[Tuning] Policies: Imperalism

[Stalker0]

I think buffing the GA is fine but I don't think we need a lot more combat bonuses in the tree. I think the bonuses are pretty good as is.

ElliotS touched on it early on, but Industry is strong because it provides "the economy of war", which is very powerful at this point in the game. Imperalism should do the same, but in different ways. I like the notion of war weariness adjustment or the reduction of unit maintenance overall. The tree already provides great science bonuses for "going war" through the various barrack type buildings...which is another good one.

I honestly don't think the tree needs a complete rehaul, a few key tweaks and it can be competitive.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

It was an idea. It wouldn't necessarily be the same march promotion as the land march, it could be a promotion that it heals by 5hp each turn regardless of action, not the "full" 10-15-20.

But like others, I'd prefer a bonus to GA's combat bonus.

 

[Deadstarre]

4- A lot of the things that have gotten nerfed have hurt Imperialism the most.... Gold.... Gold being nerfed hurts Industry more, but it make rationalism better ...

This made no sense to me. can you explain what youre talking about? so far as I saw, gold got buffed- it now buys more hammers per gold than it used to, and its not as plentiful as it was due to building maintenance going up and banks stopped being OP. Which means it is rarer, which all means every gold is worth more than it used to be. So how is getting or saving more of it now worse than it used to be? I see the opposite. I tweaked industry purchase scalers down to %3 long before any of this, but the move makes even more sense to me now than it did then.

 

[ElliotS]

This made no sense to me. can you explain what youre talking about? so far as I saw, gold got buffed- it now buys more hammers per gold than it used to, and its not as plentiful as it was due to building maintenance going up and banks stopped being OP. Which means it is rarer, which all means every gold is worth more than it used to be. So how is getting or saving more of it now worse than it used to be? I see the opposite. I tweaked industry purchase scalers down to %3 long before any of this, but the move makes even more sense to me now than it did then.

Gold is less effective at buying units. Gold cannot be used to invest in buildings that are 1 turn from being done anymore.

Gold investment in buildings has gotten shifted around a lot, but it doesn't feel much better than before. Am I wrong?

 

[Deadstarre]

Gold is less effective at buying units.

Gold cannot be used to invest in buildings that are 1 turn from being done anymore.

Gold investment in buildings has gotten shifted around a lot, but it doesn't feel much better than before. Am I wrong?

1) true. sorta. you can buy the unit for cheaper than before, but the unit is mildly less effective in consequence. so when youre in a pinch and need a troop, oh well about losing an extra promotion - we need the troop right now and gold got us the troop, same as it used to. if youre not in a pinch, use the gold to buy hammers in a building, and use the spare turns for hard building units. so really it just kind of changed queue priorities, but didnt quite nerf gold.

2) was basically just an exploit. I mean yeah, its technically some kind of nerf but I dont even consider this, it was never really intended behavior and ultimately it doesnt make much difference except you cant effectively buy settlers anymore. occasionally you want to invest in a building but its too late once you have the gold, oh well, buy the next one.

3) yes, the ratios for buying are significantly better than before. mostly importantly, G even implemented your suggestion of wide empires not scaling the purchase costs anymore; this is a -huge- buff to gold. World wonders are the only exception though, they look to me a garbage investment now because the ratio isnt competitive against the other options.

 

[Mad Madigan]

Gold valuation has not, IMO, been uniformly nerfed or buffed, just altered. What Deadstarre said, plus that Authority-only infantry units (Landskneckt, etc.) are now very, very worthwhile for their gold cost in comparison to upgrading older units. It costs less to purchase a Foreign Legion unit fresh than it does to upgrade a Fusilier to a Rifleman, even for super-wide empires. I'm very comfortable with where gold purchase power is right now, especially considering that the building investment cost improvements that you get from Progress and Industry take the gold cost versus hammers ratio to a very happy place. It makes sense that you have to have the right policies in order for gold investment to always be worth it. The same goes for unit purchasing and upgrade costs, which are improved by Authority, Imperialism, and Autocracy. Upgrade costs are not a very good deal if you don't have the appropriate policies, but they become reasonable if you do. This seems to me to be the "comfortable" balance zone one would want for such a system.

And regarding Imperialism: Again, I think it would be a mistake to remove any of the diplomacy boosts from the policy tree. Pigeon-holing it towards military naval conquest makes it so much less interesting, and it makes such good sense that "Imperialism" as a concept would support non-military domination of minor Civs as well as forceful domination.

