Policies

[Sneaks]

I would definitely agree that Meritocracy should still be a happy per city policy.

I disagree about moving the Tradition base policy, though I get the logic of doing so. Perhaps making Liberty and Tradition mutually lock out might be a wiser solution. As it is, the AI is already locked out from choosing both. Only humans can choose both branches.

 

[Thalassicus]

1/city was commonly considered overpowered (thus its nerf), but 0.5 per city was useless (clearly worse than Piety policies). In general it's just too hard to balance because it's so ICS-friendly.

I think I have an idea for how to deal with republic... will try some things.

The idea of a tradition/liberty lockout is interesting... hmm... sort of following Blizzard's lockout pattern mentioned before...

My instinct is is I'd rather simply make the option of doing both less-desirable, without actually blocking it. Ensuring policies deep in the tree are most valuable is a good way to do this.

Ironically, back before patch .135 I changed Tradition from 2 to +33% growth in the capital. Firaxis changed it to +50% in .135, and people feel it's overpowered... hmmm!

I'll revert it back to +33%.

 

[rhammer640]

I agree, i love the 2 worker policy and its actually made it so that between tradition and liberty i have a hard time choosing during the early game. I like that feeling as i feel like my choices are having real consequences on how my game will turn out.

One way to balance honor might be to buff barbarian activity. The Barbarins! mod is beginning to do this and i think it might be just what the tree needs. It would make the trees existing policies useful rather then having to buff them, which could screw up gameplay a ton.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

I downloaded the fewer poor policies on mod browser (not the combined mod, just the policies) but not all the changes listed took effect.

(I'm referencing your web site here)

For example:
Legalism is still 33%
Monarchy still gives 1 gold for every 2 pop,
Rep still only gives 1 cpt
etc

While others are changed, is there another version out in mod browser with all the changes?

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I'm not saying that the 2 free workers policy isn't useful. If you get it at a time when you have 2 workers, that's a 100% increase in work. I'm saying it's uninteresting. Also there's already a worker speed improvement in that tree.
As for the policy that was +1 per city with which was too high and then +0.5 per city with which was too low. Am I oversimplifying it by saying, why not 0.75?

 

[juckie]

Is it possible to script Trade Unions something like this:
Trade Unions: -60% paid on roads and railroads, -5% per city city beyond the capital. With a minimum of 25%. (or something along these lines)

This would make it way more usefull for a small (4 city-45%) empire than it is now. I feel such a balance should be used more. It adds in the strategic placement and planning of cities.

Also, with a small empire you mostly get a few more tiles between cities, this way you can negate that a bit.

I find the 30% of rationality a bit much. 15% was a bit lackluster, but 30% is such a high number. I think it could be decreased a bit, to 25%.

Patronage, I do not have the game running at the moment so I don't know the name, but the policy at the end, where CS's grant great persons. Can you boost that?
It feels quite random, and very underpowered for it's tier in the tree.
And maybe add a controlling element; we have 3 CS's (unless you got a fourth one coming).
Military spawn 60% Generals (khan's) and the other 4 each have a 10% chance.
Cultural spawns Artists and Merchants, 50/50.
Maritime spawns Engineers and Scientist, 50/50.
This gives a 60% chance to spawn any, but with some control.


I remember seeing a list somewhere with all the possible policy traits, or were those civ traits?

 

[Ahriman]

I'll revert it back to +33%.

I think at 33% it'll be fine.

I'd like to find some way to make Meritocracy about happiness. 0.75 per city?
Is there some other way we could make a happiness boost that favors lots of expansion but has some other tough-to-meet criteria to get the bonus?
Maybe, it requires a particular building, and gives +X happy for that? Can't think of anything appropriate though.
Maybe it provides +0.5 happy per connected city and some other minor effect?

I think the 2-worker policy is fine, and interesting. Its neat to have some policies that give an instant payoff, while others give a long-lasting bonus.

A nice boost for honor would be if it could slightly boost the gold from barbarian village capture. Not sure if thats possible codewise.

-60% paid on roads and railroads, -5% per city city beyond the capital.

Why should a smaller empire get a larger percentage benefit?
A policy designed to reduce road maintenance *should* be more valuable to a spread-out civ.
It seems unnecessarily confusing to the user as well.

Patronage, I do not have the game running at the moment so I don't know the name, but the policy at the end, where CS's grant great persons. Can you boost that?

