Current Policy Ratings

Thalassicus · Jan 9, 2013

@mitsho
I presume a religious pressure policy is possible now, if we plan to pursue that for piety. I'd prefer to prioritize the primary policies which present new strategies, replacing insipid policies which simply pad the tree.

17! :ninja:

Ahriman · Jan 9, 2013

I presume a religious pressure policy is possible now, if we plan to pursue that for piety.

I think this is good.... but only if we can have some Piety policies that actually boost the value of religion. Spreading my religion faster is only useful if the benefits from spreading my religion are substantial. And with a couple of minor exceptions, I only care about spreading my religion to other civs because of founder belief bonuses.

Stalker0 · Jan 9, 2013

Thalassicus said:
I'd prefer to prioritize the primary policies which present new strategies, replacing insipid policies which simply pad the tree.

I agree here. I would love if the piety tree could offer new ways to spend faith for benefits.

mitsho · Jan 9, 2013

I don't get the 17 reference?

I just thought since this would be rather easy to introduce, we could try it out since nobody seems particularly happy with the Piety tree as it is now anyways...

One idea would be to transform the holy warrior belief into a policy. Is that taken a lot as a belief? I'm not sure I can concentrate on big faith generation anyways when waging war? (economy and culture and science go first, no?).

Thalassicus · Jan 9, 2013

I realized what happened while writing... :crazyeye:

Thalassicus said:
I presume a religious pressure policy is possible now, if we plan to pursue that for piety. I'd prefer to prioritize the primary policies which present new strategies, replacing insipid policies which simply pad the tree.

Thalassicus · Jan 14, 2013

I try to think of a specific reasons to get each tree, a role for the tree:

The basic problem is I can't think of a unique service Order could provide. It's sort of a tall tree like Freedom right now, since production is better for tall empires than wide... but without a unique role the bonuses are very uninspired and bland. :think:

Can anyone think of an important and unique role missing from the lategame?

Tomice · Jan 15, 2013

Wasn't Nationalism initially meant for lategame conquest and Order for peaceful lategame expansion?

I've only scratched the lategame so far, so I know little about the existing policies and how they "feel" ingame.

But generally, I could see Nationalism as a tree that's helpful if you want to finish your conquest victory against enemies that would otherwise be too tough. Or if you're stuck in wars you can't finish with an acceptable outcome.

Order could be a tree that keeps peaceful expansion interesting on maps where lots of mediocre space is left for settling even in the lategame. Bonuses for tundra/desert would fit here. I don't think production has to be the defining characteristic for Order, since you changed the balance between production and gold a lot.

Hawawaa · Jan 15, 2013

Tradition- Wonder whoring...

mitsho · Jan 15, 2013

Combat bonuses are not really optimal in the late game due to several reasons:

1) If you are a conquest empire, chances are that you have been starting conquest way before the Industrial Era so your army should be well set up. A conquest-oriented Nationalism tree would work only if the Industrial Age provided new and harsh obstacles to conquest by buffing the defensive side of other civs which you now need to overcome. Such a situation would be probably difficult to understand for the AI. But it could provide a nice late game challenge.

2) On the other hand, direct strength buffs and other combat bonuses that result in a advantage for the human player who knows how to use it, make the game boring. Conquest should be something to achieve, not steamroll. With all the other bonuses to conquest (you have a city more, your opponents one less) that lead to snowballing, buffs to combat are not well used.

So, straight conquest bonuses are useless and too strong at the same time. Also chances are a conquest empire will lack in culture and use happiness and gold policies first anyways.

As for Order, the best way would be to separate peaceful and conquest economic bonuses for Nationalism/Order. Order/Communism should be best for a Domination Victory like it existed in civ 4. Crank up the territory and population until you're number one. As that doesn't exist really and I don't see how to separate peaceful and conquest really, I see three roles that might be nice in the late game:

1) Culture monger. For that civ that has not really focused on Culture but wants to catch up. (how does that work vis-a-vis culture victory I'm not sure, would probably be too strong for a already high culture empire, so how could we lock them out?)

