AU: A MOD for the curiculum

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Theseus
I encourage as little change as possible from stock... what if an AU player got used to the "new Communism" (funny phrase!) and it screwed up a PTW MP game?

I think of the AU mod as 'smoothing out the basic game' or 'Civ3 like it should be', which means a) larger changes are allowed, as long as they improve gameplay and b) I'm still hoping that Firaxis includes some of AU's tweaks in the standard game. Until then, it shouldn't be too hard to remember if a current game is 'stock version' or 'AU mod', and what tactics are appropriate.

BTW, there ARE ideas that were at first introduced in mods and later made it into Civ3:

• Police stations reduce corruption (v1.16)
• Tweaked A/D/M rates for Privateers and Submarines (v1.16)
• Decreased cost of the Forbidden Palace (v1.17)
• Ability to upgrade to civ-specific units (v1.17)
• Army has blitz ability (v1.17)
• Medieval Infantry (announced for PTW)
• Additional tax-increasing improvement (announced for PTW)

[vmxa1]

Without address the pros and cons of the AU mod, I would point out that the people here are probably not representative of the mass market. IOW most buyers of the game will not want the game to be tougher. They are not familar with all ins and outs of the game and play at Chieftain and have their hands full. They are not routinely kicking the AI around on deity. If you look at the list of things included, they all seem to me to be geared towards making the game easier for the player.

[nbarclay]

I really think Longevity needs to come later in the game. With it tied to Medicine, with a leader, it can actually be in place before the first hospital is built, providing a gargantuan benefit while trying to grow cities to take advantage of the larger size hospitals make possible. Similarly, about that time, there may be quite a few cities (or even a whole new core) added to the nation by cavalry conquest that needs to grow. And the fact that the wonder affects all cities, not just a single continent, makes it all the more powerful.

(Read my last post regarding AU 106 and you'll see that I had recently acquired and/or was in the process of acquiring AI nations on four different continents, with three of those continents within the influence of my new second core, when I got Longevity. Not that there was any question that I would win by then, but Longevity added a bit to my already enormous advantage.)

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
The new Longbowman has the same stats like the Immortal. I thought first, that we should make it unaccessible for Persia, but OTOH it needs no iron and might be of use. Again, ideas?

The only easy way to fix this problem is your first idea: to make the Longbowman unavailable to Persia (archers would upgrade to Immortals too). Persia would then be the only civ that would require iron for their 4-2-1 unit, but I think that's OK, since they get theirs so much earlier than everyone else - it's not like Persians are a weak civ, so we can weaken them a little. Anyway, this will have to do until the real deal comes out with PtW.

Re: Longevity. Some people here still think it's a bad Wonder, and some thing we have made it too powerful. I think this means we should leave it as it is for now!

As for the goals of this mod, I don't think we should make big changes that are a matter of taste, but I also don't think that we should focus exclusively on things that will make us better out-of-the-box PtW players.

I would like to see the mod converge to something with the original Civ3 flavor, but with more balanced, multidimensional gameplay. Of course, there is a delicate line (which is different for each player) between retaining the original flavor and balancing the features of the game. Improved gameplay sometimes means that players will have to adopt and adjust to new strategies that would not work in the stock version. Fortunately, Firaxis has done a relatively good job in balancing the game, so these changes are not very many.

If we are lucky, Firaxis might be keeping an eye on this mod, and our changes make it into PtW. That would be the ideal case: improved gameplay AND stock rules. The second best scenario would be if the improved gameplay made the Apolyton community to adopt the mod as a standard, so it wouldn't matter if the rules are slightly different because we would all use the same ones.

[BillChin]

Ok, the six MP upgrade for Communism seems off the table. How about free maintenance for all buildings for Communism? The few times I have switched to Communism, I found the lack of gold (and research) to be most frustrating. The slated changes to increase the maintenance on banks and other late game buildings hit much harder on Communism than Republic or Democracy, further weakening a weak government. This makes the AI significantly weaker if little is done for Communism.

So to outline my tweaks again:
Monarchy - four free unit support
Democracy - 0/1/2 unit support
Communism - ten free units, 4/8/16 support, free maintenance on all buildings.

In more detail:
Monarchy - four free unit support. Think of it as an Imperial Guard. It would be extremely cool if they got an extra hitpoint, but there is no way to do this with the editor. Four extra gold is significant early, but meaningless later, so this is a small change that brings it closer to Republic.

Republic - increase corruption one notch. Seems like a cosmetic change that will mean about as much as the four free units for Monarchy. It may have a measurable impact on large empires.

Democracy - 0/1/2 unit support to give it a measurable edge over Republic in terms of gold and tech. Allows large Democracies to field a purely defensive force at no cost (1 unit per pop 12 city), with any offensive military costing gold.

