I'm writing this without access to the game for a few different reasons, so this will be out of memory and out of the unified changelog that was updated back when pigs could fly.
PIETY
Opener:+5 Faith in Capital
This opener is pretty much just as boring as the tradition opener. This is the medieval era, we should be able to think of something more fun by now.
Scaling:-5% -4*X% Faith purchase costs.
This was originally my idea, like most other bad designs in this tree. My initial suggestion however doesn't seem to work at all. It was that the cost of great people purchased would decrease as well. The idea was to make faith a resource that anyone could get, but make people with Piety way better at using faith. Now it doesn't really seem to do much unless you go out of your way to pick specific religious beliefs. I would suggest figuring out some other kind of scaling for this tree unless we can figure out a way to make it actually useful for everyone picking it.
Finisher:Holy Sites produce +2 Gold and +2 Culture. +1 Happiness from all Religious Buildings.
First of all, the +yields on holy sites is awesome, but got a lot worse with how prophets got their costs severely increased a few patches ago. I like the slower religion progression myself, don't get me wrong, but I really dislike how rare the holy sites have become even if you have good faith output yourself.
As for the other part of the finisher. Here is the problem with the tree that Gazebo wanted to fix +1 happiness for every faith-purchased building is pretty crazy. Assuming you founded a religion this finisher is going to easily provide you with 3 happiness per city, potentially 4 for Byzantium(but Byzantium is hardly the problem
). It is however worth mentioning that one of the other medieval trees have a policy that eventually comes to match the power of this finisher. One could also argue that the strength of religion and especially religious people that you could get them to be content with their situation even if it blew, which pretty much equates to happiness in civ. By this reasoning it makes sense that piety and heavy religion should be the natural choice for leaders wanting to suppress unhappiness.
However I completely agree that this finisher was way overpowered, but I'd like the theme to stay somehow and I'm not really a fan of the replacement.
Organized Religion: Temples and Shrines produce +1 Faith and +1 Culture, and are produced 50% faster.
This policy have felt rather boring since it was nerfed. I mean sure it isn't bad, but it just doesn't feel special. Slightly after it got nerfed tradition went and got a policy providing 1 culture to monuments and 2 culture to gardens among other things, making this nerf feels even weirder. I don't know how to make it more interesting, maybe increase the effect on temples.
Divine Right: Cities that follow majority religion generate +2 production and +2 Faith. Border-growth doubled during a GA.
I feel like a lot of Piety's problems stems from the fact that it doesn't really have a clear goal. It tried being good at everything, but that ended up being too good and all parts got nerfed and now they just don't feel fun anymore. Individual parts aren't necessarily bad or anything like that they just sorta feel all over the place. Like the reason why you pick piety isn't really about that you like piety or want the bonuses it provides, it was pretty much for the happiness from the finisher so you could sustain extreme expansion.
Iconography: All specialists produce +1 Faith. Free Great Artist.
This probably is the policy that have changed the most while receiving absolutely no changes. It went like a roller-coaster up and down with the specialist-changes, going from really good, to completely useless to the current level 'meh'. It is pretty much the same for all other yieldboosting policies, +1 yield on a specialist producing 12 is a lot less interesting than +1 yield on a specialist thats producing 3.
The free Artist makes sense and can be used in multiple ways, that's again a one-shot effect that acts as a support for the real ability, being +faith from specialists.
Trade Fairs: +2 Gold from Temples and +2 Gold from Markets in a cities that follow majority religion. Majority religion spreads 50% faster along Trade-routes.
There are a lot of these flat yield policies in piety, this is probably what's creating the imbalances in the first place as flat yields can't be both balanced in the early-game and interesting in the mid to late-game.
Monasticism: Can purchase Monasteries with Faith (+2 Faith, +2 Food, +2 Science, 1 Scientist slot).
With the recent buff to scientists, this building got a lot more interesting, and it remains probably the only really interesting part of the Piety tree. It recently lost the part where it provides a free monastery in the capital, something I'm not exactly sure why. It's not like this policy is at all very strong, it is again flat yields that you actually have to pay faith for (which you have a lot less of with the change to prophets). If the point of it was to keep monasteries as consistent faith-purchase buildings then perhaps something else should have been added instead?
