Vox Populi Congress Proposal Workshop

[msw1]

Artistry is really terrible and needs to be completely reworked IMO.

There are two major problems: most of the tree doesn't scale, and half of the tree is useless for about 1.5 eras, and both of these facts only apply to artistry. In a game that really rewards snowballing, it just doesn't work to choose policies that are useless for over an era when you could choose policies that instantly help you.

On the topic of scaling:

• Fealty has -25% faith cost to purchase religious units or religious buildings, +33% yields from internal trade routes, +15% production during WLTKD, +100% border growth during WLTKD, 25% of happiness converted to culture, and +50% religious pressure to cities without your religion. All of these are always good, with the last two being OKish.
• Statecraft has +50% city state rewards, +25% international trade route yields, gives you city state alliances whose benefits scale with era, 25% of science generated by allied city states, up to +30% culture in the capital, whatever % bonuses you get from city state resource monopolies, +15% tourism from trade routes, and culture, science, and gold every world congress session that scales with era, and with all policies +50% influence from diplomatic missions. Again, all of these are always good.
• Meanwhile, artistry has -25% golden age points to trigger a golden age, gold from building wonders that scales with era, +50% theming bonuses, 25% of culture from world wonders and tiles added to tourism, +25 GWAM rate, +10% culture during golden ages, +100% of happiness added to progress towards a golden age, and +10% tourism from open borders. Of these the reduced required golden age points, increased GWAM rates, and extra culture during golden ages are great. The problem is that these are the opener and 1st policy, and all of the others are bad. The increased theming bonuses, extra happiness added to progress towards a golden age, and extra tourism from open borders are decent. But the gold from building wonders is hardly noticeable unless you're already winning enough that you can build every wonder. And the 25% culture from tiles and wonders added to tourism is not noticeable at this stage of the game except for a couple of civs.

What the tree has instead of useful scaling bonuses is flat yield boosts to great works and artifacts. The problem is that none of these scale and there comes a point where it makes much more sense to expend great people for the instant yields rather than for the great work. Maybe others play different from me, but I rarely make more than maybe 4-6 great works of writing before the instant culture outweighs the low per turn yields. So Humanism would be giving +12-18 faith per turn...basically irrelevant beyond the medieval era or so. Same goes for all the other policies.

The other issue is the anachronism in the tree. Unless I'm playing Egypt the +2 science from artifacts is totally useless until the end of the industrial era, when I probably have an Ideology...despite this being a medieval era tree. Antiquity sites are a post-industrial mechanic and therefore it makes no sense to have medieval era buffs regarding them. Exact same logic applies to the finisher unlocking hidden antiquity sites. This should be tied to an Industrial Era tree or an ideology. The same issue applies to a lesser extent to the Great Works of Music, which if you went tradition you'll have maybe 1-2 of before researching Acoustics at the end of the Renaissance era, and otherwise you will have none of.

Here is a possible revamp. Maybe this is swinging too far the other way and making it OP. But I feel like this would make this an actually interesting/exciting policy tree for a tall cultural civ producing lots of great people.

