The Social Policy Situation

[Renergy]

A possible solution would be to keep track of the culture each city has produced since the last SP. When a city is traded away, razed or lost in combat the cost for the next SP decreases as it currently does, but all the accumulated culture for that city is lost as well. I haven't thought out all the ramifications (what to do with culture overspill from the last purchased policy, for example), just thought I'd put it out there.

+1 on this. Good idea!

 

[PieceOfMind]

You are confusing your empire improving over time with your empire improving the more cities you have.

Technically, yes. I was assuming that most players grow their empire over time.

It has never been the case in Civilization that your empire must improve in every aspect the more cities you have. Every previous iteration has included mechanics to penalise overexpansion - corruption, maintenance, etc.

Not quite. Corruption couldn't actively penalise a civ could it? Only significantly diminish the returns of additional cities.

Civ4 with its maintenance.. Yes that was a feature to discourage horizontal expansion but that wasn't something the player accumulated. They accumulated gold, and gold income was something that usually increased over the course of the game (or commerce if we want to be pedantic).

Commerce generation was something that over the course of the game (with new techs and so forth) improved. Later in the game there were more multiplier buildings, better yields from tiles due to techs, better civics etc.

So I don't see why it should be counter-intuitive for culture generation to drop the more cities you have. Moreover, note that in the OP's proposal, the actual culture generated by each city doesn't drop - rather, it is the amount of culture applied to the next policy which drops.

I already know that. Actually one could argue that makes it even worse, because if you go into the city screen of your 3 cities and see them earming 5 culture each, yet your empire's culture rate is less than the total, it probably would look even clumsier than the current system.

A mechanic like that can be easily rationalised away as representing the difficulty of enforcing a new social policy in a bigger empire.

As I said before, it's not that bad considering that the main thing people look at is how many turns to the next tech. I'm not strongly against the proposal. I just think it's even less elegant than the current system and an unnecessary overhaul. Of course, the current system is not without its flaws either.

And finally, that last quoted statement from you is perfectly applicable to counter your argument as well. It would make sense for an argument supporting that the cost of policies should increase as the amount of culture generated increases too (i.e. with more cities).

 

[fed1943]

Unless I misunderstood, I agree with the change, not the concerns here posted.
My Civ got 10 cities, so SP costs for 10 cities.
I lose 1 city, so I must pay the cost of my defeat.
I decide to raze 1 city (without replacing it with a settler) then I must pay the price of my decision.

 

[Louis XXIV]

A possible solution would be to keep track of the culture each city has produced since the last SP. When a city is traded away, razed or lost in combat the cost for the next SP decreases as it currently does, but all the accumulated culture for that city is lost as well. I haven't thought out all the ramifications (what to do with culture overspill from the last purchased policy, for example), just thought I'd put it out there.

That's what I'm arguing to. It makes the most sense. Spillover could technically be the same, but for simplicity's sake, let's just let them keep the spillover, it isn't going to dramatically change anything (maybe you get one SP total from spillover if you plan it perfectly).

If you want to go further, they could even have a pop up if you try to trade or abandon a city that tells you how much culture you will lose. If a city is captured, there's already enough bad news so I wouldn't go with a pop up, but you would see it at the top of the screen as both your accumulated culture and required culture go down. You could always get this culture back by recapturing the city. The whole thing would kill the exploit and still be intuitive, provided someone wants to go to the trouble of programming it (I'm not sure if it's that easy to program).

 

[Celevin]

The problem I have with this proposal (I think another poster came to the same idea as you as well) is that your culture accumulation actually decreases with increasing number of cities (or at last stays nearly the same). I know that mathematically it's not hard to make the two systems behave functionally in a similar way, but from a gameplay point of view, it's just counter intuitive to build in negative modifiers for increased empire size.

It is a valid concern. I guess people do like to see culture going up and up and up over time. However it's not a big deal, I don't see players getting confused by the change. Rather I think they'd get more information out of the numbers given after the change.

