AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Regarding the "Forced Resettlement" flag, it looks like removing it was included in the proposal Alexman placed under consideration but not in what we ended up voting on. A quick search for references to that flag reveals no trace of a reason why it was excluded from the voting, but it's possible that I missed something. Therefore, I suggest that we go ahead and vote on that change unless someone can come up with a reason not to in the next day or two. (Alexman, do you remember anything about why that flag ended up being excluded from the vote?)

I withdrew the initial proposal because I thought it would be better to leave Fascism as a underpowered government, and just try to discourage the AI from using it.

Currently we have a minimum change, which preserves the stock flavor of Fascism, and it's better for the AI, which would often make the wrong choice between the two late-game war-time governments, if those were balanced.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The Forced Resettlement flag is what causes civs to lose pop points when they switch to Fascism. Eliminating that flag would make Fascism a little less costly for AIs and a little less unattractive to human players.

Thanks... damn, I forgot about that... the few times I've gone Fascist, I remember being shocked at the pop penalty.

If this is in fact going to be the next game, I think part of the opening post needs to be a clear spelling out of what Fascism entails.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alexman


I withdrew the initial proposal because I thought it would be better to leave Fascism as a underpowered government, and just try to discourage the AI from using it.

Currently we have a minimum change, which preserves the stock flavor of Fascism, and it's better for the AI, which would often make the wrong choice between the two late-game war-time governments, if those were balanced.

If eliminating the Forced Resettlement flag would make AIs noticeably more likely to choose Fascism, I agree with that logic. But earlier in the thread, you'd written

...Instead, I propose to remove the 'forced resettlement' from Fascism (which the AI does not take into consideration at all)...

If that's true, removing the flag, and hence making the government more worthwhile when AIs do end up using it, would not cause that problem. Thus, I would view eliminating the flag as entirely beneficial, both in helpiing AIs when they do use Fascism and in making Fascism less unattractive to human players.

[alexman]

We increased the corruption level for Fascism, and told all AIs to shun that government. According to my testing, those two changes should have been enough to prevent the AIs from choosing Fascism over Communism when at war.

I was just saying that if you improve a government that is almost never chosen by the AI, you give an advantage to the human player. Of course, the AI still might go Fascist if it has not discovered Communism, but that situation is only temporary.

As it is now, Fascism can be a good government in very limited situations, which only the human player can recognize. If we make it a good government in more situations, the AI will more often pick the wrong government, because it will always pick Communism.

[nbarclay]

The way I look at it, making Fascism more powerful when AIs choose it is beneficial from a "helping the AIs" perspective, while making it useful a little more often for human players (who very rarely find it useful from what I've seen) is beneficial from an "interesting strategic choices" perspective.

In regard to the idea that Communism would be the wrong government more often if we make Fascism more powerful, I view that as a purely aesthetic matter that makes no practical difference. It might not look pretty to have AIs choose Communism in situations where Fascism would be better, but the reality is that when AIs are in Communism, how good or bad Fascism is is completely irrelevant to the quality of game the AIs play. The only times when making Fascism better would actually undermine the AIs' effectiveness as opponents would be when human players choose Fascism and AIs don't.

Thus, from a "helping the AIs" perspective, the real question is whether AIs would benefit more often in situations where they choose Fascism because they don't know about Communism yet or humans would benefit more from finding situations where Fascism is the best government for them. Given that I've never used Fascism even once in all the C3C games I've played, my inclination is that aside from the "Power of Fascism" game we're planning, the change would tend to benefit AIs more than it does humans.

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Given that I've never used Fascism even once in all the C3C games I've played, my inclination is that aside from the "Power of Fascism" game we're planning, the change would tend to benefit AIs more than it does humans.

But how can it benefit the AI when they don't choose Fascism? Has anyone ever seen the AI choose Fascism in an AU mod game? It's extremely rare.

Also, just because you personally haven't used Fascism it doesn't mean that Fascism is not useful to others. Ultimate Power-style games (like you prefer to play) do not lend themselves to Fascism, which is better for smaller empires.

My feeling is that if we remove the forced resettlement flag from fascism, we will see much more widespread use of this government from human players. Remember, we have already given Fascism an extra FP.

[nbarclay]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by alexman

Also, just because you personally haven't used Fascism it doesn't mean that Fascism is not useful to others. Ultimate Power-style games (like you prefer to play) do not lend themselves to Fascism, which is better for smaller empires.

It's not just the "ultimate power" angle. There is also the fact that even when Fascism might provide a short-term advantage, it doesn't take a lot of conquest for the advantage to shift to Communism. Thus, even with religious civs, it generally makes sense to go ahead and switch to Communism. The two main exceptions I can think of offhand are (1) if a player is planning limited warfare followed by a switch to Democracy and (2) in really tough games where making any significant military headway at all is expected to take quite a while.

