Tweak a policy tree!

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Parell to the tweak a civ tread I create this tread about tweaking social policy trees and idiology.

Rules:
A tree can't be tweaked to not fit for its current purpose, like rationalism don't give any science boost or tradition help alot for ICS.

Try to argument for your changes.

Tell about what policy is needed to get it, like Landed Elit prereq Legalism, also tell what era you can unlock this tree.

Keep this tread civilized.

Example:
Aesthetics unlocked at classical era

Opener: Great Writers, Great Artists and Great Musicans are born 25% faster unlocks the Uffizi
Same opener as Before, gives a nice boost to the "artist" Great People and unlocks a good culture wonder.

Cultural Centers prereq Aesthetics:
Monuments, Amphitheaters, Opera Houses, Museums and Broadcast give + 1 Culture each.
Most of these Buildings give Little Culture, this will make them give quite a bit more and make these Buildings a bit more useful even without great works in them.

Fine Arts prereq Aesthetics:
Each great work give + 1 happines +1 Culture and +1 tourism.
A big boost to the great works, fit nicely for cultural games.

Artestic Genius prereq Fine Arts:
Chose between a free Great Writer, Great Artist or Great Musican and each specialist +1 Culture.
Now you get to chose what Artist you want and each specialist give Culture making it quite a bit stronger then it is now.

Flourishing of the Arts prereq Cultural Centers and Fine Arts:
Double the theaming bonus from great works and great works +1 culture.
Changes made to make this policy less of a dominate choice it is now in my opinion.

Cultural Exchange prereq Flourishing of the Arts.
Increases the tourism modifier for shared religion, trade routes, and open borders by 15% each.

Fine at it is now, helps alot with spreading tourism.

Finisher:
May purchase Great Writers, Artist and Musicans with faith, Enter a golden age, Each city with a World Wonder produce 33% more culture, great works +1 Culture.

Finisher basicly swaped Place with Flourishing of the Arts which probably give the biggest bost of the tree right now.

Aesthetics gets boosted because its a tree you purchase with culture to generate culture, it will do it better I Think with this change.
Great Works will be far stronger under the Control of an Aesthetics civilization then they are right now.

 

[PhilBowles]

Liberty tree

Problems at it stands: Designed for early expansion and by extension playing wide (Meritocracy and Representation are of marginal use in tall empires), but while playing wide incurs substantial economic and happiness penalties, Liberty has a weak happiness booster and nothing at all that increases income or reduces costs.

Opener: As now - it seems weak compared with Legalism, but it's about on a par with the Tradition opener and changes to the rest of the tree favouring wider play will make it stronger.

Collective Rule (no prerequisites): With Liberty weakened, it may be time to put this back where it was in vanilla days, when opening with a Settler made Liberty the all-powerful tree. Plus thematically it doesn't make a lot of sense following a policy called "Republic". Effects as now.

Citizenship (no prerequisites): As now.

Representation (no prerequisites): As now, but more relevant placement in the tree.

Meritocracy (prerequisite: Collective Rule): +1 Happiness for each city connection and -5% Unhappiness in non-occupied cities. Settling a city produces 1 less Unhappiness than normal.

It's widely recognised that Meritocracy is not very strong compared with other happy generators (at least compared with Monarchy). This change basically halves the happiness cost of settling a new city (+1 happiness, -1 unhappiness), allowing you to settle twice as many on the same happiness - which is what you need when playing wide. -5% unhappiness from the non-occupied population can help eventually, but it's not going to do anything until you have a population of at least 20, and you need to have done the majority of your settling before this point - however, that's when the happiness constraints start to hurt most.

Republic (prerequisites: Citizenship and Representation): +1 production in cities and +5% production when constructing buildings. Building maintenance cost reduced by 33%.

This is the major change to the tree, intended as Liberty's answer to Monarchy in Tradition. In BNW, economy is the really big constraint on playing wide - no free monuments, no free aqueducts, and you need more of the former plus more libraries and granaries; unlike past versions of Civ V, founding new cities does not provide any income, so they are not self-sustaining. This takes the basic effect of Wagon Trains and applies it to buildings (but at a lower rate - 50% discount would be fine in the early game, but make Liberty better than Commerce for earning money in the late game), hence switching it to a later point in the policy tree for balance. Also makes more thematic sense in this position.

Finisher: As now. There sadly isn't a GP to give Liberty for faith-buyng.

