Current Policy Ratings

Stalker0 · Jan 2, 2013

With the public release, I thought I would give me current grades on the where I think policies rank currently. I've done the long-winded explanations before, so this time I'm just using a simple letter grade.

A - Almost always my first pick in the tree. Strong enough to convince me to take a tree I wouldn't normally, or to finish a tree through bad policies.

B - Solid policy, often an early pick.

C- Ok policy. I'm not really excited about them, but they do their job.

D - Crappy policy. Only if I exhausted other options.

F - Worthless policy. Unless I want to finish a tree for a closer or to get a culture win, I would never take it.

Spoiler :

My overall rankings

The BEST trees (in no specific order)
Liberty (good for wide, and frankly also decent for tall, never a bad pick)
Commerce (just chocked full of solid policies)
Knowledge (science is always good no matter what you are doing)

The decent trees
Tradition (not as versatile as liberty, but still has a great selection of policies for the most part)
Honor (some stellar polices mixed some average ones but good enough)
Freedom (worst opener in the game but comes back strong)
Order (its between my decent and bad list. Its not very exciting but some of the policies are decent enough).

The bad trees
Piety (generally mediocre, worst closer in the game)
Patronage (a beautiful start and end, with not enough meat in the middle)
Nationalism (too much city happiness that can't be used, competes with the solid freedom tree).

Ahriman · Jan 2, 2013

I'm not sure that A vs B conflating "best policy" with "first pick" is very helpful (some policies aren't super-strong overall but are worth picking first), but interpreting your rankings as best overall policies, I'd say:

Spoiler :

Drakir89 · Jan 2, 2013

Spoiler :

Thalassicus · Jan 3, 2013

@Stalker0
I agree about Piety, Patronage, and Nationalism. I've been thinking of some broad solutions for each tree.

Patronage
I plan to make this tree simply improve all our citystate interactions, instead of the narrow focus on bribes. It's a straightforward concept, but will require learning some new code, so it's been on a back burner.

Nationalism
I plan to give this tree some national happiness, which fits the name and the wide-empire theme.

Piety
In VEM Piety had a few happiness policies useful for anyone. In G&K Piety focuses almost completely on religion, and religion is optional. It does not meet the "somewhat useful for all" criteria for policy trees anymore. The simple solution is moving some broadly-useful happiness back into the tree like in VEM.

123john321 · Jan 4, 2013

I actually like warrior code early: getting an early GG then building a cidatel for that early science and sheilds is useful

Naeven · Jan 4, 2013

123john321 said:
I actually like warrior code early: getting an early GG then building a cidatel for that early science and sheilds is useful

Agreed, this is how I do it too. But it's only good in the very beginning, I still agree the overall effect is weak and need a slight boost.

mitsho · Jan 4, 2013

I'm not good with grades in general

I'd say I dislike the heavy focus on production/science/gold for Order/Rationalism/Commerce a bit. I'd just like to single out one policy who seems to be weak and in your views as well (consistently a D), namely Planned Economy (+100% production on production buildings), I'd rank it even lower since it loses value the longer the game goes on. If you've already built all of them, it's useless, it's just not exciting policy to me.

Ahriman · Jan 4, 2013

I'd say I dislike the heavy focus on production/science/gold for Order/Rationalism/Commerce a bit.

I think these are ok. Commerce is really gold/coastal. Order is (or rather should be; I don't like the current implementation much) production/wide. Rationalism directly supports a scientific victory path.

I'd just like to single out one policy who seems to be weak and in your views as well (consistently a D), namely Planned Economy (+100% production on production buildings), I'd rank it even lower since it loses value the longer the game goes on. If you've already built all of them, it's useless, it's just not exciting policy to me.

I agree with this. I really dislike policies that don't give you anything you couldn't get through regular production. Policies that effectively become completely obsolete are even worse.
A policy that boosts production of production buildings at minimum needs to also boost those buildings.

There is a similar problem in Tradition; the policy that gives free culture buildings isn't the policy that boosts those buildings (the boost is on Monarchy for some reason?).

Bernd-das-Brot · Jan 4, 2013

I changed the definitions of the grades a bit to my understanding/liking.

A - Awesome policy. Strong enough to convince me to take a tree I wouldn't normally or to take weak policies to get it.

B - Good policy. Often an early pick, and generally useful.

C - Solid policy. They do their job, if circumstances are fitting. Some could be a bit stronger.

D - Weak policy. Only if I exhausted other options or under very special/rare circumstances. Needs a boost.

F - Worthless policy. Unless I want to finish a tree for a closer or to get a culture win, I would never take it. Needs a total overhaul.

Spoiler :

The Best
Knowledge
Tradition

The Solid
Liberty
Honor
Order
Freedom

Undecided
Commerce (Must make some gold-focused games to get a feeling)

The weak or at least non-appealing
Patronage
Piety
Nationalism (never picked)

Too be finsihed/edited later

Greensiberia · Jan 4, 2013

Diplomarriage must be added to patronage tree.

