Yeah, it's the interaction I was thinking about. The 10 society "stats" were very impactful, and you would indeed need to balance them, often compensating for the negatives of one with the other. Each faction had a set of base stats which made this play somewhat differently for each, and the stats could be impacted by wonders, or even by buildings locally. Each choice had a very clear meaning and flavour, which again impacted your relationships with other factions, who usually had strong feelings about one or more of your choices. Something like
"Planned Economy
+ 2 Growth
+ 1 Industry
- 2 Efficiency"
...both is and feels a lot more meaningful than something like
"Ilkum
+ 30% production towards Builders".
This is something I generally dislike about Civ 6: there are a lot of choices (well over 100 of those policy cards for example), but it tends to add micro-management rather than depth or flavour.
The point is that a general +industry, +morale, +research is just cooler than a conditional "your units are better on hills" or "you get +1 production on pastures".
Having ++industry transforms the entire game. If I have a general ++morale, I can say "hey, I'm a cool warrior civ, all my units are elite". If I have ++research I'm the cool science civ.
Having +1 production on pastures feels lackluster.
Well, I assume "Planned" economy in terms of flavour is clear for most people? In game, you will be criticised by the proponents of other models such as "Free Market", and praised by those with collectivist tendencies.
In terms of the gameplay effects, when I say *meaningful*, I don't mean that the effects are *obvious* to someone who hasn't played the game, or read about its systems. When I say "meaningful", I mean that it has significant impact on the game. If you look at the screenshot BackseatTyrant posted, you will see that your faction has a score for each of the "Society" aspects. These are your "stats", and they are the sum of your faction abilities, social engineering choices, and bonuses from things like wonders. The effects for the three I mentioned, Growth, Industry, and Efficiency, are as follows:
Spoiler:
GROWTH
Growth affects your population growth rate. The higher your score, the fewer nutrients your bases will need to grow.
-3, Near-Zero Population Growth
-2, -20% growth rate
-1, -10% growth rate
0, Normal growth rate
1, +10% growth rate
2, +20% growth rate
3, +30% growth rate
4, +40% growth rate
5, +50% growth rate!
6, Population Boom!!
INDUSTRY
Industry represents your manufacturing strength. A high score reduces the number of Minerals required to build units and facilities.
-3, Mineral costs increased by 30%
-2, Mineral costs increased by 20%
-1, Mineral costs increased by 10%
0, Normal production rate
1, Mineral costs decreased by 10%
2, Mineral costs decreased by 20%
3, Mineral costs decreased by 30%!
4, Mineral costs decreased by 40%!!
5, Mineral costs decreased by 50%!!!
EFFICENCY
Efficiency represents your society's ability to function without waste and mismanagement. If this value falls too low, your bases will begin to lose energy to inefficiency.
-4, ECONOMIC PARALYSIS
-3, Murderous inefficiency
-2, Appalling inefficiency
-1, Gross inefficiency
0, High inefficiency
1, Reasonable efficiency
2, Commendable efficiency
3, Exemplary efficiency!
4, PARADIGM ECONOMY!!
These are significant effects, and your choice of policies will be a major factor in how successful you are, as well as having diplomatic consequences. Note that these three in particular are all mostly economy-related. Other stats affect things like how many units you can support, whether native life forms will be more or less hostile, how vulnerable you are to espionage, and so on.
Now, to go back to "Ilkum". First, I need to google it to find out what it is...okay, it was some kind of peacetime "conscription" in ancient Babylon, where you did labour instead of murdering. Fine, it makes sense, but it is hardly something most people will know. As for the gameplay effects, + 30% production towards Builders, means that my 7 production city will turn out 9.1 production when hard-building Builders, which means that they are completed in 5.5 turns instead of 7.1. So making this one specific thing takes 77% of the time it usually does. I mean...it's not nothing, but definitely a small reward, and in order to use it effectively, you also need to get the timing right. Every turn you are not producing Builders while this is slotted in, it's a lost opportunity to use one of the other cards available, like God King, which gives you +1 gold and +1 faith in the capital. At least I understand what that one means without googling it.
Some cards are better and some are worse, but in sum, I feel like it's a a lot of very small effects which are fiddly to time and calculate. It's tedious to me, and I don't get any sense of flavour from it.
In comparison, my faction in SMAC which is a Police State with a Green economy, values Knowledge, and has started using Cybernetic enhancements...I have a sense of what kind of society that is.
Well, I assume "Planned" economy in terms of flavour is clear for most people? In game, you will be criticised by the proponents of other models such as "Free Market", and praised by those with collectivist tendencies.
In terms of the gameplay effects, when I say *meaningful*, I don't mean that the effects are *obvious* to someone who hasn't played the game, or read about its systems. When I say "meaningful", I mean that it has significant impact on the game. If you look at the screenshot BackseatTyrant posted, you will see that your faction has a score for each of the "Society" aspects. These are your "stats", and they are the sum of your faction abilities, social engineering choices, and bonuses from things like wonders. The effects for the three I mentioned, Growth, Industry, and Efficiency, are as follows:
Spoiler:
GROWTH
Growth affects your population growth rate. The higher your score, the fewer nutrients your bases will need to grow.
