Txurce
Deity
I had questions about this for a long, long time. I select everything in the folder and delete the contents - so you wind up with an empty folder. The same applies for the ModUserData folder.
Getting Started
- Thread starter Thalassicus
- Start date
I had questions about this for a long, long time. I select everything in the folder and delete the contents - so you wind up with an empty folder. The same applies for the ModUserData folder.
Thal,
You mentioned that you are retooling yields to make them easier to work with. Does that mean you can put culture onto improvements now?
I know you are trying to make villages more useful in the game, and you've also mentioned your not satisfied with culture....in that unless you are going lots of culture and a small empire you won't have a lot of policies.
What if a village granted -1 F (representing villages eating) +1 G +1 Culture?
This provides a person another avenue for pursuing culture. It costs them long term growth, but they gain cultural advantages.
It also allows larger empires to at least curb the balloning of culture requirements by providing them ways they can provide a large amount of culture...at the expense of other things.
You mentioned that you are retooling yields to make them easier to work with. Does that mean you can put culture onto improvements now?
I know you are trying to make villages more useful in the game, and you've also mentioned your not satisfied with culture....in that unless you are going lots of culture and a small empire you won't have a lot of policies.
What if a village granted -1 F (representing villages eating) +1 G +1 Culture?
This provides a person another avenue for pursuing culture. It costs them long term growth, but they gain cultural advantages.
It also allows larger empires to at least curb the balloning of culture requirements by providing them ways they can provide a large amount of culture...at the expense of other things.
Txurce
Deity
Villages getting -1f would seemingly make them useful only later in the game.
Thal has a post somewhere that explains how easy it is for a large empire to have a strong culture. In terms of buffing Villages, what about going back to +2g on river tiles? This could create some choice when you would normally build a farm.
Thal has a post somewhere that explains how easy it is for a large empire to have a strong culture. In terms of buffing Villages, what about going back to +2g on river tiles? This could create some choice when you would normally build a farm.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I'm happy with culture now that I've settled on culture-gain policies for the Honor tree. All playstyles big or small get policies at an equal rate so things are nicely balanced. 
Txurce
Deity
That would be very helpful - even if it's just a line about some background fix, as it probably was most of the time yesterday.
Alright, I just finished a game as Arabia on an archipelago map going full commerce (Beta 11), so here's what I've seen.
1) I think the change in Optics was a great one. Now that I can get a freshwater gold bonus even faster than a food one, it provides more incentives to build villages early. And then from there, I have more incentives to increase them through policies later.
2) Even with the nerf to the seaport its still a good building. Now its more about the production bonus to ships than the other benefits but its still solid. Meanwhile, the harbor is now a good building to build on almost any coastal city.
3) My policy strat this game was to start with a little bit of tradition (which overall was a mistake), then I got Honor -> Military Caste for the culture bonus. I then went all commerce.
I can say that Military Caste is right now the greatest culture bump you can get in the early game. I would build a city, buy a monument and place a warrior in the city, granting an immediate 4 culture in the city. Until you get temples there are so few ways to bump culture that its a big impact.
As for commerce, the bonuses were generally pretty nice. The golden age definitely fits the theme of commerce. The -25% unit cost was a nice transition point after that. I went with merchant navy next. It was funny that honestly for my archi game the naval bonuses were actually more useful than the hammer ones, mainly because I was always purchasing my important buildings. But that's good because the policy has different things for different games and that makes it a solid overall tech.
The lame duck was Guilds in this game. The +1 speed for embarked units was nice, but the -50% road cost was useless for me (I had 3 squares of roads in total). I choose it because I wanted to give the full tree a chance, but I was really tempting by other trees at that point. I see that in Beta 12 you changed it to +1 gold specialists. I think that's a great change, as that is more universally useful to all types of games.
Patent Law was a huge bonus for me...not for villages (I had some but not that many since I was mostly islands) but for the fish. I like your new change to bump the village bonus up more, but I disagree with the +4 to fishing boats. I think +2 is just fine, fish tiles are already insanely good late game (see my notes below).
I tried out Monopolization and got 13 happy off the bat, so it seems like an effective bonus.
Overall, my biggest problem was the fact that gold heavy games tend to lend themselves well to expansion, mainly because I gain get them up and running so quickly. But that means I get fewer policies, and every one of them is precious.
I went for a diplomatic (aka economic) win, and so commerce was very useful...but ultimately I wonder if the whole of the tree is good enough. Don't get me wrong, the bonuses are very nice. Its that if I am not getting money solely for money's sake, then is it the best route to go?
