Socail Policy Cost

[shaglio]

Back when Civilization 5 was released, the cost for a new Social Policy was based on how many cities you owned and how many SPs you already had. This led to an exploitation where people would build alot of cities (driving up the cost for the next SP), each with all the Culture buildings, and accumulate a ton of Culture. They would then sell/raze all the cities except for their capital which lowered the cost for the next SP, and all the stockpiled Culture caused them to earn a buch of SPs in a row, fill up the requisite 5 Policy Trees, and trigger building the Utopia Project for a quick CV. This was fixed in a patch so that selling/razing a city no longer lowered the cost for the next SP, unless the city was razed immediately upon capture.

Now that the Cultural Victory has changed dramatically and doesn’t require 5 Policy Trees to be filled, is that “fix” necessary anymore? If it were removed, would stockpiling a ton of Culture and selling/razing all your cities to rapidly get several SPs be a viably strategy? Should the “fix” be removed so that people who build/annex a city, that they later decide they don’t want, aren’t pushed for it terms of SP cost? Would removing the “fix” lead to any new exploits in the game?

 

[danaphanous]

oh...so that's why it's like that. I didn't know. I can't think of any reason for doing that now. The opportunity cost of not getting the SP's you want is pretty high too as they help a lot.

There is that transition period when you are waiting for Rationalism or an ideology though so sometimes it might be helpful if you really wanted something in a tree a little more quickly. Since it isn't game-winning though, it wouldn't be broken if it was changed back.

 

[joncnunn]

I'd vote for it staying as it is. I doesn't really hurt anything to punish players who lose a city to the AI by keeping policy cost the same.

I'd much rather them address how over powered cargo ships are to caravans.