Policies

[Babri]

I just realized that, after this latest patch, entering a new Era no longer grants you a free policy. You still need 6 branches to win a Culture Victory.

Also, I'm sure everyone here would be eternally grateful if you could change all of the policies not currently affected by this patch back to the way they were before the developers "fixed" them.

I've the same problem. I am not getting social polices at each era anymore.

 

[SlightlyMad]

I've the same problem. I am not getting social polices at each era anymore.

Works for me.

 

[Thalassicus]

Make sure you have the latest version... it worked properly in my current game.

 

[Babri]

Make sure you have the latest version... it worked properly in my current game.

What is the latest version ? I am using v11.

 

[Babri]

I feel that Total War policy is not that good with the latest patch because it is now more difficult to time your invasion with the policy. So are you going to change it ?

 

[Thalassicus]

Ooops sorry for not responding to this, thought I had! I got distracted when family was over for Christmas.

You might try the version of the policies mod included in the development testing version, it's working properly for me.

To be honest I've done no testing with the Autocracy tree at all. When I'm warmongering, the Honor tree's always been enough to win militarily so I typically go for Rationalism or Order at the late stages in the game. I think the best thing that could happen for Autocracy is AI improvements... it was rated at like 2% of people's favorite policy tree in a poll I saw.

You have a really good point about that policy, the only one where timing's really important. I could double its duration or something to give more leeway.

 

[Tomice]

Just wanted to say that the +1 culture for every city is from the freedom tree is very useful, good to have it back. Not that the 50% lower tile culture cost was bad, either, but I think the vanilla option is better here.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't really like the free policies with eras.

IMO, fewer policies is supposed to be the deliberate penalty for overexpansion. If you ICS, you might only be able to get 3-4 policies all game, but with the free policy per era, you're now getting ~8-9 policies.

The change dramatically reduces the value of culture; no longer do I have to invest heavily in culture to get 2-3 policy trees, which in practice is all I need.
It now means that buildings like the opera house and museum are pretty weak unless I'm pursuing a cultural victory.

I think I prefer vanilla where you have to choose more carefully, and really customize picks to your playstyle, but here you can get the 2-3 best policies from each tree without having to focus on culture much at all.

 

[Tomice]

I still like to build culture buildings, although I tend to grab as much land as possible (with 4 average city distance, though). There's a huge number of useful policies, definitively more than the 7 or 8 you get throughout the game in TBM without many culture buildings. I haven't seen the risk of running out of desirable SPs.

I also like culture buildings because I need the border expansion for my rather big cities.

Getting almost no SPs at all if you have more than a few cities is not exactly realistic or fun. Several changes made small empires more competitive compared to vanilla 1.0, I don't see a need to "hide" an interesting gameplay element for most players.

 

[Thalassicus]

To put it simply, in vanilla CiV policies are a significantly reduced aspect of the game compared to earlier versions of the civ series. I don't find this very fun, since they provide so much flexibility to customize our gameplay when we need to shift based on surrounding terrain and circumstances. Removing healthiness, religion, so many other game mechanics I'm relatively okay with... but to nearly remove policies as well I personally found frustrating. It's mostly a matter of personal preference, it's perfectly okay if you prefer having 3-5 less policies throughout the game. It's simple to tweak by changing the tree-requirement for utopia back to 5 and remove the "lua" file.

Culture buildings also got buffed. Temples give 33% more culture now, Opera Houses give happiness, etc. Temples are also the only source of specialists until the Medieval era. I still find them useful to build for border expansion and quick policy generation in the Medieval period.

The effect is also spread out over a very long period of time. We don't get all 6 free policies until the Future era, and I've never had a game last that long. Average games just have ~4 more policies than before.


Also, if some policies in each tree are still "best" (which I agree with) I'd like to improve policy balance further. In particular, in the dev version I buffed two policies in the Tradition tree. I still don't like the state of the left side of Liberty either... or the right half of Piety. Patronage does feel better now that I've swapped the effects of Aesthetics and Patronage.