Commerce can help me buy science buildings for a science win...but then would rationalism be better?
Commerce can help me buy city stats for an dipl win...but couldn't patronage do the same thing?
Commerce can make specialists a bit better (+1 gold). But doesn't freedom make all specialists that much better?
Right now I find commerce is competing for attention with freedom for me. I find specialists are so powerful later in the game, especially on sea maps. I've got food at the wazoo, more specialist slots than I know what to do with, and a constant happiness problem.
The freedom tree makes my specialists even better, and the entry into that tree gives me a lot of happiness control by shifting citizens to specialists when happy is low. And of course 50% GG creation late game with a lot of specialists is great.
I think overall Commerce's greatest advantage right now is that it works with everything. I can go piety and commerce, commerce and rationalism. I can go commerce and autocracy for a late game war move, etc. I never go....damn, I really want to go X, but can't because I went commerce.
4) Naval Units are very powerful now. When you have a solid navy, no one is getting to your island....and you own coastal cities. The only real land defense is artillery until you have flight, which to me is how it should be. Now if we can just get the AI to understand that
Ships of the Line are a great use for iron in the midgame, but I like being able to build frigates if I don't have any. And ironclads are solid now. I might recommend lowering their stats a bit (they shouldn't have the same attack as destroyers imo). But the destroyers not needing iron and having twice the speed makes them very useful.
As a note, it might be worth lowering flight penalties against naval units. Naval units are much stronger than they used to be, I don't know if a big penalty is needed.
5) Properly done, fish tiles are the best tiles in the game. 6 F, 1 H, 5 G, 2 Sc. It really doesn't get better than that!
6) Does anyone see anything wrong with a civ that can build battleships but the strongest land unit he can field is a musketman?
1) I think the change in Optics was a great one. Now that I can get a freshwater gold bonus even faster than a food one, it provides more incentives to build villages early. And then from there, I have more incentives to increase them through policies later.
2) Even with the nerf to the seaport its still a good building. Now its more about the production bonus to ships than the other benefits but its still solid. Meanwhile, the harbor is now a good building to build on almost any coastal city.
3) My policy strat this game was to start with a little bit of tradition (which overall was a mistake), then I got Honor -> Military Caste for the culture bonus. I then went all commerce.
I can say that Military Caste is right now the greatest culture bump you can get in the early game. I would build a city, buy a monument and place a warrior in the city, granting an immediate 4 culture in the city. Until you get temples there are so few ways to bump culture that its a big impact.
As for commerce, the bonuses were generally pretty nice. The golden age definitely fits the theme of commerce. The -25% unit cost was a nice transition point after that. I went with merchant navy next. It was funny that honestly for my archi game the naval bonuses were actually more useful than the hammer ones, mainly because I was always purchasing my important buildings. But that's good because the policy has different things for different games and that makes it a solid overall tech.
The lame duck was Guilds in this game. The +1 speed for embarked units was nice, but the -50% road cost was useless for me (I had 3 squares of roads in total). I choose it because I wanted to give the full tree a chance, but I was really tempting by other trees at that point. I see that in Beta 12 you changed it to +1 gold specialists. I think that's a great change, as that is more universally useful to all types of games.
Patent Law was a huge bonus for me...not for villages (I had some but not that many since I was mostly islands) but for the fish. I like your new change to bump the village bonus up more, but I disagree with the +4 to fishing boats. I think +2 is just fine, fish tiles are already insanely good late game (see my notes below).
I tried out Monopolization and got 13 happy off the bat, so it seems like an effective bonus.
Overall, my biggest problem was the fact that gold heavy games tend to lend themselves well to expansion, mainly because I gain get them up and running so quickly. But that means I get fewer policies, and every one of them is precious.
I went for a diplomatic (aka economic) win, and so commerce was very useful...but ultimately I wonder if the whole of the tree is good enough. Don't get me wrong, the bonuses are very nice. Its that if I am not getting money solely for money's sake, then is it the best route to go?
Commerce can help me buy science buildings for a science win...but then would rationalism be better?
Commerce can help me buy city stats for an dipl win...but couldn't patronage do the same thing?
Commerce can make specialists a bit better (+1 gold). But doesn't freedom make all specialists that much better?
Right now I find commerce is competing for attention with freedom for me. I find specialists are so powerful later in the game, especially on sea maps. I've got food at the wazoo, more specialist slots than I know what to do with, and a constant happiness problem.
