Idea about balancing Monarchy vs Democracy

[Barchan]

Originally posted by player1
The point is that if you want large military and world conquest you should stay in Monarchy & Communism.

Even in peace time (since you'll have too much big military to support it in Republic).

And if you want peace gold and science that you should be in Republic and wage defensive war (since you big military won't be an option).

Yes, but isn't it the large standing military that discourages the AI (and soon to be humans as well) from taking liberties with your civilization in the first place? If you're "weak", the AI will bully you into giving away concessions or simply declare war on you. Generally, when in a republic or democracy you have a smaller army to begin with. Making it more expensive will only make matters worse.

I know *we* can’t modify happiness. But there are those who can, and you never can tell when they might choose to implement a good idea. Therefore, I have to stick to my guns when I say that leveling factor for balancing growth bonuses and conquest ability should be increased extraterritorial unhappiness, and not standing military cost.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, there’s not much that can be done about this in SP games. If you make republic or democracy too expensive, the AI will just soldier on in endless monarchy anyway. Even if it doesn’t, the religious trait will become way too powerful as the need to jump back and forth between governments becomes ever greater.

Anyway, I think in that in MP this will resolve itself, since just about the only way you can wage extended warfare in republic or democracy (especially democracy) is to be fat with luxuries. Even if you’ve got all the right structures in your cities, you really need maximum luxuries to fully combat war weariness for a long time. When those 5th through 8th luxuries get to market, you can really calm the people down. The AI can’t grasp this, but human players can and will isolate trading partners, bombard roads from luxuries cut off cities to induce civil disorder and the eventual government shift or collapse. Frankly, I envision a lot of people playing “democratic spoilers” by simply declaring war on a democracy just to watch it slowly unravel as war weariness drags it down.

[player1]

Here is the test BIC (v1.1).
It's same as original BIC with following changes:

Republic & Democracy have following changes: all units have upkeep cost doubled (2gp per unit), but you get 2 free units per town, 3 free units per city and 4 free units per metropolis.

I suggest testing it with Religious civ, in order to easily compare different govenments.

Post commnents in this thread.


EDIT:
Free support per town/city/metrop. is changed to 2/3/4

Testing BIC file can be found on second page of this thread.

[BillChin]

I think Monarchy, Republic and Democracy are already fairly well-balanced. Communism needs a boost. The tweak I suggest is to increase unit support for Communism. Maybe 3 per town, 6 per city, 12 per metroplex. That way a Commie, could field a huge low tech conscript army which is historically accurate.

I vote against the idea of free units for Republic or Democracy and/or the idea of 2 gold per unit. As I said, I see the problem with Communism being too weak, especially because it is the last tech available for government.
- Bill

[player1]

People,
Lets test this BIC flie and then comment the results.
(is it good idea or not)

Thanks.

.

.

P.S.
Monarchy vs Repuclic is only balanced in ancient age, after that Republic is clearly better choice (read: no brainer).

[alexman]

Originally posted by BillChin
I think Monarchy, Republic and Democracy are already fairly well-balanced. Communism needs a boost.

I agree with this. Monarchy is still useful after the ancient age, especially for warmongerers, because they are often forced to switch to Monarchy due to war weariness.

Sir Ralph's suggestion hopefully doesn't unbalance Republic compared to Monarchy, but it all depends on whether you want to make drastic or minimal changes to the original rules.

I'm generally in favor of smaller changes in mods, so I like the solution of boosting Communism as opposed to weakening the other governments. I would suggest definitely doubling communist worker speed plus some other small change like increasing free units.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by player1
The point is that if you want large military and world conquest you should stay in Monarchy & Communism.

Why? Democracies are just as capable of supporting large militaries as other forms of government, actually more so. And the fact that in our world, the most powerful democracy's taste for expansion ended far short of world domination doesn't necessarily mean that another democracy in other circumstances would feel the same way.

