Making other government types viable

[Fergei]

Reading this thread on government types, there is a bit of a consensus that Republic, a government type available in the first era, is a flexible and strong option for playing through until the end of the game. Also that Republic and Communism are viable end of game Government options and so you may not bother with any of the others if you aren't a religious Civ (removing the anarchy penalty).

Not everyone will agree with the above, but for the purposes of this thread I'd like to accept the above position and ask for suggestions in the editor that would increase the likelihood of an average player ever changing to Monarchy, Feudalism, Democracy or Fascism - whilst improving game balance

Suggestions can be ways to boost the above or to reduce the value / power of Republic. Bonus points go to suggestions that would have any historical validity (e.g. halving the productivity of workers under Republic would not have a historical basis).

Republic vs Feudalism & Monarchy

Looking at the Civ Editor Help, I was considering the following:

- Increase the cost of Philosophy & Republic (so these advances take longer to gain) and reduce cost of Polytheism - to make Monarchy a more viable early game alternative.

and/or

- Move Republic to Middle Ages and Feudalism to Ancient era - to make Feudalism a more viable pick because it will appear before Republic

and/or

Make Feudalism and Monarchy additional pre-requisites for Republic (keeping it in the ancient era).

Does any of the above sound flawed or would have unpleasant unindented consequences?
Are there any Middle Ages techs that could realistically be pre-requisites for Republic?
Would everybody wait and just take Democracy rather than Republic if I did this?

Other options

Would it unbalance the game too much if I reduced the anarchy period for revolutions for non-Religious Civs? Say, taking the maximum down to 5 or 6 turns? Religious ones would still get cheaper culture buildings but perhaps that isn't enough to make that trait devalued? I think shorter anarchy would definitely make players consider switching to other government types both before and after Republic came onto the menu.

Is there anything in the Government tab that I should tweak? I was thinking of the following options - none of which I think would match historical reality?:
- making you unable to rush production in Republic
- making workers more productive in Monarchy / Feudalism
- making one out of Monarchy or Feudalism only have 'nuisance' corruption, like Republic (probably make Monarchy less corrupt and drop the war weariness from Feudalism, purely for a game balance perspective).

I think even some of the above changes would make Democracy more viable relative to Republic, so maybe no changes are required for Democracy?

I have no idea how to make Fascism more viable compared to Communism or Republic, as I've never gone fascist. So I'm all ears on that one.

 

[justanick]

Would it unbalance the game too much if I reduced the anarchy period for revolutions for non-Religious Civs?

How would you do that? The only way i can think of is to make every civ religious.


Republic could have slightly higher corruption and a lower free unit support. Say 2/2/2 instead of 1/3/4.
Monarchy could have lower corruption and also a mitigated free unit support. Say 3/4/5 instead of 2/4/8.
Feudalism could have communal corruption for larger empires.
Democracy could have regular WW instead of the one that can send you into anarchy.
Fascism could lose the penalties specific to this kind of government.
Anarchy could lose the despotism penalty and gain 3 military police to mitigate the cost of anarchy.

The techs for Democracy, Communism and Fascism could be required for other advances and entering the next era.

Edit: Added some thoughts on Anarchy and Democracy.

 

[Fergei]

Sorry, I didnt realise that anarchy duration was hard coded for some reason. Also you can't amend any of the detrimental impacts of anarchy (e.g. no production or teching)? So bang goes those options unless anyone can suggest any way of interfering with anarchy settings in any way (other than making anyone religious, which I wouldn't want to do).

I like the Feudalism / communal corruption suggestion and lowering Monarchy corruption. It is a complete double whammy that Republic gets a commerce bonus AND lower corruption.

If Republic has worse corruption would anyone (not religious) ever take it instead of pushing for Democracy? I think your suggestion of lowering unit support for Republic might work better.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Despotism is among the worst governments, because of the ceiling for commerce and production. Average players will want to get out of despotism as soon as they can. You may be onto something by making Feudalism available in the Ancient Age (with a different prerequisite) as an alternative. Improving its corruption model -- which would last the whole game -- would make it more attractive as something to switch out of despo into.
Among the aspects that makes republic attractive is that wonderful commerce bonus. Extra commerce can fuel the economy to compensate for the reduced unit support. Worsening its corruption and lowering its unit support as justanick proposes would consume some of that extra commerce, making its harder to grow a powerhouse economy.

