Apolyton University Mod (PTW version)

[joncnunn]

In that game: the enemy stacks totaling 20 Infenty were in my territory for about 10 turns. They were on improved tiles (roads) the entire time, about 60% of the time were inside a CR.

I showed no WW at the end of that timeframe.
Civ III Classic, 1.21f.

[alexman]

Help!
We're being threadjacked!

[Catt]

Originally posted by alexman
Help!
We're being threadjacked!

No Longer! Click HERE for a revived WW thread and let's leave the AU Mod thread to its proper topic!

Catt

[Theseus]

Bringing the discussion together:

The improvements to Communism make it FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC for the inner warmonger in me!!!

I'm haven't quite gotten to Motor Trans in AU 203, but I've been at war forever, having just gotten to max acceptable WW under Republic when I was able to convert to Communism.

WOO HOO!!

[Dominae]

alexman, I finally got around to capturing that Monarchy shot you asked for (you'll need to go back a couple of pages to compare to Communism). Basically they're equivalent economy-wise, apart from the fact that I'll start incurring some military support costs under Monarchy (I had not started building Panzers yet at the time of the switch). My Palace is still in Berlin (starting location), and the FP is nicely placed a few tiles South of that.

So, is this how you think Communism and Monarchy should compare to one another?


Dominae

[BRC]

Wow. Those were pretty close.

[alexman]

Thanks Dominae!
It looks encouraging.
A better FP/capital placement would make Monarchy the government of choice, so the change did not overpower Communism.

For the AI (or the human with a bad FP placement), the two governments are about the same. Otherwise, Monarchy is better, just as it was before. It seems as though this is as much as we can improve Communism (and thus help the Communist-happy AI) without changing the feel of the game. This was our goal.

Too bad we can't keep the change...

[Dominae]

Actually, given the restriction on not attacking anyone and the particular geography, I think the FP was in a pretty good position in my game. But the FP's proximity to my capital does reflect the AI's tendency, so your points all make sense.

I guess we (or you!) will have to keep working to try and find a Communism that resembles this, but without any bad side effects. There are rumblings of a new patch coming out: maybe all our wishes will come true then.

Maybe.

By the way, give yourself a nice pat on the back for taking Communism this far. You deserve it.


Dominae

[=DrJambo=]

Have you considered increasing the number of shields (currently 20) per pop sacrifice OR decreasing the unhappiness (currently 20 turns) per pop/sacrifice as a way of boosting communism?

Or making Communist workers work at the same pace as Democratic ones?

I can't remember what this mod's done to Communism already!? Maybe someone can remind me. And why can't you keep the changes?

[alexman]

Dominae,
This mod (including the Communism changes) is a result of the endless debate, testing, and ideas from all of us here. However, this is the closest thing to a pat on the back I could find in the Apolyton smileys...

Dr. Jambo, the readme is in the beginning of this thread.

Making pop-rushing more powerful is a possibility, but we need to be careful because Despotism would get the same boost as Communism. The latest Communism change that we made (and are not keeping) was to reduce flat the corruption of Communism by 1/3. The side-effect was that the distance corruption of Despotism was also reduced by 1/3, making it too close in economic performance to Monarchy.

[Stuie]

What about changing Communism to rush with gold instead of population - or does this change the "flavor" too much? Would this encourage larger AI cities? Is the AI actually using the pop rush, or are its cities self-destructing merely from drafting them to death?

[Bluefrog]

Originally posted by Stuie
What about changing Communism to rush with gold instead of population - or does this change the "flavor" too much? Would this encourage larger AI cities? Is the AI actually using the pop rush, or are its cities self-destructing merely from drafting them to death?

In my AU203 game, which I'll eventually post a full AAR, I ended with a huge treasury, which was useful to a degree, and little means of rushing the later improvements, due to only being able to sacrifice up to half a city's pop for any pop rush.

