Altered civic options for FfH

[Apepis]

I've remade civics options in FfH. Download the file, play and let me know what you think of it.

Link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/131308/AltCivics_for_FfH.rar

Features:

Spoiler :

2 new government civics:
- Magocracy - enabled by Sorcery, giving +20% beakers, +2 experience pts for units built, +1 happy with Mage Guild;
- Empire - enabled by Mercantilism, giving no maintenace from distance to palace, +10% military prod, -25% war weariness and lowering unit upkeep costs a bit.

Balanced religion civics:
- Social Order gives now +1 happy from courthouse, +3 happy from basilica, +1 happy per military unit in city, +10% military prod and a few units free of upkeep.
- Slavery gives additionally a +25% bonus for building production in cities with Octopus Overlords.
- Arete bonus for GP rate rised to +50% in cities with state religion; Arete also gives unlimited Engineers.
- Guardian of Nature lost its -10% military prod handicap.
- Sacrifice the Weak remained unchanged (it is already overpowered).

Changes in other civics (noted only major):
- Empowered Republic (removed unhappiness for civs not having the Republic, but added increased speed of improvement upgrade and a bonus +1 commerce for Towns).
- Reworked Aristocracy (decreased commerce bonus on farms from +2 to +1, but also no -1 food on farms anymore).
- Accordingly changed Agriculture (removed -1 hammers on farms, but bonus food is +1; also +1 food on pastures, hamlets, villages, towns; -1 commerce on hamlets and villages; -2 commrce on towns so you never get a town productive more than a village).
- Reworked Guilds civic (bonus gold, unlimited merchants, and added for future use -20% upkeep of corporations/guilds)
- Changed Foregin Trade civic (removed -10% gold handicap, cultural bonus lowered to +10%, removed +1 trade route in costral cities but added +50% commerce from trade routes)

When "Shadow" comes out, I intend to update AltCivics, and if the team decides to remove any religious civic, I may consider adding it back, as well as making new ones for new religions.

 

[Sureshot]

those are nice changes (especially magocracy and social order heh)

only thing i cant say i like is the change to aristocracy (2 commerce makes it amazing for financial leaders, with only 1 its just a meh civic to me)

and id rather see the +1 food from other improvements on other civics in the category (like tribalism giving +1 pasture food; maybe the cottage ones move to mercentalism or something).

 

[xienwolf]

Kinda nice having the bonus food on all (non-hammer) improvements. It means you can run Agriculture, but not limit yourself to farms only.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

@Magocracy - only positives and no negatives, on top on that it would overshadow everything else in that department maybe except Empire

@Empire - kind of silly, empire is not a form of government, it is an adjective that can be attached to a Republic or despotism ruled nation, bonuses are also overpowered

The religion civics are kinda strange. You made some changes but they are really the same, nah, let them be, only the +1 for units in city is a nice change limit it to 3 thou or demand for the 4th T4 unit

Aristocracy lost its main flavour and purpose, no one would use it any more

Agri is interesting, Foreign trade is a must to be considered.

Overall there is no visible concept of what you are trying to achieve. Magocracy is a nice idea but your implementation is just wrong. Give it:
- +20% science output
- -15% production
- high upkeep
- extra +1 for each enchantment mana
- +2XP for arcane units
[there is still something missing, something unique, something negative that would represent the dangers of magic in politics]

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I pretty much agree with [NWO]_Valis here. (except I don't think you should limit Social Order's happiness per military unit, just reduce the Basilica happiness back to 1)

Also, you didn't change the one thing that has always annoyed me about Aristocracy: it is completely useless without farms (well, apart from the Royal Guards, which were always the best reason to use it). I'd want some reason to adopt it regardless of what civ I'm playing, even Lanun.

What I'd really like is if Arete had more synergy with the mountains, like making them provide ~2 production , ~2 gold, and ~ 1 happiness. Unfortunately, I don't think that is possible the way civics currently work. (I've tried to get around it, but the best I've done so far is to add a religious UB that requires the Arete tech which (borrowing some code from the Machu Pichu mod) adds to the yields of peaks in its city radius, and also randomly adding some marble, gems, gold, iron, copper, mithril, and shuet stone, along with mines and quarries. (peaks are "graphical only," so they can't actually change a tiles yield. Python code was required to make them more productive. If you made them not graphical only, then a flat version of peaks with the yields you selected were added, and the normal peaks remained the same. They are also "water" terrain. Changing this didn't seem to cause a problem, and allowed dwarven workers (who I'd made able to move though impassible terrain) to build roads there. Hmm, I wonder if this is also the only change I would need to allow the dwarven workers to build mines/quarries there, but only on the proper resources.))