I'm not sure that many buffs to Middle Age or Industrial Age governments would make it worthwhile to wait that long to switch out of despotism. To make Democracy, Communism, or Fascism worthwhile for a second switch, they would need to really boost the late-game play.

 

[Lanzelot]

Would it unbalance the game too much if I reduced the anarchy period for revolutions for non-Religious Civs?

How would you do that? The only way i can think of is to make every civ religious.

I'm not completely sure, but isn't the OCN one factor that contributes to the length of the anarchy period? And I think, the OCN can be modified somewhere in a config file or in the Editor? So perhaps by setting the OCN to some insane number like 1000, one can dial down the anarchy period? Or perhaps OCN = 1 would do the trick?! Of course we would have side-effects...

I think even some of the above changes would make Democracy more viable relative to Republic, so maybe no changes are required for Democracy?

To make Democracy, Communism, or Fascism worthwhile for a second switch, they would need to really boost the late-game play.

Exactly. In my opinion, the "problem" with the later government types is, that they don't really add that much of an advantage to the game compared to the earlier ones. If you would boost the later ones with some "real" benefits, so that they might be beneficial despite another anarchy period, it would add another difficult "strategic decision" to the game and therefore make it more interesting: "in my current situation and with regards to the VC I'm shooting for, would witching to X pay off big time, or only slow me down?" You would carefully have to weigh the costs (expenses to get the necessary tech plus anarchy period) against the expected benefits, and then decide what's best for the game at hand. In that case we would not need to mess with the length of the anarchy period.

Take Democracy as an example: you have to research two extra optional techs otherwise not needed, and then what do you get? Not a government that provides you any benefits compared to the one you already have (Republic), but quite to the contrary, a government that's even worse than the one you already got...! (In my opinion, the developers goofed up big time here... Democracy is the biggest design error of the entire Civ3 game... )
Because what are the differences, when you compare Republic with Democracy? The disadvantages of Democracy are very painful:

• insanely high war weariness, even leading up to revolt and another anarchy period, at a time you need it the least (in the middle of a difficult war)... (And whether you get into a war or not, is sometimes not under your control, considering the paranoid AI that likes to sneak attack you, even when best friends and "gracious"!)
  
• unit support costs you an arm and a leg

On the other hand, the advantages of Democracy are negligible at the time you are able to get that gov:

• worker speed is increase by 50% -- at that late a time, I usually have so many workers and slaves at my disposal, that worker speed doesn't matter at all. Every important tile is already improved, and railways are still far ahead.
• corruption is slightly lower than in Republic. -- But again not enough to really make a difference.

For me, to make me even think about Democracy, the disadvantages (WW and unit support) would have to be eliminated, and additionally some real benefit would have to be added, for example 2 extra commerce per tile, compared to the 1 extra commerce you get in Republic.

 

[tjs282]

Also you can't amend any of the detrimental impacts of anarchy (e.g. no production or teching)?

Yes, you can change the settings for Anarchy, e.g. you can reduce the corruption level from "Catastrophic" to "Rampant" (same as in Despotism).

You might also want to have a look at some of the suggestions which @justanick already made in a similar thread that I started a couple of years back:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-would-you-nerf-republic.627434/

Or this one which @md4 started more recently

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rebalance-mod-governments.658933/#post-15789397

 

[need my speed]

My random thoughts on how to redesign the governments, now that I am thinking about it:

Republic:
Removes the Despotism penalty
Nuisance corruption
Good Worker efficiency (3)
Low unit support (1/2/3, 2 cost per unit?)
Low war weariness
1 military police
Hurries production with population

Monarchy:
Removes the Despotism penalty
Nuisance corruption
Low Worker efficiency (2)
Good unit support (2/4/8, 1 cost per unit?)
No war weariness
3 military police
Hurries production with population

As you can see, I would remove the Commerce bonus from Republic, and indirectly partially compensate for this with increased Worker efficiency, which will eventually lead to more commerce (and food, and production). But this takes time to set up, and you won't be able to afford a large army without having your infrastructure set up. I think having 1 military police instead of 0 would be a fitting change though, otherwise Monarchy would clearly be the superior choice.