The freedom tree makes my specialists even better, and the entry into that tree gives me a lot of happiness control by shifting citizens to specialists when happy is low. And of course 50% GG creation late game with a lot of specialists is great.
I think overall Commerce's greatest advantage right now is that it works with everything. I can go piety and commerce, commerce and rationalism. I can go commerce and autocracy for a late game war move, etc. I never go....damn, I really want to go X, but can't because I went commerce.
4) Naval Units are very powerful now. When you have a solid navy, no one is getting to your island....and you own coastal cities. The only real land defense is artillery until you have flight, which to me is how it should be. Now if we can just get the AI to understand that
Ships of the Line are a great use for iron in the midgame, but I like being able to build frigates if I don't have any. And ironclads are solid now. I might recommend lowering their stats a bit (they shouldn't have the same attack as destroyers imo). But the destroyers not needing iron and having twice the speed makes them very useful.
As a note, it might be worth lowering flight penalties against naval units. Naval units are much stronger than they used to be, I don't know if a big penalty is needed.
5) Properly done, fish tiles are the best tiles in the game. 6 F, 1 H, 5 G, 2 Sc. It really doesn't get better than that!
6) Does anyone see anything wrong with a civ that can build battleships but the strongest land unit he can field is a musketman?
Txurce
Deity
That was a stimulating post, Stalker.
1. I agree that the Seaport works basically as is, once you understand its purpose (close to a forge).
2. Military Caste feels OP, but you have to take Tradition in order to get it, so I don't think I would detour from a non-warmongering game to go after it.
3. Funny - I feel similarly about Freedom, in that other than the first SP as an emergency fix, I often think all it does but through SPs to get more SPs faster - which is similar to your point about Commerce and gold. I don't think it necessarily competes with Freedom, mainly because it comes earlier.
4. This point does a good job capturing why the Commerce tree now works so well.
I think its more a question of what does gold do compared to what specialists do?
for example, science gives me better units, passive bonuses, improvements terrain, and is a victory condition. There is a net benefit to going science just for science sake.
But with gold, gold is intended to be used for something. The key things are:
1) City States
2) Purchasing Units and Buildings (Production)
I don't consider tile buying so common in the game that I think of going for gold for it.
With specialists and freedom, you can use them for all sorts of them.
1) Culture - I consider artists/great artists/landmarks the lynchpin to cultural victory.
2) Gold
3) Science
4) Production
5) Happiness Control
Specialists allow you to....wait for it....specialize in whatever build you want to go. In that sense it is even more flexible than commerce. Freedom with science specialists is like going rationalism. Freedom with merchants is like going commerce. And of course, freedom is basically a prereq imo for a good cultural win...you can never have too many landmarks!
Txurce
Deity
I have a problem with the opening premise. Commerce raises your gold income; Freedom doesn't give you specialists. In fact, Freedom only has two policies that involve specialists. You can take the first one to control unhappiness (a nice fix if needed, or a flexibility tool otherwise) and the second one to increase food intake (relatively worthless in my games at that stage).
That initial happiness control can result in increased science, production, and gold, but enough gold would give you more of those same benefits. I think this is the case when comparing tree to tree.
What Freedom is mostly good for, once past the opening SP, is culture, and I would never argue its value over Commerce in pursuing a cultural win.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Sure! I used to do this for 4.x beta, but I'll admit I've sort of slipped on that recently because I'm trying to work quickly. Documenting in detail what's changed changed takes a lot of time, but just boldfacing it will be easy and I'll do so.
@Stalker0
Your analysis of the Seaport is my goal with it, a navy-oriented building.
I agree Guilds was weak. I added a +1
for all specialists effect to it (unfortunately it's not possible to buff only merchants).The reason I have a higher bonus on fishing boats than villages is that proportionally, we can build more villages around a city than fishing boats. I want to give about the same benefit to both land or sea focused empires from this policy. If we have 6 villages in one city and 3 sea resources in another, both cities get +12
.Overall I think this places Commerce and Rationalism very close to one another:
Commerce
- Useful if research is outpacing city production.
- +1 per Specialist
- +2 per Village
- -25% costs (equal to a 33% increase 1/.75=1.33)
bonus
- Useful if city production is outpacing research.
