Policy Discussion: Liberty

[Stalker0]

Alright, a lot of people are chomping at the bit to start working on Liberty, so lets get to it.

A note on names:
Names are important, and they should be debated. That said, I hope we can all agree they don't need to be debated up front, we have PLENTY to debate already. In fact, I'm not even going to use names for the policies going forward. The focus is on the ideas....we can craft whatever names are appropriate once the ideas are finalized.

A note on theme:

My general thought is that Liberty should be the "infrastructure opener". I have a number of cities, and I am working to peacefully build them up to be the best they can be. If Tradition generally focuses on a super capital, and Honor focuses on getting a big empire fast, Liberty is about taking an existing empire and making it great.

You could also envision Liberty as being a good companion to Tradition or Honor, a secondary tree if you will. I take a little tradition to get my capital going...then move to liberty as I go a wide style. Or I start with honor, conquer and expand my empire, then take some liberty to shore up that empire. This is not to say that liberty shoudn't stand on its own, but there is no shame if it works well with other opening trees.

From my debates with Wodhann its sounded like we were in general agreement on this concept, but what do others say? Does that theme sound appropriate?


A look at the current tree:

Opener: The culture bonus itself is not that bad overall compared to Tradition. +1 per city will eventually beat the +3 in the capital, and it does help border growth for the empire as a whole.

That said, it starts off slower than tradition and honor...maybe too slow?

Beyond culture, it is definately the most boring opener, I am sure we can add a little spice.


+1 Prod per City, +5% for buildings in all cities: Conceptually I think this one is fine. We are enabling all of our cities to build that infrastructure faster. Might be a tad on the weak side, but its functional.

Gain a worker, +25% terrain improvement I think this strongly fits the theme of Liberty, and its a good bonus. If we have "sexier" bonuses we want to add we could probably drop the +25% terrain improvement for something else, but this policy I think stands on its own pretty well.

Free Settler, faster settlers: Right now we are considering this one for honor, so it would need a replacement.

33% less culture to get policies, golden age Both ideas have moved to current honor version, probably would need something else.

+1 happy per connected city, -5% unhappiness in cities. A decent bonus, probably could use some tweaking, but overall its solid.

Finisher: Free Great Person of your choice: This one to me is fun and flexible. I get a GE for a wonder, get a Great Admiral to explore the world long before anyone else, build an academy to get my science started...etc etc. I think its a fine finisher.


Overall Thought: My personal thought is that many of Liberty's policies would be fine with a little tweaking, and then the ideas we have moved out of the tree to honor leave us some holes for fresh ideas to be put in.


Some ideas: Just a few brainstorm ideas I think could be cool:

1) Rome's bonus or a version there of. I like the concept that once a building has been built first it provides a bonus to building it in other cities. When playing Rome I have fun trying to tailor my build orders in teh capital to optimize play (hmm my capital could use X, but I probably should go ahead and get the shrine so my other 3 cities can build it quicker...etc).

2) Free buildings. If we are going with any free building concepts, liberty is probably a good place to put it. If its a free building in every city you build...its a bonus that last most of the game so its not as anemic as the free building in 4 city idea.

3) Internal Trade Routes: Right now we have a ITR concept in tradition, and that may be enough. If we don't mind double dipping an ITR idea may work for liberty as well.

4) Make buildings better. Something like +1 culture for all monuments, or something of that nature. Not just building faster instrastructure...but superior infrastructure.

 

[Funak]

A note on theme:

My general thought is that Liberty should be the "infrastructure opener". I have a number of cities, and I am working to peacefully build them up to be the best they can be. If Tradition generally focuses on a super capital, and Honor focuses on getting a big empire fast, Liberty is about taking an existing empire and making it great.

You could also envision Liberty as being a good companion to Tradition or Honor, a secondary tree if you will. I take a little tradition to get my capital going...then move to liberty as I go a wide style. Or I start with honor, conquer and expand my empire, then take some liberty to shore up that empire. This is not to say that liberty shoudn't stand on its own, but there is no shame if it works well with other opening trees.

