History Rewritten (Original Thread)

[Azoth]

There are other areas in life to drive schoolishness out of people's minds, dear.

Ah, but you'll never win an argument if you bring up the Kardashians.

 

[Xyth]

Disagreement and debate is healthy, just ensure we all keep it constructive and open-minded. We each have differing ideas, preferences and areas of expertise and HR is a better mod because of it.

 

[Xyth]

I agree. (That's one convoluted function!)
So are we stuck with +25% production? None of the other XML options really seems to fit.

Ugh I'm starting to lose track of which change was which. Was this for the Mercantilism replacement? If so, could you remind me how the whole civic is looking so far?

I don't think the War Wariness penalty is necessary for balance. You can retain it for flavour or remove it altogether.

I'll remove it, penalties as flavour aren't fun.

Are you sure about that? Drafting is much more efficient than building units with food.

It will give players who have reached their health and happiness caps or who started in a food-rich but hammer-poor environment (a flood plains valley, say) the opportunity to make use of their excess food.

This is actually the problem with the bonus. You can cap the growth of a city (particularly a city with 2-4 good food resources) and churn out units very quickly without penalty or the need for building up city infrastructure very much. It's not that it's faster to build units that the other civics, it's that it enables a warmonger to skip most other production altogether and continually produce units as well as a city 3 times the size with factories, etc. There's not even any health penalties to worry about.

And things get seriously out of control once someone founds Sid's Sushi Company.

That said, I am worried that the AI will not grasp the full implications of this change, such that any cities it devotes exclusively to military production will not grow. At the very least, I feel this bonus is worth a second look.

The AI grasps it all too well actually. In the very first edition of the new civics this bonus was attached to Agrarianism. The AI was choosing it over all civics in the category for the entire game, even ignoring their specified favourite civic - a sure sign something is imbalanced. This was happening even without any other bonuses on the civic. Even with a penalty of zero growth on cottages/hamlets/villages, any slightly aggressive AI leader would stick with this the entire game, cap their cities and send stack after stack of units off to war.

In the end I cut it out because in order to get it balanced I had to pile on penalty after penalty and in the end it became far worse than Mercantilism. It certainly lost any sense of theme or focus.

I'm not sure if Vassalage will need anything in return. What is the current ratio of free units to empire population?

In HR the base number of free units is 5 and the 'free military units per population percent' is 20. In standard BTS these numbers are 5 and 10 respectively.

Instead of adding more free unit upkeep, what do you think of unlimited Spies? (I maintain that the BtS espionage system is poorly designed; but so long as we have it, we may as well make use of it.)

I'm not quite sure how to code this (same with unlimited missionaries), a cursory look through the Python API didn't provide any obvious solutions. I'll have a more in depth look sometime in the future.

 

[Azoth]

Ugh I'm starting to lose track of which change was which. Was this for the Mercantilism replacement? If so, could you remind me how the whole civic is looking so far?

Yup, that's the one. Here's how the proposed Economy column would look:

Reciprocity, Low Upkeep
none

Redistribution, Low Upkeep, unlocked at Record Keeping
+1 commerce Camps, Mines
+1 happy Granary
-25% GPP

Professionalism, Medium Upkeep, unlocked at Artisanry
+1 hammer Workshops
+1 commerce Workshops
+2 happy Market
+25% culture

Free Market, Medium Upkeep, unlocked at Economics
+1 trade route/city
unlimited Merchants
-25% Corporation expenses

Central Planning, High Upkeep, unlocked at Nationalism
+1 food Watermills, Workshops
unlimited Scientists
+25% production
no Corporations

Environmentalism, High Upkeep, unlocked at Sustainability
+25% Corporation expenses
no health penalty from population
+2 commerce Windmill, Forest Preserve

Quite apart from the other changes, I suggest you enable Environmentalism earlier. As it stands, Environmentalism plays no role at all in most games: it is unlocked at Sustainability, on the last full column of the tech tree before the branches narrow to Future Tech. (BtS fixed the problem by moving Environmentalism from Ecology to Medicine.) For HR, Ecology is perhaps too soon, but it's in the right ballpark. The change can be justified in flavour terms: after all, it was obvious to Mathus, writing in 1800, that the Earth had the resources to support only so many people. In our world, Environmentalism wasn't taken seriously until quite recently, but things might have worked out differently.

This is actually the problem with the bonus. You can cap the growth of a city (particularly a city with 2-4 good food resources) and churn out units very quickly without penalty or the need for building up city infrastructure very much. It's not that it's faster to build units that the other civics, it's that it enables a warmonger to skip most other production altogether and continually produce units as well as a city 3 times the size with factories, etc. There's not even any health penalties to worry about.

