Strongest and Weakest Policies

What are the 5 most and 5 least important policies in CEP v1.11 - v1.12, including normal policies, openers, closers, and ideological tenets?

You can just name your choices, or include a short explanations, whatever you feel comfortable with.

 

This is mostly from an early game perspective. Do note that I pretty much never play for a cultural victory so I kind of ignored the aesthetics tree.

Most important:
Citizenship - Workers are fairly expensive production wise early game; Not having to produce them gives lets me build other things with the precious production instead.
Piety Opener - 5 Happiness w/ free faith is pretty nuts early game; amazing for early expansion/conquer
Consulates - +20 resting (and I believe it also effectively functions as an instant +20 as well)
Wealth Opener - 15% gold and production is extremely nice.
Protectionism - +10% gold/production and increased gold/production yields from improvements

Least Important:
Gladiators - 1 happiness per city, requires an arena in that city. Pales in comparison to many other happiness bonuses, especially the piety opener early game or ones that can give multiple happiness per city later game
Honor Finisher - Again, 1 happiness per city, requiring a building in that city to even get the bonus.
Mercenary Army - Problem with this to me is that by the time I can get to it, usually the landsknechts are almost obsolete by then (requires you to enter the medieval era and then pick 2 policies for a unit that's first half of medieval and weaker to boot). Perhaps that's a playstyle issue though.
Caravans - +2 Gold per trade route seems kind of low, especially since it requires the medieval era.
Spoils of War - Gold rewards seem kind of low the time or two that I got it? Though honestly I had trouble finding a 5th and I haven't actually made it to Ideology in a game yet so I have no experience w/ those.

Other notes: I really like the Patronage opener of revealing all city states... when it works. I've found it doesn't work more often than it does. If it doesn't work, then Philanthropy and Consulates are kind of a waste as they don't work on city-states you haven't met yet.

 

A preface: In general, I frequently end up touching multiple policy groups but finishing few. Maybe the openers are too powerful but the finishers aren't convincing enough to complete them.

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
Liberty	Collective Rule	Very Strong	A free city in the early game is a no brainer.
	Republic	Strong	Walls are expensive, and picking this policy easily staves off early Mongol aggression.
Piety	Opener	Very Strong	+5 Happy is very strong, but a strange choice for the opener.
	Tolerance	Strong	Happy for Religious buildings is strong, the multiple religion effect is neat but hard to quantify.
	Meditation	Weak	Faith costs are high in CEG and this policy doesn't make a big enough difference.
	Unity	Unsure	Not sure what "10 golden age turns" means. Generally feels like a weak pick.
	Inspiration	Strong	A policy for a religion. Simple and effective.
Wealth	Opener	Very Strong	Gives far too much without any real commitment to the rest of the tree.
	Caravans	Very Weak	Impossible to balance. Either too strong early or far too weak late.
	Maritime Infrastructure	Very Weak	Coastal cities are already poor without lots of fish, and this isn't enough to convince me to make more.
	Mercenary Army	Unsure	I don't grok the concept.

 

I usually start out with the Honor opener for the help against Barbs.
Then I move straight to Liberty and in most cases finish it all the way through and as quick as possible for the finisher which I usually pick a Prophet so I can be the first to found a Religion. I know that I could go Piety and get a free prophet probably faster, but I feel the Liberty tree just plays better for me.
After completing the Liberty tree I'm usually all over the place - am I in a war, then probably more Honor - am I just coasting, then I might get a few from Tradition.
Like Kivin mentioned above I touch a lot after finishing Liberty.

 

Strongest:
Wealth Opener and protectionism- +25% production and Gold empire wide with village and mine bonuses. Extremely useful in developing the empire come the middle ages.

Piety Opener- +5 happiness to support my 2nd or 3rd city, allows me to get my pantheon faster and I typically build Stonehenge which guarantees me the first religion unless Maya are in the game.

Rationalism science Policies: The 3 science boosting policies allow me to catch up to and eventually overtake the AI in science in renaissance/Industrial. These are the most important policies in the game.

Exploration: The belief that gives all tier 1 buildings is the strongest single belief in the game, gives a miraculous headstart on new cities. The AI also uses it to great advantage it seems and that makes the late game more interesting against a wide AI opponent.

