How is waste calculated?

Sore Loser · October 20, 2003, 03:48

I haven't been able to find anything on this subject in the GL. Yesterday, while toying around with a patch that makes despotism more worthwhile, I noticed that waste is reduced by having the city in question linked to your palace city with a road (more if it's a rail road). It seems the road has to follow a certain pattern that sometimes follows a straight line and sometimes follows a slightly curved route. Does anyone know more about this?

rah · October 20, 2003, 11:47

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=50755
(in the GL) shows how waste and corruption are calculated.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...357#post374357 (also in the GL)

Shows the valid road patterns and some tricks on how to tell without the pattern.

Why make despotism better? There should be some incentive to get out of it as quickly as possible.

Elephant · October 20, 2003, 16:33

One value of Despo: for each citizen, you get a unit free of shield support. Once the city is size 4+ you are beating Monarchy-level support. Add some WL and you've got the special tiles back.

There was a Despo to Demo Succession game a while back that had some interesting comments on exploiting Despo.

Six Thousand Year Old Man · October 20, 2003, 23:34

Originally posted by Elephant
One value of Despo: for each citizen, you get a unit free of shield support. Once the city is size 4+ you are beating Monarchy-level support. Add some WL and you've got the special tiles back.

There was a Despo to Demo Succession game a while back that had some interesting comments on exploiting Despo.

We had a couple like that. Size 5, convert all workers to taxmen/scientists is one way to go... the free support is helpful, too.

Sore Loser · October 22, 2003, 02:24

I actually had a tiny hope that I might be the one discovering the palace road impact on waste. Silly me

I must say, I'm getting even more impressed with the research capabilities of this community every day.

As for reasons to make Despotism more useful, I think games become more fun when you add more factors to consider, not when you remove them. Between Civ 1 & 2, Despotism was altered from a government type to a necessary evil in the first few turns. I know the balance was generally all wrong in Civ, but the easy way out with Monarchy in Civ 2 just feels wrong to me.

The way I'm making it more useful is:
1) Monarchy supports only 1 free unit
2) each citizen eats only 1 unit of food (twice the amount of food needed for pop growth)
3) irrigation of grasslands and mining of hills take more time
4) bump Monarchy further down the tech tree, possibly adding a self-imposed rule that you need both Republic and Monarchy before you can switch to Monarchy (same thing with Democracy/Republic)

I'm also making Monarchy more useful by having each settler each 6(!) units of food under Republic. This is not as severe as it sounds, considering that each citizen eats only 1 unit of food.

rah · October 22, 2003, 08:33

My fear would be that making despotism livable, and Monarchy harder to get and less useful, why would you go to it? (CIV III is the best example) No need to waste time researching those techs, just work on war techs.
MP games would turn into simple arcade type war games.

Sore Loser · October 22, 2003, 09:59

For starters, I readily admit that I have no clue about MP games. And there obviously has to be a balance. I don't think that balance is hard to attain either, as the primary weakness of Despotism in my patch (the riot factor being set to 12) makes Despotism undesirable once you hit 6 or so cities. I just want Despotism to be a useful alternative very early on, not a long-term alternative to Monarchy or Republic.

I'm weakening Republic (I think) by giving all tiles (except forest, hills, mountains) +1 trade, making the trade bonus slightly less significant.

rah · October 22, 2003, 15:24

I just remember my first game of CIV III and rushing to monarchy and revolting and seeing that I was worse off for changing and changed back quite quickly. Granted part of it was not being familiar with differences as I was in CIV II, but the concept was undesirable.

Sore Loser · October 22, 2003, 15:32

So you're saying that an advanced form of government should always be desirable? Again, I prefer as many strategic factors as possible. With Despotism slightly better, when to go for Monarchy is yet another decision you'll have to make.

rah · October 22, 2003, 16:44

With a slightly improved Despotism, you might end up wanting to Skip monarchy all together. I don't think that type of thing would add to the game. (strategically)
But again, just my opinion.

SlowThinker · October 22, 2003, 19:37

I agree with Sore Loser that the initial choice of techs is too clear. You should hesitate between several options. And the best option should depend on the concrete situation.

