Civics Improvements Suggestions

So I just noticed that Fascism was removed because of similarities to despotism.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong (or argue semantics), but to my understanding of the brief period of history that included functioning fascist states; Fascism basically consisted of a Nationalistic society with Despotic government, an early State Capitalism economic system and perhaps a Personality Cult.

To me it makes sense then why Fascism would be removed from Government, since it was technically a little more complicated than that, but what comes to mind for me is that RoM:AND has no representation of State Capitalism in the economics category. Could we find a way to add that? I think that State Capitalism as a concept is both distinct enough from any of the economic options currently available, and influential enough in recent history to be worthy of inclusion.

 

May worth considering it.
What should the effects be?

• no foreign corporations
• can hurry with gold
• and?

 

I mean, thats already a powerful combination, and only Guilds does that right now.
-I could also suggest that since from what I know State Capitalism tends not to be popular with one's neighbors you could add a penalty to foreign relations.
-It also seems to tend to have a relatively stable baseline economy, irregardless of previous or surrounding conditions, for instance it contributed strongly to pulling Weimar Germany out of economic disaster, or for instance how China's economy was comparatively unaffected by the 2008 financial crash. Thus I think a bonus for Domestic Trade routes could make sense.
-I could also suggest a gold bonus from certain natural resources, since to use Norway, Russia, and possibly certain OPEC countries as examples; State Capitalism seems to be a beneficial model for Civs trying to manage their expendable natural resources like Oil to leverage themselves, nationally, to a stronger financial position.

Beyond that at the moment I'm not sure I would be qualified to offer strong opinions, I am unfortunately not an economic expert, and not a game designer.

 

We haven't really looked at the Economic civics yet, but I'm not really sure if there is a niche for State Capitalism to fill as a separate civic. What's being discussed here seems more appropriate for Regulated. I think Regulated is now supposed to be the midpoint between Planned on one end and Free Market/Corporate on the other. So maybe can we find a new ability set for Regulated.

 

I thought of a civic building for Warrior Caste: Funeral Pyre.

I don't think its mechanics should be very complex, so no Lascaux-type effects here.

• Is a Graveyard replacement.
• Requires Woodworking tech instead of Masonry.
• +2 happiness, +1 health, +1 culture.
• Does not expire; it goes away if you switch out of Warrior Caste.

Overall, this is +1 happiness over the Graveyard.

I was also thinking about this in conjunction with Mausoleum. Mausoleum has two different advantages over the Graveyard it replaces. First is +2 happiness, and second is that Mausoleum continues to provides its benefits between Education tech (when Graveyard obsoletes) and Ecological Engineering (when Mausoleum obsoletes). Since this allows India to get +3 happiness per city from the Renaissance Era into the early Transhuman, I think it would be fair to drop Mausoleum from +3 happiness to +2. Then Mausoleum is NOT replaced by Funeral Pyre.

 

I dont pretend to speak with authority on this, but I invite you to consider that for at least many India playthroughs they benefit from Spiritual allowing them to switch to Warrior Caste for fast Military boosts, then switch out once they have prepared their army, so they spend as little time as possible suffering from the massive penalties associated with Warrior Caste.

 

But the civic building will only work as long as the civic is active. (It's not absolutely mandatory; there is a separate <bRequiresActiveCivics> tag that has to be set. I think it should be set this way for all civic buildings.) So as long as India isn't actively running Warrior Caste, they have just their Mausoleum.

 

I was just thinking about the military civics today and had a couple of ideas. First do you think that Recruitment Center should have - rather than - the would represent incentives to join the army such as college tuition paid by the state and other benefits. I was thinking maybe -10%?

Also I was wondering if you think it would be a good idea to give most military civics its own unique promotion for free either from the civic itself or from its civic building?
The reason I would like this is just to show how the different ideas and tactics behind each civic would affect the individual units themselves even from civics that don't grant free xp.

So here are the promotions I thought of.

