Civics Improvements Suggestions

[Vokarya]

So here's the next question. What should Survival really do? Currently, it only has two abilities: +1 happiness from Ceremonial Altar and +1 health from Healer's Hut. Maybe more appropriate would be a speed bonus to certain buildings like Walls and Granary? Or just make it a no-trait civic?

(I was looking at the civics with Revolutions off. I noticed Chiefdom only has 2 bullet points with Rev off: +100% city maintenance and the 3-city limit. That suggests Chiefdom is trying too hard in the revolution department.)

 

[Vokarya]

One more thing I noticed. Unmanned Warfare has a bunch of city maintenance modifiers: +15% distance, +15% from number of cities, -25% overseas cities. I don't think this is appropriate for a military civic. I think instead it should modify unit supply costs for distant units. I think I would go with -25%; you are shipping less supplies because so much of your army is mechanical.

 

[Rezca]

Survival states people perform the bare minimum to get by or something, so a No-Trait civic (Like the classic BTS starter civics?) sounds best. The Walls and Granary would be a good second bet though, so it's okay to help you get started but it's still clearly not as good as anything that follows.

 

[<Nexus>]

Survival states people perform the bare minimum to get by or something, so a No-Trait civic (Like the classic BTS starter civics?) sounds best.

+1

The Walls and Granary would be a good second bet though, so it's okay to help you get started but it's still clearly not as good as anything that follows.

I don't think these are really needed, but don't mind so much...

 

[Samson]

I'm leaning towards this. I'll probably do this unless someone else complains. Should Despotism still have its unhappiness from taxation in addition to unhappiness from overcrowding? That's probably too much unhappiness in one civic.

I am not complaining, and it will be interesting to give it a go, but I can imagine bee lining to masonary and staying in despotism for a very long time if this change is made. Once I get happiness from military units I generally let some or all my cities grow large enough that I need it, so it is hard to change out.

 

[<Nexus>]

I am not complaining, and it will be interesting to give it a go, but I can imagine bee lining to masonary and staying in despotism for a very long time if this change is made. Once I get happiness from military units I generally let some or all my cities grow large enough that I need it, so it is hard to change out.

...unless you want you want to have a big empire The maintenance bonus that Monarchy has is still very useful.

 

[Vokarya]

Regarding Despotism/Monarchy: I usually have more overcrowding unhappiness than military happiness, so as long as we move both of those traits to Despotism, Monarchy will still be very useful.

 

[Vokarya]

I think Survival could work as a no-trait civic. That would emphasize the complete lack of attention to welfare. It would also be the second no-trait starter civic after Isolationism.

 

[GreedyManul]

By the way, I'd like to talk about something concerning regarding production creep. I did a quick checkup regarding production bonuses on each civic category, and I managed to list out the max production bonuses you could get purely from civics, buildings excluded:

25% + 50% military unit only (republic)
25% (single party)
15%/33% (caste/hive, depends on if you'll go for corps)
10%/20% (corporatist/planned, depends on if you'll go for corps)
20% buildings only/20% military unit only (free church/intolerant OR personality cult)
25% (superhuman)
75% military unit only/-50% + 150% military unit only (conscription/mobilization)
10% (protectionism)

Then, you stack up everything based on if you're going for buildings or units, and if you want to pursue corporations or not:

25 (republic)+25 (single party)+15 (caste)+10(corporatist)+20 (free church)+25 (superhuman)+10 (protectionism)=130% (fully geared for buildings, allows corporations)
25 (republic)+25 (single party)+33 (hive)+20 (planned)+20 (free church)+25 (superhuman)+10 (protectionism)=168% (fully geared for buildings, forbids corporations)
75 (republic)+25 (single party)+15 (caste)+10(corporatist)+20 (intolerant OR personality cult) +25 (superhuman)+100 (mobilization)+10 (protectionism)=280% (fully geared for units, allows corporations)
75 (republic)+25 (single party)+33 (hive)+20 (planned)+20 (intolerant OR personality cult)+25 (superhuman)+100 (mobilization)+10 (protectionism)=318% (fully geared for units, forbids corporations)

As you can see... things can get easily out of hand. One could build himself to be the ultimate productive behemoth, outpacing everything else in the game, due to taking advantage of the production creep. This needs to be fixed.

