Minimal Histographic Variant

[Quintillus]

I agree with vorlon_mi and Lanzelot that this could be a fun challenge, but disabling victory conditions would drain it of most of the fun for me. Space Race in particular would add to the drama near the end.

I think this also would play differently based on map size, as well as the obvious difficulty level. On a Tiny map, it would be relatively easy to split the world up 50:50. On a Huge map and easy difficulty, you would likely have to conquer all but one AI and then let whoever's left catch up, by either razing or abandoning cities, and also having to account for the AI likely not developing their corrupt cities very well. On a Huge map and high difficulty, assuming you aren't a HOF-caliber player, it could be a real challenge remaining the top dog, but not too much, and sufficiently able to react if an AI starts gaining the lead by taking land from another AI - a "runaway AI". The smart money might say to try to make it a 2-civ game anyway, but one could argue that the challenge might be even more interesting if a condition were added such as, "there must be at least 5 civilizations with at least 5 cities apiece still in existence in 2050 AD". Vary it based on the size of the map, but keeping a 20:20:20:20:20 balance would add significantly to the challenge versus a 50:50 balance, I'd wager.

 

[jarred!]

I like this idea. I have an attempt going, but I haven't been playing lately so I'm a bit rusty. I started a large monarch level game as the Iroquois on a pangaea vs 6 opponents. My first thought is that it would be easier to begin with more opponents, probably max opponents, to improve resource distribution and increase player to AI trading (AI needs to be given luxes). Opponents are Zulu, Mongol, Japan, Arab, (China), (Persia). I haven't met the last two but I think that's what I chose. No real reasoning besides no alphabet so I had an easy go at getting philosphy first.

First pic is BCE 1500, the turn I got The Slingshot. I waited a bit to revolt since I was still a fairly small civ.


And here's where I am now, the turn after becoming a republic.


Zulu are to the east across a nice high latitude grassland. Japan is south of them. Arabs to my south in jungle and marsh. Mongols way off to the southwest met by boat.
This was the third start I rolled, 5 cows is nice but only nearby lux is that Ivory.

 

[Lanzelot]

I waited a bit to revolt since I was still a fairly small civ.

The smaller, the better...: makes the Anarchy period shorter and helps you to grow bigger faster!

 

[jarred!]

Isn't anarchy time random?

 

[tjs282]

Isn't anarchy time random?

Yes, but it's weighted by Civ-size. That's why a late-game revolution is such a bad idea for a non-Religious tribe, because by that point, your Civ is likely large enough that you're almost certainly going to draw the maximum 9 turns.

 

[Spoonwood]

That's why a late-game revolution is such a bad idea for a non-Religious tribe, because by that point, your Civ is likely large enough that you're almost certainly going to draw the maximum 9 turns.

Exceptions include playing some limited city game, OCC, 5CC, 10CC I suppose. Also, if you play a high level spaceship and even more so diplomatic, most of your research still likely comes from your core, and war, though it can have benefits, can result in war weariness or a slower overall tech pace. Also, though war can get your tech rate up later, infrastructure can have more immediate benefits. Though your city might have a maketplace, library, and university in the industrial era with both Newton's and Cope's completed, a cathedral for a party day might net more beakers earlier than capturing and developing a new town (results in slower research possibly due to population loss from a settler) or until there's serious benefit from specialist farms OR on a huge map where you might need serious infrastructure like a courthouse, library, and more desired (police station) before captured territory due to the hard coded maximum city limit as a limitation on specialist farm territory.

I think both of my old HoF standard Deity spaceship games, and all of my diplomatic games had no city captures by me. I only had larger cities than when I started a Republic I think when I finished.

So, I guess my question is... does population size matter for the revolution length? Or is it number of tiles for the domination limit? Or the percentage of tiles of the domination limit?

 

[jarred!]

Catt had a thread on Apolyton that addressed this question,
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63506



So with a OCC you should see 1-5 turns. If you revolted on the turn you got the tech, in response to a dialog, and actually spent a full round in anarchy, that would be '2' turns. Revolting via popup dialog would seem like 0-4 turns.

I drew '1' from a 2CC game recently and was quite pleased

Charis

The total length of the anarchy is composed of two separate numbers. The first is a random number between 1 - 5; and the second is between 0 - 3 and depends upon the number of cities in your empire. The combination of the two numbers is the amount of turns in anarchy, meaning a non-religious civ can experience anything from 1 to 8 turns of anarchy at each government switch.

BTW, based on personal play experience, it seems pretty clear to me that the "number of cities" factor is not a fixed number, but rather a variable that moves with either map size or OCN in each given game -- in other words an empire of 15 cities would generate a longer anarchy period for the 0-3 component of the formula on a tiny map than it would on a huge map.

The link to this info is a post by Soren Johnson at Apolyton and can be found here.

These are pre-C3C.

 

[Lanzelot]

I think the only change introduced for C3C is, that instead of a number between 1 and 8, you now get a number between 2 and 9. (This was done to address the "exploit", which is possible in Vanilla and PTW, that if you are religious and revolt interturn upon discovery of the government tech, you basically get an anarchy period of length 0. Or rather "0.5"... In C3C as a religious civ you now get 1.5, when revolting interturn, and 2, when revolting "the ordinary way".)

Of course they introduced a new bug when doing this for C3C... justanick brought this to my attention over on the German civ forum:
On Sid level, any AI can revolt with only one turn of anarchy. That is part of the Sid level mechanism. But for religious civs, which have a hard-coded anarchy length of 2 instead of the probability based length, they forgot to adjust this. So a religious Sid level AI still gets its 2 turns of anarchy, while all the other AIs get only 1 turn...

 

[justanick]

On Sid level, any AI can revolt with only one turn of anarchy.

It is one in the editor, which means zero.

Have you ever seen a nonreligious Sid-AI in anarchy? As i recall it they can have a different government type within the same turn. It should be easy to check by gifting the needed tech.

Yes, but it's weighted by Civ-size. That's why a late-game revolution is such a bad idea for a non-Religious tribe, because by that point, your Civ is likely large enough that you're almost certainly going to draw the maximum 9 turns.

The chance for that is only 1/5=20%.

 

[Spoonwood]

Have you ever seen a nonreligious Sid-AI in anarchy?

Nope. I have checked their government a handful of times and never seen Anarchy. Not sure I checked in the case of gifting The Republic, which I did do a handful of times. I completely believe you are correct that it's zero anarchy period for Sid AIs in effect. But, Lanzelot's comment could be useful, that could be a bug. The design of the game from what I gathered from listening to Soren Johnson leads me to believe that they would also be likely to miss such a bug, since the AIs are there for the human player's experience, not for some sort of plan for their behavior.

 

[Spoonwood]

Have you ever seen a nonreligious Sid-AI in anarchy?

Nope. I have checked their government a handful of times and never seen Anarchy. Not sure I checked in the case of gifting The Republic, which I did do a handful of times. I completely believe you are correct that it's zero anarchy period for Sid AIs in effect. But, Lanzelot's comment could be useful, that could be a bug. The design of the game from what I gathered from listening to Soren Johnson leads me to believe that they would also be likely to miss such a bug, since the AIs are there for the human player's experience, not for some sort of plan for their behavior.

 

[Lanzelot]

It is one in the editor, which means zero.

Well, that's even better then: non-religious Sid AIs get zero turns of anarchy, while religious ones get 2 turns of anarchy...
(The religious civs must really be pissed... )