[NFP] Monopolies and Corporations Game Mode Discussion Thread

[GinandTonic]

It's based on total number of luxuries? I thought it was total number improved by civs. I had 9 improved, nobody else had any. Well, that would explain it, since I can see at least 9 more on the map that I don't control.

Two improved by you for an industry. Three improved by you for a corp. > 60% of total instances controlled (improved and owned or city state owned) for monopoly. Hit mercantilism and the resources tab will show you a %.

Sea resources are a bit weird since there are many, well spread, instances. Monopolies work multiplied by the number of a resource, but only on civs without access to that resource. So a sea resource monopoly will have a crushing multiplier applied to fewer civs. If you secure the multiplier it's probably game done.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Although .. Hero Anansi can alleviate a fair chunk (6 per lifetime cycle) of these Sea Luxury numbers (Amber+Turtles+Perls too) & thus, nearly break up the multipliers within rational limits when targeting specific types. Within four Eras.. he would likely cut Whales in half+ (of the average counts on Standard/Archipelago maps) for example. Sooooo, we can ultimately prevent at least ONE Monopoly gambit loophole.
Many others can be submitted to such "calculated" control hegemony -- as long as the Worldwide Anti-Fog reveals the essential DATA (MoreLenses Mod comes handy to discover facts rapidly!).. which normally happens soon after Industrial or early Modern Eras. Keep watch on Resource Report(s) and you'll soon realize the weird Tourism/Cultural flaw we hate so much becomes a challenge strategy all by itself. Another mod that helps is "Closed Country", btw.

Further more .. Hero Maui can generate some random extra Luxury or Bonus tiles too!

Two major twists of events for sure.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

recently I've been winning games 2/3 of the way through.
I might be turning this feature off, or disabling all victories except for high score.

 

[blackbutterfly]

I played a game in the last couple of days that wouldn't allow me to create an industry on Turtles.

Though this was on a map mod of mine (Scrambled Australia) that spawned like 70+ nodes of turtles! The map does have water luxuries setting to high (same as Outback Tycoon scenario map which is where it was lifted from originally).

Further, on this standard sized map, I won a diplomatic victory instead of the obligatory culture victory guaranteed when playing M&C. IDK if it had anything to do with the Turtles bug.

Anyone notice anything off with industries on water luxuries (pearls, whales, turtles)?

 

[Abaxial]

In my last game, for the first time I saw an AI get a monopoly. Japan managed 3/5 gypsum. It only developed one gypsum mine, but it was suzerain of Jerusalem, which had two gypsum deposits in its territory.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

They fixed the broken Monopoly Tourism in the latest patch!

 

[Chocolate Pi]

It seems they merely lowered the bonus from 5% * resources * other civs to 3% * resources * other civs.

The mode is still unplayable with a large number of civs.

 

[walkerjks]

It seems they merely lowered the bonus from 5% * resources * other civs to 3% * resources * other civs.

The mode is still unplayable with a large number of civs.

I'm not convinced it's that high. I'm sitting on a monopoly with 2 resources (presumably 2/3 as I can see the 3rd) and 22% bonus on a huge map (11 opponents). That would imply 1% resources * opponents without resource. So maybe they cut it 80% from what it was? Still too high, but not as outrageous.

 

[fy00sh]

So now that I'm finally actually playing with this mode, I've realized that there's actually another design for a fishing boats industry, which makes sense since the image I got when the mode first came out showed industrial era-style fishing boats. A pre-industrial fishing industry uses 4 sized-up fishing boats, which is interesting since after industrialization, an industry uses 3 boast and a corporation uses 4 boats. Caught me off guard when I built it!

Spoiler Pre-Industrial Whaling Industry :

 

[Aurelesk]

[Tourism boost] = 5% × [Number of enemy Civilization not exploiting the ressource] × [Number of Monopolies] × [modifier]

The formula is fixed and changed:

• FIX: The game takes the number of luxuries you control under a monopoly, instead of taking the number of monopolies and (sometimes) multipliying to the number of (first?) luxury you control.
• CHANGE: The value is lowered from 5% to 3%.

The new formula seems to be:
[Tourism boost] = 3% × [Number of enemy Civilization not exploiting the ressource] × [Number of ressources under a monopoly]


From that game, I went from +1890% to +864%, halving my Tourism modifier.

