AU 505 The Power of Fascism - After Game Comments

[Theseus]

So... what did ya think??

Were you Center-of-a-Black-Hole eeeeviiilll??? Or a namby pamby dictator, with a velvet fist in a silk glove?

Thoughts on Fascism? Thoughts on unit support for REP and DEM?

Who gets what DAR awards?

[Tassadar500]

And remember to put your games in the HoF.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Theseus
Were you Center-of-a-Black-Hole eeeeviiilll??? Or a namby pamby dictator, with a velvet fist in a silk glove?

Well, judging by the number of enemies left at game end... Center of Black Hole comes close.

Originally posted by Theseus
Thoughts on Fascism?

With the AU Mod, it's useful. But only if you keep the AI at war. A peaceful Democracy, or ever Republic, can out-research you easily. If you can plan and execute short wars, or don't want to fight at all, you are better served with those two.

I almost felt the advantage on the home continent to be unfair. They all went down too fast. It seemed like the government form didn't matter, because of the speed of those wars. The meaningful difference showed during my war with Russia, which dragged longer, and would have given considerable War Weariness to other governments.

The SPHQ was fun too. Put into Moscow, aided by Iron works, it allowed for 1-turn Modern Armor production. Not that it mattered that late in the game, but it was nice.

Originally posted by Theseus
Thoughts on unit support for REP and DEM?

Don't know about Democracy, didn't use it. But Republic allowed me to go without paying upkeep for a while, because of the 18 units free. I had a small military, and relatively few workers at that time (switched governments right after researching Republic). Later my income allowed for a larger force without any cash worries. So, for small empires, not warmongering, it allows a very relaxed game - the early switch doesn't hurt.

Originally posted by Theseus
Who gets what DAR awards?

Looking forward see what Dominae will do with those modern units. I can't recall when I last saw Rocket Artillery in Civ3.

[Golden Bear]

Sorry, I put my after game comments in the last DAR thread because I did not see this one last night.

In short, I liked Fascism for the speed that it helped me develop my continent and for allowing me to have ceaseless war. Unlike Republic or Democracy, those "everybody against me" wars were of no concern. I could turtle up and defend my island and outlast them while I built up.

However, the inability to spawn culture in conquered territories hurts the speed of the game. Going to full conquest in stead of domination chafed. I could have switched back over but I figured that 8 turns of Anarchy followed by paying for temples followed by 4 turns of culture building was too tedious.

The slow pace of tech progress goes against my grain too, but sometimes it is good to try something diffferent in order to appreciate what you have. The lack of money was not such a biggie because I could not buy city improvements anyway - another huge downside.

As I said before, I could see using this government in selected situations - perhaps with a Religious/Commercial civ where I could develop my infrastructure quickly, fight my WW, and get out and back to peaceful development.

What is this HOF? What do I post there?

BTW, again a repetition, but I won by conquest on stock Monarch in 1822 with the low value of 2878 points.

[-SafaN-]

Well, i never finished the game, just because it was to boring. I had 100 f15, 100 art, and tanks could be rolled from the factory to the battle field with the use of a few transports, add in a golden age mobilization and tech lead, so the game was over. I didn't like to play 10 minutes for each turn.

notes:
fascism and industriuos gives reeeeal fast workers, u can also have many without a cash shortage. I was surprised.

Food is a little more important then otherwise, and so i went for the Pyramids. Later on you could do with the longetivy, but the free granarys worked like a charm: city conquering, starving and then rebuilding pop was realy quick.

Fascism is a real nice gov, Mayb i will use it as wartime gov for the celts: religious so one turn lost, and agricultural so there is a fast pop boost afterwards.
What i realy hated is that my continent had no aluminium and the NMY was bombarding my harbors to shredder. And the cities were to small to poprush, so no harbors, no alumium

Thats it for now

Greetz

about the F15, well it sucks. I just used them because they were the special unit, but 100 bombers have a longer range and did more damage then the F15's

[Modo44]

Yes, that F-15 is basically a different-looking Jet Fighter. If it has some meaningful advantages, I couldn't see them.

HOF is short for Hall of Fame. You can put your game in there.

[Golden Bear]

I never used F15s at all. Once I reached Tanks I was able to rush the other civs. But I was playing only on Monarch. I might (probably won't) try it again on Emperor. I found that the most productive thing, once I had a slight tech edge, was to just build units. I built a ton of bombers, tho' and they were just fine.

