Virtues, what was the issue?

[Hail]

I don't think I've ever played a game when I haven't been 'hybrid' to some extent and honestly can't recall a game where I have been pure, even when going Purity . Some of the affinity perks are just too good to miss out on or I want the bonus the tech gives my Biowells/Farms etc. Stealing Techs via Espionage also gives me 'unwanted' affinity levels so it's not unusual for me to have a very high levels of my primary affinity and a farily high level of a secondary affinity

Supremacy level 3 bonus is awesome.

The prosperety virtue that gives health from number of resources will be even stronger with all the new water resources added. And a reason to have both sea and land cities.

wat? do you refer to the "Joy from Variety" virtue?
it's +1 health per every type of basic resource that is improved.

This is how I would change Might.

(Other trees would also receive some buffs, mostly targeted at filler virtues.)

I was actually working on modding it in, but I had difficulties with a perks grant buildings tool that I still need to figure out.
____________________________________

Survivalism now grants Energy equal to 10x the Strength of slain enemies.

Scavenging now grants three times the Science from cleared nests and Science equal to five times Alien combat strength.

Military Industrial Complex now grants 4 Production in the Capital.

Liberation Army now grants Culture equal to 10x the Strength of all enemies killed.

Adaptive Sciences absorbs Martial Mediation's 1 free Affinity Level bonus.

Martial Mediations now grants Gold and Culture equal to 5x the Strength of all enemies killed.

Army Engineering Corps now grants +4 Production from strategic resources. The energy boost is transfered to Brutal Efficiency.

Brutal Efficiency now grants +4 Energy from strategic resources.

Joint Operations now grants +2 Science from trade routes with Stations per Station tier.

do Survivalism & Martial Mediations stack? seems pretty OP. and too energy focused.

I'm quite astonished that no Virtues are being overhauled to integrate them into the new Diplomacy system. This is especially surprising given that Might should logically provide benefits to your War Score and Fear rating, and Knowledge should provide benefits to your Diplomatic Capital and Respect rating. Those two trees are also co-incidentally the two underpowered virtue trees. It feels like the devs missed a golden opportunity here to not only integrate their new systems more fully with the existing gameplay, but also to give Might and Knowledge some much needed love.

Oddly enough RT actually gives slight buffs to Prosperity and Industry by providing more basic resources, which means more Energy and Health.

It's rather telling that the virtue is so unused that when it pops up in a Livestream most people think it's a new feature.

Might and Knowledge vitrue trees need a buff.

is it just me or the Central Planning virtue paired with a solar satellite looks strong?
maybe the let's play players selected a low difficulty, but they seem to amass the sum required buy a colonist very quickly.

Within the context of the game's design goals, the hybrids do what they are designed to do: give the player gameplay perks for going multi-affinity:
- the player gets synergy bonuses for getting points in 2 different affinities
- the player gets hybrid upgrade options for many of the base units when the player reaches a certain level in 2 different affinities
- the player gets unique hybrid units which complement the strengths of the other affinity units that the player can build.

wat?
the player does not get synergy bonuses for getting points in 2 different affinites.
the player gets a hybrid affinity bonus if (when) he bumps both of two different affinites to a specific level.

The level 2 hybrid bonuses all say "or" in them. I suspect this means you take the highest of the two. So Pure affinities that get level 2 off affinity will get a larger bonus there than hybrids.

the way the second level hybrid affinity bonuses are worded implies that the bonuses apply to the sum of the levels of the affinities.

 

[Galgus]

That would be the idea, as a reward for heavy investment in Might.

Though I could see Survivalism's bonus getting halved maybe, perhaps maybe alongside Liberation Army's.

Mostly I'd want players to need to invest deeply in Might to maximize on-kill bonuses.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

wat?
the player does not get synergy bonuses for getting points in 2 different affinites.
the player gets a hybrid affinity bonus if (when) he bumps both of two different affinites to a specific level.

The hybrid affinity bonus is what I am calling a "synergy bonus". Perhaps a poor choice of words but that was what I was referring to. For example purity-harmony grants +1 Culture per level of Harmony or Purity once the player reaches level 2 on both.

 

[Ryika]

wat? do you refer to the "Joy from Variety" virtue?
it's +1 health per every type of basic resource that is improved.

