Civics Improvements Suggestions

[GreedyManul]

While I was looking at civics, I noticed several leaders could use a change of favored civic and a few leaders need a favored religion.

• Atotozlti: Change State Church to Divine Cult and add Naghualism as favored religion. Divine Cult fits better for rulers whose heyday was in the Ancient-Classical Eras. Medieval and later rulers with a more formalized religion can use State Church. State Church was acceptable when it was Ancient Era (Monotheism), but now it's Medieval Era.
  
• Augustus Caesar: Add Hellenism as favored religion.
• Boudica: I don't think Federation fits here. In BTS, her favored civic is Universal Suffrage, but I would go with Warrior Caste.
  
• Gandhi: Is there a reason Gandhi's favored civic is Proletariat and not Pacifism? I can't think of a better poster character for Pacifism. But I could leave it where it is.
  
• Hatsheput: Like Atotozlti, change State Church to Divine Cult.
• Leonidas: Add Hellenism as favored religion.
• Marcus Aurelius: Add Hellenism as favored religion.
• Napoleon: Change Republic to Monarchy. Napoleon crowned himself as Emperor, after all, and wanted to found a dynasty.
  
• Nebuchadrezzar II: Has Green as a favored civic. I don't why this one is here, unless it's a nod to the Hanging Gardens. I'd go with Monarchy or Divine Cult.
  
• Pericles: Change Democracy to Republic. I think it fits better.
  
• Stalin: Change Despotism to Single Party.
  
• Victoria: Change Republic to Senate. Constitutional monarchs currently fit under Monarchy+Senate, not Republic.

Gandhi advocated for non-violence, not pacifism. There's a big difference between non-violence and pacifism; non-violence does not advocate for violence, but it condones it ONLY if there are no options left. In civ4 terms, however, I would very much like Gandhi to have Pacifism; after all, there's no "non-violence" civic in there.

The rest look good, however.

 

[<Nexus>]

In civ4 terms, however, I would very much like Gandhi to have Pacifism; after all, there's no "non-violence" civic in there.

...and what would you like him to have in Chronicles since it replaces Pacifism with Prosperity? Any idea?

 

[GreedyManul]

...and what would you like him to have in Chronicles since it replaces Pacifism with Prosperity? Any idea?

Keep Prosperity for Gandhi; no muss, no fuss.

 

[<Nexus>]

Keep Prosperity for Gandhi; no muss, no fuss.

Other idea: He was "fighting" against Caste system too, right? He could favor Liberal society then. How does that sound?

Sure, not touching it is easier

 

[GreedyManul]

Other idea: He was "fighting" against Caste system too, right? He could favor Liberal society then. How does that sound?

That sounds good too, if you wanna go that route.

 

[zoob]

Speaking of Caste civic:
in my last games i never switched to it because of its mali are imo rather severe (negative great person multipicator and +1 unhapiness iirc).

Why switch to it from starting civic?

 

[Vokarya]

Speaking of Caste civic:
in my last games i never switched to it because of its mali are imo rather severe (negative great person multipicator and +1 unhapiness iirc).

Why switch to it from starting civic?

Caste will do two things: it will remove Tribal's growth penalty, and the Tribal civic will be losing its hammer bonus in my next build, so Caste will give you a production bonus. That still might not be worth both penalties. I believe that penalties on civics, even if they are thematically correct, should be minimized for better game play. I'm tempted to cut it down to just the unhappiness and remove the GP penalty.

 

[<Nexus>]

Caste will do two things: it will remove Tribal's growth penalty, and the Tribal civic will be losing its hammer bonus in my next build, so Caste will give you a production bonus. That still might not be worth both penalties. I believe that penalties on civics, even if they are thematically correct, should be minimized for better game play. I'm tempted to cut it down to just the unhappiness and remove the GP penalty.

We could also add the GP penalty to Tribal too so Caste is no worse than that.

 

[Vokarya]

We could also add the GP penalty to Tribal too so Caste is no worse than that.

I'd prefer not to have more than 1 penalty per starter civic. It's supposed to be enough to prod you out of the civic at the first reasonable opportunity. Great Persons are rare enough in the early game that I don't want to penalize their production too much.

 

[Vokarya]

I think we should do something about certain favored civics that are over-represented in the leader list. I made a list and found that the most common civics were Despotism (8 leaders), Feudal (10 leaders), Monarchy (13 leaders), and State Church (9 leaders). That's 40 out of 85 leaders.

One idea that I think would help is switching a few leaders from Feudal to Vassalage. Military civics aren't getting a lot of attention from favored civics. In fact, the only ones at the moment are the ones I haven't done yet: Boudica with Warrior Caste, Gandhi with Pacifism, and I'm also switching Leonidas from Caste to Warrior Caste. I think Warrior Caste is just a little more appropriate in his case.

To help drain off Feudal, I think we should move Peter from Feudal to Liberal. It might not be a perfect fit, but I think Peter is most known for his attempts to modernize Russia, which would fit reasonably well with the Liberal civic. (In BTS, Peter's favored civic is Bureaucracy. We have 5 other leaders with Bureaucracy as a favored civic.)

