GEM Stage 4: Cities & Policies

mitsho said:

I guess there will be much need for balancing since it's hard to translate a focused policy into a policy of the same value.

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Could you describe your thoughts about this in more detail?

I was dreading that question...

Basically, it's more difficult than the simple equation we can make of each yield, because that one is based on the costs it takes to acquire them and benefits of spending them. These are based on the basic game and stay the same regardless of the playstyle you use (tall, wide or conquest). What changes with the playstyles is how you use them and in what order. Now policies are mostly adapted to playstyles, tradition is for tall, etc. So we have different policies for the gameplay styles and other focusses. How will they work if you can more easily chose them and they are not hidden in later tiers?

Or short, I'm a bit afraid of the cherrypicking possibilities that are opened. Directly jumping to gold from kills in Honor maybe. But it opens up a lot of flexibilities as well, with adapting your strategy like for example jumping to city states as production providers quite early. And it allows for not having to pick policies you don't want on your way there. So it's quite a double-edged sword.

mitsho said:

And it allows for not having to pick policies you don't want on your way there.

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This is something else I was thinking about, and forgot to post. It can be frustrating to get stuff we don't want in order to reach something really fun we do want. This might make the game more enjoyable.

mitsho said:

I'm a bit afraid of the cherrypicking possibilities that are opened. Directly jumping to gold from kills in Honor maybe.

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This is an excellent example of game balance we should consider. I'm glad you brought it up.

Professional Army is weaker now because we have to use the vanilla system, which is based on unit strength instead of cost. I doubt I would get it before the garrison policy. I think the happiness and culture is more useful first, especially the culture helps us get future policies faster. If we could jump directly to the gold-from-kills policy, but it's weaker, would we actually do so? Would it be more fun to have that capability instead of having to get all the prerequisite policies? Does that fun outweigh concerns for balance, and we could rebalance the policy to work at any level?

Questions like this I've been asking myself, and talking about with friends over the past week.

Ok so i dont know if this is possible but what if instead of a whole policy tree unlocking at a certain age, the policies each unlocked at a tech? Not sure if something like that could even be coded but could add to strategy and stop cherry picking as much if you wanted military policies you might have to go down the bottom of the tree first etc.

Not sure entirely how i feel about the idea thought i would throw it out there

That is actually possible; there's some unused code that allows specific policies to have tech requirements. I think it might be too complicated, however.

I see two benefits of policy links:

• Encourages us to take policies in a fun order. A really good example of this is Military Caste c5happy: for garrisons). In the past I tried out that effect on the Honor opener or as a first-tier policy. It actually made the game less fun because it encourages us to passively sit around in cities instead of actively going out and engaging barbarians. It's not overpowered to get it early, but rather boring.
• Multiple policy tiers lets us balance more and less powerful policies. As Ahriman said it's not possible or even desirable to have everything exactly the same. A good example of this is the Rationalism tree. It has both free techs and happiness policies, both of which are rather powerful regardless of the exact numbers we give them.

Three benefits of unlinked policies:

• When policies in each tree have equal value, fewer links gives us more flexibility and variety from one game to the next. This increases the game's replayability, an important part of games (and Civilization in particular).
• Early policies in trees are usually good early, and late policies useful late, so links rarely affect gameplay. There's often no reason to get a late policy before an early one.
• Policy links don't have the concrete relationships of tech links. There's an obvious physical reason we must learn Mining before Bronze Working, while policies can exist in a more abstract order and skip around.

So my thinking is let's try things hot, then cold, then just right. At the moment we're on the "lots of links" side of the scale. I'm going to try things on the "no links" side. In another week or so when we've had a chance to try it out, we can figure out what really should have links, and I'll add some back in to move to the middle. Two policies that will probably get their links back are Military Caste (garrison bonus) and Humanism (happy from sci buildings) for the reasons described earlier.

You can try this out by downloading the next version of GEM I'll release today, or by looking over the policies documentation.

I'd lean away from tech requirements for policies. We can and should have era requirements for trees, but we don't need tech and policies to interact beyond that. If we want techs to enable particular effects, then those effects belong on the tech itself, not on an enabled policy.

Wow to after checking out the new policies i think it could be a lot of fun! I love the different bonuses to improved tiles (villages especially as It might actually make me use them!).

I assume you still have to open the tree before picking any within right?

