Policies

[Thalassicus]

I don't know of a way to make puppets act as occupied, but I think I have an idea of how to deal with Theocracy and will experiment a bit.

 

[Ahriman]

I think Theocracy can be fixed just be tweaking the value back down to 20% again.

Police state already becomes attractive if puppets get a yield nerf.
I'd really say that a yield nerf for puppets is sufficiently important that its worth 20+ other balance changes; its one of the few things that really is worth a significant time investment. If fixes so many things; conquest vs builder, puppet vs annex, police state SP, etc.

Of course, easy for me to say, I'm not the one doing the work.

 

[Thalassicus]

Right now the only information I'm missing is the name of the function to add/remove buildings. I asked about it on another forum.

The thing is... the information Firaxis provided is nothing more than a list of the thousands of function names. There's no information on usage, and they're not even in alphabetical order, so it's blind needle-in-a-haystack searching that might take seconds or hours. If we had decent documentation it wouldn't be a problem.

I haven't spotted any potential prospects with a search of names containing the words "building" or "city". There's a function to get if a city has a building (IsHasBuilding) and one which likely removes a building (RemoveBuildingClass) but I didn't see what probably adds buildings.

I copy-pasted the search results below, so if anyone notices a possibility in this list, please point it out. I looked over this twice but might have missed something.


GetCityPlotIndex
GetCityIndexPlot
ConscriptMinCityPopulation
GetCitySizeType
SetCitySizeBoost
GetNumCityPlots
AddCityTrade
RemoveCityTrade
InitCity
AcquireCity
GetNewCityName
CountCityFeatures
GetCityConnectionGold
GetCityConnectionGoldTimes100
GetUnhappinessFromCityCount
GetUnhappinessFromCapturedCityCount
GetUnhappinessFromCityPopulation
GetAdvancedStartCityCost
GetCityDefenseModifier
GetCapitalCity
IsFoundedFirstCity
AddCityName
GetNumCityNames
GetCityName
FirstCity
NextCity
GetCity
GetRecommendedFoundCityPlots
IsWithinTeamCityRadius
IsCity
IsFriendlyCity
IsEnemyCity
GetCityRadiusCount
IsCityRadius
IsPotentialCityWork
IsPotentialCityWorkForArea
GetPlotCity
GetWorkingCity
GetWorkingCityOverride
GetPlayerCityRadiusCount
IsPlayerCityRadius
IsCultureRangeCity
CityAttackModifier
CityDefenseModifier
GetExtraCityAttackPercent
GetExtraCityDefensePercent


GetBuildingClassCreatedCount
IsBuildingClassMaxedOut
IsBuildingEverActive
BuildingLibrarySwap
SerialEventBuildingSizeChanged
IsBuildingsMaxed
HasLocalResourceForBuilding
IsProductionBuilding
GetProductionBuilding
GetFirstBuildingOrder
GetBuildingProductionTurnsLeft
GetBuildingPurchaseCost
GetBuildingProductionModifier
GetNumBuilding
IsHasBuilding
GetNumActiveBuilding
GetNumBuildings
GetBuildingDefense
GetBuildingProduction
SetBuildingProduction
ChangeBuildingProduction
GetBuildingProductionTime
SetBuildingProductionTime
ChangeBuildingProductionTime
GetBuildingOriginalOwner
GetBuildingOriginalTime
IsCanAddSpecialistToBuilding
GetNumSpecialistsAssignedToBuilding
GetBuildingSpecialistUpgradeProgress
GetNumSpecialistsAllowedByBuilding
GetNumSpecialistsInBuilding
GetNumRealBuilding
SetNumRealBuilding
GetNumFreeBuilding
GetBuildingYieldChange
SetBuildingYieldChange
CountNumBuildings
IsProductionMaxedBuildingClass
GetBuildingProductionNeeded
GetBuildingClassPrereqBuilding
RemoveBuildingClass
GetHappinessFromBuildings
ChangeHappinessFromBuildings
GetAdvancedStartBuildingCost
GetMaxGlobalBuildingProductionModifier
GetMaxTeamBuildingProductionModifier
GetMaxPlayerBuildingProductionModifier
IsBuildingFree
GetBuildingClassCount
IsBuildingClassMaxedOut
GetBuildingClassMaking
GetBuildingClassCountPlusMaking
GetBuildingClassMaking
GetBuildingClassCountPlusMaking
GetBridgeBuildingCount
IsBridgeBuilding
ChangeBridgeBuildingCount
GetBuildingClassCount
IsBuildingClassMaxedOut
GetObsoleteBuildingCount
IsObsoleteBuilding
IgnoreBuildingDefense

 

[Thalassicus]

Well, after two hours' trial and error I figured out it's SetNumRealBuilding, and thankfully Firaxis used the function in some of their tutorial scripts, so I was able to deduce how to use it.

