Civics Mod: Balance

[The Q-Meister]

Thanks for the compliments.

Please tell me which communist government did not fail? Which State Property governments continue to run as (idealistically pure) State Property without any of the negative effects that I have included in my mod?

There has never been any "idealistically pure" communist government in history, in fact, many, including myself, would argue that no communist or socialist governments had ever existed at all. If we are using the traditional definition of what socialism is. Lenin for example, was quite open that he did not feel that socialism could exist in Russia without revolutions in other (European) countries that were more advanced, particularly Germany, when the revolution happened but did not succeed, Lenin then reverted to a rather brutal police state-capitalist system that he believed would only be temporary until the world revolutions overtook Europe. He died early on however, then Stalin came to power and dramatically abandoned any "notions" of "socialism" that had ever existed, if any had in the first place. Don't want to turn this into a history discussion here but just thought you might want to keep that in mind.

With regards to "states failing", I guess it would have be in the eye of the beholder what they consider to be "failure" For many, turning a backward peasant state like Russia into one of two industrialized superpowers in the world is a major accomplishment. It seems that Civ IV glorifies those leaders and states that were aggressive and increased their civs power dramatically, even if it did not last very long (a la Napoleon, Alexander, etc etc)

Not trying to defend the USSR here, I despise that gov as I feel it is or was an enemy of socialism, openly advised against revolutions in other countries (such as Spain, Cuba, Indonesia, China, etc etc) BUT what I am saying is that we must be very careful when analyzing other states, paricularly when they have been classifed as "enemy" state by most of the governments that I'm sure the majority of people here live under. There is a strong argument to be made that, as brutal as countries like the USSR were, using the Civ IV model of war, empire and power that we are using, they did dramatically industralize their countries, increase their size, land and power and thus, could reasonably be considered a "success"

 

[Armandeus]

Thanks for the insight.

First, I am neither trying to be "politically correct" nor am I trying to be jingoistic and fanatically anti-communist (or anti-whatever) with this mod. "Enemy state" status or whatever in the real world had no bearing on my choices when modding these civics.

This argument began when someone commented that I ruined "his favorite civic," State Property, and how ideally such a civic would have none of the negative attributes I gave it. He was missing the point of the mod entirely. (Nevertheless, I didn't ruin anything for him anyway - nobody is twisting his arm to make him use my mod in his game.)

People were trying to argue against my "grittier" version of the civics by telling me about the virtues of communism or police states in their purest idealistic form. The question of mine that you quote above, asking for an example of this "successfully idealistically pure State Property country," was meant to illustrate that the person I was originally discussing this with was basing his criticism on an idealistic version of the civic, and I am not, and I wanted to show that to him.

I asked for an example of a State Property government that fits his idealistic description which did not fail to stay "true" to that ideal. He wanted me to stick to his ideal, and I was trying to show him that I am more interested in history than ideals, which are only ideas anyway.

We can use the more utopian vanilla version of the civics, or do what I am trying to do, or do something else. That's why Firaxis made the game moddable. I made this mod because the utopian version bored me. If you like the utopian version better, then that's fine with me. Please use it. I am not interested in modeling the ideals, but instead the historical advantages and disadvantages of that civic.

I posted my mod here to share it with anyone who might be interested, and to get constructive feedback. It's unfortunate if some are offended by my refusal to abandon my mod because it does not align with their ideals.

As for Police State, State Property, Theocracy, or any other "negative" civics: I myself have found them useful when I play Civ IV (yes, even in the way that I modded them here!), and I often choose them when it suits me. I am not saying that Police State or State Property are useless filthy civics and so I hate them and want to mod them into oblivion.

I recognize their usefulness in the game, just like everyone else.

I also recognize your point about Firaxis choosing successful (meaning powerful) civilizations, and representing their civics. I have no problem with that, except what I said about the civics being a bit too idealistic (for my taste). If Firaxis wanted to be perfectly politically correct, many of the leaders would not be in the game, and neither would some of the countries or civics. But they did not take things to such an extreme, and neither will I.

I asked for constructive criticism, which I appreciate highly. Correct my history, give me a better way to represent the positive or negative aspect of a civic, tell me specificially how a change I made unbalances the game.

However, I really don't want to get into a flame war about what ideal communism is, or any such other tangent. As I said, the whole point of this mod is not the ideal civic, but the approximate historical representation of it (within what the game allows), including its advantages and disadvantages. Ideals are actually irrelevant to my mod, as interesting a topic as they may be. I'm more interested in abstractly simulating what actually happened.

