Civic tweaks

[ICanHasName?]

CIVIC TWEEKS --- version 1

My main goals are to make more of the civics useable in more situations without changing their purpose, and to improve civs that are objectively bad. I also wanted to give late game cottages a little something, as despite their disadvantages their output is equal to that of a Agristocracy + specialists economy. Also, I added a little flavor where it fit.

I'll release this once I finish the Conquest Python and have a working FF and FF+ version, tomorrow probly.

1) Government First off I want to make Theocracy viable and lean toward religious violence, and I want to make the research and running of GodKing less of a commerce sinkhole, and more useful outside of early game REXing.

GodKing - [50% ] [25% ]

Theocracy - Zeal promotion for disciple units giving +1 attack strength .75 exp gain modifier and free inquisit abilities. Also, [+20% ] [-20% ] 3 from state religion 1 from other religions.

2) Economy - I see no reason to run anything other then AG unless you are Fallow, lanuan, or Matzl. Specialist Economy? Run AG to feed them. Agristocracy? Duh, needs ag. Cottage Economy? Run AG because nothing else is good. I'm not going to change AG, I intend to fix other stuff.

Foreign Trade - Removed -10% and made the 2 trade routes for all cities.

Conquest - Going to make a function that gives you maybe 10 gold per population killed every time you raze a city, up to ~ 85limit in addition to the bonus you get from capping the city in the first place. Nothing major, it should just make raiding and destruction more profitable.

Mercantilism - Gave it 20% instead of and +1 from towns (also enclaves), but it keeps its no foreign trade routes of course.

3) Cultural Values - Values is just a mess for a few reasons. Its got fully 10 civics where 8 or 9 fit. Glory, and Crusade are civ specific, Social Order and Sacrafice the Weak are religious specific. Scholarship and Liberty come way late, Nation, Religion and Pacifism come way early. Fixing this is outside the scope of this mod^4 though.

Consumption - Don't really know what to do with this, Until I think of something better its +25% and 1

Liberty - Gave liberty a 25% emancipation bonus. That increases the development rate of explorable unique features too >_< In any case thats fun, and probly worth it.

Flavor - made all the allignment changes multiples of 5 and increased them a little: Slavery, Undercouncil, Blood&Sacrafice, Sacrafice the Weak are -25, Conquest is -15, Military state is 0, pacifism is +15, overcouncil and Liberty are +25. Gave slavery a +1 commerce/plantation bonus.

 

[Mylon]

Just out of curiosity, why do you think cottages are weak?

If anything I think the length of growth needs to be made greater, to make them look slightly less attractive.

 

[solistus]

Mylon - I pretty much never use cottages in FF unless I'm Fallow. With Aristograrian, Farms give solid commerce while providing an extra specialist worth of food! There's no way Cottages can compete when Grassland/Farms give 5 food by midgame. It takes an insane military investment to protect growing cottages on high difficulties with Raging Barbs (or whatever it's called in FF, Orcish Swarms or something?), let alone aggressive neighbors, for an end product that is arguably inferior to a plain ole' Farm. The only time I build them is when there's no other improvement worth building on a tile (e.g., deserts, but if I'm in a desert I'm hopefully Malakim in which case I'll build Bedouin Sits for the food). Any non-Fallow, non-Jotnar civ I play is virtually guaranteed to spam farms.

 

[Mylon]

While farms sound nice and all, I tend to run into the problem of not enough health (so each additional population costs 3 food) and not enough specialist slots. Even still, I can see where you're coming from. Aristocracy gives less food, but provides a flat commerce boost, bypassing the health/specialist concerns. I guess giving cottages a hammer with one civic and a commerce with another civic might help and make them more attractive.

 

[WarKirby]

Most of the time, my ultimate plan is to beeline machinery, get industry, and spam windmills on every possible hill.

 

[ICanHasName?]

I think I'm going to actually have to play a couple of experiment games to see how the economies work out. Crunching the numbers it looks like cottages about the same as agristocracy with all the +1 civics, strictly better without them, but grow slow and are barbarian candy. Until I sort it out or someone else runs a good experiment I'm going to leave cottage stuff alone, other then perhaps a late game commerce somewhere.

I updated the original post with a mercantilism idea that I think is pretty sweet.

Also, what does everyone think about a civic with the emancipation effect, so you could transition toward a cottage economy once Great people start petering out and Inflation makes you start to want city states.

 

[Shatner]

1) Government

GodKing - I want to give it the full 50% commerce bonus, and throw on some more maintenence if neccisary. It would help out tiny empires, and make it possible to run a truly monsterous capitol.

