Civics Improvements Suggestions

[Vokarya]

I thought of a mechanic we can use for the Corporations civic, and that is Increased Yields from Corporations. We currently don't have this.

I was thinking it would be one number that would be a +% add (or -% subtraction if negative) to all yields -- food, production, commerce, gold, science, culture, and espionage -- produced by corporations. It wouldn't apply to Corporate Stores because I want to keep this simple. In-game you would see one bullet point that says +25% Yields from Corporations or whatever number you plug in.

This would be usable on the Corporate and Corporations civics. I probably wouldn't want to use it on the Guilds civic because the Guilds themselves have small, mostly flat bonuses that you would need a big % to affect and I don't really want the Guilds civic to be ass later. One or two civics that are corporation-unfriendly could also use this with an inversion.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I thought of a mechanic we can use for the Corporations civic, and that is Increased Yields from Corporations. We currently don't have this.

I was thinking it would be one number that would be a +% add (or -% subtraction if negative) to all yields -- food, production, commerce, gold, science, culture, and espionage -- produced by corporations. It wouldn't apply to Corporate Stores because I want to keep this simple. In-game you would see one bullet point that says +25% Yields from Corporations or whatever number you plug in.

This would be usable on the Corporate and Corporations civics. I probably wouldn't want to use it on the Guilds civic because the Guilds themselves have small, mostly flat bonuses that you would need a big % to affect and I don't really want the Guilds civic to be ass later. One or two civics that are corporation-unfriendly could also use this with an inversion.

I like the idea, but it will take some time to code it properly I think.

 

[Vokarya]

I like the idea, but it will take some time to code it properly I think.

I know I'm asking for a lot of mechanics, and I can wait. I think it's good to have a mix of repeated mechanics across some civics with some unique ones if they really fit the civic in question, like Standing Army's accumulated XP or MAD's targeting console.

 

[<Nexus>]

Increased Yields and Commerce from Corporations is a great idea. I love it!

I like the Cabinet too, but I strongly suggest swapping its abilities with Parlament. A Parlament always has to be in the capital (or very close to it) while the Cabinet has less limitations. So I suggest:

• Cabinet could use bGovernmentCenter tag.
• Parlament could use the iGlobalMaintenanceModifier tag.

This would give 2 different "grow wide" civics. The difference is based on the shape of your empire. A round shape empire with many, closely situated cities would benefit more from Parliament, while an empire with an erratic shape would benefit more from President where it can use another "Summer Palace".

 

[<Nexus>]

I like the idea, but it will take some time to code it properly I think.

Err... may I also have a wish too
Could you apply bExtendMovementLimits to civics too? I could reeeeally use it for Exploration civic.
No hurry but if you could do it sometime I'd be grateful.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Err... may I also have a wish too
Could you apply bExtendMovementLimits to civics too? I could reeeeally use it for Exploration civic.
No hurry but if you could do it sometime I'd be grateful.

Please join the queue

 

[<Nexus>]

Please join the queue

Okay

Spoiler :

 

[Vokarya]

What do you think of using Fighting Pit for a civic building for Warlords? It used to be part of a very old Sports component of AND that was removed a long time ago. I don't think we need very much of it, but I think this would fit as a civic building.

Here are the stats I am looking at:

• Requires Slavery tech.
• Cost 30, relatively cheap by early standards.
  
• +1 happy, -1 healthy. Allows you to offset Warlords' innate -1 happy by taking a health penalty.
• Minor, probably only +5%, military production. Just enough to bump you a hammer or two.
• Upgrades to Arena. Arena is +1 happy and +1 healthy (more precisely, doesn't have -1 health) over Fighting Pit, and has +2 culture. Fighting Pit has none. By the Classical Era, you have more sources of happiness and don't need the +1 as much.
  