 

[Vokarya]

This is another civic I've been considering: Raiders. It would be a Military civic available with Stirrup. I cannot do OR civic prerequisites; if I could, this would probably be Stirrup OR Naval Warfare. Raiders can represent Huns, Mongols, and Vikings. It would make a good favored civic for Genghis and Ragnar.

The overall plate of effecs sits somewhere between Conscription, Warrior Caste, and Standing Army.
Benefits:

• +X% Unit Production: probably around 20%
  
• Can draft 2 Units/Turn
• 1% chance to create a Slave from combat

Drawbacks:

• Military Units produced with Food
• -20% Commerce all cities

The Civic Building for this would be Hoard: available with Currency, +25% gold production and free Looter promotion for all units.

How this works: I think the concept is good, but I had a problem differentiating this from Warrior Caste. Raiders gives you a population with a little military experience, but not full-time military training like Warrior Caste. Therefore, it gives you a bonus to unit production instead of experience. Also, I would think raiders would look to pick off weak targets rather than hit well-defended ones. The raiding population lets you draft by pulling the raiders into military force for self-defense or improved offense, although you can't draft mounted units. (Draftable units have an assigned <iConscript> number; only the unit with the highest <iConscript> can be drafted.) The chance to create a slave is because I wanted some kind of benefit for being on the attack and I don't think civics can adjust pillaging bonuses. It's not quite as good as when running Slavery, but it can still create some captive workers.

I don't want the drawbacks of Raiders to overlap too much with Warrior Caste, so I chose a slightly larger Commerce penalty, but no production penalties at all, and producing units with Food rather than cities requiring more food to grow. W-Caste requires more food because the warrior caste doesn't farm. Raiders can farm when they're not raiding.

 

[<Nexus>]

To help drain off Feudal, I think we should move Peter from Feudal to Liberal. It might not be a perfect fit, but I think Peter is most known for his attempts to modernize Russia, which would fit reasonably well with the Liberal civic. (In BTS, Peter's favored civic is Bureaucracy. We have 5 other leaders with Bureaucracy as a favored civic.)

Bureaucracy sounds better to me. Modernization is not the same as liberalism. Bureaucracy is about efficiency even if it is expensive.

This is another civic I've been considering: Raiders. It would be a Military civic available with Stirrup. I cannot do OR civic prerequisites; if I could, this would probably be Stirrup OR Naval Warfare. Raiders can represent Huns, Mongols, and Vikings. It would make a good favored civic for Genghis and Ragnar.

Another ancient military civic? I don't think it is needed.
(However I don't really care. If you will add it than I will override it with Belligerence in Chronicles.)

 

[zoob]

I really like Ancient to Classical game phase when game is tight and there is no runaway civ.

In most cases building a settler first and looking for a good 2nd spot meanwhile is a decent approach in the first turns. Building your 2nd town few tiles away results in lil bit of :unhappiness: and on epic gamespeed only 2 maintaince cost on average. In most cases you've found a hut with some and can easily run your empire on 100% research. If you're clever and research slavery early on, it's an even more no brainer as every town produces 2 :coin: from base tile and maybe another one from a tile, if you choose the right spot. After building some units, you should look for your 3rd town to max out number of cities on epic.

Right now tribal has no negative effect expact more cost for foreign unit.

I would like to see civs on tribal stiffle their economy more if they expand too fast early on:
Maybe add something like +100% for number of cities, or maybe +50% for distance of city, maybe booth

I just don't want me too see rushing for those 3 cities too fast with an more or less intact economy *g*

 

[Pongui]

About Caste bonuses. Perhaps Caste helps citizens coexist? Like, under Caste you could easily accommodate multiple religions in a city? This assumes Revolutions turned on.

 

[jackelgull]

I think the -15% hammer penalty for federation can be removed, otherwise federation doesn't compare favorably to monarchy.

 

[Vokarya]

I think the -15% hammer penalty for federation can be removed, otherwise federation doesn't compare favorably to monarchy.

There are several changes coming to both Monarchy and Federation. Monarchy is losing the gold bonuses, tax rate unhappiness, and building production bonuses, while Federation is losing the production penalty, culture bonus, building production bonus, and happiness bonus, but getting +15% to domestic connection commerce.

So Monarchy will have:

• -50% maintenance for number of cities and distance to Palace
• Fixed borders
• Unlimited Noble
• No capital unhappiness

Federation will have:

• -25% maintenance for number of cities, distance to Palace, and overseas cities
• +15% domestic city commerce
• -25% military unit production

It still might need more tweaking. There should be a point where Democracy is better than Federation for smaller civilizations, but a very large modern civilization will get more from Federation's reduced maintenance and increased connection commerce than either Democracy's science/culture bonuses or Monarchy's higher reduced maintenance.

 

[jackelgull]

that's a much more even trade.

