Policies

[Thalassicus]

The maintenance difference makes the bonus more powerful on walls. Barracks are only useful in our military production city, while walls can potentially be useful in more. Since the barracks won't be used for anything else, it's a trade of +1 for -1/turn. In contrast, the walls might be useful if attacked, and are +1 for no maintenance cost. The bonuses also stack with Meritocracy to make the walls very valuable. With one bonus on barracks and the other on walls we'd have two mediocre buildings, and neither would be particularly desirable in most cities.

I think one of the problems might be happiness is too easy to come by now that the Stoneworks was added. I do want to keep that bonus but I'm figuring out ways to compensate for it.

 

[Sneaks]

I tend to side with Txurce here. I love the value added to walls for non-warring strategies, as those are the ones I am more likely to build walls in. As is, defensive buildings kind of suck. What I dislike about the wall approach particularly in regards to Honor is that the policy itself results in 0. The policy simply says there is now an opportunity cost of X to gain maintenance free happiness. Most other happiness policies either intrinsically grant the bonus upon adoption, or grant the bonus to buildings that will already be build (Piety for example). Warmongers generally have little need for walls, due to their ever expanding borders. Adding +1 +1 to Colosseums would make more sense to me

 

[Thalassicus]

I really like the concept of Honor improving Colosseums, it makes so much sense! I also felt the Honor tree needed some later culture to make up for the loss of the earlier effect (culture from city capture). Moving the defense building bonus gives me some ideas for other policies too.

 

[Maniac]

Defensive buildings are usually built earlier than Colossea in puppets, so that change will IMO actually make the policy less useful for conquerors.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

So, I like the 1 happy 2 culture on Colosseums, but isn't that a little strong? It seems like adding culture to them compensates for warmongering's weakness of lesser infrastructure for culture/policy generation, when players going for warmongering maybe should be forced into this hard choice. I'm a crappy warmonger though, so somebody else chime in here.

 

[Thalassicus]

It's exchanging 1-4 happiness per city from defense buildings for a fixed 1 happiness 2 culture, which could be better or worse depending on circumstances. This tree used to have culture from city capture at its final tier, and I've felt policy generation has been a bit low since removing that. I feel every person should be able to acquire policies at a decent rate, in different ways. There was a big discussion about this in The Honor tree and warmongering thread.

 

[Seek]

I think one of the problems might be happiness is too easy to come by now that the Stoneworks was added. I do want to keep that bonus but I'm figuring out ways to compensate for it.

Is it possible to make all the + on buildings from policies limited by population like regular buildings? That would go a long way towards solving this goal.

 

[Thalassicus]

There doesn't appear to be an option for that.

 

[Babri]

Liberty finisher is quite weak compared to other finishers (eg : Tradition). I would say boost it to 10% or change it completely as Forbidden City has a similar benefit.

 

[Thalassicus]

Do you feel the liberty tree overall is valuable to invest in? I don't worry too much about comparing finishers directly to one another. For example, the Commerce finisher is very powerful while the Rationalism finisher is basically nonexistent, but I think the two trees as a whole are about equal in value. It's that overall value I look for. Usually I give the trees with situational high-tier policies (like Merchant Navy) more powerful finishers as a reward even if we don't need the policy. Trees with generally useful policies (the last two in Rationalism) have less powerful finishers. The higher policies in Liberty all seem decently powerful.

 

[Sneaks]

I would say the Liberty finisher does need a bit extra oomph, and honestly a different role. The tree already has a happiness policy. Instead, an amazing finisher that wouldn't really be OP would be 10% discount on buildings already in the capital (a la Rome).

 

[Txurce]

I would say the Liberty finisher does need a bit extra oomph, and honestly a different role. The tree already has a happiness policy. Instead, an amazing finisher that wouldn't really be OP would be 10% discount on buildings already in the capital (a la Rome).

I would call it a really good shift, but OP relative to the current finisher. I'd prefer adding this finisher, but then balancing the tree by nerfing it elsewhere.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Usually I do Liberty as a partial investment to conquering, and I rarely find it's worth completing the left tree. By the time I get to it investing in Honor is more important and when that's done I find that Commerce or Piety is much more helpful. Something like Sneaks said would really make me reconsider.

 

[Babri]

I really like the vanilla bonus of Meritocracy policy. In Thal the bonus is 2 & 2 with defences. They are already policies for improving defences so I would say revert back to vanilla one : 2 & 5% bonus on buildings. (or maybe increase the bonus to 10%)

 

[Thalassicus]

A Rome-like policy would be possible if that interests you.

@Babri
I like buildings to always be somewhat useful for every playstyle... I'm concerned recent changes are reducing that for defensive buildings, such as the recent removal of a bonus to them in the Honor tree. I'd like to find ways to buff them with policies, not nerf them.

With walls Meritocracy provides 4, while the vanilla version (even at 10%) equals that only if we have 20 base production and are constructing a building. With a castle it'd need 40 base production to match it. The current version is significantly more powerful, especially for wide empires, where fixed yields outweigh percentage yields.

 

[Thalassicus]

I've reverse-engineered the Ceremonial Rites effect to fix two bugs.

Vanilla:

1. Build a monument
2. Get Ceremonial Rites
3. Research Philosophy
4. No temple.

Mod (v9.1.17 beta):

1. Monument
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Philosophy
4. Free temple.

Vanilla:

1. Temple
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Free Monastery

Mod (v9.1.17 beta):

1. Temple
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Free Opera House

We can now do this effect for any type of building, not just culture buildings.

 

[bwoww78]

I've reverse-engineered the Ceremonial Rites effect to fix two bugs.

Vanilla:

1. Build a monument
2. Get Ceremonial Rites
3. Research Philosophy
4. No temple.

Mod (v9.1.17 beta):

1. Monument
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Philosophy
4. Free temple.

Vanilla:

1. Temple
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Free Monastery

Mod (v9.1.17 beta):

1. Temple
2. Ceremonial Rites
3. Free Opera House

We can now do this effect for any type of building, not just culture buildings.

That's weird because I'm playing a 9.1.17b game and with philosophy and monuments in 4 cities and NO temples (on purpose) I got all monasteries with ceremonial burial...

Might it have to do with where I was on the tech tree? I saved the policy on lipids so that I had a 4th city with monument beforehand... I can provide some more info if I pull up that save.

EDIT: I recall from memory now that I had definitely already studied theology before selecting ceremonial rites policy because I had already completed ankor wat

 

[Thalassicus]

It's based on the culture_flavor value, and Monasteries in vanilla have a higher flavor than Temples. I'll change this for .18 beta.

 

[tlaurila]

In my recently started game (as egyptians), I took Ceremonial Rites when I only had my capital, which promptly showed up with the monument. Then I built my second city ... and no monument appeared. By the reading above this wasn't intentional. (At the time thought maybe Tradition was figured for too powerful, and culture buildings were intentionally made to only show up in upto 4 cities when the policy is chosen).

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm working on isolating the problem, drop by the thread on the subject.