Policies: The time has come!

[Stalker0]

Numbered and commented on

Opener: +2 food in the capital
Boring and weak, still think the 3 culture should be here. 2 food could make up for losing the border expansion.

--Boring perhaps, but its not weak. People really underestimate how powerful that early food is, it can increase your growth by 30-40% for a good portion of the early game, and you can get it right at the beginning.

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +15% less poverty in the capital.
Maybe, I dislike the wonderbonus and as mentioned before all the %-unhappiness things are rather weak in the capital (Poverty might actually be the best however)

--A lot of people really like a wonder bonus, in our CEP discussion it was commonly cited as a very fun bonus.

Legalism: +3 culture and 10% bonus to GP in the capital.
This could honestly be anything if you move the 3 culture back to the opener. 10% gp (and specially only in the capital) is superweak. maybe this could be the "add specialists to palace" policy (and I would rather see 2 specialists that you have to work yourself than 1 that you get for free). Lowering unhappiness from specialists in the captial by X%(25-50?) could also be added here. I would rather see that being the major happiness bonus in this tree, with the current ideas the tradition playstyle is going to be extremely capitalloaded making the other unhappiness mods rather weak.

--I think people really underestimate the 10% GP. Maybe its just my gameplay style, but when I am going tall most of my specialists are in the capital. And that's 10% extra GP for a huge portion of the game. It probably would have a greater impact overall to GP creation than the 25% you get from ideologies near the endgame.

Oligarchy: +1 Pop in the Capital. Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot.
I would still like to see the old oligarchy (liked it) maybe with a added culturebonus in garisoned cities (like that honor bonus). 1 pop in the capital is a bad idea imo. So is free specialists (let people work the specialists themselves, more fun)

--You and I are on two minds on this one, I HATE HATE HATE the old oligarchy, it is my personal definition of a boring policy.

Landed Elite: Border Expansion increased, Tile Buying Costs reduced by 15%.
Sounds both boring and weak honestly Border expansion could be moved to the finisher and this policy could be anything. Maybe bring the old one back. 2 food 10 growth.

--I will agree that this one is boring. It is actually very useful and powerful, but its just a snoozefest to take.


Closer: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. +25% growth in the capital.
Kinda plain and boring, finishers are supposed to be grand. How about Border expand bonus and 10-15% FOOD bonus? Like the temple of artemis/Floating garden bonus.

--25% growth to your capital isn't grand? That seems like a really good bonus to me.

 

[mystikx21]

Stalker the problem with the 25% growth in the capital is that you already have a 10% growth. Duplicating the effect isn't really necessary. Pick one or the other and keep it as the bonus made available.

 

[Wodhann]

We're in this discussion already, aren't we. Ok. I'll outline what I think should be done with policies from a general point of view. I won't refrain myself from doing what I wish was done with social policies, so you'll see a lot of out-there changes. I'll name every social policy tree I think should be in the game, without much regard for orthodoxy (as is usual of me).


* CRAZY WODHANN'S IDEAS WARNING * Edit: Ok maybe not so crazy

Ancient Era


Tradition:​

The usual option for "Tall", peaceful players. Tradition should help you develop a small, safe, highly populated empire.

Changes from vanilla: Almost the same, conceptually - just less "good for everything" (no more free buildings) and more to the point of what's supposed to accomplish.

Associated Great Person: Any of your choice​

- Liberty and Honor now merged into Conquest -​

Conquest​

The usual option for "Wide", menacing players. Conquest should help you create a sprawling mighty empire (or take by force), and manage its toils.

Changes from vanilla: I feel like when you're choosing social policies, you either go for tradition or liberty, and honor feels too specific a niche for anyone to spend but a single point in it. At the point you're done with one of the first two ones, you rarely ever feel like it's worth getting it, and move on to the next era policies. So I feel like merging Honor into Liberty makes it into a more strong theme of conquest and the creation of expansionist empires.

Associated Great Person: General​

- New policy: Wisdom (pending name) -


Wisdom​

A new policy tree that helps you get with your cities' infrastucture. Early game improvements in yields and construction belong in here. The general theme is "good management".

