Policies: The time has come!

[Funak]

I think we have given enough production in the capital with tradition currently, so I wouldn't want to add more to the specialists. Culture I think would be fine, but would that be too boring?

I heard the compromise idea of doing both GA points and Yields...so how about we start with that.


Tradition Version 1.1

Opener: +3 culture in the capital. +1 food in the Capital for each policy of Tradition taken (including this one).

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

Legalism: Palace gains +2 science. Science buildings in the capital generate 5% more science.

Landed Elite: Great Person Improvements generate +2 Yields and +5 Golden Age Points. Borders expand faster.

Oligarchy: Palace gains +3 hammers and a specialist slot (engineer). Requires Legalism

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

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Great Person +25% in your first 4 cities.

Just compromising for the sake of compromise isn't going to cut it.
I honestly hate the GA idea I think it's terrible, but just adding both isn't going to cut it. We need to figure something out, something smart.

I'd rather the GP improvements get bonuses in commerce/rationalism/aesthetics/freedom. The border expansion and the GA points is good honestly as is without some other feature in my opinion. The only reason to put some yields with it is if the citadel is also boosted by honor.

+2 science per academy early on is potentially a large bonus, if that's the route.

So if custumhouse gets a bonus in commerce, academy in rationalism, landmark in asthetics, where does the manufactory get boosted?

And honestly I wasn't asking for GI to get their respective yield buffed, I just wanted some yield on them, could be production/science/culture/food for all I care.

I'd still prefer to have GA points than to improve specialists significantly in that tree. But a +1 production from them in the capital only might be okay (instead of +3 on the palace). There's no way I would think +1 production for all specialists everywhere in tradition would be balanced as it is a late-game wonder effect presently.

1 production/specialist is on the Eiffel Tower, 1food/specialist is a freedom policy. Either of those could work with a capital only restriction. Culture/specialist could work aswell but I'd rather see that in asthetics.



Anyone got any totally new suggestions? Even if they are terrible we can probably do something about them. Bad ideas are better than no ideas at all or something like that.

 

[mystikx21]

1/production is on Statue of Liberty actually. Manufactory would be in either Order or Freedom or Exploration (Freedom may still have a general GI boost and Order/Exploration make the most sense for a boost there).

I'm not sure why GA points are a terrible idea. If Golden Ages are useful (by using CEP's 20% to all yields for example), then they are in effect also providing other yields already.

 

[Wodhann]

I have been out this weekend, but I've meaning to post my version of tradition (conquest is pretty much fleshed out, every change from now on will be relatively minor) for a while now.

I don't want to step on stalker's or anyone's toes but I already started putting my vision together so I might as well go ahead and finish it. My version of Tradition belongs to the "parallel universe" of Conquest and "Wisdom", so it's different than what's been discussed so far; a lot of suggestions I've been seeing fit more on my concept of "wisdom" than tradition (the oligarchy one, for instance).


My idea of tradition is, a policy that assists you in developing a highly populated, compact and safe empire. Its themes are growth, quality over quantity, and defense.

(Alternate) Tradition​

Opener: Barbarians must expend 1 extra movement per tile inside your territory and +3 in your capital.

Sanitation: 20% of the is carried over after a citizen is born. Whenever a citizen is born, gain points towards Golden Ages equal to the amount of population in that city.

Autarky: The amount of food or production trade routes that may be directed to the same city is increased by one. A free Caravan appears in your capital. (This looks underwhelming at first glance but has the potential of being OP. Testing would need to be made to evaluate this.)

Timocracy: +6 for each city. This amount is lowered by 2 if you control another city besides the capital, and by 1 for each city beyond the second one, with a minimum of 1 for each city. Needs Sanitation and Autarky.​

Monarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance and cities with a garrison gain +50% Ranged Combat Strength.

(?): Free Wall building in your first [4 at standard map size] cities. For each of those cities with a Wall already built, gain 75 . Requires Statocracy.​

Finisher: Forts and roads are built twice as fast inside your territory. A Great Person of your choice appears in your capital.​

Again, numbers are subject to change.