Communism - ten free unit support, 4/8/16 unit support, free maintenance on all buildings. This really strengthens AI players as they will have more gold available for research or spy missions. In the games I play, the superior spies for Communism never seem to get used because there is no gold to conduct missions. Free maintenance on buildings may make this an option. Think of it as a consequence of the abolition of private property with patriotic volunteers maintaining the buildings for free. This may give Communism a gold edge over Monarchy, but I do not see this as bad. Communist states have disadvantages of slower wonder construction (vs. everybody), and the extra cost of the tech itself plus construction costs of courthouses near the palace.

Ten free unit support makes Communism a viable choice for a small empire that is at war or at risk of war. I think of real world states such as Cuba or North Korea that maintain large standing armies. Again, would be really cool if these ten had extra hitpoints for role playing.
- Bill

[BillChin]

Originally posted by lockstep
As for Longevity, I think that the AU mod's tweak to make this wonder available with Medicine already makes it much better than in vanilla Civ3. (Or am I the only one who deems accelerated city growth in the early industrial age an interesting option?) Anyhow, Longevity providing hospitals in every city on the continent is also a good idea, and I wouldn't say it is unbalancing. After all, hospitals cost 160 shields each, and PtW will introduce a new Internet wonder which will provide research labs in every city on the continent, which normally cost 200 shields each.

Still sounds super powerful to me. I am thinking in terms of multiplayer in a game that is fairly even into the Industrial Age. Whoever gets Longevity probably locks up the game. That player probably gets to Hoover first as a consequence, even if he/she misses the Theory of Evolution. The bonus of instant Hospitals plus +2 pop, means that player will leap frog all other players in tech and gold, in a formerly even game. I vote no because this new super wonder looks like a game winner to me.

Perhaps the same is true of the Hoover Dam and/or the new Internet wonder, but I see no reason to create another game winning wonder in this mod. In any case, Hoover is much further down the tech tree, as is Computers.

Free Aqueducts would be a significant boost, saving the gold for maintenance in existing cities, and getting a free one in conquered cities, but in no way guarantees victory. Free Hospitals seems like it does, because research and gold will quickly shoot up and pass all other players. Sounds like Alexman is against this as well, that moving it up to Medicine is enough. However, I will not build it, nor do I see any human player building it unless all other decent wonders are taken.
- Bill

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
The only easy way to fix this problem is your first idea: to make the Longbowman unavailable to Persia (archers would upgrade to Immortals too). Persia would then be the only civ that would require iron for their 4-2-1 unit, but I think that's OK, since they get theirs so much earlier than everyone else - it's not like Persians are a weak civ, so we can weaken them a little. Anyway, this will have to do until the real deal comes out with PtW.

Why not make the new Longbowman available to Persia, but not on the upgrade path from Immortals? Then it would be available to upgrade archers and if no iron is available, but would not be used otherwise (just as Persia already has no reason to use Longbowmen otherwise).

Re: Longevity. Some people here still think it's a bad Wonder, and some thing we have made it too powerful. I think this means we should leave it as it is for now!

Frankly, I can only see three things that could make Longevity less than overpowering if it's completed around the time hospitals start coming online. One is if a player builds densely enough that he gets very little use out of hospitals to begin with (and even then it could be overpowering if there's a good bit of conquered territory in a productive area that needs gotten up to size). The second (and no offense meant to Sir Ralph here) is if he hasn't figured out how to use it properly yet. And the third is if he's unwilling to do the bit of extra micromanagement needed to use it properly.

The trick to using Longevity without blowing WLT?D is to adjust how much food you get from tiles and how many people are entertainers to maintain a workable balance. Worst case, if Longevity overshoots the population level you want, you can irrigate an extra tile and assign an extra entertainer until you can either build an extra worker or do something to let the city stay in WLT?D at a larger size. (Long-term, the extra worker can more than make up for the worker time lost flipping a tile to irrigation and then back to mining.) Then, unless I'm missing something, the only long-term down side to Longevity is that if a city has an odd number of food production, you have to build a settler or two workers every now and then instead of just a single worker to bleed off excess population. And even that can have advantages if there are places where you still need to grow.

I suppose the micromanagement needed to do this can be a bit of a pain, but the fact that a wonder requires micromanagement to be unbalancing does not change the fact that it can be unbalancing. If anything, having an unbalancing strategy available only if you do extra micromanagement can be even more annoying.

Question: are any of the people who remain critical of Longevity's value even with it available with Medicine writing from exeperience having used it during the early industrial era under circumstances where they need to grow and using tactics similar to what I describe?

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay

Why not make the new Longbowman available to Persia, but not on the upgrade path from Immortals? Then it would be available to upgrade archers and if no iron is available, but would not be used otherwise (just as Persia already has no reason to use Longbowmen otherwise).

