Let's discuss balance and possible fixes

[Acken]

TLDR: Read bolded parts

Issue 1 will be the first 4 Policy tree
Currently discussing balancing Piety

Hello and please read before posting

Somewhat like Ninakoru is currently researching ways to make the AI perform better I'm a firm believer that another critical point where Civ5 could be improved is in its balance. I'm also very confident that a better balance means an AI that performs better in the end because it's sub-optimal moves will become less so.

As him in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=521140 I'm currently heavily considering making a mod adressing what I consider troubling problems that I don't think Firaxis will fix. For me the fall patch was rather disappointing fixing only a portion of the problems not bothering touching most of them.

I love Civ5 but when I see myself never utilizing some options apart from some very situational cases it makes me a little sad.

First, I want to acknowledge that there are already some mods trying to balance things up. Machiavelli, the Communitas package and probably a lot more. However where I want things to be different is that I'm trying to make something very minimalistic. Like an unofficial patch with ideas from me and the community. Mostly numbers tweaking here and there. So that somewhat used to the original won't feel lost playing with this mod, many things will be left unchanged and others will be mostly buffs and nerfs. So if you are looking for new buildings, new wonders and a totally revamped policy tree it's not what I propose. But if you really enjoy the original game but feel you'd like things to be a bit smoother this is where I want to go also !
I also intend to keep things in the spirit of the game, Liberty should remain the wide tree for example.

I'm not a Civ5 god, I don't claim to be but I think I have some solid experience to make reasonable claims that this or that should be changed. But since I don't have all the experience in the world I'm making this thread to share people thoughts and having debates. This will be a slow project with many incomplete versions where people would be encouraged to test changes and report afterward.

I intend the discussion and modding process to be by baby steps. One problem at a time, for example I won't touch civilizations for a LONG time.

Finally, it's possible that some stuff are true for singleplayer and not for multiplayer. I intend this to be a mostly singleplayer experience.

Planning:
1. Rebalancing the 4 first policy tree
2. As I'm doing honor, I'll also focus myself in spotting problems with everything concerning wars (AI agressiveness/passiveness, range vs melee, spoils of war etc)
3. Finalizing the other trees (when necessary).
4. Boosting some buildings or techs if necessary (especially late game buildings like the windmill).
5. Other stuff to be decided

____________________________________________________________________

Issue number 1 to be discussed is the balance between Tradition, Liberty, Honor and Piety. More specifically today we'll talk about Tradition and Liberty.

I desire to make each a viable first 100 turns options depending on your start and how you will use it. Here are my thoughts and analysis :

For references as to specific policies please go to:
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Social_policies_(Civ5)

(Discussing Liberty in spoilers, now old)

Spoiler :

First what is the purpose of each according to Firaxis:
-Tradition is for small empires
-Liberty is for wide empires
-Honor is for warmongers
-Piety is for people trying to get the most out of religion

Tradition has been the most loved tree these past months for a whole lot of reasons:
-It has great early culture (3 in cap, 4 free culture buildings (monuments)) allowing faster policies
-It has a lot of growth 2f in capital, 10% in cap, 15% elsewhere 4 free aqueducts, allows HG
-Good happiness: 1happy per 10pop, 1happy per 2pop in capital
-Some gold: 1GPT/2pop which goes very well with % modifiers in capital like Market and Commerce. And a no maintenance policy for garrisoned units.
-Allow faith buy engineers

Everything is good in that tree and works for the whole game. The strong growth bonus make this tree the primary choice for many many strategies because as we know: POP = everything, better science, better production, easier to fill slots etc. Then the happiness is pretty stellar, with 3 city at 20pop and a capital at 30 we are looking at 24Happiness.

Tradition is often responsible for the fastest finishing times in science and culture in GOTM or the strategy forum. Some people have also tried to take some liberty policies into the mix and have come out with good results.

Now let's take a look at liberty:
-1 culture per city, -33% policy cost penalty per city
-5% production 1hammer per city
-1 free settler, 1 free worker faster improvements, faster settlers, allow Pyramids
-One golden age, One "free" great person, 1happy per linked city -5%unhappy

The tree is often suggested for early wars, it has happiness per city, some reduction in culture penalty per city and an early production boost.

The purpose of that tree is clearly to get something wide going on, reductions per city, faster settlers, bonuses on a per city basis.

However here is problem number 1:
-One of the biggest downside of making many cities is the unhappiness generated. 3 per city (+1 per pop). This issue is often offbalanced by additional luxuries, but that is something available to tradition as well. A liberty player and a tradition player will both be looking for spots with luxuries to offset the unhapiness of founding cities. But I think a liberty player should be able to have a bit more room where to put cities, since the tree is supposed to allow a bigger number of cities.
It doesn't seem to make sense that the tree that is supposed to help expansion is getting less free happiness than Tradition.

