Policies: The time has come!

[Thoma]

I have already expressed my love for the new Honor tree in another thread.

Great work, guys! The old tree was practically useless for a human player since we don't need help in warfare. The new tree, otoh, answers exactly the urgent needs of a human warmonger.

Even better, it reflects the motivations and the mindset of the aggressive player by linking reward with risk. The more risk you take, the higher the reward. Or the deeper the fall .. which fits just as well.

If any further changes are planned: Please, don't water down that much focus! Any change should rather tweak the risk-reward relation into higher gear, not make anything safe(r).

One interesting benefit of the new Honor for all players is the irrelevance of the starting position. If you happen to find yourself in an abysmal place, start with Honor and take your growth in culture, science and wealth from your neighbours.

I have talked about this more in my other post, so I won't repeat myself here.

But I want to express my appreciation for your effort to create more links among policies, pantheons and faiths. This adds synergies which reward the focused strategic play. Nice.

If I have one reservation, it's this: I am not sure yet, that the AI knows how to use the new Honor or any other policy tree to its advantage. My initial impression has led to some doubts, but I could either be wrong or any problem might be solved by tweaking the AI more.

Anyway, the changes so far make sense, add synergies and are fun. I like them.

 

[Valvts]

Great great work on the polices, I sincerely like each and every policy change.
However I encountered a few bugs -

1. Liberty - Meritocracy(?), the policy that gives you beakers and golden age points upon expanding great person, does not scale with ages.
It gives 50/50 points in from the first time I took it to the modern age, rendering it pretty useless. Played the previous version.

2. Honor, I think after taking discipline units got a promotion that gives them 15% dmg when adjacent to friendly unit, but it doest really works, so it looks like a minor graphic icon bug. Played with the new version(17 sept)

3. Autocracy - the first tenet that gives wounded units 25% more dmg, doesnt work. I pointed wounded riflemen on enemy Gatling gun, and it didnt show any 25% dmg bonus

Thanks and keep the great work.

 

[Gazebo]

Great great work on the polices, I sincerely like each and every policy change.
However I encountered a few bugs -

1. Liberty - Meritocracy(?), the policy that gives you beakers and golden age points upon expanding great person, does not scale with ages.
It gives 50/50 points in from the first time I took it to the modern age, rendering it pretty useless. Played the previous version.

2. Honor, I think after taking discipline units got a promotion that gives them 15% dmg when adjacent to friendly unit, but it doest really works, so it looks like a minor graphic icon bug. Played with the new version(17 sept)

3. Autocracy - the first tenet that gives wounded units 25% more dmg, doesnt work. I pointed wounded riflemen on enemy Gatling gun, and it didnt show any 25% dmg bonus

Thanks and keep the great work.

I'll look at 1 and 2 (keep in mind that the new Discipline promotion change is no longer based on adjacency), but the CBP hasn't touched 3 yet, so that sounds like a base-game issue.
G

 

[Funak]

The way i remember, that autocracy tenent just counts your health higher with a cap at 100%, meaning yes it is useless for japan for example.

 

[Lord Tirian]

As I have played, alternating, Civ:BE, BNW (unmodded, with new patch) and the CPP...

I feel the new tradition tree is too good. It's not any specific policy, but just that every policy is basically always useful - especially compared to the new vanilla tradition tree which moves a bit slower and takes longer to get going, even if the end effect is the same.

I can't quite pin it down, but I get the impression that our current take on Honour and Liberty are much more balanced as they are decent, interesting but not "always on".

 

[Funak]

As I have played, alternating, Civ:BE, BNW (unmodded, with new patch) and the CPP...

I feel the new tradition tree is too good. It's not any specific policy, but just that every policy is basically always useful - especially compared to the new vanilla tradition tree which moves a bit slower and takes longer to get going, even if the end effect is the same.

I can't quite pin it down, but I get the impression that our current take on Honour and Liberty are much more balanced as they are decent, interesting but not "always on".

I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out either, but since no one seemed to care I put my concerns on ice.
If you're willing to discuss it with me then we can probably work something out.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'm going to say here what I think of the new Policy trees.

Well, I mostly love them. Great job, made me play lots of Civ lately.

Tradition is great, fun to use, really helps getting a great capital and - by doing so - ensures you may get a good empire as well. The only thing I really don't like is the finisher.

I feel the +25% faster Great Person generation should go to Liberty since it'd help it benefit from that one policy which generates Science/Golden Age points after you use one. I'd definitely consider giving Tradition something else as a finisher, maybe -25% building gold cost in the capital? It's not as strong as what it had, yes, but it's fine since all the other stuff is so powerful.