Because of the way Firaxis designed the upgrade paths, in order to have Immortals replace Swordsmen, you need to have Swordsmen upgrade to Immortals. So to make Swordmen upgrade to Longbowmen, you NEED to have Immortals upgrade to Longbowmen.

[alexman]

Originally posted by BillChin
How about free maintenance for all buildings for Communism?

Just an observation: This would make Adam Smith's useless for Communism. Realistic yes, but is that what we really want?

[nbarclay]

It also occurs to me that Longevity would be a lot more powerful for someone using a raze-and-rebuild military strategy. Prior to the invasion, it would cut the population cost of building settlers in half, or to practically nothing if a player waits until a city is ready to grow to build a settler. (Without Longevity, the first growth after building a settler takes the city up to one pop less than what it had before, but with Longevity, the population for the settler is replaced all at once - not a small consideration if the city contemplating building a settler grows slowly.) Further, replacement cities grow twice as quickly under such circumstances. That combination represents a dramatic shift in the equation of whether to capture cities intact or to raze (or abandon) and replace them. It also dramatically reduces the cost of starving captured cities down and replacing the population with your own citizens throgh growth and/or imported population.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
Because of the way Firaxis designed the upgrade paths, in order to have Immortals replace Swordsmen, you need to have Swordsmen upgrade to Immortals. So to make Swordmen upgrade to Longbowmen, you NEED to have Immortals upgrade to Longbowmen.

I know Egypt's war chariots are still available after horsemen, the normal replacement for chariots, become available. Did they do special hard-coding for that that makes it impossible to create a similar effect with Immortals? (Note that the important thing is making sure having Longbowmen available doesn't end the availability of Immortals, not preventing Immortals from upgrading to Longbowmen. Having a pointless upgrade available doesn't actually hurt anything.)

Nathan

[Harovan]

We could make the new Longbowman inaccessible for Persia, but it isn't entirely pointless, because it needs no iron.

Btw I know for sure, that the Iroquois can also build Knights and MWs at the same time, after Chivalry. There must be something special coded about the UUs.

[alexman]

Chariots and War Chariots are a special case because they are both at the beginning of an upgrade chain. Horsemen and WC both upgrade to Knights, that's why the Egyptians can build them both.

Sir Ralph, are you sure about mounted warriors? I would have sworn that the Iroquois can't build them after Chivalry unless they have no iron.

[alexman]

Let's start by making a smaller change to Communism that will help the AI but will probably not influence the human's decision not to switch to Communism under most circumstances:

List of Government changes for 1.04:

• Increase Republic corruption to Problematic level.
• Add three free unit support to Monarchy.
• Increase worker speed to 3 for Communism.
• Remove all building maintenance for Communism.
• Add 1 free unit per city and two free units per metropolis for Democracy.

I updated the initial post. To test these changes, it's best if we play AU 107 as a religious civ.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by alexman
Sir Ralph, are you sure about mounted warriors? I would have sworn that the Iroquois can't build them after Chivalry unless they have no iron.

For 1.21f I'm 100% sure. I kept a screenshot of a city build queue with both Knights and MWs for a while and deleted it not long ago. Since 1.29f I didn't play with the Iroquois again, so for the latest version I can't say it for certain.

[Harovan]

I made a quick check with a modified civ3mod.bic: Iroquois with The Wheel, Iron Working (for the resources), Horseback Riding and Chivalry as free techs, and Chivalry moved to the Ancient age with prerequisites Iron Working and Horseback Riding. Unit upgrades etc. unchanged. Then I made a map with iron under the start location and horses just 1 tile away. Here's a shot of the citys build queue after the horses were connected:

[nbarclay]

Alexman, how hard have you tried to set up separate upgrade paths for swordsmen and immortals? From looking at the editor, it looks like it ought to be possible, but I don't have time to run a test at present. The units are definitely listed separately.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Ok, since we appear to be going through with some major change to Communism, I'm ready to play-test it in AU-107. I'm also interested in figuring out if Longevity is really as unbalanced as was previously mentioned. The very fact that this Industrial age tech could be unbalanced goes to show that sometimes (often?) the game is far from decided before the Industrial age.

But I do have a problem with the change to Monarchy. 3 (or 4) free unit support? What's the reasoning behind this one (although a "royal guard" idea does seem cool)?

Here are the goals of the AU mod:

- Present the player with more strategic decisions.
- Improve the AI.
- Change as little as possible, to preserve the unmodded Civ3 flavor.
- Reduce micromanagement.

I really don't understand where the change to Monarchy fits into this scheme. It seems like a minor point, but small changes do add up.


