Policies: The time has come!

[Lord Tirian]

Also why would anyone pick a backloaded religionfocused piety tree over something that actually helps them win the game?

This is a bit of an issue, though and should be re-designed.

But your arguments could equally apply to Patronage - why invest in it when you get the more valuable Rationalism tree soon after? By moving Piety into Classical, we get two interesting but niche trees in Classical giving you additional decisions: stick with your first opened tree or abandon it?

Since they come later, we can also improve them a bit (as they're now competing with the later policies in the initial three trees), giving us more design space. Finally, if we only have three trees, Tradition, "Liberty" (aka Wisdom) and Honour, it's much easier, design-wise, to get them competitive.

 

[Funak]

I could agree on having a religionfocused policytree if religion was actually a victorycondition, but it isn't and there is no real way to make it one either. Religion is a tool you use to work towards your VC, social policies are tools you use to work towards your VC. With that logic why would anyone go for something that works towards their tool instead of their VC?

And there being no role for a 4th policy in ancient? I can make one up right now, no problems.

Tradition: Captial, Growth, Production. Big capital with 1-3 smaller cities around it for support

Liberty: Expansion and Infrastructure. 4+ Cities, Rapid expansion

Honor: Military power and conquest. No clue, but probably conquest

Piety: Stability, Faith, Economy. 2-4 equal cities, slower to get started (No capital bonuses, no expansionbonuses.) Just solid bonuses, gold, faith, culture, happiness. Risk of losing expansion opportunities because you don't have expansionbonuses and no capitalbonuses to fall back on.
Will help you found a religion faster because of extra faith but even if you don't get one you're still fine because faith is always useful.

 

[Funak]

But your arguments could equally apply to Patronage - why invest in it when you get the more valuable Rationalism tree soon after? By moving Piety into Classical, we get two interesting but niche trees in Classical giving you additional decisions: stick with your first opened tree or abandon it?

The idea was making Patronage focused on the world congress and diplovictory and it being equally good as rationalism tree (but for diplo instead of science) and make them available at the same time, but I'm pretty sure you see how that same thing wont work for piety since there is no religious victorycondition that it could support.

 

[mitsho]

Honor buffing puppets is genius since a conqueror should probably enjoy focusing on his units on conquest than micromanaging the conquered empire. A liberty player on the other hand should enjoy settling and linking up and all that micro-managing.

Piety is incredibly hard to balance, but quite similar to Patronage. Do you go all out for CS/Religion or do you ignore it completely? But I feel a Piety with some extra faith and some extra gold works well. (Gold helps everywhere but mainly with short-term happiness or invasion problems). I agree with Wodhann that Patronage could help with Diplomacy (Espionage?) a bit too reduce the "you have to fill it"-for-CS effect.

I can see the points in some radical reimagining of the policies, but unlike with the happiness system, I don't see the it being worth the work and the confusion for new players. A basic distinction like the one Gazebo made above works well, but it doesn't need to be any more detailed. The distribution over the eras is more gameplay balancing than it affecting design decisions.

If really "anything" is possible, we should continue thinking up good effects that require active investments (and work for the AI more or less), Internal Trade Routes from puppets granting gold is such a good effect (since gold amount is calculated by the AI, yes?).

Would "may build unique units of conquered civs/city states" be a good honor policy or just too easy to be abused by the human player?

 

[Wodhann]

I could agree on having a religionfocused policytree if religion was actually a victorycondition

It's not, but it has a meaningful role in the game. Plus, don't forget, we are still to touch religion. Again, I repeat the wallpaper analogy - you're complaining about the drapes when we're doing a full makeover of the house.

And there being no role for a 4th policy in ancient? I can make one up right now, no problems.

You added general stuff to piety (in fact, you added pretty much everything to it), but you didn't explain the point of doing it.

Three is a good number. One is for growth and for compact empires, another is for expansive aggressive empires, and the third is for general infrastructure. Piling up another "basic" policy on top is pointless. From that point on, we need niches, we need the variety that comes with specific strategical policies.

