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Do you think the social policies are evenly balanced now?
- Thread starter Artifex1
- Start date
I think that Liberty and Tradition are now more closely balanced but Liberty is better for stronger religion influence with increasingly wide empires. That doesnt make liberty better; it is just something to think about when avoiding building a wide empire.
I dont think that Honor really is even remotely as good as Tradition or Liberty and that, that tree needs to be re-done.
Just my opinion folks...
Udey1
Prince
As a oft-warmonger, i think honor holds well. The tradition got a boost (i do love tradition) but when you are going war, and especially early game war, honor is for you.
I'm inclined to say Honor and Autocracy are a bit weak. They have their uses, but I find it's rare I ever grab them over the other SPs available in the same eras. Even in games where I'm going full on warmongering (ie: where they're supposed to be no-brainers) they don't feel as powerful as the other trees.
Piety might need a tiny bit of a buff, although I would understand if it got left alone. It feels a bit too situational to me, only ever being a better choice than rationalism in a few very specific scenarios. As per the other two, I'd like it to be a viable option more often than it currently is.
Piety might need a tiny bit of a buff, although I would understand if it got left alone. It feels a bit too situational to me, only ever being a better choice than rationalism in a few very specific scenarios. As per the other two, I'd like it to be a viable option more often than it currently is.
thadian
Kami of Awakened Dreamers
I want policy saving as the default option, with a 50% culture penalty for each policy saved. Each policy not taken will hold back the culture of your empire from growth. then i will feel it is balanced.
I've been playing alot more Honor now than ever. It gives the highest per city culture and happiness which i think makes the most impact in the kind of late games i get into. It saves you significant gold throughout, a flat out stronger army, and the early game culture boost is nice if you keep up the killing (easy to abuse). I find in G+K i use my armies more early game in CS quests, and i also find i build more walls than vanilla as it is a useful building for military strength and has no maintenance which is now a bigger issue to deal with (negative gold? Build walls)
I think rebalancing Liberty is one of the best adjustments they've made. I still like Tradition but it still seems to situational: i need to be a non-war civ with little room to expand or a starting spot with substantial food. It rarely seems optimal. I think they could afford to boost the wonder buff just a tad
I think rebalancing Liberty is one of the best adjustments they've made. I still like Tradition but it still seems to situational: i need to be a non-war civ with little room to expand or a starting spot with substantial food. It rarely seems optimal. I think they could afford to boost the wonder buff just a tad
I take Honor in rare cases (i.e. Songhai - Encampment-based economy) and Autocracy has some nice policies, too (double strategic resources, which is great if your country is lean on Uranium, for example).
Overall, I'd say they're weaker, but you can still justify taking them in certain circumstances.
Overall, I'd say they're weaker, but you can still justify taking them in certain circumstances.
thadian
Kami of Awakened Dreamers
To be honest i do think honor and freedom have less value - i will never choose freedom over order, i will never use piety over rationalism and i would only choose honor if choosing it was my only way out of "swapping branches" but i would rather take patronage for that.
I use honor a lot more often than I did before, but I am playing on higher difficulties and the early general is very handy - as is the happy boost for every defensive structure plus the reduced upgrade costs.
I use tradition a lot less. I go liberty very often.
I kind of think Piety should be an ancient era available policy nowadays. I guess I'm not sold on it and Rationalism (the science based tree) really being mutually exclusive, I've often wanted to partake of both. Lots of scientific advancement was done by the most pious members of society... if anything Piety should be opposed to Order
I use tradition a lot less. I go liberty very often.
I kind of think Piety should be an ancient era available policy nowadays. I guess I'm not sold on it and Rationalism (the science based tree) really being mutually exclusive, I've often wanted to partake of both. Lots of scientific advancement was done by the most pious members of society... if anything Piety should be opposed to Order
Rationalism to good in every situation other than a OCC culture game. Piety only good in this scenario.
Early game i find its always Tradition vs Liberty, Honor is never really an option for me.
Post G&K i haven't really used the 3 endgame trees much other than freedom for OCC culture games. I usually end up with only moderate culture enough to fill out Tradition & rationalism in majority of games. But makes for some fast science victories with RA spam.
