Another "how to improve the weak SP's" Thread

[sendos]

There has been quite a few of these threads before but I will jump straight to the point. Liberty needs a minor buff whilst honor, exploration and piety need major buffs. Here are my suggestions:


Liberty

The opener and finisher are rather weak policies even though the finisher is rather flexible. I do not recommend replacing the finisher but I recommend adding a few things to it. Here are my ideas:

Opener: +1 and +1 gold per city.

Finisher: free great person of your choice + -33% penalty reduction.


Honor

This tree has a good opener, but everything else is ordinary. Here are some ideas to improve this tree:

Warrior Code: +50% Great General spawn rate. Great Generals are maintenance free. +20% bonus for melee units.

Discipline : +20% bonus for units with a friendly unit next to it.

Military Tradition: +50% XP rate. All melee units start with +15XP and receive Cover I promotion.

Military Caste: +1 and +3 per city with a garrison. -25% unhappiness from occupied/puppeted cities with a garrison.

Professional Army: Cost of upgrading units is reduced by 33%. 50% faster production of military buildings.

Finisher: Gain from killing enemy units. All drill and shock promotions provide an additional 5% bonus (so 20% for I, 40% for II and 60% for III). Gain culture from capturing cities proportional to 5x its culture production.


Piety

This SP tree is somewhat completely hollow. The opener needs more work. the policies themselves need to be more effective and the reformations also need some more work.

Opener: +2 in capitol. Temples and shrines take half as long to build.

Organized religion: +1 and +1 from temples and shrines. +4 culture from grand temple.

Mandate of heaven: -25% cost for units and buildings. +15% bonus when empire is happy.

Theocracy: Holy sites provide +3 . +25% from temples.

Religious tolerance: cities with majority religion gain pantheon bonus of second most popular religion. Cities with no majority religion gain pantheon bonus of all religions influencing that city (if coding for this is actually possible).

Reformation: Bonus belief if you have your own religion. If all religions are founded, you may select which religion to follow and religious influence of that particular religion is increased in your empire (also contains diplo religion bonus).

Reformation list:
- Underground sect: bolsters religious influence when you put a spy in it. If the spy is in a CS that does not follow your religion, the chances of intimidating it are doubled, coups are more successful and they have the effect of a great prophet in spreading religion.
- Jesuit education: may purchase science buildings with . Public schools and universities produce +2.
- Sacred sites: +2 tourism and +2 and from buildings purchased with faith.
- To the Glory of God: May purchase all great people with faith. Great person faith cost is reduced by -10%.
- Religious fervour: may purchase units with faith at industrial era and onwards. Fix the exorbitant faith costs (e.g. infantry is worth 2250 faith). Cut them by 50% at least.

Finisher: Free great prophet. Holy sites provide +3 culture. Gain free grand temple at capitol.


Exploration

Exploration tree is highly dependent on the type of map. For example, on pangaea it is near useless but on archipelago it is a decent SP. We either need to take out this situational nature or bolster the existing SP's to make coastal settlements more attractive. I will take the latter approach.

Opener: +1 sight and +1 movement for naval units. Upon revealing a shrouded tile, you gain 3 culture.

Maritime infrastructure: +4 production from coastal cities.

Naval Tradition: +1 happiness and +2 culture from lighthouses, seaports and harbors. Sea resources provide +1 food and +3 (because marine biology).

Merchant Navy: +1 trade route and free cargo ship.

Navigation School: Free Great Admiral. +50% Great Admiral spawn rate. Unlocks naval college (+15XP for naval units. Can only be built on coast).

Treasure fleets: +25% gold from external sea trade routes. +1 happiness per sea trade route in a city.

Finisher: Reveals hidden sites. Production cost for architects is halved by 50%. Great merchants are given the ability to enable WLTKD.

The rest of the SP's are fine. I hope you enjoy these ideas.

P.S. I understand the image/emoticon limit but I wanted to make this thread look a little professional with the use of civ 5 emoticons. I had no intention of spamming them.

