AU mod: Balancing the Governments

[ZargonX]

My apologies for the delay in voting on this one. Now that I've completely read up on all of the relevant discussion (of which there was plenty ), my vote is:

1)Yes
2)No

[nbarclay]

Moving a discussion here from the AU 505 wrap-up thread:

Originally posted by Dominae

The very reasons you prefer a "balanced" government strategy is that there is a best government (Republic) that does everything, and that Anarchy times make switching to and from it inefficient. I think you are confusing "balanced" with "most poweful at a certain stage of the game"; Communism is only "balanced" in the sense that it makes sprawling empires very powerful (and in those games I daresay you've won far before you switched to Communism).

My concept of "balanced" is "able to do everything reasonably well." That is, a government that supports a balanced style of play does not have to be best at research, production, or fighting, but it has to be competitive in each. Republic supports that, being best at research among the early governments, slightly behind Feudalism in production (in the AU Mod, where Feudalism has a corruption advantage), and a little worse than Monarchy for fighting. Communism also fits my concept if (but only if) a civ is large enough: it's best at production, about even with Fascism for war-fighting, and not much worse than Republic or Democracy in research. I am going by objective criteria here, not just arbitrarily labeling whatever government happens to be most powerful at a particular stage of the game balanced.

In contrast, Monarchy, Feudalism, and Fascism fail my balance test pretty badly because they are not competitive in research. They are not designed well for a balanced style of play that mixes lengthy periods of peace with a few bouts of warfare here and there. And because they are designed badly for a balanced style of play, people who want to play a balanced style don't use them - which, in turn, is why Republic is so popular.

Brainstorming a little, one thing that might help that situation would be to eliminate building maintenance expenses from Monarchy, Feudalism, and Fascism. My impression is that building upkeep costs rarely have much impact on people's choices of what to build, in which case damage from a "strategic choices" perspective would be negligible. And eliminating that source of expense would help close the gap created by Republic's commerce bonus. In addition, eliminating builiding upkeep costs from those governments but not from Communism would provide a clear differentiation between Fascism and Communism, making Fascism clearly better in Communism in more situations (and probably a clearly better normal choice for the AIs).

The idea of eliminating building maintenance for war-oriented governments other than Communism is something I just thought of, so I have no clear picture of how well it would work. But if in fact it would work, it would provide a way to close the gap by making the relatively unattractive governments better instead of by nerfing Republic even more than we already have.

[alexman]

IIRC eliminating building maintenance costs would seriously mess up the AI's government selection criteria. That was one of the reasons they removed that property from Feudalism in C3C play testing.

[Dominae]

Yeah, the AI really loved maintenance-free Feudalism (and I mean really loved it!).

[Dominae]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by nbarclay
My concept of "balanced" is "able to do everything reasonably well." That is, a government that supports a balanced style of play does not have to be best at research, production, or fighting, but it has to be competitive in each. Republic supports that, being best at research, slightly behind Feudalism in production (in the AU Mod, where Feudalism has a corruption advantage), and a little worse than Monarchy for fighting. Communism also fits my concept if (but only if) a civ is large enough: it's best at production, about even with Fascism for war-fighting, and not much worse than Republic or Democracy in research. I am going by objective criteria here, not just arbitrarily labeling whatever government happens to be most powerful at a particular stage of the game balanced.

In contrast, Monarchy, Feudalism, and Fascism fail my balance test pretty badly because they are not competitive in research. They are not designed well for a balanced style of play that mixes lengthy periods of peace with a few bouts of warfare here and there.

Not all governments can be "balanced" as you define it, because they would all be the same; there are not enough government variables in Civ3, as opposed to, say, SMAC. If you can do "everything reasonably well" in one government, why would you ever switch? I would just pick the first opportunity to switch to such a government and stay there. This is the story behind Republic.

And because they are designed badly for a balanced style of play, people who want to play a balanced style don't use them - which, in turn, is why Republic is so popular.

I disagree. Republic is so popular because it is so powerful. Make it next to impossible to wage war in Republic, and you might discover than Monarchy is suddenly the most "balanced" government (according to your preference). Even players who are open to experimenting with different governments and do not always employ the "balanced" approach recognize that Republic is the way to go; I have to work really hard to get as much mileage out of Monarchy.