All in all there are really not a lot of policies that I actually like in piety. Boosted holy sites, faith from specialists, monasteries, and the now removed superior happiness compared to the other medieval trees. The main imbalance in the medieval trees in my opinion states from a problem in design, something that I'll probably talk about more later on.
PATRONAGE
Opener:Influence with City-States degrades 25% slower than normal
This opener is fine, it is a pretty unique ability, it helps the trees main purpose and most importantly of all. It is not boring
Scaling:+5 +3*X Influence resting point for all City-states
My only real issue with this is that if you go for the patronage tree you're pretty much expecting to ally most city-states you run into, and keep them as allies. At which point extra resting point isn't going to do anything for you. I guess there are still strategies for keeping permanent friends by raising the resting-point enough but I hardly think you'd invest this heavily in patronage without the intention of allying most of them.
Finisher: Allied City-States occasionally gift you Great People, and expending a Great Person increases your Influence with all CSs by 5.
Completely fine, it rewards you for gathering city-state allies while also helping you keep them as allies.
Philanthropy: Receive 33% more Influence from Quests completed for City-States.
One of the more interesting policies in patronage imo. Seems to not be that good however, as quests seems to be less important the longer the game goes on. I personally like the idea that you need to actively work to make use out of the policy but again, if you in the mid to late game just stop doing quests because they are pointless this policy becomes garbage.
Consulates: Gain 1 additional vote in the World Congress for every 8 CS in game, and the chance of rigging elections in City-States is increased by 33%.
I've personally never found a use in the "Chance of rigging increased" I mean I rarely rig elections to start with, and when I do, I don't think I've ever failed to. I know that if you and another civ both have spies in the same city-state only one of you can actually rig the election, but that seems to be such a rare occurrence I'd hardly say it's a good stat to increase.
About the other part, more votes are always powerful, maybe too powerful. This policy along with the forbidden palace can make your first WC vote give you world religion even without spreading it, something that usually snowballs out of control. No idea how one would make it weaker and still relevant however.
Scholasticism: All City-States which are Allies provide a Science bonus equal to 33% of what they produce for themselves. If using CSD, also grants +25% Great Diplomat production.
This is both fine, fun and unique
Cultural Diplomacy: Quantity of Resources gifted by City-States increased by 100%. Happiness from gifted Luxuries increased by 100%.
I've used this plenty of times at this point but I'm still not sure how that luxury happiness thing works, does it also scale with population or is it just an extra 1 happiness for every luxury? Either way this is a pretty decent policy, but like most other patronage policies it seems really hard to balance, as how many city-states you can command completely varies between games. It is going to be either completely overpowered if you can snowball a lead with your city-states or if no AI tries to contest you, or it's going to be completely worthless if you have plenty of other AIs choosing patronage.
Merchant Confederacy: +3 Gold and +1 Influence (per turn) for each Trade Route with a City-State.
Decent enough policy imho, helps you keep your allies but locks down your trade-routes. However you seem to be getting about the same amount of gold from city-states as you get from other civs these days, so it's probably not a big loss.
All in all this tree isn't bad or poorly designed or anything like that, but the very concept behind it kinda ruins the medieval trees as a whole. Aesthetics does this as well to some degree but not nearly as badly.
AESTHETICS
This may come as a surprise to everyone but I usually end up going Aesthetics pretty much every game, unless I'm planning on doing some mass expansion/conquering at which point I picked up piety for the earlier happiness. This really has nothing to do with the power of Aesthetics, more to do with both the alternatives being really boring. Patronage is great if you're planning to do a diplomatic victory, per design, but utterly boring if you have no intention to play around with city-states. I realize that is by design, but that just leaves you with Aesthetics and Piety. I completely dislike the design of Piety right now. It was a bunch of flat yield policies held together by a overpowered finisher. Even before the nerf I really disliked going for it. The happiness felt cheesy and the rest of the tree felt extremely boring.
