Civics in FfH2

[apotheoser]

I agree with you, for the most part. One thing I would like to counter, though is "Religion" is just a bad name for a "Cultural Value." I understand where you are coming from, and I agree with your complaints about how it is implemented, but Religion can be a cultural value.

Second, your comments on city-state: The cities are in charge. It's in the name. If a god-king was manipulating the city mayors, it wouldn't be city states. In ancient Greece, each city-state had its own government system. The only thing each city-state had in common was a language and a nationality. If they weren't fighting foreigners, they were fighting each other.

Yeah, I thought about that. The problem is the gameplay mechanic: why don't the city states ever fight each other, then? City states in real life basically had different civics, like whole different civilizations - Athenian, Spartan, Theban, et cetera.

And even then, city states still had different governments. That doesn't make sense in a Civ-type game.

As for "Religion" as a cultural value, it's mainly an issue of precision. Certainly "the Church" is important in a lot of people's lives, but how does that manifest itself? Basically it seems to be by doing things the Religion tells you to do. For example, attending religious services. Also, behaving in ways the religion says are good. So from my perspective, the "value" of it seems to be in being a "dutiful" adherent of the religion, not in just being happy you have a religion. Either way, it's really odd that all the non-state religious temples would provide benefits if the people supposedly value their own religion.

Look at it this way: I have a city that's just Order. Order is my state religion (+1). I have a Temple of the Order in the city (+1). Then suddenly the Ashen Veil shows up. Now the city is both Ashen Veil and Order. No change in . But then I build a Temple of the Veil, and now I get another +1? What, the people in the Order temple aren't pissed that there are Veil worshippers in the city? The Veil people aren't pissed that there's an Order temple? Apparently because we value "Religion" over here, everyone can get along? It just doesn't feel right.

In general, here's the feeling I get from the civics: It feels like someone came up with the civics and THEN created categories that "best" fit them. This creates incongruencies between the different options. Here's how it should work: create the categories, and then, like you said, create civics that answer the "questions" they ask.

Yeah, I didn't know about the whole history of civics in FfH2. There used to be 2 other categories, apparently. Those 2 categories were removed and some of the civics were dumped in to other categories, even if it didn't make sense.

 

[blacknight]

I have always thought Agrarian was an obvious choice for almost any civilization. The modifiers sound balance until you realize that -1 is no penalty on grassland! This seems to give a huge bonus to any civ that starts in good terrain (mostly grassland) while being of no use to a civ that finds itself on plains (where the extra food is desperately needed). Thus the rich get richer and the poor get nothing.

I think this civic would be much better balanced if it gave a -x% instead of -1 from farm.

On another note, I love the idea of the elections from republic!

 

[Verdian]

I do not feel comfortable commenting on civics, as I am not sure how to even go about balancing them. I just hope that, despite the fact that FFH is in feature lock, the Team won't pass on a good idea.

However, might I suggest the following:

The Great Dreaming - Low upkeep. Grants the Insane trait. -10% unit production, +50% , +2, +10% in all cities.

If you gave up this civic, you would return to your normal traits. I was thinking of increasing the chance for a living unit to start with Enraged, but that may be too much.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

i agree the civics are a bit weird. I like the ideas that the Op stated: very rich and unique. of coruse there needs to be some balancing, but that is the essence of game design, no?

Also, to address something someone else said:

"Given the high cost and low return of many FFH buildings I rarely find population whipping useful except in combination with Sacrifice the Weak. But its always useful for captured cities where the alternative is to allow the excess population to starve"

The alternative is actually to build workers/settlers: the pop dosnt starve out.

 

[apotheoser]

I have always thought Agrarian was an obvious choice for almost any civilization. The modifiers sound balance until you realize that -1 is no penalty on grassland! This seems to give a huge bonus to any civ that starts in good terrain (mostly grassland) while being of no use to a civ that finds itself on plains (where the extra food is desperately needed). Thus the rich get richer and the poor get nothing.

I think this civic would be much better balanced if it gave a -x% instead of -1 from farm.

On another note, I love the idea of the elections from republic!

Well, Agrarianism still gives +food to a plains civilization, so they get something. However, the current agrarianism removes 100% of the production from a plains+farms tile. If it were just -1 on plots with 2 or more, then the plains tiles wouldn't lose anything, and they would still gain bonus civic food from plains+farms.

However, everyone would lose production from mines and quarries.

Unfortunately grassland+forests and grassland+plains would be heavily tilted in favor of grassland+forests (3 food+1 hammer versus 1 food+1 hammer) in my version.

