[Vote] (2-29) More Processes Proposals

[Recursive]

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" for every proposal you'd be okay with if it were implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if these proposals weren't implemented. You can vote for any number of options.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 29
Discussion Thread: (2-29) Integrate More Processes From Bare Necessities Mod
Proposer: @N.Core
Sponsor(s): @N.Core

Proposal Details
Bare Necessities mod link: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bare-necessities.645157/

Add more flavor to city processes by integrate these three processes to VP:

As for balance context:
Prayer unlocks in Philosophy
Propaganda unlocks in Radio
Prosperity unlocks in Globalization

Reasoning:

• While VP already has Food and Culture related processes for a long time, it would be nice to also have more processes for other types of yield. So you can have more options to spend the production from cities.

This shouldn't be a big deal since it only affects minor gameplay. But I still need your opinion about what do you think of this one?

Credit: @Enginseer


VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 29a
Discussion Thread: (2-29a) Integrate Tourism Process As An Order Ideology Tenet
Proposer: @pineappledan
Sponsor(s): @Recursive

Proposal Details

Problem: Order's CV tenets are lame.
- There is no Tier 3 cultural victory in Order
- Order has 2 CV tenets and they are both Tier 2:

• Cultural Revolution: +34% Tourism to the other Order Civilizations. Spies steal technologies at double the normal rate. +5 from Great Works.
• Dictatorship of the Proletariat: +50% Tourism to civilizations with less Happiness.+1 happiness from Factories.

Cultural Revolution's bonus to Great Works is identical a Freedom T1 Tenet: Creative Expression. The 34% Tourism towards other Order players is basically useless, but it's not doing any harm either. Players that share your ideology are unlikely to be the last cultural holdout, so it won't win you a game.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat is extremely powerful, basically because it's only 1 of 2 meaningful CV bonuses in the entire tree, other than a flat GW booster. A 50% tourism modifier is huge; basically carrying the full potential of Order's CV play

Order's Great Leap Forward is squatting on the slot that a Tier 3 CV tenet would use. It's also a lame tenet. It is a full T3 slot and GLF consists entirely of 2 free techs. No permanent bonuses. It's potentially quite powerful, since techs in the super-late game are expensive, but it's not special and it doesn't affect your playstyle. A Rationalism policy also gives a free tech, but it also gives a 2nd bonus. I think we can do better.

Proposal:
New Order T3 CV policy: Socialist Realism
Unlocks the Propaganda Process (convert 15% of Production into Tourism). +25% Tourism to the other Order Civilizations. +4 Production from Great Works

Great Leap Forward moved down to T2:
Gain 1 Free Technology. Spies steal technologies at double the normal rate. +1 for every 3 non-specialist Citizens.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat renamed to Cultural Revolution and nerfed:
+25% Tourism to civilizations with less Happiness.+1 happiness from Factories.

Party Leadership renamed to Dictatorship of the Proletariat (no balance change, it's just a bad name)

Spoiler Justifications :

• Cultural victory is the strongest, fastest, and safest victory type, based on user feedback and AI test games. We have been looking for ways to nerf it relative to other victory types
• Order is the strongest tree right now, according to user feedback.
  • Autocracy got hit with a major nerf to its CV 2 versions ago, when we removed the GW and tile modifiers off Airports (Air Supremacy T3 tenet)
• Order is already the safest CV tree.
  • It has numerous bonuses to allow it to work as an autarky, allowing it to ignore or cushion itself against world congress. It has a lot of in-built economic flexibility as well
  • While Freedom's CV bonuses are all either indirect from its general specialist focus, and Autocracy has several policies that translate war bonuses into cultural victory
• Order has no T3 cultural tenet. It should have one.
  • Both of its CV tenets are T2, meaning it reaches its peak potency as early as 5 policies, earlier than other ideologies. This makes Order's CV very unorthodox from a timing and structure perspective
  • The two T2 CV tenets are packing enough power that Order is viable for a CV without a T3 tenet, which is it's own problem
  • All ideology trees except for order have a full array of 3 T3 tenets that each point squarely at one of the ideology's intended victory paths. Order is the only one that is missing a full set, and it feels poorer for it.
• The T2 CV tenets that Order has are too strong and too boring.
  • They are basically a large GW modifier and a large empire % tourism modifier. Neither of them asks you to do anything you weren't doing already.
  • Compare to Autocracy, which has numerous flashy abilities that translate war winning into cultural dominance (eg. Futurism and Cult of Personality)
  • Of the 3 ideologies, Order's CV is the most passive. Autocracy has its war fighting bonuses, and at least Freedom is oriented more around historic events, and has to control enough of the diplomatic game to stay competitive, because they are vulnerable to sanctions, etc. Order's CV bonuses amount to big numbers and pressing 'Next Turn'.
  • Cultural revolution is just Freedom's Cultural Expression T1 tenet, but 2.5x stronger. It should do something else.
  • Dictatorship of the Proletariat has a 50% culture modifier while most of the other % modifiers in the game are 10%. There is only 1 other 50% tourism modifier in the game, but it's a T3 tenet and it's much harder to use.
  • In contrast, a Tourism process gives Order a choice, and a task to do. You have to choose to work a process instead of doing something else
  • A Tourism process combines with all of the other production bonuses in the Order tree to make the ideology cohere as a CV ideology, in the same way that Freedom's general specialist bonuses resolve into a CV victory
• Great Leap Forward isn't focused enough, or interesting enough to merit its spot as a T3 tenet.
  • Unlocking a new process has the "Wow factor" that would make it much more deserving of being a capstone ideology tenet
  • Unlocking the Tourism Process at T3 would give Order a full complement of 3 T3 tenets, each focused on 1 of its intended victory paths.
• Great Leap Forward ought to be changed anyways.
  • If GLF is going to be moved down to T2 that should come with a nerf.
  • GLF has no basis in history. I have proposed additional bonuses for it that add a catchup mechanic and science for non-specialists, which are both more historically aligned with what the GLF was intended to do*
  • GLF doesn't transform a game mechanic or unlock an entirely new one like most other T3 tenets do. It's just a large, conventional tech bonus
  • I hazard to even call it a proper tenet, because it's the only example of a policy or tenet out of >100 policies in the game that has no permanent bonus that you can build off of. Its entire power is a 1-time bonus and then it's inert; a dead slot. This violates the basic idea of what a policy/tenet is supposed to do.