Opener: Receive a large amount of culture every time you expend a great person.
I actually think this might be too bad. The idea is solid but the number is too low at least I think so.
Scaling: +5% +5*X% faster Cultural GPs.
This is solid, I tend to use a lot less cultural specialists now for some reason. Probably have something to do with all other specialists going up to 6 yields way earlier. However the idea by itself is solid, good synergy with the opener and the rest of the tree.
Finisher: Double theming bonus you receive from Museums and Wonders, and reveals hidden antiquity sites.
With the current focus of the tree, this finisher is awesome. Two unique, powerful and fun abilities.
Humanities: All Culture buildings that can hold Great Works produce +3 Science. All Great Works produce +1 Gold.
This is how you do flat yields. You add it to buildings and things that increase over time, making the effect balanced at most points during the game. It also raises the value of less powerful buildings like the amphitheater.
Public Galleries: 100% of excess Happiness added each turn to the amount of Culture that may be spent on Social Policies. +1 Happiness from Museums and Opera Houses.
This policy is awesome, sure it's probably not going to do anything at the point when you pick it, but eventually it provides you with 2 happiness per city along with converting excess happiness into culture. This policy imho catches up with the old Piety finisher eventually, even if the Piety finisher potentially provides 3 happiness per city, it forces you to pick faith-buy buildings as your beliefs, and they are in my opinion less powerful than the other beliefs (with the possible exception of Order, which is awesome)
Flourishing of the Arts: World Wonders generate +1 Tourism, and the empire immediately enters a Golden Age.
Pretty much a filler policy. A golden age is nice, but 1 tourism per wonder really isn't. Even if you manage to collect a majority of the wonders in the game, this policy isn't going to do much at all.
National Treasure: A Great Person of your choice appears near your Capital. +2 Culture from GP improvements.
Another awesome policy, a powerful instant effect with a situationally powerful long-term effect. The only difference between this policy and the Liberty finisher is a few extra yields on a few select tiles, yes this policy feels fun while the liberty finisher just feels like a drag.
Cultural Exchange: Increases the Tourism modifier for shared religion, trade routes, and open borders by 25% each.
Probably my least favorite policy in the entire tree. I mean at least Flourishing of the Arts provided a free golden age. This feels like a remnant of the old Aesthetics tree that was just left here for no reason at all, increased modifiers on a boring yield that is pretty much only useful for tourism-victory.
Finale
Okay, this is the important part, I feel like all of the medieval trees issues comes down to one thing, and that's the fact that two of the trees are tunes towards specific victory-conditions, this leaves the third tree, piety, feeling like the only real choice for people not planning on going for those two specific VCs. This has lead to a whole lot of nerfs to the piety tree, which in my opinion wasn't really very fun to start with. Flat yields, which the piety tree was pretty much built around suffers even more from nerfs, because their early advantage is pretty much all they have.
I would try to solve this by pretty much reconstructing, to some degree, all the existing medieval trees. Yes I'm aware that sounds like a really big overreaction, but as it looks now there really isn't going to be any balance.
First step would be getting rid of the heavy focus on specific VCs in Aesthetics and Patronage, it feels like a huge waste of choice to waste two of three options on niche-strategies. It would be way more interesting for everyone involved if every player that chooses to unlock a medieval tree have to seriously decide between three trees that are equally powerful in different ways. Kinda like how the renaissance era trees are balanced, they are all focused in their own way, but they are all pretty much valid choices for any build or strategy.
Piety have a few policies that are actually salvageable, but most others are just unfixably boring.
Aesthetics is pretty fine aside from the tourism from wonders and increased tourism modifiers policies. Hidden antiquity-sites can be turned into landmarks and are useful for any build, theming-bonus I think is pretty fine, themingbonuses isn't really something that you completely ignore even if you have no intention of going for tourism-victory.
Patronage I'm not really sure about, can you actually have a city-states tree without having it tied to diplo-victory? Probably not. Patronage also suffers from, as mentioned earlier, that the more civs that pick it, the less useful it becomes for everybody. City-states are finite, and not having as many as you want really hurts you if you go for patronage.
