C2C - Civics Discussion Thread

[MoogleEmpMog]

Personally I like the Democracy/Monarchy balance at the moment. From a historical perspective, Democracy should flat-out not work for large, expansive empires until much later in the game and this achieves that. From a game balance perspective it's still extremely attractive for small empires (equivalent to the ancient Greek city states or Holland) without making Monarchy useless. Now they have very distinctive roles.

Two games ago I had over 500,000 gold by the end of the ancient era. (I think there may have been a maintenance bug, though, which has subsequently been fixed.) The last game I played I was on a small island chain and managed to build up a 10,000 gold stockpile while staying at 100% research, but was at -gold from the classical era on, at which point I often had to switch to building gold and avoided high maintenance buildings. Current build feels balanced about right on gold to me.

The largest AIs ended up with about 16 cities and were beating me handily, but they were admittedly running Monarchy. (Started on Monarch difficulty but it switched to Prince midway through Prehistoric.)

On Education: Apprenticeship, is it supposed to give unlimited engineers and +25% Great People? That's formatted wrong on the civics choice screen, at least as of the SVN from a few days ago. Maybe it's been fixed since then.

 

[JosEPh_II]

What you have now and back then you will not have in a few short days. It's all changing again.

The AI never plays on Monarchy, only on Noble.

JosEPh

 

[CIVPlayer8]

I see BOTH of these in your NEW civics?

Yes, but Oligarchy no longer needs to be a starter civic.

@CIVPlayer8

Why was Mind Control moved from "Education" to "Rule"? Also whats it have no stats?

Rule is the category for civics that represent how you control your people, or rule them. I figured Mind Control was better suited for a position in this category. Also, the civic itself isn't supposed to have the drawbacks, its the Control Center itself that provides the minus research and such.

Something wrong with the latest SVN

Yes, I will fix it.

Mine is like that also, i believe HE is not done doing them yet and is just using these as a placeholder.

From the looks of the Civics.py it can hold only 15 civics? I haven't looked how many there is yet. Plus your adding to the Top and Bottom also.

		self.USER_ADJUSTMENT = 15 # default 100

Spoiler :

self.HEADINGS_TOP = 0
	#	self.HEADINGS_BOTTOM = 220 Never Used
		self.HEADINGS_LEFT = 0
		self.HEADINGS_RIGHT = 260
		self.HELP_TOP = 20
		self.HELP_BOTTOM = 610
		self.HELP_LEFT = 290
		self.HELP_RIGHT = 950
		self.BUTTON_SIZE = 24
		self.BIG_BUTTON_SIZE = 64
		self.BOTTOM_LINE_TOP = 630
		self.BOTTOM_LINE_HEIGHT = 60
		self.Y_EXIT = 726
		self.Y_CANCEL = 726
		self.Y_SCREEN = 396
		self.H_SCREEN = 768
		self.Z_SCREEN = -6.1
		self.Y_TITLE = 8
		self.Z_TEXT = self.Z_SCREEN - 0.2
		self.TEXT_MARGIN = 11			# original = 15

This was MY original civics screen, but i haven't worked on it i over 2 years, so i forgot everything .

Yes, I was using them as a placeholder, but I'll get rid of it for now.

Please stop adding Maintenance costs over 25%. 30-75% kills AI and Player

Please stop adding WW over 25%. Same here as above.

Please stop adding to tax rates using % below 25. Stop crippling Republic, Democracy, what used to be Federal, etc. with these rates.

We went thru this before. Now we're doing it again. C'mon man!

It seems as if you all are just throwing numbers in cause you think it's "cool". Please! Take a look at what has been done and used in the past. At what works and use that as a template. You can Not do Civics like you can do Buildings.

Frustration levels rising, Warning, Warning!

JosEPh

Yes, I agree with maintenance. We all need to agree on a "total maintenance" for throughout the civics, and distribute them as such. But, Democracy and Republic do need drawbacks, I can't just create a "super-civic", so these drawbacks are tax and war anger.

Personally I like the Democracy/Monarchy balance at the moment. From a historical perspective, Democracy should flat-out not work for large, expansive empires until much later in the game and this achieves that. From a game balance perspective it's still extremely attractive for small empires (equivalent to the ancient Greek city states or Holland) without making Monarchy useless. Now they have very distinctive roles.

Two games ago I had over 500,000 gold by the end of the ancient era. (I think there may have been a maintenance bug, though, which has subsequently been fixed.) The last game I played I was on a small island chain and managed to build up a 10,000 gold stockpile while staying at 100% research, but was at -gold from the classical era on, at which point I often had to switch to building gold and avoided high maintenance buildings. Current build feels balanced about right on gold to me.

The largest AIs ended up with about 16 cities and were beating me handily, but they were admittedly running Monarchy. (Started on Monarch difficulty but it switched to Prince midway through Prehistoric.)

On Education: Apprenticeship, is it supposed to give unlimited engineers and +25% Great People? That's formatted wrong on the civics choice screen, at least as of the SVN from a few days ago. Maybe it's been fixed since then.

