Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[Enginseer]

	Current	Proposed	Justification
Fealty Opener	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery.	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery. May work Faith Process (25% into )	It gives fealty a more religious theme. Also lets them scale in faith production if they need to as purchases of Great Person can now be translated into Production Cost!
Fealty Opener (Alt Idea)	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery.	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery. +1 Faith from Specialists.	Artistry gets their Specialist bonus on the earliest first choice. Statecraft gets it on the earliest second choice. What if Fealty gets theirs on the opener? The above can make this opener a bit too strong in the Industrial Era above...
Organized Religion (Alt Idea)	+50% Pressure to Cities that don't have their Majority Religion as your Primary Religion. +1 Faith from Specialists.	+50% Pressure to Cities that don't have their Majority Religion as your Primary Religion. +1 Happiness to Monastery.	Fealty is known for the Happiness tree. Doing Fealty things like purchasing a Monastery can help a lot!
Navigator I	+1 Sight and Move	Gain XP after scouting a water tile and +1 Move.	There's an angle for you to train a Caravel and take down this promotion line and keep them XP'ed up.
Navigator II	+1 Sight and Move	+2 Sight and 1 Move. (Also is an optional prerequisite to unlocking Supply if desired since getting this requires the same as the 3rd tier of a naval promotion line).	You can either finish this line to keep gaining more XP in return or start going into other promotions if necessary.
Recon Units (+ UU as well)	Current	Current + Gains Full XP after Purchasing + Can Move After Purchasing	Given recon units take the same production cost as their other respective units, it can be hard to justify their cost in production, and gold cost can be brutal too when they cost the same as the rest. Instead, we give them full XP after purchasing. We retain the purchase cooldown though, they're not exactly Mercenaries.
Landmarks	+50 Influence scaling with Era.	+50 Resting Point, not scaling with Era. If not hostile to the City-State and your Influence is under the Resting Point, raise your Influence immediately to that threshold.	Landmarks are pretty permanent. Influence is temporary, easily yoinked, and stolen away.
Vassal Nerfs	+20% of , , duplicated to Master; +33% to Vassal, +100% Religion Pressure to Vassal.	+10% of , , duplicated to Master; +15% to Vassal, +25% Religion Pressure to Vassal.	Yield Reduction: These yields are not stolen, but cloned and given to the master. A nice Research/Policy/Faith Agreement! The yields should be somewhat closer to what a "big" city-state should give. Address some yield inflations from Masters. Tourism Reduction: Masters already have permanent Open Borders + diplomat modifier on them so they already have a permanent tourism modifier on them. All of this just adds up to +50% with the reduced number. Pressure Reduction: +100% Passive Pressure is crazy strong, it makes that vassal never able to recover over time. Reduced to +25% so the Master still has to work in converting their Cities (equivalent to a follower building)

 

[myclan]

There are mainly two kinds of bonus in Civ5. One is +X yield, good at early. The other is +X% yield, weak at early but stronger later.
Also, +X yield is better for wide (more building, more bonus), and +X% yield is better for tall (same bonus, less building).

But in VP, there is a third option: +X yield, but scaling with era. Better for wide, quite good both at early and late game.

So for Progress wide game, the +X yield policy is very suitable, I build a city and enjoy the bonus at once, regardless of population inside.

But for Tradtion tall game, there are too few +X% bonus to encourage growing population. What's worse, a lack of production and gold make constructing building slower. Without yield from buildings, citizens need is difficult to meet for higher population, thus even an advantage in growing can't be assured except for the capital. It will be far better if we have +1 produciton for every 2 citizens(Capped at 5), just like the Diligence Belief.

If worrying about Ancient policy is far better than Medieval policy, just take the scaling with era out. If you want more, adopt a Medieval policy. Ancient tree is only used to help the developent during Ancient/Classical Ages.

For authority, sometimes we don't have much space to settle and have early strong UU, thus we choose to take a city from AI instead of building settlers. But the main problem of massing units is lower yield from building (don't have time to construct one) and high unit maintaince. Though not perfect, I think current Authority tree is acceptable, but also take the scaling with era out please.

