[Vote] (5-56) Re-Proposal: Rework Order Ideology & Integrate Tourism Process

[pineappledan]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" if you'd be okay if this proposal was implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if this proposal wasn't implemented.

You can vote for both options, which is equivalent to saying "I'm fine either way", but adds to the required quorum of 25 votes in favor.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

VP Congress: Session 5, Proposal 56

This is a re-proposal of an already passed, but unimplemented proposal from Congress 2

Proposal History

Original Proposal here​

The proposal narrowly passed, with 45% vote​

The original sponsor did not implement the proposal, and asked to have the proposal put back up for voting in light of changes with overall Victory balance.​

When this change was originally submitted, Cultural Victory was more than 70% of all victories. That number has been reduced to 37% in the latest round of AI game tests.​

Because this proposal targets several end-game, victory-oriented tenets, and because a lot of other things have changed with Order and the game more broadly in the last 3 sessions, victory balance is a much-reduced reason for implementing this proposal.
Still, many of the problems cited in the original proposal persist, and so I think it is worth bringing back for another vote.

Current situation:
Order contains 3 tenets that are relevant to this proposal:

• Cultural Revolution: +34% Tourism to the other Order Civilizations. Spies steal technologies at double the normal rate. +5 from Great Works.
• Dictatorship of the Proletariat: +50% Tourism to civilizations with less Happiness.+1 happiness from Factories.
• Great Leap Forward: Gain 2 Free Technologies.

Problems:

Spoiler many problems :

• Although much less so than before, Cultural victory is still the strongest, fastest, and safest victory type, and Order continues to be the strongest and most-picked ideology. Slightly weakening Order's CV abilities will benefit balance in both respects
• Order has no T3 cultural tenet. It should have one.
  • Both of its CV tenets are T2, meaning it reaches its peak potency as early as 5 policies, earlier than other ideologies. This makes Order's CV very unorthodox from a timing and structure perspective
  • The two T2 CV tenets are packing enough power that Order is viable for a CV without a T3 tenet, which is a problem
  • All ideology trees except for order have a full array of 3 T3 tenets that each point squarely at one of the ideology's intended victory paths. Order is the only one that is missing a full set, and it feels poorer for it.
• The current T2 CV tenets that Order has are too strong and too boring.
  • They are basically a large GW modifier and a large empire % tourism modifier. Neither of them asks you to do anything you weren't doing already. No interactivity and no substantial changes to gameplay.
  • Compare to Autocracy, which has numerous flashy abilities that translate war winning into cultural dominance (eg. Futurism and Cult of Personality)
  • Of the 3 ideologies, Order's CV is the most passive. Autocracy has its war fighting bonuses, and at least Freedom is oriented more around historic events and Corporations, and has to control enough of the diplomatic game to stay competitive, because they are vulnerable to sanctions, etc. Order's CV bonuses amount to big numbers and pressing 'Next Turn'.
  • Cultural revolution is not a good tenet:
    • It is a carbon-copy of Freedom's Cultural Expression T1 tenet, but 2.5x stronger.
    • The 34% Tourism towards other Order players is basically useless; Players that share your ideology are unlikely to be the last cultural holdout, so it gives almost no benefit
  • Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not a good tenet
    • It has a 50% culture modifier while most of the other % modifiers in the game are 10%. There is only 1 other 50% tourism modifier in the game, but it's a T3 tenet and it's much harder to use.
    • It's very powerful. The power level of this tenet is not appropriate for Tier 2.
• Great Leap Forward is bad, and should be changed.
  • It is not focused enough on a victory condition to merit being a T3 Tenet
  • It gives no persistent bonus, and consists entirely of an instant effect. In that respect, it's not even accurate to call it a proper tenet. It's the only case in the game out of more than 100 different policies and tenets that does absolutely nothing once unlocked.
  • If GLF is going to be moved down to T2 that should come with a nerf.
  • The current GLF effect has no basis in history. The real-life Great Leap Forward was not an instant breakthrough of some new technology, but a mass-mobilization effort to rapidly industrialize a nation and catch up to other nations. The current bonuses do not reflect this.
  • GLF doesn't transform a game mechanic or unlock an entirely new one like most other T3 tenets do. It's just a large, conventional tech bonus. There is currently a Rationalism bonus that gives the same bonus, and does more things besides.