And things get seriously out of control once someone founds Sid's Sushi Company.

Ah, I see it now. Well, that's reason enough to keep Clan Warfare as is.
(Sid Sushi's Company is a whole different story; it is inherently imbalanced. Just one of many things I want to address when we take a look at corporations.)

I'm not quite sure how to code this (same with unlimited missionaries), a cursory look through the Python API didn't provide any obvious solutions. I'll have a more in depth look sometime in the future.

I'm sorry, I meant unlimited Spy specialists, not unlimited Spy units. (I was under the impression that Spies as units are unlimited already.)

 

[Howard Mahler]

It is unclear to me how newspapers in country A cause extra war weariness in country B. It makes more sense that newspapers would affect the public in their own country, or to some extent in neutral countries.

Also, war weariness can get awfully high very fast if two opponents both have built a bunch of these. I am not sure that the spread of newspapers had this big an affect in one direction on the rate at which the public got weary of wars, even in democracies.

Some newspapers sometimes urged going to war or urged the public to continue to support an on going war effort. Reporting on war victories, real or imagined, helped to keep the publics morale high.

You should consider changing this for the future.

One possibility would be +?% war weariness for opponent and -?% war weariness for the owner.

The benefit to the owner has to be small so as not to unbalance things.
(War weariness of 0 should be a very special situation.)

While it might be a pain to program, the best gaming solution might be that the effect only applies to one of the opponents, and is based on how many more news presses one country has than the other.
So if A has 8 news presses and B has 5 news presses, then +30% war weariness for B and no extra war weariness for A. This is a gaming idea, since it shares the current conceptual problem of newspapers affecting the public in a country with which you are at war.

Maybe the best solution is to come up with something else for News Press to do, and some other way to affect opponent's war weariness.
Possibly at this stage of the game there could be some way to use espionage points to increase opponents war weariness, perhaps with the help of a national wonder.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Xyth]

I've been doing some research about wells, aqueducts, qanats and irrigation and mulling over the related mechanics in HR. I'm arrived at a system I'm pretty happy with:

Well
Requires Mining
Cost: 40
• +2 health

Aqueduct
Requires Hydraulics
Cost: 150
• +2 health
• Provides a source of Fresh Water for Irrigation

Other changes:
• Farms can spread Irrigation with the discovery of Ecology
• Can build Farms without Irrigation with the discovery of Sustainability
• Ecology will be renamed and possibly shifted a little, but probably not in 0.9.4
• The Persian Apothecary (UB) will be replaced by the Ab Anbar (Aqueduct replacement). It's bonus will be that it's available early (probably at Engineering).


Rationale

I want Wells to be available very early. They've been around since the dawn of civilization and were a real alternate to rivers. In game terms I think it's good to have one decent source of health to make desert and jungle starts more viable. Riverside cities still have an advantage of either a bit more health if they need it or the saved production due to not needing to build one early.

This implementation makes Wells equivalent to cheaper, earlier BTS Aqueducts but the important factor compared to 0.9.3 is that the benefit is city only, the tiles around the city are not improved in any way. Note also that early health availability has been noticeably reduced in 0.9.4 compared to 0.9.3 due to the Smokehouse no longer giving health for meat resources, improvements like the mine causing unhealthiness, and a few other factors.

The Aqueduct has the same stats as the Well does in 0.9.3, but triple the cost and is available even later, at Hydraulics. It allows you to irrigate the tiles immediately adjacent to the city but these tiles will not be able to spread that irrigation until much later, in the Renaissance. I think this is a more realistic and historical progression of hydraulic technology. It will slow growth a little, but not prohibitively so.

I've always felt that being able to build farms without any water source at all is not realistic or historical (at least farms intensive enough to provide food on a large scale). Thus the shift all way to Sustainability in the modern era. By then it's not really needed (thanks to the Aqueduct and chained irrigation) but it's there to help later cities catch up a bit if need be.

The Persians were the original master hydraulic engineers, they were even able to build refrigerators in the desert by 400 BCE! Other early centres of hydraulic engineering all seem to have learned the technology from the Persians. Thus their UB will change to the Ab Anbar and be available earlier to reflect their origination of the tech. I never really felt the Apothecary was all that interesting or representative anyway. Persia's skill in medicine is still represented in HR by their UW, Gondeshapur.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, they stack.

