One Dimensional Policies

[Redaxe]

Does anyone else think that the Social Policies and Government Bonuses are too one dimensional?

By that I mean that there are no downsides or weaknesses inherent in any policies - Civ 5 was the same and I always had the sense that this made a lot of the decision making quite shallow.

A couple examples I would have for how more dynamic social policies would work.

Professional Army
The Army is recruited from volunteers who are put through rigorous training regimes to serve as full time career soldiers. Veteran soldiers are provided with pensions during retirement as a bonus to encourage high morale. Armies are supported by professional surgeons and doctors and auxiliary units to provide entertainment and logistical support while on campaign. Ancient Rome was the perhaps the pinnacle of the organised, professional army structure before modern times.

Pro's: Military units fight +10% stronger and start with +15exp. Military units heal at +5hp per turn when resting.
Con's: Unit maintenance cost increased by 1 per unit.

Universal Healthcare
The state provides a basic level of healthcare for the wider population out of its general revenue. Many secular democracies have public health policies to improve standard of living although these policies are very expensive to maintain.
Pro's: Bonuses to happiness, growth, science....
Cons: Very expensive to maintain - so generally only something a wealthy civ could afford.

Anyway I miss how the earlier iterations of Civ always had trade-offs in government. I suppose you do to an extent anyway (you can choose one policy but then you can't choose another....) but I think it would certainly be more interesting if at least some policies could offer a bit of a tradeoff in their benefits and costs.

 

[Siptah]

I am fully with you on this. I asked about maluses in general in this forum like a week ago. I miss it tbh. Also I just read up about older civs governments and I remembered the fundamentalism of civ II that cut science in half but got rid of unhappines and gives free fanatic military units and lots of gold. That's something to chose! It gets more interesting and every game gets more individual with pro/cons instead of just pro.

Edit: it would also encourage changing the governments/policies more often (war/peace).

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

They are not one dimensional, but you are also choosing to see them for what they are and neglecting the big picture. You can't have all of them, unlike in Civ 5.

Civ 6's Policy System forces a huge opportunity cost, and you make the choices of "what do I need now", and that's very clear in the beginning

Let's pick the that after you get Code of Laws you have your first opportunity cost.

You can have either - +1 Production in all Cities, or +1 Gold and Faith in capital.

In Civ 5, you had the same choice (well, let's make that assumption for sake of simplicity)

You either open with Production, or Gold and Faith, BUT, in Civ 5, you retained the one, and could choose the other later and have both Production, and Gold and Faith.

In Civ 6, if you want Gold and Faith, you have to give up Production, and if you want Production, you have to give up the Gold and Faith.

In Civ 6, the key is "what do I need now", while in Civ 5 it was about "when do I need it"

And to be fair the previous iterations weren't nearly as "great" as you think, Civ 4 had very small and limited Civics (Slavery vs EMancipation etc) and in Civ 3 and previously it was just Governments that were nothing more than modifiers to some aspect of your government.

 

[Haggbart]

Does anyone else think that the Social Policies and Government Bonuses are too one dimensional?

By that I mean that there are no downsides or weaknesses inherent in any policies - Civ 5 was the same and I always had the sense that this made a lot of the decision making quite shallow.

A couple examples I would have for how more dynamic social policies would work.

Professional Army
The Army is recruited from volunteers who are put through rigorous training regimes to serve as full time career soldiers. Veteran soldiers are provided with pensions during retirement as a bonus to encourage high morale. Armies are supported by professional surgeons and doctors and auxiliary units to provide entertainment and logistical support while on campaign. Ancient Rome was the perhaps the pinnacle of the organised, professional army structure before modern times.

Pro's: Military units fight +10% stronger and start with +15exp. Military units heal at +5hp per turn when resting.
Con's: Unit maintenance cost increased by 1 per unit.

Universal Healthcare
The state provides a basic level of healthcare for the wider population out of its general revenue. Many secular democracies have public health policies to improve standard of living although these policies are very expensive to maintain.
Pro's: Bonuses to happiness, growth, science....
Cons: Very expensive to maintain - so generally only something a wealthy civ could afford.

Anyway I miss how the earlier iterations of Civ always had trade-offs in government. I suppose you do to an extent anyway (you can choose one policy but then you can't choose another....) but I think it would certainly be more interesting if at least some policies could offer a bit of a tradeoff in their benefits and costs.

At least now you have to swap out bonuses, not just accumulate them.

However there are negative consequences beyond opportunity cost, and that is the negative diplomatic effect of having different governments. In late game CiV the ideology differences and effect on diplomacy and happiness was quite big, so now it will be a part of the entire game (although early diplo penalties for different govs are said to be quite small).