From my debates with Wodhann its sounded like we were in general agreement on this concept, but what do others say? Does that theme sound appropriate?

I somewhat disagree here, I think Liberty is and should be the peaceful way to get a big empire, which usually comes down to REX. Faster improvements also makes sense, bonuses for having roads. generally what's already in liberty.

A look at the current tree:

Opener:+1 culture per city


+1 Prod per City, +5% for buildings in all cities: Conceptually I think this one is fine. We are enabling all of our cities to build that infrastructure faster. Might be a tad on the weak side, but its functional.[/B]

Combine these two, change the 5% buildings to 2% buildings per policy. use it as an opener.

Gain a worker, +25% terrain improvement I think this strongly fits the theme of Liberty, and its a good bonus. If we have "sexier" bonuses we want to add we could probably drop the +25% terrain improvement for something else, but this policy I think stands on its own pretty well.

Bump it up to 50% and it's pretty solid imo.

Free Settler, faster settlers: Right now we are considering this one for honor, so it would need a replacement.

Think this should stay along with some buff.

33% less culture to get policies, golden age Both ideas have moved to current honor version, probably would need something else.

Something new indeed

+1 happy per connected city, -5% unhappiness in cities. A decent bonus, probably could use some tweaking, but overall its solid.

This is one of those we could remove if we want something new in here, solid but kinda boring.

Finisher: Free Great Person of your choice: This one to me is fun and flexible. I get a GE for a wonder, get a Great Admiral to explore the world long before anyone else, build an academy to get my science started...etc etc. I think its a fine finisher.

I'm one of the few people who have no love for this one whatsoever I guess. But even if you like it we need something purchasable with faith here or this tree will fall behind. (I suggest Engineer)



Overall Thought: My personal thought is that many of Liberty's policies would be fine with a little tweaking, and then the ideas we have moved out of the tree to honor leave us some holes for fresh ideas to be put in.

 

[mitsho]

Liberty does seem largely fine in the base game. It has a nice mix of instant and gradual bonuses. With the latter we need to make sure not to make them unintentionally strong in the late game. But that's numbers tweaking.

I dislike the Free Great Person as well, but mainly for the possible free Great Prophet that devalues a lot of religion-oriented wonders. If we can make them non-chosable, I'd be all for it, since yes it's a great fun. It's a very strong finisher though and I'm not sure we want to make all of them very powerful. Maybe this fits better as the Piety finisher (and there I could live with the Prophet I guess )

With the (potential) move of (free) settlers and less-culture-costs-per-city, this tree does need something more though. The "instant gold" bonus was quite well liked (or just controversial?), easily coded and a nice replacement for the "lost" free settler. A boost to interntal trade does fit best here in my opinion (Many cities = lots of options for internal trade). I'm not sure as to the arguments for the other side.

I agree on the basic question of the theme though: "infrastructure". (as opposed to capital for tradtion, expansion for honor and flexibility for piety)

 

[mystikx21]

1) Culture + a building rate improvement or +1 production would be fine on its own here. It doesn't need to be overwhelmingly better by putting a bunch into the policy.

2) Agreed it is conceptually fine. The 5% bonus needs to be improved. Funak's suggestion of using the scaling % per policy effect here would be fine.

3) 25% worker improvement rate is consistently considered one of the strongest policies. It doesn't need anything. I think this effect/policy is fine as is.

4-5) I think this is fine to move to Honor. It's possible we could keep the settler cost decrease (change it to 25% in any city) and add something else to it (city connect income boost?, etc). 5 needs complete replacement

6) Needs adjusted to the new happiness system, but the +1 per connection is fine already. A poverty or literacy happiness bonus might be fine here.

7) Finisher is good as is. A strong argument against it is that it is really easy to use a great prophet to get a religion without getting piety. If we are moving piety to classical though, this is fine.