 

[Brancaleone]

- I'm more interested in abstractly simulating what actually happened. -

Communism "actually" changed the URSS, from 90% rural population to one of the world industrialized superpower. But i do belive that Stalin is a spawn of satan (actually i dont); he kiled 20kk russians! Placing all Goulags close to each other, you have a concentration camp bigger than the French territory. Hitler was a noob compared to Stalin.

Ive been reading alot about communism. In Civ terms, state property didnt ruined URSS by itself; a continuous Military State, an Inumame Legal Sistem (Barbarism with Bureaucracy i would guess), with excessive usage of Slavery civic and the world worst human being leading it, helped alot. I think you tried to put all the "bad" aspects of URSS into one civic, when State Property is only the economic civic. A State property with Emancipation, Free Speech, Universal Sufragge, and pacifism/free religion can be a nice little place to live

Your mod is cool, but too evil

-edit: actually i think i 'misread' your topic. I missed the factory bonus and the workshop bonus. So the workshop end with +3 hammers, a mine-of-grass. Still a good civic.

 

[Armandeus]

Hitler was a noob compared to Stalin.

I don't deny that. But I am not fixated on the Soviet Union.

I was trying to simulate the good and bad economic results of State Property. I was not trying to simulate either a utopian ideal or simulate Stalin's regime exclusively. I am not convinced that State Property is without negative points as an economic system. To clarify, I think that capitalism, or any other economic philosophy, ultimately has good and bad points. I am not attempting to single out State Property for extra punishment.

Ive been reading alot about communism. In Civ terms, state property didnt ruined URSS by itself; a continuous Military State, an Inumame Legal Sistem (Barbarism with Bureaucracy i would guess), with excessive usage of Slavery civic and the world worst human being leading it, helped alot.

I think you are right. But I am not trying to put all of that into State Property.

Do you deny that "State Property" has negative economic effects as well? Is it the ideal economy?

I think you tried to put all the "bad" aspects of URSS into one civic, when State Property is only the economic civic. A State property with Emancipation, Free Speech, Universal Sufragge, and pacifism/free religion can be a nice little place to live

I think you, and the many others who continuously point this out to me, are idealizing State Property and want me to think it has no negative aspects worthy of simulation in a Civ 4 civic.

Your mod is cool, but too evil

Thanks, I guess.

-edit: actually i think i 'misread' your topic. I missed the factory bonus and the workshop bonus. So the workshop end with +3 hammers, a mine-of-grass. Still a good civic.

I'm not sure how to take the "mine-of-grass" comment (do hammers have to represent actual physical ore, or can they not represent production value?), but how exactly would you like me to redo State Property so it would please you?

You do realize that I only listed the changes I made to the civics, right? You do realize that when I did not change the default setting, I did not write it in my list in the first post? Even though I wrote that in the first post, it seems that I may need to rewrite my listing to include what I did not change as well as what I did. Everybody seems to want to ignore my note and instead assume that I nerfed all the civics. At least that is the impression I get from these comments.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Well done Armandeus, this is really getting great. I guess I will add this to the next version of my mod which is soon to come (hopefully, if nothing goes wrong )

 

[Armandeus]

Thank you, Gekko. I'm glad you approve.

When I get some more free time next week, I plan to make two versions of this: the first with no new civics, and another with some new civics added (I plan on adding one for each category, and maybe replacing a couple default ones). Please feel free to add either one to your mod.

I want to reiterate that I am very grateful for constructive criticism. It is helpful when someone tells me not only that there is a problem with my civic or a disagreement they have, but also when that person gives a concrete suggestion as to how to fix it in the mod. Otherwise, we just get into a philosophical discussion and it is usually unclear to me how I should adjust my mod to please that person.

 

[Hephaistion]

Armandeus, your mod is extremely cool and is definitely the direction in which I'd like to see Civ4 go in many areas. I'm in complete agreement that choosing civics should be a matter of taking the bad with the good, and that positive choices should usually have some negative consequences as well.

