My guess is because the "Age of Exploration" and all was largely done by sea. Sure, some exploration has been done by land... but most of the more famous bits of exploration were all conducted by seafarers. Even with things like the exploration/colonization of Africa, I suspect more people travelled there by sea rather than over land routes.
So I suspect the Exploration tree is meant to evoke the golden age of exploration, when people were sailing off to find new continents or ocean passages or whatever...
Having said this, I would propose the following modifications to the tree:
Opener: +1 extra sight and movement to naval units => Fine as it is
Maritime Infrastructure: +1 production on each coast tile surrounding your coastatal cities => A diffeerent take on this bonus, it would force you to rethink your city placement while mantaining the original goal of giving a boost to coastatal cities, it also would encourage you to settle in islands
Merchant Navy: +1 gold for each improved sea resource and atoll tile. Requires Maritime Infrastructure. => Another way to implement this mechanic, it adds yet another layer of depth to coastatal city placement while keeping the original idea about rewarding wide coastatal empires a la Carthage
Cartographic tradition (previously Naval Tradition): +1 happiness generated by the discovery of natural wonders and CS => Look, ma! A happiness bonus for wide empires that actually rewards exploration!
Treasure Fleets: +4 gold from all your Sea Trade Routes. Requires Merchant Navy. => Fine as it is, however, I would need to try the trade route mechanics first in order to fine tune it if necessary
Antropologic institute (previously navigation school): +2 to the tourism output of archeological artifacts, and +3 to the culture output of landmarks. Requires cartographic tradition => A SP with the late game in mind and a firm candidate to be the last of the tree SP picked up, the idea is to increase the rewards for late game exploration as well as giving balance to the decision between historical site VS artifact (now it is obviously titled to the former rather than the first)
Finisher: You can view the 10 hidden treasures => Best policy of the tree, left unchanged
Opener: While decent as is now, what I'd really like to see is this: Instead of the simple +1 sight for naval vessels, this SP granted a special ability to Great Admirals that gave them an ability to "Explore Terrain", essentially see three or four tiles into the mainland regardless of terrain (so, not limited by rough terrain or Open Borders) - the ability would not consume the GAd, but would remove all remaining movement points (perhaps with a cooldown as well?). This would make GAds much more in line with the great explorers of history. It could also be useful for some combat situations.
Maritime Infrastructure: This SP per your suggestion would weaken Seaports too much and let coastal cities without nearby resources be too strong imo. Coastal cities should require resources to be useful, so I'd suggest instead either "+2 production Lighthouses, Harbors and Seaports" or "+1 production on improved sea resources and atolls".
Merchant Navy: Neither Firaxis' nor your suggestion really makes sense for what a Merchant Navy is actually used for to me (though I like your idea and could see it having a place in the game). How about "Cargo Boats performing Domestic Trade Routes supply an additional 50% of nonprimary goods" (wording is clunky, will work on that) - meaning that if you send an oceanic DTR delivering 4 food, 2 production would be carried along with it and vice versa.
Cartographic Tradition: Really like this one, my only suggestion would be to limit it by a) removing either Natural Wonders or CS (it's too strong with both) or b) keep both but qualify it with "on another continent" (so your neighbors that you met on turn 3 don't count). I disagree with your assessment of Naval Tradition - it is the best happiness SPs before Ideologies now, and thus will be quite strong with a coastal-focused empire.
Treasure Fleets: Agree it's difficult to tell if this will be good or mediocre. If it applies to both Domestic and International TRs it will be quite good, even more so if the gold is affected by modifiers. And as I said earlier, it would be better as an earlier pick in the tree.
Antropologic Institute: Interesting idea, I think I like it but I'm not 100% on it yet. What if the SP granted +1 science and tourism to Artifacts, and +2 science to Landmarks? Or unlocked a National Wonder with three Artifact slots with powerful theming bonuses? Any of these ideas would have nice synergy with the finisher, which I like.