As Tirion said, the more "basic" policies we add, the harder it will be design them, and we'll be just making policies that are bland and similar to each other.

 

[Funak]

*Sigh* You do realize we're changing policies altogether, and not just shifting places around the era thresholds right? The whole "piety is crap" argument falls flat when the whole point of this is that we can just make it better, and make it worth for someone to get religion.

You do realize that as long as the reformationbelief remain in piety the tree is always going to be backloaded, right? Unless you move it to the opener, but in that case I really don't see the point to the tree at all.

Three is a good number. One is for growth and for compact empires, another is for expansive aggressive empires, and the third is for general infrastructure.

And you've already decided on your idea where you remove liberty.

 

[Wodhann]

I can see the points in some radical reimagining of the policies, but unlike with the happiness system, I don't see the it being worth the work and the confusion for new players.

Disagreed. Policies right now are broken significantly badly, both conceptually and from a balance standpoint.

In terms of balance, we got basically people picking the same policies regardless of gameplay. Tradition, Patronage (if you're getting a lot of culture), Commerce and Rationalism every game; that's about half of the entire policy "orchard". Obviously something is wrong here.

Conceptually, we got a very shallow policy tree (liberty is pretty much just "more cities", and that's it), we got a religion tree that gives you more religion (instead of making religion pay off) and comes one era too early, we got one that is fixated on city states, we got an useless social policy tree that for some reason helps you get great artifacts, and we got an overpowered science-only tree.

Now, I'm not saying we need a complete redo (conceptually speaking), but some drastic changes are in order.

And you've already decided on your idea where you remove liberty.

What's the point in me suggesting something if I don't stick to it? Plus it doesn't "remove" liberty, just combines its expansive concept with honor's military buffs and creates a new one that has both aspects.

 

[Stalker0]

As far as Piety goes, I wouldn't mind making it classical. It is harder to balance 4 trees instead of 3....especially since all 3 need to be "starter" trees which implies some responsibilities later trees wouldn't necessarily have.

I want to keep working on tradition, primarily since its the default tree right now, so its the baseline. Lets get tradition to where we want it flavor and powerwise...then we can use it as a measuring stick for the Liberty, Honor..and maybe Piety.

I'm going to look at some things Anastase Alex did with my initial proposal and keep making some tweaks. The important things to look at:

1) Is the tree powerful enough?
2) Is it fun enough?
3) Remember that as the beginning tree, even smaller bonuses can be very powerful. There's nothing that says the starter trees have to provide amazing benefits till the end of time necessarily.

Opener: +2 Food, +3% growth in the capital for every Tradition Policy taken.
Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +1 happy for each wonder.
Legalism: +3 Culture/Tourism in the Capital. +2 culture on GP improvements, Borders increased.
Oligarchy: Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot, 10% bonus to GP birth in the capital.
Landed Elite: +25% Gold in the Capital (yep taken straight from commerce).
Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, -15% unruliness.
Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Palace gains +1 food, hammer, culture, faith, science, gold (aka God King pantheon belief)
Alternative Finisher: Capital immediately gains maximum borders.

 

[Funak]

Opener: +2 Food, +3% growth in the capital for every Tradition Policy taken.
Tradition just went from having 25% growth in the capital and 15% everywhere else to just 15% in the capital? I know tradition isn't just about growth, but it was kinda the theme it had going. Changing it to FOOD% instead of GROWTH% (like floating garden) would fix that but I'm still not a big fan of not having culture in the openers (the start is going to be really slow)

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +1 happy for each wonder.
Happiness from wonders is a nightmare to balance. It's going to go from being worth 50 happiness on settler to close to nothing on deity. If you want a fair easy to balance bonus then base it of national wonders instead.

Legalism: +3 Culture/Tourism in the Capital. +2 culture on GP improvements, Borders increased.
I'm fine with that

Oligarchy: Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot, 10% bonus to GP birth in the capital.
Not sure if you're talking about a Engineer slot in the palace or a free engineer specialist(civ4 style).I still think 10% GP is close to pointless I would rather see something lowering unhappiness from specialists if you can't make the bonus bigger than that.