-3, Near-Zero Population Growth
-2, -20% growth rate
-1, -10% growth rate
0, Normal growth rate
1, +10% growth rate
2, +20% growth rate
3, +30% growth rate
4, +40% growth rate
5, +50% growth rate!
6, Population Boom!!
INDUSTRY
Industry represents your manufacturing strength. A high score reduces the number of Minerals required to build units and facilities.
-3, Mineral costs increased by 30%
-2, Mineral costs increased by 20%
-1, Mineral costs increased by 10%
0, Normal production rate
1, Mineral costs decreased by 10%
2, Mineral costs decreased by 20%
3, Mineral costs decreased by 30%!
4, Mineral costs decreased by 40%!!
5, Mineral costs decreased by 50%!!!
EFFICENCY
Efficiency represents your society's ability to function without waste and mismanagement. If this value falls too low, your bases will begin to lose energy to inefficiency.
-4, ECONOMIC PARALYSIS
-3, Murderous inefficiency
-2, Appalling inefficiency
-1, Gross inefficiency
0, High inefficiency
1, Reasonable efficiency
2, Commendable efficiency
3, Exemplary efficiency!
4, PARADIGM ECONOMY!!
These are significant effects, and your choice of policies will be a major factor in how successful you are, as well as having diplomatic consequences. Note that these three in particular are all mostly economy-related. Other stats affect things like how many units you can support, whether native life forms will be more or less hostile, how vulnerable you are to espionage, and so on.
Now, to go back to "Ilkum". First, I need to google it to find out what it is...okay, it was some kind of peacetime "conscription" in ancient Babylon, where you did labour instead of murdering. Fine, it makes sense, but it is hardly something most people will know. As for the gameplay effects, + 30% production towards Builders, means that my 7 production city will turn out 9.1 production when hard-building Builders, which means that they are completed in 5.5 turns instead of 7.1. So making this one specific thing takes 77% of the time it usually does. I mean...it's not nothing, but definitely a small reward, and in order to use it effectively, you also need to get the timing right. Every turn you are not producing Builders while this is slotted in, it's a lost opportunity to use one of the other cards available, like God King, which gives you +1 gold and +1 faith in the capital. At least I understand what that one means without googling it.
Some cards are better and some are worse, but in sum, I feel like it's a a lot of very small effects which are fiddly to time and calculate. It's tedious to me, and I don't get any sense of flavour from it.
In comparison, my faction in SMAC which is a Police State with a Green economy, values Knowledge, and has started using Cybernetic enhancements...I have a sense of what kind of society that is.
Yeah, I mean, the civ 6 policy card names mean nothing. There was never a time when I had Triangular Trade slotted in where I thought to myself "my economy is running on slaves" or that I should somehow send trade routes to a different civ to maintain the "triangle". Sure, obviously if you have Trade Confederation (bonus to international trade routes) I would gear my routes that way to maximize, but it doesn't really add any "flavour" to my empire other than how I allocate those routes.
I go back and forth sometimes on how they work. I do think the SMAC style setup is hard to balance, to avoid some combinations just being too dominant at times. And since the bonus structure ends up being very global, sometimes it gets a little impersonal. Like despite the arguments above, I really like the pantheon style "+1 production from pastures" type of bonuses, because it does give a little personality. In a lot of cases I don't think it goes far enough - I'd love some setup where if I see a couple deer tiles near each other, I'm racing to get to that spot because my bonuses are geared towards that. Sometimes the flat bonuses like +1 production per city or whatever just give you a bonus without really altering how you approach the game.
Like in civ 6 terms, if the policy cards were (more) permanent and didn't let you slot competing options, for example, you have a real decision on whether you want bonus production to melee units, bonus production to cavalry units, or reduced maintenance cost, for example. Or if I have to choose between bonus campus adjacency vs bonus industrial zone adjacency, suddenly what choice you make to that might have a deeper impact on how you slot things in later in your empire.
I like the idea of having policy cards, but I dislike having them lock and unlock.
First, you can change policies at any time. That is a major plus. No more, “whoops, I forgot.”
Second, policies cost something in terms of yields. Gold, production, faith, science, culture, happiness, etc. That is a definite move toward realism. It simulates taxation. You want troops faster? Gold! Production! It would also mean that policies must be affordable for you before you can slot them.
Third, policies have custom penalties and/or bonuses for removal, insertion, or both. Whenever change occurs, the people react. The reaction should be reasonable for the circumstances and the number of turns that they last must make sense for the policy.
The circumstances that can change all of the specific bonuses or penalties for insertion and removal, as well as the costs for running the policy card could be the kind of government or being at war or peace. That is two major circumstances, but the policies cards themselves could reflect the specifics and the circumstances affecting the changes to policy could be on the back of the card or something. Then cards could be affected by customized circumstances. Or just make the card bigger to fit the information.
