Civics Improvements Suggestions

[Vokarya]

I like Mercenary Camp but its effects might need twiddling a bit. I don't like Personal Guard; that seems to be a unit, not a building. I also don't think Monarchy needs another civic building. It has Villa which fills the slot and does what I need it to do, especially having 2 Noble slots so it can provide a few Nobles without having to use the Unlimited Noble mechanic.

 

[Fozman]

Speaking of which, my current game has 20+ something nations, and pretty much everyone is using Republic, Bureaucracy, Public Works, and Standing Army.

Small empires are probably going to go with Bureaucracy because its negatives are all upkeep-related. It has High upkeep and +25% maintenance from number of cities so if your empire is small to begin with there isn't that much disadvantage to Bureaucuracy.

In my current game, my closest ally and myself have been running Republic/Bureaucracy with nearly 30 cities each on a Huge map (default size). We didn't change anything until we hit Democracy. I was running 80% science, while at war with 7 other nations, no problem. This is on Monarch difficulty (non-flex) with Revolutions on. I, again, want to press the issue that something needs to be changed here.

 

[Rezca]

In my current game, my closest ally and myself have been running Republic/Bureaucracy with nearly 30 cities each on a Huge map (default size). We didn't change anything until we hit Democracy. I was running 80% science, while at war with 7 other nations, no problem. This is on Monarch difficulty (non-flex) with Revolutions on. I, again, want to press the issue that something needs to be changed here.

If Chiefdom can't be taken when you have more than X cities, maybe Republic can do something similar - you can't take it if you have more than so many cities (Based on map size). They could possibly do away with or reduce the major maintenance costs then too, since it'd be truly limited to your empire's size and not "Can I afford it?"

A hard limit like that I'm not sure would be best though, but I'm having difficulty thinking of anything else :/

 

[Vokarya]

If Chiefdom can't be taken when you have more than X cities, maybe Republic can do something similar - you can't take it if you have more than so many cities (Based on map size). They could possibly do away with or reduce the major maintenance costs then too, since it'd be truly limited to your empire's size and not "Can I afford it?"

A hard limit like that I'm not sure would be best though, but I'm having difficulty thinking of anything else :/

We've already decided we don't want a hard limit on Republic, back around page 36. Chiefdom is the only civic that will do that.

 

[Sock Thing]

I like Mercenary Camp but its effects might need twiddling a bit. I don't like Personal Guard; that seems to be a unit, not a building. I also don't think Monarchy needs another civic building. It has Villa which fills the slot and does what I need it to do, especially having 2 Noble slots so it can provide a few Nobles without having to use the Unlimited Noble mechanic.

Oh I thought monarchy had royal monument that's what I was trying to replace. As for personal guard I do agree that it sounds like a unit. But the buildings purpose would be to let you support more units. Sort of like something similar to the SA or the red guards or how in Ancient Greece the would be tyrants would first get permission to have bodyguards after an alleged attack on themselves And would than use them to take power. Sort of paramilitary

 

[Vokarya]

I'm trying to come up with a Theocracy civic building. The point of the Theocracy civic building is to provide +2 XP in cities with your State Religion, but rather than having it be available to a civic as soon as the civic is available, I want to delay the effect a little. So far, the only thing I can come up with is a knightly order like the Templars.

There are three ways this can be implemented.

• A standard civic building that gives +2 XP.
• A National Wonder civic building that grants +2 global XP.
• A National Wonder civic building with a inherent effect and allows building a standard building that grants the +2 XP.

So I'm looking for a good name suggestion and which one would be best. 1 is probably the most likely, but 3 has some potential. Any ideas?

 

[Sock Thing]

Well for the third option you could call it Holy War. For the additional effect could you grant a small strength bonus when fighting followers of other religions if possible.
For just a civic building the only other thing I could think of other than Knightly Order would be something like Holy Quest?

 

[Fozman]

• A standard civic building that gives +2 XP.

• A National Wonder civic building that grants +2 global XP.

• A National Wonder civic building with a inherent effect and allows building a standard building that grants the +2 XP.

#2 would be too easy, even with an exorbitant cost (just burn a GE on it). #3 would allow for some other bonus effect and still properly "gate-keep" each city for the +XP with a standard building. Anyone who specializes to even a minimal extent doesn't build military buildings everywhere until 1) there's nothing left to build OR 2) they are in a total war situation. My money is on #3.

 

[Fozman]

We've already decided we don't want a hard limit on Republic

Is there some way to make a hybrid of the hard limit and the carpet bomb maintenance approaches?

In other words, can we make maintenance progressively more dramatic with size by...