Maritime Infrastructure: +1 production on each coast tile surrounding your coastatal cities => A diffeerent take on this bonus, it would force you to rethink your city placement while mantaining the original goal of giving a boost to coastatal cities, it also would encourage you to settle in islands
In contrary, I think spreading the production bonus of MI onto the individual tiles will kill the policy and thereby also take out a vital part of what keeps this SP tree alive. MI is great because it applies to all cities - even small ones - and because it does not force you to work poor tiles. Placing the bonus on coastal tiles will mean that you have to force work these tiles to get the benefit, which will at best mean that you have to work mediocre tiles, and at worst mean that you will have to either forego working better tiles or not get any benefit from this policy at all, or only when city has grown very big and already works all the usefull tiles. So that's a definite no from me.
The only problem I have with it is the name. It has nothing to do with exploration. Should simply have been called mercantile or maritime, and everything would be good. A 'true' exploration policy would be available in the classical era, offer some actual benifit to exploration (finding CS grants double money, +10 resting place, no 'duds' from goody huts, +1 visibility range; a free scout, things like that.)
I think they try to make social policies as culturally neutral as possible. The Chinese bureaucracy engaged in exploration in the Indian ocean but not really in the terms of colonialism or imperialism like Europeans.
In contrary, I think spreading the production bonus of MI onto the individual tiles will kill the policy and thereby also take out a vital part of what keeps this SP tree alive. MI is great because it applies to all cities - even small ones - and because it does not force you to work poor tiles. Placing the bonus on coastal tiles will mean that you have to force work these tiles to get the benefit, which will at best mean that you have to work mediocre tiles, and at worst mean that you will have to either forego working better tiles or not get any benefit from this policy at all, or only when city has grown very big and already works all the usefull tiles. So that's a definite no from me.
That would work, but then it would probably be really overpowered. Settle on any 1-hex island for instant +6 in city.
But if there was a cap at perhaps +4 I could see a point in it, then cities sitting at an end of a narrow fjord with only one adjacant water tile wouldn't get the full +3 which is a bit abusive in some ways. But on the bottom line, question is if it isn't easier to just leave it as it is then?
That would work, but then it would probably be really overpowered. Settle on any 1-hex island for instant +6 in city.
But if there was a cap at perhaps +4 I could see a point in it, then cities sitting at an end of a narrow fjord with only one adjacant water tile wouldn't get the full +3 which is a bit abusive in some ways. But on the bottom line, question is if it isn't easier to just leave it as it is then?
you would get +6 but you would have to work coastal tiles which are bad except for the once with resources on them. So it would be a trade off of good workable tiles for .
you would get +6 but you would have to work coastal tiles which are bad except for the once with resources on them. So it would be a trade off of good workable tiles for .
True at that. Personally I feel it would be a bit too easy to plop down a city with access to 3 or 4 Fish tiles and then have super high production for free at the same time, but I guess it would require some testing to say for sure.
1 The Great Admiral bonus is a good one if it's available "easily". Which means remove the link and it's an interesting policiy, but not one of the most powerful. It also devalues the later you take it. (I like the idea of giving the Great Admiral a "explore territory and take all goody huts"-ability. Would make them fun to play)
2 The Finisher can become useless if you're not one of the first to get it. This in turn may discourage you to fill the tree up and make you not pick the ones you can't really use (GA-policy f.e.). Also the synergy with all these naval policies is minimal*. Do the producers feel that 2 techs deep into the tree is too overpowered?
3 The happiness, production and gold policies for seabased empires are interesting. I wouldn't want to lose them. Though I agree there could be a bit more creativity regarding how the bonus is given. Good ideas there.
4 What's the difference between a merchant and a treasure fleet? Seems similar. I could see one of those bonuses being lower upkeep for navies.
5 Ideally, there would be at least one more exploration or archaeology based policy in there, no? One seems kinda low.
*If sunken ships or ruins are not antiquity sites which they should be but I doubt that since this would require making the Archaeologist the first truly hybrid land/sea unit. I guess this could be a task for a modder and would be a cool feature, if it'd also merge the workboat with the worker.