In a situation like the real world where the major nations are all at roughly the same level of technology, it IS hard for a Democracy in Civ 3 to engage in large-scale warfare - so hard that more than a few players favor Republic in spite of Democracy's corruption advantages. And even a Republic can have major war weariness problems against an opponent with an equally large, equally modern military.

On the other hand, if you have a mismatch where a Democracy or Republic has modern armor, jet fighters, and mechanized infantry, and all the others just have unmotorized infantry and cavalry or maybe (if they're lucky) World War II style tanks, there is very little to deter the Democracy or Republic from voting to take over the world if that happens to be its whim. In Civ 3, if you want to fight a lot as a Democracy, achieving that kind of technological mismatch is important.

Nathan

[player1]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Why? Democracies are just as capable of supporting large militaries as other forms of government, actually more so. And the fact that in our world, the most powerful democracy's taste for expansion ended far short of world domination doesn't necessarily mean that another democracy in other circumstances would feel the same way.

Correct.
On the other hand, just being in Republic and Domcracy doesn't DOUBLE your gold and science output in real wolrd.
It's bigger, but not that much bigger.

But in this game...

So you have govemnet that can do all things well, and govemnet which is only good in long (15+ turns) war.

Which would you always choose?

In fact,
rep. & dem. trade bonus is the thing which is owerpowered in this game.

[player1]

Originally posted by alexman
I'm generally in favor of smaller changes in mods, so I like the solution of boosting Communism as opposed to weakening the other governments. I would suggest definitely doubling communist worker speed plus some other small change like increasing free units.

Me too, that why I didn't put this in my PS mod.
I put in in once nice vannila Civ3 BIC in this thread in order to have people here playtest it.

Hopefully, by giving them 2/3/4 free upkeep, would prevent 2gp per unit to be unbalanced.

[player1]

Higher_Upkeep.BIC update:

Now Republic and Democracy get 2/3/4 free units per town/city/metrop. (other units still need 2gp per unit)

This is done in oreder to make ancient and medivial Republic still a good choice.

With 2 free units, you could have 4 units per town and still have same upkeep as in vannila Civ3 Republic.

With 4 free units in metropolis, you could have 8 units per metrop. and still have same upkeep as in vannila Civ3 Republic (or Democ.)

But having destoyer armies would be a little bit probelmatic.

[player1]

-

[BillChin]

The change, 2/3/4 free units, and 2 gold per units additional seems to make Republic and Democracy stronger. Monarchy looks even weaker as a peace time government. Most human players that switch to Republic have 1 or 2 units per town/city, to deal with barbs or for safety. With free unit support, the gold advantage and tech advantage becomes even stronger for peace time Republic. Is that the desired result?

Again, my vote is against the mod. I don't have to play test it. I can see that with my play style, the new rules make Republic even stronger, Monarchy weaker. Democracy is still kind of weak because of excessive war weariness. Communism still looks next to useless.

Again, my proposal is to give a small boost to Communism (3/6/12 unit support or maybe even 4/8/16), and leave the other governments the same. Maybe add 1 free unit per city(0/1/2 unit support) for Democracy to make it worthwhile for non-religious civs to switch to Democracy and to give Democracy a slight gold advantage over Republic.

Under the default rules, many experienced players go for Republic and stay there the entire game. On higher levels the 7 to 10 turns of anarchy make further switching unwise. With the Universal Suffrage wonder, a player can stay in Republic, war or no war.

The mod seems to increase the tendency to Republic over Monarchy. Most players do not build a huge army under Republic. Two per town is plenty of units to launch a war, especially with Knights or Calvary vs. lesser defenders.
- Bill

[player1]

Originally posted by BillChin
The change, 2/3/4 free units, and 2 gold per units additional seems to make Republic and Democracy stronger. Monarchy looks even weaker as a peace time government. Most human players that switch to Republic have 1 or 2 units per town/city, to deal with barbs or for safety. With free unit support, the gold advantage and tech advantage becomes even stronger for peace time Republic. Is that the desired result?