EDIT: changes have been made. A lot of good ideas have been posted and I have removed hopefully most the extreme policy changes.

 

[joncnunn]

I don't like those Liberty changes at all; It's stepping on Tradition's growth bonuses and also makes Liberty's best policy (the finisher) even stronger.

In fact, with Liberty being regarded as the second strongest opening tree; it's not in need of any boosts. Honor needs a boost and Tradition needs a nerf.

Some of the proposed Honor changes are stepping on Autocracy ideology. Also the proposed science bonuses are out of place.

Piety:
I like the opener and organized religion idea. I don't like the proposed discount on Great Phophet; I prefer them to be full price because it's already a race to complete this tree before you spawn a second 2nd natural GP anyway and the discount would downgrade the free one to being the 3rd one. The faith bonus of 25% when empire is happy is also overkill; 10% would be better.

Theocracy: Maintenance free religous buildings & +25% gold is overkill; +10% gold & Maintenance free religious buildings would be better.

What's proposed for Religous Tolerance doesn't look possible to actually mod. That's not controlled in XML.

To the glory of God & Jesuit Priests: Are both powerful enough without additional power added.
Secret Society: Why too much of a happiness penalty.

I'm also doubting that making founder beliefs 2X as effective could be moded into the game.

Exploration: Disagree with approach taken entirely. In fact I wouldn't change it at all; it's fine on water based maps.

Actually the biggest balance issue with trees is that Rationalism is still over powered compared to everything else. There would be more balance among remaining trees if it were removed from the game entirely.
In addition, Tradition's maintenance free garison units that make city bombard more powerful are very out of place and in a tree that's the most powerful opener anyway and so that policy should be moved to a more apporiate tree such as Honor.

 

[sendos]

I don't like those Liberty changes at all; It's stepping on Tradition's growth bonuses and also makes Liberty's best policy (the finisher) even stronger.

In fact, with Liberty being regarded as the second strongest opening tree; it's not in need of any boosts. Honor needs a boost and Tradition needs a nerf.

It does a bit, but when I hear complaints that liberty/wide strategies just stall you in the long run, I was trying to placate their concerns. Liberty is indeed the second strongest policy tree so that is why I kept my changes rather minimal.

Some of the proposed Honor changes are stepping on Autocracy ideology. Also the proposed science bonuses are out of place.

If you look at the +15XP for melee units, yes, but in this case I was trying to make earlygame (EDIT: not necessarily lategame) warmonger a bit more attractive. It also stacks with the Zulu UB and UU very nicely. The science bonuses in general do seem out of place but it's because of my thoughts of science >>>>> everything and tall empire bias, as both tradition and rationalism boost small empires very well.

Piety:
I like the opener and organized religion idea. I don't like the proposed discount on Great Phophet; I prefer them to be full price because it's already a race to complete this tree before you spawn a second 2nd natural GP anyway and the discount would downgrade the free one to being the 3rd one. The faith bonus of 25% when empire is happy is also overkill; 10% would be better.

Theocracy: Maintenance free religous buildings & +25% gold is overkill; +10% gold & Maintenance free religious buildings would be better.

What's proposed for Religous Tolerance doesn't look possible to actually mod. That's not controlled in XML.

To the glory of God & Jesuit Priests: Are both powerful enough without additional power added.
Secret Society: Why too much of a happiness penalty.

I'm also doubting that making founder beliefs 2X as effective could be moded into the game.

Good to see you support most of the changes with some amendments which I will consider. As for the practical concerns, I guess that leaves me with a choice to seek further opinions to support your practical concern or a different approach in those areas.

Exploration: Disagree with approach taken entirely. In fact I wouldn't change it at all; it's fine on water based maps.

I might change the building improvements but keep the XP bonus for ships. Perhaps the latter approach is unnecessary but what are thoughts on the opener? I did try to add the explor(e) into exploration.

