Tradition/Liberty/Honor: Rankings from the greater population

The main forum has also been ranking the policies, so it seems wise to link it in for our use:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=505406

Interesting results. I wish there were more people that responded instead of just 18 votes. Biggest thing that stands out at first, Liberty is only .2 behind Tradition.

The Honor results are really off from my own impression. This could be from AI passivity in BNW though, or people just ignoring the tree altogether for the other two (plus piety). I would agree with a general consensus that it seems to need the most help of the early four though.

They have a part deux up now. Unsurprisingly ethics is getting smashed in aesthetics (future policy cost reducer is boring), and merchant confederacy (+1 gold with CS trade) in patronage is universally viewed as useless. Tolerance isn't doing so well either in piety.

Unsurprisingly ethics is getting smashed in aesthetics (future policy cost reducer is boring), and merchant confederacy (+1 gold with CS trade) in patronage is universally viewed as useless. Tolerance isn't doing so well either in piety.

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Yup, all of those are pretty terrible.

I strongly believe that merchant confederacy should give 1 or 2 influence per turn from CS trade, and that tolerance should be axed.

I wonder if ethics could be some kind of culture bonus (so helping with policies) that would then get turned into a tourism bonus with hotels and airports?
It's probably not a good idea for gameplay, but another way of making ethics interesting/flavorful could be if it also had some penalties; inability to raze cities, less gold from pillaging, etc.

Doesn't influence-from-CS-trade create a snowball effect? Civs good at it (because they took Patronage) get more influence? Shouldn't the City State minigame be competitive for all civs. Patronage should benefit more from city states, but not necessarily make it easier to get them (a slight effect like the minimum influence and so on yes, but not too much).

We should open up Policy Tree threads for the other mid-game trees as well.

Doesn't influence-from-CS-trade create a snowball effect?

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I don't think so, it just encourages you to use trade routes with city states rather than with other civs. Keep in mind that trade routes with city states will typically give you slightly lower gold income (they aren't as well developed as big major civ cities), and will require you to give up the tourism bonus and the diplomatic bonus and science income from trade route connection with civs.

It shouldn't be more than 1-2 influence per turn.

shouldn't the City State minigame be competitive for all civs. Patronage should benefit more from city states, but not necessarily make it easier to get them

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I don't think so. Patronage has always made it easier and more cost-effective to get city state allies. Most of the policies (bigger influence gain from gifts, slower decline, resting state boost) have all been about this since the beginning of Civ5. And the "bigger bonus from CS allies" have always been pretty weak.

I think it's fine that it isn't cost-effective for every civ to be pursuing significant numbers of city states. Patronage basically makes it more likely that you'll want to dump your gold into CS quests than into buying buildings or units.

I think the biggest snow-ball effect from CSes are the quests; the biggest faith producer wins the faith production quests, which gives them more faith. The biggest culture producer wins the culture quests, which gives more culture, etc.

Also, while we're on CSes, it would be great to see some of the GEM effects back (lump sum food from Maritime scaled by era, spread across cities; Mil CSes that give experienced units depending on era, etc.]

I also think influence from trade routes with CS might create a snowball affect. You get free influence with the CS, and you can use the money from the trade route to further increase your influence. This can very easily keep any other civ from allying with a cs, while keeping your influence with the CS very high. The game could easily become every civ trading with CS's just to compete for them. However, I also like the influence from trade routes idea, as long as it isn't OP. Maybe even .5 influence per turn is ok.

You get free influence with the CS, and you can use the money from the trade route to further increase your influence.

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But.... you can use money from trade routes to increase influence anyway. The policy doesn't give you any more trade routes. And the trade routes to city states will almost always give you less gold than you would get from trading with another civ.
Remember that you're probably only going to have ~5 trade routes anyway, at 0.5 per turn per trade route you would be spending a policy and giving up ~10 gold per turn (assuming 2 gold less profitability from CSes) and all the other trade-route-with-civ benefits to gain 2.5 influence per turn. That hardly seems worth it.

