Social policy change restriction

[Simplicity2]

Doesn't it feel like there should be more restriction on social policies to any one else? The ability to swap out all of your policies every time you get a culture tech upgrade seems a bit much to me. Especially on these Quick mode games that I'm seeing. Like maybe you should be able to swap ONE policy on each such upgrade?

Or maybe you can't swap something you recently changed? I don't know. Feels a little too loose to me at the moment. No real consequence for swapping in the builder bonus, say, every time you build a builder and then swapping it right back out.

I mean, that can be cool if it's a thing you want to micromanage and that's part of the game. Better than micromanaging food/hammers/beakers, I suppose.

 

[King Jason]

Plenty of consequences in making the wrong decisions - watching the livestream, they swapped in policies that went underutilized constantly.

I think striving for efficiency in your policy decisions adds a whole new welcomed level of strategic depth to the game. Picking something for 20+ turns is boring.

 

[Josephias]

I think it is intentional to make you more involved with policy system and avoid it being set to "auto-pilot" with a "standard, normally nice" set of cards.

So, each time you unlock a new card, you are offered to use it, and as you already need to go into the screen, why don't change everything.

Changing social policies should be underestood as modeling changes in government officials, ruling party,... it is not unrealistic it happens with certain frequency.

Still, as this depends on your cultural output, is keeps hard to micro-manage, because timings might not be right. If you want to really taylor to the minute, you still need to pay.

 

[Big J Money]

I am not sure how I feel about this aspect yet.

On the one hand I enjoy the freedom it provides.

On the other hand, it makes multiplayer games more "fuzzy". Not only would you have to keep track of the government plus all policies chosen by an opponent to estimate their capabilities, but they can change this on you every few turns.

But maybe this fuzziness will be good in MP so that you can't too strongly predict the situation of your opponent. Especially since certain data are actually more transparent than before. For example we can see exact progress on Great People and exact Envoys sent to City States. So maybe knowing production bonuses aren't so important.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I like how often you can change them as most of them are very specific. It allow you to quickly change between war focus and builder focus instead of being locked in one path for most if not all of the game like in civ V.

 

[Simplicity2]

I like that this maybe gives a way to differentiate low vs. high skill players. That's cool.

Regarding the fuzziness, I assume that at least the government type should be visible via diplomacy/rumors. So you could know at least that the military units might be a bit tougher if they are say a military dictatorship vs a musicocracy.

 

[LDiCesare]

I think that's great. Historically, stuff like the French or Soviet revolutions threw absolutely everything away to rdo everything differently. Or tired to, anyway. Not being able to do that in Civ 5 was one reason I dislike the game, so being able to change everything at once is a must to me.

 

[Big J Money]

You are in luck, because I saw a screen where this was revealed I don't think a spy is even needed for that knowledge.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Plenty of consequences in making the wrong decisions - watching the livestream, they swapped in policies that went underutilized constantly.

I think striving for efficiency in your policy decisions adds a whole new welcomed level of strategic depth to the game. Picking something for 20+ turns is boring.

I'll have to see. The ability to turn on a dime also seems to me like you don't need to use as much forethought in your decisions, and makes a bad choice hurt less. I disagree with the post that said it will reward "high skill players" more.

 

[rastak]

Playing on Epic speed might make it feel quite different.

 

[isau]

I want to see it more before commenting. My concern is the strategy of swapping policies every single turn to get the most benefit at that exact second. Could get really tedious. I kind of think there should be a turn limit before you can switch a card (10 turns?). I think swapping governments works fine as designed, though.

 

[Haggbart]

After CiVs static social policy accumulation I welcome a change to a more dynamic system.

Initially I feel it would be wrong to limit this system by having disadvantages to change the policies.

 

[rastak]

I want to see it more before commenting. My concern is the strategy of swapping policies every single turn to get the most benefit at that exact second. Could get really tedious. I kind of think there should be a turn limit before you can switch a card (10 turns?). I think swapping governments works fine as designed, though.

If you didn't just discover a new civic card you have to pay gold to switch it. That's your only free switches and they were playing on quick.

 

[Gali]

It will reward high skill players. Filthy Robot, a top MP player, listed it as his favorite change in all of civ 6. He did that because of the flexibility and decision making it fosters.

Being able to match policy cards with your situation in a constantly changing situation requires skill. Especially when you add in Eureka's. Planning ahead to get the right eureka's to most efficiently research civics that unlock cards you will need while maintaining efficient growth is real skill. The biggest problem with social policies is there were very few meaningful decisions to be made. Even more so wit the effects of terrain in civ 6.It was incredibly hard to balance meaningful choice into really 4 meaningful decisions per game. So it became Tradition, Rationalism Ideology and maybe a couple filler policies. Anyone could read Tradition and Rationalism were OP and pick them and do at least 90% as well at social policies as high level players. With policy cards you have to make far more decisions based on a much larger number of factors. Terrain, nearby civs, barb threat, victory plan, available eurerka's etc. to optimally pick cards.

 

[Big J Money]

My concern is the strategy of swapping policies every single turn to get the most benefit at that exact second.

Yeah you only switch every time you discover a new Civic. So it's possibly the same as before where you spend some time on the civics screen making your next choice. Only now you have more freedom of choice.

From what I saw this would lead me to faster decisions actually, because sometimes I would look at that civics screen and feel like all I had were tons of crappy choices to make, or like the last choice I made was a real mistake. Plus you know exactly what the new cards in your deck will be next time around because those were the ones you chose to research ahead of time when prompted to do so.

 

[isau]

If you didn't just discover a new civic card you have to pay gold to switch it. That's your only free switches and they were playing on quick.

Good to know. Sounds like they thought about it. That alleviates any concerns.

 

[rastak]

I think the cost I saw in a video it was 35 gold to switch early. Not sure what factors into the price.

 

[demidyad]

If you watch the recent livestream with Ed Beach and Ed Beach's Sidekick, they explain that there's no anarchy when you switch to a civic for the first time but if you switch back to a civic that you've already used, there is anarchy. They justify it as your people being unhappy about 'going backwards'.

 

[rastak]

If you watch the recent livestream with Ed Beach and Ed Beach's Sidekick, they explain that there's no anarchy when you switch to a civic for the first time but if you switch back to a civic that you've already used, there is anarchy. They justify it as your people being unhappy about 'going backwards'.

I believe that's switching goverment types, not individual civics cards.

edit: It is an interesting concept about going back causes anarchy.

 

[stealth_nsk]

As I understand, the restrictions are:
- If you try to switch policies without opening a civic, you need to pay in gold.
- If you switch government to the one you already had, you have anarchy.
- If you don't switch government (or civics?) for some time, you get legacy bonus.

Overall switching governments is much more punishing, but I'm not sure how well it will work. Also, I can't remember mentioning how legacy bonus actually works.