General discussion for civics

[JosEPh_II]

Crawling...

What suggestions do you have for Ren, Industrial, and Modern Eras? I have not gotten a single game into these eras yet.

Been a year of distractions... and I have not played since I hurt both hips back in Sept. I'm fine now physically. But because I have played BtS starting with RoM, thru AND/AND2, since early 2007. Plus C2C from it's inception, with side Mods like Krome since 2010. I've not been in any hurry to Jump right back into Hours A Day of playing C2C atm. Mental break along with the forced physical break. It would seem I'm not the only one that has slowed down this year as well.

Has there been much clamor for changes around here? Or just on Discord?

 

[Thunderbrd]

It would seem I'm not the only one that has slowed down this year as well.

Work has been... demanding af.

That said, looking like we'll be trying to purchase a home this month for the first time, which not too long ago seemed like it would absolutely never even possibly happen ever in my lifetime.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Work has been... demanding af.

That said, looking like we'll be trying to purchase a home this month for the first time, which not too long ago seemed like it would absolutely never even possibly happen ever in my lifetime.

Congratulations!

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Thunderbrd,
Do not let fear control you as you buy. Be steadfast in your decision making and stick to your goals. You will reap rewards if you do so.

This is my 3rd House. And from the mistakes of the 1st 2 houses I learned how to be more focused on the needs vs the wants of Home ownership. In doing so I paid off a 30 yr note in 15 years.

You will do this.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You make a good point because the truth is the market is climbing quickly and the rates about to jump so we're trying to sneak in just before we either get priced out or suffer higher rates. There are really only a few things we super value aside from the overall general healthy quality of the home though so hopefully it won't be too hard to find in our range and our credit is pretty good right now - working for a loan officer will help with getting some discounts on overhead fees and scoring a good rate. But it's a snatch and grab war here in vegas and has been all year where many buyers with mortgage needs are simply losing out to immediate elevated cash offers from companies trying to buy up the homes to turn all into rentals. What they are finding though is that it's backfiring a bit because people here are smart enough not to rent homes and make themselves payment poor without getting their own equity out of that much expense. So there's a little backing off there and with luck, in the next month or two just the right thing will come up and we'll jump all over it.

When you talk about needs vs wants its kinda funny because I do chastise myself about that already a bit, given one of our top requests here is a pool, lol.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Per comversation with Toffer90 have removed all Rev sections from All Preh Era Cvics. Many were just set to "0" for all tags.

Also Tweaked Magistrates Civic

 

[Thunderbrd]

From Discord...

Typical_Name — Today at 5:33 PM​

so I'm looking ahead at civics and I'm noticing that Gold Standard seems just unambiguously better than anything else, including the ones that come after it, am I missing something? It's kind of weird that gold standard be good at all, given how poorly it worked in real life. Like, why does having a gold standard result in more income from trade?

 

[JosEPh_II]

From Discord...

Typical_Name — Today at 5:33 PM​

so I'm looking ahead at civics and I'm noticing that Gold Standard seems just unambiguously better than anything else, including the ones that come after it, am I missing something? It's kind of weird that gold standard be good at all, given how poorly it worked in real life. Like, why does having a gold standard result in more income from trade?

Is this poster really That uneducated? Or outright naive?

 

[Typical_Name]

Is this poster really That uneducated? Or outright naive?

What about my suggestion do you think is either naive or uneducated? It's been a good many years since I earned my economics degree, but from what I remember, basically everyone agreed that the gold standard at the very least had significant drawbacks that make it inviable for modern-day usage. The purposes of currency are to store value and act as a medium of exchange, and having the monetary supply artificially pegged to the supply of a specific good (such as gold) can interfere with this - usually, since modern economies grow faster than gold mines, this leads to deflation (in other historical periods, a sudden influx of gold into an economy led to inflation, such as when the Spanish started bringing in boatloads of gold from the new world).

So that's what I'm getting at when I question the idea of gold giving a bonus to commerce from trade. More importantly, from a game balance perspective, it feels like many of the latter currency civics have no purpose, since there's no reason to ever use Fiat Currency, Credit, or Digital, given that they're more or less straight downgrades from Gold Standard (unless I'm way underestimating the value of income from foreign trade).


Idea I had: what if we had Gold Standard (and civics similarly tied to the value of materials) act similarly to Slavery, where it grants significant benefits early on and gradually accumulates penalties as you advance through the tech tree? In particular, techs related to increasing the production of goods (ie, factories and assembly lines) could give penalties to gold-based economies, since the main disadvantage of gold-based currency is that the gold supply can't expand as fast as the overall economy once industrialization comes into play.


