Starting Government changes - early "feudalism"

[Ceithernach]

Hi all.

I was thinking of making a change and wanted the opinions of people with more XP.

Feudalism is a bit marginal in game, but may be useful at an earlier age.
I was thinking of changing the default gov to be like feudalism with the despotism penalty, communal corruption and maybe high war weariness. To represent tribal confederations and leagues of city states before they are centralised into Monarchies and Republics.
My gut says this might be useful for the expansion phase of the game, with high support for workers, exploring warriors and settlers as long as cities are small and when the borders are stabalised, the civs can switch to more centralised form of gov to grow into the Medieval period, when they start losing the unit support because of city growth

As a follow on I was thinking of
- making the palace cheaper, so it can be moved to a good spot based on the map and expansion phase
- adding a draftable feudal militia unit to the Feudalism tech, representing calling up feudal levies and deleting the Feudalism gov (or maybe keeping it since it be a non-disruptive gov change that might pair well with drafting levies, and removing the despotism penalty is still a bit of a step up)

Is this a relatively small change the AI can handle, or are there a bunch of side effects that I should be aware of?
Thanks

 

[WildWeazel]

Hi, welcome to CFC!!

These are some interesting ideas. I'm not sure how Communal corruption works out for small civs. I know it's advantageous when you have a lot of spread out cities, so it may be quite bad here but I don't know how it compares to Rampant. Free units are another lever that is rarely used. A modest number of free units, zero unit support per city, and high (>1) unit support cost would put a practical cap on expansion even if Communal corruption starts to tilt in your favor.
The draftable feudal levy is something I plan to do myself. The cheaper palace is interesting, but keep in mind the AI will never rebuild it. Otherwise I don't think it will have trouble with any of this.

 

[timerover51]

This is an interesting idea. I have considered starting the game in the Middle Ages with Feudal as the starting government.

 

[Ozymandias]

As a follow on I was thinking of
- making the palace cheaper, so it can be moved to a good spot based on the map and expansion phase

@Civinator, in his magnificent CCM Mod, using @Quintillus' equally magnificent Editor, which addresses many game engine annoyances, like ICS ("Infinite City Sprawl") by having the Palace auto-produce on Settler every 20 turns. He also added the "Air Trade Flag" to the Palace, which might, at first, seem incomprehensible, but it effectively also "kills" 20+ minute turns while the A.I. ("Artificial Idiot" ) calculates every possible trade route on the map.

 

[timerover51]

@Civinator, in his magnificent CCM Mod, using @Quintillus' equally magnificent Editor, which addresses many game engine annoyances, like ICS ("Infinite City Sprawl") by having the Palace auto-produce on Settler every 20 turns. He also added the "Air Trade Flag" to the Palace, which might, at first, seem incomprehensible, but it effectively also "kills" 20+ minute turns while the A.I. ("Artificial Idiot" ) calculates every possible trade route on the map.

I like that idea of the Air Trade Flag, and as I go with Seafaring Civilizations, I do check the Water Trade Flag. I can understand having the Palace auto-produce Settlers, but that does not work in Play the World. I do have some buildings auto-produce Settlers or the equivalent, depending on the scenario.

 

[Sakharov]

Would do you think about swapping Feudalism and Monarchy? So it would allow to switch to Feudalism directly from Despotism, and Monarchy would appear later, when most likely you will have a lot of big cities.

 

[timerover51]

Would do you think about swapping Feudalism and Monarchy? So it would allow to switch to Feudalism directly from Despotism, and Monarchy would appear later, when most likely you will have a lot of big cities.

That is not a bad idea, although historically, Monarchy came about 2000 years or more before Feudalism. I think that I like the idea of changing the starting government from Despotism to Feudalism better. I will try that out and see how it works.

 

[WildWeazel]

@timerover51 You've mentioned PTW a few times recently so I'm curious, are you working on a project specifically for PTW and not C3C?

 

[timerover51]

@timerover51 You've mentioned PTW a few times recently so I'm curious, are you working on a project specifically for PTW and not C3C?

Greetings, Wild Weasel. I am not sure that you would call it working on a specific project for Play the World, but I do play that version a lot. The Barbarians are quite a bit more challenging in PTW than Conquests. When set them to Raging, they are just that, roving all over the map looking for trouble. This is especially true for the Dinosaurs in my version of Test of Time, where they are Foot Units with increased combat values, and tend to wreak havoc in their wanderings. Having one of the T-Rex come for a visit is not something you wish to see.

Leaders work differently. They can be used to finish any improvement or unit, not just Great and Small Wonders. With Test of Time, you can build Leaders as necessary, and not be restricted to the happenstance of them appearing. You also are not auto-producing them from a Wonder, which means you are not overwhelmed in one city by leaders when you need them on another continent. With the leaders, you can jump start a new city on a different continent when needed if you are fighting a war.

I do have the start of a Dinosaur-based civilization in a mod of Test of Time, where the Dinosaurs are the primary warriors up to the start of mechanized units, and still pack a nasty punch even them.