Possible replacements
1) City connection income
2) Road upkeep decrease (both of these two I would rather put in commerce, but I am not dedicated that they need to be there)
3) GA points from wonders? (this could also be used in tradition)
4) Improved buildings
5) The gold/era effect from CEP was fine here as well.

I don't think borrowing Rome's UA is ideal here.
I don't think we need another ITR bonus.
I'm not a fan of free buildings.

 

[Lord Tirian]

There's also the possibility of reducing the technology cost increase per city, analogous to the culture cost increase now living in Honor.

By the way, given how potent science is, I'm almost of the opinion that the default penalty isn't strong enough anyway, especially as you go up in map size.

 

[Hawawaa]

Opener- +1 culture and +1 production in all cities and 2% to production for all policies.

free worker and +25% to terrain improvement.

Settlers build 25% faster in all cities and internal trade routes also give gold (if your all alone this really helps).

Meritocracy is good right now (maybe one other small bonus say 3 free walls in first 3 cities?)

I do like the idea of reducing tech penalty per city and when you connect roads that are in tiles outside of your border will flip to your control (only apply to cities connected to the capital).

I did also like that gold era effect from cep too.

I do like free GP but maybe if its possible free GP building you can slap down?

 

[Funak]

Ok this is how I think, a scaling bonus in the opener doesn't make the opener strong by itself. and without it 3 culture tradition vs 1culture 1 production/city is pretty fair (Probably in liberty's favor) (actually isolating it and it's pretty damn overpowered truth be told, 1 culture is probably fine). I personally think the scaling bonuses are a fun thing and I think we should use them in all the openers. Best I can think of here is %production when building buildings.

If you want to keep the old finisher atleast consider adding the ability to purchase some greap person for faith, know that was one of the worst things about liberty or piety openers in vanilla.

 

[Wodhann]

Ok, I wasn't expecting a new thread, but let's go. Finally I get to flesh out wisdom, at least preliminarly.

So the theme of wisdom is: Infrastucture, good management, and education.

"Wisdom"*

Opener: Each building in your empire produces 1 . (Just the general idea, obviously needs tweaking)

Citizenship: Free worker. +25% terrain improvement.

Mentorship: During war time, +5 . During peace time, +5 . Requires Citizenship. (Numbers obviously preliminary)​

Apprenticeship: Can build Smithies (Cost 60, +2 , Engineer slot). Requires Mentorship.​

Aristocracy: Wonder construction +20%. You get 50% more back when someone builds a wonder you were working on. (The name is the same as in tradition because it fits the theme, in my view.)

Panis et Circenses: Entertainment buildings give you based on how much flat happiness they provide. Requires Aristocracy. (This further reduces poverty unhappiness)​

Finisher: Free library in all cities. Can build Great Engineers with faith in Industrial Era.​

*: Temporary name, feel free to offer suggestions

 

[Stalker0]

Apprenticeship: Can build Smithies (Cost 60, +2 , Engineer slot). Requires Mentorship.​

So is the idea here that this is a "unique" building that only Wisdom can create?

That is an interesting idea.

 

[Wodhann]

So is the idea here that this is a "unique" building that only Wisdom can create?

That is an interesting idea.

Precisely. It's supposed to be a simple building though - mainly a glorified engineer slot.

 

[mystikx21]

Each building produces culture is insanely strong. Even at something like .25/building it can add up to an enormously large amount of culture per city relative to culture as a yield (it could quickly be 5-10 culture per city even at .25). It also decreases the value of cultural buildings rather than improving their usefulness. I don't think this is a good idea. Culture per city is fine with some other effect added on to it (building production % is fine too, just slightly higher than default)

Mentorship is interesting in providing a wartime/peace time split. I don't know how difficult that is to have a check that flips on during wartime and off at peacetime in the code. I'm pretty sure there isn't one right now. But conceptually this idea is interesting and we would need at least one or two policies replaced to use the current honor design. We may also want it to do something different however (something like +1 from libraries and +1 from monuments or theaters). +5/5 isn't very much in the long run and is more of an instant boost approach. If it's just doing that, it should be a stronger or different kind of boost. (the culture boost is also a bit stronger as an instant effect early on, so if there's something like this involved, it may be best to spread out the bonus over time and require a bit of investment to make it go).

