[Vote] (9-049) Policy Tweaks VI: Rebalanced Industry

[hokath]

Motivation:
Industrial Policy trees are in a weird place. The previous 6 trees all have really strong character, for me. But then you get to choice #3 and it feels the design goes downhill a bit.
I think some of this can be blamed on the fact these trees come later and so fewer people have cared about it compared to more pressing, early game problems.
In brief, Rationalism is king due to the high value of Science (and Great Scientists), and then Imperialism has a niche for Warmongers (and has some fun effects for them). Industry is left a bit behind; there are some rare use cases, and it does have some strong modifiers for multiple yields, but I think it's generally not considered competitive.
Here I present the changes from my proposal mod that significantly overhaul the trees with a view to creating a lower powerlevel Rationalism and Industry where the trees have a food/sci versus prod/gold flavor sitting on a number of general yield bonuses with varied hooks. There are minor changes to Imperialism.

Industry has these big +15% modifiers to the four yields Prod/Gold/Science/Culture. These are good but I think problematic for a couple reasons: 1) they compete with the +% puppet effect in Imperialism, because modifiers just add so its just superior to that bonus, 2) it places most of the power of the tree into these early policies which are at least as powerful (and in many cases more powerful) than ideological tenets, meaning you can come back and start unlocking Industry which is something the AI doesn't do (it's like advanced border blob!). It's ok to have strong bonuses in the Industrial but they really need to require investment into the majority of the tree.
There is also the opener with +2 Trade Routes, this is the worst offender of this sort of thing because even in the Industrial you can dip in to snatch this extremely powerful effect which is equivalent to an ideological tenet. It needs to be embedded in the tree much more.
Finally, I absolutely HATE some of the names. What do you mean we do Mercantilism into Protectionism (an essay on the difference and how it led to the wars of the 20th century on my desk by Monday, please) and then come back and take Free Trade?!
"The question is not whether economics is a Science, but whether science is an Economics."

Note to people who already read this before. Now the building buffs are at +2/+2, but there are 1 fewer buildings. So it tops out at +8/+8 instead of +5/+5. A large buff overall.

---

Proposal:
Industry

• Splash art changed to "Industry" with the man in the top hat standing by the train, rather than the "Commerce" ships
  
  
• Tree Structure is now
  
  
  • Division of Labor
  • Subsidies
  • Entrepreneurship (requires Division of Labor)
    Note due to graphical glitch in CiV, cannot put Entrepreneurship on second row! Ask me how I know...
  • Mercantilism (requires Subsidies)
  • Gold Standard (requires Mercantilism and Division of Labor)
• Opener
  • +2 Trade Routes.
  • -10% (from -5%) Gold needed for purchases.
    Same total but more power moved to opener
  • +50% Great Merchant rate
  • +100% Coaling Station Production boost
    You need this early or you won't use it!
• Scaler
  • -4% (from 5%) Gold needed for purchases.
• Division of Labor
  • +100% Production towards Coaling Stations.
  • +3% Production and Gold from Forges, Windmills, Workshops, Factories, and Coaling Stations.
  • +2 Culture and +2 Production from Workshops, Windmills, Factories, and Coaling Stations.
    We will have a Culture side and a Science side to the tree
  • +5 Gold from International Trade Routes.
• Subsidies (was Free Trade)
  • • Earn Great Merchants 50% faster.
  • +5 Gold from International Trade Routes.
  • -2 Unhappiness from Poverty in all Cities.
  • +1 Happiness from Workshops Windmills
    Moved happiness bonus earlier and on a building you might not have yet
  • Gain -50% Tile maintenance
    So with Authority your Railroads could be free!
  • 15 Science on building construction, scaling with Era
• Entrepreneurship
  • +1 Happiness from Workshops.
  • +25% Yields when you expend Great Merchants or Great Engineers for their Instant Yield abilities.
  • +2 Production and +1 Gold from Mine, Quarry Farm, and Lumbermill
    The "spammable" improvements
  • Gains +3 Food and Culture on every Town
    A bonus to Great Merchant other than bulbing them
  • +2 Gold and +1 Culture on every Village
    This is determined as double base yields
• Mercantilism
  • +3% Science and Culture from Markets, Caravansaries, Customs Houses, Banks, and Stock Exchanges.
  • Cities earn +10 Science when they construct Buildings, scaling with Era.
  • +2 Gold and Science from Customs Houses, Banks, Hotels, and Stock Exchanges
  • +2 Trade Routes
• Gold Standard (was Protectionism -- too close to Mercantilism)
  • Gold investments in Buildings reduce their Production cost by an additional 10%.
  • +33% Yields from Internal Trade Routes.
    This is in Fealty nowadays
  • +10% Food and Science during "We Love the King Day."
  • 10% Gold and Culture during "We Love the King Day."
    this is now mirror alternative to the 10% Food/Science in Rationalism
  • +25% instant yields from Great Merchants
• Finisher
  • Unlocks building Broadway.
  • +3 Happiness per unique owned Luxury Resource.
  • +2 Production and Gold from Specialists.
  • +2 Science and +1 Production from Bonus Resources
  • Allows for the purchase of Great Merchants with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.