 

[nukehumvee]

With limited policy slots you will have to pick bonuses that work for your current situation and forego many others that might contain better rewards. This isn't the "collect bonuses as you go through the ages" system (or should I say Civ V's social policy system, which, in retrospect, isn't a well executed idea in my opinion). Remember, you will have even fewer slots in Civ VI. Fewer bonuses. You will have to make choices. Should I boost my economic development, even if it meant putting defence at risk? What diplomatic bonuses do I want? What about Great Person?

 

[criZp]

Only getting positive effects from policies make them more fun to pick.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[Mort_Q]

Opportunity cost; making interesting choices. That's the design model. The con is not getting the other bonus.

 

[Acken]

If there were a few of them to juggle with id agree with you but there are a lot of these little policies and adding another dimension beyond the bonus the oportunity cost and the policy type feels like too much to me.

 

[qwerty25]

Opportunity cost; making interesting choices. That's the design model. The con is not getting the other bonus.

Actually if you only use bonuses, it can limit more specialized choices. Like indias halved happiness for population had to be balanced with doubled unhappiness for each city created.

Bonuses also have to be balanced against each other. If you never have maluses, then the bonuses cant be too large.

I mean plenty of other games have "maluses". Like mario kart has cars with normal max speed/accleration. But it also has cars with faster max speed at the cost of slower acceleration.

I mean sure we can say slow speed and slow accleration could be the "norm" and one should choose how much of a bonus to each you want. But the reverse could be said of government bonuses. Theres no good reason to constrict government bonuses in one direction besides how its named and what it looks like.

 

[chaotoroboto]

I mean plenty of other games have "maluses". Like mario kart has cars with normal max speed/accleration. But it also has cars with faster max speed at the cost of slower acceleration.

Civ 6's policies is the exact same system as Mariokart.

In mariokart, you choose a body, wheels, and glider. They each give you a bonus above baseline. If you want one wheel's bonus, you forego all other wheels.

In Civ 6, you have x slots for diplomatic policies. Once you've taken your max, you forgo all other diplomatic policies.

 

[qwerty25]

Civ 6's policies is the exact same system as Mariokart.

In mariokart, you choose a body, wheels, and glider. They each give you a bonus above baseline. If you want one wheel's bonus, you forego all other wheels.

In Civ 6, you have x slots for diplomatic policies. Once you've taken your max, you forgo all other diplomatic policies.

No.. not really. Its not really the same. Or if you are to claim its the same then there's not a good reason why Civilization can't have maluses. Which is the endgoal of my argument and you really didn't address it.

In mario kart (8 and I think 7) there's three "body types". With slow, normal, and fast max speed. Plus slow, normal, and fast acceleration.

Acceleration Speed
Slow Acceleration Fast Speed
Normal Acceleration Normal Speed
Fast Acceleration Slow Speed

If you want fast acceleration, then you must forgo not only fast speed -- but normal speed into slow max speed. Its different than civ 5/6 because the game is balanced around normal max speed and then you went below it.

Additionally, since civilization is a cumulative game over time, not placing a malus makes it harder to balance. (bonuses increase the positive feedback loop of resources -- like the science brings more science).

With yields of gold, food, science, faith, production, etc... if you balance game around the norm and then only use bonuses its hard for the bonus not to be overpowered as there's nothing in check.

Can you imagine how they would have balanced India's half population unhappiness bonus without placing a malus of double unhappiness on cities? Giving everyone else extra happiness as their baseline, and renormalize everything?

Secondly, if you or others want to claim that maluses "feel bad for the player" and it could be emulated with bonuses. Then its easy to just rename all the bonuses into "norms".

Production Food
Slow Production Fast Growth
Normal Production Normal Growth
Fast Production Slow Growth

into:

Production Food
"Normal" Production "Super" Fast Growth
"Fast" Production "Fast" Growth
"Super" Fast Production "Normal" Growth

So, either A) one recognizes that maluses are a distinct attribute below norm that cannot be easily replicated with bonuses. Or B) if all normal attributes are "maluses" why not just use maluses then?

Its like how blizzard originally penalized players experience points after playing too long to prevent players from leveling too fast. People hated it so they renamed it to limited bonus experience points after not playing for a long time.

TL;DR: maluses are an explicit negative away from the norm that cannot be easily replicated using bonuses. Or if one is able to replicate it using bonuses, then we can just easily rename everything with "malus" as "norm", "norm" as "bonus", and "bonus" as "super bonus". There's no good gameplay/balancing reason not to use maluses besides "players not like it".