spy "thief" action completing

[Deadstarre]

The current value is 3%, but I'll probably drop it by 1% (to 2%) for the next patch (just based on a few scenario tests I've been checking in on). So 10 city empire goes from 172% above cost (8% x 9) to 154%. A more modest amount.

G

honestly math isnt my strong suit so please someone tell me if i'm wrong, but for a look in on how that would work lets assume more than 10 cities a moment - the top few best performing AI contenders in the game at that point would normally have over 10 cities right? assuming 13 a moment

13 city goes from %196 to %172

real world application = current beaker output 1000, tech cost base is 4080 becomes 8k (at %196) then becomes 7,020 (at %172) = tech gone from 8 turns to 7 turns = a flat %14 increase to science

given it goes into effect passively and immediately under every circumstance, compared to anything else from the tree, this is still hands down by far the most powerful policy in the entire branch no? you'd need the opener plus the full 5 scaler bonus in effect (and needing to be happy) to get that bonus from the tree otherwise right?

 

[Gazebo]

honestly math isnt my strong suit so please someone tell me if i'm wrong, but for a look in on how that would work lets assume more than 10 cities a moment - the top few best performing AI contenders in the game at that point would normally have over 10 cities right? assuming 13 a moment

13 city goes from %196 to %172

real world application = current beaker output 1000, tech cost base is 4080 becomes 8k (at %196) then becomes 7,020 (at %172) = tech gone from 8 turns to 7 turns = a flat %14 increase to science

given it goes into effect passively and immediately under every circumstance, compared to anything else from the tree, this is still hands down by far the most powerful policy in the entire branch no? you'd need the opener plus the full 5 scaler bonus in effect (and needing to be happy) to get that bonus from the tree otherwise right?

Perhaps, but the downside here is that leaping ahead in techs has major consequences. Other civs get discounts off of you (so the net effective discount is not the full value), unhappiness/supply cap woes from over-teching can cripple you, and wonders are still policy locked.

G

 

[Deadstarre]

Perhaps, but the downside here is that leaping ahead in techs has major consequences. Other civs get discounts off of you (so the net effective discount is not the full value), unhappiness/supply cap woes from over-teching can cripple you, and wonders are still policy locked.

G

its really a tricky road to go down saying the tech leader in a game has his own 'disadvantages' of sorts. Everything you just said is of course %100 true, but also the benefits of having new techs other people don't generally outweighs any negatives that come with it- if you ask any player would they like to be #1 in tech the answer is surely a yes

all of the trees are interconnected with the yields like industry can grant %10 science to your empire as well, you just need all the gold-related buildings to get it. Rather than create this situation where someone taking rationalism is guaranteed to be the tech leader against someone of equal strength who didnt (and then have to deal with the consequences of such) i'd honestly rather see the tree instead add some different kinds of bonuses to science buildings like libraries or such. I think the opener, scaler and the other policies are all in the right place and literally need no touching, but this one policy alone getting changed to something else would make a giant difference.

 

[Deadstarre]

actually, if this policy ever was reworked to benefit something other than the empire-wide science %, the scaler could even be bumped to %3 to compensate for that a bit. at least with the scaler it comes a lot more gradually

 

[Gazebo]

its really a tricky road to go down saying the tech leader in a game has his own 'disadvantages' of sorts. Everything you just said is of course %100 true, but also the benefits of having new techs other people don't generally outweighs any negatives that come with it- if you ask any player would they like to be #1 in tech the answer is surely a yes

all of the trees are interconnected with the yields like industry can grant %10 science to your empire as well, you just need all the gold-related buildings to get it. Rather than create this situation where someone taking rationalism is guaranteed to be the tech leader against someone of equal strength who didnt (and then have to deal with the consequences of such) i'd honestly rather see the tree instead add some different kinds of bonuses to science buildings like libraries or such. I think the opener, scaler and the other policies are all in the right place and literally need no touching, but this one policy alone getting changed to something else would make a giant difference.

Rationalism should get you a science advantage. But that alone isn't everything.

G

 

[Deadstarre]

yeah, when i said theyd be guaranteed to be tech leader i didnt mean tech leader by 1 or 2 techs - as ive been repeatedly seeing and you just saw in your scenarios i assume, as it is its been creating *too* much discrepancy. lowering from %3 to %2 will be a huge nerf actually, something i already did for the game im playing right now, but still personally im not so sure it is enough of a change to make a difference. we'll see I guess? at best you'll still have a branch where one policy is outshining its peers in every way by a large amount though, which is pretty bad where choices are concerned (for a human there is no choice, you go right for it - for an AI who avoids it and takes other things they would suffer).

if you removed empiricism from the tree entirely this moment, it would still be the best science tree by a long shot- so all i was saying is I think yeah, let it continue to be that; but change empiricism to benefit any other aspect of the game than direct science. Theres really a million things to choose from it could do that would keeps it perfectly relevant as a branch still