Yes, that requirement remains. I'm glad you like the looks of things. I was unsure what kind of reception this idea would get, as you can probably tell by my testing the waters first.

you could keep the military caste and humanism link for now since we're particularly unsure about those.

Four observations from skimming the new list:

• Monarchy, Inspiration, Patronage Opener seems overpowered, Planned Economy, Unity, Piety Finisher(slightly) underpowered
• There seems to be a lot of Happiness around.
• Villages can grow very strong, I counted + 1 and + 1 . I didn't do the math to compare it to specialists and farms+mines though.
• Many of the new effects seem to be "instant" and generally more short term in their effect (how long it takes til they are worth it). Are you building towards a Revolution system which lets you redistribute the Policies? (For the balancement of which such effects are needed)

Thalassicus said:

Three benefits of unlinked policies:

• More flexibility and variety from one game to the next, which it increases the game's replayability, an important part of games (and Civilization in particular).
• Early policies in trees are usually good early, and late policies useful late, so links rarely affect gameplay. There's often no reason to get a late policy before an early one.
• Policy links don't have the concrete relationships of tech links. There's an obvious physical reason we must learn Mining before Bronze Working, while policies can exist in a more abstract order and skip around.

So my thinking is let's try things hot, then cold, then just right. At the moment we're on the "lots of links" side of the scale. I'm going to try things on the "no links" side. In another week or so when we've had a chance to try it out, we can figure out what really should have links, and I'll add some back in to move to the middle. Two policies that will probably get their links back are Military Caste (garrison bonus) and Humanism (happy from sci buildings) for the reasons described earlier.

You can try this out by downloading the next version of GEM I'll release today, or by looking over the policies documentation.

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I'm going to respectfully disagree that no dependencies allows for more flexibility in build choice. I think it will result in always taking the exact same order every game rather than making tough choices. As an example say you have policies A, B, and C and B depends on A. Now if B is a strong policy, C is medium strong, and A is relatively weak you have a compelling choice: Either A to unlock B, or directly to C. With no policy dependency you always go straight to B.

All that said I'm willing to try it out in a few game - it might not be as bad as I envision when I actually try it.

I'm more in Zaldron's camp on the policies. Right now it looks like we have this way to look at the trees: as providers of a few cherry picked bonuses, with a possibly weak opener to get to them and then with somewhat powerful finishers instead of powerful individual policies, which suggests that we don't want or need to balance the trees internally. It might make it easier to identify which individual policies are weak this way, by removing the more valuable dependencies it provides for later balance. But it does so by removing an element of strategy and choice. Which I'm not sure is warranted.

I don't really like the temporary yield bonuses either. They are better focused and a neat effect that would be easy to interpret, but they look very weak versus more permanent effects or even temporary golden ages. You can get better effects by knocking off a CS. (I don't think that means we should make them bigger, rather I think it means they're more of a neat idea than one that will work. I could just prefer lasting institutional changes to temporary shifts).

How does Order being unlocked from Freedom/Power play diplomatically? I haven't looked at that code yet, (looked like Mitsho had?)

Monarchy looks OP with science and culture (and science on villages doesn't seem like a realistic effect here). I'm not sure where monuments and amphitheaters goes with "power", but I suppose it could make sense on "nationalism" as the effects of propaganda and public/state education. That actually makes more sense than courthouses from conquest as not every country's impact from "nationalism" has resulted in aggressive warfare against its neighbours or in colonial imperialism abroad.

@Mitsho, some of the happiness from VEM looks like it was removed. It doesn't say +1 on libraries and labs for example in humanism. But it does seem like it is more spread out. Villages look like the only change was +1 from VEM. There it was +1 and +1 , and now it's +2

@mitsho
All players start with 15 per turn. If our capital has 5 citizens and a Mentor's Hall, then +5 increases our science rate by at most 20%, and quickly drops in value as we expand. Happiness is also harder to get with this plan than the basic G&K game.

@mystikx21
The reason for the instant policy/tech/gold/etc bonuses is it's really hard to do new stuff for policies. Our modding tools have very limited capabilities in this part of the game, so I have to use similar effects in many places. I paired instant effects with lasting effects so we get both short and long term value.

Zaldron said:

Now if B is a strong policy, C is medium strong, and A is relatively weak

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The "more flexibility" analysis is when policies A, B, and C have equal value. I should have specified that in the post.

Thalassicus said:

@mystikx21
The reason for the instant policy/tech/gold/etc bonuses is it's really hard to do new stuff for policies. Our modding tools have very limited capabilities in this part of the game.