Feudalism:
Removes the Despotism penalty
Problematic corruption
Good Worker efficiency (3)
Good unit support (3/5/6, 1 cost per unit?)
No war weariness
2 military police
Hurries production with population

Feudalism is still a niche case, but I can imagine this being used in case you got a bad start, have a small empire, and need to expand. The corruption is higher, and the unit support of Metropolises is worse than that of a Monarchy (plus, 2 military police instead of 3, to further incentivise smaller empires), but it largely combines the positives of a Republic and a Monarchy, so it is probably a superior choice to both. However - it would require a second round of Anarchy, or waiting (too) long with switching to a new government - but if you have a small empire, the second round of Anarchy might be worth it. If you don't think it is - maybe hurrying production with gold would make it more attractive?

Democracy:
Removes the Despotism penalty and further increases commerce
Nuisance corruption
Good Worker efficiency (3)
Low unit support (2/3/4, 2 cost per unit?)
High war weariness
0 military police
Hurries production with gold
Pays no maintenance for city improvements

Communism:
Removes the Despotism penalty
Communal corruption
Low Worker efficiency (2)
Good unit support (6/7/8, 1 cost per unit?)
No war weariness
4 military police
Hurries production with gold

Both of these are clearly upgrades over Republic and Monarchy. One gets the commerce bonus per tile and pays no maintenance for city improvements (plus slightly more unit support), allowing for massive amounts of commerce, and the other gets communal corruption (and a slightly larger increase in unit support, plus an increase in military police), allowing for war with cities conquered faraway still being productive. Both can hurry production with gold, which is also an improvement in my opinion. This should make a player eager to reach one of these two governments and endure multiple turns of anarchy. To further enable that:

Anarchy:
3 military police

That leaves us with Fascism.

Fascism:
Removes the Despotism penalty
Rampant corruption
Good Worker efficiency (3)
All unit support free
No war weariness
4 military police
Hurries production with gold
Xenophobic and forced resettlement; you will lose population upon switching, and you won't gain culture in cities unless your culture holds the majority.

Objectively the best option (if it has 'no corruption', as I first conceptualised), except for the last points. But would they make you choose Communism over Fascism, I wonder? Or even over Democracy, given that 'no corruption' would be better than 'increased commerce' for larger empire. Based upon these thoughts, I added the 'do not pay maintenance for city improvements' to Democracy, so that Democracy is the superior 'peaceful empire building' option, and reverted 'no corruption' to '', so that Communism is the superior 'warlike empire building option'. Fascism, then is the superior 'warlike conquest' option; not building an empire, because you're not getting much out of your empire what with the corruption and the last points, but for pure conquest it'd work best. But these are just my thoughts from this night, I have never played with these settings.

 

[Fergei]

Thank you all. I don't know how I missed the recent thread. Lots of food for thought. I hadn't considered how it might totally mess with AI performance if they retain their Republic addiction and it gets downgraded.

I'll look into the optimum city number. If it can be done in the editor I'll give it a crack. If it takes something more advanced than that I'll raise the white flag on the anarchy issue. I thought you had zero production and neutral gold balance through anarchy, so the corruption tweaks have no impact?

I also like the notion of mentally splitting the Governments into late game versus early game, and creating sizeable incentives for a late game switch (although this may overpower the religious trait). So if I boost Monarchy and Feudalism then I must also boost fascism. This approach may also mean that corruption levels are the key differentiator/incentive between early game and late game governments, given that we can assume corruption becomes more of an issue with larger, later game empires.

As an early game government I also think reducing worker efficiency for Republic to 50% could make people consider Monarchy and Feudalism more, and see more merit in a switch to Democracy (if combined with a financial hit to Republic). I am going to work on the theory that in govts with no workers rights, workers/slaves can be worked harder.

The AI will probably become confused and make inappropriate choices, but at least I'll have had fun tinkering in the meantime!

