Culture in Civ VI.

[stealth_nsk]

I liked how Civ:BE did it, with horizontal (as well as vertical) bonuses.

In CivBE due to undirectional techs, the gradual updates were partially split between affinities and civics. With Civ directional tech tree, the social policy system should handle optional feats. I'd say some less linear design would be better.

 

[DefiantMars]

In CivBE due to undirectional techs, the gradual updates were partially split between affinities and civics. With Civ directional tech tree, the social policy system should handle optional feats. I'd say some less linear design would be better.

I think MIS is more directly referencing the Virtue Synergies were going down the same tree (Might, Prosperity, Knowledge, Industry I believe they're called) nets you bonuses. But instead of punishing you for going down multiple trees, you're actually rewarded for diversifying.

 

[Cyon]

Could be interesting with a Hybrid system where Social Policy trees work like civics that are in some cases are mutually exclusive (like how Piety and Rationalism used to be) and each policy tree have a "legacy effect" that scales with every policy you take in that tree and is activated if that policy tree gets deactivated because of a new policy in another tree.

So when adopting democracy late in the game would force you to abandon your earlier Traditon pick, you would lose the direct benefits of the different policies in Tradition but you would get a 'legacy of the King" that would give you say 2 yield of every kind in the capital for every tradition sp you earlier had picked.

This would lend itself to a more logical contemporary bonuses, (despite living in Sweden I don't really think monarchy and democracy blend that well) where 5 000 year old army traditions don't still directly exist but could have a more indirect heritage effect. A mutual exclusive effect among some starting trees would also make more sense, it is a bit weird that you can be both a Monarchy and a republic at the same time in Civ 5...

 

[dexters]

Social Policies have some basis in reality in that governments and social norms often progress incrementally and rarely vascillate. Civics doesn't model this well and leads to some really gamey elements (some players love that I know, but I don't find it interesting)

A combination Social policy tree for governments/ideologies and civics branch for 'national policies' would make sense. The social policy tree determines the ideological and govermental trajectory of your Civ; The Civics tree is more flexible and reflects the whims of the government of the day.

So let's say (example I'm pulling out of my head) you're deep in a science centric, autocratic tree that doesn't give you a lot of gold. You could enact a 'Window to the World' Civic that allows your citizens to travel overseas to send money back home. Giving you extra gold per turn.

This would allow for some very deep customizations, min-maxing as well as using civics to blunt the pain of some of the choices made in the social policy branch.

Civic choices and the # of civics available increases based on technology, and some are unlocked universally for all civs, others may be Civ specific and still others are Civics only available based on government/ideology/specialization choices made by the player.

 

[Stilgar08]

Civics and Social Policies feel a bit "gamey" in general, don't you think?

I just wondered what it would be like if you cannot choose your civic/Social Policy without taking into account the way you play. It could be implemented like the tech boosts in CIVVI: If you play warmonger-style Honor boosts are far superior to Tradition OR the branch opens up earlier, not based on tech/culture but on style of play...

If you are a builder Tradition branch can even emphasize on that. Like with techs you can still choose but bonuses are lower choosing against your own current style of play, hereby making a change of policies more and more viable (opportunity costs). Because you're not a builder/warmonger all the time, right?

It could be even possible to get in trouble with your people (unhappiness/revolt) if you completely ignore their "will" or don't have a sufficient army to support your autocratic setup. Again: what hooked me on CIVVI again is "Making the player to constantly think about decisions", (eg if it's worth the hassle to be a warmonger pretending to be interested in Culture or Building).

On another thought: How about having edicts you cannot really choose but "occur" because you play as you play.
If you fear your big neighbour - tech costs of military inventions decline or building units is cheaper and vice versa: if you have a big military but you aren't warmongering (lifting the weak crippling the strong, presumably very hard to do right concerncing balance).

If there's a strong agreement in "Society" that environment needs protection because you already suffered from pollution of some kind, you'll have higher costs building the next coal-plant. Would be hard to implement that sort of thing I guess, though...

both ideas should be heaven for modders I suppose...

 

[AriochIV]

I suspect that they won't want to go back to "choose government type" civics wherein you swap back and forth (because, they said, it feel regressive when you unlock a new government type but have to lose the bonuses of the old one). But, it would be nice if the civics/policies, when unlocked, gave you useful abilities instead of passive bonuses. Things like slavery rush/buy, conscription, or other active abilities made the policy choices a much more important and interesting part of gameplay, instead of just a set of stack buffs.

I think the BERT leader abilities had the right idea here, although perhaps not implemented as well as it could have been.

 

[Stalker0]

In general there are 2 approaches:

1. Buying social policies with culture.
2. Switching between civics.

There's a middle ground. Allowing revolutions to revoke some of your policies so you can choose new ones. Effectively creating a more flexible civic system.

 

[Red Menace]

Perhaps they will extend the action/terrain based progression into the culture system by unlocking policy trees with actions, like Kill X number of units to unlock Honor, or build X number of cities to unlock liberty. of course for this, they would have to change the bonuses to fit this system and it may be to restrictive.

 

[stealth_nsk]

There's a middle ground. Allowing revolutions to revoke some of your policies so you can choose new ones. Effectively creating a more flexible civic system.

Taking the worse of 2 worlds The civic system would be still quite static and in addition combined with quite lame revolution mechanic.

