40 turn penalty is cumulative???

[watorrey]

I have no problem with a 40 turn penalty if that is what the programmers want, BUT it should not be cumulative!!

It is likely that the 20 turn penalty was cumulative as well. I seem to remember waiting a terribly long time for cities to restore themselves previously, but never tried counting turns.

Granted... there should be an unhappiness penalty with rushing and/or drafting, but it should be X turns from the date of useage and 4 or 5 usages by me or the AI on consecutive turns should not disable a city for the rest of the game.

I took a town from egypt 230BC +/- a couple of turns. It took me quite a while to figure out that the penalty must be cumulative. I made my notes at 1360 AD. That was ~146 turns later!!! It still suffered from 100% "we cannot forget cruel oppresion".

This town sat at a pop of 1 for the longest time until i started rushing happiness improvements with money. I was waiting... i guess... for the 40 turns to be up.

I am now well into the 1800's AD. I have temple + cathedral + marketplace w/ 8 luxuries. There is a total of 2 or 3 happy ppl in the town (what sense is there to build an aqueduct?) The unhappy person left now reports "no more draft".

Is the AI drafting during the ancient era?? Or does the report just reflect the fact that i now have nationalism?

This is yet another example of the programmers focusing on trying to make the game unbeatable at the highest level instead of trying to make a well balanced game. Where are thier priorities??

[Arrian]

The 1.17 patch made two changes to the unhappiness penalty:

#1 - Cumulative unhappiness from poprushing. Prior to 1.17, an extra unhappy person would be the one sacrificed in the poprush, thus negating the culmulative effects (so you could have a pop1 city w/a temple and poprush indefinitely w/o the 1 citizen getting unhappy). This was a bug, and was fixed.

#2 - 40 turns instead of 20 for unhappiness. This may have been overkill, since #1 fixed the real problem.

The remaining issue here is that you inherit unhappiness when you capture cities. The whipping or drafting done by the AI becomes your problem, though you are the liberator. It shouldn't work that way, and many others have brought it up. I hope Firaxis is working on it.

-Arrian

[Shadow_Cougar]

I think it is worse than that. Your people can be made extra unhappy. I just took over a city and with a temple, JS Bach and 6 luxuries, I have 3 content and an entertainer. I am going to add a catherdral and see if a size 4 city can be made any happier. Watch out producing settlers and workers also. They carry their unhappiness with them. You can try adding workers from happy towns and moving the unhappy population away where the discontent is spread amoung several cities. Of course, they might all go into revolt then...

[randommushroom]

I just finished up my first full and serious 1.17 game this week--had done a few one-city challenges in between. Can't comment on the cumulative, but did get to witness the unhappy captured city syndrome. Cleo had drafted the hell out of a city, and I had a bunch of unhappy twits screaming "Hell no, we won't go!" Yo, wake up, I just liberated you and I'm not mobilized, I'm not going to draft you. Sigh. Temple hurried, marketplace to help luxuries hurried.

From then on, it was raze and replace with my happy settlers.

[watorrey]

I agree that pre 1.17 it was buggy. My point is, that it shouldn't be cumulative. It should be additive.

If you whip 3 turns in a row, you should have a very unhappy, useless city for 43 turns, the worse being turns 3 - 40. This is what i expected since it made logical sense.

What is the point of having a feature if you can't use it? Not to mention the inherent disability it poses on the AI. As soon as the AI goes to war, it whips and drafts. Is the AI suffering from whole game useless cities as well? For some reason, i doubt it. Even if it were, it isn't right.

It could also be tied to dificulty level. since they seem preoccupied with deity level play, (note that one of the first questions asked by firaxis in the chat transcript was about ppl beating deity) the programmers can make it worse at the higher levels. This would allow newbies the chance to enjoy its use at least. With 6 levels of play, we could have a range of 10 - 60 turn ADDITIVE penalties.

I am certain the whole issue has been discussed in depth somewhere. I truely hope so at least.

I remember reading that if i disbanded the city, the unhappiness would transfer to a different city so i have spent a whole game waiting it out. If settlers and workers carry unhappiness with them, it should be noted somehow that it is an unhappy worker or settler. I haven't made that unfortunate mistake in this game.

So can i add happy workers to the city or does it just carry over to them? I would think it shouldn't matter.

And if i transfer unhappy workers to other cities, how much of the unhappiness is carried with them? 40 turns per worker - 80 for a settler, or did they screw this up more than it already is?

I really don't know what the heck they were doing with this last patch, but the game lost much of its enjoyment. I dropped back to regent level to get use to the 'me vs the ai' feel of tech trading and am now noticing other things like this penalty that just isn't right.

Why should i be EXPECTED to raze all non wonder cities in a war? Hell, i even considered razing the pyramids and sun tzu's just so i could have a usefull city (London, in a perfect location for a city). As it is, i doubt i will ever be able to fix it. It will starve itself down to a size one and stay that way for the rest of the game. So i will build cities near it to make use of the land that it will never use. That is assuming i feel like finishing the game now.

