I'm doing 4 tiers not 6.
Slightly, Moderately, Very, Extremely.
Very Should be around Modern imo.
Can you tell me how much culture is required for level ups?
The BASE, which is based on Normal Gamespeed (which will also soon be adjusted for mapsize and difficulty) is 10 X lvl+1. Thus, to get the first is 10 culture, the 2nd is 100, the 3rd is 1000, the 4th is 10000, the 5th is 100,000, 6th is 1,000,000 and so on. The gamespeed modifier multiplies that by a percentage adjustment. I'm not sure what ls612 established on all those at this point but it seems to be pretty fitting so far.
As I've said, I don't know how fast civilizations tend to develop their culture output in relation to this exponential increase in requirement yet.
This is also based on also utilizing the game option No Positive Traits on Gamestart. If you don't have that, you get the leader's base first traits but you also basically start off at the 2nd lvl. Thus, to get the next trait still takes the same amount (1000 base.)
I know how you feel there but keep in mind if we reduce the amount of picks we reduce the amount of enjoyment that can be had in the system and reduce the effectiveness of culture expansion to earn traits as a strategy in relation to research expansion for techs. To some extent the two are in competition for the attention of the player and if we reduce the amount of picks by too much we make enhanced research far more important, which it still probably is slightly more important now.
In short, I'm trying to give a good and viable alternative strategy to the 'always maximize research over everything else' strategy. Eventually, I'll look to try to enhance the usefulness of espionage for this purpose as well.
Also,
Do the leaders start with their inherent negative (slightly)? Or is the first negative trait selection that you describe, selecting the first 'slightly' negative one? Is it compulsory?
It depends. If using the No Positive Traits on Gamestart option, they don't start with any traits, including negative ones. The negative then comes at 2nd lvl and the pick is enforced just after the positive selection made at that level, leaving the leader at its stock 2 positive, 1 negative. Thereafter it's 1 negative every 3 more levels.
It's compulsory to pick one but the next level offers you the ability to eliminate a negative rather than take a positive. And I do intend to implement Koshling's idea of allowing a negative selection to instead negate a positive trait if the player so chooses.
I still definitely think its impossible to make the 'slightly' negative traits anywhere near potent enough for them to become gradually less negative if they begin 2 level ups into the game.
Imagine the first trait giving a -15% production. Of course there's more than that to the Negative Trait but this is just for an example. At 20 production in the first city, this means -3 production overall. A player may well still be, after such a modifier, at the top of the list for production at that point.
But down the road, when the sum total of production in the nation is somewhere around 5000 (which isn't toooo far into the game actually), that -15% means -450 production. When their next Negative Trait selection comes up they are already noteworthily suffering (more noticeable now than it was at the beginning) from reduced production. So when they get the option to take a -10% production vs a -15% food (from a differing negative trait), it's debatable which is a worse penalty in this case. The overall impact in game terms is actually worse if you take the -15% food but it's perhaps not as crippling as ending up with a total of -25% production from the combination of both negative traits. Thus, the question of diversify negatives or extend the one you have becomes far more strategic. If you have, for example, troops being built with food as well as production, you may be much better off selecting the -10% additional production penalty.
Now also too consider that if that leader continues to plow through the negative trait, he begins to see more and more benefits to the point that at the later tiers of the negative trait, he begins to experience these negative traits much as a positive one would be (the leader has learned how to work with his psychological deficiencies and turn them into something good - never completely negating the deficiency but giving him a strength to play to.) For example, perhaps the trait above may start with +5% culture. Then the second gives +10%, thus he ends up with +15% culture and -25% production. On the third, the production penalty becomes another 5% (-30% production total) and the culture becomes another +15% (+30% culture). It's already becoming as much a positive as a negative. One more tier and perhaps he just gains more culture, another 20%, and loses no further production. So now he's at -30% production, +50% culture. It's now officially more a positive than a negative but he earned it by being willing to continue to extend his deficiency until it became a benefit. He still has crappy production though... and that sucks.
These are just examples of the kind of thinking I have in mind with those.
Other types of tags do operate much the same way. This concept doesn't just apply to yields and commerces.
I know what you mean about having to tweak/re-tweak, its just I can forsee some issues in my mind and wanted to bring them up. How you approach it is up to you, if you want to wait until i've done the traits and people play them and we get feedback thats ok. I would just prefer these couple of changes first so I can create and balance the traits with a certain developing leader structure in mind.
I'm not saying it'd take long to address but I've got projects between now and the point I'm ready to revisit the mechanism in those ways. Yes... I'm just asking for some evaluation time on anything we try.
I think you wrote that perhaps in the future some traits wouldn't be available from the beginning but maybe connected to the era (like: the prehistoric "food enhancing trait to be picked": would be "nomadic" whereas the ancient eras one (or lvl2 of food) trait is "agricultural"?)
- or maybe certain traits would be tied to techs, like being able to pick the trait "agriculture" would becoming available with finishing the research of the tech "agriculture", "nomadic" with "nomadic lifestyle" and so on?.
After all there is no reason for a "philosophical" or "cultural" trait with none of the prerequisites that are needed for its existence being present in a civ that has no language or anything else yet.
Yeah, I'm liking that. Not all trailheads into the traits tiers need to be available at the first pick. But we should work to not be too restrictive.
So for example the trait that gives culture would be available with Prehistoric music, a later version lvl2 of that trait at Music etc?
