Apolyton University Mod (Thread II)

[alexman]

Let me throw in a couple of ideas, just to spark some discussion for the C3C version of this mod:

Colosseums

They cost as much as two full-price Temples to build and maintain, but produce half as much culture and don't allow Cathedrals like Temples do. Why build them? Well, most of the time, you don't.

What if Colosseums were the building of choice for border expansion for non-religious, non-scientific civs? What if we made them cost a little less than half-price, with half the effect? Say 50 shields, 1 culture, 1 happy citizen, 1g maintenance (down from 120, 2, 2, 2). Borders would expand after 10 turns after you build one of those, or you could build a slightly more expensive Temple and have borders expand after 5 turns instead.


Cavalry

As much as I love Cavalry, I have come to realize that they are the biggest reason that my games end before reaching the industrial age (either because I have won, or because I am bored, or because I got my butt kicked in MP) .

IMHO Cavalry power in Civ3 is too strong, and that hurts gameplay, not to mention realism. The poor AI rarely uses Cavalry in numbers, so it doesn't take advantage of the human Cavalry-blitz tactic.

What if we reduced Cavalry (and Cavalry-based UU) movement to 2? Not a drastic change, but certainly enough to prevent empires from collapsing overnight.


Ship Movement

The often-stated problem with ship movement in Civ3 is that it takes forever to move around larger maps. But if you increase the movement of ships, it creates an unfair tactical advantage for seaborne invasions and raids. Increase movement too much and defending fleets and airpower have no chance to intercept the attackers before they drop off their passengers, bombard their targets, and vanish into the fog of war or into home ports in the same turn.

One solution is to make movement in Ocean cost less than movement along the coast. That would allow rapid movement across oceans, with more movement spent in tactical operations near the enemy. This has been adopted over at the GOTM with success, but the problem is that it allows ancient Galleys to discover the World much faster.

What if we did the following:
Galley and Caravel are unchanged, with Galleys needing two movement points to enter Ocean. After this point, we double movement of all ships, but charge extra for movement in Coast (3), Sea (2), and ignore the extra cost of Ocean. That way exploration in the Ancient Age is still hampered, but later ships can quickly cross oceans, without removing the chance of naval/aerial combat near the shore.

Any thoughts?

[Jaybe]

Cavalry
Alex, as I have kibitzed before regarding the AU mod, the problem is not with the cavalry: it is with the foot units.

Understand that my background is with board wargaming (before computers). In civ, it is the rare foot unit that attacks; IRL, it was much more common.

I understand that the AU mod is predicated on keeping the "feel" of the game close to stock, but from a "simulation" aspect, I recommend (in general):
1. Increasing foot attack strengths, generally to equal defense strengths, through Rifleman units (I think AU Infantry @ 8/10 are fine).
2. Increase Fortified defense bonus to 50% (I also suggest the same be done with Rivers).

Some upgrade paths end up being changed. I can send you an MS Word file of my unit changes, upon request.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
Let me throw in a couple of ideas, just to spark some discussion for the C3C version of this mod:

Good idea! Of course, there will be a lot more to talk about when C3C comes out...

Colosseums

What if we made them cost a little less than half-price, with half the effect? Say 50 shields, 1 culture, 1 happy citizen, 1g maintenance (down from 120, 2, 2, 2).

How about making them rival or exceed Cathedrals in terms of Happiness but not Culture? Say, something like [120, 1, 3, 2] or [120, 1, 4, 3]...exact numbes would need to be tweaked, of course. I would like to see Collosseums as alternatives to Cathedrals for non-Religious civs. This would help the AI because it needs all the Happiness it can get.

Cavalry

What if we reduced Cavalry (and Cavalry-based UU) movement to 2? Not a drastic change, but certainly enough to prevent empires from collapsing overnight.

Another, sligher more drastic options: reduce Cavalry cost to 70 Shields and remove them from the upgrade path. The reasoning behind this is that Cavalry:Riflemen should be analogous to Knights:Musketmen, but currently it's more like Cavalry:Musketmen. This would help the AI because upgrading is not exactly it's strong suit.

Ship Movement

Galley and Caravel are unchanged, with Galleys needing two movement points to enter Ocean. After this point, we double movement of all ships, but charge extra for movement in Coast (3), Sea (2), and ignore the extra cost of Ocean. That way exploration in the Ancient Age is still hampered, but later ships can quickly cross oceans, without removing the chance of naval/aerial combat near the shore.

It's not very elegant (yes, I'm a complainer), but I like the ultimate effect.


Dominae

[alexman]

Jaybe, first of all, you are right that your proposed changes are too far from stock to be added to this mod.

But just for discussion, how would an increased attack of foot units make Cavalry blitzes less likely? Your 4-4 musketmen and 3-3 pikemen will fall just as easily as the 2-4 and 1-3 versions. And if you give all these foot units an AI-offense flag to use their new attack, the AI will build them instead of Cavalry, which is not exactly what we want...