For example, can you name the usual policy requirements for your 4th policy, or your 8th in most games? It's impossible, this depends on way too many factors. Who knows how much it could be. I can't even give a close approximation. What about for tech rate costs? That one's actually pretty easy. If we take the "# of cities" modifier out of the policy equation, we now have more information. Players will get used to saying "The 8th policy costs twice as much as the 6th policy" and such. The policy costs will become more meaningful.

Secondly when analyzing your civ game to see how well you're doing, your personal culture rate is actually fairly meaningless right now. If someone said "I'm making 600 culture but I can't win by culture, help!", that number tells me nothing. I've won with 300 culture per turn in the end game before, and other times with 800. After my proposal, x culture will be less valuable than x-1 culture, period.

Finally, and what I consider most important, is people have a solid idea on how much building that new city hurt them. If they see their culture per turn go from 10 to 8, they know they just had a 20% efficiency loss, and know how much that new city needs to make to recoup.

Ultimately though, this is an issue that doesn't concern me much, so I haven't given it as much thought as you and others. Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the suggestion.

I wrote a lot, and I admit maybe that the most important point got buried . Let's ignore the Firaxis suggested change right now, and just concentrate on the current system VS my proposal.

Take a 5 city empire on a standard map. You just bought a policy, and are 20 turns from your next one. When you build a city on the xth turn towards your next policy (where 1 is now, and 20 is the next policy), how much did it set you back? Assume that this new city produces 0 culture for at least 20 turns.

Before and after building the new city, the policy costs are multiplied by 2.2 and 2.5 respectively.

Say I built the new city on turn 1. Then through every turn the average contribution from each of my 6 cities towards my policy gain rate is divided by 2.5 from turns 1 to 20. OK, that's fair, I built that new city right away and am being penalized for it on every turn of the 20 turns.

Now say I built the new city on turn 10. The average contribution from each of my 6 cities towards my policy gain rate is once again divided by 2.5 from turns 1 to 20. So I'm being hurt retroactively for turns 1 to 9. Doesn't this feel like micromanaging overflow at this point, just in a more opaque way? We lose valuable turns towards our policy not based on a strategic decision, but micromanaging city build time. What about a more extreme situation, like a 3 city war trade? If that happens right before you gain a new policy, it could easily set you back 10+ turns.

I would argue that in our second scenario, the average policy gain rate should be divided by 2.2 for turns 1-9, and divided by 2.5 for turns 10+. My proposal accomplishes this.

Note that we can also reverse the settling of a city to the selling of a city, and see the opposite retroactive harm become a retroactive help. The extreme of this is the "mass selling exploit".

 

[Celevin]

That's what I'm arguing to. It makes the most sense. Spillover could technically be the same, but for simplicity's sake, let's just let them keep the spillover, it isn't going to dramatically change anything (maybe you get one SP total from spillover if you plan it perfectly).

If you want to go further, they could even have a pop up if you try to trade or abandon a city that tells you how much culture you will lose. If a city is captured, there's already enough bad news so I wouldn't go with a pop up, but you would see it at the top of the screen as both your accumulated culture and required culture go down. You could always get this culture back by recapturing the city. The whole thing would kill the exploit and still be intuitive, provided someone wants to go to the trouble of programming it (I'm not sure if it's that easy to program).

It only fixes one side of the coin. I read this after I wrote what I did above. You're taking away the retroactive benefit a player sees when a city is sold/razed, and that's cool and kills a lot of exploiting. But you're still not even touching the retroactive harm a player sees when a city is built/bought. I also think this method might be a bit opaque, because who likes to see a "-200 culture lost!" bubble pop up?

 

[André Alfenaar]

Related to this is that one often has to postpone to build a new city just to after the adoption of a new policy. It feels unnatural that sometimes I have a couple of settlers just waiting for a certain turn to arrive.

The effect of extra cities should be more gradual for both new cities and cities that one gives away. I agree with the OP that the effect of an extra city should be related to the total number of turns that the city wasn't there.

