"vision" specific buildings and effects

[davidlallen]

I have split this off from the playtest thread. I have written a few comments about it in different places, maybe we can centralize the discussion in this thread.

I would like to make visions have a strong effect on AI interaction (which civics don't) and also have a strong effect on your economy (which religions don't). But the Civ developers did not anticipate that, there is no way for *religions* to affect much of anything. For 0.7 or future, I will definitely look at vision-specific buildings and units. Also, maybe I can find a way to "link" the vision choice with a specific civic in the government column. Civics can affect a lot more than religions, but I don't want the player to switch government civics separately from vision.

Several people have replied that FFH has a variety of religion-specific buildings. Jabie contributed a list of possible vision-specific buildings:

+ Democracy - Courthouse.
+ Technocracy - Research Lab
+ Anarchy - Collosuem (renamed Arena)
+ Monarchy - No idea. Something military.
+ Plutocracy - Grocer (?), Money Changer
+ Federalism - Castle (Renamed fortress)
(+ Religion - Temple)

Assuming I can link government civics and vision, what are some good effects?

 

[Refar]

Well peraps it would be a good ideas to start with re-introducing shrines.

Those are coded in the XML as buildings, so they can have additional effects besides (or if you prefer instead) of the +1 per city with religion - kind of religion specific wonders.

You don't have Great Prophets. You could re-introduce them in the disguise of "Great Visionarys" - i.e. if you plan to bring back the temple it is feasible.
Or you let other GP construct the shrines (Maybe of appropriate type Merchant - Demo/Pluto / Sci - Techno/Anarchy / Engineer - Feudal/Monarch).
Or you enable shrines just to be built in a city like Wonders (Or a combination of the above).

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On those buildings. Just giving the civ in that religion a building might make balancing difficult and/or push the Human player into a pattern - "I want those courhouses so i will make a point in getting Democracy every game".

To my eyes the Courthouse definitely sticks out here.

The bonus a Religion gives you should be noticeable but not game breaking. You could of course change the effect of the buildings to be smaller than in the original game

Or - is this possible ? - give every civ that building (Say normal Courhouse) but upgrade those to a unique version, if the civ runs the right religion (So a civ in would get its Courthouses replaced by Rathouses, as long as it will stay in Democracy).

 

[davidlallen]

As background, here are the vision definitions:

Leaders whose vision is Anarchism say "Nobody rules the world"
Leaders whose vision is Democracy say "We all rule the world together"
Leaders whose vision is Federalism say "We each rule our own city"
Leaders whose vision is Monarchy say "I rule the world"
Leaders whose vision is Plutocracy say "Money rules the world"
Leaders whose vision is Technocracy say "Technology rules the world"

Jabie has also suggested Religion, "God rules the world".

If I can link religions to civics, here is what I was thinking for the civic-type effects of each vision:

Anarchy -> police state (+25% military production, -50% war weariness)
Democracy -> organized religion (cities with state vision build buildings +25% faster)
Federalism -> nationhood (draft 3 units, +2 happiness from barracks, +25% espiononage)
Monarchy -> hereditary rule (+1 happiness per military unit)
Plutocracy -> universal sufferage (+1 hammer/town, pay gold to finish construction)
Technocracy -> representation (+3 beaker/specialist, +3 happiness in 5 largest cities)

 

[davidlallen]

(split from the "Visionary Keith AAR" thread and merged here)

Say Democracy is allowing "Representation Civic" and normally tied to Constitution. I use "Choose Religions" and found Democracy with Radio. But i still need to wait till Constitution in order to enable the "Representation Civic", since the Civic requires Right Vision + Right Tech.

If it is doable, i would prefer having the Choose Vision option avaiable for flavour. But naturally gameplay comes before flavour.

For some of the visions the match between founding tech and name is strong -- currency for plutocracy, education for democracy, etc. For others it is weak -- automatic weapons for anarchism? Some anarchists might disagree. (Violently But my thought was that each vision is identical to a government civic. If you change vision, you change civic. The only reason for having two different things is high effect on relations and also high effect on economy.

So "Choose religion" would appear to allow me to found Monarchy with automatic weapons and then get the +1 happiness per miilitary unit. The option makes sense if the religions are "generic", no problem with that. The vanilla "generic" religions only differ in where they lie in the tech tree.

