philosophy of trees.

[rhammer640]

Ok well i still think speciallists should be better for tall so as long as they are then I'm open to looking at a new system although what if instead of using policies to boost them you had to expend a GP of the correct type, aka give the GP a new power (specialist boosting).

This would favor tall as tall get more GP so it would be easier for them to spend one improving specialists. Wide could expend one but it would be a more difficult choice.

If we used policies then 8-10 or so policies would be burned with those improvements. It would also add to the choice when getting a GP about how to use it which as we always say more choice is always more fun.

 

[Zaldron]

Then for tall players, there could be a policy in tradition (or wherever) which boosted Great Merchants trade missions? This would fit tall empires having an easier time generating GP, and trade missions have synergy with city states, another staple of tall empires.

There already is such a policy for GM missions, the second one in commerce. It doubles mission effectiveness (and is very nice indeed).

 

[mitsho]

On your list there, instead of ???, I'd say: Specialists bring Great People and temporarily higher needed yields, like less unhappiness if I have that policy, much needed hammers in the Wonders Race, maybe shave off one turn on the next policy/tech or help me get out of that tight financial spot I'm in. That's how I see them. Either I play for Great Peoples or they are fill-ins for what I need right now.

But then, that's basically the same with Great People. Often I want to work for an Engineer to get that wonder, or an artist for a golden age or a merchant to help me push over that edge with that CS and buy me something else. So in the end, the Specialist Tab can be split up into the various specialists imho since I rarely use them all, and more often just use them more ... specialized

 

[mystikx21]

On your list there, instead of ???, I'd say: Specialists bring Great People and temporarily higher needed yields, like less unhappiness if I have that policy, much needed hammers in the Wonders Race, maybe shave off one turn on the next policy/tech or help me get out of that tight financial spot I'm in. That's how I see them. Either I play for Great Peoples or they are fill-ins for what I need right now.

But then, that's basically the same with Great People. Often I want to work for an Engineer to get that wonder, or an artist for a golden age or a merchant to help me push over that edge with that CS and buy me something else. So in the end, the Specialist Tab can be split up into the various specialists imho since I rarely use them all, and more often just use them more ... specialized

This is more or less why I don't recognize that as a high priority problem. Even wide empires have uses for GPs and for temporary yield boosts in a specific yield for gold or culture or science or production. They just don't get very efficient use versus tall by having several concentrated at once and instead would get several locations using one or two other than intentions for GP generation.

A boost wouldn't mean you use them more, just that they're a little better when you have to. Which is fine, but if you want to improve them, I think you should have to go decide to do that rather than receive that boost instead of other advantages of greater utility.

The general idea sounds like it ought to be that specialists aren't useless for wide, or villages for tall and that there's some dispute over whether this was the case as it was requiring changes, and then whether there are changes we can do to accomplish those ends if they are indeed desirable ends. And I'm of the mind that 1) specialists or villages weren't useless or exclusive in game terms because they're very useful to some people over their alternatives and 2) that they are not useless to non-optimal game play either because they offered specific or special bonuses that are still desirable or useful under specific circumstances.

So long as that comes with the cost of having to make some positive steps to improve it further, I think that's fine. You should have to want to improve these rather than simply get them improved as part of the normal path.

 

[Ahriman]

Right; if a Wide empire wants to use specialists they can do so by picking up a Merchant boost in Commerce, a Scientist boost in Rationalism, an Engineer boost in Order or (atm and I think this has poor flavor) a happiness boost in Autocracy.

Wide empires might pick any of those trees.

 

[mystikx21]

Or if a tall empire wants to improve villages, they get techs, they get rationalism, or they get commerce.

 

[Ahriman]

Exactly. So the player has options; they can get boosts of the type they want that fits their playstyle, they aren't forced to get those picks in the "core" Tall/Wide/Military trees.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

sounds good

 

[Calavente]

Mu.
That is the wrong question.
Specialists do not need to be exciting for wide empires. Wide empires do other things.

The question is like saying: "how could we have Tall empires still have massive amounts of territory"? It's the wrong question; if you want lots of territory, don't play Tall.

I'll disagree here. Tall is the definition of "small empire with huge cities" so Tall with territory is not "Tall".
however in the definition of "Tall" there is not the wordings "no village". That is a consequence of game-mechanics that make village worthless for Tall ; but it is not mandatory.

What I think Thal is saying is:
"you want to block a gameplay to a gamestyle".

you say that the paradigme is between "village don't go with Tall" and "the choice between village and farm becomes moot".

for me it's like saying (on the graph) Either I'm extrem left or I'm extrem right.

You are forgetting the middle ground.

And here I disagree with you and agree with Thal.
(however maybe the solution proposed is not the good one, but the aim is IMO worthwhile).


why do you WANT to BLOCK some choices and link farm / specialists to TALL and village to Wide ?

is conquest linked only to WIde ? or can Tall do it ? or is wide limited only to conquest ? or can it do other things?

