State of Civics Poll

[1SDANi]

But what about the worker effect? Is it useful or could it also just be removed?

Worker effects are largely ribbon effects to me, they're really strong, but they don't really affect my decision-making too much. Caste System's main benefit is the food bonus helping civs with lots of plains and rainforest plantations, the improvement boost is good for civs like India with a lot of territory and plantations, but for civs like Japan it is a bit of a double edged sword as if you finish all of your improvements in the first twenty turns, you've basically just thrown away the economic stability they can give you. Manorialism helps civs with low production benefit from Tributaries without dying economically, the worker bonus is strong, but vanishes the instant you build your workers, and Slavery makes food sinks even stronger than they already are, with the worker capture effect being more or less a RNG-based sidegrade to manorialism's worker production effect, That said, if I'm going to be running Caste System I usually switch to manorialism turn 1, get my workers out, and then switch back. Most civs that I run slavery on generally have enough neighbors they want to invade or small enough territories or don't start with the Calendar tech.

 

[Hickman888]

But what about the worker effect? Is it useful or could it also just be removed?

The worker effect for Manorialism is useful, but at the end of the day, it essentially does the same thing as Caste System. 50% more workers vs 50% more efficient workers. And in fact, as 1SDANi said, if Caste System is your desired civic, it's usually beneficial to swap to Manorialism first, train your workers, and then switch to Caste System after.

I think we should go a different direction with Manorialism, to give each of the early Society civics a distinct playstyle. Remove the 50% worker discount, and add a new effect-

Manorialism: +1 on unimproved tiles. (Taken from Elective. Manorialism should also keep the current boost to farms.)

IMO, this effect belongs in the category of civics that has to do with workers and improvements. After all, it's competing with a civic that allows you to capture workers in order to improve your land, and another civic which builds improvements faster. This will give each of the early three Society civics a distinct playstyle:

• Slavery: Aggressively take workers from your neighbors, in order to improve the land. (Additional wish list item: allow civilizations with Slavery to diplomatically trade workers with one another.)
• Caste System: Peacefully improve the land with more efficient workers.
• Manorialism: Decreases the urgency of improving your tiles, allowing the player to focus on more immediate matters than acquiring more workers.

Manorialism will have to be pushed back a bit in the Tech Tree IMO, to Classical or early Medieval. I think this civic will still be used heavily by European/Russian civilizations, but still offer a unique enough option that other civilizations may at least pause to consider it. And it will no longer be the "train 8 workers quickly and then leave it" civic. It will be a civic to stand on its own merit, with purpose and effect.

From a "real world" perspective, I think +1 on unimproved tiles does a great job of showcasing the decentralized and basic nature of the manorialism system in the early Middle Ages, before the advent of trade routes and money.

Of course, a new effect for Elective will need to be brainstormed, an effect that is attractive to Holy Rome/Poland/Mongolia/Vikings/Mongolia/etc. But with it's strong secondary effect of "Double Barracks/Stable" production, I'm confident Elective is still in good hands.

 

[banzay13]

If you playing expansion (peacefully or not) civs/style - you constantly need new workers. 50% discount - very useful

 

[BaneFire]

But what about the worker effect? Is it useful or could it also just be removed?

I definitely notice the manorialism one most of all. In countries like Russia or Arabia that spawn with vast territory but little infrastructure, pumping those workers out quicker is a huge difference to me.
Slavery I didn't notice so much until I played some more conquest focus games in the Ancient Era, where it's a nice bonus but not a prime driver. For Hittites, Assyrians etc it might be a lot better.
Caste System I rarely notice the bonus.

 

[Force44]

Suggestion for monarchy: Surplus happiness generated by military units is added as shields in the capitol.
Suggestion for deification: Palace gives an additional happiness.

(both of these in addition to their current effects, I originally made these up as a buff to Egypt)

 

[1SDANi]

Of course, a new effect for Elective will need to be brainstormed, an effect that is attractive to Holy Rome/Poland/Mongolia/Vikings/Mongolia/etc. But with it's strong secondary effect of "Double Barracks/Stable" production, I'm confident Elective is still in good hands.

