Suggestions and Requests

Hi all and happy new year.
Completing Chateau Frontenac looks unreal for Canada. They should start with tech, that will allow them to start building it as soon as they start, I guess.
(Latest downloadable version / Monarch / Marathon)

And also there is some buggy notification early in the game for Canada.
The dialog box is the auto-fail for one of the Secular UHVs.
 
Actual suggestion: There are a lot of wonders and civics that improve specialists' output - would it be possible to list them on the various specialists' Pedia page?

Random musing: It's a very minor thing but I find it ironic that post-1700 AD France has little use for Artists and :culture: in Paris when that period is really only the start of when the city became an enduring cultural icon. The Eiffel Tower's +50% :culture: in particular does very little - I guess you could build it outside of Paris and go for a Culture Victory since you already have one Legendary city, but that's hardly historical. I feel like a more appropriate effect would involve still rewarding you for working Artists and/or spawning Great Artists. Idea for new Eiffel Tower effect: +1 :commerce: and/or +1 :hammers: on Artists, Great Artists count twice for Golden Age requirements (still a focus on Golden Ages but more Artist centered).

e: Apparently the effects on specialists are listed on the Pedia page for those that currently apply, which I didn't know (I have the Sistine Chapel and every Specialist is listed as having +2 :culture:). Still, something more permanent is what I'm talking about.
 
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One nice idea I loved from Fall from Heaven is tougher barbarians and wandering monsters, as well as lairs and improved village results.
How valid is it to have barbarian lairs (separatists, terrorists, pre-spawn indy soldiers) appear in areas of low stability or in independent areas to add a bit more randomness and a chance of good or bad events?
 
I would like to suggest that Spain have the dynamic name "Kingdom of Asturias" during medieval age and the capital is Oviedo. The "Kingdom of Castile" dynamic name would be better related to Madrid as capital.
Also, the civilization should begin with Elective as civic, since the asturian kings were elected by the nobility and the historical context that the spanish civilization begins in the game is the ascension of the asturian resistance against the umayyad invasion on the Iberian peninsula.
It could be nice too have the "Asturian Empire" dynamic name if Spain can't have conquered andalusia before Renaissance and already have other territorial possessions outside the peninsula (just like the "Castilian Empire" dynamic name works). That would make the game more open to alternative history.

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Actual suggestion: There are a lot of wonders and civics that improve specialists' output - would it be possible to list them on the various specialists' Pedia page?

Random musing: It's a very minor thing but I find it ironic that post-1700 AD France has little use for Artists and :culture: in Paris when that period is really only the start of when the city became an enduring cultural icon. The Eiffel Tower's +50% :culture: in particular does very little - I guess you could build it outside of Paris and go for a Culture Victory since you already have one Legendary city, but that's hardly historical. I feel like a more appropriate effect would involve still rewarding you for working Artists and/or spawning Great Artists. Idea for new Eiffel Tower effect: +1 :commerce: and/or +1 :hammers: on Artists, Great Artists count twice for Golden Age requirements (still a focus on Golden Ages but more Artist centered).

e: Apparently the effects on specialists are listed on the Pedia page for those that currently apply, which I didn't know (I have the Sistine Chapel and every Specialist is listed as having +2 :culture:). Still, something more permanent is what I'm talking about.
This makes sense, it would also help the lack of production in France's (should they build it ofc) core area, though I think Sagrada Familia already has the extra :hammers: for Artists effect. I'd still support something like this.
 
Yes, I considered that it's a bit similar to the Sagrada Familia effect but figured that wasn't that big of a deal if the two wonders have other effects besides that.

Other possible effects:
-Artists can rush buildings like Great Engineers,
-Some sort of effect that applies to Artists per the city's :culture: level (to not make Eiffel Tower Artists too OP everywhere) - could be generic :gp: (useful but kind of defeat the point of spawning Great Artists), or a fraction of :hammers: or :commerce: (like +0,33 of one or the other on Artists per :culture: level, meaning a Legendary city would have +2) - would avoid making Artists in general too OP, but might achieve the opposite and make the Eiffel Tower too niche,
-A powerful effect but as a counterpart the Tower's construction would require a certain :culture: level as prerequisite.

On the lack of :hammers: in the French core (which I usually adress by building Lumbermills in the Medieval era then switching to Watermills once those start outclassing them, while building Cottages everywhere else), I wonder if that couldn't be an incentive for late game France to switch to the currently underwhelming Public Welfare civic. The Eiffel Tower effect could then grant :gold: from Artists, that would then be reconverted into :hammers: by rush-buying. That sounds like a somewhat clumsy way of adressing two different issues though - Public Welfare should probably just be a bit boosted for everyone.
 
