Policies: The time has come!

[Funak]

Finisher: Free Great Person of your choice appears near the Capital. +25% Great Person generation in the Capital. (Again, great engineers in liberty/wisdom is a better idea, and people even conceded this point in that thread to an extent. I preffer free generalized great person here than on liberty.)

Just going to point out that no one 'preferred' faithbuying great engineers in liberty I bulldozed my point about not having the ability to purchase a great person for faith was a huge liability through. People agree that great engineer makes way more sense in tradition than in liberty but the only reason to drop a great person faithpurchase in a tree would be if you have a more fitting GP in mind for it instead and the only thing that would be remotely more fitting for tradition than a great engineer would be a foodbased GP which does not and will not exist.

Other than that your tree idea just seem a lot less interesting than our current one. It doesn't actually look like it has any real focus, and even the foodbonus which was our only real focus have been dropped.

 

[Wodhann]

I don't think the current accepted tradition has much focus either.

The only general theme I can see is "your capital gets stuff", but the thing is, everybody has a capital, in other words you aren't rewarding compact gameplay specifically as much as you're rewarding "people who have at least a capital in their empire" which means... literally everybody who is still in the game. To me you guys' tradition looks almost like a generalized tree right now, which is exactly what was the problem with the vanilla tree, and you guys are making more or less the same mistakes as Firaxis did with theirs.

In fact, I'm looking at the tree right now, and nothing particularly strikes me as a "compact empire" policy. Nothing. It seems like a tree I could easily get going medium/wide and still benefit from. I'll even go further and state that it looks like you guys are trying harder to do a WvT neutral policy tree here than in Liberty.

Now what I'm trying to do here is actually reward compact gameplay. As in, creating mechanics that actually help you more when you have less cities and more population. Also I'm adding some defensive mechanisms which are helpful if you're a vulnerable little empire.

 

[Funak]

I don't think the current accepted tradition has much focus either.

The only general theme I can see is "your capital gets stuff"

Which is exactly what people wanted out of it.

, but the thing is, everybody has a capital, in other words you aren't rewarding compact gameplay specifically as much as you're rewarding "people who have at least a capital in their empire

"
Technically a compact empire is going to have a larger percentage of its population in their capital, so this tree would actually favor compact empires more than it favors wide ones.

To me you guys' tradition looks almost like a generalized tree right now, which is exactly what was the problem with the vanilla tree, and you guys are making more or less the same mistakes as Firaxis did with theirs.

Here is another problem, most people seem to agree that the firaxis verson of tradition was fine, we had some argument about free buildings and for that reason they were removed.

Now what I'm trying to do here is actually reward compact gameplay. As in, creating mechanics that actually help you more when you have less cities and more population.

The only thing you actually have that "rewards compact gameplay" is that sciencething, which I'm personally not sure what to think of, how much will it actually punish people for expansion? Will it actually do that at all or will it actually just increase the time it takes before a newly settled city becomes a boon to your resources instead of a drain upon them.

And by that logic our traditiontree does favor not settling cities simply because they are not getting any bonuses at all which means they would spend most of the game being behind the cities of something going liberty.

Also I'm adding some defensive mechanisms which are helpful if you're a vulnerable little empire.

Also you keep repeating that, but I'm personally not sure what you're talking about. A compact empire by design is easiers to defend than a wide one since there is less of an area and fewer cities to actually cover.

 

[Wodhann]

Also you keep repeating that, but I'm personally not sure what you're talking about. A compact empire by design is easiers to defend than a wide one since there is less of an area and fewer cities to actually cover.

Let me put it this way then, large empires are easier to defend from obliteration than small ones.

Cities are the best "armies" you can have - they have powerful ranged attacks and take many hits to kill. I would say city siege is probably often the biggest cause of one's armies dying in the game. Because of this, cities are huge speedbumps when it comes to domination victories. If you want to take someone's capital, is it easier if that guy has just 3 cities (even if highly populated), or if that guy has like 6 cities surrounding his capital?