[pvzh]

The more interesting question is "does Fascism need a boost"? or even "does it have a purpose?"

In AU mod Fascism has extra FP, but I found this somewhat indiffrent for this game. By the time my FP city "Rome" was up and running, I have already finished most of opponents. Plus I had a feeling that I could have done all the same in republic without 7 or 8 turns of anarchy that I got. At the very worst I would have the same research rate due to high upkeep on units and luxury slider to suppress WW.

So, do we need to:
* remove "forced resettlement flag"; (1) it is contradicting to the purpose of the goverment in the game: you are trading the long run advange for a short run; which is opposite to communism. (2) it is bigger penalty for AI than for human who can join workers produced from woker pumps and make-up population loss very quickly.

* since it is shunned goverment by AI's (they are not suppose to use it anyway). Why not remove it entirely from the game? Thus, AI will not waste resourses to research it.

-----------------
A random thought
-----------------
In general, in Civ there is a flaw that representative goverments are always much better and there is no need to use any other, in the most cases. This is due to +1 trade at each tile: it is like having The Colossus at each and every city, and that is very hard to beat. Unless you are in the always war and cannot sign peace treaties when WW is unbearable.
I am not even sure how to address this without something drastic: give to roads +2 trade instead of +1 trade and increase the cost of tech's to compensate for this.

[Dominae]

Like I said way back (before I left the panel), the solution to making the representative governments (and their trade bonus) more balanced is to make them pay through the roof for unit support costs.

C3C tried to do this with Republic with 2gpt support instead of 1, but this had little effect because of the boosted unit support values for cities and metros. The AU505 tweak of granting Rep. and Dem. +15 or so free unit support is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

The "builder" governments should have enough money to support a defensive standing army. Waging war while in Republic should be difficult. If ever diplomacy fails, the player will have to think long and hard about his or her government choice: do I risk getting overrun while staying in Republic, or do I defend myself properly with Monarchy/Communism, etc.?

Thus I suggest 0/0/0 unit support for both Republic and Democracy. Very rich countries will be able to afford to defend themselves and have a representative government, but only much later in the game. This is as it should be for gameplay balance. Yes, I know that "realistically" democracies support large armies just fine thank you very much, but AU is interested in gameplay first (I think).

Note that this change will surely hurt the AI, as most of these changes tend to do anyway. But with free unit support at increasing difficulties, I'm sure it would not be fatal to the AI's competitiveness.

[bigfatjonny]

Dominae is right, the power of fascism is the unit support and no WW.
The free unit support for Demo and Republic undermines this.
If you want to be a builder and have a tech lead then go for Republic, but you shouldnt be able to lead an offensive war with it otherwise there is no point in an other government.

The republic free unit support of 15 is only really important in the early stages of the game, later on 30gpt doesnt really make much difference. I agree with Domanae that it should be put back to 0/0/0, a really rich Republic or Demo could afford that anyway. How about changing Demo to 2gpt unit support as well or would that make it totally useless? ( i would like a Demo 3rd forbidden Palace)

One thing that no one has said - what about the comparison between Communism and Fascism? I like Communism because all of your cities have some productivity, even newly captured ones. Using the SPHQ on another continent with Fascism would also bring that benefit, i think that it is a great AU change.

One of the worst things I found about Fascism was that pop rushing was rather difficult, i normally lower science and buy factories as soon as i get the tech but couldnt do that because i had changed to Fascism already. It is so costly in human life to pop rush expensive buildings or units, particularly after taking a pop hit on changing goverments. I think that it is a good balanced part of the goverment though, just one reason that i wouldnt normally use it.

[Golden Bear]

I'm just not certain that fascism is worth the bother, given the way things are set up. Why bother with the unnecessary extra research path if you do not get anything that is really worth the effort? Sure we like Police Stations, but they come off a different path from Nat and is yet a third non-necessary tech.

At that stage in the game I usually am beelining to other techs am can just live without those techs until I trade/steal them later.

I think that the geometry of the tech tree demands that Fascism and maybe Communism need beefing up in order to entice people to spending the time on them.

[Modo44]

Or, make Nationalism a required tech. It would definately be right with history, and it would increase the relative value of all techs that require Nationalism.