=> Solution 1: Buff Liberty. Make Meritocracy a better policy, 2 happiness per city linked and/or a -10/15% to unhapiness (exact numbers should be found through playtesting ).
=> Solution 2: Nerf Monarchy in the Tradition tree. It's the biggest culprit for the vast amount of happiness this tree generate. I'm thinking something along the line of only one hapiness per 3 or 4 pop.
=>Or both at the same time

Now let's say we can put happiness from both tree around the same level (with one in a tall context and the other in a wide context). If we want both trees to compete we want both of them to be able to reach end techs in similar times. Sadly here tradition probably wins most of the time: better population means more science and an easier time building costly buildings. Liberty is supposed to compete by having lower pop cities but more numerous. This create however a problem when it comes to building the necessary science buildings.
Libraries will benefit a lot from the Republic policy, 1 additional hammer is a big deal early on. But Liberty also has to make monuments in the early game so in my opinion both somewhat negates themselves when it comes to libraries. Later on, having to build many schools, universities and laboratories can be pretty slow. But you have more luxuries and more cities connected so overall you should have gold to rush buy some. Here to me it's up to the community to weigh in whether or not Liberty should get a small boost in growth and/or production.
So problem 2: Is production from liberty enough to offset the lower pop ? Will you be able to compete with tradition when it comes to science ?
I have three possible ideas:
-Make Republic scale with eras, +1hammer per era.
-Give liberties 1 or 2 additional trade routes in its finisher to allow for better growth.
-Make National wonders requirement cost less hammers (libraries, markets, monuments, Opera, Hotel, Colloseum (helps happiness too !), workshop, hotel, temple...)

Another Idea I have been toying with is that all three trees but tradition have to build aqueducts. And all 3 trees have an inferior growth hence a possible inferior production. So an additional solution would be to reduce the basic cost of Aqueducts. Tradition doesn't really build them but I feel considering the cost of aqueducts reducing their cost would lower the interest in having the trad finisher.


That's it for today Quite a long post. I'll hope there is some interest in this

Please refer to this post for my most uptodate entry:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13208418&postcount=52

 

[Gokudo01]

I think you take the problem from the wrong way. I pick a tree because i want it to change my way of playing not just adding some minor bonus.
By nerfing the tradition tree, you dont accomplish that. you just put the tradition policy as the same level as liberty which isn't that great.
I think you should concentrate on small buff for liberty and big buff for honor and piety.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Have you checked out the Reform and Rule mod?

 

[White Out]

reform and rule is great but by itself piety is still a dumpster fire.

the Ai takes piety WAY too much. the only civs that should take piety as an opener are civs that get a faith bonus. otherwise it should be secondary at best.

 

[Acken]

I think you take the problem from the wrong way. I pick a tree because i want it to change my way of playing not just adding some minor bonus.
By nerfing the tradition tree, you dont accomplish that. you just put the tradition policy as the same level as liberty which isn't that great.
I think you should concentrate on small buff for liberty and big buff for honor and piety.

Hmm I disagree. First nerfing is only a tiny option in all I've said, second it's sometimes easier to nerf down something too strong than making everything too strong And did you mean: "I pick a MOD because I want to change my way of playing" instead ?
Because I'm not trying to make both trees the same, I'm trying to make them as good.

If in the end you wish things to be all very strong with fun new elements/mechanics rather than number tweaking, I'd say this isn't for you then I made that very clear

Have you checked out the Reform and Rule mod?

Yes and like I said it's not what I'm looking for:
-It changes things a ton
-It only changes policies
I like some of the ideas though. But I'm aiming things to be very close to the current game, just balanced. Something that Firaxis would release as a balance patch if you will.

 

[Calouste]

-Tradition is for small empires
-Liberty is for wide empires

I think that's the wrong way to look at things. Tradition is for good capital locations, Liberty is for mediocre or bad capital locations.

 

[Acken]

I think that's the wrong way to look at things. Tradition is for good capital locations, Liberty is for mediocre or bad capital locations.

I'd say it's a consequence instead. You grow tall because with a good capital it's worth it or you put less emphasis on your capital (you know it will never be as good) and therefore more on additional cities (and the additional settler/worker help a bad start). If you make a small empire with a bad capital you should have moved and settled elsewhere.

Edit: I'm not arguing that this isn't a good idea (to take liberty because the capital isnt great). I'm arguing that Liberty is a rather inferior tree most of the time that needs a couple boosts. Now I'm open to the opposite opinion or to different changes than those proposed.

I mean let's say we make Liberty better. It doesn't change the fact that if you settle in the jungle, it's an attractive tree. It would certainly make it even more attractive but I don't see how that would make Liberty too strong or lose it's current flavor.

 

[Gamewizard]

Ninakoru has already made a pretty good balance mod with a minimalist approach:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=514586

I think if you search in the workshop it is just called Game Balance.

 

[Acken]

Ninakoru has already made a pretty good balance mod with a minimalist approach:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=514586

I think if you search in the workshop it is just called Game Balance.

Thanks man. Doesn't look like he works a lot on it these days but at least we are on the same page :

· Tradition: culture growth down from 25% to 15%, happiness and gold form Monarchy down from 1 per 2 pop to 1 per 3 pop. Ranged city attack from 50% to 30%.
· Liberty: unhappiness cut up from 5% to 8%.

