Policies

Website: civmodding.wordpress.com

Information about policy changes in Vanilla Enhanced is located on the menus at the top of the website. This thread is for overall discussion about policies in the game.

I didnt tested it yet because im in a long game and dont want to mess anything as long as i start another. But is there a chance to mod policies to add a bonus for completing one? (filling all tree elements). Not everything i need from given policy, so maybe if there would be bonus lets say 10% more of everything you got from this policy tree if you have it filled could give people more options to choose.

The easiest way to do so is simply make all sub-trees link to a final "tree completed" bonus, and have the final bonus cost 0 culture.

I'm just focusing on the simpler task of numeric balance tweaks here and there for now. Someone more dedicated to social policies in particular will certainly explore that avenue in the days ahead.

Your changes do not seem balanced to me. Just my opinion. I like some of the small tweaks but baby steps, baby steps.

Doubling values is usually drastic. For ex, I doubled the yields of the great person buildings and the AI went from building none to having 3 academies at a city.

IMO, Merchant Marine is fine - 3 prod is the equivalent of a free mined hill which is pretty big production out of salt water. The only way I'd bump it is if it fell out of balance due to tile yield or improvement yield bumps - but then we're talking big picture balance and this is why I don't like to see drastic alterations. One SP might look weak to one person, strong to another, and in the big picture could be balanced considering the whole.

Zhahz said:

Doubling values is usually drastic.

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Mentioned this in the other thread, this approach is quite common in game development:

http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=119

True about Merchant Navy already being rather good, this is simply to make that side of the policy tree a little more valuable, as the policy right before it is underwhelming.

If you feel you like the game the way it is, can simply leave it that way. Modding is here for those who like fiddling with things until it "feels right".

I agree with all of your changes.

Some of these are so obviously bad, I can't believe that anyone will pick United-Front. Gee, get one policy closer to the AMAZING +5 production every city, or get United Front? hmmm

I don't agree that the +3 prod every sea-coast city needs to be boosted. All the production boosting policies are already some of the VERY BEST, and 3 is a good number considering the era (it goes 1-3-5). Given that commerce is for seafaring nations, its likely that all your cities are coastal already.

However, I remember there to be lots of useless stuff in Traition, not just the one you mentioned.

Mandate of Heaven - I agree, this is bad, I have every single happiness resource on the map, with an amazing +18 happiness, and I get only 9 culture a turn. The liberty line one should be worse, but at 1 culture/city, you'd probably do better in most cases.

I would keep the +3 production in coastal cities. I was so happy to get the bonus, and saw my empire flourish. Also getting an immediate +3 encourages you to push out even more coastal cities, maybe in other continents or islands. The feeling of getting a boost instantly, because you've specifically built your empire to be all coastal, is better than getting crappier tiles to be mediocre.

ashmizen said:

Mandate of Heaven - I agree, this is bad, I have every single happiness resource on the map, with an amazing +18 happiness, and I get only 9 culture a turn.

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I think this is the wrong way to look at it. If you're getting Piety you'll want the full tree. And MoH is a requirement for the doozy at the end which gives 2 free policies. So you WILL get MoH - it's not bad enough that you don't. Now the question is, do you ever get it before the other Piety policies on the other side? Yes. Depending on timing, you may want to get it before the golden age happy cost one - namely if you are, using that extra culture, going to be able to get the next policy before your next GA triggers.

If the Piety tree in general is too weak, strengthening MoH would counteract that. But I am not convinced that's the case.

The tricky thing about the tradition tree is one city challenges. Anything that's done to make it valuable for normal games would make it overpowered for OCC.

The question about Mandate of Heaven (and all of these really) is would you take it if you didn't have to? Most of the items in each tree are valuable in their own right. There's something to be said for the argument it basically is designed to make the two free policy item more expensive due to the latter's extreme value for cultural wins. That said, if it makes players feel they're forced to get a policy they don't want or need just to progress towards victory, that can decrease the fun factor. This seems to be the reason many have cited on the strategy forum.

Arksa said:

I would keep the +3 production in coastal cities. I was so happy to get the bonus, and saw my empire flourish. Also getting an immediate +3 encourages you to push out even more coastal cities, maybe in other continents or islands. The feeling of getting a boost instantly, because you've specifically built your empire to be all coastal, is better than getting crappier tiles to be mediocre.

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Alright, that's a reasonable argument.

I finished doing all the tooltips, the mod is now available.

I just want to say that I love every single one of your Balance mods. They truly do seem balanced, and I can't think of a reason to play without them.

Thalassicus said:

• Tradition
  Landed Elite: +50% growth rate in capital (up from +33%). Still only particularly useful for one-city challenges.
  .
• Liberty
  Collective rule: Newly founded cities start at size 2 (up from 1.5)
  Citizenship: +33% worker rate (up from +25%)

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• 
  Collective Rule now mandatory.
  

