Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Drat, I just accidentally closed the window of a reply I was writing! Well, I think I remember most of what I said...
Thanks for pointing out the Cultural Diplomacy typo. The main draw of the Guilds policy is the free great merchant. I've seen feedback people invest in Commerce specifically for the GM, so I don't think it needs a buff.
Cross-posting something I wrote elsewhere: One primary goal with policies is for every tree to be somewhat useful for most strategies, and most useful for some strategies. Policy changes in the past few months generally work towards this goal. For example, early Piety policies are somewhat useful for most strategies (+3 and +1 per-building), while later Piety policies are most useful for some strategies (specialist, culture, and tall-empire games). Militaristic games will generally get more use out of investing in other trees instead of the left half of Piety.
I moved the culture-from-wonders policy back to the Piety tree, but on the Theocracy policy now. It fits the theme of % bonuses to yields from various sources.
Altering the effects of the specialist policies requires the game core only Firaxis has access to. The old Freedom finisher of +2 yield to Great Improvements was split up to the various specialist-improving policies. Militarism is weak but leads to the two most desirable policies in the Autocracy tree (happiness and healing bonuses). This is why I set up Militarism as a prerequisite to those two. I reduced Communism from 2 to 1 per village because it's more accessible now.
I decided to make the Engineer policy last of the 4 specialist base-yield bonuses because it's arguably the most powerful and trickiest to balance. The decision was also influenced by realism. It makes sense for the productivity of Engineers to increase at the start of the Industrial era, particularly for an Order/Communist society. Since the policy is early in Order it's easily accessible to any playstyle once we reach that era.
Thanks for pointing out the Cultural Diplomacy typo. The main draw of the Guilds policy is the free great merchant. I've seen feedback people invest in Commerce specifically for the GM, so I don't think it needs a buff.
Cross-posting something I wrote elsewhere: One primary goal with policies is for every tree to be somewhat useful for most strategies, and most useful for some strategies. Policy changes in the past few months generally work towards this goal. For example, early Piety policies are somewhat useful for most strategies (+3 and +1 per-building), while later Piety policies are most useful for some strategies (specialist, culture, and tall-empire games). Militaristic games will generally get more use out of investing in other trees instead of the left half of Piety.
I moved the culture-from-wonders policy back to the Piety tree, but on the Theocracy policy now. It fits the theme of % bonuses to yields from various sources.
Altering the effects of the specialist policies requires the game core only Firaxis has access to. The old Freedom finisher of +2 yield to Great Improvements was split up to the various specialist-improving policies. Militarism is weak but leads to the two most desirable policies in the Autocracy tree (happiness and healing bonuses). This is why I set up Militarism as a prerequisite to those two. I reduced Communism from 2 to 1 per village because it's more accessible now.
I decided to make the Engineer policy last of the 4 specialist base-yield bonuses because it's arguably the most powerful and trickiest to balance. The decision was also influenced by realism. It makes sense for the productivity of Engineers to increase at the start of the Industrial era, particularly for an Order/Communist society. Since the policy is early in Order it's easily accessible to any playstyle once we reach that era.