Unique building with an engineer slot is okay, but it's basically the same as having a city give an engineer slot and +production, you just have to build it. + production is fine from default combined with some other effect without doing this. Circle back to the idea of a unique policy building though. Piety would be one obvious place to discuss this I think.

Wonders I think we have set on keeping in tradition for now. There's no requirement that it be staying there, but it has a better synergy with the current design (powerful capital should be able to crank out a few, there's a GP rate effect, etc).

Finisher is meh. I'm not a fan of any free buildings concept and it doesn't do anything if you already have a library (free library isn't a huge gold savings). Library is probably one of the better buildings to get quickly in any new city, but it isn't much of an effect. Purchasing GEs is nice, but it doesn't seem necessary or well meshed with the rest of the tree and does nothing at all for about half of the game. The free instant GP versus Tradition giving an option to buy Engineers later is fine as a trade-off comparison.

This design overall probably suffers from the same problem as the tradition design did, it has a few duds or weak effects (and a couple that are overpoweringly strong), which encourages cherry picking and abandoning it. What should "encourage" cherry picking and abandoning any tree is that you would have open trees available from later eras and not that the tree ceases to be very useful that you are bored with it and move on because it is no longer an effective choice. It should always remain a solid and good interesting choice, but maybe not always be your best choice to fill out a tree by taking its less "desirable" effects.

Not sure if gold on arenas, etc is necessary but I don't mind an additional happiness effect from them in here and that's one way to achieve it. +1 from city connections though seems stronger.

Of the other above options proposed

Gold on ITRs is okay. This was used in CEP for the Ottomans. Could scale per era or be impacted by gold/trade buildings, something like that. I'm not sure I like this effect here though.
I would not bring back the free walls from CEP in any format if it can be helped.
Tech penalty reduction would be okay, or just provide a bonus science that roughly approximates the reduction we might seek.

 

[Funak]

Ok, I wasn't expecting a new thread, but let's go. Finally I get to flesh out wisdom, at least preliminarly.

So the theme of wisdom is: Infrastucture, good management, and education.

"Wisdom"*

Opener: Each building in your empire produces 1 . (Just the general idea, obviously needs tweaking)​

I don't see how any amount of tweaking could possibly balance this.

Citizenship: Free worker. +25% terrain improvement.​

Well, that's in the basegame and it's fine. Would still bump it up to 50% and replace the effect on the pyramids, but that's just me.

Mentorship: During war time, +5 . During peace time, +5 . Requires Citizenship. (Numbers obviously preliminary)​

Straight up giving someone 5 culture/turn is a horrible idea tbh.

Apprenticeship: Can build Smithies (Cost 60, +2 , Engineer slot). Requires Mentorship.​

Way too powerful, gives the advantage of our tradtitionpolicy in all cities(which is insane even if you need to pay 60 hammers for it).
Unique buildings are usually a bad idea unless you have one for every tree.

Aristocracy: Wonder construction +20%. You get 50% more back when someone builds a wonder you were working on. (The name is the same as in tradition because it fits the theme, in my view.)​

Still don't agree on having this in liberty at all.

Panis et Circenses: Entertainment buildings give you based on how much flat happiness they provide. Requires Aristocracy. (This further reduces poverty unhappiness)​

​

So this would give like 1 gold per happiness building? That's fine I guess if not really boring.

Finisher: Free library in all cities. Can build Great Engineers with faith in Industrial Era.​

You're going to expect people to not build libraries until they've finished a full policytree? Also we already discussed how free buildings are a bad idea.


I guess I was expecting more than this, most of these aren't usable in my opinion.

Edit: Didn't mean to sound overly harsh, first this I wrote after I woke up.

 

[mystikx21]

Pyramids I would replace as the wonder for this tree anyway, but I'd also agree they'd be better with a free settler and the worker rate increase (CEP design). That's a separate issue from the tree itself for now.

