AU mod: The Colosseum

[Theseus]

Does this mean delaying or changing the vote?

[alexman]

No, we have already voted, but we would have a new vote for any new proposal that might take place.

[alexman]

So I would like to place the following proposal under consideration for the Colosseum:

Yes/No:

• Restore maintenance to 2gpt (as in stock)
• Add tourism bonus.

There has been a fair amount of discussion and analysis in pvzh's A neat bug thread, without any clear conclusions.

To summarize, adding the tourism bonus would make the Colosseum an interesting strategic choice, exchanging short-term gold and shields for a long-term benefit in tourism income.

The downside is that because of the benefit of building the Colosseum early to get the tourism bonus, there is a significant departure in strategy compared to stock.

Voting in one week.

[JimiD]

Playing devils advocate

Adding tourism attribute to a standard building seems to me to be an unconservative proposal (much as I like the feature), and it does add another strategy. I have some concern that the additional strategy means that it is a deviation too far from stock for the AU mod.

The new strategic option is for the early game - investment in buildings for cash rewards later, (regardless of government, MM, trade etc.). It is significantly different from other AU Mod changes in that it is not a refinement of an existing strategy, improvement of the AI, or a fine tuning of sheild cost for game balance.

For example:
It is a subtle strategy that would not be appreciated immediately by someone fresh to the mod, because the cause & effect are so far appart, whereas other changes can be appreciated immediately (eg Light and Heavy cavalry - a quick skim read of the Read Me, and you understand that the old Cavalry is weakened, but gains its full impact a few techs later).

It will also change the way that those familiar with the mod play as, regardless of civ, an appraisal of the value of investment in Cols needs to be made.

The other pillar of the AU Mod is improving strategic choice for the human, which this does indeed acheive.

Done on principle arguments, how about game mechanics?

Has the implications in the later game of a militaristic civ building early half price colleseums been investigated? Potentially a big cash bonus - they are effecient happiness buildings, and now quick to build, so they can be in more build queues early, with less impact on other production (of military units?).

I like the military flag, but this might have compund issues.

[Moonbars]

There are many aspects of civ that would benefit by being studied in depth before starting a game - you could do studies on any number of things, from the benefits of food over trade in the early game, to the return on rushing marketplaces with gold by the end of the game - and so and and so on.

I do not feel that giving tourism bonus to Cols is any different in that aspect, but I do accept that it is a new 'feature' that is not present in stock.

If you read the Read-me, you know about the cav change, and the col change. i do not agree that the cause/effect is any worse than it is with, say, the changes to naval exploration (which has a huge impact on most map types, but that's not what it says in the read-me.). If this is felt an issue, we can always put the cuase and effect of the new Colls into the read-me.

What we really need to think about is:

1) Do we want to improve the Col?
2) Is adding tourist bonus the solution, if we do?

The answer to the first one has got to be YES - I do not think I have built more than 5 Cols in my entire civ lifetime. the AI, however, builds plenty. So if we improve the worth of Cols, we help the AI.

I think it might be. Certainly making it MIL gives it *some* use, but it might be a bit overkill coupled with tourism.

[JimiD]

1) Agree that Cols need improving / making more interesting.

However if the problem is that the AI is building Cols when it should be building temples (and caths), then perhaps the answer is to make the AI build more temples and less Cols.

2)I think Mil is enough with the other proposals previously discussed. Makes them more worthwhile, and Mil adds interest. I think tourism is the wrong answer, even if Mil is removed.

I dont vote though....

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by The pirate
1) Agree that Cols need improving / making more interesting.

However if the problem is that the AI is building Cols when it should be building temples (and caths), then perhaps the answer is to make the AI build more temples and less Cols.

2)I think Mil is enough with the other proposals previously discussed. Makes them more worthwhile, and Mil adds interest. I think tourism is the wrong answer, even if Mil is removed.

I dont vote though....