 

[Funak]

1/production is on Statue of Liberty actually.

Right you are, same guy however. Just woke up, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Manufactory would be in either Order or Freedom or Exploration (Freedom may still have a general GI boost and Order/Exploration make the most sense for a boost there).

I'm not sure why GA points are a terrible idea. If Golden Ages are useful (by using CEP's 20% to all yields for example), then they are in effect also providing other yields already.

1. I really don't think GApoints are fun, golden ages are supposed to come from happiness.

2. If we add GA-points to a tree we are going to force the civs that focus on GA to pick that tree (Persia and Brazil as far as I remember)

3. Since GAs aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance.

 

[Lord Tirian]

3. Since GAs aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance.

You could say that about everything: "Since combat bonuses aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance" or "Since culture bonuses aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance". Not to mention that this is an inherent part of tall vs. wide - tall will often be at an advantage, happiness-wise and get more GAs anyway.

And that's exactly why I think GA points are fitting here: they're a relatively unique bonus and they have synergy with being tall (the percentage bonuses during golden ages are the most powerful in large cities). Think of it a bit like "happiness lite" - it has (part of) the empire-level effect of happiness without having a local effect. This, again, benefits going tall (if they gave plain happiness, you'd use it to go wider).

This said, I'm not sure whether buffing great improvements really is the most "tall" thing in the world, you could make an equally good argument that that's all about infrastructure and should hence go into Liberty.

@Wodhann: Interesting. I think there's too much focus on military there, but there are a lot of concepts to like: The idea of bonuses scaling down with number of cities (Timocracy) is cool (and a nice solution to the arbitrariness of saying X cities get X), so are pop-dependent GA points and slowing down barbarians.

 

[Funak]

You could say that about everything: "Since combat bonuses aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance" or "Since culture bonuses aren't worth the same to every civ they are going to be hell to balance". Not to mention that this is an inherent part of tall vs. wide - tall will often be at an advantage, happiness-wise and get more GAs anyway.

And that's exactly why I think GA points are fitting here: they're a relatively unique bonus and they have synergy with being tall (the percentage bonuses during golden ages are the most powerful in large cities). Think of it a bit like "happiness lite" - it has (part of) the empire-level effect of happiness without having a local effect. This, again, benefits going tall (if they gave plain happiness, you'd use it to go wider).

This said, I'm not sure whether buffing great improvements really is the most "tall" thing in the world, you could make an equally good argument that that's all about infrastructure and should hence go into Liberty.

@Wodhann: Interesting. I think there's too much focus on military there, but there are a lot of concepts to like: The idea of bonuses scaling down with number of cities (Timocracy) is cool (and a nice solution to the arbitrariness of saying X cities get X), so are pop-dependent GA points and slowing down barbarians.

Still think it is boring but if you really think its a GREAT idea then go ahead and keep it there. Just mentioning how no one really seems very sure about it.

Also I wouldn't say a golden age benefits tall any more than reasonably wide. I mean there are more cities to benefit from it, and both setups are going to have about the same population (from what I've gathered wide might even have a bigger total pop because of more luxuries).

 

[mitsho]

1) I'm on the side of GA points being fun, after all having Golden Ages is fun and it is fun to get them while being in negative happiness. The whole Golden Age system may need to be looked at due to the changes to the happiness system however.

The argument that it'd force Persia and Brazil into Tradition however is a good one (though I'm not sure if Brazil would want GA that early, though that in turn may be looked at with the Leader Revision...). Great Improvements on the other hand would need to be buffed a bit anyways (up to CEP levels ).

It certainly isn't a policy that needs to be in one of the opener trees. I can see a specialized "get Golden Ages" policy in a later tree.

