[C3C] Removing Standard Trade Bonus

[CivFan94]

Hello CivFanatics,
Long time reader, first time poster. Sorry if i missplaced forum for this thread.
After reading almost every topic about goverments, dowloading multiple mods and checking their goverment stats I’ve came to the decision to not use Standard Trade Bonus for goverments. You may ask why, because I’ve came to the conclusion that A.I. will (almost) always chose goverments with that setting turned on in peace times. This leads to two problems I’m facing with. 1st too fast research in AA and MA. 2nd collapsing in research when they change to war goverments. So, I’m asking for help how to balance goverments without Standard Trade Bonus usage especially since barrack building types will only be allowed for use in war goverments. Sorry for my english, it is not my native language.

Best of,

Civ3Fan94

 

[Bluemofia]

What you want to think about, is why people would choose peace time governments: They are planning on growing economically, in order to maximize productivity/commercial/scientific growth. War time governments are cashing in on said production/commerce to build military units to defeat their enemies, so their strategy revolves around building and maintaining military units, or other war-fighting modifiers.

That being said, Trade Bonus is a very strong bonus, because they provide a +1 bonus to tiles generating at least 1 commerce. This leads to a 100% commerce bonus at minimum (if triggered, but more often 50%-33%), which for bonuses, is pretty big. This is why Democracy, in the base game, tends to come late, because having that commerce boost early on allows you to reinvest it into tech early on, leading to faster than expected tech rate, especially since the base game you are in Despotism for some time, which has a Tile Penalty, which means you lose 1 shield/commerce in tiles producing 3 or more.

One easy way to reduce the effect of the Trade Bonus, but still have the increased commerce generation, is to use a government specific Bank/Stock Market equivalent to generate +50% Tax. This requires a shield investment before they can utilize it, and thus an opportunity cost. More if the improvement is expensive, more if it has prerequisites, and more if they have maintenance costs. The benefit also does not trigger immediately, so it takes time to build the improvements for it to take effect. Furthermore, the +50% only increases the amount spent going to the treasury, and if you are running 100% science, or 50% science 50% luxury spending, it provides zero benefits.

Other ways to balance it can be to utilize the other desirable traits for a peacetime government. Increased Worker work speed allows improvements to be built faster, although it's more useful in the mid game where your economy is large enough to have a large stockpile of workers, and less in the late game where most tile improvements are already built. Increased Assimilation rate is lesser used, but can be useful after finishing a war to convert more citizens to your nationality, and thus making conquered cities productive, faster, although this is hard to balance because it is often treated as just a bonus effect when people consider government choices.