Suggestions and Requests

[Ogi123]

On the topic of giving units collateral damage, shouldn't Archers also deal CD?

Hmm, that's interesting proposition. So Archers as CD non city unit and siege as CD city attack one?

Thoughts after a game sprawling colonial game on civics:

I think the society, economic, and religion trees are in a really good place with the most recent batch of changes. I was playing with the -1 trade route on regulated trade and realized it was a net detriment, but now without that I will be interested to try it.

Government
-Depotism is still king, but that's probably unavoidable. Whipping is just central to so much of the game. The happiness penalties are harsh though, and they should be. However, I found I was still dealing with whipping penalties hundreds (on marathon) of turns after the whipping.
-I'm not really sure what Elective is supposed to represent but I really don't know what purpose it's supposed to serve. It has to have some benefit that's going to outweigh despotism and I don't see it. I like the idea of the maintenance buff, and while -50% was probably excessive that might still work. I guess the only constructive thing I can say on this one is that in its current form I can't envision a situation I would use it, so I think it needs a buff.

New elective is + for non improved titles. I guess idea is that quick expanding civs who don't have time to build workers will use it. I will prefer more universal bonus myself.

Legitimacy
- Citizenship is SO good. I like the way it allows early civs to get basic buildings built allowing them to do more interesting things but it is better than all the other alternatives for so much of the game. I would suggest moving the happiness buff to vassalage, which still feels week.
- I don't like what meritocracy was turned into. While I'm not saying bring back the food buffs, I look at meritocracy and all I see is a civic that China is supposed to want to run and that's about it. The fact that the science buff is capital constricted it weird because it's basically a weaker version of another buff that's already in the tree (centralism) feels redundant. My suggestion would be some sort of industrial improvement buff (it does make sense that windmills and watermills, the embodiment of non-urban industry, would run more effectively in a meritocratic society) or the reduced maintenance that was just stripped out of elective (it seems reasonable that a meritocracy would reduce waste/corruption). I also don't get the paddy bonus except for being a neon sign from the dev to China players to run the civic.

Citizenship is only way that allow build early infrastructure, without it I wouldn't brother with most buildings to expensive for to little gain. On Meritocracy I agree this is currently civic without clearly defined purpose.
Despotism is OK, penalty made whip use more conservative, and I may remember it wrong but its only work on buildings?

Territory
- Colonialism was weaker than tributaries for my very colonial empire. Maybe that's an anomaly but with slaves being more of an intrinsic tradeoff with happiness colonialism doesn't do much. Perhaps this would be a good place for a fishing boats buff (one hammer?).

Eh, from boats is ribbon. I would much more prefer from colony.
No opinion on republic? Last changes made it overloaded with penalties IMHO, I would prefer some other different method of balancing than less from improvements.

New grenadier is also very unhistorical, grenadiers even at napoleon time were simply more elite line infantry. Rifleman attack bonus is weird considering that grenadiers should be siege unit coexisting with arqebusier. Skirmish line also could overall get some fine tuning.

 

[1SDANi]

No opinion on republic? Last changes made it overloaded with penalties IMHO, I would prefer some other different method of balancing than less from improvements..

Republic's penalty should just be -1 Commerce from Cottage Improvements and -25% city growth if we want to punish CEs and make the -1 Food Consumed by Specialists less absurd. Though the 25% may need to be tweaked obviously.

 

[Leoreth]

It seems a lot of the feedback on Republic makes the wrong assumption of what its purpose and scope is supposed to be. It is intended to reflect city state type, classical republics. This means historically, the civs that would run it are Greece, Rome, Italy, potentially Phoenicia, and it's also the best civic for Netherlands because they spawn before modern Democracy is available. I tried to design the civic in such a way that it benefits those civs while being unattractive to others that did not historically run it.

All these civs have in common that their cities are usually placed close to each other, and have little available land space. In particular, most of their land space is taken up by bonus resources that are already a "given" improvement wise. The lack of space makes cottage economy unavailable to them, while specialist economy is a natural fit (they usually also have a lot of food), in particular for Greece and Italy where there is UP synergy. The civic effect is intended to provide large specialist populations even in tight space.

While those civs probably will not run CE anyway, the penalties are in place to prohibit abuse of "free" extra food for civs that would run CE anyways and only have specialists as a bonus or some GPP on the side. Initially I thought giving penalties to cottage improvements is sufficient for that, but it still allows you to have economies based on huge farm based specialist cities which are the exact opposites of what the civic is meant to represent.

TLDR: the civic is meant to be undesirable as soon as you have any of the penalised improvements in large numbers. Removing the penalties or replacing them with slap on the wrist drawbacks would run counter to the intent of the civic and probably lead to its use by civs it is not meant for.

