Ability to Change Social Policies

[KCMcG]

Does anyone think they should incorporate a feature similar to Civics in Civ IV that would allow you to change social policies by going into anarchy for a few turns?

In order to stop it from being too flexible maybe it would cost 1 turn per policy being changed on Normal speed. You also wouldn't be able to get one time bonuses again by switching and then switching back.

Part of the reason I want this is that I never seem to use the later social policies except in cultural victories. Another reason is that I always want to use my first policy or two before I start building new cities because I don't want my accumulated culture to lose its value, but in most games I don't really want any of the first 3 policies available. Anyone else think this is a good idea?

 

[vendur]

No. Why eliminate one of the best new features that increases the strategy in choosing policies? Choose wisely.

 

[KCMcG]

Has anyone actually used Autocracy? By the time I get to the industrial age I've either:
1. Adopted Liberty because I was REXing
2. Adopted Freedom because I was using specialists
3. Run out of culture needed for policies because I own so many cities that it costs over 1000 culture for my 6th policy.

I figured that being able to reuse policies, but at a high cost (don't tell me that 6 turns of anarchy in order to adopt all of autocracy isn't huge) is a strong incentive to choose correctly the first time.

 

[Airey]

Let me apologize if I mis-read you, but I think you said, you want to adapt a penalty to changing social policy because you rarely change policy in your game play... effectively penalizes the AI coz they change social policy more than the player? As or right now, they need to boost the AI more.

 

[duxup]

The polices are so powerful I think allowing you to change them would possibly break the game, or be a huge bother.

If you're getting lots of happiness and swing over to something that provides some other benefit you want ... blamo you've got a crap load of unhappy folk, maybe your economy craps out.

I think the Civ IV governments were close enough that you mostly could swap around.. in Civ V I don't think it would work that well.
Also

 

[Tale]

I loved Autocracy in my Japanese domination game.

 

[automator]

Has anyone actually used Autocracy? By the time I get to the industrial age I've either:
1. Adopted Liberty because I was REXing
2. Adopted Freedom because I was using specialists
3. Run out of culture needed for policies because I own so many cities that it costs over 1000 culture for my 6th policy.

I figured that being able to reuse policies, but at a high cost (don't tell me that 6 turns of anarchy in order to adopt all of autocracy isn't huge) is a strong incentive to choose correctly the first time.

So what you're saying is you benefitted greatly from specializing your empire one way, and reached a point of policy stagnation, and want to be able to radically change your policies? Sorry, doesn't work that way.

The policy system is pretty neat. It encourages really thinking out whether or not to adopt a policy, and if so, which policy. Sure, a policy seems really great in 500 BC, but how useful will it be in the 1800s? Is it worth it to build up a bulk of culture so that when that future branch is open, you can rock it out?

The only way I could support such a thing is that:

1. You have to "unselect" policies one at a time.
2. Each "unselection" causes an anarchy lasting 2+ turns (depending on map size and increasing exponentially for each unslection)
3. You are refunded a fraction of the culture -- retaining more for each cultural building in your empire
4. Refunded points cannot be spent for 10+ turns (depending on map size)

 

[KCMcG]

The only way I could support such a thing is that:

1. You have to "unselect" policies one at a time.
2. Each "unselection" causes an anarchy lasting 2+ turns (depending on map size and increasing exponentially for each unslection)
3. You are refunded a fraction of the culture -- retaining more for each cultural building in your empire
4. Refunded points cannot be spent for 10+ turns (depending on map size)

This is pretty much what I'm talking about. To unselect a policy would cause your empire to go into anarchy for 1, maybe 2 turns per policy. Then after the anarchy is over (which could be 6-12 turns if you're unselecting an entire branch) you're able to select that number of free policies.

My main issue is that the later policies seem nice, but if I wait until I reach the necessary era to use them then they cost 2-4 times as much to adopt because I've expanded my empire. Unless I'm specifically going for a cultural win I don't think I've ever earned more than 6-7 policies, making it hard to ever go for Autocracy or Communism.

 

[Tale]

You could try to stop annexing everyone you conquer. My domination game had taken over an entire continent on a huge map and was still getting new policies.

