Policies

Powerful finishers are motivation to finish an entire tree when one or more policies might not otherwise be useful. For example, before finishers were introduced to Civ I always skipped the free great general policy in Honor. The naval bonus in Commerce isn't useful if we don't have many coastal cities. Rationalism's top-tier policies are generally useful for any empire or strategy (+science and +2 free techs), and I doubt anyone going Rationalism would skip them.
 
I've used the militaristic citystate reward code to redesign Educated Elite (Patronage tree).

Each citystate friend contributes 2:c5greatperson: (3 from allies) to a pool, and when the pool is filled a random Great Person appears at the capital. Progress towards the next CS Great Person displays on CS city banners.

The vanilla effect was buggy and unmoddable:

  • True/false toggle with no way to mod it.
  • Randomized.
  • Appeared at the citystate.
  • Could give Mongolian Khans to non-Mongols.
  • Could give CSD diplomat units.
 
Policy threshold should absolutely be independent. I would be quite cranky if in my science game, my GS gets pushed back thanks to a friendly neighborhood General.

Further, I think that perhaps CS type should influence what gets spawned.

Each military CS adds weight to GGs, each Maritime adds weight to GMs and GSs, and each Cultural adds weight to GAs and GEs.
 
Right now it's a simple per-player yield. It probably would be good to make it deterministic like normal great people, where each citystate type contributes to two great people types (military = generals and engineers), and each great person has its own yield pool. I estimate either a deterministic or pooled-random approach require ~5 hours' extra work, so I'm going to get the basic system working first. :)
 
I don't think each type should contribute to a specific GP. I think they should simply change the percentages on what might show up at the capital.

So, say the current weight system is

1 GG, 1 GS, 1 GM, 1 GA, 1GE
Every GP has a 20% chance of spawning.

Each Ally - 1 extra weight, Each Friend .5 extra weight
Militaristic - General
Cultural - Artist, Engineer
Maritime - Scientist, Merchant

If that player allies with 2 Maritimes, is friends with 1 cultural, and 3 Military, the new weights would be:

4 GG, 3 GS, 3 GM, 1.5 GA, 1.5 GE.
Generals in this instance would have a 4/13 chance of spawning.

Given that there are 5 GPs and only 3 CS types, the question would be whether to double up the weight value of GGs from Militaristic
 
You also run into the problem of wanting certain CS benefits but not wanting a certain GP type. This is imo, bad tension. I would almost prefer random so as to not run into this problem, although Sneaks weighted system could work as well
 
The weighted system I think allows for a proper value added split, while giving each GP type a fair chance of spawning. The only way you could really alter percentages drastically is to only ever grab one type (All Cultural in a CV game being most likely, at which point you are spawning extra GEs and GAs, which is good news, anyway).

The thoughts on which GPs to which CS type went as follows:
Militaristic CSes exist to help militarily. The GG is the natural fit.
Cultural CSes tend to favor Cultural Victories, thus GAs, and Engineers and production provide a solid boost to Wonders, which fit in flavor wise.
Maritime CSes I tend to directly associate with wide empires. The two best GPs for wide are Merchants and Scientists, as Gold and Science become the yields of choice.
 
As much as I agree with what Sneaks has said, I still want to point out that GAs don't actually help with a cultural victory any more than some other GP. The bomb is not helpful at all, and the tile improvement is on par with all the other tile improvements, AND they are mutually exclusive (per tile, obviously).

I still would like to swap out the current culture bomb mechanic for something like the other GPs. The others are large boosts now vs long term yields. The only one that isn't is the GA (and the GG, but I don't worry about him).

Also, while GGs don't stack I find them less useful than any other GP. On the other hand, they are created through different methods, and those methods synergize with the actual use of the GG. I feel that a separate boost needs to be given if a GG is the GP created with this policy. How about 2 free vanguard units? Or something like that?

If you are a warlike nation, not only will you not take this policy and have allies, but even if you did you would already have GGs up the wazoo. If you are peaceful and take this policy, you may get a GG and not be able to use him. At least if you got some vanguard units you could defend with the GG.

EDIT: Or you could make GGs made with the policy have 1.5x the bonus to units? Problem with that is that is not the only use of GGs, and so it would skew the balance of the other abilities. And while I'm on that topic, I always find the GoldenAge to be a weak use of any GP.
 
I often find myself having extra GGs as a war civ, and the last thing we would need from a CS ally would be another so I agree 100% with the above post. I'd be fine with removing him from the pool altogether, since hes almost a different class of great people from the others. And yes the Great Artist needs work but I seem to remember Thal saying it was part of the "core" so not sure what we can do on that front atm.
 
Sounds like neat, but there's the balance factor to consider... Many policies give one Great Person, and a small bonus. So the number of GPs given over time by Educated Elite should need some thought. Unlike the normal GP mechanism, EE doesn't make it harder to get every GP after the next, does it?

