Three tech trees (research/culture/faith) is lazy design

[CYZ]

I guess I would like Social Policies and perhaps a reintroduction of civics (in a muuuuch weakened state) as separate things.

However, I dont mind the way they built faith. Looks really fun and since its use/span is limited mostly to the early game and you can choose many things looks like a lot more fun than social policies.

I also really like the choices and variety it seems to offer. And indeed, the policies seem boring by comparison.

I'd prefer it if all Policy Branches were mutually exclusive between their counterpart (Tradition<->Order, Liberty<->Autocracy etc). But you could easily switch back and forth with just a small anarchy penaly. That way it'd be less set in stone, like civics, and there'd be some tough choices to make too.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think Policies lack a good Opportunity Cost within their branches (Liberty having two things that can't be active at the same time)

I also noticed that Faith isn't really a "tree" you don't have a prerequiste prior to other beliefs. You don't need God of Hunt to get... whatever.

 

[Rex_Mundi]

If your society has focused on being pious for hundreds of years, how could it suddenly become very rational overnight? Surely they would have to spend more time becoming an equally adept rational society?

I think a good real life exaple would be Germany, in game terms they changed from Autocracy to Freedom, as I see it they have addapted quite fast to the change.

I'm sure if you think about it you can name quite a few pious countries that has adapted very well to a more rational way of thinking. Even quite a few that manage to do both at the same time.

My point is don't confuse this game with reality.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Actually, you don't re-gain Culture Points if you change to a conflicting Policy Tree

if you change from Piety to Rationalism not only do you lose all the benefits of Piety, but you lose 5 policies all together, because you have to refill Rationalism from the beginning with new culture.. I think..

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

Actually, you don't re-gain Culture Points if you change to a conflicting Policy Tree

if you change from Piety to Rationalism not only do you lose all the benefits of Piety, but you lose 5 policies all together, because you have to refill Rationalism from the beginning with new culture.. I think..

I do agree with this point, Changing from one policy tree to a conflicting one never makes cents. I do believe their is a relatively simple solution this problem. After you switch tree you gain culture culture 2x 3x 4x or 5x normal till you get caught up in terms of how many usable policies you have in total. this way their is a consequences for changing trees but it would still be a viable choice should you need to do it.

 

[howox]

Social policies are concept copied from RPG games and new trend (with diablo 3) is abandonment of that principle. For the same reason they should be abandonded in Civ 5. You dont want to set yourself into carved path, because: 1. circumstances do change 2. strategy is limited that way 3. you must choose skills (policies) that you dont like at the begining or you dont like at the end of a tree, because system rewards it.

Civ4 copied civics system from SMAC and it proved to be great concept in both games, because it brought more strategic depth.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I've said once, and I'm saying again, Policies need to have Opportunity Cost within their trees.

However, howox, I have never encountered or adopted a policy that I didn't want, they are all very useful one way or another, and I tend to pick them to my liking according to the victory I'm going for, the only 2 policies I either never pick or leave for the last (if Cultural) is the 2 naval ones in Commerce.

 

[dexters]

The premise in the OP is incorrect. Social Policies aren't 'tech trees' You don't research a policy ; you earn culture which you can, in theory, apply in a modular fashion, to your society/empire.

Faith works in much the same way, as far as previews have told us, but unlike SP, they appear to be exclusive... so once a belief is taken by one civ, you're out of luck. In that way, it works more like a modular wonder, where there is some element of racing to be the first to acquire a sought after belief.

I would characterize social policies , faith, as experience trees. Your empire 'levels up' and gain new traits; which IMHO is far more realistic than previous implementations of civics or sweeping governments. But I'm sure that's a point of contention with some.

Either way, it's not a 'tech tree' and the modularity of it all makes it quite an interesting concept and IMHO one of the strongest contributions of Civ5 to the franchise. The idea of lasting change built over time, rather than OCD micromanaging exemplified with moving workers around tiles every turn, or changing civics, religion or government every few turns.

I've said once, and I'm saying again, Policies need to have Opportunity Cost within their trees.

There already is. If you pick Piety, there is a cost as you can't pick rationalism without losing your SP progress and getting hit with anarchy.

You can only pick either Autocracy, Order or Freedom , not dabble in all 3. Those are costs.

The only thing missing is turning commerce into an oppositional SP to patronage, and making that a city-state centric branch as well, so there's more variety in that end of the game.

And possibly pairing the 3 early SP Liberty/ Tradition / Honor with the 3 later SP Order/Autocracy/Freedom so that you get a bonus for completing a pair say Liberty + Freedom

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

There already is. If you pick Piety, there is a cost as you can't pick rationalism without losing your SP progress and getting hit with anarchy.

You can only pick either Autocracy, Order or Freedom , not dabble in all 3. Those are costs.

The only thing missing is turning commerce into an oppositional SP to patronage, and making that a city-state centric branch as well, so there's more variety in that end of the game.