Um... I agree with Mahler, I think. For large empires this becomes ridiculously powerful, unless the bonus is quite small? There's a 300-hammer wonder that does literally nothing but "+100% opponent war weariness." If I have fifteen cities, it becomes nigh-impossible to fight an extended war with me, unless you exploit artificial tricks on the opposing side to lower war weariness to near-zero, or unless vast excess happiness is available in peacetime and population caps imposed by happiness are unreasonably high.

There are other areas in life to drive schoolishness out of people's minds, dear.

Being vague and unclear, and then acting smug when you're not understood, is not a valid form of communication.

If you have a thing to say, say it in no uncertain terms, and people can address it. That works well. Meandering about the philosophy of it all only works if you can write philosophy clearly, which is a rare gift.

 

[Keinpferd]

Xyth, is there a more polite word for smartass in the English dictionary? Just asking.

We should definitely turn away from the b chy tone, like you suggested. If I started it, mea culpa . …and now I forgot what I had to say about HR (if any).

 

[Xyth]

Thought I'd better collate all the civic changes so far in 0.9.4, plus a few new reshuffles and ideas based on recent discussions. Civics not changed since 0.9.3 are not listed. Changes already made are in bold, potential new changes for discussion are in red.


GOVERNMENT:

Confederation
High Upkeep
• No Maintenance costs from Distance to Palace
• +1 trade route

Democracy
High Upkeep
• +50% GPP
• Unlimited Scientists


LEGAL:

Authoritarianism
High Upkeep
• +1 happiness per military unit stationed in a city
• +1 espionage per specialist

Codification
Medium Upkeep
• +5 happiness in largest cities
• +1 health from Courthouse

Jurisdiction
Medium Upkeep
• +100% growth for Cottage, Hamlet, Village
• +1 happiness from Courthouse

Equal Rights
Medium Upkeep
• 1 free specialist per city
• Happiness penalty for civs without Equal Rights


LABOUR:

Slavery
Medium Upkeep
• +2 unhealthiness in all cities
• +1 commerce from Plantation, Quarry
• Can sacrifice population to finish production

Caste System (moves to Priesthood)
Medium Upkeep
• Unlimited artists
• Workers build improvements +50% faster
• +1 production from Workshop

Industrialism
High Upkeep
• Unlimited Engineers
• +1 wealth from Specialists
•+2 unhealthiness in all cities

Social Welfare (formerly Emancipation)
High Upkeep
• +1 production and commerce from Village, Town
• Can spend wealth to finish production


ECONOMIC:

Redistribution
Low Upkeep
• +1 commerce from Camp, Mine
• +1 happiness from Granary
• -25% Great Person birth rate

Professionalism
Medium Upkeep
• Unlimited merchants
• +1 commerce from Workshop
• +2 happiness for Market

Central Planning (name not finalized, replaces Mercantilism)
High Upkeep
• +100% wealth in Capital
• +1 production and commerce from Lumbermill, Watermill, Windmill
• No (Foreign) Corporations (not sure which is better)

Free Market
Medium Upkeep
• +25% commerce from Trade Routes
•-25% Corporation expenses


MILITARY:

Clan Warfare
Low Upkeep
• No war weariness
• Increased wealth from pillaging and capturing cities

Conscription
Low Upkeep
• Can draft units each turn
• +100% experience gained from combat within own borders

Vassalage
Medium Upkeep
• Lower military unit support costs
• Unlimited Spies

Warrior Code (moved to Steel Working)
High Upkeep
• New units receive +2 experience
• +25% culture in all cities
• +2 happiness from Barracks

Standing Army (formerly Professional Army, moved to Military Conduct)
High Upkeep
• +100% Great General appearance
• +25% military unit production
• -50% unit upgrade cost


RELIGIOUS:

Organized Religion (moved to Divination)
High Upkeep
• Can build Missionaries without Monasteries
• Cities with state religion construct buildings +25% faster

Rationalism
High Upkeep
• +2 research per specialist
• +2 happiness from School

Free Religion
Medium Upkeep
• No state religion
• +1 happiness per non-state religion in a city
• Missionaries are always successful (unsure if this is possible yet)

 

[Howard Mahler]

Overall a significant improvement.

Depending on how easy it is now to get health from resources, you might consider changing Well to +1 health or increasing its cost.

Hydraulics seems a little long to wait for Aqueducts. In a future revision you might want to consider moving Hydraulics a little earlier in the tech tree.

I think the new Persian special building should have something else special besides being available earlier; perhaps it can provide one more health than an ordinary Aqueduct.