• If coded with a mathematical curve, crank up the steepness of the slope at a certain empire size X1, X2, X3...
• Alternatively, do something similar to progressive income taxation. At X1, maintenance for # of cities increases by 100%... X2 by 200%, X3 by 400%...

Where X1, X2, X3... etc. are some multiple of the Chiefdom limit (e.g. Chiefdom = 4, X1 = 8, X2 = 12, X3 = 16).

OR, other than a straight maintenance increase here, what if we came at this from the other direction? Start reducing the benefits at these levels until the civic becomes completely ineffective. This might be preferred since the maintenance can be overpowered with brute economic force, but progressively reduced benefits would make it a waste of a civic choice with large enough empires.

E: As far as coding this for effect and display, would a "switch/case" (or equivalent) work? So for case0 at full effect, do & display full stats; case1 at X1 cities = reduced effect level 1, do & display that; etc...

 

[Rezca]

OR, other than a straight maintenance increase here, what if we came at this from the other direction? Start reducing the benefits at these levels until the civic becomes completely ineffective. This might be preferred since the maintenance can be overpowered with brute economic force, but progressively reduced benefits would make it a waste of a civic choice with large enough empires.

E: As far as coding this for effect and display, would a "switch/case" (or equivalent) work? So for case0 at full effect, do & display full stats; case1 at X1 cities = reduced effect level 1, do & display that; etc...

I was initially going to suggest something like that in my initial post but couldn't find a good way to word it xD

I think back to how technology cost in Stellaris works; where it goes up by x% for every point of population you have and for every planet you own. So rapid but thoughtless expansion will get your naval capacity to rise quickly and you secure a lot of territory, but the smaller nations will almost certainly out-tech you because you have many undeveloped colonies bloating your tech costs. If something like that could be implemented into Republic, they could tone down the initial Maintenance costs and have them go up for every additional city you place, perhaps introducing some penalties slowly and gradually over time - like maybe paying more for your military, a tiny bit at fist but then it goes up for every extra city you have.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

In my current game, my closest ally and myself have been running Republic/Bureaucracy with nearly 30 cities each on a Huge map (default size). We didn't change anything until we hit Democracy. I was running 80% science, while at war with 7 other nations, no problem. This is on Monarch difficulty (non-flex) with Revolutions on. I, again, want to press the issue that something needs to be changed here.

How many cities did you have running wealth to sustain you though? That is a big question. Because in my experience the only way you can do that is if you dedicate half your empire to building wealth. And that's cripplingly bad. (Which is a good thing mechanics vise.)

In the game I am running right I had the following situation.
I am playing on a huge map, early to mid medieval period and had roughly 15 cities, give or take. I was running Monarchy (yes the one designed for large empires!) + Bureaucracy and I got into one single war that ended with me doubly the number of cities I had to roughly 20-something by conquering two AI's. By the end of that war I was forced to switch out of Bureaucracy and into senate as a result of the upkeep skyrocketing so much that even with half my cities building wealth I was still loosing over 500 gold per turn. And when I looked at the finances I found that my upkeep from number of cities hit over -1000 gold per turn. And whilst yes, I could have solved that by dropping research to something stupidly useless like 50% that would have caused all sorts of problems not just with me falling behind but also with unhappiness due to tax etc. So I was forced to switch or die.

And that to me seems that the mechanics of the game were working as intended. And was enjoyable.

 

[Fozman]

How many cities did you have running wealth to sustain you though? That is a big question. Because in my experience the only way you can do that is if you dedicate half your empire to building wealth. And that's cripplingly bad. (Which is a good thing mechanics wise.)

Precisely zero.

All cities were either building up (younger cities) or spamming military units for the wars. I will admit I was mostly running merchant & noble specialists across the board if I didn't need slaves for production (to get Great Merchants for founding Corporations later on). And pretty much any flat non-resource tile producing 3+ got a cottage. Nothing necessarily unusual, especially if you're used to running CE and/or SE in BtS. The build order for my new cities is buildings first, followed by , with as needed. Lots of coastal cities with Caravanserai, Port/Seaport, Toll House, and lots of Foreign connections is easy mode for economy. Even better when you can boost Foreign Connections output with civics.

So, I don't know. If it isn't play style, maybe it comes down to other game settings? I don't think I'm running anything unusual there, but feel free to ask.

E: Also, please remember, the AI was running the same thing with more cities than me.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well, I was not running that many merchants but I do have a fully decked out holy city and two guild HQs producing gold so that should have evened us out. And the rest I do pretty much as you did. Still, I barely managed to survive until I switched over to senate at which point things just clicked and now I only have to have like 2-3 cities running wealth to break even and keep my 85% science.

