PDan's General Impression of Policies & Tenets

[rusbeh]

Thing is, I feel like progress has no real weakness. Unless you want to go really tall. I just always have a great time with it. Cant say the same about tradition and authority. Just my experience.

 

[Civrinn]

I honestly don't have much input for most of the trees. I think they are all well done. I know recently they were discussing a small science buff for Authority but I think with the barb change Authority is pretty good.

Speaking only from experience i agree that progress feels a bit strong. It does feel like the "safe choice". Not sure if others need a buff or its all in my head.

My only small suggestion would be that Industry had a +X coal somewhere (ideally the opener). Sometimes I choose Industry before finding coal and realize I have no local coal. While I can trade / war for coal it would be nice to get maybe +4 on opener. I don't think that would be busted and it would be more thematic.

 

[Anarcomu]

I honestly don't have much input for most of the trees. I think they are all well done. I know recently they were discussing a small science buff for Authority but I think with the barb change Authority is pretty good.

Speaking only from experience i agree that progress feels a bit strong. It does feel like the "safe choice". Not sure if others need a buff or its all in my head.

My only small suggestion would be that Industry had a +X coal somewhere (ideally the opener). Sometimes I choose Industry before finding coal and realize I have no local coal. While I can trade / war for coal it would be nice to get maybe +4 on opener. I don't think that would be busted and it would be more thematic.

If anything I would definitely not put it in the opener, there is already a lot of complain that some trees have strong opener and encourage taking only the opener indeed. So maybe the same policy which unlock production toward train station, at the very least.

 

[pineappledan]

My only small suggestion would be that Industry had a +X coal somewhere (ideally the opener). Sometimes I choose Industry before finding coal and realize I have no local coal. While I can trade / war for coal it would be nice to get maybe +4 on opener. I don't think that would be busted and it would be more thematic.

Industry really is stronger with Statecraft; Statecraft gives a secure source of coal immediately on unlock, and stacks with other things like the free trade routes.

 

[pineappledan]

Thinking about Fealty a lot, on account of @DeAnno 's partial rework of the tree. His proposal takes some big swings, and it's asking for a lot of new policy table additions.

For reference here is the wiki for fealty:

Policies

Back to Vox Populi Front Page Go to Ideologies In the Community Balance Patch, social policies have been changed dramatically with the reforming of every policy tree. The 9 social branches are divided into 3 specific eras: Tradition, Progress (Liberty), and Authority (Honor) unlock in the...

civ-5-cbp.fandom.com

Here are my thoughts:

• the tree has 2 sources of in it, and that's pretty special. I think Tradition is the only other tree with any Faith in it. Maybe more can be done here?
• I really like the theme with the 3 estates, Ancien Regime thing that this tree has going on. All the policies are references to specific institutions within a feudal society, and the policies are arranged in the shape of a cross.
• Divine Right is really hard to get to work for you, and it's not that strong
  • 4 in a city turns into 1. That's not very interactive, and there aren't that many ways to build stacks of 4 happy in a single city. This seems like one of those policies where a lot of raw happiness is going to waste, and it never affects any decisions, because you are pretty powerless to stack that much happiness anywhere, you don't have little or no control over getting the amount to a factor of 4, and it's not like you weren't going to get as much happiness in all cities as you could.
  • Oddly enough, the place where you get stacks for this policy is in the capital, and it's because of the difficulty scaling, which gives you a pile of in your capital. So part of this policy is scaling off your difficulty handicap
  • It seems weird that this ability isn't affected by unhappiness, even though it's directly paired with a boredom reduction.
  • Being a policy that only gives is pretty bad, because it's an instance of a policy only existing to cost you so that it can slowly pay you back in . It's functionally a toll road to the later policies you want.
• Meanwhile Serfdom is kind of a mess.
  • 1 per 4 per non-specialist in your city, on a policy called 'Serfdom'? Does that not seem a bit icky to anyone else? All these poor people singing and joining drum circles because their right to leave the land they work on has been taken away?
  • This % boost to ITRs is on 2 other policies: Protectionism and Iron Curtain*. The Fealty tree isn't a trade-focused tree, so I'm not sure why this is here, other than to weaken the tree's theme and undercut the other places where this bonus makes better sense.
  • With the on non-specialists, on pastures, and the to ITRS, Serfdom gives 3 boosts to 4 different yield types. It's all over the place.
  • Serfdom gives more than Divine Right overall, and it is a prereq to other policies. So taking Serfdom first is always the better option. At least if all the were on a leaf policy like DR, you could justify taking it first because it will make future policies slightly faster (ie. a toll road), but there's never a reason to do that, because Serfdom opens up more policies and gets you those policies faster.

What about this for improvements for these 2 policies?

Divine Right:
Divine Right
50% of Happiness produced in each City is added to the City's Culture per Turn.
Happiness in excess of Unhappiness in each City is added to the City's Faith per Turn
-2 Unhappiness from Boredom in all Cities.

Serfdom
Pastures generate +2 Production and +2 Gold. +1 Production in Cities for every 3 non-Specialist Citizens

Doubling the power of DR's happiness scaler will make it easier to use and kick in faster on smaller cities. It will result in more than 2x the culture from that policy overall
Adding a bonus for Net happiness in cities gives another chance to add some Faith to the tree, the thing that really sets this tree apart. It also puts the 'Divine' in 'Divine Right'.
Having a Net Happiness bonus ties the other two parts together. More Culture generation reduces boredom Needs in a city. Boredom Reduction clears more boredom. less needs means more net happiness, which means more Faith
Meanwhile, removing the TR boost and yields from Serfdom and strengthening the other bonuses tightens the policy up. increasing the divisor from 1/4 to 1/3 makes it easier to use
Pushing the culture entirely onto DR and strengthening it there offers players a choice for progression.

This would require a new column or table for yields from excess happiness in a city, so there is new code

*edit: actually there are 4 different ITR % boosts, because statecraft has an ability that boosts all TR yields by 25%. That is on another medieval policy too. There really are too many of these.

 

[CppMaster]

Being a policy that only gives is pretty bad, because it's an instance of a policy only existing to cost you so that it can slowly pay you back in . It's functionally a toll road to the later policies you want.

It's also a defense against tourism.

 

[Legen]

the tree has 2 sources of in it, and that's pretty special. I think Tradition is the only other tree with any Faith in it. Maybe more can be done here?

Fealty used to have bonuses to Holy Sites many years ago. You could explore that without adding new code.

Statecraft's opener technically adds faith, but it's irrelevant.

 

[pineappledan]

Fealty used to have bonuses to Holy Sites many years ago. You could explore that without adding new code.

Statecraft's opener technically adds faith, but it's irrelevant.

It’s probably for the best that it’s gone. There are other policies that boost all GPTIs, rather than 1 in particular. There are already some beliefs that augment holy sites specifically.

 

[GeneralAmadeus]

I like this Fealty proposal a lot more than the one in congress at the moment. But I also feel that Fealty needs a buff. At the moment I would rather take Tradition or Progress than Fealty.