 

[Nunya]

I have used Autocracy, but it was an advanced start game that began in the Industrial Age. In a normal game however, I never use it for the reasons mentioned above. Which is a shame because it was quite fun. Fascism (double startegic resources) works wonders in combination with the Russian UA since you basically have 4x normal Iron, Horses, and (most importantly) Uranium. I could field an entire army of Giant Death Robots and when I unlocked Total War (+33% Strength for 20 turns) I just steamrolled over the map.

Anarchy is already in. If you adopt a policy tree that conflicts with one that you already have (like you adopt Rationailsm when you have Piety) your empire goes into anarchy for 1 turn and you lose all the policies you had in the old tree. I don't think any of them get reused though.

I have mixed feelings about social policies. On one hand I rather like them, but on the other hand I feel like I don't have enough control ... or something. I don't really know how to express my feelings, but it has something to do with how you normally never get to use Autocracy.

 

[danomite]

Anarchy is already in. If you adopt a policy tree that conflicts with one that you already have (like you adopt Rationailsm when you have Piety) your empire goes into anarchy for 1 turn and you lose all the policies you had in the old tree. I don't think any of them get reused though.

if then decide to go back to piety after having had it before the change to rationalism you then get all your old choices back. tested it out in a game where i unlocked every social policy.

 

[Lyoncet]

Some will prefer one way, some the other. Personally, I prefer strategic decisions over tactical decisions, so I love the stricter social policies.

Modding it, however, would require probably both a change to the AI to be able to leverage the ability, and nerfing a lot of the later abilities, since you could just spam yourself to the bottom of the late trees for the cost of a few turns of anarchy. And of course the one-time bonus abilities (free tech, free policies, free GA, free GG, 20 turns total war) would likely need to be changed entirely.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I would enjoy some flexibility with social policies, though certainly not so much you can change every couple of turns. I think the following would be pretty balanced:

Refunding a policy gives you 80% of it's culture cost, distributed over 10 turns(So you get 8% of it's culture per turn).
Policies that give a one-time bonus such as reformation, free religion, scientific revolution, etc. only give 20% of their culture cost(So you get 2% per turn for 10 turns).
You can refund one policy at a time with no penalty, with additional policies costing 2 turns of anarchy per policy. It still takes 10 turns after the anarchy has ended to gain all the culture back.
Refunding a policy does reset the culture cost per policy back one policy.

With this setup, you have two ways to change your policies; gradual change over many turns(50 turns to change 5 policies is quite a bit, especially in games that only last 300 turns) or rapidly, which sends you into anarchy(With rapid change, it would take 18 turns to change those 5 policies, but 8 of those would be anarchy were your empire can't do anything).

 

[KCMcG]

I have mixed feelings about social policies. On one hand I rather like them, but on the other hand I feel like I don't have enough control ... or something. I don't really know how to express my feelings, but it has something to do with how you normally never get to use Autocracy.

I think I know what you mean. A lot of this game is like that. The feeling for me is something like this:

Here are 60 policies for you to adopt instead of the 20 of last game! (I don't count the base civics) Wait, whats that? You say you want to use the late-era policies? Ok then, here's your first policy, BUT DON'T OPEN IT! If you play with it then you can't take it back and get those late-era policies that you wanted so badly. You better just let that policy sit there until your civilization is mature enough to use it properly.

It's the same way with the city tiles:

You now get 36 tiles to work instead of just 21. But you only get to start with 6 and you're going to have to unlock those other tiles one at a time. And don't try to grow too quickly either because it's going to take 200 food to grow from size 12 to size 13.

Civilization V opens up limitless possibilities compared to Civilization IV and then promptly straps a ball and chain to your leg so that you don't run away too quickly with your new found freedom.

 

[Celevin]

I think I know what you mean. A lot of this game is like that. The feeling for me is something like this:

Here are 60 policies for you to adopt instead of the 20 of last game! (I don't count the base civics) Wait, whats that? You say you want to use the late-era policies? Ok then, here's your first policy, BUT DON'T OPEN IT! If you play with it then you can't take it back and get those late-era policies that you wanted so badly. You better just let that policy sit there until your civilization is mature enough to use it properly.

It's the same way with the city tiles:

You now get 36 tiles to work instead of just 21. But you only get to start with 6 and you're going to have to unlock those other tiles one at a time. And don't try to grow to quickly either because it's going to take 200 food to grow from size 12 to size 13.

Civilization V opens up limitless possibilities compared to Civilization IV and then promptly straps a ball and chain to your leg so that you don't run away too quickly with your new found freedom.

