10 Fixes Needed for the Fall Patch

Jatta Pake said:

These are the ten fixes needed for the Fall Patch. Period.

10. Piety Opener Should Provide Culture - Tradition, Liberty, and Honor openers all provide culture. Piety opener should also provide culture making it a more useful tree to open early in the game.

9. Improve Denmark - The Denmark unique unit "Ski Infantry" is useless, stupid, and a complete waste. It should be replaced with a "Viking Longboat" melee naval unit that has a bonus vs. cities and a bonus with amount of gold generated from attacking a city. Coastal cities should be terrified of Viking invasions.

8. Lower City Attack Strength When No Melee Units Are Garrisoned - Cities should be easier to conquer if they have no defenders or have only ranged defenders. This will increase early warfare and buff the Honor policy.

7. Add New Luxuries and New Bonuses - Civs should be encouraged to settle far flung colonies for new luxuries and bonuses. Where are Tea, Coffee, Apples, Mangos, Rice, and Corn? More luxuries and bonuses will buff Wide players.

6. Make AI Calculate 1 to 1 Luxury Trades for "We Love The King Day" Bonuses - I have Pearl but I need Silk for a WLTKD. Alex has Silk but needs Pearl for a WLTKD. Even trade is clearly reasonable if we are Friendly with each other.

5. Lake Victoria Is Not A Mountain - Seriously. C'mon. This is just ...

4. Ending Unit Turn On Top of Enemy Caravan Should Auto Plunder - I shouldn't be required to station a unit one hex in front of the caravan or land on a caravan with an extra movement point to plunder the trade route. If the trade route auto plunders when a caravan runs into a unit, it should auto plunder if I end a unit's turn on top of an enemy caravan.

3. Archeological Digs Shouldn't Destroy Great Person Improvements - Wonderful. My Academy was unknowingly built on an ancient artifact. Now I have to keep an Archeologist perma placed on top of my Academy or the AI will destroy it.

2. Add More World Congress Abilities - We need more interesting choices with the World Congress. How about forcing the liberation of a City State or dead civ city? How about banning a certain unit type? How about buffs to trade routes, unit abilities, or buildings?

1. Improve Diplomats and Improve Spies - Diplomats should boost trade offers beyond World Congress voting. You should be able to trade tech, buy defensive agreements, and trade resource bonuses. Also, the AI should understand how to use Diplomats to buy World Congress votes. All foreign diplomat locations should be visible to the player. Spies should be able to assassinate Diplomats, conduct attacks on cities, and give bonuses to military units attacking the city.

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10) No, you want culture and faith? sorry...

9) meh

8) No. its just fine as it is, you just want it to be easier to take a city with not enough units. Maybe buf cats so they don't get pulped instead.

7) No, no, no. Its bad enough trying to get WLTKD's going as it is. Adding more lux's just means that you will get stuck with needed a lux that no AI has bothered to settle. Just manage your happiness better and everything will be fine.

6) I like this

5) I was getting +4 food from farms settled around LV with CS, it does seem to be fresh water, do not remember getting the option to build an observatory

4) Yep

3) No. Why are you giving open borders that late in the game? Ya it sucks to not be able to improve it yourself, but its your won fault for letting the AI steal it.

2) WC and DV is a piece of worthless broken crap. It needs to be revamped...

1) The AI tries to buy votes from me often enough. Not sure what else here.

The thing that needs fixed the most is pledge/consulates. This is utterly broken and should be number 2 to fix with DV being number 1

fyar said:

No offense, but that last sentence is all kinds of wrong. The only culture in Piety is in the finisher's +3 for holy sites, of which I rarely have more than one. I think what you mean is that you can get lots of culture from your religion, which is true. I'm playing a game where I get boatloads of culture from 7 wine plantations, Goddess of Festivals, and Monasteries. But I'm getting all that culture without Piety! Had I adopted Piety instead of Liberty, I doubt I would've gotten as much culture from my religion (never mind the +1 per city from Liberty's opening) because other civs might've expanded to that wine before I could.