Of course it should be more difficult to compete away city states from a patronage civ, just as it should be more difficult to keep up in science with a rationalism civ or keep up in tourism with an aesthetics civ.

But it's not snowballing when you only get a small per turn bonus, and when you can only influence 5-6 city states through the policy, and when you can't change the trade routes partway through.

By all means test it and change it if it is too powerful, but remember that there is a Freedom tenet which gives +4 influence per turn from trade routes with city states. I just think the effect works better in Patronage (where the existing effect is terrible) and at a lower level.

Ok, I see what you're saying. It would have to be a more competitive option from just trading with another civ, and using the gold gained from those routes to boost CS influence. Maybe setting it so that influence gained per turn > gold gained from trade route to another civ, that can be used on CS influence. Is there a gold value associated with a point of CS influence?

It would have to be a more competitive option from just trading with another civ, and using the gold gained from those routes to boost CS influence.

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Right, but it has to be *much* more valuable, because you're also spending a social policy slot (and a social policy might give you ~10-30 gold per turn) and giving up the other trade route benefits.

Is there a gold value associated with a point of CS influence?

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There are too many variables to make an exact comparison. For example, the amount of influence from gold gifts varies over the course of the game, and very often a city state gold gift isn't worth making. Also, influence over that which gets you an alliance gives no direct value, and only has indirect value by prolonging the alliance.
If very roughly we valued 1 influence at 6 gold, then with the assumptions I had above, 0.5 influence per trade route would mean 15 gold per turn gross, -10 gold from less trade route income for 5 gold per turn from a social policy (and assuming that all trade routes are with city states, and ignoring the tourism/diplomacy costs), which is a very weak social policy. 1 influence per trade route would be net 20 gold per turn from the policy, which is modest.

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Another thought: could an aesthetics policy (artistic genius, fine arts?) increase the tourism yield from great works? That might be a nice way of making aesthetics much more significant.

part three

Predictable results:
Wagon trains and navigation are getting bombed. Treasure Fleets also (bugged).
Exploration finisher needs some help. An archaeologist production bonus would be a nice touch.
Gold on naval buildings. Does seem weak. Could use gold on boats as well?
Sovereignty is hated (gold in the tech line?)

From part two results, it looks like we could consider boosting aesthetics surplus happiness to culture to .75 or even 1:1 rather than .5. It comes potentially much later than the effect when it was on the tradition opener in GEM.

Predictable results:
Wagon trains and navigation are getting bombed. Treasure Fleets also (bugged).
Exploration finisher needs some help. An archaeologist production bonus would be a nice touch.
Gold on naval buildings. Does seem weak. Could use gold on boats as well?
Sovereignty is hated (gold in the tech line?)

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Yeah. If treasure fleets worked, I'm not sure it would be a problem at +4 gold per route, especially if it boosted gold from naval trade routes to you as well as from you.

+1 movement for embarked units on Navigation school would help, +1 gold on fishing boats would help that policy. Wagon trains could boost up to +4 gold per route. Archaelogist production bonus seems nice.

I think there are a number of problems with Rationalism, sovereignty is messed up but the research agreement one is also fairly narrow and feels weak.

mystikx21 said:

From part two results, it looks like we could consider boosting aesthetics surplus happiness to culture to .75 or even 1:1 rather than .5. It comes potentially much later than the effect when it was on the tradition opener in GEM.

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I'm really worried that we're adding so much culture that a tourism victory is going to be impossible. There is much more culture available in CEP than there was in BNW, but tourism is basically the same.

I think there's also quite an imbalance between trees which give you happiness, and trees which don't. At the moment there are no happiness boosts in Piety, Aesthetics, and Rationalism.

I don't know if it is necessary to add it so much as there appeared to be a consensus that it was weaker than other policies at its current rate.

I'd be fine with adding some tourism effects in the aesthetics tree alongside somewhere or instead of adding additional culture effects.