Actually the biggest balance issue with trees is that Rationalism is still over powered compared to everything else. There would be more balance among remaining trees if it were removed from the game entirely.

Couldn't agree more. I might consider a SP nerf thread in the near future for rationalism and tradition.

In addition, Tradition's maintenance free garison units that make city bombard more powerful are very out of place and in a tree that's the most powerful opener anyway and so that policy should be moved to a more apporiate tree such as Honor.

That's also a reasonable idea. I also had thoughts of honor policies reducing maintenance costs for land units but it does overlap with Zulu and German UA. It could still encourage some specific civs to go for honor though.

 

[Amarr Emperor]

all this is gonna do is make poland even more OP

 

[Doktor Vic Tim]

THe main problem with Piety is that aside from the finisher, NOTHING gives you more culture. +1 culture to temple and shrines would sound good enough along with constructing said buildings in half the time.

 

[black213]

I don't think liberty needs buffs. The real problem is that wide empires get penalized too much; culture and science penalties, happiness problems, diplomatic consequences...

 

[Vitruvius]

Speaking from my large map experience, wide vs tall take on a whole new dimention. If you stay tall, the AI will just gobble up every bit of land, lux, strategics and you will find yourself with nothing to trade with, no production to compete militarily and generally going to get crushed sooner or later. The only way tall empires can be good is if space is limited. Otherwise, its always better to go wide. The per city science penalty is negligible. The culture penalty can be outweighed by representation. Happiness becomes less and less of a problem with the -5% unhappiness. If you can get your infrastructure up, you can still get plenty of science, if not more. On top of that, you have plenty of production to pump out units, and the city connections will provide the gold. The game still definitely favors wide #if there is space#

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[GhostSalsa]

Exploration: I like the Exploration gives science for ocean tiles idea but, to steal my own post from the Biggest Problem thread, would want it to be tied to a Great Admiral bulb. The Cousteau reference would add a lot of flavor and make Admirals and that stupid Admiral generation policy a lot more attractive. Probably just +2 science imo. If you're in Exploration, that implies your sea resource tiles are already pretty beefed up by discounted buildings, don't need overkill.

Other than the trashy bottom two policies, I think Exploration is already a really great tree as-is, especially if you prefer active play and moving units around. The fact that its bad policies are on the bottom instead of the top like Commerce is a huge bonus.

Commerce: Maybe it's not agreed this is a weak tree? Definitely I like this tree, and the GM doubling being moved to a policy makes this a really solid choice for a land-bases war civ.

But, it's still pretty pathetic that Commerce doesn't actually make you rich. Nothing on this tree is going to give you significantly more gold than the other trees can, without heavy merchant focus, and heavy merchant focus is supported more by Tradition and Rationalism policies than anything in this tree. Boo.

Honor: I think honor is really smartly-approached right now and definitely a potentially strong choice on Immortal. The thing that makes this tree so great is the synergy between Professional Army Autocracy's happiness-from-barracks and + XP policies. So I don't know if it really needs "major" work. Just un-penalize conquest a bit instead, so it doesn't become so situational when I can afford to actually go bag cities with my cool elite army.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I had more to say about honor but had to get my laundry.

Right now if you really hold them side-by-side, Honor almost offers you comparable bonuses to Tradition, minus the food bonus - which sure is huge for "optimal strategic play", but not such a bad tradeoff for making your army more fun to use all game long.

The comparable:

1 Military Caste giving you (if you can spare a unit for garrison) 2 culture on new cities off the bat with no monument to build or pay for - essentially a free invisible monument.

2 Later as monuments are built, Military Caste is generating "free" culture per turn that parallels the Tradition opener. MC overtakes the Tradition opener total accumulated culture at.. some point.. depending on how fast you expand and how many Barbarians you hunted etc. (The fact that it scales up all game-long is very attractive obviously.)

3 Since ancient era wars are rare now I burn my free general on grabbing crucial early-game tiles. It's nothing like Tradition's tile discount but takes the edge off a little, I find.

