AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[Nor Me]

Crosspost! It's obviously an idea whose time has come. Should we leave it to a thread on techs rather than here in the goverment thread?

[ducki]

It might have a place in both threads, since I think we're talking about different issue.

Moving the governments from optional to required relieves some of the AI handicap in wasted research time, but does nothing to address the time they spend in anarchy going to a government that's not really worth the change. Aren't all governments on an optional tech, currently?

Personally, I'd like to see the non-Ancient-Age governments get a serious boost, so that the player that elects to forgo a second round of anarchy is making a conscious decision to handicap themselves instead of taking advantage of the AIs tendency to switch to a (debatably) "better" government.

I'd like to see the "better" governments actually be 4-8 turns worth of anarchy better, and then some.

[Theseus]

Aye, I agree with ducki.

I know the perfect test, too: How good do democracy and communism have to be to get a non-religious second switch out of vxma1?

[ducki]

Hehe, I have a little idea for Demo - let me know how daft it is.

Similar to Communism's SPHQ, Demo can allow a small wonder, the News Media or some such, that decreases WW? I don't want to step on Univ. Suff. wonder, though. Maybe a small wonder that just makes 1 unhappy person content per city - wouldn't that combat WW to some extent? And maybe add some other peacetime/builderly bonus some other way as well?

I can't imagine what would get me to switch to Communism, though, short of an AU course(was that 203?). How about it, vmxa1? What would be worth a second round of anarchy, considering the AI will have at least 2 or 3 rounds anyway?

[Nor Me]

The problem with goverment specific stuff is that the AI spends time building them only to switch to another goverment. A relatively cheap small wonder would do or a very cheap improvement like the secret police in the PTW version.

Theoretically, a Communist empire on 5 times the OCN could be more productive than a much larger empire in another form of goverment. It just requires so much building that the game is likely to end before you'd see any benefit.

The trouble is that the industrial age is late for any anarchy when the UN and the space race are just round the corner. Delaying the space race in the AU mod is the best thing we've done so far to encourage a switch.
I wouldn't be surprised if switching to democracy is worth it some times for non-religious civs aiming for alpha centauri with those changes. I suspect it's alreafy worth it if you're level with the AI and are going to continue to be on the lower levels but most of us are too good for that.

[donZappo]

Originally posted by ducki

I can't imagine what would get me to switch to Communism, though, short of an AU course(was that 203?).

I'm thinking that the addition of the Secret Police Headquarters might actually make communism a viable government and was excited to test this out when Conquests came out. Too bad corruption is broken and this small wonder just brings civs with this government to their knees. I don't know how much discussion can be made on improving this government other than moving it to a required tech until El Corruptino has been hunted down and killed like the dirty whore that he is!

[Nor Me]

The Secret Police HQ would make Communism better for larger empires but it doesn't adress Communism's main weakness which is the component of corruption that replaces distance corruption is too big. I've played with the equivalent in PTW and it wouldn't make a real qualitative difference to the goverment.

The secret police improvement in the PTW version of the AU mod halves that component so it made a bigger difference. Communism would be better than Monarchy if you have a lot of courthouses and police stations. It suffers from being a war-time builder goverment.

[Strollen]

Originally posted by Stuie
Something else that would help the AI (in terms of government and research) would be to incorporate Communism and Fascism into other required techs instead of making them their own optional techs. That way the AI won't waste time researching both while I make the Hoover beeline.

For instance: Make Fascism available with Nationalism, and Communism available with Industrialisation. Police Stations would also need to be moved, perhaps to Espionage.

As is, the AI wastes the initial Industrial Era research on Nationalism, then Communism and Fascism.

I like the idea and agree that having Fascism as seperate tech really hurts the AI because it researchs both, instead of doing something useful.

At the very least we should combine Fascism and Communism into a single tech like Totalitarianism, and move Police stations to Espionage and make it after Totalitarianism. That would make the human player who wants police stations and/or spys have to at least trade the AI for a couple of techs. As it is now I'll never give the AI a $1 for Facscism, and not much for Communisms.

