AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Krill
Common sense should probably tell me this, but: why not wait until after AU 502 to make recommendations?
You get the extra knowledge gleaned from that game, so why are you so hasty?

Once a person is fully convinced that something is true, there is no need to wait for further evidence. I can understand perfectly if others want to wait before they form opinions, but my own recent experience with Communism leaves me no real doubt that the SPHQ makes it overpowered as civs grow on their way toward domination. (Indeed, it's proabably more powerful for large civs than would be ideal even without the SPHQ.) Alexman's experience and his graphs reinforce my belief even more. Hence, I went ahead and started the ball rolling.

Regarding the question of whether to eliminate the SPHQ entirely or move it to Fascism, I have no strong opinion at the moment. Just so long as it disappears from Communism.

Nathan

[alexman]

It appears that we have somewhat hurt the AI in our effort to balance the governments. So I just did some tests and discovered some interesting things about AI government choices.

• The AI always picks the same government in a given situation. There is no RNG involved in the government decision. On the other hand, the decision to have a revolution does have a random element.
• Corruption levels are a big factor in the AI's value of each government, even if the corruption levels do not result in a big difference in income and production. The AI thinks communal corruption and problematic corruption are equally good.
• The AI actually takes into account unit support costs in its government decisions. Note that at higher levels the AI gets more free unit support, so government decisions may be different than at lower difficulty levels.
• Other factors that influence the AI's decision are trade bonus, tile penalty (Despotism), and building maintenance. Building maintenance appears to have a different effect on communal corruption. It seems that civ with small building maintenance is more likely to choose Communism.
• The shunned and preferred governments actually make a difference in the AI's government choice!
• The AI does not appear to make government decisions based on empire size.

I believe we can use these facts to manipulate the AI into making better government decisions. But first some experimental results.

For a 9-city empire (4 cities, 5 towns) with a map OCN of 6, here is the order of preference for AI government choices (at peace). Shown in brackets are the unit support costs.

Stock Rules

• 0 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Feud(0), Desp(0)
• 1 unit/city: Demo(9), Rep(0), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Feud(0), Desp(0)
• 2 units/city: Demo(18), Rep(2), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Feud(0), Desp(0)
• 3 units/city: Demo(27), Rep(20), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Feud(0), Mon(1), Desp(0)
• 4 units/city: Demo(36), Rep(38), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Feud(9), Mon(10), Desp(0)
• 5 units/city: Demo(45), Rep(56), Fasc(0), Comm(0), Mon(19), Feud(36), Desp(9)
• 10 units/city: Demo(90), Fasc(42), Comm(36), Mon(64), Rep(146), Desp(54), Feud(171)

AU mod 1.04 Rules

• 0 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Fasc(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Desp(0)
• 1 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Fasc(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Desp(0)
• 2 units/city: Demo(2), Fasc(0), Rep(4), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Desp(0)
• 3 units/city: Demo(11), Fasc(0), Feud(0), Rep(22), Comm(0), Mon(1), Desp(0)
• 4 units/city: Demo(20), Fasc(0), Feud(3), Rep(40), Comm(0), Mon(10), Desp(0)
• 5 units/city: Demo(29), Fasc(0), Feud(12), Rep(58), Comm(0), Mon(19), Desp(9)
• 10 units/city: Demo(74), Fasc(42), Feud(57), Comm(36), Mon(64), Rep(148), Desp(54)

You can see that the AI in AU mod 1.04 probably chooses Feudalism over Republic a bit too often, and Fascism over Communism even more often than stock. This is not very good for a mod that strives to improve the AI.

I would like to propose the following changes to the governments to correct the situation:

1) Restore Feudalism unit support cost to 3gpt, like it is in stock. This will help the AI choose this government over the Republic less often. It should not make much of a difference in terms of strategy for humans because the free unit support limit is hard to reach.

2) Increase the corruption level of Fascism to problematic. The change to minimal corruption in 1.04 made Fascism far too valuable in the eyes of the AI. Instead, I propose to remove the 'forced resettlement' from Fascism (which the AI does not take into consideration at all), and move the SPHQ from Communism to Fascism, as has been suggested before in this thread by others.

3) Set the Republic as the favorite government for all AI civilizations, and Fascism as the shunned government for all. This helps the AI choose Communism over Fascism (which otherwise would be the same in the eyes of the AI), and the Republic over Feudalism.