----

That said, I run into the same roadblocks with Honor over and over. Like that it's a mis-match for plantation resource starts, because I've got no reason to be up in Calendar. Or that the AI on Immortal poaches encampments like crazy.

It'd be cool to get free workers from a certain percentage of encampments, that can work all Classical-era improvements without me having to tech to them.

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

1 Military Caste giving you (if you can spare a unit for garrison) 2 culture on new cities off the bat with no monument to build or pay for - essentially a free invisible monument.

Not free. monuments have a maintenance cost of 1, and this cost never increases. Garrisoned units cost one maintenance and this increases over and over as the eras progress. An information age garrison costs more maintenance than a monument, amphitheater, opera house and museum combined....

...unless the garrison is free, but where's that policy located? Right, IN TRADITION. May seem that honor is compatible with tradition... not really - honor becomes more useful in conjunction with tradition, but tradition does NOT become more useful in conjunction with honor. Which is why honor isn't really compatible with tradition, more as if honor is dependent on tradition

 

[DarthSheldonPhD]

And as for the OP, can't say that I'm a fan.

-The people who effectively perform on liberty do so at immortal/deity level, and they find it's as useful as tradition. Which implies it isn't broken, the rest of us just need to learn how to use it. And you can't add +1 science to the opener... at that point in the game (turn 15-25) you're making 4-6 bpt total, so that's like a 20% research boost WAY early... OP

-Honor: 5culture per city from garrisons is overkill... by a healthy margin. Look at it this way: do you really want a MC garrison to produce more culture than a (unfilled) monument/amphitheater/opera house COMBINED?

-Piety: is not fixed by adding more faith. There's already a substantial increase in faith production/faith effieciency, and it serves that purpose. It's fixed by adding some culture and some happiness. The +3 faith from opener is too much. And the approach to the reformation beliefs is very questionable- why would you beef up the strongest three, and leave the less attractive ones unchanged? And I don't care for the secret society proposal.

-Exploration: you open by saying that it's too situational based on coastal cities, but then make it even more so. The dev's intent was pretty obvious: exploration is the coastal equivalent of commerce. They weren't intended to be used together (which does not mean they should be mutually exclusive), rather if you have predominantly coastal cities/coastal trade routes go exploration, if you have predominantly land cities/land routes go commerce... Just wish they did so in a way that's as effective as rationalism.

 

[Arachnofiend]

Actually the biggest balance issue with trees is that Rationalism is still over powered compared to everything else. There would be more balance among remaining trees if it were removed from the game entirely.
In addition, Tradition's maintenance free garison units that make city bombard more powerful are very out of place and in a tree that's the most powerful opener anyway and so that policy should be moved to a more apporiate tree such as Honor.

Out of curiosity, if you were to replace Rationalism with another sort of social policy tree what would you want the focus of it to be?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I like what you did with the piety opener and organized religion. However, there are only 3 good reformation beliefs, and you buffed them all.

Furthermore, fixing honor isn't going to be accomplished by making it a better version of itself, it needs an overhaul. No matter how much happy and culture military caste gives, it still runs counter to the purpose of honor; attacking. I used a semicolon.

 

[kb27787]

I think the OP overdid it...
Maybe I would do something less extreme
Just add an extra +1 or +2 culture to shrine along with that +faith, and have the opener produce 2pts of culture, and it'll be fine.

Religious tolerance: If a city only has one religion which is followed by a majority of its people, double its pantheon effect (you already can do this with the double pantheon trick... just change the wording so it becomes a legit strat), otherwise gain the pantheon of the 2nd most popular religion.

Reformation: If you did not found a religion, and all available religions have been founded, receive a free great prophet of the religion of your choice. (nice! which means you can essentially pick your own religion instead of waiting for the AI to spread to you)

Finisher: Holy sites produce +6 culture instead of 3, 3 gold, and 3 extra faith. New deal increases all these yields by 4 instead of just faith.