[Fosse]

Stuie, I like eliminating the fascism and communism technologies. If you want, you can look at it this way: No government ever RESEARCHED another govrernment. The people make them up in response to their current condition. Your choices of where to put them sound good to me.

[Dry]

What about something more like a 2/1/2 config for Republic (keep 2gpt for maintenance).
This would make ancient age Republics (Rome) a good choice.
In the middle-age, the time of the cities, staying Republic will be a real challenge...
With the hospital, Republic is back (Europe-USA, 18-19th century) ... as long as you don't have too many units of course...
A human player would then hesitate to switch in the AA because of the middle-age weakness.
...just an idea...

Now, I'm much more unsure for this one... maybe only a starting point idea:
For Feudalism, something like 3/5/1 instead. I mean, make it a middle-age warmonger (crusades) Gov.

edit: change the feud values.

[alexman]

Let's leave the discussion about government technologies for the "How to help the AI research choices" thread, and vote on the easy stuff here!

AU mod panel, you have 24 hours to decide on the following:

1. Republic: Reduce the free unit support to 1/2/2 per town/city/metro?
2. Feudalism: Reduce unit support to 1 gold per turn?
3. Democracy: Increase free unit support to the same level as the Republic? (Exact number depends on the decision for item 1, above).

My votes:
1.Yes
2.Yes
3.Yes

[Dominae]

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. Yes.

The reason I'm voting "No" to the Feudalism change is that (for me) it's come right out of the blue and I've not put enough thought into it. I'm aware that Feudalism is sub-par, but I'm not willing to throw in changes left and right just to patch up the problem.

If we make changes, we want them to be the right ones (or seem like the right ones at the time).


Dominae

[ZargonX]

1. Yes
2. No
3. Yes

Feudalism definately needs to be changed, but like Dominae says, I think we need to look into it further before making a decision.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Dominae
The reason I'm voting "No" to the Feudalism change is that (for me) it's come right out of the blue and I've not put enough thought into it. I'm aware that Feudalism is sub-par, but I'm not willing to throw in changes left and right just to patch up the problem.

Although I advocated the Feudalism change, I have to agree with Dominae on second thought. So:

1: YES
2: NO
3: YES

(And Feudalism definitely is on my 'Civ3 features I need to think about' list.)

[lockstep]

As an example why further thoughts on Feudalism are needed:

Originally posted by alexman

• Feudalism: Reduce unit support cost to 1gpt, as for Monarchy. Empires with many small towns rather than cities in the Middle Ages will then be tempted to choose Feudalism over Monarchy, if they don’t plan on waging bloody wars.

But if they don't plan on waging bloody wars, why wouldn't they choose Republic? Same war weariness (low), support costs that are only +1 gold per town (assuming no cities, 2 units per town), but trade bonus! The only reason I can think of for peaceful players to go for Feudalism is not having to research an optional tech, and this doesn't strike me as very convincing. So, IMO Feudalism is designed excactly for waging at least one short, bloody war - crippling your nearest neighbor after having REXed out of a bad starting location.

NOTE: That doesn't mean that unit support cost of 3 for Feudalism is a good idea IMO. It just means that I don't have a clue at the moment what needs to done about this government.

[alexman]

The call for a vote at least started a discussion!

I agree Feudalism is designed for war, just not a bloody war. I think that this is what we want to achieve:

• If you have many units for your empire size, choose Feudalism.
• If you have many large cities, or you plan to get WW problems, choose Monarchy.
• If you have few units, choose Republic.

As it is now, Monarchy is better than Feudalism, even when you have relatively few units to support.

[alexman]

OK, here's a picture of the current situation for Feudalism versus Monarchy.

The graph shown is the difference in unit support cost, plotted against number of units and number of towns. Alll values are divided by the total number of towns+cities in the empire (assuming zero metropolises).