I could only come up with a few cases in which Piety would indirectly net you more than Liberty (let alone Tradition):
1. The +1 for Shrines/Temples makes the difference in you getting the pantheon / religious belief that you want.
2. Free Religion allows you to adopt someone else's pantheon that gives you culture.
3. The modest gains in from Organized Religion and Mandate of Heaven make the difference in you being to spread your religion to your own cities or being overwhelmed by someone else's religion.
4. My favorite Reformation belief, To the Glory of God.

The last of those is a late game bonus, and doesn't address the poor early-game culture in Piety. The other three are just not that likely to happen. If I want a religion, I aim for a faith-producing pantheon like Goddess of the Festivals or Desert Folklore, instead of taking Piety and thereby sacrificing culture/growth (Tradition) or culture/expansion (Liberty).

So yes, I think Piety needs another buff. I do believe it's stronger now, with the very nice Reformation beliefs and without the absolutely ridiculous incompatibility with Rationalism. But Piety used to be THE culture tree. It should give more culture than +3 in the finisher.

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Yes, I understand that you can get a religion without piety. Taking Piety over Tradition just means that you will likely get the religion earlier. Thus, you get your high-powered culture beliefs earlier, and start outproducing Tradition in terms of culture with that.

So I think culture production from beliefs should be included when discussing Piety's contribution to your culture. Getting earlier pantheon, religion, and enhancements means you'll most likely be producing the culture from your religion earlier, than if you opened Tradition.

10. Agreed. Piety Opener should do something to help with culture. I think it should give +1 culture for each shrine instead of reducing the cost of building them.

9. Somewhat agree. Denmark should be improved. But, don't forget that the Ski Infantry gets improved movement in any tile with a hill. Also, coastal cities already *are* scared of Viking invasions. If Denmark is across a narrow sea, you are in for some trouble. And, with anyone but Denmark, when you have to invade another continent, your cannons/artillery are basically useless until you have a beachhead city. You need Frigates all of a sudden. Not so with Denmark. You can invade with cannons *instead of* Frigates.

8. Meh. Not sure this is a hot issue. Not even sure I agree.

7. See 8.

6. Not sure I understand. Friendly AI already give 1:1 trades. I *would* say that if an AI only has 1 of a resource, he shouldn't demand nearly so much for a luxury trade. Example: Alex has 1 Silk and you have 2 Pearls. Instead of asking for pearls, gold AND silver like he now does, he should just ask for pearls + 8g/turn or something. He doesn't *lose* happiness in the deal. 8g/turn would be face value for the resource, which he would normally accept. THIS should be fixed.

5. Agree. And ALL Mountain wonders should properly be considered mountains for all purposes.

4. I'm pretty sure I've seen this happen already.

3. Yeah, especially annoying with OCC.

2. I wouldn't mind seeing more choices, not sure it's a hot topic.

1. Semi-agree. I think there should be a third option, like Diplomat, that improves Civ's base opinion of you by some small amount. Or that speeds up the rate at which negative diplo is reduced. You wouldn't be able to spy on their builds or get any other benefits, but the ability to influence someone's opinion of you like this would really add something to the game IMHO.

Jatta Pake said:

These are the ten fixes needed for the Fall Patch. Period.

10. Piety Opener Should Provide Culture - Tradition, Liberty, and Honor openers all provide culture. Piety opener should also provide culture making it a more useful tree to open early in the game.

9. Improve Denmark - The Denmark unique unit "Ski Infantry" is useless, stupid, and a complete waste. It should be replaced with a "Viking Longboat" melee naval unit that has a bonus vs. cities and a bonus with amount of gold generated from attacking a city. Coastal cities should be terrified of Viking invasions.

8. Lower City Attack Strength When No Melee Units Are Garrisoned - Cities should be easier to conquer if they have no defenders or have only ranged defenders. This will increase early warfare and buff the Honor policy.

7. Add New Luxuries and New Bonuses - Civs should be encouraged to settle far flung colonies for new luxuries and bonuses. Where are Tea, Coffee, Apples, Mangos, Rice, and Corn? More luxuries and bonuses will buff Wide players.