Anyways this is just me ranting, feels free to disagree with me or whatever.
PIETY
Opener:+5 Faith in Capital
This opener is pretty much just as boring as the tradition opener. This is the medieval era, we should be able to think of something more fun by now.
Scaling:-5% -4*X% Faith purchase costs.
This was originally my idea, like most other bad designs in this tree. My initial suggestion however doesn't seem to work at all. It was that the cost of great people purchased would decrease as well. The idea was to make faith a resource that anyone could get, but make people with Piety way better at using faith. Now it doesn't really seem to do much unless you go out of your way to pick specific religious beliefs. I would suggest figuring out some other kind of scaling for this tree unless we can figure out a way to make it actually useful for everyone picking it.
Finisher:Holy Sites produce +2 Gold and +2 Culture. +1 Happiness from all Religious Buildings.
First of all, the +yields on holy sites is awesome, but got a lot worse with how prophets got their costs severely increased a few patches ago. I like the slower religion progression myself, don't get me wrong, but I really dislike how rare the holy sites have become even if you have good faith output yourself.
As for the other part of the finisher. Here is the problem with the tree that Gazebo wanted to fix +1 happiness for every faith-purchased building is pretty crazy. Assuming you founded a religion this finisher is going to easily provide you with 3 happiness per city, potentially 4 for Byzantium(but Byzantium is hardly the problem
). It is however worth mentioning that one of the other medieval trees have a policy that eventually comes to match the power of this finisher. One could also argue that the strength of religion and especially religious people that you could get them to be content with their situation even if it blew, which pretty much equates to happiness in civ. By this reasoning it makes sense that piety and heavy religion should be the natural choice for leaders wanting to suppress unhappiness.However I completely agree that this finisher was way overpowered, but I'd like the theme to stay somehow and I'm not really a fan of the replacement.
Organized Religion: Temples and Shrines produce +1 Faith and +1 Culture, and are produced 50% faster.
This policy have felt rather boring since it was nerfed. I mean sure it isn't bad, but it just doesn't feel special. Slightly after it got nerfed tradition went and got a policy providing 1 culture to monuments and 2 culture to gardens among other things, making this nerf feels even weirder. I don't know how to make it more interesting, maybe increase the effect on temples.
Divine Right: Cities that follow majority religion generate +2 production and +2 Faith. Border-growth doubled during a GA.
I feel like a lot of Piety's problems stems from the fact that it doesn't really have a clear goal. It tried being good at everything, but that ended up being too good and all parts got nerfed and now they just don't feel fun anymore. Individual parts aren't necessarily bad or anything like that they just sorta feel all over the place. Like the reason why you pick piety isn't really about that you like piety or want the bonuses it provides, it was pretty much for the happiness from the finisher so you could sustain extreme expansion.
Iconography: All specialists produce +1 Faith. Free Great Artist.
This probably is the policy that have changed the most while receiving absolutely no changes. It went like a roller-coaster up and down with the specialist-changes, going from really good, to completely useless to the current level 'meh'. It is pretty much the same for all other yieldboosting policies, +1 yield on a specialist producing 12 is a lot less interesting than +1 yield on a specialist thats producing 3.
The free Artist makes sense and can be used in multiple ways, that's again a one-shot effect that acts as a support for the real ability, being +faith from specialists.
Trade Fairs: +2 Gold from Temples and +2 Gold from Markets in a cities that follow majority religion. Majority religion spreads 50% faster along Trade-routes.
There are a lot of these flat yield policies in piety, this is probably what's creating the imbalances in the first place as flat yields can't be both balanced in the early-game and interesting in the mid to late-game.
Monasticism: Can purchase Monasteries with Faith (+2 Faith, +2 Food, +2 Science, 1 Scientist slot).
With the recent buff to scientists, this building got a lot more interesting, and it remains probably the only really interesting part of the Piety tree. It recently lost the part where it provides a free monastery in the capital, something I'm not exactly sure why. It's not like this policy is at all very strong, it is again flat yields that you actually have to pay faith for (which you have a lot less of with the change to prophets). If the point of it was to keep monasteries as consistent faith-purchase buildings then perhaps something else should have been added instead?