If I was going to mass-mod Civ5, I would make all policy trees open from the start, then re-balance them based around that. And no funny restrictions like Piety-Rationalism.

3 trees at the start is still a LOT more choice than the civics from Civ4.

 

[Lyoncet]

I personally think that while it's good to let the player hold onto those culture points, it should have a heavier cost than just the opportunity cost. I'd say you should stop getting culture applied to social policies while you sit on one, so you can still hold out a few extra turns to get Patronage/Rationalism whatever, but you're heavily penalized for the cheesy strategies that rely heavily on slingshotting yourself to a later era and blitzing a late social policy tree.

 

[KCMcG]

I personally think that while it's good to let the player hold onto those culture points, it should have a heavier cost than just the opportunity cost. I'd say you should stop getting culture applied to social policies while you sit on one, so you can still hold out a few extra turns to get Patronage/Rationalism whatever, but you're heavily penalized for the cheesy strategies that rely heavily on slingshotting yourself to a later era and blitzing a late social policy tree.

This just makes the problem I have worse.

The cost of adopting first first six policies is 910 culture. The cost of adopting the next six policies is 5010 culture. If you're not specifically going for culture then the biggest culture building you will build is a monument. At 3 culture per turn it takes 300 turns for the first six and a nonexistant 1670 turns to unlock the second set of six.

Saving policies is the only realistic way to unlock all of the late-era policies unless you're playing for a cultural victory. If anything there needs to be a way to make it easier to unlock late-era policies instead of penalizing people further for waiting for them.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The cost of adopting first first six policies is 910 culture. The cost of adopting the next six policies is 5010 culture. If you're not specifically going for culture then the biggest culture building you will build is a monument. At 3 culture per turn it takes 300 turns for the first six and a nonexistant 1670 turns to unlock the second set of six.

Monuments are 2/turn. Temples are 3/turn. So if you DO care about that second set of six, you'd build a Temple and get 5/turn.
And then you'll add more cities. Sure, it'd add +30% to the costs each time, but if you're not intending to build more than Monuments and maybe Temples, you'll come out ahead in a larger empire. Five cities at 5/turn produce five times as much as one city at 5/turn, with the SPs only costing 2.2 times as much.
And of course, there are Wonders adding culture (and one that decreases the culture needed for new SPs). And an SP that decreases the cost of new SPs. This all adds up; it's rare that I'll end a game with less than a dozen SPs, even with a huge empire.

And then there's France.

 

[Nunya]

The problem is not that you can't get those late game civics. The problem is that you are discourage from adopting them in favor of earlier ones. This is especially true for Autocracy.

Let's say it's relatively early in the game and I have a small number of cities and enough culture to get 4 policies (or whatever number). I can get them right away and enjoy their benefits for the entire game or I can save them for the industrial era. But my empire will have grown by then and so will the cost of adopting 4 policies. So in order to still get 4 policies I will have to actively work on increasing my culture. But if I opted to take 4 early policies I could then choose to largely ignore culture (other than for the purpose of expanding city borders) and it wouldn't have any negative effect on the 4 policies I already have.

Because of all this saving policies for later has two oppourtunity costs. There is the opportunity cost of not having the benefits of the early policies and there is the opportunity cost of building all those culture buildings.

I'm not saying the culture buildings aren't worth it, I'm just saying that the game strongly favors taking early policies over late ones (unless you are going to specifically focus on culture in which case you can get them both). And that's a pity because they are fun.

I think Celevin's idea of making them all open from the start, removing incopatibilities, and re-balancing them acordingly would be the best solution. Of course it's not historically correct to have nazi democrats in 3000 BC, but there's already a lot of other things that don't make sense (Giant Death Robots without Robotics, building the Notre Dame without Masonry, Piety only available in the classical era, Liberty available in the ancient era). If they wanted to keep things historical, they should've stuck with the civics from Civ 4. Social policies are intrinsically gamey so that's how they should be handled.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go mod my game.

 

[vranasm]

Yesterday I found out that you actually can "switch" SP.

I had some points in Piety and forgot that it's exclusive with Rationalism (the science tree can't remember right now), so when I had the popup "you can adopt policy", I went in the screen clicked Rationalism it told me if I want really to do it, I said yes and it throw me in anarchy...
I didn't analyze the situation enough, but just saying that you can adopt new policy even if you have invested in the exclusive one.