If you were to replace Rationalism...

[Galgus]

One thing I think would be kind of interesting would be if adopting rationalism would start to "convert" your citizens to atheism, which would mean your religious follower count would start to drop. Each citizen following atheism would increase science output of city by 1 % up to a maximum of 15 %. If majority of citizens are atheists you lose religion bonuses in that city.

Aside from being rather political and controversial, I wouldn't want to see Piety/ Rationalism be an automatically terrible option unless it is made incompatible again.

Otherwise it would be a false choice and a potential noob trap, which I dislike.

Off the top of my head, high levels of could purchase hefty amounts of Great Scientists in that combo come the Industrial era.

I like to think of what the society would look like based on their combination of social policies, and I think of Piety + Rationalism as a dominant religion entwined with society that values learning and education.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Off-topic, it would kind of be cool if we got a Throne Room that changed with Era, civ choice, ideologies, and adopted policies: with some special features for combinations of policies.

Probably a lot of work, but it would make one's Civ feel more...I dunno, unique, like how it developed mattered.

 

[Vitruvius]

You can also add a bit of science to every tree. Patronage already has the scholasticism. Exploration could add +3 science for each coastal city. Commerce could give +2 science to every gold building instead of +1. And aesthetics could also give a small science boost for every gwam born.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[kaspergm]

Aside from being rather political and controversial, I wouldn't want to see Piety/ Rationalism be an automatically terrible option unless it is made incompatible again.

Otherwise it would be a false choice and a potential noob trap, which I dislike.

Well in a way, the idea I mention go back to the days that Piety and Rationalism were incompatible - but I do think when we are talking about Rationalism and being overpowered-through-universalism it's worth to drag religion into this discussion, because I feel the game is not completely balanced in that regard - the original intend according to the developers was to have religion play a major part in early/mid-game but lose importance from renaissance/industrial era and onwards. However, I don't really think they accomplished that. Having founded a religion will be a major factor in the success of your empire, not only in early game, but also late game happiness and economy will be heavily dependant on your religion.

For those reasons, I do think it's interesting to consider the options of having some game mechanics that will make religion lose importance in late game, or alternatively forcing you to make the choice between religion or science. Obviously, the part here is getting the balance right. We all know that in GnK it was really a no-choice, because the bonuses offered by Piety (coupled with the lack of drawbacks of taking Rationalism) meant that it was all-but-never worth it to choose Piety. But BnW has gone a good way in making Piety more viable as a choice, and if the significance of religion waned over the duration of the game, one could step up Piety even further without skewing the balance completely. If at the same time choosing Rationalism meant foregoing some of your religious benefits, things might start to look a lot less clear-cut than now, where Rationalism is all but your default choice on the higher difficulty levels.

 

[Galgus]

Well in a way, the idea I mention go back to the days that Piety and Rationalism were incompatible - but I do think when we are talking about Rationalism and being overpowered-through-universalism it's worth to drag religion into this discussion, because I feel the game is not completely balanced in that regard - the original intend according to the developers was to have religion play a major part in early/mid-game but lose importance from renaissance/industrial era and onwards. However, I don't really think they accomplished that. Having founded a religion will be a major factor in the success of your empire, not only in early game, but also late game happiness and economy will be heavily dependant on your religion.

For those reasons, I do think it's interesting to consider the options of having some game mechanics that will make religion lose importance in late game, or alternatively forcing you to make the choice between religion or science. Obviously, the part here is getting the balance right. We all know that in GnK it was really a no-choice, because the bonuses offered by Piety (coupled with the lack of drawbacks of taking Rationalism) meant that it was all-but-never worth it to choose Piety. But BnW has gone a good way in making Piety more viable as a choice, and if the significance of religion waned over the duration of the game, one could step up Piety even further without skewing the balance completely. If at the same time choosing Rationalism meant foregoing some of your religious benefits, things might start to look a lot less clear-cut than now, where Rationalism is all but your default choice on the higher difficulty levels.

I don't really think religion should fall off drastically, given that the entire SP tree around it would get kind of pointless.

Most Pantheon beliefs have far more impact early-game than they do later on, and the Founder beliefs are only good if you put effort into it and win the secondary religion spreading game.