2) I also like free buildings since they "propel" you forward. However, I do not always have 4 cities ready by the time I'm to chose these early policies and sometimes I dislike "wasting" one for a monument, trying to get the Theatre (seriously, can we change the names?) instead only to find that it's quite useless for the moment... So, whatever

3) So instead of the GA points, what about a) Cheaper culture/gold border expansion + Free Walls b) Bonus Growth in capital (or Free Aquaeduct) + Free Walls? Both of those point to "safety helps growing".

4) Moving on to Liberty, my first proposal:

Opener: 1 Production + 1 Culture per city (Or: One of the active bonuses)
Citizenship: 1 Free Worker, Faster Worker Improvement Time
Collective Rule: Faster Settler Build Time, Each city (founded or to be founded) gets 2 free tiles, Less increased culture costs for each founded city (the Free Settler being moved to Honor?)
Meritocracy: Happiness for connected cities, x instant gold (scales with era)
Republic: Faster Build Time for Buildings, Less Req for National Wonders (needed? needs a buff?)
Representation: Free Trade Unit, Food/Production/(Science?) from trade routes doubled and available immediately
Finisher: Extra Gold on internal city connections, 1 Science per city

The tree is appropiately full already, no? (names are completely random btw. ... )

 

[Wodhann]

@Wodhann: Interesting. I think there's too much focus on military

Just on defense, not exactly military in the conquering sense.

Tradition to me is the opposite of Conquest. While conquest was about quantity over quality, tradition is the reverse; where conquest was about offense, tradition is about defense. It makes sense for me to have a couple policies dedicated to keeping the empire safe especially considering peaceful low-city empires are the most vulnerable to attacks.

Plus, in my concept, the infrastructure side of tradition has been moved onto "wisdom", opening up policies to add to the defensive aspect (well, in reality, just one more, since the garrison thing already exists).

 

[Funak]

My idea of tradition is, a policy that assists you in developing a highly populated, compact and safe empire. Its themes are growth, quality over quantity, and defense.

(Alternate) Tradition​

Opener: Barbarians must expend 1 extra movement per tile inside your territory and +3 in your capital.

Sanitation: 20% of the is carried over after a citizen is born. Whenever a citizen is born, gain points towards Golden Ages equal to the amount of population in that city.

Autarky: The amount of food or production trade routes that may be directed to the same city is increased by one. A free Caravan appears in your capital. (This looks underwhelming at first glance but has the potential of being OP. Testing would need to be made to evaluate this.)

Timocracy: +6 for each city. This amount is lowered by 2 if you control another city besides the capital, and by 1 for each city beyond the second one, with a minimum of 1 for each city. Needs Sanitation and Autarky.​

Monarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance and cities with a garrison gain +50% Ranged Combat Strength.

(?): Free Wall building in your first [4 at standard map size] cities. For each of those cities with a Wall already built, gain 75 . Requires Statocracy.​

Finisher: Forts and roads are built twice as fast inside your territory. A Great Person of your choice appears in your capital.​

Not trying to sound harsh or anything, but that entire tree seems really boring and weak. The only thing that actually looks rather fun or powerful is the internal traderoute thing.

Free walls? That's like a way weaker verson of a CEP-policy that no one ever picked.
Building roads faster, in a tree focused on having max 3 or 4 cities?

Building forts inside your territory? I guess you could do that, but even with the borderexpand policy in tradition today, getting enough tiles to just work is tough. Having extra tiles over to build forts on, not so sure about it.

 

[Funak]

4) Moving on to Liberty, my first proposal:
Let's finish up tradition first please? =D

Opener: 1 Production + 1 Culture per city (Or: One of the active bonuses)
Probably need something else.

Citizenship: 1 Free Worker, Faster Worker Improvement Time
If you bump up the worker improvement time higher than it was in vanilla this could work.

Collective Rule: Faster Settler Build Time, Each city (founded or to be founded) gets 2 free tiles, Less increased culture costs for each founded city (the Free Settler being moved to Honor?)
Extra tilegrab works, faster settlers(and colonist and pioneers and if there is any other that I can't remember) should be probably be coupled with cheaper purchase-costs for them aswell.

