AU mod: Philosophy

[nbarclay]

Three concerns about the proposed tech cost shift:

(1) Increasing the cost of Philosophy would discourage AIs from researching it, right? Further, it would make researching it early less of a good idea for AIs that won't get it first, so trying to make AIs prioritize Philosophy regardless of cost could tend to backfire and hurt all of the AIs except the one that gets it first.

(2) Increasing the cost of Philosophy might actually make it easier to do the ultra-early Republic (or Monarchy) trick. Certainly, if AIs prioritize Philosophy less as a result, that would make the trick easier. But also, the time required to research CoL before Philosophy would be a lot smaller as a percentage of the time required for the overall maneuver. (And if we don't adopt a house rule against trading Philosophy before getting one's free tech, the longer research time for Philosophy and its higher relative value would lead to more situations where getting Philosophy, trading it for CoL or Polytheism, and getting Republic or Monarchy as a free tech is practical. Players might even base their initial choice of non-Despotic government on whether CoL or Polytheism happens to be available when they finish Philosophy.)

3) We need to give some thought to the implications of such a change on the strategy of beelining to Monarchy instead of to Philosophy and going warmonger, especially for civs with powerful ancient UUs. That issue is a very complex one, and I haven't quite decided how I feel about it yet.

Nathan

Edit: I'd still rather just get rid of the free tech and make this whole issue go away. Indeed, I think an excellent case can be made that removing the free tech would be a more conservative change than making drastic adjustments to tech costs and AI research priorities to try to make the free tech less overpowering. Removing the free tech changes the game only for the civ that gets Philosophy first and perhaps for ones that try and fail (and even that merely changes the game back to how it was pre-C3C). In contrast, shifting tech costs and researh priorities changes the game considerably for every civ.

[nbarclay]

I would definitely support a house rule against trading Philosophy before getting the free tech. I'm almost positive that that wasn't how the designers envisioned things would work, and it makes the free tech potentially even more powerful than it is under the default rules (which we all seem to agree is too powerful already).

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
(1) Increasing the cost of Philosophy would discourage AIs from researching it, right? Further, it would make researching it early less of a good idea for AIs that won't get it first, so trying to make AIs prioritize Philosophy regardless of cost could tend to backfire and hurt all of the AIs except the one that gets it first.

The idea is to make Philosophy more or less equally likely to be researched by the AI as Code of Laws. Even the AIs that don't get it first will have a better shot at the Mausoleum. Code of Laws offers Courthouses, but the AI doesn't build them immediately anyway.

(2) Increasing the cost of Philosophy might actually make it easier to do the ultra-early Republic (or Monarchy) trick.

The point of the cost increase was not to make it more difficult to get a free government tech, it was to reduce the benefit from doing that, especially when you don't intend to beeline for Republic. If your chosen first government is the Republic, first of all choosing Philosophy is not that different from your research path if there weren't a free tech involved. And if you succeed, at least you were forced to research a (much) more expensive Philosophy which delays you compared to stock C3C. If not beelining for Republic, then you probably don't want to risk researching (optional) Philosophy before Monarchy when they have the same cost (in case you get beaten to Philosophy, which would delay your switch to Monarchy). An ultra-early Monarchy is not possible if Philosophy costs as much as Monarchy.

[ducki]

Thoughts on "Optional".
It's widely believed that Republic is superior to Monarchy if you plan on peace - I'm not saying it's empirically true, just believed, including by me, under most circumstances.

So, if Republic is behind an Optional tech, would we end up with a situation like Democracy where the AIs postpone that tech in favor of techs that are a)required and b)offer more quantifiable(for the AI) benefits?

If so, is the delay to a government change good or bad?
Or do we end up with a tendency toward Monarchy with the human being left to either research Republic or wait much longer?

Just some thoughts. I've seen Demo go a long time unresearched, longer than expected, though I guess it is possible(going on some sentiment read here about switching later rather than sooner) that a postponed AI switch might not be all bad. (Might even make the other governments a more interesting option. Might not.)

Or if the player is behind, he might have to settle for a Despot-Monarch-Demo unless he wants to wallow in ancient times if the AIs decide to skip Rep. Which all but 1 did in my Emp game, IIRC.

[nbarclay]

Alexman has in mind to tweak things so AIs will research Philosophy at a relatively high priority even with its being optional. If he can do that, delays in AIs reaching Republic will only be a problem to the extent that the extra time needed to research Philosophy will give human players who go for Monarchy early a longer lead time before AIs start switching to Republic.

But if Alexman's plan fails and AIs are significantly slower getting Republic due to a prerequisite's being optional, that would pose a serious problem. AIs are at their most competitive in the tech race when they are in a representative government.

