely more knowledgeable/invested in in more detail than anything else. This is not how the mod works.
Fair enough.
Final thought - going the logic above, southern Spain shouldn't be part of their historical area either. (unless that was done for gameplay reasons?)
Don't worry, this most likely my last post on this subforum.
Cheers,
Bogdan
Is it? It probably shouldn't be, or represented differently once the stability map rules have been revised. Justinian's expansion is a good example for the concept of tenuous control that the current rules do not represent very well. It's something that is best fixed when the new map is introduced and we have to revise stability maps overall anyway.
That's unfortunate.
Wessel V1
Emperor
I think following this logic, it makes more sense for Greece to have more Mediterranean tiles marked as historical and not any region that Alexander conquered.
Most regions conquered by Alexander remained Greek-ruled for the few centuries that the Hellenistic period lasted, so it's appropriate that they're stable, especially considering that the "Greek civilization" is more loosely defined than many other civilizations in DoC.
It's true that there are a lot of inconsistencies in the stability maps. The new map will be a nice opportunity to even them out.
soul-breathing
Emperor
How about increase the movement of Labourer from 2 to 3? Then the labourers can work on forest or hill at the same turn, not wait till the next turn, just like the Indian worker in Vanilla BtS.
Tigranes
Armenian
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 10,414
Brazilian UU has that ability. Lets keep U in UU.
Technically the Brazilian UU has Woodsman II promotion by default, which means forests cost only 1/2 movement points to move through. While this has the same effect as what soul-breathing described giving a Labourer 3 movement would do, it functions differently and gives a different result in certain cases (ex. forested hills can be done in one turn, while normal hills will take two).
Also, the Brazilian UU has another advantage in the lump sum gold you get for chopping forest or jungles/rainforests, which goes a long way when clearing the Amazon. If the change to Labourers went through, I don't see any reason why the Brazilian UU wouldn't also get 3 movement as well.
soul-breathing
Emperor
Brazil UU only for forest and jungle, not for hill and desert.
Tigranes
Armenian
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2008
- Messages
- 10,414
Exactly. You don't want regular unit to be stronger than unique unit.
Soooo, downloaded the mod a couple days ago and I have to say I absolute adore it! Also, I was so suprised and happy to see the mod isn't dead so many years after the game came out. Many thanks Leoreth, you made something amazing!
Now that I've got that out of the way, there's a question/suggestion I have concerning vassalage. I did playthrough with the British from the 600 AD start all the way to the 21st century, which was great all and all, but I kept running into the same problem. It seems to me that the best way to reach create an empire as large as the British Empire without collasping under maintenance cost is to vassalize instead of occupying all teritories. Most civs, especially the smaller one in Africa and South-East Asia reliably capitulate if you destroy most of their units, which is nice and pretty realistic I think (The method I used was: kill a unit, check if they capitulate, kill 1 unit, etc.) The problem I run into with all of the civs I vasalized is that they become so unstable that they collapse 5-15 turns later and so you can either conquer those cities anyway or your rivals will take them. I've tried everything to stabilize them: give them res, money, techs, troops, I even fiddled with the worldbuilder to give them more trade, pop or an infinite golden age, but mostly they still collapsed.
There are two reasons why I feel this is problem. First, from a gameplay perspective it basically makes vassalization through subjugation so risky as to be almost useless. Better to conquer now than to be suprised by a collapse and having to do it all over again. And second, installing a puppet goverment is historic and gives the game an even more realistic flavour. And I guess there as an historical argument to be made for a collapse after a traumatic war and subjugation by another people would lead to a period of unstability, but on the other hand vasalization (specifically, installing a puppet goverment in the hands of locals) was so common throughout history that it seems reasonable to me that it should be a more reliable option.
Eventhough I'm not a programmer and can't do any of the heavy lifting, I do have some potential suggestions. I know some of them are more realistic than others, but while writing I got creative and suggestions don't hurt nobody I guess so there we go:
#1 Include stability bonus for vassals in one or two of the exsting civics, like vassage or tributaries. It would be nice if that civic is viable for early and late game civs so both Brits and Persians for example can use it, both of whom historically ruled through puppet rulers.
#2 Include an new Imperialism civic, that also gives a stability bonus for vassals and is more a late game civic that expansionary European civs could adopt, which also includes some other related bonuses, like the ability to get troops from vassals. (I'm just spitballing here, but you could make imperialism cause unrest after the founding of the UN and cause uprisings or unhappiness in cities, to make it less attractive, mimicing real world developments)
#3 Allow the overlord to increase stability by taking a standard action, like gift troops or money. These are a real sacrifice unlike techs. Say 1 unit would increase the stability by 1 for example (I'm not super familiar with how stability exactly works, but say +1 stab is reasonable), you can gift a couple of units, which does hurt you on the hand, but also allows you to keep your vassal alive. Seems like a fair trade.