The 50% fortification bonus is interesting, but won't that make ancient warfare silly?

Dominae, I like your Colosseum idea better than mine. We have to be careful with adding too much happiness though, because it can throw off the balance for luxury trading and the Monarchy/Republic choice.

As for removing Cavalry from the upgrade path, I think it would work well to balance the era. Cavalry versus Riflemen would increase the importance of combined arms, and blitzes would be less common. I'm not sure this change belongs in the AU mod though, mainly because one of the goals here is to preserve stock strategy, and the horse mass-upgrade is a big part of Civ3.

[Theseus]

Great... let's get thinking!

Very good solution re ship movement.

I think Cavs should be left alone. How about increasing the effects of Walls and Forts?

[alexman]

Originally posted by Theseus
How about increasing the effects of Walls and Forts?

The AI doesn't really build either of these, so it would do little to stop the Cavalry rush. But what if we increase the defensive bonus of cities/metros, in addition to the bonus of walls/forts? You would then need to bring slow bombard units along with your Cavalry to reduce enemy cities down to size 6. Will the AI suffer from the increased importance of combined arms?

I must say I still like the idea to reduce the movement of Cavalry instead.

[Theseus]

I'd prefer to confer defensive bonuses than to lessen offensive capabilities.

[alexman]

But isn't it better to fix the one unit that's unbalanced (even if it means lessening offensive capabilities), rather than make a change that would affect other elements of the game that might already be well balanced?

Theseus, I like your proposed change to defensive bonuses, but won't it affect warfare in other ages? Will it still be balanced?

We can certainly try...

[Theseus]

I think defense is not strong enough in general, until Infantry and MIs.

[Tassadar500]

BTW, any new Conquest items should not be talked about until the game is out. Due to the fact we don't know if some changes or new additions will make it unbalanced.

[Theseus]

NM, we can speculate.

But you're right... until Marine+Berserk Armies are fixed, it is all for naught. :grrr:

[Theseus]

BTW, wouldn't it be nice if the text under the banner to pre-order C3C referenced the inclusion of the AU Mod?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
As for removing Cavalry from the upgrade path, I think it would work well to balance the era. Cavalry versus Riflemen would increase the importance of combined arms, and blitzes would be less common. I'm not sure this change belongs in the AU mod though, mainly because one of the goals here is to preserve stock strategy, and the horse mass-upgrade is a big part of Civ3.

It's a fine point, but I thought the idea was to preserve the "feel" of stock Civ3, not any "strategy" in particular (an example is the near-complete destruction of the suicide Galley strat). But in any case I agree that most people would feel "weird" if they could not upgrade to Cavalry.

I'm torn, though. This seems like a great balancing fix. Not to reveal too much, but Conquests will certainly include major "fixes" such as this one (RCP is rumored dead, for instance). Perhaps the AU mod should jump on board and make changes that are clearly good for the game, even if it means invalidating some "basic" (in the sense of "widely used") strategies.

Like you said yourself, once you learn how to do a dedicated Cavalry beeline/offensive, the game becomes a little too easy afterward. I'm not sure reducing the Cavalry's movement to 2 will do the trick. It's the 6-attack value that's the real problem, IMO, not the 3-movement. In terms of AI tech preferences, Gunpowder is far closer to Chivalry than Nationalism is to Military Tradition. The human player can, along with upgrades, exploit this fact.


Dominae

[Theseus]

How about a-5 for Cavs?

[Dominae]

Not a bad idea at all.

The major problem that I can see is that there would be very little options in terms of offense from Riflemen until Tanks (a 5-attack Cavalry would suck pretty bad against drafted Riflemen). But this is already true to some extent. I think it's an ok price to pay to balance the latter half of the Medieval era.

I may just test this idea out myself between now and the time Conquests goes gold. Or maybe we can set up an unofficial AU game with for this.


Dominae

[Stuie]

And change the Sipahi to 7? And what about Cossacks? 5-4-3?

The change in attack value sounds reasonable. I like the 3 movement for cavalry because they cannot upgrade to anything, but having the extra move means they still have some utility (scouts, raids into enemy territory to pillage/capture workers, etc.) once tanks come in to play.

[alexman]

How about this:

Move Cavalry to Nationalism. Perhaps change cost to 90 and attack to 7. Add a new 5-3-3, cost 80 unit (Dragoon) to Military Tradition, between Knights and Cavalry in the upgrade chain.

Dragoons can either use the Cavalry animation, or the "Nakamoro Horseman" graphic that comes with PTW (in the Med. Japan extra units).

