pineappledan
Deity
There have been quite a few shakeups with policies and tenets with the changes to Tradition and Artistry, and the overhaul of the happiness system to rely almost entirely on flat happiness reductions. I thought I would take a few minutes to write down my general impressions of the policy and ideology trees as they are now.
No comments, really. I think Statecraft does a good job at being what it is: the Diplomatic and espionage tree
Freedom used to be quite meat-and-potatoes, but now it has some really special stuff like self-determination. Otherwise, I appreciate the straightforward approach to bonuses on 1 of the ideologies, especially the T3 bonuses. Freedom gets the job done. not much else to say.
Order has come under quite a bit of scrutiny by myself and others.
Spoiler Tradition :
- The recent change that added +1 working range to the capital on the finisher is a really special, nice touch. I underestimated how fun and cool this was going to make Tradition. It has a few little technical hiccups, like you can unassign and try to work a neighbouring city. and that breaks that city's ability to work its own city tile afterwards. Something should be done about that, but it's for the most part a really great addition.
- I think I went too far with the +1 to GPTIs. Tradition not being very big on production was one of its main weaknessesthat set it apart from Progress and Authority, and I think this does too much to shore up that deficiency.
- I don't know if it's warranted, but I miss the +5% growth scaler. The current 3% scaler is very small, and I wonder if we couldn't re-emphasize Tradition's food focus?
Spoiler Progress :
- I think Progress has been shown a bit too much love recently
- The addition of the +25% towards settlers was unwarranted, and it blurs the lines between itself and Authority, which up until now had the only Settler-related bonus
- We could stand to pull a few things off Progress, like only giving the +1 movement to workers and fishing boats, and no other civilian units. That would re-emphasize Progress' focus on infrastructure and sharpen the tree by taking away its bonuses for settlers/Great people
Spoiler Authority :
- Authority is, for the most part, a pretty great tree, in my estimation. It does its job as "the unit tree" pretty well.
- There have been some discussions about moving the yields on settle forward to the 2nd left policy (Tribute), and moving the Tribute bonus back. I think that would resolve some timing issues with how Authority feels disincentivized to settle new cities until it has 3 policies. I think that would be a fair change; we gave Progress retroactive yields on tech unlocks to resolve a similar problem there, after all. Just swapping those two bonuses would make the tree feel more natural.
- Some comments have been made that the garrison bonus conflicts with how the rest of the bonuses in the tree want you to move units around. I think that's also fair, but I don't want to lose that garrison bonus entirely. Imperialism also has a bonus for garrison units in the tree; maybe we could move all the garrison bonuses there?
Spoiler Fealty :
- Fealty feels a bit lacking as a tree, but that's mostly because the other two medieval trees have a clear emphasis on a victory type and Fealty doesn't. This criticism might also be levelled at Industry, but it feels more acute with Fealty, because military bonuses from Imperialism are just generally useful to defend yourself with, and more Science from Rationalism is always useful too.
- Fealty gives major bonuses towards Religion. I think it's great that we have a tree that focuses on the faith game, but it doesn't feel like it leverages into some other victory path like Domination or Science. Actually, religious power mostly directly contributes to cultural and diplomatic bonuses, which are covered by the other 2 medieval trees in more overt ways.
- Overall I don't have any real recommendations for Fealty -- I still pick it if I'm not aiming for diplomatic or cultural victories -- but sometimes I think it feels too much like a 'spare' policy tree, that only exists for if you don't really care about anything else.
- I think in order to really fix the underlying issue with fealty might require adding a religious victory. But I don't see that happening.
Spoiler Statecraft :
No comments, really. I think Statecraft does a good job at being what it is: the Diplomatic and espionage tree
Spoiler Artistry :
- I haven't had enough time with the new Artistry tree to get a very good feel for it, so I'm still looking for other players' feedback here.
- Overall, I think the tree is really wide now. The scaler and the building bonuses are huge; it's a lot of yields per city. I think that gives Artistry an interesting blend of tall, GWAM-oriented bonuses and ultra-wide per city bonuses. I'm thinking the needle might have moved too far over to favour wide play now though.
Spoiler Industry :
- A pretty great tree for what it is. No real complaints. Combines really well with other bonuses for gold cost reductions, and it's fun to stack this tree with trait bonuses like Babylon's
- The tree is a little unfocused, but it's got the goods.
- The opener might be a little too strong. Maybe we should move 1 of those 2 free trade routes to the finisher?
Spoiler Imperialism :
- This tree is a bit funny. It has policies that give weird, special bonuses that unlock abilities with really narrow usefulness, like increased radius on GGeneral Auras and the ability to upgrade units in foreign lands. And then it has other bonuses with huge yields. And the two policies are cleanly separated, so there are policies with no yields, and policies with tons of yields.
- Martial Law is pretty bad, I have to hold my nose when I pick it just to get past it for Exploitation. It's definitely the least interesting policy in the tree, and its bonuses are weak, augmenting tiny things like saving a bit of gold on unit garrisons, or augmenting the most worthless building in the game (constabulary). In contrast with the other tier 1 policy, Colonialism, Martial Law is downright ugly. If the garrison bonuses were taken off of Authority, I think they would have a good home here.
- The finisher is weird.
- The bonus that gives -3% Needs reduction for each plane in a city is unuseable when it unlocks, because planes unlock much later, and you only have 2 slots for planes per city when they come out, so the bonus is hugely delayed and negligible until you get Airports.