2) Espionage specialist. If espionage were sexier, why not concentrate them in one tree?

3) Basic Yields giver: This tree helps with late game expansion by providing basic yields, things like:
- Production and Science boost on Factories
- Production on tile improvements
- Cities founded (!) start with 2-ring expansion and more basic infrastructure
- Gold Buildings upkeep
- Move one of the Commerce policies here (since that seems to be the strongest tree) and replace it there with a colonization policy (that gives you more starting pop and happines if founded on foreign continents)

Basically a mix of all things useful and some espionage

I could also see a policy that helps more with diplomatic victories, but those are in the Patronage tree. Maybe we get an overhaul of those victories sometimes... Maybe in the new expansion "One World", if that steam entry wasn't a hoax.

Ahriman · Jan 15, 2013

Combat bonuses are not really optimal in the late game due to several reasons:

Agreed.

Espionage specialist. If espionage were sexier, why not concentrate them in one tree?

I'd really prefer that espionage stayed simple, and didn't become a major part of the game. I would definitely not want one tree to become significantly about espionage.

I really like the idea of Order being the place where late-game colonization is encouraged.

I don't like messing with Commerce. The policies there work, other than needing some small nerfs.

that gives you more starting pop and happines if founded on foreign continents

I'd oppose this, because it is so massively variable in power depending on map type. Awesome on archipelago, useless on pangaea.

Supporting new cities is fine, there's no need to particularly tie it to which continent they're on.

MrL567 · Jan 15, 2013

I dislike peity not because its bad, but becauce it does not give anything new to add a sense of direction to. It should give relgion some buffs, like moving holy warriors as a choice in this tree, adding lets say a promtions like X% str boost, to only units bought with faith.

mitsho · Jan 15, 2013

I just thought the background image of the sailing ship, the naval bonuses and the commerce theme would lend itself very well to a representation of the Age of Sail and later Colonialism.

Gameplay in any case does trump realism, though I'm not sure if founding at home would be too strong that early.

The idea of making it overseas was to push a civ not to blob at one place but to go out. Can we reach a compromise if we make it x-tiles away from capital?

But yes, moving all the other bonuses we had in mind for late game expansion in the other threads to Order would seem like a good move. (Keep the Production and Espionage policies as well of course, Espionage = catchup science and diplomatic victory fits with wide anyways).

I agree that Espionage should be able to be ignored in one game. But so are City States and they've got their own tree, which is very situational. So what's the probem with theoretically making Order a espionage tree? I agree that it's not enough to fill it as a whole. And by making espionage sexy I mean just little surgical adjustments to make it more active. In short

Spoiler :

So, not making it take over the game. That would be bad

EDIT: I also support moving Holy Warriors away from a belief to a social policy. It'd be the clear policy to nitpick for a conquest player or may allow quick defense for a religious player. It'd also provide a valve for excess :c5faith:

. The problem however is that it's not really doable, right? I'd also like to play with the "increased pressure" policy that is possible since the last patch. There's enough to play around there

Ahriman · Jan 15, 2013

The idea of making it overseas was to push a civ not to blob at one place but to go out

Why is this desirable? Where civs settle should depend on their needs, we shouldn't be forcing this. The good city spots are going to be settled by the early game. Late game cities are going to be in spots that are less desirable. This might be more distant spots, but it also might be that arctic/tundra or desert city with the oil. Why deliberately favor distant spots over nearby-but-marginal spots? The goal is to make settling cities late-game more interesting, but there are lots of different reasons why we might want to do this.

I'm really against trying to push "overseas colonization" as a theme. That is something that can happen organically, or not, depending on map type and playstyle and what happens during the game. The Age of Colonization makes sense on a Terra type map, and one where Europe was dramatically ahead of most of the world technologically and militarily. It wouldn't make sense in a world where that wasn't the case. We shouldn't try to force it to happen.