I've always been partial to giving Elective an effect that boosts diplomacy, maybe something like "enemies overestimate the strength of your armies", or "other civs are more tolerant of your number of vassals", or "relations bonus from open borders". Holy Rome loves Vassals, Mongolia's UHV not including Vassals is a kinda weird choice, the Vikings UHV should probably include demanding tribute in its gold sources it's really a shame that tribute has always felt like the most forgotten mechanic in the RFC series, and Poland would love a civic that helps it not get invaded by all of its neighbors at once.

 

[Nyayr]

I always found Elective useless, as it adds nothing to stability to any civic you link to it, or has a boost in a certain age? Also, the faster Palace is only useful for Seljuks, and the extra coins on empty areas, pasture etc made little sense to me.

Tribute is kinda forgotten but also a simple concept as bribing 'barbarian' troops like Rome did a lot and Byzantium, is non-existent for example.

 

[1SDANi]

I always found Elective useless, as it adds nothing to stability to any civic you link to it, or has a boost in a certain age? Also, the faster Palace is only useful for Seljuks, and the extra coins on empty areas, pasture etc made little sense to me.

Tribute is kinda forgotten but also a simple concept as bribing 'barbarian' troops like Rome did a lot and Byzantium, is non-existent for example.

Elective's main strength is the rock bottom maintenance cost and giving a gold boost to improvements that every Civ will already be running. If you have enough production and infrastructure that Despotism isn't useful, enough happiness and stability that Monarchy isn't useful, enough specialists or cottages that Republic isn't, or don't have enough cities or specialists for State Party or Democracy, respectively, you might as well run Elective. Everything in the Government slot is a specialist, a master of one, whereas Elective is a generalist, a jack of all trades, and that has a tendency to make it look terrible when you're expecting it to be like all of the others.

That is true, one more reason why a diplomat unit would be super duper cool, maybe alongside a renaming of Espionage to Influence, while I don't like the idea of spies doing diplomacy, I do really like the idea of investing in espionage infrastructure helping with diplomacy and vice versa, and Statesmen have already set up precedent for Espionage representing political influence.

 

[Dannimal]

Elective is essentially decentralized rulership - suggest a small blanket bonus culture bonus.

Earlier folks have talked about vassalege being overpowered with bonuses - suggest decreasing the happiness bonus and moving to elective. Promotes rapid expansion but not useful for a developed nation.

 

[1SDANi]

Elective is essentially decentralized rulership - suggest a small blanket bonus culture bonus.

Earlier folks have talked about vassalege being overpowered with bonuses - suggest decreasing the happiness bonus and moving to elective. Promotes rapid expansion but not useful for a developed nation.

Yeah, the +1 Production from farms and massively reduced army costs are already insane bonuses for Vassalage. Ironically, Vassalage has kinda the opposite situation from Elective. Elective's a generalist that's weak enough that you'll only want to use it when you don't want to use any other civic, whereas Vassalage is a generalist that's strong enough that you need a really compelling reason to want to run any other civic.

 

[Nyayr]

Elective has no stability bonuses pretty much, monarchy trumps it in Medieval times with their +2 bonus with Vassalage and the basic +2 on the religion civics monasticism/clergy. Since Vassalage also gives bonuses with other things, it is kinda easy where to go.

Elective needs a stability combination with something, now it only has 1 negative with centralism.

 

[Gen1_]

About individualism:
Instead of cottage development ×2, make cottage develop on their own, without being city-operated.
It would be more representative of what invidualism is.

 

[Orbii]

Hopping into here to offer a few more thoughts on civics, some of which echoes above discussions. A general theme throughout this is that I have a decent number of thoughts on how effects of a civic feel to use and also how objectively valuable they are to achieving UHVs.