 

[Kiech]

Piety opener: Add: Provides +1 in the capital. Currently the opening just doesn't compare to the others. You only go down this path early for a good reformation belief. This change will also make Piety AI a little more scary. I would also freeze the faith cost of units in the Renaissance era (this part isn't a direct change to Piety, but does make it stronger.)

Liberty closer: Add: when capturing a city, you may immediately turn it into a city-state (also earning you the diplomacy and influence bonus and you do not get the SP/ Science penalty). Liberty is now about liberating everyone!

Commerce: Enhance Mercenary Army: Allows you to purchase any civ's unique unit (tech must be unlocked and unit not obsolete.) Lose ability to move unit right away. This change makes the ability useful all game.

Exploration: Enhance Navigation School: allows upgrading scouts to marines. Makes the ability less boring andgives your scout something to look forward to. As a side note, I would change the Admiral ability to create a citadel-like structure in the ocean instead of the heal. This puts the ability a little more on par with what admirals actually do (take mini islands in the middle of the ocean and make them a strategic base.)

 

[PhilBowles]

Piety opener: Add: Provides +1 in the capital. Currently the opening just doesn't compare to the others. You only go down this path early for a good reformation belief.

I'd add that while you may only go down it early for a good reformation belief, you'll open it early at the very least for Organised Religion, which is very important for getting early religion.

Agreed that the opener is weak. Not sure that the above makes it strong enough - any one of Tradition, Liberty and Honor is better, and all of these produce culture that in turn helps generate further social policies. Piety's only culture booster comes right at the end of the tree, produces only as much culture per holy site as Tradition does per turn from the time you open it, and is reliant on having all those prophets spare. As a starting tree, what Piety needs is something that generates culture to get you down the tree faster, as with any of the others.

How about "Shrines and temples cost 50% less to build and generate 1 culture for each two points of faith they produce"? This of course indirectly boosts Organised Religion as well - with it, every shrine becomes a monument.

Liberty closer: Add: when capturing a city, you may immediately turn it into a city-state (also earning you the diplomacy and influence bonus and you do not get the SP/ Science penalty). Liberty is now about liberating everyone!

That's pretty substantial for a closer, also Liberty is not Freedom - this Republic as in Roman Republic, which was not concerned with foreign governance. An addition to the closer that reduces the science penalty from expansion would work (not eliminate it, since it defeats the entire point of adding it to the game if the one policy tree used by people going wide had a policy that removed a constraint added to limit the power of civs going wide).

Commerce: Enhance Mercenary Army: Allows you to purchase any civ's unique unit (tech must be unlocked and unit not obsolete.) Lose ability to move unit right away. This change makes the ability useful all game.

No, it makes too much sense with the landsknecht. Any change should be with the unit itself (e.g. changing its tech position or upgrade path). The trouble is, you'll usually be hitting this at much the same time you hit Civil Service anyway, so placing the landsknecht in - e.g. - Guilds would do nothing useful.

Exploration: Enhance Navigation School: allows upgrading scouts to marines. Makes the ability less boring andgives your scout something to look forward to. As a side note, I would change the Admiral ability to create a citadel-like structure in the ocean instead of the heal. This puts the ability a little more on par with what admirals actually do (take mini islands in the middle of the ocean and make them a strategic base.)

Again the tweak needs to be with the Admiral rather than the policy - the policy itself is more or less identical to counterparts in other policy trees, it just suffers from having a poor GP. Another reason the admiral needs tweaking is that the finisher is just not attractive (faith-buy a Great Admiral? Wow, that's useful). Clearly they made a deliberate decision to do something different with the admiral than with the general, so a citadel wouldn't work, but maybe allowing him to set up a supply depot or something - a fixed structure that turns the adjacent tiles into your territory, so that ships can heal there (with a bonus to healing when in an adjacent tile)? That would make it more or less a reverse Citadel - one that can be set up only outside your territory, and which heals rather than damages. As it is one of the reasons the GAdmiral is so weak is that he's the only GP with no permanent effect - every other GP has either a tile improvement or a Great Work. Sacrificing a GP for a one-time boost is not good unless the boost is something a lot more substantial (as with those of every other GP)

 

[Cliomancer]

A couple of vague ideas and notes:
Liberty:
-I'd agree that the real killer with settling wide at the start is the unhappiness penalty. Something like Phil's -1 Unhappiness is appropriate.
-The production bonus from Republic feels a little weedy at the start. Perhaps it could be boosted by giving newly-founded cities a few free production hammers toward their first project?
-As an accompanying Wonder I find the bonus workers and tile improvements a bit dull given that you get similar bonuses from Citizenship. Not sure what I'd alter in either as an alternative. (Maybe worker units gain +1 movement speed?)
-For a Faith-spending possibility, how about allowing the purchase of Settlers and Workers with Faith starting in the Classical era?

