Virtues and Rising Tide

[Aluminum Elite Master]

From everything I've seen thus far on RT, it looks like Virtues are largely going to be unchanged. Maybe some balance tweaks will come about as part of a general patch, but RT itself doesn't look like it's adding any virtues or making significant changes to that system.

Right away, this is a bit disappointing... even *vanilla Civ V* had more social policy trees than BE has virtue trees. But let's consider a few more points beyond just a comparison to Civ V:

• First of all, why not add to the virtue system in a general sense? It's a system that has some nice changes from Civ V, but it just needs to be fleshed out more.
  
  
• Secondly, though, why not add a virtue tree for the new diplo points mechanic? Why not add a virtue tree specific to aquatic combat and cities? In other words: even if you don't flesh out what's already there from the base game, you could still add a tree or two to compliment the new mechanics RT is adding.
  
  
• And lastly: you could even just split existing trees and fill in some pieces to make new ones... wouldn't be that much work. I mean, I sort of understand the Industry tree, since it's both energy and production (makes sense, basically gold and hammers, which both can be used to get units and buildings). But I don't understand the Knowledge tree as well... science and culture rolled into one tree seems strange, and why not split this tree into *just science* and *just culture*... make two new trees with the existing parts of it, and then fill in gaps.

I guess the bigger point I'm trying to make is that, unless I've missed a video or crucial info blurb here or there, RT looks like a decent expansion yet is sort of omitting any change to the virtue system, which is weird given that new mechanics are being brought in. G&K, which added religion to Civ V, re-worked the social policy trees in a sensible fashion, yet RT isn't adding any virtue trees for the new diplo-point system or anything else.

It really hit me how strange this is when I watched the 'first 100 turns of RT' video on PCGamer's site... it just sank in when I saw that, despite some sizable changes, RT didn't even touch the virtue system.

Thoughts? I haven't seen too much mention of virtues and RT yet, so I'm curious if there's some bit of info I missed.

[SamBC]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the virtue system. It works differently from socpols in Civ5, each tree has far more virtues in the Civ5's policies per tree, so a straight numerical comparison isn't reasonable. Plus, a tree covering more than one gameplay mechanic is good in my view. Especially as you can pick your way through it, often leaving aside policies you aren't interested in.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by SamBC:

I don't think there's anything wrong with the virtue system. It works differently from socpols in Civ5, each tree has far more virtues in the Civ5's policies per tree, so a straight numerical comparison isn't reasonable. Plus, a tree covering more than one gameplay mechanic is good in my view. Especially as you can pick your way through it, often leaving aside policies you aren't interested in.

I actually somewhat agree with this. And yes, these trees are indeed bigger.

But I do sort of still have an issue with only having 4 trees (even if they are twice as large as a social policy tree in Civ V). The issue with only having 4 is that it means you end up only having 4 themes to put policies in... so weird stuff gets thrown in sometimes, like the affinity level bonus in Might, which doesn't really fit *anywhere* in some ways.

Civ:BE vanilla, though, I do agree does okay in the virtue area despite some flaws. But *Rising Tide* not adding anything for virtues, like I said in the original post, seems strange given that it does add some new mechanics to play with.

That said, I clearly don't know exactly how the new personality traits will affect some of the new systems (especially the diplomatic points thing), so maybe those traits will deal with a lot of the new mechanics.

[Llamedos]

more like three times the size plus synergy bonuses

Originally posted by Field Marshal Sad Keanu:

But I do sort of still have an issue with only having 4 trees (even if they are twice as large as a social policy tree in Civ V).

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Commodore Dannerson:

more like three times the size plus synergy bonuses

Originally posted by Field Marshal Sad Keanu:

But I do sort of still have an issue with only having 4 trees (even if they are twice as large as a social policy tree in Civ V).

Well, considering ideologies as part of the social policy tree, it's probably more like 2.333... times the size, since the 3 ideologies were rather large. Only if you remove BNW would it be more like 3x the size.

