Why not to take Authority 1 always?

bitula

Prince
Joined
Nov 15, 2010
Messages
542
Hi All,
In my last 10 games including latest patch I always went for Authority 1 no matter how I continue. I feel this is not immersive RP-wise. Let me explain:
At least on my typical setting (Deity/Huge/Marathon) there is no point ever to not take Authority 1. Alarm at new barb camps, extra CS vs barb, culture for killing too much to ignore. So even if going tradition it would be 1 A, 6T or whatever, because with the culture kills I can start Tradition in a matter of few turns. Can I propose to move at least the culture bonus to Authority 2/3? This way one would take Authority only if he plans so, and not because it is a must. Or am I missing something? I know that starting on a small island (or tiny map) or disabling barbarians would be an example to not take it, but that is a very minority case.
Other: Where is the thread for the new "VP congress"? I see how-to thread but not the actual ongoing congress thread.
 
The reason is that it delays all other policies too much, because the cost raises very quick.
I don't feel so. At lease the following 4-5 policies are quite quick mainly because of the availability of barbs in addition to whatever other policies offer. Later possibly yes, but not that much it is just +1 policy after all. Actually the case when you take full Authority is well balanced, but if you do not take A1 in general that's not IMO. But maybe this is rather an issue with scaling on marathon/huge settings? Perhaps culture kills needs to be scaled down here?

Edit, I would still suggest to move eg.: culture kill to 2/3. That actually would motivate one to dedicate itself to Authority. Thoughts?
 
In my last 10 games including latest patch I always went for Authority 1
That is your gameplay style. I almost never choose Authority 1 due to the fact that barbs are wiped out very fast from the map ad the beginning of the game and thus there is poor reward from that policy. Instead I always choose Tradition 1 as first policy.
 
That is your gameplay style. I almost never choose Authority 1 due to the fact that barbs are wiped out very fast from the map ad the beginning of the game and thus there is poor reward from that policy. Instead I always choose Tradition 1 as first policy.
OK, seems to be a problem, with marathon/huge settings. Possibly the culture kill should scale with both speed and land size. Not sure how it is now, but with these setting it is a no-brainer to take A1 unfortunately, since barbs are wiped out quite slow...
 
OK, seems to be a problem, with marathon/huge settings. Possibly the culture kill should scale with both speed and land size. Not sure how it is now, but with these setting it is a no-brainer to take A1 unfortunately, since barbs are wiped out quite slow...
I think it is probably the huge map. I play marathon/standard settings & they soon leave the planet in the games I play. I find tradition is far better to build your civilization even if you expand a lot. Authority doesn't seem as great as it once was. Not sure how it all works with this current happiness system though.
 
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Huge maps are three (?) times the size as Standard maps, so they require 3 times the civs and City States for the experience to approach being similar to Standard.
 
I think it is probably the hugh map. I play marathon/standard settings & they soon leave the planet in the games I play. I find tradition is far better to build your civilization even if you expand a lot. Authority doesn't seem as great as it once was. Not sure how it all works with this current happiness system though.
Yes the dominant aspect could be the huge. That with marathon: civs expand so slowly results in lots of empty space spawning barbs well into the renaissance on Continents map. Also I do agree that full Authority is somewhat underwhelming unless you go domination or so. But not Authority 1. That single one is huge boost. Possibly add up more civs, or make the AI more eager to clear barb camps could be a solution, but also a performance issue I guess (the former one, the latter on is rather RP issue). And actually Authority 2 and 3 are underwhelming. So I don't want to nerf here anything just move some feature of A1 to A2 or A3. Or make culture kill scale both with map size and speed. I guess huge maps are not very popular: not everyone has 32G memory like I do :) But I would really be interested if someone plays these four (Diety-Continent-Huge-Marathon) in combo to share his experience: maybe I am just exaggerating things...? Could have been just random unlucky in 10 subsequent games...
 
Authority is just really, really good on Marathon or Epic speeds. I don't think there's really a solution without messing up balance on other game speeds.
 
Playing always Marathon Deity Huge and feel, that it just wasting precious civic slot. Authority 1 not costs you initial culture points for first civic but it costs you culture you need to open next civic every time you have culture to do it. And as civic cost progresses at very high rate dependant on how many civic you have it is no amount of barbarian camps to clear in game to beat this needed culture for new civic.

And because of this i feel that Poland leader bonus extremely OP. From mid- to late-game they already have entire civic tree opened for free. It costs insane amount culture in terms of points needed to open this all civics fairly ( not points needed to expand borders, and not points to protect against enemy tourism, but anyway ) and provide them overall bonuses no other civ have ( Arabia, Korea, Aztecs, Babylon and many others is just poor beggars comparing with Poland bonuses ).
 
Interesting topic because I have the same feeling for Tradition. I always take the tradition opener regardless of how I continue (often authority, never progress). But I play on standard speed.
 
Interesting topic because I have the same feeling for Tradition. I always take the tradition opener regardless of how I continue (often authority, never progress). But I play on standard speed.
I do feel that the tradition opener can make a big difference in obtaining Stonehenge/Pyramids or not, if a couple of goes in it.
 
I think it's good that there is a reason to mix the tree's rather than finishing a tree before moving on.

