Policies: The time has come!

[Wodhann]

I like funak's idea. Third take based on feedback:


Conquest v0.4

Opener: Bonus +33% vs. Barbarians, encampment notifications and culture for barbarian units killed and for each conquered city.

Collectivism: Free settler and -50% isolation unhappiness. (I would rather give Conquest players a head start in getting settlers than allow them to train settlers faster. Plus Feudalism is useless this early.)

Feudalism: Garrisons in occupied cities reduce that city's unhappiness from occupation by 30%, garrisoned puppeted cities gain +25% gold. Requires Collectivism.

Discipline: Units gain +15% combat strength when adjacent to a friendly unit.

Military Caste: Upgrade costs for military units -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 25% 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.​

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.

Exactly. This is supposed to be the active, expansive policy; tradition and "wisdom" are already supposed to be more passive oriented.

 

[Gazebo]

Two points:

Collectivism: The -50% isolation unhappiness function doesn't exist in the DLL – I can make it, but it might have better long-term utility if you make it -25% from Disorder (as Disorder scales with time, and isolation does not).

There's a policy function to reduce Global Averages for Puppets – that might be a nice finisher (-25% to Global Averages in Puppets, etc.).
G

 

[Wodhann]

What is disorder again?

I think the isolation -50% provides sinergy with the settling theme. And anyway wouldn't it serve other modders if you added the function to the CP?

 

[Gazebo]

Disorder is related to city strength and garrison power, which also works thematically (Honor settlers don't need no man).

I think the isolation -50% provides sinergy with the settling theme. And anyway wouldn't it serve other modders if you added the function to the CP?

The problem is that the isolation function is built around a boolean test (connected or not connected). Reducing the amount of unhappiness caused by Isolation can't really be done via a % reduction without re-writing how the function works. That's why I don't have a policy mod for isolation, famine or pillaged tiles, as they don't calculate like the others.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Opener: +2 food in the capital. Capital Growth increased by 4% for each tradition policy taken. (my math was wrong before, there are only 6 policies not 7, so I adjusted the percentage slightly).
You still haven't answered my question about having it as 2-3%(x5 for policies) food instead of growth.

--I'm generally with Mystikx on this one, I think growth is a better balance than food for an early policy in an early tree.

Aristocracy: +15% bonus to wonders, +1 happiness for National Wonders.
A bonus to national wonders is fine but happiness is boring, you could have it at X% yield/NWonder instead of your choice instead, would be more fun imho

--There are a fair number of national wonders, so any X% yield per NW can wind up being very strong, I don't know if its balanceable. That said, I am open to suggestions on this one...to me the wonder bonus is the meat of this policy, everything else is gravy.


Oligarchy: Palace gains a free engineer specialist slot, Border Expansion increased.
No real synergy between those 2 bonuses, should be moved to style

Landed Elite: Palace gains +2 hammers, Tile Buying Costs reduced by 15%.
Boring, weak and no synergy. If anything you should switch the border expansion in oligarchy with the productionbonus here, but it would still be dull

--Hehe, I actually had the two originally swapped as you guys have suggested. I just felt that Border Expansion and Tile Buying together was very dull. Its one of those things where powerwise its actually very good...but I could never get excited about it.

May need to do something other than the tile buying reduction.

Monarchy: +1 Gold per 2 Pop in Capital, any city with a National Wonder gains +10% GP generation.
Would that be a stacking bonus? So 2 NWs would give 20% Because that would be rather broken. If not it would Encourage moving NWs around just because, which isn't really the tradition style either

--Not a stacking bonus, works similar to Aesthetics where any city with a world wonder gets a +33% bonus to culture. I agree that almost anything that allows NW stacking would be nearly impossible to balance.

Right now Tradition is focused on capital and wonders. Afterall aristocracy works in all cities as well, so there is precedent here...the question is, is it a good and fun bonus?

Finisher: Can buy Great Engineers with Faith. Capital gains +10% hammers, science, culture, faith, and gold each time it gains a new population. - This is the mechanic from CSD buildings.
Still rather weak and boring imho

--Okay, what if I sweetened the pot with your personal fave, and added in a +10% bonus to food when you gain a new pop? So you get more stuff AND you grow a bit quicker. Would that work, or is the +X% on a new pop just generally too boring?

Other ideas for a finisher may be needed, seems like we are hitting an impasse.


People noted the idea of internal trade routes...personally I'm thinking of adding that to liberty I think that would be a wonderful policy idea.