Piety:
-Perhaps the opener could give the civ something like 5 faith, so they get their own religion a bit faster than everyone else?

Patronage:
-What if you could spend Faith to gain influence over a city state? Or spend it to spread your national faith to them?

Commerce:
-Mercenary Army definitely needs to keep up with the tech level.

Exploration:
-Aside from the closer, Exploration isn't really about exploration. Maybe a couple of policies could be changed to reflect that.
-For example, improving the internal sea trade route yield, reflecting the benefits of colonialism.
-Or perhaps gaining bonus culture from foreign artefacts. Or a one-off bonus from completing archaeological digs.

 

[joncnunn]

Tradition: 1. Remove the city bombardment bonus from the policy granting it, just keeping the free garison units.
Reason: That bombardment doesn't fit within well within Tradition and it's one of the strongest anyway

2. Limit the growth percentage bonus from completing Tradition down to only the first four cities.
Reason: A bonus to all cities benefits wide empires just as much as tall empires.

Liberty: Remove the free great person from completing the tree. Move the free golden age from the policy to the closer.
Reason: Liberty is for self founding a lot of cities. Tall empires can use a free great person so it doesn't fit well with wide

Honor: Add increased city bombardment to one of these policies.
Reason: It fits much better with Honor than Tradition. And if you conquer cities you can still use it in your newly conquered city after it comes out of resistance even if your core empire never sees combat.

Piety: Fine as is.

Patronage: Fine as is.

Commerce:

1. Change the policy giving increased gold from only carvans to provide increase gold from all external trade routes.
Reason: You want all your trade routes to be cargo ships due to their 2X bonus even when destination is on the same landmass. With this change, the policy would become useful.

2. Change the policy giving increased spawning rate of Great Merchants to provide extra gold from gold producing buildings (market place, mint, bank, stock exchange)
Reason: Because Great Scientists and Great Engineers share the increase counter with Great Merchants, this policy is actually net negative for the empire if you have puppets. (Science is King)

Exploration: Opener: Change the policy that grants extra gold from cargo ships to provide an additional +1 sight promotion. (On top of the promotion from the opener)
Reason: Increased cargo ship income more properly belongs in commerce. Instead, additional extra sight fits in the exploration theme.

Aesthetics: Swap the effect of increased guild based great people spawning from the opener with that of the first left side policy that increases production from all cultural buildings. Allow the tree to be opened in the Ancient Era instead of waiting for Classical.
Reason: Currently you will normally have completed a full tree before opening this one (given how much of the first tree you'll have finished before Classical). This has the side effect of making you have to pay full price in the capital for the Amphitheater if you want the spot for a Great Work of Writing when it spawns. Swapping the order will fix that problem. And allowing opening it in the ancient era would give players another option besides the standard openers.

Rationalism: Change to require having reached the Industrial era to open.
Reason: It's very over powered due to science and king and its hard to nerf effects even further at the policy level.

 

[GoStu]

Rationalism needs more of its +science abilities toned down. I don't think it's really possible to balance +science boosts in this game unless they're totally anemic. Instead, I'd tweak the bonuses to some +science, but more benefits from your science buildings. Also, scaling some of the bonuses differently would be nice.

Also, Rationalism just needs an outright nerf in my books, as it's so strong that it kind of makes going anything else a bit crazy, even if you're not going for Science victory.

Rationalism:

Opener: +1% Science for every 3 points of excess Happiness, up to a maximum of 10%.
// Scales this ability to not simply be a flat 10%, and will require more work to keep up. Makes it somewhat more counterable by measures to reduce Happiness in rival empires. Keeping above 0 is easy. Keeping into the thirties is a little harder.

Secularism: +1 Science per Specialist.
//Reduces the riduculous potency of this ability, particularly in very Tall empires with a lot of guilds next to a National College.

Humanism: +25% Great Scientist Spawning Rate.
//This one's actually all right in that it involves generating Great People, not simple flat bonuses. There would be a slight indirect weakening of the Scientists themselves due to reduced beaker yields.

Free Thought: +1 Science per Trading Post. Construct Libraries, Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs 50% faster.
//The science increase on Universities is crazy good, particularly if playing Tall where you can have a University in every city. That's a +17% boost to science in every city, in addition to benefiting Trading Posts, plus all the other multipliers this tree adds.

