Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[CppMaster]

Ahh ok. Would you consider removing Courthouse from puppet cities?

 

[N.Core]

I wanted to make the Colony building disappear if you reach a certain amount of population because bigger cities that have already been independent for so long aren't easy to integrate into an empire.

So you can annex it before it gets too big, or annex it later but you have to build a Courthouse if you want to remove the unhappiness.

 

[usadefcon1]

I just got sanctioned in my current game and I personally think it's too strong, but I can't think of exactly how to tone it down.

I'm interested in hearing what the current community feelings are towards it and any ideas on how to change it (or if you think it's good as is).

 

[Haldar]

I just got sanctioned in my current game and I personally think it's too strong, but I can't think of exactly how to tone it down.

I'm interested in hearing what the current community feelings are towards it and any ideas on how to change it (or if you think it's good as is).

Hm, the sanction blocks all Trade Routes/deals, except with vassals, right? Maybe add a possibility of deals/routes with civs you have DoF with? if you get sanctioned, it's likely that most of the civs hate you, and still would limit 90% or all of you trade, but if you managed to keep some friendship, it could give a bit of breathing room

 

[Tekamthi]

I'm interested in hearing what the current community feelings are towards it and any ideas on how to change it (or if you think it's good as is).

I've always disliked how absolute it was... Can't recall which one now, maybe it was all, but in 2/3/4 you could defy congress at huge global diplo penalty... Probably lots of work on AI side to accomplish this however

 

[usadefcon1]

Hm, the sanction blocks all Trade Routes/deals, except with vassals, right? Maybe add a possibility of deals/routes with civs you have DoF with? if you get sanctioned, it's likely that most of the civs hate you, and still would limit 90% or all of you trade, but if you managed to keep some friendship, it could give a bit of breathing room

I've always disliked how absolute it was... Can't recall which one now, maybe it was all, but in 2/3/4 you could defy congress at huge global diplo penalty... Probably lots of work on AI side to accomplish this however

I was thinking about it last night, maybe just a turn limit would be enough:

Sanctions Last 50 Turns

Extend Sanction Vote:
After skipping one WC session, sanctions on the same Civ can be extended by an additional 50 turns (100 turns in total)

 

[msw1]

I think sanctioning should be pretty devastating. It's sort of like the diplomatic version of losing a war. The problem is that with the current AI, unless you turn off victory competition, it's essentially impossible to be on good terms with the powerful civs unless you're losing and they're not aggressive. This leads to getting sanctioned in every game that you don't ally a bunch of city states in...

 

[detroitrex]

I think sanctioning should be pretty devastating. It's sort of like the diplomatic version of losing a war. The problem is that with the current AI, unless you turn off victory competition, it's essentially impossible to be on good terms with the powerful civs unless you're losing and they're not aggressive. This leads to getting sanctioned in every game that you don't ally a bunch of city states in...

While we're at it, "everyone loves you and you're getting close to reaching some completely arbitrary amount of popularity, therefore I hate you now" is a bit daft. Outside of domination, the idea that you're about to "win" history and therefore I hate you is easily the cheapest-feeling and game-iest thing in all of civ.

 

[usadefcon1]

While we're at it, "everyone loves you and you're getting close to reaching some completely arbitrary amount of popularity, therefore I hate you now" is a bit daft. Outside of domination, the idea that you're about to "win" history and therefore I hate you is easily the cheapest-feeling and game-iest thing in all of civ.

I'm pretty sure you can turn that off in DiploAIOptions

 

[Recursive]

While we're at it, "everyone loves you and you're getting close to reaching some completely arbitrary amount of popularity, therefore I hate you now" is a bit daft. Outside of domination, the idea that you're about to "win" history and therefore I hate you is easily the cheapest-feeling and game-iest thing in all of civ.

Turn on "Disable AI Victory Competition" and/or "Disable AI Endgame Aggression" in Advanced Settings.

 

[notaspambot]

Throwing out some random ideas I had to buff razing (speed). Looking at razing specifically, not necessarily resettling, which was already buffed recently. The first idea feels straightforward enough that it should be safe to propose as is for the next congress. The second one though is a bit more of a radical change that I'd be interested in hearing people's thoughts on. Both would be considered complex proposals if proposed.

1. Razing immediately after conquest negates tourism's -citizen loss from city conquest:
In a game where bigger numbers should generally be a good thing, tourism for players who want to raze cities is one of the few cases where it ends up being otherwise. This change makes it so that tourism's penalty to razing will not apply should the player decides to immediately raze the city upon conquest. This would also give the option to raze a bonus associated with it, in line with the options for annexing or puppeting the city.

2. Razing speed, and unhappiness from razing is increased by 100% upon researching railroads (2 pops/turn & 2 unhappiness/pop):
In general, razing has a problem in that the time it takes to raze a city becomes increasingly unviable as the game goes on, due to razing speed not being able to keep up with the higher population numbers. This change attempts to allow both the speed and penalties of razing to scale with technology, to keep it a viable option. The technology choice of railroads is because the technology already unlocks colonists, and because it fits thematically with the large-scale population exchanges and resettlement/colonial policies from the era.

While I do recognise that there are a couple of bonuses to razing in Order and Autocracy tenets, they're niche bonuses on tenets that they're clearly not the main focus of, and doubly so for the ideologies themselves. The bonuses aren't also game changing enough that they'd be that big of a problem when stacked anyway.

