philosophy of trees.

[mystikx21]

Thal et al.

I've been reading the policy tree fights and trying out some of my own spins on it. I will look on this as a summary of the problem.
You described three archetypes.
1) peaceful tall
2) peaceful wide
3) conquest wide

And some basic guidelines of 80-20 style utility (useful to 80%, not useful to 20% or very useful to 20%) and nods toward flexibility of strategy and rewarding skilled play.

Here's where this approach led in later vem, early gem proposals, and, I think some of my approaches and some of your own remixes, as it applies to policies.
1) peaceful tall empires really liked
a) tradition (wonders, culture, growth)
B) rationalism or patronage (science, extra strategic resources and free units)
C) freedom (food and specialists, defence)
They had less use for piety (religion) and order (wide production), and commerce but none of those are useless, just not optimal. And honor or nationalism are mostly useless.
2) peaceful wide really liked
a) liberty (rapid expansion, happiness)
B) piety (religion and happiness)
C) commerce or rationalism (gold and space race and happiness)
D) order (production and space race)
Again, less use for tradition, patronage, and freedom but all offered something. And less use for warfare.
3) wide warriors would like
a) honor (better units, happiness)
b) nationalism (better and more units and happiness)
C) commerce or rationalism (gold or better units, happiness)
Less use for liberty, tradition, patronage, freedom, or order.

What I see from that is tall wants growth, not villages. Wide wants happiness, not specialists. Warriors want happiness and units, not specialists or growth. And everybody wants science. A couple of trees are very useful for some players and not great for others, and a couple of trees are useful for anyone. I also see that the three finals each can have a logical place to fit into and not worry about exclusivity and that the three early trees mostly fall into neat lines too, with the middle four being most of the interesting choices or broadly important for all. The biggest problems I see there are nationalism (because it is late) or patronage (because CS is a victory type more than a archetype requirement). I don't think several of the proposed changes by shifting some bonuses around actually resolved that some playstyles will prefer farms to villages or military production and/or happiness to specialists. And I don't think those were problems in need of addressing.

Overlap that with victory types, which can (in theory) be pursued by anyone.
1) cultural victory requires 6 trees so you will want the three or four associated with your style plus fillers that offer culture and other benefits (usually wonders or gold/cs alliances and anything dealing with landmarks and artists). I don't see a conflict there to spread out culture somewhat since you have to get lots of policies by definition.
2) conquest requires military and tech dominance. You get other policies in service of those goals for extra happiness, gold, and production or growth. You can still get culture for having many policies because honor and nationalism offer sources of it. So that's not a problem.
3) diplomatic requires mostly patronage. And everything else is related to keeping city states happy and alive and on your side (at least late in the game). That mostly means gold and tech (because un is late game). Culture shouldn't be a problem because it isn't a priority.
4) space race requires (lots of) tech and production. Other than requiring rationalism I'm not sure this means much for policies and culture requirements.

Generally all play styles will have some use for the middle 3 (some more than others) patronage if they go diplomatic or play tall, one or more of the first 3 and one of the last trees
This sounds like it still offered ways to win that are roughly equal from all styles (except conquest from tall other than a blitz) and reasonable use of almost all policies. In accordance with an 80-20 design vision encouraging skillful use of decisions. If you have a civ or map or required victory that is ill suited for a style, you will have to make different decisions to win. That is interesting as a player.

Part of the resistance to some changes that I and others have is that it makes some individual policies incompatible with a particular play style, making that style less effective as a result, or less coherent. Making better villages when you get growth bonuses encouraging farming is a confused policy choice. Why would you want better villages there? You want better villages when you actually have a good use for them (in a wider empire or later in game). Making better specialists when you get policies encouraging conquest or expansion is a confused policy choice. You won't use specialists because they're still not as good as a smaller city's available tiles and potential happiness from growth to happiness limits. You as the player fundamentally don't want to do those things, and if you do want to do the opposite you now have to take choices to get to them that make less sense for your style and goals. That is not fun as a player. If I am cherrypicking into liberty or honor there were already good reasons for that without now having to grab nonsensical bonuses like better merchants or engineers in wide oriented trees. Moving toward a 100% strategy where all choices seem uniformly useful is what it appears like rather than some choices being situationally superior and others being generally good but not as great is unappealing. That's what the problem looks like and that's why there's resistance to some changes in particular.