Reason for existance: I feel we should balance out the "no-brainess" of tradition and liberty with a policy that helps players who don't really know what they're going to pursuit early in the game. Tradition and Conquest will now be more focused, which will attract players with more defined game plans, where wisdom will help players who simply want to Sim City for a while longer before they decide on a course of action. Plus it's a social policy you can always get if you don't know what to go for. Now, of course, balance would have to be pretty good to keep this in check - otherwise it would risk becoming "Vanilla Tradition 2.0".

Associated Great Person: Engineer​

Classic


- Piety pushed back into Classic (I really see no use for it being in ancient, especially since people usually have only pantheons by then) -


Piety​

The option for players who want to develop a strong, everlasting religion, and reap the benefits from it.

Changes from vanilla: More encouraging you to go for religion and less simply getting you more of it.

Associated Great Person: Prophet​

- Patronage is now Statecraft -


Statecraft​

The policy tree for those who not only want to maintain good relations with city states, but with other players as well.

Changes from vanilla: Patronage, while useful, was too specific on city states (which made it a little too good with it - not op, just too specific). This would also help you deal with other players, improving on deals and perhaps even granting special diplomacy options.

Associated Great Person: CSs give you great people​

Medieval​

- Aesthetics moved to Renaissance. -


Commerce​

The policy tree for those wanting to improve their economy and pursuing a path where economy will be fruitful to their goals.

Changes from vanilla: Conceptually the same.

Associated Great Person: Merchant​

Exploration​

The policy tree for discovering new lands, and shortening distances.

Changes from vanilla: Hidden antiquity sites gone to Aesthetics. Exploration now focuses on giving players a chance to settle in fringe locations of the map and helping with overall map space/usage.

Associated Great Person: Admiral​

Renaissance​

Aesthetics​

The tourism policy tree. Helps you with the "aggressive" side of culture, and getting great works and artifacts.

Change from vanilla: Exploration now lends Aesthetic its hidden antiquity sites reveal. Much more focused on tourism and influence now. Aesthetics now improves theming.

Associated Great Person: Writer/Artist/Musician​

- Rationalism is now Enlightenment -


Enlightenment​

The policy tree for science and culture.

Change from vanilla: Less no-brainer than vanilla. Also helps you with culture now, since aesthetics will now focus more on tourism (and to nerf rationalism's efficiency in focusing science).

Associated Great Person: Scientist​

I won't go in detail about each social policy, right now I'm more concerned in delineating the policy trees before jumping in specifics.



EDIT: Summary:

Spoiler :

Ancient

• Tradition: Growth, Safety and Centralization
• Liberty → Wisdom*: Infrastructure, Wonders and Yields
• Honor → Conquest: Expansion, War and Production

*: Needs better name? It's supposed to represent good leadership.

Classic

• Piety: Faith and Religion
• Patronage → Statecraft: CS influence, WC votes, Diplomacy

Medieval

• Commerce: Economy, Trade Routes, Happiness
• Exploration: Sea Power, Fringe Settling, Map Management, City Connections*

*: Needs fleshing out - I admit it's a bit all over the place so far.

Renaissance

• Aesthetics: Tourism, Great Works/Artifacts, Theming
• Rationalism → Enlightenment: Science, Culture

 

[ExpiredReign]

You set 'em up and I'll knock 'em down.

Merging Liberty & Honor and then adding a new policy (Wisdom)
Nah, sorry. Bad idea. Anyone that makes a mod that works on policies is immediately screwed. You want to make Wisdom the 'infrastructure' policy, why not just use Liberty to do that?

For the sake of discussion we should avoid the arbitrary 'tall vs wide' labels. They aren't relevant and will only serve to reinforce a non-existent view of gameplay.
Further this merger option is making the assumption conquest is the preferred way to expand.

Piety moved back to the Classic era. Hallelujah, we have a winner. Totally agree with that.

Patronage -- Statecraft
hmm... Maybe, Name change does reflect your ideas which I think are worth looking at. We do want to make friends with both CSs and other major civs.

Apart from that I think you have shown remarkable restraint in your proposal.
Perhaps you have reduced your daily intake of coffee?