There's no reason to increase citizenship to 50%. It's already good at 25%.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Just few comments, will go through this later when I have a bit more time.

Each building produces culture is insanely strong.

It would be better if you restricted it to a certain type of buildings. Alternatively, if you want to push the infrastructure theme, you could go for national wonders. If you want to apply an expansion theme to it, then make it +1 culture in each city with at least one national wonder. I think that could work nice as "slow burn" opener:
"+1 culture in all cities, increases to +2 if the city has at least one national wonder."

It's better than Tradtion, but it takes some time to go "online". In any case, I think the thrust here is rewarding you for following the tree's playstyle (like Honor rewards killing stuff), I like the intention behind it, if not the execution.

Mentorship is interesting in providing a wartime/peace time split. I don't know how difficult that is to have a check that flips on during wartime and off at peacetime in the code. I'm pretty sure there isn't one right now.

The Swords into Plowshares pantheon belief checks for wartime.

Unique building with an engineer slot is okay, but it's basically the same as having a city give an engineer slot and +production, you just have to build it. + production is fine from default combined with some other effect without doing this.

It also feels a bit... disappointing not getting anything out of a policy until after you build it. I'd at least add an one-time rider effect to policies of this type.

 

[Funak]

Pyramids I would replace as the wonder for this tree anyway, but I'd also agree they'd be better with a free settler and the worker rate increase (CEP design). That's a separate issue from the tree itself for now.

There's no reason to increase citizenship to 50%. It's already good at 25%.

Well if we completely remove the worker rate increase from any wonder we could bump citizenship up to 50% to make it actually feel like it's making a distance. (Keep in mind that this is an effect that basicly stops doing anything once you've finished expanding, and does even less on seaheavy maps.


Well back to the task at hand:

I think if we keep the tradition opener as just 3 culture in the capital, then liberty opener is fine as 1 culture per city. As seen in CEP removing the border expand in tradition and adding something else to the libertyopener made the traditionopener feel like garbage.

Ofc we would still need one of those scaling bonuses that we have in tradition (that imo isn't really in the opener since you actually need other policies to get a benefit). What do people think about productionbonus when building building in all cities? 2% per policy or 3% per policy?


Other than that, what do we have? The following ideas could work:

Cheaper roads (could also be in commerce, also of less value to inca)

Lower building maintenace (Could also be in commerce, is also in Order I believe, could still work.)

+1 Production on productionbuildings? (Maybe just the early ones? would end up being worth like 6 production in the end, might be fine anyways?)

Cheaper goldcost setlers? (Feels like this could be added to the productionbonus that already exists?)

Cities spawn with higher pop (It's in order and was in CEPexploration, feels like both of those come kinda late to be relevant however)

Plus food in all cities (Something I would rather see in piety, but could be in both to be honest. food on some building might be better?)

 

[mitsho]

Do we have a bit of a dilemma here. If Tradition is about 'turtling' up in the capital and cranking out wonders, then Liberty is about getting out and pushing infrastructure/cities. But it's Tradition that will get more policies, so it's kinda hart do put instant rewards in liberty, it'll just take too long?

Unless we have "active culture" openers, but those seem hard to balance. How do you balance "culture on completion of a building" for example for the late game? Still I don't really like 1 culture per city (but it's probably fine with 1 production added onto it).

Other random comments:
- We need to make sure not to take strong policies away from commerce and exploration (see funak's proposals above), 3% building production per policy is fine though.
- Starting with 2 pop might even be counterproductive with the current happiness system, but it of course depends on how we want to do exploration.
- (Yes, the Pyramids should give a free Settler and 25% worker bonus, then the worker policy here is fine).
- A War/Peace split bonus seems boring since you'll not declare war for it and thus it's not as much about what you yourself want...
-There needs to be a happiness counter (poverty, general happiness?) and probably some kind of culture bonus (deep inside the tree).
- Instead of "Entertainment buildings provide gold per happiness they provide" just have "no upkeep on happiness buildings". It's more straightforward, easier to understand and to code and it has nearly the same effect, no?