 

[azum4roll]

Note that tall and wide differ purely from number of cities. 4 cities with 6 population each is tall, while 10 cities with 20 population each is wide. It's the Tradition policies that shape tall into a playstyle with the capital having high population and working lots of specialists.

Whether an ability benefits tall or wide more depends on whether it applies to all cities or only 1 or few, and whether said yields are local/global. Flat or modifier, scaling or not don't matter for tall/wide balance.

+2 in the capital: definitely tall
+2 in all cities: definitely wide
+10% in all cities: equal
+10% in all cities: still equal
+3 in the capital: equal for buildings, wonders and world congress projects, but wide suffers at building units (as they need more comparatively)
+3 in all cities: equal for buildings and wonders, but wide benefits more from this at building units and world congress projects
+10% in all cities: equal
+5 from trade routes: tall, as trade routes have a player limit
+3% in capital per 100 spy points: tall
+15% when constructing buildings: equal, but Progress/Industry benefit from this more, and these are usually wide trees
+20% when construction world wonders: still equal, but tall playstyle benefits from this more

 

[myclan]

Note that tall and wide differ purely from number of cities. 4 cities with 6 population each is tall, while 10 cities with 20 population each is wide. It's the Tradition policies that shape tall into a playstyle with the capital having high population and working lots of specialists.

Whether an ability benefits tall or wide more depends on whether it applies to all cities or only 1 or few, and whether said yields are local/global. Flat or modifier, scaling or not don't matter for tall/wide balance.

+2 in the capital: definitely tall
+2 in all cities: definitely wide
+10% in all cities: equal
+10% in all cities: still equal
+3 in the capital: equal for buildings, wonders and world congress projects, but wide suffers at building units (as they need more comparatively)
+3 in all cities: equal for buildings and wonders, but wide benefits more from this at building units and world congress projects
+10% in all cities: equal
+5 from trade routes: tall, as trade routes have a player limit
+3% in capital per 100 spy points: tall
+15% when constructing buildings: equal, but Progress/Industry benefit from this more, and these are usually wide trees
+20% when construction world wonders: still equal, but tall playstyle benefits from this more

Tall means you sacrifice the number of cities (in vanilla, less unhappiness from cities. in VP, less need threshold from empire sizze) for more population in each city. While Wide means you build more cities but difficult to grow as fast as Tall (due to both unhappiness and less growing bonus).

It's always better to be both tall and wide like 20 cities all with 20 pop each. But just unable due to lack of happiness. So I either choose tall, or wide.

I forgot +X could be local, so I meaned a global +X.

If I have 2 cities both with 3 pop, each pop gaves 1 yield, plus a building +1 yield. I will have 8 in total. While 1 city with 6 pop only have 7.

If the building is +50% yield. I will both have 9. But 1 less building needed for 1 city with 6 pop.

Of course, if the bonus is provided by policies(thus I don't need to invest production to build it), +X will be better for wide, +X% will be almost the same for both tall and wide. But wide would be worse for the settler cost and need threshold punishment.

Yeah I definitely think Authority should not be as focused on domination as it is, and none of the Ancient trees should have a clear victory condition. Tradition should be the clear tall tree, Authority the clear wide tree, and Progress as the flexible tree.

Authority actually don't need to be wide. Some tall cities are even better to produce Elite units, and reserve some happiness for cities capturing/razing. Though it finally will be wide after taking a lot of cities. A medieval/renaissance tree wil do the job instead of ancient Authority.

yeah agree with this

progress is the worst at making settlers.

When i did runs I didn't find the trees that far apart by mid game but tradition was starting to fall off them so being equal probably means tradition is worse.

I don't think tradition have a distinct advantage towards producing settlers compared to progress, unless having a very nice capital with abundant resoures and production (Hill with mine probably). By cutting down forest/jungle and +3 production for every city, progress can produce settler quite fast even in non-capital cities.

