AU mod: The Colosseum

[alexman]

The Problem:

Colosseums cost as much as two full-price Temples to build and maintain, but produce half as much culture and don't allow Cathedrals like Temples do. Their cost is prohibitive for an ancient city build. Even with the luxury scarcity in C3C, Colosseums are one of the least built city improvements along with Coastal Fortresses.

Possible Solutions:

What if Colosseums were the building of choice for border expansion for non-religious, non-scientific civs? What if we made them cost a little less than half-price, with half the effect? Say 50 shields, 1 culture, 1 happy citizen, 1g maintenance (down from 120, 2, 2, 2). Borders would expand after 10 turns after you build one of those, or you could build a slightly more expensive Temple and have borders expand after 5 turns instead.

A more conservative approach could be to simply reduce their cost to 100 shields. They would become more cost effective than two Temples for non religious civilizations (to build, not to maintain), but they would still produce less culture and would not allow Catherdrals.

Yet another approach could be to increase the happy citizens of Colosseums to 3, so that this building becomes an alternative to a Cathedral.

Any other ideas? Comments? Please share your thoughts for the AU mod!

[Harovan]

Sometimes I appreciate them as they are, if I'm very short of luxuries and no good deal is in sight, like in situations, where I'm alone with 1 other civ on a continent and have only 2 luxuries until Navigation. So I would vote for the second or third option, if it is necessary to change them at all.

[vulture]

The happiness improvements (all three of them) stick to the 1 gold per turn for 1 content citizen rule. The luxury slider is nominally the same, although once you have markets, libraries etc. up and running, the effective cost is more (the luxury slider takes 1 trade before adjustments to make 1 happy face - the buildings take 1 gold after adjustments for the same basic effect). Has anyone ever checked whether luxury resources are priced at 1 gpt per happy face they produce in your empire? Specialists used to do a similar thing (you can get 1 gpt, 1 beaker, or 1 happy face) but now don't. So there doesn't seem to be a strong case from the above for sticking to the 1 gpt for one content face convention.

I think the question here is what benefits the AI without helping the human. Humans don't build colosseums very often, but do use the luxury slider for the most part. The AI doesn't use the slider, and so needs some happiness bonuses that the player doesn't get. So my thinking is that we don't need to make the colsseum more attractive to players by changing it - we need to encourage the AI to build more of them so that it doesn't cripple itself with entertainers instead.

So I suppose one important question is: how often does the AI build colosseums at the moment. If it does it a lot, while the humans don't do it much, then I'm not convinced there is much need for a change here, since a change to make it more human-attractive effectively weakens the AI.

[Stuie]

I like the idea of reducing the cost, but not the happy faces. With C3C, there usually are not enough luxuries to go around, so I actually find myself using coloseums at times. But the bang for the buck definitely makes it a hard sell as is. So I would like to try 100, 2, 2, 2.

[lockstep]

I'm for the conservative approach: Reduce the shield cost to 100 (so that colloseums become more cost-effective than cathedrals), but don't change culture and/or happy faces. Maintenance cost could be reduced to 1 (same as for marketplace and aqueduct, which have a shield cost of 100).

[alexman]

Originally posted by vulture
The happiness improvements (all three of them) stick to the 1 gold per turn for 1 content citizen rule.

Just Temples and Colosseums. Cathedrals need just 2/3 gold for 1 content citizen.

So I suppose one important question is: how often does the AI build colosseums at the moment. If it does it a lot, while the humans don't do it much, then I'm not convinced there is much need for a change here, since a change to make it more human-attractive effectively weakens the AI.

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Humans don't build Colosseums for a reason: they are not worth it. The AI builds Colosseums. So any boost to happiness improvements will help the AI more than the human, unless the human starts building those improvements more often than the AI. The flexibility and zero shield investment of the luxury slider is a major reason this will not be the case.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
Humans don't build Colosseums for a reason: they are not worth it.

I tend to build them in the late game or if I'm really short on luxuries because I want that happiness bonus. But most of the time, I use colloseums as pre-builds for cathedrals.

[vulture]

Originally posted by alexman

Just Temples and Colosseums. Cathedrals need just 2/3 gold for 1 content citizen.

Is it? I never actually noticed...

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Humans don't build Colosseums for a reason: they are not worth it. The AI builds Colosseums. So any boost to happiness improvements will help the AI more than the human, unless the human starts building those improvements more often than the AI. The flexibility and zero shield investment of the luxury slider is a major reason this will not be the case.

It's the "they are not worth it" bit I disagree with. Humans don't build them because they very rarely need to. We use the luxury slider, and are more aggressive about collecting luxuries than the AI. So either we have enough luxuries, the slider is at zero, and all cities are content, or the slider is at some value to keep everyone happy, producing the same basic effect on happiness as a colosseum but without having to invest 120 shields in building on in each city.

The AI, on the other hand, uses entertainers rather than the luxury slider. Spending time building a colosseum is worth it, because it lets the AI turn two more entertainers into producive labourers (or grow two sizes larger before enterainers stop growth) - the shields and gold per turn from those two labourers offset the cost of building and maintaining the colosseum fairly quickly. It would be better if the AI used the luxury slider, but in the absence of this the colosseum gives the effect of having the luxury slider on, but at the cost of some shields (which will take perhaps 30-60 turns for the extra workers to compensate for).