I've been doing some research about wells, aqueducts, qanats and irrigation and mulling over the related mechanics in HR. I'm arrived at a system I'm pretty happy with:

Well
Requires Mining
Cost: 40
• +2 health

Aqueduct
Requires Hydraulics
Cost: 150
• +2 health
• Provides a source of Fresh Water for Irrigation

Other changes:
• Farms can spread Irrigation with the discovery of Ecology
• Can build Farms without Irrigation with the discovery of Sustainability
• Ecology will be renamed and possibly shifted a little, but probably not in 0.9.4
• The Persian Apothecary (UB) will be replaced by the Ab Anbar (Aqueduct replacement). It's bonus will be that it's available early (probably at Engineering).


Rationale

I want Wells to be available very early. They've been around since the dawn of civilization and were a real alternate to rivers. In game terms I think it's good to have one decent source of health to make desert and jungle starts more viable. Riverside cities still have an advantage of either a bit more health if they need it or the saved production due to not needing to build one early.

This implementation makes Wells equivalent to cheaper, earlier BTS Aqueducts but the important factor compared to 0.9.3 is that the benefit is city only, the tiles around the city are not improved in any way. Note also that early health availability has been noticeably reduced in 0.9.4 compared to 0.9.3 due to the Smokehouse no longer giving health for meat resources, improvements like the mine causing unhealthiness, and a few other factors.

The Aqueduct has the same stats as the Well does in 0.9.3, but triple the cost and is available even later, at Hydraulics. It allows you to irrigate the tiles immediately adjacent to the city but these tiles will not be able to spread that irrigation until much later, in the Renaissance. I think this is a more realistic and historical progression of hydraulic technology. It will slow growth a little, but not prohibitively so.

I've always felt that being able to build farms without any water source at all is not realistic or historical (at least farms intensive enough to provide food on a large scale). Thus the shift all way to Sustainability in the modern era. By then it's not really needed (thanks to the Aqueduct and chained irrigation) but it's there to help later cities catch up a bit if need be.

The Persians were the original master hydraulic engineers, they were even able to build refrigerators in the desert by 400 BCE! Other early centres of hydraulic engineering all seem to have learned the technology from the Persians. Thus their UB will change to the Ab Anbar and be available earlier to reflect their origination of the tech. I never really felt the Apothecary was all that interesting or representative anyway. Persia's skill in medicine is still represented in HR by their UW, Gondeshapur.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Xyth]

It is unclear to me how newspapers in country A cause extra war weariness in country B. It makes more sense that newspapers would affect the public in their own country, or to some extent in neutral countries.

It's not so much the newspapers themselves but the rise of journalism and investigative reporting - the so-called fourth estate. Prior to this, almost all sources of news came via sources of authority and were thus filtered to suit the rulers' purposes. Via journalists civilians learn of the (mostly) unfiltered reality and details of war (and much more) for the first time. It wouldn't make sense to build a building increases war weariness in your own country though so I chose to make them increase it for your enemies instead. It's not perfect but I think it's reasonable. Newspapers weren't just read within their country of origin and it reflects the effect of populations in general being better informed.

Some newspapers sometimes urged going to war or urged the public to continue to support an on going war effort. Reporting on war victories, real or imagined, helped to keep the publics morale high.

I avoided adding a propaganda element to the building because I wanted it to focus on journalism being independent from the government. You describe it in a broader way that makes good sense though.

One possibility would be +?% war weariness for opponent and -?% war weariness for the owner.

While it might be a pain to program, the best gaming solution might be that the effect only applies to one of the opponents, and is based on how many more news presses one country has than the other.

The easiest way to achieve an effect similar to this is make it give +10% war weariness for enemies and -5% war weariness for the player. That way every second New Press is effectively cancelled out and it would effectively require 20 of them to reach +100%.

Anything else would require coding that the AI couldn't understand.

Um... I agree with Mahler, I think. For large empires this becomes ridiculously powerful, unless the bonus is quite small? There's a 300-hammer wonder that does literally nothing but "+100% opponent war weariness." If I have fifteen cities, it becomes nigh-impossible to fight an extended war with me, unless you exploit artificial tricks on the opposing side to lower war weariness to near-zero, or unless vast excess happiness is available in peacetime and population caps imposed by happiness are unreasonably high.

Each News Press stacks 10% war weariness and costs 175 production. So it's not at all cheap to build 15 of them. I don't think it's too powerful, it doesn't become available until the Industrial era by which point there are plenty of sources of happiness if you need it, not to mention the happiness from the culture and espionage sliders. In fact I think this helps make happiness a more relevant mechanic in the later game.