6. Make AI Calculate 1 to 1 Luxury Trades for "We Love The King Day" Bonuses - I have Pearl but I need Silk for a WLTKD. Alex has Silk but needs Pearl for a WLTKD. Even trade is clearly reasonable if we are Friendly with each other.

5. Lake Victoria Is Not A Mountain - Seriously. C'mon. This is just ...

4. Ending Unit Turn On Top of Enemy Caravan Should Auto Plunder - I shouldn't be required to station a unit one hex in front of the caravan or land on a caravan with an extra movement point to plunder the trade route. If the trade route auto plunders when a caravan runs into a unit, it should auto plunder if I end a unit's turn on top of an enemy caravan.

3. Archeological Digs Shouldn't Destroy Great Person Improvements - Wonderful. My Academy was unknowingly built on an ancient artifact. Now I have to keep an Archeologist perma placed on top of my Academy or the AI will destroy it.

2. Add More World Congress Abilities - We need more interesting choices with the World Congress. How about forcing the liberation of a City State or dead civ city? How about banning a certain unit type? How about buffs to trade routes, unit abilities, or buildings?

1. Improve Diplomats and Improve Spies - Diplomats should boost trade offers beyond World Congress voting. You should be able to trade tech, buy defensive agreements, and trade resource bonuses. Also, the AI should understand how to use Diplomats to buy World Congress votes. All foreign diplomat locations should be visible to the player. Spies should be able to assassinate Diplomats, conduct attacks on cities, and give bonuses to military units attacking the city.

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10. agree

9. agree

8. That sounds a bit complicated - why not just have garrisoned melee that can fortify grant the city additional defensive strength?

7. Nice to have, but not 'needed'.

6. agree

5. agree

4. agree

3. disagree. This reflects reality

2. Nice to have, but not 'needed'.

1. Nice to have, but not 'needed'.

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What is needed most is the following:
1. Balance social policy trees (esp. the first 4)
2. Make diplomacy victory more interactive and challenging
3. Balance and redo civs. A lot of (old) civs are very boring.

Not sure if it was mentioned or not, or if it already happens (I haven't noticed it, to be honest), but to have the option for World's Fair and International Games to occur more than just once in the game. I don't know if it can be done as it is done in the real world, every 4 years, but perhaps to have it available as an option when it comes to deciding the next World Congress resolutions.

BroOfTheSun said:

Yes, I understand that you can get a religion without piety. Taking Piety over Tradition just means that you will likely get the religion earlier. Thus, you get your high-powered culture beliefs earlier, and start outproducing Tradition in terms of culture with that.

So I think culture production from beliefs should be included when discussing Piety's contribution to your culture. Getting earlier pantheon, religion, and enhancements means you'll most likely be producing the culture from your religion earlier, than if you opened Tradition.

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If you get your religion earlier by a few turns, the culture you would gain in the intermediate turns is a pittance compared to what you can get from Tradition. The only way it makes a significant difference is if someone would've stolen your pantheon / religious belief / the last religion during those turns in between, which is just not that likely. I'm usually willing to risk that and if it happens just adopt someone else's religion, which will come with its own benefits anyway.

Let's say that Piety helped you get your religion 10 turns earlier, say turn 50 instead of turn 60. Is 10 turns of increased culture (turns 50-60) better than Tradition increasing your culture right away (or say from turn 10) and for the whole game? If you opened Piety, those turns 10-50 when you're not getting any additional culture make it hard to even get through the tree.

The thing with piety is that you can get a religion anyways if you go for it, even it is much weaker without it anyways, so the benefits are near the same without piety, I am agree: it was a culture tree after all, +1 culture from religion builgings should do the trick. The ones saying is fine because you can combine it with tradition... please, it's an ancient era you should be able to go fot it to the end then move to more advances policy trees.

My greatest concern with the game is there are much better options near always, like taking tradition, going for consulates, rationalism to secularism, going GS instead of any other GP (GE have a distant second place), waiting for ideologies to make any war, not planting merchants and ingeneers 95% of the time, the huge difficulty difference between diplomatic and domination victories, etc.