[ducki]

But if Alexman's plan fails and AIs are significantly slower getting Republic due to a prerequisite's being optional, that would pose a serious problem. AIs are at their most competitive in the tech race when they are in a representative government.

I'm not totally convinced it is a problem if they delay, just asking if anyone had any idea what the effect would be. Might even be good, since it's possible to get there before you have enough luxes to keep your people happy without MPs and (AI-delayed) temples. Additionally, the AI is unlikely to have enough cities to support their armed forces earlier.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the AI will end up using entertainers during this early republic instead of the slider like the human, further stunting either they production/growth or research.I know we all know it, my post just seemed incomplete w/o the mention.

[alexman]

Under consideration:

Yes/No: Make Philosophy optional.

After this has been decided, we will consider cost changes to Philosophy and/or other ancient age technologies. Voting in a week!

[alexman]

Actually, since there is no more discussion, and because there are several proposals, perhaps we should vote on more issues at once, according to the Statue of Zeus model. Perhaps this will even spark some discussion!

Proposals for Philosophy:
A) No change
B) Make optional
C) Remove half the cost of Republic, and add it to Philosophy.
D) Make optional, and adjust costs as in C).
E) Remove free technology.

We will vote in a week.
Let me know if there are any more proposals, and I will add them to the above list.

Note: the cost adjustment proposal (Philosophy=20, Republic=14) is chosen so that:
1) The total cost of all Ancient Age techs remains the same
2) The path to Republic without a free tech remains the same
3) The free tech doesn't shorten the path to either government as much as before.
4) You still have a dilema whether to gamble on CoL before Philosophy.

[sabrewolf]

after thinking about it, i quite like this cost-change idea (proposal D).
beelining for philosophy (cost: 6) could give you more expensive techs (CoL, Lit: 10; MM: 12; Rep: 28).
like this, you don't profit from getting very expensive techs.

with your idea, alexman, the most expensive tech is monarchy (24), followed by construction and philosophy (20) and currency (16).

the only thing i don't like, is the great difference between republic (14) and monarchy (24)... that makes monarchy 70% more expensive to research!

how about taking away 4 units from monarchy and readding them to republic. the new costs would be: monarchy: 20, philosophy: 20, republic: 18.
your 2nd consistency rule would be broken, but i don't see any other way to make monarchy less unattractive!

(except ofcourse if free tech get's removed, proposal E)

[alexman]

I know it seems strange to have the Republic cost half as much as Monarchy, but if the Republic requires Philosophy, and they are both optional, what difference does it make how the cost between those two techs are distributed?

I mean, you always have to pay (or trade for) the cost of Philosophy+Republic to get the Republic anyway. Taking some cost from Monarchy and giving it to the Republic would make the total cost of the Monarchy path cheaper, and the total cost of the Republic path more expensive than in stock C3C, even if the Republic itself costs less than in stock.

[sabrewolf]

well, with the free tech at philo, you'll probably go for it anyway.

until now, you could still decide after that, if you'd want to go for monarchy (therefor beeling through polytheism) or for republic (CoL plus the very expensive republic).

with republic this cheap, hardly anyone will go for monarchy, if you're just 14 tech-units away from a superior tech (supposedly, you choose CoL as free tech)

[alexman]

If you intend to switch to Monarchy but research (optional) Philosophy first, something's definitely wrong with the proposal. One of the main objectives of this change is to make it so researching Philosophy ASAP is not always the best strategy.

However, in most cases I don't think the risk of researching an optional 20-cost tech out of the Monarchy path is worth it, just to get Monarchy for free (costs 26).

[sabrewolf]

don't forget, that the trading value of a 20-cost-tech is higher that a 6-cost-tech. philo can get you mysticism, IW, HBR and other stuff that you still may not have.... in addition to the free tech.

and speaking of optional - many optional techs are worth it for me. eg. i go for literature and republic mostly before ending the ancient age with construction. economics is a must-have for me (to get a shot for AS). if philo is optional or not, won't change a lot to me (except that i'll need to research it for 25 instead of 10 turns)

but anyway, i wonder what other people think about the cost rebalancing idea.

and also, who knows what firaxis are going to do about this in the february-beta-patch. jesse is aware of this as there are discussions about this everywhere...

[ducki]

With the stock C3C changes and lux scarcity, I've found Despotism to last me quite a bit longer than it used to. If lux scarcity is going to be "fixed", that's probably no longer true, but for what it's worth, Despotism _easily_ lasted me to Feudalism in my latest game(at Monarch level).

I don't know what impact that has on Republic/Monarchy/Philosophy, but I did want to mention it.