 

[m15a]

There's a middle ground. Allowing revolutions to revoke some of your policies so you can choose new ones. Effectively creating a more flexible civic system.

Hmm. That could be interesting. Sort of like an extension of the ideologies in BNW, except instead of being forced into a revolution by external pressures, you're more free to choose when you want a revolution.

You could have a trade off between leaving your old social policies in place and starting to build up a new tree or declaring a revolution, which might allow to get a "partial refund" on your policies. Say, if you have the Monarchy tree with 5 policies unlocked, you could either keep it and move on to the Republic tree, building that up slowly, or declare a revolution and lose all the Monarchy policies in exchange for 3 or 4 "free" Republic policies to assign right away.

 

[Thormodr]

A hybrid between civics and social policies might be interesting.

 

[dexters]

If they are indeed bringing over BNW features, I can see them extending ideologies right to the beginning of the game, with being a tree that spans the ages starting with despotism until we hit the ideologies of BNW.

So everyone starts out at despotism, branch out Monarchy/Oligarchy/Democracy/Feudalism , then into the 20th century ideologies. There would be different sub-branches to the trees to add flavour as well as separate a civic-like system or social policy tree layered on top.

But preference is have the governments work more like an earned experience skill tree, then have 'social policies' actually live up to their name and be more flexible and some social policies may have synergy combinations with the ideology tree choices, but, it's up to the players to mix and match.

 

[bite]

If they are indeed bringing over BNW features, I can see them extending ideologies right to the beginning of the game, with being a tree that spans the ages starting with despotism until we hit the ideologies of BNW.

So everyone starts out at despotism, branch out Monarchy/Oligarchy/Democracy/Feudalism , then into the 20th century ideologies. There would be different sub-branches to the trees to add flavour as well as separate a civic-like system or social policy tree layered on top.

But preference is have the governments work more like an earned experience skill tree, then have 'social policies' actually live up to their name and be more flexible and some social policies may have synergy combinations with the ideology tree choices, but, it's up to the players to mix and match.

that would be really cool, but I don;t think we will get it on release at least

 

[Ikael]

I really like the sound of mixing up social policies and goverments.

It would be great a system where goverment civics gets progressively unlocked as your civilization advances trough the social policy tree, rather than the tech tree.

For example:

- Finishing up the liberty tree allows you to adopt the "representation" civic
- Unloking both the Economic SP tree and the Liberty SP allows you to adopt the "free market" civic
- Finishing 2 or more SP trees allows you to adopt the "public healthcare" civic

And so on.

That way, you can still have adaptability in the form of civics, but you will need to plan ahead your cultural evolution in order to have an adecuate tool for each type of situation.

 

[Gali]

Quill18 discussed the new system in his video. Apparently research and culture unlocks cards which have various bonuses on them. They come in military, economic, and diplomatic. You can use a certain number of cards of each type depending on your government. You start as a chiefdom and then unlock more. i remember an oligarchy, autocracy and classical republic. I did see in the Military Traditions tech that it made government and card swapping free for that turn which means it usually has a cost.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I really like the sound of mixing up social policies and goverments.

It would be great a system where goverment civics gets progressively unlocked as your civilization advances trough the social policy tree, rather than the tech tree.

For example:

- Finishing up the liberty tree allows you to adopt the "representation" civic
- Unloking both the Economic SP tree and the Liberty SP allows you to adopt the "free market" civic
- Finishing 2 or more SP trees allows you to adopt the "public healthcare" civic

And so on.

That way, you can still have adaptability in the form of civics, but you will need to plan ahead your cultural evolution in order to have an adecuate tool for each type of situation.

What scares me that in its essence this is exactly what I had in mind and designed for my imaginary Civ 6

A combination of all three. You havet he Social Policy Trees in its essence, although changed to a Culture Tree. You have the return of Civics in the form of those cards and you retain the Government types as well. YAAAAAAAY!

 

[dexters]

Card system is ingenious and close to what I described / speculated SP and civic system might work. Your civic tree gives you acess to progressively more powerful policies and governments but the slots let's you customize. A blend of SP and civics

 

[Gali]

Apparently governments also have a wild card area. This leads to an interesting idea. I am planning to conquer Egypt. I remain a republic for the civil bonuses but switch my wild card to a military production bonus. After I am done I switch to autocracy which has more military car slots and put in unit buff cards.

Depending on the cost this would allow more customization than even Civ 4. It would also heavily support their design goal of not having 1 strategy. The investment of going autocracy is MUCH less than going honor. Using the proper government type for each situation and just upgrading the government and cards will lead to far more choice. Lets just hope they don't put in powerful science ones.

 

[oddtail]

One thing I hope for is that some civic cards, in addition to basic ones unlocked with technology/policies, will also be unique. It would be amazing to have unique cultural policies only available with a certain World Wonder (or Natural Wonder), or perhaps one of the civilizations.

If it's not in the basic game, I'm somewhat interested in how moddable it'll be. I see a lot of potential in the "you get a number of slots from one part of the game, and cards to fill those slots from another". This could be amazingly flexible.

 

[Nixalo]

So they are doing policy cards that you unlock and swap for bonuses. Get out my head, Firaxis.

Can't wait until some awful type of government becomes the most optimal because of deck slots.