• I don't want this to give any XP. If it did, this + Barracks/Stable/Archery Range + Warrior Caste/Mercenaries would give 5 XP, which is 2 promotions, which is not supposed to happen at this point in the game without a Great Military Instructor.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

What do you think of using Fighting Pit for a civic building for Warlords? It used to be part of a very old Sports component of AND that was removed a long time ago. I don't think we need very much of it, but I think this would fit as a civic building.

Here are the stats I am looking at:

• Requires Slavery tech.
• Cost 30, relatively cheap by early standards.
  
• +1 happy, -1 healthy. Allows you to offset Warlords' innate -1 happy by taking a health penalty.
• Minor, probably only +5%, military production. Just enough to bump you a hammer or two.
• Upgrades to Arena. Arena is +1 happy and +1 healthy (more precisely, doesn't have -1 health) over Fighting Pit, and has +2 culture. Fighting Pit has none. By the Classical Era, you have more sources of happiness and don't need the +1 as much.
  
• I don't want this to give any XP. If it did, this + Barracks/Stable/Archery Range + Warrior Caste/Mercenaries would give 5 XP, which is 2 promotions, which is not supposed to happen at this point in the game without a Great Military Instructor.

I like it.
@PPQ_Purple, about Active Senate, that would be an option of course. Whoever dislikes it, can simply switch it off. I think I might go with Vokarya's suggested mechanics for civics chance of interfering with player's decisions.

 

[Vokarya]

I'd like to use the Parade Grounds as the civic building for the Junta civic. I think it's a good fit and it doesn't break the XP curve at all.

In the Ancient/Classical Era, the only XP from civics, including civic buildings, that I think is safe to allow is +2 XP from a Military civic. That won't break the 5-XP threshold. Once the Medieval Era is reached, then Military civics can produce up to 3 XP and one other category of civic can produce up to 2 XP. If we take the XP from Intolerant and give it to a civic building at Theocracy, that means we can allow 2 XP from any other civic or civic building in the Rule category. Junta is a Rule civic, so it's safe. In combination with any other Military civic, it can produce no more than 5 XP.

 

[Vokarya]

I think I am going to have to redo Graphics.FPK to get some icons that aren't present. So I'm going to include the old Mounted Archery icon (a tech removed in rev681; all it did was produce Horse Archers) for the Raiders civic. This is another early Military civic.

• Required tech: Horse Breeding
  
• +5% chance to create a Slave from combat
  
• -15% commerce all cities
• Military units produced with Food
• Civic building: Hoard. Requires Currency tech. +25% gold and free Looter promotion for all units.

I want to use the Enslavement mechanic on a civic other than Slavery. I think of Military Units produced with Food as a neutral bullet point. It lets you produce faster military units by converting food to production, but it also stops your cities from growing while you train units. I don't think of Raiders as looking for pitched battles, so this doesn't give XP.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Do we really need more military civics? Would it not perhaps be preferable to roll some of this under banditry? Since the effects are mid game they would not really change the early game balance of it and yet they would prolong its life well into the feudal era.

 

[Vokarya]

Banditry needs a rename. It's a starter civic, so it shouldn't have any positive abilities; starter civics are, at best, no abilities at all, to remove any reason to stay in that civic, and preferably have a handful of negative abilities to push you out of the civic as fast as possible.

What we really have is more of a "mob defense" mentality. There is no military organization and no system for supporting units in the field, thus the increased military support for distant units. "Militia" seems to be the most common name for this in other mods.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

You seem to very much like making civics something that one should be motivated to move away from in a sort of linear fashion, I notice. Almost like you are supposed to go through them in order. Personally not a fan of that.

 

[Rezca]

You seem to very much like making civics something that one should be motivated to move away from in a sort of linear fashion, I notice. Almost like you are supposed to go through them in order. Personally not a fan of that.

I think that's mostly limited to the very beginning one - like in BTS where Barbarism, Paganism, etc you had literally no reason to use once you unlocked ANYTHING else - and the supercivics in the Transhuman. For the huge gap between the first decade or so and the major endgame period though, there's more choice involved and you're not punished for "upgrading immediately" for the most part.

