Reform and Rule

[White Out]

just started using your mod now after a month or me playing civ 5 and i cant go back! the balanced and smarter social policies even made the AI tougher because its not all about just taking tradition and rationalism now, and the game MUCh better. amazing mod, i put this as my #2 must have mod only behind quick turns. congrats on a great mod achievement

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Just finished my first game with this -- went Liberty-->Aestetics-->Rationalism,Freedom. Was a blast!

ONE thing, though. After several starts ... I think that Tradition has been overly nerfed, perhaps. With +2 happiness per lux and +1 production per every non-lux, I found that Liberty was far better than Tradition would have been, even though I ended up building only three cities. When you are surrounded by bananas and a couple pastures, getting +6 production on turn 80 or so is just *huge*.

Problem with Tradition, as I was playing it, is growth. No more aqueducts and if you want to take advantage of the early specialist slots, you grow less -- and growth bonuses don't help at all if your food surplus is crap. I played as Egypt going Tall/Wonder-whoring and found that it was far easier to do with Liberty than Tradition, and that seems weird to me.

One thing that would help is make the Tradition finisher stronger. What is it now, +1 prod/gold per 5 pop? That's almost nothing when you finish it turn 80'ish or so, far less than what you get from Liberty. I might make it +1 food per specialist or somesuch (or even have +1 food per specialist earlier, so you can take advantage of those early slots).

Or ... +1 food, +1 prod per specialist, by the time it finishes ... probably still going to be less of a prod boost than you get from Liberty.

Going to try Tradition again, maybe Piety, and go Order this time around ...

 

[White Out]

It feels to me that this mod was made to make tradition almost like a one city challenge tree. Whereas original vanilla tradition focuses on benefits for four cities and some benefits for the capital, reform and rule seems to be almost exclusively catering to the capital under tradition. Not that that is a big deal to me because in fact to get a big population you really have to rely on the capital.

 

[White Out]

Just finished my first game with this -- went Liberty-->Aestetics-->Rationalism,Freedom. Was a blast!

ONE thing, though. After several starts ... I think that Tradition has been overly nerfed, perhaps. With +2 happiness per lux and +1 production per every non-lux, I found that Liberty was far better than Tradition would have been, even though I ended up building only three cities. When you are surrounded by bananas and a couple pastures, getting +6 production on turn 80 or so is just *huge*.

Problem with Tradition, as I was playing it, is growth. No more aqueducts and if you want to take advantage of the early specialist slots, you grow less -- and growth bonuses don't help at all if your food surplus is crap. I played as Egypt going Tall/Wonder-whoring and found that it was far easier to do with Liberty than Tradition, and that seems weird to me.

One thing that would help is make the Tradition finisher stronger. What is it now, +1 prod/gold per 5 pop? That's almost nothing when you finish it turn 80'ish or so, far less than what you get from Liberty. I might make it +1 food per specialist or somesuch (or even have +1 food per specialist earlier, so you can take advantage of those early slots).

Or ... +1 food, +1 prod per specialist, by the time it finishes ... probably still going to be less of a prod boost than you get from Liberty.

Going to try Tradition again, maybe Piety, and go Order this time around ...

I doubled up the landed elite bonus to 30% food kept. I think this solved the growth issue

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I don't see myself going back to traditional Civ unless forced to (e.g. MP with a buddy of mine).

I have to say that with Tradition, even with the 15%, I did eventually grow huge, and the ability to plant an early Great Scientist was pretty awesome ...

Just finished a Liberty game with Kamehameha, love Liberty expansion working the way it's "supposed to". Took an early science hit but hey, that's the cost, right?

 

[White Out]

After one game it may be that 30%is a little high. I have a staggering population lead on my rivals.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

After one game it may be that 30%is a little high. I have a staggering population lead on my rivals.

It may be that 15% is okay, that you just have to pay a short-term price for that awesome early scientist or engineer specialist.

It occurs to me that there is actually quite a big difference between +X% growth and +X% food held over, and the latter is much more rockin'.

I do wonder how the AI is set up to adjust to the new policy trees ...? I played an Immortal Archipelago game yesterday and most of the AIs didn't hit the Ren until turn 150, 155, which I feel is 10-20 turns later than they usually would hit on such a game. (Maybe only 10, Archipelago tends to slow things down.)

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Where would be the best place to discuss strategery, do you think, for R&R? I doubt there is a critical mass of players using it (a shame!) but I'd like to exchange profound thoughts on stuff, and stuff ...

EDIT: I would like to start a Game Of The Week sort of thing for R&R, so that those of us using it now can compare/contrast strategems. Immortal difficulty, say? I am assuming that R&R is pretty stable at this point, that there are no big tweaks expected, especially for the initial SPs. (Only thing I am wondering is whether the Piety tree is a little weak, but only because the super-buffed set of Religion mods is meant to be used with it ...?)

 

[Machiavelli24]

Where would be the best place to discuss strategery, do you think, for R&R? I doubt there is a critical mass of players using it (a shame!) but I'd like to exchange profound thoughts on stuff, and stuff ...

This thread would probably be best. Many people use the workshop comment thread but I try to encourage them to come here since workshop comment threads have a character limit.

It may be possible to persuade the forum moderators to add a section in the mod development sub-forum. Such a section would likely be for Race for Religion, Reform and Rule and other main mods in my "modular mods" series. However, for such persuasion to be successful I would at least need to be able to show a critical mass of potential users.
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EDIT: I would like to start a Game Of The Week sort of thing for R&R, so that those of us using it now can compare/contrast strategems. Immortal difficulty, say? I am assuming that R&R is pretty stable at this point, that there are no big tweaks expected, especially for the initial SPs. (Only thing I am wondering is whether the Piety tree is a little weak, but only because the super-buffed set of Religion mods is meant to be used with it ...?)