 

[statusquo]

-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery. May work Faith Process (25% into )

Im afraid this might turn out OP. Not sure how will AI be efficient in using this comparing to human. Faith is global resource as cash, and it would become instant production, so it will allow you to stockpile it and use synergistic with cash.. Purchase with cash, then just buy some missionaries.. And you will get any building building in a fracture of turns it needed, every 400 faith is 100 production, it would belp with units also. Not to mentioned enhancing that allows you to buy units with faith. Depending on the level of game, this may be op.. But then again instant boost from authority also dont have small numbers, but bonus every turn from authority can only happened in new cities or after Great Writer culture bomb.
There are already Orders and the other that spend it 10% for gold and production. So it could become 45%. So like every 2000 faith become 900 production. This is decent amount of production even for decent Modern era city.

 

[Enginseer]

Im afraid this might turn out OP. Not sure how will AI be efficient in using this comparing to human. Faith is global resource as cash, and it would become instant production, so it will allow you to stockpile it and use synergistic with cash.. Purchase with cash, then just buy some missionaries.. And you will get any building building in a fracture of turns it needed, every 400 faith is 100 production, it would belp with units also. Not to mentioned enhancing that allows you to buy units with faith. Depending on the level of game, this may be op.. But then again instant boost from authority also dont have small numbers, but bonus every turn from authority can only happened in new cities or after Great Writer culture bomb.
There are already Orders and the other that spend it 10% for gold and production. So it could become 45%. So like every 2000 faith become 900 production. This is decent amount of production even for decent Modern era city.

That's why I went with the alternative idea (Granting +1 Faith earlier and granting on Monastery from Organized Religion) since there's no easy way to balance out the Faith process.

 

[Anarcomu]

Im afraid this might turn out OP. Not sure how will AI be efficient in using this comparing to human. Faith is global resource as cash, and it would become instant production, so it will allow you to stockpile it and use synergistic with cash.. Purchase with cash, then just buy some missionaries.. And you will get any building building in a fracture of turns it needed, every 400 faith is 100 production, it would belp with units also. Not to mentioned enhancing that allows you to buy units with faith. Depending on the level of game, this may be op.. But then again instant boost from authority also dont have small numbers, but bonus every turn from authority can only happened in new cities or after Great Writer culture bomb.
There are already Orders and the other that spend it 10% for gold and production. So it could become 45%. So like every 2000 faith become 900 production. This is decent amount of production even for decent Modern era city.

I think you misunderstood the bonus.
It does not allow you to gain production when spending faith.
It does allow you to convert your production into faith. Turning a local resource into a global resource, not the other way.

 

[statusquo]

I think you misunderstood the bonus.
It does not allow you to gain production when spending faith.
It does allow you to convert your production into faith. Turning a local resource into a global resource, not the other way.

Yea, you are right, i immediately had Orders before my eyes

Hmm.. 25% production into faith..
Thou.. if you think about it, late game when each city can have 500 production, i could become like 125 faith per turn from one city.. This still might become op.
Imagine how many specialists you would need to get 125 faith per turn.. Imo, that would cause, that non Fealthy civ just wouldnt be able to
compete with fealthy civ in terms of religion. It will basically become perma Faith process, if you play bare necessities.
Conversions are tricky subjects, it can easy go out of control.
If you for example convert 25% into gold, it would be a lot, but there are many ways to scale gold into endgame, so it will be like let say 100% more gold per turn, but in
case faith, it would be probably like 10x times more comparing to what you would have by the time of atomic era.. Simply because there are no real faith scalers outside early medieval era..

Just had idea.. what if like corporation offices slightly boosted religious pressure? Would it be senseless?
Like big part of culture comes from religion, so spreading culture, kinda a little also should spread indirectly religion..

 

[azum4roll]

Trader Sid's and Centaurus Extractors already boost religious pressure through land/sea.

 

[Captain Carrot]

It will basically become perma Faith process, if you play bare necessities.

What's being proposed is the Faith process, not a permanent faith buff based on production.

 

[KlHannibal2]

There are a few problems with the Dutch UA, and I wondered if we could talk about it:

Current UA: Dutch East India Company

+3 Culture and Gold for each different Luxury Resource you import or export from/to other Civilizations and City-States, scaling with Era.​

Can import duplicate Resources, and Major Civilization imports count towards Monopolies.​

​

First off, I really like this UA. It breaks rules so the Dutch can do things that other civs simply can't, and it provides unique incentives. Fantastic.