---

Implementation notes:
This is all done by database changes.
You can play it here.

The art is currently replaced by importing it with the same name as the existing policy tree, thereby overwriting it.

---

References:
The other industrial tree changes are

[Vote] Thread '(9-019) Policy Tweaks V: Rationalism Rework'

Jan 2, 2026

Motivation:
Industrial Policy trees are in a weird place. The previous 6 trees all have really strong character, for me. But then you get to choice #3 and it feels the design goes downhill a bit.
I think some of this can be blamed on the fact these trees come later and so fewer people have cared about it compared to more pressing, early game problems.
In brief, Rationalism is king due to the high value of Science (and Great Scientists), and then Imperialism has a niche for Warmongers (and has some fun effects for them). Industry is left a bit behind; there are some rare use cases, and it...

• hokath
• Replies: 36
• Forum: Vox Populi Congress

• 

and

[Vote] Thread '(9-048) Imperialism Change'

Jan 3, 2026

Motivation:
Industrial Policy trees are in a weird place. The previous 6 trees all have really strong character, for me. But then you get to choice #3 and it feels the design goes downhill a bit.
I think some of this can be blamed on the fact these trees come later and so fewer people have cared about it compared to more pressing, early game problems.
In brief, Rationalism is king due to the high value of Science (and Great Scientists), and then Imperialism has a niche for Warmongers (and has some fun effects for them). Industry is left a bit behind; there are some rare use cases, and it...

• hokath
• Replies: 23
• Forum: Vox Populi Congress

• 

 

[paul_soryu]

I like some changes, some I don't like but understand the idea behind them, and some I don't understand, namely:

+4/+4 Prod/Gold from City Connections

I think this is not fun, as at this point you have all your cities connected, so it's the same as giving +4 to a city. You have removed "+5 Gold from International Trade Routes" bonus, it is not a bad one, and it has a flavour and a synergy with +2 TRs. You also removed +33% from internal TRs, so +2 TRs bonus now has no synergy with anything in the tree, while before this it had bonuses to both types of TRs which was part of the identity and flavour of the tree (none of other T3 Policy Trees have these bonuses). It also synergyzed well with Statecraft (and Fielty for that matter, +66% Internal TR bonus sounds fun). I would remove City Connection bonus and add back +5 from International TRs, and possibly +33% from Internal TRs (or buff from buildings a little more).

Without TR bonuses the whole tree just adds a lot of flat yields to tiles and cities, which lacks variety and synergy with other trees in my opinion (except for -50% Tile maintenance which is a fun synergy with Authority). I like bonus yields on Villages and Towns though, and I am fine with changing finisher Specialist bonus to bonus to Bonus to bonus Resources, even thought I think bonus to Specialists is a fun synergy with Tradition, Statecraft/Artistry, and Freedom.

1) they compete with the +% puppet effect in Imperialism, because modifiers just add so its just superior to that bonus

Do you mean puppet effect is superior over Industry's +15% or the other way around? Imperialism also has a possibility of +10% monopoly bonus which is applied immidiately instead of gradually, so for some time it is actually larger than current Industry's +15% bonuses. It is a fun choice of more but slower and less but faster in my opinion.

+100% Coaling Station Production boost
You need this early or you won't use it!

One note on placing this in Opener: with the current Industry tree, relatively often (20-25% of the time maybe) I am too far away from Industrial Age when I am picking second Industry policy, so sometimes I go the left path first to get bonuses to TRs and Mine/Quarry/Lumbermill bonus, and only then I go the right path. +6% I can get from the right path at this point is not much, but flat yields are still significant. I think there's an interesting choice to be made currently to go left or right path first.

