A new approach to Social Policies (Cost and Upkeep)

[historix69]

If you would ask a Civ5-developer why they designed the Civ5 Social Policy System the way it is, he might answer :
It was a Game Design Decision to add more interesting, challenging decisions to Civ5 gameplay.



1. Introduction

In my opinion the current Civ5 Social Policy system has some unrealistic properties.

Social Policies cost culture which is produced by the player's cities / military units or friendly City States. The culture accumulates every turn and the turn the amount of accumulated culture is equal or higher than the cost of the next Social Policy, the player is forced to choose a new Social Policy. (In advanced game setup there is the option to allow the player to delay choosing a new Social Policy for indetermined number of turns but the default setting is that the player has to choose the new policy that turn. Delaying Social Policies is regarded as kind of cheating.)
So somehow in Civ5 Social Policies are neither really bought nor developed.
- If Social Policies were bought for culture points, the player might delay his purchase of a new Social Policy, e.g. until new Social Policies are available due to a new science age as medevial age or renaissance.
- If Social Policies were developed, the player would specify the next Social Policy before he accumulates culture for this Social Policy. If the player would change the target policy, all previously accumulated culture would realistically stick with the previous target policy.

In Civ5 the Cost of the next Social Policy is based on the number of previously taken policies (for unknown reasons, free policies seem to not count), current number of cities and some cost modifiers from social policies, wonders, etc..
Social Policies costs are not increased by population size, e.g. a size 50 city has the same effect on Social Policy costs as a size 1 city.
Puppet cities contribute culture to new social policies and benefit from social policies but they do not increase policy costs.

The fact that costs of new Social Policy increase with the number of cities affects players' decisions and strategies.
- Players with focus on Social Policies / culture win will limit themself to a small number of high developed cities to not increase cost of new Social Policies to much.
- Players are encouraged to raze cities rather than conquer them. (Might also be caused by bad AI city placement or happiness issues.)

The unrealistic properties are obvious in following situation :
The player has a settler ready to found a new city and he has a new Social Policy ready to pick that turn.
If the player settles the new city first, he will increase the culture cost of the new Social Policy and eventually will have to wait a couple of turns until he can pick the new Social Policy.
If the player picks the Social Policy first and settles then, the new city will benefit from the new Social Policy directly without paying additional culture costs for it.
(In games with advanced start the sequence of taking social policies and settling cities on first turn will determine how many social policies a player will start with since settling cities increases social policy costs.)


Exploit :
Delay settling or annexing cities to get the next Social Policy at lower costs.

Many Social Policies give a bonus to all cities in the player's empire but the costs are only based on the number of own cities present at research. The player can research the policies in his 1-City-Empire for cheap culture costs and later expand and all his cities will benefit from the social policies without extra costs.

For a standard empire with own cities and Representation, the costs increase by about 5% per additional city, so social policy costs for a capital + 20 cities are doubled compared to a 1-City-Empire. So if the capital with all its culture buildings, culture landmarks, national wonders and world wonders has a higher culture production than the other 20 cities, if possible it would be more efficient to let the capital do the social policy research alone and sell / puppet the culture-unproductive cities meanwhile.

Exploit :
Puppet cities contribute culture to Social Policy culture accumulation and benefit from social policies but they do not increase policy costs. (I'm not sure if this is a bug / design mistake or a design decision.) So a strong strategy (or exploit?) is to have a 1-City-Empire or small core-Empire combined with a huge Puppet-Empire. (Downside is that puppets choose on their own which building to build next and that you cannot rush-buy needed buildings in puppet cities.)


Summary of current game mechanics :
- The costs of new social policies are independent of number of citizens in your empire.
- The costs of new social policies are independent of city size.
- The costs of new social policies increase (are handicapped) by additional own cities / annexed cities (with a penalty of 5% - 7% per city). Puppet cities do not increase (handicap) the development of new social policies.
- The costs of new social policies are strongly increased (handicapped) by the number of previously researched policies (but not by free policies). Disabled Policies (e.g. disable Piety tree to take from Rationalism tree) do not lower the costs of new policies.