 

[Thalassicus]

I think "fights" is too strong a word. I like "discussions" or "conversations." This community is a lot more friendly and cooperative than the vast majority of the internet. We've always had thought-provoking talks like this, I like it, and it leads to good game design.

 

[mystikx21]

True. Fighting does suggest they're unproductive. I think they will eventually lead somewhere.

 

[mystikx21]

I think the quick version is that we can think of the trees as already doing something where they are optimized for some uses, and still useful for other uses and that the only really boring trees are probably nationalism and patronage, not because of a design flaw but because you only have good uses for them if you pursue a particular victory type (rationalism might fit into this as well, but science is more generally useful to all players than CS effects and conquest based happiness). Piety probably fits into that niche as well now in some ways. What that argues for is that they be optimized for those requirements, which they mostly are, and then that those particular victory types be more engaging, obtainable, or require an appropriate tree management (conquest in particular doesn't really "require" nationalism so much as benefit from it a lot when it has a lot of VEM and default penalties to try to stop you from doing it, same with patronage and diplomatic benefits. If diplomatic victories required a longer term allegiance, patronage would be very, very useful where right now commerce might do almost as well).

I'm not sure it argues that all play styles have the same utility for certain things so much as those things have their uses and that they will be more or less useful under certain conditions, suggesting interesting trade offs that players must decide when that is properly to win a game or have fun with them. If farms or villages will better help you win, then as long as farms and villages start at a roughly equal pace, that's fine if the player then makes a series of choices to make one of them superior (in the short term). It doesn't mean the other needs to be balanced back up alongside it because the player has made a set of active choices to do it that way. In doing so they are forgoing decisions that would do other things already in order to leverage a particular advantage. We can do this in the game in all kinds of ways (deciding early tech paths does this). I don't think this desire needs to be suppressed to keep the game interesting so much as making sure these choices have consequences in opportunity cost by making other decisions interesting too so that players have to keep in mind what they are trying to accomplish.

The issue seems like that these opportunity costs were being taken away such that it didn't matter what the player was trying to accomplish. Both farms and villages could be useful in the same path of decisions instead of requiring different paths of decisions to make them each really useful.

Farms for example represent needs for additional happiness investments that villages do not, or do not provide gold or production directly in most cases, or require removing a jungle tile to make them forgoing later benefits, and so on. The same is true of specialists instead of tiles. They're slightly cheaper for happiness than citizens which can be a crucial difference between growing and not, expanding and not. They offer GPs for all kinds of benefits, they offer specific needs in a city that might not be obtainable (gold, culture, production, science). All of that has a use in any empire and at specific circumstances is very, very useful indeed. Players will still have a use for these other things even if they've optimized to do something else without needing to give them an optimized use for them as well that they could (instead) pick up later if they decided it was necessary or helpful or just plain fun.

 

[Dunkah]

Lets call it unrest...

"There is unrest in the forest there is trouble with the Trees for the Maples want more sunlight and Oaks ignore their pleas!"

It's all way too much for us casual users to take in. It just all blends together after reading the hundreds of posts.

I hope that once it is all hashed out we can get some sort of synopsis of what is actually going to be changed.

"Now there's no more Oak oppression for they passed a nobel law... and the Trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw!"... (Neil Peart, Rush)

 

[Ahriman]

Part of the resistance to some changes that I and others have is that it makes some individual policies incompatible with a particular play style, making that style less effective as a result, or less coherent. Making better villages when you get growth bonuses encouraging farming is a confused policy choice. Why would you want better villages there? You want better villages when you actually have a good use for them (in a wider empire or later in game). Making better specialists when you get policies encouraging conquest or expansion is a confused policy choice. You won't use specialists because they're still not as good as a smaller city's available tiles and potential happiness from growth to happiness limits. You as the player fundamentally don't want to do those things, and if you do want to do the opposite you now have to take choices to get to them that make less sense for your style and goals. That is not fun as a player.