I hope this is worth it!

 

[Ahriman]

Hey, its worth it for me
Now, work faster! Fix my problems for me!
*cracks whip*

...

[Good job, nice fine. Not very obvious....] So I guess you're setting the number to zero?

 

[Thalassicus]

The algorithm's simple once the function's identified. I just check all cities each turn and SetNumRealBuilding(the dummy building, City:IsPuppet).

IsPuppet=1 if it's a puppet, and =0 if it's not, so it adds or removes the building appropriately. I might make this more efficient later (doesn't really need to check all cities), but it works for now so it's what I'm going with.

 

[Seek]

Great work, thanks!

 

[Seek]

I've played a couple games with recent builds, some thoughts:

Although Liberty is now great goodjob and competes well with Tradition, the lack of a happiness policy there feels wrong. At one point you (Thal) said that the old Meritocracy bonus of .5 per city is too weak but 1 is too strong. Possible solution: Add .5 to the +1 policy and maybe have it require all other policies in the tree. (I hope this is clear, I'm not using names because they all got switched around.) I'm not sure, but I don't think this would be too strong as every time I've gone down the new Liberty branch I've taken everything but the production policy.

It was mentioned that Autocracy is now stronger with the changes to Strategics, but I still haven't been tempted to take it yet. Perhaps if Fascism were on the first tier it would help.

There's a small bug in Piety that doesn't display the link between Mandate of Heaven (I think) and Theocracy.

 

[Thalassicus]

The production policy actually gives new cities about +50%, which is quite powerful, so I'm hesitant to change it.

I've been thinking about increasing military unit costs further, which will improve the value of the Autocracy root policy. Populism (second policy) is now very good too, increasing healing in enemy territory 50-100%. I'm hesitant to move Fascism earlier because I don't want to risk trivializing our newly-introduced late game resource scarcity.

The piety display bug is an issue I've been trying to solve for a while, it appears to be some bug in the vanilla game code for that UI element (link).

============

I've been thinking about replacing the policy that gives +1 from each garrisoned unit. Here's some options available in the Policies.xml file... anyone have a preference?

• Free experience (I'm guessing this is upon unit creation).
• Faster great general creation.
• Faster great general creation in friendly territory.
• +1 per military unit.
• +1 per garrisoned military unit (current method).
• +1 sight range for all units.
• Reveal all capitals.

 

[V. Soma]

Just one thing about policies, and game immersion.

I NEVER look at the name of the policy, ONLY at what it gives me, and then I forget about it.
I can't name any of them by heart, as now, having played ca. 100-200 hrs of civ5 or more...

What could be done so that I "feel" the history that is passing in the policy tree?

 

[Ahriman]

I've been thinking about replacing the policy that gives +1 from each garrisoned unit.

I like this policy. It fits nicely with an overall military strategy, in that it makes a large military a useful thing to have during peacetime.
During peace, its often a much better happiness booster than any of the other happiness boosters.

I NEVER look at the name of the policy, ONLY at what it gives me, and then I forget about it.

I agree that this is the case, but I can't think of anything simple that can be done about it. Maybe something like how the title of the leader changes with the civ tree, but for each policy?

 

[V. Soma]

Maybe something like how the title of the leader changes with the civ tree, but for each policy?

I have an idea, it is vague now, but I share it anyways

so, the theory:

It could be a phrase put after the name of the empire in the scoreboard and/or the diplo window.
It would look like this

Germany, the "adjective" + "noun"

the "adjective" would refer to the dominant policy tree 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5
the noun would refer to the dominant policy tree of the other five, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10

there would be words for cases when one tree is dominant or when two trees equally,
but no word at all (in this case it is left empty) when 3 or more trees are equally strong.