I think a "Game of the Week" would be a great idea. I would certainly play. Reform & Rule is pretty stable currently. I do plan on releasing a small update for Reform & Rule that would make some minor changes to exploration but that is at least a month away. I want to finish the big "reformation update" for Race for Religion first.

 

[White Out]

We could do that here.

I agree about piety maybe being an issue. The ai loves that tree and it's heavily used in games I play. I'm actually considering changing the flavours a bit if that's possible to get the ai to try trad then Lib.

I'm going to put tradition back to 15% food kept and maybe restore the 4 aquaducts. See how that works.

Mach can you comment on food kept vs growth? And how it works for real population growth in game?

 

[Machiavelli24]

Mach can you comment on food kept vs growth? And how it works for real population growth in game?

You and TheGrumpyBuddha have already done a pretty good analysis of it. Growth's value is proportional to the amount of total food (not food - eating) a city is generating. A city doesn't need to have a food surplus to benefit from growth.

Food kept increases in value the higher population a city has. Under 10 population it has almost no effect but above 10 pop it starts to ramp up quickly.

Citizen | 1 | 10 | 20 | 30
Food cost | 15 | 121 | 329 | 617
value of 15% kept | 2 | 18 | 49 | 92

In a sense, 15% food kept provides 18 food divided by the number of turns it takes to go from 9->10 citizens. If it takes 6 turns to go from 9->10 citizens than 15% food kept provided 18/6=3 food per turn. If a city isn't growing (or is growing slowly) than food kept is less valuable.

 

[White Out]

I had a look at the Piety tree and it's no wonder that the game I played where all AI's took it I dominated them. I find it's very very nerfed compared to other trees, altho with race for religion who knows, but I prefer not to use that mod as I don't trust the AI with it lol.

 

[Machiavelli24]

It did not want to assume that anyone playing with Reform & Rule would also be playing with Race for Religion. I want Piety to work in both cases. Piety has been reworked numerous times over the year(s) as its interconnectedness with the religion system makes it an order of magnitude harder to gauge than other policy trees.

Would you willing to elaborate on your view of Piety? Do you find that you are rarely in circumstances where you would want to take Piety instead of Tradition, Liberty or Honor? Is Piety lacking some critical advantage that you need to execute your early game strategy?

 

[White Out]

I manually adjusted a few things too add some more "pop". I added a little extra culture, doubled the happiness from Mandate of Heaven. What I'd really like to see is some sort of food bonus somewhere, or extra culture, if even a little. When I think of religion I think that it's a cornerstore of a societies culture usually, and that's lacking here (and the default piety dont get me wrong).

It could also just be that the AI isn't smart about spending it's faith who knows. A lot of faith should translate to a lot of great people, but do they use it? Hard to say without babysitting the AI for a game.

 

[Machiavelli24]

When using Piety do you go from Shrines + Monuments or only one? Do you go out of your way to get the Writer's Guild online early (with or without its boost from the Reformation Policy) or just get it eventually?

As for the AI, the algorithm it uses for spending its faith is non-trivial but fairly inefficient. They prioritize spreading and don't really stockpile for the super Great Scientist slingshot that many human players do.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Actually, I thought growth *was* only about the food surplus ... but that % held over in general means more food held over.

I find that in the last two games where I tried tradition, and this is probably because of the crappy territory, I barely was getting to pop 10 by turn 100, and that was with only 1 other city. It may be that this is a case of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and that the map really demanded Liberty, and I need a better pop spot to go Tradition -- that's why I like the idea of posting couple of maps and having some of us go at it with different strategies, report how we did.

I have some ideas of how to handle the issue with Polynesia/Tradition (early Moias to deal with the low culture problem, make sure that I don't do it with a crappy map).

I am a little afraid that the free aqueducts *may* be too strong ... not sure. Maybe free in the first three cities?

I will say that I do think that some sort of culture boost in the cap (+1 per 4 citizens?) would be appropriate. Having to work on +5 culture (palace + monument you have to freakin' build + the +2 bonus) for the first 100 turns, if you go OCC, is a little depressing.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

Re Piety -- please bring back 100% boost for building shrines and temples, + make them half-cost if you want to buy them.

 

[Machiavelli24]

I would guess that the main modding forum would be the best location for organizing a "game of the week". It would probably be best Reform & Rule was the only mod the game used, since not everyone who uses Reform & Rule will want to use other mods.

With respect to the production boost for Shrines and Temples in Piety, there is a reasonable chance they could come back. Free Aqueducts in Tradition however are unlikely to come back. I've moved all of the early game policies away from giving one time free stuff because it is often too powerful.

I've considered swapping the 15% food carry over in Tradition with the +15% growth in Rationalism. Food carry over isn't really useful early game but is very useful mid game. This makes the effect a better fit in a mid game tree, when populations are high enough for food carry over to be noticeable.

 

[White Out]

its no wonder that everyone uses tradition in vanilla game no mods. free aqueducts *and* +15% growth in all cities is just criminally overpowered.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

its no wonder that everyone uses tradition in vanilla game no mods. free aqueducts *and* +15% growth in all cities is just criminally overpowered.

*AND* free monuments in your first four cities as well, don't forget that! Huge difference. That's why I am thinking a free aqueduct in at least the cap may be reasonable -- Liberty's 50% settler discount, +2 happiness per lux, and +3 to +6 production per city upon tree completion is just amazingly rocking.