Thoughts on Sanction Proposal?

[Milae]

I feel like I've seen people saying this before but couldn't find a thread so isn't it just massively harsh?

No trade routes, deals or franchises with anyone and Warmonger penalty reduced. It seems like something that would require more than a slight majority to pass or would require a proper justification first.

Maybe it should be split up or something? What do you guys think?

 

[Rafs]

I'd be in favor of splitting them, the problem is how because proposals are limited so you can't split it too much.
I agree at the moment they are very harsh, not only because you are losing potential gold from trade rotues, franchises or deals, but not being able to make any deals/routes makes maintaining a possitive relationship with any AI a very hard task, which means sooner or later even your friends (having lost their previous positive trade modifiers) will have a better opinion of your rivals and worse one of you, and this can lead to a "breakup" so to speak.
The warmonger penatly I honestly never felt that much, but that could be just me, as when I get sanctionned it's already because everyone hates my guts, so they would already dogpile on me.

Maybe separating franchises (banning a corporation as you ban a luxury?) would make sense, and having trade routes+deals on the sanction. I'm sure other people have better ideas though.

 

[Stalker0]

If I were going to nerf sanctions (and I am not saying we should do that....I'm not sure on that one), I wouldn't split them....too watered down. I would just do this.

Sanction: Sanctioned Player cannot make TRs with other players (but those players can make TRs to them). Franchises are removed, warmonger penalties reduced.

In other words:

• Dealmaking stays intact. You are removing a major engagement part of the game, and sometimes you need to be able to tell a sanctioned player to "get bent" after they do something you don't like.
• Sanctions hurt the player, not all the players who want to make TRs with them. Aka sanctions are a true penalty, but something the opponents can still take advantage of with their own TRs.

 

[Alpharius]

Imo it would make sense if both civs who are sanctioned could still make some kind of trade deal or send TRs to each other.

On the other hand, I like the idea of excluding trade deals on the current sanctions. But maybe put a penalty on every deal a sanctioned player makes? So essentially it'd be a higher tariff for sanctions instead of outright removing the capability to make trade deals.

E.g. if normally you could buy a lux for 5gpt, sanctioned player would have to give more. Is this possible to implement?

 

[Recursive]

If I were going to nerf sanctions (and I am not saying we should do that....I'm not sure on that one), I wouldn't split them....too watered down. I would just do this.

Sanction: Sanctioned Player cannot make TRs with other players (but those players can make TRs to them). Franchises are removed, warmonger penalties reduced.

In other words:

• Dealmaking stays intact. You are removing a major engagement part of the game, and sometimes you need to be able to tell a sanctioned player to "get bent" after they do something you don't like.
• Sanctions hurt the player, not all the players who want to make TRs with them. Aka sanctions are a true penalty, but something the opponents can still take advantage of with their own TRs.

Blocking trade deals was added to the resolution previously because it was considered too weak.

 

[phantomaxl1207]

It's definitely powerful enough now to warrant a nerf.

 

[DeAnno]

Imo it would make sense if both civs who are sanctioned could still make some kind of trade deal or send TRs to each other.

I like this idea of a Sanctioned and unSanctioned world operating in parallel. It would help at times when the UN gets a bit too Sanction happy.

 

[Marviellac]

not being able to make any deals/routes makes maintaining a possitive relationship with any AI a very hard task, which means sooner or later even your friends (having lost their previous positive trade modifiers)

This. Sanctions should have an economic impact, not change a diplomatic scene. Right now they are removing posibilities of trade and defensive pacts which can make quite a big chunk of positive opinion modifiers.

On economic level sanctions are fine, they should be harsh and exclude a player completely.

 

[Fluffball]

I will add the disclaimer that my thoughts are based on my personal experiences but i feel sanctions could be made more interesting/better but not sure if they need a nerf/buff specifically as i do find sanctions being scary enough that the possibility of being sanctioned if i annoy too many people makes me think more carefully about diplomacy so in that sense i see that they work but on the other hand if i expect my actions to get me sanctioned and plan accordingly they are not really that much of an issue.