Here are the results of the above experiment for these proposed changes:

Proposed Changes:

• 0 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 1 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 2 units/city: Demo(2), Rep(4), Feud(0), Comm(0), Fasc(0), Mon(0), Desp(0)
• 3 units/city: Demo(11), Rep(22), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(1), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 4 units/city: Demo(20), Feud(9), Rep(40), Comm(0), Fasc(0), Mon(10), Desp(0)
• 5 units/city: Demo(29), Rep(58), Feud(36), Comm(0), Fasc(0), Mon(19), Desp(9)
• 10 units/city: Demo(74), Comm(36), Fasc(42), Mon(64), Rep(148), Feud(171), Desp(54)

[Aqualung71]

Your analysis concentrates on peacetime, correct? Is it a given that during wartime the AI will automatically switch into Fascism (or possibly Communism under your proposals), or can it depend somewhat on other factors? For example, if in Republic and another civ declares war, WW may not be a problem for some time so it may be better to stay in Republic.....particularly if the AI has a wonder build going on.....stuff like that.

It a concern that there is a random element in the revolution decision There should be nothing random about timing a government change!

[alexman]

I did not investigate war time government selections, so I can't say for sure, but there is probably a factor related to the level of the luxury slider induced by war weariness.

As soon as the luxury slider element outweighs the other factors, a new government becomes the best in the eyes of the AI, which enables the chance of a revolution.

As for the random element in the revolution decision, my guess is that it was done that way to avoid constant revolutions if the best government changes back and forth. In any event, it looks like the chance of a revolution depends on how much better the AI thinks is the new government.

[alexman]

Here's another idea to make Fascism more attractive:

Give the Fascism-SPHQ the ability to spawn an Army every few turns.

This will make Fascism worth considering for the human, and it will give the AI some much-needed Armies when at war.

Edit: it's even somewhat realistic, given the militaristic nature of most fascist governments.

[MqsTout]

Fascism-SPHQ yields armies. I like it.

[ducki]

Intriguing, but I'd like a clearer idea of what you mean by "every few turns" - to me, few means 3-5, which is far too often, and I doubt you intended that.

If I have a Military Academy in a "good" city, I can knock out armies in about 6 or so turns, but this is usually in my capitol, after railroads, with a really good balance between food and shields.

Given that, I'd shoot for every 8-10 turns, although even that might be too often.

It needs testing, and it might be a bit too radical in conjunction with the "Military Academ does NOT require Victorious Army" proposal.

In fact, I'm inclined to support an Army-generating Fascism SPHQ instead of removing the Victorious Army from the Military academy if the AI is still highly likely to choose Fascism for wartime.

Would the Army-generation stop once the (now-at-peace) AI switches to a peacetime government?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by ducki
In fact, I'm inclined to support an Army-generating Fascism SPHQ instead of removing the Victorious Army from the Military academy if the AI is still highly likely to choose Fascism for wartime.

IMO, there are many valid arguments for a Military Academy that doesn't require a victorious army. Whatever we do to give Fascism a boost should not interfere with the MilAc discussion.

[ducki]

Whatever we do to give Fascism a boost should not interfere with the MilAc discussion.

I disagree, but only if we give fascism the army-generating sphq.

One of the main thrusts behind the non-victorious army Academy is to get the AI to build armies. I've long since given up suggesting that the human deserves to build armies without an army, as there is not nearly enough "builder-support" for that argument.

So, if the goal of the freely-buildable MAcad is to get the AI to build Armies, and a Fascist SPHQ that generates Armies, as well as a continued tendency towards Fascism for war will solve the problem of no AI Armies, the rule of "change as little as possible, but just enough" would suggest that we don't necessarily need to do both.

I feel that a fascist SPHQ that generates armies(therefore eventually enabling the building of the MilAcad by extension) should be mutually exclusive (in terms of implementation in the mod) with a freely buildable MilAcad.

That's just my opinion.

[Madine]

If all AI's shunned Facism, would they choose it at all?

[Ision]

While on the subject of the totalitarian states; will the SPHQ simply be transferred to Fascism - or will you consider having it in Espionage?

I believe that both SPHQ and police stations should be moved to Espionage in order to give that tech a greater importance and value to the human, and perhaps create yet another alternative to the - beeline to 'ToE' or beeline to 'Tanks' options.

