Policy Discussion: Liberty

[mitsho]

My main objection was against the Prophet. Makes it to easy to get to a religion, especially if we end up increasing the treshholds there... Besides that I feel it's a very "here, have a instant freebie"-effect whereas with other finishers, you mostly feel the effect over time. Also I don't have to like every strong effect just because it's strong

Didn't we have the discussion on the early settler already, need to look those discussions up...

 

[mystikx21]

I'd agree Honor is troubled in some ways but it has some useful bones too. Liberty and tradition need some reshuffling or minor adjustments to existing bonuses and/or have one or two duds, but they're basically fine.

Piety also could use some help but this is more because it is easy to cherry pick it and doesn't offer as many on the way benefits in the ancient age versus longer term effects.

 

[Ahriman]

My problem with the Pyramids is that it overlaps too much with the existing worker policy. I am less likely to want the Pyramids with wide because I can already get more/faster workers. Having pyramids do something else would be much nicer. [Maybe it should just give happiness; a bit lame, but that's what a Wide empire really needs, it would be nice if the tree-specific wonders were a better match to what the tree needs. So for example Patronage shouldn't have a wide-happiness giving forbidden palace, it should have the +city state influence wonder effect.]

Huh, I heard Prophets weren't available from Liberty any more, haven't tested it myself.

I was pretty sure I noticed this in vanilla BNW. [In G&K you could get a prophet, in BNW I don't think you could - which is great.]

With Republic, I think the easy solution is just tweak the % for buildings up to 10%. I think a policy that helps you construct buildings is a good fit for Liberty - wide empires tend to construct many more buildings than do Tall empires, because they are building more copies of the basic buildings. I disagree that this is an effect that should be in Tall. Tall gets the Wonder construction boost.

 

[mitsho]

My problem with the Pyramids is that it overlaps too much with the existing worker policy. I am less likely to want the Pyramids with wide because I can already get it. Having pyramids do something else would be much nicer. [Maybe it should just give happiness; a bit lame, but that's what a Wide empire really needs, it would be nice if the tree-specific wonders were a better match to what the tree needs. So for example Patronage shouldn't have a wide-happiness giving forbidden palace, it should have the +city state influence wonder effect.]

Totally agree. I do think we can ignore the wonder effects for now and come back to the policies after they have been adopted. I'm also not sure that EVERY tree needs its own wonders. It's good to have one (or two) at Honor to buff it and prevent a peaceful player to build the "city conquest wonder". But as you point out, isn't the extra delegates better if it's open to everyone? I'd rather have other conditions than strictly the policy ones.

Liberty (and Tradition) are strong already, does it make sense to reserve the Pyramids for Liberty (flavour-wise no; gameplay-wise I'm not sure we need the extra effect). The Settler+Faster Worker Rate seemed quite useful to me (just not necessarily totally for a wide empire only). Let's look at that later on.

I was pretty sure I noticed this in vanilla BNW. [In G&K you could get a prophet.]

Really need to test this now. (I haven't been playing any wide early start games with the few games I could play time-wise in BNW)

 

[mystikx21]

I'd be fine with coming back to wonder assignment to trees on the second pass. I'd agree Forbidden Palace on Patronage and Pyramids stand out. Big Ben still seems redundant to me. This might be best to do when or if wonders changes are made anyway as Angkor Wat's CS influence boost in GEM would be quite sensible to be with a Patronage unlock.

 

[Ahriman]

I'd be fine with coming back to wonder assignment to trees on the second pass.

Agreed.

Big Ben actually does function as a complement rather than a substitute though; Big Ben makes you even more likely to want to build up villages and spend your gold on buying buildings/units rather than city states, unit upgrades, etc.

This might be best to do when or if wonders changes are made anyway as Angkor Wat's CS influence boost in GEM would be quite sensible to be with a Patronage unlock.

Right, that was what I was thinking of. But we can also shuffle effects around a bit when they aren't tied amazingly well to what they do. It's not really clear why Ankgor Wat should boost city state influence, or why the Forbidden Palace should give World Congress influence.
Whereas Big Ben makes some flavor sense in representing British economic dominance and empire.

 

[mystikx21]

I think Big Ben stands out to me because the policy is 25% purchase reduction plus other effects (science on commerce buildings). It's probably more the policy that is too strong than that Ben seems out of place.

 

[Ahriman]

I think Big Ben stands out to me because the policy is 25% purchase reduction plus other effects (science on commerce buildings). It's probably more the policy that is too strong than that Ben seems out of place.

Yes, the policy is too strong, but it's in a tree where others are too weak. The policy should come down once the other policies go up.

 

[EricB]

I'd still like to see more happiness available in the Liberty tree than it currently has. Happiness is the number one need for a wide empire, and it's severely lacking early in the game.

The communitas map seems to not provide a very diverse distribution of luxury resources. I usually have multiple copies of the same resource. I'm fine with this too as it encourages trading and makes the game more fun, but it does have the side effect of making early expansion very difficult if you can find additional luxuries.