Government
On late game civics here, I find Democracy extremely meh. Its bonus just sort of exists and while probably very strong, it doesn't feel very noticeable. I also find Great People a very binary thing in this mod. Either you really need them for certain purposes (and in those cases, specific Great People for specific reasons), or they just ... exist. A lot of the times running Democracy lands me in the latter camp. The high maintenance cost on the civic also hurts vis-a-vis State Party's medium. I also note that by the point in the game you're running this civic, earning Great People moves heavily towards the 'passive' end of the gameplay loop, so Democracy's bonus becomes even less visible. In distinct contrast, State Party is absolutely and utterly broken for any civ that needs to expand, which in the late game civs, is most of them. If it wasn't for the fact that it feels so insultingly unthematic to run this stuff on many civs, I'd run this every time without a doubt.

For the early game civics (less Republic, which is too distinct to really comment on generally), Despotism is strong with clear weaknesses. I generally think it doesn't crowd out the other options here for long term use, despite how useful whipping is. On Monarchy, I'm going to divert from some of the other thoughts on this civic to note that I view this as very useful. Core population is one of the biggest things in DOC and this provides a good way to indirectly convert hammers into temporary and flexible happiness. The civic stability combinations, its modest maintenance, and the fact it never 'obsoletes' also helps with game flow. Lastly, for Elective I'm going to echo 1SDAN here and note that I really enjoy this civic as is. The Palace thing is purely thematic and I view it as just an add-on. The Barrack/Stables extra production is very strong and Elective is also the only not!late game Government civic that provides a direct economic benefit. With the current map, Pasture/Camp resources are generally a large part of the worked tiles for many civs so the specific bonus there is noticeable, and the unimproved tile thing also helps while the worker engine builds. And on that point ...

Society
Manoralism: I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I find the 50% Worker production boost very, very appealing. It is a very noticeable bonus which triggers the dopamine, and I find it just accelerates the early engine so much for two reasons: (1) obviously, you get more Workers out faster so you can improve tiles faster; and (2) it gets your cities out of using Food for producing the Workers faster, so they can start actually growing again. I also find having more Workers way more useful than Workers working faster, because you just have more options (you can combine two Workers to replicate the bonus from Caste System (math may not check out) on one tile, or split them to improve two different tiles at the same time). And on that point ...
Caste System: I find this civic very underwhelming and the +1 Food on Plantations honestly makes me feel punished when I switch out of it, if the food is necessary to maintain certain population sizes on core cities. I also think it doesn't help that most civs that run this (due to starting with it) are in Indochina which is carpeted with Rainforests and Jungles, so the improvement speed is already slowed. Yes, I get that it's a benefit because you're less slowed, but the result is that half of the civic's bonus feels less impactful. The high maintenance cost also hurts.
Slavery: I find this civic not particularly useful and generally prefer Manoralism. I find capturing (and escorting) Workers unreliable versus Manoralism's production speed bonus, and in many of the places that benefit from the Mine/Quarry bonus there are also (currently) Pastures, Farms, or Orchards that benefit from Manoralism. This will only increase with the new map's introduction of more Farm and Orchard resources in Africa and the Middle East (aka the places that would 'historically' run Slavery for long times). Interestingly, the one civ I would actually use this on (early) is Persia, and they don't start with Slavery and have a thematic reason not to use it. In general, I'd say the civic has a use case for civs that want to (and have the means to) expand early and conquer cities for better chances of obtaining camped Workers there (this is Persia, Arabia, and Turkey, basically). Most other conquering civs have a 'ramp up' period where they will be at peace and will build their Workers instead. If the civic could use a buff, maybe it could get some sort of bonus where you guarantee obtaining Workers on capturing a city (say, 1 Worker per 5 population in the city, rounded down to a minimum of 1).
Egalitarianism: Echoing the thoughts from a few others that the move of this civic to Civil Rights is very noticeable and painful. A lot of civs that like this civic have difficulties getting to Civil Rights in a timely fashion (e.g. Argentina, Japan), and before then they're stuck with subpar options as a result.