Not to mention that if you're going tall, chances are you're weaker militarly anyway, since you're not exactly building to conquer.

 

[Funak]

If you want to take someone's capital, is it easier if that guy has just 3 cities (even if highly populated), or if that guy has like 6 cities surrounding his capital?

Completely depends on how your cities are placed. In vanilla I would totally favor the highly populated cities because combatstrength is largely based on population. If we adopt the cep-mechanic however you might be correct in that it would be better to have more speedbumbs than bigger speedbumps. A wide empire however is still going to have bigger problem defending their satellites than a compact empire for the reason I mentioned in the other post.

Not to mention that if you're going tall, chances are you're weaker militarly anyway, since you're not exactly building to conquer.

Not exactly one hundred percent sure if I agree with this. I'm just as likely to attack my neighbors if I go peaceful compat as if I'm going peaceful wide. generally however I have more units per city when I go compact


Edit: In RnR both liberty and tradition have one policy with a defensive boost each. Tradition have a bonus to meleeunits in friendly lands while liberty have a 25% bonus to cityattack when the city is garrisoned. Both of these makes sense tbh but I would rather do as we did here and just not have any defensive benefit in any city which creates a balance by itself.

 

[Stalker0]

The only general theme I can see is "your capital gets stuff"

You got it in a nutshell. Tradition is for players who want to focus heavily on their capital, especially its growth. Its also for wonder focused gameplay. If you want to focus on expansion they can go honor. If they want to focus on infrastructure and building they can go liberty.

 

[Wodhann]

You got it in a nutshell. Tradition is for players who want to focus heavily on their capital, especially its growth. Its also for wonder focused gameplay. If you want to focus on expansion they can go honor. If they want to focus on infrastructure and building they can go liberty.

...
Wow. I now finally understand why I dislike this incarnation of tradition, and why I'm so apart from everyone else here. You guys are being misguided by a gross mischaracterization of concepts.

Listen, everyone:

The goal of the first three trees is to offer a "holy trinity" of main gameplay enchancers: two that are opposite to each other in terms of structural choices (quality vs quantity, expansive vs compact, aggressive vs defensive) while the center one is a neutral one that can potentially work for either side.

Tradition is the opposite of Conquest. While Conquest is about expansion, and quantity over quality, Tradition is about little cities and high population. It is more suitable for peaceful empires who don't want to have to fight for their land, and want the comforts of not having to manage a great empire.

Saying Tradition is all about capitals is not only a grave trivialization, but also doesn't do anything for what it's supposed to support. Again, every player has capitals. Therefore literally every player would benefit from a capital-centric policy tree. It may not work better for their purposes than some other tree, but if they so choose to get one like this, it will actually help them. This tree doesn't maximizes "Tall" style gameplay, it simply makes it so that players with at least one capital can benefit from it, which granted, will benefit tall players, but there's nothing in it that doesn't benefit everyone else. Everyone has at least one capital in the game, at all times, even if their initial one is captured.

And that's why vanilla Tradition is OP; it's good for everyone, because everyone has the bare minimum of things that it benefits you from having.

Take Conquest (or "honor", if you wish) for instance. Would a player going for little cities and a peaceful victory goal benefit from it? Perhaps only very little. This tree was designed to help a particular game style, and will only help players following that style, so much that it becomes a sub-optimal choice to embrace it for players going for a diametrically opposed strategy. It was designed this way, and it should be this way. And that's good design in my view.

A "Capital-centric", and especially a "wonder creating" (again, for the third or fourth time, there are wonders for all kinds of goals and it makes no sense to shove all-encompassing wonder making into a tree that's all about one certain kind of gameplay) is about as neutral as we are making Liberty to be, and perhaps even more so considering people constantly try to push their "peaceful expansion" concepts down its throat.

If Conquest is about expansion, and "Wisdom"/Liberty is about neutrality, then we're left with one more gap to be filled. The way you're describing tradition does not fill this gap.