... Also, another issue with the currency civics - no matter what civic you pick for your currency, the in-game currency is still "gold". There might not be a way around that one. :/

 

[Somebody613]

What about my suggestion do you think is either naive or uneducated? It's been a good many years since I earned my economics degree, but from what I remember, basically everyone agreed that the gold standard at the very least had significant drawbacks that make it inviable for modern-day usage. The purposes of currency are to store value and act as a medium of exchange, and having the monetary supply artificially pegged to the supply of a specific good (such as gold) can interfere with this - usually, since modern economies grow faster than gold mines, this leads to deflation (in other historical periods, a sudden influx of gold into an economy led to inflation, such as when the Spanish started bringing in boatloads of gold from the new world).

So that's what I'm getting at when I question the idea of gold giving a bonus to commerce from trade. More importantly, from a game balance perspective, it feels like many of the latter currency civics have no purpose, since there's no reason to ever use Fiat Currency, Credit, or Digital, given that they're more or less straight downgrades from Gold Standard (unless I'm way underestimating the value of income from foreign trade).


Idea I had: what if we had Gold Standard (and civics similarly tied to the value of materials) act similarly to Slavery, where it grants significant benefits early on and gradually accumulates penalties as you advance through the tech tree? In particular, techs related to increasing the production of goods (ie, factories and assembly lines) could give penalties to gold-based economies, since the main disadvantage of gold-based currency is that the gold supply can't expand as fast as the overall economy once industrialization comes into play.


... Also, another issue with the currency civics - no matter what civic you pick for your currency, the in-game currency is still "gold". There might not be a way around that one. :/

Civics in general are awfully imbalanced, and there are civics that stay THE BEST for the entire game (in certain aspects, or worse), while being unlocked as early as the first 3 Eras.
If you asked me, I'd have more civic groups, but I'd have them literally get gradually drifting towards certain priorities (and penalties), as opposed to randomly jumping between bonuses.
Like, a TRADE civic line would gradually drift from "+100% to improvement gold AND -50% to trade gold" to "-90% improvement gold AND +500% trade gold", as a CONSISTENT example.
As opposed to a drift from "+100% to production" to "+100% to Great People", as an example of a hugely CONCEPTUALLY INCONSISTENT DRIFT.
Heck, I'd go as far as to have civic groups NAMED after the bonuses they provide/penalize, loool (okay, that was a joke... maybe).

 

[Maltazard]

The purposes of currency are to store value and act as a medium of exchange, and having the monetary supply artificially pegged to the supply of a specific good (such as gold) can interfere with this - usually, since modern economies grow faster than gold mines, this leads to deflation (in other historical periods, a sudden influx of gold into an economy led to inflation, such as when the Spanish started bringing in boatloads of gold from the new world)

One might argue that it was precisely being pegged to a real commodity what made currency valuable, and that fiat paper money first, and digital currency later, have only worked as a mean to expand finance at the expense of real economy. When currency was limited, burning billions over a tweet was not as much of a viable option. Yes, gold was an external factor that could cause imbalances, but it wasn't nowhere nearly as bad as a central bank going on a printing spree. I prefer to think of currency as a value token rather than a commodity of its own, but the artificially unlimited supply of currency in our times (coupled with the effective surplus of goods and commodities) has made it neither of those things: now it's just play money for the rich.
Also, the gold value of the currency could be fractioned virtually endlessly. Or, the value of gold per weight could be increased as needed to mantain value and supply of currency. If you're not worried about making money out of thin air with interest rates on loans (talk about artificial value), deflation of the currency is not a bad thing. Most of today's inequality challenges for working people stems from the financiarization of the economy.

I think if anything the gold standard should be the currency civic that focuses the most on inflation control at the expense of other factors, so no culture, espionage or science bonuses from trade routes and so on. Unfortunately, civics don't really affect the reworked inflation mechanic in a tangible way as it is now.
I really like the gold standard irl.

 

[raxo2222]

Idea I had: what if we had Gold Standard (and civics similarly tied to the value of materials) act similarly to Slavery, where it grants significant benefits early on and gradually accumulates penalties as you advance through the tech tree? In particular, techs related to increasing the production of goods (ie, factories and assembly lines) could give penalties to gold-based economies, since the main disadvantage of gold-based currency is that the gold supply can't expand as fast as the overall economy once industrialization comes into play.


... Also, another issue with the currency civics - no matter what civic you pick for your currency, the in-game currency is still "gold". There might not be a way around that one. :/

Lots of civics should rot as time goes on - theoretically you could stay with starter civics for entire game all the way until you finish tech tree.
Civic requiring autobuild that gets bad stuff with techs would work well enough.