Maybe I'll contact him.

 

[Walter E Kurtz]

The happiness mechanic dominates game choices, war or no war. It's basically gotten to the point that you are leaving spots with huge growth or production potential and just settle on new luxuries exclusively. Perhaps you'll be able to get that spot later in the game, but that's unrealistic. Historically speaking, people needed food more than anything and luxiries are for generating trade income in more advanced societies.

Other penalties for overstrained expansion or tall growth would have my preference. Exaggerating the culture and science hit for wide expansion would allow you to cut down the base unhappiness per new city. Policy cost already increases with the number of cities. Low concentrations of people in basic settlements don't have time to develop cultural ideas and will develop less science naturally. You need to replicate science buildings everywhere before you can notice an increase.

Small concentrated empires should be hurt by the lack of raw materials much more. As it is now, a small Tradition empire can go without strategic resources until oil or aluminium. You just build ranged units for defence and wait it out for 250 turns.

But Tradition and Liberty currently work, in that they are largely balanced against eachother. Honor and Piety are obviously bad in comparison though. These trees need a lot of work.

 

[blackchimes]

One thing I'd definitely do to Liberty is swap the Production Bonus with the Free Settler, so that the Free Settler policy can be unlocked as soon as the tree is opened.

 

[Acken]

One thing I'd definitely do to Liberty is swap the Production Bonus with the Free Settler, so that the Free Settler policy can be unlocked as soon as the tree is opened.

I'm not sure, this makes mixing other trees with liberty a lot better. Best policies of a tree shouldn't be easily accessible. You have to take that into consideration.

The happiness mechanic dominates game choices, war or no war. It's basically gotten to the point that you are leaving spots with huge growth or production potential and just settle on new luxuries exclusively. Perhaps you'll be able to get that spot later in the game, but that's unrealistic. Historically speaking, people needed food more than anything and luxiries are for generating trade income in more advanced societies.

Other penalties for overstrained expansion or tall growth would have my preference. Exaggerating the culture and science hit for wide expansion would allow you to cut down the base unhappiness per new city. Policy cost already increases with the number of cities. Low concentrations of people in basic settlements don't have time to develop cultural ideas and will develop less science naturally. You need to replicate science buildings everywhere before you can notice an increase.

Small concentrated empires should be hurt by the lack of raw materials much more. As it is now, a small Tradition empire can go without strategic resources until oil or aluminium. You just build ranged units for defence and wait it out for 250 turns.

But Tradition and Liberty currently work, in that they are largely balanced against eachother. Honor and Piety are obviously bad in comparison though. These trees need a lot of work.

Can you be a little bit more specific concerning how to penalize tall empires ?

I was suggesting to instead help wider empire taking liberty by giving some happiness boost, eventually some production boost, or some growth boost in the form of caravans. This to me would make the tree more in line to Tradition level, which imo is a much better tree hands down. Liberty has it's moments (early wars, ugly start) but it feels more like a consolation price than something you'd feel happy about.

By the way, even though I suggest buffing Liberty a little I agree Piety and Honor need the most work. But like I said, one problem at a time.

PS:I'm off for 3days this WE but keep the suggestions coming

 

[danaphanous]

One thing I'd definitely do to Liberty is swap the Production Bonus with the Free Settler, so that the Free Settler policy can be unlocked as soon as the tree is opened.

I have played a lot of liberty and here is my perspective:

First, good discussion and I think some of those are good ideas for balance. I'll add my discussion and some more thoughts and some alternate solutions.

First, I don't consider the settler policy to be the "best". I think the idea is that liberty as a theme is it should allow you to expand faster right? If it is truly a wide tree, then it should enable you to get out there faster than tradition...Right now it doesn't so it has a slower build-up to become effective. This is the main reason why Tradition has faster finishing times is because liberty is good, but slow in development and lacking in policies that support the new cities.

The issues with quick expansion:

• It has less culture, so going wide makes each policy take longer...so overall you can't get to the good policies in liberty nearly as fast as the good policies in tradition. This is why I typically expand no faster until I'm 4/6 of the way through liberty because the expansion bonuses don't come until later.
• Then I have to stop at 4 cities anyway due to gold/happiness issues so honestly being able to produce those settlers quicker makes no difference since the early-game can't support more than 4 cities. If you overcome the happiness problems then you quickly run out of gold since liberty has NOTHING to help with those maintenance costs for all those extra basic building copies like tradition.
• Liberty should free you up to expand faster than tradition and grab more good spots...that's kinda the point, so for starters I think the settler policy should come first. Then the production, as you need more cities to make the production effective.