I'll consider adding a -5% war weariness element though.

Overall a significant improvement.

Depending on how easy it is now to get health from resources, you might consider changing Well to +1 health or increasing its cost.

Health is noticeably harder to get in 0.9.4 than it was in 0.9.3. The smokehouse no longer gives health for livestock resources, mines/quarries/oil wells/offshore platforms all give unhealthiness and there are a few other small changes too. I'll increase it's cost to 50 though.

Hydraulics seems a little long to wait for Aqueducts. In a future revision you might want to consider moving Hydraulics a little earlier in the tech tree.

I deliberately want it later as having it any earlier undermines the value of natural sources of fresh water like rivers and oases too much. It does mean it arrives a little late historically but not unreasonably so. Early aqueducts were focused on bringing water to cities, a role now represented by the Well. So while the Romans, for example, did have aqueducts in classical times, they weren't being used for widespread irrigation until some time after the Persian revolution in hydraulic engineering, around late classical/early medieval times - which is the era the Hydraulics tech is available.

I think the new Persian special building should have something else special besides being available earlier; perhaps it can provide one more health than an ordinary Aqueduct.

Yes it will have something else too, not decided exactly what yet.

 

[Azoth]

We should definitely turn away from the b chy tone, like you suggested. If I started it, mea culpa . …and now I forgot what I had to say about HR (if any).

I'm sure there's enough blame to go around. But I'm glad it's settled.

Now then:

Confederation
High Upkeep
• No Maintenance costs from Distance to Palace
• +1 trade route

Good.

Democracy
High Upkeep
• +50% GPP
• Unlimited Scientists

You can certainly make a case for unlimited Scientists at Democracy. Even so, this civic cannot match the cost savings of Aristocracy and Confederation for large empires; or the Monarchy production bonus for small empires. I think you need to move one half of the Social Welfare Village+Town bonus here: +1 commerce Village and Town, at a guess.

Slavery
Medium Upkeep
• +2 unhealthiness in all cities
• +1 commerce from Plantation, Quarry
• Can sacrifice population to finish production

+1 unhealthiness in all cities, surely?

Social Welfare (formerly Emancipation)
High Upkeep
• +1 production and commerce from Village, Town
• Can spend wealth to finish production

If Social Welfare loses one half of the Village+Town bonus to Democracy, it should be compensated. How about you reduce Altruism to +1 culture/specialist and Low Upkeep, then add +1 culture/specialist here?

Central Planning (name not finalized, replaces Mercantilism)
High Upkeep
• +100% wealth in Capital
• +1 production and commerce from Lumbermill, Watermill, Windmill
• No (Foreign) Corporations (not sure which is better)

With that list of bonuses, I'm tempted to call it Bureaucracy.
+100% gold will encourage players to relocate their capital to a Holy City, which is fine, I suppose. Since we've moved away from State Property and its Marxist connotations, I prefer no foreign corporations. (Heavy regulation and protectionist policies - the hallmarks of bureaucracy - do in fact deter foreign investment.) To preserve balance, I might remove the Windmill bonus. Windmills are already covered by Environmentalism anyway. Have you decided when this civic will be available? Nationalism made sense for State Property; Bureaucracy can be unlocked even earlier.

Free Market
Medium Upkeep
• +25% commerce from Trade Routes
•-25% Corporation expenses

Unlike food or production, bonus trade route commerce is applied to the base trade route yield, I think. If I'm right, then it really must be +50% trade route commerce. 1 base commerce +25% will rarely amount to anything. 1 base commerce +50%, together with other commerce multipliers (overseas trade, sustained peace, population) might make a difference in the rounding.

Overall a significant improvement.

Hydraulics seems a little long to wait for Aqueducts. In a future revision you might want to consider moving Hydraulics a little earlier in the tech tree.

I agree. I like the changes.
It strikes me that Levees are already available at Hydraulics. Instead of moving back Aqueducts, I suggest you move Levees forward. (They are too strong for medieval times anyway.) What about Investment? That technology has very little to offer now that we've moved the workshop bonus to Guilds; Levees would be a good fit there.

Other early centres of hydraulic engineering all seem to have learned the technology from the Persians. Thus their UB will change to the Ab Anbar and be available earlier to reflect their origination of the tech.