So I think religion is in a good place balance-wise, with its big rewards requiring investment and some work to accomplish.

Getting a religion also tends to set an Empire back some early, especially for the first few to found, and an edge early can snowball into a lead later.

Also, some civs are completely built around religion, so nerfing it to buff Piety would really harm them.
________________________________________________________

Anyway, Rationalism, if it remains, needs to be balanced against Commerce and Exploration, which it competes with for selection.

It may be sub-optimal, but I've always favored Commerce over Rationalism: perhaps I see as inevitable and and as the greater path to make the empire great.

___________________________________________________________

I admit to using a mod that buffs Commerce with these changes.

Commerce Opener gold bonus moved from Capital to the city with East India.
Entrepreneurship now gives +1 Gold to all Specialists.
Mercenary Army now gives Double Gold from Plunder promotion to all Melee/Gun units.
Big Ben now provides additional trade route slot.

__

As well as the Game Balance [BNW] mod that lowers Secularism's boost to 1 from 2.

 

[Sorinth]

CIV 5 has seemingly always wanted Rationalism to be mutually exclusive with Religion and so what better way then to turn Rationalism into religion. It would provide better balance with the social policies and would actually simulate the struggle between religion/rationalism.

The features of this religion are as follows

• Unlike a normal religion there wouldn't be one Holy City instead each city you control would act like a Holy City and generate Religous Pressure even if it has adopted an actual religion.
• The pressure generated is based on your tech Era, so it would start off small and not really able to compete with Religion but would rise quickly after a era or two.
• Instead of purchasing a Rational Missionary with Faith you purchase them with Science.
• Most policies are treated like Follower Beliefs, so the cities only get the bonuses if the majority are following Rationalism. Though unlike Follower Beliefs if you convert a Foreign city it does not get the bonuses though would start generating Rationalism pressure.

So how would it all play out?

A science tree is always going to be better than any other tree so it's not about nerfing it we need to make the tree situational. As a religion the only reason to go Rationalism is if you think you can convert your cities to Rationalism relatively quickly and keep them following it. If you can't it's a waste. You also have to factor in the opportunity cost of losing out on your current religious beliefs. So it's no longer a tree for everyone.

If you have a lot of external religous pressure or a neighbour who spams Missionaries/Great Prophets then your better off not going Rationalism because it will be tough to spread/keep your cities following Rationalism. So why waste the SPs on something if you can't reap the benefits.

Rationalism is also less attractive for Tall empires because your Religous Pressure will be very small which means you'd have to spend Science to buy Missionaries which will not always be worth it. Sure you'll eventually recoup your losses but is the slow down worth it? Without a high pressure your cities will be at risk for being converted back to a religion and causing you to lose out on all your SP bonues so for a small empire it's a riskier proposition. One Great Prophet can wipe out your entire Social Policy tree.

Wide empires on the other hand it would be a great choice. Since all your cities provide pressure it will stack up quickly and so spreading Rationalism via pressure is much more viable. You'd also start converting nearby cities/CS which allievates opposing religous pressure.

I find this would better balances Wide vs Tall since Early/Mid game Tall will be better due to the 5% penalty but Late game a Wide empire running Rationalism can catch up and surpass. The optimal would still be Tall with Rationlism but it would be more fragile so it's balanced out.

So what do you all think?

 

[kaspergm]

A science tree is always going to be better than any other tree so it's not about nerfing it we need to make the tree situational. (...) You also have to factor in the opportunity cost of losing out on your current religious beliefs. So it's no longer a tree for everyone.

Well I was the one who also brought this idea up, so maybe it's a given, but I think the thought is at least interesting for the reasons you sum up very well in the first sentence. I also see some potential pitfalls here, namely that this will be, at least partially, a "negative" effect, in the sense that choosing rationalism will mean you lose out on your previously earned religious bonuses, which will obviously be a loss for you.