 

[pineappledan]

Again, I think it would be a mistake to remove any of the diplomacy boosts from the policy tree. Pigeon-holing it towards military naval conquest makes it so much less interesting, and it makes such good sense that "Imperialism" as a concept would support non-military domination of minor Civs as well as forceful domination.

I still don't much care for the +25% effectiveness on tribute. That late stage of the game doesn't reward tribute demands nearly as much, and priority would likely be on allying.

I'm also against any additional healing or promotions on naval units. They get +1 move, +1 sight and +20% defense from this tree already. Adding more is beating a dead horse

Imperialism is about subjugating distant lands for the benefit of the motherland. Authority already helps your army get stronger (unique units, more supply, heals on kills, 10% CS). Of the two militaristic policy trees, Authority is already the "win easier" tree, so I think Imperialism should be the "win more" tree. I would want to see some aspect of the tree that "strip-mines" conquered/vassalized/puppeted/scared cities, and transfers benefits from those cities either to your original cities, or your capital. Think of how many people died in Indonesia so that people in Holland could have nutmeg. I would want to see some mechanic that encourages you not to build up and incorporate conquered lands, but keep them under your boot so you can extract benefits from them.

• Attacks vs. Cities with no city connection are 25% more effective. (prioritize naval blockades and cutting roads)
• Pillaging heals an additional 10HP, and provides science
• Puppeted cities give % of their base / every turn to either the capital, or cities you originally settled.
• City-states which are scared of you (can demand tribute) give you strategic and luxury resources as if they were allied (but no yields)
• Other Civs' influence with city-states which are scared of you degrades at 2x normal speed.
• +5 on luxury tiles if worked by a puppeted city
• Building a courthouse immediately yields GAP and points towards your next GG or GA
• Puppeted cities with garrisons have +15%//
• Courthouses provide +10% in city
• 15/ in capital as an instant boost for every building in a newly captured city. 15/ in capital for every wonder in a newly captured city. Can only be triggered once per city

 

[ashendashin]

2.) Civilizing Mission - since Industry is the factory tree, I'm going to swap out that building for something else. I'm thinking a high-end military building, like the Military Base. Something to make city capture for imperialists feel immediately rewarding.

What would you think about free train stations and seaports? High production cities are easily the most rewarding on top of gold, IMO... Of course it clashes with Industry still, but that's what's rewarding to me, not military buildings and such.

 

[ElliotS]

What would you think about free train stations and seaports? High production cities are easily the most rewarding on top of gold, IMO... Of course it clashes with Industry still, but that's what's rewarding to me, not military buildings and such.

What if Civilizing Mission built all preindustrial era buildings that weren't already there? That sounds like it fits the name, and would be beneficial.

 

[Gazebo]

What would you think about free train stations and seaports? High production cities are easily the most rewarding on top of gold, IMO... Of course it clashes with Industry still, but that's what's rewarding to me, not military buildings and such.

What if Civilizing Mission built all preindustrial era buildings that weren't already there? That sounds like it fits the name, and would be beneficial.

Not supported by existing code, unfort.

My current thoughts:

Imperialism

• Opener: same
• Scaler: add military unit cost discount to scaler (5% per policy)
• Finisher: move Ironsides promotion here, give it heal on kill and/or a culture boost for naval kills
• Martial Law: remove ironsides, add 'Puppets produce 25% less unhappiness from Needs.'
• Exploitation -> remove tribute/upgrade stuff, add in ocean tile bonuses from finisher.
• Regimental System -> rename 'Officer Corps,' remove GA/GG %, add 'Admiral combat bonus increased by 10%, and Voyages of Discovery generate two additional luxuries.'
• Colonialism -> remove unit cost discount, add tribute/upgrade stuff
• Civilizing Mission -> replace factory on conquest with science from conquest (so gold/science on conquest), and add in Reveals Hidden Antiquity Sites from Artistry

Artistry

• Opener - add 25% GA/GG rate to opener (so that all GPs are technically represented by the opener)
• Finisher - move GP of choice here
• National Treasure - replace GP of choice with Golden Age[

Still a WIP, nothing tested or decided.

The only new code is the stuff for admiral combat bonus (unless I can use a pseduo-promotion to do it) and the VoD extra lux, but neither affects AI behavior.


G

 

[Stalker0]

For the artistry change.

1) hidden Sites I assume is still in the finisher right?

2) I don’t see any reason to move the free GP. The finisher is just fine right now, but not so strong That i might consider dipping into another tree...which is exactly what we want IMO.

For imperialism (not industry, that typo gave me a scare!)

1) is the no maintenance for garrisons still in tact? Imperialism needs to maintain some gold some how...it’s a gold starved tree, so it needs to maintain some of the gold savings.

