AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman

The idea to give low war weariness to Democracy is a good one because then you ensure that Democracy is always better than the Republic. I just feel that having special war governments for war is better for forcing the player to make choices, and for keeping the original flavor. That's why I prefer to nerf the Republic instead.

I'm not convinced that there's room to "nerf" Republic much more than we already have without causing excessive harm for players with no more than moderate levels of experience and skill. We could "nerf" it as a big-civ warmonger government by replacing some of the per-city free unit support with fixed support without regard to number of cities, albeit only at the cost of making Republic relatively better on maps with less land than on maps with more land (at least unless players and AU game designers would adjust the fixed support level depending on map size and land coverage). But as I've said before, most of the things we could do to make Republic less powerful for the players who are best at using it effectively would cause serious problems for many other players.

If one accepts that we've already "nerfed" Republic about as much as makes sense given the full range of players who use the AU Mod, all that is really left is to improve Democracy if we want it to be worth the time of switching to for human players more often. And with Communsim so much more powerful in C3C than it was previously, and if we make Fascism a bit more viable, we have some room to improve Democracy.

[Theseus]

Fair enough... I just don;t think lower WW is the way to do so.

How about crazy good unit support for metros?

[Ision]

What would be the effect of moving Feudalism to Monarchy?

Would this interefere with Alexmans 'flavors' in ant way?

What do think of a 5-3-1 --- 2 gpt ---- ?

Ision

[alexman]

Yes, the value of the Monarchy tech would certainly increase for the AI, and minor changes to flavors would have to be done to compensate.

However, it somehow feels wrong to move the Feudalism government to the Ancient Age, especially since the Feudalism technology will still be left in the Medieval tech tree. And as for tweaking unit support, it doesn't make much difference in the Medieval Age when you have a good number of cities, as I have claimed before.

[Harovan]

In what state is Republic at the moment? (Sorry, haven't been following through the versions)

[nbarclay]

At the moment, free unit support is reduced from the standard 1/3/4 to 1/2/2, but otherwise, it should be the same as the C3C default.

Now that I think of it, if we wanted to undermine Republic just a little bit more, we could bump its corruption up to the same level as Monarchy's the way we did in the PtW version of the Mod. That shouldn't hurt non-experts too much, especially since the players hurt most by slightly higher corruption would tend to be those who are successful enough to create the biggest empires.

[sabrewolf]

i've been following this thread, but i'm not sure anymore if this has been proposed already:
how about bumping up republic's war wariness to high.

that would help towards alexman's aim of getting 3 "inbetween"-governments, a warmongering one (monarchy, no WW), an economical one (republic, high WW) and an intermediary one (feudalism, low WW).

[nbarclay]

Democracy's high war weariness is offset to a certain extent by the fact that core cities generally have much higher levels of happiness to begin with by the time Democracy becomes available, or at least not a whole lot later. The discovery of Astronomy and Navigation can dramatically increase access to luxuries (with marketplaces giving the later ones enormous value), and cities not infrequently have a cathedral, a colosseum, or both. Depending on a player's skill, priorities, and luck, Sistine and/or Bach's may also be providing a happiness boost. Thus, in the era of Democracy, core cities are likely to have a good bit more happiness than they truly need in order to avoid rioting when a war starts.

In contrast, when an early Republican war starts, a player may be running the luxury slider at twenty or thirty percent before the first shot is fired. (Such settings are fairly typical for me.) High war weariness would be far more devastating under those circumstances than it generally is later in the game.

Further, the impact on the feel of the game if we would increase Republic's war weariness to high would be truly enormous. Months and even years of experience getting used to the impact of war weariness under Republic would be destroyed instantly, and we would have to start learning what we can expect to get away with and what is too risky all over again. Granted, we would not be set back quite all the way to "square 1," but we would be set back a lot closer to it than I care to get after spending so much time getting good at figuring out what is practical and what isn't under Republic. Also note that fighting under Republic would feel so different under the standard and AU Mod rules that moving back and forth could be a significant problem, although at least the difference would not be a subtle one.