All in all there are really not a lot of policies that I actually like in piety. Boosted holy sites, faith from specialists, monasteries, and the now removed superior happiness compared to the other medieval trees. The main imbalance in the medieval trees in my opinion states from a problem in design, something that I'll probably talk about more later on.
PATRONAGE
Opener:Influence with City-States degrades 25% slower than normal
This opener is fine, it is a pretty unique ability, it helps the trees main purpose and most importantly of all. It is not boring
Scaling:+5 +3*X Influence resting point for all City-states
My only real issue with this is that if you go for the patronage tree you're pretty much expecting to ally most city-states you run into, and keep them as allies. At which point extra resting point isn't going to do anything for you. I guess there are still strategies for keeping permanent friends by raising the resting-point enough but I hardly think you'd invest this heavily in patronage without the intention of allying most of them.
Finisher: Allied City-States occasionally gift you Great People, and expending a Great Person increases your Influence with all CSs by 5.
Completely fine, it rewards you for gathering city-state allies while also helping you keep them as allies.
Philanthropy: Receive 33% more Influence from Quests completed for City-States.
One of the more interesting policies in patronage imo. Seems to not be that good however, as quests seems to be less important the longer the game goes on. I personally like the idea that you need to actively work to make use out of the policy but again, if you in the mid to late game just stop doing quests because they are pointless this policy becomes garbage.
Consulates: Gain 1 additional vote in the World Congress for every 8 CS in game, and the chance of rigging elections in City-States is increased by 33%.
I've personally never found a use in the "Chance of rigging increased" I mean I rarely rig elections to start with, and when I do, I don't think I've ever failed to. I know that if you and another civ both have spies in the same city-state only one of you can actually rig the election, but that seems to be such a rare occurrence I'd hardly say it's a good stat to increase.
About the other part, more votes are always powerful, maybe too powerful. This policy along with the forbidden palace can make your first WC vote give you world religion even without spreading it, something that usually snowballs out of control. No idea how one would make it weaker and still relevant however.
Scholasticism: All City-States which are Allies provide a Science bonus equal to 33% of what they produce for themselves. If using CSD, also grants +25% Great Diplomat production.
This is both fine, fun and unique
Cultural Diplomacy: Quantity of Resources gifted by City-States increased by 100%. Happiness from gifted Luxuries increased by 100%.
I've used this plenty of times at this point but I'm still not sure how that luxury happiness thing works, does it also scale with population or is it just an extra 1 happiness for every luxury? Either way this is a pretty decent policy, but like most other patronage policies it seems really hard to balance, as how many city-states you can command completely varies between games. It is going to be either completely overpowered if you can snowball a lead with your city-states or if no AI tries to contest you, or it's going to be completely worthless if you have plenty of other AIs choosing patronage.
Merchant Confederacy: +3 Gold and +1 Influence (per turn) for each Trade Route with a City-State.
Decent enough policy imho, helps you keep your allies but locks down your trade-routes. However you seem to be getting about the same amount of gold from city-states as you get from other civs these days, so it's probably not a big loss.
All in all this tree isn't bad or poorly designed or anything like that, but the very concept behind it kinda ruins the medieval trees as a whole. Aesthetics does this as well to some degree but not nearly as badly.
AESTHETICS
This may come as a surprise to everyone but I usually end up going Aesthetics pretty much every game, unless I'm planning on doing some mass expansion/conquering at which point I picked up piety for the earlier happiness. This really has nothing to do with the power of Aesthetics, more to do with both the alternatives being really boring. Patronage is great if you're planning to do a diplomatic victory, per design, but utterly boring if you have no intention to play around with city-states. I realize that is by design, but that just leaves you with Aesthetics and Piety. I completely dislike the design of Piety right now. It was a bunch of flat yield policies held together by a overpowered finisher. Even before the nerf I really disliked going for it. The happiness felt cheesy and the rest of the tree felt extremely boring.
Opener: Receive a large amount of culture every time you expend a great person.
