Policies

[MasterDinadan]

Let's look at what Piety is. It's a tree that is always taken in culture victories, and almost never taken otherwise. Non-culture empires usually expand enough that they don't have a ton of excess happiness, and most of the Piety bonuses just aren't worthwhile without a lot of happiness.

If Piety is a tree which is always taken by culture pursuers and never taken otherwise, you probably want to shake it up. If it must be buffed in some way, buff it to make it viable for non-culture games without making it more effective for culture games.

Maybe changing it to something like "Gain X culture for each luxury resource you have." It could be balanced so that culture-games don't see much of a difference from the old MoH, while non-culture games (which tend to involve less excess happiness) still have some reason to take it. Even if their unhappiness is high, they still get some good culture from it if they have the luxury resources.

It maintains the feel of the original, without making Colosseums into culture machines, and making Piety slightly more viable for civs that otherwise wouldn't even consider it.

But it may be too drastic a change for a mod that just seems to be about tweaking the numbers.

 

[Thalassicus]

Very good points everyone, thank you for the feedback!

You make a very good argument MasterDinadan, perhaps enhancing the tree in some non-cultural way would be best. Some trees are indeed focused on particular game types though, such as Honor and Autocracy.

I'll eliminate the current Mandate bonus, consider alternatives, and release a new version once I'm home from work.

Edit: This was delayed due to a critical ModBuddy bug I encountered preventing me from updating older mods. I'll get back to it when I can. Further updates will have to be with a new (internal) mod ID, though the name will be the same.

 

[AlienFromBeyond]

You make a very good argument MasterDinadan, perhaps enhancing the tree in some non-cultural way would be best. Some trees are indeed focused on particular game types though, such as Honor and Autocracy.

But are still useful for people not going for that victory type. Honor's Barb bonus, free General, and most importantly double XP gain is fantastic for someone playing on defense.

 

[Thalassicus]

All true points. The 6-turn golden age is most powerful in large, expansive empires though, same with the -20% bonus. There's some cross-value in both trees.

 

[Stalker0]

One idea for Mandate of Heaven is swap the bonus.

Instead of extra culture for high happiness...what about high happiness for extra culture?

Perhaps 1/10 of your culture bonus gets turned into happiness (or 1/15 or whatever is balanced).

Flavor this makes a lot of sense, the culture of a pious society adds to that society's satisfaction.

 

[apotheoser]

• Order
  United Front: +50% city state influence degradation for enemies (up from +33%)
  .

Too much, I think. You have to remember that it stacks from multiple civilizations and so in large games it can quickly become a huge effect.

 

[AlienFromBeyond]

.
Liberty
What you've done with Collective Rule is most awesome, and it allows a brand new city to start pumping out a Settler in the first few turns that it would have practically no growth either way, until the Workers get to it and improve some tiles.

Makes me afraid of some kind of French rex strategy. On the other hand, I find Liberty to easily be the worst policy tree in the game, so maybe that's okay.

 

[MasterDinadan]

After a few more games, I'm not sure I feel that a 100% MoH is really overpowered after all.
People claiming that it turns colosseums into culture buildings and all that are overlooking on majorly important fact - Culture from happiness isn't affected by city modifiers. This means that culture from your temples and opera houses is getting multiplied enormously (over quadruple if you have all of the wonders and policies.)

Adding a few non-multipliable culture points from buildings like Colosseum would really only make a minor difference, I think. Building the Colosseum is actually questionable considering the maintenance cost for very little culture benefit.

 

[rspeer]

MasterDinadan: you have a point. I hadn't thought about that.

 

[Stalker0]

Yeah MasterDan is right. Even with 100% MOH, you aren't getting the same bonus as a culture building:

1) It doesn't apply to city borders.
2) It doesn't get multipled by culture multipliers.


I also would argue that piety isn't completely focused on culture, you have several happiness bonuses as well:

1) +2 happy, useful for anyone
2) 6 turn GA, solid.

That said, if MOH did something other than provide raw culture I wouldn't mind it.


Back to Tradition, I don't feel OCC should not be factored in to the discussion. In the long run, its a variant on the base game and should be treated that way. Further, several things are more powerful in a OCC than normal.

I do feel the +1 food is a bit on the weak side, and even with 50% more capital growth the massive slowndown in growth around pop 10 makes this one pretty weak. I also like the idea of monarchy providing both a gold and culture discount to border growth.

