Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[Blue Ghost]

If you’re removing the early spy, maybe you can move the spy boost to the UB as well? That would remove some clutter on the UA and get it down to two effects, which is the standard for VP.

 

[hokath]

Good suggestion to move 25% boost to UB for clarity. There is little-to-no functional difference of course.

Note: as I wrote Tercio is melee and not gun.
I take the point that it's weird that (a small) part of the UA doesn't unlock until quite late. I take the point (on discord) that it makes more sense to have the Redcoat unit as the 4UC and remove this part boosting gun units generally.

 

[pineappledan]

The bonus vision on civilian units recreates the old problem we had with fishing boats, where barbs wouldn't attack them, and so you could use them to scout entire continents. No bueno.
I'm iffy on the Great Admiral bonus. I kind of like that Portugal is alone on that specific beat.

In summary this is what I would do. Changes from your proposal Bolded

Spoiler :

Perfidious Albion:
Civilian Units are Invisible and Ignore Borders.
Naval Military Units cost -25% Gold Maintenance, have +1 Movement and gain +1% Strength for every tile away from the Capital (up to 30%).
No Bonus for Gun units
No Bonus for Spies
No Bonus vision for civilian units

White Tower
+2 Iron
+25% Network Points for All Spies and a free Spy
+40 Gold, Science, and Great Admiral Points when you identify, capture, or kill a foreign Spy or when you perform a Spy Mission
+25 Gold, Science, and Great Admiral Points when you successfully rig an election in a City-State or construct a Building in this City, scaling with Era.
Contains 1 slot for a Great Work of Art or Artifact, and comes with a Free Great Work of Art.
+1 Culture to all Constabularies, Castles, and Armories.
The Production Cost increases based on the number of Cities you own.

UU2: Redcoat Unique Fusilier (Longbowman removed)

2 Moves​

625​

40 (+2 from Fusilier)​

Fieldworks Promotion​

Sun Never Sets (distance bonus same as naval units)​

Ignores Terrain costs​

That puts all the spy bonuses together so they unlock when you can use them
It preserves Portugal and Zulu's uniqueness
It gives you your reference to the Redcoats
It solves the problem of the Longbowman being completely OP omg plz nerf
It fixes the problem of fishing boats being used as free indestructible scouts
It properly compensates civilian units with something that is equally, or even more flavorful for British, and even sneakier.

 

[hokath]

Agree with everything except the GAdmiral. I understand the concern but I like the way it links the two themes more.
Also 4UC has Ottomans (at least) also in this area.

 

[gwennog]

gain +1% Strength for every tile away from the Capital

I already use this part in the Catalonia UA, not very cool .

 

[hokath]

Ah woops. Sorry I didn't remember (I asked on the discord if it was used but those online at the time didn't remind me).

But I had I did have it on Community Events Addition first :x

 

[gwennog]

Ah woops. Sorry I didn't remember (I asked on the discord if it was used but those online at the time didn't remind me).

But I had I did have it on Community Events Addition first :x

I'm currently reworking the Catalonia Mod but I didn't plan to remove it at all. Well that will be a "bis repetita".

 

[pineappledan]

Also 4UC has Ottomans (at least) also in this area.

kinda, yeah. It's getting crowded.

I already use this part in the Catalonia UA, not very cool .

It's Hokath's fault! He made me do it!

 

[gwennog]

It's Hokath's fault! He made me do it!

 

[gwennog]

Anyway, while I think it fits very well with Gran Companyia, it fits perfectly with the empire on which the sun never sets.

 

[CppMaster]

Regarding score calculation: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/score-evaluation.684496/
I'm going to propose few changes in non-conflicting proposals to that.
The rationale:

• To make score correlate more with victory
• To make score more of an indicator of how great the empire is
• Having the greatest empire as a victory condition (Time victory) feels the most natural, as opposed to more artificial ones like launching a rocket or being the most popular. Why not make it more balanced?
• It gives more incentive to continue a game even when you don't have a chance for winning, because then you could also aim for the 2nd or 3rd place. Or to just build the greatest empire you can, given the circumstances.