Synergy bonuses are not actual policies... you don't pick them, you just pick enough policies to get them. So, I don't really count them as policies per-se. Even if you do count them, filling out social policy trees in Civ V also gave some perks/buffs, a few of which were fairly major.

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Again, I'm not trying to be overly critical of virtues as they exist in the vanilla game we all are playing at the moment, but I'm more just commenting that I'm a bit surprised RT isn't adding a tree or two.

[Ryika]

Civ 5 Vanilla has 50 Policies.
Civ 5 BNW has 45 Policies + 42 Ideology Policies.

Beyond Earth has 60 Virtues. (And Synergy Bonuses that are barely pursued actively)

The argument the devs gave for why they haven't overhauled the Virtue tree is that they didn't want to screw over the balance. Of course, anyone who actually played the game more than by just randomly clicking stuff, knows that there is no balance to be found in the virtue trees to begin with. Industry and Prosperity dominate the field (with Industry being the better one, although inexperienced players still claim that Prosperity is the way to go :p).

The more realistic answer is that they probably don't have enough people to do a proper job at overhauling everything that "needs" to be overhauled (or that the team just works too inefficient), so they decided to focus on the most important aspects that the majority of players cares about.

Still, the new diplomacy system overlaps a lot with the virtue trees, so although it's still the same old virtues the amount of strategies that one can choose to play should increase by a lot. That does of course not change the fact that there's a lot of lost potential to include the new mechanics into the virtue trees, but at least it still shakes things up a bit.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Civ 5 Vanilla has 50 Policies.
Civ 5 BNW has 45 Policies + 42 Ideology Policies.

Beyond Earth has 60 Virtues. (And Synergy Bonuses that are barely pursued actively)

The argument the devs gave for why they haven't overhauled the Virtue tree is that they didn't want to screw over the balance. Of course, anyone who actually played the game more than by just randomly clicking stuff, knows that there is no balance to be found in the virtue trees to begin with. Industry and Prosperity dominate the field (with Industry being the better one, although inexperienced players still claim that Prosperity is the way to go :p).

The more realistic answer is that they probably don't have enough people to do a proper job at overhauling everything that "needs" to be overhauled (or that the team just works too inefficient), so they decided to focus on the most important aspects that the majority of players cares about.

Still, the new diplomacy system overlaps a lot with the virtue trees, so although it's still the same old virtues the amount of strategies that one can choose to play should increase by a lot. That does of course not change the fact that there's a lot of lost potential to include the new mechanics into the virtue trees, but at least it still shakes things up a bit.

This.

And the problem of balance is indeed big enough that they may as well tweak some Virtue stuff with RT... couldn't make it too much worse.

I mean, I usually dip into Prosperity for that early settler, then usually immediately go Industry (or rarely Knowledge, depending). I've almost never, ever, gone into Might until the game was already well in-hand. Might has some of the worst policies (like capturing an outpost and making it your own... way too situational).

And I myself wrote above that the new diplo mechanics and personality traits you can buy probably do, as the quote says, help to deal with some of the flaws in the virtue trees.

But I definitely think that it's a bit of an excuse to claim that game balance would be too drastically affected by toying with virtues... especially because it's very true that Prosperity and Industry tend to dominate, with Might being pretty rare indeed.

And like I keep saying: why not add a tree that does something with the new aquatic gameplay? Could have a Maritime-style tree that provides naval combat boosts, or bonuses to ocean tile yields, etc.

Just a bit of a disappointment (and perhaps something omitted because they plan to do more with Virtue in a 2nd expansion already).

[WarMonkey]

The real answer is that they are probably saving it for the 2nd expansion. :)

If Rising Tide sells well enough, there probably will be another expansion just like Civ 5 had. So, they want to save some of the features for it. Here are my candidates for changes:
- Virtues
- Orbital Layer
- Victory conditions
- Stations
- Also, I think we'll see actual Alien Factions aka the Progenitors. That's what we saw in the Alpha Centauri expansion, and it was super cool. :)
I'm curious if my predictions will come true or not.