What if - instead of redistributing and maintianing the Total Cost of Republic, we actually just make Philo more expensive and pull that cost from somewhere else - not on the Republic line - to maintain Total Cost of Ancient Age?

With Republic being the de facto standard "best" all-around long-term government of choice of most players, pushing it back a bit might encourage more than one govt. switch, and simply increasing the Total Cost of the line by increasing the Cost of Philo without reducing the cost of anything else on the line might be a "good" way to get that.
Maybe.

[alexman]

Worth considering, but keep in mind that we have changed Democracy so that it's now clearly better than the Republic for builders. And with the 120% OCN increase in 1.15, even Communism might even be better than the Republic for building!!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
the only thing i don't like, is the great difference between republic (14) and monarchy (24)... that makes monarchy 70% more expensive to research!

I have to agree. Swapping tech costs from Republic to Philosophy seems like a good idea, but a change of -/+14 may have a lot of unintended side effects regarding the AI's research pattern. I'd try -/+8 or -/+10 at first.

[alexman]

Originally posted by lockstep

a change of -/+14 may have a lot of unintended side effects regarding the AI's research pattern.

This is one thing we don't have to worry about. The AI research preferences are completely under control.

[nbarclay]

I still think getting rid of the free tech from Philosophy is both a more conservative change and a more effective one than this kind of major surgery on the tech tree.

Regarding players who go after Monarchy, the strategy of beelining for Polytheism, trading for Writing, researching Philosophy, and getting Monarchy as a free tech could work quite nicely under Alexman's latest proposal if a player can pull it off. Philosophy would provide a very valuable tech for trading purposes without the player's having to give up his monopoly on Monarchy. In contrast, a straight Monarchy beeline would leave the player with nothing but Monarchy itself to trade for techs he skipped while pursuing the beeline. Add to that the fact that Philosophy would be slightly cheaper than Monarchy.

Nathan

[Dominae]

I agree with Nathan: just remove the free tech from Philosophy. None of us would be happy about this, because we all love the tech lead, but it's the only change that actually meets all the goals of the AU mod.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae
I agree with Nathan: just remove the free tech from Philosophy. None of us would be happy about this, because we all love the tech lead, but it's the only change that actually meets all the goals of the AU mod.

I won't say I'd be entirely happy about it, but I would certainly be content. It's one of those things that is good for the game even though it undercuts those of us who like Ultimate Power.

Do we want to put Alexman's idea of reworking tech costs and, as an alternative, removing the free tech under consideration for inclusion in the Mod for our first game? Or do we want to save tinkering with Philosophy for a future version?

[Dominae]

Here is my ranking (despite my dislike of the ranking system!):

1. E, Remove free technology.
2. A, No change.

.
.
.
.
.

3. B, Make optional.
4. C, Remove half the cost of Republic, and add it to Philosophy.
5. D, Make optional, and adjust costs as in C).


Dominae

[alexman]

OK it's Friday in much of the World, so let's vote.

My order of preference:
D) Make optional, and adjust costs as in C).
B) Make optional
A) No change
E) Remove free technology.
C) Remove half the cost of Republic, and add it to Philosophy.

[lockstep]

(best)

D) Make optional, and adjust costs as in C)
B) Make optional
A) No change
C) Remove half the cost of Republic, and add it to Philosophy
E) Remove free technology

(worst)

[Theseus]

DBCAE

[Stuie]

B) Make optional
A) No change
D) Make optional, and adjust costs as in C).
C) Remove half the cost of Republic, and add it to Philosophy.
E) Remove free technology.

[Nor Me]

DABEC

[alexman]

Originally posted by Dominae

1. Not required for era advancement
2. Removed half the cost of the Republic, and added it to Philosophy.

This is pretty bad. Let's see:

a. It does not increase strategic options, because it's still the best move to rush for Philosophy and get a free tech on the way to Republic (Code of Laws).

b. It does not really help the AI, because all it does is slow the human player down. The AI will still not compete for Philosophy. If anything, it will reach the Medieval era faster and start on that tree, increasing the time it's not in Republic.

c. It does not preserve the feel of the stock game, for rather obvious reasons.

d. It does nothing else the AU mod was designed to do.

Although I admit there's a problem with Philosophy being too strong, I would rather we just had left it the way it is than play cut and paste with the tech tree (and still fail to solve the problem).

[Dominae]

Thanks alexman. I assume it's okay to disagree with choices the panel made, after the fact?


Dominae

[alexman]

Of course it's OK. It's even better if you have a new proposal though!

[Dominae]

Yes, I know, it's infinitely easier to criticize. I'm just trying to get a handle on all these changes we've just implemented...I'll try to suggest some stuff myself later.


Dominae