How would you balance the civics?

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The problem with cottages before emancipation is that you likely gain more science from farms + scientists + caste system + pacifism + great people. Yes it is resonable to build cottages in the capital and run bureaucracy for the gold per turn but doubtful to have alot of them before the renaissances.

For food poor cities that will never get a great person (so all gpp is wasted which is a deal breaker for specialists) cottages make sense but food rich cities should maximize their food output and then use specialists to farm that great people bar dry of cheap great people and then we can think about cottages.

These food rich cities can be relativly quickly converted into production powerhouses by converting farms into workshops which may be a good idea if you want to exploit a technological advantage. Caste system do add that extra hammer to the workshops. In particular with spiritual you can run serfdom to make the conversion quicker.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, the way I see it even if the growth time is reduced, there are often not many turns remaining once Emancipation rolls along. I guess this is all very map dependent, but satellite cities can often turn any section of river into a cottage field.

As for low value cities, I usually like to check them for hills so at least they can build some wealth.

Which brings another thing out. I rarely use Universal Suffrage unless I have to buy something. Anyone make good use of the hammers?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Well, the way I see it even if the growth time is reduced, there are often not many turns remaining once Emancipation rolls along. I guess this is all very map dependent, but satellite cities can often turn any section of river into a cottage field.

Yes that is a problem with everything that comes late. At that point the game may as well be over or decided.

As for low value cities, I usually like to check them for hills so at least they can build some wealth.

Yes that is one way to use them as you have more control over hammers than commerce however in terms of raw values I think cottages are a bit better for these cities.

Which brings another thing out. I rarely use Universal Suffrage unless I have to buy something. Anyone make good use of the hammers?

Without using the purchase ability US is pretty poor. US is really the only way to turn towns into production powerhouses so if you make heavy use of cottages you will likely use US to be able to produce stuff. Its purpose is very much the same as slavery, make something that is otherwise production poor into something productive.

Im my current game I think Im at a point there using serfdom make sense. Situation is that cannons are going to be aquired with liberalism. Most of my cities have huge population like above 15 citizens because I use farms + caste + pacifism + specialist. My capital is a standard bureaucracy cottage capital. My plan is to convert farms into workshops and mass produce cannons and serfdom do help with the conversion process then I can switch back to caste, Im spiritual in that game so no anarchy loss where. Later on in the future I may just go serfdom again and cottage pretty much every tile on my continent after I have conquered the other civs with cannons.

 

[SnipedSoul]

My problem with serfdom is that you have no production without hills. If it kept the +1 hammer to workshops that you receive in caste it could be quite good. I normally only use caste to run a ton of specialists in a couple cities to crank out a GP during a golden age. The rest of the time I mostly use caste for the workshop boost. An alternative boost to serfdom might be to allow some kind of rudimentary drafting. Historically, feudal lords would pull serfs off the land to form an army.

The other civic I would boost is environmentalism. I would just get rid of the +25% corp maintenance. Going from -25% to +25% maintenance by switching out of free market is too painful. If you only lost the -25% I think that would be good. Mercantilism might be a tad weak, but it can be really good while you are conquering your continent. A free merchant in every city really takes the edge off maintenance during a war of conquest. Combine rep with merc and you get a respectable amount of free beakers, as well.

The other trees are relatively balanced, imo.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Serfdom is however useful when you plan to switch out your improvements. Like going from farms to workshops. Like you may be at the point there you are going to get a good military unit but don't have it yet so you have very little usefulness of caste system hammer but want as many workshop in place when you get the unit so you can produce it as quickly as possible.

 

[SnipedSoul]

Serfdom is a lot better for spiritual leaders who can pop in for a few turns without much penalty. I've always found it better to just build more workers instead of going into anarchy for quicker improvements. I reserve golden ages for caste + pacifism to get max GPP.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Serfdom is a lot better for spiritual leaders who can pop in for a few turns without much penalty. I've always found it better to just build more workers instead of going into anarchy for quicker improvements. I reserve golden ages for caste + pacifism to get max GPP.