Yes, game will be slower, but you can overpower it with modifiers from buildings and other stuff once you accumulate enough of it.

 

[tmv]

usually, since modern economies grow faster than gold mines, this leads to deflation

Even in a deflation money is still spent - people are not going to starve while they wait for their money to get more and more valuable. This alone should prevent a "runaway deflation".

But FIAT money mostly seems to have advantages for certain powerful parties, who can (and will) get their way no matter if it better for everyone (or anyone) else.

But if you think FIAT money is generally better, do you think the call to "mint the coin" is a good idea? Should they mint this coin to avoid the debt ceiling, or perhaps mint 30 coins and get rid of the national debt altogether? Should they mint 40 coins and lower the taxes? What would the effect be?

I can understand the proponents of the gold standard rejecting this idea, but for a proponent of FIAT this should look a lot better.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Maltazard ,
Good post. Good summation.
@Somebody613
Civics were Never meant to be " Balanced". Get over that presumption.
@Typical_Name ,
Precious metals (ie Gold, Silver, etc) have Always been the solid economic trade model thru out History. Any time a civilization gets away from it, that Civilization eventually fails because the elite manipulate their form of "currency" to rob everyone else but themselves.
I don't know which form of "economics" you got your degree in, and it really is irrelevant anyway to this.
Yes, Sid did base the game model on Gold. So why do you want it changed? And do you think your idea/concern is new to this Mod or Civ IV BtS? Albeit the current scam of bitcoin and the insidious and enslaving CBDC idea are not included. Both of these evils will be exposed for what they really are. Have you heard about Sam Fried and his Billion dollar bitcoin scam called FTX? Perhaps you are a Yuval Noah Harari/Klaus Schwab fan and want a digital chip put under your skin so that you can never really own anything again? Digital slavery anyone?!
Back to gameplay, actually Metals or Coin are as viable an option as Gold Standard in the Currency Civic category. The rest are situational Civics.
Many Civic groups have situational Civics as well. It's how you choose your Civics to mesh together that constitutes your Game play Model for that particular game. Along with Leaders/Civilizations/etc that you make choices over. There will Always be a Best Civic in each Category per your own playstyle. How you interact and mesh these choices is totally up to you. Game play style. Don't try to remove other players game play style.
There will always be a Bad Civic choice in each category too. Maybe several.
If this comes across as dismissive to you, then all I can say is this: longevity at testing, modding, and Years of gameplay experience trumps your case. Nothing is new under the sun, and much the same for this Epic Mod.
There is an Old Old rule to Modding, sometimes you just have to tell the player no.
@raxo2222 ,
Hmmm....what is your point?
You really need to go back and fix some of the building problems you created by stripping out or reducing to irrelevance the yields they used to give.
As gatekeeper to Pepper's Mod, it should have been evaluated much much longer than it was before it was included into this Mod. It still has glaring problems.

Because of the recent Cultural changes @Blazenclaw has made to the Mod, there will be tweaks to many Civics accordingly. Will they get finished before the soon coming New version? Probably not. I am Play testing thru the Industrial era right now. Many more eras to go.

 

[Joij21]

Precious metals (ie Gold, Silver, etc) have Always been the solid economic trade model thru out History. Any time a civilization gets away from it, that Civilization eventually fails because the elite manipulate their form of "currency" to rob everyone else but themselves.

Well technically with coinage you could always do what Rome did and dilute the precious metal coinage with base metals and hope no one notices. It worked as in triggering hyperinflation, so it just goes to show that any monetary system in the hands of a corrupt government will be corrupted anyway regardless of wether the system works in principle on paper.

Besides even if one doesn't debase the gold, silver, or whatever you still have a problem when it comes to a precious metal standard. That is that most nations use a fractional reserve system by which if everyone makes a run on the treasury at the same time to hand in their bills for the amount of precious metals it's denominated in then the treasury will be unable to pay everyone the desired amount owed. Plus a government may always be tempted to keep "redenominating" the amount of precious metals to a dollar a dollar is worth.

In the case of the gold standard we allowed foreign nations to exchange any dollar bills they had for our gold reserves as per the Bretton Woods Agreement. In Vietnam when the French were struggling and going into lots of debt to try and struggle to keep their former colony they kept exchanging dollars (which they received through international trade with the U.S.) for our gold which in turn began draining Fort Knox. Later the French and their Vietnam mess got so bad it dragged us into the conflict after they left and we had to "contain" the communist north. This in turn led us and our allies into a lot of debt, with others such as Britain also taking gold out thus causing our currency to become more worthless struggling to pay for the war effort. We also were involved in various guerilla conflicts in Africa and Latin America where through the CIA we had to pay fascist warlords and various mercenary groups directly in our own gold since they would accept nothing less in payment to go kill a bunch of commies. Eventually it got so bad we ditched the gold standard after failing in Vietnam with Nixon in order to preserve what little gold we had left in Fort Knox to continue paying the mercenaries elsewhere as the Cold War struggles between Capitalism and Communism dragged on.

