Policies: The time has come!

[Stalker0]

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Conquest v0.9 (... I think)

Opener: Bonus +33% vs. Barbarians, encampment notifications and culture for barbarian units killed and for each conquered city.

--I still like the escalating bonus idea, but that this feels like a solid opener.

Imperialism: No Isolation unhappiness. A Free Settler appears in the capital.

--I like it.

Feudalism: Garrisons in occupied cities reduce that city's unhappiness from occupation by 30%, garrisoned puppeted cities gain +20% to all yields. Requires Imperialism. (Numbers can be tweaked - but I think it's safe to just apply it to all yields. You don't control the city after all)

--To me, we as a community need to make a decision on a key aspect to determine how a policy like this will work.

Should puppets be a "temporary" hurdle to overcome until you annex the city, or should it be an expected long term part of gameplay?

That said, overall this remains my least favorite, I think there is tweaking to be done here.

Looting: Gain gold for each unit killed. Killing enemy units heals the victorious unit by 20.

--I like it. People seem to like the heal bonus, which is combined with a nice warring bonus.

Military Caste: Units gain +10% combat strength when adjacent to a friendly unit. A free ranged unit spawns with new settled cities. Requires Looting.

--I'm still a big fan of the +XP to barracks, armory idea over just a straight combat bonus. For a nonwarrior like me, the most exciting part of the original honor tree is the +50% XP...just because getting tier 3 and beyond promotions is exciting an interesting. So I would like to see some version of that maintained.

That would also help the AI more than this policy, as humans are better at tactical bonuses whereas the RAW XP bonus would be very useful in AI hands.

Warrior Code: A free General appears outside your capital. Population reduction from city capture is reduced to 25% and unrest is reduced by 25%. Requires Military Caste.

--This one is shaping up well.

Finisher: Cities increase the culture cost of policies by 25% less than normal. Whenever you conquer a civilization's capital, start a Golden Age. Great Generals can be purchased with faith at the Industrial Era.

--I wasn't married to the each city provides GA points, I can go either way. This finisher seems decent right now.​

 

[mystikx21]

I would rather if the puppeted cities are to be improved within this tree, it primarily be about gold. It is thematic (tribute), fits with what the AI already does with the city (gold focus), and still allows an option later on to turn it into a productive/science/culture powerhouse as courthouses become a lower investment or micromanagement is less disturbing but it still gives us a bonus for having conquered cities. The main advantage would be the reduction of happiness penalties in conquered and garrisoned cities anyway.

10% bonus when adjacent tends to work fine with the AI as they build large armies. The real meat of that policy is the free garrison in new cities anyway.

 

[Gazebo]

There's a policy mod to reduce global averages for happiness yields in puppeted cities. That would fit in well in this tree. I've stuck it in the Honor Tree finisher in the CBP for now, so you can see how it works.
G

 

[Stalker0]

10% bonus when adjacent tends to work fine with the AI as they build large armies. The real meat of that policy is the free garrison in new cities anyway.

Never said the bonus was "bad", but I don't think its necessarily the best option here.

 

[Funak]

Finisher: Cities increase the culture cost of policies by 25% less than normal. Whenever you conquer a civilization's capital, start a Golden Age. Great Generals can be purchased with faith at the Industrial Era. (Let's keep it elegant guys. We don't really need a whole per city golden age thing. Let Conquest players work for their golden ages.)[/indent]

I think you missed the point. The point is that golden ages require different amounts of GA-points, which in turn means that conquering a capital would give a different reward depending on when you took it, which is kinda silly. Could lead to situations where you're better off waiting 4 more turns to take the capital than just taking it when you have the chance.

Also you should probably add that it only works once per city, I understand that's what you mean but without it then whole thing just gets ********.

 

[klokwerk]

I'm not sure about the 20% yield bonus for puppet cities since it would penalize people for annexing cities instead of puppeting them...

 

[Stalker0]

Warrior Code: A free General appears outside your capital. Population reduction from city capture is reduced to 25% and unrest is reduced by 25%. Requires Military Caste.

--We might be able to tailor this to push it into the "good for peaceful and aggressive expansion".

How about:

Loyalty: Settled Cities gain +1 Pop. Unrest reduced by 25%. Population Reduction from City Capture reduced by 25%.


Another idea we could consider is instead of mixing the peaceful and war portions of this tree like we are doing now...we could split them into two branches of the tree.

One branches focuses on the free settler, isolation, free units..etc etc. The other gives the gold on kills, puppet bonuses, less population killing on conquest, etc.

