[3.16]Feedback

[Gokudo01]

Good. It shouldn't be easy to fight wars without losing any units.

I agree that a production bonus when constructing military units should be a feature in the Honor tree. Previous versions of the mod had this.

The first and the second issues are related so i will talk about them in the same place.
In 3.16, we already have got 15% bonus construction to military units.
The problem is : You don't have any raw production bonus. it leads to meaningless bonus. You get 1 bonus production every 7 production. But you don't have any grow bonus to work all these mine and pasturage to make it worth except if you want to keep your capital with 4 or 5 citizens.

which leads me to the second point. You can't sustain wars if you have a capital with 5 citizens. Because you will lose units and liberty/tradition will get new units faster than you ( more population so more production or multi cities allowing multi production )

Pillaging generates a lot of gold in the early game, as IIRC it isn't era linked at all. But it *should* be tough to maintain an early army, maintenance costs are what stop military power from spinning out of control.

I think we agree that you pick honor for early warfare. But early (if i attack with units from early classical area for example ), you don't have that much to pillaging ( at least in immortal, they still don't have improved every tiles )

Moreover, it's hard to produce your units and when you have them out, it's hard to sustain the maintenance cost ...

I have to disagree with you about "what stop military power".
There are also unhappiness, science gap, the lack of road for reinforcement ( yes when it takes 10 turn to bring a new units to the heart of battle, you should start to think about the peace ), etc ...

I don't see this as a problem. Going big military early is a strategy with risks and rewards. If you pull it off, it should be rewarding (and part of the problem is that it isn't rewarding enough, because of how bad puppets are and how hard it is to get courthouses early).
But if you don't pull it off, you should be out-teched.

I didn't say it shouldn't be like that. liberty get out-tech early by tradition and it's not a problem. But liberty's advantages offset its issues.

Which is not the case with Honor.

Other strategies should have risks and rewards too: focus too much on expansion and you might over-extend and get conquered. Focus too much on tall/wonder/infrastructure building and you might get hemmed in by expansionist neighbors. Those have serious consequences too.

you gave free walls + free production to liberty to help them against conquest although you said that wide empire should be vulnerable to conquest.

I just like to get the same kind of reasoning behind Honor.

Tradition is, early, so powerful. I can win any kind of victory from tradition. His only weakness is late when its bonus starts to fade off. By this time, you have the science edge. If you have the science edge, you can do almost what you wants. That's how civ 5 is.

Wants to expands now peacefully : get order and/or exploration, find an island( +2 coastal tiles help a lot ) Feed these cities with internal trade route and they will be big so fast you won't believe it.

Wants to expands now on your neighbour : you have the science edge :Your units are stronger than them. Fight knights with lancers, musket man with Great war infantry, towns with artillery and destroyers. Get autocracy and kick their ass.

Wants to stay tall and still be powerful : get Freedom.

Moreover early you are the hardest one to conquest : You get garrison bonus and high population cites have got more strength.

sorry i fail to find any weakness to tradition.

So it's very easy to devolve into situtations where military power is unambiguously the best strategy to do, every game.

it's still one of the best way to win. the only difference is now, you fast-tech with tradition and 3 cities. Befriend military states to get free units in order to defend yourself.
get artillery/destroyer + autocracy, kill them all.

You didn't solver the issue, you just narrowed the path and made some UU useless.

 

[Ahriman]

In 3.16, we already have got 15% bonus construction to military units.
The problem is : You don't have any raw production bonus. it leads to meaningless bonus. You get 1 bonus production every 7 production. But you don't have any grow bonus to work all these mine and pasturage to make it worth except if you want to keep your capital with 4 or 5 citizens.

I don't see a problem here. You *should* have to work mines and pastures and whatever to get production to build your army. Honor shouldn't be giving you food growth bonuses.

It sounds like you want Honor to be a policy tree that gives you everything.