I don't see why
goal (victory), strategy (tall/wide/warrior) and gameplay (village / farms / specialists) have to be linked.
Sure, some combination might have synergies, but you are making some combination MANDATORY (wide almost never use specialists and Tall almost never use villages). and that's not fun.

Sure, if you could have both farms and village for all, it would be boring at all times you would have specialists + village everygame.

but currently you are advocating either WIDE + village OR Tall + farms.
so instead of a multiplicity of choices you want the game to be rigged to 1 choice :
wide or tall ?
instead of wide or tall ... + will I boost my farms/specialist or will I boost my villages to complement my wide/tall strategy and while one combination is generally better, the other situation might be situationnaly better (depending on map, neighbourgh...Etc)


IMO, it would be great to enable farm OR village for either Wide or Tall.

such as being able to develop villages for TALL (to the detriment of specialists) and being able to develop farms/specialists for Wide (to the detriment of villages).

Those would open new ways of playing wide or of playing TALL.

So sure, normally farm-specialists is the TALL way... but why not open a viable way of playing TALL that is based on villages and whatnot instead of farms ?

I have no ideas on how to attain that goal. But Thal is trying, while you want to keep the statu-quo.

IMO, it would be better if, instead of keeping your position, you tried to understand Thal's aim and propose "better" solutions... or solutions that might "alleviate" your fears.


some random ideas (IMO they are not good ideas but might go into the direction of the "middle ground"):
-why not have the "tall" civic on villages have town give a specialist to nearby city but have the town roduce less food / production (or reduce food in nearby cities/in nearby farms) (or give 1 unhappy).
(so suddenly the town might become another way to get specialists, rewarding the TALL that used a village.


-why not have the "wide" civic on specialists give a +100% to GP yield instead of free specialists. Thus, your 1-2 city that was focused on specialist is boosted and that civic serves to compensate your one weakness : low GP generation as "wide have no interest in specialist as they are un-useful in small cities".


EDIT : well it seems Tarquelne said it much better than me.
JohnS has also some good ideas

 

[mystikx21]

@calvente

I think one point overlooked in this revisiting of the debate is that one side's argument wasn't that villages and specialists weren't to be used at all, but rather that they WERE still used, just not as often as in the opposite play style because they were suboptimal strategies made necessary by changing game-conditions or strategies. Rushing a wonder or tech or seeking a culture win, providing gold for overcoming a deficit, and so on. That called into question whether such changes were a high priority problem in need of resolution if they have actual uses in both play styles.

The implementation initially of that problem was also poorly made (moving specialist bonuses to the early trees and extra science on villages also in an early tree). It has since been changed to something more palatable (similar to JohnS' ideas, assuming they're properly implemented), with a split bonus for GP rate on one side and a bonus for having A specialist, aka the guruship belief as a policy. And the GM mission bonus is in the default game already and was preserved in GEM.

I would not mind more specialist specific bonuses, like a trade route effect for using a merchant, but that may be complicated to balance and get the AI to understand. A simple one-variety bonus is sufficient to implement the proposed goal.

So far as your first point, Ahriman was suggesting that these sorts of changes were like making a tall empire or wide empire no longer function like a tall or wide empire. If we were forced to get a specialist bonus or a village bonus instead of other benefits from a policy tree, that's different than having a village or specialist bonus available to us somewhere in the game to make those a more viable strategy or a more useful fallback. It becomes a junk policy rather than something usefully selected. Since the policy trees are now different than when this debate was wrestled with, these are now less salient concerns. That's not to say they're fully assuaged, but we've moved onto to new construction instead. Revisiting the debate may show need for further changes down the line or more interesting suggestions.

 

[Calavente]

ahah..
I know now.
I just wasn't up to date to the "new debat" when I posted.
I still waited to finish the thread before posting.. but I hadn't started on other threads

However I still think one argument I made valid:

you are linking tall with farms and wide with village. and for me it goes in the "less choices" category.

I really liked some FFH modmods were you could change civics (not as policies but closest in cIV)
-villages improving civics (more commerce)
-village help provide specialists
-farms gives more food (more specialists)
-famrs give less food and more commerce (less specialists).

so even if tall vs wide were not as marked options as in ciV, you could still get a commerce style using either villages OR farms and a specialist style using either Farms OR villages.
however you couldn't cumulate all. (no : specialists using BOTH villages AND farms)
in your terms it would be like BEING ABLE TO CHOOSE to transform my farms (or specialists) into wide-empire boosting things (and in that case I won't build villages anymore as they are marginally better but riskier : need time to grow)

and BEING ABLE TO CHOOSE villages as my way to build these tall empires (maybe lower pop than farm-tall, but around same number of specialists).