I also think to address the bad border-growth problem in liberty, lack of culture, growth, and happiness some starter buildings should either be half-off like the religious ones in piety or maintenance free. Maybe upon opening granaries are half-price or cost no maintenance? And upon finishing colloseums are half price or cost no maintenance? This would encourage faster city growth getting cities of the ground faster and upon finishing allow you to quickly get +2 happiness everywhere so cities could take advantage of the growth without plunging you into unhappiness. I thought monuments...but that's kinda tradition's thing.

sorry for the long post but I find this issue interesting:

A summary of my liberty experiences and some possible improvements:


Main Problems:

1. opening liberty is way slower in policy acquisition than tradition. It takes 1/3 to 1/2 longer to finish for me. Sometimes it's even worth opening tradition then going to liberty. This should not be.
2. Due to the slow policy acquisition, liberty has a very slow start and does not enable to expand very quickly until about 2/3 of the way through.
3. the finisher is kinda underpowered compared to tradition's massive bonuses.
4. Happiness is awful. The only happiness in the tree is meritocracy which requires roads everywhere, again nerfing Liberty's supposed expansion power and requiring you to wait, grow, then build roads before you can get the effect. Not to mention, 5% does not affect the early happiness pool much at all.
5. there is no extra gold in the tree which is bad as going wide you have extra copies of basic buildings that start racking up maintenance costs. This results in the inability to produce new cities even if you have the happiness and AGAIN halts expansion. It also leaves you with an awful military since you can't support one which is dangerous as the AI likes to pick on expanding humans. I've had some success selling off all my resources like mad to support the extra building costs and military, but I think the fact that I can do this with either liberty or tradition makes it not really a solution to liberty's problems in particular.

basically, liberty is bad, because it takes a while to use the expansion ability, and then you can't even do it much in the beginning due to gold/happiness lack in the tree. Just giving you the ability to produce quick settlers does nothing as you can't support the new cities. So you're no better off than tradition for a good portion of the game. If you aren't on a large map this means going liberty can result in an empire not much bigger than tradition as the AI crowds you out due to their advantages. This is why tradition gets off the ground a lot easier, because both trees halt you at around 4 cities in the beginning, but tradition's bonuses make their 4 cities WAY better. Hence, why tradition can finish faster in the time scale of 300-350 turns. Liberty bonuses start to catch up after turn 350 but it can take this long.

Suggestions:

1. Move the settler policy up and replace the hammers/5% production policy with it. The extra production was obviously to get new cities off the ground but honestly, it has little effect until after the settler policy. You aren't wasting much buy netting it second. This will accelerate early settling making liberty more attractive and more competitive. As the settler-boost could be your second policy point. I like this as it makes tradition risky, since liberty players could steal very nice 2nd city spots, so it addresses a lot of balance issues. The risk of losing good territory would mean you'd have to think a little harder about your approach in tradition and it wouldn't be so straightforward. Since location is king, this alone would be a nice improvement and would remove the need to nerf tradition in any way. For an expansionist tree it is annoying that liberty is worse at nearly everything, and the one thing it is good at: fast settlers, comes late enough the tradition ppl have already picked and claimed a really nice second city spot due to their faster growth and gold.
2. Upon opening, liberty could reduce the cost of a critical early growth building like granaries. Not aqueducts as that is traditions thing and they don't come until later. The problem is liberty is so bad culturally you always have to hard-build a monument first otherwise border growth sucks and that +1 culture never offsets the policy cost increase so every city you are losing a lot of policy-acquisition speed while you wait for those endless monuments to finish. Why not buy them? The tree has no money either... This means growth buildings are secondary and is why tradition always boosts science so much more since they have the culture building out of the way and can immediately build growth-oriented infrastructure. This would encourage better early growth in the tree.
3. Alternatively, instead of decreasing build-times on granary or another building, you could make them maintenance free. the extra hammer and 5% bonus in liberty will then make up the difference without gold becoming an issue which is a huge problem due to building maintenance. I often have to stop building buildings due to gold...usually before I can get libraries, so there goes early science. If you take advantage of liberty's natural expansion ability then you will find just a few copies of basic buildings in each new city will put you in the red on gold. Unless you purposefully go for the few luxuries that yield early gold, but these often sacrifice growth drastically so it doesn't work.
4. upon finishing, instead of a GP which is often better saved (as it ups the cost of any GP you pick), liberty could again benefit building times or maintenance costs on a building I'm thinking colloseums half-price or maintenance free would be a good choice...allowing you to build them quickly empire-wide to offset unhappiness quicker. I frequently find myself wanting colloseums everywhere as I'm riding the red in unhappiness around when I'm finishing the tree if I've expanded properly...however, the new cities take forever to make them.
5. Meritocracy -1 unhappiness and a %gold per city connection buff OR -2 unhappiness This will encourage road-building to knit together your larger empire and will either address the happiness problem or the gold problem. I don't think you need both so either will work. I think 10% on city connection gold would be good. This is on average only .5 in the beginning but it gets overpowered later if the percentage is too much. I think %gold buff like a mini Machu-Pichu is excellent as it fits very will with the theme of meritocracy. It makes more sense that wide empires would bring in a bit more gold from city connections due to trade.
6. If the above is done the culture problems can be dealt with as a downside of taking liberty. better growth will help. I don't think going liberty should simultaneously hurt culture, happiness, and early growth in comparison to tradition though. At least have a policy that helps with one of them!
7. Piety and Honor are already great if used as a support/mixing tree.

these suggestions are made not with the idea of trying to balance tradition and liberty to be the same, but to make them as effective within the scope of the game and to not violate their theme. I like the fact that the two are so different and would prefer to keep liberty as expansion-themed as possible. I can accept that you'll get less initial happiness, culture, and growth, as long as I have a way to develop the tree and actually utilize early expansion. I think a few of these suggestions would do that and stay small and familiar to users.