 

[1SDANi]

It seems a lot of the feedback on Republic makes the wrong assumption of what its purpose and scope is supposed to be. It is intended to reflect city state type, classical republics. This means historically, the civs that would run it are Greece, Rome, Italy, potentially Phoenicia, and it's also the best civic for Netherlands because they spawn before modern Democracy is available. I tried to design the civic in such a way that it benefits those civs while being unattractive to others that did not historically run it.

All these civs have in common that their cities are usually placed close to each other, and have little available land space. In particular, most of their land space is taken up by bonus resources that are already a "given" improvement wise. The lack of space makes cottage economy unavailable to them, while specialist economy is a natural fit (they usually also have a lot of food), in particular for Greece and Italy where there is UP synergy. The civic effect is intended to provide large specialist populations even in tight space.

While those civs probably will not run CE anyway, the penalties are in place to prohibit abuse of "free" extra food for civs that would run CE anyways and only have specialists as a bonus or some GPP on the side. Initially I thought giving penalties to cottage improvements is sufficient for that, but it still allows you to have economies based on huge farm based specialist cities which are the exact opposites of what the civic is meant to represent.

TLDR: the civic is meant to be undesirable as soon as you have any of the penalised improvements in large numbers. Removing the penalties or replacing them with slap on the wrist drawbacks would run counter to the intent of the civic and probably lead to its use by civs it is not meant for.

Ah okay, that makes sense then.

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

just a minor inconvenience but can we tweak a little bit the settler ai about the city ruins?
As far as I experienced they avoid settling on ruins, but this causes some ugly city placements in the game.
For example Carthage almost always gets razed by African barbarians, and when Moors spawn they tend to avoid settling on Tunisia and instead settle on stone.
I'm not sure about the code but this might be related to city ruins being considered as improvements in the game.

 

[Ogi123]

It seems a lot of the feedback on Republic makes the wrong assumption of what its purpose and scope is supposed to be. It is intended to reflect city state type, classical republics. This means historically, the civs that would run it are Greece, Rome, Italy, potentially Phoenicia, and it's also the best civic for Netherlands because they spawn before modern Democracy is available. I tried to design the civic in such a way that it benefits those civs while being unattractive to others that did not historically run it.

All these civs have in common that their cities are usually placed close to each other, and have little available land space. In particular, most of their land space is taken up by bonus resources that are already a "given" improvement wise. The lack of space makes cottage economy unavailable to them, while specialist economy is a natural fit (they usually also have a lot of food), in particular for Greece and Italy where there is UP synergy. The civic effect is intended to provide large specialist populations even in tight space.

While those civs probably will not run CE anyway, the penalties are in place to prohibit abuse of "free" extra food for civs that would run CE anyways and only have specialists as a bonus or some GPP on the side. Initially I thought giving penalties to cottage improvements is sufficient for that, but it still allows you to have economies based on huge farm based specialist cities which are the exact opposites of what the civic is meant to represent.

TLDR: the civic is meant to be undesirable as soon as you have any of the penalised improvements in large numbers. Removing the penalties or replacing them with slap on the wrist drawbacks would run counter to the intent of the civic and probably lead to its use by civs it is not meant for.

But all those civs have problem with not with as you mentioned. What I mean is that bonus is not useful if you can't sustain all those specialist. From historical point of view this kind of republic gave way rather quickly, in terms of turn time, to despotism and monarchy.
Huh, you know getting republic older effect of per specialist and removing some or all penalties could do the trick.

 

[Leoreth]

That might actually work, let me think about it and try it.

 

[Royal Tenenbaum]

great generals or statesmen should be able to reduce instability caused from razing cities.

 

[Leoreth]

Before addressing this post in detail, let me start out by saying that (similar to techs) as soon as you commit to a rigid structure, i.e. having exactly seven civics per category, in some categories you will have a civic that is to some degree filler. This is complicated by the fact that you usually try to do three different things: 1) represent the historically most relevant civics, 2) establish synergy between civics and certain situations/strategies/play styles including balance and 3) have one map to the other in a logical way. That means that ideally, the right civic for civ in its usual situation should be the civic they were actually using in history. It's not always possible to achieve that.

The current selection of civics represents a conscious push to make civics more versatile and their use more appropriate for a variety of time periods and geographic locations. For example, overly specific types of civics like Mercantilism have been removed/renamed. I think that overall this has been rather successful. I specifically say all that in the context of Elective and Meritocracy, which are arguably both "filler" civics and more specific.