Regarding the +% bonuses from buildings: what do you think about +1 and +2% from 4 buildings? So when you build all of them it's +4 and +8%. Or +1.5+1 and +2%+1.5%, ends up as +6 +8% and +4 +6%. I like almost everything else, but I don't like complete removal of +% bonuses, perhaps combining the two will allow Industry to remain good for both wide and tall?

If there is still someone in the dev team who helped designing the current Industry Tree, I would appreciate it if they gave their opinion.

 

[hokath]

I would remove City Connection bonus and add back +5 from International TRs

Sure, I understand this criticism. We can do that. The ITR I don't think needs repeating.
I saw @L. Vern talk about making a Policy version of the "Trade routes cannot be pillaged" effect that is on Corporations table, that would also be interesting.

Do you mean puppet effect is superior over Industry's +15% or the other way around?

I mean that it is superior because it also affects your non-puppet Cities (which includes ofc the Capital, with a large amount of your yields)

 

[azum4roll]

If your plan is to remove most %yield modifiers from the industrial trees, some may argue that the medieval trees are more worth taking.

 

[Stalker0]

If your plan is to remove most %yield modifiers from the industrial trees, some may argue that the medieval trees are more worth taking.

Yea my first reaction is “you have nerfed this tree into the ground”

 

[GeneralAmadeus]

It feels like you lead Industry into a dark alley and shot it with a shotgun before stabbing it with a dagger for good measure. This tree could use a bit of tuning not an execution.

 

[hokath]

If your plan is to remove most %yield modifiers from the industrial trees

Specifically the plan is to reduce them and require more investment to pick them up. So here it's at the bottom 2x 10% mods, and rationalism its spread across 2 that have a prereq 2x 10% mods.
This is an important thing to be thinking about though, I agree.

This tree could use a bit of tuning not an execution.

Vivid
Yes as I've stated in the other thread, it does have to be seen in context of the rework to Rationalism as well.
It's also not so drastic. If we look at some numbers:

• An industrial city with a single guild being worked is around 50 Culture, depending on terrain and other factors (my second city is actually only at 38 because only 2 tile culture available)
  
  Spoiler :

  Here's my current game: a city with culture from a unique improvement and 1 guild being worked
  

  
• So 15% is +7.5 additional culture
  provided none of that 50 is already from boosts (additive stacking), otherwise it is less
• In comparison, you probably have 3/4 of the boosted buildings for +6 flat in this new Industry around now (Factory is late and needs more Coal: likely refineries or other boosts)
• So yes slightly less (intended) but not a gruesome act of violation.
• Then consider the intended use case: all the Cities without guilds that will earn much less culture, maybe 20--30, then its actually a (fairly sizeable) buff.
  (this sort of defines wide, doesn't it, when your cities start to exceed the culture scaling due to lack of guilds)

 

[paul_soryu]

An industrial city with a single guild being worked is around 50 Culture

I think Culture is the worst yield to make example of, it is the most difficult one to get compared to Prod, Gold and even Science, and in general doesn't grow as fast in late game as the other three yield do. My late-game cities have 200-400 Prod on avarage (can't say how much is base Prod, but it is surely above 150), Gold is very high too, changing the bonus from +15% even to +8 will always be worse except when it is literally a new city.

Moreover, if you're playing wide then you probably have a bunch of Coal and can build Coal Stations and Factories in all of your core cities, leaving other cities as Puppets if they were conquered. All those cities with Coal Stations and Factories will always benefit much more from a +15% bonus.

There's a difference of what is considered wide at the start of the game (10 is very wide) and past mid-game (10 is normal). I question if there is even a need to think that much about late-game in terms of wide vs. tall, perhaps they are just 2 paths of initial development at the start of the game.

And, frankly, I don't even know how wide you need to play to have cities which would benefit much more from +8 yields, like 20-30 non-Puppets? Even when I'm conquering half the world, I usually have 8-12 core cities which produce most of the stuff. All of them are very good on Production and other yields and won't benefit much from +8 bonus, I see no reason for me to annex another 12 bad cities to benefit a little from those flat yields, they will either slow down significantly my Policy and Tech development, or they'll become as good as my core cities and then +8 bonus would become useless again. And if you're not conquering anyone, then you're lucky to have 8-12 cities. You can't have a wide empire in late game without conquests.