My feeling is that if we remove the forced resettlement flag from fascism, we will see much more widespread use of this government from human players. Remember, we have already given Fascism an extra FP.

The question to me is not how often players would use Fascism, but rather how often it would give them a significant advantage over strategies involving other governments or combinations of governments. If players choose Fascism without getting a significant net advantage from it, that makes the game more interesting without upsetting its balance. Such an outcome would be very much within the spirit and purpose of the AU Mod.

The real danger is if we would make Fascism powerful enough that players not only use it more, but get a significant net advantage from doing so. (I say "net advantage" because of situations where Fascism's short-term advantages are offset by longer-term disadvantages.) My expectation is that even with Forced Resettlement removed, situations where that would be an issue would be extremely rare. Further, the times when the risk would be greatest would be times when the human player is weakest - and therefore (in my opinion) when a boost for the human player would be least objectionable.

[nbarclay]

Since the the removal of the Forced Relocation flag has, in a sense, been left in limbo with an "under consideration" status for months, I think it would be safe to go ahead and vote on it at the same time we do the Republic unit support changes.

By the way, I don't think I thought to bring it up before, but since Democracy mirrors Republic's unit support model in the AU Mod other than being cheaper per additional unit, if we increase support for Republic, we would also presumably do so for Democracy.

[pvzh]

The reason I proposed to remove Forced resettlement, is that I doubt that AI "knows" about the effect of the flag, more likely it is pure loss/gain calculation on productivity and unit support cost. Thus, I proposed to increase free support for democracy and lowered it slightly for Fascism, so AI will be more likely to stay in Democracy during *peace*.

For the human player it is more of psychological barrier, population loss is one time affair, so, if you manage population/food production well, it should not be much of the problem in the time of railroads/electricity.

Fascism should work well if you combine it with mobilization: if you xenophobic you do not accumulate culture until you have majority of population anyway, so you may just not build any cultural improvements in conquered towns at all.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by pvzh
The reason I proposed to remove Forced resettlement, is that I doubt that AI "knows" about the effect of the flag, more likely it is pure loss/gain calculation on productivity and unit support cost. Thus, I proposed to increase free support for democracy and lowered it slightly for Fascism, so AI will be more likely to stay in Democracy during *peace*.

Even in the stock game, I've never noticed a problem of AIs choosing Fascism over Democracy in peacetime. With changes already in the AU Mod, such an occurrence is even more unlikely.

The bigger problem was that AIs tended to choose Fascism over Communism practically all the time. Alexman made some changes with the goal that the AIs will essentially always choose Communism over Fascism if it has both (a change which is especially good for maximizing the power of killer AIs. So I don't view the AI's lack of knowledge about the effects of the Forced Resettlement flag as a significant problem in the current version of the Mod.

For the human player it is more of psychological barrier, population loss is one time affair, so, if you manage population/food production well, it should not be much of the problem in the time of railroads/electricity.

There's also another angle I haven't thought to bring up before. By the time a player will want to change governments to Fascism, chances are that a lot of cities will have reached a steady state of maximum desired size and little or no food surplus. With Forced Resettlement, a player has to either wait for slow growth to replace the lost population in those cities or go through some micromanagement hassle to speed up the cities' growth and then slow it back down once the lost population is replaced. Getting rid of Forced Resettlement would eliminate that micromanagement hassle.

I suppose a sufficiently serious zealot might argue that the micromanagement issue is a "strategic option" that we shouldn't get rid of. But I seriously doubt that many players would consider the micromanagement issue more interesting than it is annoying.

[nbarclay]

Since Theseus seems to have the next game essentially ready, let's go ahead and vote. Voting will last 24 hours, assuming sufficient votes are cast in that time. Note that we have two separate issues to vote on.

1) Yes/No: Increase free unit support for Republic and Democracy from 0/1/1 + 12 to 0/1/1 + 18. (That compares with 1/3/4 under the standard rules.)

2) Yes/No: Eliminate the Forced Resettlement flag from Fascism. (If we vote yes, civs will no longer lose pop points when switching to Fascism.)

[nbarclay]

My votes:

1) Yes
2) Yes

[alexman]

1) Yes.
2) No. (There isn't enough benefit to justify a change IMO).

[Theseus]

1) Sorry for being difficult: Republic no (leave at 0/1/1+12), Demo yes.

2) No.

[nbarclay]

I would be against boosting Democracy's free unit support above Republic's. Keep in mind that giving Democracy any free unit support at all is an improvement compared with stock rules. (In the stock rules, Republic has free unit support while Democracy doesn't, but Democracy just costs one gpt per unit while Republic costs two.) I consider it reasonable to give Democracy the same unit support as Republic in order to take away a significant potential reason not to change, but I would strongly oppose giving Democracy greater support than Republic on top of its advantage of only costing half as much per unit for upkeep above the free support limit.