When going for a specific civic, you basically have no choice but to focus the effects on their historical application. They cannot become too useful for civs where they are not thematically fitting. This comes at the cost of not having those civics in consideration in most situations, but I find that preferable to the inverse.

I think the society, economic, and religion trees are in a really good place with the most recent batch of changes. I was playing with the -1 trade route on regulated trade and realized it was a net detriment, but now without that I will be interested to try it.

Just as an aside here, the AI seems to love Regulated Trade, and I'm not sure why that is. Any ideas?

-I'm not really sure what Elective is supposed to represent but I really don't know what purpose it's supposed to serve. It has to have some benefit that's going to outweigh despotism and I don't see it. I like the idea of the maintenance buff, and while -50% was probably excessive that might still work. I guess the only constructive thing I can say on this one is that in its current form I can't envision a situation I would use it, so I think it needs a buff.

Elective is meant to represent forms of government where succession happened on ruler death and was decided by a group of powerful princes. The most appropriate historical examples here are HRE, Poland, Russia, Mongols and Mali. As per the above, I tried to design it so that it is appealing to these civs. Reduced distance maintenance (and now cheap palace relocation) was introduced with the large Mongol Empire in mind. In general I observed that these civs tended to have lots of Pasture and Camp (the latter mostly with regard to Mali's Ivory) resources so I geared bonuses in that direction. HRE and Poland also canonically use Manorialism which synergises with the Pasture effect.

I decided not to keep the reduced distance maintenance because it is also very powerful for large empires that are NOT the Mongol Empire, in particular European colonial empires that I would prefer to run other civics here.

Instead I came up with the idea for unimproved tile yields, which mostly reflects that many of the civs I mentioned struggle to quickly improve their territory, especially rapid expanders like Russia and Mongolia and civs under strong barbarian pressure like Mali. It also meant that as these civs would continue to build improvements, the utility of the civic would decline, giving it a built in expiration effect, which I think is historically accurate.

I currently have some game rule changes in mind that would allow some changes to Elective though. The idea is to bring back colony maintenance (a BtS concept that is disabled in RFC) for cities that are currently considered colonies (on another continent than the capital, although the exact criteria might need to be tweaked a bit) and instead have colonies pay no distance maintenance by default. The main goal of such a change would be to balance European civs better (different modifiers for distance and colonial maintenance) and make colonial costs independent of distance which I think is more accurate. If that is the case, distance maintenance once again mainly becomes a challenge for large land based empires and would be an appropriate Elective effect.

But besides that I am still open for effect suggestions.

Legitimacy
- Citizenship is SO good. I like the way it allows early civs to get basic buildings built allowing them to do more interesting things but it is better than all the other alternatives for so much of the game. I would suggest moving the happiness buff to vassalage, which still feels week.

Do you think its usefulness comes from the happiness bonus or because you continue to build its buildings even later in the game (conquered cities, colonies etc.)? In general, I don't mind Citizenship to be useful longer, at least until Ideology or Constitution become available. It represents a form of society that Vassalage, Meritocracy and Centralism do not really express.

I don't think happiness in largest cities is appropriate for Vassalage, which is about decentralisation. If Citizenship is otherwise too strong, how about giving it high upkeep instead?

As for Vassalage, besides the unit effects I see its value mostly in the low upkeep. Any other ideas on how to make it stronger?

- I don't like what meritocracy was turned into. While I'm not saying bring back the food buffs, I look at meritocracy and all I see is a civic that China is supposed to want to run and that's about it. The fact that the science buff is capital constricted it weird because it's basically a weaker version of another buff that's already in the tree (centralism) feels redundant. My suggestion would be some sort of industrial improvement buff (it does make sense that windmills and watermills, the embodiment of non-urban industry, would run more effectively in a meritocratic society) or the reduced maintenance that was just stripped out of elective (it seems reasonable that a meritocracy would reduce waste/corruption). I also don't get the paddy bonus except for being a neon sign from the dev to China players to run the civic.

That's because that's exactly what it is! As I said before, this is a civic that needs to be directed to its historical examples in some way, which are mostly China and Korea, and maybe Japan. I mean, it's possible to come up with rationalisations like the use of meritocratic administration to oversee irrigation etc. which is something that actually happened in China, but I won't deny that the desired outcome came first here.

Likewise, meritocracy in the military is reflected in the unit experience bonus, which I tried to keep defensive because that's how China is usually (supposed to be) played.

I agree that the science in capital effect is poorly placed in a civic that shares a column with Centralism. This was an attempt to represent meritocratic administration in some way that wasn't already used by another civic. Again, I am open to better ideas.