That reminds me: I have been meaning to run something by you, Xyth.
While I prefer to retain proper nouns - both names (Karolus vs. Charles) and places (Varanasi vs. Benares) - wherever possible, I feel generic nouns should be translated into English. I realize this is a personal aesthetic preference; but I am convinced that the Aztec Sacrificial Altar, the Spanish Citadel, and the Chinese Pavilion are preferable to the Aztec Tzacualli, the Spanish Castillo, and the Chinese Tingzi. What you lose in flavour, you gain tenfold in immersion and clarity. For example, the Thai Ho Trai means very little to most people; it's just another unique building with a minor research bonus. Call it the Thai Archives and you give players a much better mental picture. If you agree, we can rename some of the UBs in 0.9.5: the Turkish Hammam and the Persian Ab Anbar can be recast as the Turkish Sauna and the Persian Cistern. If not, we can leave them be.

 

[PlaysCiv]

My only gripe with the new proposals is that redistribution is possibly worse than the reciprocity. Early on in the game, great people are pretty significant, and minus 25% could really set you back.

 

[Howard Mahler]

"Health is noticeably harder to get in 0.9.4 than it was in 0.9.3. The smokehouse no longer gives health for livestock resources, mines/quarries/oil wells/offshore platforms all give unhealthiness and there are a few other small changes too."

I thought that in 0.9.4 you had changed back to resources giving health directly. So now a cow or pig will give +1 health without a smokehouse, and no extra health with a smokehouse. Before, a cow or pig gave no health without a smokehouse, and +1 health with a smokehouse.

This does not seem like a reduction in the available health from 0.9.3.
In fact, since in 0.9.3 sometimes one had to wait a while for the appropriate buildings to be available for one to get a health benefit from a resource, all else equal health is easier in 0.9.4 than in 0.9.3.

Mines/quarries/oil wells/offshore platforms all giving unhealthiness moves it back the other way. While I hope it is enough, I have my doubts.

I looked at my oldest cities in my current game:
6 cities had 0 tiles that would have been affected by the above.
8 cities had 1 tile affected
1 city had 2 tiles affected.
The above is influenced by being on an Arch. map with more water,
and probably by my playing style.

There are just more types of health resources available in 0.9.3 than in the prior versions. This is a good thing, but makes it harder to make health a challenge for the player.

We will all have to see how the new version plays.

 

[Howard Mahler]

My comments. Assumes everything regardless of color.
No comment means OK or no strong opinion.

Confederation way too strong.
9.0.3 Confederation could use a small boost as could Aristocracy.

Democracy too strong.
Add back the +25% war weariness.
Still would be on the strong side.

Current Authoritarism is probably too strong.
Proposal to strengthen it is unneeded.
Consider 1 happiness for every two units; which would leave room to add in the espionage bonus.

Codification.
Don't like the health bonus for courthouse.
However, even with something of equal strength, it should be strengthened a little.

Slavery: good change.

Industrialism: I see no need to weaken it. I prefer the 0.9.3 version.

Redistribution does need to be significantly weakened somehow from the 0.9.3 version.
Proposal is probably OK.

Central Planning
I prefer the current Mercantalism to the proposal.
The plus in capital is similar to Monarchy; not the end of the world.

Free Market
Liked it better the way it was.
Is +25% per trade route enough?
Some traits I believe now give +50%.
(I could be wrong.)

Clan Warfare
I would put back in the current penalty for number of cities.

Vassalage
It needs something besides the lower upkeep, but I do not think that unlimited spies is a good fit.

Standing Army
Much, much too strong.
Three good bonuses.
I believe that just the last two would be a bit too strong.
(A problem is that all of these bonuses are good ones to have somewhere.)

Rationalism
Proposal is too weak.
Needs something more.

Free Religion
The missionaries always working. Is this the players missionaries always succeeding or missionaries always succeeding in the player's cities?
In any case, proposal needs to be made somewhat stronger.

P.S. It is a shame you got sucked into fiddling with these for version 0.9.4.
It would have been much better to wait for 0.9.5.

Thought I'd better collate all the civic changes so far in 0.9.4, plus a few new reshuffles and ideas based on recent discussions. Civics not changed since 0.9.3 are not listed. Changes already made are in bold, potential new changes for discussion are in red.


