Unrest

[kyrub]

In your first post you did not specify the effect of Divine/infernal power, with the new percentage setting. Please do.

Also: how will the negative effects apply? They should be stronger than in vanilla, where I'd never use them (Great wasting, but that was a bug)
Cursed lands
Pestilence
Great wasting

[Catwalk]

I think +5% per religious building (with a base of 10% per building) for Divine or Infernal Power. If possible, have Infernal Power only increase mana and Divine Power only reduce unrest? More interesting that way.

[kyrub]

If possible, have Infernal Power only increase mana and Divine Power only reduce unrest? More interesting that way.

Will look into "if possible" part. - Does it mean reducing picks for IP and DP to 1?

Code:

Cursed lands
Pestilence
Great wasting

-10%, -20%, -10% like in vanilla?
(As I said, I always found the negative city spells weak. Could / should be increased, to something like -20%, -30%, -10%?)

EDIT:
Rationale - doing harm to 1 enemy city is less powerful effect than supporting 1 city of your own. Example: you play against players A, B, C. By enhancing one city of yours, you gain advantage over 3 players. By doing harm to a C-player's city, you gain advantage over only 1 player. Players A and B gain similar advantage over player C. They get a small advantage over you as well, since you have just spent mana and time. Therefore, negative city spells should be much more powerful than positive ones. Quod erat demonstrandum.

[Catwalk]

I suggest going with -10, -20, -10 for now. They'll need to be rebalanced later anyway, and I have little idea how the balance is going to end up with this many changes being done at once. I suggest going with this tax table:

Code:

gold  new  old
0.0gc  -    0%
0.5gc  -   10%
1.0gc  5%  20%
1.5gc 10%  30%
2.0gc 20%  45%
2.5gc 30%  60%
3.0gc 45%  75%
3.5gc 60%   -
4.0gc 80%   -

With the diminishing returns effect (same as original) still there, the advantage of the more advanced races should be mitigated somewhat. Again, this will also have to be rebalanced later so I don't want to spend too much time trying to guestimate at this point.

[Catwalk]

I think I want to reduce racial unrest significantly. Already this system makes multi-racial empires a little more tricky (due to the big difference in unrest control available), high racial unrest modifier may make aliens far too unproductive. I'm thinking I'll simplify the table to have only +1 and +2 modifiers. I'm also considering doing an asymmetric system where the modifier isn't necessarily the same both ways. For example, halflings are quite mellow and will defer to conquerors most of the time. But many of the more aggressive races would have a hard time with halfling overlords. Whereas nomads could be good at assimilating other races but are difficult to assimilate. Could also make one race have an inherent unrest penalty, opposite of klackons. Just a random idea, haven't thought the gameplay implications through yet.

[Oso]

Quick thought off the top of my head.

MoO style assimilation for conquered races (if even possible) kind of like growth rate (but somewhat quicker).

Conquered city. All rebel excepting farmers needed to maintain the population.

Races that are considered "mellow" would assimilate faster. Races on the other end would assimilate slower.

Current races that are 1 or 2 racial unrest with each other would have that wiped out to 0 racial unrest. Races that are +3 and +4 would retain a permanent +1 and +2 racial unrest respectively.

But since, from what I have read so far, Catnip is using (and simply modifying) existing routines, this might be impossible.

[Catwalk]

Yes, we're severely limited in what routines can be changed. Much is possible, though. kyrub has managed to change the unrest system to function on a % based system instead (-10% unrest for a shrine rather than -1 rebel). For the most part we're just tweaking, entirely new routines are all but impossible. In particular, anything requiring things to be displayed in a different manner is probably not realistic. What do you think about the proposed numbers and ideas?

[Oso]

I haven't completely digested them but nothing jumps out as unworkable.

The only thing that I can say that is causing a little bother (and not much really) is that using a percentage scale, you may end up with unrest in smaller cities where you wouldn't under the old system but then again, how much do cities that never grow beyond 10 population really add to your efforts. Mainly they just end up being a couple of points being added to your score at the end of the game.

I do think Stream of Life should retain 100% rebel pacification though. I can see why you'd want to nerf it though. It Doubles(?), growth, auto heals and pacifies all rebels. So it is overpowered. Considering what the spell does and how I use it, I'd vote to lose the auto healing as a first choice, rebel pacification as a second choice, and leave the growth modifier alone as it pretty much ceases to be useful once a town hit max pop anyway.

EDIT: As a second choice, if I read it right, have SoL perhaps add to, rather than be a part of, the rebel pacification chain. Say(just pulling a fuigure out here) 25%. So if you can get a city to 75% rebels pacified, SoL (I just remembered why that acronym was bugging me ) would make it 100%. Of course you could play with that number but there should be way (at least in my opinion), if you want, to get cities (at least of your starting race) to 100% productive citizens if they have all the rebel pacifying buildings available in the game PLUS a spell Like SoL or Gaia's Blessing.

[Catwalk]

Yeah, I agree with that. Besides, I'm not sure if we can easily change the other effects. The unrest effect is easy to change. I was thinking 25% too, compared with 5% from Just Cause and 10% from any religious building (20% from Oracle).

I rather like seeing more unrest in small cities, as they're disproportionately productive under the current system. All you really need is one good city for military and a handful of smallish-medium towns for economy. Unrest control is a no-brainer at present, just set taxes to 2.0 gc and use however many garrison units needed to contain all unrest. It always pays off to plan on running 2.0 or 2.5 (unless you're in a highly unusual situation), and it always pays off to get another 2 spearmen to quell a rebel. With this system you won't be able to suppress all rebels, and you'll have to make some difficult tradeoffs between income and production.

[Oso]

I could live with that personally, for myself. I don't mind games or situations that you have play with trade-offs. Keeps the systems from getting stale overall.