[GS] There are just too many diplomatic currencies

[returnofbabylon]

Some great ideas in this thread.

Governors. Just allow players to select the Diplomat Governor more than once, so you’re presented with a choice between more “Governors” that actually boost your Cities or more “Diplomats” that let you influence either other Civs or City States. The Diplomat(s) might have to be toned down a little bit as a result.

This is possibly getting a little outside the scope of what we're talking about, but it's never made sense to me that you couldn't have more than one of every type of governor. I play as Alexander the Great, ruthless warmonger, and have one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire; I play as Gandhi, peace fanatic, and have...one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire. Sure, you can switch up the order you use the governor titles, but the end result is always the same, and there's no real reason it has to be. I'm fine with some kind of cap on the total number of governors you can have, but it should be up to the player what type they are. Ideally this would also lead to them scrapping the identical names/pictures of the governors common to all civs.

Also, since the devs apparently monitor these...I criticize because I love. Thank you for all your hard work; you've created a fantastic game, and I can't wait to play the latest addition you've made to it (not to mention the addition after that ).

 

[UWHabs]

Some great ideas in this thread.



This is possibly getting a little outside the scope of what we're talking about, but it's never made sense to me that you couldn't have more than one of every type of governor. I play as Alexander the Great, ruthless warmonger, and have one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire; I play as Gandhi, peace fanatic, and have...one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire. Sure, you can switch up the order you use the governor titles, but the end result is always the same, and there's no real reason it has to be. I'm fine with some kind of cap on the total number of governors you can have, but it should be up to the player what type they are. Ideally this would also lead to them scrapping the identical names/pictures of the governors common to all civs.

Also, since the devs apparently monitor these...I criticize because I love. Thank you for all your hard work; you've created a fantastic game, and I can't wait to play the latest addition you've made to it (not to mention the addition after that ).

Yep, we're all just trying to make things better

I would also agree, I definitely wouldn't mind it if you had simply 7 governor slots that you can use, and when you recruited a governor, you would simply take the next "Steward" if you want another one. The names would probably be taken from the current spy list, essentially. So yeah, if you want to have a "Liang" in every city, because you want fisheries everywhere, you can do that. Although that essentially changes from city specialization to empire specialization then, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Alternately, if you actually had unique promotion trees, then you could draw them from a global pool. So while you can have multiple "Stewards" in your empire, they each would have a slightly different specialization, and it could potentially be like the race for great people to know which one you get when you have a governor title available.

Although I'm not sure how much this really adds to the system, and whether it becomes too complicated. The current system works, but I would also say that at times it seems to become just a little stale, with choosing the same batch of governors each time with only minor variation game to game.

 

[The googles do nothing]

but it's never made sense to me that you couldn't have more than one of every type of governor.

I think the idea is that these are the 'best of the best' people in your empire. You just can't find more then one person in your empire with theses set of skills.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the idea is that these are the 'best of the best' people in your empire. You just can't find more then one person in your empire with theses set of skills.

And yet, every empire can find at least one...

Some great ideas in this thread.

This is possibly getting a little outside the scope of what we're talking about, but it's never made sense to me that you couldn't have more than one of every type of governor. I play as Alexander the Great, ruthless warmonger, and have one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire; I play as Gandhi, peace fanatic, and have...one militaristic governor throughout my sprawling empire. Sure, you can switch up the order you use the governor titles, but the end result is always the same, and there's no real reason it has to be. I'm fine with some kind of cap on the total number of governors you can have, but it should be up to the player what type they are. Ideally this would also lead to them scrapping the identical names/pictures of the governors common to all civs.

Also, since the devs apparently monitor these...I criticize because I love. Thank you for all your hard work; you've created a fantastic game, and I can't wait to play the latest addition you've made to it (not to mention the addition after that ).

