MadDjinn's Blog

continued from Part 2.

Conquering Cities – Rebellious Populations

Obviously the changes notes above will cause even more problems for a warmonger.  Take too many cities too fast (or get a large number of them in a peace treaty) and you’ll break the happiness bank permanently.  The largest issue there is when you gain cities and they are in the rebellious state.  They might have happiness buildings in the city, but you can’t use them.  If the city is a high population city (common in late game) the amount of happiness you lose during that period can effectively cause you to start rebellions in your own cities.  This of course is a bad ‘limitation’ on wars.  It’s also far from realistic.  (no reality based point needed here, but if China declared war on the US, people in New York won’t be instantly upset by each citizen in Hong Kong, right away, if there’s a rebellion going on in Hong Kong after the US takes the city.  Later on, if it’s incorporated into the trade system and government, then it will matter)

So with that in mind, let’s change the system.  Instead of an instant population based unhappiness hit when you take a city, for the rebellion period, let’s have rebels appear near the city.  As well, there should be a set 5 unhappiness per ‘rebellious’ city. (but nothing from the population or city itself)  Some people in your empire will be unhappy, but not on the scale of a 20 pop city.  Given that all the rebellious city does is ensure it has food and doesn’t add anything (except increased SP cost and Golden Age cost) until the rebellion is over, this switch seems more likely to allow effective warmongering by the late game.  Preferably the rebels spawn in the cities ‘cultured’ tiles, but outside of it will do if there’s too many units there.  The rebels will count as barbs, in all effect, meaning that no civ will control them and it will eventually need to be destroyed if the city isn’t retaken during the rebellion.  The type of unit is based upon the available units of the civ that owned the city (no resource penalties though).  All rebels will start with Siege however, to given a boost vs. taking the city back (since they know the city).  If the city is taken back by the rebels, or by the prior civ owner before the rebellion period is over, the rebels rejoin the city and the city goes back to it’s previous owner.  How, and if, they spawn will be determined by your choice when you get the city:  (this counts if the AI takes one of your cities as well)

Puppet

For each turn of rebellion, there is a 40% chance of a unit spawning.  Unhappiness from the Puppets population, and city, will return once the city is out of rebellion.

Raze

For each turn of rebellion, one unit will spawn and there is a 50% chance of another unit spawning.  (You’re killing everyone, so they actually might fight back…)

Annex

For each turn of rebellion, there is an 80% chance of a unit spawning.  The unhappiness from population and the city instantly appear, and stack with the 5 unhappiness from a rebellious population.  For obvious reasons, even in the current system, Annexing a city when you get it is a dumb idea.  You can’t do anything with it until the rebellion is over and it instantly raises your golden age and Social Policy costs.  Frankly, this option should be removed from the list when you first get the city.  You can still annex later.

Liberation

Obviously Liberating a city (from another civ, a City State or your own) won’t add rebels or happiness hits.  But it should give you a 10 turn +5 happiness bonus for doing it with your own city.  (People like being Liberated, generally)

At the same time, let’s have a -50% rebellion time added to the Autocracy Policy Tree opening policy for Puppet and Annex choices.  So instead of one turn of rebellion/population, you would only have one turn of rebellion/two population.  Razing a city should be a really rough ride and nothing will tempt a population to line up and be shot.

Overall, this change shouldn’t be too hard to code, and will let warmongers really consider Autocracy instead of another Social Policy branch which gives more happiness.  Yes, there’s happiness from the courthouses, but it’s really the massive happiness hit during rebellions that causes that part of the game to hit a wall.  Meaning, if you can take cities now, you really just need more happiness, rather than the obvious ‘boost’ Autocracy gives you.  This also means that if an AI got another AI to hand over all of it’s cities in a one sided peace treaty, the AI will have to fight to keep the new cities.  That should allow you some time to figure out how to manage the big empire.

Puppet city ‘local’ happiness management

As a side point to the overall discussion, Puppet cities are extremely horrible at building choices.  Happiness buildings seem to be the furthest from their build choices, unless the empire has rebels popping up.  While it is fair that you can’t control the build order in puppets, they should be working to manage the ‘local’ happiness, if it is really low, no matter what the ‘global’ number looks like.  So if there is 10 population in the city, and only 2 generated happiness, the governor should be building the most cost-effective happiness related buildings sooner.  This also means that the governor should actually use the ‘production’ setting once in a while, rather than sticking with gold focus.  (which has it’s own issues in a 1 pop puppet that has access to a gold luxury)  Keeping the peasants from getting mad, and not fomenting rebellions, is generally par for the course for a puppet government.  No it doesn’t have to be a happiness paradise, but when a puppet soaks up 10+ happiness from your meagre global supply, and then never builds anything related to happiness, it’s hard to not consider burning the place down with a nuke.

Nuking your own cities

On a small related note: Hitting your own city with a nuke – direct strikes are possible – should not really be considered a ‘happy’ thing.  Though it is the most effective way to cut down a new puppets population, ensuring you have more happiness to continue warmongering.  A small negative unhappiness addition over a period of time – You nuked your own people, -10 happiness for 20 turns (standard speed), should be considered.  And it should stack for repeated nukes.

Conclusion

While it doesn’t seem like there has been many actual changes to the system mechanics, these key changes will set the stage for the next set of balance factors between ‘tall’ and ‘wide’ strategies.  Those will come in another set of posts (I write too much) where I’ll dive into mechanics changes for ‘tall’ cities to gain more from key buildings than ‘wide’ empires would, to help balance the ‘wide’ empires higher population and territory coverage vs. a very tall civ.  Specialist empires might start having a chance to exist in Civ 5.