Policies

Ahhh ok...

Well, the primary reason is because I feel small empires need a way to get a slight science bonus in early game. Early conquest or expansion can dramatically improve your science rates, while it takes much longer for a small empire to build up high-population cities and achieve the same thing. These changes to the Tradition tree help with both of those. I also think +1 might be too powerful, and only really be useful for cultural victories, not small empires in general. In addition there's the other reasons:

• There's precedent for having stages of empire development. The Liberty tree for expansive empires progresses to the late-game Order tree, and Honor for warmongers progresses to Autocracy. Tradition is the early tree for small empires, and both later small-empire trees improve Specialists, so a small bonus in this realm allows you to develop a specialist economy in stages instead of all at once.
• This increases the interesting decision-making opportunities a player has, by giving you the choice of pursuing a modestly successful specialist economy in the mid game.
• The Tradition tree is often considered a little underwhelming, and the (original) Landed Elite in particular.
• Specialists are generally considered weak for anything but great person production.
• A slight science bonus for small empires in an early tree helps counteract the large research bonuses large empires receive from having a high number of cities (and as a result, high population).
• Small empires often have more specialist potential. Happiness is higher, so you can support a larger population per city, and small empires often have denser-packed cities (easier defense) with fewer available tiles to work.

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That's the gameplay reasons. From a perspective of realism, I picture the elite landowners sitting back and pursuing other things in life, such as investigating the world and how it works.

You keep talking about small empires - yet this Science Bonus to specialists outweights the whole Liberty tree once you founded your cities. The problem of the change is that it is not restricted to small empires.

The Freedom social policy tree is also not restricted to small empires. Could you describe your thoughts in more detail?

I believe the bonuses to settler production, city size, improvement construction, and // per city still significantly eclipse the Tradition tree for early game land grabs, then support that rapid expansion with production, culture and happiness bonuses. The policies in the Liberty tree all support a rex game opener.

In contrast, a player doing an early rex will not likely focus heavily on wonder production, and capital benefits have proportionally less of an effect in a large empire than a small one. In addition, a large empire player is unlikely to build lots of Temples and Artist specialists, the only other form of specialist available in early game past Libraries. It takes quite some time after a rex to build the necessary buildings and improvements to sustain a specialist economy. Specialists are also not very useful in the early game, when the Civil Service bonus to farms hasn't kicked in (unless you do a Civil Service slingshot, in which case you're probably not rexing). The one exception is if you're extremely lucky and start next to multiple Fish resources.

The best way I see to effectively utilize this is a game opener where the empire stays small and focuses on building monuments, temples, libraries and farms, a natural strategy for small empires focusing on a cultural victory. If you're building settlers and roads to rex'd cities, you can't also be building temples and libraries. Settlers are expensive so it's unlikely to get enough gold to buy them all. A large empire also has more difficulty keeping happiness high enough to support large populations. In addition, since Engineer specialists don't come until the Medieval era, if you are lacking Republic's +1, have small cities, and Scientists/Artists instead of working mines, your production will be very low and leave the rex'd empire vulnerable to attack.

I tried a quick game with France to try out the new tradition tree and give it a try.

1) The +33% didn't feel OP. What I noticed was that right at the early game, it was weaker than +1 food, and much weaker than +2. Only at about turn 100 did I start feeling a real boost.

The tricky part is a small empire wants to use the capital for so many things...but in order to utilize tradition you have to focus on a decent amount of food. So its juggling act, which to me is a good thing. I wouldn't lower it now that I've seen it.

2) Landed Elite definately felt like a solid choice. I took it after a few freedom policies to get my specialists going.

3) The biggest obstacle for me in the tradition tree now is Oligarchy. At least right now, its pretty crappy. At least with freedom the defense tech is not a prereq for anything else...so you can take it specifically if you need defense.

In order to get landed elite and monarchy I have to get oligarchy...and that is such a hump to get over.

Stalker0 said:

3) The biggest obstacle for me in the tradition tree now is Oligarchy. At least right now, its pretty crappy. At least with freedom the defense tech is not a prereq for anything else...so you can take it specifically if you need defense.

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I should clarify. I don't think the oligarchy bonus is crappy in that the bonus is too weak.

Its just so conceptually different from the techs it is a prereq to. That's why I prefer freedom's defense policy. You can completely ignore it and take the rest of the tree, or pick it up if you need the defense.

One reason why "a certain other popular game which shall remain nameless" gradually eliminated those prerequisite requirements on talent trees over the years... the links reduce flexibility players have. It's precedent from early RPG's like the Diablo series, but still... I agree it's a bit limiting in this tree. Most of the other defensive policies are optional, like you say. Perhaps I could switch it with the one just to the right in the Tradition tree?