[sabrewolf]

until now it looks like the recommendations are for civ3 vanilla and PTW, nothing explicitly for conquests.
so my question: would these ideas (if they get accepted) come in the regular AU- and PTW AU-mod or is it only for c3c?

how about a new thread for c3c-only stuff, where a lot of new stuff will have to be considered (new wonders means more prebuild possibilities), sceintific leaders means more wonders/faster research, etc.


alexman, to your last post: i think the computer already overvalues nationalism. it's virtually impossible to buy the tech. another offensive unit would make it more expensive

i like the current cycle of strongest units alternating between offensive and defensive forces. there's always a short phase where the offense is in advantage, then a longer time when there's none (always counting that the defence is fortified in the town/city) and no overwhelming forces or bombarding

warrior/archer (off), spearman (def), swordsman/horseman (off), pikeman (def), knight (off), musketeer (def), cavalry (off), rifleman (def), infantry (off/def), tank (off), MI (def), MA (off).

the only real break in this path is the infantry... until tank it's really hard to crush an infantry-defended city..

a dragoon would fit in quite nicely, if you add another tech. eg. (civ2-inspired) conscription, a prereq. tech for nationalism. riflemen would come with that and nationalism would bring you cavalry (maybe even 7|3|3).
the downside: the mod would need an aditional tech, which hasn't yet happend in an AU mod so far...

but i do agree that cavalry currently is a gamebreaker. specially if you've been beelining for MT

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
How about this:

Move Cavalry to Nationalism. Perhaps change cost to 90 and attack to 7. Add a new 5-3-3, cost 80 unit (Dragoon) to Military Tradition, between Knights and Cavalry in the upgrade chain.

Is there anything in particular that you do not like about Theseus' 5-attack suggestion that brings you to propose this far more drastic solution. Like I've said before (way back when we were actually making changes to the AU mod!), adding an entire new unit is IMO the epitome of "drastic change". Are you, like me, not fond of odd attack values!?

(By the way, I destroyed a Secret Police by bombardment the other day...it was very satisfying.)


Dominae

[alexman]

No, I like Theseus' idea of 5 attack. The new unit (Dragoon) is actually the same as Theseus' Cavalry. The 7-attack unit at Nationalism (Cavalry) was my attempt to address your concern that there would be no good offensive unit between Nationalism and Tanks.

[Stuie]

Or we could take a page out of C3C, and have Cavalry I at Military Tradition (5-3-3) and Cavalry II at Nationalism (6-3-3).

[alexman]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
would these ideas (if they get accepted) come in the regular AU- and PTW AU-mod or is it only for c3c?

The AU mod so far has been always based on the latest version of Civ3. There is no official version of the mod for vanilla Civ3, for example. So I think these new changes will wait until conquests is out, and then they will be for that version only.

how about a new thread for c3c-only stuff, where a lot of new stuff will have to be considered (new wonders means more prebuild possibilities), sceintific leaders means more wonders/faster research, etc.

I think let's wait until C3C is out, and we have played a couple of games with it before suggesting improvements on it! We don't all have the honor of being on the beta testing team!

i think the computer already overvalues nationalism. it's virtually impossible to buy the tech. another offensive unit would make it more expensive

Adding a new unit would not make much of a difference, as the major reason for the AI value of Nationalism is conscription, mobilization, and the no-resource defender. An attacker that requires a resource makes comparatively little difference to the AI value.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Stuie
Or we could take a page out of C3C, and have Cavalry I at Military Tradition (5-3-3) and Cavalry II at Nationalism (6-3-3).

Is this a fact? Or are you refering to those screenshots of the different levels of Legionaries in a scenario?

[alexman]

I like it.
5-3-3, cost 80 Cavalry at Military tradition.
6-3-3, cost 80 Cavalry II at Nationalism.

Cavalry is really the same old unit - you just have to wait until Nationalism to get the extra attack point (for free).

[Stuie]

Yeah, I was basing it on the screenshorts with the different Roman Legions. But it would be easy enough to implement with the current editor, and would appropriately nerf the Cavalry unit in the short term, while strengthening it when the better defender (rifleman) appears. For me, it would also be a reason not to beeline to Replaceable Parts, which is usually my strategy. I would be more inclined to actually research Nationalism rather than waiting for it to plummet in value and trading for it.

[Dominae]

I must say, I like it too. We could "market" it as: "When you get Nationalism, you Cavalry get a free upgrade (because they're full of nationalistic fervor, or whatever)". We could call the 5/3/3 version 'Cavalry', and just add an adjective to the 6/3/3 version, like 'Advanced Cavalry' (as you can see I'm not very creative).

I sure hope the 5/3/3 version is "weak enough" to address the problem it is meant to solve.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
I think let's wait until C3C is out, and we have played a couple of games with it before suggesting improvements on it! We don't all have the honor of being on the beta testing team!

You're going to love C3C! (That's about all I can say....)


Dominae

[vmxa1]

If you have the cavalry change at nationalism, how will it work if military tradition is skipped?

[alexman]

Just as it works now when you skip Chivalry!

[vmxa1]

What I was wondering is with a 5/3/3, people may go for Chivalry and see no reason to grab MT. Especally those with three move knight units, such as Answar and Rider.
People without those units skip Chivalry and go for MT, but now they can take the cheaper tech and forgo MT.