Éa, a fantasy mod for Civ5 -- teaser thread

Damn, just lost a big post.... stupid server outages.

Basic points were:
1. There is a risk that being agriculturally oriented becomes the best strategy. In Civ, it has nearly always been the case that getting food boosts as fast as possible is one of the best strategies.
2. My query was about why you were removing the ability to affect the number of great people (just affecting which kind you get isn't very interesting). It sounds like your answer is; too hard to balance otherwise. This seems plausible, at least to start.
3. Why do you need to have the great person join a worker, rather than giving the great person the ability to build the improvement directly?
4. There is a problem when a smith is strictly better than a mined hill (because it doesn't need the mine, or the hill). Good design should try to avoid no-brainer decisions, but it is always a no-brainer to use the specialist slot.
5. It sounds like the concept you're going for is basically that of the Latifundia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latifundium, industrialized agriculture that supported large cities (and cash crops). But that might be confusing for those who don't know their history.
Some sample names:
Growth, development, urbanization, agriculture, agriculturalism, metropolitanism, agribusiness...
I forget the rest....
 
I thought about Expansion, but I'm not sure if it fits...

So Slavery is an entire branch? I have no idea what should be the policies in this branch... If I use Slavery in my mod, it will be only one policy.
 
I may just go with Agriculturalism. That at least sounds like something that involves land improvement and increasing population (never mind that the word is used for a Chinese back-to-the-land philosophy, i.e., the opposite of my meaning). This is a case where precision and clarity might be at odds.

Yes, slavery is a branch. It kind of revolves around the slave unit, which is a support-free worker. The opener allows you to get these from capture (there is no "worker capture" without this) and a small capital production boost. Other policies revolve around getting or trading slaves or getting more from your slaves. The final policies play a weird twist on the happiness system (happiness is not the main population control mechanism in Éa, which frees me to use it in different ways).

On GP joining, it is a solution to a whole host of technical issues, including both game engine limitations (it allows GPs to violate 1upt and enter foreign cities) and AI issues (helps me keep AI GPs on task). The need for workers in Wonder construction is sort of a side effect, but not a bad one. Another side effect is that great general operation (really a Warrior GP in Éa) is very different, but I think more enjoyable. You just join your Warrior to some army unit, and he rides along. You can instantly select him at any time, to move to another unit, or to do one of his special Warrior functions (haven't talked about those yet). If the army unit is killed, he'll just automatically jump to another nearby army unit. This is easier for AI without removing any meaningful player decisions (I don't consider keeping your general out of trouble a meaningful player decision). It also allows a great general analog at sea (the GP just joins a ship instead of a land unit).
 
More technical stuff on GPs. The dll game engine actually allows units to move in all sorts of rule-breaking ways: into foreign cities, into impassible tiles, into plots with other units (even without changing PLOT_UNIT_LIMIT). It's UI Lua that stops the movement (for human player) at least during your turn. However, the dll game engine does stuff after your turn, kicking your unit out of a foreign city or off a unit stack. So my GPs kind of exist on/off map at the same time. Their real "existence" is as a table/Lua construct that keeps track of location, activity, damage, experience, etc. GPs have separate "unit cycle arrows" (just above the base game one) that lets you select or cycle through GPs. When selected, the GP pops into existence (ready for new orders or whatever). But when you move on to another unit the last selected GP vanishes again, back into the city or unit it was "joined" to. Sounds weird but it is really quite intuitive and smooth when you see it in action. It also strangely makes them feel more like individuals by contrasting them with regular (multi-individual) units that "take up a tile" and have a more permanent map existence.
 
As I wrote in another thread, my new idea for the policy branch name is "Civilization" :)
 
Then maybe its opposing branch should be Barbarism, which lets you play without cities?

(I had actually considered this as a possible Doviello mod for FFH, after I made my Elohim mod. Let's just say that there were some technical and balance difficulties.)
 
Previous info posts:

Cultural Advancement
The number of policies you have is always equal to or greater than your current Cultural Level. There is no "city number punishment" for policy advancement. The only thing you need consider is total culture generated per citizen and time.
Cultural Level = 10 x CC / (CPY + 800), where CC is cumulative cultural points generated from all sources (summed each turn) and CPY is cumulative population-turns (your population points summed each turn). Over time, this number approaches 10 x culture generated / total population. You will gain a policy each time this number reaches the next integer value. Note that your Cultural Level can go down (e.g., if you expand your population without new culture generation), but this will never cause you to loose a policy.