If we are making the assumption that people are not expected to fill in whole trees...that would let people tailor their choices more towards their style. If I want to take a little honor to pick up those settlement bonus...no problem. If I am warmonger, and I don't give a lick about peaceful expansion, I can focus on just the war side.

 

[Stalker0]

Looking back at tradition, since we are getting more push to put culture back in the equation, let me take a look at that with an updated version.

Tradition

Opener: +3 culture in the capital. Capital Growth increased by 4% for each policy taken in Tradition.

--If we are considering Tradition to be the most passive of the early trees, I don't think a passive culture bonus is problematic. If we are removing the base monuments of legalism, we are also still slowing down early policy growth a bit here.

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, Happiness Requirement for National Wonders reduced by 5.

--Thought I would try hitting on one of our new mechanics (is the happiness requirement for national wonders planned to be modular? If so we wouldn't want this).

I personally believe anything past the +15% bonus to wonders is just gravy, I personally would take the policy with just that bonus myself.

Oligarchy: Palace gains +2 hammers, and a free engineer specialist slot.

Landed Elite: Capital gains +2 food and immediately gains its full 3 (maybe 4?) tile radius.

--Going a little more radical here with the instant borders, what do people think? On the one hand its a very immediate and powerful bonus....but then its done. And the rest of your cities no longer grow borders faster like in the old version.

Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, capital no longer suffers unhappiness.

--At first, that second line might seem pretty strong, but honestly I rarely have problems keeping my capital to minimal unhappiness when using tradition...so that actual amount of unhappiness is pretty small when all is said and done.

--A few more ideas here:
1) +1 Gold and Science per 2 Pop in Cap
2) +X% science and gold each time the capital grows.
3)

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith.

--A lot of back and forth on the finisher, so let me just lay out a few ideas.

1) +X yields for Great Improvements.
2) Capital permanently enters "We love the King day"
3) Specialists gain +X yield in the capital.
4) GP +X% in the capital.
5) Capital gains X food whenever any city grows.
6) Golden Ages +X%
7) +15% production in the capital.
8) Golden Age yields increased by 20% in the Capital.
9) +X% to certain yields when the capital grows.
10) Buildings do not cost maintenance in the capital.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

So instead of a tree that's good for small empires and a tree that's good for large empires we get a tree that's good for OCC and one that's good for warmongers. I agree that you shouldn't feel forced to finish a tree but Conquest seems bipolar and Tradition seems too narrow. I'd be ok with an overhaul of the policy system, with less trees and more policies for each tree. But merging trees in the current system is not going to work imo, each tree is simply too small to accomodate that. I'd rather see the CEP policies implemented and then tweaked as needed.

 

[Stalker0]

So instead of a tree that's good for small empires and a tree that's good for large empires we get a tree that's good for OCC and one that's good for warmongers.

Its more a tree for those who want to build up their capital (which is normally a small empire focus) and a tree for those who want to heavily expand (by any means necessary)

 

[Stalker0]

When it comes to culture, we need to a put a little math down to add context to our discussion.

I did a 100 turn run on a classical start to see how Honor's culture bonus stacks up to Tradition's.

After 100 turns, I killed 6 barbs netting me 55 culture...compared to the 300 culture that Tradition would net me (you can choose a policy right at the beginning with a classical start).

That was actively focusing on killing barbs whenever I could find them. Ultimately I felt that the barbs were a little on the low spawning this game, so I could see maybe another 20 culture on top...75. But then again, the randomness is a weakness of Honor's bonus, not an advantage.

But the results are very clear, Honor's bonus is not even close to Tradition's..and it just gets worse with legalism.

To me, Honor's bonus should be the most powerful early game..as the bonus tends to fade away as barbs become less frequent. Honor should jumpstart your policies with good barb hunting...and then slowly fade away while Tradition just provides that continuous bonus turn after turn.

If we look at the magnitude...even a +100% increase in barb killing culture doesn't even get us close to tradition. It would take a +400% increase...just to match it.

Now the exact number tweaking is for debate...but it is important to clearly state this:

If we want honor's culture pace to at least mirror the baseline (Vanilla Tradition), we will need MASSIVELY increase the barb killing culture...by several multiples

 

[Funak]

Looking back at tradition, since we are getting more push to put culture back in the equation, let me take a look at that with an updated version.

Tradition

Opener: +3 culture in the capital. Capital Growth increased by 4% for each policy taken in Tradition.