Who knows,
Maybe it does needs to be tweaked a litle.
Maybe 1/2/3.
Or just 1/1/1

Originally posted by BillChin Again, my vote is against the mod. I don't have to play test it. I can see that with my play style, the new rules make Republic even stronger, Monarchy weaker. Democracy is still kind of weak because of excessive war weariness. Communism still looks next to useless.

I just hope somebody else will.
I added free units just in order not to make Republic bad choice fore moderate army.

Maybe I got too far.
Who knows.

Originally posted by BillChin
Again, my proposal is to give a small boost to Communism (3/6/12 unit support or maybe even 4/8/16), and leave the other governments the same. Maybe add 1 free unit per city(0/1/2 unit support) for Democracy to make it worthwhile for non-religious civs to switch to Democracy and to give Democracy a slight gold advantage over Republic.

That doesn't work.
As you said you can be pretty muich more effective with smaller army. So having even more free units for Communism won't help you.

On the other hand, you get much more gold, just being in Republic (trade bonus).

[nbarclay]

I actually agree that the gold bonus for Republic/Democracy is too big. If the gold advantage could be set to fractions, that would make it practical to address the problem directly. But I don't think upsetting the balance in other areas of the game is a good solution to the problem in that area.

With a unit support cost of 2, at 1/2/2 unit support or higher under Republic, players like myself who use Republic to research with a lean military would have a significantly bigger advantage than we do now. For that matter, even at 1/1/1 unit support, I'd probably come out ahead more often than not in the critical late ancient/early medieval period.

Conversely, at anything under 1/2/2, I strongly suspect that the implications for AI research could get nasty due to the relatively large standing armies AIs maintain. Try to compensate for that by giving the AIs extra free unit support and you give the AIs an extra advantage under Despotism, Monarchy, or Communism, and especially against human Republics that follow military stategies similar to what the AIs use.

So unless I'm missing something, what we end up with is a situation where either human civs that run a bare-bones military get a significant advantage or AI Republics are faced with a major disadvantage. I regard both of those possibilities as cures that are worse than the disease, even aside from my distaste for upsetting the balance among possible Republic-based strategies human players can choose from.

Nathan

[player1]

Originally posted by nbarclay
With a unit support cost of 2, at 1/2/2 unit support or higher under Republic, players like myself who use Republic to research with a lean military would have a significantly bigger advantage than we do now. For that matter, even at 1/1/1 unit support, I'd probably come out ahead more often than not in the critical late ancient/early medieval period.

Hmm...
Let's try with 1/2/2 for start, and then modify it after some platesting?

Originally posted by nbarclay
Conversely, at anything under 1/2/2, I strongly suspect that the implications for AI research could get nasty due to the relatively large standing armies AIs maintain. Try to compensate for that by giving the AIs extra free unit support and you give the AIs an extra advantage under Despotism, Monarchy, or Communism, and especially against human Republics that follow military stategies similar to what the AIs use.

By the way, at Monarch and higher levels, AI civs do get extra free units to support (look in editor diffculty settings).

Of course, there is a question, how does AI choose which govenment is better.
Does he know which govenment in the moment would give more gp/per turn?

Originally posted by nbarclay So unless I'm missing something, what we end up with is a situation where either human civs that run a bare-bones military get a significant advantage or AI Republics are faced with a major disadvantage. I regard both of those possibilities as cures that are worse than the disease, even aside from my distaste for upsetting the balance among possible Republic-based strategies human players can choose from.

Nathan

Yes, pretty probelmatic.
That's why I put it in BIC file for playtesting.

I don't know how much is it good, or how good AI is with it.

Still, don't forget.
If your military is weak, AI will attack you.


P.S.
I updated BIC file with 1/2/2 free suppot.

[player1]

Higher_Upkeep.BIC update (v1.11):

Now Republic and Democracy get 1/2/2 free units per town/city/metrop. (other units still need 2gp per unit)