Strongly agree with all this, I think this is the core. If every tree is very good for every strategy then we don't have interesting/meaningful choices anymore.

I have quibbles about spreading culture wide, but that's a separate issue, and I don't have strong objections to most of the specifics (fascism culture from city conquest is fine, for example).

 

[rhammer640]

One thing i would like to mention is a minor issue i found but I was going for cultural victory but didn't end up founding a religion, aka none left. It made the entire piety tree pretty much useless to me. Maybe we could better balance that tree so its moderately usefull for someone even if they failed to found a religion.

 

[mystikx21]

One thing i would like to mention is a minor issue i found but I was going for cultural victory but didn't end up founding a religion, aka none left. It made the entire piety tree pretty much useless to me. Maybe we could better balance that tree so its moderately usefull for someone even if they failed to found a religion.

It does have the following proposed: bonuses on artists and landmarks, free social policy, extra faith points and free faith buildings, cheaper faith costs (I'm not sure how this impacts faith buying GPs but I assumed they're impacted), and improved holy sites for the then useless great prophets and the big one is extra happiness on faith buildings and in general.

I think it's probably still useful as is if less useful if you don't have a religion to make frequent missionary, inquisitor or pagoda/cathedral/mosque purchases. Faith points themselves still have utility without a religion, and happiness is routinely useful, and the landmarks boost isn't essential but is still useful for a culture win.

 

[Thalassicus]

Making better villages when you get growth bonuses encouraging farming is a confused policy choice. Why would you want better villages there? You want better villages when you actually have a good use for them (in a wider empire or later in game).

My thinking is:

1. X not used?
2. Let's make X better.
3. X is now used!

It's like...

1. We don't eat ice cream?
2. Ice cream now makes you lose weight.
3. Everyone eats ice cream!

We can only have fun with something if we actually use it. I think making useless stuff valuable adds excitement and complexity to the game. In the case of villages I was thinking:

1. Villages not used for tall?
2. Let's make villages better for tall.
3. Villages are now used!

I removed the village bonus from the Tradition tree since that had mixed feedback. It's something we can discuss more later, but for now, I'd like to focus on stuff we all agree on.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

it's a good point, I guess there's a common ground to be found between your point and point 2) here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11754651&postcount=342

 

[Ahriman]

My thinking is:
X not used?
Let's make X better.
X is now used!

We can only have fun with something if we actually use it. I think making useless stuff valuable adds excitement and complexity to the game.

But it isn't that X isn't used. It is that X isn't used much *when pursuing gamestyle Y*.
Not every aspect of the game needs to be significant in every strategy, every time.
It is not fun to be doing all the same stuff every game.
Some games I won't really use religion much. Some games I won't really use city states much. Some games I won't really fight many wars. Some games I won't use specialists and great people much. Some games I won't use navies much.
That's ok; it makes them more special and interesting when I do use them, and when I'm choosing to follow a playstyle that supports them.

If no-one was ever using specialists and great people, then you'd be right that they needed a buff. But that is not a problem we have.

With the changes you have, it feels like you're trying to force me into playing the same way every time, always using every mechanic. Not fun.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I agree, but I guess what Thal is trying to do is to provide more choice for the player regardless of the playstyle. so for example if TPs are lame for Tall, it does improve the game if TPs are changed so that they are ALSO a viable alternative for Tall, because it gives you more options.

of course, if this is overdone then you end up at the opposite site of the spectrum, where every game feels the same and soon enough boredom ensues.

 

[mystikx21]

My thinking is:

1. X not used?
2. Let's make X better.
3. X is now used!

It's like...

