Apolyton University Mod (PTW version)

[alexman]

The 33% reduction of distance corruption for Communism is still not as big a change as an additional courthouse (which would reduce distance corruption by 50% and modify the OCN by +25%).

So we need a few more bonuses to make Communism more competitive compared to Monarchy. Let's keep the increased worker speed. I propose that we eliminate the additional free military support, which usually did not make a difference. Instead, let's give Communism an additional small wartime bonus: Double the assimilation percentage (the chance that a foreign citizen will be converted each turn), and reduce the resistance modifiers vs Communism (so that resistors get quelled faster). This way you can wage war as a Communist, with less fear of culture flips.

Perhaps this will also help the AI on offense, which is what we want for killer-AIs.

[Dominae]

Unless there are any side-effects of the "1/3 proposal", I'm all for this newest version of Communism (alexman is just full of great ideas!).

This is just in time for the next AU scenario. How about a focus on Communism? Here's what ducki and I were discussing in another thread:

1. Only victory types allowed are Domination and Conquest.

2. Offensive wars are not allowed outside of Communism (yep, this means no fighting until Communism!).

3. To make number 2 more fun, no Religious civs allowed.

The one downside that I see to this idea is that it will make for a long game. I'm fine with this personally because I'm tired of things being wrapped up before the Industrial age. Sound good/bad?


Dominae

[ducki]

This sounds like a really good change, alexman!
I like your proposed "few more bonuses" too.
Something to actually differentiate Communism.

[ducki]

Originally posted by Dominae
Unless there are any side-effects of the "1/3 proposal", I'm all for this newest version of Communism (alexman is just full of great ideas!).

This is just in time for the next AU scenario. How about a focus on Communism? Here's what I was thinking about (along with ducki):

1. Only victory types allowed are Domination and Conquest.

Yes.

2. Offensive wars are not allowed outside of Communism (yep, this means no fighting until Communism!).

This will be tough.
Can we declare war as long as we do not invade? Or will we essentially be playing Light until Commie-dom?
I'm just thinking that waiting until Communism to even hope for a Leader will be a long time, even for me.

3. To make number 2 more fun, no Religious civs allowed.

Not sure how 3 makes 2 more "fun". I'd probably go Monarchy->Communism, so that's "only" 2 changes.
The added benefit of Monarch->Chairman is that I'll get a good picture of how the two compare. The downside is trying to play a Monarchy builder for 2 Ages.

I'm all for requiring non-religious if I can understand why.

The one downside that I see to this idea is that it will make for a long game. I'm fine with this personally because I'm tired of things being wrapped up before the Industrial age. Sound good/bad?
Dominae

As long as it's not larger than Standard, I should be able to at least get to Communism. Larger than that and I just don't have enough time any more.

[alexman]

[Edited out some irrelevant comments about percentage of optimal cities. I thought that this parameter doesn't multiply the modified OCN, but the raw OCN before improvements, WLTKD, Commercial, et cetera are applied. This is not true. My first observations were wrong because of rounding errors.]

[joncnunn]

Isn't there also a bonus for connection to the trade network?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by ducki
This will be tough.
Can we declare war as long as we do not invade? Or will we essentially be playing Light until Commie-dom?

I would define 'offensive war' as entering or bombarding another civ's territory with military units. So, you could declare war all you want, but you could never capture any cities or do any "conquest-type" damage.

Originally posted by ducki
Not sure how 3 makes 2 more "fun". I'd probably go Monarchy->Communism, so that's "only" 2 changes.
The added benefit of Monarch->Chairman is that I'll get a good picture of how the two compare. The downside is trying to play a Monarchy builder for 2 Ages.

I imagine crafty players will use the 1-turn Anarchy to switch in and out of Communism, which goes against the purpose of the scenario. With tougher government transitions, players will probably stick with Communism for large parts of the Industrial and Modern ages.


Dominae

[ducki]

Originally posted by Dominae
I imagine crafty players will use the 1-turn Anarchy to switch in and out of Communism, which goes against the purpose of the scenario. With tougher government transitions, players will probably stick with Communism for large parts of the Industrial and Modern ages.
Dominae

Oh, I thought the plan was to switch to Communism and stay there, but that's a good point if that's not the "rule".

Good catch.

[alexman]

Happy New Year!

I updated the first posts with the 1.14 version readme. If anything seems wrong, now is the time to speak up (before we start the next AU game). Otherwise I will post the new bix file soon.

[alexman]

I just had an idea that might help make killer AIs.

What if we slightly reduced the appearance ratio for strategic resources? Some AI civs (or the human) would end up not having all resources, so the others would automatically become more powerful. An AI civ with no iron would not last very long against knights. Doesn't that mean that we would end up with fewer but stronger empires?

Also, since it is very rare to reach the middle ages without access to horses and iron, for example, the advantage of units that don't require resources (longbowmen, elephants, samurai, keshik, etc) is minimal. Making resources more rare, would probably enhance unit balance.

Thoughts?

[Stuie]

Originally posted by alexman
I just had an idea that might help make killer AIs.

What if we slightly reduced the appearance ratio for strategic resources? Some AI civs (or the human) would end up not having all resources, so the others would automatically become more powerful....

This is exactly what I did to try and push some of the AI Civs to greatness, except my reduction was drastic, not slight. Having played several games with the reduced resources, it does seem to encourage fewer, but stronger AI Civs in the late game - the Ancient Era wars seem more frequent, too. The AI seems to know that it should go after another Civ's source of iron if no other is available.

Also, I made the reductions more drastic for the later appearing resources to reflect the fact the fewer Civs would last to the later stages of the game. This sets up some great showdowns in the late game, really emphasizing the importance of the resources.

But, seeing as the AU Mod is trying to preserve the essential essence of Civ 3, you may not want to cut the appearance ratios too drastically. I just found that slight adjustments did not achieve my goals for my mod.

[Catt]

Shame that the CM experiment didn't work. I must have been misremembering the AI using them aboard naval units whay back when.

The communism tweaks sound better than our earlier musings. @alexman - you are a masterfully creative modder with the editor tools

Catt

[alexman]

Well, it would have been nice if the Communism fix had worked, but the change unbalanced Despotism compared to Monarchy. It turns out the Despotism tile penalty is not enough to make a significant difference in the income of those two governments. The 1/3 reduction in distance corruption for Monarchy is more significant than I had thought. We should still think about adding a Communism-specific building, but for now I am restoring Despotism and Communism corruption levels to where they were.

Also, the 50% increase in OCN is not enough to make the AI win by domination on standard maps. But it certainly helps. Another 100% increase (for a total of 150%) should do the trick at least for maps up to standard or large (the ratio of OCN to number of tiles increases as map sizes get larger). Remember, this OCN increase affects only the AI, as long as we decrease the "percentage of optimal cities" to compensate.

Finally, I would like to try the idea of making strategic resources more scarce.

I updated the initial posts with version 1.15, reflecting these changes. I did it now because we are spinning off an AU MP mod from this mod.

[player1]

Should high increase would surely make building FP almost impossibile.

At standard map you'll need 20 cities.

20 CITIES!!!!!

+50% OCN with need for 12 cities could be swallowed, but

20 CITIES????

(FP availability is calculated by original OCN, diffi % is not applied)

[alexman]

You're right. I forgot about that...