Policies

[Thalassicus]

I agree the tapering off value over time for the left policies is bit too steep right now, with 3 policies in liberty only particularly useful in the early game. One thought I had is to merge the two policies somehow (perhaps 2pop in new cities + 1 free worker for collective rule) and add a new policy with long-term benefits in citizenship's place.

 

[Ahriman]

I think something like this would be a good idea.

I'd tend to move the free workers to Collective Rule (so, first pick after unlock) and then remove the "new cities start at 2" ability and come up with something else longterm.

I think the new cities start at 2 is just generally a boring ability.
But we could work with some merge. Possibly 2 free workers and new cities start with 50% food filled?

As to another longterm effect; +2 gold per city? We already have free happiness, production, culture.

 

[Thalassicus]

Something I considered when removing the food-everywhere effect from maritime citystates is replacing the 2-start effect with +1-2 per city. Both effects mainly help new cities, but a small amount of food would have more lasting benefit. The balance is different from the old maritime effect since the comparison is against other policies, more comparable to Republic's +1.

 

[Seek]

Something I considered when removing the food-everywhere effect from maritime citystates is replacing the 2-start effect with +1-2 per city. Both effects mainly help new cities, but a small amount of food would have more lasting benefit. The balance is different from the old maritime effect since the comparison is against other policies, more comparable to Republic's +1.

I was going to suggest a small (5-10%) bonus to food in all cities, but I think this works even better.

I dislike the gold/city idea - ICS already brings in heaps of gold.

 

[Ahriman]

+1 food per city? That seems reasonable. I agree thats probably more interesting than gold. +2 might be too strong, especially as an early game growth catapult.
Not sure how it relates to "Citizenship" though.
Maybe change it to "Private land ownership" or "Commercial farmers" or "Agricultural landholders" or "Yeomen farmers" or something.
Something that gets across the idea of freeman farmers who own their own land, and are thus more productive. Which definitely seems historically and economically reasonable.
Private land ownership is much more productive than collective ownership or serfdom. [Though, if the individual land plots get too small, then you lose economies of scale and productivity also falls.]

 

[Roto-Router]

Hey guys, first time poster in this subforum. Thanks for all the work done on the Balance Mods; they've put a lot of enjoyment back in the game for me.

What do you think about the changes to the Tradition tree in the upcoming patch? Oligarchy in particular seems pretty overpowered; I love the basic idea but for the mod it might be better to, for example, give a 50% discount on maintenance cost for any unit which is garrisoned.

# Tradition: Culture border expansion discount in cities placed on Tradition branch opener. Discount increases over the course of the game. Also grants +3 Culture in the capital.
# Aristocracy: Wonder bonus reduced by 5% to 20%.
# Legalism: Provides a free Culture building in your first 4 cities.
# Oligarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance, and cities with a garrison gain +100% ranged combat strength.
# Landed Elite: +15% Growth, and +2 Food per city.
# Monarchy: +1 Gold and -1 Unhappiness for every 2 Citizens in your capital.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm not really sure about the new Tradition and Liberty policies. They're such radical changes I think I'll need a few play-test games to get a good feel for what's too powerful and what's underpowered. Just comparing Oligarchy to its previous form though, the strength bonus was really quite good so I'm uncertain yet whether this is a buff or nerf. It does certainly shift Tradition to be an economy-focused tree.

 

[Seek]

It does certainly shift Tradition to be an economy-focused tree.

A good thing, I think - I've found my economy stagnates when playing with a small empire. I get to ~100GPT and stay there for the rest of the game.

Speaking of which, is it possible to make trade routes nonlinear - so, for instance, a size 10 city yielded twice as much as two size 5 cities? It would be a further ICS inhibitor and would help small empires keep up financially. From my understanding, ICS empires still have large capitals, so being based on capital population doesn't actually hurt the strat.

 

[Sneaks]

Having a size ten city give three times or more gold than two size five cities would really be the only ics inhibitor, but honestly not a very good one. The change does not alter the fact that newcities are simply a gear investment with very low negayive

 

[Seek]

Having a size ten city give three times or more gold than two size five cities would really be the only ics inhibitor, but honestly not a very good one. The change does not alter the fact that newcities are simply a gear investment with very low negayive

Brought it up in General Discussions with additional thoughts since this conversation doesn't belong here.

 

[Ahriman]

I think ICS has been punished enough already in this mod with all the building boosts, I think the ideal balance should have wide vs tall empires both be feasible, not be heavily biased towards tall.
But if you really want to make ICS hurt more using the existing mechanics, then increase the unhappiness per city up to 3.