I like the idea that sanctioned nations can still trade with each other (if it was reasonable to add) as real world pariahs tend to stick together although it wouldn't be super game changing for me as i usually get sanctioned after warmongering and gaining at least one vassal.

I do feel that AI's are a bit to eager to support sanction proposal and i have never seen them reversed so it would be nice to have the ability to actually be able to do something gameplay wise to prevent sanctions in the first place in particular considering the AI's themselves often loose out heavily by losing the deals they have/can make with the sanctioned party as well as the trade routes lost.

 

[usadefcon1]

Perhaps if you are sanctioned you can only trade with declared friends. This tends to happen IRL (North Korea and China for example)

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Supreme Leader knows first-hand that there are lots of angles and logistics to being sanctioned in the real world: sanctions don't have to solely impact economy/diplo.

One of the many ways they try to contain my glory is by restricting scientific cooperation. In order to represent such an idea, you could incorporate something like a -10% global science penalty while sanctioned. Sanctions obviously don't need this buff atm, but if they're nerfed/tweaked in other ways, this could be another alternative aspect.

 

[Recursive]

Perhaps if you are sanctioned you can only trade with declared friends. This tends to happen IRL (North Korea and China for example)

When I initially argued that vassals should be exempt from sanctions, I used this example. NK is more of a vassal than a friend of China's.

 

[InkAxis]

I don't think Sanction needs a buff/nerf. If it's really good, just make the AI strongly vote against it. There need to be strong proposals to keep things interesting and so your votes have actual effect. There need to be weaker proposals for smaller in between periods and so there isn't constant deadlock. Just adjust the AI values accordingly.

Of course if we want to make changes for different reasons then I'm open to that. Having sanctions ignore vassals would make sense. It might create a slight snowball effect, sanctions are meant to stop a runaway civ, so if a civ is running away with a lot of vassals it doesn't really do anything. But on the other hand at that point sanctions might not have stopped them anyway. I like the idea overall.

NK is more of a vassal than a friend of China's.

Every civilization is a vassal to Supreme Leader

 

[azum4roll]

Sanctions should not remove franchises from vassals and city states. That's the only problem I find.

 

[Recursive]

I don't think Sanction needs a buff/nerf. If it's really good, just make the AI strongly vote against it. There need to be strong proposals to keep things interesting and so your votes have actual effect. There need to be weaker proposals for smaller in between periods and so there isn't constant deadlock. Just adjust the AI values accordingly.

Of course if we want to make changes for different reasons then I'm open to that. Having sanctions ignore vassals would make sense. It might create a slight snowball effect, sanctions are meant to stop a runaway civ, so if a civ is running away with a lot of vassals it doesn't really do anything. But on the other hand at that point sanctions might not have stopped them anyway. I like the idea overall.


Every civilization is a vassal to Supreme Leader

Vassals are an exception to sanctions as-is.

 

[Milae]

I don't think Sanction needs a buff/nerf. If it's really good, just make the AI strongly vote against it. There need to be strong proposals to keep things interesting and so your votes have actual effect. There need to be weaker proposals for smaller in between periods and so there isn't constant deadlock. Just adjust the AI values accordingly.

Of course if we want to make changes for different reasons then I'm open to that. Having sanctions ignore vassals would make sense. It might create a slight snowball effect, sanctions are meant to stop a runaway civ, so if a civ is running away with a lot of vassals it doesn't really do anything. But on the other hand at that point sanctions might not have stopped them anyway. I like the idea overall.