I'd also like to fix Meritocracy somehow. 1 per city was too much but 0.5 is too little. I'd rather change it away from an ICS-friendly per-city bonus entirely, to something else, but haven't figured out what yet. I like the feel of Piety as the "happiness tree", especially with the buffs.

One attribute available yet relatively unused for policies is free units. The only example of this is the free Great General the Honor tree receives. What if Meritocracy gave some unit(s), like two workers? Or even a promotion for some unit class or another. The Liberty tree is designed to support early expansion, so there should be something we can figure out that would work well yet easier to balance than per-city happiness.

Or maybe shift some effects around a bit. Meritocracy could give a flat +5, and I could shift effects around in the Piety tree some to add the happy-per-city bonus there. Or add something else to Piety entirely, like a free Great Artist to replace the effect of Reformation (more flexibility than simply a golden age) or Mandate of Heaven.

There's lots of options.

 

[Seek]

To put it simply, in vanilla CiV policies are a significantly reduced aspect of the game compared to earlier versions of the civ series. I don't find this very fun, since they provide so much flexibility to customize our gameplay when we need to shift based on surrounding terrain and circumstances. Removing healthiness, religion, so many other game mechanics I'm relatively okay with... but to nearly remove policies as well I personally found frustrating. It's mostly a matter of personal preference, it's perfectly okay if you prefer having 3-5 less policies throughout the game. It's simple to tweak by changing the tree-requirement for utopia back to 5 and remove the "lua" file.

Culture buildings also got buffed. Temples give 33% more culture now, Opera Houses give happiness, etc. Temples are also the only source of specialists until the Medieval era. I still find them useful to build for border expansion and quick policy generation in the Medieval period.

The effect is also spread out over a very long period of time. We don't get all 6 free policies until the Future era, and I've never had a game last that long. Average games just have ~4 more policies than before.


Also, if some policies in each tree are still "best" (which I agree with) I'd like to improve policy balance further. In particular, in the dev version I buffed two policies in the Tradition tree. I still don't like the state of the left side of Liberty either... or the right half of Piety. Patronage does feel better now that I've swapped the effects of Aesthetics and Patronage.

I'd also like to fix Meritocracy somehow. 1 per city was too much but 0.5 is too little. I'd rather change it away from an ICS-friendly per-city bonus entirely, to something else, but haven't figured out what yet. I like the feel of Piety as the "happiness tree", especially with the buffs.

One attribute available yet relatively unused for policies is free units. The only example of this is the free Great General the Honor tree receives. What if Meritocracy gave some unit(s), like two workers? Or even a promotion for some unit class or another. The Liberty tree is designed to support early expansion, so there should be something we can figure out that would work well yet easier to balance than per-city happiness.

Or maybe shift some effects around a bit. Meritocracy could give a flat +5, and I could shift effects around in the Piety tree some to add the happy-per-city bonus there. Or add something else to Piety entirely, like a free Great Artist to replace the effect of Reformation (more flexibility than simply a golden age) or Mandate of Heaven.

There's lots of options.

There is indeed! I've been meaning to renew discussion here for a while, glad to see I'm not alone.

Liberty: Agree that it is woefully weak now. I like the free workers idea (though I prefer it for Republic) and I'd suggest that Representation get a buff to 2/city and Collective Rule should let new cities simply start with 2 pop. Meritocracy is indeed a sticky one, but if the rest of the tree is made worthwhile a change may not be necessary. Alternatively, you could go the Humanism route and tie a +1 happiness to a building.

Piety: I think your formulation is wrong here: Piety is the Culture tree, not the Happy tree. Happy bonuses are spread throughout the SP trees fairly uniformly. Piety is absolutely essential for a culture win, although the buffed Theocracy is good enough to make you consider getting some Piety even if you're not going that route. I think it provides an interesting tradeoff and that this tree doesn't need any adjustment at this point.

