Policies

[Thalassicus]

Also in 106 what's the point of nerfing the tradition opener even further (it was indirectly nerfed once already by increasing the first policy from 25 to 50)? It's arguably much worse than the liberty opener now, which only needs two total cities to be equal.

The tradition opener also speeds border expansion.

Perhaps a page from Ceremonial Rites, so that Liberty Finisher gives Colosseum automatically to all cities?

This is actually possible now that I redesigned Ceremonial Rites in the Aug 9th v9.1.17 beta. I'd forgotten that's available now! Let me explain how the effect works...


Mod

• When we get the policy and each turn after, it checks to make sure our oldest # cities have one free building of a specified Flavor.
• If a checked city does not have a free building, it places the highest-Flavor building that city can construct.
• Can determine the Flavor to use and # of cities.
• Sorts cities by turn acquired (built or captured).
• Sorts buildings by Flavor value (culture, happiness, military training, naval, etc). Flavors are mainly used for AI decision-making, but I also use them to sort items on the city production panel.

Vanilla

• At the time we acquire the policy or build a new city afterward, it places the most cost effective culture building in our X oldest cities.
• Cost effectiveness is determined by (flat culture / cost). This means structures like the Opera House (percentage) or Museum (per population) are considered worse than Monasteries (flat).
• Cannot specify a different type of building, only the # of cities.
• It does not continue checking each turn to ensure a building is placed. This means if we do not have a prerequisite technology yet, or a city is lost, the policy breaks and doesn't correctly give rewards.

These are all the flavors in the game (some for units):

OFFENSE
DEFENSE
CITY_DEFENSE
MILITARY_TRAINING
RECON
RANGED
MOBILE
NAVAL
NAVAL_RECON
NAVAL_TILE_IMPROVEMENT
AIR
EXPANSION
TILE_IMPROVEMENT
INFRASTRUCTURE
PRODUCTION
GOLD
SCIENCE
CULTURE
HAPPINESS
GREAT_PEOPLE
WONDER
RELIGION
DIPLOMACY
SPACESHIP
WATER_CONNECTION
NUKE
ANTIAIR

 

[Ahriman]

Does this mean then that you couldn't give only a Colosseum, you'd have to give a free happiness building (eg give a theater if they had the colosseum and circus built and had printing press tech)? That would be too strong I think if it affected every city, and I think the point of the policy being in Liberty would be to boost every city.

 

[Thalassicus]

I manually coded the current effect so we can do whatever we want with it.

It's been pointed out Liberty does not have as much long-term usefulness as Tradition/Honor. If we fill out Liberty after building lots of Colosseums (probably not a common situation), later in the game we get some free Theaters. This would improve Liberty's long-term staying power, which might be a good thing?

 

[tlaurila]

So ...
1) What about puppets? Are they included in cities?
2) What does the mechanism do if I capture a city from another Civ, under which the city received a free building of flavor, and that building did (or did not) get destroyed in conquest?

 

[Ahriman]

If we fill out Liberty after building lots of Colosseums (probably not a common situation), later in the game we get some free Theaters. This would improve Liberty's long-term staying power, which might be a good thing?

I think a free happiness building in *every* city you ever build would be too strong.
Maybe it would be ok if it was a one-shot effect, that only gave the building to your existing cities, but not new cities.

Puppets would certainly count, I would think. I assumed that it would trigger on newly conquered cities, looking at whatever they had after buildings were destroyed.

 

[Thalassicus]

Meritocracy
5 for empire.
1 per city.
Stacks with other effects.

Happiness from defense buildings
1 - 4 per city.
Requires production time.
Stacks with other effects.

Free happiness buildings
2 per city (usually).
Cost maintenance.
Does not stack.

My instinct is #2 and #3 are approximately equal in usefulness, and both somewhat better than #1. It's been said Liberty needs a buff, so this is it.

@tlaurila
Cities are cities. If there were restrictions I'd say "non-occupied cities" or such. The information is stored on a per-city basis, not per-player.

 

[Ahriman]

Doesn't that argument just highlight how weak the Ceremonial Burial policy is then? I don't think a happiness building is weaker than a culture building, but the Liberty (you said Freedom, but this is a typo) policy works in all cities rather than just in 4.

Also, this should serve to highlight how weak the Mandate from heaven policy is. If you're very lucky, maybe +10 culture per turn empire wide? And that is with 20 excess happiness.

 

[Thalassicus]

Ceremonial Burial is 2 policies into Tradition while the new effect is 6 policies into Liberty. I like high-tier policies to generally be more powerful than low-tier ones. (The rationalism finisher is a notable exception... not intentionally, just because I haven't had time to work on that tree.) I've seen feedback the Tradition tree is considered strong and Liberty weak, so I want to buff Liberty with a powerful finisher.

 

[Ahriman]

Ceremonial Burial is 2 policies into Tradition while the new effect is 6 policies into Liberty. I like high-tier policies to generally be more powerful than low-tier ones, to reward dedicated investment.

Finishers aren't policies. I agree that a high-tier policy pick should be stronger than a low-tier policy pick, but a finisher bonus isn't a full policy, and should arguably be weaker than a policy that requires an actual pick.

Also, Ceremonial burial may be 2 policies into tradition, but in practice nobody is going to take it as an early pick because it doesn't really have particular early game advantage, as compared to most of the other policies; I nearly always go right side, then left side, then Ceremonial burial last. [Sometimes I'll get Oligarchy earlier.] So being available early has no value.

I've seen feedback the Tradition tree is considered strong and Liberty weak, so I'm okay with buffing Liberty.

Agreed, but I think there needs to be some balance at a policy level not just a tree level. Tradition having good policies isn't much excuse for having a stinker policy.

