Apolyton University Mod (PTW version)

[minke19104]

Helicopters with rocketry???

Rocketry was invented in 1900's wasn't it? With Werner Von Braun and Germany's V1 - V2 Rockets?

[Jaybe]

In Civ3 terms, Rocketry refers to jet aircraft.
V1-V2's were researched/developed around 1940 (less than 5 years before the first jet aircraft), though deployed/used later.

Once jet engines were advanced enough to be compact, they could be used with helicopters, which gave them a sufficient power/weight ratio. Piston engine helicopters (Korean War vintage) were small puppies.

[Ozymandias]

Originally posted by minke19104
Helicopters with rocketry???

Rocketry was invented in 1900's wasn't it? With Werner Von Braun and Germany's V1 - V2 Rockets?

A bit OT but wuoldn't a separate "Rotary Aircraft" line of development make sense? -- From "Flight" (biplanes) to "Autogyros" to "Transport Helicopters" to "Attack Helicopters"?

-Oz

PS Who wants to do an autogyro graphic

-O

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae


I honestly fail to see how making it mandatory removes that choice. I fall into routines too, but if your games always look like "beeline to Astronomy then trade all my Luxuries", then your "strategic options" are already quite limited. The fact that you've granted that different strategies deal with Navigation in different ways proves my point, I think.

My beeline to Education is almost universal because universities help research the techs on the way to Military Tradition. Whether to go on and pick up Astronomy and maybe Navigation too, or to start down the bottom of the tech tree right after Education and maybe Banking, depends on the situation I find myself in. But if Navigation is mandatory, that significantly shifts the balance in favor of going ahead and getting Astronomy and Navigation early. The biggest part of the price of getting Navigation early - having to research an extra tech you wouldn't really need otherwise - disappears. (And if you think about how much extra luxuries can let you shift commerce from luxury spending to science, you can see how Navigation could pay for itself if it opens up enough cross-ocean trading.)

If skipping Navigation were unquestionably advantageous, there would be advantages in terms of AI competitiveness to making it mandatory for the human player. But given the fact that players may quite legitimately view a detour to Navigation as worthwhile in spite of the tech's being being optional, I think it's hard to argue that Navigation needs to be made mandatory in the interest of balance.

You did not address my main point, which is that, by skipping Nationalism entirely, human players essentially have more trading power. That is quite the advantage, and one that I'm sure you've noticed (although the effect is far more pronounced in the Medieval age with Printing Press, Democracy, and such).

I don't see how making Nationalism mandatory would make any significant difference. Right now, I skip Nationalism and pick it up from an AI whenever I find it convenient to do so (i.e. it's available and trading for it doens't interfere with my tech lead or with deals I regard as more worthwhile). If Nationalism were mandatory, I would do exactly the same thing.

The only times making Nationalism mandatory would be relevant are if the human is so far ahead that the AIs don't have Nationalism to trade to him by the end of the industrial era, in which case making him research Nationalism is a pointless nuisance, or if he is doing poorly enough in the tech race that he can't get a branch lead to trade for Nationalism, in which case I see no reason to begrudge him the advantage the standard rules offer. Therefore, I regard the proposed change to Nationalism as not providing sufficient value to justify a rules change.

Here is the implied standard in my reasoning:

1. All techs should have some use. It would be nice if the use of all techs were enough to make the human player consider them, but that's a different story.

2. The use of optional techs should, on average, be greater than the use of required techs. This is obvious, because a useless optional tech is not going to be researched very often. You can see that the tech tree was designed this way: The Republic, Literature, Chivalry, etc.

3. The AI is hard-coded to research most of the techs, in order to make the game more fun. The human player has the advantage of skipping some of the more usless optional tecsh. This is a major advantage, one which we should definitely address in our attempts to make a more competitive AI.

So, from these points, I think it is somewhat clear which techs I think should be mandatory:

NOT:

The Republic
Monarchy
Literature
Chivalry
Military Tradition
Democracy (government )
Free Artistry (Democracy as a prerequisite)
Communism (government)
Espionage (a specialized ability, perfect for optional status)

YEA:

Printing Press
Navigation
Nationalism
Sanitation

ON THE FENCE:

Advanced Flight
Amphibious Wafare

The last two I'm not sure about. If I had my way I would make them optional because it makes the game more interesting and helps the AI (because it researches these even when it could go for Computers), but if you would rather keep things like stock these reasons may not be that convincing to you.

I think Navigation falls squarely in the "Specialized ability, perfect for optional status" category. It's not something human players will want to use all the time, but neither is it so worthless that a good human player will always prefer to skip it.