I'm not sure I completely get your points about wide vs. tall balance and pressure. One thing I think would be interesting is to have rationalism work like a universal "religion", i.e. foreign cities with rationalism will influence your cities also just like any other religion. I like the idea of pressure scaling with era so that the later in game it is, the stronger the push for rationalism will be. Citizens that "follow rationalism" (let's just call the atheists for the sake of the discussion) will give you perhaps a small passive science onus even if you haven't adopted the rationalism tree, but if you open the tree, you will promote spread of rationalism and get additional benefits from "atheists" (perhaps +1% science in city per follower, max 5% without tree, 10% with tree, additional benefits from further policies).

Personally, I think the idea of a civ that doesn't found a religion being more prone to switch early to "rationalism" is great, because it gives a "catch-up" mechanism and makes not founding a religion less devastating.

 

[Galgus]

I disagree that will always be better than other trees, since I think two civs can be even if one is ahead in technology slightly and the other is better in other ways.

For instance, a Commerce civilization should and would be outputting far more and, less centrally, .

So while the Rationalism civ has a slight edge in technology, the Commerce civ is getting more and is freer to expand while having much more for quickly improving infrastructure and controlling city-states.

 

[Fabio1701]

I like the idea of choosing rationalism to catch up, because once you are behind it is super hard, and makes it super easy to kill off AI's which are behind. I think the Scholars In Residence should not be a world council thing but a rationalism tree thing. Also, pair it as a reaction to tourism. I find that if I choose to win with tourism I totally overpower all but one or two contender civs, which are behind in tech anyway. Civs which get a ton of tourism from you could choose something in rationalism to give them a science boost based on your tourism. This gives them a fighting chance to catch up and kill you before they loose to tourism and makes you think twice about experting your tourism as you could export your science too (assuming the science is ahead).

It's also more like real life: nations with lots of tourism and science cannot hold back their science being exported along with their culture/tourism. Listening to your pop music tends to come with ipods.

 

[kaspergm]

I disagree that will always be better than other trees, since I think two civs can be even if one is ahead in technology slightly and the other is better in other ways.

For instance, a Commerce civilization should and would be outputting far more and, less centrally, .

I just have to disagree completely (unfortunately). While ideally it shouldn't be like that, I think it is all but a fact that in current game, science IS key to pretty much everything else. Science gives you access to better military units, better cultural buildings, better economic buildings - and oh yeah, better science buildings. Problem is you can have your kingdom swimming in infinitely amounts of gold and happiness, but if I'm first to, say, Flight technology, I will eradicate you should I want to, if I just have a moderately functional empire.

And even if I don't take the military path, pretty much any victory condition is unlocked through science - directly (science victory) or indirectly (cultural and diplomatic through the information era techs that hand you these victories if you haven't managed to claim them before this point).

If we want to break the science monopoly, we need to completely rethink the way science interacts with victory conditions. I see two possible options:

1. Rethinking how new features are unlocked in the game: Perhaps new cultural buildings or new economic buildings should not - or not only - depend on your science progress, but also on your progress in that certain area. Perhaps you need a certain cultural level in a city (or in your empire, if we should keep the wide vs. tall balance in mind) before you can build a Museum, and a certain economic level before you can build a Stock Exchange, and a certain science level, before you can build a University. In that way, game will not only be a question of beelining certain technological key points (think Education in Civ5) but also about managing your empire in a more general sense.
2. Decoupling science victory (and the other victory conditions) from flat scientific progress. Science victory is, and has always been, a defacto time victory, i.e. a race for who first reaches end of tech tree. Sure, you need to build the spaceship, but in most games, that's just a formality. BnW culture victory for the first time shows us a glimpse of how one can conceive a victory condition which is not only about reaching a certain tech level, but actually builds on your actions over a longer range of the game (and in other areas than just science). Sure, BnW hasn't gotten it completely right - the fact that they felt it necessary to throw in the Internet technology as an emergency tool to get CV almost no matter how poorly you played before shows that there are some balance issues still - but non-the-less, imo. it's a huge step in the right direction. If one dared imagine something equally bold for the science victory, perhaps game could evolve a bit away from being so one-sided on science.

 

[Sorinth]

Well I was the one who also brought this idea up, so maybe it's a given, but I think the thought is at least interesting for the reasons you sum up very well in the first sentence. I also see some potential pitfalls here, namely that this will be, at least partially, a "negative" effect, in the sense that choosing rationalism will mean you lose out on your previously earned religious bonuses, which will obviously be a loss for you.

