UN and AP changes

[Leoreth]

I've been thinking about the UN and AP today for no discernable reason, and since those are on the to do list, I thought I could get right at it now.

As far as I see it, there are three main problems with their mechanics:
- they usually don't affect the world because "never" is used too often
- diplomatic victory is boring and encourages conquest
- lack of interesting and appropriate resolutions

Therefore I plan the following rule changes:
- votes will be proportional to the square root of population instead of just proportional to the population. This makes it harder for large/populous civs to easily dominate the elections.
- to win a diplomatic victory, your own votes and those of your capitulated vassals don't count, i.e. you have to get half of the votes of the remaining members. This makes true diplomacy necessary.
- candidates are partially randomized so not only the civs with the most votes have a chance to become Pope or General Secretary

Specific Apostolic Palace changes:
- only Catholic civs can vote and defy
- defying only exempts yourself from a resolution, if it passes it still takes effect for everyone who voted yes or no
- if you are the target of a resolution (e.g. returning a city), defying leads to war with everyone who voted yes, in case the resolution passes
- new resolution: excommunication, can target a civ that recently defied a resolution, cannot be defied. Forces the target to set its state religion to "no religion"
- open border resolution is inappropriate and will be removed
- declare war resolution renamed to defensive crusade
- maybe crusade resolution that targets a city (Catholic cities under heathen control) and gives an appropriate quest for everyone who participates

Specific United Nations changes:
- only the most powerful fourth of all civs ("security council") can defy resolutions
- defied UN resolutions fail for everyone
- UN intervention resolution to aid a weaker war participant
- Geneva convention resolution that forbids city razing

That's it so far. Is there anything I haven't covered?

 

[AtlantaMarty]

Two things:
Do votes of civs who have peacefully vassalized count?
And you should be able to opt out of the geneva convention resolution

 

[Leoreth]

1. Yeah. You shouldn't be penalized for vassalizing civs you have good relations with. It's a diplomatic victory after all and peacevassalizing is a diplomatic action.

2. It's going to work like the Non-Proliferation treaty, so you have to prevent it before it passes.

 

[AtlantaMarty]

1. Good to know
2. Think of todays rougue civs (north korea, syria) they ignor the treaties they sign. You should be able to violate a treaty, but recieve a huge diplo penalty.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

You could add a universal adopt civic resolution for AP.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Specific United Nations changes:
- only the most powerful fourth of all civs ("security council") can defy resolutions
- defied UN resolutions fail for everyone
- UN intervention resolution to aid a weaker war participant
- Geneva convention resolution that forbids city razing

That's it so far. Is there anything I haven't covered?

I think something like a penalty on doing any of these actions during war-time:

-Spies' poisoning action.
-+4 accumulated Whip unhappiness
-+12 accumulated Draft unhappiness
-Attacking Workers and Settlers
-Deleting captured Workers and Settlers.
(No penalty if Workers are gifted to another civ within 3 turns of capture)

As opposed to outright banning city razing would be very preferable,
for gameplay reasons one entire thread (Bad City Placement) validates.
If anything, I think it models a much better variety of topics covered under the Geneva Convention.
And real life consequences (civs cancelling trade agreements, extra espionage weight towards you) are wholly more appropriate as punishments both on a gameplay and realism level.

 

[citis]

1. Good to know
they ignor the treaties they sign

In fact all treaties and trade agreements may be violated. For example you can enter closed borders without declaring war, or attack units in a civ you have open borders with (no unit expells). You can violate a peace treaty the next turn, or even you can build nukes, althouth there is a NPT.
Some of these violations were present to civ3. However, Firaxis decided to make the agreements more "obligatory" to the human player, because others AIs cannot use these tricks. IMO all treaties should be obligatory without a "defy" option. The only reason for defying is if it affects the well-being of the civ (for example taking a core city, or changing civics, or changing religions). and why not? aplicable only by AIs.

 

[Leoreth]

I can see why it makes sense to be able to violate the Geneva convention, at least for the human player.

Maybe doing so would make you a target for a UN intervention similar to how defying AP resolutions makes you a target for excommunication.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I can see why it makes sense to be able to violate the Geneva convention, at least for the human player.

Maybe doing so would make you a target for a UN intervention similar to how defying AP resolutions makes you a target for excommunication.

I'm pretty sure the AI will do it too.
Napoleon is notoriously aggressive and flippant in most of my games.
Same thing with a couple others, like Stalin & occasionally Bismarck.

In theory, UN intervention would be like Barb/Independent Guided Missile strikes towards your cities or
Barb/Independent Infantries/Destroyers severing critical supply lines/lines of movement for the offending party.
I don't think it's very elegant though. Perhaps after earning enough "Bad Boy Points", the top civ in score (if it isn't you), will be moved to "police" you and DoW.
This is of course, after you ignore all the trade embargos and espionage directed your way.