#4 Make the exact stability of vassals more visible, so at least the overlord knows what to do, what helps and what doesn't.
Okay that's pretty long post. Let me be clear, I'm not trying to be negative, not at all, I'm probably playing DoC a lot the next couple of months and I have great admiration for everyone involved (as far as I know that's mostly Leoreth), but I thought I would just give you my two cents.
Cheers!
Now that I've got that out of the way, there's a question/suggestion I have concerning vassalage. I did playthrough with the British from the 600 AD start all the way to the 21st century, which was great all and all, but I kept running into the same problem. It seems to me that the best way to reach create an empire as large as the British Empire without collasping under maintenance cost is to vassalize instead of occupying all teritories. Most civs, especially the smaller one in Africa and South-East Asia reliably capitulate if you destroy most of their units, which is nice and pretty realistic I think (The method I used was: kill a unit, check if they capitulate, kill 1 unit, etc.) The problem I run into with all of the civs I vasalized is that they become so unstable that they collapse 5-15 turns later and so you can either conquer those cities anyway or your rivals will take them. I've tried everything to stabilize them: give them res, money, techs, troops, I even fiddled with the worldbuilder to give them more trade, pop or an infinite golden age, but mostly they still collapsed.
There are two reasons why I feel this is problem. First, from a gameplay perspective it basically makes vassalization through subjugation so risky as to be almost useless. Better to conquer now than to be suprised by a collapse and having to do it all over again. And second, installing a puppet goverment is historic and gives the game an even more realistic flavour. And I guess there as an historical argument to be made for a collapse after a traumatic war and subjugation by another people would lead to a period of unstability, but on the other hand vasalization (specifically, installing a puppet goverment in the hands of locals) was so common throughout history that it seems reasonable to me that it should be a more reliable option.
Eventhough I'm not a programmer and can't do any of the heavy lifting, I do have some potential suggestions. I know some of them are more realistic than others, but while writing I got creative and suggestions don't hurt nobody I guess so there we go:
#1 Include stability bonus for vassals in one or two of the exsting civics, like vassage or tributaries. It would be nice if that civic is viable for early and late game civs so both Brits and Persians for example can use it, both of whom historically ruled through puppet rulers.
#2 Include an new Imperialism civic, that also gives a stability bonus for vassals and is more a late game civic that expansionary European civs could adopt, which also includes some other related bonuses, like the ability to get troops from vassals. (I'm just spitballing here, but you could make imperialism cause unrest after the founding of the UN and cause uprisings or unhappiness in cities, to make it less attractive, mimicing real world developments)
#3 Allow the overlord to increase stability by taking a standard action, like gift troops or money. These are a real sacrifice unlike techs. Say 1 unit would increase the stability by 1 for example (I'm not super familiar with how stability exactly works, but say +1 stab is reasonable), you can gift a couple of units, which does hurt you on the hand, but also allows you to keep your vassal alive. Seems like a fair trade.
#4 Make the exact stability of vassals more visible, so at least the overlord knows what to do, what helps and what doesn't.
Okay that's pretty long post. Let me be clear, I'm not trying to be negative, not at all, I'm probably playing DoC a lot the next couple of months and I have great admiration for everyone involved (as far as I know that's mostly Leoreth), but I thought I would just give you my two cents.
Cheers!
Imperator Knoedel
Currently obsessed with The Owl House
Hm, gifting units/weapons to a puppet nation to allow them to keep their population in line sounds kind of realistic. Perhaps we could take a page from the Soviet approach to the Prague '68 incident and prevent vassals from collapsing as long as the master has a sufficient amount of troops in their cities.
Not going to lie, until that I had hoped your entire post was multiple paragraphs of praise
But seriously, thanks for your words, it's always great to see new people discover and enjoy the mod and that in turn is what keeps me going.Quick parenthetical thought here, now that you bring it up, isn't there a notification like "X will capitulate" in the message log? I feel like there should be, what does everyone else think?
I completely understand your reasoning here, and I agree with your expectation. Vassals should be a viable way to expand, at least to a certain extent. There should be some limits because overall expansion should be limited and come at some kind of cost. However, it seems that your issue is more with predictability, and the fact that often there is no value in having vassals at all.
Most of your proposals seem very situational. The downside I see of tying it to a civic is that it makes a certain civic mandatory when expanding. It seems that vassals overall have stability problems, do I'd like to get more information on that first. Do others have similar problems? If you (that includes everyone) can share saves of pre- and post-vassalisation (or before collapse) situations I could better investigate what the reason is. I'd really like to find the root cause first before addressing the symptoms by introducing new rules or mechanics.
Good point, I would love to do that, but I'm not sure how. Does anyone have ideas?
Well you have definitely mastered the criticism sandwich. DoC wouldn't be in its current state without all its contributors and mods it is based on, you can find out more in the credits file that comes with the mod.
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