Can we reach a compromise if we make it x-tiles away from capital?

No. I think it's a mistake to try to make it about distance at all. I don't see why we shouldn't get the settlement benefits from founding the nearby-marginal-terrain city.

But so are City States and they've got their own tree, which is very situational. So what's the probem with theoretically making Order a espionage tree?

City states are a much larger part of the game than is espionage. City states affect many more things: they appear on the map, they can give all kinds of bonuses, they can fight wars, you can capture them. Espionage is a much smaller mechanic. It doesn't deserve it's own tree. It is better kept small and beautiful. It only does two things (city state influence and technology stealing - three things if you count the information-learning mechanic). There is no need to bloat it.

More Spies! = more options = more fun

Disagree. MOAR!! is not always better.

Discover Maps as a own espionage mission for civs. Seeing the whole map is beneficial for early missions and not having to scout the rest of the map and may be a benefit for war

Very marginal value, especially by the Renaissance or industrial eras.

Gold is the only yield you can't get from city states so far

Sure you can, by bullying them.

AI Tech-Stealing needs a boost, no?

Why would it? I find the AI steals techs just fine.

mitsho · Jan 15, 2013

Sigh, okay let's play that game of quoting and snippy one liners... I really hate that though. It chops up the large point anyone is trying to make.

Ahriman said:
Why is this desirable? Where civs settle should depend on their needs, we shouldn't be forcing this.

to go in the direction of simulating history more.
to push them out of their comfort zone.
to go away from the capital bonus.
to encourage filling the map.

As for gameplay reasons, any restriction is bad per se and it also wouldn't work for the AI anyways. So it really might be better to have no restriction at all. However, you didn't respond to my point I had above:

to make the policy not too strong, especially if it is with the Commerce Tree.

As for Espionage

Spoiler :

mystikx21 · Jan 15, 2013

AI spy doesn't always go just to capitals. It estimates your city's probable tech rates based on a number of factors. The reason it goes to the capital is that the capital tends to have most of those factors (city size especially matters here). I've had them routinely go elsewhere in games where my capital was underdeveloped relative to other locations with higher populations, more infrastructure/wonders, etc. They can eventually figure out that you might have a really awesome science city somewhere else, but not always.

As far as Order. I think a mechanic making it interesting and useful for wide-late game expansion would be fun if possible (extra pop or infrastructure in new cities) but that shouldn't be a focus on the tree so much as an early impact.
If that's not feasible, some thoughts
1) some espionage effects are warranted, but this is primarily because the current espionage buildings are largely useless in wide empires (or really any empires). I would agree it doesn't make sense to make the tree greatly focus on it so much as improve the existing mechanics somewhat, possibly in an interesting way. I would also agree we could add some spies based on map size and starting number of opponents if possible as this would provide some greater flexibility for both players and AIs.

2) Production isn't very essential as a late game yield (there's a lot available already via teching up and having access to new buildings and resources). You can already get it from existing buildings and tiles quite easily. Improving some of them (bonus to mines, mills, factories, etc) might be fine as one or two policies but an entire tree focus on production isn't very interesting at all. I do not like the 10 turn production boost idea (that doesn't seem to be working anyway) and have little to no use for the production building speed boost, partly because the tree is so late and partly because neither is very useful even if they were available earlier. These should be replaced with other yields. 10% per city or +1 on tiles are fine I think.

3) Increasing happiness is potentially useful for late-game expansionist moves other than conquest and the existing order tree does not add very much (potentially +1 in most new cities, and +2 in some core cities with factories). Knowledge and Nationalism both can end up more useful for this reason to even peaceful expansion.

4) Increasing science could improve the utility of late-game cities and make the tree semi-competitive with knowledge. I don't think factories is a suitable place to put such a bonus as this would focus the attention on existing core cities rather than expansions. We could think of this as funding expeditions and even settlements toward the poles and deep jungles as was done by colonial powers and is still done to conduct research by major state and non-state actors from the developed world today.

