I agree, and it would Work fine with the happiness system, where a food increase would benefit your empire counteracting unhappiness, making a link to the happiness system.
Policies: The time has come!
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I agree, and it would Work fine with the happiness system, where a food increase would benefit your empire counteracting unhappiness, making a link to the happiness system.
Wodhann
South American Norse God
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Lord Tirian, thanks for the input, glad to have someone aboard the idea.
My second take inspired by yours:
Conquest v0.3
My second take inspired by yours:
Conquest v0.3
Opener: Bonus +33% vs. Barbarians, encampment notifications and culture for barbarian units killed and for each conquered city.
Feudalism: Garrisons in occupied cities reduce that city's unhappiness from occupation by 30%, garrisoned puppeted cities gain +25% gold.
Collectivism: Free settler and -1 unhappiness for each city. Requires Feudalism. (I'm ok with a free settler, I just really dislike making settler training easier. Plus like you said, we need something to help with the empire size happiness.)
Discipline: Units gain +10% strength when adjacent to a friendly unit, and units with less than half of their health fight as if they had 50% of their strength. (Worker training is something I want to move to "wisdom")
Military Caste: Military unit maintenance -25%. A free ranged unit spawns with new settled cities. Requires Discipline.
Warrior Code: A Great General appears outside your capital. Population reduction from city capture is reduced to 25%. Requires Military Caste.
Finisher: Cities increase the culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Whenever you conquer a civilization's capital, start a Golden Age. Great Generals can be purchased with faith at the Industrial Era.
Feudalism: Garrisons in occupied cities reduce that city's unhappiness from occupation by 30%, garrisoned puppeted cities gain +25% gold.
Collectivism: Free settler and -1 unhappiness for each city. Requires Feudalism. (I'm ok with a free settler, I just really dislike making settler training easier. Plus like you said, we need something to help with the empire size happiness.)
Discipline: Units gain +10% strength when adjacent to a friendly unit, and units with less than half of their health fight as if they had 50% of their strength. (Worker training is something I want to move to "wisdom")
Military Caste: Military unit maintenance -25%. A free ranged unit spawns with new settled cities. Requires Discipline.
Warrior Code: A Great General appears outside your capital. Population reduction from city capture is reduced to 25%. Requires Military Caste.
Finisher: Cities increase the culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Whenever you conquer a civilization's capital, start a Golden Age. Great Generals can be purchased with faith at the Industrial Era.
How would removing isolation unhappiness for liberty sound? It's just a temporary bonus (Since you're likely to build roads eventually anyways) but it's going to help your early expansion (and still have some use later on if the city get blocked/ get the road pillaged)
If anyone is interested, here is my version of initial four social policies for the balance mod I've been working on. The major change is in tradition and liberty
Piety
Wonder: Great Mosque of Djenne
Opener: Shrines cost half as much to build. Shrines provide +1 faith.
Religous Tolerance: Cities benefits from an additional pantheon belief. 1 culture for each foreign religion in each of your cities.
Organized religion: Temples cost half as much to build. Temples provide +1 faith. + 25% gold in cities with a temple.
Righteousness: -10% unhappiness from population. + 1 population in each city.
Cult of Saints: (Requires Righteouness)
+ 15% Wonder Production. Holy sites give +3 gold, +3 culture.
Reformation: (requires Cult of Saints)
A reformation belief
Finisher: + 20% faith generation.
Honor
Wonder: Statue of Zeus. 15% more city attack. + 1 happiness in all puppets/occupied cities.
Opener: Culture per killed unit. Notifications about barb camps.
Discipline: All units have +15% strength when adjacent to another unit.
Military tradition (requires Discipline): 50% more experience for land units.
Warrior code: +15% production for land units.
Military Caste (requires Warrior Code): 1 happiness and 2 culture from garrisoned units.
Professional Army (requires military caste): Barracks/armories/military cost half as much to build. 33% discount on upgrades.
Finisher: Gold per killed unit. Purchase GG with faith
Liberty
Wonder: Hanging Gardens
Opener: 1 Culture, 1 gold per city.