Early game i find its always Tradition vs Liberty, Honor is never really an option for me.
Post G&K i haven't really used the 3 endgame trees much other than freedom for OCC culture games. I usually end up with only moderate culture enough to fill out Tradition & rationalism in majority of games. But makes for some fast science victories with RA spam.
Esperr
King
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2012
- Messages
- 868
No not really, tradition is still hands down better then lib and honor on the higher diffucutly just because the comp will always out sprawl you and honor doesnt help much with a defensive war. Rationalism has obviously always been better then peity unless your going for tech. Commerce and Patronage wont get touched because by the time you pop them your already in the renaisance and taking rationalism and freedom has always been far and away just plain better then order and autocracy litterally just for the two right policies alone.
But this is talking about immortal deity games. On lower difficulty where you can keep up in tech more naturally taking stuff like commerce and rationalism can be pretty rediculous.
But this is talking about immortal deity games. On lower difficulty where you can keep up in tech more naturally taking stuff like commerce and rationalism can be pretty rediculous.
Liberty and Tradition are situationnal. They made a good job at balancing them. Honor is way better for your 2nd tree.
1st tree
Tall and Peaceful victories---> Tradition(optimal for emperor or higher))
Fast Domination--->Liberty(optimal for immortal or below)
Domination, mid expansion--->Tradition(optimal for Deity)
Wide and peaceful victories--->Liberty(optimal for king or below)
2nd tree(or 3rd for some situations)
Cultural--->Piety, Freedom
Science--->Rationalism
Diplomatic--->Rationalism, Patronnage
Domination--->Commerce(watered maps), Honor
Industrial trees come to late for fast finishes but you can open them for some short strategies(like for buying GPs or getting more happiness)
Edit : forgot about honor and commerce(added)
1st tree
Tall and Peaceful victories---> Tradition(optimal for emperor or higher))
Fast Domination--->Liberty(optimal for immortal or below)
Domination, mid expansion--->Tradition(optimal for Deity)
Wide and peaceful victories--->Liberty(optimal for king or below)
2nd tree(or 3rd for some situations)
Cultural--->Piety, Freedom
Science--->Rationalism
Diplomatic--->Rationalism, Patronnage
Domination--->Commerce(watered maps), Honor
Industrial trees come to late for fast finishes but you can open them for some short strategies(like for buying GPs or getting more happiness)
Edit : forgot about honor and commerce(added)
chazzycat
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2010
- Messages
- 2,918
I actually think they are pretty close to being balanced now. As for the early ones liberty & tradition are MUCH better balanced, it can be a difficult decision. Honor is definitely not on par with those two - but can be good for 2nd choice. Piety is perhaps the weakest branch, but it can have a powerful effect if you play to it's strengths (ie. early religion heavy focus). Commerce is MUCH improved - buffing protectionism was exactly what it needed. Patronage has always been pretty solid for a CS-heavy game, and obviously rationalism has always been pretty good. buying scientists with faith is pretty huge.
The late 3 are pretty well balanced as well. Autocracy got the short end of the stick when it comes to GP purchases, but otherwise it's a very good tree for domination. Order and Freedom are both great for their respective strategies.
The biggest imbalance is probably between piety and rationalism...but then again it's much more of a viable strategy to switch them now. get the fast shrines & temples to get your religion...after they are built switch to rationalism.
The late 3 are pretty well balanced as well. Autocracy got the short end of the stick when it comes to GP purchases, but otherwise it's a very good tree for domination. Order and Freedom are both great for their respective strategies.
The biggest imbalance is probably between piety and rationalism...but then again it's much more of a viable strategy to switch them now. get the fast shrines & temples to get your religion...after they are built switch to rationalism.
Mostly. Piety needs a little buff since it's stuck being both the culture and faith tree now. It doesn't do as good a job getting you culture victory as it used to.
Also, Order and Autocracy suffer from the fact that they both come late in the game and encourage large empires making it nearly impossible to adopt them and put them to full use right away and still fill them out. While you can afford to have a large empire better than ever in GnK (lots more happiness than before), what good is it to take these trees if you can only afford 1 to 2 policies within them before the costs get insane/the game is over? I think they need to add something in both of these trees to offset their costs.