Not sure even now why we try to recreate everything anew.

 

[Funak]

Do we have a bit of a dilemma here. If Tradition is about 'turtling' up in the capital and cranking out wonders, then Liberty is about getting out and pushing infrastructure/cities. But it's Tradition that will get more policies, so it's kinda hart do put instant rewards in liberty, it'll just take too long?

Ehm, I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Unless we have "active culture" openers, but those seem hard to balance. How do you balance "culture on completion of a building" for example for the late game? Still I don't really like 1 culture per city (but it's probably fine with 1 production added onto it).

1 culture+1production is almost as good as 3 culture, and that's just with 1 city. Founding one more city would make liberty's bonus way better. I'm afraid unless we bump up the other openers, having anything more than 1 culture in this one is way too good.

Other random comments:

- We need to make sure not to take strong policies away from commerce and exploration (see funak's proposals above), 3% building production per policy is fine though.

Anything can be replaced. (and should be if it is a better match)

- Starting with 2 pop might even be counterproductive with the current happiness system, but it of course depends on how we want to do exploration.

The general idea from what I've gathered was to just scratch exploration and replace it with a conquest victory policy-tree. Imperialism?

- (Yes, the Pyramids should give a free Settler and 25% worker bonus, then the worker policy here is fine).

Actually one of the few CEP-changes that I didn't like, the idea of building a setler but continuing to grow is just weird.

- A War/Peace split bonus seems boring since you'll not declare war for it and thus it's not as much about what you yourself want...

Agreed, along with flat bonuses being boring, and culture being a way stronger stat than science (per unit)

-There needs to be a happiness counter (poverty, general happiness?) and probably some kind of culture bonus (deep inside the tree).

I thought people didn't want culture in the tree, that's why everyone told me to off everytime I suggested it in tradition. But yes some kind of happiness policy is going to be there.

- Instead of "Entertainment buildings provide gold per happiness they provide" just have "no upkeep on happiness buildings". It's more straightforward, easier to understand and to code and it has nearly the same effect, no?

Still boring tbh.

Not sure even now why we try to recreate everything anew.

We aren't we are just balancing stuff and making them interesting.

 

[mystikx21]

The Swords into Plowshares pantheon belief checks for wartime.

It doesn't have an on/off switch for what it does in wartime. It just checks for wartime and turns off. It's possible that can be reverse engineered. (It's also a belief, not a policy, which may matter code wise).

This may still be a good effect to have an explicit peacetime/wartime benefit available in one or more of the trees. I'm not the expert on how codeable it is, just pointing out that there is a gap in the current abilities.

 

[mystikx21]

Well if we completely remove the worker rate increase from any wonder we could bump citizenship up to 50% to make it actually feel like it's making a distance. (Keep in mind that this is an effect that basicly stops doing anything once you've finished expanding, and does even less on seaheavy maps.

Other than that, what do we have? The following ideas could work:

Cheaper roads (could also be in commerce, also of less value to inca)

Lower building maintenace (Could also be in commerce, is also in Order I believe, could still work.)

+1 Production on productionbuildings? (Maybe just the early ones? would end up being worth like 6 production in the end, might be fine anyways?)

Cheaper goldcost setlers? (Feels like this could be added to the productionbonus that already exists?)

Cities spawn with higher pop (It's in order and was in CEPexploration, feels like both of those come kinda late to be relevant however)

Plus food in all cities (Something I would rather see in piety, but could be in both to be honest. food on some building might be better?)

That still isn't an argument for the worker rate increasing to 50% (and I said nothing about removing the rate increase from the Pyramids, just moving it out of the tree as the unlocked wonder, because it made no sense to duplicate the effect). 25% is very powerful already because it reduces the number of workers required and gets things up and running faster. Simple and works.

I don't know that I like any of those ideas for liberty or an early tree

cheaper roads/cheaper buildings I'd rather keep in commerce and order.