Nationalism also does a fairly good job fitting into that category. The abilities to draft and to sign MPPs are far from useless (although I'm less sure about the embargo ability). Granted, top players can usually stay out of situations where they really need those abilities until they can trade for Nationalism, but the very fact that we do trade for it relatively early makes it easy to ignore that Nationalism is where those abilities come from. In any case, the trading window between the time AIs get Nationalism and the end of the age is long enough to make making Nationalism mandatory pretty much pointless.

Sanitation often pays for itself through the extra gold additional laborers bring in. If human players skip it, it's usually because they've planned around not needing it, not because the tech itself is without value. And AIs certainly get their beakers' worth out of it, so one can hardly argue that the AIs are doing something stupid researching that instead of focusing on mandatory techs. Still, the difficulty of conceiving of a modern society without sanitation and hospitals makes the idea of making Sanitation mandatory something that doesn't bother me.

Amphibious Warfare attempts to fall into the "specialized ability" category, but is far from entirely successful at it. Actually, if AIs were at all competent at using the ability, the increased pressure AI marines would place on players to fortify coastal towns might be well worth the cost of the tech to the AI. But as things stand, the AI doesn't get much value of the tech and its value to human players is far from clear.

And I think Advanced Flight could probably be moved at least marginally into that category. Making it a prerequisite for airstrips would be one step in that direction. And with some tweaks to the helicopter unit, the ability to build an airstrip the moment you conquer a city might actually make it a lot more useful than its traditional reputation holds. It's not my style, but for someone who likes to pound cities with artillery before capturing them even with tanks, consider the potential usefulness of being able to helidrop artillery and infantry to cover them a few tiles behind enemy lines.

By the way, you left out Music Theory and Economics. Those two techs come with relatively valuable wonders if you can reach them first, but have little (Economics) or no (Music Theory) other value. Personally, I research Navigation myself more often than I do Music Theory.

[Jaybe]

... Personally, I research Navigation myself more often than I do Music Theory.

Even if you missed Sistine's???

(BTW, who WAS Sistine IRL, anyway???)

[nbarclay]

It's "Sistine Chapel," not "Sistine's Chapel." Not that I know where the "Sistine" part comes from.

Sistine is worth three happy faces, but only in cities with cathedrals (which tend to be a relatively low-priority item for me). Bach's is worth two happy faces for all cities on the same continent. Trading for eight luxuries instead of four is worth four happy faces in cities without marketplaces and fourteen with marketplaces, and you don't have to beat an AI to a wonder to get them. Even if the last luxury isn't available, going from four to seven luxuries adds ten happy faces.

In other words, give me trade routes and a big enough tech lead that I can trade tech for luxuries, and I can do perfectly fine with neither Bach's nor Sistine.

[Catt]

I have "no dog in the fight" of the discussions regarding zero-range-bombard archer units or mandatory / optional techs. But I am heavily biased against making any changes whatsoever unless there is a demonstrable deficiency to be corrected.

In that spirit, if changes to the tech tree are warranted, for my money the best overall change would be to eliminate the "Industrial Corridor" by rearranging some of the tech prerequisite requirements. It seems to me that a human-built Theory of Evolution basically seals the game (whether playing as a "warmonger" or a "builder"), because such a lead on one tech branch funnels all peaceful counter-tactics into the channel (Industrial Corridor) that offers no alternative approaches and therefore no opportunity to leap ahead or foolishily fall behind. I can remember only one or two games (one of them was an early AU game, MiniTourney III, my first ever Emperor game) in which I lost a tech lead after having reached parity in the early Industrial Age. This translates into "game-over" for the AI by the mid-Industrial Age for most of my games.

Perhaps a more varied branch system in the Industrial Age tech tree might be a consideration?

Catt

[player1]

This whole mandatory tech discussion looks to me like change for sake of change.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
But if Navigation is mandatory, that significantly shifts the balance in favor of going ahead and getting Astronomy and Navigation early.

Why? If Navigation is so good to you (in terms of the ability to trade for Luxuries), then you would get it anyway, right?

And if not, you would just skip it entirely, right (I mean, until far into the Industrial age). So I'm still not clear as to where the strategic choice lies. I believe that making Navigation a required tech does not change strategic play that much, but it does help the AI. It therefore does not affect 3 out of 4 of the AU mod philosophies, but improves one.

I don't see how making Nationalism mandatory would make any significant difference. Right now, I skip Nationalism and pick it up from an AI whenever I find it convenient to do so (i.e. it's available and trading for it doens't interfere with my tech lead or with deals I regard as more worthwhile). If Nationalism were mandatory, I would do exactly the same thing.

