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

[hokath]

Fundamentally I think the issue is that if Rationalism and Industry have a similar mix of wide and tall effects, then the balance required to make the two competitive is much higher. That is, one will just be "better". Tall Industry is a thing you can do right now in that it makes sense in isolation, but the loss of Rationalism is so huge (that 45% science modifier) that really it's a mistake to do that. The same logic applies to Industry +15% versus Imperialism +20% to puppets. The yields just aren't worth it atm (the use case is restricted, really, to the military one). So by flattening the terrain a bit, we open more options in that sense.

You can still do a Tall Industry if you think you're behind on gold and production. That's still there. The purchase cost reduction and very powerful "Gold investments in Buildings reduce their Production cost by an additional 10%." are all still present and those bonuses are still available.

If we take a moment to look what actually changed here:
1) there's the tree reordering to space out the bonuses (minor issue)
2) there's the removal of the specialist bonus on the finisher as out-of-place with nothing similar in the rest of the tree -- this is part of the split with Rationalism and favours wide
3) there's the replacement of the % bonuses with flat bonuses on the buildings, this is part of reducing the overall power of both trees, though the power is still quite high when it unlocks as we saw in the post above -- the change favors wide
4) there's a tile maintenance reduction -- this scales with empire size
5) there's village and town buffs -- the former scales best with wide
But what about Rationalism? It has
1) Food bonuses. There aren't any in Industry
2) Happiness bonuses. If you want to grow (or "thicken" as some call it) you're going to need some smiley faces and those are in Rationalism
3) There's still more science in Rationalism compared to the Prod/Gold in Industry. If you are behind in tech, it might be best.

So I think it's still a very rich set of bonuses with interesting choices, and I hope the new versions form better foundations for future adjustment.

 

[redrum68]

-10% (from -5%) Gold needed for purchases.

Doesn't this change make some of the gold discount stacking strategies even stronger? I feel like we should be careful increasing this.

 

[hokath]

The reason for that is
1) because the 2x TR are moved, it needs a buff to compensate
2) the other 2 trees have 2x the scaler on the opener

It makes the other strategies stronger in the sense additive discounts don't lose power like additive increases, yes.
Venice balance is a bit iffy to account for, and changes so much, so I opt to ignore it -- the loss of Specialist yields from Industry makes it less good for them, but I'm not familiar enough with the cost-benefit to say if its enough to open Rationalism for them.

 

[redrum68]

The reason for that is
1) because the 2x TR are moved, it needs a buff to compensate
2) the other 2 trees have 2x the scaler on the opener

It makes the other strategies stronger in the sense additive discounts don't lose power like additive increases, yes.
Venice balance is a bit iffy to account for, and changes so much, so I opt to ignore it -- the loss of Specialist yields from Industry makes it less good for them, but I'm not familiar enough with the cost-benefit to say if its enough to open Rationalism for them.

Yeah I get the reasoning, just not sure that's the best buff to give. Discounts in general because of the stacking nature are dangerous as they are hard to balance and can quickly get out of hand. Maybe switch the opener bonus all together to something else.

 

[hokath]

Yes, a different bonus could be better. I think the discount thing probably needs a bit of consideration. Is Industry the big culprit here? The bonus is big compared to a lot of other sources after all, 30% (here 35)

 

[redrum68]

Yes, a different bonus could be better. I think the discount thing probably needs a bit of consideration. Is Industry the big culprit here? The bonus is big compared to a lot of other sources after all, 30% (here 35)

IMO, it is the main culprit given the total size. Any other bonus alongside it becomes worth a lot more with the additive stacking. I generally prefer to avoid "discounts" and favor things that increase generation of yields instead so you get diminishing returns instead of increasing returns.

 

[hokath]

I'll drop the scaler 1% so it still comes to 30% total.
In the future, if we change this then maybe something like X% more Science and Culture from international trade routes might be an interesting effect for Industry -- goes in a slightly different direction to gold though.

 

[GeneralAmadeus]

So I am of the mindset that the wide/tall focus is a bad idea. Making the trees like that basically removes the choice when picking the third policy tree. You just pick witch ever suits your current number of cities. Right now I have a choice what I feel my empire needs most. Need science, Rationalism. Need prod and gold, Industry. Spreading the joy of my gorernance, Imperialism. Sometimes I just pick Imperialism because my nation is just one large farm.

 

[Legen]

As I see it, Tall vs Wide makes sense for the Ancient Era trees, since Tradition is clearly focused on boosting the Capital, while Progress is very focused on having every city being evenly developed. Authority is often seen as Wide, but it can go either Tall or Wide depending on whether the conqueror favors puppeting or annexing.

The Tall vs Wide concept isn't as clearly defined past Ancient, since those later trees don't have such a clear contrast between Capital vs other cities as Tradition and Progress have.

