Current Policy Ratings

[Thalassicus]

@mitsho
Most feedback I see indicates peaceful tall empires have excessive happiness in the late game. Do you see this in your games, or do you find happiness a limiting factor even in small peaceful empires?

Having choices is good, but too many choices can overwhelm and paralyze people. I think the ideal number of choices is about 2-5 for any particular situation. This is why I keep some policy links and the opener requirement.

Each of the first 3 trees have openers with lower value in the late game, and I'm okay with that. I intend most people to get all three early openers in the early game.

@Ahriman
I believe balancing universality with specialization makes the game complex and fun. This is why I strive to ensure each tree has an opener universally appealing to everyone, while most policies and finishers appeal to highly specialized strategies. In other words, everyone should want to get 1-2 policies from all trees, and all policies in 1-2 trees. I continually work towards this goal.

@Stalker0
I added the exclusion between nationalism and freedom because I wanted Nationalism to have early happiness bonuses. I generally restrict happiness bonuses to late stages of policy trees, so the exclusion seemed a good way to limit that easily-available happiness to militaristic empires. I'm not sure this will be necessary anymore in the future.

 

[mitsho]

Happiness was only an example, but no, I' don't have late game problems with happiness (if I have it is with because I try to have too much stuff). A better example might be or . If we want to go for science victory, we chose Rationalism. But we do have a policy in Order that helps science for catch-up (f.e.), so if the combo of "catch-up" and "go for science victory" is too strong, we have a problem. A prime example is culture, where first picking the Tradition or Honor opener is a strong option for Liberty empires as well.

Based on this thread, it's clear that the opener is liked because it's the basis of the tree system. You are all correct that we wouldn't have 10 trees in that case. (But I reserve my right to bring up out of the box ideas anyways ). Nevertheless I feel that the problem does exist of the bottleneck opener with late game trees where picking the opener is a bad decision for ~20-25 turns (until you can take the next policy) compared to filling up the Ancient/Medieval Tree first and taking the Finisher. The result is that the Late Game trees are really late game. I'd prefer it if balance pushed us more towards the late game trees. (It's btw. an interesting decision in advanced starts).

So I'd agree with Ahriman here (if I got him right) and would advocate for a exclusivity of the late game trees combined with strong effects in those trees. This way, you enforce inter-game diversity, and not in-game diversity of policy choices. It's fine to mix-and-match policies and trees in the early game, but for the late game, I feel that model fails.

(The problem of course is the balancing of the cultural victory and forcing people to take the same trees for that goal. But I'd prefer it anyways if the balance would go like this:

Spoiler :

Playstyle Victory Due to
Wide Diplomatic More , more CS, Religion
Tall Science Focus on peaceful build up, specialists
Conquest Conquest Military…
All of them Culture Fail Safe Victory Condition

Science and Diplo are not as clear cut though, and this is fine.)

As for the balance goal of wanting 1-2 policies in all trees and all policies in 1-2 trees, that fails at the moment because you for example don't take into account the timeline. I will eventually go that way, but I typically want to fill up one tree first because of the Finisher's. And some policies lose relevance with the game going on, for example many of the science policies (due to spies) and most non-instant bonuses. The Piety Tree and Patronage Tree are also ones that I go full or nothing and you can't really change that due to the nature of what they affect. City States are highly competitive, you can't invest into them a little.

So I'm trying to say that your goal doesn't work well for the specialized trees (Piety, Patronage) and the Late Game Trees (Nationalism, Freedom, Order). Am I wrong here?

Spoiler :

EDIT: On second thought, might it be that the Finisher get into the way of that design goal since it makes you want to fill up every tree (if the finishers are powerful)? (or ignore them if they're not good enough). Might be interesting to move that finisher effect to a single policy in the tree or to a National Wonder buildable if you have 3/5 of the tree?

 

[Thalassicus]

The balance goal is a goal we work towards. If we achieved the goal, it wouldn't be a goal anymore.

