Policies: The time has come!

[Funak]

So after looking at Funak's assessment of my new tradition vs the old one, I agree the new one needs some buffing. Here is that take:

EDIT: hehe so one reason it needed a buff, I just realized I had dropped legalism accidentally in the last two versions!
Tradition

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

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +1 Happy for each National Wonder

--I need to reintroduce some of the happy from the original tree, again I find that the wonder bonus is reason you take this, the happy just rounds it off.

Legalism: GP Improvements generate +2 yield.

--I like this concept, but it probably comes too early. Even if its near the bottom of tradition, it might still be too early.

Oligarchy: Palace gains +3 hammers, and a free engineer specialist slot.

--I bumped the hammers up to compete with the large amount of free hammers from the base tradition. With a +3 hammers, the capital catches up to standard tradition in terms of building that aqueduct and monument in about 40 terms (a little less with a workshop factored in). If you use the engineer slot, you recover in 24 turns.

Now there are still a lot of hammers from the other 3 cities that you have to account for. But by centralizing those hammers...and providing more flexibility on what they can be used for...we do get a benefit.

Landed Elite: Capital gains +2 food. Border expand faster.

--Brought back the faster borders overall.

Monarchy: +1 Gold per Pop in Capital, Capital provides +1 happy per 5 citizens.

--This combined with aristocracy gets us back to similar happiness benefits from the original tradition. We increase the gold to compensate for that free building maintenance.

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Great Person +25% in the capital

--Since we couldn't agree on a specific bonus, I figured we can go with GP, who are flexible in what they offer. This finisher is a weaker than the original finisher, but now more of the meat is within the tree itself.

Better, but it still doesn't really have the oomhp imo. Legalism seems kinda bare, and I still think there should be more food. Sure the growth was increased but as mentioned before growth is only good as long as you have food. Also you should probably stop saying "free engineer slot" it gets really confusing

 

[mitsho]

Maybe. Some sort of monastery/cathedral/whatever-other-name-you-could-think-of however it should probably be a new building. Stealing stuff from beliefs isn't cool.

The thing is monasteries are universal, while whatever name one choses otherwise is probably not. I'd rather create a new belief "Synagogues" and give the old monastery benefit there. But that's semantics

Like I said, the policies aren't really in any specific order. Also the general idea seem to be to move away from free buildings mostly because they are boring instantbenefit. And free temples would probably be way too strong specially for civs with temple-UBs. The current opener, which may or may not be way too strong (honestly I just don't see it) starts off doing nothing but will eventually give you 2 culture and 2 faith per city (which is really strong) I have no idea if the slow buildup compensates enough for how much strong it is.

Not temples. Temple! As in one for free without having researched the temple tech. This way, one gets fast faith without creating another faith source that adds up over the whole game. The policy is obviously intended for the tree being ancient, not classical. Policies need to be useful right away after all which is why the 1 more faith on shrines/temple is wonky since the second part takes way too long to get rolling (temples aren't a priority right now, no?).

One idea was to change exploration to Imperialism and have it as a warfare/domination policy-tree in the renaisance era.

Not exploration, the social policy tree. Exploration the act of going out and exploring the map. Agree that those later trees need quite a lot of revision, but that is later on

 

[Funak]

Not temples. Temple! As in one for free without having researched the temple tech. This way, one gets fast faith without creating another faith source that adds up over the whole game. The policy is obviously intended for the tree being ancient, not classical. Policies need to be useful right away after all which is why the 1 more faith on shrines/temple is wonky since the second part takes way too long to get rolling (temples aren't a priority right now, no?).

The same goes for 1 temple really. It would be way stronger for temple UBs and people have spoken against free buildings. And temples aren't really that late. You usually go for philosophy rather early to pick up your national college anyways. And with half buildtime and an extra 1culture and faith I'd say the temple building would be rather strong.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

@Stalker: I wouldn't make too many policies capital only, that's boring. I'd see it structured like this: opener capital only, one tier of two policies that are capital only and another tier of 3 policies that are for your first X cities ( X being 3 or 4 , possibly mapsize based ) , with the finisher also being for your first X cities. This way ideally you'd have two civics you pick when you only have one city and then three more for when you have a couple more cities built.