I don't think Monarchy should be weakened, but it should be deeper in the techtree.

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 04:07

No offense rah, but I don't understand your position. Let me try again:

1) Despotism is utterly useless as is
2) Both Monarchy and Republic are huge improvements and are not very far off on the tech tree
3) Despotism is thus a necessary evil that must be gotten rid of ASAP
4) = Despotism is a tiny and insignificant strategic factor in the game; you need to cope with it, you rarely have to consider how soon it is profitable to get rid of it

Of course Monarchy shouldn't be so bad that you wouldn't want it at all. I avoid this by setting the riot factor to 12, making Despotism cumbersome once you hit 6-8 cities, depending on map size. From that point on, unrest gets so high for additional expansion that Monarchy gives you a better payoff. On the other hand, Monarchy is further down the tech tree, so you have to decide what to do while waiting for it. Depending on the circumstances, it might be more worthwile to slow your expansion a little and build some infrastructure (including terrain improvements) rather than continuing rapid expansion and facing severe unrest problems.

Same thing with Monarchy. My experience is that it provides too few advantages over Republic. The trade bonus is superior to the support bonus of monarchy, and the higher food cost for settlers is more than offset by the ability to pop boom. Making settlers eat more food and making settlers less effective at improving terrain means that you have to balance things. Either you stay longer in Monarchy after your expansion slows down, letting you get some infrastructure in place to support the pop boom; or you stay in Monarchy and keep expanding, running into problems with the riot factor; or you pop boom with insubstantial terrain improvement, making you more dependent on plains (because irrigating them is still fast) and ocean squares. This last approach is further weakened by my proposed ban on buying production, meaning that although your cities grow nice and large and get huge amounts of trade, your production of food and shields will stay abysmal and further growth will thus be impaired.

This is a lot longer than I intended. My point is this: No-brainer choices are no fun. If you have several options in a game and you know that some of them are never any good, what point is there in having them? The more choices, the better the strategy aspect, IMHO.

Scouse Gits · October 23, 2003, 05:07

SL - I suspect that you are not taking into account the benefits of celebration - a celebrating Despot enjoys many of the advantages of a Monarch.
Without actually playing with your rules.txt, I suspect that a celebrating Despotism could be made quite comfortable - Long Live the Gardens!!!

Stu

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 05:39

I disagree. With HG, Monarchy simply jumps farther ahead of Despotism. Besides, is the riot factor affected by celebrating?

rah · October 23, 2003, 08:18

I guess I'm looking at it from too much of an MP view.
In MP every 4 turns in monarchy when your oponents are not is a big advantage. If you get that advantage for 16 turns, your opponents are likely in for a long hard game. This has a tremendous impact on how you deal with early huts. The decision to open a hut after you have one tech off the path can be the most strategic decision you make in the game. You must ask is you're behind and must open it, do you want to wait a few turns, or do you have a good feel that you can get enough huts soon enough to get back on the path and are willing to have to generate the extra beakers needed due to more techs. That's where choices come in. If despo was more livable, the game becomes a raw hut chase and seek and destroy game. (granted hut luck will bear a high importance in any game) But i guess it comes down to personal opinion, and any rules sets will eventually evolve a preferred stratagy.

Time is more critical in an MP game. In any SP game, you can dilly dally and still crush the AI. Against humans, it's different.

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 08:56

So your argument is that because it's crucial getting Monarchy ASAP, making it less crucial would make huts more valuable? I guess that's true. Following that line of thought, won't the game be a raw hut chase after Monarchy anyway?

Personally, I dislike huts. For non-competitive games they're great fun, but in MP (which I have never played for practical reasons, much to my regret), I'd imagine that the outcome can create great imbalances. I prefer choices where you can predict the outcome with a reasonable degree of certainty. If huts provided either gold or free units then they'd be fine with me, as that would still be good and worth going for, but hardly game-breaking.

I know from other games that time is more critical against human opposition. How does that relate to the question of making Despotism more livable?