Now, this will make each policy quite a bit more impactful, and it might make sense for policies to be more complex as governments become more sophisticated. A modern two party democracy like America might only have policies that look like a compromise between opposing parties in peacetime but look more agreeable when a defensive war begins. Different types of governments would be able to, for example, gear up for war, but a policy card for a tyrannical dictatorship would look different than a modern democracy.
Of course, the above scheme assumes that you choose a government type first and then select from policies tailored to that government type. There could be a scheme that attaches points to a policy card like, 3 points dictatorial, 2 points tyrannical, -3 points democratic, and so on for every government type or flavor, then your government is a reflection of the point tally across your policies. Then when you change a policy, you could see changes to the total costs of your policy spread. For example, multiple tyrannical cards might be multiplicative in cost to happiness derived from personal liberty. (assuming happiness is a type or multiple types of yields).
In the above scheme then, you could have a variety of policies pertaining to war and the ones you slot determine the flavor of government you have. A radical shift in government flavor might could make the reaction of the population more pronounced. It would require a lot of thought and experimentation to flesh the system out.
I hope the bottom line is that the necessity of changing policies often for smaller effects is reduced and instead your policy changes would affect the development and direction of the whole empire more deeply. Not to say there can’t be ways to tweak a government. So for example, some policy cards could major, and others minor, so that slotting a major policy could grant a various number of minor policy card slots.
So, in such a vision, perhaps you have a generalized statement about the penalties, costs, and bonuses of a policy on the policy card, but you put the exact total costs, a list the exact penalties and bonuses as a whole result at the bottom. Not sure if that would be likable but it would be easier to see the effects of your policy decisions if the result were compositional. Perhaps, at least the yield costs should be broken down exactly on each card and if there is any compounding costs they are listed in a totals section at the bottom.
There was never a time when I had Triangular Trade slotted in where I thought to myself "my economy is running on slaves" or that I should somehow send trade routes to a different civ to maintain the "triangle".
Slavery is by no means necessary for triangular trade. The most (in)famous triangular trade did include them, yes, but for example Dutch merchants made a lot of money with triangular trade with the Baltic, which had... I want to say wood, grain and wool as the three goods, but I'm not entirely sure, in particular about the third one. (this was also far more lucrative than the more-famous West and East India trading by the way, despite the limited attention it received)
You know, there's something to be said about not having a government system at all in the first place. That politics should be 100% informed through the player's actions, and that the idea of ideology influencing diplomatic relations (which is what I have always assumed was the original purpose of implementing the governments in Civ 1) only applied to a specific region of a very specific time frame (i.e. the Global North during the mid-to-late 20th century)
Slavery is by no means necessary for triangular trade. The most (in)famous triangular trade did include them, yes, but for example Dutch merchants made a lot of money with triangular trade with the Baltic, which had... I want to say wood, grain and wool as the three goods, but I'm not entirely sure, in particular about the third one. (this was also far more lucrative than the more-famous West and East India trading by the way, despite the limited attention it received)
Yeah, that was the second point in my example. But the point still stands, you can slot in the Triangular Trade card and get a big gold boost despite not actually trading with multiple people. Or actually without even having an internal trade route at all.
Yeah, that was the second point in my example. But the point still stands, you can slot in the Triangular Trade card and get a big gold boost despite not actually trading with multiple people. Or actually without even having an internal trade route at all.
Yeah, I feel the actual bonus from Triangular Trade should be more like getting a bonus from sending a trade route each to two foreign cities that are of different civilizations and already have a trade route active between each other
Yeah, that was the second point in my example. But the point still stands, you can slot in the Triangular Trade card and get a big gold boost despite not actually trading with multiple people. Or actually without even having an internal trade route at all.
Who you are trading with and what you are trading, being the middle man sending trade routes between two civs, trading with someone who is a war, preventing trading from someone who you are war with... There's so many ways to add to trading.
In comparison, my faction in SMAC which is a Police State with a Green economy, values Knowledge, and has started using Cybernetic enhancements...I have a sense of what kind of society that is.
Yeah, that was the second point in my example. But the point still stands, you can slot in the Triangular Trade card and get a big gold boost despite not actually trading with multiple people. Or actually without even having an internal trade route at all.
Not a bad guess based on those choices, but no, not usually, I was just picking at random there. Check out my avatar to see my main faction. 2nd and 3rd for me among the vanilla factions would probably be Gaia's Stepdaughters and Peacekeeping Forces.
Not a bad guess based on those choices, but no, not usually, I was just picking at random there. Check out my avatar to see my main faction. 2nd and 3rd for me among the vanilla factions would probably be Gaia's Stepdaughters and Peacekeeping Forces.
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Check out my avatar to see my main faction. 2nd and 3rd for me among the vanilla factions would probably be Gaia's Stepdaughters and Peacekeeping Forces.