Proposal:

New Order T3 CV policy: Socialist Realism
Unlocks the Propaganda Process (convert 15% of Production into Tourism). +25% Tourism to other Civilizations following Order. +4 Production from Great Works

Note: All yield conversions from Processes are increased by 10% by Power Plants. (25% => )​

Great Leap Forward moved down to T2:
Gain 1 Free Technology. Spies steal technologies at double the normal rate. +1 for every 3 non-specialist Citizens.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat renamed to Cultural Revolution and nerfed:
+25% Tourism to civilizations with less Happiness.+1 happiness from Factories.

Party Leadership renamed to Dictatorship of the Proletariat (no balance change)

Reasoning:
Socialist Realism

• A Tourism process gives Order an active task to do. A choice. This is more interactive than an entire ideology composed of passive % bonuses to existing mechanics
• A Tourism process combines with all of the other production bonuses in the Order tree to make the ideology cohere as a CV ideology, like how Freedom's specialist bonuses resolve into a CV victory, or how Autocracy leverages war into tourism bonuses
• Unlocking a new process has the "Wow" factor that would make it deserving of being a capstone ideology tenet.
• This would give Order a T3 cultural tenet, giving Order a full complement of 3 T3 tenets, each focused on 1 of its intended victory paths. This is consistent with the other ideologies.
• The % bonus towards other Order players is basically useless, but it's not hurting anything either. I have left it in for now.

Great Leap Forward

• The bonus to tech stealing is moved here to reflect how the IRL Great Leap Forward was a push to catch up to other modern nations.
• The Science for non-specialists reflects how the IRL Great Leap Forward was a mass mobilization campaign, recruiting China's peasants to rapidly industrialize the country.
• This new GLF now has persistent bonuses, and can now be considered a proper tenet. It still has 1 free technology unlock, so it retains some of its old character

Dictatorship of the Proletariat/Cultural Revolution/Party Leadership

• weakened down to the level that is more befitting a T2 tenet. At 50%, it had the power of a full T3 tenet like Autocracy's Cult of Personality, but could unlock much faster. It is no longer necessary for Order to have a pseudo-T3 tenet in a T2 slot now that it has a proper T3 cultural tenet.
• The name change are just flavor. "party leadership" is not a very good name for a tenet. Cultural Revolution more closely matches the existing bonuses found on Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

 

[Recursive]

Is CV overperforming, or is Artistry overperforming?

 

[pineappledan]

Is CV overperforming, or is Artistry overperforming?

Yes.

 

[Recursive]

Nice Mathematician's Answer.

 

[pineappledan]

In all seriousness, I would consider the issue of CV winning too much mostly resolved. You can mostly chalk up the number of CVs relative to other victories as simply a product of there being more CV-oriented civs in the game overall.

The place where victory balance needs to improve now is entirely on the side of domination victory. As a kit bonus, "war" civs are the most common, and yet they are underrepresented as victories.
However, I don't know if I actually want to see VP games turn into neverending bloodbaths just to satisfy some itch for victory parity.

I've already submitted a proposal to change Artistry here

 

[pineappledan]

@Recursive are you willing to re-sponsor this?

 

[Recursive]

Got a lot on my plate at the moment and this proposal doesn't particularly interest me.

 

[pineappledan]

The only new DLL code necessary for this is the ability to unlock a process with a policy. Everything else is existing code and rearranging things.

 

[Recursive]

Sponsored.

 

[axatin]

So, in the end, the +5 Tourism from Great Works would be removed, and the +50% Tourism to civs with less Happiness would be nerfed to +25% , with additionally up to +25% Tourism from working a process (in a tenet that unlocks later). To get the full 50% bonus, it would be necessary to have three conditions fulfilled (happiness, process, power plant) instead of one. This would be quite a nerf.

According to the AI data, cultural victories are split quite evenly between Freedom and Order (note that Freedom and Order are also taken almost equally often):

Spoiler :

It seems that Freedom and Order are in quite a good balance when it comes to Cultural Victories. Nerfing Order while keeping Freedom as it is would risk upsetting that balance.