2) the hidden antiquity is interesting. It’s much less powerful than when artistry gets it due to the timing of the artifact rush, but you still get a piece of the pie.

3) one idea is adjusting the prerequisite structure of the tree. The puppet needs reduction is nice...but for some gameplays it’s worthless. It would be nice to push that into its own branch so it can be mostly ignored for play styles that don’t need it...similar to organized religion in the fealty tree.

 

[Stalker0]

Scaler thought. Is it possible to grant starting xp? So +X starting xp per policy taken.

That would be a good synergy with the production bonus...and give new units a head start to catch up to older veteran units

 

[Gazebo]

For the artistry change.

1) hidden Sites I assume is still in the finisher right?

2) I don’t see any reason to move the free GP. The finisher is just fine right now, but not so strong That i might consider dipping into another tree...which is exactly what we want IMO.

For imperialism (not industry, that typo gave me a scare!)

1) is the no maintenance for garrisons still in tact? Imperialism needs to maintain some gold some how...it’s a gold starved tree, so it needs to maintain some of the gold savings.

2) the hidden antiquity is interesting. It’s much less powerful than when artistry gets it due to the timing of the artifact rush, but you still get a piece of the pie.

3) one idea is adjusting the prerequisite structure of the tree. The puppet needs reduction is nice...but for some gameplays it’s worthless. It would be nice to push that into its own branch so it can be mostly ignored for play styles that don’t need it...similar to organized religion in the fealty tree.

1. no, I'd be moving it to imperialism. feels flavorful to me to have imperialists running around, digging up secret treasures. Also helps make artistry the 'GP tree' not the 'culture victory' tree.
2. it moved to replace the hidden antiquity

1. Yes.
2. I feel like having hidden antiquity in imperialism gives warmongers a much-needed late-game shot in the arm of culture. Also keeps artistry (a great culture tree) from snowballing into early archaeologist+ hidden site power.

Scaler thought. Is it possible to grant starting xp? So +X starting xp per policy taken.

That would be a good synergy with the production bonus...and give new units a head start to catch up to older veteran units

 

[Stalker0]

If you remove the hidden sites from artistry completely...I think artistry will need a big boost. You have taken out one of the key reasons to go that tree.

 

[pineappledan]

Industry (i think you meant imperialism?)

• Opener: same
• Scaler: add military unit cost discount to scaler (5% per policy)
• Finisher: move Ironsides promotion here, give it heal on kill and/or a culture boost for naval kills
• Martial Law: remove ironsides, add 'Puppets produce 25% less unhappiness from Needs.'
• Exploitation -> remove tribute/upgrade stuff, add in ocean tile bonuses from finisher.
• Regimental System -> rename 'Officer Corps,' remove GA/GG %, add 'Admiral combat bonus increased by 10%, and Voyages of Discovery generate two additional luxuries.'
• Colonialism -> remove unit cost discount, add tribute/upgrade stuff
• Civilizing Mission -> replace factory on conquest with science from conquest (so gold/science on conquest), and add in Reveals Hidden Antiquity Sites from Artistry

Artistry

• Opener - add 25% GA/GG rate to opener (so that all GPs are technically represented by the opener)
• Finisher - move GP of choice here
• National Treasure - replace GP of choice with Golden Age

Removing the discount on upgrading makes sense, since it's redundant with the Pentagon wonder. You might consider increasing the Pentagon's discount in that case though.

I stand by my statement that 2 different promotions on naval military units is sufficient; I don't see much need to keep piling on special policy abilities for naval.

I'm with @ElliotS on his main 2 points, and I don't feel these changes address them adequately:

1. I don't think boosting tribute is a terrible bonus, but I feel it is underused coming this late, and is really only useful if you go for Tyranny later. I think that adding a passive bonus for having intimidated CSs, or dropping CS diplomacy entirely would be preferable.
2. Reducing the unhappiness in puppet cities doesn't stop them from being pretty sh!t. I don't think this goes far enough towards making puppets an attractive choice.
   • If it's possible, I think my idea of adding gold to luxuries worked by puppets would alleviate this

I think that bringing the hidden antiquity sites back, isn't such a bad idea. It fits really well with Imperialism as a concept, and none of the other industrial trees have any benefits for a CV. I think that only having that single CV benefit, however, appears unfocused. I think the tree could stand to have at least 1 other tourism benefit, or augment an effect of having influence with another civ. A peaceful CV player doesn't have enough of a carrot to consider this tree over the other two, so it feels more like locking away one of their big policies behind 5 other dead-weight policies.