Meritocracy: Happiness for connected cities, x instant gold (scales with era)
No idea if I'm alone on this but I found the instantgold in cep to be rather boring. It was optimal to save that policy until you hit medieval or renaissance even if you wanted to grab it earlier to finish the tree.

Republic: Faster Build Time for Buildings, Less Req for National Wonders (needed? needs a buff?)
Less req for national wonders in a tree designed to go wide makes no sense

Representation: Free Trade Unit, Food/Production/(Science?) from trade routes doubled and available immediately

Extremely overpowered, just pointing that out. Also from what I remember from the earlier brainstorming, liberty was supposed to rely on external traderoutes.

Finisher: Extra Gold on internal city connections, 1 Science per city
Maybe, but gold isn't really in my vision of the liberty-tree. Also this would be extremely weak.


Honestly however we should stick to finishing off tradition before we tackle this.

 

[mitsho]

@wodhann The tree does seem to lack a little bit of "fun", but it's certainly balanced designed. But...

Honestly however we should stick to finishing off tradition before we tackle this.

I don't think there will be much more fertile discussions. We've been discussing Tradition and Honor for ~8 pages (?) and 2 weeks. If we continue in this pace for all the other trees, we'll be up to 80 pages and 20 weeks (meaning December).

The longer this takes, the older civ will be, the less new users will get into it (the thread is already too long) and sometimes you just need to know when to move on. I think there's a pretty good idea of how we want Honor and Tradition to look, so let's move on to fresh ideas

 

[Wodhann]

Not trying to sound harsh or anything, but that entire tree seems really boring and weak.

Gonna echo what mystic said here: Not every single policy has to be super powerful and overwhelming (in fact, it's best that they aren't), the goal of policies is to offer sinergy to game strategies. That being said, I don't share with your opinion, at least from a conceptual level. Numbers and overall balance can be changed.

Free walls? That's like a way weaker verson of a CEP-policy that no one ever picked.

Can you describe what it did?

Building roads faster, in a tree focused on having max 3 or 4 cities?

Maybe I need to rethink that, but my thoughts behind it were the fact that a tall civ should be completely and effectively wired.

Building forts inside your territory? I guess you could do that, but even with the borderexpand policy in tradition today, getting enough tiles to just work is tough. Having extra tiles over to build forts on, not so sure about it.

Forts are often used defensively when facing a siege - by making them twice as fast to build, I'm encouraging a more prompt defensive maneuver on part of small civ players.

 

[Wodhann]

I don't think there will be much more fertile discussions. We've been discussing Tradition and Honor for ~8 pages (?) and 2 weeks. If we continue in this pace for all the other trees, we'll be up to 80 pages and 20 weeks (meaning December).

The longer this takes, the older civ will be, the less new users will get into it (the thread is already too long) and sometimes you just need to know when to move on. I think there's a pretty good idea of how we want Honor and Tradition to look, so let's move on to fresh ideas

Disagreed. I've just offered a fertile ground for discussion on tradition here, for instance.

If we don't do baby steps here, we're gonna stumble all over the place. This is a community effort, we can't just say "OK DONE! MOVE ON!", we need to be in some level of agreement and exhaustion of fruitful discussion before doing so. And there's no "moving on", we can't just shut down discussion on something. If someone dislikes something, they can and should speak up.

 

[mitsho]

Gonna echo what mystic said here: Not every single policy has to be super powerful and overwhelming (in fact, it's best that they aren't), the goal of policies is to offer sinergy to game strategies.

agreed

Can you describe what it did?

Free Walls in all cities. And walls gave 1 production in CEP. I actually took that quite a few times, it is a deterrent when Rexing...

Maybe I need to rethink that, but my thoughts behind it were the fact that a tall civ should be completely and effectively wired.

Forts are often used defensively when facing a siege - by making them twice as fast to build, I'm encouraging a more prompt defensive maneuver on part of small civ players.