Sovereignty: +1 Gold and +1 Happiness from Libraries, Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs.
//This is one of the weaker policies that could deserve a boost. It also marks the cutoff where a lot of people won't bother continuing the tree. I'd probably move this tree to be one of the opening two ones as well, and bury Secularism deeper so it's not as easy of a cherry-pick.

Scientific Revolution: Boosts Science gained from Research Agreements by +50%.
//Totally fine as-is. Boosts Science output, but more for players who are behind and need it more. A runaway can't take advantage of this as much vs. intelligent players, who will simply stop signing agreements.

Finishing bonus: Free Technology. May buy Scientists with Faith.
//No complaint on my part with this one.

I would also re-order the policies slightly, with Sovereignty and Free thought being the two immediately available policies. Not only is this tree absurdly powerful, it's also very front-loaded. You get the majority of the benefits off three of the first policies available, and then can dive right into the Ideologies without really missing the last couple bits until the end, where you want to buy out all your Great Scientists after you've got research labs and all your chosen ideology's science boosters.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Also, Rationalism just needs an outright nerf in my books, as it's so strong that it kind of makes going anything else a bit crazy, even if you're not going for Science victory.

Rationalism already has been nerfed, in that the university booster is two policies away from the specialist booster. Rationalism is clearly less powerful than before BNW.

It's science in general that needs a "nerf," or at least richer paths to players not focusing on it. Like making post-Industrial wonders not unlock until World Congress has hit that era, so a Radio-beeline doesn't give the human first dibs on Eiffel etc.

Anyway some tweaks:

Liberty

Production boosts should stack an additional +5% based on how many eras-old the tech for a building is. Essentially, wide players should not be spending 20 turns building a granary for a city settled in the Renaissance era. Mid-game settled cities need to catch up quicker, not essentially be useless place-marks until the Modern era. This especially is geared toward Spain whose UU is designed for Renaissance settling.

Replace the Golden Age with two free internal trade routes. This addresses a critical wide empire problem that trade routes don't scale with empire size, so the wide player can't send food or production TRs to new cities without huge opportunity costs (namely that the same TRs should always be going to the capital instead). 2 free internal TRs is enough to support constant slow expansion.

Closer: all types of Great People can be burned for a Great Writer-style culture boost (not era dependent). Traditions gets essentially 3 free late-game wonders via faith engineers so this isn't OP. Primarily the player would only use this on Generals and Admirals which matches the way Rome's generals bartered and warred for control of the government during the transition into empire.

Piety

Piety already boosts culture by making faith buildings cheaper. However, I agree that a player needs to be able to blend piety with other trees better.

The simple answer is that players can buy Piety policies with faith.

I think BNW did a really good job of making Piety more interesting and dynamic, but then ruined it by giving the AI a serious jones for religion and for using up all the good perks too early.

This is nonsense. Religion is a shared resource. There are only so many cities and so many beliefs in a game and all religions have only those cities to spread to and those beliefs to choose from. Essentially religion is like the game's other shared resource, City States. Imagine if the AI automatically spent all available gold on CS's all the time - the human player would never get to use the CS game element without extreme focus on Patronage and spending on CS to the detriment of everything else. That is essentially the way the AI approaches religion right now.

Fix that and you don't really need to tweak the tree much. The player will be able to blend Piety with other trees and not beeline Reformation every single game. The player will be able to use Piety without sacrificing everything else.

Exploration and Aesthetics -

Barring a total rebalance to science itself, these both need a science boost so Rationalism isn't the default approach to culture victories.

For Exploration, Admirals should be able to bulb to add 2 science to all sea resources in a city. Like a Cousteau theme basically.

For Aesthetics, 2 science for art specialists should be moved from Rationalism to this tree.

 

[joncnunn]

Free Thought: +1 Science per Trading Post. Construct Libraries, Universities, Public Schools, and Research Labs 50% faster.
//The science increase on Universities is crazy good, particularly if playing Tall where you can have a University in every city. That's a +17% boost to science in every city, in addition to benefiting Trading Posts, plus all the other multipliers this tree adds.

I wouldn't include Libraries on this; you should already have built all the libraries long before the Rean era begins. The timing is even questionable with Universities.
If the idea is to be a net nerf, just increasing production rate of Public Schools & Research Labs is plenty.