Lastly, this is pretty harsh nerf to Artistry. Moving hidden sites from this branch will leave the tree's closer much weaker.

 

[Gazebo]

Removing the discount on upgrading makes sense, since it's redundant with the Pentagon wonder. You might consider increasing the Pentagon's discount in that case though.

I stand by my statement that 2 different promotions on naval military units is sufficient; I don't see much need to keep piling on special policy abilities for naval.

I'm with @ElliotS on his main 2 points, and I don't feel these changes address them adequately:

1. I don't think boosting tribute is a terrible bonus, but I feel it is underused coming this late, and is really only useful if you go for Tyranny later. I think that adding a passive bonus for having intimidated CSs, or dropping CS diplomacy entirely would be preferable.
2. Reducing the unhappiness in puppet cities doesn't stop them from being pretty sh!t. I don't think this goes far enough towards making puppets an attractive choice.

I think that bringing the hidden antiquity sites back, isn't such a bad idea. It fits really well with Imperialism as a concept, and none of the other industrial trees have any benefits for a CV. I think that only having that single CV benefit, however, appears unfocused. I think the tree could stand to have at least 1 other tourism benefit, or augment an effect of having influence with another civ. A peaceful CV player doesn't have enough of a carrot to consider this tree over the other two, so it feels more like locking away one of their big policies behind 5 other dead-weight policies.

Lastly, this sounds like a pretty harsh nerf to Artistry. Moving hidden sites from this branch will leave the tree's closer much weaker.

1. That's a complex AI function to add. I don't see how increasing tribute potential is a bad thing - if you go tyranny it is fantastic, otherwise it is a few hundred yields every few turns.
2. This change is not exclusive to other tweaks to puppets, keep that in mind.

I don't think that hidden antiquity sites are intrinsically CV, as the potential for a huge instant culture yield is the real draw. And that's fine.

If you remove the hidden sites from artistry completely...I think artistry will need a big boost. You have taken out one of the key reasons to go that tree.

Possibly, yes. Artistry is doing fairly well right now, so if it does need something else we can look at that.

G

 

[Stalker0]

I like the idea of giving hidden sites to both artistry and imperialism. Artistry still gets it sooner...but G as you said gives warmongers a chance to join in the fun. It also gives you a second wave of archeologists in the game...instead of the super rush you see now.

It’s still a nerf to artistry but much less of one.

Ultimately I think we need to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. When we take things from other trees we suddenly now have another tree to rebalance...and it never ends.

We should focus on imperialism alone. The other trees are fine. If we want imperialism to share a little of another trees thing so be it...but we shouldn’t just steal it wholesale

 

[Ziad]

More reason for Japan to go Artistry now

 

[pineappledan]

That's a complex AI function to add. I don't see how increasing tribute potential is a bad thing - if you go tyranny it is fantastic, otherwise it is a few hundred yields every few turns.

Fair enough, that's why I would advocate simply dropping it. The tree is getting a new perk for culture/tourism, so I feel dropping its only diplo augmentation would keep the tree from feeling like it's spread too thin.

2. This change is not exclusive to other tweaks to puppets, keep that in mind.

Fair enough, I'm not aware of any new Puppet changes down the pipe. I can't argue in good faith if you aren't forthcoming with that information, however. Merely telling me I don't have the full story when you are the only one who can provide it feels cheap.

If luxuries yielded +4-5 gold when worked by puppets, I think that would fit the motif, would make puppets situationally useful in a way that cities you control aren't, and it would be relatively simple to add.

Ultimately I think we need to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. When we take things from other trees we suddenly now have another tree to rebalance...and it never ends.

I fully agree. If we are at least somewhat happy with Artistry as is stands, then perhaps it's best to leave it.

Fitting this whole imperialism, artifacts, great works, etc thing though, maybe something is there? Like, could a policy increase the % influence modifier with another civ if you control a great work of theirs? Like how England basically holds a ton of India's priceless artifacts because of colonialism, and that gives them a ton of diplomatic leverage?

 

[Gazebo]

I like the idea of giving hidden sites to both artistry and imperialism. Artistry still gets it sooner...but G as you said gives warmongers a chance to join in the fun. It also gives you a second wave of archeologists in the game...instead of the super rush you see now.

It’s still a nerf to artistry but much less of one.

Ultimately I think we need to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. When we take things from other trees we suddenly now have another tree to rebalance...and it never ends.

We should focus on imperialism alone. The other trees are fine. If we want imperialism to share a little of another trees thing so be it...but we shouldn’t just steal it wholesale

That's fair, but I equally worry that having two policies with the same bonus will be viewed as uninteresting.

G