Yes and no, but faster roads isn't something you get lots of things out of. They're not "sexy". Also you don't need many roads in smaller empires so you'll likely build them fast enough anways (and then what).

Maybe Forts would offer more choice if they wouldn't replace existing improvements but be built upon them. The map is normally to full to put forts down after all. (Would need to have 1 or 2 spaces between each fort of course and the bonus lowered).

EDIT: Sure, I didn't say shut down discussion. I'm not sure however that your tradition proposal opens up much discussion. In the end however, it's the guys who programm the policy trees that need to decide what they put in. We can't end in a definite tree as that's their final decision. So as soon as all proposals have been put forward, there's diminishing returns in the discussion.

 

[Funak]

Free Walls in all cities. And walls gave 1 production in CEP. I actually took that quite a few times, it is a deterrent when Rexing...

Gave a free defensive building, which translated to a castle if you already had walls. also added 1 production on ALL defensive buildings. Also walls and castles had engineerslots. So quite a bit more powerful.

I don't think there will be much more fertile discussions. We've been discussing Tradition and Honor for ~8 pages (?) and 2 weeks. If we continue in this pace for all the other trees, we'll be up to 80 pages and 20 weeks (meaning December).

The longer this takes, the older civ will be, the less new users will get into it (the thread is already too long) and sometimes you just need to know when to move on. I think there's a pretty good idea of how we want Honor and Tradition to look, so let's move on to fresh ideas

I'm just saying that we're maybe half a policy off actually finishing tradition, better to focus on that even if the conversation went a little stale

 

[mystikx21]

I have been out this weekend, but I've meaning to post my version of tradition (conquest is pretty much fleshed out, every change from now on will be relatively minor) for a while now.

I don't want to step on stalker's or anyone's toes but I already started putting my vision together so I might as well go ahead and finish it. My version of Tradition belongs to the "parallel universe" of Conquest and "Wisdom", so it's different than what's been discussed so far; a lot of suggestions I've been seeing fit more on my concept of "wisdom" than tradition (the oligarchy one, for instance).


My idea of tradition is, a policy that assists you in developing a highly populated, compact and safe empire. Its themes are growth, quality over quantity, and defense.

(Alternate) Tradition​

Opener: Barbarians must expend 1 extra movement per tile inside your territory and +3 in your capital.

Sanitation: 20% of the is carried over after a citizen is born. Whenever a citizen is born, gain points towards Golden Ages equal to the amount of population in that city.

Autarky: The amount of food or production trade routes that may be directed to the same city is increased by one. A free Caravan appears in your capital. (This looks underwhelming at first glance but has the potential of being OP. Testing would need to be made to evaluate this.)

Timocracy: +6 for each city. This amount is lowered by 2 if you control another city besides the capital, and by 1 for each city beyond the second one, with a minimum of 1 for each city. Needs Sanitation and Autarky.​

Monarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance and cities with a garrison gain +50% Ranged Combat Strength.

(?): Free Wall building in your first [4 at standard map size] cities. For each of those cities with a Wall already built, gain 75 . Requires Statocracy.​

Finisher: Forts and roads are built twice as fast inside your territory. A Great Person of your choice appears in your capital.​

Again, numbers are subject to change.

I don't think I agree with almost any of these over what Stalker's been doing. There's some concepts that I find interesting (timocracy, maybe autarky though it will be tough to balance).
GA points per population is interesting. Otherwise, I'd rather go with what Stalker has set up already and move on to Liberty. I don't think this was very fertile ground for debate. It basically started with the assumption that whatever you have in mind is better anyway and ignored the previous two-three pages but offered little basis for saying what you have in mind is actually good and useful.

Your version of Honor (Conquest) doesn't really exist in a different universe and was integrated within other ideas. Why does this?