I like the suggestion to do something with wind/watermills. Maybe a simple commerce bonus here would also be interesting.

Territory
- Colonialism was weaker than tributaries for my very colonial empire. Maybe that's an anomaly but with slaves being more of an intrinsic tradeoff with happiness colonialism doesn't do much. Perhaps this would be a good place for a fishing boats buff (one hammer?).

How? Did you have many vassals? Or is it the upkeep difference?

 

[Ogi123]

So about those units... Here is another try to build better unit list, it's much more difficult that it seems. Still don't have good idea about light cav line, so in this draft I returned to idea of single mounted unit line, because frankly if there isn't niche for light cav then it should be removed.

Firstly word about promotions, IMHO there should be less preq for promotions, it would be more fun if +25% vs unit type promotions would be available from start. I personally would remove flanking promotions and replaced it with charge promo, +25% open terrain attack. Anti siege promotion could be renamed to something else.
Anyone has opinion on disengage promotion line? I never used it, combat or flanking are much more useful.
I think that I already talked about it but paratrooper and marine should be removed. They could be replaced with promotions,paradrop/amphibious, available from start.

Ancient age:
1)Warrior 4, 1, 25, melee - basic unit symbolises ancient era warriors up to iron age.
2) Archer 4, 1, 1FS, CD(30%) max 20%, withdraw(50%), 35, archery - since defending cities against enemy stacks is pointless, you will always lose, this unit gets CD as by 1SDAN recommendation.
3)Chariot 5, 2, retreat(20%), 40, archery or melee - obsoletes with lancer, nobility will need something else instead of horse archer.
4)Spearman 5, 1, +50% vs mounted, 35, melee - since there is no light sword this should be mainstay unit in ancient age.
5)Galley 4, 3, cargo(2), 40, naval - bit cheaper since naval warfare is already discouraged.
6)Pirate Galley 4, 3, 50, naval- hidden nationality, for you early pirate needs.
7)Scout 2, 1, +100% vs animals, starts with sentry, 25, recon - basic scout with good visibility.

Classical age:
1)Swordsman 6,1, +10% city attack, 40, melee - obsoletes warrior, good at conquering cities.
2)Catapult 3, 1, +100% city attack, CD(40%) max 30%, withdraw(80%), bombard(8%), 60, siege - basic city siege unit, weak in field.
3)Skirmisher 4, 1, 1FS, withdraw(50%), ignores enemy terrain defence bonuses, +50% difficult terrain attack, 50, archery - by difficult terrain I mean rainforest/forest/hills.
4)Horseman 6, 2, +25% open terrain attack, 60, mounted- expensive but very good at charging.
5)War elephant 8, 1, 60, mounted- should not have access to charge promotion.
6)War galley 6, 3, 50, naval - to crush pirates and galleys.

Horse archers could be UU and barbarian units.

Medieval age:
1)Heavy sword 8, 1, +10% city attack, 60, melee - basic infantry good at attacking cities.
2)Heavy spear 7, 1, +50% vs mounted, 60, melee - counter unit.
3)Lancer 8, 2, +25% open terrain attack, 80, mounted - better horseman.
4)Crossbowman 6, 1, 1FS, CD(40%) max 30%, withdraw(50%), 60 - archer replacement, better at CD.
5)Longbowman 6, 1, 1FS, ignores enemy terrain defence bonuses, +50% difficult terrain attack, 70 - better skirmisher.
6)Trebuchet 4, 1, +100% city attack, CD(50%) max 40%, withdraw(80%), bombard(10%), 90, siege - better catapult.
7)Cog 6, 4, cargo(3), 60, naval - another transport ship.
8)Heavy war galley 8, 4, 70, naval - better war galley.
9)Explorer 4, 2, +100% vs animals, start with sentry/woodsman/guerilla, 50 - better recon unit.

Renaissance age:
1)Arquebusier 10, 1, 80, gunpowder - first gunpowder unit, reasonably cheap.
2)Pikeman 9, 1, +50% vs mounted, 80, melee - can defeat medieval melee units, counters mounted units.
3)Light cannon 8, 1, CD(60%) max 50%, withdraw(80%), bombard(12%), 120, siege - at same tech row as arqebus, first gunpowder era siege that also can be used in field. gunpowder tech will need something else instead of bombard.
4)Curiassier 10, 2, +25% open terrain attack, retreat(20%), 100, mounted - better cavalry.
5)Musketman 12, 1, +25% vs mounted, 100, gunpowder - adding bonus vs mounted otherwise it will get crushed on open terrain.
6)Cannon 10, 1, CD(70%) max 60%, withdraw(80%), bombard(14%), 140 - even better siege
7)Caravel 8, 6, naval, cargo(1) only recon, 70 - sea explorer.
8)Galleon 9, 5, cargo(4), 80, naval - another transport.
9)Privateer 10, 7, +50% vs galleon, 90, naval - for all you improved piracy needs.
10)Frigate 12, 6, +50% vs privateer, 90, naval - for crunching those irritating pirates.
11)SoL 15, 5, +50% vs frigate, 110, naval - for naval domination needs.
12)Pathfinder 9, 2, ignores enemy terrain defence bonuses, +50% difficult terrain attack, starts with sentry, 90, recon - combination of skirmisher and explorer units lines.

