Tasunke

Join Date 10/2009

+45

On Pioneers and Conquered cities

one a matter of cost, the other a matter of race.

On pioneers

Personally, I am somewhat curious as to "why, exactly" Pioneers are so cheap.

I mean yes, it some ways it takes parts of the strategy "out of the equation" ... which I guess is a good thing as we can focus on the RPG elements more?

What about just making pioneers EXTREMELY expensive (say, about as expensive as a building), and make them immortal/unable to use in battle.

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Having them spammable seems, to me, to be "not limiting the player enough" --> an example of too little consequence for one's actions.

Pioneer spam is Low risk/ High reward, in other words.

On conquering enemy cities.

While I think that conquered cities should "eventually" be returned to their former glory ... I think that city capture shouldn't be the immediate boon that it currently is.

Currently when I capture a city ... all I have to do is delete all the buildings that require maintenance, and I have a perfectly happy city.

Upon capture, I think that national wonders should be destroyed. I think that regular improvements should have a chance to be destroyed. I think that Wonders should never be destroyed (a la Civ and FFH formula)

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However, what about the rest of the situation? Clearly we do not have a culture system like in Civ, nor do we have a "de jure" system as in Crusader Kings 2 ... or any of the other "ownership" mechanics from any other 4X game.

So how do we determine ownership?

I think we should have the various races graphically represented in the city.

We should have assimilation rates, and penalties for multi-race cities.

Schools, Town Halls, and Markets increase the assimilation rate and have no affect on multi-race penalties.

Prisons, Dungeons, and other "Punishment" buildings reduce the assimilation rate but decrease the multi-race penalty (see Unrest)

SlavePens, meanwhile, absolutely bring assimilation to a standstill ... while there is absolutely no multi-race penalty.

The downside however, is that its effect (production rates not affected by taxes) only apply to other races ...

meaning, that the Race in power is not affected by a Slave Pen ... so Slave Pens are only good for cities with large numbers of 'other races'.

In this way, the Quendar could gain a highly varied population (graphically). Shown on some interface or another.

As Slavelords however, They would have no multi-race penalty. -> But, their Slave Pens would still give a bonus of some sort.

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So under normal circumstances, conquering a city of a different race would give an addition BASE unrest of Population%/2 (lets use this as a starting point)

So if you had 100% other races, you get 60% unrest at no taxes, instead of 10% unrest.

I think a nice and even Assimilation rate should be 2% per turn. So regardless of the amount of new Younglings ... each Season, if more than 2% of the population is NON-Youngling, then 2% of the city's population becomes Youngling race.

This means, assuming 0 growth for the city, it would take 50 seasons to fully assimilate a city.

However with an influx of new Younglings into the city, it would take in practice somewhat less than 50 seasons of assimilation.

The only reason we would keep track of all 10 races, as opposed to Owner vs non-Owner, is in case of Multiple Successive Ownership and/or Reconquista by those that originally lost the city.

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For the Magnar however, there is no Assimilation. Instead, the "Unrest factor" is what decreases. The original unrest factor is determined in the same way ... however perhaps with less penalty (say Pop%/ 4 instead of Pop%/2).

For the Altar, since they are "mutts" or whatnot, they should perhaps have a higher (base) assimilation rate (either 3% or 4%).

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Basically, it would just require a simple Interface of

Name X%, Name Y%, Name C%

It wouldn't have to be anything too fancy, I don't think. The total wars did something about "religion percentage" and those mechanisms were far less linear iirc. (Not to mention other factors such as Difference in Culture, Distance to Capital, etc)

In this case, Race% is somewhat of an 'inclusion' of both religion and culture. Or at least culture, but represented in a clear and distinct percentage basis.

I suppose we could do a 'distinct value' system as opposed to a percentage system of Name N1, Name N2, Name N3. It could still be shown in percentages, but larger cities would take MUCH longer to assimilate.

In this case you could have a hamlet assimilate in as few as 10 turns while a large city takes 50 turns, 100 turns, or longer.

