I have been working on balance for policies in Civ 6 and I have concluded that there is one particular outlier that I need to address somehow - Rationalism.
Rationalism:
Increase the Science output of your Campus buildings by 50% if the adjacency bonus of the district is at least +3. Increase it by 50% more if the city has population 10 or more.
There are three other cards that do similar things for the Holy Site, Theatre Square, and Commercial Hub.
I find myself virtually always running Rationalism to boost my science and mostly ignoring the other three cards. I think this is a bad sign - you want policies to be powerful, but if there is one you auto pick every time then something is amiss.
The core thing that goes on is that the Rationalism card boosts science more than the Theatre Square card boosts culture, or the Commercial Hub card boosts gold. There are lots of sources of culture in the game that aren't affected by cards, such as Great Works and Wonders. Plus if you have a ton of culture going you actually don't need to boost your culture more - you really want to boost your tourism! If you already have a truckload of high adjacency Theatre Squares your culture is probably already plenty high. More of it is better than nothing, but your utility drops off quick. Commercial Hubs mostly give you gold via enabling trade routes and those aren't boosted by the card, so that card is bad. Also getting the adjacency of +4 to qualify for the Commercial Hub bonus is rough.
The Holy Site card is good. Nearly all your faith comes from Holy Site buildings, so it is a huge bonus. It, like science, is hard to get other ways, so the card does something powerful. But unless you are going for a religious victory there isn't much point in stacking faith, so this card is a really powerful one that only comes up in limited circumstances - I am fine with that.
Because science nearly all comes from Campus buildings the Rationalism card is simply too big a science multiplier. This is also why Campuses themselves are good - you simply can't get any reasonable amount of science in any other way. No matter what victory condition you are aiming for it makes sense to have more science - it gives you better units, more buildings, better yields, everything. And the cap is really high, such that getting ever more science is pretty much always good, in a way that other resources don't quite match.
Unfortunately I don't have a clean way to change this. Other cards at similar places in the tree do things like adding 2-3 science per Campus, or similarly affecting other districts. Rationalism can easily be pumping out ~4 science per district at that point, and it can get so much higher as your cities grow and it rockets to the moon when you start pumping out Research Labs in the late game. I could just hard nerf Rationalism to give 4 science to every university, for example, which would ruin the symmetry of the cards but would certainly fix the necessity of having it. It would also take away the fun minigame of trying to get all your Campuses to +3 adjacency to get the big Rationalism boost. I can't decide if I like that or not. Unless I change all the four cards it will be ... kludgy.
It is certainly true that the AI isn't adept at maximizing Rationalism, and it needs to be to win. It definitely tries to get big cities and high adjacency bonuses but you have to specifically hunt for +3 and 10 in particular if you want to max returns, and you have to slot Rationalism in the first place, and they will only do so randomly.
Initially Rationalism didn't require high adjacency or high population. This led players to slot Rationalism, then just slam down Campuses in tiny cities absolutely everywhere without worrying about adjacency. I think what the designers were trying to do when they changed to this latest version is make players care about adjacency and to grow bigger cities. That worked. Unfortunately it didn't fix the fundamental problem that the card is just so good you have to build your entire game around it nearly every time.
I can now see that you're playing the R&F expansion and I don't have that. In my game, Rationalism gives +100% science from campuses, which makes Research Labs provide +10 science vs. the +3/+8 that you've been complaining about.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I need to get the expansion to fully appreciate your articles. And possibly it just makes for a better game, like with the Civ5 expansions.
I still always take Rationalism as +100 science is just too good. There are a few base game policies that just seem generally amazing in terms of culture and gold return, which bugs me. I want more valid choices.