There are new types of water resources added, so that virtue will indeed become stronger on average. I assume it will be an especially strong pick for empires that either have both, land and water cities, or a land-empire that has a ton of coastal cities, because both of these should easily get a high variety of resources.

Depending on how water borders work it may even be possible - though probably very ineffective - to just paint over an area to chomp up the water resources and get some bonus health.

 

[Hail]

Mostly I'd want players to need to invest deeply in Might to maximize on-kill bonuses.

so the player should farm his neighbors?
you may want to lower unit kills impact on War Score, though.

the way I envision the Might tree is units with less base strength, but insane bonuses from promotions. such changes should go hand in hand with adding affinity specific promotions and/or promotion trees.

 

[Galgus]

Ideally, and this is a big one, but ideally the AI could also be a threat in war.

Something like the Super Warmongering AI mod from Civ 5 could work, which mostly makes the AI very territorial and keen on fielding large armies.

Affinity specific promotions could be very fun.

 

[GenEngineer]

@ Galgus - Aren't affinity specific promotions essentially what the upgrade perk system is? Harmony gets terrain dependent stuff, Purity get's raw power, and Supremacy get's bonuses based on positioning.

 

[Galgus]

Yes, and it may be best for it to remain exclusively that way, but experience promotions based on affinity could also be interesting.

 

[GenEngineer]

Listening to the developers talk about units, I don't think experience promotions beyond bonus strength will ever make their way into Civ:BE(RT). From their views on the matter, it became too much of a focus on carefully nurturing select units to high levels in Civ5, rather than all of them being disposable and not long for this world (their view of it, based on their decision to not allow renaming units - I believe from the IGN livestream?). Although it's a pity they can't get the AI to share those views and build more units.

Another iteration could be given to the affinity buildings, where perhaps Optical Surgeries give a +1 sight promotion to units produced by the city, or Bionics Labs give an additional +10% to units, but I don't think experience will ever amount to more than it currently does.

 

[Galgus]

Probably not, and it may be superfluous anyway.

I would like to see unique units have access to their abilities before they are upgraded though, to increase the asymmetry.

 

[GenEngineer]

I would like to see unique units have access to their abilities before they are upgraded though, to increase the asymmetry.

Agreed.

 

[Doviello]

Since both engineering and computing give supremacy points now, it would appear that if players want to avoid getting level 1 supremacy then they will not be able to get both techs. They would need to choose one or the other.... It would only be an issue for the player who wants to role-play and deliberately go for x/0/0.

That would be me

Some of the arguments brought in this thread made sense, and i kinda agree that having affinity xp in branch techs is not as bad as i was thinking. But i still want to be able to access all basic units and resource improvements without being forced into an affinity. I don't see spy agencies, air units, titanium mines and floatstone quarries as things that are more relevant to supremacy than the other affinities, so why should i have avoid them to go pure purity, if i didn't had to in vanilla.

Besides, that wasn't an issue before! BE doesn't lock the basic stuff behind affinity xp, RT does, and i disagree with that design decision. I'm not asking for too much change, looking at the tech tree, there are about 6 branch techs from which i'd like to see the xp removed, 4 on the first ring. And, frankly, this is something i can mod out in 10 minutes, so i guess i'll just do that and stop whining.

All this talk about, how playing like that is suboptimal, and the game shouldn't cater to that style, is ridiculous. I've played a couple dozen thousand hours of civ since AC/III that i don't care about winning or min/maxing anymore. I want to have fun and roleplay the story of my civ/sponsor; i don't build farms as supremacy, and i place domes at my borders as purity. Affinity plays a huge part in the identify of my nation in BE, so if a player cares about going x/0/0 off course he'd be annoyed with the new tech tree placing xp everywhere. But whatever, this is hardly an unfixable problem.

I believe its 12points for the first level, but I'm not worried about getting 2 levels in a different affinity but rather that the hybrids get perks from 3 different affinity trees and someone who is trying to stay to their core affinity 8/3 not intending to get above 5 in an off affinity so later in the game the hybrids have 8/8/2 or 8/10/5 [or whatever] they have perks in three different trees where the core player 16/3/2 has all of his core affinity perks and 2 others, basically higher affinity levels should have perks such as 14 or 16 or 18 something the hybrids cant reach.

I agree, that would be a good idea. The balance between hybrids and core affinities seem strange, it's a case were going wide (hybrid) seem much better than tall.