1. We don't eat ice cream?
2. Ice cream now makes you lose weight.
3. Everyone eats ice cream!

We can only have fun with something if we actually use it. I think making useless stuff valuable adds excitement and complexity to the game. In the case of villages I was thinking:

1. Villages not used for tall?
2. Let's make villages better for tall.
3. Villages are now used!

But villages ARE used widely. In wide empires. And specialists ARE widely used. In tall empires. And neither was inherently useless in the reverse they just weren't best to use in those cases so people try to avoid them. If you see the distinction there. I don't think of it as having this new and better weight losing ice cream that I would eat voluntarily and enjoy. I see it as having blander and tasteless or even just extra fattening ice cream forced upon me. I saw the previous VEM or early GEM system as being more of the weight-losing ice cream in contrast. Further, one is not forced forever to play as a wide or tall empire in Civ. They can start again fresh, or they can change strategies in the game itself by making new choices.

If you wanted to use villages widely, then the optimal approach was to play a civ or map or style that maximizes that approach. Or, more broadly, the approach in design is to allow a person to try using mixed values naturally of their own decisions to experiment with non-optimal strategies for fun that involved choice and cost (by leaving these kinds of choices in their unique trees instead of mixing and muddling them across the board), or finally to improve villages through natural means that all people could choose to use or ignore them but could find them very useful sometimes (such as to add a base point to them, which is itself controversial but is an example of such an approach). It was not to try to force people to make use of villages who had little use. That feels like a penalty rather than a bonus for a lot of reasons.

Contrast this with changes to make navies more important by making islands better or act as sources of coal for heavier industry or to improve coastal tiles . The reason to do that was that people could ignore navies entirely otherwise. People don't ignore villages or specialists. Only some play styles can (and can always choose to use them or not). Others find them extremely useful and use them intensively.

It is interesting or engaging already to play a game as wide or tall and even to try to win as a civ sub-optimally built for wide or tall without making wide and tall feel like more of the same. Wide and tall shouldn't be the same is the point. They should feel different. These moves seem intended to make them too similar instead of playing to their strengths as VEM did.

There are other problems with the solution in that it did so by gifting these advantages in a visually costless and choiceless way when before you had to go get them yourself by making other choices (meaning there was a cost to focusing a tree). Their opportunity costs are now more hidden but still significant by removing things that used to be enjoyable about playing as wide or tall in order to get wide or tall civs to use specific things more extensively. You don't get a free golden age as a wide early expansion empire now, a bonus that's very helpful when happiness is potentially scarcer. Now you get better merchants, because you are supposed to use specialists like a tall empire does. You don't get significant military production as a conquest or defensive bonus early. Now you get better engineers, like a tall or peaceful empire uses. The bonuses are no longer unique, no longer interesting, and have steep costs.

Finally.
These seemed like very low priority goals, goals that a player could already resolve themselves without great modification on anyone's part by
a) starting a new game as a new civ or on a new map and making different choices and priorities. The great appeal of civ is its replay-ability. One is not forced to always play as wide or always play as tall.
b) selecting different and mixed benefit wide-tall policy trees in an existing game that will change the mixture of decision inputs (by improving yields) or that will add to the value of decisions they have had to make because of changing game conditions (loss of CS happiness, loss of city/luxuries/strats, etc). It was always possible to select both liberty and tradition for example, tradition and rationalism, or both honor and order, to attain these benefits as one wants for fun and advantage. It might not be optimal in all cases but it can still be interesting or fun if the trees themselves offered powerful and interesting and coherent advantages (as VEM does) to come up with weaker synergies that are still effective.
c) choosing different tech paths to benefit certain things as desired or needed (like a priority on village techs instead of farming ones, or using farming to benefit by having specialists).

It was not necessary to add d) forcing all people to have all policy trees individually with a mixture of wide and tall benefits or to have to add benefits of more marginal importance to their overall strategy to get to interesting and effective tree finishers.

It's easy enough for me to modify this as I want, to borrow and credit changes that you designed (that I probably can't do or haven't thought of that are or were unique and powerful and engaging). So it's not necessary to appease me, much less to do so on every topic. People do have problems identifying what they actually prefer compared to what they think they do for example, so I could be wrong too I don't think these objections should be seen as strange however.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree.

[Now I want ice cream.]