I do also assume, that there is a way to disable certain custom options in a mod.

That is how I think I will solve it.

 

[davidlallen]

Well, it is kind of working. I have sycnhed the government civics column to the vision screen. The vision screen operates normally. In the civics screen, I have added back the government column with seven entries, "despotism" plus the six visions. You can get the help on each civic by mousing over it, but when you click on a government civic nothing happens. You cannot switch government civics using the civics screen. When you switch visions in the vision screen, the government civic automatically switches. For example, when you adopt the monarchy vision, you automatically switch to the monarchy government civic, which gives you +happiness for military units stationed.

I think the suggestions for vision-specific buildings were mostly a workaround for lack of this synchronized civic. I will playtest this, but maybe that is all we need to give visions the impact they were missing.

Any thoughts?

 

[Refar]

Perhaps it should work the other way around - from the Civic screen, rather than from the religion screen: The Goverment Tab in the Civic screen should work as usual - only allowing Gov.Civics you have the Vision for. If you switch to a Civic the Vision is switched with it.

The background here is: The AI most probably does not get the connection between civics and Visions.
We know however, that the AI knows how to evaluate Civics by they effects - at least to some extent.

Edit: PS - Another thing...
It say Organized Religion: (cities with state vision build buildings +25% faster).
The "cities with state vision" note is missing on the others - it should however - if possible - apply to all civics.

 

[davidlallen]

The AI most probably does not get the connection between civics and Visions. We know however, that the AI knows how to evaluate Civics by they effects - at least to some extent.

Nuts. You are right, and this is a bigger problem with linking them. What I have done links them purely from the user interface standpoint. First, so far there is nothing preventing the AI from switching civics separately from visions, I will need to do something more there. Second, there is AI to switch civics, and there is AI to switch visions, and they are different. So somehow the AI needs to make one unified decision. That may be hard to figure out, and I need to think about it some more.

It say Organized Religion: (cities with state vision build buildings +25% faster).
The "cities with state vision" note is missing on the others - it should however - if possible - apply to all civics.

My goal was to re-use the existing government civics. So police state, for example, gives the production bonus and war weariness bonus at all cities. I can look at whether it can be "limited" to only give the bonus at cities with the religion.

 

[davidlallen]

I am starting to think the mixture of religion and government civic is kind of doomed. I may be able to get closer to my original idea, with a completely different approach. The theme is rebuilding, and my concept of vision was that each leader would try to unite more of the people under his "vision", until enough people agreed that he could announce a victory. The idea of different governmental styles kind of gets at this.

But, there is a whole different way of viewing it. I am not sure if this second way is any more "implementable", but maybe we can discuss and come up with a good solution.

What I really want is to model what happened in the US "Wild West" era with respect to state capitols. If you look at Nevada history, or other western states (not California), there was a period when the territory was about to become a state. One requirement was to select which city would become the state capitol. Several cities would consider themselves "the most important city" in the territory, so they would do a lot of "wheeling and dealing" to get everybody to agree their city was the right one. In the Wild West this naturally included bribes, murder and blackmail

The "Chinese Unification" scenario in BTS comes close to this. It is limited to 7 players, and the religions are repurposed to be royal families. So spreading your "religion" amounts to spreading the influence / blood of your family.

I thought of having a *national* wonder which is a Capitol Building. If you are serious about this type of diplomatic victory, then you build this building in your best city. Then, somehow with missionaries, you build support for your capitol among all the people on the continent. If you get enough support, you win by being selected as the capitol.

It is partly related to UN/AP victories except there are multiple of the UN/AP buildings, one per nation. It is partly related to religions, in the sense of spreading support with missionaries. I was almost thinking of making 18 religions (one for each of the 18 possible civs) where the religious symbol is the civ flag. Changing the max number of religions is possible but hard, so I would rather work out all the details first.

Any thoughts?

 

[Refar]

Hmm i do not have a complete suggestion to make. But i have some random thoughts that might be relevant here.

First of all we have two different objectives/topics here:

1) We need a factor in the game to stabilize or destabilize diplomatic relations. This was your initial reason for re-introducing religions. This is very important for interesting gameplay.