You can't sustain wars if you have a capital with 5 citizens. Because you will lose units and liberty/tradition will get new units faster than you

I don't think we should be planning for Honor to mean that you don't found any other cities. You're not limited to a single city. Going for a military/conquest oriented strategy doesn't mean building only military units and no settlers or buildings (though it might mean ignoring wonders and capturing those instead).

One idea for Honor: give it something that gives you bonuses in your existing cities on city capture which are useful early game. Food, or gold. [Not science - overlap with assyria.]
It might help Honor to reduce some of its long-term bonuses (happiness in particular) but give it more in the way of short term bonuses that help out in the early game.

you gave free walls + free production to liberty to help them against conquest although you said that wide empire should be vulnerable to conquest.

*I* didn't. I was opposed to free walls. But I lost that fight a while ago.
I also didn't say that a wide empire should be vulnerable to conquest, I said that over-expansion should be vulnerable to conquest. It's a balancing act.

Wants to expands now peacefully : get order and/or exploration, find an island( +2 coastal tiles help a lot )

I dislike the exploration tree, I don't like the concept which I think is too narrow and I think that some policies end up being too powerful (the free buildings everywhere).

And I'm open to the possibility that the growth bonuses in Tradition are too high.

and made some UU useless

Not sure what you have in mind here.

 

[mystikx21]

Looting food or culture has overlaps with the CS conquest model that VEM/GEM used. It could be useful for honor to do something similar with conquests of any kind that scale on city size (but are valuable at lower city sizes to encourage early conquest). A further improvement of gold loot for honor would offer an alternative to pillaging as a source of funding.

Exploration probably needs some major redux as well. There's way too much "moar stuff" to that tree right now. It would be fine as a coastal-expansionist tree. There's some solid effects in there, but there's probably too many of them in one place.

 

[Ahriman]

Looting food or culture has overlaps with the CS conquest model that VEM/GEM used.

Yeah, probably better to avoid duplicating those. I've argued for a long time for an Honor policy that increases gold from pillaging and city capture, to help make wars (even raiding pillage wars) profitable.

It would be fine as a coastal-expansionist tree

I wish we could go back to having coherent separate designs for exploration/commerce: sea trade and expansion vs land trade and expansion.
It's so bizarre having boosts for coastal buildings in two different trees.

 

[Gokudo01]

I don't see a problem here. You *should* have to work mines and pastures and whatever to get production to build your army. Honor shouldn't be giving you food growth bonuses.

It sounds like you want Honor to be a policy tree that gives you everything.

Indirectly wouldn't be so bad.
After all, liberty's got indirect grow bonus. ( multi cities helps to get bigger population )
I proposed to help internal trade route with Honor.

With my current iteration of Honor tree, i don't have food bonus. But i've got some bonus for Production building ( to product them and to their bonus ) + some free maintenance(mostly tier 1-2 military and production buildings).
It helps to relieve some gold pressure and to give them a little more freedom while choosing what tiles they need to work.
Without transforming Honor into another commerce.

But to come back to the subject, i don't want honor to not hold some flaws,i just want it to have a smoother development.

I don't think we should be planning for Honor to mean that you don't found any other cities. You're not limited to a single city. Going for a military/conquest oriented strategy doesn't mean building only military units and no settlers or buildings (though it might mean ignoring wonders and capturing those instead).

I agree your analysis, but you have to take into account this:

picking honor or not picking any policies is the same thing to develop your cities.
It's one of the biggest issue with honor.

One idea for Honor: give it something that gives you bonuses in your existing cities on city capture which are useful early game. Food, or gold

it could be a trail.

I dislike the exploration tree, I don't like the concept which I think is too narrow and I think that some policies end up being too powerful (the free buildings everywhere).

Ah i'm not doing it on purpose but i like exploration tree. mid-late game, you can't afford to settle a new city which will take years to start being productive and useful.
Especially when you know cultural civilizations will eventually kick you out from order.

I played 200 + hours on communitas pack. And Exploration is one of my favorite tree when i try to play peacefully.