That being said, the one civic I found to be unbalanced in my games was Bureaucracy. Completely eliminating the number of cities maintenance penalty I found to be too much. AI players who chose bureaucracy soared ahead of everyone else (perhaps this is WAD, but I didn't like it). I have been experimenting with scaling back the maintenance penalty reduction to -50% and -33%, and have found these to be more balanced settings. One problem I've had, though, is that even when I change the penalty reduction, the civics screen still says "No Number of Cities Maintenance Penalty." Do you know why this is and how I can fix it?

While I'm on the topic, I've also been trying to mod in some similar balancing measures for religion choices in the game, giving the different religions advantages and disadvantages. In this process, I've been trying to include a mechanic for non-state religions causing unhappiness (minority communities should get uppity in societies dominated by one religion, and I want to force civs to build temples for non-state religions to make these unhappy communities content rather than boosting overall unhappiness). When I modify CivicInfos.xml, making NonStateReligionHappiness "-2", on the Civics screen for Paganism and Free Religion it shows up normally, but under Organized Religion, Theocracy, and Pacifism, it shows up as, "+126774 per [praying hands]" Any ideas on why this is or how to fix it (the unhappiness mechanic is working, but this little problem is terribly ugly, and bothers me immensely)?

 

[Armandeus]

Armandeus, your mod is extremely cool and is definitely the direction in which I'd like to see Civ4 go in many areas. I'm in complete agreement that choosing civics should be a matter of taking the bad with the good, and that positive choices should usually have some negative consequences as well.

Thanks!

That being said, the one civic I found to be unbalanced in my games was Bureaucracy. Completely eliminating the number of cities maintenance penalty I found to be too much. AI players who chose bureaucracy soared ahead of everyone else (perhaps this is WAD, but I didn't like it). I have been experimenting with scaling back the maintenance penalty reduction to -50% and -33%, and have found these to be more balanced settings. One problem I've had, though, is that even when I change the penalty reduction, the civics screen still says "No Number of Cities Maintenance Penalty." Do you know why this is and how I can fix it?

I realized that myself recently. The reason is, the number of cities maintenance cost is set in the globalsettings.xml (or some similar name - I'm not at my home PC now) in the main XML folder. It is set depending on the map size. The highest setting is 45, I think. So if you give a maintenance adjustment over 45, it will always seem like you are giving free maintenance. Look in that file, and give a number that will still make sense on the smallest map. I have to do this with my mod here in the future.

When I modify CivicInfos.xml, making NonStateReligionHappiness "-2", on the Civics screen for Paganism and Free Religion it shows up normally, but under Organized Religion, Theocracy, and Pacifism, it shows up as, "+126774 per [praying hands]" Any ideas on why this is or how to fix it (the unhappiness mechanic is working, but this little problem is terribly ugly, and bothers me immensely)?

It drives me nuts too. I asked another forum member, and he told me that state religion happiness has to be set to 0 for non state religion happiness to work as a negative number. So for example, you give Theocracy 0 happiness bonus (the default - remember you still get the bonuses for the buildings) for the state religion, and -2 or whatever for non-state religions. This is also something I haven't had time to try myself, but when I do, I will add it to this mod.

 

[Vietnamese Guy]

i have a few problems with this mod, one it seems that free market seems overly powerful compared to the other economic models, the penalties which you enforced to state property seemed too harsh compared to its benefit.. perhaps in free market you could balance it somehow as in periods of depressions and booms? (market economy yo)


Your reasoning for free religion generating culture instead of science is a little odd, since once a government is seperated from the church, they would most likely allow more scientific research that would otherwise be disallowed by the church, such as the origins of the universe or theory of evolution, i dont see how culture applies to free religion.

oh and police state, you should somehow add a military unit happiness bonus because of what you stated as martial law

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Thank you, Gekko. I'm glad you approve.

When I get some more free time next week, I plan to make two versions of this: the first with no new civics, and another with some new civics added (I plan on adding one for each category, and maybe replacing a couple default ones). Please feel free to add either one to your mod.

this sounds really cool to me. I suggest you check out Kael's Fall from Heaven mod, he added a couple more Civic Categories (i.e. columns, IIRC he added medical system and school system) , cause adding more categories would be extremely nice IMHO

 

[Brancaleone]

-Do you deny that "State Property" has negative economic effects as well? Is it the ideal economy?-

No, no, i tried to say that State Property didnt ruined the URSS "by itself", it was only ONE of the reasons URSS didnt lasted. Im not a communist fanboy. I love reading those old books from Marx and John Reed (Reed's book about the communist revolution is one of my favorites, but i dont know the english title for that book), but i dont belive communism would work.