2) Your idea of a possible peaceful (more or less) victory by Vision Domination. The idea does sound interesting and is worth thinking about, but it does need to be implemented without breaking 1)

-----------------

The religions are good in achieving 1, because they introduce some randomness. You can't be sure who, when and where will found them, they might spread or not spread. Depending on where and how religions spread, civs will end up in different consteallations of friend/foe.
So the original religion mechanic creates variety in the diplomatic situation in many games.

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As i come to think of it - a tie between Religions and Civics is actually contra productive for 1) and 2).

Civics are choosen out of economic development, which is similar in many games.
Civic choices follow patterns, which often cause many or all civs to run the same Civic at some points of the game. And this tendency increases towards the later stages of a game.
Despite any and every effort on balancing there are and will be Civics that are better (or more desired by the AI logic) than others.

This is bad for 1) because it takes out the random tensions between blocks of faith.
This is bad for 2) because, being in possesion of such a "attractive" Civic will often guarantee victory. Thus reducing it all to a tech race, to found the needed Vision.

The above concideration
+ the difficultie implementing a Religion/Civic liason
+ the additional difficultie making the AI understand the tie and make sound decisions
+ my personal preference in choosing a religion by it's flavour, not by the effects it will grant
makes me think that a tie between Religion and Civics is actually not desirable.

------------------

Introducing 18 visions with every civ starting with it's own faith from the beginning of the game. It sounds interesting, but there are some caveeats.

In terms of goal 1) it will certainly cause a lot more tension than in usual games.
I have some worries, that it might result in "Deathmatch" style of games, because:
To build up blocks you will need to spread your Vision first. To spread Religion with missionaries, you need Open Boarders. Those might be impossible to get, on the basis of mutual hatred because of different Religion.
No OB's - no peacefull spread, everyone stay in his own faith, everyone hates everyone.

You could try this in all AI simuations, without the need to actually create all 18 Visions right away. You have 6 visions right now. It might be enought for some test runs to see how the Games develop.
Set up a autoplay game with 6 AI, give each its own religion, and look how it goes.
(You can just put holy cites in each capital in WB)

 

[Jabie]

I've no idea whether or not this would work, but how about basing UUs / UBs based on the the vision would you would like the AI to follow, then setting a preference towards building those UUs and UBs for that given AI.

For instance Max might have a preference towards to an Anarchist pespective. His UU - Hell's Angel - is a chopper with the Offroad Driving promotion. However this UU can only be built whilst running the Anarchism civic.

 

[Polycrates]

I think the visions idea has serious merit. Society is effectively a blank slate, and the previous way of running things obviously had some serious flaws. There's no more perfect breeding ground for people who feel very strongly about how a brand-new society should be run.
My take is that the religion thing works better with ideological blocs. So they have a shared vision/goal, sure, but they're also a movement - a bunch of people who band together and take action to further their goal, and probably with some sort of guiding light figure - like a Marx or a Rand or even a Hubbard
I've spent plenty of time on the political fringes, and believe me, strongly ideological groups often have an incredible fervour, a kind of religious devotion to a higher goal or a leader, and often a hell of a lot of dogmatism - I think this really fits the religion thing nicely.

With a few of these, there's a couple of ways you could go with the thing, and I think how you flesh it out with civics and buildings kinda depends on that. Anyway, just a few ideas, see what you think.


Anarchism:
-traditional left anarchism/anarchosyndicalism; no rule from above, workers' collectives with shared labour and means of production and bottom-up decisionmaking from the community level - think like CNT-FAI from the Spanish Civil War
-anarchoprimitivism; spurning the technology that put people into the mess in the first place, going all tribal and hunter-gatherer, perhaps with a bit of environmentalism - probably not the best idea since that sort of group would get eaten alive by anyone else
-right anarchism/anarchocapitalism; probably more encompassed by plutocracy
-Sex Pistols anarchism; bunch of punks smashing stuff up, just "anything goes" lawlessness

Plutocracy:
-Libertarianism/anarchocapitalism; evangelists of a completely free market, with the idea that markets are self-regulating and that when human avarice is allowed to go unchecked, everyone strives to better themselves and the worthy float to the top - kinda already encompassed by the free market civic though.
-A mercantile association; a bunch of merchants who have banded together to try and monopolise trade in the area by using their economic and perhaps physical muscle, as well as using that clout to influence government. Possibly one step removed from a mafia.