 

[Fafnir13]

Random note on city states:

It's one of the earliest and one of the more primitive, yet I find it's practically a necessity for a large empire. I've tried switching to republic and theocracy late game, but it just kills my research slider.

 

[xienwolf]

Would have expected an Esus only option in Legal, and possibly a RoK only option in Labor, as well as Empyrean showing up in Government. It would be quite interesting to allow the Esus and Empyrean special civics to grant membership in the Under/Over council, making it possible for a Neutral Esus or Empyrean follower to have membership in both councils (by running their religion only Civic AND the "Special Sauce" membership)

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Finally - Some Concrete Suggestions (part 1)

God-King - Low upkeep. Huge bonus to and in capital. No in capital. No in capital. Increased maintenance penalty for distance from capital, decreased for number of cities.

No in capital? Why is this? God King has no ground in preventing appearing in any way, and especially in the capital! In fact, in GK, certain Great Persons were favored to appear, like Great Sages, Great Bards and Great Engineers.
God King is supposed to express the government where the King is believed to be a chosen of God(basically all Kingdoms in history except the Romans and Egyptians) or for him to be a God himself(the Romans and Egyptians, basically).

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Not like it would be a meaningful drawback anyway. Specialists are strictly inferior to improved tiles in terms of yield at first, so even though you can get GPP from specialists in your capital under the current version of GK, you don't want to. You want some city without GK's bonus to live with the reduced yield from running specialists and spit out your first couple GPs. If the other capital bonuses of GK were buffed this would become even more true.

 

[LDiCesare]

I like the suggestions a lot.
I think the no great person in capital for God King is a very good idea.
I don't get the Justice part however. The +1 hammer per happy face?? If that's what I believe it is far too overpowered. I may not uderstand correctly, though, but typical cities have lots and lots of so this could multiply a small city production by 5 or 10 if I understand well, which is a definite no.

 

[Imuratep]

One thing I would change: Labor vs Academia isn't that tense - there isn't much for them to fight over, and often a lot of sympathy on the part of academia for labor. Some kinds of skilled labor also depend on academia.

How about Labor versus Merchants (or Rich, or Elite, or something) and Peasants versus Academia?

Overall though, I think this is a really great mechanic for Republic.

I think Church vs. Academia is more logical. A religion with its traditions and myths is usually a very traditional group while the universities put scientific progress above traditional norms - See the current conflict darwinism - creationism.

 

[Algeroth]

So many things was said but i think i should mention one thing.

Moving Crusade to renamed membership category sounds really like a good idea.

My 2 copper pieces.

 

[apotheoser]

No in capital? Why is this? God King has no ground in preventing appearing in any way, and especially in the capital! In fact, in GK, certain Great Persons were favored to appear, like Great Sages, Great Bards and Great Engineers.
God King is supposed to express the government where the King is believed to be a chosen of God(basically all Kingdoms in history except the Romans and Egyptians) or for him to be a God himself(the Romans and Egyptians, basically).

Well, I was thinking sort of a more extreme version of it, since this is a fantasy mod. The Dune series, by Frank Herbert, is mainly what came to mind. No emerge because the God-King is the ultimate Great Person in their civilization. Everyone worships him as an actual god - not just a "divine incarnation" like in various real-world places. (Meso-american civilizations, Roman Imperial dynasty, to some extent Japanese Imperial dynasty, et cetera).

Also, I thought it was a good way to balance the elimination of in the capital, and the fact that GK will produce + instead of just +.

Anyway, it wouldn't necessarily be that bad - religions are generally founded outside your capital in FfH2, so it's not hard to get a source of elsewhere.

 

[apotheoser]

I think Church vs. Academia is more logical. A religion with its traditions and myths is usually a very traditional group while the universities put scientific progress above traditional norms - See the current conflict darwinism - creationism.

This is a good point. But then, what to put "the State" against?

 

[apotheoser]

I like the suggestions a lot.
I think the no great person in capital for God King is a very good idea.
I don't get the Justice part however. The +1 hammer per happy face?? If that's what I believe it is far too overpowered. I may not uderstand correctly, though, but typical cities have lots and lots of so this could multiply a small city production by 5 or 10 if I understand well, which is a definite no.

Right, it is a very strong bonus. But it requires Order state . Sacrifice the Weak is also a very strong civic but it requires Ashen Veil state .

Of course it's possible that +1 per is just too much, especially in every city. There is a wonder that gives +1 per , but that's only in one city. Maybe +.5 per would be better?

