PBEM 2 Organizing/Tech Thread

[SevenSpirits]

You don't want to just say "no worker steals". What's a worker steal? Does it count if my intent is to capture the city? Does it matter whether I follow through on that intent? What if I want to be at war with them for the rest of the game, and pillage their tiles? What if the city state is allied with my enemy? What it's it's allied with my friend? What the the worker just happens to be on the same tile as a unit I want to kill? What if the worker got captured by barbs last turn? What if my goal is actually just to hurt the city-state, because I intend to capture it later?

Personally I don't think it would screw up the game to allow these tactics. But if you want to prevent them I would make the rule explicit.

[oledavy]

Personally I don't think it would screw up the game to allow these tactics. But if you want to prevent them I would make the rule explicit.

I agree, but there seems to be a consensus to do something to prevent worker steals. Do you have any suggestions for how this concern might be addressed without resorting to an unwieldy ruleset, but still preventing ancient era 1-turn wars with CS's to steal workers?

[pindicator]

I haven't really said anything either way, because I'm not too experienced, but i would like to think "less is more" when it comes to restrictions. Doubly so because we haven't played a G&K game here before.

[SevenSpirits]

Well, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish exactly. Capturing a player's worker is much more imbalancing, but nobody's mentioned that. Meanwhile capturing a city-state worker from barbarians is way stronger than capturing it directly from the city state, regardless of whether you return it, since it doesn't give you a gigantic influence penalty. I'd just play the game as it's made and decide what is too powerful to allow in games, after at least a few games. But here are some suggestions for what you want (I think):

Option A: "If you capture a worker from a city state, you must delete it ASAP."

Option B: "If you capture a worker from a city state on t40 or earlier, you must delete it ASAP. If you capture a worker from barbarians that could be returned to a city state on t40 or earlier, you must keep it and delete it ASAP."

[SevenSpirits]

I haven't really said anything either way, because I'm not too experienced, but i would like to think "less is more" when it comes to restrictions. Doubly so because we haven't played a G&K game here before.

My high school teacher used to say "less is more" and it annoyed the hell out of me.

"Less is sometimes better," that's my less catchy but significantly more correct motto. Anyway I completely agree with this except for your cruel attempt to make two upstanding English words fight to the death.

[Ichabod]

It seems that, though the penalties for declaring war on city states were lowered in G&K (there's no permanent war anymore), they are still heavy. I'm not sure if we need to forbid worker steals, considering this (and frankly, workers aren't that useful in Civ V, anyway). We could also compromise things by yet again changing the difficulty, back to Prince. I think the city states take a loooong time to get a worker in that difficulty. But then we'll have to do something against demands.

So, let me explain exactly what is the demand problem, now that I tested things:

It seems demands against a city state depend on having military units near it and the power of these military units. The main problem with these mechanic in Prince difficulty is that some units, namely the Jaguar Warrior from the Aztecs (but maybe others), can single handedly demand gold from city states, while base warriors cannot. So, with the Aztecs, every city state you find will not only give the 30/15 gold, but also something like 70-80 gold from the demand (even if it's turn 3). And what's the cost of doing this? -15 Influence only, apparently.

Besides, there seems to be a problem with demands + the social policy in patronage branch that makes city state influence rest at +20, not 0. As far as I can understand, that makes it possible to constantly demand gold from city states, with not much consequences. So, you get a pretty good cash income every few turns. If there's a large penalty after doing this a lot of times, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but I'm not sure if there is (damn game doesn't give any information!). Let's see what the Civilopedia says about it:

"You may choose to intimidate a city-state with the goal of asking for tribute. Tribute can be in the form of a worker, or a lump-sum of gold. One way to intimidate a city-state is through the size of your military in comparison to other powers, or by having military units close-by.

If you would like to ask for tribute from a city-state, open the city-state diplomacy panel, and click the "Ask for Tribute" option. If the following options are red, then the city-state is not afraid of you, and will not give in to your demand. If you are successful, you will gain the tribute, but lose influence with the city-state".

So, I don't think there's any penalty after the influence loss (and keep in mind that bullying a city state can give influence with another city state!).

In my eyes, this mechanic is clearly unfun and stupid. Yeah, there's an investment of getting some units and placing them near a city state, but it seems to be the same of abusing the dumb Civ AI. I'd ban this function entirely for our game, while leaving the possibility of worker steal (with the added point of no same turn war and peace). At least warring city states gives you a more concrete disadvantage, which is, according to Civilopedia:

"You've so totally angered a City-State that it's grown wary of you. This occurs if you've declared war on too many of the City-States around you - word will spread, and your minimum influence level with large groups of City-States will permanently drop from 0 to -20 (meaning that your influence can degrade well below 0)."

So, yeah, the permanent war thingy was cut off with G&K.

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So, my proposal would be:

*No city states demands.
*No declaring war and asking for peace in the same turn against city states (to avoid conquest of city states without any harm whatsoever).
*Prince difficulty (to delay city state workers) - that can change, though, whatever is preferred. Upping the difficulty makes CSs more resilient against conquest, for whatever that's worth.

[pindicator]

*No city states demands.
*No declaring war and asking for peace in the same turn against city states (to avoid conquest of city states without any harm whatsoever).
*Prince difficulty (to delay city state workers) - that can change, though, whatever is preferred. Upping the difficulty makes CSs more resilient against conquest, for whatever that's worth.

So we are to ignore the city state bullying demands?

[oledavy]

I'm fine with putting some restrictions on worker steals and bullying if that's what everybody wants.

However, I firmly believe bullying needs to stay in the game.

I would prefer no restrictions on either whatsoever, as I think there are enough penalties in the game for this sort of behavior. However, if we did this, I would want to up the difficulty enough to make it harder to intimidate the CSs.

[pindicator]

Diety?

[Jowy]

I know what I'm gonna pick :D