[joncnunn]

Making Nationalism a required tech wouldn't change a thing, it's already the AIs top Industrail era priority.

As for a human, because of how unpopular the Musket Men are to build / upgrade it, if the AI weren't in such a hurry to get Nationalism, a human would as well to upgrade all those PikeMen.

[Modo44]

The point of Nationalism as a required tech is to make the human go after Communism/Fascism/Espionage some more. Those three techs often get completely neglected otherwise, especially because you need to research/trade for Nationalism to get them. You can often beeline for Rep Parts and completely forget that part of the tech tree - a part that just as often stalls the AI for a while. Making Nationalism required could break this human habit, at least to some extent.

The AI already is in love with Nationalism, and it does research Communism and/or Fascism very often anyway, so this change wouldn't hurt it at all (which is good)

[Dominae]

Nationalism is not the prerequisite of anything all that useful, so you could just wait until the end of the Industrial era to research it. Not a huge change, if you ask me.

[Golden Bear]

You know, it occurs to me that the AI favoring Nationalism while we are all beelining for Steam Power and TOE is an inordinate advantage for humans. It is pretty much a guaranteed success criteria for me even on emperor because I know that the AI will tie itself up researching Nationalism-Communism-Fascism while I am zooming through the required techs.

That would be a pretty straightforward way to make the game tougher on humans, if whatever flag leads the AI research were to be changed to follow the human research path.

[dmd175]

Originally posted by Golden Bear
You know, it occurs to me that the AI favoring Nationalism while we are all beelining for Steam Power and TOE is an inordinate advantage for humans. It is pretty much a guaranteed success criteria for me even on emperor because I know that the AI will tie itself up researching Nationalism-Communism-Fascism while I am zooming through the required techs.

That would be a pretty straightforward way to make the game tougher on humans, if whatever flag leads the AI research were to be changed to follow the human research path.

I completely agree. This AI behavior has guaranteed my getting ahead in what I view as key techs early in the IA. I've always taken much joy as I see AI after AI getting tied up with fascism and communism; thus fixing this behavior - pretty much an exploit - would certainly maintain the challenge to the human through the IA.

Furthermore, the AI places an inordinately high value on nationalism, and I rarely if ever have been able to trade for it with the AI - at least until it is beyond usefulness (ie RP researched).

[jshelr]

We made our landing in Germany and bumped around a little before declaring victory in this game and getting out

My main thought is that I like the game format:

1) No early wars initiated by the human player
2) No late wars initiated in democracy or republic

These two items combine to make the game interesting well into the late stages by keeping the human civ small.

I would support steps in the AU mod to enforce the necessity of using non-representative governments. These might include significantly increased unit support costs in the industrial and modern eras. Increased war weariness. Changing the hurry method in fascism to cash instead of pop. And whatever else people come up with.

Nice setup. Thanks a lot.

[JimiD]

Representative governments in similar games have been hamstrung by a senate or parliment (Civ 2), who would accept any peace treaty offered, and veto war declarations (ie cant chose to go to war, and cant pursue it successfully for very long), or by combat penalties (SMAC), either negative morale (ie vets are regs), and bonuses to 'war time' governments (vets are elites), so if not in a 'war' government then you will lose many more battles (vet vs vet becomes elite vs reg)

Civ3 endevours to acheive a balance using economy - commerce bonus in representative governments, offset by high support costs.

However the commerce potential of a representative government along with city improvements can offset the loss of free unit support, so it is all too easy (in my relatively limited experience) to run representative government and fight as needed.

WW does play a part, but a good economy and luxes (trade or conquest) can offset this, and most of my battles aim to be short and intense, so this does not play the role it might.

Has an analysis been done on the relative costs of support for a given city under different governments?

ie

A city (12) with improvements (library & marketplace) under demo, and a given corruption, might produce X commerce, and thus y gpt and z research.

Similar city under communism will produce less commerce, and gpt and research, but can support units for war.

(note that as the number of city improvements increases the commerce bonus is multiplied)

Does the demo city produce enough commerce to pay for its equivilent unit support in war, instead of the 'free support'?

I will have to investigate, but I would imagine that this has already been considered, and wont get onto a machine for a while.