Legitimacy
Centralism must be the most useless civic in the game after Public Welfare. It comes too late in the game and I can really only see the Netherlands using this. For everyone else who historically would consider it (France, Turkey, Byzantium, China, etc.) other options are better and provide more decentralized benefits (and in DOC, even more so on the new map, civs generally can and should have multiple good cities in their gameplans). I also think it doesn't help that I find many of the 'capital-centric' civs don't actually currently have a capital with strong Production capacity. This 1000% needs a buff.

I do actually think that Meritocracy is quite good and the real bonus is the -%XP for unit promotions. It was very very noticeable and helpful the last time I did an Ottoman playthrough and the Specialist + Windmill/Watermill effect helps counterbalance the loss of Farm hammers on Vassalage.

Vassalage is strong. It could probably lose the happiness effect.

Economy
Aside Public Welfare, every civic here is well-designed and has a clear role in mind. There are also generally good 'default' options available at all stages of the game.

Religion
Tolerance exists and is helpful for Culture UHVs. It is helpful for maintaining religion diplo bonuses. Everything else here is fine.

Territory
This column is one where being able to revert to default would be nice. All three of the early to mid-game options (Conquest, Tributaries, and Isolationalism) have clear downsides to them (Conquest has huge maintenance costs and render Cottages unusable; Tributaries' food production bonus means cities don't grow, which hurts in maintaining a healthy core population; and Isolationalism can tank your economy) and you're stuck with them. The later options are good though.

 

[banzay13]

If we plan nerf Vassalage - it's better remove hammer from farm. Happiness effect very logic for Vassalage

On late game civics here, I find Democracy extremely meh.

If you plan Space Race victory - it's very useful. You need all those Great Engineer for wonders building.

 

[KIJLC]

If we plan nerf Vassalage - it's better remove hammer from farm. Happiness effect very logic for Vassalage

If you plan Space Race victory - it's very useful. You need all those Great Engineer for wonders building.

I'd say since the usual set up is Monarchy+vassalage, one should be forced to get more happiness out of building troops. The farm hammers are critical for getting anything done in large parts of the map during the middle period of the game. The extra happiness from vassalage will pretty much apply to every single one of your cities for all the European civs who don't exceed 6 cities until colonialism, it feels more like a boost for the AI than the player really, but that's the nerf I would make, its a "get out of luxury free card" for Euros.

Elective right now is pretty much only useful for Russia since they have so many camps and pastures. You'd think Seljuks would get more use out of it.

 

[CometHalo]

Hopping into here to offer a few more thoughts on civics, some of which echoes above discussions. A general theme throughout this is that I have a decent number of thoughts on how effects of a civic feel to use and also how objectively valuable they are to achieving UHVs.

Government
On late game civics here, I find Democracy extremely meh. Its bonus just sort of exists and while probably very strong, it doesn't feel very noticeable. I also find Great People a very binary thing in this mod. Either you really need them for certain purposes (and in those cases, specific Great People for specific reasons), or they just ... exist. A lot of the times running Democracy lands me in the latter camp. The high maintenance cost on the civic also hurts vis-a-vis State Party's medium. I also note that by the point in the game you're running this civic, earning Great People moves heavily towards the 'passive' end of the gameplay loop, so Democracy's bonus becomes even less visible. In distinct contrast, State Party is absolutely and utterly broken for any civ that needs to expand, which in the late game civs, is most of them. If it wasn't for the fact that it feels so insultingly unthematic to run this stuff on many civs, I'd run this every time without a doubt.

For the early game civics (less Republic, which is too distinct to really comment on generally), Despotism is strong with clear weaknesses. I generally think it doesn't crowd out the other options here for long term use, despite how useful whipping is. On Monarchy, I'm going to divert from some of the other thoughts on this civic to note that I view this as very useful. Core population is one of the biggest things in DOC and this provides a good way to indirectly convert hammers into temporary and flexible happiness. The civic stability combinations, its modest maintenance, and the fact it never 'obsoletes' also helps with game flow. Lastly, for Elective I'm going to echo 1SDAN here and note that I really enjoy this civic as is. The Palace thing is purely thematic and I view it as just an add-on. The Barrack/Stables extra production is very strong and Elective is also the only not!late game Government civic that provides a direct economic benefit. With the current map, Pasture/Camp resources are generally a large part of the worked tiles for many civs so the specific bonus there is noticeable, and the unimproved tile thing also helps while the worker engine builds. And on that point ...

