Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[Legen]

civs like Maya and Poland are my least favorite to play, because they offer little guidance re: what you’re supposed to do with them.

I find Maya relatively straightforward to play. The UI has a solid science focus, making Maya a prime candidate for Progress, the Ancient tree centered around science and infrastructure. You then keep the infrastructure on par with your science rate by selecting beliefs that lets you use Kuna's faith as production (Zealotry, Jesuit Education, Faith of the Masses), much like Babylon does with gold/investments. The rest is standard SV play.

The UA acts mainly as an early boost, not so different from Carthage's gold on city founding. Not a long term benefit, but an impactful one nonetheless. Though, its tech requirement does push Maya to lean on a science-focused play, further emphasizing that you should pick Progress; going Tradition or Authority could cost you a GP or two, as they can't compete with Progress in terms of early science. So, the UA does offer a guidance, both through a reward (if you go Progress) and a fear of missing out (if you go Tradition or Authority).

Personally, I don't think the UA needs any changes. It would be enough to buff the Kuna instead, in my opinion. Maya's SV winrate is quite below what you'd expect from them, and considerably so compared to Korea and Babylon, their closest equivalents.

 

[DoveCDog]

In the thread on recon units we talked about the overlap between ignore terrain cost and double movement through forest/desert. Simply removing either one would lead to low movement point scouts, so it was suggested that the promotion lines needed to be reworked. My suggestion:


All Recon units gain base +1 MP

Left tree (Recon):
Trailblazer 1: +1 MP, Can embark and cross rivers with 2MP penalty (costs 3MP, doesn't end turn)
Trailblazer 2: +1 MP, Can move on mountains with 2MP penalty (costs 3MP, doesn't end turn)
Trailblazer 3: Removed
Frogman (rq Trailblazer 1): Can embark and cross rivers with no penalty, attack with no penalty
Mountinman (rq Trailblazer 2): Can move on mountains with no penalty, attack with no penalty
Scouting 1: (rq Trailblazer 2): +1 Sight
Scouting 2: +1 sight
Scouting 3: Removed
Screening (rq Scouting 1): + 10% flanking bonus, unit counted twice for flanking bonus

Right tree (Sabotage):
Survivalism 1: +5 HP healed, + 25% CS when defending in any territory
Survivalism 2: +5 HP healed, + 25% CS when defending in any territory
Survivalism 3: Removed
Multitasker (rq Survivalism 2): Heals even when taking an action, Can move after attacking
Guerrilla Warrior (rq Survivalism 2): +20% CS in rough terrain, additional +20% CS when defending in rough terrain
Sabateur 1 (rq Survivalism 2): Ignores ZOC
Sabateur 2: Can use enemry roads/railroads
Disabler (rq Sabateur 1): Enemy units attacked by this unit suffer -2 MP, -15% CS, -50% RCS for 1 turn

General:
Treasure Hunter (rq Trailblazer 2 or Survivalism 2): +33% rewards from ruins

Notes:
1. having survivalism be limited to outside friendly territory is odd and doesn't make sense
2. With the MP upgrade there is no need for free pillaging
3. Giving base +1 MP makes Trailblazer not mandatory anymore, survivalism side is more attractive
4. I'm going off memory, might have missed 1 or 2 upgrades

@pineappledan, @Tekamthi would appreciate your suggestions

 

[Stalker0]

So apparently the last set of changes were considered too difficult to implement, do we know which ones? It would help us know what kind of changes are off the menu

 

[pineappledan]

The thing that couldn’t be implemented was ignoring terrain costs for specific features/terrain. The promotion that ignores all terrain costs works fine, but can’t be broken apart like that.

The survivalism line is the only one that is useful in that formulation. The ZOC is very important and either needs to be available from both sides or innate. The reworked trailblazer line is just situational gimmicks while survivalism has all the consistency and power.

Mountainmin (sic) is not implementable. If mountains can be traversed then they cost 1 movement. Impassable terrain can’t be assigned higher movement costs without new code.

 

[Tekamthi]

I think the 2 moves to cross rivers would also require new code -- afaik rn you can have it cost 1 move flat (no matter the terrain on the other side), or end turn, no in between. iirc embark/disembark can be given varied flat costs in this way so if you want to have a "staged" ability, costing less over time, you could focus on that one.