 

[Vokarya]

I'm already planning to reduce Conscription to +25% military production in exchange for shaving off a couple of its other negatives.

The big check on Republic is that it is supposed to keep your civilization small by radically increasing the maintenance from cities. I think a big monarchy or democracy could outproduce a republic

 

[GreedyManul]

The big check on Republic is that it is supposed to keep your civilization small by radically increasing the maintenance from cities. I think a big monarchy or democracy could outproduce a republic

Of course, but my issue is how the production bonus is shoved around so casually in so many civics, which cheapens it. Plus, not gonna lie, I find the republic maintenance penalty easy to overcome. Probably because I keep playing on Giant Earth Map? I need to test this on other maps, but I do remember that one time where I had a 30-city republican empire on gigantic map size easily, with the only issue being revolutions. I was even expanding into another mini-continent before I gave up! And that was on a randomly generated map too.

 

[Pepo]

Republic lose to monarchy , even on giant maps, once you got somewhat big. There is a difference of 165% on both distance and number of cities. I don't see how could it remain competitive against monarchy once you expand

 

[GreedyManul]

Republic lose to monarchy , even on giant maps, once you got somewhat big. There is a difference of 165% on both distance and number of cities. I don't see how could it remain competitive against monarchy once you expand

Have you tried? Because I did, and I was just fine, even on noble difficulty. I was tech leader, had my research slider very close to 100%, and pretty much left everyone else to bite the dust.

 

[Samson]

In my current game I had a 7 city empire on standard size (2nd biggest in the world) and it was the lack of MP that drove me to monarchy not the maintenance. This was flexible difficulty, I was on Deity the whole time I was in Republic. The 25% science was more than the maintenance I think.

 

[Pepo]

I have run large republics, and they are competitive, but from my personal experience not as much as monarchy. Maybe is because I play low to high and usually change civs when I'm leading, but being able to gain more money is really helpful when your cities are not very develop and you need to expand fast. Although the real problem is probably the economy in AND. Money is much easier to gain than in vanilla, and unless you do like me (change civs, impose rules to yourself) it would not matter if you are a republic or a monarchy due to the snowball effect

 

[Vokarya]

Would Republic still be competitive if we cut both production bonuses? I will admit that the +50% military production is probably too much.

 

[Vokarya]

I did some more work at looking at Mobilization. For some reason, I thought the bonus to military production was calculated off the adjusted production, but it's actually calculated off the base production. So Mobilization is producing too many hammers.

Would it be too bad if Mobilization's main hammer penalty was increased to -75%? One of the main ideas behind the Mobilization civic is that it is supposed to cripple your production except for military units and a few military infrastructure buildings. (Ideally, there would be an XML flag that would allow only certain buildings to be built under Mobilization. The closest I could do right now would be to define virtually every building as a civic building for every military civic except Mobilization. That would be way too cumbersome.) -75% production and +150% military production would add up to +75% military unit production, which I will admit is a lot, but it doesn't give you the XP bonuses that other military civics give and it hurts you in other ways.

 

[<Nexus>]

Would Republic still be competitive if we cut both production bonuses? I will admit that the +50% military production is probably too much.

Let's try reducing it to +25% and see ho it works.
I'm also thinking about a +500% maintenance for Overseas.

 

[GreedyManul]

Would Republic still be competitive if we cut both production bonuses? I will admit that the +50% military production is probably too much.

Personally, I cut the military production bonus, and gave it some war weariness to spice it up. Civs still love republic, though.

I'll try play with the civics, tweak stuff out, see what's up; just know I play with ZN's improved civics mod, so...

 

[GreedyManul]

(Ideally, there would be an XML flag that would allow only certain buildings to be built under Mobilization. The closest I could do right now would be to define virtually every building as a civic building for every military civic except Mobilization. That would be way too cumbersome.)

We COULD get 45* to do it, but making DLL changes for just one civic is a waste. Could pacifism and other civics be made to use this mechanic too, where applicable?