For Liberty, I'd like to see a free settler+worker policy that's a prereq for faster settler building + no isolation unhappy. That's very fitting for REXing alongside with the free ranged garrisons policy + ideally a free maintenance garrisons ( moved from Tradition ) policy. Another second tier would be faster worker building + faster improvement building. Then you could have another one that gives gold and happy from city connections ( since you'll have many cities and need happiness ) , either the finisher or a third tier policy ( it would need to come after the no isolation one otherwise you have conflicting interests )

@mithso: I like that "cities you settle get your religion + moar trade route religion spread idea. I don't think changing the barb camp reward to ruins is a good idea, but I'd like to see "double gold from barbarian camps" in the Honor opener. rewards camp hunting nicely.

 

[Stalker0]

Better, but it still doesn't really have the oomhp imo.

I think at this point we are roughly on par with the original tradition.

I am providing roughly the same culture, happiness, border expansion, and growth as the original, and then growth begins much earlier.

The free buildings have been replaced with more direct gold and more hammers for the capital to do work with..and now we get a very strong GP boost to the capital...which is where I put a lot of my specialists I find.


I agree legalism needs some work, but I think as a whole this tree is comparable in power to the original.

 

[Stalker0]

Other cultural datapoint. I did a 75 turn ancient start. I was going to do a turn 100 but I got caught in a 2 civ DOW (Gazebo...your aggression update has worked. I was next to Attila and Genghis so I deserved it) so I didn't think the results would be as accurate going forward.

Ultimately I got 47 culture from barb kills, compared to the 168 I would have recieved from Tradition, so Tradition would have bagged me x3.5 more culture.

Here is a log of how much culture was obtained:

Turns:
19 - Got Honor
28 - 8 culture
31 - 8 culture
32 - 7 culture
37 - 8 culture
47 - 8 culture
58 - 8 culture

What you might notice is that at first the barb kills come wtih some frequency than they taper. As expected, initially I cleared camps easily, but after a short time barb camps in my area became scarce.

I'm going to try another game where I "milk" the camps and see how much impact that has.

 

[Funak]

Other cultural datapoint. I did a 75 turn ancient start. I was going to do a turn 100 but I got caught in a 2 civ DOW (Gazebo...your aggression update has worked. I was next to Attila and Genghis so I deserved it) so I didn't think the results would be as accurate going forward.

Ultimately I got 47 culture from barb kills, compared to the 168 I would have recieved from Tradition, so Tradition would have bagged me x3.5 more culture.

Here is a log of how much culture was obtained:

Turns:
19 - Got Honor
28 - 8 culture
31 - 8 culture
32 - 7 culture
37 - 8 culture
47 - 8 culture
58 - 8 culture

What you might notice is that at first the barb kills come wtih some frequency than they taper. As expected, initially I cleared camps easily, but after a short time barb camps in my area became scarce.

I'm going to try another game where I "milk" the camps and see how much impact that has.

I think they are going to import the barbarian agression from CEP (and if you haven't tried the honor opener in CEP, just trust me when I say that it keeps up for sure).

 

[Stalker0]

I think they are going to import the barbarian agression from CEP (and if you haven't tried the honor opener in CEP, just trust me when I say that it keeps up for sure).

I don't see why we would...I don't think that is a general request overall, the barb healing in camps is probably the biggest deal.

One more data point, this time trying to "milk camps".

Total: 78 culture vs 231 compared to tradition, about a x3 ratio.

Turns:

25 - Honor
25 - 8
25 - 8 (this one was funny, I had a nearby barb camp that sent units my way, so I kept them at minimal health and was dancing with them until my honor opener hit, then took them both out).
38 - 8
50 - 8
55 - 7
100 - 11
100 - 7
102 - 11

So the milking didn't work too well. Problem was my neighbors wanted to get in on the action, so barb camps didn't stay open for that long. That last big of culture boost was from a barb assault on a CS...but it still didn't catch us up.