And possibly pairing the 3 early SP Liberty/ Tradition / Honor with the 3 later SP Order/Autocracy/Freedom so that you get a bonus for completing a pair say Liberty + Freedom

No, I meant within each Tree. Opportunity Cost of two policies withint for example Patronage.

 

[dexters]

No, I meant within each Tree. Opportunity Cost of two policies withint for example Patronage.

That wouldn't make sense. The SP branches are meant to be self-reinforcing benefits within a general theme.

Opportunity cost is the amount of X you give up for Y. There is opportunity cost to going into Piety instead of Rationalism because you lose all the science buffs , some gold plus 2 free techs.

But some of that is also offset by the gold earned in Piety. The opportunity cost of Piety over rationalism is therefore W culture + X science + Yhapppiness + Z Gold (note the values could be negative). Opportunity costs must also be controlled for things you would have built anyways. For example, in Piety, Temples and Monuments give extra happiness, however, you are likely to build both because they also give culture which is critical to social policies. What is harder to measure is the relatively likelihood the AI buildinhg something else in your puppet cities because monuments and temples are relatively less attractive buildings to them without the +1 And the cumulative turns it took for the AI to eventually getting to building them.

Within each SP branch, there shouldn't be any trade offs as the idea is to complete the whole branch. Now, there might be reasons why you don't do this and start a new tree, but that usually has to do with non cultural VC approaches and the immediate benefit of opening a new tree ... say... the happiness from the order opener, outweighing some marginal benefit to unlocking a SP within a branch.


If by opportunity cost you mean 'negative' effects in Social policies that's not an opportunity cost. That said, nothing stops them from making it such that unlocking Piety gives you a 50% RA science penalty instead of gaining 50% RA bonus from unlocking Rationalism, but negative effects like that have limitations. As Civ3,4 has generally borne out, penalties and suboptimal settings tend to drive compulsive behavior and bean counting ( to minimize those penalties), as well as a negative feedback loop. Plus, it's also much harder to balance all the trees with so many moving parts.

It is however easier to review the relative benefit of adopting one SP over another SP if you're talking about trading off science benefits from culture benefits where each choice adds something different to your empire.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

That wouldn't make sense. The SP branches are meant to be self-reinforcing benefits within a general theme.

Opportunity cost is the amount of X you give up for Y. There is opportunity cost to going into Piety instead of Rationalism because you lose all the science buffs , some gold plus 2 free techs.

But some of that is also offset by the gold earned in Piety. The opportunity cost of Piety over rationalism is therefore W culture + X science + Yhapppiness + Z Gold (note the values could be negative). Opportunity costs must also be controlled for things you would have built anyways. For example, in Piety, Temples and Monuments give extra happiness, however, you are likely to build both because they also give culture which is critical to social policies. What is harder to measure is the relatively likelihood the AI buildinhg something else in your puppet cities because monuments and temples are relatively less attractive buildings to them without the +1 And the cumulative turns it took for the AI to eventually getting to building them.

Within each SP branch, there shouldn't be any trade offs as the idea is to complete the whole branch. Now, there might be reasons why you don't do this and start a new tree, but that usually has to do with non cultural VC approaches and the immediate benefit of opening a new tree ... saw the happiness from the order opener, outweighing some marginal benefit to unlocking a SP within a branch.


If by opportunity cost you mean 'negative' effects in Social policies that's not an opportunity cost. That said, nothing sotps them from making it such that unlocking Piety gives you a 50% RA science penalty instead of gaming 50% RA bonus from unlocking Rationalism, but negative effects like that have limitations. As Civ3,4 has generally borne out, penalties and suboptimal settings tend to drive compulsive behavior and bean counting, as well as a negative feedback loop. It's also much harder to balance all the trees with so many moving parts.

It is however easier to review the relative benefit of adopting one SP over another SP if you're talking about trading off science benefits from culture benefits and each choice add something different to your empire.

No, I never mentioned anything about negative modifiers (even though they were useful). I don't know where you got that, I might've said before. People are saying how Policies are cheap or whatever, and I'm giving my idea.. that's it.

 

[dexters]

No, I never mentioned anything about negative modifiers (even though they were useful). I don't know where you got that, I might've said before. People are saying how Policies are cheap or whatever, and I'm giving my idea.. that's it.

To re-iterate, opportunity costs within a SP branch makes no sense. Unless you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means.

SP branches are meant to be completed, the benefits are self-reinforcing and there is even finisher bonuses

When you say there should be an opportunity cost within an SP branch, you're saying essentially players have to actively not choose one SP within that branch in favour of another SP and never unlock the SP they are trading off. That makes 0 sense given the mechanic.

Now, if you meant opportunity cost between different branches, that already exists as I pointed out earlier, but you replied to that already saying you didn't mean to say opportunity costs between branches.

