New Civic: Scriptoria

[evilcat]

Description:
Your Priest, High Priests, Death Chronicers, t are all produce additional +2 Physics Science and +2 Engineering Science
This jobs consume +1 consumer good

Must be some form of Spiritualist
Cant be Exalted Priestshood Civic
Cant be Fanatic Purifiers

Fluff: Your civilization believes that all creation is works of wonder, and it is purpose of the believers to study it and name all the things for the glory of god. Learning about reality you understand gods will. Monks in your temples dedicate their life to copy ancient books and sometimes even brew beer.

Background: In euro medival history monks coping ancient text ware a thing. In XIX c Euroe protestant schools was big factor in promoting literacy.

Why: Spiritualist deserve some content. If there was more content specific for spiritualist maybe someone will play them.
This could be also be a step towards players have some saying on what kind of spiritualist they are playing. Scibes (Scirptoria) High Culture (Exalted Priesthood) battle Monks (future civic) Agralian (Future civic). So there could be a set of mutually excluding civics "what kind of church you have".
We can fulfit ultimate power fantasy of religious people not being anti science.

Variant:
Add +10% anomally discovery chance on science vessals (as spice, priest science is main course)
Why? The Force shall guide us! To make civic more interesting.

There is some choice of which special priest jobs could work, death chronicers maybe yes, but death priest (sacrifize for the blood god) could not fit the theme.

Balance is overareted: +1 consumer good cost is no joke.

Advertasing: You can sneak it into Aquatic DLC, if Aquatic are themed as terraformers it could fit naturalist religioun. Just not portrait lock if you dont have to.

 

[Tamwin5]

Love the idea, but no way do they have the time to sneak brand new content into the Aquatic pack.

I do think this would be a very strong civic, as priest jobs are already decent and this makes them WAY better, but like you said spiritualist deserves cool stuff. I will note however that spiritualist have 3.5 civics, second only behind militarist with 5.5 civics. Comparatively, Materialist and Xenophile only have 1 civic requiring their ethic.

If giving 4 research for 1 extra CG proves too OP, I'd up the extra CG upkeep to 2, then add some additional bonus to balance things out.

 

[evilcat]

Balance is fishy even before aquatic DLC. Some Civics are stronger, but the weak one are not inspiring to take them. Some balance defence:
+ only 3 civic slots, and each good civic increase opportunity cost for rest of meta picks
+ gated civics are harder to combo, especially if you want both unity and science at once
+ you can spam temples if you have civic goods and minerals/trade value... so it is not that easy or cheap
+ Mining Guilds provide +25% of same resource with no cost, here we have +33% but different resource with cost
+ Meritocracy provides +10% for all specialist, with no cost (and extra leader level cap)
+ Master Artificier does a lot of things, and some of them are even useful

To make it more interesting there could be a bonus like +10% Anomally discovery chance, from divine insight. So it will be efficient and effective.

So you say that Materialist are down in civics, maybe it could be fixed like this:

Methodic Explorers
+ 25% survey on science vessels
+ 25% speed of anomally and digsite research
+ 25% Experience gain on leaders
Req. Must be Materialist
Cant be Inward Perfectionist
That is a lot of bonuses but faster survey isnt exacly powerful.

Void Exploitation
+1 resource from space mining and research stations
+ Can build Solar Panels on starbases
+ 2 Starbase limit
Req. Must be Materialist
Cant be Agralian Idyll
It is open question if +1 to Zro would be too OP or enought OP.

Generally if there is problem "We cant have another Spiritualist civic, since Materialist are forgotten" there is a solution to that.

 

[Tamwin5]

Balance is fishy even before aquatic DLC. Some Civics are stronger, but the weak one are not inspiring to take them. Some balance defence:
+ only 3 civic slots, and each good civic increase opportunity cost for rest of meta picks
+ gated civics are harder to combo, especially if you want both unity and science at once
+ you can spam temples if you have civic goods and minerals/trade value... so it is not that easy or cheap
+ Mining Guilds provide +25% of same resource with no cost, here we have +33% but different resource with cost
+ Meritocracy provides +10% for all specialist, with no cost (and extra leader level cap)
+ Master Artificier does a lot of things, and some of them are even useful

To make it more interesting there could be a bonus like +10% Anomally discovery chance, from divine insight. So it will be efficient and effective.

So you say that Materialist are down in civics, maybe it could be fixed like this:

Methodic Explorers
+ 25% survey on science vessels
+ 25% speed of anomally and digsite research
+ 25% Experience gain on leaders
Req. Must be Materialist
Cant be Inward Perfectionist
That is a lot of bonuses but faster survey isnt exacly powerful.

Void Exploitation
+1 resource from space mining and research stations
+ Can build Solar Panels on starbases
+ 2 Starbase limit
Req. Must be Materialist
Cant be Agralian Idyll
It is open question if +1 to Zro would be too OP or enought OP.

Generally if there is problem "We cant have another Spiritualist civic, since Materialist are forgotten" there is a solution to that.

Oh I totally love the idea and would greatly enjoying having it in game, just the phrase "spiritualists deserve some content" (emphasis mine) is what caught be out, since they already have more content then all but one ethic.

I agree that current balance is... not the best. But that's not an excuse for completely ignoring it.

If we compare Scriptorian Priests to Technocracy researchers, both consume 3 CGs and are specialists, so those are even. The priests produce 3 unity, 2 research (of all three), and 5 amenities. The researcher produces 4 research, and one unity. So in exchange for 2 research, you get 2 unity and 5 amenities. Honestly, that might be find. But it still opens up two avenues that I could see it being OP from: The fact that all of your amenity production will give you science, and the ability to unity rush (likely for become the crisis) while still building up tech.

I'm not really sold on Methodic Explorers. Civics should be useful all game, and this one would only be useful early. Void Exploitation seems fine, but I don't really see anything materialist about it.

 

[Reedstilt]

I'm not really sold on Methodic Explorers. Civics should be useful all game, and this one would only be useful early.

While I also generally prefer Civics that are useful all game long, having one that's better in the early game isn't terrible. When you reform to pick your third Civic, you're probably mostly done with this one anyhow so you can just swap it out at that time for something that will be more useful in the back half of the game.

 

[Tamwin5]

While I also generally prefer Civics that are useful all game long, having one that's better in the early game isn't terrible. When you reform to pick your third Civic, you're probably mostly done with this one anyhow so you can just swap it out at that time for something that will be more useful in the back half of the game.

Some civics being better at different stages of the game is fine. Swapping between civics is fine. But civics should never be useless. Even just throwing on something like +50% science from research stations would help, although I don't think that would be enough (not to mention pretty boring as well).