AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[ducki]

Longevity does what again? Double growth - 2 pop instead of 1? Sorry, but since I rarely build it, I don't recall. (Note rarely = never, not since Cheiftan/Warlord anyways).

[alexman]

Yes, double population growth. It's effectively like the Pyramids.

[ducki]

Except with starvation.
j/k

An interesting idea, but I don't know that I agree that Feudalism is supposed to be a Rex government. I'd be more likely to use it as a pop-rushing Oscillating War gov - assuming the info I've read is correct that WW is on a per civ basis:
Lots of small towns supporting lots of units(plenty for both MPs and Active military) with WW just screams "Trim each neighbor in turn" to me.
It also screams "Save yourself some time and skip 2 optional techs(3 in the AU Mod).
Zip to Feudalism tech ASAP, start hitting border towns, pop rush temples/barracks, make peace, acquire new target.

At least, that's how I see it. It seems tailor-made for Oscillating wars where you honor the 20 turn peace treaty with each civ individually allowing WW to dissipate. The huge support means you have enough units to start and end the war in short order.

Theoretically.

[alexman]

Also, there is something terribly wrong with Fascism. This government just about as good as Monarchy, and it comes two ages later. With the 1.15 FP it's no match for Communism as a war-time government in most cases, and worst of all, the AI loves it.

So I propose to reduce Fascism's corruption level to minimal (like Democracy, except there would be no tade bonus, of course).

This change would actually make Fascism better than Communism for relatively small empires.

[alexman]

If you intend to use Feudalism for war, the optional tech you skip is just one: Monarchy.

On the other hand, you can get Monarchy much earlier with a beeline, it's useful for much longer than Feudalism, and it has no WW, so you don't have to restrict yourself to short wars. The better free unit support offered by Feudalism rarely comes into play when you are not REXing. Monarchy usually offers more than enough free units for war, especially after you have conquered a few AI cities.

No, I can't see myself choosing Feudalism over Monarchy for war very often. Even someone from Firaxis answered that it's good for when you have fallen behind in expansion, when asked what's this government's strength.

[ducki]

Well that seems a bit silly - if you fell behind on expansion and have just entered the Middle Ages, an Expansionist government isn't going to help. Or is it? Maybe I'm missing something.

In Monarchy, don't you need cities for sufficient unit support? So you'll need either rivers or lakes or to build Aqueducts in every town to have 20% less unit support.

Still, I don't see how the Firaxian statement makes sense with Feudalism's timing. Odd...

[alexman]

Here are some results from my little experiment.
I arranged 35 cities spaced 3 tiles apart, with decreasing population as you get farther from the Palace, to simulate the fact that older cities usually have more population and/or more city improvements. Here is the pattern (C=capital, F=FP):

X..X..X..X..X..X..X
...................
...................
X..X..X..X..X..X..X
...................
...................
X..C..X..F..X..X..X
...................
...................
X..X..X..X..X..X..X
...................
...................
X..X..X..X..X..X..X

Then I observed the difference in income for various values of OCN for each government. The results, normalized by Monarchy's income, are shown below. The x-axis shows what percentage of the map OCN were those 35 cities (50% means that the map OCN was 70, and 500% means that the map OCN was 7, for example)

Note that unit support, effect of luxuries, and MP, are not taken into account in this study.

[alexman]

Here is the same graph for the following changes:
1. Fascism changed to minimal corruption
2. Democracy changed to communal corruption

Note that Democracy becomes much better than the Republic for large empires. The game is usually won by the time you reach 200% of the map's OCN, so I don't think it's bad to give Democracy such a huge boost after that point.

So this proposed change has the following advantages:

• Fascism becomes a good alternative to Communism for war for small empires, and it's considerably better than Monarchy.
• Democracy gives an incentive to the builder to switch out of the Republic, and removes the possibility that Communism is the best government for both building and warmongering for large empires.

Feudalism is identical to Monarchy in these plots.