I can't comment on what may or may not be implementable in dll as new features, just assessing based on how tables & abilities work currently. Simple sounding things are not necessarily simple to adapt into the .dll, I can say that much. To get sponsorship on a proposal it will be best to focus on what can currently be accomplished, though I do agree that it would be nice to have more customizable movement rules on a per terrain/feature basis. Unlikely to happen however, this was effectively what prev recon proposal failed on. Anyway most of what you've proposed looks achievable, and possibly an improvement over status quo, though admittedly I have difficulty imagining how broad changes like this will play out in-game, til I try them; it may be a worthwhile experiment, with some small revisions.

Existing features (or lack thereof) aside, the only red flag I see is giving recon attack and move -- imo this is the defining feature of mounted units. I just don't think it fits with a high mobility infantry unit, outside of maybe UUs. I don't love the idea of a pathfinder with 5 moves either; it's too fast, I'd say we want a fully promo'd recon to be no faster than the base moves of a mounted unit from same era, so for pathfinder max 4.

On the other hand, I do love the idea of using VP's plague feature ie your "disabler" promo, however as it stands I don't believe a plague can be applied during attack only; it is applied via any melee combat. Attack-only plagues would be another nice-to-have feature in the dll, but not there rn (or at least I don't know how to make 'em work this way using tables alone). It CAN be done in lua for modmod, but generally lua tricks are out-of-scope for mainbranch VP. Recon overhauls that use plagues to make the line unique do raise my interest considerably, I think there's lots of potential in that direction, especially since 3.8/9 just improved how these work (according to patch notes anyway, have not tested)

If mountains can be traversed then they cost 1 movement.

I'd qualify this by noting that this is only true for a "ignore movement cost" unit -- mountain access promo without ignore results in unit ending turn for each move into mountain. Anyway I believe 1 move cost in mountain was the intended result in the theorycrafted proposal? maybe I misunderstood, but that one should work as I read it.

Something to investigate/test that may be useful here (or someone can comment if they know) -- I'm not sure how ExtraMove combines with ignore terrain cost: it's the same table as double move, which stacks on top of ignore; if it stacks with ignore as well, we might be able to slow recon down selectively in some plots. If this is possible then I don't mind the proposed high movement point recon as much.

 

[BaldSamson]

I would be interested in having a few more project options as a place to dump extra production/gold. There are many times in the game where I just don't have something worth building/buying and I end up dumping it into diplomats/units to gift to City States. However, there are many games where I don't have any real interest in competing for alliances and it's wasted resources.

Having "buyable" projects would require some new code AFAIK, but would help some gold focused civs have more play options.

A few ideas in relation:

• Military
  • Mercenary Recruitment: Spend gold and receive a UU from one of the discovered military City States. Would need some hard limits to prevent abuse, maybe limited to the capital and with a significant cooldown. An opportunity to diversify your military if you aren't able to form alliances.
• Happiness:
  • City Festival: Spend gold and start x turns of WLTKD in the city. This will help "reset" the desired luxury in the city when it's unobtainable. China/Brazil are obvious winners here, and it may bite into Great Merchant utility in the later game.
• Culture:
  • Arts Festival : Spend production, gain +x points/turn for Artists/Writers/Musicians over x turns. Scaling costs similar to public work.
• Friendship
  • Peace Summit : Capital Only. Spend production, lower warmonger score. Distributes +x gold/etc to known major civs that are not currently at war.
  • War Support : Capital Only. Spend gold, reduce your supply by -1. Grant a friendly major civ +1 unit for x turns. Afterwards the unit is "returned" back to your capital with a bonus to XP.

Science already has reasonable catchup mechanics and affects so many other aspects of the game that I'm more hesitant to propose a project that boosts that.

 

[BaldSamson]

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

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.

You'll probably hate this, but I believe we're overthinking this. I've modified Arabia's HE trigger to / from / and it's just fine. It brings Arabia's snowballing in line, but retains most of the existing flavor for the civ.

 

[pineappledan]

I'm sure that would help control Arabia's balance more, but I'm not exclusively concerned with balance for Arabia. The bigger problem I see is that it puts even more emphasis on the 15% GP completion bonus, by further weakening another aspect of the kit.

The most pressing issue with Arabia that I see is that the GP completion bonus is just a bad bonus that should be removed. It triggers directly off of itself, and pumps out far more raw GPs than any other civ is capable of producing. It makes Arabia's playstyle intensely focused and brittle; the rest of their kit is already so minor that it almost doesn't exist. Lastly, having 1 civ that can produce GPs at a scale far greater than any other has ramifications for all other balance, because we have to consider bonuses like yields on GP expend for policies and beliefs so that they aren't broken in the hands of Arabia.

