Current Policy Ratings

[mitsho]

It might be interesting to shift the Tall bonuses (like the 5 ) to the palaces in order to make them spread out a bit and weaken the empire a bit, One City Challenges should be the exception after all, not the rule, you'd need 3 cities in every game...

Haven't looked at the new version, but +2 to villages in tradition certainly is too strong? More Village Spam?

Agree with mystikx21 that strenghtening honor at the expense of nationalism is bad. Conquest already has the benefits of - you know - conquest.

 

[mystikx21]

I don't think +2 to villages in tradition is too strong per se, but it's unnecessary versus the buildings they provided before now that it properly adds culture and free buildings. The problem with it now was the hall building, not that it (or tradition) was too weak. I'm fine with culture on palaces from policies but the halls probably should only have culture on the same grounds.

It's a poor synergy and a duplicate effort to strengthen villages that are already really strong. I still think much culture should come from buildings rather than landmarks and villages. Buildings cost money. Villages do not.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree with most of the points here, but I also think +2 to villages in tradition is too strong for an early game policy tree.

We seem to have lost the design that earlier policy trees are weaker than later ones. Those early ones have few requirements and are around for a long time, it's very important that they not be too strong.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

Greetings all, been lurking here a few months and can't play Civ V without these mods!

Community seems very civil (yukyuk) and intelligent so thought I would join the theory crafting fun.

For my first thought I want to talk about the piety tree.

Now, its gained some worth of late but I still think it has some ugly holes. Mainly the Charity policy and to a lesser degree the dull closer. While I like the fact the tree has other perks besides just faith (like patronage with CS), like patronage I think it would be nice to have it be about faith in that it gives you perks for it that are hard to get elsewhere.

I have two suggestions;
1. Get rid of Charity and replace it with "Commandments" which increase religious pressure. I think(?) this is different from the rate in which your religion spreads and factors more into direct competition with other religions. To my knowledge there are only a few sources for pressure, the city state friend spread belief increasing it by an insane 1000% (ive found it more or less impossible to convert a CS for more than a few turns if another religion has this belief) and the grand temple increasing it overall by 100%. I think that would be much more interesting and useful than a little gold hike.

Detour a moment to ask how pressure and spread speed are related? And does actual faith production factor into it?

2. While the finisher is ok, I would love if it had a further effect, namely, something to slow or stop getting rolled by great prophets. Perhaps not letting them come in if you don't have open borders or letting inquisitors damage them in the field or some such. I understand that if you stack inquisitors in your cities this will stop them but this creates some really annoying issues.
While the pain of "repairing" all the damage a GP can do, I think most of all just keeping them rotting in those cities is needlessly annoying and a bit of a faith sink. When they are sitting there taking up the noncombat-unit slot you can't buy any other non combat unit in that city and have to move them out; further, you can't have another NCU take refuge in the city in emergencies without moving them out. Something to slow those GPs down in-case I'm competing with a faith juggernaut would be so worth a slight nerf if needed to the -25% purchase cost.

In short, there is racing to get religions - which there are many choice perks for - and actually competing with established religions - where the options are lacking.
I'll think about the Order tree some and give my two cents later.

 

[mitsho]

Agree on both points, and piety is set to be changed anyways. The pressure policy wasn't possible before Firaxis introduced the Grand Temple in the latest patch, but now it is, so...

Are Great Prophets affected by "attrition" btw? Maybe they should/be weaker there.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Ahriman
Citystate allies give 3 yield per era. I forgot to explicitly mention the per-era part.

The Patronage policies add 6 and 6 per era (modifiers included). With the Patronage tree filled about 60-80% of our yield from citystates comes from policies. I'm concerned that if we make it rely more on policies, we're less likely to ally with CSs without those policies, and fewer allies reduces our incentive to get the policies at all. It creates a downward cycle where we want neither the policies nor citystates. I'm worried we're already in that place, and don't want to make it worse.

Does this make sense?

I'll give an example. Say we have a maritime CS ally giving us 3*5 = 15 in the Industrial era. Filling out the Patronage tree increases our reward from that ally by 2*2*3*5 = 60 yield, a 400% increase. 80% of our CS yield reward now comes from policies (60/75).

If we want to buff Patronage, why don't we merge some policies? This avoids the problem described above. We will need to create new policy effects if we do this.