Landed Elite: +25% Gold in the Capital (yep taken straight from commerce).
Boring and pretty weak, compare to theocracy doing the same thing in all cities with another bonus aswell.

Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, -15% unruliness.
Could work, but it would be weaker than it is now, and it's already the last policy I pick in the tree.
Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Palace gains +1 food, hammer, culture, faith, science, gold (aka God King pantheon belief)
Really weak, really boring.

Alternative Finisher: Capital immediately gains maximum borders.
Would that be 3 rings or 5 rings? Because 3 rings would be kinda underwhelming and 5 rings would be pretty damn overpowered. Also this kinda makes the borderexpand policy useless doesn't it? =D

 

[Stalker0]

1) Opener: +2 Food, +3% growth in the capital for every Tradition Policy taken.
Tradition just went from having 25% growth in the capital and 15% everywhere else to just 15% in the capital? I know tradition isn't just about growth, but it was kinda the theme it had going. Changing it to FOOD% instead of GROWTH% (like floating garden) would fix that but I'm still not a big fan of not having culture in the openers (the start is going to be really slow)

--There are 7 tradition policies, so its 21% growth in total, and begins accumulating faster than the old landed elite and finishers.

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +1 happy for each wonder.
Happiness from wonders is a nightmare to balance. It's going to go from being worth 50 happiness on settler to close to nothing on deity. If you want a fair easy to balance bonus then base it of national wonders instead.

--I like the idea of national wonder happiness.

Oligarchy: Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot, 10% bonus to GP birth in the capital.
Not sure if you're talking about a Engineer slot in the palace or a free engineer specialist(civ4 style).I still think 10% GP is close to pointless I would rather see something lowering unhappiness from specialists if you can't make the bonus bigger than that.

--I meant an Engineer slot, I should clarify. I can bump up the 10%, but I still think people underestimate that power. Than again, perception is reality, if someone thinks a policy is weak...its weak.


Alternative Finisher:... Also this kinda makes the borderexpand policy useless doesn't it? =D[/QUOTE]

Oops, that is true

 

[mystikx21]

Opener looks good that way.

Keep in mind national wonder happiness is presently an ideological tenet. We will probably change that one anyway (but there are 3 of them that do that), but just remember we will have to if we use it earlier.

Legalism is too powerful with the border increase effect, extra culture, and extra culture from GPs. That border increase and the culture/tourism is probably fine as it is. If there is to be extra culture from GPs, move it to landed elite and combine it with a specialist happiness bonus.

10-15% GP should be enough for an early bonus when you get a free slot (I'd prefer free slot per 10/population, so when you hit 10 you get an engineer). I'd still prefer an effect that provides specialist bonuses for happiness in this tree in the capital somewhere.

I don't know that we need both gold% and gold per pop in the capital.

+1 all yields as god king and in order are both boring.

 

[Funak]

You usually don't count the Opener or the finisher as policies. Still wouldn't 15% or maybe 10% foodbonus be more fun?

You could have other bonuses from national wonders aswell, think Mystikx was experimenting with that on the last verson of CEP

What would make a good finisher, that is the question for today.

 

[mystikx21]

General thoughts on the last bit here

I disagree with Gazebo's proposal. I dislike the idea of the game trying to cater to the general player's OCD needs to finish a policy tree before going to the next one.

- Agreed. This is not important for game-balance. The reason it is at all is the AI does this, but that's not actually a significant reason to make finishers "good". The real problem isn't the finishers, it's that the policies themselves aren't worth very much in some trees (piety especially) in order to bother getting to the finisher. I would rather increase the policies and thin out the finishers so you are getting more on the way and the finisher is a nice gravy to the meat.