Personally I prefer a pure precentage based system .. because even though it makes capturing big cities more efficient due to its linear nature .... you ALSO get your own natives due to growth, so this would offset it I think.

AKA, they have 20 citizens. yes if 0 growth it would take 50 turns assimilation, if you grow 1 citizen per turn in this city, then in 20 turns you will have 50% native at 0 assimilation.

Which means that after 20 turns of 2%, that is 40% ... which means that after 20 turns you will have 90% (50% growth + 40% assimilation)

So I really, really like the percentage based system

Clean, Simple, Easy to Understand, and even does well in differentiating a "large city" capture vs a "small city" capture.

Each turn each city recalculates Percentages IF there was any growth (which is likely ... so this is the only significant use of processing power I think).

Each turn, the 'entire system' is shifted by the Assimilation value.

Meaning, if by normal growth curves this turn would be 25% native and 75% foreign, a 2% assimilation turns it into 27% native and 73% foreign.

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I agree national wonders should burn upon conquest.

I also like the idea of an unrest counter starting at 100% and decreasing by 2% each turn. However I would go further by adding a 30% unrest factor to all existing cities. As in "Your Making WHO a citizen!" It would have a 1% or 2% decrease each time but would be cumulative as in conquer three cities right in a row and all of your cities have a +90% unrest. Would definitely slow down conquest.

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Well technically its a (theoretical) 50% unrest timer that decreases by potentially more than 1% each turn.

Its a 100% racial factor, which decreases by 2% naturally, or more by adding your own people. Basically each turn the city calculates how many in the city are not your race, and that divided by 2 is the unrest factor.

Example.

Season 1. CityX has 20 Quendar and 0 Altarians. 100% race factor, 50% unrest factor.

Season 2. City X has 20 Quendar and 1 Altarian. Assimilation is 2%, so there are (19.58) Quendar and (1.42) Altarians. This represents persons of mixed culture. (really just a convenient explanation for using non-integers, in order to keep the clean and efficient percentage based system)

Presented to the player as 93% Quendar and 7% Altarian.

This gives an additional 47% base unrest (rounded to nearest integer)

Season 3. City X has 19.58 Quendar and 2.42 Altarians. After Assimilation is factored in this becomes 19.14 Quendar and 2.86 Altarians.

Presented to the player as 87% Quendar and 13% Altarians.

Which gives the city an additional 44% base unrest to the city.

Season 4. City X has 19.14 Quendar and 3.86 Altarians. After Assimilation this becomes 18.68 Quendar and 4.32 Altarians.

Presented to the Player as 81% Quendar and 19% Altarian.

Which gives an additional 41% base unrest to the city.

In this case, with a growth rate of 1 citizen per season, and starting with 0% native population, you get an ACTUAL 3% unrest reduction per season as opposed to the theoretical 1% unrest reduction. This is because the city size is so small (only 20 citizens).

It is only when you reach really, really large cities that unrest reduction approaches 1% per season,.

(1% reduction is a minimum, and as city size approaches infinity, it will get closer to a mere 1% reduction. Alternatively, if growth becomes 0 you will always get baseline of only 1% reduction, regardless of starting penalty)

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Example 2. (Very large city)

Season 1. City Y has 400 Urxen and 0 Altarians. 100% race factor and 50% unrest factor.

Presented to player as 100% Urxen and 0% Altarians.

50% added to base city unrest.

Season 2. City Y has 400 Urxen and 1 Altarian. Assimilation is still 2%, so we actually have 391.98 Urxen and 9.02 Altarians.

Presented to player as 98% Urxen and 2% Altarian.

49% Unrest (1% decrease!!!)

Season 3. City Y has 391.98 Urxen and 10.02 Altarians. After Assimilation, 383.94 Urxen and 18.06 Altarians.

Presented to Player as 96% Urxren and 4% Altarians

48% Unrest (1% decrease once again!)

Season 4. City Y has 383.94 Urxen and 19.06 Altarians. After Assim, we get 375.88 Urxen and 27.12 Altarians.

