Unification scenarios and civrel/diprel imbalances

[acolorado]

First off Update 2 is awesome! Thank you for the fixes.

After several attempts at unification scenarios, scouring the forums for info, and checking the stats in the scenario folders, I think perhaps there is a balance issue with the civrel/diprel and it's effect on the unification polls.

Although these values seem to indicate public like and dislike for others - they also seem to have a disproportionate influence on who gets the Uni vote. For example in the US NW scenario South Dakota will nearly ALWAYS get the vote regardless of other factors while Washington, Colo, and Kansas, in spite of major advantages in terms of military, economics, and population will see their Uni polls drop consistently.
Perhaps reducing the value of these in the scenario will help balance for the Uni vote? Just a thought and thanks so much for this great game

[acolorado]

I tested changing the civrel/diprel values and the effect on Uni-votes. It does appear that by leveling these factors for all regions in a scenario that management issues such as tax, diplomacy, DAR become the dominate factors for Uni-poll changes.

It occured to me that the difficulty settings might alter these values? Couldn't find any info on this though so it doesn't seem like it.

This may become a map tweaking issue and I would be interested if any one else has noticed this on Unification vote scenarios. Any input on balancing civrel/diprel against other factors (tax, DAR, etc) would also be appreciated.

I love this game

[ThatMaskedMan]

I had this experience also in the same scenario. As Oregon, I had a 45% DAR as opposed to AI DAR under 30%, the best economy, exporting more or less everything but oil, social spending at 120% of recommended and still raking in cash, low unemployment, inflation under control, beating immigrants off with a stick, GDP/C above 40,000 with my neighbors averaging 30,000, etc...

And my poll numbers just dropped and dropped and dropped. I saw them tick up exactly once, for about 12 hours of game time, when I sent a bunch of military units into reserve. Other than that, they did nothing but decrease. South Dakota ended up winning easily despite the fact that I was doing about as well as any two of my neighbors put together.

[acolorado]

Exactly Masked !

The only solution I've found even after more testing is to mod my civrel starting value to the equivelant of the hightest other region or to level it for all regions. I've discovered that by making monetary diplomating contributions to other regions you can raise diprel and lower belli, but nothing seems to help other regions civrel towards you in the long run. Treaties raise it temporarily, but this is basically a one time boost and non repeatabe.

The civrel value seems to exert a permanent pressure on the other regions view of you so in the long run it seems the Unification polls will reflect the civrel values programed into the scenario. If anyone knows of any other solutions for maps of this type please let us know

And of course thank you Battlegoat this game rocks !

[George Geczy]

First off, thanks for the complements - we think it rocks too

Regarding the importance of the civrel values in the scenario setup, yes, if these have been made to give a strong preference for or against a single region, they will be hard to overcome using peaceful methods. Often these values are designed as pre-determined 'bias' values that regions may have against each other. (There's a song from the '60s with words that go: "the French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles, Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch, and I don't like anybody very much".... the civrel ratings are meant to handle this sort of thing )

Of course, not all the Unification vote regions have this type of bias to overcome, but some of them do. How do you overcome it? Well, a bit of creative diplomacy can sometimes work - for example, when playing the Europe map, there are times that we can actually pressure #1 ranked Switzerland into declaring war against an aggressive region, and this usually hurts the Swiss rankings as people re-align their support.

In other cases, you may have to wage some strategic wars - a careful look at the polls and the belli ratings can make this possible, as long as you leave enough time before the vote to rebuild your support and eliminate any contenders

Or, of course, you can mod the GMC file

-- George.