What difficulty are you using? And what game settings?

 

[Fozman]

As previously stated, Monarch. No flex, which means I was well behind the leader for about 2.5 - 3.0 eras. Revolutions on.

Not 100% on what settings could cause such a discrepancy, but I have Usable Mountains & Unlimited Wonders on. UW certainly shouldn't be a problem, since I've built maybe 6 World Wonders at most in 2 or 3 cities.

I do use the Smartmap script, but I've kept the resources at normal & balanced. I do set it to Tropical to minimize the Ice wastes, but set Ocean to >60%. My AI ally is on the same continent, with probably a better start and is somehow doing even better than me with the same civics.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

My setup is very similar. UW and UM on as well. Similar difficulty. I can like get the save file up if you want it. It is a bit of an earlier version but not too far back. Like downloaded a month ago or so. Not sure if that makes much of a difference.

 

[Sock Thing]

I'm trying to come up with a Theocracy civic building. The point of the Theocracy civic building is to provide +2 XP in cities with your State Religion, but rather than having it be available to a civic as soon as the civic is available, I want to delay the effect a little. So far, the only thing I can come up with is a knightly order like the Templars.

There are three ways this can be implemented.

• A standard civic building that gives +2 XP.
• A National Wonder civic building that grants +2 global XP.
• A National Wonder civic building with a inherent effect and allows building a standard building that grants the +2 XP.

So I'm looking for a good name suggestion and which one would be best. 1 is probably the most likely, but 3 has some potential. Any ideas?

How about fortified or walled monastery?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I'm trying to come up with a Theocracy civic building. The point of the Theocracy civic building is to provide +2 XP in cities with your State Religion, but rather than having it be available to a civic as soon as the civic is available, I want to delay the effect a little. So far, the only thing I can come up with is a knightly order like the Templars.

There are three ways this can be implemented.

• A standard civic building that gives +2 XP.
• A National Wonder civic building that grants +2 global XP.
• A National Wonder civic building with a inherent effect and allows building a standard building that grants the +2 XP.

So I'm looking for a good name suggestion and which one would be best. 1 is probably the most likely, but 3 has some potential. Any ideas?

Make it be a national wonder representing a knightly order, but instead of making it generic have a unique version for each of the religions in game with their own unique abilities and only sharing the +2 XP. That lets you have a little more flavor but also gives you a cool way to explain away having to jump through hoops to get the ability.

 

[Vokarya]

How about fortified or walled monastery?

I think I like this. Could we just call it Abbey? Would that be too short? I'm not very keen on separate buildings for each religion.

 

[Vokarya]

I think if we want to pursue making civics viable for longer periods of time, we should really cut down on the bullet points for Vassalage/Fealty. Fealty is the pending rename.

Prior to reaching the Medieval Era, there is a variety of choice in terms of Military civics:

• Conscription is the best for a big army. You get +25% military production and can draft.
• Raiders will produce a big army too, by converting food to hammers. It will cost you in terms of commerce.
• Warrior Caste produces a well-trained (+2 XP) army with about +16% production. It costs you in city growth.
• Mercenaries also produces a trained army, but smaller because of no production bonus and direct costs in upkeep.
• Pacifism is an attempt to forswear war altogether and benefit in other ways.

Fealty, by providing +3 XP at much less cost, seems to blow away both Warrior Caste and Mercenaries. So to make it separate from other military civics, I think Fealty should be the civic that lets you maintain a big army once you build it.

Keep:

• Great General bonus, but lower it to +25%; I think we can cut the GG bonus from other civics, and leave Fealty as the best source of Generals.
  
• -50% distant unit supply costs
  
• Manor building

Add:

• +25% city defense in all cities

Delete:

• +3 XP for new units
• -1 happiness all cities
• -25% military unit production
• Unlimited Noble. Nobility (Rule) and Feudal (Society) would have this ability.

One purpose that Fealty currently serves is being the easiest path to 5 XP and the second promotion for Melee/Archery/Siege units. Without this, to get to 5 XP, you either have to run Theocracy and build its civic building (even if it isn't named, I still know what I want it to do), or get Asatru. Asatru Monastery can boost Melee units to 6 XP with Barracks + Warrior Caste/Mercenaries, and The Sagas can boost any unit to 6 XP. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing.

 

[Sock Thing]

I think I like this. Could we just call it Abbey? Would that be too short? I'm not very keen on separate buildings for each religion.

Abbey does sound like a name that a Theocracy civic building would have. But I'm not sure it sounds like one that would give a military bonus.