We Love The King Day

[Leoreth]

This has nothing to do with my current work on the new map, but for tangential reasons I have been thinking about We Love The King Day (WLTKD).

My first question, does anyone care about this effect? When it happens to one of your cities, does it actually matter for your games? Do you ever actually pay attention to triggering it?

In my personal experience, the answer is no. I feel like WLTKD in Civ4 is more a legacy mechanic meant to reference the identically named mechanic in previous games but actually only awkwardly fit in because its previous role (and strengths) are actually now represented by Golden Ages. In case you never knew, here are the rules for WLTKD:

• It requires the city to be not in unrest and have positive happiness and health
• Every turn there is a random chance to trigger it
• Once triggered, it will continue until one of the above conditions is violated
• Affected cities do not cost any maintenance

Not paying maintenance is actually not that bad in vanilla Civ4, where city maintenance is your primary limiting factor for expansion and accelerating your power curve. In DoC the limiting factor is stability and historical territory, so the benefit is significantly reduced. However, this mechanic makes WLTKD more valuable in frontier cities and almost useless for cities close to your capital - which is strange thematically because you should care more about your core cities being happy than your border cities. Especially in a DoC context, where the core cities are literally your core and the thing you should primarily care about, but which is usually so compact that the maintenance costs are negligible.

So, I would like to make WLTKD more interesting. But I want to avoid turning WLTKD into a local golden age. So it should be both less powerful and also impact different things. Just for comparison, the rules for golden ages are:

• Triggered in a variety of ways but primarily by great people
• Lasts a specific number of turns
• +1 production on tiles that yield 2+ production
• +1 commerce on tiles that yield 2+ commerce
• +100% great people birth rate in all cities
• not in DoC: no anarchy from civic and state religion changes

My ideas for new/additional WLTKD effects:

• City growth: +50% food added to storage
• Cottage growth: +50% growth for worked tiles
• Specialists: +2 commerce for each specialist
• Wonders: +25% production for wonders and projects

Another point is the way WLTKD is triggered. I think part of why I don't care about it is that I have little control over it, because it is triggered randomly. I wonder if a less random trigger would make it more plannable and therefore something you would actually go for. One idea I had is a happiness bar that fills up based on how much excess happiness a city has and once it's full the effect triggers and lasts until one of the WLTKD conditions is violated (i.e. the city becomes unhappy/unhealthy again).

Any further thoughts or ideas?

 

[SultanRedSnake]

I’ll certainly share my ideas once I think of some. For now I’d just like to propose that the text be changed to “We Love Leoreth Day”

 

[ThreeBlackSevens]

I really like the wonder effect idea especially, seems like it's specific enough that you'd want to actually trigger it when you want to build wonders, and also fits really well thematically. Could also have a culture boost? Though that might also make it more valuable outside your core, since your core usually has great culture to begin with. Another off-the-top-of-my-head idea with no real continuation as of yet would be a bonus that depends on your government type, e.g. more militaristic oriented civics could provide a boost to military production or experience at the expense of some other boost.

An idea I had for how it could be triggered would be like a "happiness bank" of sorts, where excess happiness adds to the bank and unhappiness subtracts from it. Once it reaches a certain value, so you've kept your city happy enough for long enough, WLTKD gets triggered. From there there would be an extra reduction from the bank, so if you don't keep your city with x amount of excess happiness, it WLTKD will start to count down. Once the bank hits 0 again, WLTKD would end. Additionally, perhaps once it's triggered the max amount of change to the bank could be 0, or some other low number, so that you can't just make a city super happy for a while and then have WLTKD forever without worrying about happiness. And maybe the negative effect for unhappiness could be multiplied by like x5 or x10, so that if your city becomes unhappy WLTKD will disappear very quickly.

Maybe health could have something to do with it too like in the original method? I dunno, I've always found it weird that bad health has no impact on happiness in the game anyway haha.

 

[trexeric]

I thought this was going to be another Leoreth appreciation thread!

 

[urbestfriend]

This might be too OP, but obviously that also interacts with what the requirements for triggering WLTKD are - but maybe if a city is in WLTKD, it won't secede during an expansion crisis? Or maybe it could give -1 to the cities expansion modifier similar to jail/courthouse

 

[Dracosolon]

Another point is the way WLTKD is triggered. I think part of why I don't care about it is that I have little control over it, because it is triggered randomly. I wonder if a less random trigger would make it more plannable and therefore something you would actually go for. One idea I had is a happiness bar that fills up based on how much excess happiness a city has and once it's full the effect triggers and lasts until one of the WLTKD conditions is violated (i.e. the city becomes unhappy/unhealthy again).