Ision

[Aqualung71]

I agree with ducki. Either/or, but not both. SPHQ-spawned Armies makes the MA unnecessary for the AI, except for the power bonus. I have yet to see any tendency for the AI to choose Communism over Fascism for a wartime government, so I think this may work well.

In fact, it's a simpler solution, since removing the victorious Army requirement from MA won't necessarily result in more AI Armies.

AI Fascist governments + bonus armies =

[alexman]

The following proposal is now under consideration:

1. Restore Feudalism unit support cost to 3gpt, like it is in stock.
2. Increase the corruption level of Fascism to problematic.
3. Remove 'forced resettlement' penalty from Fascism
4. Move the SPHQ from Communism to Fascism.
5. Set the Republic as the favorite government for all AI civilizations, and Fascism as the shunned government for all.

Voting in a week, for the whole proposal as stated above (not for individual items).

Let's leave the Army-spawning ability ability of the SPHQ for after we have decided on the requirements for Military Tradition.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Ision
I believe that both SPHQ and police stations should be moved to Espionage in order to give that tech a greater importance and value to the human, and perhaps create yet another alternative to the - beeline to 'ToE' or beeline to 'Tanks' options.

I believe the SPHQ is already in Espionage.

As for police stations, I don't think the benefits from moving them are worth the change from stock. It's a relatively big change that won't be enough to motivate players to research Espionage more often than they research Communism at the moment, especially if we nerf Communism by removing the SPHQ. Others may disagree, of course.

[Aqualung71]

Any feel for the extent to which increasing the corruption level of Fascism to "problematic" will merely offset moving the SPHQ to Fascism?

[alexman]

Compared to Problematic corruption:

-> Nuisance has the same distance corruption and 10% greater OCN.

-> Minimal has 25% less distance corruption and 10% greater OCN.

The SPHQ reduces distance corruption around it and adds 37.5% to the OCN, so I would say that even at the hands of the AI, problematic+SPHQ is better than minimal corruption without a SPHQ.

[ducki]

Let's leave the Army-spawning ability ability of the SPHQ for after we have decided on the requirements for Military Tradition.

I would really rather we try this sort of feature in a limited building - such as the SPHQ, which should stop squirting armies once you leave Fascism/Communism, wherever it ends up.

Going slow, if we follow that de facto mandate, would - IMO - favor making that sort of change in a way that is limited.

This is my second 2 bits on this topic, so I'll leave it at that.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Aqualung71 in the MA thread

Either way my point is, we are trying to generate more Armies for the AI.....we humans already exloit the game in whatever way we can to build lots of Armies and run amuck over the AI in the late game. So, the best solution is surely one in which the AI gets Armies automatically but the human doesn't.....and the easiest way to deal with this is through government. I say forget the MA - we'll still use our Elites against the AI red-liners and generate MGL's for Armies, regardless. Give the Army-spawning in an area the human doesn't use, or at least, must sacrifice something else in order to use.

It would be nice to get more feedback here. Is it better to leave Fascism as an Army-spawning but otherwise worthless government, chosen exclusively by the AI? Or should we attempt to make Fascism a balanced government so that it is sometimes chosen by humans?

Keep in mind that the communal corruption model is ideal for the AI, which doesn't generally have a good FP/SPHQ placement. If we leave AI preferences as they are in stock C3C, the AI will miss out on the benefits of this strong government.

[Nor Me]

Obviously, it would be a good idea to make Fascism a balanced government. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to succeed as there doesn't seem to be an obvious niche for a balanced Fascism-like government, at least for the player.

There are circumstances when Communism is a much better government. But looking at the criteria that the AI uses to select government, its choice is unlikely to be logical in just those circumstances.

I notice that we don't have any data for your suggestion that Communism is less likely to be chosen when the building maintenance is high. If this is significant, it might rule out an AI civ from choosing Communism whenever it's more useful. With an FP and SPHQ, even a city at the OCN only has 32% rank corruption with Fascism. In Communism, any city without improvements will have 24% distance corruption. If the AI still doesn't like having empires bigger than the OCN, then Communism would only be better if it had a significant number of courthouses. Courthouses aren't high on an AI's priorities, so they are likely to have high maintenance if they do. Your proposals could conceivably lead to the AI choosing whichever government of the two is worse.

