Temples & Slaves (re: Scott, Against the Grain, 2017)

[Mithadan]

I'm reading James C. Scott's Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale, 2017) and while a lot of its premises are familiar to me, I was surprised about two things that I thought would be cool to add into an epic mod (i.e., mine).

First, Temples were production enhancers:

"There is, moreover, abundant evidence of substantial work gangs mobilized for agricultural and nonagricultural tasks by temples, as well as thousands of standardized bowls used, most judge, to distribute food or beer rations." (p. 120)
​

That wouldn't be hard to change, and shouldn't break the early game by any means.

Secondly, early warfare was geared more towards the capture of slaves than the acquisition of territory:

"Warfare in the Mesopotamian alluvium beginning in the late Uruk Period (3,500-3,100 BCE) and for the next two millennia was likewise not about the conquest of territory but rather about the assembling of populations at the state's grain core." (p. 154)

"A sure sign of the manpower obsession of the early states, whether in the Fertile Crescent, Greece, or Southeast Asia, is how rarely their chronicles boast of having taken territory. ... The conquerors were on the lookout for generic manpower and, simultaneously, for the craftsmen and entertainers who would enhance the luster of the conquerors' courts." (p. 171)
​

I know Steph's mod way back when -- at least at one point -- made all or most military units require a population cost, and I assume that worked without breaking the game? I'm wondering about adding that alongside giving virtually every unit in the early game -- maybe up to the medieval period, at least for European units (but who knows)? -- the enslavement ability, and then making worker units extremely expensive and hopefully unnattractive to build. So essentially a civ can only really exploit its territory with irrigations, roads, or mines with slaves taken from raids (maybe by creating hidden-nationality raider units) or wars. I wonder if this might break the game, though!

Any thoughts?

​

 

[tjs282]

I know Steph's mod way back when -- at least at one point -- made all or most military units require a population cost, and I assume that worked without breaking the game?

Actually, from what I remember, Steph eventually decided that this wasn't a good idea, because (it turned out that) the Civ3-AI doesn't cope well with all units having a population cost: it tends to result in all the AI-towns being reduced to Pop1.

So I would suggest being very circumspect with this option, maybe limit it to advanced (Industrial, Modern) units, and/or maybe only those units which have the "Defensive" AI-strategy (or those which can be drafted?) — which should maybe also get an HP-boost to make them more valuable?

I'm wondering about adding that alongside giving virtually every unit in the early game -- maybe up to the medieval period, at least for European units (but who knows)? -- the enslavement ability,

I've done this in my mod: all Ancient/Medieval melée units can enslave Workers (exceptions: Archer- and Horse-units, including UUs, can't enslave; Chasqui Scouts enslave Scouts), and it seems to work OK. That is, the AI ends up with more Workers(Foreign/Barbarian) in the early game, when it needs them most. I also gave Workers ATAR, so that the AI can quickly extricate captured Workers from hostile territory, and improve its most useful tiles more efficiently.

then making worker units extremely expensive and hopefully unnattractive to build.

Rather than making Workers expensive, how about making them unavailable to build until e.g. Feudalism...?

 

[Mithadan]

Actually, from what I remember, Steph eventually decided that this wasn't a good idea, because (it turned out that) the Civ3-AI doesn't cope well with all units having a population cost: it tends to result in all the AI-towns being reduced to Pop1.

Dang, I had (obviously) forgotten about that! It would be awesome if the slaves could be used to replenish the city's population (which is what Scott argues happened a lot in early Mesopotamia, at least, and I think elsewhere in southeast Asia), but it would be way too optimistic to expect the AI to do that. Okay, nevermind!

I've done this in my mod: all Ancient/Medieval melée units can enslave Workers (exceptions: Archer- and Horse-units, including UUs, can't enslave; Chasqui Scouts enslave Scouts), and it seems to work OK. That is, the AI ends up with more Workers(Foreign/Barbarian) in the early game, when it needs them most.

How do you make it so that Chasqui Scouts can enslave Scouts, while all the other units enslave Workers (Foreign/Barbarian)? That would be awesome if I could select what units resulted from an enslavement!

Rather than making Workers expensive, how about making them unavailable to build until e.g. Feudalism...?

That was my first thought, actually, but I was worried that might break the game a bit, at least for those civs who didn't take advantage of the enslaving early enough to get roads onto Horses and Iron. Then again, so it goes! I think that's totally worth a shot, actually.

 

[tjs282]

it would be way too optimistic to expect the AI to do that

No, the AI will quite happily join Workers(Foreign) to its towns.