Liberty? I also dislike the slightly changed things from vanilla. The free worker/+25% faster worker improvement time is just silly and weak compared to other new policies, +1 happiness/+1 production 50% less road maintenance cost policies are neat but very underwhelming compared to the new ones. The only really worthwhile thing in the tree is the +1 population per city thing, it's awesome and I doubt I'd ever take Liberty if it didn't exist.

I feel the Finisher could use a +25% faster generation rate on top of the free GP.

Conquest has some neat stuff. Free Gold/Food after claiming a tile isn't very noticeable but the free ranged unit and +10% combat strength policy is awesome enough I don't care.
I however feel the +10% combat strength should be moved to that free gold/food policy, it wouldn't really change the tree in the long run but it'd make the policies a bit more balanced.

Piety I didn't use as much but that free building is powerful. Can't say a single thing in this tree is particularly bad from what I remember, all's fine.

 

[nimling]

Chiming in on some thoughts (without too much playtesting):

TRADITION: I like it. It's stable and fairly powerful for setting up an early capital. However, CP's happiness system favors wide empires a lot, so it isn't necessarily the best choice. It is also nice that unlike base BNW, players are not obligated to move through the tree to pick up its finisher.

LIBERTY: First of all, 10 culture per completed building is too strong once production bonuses and wider empires come into play. Unlike a lot of people, I find the Liberty policies to be generally useful, though it works best as a secondary tree to other paths. +1 production and -50% road costs is pretty strong, and by picking two policies in Commerce that is reduced to zero road costs - thus, road spam is now a thing, which has some defensive implications. (I don't think the AI would be coded to understand this.) The only sore point is that Meritocracy is bugged and far too weak by late game, but it is potentially good if it can be beelined before popping any GP. I think the culture from buildings should be decreased to 5, but culture should be present in other areas of the tree (for instance, Meritocracy gives Culture and GP points rather than science and GP, and maybe the finisher should give +1 culture per city). (Also, am I mistaken or does liberty give extra culture when adopting a social policy?)

CONQUEST: Way too strong due to the lack of defense in early cities. I appreciate the increased relevance of defensive bulidings and garrison units, but cities with 3-4 defense require basically nothing to conquer. I'm not sure how much the AI accounts for this, though the AI appears a lot more aggressive than in Vanilla (which is a good thing). I wrote in another thread about how ranged units unbalance the game, and what kind of things would help with that, but that's somewhat outside the scope of this.
The policy tree itself gives way too much culture. Barb culture should be halved... keep the culture for clearing camps and conquering cities.
The policy that gives a free ranged unit for each city is overpowered, and it fires after conquering a city which may or may not be intended behavior.
Would suggest changing the policies as follows:
Opener: Gain half as much culture from killing barbarians. Camp and city plunder remain as they are.
Free Settler Policy: This is good.
Science for Kills policy: This is good.
Martial Law: This is good.
Discipline replacement policy: Remove the free ranged units, only grants 10% combat boost to all units.
Tribute: Free Great General, gain culture and gold for killing enemy units. The culture and gold gained is equal to the unit's combat strength. (In short this is the Aztec bonus on steroids, and moves barbarian culture to its current levels.)

PIETY: I haven't played with this tree enough to figure out how strong it is. Setting up a Liberty/Piety empire seems like a strategy with potential though.

PATRONAGE: Actually fairly strong as a policy tree, since influence is really valuable in games with lots of city states, and the FP is a great wonder.

AESTHETICS: Weak in the base game, and even weaker in the mod. Outside of some early CV strategies I don't see this being particularly useful; by late game, ideologies and technological advantage gives more than the burning through 5 SPs to get to the tourism booster, and the first two policies in this tree are fairly crap. Would say that Artistic Genius needs to be much better. (Perhaps change it to pop a great musician instead, and increase the spawn rate of Musicians? That would have a big effect on using culture bombs and setting up musical great works.)

COMMERCE: Hard to utilize since it takes a few SPs to get to the good stuff. Mercantilism and Big Ben are really synergistic with Liberty in wide empires... buy all your production+growth infrastructure (even better with Skyscrapers in Order), and rake in free culture for each new city. Actually a pretty good tree. Would suggest tweaking Mercenary Army so that it's not a wasted SP if picked beyond the medieval period - perhaps split the gc cost reduction policy so that mercenary army covers military units, and mercantilism covers everything else.

EXPLORATION: Takes a pretty big nerf, though Maritime Infrastructure is one of my preferred policies for a coastal empire.

RATIONALISM: Move the big science bonuses much further down the tree, and put the weaker bonuses as openers. Rationalism should be something that requires filling out the tree to get its really big rewards, at a time when ideologies are close on the horizon. This is something that should have been done with the base game.

