As I have mentioned earlier, I spent the last weeks on implementing a planned redesign for the available civics. The main motivation was the aggregated feedback on civics I have been getting on the forum over time, as well as my own impressions while playing various civilizations in the run up to sharing the new map and new civilizations on the develop branch. There were several goals here, but most importantly I wanted to improve on civics that did not have a clear identity, either in the historical theming or in the direction of their effects, and I wanted to make sure that the choices are interesting and that no civic was too weak or overshadowed by its alternatives.
I initially only wanted to make minor balance adjustments, but after thinking about it more I eventually came up with more comprehensive changes. I removed some existing civics, introduced new ones, and renamed others (the line between these is a bit blurry since the effects changed as well). You will also noticed that a lot of the existing effects moved around as well: one takeaway from a lot of the feedback is that some effects are actually quite good but maybe not in the position they had in the previous civics system - that is both the case for effects that were too weak or too strong for where they were. Sometimes strong effects were fine by themselves but too obvious for the civic that had them. I generally tried to make the decision to move these to civics that seemed weak before.
Here is a full list of all civics in the game so you can see for yourself:
In addition to these civics changes, some other related changes happened:
Alongside this I also adjusted starting civics, leader favourite civics, civics AI (including new AI for the new effects), and civics stability.
When thinking about these changes, please note that civics design is tightly constrained by many different concerns. Civics need to be balanced among each other within the same category, but at the same time civics associated with certain time periods need to get superseded at some point. Civics also need to be spread evenly across the tech tree to give a sense of advancement and unlocking new choices. Conversely, techs should not be sparse and each offer something new to the player. The properties of a civic should align with the historically appropriate time period, geographical area, and civilizations. It's probably impossible to meet all of these goals at the same time, so if addressing e.g. the balance of a civic also keep the "theming" in mind. Overall, I think it is fine for a civic to be "niche" or situational, as long as such a niche exists at all and feels not contrived and historically fitting.
I don't want to elaborate on every individual decision I made with these changes in this post, but if you are interested, feel free to ask in this thread. Likewise, none of these decisions are final in any way (and actually some civics are more experimental than others). So feedback is explicitly welcome - but as with the map and civ changes, I value feedback based on actual play over theoretical considerations. I put this out so soon after the civilization changes to get as much practical feedback as possible and anticipate making further adjustments.
I initially only wanted to make minor balance adjustments, but after thinking about it more I eventually came up with more comprehensive changes. I removed some existing civics, introduced new ones, and renamed others (the line between these is a bit blurry since the effects changed as well). You will also noticed that a lot of the existing effects moved around as well: one takeaway from a lot of the feedback is that some effects are actually quite good but maybe not in the position they had in the previous civics system - that is both the case for effects that were too weak or too strong for where they were. Sometimes strong effects were fine by themselves but too obvious for the civic that had them. I generally tried to make the decision to move these to civics that seemed weak before.
Here is a full list of all civics in the game so you can see for yourself:
Spoiler :
In addition to these civics changes, some other related changes happened:
Spoiler :
Alongside this I also adjusted starting civics, leader favourite civics, civics AI (including new AI for the new effects), and civics stability.
When thinking about these changes, please note that civics design is tightly constrained by many different concerns. Civics need to be balanced among each other within the same category, but at the same time civics associated with certain time periods need to get superseded at some point. Civics also need to be spread evenly across the tech tree to give a sense of advancement and unlocking new choices. Conversely, techs should not be sparse and each offer something new to the player. The properties of a civic should align with the historically appropriate time period, geographical area, and civilizations. It's probably impossible to meet all of these goals at the same time, so if addressing e.g. the balance of a civic also keep the "theming" in mind. Overall, I think it is fine for a civic to be "niche" or situational, as long as such a niche exists at all and feels not contrived and historically fitting.
I don't want to elaborate on every individual decision I made with these changes in this post, but if you are interested, feel free to ask in this thread. Likewise, none of these decisions are final in any way (and actually some civics are more experimental than others). So feedback is explicitly welcome - but as with the map and civ changes, I value feedback based on actual play over theoretical considerations. I put this out so soon after the civilization changes to get as much practical feedback as possible and anticipate making further adjustments.
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instead of Great Generals, in addition to Democracy?