- This is one of the last places in the game that still has a % needs reduction, and it's a circumstantial, weak, and obtuse bonus. I don't know about other players, but I am never moving planes around for the increased city CS and needs reduction.
- I think the + CS for each plane in a city would be re-homed to Autocracy's Air Superiority lvl 3 tenet. That tenet provides the air slots needed in all cities to actually make this bonus meaningful, and it also unlocks an oil-free plane to fill those slots with. The % needs reduction ability can just go back into the toolbox; I don't think it has a place in the game now that everything else works off flat unhappiness reductions
- Instead of the bonus to cities for each plane, I would give planes a +20% attack bonus on the finisher. This would mirror the +20% defense bonus that the Opener gives to all ships, and it would be the only combat bonus given to air units via a policy.
Spoiler Rationalism :
- This tree was hit very strangely by the change to unhappiness. The scaler used to have a % needs reduction for all needs, but now it has -1 flat unhappiness in the opener and the finisher.
- As a result of that change, the opener is arguably the strongest in the game
- Meanwhile, the scaler is only 2% science per level, the weakest in the game by far. Compare to Artistry which gives +1 Science and +2 GAP on the scaler.
- Rationalism is a LOT of +% science bonuses. There are 22 discrete boni in the whole tree and 4 of them give +%science. It's strong, sure, but the tree is quite monotonous.
- One of these bonuses gives +% science for each Great Work in a city. Thematically, this bonus doesn't make any sense on Rationalism. This is the tree of Empiricism and the enlightenment. These were intellectual movements that reacted against the received wisdom of older texts, and called on people to rely on their own senses to acquire knowledge about the world. It was specifically the Renunciation of the old works that made Rationalism what it is.
- This % GW bonus would be more suitable for something like Industry. The discipline of economics was just emerging at this time, and it was highly reliant on the dissemination of great works. Many of the tracts of economics written in those years by figures like Mills, Bentham, and Smith, form the basis of Classical Economics, and still hold up as required reading for those disciplines into the present day. I don't know if Industry needs anything more like this, but it's the place where I feel a % yield per GW bonus is the strongest, thematically.
- Rationalism is the only Industrial tree with any bonuses for Golden Ages, and for Great Works. Those are also the main bonuses for Artistry. Rationalism only has 1 of each kind of bonus, but they also happen to be 2 of those repetitive +% bonuses, on top of being overlaps with Artistry. This has caught my Sauron's eye; this is the kind of stuff that I just got done overhauling to keep Artistry and Tradition separated too.
- All of rationalism's policies are focused squarely on yields, with the exceptions of the GAdmiral bulb and the flat needs reductions. The GAdmiral bonus feels pretty out of place with the rest of the tree, given that the finisher doesn't let you purchase GAdmirals, and there isn't much in the tree that would encourage or augment naval combat. It feels like an Imperialism bonus, except Imperialism already has quite a lot of fiddly non-economic bonuses like this one, and doesn't need more.
- Overall, Rationalism is a very boring tree. It's almost entirely composed of +yields bonuses, and most of them are for the same yield type. The tree is so homogenous that the things added to try to spruce it up just look out of place.
Spoiler Freedom :
Freedom used to be quite meat-and-potatoes, but now it has some really special stuff like self-determination. Otherwise, I appreciate the straightforward approach to bonuses on 1 of the ideologies, especially the T3 bonuses. Freedom gets the job done. not much else to say.
Spoiler Order :
Order has come under quite a bit of scrutiny by myself and others.
- It has a CV focus, but no T3 CV policy. This will be rectified in the next patch (hopefully, at least. There is a proposal with a new T3 CV policy design that has been approved but not implemented)
- The tree also has a domination focus, but only 1 overt military bonus: Patriotic War. This policy is carrying a lot of the tree's emphasis, but it's too strong right now.
- Maybe this policy should be a T2?
- The T34 should be weakened a bit. Tanks are good. Unique tanks are really good.
Spoiler Autocracy :
- Autocracy is the ideology tree with the most special abilities. It's the weirdest of the 3 by far, as a result, and offers a lot of cool tools.
- If there is one shortcoming to this tree, it is the names.
- 'Autocracy' is the only name for a policy or ideology that is explicitly a type of government, rather than some quality or attribute. It would be like is Progress was called "Republic". It sticks out like a sore thumb. I would rename the ideology to something like "Strength".
- 'Commerce Raiders' is a bland, and rather imprecise term. It's something that the Axis powers did, but it's not a unique concept to them. I would rename the policy something like 'Mare Nostrum', which would not only be something overtly Fascist, but overtly Italian-Fascist. We don't have any policies named after Italian Fascism yet. Maybe I would look at shaking up the bonuses to better suit that name as well.
- 'Iron Fist' is a bit Hokey. The policy is all about extracting value from puppet governments you have set up. What about 'Co-Prosperity Sphere'?
- As mentioned in the Imperialism section. I think that the Air Superiority tenet would be a good home for that + City Strength per airplane bonus (but dump the % needs reduction). This is already a policy that guarantees you enough slots in cities to make use of the bonus, and a new air unit to fill those slots with that is free from that strategic requirement. Air Superiority lost quite a bit of power when we weakened the airport building a while back; I think this would work as compensation, and fit Autocracy's general weirdness.
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