- The benefit of social policies seems not to be related to any kind of previously built (invisible) infrastructure since a puppet empire or any new settled / annexed / puppeted city can immediately benefit from the policy without extra costs for expanding that (invisible) infrastructure.

Conclusions (assuming realistic mechanics) :
- If new cities and puppets can benefit from policies without additional culture costs, why do costs increase with number of current cities at all? I don't know. It might be some internal policy decision process where every additional city (except puppets) has its own vote / voice and increases the time (or culture turns) needed to find a decision and implement the solution. (Unfortunately a dictatorship social policy eliminating additional cities' costs to social policies is not available.)
- Why do Social Policy costs increase with the number of previously chosen policies?
Usually the player can choose from different policies at the same costs. (For example at the beginning of the game the player can choose from 3 policies opening Tradition, Liberty, Honor.) For briefness let's call two available policies A and B. Policy A taken first has the same costs as Policy B taken first, so policies seem to have the same intrinsic costs. Since the 2nd chosen policy is more expensive than the first, there seems to be an additional cost which can be described as the cost for having 2 policies (Policy A AND Policy B) at the same time. So the final costs for both policies are A + (A AND B) + B. Having multiple policies parallel seems to be very complicated since costs for additional policies increase exponential in Civ5.
- Disabling Policies (e.g. disable Piety tree to take from Rationalism tree) does not lower the costs of new policies, so the additional costs for new policies seem to be more kind of costs for decision process in regard of decision history including all previously decided policies rather than costs of policy implementation.

As you can see from these lines, it is not easy to find an underlying logic / realism in the Civ5 Social Policy system which can explain why policy costs increase in the way they do and why they don't increase in some situations.


2. New Ideas for a more realistic Social Policy System
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The following describes a new system for Social Policy costs and policy handling with the goal to minimize the unrealistic side-effects / exploits of the current system.

- Social Policies are treated similar to Techs in science.
- Each Social Policy has a fixed research cost depending on position in its policy tree, science age the tree becomes available, usefulness of the policy, etc.
- Policy costs do not increase with number of cities or number of researched policies. (So taking openers to Tradition, Liberty, Honor is not causing a penalty that you won't get a late game policy due to exponentialy increasing policy costs.)
- The Social Policy to be researched is selected at the beginning of culture accumulation (research), not chosen at the end of culture accumulation.
- Accumulated culture (progress) for each policy is saved individually, similar to Science Points saved for Techs. So it is possible to switch research target without loosing culture. However accumulated culture is not transferred to the new target policy. You have to go back to research the previously selected policy to use the culture points.

- Researched Social Policies can be enabled / disabled by the player at will.
- To research a new policy, at least all prerequisite policies in the tree must be enabled.
- To enable / use a previously researched policy, at least all prerequisite policies in the tree must be enabled.
- There might be mutually exclusive trees like Piety, Rationalism where only one tree can be enabled at a time.

- Each policy has an individual dynamic upkeep-cost in culture which is taken from the national culture-income on each turn if the policy is enabled. (The national culture-income is the culture produced by all cities + culture from city-states, etc.)
- The culture-upkeep does not affect local culture accumulated in cities used for culture-expansion.
- Each city which benefits from the social policies pays upkeep, even Puppets.
- Having too many policies enabled at the same time may slow down or halt the research of new Social Policies.
- If culture-income is not covering the culture-upkeep-cost, the player must decide which policies to disable.
- A tall empire with high developed cities might support more active policies than a wide empire with undeveloped cities.