Name	Current	Proposed	Justification
Opener	+25% GWAM rate, +10% culture during golden ages, +100% Production towards guilds	Unchanged	Strong opener.
Scaler	+1 science in every city, +20% of excess happiness produced in each city is added as progress towards a Golden Age.	Unchanged	Decent and comparable to other Medieval scalers.
Humanism	+3 Faith from Great Works of Writing. -25% Golden Age Points needed to trigger a Golden Age. +1 Happiness from all Guilds.	+10% Faith in city for every Great Work of Writing. -25% Golden Age Points needed to trigger a Golden Age.	Make great works of writing actually useful to make in the late game by giving them some kind of scaleable bonus, and this policy is already great so move the guild happiness to a weaker policy.
Refinement	+2 Culture from Great Works of Art. 1 Specialist in all cities does not produce unhappiness from urbanization. +1 Culture from Specialists.	+10% culture in city for every Great Works of Art. 1 Specialist in all cities does not produce unhappiness from urbanization. +1 Culture from Specialists.	Make great works of art valuable to make in the late game.
National Treasure	+2 Science from Artifacts, a Great Person of your choice appears near your Capital, gain 250 Gold when you construct World Wonders scaling with Era.	+10% Tourism from city for every world wonder it contains. A great person of your choice appears near your Capital.	Right now this policy is basically only useful to spawn and pop a great writer to try to take another policy. Incentivize cultural victory by connecting wonder building to tourism output.
Heritage	+4 Gold from Great Works of Music. +50% to all theming bonuses. 25% of the culture from World Wonders and Tiles is added to the tourism output of the city.	+10% Gold in city for every Great Work of Music it contains. +50% to all theming bonuses. Guilds reduce 1 unhappiness from all Needs in the city in which they are built. Also, swap the order of this policy and Cultural Exchange.	Make the buff to great works of music actually relevant to later in the game. And move this policy down in the tree so the player is closer to Acoustics when they take it. Support tall play by allowing you to greatly reduce unhappiness in the cities you build guilds in.
Cultural Exchange	+1 Happiness for every 3 Great Works in a city. +2 Production and Culture from Amphitheaters, Galleries, and Opera Houses. +10% Tourism modifier for Open Borders with other civilizations.	+1 Happiness for every Great Work in a city. Amphitheaters, Galleries, and Opera Houses increase culture in the city by 5%. +20% Tourism modifier for Open Borders with other civilizations.	+1 Happiness for every 3 Great Works is basically unnoticeable. As is +6 culture and production per city once you're at the point where you're building galleries and opera houses. And why does the cultural victory tree give a smaller tourism bonus for open borders than the diplomatic victory tree does a for trade route, when civs can just not give you open borders if your tourism is too high but they can't avoid you sending them a trade route without declaring war on you?
Finisher	Unlocks Louvre, completing an Archaeological Dig or Starting a Golden Age triggers or strengthens an existing Historic Event, Allows you to see Hidden Antiquity Sites, +3 Science from Landmarks, allows for the purchase of Great Musicians with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.	Unlocks Louvre, Starting a Golden Age triggers or strengthens an existing Historic Event, +25% Golden Age duration, +3% Science for every Great Work in a city Allows for the purchase of Great Musicians with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.	Move all bonuses to artifacts/antiquity sites/landmarks to the industrial era policies (Rationalism/Imperialism) or ideologies (Freedom/Order). Make great works more valuable in a meaningful way and play into the cultural civ style of striving to be in a permanent golden age.

 

[rusbeh]

I agree Artistry feels weak but your values are far too high and would make the tree op. I too would like to see artistry make use of percentile yields as that would be a indirect buff to high population and food. I would change your proposal so +5% yields as opposed to +10%. The +1 happiness for every great work is also op, I would change that to +1 happiness for 2 great works. There's some other unnecessary changes in your proposal as well. I would personally like to see how artistry performs the way it currently is, just with the +5% yields instead of flat yields and small buff to happiness per grear work.

 

[Solic]

Not sure what the technical feasibility would be, but I'd like it if only the resource bonuses in the tech tree or building descriptions would contain resources you have discovered. With certain buildings or tech options they can get really longwinded and it leads to an information overload.

 

[msw1]

I agree Artistry feels weak but your values are far too high and would make the tree op. I too would like to see artistry make use of percentile yields as that would be a indirect buff to high population and food. I would change your proposal so +5% yields as opposed to +10%. The +1 happiness for every great work is also op, I would change that to +1 happiness for 2 great works. There's some other unnecessary changes in your proposal as well. I would personally like to see how artistry performs the way it currently is, just with the +5% yields instead of flat yields and small buff to happiness per grear work.

Yeah, I was debating between the 5% or 10%. The thing to keep in mind is that it only applies to one city, so for example for the policy that gives culture from great works of art with a 5% bonus the city would need to be producing at least 60 culture before modifiers for it to not be a nerf. And unlike flat yields, the bonuses from these policies wouldn't be boosted by other modifiers themselves. That being said, maybe it would scale too well and become OP. You're probably right about the +1 happiness from every 2 great work rather than for every great work.

I do still think the buffs to archaeology should be moved to a later tree, since archaeology is locked behind the late industrial era. That or Artistry should let players build archaeologists earlier that can only see hidden antiquity sites, like how Statecraft gives pre-renaissance spies.

