Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[pineappledan]

I find “floating garden” more confusing than Chinampa. Literally no one calls them that. Firaxis made up a word because the vanilla devs were allergic to using endonyms even if that is the only word for it.

Calling a Chinampa a floating garden is like calling an ukulele a “flea-jumping small string instrument”

Naresuan’s Elephant is really long and overly-specific. Rather than just using the Thai term for “war elephant”, Chang Suek, they opted to invent something. Once again, the vanilla devs were so determined to avoid non-English words that they made stuff up.

 

[Stalker0]

Maintaining pledges should not require micromanagement. Using tribute score also doesn't make much sense, as the CS having more units or an ally lowers that score.

To make it not binary, we can just make use of existing mechanics:
1. Get the player's nearest city from the CS, and the plot distance
2. Divide military score by some function of the plot distance (can be sqrt, linear or even quadratic)
3. Sort the results of every player, and top X% can pledge (and keep pledge)

Then having a big army doesn't mean you can automatically pledge everything. You need to settle a city nearby too, which naturally requires you sending an army to defend it.

Another potential option, increasing the "pledge burden" with each additional pledge (similar to how each city gives you a cumulative -5% penalty to science nad culture). So you can pledge a few CS with army X. But it takes army X + Y to pledge more.

 

[pineappledan]

This Congress was tribute rework. Next Congress is shaping up to be the one where we fix PoPs. Love it.

Until PoP proposals with clear support emerge, I’m going to modify my Greece proposal so that the stacking military bonus does not rely on PoPs.

I don’t think any diplo civ can switch onto requiring PoPs for a stacking benefit until we know what the conditions are. Ally status is more stable for now. The only thing that can be moved onto PoPs are things that are currently unconditional, like Siam’s +100% yields, Austria’s quest bonus, or Greece’s decay reduction:

Pledges of Protection grant -50% Influence decay.
+4% Combat Strength of owned and Allied Units for each City-State alliance (up to +40%).
Treat neutral City-State territory as friendly territory.

 

[Solic]

Another potential option, increasing the "pledge burden" with each additional pledge (similar to how each city gives you a cumulative -5% penalty to science nad culture). So you can pledge a few CS with army X. But it takes army X + Y to pledge more.

I like that idea. A pledge civ could possible ignore this requirement or it could be given to a policy.

 

[Anarcomu]

Something that bothers me a little, is that the free promotion from Ikanda (Zulus), does not visually stack with the Buffalo line.

 

[pineappledan]

Instead of removing the yield converter for Germany, there is room to reduce both major effects
Lower the global % from 5 to 4 per TR
Lower the % To converter from 10 to 5

 

[Rekk]

Something that bothers me a little, is that the free promotion from Ikanda (Zulus), does not visually stack with the Buffalo line.

Ask on GitHub; this is a 30 second change (plus the time to commit and make a PR).

 

[Anarcomu]

Ask on GitHub; this is a 30 second change (plus the time to commit and make a PR).

Done.

 

[pineappledan]

draft 2 of the Arabia/Byzantium swap:

Spoiler :

Details:
New Arabian UA: Seal of the Prophets
Can always found a religion.
Can pick any belief even if it was already adopted, and has 1 additional belief slot.
-15% Faith purchase costs.
Can purchase unlocked Great People with Faith in Classical

Bazaar(unique market UB)

32​

+1 and for every 4 in the city​

1 Merchant specialist​

1 to Trade Routes to or From this City​

+100% religious pressure from Trade Routes originating in this City​

+1 to Spice and Sugar​

New Byzantine UA: Arete
+1 Culture and +1 Science in your capital whenever a Historic Event occurs.
Whenever a City adopts your Religion for the first time, a Historic Event is triggered.
Cities gain 10% of their City Defense as Faith each turn.

Lavra (unique temple UB)

32 (up from 3 faith only)​

+50% Pressure in this city (up from 25%)​

Gain 100% of the city's and output as an instant yield when a new Citizen is born​

1 GW Music slot​

-1 from religious strife​

+1 to Incense, Wine, and Amber​

2nd attempt is more similar to what we already have.
The Bazaar is basically the existing Tetraconch's bonuses, but earlier
The Lavra is similar to Spain's old Mission UB, with a large bonus on Growth. This reinforces the civ's Tall emphasis.

The main difference remains with Byzantium losing the % Great Person completion bonus, losing access to the earlier TR completion HE trigger, and getting 2 different bonuses in recompense.

If people still like the random % GP completion, I thought of a new home for it: the Maya.
The Maya placed 34th out of 43 on the AI test games, indicating they are doing fairly badly.
Their UA already gives free GPs, but it is pretty barebones, and could benefit from a 2nd effect.

Spoiler Maya UA proposal :

Current Maya UA:
After unlocking Mathematics, you can pick a free Great Person every 394 game years. Can only pick each Great Person once.