 

[Tekamthi]

2. Razing speed, and unhappiness from razing is increased by 100% upon researching railroads (2 pops/turn & 2 unhappiness/pop):
In general, razing has a problem in that the time it takes to raze a city becomes increasingly unviable as the game goes on, due to razing speed not being able to keep up with the higher population numbers. This change attempts to allow both the speed and penalties of razing to scale with technology, to keep it a viable option. The technology choice of railroads is because the technology already unlocks colonists, and because it fits thematically with the large-scale population exchanges and resettlement/colonial policies from the era.

the problem imo is that we have no distinction between population the migrates away vs lives lost. i was thinking a while back of adding feature to the refugees mod here on CF that pops out population while the city is being attacked rather than only upon capture -- something like this would be more satisfying for the large centres in later eras, but the refugee gameplay model is incomplete, even as modmod

faster razing time is reasonable alternative but not my preferred gameplay option

 

[hokath]

Yes, it would be cool if razing somehow transferred the population to your own Empire, even if not 100%.
Maybe refugees is too complicated, but one can imagine the "treasure unit" model would probably work out the box.

 

[thefuseman]

Hey everyone.

So I've talked a lot on the community Discord channel about how the sovereignty policy on the Tradition tree is much stronger than its description would suggest. I wanted to post some data and hopefully get some community input and how it could be changed.

Currently, the Sovereignty policy states it reduces tile costs by 20%, exponentially. The formula used to calculate border growth (credit to @azum4roll) is: 20 + (15n) ^ (1.35 * (1 + exponent mod)) * city state multiplier * (1 + sum of border cost modifiers) * game speed modifier. Sovereignty changes 1.35 to 1.08, which drastically impacts the tile cost. I've attached 2 graphs below, to show how this affects tile costs in game (with no other modifiers accounted for).

The ability to get tiles at often 10-20% the normal cost means you can get extremely high yields from border growth, which makes civs like Russia, civs with bonus culture or border growth bonuses, pantheons like God of the Expanse, much more powerful than normal. A strategy to fill out Authority, and put two policies into Tradition can be extremely powerful, but only for a human player, as the AI does not know to pick policies in this manner.

I've attached some screenshots below (credit to @Alpakinator) from both my game and Alpakinator's games to display how ridiculous border growth yields can get, as well as show how you can accumulate culture in a city to essentially get infinite border growth (one border growth per turn in a city for the rest of the game). Note the instant production/gold yields in particular. It becomes genuinely game breaking if you account for things like Great Writers, instant culture from policy bonuses, etc.

I have heard a few ideas for how Sovereignty can be tweaked, including:

• Nerfing the exponent modifier, so 1.35 doesn't became 1.08, but rather 1.28.
• Getting rid of the exponent modifier altogether, instead simply applying a flat 20% tile cost reduction from the policy.

Regardless of how it's nerfed, I think it is due for a heavy nerf in some way. Would love to hear more input on this.

 

[Alpakinator]

If you look at instant yields panel, in Brazil game 840 food, 7085 prod and 7085 gold comes from border growth. In polynesia game, 1783 food, 12261 prod ~11000 gold and ~3000 faith due to God of the Expanse.

I support both options to nerf sovereignty. But I also think that default 1.35 exponent is a bit too high, making border expansion in mid-late game without sovereignty too rare. This makes border yield civs like russia and spain quite weak without sovereignty. And makes authority border yields very low. I'd lower it to 1.3-1.32 In addition to sovereignty change.

 

[msw1]

I don't think it needs to be nerfed. I've played the Russia authority/tradition game a few times and it was a lot of fun, but I didn't feel strong until roughly the industrial era, as with basically every other civ. Before that it was very weak; certainly not strong enough to do as a civ other than Russia. And outside of that niche scenario, you won't have sovereignty and have meaningful instant yields attached to border growth. Instead, you just get a few large cities as tradition civs are all about.

The data shows that the AI performs about the same with tradition as it does with progress. So in my mind this is just taking fun out of the game for no benefit.

 

[thefuseman]

I don't think it needs to be nerfed. I've played the Russia authority/tradition game a few times and it was a lot of fun, but I didn't feel strong until roughly the industrial era, as with basically every other civ. Before that it was very weak; certainly not strong enough to do as a civ other than Russia. And outside of that niche scenario, you won't have sovereignty and have meaningful instant yields attached to border growth. Instead, you just get a few large cities as tradition civs are all about.

The data shows that the AI performs about the same with tradition as it does with progress. So in my mind this is just taking fun out of the game for no benefit.

There are more civs that benefit from this strategy than just Russia: Polynesia/Brazil were posted as examples here, Zulu was posted about on the Discord.

The amount of production/gold you can get from border growth dwarfs any other policy production/gold bonus until ideologies. The current Authority border growth yields are balanced around the assumption that players/AI would go full Authority-it's not balanced around players picking a policy that lowers the cost by 5-6x.

Look at the average production/gold per city in the last 10 turns produced by Polynesia/Brazil.

An average of +64 production per city with seemingly little investment needed, largely just building culture improvements (which should already be considered valuable by simply providing culture) and buildings. That production level is gamebreaking to get, at Turn 184, in the Renaissance Era.

The nerf to pure Tradition play would be very mild comparatively, because border growth without any yields attached isn't gamebreaking. And overall balance can be adjusted after Sovereignty's border growth is nerfed-the goal isn't to nerf Tradition as a whole, but simply to nerf border growth stacking like this.

I can post more screenshots from the Russia game to show how high border growth yields can get, that it trivializes even playing against Deity AI.

 

[hokath]

If the intention is to nuke the hybrid playstyle rather than nerf it then an alternative could be using PlotGoldCostMod to make Tradition able to buy tiles cheaper.
I note this would affect America balance.

 

[Anarcomu]

What about something like "gain two tiles instead of one ; triggers still happen once" ?
That way you get very strong tile acquisition without influencing the yield.
You could have the effect happen every X tile acquisition, or luck based, if twice is too strong.

 

[thefuseman]

I think we should decide how the existing border growth bonus should be changed first, and then go from there.