Policies

[black213]

Loo here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10445429#post10445429

Didn't find a solution there.

Didn't work even by clearing cache + moduserdata and using only TBC.

 

[Txurce]

On the SP tree it still says that Discipline is increased by 10%, not 20%.

 

[Thalassicus]

Playing b22, I chose rationalism, received my GS - and a four-turn GA.

Interesting... those changes are on the same line:

<Update>
    <Where Type="POLICY_RATIONALISM" />
    <Set GoldenAgeTurns="0" IncludesOneShotFreeUnits="true" />
</Update>

If modifying the golden age duration has no effect, I don't know what could cause it other than a vanilla bug. I double-checked to make sure that's correct spelling of the property.

@black213
Hmm... only one version of the mod installed too? Playing on a PC?

 

[Stalker0]

The policies are definitely shaping up!

I think the honor and commerce trees have definitely become more interesting. Thal, if your interested in this direction here is my next big "problem" with the trees.

Policies that generate more policies.

This includes:

1) Freedom: 100% culture for a wonder
2) Freedom: 25% policy reduction
3) Piety: 2 free policies
4) Piety: Happiness to culture

To me, these are just lazy design. They are practically mandated for culture wins, and they are boring. I get a policy, just so I can get the next one faster.

Now I do believe that a culture win currently requires these policies to be viable (especially 100% wonder culture), so adjustments would have to be made if they were adjusted.

But ultimately, policies should be about giving you different and unique bonuses, not just speeding up the culture clock....imo.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree, and changed those to other effects for about a month before Firaxis removed policy saving. After they did that I've left it at vanilla values since then, though now's a good time to work on it again.

 

[SlightlyMad]

I actually really like the happiness-to-culture effect, because it really gives you an interesting incentive to keep a small happy empire, at a time when you'd otherwise just want to expand like crazy. It might be more interesting to have it grant science instead of culture, though?

 

[Stalker0]

I actually really like the happiness-to-culture effect, because it really gives you an interesting incentive to keep a small happy empire, at a time when you'd otherwise just want to expand like crazy. It might be more interesting to have it grant science instead of culture, though?

If you think of it this way....how much culture are spending by acquiring mandate of heaven?

It takes a very long time for it to pay for itself in a lot of cases, and meanwhile provides you little benefit.

And even so, you are simply buying policies just to have more policies, which I think is very boring.

Now for example the policy that provides 2 free techs I think is fine. That's a strategic choice where you are giving up culture in order to accelerate your science.

but if there were science techs for example that only provided +X bonus to science, I would think those were pretty crappy too.

 

[Busdriver]

Usually I only take Mandate of Heaven only if I am also going to take free religion, so the two free policies end up making up for the two that I spent on these. So Mandate of Heaven is effectively free whenever I get it (depending on how you look at it I guess). If you have a small happy empire the effect can actually be really good. But if Free Religion didn't effectively make it free, it would be a pretty lousy policy, since it probably wouldn't make up for its cost, especially once you factor in the fact that it increases the cost of all subsequent policies. This is the same problem that all the culture granting policies have except Free Religion and perhaps the tradition, liberty and honor ones (does anyone know the formula for SP cost? I would like to figure out how worthwhile the culture policies are).

For this reason, the two freedom culture policies are only worthwhile for cultural victories and just make freedom necessary for a cultural victory, which is uninteresting. Perhaps replacing these with other tall empire boosters would be smart then. Constitution (+100% for cities with wonders) could provide some other benefit to wonders; maybe some other yield, based on the type of GPP granted (ie if it adds GS points give ). If that's not possible, then I'm sure we could think of something better than culture to give. Free speech (-25% policy cost) could be replaced with some other benefit to tall empires. Maybe a yield bonus that scales with the population squared?

 

[Txurce]

For this reason, the two freedom culture policies are only worthwhile for cultural victories and just make freedom necessary for a cultural victory, which is uninteresting.

That's why I usually only take the opening Freedom policy as well.

I think there's victory-type crossover on all the later policies, but it could be argued that Freedom is primarily designed for a cultural victory, Rationalism for Science, Commercial & Patronage for Diplomatic, and Autocracy & Order for Conquest. To my surprise, there are quite a few posters who view Freedom as their main late-game tree.

 

[Stalker0]

Here my initial brainstorming.

Piety provides culture and happy bonuses. Happy bonuses are used for two things:

1) Growing an empire
2) Golden Ages

Since there is no tree that augments GA's, this seems a good tree to do that.

So a few ideas (I would recommend name changes to make the abilities fit):

Mandate of Heaven: Golden Ages last X% longer.
Free Religion: Golden Ages provides X% Great Person Boost and Y% more culture.

And/Or you could give more bonuses for happiness to make getting happiness worth even more.

Mandate of Heaven: You gain gold and culture equal to 100% of your happiness bonus.
Free Religion: (in addition to something else). You gain science equal to 100% of your happiness bonus.



Freedom: Since this free already focused heavily on specialists, you could push that even further, such as:

1) Specialists gain +1 yield (Suleiman's bonus, which could be doubled if suleiman took it).
2) +X to yield for all GP buildings (academies, landmarks, citadels, etc).

 

[QDI]

Please, no science bonus in piety. Rationalism is already suffering enough!

QDI

 

[Txurce]

Please, no science bonus in piety. Rationalism is already suffering enough!

QDI

I don't know if Rationalism is suffering, but I would agree with you on keeping science out of Piety, based on my style of play. However, I think it's worth setting aside what helps or hurts one's individual game, and focus on keeping each tree as distinct as possible while making each viable in its own right.

