I think the civic system has huge potential and I was really looking forward to a choice every time I got the popup during Victor. Some had smaller effects and some had stronger; they felt most exciting when I could make a game changing decision, like attaching outposts for money instead of influence or being able to trade when at war. Like others, I also felt I had a surplus of unused points and that felt like a waste (in addition to making the Ming LT completely irrelevant). I personally would find it more fun if they were rarer, powerful and unique, so we'd be looking forward to getting a point instead of just getting one every 6 turns (Examples of powerful choices could be: Military units gain extra combat strength or movement but now cost an inital money cost in addition to industry; 25% reduced unit industry cost but a city can only produce 1 unit per turn max; spend influence to temporarily decrease enemy units combat strength or movement points). In my opinion, you should not be able to take every civic available to you, which would make them more unique. My take would be:

1. Civic points are gained at a very slow pace, but you gain a 'base' rate of one point every time you move an era, symbolizing your cultural growth and making a quick era upmove a little more rewarding. At low stability you barely gain any points, high stability increases rate to one point every 25-30 turns. Additional effects, like the Ming LT, or a religious tenet etc. can increase this rate. This implementation allows for low stability strategies where players can still grab a few critical civics they really want, while still rewarding high stability plays. In addition, other increases in civic gains become more relevant; it opens up the design space a little.
2. At highest stability civic points gain rate, a player should not able to take more than 60% of the civics available to them. Civics should pop up more often than getting points. 100% should only be achievable if you stack strategize for it (Ming LT + some specific EQ + a religious tenet etc) and that might not even be an optimal strategy because not every civic will be relevant to your current strategy.
3. Each civic choice should offer 2 powerful options at the time of taking. That means civics available early in the playthrough can be weaker (e.g. 5 influence per plaza) than later ones, but ideally they'd scale into the later game. Options that are independent of timing (trade during war, percentage based cost discounts) automatically avoid this issue.
4. I love the fact that they pop up dynamically and depending on your play. Ideally, there would be a small hint for each one to not leave players completely in the dark (e.g. This civic governs how professional you want your army to be. You don't have enough experiences with true warfare to codify this into law.)
5. Civics affecting your ideologies is a great idea. Since they're more unique in this implementation, the effect on the sliders should be increased.
6. Civics should cover options in a wide spectrum of game mechanics (they already do in Victor, but I'm stating it for completionist sake)

I dont like civics - already discussed on a dedciated thread so will not go into the detail

Specifically in my last playthrough I got the final religion edict synergy from another culture: both options seems to have eliminated my control and benefits from religion

Not sure I was reading it right but seems like that edict eliminated one of the games functions there, and not even by the players choice... this is suboptimal

Another specific finding I had during this build is that I usualyl had more civic points then meaningful civics to spend them on. Some like the pillaging one or the ones gviing production bonus didnt seem worth investing in. Additional influence is good in Ancient Era but got plenty of influence afterwards

The edict that I did enjoy would give a function to boost stability for money and I also enjoyed the state atheism choise in theory - too bad it seemed like detrimental choice altogether as it strips away the bonuses from your religion?

Still suggest for each edict to be a game function/mechanic activation or alteration not modifiers and to have them less structured and on a signle edic screen instad of multiple nested windows.

Its just not that important and its main goal should be not to be anoying

ellebae wrote:

Irreligion's effects (regardless of the choice chosen) doesn't seem to be clear enough, i.e. spending a point in that choice will irreversibly lock you out of religion for the rest of the game.

Or more simply, not making a choice should be highlighted as a valid choice.

I second this whole heartedly. I didn't really get the gist of the text and then nearly all wonders and stuff I'd built upon had become useless. Even though it gives you back two or three civic points there are a very limited set as it is meaning I got stomped because I didn't have much of a recovery path. Going to post on the other civics in a bit on a full reply, but this one in particular was extremely troublesome.

I do agree with some of the comments that making some of the civic choices have more power and getting points less often would be a good thing. I did like how the sliders affected how you related to other empires and independent peoples.

I didn't actually try out irreligion because I was way too powerful with my religion, but maybe make the options convert your faith to something else? For instance, make faith become influence at a 4 to 1 ratio or science at 2 to 1?

