Civics Improvements Suggestions

[Fozman]

Do Divine Cult and Intolerant need to reduce War Weariness?

Divine Cult is already a bit on the powerful side. I've been using it per jackelgull's suggestion; it is invaluable on harder levels where happiness is harder to come by. Intolerant could be okay.

Can we get better mechanics on the President civic?

I guess I'd need a better idea of what you find wrong with it. It is a substantial boon to empire stability; helpful with larger nations. Perhaps focus on that kind of synergy? Since it is an Executive role (not Legislative) I think the unhappiness should come from increased WW instead of tax rate (e.g. US-Vietnam war).

Parliament

This is the popular counterpart to Senate; Senate is more oligarchic

An opportunity to go Tall vs. Wide here?

Autocracy

This might blur the line between Government & Rule; I would see it more as a Government option... possibly Totalitarianism instead:

Comparison with other forms of government
Both totalitarianism and military dictatorship are often identified with, but need not be, an autocracy. Totalitarianism is a system where the state strives to control every aspect of life and civil society. It can be headed by a supreme dictator, making it autocratic, but it can also have a collective leadership such as a commune, junta, or single political party.

In an analysis of militarized disputes between two states, if one of the states involved was an autocracy the chance of violence occurring doubled.
- Wikipedia

Regardless of what you choose to do with it, it should probably have a major unhappiness/instability penalty. If you put this in Government instead of Rule, it can pair with Junta or Single Party for the ultimate monopoly on violence.

 

[Vokarya]

You could have the wonder be prevented from giving access to Atheism, perhaps?

That can't be done. It's all-or-nothing on civic access through Wonders.

 

[Vokarya]

As far as Autocracy goes, I'm really just using the name; it's relatively short. I don't want to be too tightly tied to a definition. I find short names to be extremely valuable and once I find one, I'm going to find a way to use it. In my opinion, most modders are terrible at naming things.

So it's a Rule, not a Government, and what I think it should be is a mirror of President: single democratic leader (President) vs. single non-democratic leader (Autocracy).

 

[Fozman]

So it's a Rule, not a Government, and what I think it should be is a mirror of President: single democratic leader (President) vs. single non-democratic leader (Autocracy).

Then I would see this as a war vs. anti-war type scenario or freedom vs. police state. Something along those lines. If defined as a dichotomy, they should provide opposite functions in the game. The mechanics should be focused around that. I'm interested in what you'd like to see as an overall theme in the Rule category. Perhaps ALL civic categories should have a theme defined, so players can better gauge what mechanics are going to change within a category and make the choices less of an exercise in "denial and error" (malapropism intended).

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

That can't be done. It's all-or-nothing on civic access through Wonders.

In theory, it should be possible via dll coding (make available all religious civics except the one that doesn't have a state religion and that prevent non state religion spread - the only religious civic with these traits is Atheism). Not sure it's worth it anyway; finding that part of the code is not easy because the variable CivicOption is spread almost everywhere in the dll but with different meanings.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Some ideas regarding the Religion civics.

Do Divine Cult and Intolerant need to reduce War Weariness? While I can see why it's plausible, I don't want "do-everything" civics and I think this is a cut we can make. If necessary, Intolerant's civic building can get reduced WW.

No Corporations is already a flag we can have on civics. Would it be possible to have a similar No Religions flag, for Personality Cult and Atheist? It would outright shut down religions if the flag is on an active civic. The one case where I can see a problem is if a civilization with Shwedagon Paya switches to a No Religions civic and then is the first to a religious tech. No Corporations prevents corporations from founding, but that is done either by a deliberate act without Realistic Corporations or a repeating check with RC. I wouldn't want to see a religion get locked out, although it might be interesting. But I think it would be better if there was a way to let another civilization found the religion.

I'm ok with your ideas; I can work on No Religions flag but I fear it's not that easy, especially if we need to let another civilization found the religion in the case you mentioned: I remember working on that part of the code when I tried to solve the problem of barbarians founding religions, but in the end I didn't really fix that bug. I'll see what I can do.

And some Rule civic ideas, since I got enough feedback to tell me that wanting to cut them is a bad idea.