Tradition Finisher: +50% great people. If you combine this with an early smithy and walls for engineer slots in your capital and get hanging gardens you can pump out 4 manufactories by Renaissance for extreme production, though I don't always go this route as other policies may be more important depending on the circumstances.

Worst:

Rationalism: The spy technology. Worthless. I cannot ever seem to steal an enemy tech. It takes 70 turns on average even if the AI is many techs ahead of me and by the time it comes around I have surpassed most AI in tech. Also AI stealing my tech has a minor impact on the game so the 25% protection is not important.

Research agreement policy: RAs are not very useful in the latest versions of the game it seems even with this policy and the porcelain tower. I only pick these 2 rationalism policies so I can get the free tech finisher to increase my odds of being the first one to the modern era for the first Ideology and for great scientists with Faith. Every game it pains me to have to pick these 2 policies please replace them with anything else or fix tech stealing and research agreements.

 

Tree-by-tree analysis:

Tradition:
Opener: Nice with the GL, but not really fitting - what has tradition to do with science?
Ceremonial Rites: Tradition should be for tall empires and 4 cities is not tall; also: weak.
Oligarchy: only good for wide empires, doesn't fit
Growth, Monarchy: should both be about 50% better than now
Finisher: not ideal, but good enough

Liberty:
Opener: why Terracotta? Terracotty is for wide, Liberty is for tall - again not the best fit
Citizenship: 1 worker is enough
Rest: well balanced and fitting

Honor:
Far too weak. I'm Rome and in turn 240 and I haven't touched it at all despite defeating 3 other Civs and a total of 20 policies (+2 starter-ideologies)
The opener should improve strength against everyone. Barbarians are only a nuisance at the very beginning, so taking the policy is not a good long-term investement this way. Make it a flat +15% combat in the opener, two more policies with +10% when attacking and defending respectively and more happiness on those that are made for happiness.

Piety:
Opener too strong, 3 happiness are enough.
Charity might be too powerful
The rest fits nicely.

Patronage:
Really well done but playing against Greece is so very much harder that way. You might want to think about something that makes it harder to gather loads of CS-allies (for example: influence loss is higher the more allies you have) - in my last 20 games I always disabled the diplo victory as it is boringly easy, I'd like that to change. Also you would not have the player (or Greece) dominating the whole WC...

Knowledge:
Everything fits well together but Secularism is a bit weak with so little specialist spots.

Exploration:
Quite amazing. Very strong and explory. When does it unlock again?

Wealth:
Opener too strong, Protecitionism too strong (+25% production and gold everywhere?!?)
Merc Army is far too weak, how about unique units that can progress through the eras and are worth it?
Caravans is a bit on the weak side, rest looks good.

Aesthetics is almost perfect. Flourishing of the arts could give a free archaeologist in addition, Fine Arts could go to 1 culture per 1 happiness, maybe with an ere-depending cap (10xera)




All in all I have to play more to test everything out, I just now discovered Exploration as I got used to overlooking it alltogether, stupid me.^^

 

Most:
Piety finisher. Too much good religious stuff has been moved here, so religions are fairly weak without them.
Wealth free gold on villages and free production on mines is too strong, as is the wealth opener.
Piety opener is very extremely strong for an opener and doesn't have good fit.


Least:
Mercenary armies.
The rationalism policy that affects espionage.
The rationalism policy that affects research agreements.
The small boosts on trade route income (ok if larger).
Golden age boosts (eg in Piety).
Most of Aesthetics (just producing more culture in itself doesn't really do anything - why spend your culture on social policies that don't do anything but generate more culture, aesthetics needs to give you more tourism).

I also don't like the general Exploration tree design. There are too many policies which risk being duds, centered around a single narrow purpose.

I haven't seen the reveal city states working, but I don't like it in concept.

I posted policy thoughts earlier here and they haven't really changed:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12919959&postcount=7

 

The choice of policy is very situational for me, I don't stick to a plan game-by-game.

Mostly I pick policies that give me more of something I lack.
Very early I will pick the policies that give more , as that helps me get more policies. +3 in the Capital, +1 for cities, free buildings in new cities, reduced costs, that sort of thing.

My next priority would be . Any policy that gives a boost, but isn't out-of-whack with the rest of the choices, is fair game.

Once my & yields are comfortable I will then look at where I need to go. Military, Science, Cultural, Religious. Depending on where I think I can win is where I go.