The Policy Branches
There are only five policy branches for phase 1, with no cross-branch exclusions (another 5 are planned, but relate to religion, magic, or other mechanisms not yet implemented). Some policies and one policy branch have tech requirements, indicated in parentheses. Note that "going wide" in policies is not necessarily discouraged. Some AIs will do this, though most will focus on one or two branches. There will never be any "Utopia Victory", so the only reward for finishing whole branches are the finisher policies.

Agriculturalism
Code: 
Aristocracy	-> Feudalism
Guilds 		-> Trade Unions	 	 -\
Civil Service 	-> Taxation (Currency)	  -\-> Industrialism (Machinery)
  • Opener: +1 food from farms & pastures
  • Aristocracy: +1g per population in capital
  • Feudalism: -33% unhappiness from population
  • Guilds: +1p from specialists; half unhappiness from specialists
  • Trade Unions: +1g from specialists; half food support for specialists
  • Civil Service: +0.5p per population point in capital; can draft militia unit from pop
  • Taxation: +1g per worked improvement
  • Industrialization: +1p per worked improvement
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to food, divided among all cities

Slavery
Code: 
Debt Slaves (Currency) 	-\		/->	Servi Aeternam
Slave Trade (Currency)	-> Slave Castes -> Slave Breeding (Animal Breeding)
Slave Raiders 		-> Slave Armies
  • Opener: free slave; workers replaced by slaves; can capture slaves from settlers, workers or slaves (other civs can't capture)
  • Debt Slaves: can convert city population to slaves
  • Slave Trade: can buy or sell slaves with other civs or city states that have Slavery
  • Slave Castes: +1p per city; can build settlers regardless of unhappiness
  • Servi Aeternam: no revolt; 1 production per unhappy, divided among all cities
  • Slave Breeding: growth penalty while unhappy reduced by half
  • Slave Raiders: capture slaves from killed military units
  • Slave Armies: slaves can upgrade to warriors (with -20% str/rng from slave promo)
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to production, divided among all cities


Militarism
Code: 
Discipline 	-> Military Tradition 	  -> Professional Army (Currency)
				   \-> 	     Warrior Code
War Spirit   -> Berserker Rage
  • Opener: free Warrior; each Warrior counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
  • Discipline: +20% Combat Strength bonus for units in a tile next to other friendly military units
  • Military Tradition: No gold support for garrisoned units
  • Professional Army: Upgrading units requires 50% less Gold
  • War Spirit: Military Units gain double experience from combat
  • Berserker Rage: Partial healing from kills
  • Warrior Code: garrisoned units reduces empire Unhappiness by 1
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to unit experience, divided among all military units

Tradition
Code: 
Folklore				           -\
Folk Art	->		Crafting	-/-> The Arts (Æsthetics)
Scholastisicm (Philosophy)	-> Academic Tradition	-> Rationalism (Logic)
  • Opener: free Artist or Sage (player choice); each Artist and Sage counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
  • Folklore: allows several Epics (Völuspá, Hávamál, others)
  • Folk Art: +1c per Festival; +1c per Fair, Ivory Carver
  • Crafting: +1c per Winery, Quarry, Brewery, Stoneworks, Textile Mill
  • The Arts: +2c per Theater, Opera House; +20%c from Wonders
  • Scholastisicm: -5% Knowledge Maintenance; allows Universities
  • Academic Tradition: Sages can build Academies
  • Rationalism: -10% Knowledge Maintenance
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to research, divided among all cities

Commerce (Currency)
Code: 
Mercantilism		   -> Free Markets	-> Free Trade
Mercenaries  		 \->  Merchant Navy (Sailing)
Cultural Diplomacy 	-> Patronage
  • Opener: free Merchant; each Merchant counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
  • Mercantilism: -25% cost to buy buildings; allows banks
  • Free Markets: +20%g from domestic trade routes; Merchants can establish Trade Houses
  • Free Trade: +20%g from foreign trade routes; Merchants can establish Trade Missions
  • Mercenaries: can hire foreign units as mercenaries, or hire out your own
  • Merchant Navy: +1m at sea; +1g from all coast-only buildings (harbor, port, shipyard, etc.)
  • Cultural Diplomacy: influence with city states costs less
  • Patronage: increases decay of other civ's relations with city states
  • Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to gold, divided among all cities