I've done the most work on the early trees. I believe it's very advantageous to start with each of the 3 openers to maximize policy rate, then begin specializing in one or two trees. Openers should be good enough we want to get them before completely finishing prior trees. I've done this for the early trees, but not had time to overhaul the later trees yet, to meet these and other goals.

Openers are the most universal policy in each tree, and finishers the most specialized. We need both to ensure a balance between universality and specialization.

The first three policies of Piety are universally valuable for all empires (5 national happiness, free policy, golden age). The first policy of Patronage is also useful for anyone, since combining it with protecting a citystate will eventually make us permanent friends with that citystate.

 

[Ahriman]

This is why I strive to ensure each tree has an opener universally appealing to everyone, while most policies and finishers appeal to highly specialized strategies.

I do not think the current trees are anywhere close to this. Many finishers are very powerful, and very general. [For example: Commerce gives happiness. Liberty gives a free great person of your choice.]
And I don't think policies should be highly specialized; when finishers are powerful and general, specialized policies mean you have to take "dud" policies in order to get the good finisher.

In other words, everyone should want to get 1-2 policies from all trees, and all policies in 1-2 trees.

I don't think this is the right goal either. Inevitably, some policies are more powerful than others. If you aim for everyone to be able to get 1-2 policies from every tree, they're going to pick the same policies nearly every time (very often cherry-picking the happiness policies).
I think it is more feasible to encourage people to mostly mix which trees they get across games, but to make the policies in a tree generally useful for the broad themes/playstyles of that tree.
We used to have consensus that this was the goal for social policies; balance at a tree level, not the individual policy level. But that only works if it isn't too easy to mix trees (eg if openers are weaker than full policies, so mixing trees a lot hurts you because you spend lots of picks on weak policies).

And I think it's ok to pick the same tree every time when you pick the same strategy. It's fine if for every Tall game you want Tradition; for every diplomatic game you want Patronage.

 

[mystikx21]

As a general note, I'm not sure if it's the case in 1.13 (I haven't tried a diplomatic win yet), but in 1.12, you didn't even need Patronage to get there. It just made it somewhat easier. You really only needed the opener for any play style (free "friend"-level with any CS desired) and the rest of the policies just marginally improved diplomatic winning or made your investments somewhat (but not noticeably) better.

Piety had the same problem with religion, that it was superfluous rather than a necessary or interesting synergy. Right now you can just grab the happiness on shrines/temples and the opener even for religious play.

The problem with Order is it had no synergy with expansion at all which is why it looks so bad. Freedom has clear synergies with growth and peaceful wins, and Nationalism had clear synergies with conquest and militaristic wins (I think it's mostly rendered unnecessary by the changes to the Honor tree in 1.13). Order needed a synergy in between (expansion and growth), and some advantage for say, the space race. Which is all it really has right now.

 

[Ahriman]

As a general note, I'm not sure if it's the case in 1.13 (I haven't tried a diplomatic win yet), but in 1.12, you didn't even need Patronage to get there. It just made it somewhat easier. You really only needed the opener for any play style (free "friend"-level with any CS desired) and the rest of the policies just marginally improved diplomatic winning or made your investments somewhat (but not noticeably) better.

I think its ok that you don't *need* patronage to get a diplomatic victory (especially if you play a gold/commerce strategy). But I think you should want to use Patronage when following a city-state oriented strategy; I think the fact that you don't represents the fact that Patronage is still underpowered.

 

[mystikx21]

I'd agree I shouldn't need the policies and can achieve the goals in other ways, commerce is certainly notable in its flexibility to multiple goals (as is knowledge).

But the fact that I don't want them to achieve benefits does suggest a problem. Piety has the same issue. Order also.

If we were to say that Order was to be about production (in wide empires,) the problem with that design is that there were basically only two policies that were any good at it (the opener and the unions) and a third that was helpful to multiple strategies (lower upkeep on buildings). Everything else was core based-tall and paled in power to almost any policy in the Freedom tree.