5) Order doesn't seem to have much of any culture button to it, which makes it hard to accumulate late policies in a wide-empire if you go that route. Even the autocratic tree has culture looting from conquests and a tie-in to monuments. Freedom has culture (on villages) and purchasing artists making it attractive even to a wide-empire to accumulate new policies. Some kind of cultural or political impact is needed. Of everything associated with this tree, this is probably its weakest point. The only way to get culture from the tree is the indirect ability to pay for more cultural buildings per city.

I don't necessarily think of democratic-socialist countries as colourless and dull in some way that I would think of an autocratic-militaristic regime as such. Canada or Sweden make a lot of stuff and export a lot of music or acting talent, still can produce interesting movies and books, and so on.

Ahriman · Jan 15, 2013

let's play that game of quoting and snippy one liners... I really hate that though. It chops up the large point anyone is trying to make.

I'm really not trying to be snarky or annoying, I just find it a more effective way of discussing particular points, to make it clear which one a particular comment is responding to.

to go in the direction of simulating history more.

Earth history is a function of earth geography/map type and the fact Europe was massively ahead in technology and military. That doesn't happen in most games. And many civs colonized/settled the territory that was near them: look at France and North Africa, look at Russia (a stead stream of
And the main reason that people didn't colonize places near them is that either:
a) they did but we didn't think of those as colonies, we just thought of them as part of the country or
b) there weren't any unsettled places near them.

to push them out of their comfort zone.

I think that settling in a nearby spot in the arctic is also out of comfort zone, but in a different way. Why should distance be more important than terrain?

to go away from the capital bonus.

I don't really understand this one. Whether they settle near or far it isn't affecting the capital differently.

to encourage filling the map.

But why not fill bad terrain spots that are nearby? If there are unsettled spots in the late game that are near you, there's probably a reason for that.
Any new cities are going to fill the map.

to make the policy not too strong, especially if it is with the Commerce Tree.

I think the main risk for a policy that only affects newly settled cities is that it would be too weak, not too strong.
And as I said above, I oppose putting it in the Commerce tree. Commerce works well as it is, and its themes are gold and coastal/naval, not settlement/expansion/wide. Order works better for that.

I never said it needed a whole tree, I was speaking of a cluster of ~3 policies/finisher/opener (so 3 out of 7 effects).

You said that you wanted to make Order "an espionage tree".
But I think 3 policies is still too many, I think espionage is a small part of the game, it functions on a per-civ basis (every civ has the same number of spies) so doesn't really make sense as a specialization (everyone participates equally in it, unlike city states, which you can choose to focus on or not), and it has no particular synergy with the "Wide/production" theme of Order.

I never spoke of bloat. However I do spole of surgical adjustments

I like the simple espionage system. In my opinion (and of course reasonable people can disagree on this) I think adding more social policies that affected espionage and adding more spies and adding more different effects for spies would bloat the mechanic.

not if you tie it to all the other info which otherwise is just a byproduct of trying to steal tech. So the decision would be

I think this thought is not quite complete?

It tends to place the spy in your capital and only there, not?

Only in your highest potential city, I believe. I agree that this causes some problems. My preferred solution is to make non-city state espionage and counterespionage function of a per-civilization basis rather than a per-city basis. The whole "which city is the spy in/which city should I counterspy in" is something that I don't think works very well.

Ahriman · Jan 15, 2013

I mostly agree with Mystikx.

Order doesn't seem to have much of any culture button to it, which makes it hard to accumulate late policies in a wide-empire if you go that route.

I think a further reduction in the per-city culture cost penalty (like the 5% reduction in Liberty) would fit nicely in Order. It would also have the effect of helping to encourage late-game city settlement; the extra policy cost is a significant deterrent to more cities in the late game.