  .
  [*]Piety
  Mandate of Heaven: Culture to spend on policies increased by 100% of excess each turn (up from 50%)

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  Happiness buildings can now double as cultural buildings. SERIOUSLY OP!
  

  .
  [*]Commerce
  Trade Unions: paid on roads and railroads reduced by 30% (up from 20%)

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  OP.
  

  .
  [*]Rationalism
  Humanism: +2 happiness per university (up from +1)

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  OP.
  

  Free Thought: Fixed the default game's tooltip. It's always given just 1 from trading posts.
  .
  [*]Freedom
  Universal Suffrage: +50% city combat strength (up from +33%)

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  Let's hope the city is out in the open for even tech parity fights. Way to anti-offense.
  

  .
  [*]Order
  United Front: +50% city state influence degradation for enemies (up from +33%)
  .

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I agree with the baby steps idea. It's one thing to think some policies lose to others. It's completely different to now make them the clear winners.

Reasoning instead of simple assertions would be more valuable feedback.

I do find myself agreeing with one of the rare reasons Rashiminos provided. It is too powerful to be able to use all your happiness buildings as equivalently good culture buildings for the whole rest of the game.

However, that's not how Mandate of Heaven works. It does not convert all happiness from all buildings into culture, only excess happiness. For example, you might have:

30 from resources
5 from natural wonders
25 from buildings
8 from difficulty level

10 from number of cities
50 from population

In a situation like this, if you consider buildings "on top" of all other bonuses, only 32% of the they provide is being converted into culture. In the default game it would be 16%. If your civilization is unhappy, the social policy has no effect at all and is wasted space.

Here's another way to look at it. Even if your civ has 30 excess in the Industrial era (shortly after Theaters become available), the default Mandate of Heaven will provide you with less culture than a single cultural CS ally. If you're playing Siam, the policy is even weaker: it would take 60 excess just to equal the culture you get from 1 city-state.

Here's my take on what you did and what yet needs fixing.

Tradition
The default Tradition bonus of +1 food in capital needs to be doubled.
Monarchy (tile buy bonus) could be expanded to provide a culture spread bonus as well, much like the Angkor Wat does (about 50% reduced culture cost of new tiles). Having very few cities and buying tiles will break your bank in no time, regardless of how cheap it is.

Liberty
What you've done with Collective Rule is most awesome, and it allows a brand new city to start pumping out a Settler in the first few turns that it would have practically no growth either way, until the Workers get to it and improve some tiles. Meritocracy, Republic and Representation are all fine, and make Liberty a good choice for a fast-expansion empire.

Honour
Military Caste is pretty useless/expensive for what it gives. I'd think about changing it, but we still have basically no idea how unit maintenance works. I was thinking of making a garrisoned unit free of upkeep, or have a significant discount. Otherwise, the tree is great and needs no work.

Piety
Wouldn't touch anything in it now. And the Mandate of Heaven might be a bit too much in certain situations (a huge India or Egypt would pump out so much happiness and culture policies it's not even funny). Increasing the effectiveness of happy buildings by so much is potentially gamebreaking, since they are already tightly controlled by their huge (and I mean extremely effing big) upkeep. And finally, the whole tree and the end reward are so very solid, I wouldn't try buffing any one part of it.

Patronage
Would not touch this tree at all. If anything, it is currently overpowered. Good thing you have a CS Balance mod as well.

Autocracy
I'd redo Total War to provide a permanent 10% land unit production and strength bonus. I don't like the temporary buff of the current one.

Order
Order works very fine, and it's all worth it for the +5 production for every city in the end. Your change kind of helps against the CS cheese that is so prevalent right now.

Freedom
Small civs focused on culture are extremely vulnerable, especially since the lopsided AI is more keen on chomping up little pups than grouping up against big dogs. The bonus to Universal Suffrage is great, but nothing else should be changed with it.

Rationalism
Don't change Free Thought to 2 science, it will devalue a whole lot of stuff in the game, and will make the Great Scientist Academy once again useless. I'd also reduce the Humanism +2 happy bonus back to +1. Happiness is something that we're supposed to be keeping a very keen eye on. Sure, currently the penalties of negative happiness are meaningless, but that's what patches and mods are for.

Commerce
Increase the Protectionism bonus to count multiples of a single luxury resource, if possible. I do believe the boost to Trade Unions would become HUGE in an empire with a large number of cities, so I'd probably rething the buffing of it.

Again, just my two .