 

[pineappledan]

Artistry is really terrible and needs to be completely reworked IMO.

There are two major problems: most of the tree doesn't scale, and half of the tree is useless for about 1.5 eras, and both of these facts only apply to artistry. In a game that really rewards snowballing, it just doesn't work to choose policies that are useless for over an era when you could choose policies that instantly help you.

On the topic of scaling:

• Fealty has -25% faith cost to purchase religious units or religious buildings, +33% yields from internal trade routes, +15% production during WLTKD, +100% border growth during WLTKD, 25% of happiness converted to culture, and +50% religious pressure to cities without your religion. All of these are always good, with the last two being OKish.
• Statecraft has +50% city state rewards, +25% international trade route yields, gives you city state alliances whose benefits scale with era, 25% of science generated by allied city states, up to +30% culture in the capital, whatever % bonuses you get from city state resource monopolies, +15% tourism from trade routes, and culture, science, and gold every world congress session that scales with era, and with all policies +50% influence from diplomatic missions. Again, all of these are always good.
• Meanwhile, artistry has -25% golden age points to trigger a golden age, gold from building wonders that scales with era, +50% theming bonuses, 25% of culture from world wonders and tiles added to tourism, +25 GWAM rate, +10% culture during golden ages, +100% of happiness added to progress towards a golden age, and +10% tourism from open borders. Of these the reduced required golden age points, increased GWAM rates, and extra culture during golden ages are great. The problem is that these are the opener and 1st policy, and all of the others are bad. The increased theming bonuses, extra happiness added to progress towards a golden age, and extra tourism from open borders are decent. But the gold from building wonders is hardly noticeable unless you're already winning enough that you can build every wonder. And the 25% culture from tiles and wonders added to tourism is not noticeable at this stage of the game except for a couple of civs.

What the tree has instead of useful scaling bonuses is flat yield boosts to great works and artifacts. The problem is that none of these scale and there comes a point where it makes much more sense to expend great people for the instant yields rather than for the great work. Maybe others play different from me, but I rarely make more than maybe 4-6 great works of writing before the instant culture outweighs the low per turn yields. So Humanism would be giving +12-18 faith per turn...basically irrelevant beyond the medieval era or so. Same goes for all the other policies.

The other issue is the anachronism in the tree. Unless I'm playing Egypt the +2 science from artifacts is totally useless until the end of the industrial era, when I probably have an Ideology...despite this being a medieval era tree. Antiquity sites are a post-industrial mechanic and therefore it makes no sense to have medieval era buffs regarding them. Exact same logic applies to the finisher unlocking hidden antiquity sites. This should be tied to an Industrial Era tree or an ideology. The same issue applies to a lesser extent to the Great Works of Music, which if you went tradition you'll have maybe 1-2 of before researching Acoustics at the end of the Renaissance era, and otherwise you will have none of.

Here is a possible revamp. Maybe this is swinging too far the other way and making it OP. But I feel like this would make this an actually interesting/exciting policy tree for a tall cultural civ producing lots of great people.