Also there's a side effects to the incentive of having players need 30 happiness for full happiness; on water maps it will make Exploration's top right policy granting happiness to sea buildings extremely popular as a filer policy.

 

[PrimoXanthous]

Honor Opener: ....Free unit (warrior/ spearman/ pikeman/ musketman/ rifleman/ GW Infantry/ Infantry/ Mechanized Infantry) when adapt this Policy.

 

[GoStu]

Rationalism already has been nerfed, in that the university booster is two policies away from the specialist booster. Rationalism is clearly less powerful than before BNW.

It's science in general that needs a "nerf," or at least richer paths to players not focusing on it. Like making post-Industrial wonders not unlock until World Congress has hit that era, so a Radio-beeline doesn't give the human first dibs on Eiffel etc.

Anyway some tweaks:

Liberty

Production boosts should stack an additional +5% based on how many eras-old the tech for a building is. Essentially, wide players should not be spending 20 turns building a granary for a city settled in the Renaissance era. Mid-game settled cities need to catch up quicker, not essentially be useless place-marks until the Modern era. This especially is geared toward Spain whose UU is designed for Renaissance settling.

Replace the Golden Age with two free internal trade routes. This addresses a critical wide empire problem that trade routes don't scale with empire size, so the wide player can't send food or production TRs to new cities without huge opportunity costs (namely that the same TRs should always be going to the capital instead). 2 free internal TRs is enough to support constant slow expansion.

Closer: all types of Great People can be burned for a Great Writer-style culture boost (not era dependent). Traditions gets essentially 3 free late-game wonders via faith engineers so this isn't OP. Primarily the player would only use this on Generals and Admirals which matches the way Rome's generals bartered and warred for control of the government during the transition into empire.

Piety

Piety already boosts culture by making faith buildings cheaper. However, I agree that a player needs to be able to blend piety with other trees better.

The simple answer is that players can buy Piety policies with faith.

I think BNW did a really good job of making Piety more interesting and dynamic, but then ruined it by giving the AI a serious jones for religion and for using up all the good perks too early.

This is nonsense. Religion is a shared resource. There are only so many cities and so many beliefs in a game and all religions have only those cities to spread to and those beliefs to choose from. Essentially religion is like the game's other shared resource, City States. Imagine if the AI automatically spent all available gold on CS's all the time - the human player would never get to use the CS game element without extreme focus on Patronage and spending on CS to the detriment of everything else. That is essentially the way the AI approaches religion right now.

Fix that and you don't really need to tweak the tree much. The player will be able to blend Piety with other trees and not beeline Reformation every single game. The player will be able to use Piety without sacrificing everything else.

Exploration and Aesthetics -

Barring a total rebalance to science itself, these both need a science boost so Rationalism isn't the default approach to culture victories.

For Exploration, Admirals should be able to bulb to add 2 science to all sea resources in a city. Like a Cousteau theme basically.

For Aesthetics, 2 science for art specialists should be moved from Rationalism to this tree.

It may have already been nerfed, but it's still stronger than the other trees. I'm not against the idea of making other routes to better science or at least not lagging behind too badly available (I.E. spies that don't take forty-odd turns to grab a tech, a real amount of science through trade routes & culture, AIs that are behind having an interest in research agreements), but we're solely discussing Social Policies here. Also, even if better catchup mechanisms were in place, I still think Rationalism is too strong compared to a non-Rationalism civ.

I do like the idea of locking Wonders until the World Congress advances though. Players really behind are still locked out of course, but they really shouldn't be going for Wonders anyways. That'd at least set the startline more equal. Really cool idea, I'd love to see it playtested.

I also really like your proposed ideas for Liberty - scaling that production bonus will really help get cities up and running quicker. I also like the extra trade routes, although as a matter of policy I'd also throw one or two extra TR's into Commerce. Did you intend to put a free Caravan in with that? It's all well and good to give an extra slot or two, but it's not going to do much good in the early game without a unit for it. I think we agree that part of Liberty's problem is that there's too much crap to hard-build in the start for Liberty, so making one free Caravan would be great.

Interesting idea for bulbing Great People (probably Generals and Admirals) for some Culture. Not certain how I feel about it as a really determined player can crank out a lot of Generals or Admirals - that's a hell of a lot of Culture. Wide empires tend to be the culture holdouts against a Culture Victory and this could make them even more obnoxious to overwhelm.