I would balance the thing a bit, so you have actually many options and many different best options on different games and different victory goals.

fyar said:

If you get your religion earlier by a few turns, the culture you would gain in the intermediate turns is a pittance compared to what you can get from Tradition. The only way it makes a significant difference is if someone would've stolen your pantheon / religious belief / the last religion during those turns in between, which is just not that likely. I'm usually willing to risk that and if it happens just adopt someone else's religion, which will come with its own benefits anyway.

Let's say that Piety helped you get your religion 10 turns earlier, say turn 50 instead of turn 60. Is 10 turns of increased culture (turns 50-60) better than Tradition increasing your culture right away (or say from turn 10) and for the whole game? If you opened Piety, those turns 10-50 when you're not getting any additional culture make it hard to even get through the tree.

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Well, 10 turn difference is pretty random. If you want to use numbers for an example, you have to show some math. The +1 faith per shines/temples policy almost doubles your faith output. Assuming all you do is build shines/temples (no natural wonders or stonehenge), taking Piety means you'll get a religion much faster with Piety (I think more than 10 turns faster).

I know there's a lot of scenarios you can look at to discuss this, so let's just pick a simple one for this discussion. Assuming 3 cities, each with a shrine (no natural wonders, stonehenge). Faith producing pantheon helps you get a religion faster, no matter if you take Tradition or Piety:
Tradition: +3 FPT (faith per turn), reaches 200 faith in 66.66667 turns
Piety: +6 FPT, reaches 200 faith in 33.3333 turns.

Without taking into account other factors such as increased faith production from pantheons, faith ruin, faith cs ally, etc. Piety helps you get to a religion at least 33-34 turns faster with this simple example. Let's look at another example that should speed up getting a religion for both Tradition and Piety:

Assuming you find a faith producing pantheon (let's say stone circles), let's add +4 faith per turn to each side:
Tradition: +3 FPT (shrines) + 4 FPT (pantheon), 200 faith in 28.57 turns
Piety: +6 FPT (shrines) + 4 FPT (pantheon), 200 faith in 20 turns

So Piety gets you there about 8 turns faster. Those 8 turns don't seem that great anymore, but this is dependent on having a faith producing pantheon. In this case, it might be more beneficial to go Tradition, depending on what beliefs you want to take and if you want to get your choice before other civs pick up their religion. So in this case, Tradition looks like the better option for the early culture.

We can take the same example above, and do the same comparison with choosing a simple culture producing pantheon such as +1 culture to shrines. Now you're getting the same amount of culture from the 3 cities as taking Tradition opener, plus getting a religion faster based on the +1 faith to shrines/temples policy alone. Obviously, going wider will also provided more culture as well as other benefits. There are a lot more examples we can look at (such as grabbing a good pantheon that adds both culture and faith).

Yes, you can take culture pantheon and Tradition, but it's also very likely you won't get a religion this way. Also, you will be grabbing a religion much later than taking culture pantheon and Piety. So there's some trade-offs here.

In conclusion, I think it's obvious with getting a religion that your map is important in deciding if you want to go Piety/Tradition. There are cases where Piety can outproduce culture from the Tradition opener, although in most cases the culture will come a couple of turns later with Piety. Piety closer also gives you a free great prophet, which you can plant for +3 culture. So I think from writing this, what I'm going to take away is Tradition is better for early culture. Take Tradition for a static +3 culture early. Take Piety if you want more culture in the long run. Religion, in general, is map dependent.

Light Cleric said:

I've always found Consulates to be an incredibly badly designed policy. It's especially egregious with Siam's UA. Game just gets stupid and it's generally why I avoid that policy.

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They should switch the +20 relations from consulates with Papal Primacy's +15. For a social policy +15 is good enough, and for a founding bonus +20 is actually worth considering. Still terrible compared to the others, but not worthless.

