AU Mod Test Game: Explorig Colosseums as Tourists

[nbarclay]

And here's another version of the same scenario with the Hittites a neighbor instead of the Americans. This version is useful mainly if anyone wants to play a civ that starts with Masonry but not Alphabet.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Moonbars
I proposed moving them to CB, for this test game only, so as to ensure we CAN build some. If the game breaks, then our assumption that a few early cols is unbalancing is confirmed. If we build lots of early cols and the game doesn't break.. then we've proved there is no problem.

Given that we would never move Colosseums to Ceremonial Burial in the AU mod, I agree with Modo that your "extreme" test has no value to us whatsoever; it's pretty easy to break the game when you start modding.

It's the Colosseum's cost, combined with its location in the tech tree, that offsets this powerful new ability we are proposing it have.

[punkbass2000]

Well, as I'm sure was expected, it's harder than I thought. No screens, but I will post a couple saves so people won't accidentally see things they don't want to know. I have at least three cities that are quite ready to build a Colosseum, but getting the tech is harder than anticipated. I'm wondering if an Exp. civ could really aid in this dept, however.

Here's my first save:

[punkbass2000]

The second:

[nbarclay]

What tech strategy did you use? I tried a couple test runs with the Aztecs on Emperor researching Alphabet as my first tech and America beat me both times.

[Moonbars]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
Well, as I'm sure was expected, it's harder than I thought. No screens, but I will post a couple saves so people won't accidentally see things they don't want to know. I have at least three cities that are quite ready to build a Colosseum, but getting the tech is harder than anticipated. I'm wondering if an Exp. civ could really aid in this dept, however.

Here's my first save:

This was my reasoning behind giving a civ Cols. to start with - in rare cirsumstances, it will be possible to get Construction early enough to have a shot at building 3-6 cols prior to 2000BC, my suggestion was to simulate such a situation without having to wait for good luck to random chance to provide it, but it looks like I'm the only person who sees any merit in this, so I'll just shut up and leave it at that

[Rommel2D]

If those rare circumstances can't be duplicated in a playtest game played solely for that purpose, we shouldn't consider them as part of any game-breaking strategies, no matter what the late game results are.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
If those rare circumstances can't be duplicated in a playtest game played solely for that purpose, we shouldn't consider them as part of any game-breaking strategies, no matter what the late game results are.

The one caveat to that view is that what I've tried to create is not actually a best-possible-case scenario, just a better-than-average one. If we have something approaching balance problems with my latest scenario, we can expect the situation to be worse every now and then in random games, although it usually wouldn't be as serious.

There are three reasons I took the approach I did. (1) The vast majority of AU games are not designed to give the player an unbalancing advantage over the AIs in starting position. (2) past a certain point, starting positions are so favorable that it doesn't really matter if a player gets a "game-breaking" advantage late in the game because any semblance of balance was broken long before then. And (3) I wanted the game to be fun to play.

[Rommel2D]

If two quality players trying different maps and tribes can't produce one example of an early colosseum bumper crop, it isn't going to happen enough in random games to worry about. I'm not saying we should draw any conclusions at this point, but the burden of proof is on those that suspect it is likely...

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Rommel2D
If two quality players trying different maps and tribes can't produce one example of an early colosseum bumper crop, it isn't going to happen enough in random games to worry about. I'm not saying we should draw any conclusions at this point, but the burden of proof is on those that suspect it is likely...

Yes, if they can't. I'm not done yet. My earlier theses have proven fairly false, however my methodology is adaptive. I have tons more to say about the whole issue than I have time for ATM, unfortunately. One thing is I'm (IIRC) 25 turns from Constr. at 1750. I imagine with growth that it will take no more than 20, but we'll see. IINM, that means Constr. by 1250BC. There are some advantages to not being able to build them right away, it would seem, as I think all five of my current cities will not have a huge problem pre-building and completing the turn after I discover it. Also, the way things work with corruption and Marketplaces, only really core cities are going to get early Colosseums and these cities will almost invariably have Markets and little corruption. If I do get them in 1250BC in five cities, by 250BC (with Markets and no corruption, for arguments sake ATM) I will be making 15gpt bonus gpt. By 250AD, 30gpt. This is getting substantial. Not only is this etra gold, it's gold that comes in and gets multiplied even with 0% tax rate. In concert, that means right around the begin of the turning point in most games (the Middle Ages) you will have something almost as good as Wall Street (which won't show up for another age) as well as be in a position to switch over into taking the tech lead. Add in a well-timed GA that nets you plenty of Uni/Banks, and you have a monster of an empire. All this on top of the bonus content citizens in these, the core cities. Not bad, I say, not bad. Perhaps not as profound/shocking as my original hypothesis, but significant, IMO, nonetheless. I will likely continue this game on Tuesday to try and confirm. I also want to try with a few other civs.

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by nbarclay
What tech strategy did you use? I tried a couple test runs with the Aztecs on Emperor researching Alphabet as my first tech and America beat me both times.

Well, you are playing MH, of which the differences I am not familiar with, but at least somewhat harder anyway. I researched Alphabet full bore, traded it to America for Mas. and then went at Math full steam. Later, I met Japan, who didn't have much they wanted from me. Then I ran into Babylon, who was quite happy to sell both of their starting techs and all gold (20?) for Alph. + Mas. With Math. I was able to grab IW from America and the Wheel and Myst from Japan or Babylon, I can't recall. (only America had IW at the time).

[Risa]

I don't think TA produce golds. It's raw commerce in my experiences.

[nbarclay]

I just found a bug that I hadn't previously known about. When I compared punkbass2000's game with some unsuccessful attempts I made to replicate it, I discovered that his research cost was half of what mine was (with both of us playing on Emperor). On further investigation, it seems that the scenario is calculating tech costs based on the world size for whatever game has been played previously. (I can see the change when I start a new regular game and then reload the scenario.) So even though the map size in this game is supposed to be standard, it looks like I've been playing with huge-map tech costs, making my research costs one and two what they ought to be. Conversely, I'm speculating that punkbass2000 may be playing with small-map tech costs, which would make his tech costs about 17% lower than they ought to be.

In any case, forget everything I said based on my results from my test games thus far. I'll have to start testing over again with the tech costs acting like they're supposed to.

I haven't tested yet to see whether the same bug hits other scenarios with built-in maps. If it does, we need to make sure we release AU games as .sav files rather than as scenarios, at least as the primary format.

[punkbass2000]

Well, I guess I'll have to restart as well . It makes me wonder how many games I've played with this error

[punkbass2000]

Here's the save as well as the thread, for background info. The tech pace is absurd on this Emperor game on a Huge Map (despite the unusual "challenge" form of the ridiculous KAI, the rest of them were all advancing in tech rapidly). I came up with a few reasons (trading with KAI, Exp, etc.) but now that I've seen N's post I think this is liekly the best explanation.