 

[Ahriman]

Needless to say, I agree
See my suggestions above for order.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12157993&postcount=87

Patronage just needs more powerful policies. And I think there need to be some mechanic changes that make city states grow faster/produce more military/culture etc. City states just seem very weak (low pop, little power, etc.), which is part of why the science from city states is so low. I hardly ever see a city state over pop 10, while major civ cities get to 20-25+.

Is it possible to give city states some free dummy buildings (that are destroyed on city capture)? Do city states get the per-civ economy bonuses? Do they get difficulty level economy boosts?

 

[Kakafika]

I like Thal's goals for social policies. I think it is possible to get pretty close to that goal and increase replayability and interesting decision-making.

I really like how most of the dependencies have been taken out of the policy trees. I find myself dipping into trees much differently than I used to, where it was more skewed towards finishing the one you were working on before moving on to another. Before, I agonized over which opener to get, as that would lock me into the path for that one powerful policy a few dependencies into the tree. Now, I can take a detour from my initial plan without too much consequence: I grab an honor policy if a war is declared on me; I grab a happiness policy if my expansion is being slowed; I favor one policy over another in the tree based on how powerful it will be relative to another in the 15 turns until I can take the another.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Kakafika
Thank you, it's reassuring to hear you understand the goals I'm talking about.

The problem with Order is it had no synergy with expansion at all which is why it looks so bad.

The order tree has a production focus which helps tall empires, not wide or expansion. Nationalism is currently the wide expansion tree. I explained this in post #49 when I talked about changing Order to an expansion focus. I got the impression you didn't want to do that... did I misunderstand your goals?

I basically would like to focus Order on peaceful expansion (instead of tall production), and Nationalism on military expansion (instead of all expansion). Does this make sense?

 

[mystikx21]

No. That's not the problem I had at all, perhaps I wasn't very clear. I felt its purpose should have been from the beginning to be a wide-expansion tree with a production flavor, and that it is useless because it doesn't achieve that goal and instead is a tall-production centered tree that isn't very useful also Freedom already has the tall-centered market cornered pretty well in the late game on top of being less useful at even that proposed goal.

My complaints have been pretty firmly centered around
1) that it doesn't do expansion-wide-production well already.
2) And that you felt the commerce tree was somehow usurping that goal.

Commerce is fine as is I feel (and seems to be a modest consensus that it was generally fine in design) and isn't expansionary so much as a jack of all trades tree (because of the gold centric element) with a coastal/naval spin. I like it that way with some modest nerf to merchant navy and probably a CH boost somewhere. The problem with Order was limited to Order not being very useful, not that other trees got in its way and step on its proposed goals but that it had the wrong goal before, plus several useless policies to boot.

I think also that
a) Honor was mostly fine before without a massive happiness option. It had two weaker policies that were merged, and one overpowering one. I might have remixed the tree differently and definitely left out the lot of happiness option.
b) nationalism was mostly conquest centered rather than expansion centered. It wasn't giving much to peaceful options other than the happiness on monuments and the random specialist anger reduction it had. We could remove those and replace them with other effects to make Nationalism more war-centric, or alternatively move the war epics idea to Nationalism and replace it with a bonus to Colosseums (as before), leaving the barracks and garrisons intact, if that idea of encouraging culture+war is desirable (I don't mind it as culture buildings are destroyed on conquest).