Totally bummed by way this is developing.

[Arrian]

Actually, I disagree with you about the additive penalty. If you whip three times in a row (or whip once, using 3 citizens), I think you should have 60 turns (going back to the old 20 per whip pre-1.17) of citizen unhappiness to deal with. The penalty for whipping should be harsh.

The inherited unhappiness is something else altogether - and it needs to go. You're right, as it stands now, keeping the AI's cities really isn't worthwhile. I had a Roman city flip to me in one of my recent games, and I had to wait 40 turns so I could put its one citizen to work. They just couldn't forget the cruel oppression... that CAESAR had laid down upon them, not I. They should've held a damn parade upon entering the glorious, cultured Egyptian Empire.

-Arrian

[watorrey]

Originally posted by Arrian
Actually, I disagree with you about the additive penalty. If you whip three times in a row (or whip once, using 3 citizens), I think you should have 60 turns (going back to the old 20 per whip pre-1.17) of citizen unhappiness to deal with. The penalty for whipping should be harsh.

I agree that it should be harsh and perhaps keeping the 20 turn cummulative penalty may work okay. My thoughts keep returning to the rules which state (wrongly) that rushing makes one unhappy citizen for 10 turns. This implies, to me, an additive penalty.

Why wouldn't a large additive penalty be just as effective as a smaller cumulative one? If you use 3 pop on one turn, you effectively trash that city for the 40 turns. Especially if it is a smaller one. 40 turns is a long time in this game.

The inherited unhappiness is something else altogether - and it needs to go. You're right, as it stands now, keeping the AI's cities really isn't worthwhile. I had a Roman city flip to me in one of my recent games, and I had to wait 40 turns so I could put its one citizen to work. They just couldn't forget the cruel oppression... that CAESAR had laid down upon them, not I. They should've held a damn parade upon entering the glorious, cultured Egyptian Empire.

This alone would solve many problems with the system. It should also be goverment based. Why should my newfound democracy, where there will be no more whipping, suffer from whipping that was done under a different form of goverment? If i were to switch back to a whip goverment, then it should reappear.

[Arrian]

I don't know about the government based thing. I see a serious exploit there if you play as a religious civ. Whip, whip, whip, switch to republic, hang out for a few thousand years, quickly switch back to despotism (or commie) and whip out a bunch more stuff, and then switch back to republic or democracy. I don't know if it would be all that powerful, but it could be.

The way I play, I switch from despotism to republic asap and never go back to a "whipping" government. I could, therefore, whip out a bunch of stuff and avoid the penalty by switching to republic. Hmm... actually, even better, I could switch back to despotism briefly after building Sun Tzu, whip out a horseman from every city... maybe even do it twice, depending on the city, and switch back to republic. *Poof* insta-army. That's a lot of knights once I discover chivalry.

So I don't think it's such a good idea, from the standpoint of balance.

-Arrian

[watorrey]

Originally posted by Arrian
I don't know about the government based thing. I see a serious exploit there if you play as a religious civ. Whip, whip, whip, switch to republic, hang out for a few thousand years, quickly switch back to despotism (or commie) and whip out a bunch more stuff, and then switch back to republic or democracy. I don't know if it would be all that powerful, but it could be.

The way I play, I switch from despotism to republic asap and never go back to a "whipping" government. I could, therefore, whip out a bunch of stuff and avoid the penalty by switching to republic. Hmm... actually, even better, I could switch back to despotism briefly after building Sun Tzu, whip out a horseman from every city... maybe even do it twice, depending on the city, and switch back to republic. *Poof* insta-army. That's a lot of knights once I discover chivalry.

So I don't think it's such a good idea, from the standpoint of balance.

-Arrian

You have a very good point. Perhaps something along the lines of 1/2 the unhappiness remains under the new gov't?

When you switch back to despotism, the full unhappiness will be there waiting for you from previous rushs, and you won't be able to rush. There is already a cap of 1/2 the population. I am assuming that they also don't let you rush with unhappies now. That would, or should, be a limiting factor. So instead of 1/2 the total pop, it should be 1/2 of the happy/content pop... not counting entertainers/scientists/taxmen

It would also clear up the problem of inherited unhappiness from other civs. If you are a whip gov't, then you should inherit it. If not, then you shouldn't.

The goverment based penalty could be worked out to be a valid solution if we had enough input.

[Bolleck]

Originally posted by Arrian
I don't know about the government based thing. I see a serious exploit there if you play as a religious civ. Whip, whip, whip, switch to republic, hang out for a few thousand years, quickly switch back to despotism (or commie) and whip out a bunch more stuff, and then switch back to republic or democracy. I don't know if it would be all that powerful, but it could be.
.....
So I don't think it's such a good idea, from the standpoint of balance.-Arrian

Where is the Problem if you use it this way. You hurt nobody. Just to make the game save against some Powergamers you would sacrifice the whole fun.

And the MP is not even out.


Ist took very long until the Town was happy again, but I didnt count the turns:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43995