For example, I remember seeing an epic-game screenie somewhere on CFC — maybe in the "Interesting Screenshots" thread, and/or posted by @Buttercup? — showing a "Barbarian" citizen in a town which was (previously?) held by the Mayans.

That would be awesome if I could select what units resulted from an enslavement!

"Enslave" is a separate unit abilty from the "Capture" ability (which only applies to A.D.M=0.0.x units like Settlers, Workers or bombard-units).

So once you have given a unit the "Enslave" ability, yes, you can set any other unit in your .biq as the target "Enslave results in [this unit]", e.g. in the epic-game, Mayan Javelineers enslave Workers(Foreign), English MoWs enslave more MoWs(Foreign), and Privateers enslave more Privateers(Foreign).

That was my first thought, actually, but I was worried that might break the game a bit, at least for those civs who didn't take advantage of the enslaving early enough to get roads onto Horses and Iron. Then again, so it goes! I think that's totally worth a shot, actually.

Moving the Worker-unit as far into the tree as Feudalism would likely make the Ancient Age much more difficult for the human player, especially at higher levels when the AI-Civs are likely to pop most of the Goody-Huts and Barb-Camps with their extra starting units, and thus scoop up a lot of the potential Workers(Barbarian).

This would likely encourage/force the human player to go to war earlier, if only for the purpose of securing those Workers(Barbarian) for themselves (in addition to any Workers gained by enslaving foreign military-units). The human will also still get their usual "starter" Worker, they'd just have to take really good care of it until they can build their own (the advantages of building the native Workers being that they will work faster, and can be used to increase town-size quickly, and without incurring "Stop the aggression..." unhappiness during wartime).

But if playtesting does show that Feudalism is too far into the tree, then maybe Republic would be another option? If it's beelined on a Standard-size map, it usually takes around 100 turns at most to get there (up to about Emperor, anyway).

EDITED to add an afterthought.

If Workers are going to be made scarce/slow in the Ancient Age, I would also strongly recommend removing the 'Pillage' ability from most/all early game mil-units (except Armies).

 

[Civinator]

Mithadan, may be you should really have a closer look into the CCM 2.50 mod (more than 3.800 downloads in a little more than two years). I was not aware of James C. Scott's book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale, 2017), but this mod starts with a lot of mechanisms in that sense. Less workers (and less settlers) in my eyes are a big plus in game play for Civ 3. In this mod the first freely buildable workers are available at the end of era 2 (and I am reflecting about setting them available even later). Before late era 2, workers are only available autoproduced by a certain SW, enslavement or trade.

With the enslavement feature, a civ not only can gain workers, but also monks and great artists for "culture-bombing" cities.

If you want to have a closer look about this mod, please visit the Civ 3 succession game forum, where you can find a lot of games that were played with that mod (and helping to improve it).

 

[Nathiri]

I'm reading James C. Scott's Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale, 2017) and while a lot of its premises are familiar to me, I was surprised about two things that I thought would be cool to add into an epic mod (i.e., mine).

First, Temples were production enhancers:

"There is, moreover, abundant evidence of substantial work gangs mobilized for agricultural and nonagricultural tasks by temples, as well as thousands of standardized bowls used, most judge, to distribute food or beer rations." (p. 120)
​

That wouldn't be hard to change, and shouldn't break the early game by any means.

Secondly, early warfare was geared more towards the capture of slaves than the acquisition of territory:

"Warfare in the Mesopotamian alluvium beginning in the late Uruk Period (3,500-3,100 BCE) and for the next two millennia was likewise not about the conquest of territory but rather about the assembling of populations at the state's grain core." (p. 154)

"A sure sign of the manpower obsession of the early states, whether in the Fertile Crescent, Greece, or Southeast Asia, is how rarely their chronicles boast of having taken territory. ... The conquerors were on the lookout for generic manpower and, simultaneously, for the craftsmen and entertainers who would enhance the luster of the conquerors' courts." (p. 171)
​

I know Steph's mod way back when -- at least at one point -- made all or most military units require a population cost, and I assume that worked without breaking the game? I'm wondering about adding that alongside giving virtually every unit in the early game -- maybe up to the medieval period, at least for European units (but who knows)? -- the enslavement ability, and then making worker units extremely expensive and hopefully unnattractive to build. So essentially a civ can only really exploit its territory with irrigations, roads, or mines with slaves taken from raids (maybe by creating hidden-nationality raider units) or wars. I wonder if this might break the game, though!

Any thoughts?