I think this policy is sufficiently powerful as it is. You can always burn the GPs for golden ages if you want (compare it to Reformation or Rationalism unlock, which gives a single, brief, golden age). I don't see that being unable to control the GP type is problematic.

I do wonder, based on testing, if the research boosting one gives a bit too much benefit though.

 

[Seek]

Maybe it provides +0.5 happy per connected city and some other minor effect?

Like 1 hammer per city?

A nice boost for honor would be if it could slightly boost the gold from barbarian village capture. Not sure if thats possible codewise.

A small production boost for land units in addition to the barb combat bonus would work well here, I think. Around 10% would make opening the tree much more attractive.

I find the 30% of rationality a bit much. 15% was a bit lackluster, but 30% is such a high number. I think it could be decreased a bit, to 25%.

Agree.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

How about instead of a happiness bonus to Liberty you should have a +2 food bonus to all cities connected to capital.

 

[Thalassicus]

@He-Who-Hunts
Sorry about the confusion there. Due to a ModBuddy bug (see my signature) I'm unable to remove some really old versions of the mod from the mod browser.

I'd recommend downloading the "Combined" package (link). It contains everything you'll need, and if you want to go without the other mods in the package you can remove them (instructions at the link).


@Minor Annoyance
I think the problem with +X/city is just that the policy is inherently hard to balance. Going from absolutely-overpowered to completely-worthless from a 1.0 to 0.5 drop means it's a very fine line.


@juckie
I'll investigate those possibilities, though it'll probably be difficult if possible, so no promises.

I think I posted a list of all the built-in policy stats earlier in the thread.


@Ahriman
I think a gold bonus from capturing barbarian camps might actually be rather easy, if I can intercept the call to give the gold. It might not be easy to do for AIs, though.

The power of the research-boosting policy in Patronage is why I moved the weakest policy (Aesthetics) as its new prerequisite... lessens the total effect of the 3-policy chain. I could nerf it slightly too.


@He-Who-Hunts
I really like the idea of a flat +X per-city boost deep in the Liberty tree, because it would actually combine well with a plan on my todo list to redesign Maritime city-states. I've been considering either A) limiting their bonus to a certain number of cities or B) changing it to a % growth bonus.

 

[Ahriman]

I think the problem with +X/city is just that the policy is inherently hard to balance. Going from absolutely-overpowered to completely-worthless from a 1.0 to 0.5 drop means it's a very fine line.

Not sure that 0.5 is *comepletely* worthless, but there definitely needs to be some happiness policy here. Liberty is the tree about city-spam, and city-spam is restricted in part by happiness, so Liberty needs to have a policy that reduces the happiness problem of cityspam.
+0.5 happy per connected city and +1 hammer per connected city seems reasonable, particularly if you tweak the requirements such that it requires, say, both Representation and Republic.

Or maybe we should have:
Left side:
Collective rule, cities start size 2.
Citizenship, 2 free workers

Right side:
Meritocracy: +33% worker build rate
Representation: +2 culture per city
Republic: Requires Representation, Citizenship, +0.5 happy per connected city, +1 hammer per city.

If feels like Representation and Citizenship should be feeding into Republic, and that Republic should be the high end achievement here.

The power of the research-boosting policy in Patronage is why I moved the weakest policy (Aesthetics) as its new prerequisite... lessens the total effect of the 3-policy chain. I could nerf it slightly too.

I see your point.
I think its a bit hard to evaluate because I might see a huge boost in research from my city states and attribute it to this policy, but not really also consider how much science I could have got from eg buying libraries in my cities instead of CS alliances.
We could consider reducing it to 25% though, down from 1/3.

I really like the idea of a flat +X per-city boost deep in the Liberty tree, because it would actually combine well with a plan on my todo list to redesign Maritime city-states.

I think MCSs have already proved how problematic +x food per city is. Its an interesting idea, but I'd probably keep away from that, personally.
I guess though it could be a substitute from a happiness booster though, so it helps expansion but in a way that doesn't relax the happiness constraints.

 

[Sneaks]

I like Ahriman's ideas a lot here, especially in regards to Liberty. I think it is important that every branch maintains having 1 happiness policy. Honestly, the best fit here would be something akin to Planned Economy lowering unhappiness from number of cities, but that just creates issues elsewhere.