If we would decide we want to reduce Democracy's war weariness, that would not cause players a lot of problems. Any strategy that works under high war weariness would also work under low war weariness, so players would not be in for any nasty surprises if they play the way they usually do under the AU rules. Further, it would be hard to find a player that is used to what war weariness is like under Democracy who is not also used to what it is like under Republic.

But the situation giving Republic Democracy's level of war weariness would be the exact opposite. Strategies that used to be practical under Republic would become disastrous, and even to the extent that people have recent experience fighting under Democracy at all, that experience would not necessarily carry over well for reasons I explained above.

Nathan

[sabrewolf]

nbarclay: i see your point. i too like starting major wars in the days of knights... (usually republic era).

but then, aren't these changes proposed here made for 2 main reasons:
1) balancing: make every governement worthwile... everything has it's strengths and weaknesses.
2) switching: to motivate people to 2 switches, even for non-religious civs.

but the only "old" governement which is useful in industrial and modern ages is the republic. you've got a great economy, hardly any WW, little corruption.
now, to get 2 switches likely, the difference between the middle and later gov-types have to be big enough. instead of only making later ones much stronger, the middle ones (well, actually only republic) could be weakened a tad bit.

your example of war under republic without enough cathedrals, luxuries, etc. would need a change of strategy, if republic's WW would be high. republic wouldn't be a good option anymore for waging bigger wars and monarchy and feudalism would be more appropriate. wouldn't this give a bigger variety of govs?

[ducki]

Another possible way to make it less painful to make a second switch would be to shift the Anarchy cap of the AIs by a difficulty level, maybe two. A shift of one would still leave Sid AI with a 1-turn cap, a shift of two would set the Sid AI with a 2-turn cap. Currently, IIRC, Sid and Deity are capped at 1-turn, Demi at 2, Emp at 3, Monarch at 4, though I could be recalling them incorrectly.

If we change them to 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, the human would be less likely to lose ground on the second switch.

The drawback is that the AI tends to change as though they have the religious trait even when they don't.

Thoughts?

[ducki]

Originally posted by ducki
I wonder if there are certain hardcoded triggers that determine which govt is "better" for the AI or if it just picks the "highest" form of govt depending on "mode", war=fascism, peace=demo.

If Fascism got a SPHQ, that would push back on the crossover point between it and Communism, right? Hmm..

Just read an article comparing Commie and Fascism over on CFC by Ision.
The last paragraph was particularly interesting to me in light of my query above..

[nbarclay]

After thinking about it a while, I've come to the conclusion that the goal of coercing players into making two government changes is not compatible with the purposes of the AU Mod. To the extent that the choice of whether to stay in Republic or switch to Democracy is currently not all that interesting, it would be useful to make it more interesting. But replacing a situation in which peaceful players almost always stay in Republic with one in which they almost always change to Democracy would depart from the standard rules without actually making the strategic choices involved any more interesting. And if players would change to Democracy more often under changed rules than they stay in Republic now, we would actually reduce how interesting the strategic choices are.

I posted a poll in a new thread to try to get us a clearer picture of what governments people used in AU 501. That may help us in determining whether we have a real, widespread problem with the balance between Monarchy and Republic or not.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by ducki
Another possible way to make it less painful to make a second switch would be to shift the Anarchy cap of the AIs by a difficulty level, maybe two. A shift of one would still leave Sid AI with a 1-turn cap, a shift of two would set the Sid AI with a 2-turn cap. Currently, IIRC, Sid and Deity are capped at 1-turn, Demi at 2, Emp at 3, Monarch at 4, though I could be recalling them incorrectly.

That would really just hurt the AIs rather than genuinely making a second change of governments more attractive. Staying in the same government while AIs waste time in anarchy switching would help human players stretch out a lead.

[ducki]

Yes, as noted in the last sentence of my post.
It's a subtler change, making it less of a disadvantage to switch, but as we both pointed out, would hurt the AI.

By the same token, even at a capped 3-turn anarchy for emperor, it's not that bad.

Heck, if I knew I was capped at 3 turns of Anarchy, I'd probably switch 3 or more times and still have less Anarchy than I did in AU501.