Dominae

[BillChin]

Originally posted by Dominae
Ok, since we appear to be going through with some major change to Communism, I'm ready to play-test it in AU-107. I'm also interested in figuring out if Longevity is really as unbalanced as was previously mentioned. The very fact that this Industrial age tech could be unbalanced goes to show that sometimes (often?) the game is far from decided before the Industrial age.

But I do have a problem with the change to Monarchy. 3 (or 4) free unit support? What's the reasoning behind this one (although a "royal guard" idea does seem cool)?

Here are the goals of the AU mod:

- Present the player with more strategic decisions.
- Improve the AI.
- Change as little as possible, to preserve the unmodded Civ3 flavor.
- Reduce micromanagement.

I really don't understand where the change to Monarchy fits into this scheme. It seems like a minor point, but small changes do add up.

Dominae

The change to Monarchy narrows the gap with Republic (strategic decisions). It also helps the AI, if they decide to stay in Monarchy through the middle ages. So it fits one and two. The cosmetic change to Republic corruption is about equivalent to three free units. That small nudge down plus the small nudge up to Monarchy closes the gap. Though to me, Republic still seems clearly better for most situations.

The change is small so it preserves the flavor of the unmodded game, though it is a change. So this change gets pluses for 1) and 2) and only a small hit on 3) so that makes it a decent change in my book. This is the same scoring I give for the change on Republic. I think both are decent and both make the government choice less clear cut for a human player while helping the AI which has a higher tendency to stay in Monarchy. The three free unit support helps small empires much more than large ones. For a human warmonger it is largely irrelevant after the first war of conquest. I do see it helping keep smaller AI Monarchies in the game.

The main purpose is to cut down on the tendency of many experienced players, to go straight to Republic and stay there the entire game. This is often seen as the optimal path for non-religious civs. The exception is the warmonger who goes straight to Monarchy and stays there and stays at war for much of the game. The change does little to encourage that, because it is still worthwhile to shift to Republic or Democracy if there is a long period of peace.

I doubt there will be much useful evidence collected on Communism or Longevity in AU-107. Maybe 5% of single player games are in doubt by the time the Industrial Age rolls around. In multiplayer, I see a higher percentage of games undecided at that time, though the majority will be over. Humans often have a tendency to gang up on the leading player. Humans also learn from their opponents so the gap between the best players and lesser players can become smaller over time.
- Bill

[alexman]

UU's are indeed a special case in the upgrade path for every civ. (It must be the "starts golden age" property). I tried Sir Ralph's experiment with Japan and they can build Samurai and Cavalry at the same time. By the way, this sheds new light on the player1/lockstep debate about the upgrade path of Jaguar Warriors because Aztecs can always build them - until the end of the game!

Anyway, back to the point, just making Immortals upgrade to the new Longbowmen will do just fine. The Persians will be able to build them both.

Sorry for the confusion!

[player1]

Actualy, I've had similar strange thing going while playing with my SCENARIO:New Earth (which uses my MOD as base).

Now I get it!


New cheesy Greek strategy:
In Modern times build Hoplites in your highly corrupt cities.
Then rush build Barracks.
Then upgrade them.
Repeat process.

Expensive but can pay off sometimes (especily if you have Leonardo's Workshop).

[Dominae]

BillChin, thanks for your convincing reply. But I'm still anxious to playtest these changes to see if the governments really will be closer to being balanced. When is AU-107?


Dominae

[Dominae]

Um, I'm going to echo my own question (above): when is AU-107 scheduled? I'm eager to try my hand at another communal game.


Dominae

[alexman]

I heard rumors about an always-war scenario for AU 107. Theseus, can you confirm?

I suggest combining it with a resource-poor world (4-2-1 Longbowmen anyone?) and a religious civ (Communism anyone?).

Personally, I'm still trying to finish 106 so I'm not yet ready for 107.

[Gen.Dragolen]

alexman,

Could you check on the au mod 1.04 download ?

I have tried a couple of times this evening, but cannot get a complete file. This could be just from the load on the servers, but I just want to cover off all angles.

Thanks.


D.

[Theseus]

I think there's something wrong with downloading today... both Arrian and I have had problems.

I PMed Mark.

[Harovan]

I have also problems downloading the file, although my problem as always is, that I keep getting the old (1.03) version. Somewhere between me and Apolyton sits a very nasty proxy .

Alexman, could you mail me the AU 1.04 mod? You should have my email. Thanks in advance.

[Catt]

Me too - I get an empty zip folder. Alexman, if you have a copy and a chance to email, I'd love a copy for AU 107. I have PM'd you with my email address.

[alexman]

I replaced the file - if it still doesn't work, it's probably not my fault!

[player1]

It's probelm with ALL ZIP attachments!