​

Good ideas. These small changes can actually create a very interesting experience. I've had similar ideas and I was working on an epic mod to try and make some interesting gameplay. I havent worked on it for a couple years now, but while I did not restrict workers, I did restrict settlers (not unusual for most mods). I made them techable in the first era, but before that, they had to be obtained. You started out with an extra settler so you had stuff to do, but you had to rely on workers to road resources in the early game. I made growth a lot harder, but cities were still something expected to be grown to big sizes, so I doubled the amount of food resources and their yields. I was also experimenting with governments and trying to make them beneficial for brief periods of the game and not something you'd stay in one government the entire game.

When you restrict certain things in the game, I think it's important to try and make other aspects of the game more involved so the game does not feel boring. Some challenge that has to be overcome. So if you restrict workers and settlers, then yes you'd need something like enslavement ramped up to fill in the void. A good idea here is to make all units hidden nationality. That way the AI will be aggressive without having the problem of war interfere. A neat little feature is that you cant conduct diplomacy from HN units so this actually delays diplomacy until you reach a civ's borders.

 

[Civinator]

Nathiri, what are the names and settings for those governments that are "beneficial for brief periods" in your mod?

 

[Nathiri]

Nathiri, what are the names and settings for those governments that are "beneficial for brief periods" in your mod?

Well, from when I last worked on it, I used normal names like Monarchy and Republic, but added several sub-governments, which emphasized certain policies. This thread has kind of prompted a re-interest in the subject and I might return to work on it here, so I might go for a simpler approach. But the idea was to be in a certain sub-government for a specific purpose, but if you stayed in that too long you'd neglect another aspect like economy. The sub-government might allocate less money for unit support or for science, but give you a boost in another direction. If it was the growth branch, then you'd lose more money on unit support and have higher corruption than the default government, but gain faster population growth and faster workers.

 

[Civinator]

So you are trying to introduce some kind of "civics" (sub-governments) as it is in Civ 4, but alternative and not cumulative. The difficult point seems to convince the AI to change these "civics" so it is a benefit for game play.

 

[Nathiri]

So you are trying to introduce some kind of "civics" (sub-governments) as it is in Civ 4, but alternative and not cumulative. The difficult point seems to convince the AI to change these "civics" so it is a benefit for game play.

Yes. Though I dont care too much about the AI. I'd rather have more choices for the player. I have a general form of each government, which the AI should stay in. I can make the difficulty harder for the player in other areas to warrant the need for the choices.

 

[Mithadan]

Thanks for all this discussion, everyone, it's great!

No, the AI will quite happily join Workers(Foreign) to its towns. For example, I remember seeing an epic-game screenie somewhere on CFC — maybe in the "Interesting Screenshots" thread, and/or posted by @Buttercup? — showing a "Barbarian" citizen in a town which was (previously?) held by the Mayans.

Awesome! I guess that still won't compensate for the problem of the AI reducing all it's towns to size one if military units all have a population cost, though, eh? Hmm.

So once you have given a unit the "Enslave" ability, yes, you can set any other unit in your .biq as the target "Enslave results in [this unit]", e.g. in the epic-game, Mayan Javelineers enslave Workers(Foreign), English MoWs enslave more MoWs(Foreign), and Privateers enslave more Privateers(Foreign).

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't remember this. DUH!!! That's gonna change a lot for me, woo hoo! I have civ-specific Raider units right now in my mod, and tonnes of civ-specific worker units, which I can now make civ-specific slaves, at least graphics-wise!

If Workers are going to be made scarce/slow in the Ancient Age, I would also strongly recommend removing the 'Pillage' ability from most/all early game mil-units (except Armies).

Ah, is that so we don't get a tonne of Hidden-Nationality units erasing all those roads that these stacks of slaves have built? I'm wondering if that would be part of the challenge, because -- as I understand it -- part of the point of early warfare as slave raiding was to erase the infrastructure of the slaves' home towns so that they had nowhere to go back to if they escaped their enslavement.

Mithadan, may be you should really have a closer look into the CCM 2.50 mod (more than 3.800 downloads in a little more than two years). I was not aware of James C. Scott's book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale, 2017), but this mod starts with a lot of mechanisms in that sense. Less workers (and less settlers) in my eyes are a big plus in game play for Civ 3. In this mod the first freely buildable workers are available at the end of era 2 (and I am reflecting about setting them available even later). Before late era 2, workers are only available autoproduced by a certain SW, enslavement or trade.