10. Piety Opener Should Provide Culture: The problem here is that your Religion - starting with your pantheon - can start mass producing culture pretty easily. A Sacred Path religion is pretty easy to get off the ground with a couple of Shrines. Piety produces culture if you choose to build your religion to produce culture. I'm not sure this needs a fix, though I wouldn't oppose a small tweak, I guess.

ShunNakamura said:

The problem is getting that religion to your city.

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Trade route. You only need one believer in most instances. Just trade route into the secondary religion you want the pantheon belief for. It's really not that hard.

9. Improve Denmark: Denmark is fine. And in no way does it have the problems Germany has. Heck, most people would say Japan needs fixing long before Denmark. This is not a "must."

8. Lower City Attack Strength When No Melee Units Are Garrisoned: If by this you mean that garrison Ranged Units shouldn't increase the attack strength, then that might be a neat idea to test. But melee units, typically with a stronger strength than ranged units, already tend to increase city strength more.

7. Add New Luxuries and New Bonuses: I agree with this. The new happiness reality makes going wide hurt too bad, and as a result most maps don't get settled much. Certainly not by the player. Adding in some new luxuries will balance things out and encourage folks to settle more if they want by alleviating the happiness penalties.

Peng Qi said:

Uh, when have you ever had difficulty getting a 1 to 1 trade out of a friendly AI?

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When the AI is clinging to its singleton of Pearls and it really needs my Dyes for "We Love the King Day" and Citystate quests. Also, when the AI refuses to improve its other five Pearls for trade.

6. Make AI Calculate 1 to 1 Luxury Trades for "We Love The King Day" Bonuses: The AI's trade calculations need a total rework. As it is, there's way too many examples of the AI being irrational at best and utterly psychotic at worst when it comes to trading. Since spare luxuries do absolutely no good, the AI should value spare luxuries less. It should also be improving all its spare luxuries for trade (something I often see the AI not do now). And I agree that if the AI has a large need for a specific luxury, it should be willing to trade a singleton for it.

5. Lake Victoria Is Not A Mountain: Yeah, the coding on Natural Wonders needs work.

4. Ending Unit Turn On Top of Enemy Caravan Should Auto Plunder: Does this really not happen?

3. Archeological Digs Shouldn't Destroy Great Person Improvements: Don't give Open Borders to an AI that will do that to you.

2. Add More World Congress Abilities: I agree that more (and more interesting) options in the World Congress would be a plus. I'm very much opposed to a hard liberation of a former capital (domination is annoying enough now as it is), but a hard liberation of a city state (or a penalty if you don't) is an interesting idea. Especially if it works on Austria and Venice.

1. Improve Diplomats and Improve Spies: Diplomats can be given some extra abilities through Religions, Social Policies and Ideologies, but generally I'm with you. Spies should definitely get a "seek and assassinate" option. Has anyone ever had the AI use a diplomat on you? Also, it is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS that both parties need Diplomats in place in order to exchange a vote on one proposal for a vote on another (or to sell your vote to someone who's going to need it but hasn't put a diplomat into your capital).

Catalytic made some interesting additions...

11. Separate the counters for GM, GS, and GEs: I disagree with this. I think the current track is fine. It forces the player to make a choice that has consequences down the line. I think that's a good thing.

12. Fix the AI retreating calculations: Yeah, the combat AI is buggy again. I agree that water retreats are rarely a good strategy, but the AI does it all the time.

13. Warmonger penalty seriously needs adjustment: THIS. Thisthisthisthisthis. The AI needs to be more nuanced in its warmonger calculation. If the Zulu attack me for the fourth freaking time, any rational player will start to take and/or burn down the cities. The AI needs to have some contextual calculation. If someone is attacking you, you should be able to retaliate with some leniency. We've long asked for a casus belli mechanism in AI calculations, and IT REALLY NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Also, it feels like the warmonger penalty never dies down or doesn't die down fast enough. If I wiped out a player in the ancient era, the AI should be well beyond caring by the industrial era.

14. Would like to see auto-paths be more resilient: I'd like to see player controlled pathing. Go here, then here, then here. That way my Great General doesn't decide to march right into a city state that will kill him or my workers don't decide "war" means "open borders with the friendly Zulu!"

