How would you balance the civics?

[salty mud]

It's indisputable that some civics are better than others. If you developed the game, how would you change the civics to make them more balanced? Don't just pick underpowered civics, try and balance the overpowered ones too!

Slavery

Can whip population to finish production in a city
Make the slave revolt event slightly more common
Make a rare event where each time you whip, there is a small chance of a slave uprising, resembling Spartacus. Barbarian units would rise up around the city and rampage your countryside and, if you're unprepared, take the city for themselves.

Slavery gives a huge bonus by finishing buildings quickly - let's balance it a bit by introducing more risk.


Serfdom

Workers build improvements 50% faster
Workers are constructed 50% faster
Workers cost zero upkeep

This civic is designed to improve your land quickly and cheaply. Plant a few cities, get workers out and improve them in no time. The old Serfdom was pretty awful - hopefully this will boost it a bit.


Please share some of your thoughts.

Regards.

 

[elmurcis]

My biggest "issue" is that Universal Suffrage rush-buying ignores hammers +% (while Slavery does take care about Forge... IMP trait... Bureau capital or access to stone). If would rush-buy base-hammers, it would make it much much more useful civic with big empires at/after Astro if world has some "New World" landmass (well, there usually is shortage of extra production, not commerce at that moment)

 

[Archon_Wing]

Slave uprisings are a bad idea because they just add more randomness to the game while not changing that slavery is the best civic and would defacto switch to it. Furthermore, as it's one of the best ways to defend against early aggression, it's not fun at all. It's unfair to add risk to something that is essentially mandatory to survive at higher levels. In other words people would still be told to slave and just deal with it if RNG decides to screw them over.

I mean the choice would boil down to not using slavery, and being beaten to every city site and have no units to defend, or play as usual and deal with the RNG. That's not a very interesting choice.

That is, either nerf it outright, or not at all.

The best way I think is to allow Emancipation to come earlier and make it stronger.

I also don't think those changes to Serfdom would help either. Except in those dumb games where dumb people oracle feudalism (looks away), people will have generally made enough workers and improved most of the important land. Serfdom is a civic that also needs to come much earlier and even then it'd be pretty questionable.

What serfdom should do is provide something for having population and farms. If slavery makes you want to whip away citizens working useless tiles, serfdom should give you a reason to not do that, say production bonuses related to population and farms.

 

[salty mud]

Slave uprisings are a bad idea because they just add more randomness to the game while not changing that slavery is the best civic and would defacto switch to it. Furthermore, as it's one of the best ways to defend against early aggression, it's not fun at all. It's unfair to add risk to something that is essentially mandatory to survive at higher levels. In other words people would still be told to slave and just deal with it if RNG decides to screw them over.

I mean the choice would boil down to not using slavery, and being beaten to every city site and have no units to defend, or play as usual and deal with the RNG. That's not a very interesting choice.

That is, either nerf it outright, or not at all.

The best way I think is to allow Emancipation to come earlier and make it stronger.

I also don't think those changes to Serfdom would help either. Except in those dumb games where dumb people oracle feudalism (looks away), people will have generally made enough workers and improved most of the important land. Serfdom is a civic that also needs to come much earlier and even then it'd be pretty questionable.

What serfdom should do is provide something for having population and farms. If slavery makes you want to whip away citizens working useless tiles, serfdom should give you a reason to not do that, say production bonuses related to population and farms.

So basically you want slavery to be the "click here to win" button. In a game that has a heavy element of RNG, you're very critical of RNG.

The entire combat system is RNG. You could have a battle with a warrior against a knight and a 100% chance of victory for the Knight showing, yet the warrior still triumphs.

Diplomacy is RNG. You could start the game surrounded by Shaka, Monty and Alexander who hate your guts for no apparent reason except "a first impression is a lasting one." Alternatively, you could start next to Gandhi. You could even start isolated, which brings its own heap of troubles.

Your starting position could be laden with corn, fish, gold and ivory. Alternatively, some poor souls are stuck with capital cities surviving off of rice and cows on plains.

