This is especially bothering for the super-finish: 10 happiness ain't so much, even with boosted empathets...
While the exact value is subject to tweaking, the idea was that the SF effect for Eudaimonia should be a flat benefit, the kind of thing that would still be significant for an OCC game. 10 Happiness means 8 more population in your city, and in a one-city challenge you won't have many luxuries. It's not just for one-city games; small empires won't have many luxuries, and won't have enough to trade for more, which seriously inhibits their growth. And don't underestimate the benefit a flat +10 Happiness gives to a larger empire; that's Wonder-level effects right there, even without the doubled Empath part.
I'm not saying that I can't boost it a bit more; it was set to +10 back when most Wonders were +5 to +8. So I might bump it to +12 now. The thing to remember is that nearly all Happiness is capped by population, so it's a bit more powerful than just building a few Colosseums.
Don't underestimate the Empath bit; you'll have up to 3 per city by the end of the game, except that cities with local Omnicytes have 2 more through the Centauri Preserve, and the city with the Empath Guild will have 2 slots. So it does help a sprawling empire quite a bit, but only large cities will really have the food to spare for specialists in the first place so it's still mostly the vertical emphasis I wanted for Tradition. You'll only see huge empire-wide benefits once you get to the Nanotech Era, but before then you'd still have a few of these.
If I boost Eudaimonia further, it needs to be another Happiness (or maybe food) bonus, preferably something that benefits vertical development (OCC, specialists, etc.) more than sprawl. Even if it's as simple as "+10 food per turn in your capital" (which I can do).
- Many policies doesn't particularly benefit small empires:
Just to be clear, I didn't change ANY of the policies within this branch. This is all the same as in the vanilla game; any shift in emphasis was on their part, not mine.
To me, Tradition wasn't really so much "small empire" as "all-around useful no matter how big your empire is"; the Liberty branch is sort of a trap, in that it basically forces you to expand quickly without giving you much Happiness support to do so, which then basically forces you to go Piety. So I've found myself going Tradition fairly often lately, especially on maps where you don't have a huge amount of room to expand.
Take the Wonder production bonus, for instance; that actually does favor vertical development, because the ICS-style sprawl of Liberty doesn't tend to leave you with enough production to win any Wonder races. In the early game, that bonus allows you to use your large capital city to grab a couple early Wonders, instead of only using it to spit out more Settlers. Adding extra Wonder production to a bunch of small cities isn't going to do anything, since none of them would ever win a Wonder race, so that one does fit the pattern.
And I do have to say, Tradition's Finisher is one of the stronger ones out there; it's just strange that they'd use it for Tradition. In fact, I'd say that Tradition and Liberty should just switch Finishers; Tradition get a Great Person (good for a small empire that could use another GP improvement or an early Great General), Liberty get the food bonus in each city.
It might just be me, but I am mostly forced to take the "4 free culture buildings" policy when I have like 2 cities and before temple is unlocked (So I either get like 1 free monument or nothing...) These kind of situational one-shot policies are very weak IMO.
That one I'll give you. The 4 free building thing is just weak, and I'll be looking into ways to boost it. Also, remember that in my mod the Temple isn't in the Culture chain any more; it goes straight from Monument to Opera House.
Now, if they'd said "the Monument is free in EVERY city you make from here on out", that'd be something. But that might overlap a bit too much with the Liberty opener. I'd prefer something like "Cultural buildings are always free within your capital"; that would have some real potential. (Can't actually do that, but still, there ARE some things I can do.)
Overall the tradition tree seems a bit underpowered, but it might be that it's a starter tree...
That might be part of it, too. I know that this is part of why they tried changing Honor to be a bit more well-rounded; I think the idea was that Tradition, Liberty, and Honor were all supposed to be a bit weak, with some real clunkers along the way, but that each would favor a different development strategy (vertical, sprawl, conquest). Each of those strategies also ties to one of the late-game trees (Honor -> Autocracy, Tradition -> Freedom, Liberty -> Order), so I guess the idea is that it encourages the AIs to pick one of these three basic paths and stick with it. This is why it's so strange that Commerce is underwhelming; those middle 4 are supposed to be how you really distinguish yourself.