Urban Improvement: Free aqueduct in the first three cities.
Call of the City (requires urban improvement): +15% population growth.
Leisure: 25% great person generation.
Representation (requires Leisure and Urban Improvement): - 15% unhappiness from population.
Patriotism: (requires representation) Free garrisons, units start with + 10 xp.
Finisher: Free great person.
Tradition
Wonder: Pyramids, - 33 % tile improvement rate. 2 Free workers.
Opener: 3 culture in capital city. Border expansion.
Serfdom: Free worker. 1 Prod per city.
Feodalism: Settlers cost half as much to build. 1 Food per city.
Monarchy (requires serfdom and feodalism): -1 unhappiness and +1 gold for every two citizens in your capitol.
Viceroys (requires monarchy): 1 Happiness per city.
Centralisation (requires monarchy): Each city increases the social policy cost by 33% less.
Finishers: Great engineers can be purchased with faith. Building maintenance reduced by 25%
Piety
Wonder: Great Mosque of Djenne
Opener: Shrines cost half as much to build. Shrines provide +1 faith.
Religous Tolerance: Cities benefits from an additional pantheon belief. 1 culture for each foreign religion in each of your cities.
Organized religion: Temples cost half as much to build. Temples provide +1 faith. + 25% gold in cities with a temple.
Righteousness: -10% unhappiness from population. + 1 population in each city.
Cult of Saints: (Requires Righteouness)
+ 15% Wonder Production. Holy sites give +3 gold, +3 culture.
Reformation: (requires Cult of Saints)
A reformation belief
Finisher: + 20% faith generation.
Honor
Wonder: Statue of Zeus. 15% more city attack. + 1 happiness in all puppets/occupied cities.
Opener: Culture per killed unit. Notifications about barb camps.
Discipline: All units have +15% strength when adjacent to another unit.
Military tradition (requires Discipline): 50% more experience for land units.
Warrior code: +15% production for land units.
Military Caste (requires Warrior Code): 1 happiness and 2 culture from garrisoned units.
Professional Army (requires military caste): Barracks/armories/military cost half as much to build. 33% discount on upgrades.
Finisher: Gold per killed unit. Purchase GG with faith
Liberty
Wonder: Hanging Gardens
Opener: 1 Culture, 1 gold per city.
Urban Improvement: Free aqueduct in the first three cities.
Call of the City (requires urban improvement): +15% population growth.
Leisure: 25% great person generation.
Representation (requires Leisure and Urban Improvement): - 15% unhappiness from population.
Patriotism: (requires representation) Free garrisons, units start with + 10 xp.
Finisher: Free great person.
Tradition
Wonder: Pyramids, - 33 % tile improvement rate. 2 Free workers.
Opener: 3 culture in capital city. Border expansion.
Serfdom: Free worker. 1 Prod per city.
Feodalism: Settlers cost half as much to build. 1 Food per city.
Monarchy (requires serfdom and feodalism): -1 unhappiness and +1 gold for every two citizens in your capitol.
Viceroys (requires monarchy): 1 Happiness per city.
Centralisation (requires monarchy): Each city increases the social policy cost by 33% less.
Finishers: Great engineers can be purchased with faith. Building maintenance reduced by 25%
So you just switched them..?
Yes. Because I am an historian and care about the theme of the game. It has annoyed me from the beginning that liberty premiers wide and tradition tall while the opposite should be case. Virtually all large empires before the age of revolutions were monarchies. Liberty as I envison it is focused on city life and city states whereas tradition is focused on the capital and a broad empire. While monarchies ruled the globe in the early days the cities held out a promise for the future, which I try to portray by giving liberty more long term bonii. I would argue that the vanilla game is mixed up. Case in point: the Pyramids, a huge monument built to a god-king with the lives of countless slaves. This is the opposite of liberty.