The problems I have with it are:

1. The name is terrible.​

It has the word "Dutch" in it, which is redundant. It's like Calling America's UA "American Manifest Destiny".​

There is already a national wonder called "East India Company". I think at minimum either the Dutch UA or the national wonder needs to have a name change.​

2. It's not multiplayer compatible.​

There are some civs that provide too much counter-play, exposing you to the whims of other players. The UA's economic engine is dependent on other players being willing to trade with you at all, putting you at the mercy of human players, who are much more willing to coordinate and gang up.​

India also had this problem, because coordinated human players can just spread on him and shut his passive pressure abilities off before they can get going. A change to that was approved last congress, so that just leaves the Dutch.​

​

Here's the alternative UA that I came up with:

Wisselbanken
Gains Gold equal to 2% of total Gold reserves each turn. Can enter into debt at a 2% Gold Interest Rate
15% of the Gold spent to purchase Units or invest in Buildings is converted into Golden Age Points.

This UA allows the Dutch to have negative gold, which they have to pay off with interest. Interest is treated in the same way as building or unit maintenance.
This also makes the Dutch immune to the Science penalty for having no gold reserves. When civs have 0 Gold and negative GPT, they lose 1 for each negative they would have lost. Instead, the Dutch simply gofurther into negative gold. They always have the ability to pay, even if they have no to pay with.
I imagine this would create some very interesting strategies, because you are basically not limited by gold reserves, only gold income. For instance, you could disband your entire army to reduce maintenance costs, and then purchase them back again if a war ever breaks out, because you have effectively limitless ability to put new units on the map. You could enter into debt very early to buy a turn 1 worker or invest in your first few buildings.

The Dutch UA basically has no interactions with the UU or UI. Their whole kit is quite disjointed, so it's easy to swap one part out without having to change the others. Actually, the UA's dependence on good AI relations had a bit of countersynergy with how aggressive their UU is, so I think that this change would also make a Dutch playstyle slightly more coherent.
As I said I really like the current Dutch UA, but I just don’t see how it’s workable if VP wants to have multiplayer as a goal. The UA is per text for a modmod.

I do like the current name. There were several east india companies. This is the dutch one. There is only one manifest destiny.

 

[Stalker0]

	Current	Proposed	Justification
Fealty Opener	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery.	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery. May work Faith Process (25% into )	It gives fealty a more religious theme. Also lets them scale in faith production if they need to as purchases of Great Person can now be translated into Production Cost!
Fealty Opener (Alt Idea)	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery.	-25% Faith Cost for Faith Purchases. Can Purchase Monastery. +1 Faith from Specialists.	Artistry gets their Specialist bonus on the earliest first choice. Statecraft gets it on the earliest second choice. What if Fealty gets theirs on the opener? The above can make this opener a bit too strong in the Industrial Era above...
Organized Religion (Alt Idea)	+50% Pressure to Cities that don't have their Majority Religion as your Primary Religion. +1 Faith from Specialists.	+50% Pressure to Cities that don't have their Majority Religion as your Primary Religion. +1 Happiness to Monastery.	Fealty is known for the Happiness tree. Doing Fealty things like purchasing a Monastery can help a lot!
Navigator I	+1 Sight and Move	Gain XP after scouting a water tile and +1 Move.	There's an angle for you to train a Caravel and take down this promotion line and keep them XP'ed up.
Navigator II	+1 Sight and Move	+2 Sight and 1 Move. (Also is an optional prerequisite to unlocking Supply if desired since getting this requires the same as the 3rd tier of a naval promotion line).	You can either finish this line to keep gaining more XP in return or start going into other promotions if necessary.
Recon Units (+ UU as well)	Current	Current + Gains Full XP after Purchasing + Can Move After Purchasing	Given recon units take the same production cost as their other respective units, it can be hard to justify their cost in production, and gold cost can be brutal too when they cost the same as the rest. Instead, we give them full XP after purchasing. We retain the purchase cooldown though, they're not exactly Mercenaries.
Landmarks	+50 Influence scaling with Era.	+50 Resting Point, not scaling with Era. If not hostile to the City-State and your Influence is under the Resting Point, raise your Influence immediately to that threshold.	Landmarks are pretty permanent. Influence is temporary, easily yoinked, and stolen away.
Vassal Nerfs	+20% of , , duplicated to Master; +33% to Vassal, +100% Religion Pressure to Vassal.	+10% of , , duplicated to Master; +25% to Vassal, +25% Religion Pressure to Vassal.	Yield Reduction: These yields are not stolen, but cloned and given to the master. A nice Research/Policy/Faith Agreement! The yields should be somewhat closer to what a "big" city-state should give. Address some yield inflations from Masters. Tourism Reduction: Masters already have permanent Open Borders on them so they already have a tourism modifier on them. Pressure Reduction: +100% Passive Pressure is crazy strong, it makes that vassal never able to recover over time. Reduced to +25% so the Master still has to work in converting their Cities (equivalent to a follower building)