15. Support caps on flying units in any one city. I can support this.

16. Strategic Resource bias for dependent civs. YES. If you are Japan, on a continent with no Iron, you are screwed. And I've had that happen way more often post BNW. I shouldn't have to Legendary Start to make sure there is Iron nearby SOMEWHERE, even if it's not right on top of my capital.

wigwam added...

17. Zero-interest loans. Absolutely right on. The trading calculations are totally borked. I would add that under the current system we should also absolutely be able to trade GDP even if our GDP is negative, so long as there's some funds there to cover it. Nations BORROW to cover their spending when they have wealth or credit-worthiness to pay it off. Players can negotiate this in multiplayer, it's nonsensical that the AI can't. Add to the fact that somehow when an AI goes down to 2GDP per turn, they can bilk me on the rest of the 6GDP per turn they promised when I sold them those Pearls...

18. Pledging to protect city-states. "Shockingly bad design." Can't put it better. There are ZERO consequences to Pledge to Protect and just spamming the "You'll pay for this in time" button and doing nothing else. I'll pledge to protect every citystate I meet. Who cares? This mechanic is in sore need of an overhaul.

19. Worker-stealing. I think the part about declaring war directly on a City-State lowering your resting point is a good idea. I would also suggest that capturing a civilian unit should grant a fair diplomatic penalty.

Jatta Pake said:

Tradition is overpowered because Tall cities are overpowered.

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Tradition is overpowered because going wide in the early game isn't a viable strategy. The unhappiness just hurts too much and there's nothing in Liberty that counteracts that early. Also Tradition gets you rolling with big early game bonuses, which are all-important because they snowball you to where you want to be.

Whats the problem with Consulates/Pledge? It works for you the same way as it works for the AI. You take 2 policies for a good bonus, that will be useful in 1/2 of the game max - i seriously do not see any problem with this. If they nerf the combo, the whole tree will be kinda useless (like exploration).

As it is, why is noone proposing removing (or nerfing) Salt? Or weakening Poland's abilities? Weakening Zulu? Nerfing Rationalism, and especially Humanism??


Seriously ... Its good as it is, no need to change. There are enough bugs that need to be fixed and need more attention.

An issue with Piety is that it provides the ability to build stuff in 1/2 time but those buildings cost money and can bankrupt you. That's a big part of why the free culture buildings in Tradition are so good. Yeah, it saves you a few turns because they are free, but it's also +1 gold per turn per city, which in BNW is a lot of money. With Piety, if you so much as build 1 shrine and 1 temple in a city you're already at -3 gold per turn. The +10% gold per temple policy isn't terrible but you don't make enough money that early in the game to offset the temple's cost.

If I were going to change Piety I would consider adding to it:
- 1 Free Temple in the capital (not in the opener, maybe a Tier 1 ability)
- 1 Free early Spy/Diplomat (replacing the awful "get bonus of second most popular pantheon" which runs completely counter to the interests of a Piety player who should be trying to eliminate other religions)
- Libraries provide +1 Faith. You're going to build Libraries anyway so making them grant Faith is a good early bonus.
- Alternative to Library bonus above: World Wonders provide +3 Faith


The secondary issue facing Piety is that Faith generation from Desert tiles (and possibly Tundra tiles) with that Pantheon belief is undeniably overpowered. That Pantheon belief alone in a reasonably sized city can easily outperform four cities running Temples and Shrines. Faith generation from natural wonders is similarly ridiculous and more or less random. If the point of Piety is to give you a strong chance to win a religious race, it should be a reliable indicator of who will perform well. Instead, the religious race is almost entirely determined by whether you randomly start in a desert or next to a wonder.

By the way, RE: new World Congress edicts, a ban on religious indoctrination that prevents creating missionaries of a particular religion would enhance the game greatly.

Rationalism has already experienced a pretty serious nerf.

As for consuls, they should nerf pledging instead of consuls.

In terms of the early 4 social policies I'd want no changes done to Tradition, minor boosts to Liberty, major boosts to Honor, and moderate boosts to Piety.