The BEST way to represent communism in CIV terms, i saw in one mod, dont remember wich one; Fall from Heaven or Europa Europa, one of those. Make Cottages/Town give -1/-2 gold, but +1/+2 hammer. What does that change? First, with all those hammers from your cottages, you will be able to industrialize (ie: build troops and factories, etc), BUT, in the long run, you will suffer to pay the civic upkeep, and all that gold you are not getting anymore will make you lag behind in technology; tell me thats not what happened IRL. So you will not only have to decrease your Beaker %'s, but each 10% will be worth less (you with Science at 60% will be getting less beakers than an equally powerfull non-communist AI with 60% funding)

So, you asked how to please me? Make cottages/town give -1/-2 gold but +1/+2 hammer.

I always play creative/financial, in all mods i play, even if i have to play a Halfling nation (in Fall from Heaven). I am a big fan of the cottage spam strategy, simple because ill have so much gold ill always be the first to get new guns and those prizes from techs (Free great people, free tech with liberalism, etc). Losing half of my gold from cottages to get hammers isnt so atractive as it looks like; for the first time i didnt played the socialist civics! I had to play a fancy "freedom, equality, emancipation etc" nation

Well just my 0.02 gold (or 0.01 gold and 0.01 hammer )

 

[Hephaistion]

Armandeus: "I realized that myself recently. The reason is, the number of cities maintenance cost is set in the globalsettings.xml (or some similar name - I'm not at my home PC now) in the main XML folder. It is set depending on the map size. The highest setting is 45, I think. So if you give a maintenance adjustment over 45, it will always seem like you are giving free maintenance. Look in that file, and give a number that will still make sense on the smallest map. I have to do this with my mod here in the future."

Probably GlobalDefines.xml? What effect does this number have on actual gameply -- I'm concerned about throwing off the maintenance settings that I'm trying to balance!

"It drives me nuts too. I asked another forum member, and he told me that state religion happiness has to be set to 0 for non state religion happiness to work as a negative number. So for example, you give Theocracy 0 happiness bonus (the default - remember you still get the bonuses for the buildings) for the state religion, and -2 or whatever for non-state religions. This is also something I haven't had time to try myself, but when I do, I will add it to this mod."[/QUOTE]

I don't think this works, since in your mod, Theocracy IS set to 0 for state religion happiness, but still comes up as the dreaded "+12734" (or whatever). I solved my problem by altering the default non-state religion happiness modifier in GlobalDefines.xml to -2 instead. I figure that under civics with no state religion, religions WANT to be state religions, or at least in control of government policies, and are frustrated and feel underrepresented when they are not (IMHO, witness American politics). This solution works for me, though it's still frustrating for those who'd want, say, Theocracy to make non-state religions MORE unhappy than other religion civics.

Oh, and I do agree with Vietnamese Guy about free market. In my version, I simply removed the income bonus, figuring that having no penalty to income, more trade routes, and free trade with other civs (not Mercantilism) is bonus enough, considering the "boom" that civs undergo in the Renaissance era. I'm in a constant war in my mod to keep civs (including my own!) from becoming full-blown Napoleonic-era powers by 1500 or 1600!

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Armandeus, another cool mod you should check out if you plan to go for more civic types, is the Gender mod. just my 0.2 gold.

 

[Spocko]

I'm impressed with this mod - I agree that the vanilla civic choices seemed to have only positive impacts. The negative impacts force me to make balanced choices, instead of beelining for the bottom civics (plus Free Market), as I usually do.

Anyway, because I agree with the tweaks, this works well for me. Thanks!

I've cooked this into my own fusion mod, and I'm playtesting it now. More later.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Regarding Theocracy in the next version of this mod, my suggestion is to make it give +2 unhappiness for each non-state religion present in a city. ( I THINK I've read somewhere someone succeeding at doing this...)
that way, I will be able to add Religious Victory to my mod without it making theocracy horribly overpowered
Religious Victory could certainly be a great addition to the game IMHO, and I would recommend you add it in your mod too.
if you want more infos about it, check out this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144052

 

[Vietnamese Guy]

Regarding Theocracy in the next version of this mod, my suggestion is to make it give +1 unhappiness for each non-state religion present in a city. ( I THINK I've read somewhere someone succeeding at doing this...)
that way, I will be able to add Religious Victory to my mod without it making theocracy horribly overpowered
Religious Victory could certainly be a great addition to the game IMHO, and I would recommend you add it in your mod too.
if you want more infos about it, check out this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=144052

in EE3 theocracy gives -2 unhappiness for every religion, which makes sense because then the unhappiness isnt cancelled out by temples..