One idea may be to give culture for clearing the barb camps (perhaps 25 for that 25 gold base). That would encourage a player to clear camps instead of trying to milk them...and might balance out honor vs tradition a bit more. That plus a x2 culture per strength might do the trick.

 

[Funak]

One idea may be to give culture for clearing the barb camps (perhaps 25 for that 25 gold base). That would encourage a player to clear camps instead of trying to milk them...and might balance out honor vs tradition a bit more. That plus a x2 culture per strength might do the trick.

That plus CEPlevel barbspawns and you're good to go.

Double combastrenght culture(Probably have to add the same to aztects to keep things fair) 25 culture from clearing camps along with more barbarianspawns. Should probably be slightly above fine on the scale, but atleast you have to actively go hunt for them.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

quoting myself here

nice analysis of the Honor vs Tradition early culture Stalker. You are right that linking it to barbarian activity makes it fade away though. What about giving culture for ANY kill instead? The Aztec UA could be changed to give faith instead. Also, an Honor policy that gives a one-shot science boost when you capture a city ( similar to bulbing or Korea UA ) would be fun to have imo.

 

[Stalker0]

quoting myself here

In one of my versions I did put a culture for any kill bonus, I never got much feedback about it.

I will say the one nice thing about the current honor opener is that...whether you are going for war or peace...you still deal with barbs. So having barb bonuses is useful for everyone.


I think a science bonus on capture of some kind might be useful.

 

[Funak]

In one of my versions I did put a culture for any kill bonus, I never got much feedback about it.

I will say the one nice thing about the current honor opener is that...whether you are going for war or peace...you still deal with barbs. So having barb bonuses is useful for everyone.


I think a science bonus on capture of some kind might be useful.

I think someone, mystikx maybe mention that it was too much overlapping with the aztec UA, which I think is a fair point.

But then again I took the arabian UA and placed it in my pietytree. Personally I would change the arabian UA if I got the chance, it's boring and weird.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

aztec and arabian UA should be changed of course, it's not a problem though imo How does faith per kill sound for aztec UA ?

 

[Stalker0]

aztec and arabian UA should be changed of course, it's not a problem though imo How does faith per kill sound for aztec UA ?

I always say that current leader balance should never ever hinder our core balance. We can always change leaders.

That said, I don't think culture on all kills would solve the problem we are discussing right now. Well...it would from a standpoint that kill culture would not taper off like it does now. It would still lag behind tradition for most of the game, but would likely overtake it late game if you war heavily.

 

[Funak]

aztec and arabian UA should be changed of course, it's not a problem though imo How does faith per kill sound for aztec UA ?

I think the aztec UA is fine, just need to bump the number up to the same level as honor opener, 2x strength. Faith on kill isn't really a good idea imho, CEP had it on a pantheon and the celtic UU have it. While one could argue that the aztecs were sacrificing people for relgion, one would also have to keep in mind that their religion was their culture.
Also Monty isn't really that focused on relgion, and imho we have enough relgious civs in the game, specially if you count arabia into one aswell (and you kinda have to)

I always say that current leader balance should never ever hinder our core balance. We can always change leaders.

That said, I don't think culture on all kills would solve the problem we are discussing right now. Well...it would from a standpoint that kill culture would not taper off like it does now. It would still lag behind tradition for most of the game, but would likely overtake it late game if you war heavily.

You are correct, the aztec UA is a lot stronger lategame than it is earlier on.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I think giving the full Aztec UA would be extraordinarily strong for an opener. I'd rather just have a decent amount of bonus culture from encampments and conquered cities in order to bring it on par with the tradition opener.

If we need something else, I'd rather find out whether we can do something like "gain X culture whenever an unit gains a promotion" with the culture gain taking into account the units level. That way, honour rewards people for keeping units alive and it's a bonus that scales through the game (as you get higher level units through the game, either due to having more base XP from buildings or from having long-lasting units).

 

[Stalker0]

Funak has been asking about using Food Bonuses instead of Growth bonuses for Tradition. So I crunched a few numbers to see what that would look like. The excel is attached with some charts...and its easy to play with the numbers to see what it would look like.

