Let's discuss balance and possible fixes

layelaye said:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=251628203
I have considered: Switching between republic and collective rule, so you get the free settler 2 policies in.

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danaphanous said:

cool, I would do this, as someone pointed out, if the opener to liberty is TOO good, tradition people will take it too and get the same benefits easily. I'd rather it be a little harder to mix unless you're going all in.

The rest of it is an interesting change, and will definitely make liberty a LOT better.

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Soffacet said:

Opener : +2 culture per city. +2 science from Palace.
1. +50% Settler construction in capitol. Free worker appears near capitol.
2. Free worker appears in new city centers upon settlement. +25% tile improvement speed.
3. +1 hammer per city. +10% construction of structures. -50% building maintenance.
4. Build roads in 1 turn. +2 local happiness in connected cities.
5. -50% culture/science penalty for additional cities. GA begins, does not affect happiness requirements of subsequent GAs.
Finisher : Free GP of your choice, does not affect required GPP of subsequent GPs. Unlocks faith purchase of GEs.

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layelaye said:

Im independant, but i'd love feedback, and will change the mod if people convince me something is too weak/strong or if they get nice ideas.

Since you dont get the free settler until 3 policies in, i dont think the opener is problomatic, as a tradition player will at most want to get 3-4 cities, so wasting a policy for 4-5 culture and a discount on that little amount of settlers is probably going to be suboptimal : D

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danaphanous said:

As stated in my previous discussion, the one thing piety could use would be a little passive or building associated extra culture in the opener. It doesn't make sense that every first tree has a way to get extra culture but piety. This would help the AI who go straight through it and encourage more ppl to open it as the culture cost wouldn't be as great for investing in it.

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EriktheRead said:

Holy crap. That is incredibly overpowered. Here are some suggestions.
1. Remove the golden age altogether.
2. Make collective rule simply free settler and extra movement point. Move the unhappiness per city boost to the finisher.
3. The finisher should be changed to not include a free person, and the extra pop should be for every city founded before you finished the tree.

That might bring it in line, still an extremely powerful tree though.

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layelaye said:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=251628203

This mod is already working and running, get it at the link.


changelist:

FIXED the liberty finisher, making the great person actually free.

Liberty Opener: Adopting Liberty will provide 1 Culture in every city, increase border expansion rate and provide a 50% bonus when constructing settlers in all cities. Adopting all policies in the Liberty tree will grant a free Great Person of your choice near the Capital."


Republic: +1Production and +10%when constructing buildings. -15% Gold maintenance cost for buildings.


Collective Rule: A free Settler appears near the Capital. Newly founded cities start with 50% food towards the next citizen. -15% Unhappiness from number of cities. +1 Movement for settlers."


Citizenship: Tile improvement construction rate increased by 25% and a Worker appears near the Capital.+1 Happiness for every Luxury resource


Meritocracy+1 Happiness for each City you own connected to the Capital and -5% Unhappiness from Citizens in non-occupied Cities.-25% Gold maintenance on roads.


Representation: Each city you found will increase the Culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age. +1 Science in every city.

Finisher: 1 extra Population in every newly founded city. Great person is now TRULY free.



I have considered: Switching between republic and collective rule, so you get the free settler 2 policies in.

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Cromagnus said:

There are enough Liberty vs Tradition arguments raging to prove that Liberty isn't "weak". Piety and Honor, however, ARE weak, and there's little argument about that. So #1 priority should not be Liberty vs Tradition.

However, I do agree with your primary argument: Tradition is the only tree of those 4 which is good at what it was designed for. Liberty is not as good at going wide as Tradition is at going tall, but that's not a problem with Liberty. It's a problem with CIV5 BNW. Wide is very nerfed, in general. Happiness, culture, and science. This is necessary to prevent the "inevitable ICS wave of doom" though. So to avoid unbalancing the game, I think subtle changes at best should be made to Liberty... It's quite powerful the way it is. IMHO, -2% to the science penalty with the closer, and +1 happiness for every 3 cities, is good enough. (Not requiring city connection)

Also, Freedom and Order are currently backwards. Order is better at tall, and Freedom is better at wide. This is IMHO MORE broken than any of the other trees in terms of suiting intended purpose, however, neither tree is exactly "weak".

