AU mod: The Colosseum

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Moonbars
I don't douvt your skill at all Punkbass, I am sorry if you took my comment the wrong way. maybe having 5 cities, at least one of which has been bulding settlers, is IMO not very many to then go on and build Cols in before 2000BC.

How BIG are your 3 cities? How many SPT do they produce, do any of them have granaries?

My capital is size 6 in 2190BC, producing 5fpt and 8spt and already has a Granary. My second city is size 5 producing 5fpt and spt is dependent upon MM, but it's 3spt and 5spt, alternating. It too has a Granary. If I had went that way with technology both these cities could get Cols fairly soon, I believe. The third city is, admittedly, not in a position to build one too soon.

EDIT: In fact, both cities have an "extra" forest to work, so at 5fpt they're producing a "bonus" spt. Call it 9 and 4, though I'd MM to 8 and 5, most likely.

[nbarclay]

I just checked back my in my Glory of Culture game to see how many culture-doubled colosseums the AIs that survived into the late game had. As of 1430 AD (with the last few turns of that played in a parallel universe), the Germans, Ottomans, and Iroquois were still around. Unless I missed one somewhere, the Iroquois capital was the only AI city with a colosseum producing double culture, and thus the only one that would get a tourist attraction bonus. I had about five, having prioritized colosseums more highly than normal for cultural reasons (but still not anywhere near as highly as I could have).

If the dates of AI colosseum-building in that game are at all typical, I think a tourist attraction bonus would almost certainly benefit humans significantly more than AIs. Indeed, compared with the current approach of reducing the maintenance cost for colosseums, a change to the tourist attraction concept wuld make AIs worse off.

[alexman]

That game is not typical, since the human was encouraged to focus on culture, but the AI did not know to do that.

Also, the higher the difficulty level, the farther falls the human behind the AI in building cultural buildings.

[nbarclay]

The game's special emphasis certainly affected human building patterns, but a tourist attraction bonus for colosseums would also affect human building patterns. As for AI building patterns, do you have any particular reason to think that game was atypical? In that game, only one city among the survivors of inter-AI warfare on an entire continent would have gotten a tourist attraction bonus by AD 1430. That seems to imply that AIs would get very llittle use of the tourist attraction bonus, that such a bonus would likely be mostly an extra toy humans can use to gain an additional advantage. (If, that is, we can figure out how to use it correctly - which brings us back to my earlier concerns about the complexity involved.)

As for the difficulty level issue, I was playing on Emperor. On Monarch, I'm guessing the AIs would be even slower in building colosseums since they wouldn't REX quite as quickly.

[Dominae]

Maybe this is a difference between stock and the AU mod, but in my (stock) games the AIs regularly have Colosseums everywhere by 1400AD. Not sure when exactly they get around to building them, but only one or two in total I consider atypical.

[Rommel2D]

The one colosseum he mentioned wasn't the only one built by 1430, it was the only one built before 430.

Nbarclay, I'm guessing GoC was the only game you've built early colosseums...?

I don't see any mystery to figuring out 'how to use' the tourism bounus- the sooner you build them, the sooner you start to get the bonus. It's a matter of cost/benefit calculation that still doesn't look to me like it's use would be any more gamebreaking than other existing strategies against the AI (although I'll point out my inexperience with the AU mod). Yes it is complex, but you make it sound like any modification should display an ability to be adapted to a simple, rote strategy.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
The one colosseum he mentioned wasn't the only one built by 1430, it was the only one built before 430.

Doh!

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

Nbarclay, I'm guessing GoC was the only game you've built early colosseums...?

You guess incorrectly. In Power of Fascism, the fact that conquest was not an option caused me to put a higher emphasis on culture - including colosseums. I checked a save from AD 320, and I had four at the time. I've also had games without special predefined goals where I built early colosseums because there weren't enough luxuries available to get a happiness boost from marketplaces, or at least to get as much boost from marketplaces as from colosseums. Granted, such games are the exception rather than the rule, but they do occur. (And I might add that the reduced maintenance cost in the AU Mod plays a role in such decisions.)

I don't see any mystery to figuring out 'how to use' the tourism bounus- the sooner you build them, the sooner you start to get the bonus. It's a matter of cost/benefit calculation that still doesn't look to me like it's use would be any more gamebreaking than other existing strategies against the AI (although I'll point out my inexperience with the AU mod). Yes it is complex, but you make it sound like any modification should display an ability to be adapted to a simple, rote strategy.

The, "the sooner you build them, the sooner you start to get the bonus," view does not factor in the opportunity cost of what else could be built instead, or (in the case of more extreme strategies) the opportunity cost involved in researching Construction early instead of focusing research in other directions. Nor does it factor in the maintenance cost for colosseums until the tourist attraction bonus kicks in. With most improvements, the nature of the benefits provided is immediate enough and clear enough that cost/benefit analysis isn't all that difficult. But when an improvement has an immediate upkeep cost, but a key benefit doesn't start to kick in for over a thousand years and remains small for a few more centuries after that, analyzing costs and benefits is a lot more complex.

Also note that even in AU 504 and 505, where colosseums were a relatively high priority for me, they still didn't come until the AD's. In order to get much impact from the tourism bonus, players would have to build them even earlier than I did in those games, early enough that there would be an even bigger issue of opportunity cost.

I certainly don't want Civ to be a game that can be played with a simple, rote strategy game after game. Take a look at the fact that I sometimes build relatively early colosseums when other people are calling the choice not to build them a no-brainer if you doubt that.

But I do want to be able to have a clear picture of what the consequences of my choices will be and of how the consequences of different choices compare (subject to the vaguries of random factors and AI behavior where applicable). I can't find that picture with a tourist attraction bonus without a lot of complex mathematical calculations.