 

[Vokarya]

As I see it, once you get to the mid-game, there shouldn't be a civic that is always better. Some civics might be better in particular situations, like Monarchy for big empires vs. Republic for small ones. But I'd like to not have a "best" civic after the first round or two, at least not until the Transhuman Era. Some of those can be really good if you meet their requirements -- especially Virtual, which is built around having an extremely strong civic building with some extensive infrastructure requirements. In the last game I played, I was trying to conquer/settle the world and had to lay down a lot of supporting buildings in every single city; I needed Power Receivers, then Communications Towers, then Computer Networks, and then finally Voting Links.

 

[Fozman]

I haven’t played too many games so far, but I wanted to throw my newbie perspective into the mix. Some of the options aren’t very tempting so I avoid them altogether. A lot of the options don’t appear intuitive or straightforward; partially from me not understanding the synergies and partially because I play a certain way. I would be interested to know how other people progress through the civics as well.

• Government seems close to perfect; especially with the updates Vokarya proposed.
• Rule/Society: these are probably the civics categories I have the most trouble with.
  • Rule --> Nobility && Society --> Feudal
    • I typically skip these, since there is not much improvement over earlier civics. Is there a particular use for them? Maybe for Classical/Medieval warfare?
  • Society --> Proletariat
    • I skip over this one as well, since I typically avoid negative production if at all possible. It also doesn’t seem like you get much for what you give up (-10% production & low civic upkeep instead of no upkeep). Even the civic building (Festival) doesn’t look appealing for the production loss. It just seems like there are better ways to get happy/healthy, culture and gold. Am I missing the point on this one?
  • With Society, I typically hold Tribal as long as I can until I grudgingly need to switch to Caste. I sometimes never do it if I’m playing a Philosophical leader because of the GP hit. Then I’ll either park it in Bourgeois or Liberal for the rest of the game depending on if I'm using a Philosophical leader. The removal of the GP hit would get me to switch to Caste almost immediately because the civic building (Shanty Town) is something I spam everywhere.
• I haven’t messed with the Economy civics much; I typically just stay in Slavery until I can’t.
• The Military options have some pretty substantial drawbacks and I’ve had games where I’ve left it in Banditry until Volunteer Army becomes available. With the exception of Vassalage, I probably don’t use any of the others.
• The Religion civics seem to be straightforward, but once I have a religion I typically use Prophets then Free Church for the GP bonus. Secular would also come into play for me when lots of religions come in via Open Borders.
• Welfare civic options are pretty diverse, but I’ve only ever used Church.
• And finally, I don’t think I’ve ever used any of the Foreign Policy civics. I just leave that one alone.

 

[jackelgull]

I haven’t played too many games so far, but I wanted to throw my newbie perspective into the mix. Some of the options aren’t very tempting so I avoid them altogether. A lot of the options don’t appear intuitive or straightforward; partially from me not understanding the synergies and partially because I play a certain way. I would be interested to know how other people progress through the civics as well.

• Government seems close to perfect; especially with the updates Vokarya proposed.
• Rule/Society: these are probably the civics categories I have the most trouble with.
  • Rule --> Nobility && Society --> Feudal
    • I typically skip these, since there is not much improvement over earlier civics. Is there a particular use for them? Maybe for Classical/Medieval warfare?
  • Society --> Proletariat
    • I skip over this one as well, since I typically avoid negative production if at all possible. It also doesn’t seem like you get much for what you give up (-10% production & low civic upkeep instead of no upkeep). Even the civic building (Festival) doesn’t look appealing for the production loss. It just seems like there are better ways to get happy/healthy, culture and gold. Am I missing the point on this one?
  • With Society, I typically hold Tribal as long as I can until I grudgingly need to switch to Caste. I sometimes never do it if I’m playing a Philosophical leader because of the GP hit. Then I’ll either park it in Bourgeois or Liberal for the rest of the game depending on if I'm using a Philosophical leader. The removal of the GP hit would get me to switch to Caste almost immediately because the civic building (Shanty Town) is something I spam everywhere.
• I haven’t messed with the Economy civics much; I typically just stay in Slavery until I can’t.
• The Military options have some pretty substantial drawbacks and I’ve had games where I’ve left it in Banditry until Volunteer Army becomes available. With the exception of Vassalage, I probably don’t use any of the others.
• The Religion civics seem to be straightforward, but once I have a religion I typically use Prophets then Free Church for the GP bonus. Secular would also come into play for me when lots of religions come in via Open Borders.
• Welfare civic options are pretty diverse, but I’ve only ever used Church.
• And finally, I don’t think I’ve ever used any of the Foreign Policy civics. I just leave that one alone.

You're missing out if you're not using divine cult. I mean, yes the gold and culture hits are significant drawbacks, but the gold in capital bonus is nice especially if you're capital is the head quarters of your corporations and/or a holy city. And the half unhappiness from over population is a happiness boost you won't see anywhere else and the game and effectively makes health the limiting factor. I cannot stress how good this benefit is and it only gets better as the game progresses and cities get better and there's more food.