I think this wide focus works against itself. Wide means Coal, Coal means Production. Just only three Factories across my empire will give me more Production than adopting Industry and then waiting to unlock and build all required buildings. If you only have three Factories that's not a wide play. Wide play is when you have 10 Factories which give you +25 Prod in all 10 cities, that's 3 times better than +8 bonus.

 

[hokath]

Yes it's definitely relative. Factories are a much stronger source.
The comparison to make though is with other Policies. Especially the ideological tenets
e.g.
Tier 2 Order: +7 Food, Science, Gold, and Culture per city.
Tier 2 Freedom: 2 Specialists in each of your cities generate +1 Happiness instead of -1 Unhappiness from Urbanization. Specialists generate +1 Gold and Science.
Tier 2 Autocracy: +1 Oil and Coal for every City-State Alliance. +2 Production and Culture to Atolls, Fishing Boats, and Offshore Oil Platforms. Naval Ranged Units gain the Mare Nostrum Promotion.

In context, +8/+8 and either 2 whole trade routes or 5 (base: i.e. modifiers make it higher) gold per international trade route are already quite high-budget!

 

[GeneralAmadeus]

So I did some math based on the last game I played. I picked Industry in that game like I often do. These are the base values added together. I had unlocked both % policies around turn 348.
Turn 352: 490 390 650 460 This is with 5 cities.
Turn 454: 650

540

930

760 This is with 4 cities. I had a disagreement with Shaka.
With the old policies the values are much higher. I used a 12% modifier just because it seemed reasonable that you might not have built all the required buildings. So if you did build all the buildings the difference would be even larger.
Turn 352: 58

46

78

55

This is with 5 cities and a 12% modifier for all. With the new policies the bonus would be 40.
Turn 454: 72

64

111

91

This is with 4 cities and a 12% modifier for all. I had a disagreement with Shaka. With the new policies the bonus would be 32

.
I absolutely hate that one of the new bonuses are for hotels. They are only good for tourism so I don't build them 90% of the time.
Finally the finisher. On turn 454 I had 60 Specialists so 120. The new finisher gives practically nothing compared to that.
I stand by my previous execution statement.

 

[hokath]

Firstly, you have 5 cities (pre Shaka ), so you are in a very "tall" regime. The design goal is to precisely move away from this, so before we look at the numbers we should anticipate that.
Even then, the Turn 352 yields are comparable in the two cases. (somewhat shocking)
The turn 454 yields show the effect of remove the %modifier's late-game scaling, which is intentional (and done also to Rationalism).
The finisher is the same story. You are in the regime of 15 Specialists per City, so the yields are very high. Again, the design is exactly to move away from this towards a different core identity.

So the tall Industry has been cut down to size. Like a hedge trimmer. The wide Industry is splattered with b... buffs.

 

[Lystrin]

I think this version of industry is good in the context of your modmod, but very underwhelming in current base VP. the instant science on building construction is MUCH stronger in your modmod considering the sheer amount of industrial+ buildings you have added, most if not all worth building anyways while in base VP you have relatively few.

In terms of design, I love it. I think the addition of buffs to farms and villages in addition to mines and lumbermills cements the trees identity in working a lot of improvements and tiles, rather than specialists. currently it only really matters with lumbermills but with farms and villages added it feels much less geography-dependant and is a much stronger theme. The numbers can and should be discussed further aswell as the science on building construction, but I like it. Might be out of scope for a "balance congress" in this current form though.

 

[Anarcomu]

The move to farm also means that Industry now improve the same improvement than Equality does. Previously, if you wanted to stack farms, you would want to take Imperialism, and that feels out of touch for a pacifist empire for example. With this, you can take Industry and go either Order or Equality and still fully benefit from stronger improvements.

 

[paul_soryu]

Previously, if you wanted to stack farms, you would want to take Imperialism, and that feels out of touch for a pacifist empire for example.

Yes, but since Imperialism grants Pentagon WW, it somehow made sense to me that an imperialistic state transitions into Freedom (or is both at the same time).

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I'm not sure about the need to assign trees to "wide vs tall" at this stage of the game, I feel it reduces options and creativity. Industry used to be a very valid tall CV play: you start tradition-artistry, you lag behind in terms of buildings in your satellites so you need production and money more than science - more so if you had a very fast renaissance like Brazil or some Byzantium play. This is a nice trade-off already. Widening industry only stacks rationalism on tall play, no? It removes a branching option.