 

[Leif]

As you can tell from my icon and sig, I must admit I am coming to this with my own personal bias and baggage, yet I think the main arguements from those such as me who would prefer to live in a society with state property over a free market one is that you call this "Civics mod: Balence", which would imply that you give each a fair set of advantages and disadvantages. However what seems to be stepping on toes it the great difference between

Free Market
+10% to trade

and

State Property
Anarchy Length 2
-10% great people
-25% foreign trade yield
-10% gold in commerce
+1 happiness with factory
+1 hammer with workshop, but removed +1 food for watermill

Now, one cannot help but think you prefer one over the others, for many (myself again included) would argue that capitalism has a great deal of baggage that goes along with it, namely - happiness due to inequality, - health due to the poor conditions of the working class and a complete lack of healthcare for the working class, a minor - to production due to lots of money and energy being spent on things that don't matter (private golf courses for example).

Now, in the interest of logic, I cannot understand how you can call free trade and state property civics balenced. If you were to call this "opinion mod", it would be fine, but balenced it is not.

We can flame and counter flame about the merits of Communism against Capitalism, however as you have stated, that isn't what we're here to talk about. We're here for constructive criticism to help your mod. Well for the interest of the name of the mod and the intention in which you appear to have in it's creation.

I hope all of this helps the mod in some way, but even when looking beyond the right wing vs left wing debate,however unfortunetly this mod is far from balenced.

(I tried to keep this post not so ranty, I know I didn't do a good job and I don't want to discourage you from working on mods)

-Leif

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

in EE3 theocracy gives -2 unhappiness for every religion, which makes sense because then the unhappiness isnt cancelled out by temples..

yep that's it. thanks for pointing it out!

 

[Brancaleone]

I have to agree with Leif here. You gotta choose between Balance or Realism. Due to your mod name, i think the choice is pretty obvious. The civics are balanced in the original game; some of them are useless, but none is too good. The example Leif used is perfect: free trade = only goodness, state property = MANY heavy penalties. Not balanced.

 

[anjf]

-Do you deny that "State Property" has negative economic effects as well? Is it the ideal economy?-

No, no, i tried to say that State Property didnt ruined the URSS "by itself", it was only ONE of the reasons URSS didnt lasted. Im not a communist fanboy. I love reading those old books from Marx and John Reed (Reed's book about the communist revolution is one of my favorites, but i dont know the english title for that book), but i dont belive communism would work.

The BEST way to represent communism in CIV terms, i saw in one mod, dont remember wich one; Fall from Heaven or Europa Europa, one of those. Make Cottages/Town give -1/-2 gold, but +1/+2 hammer. What does that change? First, with all those hammers from your cottages, you will be able to industrialize (ie: build troops and factories, etc), BUT, in the long run, you will suffer to pay the civic upkeep, and all that gold you are not getting anymore will make you lag behind in technology; tell me thats not what happened IRL. So you will not only have to decrease your Beaker %'s, but each 10% will be worth less (you with Science at 60% will be getting less beakers than an equally powerfull non-communist AI with 60% funding)

So, you asked how to please me? Make cottages/town give -1/-2 gold but +1/+2 hammer.

I always play creative/financial, in all mods i play, even if i have to play a Halfling nation (in Fall from Heaven). I am a big fan of the cottage spam strategy, simple because ill have so much gold ill always be the first to get new guns and those prizes from techs (Free great people, free tech with liberalism, etc). Losing half of my gold from cottages to get hammers isnt so atractive as it looks like; for the first time i didnt played the socialist civics! I had to play a fancy "freedom, equality, emancipation etc" nation

Well just my 0.02 gold (or 0.01 gold and 0.01 hammer )

In the beginning of this thread I had a lot of comment on this civic, but I like this one and I agree with it, also I would like to say that I made myself look like a socialist but I only support PURE communism in the best way anything less and I hate it and then I support liberalisme in high forms, I know that sounds realy stupid but for the most part I am not a socialist or communist but a liberalist. Also I hate the USSR, because they didn't had PURE communisme, but as you said state-property did help there economy.