Examples for individual upkeep-costs :
- Policies which affect population have upkeep based on total population, e.g. 0,1 culture per pop per turn.
- Policies which affect specialists have upkeep based on total number of specialists, e.g. 0,1 culture per specialist per turn.
- Policies which affect all cities (Food-Bonus, Production-Bonus) have upkeep based on number of cities, e.g. 1 culture per city per turn.
- Policies which affect coastal cities have upkeep based on number of coastal cities, e.g. 1 culture per coastal city per turn.
- Policies which affect a certain building (e.g. university) have upkeep based on number of this building in your empire, e.g. 1 culture per university per turn.
- Policies which affect only naval units (+2 Move) have upkeep based on number of naval units, e.g. 1 culture per naval unit per turn.
- Policies which affect all military units have upkeep based on number of units, e.g. 1 culture per unit per turn.

There are a variety of different approaches, e.g. a bonus for coastal cities or naval units can be tied to a coastal building.

Research and Upkeep costs of Social Policies and Culture Production and Boni of buildings must be balanced.

 

[Pazyryk]

Long post, so I haven't read it all the way through. Here are some modding points though:

It is possible to rework social policy advancement, as I am doing in my Éa fantasy mod, but not trivial. Actually, it's all "run of the mill" Lua programming except the AI. Set policy advancement cost (in Defines, not Policies.xml) to 9999999. Then use Lua to run whatever formula you want and provide a "free policy" whenever the player meets your specific criteria. The problem, however, is that the AI won't seem to pick anything if you give it a free policy. That might be due to some other problem that I don't understand. In any case, I'm doing total Lua control of AI policy choices anyway so my Lua code sets the policy for them. (Programming AI is not easy, btw.)

In my mod policy advancement is based on "Cultural Level", which is a sort of moving average of total culture generated divided by population over history (that's the best I can do in one sentence). No specific punishment for number of cities. But total population matters.

 

[Ajuga]

Should you not post this in suggestions? I thought this place was for actual modifications.

Anyway,
This suggestion looks a bit too much like science right now. I like how culture and science are two completely different things. This suggestion brings culture way too close to being science.
Let me highlight the issues.



The biggest issues are:

- Each Social Policy has a fixed research cost depending on position in its policy tree, science age the tree becomes available, usefulness of the policy, etc.
- Policy costs do not increase with number of cities or number of researched policies. (So taking openers to Tradition, Liberty, Honor is not causing a penalty that you won't get a late game policy due to exponentialy increasing policy costs.)

The cost should increase when you have more cities (including puppets, but puppets increase it not as much as annexed or own cities).
Science favors a wide empire, culture favors a tall empire. If culture would be the same cost no matter how much cities you have they become essentially the same kind of victory. Get as much cities and you win. This is bad from a gameplay point of view.

In fact, just having puppets increase the social policy cost is good enough of a fix for the game right now.

- Researched Social Policies can be enabled / disabled by the player at will.
- Each policy has an individual dynamic upkeep-cost in culture which is taken from the national culture-income on each turn if the policy is enabled. (The national culture-income is the culture produced by all cities + culture from city-states, etc.)
- The culture-upkeep does not affect local culture accumulated in cities used for culture-expansion.
- Each city which benefits from the social policies pays upkeep, even Puppets.
- Having too many policies enabled at the same time may slow down or halt the research of new Social Policies.
- If culture-income is not covering the culture-upkeep-cost, the player must decide which policies to disable.
- A tall empire with high developed cities might support more active policies than a wide empire with undeveloped cities.

This is not how policies work. Policies are things that affect the entire country, we can't have a democracy in the northern part of our country and a dictatorship in the south (the policies represent parts of governments).
Every city in the empire should gain the benefits of social policies and there should be no upkeep other than that more cities means more culture needed before you can adopt another policy.

For the same reason it's silly that we can disable policies. A country can't just arbitrarily decide to abandon order in favor of freedom.
The only way this would work is that the country enters a severe rebellion when you do change governments, something akin to a negative golden age. (Something that already happens I believe.)