When it comes to tenets it is a slightly different choice. I think all three give pretty much the same but with a slight flavour twist. The choices of your neighbours mean much more to me at this stage. Do I want the extra cultural boost from shared ideologies or do I want to provoke someone into a war?

 

(quickly a little bug if you don't have Masonry researched and you grab republic you don't get free walls until you research it)

Tree by Tree-

Tradition-
Ceremonial Rites- feels weak (maybe add 1 free random painting, music, and or art piece honestly I don't know... and or -1 building requirements for National buildings)

Liberty-
Citizen should require 1 other policy. Its a no brainer.

Honor-
Military Caste- Also makes 3-5 military units you already have maintenance free. (honor civs can field bigger armies without hurting the bank)
Gladiators- Add 5-10% combat bonus to units.
Finisher- add 10% combat bonus for all units & boost GG combat bonus tile range +1)

Piety-
Opener- is too good, (+2-3 happiness)
Unity- add free missionary and this is linked from Charity (off topic but once you finish your religion free missionary ie plug any cities you have with your religion early on)
(something makes roads spread your religion and religious pressure?)

Patronage-
Cultural Diplomacy- when you have 1 CS ally you also get 10-20% bonus to GP generation. (linked from Consulates?)
(somewhere in their your military units don't upset them anymore for being in their territory)

Knowledge-
Scientific Revolution- Also allows cities that settled on resources to be sold. Also each Research agreement nets both civs +4-5 production to all cities.
(I was also thinking of adding the idea of "allow cities that settled on resources to be sold to scientific theory ie feels so light but maybe its better for a policy?)
Counterintelligence- Free Constabularies in your first 4 cities and -50% production costs to Constabularies, Security Agencies and National Intelligence Agency. Your spies are harder to kill.
Finisher- Add Civs that are doing Research Agreements also earn +4-5 gold per turn.
Secularism- +3-5 science per specialist.

Exploration-
Finisher or Colonization- Embarked units and work boats get +1 LOS (not military units) and another Admirals get +1 combat bonus tile range
Naval Tradition- Admirals get +1 combat bonus tile range.

Wealth-
Opener- holy crap its so good, cities with 2-3 pop get 15% gold and cities with 4-5 pop get the 15% production.
Caravans- +4 gold and roads require 1 less turn to build and lower road maintenance.
Maritime Infrastructure- Add +1-2 science per seaport.
Mercenary Army- So this ones a weird one either buff it or remove it. So if we add to it you also get to pick a unique unit (you will receive 2) per era from the list of civs not in the game and this also doesn't include units from the military CS pool.

Aesthetics-
Fine Arts- +2 culture per 2 happiness and +1 tourism per 4 happiness.
Cultural Centers- Add +2 tourism per city for your first 4 cities.
Flourishing Arts- Add free Archaeologist and +1 tourism and +1 production per great work.
Cultural Exchange- add 15% faster policies and each open border nets civs +1-2 production to all their cities.
Finisher- add +1 tourism per policy.

 

Here is the list of Tenets- http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_bravenewworld.html#tenets
I wish in game you could look at them from turn 1 somewhere on Ideological Tenets screen. (looks at Thal)

 

Liberty
Both the workers and settlers policies are powerful for any play style. I don't know they need to be changed but perhaps moved into the tree more if practical.

Honor
Gladiators is weak. Arenas already have a bonus happiness in the mod, while populations aren't always high enough to encourage building them early on if expanding through conquest as it is when considering any religious or pantheon benefits. Later you have other happiness buildings to build. I'd be fine with some kind of benefit to combat here instead of additional happiness or a combination of the two.

Piety
Opener is too good and has nothing to do with the rest of the tree. You can just cherry pick it and ignore the tree itself if you want (Patronage often worked this way too). Drop the happiness entirely and do something faith-related instead to help get a religion/pantheon up faster. A modest instant faith bonus or increases to the speed/faith of religious buildings could be an option here.
I don't mind the Golden Age effect here, but it's too weak.
Charity is weak.

Knowledge
The Spy bonus is essentially useless. No one who takes this tree is going to be behind in tech for very long enough that it would help in that direction. Catching spies is maybe useful here if in a competitive space race but it has a better feel combined with something else or in a later-game ideology.
Research Agreement bonus is likewise insignificant.