Having a variety of strategies is a good thing.

However, like other have said, the authority opener holds more appeal on slower game speeds rather than faster ones, because barbarians are a thing longer on the slow speeds.
 
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Playing always Marathon Deity Huge and feel, that it just wasting precious civic slot. Authority 1 not costs you initial culture points for first civic but it costs you culture you need to open next civic every time you have culture to do it. And as civic cost progresses at very high rate dependant on how many civic you have it is no amount of barbarian camps to clear in game to beat this needed culture for new civic.

And because of this i feel that Poland leader bonus extremely OP. From mid- to late-game they already have entire civic tree opened for free. It costs insane amount culture in terms of points needed to open this all civics fairly ( not points needed to expand borders, and not points to protect against enemy tourism, but anyway ) and provide them overall bonuses no other civ have ( Arabia, Korea, Aztecs, Babylon and many others is just poor beggars comparing with Poland bonuses ).
Well after like 5-6 civics it does slow down which is exacerbated by the +1 extra civic. Well yeah it is hard to tell that how much this matters considering you also get gold and xp and you get alerted to new camps so you are prepared for barb attacks. I still think on marathon-huge-continent Authority 1 is OP, but yeah, hard to tell. For Egypt it is clear take because of the additional production from kills, for warlike civs its also clear, but yeah, for peacefull civs it's possibly not that clear. I basically can accept your reasoning because I don't know how to check the +1 extra civic effect on the seemingly exponential growth of civic cost late/mid game (I don't remember significant difference when playing full tradition).
 
Auth 1 on it's own reminds me of that psycological experiment where you offer to hand someone a £5 note on the condition they bet on the flip of a coin. If they win they get to keep the £5 but if they lose they have to hand it back.
You then ask someone to bet on flipping a coin and offer to give them £5 if they win but they lose nothing if they lose.
In both cases you get £5 if you win and zero if you lose but the people with the £5 in their hand would generally not bet as that £5 in their hand can be felt and is theirs so they fear losing it where as the people not given the £5 beforehand were more likely to bet as they felt they had nothing and thus nothing to lose even though the situation was essentially exactly the same for both cases.
The culture from killing barbs is very visible when you have it and thus feels like you are losing something if you don't have it.

Auth 1 is a strong very early game policy but probably more for the 1 production in every city which is huge when cities are small rather than the culture for killing barbarians and it has a long term opportunity cost while becoming increasingly meaningless. It's lifespan can be heavily skewed by the settings used.e.g. if you play a huge marathon map with a lot of space between civs you will get a lot more benefit from it than playing a map where civs are closer together or has more civs as less barbarians will spawn and the AI is more likely to get them when they do.

Even when i take authority as a main tree, by the time i am getting my third or forth policy and policy gain really starts to slow down i find it not worth actively hunting barbs unless they are only a few turns away from my territory as the AI will tend to get there first and also i have to send a significant proportion of my very small army to take it out leaving my territory undefended and i would rather be fighting my neighbours and taking their cities.

Doing some quick excel math based on the only social policy cost calculation i could find https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Mathematics_of_Civilization_V and basing it on 1 city for your first policy, 2 cities for your second policy, 3 cities for your 3rd policy and 4 cities thereafter it will take an extra 2030 culture to finish your first policy tree if you start with Auth 1 then move onto another tree.
Assuming (from memory) 15 culture per kill that is 135 barbarian kills just to break even.

Going to complete the next policy tree, assuming you gain a new city every two policies it will take an extra 11640 culture to finish the second tree which is a lot of barbarian kills to break even.

As a very simple rule which has been proved to be true when i did this, if you look at how much your current policy costs that is how much EXTRA it is costing you simply for taking Auth 1 first.
 
Assuming (from memory) 15 culture per kill that is 135 barbarian kills just to break even.
But it later gets higher depending on how advanced are the barb units. And you get an even larger amount from capturing camps (50 I think?).

as the AI will tend to get there first and also i have to send a significant proportion of my very small army to take

But with a medium sized army you can just run around with 1-2 units per group leaving your main army to defend. And in my experience in 80% of cases they don't get there first.

and 4 cities thereafter it will take an extra 2030 culture to finish your first policy tree

OK, but if you have eg.: 100 per turn culture by that time its only 20 turns not counting barb kills. You maybe wont get that much if you stick to Auth, but picking another one immediately after Auth 1 could do the trick. I don't see how is +1 civic so taxing. At most it delays your progress by -1 civic at midgame or late game. But maybe having a -1 civic at late game a big deal since you delay ideology pick? Don't know. But in the early game even on Diety I can keep pace on civic count with others until sometime renaissance when they start running away. And if I don't pick it I'm already behind them in ancient era.
 
The math can be hard to comprehend and it is a common issue in many games with progress trees where people tend to think the opportunity cost is simply the cost of the first policy you take where as it is the cost of the policy you are currently working towards.

I would suggest starting a game and saving the start. Don't take Auth 1 first and play the game out and then replay it taking Auth 1 noting each turn you gain a social policy to see what difference there is. Even with the advantage of foresight in the second game i would bet on you getting policies later by the mid game and certainly in the later game.
 
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