Banditry gets nothing.

Warlords gets nothing.

Raiders already has looter.

Warrior Caste

(promotion) Courage
Suffers 20% less collateral damage

Conscription

(promotion) Reinforcements
Heals extra 10% in friendly lands
Heals extra 8% in neutral lands
Heals extra 5% in enemy lands

Mercenaries

(promotion) Cutting Edge
50% less to upgrade

Vassalage/Fealty

(promotion) Levy
+15% city defense

Standing Army

(promotion) Esprit de Corps
1 extra first strike chance (I know this is the same as drill 1 I just didn't want to give them a jump start on the drill line or mess up the Protective trait.

Volunteer Army

(promotion) Patriotism
+5% strength

Mobilization gets nothing.

MAD gets nothing.

Shadow War

(promotion) Booby Traps
+10% withdraw chance

Unmanned Warfare

(promotion) Drones
+1 visibility range

And if your still putting Navel Supremacy in I think giving it the Sea Control promotion would be appropriate.

 

I want to keep the number of free promotions as low as I can. When I cut down starting XP I also removed a few ways to get free promotions; Augmentation Center and Incubation Center were deliberately made exclusive, and the free promotion handed out by the Penicillin project was changed from Heal to Medic I so it overlaps with Red Cross instead of making it possible to focus on Augmentation Centers and still get Heal.

Otherwise you wind up with units with lots of starting promotions and that makes actual combat experience less meaningful. Some military infrastructure is good, but I want to keep it under control.

 

I agree that it is not desirable to have units with to many starting promotions. I just suggested it because I would like the military civics to have some sort of constant unified effect on the units themselves outside of the civics that grant free xp.
for example right now when you fight a civ running Conscription you know that that civ will have at least one promotion generally from barracks on its units. But they are all different some may have Combat 1 some Drill 1 or Pinch 1 etc. They are never all the same and that's good but what I would propose is if you where to give each military civic its own unique promotion for free than you can count on at least one constant thing for their army such as all Conscription units heal quickly all Shadow Warfare units have a chance to withdraw and so on.

 

I certainly like the idea
I will add them to Chronicles. Maybe with some changes but I like them
I already had some similar idea: free promotions for Workers from Labor civics and for Religious units from Religion civics.

 

Thank you

 

So, I've been looking at the early Economics Civics, I've put a fair amount of thought into it, and it seems to me that the first three; Barter, Slavery, and Coinage, are fairly underserved at the moment. The concepts for which these 3 Civics are the earliest representations of are fundamental paradigms of human exchange that are currently not really done justice. I'll try to express this in as organized a manner as I can.

Viability Issues
Coinage: I'm going to start with Coinage simply because it is, as far as I can tell, just so bad. This unless I'm missing something huge this civic is not only underpowered, its actively detrimental. The main reason for this is the fact that it consumes all Gold and Silver resource for a measly 1 and 0.5 per city respectively. Compare that to the bonus that the Jewelry Building gives for the same resources; 1 each. That 1 for the Gold resource is superior because it benefits from +% to before receiving +% to in contrast to the Coinage civic, and the 1 for the Silver resource is superior for the same reason, and because 1 > 0.5. This consumption effect also cripples the National Mint that Coinage has access to later. To use the local lingo, the only real 'trick' the civic has left is +20% from domestic , though this is offset by -20% from foreign .

Barter: This civic is currently being treated as a stepping stone civic in the same way that most of the other starter civics are. The player and ai are, because of the massive penalties associated with Barter and because of the placement of Techs, funneled into slavery basically ASAP.

Because Barter and Coinage are so bad, the player and AI have really no viable options besides Slavery until Guilds, halfway into the Medieval Era. This doesnt really make game sense, or historical sense.

