How is waste calculated?

[Sore Loser]

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]

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]

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

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[SlowThinker]

A neutral person or a program can do it.