AU: A MOD for the curiculum

[lockstep]

After a quick glance at PtW's editor (yes, I managed to get the U.S. version of PtW in Vienna ), here's a suggestion for the first PtW version of the AU mod: Make the Manhattan Project a small wonder!

(And now back to doing some calculations about communal corruption and free maintenance ...)

[alexman]

Originally posted by lockstep
Make the Manhattan Project a small wonder!

I like this suggestion, and I know people have been asking for it for a while because it makes sense in real-life, but does it fall into any goal category for this mod? On the other hand, I think the effect on strategy, AI competence, and gameplay will be minimal, so why not...

As for Communism, thanks for investigating it. Don't forget that in order to help the AI it's better to give supportless units than free-maintenance buildings. Is infinite support-free units out of the question?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Combine poor capital placement, additional buildings, and a large military, and Communism probably does have a niche where it could match or even beat Democracy for gold/science generation.

While I can't prove or refute the general thesis, I've done some calculations based on your savegame. Would Communism's free maintenance offset the negative overall effects of communal corruption and a lacking trade bonus if you built every improvement in all of your cities and maxed them out at size 20? The answer is 'probably no'. Communism's gold/science generation won't match or even beat Democracy's.

Why do I think so? Based on your savegame, the most important thing was to find out Democracy's 'real' corruption rate in your sprawling empire without actually counting the 'raw' commerce income in 88 city screens. Here goes:

• I knew that Thebes lost 18 out of 42 'raw' commerce units due to communal corruption, which is a rate of about 43%.
• As this corruption rate should be the same throughout your empire, the 876 units lost due corruption under Communism are 43% of the total 'raw' commerce income, which results in about 2044 commerce units without a trade bonus.
• From your savegame, I knew that commerce units lost due to corruption were 589 under Monarchy and 962 (+63%) under Republic.
• As Monarchy and Republic have the same corruption level ('problematic') in the AU mod, the higher absolute figure for Republic must stem from the latter government's trade bonus - the more you have, the more you lose.
• Total 'raw' commerce income with trade bonus therefore should be about 63% higher for your empire than without trade bonus (2044), which results in about 3338 'raw' commerce units for both Republic and Democracy.
• As you lost 860 commerce units due to corruption under Democracy, Democracy's 'real corruption rate is (860/3338) or about 26%.

And now for the easier part: Compare 43% corruption plus free maintenance for every city improvement with trade bonus plus 26% corruption, with your former capital Thebes as exemplar.

• Under Communism, 'Thebes' yields 42 'raw' commerce units, 18 of which (43%) are lost due to corruption.
• The 24 units left have to be multiplied with 2.25 (assuming library, university, research lab, marketplace, bank; 50% science, 0% luxuries), which results in 54 gold/science units.
• As maintenance is free and your military is well under Communism's support limit (8 free units per metropolis in vanilla Civ3), 'Thebes' (as every city in your empire) actually yields 54 gold/science units per turn.
• Under Democracy, 'Thebes' yields 63 'raw' commerce units (+21, including the city tile). Democracy's average empire-wide 'real' corruption rate of 26% results in a loss of 16 units.
• The 47 units left have to be multiplied by 2.25, which results in about 106 gold/science units.
• Now we have to subtract maintenance costs of 41 gold for the 25 possible city improvements of vanilla Civ3 and support costs of 2 gold (assuming about 4 units including workers per city, 2 of which are free in the AU mod). 'Thebes' actually yields 63 gold/science units per turn under Democracy, or 9 units more than under Communism.

Originally posted by alexman
As for Communism, thanks for investigating it. Don't forget that in order to help the AI it's better to give supportless units than free-maintenance buildings. Is infinite support-free units out of the question?

While I'm not an expert player, I always suspected that the AI neglects city improvements and builds too large a military (including many obsolete units). Still, I have rarely seen an AI that paid unit support costs under Communism even in vanilla Civ3. Contrary to that, free maintenance WILL increase the AI's treasury to a certain extent. And if the first hints of AI tweaks in PtW turn out to be true (Mongols building stock exchanges, according to Catt), I'd rather have free maintenance than doubled unit support.

Note: I still regret that free maintenance would take away a lot of interesting decisions what improvement to build next. But as far as I can see, it's the best solution to tweak Communism that is currently available. A future version of PtW's editor may include new possibilities like a tuned-down version of communal corruption.

[alexman]

lockstep

Here's an idea to reduce communal corruption:

Create a new courthouse, available only to Communism. Call it Party HQ or something. Then modify the FP to give one of these improvements for free in every city.

This was not possible in Civ3, but it can be done in PtW because now a small wonder like the FP can give free improvements in every city.

[Catt]

Originally posted by lockstep


While I can't prove or refute the general thesis . . .