 

[Funak]

...
The goal of the first three trees is to offer a "holy trinity" of main gameplay enchancers: two that are opposite to each other in terms of structural choices (quality vs quantity, expansive vs compact, aggressive vs defensive) while the center one is a neutral one that can potentially work for either side.

This is your opinion. Not how it is 'supposed' to be

Saying Tradition is all about capitals is not only a grave trivialization, but also doesn't do anything for what it's supposed to support. Again, every player has capitals. Therefore literally every player would benefit from a capital-centric policy tree. It may not work better for their purposes than some other tree, but if they so choose to get one like this, it will actually help them. This tree doesn't maximizes "Tall" style gameplay, it simply makes it so that players with at least one capital can benefit from it, which granted, will benefit tall players, but there's nothing in it that doesn't benefit everyone else. Everyone has at least one capital in the game, at all times, even if their initial one is captured.

Again, your opinion. And this is what people wanted out of tradition.

A "Capital-centric", and especially a "wonder creating" (again, for the third or fourth time, there are wonders for all kinds of goals and it makes no sense to shove all-encompassing wonder making into a tree that's all about one certain kind of gameplay) is about as neutral as we are making Liberty to be, and perhaps even more so considering people constantly try to push their "peaceful expansion" concepts down its throat.

To be perfectly fair, you're the one trying to push your Liberty-concept down everyones throat after this tree was basically already done. If anything Liberty is the tree that should have filled a specific role while tradition was generally good.

If Conquest is about expansion, and "Wisdom"/Liberty is about neutrality, then we're left with one more gap to be filled. The way you're describing tradition does not fill this gap.

Again, your opinion. Having two or three trees that are generally good but in different ways gives you an ability to choose which playstyle you like better rather than being forced to pick one because of how many cities you think you'll be able to found.

 

[Wodhann]

This is your opinion. Not how it is 'supposed' to be

Quite ironic of you stressing this considering this is an accurate response to a lot of your posts, which are often inflexible one-liners stating that someone else is wrong, or that you're correct about something, without rarely any actual case to back them up.

In fact, this is the perfect example - I lay out a reasonably lengthy argument for my views, and all you respond is "that's your opinion". What do you expect me to take from this? "Oh! Funak said my opinion is wrong. I must be wrong then". That's not how rational debates work.

And this is what people wanted out of tradition.

This is not the first time I've seen you try to speak for "the people" and frankly it's getting ridiculous. It's one thing to point what the current trend seems to be, it's another to plainly state what everyone else thinks as an attempt to boost the validity of your argument (which even then would be just argumentum ad populum).


Frankly Funak, I'm getting to the point where I'm just gonna stop reading or considering your posts at all. You rarely offer any actual argumentation for your points (even when I agree with them), and your absolute, toxic tone is off-putting. It's just a waste of time.

 

[Funak]

Quite ironic of you stressing this considering this is an accurate response to a lot of your posts, which are often inflexible one-liners stating that someone else is wrong, or that you're correct about something, without rarely any actual case to back them up.

In fact, this is the perfect example - I lay out a reasonably lengthy argument for my views, and all you respond is "that's your opinion". What do you expect me to take from this? "Oh! Funak said my opinion is wrong. I must be wrong then". That's not how rational debates work.

This is not the first time I've seen you try to speak for "the people" and frankly it's getting ridiculous. It's one thing to state what the current trend seems to be, it's another to plainly state what everyone else thinks as an attempt to boost the validity of your argument (which even then would be just argumentum ad populum).


Frankly Funak, I'm getting to the point where I'm just gonna stop reading or considering your posts at all. You rarely offer any actual argumentation for your points (even when I agree with them), and your absolute, aggressive tone is off-putting. It's just a waste of time.

What are you even talking about? You're claiming how the 'goal' of the started trees is to form a trinity, which is entirely your opinion. It's not how firaxis designed the game, that is not what people in the thread wanted out of it.
If you want to change something then go ahead and suggest a valid change, but don't act like that is how it's supposed to be because everyone else is "being misguided by a gross mischaracterization of concepts."