An instructive study on the opposition between powerful cities (capital) and wide empires (coercion) is Charles Tilly's Capital, Coercion and European States AD 990-1992
An instructive study on the opposition between powerful cities (capital) and wide empires (coercion) is Charles Tilly's Capital, Coercion and European States AD 990-1992
Ehm are you sure about that? afaik the pyramids weren't built by slaves, because the pyramids were monuments and the slaves weren't worthy of it. Haven't really brushed up on my ancient egyption history in a while but from what I remember building monuments, especially big ones like the pyramids was considered extremely classy work. Not saying egyptians didn't have slave labor, but honestly most civilizations at the time were using slaves one way or another. But they were likely doing other stuff.
Funak, food is more "interesting" because it's more powerful. Something powerful should not be in an early tree unless it is a long-term benefit that accrues slowly. Food is an immediate benefit that accrues immediately. Growth is slower to ramp up as you need higher surpluses over time.
I could go for a 3 national wonder GP bonus that you can use in any city (but most likely will start with the capital).
I could go for a 3 national wonder GP bonus that you can use in any city (but most likely will start with the capital).
This is getting somewhere
Things to note:
Agreed I'd rather leave the worker rate improvement in "liberty".
I like the finisher, though these effects could be split up. The culture cost reducer alone is rather good as it is.
I like the gold instead of production change. This represents the sort of "tribute" system you might get from puppets better, fits with the gold focus that puppets usually take, and still allows some room to want to annex a productive or high population city for other reasons (culture/science/wonders/units).
Discipline is fine at 15%. I'm not sure the UA from Japan really improves it that much.
One way to get some happiness would be to have a raw happiness bonus for captured capitals or great generals, or something representing and rewarding your skill in battle.
The upgrade policy effect is worth more here than a unit upkeep reduction, in the long run. What can be done instead is to make garrisons free (as with oligarchy) or to make an additional number of units based on the number of cities you have free, or just a set number of free units that scales on map size, basically representing that there's a high volume of people waiting to join the army at any time for glory and honor. But my preference would be to leave the unit upkeep reduction in autocracy and leave the upgrade effect here.
If it is about expansion, a settler training bonus makes sense. That could remain in liberty with the free one moved here, if you're adamantly opposed to moving it.
To be perfectly fair 10% food is only more powerful than 25% growth if more than half of your produced food is consumed by citizens.
And honestly stop getting hung up on something being too powerful. We are working on the first tree, it is technically impossible for the first remade tree to be too powerful since you're going to balance the other ones around it.
Also I don't see your point in how it shouldn't be in an early tree, what other tree were you going to place it in? The only other FOOD% bonuses there are are both in ancient era aswell.
And speaking of balance the effect is less than half the effect of an ancient era wonder, I don't see how that would be considered unreasonable.
Just a minor note, wasn't the whole idea with the new happiness system to move away from general - unhappiness? Atleast word it as -X% expansion unhappiness (honestly no idea how much that is, think it's 1 base)
10% food is worth more in the long run as Tirian outlined, because food bonuses from tech and buildings continue to increase so you have will more available for it to be multiplied and then in turn affect growth. It isn't a fixed yield. Growth is because the cost of increasing populations remains stable (what changes is your local ability to meet that cost quickly or not).
The idea should be that there's some progression to take an early tree, dabble in another perhaps, and move onto the middle tier of policy trees. In order to do that, early tree effects should be modest, powerful but not awesome game-winners. It is easier to balance other later trees designs around a more modest effect, which is why I would avoid putting things that are "too powerful" early on.
The effect is the same as ToA if it is 10% food (and we can discuss changing that in the wonders thread if necessary).
The idea should be that there's some progression to take an early tree, dabble in another perhaps, and move onto the middle tier of policy trees. In order to do that, early tree effects should be modest, powerful but not awesome game-winners. It is easier to balance other later trees designs around a more modest effect, which is why I would avoid putting things that are "too powerful" early on.
The effect is the same as ToA if it is 10% food (and we can discuss changing that in the wonders thread if necessary).
Lord Tirian
Erratic Poster
I only put the worker rate improvement there, because Discipline is very lacking in peacetime, same with Feudalism. If "Conquest" gobbles up Liberty's "wide" bonuses, it needs something that helps there in the policies after the opener (though I'm aware that I moved the free settler away from that, because I think that's one of the very good ones that are a nice reward for going deeper).