Might make for some interesting strategic decisions to rush to certain techs before the culture graduates you to a new level, or reduce cultural output until you can reach the tech you're looking to get to to unlock a particular trait.
The trait "scientific" could be unlocked with oral tradition, lvl2 with of it literature and so on?
It'll take a while for us to really narrow down the best prereq points but yes, I'm liking that thinking.
I would like to be able to decide when to adopt another trait. I experienced in vanilla civ5 that using the option "can delay social politics" meant that, as certain social policies were tied to eras (like auhtority needs industrial age to be reached to be accessed).
This "allow to delay" option made slingshots to better social policies possible (which in civ5 is good as once you start to invest your social policy/culture points in one branch you better stick to it as if you finish one brach you get a big reward - and the later social policies are of course having better rewards than those of the early eras....
You can't really say this excursion into civ5 traits has much of a connection to the question what would be if the availability of certain trait branches (lvl1-lvl5 or something) in C2C were connected to techs but what is important I think is that that strategic players would want to wait with accepting a new trait once they hit the bar
but maybe wait a few more turns until they finished researching a tech (like literature for example) that would give them access to lvl2 scientific --
I see your point but the programming on this would be pretty tricky. Being able to remove a positive with a negative could be a good use of a negative if you feel you've outdated a positive trait though.
Regarding the bars for trait expansion I have to say they are fine for prehistoric/ancient. Always playing Eternity, I found that the first trait coming at 150 is usually always the cultural trait, as it doubles the scound traits "research" at 1500 instantly and picking scientific here is obvious to me. As negative traits I had excessive, idealistic and megalomaniac, the latter being a bit weaker one on the long term.
3rd trait comes at early ancient with 150000 culture and is well timed (always agricultural for me). So breaking up this (to me at last) "best" path could mean to make traits adjusted to the era they are picked in (by techs) as well as having not a problem to chance trhreads once the times change (lay off "nomadic" trait for "agricultural" for example) But of course the nomadic trait could be kept throughout the game as well, rewarding a more pirate style of playing or something even in later eras (nomadic lvl3 available with invention of piracy for example).
And how would you feel if this rate of trait achievement were greatly reduced?
So as we see some traits change in civs over time, some stay - this should be fully customizable, although changing traits could be linked to great people (you want to change a trait with the treshold still having hundreds of turns to hit the bar? Use a great artist for exchanging one throwaway trait to pick with a (available) culutural trait lvl maybe? Or a Great engineer for a "industrial" trait lvl or a scientist for scientific trait lvl etc) so you had to invest something in a change of traits "midterm" but perhaps you would glady make this investment as you just researched the technology enabling you a higher lvl of a trait you specialize in.
I like the idea of being able to use a specialist to, with a mission, exchange a selected trait for one they replace it with (as if the leader has been influenced by this exalted adviser.) Would take a while to get to a project like that but it's noted and I like it...
By the way culture now has become a new very valuable currency I think - as the better you are culturally you can effect to get commerce and production by more and better traits. And as you can "produce culture" with hammers once you have Music, we really should have in mind that a "culture bubble" can be possibly exploited...just sayin'...
I'm wondering to what extent that would be of value at this point, given that buildings and techs appear to remain extraordinarily challenging to keep up on as it is. The choice to do as you say is a choice to ignore those two needs as well and could be fairly devastating to the nation to do so but MAY pay off if managed cleverly.
I would say the points needed to trait expansion could also be tied to the #in the scoreboard - the reason for this is that smaller empires are more forced to specialise their strengths to survive whereas large empires often stagnate and then collapse.
Time will tell if this becomes necessary but so far the goal is to challenge research as the only viable strategy so for now I'm appreciating the new value in culture.
The reason for the cultural diveristy is that europe acted as a kinf of net in which the tribes were driven in like fish by the steppe hordes. This being pressed in made them so agressive to colonize the world with their arrogance and military power which they developed, again by the exposion to constant pressure.
That way in civ terms, some european civs had lvl2 trait of agressive and cruel a bit earlier that lets say (in civ points) much bigger china, although china had more population and culture.
So what I try to explain here is why untieing traits from culture alone to
tieing expansion of traits to culture and #score could be good for the overall game flow as minor nations (again, in terms of population and culture) could still rock in some way.
In civ5, btw, the social policies are getting harder the larger your empire is, if you have 1 city the treshold is at 300 for example and with 5 cities its at 1500 for next social policy - which would be the next trait treshold level in our terms
I'm feeling that the largest influencing factor aside from size in culture development is wonders. Often smaller nations are smaller due to a focus on wonders over war and expansion. Thus, smaller nations should well be able to compete on the leaderhead level, even at times exceed due to their decisions to value wonders higher than more cities.
I've received the suggestion to make the tally towards leader level divided by the # of cities but it does remain to be seen if this, or something even along those lines, is necessary.
One small nation with a religion with a shrine that produces culture rather than gold, along with some wonders in the same city that increase the culture % output could generate a truly powerful leader still, probably more effectively than having 5-10 more cities instead. I'd find, on Developing Leaders and no-choose religions, the early religions would be
extremely desirable for this reason.
in a lvl 3 trait but on a lvl 1 trait it would make the game unplayable during the prehistoric era. Similarly, +1
etc etc, your examples are about the only tags that CAN be used.