EDIT: From a MP perspective, I still think this could work. You can stay in Despotism and stop expanding at 6-8 cities and wage early war, or you can expand further in Monarchy or even further with Republic. The early war strategy can be dangerous if you don't take him out fast because of his economic advantage (assuming he didn't choose early war as well), but it's another option that can be put to good use, increasing the strategic diversity.

-Jrabbit · October 23, 2003, 09:04

Interesting thread.

Query: Is a 7th gov't slot possible? Seems like a viable solution might be an interim gov't between Despo and Mon/Rep.

Call it Tyrrany. Maybe equiv. of a celebrating Despo and requiring a different tech path (maybe 2 military techs and another). This would be a war-footing government, sort of a limited pre-Fundy vibe, with reduced science traded for increased troop support.

Just a quick thought...

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 09:14

Can you alter gov-specific attributes? Like support for Despotism or various production bonuses and penalties?

Six Thousand Year Old Man · October 23, 2003, 09:45

IIRC, you can alter some of them - support can be altered for Fundamentalism, for example - but not others. I don't think governments are fully moddable.

SlowThinker · October 23, 2003, 10:48

I think you can neither add a government, nor modify them behind changes in rules.txt. But ... there is something called 'fascist patch', but I am not familiar with it.

Look at these threads (especially Sore Loser), they have a similar subject:
Changes in rules.txt
More than 11 terrains?

About the second thread: I don't know many scenarios but I have a feeling that most scenario designers don't look at the game from strategic point of view - they usually adopt mistakes of the original rules.txt.

Originally posted by Sore Loser
Same thing with Monarchy. My experience is that it provides too few advantages over Republic.

Republic is strong in SP, since you need no units. But Monarchy is quite good in MP, because every city supports 3 units. Also notice you can celebrate the Monarchy before you deliver a caravan.

Originally posted by Sore Loser
Besides, is the riot factor affected by celebrating?

Of course it isn't, celebrating is affected by the riot factor,you can't suppose a cyclic dependence. But you can use the Black Hat Bug with HG.

Personally, I dislike huts. For non-competitive games they're great fun, but in MP (which I have never played for practical reasons, much to my regret), I'd imagine that the outcome can create great imbalances. I prefer choices where you can predict the outcome with a reasonable degree of certainty.

A good solution would be to clear all huts say 8 squares from starting positions. It is the early hut that causes an imbalance.
IMHO uncertainity is not so bad. The question is which level of uncertainity starts to be too high.

Scouse Gits · October 23, 2003, 10:55

I must say, I'm getting even more impressed with the research capabilities of this community every day.

Don't forget that several of the regular posters here are professional researchers in their own fields ...

Stu

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 11:01

By coincidence, I've just been reading your rules.txt thread while digging through old threads

This thread doesn't really belong here anymore, though. Please visit http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=99799 instead.

rah · October 23, 2003, 11:36

I also like the uncertainty from huts. It another thing that makes you adapt. And it also keeps people from applying strict formula type strats. Getting a tech from a hut can change my thinking. MP is about adapting to circumstances more so than SP, since the AI is quite forgiving, and War4ever isn't.

Sore Loser · October 23, 2003, 11:44

How do you make maps for MP? Are they known in advance? Are they balanced by a non-participant? Just curious. I agree that uncertainty can increase the strategic diversity, but once beyond a certain point it ruins the fun for me.

Let me use an example that the esteemed Richard Garfield wrote once:

Pick-A-Number is a fairly simple game in which both players hold out a number of fingers. The one who holds out the most fingers wins. The game is certainly very predictable, but it does get boring after a while (especially if you don't have more fingers than your opponent).

Rando-Chess is ordinary chess with a twist: Every turn, you roll two 6-sided dice; if you get 12, you win. There is plenty uncertainty here that actually can be used to give you a slight advantage (when to play defensively and when to play offensively), but it doesn't satiate my apetite either.

In conclusion, hut tipping is not all that extreme, especially with SlowThinker's proposal implemented.

Elephant · October 23, 2003, 17:43

Unfortunately, I don't think you can clear certain huts without founding several cities, moving workers over the huts to make them vanish, and disbanding the cities. Scenario mode has a "clear all huts" option.