I tend to run caste + pacifism as my standard set in the medieval and renaissance era because great people is more valuable than cottages at that point and a good cottage capital should bring in enough commerce to pay for your empire. Sometimes I switch to organized religion + slavery if I get a new infrastructure such as market or universities because that give me the infrastructure instantly and my cities grow relativly quickly back and infrastructure do make a huge difference in the long run so getting it as soon as possible to make your economy more efficient seems like a good idea.

Spiritual is pretty nice to have for such reasons.

If you don't care about specialists, like you run both merchants and scientists when the only advantage caste get is the workshop hammer (which make them roughly equal to mines) while serfdom have the advantage of low upkeep and +50% worker speed. If you focus on cottages serfdom is probably only second to emancipation, the extra worker speed make it easier to grow cities with farms that is later replaced with cottages.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I generally stay in slavery if I'm not spiritual. I play a lot of tropical maps that tend to have a ridiculous amount of food, but few hills. Slavery is the only way for me to have a reasonable level of production before workshops are boosted.

I appreciate the boosted worker speed, but I can't live without slavery in most of my games. I can always build more workers, but I can't force more production without slavery.

Slavery is also crucial for war, imo. Whip every city twice and you can have a huge catapult stack right after construction is researched.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well it is true that any civic is useful as a spiritual Civ. Consider a scenario where you have a jungle heavy map and you oracled feudalism because you have very scary neighbors.

It's obscure yes but it does happen.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I actually did oracle feudalism as Victoria on a jungle heavy map once. It was super strong switching into HR, vassalage, and serfdom, then quickly clearing all the jungle and spamming financial cottages everywhere. 5xp longbows are really strong that early in the game. I actually fought some defensive wars to farm great generals and build diplo with other AIs from shared war bonus.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I actually did oracle feudalism as Victoria on a jungle heavy map once. It was super strong switching into HR, vassalage, and serfdom, then quickly clearing all the jungle and spamming financial cottages everywhere. 5xp longbows are really strong that early in the game. I actually fought some defensive wars to farm great generals and build diplo with other AIs from shared war bonus.

Well, I don't make stuff up.

There's a lot more options than traditionally suggested, especially when you play more unusual maps. But I usually end up thinking I should have switched to serfdom afterwards. I suppose it is funny people always scream "map dependent" and then make absolutist statements, sometimes right after. I do the same. Then again, I'm probably one of the least flexible players around.

 

[VanitysFiend]

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.

I've twiddled around with slavery several times in my own personal mod, but eventually I've always ended up reverting back to the default...

Simplest suggestion I can make is to bump it up to high upkeep (tbh I adjusted civic costs a long time ago to make high upkeep more expensive and low upkeep less so).

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.

I changed this by giving it +1 from farms, it lets u just sprawl more easily, has nice synergy with financial riverside farms to...

Please share some of your thoughts.

Regards.

One change I made that wasn't necessary but I'm none the less quite fond of was swapping state properties +10% bonus with +1 from farms, helps keep them competitive with watermills and workshops, really puts the 'Sickle' back in 'Hammer and Sickle'

 

[Strijder21]

One change I made that wasn't necessary but I'm none the less quite fond of was swapping state properties +10% bonus with +1 from farms, helps keep them competitive with watermills and workshops, really puts the 'Sickle' back in 'Hammer and Sickle'

Good to see I'm not the only one who thinks State Property is totally underpowered and should receive even more boosts.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

One change I made that wasn't necessary but I'm none the less quite fond of was swapping state properties +10% bonus with +1 from farms, helps keep them competitive with watermills and workshops, really puts the 'Sickle' back in 'Hammer and Sickle'

I don't know, the entire point of most planned economies was to get away from agriculture and jumpstart an industrial revolution ASAP, even at the cost of mass starvation. State Property should encourage players to bulldoze farms to replace them with workshops, not spam farms. Extra production for farms should come with -1 food from them imo.

 

[VanitysFiend]

I don't know, the entire point of most planned economies was to get away from agriculture and jumpstart an industrial revolution ASAP, even at the cost of mass starvation. State Property should encourage players to bulldoze farms to replace them with workshops, not spam farms. Extra production for farms should come with -1 food from them imo.