The awkward position of Slavery
Slavery as a civic is in an awkward position because slavery, serfdom, and otherwise denominated human servitude have been with us for so long, since some of our earliest records of law[1] to the last vestiges of serfdom as late as 1923 in Afganistan, to the fact that forced labour still exists today. Yet many of the economies throughout history that have allowed slavery(most of them) did not mainly consist of slavery, and were not distinguished by their slavery. Slave labour may have been important, yet free labour, artisans, and other components were equally or considerably more important. This is why I would argue that a Civ with the Slavery Civic represents not an economy that has slavery, but an economy largely based on slavery. This semantic distinction allows us to treat the Barter civic as a viable early alternative to slavery, rather than as an extremely penalizing stepping stone.

Thoughts and Suggestions for Barter/Slavery
Barter
A. My main suggestion for Barter is to buff it until its a somewhat viable alternative to slavery, and possibly to nerf slavery. I think the massive penalties to both and for barter should be at least reduced to perhaps -10% or -15%.
B. My second suggestion for barter is to give it small bonuses for Buildings that require a resource in city vicinity(Furrier), or in some cases resources themselves(wheat and resources without city-specific buildings?) or early buildings(perhaps carpenter). Firstly this would allow barter to scale a little further into the ancient era, as the player researches the early techs barter would gain a little bit of extra to offset the penalty. Secondly this would fit Barter thematically, because even though barter based economies did in fact trade frequently using standardized weights of precious metals, basically proto-coins it remains that diversity of available goods is especially helpful to a barter economy.
C. My third suggestion might be a little trickier, and it has to do with the differentiation of the Slavery Civic as a slave based economy, not just a society with slaves. I rather recommend that Barter, and perhaps Coinage, allow for each city to use slave specialists in a limited way. I would suggest either tying this to a building that is unlocked by researching the Slavery tech, or I would suggest allowing at least Barter to build unlimited Slave Specialists, but give their slaves - or some other penalty so that they are usable, but not optimal.
D. I'm also testing making Barter into at least Low Upkeep rather than None, no upkeep can be too valuable later in the game, but low upkeep is 0 early on when Barter is intended to work so this helps incentivize leaving Barter later on without damaging it early.

Slavery
Some people have argued that Slavery is still too strong of a Civic, and in some very strategic ways it is, which is I believe why we currently have the Slave Market going obsolete in the modern era. I would suggest that we could adjust Slavery a bit, and perhaps nerf it, in a few subtle ways:
A. Rather than having the Slave Market go obsolete, have Slavery receive a significant penalty to Foreign. This represents thematically the incompatibility between heavily slave based economies and non-slaving societies. Remember that although the vast majority of historical societies had some kind of institutionalized servitude, many of them did not support actual slave trade(they may have had serfs but serfs had rights and could not be bought or sold etc., there are many examples). The other effect of this that I believe we desire for gameplay reasons is to give both the player and the AI reasons to switch out of Slavery as the game progresses, because Foreign scales so hard in the late game.
B. My second thought about Slavery is that along with it's bonus to it should perhaps receive a penalty to . In the end this adjustment could be a nerf, or the math could be worked so that it is not a nerf, but thematically I think it could be argued that a Slave based economy would likely not have as much technological innovation as other economies.
C. Perhaps a penalty to relations with other Civs who are not using Slavery, this is another thematically supportable avenue to nerf Slavery in the later eras.

Coinage
The advent of specie currency in various places in the world is very interesting, and the introduction of coinage into the Mediterranean economy was absolutely fascinating(Mediterranean societies continued to use barter and slavery alongside their coinage btw), but frankly, most of the really fun things (debasement, influx of resource, deflationary spirals) that could be done with Coinage in a game are I think not really supportable within the Civ4 framework, the AI could not handle it.
A. My suggestion then is to use the fact that the long-term trend of Coinage is that of Inflation and Debasement, which combine into the concept of Seigniorage[2]. In game terms, the theme of Coinage would look something like a +2x% along with a -1x%.
B. My second suggestion is that Coinage should be at least Medium Upkeep, minting coins is not free, and this would encourage larger civs to abandon the Civic later in the game.
C. My third and strongest suggestion is to remove the XML that causes Coinage to consume all Gold and Silver. If we could make it consume just 1 of each I think that would be OK, but having Coinage just remove all of those resources from your empire screws with too many other buildings, bonuses, and mechanics.