Liberty could use a tiny gold and happiness boost associated with going wide I think. Right now Liberty feels like it's slightly behind Tradition with all the recent nerfs to going Wide. Maybe just changing Meritocracy to a flat +2 Happiness and +2 Gold per city connection could do it.

Honor needs to allow someone to wage an Ancient / Classical war without being bankrupted. It also needs a serious logic overhaul. Some Free Unit Maintenance solves the bankruptcy and I wouldn't even mind some Barracks boost somewhere in there that grants gold. Discipline should affect both Melee and Gunpowder so it lasts and the garrison requirement bonuses should be simply changed to requiring a Barracks in a city to fit better with the offensive nature of the policy path. It still is a tree that is iffy though, since the only "growth" benefits associated with it assume you are successful with war, but that's something I don't think can be fixed. We can however allow someone to wage a war without being bankrupt and unhappy in this era. Heck I would even argue that the Finisher should auto promote everyone with Cover but I'm not entirely sure on that one as it's a bit much.

Piety I think is an awful choice as an opener currently. I've seen some comments in here about it not needing bonuses to Culture because they get Faith instead, but frankly you can do religious games without Piety fairly effectively because the growth benefits of Liberty or Tradition severely outweigh the Faith bonuses you get in Piety. Pick a Culture Pantheon over a Faith Pantheon and you can lose out in some Faith races. Honestly I think the opener should change it so you get your first 4 religious buildings free just like with Legalism for culture. I do think some culture and growth bonuses should be in here as well, but as to where it'd go I'm not fully sure about although Religious Tolerance is pretty terrible. The growth bonuses should be nothing near what Tradition or Liberty would offer though, since you can utilize some Religious stuff for growth and Piety would allow you to access them a little earlier and more reliably. Right now however if you go Piety alone it doesn't matter what you pick you are going to be behind someone that picks Liberty or Tradition.

In terms of the early 4 social policies I'd want no changes done to Tradition, minor boosts to Liberty, major boosts to Honor, and moderate boosts to Piety.

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In my opinion tradition is too powerful to be the standard: policies shouldn't be so important to the game itself. While tradition is pretty well timed with the policy distribution and the time its effects come into play, but there are too many bonuses and quite overpowered some of them.

After all, with tradition you get culture, happiness, gold and growth: what is left? production? with free buildings you need less produciotn to be even with liberty, and more growth is after all more production indirectly. Military might? more gold meands being able to field and army, quantity to match quality and problem solved.

Every person who play on Immortal and Deity knows not going tradition will make things much more complicated, even near impossible in Deity (liberty still performs well, I must say). Still I have to see a LP with honor start in Deity in BNW.

Liberty should be the gold standard to follow, so I would de-buff the must options: consulates with 15 instead of 20 points would be good enough and the tree could be optional again. Bonuses for free from all CS is too much. Also rationalism is such a huge science boost: only from opener and secularism you will boost your BPT by 40%, that is ridiculous. And being science the most important factor in the game this should be revised for less impacting science bonuses.

Well, the reason I would want a boost to Liberty rather then a nerf to Tradition is because the negative gold per turn I get by going Liberty in contrast to Tradition. I'm sure I could slow my expansion down and beeline Markets a little harder, but as it stands it feels Liberty just can't even do what is advertised at the speed I think it should be capable of. Maybe it's more of an issue of my play, but if I slow down my Liberty expansion so that I'm always happy and stay steadier on the gold then I feel like I'm expanding as fast as my Tradition opening would anyway. The whole point of Liberty to me is the faster expansion for better choices in territory, and it feels like it can't quite do that without running a severely negative gpt.

The way Consulates works out does need to be changed though, I agree. I'd rather it just be something later in Patronage though, maybe even the Finisher.

