MOD: The Ancient Mediterranean MOD 0.2.2

[conmcb25]

I think adjusting the cost maybe in order.

Im not saying make it easy, Im just saying dont make it so its really not worth it.

There has to be a middle road there somewhere

[Justus II]

OK, I got the save, I will take a look at it later tonight (hopefully!). As for the vet wonder, I was trying to avoid the Parthenon, as it is pretty much a 'human only' wonder, since it requires 4 temples, the AI is bad about building pre-requisite buildings for wonders.

[Arrian]

Yay! I finally got to Standing Military. Of course, me being me, I've been building bath houses, sewers and guard stations instead of the barracks. My upgrades are almost all done (until I get Arab Horsemen in 4 turns, that is) and the rest are easily dealt with since I now have a solid Imperial Highway net. Once you have railroads, it's a snap.

Next time I play, I will see how a powerful City States empire deals with being the aggressor in a relatively large-scale war (Media, thy time has come!). I may, however, build the TAM version of Universal Suffrage first (I'll have to double back and research Drama).

Goodnight.

-Arrian

[Justus II]

OK, I had a chance to look over the save. Your results are similar to what I do, you have a (relatively speaking) small military compared to empire size, averaging just over 2 units per city (not counting workers). So, that tends to avoid the unit-support penalties we tried to use to offset the communal corruption problem. Here's the current gov't settings for version 2.5i, and how your empire fares in each gov't. Note that since you don't have the techs for Empire or Feudalism, I've had to estimate them. Also, Despotism and Theocracy include the tile penalty. This is reflected in Commerce and Shields, but there's no easy way to sum up the total surplus food, so it's not shown. It certainly reduces population growth, and even led to starvation at a couple towns. Also, Republic and Empire have Gov-specific wonders to act as an additional FP, which are obviously not built, so that would help those 2 govs. Empire, however, also has the 'facism' resettlement penalty, so after switching, you would experience a big pop loss, and need a few turns to recover your productivity.

Here's the results:

[Justus II]

Note that City States is the hands-down cash winner, but Republic isn't too far behind, and with another FP added in, should catch up. It also has faster workers. Empire has the shield production to match, and faster workers, and would be even more productive with it's FP. The differences start to shift as the total unit count increases. Here's a couple example cases, with larger militaries (3 units per city, then 4 units per). As I mentioned, I tend to also go for smaller militaries, but many players go for larger militaries, especially during the conquest phase. This, and the WW, combine to make Empire a better pure war-mongering gov (see in the last case, it even has more net cash flow than city-state!), and Republic the best balanced gov (with the FP). I know it's far from perfect (and am very open to suggestions), we just tried to come as close as possible while still allowing communal governments.

[thamis]

We need to find a way to make the Merchant Oligarchy produce a bit more gold. Also, Republic should be superior to City States, IMHO.

[Justus II]

Originally posted by thamis
We need to find a way to make the Merchant Oligarchy produce a bit more gold. Also, Republic should be superior to City States, IMHO.

Merchant Oligarchy does provide more net gold, for smaller size empires. The problem is once you get past about 30 cities (OCNx1.5 or so), the communal governments really start outpace the others. With 20 cities or less, Merchant Oligarchy would have better cash flow.

Republic IS superior to City States, IMHO, even in these examples. First, the Forum Romanum hasn't been built, once it is, corruption will be further reduced, bringing it closer to City States. Second, the improved worker rate, and lower war weariness, make it a more flexible government than City States.

[Arrian]

Cash flow isn't the only factor. Even if Republic had beaten out City States in overall cash flow, I still would have chosen CS, because of shield waste. This shows up in your spreadsheet comparison as well. Under Republic, there would have been two sizeable portions of my empire that would have been close to useless (Phoenicia and Assyria), forcing me to cash rush anything I wanted to build there. I planned to build the extra FP small wonder in Sidon, and that surely would have helped (eventually, since that would've taken some time), but under CS, there was no need. Every city I have was immediately productive.