IDEOLOGIES: I haven't played with them enough, although the last long game I played had most of the AI actually pick ideologies around the same time I did, instead of the usual case when I am by far the first to claim one.

 

[Funak]

PATRONAGE: Actually fairly strong as a policy tree, since influence is really valuable in games with lots of city states, and the FP is a great wonder.

AESTHETICS: Weak in the base game, and even weaker in the mod. Outside of some early CV strategies I don't see this being particularly useful; by late game, ideologies and technological advantage gives more than the burning through 5 SPs to get to the tourism booster, and the first two policies in this tree are fairly crap. Would say that Artistic Genius needs to be much better. (Perhaps change it to pop a great musician instead, and increase the spawn rate of Musicians? That would have a big effect on using culture bombs and setting up musical great works.)

COMMERCE: Hard to utilize since it takes a few SPs to get to the good stuff. Mercantilism and Big Ben are really synergistic with Liberty in wide empires... buy all your production+growth infrastructure (even better with Skyscrapers in Order), and rake in free culture for each new city. Actually a pretty good tree. Would suggest tweaking Mercenary Army so that it's not a wasted SP if picked beyond the medieval period - perhaps split the gc cost reduction policy so that mercenary army covers military units, and mercantilism covers everything else.

EXPLORATION: Takes a pretty big nerf, though Maritime Infrastructure is one of my preferred policies for a coastal empire.

RATIONALISM: Move the big science bonuses much further down the tree, and put the weaker bonuses as openers. Rationalism should be something that requires filling out the tree to get its really big rewards, at a time when ideologies are close on the horizon. This is something that should have been done with the base game.

Just going to point out that those trees haven't actually been worked yet, we were going to get the startertrees worked out correctly first, but the process kinda stopped

I mean I usually end up going Tradition Liberty and Piety, and that really isn't supposed to be optimal, atleast not every game

 

[Lord Tirian]

I mean I usually end up going Tradition Liberty and Piety, and that really isn't supposed to be optimal, atleast not every game

Also, from another thread, Gazebo changed up Tradition, the current plan is:

Opener: +2 Culture in Capital, +1 Food in Capital for every unlocked Tradition policy. Unlocks Hanging Gardens.

Aristocracy: +15% Production for World Wonders, +1 Culture from World Wonders.

Legalism: Capital growth increased by 25%, Golden Ages 25% longer.

Monarchy: Golden Age Points from births in Capital, and Gold from births in Capital and other cities

Oligarchy: +2 food to all cities, +1 production per 4 citizens in capital, and free engineer specialist

Finisher: +25% GP rate, allowed for Great Engineer purchase with Faith in Industrial Era.

Personally, I like the GP/GA theme of the tree, it gives it a bit more focus but drops it a bit in raw potency. Funak brought up that Aristocracy is useless on higher difficulties - while I don't mind too much (I'm usually playing King these days), I think it's at lease worth keeping in mind and see whether we can "sweeten the deal" somewhat.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Also, from another thread, Gazebo changed up Tradition, the current plan is:



Personally, I like the GP/GA theme of the tree, it gives it a bit more focus but drops it a bit in raw potency. Funak brought up that Aristocracy is useless on higher difficulties - while I don't mind too much (I'm usually playing King these days), I think it's at lease worth keeping in mind and see whether we can "sweeten the deal" somewhat.

I think that GP bonus doesn't fit Tradition, not when Liberty has a rather weak Policy granting stuff for expending GP. It'd make more sense to add the +25% GP generation to Liberty (maybe even to that aforementioned policy) to improve the tree while replacing the finisher of Tradition with something different.

I'm liking the Golden Age focus of that reworked tradition, seems sweet.

This new Aristocracy is just irrelevant, 1 culture per wonder does nothing. How about buffing the yields of capital/cities during Golden Ages instead? Or maybe buff them permanently, like +1/2 of some/all yields in the capital for every Golden Age triggered.


I am a bit sad about the lack of GPT per capital citizens though, I loved this thing. AI also did - many of them go Tradition from what I've noticed and they still manage to go into negative GPT on Emperor. I fear to think how badly those less fortunate AI's will do with that thing gone.

 

[Lord Tirian]

This new Aristocracy is just irrelevant, 1 culture per wonder does nothing. How about buffing the yields of capital/cities during Golden Ages instead? Or maybe buff them permanently, like +1/2 of some/all yields in the capital for every Golden Age triggered.

Have to think about the other points a bit, but I think new Aristocracy would do a bit better if it was for world wonders and national wonders. Works in the same spirit and theme as before but is a bit better.

