Civics - Balance Questions

[Rezca]

I've used Coinage fairly often when I have multiple copies of Silver or Gold (Or both) lying around, but Slavery gives way too many bonuses for (Coinage) to be worth switching into most of the time. I'm of the opinion that there shouldn't be any "One true perfect civic" to run, at least prior to the Transhuman when things like Superhuman and Post-Scarcity are available, which is why I was somewhat annoyed with Nationalism and Atheist for a while - since EVERYONE would switch to those the moment they unlocked then stick with them until the end of the game. Slavery is pretty close to that status where you shouldn't even bother with anything else.

If Rev Stability is the main drawback to it, then what about people playing without Revolutions? It'd be like the Tax Office building being overpowered without Rev, but something you'd only want in a few key cities when playing with it.


Unless you really hate the Slavery civic with a passion, it really seems like there's often no point in using anything else.

 

[Vokarya]

If we need to balance Slavery, I would suggest completely removing the +10% commerce. The Slave Market can still produce +10% gold (although we could change that to a flat gold bonus). I think it's a common tendency to give civics too many bonuses and some can be easily removed to keep the civics balanced against each other. We did that with Nationalist, completely removing both its hammer bonus and culture bonus to bring it down.

 

[Soviet elf]

I am not convinced this is necessarily a problem, in BtS I tended to enter slavery ASAP and stay in it for a long time

Yes, in unmodded BtS slavery is overpowered too (especially in high , low situations) and unrealistic, and emancipation is a very weak civic, but adopting it ASAP is less important (no penalty for tribalism), caste system is useful too, and slavery at least causes in industrial era. In BtS I usually avoid slavery for roleplay reasons.

it was a prominent part of most of the world for most of pre-industrial history.

Overpowered or not, personal view point, but its reality in this world. Until the industrial revolution, slavery boosted manpower.

Almost all countries had some slaves (for example, aristocrats owned domestic slaves), and slavery was legal, but many pre-industrial countries did not have mass slavery, slavery as main source of labor or economy based on slavery. "Slavery" (mass chattel slavery) fits for Ancient Greece, Rome, medieval Muslims, late Russian serfdom, USA. Ancient Egypt, India, China, Incas, Renaissance Europe didn't have mass slavery, if I'm not mistaken. "The Pyramids were built by slaves" is a myth.
Conscription was used by many countries too, practiced by Western nations long after slavery, and even now some countries have mandatory military service - and yet in this mod conscription causes more than slavery, and nobody uses it.

Anyway barter is given that big penalty because you're not supposed to use it for long anyway, you should quit it as soon as possible, which is what most of the time happens.

The problem is that slavery is the only alternative to barter - both unbalanced and unrealistic. I don't know why slavery is in economic category, fits more for society. Slavery is compatible with coinage/mercantilism/free market, and actually use of slavery increased with invention of metal money, because one of major uses of slaves was in gold and silver mines. Athens definitely relied on slaves to mine silver for coinage. And, of course, barter wasn't even a main economic system in ancient times, it's an incorrect name for starting civic.

(I know, somebody posted in this thread that balance is more important than historical correctness, and some civics (like slavery, I suppose) draw too much attention, but I already wrote about balance and about other civics.)

 

[JustAnotherNerd]

Why everyone always trying to point out on civics they consider overpowered.
Point out on a civics you consider underpowered.

Just buff coinage and guilds, so that they were more attractive for the player.
Say, coinage does not consume gold and silver, it be whole 48% commerce with national mint, most likely in a capital.
And no foreign city connection malus, but some boni instead ;D

Guilds are not balanced yet as I understand, but removal of -10% science malus, maybe will make it more attractive to try that guild civic at least.

 

[Rezca]

Why everyone always trying to point out on civics they consider overpowered.
Point out on a civics you consider underpowered.

Just buff coinage and guilds, so that they were more attractive for the player.
Say, coinage does not consume gold and silver, it be whole 48% commerce with national mint, most likely in a capital.
And no foreign city connection malus, but some boni instead ;D

Guilds are not balanced yet as I understand, but removal of -10% science malus, maybe will make it more attractive to try that guild civic at least.

Divine Cult was one, but that's been largely addressed now. It's a good civic to couple with Monarchy since it counters the overcrowding penalty that Monarchy carries.

Guilds and Merchantalism are two others IMO.


As for the "It's unrealistic!" argument for/against civics... I'm getting kind of tired of seeing that as well. That's not what is important here - Suggestions for balancing things out sure, but historical accuracy isn't a defining feature of the mod.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

The Republic civic, should incur the maintenance penalties on a log scale.

Currently its too easy to build a continental empire, or a large one, and run republic.

I am able to do so on a 62 city continental empire basis, with only 1 city making gold, Wall street.

The rest of my cities are all on building infrastructure or science only. Enabling me to run an effective 60% rate of research, or 40% science and 20% culture.

Spoiler :

I say this as Republic is designed for smaller empires, and should hold intrinsic penalties for large empires.

The 250% costing penalty is too easy to overcome.

Mind you, size does matter, as does city maturity. You run Monarchy/Democracy/Federation until you reach that critical tipping point of city maturity/Numbers.

You just space out your cities to use the full 3 rings, reducing city maintenance costing, and increasing the potential of each city.

Solution – Each additional city, based on map size, should add another 20% overall costing to ALL cities.

That way, you can go over the 'ideal' number for map, but still run Republic, but have an ever increasing cost for doing so. Eventually it will become too onerous to do so, forcing a switch to better government civics.

This was the intention of the 250% Republic costing.