 

[apotheoser]

Would have expected an Esus only option in Legal, and possibly a RoK only option in Labor, as well as Empyrean showing up in Government. It would be quite interesting to allow the Esus and Empyrean special civics to grant membership in the Under/Over council, making it possible for a Neutral Esus or Empyrean follower to have membership in both councils (by running their religion only Civic AND the "Special Sauce" membership)

Yeah, I guess I forgot to replace the RoK civic in Labor. Hmmmmm. There's certainly room for it. I don't know much about RoK in the lore, so I wouldn't be sure what it should be like (other than the current arete).

Esus in Legal was tricky. I sort of think of the CoE as a shadowy extra-legal group, like an organized criminal syndicate. A Legal civic for them would be almost like some kind of para-military, internal security force that carries out laws and executes dissidents. It's got very cool potential, actually.

 

[Lemminkäinen]

Vassalage - Low upkeep. Can Draft units; draftees are 0 xp Warriors. -1 in plots that produce 2 or more, except in capital city and cities with Winter/Summer Palace.

It's entirely possible that I'm missing something obvious, but this civic sounds absolutely terrible. You'd need a boatload of money to upgrade those Warriors to something useful and the commerce malus is extremely severe. And those Warriors would cost population, right?

 

[JonathanStrange]

It would be interesting if any change would also take into account civic combinations (and religions too) beyond counting up hammers, commerce, etc. of individual civics and pronouncing them good. When players can recommend religions and civics ranging from Ashen Veil to Slavery with little regard to the particular civ in question, often seeming to play similarly regardless of civ or leader, then the fantasy atmosphere and "unique" civs feeling is dimmed.

I've been reading several books on the Byzantine empire and the late Roman empire, and it's surprising how resilient the Byzantine cultural identity and nationhood was - despite devastating setbacks and territory losses. It may be that a Fall From Heaven 2 civ may gain from using Slavery and treating its peoples as a team of animals under one whip but be far more brittle than another whose civic combinations are more consistent with its "vision" of itself. It may not matter in some cases but, for example, were the Ljosalfars to use slavery or Ashen Veil, then we may as well breakup the empire and leave Erebus.

 

[apotheoser]

It's entirely possible that I'm missing something obvious, but this civic sounds absolutely terrible. You'd need a boatload of money to upgrade those Warriors to something useful and the commerce malus is extremely severe. And those Warriors would cost population, right?

Yeah, maybe -1 per plot that makes 2 or more is too much. It could theoretically be almost half your outside your capital.

Maybe just a flat % penalty? Or maybe it's possible that it could be -1 on plots that make 4 or more?

Or maybe the draftees could start as Swordsman/Axemen/Archers with the right technology? That would reduce upgrade costs significantly. I don't think it would be appropriate for the units to start as anything better.

But just to play devil's advocate, I think the real strength would be to use Vassalage this way:

1. Stockpile a large sum with a different civic
2. Switch to Vassalage
3. Spend 10 turns drafting as much as possible
4. Switch off of Vassalage

You probably lost some money during Vassalage, but switching from Vassalage you're making money again and you can upgrade your army. (In Fall Further, you can also use buildings to train them up to level 3 or so).

Now, if that's a play-style we want to avoid, Vassalage shouldn't have such a large penalty. The large penalty combined with benefits that exist after the civic (eg, the drafted army), mean that people will only ever use it temporarily, or in absolute emergencies. Is that good or bad?

 

[apotheoser]

It would be interesting if any change would also take into account civic combinations (and religions too) beyond counting up hammers, commerce, etc. of individual civics and pronouncing them good. When players can recommend religions and civics ranging from Ashen Veil to Slavery with little regard to the particular civ in question, often seeming to play similarly regardless of civ or leader, then the fantasy atmosphere and "unique" civs feeling is dimmed.

I've been reading several books on the Byzantine empire and the late Roman empire, and it's surprising how - despite devastating setbacks and territory losses - resilient the Byzantine cultural identity and nationhood was. It may be that a Fall From Heaven 2 civ may gain from using Slavery and treating its peoples as a team of animals under one whip but be far more brittle than another whose civic combinations are more consistent with its "vision" of itself. It may not matter in some cases but, for example, were the Ljosalfars to use slavery or Ashen Veil, then we may as well breakup the empire and leave Erebus.

I think this is an unavoidable problem with Civilization in general, not just FfH2. Aztec tanks purchased in my Universal Suffrage Aztec government? Theocracy America with state religion Taoism? (Taoist Theocracy at all?)

And like you say, Infernal Republic that values Liberty?

I think we just have to forget it and leave that all up to the game.