--If we are considering Tradition to be the most passive of the early trees, I don't think a passive culture bonus is problematic. If we are removing the base monuments of legalism, we are also still slowing down early policy growth a bit here.

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, Happiness Requirement for National Wonders reduced by 5.

--Thought I would try hitting on one of our new mechanics (is the happiness requirement for national wonders planned to be modular? If so we wouldn't want this).

I personally believe anything past the +15% bonus to wonders is just gravy, I personally would take the policy with just that bonus myself.

Oligarchy: Palace gains +2 hammers, and a free engineer specialist slot.

Landed Elite: Capital gains +2 food and immediately gains its full 3 (maybe 4?) tile radius.

--Going a little more radical here with the instant borders, what do people think? On the one hand its a very immediate and powerful bonus....but then its done. And the rest of your cities no longer grow borders faster like in the old version.

Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, capital no longer suffers unhappiness.

--At first, that second line might seem pretty strong, but honestly I rarely have problems keeping my capital to minimal unhappiness when using tradition...so that actual amount of unhappiness is pretty small when all is said and done.

--A few more ideas here:
1) +1 Gold and Science per 2 Pop in Cap
2) +X% science and gold each time the capital grows.
3)

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith.

--A lot of back and forth on the finisher, so let me just lay out a few ideas.

1) +X yields for Great Improvements.
2) Capital permanently enters "We love the King day"
3) Specialists gain +X yield in the capital.
4) GP +X% in the capital.
5) Capital gains X food whenever any city grows.
6) Golden Ages +X%
7) +15% production in the capital.
8) Golden Age yields increased by 20% in the Capital.
9) +X% to certain yields when the capital grows.
10) Buildings do not cost maintenance in the capital.

I'm just going to point out that this tree is A LOT worse than the current tradition tree, while the new honor tree is A LOT better than the old honor tree.

 

[Stalker0]

Also...we have been ignoring CEP's work on this. We should at least shake that tree and see what good ideas came out. So here it is. On a funny note, Thal and I apparently had similar ideas with tradition, there are several similar concepts:


CEP Tradition

Opener : 3 Culture and +2 Food in Capital Unlocks: Banaue Rice Terraces

Aristocracy roduction: +15% for wonders. Happiness: +1 for every 10 Citizens

Oligarchy: City Attack: +50% from garrisons. No maintenance for garrisoned units. +2 culture for garrisoned units.

Legalism: (renamed Mentors) +5 science in capital, 5% science on all science buildings.

Monarchy Capital gains +1 gold per pop, unhappiness is halved.

Landed Elite: +2 food, +15% growth in ALL cities. Capital gains +1 food/5 citizens.

Finisher : Great Person rate: +25%. Doubles cultural border expansion to tiles far from cities. Can purchase Great Engineers with Faith starting in the Industrial era


CEP Honor

Opener: Reveal barabarian camps, +10% Strength bonus against barbarians, Barb Culture (double what vanilla provides). Unlocks ToA.

Killing barbarians gives Culture

Warrior Code renamed to Gladiators : Free Collesseum in all Cities, +2 defense units at the capital
Great Generals are earned 50% faster

Discipline:


Discipline: +15% Strength for all units adjacent to other friendly military units, 1 free Great General. +1 movement for Great Generals, +2 science and production on citadels.

Military Caste: Barracks, Armories, and MA provide more production (not sure what this means) and are produced 50% faster. Promotions are earned 25% faster.

Military Tradition (now Spoils of War) Killing enemies gives Gold (3x strength), +25% rewards from capturing City-States

Professional Army : Upgrade cost: -50% for units, Production: +15% for All units

Finisher : Melee Units +15% stronger, Great Generals +25% faster.

 

[Funak]

When it comes to culture, we need to a put a little math down to add context to our discussion.

I did a 100 turn run on a classical start to see how Honor's culture bonus stacks up to Tradition's.

After 100 turns, I killed 6 barbs netting me 55 culture...compared to the 300 culture that Tradition would net me (you can choose a policy right at the beginning with a classical start).

That was actively focusing on killing barbs whenever I could find them. Ultimately I felt that the barbs were a little on the low spawning this game, so I could see maybe another 20 culture on top...75. But then again, the randomness is a weakness of Honor's bonus, not an advantage.

But the results are very clear, Honor's bonus is not even close to Tradition's..and it just gets worse with legalism.

To me, Honor's bonus should be the most powerful early game..as the bonus tends to fade away as barbs become less frequent. Honor should jumpstart your policies with good barb hunting...and then slowly fade away while Tradition just provides that continuous bonus turn after turn.