That it's for now I still need think about industrial and later ages, any thoughts about this list?

 

[1SDANi]

Elective is meant to represent forms of government where succession happened on ruler death and was decided by a group of powerful princes. The most appropriate historical examples here are HRE, Poland, Russia, Mongols and Mali. As per the above, I tried to design it so that it is appealing to these civs. Reduced distance maintenance (and now cheap palace relocation) was introduced with the large Mongol Empire in mind. In general I observed that these civs tended to have lots of Pasture and Camp (the latter mostly with regard to Mali's Ivory) resources so I geared bonuses in that direction. HRE and Poland also canonically use Manorialism which synergises with the Pasture effect.

Britain also has a good amount of Pastures and Camps, which lead me to using Elective in pre-colonial Britain whenever I'm not trying to conquer the middle east, after all with furs and Citizenship you have enough happiness that you can constantly grow until you get an ampitheatre (I think thats what the collesiums are called) and theatre in all cities and go 20% culture for eternal happiness until you reach the new world and go ham on luxuries. Is Monarchy that much better that this strategy? I mean it can give a lot of happiness, but either way you're paying upkeep on your happy police or 20% culture, and the increased culture helps the specialist economy of Britain and allows you to get a lot of wonders.

 

[NerfCothons]

Before addressing this post in detail, let me start out by saying that (similar to techs) as soon as you commit to a rigid structure, i.e. having exactly seven civics per category, in some categories you will have a civic that is to some degree filler. This is complicated by the fact that you usually try to do three different things: 1) represent the historically most relevant civics, 2) establish synergy between civics and certain situations/strategies/play styles including balance and 3) have one map to the other in a logical way. That means that ideally, the right civic for civ in its usual situation should be the civic they were actually using in history. It's not always possible to achieve that.

The current selection of civics represents a conscious push to make civics more versatile and their use more appropriate for a variety of time periods and geographic locations. For example, overly specific types of civics like Mercantilism have been removed/renamed. I think that overall this has been rather successful. I specifically say all that in the context of Elective and Meritocracy, which are arguably both "filler" civics and more specific.

When going for a specific civic, you basically have no choice but to focus the effects on their historical application. They cannot become too useful for civs where they are not thematically fitting. This comes at the cost of not having those civics in consideration in most situations, but I find that preferable to the inverse.


Just as an aside here, the AI seems to love Regulated Trade, and I'm not sure why that is. Any ideas?


Elective is meant to represent forms of government where succession happened on ruler death and was decided by a group of powerful princes. The most appropriate historical examples here are HRE, Poland, Russia, Mongols and Mali. As per the above, I tried to design it so that it is appealing to these civs. Reduced distance maintenance (and now cheap palace relocation) was introduced with the large Mongol Empire in mind. In general I observed that these civs tended to have lots of Pasture and Camp (the latter mostly with regard to Mali's Ivory) resources so I geared bonuses in that direction. HRE and Poland also canonically use Manorialism which synergises with the Pasture effect.

I decided not to keep the reduced distance maintenance because it is also very powerful for large empires that are NOT the Mongol Empire, in particular European colonial empires that I would prefer to run other civics here.

Instead I came up with the idea for unimproved tile yields, which mostly reflects that many of the civs I mentioned struggle to quickly improve their territory, especially rapid expanders like Russia and Mongolia and civs under strong barbarian pressure like Mali. It also meant that as these civs would continue to build improvements, the utility of the civic would decline, giving it a built in expiration effect, which I think is historically accurate.

I currently have some game rule changes in mind that would allow some changes to Elective though. The idea is to bring back colony maintenance (a BtS concept that is disabled in RFC) for cities that are currently considered colonies (on another continent than the capital, although the exact criteria might need to be tweaked a bit) and instead have colonies pay no distance maintenance by default. The main goal of such a change would be to balance European civs better (different modifiers for distance and colonial maintenance) and make colonial costs independent of distance which I think is more accurate. If that is the case, distance maintenance once again mainly becomes a challenge for large land based empires and would be an appropriate Elective effect.