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A repost from another thread and in a resized format.

Would like to explain my main and only complaint about the stability mechanic in DoC. I absolutely love the gamemode and especially how the stability mechanic works here compared to the vanilla RFC but there's just one, one single thing that I don't like not just only in stability mechanic but in DoC as a whole which is how unforgiveable it is. You're getting close to one of your well deserved UHV, almost being there and then you're being slapped with the collapsing stability because of recession that you need lots of time to fix by building the improvements and all that or because of overextensions due to which you're being forced to abandon your hopes for reaching an UHV goal. It's a very interesting challenge when you have to always be very careful with your decisions to pevent the collapsing stability from happening but when it happens it just absolutely wrecks you. In vanilla RFC the collapsing stability results firstly with a few cities becoming independent and then all of your cities turning into the independent ones besides just the capital and a few other cities joining the neighboring civilizations, leaving you with just only the capital and a chance to rebuild yourself from ashes by retaking the cities that turned into independent ones. In DoC, it is just an instant and absolutely unforgiveable collapse of everything at once with not even a smallest chance to recover yourself.

I saw in the 2018 thread related to this when you said that right now it's very hard to implement but how comes it actually is when this civil war mechanic existed in vanilla RFC with all the cities besides the capital turning independent and then suddenly being impossible to implement in DoC? Is there something that I might not be understanding in the coding? Because it is just weird when there was a feature that existed in vanilla but suddenly it becomes "impossible to implement" in a modmod which was originally built upon the said vanilla RFC. I just really hope that this issue would eventually be considered and fixed, because aside from just this one single thing I absolutely love and enjoy DoC.
 
More musings on an existing wonder:

I've seen various suggestions to include monastic or specifically crusading orders in the game. I don't really have an opinion on if they deserve that level of complex representation, but one thing I've been thinking about is that, since the Hospitallers are already represented by the Krak des Chevaliers wonder, a more complex approach could start with it.

Personally I never build the Krak except as Spain (thanks to its Citadel UB and easy access to a city with Islam in it). I consider its effects a bit too niche for the effort involved. Historically building it in the Levant would be an ever bigger expenditure considering the difficulty of conquering and holding a city there.

But what if the Krak had its requirements increased (by adding to State Religion catholicism and Islam presence a requirement of desert in the city's vicinity so that you can't build it in Spain and have to invade a Muslim civ) in exchange for a stronger, instantaneous effect on completion (since in the spirit of the Crusades you wouldn't hold the city for very long - the Krak shouldn't be a long term investment). This would further encourage European players to actually do some crusading, either in the Levant or against a softer target like the Moors or a respawned Egypt.

Thematically appropriate instantaneous effects I could think of would be:

-Instant troops from state religion buildings,
-Instant :gold: from state religion buildings (admittedly wealth is more associated with the Templars than with the Hospitallers though),
-Great general threshold reset,
-Generic :gp: threshold partially reset (representing military or religious achievements but also cultural, commercial or scientific exchanges),
-Free, permanent religious buildings in every city (as in, they don't disappear when the wonder obsolete like other free buildings do).
 
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As it is how you interact with Independent civs is extremely limited (justifiably so, they're not like city-states in later games). It could be a neat thing to receive some small bonus in your interactions with them depending on your Territory civic:

-Sovereignty, Conquest: Nothing.
-Tributaries: +1 :commerce: from neighboring Independent cities.
-Isolationism: Faster peace following a declaration of war.
-Colonialism: No city unrest when conquering Independent, Barbarian or Native civs.
-Nationhood: Faster :culture: spread on Independent tiles.
-Multilateralism: Open Borders with both Independent civs, additional trade route yield with Independent cities.
 
Suggestions for Diplomatic Victory:

I'd like to see the push for Diplomatic Victory to include actual efforts and work while leading the UN which slowly help you edge towards a Diplomatic win instead of merely a single vote that could (in theory) happen as soon as the organization is founded. I'd like to think that other civs would take into consideration your efforts in the UN when deciding whether you'd make a suitable world leader. So here's some suggestions:

Whenever you manage to push a resolution in UN that a particular civilization likes, their disposition towards you would increase (and the likelihood they would vote you for Diplomatic Victory). So in this new model both disposition towards you as well as the resolutions you've manged to push forward would have an effect on whether you get voted for Diplomatic win or not. For example, managing to push through a civilization's favorite civic as a global civic would improve your relations with said civilizations. Other such decisions I quickly thought of to affect relations would be:
-Using UN to end a war against a particular civilization (Unless said civilization votes No in which case you get a penalty)
-Freeing a civilization from foreign occupation (Huge relations boost with the newly freed civilization and maybe a small relations penalty for your relations with the civ that lost territory)
-Banning Nukes (disposition boost for every other civ besides the one's running Totalitarianism or having the Aggressive leader trait)
-Passing the Free Trade routes resolution would increase your relations with civs that have Free Enterprise as favorite civic
 
Actual suggestion: There are a lot of wonders and civics that improve specialists' output - would it be possible to list them on the various specialists' Pedia page?