Can we get better mechanics on the President civic? It's very vague. It gives +15% production and +15% military production, balanced by -1 happiness/20% tax rate. This civic is one of the reasons I don't like the Rule category that much. Some of the others, like Bureaucracy and Virtual, I'm happy with.

Also, I came up with some ideas for other Rule civics. I don't mind choices within a category, as long as they are conceptually different and use different mechanics. Adding entire categories really increases the number of interactions, so that's where I want to be much more careful.

• Theocracy: Requires Scriptures tech, or possibly even Priesthood. This is a religious civic that doesn't belong to the Religion category. It would be incompatible with Secular/Cult of Personality/Atheist. Most of its benefits would be tied to a religion, so it would be a bad idea to adopt it before founding a religion or at least having it spread to your cities. It definitely has No Non-State Religion Spread and possibly steals +2 XP from State Religion away from Intolerant. I think of +XP as indoctrination or training, while +% military production from State Religion is the "crusading horde".
• Junta: Requires Military Tradition tech. Government by a professional military; I'm thinking of "Prussia is not a country with an army, it is an army with a country". Increases military production and military building production, but doesn't increase unit XP. Might be allowed to draft a small number of units. Decreases relations with other leaders (that military is going to want to go somewhere).
• Parliament: Requires Liberalism tech, maybe Social Contract. Liberalism isn't that high on the trick count right now and its tricks are limited (free tech, Encyclopedia). This is the popular counterpart to Senate; Senate is more oligarchic. I could see this as boosting happiness and culture.
  
• Autocracy: Requires Absolutism tech. This is the "enlightened despot" of the 18th century. Not sure on the mechanics, but I've wanted to give Absolutism a civic ever since I made the tech.
  
• Corporations: Requires Megacorporations tech. This is a cyberpunk trope, so I'm putting in the Transhuman Era and not the Modern. It's a government controlled by corporations. Incompatible with "No Corporations" techs. Mechanics would be similar to the Corporate economy civic, but ramped-up since the corporations are in power.

I like it, go for it!

 

[Vokarya]

Then I would see this as a war vs. anti-war type scenario or freedom vs. police state. Something along those lines. If defined as a dichotomy, they should provide opposite functions in the game. The mechanics should be focused around that. I'm interested in what you'd like to see as an overall theme in the Rule category. Perhaps ALL civic categories should have a theme defined, so players can better gauge what mechanics are going to change within a category and make the choices less of an exercise in "denial and error" (malapropism intended).

I haven't really thought about this too much. I've been looking for a few effects per civic that don't clash with other civics in the same category.

I'm willing to have more civic complexity than BTS. Civics in BTS go from 0 bullet point effects (starter civics) to 4 (Environmentalism, State Property). But I still think some of our current civics have too many effects. Even after turning Revolutions off, Nationalist has 12 bullet points and Intolerant has 11, and Revolutions on adds several more points. If we trimmed some of them down more, then we could focus them on particular effects.

 

[Arakhor]

A dozen different bullet points is rather too much, I agree. Half a dozen should be fine.

 

[Fozman]

I'm willing to have more civic complexity than BTS. Civics in BTS go from 0 bullet point effects (starter civics) to 4 (Environmentalism, State Property). But I still think some of our current civics have too many effects. Even after turning Revolutions off, Nationalist has 12 bullet points and Intolerant has 11, and Revolutions on adds several more points. If we trimmed some of them down more, then we could focus them on particular effects.

This would be a step in the right direction, imo. It seems like it would be a nightmare trying to balance things as they are now, much less add new civics to an already messy situation. I think a lot of the effect descriptions themselves could be condensed, before even touching the actual effects.

I think the ramp upwards with later civics is warranted (i.e. intentional power creep). The more modern civics should be more powerful; otherwise, what's the point? I agree with you that this should be the most effective process for this project: trim the fat, see what you've got underneath, then rebuild.