Yep, we're all just trying to make things better

I would also agree, I definitely wouldn't mind it if you had simply 7 governor slots that you can use, and when you recruited a governor, you would simply take the next "Steward" if you want another one. The names would probably be taken from the current spy list, essentially. So yeah, if you want to have a "Liang" in every city, because you want fisheries everywhere, you can do that. Although that essentially changes from city specialization to empire specialization then, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Alternately, if you actually had unique promotion trees, then you could draw them from a global pool. So while you can have multiple "Stewards" in your empire, they each would have a slightly different specialization, and it could potentially be like the race for great people to know which one you get when you have a governor title available.

Although I'm not sure how much this really adds to the system, and whether it becomes too complicated. The current system works, but I would also say that at times it seems to become just a little stale, with choosing the same batch of governors each time with only minor variation game to game.

Yup. Agree.

I like the idea of just having seven Governor slots, but it doesn’t even really need to go that far. Maybe you still have seven unique Governors, but if you wish you can spend titles not on one of these Governors but instead on either Diplomats (each of which basically works like Amani) or Marshalls (which all basically work like Victor but perhaps can also be put into City States or Allies).

That way, you’d have to choose more clearly between buffing your cities via Governors, being outwards looking and focusing on Diplomats, or being defensive and grabbing Marshalls.

 

[ChocolateShake]

But what if there was one unified currency, Influence maybe, that you would gather for diplomacy or for getting city/states or for loyalty or buying governros etc.. That would be one system instead of several, sure, but then there's be an added decision making process of what to do with it. More "streamlined" but not simpler, if that makes sense. I don't know if it would work or not but I don't see why not. Not in Civ6 of course though.

I do like that idea. I definitely agree with @Alexadamz, we could add the world congress in there too. We could also include alliance points.

I think unifying related elements to one currency would be pretty cool.

Another way to have loyalty would be nice, as you could spend diplomatic currency to pump one of your cities' loyalty, which adds more critical choices for players and make loyalty a less passive mechanism.

Yup it would be great to be able to invest points into keeping a city happy during tough times.

 

[Equilin]

I like the current status of differing "currencies" as it is. Civ is an empire-building game and players (of which i suspect won't count as a fanatic and won't be on this forum) would like to have everything available to them all at once (from one point in the game onwards), so using a single currency to force a tradeoff is not a good idea.
I agree however to make a lot of the mechanics interact with each other more, especially Tourism since I really like the civ5 tourism effects on spy and conquest. If Diplo Favor really does not interact with Diplo relation modifiers I'd be hugely disappointed in that regard.

 

[acluewithout]

Thinking about it more, I think I’ve decidedly cooled on the idea of a single currency.

But I do think you should be able to spend Governor titles and Envoys on more things so there’s more flex in the mechanics (i.e. for Governor Titles, being able to spend Governor titles on multiple “Diplomats” or leveling up Diplomats; and for Envoys, being able to place Envoys with other Civs or at least Allies), and I do think Governor Titles, Envoys and Spies need to interact more (i.e. by being able to use Governor Titles to buy Diplomats, and having Spy capacity and or effectiveness linked to how many Envoys you have and where they’re placed).

These mechanics separately are all really good, but there is so much that could be done to really expand and deepen these without that much work or creating too much complexity.

I mean, you can see what I mean with Diplo visibility and combat bonuses. Just that one simple change - giving a combat bonus for having diplomatic visibility - made diplo visibility and Spies etc just so, so much more interesting. You can see the same thing when FXS linked loyalty and Religion - suddenly Religion becomes way more interesting, a potential downside and also a new tool for conquest, and a bunch of trash tier Civs got made way more interesting, eg Spain.

I think letting people spend Governor Titles on something like Diplomats would also massively broaden the appeal of Civ post RnF without requiring a massive rework of the mechanics, because it would let people who aren’t a huge fan of Governors to opt out of that system a little bit.

 

[cosmicmangobear]

I miss the transparency and logic of Civ IV diplomacy system. You knew more or less how a certain leader was going to act and why they were acting like that so you could plan accordingly. Now, it seems all bets are off. I also hope the “discuss” option will be expanded so you could get a sense of where each civ stands on current events.