Random musing: It's a very minor thing but I find it ironic that post-1700 AD France has little use for Artists and :culture: in Paris when that period is really only the start of when the city became an enduring cultural icon. The Eiffel Tower's +50% :culture: in particular does very little - I guess you could build it outside of Paris and go for a Culture Victory since you already have one Legendary city, but that's hardly historical. I feel like a more appropriate effect would involve still rewarding you for working Artists and/or spawning Great Artists. Idea for new Eiffel Tower effect: +1 :commerce: and/or +1 :hammers: on Artists, Great Artists count twice for Golden Age requirements (still a focus on Golden Ages but more Artist centered).

e: Apparently the effects on specialists are listed on the Pedia page for those that currently apply, which I didn't know (I have the Sistine Chapel and every Specialist is listed as having +2 :culture:). Still, something more permanent is what I'm talking about.
eiffel tower doubles the number of artists/settled great artists in the city it's built in to replace it's +50%
 
Well the point is that more :culture: is useless to a Legendary city. The Métropolitain wonder already rewards you with :commerce: for having built so many :culture: buildings, I'd like the Eiffel Tower to have something with the same approach but for Artists. Your idea would have the effect of more :gp: and more per Specialist bonuses from civics and wonders so it's something though, but then Artists would also further "pollute" the pool if you want other types of Great People, and per Specialist bonuses would have synergy with civics that may not have the right flavor.

I think "Great Artists contribute twice to Golden Age requirements" is a good start because it gives you something to do when one spawns and preserves the current effect of facilitating Golden Ages, but I'd like something for regular Artists as well. I also want the player to be encouraged to build it in an Influential/Legendary city (instead of another city you'd use for a Cultural Victory).

I think I'm hesitating between:

1) Great Artists contribute twice to Golden Age requirements, +0.33 :commerce: per Culture level on Artists (mirrors the Sagrada Familia's focus on :hammers:).
2) Requires Influential Culture level or more. Great Artists contribute twice to Golden Age requirements, +1 :commerce: and +1 :hammers: on Artists in the city (more powerful effect).
 
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I've always kinda liked the idea of a "social event" system that'd pop once enough culture is generated, allowing you to make choices to help address your nation's sources of instability, be it by enacting laws or by engaging in diplomatic actions that wouldn't make sense to place in the trade menu or that'd be too easy for players to abuse. Said laws would be in a "reforms" tab of the civics page, and would only exist for as long as you still have the civic that they required to be enacted.
 
Random ideas on China:

UP - Mandate of Heaven: Reaching a new era grants a temporary maintenance/upkeep bonus.
Alternatively, for more of a challenge: Being first to reach a new era grants a temporary maintenance/upkeep bonus (Though this might be too self-reinforcing, which is bad for China).
This bonus would be temporary because it would decay by 5% every X turns until going back to 0%.

Reasoning: The current UP is fine (though it's hard to use it to its full potential given how fast you reach your happiness limits), but I've seen many attempts at a Mandate of Heaven-themed UP so I thought I'd try too. The big problem is that this is a concept that mostly has to do with internal conflicts, which aren't really represented in DoC outside of the abstraction of stability. But a chinese stability boost wouldn't be terribly interesting since 1) Human China doesn't have much stability troubles in my experience 2) AI China should have stability troubles and collapse repeatedly and 3) a stability-focused UP doesn't sound that fun for a civ that does very little conquering. If stability is out, maintenance/upkeep is the next most thematically appropriate thing, and it's certainly useful for China. The decaying part I think also hints at the cyclical nature of Chinese history without going overboard with forced collapses, etc.

UHV 3: Start a golden age in four different eras before 1800 AD.

Reasoning: The basic idea is to put more pressure on the player's choices between bulbing techs vs triggering Golden Ages. If the player fails a Golden Age in one of the earlier eras (Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance), they'll have to scramble to reach Industrial before 1800 AD, which seems like a nice alternate history goal and would make the post UHV 1 & 2 game more interesting.
 
