Policy Discussion: Honor

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me. How can flat production not make sense for a branch that's all about rapid expansion and conquest?

Everyone keeps using this word 'infrastructure' without a real understanding of what it means. Infrastructure is not just buildings, it is the synergy between buildings, policies, tile improvements, and city connections. Progress still has this in spades, whereas Authority can simply build things to stay competitive. If you take Authority to play like progress, you'll fall behind. If you take Progress to play like Authority, you'll fall behind. Previously, one could take Progress and do a better job at Authority than Authority because Authority lacked production and fell behind. No longer.

Authority is all about empire and the war machine. How does production not fit into that?

G

 

Same reason why flat production per city is not fit for Wonder-hoarding empires, even though they could really use a lot of production: it's because another policy branch exists that's supposed to fill that niche.

The current Authority tree allows an empire that's all about rapid expansion and fueling their military-industrial complex to temporarily beat everyone else in the infrastructure game. (And yes, I meant that in the sense which you've just defined.) This is true for those warmonger civs like France, whose Unique Units don't come until the Renaissance era. With the current Authority, they'd be able to develop their cities quite thoroughly (just as thoroughly than Progress players) for one third of the game. Then just when Progress is gaining momentum, these players can attack their equally-developed cities defended by less-developed troops because they took Progress.

Yeah, this never happened to me or anyone yet. This is just theorycrafting and intuition so bury this complaint for now. I'll bring it up again (or others will) if it has any substance at all.

 

I just don't see the problem. Flat production falls off pretty quickly in value (compared especially to the % mod in Progress), so all this really does is give Authority the early steroid it needs to pump out units and get a basic empire running. Everyone needs production, and everyone needs infrastructure. Authority players still need infrastructure - they have to expand and build stuff just like everyone else. Progress still has the monopoly on bonuses for doing this, and the Progress buffs to civilian units, growth, research, and city connections give it the long-term edge.

So what you have now are three branches capable of building three different empires:

• Tradition: strong capital, early great people/great people improvements, strong contender for Wonders. Benefits of early expansion are limited, but a strong capital makes up for this.
  
• Progress: strong research and culture, strong city and terrain infrastructure with powerful instant effects from doing these things. Early expansion pays dividends in terms of science, culture, and gold.
  
• Authority: steady production in all cities, strong military bonuses for early conquest, barb control, and territorial expansion. Early expansion pays dividends in terms of production, allowing you to build a basic empire to kick-start your war machine.

This is the current design. If, after testing this out, players begin to ignore the infrastructure bonuses of Progress in favor of Authority, we'll consider narrowing the production bonus to just units (will require new code, but what doesn't?). For now, though, I'm pretty happy with the buff.

G

 

I can confirm that this is false.
You gain the culture (science doesn't matter afaik) in your capital, not in the newly founded city, when you found a city after picking up Imperium

 

He was referring to border growth, correct? Anyways, I was referring to border growth.

Founding culture goes to the capital right now, but I can change that if needed.

G

 

He said Culture and Science, which probably does not refer to the border growth on the count that border growth provides neither culture nor science.

 

Fairly certain he mentioned border growth, but I can't find the initial thread. In any case, both are working as designed from a DLL standpoint. If there's a consensus that the culture should go the founding city, I can change that.

G

 

You can just click the little arrow thing on the quote to take you to the original post.

And he mentioned the yields from the border-growth because the culture from settling the city was supposed to give you a border-growth.

 

Having the founding culture go to the city you founded would be helpful. It fits the 'early rapid expansion' flavor of Authority to grab up extra land and get rewarded for doing so.

 

Ahh, that's where I got mixed up. I read the food/production part incorrectly. Alright, I'll change the function.

 

Re: earlier conquest. How about making the siege promotion available earlier? Like on the same level as Medic.

 

Holy moly, that's an amazing feature I never noticed. Thanks!

The impression I get from the Authority tree is that it enables rapid settling and encourages having a basic army to bully enemy settlers around. Once you get through the tree and are in Medieval, you actually have the ability to conquer things plus bonuses to do so. I think this is perfectly fine, and the current version seems fine at it.

The problem I have is that AI difficulty levels don't even allow for the bullying part at all. You can't protect/bully CS no matter how much military you build, and you can't raid improvements or bully settlers because the AI just has so many units to start.

I'm really not a fan of that, and I think that's the part that needs to change.

 

The AI doesn't get that many more units. You can very easily get up to bullying status if you attack a CS, kill some of their units, and then peace out with your army around them. That's what I do if I'm feeling nasty (and what the AI often does) – kill their stuff, peace out, then bully them.

G

 

Wait, so you can increase your intimidation level against CS by going to war? I never knew that!

Also, is there a comprehensive list of what boni the AI gets at each difficulty level?

 

The difficulty.xml file gives you a good idea.

You can't bully at war, but if you kill off their units you'll have a bigger bonus post-war.

G

 

Doesn't this make all CS hate you forever if you do it twice?

Establishing a economic snowball is super critical, so those first few turns are not worth catching up to the AI in unit strength. I'd rather they get more scaling bonuses per era than all the starting units, if possible. I seem to recall that used to be the case?

 

That just drops your resting point to -20. Not that bad.

 

And it removed if you are able to ally a cs if I remember correctly.

 

Can anyone confirm this? There's a lot that's unclear when it comes to City States...

 

In my recent 2 games (v3.18), nearly every ai picked authority over the other two trees. 8 out of 10 ais in my last game opened with authority. In the one before it was ~8-9/11ais.
In the current iteration authority seems to be a little too appealing, at least for the AI.