Based on these numbers:

10 per city, scaling with map size
+ 2 per population, scaling with map size
+ 1 per tile, scaling with map size
+ 25 per World Wonder
+ 16 per Social Policy or Ideology Tenet
+ 4 per Great Work
+ Religion (owner of religion only: +5 per belief in religion & +3 per worldwide city following the religion)
+ 6 per Technology
+ 10 per Future Tech
+ 50% of all vassals' scores from land and population (calculated the same as above), rounded down
+ City-State Alliances: (25 * # of City-States ever alive) * (# of City-State Alliances * 100 / # of currently alive City-States) / 100, rounded down; 0 if no City-States currently alive
+ Military Power: Military Might Stat / (10 + # of cities), rounded down

1) To correlate more score with cultural victory and so tourism matter more outside of culture victory:
+ 5 * average tourism influence in %, which means +500 if you influence all civs. It's a bit more than having 3 policy trees and 6 tenets (384 points). Defeated civs counts as 100% to avoid an exploit that you'd not eliminate a civ for an easy 100%.

2) To correlate more score with science victory and so rockets parts matter outside of science victory:
+ 25 per launched rocket part, same as World Wonders.

3) To correlate more with domination victory: (Although it's the most correlated victory)
+ 10 per controlled capital.

4) +4 per owned Great Person Tile Improvement, so it's consistent with Great Works.


What do you think about the numbers?

 

[hokath]

Tough to say without playtests.
The current city state alliances formula is hard to parse. What's a normal number for this?
Also is a future tech 10 or 16 (10+6 for a tech)?

 

[CppMaster]

The current city state alliances formula is hard to parse. What's a normal number for this?

It's +25 per CS alliance times ratio of total CSs to still alive CSs.
E.g. If half of CSs are conquered then it's +50 per CS alliance.

Also is a future tech 10 or 16 (10+6 for a tech)?

I don't know for sure, but 10 makes more sense here.

 

[hokath]

Thanks.

I guess a philosophical/design question is: do you want this to be some kind of average over all victories, or should it prefer certain things that perhaps aren't measured directly by other victories (tiles, wonders, etc.). Seems like we're discussing the former? So maybe a good approach would be to write out some columns of these things as they contribute to each victory, then run a game and see how each victory tallies up for each civ, note how the distribution looks. Run another game, repeat.

For example it may turn out that tech/spaceship/future tech is consistently a low contribution to score.

I guess you run these test games with only time victory turned on so they don't end early -- but this might affect AI victory pursuit.

 

[CppMaster]

do you want this to be some kind of average over all victories, or should it prefer certain things that perhaps aren't measured directly by other victories (tiles, wonders, etc.).

I want it to indicate how great the empire is in general. It could be because of how big it is, how advanced it is, how famous it is, how big it's religion is, how good it is diplomatically... Whatever makes the empire better.

 

[hokath]

I wanted to revist the Pikeman discussion (see for example here). Strap in.
The Knight is described in the game as "Powerful Medieval Mounted Unit, weak to Pikemen". It is generally agreed that only the first part of this is true. However making the Pikeman stronger is problematic because (a) simple ways of doing this clash with the Longswordsman, (b) Knights come at a similar time and would have limited time to shine, (c) moving it to an earlier tech is historically inaccurate (probably it already comes 1 tier too early). In this video essay, I will explore a possible change I think would make for more interesting combat around this 'early mid-game' phase. This will also offer a solution another problem: there are several UU (especially with 4UC) that replace the Pikeman, but because of the aforementioned problems it feels hard to design them in a satisfying way.

Spoiler Some information for reference :

Unit Name	Unlock Column	Combat Strength	Promotions	Strategic Resources
Spearman	T2 Ancient	12	Formation I
Swordsman	T1 Classical	16	Discipline	1 Iron
Pikeman	T1 Medieval	17	Formation I
Knight	T1 Medieval	24	standard mounted promotions	1 Horse
Longswordsman	T1 Medieval	22	Discipline	1 Iron
Tercio	T1 Renaissauce	25	Discipline and Formation I
Fusilier	T1 Industrial	38	Field Works and Formation I

So before other bonuses (likely rough terrain/Formation I open terrain boost/fortification) a Pikeman's 33% Formation I boost gives it 22.6 strength versus a Knight's 24
I have omitted training costs. In what follows just assume all costs are appropriate to the tech tier.
And here is an Great Artist's impression of the relevant part of the tech acyclic, directional graph:

As a brief aside, in the thread linked above Hinin suggested moving the spearman to Mining (T1 Ancient) and introducing a new Spearman-line unit at T1 Classical with 14 CS. This would allow for a smoother power curve of that unit line, since currently there are 3 tech tiers between Spearman at a weak 12 versus Pikeman at a (still quite weak tbh) 17. Now personally I don't view that gap as a huge problem and I won't get too off topic. However I do think the introduction of 1 additional unit can help us here.