Underground Sect: Spies exert effect as if a missionary had spread your religion there every time it steals a tech for AI cities (this effect cannot be blocked by inquisitors since the sect is underground) or, for CS, when said spy successfully rigs an election. When a coup on a city state is successful by said spy, spread your religion as if a great prophet was used there (the removal effectiveness is not halved by unity of the prophets).

Unity of the prophets: Aside from your religion being able to be removed by prophets/inquisitors by only half, also add: enemy inquisitors can no longer block the effect of your great prophets and eliminate your missionary effectiveness only by half. Gain influence as if a spy had rigged an election when a great prophet spreads your religion to CS following other religions.

Religious Fervor: Aside from purchasing, you may use faith to upgrade units as well. (and lower the price... because no one wants to buy a single artillery at the price of a whole great person). The upgraded/purchase unit gains one extra special promotion which does not increase the xp price of future promotions.
Promotion: Religious Fervor +15% strength and +10 hp healed per turn when fighting within 2 tiles of a friendly missionary, inquisitor, great prophet, or holy site. This bonus is only applied once regardless of the source. This basically turns your religious units into great generals.

Sacred sites: Aside from the faith-bought buildings, each holy site gives +6 tourism when worked as if the city had a hotel and airport (since we buffed the holy site culture yield to 6), but this is separate from the hotel and airport bonuses and is multiplied by national visitor center, holy city of world religion, broadcast towers for freedom, and other modifiers.

Finally, allow reformation policies to be chosen by Byzantium as their extra belief

Also:
Papal Primacy: Influence with CS following your religion does not decay. (makes more sense, as perma-friend with consulates is nice, but it becomes useless once you are ally... here it helps you STAY an ally if you manage to get there) Coup and election rigging chances in said CS is doubled. Enemy coups in CS in which follows your religion and you are its ally have their success chances halved.

Buff honor? Just the finisher is fine I feel: give culture and points toward golden age for each non-barbarian enemy killed and double culture/points from barbarian kills. This will keep a warmonger happy while on the warpath. He still gets a golden age while unhappy, and the rebels provide extra fuel for him in the form of culture and gold.

 

[Sheershaw]

Does it bother anyone else that Exploration is an awkward combination of naval policies and archeology policies? It's as if the tree is meant for both cultural and domination players. I'd merge Exploration's naval policies with Honor somehow, and make it a completely new tree. Maybe if Firaxis could add some colonization features in the future, you can make some policies based off of that.

Also, for Liberty, I'd move the reduced Science penalty into Representation, and make finisher give a free GP + 2 Pop when founding a new city.

 

[sendos]

I did overdo some policies to promote discussion and it did work. I am going to add some changes now.

 

[maneckezaog]

The real problem is that wide empires get penalized too much

 

[Redaxe]

I think some of these changes you suggested are a bit too overpowered but I see you toned them back a bit which is good.

Regarding the +1 gold per liberty city, someone recently released a balance patch that removed the maintenance cost of monuments and shrines. I think that is perhaps a good buff to the non-tradition trees and it tones down legalism a bit which is crazily powerful right now. I think Liberty, Honor and Piety all deserve to get a little help in early gold income and a removal of maintenance costs for monuments and shrines is a perfect way to do this.
Regarding the liberty finisher how about changing the reduction in science penalty to a +25% bonus to generation of Great Engineers/Scientists/Merchants. This helps you get the Great People you need to assist your victory strategy.


A +20% melee combat from honor is I think too much. I don't think honor should directly buff military units too much but should concentrate on helping your military culture and economy.

The problem with military caste is that it still requires you to keep a lot of units sitting idly in cities for no real reason except to provide happiness.
Perhaps military caste could "garrisons reduce unhappiness caused by puppeted cities and annexed cities without courthouses by 80% and increases gold yield by 1 per 4 civilians.
This would represent your army occupying puppet and captured cities that oppresses dissidents and heavily taxes the population. This negates the need to rush courthouses and makes puppets more viable. Once you build a courthouse you are effectively granting the population of that city permanent citizenship and the income benefit is removed along with the normal unhappiness caused by occupation.
I think this change would just make it a little easier to occupy cities. For honor I would let barracks, armouries and castles provide culture. That should be fairly realistic, think of the Heraldry that each ancient army had and how that was tied to castles and the local militia.