 

[TheJopa]

- Changed Foregin Trade civic (removed -10% gold handicap, cultural bonus lowered to +10%, removed +1 trade route in costral cities but added +50% commerce from trade routes)

A must - have change for main mod, I'd say

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It might also be nice for Mercantilism to nullify foreign cooperations/guilds (like in normal BtS) and for Foreign Trade to give them a bonus; say, maybe -10% maintenance for foreign guilds in your cities and +50% gold from your guilds in other civ's cites.

 

[xienwolf]

Wierd. You said Mountains are treated as water terrain? They still track desert/plains/grassland attribute for them. I have often had my druids upgrade mountain tiles just in case deserts actually spread (and to make sure all of my land is pretty green color).

 

[Apepis]

First, thanks for replies, but playtest new civics for a while, please

Magocracy is a nice idea but your implementation is just wrong. Give it:
- +20% science output
- -15% production
- high upkeep
- extra +1 for each enchantment mana
- +2XP for arcane units
[there is still something missing, something unique, something negative that would represent the dangers of magic in politics]

You are right that magocracy needs unique handicap, maybe not nesesarily to balance it (I believe it isn't really much more powerfull than theocracy), but to make it more interesting.

But... Seeing your proposition I culdn't stop my smile. -15% prod is strange idea (what's the point?). Extra +1 for enchantment mana? Why enchantment? Extra happy for Mages Guild works better. Only +2XP for arcane units instead of all units is really ok, but how to do this just editing XML files and not incorporating python scripts?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Wierd. You said Mountains are treated as water terrain? They still track desert/plains/grassland attribute for them. I have often had my druids upgrade mountain tiles just in case deserts actually spread (and to make sure all of my land is pretty green color).

Well, deserts have <bWater>1</bWater> like coasts and oceans instead of <bWater>0</bWater> like deserts, grasslands, etc, but I don't think that really means much when they also have <bGraphicalOnly>1</bGraphicalOnly> (when you change this things get wierd). Also, although they are impassible terrain, they have <bImpassable>0</bImpassable> (actually, no terrain types are marked as impassible in the Civ4TerrainInfos file. I haven't actually tested to see what happens if you make this true)

Hills are actually treated exactly the same way. Hills themselves can't have any yields either, but it is set up so that they can change the yields of the planes/grasslands/desert tiles they are on (there is a <HillsYieldChange/> tag, but no such thing as a <PeaksYieldChange/> one). I don't think peaks are set to share their tiles like hills are by default, but I image there is little are nothing stopping you from making it so. I'd guess this is purely a matter of the map script that peaks do not occupy the same tiles as the other base terrains at the start of the game like hills do.

 

[Kael]

Firaxis intended to have hills and peaks as their own terrain type but late into Civ4's design they ran into some issues and built in the current implementation of them as a kludge (Soren's words, not mine). The real work in making them is hard coded in the graphic engine (unfortunatly as I would love to have enough control over the height maps to make chasms) with the terrain entires as little more than stubs.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'd imagine its for enchantment because enchantment's usual function is +1

How about this for a Magocracy mechanic: Double all passive mana effects. That would mean +1 happiness per enchantment mana, more research for mind, GPP for spirit, etc, but would also mean that mutations and wild fires are all the more common. It might be hard to code, but this could be quite powerful (and dangerous), especially if more (and risker) passive mana effects are added.

(I'd like to see a similar mechanic for Consumption that doubles the happiness from luxury resources, and maybe causes unhappiness in cities deprived of resources that other cities have)

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

How about this for a Magocracy mechanic: Double all passive mana effects. That would mean +1 happiness per enchantment mana, more research for mind, GPP for spirit, etc, but would also mean that mutations and wild fires are all the more common. It might be hard to code, but this could be quite powerful (and dangerous), especially if more (and risker) passive mana effects are added.

(I'd like to see a similar mechanic for Consumption that doubles the happiness from luxury resources, and maybe causes unhappiness in cities deprived of resources that other cities have)

That was exactly my way of thinking behind it but I did not want to go to far. Ppl are complaining over earth mana effects to be to powerful now with 3 earth nodes. Now imagine your empire with the magocracy effect. I would switch to it for like 10-20 turns and then back to whatever I want having all my mines with a mineral resource.