New Maya UA:
Every 394 game years, gain 50% completion towards a Great Person of your choice. Can only pick each Great Person once.
Gain 25% completion towards a random Great Person every 20 turns.

current UA

• With the current version, you can get a free GP on turns 62, 72, 86, 101, 117, 133, 152, 183, and 234 for a total of 9.
• You have to research Mathematics before turn 62. This is doable, but makes Maya very inflexible early game and unable to respond to their start, or else they will delay their UA.
• The current UA also pretty much turns off after turn 234. After that the game clock slows down so much you won't get another Baktun before the game ends.
• This is the only UA with an explicit tech unlock, that just doesn't function without a prereq tech. That's arbitrary and restrictive, and it doesn't seem very fun to be strongarmed into a tech path by your UA when you have 2 other components that already give enough direction for tech emphasis.

New UA

• With this new UA there is no tech unlock for your UA which means no priority tech forcing you to go down Mathematics. This makes Maya's early game flexible. Math is still a high priority tech for Maya, because their UU unlocks on it, so nothing is lost for roleplay flavor.
• There are 3 potential extra triggers on turn 33, 42, and 52, for a total of 12 triggers. At 50% completion for each, that's a total of 6 free GPs.
• Assuming a game takes about 400 turns, a 25% GP completion every 20 turns is equivalent to +5 GPs over the game. Combined with the UA that is equal to 11 GPs, an increase in 1 over the game.
• The random % completion is more interactive than the full free GPs, giving you something to aim at completing, either through GP generation or by finishing off with your 50% Baktun trigger. You also interact with it on a consistent period throughout the game, so you have a part of your UA that stays active after turn 234.
• Giving 50% completion for Great Generals, Admirals is a little unorthodox, but doable. I think that Great Prophets would have to be removed as an option, however. GProphets are generated with Faith, so you would have to give a burst of Faith equal to 50% of the next GProphet, but that Faith could be spent on other things instead.
• Unlike the previous version, the GPs would no longer be Free, meaning they would contribute to the const increase of the next GP. This makes it weaker than the existing UA in one respect.

 

[Stalker0]

Does the lavra still unlock earlier? (I believe the tetraconch does I may be misremembering).

My initial thought is: the switch seems fine enough. I think the two would be thematic enough. the idea of byz getting faith through growth is neat for making a Tall faith engine more viable, even though you would likely still get more faith overall from it thorugh wide play (wide can just generate so much more pop), but I think it lets them get over the faith hump to be a more aggressive spreader should they want to. You could also see an aggressive tradition play where they go medieval conquest with their cataphracts to conquer and convert cities for the nice +1 science/culture in all cities (and having puppets is always nice for tradition). The biggest balance question for them will be, if it possible to power spread "too much" in medieval and actually rack up an OP amount of SPT and CPT? Even a basic 6 city Tall would give them a +6 science/culture pretty early in teh game, and it only scales from there. Now I'm not so concerned that I think its not worth trying, but its definately the part that would be on my watchlist.

I would be willing to try these changes out.

For Mayans, I still think if we are going to change it just remove the mathematic prereq as a first pass attempt. Now....it might be insanely crazily broken, I fully respect its a big buff, but mayans are hurting right now, and it would such a smooth change, as its always felt weird that mayans have to race to mathematics every game or they literally lose out on an entire GP.

 

[pineappledan]

Does the lavra still unlock earlier? (I believe the tetraconch does I may be misremembering).

The current one doesn’t unlock early and I don’t propose to make this one do that either.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Imo the immortal is way too fun to use to be relegated to a CS gift and significantly better than a cataphract such that I would not consider a cataphract a suitable replacement. Extra healing is useful the whole game wheras extra CS is only useful before you upgrade it. Upgraded immortals with march are good tanks and kill things incredibly efficiently. Persia with cataphracts would just feel like a worse songhai to me.

A commando minuteman that has a ranged attack only as long as you keep them commandos runs into the same problem as keshiks and camel archers did in vanilla and zeppelins in VP. (rip zeppelins, my favorite unit). You build a bunch of them because they are really nice, but they become significantly less nice once you upgrade them. So you keep them around until they deal only 5-10 damage a hit and die to anything.

I fully agree. The immortal is Persia's main asset.

And scout line UUs suck, especially for warmonger civs. Not only do they get too weak after upgrading, but the upgrades are far off the warmonger tech path. You can have explorers with 17 CS or longswords/tercios with 22/25. and when you get to industrial, you want field guns. You get fusiliers with the same tech at 37 CS while you still have explorers at 17. If you want commandos early, you have to delay field guns by a lot.

Personally, I would prefer having close to 0 UUs of the scout line. But as people seem to like this unit line, please give those UUs to peaceful civs and give them non-combat bonused like the bandeirantes. For those, I don't care thet they get useless after upgrades. They still give their yields. Or put them in more UC mod.

