Apprenticeship: Can build Smithies (Cost 40, +2
, Engineer slot). Requires Civility.
(Reduced production cost. Any less and it's practically free now, and free would be just too good.)
Where's the added benefit of this bonus being on a building? Extra maintenance, delayed time, need to invest for reward? Just that it can be better? But then it's not that much better than the other production buildings around (does one get removed?). I'm just not seeing the specialness in this proposal.
Liberty: +1
from every 5
during peace. -1
from every city in your empire during war.
(I am honoring the replaced name here, because I like it.)
So, potentially (I haven't done the numbers) a (AI) civ could be happy, then delare war, fall into unhappiness, receive a combat penalty and lose the war?
Where is the benefit in this complex set-up compared to a simple
boost? What do we get with the peace/war trigger? I'm all for it, but it needs a gameplay reason, not just "being cool".
And I'd rather wait with the complex mechanisms for later trees where you can more easily steer your strategy than in the early game.
My idea here is, you give cities production without having bias for a kind of strategy over another. A player with a compact empire will easily build a smithy in every city while an expansionist player will have to spend more time doing so (and reap more rewards).
Ah, I did overlook that quote on the smithy. That's a good point, it just increases micromanagement so it's not my favourite, but it's a compelling reason for putting the effect on a building. (It might not convince me that we need such a policy)
Not exactly, the wonder is built immediately, it isn't a production bomb. Also a great engineer would give you the option of building a manufactory.
So? More choices for the players are fine (as long as they don't impede on other strategies such as a Free prophet from a finisher might...). Why chose the complex-to-code ("next wonder that has a turn of production put into them finishes the next turn" sounds way harder to explain, open to bugs and less intuitive than "Free Great Person/Engineer"). The only thing it does differently is not allowing the player to have a manufactory (and I guess building that wonder in that freshly built city across the barbarian infested water which the engineer could not travel quick enough, but that's minor). I'd chose the easy way.
Ehm, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Tradition gets a headstart due to more direct culture (and then from wonders and more science as the culture buildings are in that part of the tech tree). So if Liberty is supposed to be about rapid expansion, the policy rate may be too slow for instant expansion focused rewards. A minor note I have to concede.
1 culture+1production is almost as good as 3 culture, and that's just with 1 city. Founding one more city would make liberty's bonus way better. I'm afraid unless we bump up the other openers, having anything more than 1 culture in this one is way too good.
It takes time to catch-up for the 1 culture per city with the 3 in capital. How many turns till the 3rd city is founded? You'd probably need the fourth to catch-up with tradition (due to the #ofcities modifier) and the tradition capital by now may have a culture % bonus as well (national epic). I'd really like to see the curves between the two.
Now I don't deny that there will be a moment in time when liberty will overtake Tradition. But aren't these trees supposed to be the starter trees? Why should I chose a policy that'll only reward me after turn x if not it being the opener. I feel the opener should be something that gets noticed quite instantly. Proposals so far have been culture:
on (certain type of) buildings (rewards focusing on infrastructure, but units? late game balance?)
for number of tiles city encompasses (<- probably also not 'instantly')
each time a city grows (difficult to balance towards late game)
combine it with production (one notices the decrease in build time for that scout, but it may be too "ICS"y)
We could also put the border growth here. After all, new cities on the border do profit from that. It might be a nice, clean, easy way to balance the openers out.
EDIT: Quick comments:
If we want nuLiberty to become more WvT agnostic, I think we really need to move away from city- and tile bonuses and towards empire-level bonuses.
Without spending much time on the numbers and just trying to explain what I mean, what about this:
"Wisdom" v0.2a
- Opener: +1 culture, plus +1 culture per 5 positive happiness. (now entire decoupled from city sizes etc., rewards you for "wise" empire building, I think this could really be something worthwhile, even if the other ideas here are less interesting - it's WvT agnostic and interactive!)MAybe, but you take a policy out of Aesthetics, see discussion above, but fine I guess
- Citizenship: Free worker, +25% terrain improvement. (good as is, already global level) good
- Public Works: +10% building construction, -25% maintenance on buildings, roads. (good as is, already global level) good
- Republic: 25% discount on rush buying buildings and civilian units and tile buying. (I like the special building, but I think Piety is a better home of it, this is just a smattering of general discounts, too boring, though...). You take a policy out of commerce, but complicate it. How often can one rush buy in the starting eras however? And if you do, one can certainly not use it for all of the above options. This seems to me to be more of a 'mid game' bonus
- Representation: +1 happiness from every 5 citizens during peace. (no need for a war penalty, losing the bonus already is a penalty) But why does it need to have a penalty? Is it that strong?
- Meritocracy: +1 yield from GP improvements, +10% GP generation, requires Representation. (as mystikx21 mentioned, more straightfoward).Seems like a mid-game bonus to me, when do you get the first Great Person?
- Finisher: Free Great Engineer, Great Merchant or Great Scientist (I like the flexibility, but let's cut it down to the base yield-related ones! If you want artists or prophets, invest into these trees!). agreed
Hmm, empire-specific bonuses are definitely... less interesting by nature, since they have to be more abstract. Hrm.
So while the tree seems interesting, it to me looks more what a 'medieval' era commerce tree should be, i.e. helping you all around building your empire but still somehow requiring some basic infrastructure build up. The decreases maintenance for example means you need to have upkeep costs from buildings at 4 (= 4 early buildings) to get 1 gold back. Tradition on the other hand atm has a policy that gives 1 gold per pop (or was it 2?). Seems like a policy that takes some time to get over the threshhold. There don't seem to be many "kickstarter" policies in it as well (apart from the worker one). This tree in my mind would need a bit of both.
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