Executive summary: Colosseums are useless for the human, primarily because of the luxury slider (I built them a lot more before I figured out the benefits of the slider incidentally). Colosseums are good for the AI because it doesn't use the luxury slider.

If the AI already builds the colosseums, when the human doesn't, then good. Changing colosseums to make them more attractive to humans would effectively weaken the AI. If they don't build them then they should be encouraged to, without making it too attractive to the humans.

[ZargonX]

As said, with luxury-scarce C3C, colliseums are showing up more often in build queues. I would leave them with their current effectiveness, with the shield-cost reduction the simplest possible solution. However, that does beg the question as to whether the human will again be given a leg up on the AI...

[alexman]

Originally posted by vulture
Changing colosseums to make them more attractive to humans would effectively weaken the AI.

Again, humans will benefit more than the AI from a better Colosseum if they build more Colosseums than the AI. This will never happen because of the luxury slider.

You seem to think that it's bad for the AI if the human is given the choice to build a Colosseum, even if the AI gets the same benefit from the Colosseum boost. Remember that the human won't sit building nothing if he doesn't think Colosseums are worth it. He will, for example, build 4 Swordsmen instead. And how is that better for the AI?

[ducki]

Executive summary: Colosseums are useless for the human, primarily because of the luxury slider (I built them a lot more before I figured out the benefits of the slider incidentally). Colosseums are good for the AI because it doesn't use the luxury slider.

I wonder if there would be any interest in a "Power of Luxury - Now THAT'S Entertainment" AU game - use of the Luxury slider strictly verboten. It would allow testing a new colleseum and might could be coupled with Agricultural so we can see how Agricultural feels to the AI with the extra pop growth and no lux slider.

Just a thought. A lot seems to hang on the use of the slider, so what would happen if it was not available? How much more like the AI would our gameplay, our build queues become? Would we be more warmongering or more likely to go into builder mode to keep those guys happy? Would we have monstrous, corrupt empires from endlessly popping out settlers to lower pop? Would we have so many workers that we couldn't support a sufficient military?

[Nor Me]

I dug up an old test on the AI build order and tried it with conquests. The good news for this topic is that the AI in conquests now builds temples ahead of colosseums unlike in PTW. With the AI's liking for culture, that means it will build cathedrals first as well. This takes away one of the main reasons for this change.

The first proposal would lead to the AI not build colosseums for much longer. In the test, they built many units first and up to manufacturing plants when before they only built aqueducts, hospitals and culture-producing buildings first. If the AI needs to buld colosseums then this is a bad idea. Of course, that's deabatable.

Either reducing the cost of the colosseum or increasing the number of happy faces might help a non-religious human player more than the equivalent AI since the AI would build expensive cathedrals first while the human knows that the colosseum is better value. At least the latter might help the AI overall if they have worse unhappiness problems than the human.

Originally posted by vulture
Has anyone ever checked whether luxury resources are priced at 1 gpt per happy face they produce in your empire?

Yes, I have. It's only half that in an ideal situation.

[Dominae]

Re: AU mod: The Colosseum

Originally posted by alexman
What if Colosseums were the building of choice for border expansion for non-religious, non-scientific civs? What if we made them cost a little less than half-price, with half the effect? Say 50 shields, 1 culture, 1 happy citizen, 1g maintenance (down from 120, 2, 2, 2).

As a package deal, this would completely replace Temples for non-Religious civs. In those instances when 10-turns for border expansion is not a major issue, you would always build Colosseums, right?

I would much prefer if Colosseums were in the same cost category (~100 Shields), and were rivals to Cathedrals for non-Religious civs. We would need to arrange its properties (Culture, upkeep, etc.) so as to create a valid alternative to Cathedrals, depending on what your looking to accomplish.

Without going into details right now, I'm thinking Cathedrals should produce slightly more Culture and have lower upkeep, while Colosseums should create more Happy Faces but require more upkeep. Colosseums would also be more expensive. Thus you would have the option for more Happy Faces but at a steeper cost, or a "quick fix" at lower cost, but with bonus of a bit more Culture.


Dominae

[Buckets]

Here's a bit of an oblique idea that has worked well for my own modding: have cathedrals produce 2 HF's instead of 3. The effect is that non religious civs will get more happy faces for their shields with colosseums, but less culture. Also i believe this makes the Sistine Chappel more balanced as it will produce +2 HF's in cathedral cities instead of a whopping +3.

Now you may ask, what about losing that one HF? personally, i don't think it's needed. However, if it should go anywhere it's hospitals. But, that's another thread.

[Zevico]

I am inclined to agree that Colloseums are quite weak in comparison Cathedrals--however, perhaps this weakness is lessened during the later difficulty stages, where technology is much harder to come by. At that point, a Colloseum is quite useful, because it will be a good 60 or so turns before you hit Monotheism, and if you ever wish to have cities in the early game, Colly's seem to be a must, especially if you would prefer to have a bit more culture in your civilisation, for example when you have them darn Scientific/Religious types next to you.
As Alexman has mentioned, it costs 120 shield normally, and Cathedrals cost about 1 and a third more than that--certainly not enough to make the two balance each other out. Therefore his suggestion to make Colly's cost 100 shields to build is a good one.