Policy dependent buildings
Slave Stockade (Slave Trade; 150p) +2p; can put slaves on the "exchange" to sell (see slaves below)
Barracks (Discipline with Bronze Working) +10%p and +5xp all melee
Bank (Mercantilism with Coinage; 300p) +30%g; 1 trader slot
University (Scholastisicm with Logic; 300p) +6s; +20%s; 1 scribe slot
Factory (Industrialization with Machinery; 500p) +25%p; 1 smith slot
Slave Factory (Slave Castes with Machinery; 300p) can sacrifice slaves for 25p​

Policy dependent "great works" (made by Great People in 25 turns; *mod = 10 for now)
Academy (Academic Tradition; Sage in city) -mod/3 Research Maintenance
Trade House (Free Markets; Merchant in own city) +mod%g all foreign trade routes with this city
Trade Mission (Free Trade; Merchant in foreign capital) +mod%g all trade routes with this civilization
Völuspá (Folklore; Artist) +mod/10 Cultural Level (i.e., gain one policy)
Hávamál (Folklore; Artist) +mod happiness
Vafthrúthnismál (Folklore; Artist) +mod research per turn
Grímnismál (Folklore; Artist) permanent +mod%/10 boost to all leader effects for this civ
Hymiskvitha (Folklore; Artist) +2 x mod% culture from alcohol (all wineries, breweries, distilleries)​

New concepts
Slaves have no support cost and replace Workers for civs that have opened the Slavery policy branch. They can be acquired in a variety of ways that depend on slavery policies. In addition to acting as workers, they can be sold for a base price of 25 g (with Slave Trade), "upgraded" to warriors (with Slave Armies), or sacrificed for 25 production (with Slave Factory building). The 25 value is based on population growth, which always requires a flat 25 food regardless of current city size (Debt Slaves allows population conversion). Slaves available for sale or purchase appear in the trade screen. A slave can be made available for sale by "loading" it into a city with a slave stockade (up to 10 can stack in a city).
Mercenaries can be hired out or hired by civilizations with the Mercenaries policy (in the Commerce branch). Any military unit can be made available for hire at any time by the "hire out" action. The unit will remain under the civ's control until/unless a foreign civ or city state hires the unit. The unit will remain in that civ's control for 30 turns, with total gold cost paid 50% upfront and 50% spread over the 30-turn duration. The player always receives the option to renew before the contract expires, unless the civ is currently at war with the mercenaries' civ of origin. Nearness to a foreign empire, or a focal point of a civ's military efforts, increases both the price and the likelihood that an AI civ will hire a unit. Price is also a function of the unit's production cost and experience. There is no tech requirement to hire any unit of any type. Mercenaries have normal unit cost and resource requirements for the controlling civ (unit penalty for lacking required resources has been reduced to only -20% strength, so it may be practical to hire these units anyway). Note that many city states are able and willing to hire a limited number of mercenaries for their own defence, except for "Mercenary" city states which are reliable providers of mercenaries.
 
I think you have some wild balance disparities in your policies. Some of these are a matter of value-tweaking, but discreteness issues mean that combining tile yield boosting policies into the same tree is never likely to work well, unless you totally overhaul the economy and make it so that base tile yields are 4 or 5 or more and then go up further with improvements, so that +1 is at most a 20% increase, rather than a 50% increase.

Obviously, things will play a bit differently in your mod, but based on how they act in vanilla:

Very strong:
Opener: +1 food from farms & pastures
Feudalism: -33% unhappiness from population
Guilds: +1p from specialists; half unhappiness from specialists
Trade Unions: +1g from specialists; half food support for specialists
Taxation: +1g per worked improvement
Industrialization: +1p per worked improvement
Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to food, divided among all cities
Servi Aeternam: no revolt; 1 production per unhappy, divided among all cities
Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to production, divided among all cities
Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to unit experience, divided among all military units
Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to gold, divided among all cities
Click to expand...

