N/A

Agreed!

Seems like the bandit mechanism can be handled by reducing income via trade routes (as in, they're attacking the caravans and stealing some). This is already closely through reducing income, so it seems like an unnecessary mechanic. I understand the intent to make it important to watch the homefront, but I'm sure it detracts from the fun of the game, too. And the AI would also need to handle that new threat, too. LE is already spread out and long enough we don't need minor threats taking away the fun!

@ Frogboy

Please don't waste the code.

Perhaps create an event out of it? When the even triggers, it looks at all cities and if unrest meets threshold, then bandits attack.

I suppose it would be most similar to the skeleton spawning event. However, instead of many groups randomly spawning, the X number of bandits would collect in only a few (if any) locations where the unrest requirements are met.

There's a LOT more monsters already in LH 1.7 but they don't spawn inside your territory. They originate due to the wild land players.  

Has there been consideration in having 'expanding wildlands'(1 radius every X turns) to add additional late game pressure on the player?

With the increase of wildland monsters, how does the AI handle against them? Will the AI be competitive in the late game?

I'd say unrest as implemented is pretty unfun.   Maybe necessary to prevent overexpansion, but still unfun.

Makes it where there is little point in taking cities instead of razing them

There are ways to mitigate it so I don't think it's all that unfun. You don't want the player having dozens of cities and a hard cap would be even more unfun.

I'd love to find a better unrest system for 4x games.

To throw out an idea:

Expand my idea from earlier. (#15 @ https://forums.elementalgame.com/452034/page/1/#3443809). In addition to the X buildings allowed per level, tack on Y% unrest per building. The larger your city becomes, the higher the unrest becomes, and the more care you need to take in planning out your city design and the more focus you need on buildings that provide rest bonuses. Add to that a tax modifier that acts as a multiplier instead of a summation, and your cities become creative works of art; a gentle balance of functionality, practicality, and sense.

Personally I think it is currently workable the way it is. Build a Onyx throne and your unrest goes down by -30% Prison for other -10%.

Or just build those improvements which decrease all unrest to zero in all cities. They're level 2 upgrades if I remember right, I seen an AI build one of those once.

Two related ideas:

1. Make expansion technology dependent. You can only maintain X cities until you research something to increase the number by X.

2. Reading about Endless Legend. If you raze a city, it causes the roads to it to disappear after a few turns due to decay. Cool mechanism for penalizing Razing.

 Warlock went there, and it was pretty fun. Better than pressure to city spam + repeat same builld queue over snd over. It tied nicely with other mechanics as well in that game.

(One thing it got wrong is free cities costing no unrest at all, resulting in yet more city spam + hexagonal close packing minigame...would have preferred them costing 0.1 unrest or sthg)

How precisely didi you implement this? I was looking forward to bandits as a feature that would make unrest even more interesting and vital...

Also, it would represent a natural buffer vs. single stack of doom blitzkrieg, i.e. you conquer enemy city, almost inevitably rebels spawn, you cant proceed unless cleaning them or leaving strong garrison behind.

I'm sad to hear bandits spawning was axed, though I could see how it would be difficult to implement. If the bandits are too easy, then there is no drama to them spawning, it's just a chore to "manage" them with a few units. If the bandits are too strong, then they raze your city and salt the earth? Well there goes my favorite conclave...If they are strong, but don't attack cities, it's still not that exciting, because they aren't a real threat. You can let them trash a mine or two while you bring your stack of doom over. 

 That said, I'd really like to see something like this implemented, so here a few suggestions for people to kick around:

• Make it optional. Have a quest that hero can pick up in a city to "Quell rebellion" which spawns rebels or starts the battle immediately. If the hero wins, then unrest is lowered for x turns during which you can't pick up the quest in that city. The rebels should spawn units with equipment/army size & group size based on your empires capabilities or scaled in such a way that you can't steam roll them easily.
• If you empire or any x cities has high unrest the rebels might send an assassin after your leader. This could be a 1 on 1 fight similar to the bacco encounter. I think it should lean towards being more rare and a harder fight to make it more exciting and less of a chore. Some "rumors of plots" might precede it by 1 - 3 turns.
• Rather than "bandits" If you empire or any x cities has high unrest the rebels will start organizing a revolt. Again this should lean towards being more rare and a harder fight to make it more exciting and less of a chore and again I think some some "rumors of plots" might precede it by 1 - 3 turns. Once it starts a rather large army or empire wide spawning of rebels would be good, similar to the undead. The logical flaw here would be that if they take a city the rebels raze it? Or could they create a "wildlands city"

That's brilliant! ugh. I wish we had thought of item #1.