As I alluded to in the other thread, I am not against a best/balanced government per se, I just do not think that Republic should be it - it comes too early in the tech tree. While Republic and Democracy may seem similar superficially, the one huge difference between the two is that one is available 10+ before the other, and the way Civ3 works means that Democracy comes way too late to make or break a game. As you know, I'm not big on the UP concept, and Democracy and Communism are, to me, just examples of "win more" governments. Insofar as I can be objective on this point, I do not think this sitation is condusive to strategy.

[nbarclay]

I just came up with a really wild idea: redefine anarchy to reduce its impact. If anarchy did not have the standard tile penalty and had rampant corruption (like Despotism) instead of catastrophic, changing governments would have a definite cost involved but the cost would not be so high as to be prohibitive. (The main reason for eliminating the standard tile penalty is to avoid creating as many micromanagement hassles.) That would make multiple government changes by nonreligious civs a whole lot more practical. Granted, it's a major change from stock rules, but I think the benefits in terms of enhancing strategic options would be very much worth it.

[Dominae]

Can you go into Anarchy at the beginning of the game (i.e. when Despotism is the only government available to you)? If so, this new Anarchy would be an exploitative way for Agr. (and other) civs to grow their cities quicker than normal.

Interesting idea, though.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

Not all governments can be "balanced" as you define it, because they would all be the same; there are not enough government variables in Civ3, as opposed to, say, SMAC. If you can do "everything reasonably well" in one government, why would you ever switch? I would just pick the first opportunity to switch to such a government and stay there. This is the story behind Republic.

It would definitely be possible, if the game mechanics allowed, to have more than one government that is "balanced" by my definition. One government would be a little better at one thing and the other (or others) better at different things, but they would be interchangeable enough that each could be used flexibly.

Not that I consider it necessary for all governments to be balanced. If players want to play a pure warmongering style or a pure peacenik style, having a government available that provides a bit of extra advantage for that style but that restricts other options in exchange could make a game a bit more interesting. But I strongly object to the idea of having the only governments available be oriented toward extreme styles of play, with no government available that is suited to a balanced approach.

As for the question of why switch, why should players have to switch governments every time they switch back and forth between war and peace? I don't see such a pattern of changes in government in real-world history. Do you?

If multiple balanced governments were available, the question of which one to choose would be interesting in its own right without players' having to switch (except perhaps when newer, better governments become available). Unfortunately, Civ 3 does not seem to offer a good way to have multiple balanced governments, especially in the early game. But that doesn't mean I think we should react by turning the balanced early-game government that we do have into an unbalanced one.

To me, the ability to have a government that gives me the flexibility to do different things reasonably well at different times is vastly more important than making the choice of governments more interesting. I don't want to turn Civ into a game where the only practical way to change tactics is to change governments.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae
Can you go into Anarchy at the beginning of the game (i.e. when Despotism is the only government available to you)? If so, this new Anarchy would be an exploitative way for Agr. (and other) civs to grow their cities quicker than normal.

Interesting idea, though.

Anarchy is not possible until you've researched another government. (I've accidentally hit the change governments button and been told I couldn't.) So the exploit you're concerned about would not be available.

[Modo44]

You must have a new government form researched, to be able to go into Anarchy.

The idea is interesting. But still, Anarchy should be much worse than Despotism. Also, it won't make Republic weaker, it will only make it easier to switch to an even better government.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Modo44

The idea is interesting. But still, Anarchy should be much worse than Despotism.

Ideally, anarchy should be much worse than Despotism but should not last nearly as long as it does in Civ 3 (especially on higher difficulty levels). Basically, what I'm suggesting is a workaround for the fact that the editor provides no way to cut back on the duration of anarchy for the player. Since we can't reduce its duration, we can achieve a similar result by making its impact each turn less severe. The end result is an approximation that, while perhaps less than entirely realistic in its mechanics, is in fact realistic in its cumulative overall effect.

Also, it won't make Republic weaker, it will only make it easier to switch to an even better government.