 

[Ahriman]

What do you think are the main differences between +happy per city and -unhappy from # cities?

I like the idea of getting benefits only to cities that are connected to the trade network.

As for the comparisons to Theocracy, one possibility would be to make theocracy only apply to founded or courthoused cities, not puppets (ruling through a puppet government often meant respecting some local autonomy, such as on freedom of religion - historically a puppet government wouldn't really be a member of your state church, in general), and then tweak the numbers to balance it.
I realize that's probably not possible with current code hooks though.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

Thal,

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but the mod isnt showing up, I put the file "Balance - Policies" in the MODS directory of civ 5 but it never appears on my list in game...

Any idea whats happening?

 

[Thalassicus]

@Ahriman
Well, consider that to have Meritocracy give the same effect as a single luxury resource (or the Piety base policy), one must have 10 cities. It fares worse when compared to Theocracy. Even at the original -20% value, for 10 cities of size 5 Theocracy is double the effect of Meritocracy.

About the Liberty tree... wouldn't moving it down a tier be a nerf? Especially if players are already a bit into the game and don't need the left side of the tree. This is how things look in the current beta (I've been falling behind on documentation, sorry about that! ):

I also like the idea of only giving these bonuses with connected cities, but currently that's only possible with the happiness.


@He-Who-Hunts
Just leave the file in the folder you find it. To have only the Policies mod active, it should look like this:

Notice the "_" underscore in front of the names of other mod folders, disabling them. It's important to keep the "Unofficial Patch" enabled because everything else I make relies on tools created there.

 

[Seek]

About the Liberty tree... wouldn't moving it down a tier be a nerf?

I think that's the idea. I was actually going to suggest the same thing!

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

Thanks Thal,

also with regards to Liberty, I've always been of the opinion that it REALLY should be compatible with Autocracy. I'm not even really sure why its called Liberty, its really more expansionist and all kinds of civilizations (peaceful and hostile) have had natural expansions.

I think the change would go well with Autocracy, anytime I've attempted to utilize it in any capacity I've always tried to make a fairly nice sized empire and then spam an army (more troops, more resources, less maintenance) however it never seems worth the bother when you can go honor earlier on.

 

[Ahriman]

Well, consider that to have Meritocracy give the same effect as a single luxury resource (or the Piety base policy), one must have 10 cities.

Yes, but slightly underpowered doesn't mean weak.
And thats not really a fair comparison because Meritocracy will give you a *bigger* bonus when you have more than 10 cities, whereas Piety is capped at 5.

It fares worse when compared to Theocracy.

Which is the best happiness policy in the game, and is arguably too strong, and is arguably the only non-culture-victory reason to ever use the Piety tree. Everything else in Piety is mediocre.

This is how things look in the current beta (I've been falling behind on documentation

Ok, didn't know that. Hard to keep track of all the changes when they're being made so fast.
That version is ok.

I also like the idea of only giving these bonuses with connected cities, but currently that's only possible with the happiness.

Thats fine.

 

[rhammer640]

so i felt that the thread on improving honor sort of got dropped after liberty got fixed, figured i would bring it back up.

1: Unlock; the problem as i see it is that barbarians are not a problem really ever to worry about. The solution is either to make them a lot harder to make the combat bonus useful, (more camps or less FoW required for spawn) or to get rid of the combat bonus and replace it with increased gold from camps and possibly raising or removing the xp cap from barbs.
(i would be in favor of doing both )

2: Combat is really not an issue against the AI because of how bad it is. The 15% flanking increase (discipline) ends up being excessive in my opinion. I would suggest bringing the free great general here because it adds discipline to the troops, maybe add a 5% increase to its ability. Either that or just change it so that the GG ability is doubled or something to keep with the theme of flanking if ppl like that added attacking power.

3: Warrior code would then change to give 2 free land troops and one ranged of the highest non-resource level at your capital or something like that to show your civs new commitment to the way of the warrior. It would make honor a bit more enticing for ppl not looking to go on conquest but want some better defense. It fits with the new '2 free worker' policy from liberty

I think beyond that the others are fine. I know you (thal) are busy modding other things now but figured it wouldn't hurt to get the conversation rolling.

 

[Seek]

Republic is great now, but I'm finding that I ignore the left half of Liberty if I don't take the tree early on - perhaps Republic should require Citizenship or at least Collective Rule.