General Setup
I started with a Pop 5 Capital, assuming it had 3 food from Granary, 2 for landed elite, 2 for the tile base. From there it gets 2.5 food for every citizen. I compared the data points to some of my real world games and they seem to be in the ballpark.

TEST 1
I looked at 24% growth (the current tradition proposal, which is right in line with the old traditions 25% growth...remember the 25% takes longer to kick in then our 24%).

General Conclusions:

1) Food% would need to be lower than 10%. At 10%, Food quickly takes off like a shot and completely overshadows Growth.

2) At 8%, Food tends to win around 10 (at 24 pop produces 40% more food than growth), at 7% its around 14 (22.5% at 24 pop), at 6% it takes until 21 pop for it to catch up (5% more at 24 pop). 7% here looks looks somewhat like a sweet spot

3) It is amazing how powerful static food bonuses are. At 24 pop for example, my growth is only netting me about 3.6 more food in total. So a building that provides +4 food would be more powerful than the entire Tradition growth bonus!

TEST 2
Now that alone is not enough to compare them. Food and Growth acts differently with other growth bonus added in (such as fertility rites or swords to plowshares). Food bonus gets added in first, and is then magnified by the growth bonuses...growth bonuses simply add with each other.

So lets added in a 10% growth bonus from fertility rites, and see what that does.

Conclusions:

At 8% food, Food wins at 9 pop (24 pop is 54% stronger)
At 7%, Food wins at 12 pop (34.75% stronger at 24 pop)
At 6%, Food wins at 17 pop (15.5% stronger at 24 pop)

Test 3
Lets make the other growth 25%...fertility rites and swords to plowshares are maybe some "I love the king growth".

Conclusions:

At 8% food, Food wins at 7 (75% stronger at 24 pop)
At 7% food, Food wins at 9 (53% stronger at 24 pop)
At 6% food, Food wins at 13 (31% stronger at 24 pop)


Overall Conclusion:

Food Bonus is a very powerful mechanism for growth, and scales much more aggressively than growth% does. When other growth%s are factored in, even only a 6% Food bonus is comparable to a 24% growth bonus.

Perception is a powerful thing. For example, if I simply gave the capital +1 food per Tradition policy taken...most would likely think that was a terrible bonus. Yet it would be significantly stronger than the growth bonus, and generally stronger than the 8% food bonus.

 

[Stalker0]

If we need something else, I'd rather find out whether we can do something like "gain X culture whenever an unit gains a promotion" with the culture gain taking into account the units level.

I like the concept, the question is how much do we want to pack in the opener? Right now the following have been considered:

1) X culture per barb kill
2) X culture per barb camp kill
3) X culture per city taken
4) X culture per any kill
5) X culture per pillage
6) X culture per promotion taken
7) X culture per unit produced
8) X culture per Garrison


Now the issue right now is that Tradition's +3 culture opener is stronger than Honor's. This means that Tradition's tree is innately better just because I can get it quicker. So conceptually you would want Honor's pace to be caparable.

If we maintain the "tapering problem", aka honor's culture bonus tends to wane with time...than in theory Honor should actually be stronger than tradition out of the gate, and then they will equalize mid game, and tradition wins late game.

 

[Funak]

Funak has been asking about using Food Bonuses instead of Growth bonuses for Tradition. So I crunched a few numbers to see what that would look like. The excel is attached with some charts...and its easy to play with the numbers to see what it would look like.

General Setup
I started with a Pop 5 Capital, assuming it had 3 food from Granary, 2 for landed elite, 2 for the tile base. From there it gets 2.5 food for every citizen. I compared the data points to some of my real world games and they seem to be in the ballpark.

TEST 1
I looked at 24% growth (the current tradition proposal, which is right in line with the old traditions 25% growth...remember the 25% takes longer to kick in then our 24%).

General Conclusions:

1) Food% would need to be lower than 10%. At 10%, Food quickly takes off like a shot and completely overshadows Growth.

