Thoughts on World Congress mods and balance?

[konokono]

So, World Congress to me is kind of a dealbreaker. When I first saw it pop up in the Medieval Era, and then the strange voting system, I immediately ended the game and went back to playing R&F only.

Well just recently I decided to give GS another go, and I still just cannot get past my disgust at the World Congress, despite enjoying most of the other features. So I decided to "turn it off" by modifying the Expansion2_GlobalParameters.xml file to set WORLD_CONGRESS_INITIAL_ERA to 12, which basically made it go away.

But now I'm thinking about possibly bringing it back but making it only start in the Modern Era, because by then everyone should have met each other and things like global emergencies actually make sense. Now, the only thing is, I'm not sure how that would affect balance on things like diplo favor and diplo victory, which I'll admit I've never tried to use at all. So I was wondering, if anyone has any good mod suggestions regarding World Congress (a quick Steam workshop search didn't yield anything promising), or does anyone have thoughts on how the World Congress and diplomacy system could be balanced for a WC that starts in the Modern era?

 

[Aurelesk]

My main problem with the Wolrd Congress are:

1. Diplomatic Favor
I think it is a good idea, but poorly executed. Right now, they not really useful to win a Diplomatic victory. Even if you maximise your Diplomatic Favor generation by having all the city states, well it is not be enough to outvote everyone for World Leader. And you can win all the propositions by just putting 1 Vote in it. Save and reload can do the trick, but you end up to recognize the patterns and guess it right 90% of the time.
I must admit that I sell my Diplomatic Favor to the AI. You can bankrupt a millitary threat like this, and it feel like an exploit.

2. The resolutions
They are meaningless. Some are strong under certains circonstance, some are not. But they are not permanent. They should reconsider how the Resolutions work:
• Permanent Resolution: Once enable, this gives a small bonus / malus for every civilizations. You can ask to repeal the Resolution by vote too.
• Temporary Resolution: This only work up to the next Congress. It gives a strong bonus / malus.

3. The choice of the resolutions.
They are random: nobody choose what will be discussed. And the voting is spread: it is not a Yes / No question. Maybe it should have an election for President for the era that allows to choose a Permanent Resolution, and let the civilization with the most Diplomatic Favor to choose the Temporary Resolution. Both decide the resolution, they also decide on which subject ("should we ban Cacao", and not "should we ban a luxury or promote one, and which one?").

4. Diplomatic Points and Victory
This look kind of wonky: you need to reach an arbitrary number of diplomatic point by guessing which resolution will be the most voted by putting the less Diplomatic Favor in it. You can also build some wonder or unlock some key technologies/civics. But I have no idea how to improve it.

5. Emergency
They are random, but you can't do anything about it. Most of the time, I cannot participate because I am a friend of the civilization. I do think this system should allow to backstab allies when they do something wrong. In the real word, you can end a diplomatic friendship when the other civilization are doing something wrong.

6. AI reactions
The AI has a pattern on how to vote things. They either put 1 Vote or all vote in something, and each leader do not have a preference. The AI should be reworked to be more diverse, and see more diverse choice.
Plus: the AI do not get grateful or mad when a Resolution pass or not. Something, this World Congress has no diplomatic outcome.

Those are the point I dislike about the World Congress. It is frustrating, because it has so much potentiel and just need to be improved.

 

[GIO888]

Totally agree we should at least be able to influence what resolutions get to be voted on. Remember this from an earlier Civ, so it can't be a coding problem. As it is it is REALLY annoying!

 

[kaspergm]

The main problems with the World Congress are ... everything.


But, saltiness aside, while I think with current modding it would be possible to make some of the proposals more meaningful, and/or remove some of the most pointless ones, I think some of the more fundamental problems like a nonsensical voting system, complete lack of transparency wrt. how AI will place their votes, and the fact that you can't influence which proposals come up, are outside our limits.