This would give some strategic weight to extra /, which are currently suboptimal since you always want your population to be as big as those two allow otherwise. It's also easily monitored/managed by the player and gives a bit more "humanitarian" flavor to the game (could even be part of a goal one day). I like it.

Though I didn't know WLTK day lasted that long. If you can just keep it forever (well at least until the next anarchy turns) once you got it by micromanaging and that might force the rewards to be pretty weak for the sake of balance. Would it make sense to give it more immediate rewards (like a or a boost), or perhaps to introduce more ways to expire it?

 

[Leoreth]

I thought this was going to be another Leoreth appreciation thread!

Please no royal titles, it is Citizen Leoreth.

This might be too OP, but obviously that also interacts with what the requirements for triggering WLTKD are - but maybe if a city is in WLTKD, it won't secede during an expansion crisis? Or maybe it could give -1 to the cities expansion modifier similar to jail/courthouse

Yes, stability is another element I thought of. It could definitely have a stronger impact on domestic stability.

 

[xijinping]

accelerated cottage growth sounds good. It is around individualism gets unlocked when population starts booming and keeping them happy becomes harder. So the reward looks reasonably attractive compared to those that impact later stages too.

 

[Cacaso]

I have a doubt. In this part this would mean that if a city grew by 1 population point it would keep +50% of the food used to grow (effect similar to that of the granary and aqueduct added) in this case it is necessary to remember that adding this effect plus the +50% granary and equeduct effect that would give 100% food stored and then it would be very strong, or does this effect mean that the city receives a (one-time, when the WLTKD is reached) food bonus that would help it grow?

My ideas for new/additional WLTKD effects:

• City growth: +50% food added to storage

I think following the similar idea of @ThreeBlackSevens that the activation mechanism of WLTKD should be by a kind of "fill bar per city" where each point of excess of Hapinnes would count with weight +2/+3 each point of excess of health +1, and also a certain percentage of the culture (something like 1%/2% of the culture produced in the city is converted to fill this WLTKD bar), I think the idea of using the culture to fill the WLTKDbar would be very cool because it would give yet another use for the yeld Culture, and it also seems fitting that a part of the culture be used to fill the WLTKDbar as this would be linked to the welfare condition of the population that would then pay homage to the leader.


I think that for balancing purposes the WLTKD cannot be "infinite" (as long as the conditions remain) otherwise, it gets too strong especially for older civs, because the snowball effect in cases, for example, like ChinaCIV where the player being able to keep cities at nearly constant WLTKD since the year 3000BC would be too Overpowered. This scenario would be very negative for game balance. I think to solve this we could think of WLTKD having a finite number of turns (something like it lasts 10 turns and then you have to fill the WLTKD bar again to have the event again, something similar to the GreatPearson or culture bar , but every time there is an event it gets more expensive). If this solution is not pleasant, as it looks like a mini GoldenAge only local, a solution would be to have an idea similar to "hapinnes+health+culture banking" by @ThreeBlackSevens where you have an effect that once the WLTKD starts for each turn who passes he gains a -1 point per turn in this WLTKDbar (and this malus increases over time) so that it is emptied and the event ends.

 

[Leoreth]

I have a doubt. In this part this would mean that if a city grew by 1 population point it would keep +50% of the food used to grow (effect similar to that of the granary and aqueduct added) in this case it is necessary to remember that adding this effect plus the +50% granary and equeduct effect that would give 100% food stored and then it would be very strong, or does this effect mean that the city receives a (one-time, when the WLTKD is reached) food bonus that would help it grow?

It's deliberately "+50% food added to storage", not "+50% food stored after growth".

In other words, if a 10 population city produces 22 food, then it consumes 20 food and 2 is added to storage normally. With the bonus it would be 3 instead.

 

[Nyayr]

Maybe also a check against spies? As a happy city is less bound to be poisoned, go into revolt etc easily cause people care?

 

[Publicola]

It's deliberately "+50% food added to storage", not "+50% food stored after growth".

In other words, if a 10 population city produces 22 food, then it consumes 20 food and 2 is added to storage normally. With the bonus it would be 3 instead.

That's a pretty cool effect, actually. Is it associated with any other buildings or Wonders? Both commerce and production have +% modifier buildings, but I don't think I've ever seen one for food.