Thalassicus said:

One reason why "a certain other popular game which shall remain nameless" gradually eliminated those prerequisite requirements on talent trees over the years... the links reduce flexibility players have. It's precedent from early RPG's like the Diablo series, but still... I agree it's a bit limiting in this tree. Most of the other defensive policies are optional, like you say. Perhaps I could switch it with the one just to the right in the Tradition tree?

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That's what I was thinking. It also makes sense that you would have legalism in order to get your landed elites and your monarchs.

Thalassicus said:

Perhaps I could switch it with the one just to the right in the Tradition tree?

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Stalker0 said:

That's what I was thinking. It also makes sense that you would have legalism in order to get your landed elites and your monarchs.

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I also support this suggestion.

Some feedback: I think "Humanism: 2 per university (from 1)" is too powerful. Many of the other trees have a way to increase happiness, and it's generally about 1/city (e.g. via garrisons, trade routes, =1 per luxury resource). This is potentially twice as good, and it's only 1 pick deep into the Rationalism tree. It would be fine if Universities were a mediocre building. But I build them pretty much everywhere eventually, only the smallest cities would not benefit from more science. Science is a pretty vital thing to have as much as possible of. And maintenance on them is not outrageous (2, I think?). Also, the "Oxford University" national wonder is pretty decent (a free technology), and worth building eventually (cost 260, not bad later in the game).

Hm, well the reason I'd improved it is most strategies I see go for the left side of the Rationalism tree. I've never seen one down the right side, so figured it could use a buff. Maybe I should buff the policy just beneath it instead?

I wouldn't do anything just yet. Having second thoughts in my latest game. For one thing, the Unis are 3 maintenance, not just 2. For another, I'm finding that I'm not building them nearly as fast as before, because all the other balance patching (and a couple of other mods I have) has made almost every building desirable now. So it's a real battle for production resources now, whereas before there were a lot of buildings I would skip over for uni.

Thalassicus,

It seems that very few people have messed around with social policies (from what I have been able to find). I am encountering some difficulties in updating/changing/modifying/moving policies from branch to branch as well as within a particular branch.

I was wondering if you could post your xml files or at least the text within said files (as spoilers to save space) you used to mod some of the different changes here in this thread.

Also, with regards to changing how the AI evaluates your new social policies, did you ever try to adjust that? Specifically, did you adjust the flavor (changing the weighting or in some other way) or did you just say "the heck with it"?

Also, to avoid the "do you know how to use modbuddy" questions...
Yes, I know how to use mod buddy and I have ~10 XML files that change things from calendar to units to buildings to civs to city-states, leaders, and some minor Civics changes--but now I am trying to make an extensive overhaul to the civics and so far the major changes have been causing crashes.

thanks,
-Zen Blade

Sure, here's the XML file, and yep I update the AI flavors for policies.

Do you know if you AI flavor updates have had any effect on what the AI chooses? Or how do you decide what numbers to use for each flavor?

If it didn't have any effect at all I'd be surprised, though I don't know exactly what the numbers do, since we don't have access to the c++ source that uses them.

let me rephrase,

when you put "5" or "10" down for a particular flavor for a specific social policy, how did you decide on the number and the size of the number?

Did you look at what the flavor number was for similar policies?

Yes, I just try and get a sense of the relative value of other techs/units/buildings/etc and gauge the changes off that. One thing I do know is the numbers appear to be absolute comparison checks. In other words, if one building is valued at growth 10 and another is growth 9, and if the AI wants to do a growth path, the 10 one will always be picked.

Didn't 2K say that the AI makes a list of choices and depending on the difficulty level it will pick the top choice or have an increased chance of picking some lower on their list?

I didn't read much of the pre-release press material, so I don't know for sure. Maybe the reason they appear to be absolute checks for me is I'm usually on the immortal difficulty setting, so it always picks the largest flavor value?

The rationale for a slight early-game specialist improvement is based on logical reasoning by bobbyboy29 in the Specialists and GP improvement mod here.

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Thanks for the mention Thal, the way you take input from the other posters here is great and it feels nice to be given credit .

Amusingly, I just came on here to suggest this exactly:

Thalassicus said:

1 free policy at each era, Utopia requires one additional tree. The goal is to allow empires of any size to get a little more use out of the fun Policies concept, which feels very restricted in the vanilla game.

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But it seems you beat me to the punch! Shows how in synch we are. Another thing that you should mention is that this also combats the new restriction placed on us in the upcoming patch where policies must be spent the turn they are earned, this will hopefully mean that people aren't forced to have a disproportianate amount of their SP's in the early trees. It also opens up a bit more strategy as if you time it right you can still say, get 2 policies just as you enter the industrial era.