I like the system you use with the Tech Tree balancing: the trick count. If you can develop something similar for this project -- like a weighted system with plus & minus counts -- the rebuild should run smoothly. Determine what each civic or "civic pair" (the dichotomies, tall v. wide, war v. peace) should function as (war civic?, production civic?, commerce civic?, health civic?), setup a trick count and apply mechanics.

 

[Vokarya]

This is an intriguing idea. It might skew a little in some places. The Virtual civic is meant to be mostly drawbacks, backed up by a very powerful civic building. This is so if you get into early through Independence Hall, it will actually hurt you because you won't have the infrastructure (the Internet and Computer Networks) to support the Voting Link building.

That said, if we take that into account it'd be useful. Also, there are some points that are okay to repeat across civics, like +starting XP from military civics, and some that probably shouldn't be, like +Great General from many military civics and +Science from many welfare civics.

 

[Vokarya]

A dozen different bullet points is rather too much, I agree. Half a dozen should be fine.

I'd love to get there, but some civics would need an axe taken to them. Nationalist and Intolerant are the worst, but Liberal and Mobilization aren't that far behind. And this is before Revolutions; that can add even more points, especially to some of the religious civics that care about holy city ownership.

We might actually need some new mechanics to simplify some civics. One I noticed is that Regulated has a bunch of +health on improvements, but what this effectively does is to remove the current unhealth from them. It doesn't affect Mines but does affect Industry/Industrial Complex and Village/Town. If we had a mechanic of No Unhealth from Improvements, like we do No Unhealth from Buildings on the Paradise civic, that would save three bullets.

Mobilization is the other one that I'd like better mechanics on. The purpose of the extensive production modifiers is to force you to focus on producing military units and some basic military buildings. I could imagine a "Mobilization" mechanic parallel to the current "Free Religion" mechanic. "Free Religion" applies to Monasteries and Cathedrals: if the building requires a religion, but it's not your state religion, you can't build it unless your civic has the "Free Religion" flag. Temples have a <bFreeFromStateReligion> that exempts them, so under a civic like State Church that doesn't have free religion but does allow non-state religion spreading, you can build Temples of other religions but that's all.

For Mobilization, we could turn this around: if the "Mobilization" flag on the civic is on, then it stops you from building ANY building unless the building has a <FreeFromMobilization> flag. Only a few military buildings would get the flag. Then we could clear out most of the production points.

 

[Fozman]

early through Independence Hall

Would the "block civic" flag be useful to prevent this from a different angle? (e.g. can't run Liberal with Intolerant --> can't run Virtual with lower level civics)

new mechanics to simplify some civics

that would save three bullets

Then we could clear out most of the production points

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Optimize how the mechanics do their job to simplify the descriptions and condense 2-5 lines of the "same" effect to 1 bullet point. Run with this!

 

[BlueTemplar]

Hi, if I may interject, one thing that adds to the complexity for the player is the effect of the building(s) that many civics enable - especially since you cannot (directly) consult the pedia from right clicking on the name of the building on the civics screen (you have to right click on the civic itself first).

 

[Vokarya]

Hi, if I may interject, one thing that adds to the complexity for the player is the effect of the building(s) that many civics enable - especially since you cannot (directly) consult the pedia from right clicking on the name of the building on the civics screen (you have to right click on the civic itself first).

I don't think there is a way to get the civic screen to hold onto a civic just on mouseover; you have to either left-click the civic to specify a switch (if you've enabled it) or right-click to get the pedia entry.

 

[Vokarya]

I did some preliminary analysis on the Government civics. Since there are only 6 of them, it's a good place to start.

I came up with two numbers that can be used to rate civics. Complexity is how many non-Revolution bullet points the civic has. Rating is the number of positive abilities from the civic minus the number of negatives. Some abilities are doubled on a bullet point, but they count as two positive or two negative abilities.

So here's a look at the first 3 government civics. It's a long post.

Chiefdom: Complexity 2, rating -2.
Chiefdom has two abilities: +100% Maintenance from Number of Cities and Cannot settle more than X Cities (it scales by map size). Both of these are negative, so Chiefdom's rating is -2.