MrL567 · Jan 15, 2013

If order is about control, how bout you get a a few policies that have IRL examples. One could reduce city unhappiness by lets say 1/3 per city, but could also give a gold boost or somthing. I think order is about lowering general large city issues, such as large pop.

mystikx21 · Jan 15, 2013

Thinking about the order tree, as a wide related tree, the two most probable trees preceding it are liberty and commerce. And then knowledge. None of those provide any substantial culture, other than liberty's per city reducer and a trivial per city bonus. They can provide some happiness, which is less important for order as a result (still useful though as an incentive to continue expanding).

You can get by instead by cherry picking tradition or honor but something wide-targeted for culture would be helpful on that end. I agree something like the per city reducer is ideal here, but kind of boring to use both and it makes more sense on liberty earlier. If we could do a +% culture empire wide policy that might also be useful and a little more active (I don't think there is one of those right now other than golden ages). I'm not sure how to balance that though (scaled based on # of cities?), as it would provide more to a bigger empire, but a taller one would have a lot of culture potentially and cheaper policy costs.

As far as espionage I think we have several options

Improve the espionage infrastructure to be more useful. I agree moving to one tier was better. This would mean some adaptations to any policies that affect both of course. Removing upkeep isn't really sufficient as it just makes it less harmful to build them than making them actively useful.

If we could use a civ4 style "build three temples and get a synagogue" to get three or four constables/police and get an extra spy that would at least provide some uses to wide empires for espionage other than their highest value science cities to get to use spies more widely for offence/defence.

I think the existing uses for spies are mostly fine, tech leaders can play with diplomacy, and trailers can try to steal techs. We could tweak the diplomatic options to make that side of the spy game more involved and engaging (or just tweak the CS options/quests anyway to make that more interesting generally, which would help make the spies more useful).

mitsho · Jan 16, 2013

@Ahriman I was also suggesting a Culture and a Basic Yields&Late Expansion Theme. I was listing options for Roles one assign to Order.

As for Espionage, I do feel we are mostly on the same page of it, just discussing about semantics. Anyways, as it doesn't look like this side will get adressed in the next time other than removing of a second tier (respectively replacing the second one with a NW so that there's two NW for Espionage: Prison - Police Force (NW) - NIA (NW)), there's not much sense in going into details anyways...

It does seem like a combination of Culture and Basic Yields seem's most promising though, coupled with the liked policies of Order right now. So it may be fine by adding those two effects. From then on, all the policies would support wide. It may be the opposite of Patronage in that you often want to take one or two out of it but seldom finish it, but that's okay, no?

I like the idea of giving culture in percentage per # cities you have. So if it were 2 % per city, with a border at 40 %, you'd need 20 cities to reach that? Other formula would seem to be too complex to understand quickly, no? Additionally culture could fit on the espionage buildings, a high flat amount?

I also like the idea to gain spies every x constabulary/new name. But I doubt it's doable. Would an additional spy on a policy be too much already?

So I'm going to make a suggestion

Opener Free Great Engineer, Faith for GE, +15% Production in cities
Planned Economy Newly Founded Cities start with 2-tile radius, + 1 population, free culture and gold building
Socialism -25% :c5gold:

upkeep
Labour Unions + 1 :c5production:

on mines, quarries, lumbermills, fishing boats, oil wells, offshore platform, Forts and all Great People Improvments
Communism 2% per # of cities in each city, up to 40 %
United Front -25 % enemy spy tech steal rate, additional spy, + 5 on espionage buildings Finisher +1 :c5happy:

and +10 %

from all production buildings

Current Policy Ratings

Bytes and Nibblers

Tyrant

Baller Magnus

Deity

Bytes and Nibblers

Bytes and Nibblers

Passionate Smart-Ass

Prime

Deity

Tyrant

Warlord

Deity

Tyrant

Deity

Deity

Tyrant

Tyrant

Warlord

Deity

Deity

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