[Rommel2D]

Fair enough, but I want to try a brief summary of why I still think this change has worthwhile potential.

Back when I was well occupied playing the basic SP game, I didn't pay much attention to the AU. Discovering that the stroke- of-genius zero-range bombard was adopted from the AU impressed me a great deal. But looking at the Mod itself, the original Colosseum change was the first and largest item to send up flares warning me off.

This change, and more importantly the philosophy behind it, just seemed like too large of a departure from what I liked about the game. I don't know if it is so much a matter of historical accuracy, but the current AU Colosseum just looses all character to me. By making the improvement a likely choice to build in the stead of other hapiness improvements, it has been adjusted to be, well, just another hapiness improvement.

To me stock rules are better because it is distinctive. If you need to improve the mood in a particular city, but don't have Monotheism and/or enough luxuries, you can build this less efficient improvement. It may not fit into better players' strategies, but that's the Colosseum.

Now my interest has been peaked again by the tourism bonus. It holds the promise of making the improvement useful while maintaining an identity seperate from the strictly 'religious' ones.

It is the complexity of the situation that makes it seem so right. Actually 'complexity' isn't a good description as it implies that a certain answer lies within the calculation. It is the uncertainty of what events will unfold in the next thousand-odd years of the game that make it a difficult decision. There would never be a clear answer on what value any Colosseum would be to any particular game. The number and timing of colosseums built would always be a gamble, a characteristic very appropriate for an improvement that represents a place for people to gather and observe spectacle.

This is, of course, assuming that taking the 'Colosseum Gambit' wouldn't allow players to consistantly win at a level they could not otherwise...

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Also note that even in AU 504 and 505, where colosseums were a relatively high priority for me, they still didn't come until the AD's. In order to get much impact from the tourism bonus, players would have to build them even earlier than I did in those games, early enough that there would be an even bigger issue of opportunity cost.

That is exactly what makes this look like a good idea- in the course of a normal game, the Tourist Attraction will provide some benefit over stock, but not the game-breaking numbers being thrown about in the other thread.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

That is exactly what makes this look like a good idea- in the course of a normal game, the Tourist Attraction will provide some benefit over stock, but not the game-breaking numbers being thrown about in the other thread.

Basically, what it comes down to is that either the tourist attraction bonus will be so small as to be almost completely irrelevant, or players will significantly alter their strategy for the specific purpose of pursuing the tourist attraction bonus. If the former, I don't see how the game is really improved. We can get a similar net benefit in a much simpler, more straightforward, and more consistent way with the current approach of reducing the maintenance cost. If the latter, we're no longer dealing with a "normal game" by current standards, but rather with a game where players deliberately alter their strategy in a significant way to build colosseums earlier.

Now let's consider the latter possibility in greater depth. If altering strategy to build more early colosseums is a good move, it gives humans an additional advantage at the expense of the AIs, because (at least if the game I checked is any indication) AIs don't tend to build colosseums particularly early. If altering strategy to build colosseums significantly earlier is not a good move, we end up with a situation where players don't really understand the costs and benefits all that well and, as a result, make a bad decision. Either way, I view the outcome as detrimental.

The tourist attraction bonus idea is an interesting gimmick, but I contend that it complicates the game with little prospect of actually making it better. That's not something I think a conservative mod should do.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Rommel2D

It is the uncertainty of what events will unfold in the next thousand-odd years of the game that make it a difficult decision.

Dealing with uncertainty about the future is an integral part of the game. I have nothing against the idea of having to deal with such uncertainty in and of itself.

What really bothers me is that even if players could know the future perfectly, it would still take fairly complex calculations to figure out how the benefits of building an early colosseum compare with the benefits of doing other things instead. The time delay makes it impossible to use knowledge of the benefits of each choice in the near future as a fairly reliable heuristic the way we normally can. And complexity that would be hard to deal with on more than a superficial, guesswork level in the face of a known future is vastly worse when it has to be weighed in the face of a variety of possible futures.

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by nbarclay
And complexity that would be hard to deal with on more than a superficial, guesswork level in the face of a known future is vastly worse when it has to be weighed in the face of a variety of possible futures.

In a game based heavily upon the 'single die-roll', low integer combat system, contemplating a "known future", or even a quatifiable number of possible ones, strikes me as a bit absurd.

The uncertainty level being discussed here again seem like a good fit with many other elements of the game to me...

[nbarclay]

I think you're still missing the point that my only concerns about the uncertainty aspect are in relation to how they magnify an already serious complexity issue. I have yet to hear anyone suggest an approach to figuring out whether it's better to build a colosseum or something else that was more than essentially guesswork and that wouldn't require getting out a calculator (and probably a pencil and paper as well to keep track of the various steps involved in the calculations).

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I have yet to hear anyone suggest an approach to figuring out whether it's better to build a colosseum or something else that was more than essentially guesswork and that wouldn't require getting out a calculator (and probably a pencil and paper as well to keep track of the various steps involved in the calculations).

And I have yet to hear you explain why this would be an issue with the Colosseum, when there are already dozens of decisions like this in every game of civ, and most have a much greater effect on the outcome of the game than the tourist bonus. Do I build Horsemen or Swordsmen? Do I attack my neighbor now, or after I get a stronger economy going? When and where do I build the FP? Do I build marketplaces before libraries? Granaries before Barracks? Temples or units for MP? Catapults or Swordsmen? Do I build the Pyramids or the Great Library with my SGL? Do I beeline to Military Tradition, or do I take the upper branch and get my Heavy Cavalry with Nationalism instead? I could go on and on...

The type of decisions involving what you call "guesswork" are what make strategy games interesting. It's not fun when you know the correct answer in every situation.