 

[Lord Tirian]

Hmm, I like the idea, Wodhann. I find it interesting to merge the current Liberty and Honor into one tree, sort of picking the "best of" of them. I'd call that tree "Honor", though and basically rebuild Liberty with what you called "Wisdom".

Will have to think a bit more about the specifics, though, since it means coming up with bonuses that are "generally good" for Liberty (we could steal some of the infrastructure-oriented ones from the current Tradition, though).

Moving Piety to Classic sounds decent, I like the idea of having about two trees per era you can choose from, we can then aim, culture output-wise, for a little less than that, so dedicated culture players get a new tree every era, others not quite.

 

[Wodhann]

Merging Liberty & Honor and then adding a new policy (Wisdom)
Nah, sorry. Bad idea. Anyone that makes a mod that works on policies is immediately screwed. You want to make Wisdom the 'infrastructure' policy, why not just use Liberty to do that?

Then just change liberty into "wisdom", and honor into conquest. It conceptually doesn't change anything, and maintains the structure.

You see when I talk, I talk on an ideas level, not an execution one (since that part I know little of). When I say "merge liberty with honor and create conquest", that is not to be taken literally, more on a conceptual level - as in, the "concept" of liberty is merged with the "concept" of honor into to create "concept" of conquest.

(Maybe that's why I'm so often misunderstood around here? Maybe I'm speaking different languages. I don't speak moddese, unfortunately.)

 

[Funak]

Longer thoughts on this proposal.
Opener: +2 food on its own is a lot for free right off the bat. You can use that for more growth or to work a mine (and build wonders/buildings/units). Mixed in with +3 culture and it's still too strong that I'd cherry pick it most games. I could see having something else here with it, but not the culture and food combined. Maybe 10% growth in the capital with it would be fine (essentially move landed elite here).

Again, either you have culture on all ancient era openers or not on any of them. And it is in my opinion that it would be better to have it on all of them, just to get the culture game going early on. Also this is the reason why the finisher is supposed to be grand, to punish someone delaying it by cherry picking another opener.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Then just change liberty into "wisdom", and honor into conquest. It conceptually doesn't change anything, and maintains the structure.

You see when I talk, I talk on an ideas level, not an execution one (since that part I know little of). When I say "merge liberty with honor and create honor", that is not to be taken literally, more on a conceptual level - as in, the "concept" of liberty is merged with the "concept" of honor into to create "concept" of conquest.

(Maybe that's why I'm so often misunderstood around here? Maybe I'm speaking different languages. I don't speak moddese, unfortunately.)

Fair enough.

Well as soon as you start posting in Portuguese I think we might have to stop you.

 

[Funak]

Also, ancient era piety works fine as long as you remove the religion requirement from it. Sounds somewhat like what you're trying to do with liberty Wodhann.

Another idea would be splitting liberty and adding parts to both honor and piety. This would open room for another tree later on, maybe something to compete with the retardedly overpowered rationalism.

 

[Wodhann]

I'm fine with Piety being the religion tree, and it being in classic. The thing is, currently Piety focuses too much in giving you "more religion" and less in "giving you a reason for going with religion", which is exactly what I think Piety needs to do. It needs to be something people who have a lot of religion can benefit of and less a means of getting more religion, which makes no strategical sense considering religion doesn't win you the game, so you've just wasted a policy tree.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Again, either you have culture on all ancient era openers or not on any of them. And it is in my opinion that it would be better to have it on all of them, just to get the culture game going early on. Also this is the reason why the finisher is supposed to be grand, to punish someone delaying it by cherry picking another opener.

I think, mechanically, there's a good reason to have culture boosts on openers: openers are deliberately a bit weak in order to discourage cherry-picking, but it means you don't get much "oomph" from your pick which is a bit boring. The culture boost means you quickly get the next policy, making you more "invested" into your tree. And actually getting a nice benefit from it.

And since the boost is usually themed in order to correspond with your play-style, it discourages people from "double-dipping". The biggest problem, I think, is Tradition's culture boost rewarding you for "having a capital". D'oh.

Finally, I think a benefit is getting through the first tree quickly, so everybody has a "base tree" before starting to branch out with the classic/medieval/etc. era trees.