Wealth
The dual commerce/production bonuses are way too strong but especially on the opener.
Mercs policy is useless, in part because Landknechts aren't very good but mostly because the concept is so clearly thrown in there.
Caravans is near useless. +2 gold per route is insignificant for much of the game because there are other large sources of gold available in the mod.

The extra gold on coastal buildings doesn't really make sense with the tree. It fits better with exploration even though it is gold. I'd rather keep a bit of a naval/coastal feel in one tree rather than spread it around and if the bonuses are too weak, they can be combined with other effects. This would help alleviate the narrow "build more cities" feel of exploration too.

I'd be fine with returning a 25% city connection bonus or a 25% discount on road infrastructure to wealth to replace the duds and/or consolidate the production/commerce bonus as one policy at a lower rate.

Patronage
I don't like the opener, even when it works. It defeats the purpose and fun of exploration without really giving many advantages. The barbarian bonus in honor that reveals camps does so in territory you've already seen. This is however is like pre-cognition.

 

I don't like it either and I love CSs. Also, I just had it reveal the entire mini-map in 3.12.1 (fog of war for the real world still).

 

Same here, The Patronage opener that reveals CS's is one of the two policies I like least (the other one being Mercenary Army). I would really like to see it changed.

Maybe change it into an effect that grants 15% - 20% increased resources/gifts from City-States (for militaristic city states, maybe an extra 5XP for units, or faster unit spawning).

 

My thoughts on some of the other policies (not really a top/bottom 5, sorry):

Honour
Gladiators (+1 happiness per arena): I don't really like it. At the least it should be national happiness.

Wealth
Protectionism: it's not like me to want stuff weakened, but even I think this is too powerful considering the opener.
Caravans: weak and boring in my opinion.
Mercenary Army: perhaps the most bizarre and pointless policy of them all. And I've never ever had the 2 Landsknechts show up.

Exploration
Colonisation: might need something more, not sure. I mean, for me, when you're ready to colonise at this time and are going for this tree, you usually have a lot of stuff in place that will see a city race to 5 citizens anyway so just starting at 5 doesn't seem that great to me.

Knowledge
Counterintelligence: not interesting or that useful for me. The AI is going to get its techs regardless and while I can see the logic in apparently protecting your research, I'd rather have a proactive spy effect than defensive.
(The rest of Knowledge is so-so for me I think. It used to be a tree I'd often pick, but now I never do).

I also find it odd that Knowledge and Aesthetics do not have any policies relating to happiness. And maybe I'm in the minority but I don't think Piety's opener is too strong. In fact, I usually never even enter the Piety tree (but always found a religion) so it doesn't entice me very much.

Overall, the policies are in good shape and fun to use.

Edit: didn't see until now that ideologies are included. I'll do that later - there is a good opportunity to improve those a lot.

 

Exploration
Pioneer Spirit: I can't really say that it's all that powerful, but the mechanic of revealing the entire world map is a bit, unflavorful... kinda takes away some fun, just like people have been saying about the Patronage opener. I'd rather see this Policy come with two ships that are the fastest currently available, each with scouting upgrades. I use the IGE to do this myself (since the reveal map feature of the policy doesn't seem to work anyways), and find it to be more fun.
Colonization: Feels like too little too late; it's not bad, it's just not very appealing compared to every other policy in the tree.

Wealth
Opener: The +15% production bonus on this makes it worth it alone, but I definitely do not think that an opener alone should be more powerful than most policies. Scrap the production bonus, and this might be fine, but as it stands, it's really hard to not want to put 1 point into wealth every single game. That should simply not be the case.
Protectionism: Too strong, period. Not sure how I would change it, but I do not like the wealth branch boosting production options as much as it does. +10% production from this and one extra hammer from mines? More thoughts on what role production should have in this policy tree would be welcomed, but from my stance, this is too far. Production is too useful; you already have a bunch of gold bonuses that enable buying units and buildings, and a greater ability to produce on top of that just seems overkill.
Mercenary Army: Way too niche/specific. I like how easily you can pump out the special unit with this, but it makes for a very odd change in game dynamic when this policy alone gives a very powerful rush strategy, one that only works within a very small window of the game. I find this policy to be disrupting, if nothing else. I'd like to see it made more general, without being too powerful. A flat decrease in the cost to recruit units (albeit boring) would serve a similar role to what this policy currently does, but for the rest of the game as opposed to a blip. It would also synergize fairly nicely with the Honor finisher, but I'm not sure if it is good or bad for policy branches to synergize (as if they do too strongly, the player is kind of shoehorned into particular strategies).