Just as a reminder, we have these new policy functions and tables to play with:
ToA gives 10% food in ALL cities, this would give it in one. ToA also gives extra production on ranged units, 1 culture/turn and 1 great engineer point.
Also if 10% food would as powerful as you make it out to be then the aztecs would be considered overpowered with their 15% food in all cities, but they are barely considered midtier.
Also your idea of things continuing to scale and other things not seems rather off. I mean there are A LOT of policies that scale, everything with production, science, gold, culture. I mean honestly growth is the odd one out, being the only one of them that actually becomes completely useless eventually.
Tirian I don't mind if some policies have mostly military aggressive effects versus peacetime only effects. If the flavor of the tree is "expansion", it doesn't need to have every policy give a peaceful and militant effect.
Funak - Growth never becomes "useless". It becomes less powerful because you grow less frequently, but a growth bonus continues to counteract that throughout. The Aztecs are considered middle tier in strategy rankings. In this mod so far I think they would be stronger without any other changes. Floating Garden still requires freshwater like a regular water mill. That's a critical, though not always essential (it's not that difficult to found cities by rivers), modification to the all cities element.
Here's the distinction. A "food" bonus IS a growth bonus. Because it increases all food that you have. As you work more tiles and gain in population, this bonus does not decrease in any way as long as you keep adding food, it keeps multiplying it up. That does not mean that every city is growing at warp speed, but it does mean you can do lots of other things with the extra food (grow faster, work mines/spec slots, etc).
A growth bonus applies only to surpluses. If you have a food bonus as well, the surplus should be higher already. But if you have no or little surplus, this does very little. This is also why there were death spirals for happiness coming from food supplies being reduced rather than growth supply. Food is more important than growth. Multipliers on food as a result are more powerful than those on growth. I would not use them in a policy tree early on for that reason.
If you have say 50 food being produced in a city, regardless of its population you will produce 5 more food with a 10% bonus. To do that with a 25% growth you would have to be producing a surplus of of 20 food. That's possible to do later on in the game, but not as easy as getting 50 food. Early on a 10% food bonus for a city is maybe producing 1 food while the surplus may produce more. By the mid game, it is not unusual to have the ability to produce enormous quantities of food in a larger city. If we are using this for an early tree, I would rather have the effect that produces an earlier game effect that persists in being somewhat useful later on (both because you will have grown faster and because you will still grow faster than your rivals) rather than a slow building monster effect that does both.
Funak - Growth never becomes "useless". It becomes less powerful because you grow less frequently, but a growth bonus continues to counteract that throughout. The Aztecs are considered middle tier in strategy rankings. In this mod so far I think they would be stronger without any other changes. Floating Garden still requires freshwater like a regular water mill. That's a critical, though not always essential (it's not that difficult to found cities by rivers), modification to the all cities element.
Here's the distinction. A "food" bonus IS a growth bonus. Because it increases all food that you have. As you work more tiles and gain in population, this bonus does not decrease in any way as long as you keep adding food, it keeps multiplying it up. That does not mean that every city is growing at warp speed, but it does mean you can do lots of other things with the extra food (grow faster, work mines/spec slots, etc).
A growth bonus applies only to surpluses. If you have a food bonus as well, the surplus should be higher already. But if you have no or little surplus, this does very little. This is also why there were death spirals for happiness coming from food supplies being reduced rather than growth supply. Food is more important than growth. Multipliers on food as a result are more powerful than those on growth. I would not use them in a policy tree early on for that reason.
If you have say 50 food being produced in a city, regardless of its population you will produce 5 more food with a 10% bonus. To do that with a 25% growth you would have to be producing a surplus of of 20 food. That's possible to do later on in the game, but not as easy as getting 50 food. Early on a 10% food bonus for a city is maybe producing 1 food while the surplus may produce more. By the mid game, it is not unusual to have the ability to produce enormous quantities of food in a larger city. If we are using this for an early tree, I would rather have the effect that produces an earlier game effect that persists in being somewhat useful later on (both because you will have grown faster and because you will still grow faster than your rivals) rather than a slow building monster effect that does both.