Awesome, thanks, I will! I've actually never downloaded or played a Civ3 mod other than DyP/RaR and the Lord of the Mods, I think largely because the file sizes were so big and I was usually too busy modding my own personal mod to actually play the game, let alone other mods! I love this idea about making settlers less common in the early game. I have tried to limit the AI rush to smother every square inch of the map by making settlers wheeled (but not hardy settlers, I think this is an idea from DyP?), forests impassable to wheeled, and mountains impassable to everything. Cities also cannot be built on tundra, desert, jungle, or forest (although the human player could clear a tile of jungle or forest to build a city, the AI won't), but on custom world maps I stick a tile of flood plain in the middle of a desert where a historical city could go, and the AI finds those just fine. Does your mod limit settlers by making them autoproduced by Small Wonders as well?

Edit: I just saw this line in your explanatory post for CCM 2.50: "in CCM2 settlers in the first eras of the game can only be received by autoproduction connected to the palace (a small wonder in CCM) and many ancient great wonders, and workers can only be received by autoproduction connected to the small wonder 'Worker Houses' (that therefore should be built as soon as possible) or by enslavement." I'm totally gonna steal that idea! I haven't installed CCM 2.50 on my machine, though, because I don't want it to overwrite the terrain mods that I've already put into my standard C3C Art folder, and which I use for any and all games that don't have a terrain mod embedded into them. Do you mind just telling me what frequency your settlers (and workers) are produced by the associated wonders?

Good ideas. These small changes can actually create a very interesting experience. I've had similar ideas and I was working on an epic mod to try and make some interesting gameplay. I havent worked on it for a couple years now, but while I did not restrict workers, I did restrict settlers (not unusual for most mods). I made them techable in the first era, but before that, they had to be obtained. You started out with an extra settler so you had stuff to do, but you had to rely on workers to road resources in the early game.

Could you clarify what you mean by "techable in the first era, but before that, they had to be obtained"? How did the AI do with roading resources and making colonies without being able to put cities everywhere?

When you restrict certain things in the game, I think it's important to try and make other aspects of the game more involved so the game does not feel boring. Some challenge that has to be overcome. So if you restrict workers and settlers, then yes you'd need something like enslavement ramped up to fill in the void. A good idea here is to make all units hidden nationality. That way the AI will be aggressive without having the problem of war interfere. A neat little feature is that you cant conduct diplomacy from HN units so this actually delays diplomacy until you reach a civ's borders.

I'm super interested in making all the early game units, or a tonne of them anyway, hidden nationality. I'd have to think more about when I'd give them nationality and make wars more of the diplomatic pain it is in the vanilla game, but that sounds like a fun bit of research to do. Huh. Thanks for the idea!

(I gotta say, all this enslavement and war is a horrible thing to contemplate, but therein lies the unique challenge of facing the implications of games that explore or attempt to replicate things like, uh, history!)

 

[Mithadan]

This just in:

Finally, there are two forms of communal bondage that were widely practiced in many early states and that bear more than a family resemblance to slavery but are unlikely to appear in the textual record as what we think of as slavery. The first of these might be called mass deportation coupled with communal forced settlement. Our best descriptions of the practice come from the neo-Assyrian Empire, where it was employed on a massive scale. ... Mass deportation and forced settlemet was, in the neo-Assyrian Empire, systematically applied to conquered areas. The entire population and livestock of the conquered land were marched from the territory at the periphery of the kingdom to a location closer to the corse, where they were forcibly resettled, the people usually as cultivators. ...taking entire agrarian communities as modules and placing them at the service of the state. ... Many of the captives were referred to as "saknutu," which means "a captive made to settle the soil." The neo-Assyrian policy is not historically novel. Though we have no idea whether it was common in Mesopotamia, it has been the practice of conquest regimes throughout history -- in Southeast Asia and the New World in particular. (Scott, pp. 176-178)
​

So assuming I can figure out how you guys limit the production of Settlers, I'm now thinking that at some point, I can give some units the ability to generate Settlers with enslavement. I wouldn't give them those units for long, but it could for a brief moment create a fairly nice explosion of territorial expansion before Settlers become buildable, perhaps? I'm also thinking that before that, I should make the capturing of Settlers yield another Settler (instead of a Worker/Slave), so that we still see some cities getting founded, even if it's extra hazardous to have them venture out (with escorts) into world full of hidden nationality units.

 

[Civinator]

I've actually never downloaded or played a Civ3 mod other than DyP/RaR and the Lord of the Mods, I think largely because the file sizes were so big and I was usually too busy modding my own personal mod to actually play the game, let alone other mods!

With CCM 2.50 you can also play the RARR mod, what started as a graphical update of DyP/RAR, but later some new concepts, per example world religions, were cautiously integrated into that mod. But be warned. CCM 2.50 is concepted as an inofficial expansion of C3C and holds thousands of additional units and therefore at present is the biggest mod for C3C I am aware of. For playing RARR only a very small additional download (mainly the graphics for the different techtrees and the biqs) is needed. The advantage of concepting CCM 2.50 as an expansion is, that all additional stuff (especially the huge number of units) can be used in other scenarios, too (as if they would be part of the basic containt of C3C).

