How to make small empires capable of withstanding large ones...

...and favor peaceful development

The idea is inspired by "How to reward small empires", "Science system" and some other threads.
What it is based on is an intensive way of development, in contrary to extensive growth, and on social policy mechanism of civ5. There are two base principles:
1. science come from specialists for most
2. specialist-boosting policies are hardly available for big empires.

so, for the first plank:
- science from common population lowered: 0,5 per population
- per population bonus for library removed.
- city generates additional +1 per each specialist.
so, 1 scientist specialist generates a base value of 4 that is equal to output of 8 citizens. later in the game scientists as well as other specialists got boosted even further by policies, much of which will be hardly available for big empires. read details below.


I. Civics and policies, core mechanics
lets call policy trees "civics". how the new civic system will work?
- civic adoption is free.
- swiching civics launches dark age (if you adopt a new civic but do not swich to it from some old one, there is no dark age). *dark age is an opposite to the golden age, it hurts and output.
- each policy has its cost (like a technology do)
- policy cost is being risen exponentially with number of cities (see zipped xls file demonstrating this in attachment)
- costs also rise with number of adopted policies, but not that dramatically as now (linear relation there should be)
- three cost groups: cheap, average, high. for big empires, average-priced policies will be very hard to get, highly-priced - impossible (with great philosopher only, see below).
- interface: notification appears when there's enough culture to buy some new policy.

II. Great Philosophers. These are great people that could give a couple of expencive policies (like communism) to big empires.
great philosopher gives free social policy
can create (what?) improvement
great philosopher points can be acquired from:
judge specialist (1 slot in courthouse, +2 )
priest specialist (1 slot in temple, +1 , +1 )
great philosopher points generating wonders: porcelain tower, parthenon.

III. new/changed policies. Policies should be changed for expencive policies to boost specialists.

*** OWNERSHIP



adoption: +2 per great people's improvements (academy, landmark etc)
consumerism: 15% gold from . cost: cheap
corporations: +1% rushbuy discount per citizen. cost: average
antimonopoly: -25% buildings maintenance expences in cities with courthouse*. reqs: corporations. cost: average
capitalist lobby: merchants +2 . cost: average
patent law: scientists and engineers +2 , +1 . reqs: capitalist lobby. cost: high
copyright: 15% from output, artists +2 . reqs: patent law. cost: high

*courthouse should be available to buid in any city, giving 1 judhe slot and something like lowering rebellion probability.

*** TRADITION
mythology: +1 per specialist. cost: average
aristocracy: +1 per military unit. cost: high

*** LIBERTY
meritocracy: +2 per scientist. cost: high
oligarchy : +2 per merchant. cost: average
justice: ?

what we have for big empires? there are cheap policies and such civics as Autocracy, Piety and Order, providing "per city" bonuses and the new Power civic for early-game expansive military empires:

*** POWER



adoption: gives a military uint
segregation: non-specialist citizens eat 25% less food. cost: cheap.
forced labor: can capture slaves*, less production penalty for unhappiness, reqs segregation. cost: cheap
tyranny: final (after happiness is deducted) reduced by 50%, cost: cheap
expropriation: player gets 5*era*population gold and a short dark age, reqs tyranny, cost: cheap
leader worship : +2 per monument, reqs tyranny, cost: average

*slave is a unit like worker that can work and also hurry production in cities a little and can be settled as well.

IV. mutually exclusive civics:
power - ownership
power - freedom
power - piety
order - commerce
order - ownership

V. particular policies disabled by certain civics:
tyranny - liberty
humanism - power
justice - power, autocracy

also if a small and developed state goes to conquest and tracks on much of new land, it should lose expensive policies previously acquired. mechanism is not thought out well so far.

Love the pictures. Cosgrove from freakazoid and a guy poking someone in the eye with a stick (to applause it seems?)

Stuff: Making specialists have higher science actually buffs large empires. Since a size 6 city can usually hold 2 scientists with maritimes or civil service, and a size 12 city usually has 3 scientists. I would suggest if you want to do this to reverse the specialists for library and university. That is, library = 1 scientist, university = 2. Perhaps adding a High cost SP that gives +1 specialist slots (the effective "no brainer" SP for smaller empires. Put in tradition? Or more interestingly, specialist slots also take into account city size... e.g. library gives one slot for every 8 size rounded up).

As for your second post, I'm thinking each policy has a city limit. Going above the city limit cause it's effects to be nullified, and this limit goes up with... era? techs? *shrug*. Higher policies tend to have a lower limit. You could get back under the limit through selling cities in a pinch.

Slowpoke said:

Stuff: Making specialists have higher science actually buffs large empires.