If we went for more interactive culture rewards, I think it'd be more interesting, perhaps something like this:

• Tradition: 5 x era culture for every building built in the capital.
• Liberty: 25 x era culture for every city founded.
• Honor: Culture for killing units, 5 x era culture for every unit built.

Numbers are completely random, of course.

EDIT: There are probably better ways than triggered culture boosts (which are uneven), stuff like +1 culture per building in capital, +2 culture per city for wider empires and so on.

 

[Funak]

I'm fine with Piety being the religion tree, and it being in classic. The thing is, currently Piety focuses too much in giving you "more religion" and less in "giving you a reason for going with religion", which is exactly what I think Piety needs to do. It needs to be something people who have a lot of religion can benefit of and less a means of getting more religion, which makes no strategical sense considering religion doesn't win you the game, so you've just wasted a policy tree.

Piety can still provide faith (Faith is useful even if you don't found a religion), along with other useful bonuses. But having the bonuses all tied around having a religion makes the entire tree feel clunky and weird. Move the reformationbelief to the grand temple (Or some other later national wonder) as mentioned and keep the requirement for a religion out of piety. It will make both the policytree and religion in general better.

 

[Funak]

Analysis of Piety (Because liberty is boring and I don't know the first thing about honor):

Lets go over the policies one by one and see what is actually salvagable (Assuming you disconnect Piety from religion, but since I'm the one doing the analysis I'll do that =D) I'll also work with the vanilla tree, I know you've made some changes but it is easier this way.

Opener: 50% production on temples and shrines

This is weak, really weak. Shrines are dirtcheap anyways, temples not really but they are still early. Comparing it to "Cultural centers" in Asthetics, which I don't really consider a fantastic policy either, makes it look even worse. Cultural centers gives you discount on 5 buildings spread out over the entire game.
The 50% discount on shrines and temples could stay in the tree, but it is hardly worth half a policy and especially not the entire opener. (No idea if adding a third religious building would help and/or give the same bonus for the grand temple aswell)

Organized religion: 1+ faith from shrines and temples

This is somewhat stronger than the opener, still not worthy of being a policy however but the idea isn't terrible.

Mandate of heaven: 20% discount on religious units and buildings purchased by faith

I once actually thought this one was rather good, until I actually tried the tree and realized it didn't affect great people, so it is sadly enough garbage. If you combined it with both the other mentioned policies it could possibly be worth a policy, but it would just be easier to remove it(as it also requires having a religion to actually do anything)

Theocracy: Temples gives 25% goldbonus. 3+ gold on holysites.

This is possibly the only policy in the entire tree that is actually good. However if we want to disconnect religion from Piety we can't really have a bonus to holysites in it (Since you can't really get GPs without a religion). Could possibly replace it with some happiness. possibly -unhappiness from poverty or religious strife?

Religious tolerance: Get the pantheon from the second most popular major religion

This is uncontrolable, at best it is decent, most of the time it is garbage. I would suggest removing it.

Reformation: Add a reformationbelief to your religion

Reformationbeliefs are great, but they really shouldn't be in this policytree. Move it somewhere else, Add it to a national wonder or make it possible to add one with a great prophet?

Finisher: Free Great prophet and 3+ culture on holysites.

The culture on holysites (along with the gold from theocracy) are actually cool and fun imo, but I don't see a way to have them in this tree if you plan to disconnect it from religion. One idea could be making prophets buyable even if you didn't found a religion yourself, but I'm not sure how much sense that would make.

 

[Gazebo]

Some good ideas flowing here, guys. Also, Wodhann, could this be the day that I say that I like your ideas without giving any pushback? It may just be.