 

[filli_noctus]

It only fixes one side of the coin. I read this after I wrote what I did above. You're taking away the retroactive benefit a player sees when a city is sold/razed, and that's cool and kills a lot of exploiting. But you're still not even touching the retroactive harm a player sees when a city is built/bought. I also think this method might be a bit opaque, because who likes to see a "-200 culture lost!" bubble pop up?

I would argue that if you're planning on settling a city you should have already balanced the costs in terms of SP generation/happiness to the extra gold, production capacity etc.

However, for those that would argue differently there are a few solutions, although I don't think any of them are perfect.

1. When the city is founded/captured it automatically gains culture equal to current culture divided by number of cities) therefore rush buying all available cultural buildings would leave the turns to next SP unchanged - I'm sure that someone could work out an exploit based on this though

2. Don't change the cost of SPs until the one currently being worked towards has been acquired (issues with new cities not raising the cap but contributing towards the cost)

There are probably more imperfect solutions, but I think no solution is going to be perfect.

 

[da_Vinci]

I think they should enforce that, but why not make it so you can change your social policies around? Maybe for each one you change you have one turn of anarchy so if you change 8 of them then you get 8 turns of anarchy. This would be nice because some of the early ones are useless if you change game plans part way though.

Problem with swapping policies is that unlike the civics of Civ 4, policies are a mix of ongoing benefits (like civics) and one time gifts (golden age, two free policies, two free techs, etc). This makes swapping around problematic.

I could see folks swapping policies six at a time to fill out entire policy branches, collect the one time benefits, and then swapping back. Sounds abusive and exploitative.

I suppose if one made certain policies interchangable, and others not, and re-ordered the pre-reqs in the policy tree, it might be workable ...

The whole issue of policy cost being tied to both number of policies in hand AND number of cites is I assume to generate a brake on expansion. Since more cities means more sciopulation and more gold, there needed to be cost to expansion. That turns out to be happiness and culture cost. The culture cost can be avoided by puppeting, but then you can't control the building of happiness buildings and so the happy restriction is more weighty in puppeted civs.

One could ask, should culture cost scale with number of cities at all? Why not just have a fixed price for the nth culture policy, just like each tech has a fixed research cost? Seems to work fine in the natural science tech tree (vs the social science tech tree, aka culture policies).

Maybe 1upt requires more limits on expansion and production than in previous civ versions, and culture policy is it (in addition to happiness issues)? I'd say that puppeting nerfs any culture policy limit on how many cities are out there, but I guess since the puppets don't make units, maybe that does still reduce unit spam. And you can't focus the puppets on culture, so the puppets contribute less to that.

If we think that culture cost needs to scale with something other than nth policy, what could it scale with? Well, it could scale with turn number, with techs or tech eras, with population, with gold production, with science production, etc, rather than with number of cities.

With the civ related scalers (techs, science rate, gold rate, population) the idea is that a more complex civ has more cost to implement policies. Problem is that all of these except for number of techs (or number of beakers in known techs, so that many low techs not worse than a few big techs) can be artificially manipulated, and isn't that what we want to avoid?

So we could scale policy cost with the total cumulative beaker investment in science (known techs plus current tech investment), established either at the start of working on next policy or at the end of it.

Or we could scale policy cost with the turn number.

In either case, policy cost only goes up over the course of the game, except for rare ingame modifiers (Redentor). While that might seem bad (what if I lose a city?), any system that allows the cost to fluctuate can be exploited. And you don't get science discounts if you lose cities, so why should we expect to get policy discounts? Just don't lose cities!

So my thinking is either

1. Just have policy cost increase as a function of number of policies.

2. Or have policy cost scale additionally with turn number

3. Or have policy cost scale additionally with tech investment. This latter might be a usefull balancing feature ... if your tech rate is slow, your policy rate will be faster. Oh gawd ... it's a psuedo SLIDER!

dV

 

[Kid R]

Broken exploitable mechanic: SP cost depends on current number of cities.