Yes, that is what I was going for! Running a Republic early in the game is not really feasible for large civilizations (hence, Rome), but in the late game, it can be.

So, other than the junk at the bottom of the civic screen, how are the civics?
And Joseph, I didn't forget you're consideration.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Is the SVN functional now? Otherwise I don't know if I can give you an answer.

JosEPh

 

[CIVPlayer8]

Is the SVN functional now? Otherwise I don't know if I can give you an answer.

JosEPh

Is the SVN not working?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

What you have now and back then you will not have in a few short days. It's all changing again.

Hm. That's a shame, I found the balance the best it's been in a while. May hold off on updating.

The AI never plays on Monarchy, only on Noble.

I know. I meant that the larger AIs were using the Monarchy civic, while I was running Republic due to my limited land area.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Yes the AI does Love Monarchy Civic, too much so imo.

JosEPh

 

[CIVPlayer8]

Hm. That's a shame, I found the balance the best it's been in a while. May hold off on updating.



I know. I meant that the larger AIs were using the Monarchy civic, while I was running Republic due to my limited land area.

I will take great care to balance the new civics, don't worry. I think it's alright if a lot of civilizations run monarchy, as this is what we saw in real life, more monarchs than despots.

Edit: Also, for those who have huge maintenance problems, could you please post a save game for me to examine? Thank you

 

[WimpyTheWarrior]

Is the SVN not working?

I reported 3 bugs with your SVN update 4418 here, and your SVN update 4424 fixed one of the three bugs. The remaining two bugs are listed here.

Edit: Also, for those who have huge maintenance problems, could you please post a save game for me to examine? Thank you

The save game posted here shows excessive maintenance once your SVN update 4418 is applied. My maintenance increases by about 27 GPT and I'll be bankrupt in about 5 turns. I can't drop my research rate since I'll incur tax rate unhappiness. So I've just started the Ancient Age and my empire of 6 cities is too large.

"Build an empire to stand the test of time" - as long as your definition of "empire" is Liechtenstein.

For my tastes I'm going to hold the Civics part of the SVN at 4417 while you work on this a bit more. I love what you've done with Civics but I think your latest work needs a bit more testing.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@CIVPlayer8

Looks like you got your work cut out for you. Balance is never easy, especially with things like Civics, which players are very passionate about. Good luck!

 

[WimpyTheWarrior]

@CIVPlayer8

Looks like you got your work cut out for you. Balance is never easy, especially with things like Civics, which players are very passionate about. Good luck!

+1 to this.

There is an extra challenge in that changes to Civics can invalidate a strategy that was useful under the previous Civics. Changes to Buildings or Wonders or Combat rarely have that global effect. When there is a material change to the Civics in some cases the strategy being followed is now invalid, as my save game mentioned above demonstrates.

If you're lucky you might be able to recover with N turns of anarchy while you swap Civics. If you're unlucky your game is toast. Your empire will collapse under unhappiness or go bankrupt. I recall a few weeks ago when the city limit was added to Democracy. Suddenly my 45 city Democratic empire was invalid with raging unhappiness, both in my cities and also in me!

And this is the reason why passions on Civics can seem so high; hundreds of hours invested in a current game can be wasted. No doubt some of the new Civics are just fine for a new game where I can plan and adapt as my empire grows. But for games in progress, where the player has invested 100's of hours to build their empire, to see it all blown away by an SVN update, THAT is what generates so much

I'm sorry I can't think of an elegent recovery to this but hopefully you can appreciate why so many responses will be so passionate.

 

[dusckr87]

And this is the reason why passions on Civics can seem so high; hundreds of hours invested in a current game can be wasted. No doubt some of the new Civics are just fine for a new game where I can plan and adapt as my empire grows. But for games in progress, where the player has invested 100's of hours to build their empire, to see it all blown away by an SVN update, THAT is what generates so much

I've been saying this off and on for months (just more subtly), and it makes the save game compatibility between versions somewhat useless.

 

[JosEPh_II]

+1 to this.

There is an extra challenge in that changes to Civics can invalidate a strategy that was useful under the previous Civics. Changes to Buildings or Wonders or Combat rarely have that global effect. When there is a material change to the Civics in some cases the strategy being followed is now invalid, as my save game mentioned above demonstrates.

If you're lucky you might be able to recover with N turns of anarchy while you swap Civics. If you're unlucky your game is toast. Your empire will collapse under unhappiness or go bankrupt. I recall a few weeks ago when the city limit was added to Democracy. Suddenly my 45 city Democratic empire was invalid with raging unhappiness, both in my cities and also in me!

And this is the reason why passions on Civics can seem so high; hundreds of hours invested in a current game can be wasted. No doubt some of the new Civics are just fine for a new game where I can plan and adapt as my empire grows. But for games in progress, where the player has invested 100's of hours to build their empire, to see it all blown away by an SVN update, THAT is what generates so much

I'm sorry I can't think of an elegent recovery to this but hopefully you can appreciate why so many responses will be so passionate.