Moderate:
Discipline: +20% Combat Strength bonus for units in a tile next to other friendly military units
Berserker Rage: Partial healing from kills
Folk Art: +1c per Festival; +1c per Fair, Ivory Carver
Crafting: +1c per Winery, Quarry, Brewery, Stoneworks, Textile Mill
The Arts: +2c per Theater, Opera House; +20%c from Wonders
Finisher: ⅓ of all culture converted to research, divided among all cities
Mercantilism: -25% cost to buy buildings; allows banks
Free Markets: +20%g from domestic trade routes; Merchants can establish Trade Houses
Merchant Navy: +1m at sea; +1g from all coast-only buildings (harbor, port, shipyard, etc.)
Cultural Diplomacy: influence with city states costs less
Click to expand...

Weak:
Aristocracy: +1g per population in capital
Civil Service: +0.5p per population point in capital; can draft militia unit from pop
Slave Castes: +1p per city; can build settlers regardless of unhappiness
Slave Breeding: growth penalty while unhappy reduced by half
Military Tradition: No gold support for garrisoned units
Professional Army: Upgrading units requires 50% less Gold
War Spirit: Military Units gain double experience from combat
Warrior Code: garrisoned units reduces empire Unhappiness by 1
Patronage: increases decay of other civ's relations with city states
Click to expand...

Too hard to evaluate, because depends on new mechanics (but likely weak):
Opener: free slave; workers replaced by slaves; can capture slaves from settlers, workers or slaves (other civs can't capture)
Debt Slaves: can convert city population to slaves
Slave Trade: can buy or sell slaves with other civs or city states that have Slavery
Slave Raiders: capture slaves from killed military units
Slave Armies: slaves can upgrade to warriors (with -20% str/rng from slave promo)
Opener: free Warrior; each Warrior counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
Opener: free Artist or Sage (player choice); each Artist and Sage counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
Folklore: allows several Epics (Völuspá, Hávamál, others)
Scholastisicm: -5% Knowledge Maintenance; allows Universities
Academic Tradition: Sages can build Academies
Rationalism: -10% Knowledge Maintenance
Opener: free Merchant; each Merchant counts as ⅔ of a person for the purpose of GP appearance
Free Trade: +20%g from foreign trade routes; Merchants can establish Trade Missions
Mercenaries: can hire foreign units as mercenaries, or hire out your own
Click to expand...

In particular, the agriculturalism tree seems waaay too strong (+1 food per farm from an opener will break the game).
Tile yield boosts and boosts to all specialists are really, really strong, because they scale like crazy. With your policies here, you can be doubling the efficiency of every population point!
Some weak effects could be bolstered by merging them; Warrior code and Military Tradition effects could be combined.

Policies that allow you to then use some extra mechanic which has an additional cost to you (buy/trade slaves or mercenaries, or allow a sage to make an academy -maybe this policy should also give a free sage?) will be super-weak unless the trading is something you do a lot of and gives big benefits.

I'm a bit leery of policy requirements for buildings - isn't that what techs are for?
It seems to me that policies should give you a benefit, rather than just adding additional options that still require further investment.

I also think it might be unwise to tie your tech into policies like this. You already have a tech line that supports technical advancement; why make it so that you have to research tech *and* get tradition policies to advance?

* * *
Edit:
I should say, I think the slave-tree economy, which allows you to basically ignore happiness at the cost of growth, could be very interesting. [Hard to balance though!]
 
Huh, this sounds damn exciting. I'll be keeping an eye on this mod. You've some very interesting ideas.
 
@rocklikeafool, Thanks!

@Ahriman

Thanks for trying to scale these. Although it's probably an impossible thing to do before testing (and with missing knowledge), it is still helpful to me. Just a couple notes:

Food consumption, resource tile yield and improvement yields are all much higher than base (the only thing that isn't higher is base non-resource non-improved tile). So the "+1 yield" per tile effects are relatively less valuable than it would be in base (but still quite good).

I think you are undervaluing military policies, especially the two "per garrisoned unit" ones. Obviously these are only relevant to a conquering civ, but my experience in base Civ5 is that these are massive boosts when you are trying to "roll over" the whole planet. We'll have to see how things go in testing.

