The only major gripe I've had with Utopia so far are traditions and their linkage to ascendancy. It's not that they are bad, and most traditions are pretty good depending on what you want, my problem is that they really aren't traditions and they railroad your decision making when it comes to ascendancy.
Starting simple: requisite unlocks. There's no good reason to force the player to choose specific traditions before other traditions. First off, it requires one point as an opener so you have to invest before you can pick ANY of the skills. Second, you earn TWO bonuses for finishing a tree so it's already basically forced on you to pick all the traits whether you want them or not. That's plenty of restrictions and incentive to force the player to pick traditions they are less interested in.
A bit more complex: traditions make no sense anyways. A tradition is no less susceptible to change than your civics. I'm fine with these permanent bonuses, but the real crux is they are just that: bonuses. So if you make the trees easier to navigate, I'd also make the argument it shouldn't be generally easy (especially in smaller games) to unlock all of the traditions. Every player should be expected to be able to complete two or three trees, but eventually it should take decades or even centuries for all but the most dedicated cultures to keep adding new ones. We can't have all the civics, so why all the traditions? It's nice having these bonuses that make us a bit different from the groups around us, and I know they inform the way we play, so we should be at least a LITTLE tied to our decisions. The alternative is to max out Unity and then ... I guess replace our buildings with science labs since those never go out of style.
And finally, super complex: ascendancy is tied to tree closure. This makes the above worse because you get not one, but TWO bonuses for finishing a tree. It might as well just ask you what tree you want to complete next and pick traditions for you automatically when you have enough points for all the real choice it gives you. The fact you have a tree and multiple traditions is basically a farce, doing anything other than completing one at a time is a huge disadvantage. When you get down to it, ascendancy should be uncoupled from traditions altogether. Ascendancy is what? It should be a culmination of all the things your society has done to advance: population, technology, infrastructure, traditions and importantly: time. We use these things to compare our might to other species, why not to represent how far our own has come? To my way of thinking the game should treat all of your progress as 'XP' towards ascendancy and those points should be awarded over time. That's a far more complex solution than what we have now, but a major problem with traditions is they are a gatekeeper to ascendancy. Useful or not, the path to maxing out your culture or achieving grand structures is building enough heritage sites when everything you've done should contribute.
TL;DR I like Utopia a lot but traditions just seem far less dynamic than they should given that you are expected to collect them all. They behave like a flattened tech tree and gatekeeper to ascendancy instead of forming areas in which your culture excels.
Starting simple: requisite unlocks. There's no good reason to force the player to choose specific traditions before other traditions. First off, it requires one point as an opener so you have to invest before you can pick ANY of the skills. Second, you earn TWO bonuses for finishing a tree so it's already basically forced on you to pick all the traits whether you want them or not. That's plenty of restrictions and incentive to force the player to pick traditions they are less interested in.
A bit more complex: traditions make no sense anyways. A tradition is no less susceptible to change than your civics. I'm fine with these permanent bonuses, but the real crux is they are just that: bonuses. So if you make the trees easier to navigate, I'd also make the argument it shouldn't be generally easy (especially in smaller games) to unlock all of the traditions. Every player should be expected to be able to complete two or three trees, but eventually it should take decades or even centuries for all but the most dedicated cultures to keep adding new ones. We can't have all the civics, so why all the traditions? It's nice having these bonuses that make us a bit different from the groups around us, and I know they inform the way we play, so we should be at least a LITTLE tied to our decisions. The alternative is to max out Unity and then ... I guess replace our buildings with science labs since those never go out of style.
And finally, super complex: ascendancy is tied to tree closure. This makes the above worse because you get not one, but TWO bonuses for finishing a tree. It might as well just ask you what tree you want to complete next and pick traditions for you automatically when you have enough points for all the real choice it gives you. The fact you have a tree and multiple traditions is basically a farce, doing anything other than completing one at a time is a huge disadvantage. When you get down to it, ascendancy should be uncoupled from traditions altogether. Ascendancy is what? It should be a culmination of all the things your society has done to advance: population, technology, infrastructure, traditions and importantly: time. We use these things to compare our might to other species, why not to represent how far our own has come? To my way of thinking the game should treat all of your progress as 'XP' towards ascendancy and those points should be awarded over time. That's a far more complex solution than what we have now, but a major problem with traditions is they are a gatekeeper to ascendancy. Useful or not, the path to maxing out your culture or achieving grand structures is building enough heritage sites when everything you've done should contribute.
TL;DR I like Utopia a lot but traditions just seem far less dynamic than they should given that you are expected to collect them all. They behave like a flattened tech tree and gatekeeper to ascendancy instead of forming areas in which your culture excels.
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