As far as I know, the reason most planned economies worked towards breakneck industrialisation was because communism took hold in societies that were, at the time, predominately agrarian, like Russia and China, and who therefore needed to play catch up. Ideally Planned Economies are supposed to represent a union of industry and agriculture, imo State Property should encourage players to emphasise and at the expense of . Bulldozing farms for workshops/watermills is still pretty likely to happen with my change, farm spam is good in only a few situations, I haven't found the +1 to really tip them over the edge, at least not on state property, I've seen a few mods that give farms +1 under serfdom, and I can tell you, that makes a difference!

 

[civvver]

Slavery is fine as is. The issue is that there are just no other options for a long time so it makes players whine about not having options. Serfdom might be worth it if it came way sooner, but what I would do is make it reduce maintenance by 25% cus hey your feudal lords are helping to manage the people. That could be a huge difference on same maps, 2-4 gold per city even.

State prop is fine, if you have a lot of rivers it's ridiculously op and since it comes online so much sooner than corporations it's amazing.

Emancipation sucks because it comes so late. I only ever switch to it because I'm getting 6+ unhappiness in my cities. I'd rather state in caste and combo it with state prop forever. So what they should do is move emancipation way up. Democracy is an expensive dead end tech too. We had republics and slave free states way before modern versions of democracy. Tech tree wise I think around civil service is balanced for what it is, but it doesn't fit the flavor of the tech. Code of laws fits a little better but way too early. Maybe philosophy?

Mercantilism is really bad too cus of what tech unlocks it. Banking as a tech sucks. Banks are a terrible building except for unlocking wall street, so I only ever research it on route to economics. So why switch to mercantilism for like 5 turns? It's a waste. If it came with like currency it would be very good. And I don't think that's too early cus there are no other economy civics unlocked early.

Free speech I think is a tad weak but I'm ok with it since it combos so well with universal suffrage plus corps. Suffrage I agree just make buying do base hammers or something though combo'd with kermlin it's pretty strong.

My only other grip is vassalage I think it's a bit weak. Only super useful if like your entire empire is building units, but I usually just have 2-3 specialized cities spamming them and bureaucracy ends up a lot stronger. And even with free unit unit support it usually ends up costing more cus of the cost of the civic. So just lower the cost of the civic to none and then it'd probably be fine. Now you lose your bureaucracy bonuses but might make out on net gold.

Religious civics are all nicely balanced I think.

 

[Lexicus]

Mercantilism is really bad too cus of what tech unlocks it. Banking as a tech sucks. Banks are a terrible building except for unlocking wall street, so I only ever research it on route to economics. So why switch to mercantilism for like 5 turns? It's a waste. If it came with like currency it would be very good. And I don't think that's too early cus there are no other economy civics unlocked early.

Banking is needed to get to replaceable parts, which in turn leads to rifles.

 

[Strijder21]

My only other grip is vassalage I think it's a bit weak. Only super useful if like your entire empire is building units, but I usually just have 2-3 specialized cities spamming them and bureaucracy ends up a lot stronger.

When you are doing a rush, you don't have the time to let 2 cities build all your units. You'd be whipping/drafting all your cities, which does make vassalage/theocracy useful.

 

[civvver]

Banking is needed to get to replaceable parts, which in turn leads to rifles.

Ok so you go banking, replaceable parts, rifles, then probably economics after. It's rare to sit on banking very long without teching economics. If you beeline rifles and ignore education then I suppose you could run it a long time. Still not that great though as foreign trade is probably worth as much.

 

[Strijder21]

Ok so you go banking, replaceable parts, rifles, then probably economics after. It's rare to sit on banking very long without teching economics. If you beeline rifles and ignore education then I suppose you could run it a long time. Still not that great though as foreign trade is probably worth as much.

Specialists get
1. Boosted with representation
2. Give GPP
3. Are inherently more flexible than commerce is.

Sûre, Free Market often beats it when it comes, but State Property comes very soon after it usually, and handily beats it in most cases. Mercantilism goes online about 30-60 turns before FM does.