Policies

IMO United Front should be changed in to something more interesting.

@SlightlyMad
Oh you're right, it doesn't refund the policies after switching. I assumed it did since it doesn't make sense to do it any other way.

So Thal, is it possible too add trees?


Ow, and: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10311719&postcount=257, yes, no?

I think if Autocracy's opener had a decent happiness policy it would be more tempting. If I'm warmongering, happiness is always the biggest issue, and losing the s from Meritocracy or the opportunity cost from not choosing another SP which helps with happiness is the main reason I never choose it - perhaps 1/connected city to compete against Meritocracy might be a good way to go here.

The current financial opener for Autocracy seems irrelevant in most games where I already have a decent amount of puppets on gold focus and thus raking in the cash. (Though I haven't played the new version with higher unit maint costs.) I'd also love it if we could include the culture from military buildings in this tree.

EDIT: Didn't see the changes in 6.0 - you may disregard the above or if you care to.

@juckie
Adding trees would be outside the scope of this mod.

About the earlier posts... I'm not sure if it's possible to do the things you describe, but will keep it on the todo list.

I assumed it did since it doesn't make sense to do it any other way.

Click to expand...

Sure it does. Its supposed to be a real block to stop you from bothering to invest in mutually exclusive trees. The switch with anarchy is just a way to allow you to fill multiple trees if you really want to (for roleplay reasons or whatever) not to make it a good idea to do so strategically. This design is reasonable.

Having said that, I think its fine for Autocracy to only block Freedom.

I think if Autocracy's opener had a decent happiness policy it would be more tempting. If I'm warmongering, happiness is always the biggest issue

Click to expand...

I would use police state as the avenue for happiness boosts. One thing I would strongly consider is making the happiness gain under police state such that an annexed city cost less happiness than a puppet or normal city.
This would be very attractive to a warmonger.

I'm not sure that extra happiness from trade route connection or flat happiness in every city is thematic for a militaristic, repressive policy tree.
If you were going to mimic something from early game, I'd be more inclined with using Honor-style happiness from garrisoned units than Meritocracy-style bonus.

That might be an interesting alternative interpretation of police state; +1 happy per garrisoned unit, no maintenance cost for garrisoned units, -X% unhappiness for annexed cities.

Here's my thoughts on how to make the Commerce tree more fun and exciting. Feedback is appreciated!

⇒⇘Commerce ⇗ Merchant Navy
⇗⇘Commerce ⇒ Mercantilism _⇒ Trade Unions ⇒ Free Market
⇒⇗Commerce ⇘ Protectionism ⇗

Commerce
-20% Maintenance for Roads and Railroads, and +1 Gold on Harbors. (was 30%)

Merchant Navy
+1 Movement and +1 Sight for naval units.
+2 Production in coastal cities. (was 3)

Mercantilism
-25% Purchase cost for units and buildings.

Protectionism
+1 Happiness per luxury.

Trade Unions
+1 Movement for civilian units.
-25% Purchase cost for tiles.

Free Market
+1 on Villages, Fishing Boats, and Customs Houses.


I removed the 25% capital gold bonus, merged the two naval policies, and used the freed-up slots to add new effects.

Commerce, Mercantilism & Protectionism look ok.

Merchant Navy looks strong - maybe +1 production?

Trade Unions looks very weak - by the time anyone has this the critical time for settlers and workers is gone, and they spend most of their time working rather than moving anyway.

Free Market looks exceptionally strong. That could be worth literally hundreds of gold, way out of step with any gold gainers in the game.

Have to agree with roghar most of the way, but are the units from CSD (envoys, ...) treated as civilian units? Maybe that could make the policy worth choosing. Otherwise I'd have to agree with Roghar about Trade Unions.

\Skodkim

You've got a good point that weak policies leading up to a very powerful one isn't necessarily fun. I've shifted around the power levels a bit, have another look.

I restricted Free Market to a few improvements (instead of all improved tiles) and buffed Mercantilism and Trade Unions.

It might be possible to have Trade Unions affect diplomacy units, which are a different class from civilian units. It'll require some compatibility testing since I'm not sure what the game will do if I refer to a "diplomacy" combat class if CSD isn't active. The combat classes we've created are:

• Diplomacy - Diplomats, envoys, etc.
• Command - Great Generals.
• Civilian - Settlers, workers, workboats, other great people, and spaceship parts.