The current policy changes already active
1) altered the value of production and science in coastal cities, unnecessarily as coastal cities had plenty of science before but in both cases will need local production. They are now starved without GotS (or a lot of hills). A modest reduction in the amount of production available would have sufficed (previously you could get 10 easily in any coastal city plus GotS, which was overpowered.) 1 gold does not (and should not) equal 1 production for purposes of development and isn't local in its use. Gold should be equal to production on other grounds (flexibility to multiple strategies, storage, etc).
2) massively nerfed nationalism by providing most of its valuable effects in the honor tree (lower upkeep on units and happiness on culture buildings).
3) didn't do anything about the actual problem which was the design of the Order tree was flawed (which is to be expected as the Order tree needed more work than the others to make it functional). Core production increases (on factories and power plants for example) are not necessary versus improving expansion options with general production boosts and micro or happiness effects. I think it had 3 useful policies, two halfway decent ones, and at least 2 duds. Piety was the only other tree with that kind of setup to me (one useful policy, 4 decent ones, and two duds). Patronage has at least 3 duds.

I haven't seen a full on proposal for Order from you yet but my true concern was stripping Commerce and Nationalism to improve Order struck me as unnecessary and undesirable portions of any plan to a re-organised Order. Order already had a couple of dud policies that could be easily replaced (finisher and planned econ, for two), ideally with happiness effects or new (unique) expansion options.

 

[Ahriman]

The order tree has a production focus which helps tall empires, not wide or expansion. Nationalism is currently the wide expansion tree

I would like to see Nationalism be favoring conquest-expansion, while Order favors Peaceful-Wide expansion (including some production bonuses, which help that kind of strategy since you have to construct many more buildings).

I think we want to make it such that Order is better than Nationalism if you aren't planning on much in the way of conquest. I think Nationalism policies that boost courthouses and reduce unrest time and favor large armies are good ways of achieving that. Both need to provide good amounts of happiness, but they can do so in slightly different ways.

 

[Tomice]

Maybe we have problems finding enough useful policies to justify 3 lategame trees because we focus too much on great core strategies (conquest/wide/tall)?

What about finding small things that are typical for communism, democracy and fascsism and making policies around those topics?

Example: Unit types

Nazi Germany was famous for it's Blitzkrieg, Russia for the masses of cheap units that were thrown into battle carelessly and so on. Sorry for the oversimplified cliche, it's just an example.

Why don't we give Order a policy that reduces price and upkeep of vanguard units? And Autocracy a policy that further boost the speed of mounted/tank units?
We would still follow the general flavour of the tree (since vanguards are ideal for defending a large, but peaceful empire and tanks are for conquest of course), but we wouldn't reduce it to the 3 main economy concepts that already dominate the whole game.

I have a feeling we previously would have automatically placed any kind of military-related policy ideas in the order tree because it is "the" military tree, which might be too narrow-minded.



Of course, my idea would work better with trees that are exclusive, so we would choose between very different styles to play the endgame. Basically like choosing Zerg, Humans or Protoss. Each of those lategame trees should allow things we couldn't do without it. Surely this shouldn't be exagerrated - we should still be able to win by conquest even if we choose order.




Further ideas:

- peaceful tall empires could get a policy centered around few and elite/high XP units.

- maybe it's possible to unlock certain buildings with policies that specifically help with one of the three playstyles (or maybe it's enough to boost one very characteristic building with a policy per tree)?

- Since we talked about "paying" for oppertunities with culture, faith or many other yields not usually used to "pay" for things, could we give order a policy that allows us to pay for units with science, while autocracy pays with population and freedom with culture? A bold suggestion, I know, just brainstorming here

 

[mitsho]

Outside of the box thinking is always good. Looking at your examples though, I feel the need for policies to be broadly applicable as well. Cheaper Vanguards sounds very narrow. Make it non-strategic foot units and it sounds much better already. Or ranged attacks in general (and not only aircrafts). Ideally, these policies would make us change the way we play.

Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to tie buildings to policies. Better effects on policies yes, unlocking them, no. And I don't think peaceful tall empires should get any bonus to combat at all, they should suck there. Hard.