 

[pineappledan]

This shouldn't be a big deal since it only affects minor gameplay. But I still need your opinion about what do you think of this one?

It's a huge deal.

The Propaganda process is an enormous addition; I would fully expect it to become core to any CV strategy and greatly increase the speed of CVs overall.

Bear in mind that all processes gain +10% to their conversion with a power plant in the city, so Prayer, Propaganda, and Prosperity are increased to 35%, 25%, and 20% conversion at Alternative energy, respectively.

We are in the middle of trying to figure out way to Slow Down cultural victories so that fewer games are won in the same way. Adding a method that allows you to leverage your entire economy towards output is an incredibly powerful ability. This is why my proposal was to gate this process as a T3 ideology unlock, and to nerf all the other sources of tourism in the tree in order to make room for it. Simply adding this ability without tradeoffs or opportunity costs associated with a policy choice is a direct, and powerful steroid to Cultural Victory. An extinction-level event to months of work and discussion on how to balance CV against other victory types.

The Prayer process has massive implications for the faith game, and it unlocks in Classical, so its presence will be felt all game. Faith economy is relatively inflexible and doesn't scale that well into the late game. If you make an ability that allows to scale with , then you are functionally uncapping faith. This has massive implications for beliefs like Zealotry, who can now leverage much higher faith economies in later eras for fast and efficient unit purchases. It blows the lid off GP purchases post-Industrial. It could be used to mill out larger quantities of GProphets, especially for a civ like India who has adopted Prophecy (combined 60% cost reduction to GProphets).

Prosperity is... Well it's pretty much useless, so I don't know why it should ever be added. It unlocks very late, in a stage of the game where if you focused on GAs, you could have perpetual GA turns already. It's a 10% conversion into a point which activates an empire-wide bonus which gives +20%production. It's an ouroboros of inefficiency. I don't know why anyone would use it, thus I don't know why it should be added.

 

[Stalker0]

We are in the middle of trying to figure out way to Slow Down cultural victories so that fewer games are won in the same way. Adding a method that allows you to leverage your entire economy towards output is an incredibly powerful ability. This is why my proposal was to gate this process as a T3 ideology unlock, and to nerf all the other sources of tourism in the tree in order to make room for it. Simply adding this ability without tradeoffs or opportunity costs associated with a policy choice is a direct, and powerful steroid to Cultural Victory. An extinction-level event to months of work and discussion on how to balance CV against other victory types.

The Prayer process has massive implications for the faith game, and it unlocks in Classical, so its presence will be felt all game. Faith economy is relatively inflexible and doesn't scale that well into the late game. If you make an ability that allows to scale with , then you are functionally uncapping faith. This has massive implications for beliefs like Zealotry, who can now leverage much higher faith economies in later eras for fast and efficient unit purchases. It blows the lid off GP purchases post-Industrial. It could be used to mill out larger quantities of GProphets, especially for a civ like India who has adopted Prophecy (combined 60% cost reduction to GProphets).

Prosperity is... Well it's pretty much useless, so I don't know why it should ever be added. It unlocks very late, in a stage of the game where if you focused on GAs, you could have perpetual GA turns already. It's a 10% conversion into a point which activates an empire-wide bonus which gives +20%production. It's an ouroboros of inefficiency.

Completely agree on propaganda, I think giving unfettered access to that is stupidly busted.

Prayer is more interesting to me, your concerns are valid but at the same time it does open up a whole new slew of faith based strategies, which could be really neat. I would at least be interested to see that in play.

Prosperity is useless.

 

[pineappledan]

Of the 3 processes, unfettered access to Prayer is the least problematic. However, it still would require a complete re-think of the Faith game. Faith Economy is hard to scale and grow by design. If you blow up that paradigm then we need to give every belief and religious component a balance pass. It has massive implications and is not "only a minor effect on gameplay".

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, Prosperity provides the worst yields and give the least amount of them at the same time. The ratio should be much higher, like 100%.

Propoaganda should probably be nerfed if it's for everyone.

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.