Thalassicus said:

However, that's not how Mandate of Heaven works. It does not convert all happiness from all buildings into culture, only excess happiness. For example, you might have:

30 from resources
5 from natural wonders
25 from buildings
8 from difficulty level

10 from number of cities
50 from population

In a situation like this, if you consider buildings "on top" of all other bonuses, only 32% of the they provide is being converted into culture. In the default game it would be 16%. If your civilization is unhappy, the social policy has no effect at all and is wasted space.

Here's another way to look at it. Even if your civ has 30 excess in the Industrial era (shortly after Theaters become available), the default Mandate of Heaven will provide you with less culture than a single cultural CS ally. If you're playing Siam, the policy is even weaker: it would take 60 excess just to equal the culture you get from 1 city-state.

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In the short run, adding a colosseum for excess happiness would now be 4 happy and 4 culture with your change, assuming we already have a surplus in a cultural strategy. If we're conquering, this policy is not a high priority, nor do we need it to tech (rationalism is much better), or be diplomatic. The basic reason for choosing this policy is cultural victory, and you would be making that goal easier (the player would both build and have CS allies, naturally). Do you think cultural victory is currently too hard?

The Boz said:

Honour
Military Caste is pretty useless/expensive for what it gives. I'd think about changing it, but we still have basically no idea how unit maintenance works. I was thinking of making a garrisoned unit free of upkeep, or have a significant discount. Otherwise, the tree is great and needs no work.

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Reducing unhappiness by 1 per garrisoned city is pretty powerful actually, as that's one of the bigger slowdowns for conquest. If someone is down in the Honor tree, they had warmongering on their mind. Pillage gold pays for troop maintenance.

Autocracy
I'd redo Total War to provide a permanent 10% land unit production and strength bonus. I don't like the temporary buff of the current one.

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There already are several buffs to number and quality of military units in honor and autocracy. Total War is the policy where France surrenders to a German blitzkrieg.

Freedom
Small civs focused on culture are extremely vulnerable, especially since the lopsided AI is more keen on chomping up little pups than grouping up against big dogs. The bonus to Universal Suffrage is great, but nothing else should be changed with it.

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Players shouldn't be haphazardly rewarded for all but neglecting defense of their treasured artifacts.

Commerce
Increase the Protectionism bonus to count multiples of a single luxury resource, if possible. I do believe the boost to Trade Unions would become HUGE in an empire with a large number of cities, so I'd probably rething the buffing of it.

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Because a 20% boost to resource happiness is just not big enough.

@The_Boz
I do agree the Tradition bonus is rather small, yet since France (or anyone who pops a culture ruins) can get it very early, it can have a significant effect on early capital growth. It also is on the path to increasing wonder production speed, something that's considered vital for many game openers. The Liberty bonus is often considered equally weak, since settlers are often better purchased than built.

Honor is something I'm leaving alone, as mentioned before - Honor and Patronage are already considered two of the most powerful trees, and nearly must-haves depending on the victory you're going for.

I left Free Thought alone. I simply fixed the tooltip to display the actual game effect, which is 1.

@Rashiminos
From what I've seen the change to Mandate of Heaven only adds about 1-2% to overall culture when pursuing that victory type, still much less than what city-states or other sources provide. If it does in fact make the Piety tree dramatically better than the others as you say, I'll remove it, though consensus on the strategy forums seems to indicate Piety is a weaker tree than others like Patronage.

Whoever has played a lot of cultural victory games, in your experience, what is your opinion on this subject?

Regarding Universal Suffrage, are you saying the policy should simply be removed? Something to consider about a social policy focused on cities is they deal weak damage, cannot move, gain experience, promote, create great generals, be upgraded, etc. It could be considered actually hurting you to take this policy over one that can improve your empire in other ways that can provide superior forces in the field, even with the change. At the very least, it has no value until the combat AI is improved to a basic level of competence.

Thalassicus said:

From what I've seen the change to Mandate of Heaven only adds about 1-2% to overall culture when pursuing that victory type, still much less than what city-states or other sources provide. If it does in fact make the Piety tree dramatically better than the others as you say, I'll remove it, though consensus on the strategy forums seems to indicate Piety is a weaker tree than others like Patronage.

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With a dedicated cultural victory strategy, you could pump up your excess happiness to ~100 without much problems, it seems. My latest game with 3 cities, two puppets had me actually at ~20% culture from happyness before the late game 100% culture boosters kicked in (without your mod)

I think that Mandate of Heaven is designed to get at least some use out of excess happyness for culturemongers, not to be a viable culture source in itself. A slight increase (60-75% ?) might be in order, though..

After-victory screenshot attached

The only problem I have really with Mandate of Heaven as it is now is that it seriously devalues cultural buildings - Temples produce less culture with it on than Colosseum's do. Does that seem particularly Pious?