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danaphanous said:

Spoiler :

Hey, thanks for your discussion of my suggestions! I'm excited to see how your mod turns out, keep me posted!

The last time I took liberty/piety I actually finished both trees without much of a loss on timing with Rationalism. This happened because of the +4 extra culture I got in every city due to my two religious buildings, pagoda+mosques, tripling early culture. I did far more than break even, finishing many more policies than I usually do and getting much more early smiley's and faith than I usually do. It made my tradition games look weak--especially in the modern/information when all those cities matured and my science was just insane. Going piety early could pay off and result in a well-balanced religion that exceeds the benefits of a typical second tree, or you could have 4 AI go that route and lose out on much of what you were aiming for--it remains a calculated risk which is probably why I like it.
This particular game I completed 4 trees completely: liberty, piety, aesthetics, rationalism, and put 8 points in order: 32 points spent so far. I completed all this by around 1908. I usually struggle to get more than 3 trees completed and am still working through my ideology when the game ends, but this game I seemed to get at least an extra tree done directly as a result of going piety which completely offset and exceeded the investment. I wonder if these potential customizable benefits are why piety doesn't reward you much in the beginning. They wanted it to be a risk tree.

As far as your comment about getting a religion with or without it: totally true. But just getting a religion isn't the whole story...it's being able to use it. Most ppl look at the system as what beliefs did I get? With that approach is 1 extra belief worth 5 policies? No, of course not. But the other 4 policies before it all boost your religion, faith, reduce hammers to faith buildings, etc. So don't look at it as adding +1 belief to 5 you already have. Look at it as roughly doubling, on average, the benefits of all beliefs that require faith to effectively utilize (and occasionally tripling like the above game), and this includes ones that work based on city numbers or pop as your religion will spread about twice as wide too due to the extra missionaries.

As stated in my previous discussion, the one thing piety could use would be a little passive or building associated extra culture in the opener. It doesn't make sense that every first tree has a way to get extra culture but piety. This would help the AI who go straight through it and encourage more ppl to open it as the culture cost wouldn't be as great for investing in it.

I agree, honor might should be changed. It also has some very powerful policies though, but the distribution and early rewards are unbalanced. for warmongering: the 50% increase in exp is really, really good. I also very much like military caste. Just park a unit in the city and you have an extra smiley and monument's-worth of culture. Pretty good. If you can manage to finish it before leaving, the gold upon killing ends up pretty useful. If you are trying to make it a valid start in its own right though then it is certainly not.

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Acken said:

I'm beginning with these 2 because I'm taking things one by one.

The current problem is that tradition is not that tradition is better at being tall than liberty, it's that being wide with tradition (or a tradition/liberty mix) performs better.

For a simple reason: while the opener, Republic and collective rule are good policies, the finisher and meritocracy are just subpar policies and don't really help wider empire more than Monarchy and the trad finisher in happiness, gold, or growth.

Obviously I'm trying to aim changes that would make wide liberty a bit easier. Not make the whole tree the new overpowered thing that everybody go ICS with. That would be sad And therefore I'm with you when I think the tree should mostly get a happiness bonus. I still think it should also get a bit more.



Yes I did understand how you could get that much policies. I wonder however how much of an opportunity cost to pass plowshare and religious community that is. On the other hand I guess that with Jesuit Education or the GP for faith reformation you may come almost even. Would be interesting to test this one a bit more myself.
For honor, 50% exp and caste are the good policies, they don't need fixing. The problem of the tree relies more in it's lack of real bonuses to go at war (no help for conquered cities) and that it's a very melee centric tree in a very range centric game.