A few notes on piety/honor, I know this has just started to be discussed, but:

I don't think Piety or honor needs to be balanced so that it's the same starting strength. I see both as a supporting tree that you mix and match with either tradition or liberty. I play liberty AND piety, they synergize really well as having a strong religion often benefits wide empires more and gives me the early happiness/culture/gold/faith I need. If I see the potential for a religion, I open piety as my second policy after putting a point in liberty, this halves the time for the shrine and temple. Then a second point to get more faith from them. These two points nearly guarantee I'll get a nice religion and I can then go back to liberty and build cheap shrines as a starter building (only a few turns) while founding and enhancing a religion far quicker. After working down to the settlers/-33% social policy cost per city I then take the -20% discount to faith purchases and start spamming my religious buildings that I easily picked up due to piety faith acceleration (Pagodas is best if possible for liberty)...each gives a bit more faith adding to your fpt, new cities quickly build shrines and temples and in no time I have more than 50 faith/turn and can buy these great religious building just turns after founding...erasing founding happiness penalties and giving me that good early culture. Mixing this way in my experience can give liberty/piety the same policy acquisition rate as tradition and you can go far wider. I see honor in the same way...I support tree that you mix with either liberty or tradition if you intend to produce extra military and take someone else's cities through war early game.

Piety especially will be too powerful if you change it much and is already optimized to synergize really well with getting a very quick early religion. That is it's purpose. It is not a standard starting tree no, but a powerful religion has huge benefits later that should not be overlooked. When combined with liberty as a supporting tree it eliminates some of the early happiness/culture/gold problems. If you change anything it should be AI-focused as the poor saps go straight down the tree and don't mix. Maybe add a little passive culture to the opener help them get through the tree a little quicker? This makes sense to me as every other opener helps a little with culture, but the piety one doesn't. A good synergy with the half-cost shrines would be +1 culture per shrine. You'll be building these in the beginning anyway if you want a good religion. This would also offset the other downside of mixing: takes longer to get to the good policies in liberty. But remember, if you get a powerful religion it can more than make up for the slow start.

Most ppl seem to have trouble with this, but my religions always seem to make the game with tons of gold, happiness, and culture, and even growth as a result. And I've done this on every difficulty including Deity, so this strategy is always valid. The people that complain that religion is not worth the investment or too hard to maintain must have not really given Piety a good shot. It always gives me an epic religion with more than enough faith to maintain my pressure and buy buildings. Honestly, for all the griping that the religious civs shoot themselves in the foot taking piety, you shouldn't be surprised that they then dominate on religion and take the good beliefs. That's the point of piety: to greatly increase your early faith yield. It slows down your other tree, but pick up a single building and the extra culture/happiness catches you back up, you're essentially slowing the fast forward settling to enable more capability later. The piety tree even has a solution to the expensiveness of the shrine/temple (+3 maintenance), by making the temple into an early market with +25% gold. I never have gold problems taking piety as a result. Especially if it means I can grab tithes, I consider it nearly as powerful if not better than tradition when it is mixed in the beginning and then completed as my second tree.

Case Study:

• Last game (Immortal with 3 other AI going piety as competition), by putting 2 points in piety before going back to my starter tree,
• by the industrial I was:
• raking in 200 extra gpt from tithes just from completing Piety and Mosque of Jenne (and it was nearly 100 gpt even by medieval as I was able to forward-spread my religion so quickly). Just imagine how many bonuses this gave. I bought out nearly everything in new cities. And on one occasion bought an entire defensive army and rebuffed an invasion in only 2 turns.
• I easily caught back up in policies due to extra culture- finishing tradition, piety,patronage,several tenets in order, and halfway through rationalism by late industrial era.
• My faith yield stayed high enough I had no problem spamming loads of missionaries and all the religious buildings I could want--in fact I'd suggest picking a reformation belief that uses faith points because you'll actually end up with more than you can use with this strategy.

 

[joncnunn]

I think a source of Liberty's problems is that two of its strengths are actually really good for tall empires as well:

1. Free Great Person : An OCC would love this just as much as an empire with 6 self based cities.

2. Free Golden Age: Again, tall empires can also use this.

As a result, if you strengthen something that's along Liberty's lines (like increasing happiness per city) you also need to remove one of those or else you'll just switch things from Tradition overpowered to Liberty overpowered.

Tradition also has the same issues:
The food growth bonus for completing Tradition is too all cities; which is something a wide empire can use.
And the extra strength bombardment is feels out of place as it's military related.
Instead of triming Tradition's core Monarchy, I would instead downsize the global food bonus for completing tradition down to only the first 4 cities (matching the other two abilities) and also remove the extra strength bombardment.

Honor: I'd add that extra strength bombardment to one of the policies here.