 

[rhammer640]

I agree as well.

And I'm glad i just ate lunch so I'm not hungry.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Ahriman
I was basing my decisions on the hunch each person has a preferred playstyle and set of maps we use in every game. I always play continents-plus maps and love conquering the world, so if X is not useful for conquest on that map, I never encounter it. However! I have not done a poll about this to verify if my hunch is true of most people. I'll try to figure out a poll to discover more information.

I agree, but I guess what Thal is trying to do is to provide more choice for the player regardless of the playstyle. so for example if TPs are lame for Tall, it does improve the game if TPs are changed so that they are ALSO a viable alternative for Tall, because it gives you more options.

of course, if this is overdone then you end up at the opposite site of the spectrum, where every game feels the same and soon enough boredom ensues.

Right! You get what I'm trying to say. I feel we're on the left side of the spectrum, while others are concerned we're too far on the right (if I'm understanding Ahriman and mystikx correct). It's just a disagreement over how to get to the middle.

 

[Ahriman]

I was basing my decisions on the hunch each person has a preferred playstyle and set of maps we use in every game

I don't think this is likely to be true. I think people vary across games, and across factions. The strategy I use with Siam will be quite different from strategy I use with Rome, or with the Huns.

I think this issue is really the key, not the bell curve figure. People might have preferred playstyles, but they don't play them every game. Whereas it feels like you're trying to get people to use everything equally every game.

Even in your poll, which asked only about favorite playstyles and not any playstyle used, nearly 1/3 of people voted for 2 options.*
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=471802

*[Not quite true, since we can't observe how many voted for 3, but there were 94 votes cast across 72 people.]

If you wanted to poll on this, the question to ask would be:
Do you sometimes use a playstyle that involves:
a) Settling many small cities (yes/no)
b) Developing a few big cities (yes/no)
c) Conquering other player's cities (yes/no)

 

[Thalassicus]

That point about changing our strategy is why I made the early trees more universally appealing. In the early game we don't know what path is best. It's like trying to guess the shortest line at a grocery checkout. We have to guess without much information, so I don't want to penalize the player for guessing wrong.

In other words... think of it this way.

Say we start out with the Tradition tree. We get the Opener and Monarchy, but as we reveal the map we discover there's absolutely no players around us for a long distance. We should probably change to a wide strategy, right? I don't want players to feel bad for guessing wrong with their very first policies.

The same is true of Meritocracy and Military Tradition. If we start out with those trees, then decide to go for a tall strategy, the specialist bonuses support us in our decision to change focus.

 

[Ahriman]

We do have to invest in a playstyle before seeing the full extent of the map.

This encourages early scouting. Sounds good to me. By turn 20 you have had 20 turns of scouting with a warrior and ~13 turns of scouting with a scout. You should know a lot by then.

If you don't want to scout, then there should be consequences for that.

Also, there will almost always be *someone* near you on most mapscripts, so its always possible to have someone to attack if you want a military strategy.

But in general I would say I pick my rough early game playstyle when I pick my faction + ~first 5 turns.

How do we know +20% military production will be useful to us on turn 20?

+20% military production will be useful to almost anyone. It will be more useful to conquest players, but that's fine.

And even if I do want to change my playstyle, I can just go unlock another tree. I'll only be 1 policy behind in that tree. So it's not like I'm locked into it forever from my first SP pick.

The solution I came up with is to add more universal appeal to the earliest trees.

But in my view your design does not have universal appeal. You are concerned that the policy tree you picked might not help the strategy you want to follow because something unexpected happened. I am concerned that the policy tree I picked won't help the strategy I want to follow because nothing unexpected happened, and the tree I'm following has some junk that doesn't help me much with the way I want to play.

I think it is more often the case that you don't change your plan after your first SP pick than that you do.

 

[rhammer640]

I think that could also be fixed by delaying the rate of early policies a bit so the first few take a bit then they can start to pick up if you've been investing. Thats more the problem for me right now is so many policies are gotten before we get a handle on the direction the game is going. That seems a better solution then muddying the waters of the policies.