 

[Thalassicus]

Really interesting points about MoH I hadn't previously considered, thank you for pointing that out. Perhaps a 75% effect?

Back to Tradition, I don't feel OCC should not be factored in to the discussion. In the long run, its a variant on the base game and should be treated that way. Further, several things are more powerful in a OCC than normal.

Do you mean "I don't feel OCC should be factored in to the discussion"? Just want to clarify the double-negation.

One thing to consider I mentioned somewhere about the +1 (can't seem to remember where) is France or a civ who pops a culture ruins can get it very soon and the bonus is immediate. The bonuses from Liberty and Honor are more long-term. While it may seem small, small gains in early game can amplify to big effects in late game. You can get to new population levels faster, start building a settler faster, and increased population gives extra science too. This policy also leads to the powerful wonder-speed policy, and two powerful policies in a row in early game might be troublesome. The early policies in Honor could arguably fall into this category, one reason why I think Honor is so strong.

All that said, perhaps +2 would be a good change. It is something I considered when first looking at policies, and left alone after thinking about the reasons described above, yet perhaps it could still use a bonus.

 

[MasterDinadan]

The fact that it's effect is not even as good as a Granary kind of makes me raise my eyebrows. A lot of policies have effects that are on par with wonder effects, and this is one that sticks out as being strictly worse than a normal building.

 

[Horem]

Hey there Thalassicus,

I liek alot of your mini mods, and I was wonderign if you minded me includign soem of them in a mod im making?

 

[Thalassicus]

Sure that would be perfectly alright! I don't mind anyone using code directly or for inspiration. Just give appropriate credit of course, possibly a short mention to http://tiny.cc/BalanceMods.

 

[MilkmanDan]

One thing to consider I mentioned somewhere about the +1 (can't seem to remember where) is France or a civ who pops a culture ruins can get it very soon and the bonus is immediate. While it may seem small, small gains in early game can amplify to big effects in late game.

Perhaps instead the order should be changed? If the unlock for tradition instead didn't give such a change to the initial exponential growth (albeit short lived in effectiveness), you could put a higher bonus. Say maybe swap that with the wonder production bonus or the unhappiness reduction.

 

[Stalker0]

One thing to consider I mentioned somewhere about the +1 (can't seem to remember where) is France or a civ who pops a culture ruins can get it very soon and the bonus is immediate.

Consider that the culture hut could allow someone to immediate gain liberty...which might take 7 or so turns from getting that first settler out and first city built. Think of how much more food, gold, and production that might lead to?

Or honor can allow you take on a barb camp quicker, recover faster, allowing you to either attack someone else or take on more barbs which gains you more gold.

All the policies can give you solid benefits in the start, but I do feel that the +1 food is much weaker in the short and long term.

 

[Thalassicus]

@apotheoser
I've been thinking about what you said a few days, and while this yes can be very powerful if a lot of civs get it, it's still arguably worse than the alternatives in this tree, this late in the game. If an empire is going Order it's a big one. Militaristic and cultural CS's won't help much anymore for this empire. The +5 to every city is significant, since production is so much more valuable in CiV than before. If it's a choice between picking up United Front or this policy sooner, most probably go with the +5.

@MilkmanDan
That wonder bonus is the one reason many people go for the Tradition tree, it's quite powerful and does make sense up where it is.

@Stalker0
All true points.

I'll make the policy give +2, seems there's a general consensus in that regard.

 

[DeepQantas]

How about making United Front a big one time penalty (75% or even 100% faster influence degradation) that doesn't stack no matter how many civs have it... but gives immunity to itself.

If you adopt it when someone else has it, you can think of it as a bonus and compare it to Patronage. That way it's not just for griefing AIs.

(Actually I'm not sure if vanilla UF already gives immunity?)

Bonus points if you can make it a notification when someone first adopts it.

 

[Thalassicus]

That actually sounds like how it should have been done in the first place, if it doesn't follow those mechanics in some way. You've got a very good idea there, and it warrants further testing, though any significant changes will likely have to wait for the C++ part of the sdk.

 

[Plasmabunny]

What about tweaking tradition to grant an additional +1 to food in the capital based on Wonders in the capital, or cities attached to it?