Policies

[Seek]

Yes, that's what I discovered in my first war game, and I was considering playing with the Aztecs next to do just that. My thinking would be to keep expansion at a minimum (or use puppets) but keep fighting to put up free buildings faster in the earlier stages when gold is usually low.

First TBC GotM?

 

[Txurce]

First TBC GotM?

Sounds good to me - especially since we probably shouldn't use DLC. The Aztecs can go a lot of different ways, and via unique paths.

 

[Thalassicus]

So, if I pick Honor for the combat bonuses, then I should have to weigh that against the commerce and culture and happiness I'm giving up by not following another branch.

In principle I agree that combat bonuses are better for the combat trees, but with the AI as it is right now, combat bonuses just trivialize warfare. The way Honor is set up right now still changes the way you play the game, since the bonuses depend on you going to war.

Busdriver explained it well - two of the three combat bonuses from Honor are gone because I find combat too easy in Civ 5. The one remaining bonus encourages us to keep units in groups, which I kept because it favors the AI:

• AIs tend to have quantity over quality.
• Bonuses are additive so Discipline gets weaker as our units get more promotions.

The distinction between the three policy trees is how we get gold, culture and happiness. All three playstyles are equally powerful but play in a different way (peaceful small empire, peaceful expansionist, and conqueror). These are the three fundamental playstyles of Civ.

I get the feeling that there are some pretty big penalties for being at war - for one thing it makes it much harder to have Declarations of Friendship, and without those, your research can really tend to stagnate.

Each DoF gives + 5-20% (depending on how far behind we are) so this is true, especially if we declared those wars and got all the peaceful AIs mad at us.

 

[Txurce]

The distinction between the three policy trees is how we get gold, culture and happiness. All three playstyles are equally powerful but play in a different way (peaceful small empire, peaceful expansionist, and conqueror). These are the three fundamental playstyles of Civ.

This is my understanding of the TBC conceptual approach as well. However I don’t think all three playstyles are equally powerful. For example, only the warmonger is set up to win all the victory types. That alone seems to make it the default way to play the game, allowing you to choose a victory condition at a much later point based on circumstances.

That aside, the present balance between the warmongering policy trees and the others doesn’t seem right to more people than usual. Specifically, some players are finding SOW too OP. My own sense is that it’s an aggregate Honor/Autocracy issue, centered around SOW. This is why comparing SOW to any other policy or tree seems to miss the point. It’s how the entire combination works. This is an equation that I don’t think anyone can spell out… and why I suggest stepping back to gain a different perspective on the issue.

 

[Questdog]

One complaint about the new beta build:

Oligarchy XP Bonus. I don't like the idea of units not in combat receiving experience bonuses (don't like it from buildings either). Promotions are already overdone, but to be able to pump a unit up over time without it EVER being at risk of loss doesn't seem quite right. And 1 pt. every 5 rounds is a lot of Exp. over the course of a Marathon game.

And to those who say the garrisoned troops are training while in town and deserve XP for that have never been in combat. No amount of training can substitute for combat experience. The word Experience has a definition that should preclude bonuses outside of combat.

 

[Busdriver]

I don't have a problem with experience outside of combat, since it represents the very realistic effect of training, but I think that the oligarchy bonus should probably be capped, and it should scale with game speed to avoid the risk of overpowering it.

 

[Questdog]

I don't have a problem with experience outside of combat, since it represents the very realistic effect of training, but I think that the oligarchy bonus should probably be capped, and it should scale with game speed to avoid the risk of overpowering it.

Uh, I think building the units represents training them (since I don't think they are actually putting soldiers together in the factories). And as I said, anyone who thinks any training time should equate with combat time is way off the mark and I think it might even be construed as an insult to combat veterans. And if training time equated with combat time, 2nd Lieutenants wouldn't be the brunt of so many jokes.....

The experience promotions should be seen as a perks for units putting themselves in harm's way and living to tell the tale (and fight better next time based on the experience they learned in battle).

Plus, it's cool when in modern times you have a buffed up unit that has been with you through all the Eras (and you know this because he is buffed up). If you can just grow your own buffed units, it takes away the specialness....

 

[Txurce]

One complaint about the new beta build:

Oligarchy XP Bonus. I don't like the idea of units not in combat receiving experience bonuses (don't like it from buildings either). Promotions are already overdone, but to be able to pump a unit up over time without it EVER being at risk of loss doesn't seem quite right. And 1 pt. every 5 rounds is a lot of Exp. over the course of a Marathon game.

And to those who say the garrisoned troops are training while in town and deserve XP for that have never been in combat. No amount of training can substitute for combat experience. The word Experience has a definition that should preclude bonuses outside of combat.