If the AI doesn't choose Communism when it's better, then there's little reason why we'd want the AI's not to choose Fascism when war-weariness is a problem. Then an army-spawning SPHQ might make sense.

On another issue, I've recently discovered how good cash-rushing might be for an AI. On debug mode, at Deity, rushing things in AI cities appears to use 1/3 of the money that I'd expect (per shield. That's 1/5 of what the player would spend on the same item). I haven't tested other difficulty levels yet and can't show that that really is what an AI would spend. But it appears that for an AI at war, rushing would be a better use of the AI's commerce than anything else. This is something else that makes these two governments a bad choice for the AI. I would seriously consider giving paid labour to Fascism even if that would be unrealistic.

[alexman]

I'm pretty sure that in the above proposal the AI will always choose Communism over Fascism, as the building maintenenace factor is small (I noticed building maintenance being a factor only when all other aspects of the governments were identical in the eyes of the AI).

However, I'm equally sure that we can't make the AI choose the proper war time government in a given situation. So perhaps we should accept the fact that the AI will always choose the same government for war, and try to give it some benefit.

Option 1: Communism is already the best overall war time government in C3C. We could just encourage the AI to use it, and forget about Fascism. The smallest AI empires might suffer, but we will get some monster AI empires in exchange. By the way, the AI doesn't seem to stop expanding/conquering at the OCN in C3C.

Option 2: The AI already chooses Fascism when at war, so we should leave it that way. Improve Fascism to help the AI (Army SPHQ, cash-rushing?), but don't make it powerful enough to become worthwhile for a typical human empire. It will be a minimum change from stock, the AI will still be at a disadvantage compared to humans, but at least the AI will be better off than in stock.

So, Option 1 or Option 2?

[Ision]

Alex,

In this thread you stated that the 'preferred and shunned' governemnts DO have an influence on the AI.

What would be the effect of:

1. All Agricultural, Industrious and Expansionist CIVs are given Fascism as shunned (Typicallly the larger AI empires that would benefit from Commie the most).

2. All non-Agri/Ind/Exp AIs are given Commie as shunned (typically the smaller empires that would benefit from Fascism the most)

3. Fascism made Prob corruption with SPHQ and no resettlement - as you already intend to do.

4. Nerfing Fuedalism to the point where there is no need to make 'republic' the prefferred Gov of every CIV.

5. Making the preferred gov of every Agr/Ind/Exp CIV - Commie - all others Fascism.

Could this work as an option 3? . Agri, Ind and Exp combined are about 18 of the 31 Civs - so it would be aproximately balanced in Gov choices. Think of this proposal as merely an extension of your 'flavors' for each AI.

what do you think?

Ision

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by alexman
It would be nice to get more feedback here. Is it better to leave Fascism as an Army-spawning but otherwise worthless government, chosen exclusively by the AI? Or should we attempt to make Fascism a balanced government so that it is sometimes chosen by humans?

Keep in mind that the communal corruption model is ideal for the AI, which doesn't generally have a good FP/SPHQ placement. If we leave AI preferences as they are in stock C3C, the AI will miss out on the benefits of this strong government.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. While it's clearly a more "honourable" approach to try to push the AI towards a better government, when combined with the Armies question the issue becomes more clouded.

It seems to me that the best solution to the MA issue is to give the AI something that the human will not access, or at least will do so only on rare occasions. If this means steering the AI into a less than optimal government, then that's the compromise for devising a really effective fix to the extremely unbalancing effects of "human only" Armies. Of course, only time will tell whether the AI actually uses the Armies we give it.

I would also think that along with such a proposal we may wish to think about reducing the power of Communism....unless you think that removing the SPHQ is already enough of a hit.

I favour option 2. But if testing shows the AI doesn't use Armies effectively, we should consider going back to option 1.

[alexman]

Ision, your idea is a good one, although I have not noticed that expansionist civs are generally any larger than other AI civs, and Industrious civs are not the monsters they used to be in PTW.

In fact, the only AI that is generally larger than the rest are Agricultural civs because the trait is so powerful in general. But you also get large civilizations of random traits, which became large because they conquered their neighbors.

For example, in a recent debug game of mine, the Germans actually won by domination, even though there were several Agricultural civs.

[alexman]

What if we reduce the free unit support for Communism? That would help the AI choose Communism over Fascism unless it has unit support problems, which usually happens when it has a small empire compared it its army.