The AI builds them because it has already built all the other buildings, or it makes a silly decision and decides to make the COL early - at least that's my experience The AI does not, as far as i can tell, build improvements to any kind of dynamic global objectives, like say "increase happy citizens" or "increase research"

Oh what a good thing it would be if it did..

By adding tourism to the Col, we make it an interesting choice, rather than a no-brainer "never bother" improvement. Just making it MIL does not do this.

By just making it MIL, all we are doing is make it almost-worth building for MIL civs - no benefit to the rest at all.

[Moonbars]

I am going to Pick up Modo's comments from the other thread:

Originally posted by Modo44
Under AU mod, the AI did build Temples in core cities, because Construction is not exactly a cheap tech. But, once it was there, almost all new AI cities would build Colosseums, often as the first structure.

Then, I tried it with the proposal: Colosseum back to 120 shields, but Militaristic. Non-Militaristic AI would build Temples first, Militaristic AI would go for Colosseums in new cities.

It's hard to find out, when those Colosseums become active.. ..It seems, that 1000 year old Colosseums should be pretty common... ...they might even cross the 1500 year mark, making a civ quite rich.

The fact that the AI built Colls over temples when not flagged as MIL makes me think that restoring the COL to it's stock cost and flagging as MIL is 100% the right way to go.

On the cash front, it is important to remember that this will be true for all civs.. especially the AI, which as you've seen in your debug game, seems to love building the Colosseum. If it earns the intelligent human player 50GPT, or 100GPT, it is likely earning the AI something similar, or possibly even greater, itself.

The AI does not order sensible things. having a building that sucks so badly, as the Coll does under stock, really hurts the AI.

[Moonbars]

Hehe, here is another idea to add fuel to the fire... Set the Col's Culture to zero

That way you could capture other people's cash cows!

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Moonbars
Hehe, here is another idea to add fuel to the fire... Set the Col's Culture to zero

That way you could capture other people's cash cows!

Only if you could make absolutely sure, that the AI won't try to build a Colosseum for culture. This is flagged to "build often" for some civs. I hope the AI can check the cultural value of a building, but I don't know for sure, and I didn't see it tested.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Moonbars

The answer to the first one has got to be YES - I do not think I have built more than 5 Cols in my entire civ lifetime.

I usually build cathedrals before colosseums, but sometimes build colosseums first due to the peculiarities a city finds itself facing. Colosseums are cheaper than cathedrals, so they can alllow a city to start growing again sooner than a cathedral would if I don't have enough luxuries to keep it happy. And in some situations, having two additional happy faces is important to me but a third isn't as important, at least in the short run. Part of building colosseums is looking for opportunities where they make sense instead of always following a standard set of build priorities.

That's not to say that my choices to build colosseums are necessarily always the best ones. I haven't taken the time to do a detailed analysis of the long-term impact of different build orders in different situations. But at the very least, colosseums are competitive enough in certain situations to attract my interest.

Also note that in the current version of the AU Mod, we've reduced maintenance on colosseums from two to one. As a result, colosseums have the lowest upkeep cost per happy face of any happiness improvement.

So my anwer is no, the colosseum as it now exists in the AU Mod is fine. It's not usually a priority, but there are enough times when it can be worth considering that strategic options are in fact involved.

As for the tourist attraction idea, I view it as too big a change from stock for too little net gain, if in fact the advantages outweigh the disadvantages at all. One of the lessons I learned in comparing Civ 3 with the Call to Power games is that there is elegance in simplicitly. Part of Civ 3's beauty is that it allows players to focus on their core strategy without as many peripheral elements to the game distracting them.

In my view, the distraction involved in thinking about how best to deal with a tourist attraction bonus would do more harm than good. It would be an extra gimmick that players would have to worry about in order to play optimally, but would not enhance the game's core strategiic issues.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
In my view, the distraction involved in thinking about how best to deal with a tourist attraction bonus would do more harm than good. It would be an extra gimmick that players would have to worry about in order to play optimally, but would not enhance the game's core strategiic issues.

