New policy system

So in the last patch, policies finally got some loving. I'd like to propose a rich and more natural system however. Either in an expansion or mod. There's two thing I'd like to see:

First of all, the policy branches feel unnatural to me due to the fact that some policies exclude others and some don't. It's assymmetric. I would propose a system where every policy excludes the one right below or above it.

So
Tradition excludes Order, Liberty excludes Autocracy, Honor excludes Freedom, Piety excludes Rationalism and Patronage excludes Commercialization.

The upside of this is that it feels more logical and natural. However a downside is, when going for a culture win, your choices will be more limited near the end. However, this change would correspond very nicely with my second part of this thread.


It seems the devs decided to make sticking to a branch worthwhile by outting the better policies at the bottom. I'd like to see that instead of doing this you get a bonus not just for adopting a policy, but also for completing it. In fact, this should be a somewhat game-changing bonus. Thereby aiding the idea of focussing on a certain strategy, and also creating diversity for the ingame civs during the game.

For example, and these are just examples:

Upon completing tradition: the workable area of your capital increases by one hex in every direction
Arguments: This makes your capital a true powerhouse, a potential supersupercity even, but has no effect on other cities. It wouldn't be overpowered since it would take a long time to take all the territory and grow a city large enough to work it.

Upon completing liberty: Gain 1 (or 2) extra workable tile per city for free.
Arguments: This really helps small cities and large empires, suiting a a large empire strategy.

Upon completing patronage: Completing CS quests decreases the influencedegredation by 50% (or 33%). Thus fulfilling 2 quests means it degrades at 25%, fulfilling a third turns it into 12.5%. Obviously, you'll want to focus on fulfilling as many quests as possible and gaining many CS allies with minimal upkeep. Also makes the Order policy more usefull as a counterstrategy to this.


I'm really curious how others see my ideas. If I had any modding skills I'd probably try to create something like this. However it seems very hard to code. Feel free to comment, criticize or add your own Policy Branch ideas.

I do not like your suggestion of more policies excluding each other. To me that feels limmiting.

However I really like your idea of getting a bonus for completing a policy.
Your suggestions seem too powerfull, but I like the basic idea.

Rex_Mundi said:

I do not like your suggestion of more policies excluding each other. To me that feels limmiting.

However I really like your idea of getting a bonus for completing a policy.
Your suggestions seem too powerfull, but I like the basic idea.

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Personally I feel making it powerfull and gamechanging is making it more fun. I do think several policies would really need to change though, since some of the lower ones are already very strong.

I really like the idea of balancing Policies by making them more exlusive - decision making is good.

I really dislike the asymetry as is now (discrimination of Authocracy is evident, for example). I even think, that in first builds, the upper policies exluded the ones below them a vice versa (it completely gives sense), but someone decided to change that at the end of developement (and devs had no time to balance that).

I completely agree with your suggestion.

I had the same idea a few weeks ago, then I forgot it...
But I'm completely for this.

I don't think that trees should exclude each other just to enforce social policy excluding.
For example, there is no reason why Tradition and Order would Exclude each other.

aatami said:

I don't think that trees should exclude each other just to enforce social policy excluding.
For example, there is no reason why Tradition and Order would Exclude each other.

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Yes, freedom and tradition should be switched.

aatami said:

I don't think that trees should exclude each other just to enforce social policy excluding.
For example, there is no reason why Tradition and Order would Exclude each other.

Click to expand...

Arguements?


I think it makes sense. If we view Order as the socialism/communism branch, which it is. Communism was revolutionary and anti-tradition (strongly anti-religion for example).

Then again, it could indeed be switched. It's more the general idea that I'm interested in.

Order and Autochracy are different things. Please let's not get into a political debait here.

I liked CivIV civics, sure we needed more of them, but it fit with a wide open adapt to random elements playstyle, whereas in V, I feel like the victory type is determined by the civ from the beginning and I'm coerced to choose my social policies accordingly. I do like the idea of culture as a currency of sorts.

What I like about this proposal-
*The idea of mutually exclusive branches being organized vertically.
*The idea of a bonus for completing a social policy, whether the bonus is another policy-related benefit, or a simply free social policy in another branch.

in my opinion the conflict between science and Religion doesn't belong.
the policies are OK as is, though.

the asymmetry bothers me too, but from a gameplay perspective I wouldn't want things to be more limited. I like the system in place as it is.

BUT... if you were to have "mirrored" exlcuding policies, this makes more sense to me:

>Tradition excludes Liberty
>Freedom excludes Autocracy
>Piety excludes Rationalism
>Honor excludes Commerce (business is unethical? the connection is kind of tenuous here...)
>Patronage excludes Order (this one doesn't make much sense either, but a Communist state would be somewhat unlikely to make mutually beneficial deals with its neighbors, right? I'm thinking of the USSR and China here, and their tendency to swallow up/conquer neighbors rather than allying)

I do like the idea of more exclusion based decision making, and moving around the branches to oppose the one above/below is a good way of representing that in the interface. I also like the idea of a "branch complete" bonus, which is some cases (free religion anyone?) could be an existing policy and a less powerful policy worked into the tree...