1 The Great Admiral bonus is a good one if it's available "easily". Which means remove the link and it's an interesting policiy, but not one of the most powerful. It also devalues the later you take it. (I like the idea of giving the Great Admiral a "explore territory and take all goody huts"-ability. Would make them fun to play)
I agree and I think it would be cool if ships, or maybe just the Caravel, could get a "Shore Party" promotion. It would allow boats to snag ruins and explore two tiles inland. All ships gaining that promotion would be a great early policy for this tree.
You're probably right, I just don't see why it's such a big cultural wonder in a tree that is hardly focused on cultural endeavors with only the finisher being related to archaeology. France will have to dip into this despite not being maritime focused at all. The Colossus could be pushed back or we could get a famous naval academy as a wonder. Just seems strange.
For me, the image of an explorer like those in colonial africa was badly choosen. It should have been more like a ship sailor looking to the horizon. Those SP are more for a naval empire who tries to discover new places and use the naval mechanics.
You have many good ideas in your post, but I think you are a bit off on this one. While this policy should have something else than just the GAd things (like it used to have in Commerce), don't underestimate the importance of a free GAd - the GAd can cross ocean tiles before Navigation is discovered, and this makes a huge importance when playing on continenets maps.
Good point! Thing is, there's a very little timeframe for the utility of GA (basically, before navigation arrives), and the latter you get the GA, the less useful it is... and this is a 3rd policy of a tree that opens only after you arrive to the medieval ages. I think that it would be far more useful if the free GA would come with the opener.
I would turn the argument around and say: The finisher is about the only thing that makes the tree title "Exploration" relevant, so rather than putting less Archeology in here, I think we need more stuff relating to that and exploration in general.
Branch 2: Age of Discovery
Double happiness from discovered natural wonders. Discovering a new natural wonder triggers "We love the king day" in your capital.
I like this so very much! The "we love the king's day" bonus is quite original. Still, I think that the happiness bonus should be a fixed one (say, +1 or +2) because otherwise it would create balance problem if it stacks with Spain's UA :S
Last policy (need both branches) Colonization
Trade routes with city-states generate +5 gold and +1 influence. Other players cannot estabilish trade routes with your allied city-states.
Maritime Infrastructure: This SP per your suggestion would weaken Seaports too much and let coastal cities without nearby resources be too strong imo. Coastal cities should require resources to be useful, so I'd suggest instead either "+2 production Lighthouses, Harbors and Seaports" or "+1 production on improved sea resources and atolls".
I don't know why this would weaken seaports, it is more of an option to make island cities viable from scratch rather than having to spend loads of gold into seaports and workboats. Still, I approve of any atoll bonus
Merchant Navy: Neither Firaxis' nor your suggestion really makes sense for what a Merchant Navy is actually used for to me (though I like your idea and could see it having a place in the game). How about "Cargo Boats performing Domestic Trade Routes supply an additional 50% of nonprimary goods" (wording is clunky, will work on that) - meaning that if you send an oceanic DTR delivering 4 food, 2 production would be carried along with it and vice versa.
Ooooh, I would love if you could get food and production bonuses from international trade routes intead of just by internal ones. Was it confirmed by Firaxis? Otherwise, that would certainly be a quite interesting idea.
Cartographic Tradition: Really like this one, my only suggestion would be to limit it by a) removing either Natural Wonders or CS (it's too strong with both) or b) keep both but qualify it with "on another continent" (so your neighbors that you met on turn 3 don't count). I disagree with your assessment of Naval Tradition - it is the best happiness SPs before Ideologies now, and thus will be quite strong with a coastal-focused empire.