 

[tjs282]

My random thoughts on how to redesign the governments, now that I am thinking about it:

One thing you haven't mentioned at all in your list is the rushing method for each gov. In the epic game:

Whip-rushing: Despot, Feud, Commie, Fascism
Cash-rushing: Rep, Mon, Demo
No rushing: Anarchy

It should be noted that an AI-Civs' late-game tendency to go Fascist and whip its population to death -- especially when losing wars -- tends to hasten its demise. This may have been intentional on the part of Firaxis, but may also not be optimal.

So you may also want to consider changing those, e.g. making Monarchy and Republic (continue to) use the whip (I'm thinking of Greece, Rome and Egypt, which continued to rely on slavery, after all), but later-game govs use gold.

 

[justanick]

unit support costs you an arm and a leg

Unless of course your army is really big. Which happened to me in a PBEM when i was playing India. Most surprisingly i did not only save some bucks on unit support but also avoided war weariness most of the time despite some serios losses in battle.

Reducing the WW to the level of Republic could help. Being forced into anarchy sucks.

Another way to incentive change could be to reduce the cost of anarchy. The despotism penalty could be removed and say 3 military police be added. Managing happiness during anarchy is a relevant concern. If at least food is produced properly during anarchy, the pain of anarchy would be lower.

 

[md4]

The AI will probably become confused and make inappropriate choices, but at least I'll have had fun tinkering in the meantime!

Based on my own experiences, this is practically guaranteed. See below:

Or this one which @md4 started more recently

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rebalance-mod-governments.658933/#post-15789397

After suspecting that my changes were bankrupting AI civs (a string of games where they routinely had 0 gold at pretty much all times and their industrial era tech stagnation was almost 100%) I walked back on a lot of the changes I'd made, leaving it far closer to default settings. I will likely update that post in the next day or so, but to summarise:

• Republic gets High War Weariness and Problematic Corruption. I have confirmed that early era wars are very unpleasant, so a conquest game is definitely better served by going the Monarchy/Feudalism route.
  
• Feudalism is mostly the same as I made it in the original version of the mod, and Monarchy is slightly more optimised to mostly smaller cities in terms of upkeep.
• No other major deviations from vanilla settings.

It was a lesson in not getting drunk on editor powers, and only changing what you really have to and nothing else.

 

[need my speed]

One thing you haven't mentioned at all in your list is the rushing method for each gov. In the epic game:

Whip-rushing: Despot, Feud, Commie, Fascism
Cash-rushing: Rep, Mon, Demo
No rushing: Anarchy

It should be noted that an AI-Civs' late-game tendency to go Fascist and whip its population to death -- especially when losing wars -- tends to hasten its demise. This may have been intentional on the part of Firaxis, but may also not be optimal.

So you may also want to consider changing those, e.g. making Monarchy and Republic (continue to) use the whip (I'm thinking of Greece, Rome and Egypt, which continued to rely on slavery, after all), but later-game govs use gold.

Yep, all very true points, I agree with all of that. I changed my post a bit.

I also agree with allowing military police for anarchy. It makes sense both theoretically and functionally.

 

[md4]

@need my speed:
I like the idea of Republic & Monarchy being more balanced, save for worker efficiency versus military support. I ran your numbers through a spreadsheet I made for my own tweaks, and here's how they stack up for upkeep (I chose 1 city & 8 towns to represent a still fairly undeveloped empire):


Re: Feudalism, I'm still not sure what role this government has, either in the default settings or with youru changes. You've balanced it, but it still seens objectively worse than Monarchy and Republic, with the increased corruption (I went the other way, minimising corruption with each era so they scaled with your empire's development).

Why low Worker Efficiency for Communism? One thing Communist governments could do was rapidly bash out infrastructure. Meanwhile, in the West, the defining image of worker efficiency seems to be road work signs for weeks on end without a single worker in sight. Plus, with Democracy now having Low weariness (does any government have High?), and the only government with the trade bonus, it seems way too strong compared to any alternative.

 

[need my speed]

Looking at your spreadsheet, that seems to be good, not? Republic pays more in upkeep costs than Monarchy - so a Monarchy can do well for you if you take your army to conquer, while with a Republic, you can quickly get irrigation, mines, and roads up in your territory.