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I gathered that some of the other new ideas that were proposed weren't going to fly (like making missionaries production based instead of faith). Which is unfortunate, but not surprising. I didn't say it was a bad idea, but I do point out they're fairly weak and don't seem to add much to the other effects versus other things you could do in game (like war).

mitsho said:

Four observations from skimming the new list:

• Villages can grow very strong, I counted + 1 and + 1 . I didn't do the math to compare it to specialists and farms+mines though.

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Just remember that mines are particularly strong early, allowing much faster building production and everyone needs food throughout the game. I'd want to play a few games but I'm not worried about OP villages just yet.

Thalassicus said:

The "more flexibility" analysis is when policies A, B, and C have equal value. I should have specified that in the post.

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Ah, I was basing my comments on the previous development decisions to balance trees and not individual policies.

I'm going to respectfully disagree that no dependencies allows for more flexibility in build choice. I think it will result in always taking the exact same order every game rather than making tough choices.

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I generally agree with this. Not every game, but every game where you're pursuing a particular playstyle. It is much easier to balance trees and subtree chunks than to balance individual policies.

In terms of the what I assume is the latest policy proposal from http://communitas.wikia.com/wiki/Gem_Policies

I am really leery of some of the changes. There are things that were working well that seem to have been changed for reasons I don't understand; things that weren't broken have been removed. In general I really dislike the move towards one-shot bonuses rather than per-turn bonuses. They are very hard to balance, and they all favor the human over the AI. I mostly prefer the old design.
I also really dislike the policies that just give a free building. Policies should generally give you something that you can't get just by building them; they should give you something that can't just be duplicated with hammers or gold. That makes them feel more special.

Meritocracy seems weird. Poor synergy for a wide empire (why specialist bonuses?). Instant gold effect seems odd. Also favors the human if it is based on this turn's gold output; the human can change their settings to maximize gold output, pick the policy, change back. The AI can't do this.

I dislike that there is no longer a Liberty policy that reduces the policy cost increase from more cities. That was really important.

I'm leery of bringing back the wall bonuses, particularly for Liberty. Walls are pretty balanced in G&K. In Tradition they make sense, because you're going to be on the defensive. But in Liberty they're pretty weak, because with wide you're going to have a big empire.
But the Representation looks very weak and unthematic. With a wide empire, your oldest cities are going to be in the empire core and aren't likely to be attacked.
I'd rather revert to one of the old effects (bring happiness from connected cities earlier, the finisher is too late to help, revert to free great person at finisher).

Monarchy feels weird. Really different effects, most of which have any particular Tall synergy. I don't understand this.

Also the Monarchy culture boost and the ceremonial burial policy seem to overlap too much. There don't need to be 2 benefits in Tradition for monuments and ampitheaters. I don't really like ceremonial burial myself.

Engineer and manufactory bonuses in Honor feel really weird and out of place. I would much rather revert to one faster military unit production and experience earning.
The policy also feels much too strong.

+10 instant faith from Piety opener is near useless by the time you get to the medieval era. Was this supposed to be +100?
Charity is a bit boring and has poor synergy with the culture/faith strategies of Piety.

Unity is underpowered. I would much rather boost faith yields from these buildings than give a free one.

If all the culture and science costs and yields from buildings have been doubled, then many of the culture and science boosters look far too weak. +1 culture from artists and +5 culture for landmarks is now a small boost.

Piety Finisher feels very weak. Piety feels weak overall.

I dislike the policy name changes. Wealth, Power, Knowledge are boring and unevocative. Autocracy, Rationalism, Enlightenment, Freedom, Commerce, are much more flavorful.

Mercantilism is probably too strong. 25% trade boost is a lot of gold.
I would prefer that Commerce boosted merchants and customhouses rather than great merchant trade missions.

Aesthetics is incredibly weak. A policy that only hurts your enemies rather than benefiting you is already not very fun, but a -10% penalty will have negligible gameplay impact. I'd rather have a happiness boost back, either from extra resources/luxuries or from alliances. Patronage is now very weak as the only tree without happiness boosts.

Planned economy is very weak. +25% production while building one of a handful of particular buildings? I would rather boost the yield of these buildings.

United Front has problems that have been discussed before. Espionage buildings aren't really worth building outside of 1-2 cities, particularly for a wide empire.

Order was supposed to benefit wide empires, but now has no happiness boosts. This is a major problem.