Tourism does have a religious belief (wonders) that isn't in BNW vanilla by the way, I haven't found that AI culture is too hard to overcome when I have tried for culture wins. A policy pick lowering archaeologist costs, another raising tourism on great works and one raising culture on (some) culture buildings or great works would probably not skew the result much. Raising happiness to culture probably wouldn't do much until later in the game, when happiness from stadiums and ideological picks would start to kick in.

I'd like to see +1 tourism from great works in the aesthetics tree.

Should Culture and Tourism boosts be in the same tree? It probably works, I'm just asking.

I guess we need to have a clear idea where we want happiness, those are quite wanted after all and the overall balance should remain or be created...

The results seem fairly obvious and logical so far, fewer links does seem to be one answer that works in surprisingly many cases.

Lower Culture Costs for policies would work best together if there were more benefits that work on a "number-of-policies-adopted" basis (i.e. the Prora effect). Maybe that policy could be delinked and connected to this (Tourism per adopted policy?).

Should Culture and Tourism boosts be in the same tree? It probably works, I'm just asking.

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I think culture should be in aesthetics but mainly as a secondary effect, it should be mostly about tourism or forms of culture that support tourism.

Culture itself is pretty useless as an effect of social policies, because the main value of culture is to get more policies, so if all your policies do is let you pick other policies, then you may as well have just picked the other policies in the first place. A culture tree made some sense before BNW, where filling in trees was its own reward as part of attaining the culture victory, but with the move to tourism this isn't really so.

So I have some problems with fine arts, flourishing of the arts, and ethics, I think they need a total rethink.

In particular, I'd really like to see Aesthetics as heavily supporting great works accumulation, as opposed to tourism generation from archaeologists and wonders.

How about something like:
Opener: 25% faster great artists, musicians, writers. Unlocks Uffuzi.
Cultural centers: construct monuments, ampitheaters, opera houses, museums, broadcast towers 50% faster.
Artistic genius: Produces a free great artist. +1 culture from great works.
Ethics: ??? [+15% faster policies, and +1 tourism per policy] ???
Fine arts: 50% of excess happiness converted to culture, 25% of excess happiness converted to tourism.
Flourishing of the arts: +1 tourism from great works.
Finisher: doubles theming bonuses, allows faith purchase of great artists, musicians, writers.

Still not sure what ethics should do.

Another interesting possibility would be a +1 happiness bonus from great works. I wouldn't want too many bonus effects on great works, so that would need to be instead of the culture one.

Question: Does "Construct xy faster" also lower the price to buy buildings with gold? If no (and I'm pretty sure it is like that), these policies become even more wide focused and sometimes counterintuitive. I guess they are okay balanced, but sometimes, well a little bit annoying

I like the idea of your tree. I would like to see a non-culture/tourism related effect in there as well, no tree is completely focused on one thing after all. Not sure what though. Great Works will be absolute monsters with this tree which I think is okay. As you thus make one want to spend Great WAMs on Great Works, the tree should provide some help to get what their other abilities would provide. Tourism and Culture is accounted for, so I could see some policy that provides x Golden Age points per turn. And a happiness bonus seems fine somewhere as it's a rather wide tree after all.

EDIT: So what about a delinked Ethics "Get policies 15% faster, 1 Tourism per adopted Policy"?

mitsho said:

EDIT: So what about a delinked Ethics "Get policies 15% faster, 1 Tourism per adopted Policy"?

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I think any discussions about changing Ethics should also include the finisher because Ethics is the last policy (unless this is changed). So getting Ethics is like getting 10% cheaper policies + double theme bonus. It is like a bonus for getting to that finisher policy.

Although Ethics is considered weak, I don't think it should be changed that much. The other policies in Aesthetics are very useful. So having a somewhat weaker policy in Ethics somewhat balances the entire policy tree. Maybe just the 15% cheaper policies is fine (?)

I don't think any policies should be considered along with the value of the finisher (considering the value of later policies is fine if it is a pre-req). You should be able to get one of two policies per tree at least as the "last" rather than limited to only one option.

That looks so far like an interesting tree, especially for culture games.