I actually think this might be too bad. The idea is solid but the number is too low at least I think so.
Scaling: +5% +5*X% faster Cultural GPs.
This is solid, I tend to use a lot less cultural specialists now for some reason. Probably have something to do with all other specialists going up to 6 yields way earlier. However the idea by itself is solid, good synergy with the opener and the rest of the tree.
Finisher: Double theming bonus you receive from Museums and Wonders, and reveals hidden antiquity sites.
With the current focus of the tree, this finisher is awesome. Two unique, powerful and fun abilities.
Humanities: All Culture buildings that can hold Great Works produce +3 Science. All Great Works produce +1 Gold.
This is how you do flat yields. You add it to buildings and things that increase over time, making the effect balanced at most points during the game. It also raises the value of less powerful buildings like the amphitheater.
Public Galleries: 100% of excess Happiness added each turn to the amount of Culture that may be spent on Social Policies. +1 Happiness from Museums and Opera Houses.
This policy is awesome, sure it's probably not going to do anything at the point when you pick it, but eventually it provides you with 2 happiness per city along with converting excess happiness into culture. This policy imho catches up with the old Piety finisher eventually, even if the Piety finisher potentially provides 3 happiness per city, it forces you to pick faith-buy buildings as your beliefs, and they are in my opinion less powerful than the other beliefs (with the possible exception of Order, which is awesome)
Flourishing of the Arts: World Wonders generate +1 Tourism, and the empire immediately enters a Golden Age.
Pretty much a filler policy. A golden age is nice, but 1 tourism per wonder really isn't. Even if you manage to collect a majority of the wonders in the game, this policy isn't going to do much at all.
National Treasure: A Great Person of your choice appears near your Capital. +2 Culture from GP improvements.
Another awesome policy, a powerful instant effect with a situationally powerful long-term effect. The only difference between this policy and the Liberty finisher is a few extra yields on a few select tiles, yes this policy feels fun while the liberty finisher just feels like a drag.
Cultural Exchange: Increases the Tourism modifier for shared religion, trade routes, and open borders by 25% each.
Probably my least favorite policy in the entire tree. I mean at least Flourishing of the Arts provided a free golden age. This feels like a remnant of the old Aesthetics tree that was just left here for no reason at all, increased modifiers on a boring yield that is pretty much only useful for tourism-victory.
Finale
Okay, this is the important part, I feel like all of the medieval trees issues comes down to one thing, and that's the fact that two of the trees are tunes towards specific victory-conditions, this leaves the third tree, piety, feeling like the only real choice for people not planning on going for those two specific VCs. This has lead to a whole lot of nerfs to the piety tree, which in my opinion wasn't really very fun to start with. Flat yields, which the piety tree was pretty much built around suffers even more from nerfs, because their early advantage is pretty much all they have.
I would try to solve this by pretty much reconstructing, to some degree, all the existing medieval trees. Yes I'm aware that sounds like a really big overreaction, but as it looks now there really isn't going to be any balance.
First step would be getting rid of the heavy focus on specific VCs in Aesthetics and Patronage, it feels like a huge waste of choice to waste two of three options on niche-strategies. It would be way more interesting for everyone involved if every player that chooses to unlock a medieval tree have to seriously decide between three trees that are equally powerful in different ways. Kinda like how the renaissance era trees are balanced, they are all focused in their own way, but they are all pretty much valid choices for any build or strategy.
Piety have a few policies that are actually salvageable, but most others are just unfixably boring.
Aesthetics is pretty fine aside from the tourism from wonders and increased tourism modifiers policies. Hidden antiquity-sites can be turned into landmarks and are useful for any build, theming-bonus I think is pretty fine, themingbonuses isn't really something that you completely ignore even if you have no intention of going for tourism-victory.
Patronage I'm not really sure about, can you actually have a city-states tree without having it tied to diplo-victory? Probably not. Patronage also suffers from, as mentioned earlier, that the more civs that pick it, the less useful it becomes for everybody. City-states are finite, and not having as many as you want really hurts you if you go for patronage.
Anyways this is just me ranting, feels free to disagree with me or whatever.