- +2
per Specialist - +1 per Village
- 33% increase
- bonus
Freedom is a different perspective since it's mutually exclusive with Autocracy, which I'm positioning to be a very powerful late-game military tree. I want to make Autocracy an obvious choice for conquest victories (between that and Order). One way to do this might be to reduce the strategic resource count of oil and aluminum to make Autocracy's +100% bonus more valuable... I haven't gotten to a late-game war since February (busy with modding and other things) so I'm not sure how the resource situation is there.
When comparing Freedom to Commerce, you're absolutely right that specialists can be used to for a number of different purposes... culture, production, gold, etc. However, Commerce does the same thing! By reducing the cost of purchasing units and buildings by 25%, we can buy more buildings focused on culture, production, gold, etc. What we purchase gives flexibility, just like deciding how we assign our specialists. Commerce is also useful for warmongers, while Freedom's policies aren't particularly helpful for conquest:
- Commerce's happiness bonus is probably more useful for a conqueror, since we have lots of territory and resources.
- A warmonger's population is typically very constrained by happiness, so the food bonus of Civil Society is of marginal value.
- Large empires have difficulty getting national wonders, and each city we acquire slows great person generation, so Democracy's great person bonus isn't too useful.
- Freedom is exclusive with Autocracy.
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From a gameplay perspective, the reason I gave Ironclads and Destroyers equal combat strengths is Ironclads are on the "battleship" line of units, while Destroyers are on the "light support" line. If a player builds mostly SotLs for a big Renaissance advantage, they'd be suddenly weaker than everyone else in the Industrial era, then stronger again in the Modern period. I want to maintain the light ship / battleship dichotomy throughout all three eras.
From a realism perspective, destroyers of the 1800's were light ships designed to launch and protect against torpedoes (hence the name "torpedo boat destroyer"), guarding the slower and vulnerable capital ships. I feel this is decently represented with the speed and sight range advantages of Destroyers. Giving destroyers too much of an advantage wouldn't be true to the historical balance between light and capital ships.
---------------------------------------
By "flight penalties against naval units" do you mean aircraft? I haven't done any testing to see how much damage they do to ships. If you feel I should remove the penalty from aircraft I could do so.
Since you have plans to buff Autocracy, are you going to buff Order as well ? Also Rationalism comes later than Commerce so it won't hurt balance if it has an edge over commerce. Also Rationalism is exclusive with Piety while Commerce is with none.Overall I think this places Commerce and Rationalism very close to one another:
CommerceRationalism
- Useful if research is outpacing city production.
- +1
- +2
- -25%
The bonuses are slightly different, but overall I'm positioning them to be two opposite strategies that depend on the production/research balance of our current game.
- Useful if city production is outpacing research.
- +2
- +1
- 33%
Freedom is a different perspective since it's mutually exclusive with Autocracy, which I'm positioning to be a very powerful late-game military tree. I want to make Autocracy an obvious choice for conquest victories (between that and Order). One way to do this might be to reduce the strategic resource count of oil and aluminum to make Autocracy's +100% bonus more valuable... I haven't gotten to a late-game war since February (busy with modding and other things) so I'm not sure how the resource situation is there.
When comparing Freedom to Commerce, you're absolutely right that specialists can be used to for a number of different purposes... culture, production, gold, etc. However, Commerce does the same thing! By reducing the cost of purchasing units and buildings by 25%, we can buy more buildings focused on culture, production, gold, etc. What we purchase gives flexibility, just like deciding how we assign our specialists. Commerce is also useful for warmongers, while Freedom's policies aren't particularly helpful for conquest:
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Rationalism does give 2 free techs and a Great Scientist, which is probably more powerful than Commerce's golden age and naval policy.
Txurce
Deity
I get far enough in the late game to occasionally want to build a resource-based unit. With a four-city-or-so civ, I often don't have it. I always check for nearby availability, and find that often enough it's nowhere near me. I'm okay with that scarcity, which would push my military in one direction and not another, were I to want to crank up. But I don't think reducing the oil-and-aluminum resource count is a good idea.
One related option, though, is to break up aluminum. I think it's the only resource available in quantities larger than 3.
SlightlyMad
Prince
The biggest problem with rationalism is how good piety is. Adopting piety when it's available generally means I can expand my empire with several additional cities, and get a huge boost towards future policies.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I've somewhat addressed that in one of the recent betas. They buffed Theocracy to 25% in December I believe, which I felt was unnecessary and overpowered the tree. I've reduced it back to its original value of 20%, which should shift the balance between Piety and Rationalism somewhat.
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