Sometimes powerful civilizations that have vassals end up collapsing to the core, but they keep maintaining its vassals. So, why keep vassals, even when your controlled territory is falling apart? Many times in history, powerful empires have lost control of their vassals when trying to keep themselves whole. My suggestion is to allow capitulated-vassal civilizations of a civilization that have collapsed to the core cancel the capitulation. Since these nations have lost most of their territory and beligerant power they don't have any force to exercise control or protection over the vassal nation (and don't even control parts of their territory anymore). That should allow the vassal civilization to free itself and return to its sovereign status. Also, would allow the vassal civilizations to have more time in game develop themselves or be conquered by other nations without being vassals for a long time.
 
India’s dynamic names needs some adjustments. The Nanda Empire, which is know to be the first indian empire, from Antiquity is not represented and the Maurya and Gupta Empires are dependent of which religion the player are converted at the moment, instead of the era. In other words, if my state faith is Hinduism, the dynamic name automatically is Gupta Empire. Historically the Gupta and Maurya empires have favored many religions depending of the ruler at the time, so to the game it would not be good restrict these names to the state religion. So, my suggestion is to give India the same system that China have: changing its dynamic name according to era and researched techs. This is an example of how could be their dynamic name system:
  • Initiates with Indian Mahajapanadas
  • If the player or AI founds 3 cities (or have cultural control over its core region), stills in Ancient Era and have Despotism or Monarchy as the government civic, the name changes to Nanda Empire.
  • Entering in Classical Age, having more than 5 cities and Despotism or Monarchy as government civic the name changes to Maurya Empire.
  • This one have given me doubts in it should be implemented or not. After the fall of the Maurya Empire came the Shunga Empire, which was the dominant power in north india and the Satavahana Empire which dominated central and south India. Also both empires lived only a small period of time. I suggest put the Shunga Empire name in the list because it was dominant in Mauryan core, controlling its capital Pataliputra. Also, it could just move from the Maurya to the next great indian empire. The conditions would be: Still in Classical Age but maybe have research Artisanry too, since this period is marked by great cultural advancements.
  • The Gupta Empire name would be unlocked when the player reseaches Scholarship and use either Despotism or Monarchy. This tech should represent the scientifically advancements that many scholars have made during the Gupta Empire.
  • After the Gupta Empire came an series of dynasties that ruled north India for a brief time. They didn't extended their power to whole India which made me think that is not better put them represented in the game. That would require many triggers in a same age just to show their names for 3 or 4 turns.
  • The next great power in north India was the Pala Empire. Although they didn't control the whole India, they are already in the game. They should be triggered by having researched Feudalism or entering medieval age, and using Monarchy or Despotism as civics.
  • After that came the muslim dominance in India under turko-afeghan dynasties, which India should already be collapsed.
 
Small suggestions after playing a ton of marathon America games all the way to 2020 recently. I'm not sure how many have already been made but my sample size is >5, so here goes:

1. Please remove Scotland from the British core and add an independent city it has to conquer there (or just have the Celts settle it in the new version). It should slow down England's mideival development. And Britain needs (1) a mideival nerf and (2) to collapse post-1950 (never does).

2. In the new map please try to keep a close eye on luxury balance in Europe. France in the old map has 3 wines but nothing else, so is at a huge disadvantage vis-a-vis Spain. The luxury balance seems to be the #1 determinant of success in the middle ages in marathon which can snowball.

3. Portugal needs to spawn with more defensive units. In my marathon games it falls to Spain 100% of the time, and then Spain just declares war on repeat on France ....

4. Maybe Russia needs to collapse at some point if it overextends? It also never collapses in the late late game.

5. Modern civs simply don't respawn in a realistic manner. So in one game Germany conquered France and Spain. Then in ~1975 it spit out France. That left it with two big production centers separated by another country. I don't know how to fix this, but maybe distance from an unstable civs capital should determine who gets spit out first?

Again, I play a ton of marathon America, so I apologize if man of my suggestions are modern-game focused. And if the new map will completely invalidate any of these then I am very sorry!
 
2. In the new map please try to keep a close eye on luxury balance in Europe. France in the old map has 3 wines but nothing else, so is at a huge disadvantage vis-a-vis Spain. The luxury balance seems to be the #1 determinant of success in the middle ages in marathon which can snowball.
I am, and I think France is on par here with most other European civilizations. At least they do have excess wine that can be traded, which is not the case for e.g. Germany or England.

Spain's situation may be a bit deceiving because its additional happiness resources (gold, silver, dye) are meant to expire, most of them before Spain even spawns, as they did historically.
 
Excess wine is a good trading resource but mostly to the Arabs (for :gold:) or the Turks (for Silk, Cotton, etc). Alternatively for Marble (Byzantium or Arabia), which is needed for the medieval wonders you want, including Notre-Dame. European civs don't have enough excess resources worth trading.

I don't know if the French AI can trade effectively though.
 
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