General discussion for civics

Maybe it is cheapest to have the starting civics but that doesn't immediately mean they are the best civics to have. There's so many other things... so many. The cost is only one factor, and not often even the most important one by a mile.
Like negative science or education, and if you want to make it less damaging to early game (but much more to a developed nation), you turn it into -XX% instead of a flat value. With that the civic can be as cheap as you can imagine - even negative maintenance wouldn't make it a good choice for a more developed empire.
 
I do feel that it would be nice to reinstall the values we used to have on the city limits happiness penalties so that if that option was on there's at least that to add to the purpose of the gov civics.
Harrier already did this back in August. Check out the SVN for his last Commit. The Old City Limit values have been back in the Mod since August. Use the Option and see. Or look into the Files, it's there.

Commit - harrier123 - 10139 - Friday August 17th, 2018 - 9:07 pm - "Changed "City limits" option (in start game screens). Now more cities per civic cause mor unhappiness.".
 
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I haven't seen the latest ones, but in the current Government civics until a few hours ago, gold simply dwarfs every other consideration, given that you have the civic city limits deactivated by the default option. There are no limits to expansion, except the size of your continent and the proximity of multiple AI. If the continent is large enough and the AIs far enough away, the sky's the limit (eg. 40 cities in early Medieval as I have now).
If you want City Limits On turn it On. No one is forcing you to not play with it. Default on or off does not handcuff you.

And the Gov't Civic category is one of the Most natural places in the whole Civic Set to control Gold. To give and to take away and/or to balance. Just only looking at the Gov't Civics and not taking into consideration of how they interact with the Other Civics is a bit myopic. It is why I asked for details from you but got none. A broad sweeping generalization makes the argument, that there is too much this or that, a needle in the haystack hunt.

Things are being changed but in stages. The 1st stage that has been committed to the mod is just a footing to set the foundation and stabilize the building og the House of Civics.
 
Harrier already did this back in August. Check out the SVN for his last Commit. The Old City Limit values have been back in the Mod since August. Use the Option and see. Or look into the Files, it's there.

Commit - harrier123 - 10139 - Friday August 17th, 2018 - 9:07 pm - "Changed "City limits" option (in start game screens). Now more cities per civic cause mor unhappiness.".
Cool. Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware this had been addressed but haven't looked directly at civics much either. Usually keep abreast of SVN changes though - was it posted in the SVN thread?
 
Like negative science or education, and if you want to make it less damaging to early game (but much more to a developed nation), you turn it into -XX% instead of a flat value. With that the civic can be as cheap as you can imagine - even negative maintenance wouldn't make it a good choice for a more developed empire.
Very Good point tmv
 
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Cool. Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware this had been addressed but haven't looked directly at civics much either. Usually keep abreast of SVN changes though - was it posted in the SVN thread?
I believe it was.
 
If you want City Limits On turn it On. No one is forcing you to not play with it. Default on or off does not handcuff you.

And the Gov't Civic category is one of the Most natural places in the whole Civic Set to control Gold. To give and to take away and/or to balance. Just only looking at the Gov't Civics and not taking into consideration of how they interact with the Other Civics is a bit myopic. It is why I asked for details from you but got none. A broad sweeping generalization makes the argument, that there is too much this or that, a needle in the haystack hunt.

Things are being changed but in stages. The 1st stage that has been committed to the mod is just a footing to set the foundation and stabilize the building og the House of Civics.
Excellent, Joe!
 
Cool. Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware this had been addressed but haven't looked directly at civics much either. Usually keep abreast of SVN changes though - was it posted in the SVN thread?
I find myself spending more and more time with a Mastery game that I would like to play to maximum Tech/Science. It relaxes me around Midnight or So!
 
I find myself spending more and more time with a Mastery game that I would like to play to maximum Tech/Science. It relaxes me around Midnight or So!
Are you the player that used to live in Macomb and then moved to Rockford?

Any suggestions on the Civics that you might have?
 
2nd set of Civic changes Committed. More work yet to be done.
 