If you have good religion then you'll choose a different tree, like Commerce and get the science bonus from Mercantilism. It becomes a trade off, you have two good abilities but can only chose one.

I'm not sure I completely get your points about wide vs. tall balance and pressure. One thing I think would be interesting is to have rationalism work like a universal "religion", i.e. foreign cities with rationalism will influence your cities also just like any other religion. I like the idea of pressure scaling with era so that the later in game it is, the stronger the push for rationalism will be. Citizens that "follow rationalism" (let's just call the atheists for the sake of the discussion) will give you perhaps a small passive science onus even if you haven't adopted the rationalism tree, but if you open the tree, you will promote spread of rationalism and get additional benefits from "atheists" (perhaps +1% science in city per follower, max 5% without tree, 10% with tree, additional benefits from further policies).

Personally, I think the idea of a civ that doesn't found a religion being more prone to switch early to "rationalism" is great, because it gives a "catch-up" mechanism and makes not founding a religion less devastating.

Right now Tall beats out Wide for science because of the 5% science hit per city. This change makes Rationalism less attractive for Tall empires because it'll be harder for them to get their cities to follow Rationalism and if an AI decides to send Missionaries/Prophets into your lands it's more damaging. Wide empires will generate more pressure and their cities are smaller so they can convert faster and are better protected. So ideally a Tall empire will take the science lead but after rationlism the Wide empire will catch up. So it becomes a choice between going tall and hoping to snow ball your way to victory or going wide and starting slower but finishing strong.

The 1% science per follower is interesting and could easily replace the Rationalism opener of 10% science while happy.

 

[Galgus]

I just have to disagree completely (unfortunately). While ideally it shouldn't be like that, I think it is all but a fact that in current game, science IS key to pretty much everything else. Science gives you access to better military units, better cultural buildings, better economic buildings - and oh yeah, better science buildings. Problem is you can have your kingdom swimming in infinitely amounts of gold and happiness, but if I'm first to, say, Flight technology, I will eradicate you should I want to, if I just have a moderately functional empire.

And even if I don't take the military path, pretty much any victory condition is unlocked through science - directly (science victory) or indirectly (cultural and diplomatic through the information era techs that hand you these victories if you haven't managed to claim them before this point).

If we want to break the science monopoly, we need to completely rethink the way science interacts with victory conditions. I see two possible options:

1. Rethinking how new features are unlocked in the game: Perhaps new cultural buildings or new economic buildings should not - or not only - depend on your science progress, but also on your progress in that certain area. Perhaps you need a certain cultural level in a city (or in your empire, if we should keep the wide vs. tall balance in mind) before you can build a Museum, and a certain economic level before you can build a Stock Exchange, and a certain science level, before you can build a University. In that way, game will not only be a question of beelining certain technological key points (think Education in Civ5) but also about managing your empire in a more general sense.
2. Decoupling science victory (and the other victory conditions) from flat scientific progress. Science victory is, and has always been, a defacto time victory, i.e. a race for who first reaches end of tech tree. Sure, you need to build the spaceship, but in most games, that's just a formality. BnW culture victory for the first time shows us a glimpse of how one can conceive a victory condition which is not only about reaching a certain tech level, but actually builds on your actions over a longer range of the game (and in other areas than just science). Sure, BnW hasn't gotten it completely right - the fact that they felt it necessary to throw in the Internet technology as an emergency tool to get CV almost no matter how poorly you played before shows that there are some balance issues still - but non-the-less, imo. it's a huge step in the right direction. If one dared imagine something equally bold for the science victory, perhaps game could evolve a bit away from being so one-sided on science.

I like the idea of making progress in other areas more important, though unit tech should be spaced closely enough that being one tech above isn't as much an advantage.

We could probably use more units to fill in gaps.

On the other hand, Spies stealing tech provides a way for a civ behind in tech to catch up, making it a edge a bit less important.

There is definitely an edge in having a advantage: ideally the Commerce player would get to a new tech slower, but incorporate its buildings into their empire far sooner than a Rationalism player.