 

[Inhalaattori]

I think a good real life exaple would be Germany, in game terms they changed from Autocracy to Freedom, as I see it they have addapted quite fast to the change.

Yeah, but Germany was defeated in war and it lost its Capital. In Civ terms Germany is still US puppet. It can produce what it wants, but US still has military control over the country. Same thing with Japan - they lost war and became US puppet. They did not change from "autocracy" to "freedom" - they were conquered.

What happened in Soviet Union when they changed from "Order" to "Freedom"? They pretty much lost everything they had achieved. The country was in a total anarchy for a long time/ many turns.

So it seems Civ V mimics the real world better that one might expect.

 

[Mark the Bold]

The OP question is unfair. So, Firaxis is lazy because they make the most consistently awesome series of video games ever made? They made a design decision based on their judgment of what their customers would like, and implemented it through no doubt extensive hours of programming and QC. Quite well, in my opinion. I have met many successful people in the video game industry and while they are usually perculiar personalities, lazy they are not. Reading intelligent and articulate posts on this thread reminds me just why I love this game, and its fans, so much.

I much prefer the current Social Policy system to the old civics. Yes the civics had the option of being changeable over the game, but I disagree that they allowed for a more flexible game experience every time. Short of MP game <100 turn cIV deathmatches, who wasn't trying to found either Buddhism / Judaism and going the Organized Religion (+25% building bonus) in the early game?

But I do agree that there is something that can be done to the current Social policy system. The reason I never go Autocracy is because I really don't have any need to: I can be a full-Liberty, full-Freedom, full-Rationalism SP civilization, AND be a MORE effective "women-and-children-die-first" fascist entity than any Honor-Piety-Autocracy one.

I believe the SP system does need some "negative" or restrictive traits to the various branches. There should be no reason why a Liberty-Freedom loving civ should be allowed to burn once-great civilizations, (of no threat to anyone) to the ground across the globe with very little consequence (via nukes or otherwise) . Not so much war weariness, but making puppet cities / razing cities have SEVERE consequences to the very science/production/happiness bonuses that Liberty-Freedom-Rationalism give you. If you did this, believe you me, the war civs like Mongolia, Iroquois, Aztecs would not be taking Liberty every time like they do now.

I am receptive to the idea of changing / refunding social policies during the game with two major conditions: "unrest" and "sunsetting clauses". By unrest, I mean that to go from Freedom to Autocracy my entire civ must enter a period of major production / science losses, whereby the period is extended by how deep one is into the currently undesired SP. Similar to cIV but much longer so it would have to be a decision not taken lightly.

By "sunsetting clause", I mean that once you have fully completed a SP tree, say Liberty, you can never reassign or change it after XX turns or years.

 

[howox]

Short of MP game <100 turn cIV deathmatches, who wasn't trying to found either Buddhism / Judaism and going the Organized Religion (+25% building bonus) in the early game?

Maybe someone who didn't play builder game? Using theocracy to make highly promoted units? Or someone that wanted to avoid highest upkeep religion civic ? Or someone that wants religion, but wants to have not so high upkeep and prevent other religions spread. That is the beauty of the system. It is so flexible.
Anyway early game you don't have other civics. And avoiding religion altogether is totally viable strategy. If pacifism was earlier in tech tree I'm sure many would consider it with representation/caste system. OR is by no means a must civic it is just one of many paths(something Civ5 policies don't offer).

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

I believe the SP system does need some "negative" or restrictive traits to the various branches. There should be no reason why a Liberty-Freedom loving civ should be allowed to burn once-great civilizations, (of no threat to anyone) to the ground across the globe with very little consequence (via nukes or otherwise) . Not so much war weariness, but making puppet cities / razing cities have SEVERE consequences to the very science/production/happiness bonuses that Liberty-Freedom-Rationalism give you. If you did this, believe you me, the war civs like Mongolia, Iroquois, Aztecs would not be taking Liberty every time like they do now.
.

without these sorts of restrictions picking a policy is just a matter of which boon do I want here and now. picking policies shouldn't be just about what I want to do as a civ but what I can't do with the civ. I the gods & kings expansion policies are going to have an effect in diplomacy which will mean their will be an element of role playing to the policies now and this sort of system would reinforce this.

 

[Zaimejs]

Is there a way to see what policies your "enemies" have in place? I liked that in CIV IV when it told you that someone changed from this to that... you knew they were building up for war or whatever. I've probably just not looked for this yet in Civ V. Laziness.

I just don't think the skill steps to social policies make much sense. Another added cool thing would be to have pressure to take the policies of your neighboring civs. I liked how in CIV IV that countries with the same government types would be friendlier. This makes sense. Maybe a new UN will help to implement some of those ideas?

 

[Gucumatz]

Yep Zaimejs. Clicking f4 brings up Diplomacy screen. Then clicking on the right for global politics will show which policies people have adopted I.e. 4 liberty, 2 Autocracy, 2 Piety, but not the specific policies