The opener of fealty doesn't need a buf, its quite solid as it is.

The happiness to monastery for organized religion, I could see that.

The problem with the recon unit change here....we keep trying to make a niche unit a general unit. Its not. Recon units are scouts and speciality units, they are "special forces" not main fare. They should be a few units scattered among the greater whole, not the whole itself. So I see no reason to make them easier to build, that's not really their purpose. Now if you wanted to add this in for some of the UU recon units....that I could see, as in those cases you do want to ramp up their use

Agreed on landmarks.

Agreed on vassals.

 

[CppMaster]

The problem with the recon unit change here....we keep trying to make a niche unit a general unit. Its not. Recon units are scouts and speciality units, they are "special forces" not main fare. They should be a few units scattered among the greater whole, not the whole itself. So I see no reason to make them easier to build, that's not really their purpose. Now if you wanted to add this in for some of the UU recon units....that I could see, as in those cases you do want to ramp up their use

They are niche now, but why should they stay that way?

 

[Stalker0]

They are niche now, but why should they stay that way?

because that's the point of the unit. Recon isn't some ubigitous operation. I don't need a dozen scouts, I need 1. Why should they be some common unit?

 

[msw1]

At some point around commandos and paratroopers, recon units stop being only useful for reconnaissance and start becoming useful for getting behind enemy lines and attacking.

 

[myclan]

Recon units can ignore terrain and move very fast wherever they are, so are quite useful in many aspects like:
1. Arrive and destroy the barbarians spawning everywhere in time.
2. With promotion, see further to give more information on enemy army.
3. With promotion, help injured units in the front line heal faster.
4. Escort missionaries and diplomatic units from barbarians.
5. Plunder trade routes and valuable improvements.

I think we can make them more specialized by promotion in medic, visual range, and movement. Survivalism is just not attractive.

 

[ma_kuh]

Recon sort of has two niches: scouting, and special forces. The first two recon units you build (if you even build a second one early) are usually way better scouts than anything you build later, just because you get so much more free XP on them. If they get sniped by barbarians or you're too aggressive with them during an early war, it can basically feel like you'll never get that level of scout again, until Explorers at least. So it's very feels-bad, but maybe not that impactful for win chances overall.

I can see a world where recon units are treated more like zerglings, where there's an actual strategy of building swathes of cheaper melee throw-away units in place of spears and swords, and it has some kind of dedicated support via promotions, reductions in War Weariness from policies, etc.... but that's not the world VP is currently in. Spears are already somewhat in that vein, especially if you go Shock instead of Drill. Later recon fills this fine as well, so it's just early recon not being "useful" for fighting.


A random thought: What if we gave small packets of XP to recon that walk adjacent to Natural Wonders? This way, if you lose an early scout to a misplay, you can still get a replacement and recover some of the "banked" XP from wonders you've found --literally retrace your steps to get back some XP. This would only be for recon of course, and we might also lower the XP-from-tile-reveals to compensate a little. But I know VP intentionally removed the walk-adjacent mechanic of some Natural Wonders already, so maybe that's not something the community would like (even if it was just for recon).

