Civics Improvements Suggestions

[gay_Aleks]

Please don't do that. No Unhappiness In Capital is super useful, since your capital is usually one of your bigger cities and having your capital being unhappy is something I'd rather avoid.

 

[Vokarya]

I think your ideas are great. I think however you are slightly underestimating the power of nobles. Because they produce "generic" GPP they can be very useful in getting great people you want. For example if you have a religion and want the shrine you can build one temple, assign one priest and set the rest of your specialists as nobles. This allows you to produce lots of priest GPP with only one priest slot (I think, I have only tried it a couple of times). Really does not change your analysis, but I thought I would point it out.

That is true. For some reason I thought they were Artist points. I think you would have to micromanage your specialist slots pretty heavily to benefit.

 

[Vokarya]

Please don't do that. No Unhappiness In Capital is super useful, since your capital is usually one of your bigger cities and having your capital being unhappy is something I'd rather avoid.

I'd rather keep no unhappiness in capital myself. Extra Wonder slots would have to be specially implemented, and I think that would be too limited to be worth the effort.

 

[Vokarya]

I had an idea about Republic. If Republic is supposed to encourage small empires, I think it should use the "+X happy in largest cities" mechanic rather than the generic "+X happiness in every city" mechanic, like Representation in BTS does. That would encourage you to keep your empire smaller, or put more effort into developing your smaller cities above the number affected. (The number of cities affected is a function of the map size and cannot be changed by the civic. Only the amount of happiness can be set.)

 

[<Nexus>]

I had an idea about Republic. If Republic is supposed to encourage small empires, I think it should use the "+X happy in largest cities" mechanic rather than the generic "+X happiness in every city" mechanic, like Representation in BTS does. That would encourage you to keep your empire smaller, or put more effort into developing your smaller cities above the number affected. (The number of cities affected is a function of the map size and cannot be changed by the civic. Only the amount of happiness can be set.)

I did that for Chronicles some time ago and I think it works just fine.

 

[Vokarya]

Since I'm adjusting all the Government civics, I'd like to change Federation a bit. I don't like the production bonus to Port-type buildings. It seems random (why seaports but not airports?). I'd actually like to get rid of all of the Port production, regular production penalty, culture bonus, and happiness bonus. I don't really like generic happiness bonuses on civics; I'd rather have bonuses that are more tailored to specific things (like Republic boosting the largest cities or religion civics boosting State Religion happiness). I do think the military production penalty is important. Federation has to have some negatives to avoid being strictly better than Democracy. Democracy is a high-upkeep civic, although not as high as Republic, and Federation lowers upkeep, so it has to be weaker in some other areas.

What I'm leaning towards here is swapping out the production penalty and Port bonus and the culture bonus for a bonus to domestic connection income. I think +20% would be fair, but it could be less. Mercantilism is +30% and Protectionism is +33%, so I'd like it to be less than those.

 

[Nyayr]

Federation seems to focus on a large empire that might be. Maybe even bigger reduction in oversees costs sounds plausible, unless it is not meant to seem too colonial? An increase in domestic trade might be good, as well maybe a tiny increase in foregin trade. In the european union for example working together, helps to trade on a bigger world scale.

I personally myself enjoy the republic to play even with a large empire, forces a lot of strong economical working and negotiation. Sadly the Agora ends with leadersip... So it kinda forces you to Democracy or Federation... But I'm a Senate/republic kinda guy

 

[Vokarya]

Here are some more ideas I had about flattening civics to reduce the number of bullet points.

Corporate: This has both -1 happy overall and -1 happy in X largest cities. I don't think it needs to have both. I'm not sure if -2 happy overall is necessary, but it's the way I'm leaning right now. The -25% corporate maintenance is huge if you're running more than one corp. My current v1046 game is doing very well with Creative Constructions + Mobby Meats spread widely and a little bit of Civilized Jewelers and Ultimate Soldiers. Ultimate Soldiers I generally confine to a couple of cities (one HQ and one mega-military city).

Green: This has a lot of points. First of all, it has +3 health and an additional +2 health from Public Transportation/Personal Rapid Train. I think we should consolidate this at +4 health overall and delete the bonus from the buildings. (Environmentalism does this in BTS, but there are a lot fewer sources of health there.) We could also then lop 2 points of health off the Transporter and leave it at +3 (equal to Oil-boosted PRT). Secondly, it has +1 happy in all cities that I don't think is necessary. Those little happy bonuses add up, and I'd like to reduce the bonuses from civics.

 

[aggri1]

I don't find that health bonuses are worth very much because unhealth just isn't an issue in AND (especially if you get a food corporation or two). So the Green civic is often relatively (very) unappealing, with its extra corporation maintenance and very limited other benefits. I'd like to see it improved a bit.

 

[Vokarya]

I don't find that health bonuses are worth very much because unhealth just isn't an issue in AND (especially if you get a food corporation or two). So the Green civic is often relatively (very) unappealing, with its extra corporation maintenance and very limited other benefits. I'd like to see it improved a bit.

I find that health and unhealth keep very good pace throughout the Industrial and Modern Eras, although I can agree that unhealth doesn't seem to mean much towards slowing down growth.

What I'm really trying to do here is reduce most civics from a bunch of trivial abilities to a few really important ones. In BTS, the bullet point range goes from 0 for starter civics to 4 for Environmentalism and State Property. While we can't get that low, especially with Revolution involved, we don't need a count of abilities that gets into the double digits. Then, if necessary, we can either increase the remaining points or possibly add another if we can find something extremely appropriate. I keep saying the XML is much less forgiving than one would expect, so the pool of effects we can draw on is limited without reprogramming (which I can't do).