Many of these fall into the hard choice of "small benefit now vs bigger benefit later". In general, Deity players will tend to gravitate to the former, while "bean counter" type players gravitate to the latter. Getting something sooner often translates to victory. But again, only testing will tell (e.g., my guess is that "GP now" policies will be relatively overpowered, but I could be wrong).

The slave/unhappiness thing is pretty experimental. Not only can they ignore unhappiness, they might actually want to push it up to very high levels (if you look at the combined effect of 3 of these, you will see that -100 unhappiness is much better than -20). The reason I think this might work is that unhappiness is not the main pop limiter in Éa as it is in base (food is the limiting factor for most civs).

The Mercenary thing should be fun too. Sure, no "immediate" benefit. But it opens up two very different play styles (mercenary supplier, or gold-focused civ that uses mercenaries) that should be quite powerful. I don't think there will be a shortage of players that want to try it. Whether I balance it properly is a different matter.
 
Food consumption, resource tile yield and improvement yields are all much higher than base (the only thing that isn't higher is base non-resource non-improved tile). So the "+1 yield" per tile effects are relatively less valuable than it would be in base (but still quite good).
Click to expand...
Ok. As I noted, this approach is the only way to get around discreteness issues, but it requires a massive economy overhaul.

I think you are undervaluing military policies, especially the two "per garrisoned unit" ones.
Click to expand...
I don't. These are weak. +1 happy per city is a moderate policy, unless you have made happiness incredibly rare. +1 happy per city if and only if you dedicate a military unit to it (and pay the upkeep) is very weak. Having to keep a unit garrisoned is a big opportunity cost.

my guess is that "GP now" policies will be relatively overpowered, but I could be wrong
Click to expand...
I can't evaluate them, because I have no feel for how powerful GPs will be in your mod.

The Mercenary thing should be fun too. Sure, no "immediate" benefit.
Click to expand...
I guess the point is; the average value per turn needs to be similar to other policies. So for example, if you have a policy that is +1 food per turn per farm, and you have 40 farms being worked in your civ, then that is +40 food per turn.
So your Mercenary thing needs to be worth +40 per turn. Suppose 1 food ~= 1 gold, then you need to be getting 40 gold per turn worth of value *plus* compensation for the loss of use of those units, and the possibility of them being killed.
So, very hard to balance.

I'm not trying to say don't do it, I think the idea sounds interesting, I just want to make it clear that you don't want to try to balance the mercenary mechanic on it's own (eg where the cost of buying a unit is equal to its value), because the mechanic has to also pay for the opportunity cost of the policy slot.

Similarly for slave trading. A better approach than trying to actually buy and sell slaves between civs might just be to abstract the issue, and have the policy give you a free slave unit every X turns. That might be easier to balance.

Similarly, mercenaries might be easier to balance if you can just hire out or rent your units for gold in the abstract, and have them come from nowhere and disappear, rather than showing up elsewhere on the map.

Is a mercenary city state really interestingly different from an existing military city state?
 
Ahriman said:
Is a mercenary city state really interestingly different from an existing military city state?
Click to expand...
Yes, because you can hire mercenaries from them.:)

Actually, CSs are one area that I haven't worked on much. I might have two types at release. I won't be using any of the base types, or not in their current form anyway. If I do add a "food type" CS, it will not work on a "per city" basis. I have a Lua function that can distribute a fixed amount of a yield among cities (the remainder that can't be divided equally gets distributed randomly each turn).
 
I hope so, though there is still a lot of work to do. Keep in mind that initial release is going to be a very rough alpha. You aren't going to see anything approaching a "good game" until after G&K, perhaps sometime this summer.
 
Pazyryk said:
I hope so, though there is still a lot of work to do. Keep in mind that initial release is going to be a very rough alpha. You aren't going to see anything approaching a "good game" until after G&K, perhaps sometime this summer.
Click to expand...

Hey, man...that's all we need. At least, for me, I love going in and just testing. It'll be good, 'cause we can give you constructive feedback and that kinda thing. I'm excited actually, because there's not that many fantasy mods for CivV. (And I don't have time to do one myself, haha.) But just let me know what kind of things you wanna see tested, if there's anything specific.
 
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