I agree, but this is part of making every tree deliver some version of what the other trees deliver.

 

[Txurce]

Would someone confirm that Opera Houses cannot be built with Aristocracy - that Museums are the last stop? I ask because I just failed to build OH's with the policy.

 

[Seek]

Would someone confirm that Opera Houses cannot be built with Aristocracy - that Museums are the last stop? I ask because I just failed to build OH's with the policy.

Opera Houses don't yield any actual culture, so it's conceivable that they wouldn't pop. As for the last stop, don't Public Schools have a culture yield now?

Perhaps OHs should get +1 culture as a simple fix.

 

[Busdriver]

Uh, I think building the units represents training them (since I don't think they are actually putting soldiers together in the factories). And as I said, anyone who thinks any training time should equate with combat time is way off the mark and I think it might even be construed as an insult to combat veterans. And if training time equated with combat time, 2nd Lieutenants wouldn't be the brunt of so many jokes.....

The experience promotions should be seen as a perks for units putting themselves in harm's way and living to tell the tale (and fight better next time based on the experience they learned in battle).

Plus, it's cool when in modern times you have a buffed up unit that has been with you through all the Eras (and you know this because he is buffed up). If you can just grow your own buffed units, it takes away the specialness....

I think you're looking at experience a little to literally for a game where units last thousands of years. And there is a huge difference in the quality of training between different nations' militaries. And I don't view training from buildings as disrespectful to veterans, given that veterans are still almost always better than freshly trained units. I can agree that by the end of the game, experience from buildings may go a bit far, but I couldn't give you a better replacement.

Other than that, would it be possible to cap unit experience gain from oligarchy based on what experience buildings have been built? This way, units could train up to, but not beyond, what new units would start with. This would avoid the issue of someone getting super units by just sitting them in cities.

 

[Questdog]

If you did away with all boosts to experience outside of combat, you wouldn't have all these stupid super-units running around in the modern era. And when everybody gets the perks, then they aren't perks anymore.

P.S. Just found a real stupid part of this game. I rarely ever lose a city and when I do it's usually very early and I just quit and start a new game. But the game I'm playing right now, I'm on a big island with the Greeks. I (as I am always tempted to do and can never restrain from doing) plopped down some cities in his direction to try to squeeze his expansion and he declared war on me when I was very low on units. I had two vulnerable cities and could only save one. But I like this map so much I'm not quitting, I'm gonna keep playing. Anyways, the stupid part is when I lost my city, everybody in my empire got real happy.....

 

[Ahriman]

Anyways, the stupid part is when I lost my city, everybody in my empire got real happy.....

Well of course they did, they just got rid of all those stupid freeloaders who got them into a war ;-)

 

[Thalassicus]

@Txurce
Thanks for pointing that out.

@Busdriver @Questdog
Consider a unit that is built from a barracks early in the game around turn 100.

• Starts at 15.
  Sits in a city and does nothing for 200 turns.
  At the end of the game it has ~55.
  Upgrading costs .
• A newly-built unit at the end has 60 (75 with Autocracy).
  Deleting and rebuilding costs or .

Oligarchy is equally viable as deleting + rebuilding, so this part of the policy actually has little net benefit. It's mostly just to reduce the hassle.

 

[Herb0815]

How do I select the free person, that I get for democracy in the freedom branch? I just get a message saying "choose free person" on the next tun button. When I click it, nothing happens .

Btw great mod!

 

[Txurce]

How do I select the free person, that I get for democracy in the freedom branch? I just get a message saying "choose free person" on the next tun button. When I click it, nothing happens .

Btw great mod!

There was a bug that held this up, but it's been fixed. Clicking on the icon should work. Otherwise, I'd ask if you cleared your cache and ModUserData folder after downloading the latest version.

 

[Herb0815]

Doh! I didn´t cleare my cache, just deinstalled the old version and installed 7.2 via the ingame modbrowser.

Just tried to save my game by deinstalling thal´s balance mod, clearing the cache and reinstalling 7.2 manually. Loaded an autosave and tried to use "democracy", with the same result as before. The "choose free great person" icon does nothing.

Please don´t tell my, that I have to start a new game to fix this bug.

 

[Txurce]

Please don´t tell my, that I have to start a new game to fix this bug.

I think you do. Although normally it wouldn't even reload.

 

[Herb0815]

Oh, that´s bad! But thx for the help.

 

[Thalassicus]

Check the rest of the Common Problems List. You might not have to start a new game... but usually changing mods midgame doesn't work because Civ stores some stuff in the savegame itself... which messes up when mods are changed.