Every civilization is a vassal to Supreme Leader

I don't think that's a good idea because it means that humans would still use sanctions but AIs won't.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I was thinking about this in my current game when both myself and Ethiopia were sanctioned mainly by the diplomatic juggernaut that was Siam, to whom we were the main threat. So yeah, a few brainstorming ideas:

a.) make sanctions a temporary resolution, i.e. if voted into effect, it only lasts a certain amount of turns, for example 30 turns (not sure if feasible code-wise), after that it can't be re-proposed for another amount of turns (let's say 20 turns);

b.) make sanctions require a special/higher majority (how high would be up to discussion) - not sure how feasible code-wise;

c.) split it into two separate and mutually exclusive resolutions: diplomatic sanctions (can't make DoFs or joint wars, can't use open borders, can't make defensive pacts, can't trade vassalage, can't trade techs, can't trade research agreements, can't trade votes, can't bribe re: wars; great musicians can't be used in their territory; all current diplomatic arrangements (open borders, defensive pacts, VOLUNTARY vassalge etc.) cease effect immediately; all this applies to vassals of the sanctioned civ, i.e. the vassal and master can make deals with each other, but the vassal cannot make deals with 3rd civs) and economic sanctions (can't sell or buy resources, can't send or receive trade units except with owned vassals (so not even with city states), all current economic arrangements cease effect immediately (that would be more AI friendly, because the human player currently has an advantage of knowing to buy&sell as much as possible before a sanction vote), new corporations' franchises can't be established, but existing ones remain in existence)

d.) have the sanctions NOT apply to civs sharing the same ideology (let's imagine that ideologically aligned civs would shun any attempts by the UN to curtail trading/diplomacy between them)

e.) eliminate certain aspects of the sanctions effect

f.) eliminate sanctions altogether

I'd personally prefer the c.) option, because that way you'd have two different tools available to harm another civ, but you'd have to choose between them, so no civ would be completely cut off from the world, making sanctions less extremely punishing, and I also like the d.) option, making ideological groupings more meaningful . The problem I see with the b.) option is that a diplomatic runaway can at some point wield almost complete control over the congress, bypassing the effectiveness of the higher majority condition, also I imagine it'd be hard to code. The a.) option also seems hard to code, but other than that I think I like it. I'm not a fan of e.) or f.) either, but I could be convinced for either option.

 

[DoctuhD]

If it were split into two proposals, I'd suggest replacing Ban Luxury to reduce proposal bloat. You could even negate all luxury monopoly bonuses of the economically sanctioned civ, which would have a similar effect while being a more impactful proposal. Diplomatic Sanctions would be good against opponents the proposition wants to fight and Economic Sanctions would be good against peaceful runaways.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

That's a good idea DoctuhD, I completely forgot about the option of including ban luxury/monopoly benefits into the economic proposal if the community considered this to be warranted. We'd have to find a good way to ensure diplomatic and economic sanctions would be more or less similar in their strengths, so that one of the wouldn't be consistently favored over the other by human players and the AI, and the luxury/monopoly aspect is definitely something to consider in this light.

After thinking about this a bit more, we could, if the community chose so, add to diplomatic sanctions something like a production malus to building diplomatic units, a malus to GD generation and/or an increased cost of purchasing diplomatic units. Alternatively, we could make these maluses into a separate resolution that would affect all civs, so something kinda like the Global Peace Accords, but perhaps on the other hand increasing bonuses from CS quests by a certain percentage to reward those that continue to have good relations with CS despite those global maluses to the CS game.

 

[jekke]

First, I believe sanction as a resolution should come much much later than it is available now.
Second, I suggest thinking about in which situations a human player would like to enforce sanctions against an ai. I can imagine two possible situations: (1) there is an ai runaway and I want to stop them, and (2) I want to conquer someone and would like to minimize the diplomatic damage with other nations. In (1), it's about economy, so what we can do is to stop international trading, so the current proposal works just fine. The sanctioning nations suffer from no trade too, but that is a price to pay for employing politics to solve economy issues. In (2), it is rather about diplomacy (so politics issues, not economical), so there is no need of economic measures like no trading etc. Here reduction of the warmonger penalty would be appropriate. I would also suggest that since CS allies are supposed to join the sanctions, diplomats of the sanctioned nation should not be able to improve their relations with those CS. Not sure if this is possible though.
All in all, these are two distinct situations and two different resolutions would be reasonable.