It would give a combination of
(5 + 10) * (5 + 10) = 225 variations of "adjective + noun" titles.

plus 30 other variations when only one word...


I will come up with more elaboration...
but welcome and help...

EDIT

The titles would give information on a given civ's way of social policy,
and therefore maybe on what is its direction, to what victory or to what strategy.
It maybe interesting, may not be so?

Maybe knowing this info could be tied to some ctriteria, as it almost like spying

 

[Ahriman]

It could be a phrase put after the name of the empire in the scoreboard and/or the diplo window.
It would look like this

Germany, the "adjective" + "noun"

the "adjective" would refer to the dominant policy tree 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5
the noun would refer to the dominant policy tree of the other five, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10

Hmm. Seems possible, but this still only refers to the trees, not to the individual policies.
I don't see much immersion gain as long as there is no difference between all the different policies in the tree.
We want to distinguish between Theocracy and Free Religion, for example.

And we already have a title descriptor for every tree;
X the pious, Sovereign Y, Doge Z.

Maybe knowing this info could be tied to some ctriteria, as it almost like spying

Nah, it should be as widely available as possible, to maximize effect. Also, its not like you can't tell if your neighbor is a theocracy or has a naval tradition or not.

I would do something like this:
<title> <leadername> of the <adjective> <civname>.

Title comes from the tree (as current), and adjective comes from the most recently purchased policy.
In some cases, the <title> could still go after the name: Bismark the Pious.

The thing is: can we come up with adjectives for every SP that don't sound lame?
I'll see if I can come up with some possibilities.

 

[Thalassicus]

It's a good idea, though would be very difficult to change all the UI elements involved... for now I'm prioritizing things with low effort and a high gameplay impact.

 

[Tomice]

I think we can't change much about the policy names being uninteresting for most players without fundamentally changing gameplay.

What I always dreamt of was a difference in terms of gameplay between true happiness and oppression. Easier said: Having the choice to play "good" or "evil".

In my ideal game, "empire instability" could be countered either by "happiness" or "oppression". "Oppression" would be rather easy to achieve, but have disadvantages in terms of science and culture, maybe it would also have a risk of revolutions. "Happiness" would be harder to achieve and may have disadvantages in terms of military and production.

And of course, the AI should treat you accordingly, and government forms/policies should allow to improve either playstile.

But that's just daydreaming, not civ5.

 

[rhammer640]

Another option for realism, although im not sure how much effort it would take, would be to have a window pop up with each adopted social policy, using the same mechanic as the windows at the start of each era. It could have a little blurb about the history of the policy type copied out from wikipedia or somethign with some images that go with it.

Would be at least something that would at least make the change feel more meaningful without changing a bunch of UI or gameplay elements.

 

[Ahriman]

It's a good idea, though would be very difficult to change all the UI elements involved... for now I'm prioritizing things with low effort and a high gameplay impact.

Agreed.

What I always dreamt of was a difference in terms of gameplay between true happiness and oppression.

Eh. I don't think this would be realistic. *All* governments have been pretty oppressive for the vast majority of human history. If you weren't ruling class, life sucked.
I think a unified happiness/stability mechanic works fine, no need for more complexity.

Another option for realism, although im not sure how much effort it would take, would be to have a window pop up with each adopted social policy, using the same mechanic as the windows at the start of each era. It could have a little blurb about the history of the policy type copied out from wikipedia or somethign with some images that go with it.

Yes, this would be a good way, as long as it could be turned off as an option, but it'd require a fair amount of work.

 

[Ramesses]

Well for starters, the title "Pious" should be replaced with "Pharaoh." After all, what better way to show your nation is the center of religious enlightenment than by being ruled by a king whose subjects honestly considered him to be a mortal god?

 

[Ahriman]

Pharoah is too culturally linked I think (though so is Doge). And most civs historically have been religious without making their king into a god.

 

[V. Soma]

I would do something like this:
<title> <leadername> of the <adjective> <civname>.

Title comes from the tree (as current), and adjective comes from the most recently purchased policy.

I see. So this would be based only on one (the most used or most important) tree?
I think it is a compromise, but sounds OK...
/it would be difficult to come up with anything better, I guess/