If we look at the magnitude...even a +100% increase in barb killing culture doesn't even get us close to tradition. It would take a +400% increase...just to match it.

Now the exact number tweaking is for debate...but it is important to clearly state this:

If we want honor's culture pace to at least mirror the baseline (Vanilla Tradition), we will need MASSIVELY increase the barb killing culture...by several multiples

I would argue that the honor opener i CEP gives a lot more culture than the tradition opener in CEP and that's just doubled the normal culture on kill. On the other hand barbarians spawn like crazy and you're forced to spam units just to deal with them

 

[Funak]

Also...we have been ignoring CEP's work on this. We should at least shake that tree and see what good ideas came out. So here it is. On a funny note, Thal and I apparently had similar ideas with tradition, there are several similar concepts:


CEP Tradition

Opener : 3 Culture and +2 Food in Capital Unlocks: Banaue Rice Terraces

Aristocracy roduction: +15% for wonders. Happiness: +1 for every 10 Citizens

Oligarchy: City Attack: +50% from garrisons. No maintenance for garrisoned units. +2 culture for garrisoned units.


Legalism: (renamed Mentors) +5 science in capital, 5% science on all science buildings.

Monarchy Capital gains +1 gold per pop, unhappiness is halved.

Landed Elite: +2 food, +15% growth in ALL cities. Capital gains +1 food/5 citizens.

Finisher : Great Person rate: +25%. Doubles cultural border expansion to tiles far from cities. Can purchase Great Engineers with Faith starting in the Industrial era

Going to point out that this was mostly done by Mystikx with my suggestions. Thals tradition looked rather different.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

(this is in response to Stalker's post #210 )

Ok, but is there a real need to change the focus of the tree? The way I see it, the conceptual weakness of the vanilla implementation is that tall and wide empires actually have the same number of cities early on, but the former stops expanding sooner while the latter continues to do so. Therefore, in vanilla Tradition is also fitting for Wide approaches which I agree is undesirable, but I think focusing it too much on just the capital is excessive and a bit boring imo. Tradition is mostly fine the way it is, it just feels stronger because with early culture you complete it quickly AND the other trees need a buff.

I'd like to see Liberty focus on peaceful REX, but a couple of the suggested policies for Conquest fit it nicely, i.e. the no isolation penalty and the free garrisons ( since REXing makes you vulnerable to attacks )

Someone mentioned that rewarding the player for having a capital is boring because that's not a choice, everyone has a capital. I agree, for me the early choice for a peaceful player is between focusing on Infrastructure or Expansion. Wodhann wanted to change Piety/Wisdom to be the infrastructure tree, but I feel infrastructure belongs in Tradition.

Piety is fine as a religious tree imo, for those who want to focus on it. Someone said it's difficult to balance religion with and without this tree but I don't think that's an issue, if you are focusing on religion of course you are going to want this tree, same as rationalism for science, patronage for diplo and aestethics for culture. The problem with Piety imo is that the policies are weak and the finisher is very strong, which to the player feels like he's being forced to get all those meh perks just to get to the last one.

For Honor, I think your Conquest ideas are shaping up nicely: instead of making you better at war, it should give you rewards for warring, and it should actively give you yields from it so that it can compete with Tradition and Liberty.

 

[mystikx21]

Tradition I did very little to. Thal did most of that, or Expired. I think moving around and slightly reducing the food bonuses was all I did (funak did have some good input on what changes were made too). The barracks line adds more production in honor was (+1, +2, +3)

Looking at Stalker's latest.
I am not a fan having instant border pops as a policy. It's a one shot deal and isn't very powerful. The passive border expansion of cheaper culture costs and cheaper buying of tiles is much more useful (flexible). The instant border works fine with early wonders, assuming it comes with other effects, or with an effect that shoots the border out 1 ring immediately on all cities, things like that. I'd rather have the boring consistent policy here though as it is more useful.

I would stay away from removing unhappiness in the capital entirely. But a significant reduction from any of several options is fine.

I am fine with an effect for specialists in the capital, either increasing GP rate, or decreasing unhappiness from them, or increasing yield, or an effect increasing yields on GPIs.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm just going to point out that this tree is A LOT worse than the current tradition tree, while the new honor tree is A LOT better than the old honor tree.

Lets do a side by side comparison and see if your right.

