Policy Cards vs Social Policies vs Civics

[Boris Gudenuf]

I will do my Best!

An Idea came to my Mind while I was typing the above Post, is making each Government Type have a different way to generate Bureaucracy Points. Like "Merchant Republic" generating more BPs by focusing on a good economical infrastructure and having Happy Citizens while "Theocracy" doesn't require the latter but having your Cities follow the same (majority) Religion as the Capital City and having Holy Sites built in them. In addition, each Government Type will reduce the BP Cost of Policy Cards that have to do with it, like reduced BP Cost for "Triangular Trade" and "Free Market" Policies when you have "Merchant Republic" as your Government.

This way Governments can be much more differenciated and each one would be more Unique, and each would need a different Playstyle to take full advantage of it, while ignoring that causes instability in your Cities.

I have to think more about this, because there might be some Flawbacks that might come with it, that might not be Fun.

There should be some Downsides, otherwise government/policy choices become largely meaningless.

Each government-specific 'BP' should not only give a bonus to that type of government, there should be things about most of them that make them unavailable or much less effective to other governments.

Governments and Cultures should be defined both by the Bonuses they accrue from their behavior and choices, and by the bonuses they gave up when they made their choices.

So, for example, Triangular Trade may give a much smaller Economic Bonus to a Theocracy than to a Merchant Republic, but certain Religious Tenets chosen by the Theocrats make it possible to convert the Triangular Trade cargo to their religion and give them a boost from that - which is not available to the Merchants!

 

[Zegangani]

There should be some Downsides, otherwise government/policy choices become largely meaningless.

I didn't mean the Drawbacks of the Consequences of Policies and Governments (which I want to make similar to Dark Age Policies, with Bunuses and Maluses (a Price), but less severe ofc) but more of Issues like Balance between the Governments. But nothing unfixable, it's just something that I haven't thought of before and hence didn't include in the design of the Mod.

Each government-specific 'BP' should not only give a bonus to that type of government, there should be things about most of them that make them unavailable or much less effective to other governments.

Governments and Cultures should be defined both by the Bonuses they accrue from their behavior and choices, and by the bonuses they gave up when they made their choices.

So, for example, Triangular Trade may give a much smaller Economic Bonus to a Theocracy than to a Merchant Republic, but certain Religious Tenets chosen by the Theocrats make it possible to convert the Triangular Trade cargo to their religion and give them a boost from that - which is not available to the Merchants!

Great Ideas, as always. I don't think I can include the latter in the 3rd Pack which focuses on Empire Government, but I hope I can manage to include all of that with later patches/Packs. Because there are indeed a lot of modifiers and requirements to make for all the Policies.

 

[Katsuraw]

(it's very similar to civ5 being way too much into Tall and painful happiness system and civ6 way too much into Wide and meaningless happiness system)
[/spoiler]

I would change the Enlightenment civic and policy cards. Specifically, the civic should give 2 envoys and unlocks a card which combines Free Market and Rationalism. On top of that, the card gives +50% yields for +4 adjacency districts, and +50% yields for 13 pop. If your city has 18 pop, the maximum bonus is given regardless of adjacency. Rationalism was nerfed hard from the base game by adding these restrictions. In fact, 9/10 times, it is markedly worse than the campus adjacency card. If you added the effects of Free Market, all of a sudden, using the card is a much more attractive proposition, with the extended policy card mod, it appears as giving Science and Gold. Furthermore, it would be slightly easier to reach the restrictions, and in cities that cannot gain the full bonus initially, the door is not closed forever. Finally, the significance of the distinction of yields and science and gold, is that things like the Madrasa becomes better, encouraging those civs to go tall.

Combining Grand Opera and Simultaneum in the future is also good for this.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

So here's my suggestion. Find a middle ground between those two, that will combine their strengths and minimize weaknesses. For example, retain government types from civ6 (unlocked by tech), and each of them has a civ5 style 'social policy tree' attached to it. You can change governments, but it is a significant investment of yields and stability (maybe even civil war) so you can do that, but not very often and easily. Also there could be a distinction between 'soft' transition between gov types, when most of old social tree bonuses are retained but transition takes some time (evolution, reform) and 'hard' transition when you change govs quickly but most of old bonuses are lost (revolution, coup d'etat).