 

[Seek]

I think ICS has been punished enough already in this mod with all the building boosts, I think the ideal balance should have wide vs tall empires both be feasible, not be heavily biased towards tall.
But if you really want to make ICS hurt more using the existing mechanics, then increase the unhappiness per city up to 3.

The trade route idea didn't seem to gain any traction, and iirc, TBM already has 3/City.

 

[DeAnno]

The current incarnation of Liberty seems *really* strong early game, especially in comparison to Honor, and with the Tradition food bonus moved down in the tree. Whenever I play any civ with a culture boost (Monty, Nappy) or get a culture hut, taking the Liberty opener for a further culture boost, and then parlaying that into the very early free settler feels like a big advantage. And on the other side of the tree, you have a free worker along with the +25% worker speed now, and a free GE one tier down to pop a GA or get a choice otherwise-ungettable Wonder (I haven't had the opportunity yet, but I imagine you could use this tactic to do a CS slingshot even on high difficulty levels).

Maybe Liberty doesn't need to be nerfed, but I feel like Honor needs a significant buff at least, possibly beyond current talk of getting culture from garrisoned units.

 

[Ahriman]

I think Honor policies can be tweaked primarily through parameter value changes; eg how large is the adjacent unit bonus from Discipline, how large is the cost reduction from professional army, how much extra combat XP, etc.
I think the core design of what the policies do (other than the unlock) is decent.

 

[SlightlyMad]

The biggest problem with the honor tree is not that the bonuses aren't strong enough, but that combat bonuses are relatively irrelevant. When the AI marches a trebuchet out into the front lines, I'm going to defeat it whether I have a combat bonus of 25%, 50%, or even no combat bonus at all. Not to say that the AI can never be effective in combat, but the outcome of a war generally has more to do with how many blunders the AI makes than how effective your army is.

 

[Ahriman]

but that combat bonuses are relatively irrelevant

I disagree with this. When the enemy is throwing huge hordes of units at you, taking less damage certainly matters. When attacking cities, strength certainly matters.

When the AI marches a trebuchet out into the front lines

Yeah, its annoying how often that this happens, but that isn't most fights. The enemy still builds a lot of melee units, and strength matters when you're fighting those.

 

[SlightlyMad]

It seems to me that you can exploit a blunder of some kind more often than not, especially once you learn how to exploit them and draw them out. I do absolutely agree that it's not every fight though, which is why I call it "relatively" useless. It's not completely useless, but something that is useful all the time, like most of the other trees, is generally better than something that is only useful some of the time.

 

[Ahriman]

I think its pretty clear that strength still matters in combat, otherwise you could easily conquer every civ from the get-go. I don't find that to be the case, on a sufficiently high difficulty level.

I think that Honor *should* be a tree about boosting combat. If you don't find combat boosts to be useful, then don't pick Honor.

After all, in Civ 5 as in every previous Civ, the main benefit of having a bigger economy is that it lets you build more military units and get more tech, and the main benefits of more tech is better military units (higher strength). Because war is the main way in which the other players frustrate your efforts to win.

If nothing else, combat boosts let you win faster, or let you win with a smaller military, both of which are valuable.

I think its just wrong to say "combat strength doesn't matter, so lets not make the combat tree about combat boosts". The Honor tree should not be about getting non-combat boosts from a military. We have one policy in Honor that does that, which I think is sufficient.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm relatively okay with most of the honor tree, except the opener. I feel it trivializes barbarians. I've been searching for ways to deal with that for months now without success, so if anyone has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

The clarify this a bit, I want to keep the barbarian camp reveal effect, while replacing the barbarian combat bonus with some other new effect.

 

[juckie]

I'm relatively okay with most of the honor tree, except the opener. I feel it trivializes barbarians. I've been searching for ways to deal with that for months now without success, so if anyone has ideas I'm open to suggestions.

The clarify this a bit, I want to keep the barbarian camp reveal effect, while replacing the barbarian combat bonus with some other new effect.

So you want the % bonus to change into something else?
Add a new promotion. A military unit who conquers/pillages (somethings) a Barbarian camp gains this promotion. Like a Rite of passage or initiation.

The promotion could be anything from a straight forward xx% bonus to some sort of toughness bonus, in which a unit gets -1 on damage taken (so instead of taking x damage, it takes x-1 damage), if this can be coded...