Civics choice seems inconsequential. If it is, then they are underpowered, if not then that info is not correctly communicated to the user. I would think it's a bit of both. Civ lets you slot civics in and out so you have definitive trade-offs when selecting civics, and also limits the choice based on government type - not saying to do that, but there is no "government type" or civic choice really that lets me create a government I want (either for min/max or roleplaying purposes) and the system just comes off feeling like an afterthough. 

As a bunch of people here have mentioned, the Irreligion civic doesn't make any sense and comes way too early, actual atheist cultures never really existed that early and were more a consequence of politics. 

I agree that early civics with +5 influence on city and -20% cost of attachment are too stronng to pick another one. The rest of the civics seemed not impactfull enough to do a real choise.

Sliders are pretty good for me.

I really liked how sweeping some civic's effects were (e.g. artistic expression, propaganda). This made the civics really feel like they mattered and reflected truly impactful historical forces.

I did not feel like just maxing out each ideology was the way to play. This was because of the smart choice to not just make the spectrum a continuum (e.g. +10% gold // +5% gold // 0 // +5% food // +10% food), but to have qualitatively distinct sublevels with different income types and effects. Good improvements since Lucy. I think a very interesting possibility for the future would be to put a big bonus as well as a big malus at each ideological extreme, to reflect their extremity. This would make it even more appealing not to just max out but to weigh the trade-offs against more balanced ideology.

Lastly, wanted to point out that Homeland vs. World's effects seem boring (food income) but also unbalanced (alliance # is far more difficult to achieve than fixed bonus - is the bonus per alliance very big to compensate?). On this point, I think it would be appropriate if Homeland negatively affected trade incomes while boosting local incomes (from luxuries for instance) whereas World boosted trade incomes. Alternatively, maybe Homeland could increase trespassing attrition in home territory and/or slow down influence conversion, whereas world could increase influence conversion of other territories.

Satur9NL wrote:

Lastly, wanted to point out that Homeland vs. World's effects seem boring (food income) but also unbalanced (alliance # is far more difficult to achieve than fixed bonus - is the bonus per alliance very big to compensate?). On this point, I think it would be appropriate if Homeland negatively affected trade incomes while boosting local incomes (from luxuries for instance) whereas World boosted trade incomes. Alternatively, maybe Homeland could increase trespassing attrition in home territory and/or slow down influence conversion, whereas world could increase influence conversion of other territories.

Good suggestions re Homeland vs World.  This axis currently very boring and could use some spicing up.

Marmot wrote:

I really like the sliders on the civics and how it shapes the society. It's creative and can tell as story over time. In my opinion, the sliders are too low impact though. Even the most extreme giving a moderate bonus and no drawbacks (aside from stability, but that's the same for all the extremes). I feel like we'll get a meta for the "best society" and just always have the same ones for most playstyles, especially because some of the ends of the sliders seem pretty useless. I might just be because I don't yet know the game well, but +4 turns before conversion for Authority seems pretty insignificant. I'm worried its on purpose because of pressure to make modern Western government styles clearly superior in all scenarios except something super niche with a negative connotation, like hyper-aggressive military domination or all-in on a religious society, but we've seen that before and its pretty boring for gameplay. Balancing them fairly is way more fun, even if some worked out better than others irl.

Also, I think it'd be really interesting if earning a civic point also occasionally earns a civic refund (so we can change previous civics to another policy). It'd make it more interesting to be able to redo some critical civics after some time in response to what other players are doing just to give some more back and forth to the social gameplay.

I don't think it have anything to do with real world society. Liberity is not that useful either. I would suggest changing them so that authoritarian give more stability from commons quarters, while liberity give more influence.

On civics, while I know the Religion bonuses are way too strong and  should be reduced, I think the Irreligion civic should have more bonuses. You're losing several nice bonuses by picking either secularism or state atheism, I think those civics should compensate you well to make up for it.

Now that OpenDev is nearly over, here are some thoughts that I had about civics in my playthroughs.

1. Some of the civics are a bit off era-wise. For instance, you can get irreligion in the classical era, and you can get the private/public industry civic in the medieval era. In real life these happened during the industrial era.

2. Speaking of which, it weird to get stuck in autarchy during the early modern period. It's hard to get to the more advance political tiers beyond small council/autarchy, and I've only reached the level 2 tiers on random occasion.