Despotism: Complexity 4, rating 2.
Despotism's theme is "early civilization struggling upwards". You should want to switch from Chiefdom to Despotism as soon as you can.
Despotism has three positive abilities. First is the +1 happiness per Military Unit. Second is Fixed Borders. Third is the Monument to the Dictator, although I'm reluctant to tag this one because Monument to the Dictator has that -1 happiness which is so not needed in the early game. I think we would be better off dropping it. Despotism then has 1 negative ability: +50% unhappiness from population. So that gives us a rating of 3-1=2. It's slightly more complex than Chiefdom but not by much, and it's better than Chiefdom.

Monarchy: Complexity 7, rating 7.
Monarchy's theme is "big empire". It has seven separate bullet point abilities, all of them good. This is a lot of bullet points for one civic, especially an early one.

• Fixed Borders
• -50% maintenance from number of cities
• -50% maintenance from distance to Palace
• No unhappiness in capital
• Royal Monument building

I think these five attributes are pretty much unshakable. The rule is authoritarian civics get Fixed Borders. The two maintenance breaks are necessary for the "big empire" theme. The no capital unhappiness feels like it runs counter to the big empire theme, but I believe it's popular. Every civic needs one civic building, although monuments seem a bit overused. We have Monument to the Dictator, Royal Monument, and Presidential Monument.

Then there are two abilities that might not be so necessary.

• Unlimited Noble specialists

Maybe this should be saved for Nobility instead? Change Royal Monument to a governor-type building that gives 1 or 2 Noble specialist slots, then delete the ability from the civic.

• +1 relations with other Monarchies

This one just makes me want to ask "Why?" Is there something special about monarchies that they get along better? Especially since once you really start to grow, you'll want to get out of Despotism and into Monarchy, meaning +1 relations for everyone.

So if we cut these two abilities, we have a much less complex civic that doesn't lose much in execution.

 

[Fozman]

Agree with the points on Monarchy.

• Well-defined and separate roles should be the goal. Keeping Unlimited Nobles with the Nobility civic is a good start in establishing a difference between two civic categories.
• The building change... Perhaps something like "county seat" or "county administration" would work. Plop your Noble specialist in there, maybe a small maintenance adjustment (either direction), a small gold adjustment (taxes) or some other small boon. Sure beats another boring + Monument.
• The relations adjustment can be easily dumped. This kind of thing is the "fat" we've discussed. It's such a non-factor in deciding to go with Monarchy anyway, it won't be missed.

The rating system should accomplish the goal of comparing the civics in an objective manner, which at least should make the power balancing easier. Beyond that, trying to define the roles and put meaningful mechanics into the system is probably going to be the challenging part here. I think the civic buildings should be factored into the score a little differently. Perhaps half points for the building boons and drawbacks? Some buildings are easy to get at while also being no-brainers, but others -- like the aforementioned Monument of the Dictator -- are useless garbage for anyone not running a specific leader trait or gimmicky strategy. Probably want to look into adjustments to these while moving things along.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I did some preliminary analysis on the Government civics. Since there are only 6 of them, it's a good place to start.

I came up with two numbers that can be used to rate civics. Complexity is how many non-Revolution bullet points the civic has. Rating is the number of positive abilities from the civic minus the number of negatives. Some abilities are doubled on a bullet point, but they count as two positive or two negative abilities.

So here's a look at the first 3 government civics. It's a long post.

Chiefdom: Complexity 2, rating -2.
Chiefdom has two abilities: +100% Maintenance from Number of Cities and Cannot settle more than X Cities (it scales by map size). Both of these are negative, so Chiefdom's rating is -2.

Despotism: Complexity 4, rating 2.
Despotism's theme is "early civilization struggling upwards". You should want to switch from Chiefdom to Despotism as soon as you can.
Despotism has three positive abilities. First is the +1 happiness per Military Unit. Second is Fixed Borders. Third is the Monument to the Dictator, although I'm reluctant to tag this one because Monument to the Dictator has that -1 happiness which is so not needed in the early game. I think we would be better off dropping it. Despotism then has 1 negative ability: +50% unhappiness from population. So that gives us a rating of 3-1=2. It's slightly more complex than Chiefdom but not by much, and it's better than Chiefdom.