Ayestes said:

Well, the reason I would want a boost to Liberty rather then a nerf to Tradition is because the negative gold per turn I get by going Liberty in contrast to Tradition. I'm sure I could slow my expansion down and beeline Markets a little harder, but as it stands it feels Liberty just can't even do what is advertised at the speed I think it should be capable of. Maybe it's more of an issue of my play, but if I slow down my Liberty expansion so that I'm always happy and stay steadier on the gold then I feel like I'm expanding as fast as my Tradition opening would anyway. The whole point of Liberty to me is the faster expansion for better choices in territory, and it feels like it can't quite do that without running a severely negative gpt.

The way Consulates works out does need to be changed though, I agree. I'd rather it just be something later in Patronage though, maybe even the Finisher.

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Beelining markets is a must when going liberty, there's no other way to really make up for the lack of gold from maintenance. You can try and cover up the lack of science with a free academy from the Liberty finisher. I think Liberty is more of the late game tree. You expand more early, claim more land, and settle some cities. it sucks at the start, but once those cities are up and running, you'll start to regain ground. Wide has more potential for just about anything than going Tall. Tall just get's you there sooner. Wide, higher potential. Tall, get's to it's peak faster.

isau said:

An issue with Piety is that it provides the ability to build stuff in 1/2 time but those buildings cost money and can bankrupt you. That's a big part of why the free culture buildings in Tradition are so good. Yeah, it saves you a few turns because they are free, but it's also +1 gold per turn per city, which in BNW is a lot of money. With Piety, if you so much as build 1 shrine and 1 temple in a city you're already at -3 gold per turn. The +10% gold per temple policy isn't terrible but you don't make enough money that early in the game to offset the temple's cost.
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Scratch that, this policy is terrible. For this policy to pay for the maintenance cost of a temple your city would need 20 base (percentage modifiers have no effect on trade route income besides the "more city gold production = trade route is more profitable" thing). You would have to work 10 post-economics trading posts to get 20 gold.

Sure, it also gives +3 per Holy Site which is worthless considering you will usually only have one or two Holy Sites. Frankly, I consider this policy to be worse than Merchant Confederacy in Patronage. At least the gold from Merchant Confederacy gets doubled for sea trade routes.

BroOfTheSun said:

Well, 10 turn difference is pretty random. If you want to use numbers for an example, you have to show some math. The +1 faith per shines/temples policy almost doubles your faith output. Assuming all you do is build shines/temples (no natural wonders or stonehenge), taking Piety means you'll get a religion much faster with Piety (I think more than 10 turns faster).

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I actually started to do the math (almost the very same calculations that you did) but I didn't bother posting them for the sake of brevity. I wound up just saying 10 turns from a calculation similar your second one. I also did one similar to your first calculation but concluded that I don't bother with a religion if I don't have the faith base from something else besides shrines/temples because I won't have the faith to make the most out of it anyway. But even if you want to take 30 turns of extra culture as the baseline, I still contend that +3 culture over the course of hundreds of turns (in particular the first 50 when +3 culture makes the biggest difference) will WAY outshine even 30 turns from piety.

Here's the math since you asked for it:
Let's say Tradition might've gotten a religion on turn 100, and those first 100 turns are the only turns we care about (even though Tradition's +3 will continue for all 300 turns of the game).
Tradition -- +3 culture over 100 turns = 300 culture, +2 culture from 4 free monuments that would've otherwise taken 10 turns to build = 2*4*10 = 80 culture (also 160 free hammers that could be spent elsewhere), total = 380 culture
Piety -- (let's say you get Sacred Path and work 6 jungle tiles during those 30 turns) +6 culture over 30 turns = 180 culture... if it's only a 10 turn difference, +6 culture over 10 turns = 60 culture << 380 culture
More importantly, Tradition's +3 culture came during those crucial early turns where +3 is a HUGE percentage of your cultural output otherwise.

BroOfTheSun said:

Yes, you can take culture pantheon and Tradition, but it's also very likely you won't get a religion this way. Also, you will be grabbing a religion much later than taking culture pantheon and Piety. So there's some trade-offs here.

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Going by your second calculation, I don't think 10 turns usually changes the likelihood of getting a religion all THAT much, nor does the accrued culture over those turns come close to matching Tradition's overall output.