If it were mandatory, you would have to pick it up, whether you wanted to or not. It may in fact be very inconvenient for you to have to pick it up at the end of the Industrial era. This puts you closer to the AI, which kills for Nationalism, removing your priviledged status of being able to avoid it entirely.

I think Navigation falls squarely in the "Specialized ability, perfect for optional status" category. It's not something human players will want to use all the time, but neither is it so worthless that a good human player will always prefer to skip it.

The fact is that the AI likes Navigation a lot more than Espionage. The AI seems to think that Navigation is mandatory, while Espionage is relatively optional.

In any case, the trading window between the time AIs get Nationalism and the end of the age is long enough to make making Nationalism mandatory pretty much pointless.

The problem with Nationalism (I think) is that you can sign MPPs even if you do not know Nationalism.

And, again, I disagree with your point that Nationalism would be "too easy" to pick up if it were required for advancement to the Modern age. In close games where there actually is a tech race (remember those?), having to buy/obtain Nationalism from the AI could be very annoying. Strangely, your example was of a game where Nationalism would be rather easy to obtain from the AI (when the human player is far ahead). Trying to take the player out of all-too-frequent tech leads is the whole point of this change. It seems to me you like being in a tech lead yourself, and do not want any mod challenge you in this regard.

Sanitation often pays for itself through the extra gold additional laborers bring in. If human players skip it, it's usually because they've planned around not needing it, not because the tech itself is without value. And AIs certainly get their beakers' worth out of it, so one can hardly argue that the AIs are doing something stupid researching that instead of focusing on mandatory techs.

Sanitation's value is a lot less valuable to the human player than to the AI (because the AI always uses sparse city-spacing). The AI was coded this way. Thus, the AI is in fact researching a "mandatory" tech (for it), which the human player can jump over, either entirely or until the AIs get it (always eventually). This helps the human player immensely, since he or she can just jump straight to Scientific Method, without ever looking back.

Still, the difficulty of conceiving of a modern society without sanitation and hospitals makes the idea of making Sanitation mandatory something that doesn't bother me.

Again, you're arguing from aesthetics. This makes me think that you believe the two primary philosophies of the AU mod are "improve realism" and "change as little as possible". Through my experience with the AU mod (including numerous polls), I thought the two primary ones were "help the AI" and "add strategic options". Other than the Navigation issue, I want to know if you think the change I'm proposing does not further these last two aims.

By the way, you left out Music Theory and Economics. Those two techs come with relatively valuable wonders if you can reach them first, but have little (Economics) or no (Music Theory) other value. Personally, I research Navigation myself more often than I do Music Theory.

Those two could be made mandatory too. On a side note, I now consider J.S. Bach's useful enough for me to research Music Theory myself (depending on the specific game, of course).


Dominae

[Dominae]

Originally posted by player1
This whole mandatory tech discussion looks to me like change for sake of change.

Please offer reasons to back up your comment. I believe I've outlined arguments for why I think the changes I'm proposing are in the aims of the AU mod. If you're not going to address those and simply state that this is all whimsy, well, I'm wondering why you're bothering to post here in the first place (no offense, really!).


Dominae

[Fosse]

On zero range bombard: It should stay in. It satisfies helping the AI and increasing strategy.

Arguing that it also helps the human doesn't carry much water for me, as that means the human has a perfectly viable strategic option, and also because humans could use archers better BEFORE zero range got added in anyhow.

I'm for flagging Navigation as required, if for not other reason than it's silly to imagine ironclads and battleships existing in a world that doesn't understand navigation. Thus, adding realism.
Nationalism should be required, and actually I didn't realize it wasn't. The player can reap the rewards of MPPs and Embargos without researching it, which isn't really fair. Also, because the AI LOVES this tech and will ALWAYS go for it, it can only help the AI to make sure the human has to research it before advancing to the next age.

I'll have to consider my stance on the other optional techs.

[player1]

Originally posted by Dominae
Please offer reasons to back up your comment. I believe I've outlined arguments for why I think the changes I'm proposing are in the aims of the AU mod. If you're not going to address those and simply state that this is all whimsy, well, I'm wondering why you're bothering to post here in the first place (no offense, really!).


Dominae

original flavor

If you make 90% of techs manadatory you lose a flavor of optional techs.

I'm means this is all just for "it will kill flavor, but maybe AI would research them more?"

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae


Why? If Navigation is so good to you (in terms of the ability to trade for Luxuries), then you would get it anyway, right?

And if not, you would just skip it entirely, right (I mean, until far into the Industrial age). So I'm still not clear as to where the strategic choice lies. I believe that making Navigation a required tech does not change strategic play that much, but it does help the AI. It therefore does not affect 3 out of 4 of the AU mod philosophies, but improves one.