Feudalism is better than Republic and Monarchy for smaller civilisations, but worse for larger ones because of the corruption. It could be used as a catch-up government for those who didn't do well in the Ancient Age, to later on switch to a better government. That is my reasoning at least.

I do not relate to what you write on Worker efficiency in the west, but, I live in the Netherlands, and I suppose it is likely that you live in the USA (by virtue of this being the internet ), where I know infrastructure is much worse. I suppose Communism could have a high Worker efficiency too, to better contrast it with Fascism (empire-building through conquest versus wanton conquest) - but did you read my post after I edited it? I changed some things, such as changing Democracy's war weariness to 'High', probably just as you wrote your post. 'Communal corruption' is very, very good, wouldn't you say (I largely play gigantic maps and play on until I have conquered literally everyone, so maybe I am biased in that sense)?

 

[md4]

Yes, the graph looked fine to me too, but sometimes the discrepency might be more or less than what you expected. Always good to run some scenarios.

I'm not sure that Feudalism is as good as you believe it to be: you get 1 extra unit supported per city (you won't have any metros until Sanitation), fewer military police and greater corruption, meaning less gold overall and possibly more of it going to luxuries on the slider. All you get is the worker bonus, which, for its intended purpose for smaller empires, doesn't net all that much (IMO you need worker efficiency for improving large territories, especially mid/late game when your cities have grown to use most/all tiles around them).

I'm still not sure about Fascism having rampant corruption. The outer cities (the ones you are capturing) are not going to be productive at all, making it hard to build/rush walls, barracks, replacement units. What if you went the other way and set low corruption but add back the despotism penalty to compensate? The end result will be that you can put newly captured cities to work, but there will likely be starvations across your empire as everything is diverted to the military. You'd switch to a wartime economy to make up for the shields lost to DP, but the low waste means our outer cities are productive so reinforcements don't have to come from the core. Food for thought, maybe.

I did see the updates after I posted, and I noticed that Democracy now has the Trade Bonus, plus pays no maintenance for city improvements. What's the motivation there, as that seems hugely unbalanced.

 

[Fergei]

Thanks again for everyone's thoughts. I've implemented changes and done unscientific tests of them for them up until the advent of Democracy. No matter how juicy I made Feudalism (within reason), I couldn't get Civs to switch to it if it appeared in game after Monarchy. So I either had to beef it up massively OR bring it forward in the science tree. In the end I did the latter and made it accessible with Code of Laws (probably the most relevant Tech, outside of Feudalism). I also made changes to Anarchy which seem to create big differences in AI willingness to have a revolution.

I'll break down in more detail at the end of the post for anyone with an interest, but in general terms...

Testing Experience
From testing about a dozen times on a small world map, with the same 8 Civs every time it threw up something more in keeping with what I'd like to see from the game.

- Civs usually accessing Feudalism first, but not always choosing to leave Despotism despite having the tech. Roughly 25-60% of Civs would switch to Feudalism in any given game.
- Civs like Japan (which favours Feudalism) and Aztecs (which does not) both loved picking Feudalism.
- Arabia never ever picked it and waits until Monarchy.
- Civs with Feudalism could carry out extended successful military campaigns, but would quickly try to change government if they started losing.
- Civs that were Republic would occasionally revert to Monarchy if it was caught up in a war, but would never revert to Feudalism in these circumstances.
- about half of those that reach Feudalism will change to Monarchy, but the other half will wait for the Republic.
- a higher proportion of Civs switching to Democracy than I'd expect (I didn't test long enough to see if they would then revert to Monarchy rather than Republic during wartime).
- generally a lot more revolutions going on than is usually the case in my experience, regardless of whether or not the Civ had a the Religion trait (see Arabs above, Religious but would always ignore Feudalism).

Changes made

Anarchy
- Corruption reduced to Rampant, so you still make coin and can tech rather than it being a horrible limbo world where nothing can be done. Anarchy is still not somewhere you want to be though, so the Relgious trait retains value.
- Capped Tech at 5 (so you can only spend a max of 50% on tech whilst in anarchy)
- Introduced maintenance and Unit costs, but was generous with Free Units per city etc (8 per settlement).