I think that I have figured out how to change the Victory Point Win rules in the script for PTW, and sometime soon I will tamper with them and see if it works. Then I might get brave and work on adding some units from Delta Strife and some of the Conquest Mods to Test of Time, and shift it to the 362 X 362 map for PTW.

One thing that I do not know is how Flintlock's changes work with Play the World, and I am debating about trying it one some day, when I have more storage room on my computer, and can segregate a Flintlock-modified game file from the standard game file.

The bottom line is that I still greatly enjoy the Play the World version, and it will show in my comments.

 

[tjs282]

One thing that I do not know is how Flintlock's changes work with Play the World.

Short answer is, that they don't.

The @Flintlock-patch is exclusively for the conquests.exe file included in the Civ3 Complete download-package from GOG.com (or Steam). If I understood correctly (that's a big "if"! ), his changes involve inserting redirects to his own code while the .exe's running in memory, so these interrupts have to be applied at specific lines of the target-file — which are not the same lines as in the civilization3X.exe file that runs PtW.

However, the good news is that the PtW .exe has a few less bugs than in the Conquests .exe (that Flintlock fixed) to begin with. For example, the PtW-AI already knows how to properly fill and use Armies (even if not Artillery). And as you note above, the PtW-Barbs have 360° vision, rather than the NW–SE axis "tunnel-vision" of the unpatched Conquests-Barbs (IIRC, one of the more recent Flintlock versions also fixed that).

 

[timerover51]

Short answer is, that they don't.

The @Flintlock-patch is exclusively for the conquests.exe file included in the Civ3 Complete download-package from GOG.com (or Steam). If I understood correctly (that's a big "if"! ), his changes involve inserting redirects to his own code while the .exe's running in memory, so these interrupts have to be applied at specific lines of the target-file — which are not the same lines as in the civilization3X.exe file that runs PtW.

However, the good news is that the PtW .exe has a few less bugs than in the Conquests .exe (that Flintlock fixed) to begin with. For example, the PtW-AI already knows how to properly fill and use Armies (even if not Artillery). And as you note above, the PtW-Barbs have 360° vision, rather than the NW–SE axis "tunnel-vision" of the unpatched Conquests-Barbs (IIRC, one of the more recent Flintlock versions also fixed that).

I run off of the Civ3Complete disc, so I do not know if that makes any difference. As for the AI actually using Armies in PTW I can vouch that it does, as I have run into a few mixed units of missile-armed and hand weapon troops.

 

[Civinator]

Another shortcoming of PtW compared to C3C is, that PtW can only hold half the number of units on a map. The MUA (= maximum units allowed) for PtW is only 4096 units, while C3C has a MUA of 8192 units. The Flintlock mod, that eliminates the MUA border for C3C, is not working with PtW.

 

[timerover51]

Another shortcoming of PtW compared to C3C is, that PtW can only hold half the number of units on a map. The MUA (= maximum units allowed) for PtW is only 4096 units, while C3C has a MUA of 8192 units. The Flintlock mod, that eliminates the MUA border for C3C, is not working with PtW.

That does not bother me that much, but does explain occasional crashes when I have a lot of units on the board.

 

[Fergei]

Hi all.

I was thinking of making a change and wanted the opinions of people with more XP.

Feudalism is a bit marginal in game, but may be useful at an earlier age.
I was thinking of changing the default gov to be like feudalism with the despotism penalty, communal corruption and maybe high war weariness. To represent tribal confederations and leagues of city states before they are centralised into Monarchies and Republics.
My gut says this might be useful for the expansion phase of the game, with high support for workers, exploring warriors and settlers as long as cities are small and when the borders are stabalised, the civs can switch to more centralised form of gov to grow into the Medieval period, when they start losing the unit support because of city growth

As a follow on I was thinking of
- making the palace cheaper, so it can be moved to a good spot based on the map and expansion phase
- adding a draftable feudal militia unit to the Feudalism tech, representing calling up feudal levies and deleting the Feudalism gov (or maybe keeping it since it be a non-disruptive gov change that might pair well with drafting levies, and removing the despotism penalty is still a bit of a step up)

Is this a relatively small change the AI can handle, or are there a bunch of side effects that I should be aware of?
Thanks

Great minds think alike. I made the palace cheap and brought forward feudalism to Code of Laws. The AI hates communal corruption almost as much as the despotism penalty and will leave it at the drop of a hat and never return (until late game unit numbers and corruption makes Communism viable). So Feudalism has to be the first to appear. More details here including other invented government types the AI will select occassionally.

[C3C] - Civ 3 Conquests - retuned

Main objectives - overview - Provide a more consistent challenge throughout the game (rather than the early game difficulty spike and routine late game victory often offered by the default settings). - Make random maps more viable by reducing having to abandon a game as being...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Ozymandias]

A "P.S." - what you're getting at might also be considered a "Satrapy," q.v.