I also find it rather ironic how you claim I'm being aggressive and off-putting when your last two posts have been nothing but personal attacks.

 

[Wodhann]

I was going to answer your post, but after reading this part:

If you want to change something then go ahead and suggest a valid change

...
I have no words for this. Either you're trolling, or have a really weird taste in humor. (Also, "personal attacks"? What?)

And yeah, for the sake of this forum's cleanness/sanity (I know guys, I'm sorry about these derails, I just felt I had to say something) from now on I'm only going to address your posts when you can actually present a case with a rational, open-minded demeanor.


Now, back to the subject!

 

[Stalker0]

...

And that's why vanilla Tradition is OP; it's good for everyone, because everyone has the bare minimum of things that it benefits you from having.

Take Conquest (or "honor", if you wish) for instance. Would a player going for little cities and a peaceful victory goal benefit from it? Perhaps only very little. This tree was designed to help a particular game style, and will only help players following that style, so much that it becomes a sub-optimal choice to embrace it for players going for a diametrically opposed strategy. It was designed this way, and it should be this way. And that's good design in my view.

To your first point, Tradition in vanilla is OP....because its OP Liberty in the base game gives me a lot too even if I am only plopping down 4 cities...its just not as good as tradition. The key to this initiative was to make Liberty, Honor, and Piety strong enough to compete with tradition.

To your 2nd point, I think the pigeon holing of honor in the base game was why it was so weak. Its the very beginning of the game....do I really know if I am going to be warring or going Tall/Wide? In many cases...the answer is no. An opening tree shouldn't force you too strongly down any path.

That is why I like our new honor. Everyone has to kill barbs and make some military units, so opener is useful. We have some immediate expansion benefits...which everyone can use. Then from there you can push further into war if that is your thing...or I can pull out and go a different tree if I like.

 

[Jamforce]

Generally I read, but I don't post in this subforum, however, this time I could not avoid it.

This is your opinion.

Some arguments?

And this is what people wanted out of tradition.

Let me understand, your opinion is right because it's shared by others?

An opening tree shouldn't force you too strongly down any path.

Your opinion. And this is what people ( me, Legolas and the Smurfs) wanted.

 

[Funak]

Some arguments?

I don't see why a argument would be required, he explained his point as if it was how it was supposed to be, so I told him it was his opinion, not a fact.

Let me understand, your opinion is right because it's shared by others?

My opinions are opinions they aren't any more right than any other opinions. I would never claim that my opinions were anything other than my opinions.
However this tree have been made and accepted by a lot of people who clearly agrees with how it currently looks. Making your own verson is fine but don't go rage and call everyone "misguided" when they don't agree with you.

Your opinion. And this is what people ( me, Legolas and the Smurfs) wanted.

You're completely right, that is his opinion. I agree with it, so it is my opinion aswell.

 

[Jamforce]

The purpose of my reply was to make you realize that if each of us simply writes "This is your opinion", there would be no comparison and without comparison there would be no progress and this same community would not have any sense of being.

 

[Stalker0]

Generally I read, but I don't post in this subforum, however, this time I could not avoid it.

Horray more posters!!

The truth of this is...all of this is "our opinion". That is why we need more opinions. The goal is for the community's will to win out...so we need more of the community to speak up and tell us what you want!

 

[Wodhann]

To your 2nd point, I think the pigeon holing of honor in the base game was why it was so weak. Its the very beginning of the game....do I really know if I am going to be warring or going Tall/Wide? In many cases...the answer is no. An opening tree shouldn't force you too strongly down any path.

First of all wisdom/liberty exists for that purpose ("don't know what to do? just take me").