Besides, wide industry does not open new options, it consolidates an existing choice. You either went wide earlier with a wide tree (e.g. progress scales well into late game) or you need imperialism to move away from tall turtling (say you have late UUs) as everything is mostly settled at that point. The only "creative" innovation this wide industry could bring would maybe be to help an authority-artistry path that lacks infrastructure? Or maybe give strategics to industry rather than third alternative, to help tall have a small but more advanced army and fill-up factories?

Finally, while the intent is to give industry a wide focus, does wide itself need buffs right now? The issue seems to be that rationalism is the pick for all play styles, not that turtling is OP.

As a side note also relative to border blob, I'm also reluctant about the current trend of nerfing policy mixing because AI can't do it. It should be nerfed if it's op but keeping it viable, which I feel is not usually a concern.

 

[hokath]

the instant science on building construction is MUCH stronger in your modmod

True, now, though this predates the additional buildings. I would note its a 50% increase on the effect in base VP, currently.

the same improvement than Equality does

did you mean Freedom?

I'm not sure about the need to assign trees to "wide vs tall" at this stage of the game

Developing that a bit, the goal is to have an intentional design beat around the scaling of the bread-and-butter bonuses. Here with Empire size rather than Population, as the contrast. But I have tried not to go so far as to invalidate the tree if you don't have some giant sprawling empire to leap off (again, the comparison is between the new balance, not with respect to the old balance murder/crimescene). So, I would put it like this: if you somehow did manage to get many, many cities, this is the natural choice. (That might be through any of the ancient trees, in principle.) But most of the time you are in that in-between where there is still a cost-benefit to be done between the trees. So maybe those +2 Trade Routes tip the scales. Maybe you want the Great Scientist boosts.

Or maybe give strategics to industry rather than third alternative

If the policy table were implemented to give the buff to individual strategics, it would be possible to add, say, Coal.

The issue seems to be that rationalism is the pick for all play styles, not that turtling is OP.

This is certainly the central issue, and a big reason to consider the changes separately.

nerfing policy mixing because AI can't do it. It should be nerfed if it's op but keeping it viable

Yes I think if it's OP it has to be nerfed. So here +2 TR on opener is too much. If you want to mix you can still get it, but with 3 policies instead. I think that's fair? You could then go 2 Rationalism and pick the free tech policy, for example, sounds like there could be a use case for that.

 

[papercliptrail]

From a purely selfish tall-Venetian perspective, I hate how everything I want from Industry gets moved to Rationalism (+yields from specialists, % scalers), except the most important one (the trade routes).

 

[azum4roll]

I think it would be better to try to divide these policy proposals not by tree, but by individual swaps as much as possible. I think the changes to whole trees are too much for everyone who isn't already familiar with your mod. Plus this way the 3 industrial trees (+ Artistry) will need to be in the same voting thread anyway (they don't make much sense passing alone).

 

[hokath]

I thought about it, but the implications of some things passing and others not means you still really need to vote on them together.
At least this way, there is a considered, joined-up way of thinking. It would be helpful just to see the voting numbers on how many people are actually in favor of this sort of rethink.

(Artistry wont have to be, I removed the Hidden Sites part for this congress to make it simpler)

 

[Thibix Magnus]

@hokath thanks for the detailed answer. I'm out of the loop on balance and modmods so I'll focus on intent/design (ok moving down the TR could still be fine for tree mixers). My compass is usually always to keep options open and encourage diversity. I'd be fine with any change as long as it opens more playstales than it closes

I'm still not sure about the reason behind the changes : what's the problem with a tree focusing on pure eco? Why does it need to tilt the scale towards wide gameplay? Does it open/enable new play styles? The current industry is pretty neutral regarding empire size, with its mix of additive yields, scalers, etc. It's the money tree, that can benefit different play styles. It is generic and adaptable. Losing the % scalers hurts a taller empire. Crappy tradition satellites may benefit a bit more but not your big capital. So basically the move hurts a tradition-artistry-industry play (unless you conquered your neighbours with trad-art but then you don't need help anyway). Does it open other play styles? If you already have many cities, any of the three trees are good right now, I'm not sure you need more help. Maybe it does help a military CV with Persia, authority-artistry into "oops now I need buildings"? Why not, but more importantly, does tall play need to be nerfed for that?