Forgive me if you included this in your calculations -- but don't forget the military police effects of both Monarchy and Communism. Unless the saved game you reviewed has an absolute surfeit of happiness producers and a uniformly happy populace, I would bet that the MP effect also serves to kick certain cities into WLTKD under Monarchy or Communism that don't quite get there under Republic or Democracy. Although not a massive departure from your empirical testing, numerous WLTKD's could alter the overall empire corruption rates by several percentage points (I noticed such an effect in an earlier game comparing Monarchy and Republic and hit the WLTKD effects when I couldn't otherwise square expected with actual results).

Catt

[lockstep]

Catt, AFAIK, 'We Love The King Days' only affect shield production and not commerce, and I only wanted to analyze the gold/science generation of Communism vs. Democracy.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by alexman
lockstep

Here's an idea to reduce communal corruption:

Create a new courthouse, available only to Communism. Call it Party HQ or something. Then modify the FP to give one of these improvements for free in every city.

This was not possible in Civ3, but it can be done in PtW because now a small wonder like the FP can give free improvements in every city.

I'm in the editor right now, and while wonder and small wonder flags have been merged, the 'gain in every city' option is - sadly - only available for wonders.

As for the solution to actually build this 'Party HQ' in every city under Communism: IIRC, this would push the OCC from 250% to 275% (provided courthouses and police stations are present), which is 66 on a large map like in nbarclays savegame. Let's say empire-wide corruption drops from 43% to 40%, then this would mean about 3 gold/sciene units more per turn and city. Not enough to make Communism competitive, if you don't add other major tweaks like free maintenance.

[DaveMcW]

Trade is not an issue in communism. If you want to research and get rich you use republic or democracy.

Communism is a war government, all it needs is a way to cover its upkeep and produce reinforcements as fast as the other governments.

What about a massive increase in military police, to help make pop rushing viable?

[player1]

I think that some of you should need to persuade some of Firaxis programmers (those who work on editor) to make preset government based corruption customable.

So you could set how much (in %) corruption is Problematic, how much is Communal.

Personnaly I think that having Communism corruption be 70% of what is now would be OK (some extra gold and SHIELDS).

[player1]

dp

[Catt]

Originally posted by lockstep
Catt, AFAIK, 'We Love The King Days' only affect shield production and not commerce, and I only wanted to analyze the gold/science generation of Communism vs. Democracy.

Opps - you're right - I always forget that.

Catt

[lockstep]

Originally posted by player1
I think that some of you should need to persuade some of Firaxis programmers (those who work on editor) to make preset government based corruption customable.

So you could set how much (in %) corruption is Problematic, how much is Communal.

What I'd really like to see are different types of 'communal' (empire-wide flat) corruption. The current one is at least as bad as Despotism's 'rampant' corruption if you don't have a huge empire.

[alexman]

Originally posted by lockstep
As for the solution to actually build this 'Party HQ' in every city under Communism: IIRC, this would push the OCC from 250% to 275% (provided courthouses and police stations are present), which is 66 on a large map like in nbarclays savegame.

Courthouses not only add 25% to the OCN, but also cut the distance corruption in half. That would mean *another* 3.75% savings if you already have a couthouse and a police station, 7.5% if you have only a courhouse, or 15% if you have none of them.

Still, based on ncbarclay's save, an extra courthouse would bring the communist corruption in fully-developed cities down from 43% to 35%. Probably still not enough to justify the big change of adding an extra building.

PS. Too bad about Small and Great Wonders not behaving the same way.

[lockstep]

Hmm ... maybe we need some additional Comm vs. Dem calculations for a hypothetical empire that isn't greater than the modified OCN. I obviously need to get more familiar with your corruption formula ... but not in the next few hours.

[nbarclay]

Keep in mind that in the AU 201 game, I have my palace and forbidden palace very well placed (or at least I like to think so). I have no cities that remain totally corrupt after adding courthouses and police stations. That isn't always practical, and communism would probably do a lot better by comparison under less favorable circumstances. Still, games where it makes sense to use communism as anything but a wartime government even with free maintenance would be few and far between if they exist at all.

Free unit support under communism is good enough in the standard game that I seriously doubt that adding more would make much difference. Yes, AIs have bigger militaries than humans do, but once the free unit support is enough to cover all a civ's units, any additional free support is of no more than theoretical interest. And even if an AI would go a unit or two per city over, the amount of gold involved wouldn't be big enough to make that much difference.

All in all, free maintenance seems to be the only really practical way I've seen to make serious research under communism even remotely viable, at least in the standard game. Thus, it's the only way to deal with the problem of AIs' scientific efforts self-destructing in the middle of the space race. (Note: these comments are pre-PtW.)

I also tend to wonder how much maintenance costs really enter the picture regarding strategic choices except maybe in the very early stages of the game. If I'm winning, I can afford to build where and when I want to without worrying much about maintenance. If I'm behind, improvements that wouldn't be worth the maintenance costs are unlikely to be worth the diversion from military forces. Do other people pay a lot more attention to maintenance costs than I do, or is what's lost in terms of strategy mostly just theoretical?

Nathan