Quick numbers at work:

Demo:

12 tiles worked plus city, assume each normally 2 commerce =26

loose 2 to corruption

12+6 = 18 gpt (bank) - 8 (4 units x 2gpt upkeep) = 10gpt
12+6 = 18 beakers (library)

Communism:

12 tiles worked plus city, assume each normally 1 commerce =13

loose 1 for corruption

6+3 = 9gpt (bank)
6+3 = 9 beakers (library)

4 units supported per city for free.


Is it really as simple as that or, more likely, am I missing something?

[Modo44]

Yes, it is as simple as that. Choose Republic, and never change to anything else, no matter if at war or not. This is true in most games, even with the AU Mod.

A Republic can usually handle 20 turns of war with ease. Heck, even a Democracy can, if the war is guaranteed to last only those 20 turns. If a player masters quick wars (BOOM -> we have 3 cities -> 4 turns later we have peace -> the AI pays tribute), and keeps the other AIs at peace, no War Weariness ever happens. The lux slider is much more powerful for those governments, offsetting the lost MP. And, the units not used for MP can go boot someone, or can be disbanded for a massive decrease in upkeep cost. Democracy is only dangerous against many opponents (and wars). Republic seems able to handle even that.

Yes, Fascism or Communism can be fun, but they are really useful only in very special conditions. Fascism - for a small core, preferably matros. Communism - for a huge empire. Both need to keep everyone at war, to stay alive in the tech race. Losing the cash (huge impact to research ability), and x turns to Anarchy is too big a hit in most cases. About the only thing those two governments are good at are extreme wars (many turns, many casualties, many cities changing hands), that would generate huge amounts of War Weariness.

Unfortunately, unit counts don't matter either. A player has a huge tactical advantage over the AI. This means, that he can often win with a fairly small force, that would be easy to sustain even with high upkeep costs. Those would only help against a massive build up of forces, which is often not needed, especially after Railroads.

[Risa]

I learned several points from this course.
1) In a game of no early conquest, gaining a city or settler from hut is very helpful, even if it's hopeless corrupted. I have played twice, both got New York by south of Rome. Helped by rice on grassland and forest-chopping, I claimed a fairly large area around - even larger than home part on the second try.

2) Longevity is very important for Fascism warfare. It helps the recovery from the population hit on government change, and more importantly, speeds up culture expansion of conquered land immensely.

3) Airfield is so cheap, to a point that there's almost no reason to build airports in cities.

And some observations:
1) Compared to Communism, Fascism is an ineffecient wartime government type. It's corruption model is inferior to Communism's. SPHQ is only useful to save a Ironwork city, cities around it are of course not total corrupted, but still too corrupted to be useful. And culture expansion in conquered land is too slow.

2) AI don't give a high enough priority on Computer (and to a less point, Synthetic Fiber). I enjoyed a quite long period of MA vs. infantry/TOW infantry warfare.

[Risa]

Originally posted by Dominae
Nationalism is not the prerequisite of anything all that useful, so you could just wait until the end of the Industrial era to research it. Not a huge change, if you ask me.

What if making it the prerequisite of Industialization?
It is a big change to alter tech tree, but is not the first time AU Mod do this.

[pvzh]

A more logical move would be to place all industrial governments after Espionage since it has industrialization as pre-request, so AI might go for something else after Nationalism.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Risa

What if making it the prerequisite of Industialization?
It is a big change to alter tech tree, but is not the first time AU Mod do this.

Yes, a pretty drastic change (at least, compared to alexman's idea regarding Motorized Transportation). I like it, though.

[joncnunn]

Doubt it; if the AI is anywhere near my tech lead, I'd still be content researching something else and trading it to the first AI getting Nationalism.

With a big enough tech lead, sure I might make Nationalism my second tech (right after Steam Power.)

I've tried my all optional techs are now required mod. The affects on my research plans for Nationalism/Communism was competely unaffected. The most noticeable affect of this was a delay at the end of each era researching the bypassed techs.

Originally posted by Modo44
The point of Nationalism as a required tech is to make the human go after Communism/Fascism/Espionage some more. Those three techs often get completely neglected otherwise, especially because you need to research/trade for Nationalism to get them. You can often beeline for Rep Parts and completely forget that part of the tech tree - a part that just as often stalls the AI for a while. Making Nationalism required could break this human habit, at least to some extent.