If we have few or ideally no dud policies, it doesn't matter what the finishers are. You will always have the choice to finish a tree because it offers a solid cohesive benefit, or go open up another one to get a different kind of benefit to craft a more flexible empire.

I would not significantly move culture costs toward CEP for policies. I think the ability to "finish" 4-5 trees and an ideology should be sufficient (say 34-40 policy picks for a completed game), and getting more than that should require a strong culture play or stacking up a lot of free social policy effects, things like that. If they come faster than that, the choices start to become less meaningful. So long as the policies themselves and the overall trees are somewhat evenly balanced to provide a strong coherent role with good effects, this should be fine.

It sounds like if we move Piety back to classical and beef it up religion wise, with maybe a sideline function in gold and/or happiness it will be fine. I'd rather not make it into a catch-all policy tree. The main reason to maintain it's faith-based effects is that religion is (or should be) a powerful tool to help any victory condition. Aesthetics or Patronage (and probably Exploration with a naval conquest/expansion bent) meanwhile are more narrowly tailored, religion and piety should be flexible to provide a noteworthy advantage for any victory that you can get early on. Note: this means we will have to undertake the project of making religious beliefs and effects meaningful.

I still don't understand the "liberty will be different theory". I'd probably rather see a design plan for what honor would look like from Wodhann here to see why this would be a worth while change. Or even what the change actually would be. I'm just not following how that design is any different from what we have now without seeing what pieces are moved around or removed I think and in order to evaluate the merits of that proposal overall. At the moment, I still don't see a major flaw in both retaining their current roles, but buffered a bit.

I don't think it is necessary to move aesthetics to the renaissance. Leave it in medieval and give it a nice culture/tourism bent and it will be fine there. The real power for tourism isn't really until late game because of tech. There's no reason it can't start ramping up before that with bonuses that will become more powerful later on with more multipliers. You aren't going to win a cultural victory just by taking and completing this tree.

 

[mitsho]

Disagreed. Policies right now are broken significantly badly, both conceptually and from a balance standpoint.

...

Now, I'm not saying we need a complete redo (conceptually speaking), but some drastic changes are in order.

Sure, but then we're already on page 5. Now this is not to you alone, but I would suggest to avoid restating the same things you posted in a previous post. May get confusing.

I don't say we shouldn't do drastic changes, but it needs to have an overview and shouldn't get lost in details either, the happiness system has seen changes afterwards after all. And there's quite some agreement on the general layout.

What would make a good finisher, that is the question for today.

I can see a specialist slot of every kind in the capital, if we don't use it in an earlier policy.

A good fit would be something that rewards the growth, like "receive x of yield y everytime the capital grows". One could switch that around, put the growth in the finisher and that reward earlier, maybe as a more "active" culture generator than the 3 culture.

A free Great Work (+ another space on the palace if possible) might be a cool idea, but maybe cheapens them in general and the classical wonder that provides one (Parthenon).

 

[Funak]

I'm once again going to state that if you keep piety linked to religion and make piety worth taking, you're going to make religion without piety useless.

I honestly can't even think of 5 policies + opener/finisher themed around religion that are fun without making non-piety-religion not fun.

 

[mystikx21]

Comments on these in italics.

Tradition

Opener: +1 food from farms in the capital +2 in capital and a growth bonus is fine, +1 from farms is extremely powerful for an early game policy, especially from an opener. Everyone would cherry pick this.
Aristocracy: +25% bonus to wonders, each wonder reduces borredom unhappyness by 5% - smaller bonus to wonders is fine. Agreed it should do something with wonder happiness, national wonder tie-in would work fine here.
Legalism: +2 culture on GP improvements and 10% bonus to GP birth in the capital. - I like this over the +3 from the capital.
Oligarchy: +1 Pop in the Capital. Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot. - would rather it provided specialist unhappiness reduction in the capital than free people.
Landed Elite: Border Expansion increased, Tile Buying Costs reduced by 15%. - fine.
Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, and +5% GP growth on National wonders - I like this over just adding growth or gold.
Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. +25% growth in the capital.
- It looks like the finisher is the big hold up in this tree as I don't like +1 yields, +25% growth, +25% gold, or an extra ring of borders/working extra tiles
Other possible ideas: can work an extra ring in the capital,

In general there's a good coherence here of capital growth+specialists/GP effects (Wonders are a mild GP effect).