Monarchy: Complexity 7, rating 7.
Monarchy's theme is "big empire". It has seven separate bullet point abilities, all of them good. This is a lot of bullet points for one civic, especially an early one.

• Fixed Borders
• -50% maintenance from number of cities
• -50% maintenance from distance to Palace
• No unhappiness in capital
• Royal Monument building

I think these five attributes are pretty much unshakable. The rule is authoritarian civics get Fixed Borders. The two maintenance breaks are necessary for the "big empire" theme. The no capital unhappiness feels like it runs counter to the big empire theme, but I believe it's popular. Every civic needs one civic building, although monuments seem a bit overused. We have Monument to the Dictator, Royal Monument, and Presidential Monument.

Then there are two abilities that might not be so necessary.

• Unlimited Noble specialists

Maybe this should be saved for Nobility instead? Change Royal Monument to a governor-type building that gives 1 or 2 Noble specialist slots, then delete the ability from the civic.

• +1 relations with other Monarchies

This one just makes me want to ask "Why?" Is there something special about monarchies that they get along better? Especially since once you really start to grow, you'll want to get out of Despotism and into Monarchy, meaning +1 relations for everyone.

So if we cut these two abilities, we have a much less complex civic that doesn't lose much in execution.

Looks good to me so far

 

[BlueTemplar]

it seems to me too that

• -50% maintenance from number of cities
• -50% maintenance from distance to Palace

and

• No unhappiness in capital

are really contradictory in the terms of gameplay and should be in two separate civics

----

Unlimited Noble specialists

why would anyone want to run a noble-heavy civilization?

 

[Vokarya]

Should we give Nobles an extra +1 culture? Nobles are currently +2 gold and +1 culture. A Merchant gives 3 gold, and an Artist gives 4 culture. So 1 culture is worth less than 1 gold, but a middle-of-the-road option is generally worth even less than if its bonuses were equal to another specialist. Noble does give GPP that increase the total without flavoring it towards a specific type, so they have a use there.

 

[Vokarya]

Let's break down Republic. The complexity rating is 8. The overall rating is 5. So in terms of raw features, it's a little behind (current) Monarchy. However, some of these are big. Also, the AI seems to prefer Republic, so some toning down is probably in order. The <AIWeight> of this civic is 0, so there isn't much to modify there.

The theme for Republic is "tall empire". So we have the following negatives:

• +250% maintenance from number of cities
• +250% maintenance from distance to Palace

The benefits to running Republic are:

• +3 happiness in largest cities
  
• +25% production all cities
  
• +25% military production all cities
  
• +25% gold in Capital
• +25% science all cities
• +25% culture all cities
• Agora, Statue of Liberty, Supreme Court buildings

Those are a lot of benefits. Statue of Liberty is also shared with Democracy and Liberal civics, while Supreme Court is shared with Democracy and Federation civics.

The +happiness in largest cities encourages a tall empire. It's what Representation has in BTS.

Does Republic need both a production bonus and a military production bonus? I think this might have been done to keep it competitive, but I would keep one or the other. Probably the general production bonus.

Likewise, I think all of the commerce bonus points could be consolidated into a single +25% commerce in all cities ability. The benefit is that this would apply to all commerce generated, but it would not apply to +culture/+science from buildings. It would make you more reliant on your sliders. I tend to ignore the Culture and Espionage sliders.

So this is what Republic would wind up with:

• +250% maintenance from number of cities
• +250% maintenance from distance to Palace
• +3 happiness in largest cities
  
• +25% production, commerce in all cities
  
• Agora, Statue of Liberty, Supreme Court buildings

Is this enough or too little? It would clock in at complexity 5 (production and commerce being on one bullet point line) but have a rating of anywhere from +2-4 depending on how you count the civic buildings. It has 3 positive points with production, commerce, and largest city happiness, with 2 negative points from increased maintenance from number and increased maintenance from distance. The Agora would count as a full +1, but the Statue and Supreme Court might count for less as they are shared.

I wouldn't want to add any more negatives to Republic without swapping out one of the current maintenance penalties (probably the distance to Palace one first).