Proposed patch mechanic: SP cost will depend on maximum number of cities during whole game.

Better mechanic: SP cost would depend on average number of cities during whole game.

So there would be some inertia and you could happily hold enemy cities for a single turn and gift them away without undue worry because your SP costs would only increase a tiny amount. And if you spent a long time with lots of cities building up culture points and then get rid of them all, your SP costs only go down very slowly, and the exploit is removed.

 

[JBConquests]

I think the OP's ideas make sense. I would add that I think conquering cities should come with some kind of temporary penalties to culture. It is kind of intuitive to me that this city you conquered will likely have completely seperate culture and will undergo some pain as they integrate their culture with yours.

 

[No_such_reality]

Unless I misunderstood, I agree with the change, not the concerns here posted.
My Civ got 10 cities, so SP costs for 10 cities.
I lose 1 city, so I must pay the cost of my defeat.
I decide to raze 1 city (without replacing it with a settler) then I must pay the price of my decision.

I have ten cities, so SP costs for 10 cities.

Catherine declares war on me, I conquer and start razing one of her cities, so SP costs 11 cities.

Before the razing is complete, I take a 2nd city, so SP costs 12 cities.

Finally, I sack the third, Moscow, my SP now costs 13 cities. I can do this before earning a policy. I decide to trade it back to her to end the stupidity.

The first two cities raze, the third is back to Cathy being a pawn in war. I have my original ten cities, a buffer zone and my SP will be stuck at 13 cities. That's what, 10% more culture needed on each policy when on quick setting?

 

[Celevin]

Broken exploitable mechanic: SP cost depends on current number of cities.

Proposed patch mechanic: SP cost will depend on maximum number of cities during whole game.

Better mechanic: SP cost would depend on average number of cities during whole game.

So there would be some inertia and you could happily hold enemy cities for a single turn and gift them away without undue worry because your SP costs would only increase a tiny amount. And if you spent a long time with lots of cities building up culture points and then get rid of them all, your SP costs only go down very slowly, and the exploit is removed.

This makes it really hard for players to ever predict at what policy cost multiplier they're at. Right now it's simple: look at the number of cities.

Secondly, what do you mean "average"? Average of the number of cities I've ever had given every turn of the game? That's extremely hard to compute.

Finally this would require a full rebalancing of the policy costs to make it so culture victories are balanced with the others.

I would argue that if you're planning on settling a city you should have already balanced the costs in terms of SP generation/happiness to the extra gold, production capacity etc.

You are balancing the costs either way. I look and say "hey, this new city will increase my policy cost, but I'm OK with that for these reasons". Even with my proposal or Firaxis' change, you'll still balance costs. It's good to balance pros and cons, and the policy cost increasing is supposed to be there to make you think.

The problem is in the game currently, and with Firaxis' change, you're being hurt for all the previous turns between your last policy purchase and your next as well. It's retroactive damage based on how many turns have passed since you bought your last policy. Anyone who has had a settler out when their culture is at 30/35 knows this feeling. Deciding to settle a city at 34/35 and the turn after can greatly change the course of the game for a reason that doesn't make much sense. It doesn't flow nicely at all.

 

[Celevin]

I have ten cities, so SP costs for 10 cities.

Catherine declares war on me, I conquer and start razing one of her cities, so SP costs 11 cities.

Before the razing is complete, I take a 2nd city, so SP costs 12 cities.

Finally, I sack the third, Moscow, my SP now costs 13 cities. I can do this before earning a policy. I decide to trade it back to her to end the stupidity.

The first two cities raze, the third is back to Cathy being a pawn in war. I have my original ten cities, a buffer zone and my SP will be stuck at 13 cities. That's what, 10% more culture needed on each policy when on quick setting?

On a standard map size, your policy multiplier went from 3.7 to 4.6. That's a 24% increase in policy costs for the exact same empire with the exact same infrastructure before/after your war. Congratulations, you were just penalized the equivalent of the Christo Rendentor for winning a war and accepting no spoils .