Something such as:
When you adopt a policy in Order you instantly get 2000 culture towards your next policy.
When you adopt a policy in Autocracy, 30% of the culture cost is applied towards your next policy.
That type of thing needs to be baked into the opener of both of those to offset them coming late and being designed for wide empires.
Also, Order and Autocracy suffer from the fact that they both come late in the game and encourage large empires making it nearly impossible to adopt them and put them to full use right away and still fill them out. While you can afford to have a large empire better than ever in GnK (lots more happiness than before), what good is it to take these trees if you can only afford 1 to 2 policies within them before the costs get insane/the game is over? I think they need to add something in both of these trees to offset their costs.
Something such as:
When you adopt a policy in Order you instantly get 2000 culture towards your next policy.
When you adopt a policy in Autocracy, 30% of the culture cost is applied towards your next policy.
That type of thing needs to be baked into the opener of both of those to offset them coming late and being designed for wide empires.
Piety and Freedom are crap. And I shall now diverge for a moment.
The policy system is a failure altogether. It should at the very least be proportional to the map size. Because it isn't, you are punished for settling free land. In an ideal world increasing the amount of AIs proportionally to the map size would fix that, but because of randomly generated maps, you will always have one or more civs which will land with a lot of land.
If you go beyond 4 cities, even with Liberty, you begin shooting yourself. That's why you see a lot of weird warmonger empires with <4 Player-controlled cities and the rest as puppets. It's so people can grab something like autocracy without waiting eons. It's really not possible to warmonger without those critical social policies, because of spiraling unhappiness as well as the combat&production debuff and rebels.
In other words,
If you want to play culturally, you need social policies.
If you want to play diplomatically, you need social policies.
If you want to be a warmonger, you need social policies...wait, what?
If you want to expand everywhere, you need social policies....o...kay...
I can't settle all the awesome land near me because then I'm behind. The math has been done. If you go beyond 4-5 cities, you will never come back in the green in terms of culture by the end of the game. Also the Civ V AI is bad. But the current state of the game does not encourage any sort of land grab. It feels really awkward moving into the mid-late game where there are still vast stretches of land to acquire.
A hypothetical solution to this is to change the social policy culture requirement. Hopefully somebody will mod this, but social policies should work on a flat rate, divisible by the amount of population in a civilization and their city: pop ratio, which would be determined by dividing the total number of citizens for each civ by their number of cities, then averaging it out. (How many citizens per city?) Ex: ( M + C ) / P
Where M= Map size, C= Cities, and = Cityop ratio.
So in other words, if you're a tall civ, then you would raise the average number of citizens per city, thus making it harder for warmongers to adopt social policies. This would ideally be for people playing culturally. If you want to expand everywhere, you can do so and by allocating culture specialists as well as growth in your cities, you will eventually break even with tall empires. If you're a warmonger, you don't need to feel scared about annexing those few cities as long as you can bring them up to speed relatively quickly.
Foreseeable problems:
- This would destroy OCC players.
-It would also hurt civs that started or settled in horrible positions.
The first 3 trees are fine. You can go Tradition + 1pt Honor, Liberty + 1pt Honor, Tradition, Liberty or Honor. Pure honor openings are viable.
Piety has an identity crisis. It's split between faith and culture, and does both horribly. Change how the tree diverges. It feels really quirky right now in how people progress to the last policy in the tree.
Freedom is awful and no explanation is needed. If one is needed, admit yourself to your local mental health clinic.
I am absolutely appalled at how nobody bothered to buff or change the Freedom tree in any way except for the ability to buy great artists. Shame on you. Shame on your incompetence.
Firaxis is amazing for their ability to fix things, then completely ignore completely foreseeable problems. I refuse to believe that they didn't see the problem. Somebody must have seen it then decided to ignore it so they could ship the product and book the revenue in the same quarter. In the gaming world, we call this the "EA games strategy", and it's doing horribly. In fact, EA games is responsible for killing the command and conquer franchise by doing the exact same thing Firaxis is doing now. Ship the product, patch it later, do a very crappy job patching it. Release an expansion, patch it later, do a very crappy job patching it. By the time EA got to Command and Conquer 4, the community was done. They did wave after wave of rushed balanced patches which only made the game worse and did nothing to fix and fundamental game design problems that couldn't be fixed by issuing a patch.