 

[Nashoa]

For me part of liberties problem is that its very risky. Tradition is great for 4 tall cities and is still quite good for wide empires. Liberty is terrible, compared to tradition, with a small empire. Its debatable if its better for larger empire at all until mid-game.

Since you have to pick one or the other quite early, really early w/culture ruins, if you open liberty and end up with no space you've hurt yourself for the entire game. You can recover but its still a big risk. If you go tradition and end up alone on a large island with room for 6 cities your in super great shape.

Liberty is much, much better if you get pyramids if you miss out on it its a big loss. For me anyway.

As for ideas:
Yes to move the settler up one.

What about an extra trade route and a caravan? This gives you options to balance what your empire might need. Maybe you need food or maybe you need gold. Might make it and commerce(and wonders) to powerful?

What about +1 happiness per unique luxury, maybe exclude ones from trade if you can. Or +1 happiness from extra luxuries, still better to trade but maybe not sell. I've had some games on liberty really hurt by lack of unique luxuries. Everyone's had that game where you have 5 silk and everyone else already has silk and every city state has whales..and only whales...and you already have whales....I still hate whales

Faster build time and lower cost on happiness buildings?

Free granary in cities past your 3rd? Or honestly just reverse traditions free Aqua/Monument to cities past your 4th.

A small boost to culture when you make a city connection to capital. Enough that its useful early but meaningless later on.

 

[Acken]

Hello danaphanous and thank you very much for participating

I have played a lot of liberty and here is my perspective:

First, good discussion and I think some of those are good ideas for balance. I'll add my discussion and some more thoughts and some alternate solutions.

First, I don't consider the settler policy to be the "best". I think the idea is that liberty as a theme is it should allow you to expand faster right? If it is truly a wide tree, then it should enable you to get out there faster than tradition...Right now it doesn't so it has a slower build-up to become effective. This is the main reason why Tradition has faster finishing times is because liberty is good, but slow in development and lacking in policies that support the new cities.

The issues with quick expansion:

• It has less culture, so going wide makes each policy take longer...so overall you can't get to the good policies in liberty nearly as fast as the good policies in tradition. This is why I typically expand no faster until I'm 4/6 of the way through liberty because the expansion bonuses don't come until later.

• 
  It's true that happiness comes very late and that the tree is slower than tradition due to late culture bonuses.
  
  

  [*]Then I have to stop at 4 cities anyway due to gold/happiness issues so honestly being able to produce those settlers quicker makes no difference since the early-game can't support more than 4 cities. If you overcome the happiness problems then you quickly run out of gold since liberty has NOTHING to help with those maintenance costs for all those extra basic building copies like tradition.

  
  As far as gold goes, I think extra road connection is supposed to alleviate the problem. But maybe it comes a bit late I'm unsure, or workers need some speed boost for roads. Happiness however is problematic as stated in the OP, maybe it comes too late however.
  
  

  [*]Liberty should free you up to expand faster than tradition and grab more good spots...that's kinda the point, so for starters I think the settler policy should come first. Then the production, as you need more cities to make the production effective.

  
  My main issue with putting settler before production is it makes taking that policy easier for a tradition/liberty mix which I really don't think helps improving the balance between both trees.
  
  

  I also think to address the bad border-growth problem in liberty, lack of culture, growth, and happiness some starter buildings should either be half-off like the religious ones in piety or maintenance free. Maybe upon opening granaries are half-price or cost no maintenance? And upon finishing colloseums are half price or cost no maintenance? This would encourage faster city growth getting cities of the ground faster and upon finishing allow you to quickly get +2 happiness everywhere so cities could take advantage of the growth without plunging you into unhappiness. I thought monuments...but that's kinda tradition's thing.

  
  I've proposed cheaper Colosseum and Aqueducts as a mean to help liberty.
  
  

  [*]opening liberty is way slower in policy acquisition than tradition. It takes 1/3 to 1/2 longer to finish for me. Sometimes it's even worth opening tradition then going to liberty. This should not be.
  [*]Due to the slow policy acquisition, liberty has a very slow start and does not enable to expand very quickly until about 2/3 of the way through.

  
  Yes it's true it's a slower tree due to 2 factors, tradition has a very strong opener and then it has a good culture policy. I don't really know how to fix the issue without making the tree culture too good to take while going tradition though, especially with a capital centric bonus.
  
  

  [*]the finisher is kinda underpowered compared to tradition's massive bonuses.

  
  Agreed, I proposed giving liberty a free trade route to help with growth (or gold).
  
  

  [*]Happiness is awful. The only happiness in the tree is meritocracy which requires roads everywhere, again nerfing Liberty's supposed expansion power and requiring you to wait, grow, then build roads before you can get the effect. Not to mention, 5% does not affect the early happiness pool much at all.

  
  Yes I agree Meritocracy is crap compared to the 1happy per 2pop in capital in Tradition, especially in a tree that needs happiness the most. I've proposed boosts to meritocracy, with a boost to workers it may be enough to both fix the happiness problem AND the gold.
  