That "only" is a very important one. There seems to be a pretty strong consensus that players should want to switch governments at least twice during the course of a game, once to get out of Despotism and again to switch from an early government to a more modern one. Reducing the impact of anarchy would make that kind of double-switch a lot more attractive. And it would also make additional switches, such as a brief switch to Monarchy if war weariness gets to be a problem or a switch to Democracy in between Republic and Communism, a lot more worth considering.

As for the fact that it wouldn't make Republic weaker, I don't like the idea of weakening Republic further in any case. If we can find good ways to improve Monarchy and Feudalism so they'll be more attactive, fantastic. But if the price of making those governments more attractive is to further erode the flexibility players have in Republic, I view that price as too high.

[Modo44]

What I meant by "not making Republic weaker" was the fact, that your proposal doesn't do much to provide and alternative for this government. In most cases I still won't go for Democracy, if I want to make any wars, and I won't go for Monarchy, if I want my research to keep up with the others. If the other governments can't be strenghtened enough, then nerfing Republic will be necessary IMO. Not that I like it, but still.

I agree that it is a good idea to make Anarchy less damaging, if we can't make it shorter. But be careful, or the Religious trait will become even less worth choosing.

[Risa]

IMO the standard tile penalty should be kept. If Anarchy still means no production, I will agree that removal of STP, which effectively only affect food production, is good for ease of micromanagement. Once it is productive, STP is no longer only to food, but to shield and commerce as well. That means Anarchy is better than Despotism, which is unacceptable by my standard.

BTW, currently culture does not grow during Anarchy. Is this related to total corruption or to its transitive government essence?

[pvzh]

I do not know how culture accumulation is handled, but if we improve Anarchy to make switches less painful it will make anarchy the same or better than despotism.
Anarchy has catastrophic corruption (all production/commerce is lost), notch up is rampant (it is despotic corruption). There is nothing in-between.

Improved corrupction can only be: STP, rampant corruption, free maintaince on units/buildings, no MP.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
As for the question of why switch, why should players have to switch governments every time they switch back and forth between war and peace? I don't see such a pattern of changes in government in real-world history. Do you?

Back to the historical accuracy arguments...YAWN.

But that doesn't mean I think we should react by turning the balanced early-game government that we do have into an unbalanced one.

The very fact that it is so "balanced" to you means that it is imbalanced; Republic is not supposed to do everything well. You have come to love the most powerful government (by a long shot) because it is the most powerful government.

I don't want to turn Civ into a game where the only practical way to change tactics is to change governments.

You prefer a game where you can exploit peace-time advantages while waging war. Your preferred type of game does not involve many strategic decisions, IMO.

Maybe I'm asking too much of Civ3...

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Risa
IMO the standard tile penalty should be kept. If Anarchy still means no production, I will agree that removal of STP, which effectively only affect food production, is good for ease of micromanagement. Once it is productive, STP is no longer only to food, but to shield and commerce as well. That means Anarchy is better than Despotism, which is unacceptable by my standard.

When is Anarchy productive (apart from Food)?

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I just came up with a really wild idea: redefine anarchy to reduce its impact.

Snoopy369 just proposed this a few days ago in the main PBEM mod thread. Linking the length of anarchy to difficulty level seems like it was a poor idea to me. Softening it's impact might be worth consideration...

I think Monarchy might be viewed as inferior to Republic here due in large part to a number of bias(i?). Players from our culture view pushing progress and developing superior technology as the preferred path to victory. Historically, the stability of a monarchial government was predominantly preferred. Also, since the AI is not very good at conquering through strategic and tactical means, they are not much of a threat to knock out a player who has gained a slight technological edge at the cost of military preperation.

The real power (and weakness) of Monarchy should be preference to cooperate with other such governments. In PBEMs (and historically) this has a decent chance to develop, but it doesn't seem to do much in SP. I know AIs have preferences for what governments they choose or shun. Does this affect diplomacy? If so, can (have) we mod this to empower other govs in relation to Republic?

[Dominae]

You mean have all the other government types shun Republic? I'm not sure that would have much of an effect (it's crazy what per turn deals can do an AI's opinion of you).