Disclaimer: I am not a historian. Please correct me, but hopefully you agree with the basic premise.
Step 1:

Spoiler :

Technologically I would draw a distinction between the peasant levies using modified farming equipment and the more 'professional' pikeman wielding a purpose made 10 foot monster.
This weaker unit (tentative name: Billsman. Halberdier was suggested but it sounds a bit too advanced to my AoE II ears) would fulfil the current role the Pikeman has, being moved to Metal Casting (1 tier earlier). I considered -1 CS as well, what do you think? When Knights turn up they are rightfully going to stomp all over these peasants.
The historically-driven innovation to the pike would then be represented by the Pikeman (in name and model) being moved to Machinery (1 tier later). It can come up to, perhaps, 20 (+3) CS. The 33% Formation I bonus is then 26.6 CS making it favoured against the Knight (but still slightly weaker than a Longsword).

Step 2:

Spoiler :

There is now a 1 tech gap between the newly position Pikeman and the Tercio. Solution? Kill the Tercio (hold your outrage for a moment). Pikeman will upgrade to the Fusilier where the Formation and Discipline promotions will combine. N.B. the Fusilier is the first Gunpowder Unit. Tercio are counted as Melee Units. I think this confuses some people because Tercio comes at Gunpowder and has a Gun.
In the timeline, the next advance that came was the two handed sword. This was specifically meant to counter the pike. So I will take a leaf from the EE modmod and add a Twohanded Swordsman (shorter name Zweihänder is probably better for readability in game. FlamingCheesePie: Greatswordsman) at Chemistry (same tier as previous Tercio, but Chemistry because better Steel). This would have more CS, 27 (+2 on Tercio), but no Formation I bonus. 7 CS higher should be enough to seriously injure the new Pikeman. I note here that the Iron cost would compete with the Cannon.

Step 3:

Spoiler :

Gunpowder now just has the Cannon. We also have no representation of the military innovation of Pike and Shot (the reason Twohanded swords were really necessary was that pikes guarded Arquebusiers that we represent as the Tercio). Well, did you know the Promotions can have Tech unlocks? An example is Air Defense, which Archery, Gun and Naval units can learn with a Tier 1 promo and Flight researched. I would propose Pike and Shot be a Melee Only promotion (i.e. once Fusilier obsoletes the Melee line you won't see it anymore) that requires Formation I (so a Swordsman-line unit could get it if they had Drill II -> Formation I). My idea is the Impi effect along the lines of a Ranged Attack with 50% Strength when Attacking, which the combat simulator now understands amazingly. I'm open to other suggestions! This is like a mini-upgrade to the Pikeman to put it fully dominant over the Knight and slightly above the Longswordsman without requiring an entirely new unit (which would have only a 1 tech gap). I also think it would be quite fun and give that military boost on Gunpowder that I dream about from older Civ games.

After these changes we would have:

• A smaller gap between Spearman and its upgrade,
• Two spearman-line units to replace with UUs, allowing more uniqueness,
• A unit that can fight the Knight, though 1 tier later to give it time to dominate,
• No loss of the Longswordsman as the premier T1 medieval melee, and indeed it can even leapfrog the Pikeman at T1 Renaissance,
• A longer time period where the mounted->spear->melee->ranged->mounted rock-paper-scissors game can play out,
• No confusion about Tercio being a Melee not Gun unit,
• Military bonus from both Chemistry and Gunpowder making the bottom of the tree more interesting.