I think that combined, my suggestions would be at least a step toward much more interesting and balanced early game Economics Civics. I've tried to be general enough when it comes to balance concepts to leave room for improvement. I hope my thoughts have at least been helpful.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage

 

Well, believe it or not I almost always play with coinage and I switch out of slavery as soon as I reach coinage.
Anyway your proposal sounds good to me, just one thing: are we getting rid of the gold/silver consumption mechanic? I can try and see if I can make it either gold OR silver consumption, but I remember that part of the code being tricky, I recall it wasn't working properly months ago.

 

I suspect that the gold/silver consumption mechanic is more trouble than its worth. Unless I'm mistaken if you have Gold, Silver, and a Jewelery and you then switch to Coinage; you will lose gold per turn, though I dont know if the AI actually realizes that. I believe there is a UB or two from the MegaCiv Pack that has the same issue, and I suspect the National Mint does as well unless something very specific has been done for that building.

Imo flavor for Civics is valuable, and if for purposes of flavor a bonus to Coinage from Gold and Silver is desired I might suggest a civic-specific building earlier than the National Mint for Coinage. At the time that Currency is discovered ingame coins were not in fact machined, they were hammered, or in some areas they were cast, so a building along those lines that goes obsolete at some point might be appropriate, though I have no concrete suggestions in that area.

 

Regarding the slave market and early civics.

The slave market can only be built with Slavery, currently.

How about if it were no longer a civic-building at all, so it could be built any time after you discovered the Slavery tech' (or whatever). This allows all ancient civics to benefit from the free slave associated with the slave market (it does have a free slave right? Or if not, then a commerce bonus or whatever, doesn't really matter I think). As noted above, most early civilizations had some sort of slave/indentured servant stuff going on.

However, a slavery economy was really dominated by slave labour (as also noted above), and so the Slavery civic in our game would allow unlimited slaves, and possibly provide a bonus to the slave market, e.g. +2 or something, reflecting the importance of this building to the civic/society.

This allows the slave market a bit more use, and reflects the fact that slaves weren't limited to 'slavery' civilizations. I guess the slave market could go obsolete at some stage, but with human trafficking still being a problem in 2017, perhaps it's not unreasonable that it would linger on with its (by late-game standards) meager bonuses long after it should.

Thoughts?

 

As far as Coinage goes, you'd have to do some serious work to make the minting process do something other than how it currently works. The XML is literally <BonusMintedPercents>: it converts resources directly to gold. We could ramp it up a little.

I haven't thought too much about the Economy civics yet, but I think most of the other categories are in good shape now. I want to move Slavery to the Society category, and I don't want Slave Market to be a non-civic building. It's the simplest solution for the civic building for any slavery civic, and I don't want to mess too much with something that works.

The early Economy civics do need some adjusting. I noticed that in BTS, the first Economy civic change isn't until Banking tech, and at least 1 other option in each category is available before then -- in Labor and Religion, 3 of the 4 are unlocked. So there does need to be something other than a strict linear plot for the Economy civics.

 

Barter:
A and D sounds very good. Maybe B too but I don't really like C.

Slavery:
B makes the most sense to me. Maybe some -% :gpp: could be added too.

Coinage:
How about a new civic building (instead of the general gold/silver minting):

• Mint
  • requires gold/silver/copper
  • +2/1/0,5 (or other numbers) gold/silver/copper
  • removes access to gold/silver/copper

 

Ramping it up might work, but imo in the long run <BonusMintedPercents> and its interaction with any current or future buildings you want to do that gain bonuses from Gold or Silver resources is just too awkward. Personally I would just remove it and give Coinage something else. I may be alone in that opinion however...