Liberty

Opener: +1 production per city, connected cities get +0.5 science/era - sounds good.
Collective Rule: Each city you found will increase the Culture cost of policies by 50% less than normal. Settlers production +25% per source of local unhappyness in a city. - Culture cost reduction is fine at 25-33% per new citiesExtra settler production is fine at +25% anywhere without making it that complicated I should think.
Citizenship: 1 free Worker appears next to each city you control - I'd rather have the worker speed bonus than more workers. Less micromanagement is good and this basically just means more workers to pillage from an AI
Republic:+1 happiness per city connected to the Capital -15% vulnerability unhappyness in non-occupied cities. - good
Representation: -10% poverty unhappyness, connected cities have +2 food - what about making this +1 culture from the default opener instead of +2 food, there's little culture here int he tree
Meritocracy: +20% production when constructing buildings that exist less than 4 times in your empire.- works fine as 10-15% for constructing any building paired with an illiteracy reduction
Finisher: Can buy buildings already existing in at least 4 of your cities with faith. - not sure I like a faith tie-in in liberty. Save it for piety. The free GP is okay here as it is

Other possible ideas: Give bonuses depending on the non-existance of specific types of unahppyness in your empire. No illiteracy? +1 science / city as a national income (not tied to a city therefore not affecting the average) No problems of piety? +1 faith. etc etc

Honor

Opener: Reveal babrabrian camps, +30%vs barabarians, culture from barb kills = 2*destroyed unit's strength, free Barracks in your 3 first cities - barb bonus doesn't need to be that high. The culture is the meat of this pick
Warrior Code: Pillaging tiles or trade routes gives you more money, Killing a unit gives you 2 gold per strength of the defeated unit - good, not sure I'd use that as this name. Probably 2x pillaging bonuses or provide additional yields besides gold
Discipline: +15% combat strength for military Units which adjecent to another friendly military Unit , 2 units free of mentainance - Have it give a couple of free units as well
Military Tradition: Barracks, Armory, Military academy give +1, +2 and +3 science respectivelly. Citadels give +2 culture + 2 science - production is more useful for conquerors than culture, but that's still not bad
Military Caste: Guarisonned units give +1 gold, +1 science for every 2 levels they have, level 4+ units can plant forests (see reforestation mod), build farms. - . Reforestation doesn't interest me as something to build a policy around, particularly an early game tree.
Professional Army: Gold cost of buying and upgrading Military Units reduced by 33% and -30% vulnerability unhappyness. - vulnerability happy may make more sense here than in liberty (don't overlap them) - gold buying of units should be in autocracy more than here. Upgrading is more valuable over the longer term.
Finisher: Buy great generals with faith, -50%pillaged tiles unhappyness, Great Generals grant their bonus and the March promotion to friendly units within 3 spaces of them - Rarely matters how far the bonus is. Healing would be the main effect there

Other possible ideas: make pillaging farms give food to nearest city, mines give production, trading posts extra gold, GP improvements MASIVE amounts of resources of the corresponding type. Removing the connection of a city to the empire could also deal damage to the city?

- Missing from this - happiness from Great Generals was a good idea
- puppet bonus or speed of resistance bonus would be a good fit
- I don't mind some way of getting science or culture from conquering cities here. Pillaging food/production to nearest city sounds a bit complicated to determine (not to mention not always desirable or easy to control). I'm sure it can be done, but it would probably be easier to manage to just add the amount of yield to your empire and divide it across all cities than to park it on the border town you are fighting nearest. Which may be a puppet.

Piety (would need a new name and new names for the policies)

- I'm not a big fan of overhauling piety toward a heavy gold function with religion tie-ins. So most of these I don't like.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I sort of mentioned it before but in a less forthright manner, we simply get to pick too many policies in any given game.