Piety looks a bit better than before, I see you nerfed it a bit but I would change the opener to +1 faith from capital, make shrines free of maintenance and include the grand temple in the 50% production cost decrease. I think +2 faith from capital just makes it too easy to dip 1 policy point in from a normal tradition or liberty start to make it easy to secure an early religion and this punishes a player that chooses full piety.

Exploration looks a bit tidier. Interesting I actually had an idea for an exploration tree some time ago (before the latest patch). My thought was to make exploration a hybrid seafaring/colonialism tree since we don't really have any renaissance era policies that hugely benefit imperialists.

I don't want to detour your thread too much but this does relate to your other thread about dealing with rationalism. I think rationalism is best removed entirely. The problem with it is that science dictates the speed and progress of the game. You need to win the science war to be ahead either in accessing cultural wonders, strongest military or science victory. Science currently is just too important to ignore and it's made worse by the tech headstarts the AI gets on higher difficulties. I think it could be replaced with an imperialism tree or simply moved to the industrial era so you have to choose between ideologies and rationalism.

Anyway here's my original thoughts for an exploration/imperialism tree maybe you can write up an alternative tree for it.


Exploration Tree

Opener: +1 movement and sight for all naval and embarked units. Unlocks building the louvre.

Maritime Infrastructure: All coastal cities gain +3 production

Colonialism: You can now build the colonist unit (requires gunpowder) a cheap gunpowder unit which replaces the settler but is weaker than the Musketman. Can build cities. Receive a free colonist and a free Caravel at your capital (or nearest coastal city). Cities settled on new landmasses gain +1 population, +1 happiness, + 5 defense and +50HP (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Imperialism: Gain +15% productivity toward Renaissance era Naval units and +15% productivity toward Renaissance and Industrial gunpowder units i.e. Musketman, Rifleman, cannons, gatttling guns etc. Unlocks the 'Foreign Legion' unit - purchasable with gold (requires rifling). This policy requires Colonialism.

Naval Tradition: +1 happiness for every lighthouse, harbor or seaport. A great Admiral appears. Great Admirals gain +2 movement. Great Admirals are earned 50% faster (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Treasure Fleets: Receive 1 additional trade route. A free cargo ship appears in the capital (or nearest coastal city). Gain +2 happiness and +2 gold from improved luxuries on foreign landmasses (Requires Naval Tradition).

Adopting all policies in exploration grants 2 free archaeologists and allows you to see hidden antiquity sites (1/3 great works of writing, 1/3 are fossil dig sites (yield fossil artifacts that grant a science benefit to museums or produces a fossil dig-site providing science to city). Allows you to purchase Great Admirals with faith from the industrial era.

 

[Barghaest]

Piety doesn't really need a buff if you know how to use it. The reason it grants neither culture or happiness is two-fold: 1) There are plenty of pantheon/religion beliefs that grant them and 2) You don't have to save up for the GP like people doing other SPs and can freely buy missionaries/buildings with faith and get your Enhancer belief by completing the tree. I did a Piety opener in my current game with Ottomans (also got Stonehenge) and had no culture issues because of the beliefs I selected. I was still the first to enhance my religion and didn't save for the GP, I got it by completing the tree and spent my faith on Missionaries/Buildings to expand my religion... causing the nearby AI to delay their second GP to combat the spread of my religion.

As for Honor, I've never liked the +50% earned XP bonus it gives... the fix I did for my mod was to remove that and replace it with granting Morale to all non-air military units (I removed Morale as a Trained Free Promo from Heroic Epic and gave it +2 Global Happiness instead... don't care for having to build units from one particular city to get a bonus).

 

[zukenft]

so when will you make the actual mod?