Totalitarianism - Has this idea been completely dropped?

Ision · January 12, 2004, 03:15

There was some talk on the ToE - Hoover thread of incorporating Fascism and Communism into a single tech called 'Totalitarianism'. Has this been completely scrapped? I hope not. Let us remember that the ToE/Hoover debate is in many ways related to the idea of incorporating Fascism and Communism into one tech.

After an extensive number of games of C3C it is apparent to me that the addition of ‘Fascism’ to C3C has added yet another detour for many AIs from researching towards factories or ToE. Invariably one or more AIs will waste time pursuing either commie or fascism in spite of already having researched one of the totalitarian techs.

Personally I would like to see some experimentation with completely eliminating both techs and making Commie available with ‘Industrialization’ and Fascism available with ‘Scientific Method’. No doubt many AU Mod Developers would consider this far too radical.

So what about it guys – is a single ‘Totalitarianism’ tech in the works?

Ision

pauli · January 12, 2004, 03:38

hell, i'd like to see the govs milled together to boot...

alexman · January 12, 2004, 08:34

In my tests to balance the AI research choices in the Industrial era, I have succeeded in making the AI choose Communism and Fascism as their next tech just 7% of the time (each), after getting Natioinalism. This is down from 49% for Communism and 33% for Fascism in the stock rules.

I will post my results in that thread as soon as I have finished the Modern Age, but I don't think it's necessary to combine Fascism and Communism if the AI doesn't value them nearly as much as in the stock rules.

Nor Me · January 14, 2004, 00:15

There's still the issue of an AI switching twice if they research the wrong tech first.

nbarclay · January 14, 2004, 00:55

At most, changing AI research priorities is no more than a partial solution. On the plus side, in some cases, the AI that eventually gets around to researching Fascism might be one that lags behind and can trade it to catch up some without any net loss of relative tech position for the AIs. But in too many others, the civ that finally decides to research Fascism (whenever it gets around to it) will be one of the leaders, causing the civ to lag behind in its competition with the human player (who, after all, is unlikely to place any significant value on trading for it). In such cases, the problem would be merely delayed rather than eliminated.

With a single Totalitarianism tech, AIs would never waste their research effort on more than one optional industrial government tech. Further, that optional tech will be one that also has significant value to human players for Police Stations, and that human players would therefore have an incentive to trade for relatively quickly. That would solve the problem of wasted AI research effort a lot more completely.

Nathan

alexman · January 14, 2004, 10:18

Quote:

Originally posted by nbarclay
the problem would be merely delayed rather than eliminated.

It's far more accurate to say that the problem will be partially solved than to say that it will be merely delayed.

The most likely result from the reduced AI value of those technologies is that only a small fraction of AIs will research them, and then they will trade them around. This saves the rest of the AI civs from having to (at least partially) research them, as they do now.

ducki · January 14, 2004, 12:16

Quote:

There's still the issue of an AI switching twice if they research the wrong tech first.

The higher the difficulty level, the less this is an issue since AI anarchy times are capped.
Not saying a fix is not needed, just that starting at, IIRC, Monarch(or is it Regent?), the AI is almost guaranteed to have less anarchy per revolution than the human.