AU mod: The Colosseum

[MrWhereItsAt]

Re: Re: AU mod: The Colosseum

Originally posted by Dominae
As a package deal, this would completely replace Temples for non-Religious civs. In those instances when 10-turns for border expansion is not a major issue, you would always build Colosseums, right?

I don't quite agree with you here Dom, since one will have the ability to build Temples far in advance of Collossea in most games. Also, for non-religious civs, it's only an extra 10 shields to Temples then, which is jsut a few short turns for cities with more than 1spt anyway.

I would much prefer if Colosseums were in the same cost category (~100 Shields), and were rivals to Cathedrals for non-Religious civs. We would need to arrange its properties (Culture, upkeep, etc.) so as to create a valid alternative to Cathedrals, depending on what your looking to accomplish.
Dominae

OOOh! Now we're talking! Since Collossea come so much later in the tech tree than Temples, I agree they should be like an expensive Cathedral before you get the ability to build Cathedrals. Expensive as in happy faces + culture per shield as compared to Cathedrals, not necessarily in terms of costing more overall than Cathedrals.

If we set Collossea to give 3 happy faces (otherwise the same), this makes them like Cathedrals except with 1 less culture. Would this be overpowering and degrade Cathedrals where you aren't going for Sistine's? OTOH perhaps Cathedrals need to be reduced in impact a little... Since these improvements' benefits are additive it would still be worth building Cathedrals in large cities, so such a chanbge seems OK to me.

On a Monarch game, a city in Monarchy with a Temple and a Collosseum then would keep 6 citizens happy - as much as 9 with MP. With a Cathedral and no lux, this would mean you could get size 12 cities. This doesn't sound too bad to me, as especially with the rarer resoures in C3C it is not inconceivable you could miss all lux until you can trade for them.

Thus I'd suggest simply upping Collossea to give 3 happy faces. No change in cost, unless someone has a reason to suggest one...?

[Dry]

Re: AU mod: The Colosseum

I indeed also noticed that problem.

My solution:
I did not change the build cost/maintenace of cathedrals or colosseums, but I made the cathedral producing only 2 HF's and the colosseums 1 culture, but 3 HF's.
This, not only seems more logical to me, but it also makes the choice between culture (cathedrals) and happyness (colosseums) harder.
This still makes the second happyness improvement of non-religious civs expensive to build, but a little bit more appealing. Maybe I should also reduce it's cost to 100

[nbarclay]

While a number of the ideas mentioned sound interesting, the AU Mod is supposed to be relatively minimalist in nature. Changing the cost of colosseums to 100 and leaving everything else the same would make colosseums more worthwhile without complicating the mod with a whole bunch of differences to keep track of. Anything more than that would create significant additional confusion keeping track of what's different between the regular game and the AU Mod version, and I don't think the benefits would be worth the confusion.

The one caveat is that reducing the cost of colosseums only makes sense if, with the change, the AI tends to build significantly more and earlier colosseums than humans do. Further, the AI would have to get a meaningful advantage out of doing so; if it builds a colosseum and not a cathedral instead of a cathedral and not a colosseum, the AI isn't really benefitting significantly from the change. If the AI doesn't benefit, I don't see changing colosseums as worthwhile at all. One or another of the culture buildings has to be "low man on the totem pole," and I see no reason why it is bad to have colosseums in that role.

Personally, I often build colosseums in my core cities at some point in the game, for the culture if nothing else. The most likely time is in the industrial era after I've finished my cavalry warfare and before tanks become available. So the question is, would the AI build more and earlier colosseums than I do?

Nathan

[sabrewolf]

maybe a too extreme idea.
but couldn't the colosseum be a small wonder? after all, only provincial capitals had large amphitheatres and only rome had _the_colosseum_.

this small wonder may require a certain number of other buildings, eg 5-10 amphitheatres (which would be the current colosseum). after that you'd get a amphitheatre in all cities on the continent... so +1 happiness.

the AI would be harmed by building the amphitheatres because it would enable "free" happiness.

i guess this idea is too extreme, because the whole point of AU is not to change too much. but after reading the ideas of the cavalry (adding a intermediate unit before the real cavalry, etc.), this suggestion doesn't even seem too severe...


otherwise, i'm for "reduce cost to 100" or "happiness to 2".

[pvzh]

What about 80 shields 2 HP, 2gpt, 2 culture. This way it is good to build for non-religious civs.

Religious civs have cathedrals for that price.

[alexman]

To add a strategic choice, building Colosseums before Temples and Cathedrals should sometimes (but not always) make more sense for a non-religious civ.

Current stats per happy face:
Colosseum: 60 shields, 1 maint, 1 culture
Temple: 60 shields, 1 maint, 2 culture
Cathedral: 53.3 shields, 0.67 maint, 1 culture
Temple+Cathedral: 55 shields, 0.75 maint, 1.25 culture

You can see that building a Colosseum when you can build a Temple and/or Cathedral is usually a silly decision.