Patronage: I'm not crazy about the switch, actually; I find I go down the tree much less frequently with it. I know it's meant as a buff, but at that point in the game I'm more interested in maintaining the relationships I already have (often gotten through quests because of limited econ) than expanding new ones. If you're set on moving the effects around to adjust the balance, maybe have Philanthropy's effect the opener?

Autocracy: There's got to be *some* way we can make it worth taking, right?? Maybe make it a little less directly militaristic and move it towards a more viable alternative to Freedom:

• Autocracy - Unchanged
• Militarism - 10 culture for each military conquest, unit purchasing bonus reduced to 20%.
• Populism - Unchanged
• Police State - Growth in non-occupied, non-puppet cities increased by 33%
• Fascism - Unhappiness from occupied and puppet cities' population reduced by 25% (might require Theocracy to be changed to non-occupied *and* non-puppet cities to balance this)
• Total War - Unchanged (lengthened?)

 

[Tomice]

I'd also like to fix Meritocracy somehow. 1 per city was too much but 0.5 is too little. I'd rather change it away from an ICS-friendly per-city bonus entirely, to something else, but haven't figured out what yet.

....

Or maybe shift some effects around a bit. Meritocracy could give a flat +5, and I could ....

The flat happiness bonus might be interesting, it'd more balanced and it'd fit well into the "fast expansion" flavor of the tree, without ICS risk.

I'll say something about the other stuff when I'm back home and can start the game.

 

[Polycrates]

I *really* like the extra policy at each era. Otherwise a non-cultural civ is never going to see most of the policies beyond the ancient era ones, and policies are fun and cool.

Anyway I'd like to give a bit of a shout-out for Autocracy, which I think is pretty good, and which I went almost all the way down last game without regret.

The 33% reduction in cost for units is MASSIVE in the later game when armies get very very expensive. It can easily be worth 100 gold or more per turn for a large late-game empire. Synergises well with Honour by making it more feasible to have a few extra units around to get the garrison happiness bonus too.

The combat bonus for wounded units is great, and lets you sustain an offensive war a little bit better than before. It's also one of the only boosts that counts on offence, to somewhat counter opponents who have invested heavily in the defensive policies. Kind of a mini-Japan. Particularly good for planes and city sieges.

Depending on the map, doubled strategic resources can be amazing. Think how many more planes and tanks you can have! This was the main reason I took Autocracy in my last game, so that I could have an absolute horde of aircraft. And you can sell excess resources to any friends you may have left by this point.

Reduced rush-buy cost is pretty nice, especially if you combo it with the commerce one/Big Ben. A good way to use all the gold you save on maintenance.

Reduced unhappiness can be good depending on what you're doing. It seems to me to be best if you're going through and razing a whole empire, so that the combined unhappiness of the burning cities doesn't tip you into the -33% combat penalty. If you're puppeting and then annexing (you're not annexing outright straight away, right?) then you can just stagger the annexing while you build courthouses so this is not going to do much. And if you're just puppeting then yeah not so great. If it slightly reduced puppet unhappiness as well, this would be a real winner.

Total War...I'm not so sure that it really works now. Perhaps needs to give a permanent attack bonus (20% maybe...given that it comes very late). I really like the idea of a military "golden age" though. Could be interesting if it would let you sacrifice a Great General for a shorter version of the effect...no idea if that's workable though (and could be problematic with the AI).

 

[Thalassicus]

@Seek
I'm not really sure how to feel about the Liberty tree as a whole. My games break down into A) Honor if neighbors nearby B) Liberty if no neighbors nearby C) Patronage if no neighbors nearby, but also no room to expand due to a CS clump surrounding me.

I tried 2-pop Collective Rule at first but there were quite a few opinions earlier in this thread about it. The statements were it gave too much ICS potential, especially for France.

However, this early rex capability is somewhat mitigated by several things I've added to the mods since then, such as:

• Reduced from luxury trades (to buy settlers)
• Reduced maritime bonus
• 3/city

I think these in particular might make a big rex more difficult now. What are yalls thoughts about this?

Representation and Citizenship are actually the two policies I go for in Liberty. With just a half dozen cities Rep is about the equivalent of Stonehenge.