Society
Manoralism: I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I find the 50% Worker production boost very, very appealing. It is a very noticeable bonus which triggers the dopamine, and I find it just accelerates the early engine so much for two reasons: (1) obviously, you get more Workers out faster so you can improve tiles faster; and (2) it gets your cities out of using Food for producing the Workers faster, so they can start actually growing again. I also find having more Workers way more useful than Workers working faster, because you just have more options (you can combine two Workers to replicate the bonus from Caste System (math may not check out) on one tile, or split them to improve two different tiles at the same time). And on that point ...
Caste System: I find this civic very underwhelming and the +1 Food on Plantations honestly makes me feel punished when I switch out of it, if the food is necessary to maintain certain population sizes on core cities. I also think it doesn't help that most civs that run this (due to starting with it) are in Indochina which is carpeted with Rainforests and Jungles, so the improvement speed is already slowed. Yes, I get that it's a benefit because you're less slowed, but the result is that half of the civic's bonus feels less impactful. The high maintenance cost also hurts.
Slavery: I find this civic not particularly useful and generally prefer Manoralism. I find capturing (and escorting) Workers unreliable versus Manoralism's production speed bonus, and in many of the places that benefit from the Mine/Quarry bonus there are also (currently) Pastures, Farms, or Orchards that benefit from Manoralism. This will only increase with the new map's introduction of more Farm and Orchard resources in Africa and the Middle East (aka the places that would 'historically' run Slavery for long times). Interestingly, the one civ I would actually use this on (early) is Persia, and they don't start with Slavery and have a thematic reason not to use it. In general, I'd say the civic has a use case for civs that want to (and have the means to) expand early and conquer cities for better chances of obtaining camped Workers there (this is Persia, Arabia, and Turkey, basically). Most other conquering civs have a 'ramp up' period where they will be at peace and will build their Workers instead. If the civic could use a buff, maybe it could get some sort of bonus where you guarantee obtaining Workers on capturing a city (say, 1 Worker per 5 population in the city, rounded down to a minimum of 1).
Egalitarianism: Echoing the thoughts from a few others that the move of this civic to Civil Rights is very noticeable and painful. A lot of civs that like this civic have difficulties getting to Civil Rights in a timely fashion (e.g. Argentina, Japan), and before then they're stuck with subpar options as a result.

Legitimacy
Centralism must be the most useless civic in the game after Public Welfare. It comes too late in the game and I can really only see the Netherlands using this. For everyone else who historically would consider it (France, Turkey, Byzantium, China, etc.) other options are better and provide more decentralized benefits (and in DOC, even more so on the new map, civs generally can and should have multiple good cities in their gameplans). I also think it doesn't help that I find many of the 'capital-centric' civs don't actually currently have a capital with strong Production capacity. This 1000% needs a buff.

I do actually think that Meritocracy is quite good and the real bonus is the -%XP for unit promotions. It was very very noticeable and helpful the last time I did an Ottoman playthrough and the Specialist + Windmill/Watermill effect helps counterbalance the loss of Farm hammers on Vassalage.

Vassalage is strong. It could probably lose the happiness effect.

Economy
Aside Public Welfare, every civic here is well-designed and has a clear role in mind. There are also generally good 'default' options available at all stages of the game.

Religion
Tolerance exists and is helpful for Culture UHVs. It is helpful for maintaining religion diplo bonuses. Everything else here is fine.

Territory
This column is one where being able to revert to default would be nice. All three of the early to mid-game options (Conquest, Tributaries, and Isolationalism) have clear downsides to them (Conquest has huge maintenance costs and render Cottages unusable; Tributaries' food production bonus means cities don't grow, which hurts in maintaining a healthy core population; and Isolationalism can tank your economy) and you're stuck with them. The later options are good though.