Think about it, these policies define the style of empire we rule yet by the time we get to choose an ideology there are less policies we haven't chosen than those we have. That should be reversed.

Currently there are nine policy branches, each with six picks (opener and five sub-picks), that's 54 selections of policy. As mentioned it isn't uncommon to have made 30 or more policy selections before you get to ideologies. Don't you think that is a bit much? I would be quite happy if our total pre-ideology choices were < 50% or ~24 picks. That equates to about 4 complete trees, plenty of options throughout the game.
I could also see this figure being reduced even more.
Doing so might also make our design of each policy mean more as we won't be able to bolster it with many other policy boosts.
It also makes the finisher or 2nd tier policies much more vital as you need to balance the number of choices more if you want to get them. (probably stuff up the AI though)

Less is more!


Question(s) without notice. Has anyone ever finished a game without taking an ideology? Is it even possible? What consequences might arise if one isn't chosen?

 

[Wodhann]

I'd probably rather see a design plan for what honor would look like from Wodhann here to see why this would be a worth while change. Or even what the change actually would be.

You're talking about the "conquest" idea right? Sure.

Roughly speaking, and this is but a preliminary though exercise:

• Ways to help dealing with unhappiness from amount of cities (garrisons?)
• Settling is good
• Puppets are good (the suggestion that's been thrown around is interesting)
• Barbarians are evil and must be dealt with (not necessarily as starter)
• Build armies faster and more efficiently
• Better siege and the taking of cities.

They all fit within the theme of conquest, and makes liberty seem like a weak concept that's been stretched as thin as it could have.

I don't think it is necessary to move aesthetics to the renaissance. Leave it in medieval and give it a nice culture/tourism bent and it will be fine there. The real power for tourism isn't really until late game because of tech. There's no reason it can't start ramping up before that with bonuses that will become more powerful later on with more multipliers. You aren't going to win a cultural victory just by taking and completing this tree.

If you think piety should be in classic you also should agree aesthetics should be in renaissance. There's no need for it to be earlier, not to mention it ruins the "2 new trees each era" progression I set up. Besides, the whole antiquity sites thing only comes until later in the game.

but it needs to have an overview and shouldn't get lost in details either, the happiness system has seen changes afterwards after all. And there's quite some agreement on the general layout.

COMPLETELY agree. I think we need to agree on the macro before we get to the micro.

Honestly, I think we first need to agree on what to do on a general level before we try to define each individual social policy.

 

[Funak]

Think about it, these policies define the style of empire we rule yet by the time we get to choose an ideology there are less policies we haven't chosen than those we have. That should be reversed.

I have no idea which game you have been playing, but in my latest game(where I went for an extremely cultureheavy tourismvictory) I didn't even have 3 trees finished off before I picked my ideology. I had full tradition, full Asthetics, Patronage opener and secularism. (And that was with me rushing everything that gives culture)

Question(s) without notice. Has anyone ever finished a game without taking an ideology? Is it even possible? What consequences might arise if one isn't chosen?

I don't really understand the question. I have finished a game in classical era by rushing my enemy, so yes that is possible.
If you're however asking if you could skip picking an ideology, no you can't, as soon as you hit modern era or build 3 factories you can't end the turn without picking one (as far as I remember).

 

[ExpiredReign]

I have no idea which game you have been playing...

To be honest, I haven't actually 'played' a full game for months and the last time was with CEP in a state of modification (inbetween versions 3.15 & 3.16). It could easily be the case my perception of a typical game is warped.

So what would you say is the actual number of policies the average player gets before ideologies? <50%?

...
I don't really understand the question. I have finished a game in classical era by rushing my enemy, so yes that is possible.
If you're however asking if you could skip picking an ideology, no you can't as soon as you hit modern era or build 3 factories you can't end the turn without picking one (as far as I remember).

Ahh... of course. Nevermind, brain fart.