Despotism
- Reduced corruption to 'Problematic', no other changes. Appears to result in a small number of Civs holding on to Despotism for longer and ignoring the upgrade options to Feudalism and even Monarchy for a time.
- holds value longer in starts where fresh water is hard to come by.

Feudalism
- becomes available with Code of Laws, so in most instances will appear before Monarchy.
- corruption changed to communal to reflect the localism of the tech type.
- useful for infinite city sprawl type early games with forced labour / slaving and where fresh water is available
- loses value sharply as your empire starts to consist of cities.

Monarch
- reduced corruption to Nuisance. Trying to make this a viable Government for war torn democracies to revert to prior to arrival of Communism and Fascism.
- worker rate upgraded to 3 to reflect tyranny
- reduced unit support for Metropolis, to make a clear benefit for Communism and Fascism as late game techs.

Republic
- greatly extended time to gain Philosophy and Republic, and made Monarchy a pre-requisite. There shalt be no 'Republic slingshot' in 2000BC!
- reduced worker rate to 1 to encourage holding on to earlier governments to improve roads and irrigation prior to changing.
- raised unit cost to 2 and reduced support for 1, 2, 3
- no other changes for fear of bankrupting AIs. As it stands they appear to have adequate gold with these changes.

Democracy
- reduced worker rate to 2
- no other changes. Hoped that the gentle nerfs to unit cost and worker rate for Republic will be enough to give AI and players more consideration to switch to Democracy, without overpowering it.

Communism
- raised military police limit to 6.
- insufficient testing

Fascism
- raised military police limit to 6.
- insufficient testing

 

[Civinator]

Governments in my eyes are the most difficult topic in modding Civ 3.

In my eyes after the flag 'tile penalty' the flag 'xenophobic' is the most severe limitation that can be used against a government. Xenophobic limits the growth of captured cities massively. So in my eyes one of the biggest mistakes done by Firaxis considering governments, is to give a government, that should be aimed for warmongers (like Fascism), the flag 'Xenophobic' that massively reduces the use of captured cities and slows down the 'Blitzkriegs' under such a government.

On the other side this limitation should never be forgotten, when reflecting about how to nerf the current government 'Republic' or to influence the AI decision between two forms of government. To achieve such a 'reverse' effect of that flag, may be you could rename 'Xenophic' to 'only peaceful growth' (or something sounding better). If you give the government 'Republic' the flag 'only peaceful growth', this would limit the expansion of that civ by conquered cities.

...only some thoughts.

 

[tjs282]

Xenophobic limits the growth of captured cities massively.

I was under the impression that the 'Xenophobic' government-flag (only) limited a town's Cultural growth (until >50% of the town's citizens have your Civ's nationality, no Culture can be accumulated).

Are you saying that it limits population growth as well/instead?

 

[Civinator]

I was under the impression that the 'Xenophobic' government-flag (only) limited a town's Cultural growth (until >50% of the town's citizens have your Civ's nationality, no Culture can be accumulated).

Are you saying that it limits population growth as well/instead?

The limitation of cultural growth in conquered cities has the consequence that the fat cross of those cities cannot be reached until that city can break that barrier (when the conquered city is loosing all its culture as it is in the standard settings when starting a game). Only the tiles in the 'small cross' can be worked by citizens. The workable tiles of a city are only the tiles of city size 1, even when the city has a much bigger population. This is a severe limitation for conquered cities, especially in produced food, shields and commerce and additionally the missing 'fat cross' slows down the progress of any 'Blitzkrieg' as even when you have conquered a big city, one tile behind the conquered city you have to continue your war through enemy territory without the road bonus.

Even cultural bombing in mods like CCM is not working in that situation for a civ with the 'Xenophobic' flag.

 

[Fergei]

It sounds like if we want alternatives to Communism and Democracy / Republic to be viable late game we could have Fascism have only one of the bad things (Forced Resettlement & Xenophobia), and maybe another aggressive government type as a further option. For example:

Fascism - keep the same but remove Forced Resettlement.

Option 1 (Fundamentalism or Strongman Oligarchy) - Forced resettlement, but not xenophobia. More unit upkeep and/or corruption than Fascism.

I'm going to end up having more governments than techs at this rate!