[Rommel2D]

Republic should be universally shunned by all governments, including other republics. That last part seems unlikely from what little I know of this part of the game.

Yeah the per-turn thing really makes diplomacy one-dimensional. Is the opinion that results from this the extent of any impact on AI dealings? It only seems to affect other per turn deals. Is there anything that can influence willingness to trade techs and the cost therof? What about willingness to declare war or make peace?

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

The very fact that it is so "balanced" to you means that it is imbalanced; Republic is not supposed to do everything well. You have come to love the most powerful government (by a long shot) because it is the most powerful government.

I've come to love Republic because it gives me the flexibility to play the kind of game I enjoy. I have very strong builder and researcher tendencies dating all the way back to when I used to play the original Call to Power, my first Civ-type game. I like to be able to do some fighting every now and then - and sometimes quite a bit of fighting, depending on the situation - but I virtually never play games where research and building aren't near the core of my focus. Republic fits that style of play well.

Further, I find the tradeoffs created by Republic interesting. Unit costs create some serious tradeoffs regarding building military units that probably won't be used for a considerable length of time and regarding keeping obsolete units around. War weariness can create interesting questions of whether to keep a war going or to go ahead and settle for something less than complete victory (although the increased power of bombardment units in C3C makes that issue a bit less interesting than it used to be). So it's not as if Republic were a government where I can do whatever I want to without having to pay any kind of price at all.

Do I want Republic to be the best government in the game, at least until most of the way through the middle ages, in just about every type of situation? Certainly not. I would love it if we could find a way to make the war-oriented governments more competitive in research so their benefits would overlap with the range of game styles I normally play more than just once every few blue moons. Then I could have more than one government that is compatible with my preferred range of styles of play instead of just one.

But what I strongly oppose is, instead of making Monarchy and Feudalism more flexible, taking away a significant chunk of Republic's existing flexibility. Such a change, instead of taking me from one government that is well suited to my typical styles of play to two or three, would take me from one to zero.

You prefer a game where you can exploit peace-time advantages while waging war.

I prefer a game where whatever peace-time advantages I have to give up in order to fight a war are essentially limited to the time of the war itself. I don't want to have to give up significant research benefits for an entire era just so I can fight wars in a small part of the era. I don't want to have to go through protracted periods of anarchy in transitioning between peaceful and aggressive modes of operation unless the duration of the mode I'm switching to is expected to be several times longer than the length of the preceding anarchy. The issue is not that I don't want there to be a price for warfare at all, but rather that I consider the kind of prices you're advocating to be unacceptably high.

[Risa]

If we can't find a better approach, what about just swapping war weariness of Republic and Democracy?

[Golden Bear]

From my first times playing C3 I have had the wild thought that Republic/Democracy should automatically change to Communism (and/or now Facism) after maybe 10 turns of war. Maybe if a free swap into a government instead of into Anarchy would persuade players that it is good to have these techs on their side.

This would have the appeal of some kind of historical basis (I know, Dom, *yawn*, and I don't totally disagree!).

So the sequence would be: get into a war as Republic; fight for 10-15 turns and get dumped into Facism. Finish war in Facism. Spend 5-8 turns changing into a new peacetime government - maybe even Democracy! Democracy could drop into Communism or make it a choice. THe upside is no Anarchy or WW, assuming that you have one of the alternate governments. The downsides are that without the other government you will go into Anarchy faster. The other downside is that you will pay for your free change to a wartime government by going through Anarchy to get back to a peacetime government. Of course the other upsides are that people will now have a good reason to research Com/Fac. early rather than later and might be more inclined to use the seldom achieved Democracy.

This is absolutely impossible to implement even if more than one person (me!) agreed with the idea.

[joncnunn]

Here's my opinions of the govts (as in stock Conquests)

1. Despotism. Pefectly fine as is.

2. Monarchy. Looks good as is as well.

3. Fedualism. Also looks good to me.

4. Republic. Too powerful; mostly due to too many free units allowed on one hand.

5. Democracy. Too weak; insufficent further improvement.

6. Communism. Looks good to me.

7. Fascism: Don't know the govt itself enough, but the numbers indicate it's for an empire that was smaller but better developed than the Commie.