 

[Stalker0]

I think I can get behind the idea of an "expand by any method" tree with this conquest idea, so let me see if I can incorporate some of the ideas I had around "war giving you benefits" with some of the work you guys have done so far.


Opener: +10% combat strength, encampment notifications, gain +3% bonus to military unit production for every policy in Honor taken.

--I'm trying this "escalating opener" idea, where every policy in the tree makes the opener a bit stronger. Also, trying to remove culture from the opening policy to balance out culture pace right at the beginning. Also I am putting in a straight up combat bonus at the top of tree, a bit more radical but lets see what it looks like.

Collectivism: Free settler, a free ranged unit spawns with new settled cities.

--I like the free ranged unit idea, so lets add that in to the point when I can immediately get a new unit for that added oomph.

Feudalism: Garrisons reduce unrest by 15% and occupied city happiness by 30%. Requires Collectivism.

--I wanted to give a more generic use for garrisons other than with occupied cities. I will admit though that as powerful as this one might be it feels dull to me.

Discipline: Gain culture from killing units. Pillaging provides culture as well as gold.

--We go to war for culture...and to steal cultural treasures!

Military Caste: Gain gold from killing units. Upgrade costs -25%. Requires Discipline.

--We go to war for gold!

Warrior Code: A Great General appears outside your capital. Great Generals generate +5 Golden Points per turn. Population reduction from city capture is reduced to 25%.

--I would really like to see other uses for great generals, especially during peace time. Here is one idea. Or maybe the GA benefit could be a use for citadels?

Finisher: Cities increase the culture cost of policies by 25% 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.[/indent]

--The GA on a capital conquest is interesting...not sure if this is the best finisher but I'll have to think about it some more.

 

[mystikx21]

Would rather leave culture on kills as Aztec UA. Culture on conquests though....

The gold or some other yield from puppet/occupied cities would be nice.

 

[Stalker0]

Would rather leave culture on kills as Aztec UA. Culture on conquests though....

The gold or some other yield from puppet/occupied cities would be nice.

I still have a strong belief that the war tree should give a meaty bonus for warring. So if not culture than some other bonus.

How about gain science from kills against a civ with more techs than you?

 

[Gazebo]

I like the incremental improvement concept (+x% for every policy taken). Easy to implement, and feels like a snazzy RPG mechanic.

Speaking of which, it'd be an interesting design system if each policy branch was thought of as an RPG skill set, where you have a % passive boost, a unique passive ability (free building, free yield, etc.), an active ability (something gained for doing something) and an 'elite' ability (the finisher). It might help up focus our design efforts so that all of the trees feel unique, yet also balance out in terms of flow and power.
G

 

[Wodhann]

I don't like those kinds of mechanics because they encourage always staying on the same tree until the end and that's not something we necessarily want.

We don't want players to "skip" policy trees because they think X tree and X tree alone will help him, and only have like 3 complete social trees with no point taken in others. We want players to have a diverse kit of social policies, and if they so choose to focus on one specific tree, that'll be also fine.

As I said, current game caters too much to the OCD need for players to always finish a tree before moving to the next one and I'm not sure if that's a healthy incentive to keep, or even encourage as you guys are trying to do.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't think it encourages staying on the same tree any more than a good finisher does. I'd say it rewards staying on the same tree, sure, but you still get the % bonus you invested into it, so opening a different tree is simply a matter of having more low % boosts versus one big % boost.

G

 

[Stalker0]

I don't like those kinds of mechanics because they encourage always staying on the same tree until the end and that's not something we necessarily want.

We don't want players to "skip" policy trees because they think X tree and X tree alone will help him, and only have like 3 complete social trees with no point taken in others. We want players to have a diverse kit of social policies, and if they so choose to focus on one specific tree, that'll be also fine.

As I said, current game caters too much to the OCD need for players to always finish a tree before moving to the next one and I'm not sure if that's a healthy incentive to keep, or even encourage as you guys are trying to do.

I agree that we don't need to force people down whole trees. That said I don't know if the escalation mechanic really encourages that. It provides a steady bonus. But if I start dipping in another tree I get a steady bonus somewhere else.

I think that pushes people down the tree less than giving large bonuses later in the tree

 

[Funak]

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"

As soon as you start focusing your city on something other than growing(which is what you do at late mid to lategame), and therefore stop growing. Any %Growth is useless. That is fact.

Also you don't need to write a essay about how growth% and food% work, I clearly already know that.