Name	Current	Proposed	Justification
Opener	+25% GWAM rate, +10% culture during golden ages, +100% Production towards guilds	Unchanged	Strong opener.
Scaler	+1 science in every city, +20% of excess happiness produced in each city is added as progress towards a Golden Age.	Unchanged	Decent and comparable to other Medieval scalers.
Humanism	+3 Faith from Great Works of Writing. -25% Golden Age Points needed to trigger a Golden Age. +1 Happiness from all Guilds.	+10% Faith in city for every Great Work of Writing. -25% Golden Age Points needed to trigger a Golden Age.	Make great works of writing actually useful to make in the late game by giving them some kind of scaleable bonus, and this policy is already great so move the guild happiness to a weaker policy.
Refinement	+2 Culture from Great Works of Art. 1 Specialist in all cities does not produce unhappiness from urbanization. +1 Culture from Specialists.	+10% culture in city for every Great Works of Art. 1 Specialist in all cities does not produce unhappiness from urbanization. +1 Culture from Specialists.	Make great works of art valuable to make in the late game.
National Treasure	+2 Science from Artifacts, a Great Person of your choice appears near your Capital, gain 250 Gold when you construct World Wonders scaling with Era.	+10% Tourism from city for every world wonder it contains. A great person of your choice appears near your Capital.	Right now this policy is basically only useful to spawn and pop a great writer to try to take another policy. Incentivize cultural victory by connecting wonder building to tourism output.
Heritage	+4 Gold from Great Works of Music. +50% to all theming bonuses. 25% of the culture from World Wonders and Tiles is added to the tourism output of the city.	+10% Gold in city for every Great Work of Music it contains. +50% to all theming bonuses. Guilds reduce 1 unhappiness from all Needs in the city in which they are built. Also, swap the order of this policy and Cultural Exchange.	Make the buff to great works of music actually relevant to later in the game. And move this policy down in the tree so the player is closer to Acoustics when they take it. Support tall play by allowing you to greatly reduce unhappiness in the cities you build guilds in.
Cultural Exchange	+1 Happiness for every 3 Great Works in a city. +2 Production and Culture from Amphitheaters, Galleries, and Opera Houses. +10% Tourism modifier for Open Borders with other civilizations.	+1 Happiness for every Great Work in a city. Amphitheaters, Galleries, and Opera Houses increase culture in the city by 5%. +20% Tourism modifier for Open Borders with other civilizations.	+1 Happiness for every 3 Great Works is basically unnoticeable. As is +6 culture and production per city once you're at the point where you're building galleries and opera houses. And why does the cultural victory tree give a smaller tourism bonus for open borders than the diplomatic victory tree does a for trade route, when civs can just not give you open borders if your tourism is too high but they can't avoid you sending them a trade route without declaring war on you?
Finisher	Unlocks Louvre, completing an Archaeological Dig or Starting a Golden Age triggers or strengthens an existing Historic Event, Allows you to see Hidden Antiquity Sites, +3 Science from Landmarks, allows for the purchase of Great Musicians with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.	Unlocks Louvre, Starting a Golden Age triggers or strengthens an existing Historic Event, +25% Golden Age duration, +3% Science for every Great Work in a city Allows for the purchase of Great Musicians with Faith starting in the Industrial Era.	Move all bonuses to artifacts/antiquity sites/landmarks to the industrial era policies (Rationalism/Imperialism) or ideologies (Freedom/Order). Make great works more valuable in a meaningful way and play into the cultural civ style of striving to be in a permanent golden age.

You are aware that Rationalism gives 3% per great work in a city already? You're proposing to duplicate that ability, more than triple its power, and move it 2 eras earlier?
Is rationalism still going to give the exact same bonus as the Artistry finisher with this change, or are you proposing to move the landmark bonuses there?

The flat yields used to be all piled onto a single policy, refinement. I predict that if you try to make players fiddle around with GW management to maximize the yield output from a tree they will resent Artistry even more.

Artistry is already stronger than it was a year ago. If Artistry is weak it's clearly not 1/3rd as strong as the other medieval trees. Tripling the power of several of its policies at once is going to make whatever problem you claim to be addressing far worse, but in the opposite direction.

 

[msw1]

You are aware that Rationalism gives 3% per great work in a city already? You're proposing to duplicate that ability, more than triple its power, and move it 2 eras earlier?
Is rationalism still going to give the exact same bonus as the Artistry finisher with this change, or are you proposing to move the landmark bonuses there?

The flat yields used to be all piled onto a single policy, refinement. I predict that if you try to make players fiddle around with GW management to maximize the yield output from a tree they will resent Artistry even more.

Artistry is already stronger than it was a year ago. If Artistry is weak it's clearly not 1/3rd as strong as the other medieval trees. Tripling the power of several of its policies at once is going to make whatever problem you claim to be addressing far worse, but in the opposite direction.

You are right, I forgot about the science per great work from rationalism. Honestly though it seems like it fits better in artistry, since artistry is all about great works. I don't see how this triples its power, and I don't think it's an issue for it to come earlier. It's a percentage boost so its power scales with how much science the city already has.

I do think science from artifacts and landmarks fits better in rationalism. With that it might make the most sense to tie hidden antiquity sites to rationalism as well.