Oh, I don't think that Naval tradition is weak, as you pointed out, it is quite useful for wide coastatal empires a la carthage. It is just plain old boring and unrelated to exploration but yes, a little bit of fine tuning would be good
Antropologic Institute: Interesting idea, I think I like it but I'm not 100% on it yet. What if the SP granted +1 science and tourism to Artifacts, and +2 science to Landmarks? Or unlocked a National Wonder with three Artifact slots with powerful theming bonuses? Any of these ideas would have nice synergy with the finisher, which I like.
I really like you idea about a free national wonder, as you pointed out, it would make for a great combo with the finished!
With all your comments on mind, I would redo the Exploration tree as this (only commented on the ones I would tune):
Spoiler:
Exploration
Opener: +1 extra sight and movement to naval units, gain one free GA => Added the great admiral in order to make for a cool strategic choice: the earlier you take this tree, the more useful it will be!
Maritime Infrastructure: +1 production on each coast tile surrounding your coastatal cities
Merchant Navy: +1 gold for each improved sea resource and atoll tile. Requires Maritime Infrastructure.
Cartographic tradition (previously Naval Tradition): +1 happiness generated by the discovery of each CS => A more blanced way to reward exploration, one has to keep in mind that this is non-local happiness, so no happiness bonus for natural wonders
Treasure Fleets: +1 food and +1 production from Sea Trade Routes. Requires Merchant Navy. => Still early to judge if this would be balanced, but I think that trade route offering some food and production boosts would be original
Antropologic institute (previously navigation school): Your palace have 3 extra artifact slots, historic sitesproduces +2 culture, get a random artifact => A big array of bonuses for your archeological findings, coupled with a much needed extra boost for historic sites. The random artifact has been included in order to give it more usefulness in the short term. I also guess that theming is quite fun, so more space for making combos: yay, funnier!
I agree that the image presented by the name "Exploration" (and the stereotypical pith-helmeted Anglo explorer icon) does not mesh with the almost entirely naval focus of the policy tree. I don't think the overall set of policies looks bad, but the tree is clearly more naval/economic than discovery/exploration oriented.
Bonuses for discovering natural wonders and contacting new civs/city states would have been a better fit. For example, I could see something like this:
Foreign Envoy: Each civilization or city state discovered on a continent other than that of your starting capital grants you 100 culture and +1 happiness. (I haven't made any effort to balance this, I'm just giving an example).
Also, I wonder what the title for choosing the policy tree will be.... I might laugh if I encounter "Theodora the Explorer".
Opener: +1 extra sight and movement to naval units, gain one free GA => Added the great admiral in order to make for a cool strategic choice: the earlier you take this tree, the more useful it will be!
Maritime Infrastructure: +1 production on each coast tile surrounding your coastatal cities
Merchant Navy: +1 gold for each improved sea resource and atoll tile. Requires Maritime Infrastructure.
Cartographic tradition (previously Naval Tradition): +1 happiness generated by the discovery of each CS => A more blanced way to reward exploration, one has to keep in mind that this is non-local happiness, so no happiness bonus for natural wonders
Treasure Fleets: +1 food and +1 production from Sea Trade Routes. Requires Merchant Navy. => Still early to judge if this would be balanced, but I think that trade route offering some food and production boosts would be original
Antropologic institute (previously navigation school): Your palace have 3 extra artifact slots, historic sitesproduces +2 culture, get a random artifact => A big array of bonuses for your archeological findings, coupled with a much needed extra boost for historic sites. The random artifact has been included in order to give it more usefulness in the short term. I also guess that theming is quite fun, so more space for making combos: yay, funnier!
I like this. The opener is too strong though. for 1 policy you are most likely to be able to become the first host of the WC in SP. While you are the host you can control half the things that get voted upon as well as having an extra vote.
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). How about "Cargo Boats performing Domestic Trade Routes supply an additional 50% of nonprimary goods" (wording is clunky, will work on that) - meaning that if you send an oceanic DTR delivering 4 food, 2 production would be carried along with it and vice versa. 
in city. 
but yes, a little bit of fine tuning would be good