But besides that I am still open for effect suggestions.


Do you think its usefulness comes from the happiness bonus or because you continue to build its buildings even later in the game (conquered cities, colonies etc.)? In general, I don't mind Citizenship to be useful longer, at least until Ideology or Constitution become available. It represents a form of society that Vassalage, Meritocracy and Centralism do not really express.

I don't think happiness in largest cities is appropriate for Vassalage, which is about decentralisation. If Citizenship is otherwise too strong, how about giving it high upkeep instead?

As for Vassalage, besides the unit effects I see its value mostly in the low upkeep. Any other ideas on how to make it stronger?


That's because that's exactly what it is! As I said before, this is a civic that needs to be directed to its historical examples in some way, which are mostly China and Korea, and maybe Japan. I mean, it's possible to come up with rationalisations like the use of meritocratic administration to oversee irrigation etc. which is something that actually happened in China, but I won't deny that the desired outcome came first here.

Likewise, meritocracy in the military is reflected in the unit experience bonus, which I tried to keep defensive because that's how China is usually (supposed to be) played.

I agree that the science in capital effect is poorly placed in a civic that shares a column with Centralism. This was an attempt to represent meritocratic administration in some way that wasn't already used by another civic. Again, I am open to better ideas.

I like the suggestion to do something with wind/watermills. Maybe a simple commerce bonus here would also be interesting.


How? Did you have many vassals? Or is it the upkeep difference?

Regulated Trade - I'm guessing because most AI civs are small civs for which a +50% commerce buff in your capital is tremendous.

Elective - That makes a lot of sense. However, this is a tree where it has to compete with whipping and a giant pile of minimally restricted happiness; it probably still could use a buff. I would suggest a marginal (10% or 15% reduced maintenance based on distance) and/or reducing the civic cost to none.

Citizenship - For me it's the half-speed on so many build-this-first sort of buildings that I am building first in any newly acquired city. These are the buildings that a city needs before it can be an asset to an empire. There are few civs when played by a player that have empires remain a collection of the same cities. If this weren't true it would be an indictment of the dynamism of the mod. Therefore, most civs will continue to be able to make use of it beyond the early game. Maybe the issue is that it buffs the building of too many buildings, but I really like the effect it has on early empires to allow me to bring fresh cities into relevancy faster. Maybe drop the library and market buff. Maybe the real issue is that vassalage, meritocracy, and centralism are just weaker than they should be.

Vassalage - I guess it needs something to emphasize the decentralization you mentioned. Maybe this is where the reduced distance modifier belongs. Could also add reduced build time on castles and potentially other medieval buildings. Maybe this is where the forge build buff belongs. It's funny you mention that the happiness buff from citizenship runs counter to decentralization; I think of that as a decentralized bonus as six cities is a decent sized empire by European standards. Perhaps the issue is that the happiness buff should be a bit stronger but apply to fewer cities so it can stay with citizenship. In fact, you're saying vassalage ought to be a decentralized civic but historically it ought to be run by a bunch of civs in Europe who are on the smaller side by civ scale. None of the historical vassal empires really benefit in game from a decentralized buff. Maybe the buff should just focus on it's place in history, so I'll suggest we steal faster forge (and maybe jail and/or market) from citizenship and add faster castle, post office, and/or constabulary. The castle happiness bonus could also be doubled. I really couldn't care less about the fort buffs. It makes forts distinctive in the European countryside, but I don't think many players build many, and if I want food or commerce I can just build the appropriate improvement instead. It also saddles a bunch of AI civs with improvements that become drains after they drop the civic. It also takes up two lines of the civic page.

Meritocracy - Since we're talking about buffing the whole tree I am going to suggest removing the science buff and going back to the a major yield buff for watermills and windmills. China has one of the highest concentration of watermill locations on the map in the east and a ton of windmill locations in the west. Even food for watermills isn't crazy as historically Han China had a very high population at this time. It also appears you are trying to give China extra food with the current paddy field buff. The natural extra hammer from these improvements doesn't come until replaceable parts which is pretty far down the line in the current tech tree. I'll suggest +1 food for watermills and +1 commerce for windmills to replace the current paddy field and science bonus, even though it is something of a reversion.

Centralism - could get the science capital buff from meritocracy. Maybe it could use some faster build buffs as well. Civic center?, bank?, trading company?

Vassalage/Colonialism - I had many vassals. Maybe this is unusual and my experience is therefore not instructive on civic balance. I still think Colonialism ought to be sexier. Right now you are trading an unclear pile of money in the upkeep bonus for an unclear pile of money in the resource commerce bonus, plus a bonus to a minimally important field in naval experience (I just don't find my games hinging on naval battles), and the ability to use slaves, which are often not worth the tradeoff in the first place.