Second, the problem with honor is that it was a superficial tree, like vanilla liberty. It was a "combat" tree and that's it. The problem with it wasn't that it was specific to one strategy, the problem was that it was too specific to one mechanical aspect of the game. Now Conquest is still "specific" to a game style, but in a good way. It functions much like RPG games have certain skill trees more tailored toward certain roles, and that's good design. Over-saturating policies with more than one neutral tree, that is bad design.

The point is not to force anyone down a path, the point is to enchance certain game strategies.

That is why I like our new honor. Everyone has to kill barbs and make some military units, so opener is useful. We have some immediate expansion benefits...which everyone can use. Then from there you can push further into war if that is your thing...or I can pull out and go a different tree if I like.

Can you get Conquest if you're going Tall? Yeah, sure. But you'll get expansion benefits when you're not expanding too much, you're get bonus for conquest when you're not conquering, and you'll get bonus for combat when you're trying to avoid it. It's a sub-par choice, and it should be so, because it was not made for what kind of strategy.

You guy's tradition? It helps everyone. Everyone has a capital, everyone can benefit from it. There's no focus in here. Nothing in here makes Tall gameplay better. You're just continuing the problem that vanilla civ5 has of wide being a more competitive choice than tall.

The truth of this is...all of this is "our opinion". That is why we need more opinions. The goal is for the community's will to win out...so we need more of the community to speak up and tell us what you want!

I agree, we need more opinions (and by the way, welcome Jamforce). But I much preffer when they're attached to arguments. Saying what is equivalent to "you guys are all daft/******ed, my opinion is simply right and warrants no case" is a waste of time and forum space.

 

[Stalker0]

Can you get Conquest if you're going Tall? Yeah, sure. But you'll get expansion benefits when you're not expanding too much, you're get bonus for conquest when you're not conquering, and you'll get bonus for combat when you're trying to avoid it. It's a sub-par choice, and it should be so, because it was not made for what kind of strategy.

You guy's tradition? It helps everyone. Everyone has a capital, everyone can benefit from it. There's no focus in here. Nothing in here makes Tall gameplay better. You're just continuing the problem that vanilla civ5 has of wide being a more competitive choice than tall.

I'm going to flip your argument around. Can you get tradition if you are going wide? Sure. Now you won't get any expansion benefits, and you won't get any bonuses for the warring you might do if you had taken honor. Oh, and your infrastructure as a whole will be slower to build than if you had taken liberty. Its a sub par choice, as it was not made for this type of strategy.

I believe you and I are arguing the same thing. Is Honor "more geared to expansion play" yes. Could it work if you decide to go Tall? "It could, just not as well".

But I believe tradition is the same. Tradition is more geared to tall play, most of its benefit help the capital alone...so the more you focus on the capital and less on other cities the less expansion is useful.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Now, back to the subject!

Still need to mull over it, but I actually quite like your latest take on Tradition! It seems to be a lot more interesting than your previous version, this is a nice "buffet" of options that will all work well for Tall but are less usable for Wide.

Some notes:

Opener: +3 in the capital and +15% bonus to ancient and classical wonders. (People said "tradition needs wonder bonuses to win wonder races because they have fewer cities" - fine. But later in the game a Tall empire's capital can finish a wonder probably quicker than any other. So to me it's fairer that they get an early game bonus, but not a generalized one, for reasons I stated in the liberty thread.)

I don't like this on the opener, this is too tempting to grab for anybody with a wonder-centric strategy, I think the previous opener (+1 per policy) worked better.

Agrarianism: Each time a citizen is born, the city gains and equal to the population in that city. (This means a civilization with low number of cities but higher population benefits more than the opposite kind.)

I like the idea, but find it a bit... weak. I think this would be a nice place to have the wonder bonus instead combined with something else that's related.

Autarky: Borders expand faster. Internal trade routes carry 25% more goods. Requires Agrarianism.

Fitting name, already in the other tree iterations, solid.