Note that although building the extra FP would help Republic, I did some things that helped CS as well. I had several core cities that lacked courthouses, because under a central government those cities didn't need them. Those were quickly built, making things even better under CS. The previously super-corrupt areas did the same.

IIRC, when I did my test, I rearranged the WF in my cities first (I had moved things around to prevent starvation during the 6 turns of anarchy). This resulted in 1066 raw commerce for CS, with 220 lost corruption - 20.6%. I have it written down at home.

IMO, Republic loses out to CS, and would even if my army was larger (which, having played forward into the Imperial Age, it now is).

-Arrian

[Justus II]

Unfortunately, it's always hard to get a good comparison, since how you optimize your cities would be different under each government. I agree with your point about the production advantage of CS, unfortunately there's little or nothing we can do to offset that in the government settings, Communal gov's will always have more shields available outside the core, and with larger empires, that will always outweigh the (mostly minimal) losses due to corruption in the core when you switch to communal. And as you point out, that can be easily fixed in CS by building core courthouses.

One option we discussed was to remove the trade bonus, and possibly even add in the tile penalty (the only thing which can affect sheild production), but that seems too harsh. Just removing the trade bonus basically gives you Thing Law, which is communal and comes much earlier. Making City States non-communal solves the problem, but then what's the point of the government? You'd have Merchant Oligarchy (which also originally was communal).

I'd love to hear more suggestions about ways to tweak the governments, I spent a lot of time on them and never did get what I would consider 'balance', just tried to get them to each be appealing under different circumstances. Certainly, a good human player can ocercome just about any restrictions (look at players who choose to war-monger in Democracy in the normal game), all we can do is try to make some governments a better fit for certain situations.

[Arrian]

Justus,

I was thinking about this earlier. I agree that removing the commerce bonus just leaves you with Thing Law, so that's a no-go.

Is there a way to deny the Pantheon to City States? That might make corruption more of an issue. As you noted, my empire in this case is 2x the OCN. Without a FP, my empire might actually be feeling the corruption hit.

Perhaps deny Guard Stations as well? Again, corruption stays higher, and it's harder to reduce war weariness.

I think you could further reduce the unit support (0/1/1).

-Arrian

[Justus II]

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to deny improvements/wonders for certain gov's, just enable them. That was our thought with the extra FP for Republic and Empire. We may have to look at removing the Pantheon, or making it have a different effect, so the only FPs would be Republic and Empire. Another option would be to add the FP effect to other gov-specific wonders for the other govs, but that's adding a lot more small wonders.

I can definitely reduce unit support again, that' another problem area. By the time you have a huge empire and Imperial Roads, you no longer have to garrison most towns, so the unit/city ratio starts dropping again, just when we need it to offset the lack of corruption.

As for the Guard, again, can't really deny it. We could, however, make the WW wonder be Republic-specific, though?

[Arrian]

Doh. So much for my bright ideas. As you can see, I've not done any modding myself.

Making the WW wonder Republic-specific gives a (very minor, IMO) boost to Republic. Fine by me.

Hrm. I'm blanking. Other than making having much of an army hideously expensive, I can't think of anything else (right now) to restrain CS.

-Arrian

[thamis]

What's the current cost per unit in city states? Well I'm all for reducing units per city OR increasing the unit upkeep cost by 1.

[Arrian]

3 per, right? So it's already the highest in the Mod.

It's got 0/2/2 support levels. So once you have a decent number of cities, you're all set. Dropping it to 0/1/1 makes sense, I think.

-Arrian

[Justus II]

0/1/1 unit support sounds good to me too. Any other suggestions/concerns? Glad to see the increased interest in the mod!

[conmcb25]

Well I just found it a few months ago, and like i said earlier my kid loves it.

I have not said much about city states myself because I have not used it, by the late game Im on an all out conquest anyway so the war weariness scared me off.