I posted this somewhere forever ago, but since we're throwing out ideas, and Wodhann's opened the theme-door, here's my .02:

All available at Ancient:
Tradition - Growth and Wonders
Liberty - Expansion and Infrastructure
Honor - War and Production
Piety - Faith and Culture

All available at Renaissance:
Patronage —> Authority (Diplomatic Victory): CS influence, WC votes, Ideology
Rationalism—> Diligence (Science Victory): Production, Research Agreements, Growth
Exploration —> Imperialism (Conquest Victory): Maritime power, Military strength, Expansion
Aesthetics —> Splendor (Culture Victory): Culture, Wonders, Tourism
Commerce —> Affluence (Any Victory): Gold, Great People, Happiness

Cheers,
G

 

[Funak]

I thought you didn't want a culture tree in ancient era? Other than that, assuming you focus Piety on stability+faith instead of culture it sounds great. (Could use better names on the trees, but that's a minor detail)

 

[jacktannery]

Gazeba et al, I really like the ideas suggested here.

I'd like to see more support for the concept of a single megacity and lots of conquered puppets in the Honour tree. At present, if I intend to war I just go liberty, raze everyone else's cities and replace with my own new ones in the same location - it's much more efficient on the long run.

I would like it if Tradition offered support for having 1-3 cities, Liberty offered support for settling 4+ cities yourself, and honour offered support for pupetting (as opposed to annexing) lots and lots of cities.

Ways it could support this are:
1) very large reductions in unhappiness in pupetted cities from honour policy.
and
2) internal trade routes from your pupetted cities (esp pupetted capitals) to your capital provide HUGE AMOUNTS of extra gold.

Adding these two extras onto the existing honour tree would instantly bring it up to par to the other two in my eyes, and provide a genuinely interesting third means of playing.

As for piety, can we add an effect that HUGELY increases faith spread along trade routes to one of the policies. This would allow for internal spreading of religion in the early game without missionaries.

I really think the trade route system has huge potential to add interest and diversify various approaches.

 

[mystikx21]

Those might be interesting effects for honor and provide an immediate peacetime benefit. Most of Wodhann's ideas I like (some of them were used in CEP, as with the changes to aesthetics). I agree immediately there's little reason to "merge" liberty into honor. Both trees can remain as default but have a more focused role.

The blow-by-blow outline from Stalker on tradition sounds amenable to the tradition tree you outlined as well.

For everyone: I would counsel against making too many specific suggestions outside of the initial four trees for now (thematic discussions to provide broad outlines there are important and fine). Not because we don't want to adjust them, but because I'd rather have a more focused discussion on them. This was a big weakness in CEP design as the middle trees sort of fell off the focus tree with ideas being tossed together (piety and honor never really got settled either), and ideologies were completely ignored in much discussion.

After the first four get settled in, then hammer out the middle ones, and then hammer the ideologies. There's a bit more natural flow for what we need to do to change something when we understand how the timeline is progressing by our designs, and we would know clearly what ideas are already in play somewhere else.

 

[Funak]

The only reasons you would raze a conquered city is because it is horribly placed (and you want to build a city in the right spot), you can't support it (It brings no new luxuries and/or productioncapabilities and your happiness isn't enough to support it) or if it is placed completely off (In the snow/desert or just too far away from you).
Puppeting is for cities that you need for resources/positioning but that lack productioncapabilities to actually be useful as a city. Anexing is for everything else. As they are, puppets are usually a drain upon your resources (happiness) and that's how they are designed to be because the puppet-empires of vanilla/GnK were really silly.

So imo if anything honor can have a policy that makes conquered cities come out of resistance faster so you don't have to keep them puppeted.

 

[jacktannery]

The only reasons you would raze a conquered city is because it is horribly placed (and you want to build a city in the right spot), you can't support it (It brings no new luxuries and/or productioncapabilities and your happiness isn't enough to support it) or if it is placed completely off (In the snow/desert or just too far away from you).
Puppeting is for cities that you need for resources/positioning but that lack productioncapabilities to actually be useful as a city. Anexing is for everything else. As they are, puppets are usually a drain upon your resources (happiness) and that's how they are designed to be because the puppet-empires of vanilla/GnK were really silly.

So imo if anything honor can have a policy that makes conquered cities come out of resistance faster so you don't have to keep them puppeted.

I get what you are saying but actually we don't disagree on the main thing:

ME: make honour improve puppet empires because at the moment they are crap, and the other policies are already better for the other two types of empire (cap-centric & wide).

YOU: no! puppet empires are crap and no-one would make one so that's a waste.

lol.

 

[mystikx21]

Venice?