I would say that "Which improvements do I build, and in what order?" is one of the game's core strategic issues.

Yes, making Colosseums better is an significant departure from stock, because it would make the Colosseum versus Cathedrals question a lot more difficult to answer. I personally think this is the type of change that the AU mod is all about. However, if Colosseums were only attractive to Militaristic civs (as I believe is being proposed), the strategic option would not be all that interesting ("When playing a Militaristic civ with the AU mod, build Colosseums"), and the departure from stock a lot more difficult to justify.

[alexman]

Under the current proposal, militaristic civs have a good incentive to build some early colosseums, but they have to balance that temptation with building early military units to take advantage of their cheap barracks and promotions. Also, keep in mind that a building a colosseum instead of a cathedral is worthwhile only if the game lasts into the modern age, something that doesn't happen very often. It's an interesting decision for a militaristic civ, IMO.

On the other hand, non-militaristic civs are probably more likely to be building improvements instead of units in the ancient age, so they might afford to build some early expensive colosseums. In the middle ages, a 120 shield building is not that big of a deal, so the militaristic trait is not such a big factor in deciding which improvement to build. Worthwhile colosseums are by no means limited to militaristic civs in this proposal.

I think the major concern here is whether a few ultra-early colosseums are going to be overpowering in the modern age, and whether we think the change in colosseum stategy is appropriate for this conservative mod.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

I would say that "Which improvements do I build, and in what order?" is one of the game's core strategic issues.

Under the standard rules (and also the current AU Mod rules), the answers to that question are governed almost entirely by which improvement has the most value in the near term. If you need a barracks now but won't need a temple until later, you build the barracks first. If you won't need a barracks until later, it makes more sense to go ahead and build a temple now to start accumulating culture from it and to make the doubling effect kick in earlier. Good decisions regarding build order can be made just by looking at relatively short-term needs, without having to do a lot of mathematical analysis of long-term impacts. The only even slightly significant exception that I can think of is the culture doubling effect after a thousand years, and even that is fairly simple and straightforward.

In contrast, while the tourist attraction bonus could affect the question of build order, the way it would affect the issue is completely beyond the scope of how build order decisions are normally made. The concept of building an improvement now in order to pursue a benefit that won't kick in at all for a thousand years is totally foreign to Civ, and the kind of detailed mathematical analysis that would be needed to make good choices in making use of the feature is even more foreign.

[Edit: I'm assuming here that most people regard the tourist attraction issue associated with wonders pretty much how I do: it's an interesting gimmick, but not a particularly significant factor in determining whether and when to build wonders. In contrast, the main motive for adding the flag to the Colosseum seems to be a desire to influence build order decisions.]

Our current approach of reducing the maintenance cost for colusseums improves their value in a manner completely in keeping with how build order decisions are normally made. And under a lot of conditions, the current approach improves the value of colosseums more than the tourist attraction approach would.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The concept of building an improvement now in order to pursue a benefit that won't kick in at all for a thousand years is totally foreign to Civ, and the kind of detailed mathematical analysis that would be needed to make good choices in making use of the feature is even more foreign.

As the Corruption Nazi and democracy game players all around well know, you can apply a whole bunch of mathematical analysis to Civ3 if you so desire. Most players do not. Thus they rely on heuristics like: "I am playing a Builder game and will probably benefit from the extra Colosseum Commerce when I hit the Space Race." Having Colosseums at least cross their mind is, I think, a major improvement from stock Civ3.

Incidentally, Colosseums would retain a short-term benefit of granting two Happy Faces. So the nearsighted among us could expect something useful right away.

It may well be that building a bunch of Colosseums really early is unbalancing and therefore too much of a departure from stock; my gut tells me no, especially considering that the AI builds them already. All I am arguing here is that this is an interesting change that should not be thrown out the window just because it forces players to think a bit more (because, you know, that's sort of the point of the AU mod).