 

[KlHannibal2]

I would be interested in having a few more project options as a place to dump extra production/gold. There are many times in the game where I just don't have something worth building/buying and I end up dumping it into diplomats/units to gift to City States. However, there are many games where I don't have any real interest in competing for alliances and it's wasted resources.

Having "buyable" projects would require some new code AFAIK, but would help some gold focused civs have more play options.

A few ideas in relation:

• Military
  • Mercenary Recruitment: Spend gold and receive a UU from one of the discovered military City States. Would need some hard limits to prevent abuse, maybe limited to the capital and with a significant cooldown. An opportunity to diversify your military if you aren't able to form alliances.
• Happiness:
  • City Festival: Spend gold and start x turns of WLTKD in the city. This will help "reset" the desired luxury in the city when it's unobtainable. China/Brazil are obvious winners here, and it may bite into Great Merchant utility in the later game.
• Culture:
  • Arts Festival : Spend production, gain +x points/turn for Artists/Writers/Musicians over x turns. Scaling costs similar to public work.
• Friendship
  • Peace Summit : Capital Only. Spend production, lower warmonger score. Distributes +x gold/etc to known major civs that are not currently at war.
  • War Support : Capital Only. Spend gold, reduce your supply by -1. Grant a friendly major civ +1 unit for x turns. Afterwards the unit is "returned" back to your capital with a bonus to XP.

Science already has reasonable catchup mechanics and affects so many other aspects of the game that I'm more hesitant to propose a project that boosts that.

The mercenary idea sounds interesting. What about making the UU a quest reward? That would limit it hard. IMO you should get only one such unit by buying or a quest reward. If you are a friend of that city state, you might get 2 or 3 units over time and as an ally maybe up to 5.
Buying/quest reward units should be much rarer than freindship/ally units.

 

[azum4roll]

It triggers directly off of itself, and pumps out far more raw GPs than any other civ is capable of producing.

having 1 civ that can produce GPs at a scale far greater than any other has ramifications for all other balance

Stating it multiple times doesn't make it true. So far we don't really have numbers in how many more extra GPs Arabia is generating over a game. Is it really that much more than Austria's?

 

[Enginseer]

2 Proposals for next Congress I'd like to do:

Captured Units receive "Purchased" XP
I heard several comments that one downside of using captured units is that they are XP-less, they don't feel good to use even if they're at 100 HP, and 0 XP feels "bad" per se. I would like to propose captured units to receive XP based on the origin city of the unit (you can see where they are "trained in" via UnitPanel; this won't be from your enemy but yours) as if they were purchased. So if you captured a Foreign Legion/Mercenary, you get full XP! If you capture anything else without the Volunteer Army of Freedom tenet, you'll get half-XP.

Landmarks on City-State Territory grant the Owner +30 Resting Influence instead of +50 Influence, scaling with Era.
It is as said in the title. Antiquity Sites are a limited resource and they should offer a permanent bonus. The temporary influence is useful but can easily be lost within a few turns from spies and great diplomats mocking about. No AI change is needed as the AI builds landmarks if they need a diplomatic victory.

 

[pineappledan]

It should be the same as the GDiplomat bulb, which I believe is 35.

 

[Enginseer]

Says 30 to me, I believe. https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...bulb-increase-resting-influence-by-30.683270/

 

[N.Core]

One thing I would like to change is the Nuclear Non-proliferation. The current one is so stupidly no-brainer for tech-leading domination civ.

You can just spam-build Atomic Bombs or Nuclear Missiles. If someone proposed Nuclear Non-proliferation and no one had nukes yet, you can go vote for it. Making anyone unable to build nuke weapons including you, but only you already have existing nukes and can obliterate anyone.

Make the proposal also force everyone (including friends) to instantly declare war on a civ who uses their existing nukes to attack someone, this would be a double-edged sword for anyone who possesses nukes. You need to repeal the proposal to make sure you can use your nukes without triggering a world war against you.

 

[KlHannibal2]

One thing I would like to change is the Nuclear Non-proliferation. The current one is so stupidly no-brainer for tech-leading domination civ.