So perhaps some kind of happiness booster in the Liberty tree would help with this. There is one already but it's kind of weak early on. +1 happiness per city and -5% unhappiness empire-wide helps once you have a lot of cities but not much with initial expansion. Maybe just a flat +3, +4, or +5 happiness instead of a production bonus on buildings? That policy is already pretty weak and a prerequisite for the strong settler policy. Having some extra happiness would help if it came right before getting that settler going. Kind of like having 1 extra free luxury resource. In the late game this policy wouldn't be very strong at all.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

I seriously rage quit a Siam game when I rushed Angkor Wat and found it didn't give influence boost anymore. Bring it back please! D:

 

[Stalker0]

I'd still like to see more happiness available in the Liberty tree than it currently has. Happiness is the number one need for a wide empire, and it's severely lacking early in the game.

I'm not seeing that myself. Liberty provides me enough with my luxuries to usually get the first 4 or so cities down. Now i do usually need circuses or coliseums to keep expanding but i don't consider that a problem, just the cost of doing business.

 

[agc28]

I think Liberty has enough happiness in the tree. +1 per connected cities? That is a lot!

The biggest problem is that roads are VERY expensive, compared with the internal trade route returns.

In the early game, if I connect two cities with 6 tiles of roads, I pay 6 gpt. But I only gain 2-3 gpt from the internal trade route. What the heck?

Compare this to the harbor connection: I pay 1-2 maintenance cost per harbor, I gain trade route + all the harbor benefits.

This is why I prefer coastal-only empires.

Inland empires need to be buffed.

 

[Ahriman]

The biggest problem is that roads are VERY expensive, compared with the internal trade route returns.

The problem is that the CEP internal trade income is much too low. This is really crippling wide empires. In G&K and GEM and to some extent BNW, the main advantage that wide empires had was more gold income. But in CEP I'm not really finding this to be the case. It really seems that Tall > Wide.

 

[BroOfTheSun]

The problem is that the CEP internal trade income is much too low. This is really crippling wide empires. In G&K and GEM and to some extent BNW, the main advantage that wide empires had was more gold income. But in CEP I'm not really finding this to be the case. It really seems that Tall > Wide.

Depends on when you connect your cities. When do you normally start connecting cities for? Early game, it is a waste of GPT for the roads. Once your cities get to about pop 5-6, it starts to become worth the money (unmodded BNW).

 

[mystikx21]

That's unmodded BNW. CEP is much different on city connections

Unmodded: -1 per route, 1.1 per population, .15 per capital population.
CEP: +3 per route, .2 per population

Say we have a capital at 10, and a city at 6.
Unmodded: 7.1
CEP: 4.2

Or at 20 and 12
BNW: 15.2
CEP: 5.4

That's a huge change. We should certainly consider keeping a per route effect, to make early road connections being worthwhile and thus improve the meritocracy policy pick, but raise the per population effects to raise the amount of income to something closer to default (still lower, but not as severe). Nixing the capital population is fine with me, we can replace that with a capital connection with itself to fix the RR bug.

I'd propose 2+60%
at city size 1: 2.6
at city size 6: 5.6
at city size 12: 9.2

(Note: the values were already changed in BNW from GK, the per route bonus was increased from -1.3 and the per pop bonus was reduced from 1.2).

 

[Ahriman]

Precisely, and when you aggregate it up you can really see the difference.

Capital 20, 7 other cities of size 12 on average
Unmodded: 106.4
CEP: 37.8

And looking at income net of road maintenance, assuming average distance of 5 per city connection:
Unmodded: 71.4
CEP: 2.8

CEP effectively removes net income from domestic trade over roads, which was a major source of income in the unmodded game.

It affects tall vs wide because more aggregate population (due to the increasing marginal food cost per pop in larger cities) is the one main advantage that Wide empires had. With 4 unhappiness per city, a new city that nets you a new luxury only just covers its base unhappiness, any city that doesn't net a new luxury is a big happiness drain.

[It also may be a cause of the AI's large negative gold income that I often observe, as they can't pay their military maintenance costs.]

 

[Ahriman]

doublepost

 

[BroOfTheSun]

I see. Thanks for the info. As you can tell, I haven't gotten around to playing CEP yet. Still working through unmodded BNW. CEP gold from city connections looks like it does not pay to go wide at all, and I enjoy playing wide and starting liberty much more than going tall/Tradition.

 

[EricB]

I just tried playing a Liberty style game with England. I expanded out as quickly as I could given the resources around. Eventually, every civ on the continent declared war on me and I was screwed. Quit that game.

One thing that might have helped is cheaper city walls. I couldn't build walls in these tiny cities to protect them even though I was trying to. They were just too expensive. Playing wide is harder than playing tall early on. Maybe try putting some sort of discount on building walls in the Liberty tree somewhere. Maybe boost the production policy in Liberty that gives +1 production plus 5% production for buildings by adding +50% production for walls (just walls, not castles, etc). That would have helped.

Also, I play on a modded version where the AI are more aggressive than CEP or BNW, so I learned the lesson to build a bigger military before expanding.

 

[BroOfTheSun]

A bonus to walls production might be a good idea for honor. I sorta like the downside to Liberty where fast expansion also means you will be vulnerable in early wars. Fast expansion + free/quick walls would make it too easy to defend new cities. Especially considering how difficult it is to be a warmonger early, having walls on new cities means you need more units to take it down.

So leaving new cities without walls makes early wars more manageable as well.