And I'm open to the possibility that the growth bonuses in Tradition are too high.

I think the real culprit is Science and how it works in civilization 5.

 

[Ahriman]

I proposed to help internal trade route with Honor.

That really makes no sense from a flavor or realism perspective. Why should something about having a militaristic society give you better trade routes?

picking honor or not picking any policies is the same thing to develop your cities.

I don't think it directly should. Piety doesn't either.
If Honor directly helped your economy *and* military it would probably be too good.

Indirectly it does: a military production bonus means that for any give army size, you have production left over to spend on other stuff. Gold bonus means you can buy city buildings.

I think the real culprit is Science and how it works in civilization 5.

I really like how science works, I think it is one of the best things about Civ5....

 

[Gokudo01]

That really makes no sense from a flavor or realism perspective. Why should something about having a militaristic society give you better trade routes?

Yes it does.

If you check along the history, great military empires have got big commerce on their newly conquest(colony, puppet-states) and they use their commerce to submit less powerful states.

Have you heard about the opium war ?
Didn't Rome have the biggest commerce system until middle age ? for recall, Rome imported many goods from Egypt which has got a great agriculture since ancestral times.
Egypt was the Rome's Granary, isn't it internal trade ?
USA are forcing TAFTA on UE, isn't it commerce ? And please don't say me USA isn't a military state : they has got 48% of global military expenditures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

From a historical perspective, commerce has always been the side weapon of imperial power. ( Rome, Ottoman, England, Napoleon's France, USA )

I don't think it directly should. Piety doesn't either.
If Honor directly helped your economy *and* military it would probably be too good.

Which brings us back to the first points ?
I don't spawn with units, i need to produce them. I need some economic base to start producing army.

And why are these trees available from the start if they are never better in any case and with any civilization ?

I propose you this Challenge: take communitas 3.16.

Win a standard game, 8 civs - 16 cs in diety with Assyria and Honor, domination victory.
Save after loading the map.
You have to finish Honor before putting points in others policies.
Try to win the game
Now start again and try it with tradition or liberty . . .


ATM, honor is good when the sun, the moon and Halley's Comet line up in the sky.

 

[Archonios]

Why dont you give the bonus from the Norway but nerfed?

"When you research a line of units, the previous units (spearmen instead of pikemen), become available to you."
It isn't strong enought to rush and can give you gold by deleting them.
"Nation of helots"At war they were also carrying the warrior's weapons and fighting by their side.
Remove the food bonus from vilages. I find gold to be abundant already. Picking wealth makes them over 9000 good, which you should cause u want production and even better economy. Give bonus +gold to farms (they were slaves after all)

All roads lead to rome
Free Caravansary to you cities
+1 trade route for every original enemy capitol?
It will keep you going.

With Honor what you will be doing is taking the bonuses from others. Happiness prevents you from doing that. And the bonus gold from farms will make you keep a few cities.

I am trying to throw some ideas around. I dont know how easy it will be to do these.

 

[Ahriman]

If you check along the history, great military empires have got big commerce on their newly conquest(colony, puppet-states) and they use their commerce to submit less powerful states.

I think that's backwards. Commerce benefits are in the commerce tree. Commerce sometimes accompanies conquest, sometimes not, they aren't inherently linked.
Britain wasn't a particularly impressive land military power, its influence came from commercial, naval, and alter industrial strength. The military power didn't cause the commerce, rather the other way around. Commercial strengths led to wealth led to the ability to produce and maintain a powerful navy and to technological advancement.

And plenty of conquest-oriented civs weren't particularly commercial - huns, russia, aztecs, zulus, etc.
And plenty of commercial/trade civs weren't particularly conquest oriented (Venice, Netherlands, Portugal, Genoa, etc.)
These are different kinds of strengths, they don't belong in the same tree.

I need some economic base to start producing army

So get some. It doesn't have to come from your policies.

I'm not saying that I think the design for Honor in the mod is the right one, but I think that some of your suggestions aren't the right way to go.