  

  I don't think Piety or honor needs to be balanced so that it's the same starting strength. I see both as a supporting tree that you mix and match with either tradition or liberty. I play liberty AND piety, they synergize really well as having a strong religion often benefits wide empires more and gives me the early happiness/culture/gold/faith I need. If I see the potential for a religion, I open piety as my second policy after putting a point in liberty, this halves the time for the shrine and temple. Then a second point to get more faith from them. These two points nearly guarantee I'll get a nice religion and I can then go back to liberty and build cheap shrines as a starter building (only a few turns) while founding and enhancing a religion far quicker. After working down to the settlers/-33% social policy cost per city I then take the -20% discount to faith purchases and start spamming my religious buildings that I easily picked up due to piety faith acceleration (Pagodas is best if possible for liberty)...each gives a bit more faith adding to your fpt, new cities quickly build shrines and temples and in no time I have more than 50 faith/turn and can buy these great religious building just turns after founding...erasing founding happiness penalties and giving me that good early culture. Mixing this way in my experience can give liberty/piety the same policy acquisition rate as tradition and you can go far wider. I see honor in the same way...I support tree that you mix with either liberty or tradition if you intend to produce extra military and take someone else's cities through war early game.

  
  That's an interesting take on Piety. Ultimately though if you buff Piety to make it better by itself, I don't think it's a problem. Sure a liberty/piety mix will be better but so is a good tradition/liberty mix. It's very much true that piety policies synergize mostly with a wide empire. That would have to be taken into consideration. Maybe increase it's capital centric powers then.
  
  M

  ost ppl seem to have trouble with this, but my religions always seem to make the game with tons of gold, happiness, and culture, and even growth as a result. And I've done this on every difficulty including Deity, so this strategy is always valid. The people that complain that religion is not worth the investment or too hard to maintain must have not really given Piety a good shot. It always gives me an epic religion with more than enough faith to maintain my pressure and buy buildings. Honestly, for all the griping that the religious civs shoot themselves in the foot taking piety, you shouldn't be surprised that they then dominate on religion and take the good beliefs. That's the point of piety: to greatly increase your early faith yield. It slows down your other tree, but pick up a single building and the extra culture/happiness catches you back up, you're essentially slowing the fast forward settling to enable more capability later. The piety tree even has a solution to the expensiveness of the shrine/temple (+3 maintenance), by making the temple into an early market with +25% gold. I never have gold problems taking piety as a result. Especially if it means I can grab tithes, I consider it nearly as powerful if not better than tradition when it is mixed in the beginning and then completed as my second tree.

  
  Religion is good, the problem is that it doesn't need Piety to be good. The other issue is that you don't really have that many policies to invest in Piety. You usually finish tradition or liberty and then before rationalism you only have one or 2 extras. However I don't think Piety needs many buffs, it mostly need a culture buff in my opinion. For growth I really think making aqueducts cheaper (as base not as a policy) is the way to fix a lot of the growth problems in the first four trees. It won't affect tradition a lot since they get it free and it would help the others a lot.
  
  Honor however needs some help, mostly because it doesn't help war very well. But that's a discussion for later and something that may require to also discuss melee vs range balance.
  
  Thanks for your detailed feedback A bit busy these days playing Dark Souls 2 but I will be back to the drawing boards and give you a testable version with minor fixes if you are interested.
  
  

  I think a source of Liberty's problems is that two of its strengths are actually really good for tall empires as well:
  
  1. Free Great Person : An OCC would love this just as much as an empire with 6 self based cities.
  
  2. Free Golden Age: Again, tall empires can also use this.
  
  As a result, if you strengthen something that's along Liberty's lines (like increasing happiness per city) you also need to remove one of those or else you'll just switch things from Tradition overpowered to Liberty overpowered.
  
  Tradition also has the same issues:
  The food growth bonus for completing Tradition is too all cities; which is something a wide empire can use.
  And the extra strength bombardment is feels out of place as it's military related.
  Instead of triming Tradition's core Monarchy, I would instead downsize the global food bonus for completing tradition down to only the first 4 cities (matching the other two abilities) and also remove the extra strength bombardment.
  
  Honor: I'd add that extra strength bombardment to one of the policies here.

  
  Yes I,ve considered limiting tradition bonus to the first four. We'll see. In the end I don't think it's a problem that this policy affect every cities as long as the rest of the trees makes it a lot harder to manage a larger empire.
  
  

  For me part of liberties problem is that its very risky. Tradition is great for 4 tall cities and is still quite good for wide empires. Liberty is terrible, compared to tradition, with a small empire. Its debatable if its better for larger empire at all until mid-game.
  
  Since you have to pick one or the other quite early, really early w/culture ruins, if you open liberty and end up with no space you've hurt yourself for the entire game. You can recover but its still a big risk. If you go tradition and end up alone on a large island with room for 6 cities your in super great shape.
  
  Liberty is much, much better if you get pyramids if you miss out on it its a big loss. For me anyway.
  
  As for ideas:
  Yes to move the settler up one.
  