Similarly for Mandate of Heaven; Piety isn't particularly good either (it is very narrow in focus).

 

[Zaldron]

Also, Ceremonial burial may be 2 policies into tradition, but in practice nobody is going to take it as an early pick because it doesn't really have particular early game advantage, as compared to most of the other policies; I nearly always go right side, then left side, then Ceremonial burial last. [Sometimes I'll get Oligarchy earlier.] So being available early has no value.

I actually follow the exact same order that you do in tradition. I feel that Ceremonial burial is definitely the weakest of even the first tier choices (not to mention that it gets more powerful if you hold off on it). Would it be too powerful to add a small production modifier for culture buildings to it?

 

[Sneaks]

Meritocracy
5 for empire.
1 per city.
Stacks with other effects.

Happiness from defense buildings
1 - 4 per city.
Requires production time.
Stacks with other effects.

Free happiness buildings
2 per city (usually).
Cost maintenance.
Does not stack.

My instinct is #2 and #3 are approximately equal in usefulness, and both somewhat better than #1. It's been said Freedom needs a buff, so this is it.

@tlaurila
Cities are cities. If there were restrictions I'd say "non-occupied cities" or such. The information is stored on a per-city basis, not per-player.

Who has said Freedom needs a buff? Its still probably the single best policy tree in the game.

 

[Txurce]

Who has said Freedom needs a buff? Its still probably the single best policy tree in the game.

I think Thal meant Liberty.

 

[Sneaks]

To add my two cents:

I absolutely 100% hate hate hate any policy that would give a free Happiness building in every city. Such a policy would be 1. Way way way too strong considering how early it is (it is easy to finish off the full Liberty tree before Education) 2. Allow players to pretty much ignore happiness as a mechanic for wide empires

 

[Atlas627]

I think giving the cultural building bonus in Tradition to the first 5 cities is very strange. Shouldn't tradition be encouraging tall? So you add another building for another city? Isn't that wide?

How about we change that policy entirely? Can we do that? I would propose something about cultural defenses.

Also, the changes to Piety are interesting. I always go tall when I go culture, and the Piety opener conflicts badly with Ceremonial Burial (the free culture building policy in Tradition). I still feel the same way about whatever its swapped to. Can we just scrap this one entirely and change it? It feels weak anyway. How about we move the happiness from walls to here?

 

[Ahriman]

I always go tall when I go culture, and the Piety opener conflicts badly with Ceremonial Burial (the free culture building policy in Tradition).

I agree with this. I find the Piety opener very weak, and so arguably the opener could change if we didn't change Ceremonial Rites.
I also find Piety quite weak at the moment overall. The sensible nerfs to Tradition happiness have meant that Mandate of Heaven is near useless (particularly beyond the early game) and I find most of the other Piety policies a bit weak too.

 

[Thalassicus]

@GamerKG
It's difficult to create entirely new policy effects... mostly we can just adapt existing ones to other policies. I could add a + to defense buildings effect in Piety if that's what you mean by "cultural defenses."

@Ahriman
I'll buff several policies in Piety.

 

[tlaurila]

Piety/Commerce/Patronage come along at about the same time. Of these, I've pretty much always ended up with commerce. The +10% to gold is quite very strong. Perhaps it would serve better as the finisher? Commerce also has both gold and happiness, which seems to fit all. That leaves Piety just for those going to Culture victory, doesn't it? Couple to that that Commerce doesn't ban any tree, and Rationalism is pretty good for anyone as everyone needs science.

So how about making Piety and Commerce both more clearly thematic? Commerce has gold and naval, which is fine, but perhaps it doesn't need happiness boosting? And perhaps Piety could use a clear improvement in its Happiness boost, to give it appeal beyond the Culture-hoards? Perhaps then the extra Piety happiness, which is appealing to wide civs and war-mongers, need then be countered by reducing the bonuses from extra happiness Piety brings, so as to not make it too good for tall culture civs.

Finally, I find the happiness from extra luxuries from commerce odd in that it actually decreases the rewards on trading, since your surplus is now worth something, too.

 

[Sneaks]

I agree with this. I find the Piety opener very weak, and so arguably the opener could change if we didn't change Ceremonial Rites.
I also find Piety quite weak at the moment overall. The sensible nerfs to Tradition happiness have meant that Mandate of Heaven is near useless (particularly beyond the early game) and I find most of the other Piety policies a bit weak too.

Really? I always found Piety an incredible tree. Statistically, it provides a boatload of happiness AND immediately turns that happiness into culture as well. The tree also requires the least amount of policies to finish, thanks to using the free policy in the third tier to grab the remaining one. I do need see the need to do anything to buff it. It absolutely has less variety to it than Liberty or Tradition, but it does not need it. It is a culture/happiness tree through and through, and does a great job at massively boosting the potential of both yields. I think a testament of this strength is that I often grab the tree even in non-culture games because the happiness boosts are so wonderful for wide empires.

 

[Atlas627]

Even though I consistently go tall culture, I still don't like Piety. It feels too weak. And if I'm not going for culture, I almost always skip Piety. It simply doesn't help enough to justify spending time on its SPs.

I think Piety should be about Happiness, and turning that happiness into culture. I liked the opener much better when it gave happiness (way back when). Also the policy that reduced unhappiness was nice, but perhaps favored tall empires too much? This new one about temples giving gold is so weird, it doesn't really synergize well with anything in Piety.

@Thal- By cultural defenses I mean the city adds its culture to its strength somehow. Isn't that already coded but just unused?

 

[tlaurila]

It would make sense that openers for trees that ban another tree are clearly above average in overall power, doesn't it?