This I totally understand and agree with. That's why I was so about the inclusion of Crime in the middle of a version cycle.

I personally think that the time of wholesale changes needs to be reconsidered and held back. We've went thru 3 seemingly innocent changes that have in fact made massive disruptions to gameplay over the last several versions of C2C. And that is a big factor in my current dissatisfaction with the Mod. I have not played C2C for 2 weeks now. I start up my ongoing game and after 2 turns shut it down. I'm updated to SVN 4417 but won't go past that till the brokenness/unfinished business is made playable.

So to CIVPlayer8, I really won't have any feedback to give till all the Civics are either in place or made workable as the parts are added. And please understand this, if you individually and C2C as a Team, make the Civics/and other additions in the light of "everyone" plays this way (Uses REV, City Limits, DP, Fixed Borders, Limited Religions) then you've painted yourself into a corner. Because you cut out the other ways to play. And cut out a segment of your fan base.

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

So to CIVPlayer8, I really won't have any feedback to give till all the Civics are either in place or made workable as the parts are added. And please understand this, if you individually and C2C as a Team, make the Civics/and other additions in the light of "everyone" plays this way (Uses REV, City Limits, DP, Fixed Borders, Limited Religions) then you've painted yourself into a corner. Because you cut out the other ways to play. And cut out a segment of your fan base.

I dont like Rev On, Limited Religions, or DP either, and lately Rev On is really really really bad as of late.

 

[GT Ranma]

I always play on Large or Huge maps, part of the fun I get out of the game is 'exploring' early on.
Unfortunately, it seems that Large+ maps take the biggest hit on Civics issues, some of my saves are worthless because I have 40ish cities, and with Civics how they are, the whole empire implodes in upon it's self ; ;
But I completely agree with some people where in that it is going in the right direction, we just really need to play test it more to make sure the balance is more towards 'fun' then it is towards 'micromanage'.

P.S. I thought DP stood for Divine Prophets, but in the context it is stated, I can't see that being correct. What does DP mean? (And seriously, someone actually uses Fixed Borders??)

 

[strategyonly]

P.S. I thought DP stood for Divine Prophets, but in the context it is stated, I can't see that being correct. What does DP mean? (And seriously, someone actually uses Fixed Borders??)

Yes i like Fixed Border alot. You just need to manage your forts, and space them out, you get tons and tons of area that way.

 

[Taxman66]

Why can't the '# of cities' limits of civics adjust for the size of the map? Can't the function which compares the # of cities owned to the civics' limit of cities have a static add (+x for large, +2x for huge, etc...) or even multiplier (*1.5 for large, *2 for huge, etc...)? Editting the text for the civic and/or pedia should be easy enough.

*Or is the problem more along the lines of the +x% to maintanence values for #of cities and distance of cities? If so those could be modified for map size as well.

Additionally, you could have the current 'base' value for # of cities modified by other civics as well. There is a huge differance between ancient monarchies and those of the dark to middle ages, and from those to the constitutional monarchies through the 1800s.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@GT,
DP does stand for Divine Prophets.

I use it occasionally for a different way of adding Religions. But I prefer standard BtS with BUG Multiple Religion Spread On. I do not use Limited nor Choose, although they do have their place if they work right.

JosEPh

 

[dusckr87]

I'm updated to SVN 4417 but won't go past that till the brokenness/unfinished business is made playable.

Same here, except it's 4388 for me. I update the SVN daily, but will not update my working copy until it is fixed (or V28, whichever is first). The save game I am on has been the longest ever (started back in early November), and I'm not going to scrap it now for some random "test".

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

:|

Democracy (now Republic again; these keep flip-flopping) dropped from 25 to 20 in City Limits as of yesterday evening's latest SVN. Monarchy dropped from 35 to 20.

Monarchy being higher and allowing a larger empire was one of its signature advantages over (what is once again) Republic. It still kinda-sorta does that through the way they handle maintenance, but not to the same extent.

More, 35 made Monarchy occasionally viable in the lategame so there were choices OTHER than Republic (now once again Democracy) and Corpor-nation (now gone in favor of Technocracy, a change I do like). Since Technocracy only becomes available in the future era, everything from the discovery of Representative Democracy on is now basically locked to Democracy if City Limits are turned on. It feels like the others are lowered, too, but I don't remember them exactly so it could just be my shock at what happened to these two.

I will unquestionably turn them off every game until this changes back.

I kind of miss Patriarchy and Matriarchy, if only because they were the earliest civics to offer a meaningful choice to the player instead of just being upgrades.

Do you think anyone will ever want to run Subsistence? It's basically trading 1C on Cottages for 1F on Farms, and -75% Production from trade routes for +25% Food from trade routes. Maybe I've just never played on a map where this would be beneficial.

On the maintenance front, I break even at 85% Science in my current save, but with only 7 cities that seems awfully low. (My low number of cities is just due to the geography of the map.)