I'd break it up this way -
Tradition vs. Liberty
Freedom vs. Autocracy
Order vs. Commerce (Communism vs. Capitalism)
Piety vs. Rationalism
Patronage vs. Honor

Personally I'd opt for keeping the branches in the place they are now. When looking at realism there is several options for re-arranging them that are viable. I don't think that the current distribution is unrealistic in any way though.

However, the current way is very good gameplaywise. There is a very nice flow to it and it all seems to make sense. I wouldn't like tradition or liberty to come later in the game for example.


Now, I've been giving it some thought, and figured out more branch bonusses.

Tradition
Workable area of capital grows with one hex

Liberty
One free workable tile per city

Honor
Walls give cities +50% damage on range attack
Castles will damage all enemy units adjacent to the city with 1 hp
Military base will increase range of city attack with one hex
(change should be made so these buildings don't require prerequisites)
If this is too weak or situational, walls and castles could also get 1 or 2 respectively.

Piety
Happiness, or unhappines, increased by 33%.
This will give you alot of extra golden ages, but could also backfire if you go into negative happiness

Patronage
Completing CS quests decreases influence degradiation with that CS by 33%

Order
Recieve 1 and per city for every city in the empire.
So ten cities= ten food and hammers per city.
Powerfull, I know, but you won't complete this branch untill the near end of the game.

Autocracy
When a military unit is killed you recieve 50% of the purchase cost of that unit. When you kill an enemy unit you recieve 2 happiness for 1/2/4 turns (depending on gamespeed)
Again, powerfull, but comes only in the end.

Freedom
Specialists have double yields (ie, Engineer goes from 2 to 4 hammers, GP points stay the same). GP improvements double the basic yields of tiles. (academy on a river hill goes from 2 1 and 6 to 4 2 and 6

Rationalism
Recieve a 1% increase of science per turn.
If you have 1000 science when completing the branch, it will be 1010 one turn later. Then 1020.1 after two turns. Etcetera. This will speed up your research untill the end of the tree.

Commercialization
Any ideas for this one?
Best I could think of was this:
Golden ages provide 1 additional on tiles with at least 1 and also 1 on tiles with at least one

But that, combined with piety, could be veeery strong. Especially when playing Persia.

MdREV said:

Order vs. Commerce (Communism vs. Capitalism)

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That would be good (and realistic), without offending anyone.

The only problem with each tree forbidding another tree is, that there basically would just be two paths to follow, to speak, only two policy trees.

aatami said:

That would be good (and realistic), without offending anyone.

The only problem with each tree forbidding another tree is, that there basically would just be two paths to follow, to speak, only two policy trees.

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Not exactly true. There is still a large amount of combinations possible. And by giving each a strategicly different effect players will be inclined to very different combinations depending on the map, civ, starting location and mostly; strategy.

Yes, there would be a large amount of combinations possible, but most of them wouldn't be very logical to take.

I kind of like the idea in the OP for a bonus at the end of a tree. That makes sense. I'm not sure if it should be game changing, though, or just like getting a bonus policy.

I'm more sceptical about more exclusions, though. I get that the asymmetry isn't all that nice, and yeah, it'd be good if it wasn't asymmetrical in such a way, but I don't really think it makes sense for other social policy trees to exclude each other. Why should Tradition exclude Order? Those two would seem to go nicely hand in hand. And Patronage excluding Commerce? Again, that doesn't really make all that much sense.

aatami said:

Yes, there would be a large amount of combinations possible, but most of them wouldn't be very logical to take.

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Can you explain why not?

Camikaze said:

I kind of like the idea in the OP for a bonus at the end of a tree. That makes sense. I'm not sure if it should be game changing, though, or just like getting a bonus policy.

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I think it should be game-changing to make it more than just another policy. Because then it's just another policy.

I'm more sceptical about more exclusions, though. I get that the asymmetry isn't all that nice, and yeah, it'd be good if it wasn't asymmetrical in such a way, but I don't really think it makes sense for other social policy trees to exclude each other. Why should Tradition exclude Order? Those two would seem to go nicely hand in hand. And Patronage excluding Commerce? Again, that doesn't really make all that much sense.

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You're right. It doesn't always make sense always. But the assymetry bugs me like hell

I don't see how tradition and order go hand in hand. One is focussed on the capital and the other on a large empire.

Patronage and Commerce could be overpowered together. One will decrease the amount of money you lose on befriending CS, especially after fulfilling several quests. The other is foccused on gaining you alot of extra money. Together it's just too much.

Unless you're talking about realism. In which case it's a different discussion...

I'm perfectly fine with the asymmetry as it is now. Symmetry is nice for the harmonic appearance of architecture but not necessary in CiV.

Regarding the bonuses for finishing trees:
I think, if they are really game changing (what would be OK for me), they should not come automatically when finishing a tree. You have to do this by all means if heading for Cultural Victory. Even more, there is the effect for choosing the last slot itself.

What, if there would be one *extra* slot in every tree, that can only be chosen if *all other* slots are filled?
This extra slot will give all the "game changing" bonuses you want - but is *NOT* needed for cultural victory?

With this solution, there is an interesting trade-off again: Take the last Über-Slot and delay Cultural Victory conditions or go strait forward to achieve the desired victory?