_______________________________________

Ideally the trade-off should be between :

More developed infrastructure and/or a tighter grip on city-states and/or more cities.
vs.
Having access to the most advanced buildings sooner.

______________________________________

I still don't think barring religion with Rationalism is a good balancing move, partially because it doesn't actually address any of the issues we have been taking about and partially because it limits options while not accomplishing much.

 

[kaspergm]

One thing I think it's worth noting in this discussion, with regards to the victory conditions, is how they in BnW sort of "reboot" the game with regards to cultural and diplomatic victory in the middle of the game. Dipomatic victory, obviously, only really sets in after World Congress is founded in renaissance, and tourism for cultural victory, while being available from early game in small amount, gets its major input with archeology in industrial. I really like this approach to victory, because it means early game will be where you establish your empire, but late game is where you fight for victory, which is good because it means you can be underdog in early game and still win.

Science victory, on the other hand, is very much just cummulative over the entire game. Sure, you need to research a specific target and then build the spaceship, but since tech tree is identicalfor all civs, that basically just amounts to accumulating a fixed number of beakers (and a bit of hammers for the space ship on top). This is imo. not very different from the culture accumulation from vanilla culture victory, and something that really should be reconsidered in a future installment.

 

[Galgus]

That might help make later eras feel more interesting as well.

 

[Kallowe]

So what if Rationalism was replaced with a mid-game nation building policy tree comparable to Tradition or Liberty. Perhaps if for some reason you were unable to expand in the early game, or just chose not to, you could with this policy. The policy itself could be called "Colonialism"or something like that.

 

[Redaxe]

I like the idea of choosing rationalism to catch up, because once you are behind it is super hard, and makes it super easy to kill off AI's which are behind. I think the Scholars In Residence should not be a world council thing but a rationalism tree thing. Also, pair it as a reaction to tourism. I find that if I choose to win with tourism I totally overpower all but one or two contender civs, which are behind in tech anyway. Civs which get a ton of tourism from you could choose something in rationalism to give them a science boost based on your tourism. This gives them a fighting chance to catch up and kill you before they loose to tourism and makes you think twice about experting your tourism as you could export your science too (assuming the science is ahead).

It's also more like real life: nations with lots of tourism and science cannot hold back their science being exported along with their culture/tourism. Listening to your pop music tends to come with ipods.

This is a good point actually. If I was behind in Science rationalism is a no-brainer, but then it needs to balanced so a Runaway Civ can't get even further ahead...
Interesting idea about 'Scholars in Residence' - if you take Imperial Japan for instance, they were traditionally very isolationist like China but once the West under Perry forced trade agreements onto Japan, the Japanese realised what was happening to China & they realised they had to modernise or face humiliation. And well within 50 years Japan did modernise (by studying Western social/political/economic institutions) & had a military that defeated Russia in a war in 1904/5.
This historical period of Japan could be seen as an example of how Rationalism could function(i.e. it will benefit a technologically inferior Civ (e.g. 1860s Japan much more than the leading Tech Civ of the day i.e. 1860s America or Britain)...

 

[Fabio1701]

This historical period of Japan could be seen as an example of how Rationalism could function(i.e. it will benefit a technologically inferior Civ (e.g. 1860s Japan much more than the leading Tech Civ of the day i.e. 1860s America or Britain)...

Good example of history. Unfortunately I find that in civ it is pretty hard to recreate such real world experiences. In civ5 I don't think that any nation would be able to modernize that much in 50 years without a glut of great scientists purchased through spending religion points, assuming you had that much to spend. (Which Japan would not have had IRL considering they are not a founder civ).

In civ there seems to be a trade off or either building, peace and lots of science, or war, conquest and science slows. Every time I decide to go on a war path before industrial times, my science suffers massively which hampers me in the later game, so I almost always play peaceful until artillery and then kill everything. Makes for bring games, and not completely in line with RL where war can accelerate technological innovation.

 

[Redaxe]

Good example of history. Unfortunately I find that in civ it is pretty hard to recreate such real world experiences. In civ5 I don't think that any nation would be able to modernize that much in 50 years without a glut of great scientists purchased through spending religion points, assuming you had that much to spend. (Which Japan would not have had IRL considering they are not a founder civ).