 

[Busdriver]

That's why I usually only take the opening Freedom policy as well.

I think there's victory-type crossover on all the later policies, but it could be argued that Freedom is primarily designed for a cultural victory, Rationalism for Science, Commercial & Patronage for Diplomatic, and Autocracy & Order for Conquest. To my surprise, there are quite a few posters who view Freedom as their main late-game tree.

While the later trees all clearly offer benefits for particular victories, most of them are still useful for other victories. Patronage is still great for cultural and science, and Commerce is great for conquest. Rationalism is good for getting to globalism quicker for diplomacy or for getting to the powerful late game units sooner for conquest. Autocracy will likely never be useful for anything other than conquest. Order is useful for any big empire, which mostly means conquest and science.

Freedom, with the exception of the opener and Civil Society (half food specialists), is really only useful for cultural victories; I think it would be more interesting and versatile as a tall empire tree. This would still probably benefit cultural victory the most, since this is the victory condition that is most likely to use a small, tall empire. But this way it would be more useful for the other victory types. In particular, I think adding something like a tall empire version of Communism, which grants production proportional to the square of population would achieve this. It could be something other than production, or a power other than 2, but I think a policy like this could make a few monster cities more able to compete with big sprawling empires.

 

[iWant921nooow]

@busdriver

I really like that idea. Getting an extra bonus in cities based on their population is something I'd really like to see. Putting it in the freedom tree could be pretty helpful since I pretty much always go for freedom when playing tall empire, but I dont necessarily always go for a cultural victory.

dzx

 

[jacktannery]

I've just played a conquest game and took the new Commerce tree. I had been warring from the start as the Aztek (only gave up because I had allied every City State and the combat animations took forever - you really have to fix the 'quick combat' bug Thal).

I was at war from the start of the game, and by the time I reached Renaissance I had captured half the world, but everyone hated me and no-one would trade. I had all the luxury resources and c. 17 extra copies which I could not trade. Usually this is a real problem, but with the new commerce tree these extra copies of luxury resources give me +1 each, just when I needed it most.

This change to the commerce tree is brilliant, and makes commerce an excellent choice for huge empires withy happiness problems that have no-one to trade with. It sort of represents the British Empire internal trade, and Mercanalism. And I strongly recommend commerce for all warmongers.

 

[Seek]

I agree, and changed those to other effects for about a month before Firaxis removed policy saving. After they did that I've left it at vanilla values since then, though now's a good time to work on it again.

I'm a bit leery of ditching every culture-booster from SPs - if I'm playing culture it's fun to get it really cranking asap with those policies. (Plus it's an interesting tradeoff to get them in lieu of something more substantive.) Anyway, if you do decide to do so I'd consider putting the victory back at five trees as it would be a real slog to get six without those SPs.

 

[Txurce]

While the later trees all clearly offer benefits for particular victories, most of them are still useful for other victories...

Freedom, with the exception of the opener and Civil Society (half food specialists), is really only useful for cultural victories; I think it would be more interesting and versatile as a tall empire tree...

In particular, I think adding something like a tall empire version of Communism, which grants production proportional to the square of population would achieve this. It could be something other than production, or a power other than 2, but I think a policy like this could make a few monster cities more able to compete with big sprawling empires.

Again, I like your ideas, but worry about them in context. Freedom is indeed the Culture tree, and if those multiplier policies are changed, then people seeking cultural victories really have to troll for useful policies.

Also, as a player who almost always goes for tall empires, I've never felt I can't compete with sprawling empires. In fact, I'm now trying "wide" science victories to see if they can compete with"tall"!

I'm a bit leery of ditching every culture-booster from SPs - if I'm playing culture it's fun to get it really cranking asap with those policies. (Plus it's an interesting tradeoff to get them in lieu of something more substantive.) Anyway, if you do decide to do so I'd consider putting the victory back at five trees as it would be a real slog to get six without those SPs.

 

[Stalker0]

Again, I like your ideas, but worry about them in context. Freedom is indeed the Culture tree, and if those multiplier policies are changed, then people seeking cultural victories really have to troll for useful policies.

Culture victories would definately need to be adjusted for the loss of these policies. But you would also have more interesting policies to choose from when going for a culture win, instead of automatic gimme policies.

 

[Thalassicus]

(only gave up because I had allied every City State and the combat animations took forever - you really have to fix the 'quick combat' bug Thal)

Just to clarify this:

• We detect when things happen with "events" provided by Firaxis. These events cannot be modified by us, they're coded in the c++ available only to Firaxis.
• The "combat ended" event only happens when the combat animation is visible.

Fixing this bug requires one of:

• Firaxis releases the c++.
• Firaxis fixes the bug themselves.

"A" is more likely, but probably won't happen for at least a few months.

Anyway, if you do decide to do so I'd consider putting the victory back at five trees as it would be a real slog to get six without those SPs.

If I reduced culture income I'd simply reduce culture costs (this curve). The number of policies we acquire is handled independently from income/expenses... if that makes sense.

I agree with Stalker0's and Busdriver's reasoning: if a choice is only good in one situation, and better than all other choices in that situation, then it's really no choice at all. It's similar to my reason for changing England's unique unit. Elizabeth was only good on Archipelago maps and better than anyone else on those maps. With a Factory UB she's more well-rounded now.

These sort of major changes I take my time with to consider all angles of the topic. I consider options for a long while while playing various games, considering what effect particular changes might have at decision-making points in the game. I'll think over the ideas floating around here, but probably won't make any significant changes in this regard for a long while.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

As I intimated before, I'd very much like to see the Autocracy Policies modified to be useful for builder players as well as for Warmongers.

Aussie.