BTW Arrian did you get the spreadsheets for this game from CDG? Listing all the pertinent stats? If you need it lemme know and Ill post you a link

[Arrian]

Yeah, I saw the spreadsheets. I have a pretty good idea of the stats now, though, so I don't really need to refer to it. Thanks, though.

City States is just like Democracy w/regard to WW. You most certainly can fight wars under CS - they just need to be rather short if they're aggressive wars.

Luckily, since CS is so darn powerful, that can be arranged

I'm now thinking that a Despot -> Thing Law -> CS path is the way to go for me, especially if playing a civ like Persia (which has somewhat builderish traits and a cheap small wonder that pops out troops).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Justus II
0/1/1 unit support sounds good to me too. Any other suggestions/concerns? Glad to see the increased interest in the mod!

Other than offense/defense balance?

Just kidding, we've been over that.

Here's one:

Do you really think it's a good idea to allow civs to capture and use other civs' special small wonders?

-Arrian

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by Arrian


Other than offense/defense balance?

Just kidding, we've been over that.

Here's one:

Do you really think it's a good idea to allow civs to capture and use other civs' special small wonders?

-Arrian

Case in point. I was the Romans in the Large Med Map with all the Civs. I built my wonder that gave me all the barracks, then I waited until the Eutruscan Capitol built Eutruscan Pottery and then guess what, it was mine. Pretty powerfull.

Cool on the spreadsheets. I didn't know if you knew about them or not.

[Arrian]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of: Roman + Etruscan wonders. Wow.

I noticed it when I captured Insidious Diplomacy from Media. That one is kinda nice, but it's not like getting free granaries!

-Arrian

[Justus II]

Originally posted by Arrian


Other than offense/defense balance?

Just kidding, we've been over that.

Here's one:

Do you really think it's a good idea to allow civs to capture and use other civs' special small wonders?

-Arrian

No, I don't think it's a good idea! Watorrey and I had several discussions on that very topic, and the potential problems. And if we could make them all Small Wonders, that would solve the problem. Unfortunately, most of the powerful ones (Mil Training, Etruscan Pottery) will only work as Great Wonders, which can be captured, and we can't do anything about it. (Unless someone can suggest a better idea).

(I decided in testing that the Dacians may be the best civ for the humans, as they start close enough to Macedon, Etruscans, and the Romans to grab 3 of the best civ-specific wonders, and still get their own benefits. Peltast is a great UU also, BTW.)

[watorrey]

what WHAT? did i hear my name?

Seriously... If you guys work something out that everyone is happy with and get me simple list, i'll get a patch out by christmas.

I'm gonna do what i can to fix the culturally linked bug and fix it so the biqs can be in the scenario AND/OR the conquests folder and not require the tam folder to be in both.

Anyone decide if the catapult was suppose to have a 2 range?

[thamis]

I think taking over wonders is absolutely a good idea. We once even thought of letting civs that take over other capitals be able to build the other civ's UUs.

Reason: If you're strong and getting stronger, this creates a rollercoaster effect. You won't be bored with having to finish off some stupid nation even though you already know you've won.

Also, if an AI takes over another AI, you really gotta watch out. It just makes strong powers stronger, which makes the game quicker.

[Justus II]

OK, Thamis has spoken. The civ-specific wonders will remain unchanged. We did put a lot of thought and work into adjusting the costs/pre-requisites/culture values to make sure at least every civ will actually build them.

[Arrian]

I tried to start a new game on the larger map (with barbs) and the game froze on me. I think it's because there are SO many barbs, right at the start, plus all the civs. My computer probably just can't handle it.

Playing as Media, had I not gotten a relatively lucky combat roll, my capital would've been sacked by barbs before it could even build a unit. As it turned out, my warrior (fortified on hill) survived with 1hp remaining.

Still, it was looking pretty grim. Barbs huts are everywhere, and if you don't start with warrior code... My scout didn't stand half a chance.

Speaking of which - all those barbs pretty much remove the Expansionist trait. My scout was useless.