I don't really like the addition to the Great Admiral. I might be the only one on this forum who feels this way, but I think the Great Admiral is just fine where he's at now. He's obtained through naval warfare, is good for naval warfare, and I see no real reason to add much more to him. If he's going to create any water-borne improvement I'd like to see it be some kind of think like a Citadel, to reduce the vulnerability of maritime Capitals. Science to sea resources... I'm not that interested.

I wouldn't include Libraries on this; you should already have built all the libraries long before the Rean era begins. The timing is even questionable with Universities.
If the idea is to be a net nerf, just increasing production rate of Public Schools & Research Labs is plenty.

Also there's a side effects to the incentive of having players need 30 happiness for full happiness; on water maps it will make Exploration's top right policy granting happiness to sea buildings extremely popular as a filler policy.

No reason not to include them, in my opinion. If someone's ahead and has their Libraries and Universities up, it's no big deal, but if someone's lagging behind, or their empire consists partially of captured cities, they might have to build/rebuild some of the earlier tech buildings. It'll even work for people still going wide and building cities into Industrial or later. I can think of settling a city or two for some Coal, Oil, or Aluminum.

I threw the 1% per 3 Happiness out there as a number, I could see it working as tough as 1% per 4. I see no problem with making the one side of Exploration more popular; my goal is really to add an incentive other policy trees as well.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I don't really like the addition to the Great Admiral. I might be the only one on this forum who feels this way, but I think the Great Admiral is just fine where he's at now. He's obtained through naval warfare, is good for naval warfare, and I see no real reason to add much more to him.

I feel like Great Admirals were hurt when the post-G&K patch (if I'm remembering right) took away the +againstcities for Frigates. I used to use Admirals to speed up city bombardment. Now I find that Frigates become ineffectual against cities after a very short window, so I don't value a strength addition anymore. Naval v naval conflicts don't benefit much from the admiral because the AI is so tragically bad at using ranged boats. But anyway.

 

[ezysquire]

Liberty tree

Finisher: As now. There sadly isn't a GP to give Liberty for faith-buyng.

Perhaps the finisher faith purchase could be for settlers?

 

[PhilBowles]

Perhaps the finisher faith purchase could be for settlers?

I really like the idea, but I'm not sure of the utility - you'll finish Liberty at a game stage when, if you're playing a heavy faith game, you want that faith to enhance your religion, and if you're playing wide you'll want it for happy-boosting Pagodas. If you're not playing the faith game you can't afford a, say, 200-faith settler at the time one would be useful, and certainly not many. By the time you have the faith spare for Settlers, their time has passed. Industrial faith-buying is always good because even civs without religion can build up temples and shrines later in the game, or just accumulate. Early-game faith buying only benefits specific playstyles. In order to get use out of a finisher like that, you'd be nearly required to go Liberty-Piety (which is probably the optimal way to play Liberty at the moment, but it's not a policy path you want to force on the player to make the Liberty finisher useful).

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions.

 

[UWHabs]

Piety I'd like to see a few tweaks to it:

Opener: Same as now, plus +1 faith in capital (cheap buildings is good, but adding the raw +1 faith means you get started a little earlier on pantheons and religion

Organized Religion: good now

Mandate of Heaven: 20% discount on religious purchases. Temples give +25% gold

Theocracy: +3 gold to holy sites. Enemy missionaries are -50% effective

Religious Tolerance: You may adopt a second pantheon religion. Cities gain use of the pantheon of any religion in the city

Reformation: Gain a reformation belief. Shrines and Temples provide +2 culture each.

Closer: Free GP. Holy sites +3 cpt. Great Prophets may settle after spreading religion once.

The big changes are getting that extra 1 faith early, making it actually a viable opener even ahead of tradition (if you desperately want the pantheon).
Mandate of Heaven seemed weak as well, since it didn't apply to great people. This makes it viable even if you don't want to use it to buy missionaries
Adopting Theocracy will also be a big way to combat enemy religion. Makes me care a lot less about my neighbour spamming me missionaries
Religious Tolerance also was an odd one, since if I was winning the religion game, I don't get a benefit. This can let you take a "mid-game" pantheon - sometimes I really want a second one, and this would let me have that.
The reformation beliefs are good (although I haven't explored them fully), but this gives a slight extra tweak. If +2 each is too much, then +1 each is fair. It gives you a little culture benefit per city.
And the closer just makes prophets ever so slightly more usable, as you can use them to spread some religion and then settle down. It may not actually be worth it to move the prophet out and back, but if you want it, it makes them a bit more valuable.