You can see that Feudalism is better than Monarchy only within a small triangle at the high town ratio, centered at about 5 units per city.

[alexman]

And here is the same graph for 1gpt Feudalism maintenance.

You can see that Feudalism is now better than Monarchy at a wider range of conditions. Specifically, when more than 40% of your cities are under size 6.

[alexman]

And here is the same deal with 2gpt Feudalism maintenance. I think it's not much different than 3gpt, but you can decide about that.

[Theseus]

Holy cow!!

Coooolllll......

[lockstep]

Theseus, we still need your vote about proposals no. 1 and 3 (Republic/Democracy) - even if no. 2 (Feudalism) may not be decided in the short run.

[ZargonX]

I just want to put in a vote for alexman's graphs. Can we add them to a mod?

[Nor Me]

1. Yes 2 No. 3. Yes if you need a 5th vote.

If anyone has more interesting proposals for Feudalism then I'd like to see them.

I've had too many units to comfortably switch to Monarchy once before but other than that in the only games I'd have used Feudalism I'd have used it for the pop-rushing ability.

[DrSpike]

I only gave Feudalism a cursory glance in my games.........I didn't really push things to see how bad the war weariness would get, so this comment is provisional. However, perhaps the war weariness needs to be looked at, since a govt that allows you lots of units and pop-rushing isn't as compelling if you cannot wage war effectively.

[Stuie]

1. Yes
2. No (but let's keep the discussion going...).
3. Yes

[Theseus]

1 and 3 yes.

2... undecided.

[donZappo]

Originally posted by Nor Me
If anyone has more interesting proposals for Feudalism then I'd like to see them.

I was always interested in seeing of feudalism would be viable as a communal government. I haven't been able to test this since corruption has been broken for a while. I would apprectiate just a note of feedback on this (however brief!) just to know if it would be within the bounds of the AU, and if you guys think that having a communal government so early would be broken for some reason. I never played with Communism before, and haven't been able to test it out under the new system.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
The religious/non-religious aspect of government changes is not that bad now that C3C imposes a 2-turn anarchy for Religious civs.

Compared with as many as nine turns when I've played nonreligious? It's still a very big deal, although I think with a start along a river, Agricultural probably gives a big enough boost out of the starting blocks to pay for losing a few turns later.

What I really wish they did was instead of increasing anarchy for Religious civs, reduce the maximum time in anarchy for other civs. That would make using more than just one type of non-despotic government a whole lot more practical.

[lockstep]

Another discussion revival.

Originally posted by alexman
OK, here's a picture of the current situation for Feudalism versus Monarchy ... The graph shown is the difference in unit support cost ... You can see that Feudalism is better than Monarchy only within a small triangle at the high town ratio, centered at about 5 units per city.

And here is the same graph for 1gpt Feudalism maintenance ... You can see that Feudalism is now better than Monarchy at a wider range of conditions. Specifically, when more than 40% of your cities are under size 6.

After some thoughts, I'm again for the change alexman proposed. Reasons:

1. The graphs alexman provided after the first vote suggest indeed that Feudalism may become worthwile in more instances and may e.g. allow for a Despotism - Feudalism - Republic/Democracy switch,
2. Feudalism's forced labor may be useful insofar as pop-rushing units / city improvements can keep high-food cities below size 7 and therefore preserve the higher unit support,
3. I strongly suspect in the meantime that the unit support cost of 3 is simply a remnant from the beta version of Feudalism that had no maintenance costs for city improvements.

Note that I'm still not sure that alexman's proposal is the 'definite' solution to Feudalism - this obviously needs to be playtested. But I'm fairly sure that it is a better solution than the stock rules.

[alexman]

Let's place the above proposal for Feudalism under consideration once more, on the grounds that it's better than stock rules.

If we find a better solution, we will of course reconsider the change, but after a several weeks of playing C3C I see no better solution.

Voting in a week.