God King is already really good. I am not opposed to it being changed but I don't think it needs to be empowered overall. What I think would be cool is if God King was more of the anti-City States. As such it gives your capitol a 50% hammer, commerce and culture bonus BUT gives all other cities a penalty to their happiness (-1) and/or culture (-20%) and/or number of trade routes (-1) and/or commerce (-25%). God King could make the capitol a beast but handicaps all other cities. This way it is perfect for the pocket empire but really harsh on anything larger.

Theocracy - Truly, this civic both blows and sucks. I want to give it some more state religion happy, free exp for priests and missionaries. I think it would also be interesting to give it some kind of - + to encourage being backward but rich.

I can see this civic going two ways: big domestic benefits (happiness, XP, gold, etc.) that hinge on having the state religion in your cities OR unusual benefits (special promotions, free units, etc.) that makes your civ operate like it was running a more religion-themed variant of the Crusade civic.

For the former, I would make the happiness bonus small (+1 or so) but make all temples give bonus happiness, culture, gold and maintenance (+2 happy, +2 culture, +2 gold, -20% maintenance) AND a big production bonus to all acolyte and priest units (maybe +25%) BUT give a penalty to science (-25%... the anti-library) and a happiness penalty (-1) for each non-state religion in a city... also, all non-state temples should offer no benefit while you are using this civic.

For the latter, I would offer a moderate religion-happy bonus (+3), reduce the unhappiness duration of whipping by 50%, a -25% penalty to science and it would grant all disciple units (even those already built) the "Zealotry" promotion (which would vanish if you changed civics). This promotion would allow them to inquisition non-state religions, upgrade for half price, give them healing while moving, a slight bonus attacking cities (+20%) and a variant of the rally ability, called Incite Fervor. This spell, which has a casting time of 2 or 3 turns and requires the state religion in the city, would reduce the city population by 3, temporarily reduce happiness (like whipping, so reduced in duration by 50%) by 3 (negating your happy-bonus) and spawn 3 acolyte units. These could then be upgraded (at half price) to priests or be upgraded (again at half price) into the combat variant of that religion (paramanders, crusaders, stygian guard, etc.). This would allow theocracy civs to rapidly mobilize an army of disciple units at the cost of their population/happiness AND allow those disciple units to become an effective mob. At the very least, it would be different, interesting and solidly change the role of Theocracy.

City States - It does have a purpose and its good at what it does, still I would like to see it have more general use. + Happies? + Cottage commerce?

If you really want to boost this, you can have it give one bonus trade route to each city (the city-states of Italy were centers of trade during the Enlightenment). You could do other stuff (hammer/commerce bonus to workshops, trade value increase, etc.) but this is meant to be a civic for the over-expander so I don't see the need to make it do anything else.

I may wade in on the Economic and Cultural Value civics later but that's it from me for now. I hope my suggestions appeal or at least inspire better ideas.

 

[Valkrionn]

.........I love your second Theocracy idea. What's best, is it's even possible to have a promotion depend on your civic now.......

 

[ICanHasName?]

First off, in general what do people think of Guilds, Religion, and Republic, and anything else for that matter. I would assume they are fine, but I have very rarely used them so I honestly don't know.

Valkrion/Shatner - It never even occured to me to just give theocracy priests a promotion, im definatly going to do that. Might use it for the conquest stuff to, allthough I would rather use something that doesn't add more promotion clutter.

Shatner - That GodKing idea is really interesting, though a little Kurio like if it was done wrong. I like all those Theocracy ideas. Giving a specific bonus to acolyte production would be tricky, but Zealotry stuff shouldn't be to hard. I like incite fervor alot but I want to make sure it wouldn't end up just another way to whip or draft or crusade.

Also, Glory bugs me. Can't the Engineers and state religion stuff be done some other way? Its basically Liberty II but with a couple of Scion flavored sprinkles. It almost feels like it could be called IMPERIUM PATRIA and go in the membership catagory, but I don't want to mess with it.

And finally, thanks to everyone who read even part of that wall of text (Amurite Unique building +50% vs Doviello) . I'll be updating as I work on stuff and think of things. I have an essay due in 2 days, but after that I think I'll sit down and put this all together.

 

[Valkrionn]

Yeah, I'm already planning on changing Theocracy now. It's a change that would make me actually use the civic.

 

[deadliver]

I think God King should regain the bonus for having a state religion present in the city and also should cause problems if you have non state religions. God king essentially is a form of theocracy.

Ancient Egypt was divided between the Cult of Set which run the southern half and, I think Osiris which supported the Pharaoh in the North.

EDIT: Cool ideas btw.

 

[Valkrionn]

I'd actually rather see it give a large capital happiness bonus, and block state religions. It's God-King.... You're setting up a cult worshiping yourself.