Is this why the no barbs map was created?

-Arrian

[thamis]

Yepp, that's why I created a no barb map. It's faster and less difficult in the beginning.

[watorrey]

Arrian: Instead of playing the no-barb map, you may want to consider backing up the biq then editing it to reduce the # of barbs. A good start would be to remove all the direwolves but leaving the camps.

[Arrian]

I'm playing on the no-barb map. MUCH better! I'm not up for doing the work needed to trim the barbs down on the regular map, and this way makes it run faster on my computer, so it works for me

Status:

Level: Monarch, of course
Year: 1400 BC.
Civ: Rome
Government: Thing Law
Research: Literature (14 turns)
Contacts: Etruscans, Gallia, Germanic Tribes, Mycenae, Macedon, Scythia, Huns, Minoans, Carthage, Troy, Kolchis.

I hit the Etruscans with an ultra-early warrior rush and took their capital. This resulted in a repop to the ENE (Yugoslavia). Strong repop, too! It seemed like a blink of an eye and they had 3 cities. I got gold & a tech (animal cult) for peace. Their repop may have hampered Macedon, which I'm obviously pleased with.

I researched pottery & built 3 granaries, and then beelined for Thing Law. I traded tech freely, keeping me at or close to parity. I REXed (to the extent that's possible in TAM ) mostly northward and in the immediate environs of Roma, until I noticed landings in southern Italia. This resulted in brief wars against the Minoans and Mycenae, netting me 4 slaves for the loss of one Velite. I then filled in the South, although the Minoans did get Sicily.

Then Gallia got upity, demanded tech, and declared war on me when I refused. Military Training was actually the first thing I'd built in my 2nd city, so I had barracks everywhere, and a decent number of Velites. I also was closing in on having Broadswords. So I fought a defensive war until I got a MGL (thanks, Grog, you're always there for me!) and turned that into a 3x Broadsword army. I've now done bad things to Gallia, including taking their capital (and rushing the Pantheon there with MGL #2).

Meanwhile, I've hit the Hellenistic Age, just ahead of everyone else (the AI tech leaders lack only mathematics). I've a strong Great Library prebuild going, so I expect to easily grab that and then benifit as the scientific civs hit the Hellenistic Age.

The Etruscans have dutifully built their psuedo-Pyramids, which has made them my next target, once I do a little mop-up in Gallia. I've begun filling in southern Gallia and will also start down the coast of Iberia (no Iberians in this particular game). Speaking of which, I've seen a couple of isolated barbs elsewhere on the map, so I'm a tad concerned about Iberia. I've explored it almost entirely, but haven't had a unit down there in a long time. With the other civs poised to join me in the next age shortly... I may actually have more trouble there than with any of my civilized neighbors.

My current plan is to finish the GL, crush the Etruscans, switch to City States, EXPLODE (colonize the rest of southern Gallia, Iberia, and hopefully some other areas north of the Alps to help buffer against the Germans), Consolidate (courthouses, other basic city improvements), and then start knocking off civs again.

...

I did notice one potential bug:

I noticed that when I established embassies, sometimes it would take two tries to get one. I would click the right buttons, I would lose the cash, but nothing would happen the first time. Then, if I repeated it (and paid again), I got the embassy. Not with all civs, just about 1/2 of them. Odd, wouldn't you say? Of course I wasn't smart enough to keep a save of that, but I have yet to meet a bunch of civs so I may be able to reproduce it.

-Arrian

[thamis]

It's nice to see that you're ahead of everyone right now. But beware of Carthage and Kolchis... they've got the best land in the map to expand into. A game without Assyria or Babylon might get unbalanced quickly.

[watorrey]

I've noticed that establish embasy bug as well. The only way i can think of to fix it is also the one thing i'm not gonna do.... that is build the mod over from scratch with the latest editor. This may not even work however and might end up being a waste of time. If it's not a bug in the current editor, it's something that occured from all the upgrades starting from VC3. There's no way to tell.