• 1890% = 5% × 3 × 14 × 9, because I have 14 monopolies and 9 Olives (doesn't make sense it scales with Olives? yeah you are right! but this is how it worked).
• 864% = 3% × 3 × 96, 96 which is the total amount of luxury I control (2 monopolies of sea luxuries of 14, 4 monopolies of australian luxuries of 9, 4 monopolies of african luxuries of vaalbaran luxuries of 4).

From a other game, I went from +2090% to... 4104%, doubling my Tourism modifier!

• 2090% = 5% × 19 × 22 × 1, (19 civilizations, 22 monopolies, scale on Truffles who exists only 1 time).
• 4104% = 3% × 19 × 72 = 4104% (19 civilizations, and 72 luxuries under monopolies: 4 of 5 lux, 4 of 4 lux, 8 of 3lux, 4 of 2 lux, and 4 of 1 lux).

The problem is the same from last time: the 3% shouldn't increase with the number of civilization. +25% from Open Borders isn't +250% when your are playing against 10 civilizations. It means that more players are around, more quickly you are going to win the Tourism victory.

Instead, they should give a flat modifier (25% × [percentage of monopoly?]), and apply it to every civilizations without the ressource. Sure, taking control of a continent is going to give you +100% to all civilizations. But right now, if you control a continent with 4 monopolies of 4 luxuries, you already have a +96% when facing 2 other players.

The drawback could be there would be no interest of taking over a monopoly over an abundant luxury ressources. You are right: taking over a small continent with few luxury ressources would give you +100%, so why bother to do it over a large continent or over sea luxuries? But they could also change how the Gold generation works to be more lucrative when taking over a monopoly from abundant luxury ressources.

 

[Shadowstrike]

The obvious solution is to eliminate the "number of enemy civilizations not exploiting the resource" modifier, since that tourism boost is applied to all civs.

Instead, the formula should be Base Percentage * Number of Resources, and then that applies only to civs that don't exploit the resource (in the same way that the other modifiers, like open borders, or trade route, only apply to the civs where you have those).

 

[FloodPlain]

I have a great merchant on an industry, (gems I think), but I can't make a corporation.

The game is telling that there is no industry! What is going on?

 

[walkerjks]

The formula is fixed and changed:

• FIX: The game takes the number of luxuries you control under a monopoly, instead of taking the number of monopolies and (sometimes) multipliying to the number of (first?) luxury you control.
• CHANGE: The value is lowered from 5% to 3%.

The new formula seems to be:
[Tourism boost] = 3% × [Number of enemy Civilization not exploiting the ressource] × [Number of ressources under a monopoly]

I should just stop tryijng to speculate what the real formula is, cuz I don't know. I know I got +22% in a huge (11 opponents game) with a 2/3 monopoly. THen I got a second 2/3 monopoly and it went to 44%. That all implies 1% * number of resources controlled * number of AI opponents without the resource.

Well, somewhere along the line, I got more resources, some of the 2/3 went to 3/3 and now I have the following:

2/3
3/3
3/3
3/3

And a +363% luxury resource monopoly bonus. Which matches the 3% bonus reported (11 resources * 3% * 11 opponents). But why the 22% and 44% earlier? I'm just very confused.

But not about the fact that they didn't reduce the bonus enough. At most, a single monopoly should be roughly +25% (regardless of number of opponents).

 

[kaspergm]

I don't know what the bonus I got was (where do I even see that number?), but I agree it's still (way) too high. I won a cultural victory in late modern era, which is a bit slower than it was before, but still seems completely unwarranted given I didn't even build any Theatre Squares until industrial era.

Oh yeah, and AI still doesn't improve their luxes, as also discussed in the other thread. I don't know if they have gotten marginally better, but I still had Persia with an unimproved Marble (the only one in his territory) when the game ended.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I just hope that FXS eventually exposes the parameters of the formula instead of having it hardcoded. So, even if they don't change anything themselves, we still can mod in the changes we want.

 

[Shadowstrike]

I just hope that FXS eventually exposes the parameters of the formula instead of having it hardcoded. So, even if they don't change anything themselves, we still can mod in the changes we want.

