(2-NS) Give policy opener for free on turn 15

[alchx]

Now all (or almost all) players build Monuments with the first building, because. the sooner the empire opens policies, the more development acceleration it will receive through free bonuses. I personally don't see the point in starting with the first Shrine building on Deity/ I mean. in practice, there is no choice - the Monument will be the best solution. Why not make life easier for everyone? The price of subsequent policies will remain the same - 70, 105 culture, and so on.

If a player plans to play through Authority, then he must build the first monument, .to. otherwise, he will fall behind opponents so much that he will not be able to catch up.

With these changes, players will be able to initially produce Scout + Warrior, 2 Warriors, Shrine + Warrior, and other variations.

Without side bonuses from the ruins and speeding up the construction of the monument, we will get the first policy on turn 19.

 

[AndreyK]

I don't like it for free. If take to extreme, then get 2,3,4 and more policies for free, it will be easier.

 

[CppMaster]

I always thought that both monument and shrine are OP. +2 culture and faster border growth and +2 faith respectively for a very little cost in production. Maybe it should be +1 culture and +1 faith? Then building a monument would be less of an obvious choice.

 

[rkkn]

I always thought that both monument and shrine are OP. +2 culture and faster border growth and +2 faith respectively for a very little cost in production. Maybe it should be +1 culture and +1 faith? Then building a monument would be less of an obvious choice.

that would be a major change to the pace of the game. and a relative major advantage to civs with early unique faith or culture.
especially for faith. remember that the shrine is typically the ONLY source of faith early on, so cutting it from 2 to 1 delays the pantheon by 25 (!) turns

I don't think it's a problem that these buildings are must-build

and I definitely don't think policy opener should be free. and getting it at some arbitrary turn threshold just seems weird

one thing that you could maybe do instead if you really want to lessen the importance of rushing monument and/or shrine is give palace 1 extra culture / 1 extra faith, and then nerf monument / shrine to +1 yield. but that would still shift things a great deal

 

[CppMaster]

But if they are must-build then it's not a meaningful choice. I pretty much always build those 2 buildings first in my cities. And yeah, if it'd be changed then other things would need to be balanced too, so it may not worth the hastle.

 

[CrazyG]

I always thought that both monument and shrine are OP. +2 culture and faster border growth and +2 faith respectively for a very little cost in production. Maybe it should be +1 culture and +1 faith? Then building a monument would be less of an obvious choice.

The goal of the monument going to 2 culture instead of just 1 (which was a change from years ago) was to make other culture sources less dominating. The idea was if the basic level of culture was higher, things like a culture pantheon would be (relatively) weaker. eg: a pantheon with 2 culture per city currently doubles your per city culture, but before it would have tripled it.

Overall I like this direction but it makes things very snowbally. For a while monuments, shrines, and councils did have maintenance which helped make building them ASAP less dominating, but people found it made certain starts very difficult due to lack of gold.

 

[Voremonger]

If it's desirable to reduce the dominance of building monument first I think the culture from palace should be increased instead. As it is the early policies are a major source of culture but you essentially need to build a monument first to get access to that source. Without a monument you have to wait 50 turns for your first policy which is just terrible. If palace gave you e.g. 2 culture you would automatically get your first policy after 25 turns. You would still be able to accelerate this with a monument but strategies like building units first would be significantly better.

 

[Stalker0]

I feel like this creates more problems than it solves. Messing with the culture rate is a recipe for disaster imo.

 

[Circe]

I do shrine first unless I'm playing a civ with a faith bonus. Progress gives back culture for techs already researched in the gap, and Tradition's bonus pop will go to higher food cost citizens(presumably). The worst thing it does is probably making some early wonders harder to grab.
Authority is the only one that really doesn't want to wait.

 

[Recursive]

Proposal failed due to lack of sponsorship.