Order finisher can be gamed by the human player, and feels fairly weak.

Sovreignty is weak, and the opener is now probably too strong.
With doubled science costs and yields from everything, free thought and secularism are weak.

Autocracy opener is too easy to cherrypick, happiness policies should require pre-requisites. It also feels a bit unthematic, though I suppose your getting at a propaganda effect.

Police state still struggles with the weakness of those buildings, but its an interesting idea. The effect is strong enough to make those stuctures building even just for the happiness bonus alone. I think I like it. That was an imaginative solution.

Fascism might be underpowered; depends how big the bonus is.
Nationalism feels out of place; why should there be specialist boosts in Nationalism? Poor synergy.

Freedom has the strongest opener in the game, I think that is a problem because it makes it too easy to just cherrypick the opener.

I would prefer the Immigration effect in Patronage; Tall/specialist empires won't necessarily have CS allies.

Free trade is interesting. I have to think about that more.

I like the villiage ones cause if i decide to play with a lot of villages they are strong but if i decide to play with hardly any which i do fairly often then they aren't as strong which makes it so they are never 'must haves' but also aren't ones you never want

All players start with 15 science per turn.

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Again: why?
I really dislike this move to very large flat empire bonuses. It completed devalues all the early decisions about which avenue to pursue, because everyone has lots of gold science and culture, so it makes no difference whether you build a monument or library early or not. That means less fun. Its also going to make early game techs really race by.

Ahriman said:

I dislike that there is no longer a Liberty policy that reduces the policy cost increase from more cities. That was really important.

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- This looks like it was moved to the finisher.

I'm leery of bringing back the wall bonuses, particularly for Liberty. Walls are pretty balanced in G&K. In Tradition they make sense, because you're going to be on the defensive. But in Liberty they're pretty weak, because with wide you're going to have a big empire.
But the Representation looks very weak and unthematic. With a wide empire, your oldest cities are going to be in the empire core and aren't likely to be attacked.
I'd rather revert to one of the old effects (bring happiness from connected cities earlier, the finisher is too late to help, revert to free great person at finisher).

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- I think previous debates had suggested moving the walls/defense building to the freedom tree and moving the free GP back to liberty. I'm not sure why that idea didn't stick (freedom could keep a GP rate bonus for example). The production/food bonuses are smaller now +1 from +2 and the defence buildings themselves are slightly changed from GK for allocating hit points in a more balanced way. I think these are fine as long as they're not free walls in every city style.

Monarchy feels weird. Really different effects, most of which have any particular Tall synergy.

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I don't understand this. - I don't get the science on village part myself. Extra culture isn't bad and at least reflects something like a real life element of the various stories of famous kings and queens passed down as "culture". So it is flavourful. I agree we shouldn't get freebies and this however.

Engineer and manufactory bonuses in Honor feel really weird and out of place. I would much rather revert to one faster military unit production and experience earning.

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- Agreed.

Unity is underpowered. I would much rather boost faith yields from these buildings than give a free one.

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- Ditto. Shrines don't cost that much.

Piety Finisher feels very weak

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. Which is odd because most of the finishers are decent.

I dislike the policy name changes. Wealth, Power, Knowledge are boring and unevocative. Autocracy, Rationalism, Enlightenment, Freedom, Commerce, are much more flavorful.

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- Agreed. We have wealth and knowledge already in the game as concepts. They're not grand concepts of social innovation.

Mercantilism is probably too strong. 25% trade boost is a lot of gold.

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I don't like this effect here for realism purposes, but it's not as powerful as 50% on "free market" was.

I would prefer that Commerce boosted merchants and customhouses rather than great merchant trade missions.

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- Seems like the honor change, moved too early to put it in liberty.

Patronage is now very weak as the only tree without happiness boosts.

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Patronage still has a happiness boost in the finisher, just as commerce does. I might too have preferred that as a policy and the 10% as a finisher. I suspect that's switched because there are proposed no requirements anymore and its otherwise a very powerful policy that would be easily cherry picked.

United Front has problems that have been discussed before. Espionage buildings aren't really worth building outside of 1-2 cities, particularly for a wide empire.

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- it does at least have the proposed espionage benefit aside from it now but I don't find the production instead of happiness benefit on them to make any sense either. I was fine with the amount of happiness available in order and saw the problem as either a bonus on meaningless buildings or a building that could be improved. Not as something that should be transferred to give Autocracy even more happiness for conquest.