I'm not saying that Navigation is so wonderful that going for it as early as possible is a no-brainer. Just that the benefits it provides can be worth researching an extra tech for depending on the situation. That's why I think there's a real, meaningful strategic choice involved in the decision of whether or not to research Navigation, and why I don't want to disrupt or change the nature of that choice by making the tech mandatory. It's the borderline situations, the ones that leave the player thinking, "Do I want to go ahead and get Navigation, or do I want to wait until Magnetism to do my sea travel and trading?" that would be affected.

The fact is that the AI likes Navigation a lot more than Espionage. The AI seems to think that Navigation is mandatory, while Espionage is relatively optional.

It would be nice if the AI had more sophistication in analyzing how a given tech will fit into the overall game puzzle, but in the absence of significantly greater sophistication, I don't think having the AI research Navigation less would help it. On the contrary, it would help human players preserve contact monopolies longer (making Arrian Deceptions a lot easier). It would also undercut luxury trading, and keep in mind that an AI can't just ratchet up the luxury slider to compensate in such situations. So I don't view this as a case where the AI is playing particularly stupidly, except maybe if it makes Navigation a priority on true Pangea maps.

The problem with Nationalism (I think) is that you can sign MPPs even if you do not know Nationalism.

Check the Civilopedia, or try signing a MPP sometime when you don't have Nationalism.

And, again, I disagree with your point that Nationalism would be "too easy" to pick up if it were required for advancement to the Modern age. In close games where there actually is a tech race (remember those?), having to buy/obtain Nationalism from the AI could be very annoying. Strangely, your example was of a game where Nationalism would be rather easy to obtain from the AI (when the human player is far ahead). Trying to take the player out of all-too-frequent tech leads is the whole point of this change. It seems to me you like being in a tech lead yourself, and do not want any mod challenge you in this regard.

You're missing the fact that the human player wouldn't have to obtain Nationalism from an AI he's neck and neck with. All he needs is for an AI farther back in the pack to get Nationalism by the end of the era and he can trade for it. The only exceptions I can think of would be (1) if the human player is behind in tech to a point where handicapping him farther would be counterproductive or (2) if the only AIs that can't essentially 100% keep up with the human player are a full era behind in tech.

As for your accusation that I'm just trying to protect something I use to help me maintain a tech advantage, you couldn't be more mistaken. I don't recall a single game where I exited the industrial era without having Nationalism, and if there was one, it certainly wasn't one where I was motivated by trying to protect a tech lead. If you can come up with significant anecdotal evidence that people do refuse to trade for Nationalism throughout the industrial era to help them in games where they and the AIs are fairly even in tech, I'll reconsider my position. But in the absence of such evidence, I think your proposed change would be pointless for the types of situations you're trying to address and counterproductive in other types of situations.

Sanitation's value is a lot less valuable to the human player than to the AI (because the AI always uses sparse city-spacing). The AI was coded this way. Thus, the AI is in fact researching a "mandatory" tech (for it), which the human player can jump over, either entirely or until the AIs get it (always eventually). This helps the human player immensely, since he or she can just jump straight to Scientific Method, without ever looking back.

I'll certainly agree that the AI has a vastly greater need for Sanitation than most human players do. But the fact is that Sanitation, city size, city development strategy (e.g. whether or not to build temporary cities), and research rates fit together in a fairly intricate balance. Make Sanitation mandatory and you tilt that balance in favor of looser city spacings and/or temporary camp cities. We've already tilted the balance in favor of encouraging research into Sanitation by tying the Longevity wonder to it. I'm not in favor of tilting that balance still farther.

Again, you're arguing from aesthetics. This makes me think that you believe the two primary philosophies of the AU mod are "improve realism" and "change as little as possible". Through my experience with the AU mod (including numerous polls), I thought the two primary ones were "help the AI" and "add strategic options".

When have you ever seen me propose or promote a change for purely or primarily aesthetic reasons? On the other hand, when a change is a close call otherwise, the small weight I do give aesthetic/realism issues can have an influence.

Other than the Navigation issue, I want to know if you think the change I'm proposing does not further these last two aims.

I think making Printing Press mandatory does. I'm skeptical as to whether the value is great enough to justify changing the rules over, but I do think it has merit with respect to both goals. Specifically, it makes researching Democracy oneself (which seems to be something top players almost never do) less unattractive, and it can cut into a runaway human tech lead just a little.