Does your mod limit settlers by making them autoproduced by Small Wonders as well?

Settlers in CCM 2.50 are autoproduced by the palace and by Great Wonders.

 

[Nathiri]

Auto-production is often the method of limiting settlers because its easy, bypass AI build order, you can control the duration, and then have it obsolete. I've used this method, but I prefer something more random that a player can seek out and somewhat prioritize build order for.

As with any weird gameplay addition, you have to sort other mechanics out to compensate. So if you do make HN a common thing, then you have to think about city defense, because a civ could die off far quicker than you want. I think its worth it to have more threat and allows for military promotions and more action overall on the map.

Obtained as in only gotten a couple of times whether by auto-production, military leader, or enslavement. I then make them expensive and higher population once the tech is researched. I think in a mod released years ago it was even tied to a resource. I wish there were more options. I've tried using the Military Academy function but the flags dont function as you might think based on other flags in the editor.

 

[Mithadan]

With CCM 2.50 you can also play the RARR mod, what started as a graphical update of DyP/RAR, but later some new concepts, per example world religions, were cautiously integrated into that mod. But be warned. CCM 2.50 is concepted as an inofficial expansion of C3C and holds thousands of additional units and therefore at present is the biggest mod for C3C I am aware of. For playing RARR only a very small additional download (mainly the graphics for the different techtrees and the biqs) is needed. The advantage of concepting CCM 2.50 as an expansion is, that all additional stuff (especially the huge number of units) can be used in other scenarios, too (as if they would be part of the basic containt of C3C).

I get that, it makes sense, but if I ever released my own mod, it would be predicated on CCM 2.50 as well, which I don't think I'd want to take for granted. It's still an awesome achievement, though, and I'm super impressed by the work you and your team put into it. Wow!

Settlers in CCM 2.50 are autoproduced by the palace and by Great Wonders.

Do you mind me asking how frequently those improvements generate Settlers?

As with any weird gameplay addition, you have to sort other mechanics out to compensate. So if you do make HN a common thing, then you have to think about city defense, because a civ could die off far quicker than you want. I think its worth it to have more threat and allows for military promotions and more action overall on the map.

Ha ha, indeed! Doesn't it make capturing cities impossible for the human player, though? I seem to recall the AI being able to capture cities with a HN unit, but human players cannot? It doesn't sound like it's an issue for you, though, so maybe I'm mistaken?

 

[Civinator]

Do you mind me asking how frequently those improvements generate Settlers?

The most important is the palace, producing all 20 turns a settler base unit, that can be upgraded by the advanced autoproduction method to civspecific settlers with different graphics. The settlers autproduced by GWs have different intervals for their appearance, based on the number of turns until the GWs are becoming obsolete and the different production costs of the GWs. Modern GWs are not producing settlers any longer.

In the Firaxis editor, you can see the interval here:

Ha ha, indeed! Doesn't it make capturing cities impossible for the human player, though? I seem to recall the AI being able to capture cities with a HN unit, but human players cannot? It doesn't sound like it's an issue for you, though, so maybe I'm mistaken?

The human player must declare war before being able to attack a city by a HN unit, the AI can do this without declaring war.

 

[Mithadan]

The most important is the palace, producing all 20 turns a settler base unit, that can be upgraded by the advanced autoproduction method to civspecific settlers with different graphics. The settlers autproduced by GWs have different intervals for their appearance, based on the number of turns until the GWs are becoming obsolete and the different production costs of the GWs. Modern GWs are not producing settlers any longer.

In the Firaxis editor, you can see the interval here:

View attachment 619902

Thank-you so much! You are a scholar and a gentleman.

The human player must declare war before being able to attack a city by a HN unit, the AI can do this without declaring war.

Ahhh, that makes sense. Perfect! I'm liking this idea a lot.

 

[Civinator]

Perfect! I'm liking this idea a lot.

Unfortunately setting all units to be HN units is not perfect. What is about boot orders for units to leave your territory ?

 

[Mithadan]

Unfortunately setting all units to be HN units is not perfect. What is about boot orders for units to leave your territory ?

I like the idea of early civs going on slaving raids more or less constantly in order to obtain the slaves necessary for the maintenance of the state. I think once I get to the point of states expanding territorially (e.g., neo-Assyrian Empire), I'll probably stop giving units HN. I will, however, probably still give them enslavement until the high or late middle ages. Just a guess for now.