[alexman]

if we wanted to undermine Republic just a little bit more, we could bump its corruption up to the same level as Monarchy's the way we did in the PtW version of the Mod

The corruption increase from Nuicance to Problematic is just a 10% OCN reduction. Distance corruption remains the same.

In PTW we increased corruption for the Republic, but increasing corruption for the most used government in the game, even by such a small anount, is not a popular change. Many people (not only inexperienced players) hate corruption, and some refuse to use a mod that increases it. Sir Ralph was one of them.

[nbarclay]

I hate corruption myself, so I can certainly sympathize with that.

(Edit: More precisely, I view corruption as being at least a useful evil, if not an entirely necessary one. Corruption plays a useful role in counteracting the traditional "the rich get richer" tendency of 4X games, but I still don't consider it a lot of fun when I have cities that are next to worthless.)

[nbarclay]

Regarding the balance between Republic and Monarchy, the thought occurred to me that one of the things that makes Republic seem like it's so nearly always the right choice for many players is probably that a lot of us tend to play with combinations of difficulty level and starting position where we essentially always win. When playing on a difficulty level that is easy relative to a player's skill, the AIs don't produce as many military units as they would on a higher level. That, in turn, means that players can get by safely with fewer units (making Republic's support costs less of an issue) and will have fewer problems with war weariness (since they will lose fewer units offensively and have fewer AI units attack them in the course of conquering the same territory, and are more likely to have clear technological superiority on their side as well). Couple that with a larger empire size at any given stage of the game (since AIs won't REX quite as effectively and are easier to take territory from) and Republic is a good bit more advantageous when players are playing on a difficulty level that is fairly easy for them than it would be in tougher games. Similarly, a good starting position puts players in a stronger position in size and productivity, helping them use Republic more effectively.

Thus, a player who almost always chooses Republic might find himself using Monarchy a good bit more if he moved up a difficulty level and/or played out every starting position. I don't know exactly how much difference difficulty level and starting position make in whether Republic or Monarchy is preferable, but I'm sure they make at least some difference.

Nathan

[Ision]

If a SPHQ option were to be added to fascism - where should it be available - with the Fascism tech itself, or like Commie - with espionage? Personally I would think that having it already available with Fascism would be the better option.

Also, what about eliminating the Xeno flag from fascism? Would this not also be a great boost for this Gov? Trust me, I am as much of a purist as anyone - and strongly dislike changes that remove the unique flavor of the Govs - ( from a purist/historical point of view there would also be some type of 'genocide' flag for commie as well) - but thats not the point really - within the context of making Fascsim a more viable AI gov for increasing late game AI viability - would not the addition of a SPHQ combined with no Xeno flag do the trick?

or would it still fall short?

Ision

[Ision]

One more thought - and this is related to my last post.

Currently Police Stations are availbale with Commie - if as we have already seen - these mid-sized AIs are going to continue going Fascist - would it not be better to move police station availablity to Nationalism?

This would give the AI access to a corruption reducing building - without having to research yet another Totalitarian optional tech?

OR - police stations could be made available with Fascsim instead - this would still help the AI, while also denying the human player (whom almost always goes Commie when he decides to be totalitarian) instant access to another corruption reducing building.

Ision

PS: Alexman, I cannot thank you enough for your 'flavors' addition - my enjoyment of the game has increased significantly due to your efforts.

[ducki]

This would give the AI access to a corruption reducing building - without having to research yet another Totalitarian optional tech?

It would also give the player an advantage in getting Police Stations up without having to get Communism.

I'd rather see Police Stations available with both Communism and Fascism. That way the player still has to acquire at least one of those two techs, either by research or by diplomacy, in order to build Police Stations, and the AI is going to get them one way or the other, if not both.
Can we have two techs enable the same building in an "OR" way, or would it end up being an "AND"?

[Ision]

To my knowledge it is one or the other - not both. I do not believe that you can make a building available with 2 different techs.

Ision

[alexman]

AU mod panel, please vote within 48 hours.

Originally posted by alexman
1. To make Feudalism more useful as a first government:

• A: No change from 1.03b (1gpt unit support).
• B: Reduce corruption for Feudalism to minimal (1gpt unit support).
• C: Reduce corruption for Feudalism to minimal and restore 3gpt unit support.
• D: Remove war weariness from Feudalism and restore 3gpt unit support.
  Add low war weariness to Monarchy.
• E: Remove war weariness from Feudalism and restore 3gpt unit support.