Other effects I could imagine (not saying they're balanced):

• rushing-by-population: The Civ4 slavery effect. Makes you focus on food and growth.
• change focus in puppets (but nothing else)
• changes/adds % of faith income to culture/science
• doubles Opportunities rate (not liking that one very much)
• build wonders with faith (has been brought up I know, but I wanted to repeat the suggestion, it isn't mine )

 

[mystikx21]

And I don't think peaceful tall empires should get any bonus to combat at all, they should suck there. Hard.

Freedom gets a 25% friendly territory bonus. I think that's probably too high and if reduced should be combined with some other effect (a boost to landmarks perhaps?), but I think that's fine to have peaceful-tall empires have a defensive bonus late in the game. I think autocracy does okay at this kind of effect already, but I'd be willing to see some more combat related effects in other trees than the two militaristic ones. Tradition and Freedom and Liberty and even Commerce all have them. Order and Piety and perhaps even Patronage would make sense here too.

Ideally, these policies would make us change the way we play.

I'd agree it would best to have policies that change the way you would play rather than merely increase your ability to play the way you were already going. But this is also a harder method to provide a good balance that way. 1-2 policies per tree might operate that way already and to be honest, if they're powerful enough, they will change the way you play anyway to the point they can become too powerful (liberty opener with 3 strong palaces instead of 3 decent ones, tradition with high culture per happiness, honor with culture per barb kills).

Good specialised policies will always be like that. If they are surrounded by policies that make following that specialisation more effective, then the tree is as a whole fine. This is probably why Order and Patronage and Piety are so off as their augmenting policies are very weak or don't mesh with the specialisation while other trees do.

If Order had a opener or policy that improved new cities with free infrastructure or population, we would play differently than a set of policies that boosts production in already our high production cities. If piety provided faith-bought units or another pantheon belief say, it would be a distinct advantage to pursuing religious power. If Patronage provided strong benefits from CS allies, it would be an useful advantage to courting minor powers. And so on.

 

[Tomice]

Whoa, I just realized how much bringing the famous "whipping" back could alter the way we play. Probably an awesome new addition to variety, but a beast to balance. Not sure if that's even realistically possible...

Back to reality: It would be very much possible to include rather weak policies into trees if they are mutually exclusive. Even when choosing freedom, we still could pick a military policy, but it would never be as strong as the autocracy stuff. That's the price for having better choices for lets say culture.

 

[Ahriman]

I have a feeling we previously would have automatically placed any kind of military-related policy ideas in the order tree because it is "the" military tree, which might be too narrow-minded.

As mentioned above, brainstorming is always good, but I don't see a problem with one of the tree late-game trees being militarily oriented and the others not being oriented that way. Military is only one victory path and one strategy, putting offensive military bonuses into every trees I think is narrow by trying to force everyone into a militaristic playstyle.

 

[Kakafika]

Now I want to find and reinstall Civ4....

 

[Thalassicus]

Gold lets us rush construction in the early game, though the difference is it costs a national supply (gold) instead of a local supply (population). Production builds things with local supply, so I think the production/gold system is enough.

@Tomice
I believe your basic idea is conquest and peaceful players have different military needs, so we shouldn't lump all military stuff into one category? I think that makes sense. I'll think about it more in the days ahead.

@mystikx21
I avoided giving details about policy plans because when I posted details in the vaccinations thread, people said everything was wrong, without providing helpful alternatives. It was very discouraging. I figured I'd try a different approach here, focusing on broader topics, but that didn't work either. I'm just not very good at explaining things lately.

I'm searching for the best way for everyone to receive policies at about the same rate, but in different ways. This has been a goal of mine for years. The old method of improving things other than culture buildings was not popular with some people. After reading Tomice's thoughts, I figured we can explore new ways of doing it. I'm now searching for ways to give military players incentives to get culture buildings, encouraging us to pursue strategies we might not have thought about.

Please ignore culture victories for now (I can't detail the reasons why at this time).

 

[Tomice]

Could we create a policy that prevents destruction of cultural buildings after city capture or something similar?

Or maybe a "victory column" building that appears in our capital after a great victory (e.g. capturing a large city)