AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[nbarclay]

Would giving Democracy communal corruption make it significantly more interesting for players than it is now in games where the human player's civ isn't the biggest, or at least one of the biggest? My experience with Communism in C3C is still pretty limited; I've only used it a couple times in games where I already had a huge empire when I made the change.

More importantly, from what I remember, a lot of the reasoning behind the idea of giving Democracy communal corruption had to do with the idea, "We don't want there to be times when Communism is better for playing builder than Democracy is." But since the only times Communism can even come within shouting distance of Democracy in ability to generate wealth and science now are times when the human's civ is big, those are the very times when communal Democracy would have its most serious problems in terms of the balance between humans and AIs.

Thus, if we follow your idea that we shouldn't care nearly as much about balance when the player has already essentially won anyhow, it makes no sense to be concerned about Communism's being too good a research/builder government under those conditions. In which case, it makes no sense to give Democracy communal corruption to compensate, right?

[Dominae]

(Left to right is decreasing order of preference.)

1. BACED

After thinking about this a bit, removing WW from Feudalism would be too big a change for the AU mod.

2. BADC

3. CBAD

I'm not big on the flat support idea.

4. AB.............................................DC

Sorry, but 4B confuses me. Republic gets free unit support? Is this carried over from part 3 above?


Thanks for the PM, alexman!


Dominae

[alexman]

Even for medium-sized empires (say around map OCN), communal Democracy will still be better than the Republic. The smaller the empire, the lower the motivation to switch out of the Republic, but the choice to switch for non-religious civs will still exist.

For medium empires, it's true that Democracy is currently better than Communism for research, but it's much worse for production. Therefore, a non-communal Democracy encourages players to switch to Communism and conquer the world every time, because then with a larger empire they will have awesome production as well as better research than Democracy.

Dominae, I assume you're confused about the wording of 4B? Sorry for my poor wording. It means that the number of free unit support you get under Republic and Democracy will be whatever we choose for Republic in 3. For example if we choose 12 flat and 0/1/1 per town/city/metro, that will also apply to Democracy.

[Ision]

Having said all that, I think removing the SPHQ is a good idea too.

Alex,

Instead of removing it - what about changing it to 'Fascism'. It now appears that Fascism will have 'minimal corruption' - but, the move from nuisence to minimal will be 'minimal' in effect. Considering that Xeno is still in effect and no trade bonus - I believe that a Fasci SPHQ along with Min corruption could bring it more in-line with Commie as a viable option.

Ision

[alexman]

That's a good idea too. In fact, we have that option for Fascism already under consideration, but from the six votes already cast, is doesn't look like it's going to happen. I agree that minimal corruption will not help Fascism much at all.

Maybe next time we will put the Communism/Fascism issue under consideration again.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman
For medium empires, it's true that Democracy is currently better than Communism for research, but it's much worse for production. Therefore, a non-communal Democracy encourages players to switch to Communism and conquer the world every time, because then with a larger empire they will have awesome production as well as better research than Democracy.

If you aren't trying to warmonger, why do you need Communism's higher production? And if players will use their higher production in Democracy to warmonger, doen't that work directly against the desire to have players not always try to conquer most of the world?

My game in AU 501 is a perfect example of what's wrong with giving Democracy communal corruption if you don't want players trying to conquer the world. In AU 501, I continued my wars of conquest only as long as I felt like I could gain a clear benefit from doing so. Once I reached a point where any additional conquered territory would be worth very little in a representative government, I stopped. I don't think I built a single cavalry the entire game even though I could probably have conquered half the world with them if I'd wanted to (even in spite of the AU Mod's reduction in their power).

Could I have won my space race victory faster going Communist? I doubt it. Even if I'd been far more aggressive around the cavalry era, my research rate would almost certainly have taken a hit in the initial transition above and beyond the cost of the anarchy. It would have taken a major advantage in the late game to offset that. And whether or not my choice not to engage in further aggression until I needed resources produced the fastest space race victory possible, it worked well enough that I didn't feel like I was placing myself at a major disadvantage staying peaceful.

But with communal Democracy, that situation would have been radically different. There would have been an enormous payoff for engaging in further aggression and then changing to Democracy to take advantage of my conquered lands. And once I started down that path, I don't know how much chance there is that I would have stopped short of domination.

I'd like to see conquering only a relatively small part of the world and leaving the AIs in the rest as trading partners remain a highly practical and efficient path to a space race victory. And that will not happen if we give Democracy communal corruption.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay

If you aren't trying to warmonger, why do you need Communism's higher production?

To build up your infrastructure faster, which in turn will increase your science output, to build more Wonders and simultaneous Spaceship parts, to build up your defenses so that more poweful AIs won't attack...

The point is that with the current system if you are going to win under Democracy with a mid-sized empire, you can probably get an easier win if you switch to Communism and go to war. That makes Democracy useful only when you are too lazy to move your units around.

With communal Democracy in the above situation you will still be able to win without needing to go to war, unless the AI has a larger Democracy, in which case the game will be more competitive, which is a good thing.

By the way, the Democracy issue is tied between 12flat+0/1/1 support and communal corruption. Theseus gets to decide today!