Yes that's true but perhaps Ratonalism could have some policies changed to enhancing the rate of scientific development through espionage & trade routes.

For instance the opener could be
A spy in a foreign city produces 1% of the total beakers produced by that city for every technology that the foreign city has that you miss. Trade routes to a city produce 1% of the total beakers for every two technologies that the foreign city has that you miss.

Ok forget about the numbers for a second but the intention is that a Civilization that chooses rationalism is one that is looking beyond it's own borders for progress. It is the idea of pragmatism, i.e my neighbour is 10 technologies ahead of me so what can we learn from them....
So a combination of spies and trade routes to a more advanced civilization may provide a noticeable boost to your science that helps a backward Civ to close the gap. It helps make espionage a little better to as a spy would generate science per turn as well as trying to steal a free technology. Espionage often becomes nearly useless after a while with the time to steal a tech approaching 100 turns so at least you're still making some science. So if your spy is in a capital that produces 100 science/turn and you are 10 techs behind you would get 10 beakers per turn for free.

Trade routes would have a lesser effect but you are also giving that Civilization extra gold as well so they are getting something from you. So if you are really behind in tech sending all your spies and trade routes to more modernized foreign Cities would give you a healthy boost to technology but as you close the gap the bonuses would get considerably less...
That is sortof how I would envision rationalism, rather than just being flat boring bonuses to science you have to work and find other ways to enhance that science, in this case through trade routes & spies...

 

[Fabio1701]

I like your idea of spies contributing to slow building tech rather than just stealing a tech, in combination with trade routes helping catch up I think we approximate what happens with tech spread IRL.

Spies are indeed useless against other civs at one point. In then end I have them in CS just to keep a few permanent allies, but I really don't feel the espionage game in civ5 that other civ had, i.e. planting nuclear bombs

Currently the rationalism tree looks like this:

-Secularism: +2 Science from every Specialist.
-Humanism: Great Scientists are earned 25% faster.
-Free thought: +1 Science from every Trading Post and +17% Science from Universities.
-Sovereignty: +1 Gold from Science buildings.
-Scientific revolution: Boosts Science gained from Research Agreements by +50%.

Perhaps it should look like this:

-Secularism: +2 Science from every Specialist.
-Humanism: Great Scientists are earned 25% faster.
-Free thought: +1 Science from every Trading Post and +17% Science from Universities.
-Sovereignty: X% science boost from spies in more advanced civs.
-Scientific revolution: X% science boost from trade with advance civs.

I really don't feel that I would miss the 50% research agreement boost at all, and it makes sense that a civ trying to catch up would sacrifice money for tech.

 

[kaspergm]

Any change to Rationalism that does not cut down Secularism from 2 to 1 science per specialist will never achieve the aim of making Rationalism anything but a no-brainer. That policy is just so good, and sitting at first level, why would you ever not open Rationalism and take this?

Imo. policies sitting at first level should be universal but weak. Policies sitting on the higher levels should be specialized but strong. Secularism is universal and strong (very strong in fact), which just completely tips the balance. If trees are constructed this way, you get the best gameplay because you can always open a tree if nothing more opportune is available without it being a complete gamebreaker. Finishing the tree should only be your choice if you really focus on this game aspect.

Apart from the obvious mistake of universal and strong at lower levels (or even more default stupid, specialized and weak, which should obviously be avoided completely), a dangerous mistake is putting something that is specialized and strong at the first level. The pitfall here is that having first-level policies that are specialized means you sometime have to trot through policies that give you no benefit in the specific game just to get to higher level policies, and that's just frustrating.

 

[Redaxe]

How about something like this. I took the gold bonuses out so it doesn't tread on Exploration or Commerce

Opener: Trade Routes provide 1% of the total scientific yield of that city every turn for every 2 technologies that Civilizations city has that you miss.

Secularism: +1 science from every specialist

Humanism: Great Scientists are earned 25% faster (as is)

Free Thought: +1 science from every trade routes and + 10% science from universities

Sovereignty: Spies in a foreign city produce 1% of the total scientific yield of that City every turn for every technology that Civilization has that you do not.

Scientific Revolution: As is

Completion: As is....