Would it make sense for Trade Unions to affect diplomats? Diplomacy is mostly focused on the Patronage tree, and to my knowledge ambassadors don't unionize.

I like the proposed changes...the production bonus in coastal cities was the only policy (in my opinion) worth going for in vanilla. I was thinking that more bonuses for coastal cities was the way to go to improve the Commerce tree, but I also like the way you have laid out the tree with your changes. Free Market looks strong (which is exactly what the tree needed) especially when you consider the gold spending reduction policies in front of it.

This creates an excellent decision making conundrum once you hit Medieval, putting the whole tree on par with Patronage. In my recent games with TBC and CSD mods, I had been going production heavy almost every time, improving land with farms, mines, and lumbermills, and then hitting up Patronage to mass produce diplomats. Now there would be more reason to specialize cities early and then reap the benefits of cities with Villages later in the game, especially when combined with the Rationalism policy that gives science to Villages (also a tree I rarely touch). This sort of boost reminds me of Civ IV's towns and how powerful they become late game. Fun!

Looking good - a couple questions/suggestions:

Protectionism: Possible (maybe post-patch since happiness will be more moddable?) to make this apply only to *excess* luxuries? That could be unique, useful and fun, I think, not to mention give the SP a more realistic flavor.

Trade Unions: Would this affect embarked units' movement (since they're considered civvies while embarked)? That might make it really worth going for!

@Gamewizard
I agree it's nice to have a tree with coastal-empire bonuses, since many other effects help land-empires more. Coastal empires usually have more gold and less production than land-based ones, since all water tiles have 1 (2 with Seaports). Because of this, I feel the purchase cost reductions in this tree are a big bonus to coastal empires.

That made me realize that since roads and railroads are less-used by coastal empires, the opening policy isn't very exciting for them. I put a +1 bonus on Harbors with the Commerce policy.


@Seek
The excess-luxury idea is interesting and I'll think about it a while. I intended to eventually give that bonus to Arabia, once I have time, as was discussed a while back in the Leaders thread... though if it's included here Arabia could get it anyway. Either way the effect will synergize powerfully with Bazaars.

When a military unit is embarked it's still a military unit, just defenseless.


Civilians: Units without a military or diplomatic role.
Noncombat: Any unit without a combat strength.

I thought of listing out every unit type that's included... but once you get the policy it's obvious anyway.

Tree definitely looks better, but still a bit bland to me.

Right now protectionism seems pretty bland. Is it possible to make a policy that provides 1 happy for every +5 GPT in the positive? Basically you get happiness for having the cash rolling in.

A couple more commerce ideas just to see if any stick

1) +1 to movement on roads/railroads.
2) Workers build roads/railroads 50% faster.
3) Trade route gold increased by X%
4) Blockading ships gain X GPT.
5) The percentage for the "wealth" build option increases.
6) Gain X GP for killing ships (plunder!)
7) All coastal cities gain X building (lighthouse or harbor for example).
8) Purchased units get +15 extra XP.
9) Reduce embarkation penalties.

I think not having two naval policies is wrong, and rather than removing them they should be buffed.
This gives a real incentive to play as a naval civ and keep your cities on the coast and not inland. It encourages different play styles. I always feel that the Navel part of the game is often under played. Remember that the Navy pretty much made the British empire.

I feel that the naval policies should also include more commerce orientated bonuses (it is commerce after all)
Naval Tradition - +1 movement and sight isnt that useful for a policy. I like the +1 to harbors, this could be added to Naval Policy rather than commerce, and/or maybe a buff to navel trade routes - is this possible?
Navel tradition was about increasing sailors and ships, so maybe a +25% bonus to all ship building would be good.

Merchant Navy - The +3 hammers isnt as powerful as it was in vanilla before patches as hammers were not as plentyful, +3 is the same as a watermill and workshop.
Giving hammers is useful because coastal civs can be short of hammers, but i fell that it should also include a commerce bonus.

I do like your free market idea, this would make a commerce heavy civ more of a possibility.

Just my thoughts.