 

[Visard]

Each town should should boost trade routes by 5% either by default or from a building like a railway station.
Railway station should give a merchant slot intead of a engineer slot, since now you get total of 5 engineers but only 3 merchants.
And it should work same way as the distillery and industrial park: +15%(or 10%) from coal & oil.
There could exist a oil power plant which provides power with oil and one .

 

[Leoreth]

I like the idea of giving different building production modifiers to several civics in Legitimacy. This effect for Citizenship was initially motivated by the idea of how Roman citizens in various cities sponsored public works, so its buildings should reflect what is thematically appropriate there. So maybe:
- Citizenship: Aqueduct, Library, Market
- Vassalage: Jail, Forge, Castle
- Meritocracy: Pharmacy, Post Office, Civic Square (?)

I don't know if Centralism should be a part in this. What I would like is faster production of National Wonders here, it seems thematically fitting.

Regulated Trade - I'm guessing because most AI civs are small civs for which a +50% commerce buff in your capital is tremendous.

True. I wonder what the break even point for +1 trade route vs. +50% commerce in capital is. Or even, when +50% trade route commerce (Free Enterprise) outweighs it.

I mean, the AI is probably not perfect in evaluating these differences, although recently I tried to make its trade route value calculations a bit more accurate.

Elective - That makes a lot of sense. However, this is a tree where it has to compete with whipping and a giant pile of minimally restricted happiness; it probably still could use a buff. I would suggest a marginal (10% or 15% reduced maintenance based on distance) and/or reducing the civic cost to none.

Yeah. That's the main problem of the civic: Government is deliberately the category where I dumped most strong effects, so you are forced to choose between whipping, a lot of happiness (in particular, you cannot combine whipping with lots of happiness), lots of specialists/food, a significant maintenance cost reduction, or free specialists. Elective being a filler civic came late to this set of civics, and I didn't really have a strong bonus for it in mind.

Maybe we should try to identify another strong bonus that is worth competing with these instead. The best thing I could think of is +2 unit experience here.

Citizenship - For me it's the half-speed on so many build-this-first sort of buildings that I am building first in any newly acquired city. These are the buildings that a city needs before it can be an asset to an empire. There are few civs when played by a player that have empires remain a collection of the same cities. If this weren't true it would be an indictment of the dynamism of the mod. Therefore, most civs will continue to be able to make use of it beyond the early game. Maybe the issue is that it buffs the building of too many buildings, but I really like the effect it has on early empires to allow me to bring fresh cities into relevancy faster. Maybe drop the library and market buff. Maybe the real issue is that vassalage, meritocracy, and centralism are just weaker than they should be.

(see above)

The more I think about it, especially in light of 1SDAN's post above, the more I think that the largest city happiness bonus should not be available so early, and probably not in Legitimacy. Alternative fitting locations I could imagine are Democracy (that one specialist seems weakest in the list I made above) or Nationhood. In either case, it probably makes sense to reduce the number of eligible cities for this bonus a bit, to maybe four, which is a common upper limit of core cities for most civs. The current number still stems from BtS games on maps this size, where there are fewer civs that generally have more cities by default.

However, if this effect is moved Citizenship seems a bit bare with only a building production modifier. I could imagine adding a slight economic bonus like +1 gold per specialist instead.

So basically the proposal is:

Citizenship (Law)
- medium upkeep
- +1 gold per specialist
- double production for Library, Market, Aqueduct

Vassalage - I guess it needs something to emphasize the decentralization you mentioned. Maybe this is where the reduced distance modifier belongs. Could also add reduced build time on castles and potentially other medieval buildings. Maybe this is where the forge build buff belongs. It's funny you mention that the happiness buff from citizenship runs counter to decentralization; I think of that as a decentralized bonus as six cities is a decent sized empire by European standards. Perhaps the issue is that the happiness buff should be a bit stronger but apply to fewer cities so it can stay with citizenship. In fact, you're saying vassalage ought to be a decentralized civic but historically it ought to be run by a bunch of civs in Europe who are on the smaller side by civ scale. None of the historical vassal empires really benefit in game from a decentralized buff. Maybe the buff should just focus on it's place in history, so I'll suggest we steal faster forge (and maybe jail and/or market) from citizenship and add faster castle, post office, and/or constabulary. The castle happiness bonus could also be doubled. I really couldn't care less about the fort buffs. It makes forts distinctive in the European countryside, but I don't think many players build many, and if I want food or commerce I can just build the appropriate improvement instead. It also saddles a bunch of AI civs with improvements that become drains after they drop the civic. It also takes up two lines of the civic page.