I do agree Piety is a tree every culture-victory goes for, and both culture and happiness are listed in the description so it benefits both. The reason I consider it a happiness-focused tree is because four Piety policies help acquire or improve the effects of happiness. In my games I simply go for it for the 33% population boost.

• +5
• +33% from
• +33% from
• 75% excess as
• 10 turns
• +2 policies

(Yes, my mind analyzes strangely... not trying to be confusing, I just internally consider things in terms of modifiers on a common trait. )

In addition, I tend to think of goldenages as rewards for happiness. More → more → more tiles worked in .


With the Patronage adjustment, basically here's how I find it useful:

• Minor CS usage: If there's a few non-hostile CSs nearby I sometimes get Patronage and use targeted investments at phases in the game I need a boost in a particular area (need a big policy investment now so get a cultural.. expanded a lot recently so need a maritime... starting a war, need a militaristic). I let these investments expire when the need for them has lessened (..this Maritime isn't as vital now that I've hit the happiness cap). This tends to be with different CSs so the increase in baseline helps a lot.
• Moderate CS usage: If I do this a lot (more than 1 CS at a time or so) I get Philantropy for better cost/benefit from the gold.
• Full CS usage: If I'm surrounded by good citystates with major civs rather distant, I next get Aesthetics, then start working on the rest of the Patronage tree.

The idea of the Patronage switch had this thinking behind it:

• In the vanilla the right side of the tree was generally considered weaker in strategy discussions I read.
• It feels logical to get a boost to minimum influence first, then boosts to reaching/maintaining maximum influence. This lets the player progress in phases of CS usage.
• The switch puts the more useful/powerful policy deeper in the tree, which seems to make sense for progression.
• I usually don't invest in CSs before the medieval period, as cash is scarce and it's difficult to fulfill their quests in earlier eras.

I like the idea of making Autocracy useful for things other than war. The problem with the tree is the AI's so poor at war, it's just not necessary at that point in the game for warmongers.

 

[Ahriman]

I *really* like the extra policy at each era. Otherwise a non-cultural civ is never going to see most of the policies beyond the ancient era ones

I guess that's my point, but I reach the opposite conclusion: I think that you *should* have to invest in culture and limit your city ICS if you want to see a lot of policies beyond the ancient era.

If people think that policies aren't sufficiently important, then make every policy more valuable, don't make it easier for every player to get policies even without culture investment.

But anyway, I won't belabor the point.

 

[Seek]

@Thal

Re: Patronage. Pre-Ren (when it's most common to start down the tree) unless I've already decided on which victory I'm going for I take CSs primarily for their luxuries, weighted towards maritime and cultural. (I should have noted this in my original post.) How about: the Philanthropy effect for tree opener, with Aesthetics on the left and the slower degradation on the right? Perhaps switch positions of Cultural Diplomacy and Scholasticism as well?

Re: Liberty. I almost always go for Tradition regardless of any other factors, with policies in Honor and/or Patronage as needed. Post-patch I have not taken any policies in Liberty beyond the opener once - Tradition is just so useful now. Disagree that 6 cities with Rep=Stonehenge because policy costs are through the roof. One culture is not even equivalent to a Monument; I would think a buff to two culture is a good idea because it means you don't have to build a monument to get border pops, thus indirectly giving an alternative to Landed Elite, and if you're rexing fast it's relative value declines rapidly as policy costs ramp up.
Btw, I'm only getting 2 per city in my current game; I assumed that you'd removed it. I checked most of the readmes, but couldn't find it. Which mod is/was it in again?

I see your points about Piety and Autocracy, however I still don't think the former needs a buff atm, and with Autocracy it just seems like a literal waste of space. I think it would be good if we could find a way to make it desirable. Maybe one or two of the better Order policies could be moved there?

 

[Ahriman]

If we get oil right, fascism should feel powerful.

Perhaps police state should boost a puppet empire, not just annexation?
Maybe -25% unhappiness from population in puppets? Though that might not be possible code-wise.