GOVERNMENT:

Confederation
High Upkeep
• No Maintenance costs from Distance to Palace
• +1 trade route

Democracy
High Upkeep
• +50% GPP
• Unlimited Scientists


LEGAL:

Authoritarianism
High Upkeep
• +1 happiness per military unit stationed in a city
• +1 espionage per specialist

Codification
Medium Upkeep
• +5 happiness in largest cities
• +1 health from Courthouse

Jurisdiction
Medium Upkeep
• +100% growth for Cottage, Hamlet, Village
• +1 happiness from Courthouse

Equal Rights
Medium Upkeep
• 1 free specialist per city
• Happiness penalty for civs without Equal Rights


LABOUR:

Slavery
Medium Upkeep
• +2 unhealthiness in all cities
• +1 commerce from Plantation, Quarry
• Can sacrifice population to finish production

Caste System (moves to Priesthood)
Medium Upkeep
• Unlimited artists
• Workers build improvements +50% faster
• +1 production from Workshop

Industrialism
High Upkeep
• Unlimited Engineers
• +1 wealth from Specialists
•+2 unhealthiness in all cities

Social Welfare (formerly Emancipation)
High Upkeep
• +1 production and commerce from Village, Town
• Can spend wealth to finish production


ECONOMIC:

Redistribution
Low Upkeep
• +1 commerce from Camp, Mine
• +1 happiness from Granary
• -25% Great Person birth rate

Professionalism
Medium Upkeep
• Unlimited merchants
• +1 commerce from Workshop
• +2 happiness for Market

Central Planning (name not finalized, replaces Mercantilism)
High Upkeep
• +100% wealth in Capital
• +1 production and commerce from Lumbermill, Watermill, Windmill
• No (Foreign) Corporations (not sure which is better)

Free Market
Medium Upkeep
• +25% commerce from Trade Routes
•-25% Corporation expenses


MILITARY:

Clan Warfare
Low Upkeep
• No war weariness
• Increased wealth from pillaging and capturing cities

Conscription
Low Upkeep
• Can draft units each turn
• +100% experience gained from combat within own borders

Vassalage
Medium Upkeep
• Lower military unit support costs
• Unlimited Spies

Warrior Code (moved to Steel Working)
High Upkeep
• New units receive +2 experience
• +25% culture in all cities
• +2 happiness from Barracks

Standing Army (formerly Professional Army, moved to Military Conduct)
High Upkeep
• +100% Great General appearance
• +25% military unit production
• -50% unit upgrade cost


RELIGIOUS:

Organized Religion (moved to Divination)
High Upkeep
• Can build Missionaries without Monasteries
• Cities with state religion construct buildings +25% faster

Rationalism
High Upkeep
• +2 research per specialist
• +2 happiness from School

Free Religion
Medium Upkeep
• No state religion
• +1 happiness per non-state religion in a city
• Missionaries are always successful (unsure if this is possible yet)

 

[Xyth]

Civics discussion has been shifted to a new thread.

I agree. I like the changes.
It strikes me that Levees are already available at Hydraulics. Instead of moving back Aqueducts, I suggest you move Levees forward. (They are too strong for medieval times anyway.) What about Investment? That technology has very little to offer now that we've moved the workshop bonus to Guilds; Levees would be a good fit there.

Yeah, the Levees need to be available later. The workshop bonus is still at Investment, it was the Chemistry one that was shifted. I'm thinking Steam Power.

That reminds me: I have been meaning to run something by you, Xyth.
While I prefer to retain proper nouns - both names (Karolus vs. Charles) and places (Varanasi vs. Benares) - wherever possible, I feel generic nouns should be translated into English. I realize this is a personal aesthetic preference; but I am convinced that the Aztec Sacrificial Altar, the Spanish Citadel, and the Chinese Pavilion are preferable to the Aztec Tzacualli, the Spanish Castillo, and the Chinese Tingzi. What you lose in flavour, you gain tenfold in immersion and clarity. For example, the Thai Ho Trai means very little to most people; it's just another unique building with a minor research bonus. Call it the Thai Archives and you give players a much better mental picture. If you agree, we can rename some of the UBs in 0.9.5: the Turkish Hammam and the Persian Ab Anbar can be recast as the Turkish Sauna and the Persian Cistern. If not, we can leave them be.

No, I want to encourage players to read the pedia and learn something about these civilizations. UBs, UUs and UWs are the most effective way of doing that. Well, it would be if I had actually written all the pedia entries...

That's the goal though. I also think it can be a bit weird scrolling through the pedia and seeing buildings like the Mint, Research Institute, Garden - stuff that could feasibly be built by any civilization but is instead restricted to just one. Cistern and Archives would add to that, and Sauna sounds Finnish rather than Turkic. And adding the civilization's adjective to their building/unit just feels awkward, despite the clarity.