  What about an extra trade route and a caravan? This gives you options to balance what your empire might need. Maybe you need food or maybe you need gold. Might make it and commerce(and wonders) to powerful?
  
  What about +1 happiness per unique luxury, maybe exclude ones from trade if you can. Or +1 happiness from extra luxuries, still better to trade but maybe not sell. I've had some games on liberty really hurt by lack of unique luxuries. Everyone's had that game where you have 5 silk and everyone else already has silk and every city state has whales..and only whales...and you already have whales....I still hate whales
  
  Faster build time and lower cost on happiness buildings?
  
  Free granary in cities past your 3rd? Or honestly just reverse traditions free Aqua/Monument to cities past your 4th.
  
  A small boost to culture when you make a city connection to capital. Enough that its useful early but meaningless later on.

  
  A lot of your suggestions are already taken into considerations Pyramids is very strong for it's worker bonus and 2 free workers, I've considered making worker cheaper instead, diminishing the impact of pyramids. Extra happiness per luxuries instead of routes is also a possibility.
  
  As for the risk of taking liberties, if you have no room. That's not something that I consider fixing nor can see exactly how, I can't make everything good in every situations. If you end up with a very small empire with liberty well yes you'll be in a bad situation, but I don't really see it as a problem. If you had to open liberty early due to a ruin it's alright to then go to tradition once you have more information.
  
  
  Thank you everyone for sharing.

 

[Sorinth]

My suggestion for boosting Liberty would be to either remove the connected requirement to get the +1 Happy or reduce the maintenance cost of tiles. Additionally switching the production and worker policies so the left side was free units (Worker then Settler), and the right side had the per city bonuses (Production, Happiness, Culture) would make a lot of sense.

In terms of nerfing Tradition changing the Food growth bonus with a boost to internal trade routes always seemed fitting. That way Tradition would lose out on the science/gold bonuses of external trade routes. The science is made up by having stronger growth, gold is made up by Monarchy. It also makes sense that an Empire based on Tradition would be more insular. I'd also cut the 4 free buildings down to 2 or 3.

 

[layelaye]

i made a mod around a week ago, that does just that- buffs liberty while not changing the idea of the tree. when ill get home ill write a more detailed post, but you can check it out yourself, its named LibertyMod (how creative )

 

[joncnunn]

i made a mod around a week ago, that does just that- buffs liberty while not changing the idea of the tree. when ill get home ill write a more detailed post, but you can check it out yourself, its named LibertyMod (how creative )

If that's all you've done, I think just made Liberty over powered compared to Tradition (as opposed to in the current game Tradition being slightly over powered vs Liberty). See my above post; two of Liberty's policies are already great for tall empires.

 

[danaphanous]

Hey, thanks for your discussion of my suggestions! I'm excited to see how your mod turns out, keep me posted!

The last time I took liberty/piety I actually finished both trees without much of a loss on timing with Rationalism. This happened because of the +4 extra culture I got in every city due to my two religious buildings, pagoda+mosques, tripling early culture. I did far more than break even, finishing many more policies than I usually do and getting much more early smiley's and faith than I usually do. It made my tradition games look weak--especially in the modern/information when all those cities matured and my science was just insane. Going piety early could pay off and result in a well-balanced religion that exceeds the benefits of a typical second tree, or you could have 4 AI go that route and lose out on much of what you were aiming for--it remains a calculated risk which is probably why I like it.
This particular game I completed 4 trees completely: liberty, piety, aesthetics, rationalism, and put 8 points in order: 32 points spent so far. I completed all this by around 1908. I usually struggle to get more than 3 trees completed and am still working through my ideology when the game ends, but this game I seemed to get at least an extra tree done directly as a result of going piety which completely offset and exceeded the investment. I wonder if these potential customizable benefits are why piety doesn't reward you much in the beginning. They wanted it to be a risk tree.

As far as your comment about getting a religion with or without it: totally true. But just getting a religion isn't the whole story...it's being able to use it. Most ppl look at the system as what beliefs did I get? With that approach is 1 extra belief worth 5 policies? No, of course not. But the other 4 policies before it all boost your religion, faith, reduce hammers to faith buildings, etc. So don't look at it as adding +1 belief to 5 you already have. Look at it as roughly doubling, on average, the benefits of all beliefs that require faith to effectively utilize (and occasionally tripling like the above game), and this includes ones that work based on city numbers or pop as your religion will spread about twice as wide too due to the extra missionaries.

As stated in my previous discussion, the one thing piety could use would be a little passive or building associated extra culture in the opener. It doesn't make sense that every first tree has a way to get extra culture but piety. This would help the AI who go straight through it and encourage more ppl to open it as the culture cost wouldn't be as great for investing in it.

I agree, honor might should be changed. It also has some very powerful policies though, but the distribution and early rewards are unbalanced. for warmongering: the 50% increase in exp is really, really good. I also very much like military caste. Just park a unit in the city and you have an extra smiley and monument's-worth of culture. Pretty good. If you can manage to finish it before leaving, the gold upon killing ends up pretty useful. If you are trying to make it a valid start in its own right though then it is certainly not.