An example of gov types through game

Spoiler :

Every civilization begins with tribal gov type, which has no social tree because it is unorganized and how many tribal urban civilizatiins do you know? but only has some blanket bonus for stability or whatever. So everybody wants to leave this system but there may be some benefit in waiting a while with it. Then in the ancient era you unlock for examole Despotic Monarchy, Theocracy and Oligarchic Republic (Phoenicians had those iirc). In the classical you unlock for example Empire, Khanate and Classical Republic. In medieval - Feudal Kingdom, Divine Empire (like China, Byz, Caliphates) and Merchant Republic. In early modern Absolute Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy and Republic.

The thing with that is, it amounts to what was in Civ5 when social policy branches could be exclusive. If you switched one off to gain another, the policies were disabled and you entered your alternative government. You're proposing making a great deal of them exclusive to each other, which for sure would mean each track has to have much more than 5 elements in it, and probably some overlap in aiding basic things (just to different strengths and with different conditions).

I don't like this, because I like how the Social policies, being accrued through dumping Culture output throughout the game, are nice to build up as "Things our people know how to... be like." We know how to -do- "Meritocracy" or Legalism or Corvee or Professional Army. We chose our group of civic institutions and , however discordant they are, we made them the way of our civilization. Incompatibilities of policies is expressed through what is the mere opportunity cost of missing any Track Completion bonuses, plus the tiered development within the Track COMBINED with the higher power level of upper tier policies. (If the later tiers weren't actually stronger this would not be a cost.) And yet, you still could make some policies have tiers but not be strictly stronger, to hit that flavor resonance, to dial the power level in that case-by-case way.

So what I would like to do, is to get a little bit of what you're saying, and to do it with even something that was in Civ6 just different emphasis. Imagine if you had Civ5 policy tracks, and the policy tracks also had a selection in them which was not a policy but was a government specific bonus. Call it a card, call it a legacy bonus or whatever. This bonus, but not the others, is effective only for as long as you're in the exclusive civic tied to that track (or some other civic shared with other tracks). E.g., Collective Rule requires actually doing collective rule, which may be replaced.

I suppose that leaves the question of where government types come from. Research them by putting technological and sociological innovation together again? Or maybe cheat and use "Key techs" in the tech tree ( = places where we know the era has changed) and make that tech or a near one be the preconditions for the successive government types as you say (Republic, Khanate, Kingdom...).

 

[rocksinmypath]

I'd like to see policies include obligations from the leader to their people. For example, a policy that boosts science yields can be accompanied by the promise of building more libraries or universities. If you do not follow up on your promise, there will be penalties when you attempt to switch policies. It could be an up-front gold payment like it is now, but it could also be a happiness penalty of sort like reduced amenities and/or loyalty. Whether you fulfill your promises could also affect the efficacy of your future policies. Instead of having policies provide fixed benefits (e.g. doubled campus adjacency), have the effectiveness depend on your history as a reliable leader. If you consistently switch policies without fulfilling your promises first, your policies will eventually be almost useless, whereas continually fulfilling promises will make them stronger over time. I've grown to dislike the "unlock a new civic to switch policies for free" mechanism more and more, and I think this would be a neat alternative to that.

Also, another aspect of the policy system I don't like is that there's no sense of empire building. It sort of relates to the first point and applies to a lot of other areas of the game, but the whole thing feels too much like a series of yield optimization and not much else. Whatever combination of policies I select in any given game has no meaning to me. I really would like it if there was a way for the policy system to deliver a similar sort of satisfaction that the city planning aspect of the game does. I don't have any specific ideas on this yet, but one thing I think could help is to have policy cards evolve throughout the course of the game to do more. Civ 6 does have a bit of this where different policy cards get merged as you unlock late-game civics, but I would like the policy evolution to depend more on what you're doing with your empire rather than just how much culture you're generating. Again, going back to the policy promise idea, another benefit of fulfilling promises could be that it would provide "XP" to the relevant policy card, and eventually, the policy card will "level up" to provide more perks. For example, the Level 1 science card we looked at earlier was essentially just Natural Philosophy. When it reaches Level 2, it could also encompass Rationalism. The XP and level on a policy card won't go away if you temporarily switch it out, but you'll have a heavy incentive to not remove it. Overall, you'll be more committed to "raising" a small set of policy cards that go hand-in-hand with your overall game plan, which I think will make policies more meaningful.

 

[Henri Christophe]

The way the culture is transformed in cards is very cool, but in real game we are stack with the same card policy and never changes cards, there is a lot of very weak cards who we will never use.
The culture tree of Civ5 was also a very cool solution, and make the cultural victory more logical to achieve. But as said before, you cannot change policies what is unrealistic.
Acctually I hope civ 7 can surprise me and have a third new way to overlook culture who anyone had tought before.