You could be the victim of a massive barbarian uprising, having hordes of axemen sweep through your lands. Alternatively, they could beeline straight to your neighbour's capital and plunder them instead.

All of the above is fine, but no one must ever touch the precious slavery.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Please show me a game where you switch to slavery andthe game instantly ends in victory ?

Yes they are rng, but these things lead to meaningful decisions. When you have warmongers around you, you will build more units and take advantage of bribes. When you have a good start, then you can pursue agressive strategies like deep tech oracle.

If you start isolated, your tech path changes dradtically. Optics increases in value.

On the other hand, what does adding slave revolts add. For the first 3000 years your labor choices are slavery.... Or nothing at all.

That means there is no meaningful decision at all.

This is akin to the verdict aryan events. You could do a 5 warrior start to defend an unlikely event, or just play as usual and not instalose anyways. And a good reason why a lot of people turn things off.

That is why if you want to make a change, it should be one that is consistent and matters. Making serfdom or emancipation earlier would be one of them that doesn't have haphazard results.

Not all RNG related things are equal. Personally I think there is too much already.

 

[salty mud]

But there is a meaningful decision. You run slavery, you need the manpower and the army necessary to back it up in the event of rebellion. It's classic risk and reward. For the first 3000 years your choice is running slavery, using it to bolster your economy but also suffer the consequences, or to avoid slavery and not deal with the fallout.

The only difference here is that the player is actively given the choice to have slavery or not. The player cannot choose their starting position, their neighbours, their local resources or even if they'll win a battle or not. You're talking about REACTIVE decisions, where you change based on what the game throws at you. I propose adding another PROACTIVE change, where the player dictates the course of the game.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It really isn't. Even with events on, I switch to slavery anyways. Even if you get rebels, it is merely just a hammer sink into units, much like every other game it has existed. And this game is already biased towards military.

Slavery is still the best choice. What you end up doing is just punishing players by screwing them either way. That makes it just noise.

Case in point, if slavery gets reduced to 20 hammers a whip, people are still picking it.

And even on a more basic level, it becomes a yes/no choice. You can't compare it at all with the other examples.

The other thing is that no civic vs slavery is already balanced with anarchy and civic costs . And why are we trying to balance default civics anyways? They should be bad.

Slavery also gets punished late game with emancipation.

Tl;dr all it does is make the game harder and does not encourage other civics enough if at all.

 

[Pangaea]

Slavery also has the fairly obvious cost of losing population, and with them commerce, hammers and food.

It's effective, certainly, but if we were to change the civics I think it would be more sensible to change the ones that are so weak you are actively hurting yourself by choosing them. Serfdom is the most obvious example.

 

[Archon_Wing]

There are only a few bad civics. Most have a use so my preference is towards making them less situatuonal.

Good civics are one that come with a good tech path. Slavery comes with bronze working which has multiple uses. Serfdom comes from a tech that is expensive and the path isn't that good and at a time where you should have improved most land anyways.

Thus, make it come way earlier. Maybe with iron working for those jungle heavy spots. At the verh least, a spiritual civ can zoom back and forth.

Or just rethink it completely.

If a civic needs a nerf, I think it should be state property. I don't even consider the others after getting it. Likewise environmentalism only exists to win the UN

 

[rah]

Well they created corps to make state property a choice. Checking out HOF games demonstrates that SP isn't always superior in all instances.

I laugh every time every one mentions the downsides of slavery since they never discourage anybody form using it anyway. While I think revolts are not the best way to make it questionable, if there was a way to include mitigating it by having a minimum number of units in your cap, (to add a support and hammer cost to offset some of the advantage) then I'd have no problem with it.

But agreed that making another civic better that comes earlier so there would be an actual choice would be proffered.

 

[Pangaea]

Well they created corps to make state property a choice. Checking out HOF games demonstrates that SP isn't always superior in all instances

Corps is indeed more powerful than SP, in almost all cases. The main reason(s) people prefer SP is that you don't require a specific GP (and a GE for Mining Inc is always a pain) and it involves much less micro. Both are exceedingly powerful. Graphs from the game when you change to SP or spread corporations tell you everything you need to know about how overpowered they are.