The AI already is in love with Nationalism, and it does research Communism and/or Fascism very often anyway, so this change wouldn't hurt it at all (which is good)

[joncnunn]

I think what would help the AI the most would be removing the Communism & Fascism techs, moving Police Stations, and the goverments themselves into Nationalism. (Increase the cost of Nationalism)

Originally posted by Golden Bear
You know, it occurs to me that the AI favoring Nationalism while we are all beelining for Steam Power and TOE is an inordinate advantage for humans. It is pretty much a guaranteed success criteria for me even on emperor because I know that the AI will tie itself up researching Nationalism-Communism-Fascism while I am zooming through the required techs.

That would be a pretty straightforward way to make the game tougher on humans, if whatever flag leads the AI research were to be changed to follow the human research path.

[joncnunn]

Originally posted by The pirate
12 tiles worked plus city, assume each normally 2 commerce =26

loose 2 to corruption

12+6 = 18 gpt (bank) - 8 (4 units x 2gpt upkeep) = 10gpt
12+6 = 18 beakers (library)

Communism:

12 tiles worked plus city, assume each normally 1 commerce =13

loose 1 for corruption

6+3 = 9gpt (bank)
6+3 = 9 beakers (library)

4 units supported per city for free.

Is it really as simple as that or, more likely, am I missing something?

Yes, but a 24 out of 26 commerce city is extremely high; even with court houses. It's either right next door tio the palace without a CH (first 4), or within the first 8 cities with one. With Police Stations could be out to 12.

Offest by a non-FP / non-SPHQ Communist city getting 12/13 commerce would also be a really, really tiny communist country.

The one thing you did miss is that with a SPHQ, A communist empire would out shield produce a Democracy/Republic overall, but the manner in which it's done is more helpful for communists building a lot of units & cheap improvements, and counter-productive for wonder building outside P/FP/SPHQ.

Democracy would stilll be able to pay for the large army within reason with the commerce bonus at normal costs.
Republic does run into the support problem much quicker with the double cost over the limit.

[joncnunn]

My prediction:

All AIs would perform the following beeline:

1. Industrialism
2. Esponage
3. Communism.

Originally posted by pvzh
A more logical move would be to place all industrial governments after Espionage since it has industrialization as pre-request, so AI might go for something else after Nationalism.

[pvzh]

I do not think Espionage will be picked right away. At least now, AI does not pick it right away in AU mod, plus AI's will have Steam power (rails) and Industrialization (Factories/Plants) before they start to entrench themselves in government techs. Besides, after governments AI goes about replacable parts, maybe hiding goverments behind espionage will send some AI's for Replacable parts.
There are flavours in AU mod attached to techs already, so maybe some adjustment with tech costs like just increasing Espinage cost will discourage AI from researching it right away despite the fact that it allows government techs.
For example in Ancient Era, Religious AI (in AU mod) goes straight for Monarchy because all bottom branch is religious. Militaristic civs tends to go for Wheel, IW, HBR. Scientific AI if it has writing frequently picks Literature as next tech. So, it might work in Industrial Era, as long as goverment techs are not reachable right after Nationalism and enough diversity is present in terms of flavours for Industrial Era tech.

[Risa]

In my game AIs tech choice was pretty well already.
I was the first civ entering industrial era, followed by Germany, Netherland and Celts. My researching route was Steam Power, Industrialization and Eletricity, while Germany's free tech was Nationalism. Netherland and Celts's first tech was no suprise Nationalism, and Germany's was Communism. By that time war among Germany, Celts and Russia had already broken out, so their choice was understandable.
Later when I was about halfway to Industrialization, Russia was nearly finishing their medieval age too (judging by how they valued the last tech). Fearing their free tech would be Steam Power, I sold the tech to three indust-civs first, managed to buy Nationalism back, and not enough for Communism. It turned out Russia's free tech was also Nationalism.
By the time I had got Electricity, Germany researched Industrialization, Netherland got Medicine, Russia got Fascism. The latter two were branch lead.

That is, after Nationalism, AIs tech choosing returns to normal. The only problem left is while AI are all busying Nationalism, player can go with main bulk without hindrance. Thus I suggest adding Nationalism to prerequisites of Industiallization, which is the first thing jumping into my mind.