Bureaucracy: Citizens produce +1 additional , but cost penalty of new technologies per city is doubled. (Before you call this OP outright, remember normal penalty is 2% per city, which is a considerable amount, and each citizen already gives 1 science in vanillla)

Now here's something interesting! My gut feeling is that +1 per citizen is insanely strong, even with the increased penalty, even at 4% penalty per city, this is nothing. But regardless of the numerical balance, this is a paradigm change, instead of relying on opportunity cost, we attach a penalty to a policy.

Usually, I'd say breaking a design paradigm like that is a bit no-no... but honestly? This might be the cleanest way to get around the issue of "tradition works for everybody".

Monarchy: Your Capital gains 25% and provides +1 per 5 citizens. Maintenance costs in the capital reduced by 20%, including for units stationed in it.

Having the defence bonus here makes it a bit cluttered, but I like this. Reducing maintenance cost instead of giving gold is actually much neater to encourage a large, well-managed capital.

Oligarchy: Palace provides +3 and gains an engineer specialist slot. Defensive buildings require -25% to build. Requires Monarchy.

Nothing wrong with this one, this is actually a good place to add the little buff to building defensive buildings.

Finisher: Free Great Person of your choice appears near the Capital. +25% Great Person generation in the Capital. (Again, great engineers in liberty/wisdom is a better idea, and people even conceded this point in that thread to an extent. I preffer free generalized great person here than on liberty.)

This debate is going a bit in circles. I see and understand both arguments... but I'm starting to think we should just try it out either way and see how it "feels" in-game (mainly because I want to see how the new tradition/liberty trees will actually help me direct my game play, to see what feels the most "useful" then).

If that's your idea of how Tradition should be, I can get behind that conceptually.

 

[Wodhann]

I'm going to flip your argument around. Can you get tradition if you are going wide? Sure. Now you won't get any expansion benefits, and you won't get any bonuses for the warring you might do if you had taken honor.

But you can still get them. You can take Conquest first and then Tradition - problem solved. Comparing other trees when considering whether taking a tree is a sub-par decision is bad because what you "won't get" is always obtainable. You have to take into consideration what you will get. And in the case of tall taking Conquest, what you will get is sub-par to that kind of strategy. And your tradition is not as much a sub-par choice for wide empires as it is supposed to be.

But let's assume that you had limited points and you couldn't take both trees, at least not fully. Even then my point still stands.

Let me explain with an analogy: Take League of Legends for instance. In that game, you have tree "Mastery" trees that help you with different roles. The first is an attack/damage tree, the second is a health/defense tree, and the third is a general/support tree. Now, if you're going tank, can you still take half of the first tree and then half of the second? Sure, but the points spent on the first could have been better spend elsewhere, on the rest of the defense tree. However, say that instead of an attack/offense tree, you had a generalized "stats" tree, without any sort of focus. Is getting half of the first tree really going to harm you? Maybe compared to not getting the rest of the defense tree, but this is now a different case than before. Before, it was a sub-par decision because the first one was designed for a different kind of role - in other words, the first tree's balance didn't affect the fact that it was a bad choice, because it was a bad choice by design. In this case however, it is completely dependant on how the first tree is balanced, and whether it's worth getting from a "numbers" kind of perspective. That's bad design.

Fact is, your version of tradition, at least conceptually, is still good for everyone. And the problem with this is, is that without an actual solid theme for a neutral tree (like wisdom/liberty) a tree like this will be invariably either underpowered or overpowered - either it's balanced well and is a good pick, and as such, it helps everyone so much everyone will want to take it, or it's balanced timidly so that it is so generic that it's not a good choice for anyone to take. There's no middle ground here.

But I believe tradition is the same. Tradition is more geared to tall play

No, it isn't. It's geared toward the "capital game", and everyone plays the "capital game". There is literally nothing in your tree right now that effectively benefits people from having little or more cities. It just benefits you from having a lot of people on your capital, which can still be achieved in a wide empire, especially if you take this policy.

That's why I'm saying you're making the same mistake as Firaxis. You're assuming "capital gameplay" is exclusive to tall game styles when it isn't.