[ducki]

Wow, the corruption king is at it again!

Observations:
Stock-
-Republic and Democracy are nearly identical at ~2x Monarchy's income for any empire size.
-Fascism is so close to Monarchy in income that its other benefits are competing solely against Anarchy it seems
-With a vast empire, Communism is "pretty darn good" fiscally. I wonder what happens with a SPHQ tacked on...
-The curve shown by Republic, Democracy and barely by Fascism sure looks "odd". Is there a further penalty at 200% OCN or is that just a quirk of the city layout?

Proposed Mod-
-Wow, check out the imperialist capitalist pigs! It "makes sense" IMO, but still, WOW! I'm already a Demo fan. Whee!
-Again, I wonder if Communism overtakes Republic with an SPHQ...
--I'd like to see the Republic suffer more as the %OCN increases to make the moderns more attractive, but we probably can't do that ourselves.


Wishlist:
Another test with the SPHQ in there.
A "timeline" version - map # cities to assumed govt tech discoveries. Must assume early (avg) expansion, wartime (avg) expansion, conquest (avg) expansion, assume max anarchy. Probably too much work with too many assumptions and no valid "averages". Hey, I did say "wish list".

Pie-in-the-sky dreaming aside, great stuff alexman! I'm so glad we've got folks like you around who will take the time and put in the effort to run tests like this AND present them in an easy to consume format.

I like the Demo curve, wish the Rep curve trended downward more proportionally with %OCN after 200 and would like Commie and Fascism to look a little bit better, but since this doesn't show shields, they probably are considerably better than the commerce-only curves suggest.

Great stuff!

[ZargonX]

I too like the Demo curve in your proposed changes. And the idea of Facism being a good substitute for a smaller civilization appeals to me as well. Anything that gives more options for different styles sounds good to me, as long as it doesn't throw balance completely out of whack.

[Theseus]

Great work, alex.

Got me thinking though:

* Shouldn't the analysis be modified for range of size of town / city?

* Further to the above, taking into account unit costs?

* What happened to Feudalism?

Reserving judgement for after a little more thought and discussion, but directionally very good... I concur with the general idea that different gov's should have different applications and provide for different styles to boot.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Theseus
* Shouldn't the analysis be modified for range of size of town / city?
* Further to the above, taking into account unit costs?
* What happened to Feudalism?

If you add things like that to the analysis, it will no longer be possible to present it in a simple graph. There are just too many variables, and I had to fix some of them.

Just try to imagine that Democracy's curve will be shifted down a bit towards Monarchy, for example. The actual amount of the shift depends on the city improvements in each city, population, and town/city ratio. Similarly with the other governments.

So without considering unit support costs, Feudalism is identical to Monarchy.

[Theseus]

Fair enough. Backing away from hard analysis then, and KISS, whaddya think of this?

[Theseus]

(although I think this all still leaves Republic as a go-to and never switch alternative)

[alexman]

Originally posted by ducki
-Republic and Democracy are nearly identical at ~2x Monarchy's income for any empire size.

That's because I used exclusively terrain with 1 commerce, which becomes 2 commerce with the trade bonus. I figured that's an average between coast, roaded plains, and no commerce at all.

I wonder what happens with a SPHQ tacked on...

The curve is not as different as you might think, but I'll try and make one tomorrow anyway.

-The curve shown by Republic, Democracy and barely by Fascism sure looks "odd". Is there a further penalty at 200% OCN or is that just a quirk of the city layout?

The curves start dipping towards Monarchy's level of corruption because more and more cities become totally corrupt, so the OCN bonus from those governments doesn't make any difference after a certain point.

Theseus, I'm not sure we can get those downward sloping curves you suggest for Fascism and Feudalism. For sure you would need a trade bonus to start so high at low OCN, and you would also need crippling corruption at high OCN, which we don't have much control over. I will try Despotic (Rampant) corruption with a trade bonus tomorrow to see what happens.