Technocracy:
-I would see this as a group obsessed with pre-apocalyptic technology and life, and with the desire to restore the great heights of pre-apocalyptic tech. Perhaps with a kinda cargo-cultish reverence for "artifacts", probably as much mechanics/tinkers as scientists, making most discoveries through dissection of pre-apoc tech.

Democracy:
-Presumably a movement for representative democracy, ie with elected leaders who make the decisions. Kinda a group for restoring current western democracy, with the need for leadership (but with some popular control over its direction), as well as a focus on individual rights

Monarchy:
-Bit of a tough one, but (since I assume you're not talking about people who want to restore the heirs of prince charles to the throne ) I think maybe it fits best with a group that values strength and martial disciple and order, and subservience to a strong leader who took charge by force. Sort of bunch who puts "iron" or "fist" or "eagle" in their name. I'm thinking closer to a brownshirt sort of organisation with a Lord Humungus type as a leader.

Religion:
One specific religion would be the obvious fit, probably based around a charismatic leader
-A current religion (or a post-apocalyptic bastardisation of one - eg that the apocalypse was the Rapture or the Second Coming)
-A new cult around some aspect of the apocalypse
-Some sort of cult about mutation as the next step of human evolution or something

Federalism:
Another tough one
-As a group, I would imagine sort of New-California-Republic-ish. Focused around the unification of the various new "civs" that have sprung up under one greater association, but with each individual civ retaining a large measure of its own autonomy. Perhaps closest to your wild-west "wheeling and dealing" group.

There's other visions you could implement too - Survivalism leaps out, Hedonism (the world is screwed anyway, might as well enjoy it), etc etc

Anyway, just some thoughts. Dunno if this is the sort of thing you're after so feel free to ignore it completely

 

[davidlallen]

Refar has made some good points for *not* linking religion and government civics. That puts me back to "featureless" religions which is what vanilla civ has. I was also thinking about how Gods Of Old uses a wonder race to actually found religions -- each religion requires a tier 2 tech, which is easy to get especially if you choose a civilization which starts with the tier 1 tech underneath it. But, you have to rush build the associated *wonder* in order to found the religion.

That means you can tie founding of a religion to building a wonder instead of a tech. So, maybe what I should do is put back vanilla civics completely except for leaving out religion. This should "solve" the problem that with my limited set of civics, 2-3 of them are favorites and the rest never get used. At least it would put back the same level of tradeoff that the vanilla game has.

Then introduce a wonder building which is a capitol. Since modifying the game to have more than seven religions is hard (not impossible, just hard) I could put a limit of seven capitols. The first seven players to build this building would have a "power block" to establish their state capitol. The missionaries/advocates now become "diplomats" who can go to other cities and try to get them to agree to support my capitol. The "religious" victory would work the same way it does today.

Now that refar has shown me the "choose religions" option, I can use that. I just need seven cool sounding names for power blocks, they don't have to be linked to any specific government style. The first player to build a capitol can choose any of the seven names, whichever they like. The seventh player is stuck with the lamest name.

I have to investigate exactly how GOO does it, but it seems possible.

 

[Refar]

That puts me back to "featureless" religions which is what vanilla civ has.

Then introduce a wonder building which is a capitol. Since modifying the game to have more than seven religions is hard (not impossible, just hard) I could put a limit of seven capitols. The first seven players to build this building would have a "power block" to establish their state capitol.

This sounds like a possible and interesting solution.

The religions not need to be 100% featureless. For example each capitol could grant a unique (small) benefit - like a national wonder or something.
My point was that it should be rather small things giving some flavour to the religion. Not heavy strategic differences like civics, forcing the player (or the AI) too choose or reject the religion.

 

[GeoModder]

Now that refar has shown me the "choose religions" option, I can use that. I just need seven cool sounding names for power blocks, they don't have to be linked to any specific government style. The first player to build a capitol can choose any of the seven names, whichever they like. The seventh player is stuck with the lamest name.

Some brainstorming:

1. Rampant Riders
2. Euphoria(ns)
3. NuDawn (New Dawn)
4. The League
5. Legacy
6. Inheritors
7. The Reboubt/Bastion
8. The Expanse

 

[Refar]

The Enclave
The Followers (of Apocalypse)
The Brotherhood (of Steel)

These are from - you guessed it - Fallout...