The policy system is a failure altogether. It should at the very least be proportional to the map size. Because it isn't, you are punished for settling free land. In an ideal world increasing the amount of AIs proportionally to the map size would fix that, but because of randomly generated maps, you will always have one or more civs which will land with a lot of land.
If you go beyond 4 cities, even with Liberty, you begin shooting yourself. That's why you see a lot of weird warmonger empires with <4 Player-controlled cities and the rest as puppets. It's so people can grab something like autocracy without waiting eons. It's really not possible to warmonger without those critical social policies, because of spiraling unhappiness as well as the combat&production debuff and rebels.
In other words,
If you want to play culturally, you need social policies.
If you want to play diplomatically, you need social policies.
If you want to be a warmonger, you need social policies...wait, what?
If you want to expand everywhere, you need social policies....o...kay...
I can't settle all the awesome land near me because then I'm behind. The math has been done. If you go beyond 4-5 cities, you will never come back in the green in terms of culture by the end of the game. Also the Civ V AI is bad. But the current state of the game does not encourage any sort of land grab. It feels really awkward moving into the mid-late game where there are still vast stretches of land to acquire.
A hypothetical solution to this is to change the social policy culture requirement. Hopefully somebody will mod this, but social policies should work on a flat rate, divisible by the amount of population in a civilization and their city: pop ratio, which would be determined by dividing the total number of citizens for each civ by their number of cities, then averaging it out. (How many citizens per city?) Ex: ( M + C ) / P
Where M= Map size, C= Cities, and = City
op ratio.So in other words, if you're a tall civ, then you would raise the average number of citizens per city, thus making it harder for warmongers to adopt social policies. This would ideally be for people playing culturally. If you want to expand everywhere, you can do so and by allocating culture specialists as well as growth in your cities, you will eventually break even with tall empires. If you're a warmonger, you don't need to feel scared about annexing those few cities as long as you can bring them up to speed relatively quickly.
Foreseeable problems:
- This would destroy OCC players.
-It would also hurt civs that started or settled in horrible positions.
The first 3 trees are fine. You can go Tradition + 1pt Honor, Liberty + 1pt Honor, Tradition, Liberty or Honor. Pure honor openings are viable.
Piety has an identity crisis. It's split between faith and culture, and does both horribly. Change how the tree diverges. It feels really quirky right now in how people progress to the last policy in the tree.
Freedom is awful and no explanation is needed. If one is needed, admit yourself to your local mental health clinic.
I am absolutely appalled at how nobody bothered to buff or change the Freedom tree in any way except for the ability to buy great artists. Shame on you. Shame on your incompetence.
Firaxis is amazing for their ability to fix things, then completely ignore completely foreseeable problems. I refuse to believe that they didn't see the problem. Somebody must have seen it then decided to ignore it so they could ship the product and book the revenue in the same quarter. In the gaming world, we call this the "EA games strategy", and it's doing horribly. In fact, EA games is responsible for killing the command and conquer franchise by doing the exact same thing Firaxis is doing now. Ship the product, patch it later, do a very crappy job patching it. Release an expansion, patch it later, do a very crappy job patching it. By the time EA got to Command and Conquer 4, the community was done. They did wave after wave of rushed balanced patches which only made the game worse and did nothing to fix and fundamental game design problems that couldn't be fixed by issuing a patch.
It doesn't seem to be very significant most of the time though when SP costs are over 6000 by then.
thadian
Kami of Awakened Dreamers
no. it is not overpowered and making rationalism worse would not make piety better. Piety would become more... "useful" to me if it gave some kind of faith to science conversion or something. I agree rationalism is good - but by the time you can choose it, you probably won't be finishing the tree unless your sandbagging - don't worry, i sandbag all the time.
Depends on the city you capture. It's a boost of 10x the culture output. Knock out a wonder-spammer and you can get a nice gain
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