Ahriman · Jan 4, 2013

Greensiberia said:
Diplomarriage must be added to patronage tree.

Can you explain what you mean by this?

mitsho · Jan 4, 2013

Well, must is a bit a strong word. It's an intriguing idea for the Patronage Finisher, but I guess it fails as long as the option is not balanced (cannot liberate the CS, hampers Diplomatic Victory). You can avoid Austria if you want in your games, you can't if its part of a tree...

Generally speaking, I always am taking some policies from the Commerce tree, and I go all-or-nothing on Patronage. Of all the other trees, I often take a few policies here or there, as intended

One straight buff to Piety could be to make it available in the Ancient Era?

EDIT: @Ahriman I assume to make Austria's UA available for every player.

Ahriman · Jan 4, 2013

One straight buff to Piety could be to make it available in the Ancient Era?

I would oppose this, it would make it too easy to get a really really early religion.

I think the fundamental problem with Piety is that there aren't enough things to spend Faith on, and that the tree doesn't actually boost the effects of religion. I know these are very hard to deal with given what you can code, but I think they're the only ways of getting a religion-oriented tree to be interesting. Just giving more faith or culture isn't that interesting.

Another thing is the weakness of the shrine; I had thought we were going to make it zero maintenance, or 2 faith? 1 faith for 1 gold isn't a very good deal.
[And on a similar note, wasn't Stonehenge going to provide lump-sum faith?]

@Ahriman I assume to make Austria's UA available for every player.

Ok. I agree with you that this is better left as a UA.

I'm very surprised at how popular people seem to think Order is. Could people describe what they like about it? It seems very weak as a late-game tree to me.
Nationalism I find useful just because there are a few policies that give a huge amount of happiness, which allows for a massive empire.

mystikx21 · Jan 4, 2013

Agreed, I generally avoid Order. There's very little happiness and mostly a lot of production (which I won't need most games).

I can get more happiness in a wide empire from cherry picking in the Knowledge tree than Order provides by the late game, so I'm not sure what it is good for. Freedom is vastly better for tall oriented empires, and nationalism (while still somewhat weak), is still better than Order for wide.

mystikx21 · Jan 4, 2013

Spoiler :

Overall

Liberty, Knowledge, Commerce are all very good for wide and offer some decent cherry picks. Tradition and Freedom are mostly good for tall and offer some good cherry picks. Honor is mostly solid and has one very overpowered policy in it.

Piety isn't even that useful for religious empires. Patronage isn't even that useful for diplomatic ones. Order isn't that useful for wide and there are lots of means of production available by the industrial era.

Thalassicus · Jan 6, 2013

Thank you everyone for the detailed analysis and grades. I've got some ideas for how to fix these problems I'll get into after finishing the leaders update.

@Ahriman
I feel uneasy with things that cost a yield to give the same yield. Policies that cost culture to give culture are in this boat. If the policy is good enough, I feel I always have to get it first, since it speeds up later policies. If the policy's not good, why have it at all? These are on the extreme left and right sides of the "first or last" scale. It's very difficult to balance effects like this.

I like policies which give early effects, and continue to improve the longer we wait for it. It's easier to avoid the "always first or last" problem.

The culture buildings policy is one example. If we build monuments in our cities before acquiring the policy, we can get 5 free temples, which is much more powerful - especially near clothing resources. If that policy gives fixed culture to those buildings, we lose this advantage. It becomes a policy we always want to get very early, to get other policies more quickly.

Ahriman · Jan 7, 2013

If we build monuments in our cities before acquiring the policy, we can get 5 free temples

Ampitheaters, I assume? Temples are faith buildings.

The thing is, the Tradition opener typically means that early culture is insanely quick already, such that I usually get most of the tree before I even get a second city, and get the whole tree before I get a third.

So I find the policy incredibly underwhelming.
Even ignoring culture, "Give free building in X cities" also has poor synergy with the Tall theme of Tradition, which does not support rapid expansion, so it could be a very long time before I get 4 cities.

Thalassicus · Jan 8, 2013

Hmm... haven't opened with that in a while. I usually go the honor path. I'll try tradition out some more. :think:

I keep mixing up buildings, mainly because the names of culture and happiness buildings are very strange. I started a thread about it.

mitsho · Jan 9, 2013

I approve the renaming of culture/happiness buildings. They have been strange since vanilla and the whole temple stuff...

One Question: In the last patch when the Grand Temple was introduced, do we now have the opportunity to have a "increases religious pressure" on a building? Since that is what the Grand Temple does? So could we have a policy that increases religious pressure? (via a invisible dummy building). Seems like that'd be an effect worth it for Piety and you can't really have too much of that, no?

skodkim · Jan 9, 2013

I've always hated Oligarcy.

Having units sitting passive around in my cities is just so pointless when its much more fun exploring and killing barbarians.

\Skodkim

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