AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[ducki]

Quoting alexman from the MilAcad thread - warning, this is out of context, go read the original for all tidbits, but I felt responding to it belonged here.

The proposal in the government thread makes the AI unlikely to choose Fascism, so they will usually not get the Army bonus.

And now noone will get the SPHQ - this seems a big move for something we are actively trying to prevent the AI from using.

Fascism will become a non-factor in the AU mod for the AI, as it is for the human.

If so, why try to fix it? Why not really make it a non-factor? If it's so bad that the AI should never use it and we're tweaking things to try to prevent just that, why not get rid of the Government altogether?

But even if the AI does choose Fascism (because they don't know Communism yet), double Armies are a good thing! Since the AI doesn't use leaders properly, it needs as many Armies as it can get, especially if it's unfortunate enough to choose a terrible government like Fascism.

This seems like an odd way to address it as noted above. If Fascism is so bad that the AI should - really - never use it, then let's make it so that the AI never can use it instead of simultaneously giving Fascism a boost and ensuring that the AI prefers Communism.
It seems an odd way to go about it.

[alexman]

The change is so that Fascism is not entirely worthless. It can actually be worth it for small empires, or for someone who doesn't know Communism.

If you remove Fascism, it's a highly visible change from stock (tech tree graphics downloads again anyone?) that I'd rather avoid.

What you see as "odd" was my best attempt at a compromise between a) helping the AI, b) keeping the strategic choice of Fascism under certain special cases, while c) changing as little as possible. I think it is a good solution.

Nevertheless, I suppose we could split the proposal in two and see what happens:

1. Yes/No: Increase Fascism corruption level to problematic.
   Restore Feudalism unit support cost to stock level.
   All AIs favor Republic and shun Fascism.
   Remove SPHQ from Communism.
2. Yes/No: Only if 1 results in a Yes:
   Add SPHQ to Fascism.
   SPHQ spawns an Army every 20 turns.

[ducki]

Ah, I see...
I do like the split proposal better.
Thanks for clarifying.

[Cryptor]

It seems to me that there is constant debate over whether fuedalisms unit suport should be one or three? Why not just make it two? This preserves the fact that fuedalisms should not have extremely large armies, whilst allowing them to support a few more units over their support limit. I don't see the problem with unit support 2, just like republic, but for some reason this proposal is usually ignored.

[alexman]

I think the reason that proposal is not popular is because it doesn't have enough effect to justify a change from stock rules. Somewhere in this thread there is a graphical comparison for Feudalism at 1gpt, 2gpt, and 3gpt unit support.

Anyway, it's time to put the following proposal under consideration:

1. Yes/No: Increase Fascism corruption level to problematic.
   Restore Feudalism unit support cost to stock level.
   All AIs favor Republic and shun Fascism.
   Remove SPHQ from Communism.
2. Yes/No: Only if 1 results in a Yes:
   Add SPHQ to Fascism.
   SPHQ spawns an Army every 20 turns.

Voting in 1 week.

[nbarclay]

Alexman, have you thought about how changing the favored and shunned governments would affect AI attitudes? I'm starting to think that if we can't make Feudalism useful to human players without either having AIs use it when they shouldn't or changing other aspects of the game to prevent AIs from doing so, we'd be better off going back to the stock rules for it.

I think we really ought to have separate votes on whether to add the SPHQ to Fascism (assuming we remove it from Communism) and on whether, if we do that, we should have it spawn armies. If I recall correctly, the idea of moving the SPHQ to Fascism predates the idea of having it spawn armies and was originally proposed for separate reasons, so I think combining the two issues into a single vote is inappropriate.

My current views on these issues are:

- I definitely like the idea of removing the SPHQ from Communism.
- The rest of "1" seems better than what we have in the last version of the Mod, but I'm not convinced it's preferable to the stock rules.
- I'm undecided on both aspects of "2".

[alexman]

It's true that an AI in Republic will have a minus 5 attitude adjustment towards you when you are in Republic, whereas normally the AI adjustment is minus 1 when you are in the same government as the AI.

A difference of 4 attitude points, or 40% of the range of "Polite", is considerable, but then again who here knows the current favorite/shunned governments of the AI civs, and adjusts their strategy accordingly? I would guess nobody.

Anyway, here is the new proposal, even more split-up:

1. Yes/No:
   - Increase Fascism corruption level to problematic.
   - All AI civs shun Fascism.
   (Both are required for the AI to choose Communism over Fascism).
2. Rank the choices, to make the AI choose Republic over Feudalism more often:
   A: No change
   B: Restore Feudalism unit support cost to stock level, all AIs favor Republic.
   C: Change corruption and unit support cost of Feudalism back to stock levels.
3. Yes/No: Remove SPHQ from Communism.
4. Yes/No: If 3 results in a 'Yes', add SPHQ to Fascism.
5. Yes/No: If 4 results in a 'Yes', SPHQ spawns an Army every 20 turns.

[Theseus]

1. Y
2. ABC
3. Y
4. Y
5. N... too far afield, wait for the patch.

[MqsTout]

Isn't there a problem, if you want the AI to prefer Communism, and yet you remove the SPHQ from it?

[alexman]

Not really. Communism is better than Fascism even without the SPHQ.

[nbarclay]

The main reason for removing the SPHQ from Communism is that Communist warmonger strategies are currently overpowered in human hands. With a relatively large empire, a human player can go into Communism for the rest of the game and conquer AIs right and left while still maintaining about as fast a research pace as he could have had under Democracy. Thus, there is very little tradeoff involved in the choice to be a communist warmonger. With the SPHQ removed from Communism, the tradeoff would be at least somewhat more serious.

Also, if I understand how things work correctly, the impact of the SPHQ is much greater for large empires than for smaller ones. If that is correct, removing the SPHQ from Communism would have a vastly greater impact on the typical human warmonger than on the typical AI.

Nathan

[alexman]

Originally posted by alexman

1. Yes/No:
   - Increase Fascism corruption level to problematic.
   - All AI civs shun Fascism.
   (Both are required for the AI to choose Communism over Fascism).
2. Rank the choices, to make the AI choose Republic over Feudalism more often:
   A: No change
   B: Restore Feudalism unit support cost to stock level, all AIs favor Republic.
   C: Change corruption and unit support cost of Feudalism back to stock levels.
3. Yes/No: Remove SPHQ from Communism.
4. Yes/No: If 3 results in a 'Yes', add SPHQ to Fascism.
5. Yes/No: If 4 results in a 'Yes', SPHQ spawns an Army every 20 turns.

Time to vote. AU mod panel, you have 48 hours.

My vote:
1. Yes
2. BAC
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes

[lockstep]

1: YES
2: BAC
3: YES
4: YES
5: NO

[Stuie]

1. Yes
2. BAC
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes

[Nor Me]

1. Yes
2. BCA
3,4,5: Yes