+ food in all cities I would not put in piety and would not put here. If it goes anywhere, it would be in an ideology (freedom or order).

Piety should still be mostly about religion or faith effects, and I would not make it about yields where possible (happiness and some culture maybe). I disagree strongly with the idea that we should make it about other things mostly. It should have other things in it, but be centered around making religion/faith spending effective and powerful.

Extra pop I would leave in Order or move to Exploration as CEP did.

I would rather settlers still be expensive to rush for balance reasons. A rate increase in production is fine on its own.

+ production on production buildings is probably better in Order.

Tirian's suggestion for culture is probably good enough as an opener (also encourages decentralized city specialization for building national wonders). The % for buildings can be a separate policy with +1 production/city but can still do a check for the opener as a policy choice counting them all up to make for a higher bonus. That way when you get it, it should already be at say, 6% from two policies. So it is already stronger than the default version and will continue to scale up.

 

[Funak]

That still isn't an argument for the worker rate increasing to 50% (and I said nothing about removing the rate increase from the Pyramids, just moving it out of the tree as the unlocked wonder, because it made no sense to duplicate the effect). 25% is very powerful already because it reduces the number of workers required and gets things up and running faster. Simple and works.

My argument was that I feel the 25% is too weak, I hardly notice it unless I have the pyramids, that's why I suggested removing the pyramids, and placing a full 50% in the libertytree (If that would be too powerful for one policy then remove the free worker.

cheaper roads/cheaper buildings I'd rather keep in commerce and order.

Those things, atleast cheaper roads is something that makes much more sense in liberty, liberty is about having a lot of cties and getting a good infrastructure for a large empire. Commerce is about gold and economy(and that might even be changed). IMO commerce shouldn't have policies that only makes sense in larger empires. (For example cheaper roads would do very little in a 3 city empire and nothing in a OCC) especially if we change the other lategame-policy-trees into being victoryconditionspecific, commerce needs to be something that could be open to all playstyles just to keep up.

+ food in all cities I would not put in piety and would not put here. If it goes anywhere, it would be in an ideology (freedom or order).

A low amount of food for free or on a building isn't anything gamebreaking and mostly just makes somewhat worse citylocation a little more viable (which is important because of the way peaceful expansion works. It could allow you to place a city to pick up a specific resource or get a coastal city going for trade.

Piety should still be mostly about religion or faith effects, and I would not make it about yields where possible (happiness and some culture maybe). I disagree strongly with the idea that we should make it about other things mostly. It should have other things in it, but be centered around making religion/faith spending effective and powerful.

Difference in opinion, but the pietydiscussion does not belong here so I'll just ignore this.

Extra pop I would leave in Order or move to Exploration as CEP did.

Extra pop in an ideology would be close to useless (In fact I can't remember ever picking that tenent up). If Exploration gets turned into a conquest victory condition tree, having it there makes no sense either, and even if it doesn't change having the bonus in renaissance is still weak. (I mean there will already be the advanced settlers available at that time and they start at 5 pop I think, getting another 1 on top of that is extremely meh, especially for a renaissance policy)

Tirian's suggestion for culture is probably good enough as an opener (also encourages decentralized city specialization for building national wonders). The % for buildings can be a separate policy with +1 production/city but can still do a check for the opener as a policy choice counting them all up to make for a higher bonus. That way when you get it, it should already be at say, 6% from two policies. So it is already stronger than the default version and will continue to scale up.

I'm going to repeat myself because I don't think the message gets through.
The 1 culture/city opener is probably fine because atleast in my opinion liberty is going to have atleast 5 cities. If you want it anymore powerful than that you are going to have to buff the traditionopener to keep up. The scaling bonus on anything other than the opener makes no sense. The bonus isn't actually on the opener in the first place it's in the tree in general(a scaling reward for sticking with the tree)

Other than that I don't think there is a need to reward spreading out your national wonders, most of the time it is the optimal thing to do anyways (and the time where it isn't you don't want to punish people for it)