 

[Funak]

Disorder is related to city strength and garrison power, which also works thematically (Honor settlers don't need no man).



The problem is that the isolation function is built around a boolean test (connected or not connected). Reducing the amount of unhappiness caused by Isolation can't really be done via a % reduction without re-writing how the function works. That's why I don't have a policy mod for isolation, famine or pillaged tiles, as they don't calculate like the others.

G

Just make it -100% then? wouldn't be too powerful(would still fall off), and that effect already exists. Also if it is too powerful you could just lower something else to compensate.

 

[Stalker0]

I was curious what are people's thoughts about more "instant bonuses" in the trees that don't have long term gains.


Here is one example for Tradition I was pondering: "You receive a free workshop in the capital". It would be one tier down from the opener.

Now on the face you might think "I get one building that I will eventually build anyway, that is garbage!"

But on the other hard, I am giving the capital an engineer slot and a +2 hammers much earlier in the game than it normally would get. Further, that 10% bonus to building EVERYTHING is matching with aristocracy's +15% to wonders. Combined, that's a full 25% to wonders that you wouldn't get otherwise.

However, by midgame the policy loses all value...other than the little bit of maintenance you save on the free building.

Do people feel like that would be an fun policy?

 

[mystikx21]

As soon as you start focusing your city on something other than growing(which is what you do at late mid to lategame), and therefore stop growing. Any %Growth is useless. That is fact.

Also you don't need to write a essay about how growth% and food% work, I clearly already know that.

It did not appear you understood the mechanics from reading your posts. I apologize for that then.

You haven't created an argument that % growth is useless by stating that you claim it is useless. It is useful, just not as "useful". It only stops being useful if you stop growing a city at all.

That is also not an argument that % food is not too powerful to say that growth is "weak". The argument that growth is better earlier fits very well with tradition as an early tree. If there's a food bonus anywhere, it should be later (ideology?). When food bonuses would be more powerful and act in concert with accumulated growth bonuses. Frankly I'm tired of this digression. I don't see any reason to put food in tradition as a % bonus and will move on to other questions.

 

[mystikx21]

I was curious what are people's thoughts about more "instant bonuses" in the trees that don't have long term gains.


Here is one example for Tradition I was pondering: "You receive a free workshop in the capital". It would be one tier down from the opener.

Now on the face you might think "I get one building that I will eventually build anyway, that is garbage!"

But on the other hard, I am giving the capital an engineer slot and a +2 hammers much earlier in the game than it normally would get. Further, that 10% bonus to building EVERYTHING is matching with aristocracy's +15% to wonders. Combined, that's a full 25% to wonders that you wouldn't get otherwise.

However, by midgame the policy loses all value...other than the little bit of maintenance you save on the free building.

Do people feel like that would be an fun policy?

No. I was in the camp that didn't like the 4 free cultural buildings though. Others may find this more useful. I preferred policies improve things you can get anyway.

I do like the concept of policies that are instantly useful but stop being as useful provided their instant bonus is strong. The honor opener in default works that way and conceptually is fine (though I preferred your approach to it).

 

[mystikx21]

As an addendum to that, I don't mind policies that make entire tiers of buildings easier to construct in comparison to an instant building, but they're still on the weak side.

 

[Stalker0]

Frankly I'm tired of this digression. I don't see any reason to put food in tradition as a % bonus and will move on to other questions.

I agree we can table this aspect of the discussion for now. Since both food and growth are "conceptually" the same...lets work on the policies around them and then we can get more input from the community on which of the two concepts works better.

 

[Funak]

I was curious what are people's thoughts about more "instant bonuses" in the trees that don't have long term gains.


Here is one example for Tradition I was pondering: "You receive a free workshop in the capital". It would be one tier down from the opener.

Now on the face you might think "I get one building that I will eventually build anyway, that is garbage!"

But on the other hard, I am giving the capital an engineer slot and a +2 hammers much earlier in the game than it normally would get. Further, that 10% bonus to building EVERYTHING is matching with aristocracy's +15% to wonders. Combined, that's a full 25% to wonders that you wouldn't get otherwise.

However, by midgame the policy loses all value...other than the little bit of maintenance you save on the free building.

Do people feel like that would be an fun policy?

I generally dislike all policies like this, it somewhat removes the ability to go into the tree later (which is usually a bad idea anyways but having options is nice)

I think policies should give you lasting effects and effects that can't obtain with hammers/gold.