With these changes, this would be a powerful tree that any religious gamer would want to pursue, maybe even ahead of tradition or liberty

 

[UWHabs]

That was fun. Liberty:
Opener: good as is
Collective rule: good as is, moved back to first level
Republic: now after Collective Rule. Same benefits as now, plus Free granary and Lighthouse in all cities (helps get first infrastructure up and running)
Citizenship: good as is
Meritocracy: same as now, plus 1 happiness for each internal trade route
Representation: same as now, plus reduces the tech cost increase per cities by 50% (so now a wide empire gets a science boost as well)
Closer: free GP of choice. Can use great people (1 per type) to give 2 extra trade route slots

Moves the settler up, when you really want it.
Gives free granaries and lighthouses in all cities, helping get that infrastructure up early (or saves some money) for a wide game.
Improves internal trade routes.
Improves wide game science
Can give you a way to use late game GP for more trade routes. Limits it to one per type, so you can't use 4 GG on trade routes. But at least you'll probably use a general and an admiral, and maybe others if you're not playing a culture game. So most games you'll get between 4 and 8 extra trade route slots from the finisher, but you need to provide your own caravans or cargo ships.

 

[adwcta]

Tradition - This tree has an insane amount of happiness. I think it would be better if the wonder-building policy (Aristocracy) had +1 happiness per 12 citizens, as opposed to per 10. Internal trade routes have changed the dynamic of how quickly a "tall" city can grow. Plus, at normal growth rates, with 8 cities (not feasible on standard settings), Tradition STILL provides more happiness. That just ain't right. Otherwise, I'm going to balance the other opening trees with Tradition's power.

Liberty - The policy that gives -33% culture penalty per city and provides a golden age (Representation) is woefully outdated for BNW. BNW changes already reduced the culture penalty significantly (so the effectiveness of this policy went from "eh..." to unnoticeable). Also, the main draw of an early golden age, the double gold on rivers, is gone in BNW. So, this policy got a double nerf without changing. Not to mention that this policy got nerfed going from Vanilla to G&K too. Should be changed to -50% culture penalty per city. Another change is to give workers +1 movement speed in the workers policy. Wide empires need their workers to cover more ground. Finally, I would add +2 happiness globally to Meritocracy. Side note: I like that Liberty has no gold, this tree should be about going wide to start, not taking people over.

Honor - There are so many things wrong with this tree. For starters, Warrior Code should apply to all melee, ranged and mounted units (no tanks, planes, boats). Second, for the tree that used to have the most happiness, it now has the least of all starting trees. Why? How are you able to take and hold anything without happiness? Add to Military Caste a trait that prevents unhappiness from cities in revolt with a garrison (so unhappiness doesn't start counting until after you can do something about it). Third, you need gold to maintain an army. But, in this tree, you don't get gold until the finisher. Replace the +dmg vs Barbs part of the opener with a -15% upkeep for melee, ranged, and mounted units. Finally, and this just bugs me, the +50% great generals trait should be moved from Warrior Code to Military Tradition. You don't need it that early, and this helps balance out my earlier change to Warrior Code.

Piety - You need culture somewhere, and happiness. You can't get both from the religion itself (at least, not effectively in the beginning). Add to opener: Gain culture for each shrine and temple constructed. The culture gained would function the same way Aztec and Honor opener functions. Also, add to Religious Tolerance: +1 happiness per religion in your empire (as with the way the policy currently works, pantheon beliefs count as religions for purposes of this policy). This should start out at +2 (pantheon and your religion) and eventually hit +5 by the end of the game (more of a nod to the start of the game than the endgame, will be by far the worst +happiness of the 4 opening trees). This is not that bad of a tree, it just needs something to speed it up and have something for happiness, however minor.

Patronage - Have a better description for the closer. Otherwise, I think this is the most balanced and well thought out tree. No changes.

Aesthetics - I like that this tree doesn't have science, but it's pretty stupid that Aesthetics doesn't have happiness. It actually has a reverse policy, whereby you need extra happiness to generate culture. Simple change: Add +1 happiness for each world wonder to Flourishing of the Arts.

Commerce - Mercantilism should not be tied to Mercenary Army. This is a tree that should be friendly to dip in "oh look, I need some gold", but it's unfortunately not, as the three best parts are the finisher and the last two policies. De-synching Mercantilism and Mercenary Army (and making only Mercantilism and Entrepreneurship required to get to Protectionism) would solve that. Mercenary Army is really its own thing, and, like the policy in the Exploration tree that gives the admiral, should not be required to finish the rest of the tree. Speaking of Mercenary Army, would it kill the policy to provide a free Landsknecht next to the capital? Since Landsknechts are just 50% pikemen (with minor bonuses), it should at least match the utility of the free settler plus 50% cost later in the Liberty tree. Especially because settlers are so much better than Landsknechts.