 

[Biz_]

they already killed the real SP gameplay by eliminating the ability to save culture

now it's just a tech tree so they don't need any complicated mechanics.

all your culture contributes to whatever policy you're researching. every city you multiplies this by some factor less than 1. to keep a little bit of suddenness you can switch production before something is researched just like you could switch production in civ3.

 

[Kid R]

This makes it really hard for players to ever predict at what policy cost multiplier they're at. Right now it's simple: look at the number of cities.

The SP screen would display the current "effective" number of cities for this purpose, or even just the multiplier value, which would be similar although lagging a little behind.

I only suggested it because it would be a very simple-to-understand and simple-to-implement mechanic change. The culture accumulation would all be as it is, and would retain exactly the same spirit like now, as PieceOfMind says of your empire making progress, rather than culture output going down with more cities which is counterintuitive.

You're right it would throw the balance of the cultural victory off with current SP prices, but that suggests they ever did any balancing in the first place

Secondly, what do you mean "average"? Average of the number of cities I've ever had given every turn of the game? That's extremely hard to compute.

Averages are not hard to compute. (On a scale of 1 to 10, around 5.5).

 

[Celevin]

Averages are not hard to compute. (On a scale of 1 to 10, around 5.5).

You need to keep track of the number of cities of every civ every turn, and then update the social policy cost based on that average. That's a lot of computation.


Thinking about it, I would also abuse your idea by having a small empire at the start of the game, then MASSIVELY expanding halfway through gunning for the best culture buildings. Your running average would be thrown off for when I buy those mid-game policies.

 

[neilkaz]

puppet the cities, then gift them. problem solved.

when razing you would have to assume firaxis will fix it so that razing does not increase culture cost. if they haven't done that in this patch, it will be quickly fixed.

Also when you conquer a city and immediately decide to raze it, that city should not count as annexed and should only count as a puppet. This also removes the annoying need to specify production for a city being razed. This also minimizes the happiness changing but when reloading a game saved while razing.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[Kid R]

You need to keep track of the number of cities of every civ every turn, and then update the social policy cost based on that average. That's a lot of computation.


Thinking about it, I would also abuse your idea by having a small empire at the start of the game, then MASSIVELY expanding halfway through gunning for the best culture buildings. Your running average would be thrown off for when I buy those mid-game policies.

Yes I see, I was just thinking aloud really. Alternatively how about making it so that culture isn't "output" from cities that gets banked, but remains within the cities until it's spent. Then if you give cities away you'll be giving away the culture too. I think somebody suggested that already.

Re. averages, adding up a few thousand numbers and doing a few divide-bys is probably around the same amount of computation as animating one axeman arm moving by one pixel, but yes certainly the game doesn't need any more overheads on it.

 

[neptune2000]

They way they're going about balancing this or killing the exploit feels lazy to me. Huh? Some people are saving a bunch of culture and then selling off their cities to pick a bunch? Let's make cost one-directional and then force them to buy policies! I think this is a terrible idea. You can turn off the force-buy, and then you have just a one-directional change in the cost of policies, which is not as bad but still not good, and besides, turning off the former then feels cheap.

Social policies are treated like techs in that once you gain them, well, you have them permanently. The cost of techs goes up greatly as you progress along the tree, but you can adjust your empire to gain more science if that's what you want. The costs of social policies goes up greatly in a common empire-type, that is one that is expanding. However, now you can't adjust your empire to gain more. Sure you can build more cultural buildings/great artists/cultural civs, but the cost of the policies goes up fast enough, and you need more cities for more buildings that you can't really catch up. Peaceful builders hit hardest?

Again, this is a balance issue that is somewhat complex, and they're attacking it with a hammer. I think my favorite ideas so far is to a) have the player automatically buy the policy when they have the points but not be forced to choose iimmediately, and b) keep track of each cities contribution to the culture pool and remove those points if the city is lost.