Knowledge
Counterintelligence: EDIT: Totally misread this policy multiple times, leading me to think that it boosted spy research rate as well, which I thought was pointless. Depending on how people feel about this, I think that if it needs an improvement, perhaps make it so that when spies are used defensively, they give a small research boost in the city that they are in, maybe something like 5-7.5-10% depending on spy level? Or just a flat increase.


Patronage
No specific policy in mind, but I think it would be cool if there were a policy that affected spies in this tree, whatever that may be. It would be particularly cool if, in addition, using a diplomat had some special effect/bonus/whatever, and would go along with the flavor of this policy branch quite well in my opinion.



But yeah, to reaffirm, more so than anything else, Wealth is a bit broken right now, and on my games it is common to have every AI have no less than two points in it. I think all production bonuses in this tree need to be removed, and it should not give +1 to mines or lumber mills; no policy should do that, except maybe the ideologies.

 

Dislike:
Patronage opener. For the same reason I moaned on other posts about the World Congress revealing the major civs. It is just too much of a game-breaker in that you have less incentive to explore the map. Added to the levelled gifts from meeting these CSs and there just is no reason to sail the seas early.

Protectionism. Even when they were being developed and I was looking at how to code them I was thinking, "really? that much?"

Mercenary Army. Same as the other commenters.

Colonisation. By the time I at a stage to pick this policy I am not looking to found new cities very often, and if I do I can manage to get them up and running quickly to not care about this.

I haven't really "played" the policies enough to look further than that. My gut feeling though is @mystikx21 has a very good handle on where the balancing should take place.

 

@nickmoNW, fwiw, Pioneer Spirit has never revealed the map for me (maybe it does for others?), but if it did, then yeah, I wouldn't like it. Also, you have Counterintelligence backwards.

 

I wouldn't say I have the best ideas on what sort of balancing should be done. I just have some ideas. The armies we had some longer term balance to refer back to to use as a frame of reference and then general observations that certain units were way too cheap, way too powerful, etc. I could cheat a bit, so to speak on what advice to offer. Balance for policies is different because combat wasn't changed as much as say, trade or diplomacy/tourism.

What I think is clear is where it isn't working as well, where there's overpowering or underwhelming effects. And Thal asking this is a great way to identify that with some precision and maybe get some ideas on fixing it.

Some thoughts on the observations so far here and elsewhere in default effects left alone
1) mercenary army isn't popular and is weak. We shouldn't be tinkering with it. As Ahriman put it, it seems almost obvious it was only included to preserve the landknecht investment as a unit rather than as a design idea made by Firaxis for some purpose that has a skeleton we could build around. That policy is like eating jelly with no bread. Only the jelly doesn't taste any good either. Or maybe the toast is burnt. I'm not sure where the metaphor goes exactly, but it's bad.
- I'd note that Firaxis actually did a decent job rebuilding Germany when stripping out the landknecht. I just don't think they bothered to just cut the losses and find something productive to do with the policy tree instead.

2) Wealth has too much production or production+gold in it. I'd rather it mostly be about gold and things to do with gold myself. I'd cite things like increasing city connection value or reducing the cost of infrastructure as useful here.

3) Piety's opener doesn't have much to do with the tree (in the same way wealth's opener is powerful enough to just snag it and leave). 5 happiness for tall isn't useful enough that you'd have much use for the tree to go and get it, and for wide, it doesn't make need to use of the rest of the tree. This is not a coherent design structure. I'd rather this tree have more to do with faith and things to spend faith on (but not to the exclusion of beliefs if you don't take the tree). There's a couple picks in here that don't make sense in light of that (theocracy, opener, golden age, and to some extent the "reformation" effects being the constellation of beliefs that are picked for it).