And I am not sure how strong artistry used to be, but as it is, it's not good. It should be a tree that helps you get ahead on culture like how rationalism helps you get ahead on science, but it's not. The optimal strategy IMO is always to just take the opener, humanism, and then start filling out either Fealty or Statecraft. None of the other policies are as good as literally any of the Statecraft policies. The only meaningful bonus is hidden antiquity sites, but those are useless for 2 eras, by which point the diplomatic statecraft/warmonger fealty civs have already taken over the world.

 

[pineappledan]

I don't see how this triples its power, and I don't think it's an issue for it to come earlier.

You are proposing to take each individual GW type and give a 10% bonus per great work. 10% is 3.33x more powerful than Rationalism's existing 3% bonus.
And then you are also proposing to give all GWs another 3% yield modifier on top, so it's more like 4x power.

Math.

 

[Amadhe]

What if instead of Artistry Policies giving Flat Yields to Great Works, they instead provide +2% Great People Generation of the Respective type per Great Work in a City.

Humanism gives it for Great Writers from Great Works of Writing
Refinement for Great Artists from Great Works of Art
National Treasure for Great Scientists from Artifacts
Heritage for Great Musicians from Great Works of Music

The Finisher could also do something similar and grant +1% Great Person Generation per Great Work in a City. Artistry is the tree all about generating Great People after all.

 

[Amadhe]

What if instead of Artistry Policies giving Flat Yields to Great Works, they instead provide +2% Great People Generation of the Respective type per Great Work in a City.

Humanism gives it for Great Writers from Great Works of Writing
Refinement for Great Artists from Great Works of Art
National Treasure for Great Scientists from Artifacts
Heritage for Great Musicians from Great Works of Music

The Finisher could also do something similar and grant +1% Great Person Generation per Great Work in a City. Artistry is the tree all about generating Great People after all.

I forgot to include it in the original but these would obviously need a cap like the Rationalism Policy

 

[hokath]

I agree that the flat yields on GW are very lackluster. However your 4--6 GW of Writing estimate seems wildly low by my standards. Together with conquering and forging I easily hit double digits of those. As such the +% numbers are far too high (especially for culture!!).

I would support a change to be like +3% [yield] per great work capping at +15% in line with the rationalism policy for science.
I would not move anything between trees (and if I moved anything, it would be the hidden antiquity sites back to Imperialism for something new).

 

[msw1]

You are proposing to take each individual GW type and give a 10% bonus per great work. 10% is 3.33x more powerful than Rationalism's existing 3% bonus.
And then you are also proposing to give all GWs another 3% yield modifier on top, so it's more like 4x power.

Math.

Okay but those are different yields. +10% Faith in a city from great works of writing only is not 3x stronger than +3% science for any great work...

I agree that the flat yields on GW are very lackluster. However your 4--6 GW of Writing estimate seems wildly low by my standards. Together with conquering and forging I easily hit double digits of those. As such the +% numbers are far too high (especially for culture!!).

I would support a change to be like +3% [yield] per great work capping at +15% in line with the rationalism policy for science.
I would not move anything between trees (and if I moved anything, it would be the hidden antiquity sites back to Imperialism for something new).

With conquering I agree, you get more. My point was that after about that point it doesn't make sense to make more great works because the instant yields are better, so IMO the tree that says it's about maximizing the potential of great works should make them a more interesting option. The solution to getting too many through conquest would probably be to put a cap on the benefit as you said.

And +10% culture in a city from a great work of art probably is too high, but I do think Artistry needs something that makes it actually useful for producing culture. It is the canonical choice for a cultural victory yet the only way it increases culture output is through buffing golden ages and giving you more of them, which means that whenever you're not in a golden age, the Fealty and Statecraft civs are probably putting out more culture than the Artistry civs if they're playing well. Statecraft even has a potential +30% culture in the capital.

 

[msw1]

What if instead of Artistry Policies giving Flat Yields to Great Works, they instead provide +2% Great People Generation of the Respective type per Great Work in a City.

Humanism gives it for Great Writers from Great Works of Writing
Refinement for Great Artists from Great Works of Art
National Treasure for Great Scientists from Artifacts
Heritage for Great Musicians from Great Works of Music

The Finisher could also do something similar and grant +1% Great Person Generation per Great Work in a City. Artistry is the tree all about generating Great People after all.