The Green pool of abilities, with what I'm proposing, currently goes like this:

• High upkeep, +50% corporate maintenance, -10% commerce all cities
• +1 food from Orchard/Forest Preserve/Hybrid Forest
• +1 commerce from Forest Preserve, +2 commerce from Windfarm and Windtrap
• +1 happiness per Forest and Jungle in city radius
• +4 health

That's some big negatives, if you're trying to use corporations. I noticed in my current v1046 game that the -10% maintenance from Federal Reserve and the -20% maintenance from World Trade Center made for gold swings on the order of several hundred gold/turn.

I would love it if Green could do something with Coal and Oil the way Coinage works with Gold and Silver, but that particular XML is restricted to +gold ONLY. It would also really hurt you if you had to do any kind of military buildup, because it would cut you off from Steel (requires Coal) and Oil Products (requires Oil, unless you get up to Biofuel Refinery).

 

[Vokarya]

I want to do a little pruning on State Church and Free Church. I think some of the religious civics have too many modifiers.

State Church: I don't think it needs the gold bonus for both capital and shrine, so I want to cut the shrine boost. I think shrines are powerful enough on their own that they don't need a boost. I'm not sure about the culture bonus for this civic specifically; I think part of the theme here is that the religion is under the state's control and so it loses some of its vitality. I am willing to round up the Priest gold bonus to +1/Priest instead of its current +0.75.

Free Church: I really want to cut the building bonus here. I think State Church can keep this bonus to set it apart from Free Church. I'm also wondering if we could cut the revolution penalty for a rival owning your state religion holy city. I'm not sure how often this penalty comes up, so it seems like another flavor trait that looks nice but doesn't have much of an actual effect. This is true for all religion civics, but especially here.

 

[<Nexus>]

Free Church: I really want to cut the building bonus here. I think State Church can keep this bonus to set it apart from Free Church. I'm also wondering if we could cut the revolution penalty for a rival owning your state religion holy city. I'm not sure how often this penalty comes up, so it seems like another flavor trait that looks nice but doesn't have much of an actual effect. This is true for all religion civics, but especially here.

Maybe it doesn't affect the human player but may affect the AI. I think it's okay to cut it.

 

[<Nexus>]

I'm thinking if if we could have a mechanism similar as the city size and distance unhappiness, something that involves sizes.
Maybe something like this:
For every 10 connected cities (domestic or foreign) you receive 1
...or it could be 1/20 or scaled by map size, no matter. Just a quick idea.

Green:
How about limiting the best energy plants to this civic (Solar Plant and Energy Receiver)?

 

[Vokarya]

Maybe it doesn't affect the human player but may affect the AI. I think it's okay to cut it.

That is true. But I think Free Church is a religion headed towards modernity without completely surrendering to secularism. For certain civics, especially Intolerance, I think the revolution penalty is totally appropriate. Free Church, not quite so much.

 

[Vokarya]

Green:
How about limiting the best energy plants to this civic (Solar Plant and Energy Receiver)?

The mechanics are too clunky for that at the moment; we'd have to define each power plant we want to cut off as a civic building for every other economy civic. I'd love an anti-civic-building mechanic, although I'm not sure how many civics it could work with (Atheist and religious buildings, maybe Planned and gold-producing buildings, not sure).

Also, the game mechanics strongly support replacing the dirty power plants if possible. The +4 unhealth for dirty power is pretty severe. The replacement mechanism is intended to give you the safest possible plant. Nuclear Plant replaces coal and oil because it is clean; Hydro replaces Nuclear to prevent meltdowns; Solar replaces Hydro to prevent the Dam Burst event. Then Fusion Power and Receiver give super-power with almost no citizen consumption but only in the Transhuman Era. So I think there's enough push to get away from the dirty power. On top of that, we're looking for more BONUSES for Green, not penalties.

 

[Vokarya]

Some more tweaks.

Tribal: This needs to lose the bonuses to improvements. They may be totally in flavor for the civic, but I don't think it is good for the starter civics to have any bonuses at all. There should be just enough penalties to push you out of those civics at the first opportunity. Tribal is the only starter civic with any bonuses left.

Junta-Barbarism [pending rename]: This can be lowered from Low Upkeep to None. Also, it can lose the Interrogation Building.

Pacifism: I don't like the happiness mechanics here. I think Pacifism could be altered from +3 happiness in largest cities to +2 happiness in ALL cities, then delete the unhappiness from buildings. It's very clunky and Pacifism has enough negatives already between reduced military production, increased military support costs for distant units, and increased war weariness. This will make it a much cleaner civic.

 

[jackelgull]

I think Federation should decrease the instability penalty from distance by -50%. Federal governments give more local representation thus quieting separatist sentiments, so it just makes sense to me, and it'd make Federation a more viable alternative to monarchy on a pangaea map.

 

[Vokarya]

I think Federation should decrease the instability penalty from distance by -50%. Federal governments give more local representation thus quieting separatist sentiments, so it just makes sense to me, and it'd make Federation a more viable alternative to monarchy on a pangaea map.

Federation is already -50% to distance. Do you want it higher than that?

 

[jackelgull]

It is? It doesn't mention that.

 

[Vokarya]

It is? It doesn't mention that.

Right here. I outlined it in white. I think it's only visible on the F3 screen. Detailed rev changes are not available from the Civilopedia before starting a game.