You can just spam-build Atomic Bombs or Nuclear Missiles. If someone proposed Nuclear Non-proliferation and no one had nukes yet, you can go vote for it. Making anyone unable to build nuke weapons including you, but only you already have existing nukes and can obliterate anyone.

Make the proposal also force everyone (including friends) to instantly declare war on a civ who uses their existing nukes to attack someone, this would be a double-edged sword for anyone who possesses nukes. You need to repeal the proposal to make sure you can use your nukes without triggering a world war against you.

On the other hand, if an AI has a lead amd has nukes, and gets non proliferation passed, you are in a hell of a late game. Such a game would surely be remembered.

 

[Barna1]

I'd appreciate feedback on some proposals I've been thinking about. I also wonder how difficult these changes (especially the second one) would be to implement, as I know very little about that.

1. Remove some units (Bandeirantes and Comanche Rider) from city state gift pool.
Rationale: a single unit of Bandeirantes can result in thousands of science, culture and gold in the mid-game, far exceeding the yields obtained from any city state alliance. The problem is that it's a unique unit which you don't need more than one or two of, so you're basically getting the entire benefit from Brazil's UU. There's a similar (but smaller) problem with Comanche Riders. (There might be some other problematic gifts, but these are the ones I've come across.)

2. Modify city conquest CS quest.
Proposed new reward: free great person of choice. Additional proposed change: can only get one (successful) conquest quest against each civilization.
Rationale: this quest gives tons of free XP (especially if you have bonus modifiers like pledge or statecraft). In my games it very often starts a snowballing after which I'm unstoppable, because it quickly gives tier 4 promotions (like +1 range siege units and infantry with overrun/march/etc), which are very strong in human hands. In my opinion even a single conquest quest gives too much XP, but the problem is made even worse by the fact that quite often you immediately get another quest to capture another nearby city of the civ you're fighting, giving even more free XP. I want to keep the reward exciting, but less snowbally in a military way, and the free great person is the best thing I could think of.

 

[Little Billy]

2. Modify city conquest CS quest.
Proposed new reward: free great person of choice. Additional proposed change: can only get one (successful) conquest quest against each civilization.

I was thinking about this too, and I agree with your rationale. The great person though feels very similar to the coup quest and whatever one gives you great people points in all cities.

My suggestion would be to make the quest only pickable by militaristic city states and to make the reward 6 auto gifted military units. (with the unique unit rules applying)

 

[KlHannibal2]

I'd appreciate feedback on some proposals I've been thinking about. I also wonder how difficult these changes (especially the second one) would be to implement, as I know very little about that.

1. Remove some units (Bandeirantes and Comanche Rider) from city state gift pool.
Rationale: a single unit of Bandeirantes can result in thousands of science, culture and gold in the mid-game, far exceeding the yields obtained from any city state alliance. The problem is that it's a unique unit which you don't need more than one or two of, so you're basically getting the entire benefit from Brazil's UU. There's a similar (but smaller) problem with Comanche Riders. (There might be some other problematic gifts, but these are the ones I've come across.)

2. Modify city conquest CS quest.
Proposed new reward: free great person of choice. Additional proposed change: can only get one (successful) conquest quest against each civilization.
Rationale: this quest gives tons of free XP (especially if you have bonus modifiers like pledge or statecraft). In my games it very often starts a snowballing after which I'm unstoppable, because it quickly gives tier 4 promotions (like +1 range siege units and infantry with overrun/march/etc), which are very strong in human hands. In my opinion even a single conquest quest gives too much XP, but the problem is made even worse by the fact that quite often you immediately get another quest to capture another nearby city of the civ you're fighting, giving even more free XP. I want to keep the reward exciting, but less snowbally in a military way, and the free great person is the best thing I could think of.

I agree to the bandeirantes. Comanche raider I would keep. One raider can't pillage nealry as much and he risks his life because you need to be at war to pillage.

 

[Rekk]

I agree to the bandeirantes. Comanche raider I would keep. One raider can't pillage nealry as much and he risks his life because you need to be at war to pillage.

Or maybe a UU shouldn't have a mechanic that is fulfilled by having exactly one of them.

 

[usadefcon1]

I was thinking about this too, and I agree with your rationale. The great person though feels very similar to the coup quest and whatever one gives you great people points in all cities.

My suggestion would be to make the quest only pickable by militaristic city states and to make the reward 6 auto gifted military units. (with the unique unit rules applying)

I like the idea of military units for quest completion.