 

[Stalker0]

So, in the end, the +5 Tourism from Great Works would be removed, and the +50% Tourism to civs with less Happiness would be nerfed to +25% , with additionally up to +25% Tourism from working a process (in a tenet that unlocks later). To get the full 50% bonus, it would be necessary to have three conditions fulfilled (happiness, process, power plant) instead of one. This would be quite a nerf.

According to the AI data, cultural victories are split quite evenly between Freedom and Order (note that Freedom and Order are also taken almost equally often):

Spoiler :

View attachment 668014View attachment 668013

It seems that Freedom and Order are in quite a good balance when it comes to Cultural Victories. Nerfing Order while keeping Freedom as it is would risk upsetting that balance.

This isn’t quite accurate.

The new process doesn’t give you +25% more tourism, it converts 25% of your industrial might into tourism.

Sake of argument, let’s say your hammers in a city is 100 and the tourism is 10. The process would generate 25 tourism, +25% would generate 2.5.

So how strong this process is depends on your industrial strength and your base tourism

 

[pineappledan]

additionally up to +25% Tourism from working a process (in a tenet that unlocks later). To get the full 50% bonus

The tourism process would generate raw Tourism, before modifiers. It works the same as any other yield process, like how the Research process converts a % of a city's production into Science each turn.

It does not give +25% tourism, it converts 25% of a city's production into Tourism when worked. That tourism can then be modified by other global effects (trade routes, 25% from less happiness, etc.)

 

[axatin]

You're both right of course, that was quite a stupid mistake of me.

 

[Stalker0]

You're both right of course, that was quite a stupid mistake of me.

I’m personally worried about the opposite, that this will be crazily OP. basically take 1 city, send in all my prod ITRs (boosted like crazy with the other tier 3 order tenent and that ITR boosting belief), and then switch the process. That could be like 30-50 tourism a trade route.

My fear is that will generate so much tourism is might dwarf anything else. The theoretical counter is the loss of the +5 GW tourism js pretty significant (especially with GW multipliers)

 

[pineappledan]

So this is mostly just pure nerf. You tossed the +5 to Great Works it seems like (which is actually the main reason cultural revolution is good). You lose an entire free tech on the ideology that is best geared for SV (and because its sooner the amount of free science you gain is actually lower). You lose the massive +25% tourism from dicatorship. Yes I gain propaganda, but I actually have to work to use it, whereas the +5 from great works was just churning previously (especially when you consider all the late game multipliers on Great work tourism). A 15% conversion to tourism I don't feel is going to equal that...and I'm giving up a lot more for the privilege.

I’m personally worried about the opposite, that this will be crazily OP. basically take 1 city, send in all my prod ITRs (boosted like crazy with the other tier 3 order tenet and that ITR boosting belief), and then switch the process. That could be like 30-50 tourism a trade route.

My fear is that will generate so much tourism is might dwarf anything else. The theoretical counter is the loss of the +5 GW tourism is pretty significant (especially with GW multipliers)

Well well well. How the turn tables...

There is a significant opportunity cost to working a process vs doing anything else. The +5 to GWs that this mainly replaces is more like +8-12 for each GW, once you factor in Hotels, Stadiums, wonders, etc. That also happens passively without you having to sacrifice your build queue. The synergy with Iron Curtain's big 200% bonus to ITRs is, to me, a huge selling point for this ability. It ties Order's infrastructure and production bonuses into a coherent culture strategy.

 

[Stalker0]

Well well well. How the turn tables...

My point about losing an entire tech still stands, but yes my recent concern is due to the new cooperation belief. That thing is +21 hammers in the late game, multiplied to +77 with Iron Curtain, Fealty, and Industry. So that's an extra ~19 tourism per trade route right there which didn't exist when I made my first assessment.

 

[Anarcomu]

My point about losing an entire tech still stands, but yes my recent concern is due to the new cooperation belief. That thing is +21 hammers in the late game, multiplied to +77 with Iron Curtain, Fealty, and Industry. So that's an extra ~19 tourism per trade route right there which didn't exist when I made my first assessment.

Sending trade routes to opponents' cities is another way to gain tourism with everyone via historic event (especially the targeted civ), so you sacrifice one tourism source to gain another. I don't know how it is balanced, might need numbers here.

Edit : I'm specifically speaking about sending TR to own cities, as opposed to sending TR to others civs.