Populism just feels like a stupid design idea; a unit with 9 hitpoints does more damage than one with 10? Either tweak it so that its like the Japan ability [or maybe halfway in between, so units that have suffered X hit points of damage deal out (1-X/4)*normal damage rather than standard (1-X/2)*normal damage] or come up with a new effect entirely.
How about populism adds a promotion to all your units that increases their healing rate? Populism means more military volunteers means faster replenishment of losses?

Militarism doesn't seem underpowered.

I don't think 2 culture on Representation is OP, but one way to nerf it if you think it might be would be to have it require Collective Rule as well as Citizenship.

 

[Common Sensei]

I'd also like to fix Meritocracy somehow. 1 per city was too much but 0.5 is too little. I'd rather change it away from an ICS-friendly per-city bonus entirely, to something else, but haven't figured out what yet. I like the feel of Piety as the "happiness tree", especially with the buffs.

...

Or maybe shift some effects around a bit. Meritocracy could give a flat +5, and I could shift effects around in the Piety tree some to add the happy-per-city bonus there. Or add something else to Piety entirely, like a free Great Artist to replace the effect of Reformation (more flexibility than simply a golden age) or Mandate of Heaven.

Maybe combine the two a little? +x per Monument, +x for the National Epic (Arc de Triomphe flavor).

Makes the policy a little organic. Gives a little something to both larger and smaller empires.

 

[Thalassicus]

About Patronage, basically my thinking was this seems a logical progression for city-state influence:

1. Minimum
2. Purchasing power
3. Slower loss

The problem is #1 has no effect if we're already above it from #2 or #3. I think the concept of having #1 later is we can start expanding to many CSs after previously only having a few, yet usually I find the up-front benefit of #1 more useful. I often invest in one local citystate only to discover another one I hadn't found yet would be more valuable, due to some combination of luxuries, strategics, and which of these resources I can get from other sources.

I think it could still work having #1 later though (for the "major CS investment" stage). It might work out to have it as: Patronage #3, Left side #1, Right side #2. #1 would be weaker again, but it would be on the stronger half of the tree, so people would still have a reason to get it if they go into widespread CS investment. Likewise, the strongest policy would be put on the weaker side of the tree.

Anyone else have some thoughts about this? How do yall typically invest in citystates?


@Seek
It's really interesting you go Tradition first. I'm happy there seems to be feelings from several people Liberty isn't so powerful anymore, too! Hopefully that means these balances are going in the right direction.


@Ahriman
Wow you have a really fantastic point bringing up Fascism's +100% strategic resource availability. I'd never thought of that before! This means we could indeed make late-game resources quite scarce, and the Autocracy tree would be valuable for late-game warmongers for that reason. Maybe we can add an additional effect to it though... I don't want civs without this policy to be at too much of a disadvantage (especially since warmongers will usually have more territory and thus more resources).

The Autocracy root tree seems quite good, 1/3 less maintenance costs is a decent tradeoff for locking out liberty/freedom.

I agree Militarism is also very good, moreso with the increased upgrade costs. My thought is it'd be well-balanced if units with only 2-3 promotions cost less to rebuild than upgrade once we have Militarism. It seems logical to have a time vs money tradeoff: cheaper to rebuild, but saves time to upgrade. After all, why build academy/armory etc and move new units to the battlefield if it saves time and costs less to upgrade existing units? There'd be no opportunity cost. This would benefit the AI who isn't good at getting high-xp units.

Since upgrade costs are fixed based on known variables like base cost and difference between the two units, and production costs are fixed with known modifiers on purchase, we should be able to figure out a good middleground.

Populism might be a little odd, but remember strength of units does drop as they lose health, which reduces their combat odds of success. Slight differences in strength can have a big difference in odds. In addition, weakened units die more easily due to a lower HP pool. It's a sort of risk/reward thing... because although at 9hp we deal more damage, our strength is lower (which reduces damage), success odds are lower, and we have a higher chance of dying. If it were identical to Bushido that trait would be less unique, and the two wouldn't stack. Overall, populism seems rather decent with the risk/reward tradeoff.