More Civic changes set 2A Custom Religions Module
 
I'm loving most of the balance factors in play right now (played up to Mid Ancient so far) but I noticed with Metals that it's all negative modifiers and the starting default has no modifiers or tags in use at all. So... why would anyone take it ever? Does it change as you go somehow? Otherwise liking it mostly. I'm also not entirely sure that there's enough benefit in city states to justify taking it but at least it's pretty close. I'm just feeling that those 2% commerce modifiers are probably a little TOO soft - 5% might be more persuasive and wouldn't throw the game balance off I don't think. Maybe. Just sharing impressions as I go.

I've also noticed that DH is right about the build times on buildings, that it gets harder as you go in a touch too problematic manner. I can fix that on my end. Not a problem to resolve - just needed to experience it to get an idea of what to tweak for that.
 
Thanks for the feedback. :)

My own Long game has just reached Classical Era and I'm dead last in the rankings on Immortal, C2C_World Map, start everywhere, low sea, with 7 AI. The Lead Civ has 23 cities (and is almost half way thru the Classical era), while all my neighbors (3) and I are at 17. I just caught up to them as they all 3 were leading me at one point by 5-6 cities. And I finally got Iron too!

The change from the default Currency starting Civic to Metals removes a starting -10% Gold malus (if I'm reading my notes roght). City States gives a + Gold (10%)% from the Num Cities Maint Mod. So the 2 come about very close together and gives a boost to gold during the Early Ancient at a time when it is needed. Though not near as big a boost as it was previously. You still have to budget well. And getting a new city out of the Negative Education "well/hole" along with curbing climbing Crime and Disease means you have to pay more attention to them as well.

As I progress thru Classical I will see if the changes made mutes the sudden burst of Gold, that DH always complained about, during the late Classical. Part of DH's problem is self made in that in his Noble Diff games he is Always hoggin' all the WW's by that time. That in and of itself the diff level played and having most WWs will throw the gold balance out the window.
 
Thanks for the feedback. :)

My own Long game has just reached Classical Era and I'm dead last in the rankings on Immortal, C2C_World Map, start everywhere, low sea, with 7 AI. The Lead Civ has 23 cities (and is almost half way thru the Classical era), while all my neighbors (3) and I are at 17. I just caught up to them as they all 3 were leading me at one point by 5-6 cities. And I finally got Iron too!

The change from the default Currency starting Civic to Metals removes a starting -10% Gold malus (if I'm reading my notes roght). City States gives a + Gold (10%)% from the Num Cities Maint Mod. So the 2 come about very close together and gives a boost to gold during the Early Ancient at a time when it is needed. Though not near as big a boost as it was previously. You still have to budget well. And getting a new city out of the Negative Education "well/hole" along with curbing climbing Crime and Disease means you have to pay more attention to them as well.

As I progress thru Classical I will see if the changes made mutes the sudden burst of Gold, that DH always complained about, during the late Classical. Part of DH's problem is self made in that in his Noble Diff games he is Always hoggin' all the WW's by that time. That in and of itself the diff level played and having most WWs will throw the gold balance out the window.
Thunderbrd is right about the Metals civic.

It has no any maluses in the starting Currency civic (1st screenshot), but it has -10% gold in the Metal civic (2nd screenshot). I tried it also because as it happens in my game I just researched Metals. With the starting civic I had -11 gold/turn (3rd screenshot), after two turns anarchy it became -86 gold/turn (4th screenshot). The screenshot shows -84 gold/turn because I lost a worker and my unit maintenance went down 2 golds.
 

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As I progress thru Classical I will see if the changes made mutes the sudden burst of Gold, that DH always complained about, during the late Classical. Part of DH's problem is self made in that in his Noble Diff games he is Always hoggin' all the WW's by that time. That in and of itself the diff level played and having most WWs will throw the gold balance out the window.
@Dancing Hoskuld builds ALL possible buildings not just WWs from what I heard.
I'm not sure if Thunderbrd does that.

Generally thing can be lethal for new cities or empire full of weakly developed cities or mostly harmless if you keep building absolutely everything.
That is absolutely no building left behind unless it spawns criminals.