4) Exploration as presently constructed has a very narrow premise. City states in patronage is narrow in the same way that a faith-centered piety tree might be, but city states are often a very useful mechanic now in diplomacy (to prevent or achieve diplomatic victories) and in the same way religion has a lot to do even later on through conquest and diplomacy and any expansion. Peaceful late-game expansion often has little to do with game play (even the mid-game doesn't have much sometimes). I'd be fine with some policies here that help with it as we've been kicking those ideas around as appealing for reasons of micromanagement and psychology preventing settlement for a long time. I might prefer see some of them moved to the tech tree though. The tree should probably have some more naval/coastal advantages that it feels were stripped out to make room for these instead. Contrast that with aesthetics, which is basically the same as default with some extra twists which gives it some general coherence ("this tree is about culture and tourism wins", effectively).

I also don't like the free map and free contact (patronage) policies at all. A tree called "exploration" should be pretty good at encouraging actual exploration and to provide lasting benefits to the units best at it and not just provide for rapid colonisation and the patronage opener makes exploration almost redundant.

5) Rationalism and Wealth both have some duds or dud-feel policies. This is less true of liberty or tradition (note that there are not many comments on tradition and mostly positive comments on liberty). I think this might be because there was a lot more argument ahead of time on which to base ideas for liberty/tradition and even honor for balance and some sense of consensus was emerging on the design. Even as some people might be unhappy with some changes or effects, it was generally quite good. What work may be there is probably manageable numbers wrangling rather than design scrapping and coherence. (I could see moving the 5 happy from piety over to liberty at some point, but that's about it).

Piety doesn't quite get as much a pass, but that's mostly because I don't think any of us have very good ideas that we could do easily in this mod. There's no consensus and some confusion about the design intersection of beliefs and the policies. I think that's kind of expected. We'd do well to find the things we do like and start from there.

Other mid-game trees hadn't gotten as much scrutiny and I'd say that feeds into the feeling that they're not quite as fleshed out in what they do, in that they have some duplicated effects or weak effects that aren't worth investment alongside powerful effects that are. It might have been best to go ahead and run something out there to start the ball rolling somewhere and fix it as it goes along with in-game input (this is a beta after all we're playing with), but it feels rushed a bit or experimental rather than an invested structure that we could flesh out easily.

I'm not entirely sure where some of the ideas were headed without seeing the discourse that went into it to be able to offer as much constructive advice. So I'm sorry if it comes off as destructive.

 

5 strong ones:

5) Piety Opener (But 5 happiness doesn't really link well here...)
4) Patronage Opener (Does it have to be to reveal ALL City States? Or would x be enough?)
3) Secularism (2 science per specialist is quite attractive, but I'm not sure it's a big problem)
2) Protectionism (very safe choice, no?)
1) Wealth Opener (just strong)

My 5 duds:

5) Gladiators (I'd add x free arenas to make it shine)
4) Honor Finisher (I'd add Pillage bonus gold somewhere)
3) Ceremonial Rites (theatres are not necessarily wanted, it'd be ok if there was a policy somewhere boosting theatres slightly w gold, happiness or science)
2) Counterintelligence (I like the theme, but maybe it needs an additional spy to spice it up?)
1) Mercenary Army (but there've been quite a few proposals on this )

Very subjective list and I haven't really gotten to a game with ideologies yet...

 

Here the policies I feel are too strong or weak and an alternate suggestion.


Too strong:

Tradition finisher: +50 % great person rate and double cultural border expansion and great engineers with faith is really a lot from one policy. +25% GPP would do or move double border expansion in the tree. (Removing the garrison thing - I dislike it.)

Citizenship: +1 worker and +33% working speed.

Collective Rule: So early in the game (as a potential second policy) a free settler is way too much. Better +100% settler production and a small happiness bonus (+2?).


Wealth Opener: Better +4(?) gold on trade routs. Usefull for everyone but not so powerful that everybody will take it always.

Protectionism: Only +1 gold on villages and +10 % gold. Replace Caravans with a new policy that gives +1 prod on mines, lumbermills and +10 % prod.


Too weak

Mercenary Army: Reduce buying costs with gold for units to 200% of production (instead of 300%).

Counterintelligence: Like the idea, but needs something extra. I would suggest +1 spy.


Policies I would change:

Republic: + X happiness (or +10-15 % prod building modifier). Liberty really lacks happiness and free walls is too special.

Piety opener: +1 faith and +1 culture on shrine (and temple?). Piety opener should be faith and culture and not happiness!

Meditation: Faith costs -25-35 %

Swap the places of Maritime Infrastructure and Mercantilism! And Maritime Infrastructure could need another bonus. I like the idea, but it is a bit weak.