Spoiler Changed table and graphic for visualization :

Unit Name	Unlock Column	Combat Strength	Promotions	Strategic Resources
Spearman	T2 Ancient	12	Formation I
Swordsman	T1 Classical	16	Discipline	1 Iron
Billsman	T2 Classical	16	Formation I
Pikeman	T2 Medieval	20	Formation I
Knight	T1 Medieval	24	standard mounted promotions	1 Horse
Longswordsman	T1 Medieval	22	Discipline	1 Iron
Zweihänder	T1 Renaissauce	26	Discipline and Formation I Two Hander	1 Iron
Fusilier	T1 Industrial	38	Field Works and Formation I

Gun and Shot -- Melee Promotion -- Unlocked at Gunpowder -- Extra Ranged Attack (?)

And here is an Great Artist's impression of the relevant part of the tech acyclic, directional graph:

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Would love to get feedback. Is this even necessary? What numbers would you pick? What should the new promotion do?

 

[ma_kuh]

Great talk, thanks for taking the time to organize this presentation.

I have omitted training costs

I don't think this is a fair assumption. I feel like I can't trust the numbers on the wiki, but aren't pikemen something like 75% the production cost of knights? I think "can a pikeman hold the line against a knight?" is the wrong question to be answering. From raw production alone, I feel like a more fair comparison is "can 4 pikemen defeat 3 knights?" (defeat meaning hold the line without losses, or trade kills if the knights all-in for a kill). Or "can 2 pikemen block off two knights from reaching 1~2 comp bows while trading equal HP?"

This is before factoring in the fact that knights require Horses (which is split between two unit lines, so relatively high opportunity cost), and they require a third line of prereq techs to unlock. Knights are better because they cost a lot more, in science, in production, in tile ownership/improvements.

 

[hokath]

Yes this is a fair point.
Knights also become much cheaper to produce with the Stables.

 

[hokath]

Here is a thrown-together mod for the suggestion above.
Notes:
I lowered Billman to 16 (from 17) so it is halfway between Spearman (12) and Pikeman (20)
I made a new icon and I used a reskinned spearman with a different shaped shield.
The new promotion requires Gunpowder and Formation II and is called Arquebusiers. It is the Doppelsoldner +30% attacking units at full health effect. It may need to be stronger (35 or 40).
Berserker is Billman replacement, no changes.
Goedendag and Impi are Pikeman replacements. Impi is weaker at 24 and only costing 200. Has Cover I, Formation I, Ranged Support Fire, Fasimba (which is boosted to +50% VS Gun, so it is ever so slightly stronger VS Fusilier than before).
Two Handed Swordsman is called Greatswordsman and has the Two Hander promotion which makes it 33% stronger attacking Spears, Bills, Pikes, and Free Companies (from EE mod).
Yellow Brow, Musketeer and Landsknecht are Greatswordsman replacements.
Yellow Brow has Formation I instead of Two Hander and costs no Iron (in addition to its unique promotions)
Landsknecht is renamed Doppelsoldner -- the guys who carried the big swords -- and has Two Hander, Formation I and Formation II. This means with Gunpowder you can immediately get old Doppelsoldner promotion -- this nicely represents how the Landsknecht existed before Arquebusiers. It requires Iron and still has the mercenary-type abilities around purchasing. I playtested this one and its quite terrifying.
Musketeer is basically unchanged, unlocking at Gunpowder instead of Chemistry and not requiring Iron. Musketeer tbh isn't well represented by a unit class. Perhaps the closest is actually Cuirassier? Anyway.

Go nuts.

 

[Civ459]

With the recent change to Spain's old UA, how about reconstructing the Inquisition (Enhancer belief) using the old Spain UA? I think there should be a doctrine that aggressively expands religion(a religious fanatic) using Inquisitors to balance the units(not spy).
----------------------------------------------------
Inquisition(Enhancer belief) → Reconquista (Enhancer belief)

• Gain Inquisitors whenever a city is conquered, and Inquisitors do not cost maintenance (old Spain UA).
• Inquisitors remove 100% of other religion pressure and generate 25 gold for each converted Citizen when Removing Heresy. (Old 2.xx version / historically related to the Alhambra Decree.)
• When Inquisitors remove holy city of other religions, the Empire enters a Golden Age.

(- Lose: Inquisitors cost 33% less faith.)
(- Remove: Spies exert 52 Religious Pressure on Cities they occupy.)
(- Remove: 2 Happiness for spies stationed in Foreign Cities.)