 

[deadliver]

I'd actually rather see it give a large capital happiness bonus, and block state religions. It's God-King.... You're setting up a cult worshiping yourself.

I suppose...in FFH2 that approach would make more sense considering other than AV there would not be much opportunity to usurp the deity's role in the religion. Perhaps God king should give/gain extra bonuses from Pagan temples.

 

[ICanHasName?]

I would think Godking could take any form from "I am a living God worship me" to "I am Kilmorphs own hammer, worship her but obey me" so I would rather not tie it to religion. Giving out substantial happies would be interesting though. It comes early in the game when happies are hard to get but would remain useful until what, gambling houses or temple spam. I do want to find some science bonus for it to keep it useful for longer, even if that comes out of its gold bonus.

What about something in the range of 3 happies in the capitol, 2 angries in all other cities, [50% ] [25% ] [25% ] [10-20% distance maintenance]

That really would be a solid civic, maybe the happies would be too much as they could easily double your capitol's production, and you would just switch out once your lesser cities began to matter. I'm beggining to think just trading 25 gold for 25 science would be the most that civic could get without becoming THE early game

 

[Valkrionn]

Sounds pretty much like what I was thinking.

 

[Valkrionn]

(Amurite Unique building +50% vs Doviello)

Oh hell no.


Sadly, hurrycivicanger isn't a valid tag for civicinfos, only game speed.... I'd love to import it, as I think it would be perfect for Blood and Sacrifice as well, but I don't know how to mess with the schema and I'd rather not break anything. Might be time to learn though......

In other news, Theocracy should be working. +3 with the state religion, +1 per non-state. +10% , -25% , and the Zealotry idea by Shatner. Just need to check it out in game.

 

[deadliver]

I would think Godking could take any form from "I am a living God worship me" to "I am Kilmorphs own hammer, worship her but obey me" so I would rather not tie it to religion. Giving out substantial happies would be interesting though. It comes early in the game when happies are hard to get but would remain useful until what, gambling houses or temple spam. I do want to find some science bonus for it to keep it useful for longer, even if that comes out of its gold bonus.

What about something in the range of 3 happies in the capitol, 2 angries in all other cities, [50% ] [25% ] [25% ] [10-20% distance maintenance]

That really would be a solid civic, maybe the happies would be too much as they could easily double your capitol's production, and you would just switch out once your lesser cities began to matter. I'm beggining to think just trading 25 gold for 25 science would be the most that civic could get without becoming THE early game

I would think a civic reformer would look to make ALL civics viable no matter how far into the game a player has gone. As I mentioned in response to Valkrionn, God King should feed into the pagan religious buildings. Also, according to your logic of having God King should have a hand in the "secular" buildings. After all you should get a benefit for not adopting a religion if you are NOT an agnostic leader.

 

[ICanHasName?]

Ok I set up most of it. Original post updated with what everythings at right now.

I want to make a python thing so when conquest razes a city the player gets about 10 gold per population killed, probly to a limit of a hundred. I have it mostly set up but how do I actually give the player gold. Alternatively I could just give them a gold per military victory.

 

[Vermicious Knid]

I have to look at the list of civics when I get home, but I know that there are several that I will never, ever use...regardless of how I'm trying to win. That is bad.


In a perfect world every civic option would be enticing on some level. I think the change to Republic and the proposed changes to Theocracy go a long way towards fixing that category...now for all the others.

 

[solistus]

I don't have a well thought-out specific idea for this, but it would be really cool if God King scaled better with game length. As it stands, it's the "early game civic" only, and as others have pointed out, it can't be buffed too much because it's already powerful when you only have a couple cities, and becomes obsolete before long.

Basically, what I'd like to see is staying small as a viable option. Some mechanic that would either directly scale the numerical bonuses of God King over time or would indirectly scale in a way that makes it more useful late game without breaking the early game (this seems like a better/simpler approach but I can't think of a good bonus to accomplish this). Other options (dunno how hard they would be to implement) would be additional civic bonuses unlocked later on (similar to scaling the numerical values but adding new bonuses instead of increasing existing ones; perhaps unlocked at various techs further down the tree?), adding UBs/UUs for God Kings later down the tech tree or somehow scaling the effects by population in the capital. As I said, I really don't have a specific idea but it would be neat if God King were a viable option for civs that decide to limit or completely avoid expanding. This would probably still be very situational and in many maps/settings it would still be a very bad idea not to ReX but, for example, on a small map with No Settlers, God King turtling could be a viable alternative to conquering barb cities.

I'm not at all attached to any specifics but I'd be interested in others' thoughts on the general change in God King's role. Currently, God King is a civic that almost every civ should use early game and almost no civ should use beyond that. That's no fun!