In summary, social policies could use improvements.
I do like that you have to select a certain policy and that your cities will then proceed to generate culture in order to adopt that policy.
I also like that certain policies have lower costs as they appear in earlier ages.

However you try to solve the whole puppet issue you addressed in another thread by introducing a very roundabout and complicated system. (That, unlike you promote it as, is even less realistic.) Like I said earlier, the whole issue can be solved by increasing the social policy cost when you get puppets as well. But instead of 30% more expensive it could be 10% more expensive.

This way going for a cultural victory means a tall empire with no or a small amount of puppets. Exactly the opposite of science, which only gains benefits from growing wide. Keeping the different victories different is by far the most important thing. Even if it means giving up some realism.

 

[historix69]

@Ajuga

Should you not post this in suggestions? I thought this place was for actual modifications.

I'm not that familiar with the Civ5-forum-categories. Sorry if I chose the wrong place. Maybe a moderator can move it (and my Science-thread, too).

The cost should increase when you have more cities (including puppets, but puppets increase it not as much as annexed or own cities).

I split the cost into Research-cost and Upkeep-cost. If the policy buffs your cities, then the more cities you have, the more expensive the Upkeep will be. Upkeep-costs will correlate with overall benefit.

This is not how policies work. Policies are things that affect the entire country, we can't have a democracy in the northern part of our country and a dictatorship in the south (the policies represent parts of governments).

Enabling / Disabling a policy is meant nation-wide, not per City.

For the same reason it's silly that we can disable policies. A country can't just arbitrarily decide to abandon order in favor of freedom.

Look at Spain's history. After Civil War it was a dictatorship.
"With Franco's death in November 1975, Juan Carlos succeeded to the position of King of Spain and head of state in accordance with the law. With the approval of the new Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the restoration of democracy, the State devolved much authority to the regions and created an internal organization based on autonomous communities."

Nations can switch policies depending on changing circumstances.

Germany went from Monarchy / Empire in 1918 to Republic (1919-1932) to Facism / Police-State / Order (1933-1945) to democracy (1945 - ...)
After fall of France in 1940, the government in Vichy went from Republic to some kind of French Facism which was ended by D-Day and liberation of France in 1944.

After the peaceful end of Soviet Union in 1991, most countries switched from order to democracy.

However you found an interesting point :
My basic concept would allow to disable all policies and stop research. Allthough to continue research in a selected tree, at least the previous policies in the tree must be enabled. It might be possible that an empire gets too wide so that it won't be able to even pay culture upkeep for the cheapest policy, e.g. if average culture income is less than 1 culture point per city. On the other side, undeveloped wide empires (as maybe the Mongolian empire) in history did not feature any great social policies but were close to its fall. Cultural income and policy upkeep costs are definiteley subject to balancing.

Important is the idea that wider empires have a higher policy-upkeep-cost. Most people start with a small empire, develop social policies cheap and later use them for a wide empire without paying the extra costs for infrastructure etc.. (exploit) In my concept, if you start to expand from tall to wide, your upkeep-costs will also expand and might force you to abandon (disable) certain benefits as free food or free production until your infastructure has reached a sufficient level. In real life, free food and free production are not just raining down from heaven. People must work for it. And the more cities, the more food / production, the more work and higher costs.

This way going for a cultural victory means a tall empire with no or a small amount of puppets.

I didn't mention it in the previous post but I don't like the way cultural victory is designed in Civ5. I think they should go back to Civ3 / Civ4 and use the 3 highest ranking cultural cities in your empire (accumulating 50.000 culture each or so) or they should completely remove Cultural Victory from the Game. Utopia Project seems to be nonsense. It is just a substitution for a cultural space race. (Tibet is a real life example for Utopia Project. Tibet was conquered by China in 1950. So Utopia already failed.)

If you go tall, your average culture income per city will be high, allowing you more enabled policies and benefits compared with a wide, less developed empire.