Also a balancing factor for EE is that it seems to have given random GPs at random times. If you make the time deterministic, and give the player influence over what kind of GP they will get, the trait becomes much more powerful, because you can plan.

Personally I would really like a totally random effect: X% per city state per turn to spawn a random Great Person (Minus the Khan). There's no such thing as a "totally useless GP", you can always have a golden age. If that is considered useless, then maybe the length of golden ages given by GPs should be reconsidered. It's nice to have an effect in the game that theoretically could give you 2 GPs at the same turn, or never give anything. Considering the amount of times the probability of X% is sampled (number of allied city state per turn), though, in the long run, and for balance purposes, the average will prevail.

Not having everything in the game all deterministic for the player to plan every move ad nauseum, rather the player having to deal with random events popping up, is a good thing. And a random positive thing from EE is nice. Also makes players consider uses of GPs outside their normal planning box. Keep this trait completely random in spawning time and type is my opinion. (while fixing bugs like Khan, of course)
 
I agree, the randomness of EE is a distinct feature of he policy. Not everything needs to detailled. If you however want to go this route, I'd suggest distributing the GP over the City States Types in a balancing feature. Militaristic are considered the worst ones due to the randomness of the units you get. So they should give the Scientific Great Persons (strongest GP; there are militaristic techs!) and maybe the Great Engineer which could go to the cultural city states (engineers build wonders). Merchants and Artist can go to the strongest city state. I agree, that's the opposite direction of what sneaks suggested.
 
Further, I think that perhaps CS type should influence what gets spawned.

Each military CS adds weight to GGs, each Maritime adds weight to GMs and GSs, and each Cultural adds weight to GAs and GEs.

This seems needlessly complicated to me, and it runs the risk of unbalancing the value of the various CS types, which are pretty equal now in my eyes.

Each citystate friend contributes 2:c5greatperson: (3 from allies) to a pool, and when the pool is filled a random Great Person appears at the capital. Progress towards the next CS Great Person displays on CS city banners

This should be perfectly sufficient.
 
Unlike the normal GP mechanism, EE doesn't make it harder to get every GP after the next, does it?

The method I've got running now works exactly the same as the normal great person pool (but separate from it). So if we have 5 CS allies when we get the policy it works like this:

  • 7 turns (105/100) 1GP
  • reset to 5/200
  • 13 more turns (200/200) 1GP
  • reset to 0/300
  • 20 more turns (300/300) 1GP
  • reset to 0/400
  • 27 more turns (405/400) 1GP
  • reset to 5/500
  • etc

A standard size map starts with 16 citystates so we could theoretically triple this rate if we ally with everyone.

Militaristic are considered the worst ones due to the randomness of the units you get.

I'd like to emphasize VEM changes militaristic citystates a lot. :) In VEM the unit rewards:

  • Start with equal or greater experience than units we can train ourselves (on average).
  • Appear in the capital.
  • More frequent than vanilla.
  • Exclude low-value units like scouts.
Militaristic unit rewards typically make up most or all of my defensive force in peaceful games, and an important part of city garrisons in conquest games. The rewards are random, but generally useful since units are more balanced in VEM than vanilla.
 
Yes, I'm well aware of that. I do like to ally them in my peaceful games, it's just that they still feel worse than the others and there's nothing you can do against a feeling. A Cultural city states brings me a lot closer to a specific SP I need in the early game, a maritime CS gives me the food to free my citizens so I can put them to work on sthg I do really need right now. A militaristic city state gives me nothing unique. There's nothing wrong with that though, they don't all need to have the same usefulness and it's not that a militaristic city state is bad. They do pay you back. But you can't have frustrations with the other cs like you do with the militaristic ones because the latter is random.
 
I could normalize the random unit. Normalization basically means once an event happens, it's less likely to happen again for N amount of time. It's used for many games... like some WoW combat effects have "procs per minute" instead of "per hit."
 
Militaristic unit rewards typically make up most or all of my defensive force in peaceful games, and an important part of city garrisons in conquest games. The rewards are random, but generally useful since units are more balanced in VEM than vanilla.

This is one of the few times where one of my ingrained attitudes has been changed by Thal altering yields. I recently came to the conclusion that I'm always better off with militaristic CS allies when playing peaceful games, because they not only make up most of my army, but also effectively upgrade it, giving me the option of gifting units to CS.
 
I do like to ally them in my peaceful games, it's just that they [militaristic CS allies] still feel worse than the others and there's nothing you can do against a feeling.
My guess about that the source of the feeling would be the contradiction there: Militaristic CSs don't provide anything of much use when your game is peaceful. Sure you need some garrison, so you don't look like too easy a bit for the AI, but units are more useful when warring.
 
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