I'd be hesitant to make it much better because I feel we "overshot" with the last Tradition a bit when we tried to make every policy useful all the time.

 

[Gazebo]

I think that GP bonus doesn't fit Tradition, not when Liberty has a rather weak Policy granting stuff for expending GP. It'd make more sense to add the +25% GP generation to Liberty (maybe even to that aforementioned policy) to improve the tree while replacing the finisher of Tradition with something different.

I'm liking the Golden Age focus of that reworked tradition, seems sweet.

This new Aristocracy is just irrelevant, 1 culture per wonder does nothing. How about buffing the yields of capital/cities during Golden Ages instead? Or maybe buff them permanently, like +1/2 of some/all yields in the capital for every Golden Age triggered.


I am a bit sad about the lack of GPT per capital citizens though, I loved this thing. AI also did - many of them go Tradition from what I've noticed and they still manage to go into negative GPT on Emperor. I fear to think how badly those less fortunate AI's will do with that thing gone.

I'm fine with adjusting Aristocracy. I'm probably going to remove Specialist unhappiness in the latest version if I can't get the AI to figure it out properly, as right now it is a big source of their late-game unhappiness. In light of that, I'm going to have to tweak a few of the ideologies I tweaked earlier. I'm leaning towards creating two functions: one that grants x national yield per y number of specialists a player has in their empire, and one that grants x national yield per y number of specialists in a city. So, for example, we could change Aristocracy to grant 1 gold for every 2 specialists a player has in their capital, or something like that.

As far as the other trees are concerned, I think Liberty/Piety/Conquest are fine. We're going to buff the other policy branches across the board to make them viable. Soon.
G

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'm fine with adjusting Aristocracy. I'm probably going to remove Specialist unhappiness in the latest version if I can't get the AI to figure it out properly, as right now it is a big source of their late-game unhappiness. In light of that, I'm going to have to tweak a few of the ideologies I tweaked earlier. I'm leaning towards creating two functions: one that grants x national yield per y number of specialists a player has in their empire, and one that grants x national yield per y number of specialists in a city. So, for example, we could change Aristocracy to grant 1 gold for every 2 specialists a player has in their capital, or something like that.

As far as the other trees are concerned, I think Liberty/Piety/Conquest are fine. We're going to buff the other policy branches across the board to make them viable. Soon.
G

1 gold for 2 specialists only in capital seems a bit small, especially early on. How is the AI using Specialists? I too rarely spy on them (my Spies are more about defending my stuff because the AI always wants to wreck my capital with theirs) and so I don't know. If they're as... Reluctant about using them as they were in vanilla, this will end up only helping the player - who's going to get what, 6-7 GPT late game max from it?

1 gold per specialist seems like it'd be perfect but I'm not sure about it. Currently both Liberty and Tradition seem to be sharing Great Person bonuses - Tradition helps you spawn more of them, Liberty grants you stuff for expending one. Wouldn't it be better to make the trees more "specialised" so only one of those gets direct GP bonuses?

I liked Lord Tirian's idea about having Aristocracy affect the National Wonders in the same fashion, seems sweet.

 

[Funak]

Another option would be as mentioned earlier, focusing Tradition on growth and expansion and liberty on production and infrastructure. That's how it is balanced in C:BE, but I'm not sure, it kinda feels like growing your cities is way too important in civ5. But then again I don't see how that would be any different in C:BE and people seem to think the industrytree there is completely fine.

I would also love to see the initial idea about trees boosting specific Great tileimprovements, since those generally feel kinda underwhelming and stacking them sounds like fun.

 

[Gazebo]

Another option would be as mentioned earlier, focusing Tradition on growth and expansion and liberty on production and infrastructure. That's how it is balanced in C:BE, but I'm not sure, it kinda feels like growing your cities is way too important in civ5. But then again I don't see how that would be any different in C:BE and people seem to think the industrytree there is completely fine.

I would also love to see the initial idea about trees boosting specific Great tileimprovements, since those generally feel kinda underwhelming and stacking them sounds like fun.

I think we save tile improvement adjustments for ideologies and later policies, as that'll be a good way to make them more valuable in the mid-game than the 'event' based bonuses of the first four trees (especially now that % yield mods are no longer present on buildings).

G

 

[nimling]

Going off on a tangent here, but I've been going wide in these games and city unhappiness is rarely a problem. I get maybe 3-5 unhappiness tops in cities, with most cities down to 1-2.

The AI also seems to overvalue luxuries a lot - I can post more detailed reports but considering luxes are much less relevant now, the AI shouldn't pay for much for them (if anything at all).