 

[davidlallen]

OK, here is today's programming experiment.

I have added a national wonder, capitol building. It has a world limit of 6, and it requires the Diplomacy tech. When you build the building, you can pick any one of the six visions. If you are not the first, you can pick any one of the remaining ones. The visions don't have any effect on the game, same as religions in vanilla; but in related news, I have added back the normal government civics column.

Since each player can only found one vision, it eliminates part of the problem with vision victories: one player could beeline all the relgion founding techs and greatly reduce the chance of anybody else winning this way.

It seems to function properly, it will take some local playtesting to see if I like it. Oddly, there is no way in python to find out what is the favorite religion of a leaderhead, so I had to create a separate list; but each leader will found their favorite religion if it is available.

It may be hard to tell from just this description, but what do you think?

 

[Refar]

Sounds good so far.

The Favourite Religion thingy is odd... Perhaps there is no function to access the favourite religion directly, but there must be a way to just acess some XML value ?

But extra list fine too.

 

[westamastaflash]

Take a look at what FFH has done with religions - they affect ton of things in that mod. I'm not saying that vision should have as much an affect in this mod as a fantasy mod would, but I do think perhaps there ought to be a unique building / unique unit for each vision, plus a unique unit that you can only build if you have that state vision.

 

[Jabie]

With 0.7 it strikes me that you are trying to is accomplish to different goals with the same tools, one is to implement "Visions" and the other is to have some kind of Wild West "Which one is the Capital?" but still use Vision as your religion mechanism. I'm far from convinced that these are really compatible.

For AI reasons you wanted to avoid Visions also affecting the game, as the AI understand civics but doesn't really understand religions that also modify the game.

As has been suggested here, I'd that your religion mechanism takes a leaf from the Chinese Unification mod. Each player's Capital acts as their Holy City and they try to propogate their government as the true government. These governments can be fairly Vanilla - think of Life of Brian with "the people's popular front of Judea" and the "Judean people's front"

For extra credit the names of the government can be taken from dystopic or apocalyptic sources, such as Big Brother (1984), One State (We), Alpha Central (Paranoia), The Human Project (Children of Men), Ford (Brave New World)...

To spread your government, you have to use Spokesman and Diplomat Units. Spokesman Units allow you to spread your Government, whereas Diplomat Units can either spread your vision or remove an opposing vision (at a cost of Gold and EPs). The AP can be built used as a "Re-establish Government" victory.

Visions should be relegated civic status. Here's my take on them:

Anarchy
No Upkeep (Starting Civic)
- -25% Safety
- +10% in combat against Barbarians
- +1XP for all units created.

Federalism (Medium)
- X Free Units
- Build Workers and Settlers 50% quicker.

Technocracy (Medium)
- +50% Science in all Cities

Monarchy (Low)
- +2XP for all new units
- -10% War Weariness

Religion (Low)
- +2 Happiness in all Cities

Plutocracy (Medium)
- +1 Trade Route in all Cities.
- +2 Free Merchants in Capital.

Democracy (High)
- +50% faster build spokesperson Units.
- +10% Safety
- +10% War Weariness
- Cottages, etc, grow 50% faster.

Of course adding Visions to your Civics means that some of the other civics need to be reconsidered too...

 

[Refar]

I like how it works now. There some corks yet to be figured out, but overall i think the Vision mechanic is on the right path.

The Vision of a leader is to make his city the capital of the rebuilt country.
Of course there is a idea of the future going along with it, so i dont see any divergence here.

I think new cool names might help the player "break the connection" between goverments and Visions.
If/Once the Visions got those cool new names, there is indeed the possibility to reuse some of the Govermant names for Civics - if necessary.

I dont like the idea of mixing Civics and Visions mechanics back again however, for considerations i laid out in one of the previous posts.

Giving each capital a own religion seem too much to me.
Each Civ has the chance to found a one of the 6 capitals. If they miss that chance, well. Not each fractionon the map need it's own "Aspiring Capital" - some are just not important enought to get there, so they must support other candidates or stay out.
I think chinese unification only had 7 factions ?