Are Policies Working as Designed (Artificial Open Policy)?

[kingtaso]

Now, it's not that I don't understand how policies work. I understand them perfectly. However, I think I've found a bug in how policies are currently working. The story of me finding this possible bug is as follow:

Everytime I play a new mod or start a new game with a faction I haven't played before in a mod I already know, I do one thing to get to know the faction better. I open up my console and using codes (especifically the add_money and process_cq) I start tinkering with all my cities, trying to find what's the best way to build them, in what order, etc. Today I was doing this with Rohan when I found something strange: I had somehow managed to make Woldburg have military policy while keeping all the buildings of financial policy constructed (Great Market and the second level Place of Mirth). I thought that it was just a mistake on my part, so I restarted the game to see if I could deliberately produce the same results. However, this time I not only did it with Woldburg, but added Pelargir, Tarnost and Annumbar to the mix, making sure to leave Woldburg and Pelargir with military policy when I finish, Tarnost with financial and Annumbar with administrative policy. This is what I found.

• If a building that requires a specific policy is built, it stays built even if the policy is demolished. That means that my markets stayed built even if I changed policy.
• Passive bonuses like trade increase do not change with policy changes. Once I had my markets and places of mirth built, even if I changed away from my financial policy, neither my public order nor my income decreased. This means that I can build everything in the financial policy tree and then change to another policy while still keeping the benefits of the financial policy.
• Since no buildings are destroyed when changing policy, I can build a financial policy city development building and still change the policy while keeping my previous financial city development building and my resource building built. Obviously, once I demolish the city development building and build it again, my only options are the policy specific building, which is quite strange considering that I actually have everything else built. This probably means there's an invisible trigger that lets my city development building know what it can be upgraded to according to what policy there is, because the building themselves (markets, mirth, healing, etc) are still working perfectly and giving me all their effects.
• The one single exception to the building built under other policies are the military development buildings. If I completely develop the tree and move away from military policy, then I lose the capabilities of recruiting the units that the last two MD buildings allow you to recruit. However, the bonuses to the units that I can recruit still remain. Even stranger, if I have no policy active then I can recruit all units, even though I should only be able to recruit them under military policy.

In other words, I think there might be a bug in the way policies are designed. I could simply build all my administrative and financial policy buildings (along with any city development building that needs those policies, like the royal mint and the second level resource buildings in Tarnost, for example) and then change to military policy, building everything in that policy. I can then keep my military policy built while still taking advantage of all the financial only and administrative only buildings built, including resource and city development buildings. This means that I have literally created an artificial open policy where my financial andd administrative only buildings are working perfectly while I can still recruit every military unit that my military policy allows.

I recommend checking this issue. As it stands, all cities can reach Open Policy potential with enough time and money spent on them. Adding an undemolishable clause to the policy and city development building would eliminate this issue, but I don't know how useful that would be or if it can be done.

[athanaric]

In my experience, changing policy actually did change bonuses (have you tried playing with the change for a turn or two?). Haven't spent much time on it though.

[Stark1]

Eh, if you feel like that's exploiting just don't do it. AI definitely won't so it's on the same level of problem as a possibility of using cheats.

[Aradan]

The building effects are coded in a way that takes care of this. If you remove a policy, all the effects depending on/resulting from its existence are removed.

Eg: If a T3 Market requires FIN Policy and you replace it with MIL Policy, then the Market's effects are automatically downgraded to the effects of the last tier available under the MIL Policy (ie Market T2).

So, you can't actually cheat, even if you wanted to. Same goes for barracks and everything else.

[athanaric]

^ That's my experience as well (plus, it's in the EDB file if you want to check).

[James_Northstar]

The building effects are coded in a way that takes care of this. If you remove a policy, all the effects depending on/resulting from its existence are removed.

Eg: If a T3 Market requires FIN Policy and you replace it with MIL Policy, then the Market's effects are automatically downgraded to the effects of the last tier available under the MIL Policy (ie Market T2).

So, you can't actually cheat, even if you wanted to. Same goes for barracks and everything else.

Really? I... would actually prefer it the other way around (where a T3 Market maintained its bonuses even if you swapped out of Financial policy)


That's because, in my eyes, policies really represent DEVELOPMENT mindsets- i.e. what things you're focusing on improving and growing. The social systems and infrastructure from a previous policy ought to still work, at least to some degree, when abandoning one policy for another. After all, it's not as if they are mutually exclusive in operation- as the Open Policy so clearly demonstrates... Rather, broad-based development lie this should be/is EXTREMELY slow/expensive in a lesser city than the capital- i.e. you should be able to do what is described above, but it should/does cost a lot of time/money to do it (making it hardly cost-effective from an economic perspective: you'll spend way more time and money getting both high-level financial and military buildings operating in the same non-capital city than it's worth, making the only real reason to do it for kicks or pride...)


Regards,
Northstar