 

[Titoudeff]

There should be more Treaties on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are accessible to everyone and haven't any effect on diplomacy (exept if nuclear weapons are used, which happens way too often). It should be more regulated.

 

[Wilhelm Meister]

I like Leoreth's ideas.

 

[yurisusuki]

''We love leoreth day''

 

[Malchar]

I liked the Geneva Convention idea as it was originally proposed. One of the most interesting aspects of the UN/World Congress is the ability for the AI to demand cities from the player. If you can simply raze all the cities when you capture them, it makes it so that they can't demand them back. If you defy the Geneva Convention, you should have a large unhappiness penalty in every city similarly to the penalty for defying in BTS. It would make sense to have a penalty that stacks for each city that you raze, so if you really have to raze one or two then you can, but if you try to abuse it and raze many then you'll have to suffer the consequences. The penalty could also be based on the population of the city. Razing a useless 1 pop city isn't as important as razing Amsterdam.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

I liked the Geneva Convention idea as it was originally proposed. One of the most interesting aspects of the UN/World Congress is the ability for the AI to demand cities from the player. If you can simply raze all the cities when you capture them, it makes it so that they can't demand them back. If you defy the Geneva Convention, you should have a large unhappiness penalty in every city similarly to the penalty for defying in BTS. It would make sense to have a penalty that stacks for each city that you raze, so if you really have to raze one or two then you can, but if you try to abuse it and raze many then you'll have to suffer the consequences. The penalty could also be based on the population of the city. Razing a useless 1 pop city isn't as important as razing Amsterdam.

I do not like the RAW. For the same reasons why there was a lot of negative feedback when the new stability mechanics were introduced.
It will always be an uphill battle to wage wars under the RAW and furthermore, the BtS game mechanics
cannot accurately model proxy wars fought by larger powers to achieve influence that this kind of rule would encourage.

I still standby my proposal as it again:
1) Covers a larger variety of topics covered under the Geneva Convention.
2) Has a more moderate effect on gameplay as opposed to a constant uphill swim.
3) Models realism by simulating the limits of actual U.N. involvement.

 

[clark k]

Leo, are you still planning to change the way congresses work as well

 

[Leoreth]

Yes.

I just don't know how yet.

 

[Wondering Kid]

I like this whole proposal, but what I love the most is the "Security Council" idea. It makes the whole UN more interesting for both the player and the AI.

Could it be possible, however, to go even beyond that and implement some sort of Peacekeeping missions? Something that forces the "Security Council" members to give up some troops as to play pretend that they are helping out somewhere else? I think this will play as a deterrent from actually wanting to be inside the "Security Council" as in "with great power comes great responsibility", so that the player and the AI can actually decide whether to be in it or not.
So, if you are inside the SC, you can veto Resolutions but you have to give up some troops from time to time. And if you are outside the SC. you cannot veto any Resolutions, but you do not have to give up some troops for "Peacekeeping". I dunno, just thought on this one. I'm not even sure if it is possible to implement in-game.

 

[citis]

Congresses:

When a civ fights a war against an alliance then he can negociate with all the powers of the alliance.
Instead of a peace treaty button there is a "call a congress" button. The civ that chooses that button may called the "surrender" and the alliance the "winners".
Winners should accept the congress, the big regional neutral powers may be invited. If all forces accept the congress, then the congress will be held the next turn. The war isn't over yet.
Other civs that fight against that alliance will be invited too (as surrenders), especially the original civ's allies, but the congress will be held with or without them.

The congress should work like peace treaty negociations. However, the surrender negociates with all the winners and not just one rival.
Every winner can ask only one city, that has its own culture, that is owned by the surrender and that is not asked already. Note that the strongest civ will ask first, then the second more powerful etc. Winners may ask the surender to join their war against the surender's former allies.
Neutrals may cancel some asks (beginning from the weakests), and may decide to give a city to the surrender.
The winners will ask some of the surrender cities. Then the surrender may change the city he asks, or cancel or give some other cities to winners, and propose it to the winners. It's like negociations betwin two civs. Where the one part is the winners filtered by the neutrals and the other part is the surrender.
If an agreement is achieved then the wars of the surrender is over and the peace treaty is signed.
The procedure goes for every surrender.

 

[NKN]

I like many of these ideas; what I really want are more resolutions. Typically, the AP ends up voting on maybe 5-10 resolutions over its lifetime, and the UN even less. I'd like a resolution every 4-5 turns, and security council elections (if existent) every 20-30 turns. This will allow multiple resolutions against a single, misbehaving civ, and allow nearly every agenda a chance of success.

 

[Leoreth]

I agree that there is not enough to vote on. I made some changes already and started a test game and the AP didn't have anything to do as long as there are no wars between the member powers.