2) At 8%, Food tends to win around 10 (at 24 pop produces 40% more food than growth), at 7% its around 14 (22.5% at 24 pop), at 6% it takes until 21 pop for it to catch up (5% more at 24 pop). 7% here looks looks somewhat like a sweet spot

3) It is amazing how powerful static food bonuses are. At 24 pop for example, my growth is only netting me about 3.6 more food in total. So a building that provides +4 food would be more powerful than the entire Tradition growth bonus!

TEST 2
Now that alone is not enough to compare them. Food and Growth acts differently with other growth bonus added in (such as fertility rites or swords to plowshares). Food bonus gets added in first, and is then magnified by the growth bonuses...growth bonuses simply add with each other.

So lets added in a 10% growth bonus from fertility rites, and see what that does.

Conclusions:

At 8% food, Food wins at 9 pop (24 pop is 54% stronger)
At 7%, Food wins at 12 pop (34.75% stronger at 24 pop)
At 6%, Food wins at 17 pop (15.5% stronger at 24 pop)

Test 3
Lets make the other growth 25%...fertility rites and swords to plowshares are maybe some "I love the king growth".

Conclusions:

At 8% food, Food wins at 7 (75% stronger at 24 pop)
At 7% food, Food wins at 9 (53% stronger at 24 pop)
At 6% food, Food wins at 13 (31% stronger at 24 pop)


Overall Conclusion:

Food Bonus is a very powerful mechanism for growth, and scales much more aggressively than growth% does. When other growth%s are factored in, even only a 6% Food bonus is comparable to a 24% growth bonus.

Perception is a powerful thing. For example, if I simply gave the capital +1 food per Tradition policy taken...most would likely think that was a terrible bonus. Yet it would be significantly stronger than the growth bonus, and generally stronger than the 8% food bonus.

Growth% are also stronger if you add extra surplus-food, like building hanging gardens or using internal traderoutes.

Bottomline that I was trying to get to however wasn't about comparing growth% and food%, they aren't the same, not even close. My point I was trying to make is that growth doesn't add anything a city with 60000% extra growth and a city with 0% extra grown will eventually get to the same size, the only difference is time(probably not in this case because that retardedly high number would probably overshoot the final cityexpansion and get a higher pop until it starved down to the same level).
Growth is powerful but I just can't get past the fact that it actually doesn't add anything. If we want tradtion to be about having a big capital we actually have to have a decent foodbonus in it. Either food% or that scaling food on pop that CEP used, and imo food% looks cleaner.

I like the concept, the question is how much do we want to pack in the opener? Right now the following have been considered:
1) X culture per barb kill
2) X culture per barb camp kill
3) X culture per city taken
4) X culture per any kill
5) X culture per pillage
6) X culture per promotion taken
7) X culture per unit produced
8) X culture per Garrison

I'm fine with the first 3. the 8th could still be in the tree (if it isn't added to tradition). The 4th should stay on the aztecs imo, it's iconic. 5 could work but seems complicated, 6 just seems too weird and 7 would either be useless or promote weird playstyle (Unitspamming and probably gifting to citystates), there is a reason why you can't build culture like you can research and wealth.

Still think both 1) and the aztec UA should be bumped up to 200% combatstrength however.

 

[Stalker0]

Thinking about Food vs Growth again, I realize there is another way to consider it.

As my results indicated in the last test, the base food overall affects the growth of a city much more strongly than a food% or growth% would.

A city who starts on a river...or gets a little more wheat, or gets 3 fish instead of 3 pearls...is going to be more strongly influenced in their growth than whether we chose a Food% or a Growth%.

So another question we can ask is...which bonus is more consistent? If we wanted to limit that base food imbalance, which is the better option?


I did a quick test. Took the results of a Pop 10 city, and then I increased the food produced from 1 through 5, and then did a -1 through -5. I look at the variance between food and growth numbers to see which mechanic was more consistent in its approach.

Conclusions: Food% is more consistent in its application.

At +1/-1 food, Food% varies by 3.3% compared to growth's 9.7%. At +5/-5, Food is only at 16.5% while growth is at a 48.5%

So that's a benefit of Food%. If we use Food% mechanics, a city's start has less impact on its future than it does under the growth% mechanic.