That being said, I don't much care for civics being fashioned in a way that they're only good for a brief portion of the game and then you're expected to upgrade or suffer. I like civics like most of the Relgion ones, and things like Despotism... Where you can use them at most any period of the game (Transhuman supercivics aside) without it being too much of a penalty to you.

 

[Vokarya]

There is definitely some stratification by era involved. Theoretically, civics should be viable for at least a few eras, but that's not always easy to do. There are some things that I don't want to see happening until later in the game, and there's a finite pool of effects we can do without additional coding that I cannot do myself.

Once we trim the number of individual effects on civics, that will make it easier to then figure out the proper effects to make individual civics viable for longer. That's part of what I am trying to accomplish now.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Basically the one thing I always hated about vanilla BTS was how everyone just progresses through the civic and eventually you just get a bunch of boring nations where everyone has the exact same civic choices because the end civics are the best. Well that and because the UN forces you to. The first thing I do with any new mod before I start playing is edit out the UN force civic resolutions.

 

[Rezca]

Basically the one thing I always hated about vanilla BTS was how everyone just progresses through the civic and eventually you just get a bunch of boring nations where everyone has the exact same civic choices because the end civics are the best. Well that and because the UN forces you to. The first thing I do with any new mod before I start playing is edit out the UN force civic resolutions.

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

Spoiler :

I'm the only one who has more than 8 cities so I guess Republic's not too surprising there. Everyone's crammed into small winding continents that definitely were not meant to support the 32 AI that I started the game with (Oh boy were there wars going off left and right this game!), and a handful of 'em are beginning to try and snatch up tiny strips of land overseas, not that there's much of that around.

 

[Sock Thing]

Hi again I have a few more ideas for civics. I don't know if everything is possible to code though.
First I think it would be nice if the warlords civic would grant the looter promotion for free (possibly mercenaries as well) to represent people joining up with the warlord to pillage. But if your going to add a raiders civic I guess that would have that instead.
Second would it be possible to make it so that mercenaries could rush buy units with gold compared to other military civics that can draft from population. It would be useful for small but wealthy nations in case of war and would be unique to mercenaries. also I have a new civic building for mercenaries.

Mercenary camp

+3

+1

+1 +1 with alcohol

Third a new civic building for despotism.

Personal guard

+2 free unit support

-15% war weariness

Lastly and i'm not sure about this one a new civic building for monarchy.

Royal dynasty

national wonder one allowed

requires palace

4 doubles in a thousand years

Now I have two ideas for the effects I'm not sure which would be best to use

1.) Commences a golden age upon completion (reasoning being many countries have had one dynasty that they consider to have been the high point of the monarchy)

2.) +25% golden age length

Well that's all for now.

 

[Vokarya]

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

Spoiler :

View attachment 473840
View attachment 473841

I'm the only one who has more than 8 cities so I guess Republic's not too surprising there. Everyone's crammed into small winding continents that definitely were not meant to support the 32 AI that I started the game with (Oh boy were there wars going off left and right this game!), and a handful of 'em are beginning to try and snatch up tiny strips of land overseas, not that there's much of that around.

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.

Standing Army is also a really good hybrid military civic. It offers nearly as much XP as the highest-granting ones (Vassalage/Volunteer Army) while still allowing increased military production and a limited amount of drafting. I think Standing Army needs its mechanics analyzed and trimmed; it's another civic that's good for a small empire because its current maintenance penalties apply to number of cities, not number of units. The choices that come along later are more specialized. Mobilization is when you need LOTS of units in a hurry, and MAD, Shadow War, and Unmanned Warfare are all for special situations.

Public Works isn't too surprising if your cities are small. The other pre-Transhuman Welfare civics focus on health and happiness, so if you don't need those you can run Public Works and get the building speed bonus.