Stalker0 said:

Tree definitely looks better, but still a bit bland to me.

Right now protectionism seems pretty bland. Is it possible to make a policy that provides 1 happy for every +5 GPT in the positive? Basically you get happiness for having the cash rolling in.

A couple more commerce ideas just to see if any stick

1) +1 to movement on roads/railroads.
2) Workers build roads/railroads 50% faster.
3) Trade route gold increased by X%
4) Blockading ships gain X GPT.
5) The percentage for the "wealth" build option increases.
6) Gain X GP for killing ships (plunder!)
7) All coastal cities gain X building (lighthouse or harbor for example).
8) Purchased units get +15 extra XP.
9) Reduce embarkation penalties.

Click to expand...

I agree it's still not as exciting as Tradition or Liberty, but there's a limit to what I can do with the tools we have. but Protectionism is a decent policy rewarding peaceful trade.

The ones with a "-" I can't do with our tools, or wouldn't be able to properly code the AI to recognize.

1. -
2. -
3. That'd be easy, though its role would overlap somewhat with the maintenance reduction policy and Machu Picchu wonder.
4. -
5. -
6. That's a relatively unique idea and would be easy.
7. Would be easy.
8. I put a +15xp effect in the Autocracy tree. Based on polls I've seen Autocracy needed help even more than Commerce.
9. -

@bigfatjonny
Coastlines are very powerful in TBC. All coast tiles start out at 21:c5gold, and can get up to 32. That's like grassland-rivers everywhere with a combination of farm and trading post. Since coastal civs are so gold-focused, the tree is already very powerful for a coastal civ. 3 policies in the tree also directly boost naval empires in some way.

Rather than have naval and land policies split, I like combining them into policies that affect both. This way the tree helps all regions and improves our options. If a land empire has 2 policies, and a sea empire has 2 policies, when the policies are combined both empires get 4 useful policies. In this case I took 1 coast-only policy, made it useful for both land and sea, and added sea-friendly effects to a third policy, if that makes sense.

Production and gold bonuses are basically the same, since the two are both used to build things. My goal is to make them equal in value. Production is more efficient but takes time, while gold is instant but less efficient.

Thal, would it be possible to fake foreign trade with a commerce policy that gave you X% more gold for every open borders agreement you have?

Still think +1 happy per luxury is bland for a policy, but I bow to your wisdom (since you have to write the thing, and I just armchair quarterback)

Also, I don't think you need to be stingy with the 20% road maintenance reduction. Heck, I could even see 50%...that way you can build twice as many roads as a person without commerce, which for a civ focused on trade makes sense.

If you wanted more naval involvement, you could also put a policy that gives X% production bonus when building ships.

I just discovered that this thread is active. Overall th changes look very good. Trade Unions still seems UP to me, for the reason Roughar mentions: it's too late for the tile discount, and +1 movement for workers may also not mean as much, given that by then I have plenty of workers and roads.

With regard to terrain improvements, you should keep in mind that the game gives more value to gems than any other luxury. I'm not sure that there is a need to nerf gems and buff incense. Everything doesn't have to equal out - and sometimes it's more boring when it does.

Txurce said:

I just discovered that this thread is active. Overall th changes look very good. Trade Unions still seems UP to me, for the reason Roughar mentions: it's too late for the tile discount, and +1 movement for workers may also not mean as much, given that by then I have plenty of workers and roads.

With regard to terrain improvements, you should keep in mind that the game gives more value to gems than any other luxury. I'm not sure that there is a need to nerf gems and buff incense. Everything doesn't have to equal out - and sometimes it's more boring when it does.

Click to expand...

Trade Unions sounds weak compared to other SPs available at that time. Also I would be thankful if you alter Rationalism a bit & make some UP policies in it more useful.
And one question. What have you changed in Protectionism ?. It sounds the same as it was before. From website 'Protectionism: +1 Happiness for each Luxury resource.'

Congrats on patch 7 beta.
On the site is says that;

• Free Market: +1 Gold on improved tiles.
• Protectionism: +1 Happiness for each Luxury resource.

This doesnt seem to reflect the discussing in this thread, free market looks way over powered and protectionism no different.
It this just wording or will the changes be reflected in the non beta?