Honestly, overall, I think the game has done really well in the civics department. At least when you get a bit in (or are spiritual) there are genuine choices in all branches. Economics is the one with least choice perhaps, or the latest choices. Mercantilism is often a non-choice because you can't cut off all trade routes (unless you are isolated or have a billion cities), and Free Market comes fairly late.

 

[rah]

Corps is indeed more powerful than SP, in almost all cases. The main reason(s) people prefer SP is that you don't require a specific GP (and a GE for Mining Inc is always a pain) and it involves much less micro. Both are exceedingly powerful. Graphs from the game when you change to SP or spread corporations tell you everything you need to know about how overpowered they are.

Yes, I realize that. I was more responding to Archon_Wing's comment

If a civic needs a nerf, I think it should be state property. I don't even consider the others after getting it.

But after saying that, I too usually just go with SP because I'm lazy.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, given the amount of forum games where people have already ended the game before corporations have taken effect, it makes it a bit hard for me to see the value of them. A lot of games people get their edge in the renaissance, but they generally have to finish in industrial due to other landmasses, other civs catching up. Communism is the perfect follow up to all the new conquests. Corps feels more like a "win harder" mechanic because medicine is soooooo late. (I guess there's RR, but GE) and it still requires set up.

Then again, I never go for space anyways. But that's more of a problem with snowball effects where short-term effects > long term effects.

I guess culture?

 

[Astax]

Slavery is decent, maybe do +1 hammer on Mines to make not slaving in slavery a bit more viable. I would say Caste needs a boost before chemistry, and Serfdom could use say +1 hammer to all farms, because it fails due to not providing any bonuses to production overall.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

Slavery was ridiculously OP.
In my mod I doubled the sacrifice cost for slavery rush and doubled the unhappiness length.
At the same time, I gave it +1 to mines. I also have special ancient era improvements like Slave Farm that gets +1 food from slavery but doesn't benefit from normal farm upgrades.
Essentially I balanced it out so once you in Feudalism Serfdom (which got its own era specific improvements) becomes more lucrative than Slavery.

 

[Pangaea]

Slavery was incredibly OP IRL too. Where would 'the West' be today without the massive slave labour from Africa, America and South-America?

Anyway, the game isn't going to be updated any time soon, so we have the civics we have, and for the most part I think they are good. The only one that truly stands out negatively is Serfdom.

 

[ChaosSlayer]

That what mods are for - update your own game =P

 

[salty mud]

Slavery was incredibly OP IRL too. Where would 'the West' be today without the massive slave labour from Africa, America and South-America?

Anyway, the game isn't going to be updated any time soon, so we have the civics we have, and for the most part I think they are good. The only one that truly stands out negatively is Serfdom.

The middle east also had a massive slave trade, and still uses slaves to this day. Slavery hasn't done them much good.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, that's where the Emancipation unhappiness comes into play....

Plus keeping the slider low.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I don't think slavery is overpowered as it don't make the other labor civcs useless. Slavery is however really good in the early game as production is scares, population is cheap and tiles are poor. Later on it lose much of its value as tiles improve and population get more expensive to grow (larger cities).

I don't think serfdom is underpowered. It have low upkeep as well as boosting worker speed. It is in my opinion superior to whipping workers because serfdom in itself have no disadvantage while slavery cost more just to run and whipping cost even more. Serfdom is great if you want to change your tile improvements very quickly like going from farms and mines to cottages and windmills. I think serfdom is underrated because its benifits are not as visable as slavery and caste system but they do exist.

Emancipation boost the effectiveness of cottages enormously during the growth pace due to the 100% growth bonus, it is kind of similar to serfdom but much more limited as it only effect one improvement. But getting to towns 35 turns faster is a huge deal.

Gold is multiplied by some buildings so universal sufferage work fine.