It would also further weaken the government for humans.

For example, reducing the free unit support for Communism from 6 to 2, has the following effect (same 4-town, 5-city test as before):

Reduced unit support (2) for Communism:

• 0 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 1 units/city: Demo(0), Rep(0), Feud(0), Comm(0), Mon(0), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 2 units/city: Demo(2), Rep(4), Feud(0), Comm(0), Fasc(0), Mon(0), Desp(0)
• 3 units/city: Demo(11), Rep(22), Feud(0), Comm(9), Mon(1), Fasc(0), Desp(0)
• 4 units/city: Demo(20), Feud(9), Rep(40), Comm(18), Fasc(0), Mon(10), Desp(0)
• 5 units/city: Demo(29), Rep(58), Feud(36), Fasc(0), Comm(27), Mon(19), Desp(9)
• 10 units/city: Demo(74), Fasc(42), Comm(72), Mon(64), Rep(148), Feud(171), Desp(54)

You can see that in this case the AI will choose Communism over Fascism whenever it has fewer than 5 units per city (after the difficulty bonus).

The above test did not include metropolises, which will further tilt the scale towards Fascism.

[ducki]

Alexman, could you clarify the above?

As I read it, decreasing the free unit support of Communism makes it more likely that the AI will choose Communism?

It sounds counterintuitive, which is why I ask.
Thanks in advance.

[alexman]

It makes the AI less likely to choose it than in my previous proposal, a few posts above.

In that proposal the AI always chose Communism over Fascism (due to the shunned status of the latter and due to its increased corruption).

[Madine]

What about adding low war weariness to communism?

[Ision]

Ision, your idea is a good one, although I have not noticed that expansionist civs are generally any larger than other AI civs, and Industrious civs are not the monsters they used to be in PTW.

Alex,

My centrral point is to find a method where about half the CIVs choose Commie and the other half Facsism. The Agri/Ind/Exp option I gave is in itself unimportant - it was only a means to that end - a vast generalization (that naturally has many exceptions) done purely for the point of having a 'standard' by which to divide up the CIVs. The standard itself could be Relgious/Militeristic and Seafaring CIVs will be 'flavored' so-to-speak towards x,y,z - the 'flavoring in this case is merely giving half the CIVs a preferred of either Commie or Fascism and a shunned of the other. You could do it alphabetically if you wish - whatever you choose. The point is to avoid changing the fundamental nature of the Govs to the point where you need graphs and a handbook to understand their nature.

Instead of us struggling with a never-ending series of tweaks and changes to the Government unit supports and corruption levels, we could approach this entire issue in a different manner.

No doubt given enough tweaking we will eventually find a way to balance this thing out - BUT - do you really want to do this where we end up at a point where Commie has less unit support than Despotism! and Fascism has paid labor! - and Demo has.... and Republic has.... there has to be a point were enough is enough. The games governments will begin to become unrecognizeable to the point where only someone willing to read 800 post from this forum would be able to even begin to understand the rationale for the changes.

I say we adopt a simpler is better approach - AND a willingness to just STOP and leave it alone at some point. My idea may or may not be a quick simple solution. That said, suppose that it is NOT and suppose that there simply is no quick elegant solution to this - in that case I would say - STOP STOP!!! just nerf he hell out of either fascsim or commie, learn to live with a single totalotarian Gov for AIs (as was the case for years prior to C3C) and move on.

Ision

[alexman]

Originally posted by Ision
The games governments will begin to become unrecognizeable to the point where only someone willing to read 800 post from this forum would be able to even begin to understand the rationale for the changes.

That has been a concern of mine as well, although hopefully from all this discussion we will be able to come up with a simple solution and describe it concisely in the readme.

[alexman]

Final proposal from me, which I think has a minimum effect on game play as far as humans are concerned (just a minor shift in war government balance from Communism to Fascism, without making Fascism better under normal circumstances). However, it significantly helps the AI:

• Move SPHQ from Communism to Fascism.
• SPHQ spawns an Army every 20 turns.
• Increase Fascism corruption level to problematic.
• All AIs favor Republic and shun Fascism.
• Restore Feudalism unit support cost to stock level.

The idea is to make the AI always choose Communism over Fascism, but still provide a small boost to Fascism for the cases where the AI has the Fascism tech but not Communism.

If there are no other proposals, we will mark this one under consideration.