I'd propose fixes to Republic & Democracy:

Republic : Reduce to 1/2/0. That will keep the size of the standing army in check with double unit supports, and especally and an incentive to leave it with Metros.

Democracy: Add an equivlent to the SPHQ SW that only works in Democracy. Have it adviable with an early Industrial tech, so it gets built with an Iron Works when the IW site isn't near the P or FP.

The combination of unit support skyrocketing under Reublic in the industrial age and an additional FP should give a strong incentive for peaceful players to eat the up to 9 turns of anarchy switching from Republic to Democracy.

[pvzh]

At first, I think we need to isolate what exactly the problem is. This was done perfectly by Dominae: you can do anything with republic without much penalty associated and if there are any gain from any switch anarchy will eat any benefit. The reason that you can do anything in Republic is that you have trade bonus, second best corruption and low WW (government cannot collaps by itself). Trade bonus multiplied through markets, banks and stock exchanges can pay in the most cases for large enough millitary to do effective conquest, and second best corruption will help you with that too.
If we want to redisign government, we need to ask ourselves several questions:
1. What kind of government choices should be presented to player?
2. How each goverment is supposed to play, so what features should they have?
3. How many switches supposed to be?
Right now we have Despotism, Monarchy, Republic, Feudalism, Democracy, Fascism and Communism. I do not think we should create any more, we could consider ditching the Fascism.

Let us keep it simple and make any government either war or peace. War Government (no Trade Bonus, no WW, MP, free units) -- Peace Government (Trade Bonus, WW, no MP, no/little free units). Since, we cannot scale Trade Bonus and it is BIG (I mean really big increase in commerce we should work through corruption, and WW to offset its advantages).
War Government is world domination wanna-be, so it should have some kind low corruption to have lots of cities and have high shield production for units in them. Thus, all of them should have communal/minimal/nuisance corruption extra FP and so forth.
Peace government should be geared for relatively small empires whose objective to tech through by their high commerce and FEW highly developed cities. Thus, peace goverment should have HIGH corruption (rampant/problematic), to make conquest fairly unprofitable and developing your small core more important.

Since switching to advanced forms of government is extrimely painful if you are not religious we should consider another Anarchy.

Based on this I propose such changes to goverments

Despotism: no change we will use it as a bench mark

Anarchy:
Rampant corruption (+1 level from stock), no MP, no hurry, rest is the same as despotism since we have some income.

Monarchy (early war government): Lower tech cost to about 16 from 24
Nuisance corruption (+1 level from stock), 4/4/6 unit support (in stock 2/4/8, it is stange that you should lose some unit support vs despotism, but have more than commie if you have metros)

Republic (early-mid peace government)
Rampant corruption (-2 levels from stock), High WW (low in stock), so government can collapse (should not be a game breaker with improved anarchy). Xenophobic (think Rome).

Feudalism (mid war government):
6/3/1 (increase to compensate for monarchy improvement), 3 MP (what about 4?), unit cost 1 (should be always better than Monarchy), NO WW (should not be worser than Monarchy).

Democracy (mid-late peace government)
Problematic corruption (-2 levels from stock), unit cost 2 (this government is mostly for second switch out of war government). I am affraid that with improved anarchy and unit cost 1 people might go for conquest/domination using democracy and that is not supposed to be.

Communism (late war government): add forced resettlement

Fascism (late war government): remove forced resettlement (to make fascism better initially than communism), corruption minimal (it should not be worse than Feudalism before you build SPHQ) and to increase the time while Fascism is still better than Communism.

General change: draft rate 2 should be available only to Communism/Fascism (advanced war governments) all other should be set to 1

Redraw tech tree around Nationalism (since nationalism cost sky high due to attacker/defender assosiated with it and all other goodies) we should keep it optional, so it will not be even more expensive to trade. Government techs should have Espionage as pre-request, since Espionage have Industrialisation as pre-request. Move Police Stations to Espionage and increase its cost to 120 from 90, to lower chance that AI will choose it right after industrialization. Lower cost of both Communism and Fascism to 90 from 120, so AI will not spend too much on them time after Espionage or bulk them in one tech Totalitarism at cost of 120. Another option to get rid of Fascism and not to worry too much about it.