I like the general concept of civics, but I don't feel like I got them fast enough.  Specifically, on my first playthrough (which was science/influence focused), I ended with 6 unspent civics points.  I only had 1 civic option I had not chosen, and it was Irreligion.  Given that it's major bonus seems to be a refund of your points, this was clearly not a good idea for me.  My second playthrough (where I focused on industry) seemed to have a much better pacing of civics.  It's possible that this is just an area where I over-produced influence on my first go around, but that ended up punishing me for doing so.  Maybe even if you could just generically spend civics points to adjust your ideologies with no other effect, that would have given me something to use my unspent points for.

On to ideologies, I like the idea overall.  However, it quickly became a balancing act where I tried to keep in the middle most of the time to provide stability for all of my cities.  The stability bonus feels like it heavily outweighed any other bonuses.  I haven't done the math, but each major step towards an extreme results in effectively enough stability for at least one district (maybe more if you have reduced stability costs overall).  That means instead of getting +5% research, I could just build a research district and stay neutral.  In the end, this may balance well for optimization, but it never felt like a good choice to go to one extreme over another (unless your stability was excessively high).

Goodluck wrote:

Marmot wrote:

I might just be because I don't yet know the game well, but +4 turns before conversion for Authority seems pretty insignificant. I'm worried its on purpose because of pressure to make modern Western government styles clearly superior in all scenarios except something super niche with a negative connotation, like hyper-aggressive military domination or all-in on a religious society, but we've seen that before and its pretty boring for gameplay. Balancing them fairly is way more fun, even if some worked out better than others irl.

I don't think it have anything to do with real world society. Liberity is not that useful either. I would suggest changing them so that authoritarian give more stability from commons quarters, while liberity give more influence.

Could just be a coincidence, but there is pressure to make it that way. Liberty is at least a minor boost to a needed resource. That's helpful regardless of strategy, whereas +4 turns before conversion seems like it'd be very inconsistent and only useful in niche scenarios. The choice is so obvious that I assumed it must've been on purpose.

I very much like the idea of Civics and the foundation of the system.  However, I think some of the choices require some more balance and clarity.  As has been stated previously I think there should be at least hints somewhere on the Civics tree for Civics that have not been unlocked yet.  Many of the popups seem completely random and it would be better to be able to work toward Civics and have an idea what it could do for your empire so you could strategize and build toward unlocking a potentially powerful bonus.  

Also, in general in my 3 playthroughs of this OpenDev I found myself picking the same Civics almost every time.  There was almost always one I found was clearly a more powerful bonus or an axis I much preferred going down.  Here are a few examples I can remember.

+5 Influence vs. +5 Faith early is a no-brainer, most of the time.  +5 Influence in the early game is a lot and does so much for expanding your empire in the Ancient Era.  And Faith as a resource in general is quite obfuscated and difficult to tell what it does and how valuable it is.

Legitimacy - Also a no-brainer, Celebrating in new cities is so bad compared to 20% reduction in outpost attachment cost.

Army Wages - I don't like this Civic in general, neither option seems good, maybe cause I don't do a lot of ransacking, but still it's an underwhelming Civic IMO.

Press Freedom - I never had trouble with Stability and Revolution, so another no-brainer for 20% Civics points.

Land Rights - The text for "Inherited Land", states "Allow" use of money instead of Influence.  This implies you will be given a choice once this Civic is enacted, but instead you are only allowed to use gold for outposts and cities when enacting this Civic.  I'm not sure which is intended, but the wording is ambiguous.

Slaves is a potentially touchy subject and while historically accurate you may want to alter the choice her to Slaves vs. No Slaves or at least give an option for the player to dismiss this option entirely.

Irreligion is a potentially frustrating Civic and needs to be more clear that you will lose your Religion and all the bonuses that come with it should you pick it.  And as such the bonuses for this Civic should be quite powerful.  I never wanted to take this Civic in my playthroughs because my Religion was always so strong.

As far as the ideologies go I found that Progress, Liberty, and Homeland are generally what I leaned toward and found those choices and bonuses more powerful.  Collectivism vs. Individualism I think is fine.

Civics are my favorite part of the game I think. Balancing the civic choices with the ideologies is just a really engaging part of the game. Obviously we didn't have access to every single civic in the open dev, but I would have liked to see a few more unique abilities from civics. For example, the procession ability (pay money to increase stability) and the ability to attach regions with money were both really cool abilities that made civics feel really impactful, so a few more like that would have been great. Also, I felt that some of the ideology bonuses were not super interesting. For example, homeland and world both just give bonuses to food, so there didn't seem much of a reason (to me) to go for one over the other.