I thought that in 0.9.4 you had changed back to resources giving health directly. So now a cow or pig will give +1 health without a smokehouse, and no extra health with a smokehouse. Before, a cow or pig gave no health without a smokehouse, and +1 health with a smokehouse.

Sorry I should have said that health should still be scarcer than in 0.9.2, not 0.9.3. Keeping health at 0.9.3 levels is going to be tricky without completely removing resources or buildings. I'll keep reviewing it, though it may take a few iterations to get it perfect. I'd still like to find a way to make unhealthiness more punitive too.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Aqueduct
Requires Hydraulics
Cost: 150
• +2 health
• Provides a source of Fresh Water for Irrigation

What era is Hydraulics again? Late Medieval, right?

• Farms can spread Irrigation with the discovery of Ecology

...You have to wait until the Industrial age to do that? I don't think that makes a lot of sense; there were some pretty impressive irrigation works before that. Oh, wait, you're moving it... but by far enough?

In vanilla, farms spread irrigation relatively early, in the mid-Medieval period.

• Can build Farms without Irrigation with the discovery of Sustainability

When does Sustainability come in? I forget.

Sigh, there's so much of this tech tree I don't remember.

I've always felt that being able to build farms without any water source at all is not realistic or historical (at least farms intensive enough to provide food on a large scale). Thus the shift all way to Sustainability in the modern era. By then it's not really needed (thanks to the Aqueduct and chained irrigation) but it's there to help later cities catch up a bit if need be.

I'm not sure I agree- consider the farms on the Great Plains in the US, where there are vast areas farmed from underground aquifers (non-sustainably, which makes your choice of tech a wee bit ironic).

Remember, too, that "no fresh water access" in Civ IV doesn't mean "no water at all;" it means "no lakes on the scale of the Great Lakes and no rivers on the scale of the Nile, the Rhine, the Mississippi, or the Yangtze within 200 km." There were, and are, plenty of relatively minor river valleys that permit irrigation of substantial areas, and the aforementioned aquifers.

So "farms without water" (which you'll note are never as productive as farms with water) should probably be made available at a level corresponding to the early 20th century- late Industrial.

No, I want to encourage players to read the pedia and learn something about these civilizations. UBs, UUs and UWs are the most effective way of doing that. Well, it would be if I had actually written all the pedia entries...

Since you're counting on the players to write the civilopedia for you in the first place... I think maybe you should consider going with the advice.

You're writing a game mod for English-speakers, or you'd be calling "horseman" "caballero" units and so on, and it would get ridiculous. Unique Wonders are so strongly tied to a sense of time and place that you can make a good case for using the native language, but unique buildings not so much. If I want to know what something is without having to look it up all over again, and without having to memorize what fifty civilizations' unique buildings do, it makes a lot more sense to use English words for the generic nouns.

When the Spanish Empire builds a workshop, it's a "workshop" and not a "trabajeria" or some such. When they build a castle, it should similarly be something in English, if there is an English word for the concept. "Citadel" works fine, for instance.

That's the goal though. I also think it can be a bit weird scrolling through the pedia and seeing buildings like the Mint, Research Institute, Garden - stuff that could feasibly be built by any civilization but is instead restricted to just one. Cistern and Archives would add to that, and Sauna sounds Finnish rather than Turkic. And adding the civilization's adjective to their building/unit just feels awkward, despite the clarity.

I don't know; I really think they're on to something about this.

 

[Xyth]

I think it's time for this thread to retire. Not a bad effort though, over 1200 posts and over 60,000 views. Sadly I think there is probably a lot of good ideas and feedback that got lost in here somewhere, as the conversation leaped from topic to topic.

We'll continue the UB naming discussion over in the Feedback: Civilizations thread and the Well/Aqueduct/Irrigation topic over in the Feedback: Buildings and Wonders thread. Any other loose ends can go where-ever suits or in a new thread.

Thank you to all contributors to the discussion so far, now lets make the most of the new forum space we have!



<switches out the light and closes the door>

 

[Gilgalad]

I've been playing History Rewritten on my Mac Book for the last few days. I like it, lots of interesting new buildings, units etc. and all the countries have a unique character. Well done.

I am encountering one very irritating issue with the interface, perhaps someone could help?

A greyed out overlay with a message about Commerce appeared on the lower centre of the screen and I can't get rid of it. It overlays exactly the place where the display of stacked units appears and not only obscures it but prevents me from selecting a unit within the stack.

I tried turning off everything I could think of in the Bug Menu but it didn't help. Anyone know what this awful thing is and how I can kill it?

 

[Xyth]

I'll need to see a screenshot of this if possible.