What if we decrease the maintenance cost to 1gpt?
Colosseum: 60 shields, 0.5 maint, 1 culture

Then, in the Ancient age, you build a Colosseum before a Temple if the city has the production capacity for a 120 shield improvement, and if you don't think you're going to need a Cathedral to deal with happiness. You build a Temple if you want culture, or if you just need a border expansion, or if you think you're going to need a cathedral in that city.

In the middle Ages, you build a Colosseum before a Cathedral if you don't need the three happy faces. Otherwise, if you already have a Temple, or if you need the culture, you build a Cathedral.

According to Nor Me, the AI builds Colosseums after religious buildings, and that's still the correct thing for it to do. It needs the extra happiness to compensate for the luxury slider, and it often needs the extra culture.

[Aeson]

I think the Colosseum should be a Commercial building rather than a Religious one. In that light, swapping the 'overpowered' Marketplace happiness with the Colosseum's happiness would make both about the same value, and both worth building IMO.

The Colosseum would be the place where people go to indulge in luxuries, while the Marketplace is where people go to buy them.

[donZappo]

Of all the options I prefer Dominae's the best. It is a pretty extensive change, but I think it would balance things quite well for religious/non-religious civs. If you're trying to stick to a more minimalistic approach that would be more in the "spirit" of AU, I think reducing their GPT upkeep by 1 would be the way to go.

Aeson, you raise an interesting idea with the luxuries that I hadn't thought of before. Would this make the coloseum a bit too powerful? A city that would need a coloseum would also need the extra luxury happiness as well. This might move this building into a necessary building for every culture and actually end up reducing the strategic decisions for the human player.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Aeson
I think the Colosseum should be a Commercial building rather than a Religious one. In that light, swapping the 'overpowered' Marketplace happiness with the Colosseum's happiness would make both about the same value, and both worth building IMO.

The Colosseum would be the place where people go to indulge in luxuries, while the Marketplace is where people go to buy them.

That's an interesting idea! Strikes me as a big change so I instictively recoil a bit, and I also hear donZappo's concern about removing strategic choice. But it might actually have interesting spillover consequences to the Republic challenge -- its a no-brainer to get markets up quickly as they are now; and it seems to be a slightly less no-brainer to go to Republic as a non-religious civ unless you know you'll be doing some extensive (and perhaps slow-mover) warfare for a long period or the map conditions are such to actually invite Feudalism. With the somewhat radical switch proposed, it could become an interesting choice as to build a market or colosseum early with a move to Republic (when shields are harder to come by) and might further induce a more serious consideration of Monarchy even in the absence of expected warfare. Of course, if it really did weaken Republic further in the early game, it wouldn't necessarily weaken it at all in the later game -- my sense is that many believe that the C3C changes weaken Rep early and strengthen it late. Not sure how the AI would react.

Okay, sorry for the tangent I just had never considered a market - colosseum swap of attributes and it conjured up all sorts of interesting hypotheticals.

Catt

[sabrewolf]

interesting proposal...

just keep in mind that the market-luxuries-happiness-effect only help s, if you have at least 3 luxuries. and i often see the AI not having more than two... specially in the most crowded games i like to play.

if you remove this option, marketplaces should get a lot cheaper (at least down to 80) and collosseums would then be alright (100). this also changes the building queue depending on the number of luxs.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
What if we decrease the maintenance cost to 1gpt?
Colosseum: 60 shields, 0.5 maint, 1 culture

This is my favorite suggestion thus far, mostly because it departs the least from the standard game. It still may fall below the mark of playable power level, because Luxury scarcity in C3C means that Temples+Cathedrals will be preferable to Temples+Colosseusm. But the new Colosseum might still have its uses. Maybe a token reduction of 10 Shields is in order?

All the other suggestions are interesting; Aeson's Marketplace/Colosseum swap is really cool, and I wish they had implemented something like that for the epic game. However, almost all of them are too drastic for the AU mod.


Dominae

[Strollen]

A simple change to reducing cost to 100 seems fine with me.

However, I think helping increasing the number of happy face to 3 and also increasing maintaince cost to 3, may help the AI out more. My experience is that without using the Luxury slider the AI often has a lot of entertainers, so giving them a more happy faces seems like a good idea.

For the human player
Colosseum 120 shields 3HF, 3 maintaince 2 culture vs
Cathedral 160 shields 3HF, 2 maintaince 3 culture possible chance of getting Sistine chapel. This is an interesting tradeoff

[alexman]

Now that we have a panel, we can start making decisions:

AU mod panel members, you have 24 hours to vote:

• "Yes" to reduce maintenance of Colosseum to 1gpt
• "No" to make no change.

If the majority votes "No", we may have a new vote on a different proposal. If the majority votes "Yes", we can still have a vote on whether we should also reduce the cost.

My vote: YES!

[ZargonX]

This is only for the reduced maintainance cost, correct?

In that case, My Vote: Yes

[Stuie]

I'll vote yes given that we can always revisit other ideas if the reduced maintenance doesn't have the desired impact.