Most of those are not great bonuses.
As pointed out the road/fort bonus is not worth much of anything.
Barbarian movement in your territory is basically irrelevant as a bonus.
There's a reason we went to some length to eliminate oligarchy (it's not very good for city combat balance and is a wider empire bonus more than tall, it should be abandoned).
I would not bring back CEP's concept of free walls in cities. I was never a big fan as it made rex-ing too easy. That also provides a weak synergy with a taller design. You can build defences relatively cheaply with a bigger city. The city you would want the wall immediately in is on the frontier when expanding, not in your core, so it is more of a rex bonus than a growth bonus. If limited to the first four cities, it removes the rex benefit, but doesn't really offer anything to the cities itself (the cash is potentially useful).

 

[Funak]

Oh well, back to work:

Tradition Version 1.2

Opener: +3 culture in the capital. +1 food in the Capital for each policy of Tradition taken (including this one).

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

Legalism: Palace gains +2 science. Science buildings in the capital generate 5% more science.

Landed Elite: Borders expand faster. <Specialist bonus in capital?>

Oligarchy: Palace gains +3 hammers and a specialist slot (engineer). Requires Legalism

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

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Great Person +25% in capital <Ability to send 2 internal traderoutes to the same city from the same city?>


Let's hurry up and finish this so we can move on to liberty and piety, suggestions go go.

 

[mystikx21]

The main weak points in Tradition in Stalker's design for me are these

+3 production on palace. Okay bonus paired with the engineer, but not very interesting. It could be replaced.

Balancing the free GA points. I agree with Tirian's perspective that they're actually quite useful/good, and I don't see that there should be a serious problem pushing (say) Persia or Brazil toward Tradition. Provided Tradition is in a good balance with Honor and Liberty, they aren't being penalized if that's a preferred choice. The trick is the numerical balance and what Golden Ages actually provide in terms of yield advantages. Wodhann's idea of how to get them is actually probably better here as it encourages growth more. Putting them on GI tiles could be used in Liberty instead so that all of the early three have this kind of effect (again, Tirian).

Finisher is fine with just the GP rate bonus and faith-buying engineers. I don't see that it needs help. I'm not a fan of having "powerful" finishers so long as the rest of the tree is coherent, and effective, you get the finisher anyway. It isn't something that you should go into the tree in order to get. If we are adding to the existing policies, then it seems like Landed Elite is the one that needs another effect. Eventually the faster border expansion stops being useful (unless you keep expanding).

 

[Funak]

The main weak points in Tradition in Stalker's design for me are these

+3 production on palace. Okay bonus paired with the engineer, but not very interesting. It could be replaced.

Balancing the free GA points. I agree with Tirian's perspective that they're actually quite useful/good, and I don't see that there should be a serious problem pushing (say) Persia or Brazil toward Tradition. Provided Tradition is in a good balance with Honor and Liberty, they aren't being penalized if that's a preferred choice. The trick is the numerical balance and what Golden Ages actually provide in terms of yield advantages. Wodhann's idea of how to get them is actually probably better here as it encourages growth more. Putting them on GI tiles could be used in Liberty instead so that all of the early three have this kind of effect (again, Tirian).

Finisher is fine with just the GP rate bonus and faith-buying engineers. I don't see that it needs help. I'm not a fan of having "powerful" finishers so long as the rest of the tree is coherent, and effective, you get the finisher anyway. It isn't something that you should go into the tree in order to get. If we are adding to the existing policies, then it seems like Landed Elite is the one that needs another effect. Eventually the faster border expansion stops being useful (unless you keep expanding).

Which is exactly why I put an eventual specialist bonus there, it starts off being useless because you have no specialists to run, and eventually gets stronger.

And I disagree with your point about finishers, sure they don't really need to be strong, but they need to be iconic, which imo that traderoute-thing is.

I guess one could add production(or honestly any other yield really) on specialists instead of that flat production on the palace (capital only) and instead add that GApoints in growth to landed elite (If you really want it there, personally I couldn't care less about GApoints)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

some nice ideas by Wodhann, but I agree with the others that some of those are unsynergic for tradition's focus ( free walls, faster roads, free garrisons ) and would fit liberty better.

I also like most of mitsho's suggestions for liberty.