However you'll have to note that in this case, chosing those paths went at a cost ... but it becomes worthwile not "suboptimal".

 

[Ahriman]

But Civ4/FFH was purely run at a city level. There was no empire-wide happiness. So there was really no tall/wide difference in playstyle. Every city always wanted to be as big as could be sustained by that cities happiness.

Civ5 is different. A Tall empire *means* fewer/larger cities, and that means more food. So it just isn't possible to switch between farms and villages so easily.

 

[Calavente]

because you(we) don't currently see it doesn't mean it isn't possible.

and I stated that there was/is no opposition tall wide. But the opposition that flamed the forums was specialists vs town instead of wide vs tall.
So I still think the analogy is true.

and when really thinking about it tall is not "few huge cities", its philosophy is "few highly productive cities" (with productive being not only production but all kind of yields : culture, science, gold, gpp...etc). And that is mostly obtained by concentration of sources of yield and buildings that boost it. And it needs a limitation on the number of cities.

One way the limitation is done currently is such that the best way to have "concentration" is to have huge pop... because some yield direclty comes from the pop and not from its use (science). so you need happies and won't build many cities to save those happies for city growth.
the corrolary is that you need much food because HUGE needs FOOD.

However: you could imagine a Tall-like civilization of Elves (to go to the extrem which is better illustrated in fantasy setting):
few cities ; low pop ; HUGE productivity per citizen (be it specialists or tile-working citizen).
for me it is a "TALL" civilization...

so if you could get a policy that goes : +2unhappy per village, +1 specialist per village. (or +0.5unhappy per pop, or +5 unhappy per city) well you wouldn't need food to have many specialists. And the limitation would come with the unhappies, meaning the policy/civic/whatever won't be interesting for wide.

Or it could go with 1food per farm, +2unhappy per village, +1 specialist per village. So you could design your civ around this and go for an all farm or all village or a mix.


or maybe : +0.5 unhappy per pop, +3 yield per specialists. That wouldn't increase the attractiveness of villages for TALL, but it might decrease the need for FOOD (as your unhappy cap for the civ will be reached way earlier... and cities can only grow so much. But your skilled artisans would be better than the one of the neighbourg.

there are many way of doing that.

lets think for wide and specialists.
the aim is not to make specialists mandatory for wide... it is to make them a viable strategy.

JohnS +x prod if a specialist is here is nice.



and I hate it when you say "I'm forced to take this". No you aren't.
you may CHOOSE to not take that policy.
It means not getting the finisher.... but what about it ?

why would a wide conqueror NEED to finish a policy tree ?

it's an opportunity cost :
-take a low-interest policy in order to gain a high interest policy (finisher)
-stop developping this tree and invest in a new tree.

you said earlier that you liked that... why is it different here ?

 

[mystikx21]

The "forced to take it" point considers also that you could have had other benefits instead which were likely more useful and which it replaced while the benefit itself (as initially designated at least), was largely useless to you and only marginally beneficial occasionally. These policies represented substantial costs, acting almost like penalties, rather than offering significant advantages, and were really just substitution benefits brought in from other places in the game, where they were of some more obvious use. That too was a cost.

There *can* be trees designed with some less than synergized policy effects, or unique effects that are really useful under certain circumstances and less useful than others most of the time, but it appeared to be mostly useless and only marginally useful in certain circumstances to us. That's a problem.

The current design when completed is closer to a compromise where there are benefits for using specialists in a wider empire to make that an interesting choice, it isn't as inflexible (such as by only benefiting merchants or engineers rather than "specialists"), and it is at least occasionally useful and circumstantially very useful. All empires will benefit from higher base production plus some specialist yields. Tall empires get more specialist yields and more GP rates, wide empires get greater utility for having to use specialists, and some utility generally out of them as wide empires tend to use them (in smaller clumps). Seems fine for now.

 

[Calavente]

I've got a last question to Thal:
is it possible to make an "OR" requirement and a "NOT" requirement in policies (not between policy tree but between policies of a same tree).

if yes, some nice things could be done.
(like giving 2 policyincreasing specialists in Nationalism (Power), one dependant on the other. and a policy increasing villages or prod or whatever.

Opener --> S1 --> S2
............\........|..........\
..............\....NOT.......OR--> finisher
................\....|........../
.................\->V--->./

thus you could "Help" a wide empire wanting to go "specialists" heavy but it would have to invest 2 policy in the tree.
And you'll not penalize "wide no specialists" players that want a traditional wide policy tree if they want to finish the tree without the feeling of "Being forced to take a void policy".

(I use this exemple as it was heavily discussed even if the current solution is satisfactory to most).
However another way to use it would be in the piety tree

Opener --> Free religion
............\.............|..........\
..............\........NOT.......OR--> finisher
................\........|.........../
.................\->Theocracy


if not. well too bad.