 

[Leoreth]

There are two buildings modifying overall food, Supermarket and Vertical Farm buildings both give +10% with power. I deliberately made these bonuses small and late game because additional food can have a compounding effect: more food means more population means more food, so even a 10% is actually more than 10%.

As for food added, I think for building and wonder effects it was not really needed because the same can generally be achieved with the tried and true "amount of food stored" effect - both determine how fast a city can grow without changing the maximum size it can grow to.

The reason why food stored doesn't work for the WLTKD mechanic is that it only applies on one turn, when the storage is full and the city grows. That would incentivise having WLTKD when a city grows but give you no reason to keep it going after that. Food added has a continuous impact so it is better for ongoing but temporary effects like this.

 

[Dracosolon]

Supermarkets and Vertical Farms?

e: beaten

 

[Enyavar]

A bit late for the party here, but I also never cared much about WLTKD and it seems you have not yet settled on a mechanic here, Leoreth?

I think it depends in which direction you like to flesh out the WLTKD.

For example Core vs periphery, supporting the Stability system:
* Cities within core may store +50% food. If the city is currently lacking food (starving), it gets +1 food per 10 population instead.
* Cities in historical territory yield +1 expansion stability per 10 population.
* Cities in foreign territory don't have to pay maintenance, like the previous effect.

For example Civic-related, increasing the flavor for civic choices: Each civic gets assigned an effect.
* Under despoism, whipping unhappiness decreases faster
* Under slavery, mines/quarries adjacent to the city yield +1 production
* Under manorialism, farms adjacent to the city yield +1 food
* Under republic, the city gets a free statesman
* Under reciprocation, a production boost of 25% of the food income (max +5)
* Under conquest: +2 culture for barracks, stable, walls, castle, constable and harbor (max +5)
* Under free markets, each specialist +1 commerce
* Under monasticism, all monasteries of the city yield +1 production
* Under revolutionarism, enemy spies have no effect and +1 espionage per espionage-building
* Under colonialism, the maintenance cost of the city is added to the treasury, not deducted.
Two such effects are randomly assigned to WLTKD-cities.
This could even include the state religion as well, treating it as a seventh civic to choose effects from.

The Core/Periphery system would allow players to pre-calculate their empires up to a certain point, allowing for more stable playing conditions.
The Civic-related randomized system could provide more flavor to the game, but would be very unpredictable and might confuse players.

 

[TsimTsigal]

This probably gonna be an unpopular opinion, but i'd say that either leaving WLTKD be or removing completely is better idea for gameplay purposes.

First, you naturally want your cities to be happy and (to lesser degree) healthy, with happiness being effectively a limit for city size (technically you can probably make some Calabim-tier strategies with Totalitarism, but honestly Totalitarism is very meh with maybe only Germany going for UHV having any use for it, and even that is debatable). This leads to "happiness counter" being additional treat for already stimulated behaviour, thus rather pointless from gameplay perspective. Or it might become a weird choice between big cities and keeping them celebrating - which is honestly not a bad idea but can easily fall in one being straight superior to another.

Second, naturally lots of health and happiness appear in small cities with many luxury/health reses and forests... which is nowhere near actual centers of civilization. Europe struggles with happiness until colonialism (with Feudalism being literally a crutch for European civs), China and India are geared towards huge cities both by geography and UPs of their civs, Egypt and Babylonia struggle with floodplains. Aztecs, Americans, Turks of both flavours, Vikings, Koreans will likely benefit the most from WLTKD-that-matters, which is rather weird selection (save for maybe Americans with whole American Dream thing, reflecting talented immigrants or something).

Third, it keeps the original problem that was mentioned, but in slightly different form: WLTKD will keep being mostly peripheral and not metropolian, especially for colonial nations, who usually control lots of reses (especially the Portugese and the Dutch with literally one city in core - Azores don't exist, prove me wrong - and missions to hoard resources).

On the other hand it might be a nice mechanic to tie some UHVs to it, like Babylonian or Argentinian.

 

[Si No Hay Paz]

I never really noticed WLTK in Civ4 until going for the Vedic Pagan URVs, and this condition is extremely difficult because I don't think the city actually stays in WLTK more than a turn at a time. In my Thai game on normal speed, I think I only had racked up 10 out of the 100 necessary turns by the end of the game, with all cities almost always happy, healthy, and above pop 8, at some point with over 15 cities meeting the conditions on any given turn. Someone who won as India said they had to play Marathon to generate enough turns.