I’ll gladly 1-up the ability to return to sovereignty in the territory category. I think being able to have a Civ that is neither isolationist nor in some way gearing up for war is useful

 

[KIJLC]

What is the consensus on meritocracy vs Constitution in late game? Main benefit of constitution is the stability with other modern civics, otherwise the free specialist is a mere 2 free food, whereas combining Meritocracy with the other specialist civics results in some serious super specialists.

 

[TsimTsigal]

I'd say that Vassalage should lose army upkeep rather than happiness. Currently Vassalage is a huge crutch for Medieval European lack of luxuries, it gives you a bit of breathing room until you begin colonization/begin trade with Asian countries. Especially important for Austria, Russia and Japan (not European but has to build tall).

Elective is probably the most meh civic in the mod, the idea is clear (to help agressive, undeveloped nations like Vikings or Mongols), but you want to switch from it after you build up a bit (and it competes with Despotism there), and it usually happens sooner than later. Extremely niche, doesn't stabstack with anything, has negative stabstack with Centralisation which is amusing because there is absolutely no reason why you should run both at the same time. Iirc doesn't stack with Mali and Tamils abilities (needs verifying), which honestly would make it at least memey. I don't know how to fix it, i'd rather remove it but i doubt that such an extreme decision would be appropriate. Maybe remove +1 from No Improvement and replace with something something maintenance cost? Think City-States from FFH, except it is clearly not what Elective was intended to represent.

Totalitarism is a good civic, and it's also the worst civic in the game because it has to compete with the monster of Egalitarism. Most of Egalitarism power comes from how claustraphobic city placement is in RFC; in lategame you will almost inevitably switch to specialist eco. I'd personally swap +3 Espionage from Single Party and, say, less war wearness from Totalitarism, and moved unlimited slots from Egalitarism to Democracy. This way you can't stack essentially 5 plus production on unlimited specialists by running unholy abomination of Party + Egalistarism + State Property, which is kinda meta in the lategame unless you want to stabstack.

Revolutionism is meh. Maybe should get war weaness reduction and move whip sadness to the Party or something like this, currently it's kinda based on happiness and warfare but doesn't give any real benefits. +1 hammer on sawmills feels almost lulrandom. It's hard to say what to do with "warmonger" civic when "peaceful" alternative (Constitution) provides free courthouses...

Tolerance imho should keep current theme (one of a few cultural civics), but maybe replace it with +30% everywhere? Or +1 on spec. Quite a lot UHVs require culture threshold or cultural expansion, say, Argentine or Ottomans; nothing wrong with a niche civic (like Isolationism) that is used only for a specific scenario.

 

[Maggy_domain]

What is the consensus on meritocracy vs Constitution in late game? Main benefit of constitution is the stability with other modern civics, otherwise the free specialist is a mere 2 free food, whereas combining Meritocracy with the other specialist civics results in some serious super specialists.

My anedoctical experience from a recent Korea Space victory is that meritocracy,
central planning and republic combo is absolute bonkers if you run a specialist based economy. I had to eventually switch it out for stability reasons as I needed that particular bonus to hold China under my territory. I needed China for the luxuries or I would've failed to keep my capital happy (and so all the juicy extra specialists). I guess if I didn't need the extra stability I would've kept running this triad of civics up to the modern era.

 

[KIJLC]

My anedoctical experience from a recent Korea Space victory is that meritocracy,
central planning and republic combo is absolute bonkers if you run a specialist based economy. I had to eventually switch it out for stability reasons as I needed that particular bonus to hold China under my territory. I needed China for the luxuries or I would've failed to keep my capital happy (and so all the juicy extra specialists). I guess if I didn't need the extra stability I would've kept running this triad of civics up to the modern era.

I think stability in and of itself must be considered amongst the pros and cons of of a civic, so at some point in a game strong combinations like that must be abandoned to create a more governable realm.

In regards to egalitarian vs individualism, I really think the "spend gold to finish production" should be moved to either individualism or free enterprise, to represent the ability to conjure resources from private business outside of the public sphere. Perhaps +1 hammer to town for individualism as well, as another incentive against egalitarian?