 

[Flamingcheesepie]

Reformation Belief Era-Lock:

I'm thinking about suggesting a limitation to Reformation by requiring either Renaissance or Medieval to build any of the Religious Wonders. I think it would reduce some power imbalance between early and later founders. Currently, early founders have a huge bonus to reformation because they can spread to other Civs before they can found. This means that besides the raw yields from founding and "free" spreading, they get another layer of bonuses in Reformation Pop %. This causes even faster snowball, because Reformation Beliefs are very strong.

By limiting building the Religious Wonders to Renaissance or Medieval, it gives more time for all religions to be founded, meaning that early game religious competition becomes more important. You have to fight to maintain religious control before being able to reform. This means that early faith may become slightly less valuable (after founding), because getting more faith means more spreading, but doesn't allow you to do things as powerful as faith buying buildings. In comparison, faith uses that don't involve spreading become stronger. This includes Prophets, which means that Enhancing has a legitimate chance to come before Reformation - as things are, usually you spend your faith to force through a Reformation before even thinking about a second Prophet. This is strange, because generally Enhancers are not tech limited while Reformations are, so you would expect Enhancement to come before Reforming. Enhancer and second Follower Belief are above Reformation in the UI too, implying that they should come first.

As a minor note, Religious Wonders not being locked also causes some imbalance between Reformation Beliefs. Currently beliefs that kick in early are much stronger than ones that kick in later (e.g. faith purchasing buildings in classical propels you forwards a lot, while the belief that grants you yields for delegates/successful votes may be strong, but almost never extremely useful). However, locking Reformation to a later era doesn't make faith-purchasing building beliefs not useful - you still gain extra yields from those buildings, you can faith purchase the many later buildings, and you can even delay building faith-purchased buildings for after Reforming if you know you will get there in time. Era locking to Medieval is less restrictive, while Era locking to Renaissance means that picking wincon beliefs, such as Holy Land, is slightly more competitive in the short term against the faith-purchased buildings. If this change goes through there may need to be some overall rebalancing between beliefs, and I would like to hear discussion from others.

How this may affect non-Reformation Beliefs:

Belief Buildings are already strong, so if they become too strong they could lose their bonus 25% to religious pressure, or become 300 faith, equal to Inquisitors. Otherwise, Prophets would get a slight buff in this change. This also gives more timing for using Zealotry, which some people think is a bit too weak.

For AI, likely no changes would need to be made. This change may benefit players slightly, because they can think ahead and consider when they will be able to Reform and plan around it. However, AI already knows to continue spreading throughout the game, so the ones with strong religious output should still be able to instantly Reform when they hit the requisite Era.

Karlstejn would remain unchanged, because it would simply allow easier Reformation if you haven't been able to spread enough.

 

[CppMaster]

because that's the point of the unit.

Why? Are you stating it as your opinion or as a fact?

Recon isn't some ubigitous operation.

As @myclan already said, recon units don't do just recon.

I don't need a dozen scouts, I need 1. Why should they be some common unit?

You need 1, because of how it recon units are now. They could be more common if they are overall better, so there is more reason to make them. Why should they not be common like every other unit? Why should this line of unit be special in particular?

 

[Stalker0]

I can see a world where recon units are treated more like zerglings, where there's an actual strategy of building swathes of cheaper melee throw-away units in place of spears and swords

But...that's what spears are for.

Again that's the problem, because Civ 5's combat system is very narrow (this isn't Tank Commander), you have a really limited set of "roles" you need in the game. Spears and Pikes are already your cheaper melee "throw-away" units....and heck people already question whether pikes are ever worth building because they get so much more value out of knights and longswords. Adding recon on top of that just muddies that even further.

Recon has a solid niche of scouting...they do a good job at this. And yeah you only need a few units to do that....but its important work. Just like the reaper in SC2, often only 1 of them is built in any given game of SC....but no one would question the importance of that early scouting. Recon also has the special forces niche later in the game, paradrops give them an interesting niche, and the free amphibious attack gives them some niche as well.

But....that's about it, your not going to maek them a mainstay combat unit, and if you did....it means that a different unit class is suddenly not getting used. The niche is just too narrow, we don't need more roles pushing to carve it out even thinner.