I don't understand why this wasn't the case originally, other than a programmer just wanted to wrap things up quickly to meet some deadlines. I've been playing with the mod that sets monopoly percentages at 100% just to keep the mechanics working without cultural victory coming super early. But it's really a case of "for want of a nail" - like this little thing really tarnishes the whole game mode (which is actually kind of a great concept).

 

[walkerjks]

Broken record, but I wish we had more visibility into the formula. This is all new Portugal content, so the formula did get tweaked.

5 opponents (6-armed snowflake map - naver played it and it feels like Portugal can abuse it - they can). Resource screen says none of the AIs have any of the resources I have (why not? they're still not improving stuff like they should? or maybe the resource screen is buggy).

Monopolies are:

2/2
2/2
3/3
3/3
3/3

That's easy enough for 13 * 3% * 5 for 195% bonus... except the culture victory screen says +165%. Why?

15 turns later I've gained a few more monopolies. Now we're at:

2/3 (with 1/3 by Teddy Roosevelt)
2/2
2/2
3/3
3/4
3/3
3/3
4/6
5/7

Whoo. That's a lot of monopolies.

I would expect based on the formula floating around to be 27 * 3% * 5 (minus a bit (just 3%) for Roosevelt having some Gypsum. I think that would be 405% minus some amount for Roosevelt. Culture victory screen says +369%.

We don't really know the formula (except, perhaps the top-line possible value) or whether the resources screen is bugged (I guess I can check that*) or whether the cultural victory screen is bugged (I can check that too, but it takes more work, so not right now) or what is going on.

Monopoly tourism is still way too much. 5% to 3% was a trivial nerf. Should be 1% or 0.5% or stop making the number of AI civs part of the equation. A good monopoly should individually be no more than +25% bonus to tourism (the equivalent of computers or the frickin' ecology card at the end of the civics tree. +x00% tourism bonuses at turn 100 is silly and breaks the game. But beyond the terrible formula, give us some visibility in what is really happening here.

*Checked AIs improving resources as it's a small map. Didn't see a single resource improved by city states or the AI. Says Teddy has 2 tobacco and 1 gypsum. He did settle on a gypsum, so that is explained. But not the 2 tobacco.

 

[Aurelesk]

That's easy enough for 13 * 3% * 5 for 195% bonus... except the culture victory screen says +165%. Why?

I don't know. It works with 11 ressources × 3% × 5 civilizations = 165%. Are you sure you have 13 ressources that time and do not misscounted? Or did you count unique luxury ressources like Cosmetics or Jeans?

I would expect based on the formula floating around to be 27 * 3% * 5 (minus a bit (just 3%) for Roosevelt having some Gypsum. I think that would be 405% minus some amount for Roosevelt. Culture victory screen says +369%.

I am assuming the formula should be 2 × 3% × 4 for Gypsum, so 24%. Which means it remains 345% with the other ressources, that is 23 × 3% × 5. Once again, there is a shortage of 2 ressources, like the previous example.

In both example, the formula works fine if you have 11 ressources, and 23 ressources + 2 Gypsum. There is a monopoly of 2 ressources that the game seems to not process. Can you do some testing and see which one it is? If not, can you share the savefiles? I will do some testing when I have time.

Monopoly tourism is still way too much. 5% to 3% was a trivial nerf. Should be 1% or 0.5% or stop making the number of AI civs part of the equation.

Oh I agree: the percentage shouldn't increase by the number of competiting civilizations. Instead, the Tourism should be 10% per monopoly and 25% for full monopoly applied only to civilization without the ressource. In your case, you will have 125% Tourism instead of 165% in your first example (not great change), and 165% Tourism instead of 345% Tourism (and 155% against Teddy).

 

[Abaxial]

You have to consider the following variables:

Map size
% of map that is land
Number of players
Sparse/abundant resources

A formula that works well for one combination may not work for another. If you reduce the numbers too much then monopolies may become insignificant in some cases. Hence there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

 

[Myomoto]

I think the biggest problem right now is the AI not improving their luxuries. This makes them incredibly susceptible to monopolies. If the AI was behaving rationally I don't think the monopoly bonuses would be too outrageous, unless you thought very hard to really completely corner the market on one specific resource - at which point you deserve the reward.