In case of Metals it seems like this civic is meant for map full of hills where you can put mines, and empires that have all +%gold buildings
 
The change from the default Currency starting Civic to Metals removes a starting -10% Gold malus (if I'm reading my notes roght). City States gives a + Gold (10%)% from the Num Cities Maint Mod.
I'm going to have to load the game to see, but from what I recall it added an UPKEEP PENALTY from Num City Maint (AND from Distance to Capital) so the opposite of your intention. AND there is no -10% gold malus currently on Default. I can believe in your intended design but I don't think it's setup as intended.

Looking at the screenies in the next post, yeah, it's actually even worse than that. It says it all there really. There IS a small benefit, an extra Commerce from mines (if you have them yet since this comes AT Mining), but boy that's a hell of a trade off in gold (when gold is already challenging at this stage) for a small improvement in research (IF you can afford to slider all that Commerce into research anyhow.)

Overall, I'm finding gold to be very pleasingly challenging and it's nearly perfectly limiting efforts to grow, so let's not correct it TOO much ;). And trying to keep crime and disease in check while doing it is also great fun (though I think I agree with someone who said units aren't quite influential enough at the moment - which is good that we have that margin to work with. Something else I'd like to address.)

Early on in this game we (playing a team game so the comparison might be a little easier for us on our Emperor game) trounced all the AIs on our continent with a marauding warband BUT they were getting out ahead of us and although we've caught up to most other teams and individual players on other continents, there's one in particular that's 3 times ahead of us individually in points. He's a bit scary now.

I'm not sure if Thunderbrd does that.
The capital keeps up with buildings but it struggles to do so and it's always hungry for more production. Additional cities are not even done building purely their production buildings (and I pride myself on having some advanced tricks to speed this up a bit but even that's not helping much) before they hit pop 6 and get all the additional ones to build. It's fun but a touch too much. I know exactly what's throwing off the curve. The Prehistoric era couldn't be more perfect with this though. So it's the era modifiers that are currently unnecessary as the arc of production cost increases is perfect so far without the need for a modifier at all, a rather impressive feat actually.
 
Yeah after I posted I looked over my notes again and found that I had not set Metals up as I had written down. ( I have terrible handwriting too! :p ) So I will be rethinking it a little. One thing is I had the NoC Maintmodifier higher than what I had written in the notes. The -10% Gold is also out of place. That was supposed to be on another Civic.

So Good catch!

And a quick question for your Emperor Game, Are you able to keep the research slider at 100%? Or are you finding you have to back it off 10 or 15%?
 
Thunderbrd is right about the Metals civic.

It has no any maluses in the starting Currency civic (1st screenshot), but it has -10% gold in the Metal civic (2nd screenshot). I tried it also because as it happens in my game I just researched Metals. With the starting civic I had -11 gold/turn (3rd screenshot), after two turns anarchy it became -86 gold/turn (4th screenshot). The screenshot shows -84 gold/turn because I lost a worker and my unit maintenance went down 2 golds.

Correct the default/Starting Civic is meant to be "empty", as the intent is there is no "hard" currency in the game at that point. Your Barter Civic at that time is your income producer.

Also at the time of your screenshot you are running your Research slider at 100%. The goal is to Force you to lower it to the 80-90% range to have a then +gold/turn. So if you reduce your slider to 90% do you still nave a Negative Gold/turn? How about at 85%? Or 80%.

Also what Game Speed and Difficulty level is your game Usul? These are important details for me to know.

I will be making some small changes to Metal Civic. But I'm not going to open the gold flood gates by any means.

All Civics, in play at their time of usage with all other Civics also in usage, are considered in the setting of the bonus and malus. Hope I made sense there. Meaning you can not really cherry pick 1 Civic without looking at the Total Civics in use. That is the intent anyway. And is still a work in progress.

And Thank you for your feedback and input! :) Very much appreciated.
 
Small changes to No Currency and Metals Commited to SVN.
 
Yeah after I posted I looked over my notes again and found that I had not set Metals up as I had written down. ( I have terrible handwriting too! :p ) So I will be rethinking it a little. One thing is I had the NoC Maintmodifier higher than what I had written in the notes. The -10% Gold is also out of place. That was supposed to be on another Civic.

So Good catch!

And a quick question for your Emperor Game, Are you able to keep the research slider at 100%? Or are you finding you have to back it off 10 or 15%?
I'm able to keep it at 100% but it's because I don't grow unless I can so I probably let it hold me back too much tbh.
 
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