But...I think making Communism a goldrusher is a bad move. With all my extra cash, I was able to use the gold on things I rarely used it for in the other governments. Namely, espionage. I stole probably 10 cities from enemy civx through propaganda, stole tech, stole troop locations, etc.

I also had two instances where I highly suspect the AI used propaganda on me, but there are things to make me doubt this. I'll post more later...time to go do the "hunter/gatherer" schtick at Chick-fil-A.

[Fosse]

All of the extra gold for espionage surely makes Communism more fun for the player (I wouldn't know, I lost my 203 game during the early middle ages). But it really doesn't help the AI (maybe they flipped a few cities... but at a huge cost, and if they successfully flipped two of yours, imagine how many times the failed).


I would still argue for making Communism use gold rushing, for the AI's sake. First off, when being invaded a communist AI will draft and rush their population out of existence, creating small cities with HUGE unhappiness. This means very unproductive cities, especially since it costs so many pop points to rush anything in the industrial or modern era.

If the AI could spend their gold instead they could keep those pop points and have happier and more productive cities.


If we're worried that AI commies would be too cash poor to rush their units that way, then maybe as a balance you could up communism's draft rate by one, since drafting is a more efficient use of converting population to units than pop rushing is.

[=DrJambo=]

not if you increase the amount of shields you get awarded per pop-rushed citizen? To say 25 or 30?

[Catt]

Artillery

I'm curious about everyone's thoughts with artillery having a defense of 1 (and therefore being destroyed instead of captured). My only experience has been in AU 203, but I had a few take-aways from that experience. IMHO, the change doesn't appreciably help the AI, may in fact hurt the AI, doesn't appreciably diminsh the inherent human advantage around artillery, and adds some very small minor annoyances. Did others take away a more positive view of the change?

My conclusions were shaped by the following observations. I didn't have any sense that the AI was building any more or less artillery and I didn't have any sense that the AI was using artillery any differently. On the relatively few occasions where I fought against AI artillery, the only change in behavior was for me to try and find an old cavalry unit (or any old unit with sufficient movement to get to the arty) to kill it. Based purely on my well-known faulty memory, I'm guessing I might have captured a total of 10 units had the change not been made -- hardly, IMHO, a boon to the human. On the other hand, on the few occasions where the AI was going after my poorly defended (or even adequately defended) artillery, it would divert some of its best attackers (tanks) when such forces would have been much better used on alternative targets (this behavior is probably not affected by the arty change) -- but the downside to the change became apparent when China actually threw an unexpected force against a small arty stack covered by one infantry -- the infantry fell, and then so did my 4-arty stack. I lost 4 arties, but was rewarded with 4 Chinese tanks stuck without movement points on my rail network without cover (instead of one Chinese tank and 4 disbanded or captured-back arties). Those 4 defenseless tanks actually represented a sizeable percentage of offensive Chinese forces at the time. While this could be exploitable (that's within our control, obviously) I raise the issue more as an inadvertant "exploit" -- another example of perhaps less than stellar AI "though processes." (it is so rare, at least for me, to lose an arty stack of any size, perhaps this isn't that big an issue).

On the "minor annoyance" piece of the argument (and I stress minor), I got sick of moving a small stack of arty along rails, only to have an enemy blitz unit take potshots at the stack and slow things down considerably. Since the game defaults arty movement to the beginning of the turn (when perhaps many of us use it?), it's easy to bump into blitz units. An obvious solution to this annoyance is to watch for blitz units along the path but, unlike with regular attackers or defenders, the blitz pot-shots meant absolutely nothing to the effectiveness of the arty because it wasn't engaging in combat where an extra HP might be important -- my arty would just stay injured, perhaps red-lined, until a turn came along when it wasn't needed - instant heal and then restart the process. So - I could manually check my intended path before every arty move and avoid pot shots; or I could go ahead and move stacks and da*n the pot shots as meaningless (except of course as they tended to slow the game down a bit) - either way added one little bit of micromanagement or delay.

Other thoughts?

Catt