I find it almost impossible to imagine the change to Nationalism making a difference in a game that's at all close unless a human player lets it get to him psychologically. All the human player needs is an AI that's behind him but not a full era behind to trade with. The time it seems most likely to make a difference in game play is if a player is trying to fight back from a major tech deficit, and undercutting a human player under those consitions is not something I view as beneficial.

Sanitation is too intricately involved in existing strategic balances for me to like the idea of doing something that would significantly reshape those balances. With the default rules, and even more so with Longevity tied to Sanitation in the AU mod, the question of whether and when to research Sanitation can be a strategically interesting and challenging one. This is not a case of trying to make a strategic choice interesting where it would be a no-brainer under the default rules.

Regarding Advanced Flight, I don't know about you, but until we started discussing this, I hadn't given any real thought at all to how the PtW changes and AU Mod changes might fit together to make the tech a lot more worthwhile when pursuing a modern-era military victory. Airfields provide a quick-to-build, inexpensive place where helicopters and paratroops can operate from, a place potentially right on the front lines at the time it's built. Radar towers toughen up AI defenses and provide a target behind enemy lines that is very much worth taking out before the main attack. At the very least, someone needs to do some serious testing of how useful the tech can be in an AU Mod PTW game before we write the tech off as useless. (Do I smell an idea for a possible AU game?) I can't see Advanced Flight as being worthwhile if you can get MAs while the AI is still stuck using old-fashioned infantry, but in a closer game, it might just possibly be worth something.

Those two could be made mandatory too. On a side note, I now consider J.S. Bach's useful enough for me to research Music Theory myself (depending on the specific game, of course).

Exactly. When I write of skipping Music Theory and Economics, I get a "You did what???" reaction too often for me to view the game as clearly heavily favoring skipping those techs. I think Navigation and Sanitation belong in the same category: you can skip them, but you lose out on something if you do. Which means those techs are doing their job.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Fosse
On zero range bombard: It should stay in. It satisfies helping the AI and increasing strategy.

Arguing that it also helps the human doesn't carry much water for me, as that means the human has a perfectly viable strategic option, and also because humans could use archers better BEFORE zero range got added in anyhow.

What concerns me is that the balance of benefits is likely as follows:

1) Humans who use early archer rushes probably benefit most.

2) Then the AIs, and

3) Humans who do all their fighting after the archer era are undermined by the change.

So the rules change rewards players who do early archer rushes but works against those who don't. I don't view that as a good thing. Civ 3 already has too much of a reputation for turning builders into warmongers.

Note that I have no objection to keeping the zero-range bombard ability with longbowmen and (aside from the realism angle) guerillas, since there it doesn't give an added advantage to a strategy that's already pretty powerful.

[/quote]I'm for flagging Navigation as required, if for not other reason than it's silly to imagine ironclads and battleships existing in a world that doesn't understand navigation. Thus, adding realism.[/quote]

When is the last time you've heard of a battleship navigator pulling out his sextant to take a sighting by the stars (except maybe as part of a hobby)? The tech "Magnetism" reflects a fundamental change in the tools used to navigate, a change which rendered the tools previously used no longer necessary. Had the earlier tools not been invented prior to the discovery of the later ones, there would have been no point to their ever being invented at all. I think that's the historical basis underlying Navigation's optional nature.

Nationalism should be required, and actually I didn't realize it wasn't. The player can reap the rewards of MPPs and Embargos without researching it, which isn't really fair. Also, because the AI LOVES this tech and will ALWAYS go for it, it can only help the AI to make sure the human has to research it before advancing to the next age.

I hadn't thought about it, but I suppose the player probably can reap the rewards if his prospective partner in the deal has Nationalism. Still, that leaves riflemen, mobilization, and the draft unavailable, as well as MPPs and embargos with pre-industrial AIs.

And have you ever left the industrial era without having Nationalism? Do you know anyone who has? If so, under what circumstances? Dominae's premise in proposing the change was that in a close game, human players will skip Nationalism all the way to the modern era. It's hard for me to imagine that happening in a competitive game because it will almost inevitably be too easy to trade for it to an AI farther back in the pack.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Check the Civilopedia, or try signing a MPP sometime when you don't have Nationalism.

Although this does not help my credibility as a prospective modder (!!!), I believe it proves my point concerning how irrelevant I find Nationalism (in my games), while the AI depends critically on it. I feel that this advantages me.

But you've definitely got me thinking, Nathan (and player1). I'll mull over it today. For now, I'm willing to say that maybe the solution is not the best, yet I would like players to admit that there is a problem (am I just crazy?): the human players is very much advantaged by having the option to skip the optional techs. Optional/mandatory is not a distinction that the AI gives much weight to, and I believe this to be a mistake.


Dominae