Tradition: Old vs New

Growth: Old Tradition, +25% growth in capital (happens late in the tree, usually around turn 100 or so), +15% growth to 3 other cities. New: +20% total, growth begins earlier in the tree.

Culture: Same total amount overall, however Old will produce more early on with free monuments from legalism.

Production: Old saves you 476 hammers (136 from monuments, 340 from aqueducts). New provides a permanent +2 hammers, and can generate the first Great Engineer quicker. Both have the same +15% bumps.

Gold: Old saves you 8 GPT from free building maintenance.

Happiness: Old half happiness likely saves you 10 happiness or so for a generally good capital by mid game...for serious growers maybe 15. Plus a little on top for aristocracy, so maybe 13-18 in total.

New saves you probably 3-4 on the capital.

Borders: Old provides you a big bump in borders for the game, legalism gives it an early boost as well. New provides a massive increase in capital borders, but then no further effect.


Conclusion: I agree with Funak's assessment. If we are maintaining Vanilla Tradition as our baseline (and I think we should since that will be most people's default tree)...then there are a lot of buffs that can be added imo.

 

[Funak]

(this is in response to Stalker's post #210 )

Ok, but is there a real need to change the focus of the tree? The way I see it, the conceptual weakness of the vanilla implementation is that tall and wide empires actually have the same number of cities early on, but the former stops expanding sooner while the latter continues to do so. Therefore, in vanilla Tradition is also fitting for Wide approaches which I agree is undesirable, but I think focusing it too much on just the capital is excessive and a bit boring imo. Tradition is mostly fine the way it is, it just feels stronger because with early culture you complete it quickly AND the other trees need a buff.

I'd like to see Liberty focus on peaceful REX, but a couple of the suggested policies for Conquest fit it nicely, i.e. the no isolation penalty and the free garrisons ( since REXing makes you vulnerable to attacks )

Someone mentioned that rewarding the player for having a capital is boring because that's not a choice, everyone has a capital. I agree, for me the early choice for a peaceful player is between focusing on Infrastructure or Expansion. Wodhann wanted to change Piety/Wisdom to be the infrastructure tree, but I feel infrastructure belongs in Tradition.

I think a tree focused just around the capital is fine, but it is going to need a lot better bonuses to keep it relevant, specially considering focusing everything in your capital is going to give you massive unhappiness in all other cities.

Piety is fine as a religious tree imo, for those who want to focus on it. Someone said it's difficult to balance religion with and without this tree but I don't think that's an issue, if you are focusing on religion of course you are going to want this tree, same as rationalism for science, patronage for diplo and aestethics for culture. The problem with Piety imo is that the policies are weak and the finisher is very strong, which to the player feels like he's being forced to get all those meh perks just to get to the last one.

This is one of the issues, the main issue is that on higher difficulties you are not garanteed to get a religion even if you go allin for one. Sometimes you face 5 AIs who wants a religion and if an AI wants a religion they will get it because of their sick bonuses. Piety is also something that you must focus on from the start, before knowing if you're actually likely to get a religion or not (and 3/5 policies being useless doesn't really help that).
The best idea imho is making piety a tree for someone who haven't really decided if they want to massexpand or not (tradition and liberty kinda force you into those roles, but sometimes you just don't know how the area looks and what your neighbors are like). Piety can still provide faith, making it the optimal tree to go for if you want to get a religion. Faith however is still useful even if you don't get your own religion going, and as long as you get rid of all those religionbased policies you're probably going to have a pretty good time even without one.

 

[Stalker0]

Tradition is mostly fine the way it is, it just feels stronger because with early culture you complete it quickly AND the other trees need a buff.

From a "power" standpoint, I think the original tradition is fine, and I still consider it the baseline for us to balance policies around. From a conceptual standpoint, my issue with Tradition is that it has a powerful opener, a crazy good finisher, and little bit of good int the middle. But most of the middle is frankly really boring. This is the tree that I just scoot through to get to the finish.

Opener: Pretty boring, but it gets me to the rest of the tree so quick I don't notice. The borders are also powerful.
Legalism: Is really boring, and ultimately has no long term benefit.
Aristocracy: Other than the finisher, the other reason you take this tree.
Oligarchy: A complete snoozefest imo.
Landed Elite: I like the push on my capital, but still somewhat boring.
Monarchy: Very boring.
Finisher: Crazy good.

I would rather see the tree be better balanced throughout so I don't feel like I have to fill it to be worth my time.

That said, we have focused on a capital centric tradition tree, I am not married to that concept...but I do think a fun and powerful tree can be generated from that concept.