It's an interesting idea but I think Tradition is more the tree about generating great people. I think Artistry should give great works some meaningful value beyond just helping you create more great works through more GWAMs. Also, giving +% GWAM rates is useless in cities that don't have guilds/the tradition buildings, so ultimately I think this would still be too weak.

 

[rusbeh]

+5% yields (capped at 30%) for gold and faith. +3% (capped at 30%) for science and culture. Rationalism policy changed. Flat yields from great works are a cute idea for wide play but feel bad in practice. To be honest I liked the old artistry more.

 

[azum4roll]

up to +30% culture in the capital

Nah you aren't going to get that even if you go for ALL spy point bonuses as England.

25% of science generated by allied city states

This is hot trash left over from vanilla. City States generate like 2 Science each now.

+10% Faith in city for every Great Work of Writing.

This is way worse than +3 Faith per GW.

+10% culture in city for every Great Works of Art.

This is bad at the time you unlock it outside of your Capital, so you're incentivized to put all Art in your Capital instead of using them to grow your weaker cities.

Right now this policy is basically only useful to spawn and pop a great writer to try to take another policy. Incentivize cultural victory by connecting wonder building to tourism output.

You're underestimating the amount of Gold it provides. It's like half a GM bulb.

In general you're making the whole tree %-based only, which should be reserved for Industrial trees. It now looks very valuable to take after all good tenets are taken, which shouldn't be encouraged.

Golden Ages are incredible, and with Artistry you get significantly more of a stronger form of them.
Artistry is my go-to tree when I have a civ with high tile/building Culture.

Also, when you compare Statecraft and Artistry:
Statecraft is a tree with mostly tall bonuses but benefit a wide victory.
Artistry is a tree with mostly wide bonuses but benefit a tall victory.
I think this is well-designed.

 

[msw1]

I don't see the issue with it having value to take after all good tenets are taken. You could make the same argument for any of the industrial era trees, especially rationalism. I agree that the +10% culture from golden ages and -25% golden age points required to start a golden age are great, but again you can get that with 2 policies. The remaining 4 policies are not good. By finishing the tree, we get some forgettable yields, a great person, a tourism buff, and buffs to a feature that's unavailable for two more eras. The tourism buff would help you win, except that at that point in the game, getting your tourism with civs up from Exotic to Familiar isn't going to save you from some other civ getting a massive tech/policy lead because they went statecraft and are in the process of allying every city state or went Fealty and are in the process of conquering the world.

 

[Diomedes_]

Very interesting that you are not a fan of artistry. IMO it is the 2nd tier tree in the least need of changes. I think you're really undervaluing the effects of the tree's policies and how they compound with other scalers already in the game, without even mentioning that the values you've proposed would be silly powerful. If I had to change Artistry I would just slightly buff Heritage (buff +50% to theming bonus to +100%) and Cultural Exchange (+10% tourism from open borders to +20%). Other than those small changes I think the tree is great and has the most internal logic of the 2nd tier trees.

 

[msw1]

Well now I've heard that the proposed changes would be weak and that they would be OP . If I ever pick up modding myself maybe I'll test it out and see which it is.

Maybe I play the game very differently from some others. But I feel like pretty much any % based global monopoly I could get from Statecraft trumps the entirety of the Artistry tree besides the opener and Humanism.

I hope people can at least rally behind swapping out the archaeology bonuses to something immediately useful though. It's just silly to have 3 bonuses to a feature locked behind the late Industrial era in a Medieval era tree. It's like if an Ancient era tree had 3 distinct buffs to Customs Houses or something.

 

[azum4roll]

It's weak when picked in Medieval and strong when picked in Industrial. Which makes it NOT a proper Medieval tree.

 

[hokath]

It's just silly to have 3 bonuses to a feature locked behind the late Industrial era in a Medieval era tree.

Yes I agree. It's made worse by the fact that if you are indeed going for culture, you are likely to finish the tree even faster compared to obtaining Archaeologists.

 

[Amadhe]

Perhaps Imperialism should be a Medieval Tree and Artistry an Industrial One? Imperialism didn’t start in the Industrial Era, it was going on for centuries before then. Meanwhile while the Renaissance had many arts, but so did the Industrial Era. It could fit in both.