I'm not married to the Fort bonuses, they can go if we want, and the AI is a good point here. Same with Castle happiness, it's mostly flavour. So let's keep things simple for now:

Vassalage (Nobility)
- low upkeep
- additional free units without upkeep
- units are produced using food
- double production for Jail, Forge, Castle

Meritocracy - Since we're talking about buffing the whole tree I am going to suggest removing the science buff and going back to the a major yield buff for watermills and windmills. China has one of the highest concentration of watermill locations on the map in the east and a ton of windmill locations in the west. Even food for watermills isn't crazy as historically Han China had a very high population at this time. It also appears you are trying to give China extra food with the current paddy field buff. The natural extra hammer from these improvements doesn't come until replaceable parts which is pretty far down the line in the current tech tree. I'll suggest +1 food for watermills and +1 commerce for windmills to replace the current paddy field and science bonus, even though it is something of a reversion.

I didn't just remove +1 food for Watermill because I wanted to use Paddy Fields to focus the effect more on China. As I said in my previous post, it's important to not only make the civic good for the civ you want it to run, but also not too good for civs you do not want it to run. China has good watermill land, but so has e.g. all of Europe, and it has been demonstrated that you can create a powerful economy using all grassland Meritocracy watermills there. Which is undesirable both from a civic and an improvement point of view. It's become clear to me by now that food bonuses can only be given to improvements that cannot be freely built everywhere, but instead require a resource etc. I would like to keep the East Asia focused Paddy Field bonus though. So basically:

Meritocracy (Education):
- medium upkeep
- +2 food from Paddy Field
- +1 commerce from Windmill, Watermill (if too strong, maybe even only watermill)
- +50% experience within borders

Contrary to the above I don't even think building construction modifiers are needed here.

Centralism - could get the science capital buff from meritocracy. Maybe it could use some faster build buffs as well. Civic center?, bank?, trading company?

In addition to the current gold modifier? I think Centralism is already strong enough. Although the question where the capital research goes is justified, if anywhere.

Vassalage/Colonialism - I had many vassals. Maybe this is unusual and my experience is therefore not instructive on civic balance. I still think Colonialism ought to be sexier. Right now you are trading an unclear pile of money in the upkeep bonus for an unclear pile of money in the resource commerce bonus, plus a bonus to a minimally important field in naval experience (I just don't find my games hinging on naval battles), and the ability to use slaves, which are often not worth the tradeoff in the first place.

I do not want Territory civics to become too strong economically, and I want their effects focused on the center in most cases. Maybe Tributaries should just be reduced to +1 commerce? It already has the advantage of low upkeep.

If I introduce colony maintenance in the future (like I described in my previous post) it would certainly make sense to have Colonialism reduce it though.

 

[Ogi123]

I could see removing bonus from citizenship, but overall I think this civic is balanced. I really don't understand opinion that Vassalage is weak, free units are massive bonus for larger empires, you can easily go to 40 - 50 free units, that's enormous saving here. Colonialism could be simply buffed with more from each colony. New meritocracy proposal is OK I guess and no from both windmill and watermill isn't to strong. Still this civic is for east Asia only. Perhaps instead of from paddy field it could get more universal from improved food resources(wheat, corn, rice)? Centralism doesn't need changes is good for small/medium empires as it should be.

 

[Leoreth]

What are your thoughts on replacing the Citizenship happiness with gold from specialists, if it is to be removed?

 

[1SDANi]

What are your thoughts on replacing the Citizenship happiness with gold from specialists, if it is to be removed?

I'm not sure if Gold is too weak or balanced, and likewise I'm not sure if commerce is too powerful or balanced.

Perhaps specialists could give +1 of their main yield. That way players have more choice over how they benefit from it.

I'm hesitant to suggest +1 GPP from specialists as I'm almost certain that's OP.

 

[Leoreth]

Also not really available through existing XML.

 

[Ogi123]

What are your thoughts on replacing the Citizenship happiness with gold from specialists, if it is to be removed?

Eh, from specialists for but rest stay the same? It's OK I guess but nothing that will make me chose civic for that. Overall I think that building bonus is enough by itself, it comes early where it's most needed and affect six quite important buildings. If you want add gold to specialists make it and increase upkeep to high.
Vassalage main problem is that free units are % population based. This makes it weak for small empires and very strong for large ones.

 

[Leoreth]

Actually the Vassalage free units effect is a combination of a base amount and another amount that scales with population. So we can change that.