 

[hokath]

I can see calling this "Wide Industry" was a bad move. It's inviting rather the wrong comparison.

Right now I have a choice what I feel my empire needs most. Need science, Rationalism. Need prod and gold, Industry. Spreading the joy of my gorernance, Imperialism.

This is more what I was getting at.
I want to a) make this specialization a bit less pronounced (lower the powerlevel) but
b) still have clearly defined benefits for rationalism vs industry (food/sci vs gold/prod)
Imperialism is just "tweaked" as the gorernance is already good.

 

[redrum68]

+100% Coaling Station Production boost

Maybe add Factories as well?

Gain -50% Tile maintenance

I really don't like this. 0 maintenance can just lead to ridiculous road/rail spam on every tile.

 

[paul_soryu]

Tall Industry is a thing you can do right now in that it makes sense in isolation, but the loss of Rationalism is so huge (that 45% science modifier) that really it's a mistake to do that.

It seems the loss of 30% additional Science modifier isn't that big of a deal for most players, otherwise no one would play current Industry. Is this really a problem? It might be unoptimal, but fun isn't always optimal.

 

[papercliptrail]

Might be a Venice thing again, but the Bank's ability to convert gold to science makes up for a decent chunk of that % science loss.

Also, renaming it from Wide Industry doesn't really change the fact that scalers and specialist buffs have been removed in favour of flat bonuses, whereas Rationalism has flat bonuses removed in favour of specialist buffs

 

[Lystrin]

I really don't like this. 0 maintenance can just lead to ridiculous road/rail spam on every tile.

Irrelevant imo, by that point the unit maintenance paid for a worker deleting roads fulltime compares to the cost of the roads themselves. You'd be needing to spam rails for it to be significant but there's no reason to do that ever... roads are almost as fast as rails iirc until combustion in the first place.

 

[hokath]

Maybe add Factories as well?

I thought about it, but I think Factories really enter the ideology era of policy buffs, so I steered clear.
In EE, I expanded (and reduced to 50%) the value to include some Enlightenment Era buildings.
Here I think it's ok. You could add Windmill but I don't think it's necessary.

fun isn't always optimal.

For sure. For me, though, the fun comes mainly from the utility or non-standard yield effects: extra trade routes, free railroads, free tech slingshot, happiness mechanics
I'd like to be able to choose more between these effects without the shadow of Rationalism hanging over me.

scalers and specialist buffs have been removed in favour of flat bonuses, whereas Rationalism has flat bonuses removed in favour of specialist buffs

Totally. That's why I named it the way I did in the first place, because I thought it was most descriptive to summarize what the changes were.

But the effect is, I think, not that you look at your #cities counter and that decides for you which tree to go. An Empire with many Cities can desire Specialists -- and growth! especially if you sort of rapidly expanded at low happiness and have meager population as a result, Food might become the most important yield to "thicken" and really get the value out of your width -- and a small Empire can be lacking in Production and (often times) Gold. Even, a small Empire might wish to Pioneer (or Colonist) onto other continents or islands, perhaps because their small size is a necessity of their start location, but not a constraint after Astronomy. Then, Industry purchase effects are the best way to get those new cities online.

There's a bunch of reasons why the trees might be chosen over the general theme, but the fact they have a general theme gives that "off-pick" meaning more than if they were just identical sets of bonuses. And that, hopefully, leads to more diverse decisions being presented from game to game.

 

[hokath]

I sponsor this

 

[Kineticz]

Been playing with this in the modmod for a while.
I love the yields on basic improvements and bonus resources and agree with the reshuffling of the other bonuses, but replacing % bonuses from buildings with flat yields just feels incredibly underwhelming for an industrial tree and as others have said, shifts a previously fairly shape-neutral tree into a specifically wide tree.
If the changes to rationalism go through (which they should because current rationalism is an absolute science nuke), just tweaking existing % bonuses would feel better

 

[hokath]

@Kineticz note here the bonus is +2/+2 on 4, rather than the mod which is +1/+1 on 5
In this post

[Vote] Post in thread '(9-049) Policy Tweaks VI: Rebalanced Industry'

Jan 4, 2026

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...

• GeneralAmadeus

• 

we saw the effect is actually fairly comparable in the majority of cities.
I think you really need to remove the % bonus
a) because rationalism will also be weaker
b) to not compete with ideologies

We could tone down the % bonus to like +10% total or +5% total, but I can't change this proposal now.
(That would be also be, generally, weaker than this proposal for most of the game)

 

[azum4roll]

The medieval trees have % bonuses so they're going to be the better ones.

 

[hokath]

Here there are still two +10% boosts in both Industrial trees.
In medieval I think there's only 10% Culture in GA and 15% Prod in WLTKD.
Statecraft has the Culture/100 Spy Points in Capital thing but that's a whole other story.
So no I don't think a Medieval tree will be better in standard play.