[Nor Me]

Nathan, I've just looked at your AU501 DARs and I can't see how they would support your argument. Your empire was large enough to be at 4 or occasionally 5 turns per tech for most of the industrial and modern age. You may only have gained a few turns if communal Democracy had been available as you were non-religious and I doubt it would have made sense to research it yourself.

If Democracy had communal corruption, you would have been able to reach 4-turn research in the modern age with a smaller empire. At this point the advantage of Democracy for the larger AI's would have given them more chance of picking up other techs first and so not attacking them would be better than it was in your game.

I went Communist with smaller empire, before taking on the Sumerians. At that stage, war was the only way of getting anywhere near 4-turn research and going Communist for extra production was the best way of doing that. It would not have been worth it me switching out of Communism as I could get to 4-turn research by staying in Communism and attacking more AIs.

[nbarclay]

I hadn't thought about the implications of communal corruption for Democracy for the size of empire needed to maintain a four-turn tech pace, but from my perspective, that only makes the situation worse. For me, one of the great challenges of Civ 3 has always been trying to get on and stay on a four-turn tech pace. If the AU Mod would make it easy to get and stay on that research pace, I would probably view the Mod as not worth using. That's not a threat; just a fact.

Nathan

[ducki]

And if a player wants a bigger military than he can build with Democracy's production, isn't forcing the player to give something up in return a good thing from the perspective of having interesting strategic choices in the game? Doesn't it make the strategic choices less interesting if a player can have the best of both worlds? (Consider how many units Democracy's commerce bonus could typically pay for.)

Just one quote among many possibilities to point something out - this discussion seems to be focused entirely on the player, paying little attention to what benefits or penalties it might give the democratic AI.

I'm sure it was discussed previously, but seems absent now.

[nbarclay]

I wrote a nice, long post (which ducki's quote, above, was from) and then deleted and started replacing it after a couple minutes when I realized a crosspost from Nor Me had pointed out a serious flaw in my logic. There are some points from that post, though, that are still worth making.

1) In my experience, I don't think production has ever once been a factor in my ability to win the space race. I suppose it could be an issue for a player trying to build a spaceship and fight for his life at the same time, but I see nothing wrong with having Communism be the better government for trying to win the space race and fight at the same time.

2) If a player wants a bigger military than he can build with Democracy's production, isn't forcing the player to give something up in return a good thing from the perspective of having interesting strategic choices in the game? Doesn't it make the strategic choices less interesting if a player can have the best of both worlds? (Consider how many units Democracy's commerce bonus could typically pay for.)

3) From a research and wealth perspective, Communism's greater ability to build infrastructure is largely offset by the fact that Communist civs need a lot more infrastructure for those purposes. In other governments, most of a civ's commerce comes from cities realtively close to its core and the marginal advantage of wealth and science improvements in outlying cities is relatively small. But communist civs need science improvements in all their cities. That provides a balance against Communist civs' higher production.

[Nor Me]

Nathan, I doubt it will make it easier than it was with good FP placement in PTW so if you were alright with that, why not with this?

ducki, if the AI chooses Democracy when it has a large empire, it will gain. The AI has never really understood the concept of core cities so I don't think it will lose out when things are even. It likes building libraries and universities everywhere, probably for the culture. The touble might be that it doesn't choose Democracy when it's good. We don't know what the AI's taste in goverment is determined by so we'd have to playtest that. I've seen sensible AI decisions on goverment before so it's likely to be O.K.. I wouldn't be sure about what the implications of changing Feudalism or Fascism to minimal corruption are for the same reason.

[Nor Me]

Nathan, point 3) partially applies to a communal-corruption Democracy. You would need more improvements than a Republic with the same average corruption needs.

More importantly, you would gain from building improvements for longer. With the current corruption model, core cities run out of things to build and frequently have nothing more useful than military units to contribute. They would still do so but would produce them slightly more slowly with communal corruption. Outer cities will have to catch up and it won't be until late in the game that you run out of things to build in them.

So in order to take advantage of the potential military production, you'd have to give up useful improvements similar to the way you'd have to earlier in the game.

War weariness is somewhat map size and difficulty level dependant but in general, I'd hope that it would help making large scale wars, for which you'd be able to use that many units, reasonably difficult to have without at least slowing your research significantly. At any rate the choice between Communism and Democracy should be more interesting than the current one between Monarchy and Republic.

[nbarclay]

Nathan, I doubt it will make it easier than it was with good FP placement in PTW so if you were alright with that, why not with this?

The big question is how much easier. If it were just a little easier, I could actually find that a pleasant change because it's a tad frustrating consistently finding myself unable to quite manage a 4-turn pace at the dawns of the industrial and modern eras (at least unless I have a SGL helping me). But if I don't feel like four-turn research is something I have to work for, that would take the fun out of it.

Whichever the case would be in that regard, I don't like the idea of a representative government where the civ's ability to generate commerce is so close to directly proportional to its size. If a civ smaller than mine was in AU 501 could do four-turn research, and if a big Communist civ can do four-turn research once its research labs are in place, the commerce-generating power of a Democracy spanning half the globe would be totally and completely absurd.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Nor Me
Nathan, point 3) partially applies to a communal-corruption Democracy. You would need more improvements than a Republic with the same average corruption needs.

The difference is that with Communism, the extra improvements are needed just to keep up with Republic and Democracy. With a communal corruption version of Democracy, the extra improvements would often merely be icing on the cake.