2. To make Fascism more useful as a late-game warmongering government:

• A: No change.
• B: Reduce corruption for Fascism to minimal.
• C: Increase corruption for Fascism to Rampant, and give trade bonus.
• D: Add another Secret Police HQ Wonder for Fascism, that functions exactly as a Forbidden Palace.

3. To make Republic less useful as a late-game warmongering government:

• A: No change from 1.03b. (Republic 1/2/2 support)
• B: Increase war weariness of Republic to high (1/2/2).
• C: Reduce free unit support for Republic to 1/1/1.
• D: Reduce free unit support for Republic to 0/1/1 and add a flat 12 free unit support.

4. To make Democracy considerably better than the Republic so a switch is more often worth it:

• A: No change from 1.03b (Democracy 1/2/2 support).
• B: Democracy gets the same free unit support as Republic.
• C: Democracy gets communal corruption model and no free unit support.
• D: Reduce war weariness of Democracy to low.

[alexman]

My votes:

1. CABDE
2. CDBA
3. DCAB
4. CBAD

[ZargonX]

1. CABDE
2. BCDA
3. DCBA
4. CBAD

[Stuie]

1. CBADE
2. CBDA
3. DCBA
4. BCAD

[lockstep]

1: BCAED
2: BCAD
3: CADB
4: BCAD

[Nor Me]

1. BACED
2. BDAC
3. DACB
4. CBAD

[Nor Me]

As I missed the debate on this one, I'd like to point out that a Democracy with communal corruption would help change the balance of what to do with a large empire back to building and is probably the only way of doing that. The recent improvement to Communism means than attacking may be better for science.

A disadvantage is that it really hurts the Commercial trait.

[nbarclay]

After thinking about it a while, I'm starting to think that Democracy with communal corruption would be a total disaster. The power of communal corruption is almost directly proportional to a civ's size, and human players often build vastly bigger empires than AIs do. With human players and AIs both in Democracy under the standard rules, corruption negates a significant part of the research advantage the human gets from having a larger empire, and Communism even at its best provides no more than a small research advantage compared with Democracy. But a verson of Democracy with communal corruption would give a human empire grown large from earlier conquest a vastly larger research advantage even than what we already enjoy. Further, players could get both that research advantage and the production advantage that Communism provides at the same time, and could use excess gold to rush buy (which Communists can't).

Also consider the power that Religious civs would have with communal Democracy. They could switch to Democracy and still fight to their hearts' content with the confidence that they can always switch to Communism temporarily if war weariness gets too bad. Granted, a similar situation exists with Monarchy and Republic now, but with Republic/Monarchy, corruption eats into the value of the conquered lands rather considerably and the war weariness involved is Low, not High (making the difficulty of switching governments for nonreligious civs less likely to be crippling if they're in Republic). With both Democracy and Communism communal, religious civs could use their ability to switch governments to do extensive fighting and could get essentially full value out of their conquered lands whichever government they are in. Consider the implications of that for AIs' ability to compete!

All in all, changing Democracy to have communal corruption would tilt the balance far more in favor of human players and against the AIs than it is now. Ironically, if we think Communism is now looking too good compared with Democracy, a much better solution would be to (gasp!) eliminate the State Police Headquarters.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The power of communal corruption is almost directly proportional to a civ's size, and human players often build vastly bigger empires than AIs do.

Yes, this is often true, but it is often not true as well. It all depends on the difficulty level that you choose, especially compared to your ability.

Communal Democracy will make higher difficulty levels harder, and lower ones easier, but that doesn't mean that it favors the human over the AI.

When you have a larger empire than that of the AI, chances are that you are going to win anyway. I don't see the point of delaying the victory. Personally, I find the game much less exciting after I have reached the point where I know I am going to win and I just have to play it out.

As for strengthening the Religious trait, I don't view that as a bad thing. It's a small price to pay for having to make interesting choices as a non-religious civilization.

Having said all that, I think removing the SPHQ is a good idea too.