AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[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.