[joncnunn]

With the above changes, Monarchy would be better at both building wonders and tech improvements than Republic.

Much of the trade bonus would be lost to Republic, and meanwhile Monarchy gets a 33% advantage reseraching.

[nbarclay]

I have no idea what the emotional impact would be on people's willingness to use the AU Mod, but increasing Republic's corruption to Rampant actually looks workable according to a little experimenting I did. I've been operating under the assumption that Rampant corruption was so much worse than the others as to be completely untenable for any government other than Despotism, but it's not as bad as I'd been thinking.

Methodology

What I did was to load an old save from the Glory of Culture AU game from the early 900's AD, at which point I was in the middle ages with five mandatory techs left to research in the era. At that point in the game, I'd conquered virtually all of China and had just ended my first war with Persia, in which I'd taken a few cities. I went into anarchy and saved the game right before ending the turn before the anarchy ended. I then checked the income from cities and loss to corruption in each of the four available governments: Despotism, Monarchy, Republic, and Feudalism. At the time of the experiment, my slider settings were were at 3.7.0 (science at 70%, entertainment at 0%).

Results:

Government - City Income - Corruption - Percent Corrupt

Despotism - 790 - 211 - 26.7%
Monarchy - 857 - 187 - 21.8%
Republic - 1333 - 304 - 22.8%
Feudalism - 861 - 173 - 20%

The actual percent loss to corruption would be a bit higher than is indicated here because commerce not lost to corruption gets multiplied but commerce lost to corruption does not. But even so, the difference between nuisance and rampant corruption is nowhere near as big as the difference a commerce bonus makes.

Note that corruption under Republic is a bit higher than would be expected. Presumably, in this particular game, the trade bonus is causing a higher percentage of commerce to come from highly corrupt areas.

If we increased Republic's corruption to Rampant and reduced corruption for Monarchy to Nuisance, Republic would still have a commerce advantage over Monarchy (albeit a significantly smaller one) while Monarchy and Feudalism would have a production advantage over Republic (due to their lower corruption). But that still leaves two questions. (1) How much would Monarchy and Feudalism be able to close the financial gap, especially in earlier stages of the game, by using military police to run the luxury slider at a lower setting? And (2) How much would the production advantage Monarchy and Feudalism get in outlying areas translate into additional gold resulting from additional city improvements?

I'm not ready to take a position yet regarding how I feel about pvzh's corruption change ideas. I do know that if we would make those changes to Republic and Monarchy, I would strongly oppose doing other things beyond that to make Republic less attractive compared with Monarchy, at least until we see how the corruption changes work out.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by joncnunn
With the above changes, Monarchy would be better at both building wonders and tech improvements than Republic.

Since most wonders are built in areas with relatively low corruption, I doubt that Monarchy's advantage in wonder-building would be all that noticeable.

Much of the trade bonus would be lost to Republic, and meanwhile Monarchy gets a 33% advantage reseraching.

The cost difference pvzh is referring to is in the cost of the government tech itself, not in the cost of research under the government. I can only wish there were a way to adjust the research costs under particular governments, because that would provide a way to make up for the lack of a trade bonus.

One thing that occurs to me about reducing the cost of government techs is that reducing the cost of getting Republic or Monarchy would make Feudalism relatively less attractive.

[nbarclay]

I don't agree with pvzh that Feudalism should simply be the next war-time government up from Monarchy. With the current rules, Feudalism and Monarchy each have some advantages over the other: Feudalism has lower corruption and better small-town unit support while Monarchy has better unit support for larger cities and no war weariness. If we'd turn Feudalism into something more along the lines of just a better Monarchy, the game would lose some of its diversity.

[Moonbars]

it doesn't make much sense to have the small empire war government before the big-eimpire government.

[alexman]

The main issue with changing corruption levels of governments is that it will affect the value of the government in the eyes of the AI. According to some tests I did a while back, the AI values corruption level very highly, even though it has a relatively small effect on economy.

Therefore, lots of testing is needed to make sure that the AI will not always choose a nuisance Monarchy over a rampant Republic at peace time.