I'm currently trying a game to try out my Seigniorage concept where it has +25% and -10% instead(with medium upkeep), and it feels pretty good. The extra from flat sources like merchants and priests makes it feel like its worth the upkeep with normal sized empires earlyish, with an extra ability to react to bad situations by ramping up the taxes when you need to.

I honestly like the idea of making Slavery a society civic, but I didnt want to suggest it partly because I didnt have a concrete idea of how it would work, and because I didnt feel like I could communicate the pros and cons of that major of a change well. I frankly agree with keeping the Slave Market as a Civic-only building, if only because if the AI can build it they eventually will, and they cant Ctrl-A to get rid of it, so it would be all over the place in Liberal societies and whatnot.

Well, if Slavery is moved to Society I see a number of possibilities:

1. Either keep Barter as a gimp Civic and accept that its the only option until a Civ unlocks Currency, this adds massive value to Currency, but this can be adjusted by gimping Coinage as well I suppose so that Currency isnt even more of a -must have- tech. The question here kind of becomes how irrelevant do we want Economics Civics to be until later in the game.
2. Or add an alternative Economic choice pre Coinage? I personally have no concrete suggestions in this area, the only thing that comes to mind is Piracy or something similar, but raiding your neighbors is already really strong, so further incentivizing may be a bad idea.
3. Or my favorite option if Slavery is gone is to move the penalties of Barter away from things that hurt early over to things that start to hurt as the world and techs develop.
   My suggestion for how to do this to remove or reduce the huge penalties for Barter, but instead give it penalties to .
   Currently Coinage has +20% from Domestic connections, and -20% from Foreign connections, and compared to later Civics I think this is appropriate and subtle.
   In comparison then Barter could receive a -10% from Domestic Connections and perhaps -50% from Foreign Connections. This would mean that while Coinage would be clearly superior to Barter, the strength would come from actual trade connections that scale with techs, diplomacy, exploration, and buildings. Imo this is considerably more subtle than the -33% that Barter currently has, while also being a strong incentive to switch that becomes more pronounced over time.

I guess in sum what I personally think would work best for Economics if Slavery is out of the picture would be something like:
Barter:
-Low Upkeep
-15% or -15% in all cities
-10% from Domestic
-50% from Foreign

Coinage
-Medium Upkeep
+10% Tax Levy (as is)
+20% from Domestic (as is)
-20% from Foreign (as is)
+25% in all cities
-10% in all cities
(The above +% and -% represent seigniorage, which is I think a decent way to represent Gresham's Law and the inflationary tendencies of specie currencies as they are debased over time)

Perhaps the numbers themselves would have to be adjusted to be more perfectly balanced, but I hope I'm not too far off.
The relative increase in the value of Foreign is I think a fun little reflection of how the Mediterranean trade routes drove the adoption of coinage in the region, between that and seigniorage I think my suggestion is more or less thematically appropriate to the economic systems described.

I'm also deeply curious as to if and how you are considering changing Slavery if it is reimagined as a Society option, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun to find out .

Yeah I actually tried it out and frankly I agree, especially if Slavery becomes a Society option. Making psuedo-slaves work for Barter felt both awkward and unnecessary. The small bonuses from B worked and were kind of interesting, but there were honestly not many buildings I could apply them to without it being overpowered(I applied it only to Ancient Era techs that required a resource in city vicinity). A and D both felt good though, it still felt worthwhile to switch out of Barter, but it wasnt quite so imperative, though that is of course entirely my subjectivity.
For comparison I point out that switching out of a -10% penalty is only an ~11% increase, while switching out of a -33% penalty is a 50% increase. Switching from Barter's current -33% to Slavery's current +10% is literally a 66% increase in beakers, it feels weird to me to have Slavery be essentially one of the strongest increasing techs in the game. Though when Slavery is moved to Society that will no longer be a problem.

 

@Vokarya
I will rework Territory civics in Chronicles and will no longer use the Fiefdom name. Just in case you need it.