Authority Deep Dive Round 2

[Stalker0]

If you don't have the space to make use of the extra settler, or plan to conquer some CS instead of tribute them, then picking up the melee-heal and science from kills is the natural choice. I think it's some nice flexibility, at least in theory.

I agree with you, I probably aim for the second settler most of the time as well, but I'm also not really missing the science on kill at that stage of the game. I'd want to try it this way first before assuming the science needs to be perfectly steamlined.

I've never seen an authority game where I didn't want to settle a couple of cities. Frankly those conquered cities early on are pretty garbage, they have no buildings, pillaged terrain, and will have a nasty happiness problem until you get courthouses (which is going to be a while) or they are puppets (in which case they are almost non-existant yield wise). You need some kind of engine from a 3-4 core cities or you are going to fall WAY behind.

 

[wabab]

Tradition focuses on maintaining population growth in and building up your core cities; Progress focuses on maintaining border growth and building new cities. Currently, Authority focuses on killing units and conquering cities. The first two policies are mostly a passive means to reinforce a gameplay style, but Authority requires much more active management due to its nature.

The guiding principle for Authority should be a focus on maintaining military growth and building up your army. Picking Authority shouldn't require you be at war constantly, just as Progress doesn't require you constantly settle new cities. My main annoyance with it is that you need to keep killing units to benefit from its bonuses, and while I'm not against active play bonuses, Social Policy bonuses should be passive or semi-passive. Moving on-kill bonuses to Ideologies or World Wonders (e.g., Terracotta Army) would make Authority feel more customizable depending on what you're up against.

 

[ma_kuh]

Here's a wild thought, what if instead of garrisons being the tacked-on element to culture (and maybe science) for Authority, it was instead the core. Hear me out!

Authority starts off with a need to have a garrison to keep your populace under control. You can't master others until you master yourself. The expectation is that instead of having a single garrison per city, and that garrison tries to hunt roaming barbarians like Tradition and Progress, you need multiple units to keep the free yields rolling. Your first "building" is replaced by a unit, and if you bring a unit with a settler then the city immediately gets the yield train rolling. Different policies might add different yields to the garrison bonus, and you'd make sure that garrisons are maintenance- and supply-free.

So now you have a consistent way to keep Authority cities on-par with the free +1s, +2s and +3s of Progress/Tradition, all tied around prioritizing your army infrastructure before councils, monuments, tile improvements, etc. Add to this a new mechanic: when you DECLARE WAR, you get the garrison bonus in all of your cities for 20 turns (scaling with game speed). During this time, you can move your garrisons to battle, actually leverage your army, but you have a window before your population loses its bloodlust. It's not quite as bad as war weariness, but it hits on a different angle: the free garrison yields. Maybe the finisher lets WLTKD also count as having a garrison, to let this mechanic play out in the early game but become less important later. I even love the idea that you declare war on some random civ across the world, like you're framing them for the barbarians that you're about to clear out.

You'd still keep on-kill yields, the settling yields, all of that in the tree. But it wouldn't be what the base scaling is designed around. You have a much higher floor for the policy tree, and it's a lot easier to tune it.

 

[cidk2000]

ive noticed the ai likes to take statecraft after authority too asking for tribute from city states isnt that detrimental to the authority tree as well? the ai/player needs the yields and the culture bonus plus it needs to kill current game im stalling the ai as it has taken authority and statecraft and instead of him killing my units im defending authority seems the weaker tree

 

[glaivemaster]

Here's a wild thought, what if instead of garrisons being the tacked-on element to culture (and maybe science) for Authority, it was instead the core. Hear me out!

Authority starts off with a need to have a garrison to keep your populace under control. You can't master others until you master yourself. The expectation is that instead of having a single garrison per city, and that garrison tries to hunt roaming barbarians like Tradition and Progress, you need multiple units to keep the free yields rolling. Your first "building" is replaced by a unit, and if you bring a unit with a settler then the city immediately gets the yield train rolling. Different policies might add different yields to the garrison bonus, and you'd make sure that garrisons are maintenance- and supply-free.

So now you have a consistent way to keep Authority cities on-par with the free +1s, +2s and +3s of Progress/Tradition, all tied around prioritizing your army infrastructure before councils, monuments, tile improvements, etc. Add to this a new mechanic: when you DECLARE WAR, you get the garrison bonus in all of your cities for 20 turns (scaling with game speed). During this time, you can move your garrisons to battle, actually leverage your army, but you have a window before your population loses its bloodlust. It's not quite as bad as war weariness, but it hits on a different angle: the free garrison yields. Maybe the finisher lets WLTKD also count as having a garrison, to let this mechanic play out in the early game but become less important later. I even love the idea that you declare war on some random civ across the world, like you're framing them for the barbarians that you're about to clear out.

You'd still keep on-kill yields, the settling yields, all of that in the tree. But it wouldn't be what the base scaling is designed around. You have a much higher floor for the policy tree, and it's a lot easier to tune it.

I like this idea. It hits a few issues with Authority - the inconsistent yields, the weird out-of-place garrison bonus (ironically), the all-or-nothing approach and the disadvantage of taking it for people who want to be warmongers eventually but not right now. It also fits a bit more with the "Authority" meaning to me - meaning the warlord using might to control their own populace rather than necessary always conquering.

I'd still like to see a couple of warmonger bonuses there to keep it rewarding for early warmongers and as support for those people who take it early and start conquering later.

It's also a very big change, so would need a lot of hashing out and possibly testing in a mod-mod before bringing into VP main since it's such a change in direction.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I like the rework in general. I'd add that a big issue that could alter the relative strength of starting trees is maybe the happiness system, beacuse it has changed more than the trees themselves over the last years. Maybe it just affected progress and authority in equal manner, I'm unable to tell, but I'm curious what people think about it, if some happiness changes could have tipped the balance away from authority over time.

I feel like a while ago, progress had greater risk of stalling under early aggression, not just from my experience but from many deity players advising against a progress start if too close to an authority neighbor. I'm not sure, but maybe being forced to invest in military meant fewer buildings, leading to either unhappiness or pop control, pop control meaning less science, thus less culture, it stalls the engine. A more lenient unhappiness system means progress has more room for military investment while still growing cities? I find progress is a superbely well designed tree in that it works like a bike, it needs to, well, progress, to work. It just means it can be easily affected by other changes to core gameplay. Maybe some exterior systemic changes have made it much better at resisting early pressure, less punished for defending instead of progressing.

About authority being able to win wars in the first place: how would the current AI benefit from a buff to experience gains from combat, like in vanilla game? This made the old Honor tree very strong in human hands.

And about the discussion of having more passive science: I'm not fond of the science on kill (can't find an immersive reason), but calibrating science is hard because if conquest succeeds (or is made easier), you have more science anyway just through empire size.

 

[ma_kuh]

A question for those in the know: can rewards/yields/triggers be attached to Unit Maintenance Costs and/or Total Supply?

For instance, can something like "15% of Unit Maintenance Cost added as science to the capital" be coded (somewhat) easily from existing hooks?
Can a yield like "+1 culture for every 5 Unit Supply you have occupied" (or whatever the term is for the numerator portion of the Supply Cap fraction) be added?

These would be specifically for policy tree tenets, if it makes a difference.