Presented as 93% Urxen and 7% Altarian.

47% Unrest

As you may be able to see, we are approaching a drop in 2% unrest pretty soon, because obviously we are not yet at infinity. Seeing as this is such a large city, there will almost certainly be a number of growth buildings, which would increase the reduction of Unrest even further. (imagine 2 new altarians per turn, or even 5 new altarians per turn, when added to the "assimilated Altarian" numbers) -> Might not make a huge difference, but as growth increases, reduction of unrest increases as well.

In Example 1, Assimilation had a smaller effect than growth ... therefore we had a reduction of 3% unrest per turn ....

While in Example 2, growth was smaller than assimilation, so we had a reduction of 1% unrest per turn.

I would hypothesize that if Growth and Assimilation are equal, we may see a 2% reduction of unrest per turn.

The reason keeping track of race numbers is important, is for dealing with a "Reconquering" scenario. For instance, if you lost a city 5 seasons ago, and are now taking it back ... You will now have at LEAST 10% foreign population in the city, giving you a 5% unrest penalty.

if you wait too long to retake your old city (say, somewhere between 15 turns and 50 or more turns) you could be dealing with an entirely foreign (entirely assimlated) city ... and you will have to assimilate it back just as long as the conquerors had to do.

Therefore, the longer you wait, the harder it will be to retake lost cities. (economically in any case)

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A global penalty for global non-native populations is possible/potentially interesting ... but I am not sure if it is worth it.

Perhaps global racial factor should be added directly? So if your nation is 50% foreign, all cities get +50% unrest? This would be the equivalent of suddenly conquering a nation just as large as yours is.

Depending on several factors ... this would decrease at a rate of anywhere between 1% - 3% per turn (assuming conquered population exaclty equals your own) ... making it a phenomena that can last anywhere between 17 and 50 Seasons

For a war that DOUBLES the size of your empire (over the course of 1 turn), a 17 - 50 season penalty seems fair to me. And obviously, if you are just annexing a comparatively small nation the penalty is far less.

A fitting affect, do you agree?

This included with "Free garrison" units would make defensive armies a bit less costly, while making conquering an "Investment" instead of a "Haha we now win"

On further inspection, this would make a small nation taking over a giant nation extremely costly ... but then again we always have the "Raze" button

If we have Magnar not have any assimilation due to flavor reasons, we should likely reduce their personal conquest unrest factors by half, and have them go away at a fixed rate.

On the other hand, ignoring the Magnar exception, if we have the ability to CASH RUSH slave pens .... ... then we could at least get production out of these new cities

(as Slave Pens would not work on native population, but only foreign, it would only be worthwhile to build them in new cities)

-> If we also go with Slave Pens 'removing the unrest' ... perhaps it should only remove the global unrest. Meaning that you have to choose between assimilating a city long term, or using it solely for production in the short term.

You would have to get rid of the slave pen in order to slowly assimilate the city, but upon doing so you would also get a hit to your global unrest.

In this case, if you conquer a new civ, it might be a good idea to cash rush slave pens in most of the cities, and leave just a few alone ... So that little by little you can slowly assimilate the entire nation without being hit by the global penalty "all at once".

This makes the Slavery tech (or whatever its called) VERY important .... at least for Conquerors. Conquerors that don't just RAZE that is

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I must admit I'm not as big on always having percentage assimilation as per CIV considering the fantasy setting. I like it for humans conquering humans, but it would seem a bit silly to me for humans v. fallen and fallen v. fallen. In those cases it seems to me like it might make more sense thematically to give you two options upon conquering a city: have no production and normal unrest or enslave the population and have high base unrest and heightened production. With this sort of setup I think it would represent either a relatively autonomous client state or a highly productive slave city teetering on the edge of a slave revolt rather nicely. Plus you would not have the rather ridiculous circumstances of a city of blood thirsty, resentful fallen/humans being assimilated into a culture of fallen/humans. I don't remember reading any fantasy were an army of orcs conquers a city of elves and the elves proceed to assimilate in to orcish culture.

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