All that said, the idea of a free healing promotion actually sounds sorta interesting. Maybe all units could start with Medic? It'd probably feel less clumsy than the wounded-unit-damage mechanic.

Since no one seems to feel 2 Representation would be a problem, I'll change it.

I like the idea of something providing a benefit on national wonders, I think it might feel a little odd in a tree built around supporting fast expansion though.

Going back to Seek's suggestion, you recommended free workers from Republic, I'm guessing for Collective Rule synergy? Do you think the +1:c5production should be moved to Meritocracy's place if it's set up like that? Or maybe just remove the production bonus entirely? It's sort of ICS-friendly.


In summary here's what I'm thinking of:

• Collective Rule: Cities start at 2.
• Republic: 2 workers appear outside the .
• Representation: +2 per city.
• Meritocracy: +1 per city.
• Mandate of Heaven: /turn increased by amount of excess . (up from 75%)
  There was some discussion about this months ago... and I still feel the policy is underwhelming. The argument was it lets happiness buildings double as cultural ones, but the point I made was this isn't quite accurate as it does not improve border expansion, and is not improved by city modifiers like the Broadcast Tower.
• Patronage center: -25% loss per turn.
• Patronage left: 20 minimum .
• Patronage right: +25% from .
• Populism: Units gain +1 extra health per turn when healing.
• Total War: 30-turn bonus (policies no longer can be saved, so timing it is much more difficult).

A puppet state happiness attribute isn't available. Here's all the unused policy attributes, some of which have obvious effects but others I'm unsure of:

• CultureCost
• TechPrereq
  --------
• CulturePerWonder
• CulturePerTechResearched
• ReligionProductionModifier (probably inactive)
• GreatGeneralRateModifier
• DomesticGreatGeneralRateModifier
• FreeExperience
• AllFeatureProduction
• ImprovementCostModifier
• ImprovementUpgradeRateModifier (probably inactive)
• SpecialistProductionModifier
• SpecialistUpgradeModifier (probably inactive)
• MilitaryProductionModifier
• BaseFreeUnits
• BaseFreeMilitaryUnits
• FreeUnitsPopulationPercent
• FreeMilitaryUnitsPopulationPercent
• UnhappinessFromUnitsMod (probably inactive)
• NumExtraBuilders
• PlotGoldCostMod
• GoldPerUnit (different from UnitGoldMaintenanceMod autocracy has)
• GoldPerMilitaryUnit
• UnitSupplyMod
• CityGrowthMod
• HappyPerMilitaryUnit
• MaxConscript (probably inactive)
• UnitSightRangeChange
• RevealAllCapitals
• FreeSpecialist
• ExpInBorderModifier
• MinorQuestFriendshipMod ('minor civs' are the internal name for citystates)
• WeLoveTheKing

Might think the last one would put cities into WLTK for X turns, but it takes text, not a number. I suspect it might have been intended to copy the old "We love the King/President/Consul/etc" customized WLTK day messages from earlier versions of CiV.

 

[Polycrates]

In summary here's what I'm thinking of:

• Collective Rule: Cities start at 2.
• Republic: 2 workers appear outside the .
• Representation: +2 per city.
• Meritocracy: +1 per city.
• Mandate of Heaven: /turn increased by amount of excess . (up from 75%)
  There was some discussion about this months ago... and I still feel the policy is underwhelming. The argument was it lets happiness buildings double as cultural ones, but the point I made was this isn't quite accurate as it does not improve border expansion, and is not improved by city modifiers like the Broadcast Tower.
• Patronage center: -25% loss per turn.
• Patronage left: 20 minimum .
• Patronage right: +25% from .
• Populism: Units gain +1 extra health per turn when healing.
• Total War: 30-turn bonus (policies no longer can be saved, so timing it is much more difficult).

I like it! Especially the two free workers, that could really tempt me down the liberty tree....

You could maybe switch around the names though...not sure that the grand ideals of Republic are fully encapsulated by vast armies of manual labour