-15% prod is strange idea (what's the point?)
I think of mages can be compared to scholars^2. They do theorize, have new ideas or perfect old ideas. The only problem is they do not like hard work and their ideas are not practical, even counter productive. Imagine a mage running as a minister of labour thinking new ways to 'help' organize ppl at work having all his knowledge from old grimuars and no practical experience. Besides, such big science bonus has to be weighted by something and politicks and magic should never go together [read Terry Pratchett's 'Sourcery' ]

- Extra happy for Mages Guild works better
Dull To obvious and really has no sense. Maybe mage guild would decres maintenance in that city but even if mages are the ruling class they would not make a carnival out of it and take in to their line ordinary ppl. It would be a government that could be compared to our world 'technocracy' [meaning government of specialists, not technology]

 

[xienwolf]

NWO makes a decent point about how Mage guilds wouldn't mean party time. Maybe a reduction in UNhappy would be more fitting than a bonus in happy (and essentially have the same effect).

 

[Calavente]

or just an increase of unhappies, as mage would make political decision just so that they can do what they want... without concern for anybody else, using live people for experiment of new healing spell, leaving them mutated, controling all the iron because iron (silver) kill magic, distroying cow to reduce the occurence of the bipedic polearmed cows event after hyborem's death ...etc

as proved pratchet, and many other writters (think wheel of time) when mages are dominant as the political power, they control, but not care about the people !!!

 

[xienwolf]

And yet all of the "Ancient Civilizations" which people find clues about and wonders from are typically ones in which it was a utopia, run by mages (nevermind that they are now extinct, and also typically because of the mages).

So there are equal arguments that mages can have beneficial effects in mind. Like creating the magical equivalent of the toaster oven and vacuum, that can reduce some unhappy

I think that each population consumes 1 food instead of 2, but each population produces 2 disease instead of 1 would be an interesting change to "balance" it. City will grow fast with good health buildings still, but not much larger.

 

[zxcvbnm]

"The mages think only of their own power: they wish not to share it, if it wasn't necessary for the growing of their own might. Few of them would actually teach the ways of the ether as the competition will weaken their own strength, but as they usually like to have what we have: food, water, a roof over their heads, so to get them and avoid being forced to dedicate their time for something else than magic, they get apprentices."

"The apprentices do everything the mages don't feel like doing, they keep the system functioning. No sane person would do this without getting a lot of something in exchange. The mages don't tend to have lots of money, so they pay in the only way they can: power. They share their secrets to those who serve them, because it allows them to increase their own power."

"Few people are exceptions to this: Govannon is the only one I can name. As druids don't tend to want those roofs and get their food and water from the nature, they don't have adepts doing all the menial tasks."

"But for those who want their share of what the average commoner can never get, this is the only way. Many don't live to see their last year, but for those who survive to become mages, the reward outweighs the risks."

"When they are mages and others are their apprentices, they don't want to give something they worked hard for, too easily to others, and that keeps this running."

Don't know what this means mechanically but it might be that if the mages were given the power they would command others to do the hard work so they can achieve even higher levels of arcane knowledge.
-10% perhaps?


You know things are getting bad when you don't understand your own thoughts

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Having Mage guilds (with Magocracy) gain the functions of Tax Offices/Courthouses/Dungeons seems right to me. They would cause unhappiness, but reduce maintenance (and maybe war weariness) and give you big research(and maybe gold) boosts.

The Age of Ice entry on Magocracy:
"Far from the arcane councils that dominated the previous age, Magocracy in this age was leadership by the most educated and a deep cultural focus on research. A leadership by the wise instead of those with magical gifts. In the following age this trend would reverse, but for now a man was judged by his wisdom and knowledge, not by his ability to conjure fire."

Also remember that in the Age of Magic all the Mages were evil (Until Kyorlin switched sides). The Greatests empires in FfH's history were usually strongly opposed to the Mages (although despotic Mages had empires of their own)

 

[Apepis]

About Magocracy:
+20% research is a lot - true. Lately I had an idea to change it to +1 baker from scpecialist. That's both more appropriate (mages are specialists after all ), and forms powerfull combo with Scholarship and Caste System - both quite siuted for a country ruled by spellcasters.

Mages Guild, on the other hand should give because it's the simpliest way to simulate small benefits brought by abundance of mages nearby. Imagine it: master of the guild has legal authority to rule all surrounding land - and while he can be unjust, the mere threat of his magic makes people around less rebelous. If members of the Guild are the benevolent types of wizards, then +1 is granted for their help to common people. And - one more thing - presence of the Mages Guild means that there is also an arcane school in the settlement which allows mere people to lern some magicks and advance to the privileged magic class.
+1 is just simple and easy to implement - and makes sense at the same time.

 

[Sureshot]

my favourite civic is definitely Magocracy, the flavour of it alone makes it awesome.

20% science doesnt seem too much to me, i mean godking adds +50% to both production and gold, and academies add +50% science (only 1 city for each of course, but when you specialize cities this is all you need).

have you thought of putting Magocracy on Knowledge of the Ether instead? sorcery comes so late heh