Exploration - I hate this tree. It's completely disjointed and seems more designed for certain maps than for certain playstyles (it has everything short of food). I mean, three of the policies directly require you to have numerous cities on the coast to be even remotely worthwhile. Even at it's worst, the Commerce tree only has one policy that's land-based. Anyway, assuming I can't change the entire tree, I'm going to leave it alone.

Rationalism - This tree needs to be nerfed. Again. Not only do you have access to the three best +science policies in the game as the first 3 policies, but even Sovereignty (+gold) is strictly speaking better than the equivalent policy in the Exploration tree (+4 gold per city instead of +3 gold only in coastal cities). So, step one is to exclude Libraries from Sovereignty. Who makes money off Libraries anyway? Step two is to change secularism to +2 science from every science/engineering/merchant specialist; to exclude art specialists. +2 for everything is simply too powerful, and toning things down to +1 seems too drastic. Following that, step three, I don't know how they came up with 17% for Universities, but lets tone that down a bit too and call it 10%. Finally, switch Sovereignty and Free Thought back. The new tech path doesn't make sense for what those ideas are, and we've nerfed Free Thought enough that it doesn't need a buffer.

 

[PhilBowles]

Closer: free GP of choice. Can use great people (1 per type) to give 2 extra trade route slots

While this would be massively overpowered (trade routes are in much shorter supply than GPs for a reason, and this game stage particularly has very restricted trade routes), I think the idea of adding trade routes to Liberty as a finisher reward is inspired - it fits both gamewise (more cities to send domestic trade to the capital, wider empires have access to more cities as potential trade partners) and thematically, and getting a fourth route long before Compass (and likely a third before opening Engineering) really builds up over the course of a game.

As a Liberty finisher, how about: Your civ gets +1 trade route, and a free trade unit of a type of your choice appears in the capital. Basically, most of the effect of the Colossus. That's strong enough to be desirable while ditching the GP (as a further change, perhaps get rid of the Representation Golden Age and allow a free GP of your choice instead - though it doing this my suggestion of having it as a prerequisite for Republic would have to be ditched, and the policy placed later in the tree).

So, as I'd now revise Liberty:

Opener: As now.

Collective Rule (Prerequisite: Citizenship): As now. Required for Meritocracy. Moved back to tier 2 to keep the tree balanced with improvements to other policies. Also, Collective Rule without Citizenship? Doesn't make a lot of flavour sense. Gamewise this puts the worker and settler, currently the best early bonuses, on the same policy path rather than requiring Republic as a prerequisite and being forced to take Citizenship second or - more usually - third.

Citizenship (no prerequisites): As now. Required for Republic and Collective Rule.

Representation (prerequisites: Meritocracy and Republic): Culture and science cost of founding new cities reduced by 33%, and a Great Person of your choice appears in the capital. This change can even be justified thematically, as the GP could represent a republican statesman like Pericles or Julius Caesar (Republic being a prerequisite), who came to prominence as representatives of the people.

Meritocracy (prerequisite: Collective Rule): +1 Happiness for each city connection and -5% Unhappiness in non-occupied cities. Settling a city produces 1 less Unhappiness than normal.

Republic (prerequisites: Citizenship): +1 production in cities and +5% production when constructing buildings. Building maintenance cost reduced by 33%.

Finisher: +1 trade route. A free trade unit of your choice appears in the capital.

This seems to result in a much more focused tree, better-tailored for wide empires than the current one, which only really has a couple of policies specific to playing wide, and a finisher that it's been noted also benefits tall (not that the new finisher doesn't, but a tall empire has much less incentive to go through all the intervening policies). Moving Representation hurts a little, since the culture boost only seems to apply to cities founded after you unlock the policy and so getting it earlier is better, but it means Liberty still gets its GP and does so in a place where it's balanced in the tree. Plus this placement also makes historical sense - originally republics were oligarchies dominated by particular political dynasties; popular representation came later. Also added a buff to the main part of the policy to suit its placement in the tree; I'm not convinced the culture boost is redundant as of BNW, since a corollary of the reduced penalty for founding extra cities is that culture now accumulates much more slowly in the early game when you'll get most use out of this, but it's still not an 'end of tree'-level bonus.