Click to expand...

how?
large military empire tends to have lack of infrastructure as well as smaller cities. and as time goes by small empire gets some great bonuses to specs.

good idea of additional slots. may be tied to tradition.

Slowpoke said:

As for your second post, I'm thinking each policy has a city limit. Going above the city limit cause it's effects to be nullified, and this limit goes up with... era? techs? *shrug*. Higher policies tend to have a lower limit. You could get back under the limit through selling cities in a pinch.

Click to expand...

what about culture upkeep? so for an each policy a certain amout of culture*NumCities is deducted from player's culture output. if there is not enough culture to maintain policies, they get disabled one by one.

Slowpoke said:

guy poking someone in the eye with a stick (to applause it seems?)

Click to expand...

it's assyrian bas-relief. king executes captives

killmeplease said:

how?
large military empire tends to have lack of infrastructure as well as smaller cities. and as time goes by small empire gets some great bonuses to specs.

Click to expand...

I'm referring more to ICS than conquering (although when puppets used to run specialists, it would've applied there too). ICS allows for about 3-4 small buildings, typically a colosseum, library, and monastery. Universities are beyond them for a long time.

Also, that is one awful way to be executed o.o

Edit: not that I'd like to be executed in any way of course :/

Slowpoke said:

I'm referring more to ICS than conquering (although when puppets used to run specialists, it would've applied there too). ICS allows for about 3-4 small buildings, typically a colosseum, library, and monastery. Universities are beyond them for a long time.

Click to expand...

hmm i havent considered that. maybe change library to give 1 slot per 8(?) population. and rise maintenance to 3-4.

Slowpoke said:

Also, that is one awful way to be executed o.o

Edit: not that I'd like to be executed in any way of course :/

Click to expand...

thats not the worst one from assyrian reperoire

Firstly, I have to say that I definitely like the idea of using an exponential penalty.

The alteration I would suggest to this idea is making the 'cost' a 'penalty' instead. So instead of having exponentially increasing costs to adopt social policies, you'd have exponentially increasing penalties for running those social policies. IIRC, social policies currently do not have penalties (not sure if this is correct, I think I saw it in General Discussions). Introducing penalties and then making them exponentially greater for empires with a large number of cities would maybe be a better way of doing things, because it doesn't just inhibit adoption, but inhibits the entire usage of the policy.

Camikaze said:

The alteration I would suggest to this idea is making the 'cost' a 'penalty' instead. So instead of having exponentially increasing costs to adopt social policies, you'd have exponentially increasing penalties for running those social policies.

Click to expand...

it may lead to strange effect of big empire having a bunch of policies but not be able to run them. i think both penalties has to be brought in: for buying and for maintaining. i have implied this but forget to write.

Camikaze said:

IIRC, social policies currently do not have penalties (not sure if this is correct, I think I saw it in General Discussions). Introducing penalties and then making them exponentially greater for empires with a large number of cities would maybe be a better way of doing things, because it doesn't just inhibit adoption, but inhibits the entire usage of the policy.

Click to expand...

usage is free now and all policy costs are equal. cost depends only on number of cities and policies already adopted: next policy cost = baseCost*F(numCities, numPolicies). F is exponential. Pretty lame gamedesign imo, as big empires practically can not use lategame policies such as Order and Autocracy that would fit them.
What i propose is to change policy cost value to F(numCities,policyCost), and introduce policy maintenance M=Summ(H(policyMaintenance, numCities)), where H is also exponential. So big empires still could buy and use many cheap policies, and maybe a few of average-priced. plus 1-2 high-priced, accquired by great philosophers.

So your idea is more to allow larger empires to use more social policies than to prevent them from doing so. I had thought that the opposite was the case...

I very much agree on the way you'd make science beakers collected,
I myself had the same changes in my head yesterday

the other stuff also seems to be interesting...

Camikaze said:

So your idea is more to allow larger empires to use more social policies than to prevent them from doing so. I had thought that the opposite was the case...

Click to expand...

its weird that big military empire can not use autocracy. so the new civic system will allow it to do it. but hold it away from science/gold boosting policies.

the main idea though is to make small empires more powerful in science [and gold].

Ah, I see. Why not just apply exponential penalties to the science related policies then, and hold back on the others?

Camikaze said:

Ah, I see. Why not just apply exponential penalties to the science related policies then, and hold back on the others?

Click to expand...

with current system this will not work anyways, as small empire can get all those science policies and then to go conquering. and big empire can get almost no policies.
i just want to combine the new policy system with improving small empires (and also hampering ICS). so one game mechanics change (two with adding building's specialist slots number be dependent on population size) and a few of xml tweaks will kill all those rabbits.