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Cromagnus said:

The Liberty finisher policies are actually great IMHO. Planting an academy on t75, or rushing Machu Picchu, etc... or a Great Prophet... the reduced culture cost/city is exactly where it needs to be. With Liberty, you don't need the aqueducts or bonus growth. Were it not for the science penalty, a wide empire can generate just as much science as a tall empire without growing big cities. Were it not for the happiness issues, you could afford to plant more cities. Production is not an issue, gold is not an issue, culture is not an issue. The issue is entirely happiness and science. On Deity, the problem is that you have to conquer to go wide, but I don't consider that a problem. Liberty *rules* at conquest currently. The problem is with peaceful play on Prince+.

The problem with both Honor and Piety is mostly that they're both very weak in the early game. There is zero cultural bounds expansion in either Honor or Piety except for the third policy in Honor, which is a horrible policy, demanding that you keep units (the few you can afford to maintain) in your cities instead of on offense. It's a turtle policy, *much better suited to Tradition*. That lack of cultural expansion is extremely problematic. The culture from barb kills is fine, but it should boost cultural expansion from the nearest cities. The more specific problem with Honor is all the bonuses to melee units, because melee units have been heavily nerfed by the city defense bonus, and melee units become irrelevant in the Renaissance. Domination is all about production, and ranged units, until artillery. So Honor should boost production for ALL military units, and provide bonuses to ALL military units in combat. Until then, the production bonuses of Liberty make it more suited to warfare. (The free settler counts as a MASSIVE production bonus, because you get a second city producing units)

And finally, as you said, once you conquer a city, you've got serious problems. The unhappiness penalty for puppet cities and annexed cities should be reduced for Honor, or the revolt time should be reduced, or SOMETHING. But frankly, the AI is so terrible at combat that you have to be careful about overshooting. If you make Honor equal in power to other trees, because Domination is so much easier due to bad AI, Honor would become the most effective policy by default.

Both Piety and Honor are semi-decent *once you finish the tree*. Cheap barracks, cheap upgrades and gold/kill rescue the economy for Honor. Piety gets gold from temples, and the extra faith gets you religious buildings that help, and reformation beliefs are generally very nice.

Piety would be almost entirely fixed by changing the opener. The problem now is simple: No happiness or culture until you get religious buildings. Which is a minimum of 400 faith in. By then you've *finished* the other trees. Liberty has afforded you +1culture/city for like 50 turns, Tradition has afforded you +3 and increased cultural expansion, etc., and loads of happiness.

Piety also has the dilemma of: What exactly is it designed to do??

Tradition is for tall, fine, Liberty is for wide, fine, Honor is for domination, ok. Piety is for... ?

The problem is made worse by reformation beliefs. You can go after virtually any VC, there are bonuses to going wide in Piety, bonuses to tourism, etc.

So, Piety suffers from the problem that it helps *every* VC a little, but none very much. (Sacred Sites notwithstanding)

Jesuit Education isn't reliable, but given that the game is so science-based, if you *don't get it*, Piety is a bad choice. JE is the only thing that saves Piety, since science is at the core of every peaceful victory. Even with JE, it's a terrible tree compared to the others.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Piety doesn't ensure you get a religion on higher difficulties. It should. If a second-tier policy guaranteed you a pantheon, you could get one soon enough to have a *chance* at a religion. And ensure you score a good pantheon as well, assuming the AI didn't all open Piety. ;-)

But, I think Liberty gets way too much negative focus. It's an amazingly effective policy tree on every difficulty level, except when it comes to science. It's bad at tall, and wide science is nerfed. And science is everything unless you're playing domination or exploiting sacred sites.

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Gamewizard said:

I agree with you 100%, which is why Ninakoru's balance mod is what I prefer, because it boosts honor and piety (maybe honor too much, but it is fun none-the-less).

The changes to liberty that this thread's OP has done is a little overboard IMO. Why would anyone ever choose honor or piety with how strong liberty is now?

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