Technically this all came to an end after the fall of the USSR because they could no longer support these Marxist guerilla movements and they became shadows of their former selves. Thus paying mercenaries in gold was no longer as necessary and supposedly we could have switched back to the gold standard do to less demand straining Fort Knox. Unfortunately Osama Bin Laden decided to strike not long after dragging the United States into twenty years of a global war on terror which demanded the paying off of yet more mercenaries, warlords, and paramilitaries throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. We are still technically fighting that war still having to pay off such groups and now seem to be locked into yet another Cold War conflict/forever war in Ukraine. It a miracle that Fort Knox somehow seems to be refilled with gold to keep paying the mercs, but it may simply not be fast enough to justify ever a return back to a gold standard. Welcome to the eternity wars!!!

 

[raxo2222]

@raxo2222 ,
Hmmm....what is your point?
You really need to go back and fix some of the building problems you created by stripping out or reducing to irrelevance the yields they used to give.
As gatekeeper to Pepper's Mod, it should have been evaluated much much longer than it was before it was included into this Mod. It still has glaring problems.

Well civics could be more dynamic - for example become even worse or better as you get techs. For that I guess civics should be much simpler.

It was commerces (gold/science/culture/espionage) from bonuses and commerce modifiers that were nerfed.
I tried to give some structure for normal buildings. Anyway all buildings should be reviewed.

@Maltazard ,
Yes, Sid did base the game model on Gold. So why do you want it changed? And do you think your idea/concern is new to this Mod or Civ IV BtS? Albeit the current scam of bitcoin and the insidious and enslaving CBDC idea are not included. Both of these evils will be exposed for what they really are. Have you heard about Sam Fried and his Billion dollar bitcoin scam called FTX? Perhaps you are a Yuval Noah Harari/Klaus Schwab fan and want a digital chip put under your skin so that you can never really own anything again? Digital slavery anyone?!

Eat everyone with over billion dollars, nationalize assets, bring back some regulations (listen to Nordics as they know how to balance), and fertilize land with new businesses as you privatize back those assets.
So Milton Friedman and Chicago boys was overreaction to communism I assume. They broke economy. Energy crisis didn't help it too.
Pick Interventionism and Protectionism and not Free Market and Free Trade as Adam Smith intended .

As for this "you will be happy and own nothing" seems like someone loved subscription (recurrent payments) way too much.

 

[Joij21]

Eat everyone with over billion dollars, nationalize assets, bring back some regulations (listen to Nordics as they know how to balance), and fertilize land with new businesses as you privatize back those assets.

Sounds like that would be rife with corruption. Imagine if you had inside trading knowledge because your connected with the government, they tell you who they're going to nationalize and what assets, and because your a friend they'll allow you to get first dibs come re-privatization.

It won't be small ma and pa shops moving into that land, likely corrupt medium sized business (that's less efficient than the previous big business) that's employing a special "senator's son/daughter".

 

[raxo2222]

Sounds like that would be rife with corruption. Imagine if you had inside trading knowledge because your connected with the government, they tell you who they're going to nationalize and what assets, and because your a friend they'll allow you to get first dibs come re-privatization.

It won't be small ma and pa shops moving into that land, likely corrupt medium sized business (that's less efficient than the previous big business) that's employing a special "senator's son/daughter".

Hence why "bring back regulations, and consult with Nordic nations" step before privatization, so corruption is cleansed first

 

[Joij21]

Hence why "bring back regulations, and consult with Nordic nations" step before privatization, so corruption is cleansed first

I'm pretty sure the Nordic nations have their fair share of corruption, they just don't tell you because it would destroy their image, destroy the fairy tale.

And still I'm not sure they ever nationalized something big, then re-privatized it. Otherwise Maersk a giant multinational shipping company would be nationalized by the Danish government and re-privatized into smaller less efficient shipping companies that are private and not publicly traded.

 

[raxo2222]

I'm pretty sure the Nordic nations have their fair share of corruption, they just don't tell you because it would destroy their image, destroy the fairy tale.

And still I'm not sure they ever nationalized something big, then re-privatized it. Otherwise Maersk a giant multinational shipping company would be nationalized by the Danish government and re-privatized into smaller less efficient shipping companies that are private and not publicly traded.

There is reason as to why Nordics are in top 10 - 15 of every important metric like corruption.

They have healthiest democratic system too.