 

[azum4roll]

AI Maya only sucks because they often fail to focus on Kuna and miss the turn 61 Mathematics timing. They need to get their workers into the trees earlier.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Commandos upgrade into Paratroopers, who have +10 CS and can paradrop, so it seems worth it to upgrade.

And paratroopers come at a tech that is not even unlocked in most domination games. Maybe moving the scout line upgrades to the lower part of tech tree with all the other warmonger stuff would improve that.

 

[Rekk]

And paratroopers come at a tech that is not even unlocked in most domination games. Maybe moving the scout line upgrades to the lower part of tech tree with all the other warmonger stuff would improve that.

If your domination games regularly end in the Modern Era, I think you need to choose a higher difficulty.

 

[Rekk]

Mayan UA Proposal:

Receive a bonus Great Person at the end of every Maya Long Count calendar cycle (every 394 years), and Great People of that type are earned 20% faster for the duration of the next cycle. Each bonus Great Person can only be chosen once.

• As the Long Count would unlock at the beginning of the game, this is a significant buff to the UA, giving them an additional 3 Great People (plus a guaranteed 4th), without taking into account the second ability. I think it would be fine to move it down to Calendar, or even keep it where it is.
• The new ability encourages the player to focus on generating the GP for that cycle. At the beginning, the short duration of the count cycle means the generation rate won't do a whole lot, although some abilities can possibly benefit. This is, of course, offset by the high frequency of GPs themselves
• After turn 235, the player gets a 20% bonus to their last GP choice for the rest of the game.

It still applies to all Great People, including Generals and Admirals. Great Prophets are the odd GP out, as they are generated by faith. There are two ways this bonus can present itself:

1. -20% cost to Great Prophets. This isn't ideal, because, unlike the other GPs, the player loses all of their "extra progress" towards the next Prophet when the cycle ends.
2. +20% Faith. This isn't ideal, because the player can choose to spend the faith on other items. Still, I lean towards this one, as it's more interesting.

Overall, I think this bonus is relatively minor compared to the free GPs, but it gives Pacal a direction to focus on for each Cycle, and a puzzle for the player in which to decide when they can best utilize each generation rate over the course of the game.

 

[pineappledan]

Or you need to tone down the minuteman, which is precisely what this is meant to do. The minuteman is overwhelmingly powerful, one of the strongest UUs in the game. It’s so strong that players use it to push their advantage well into industrial, and wipe their opponents out before America even gets access to their unique wonders.

And scout line UUs suck, especially for warmonger civs. Not only do they get too weak after upgrading, but the upgrades are far off the warmonger tech path. You can have explorers with 17 CS or longswords/tercios with 22/25. and when you get to industrial, you want field guns. You get fusiliers with the same tech at 37 CS while you still have explorers at 17. If you want commandos early, you have to delay field guns by a lot.

It looks like you maybe missed the part where I proposed they unlock at economics, 1 tech early. That puts them next to to America’s UNW on the tech tree as well, so it gives them a military bonus on the top side of Renaissance, and allows America to pursue their other unique component without delaying their military edge.

Regardless, if America was just a warmonger then there would be no point giving them any other wonder than West Point. We have been trying to make them more multivalent, but the minuteman has such a massive and prolonged power spike it scuttles our efforts. Im already moving all the wonders earlier next version and buffing the trade wonder, so I am hoping we can have more games where we at least get to see American wonders, but I think another piece of this is the minuteman as it currently exists is just way too good and tilts America full warmonger.

 

[azum4roll]

The minuteman is overwhelmingly powerful, one of the strongest UUs in the game.

Or you just change their Barrage I to something else (or remove) and they'll be fine.

 

[pineappledan]

proposal for new Austrian National Wonder to replace the Coffee House, in light of the new changed Austria which will be implemented this congress

Spoiler :

UA change:
further reduce the resting influence bonus to a flat 100, no scaling. (down from 75, scaling with era).

new UNW: Ballhausplatz(unique printing press)
available at Printing Press
+5 (up from +1)
10% of the Empire's Culture output is converted to Science each turn
+2 Culture to Chanceries on Empire
+1 Great Diplomat Points
+2 Paper (up from 1)
2 Civil Servant specialist (up from 1)
+20% production of diplomatic units in this City
Each of Your City-State Embassies provide 2 Votes to the World Congress each instead of 1

All diplomatic units receive the Literacy promotion: Grants +5 Influence when you conduct a diplomatic mission, +1 movement for diplomatic units, and the ability to ignore terrain costs

reasoning:
Inspired by @DoveCDog 's proposal from last congress.
The coffee house is terrible. It strikes that perfect balance of not synergizing with the rest of the kit, but instead does a worse version of the same thing. It offers no new incentives other than some raw yields.
If players wanted to see a return of the extra WC votes to Austria's kit, this is a weaker form that is unlocked at the same time as the WC, so it's a much better place for such a bonus.

 

[azum4roll]

You didn't mention it's a Printing Press replacement.