Second part due to character limit.
Ajanta Cave Frescoes
1)+10
+10% (base) + 10% (state religion is buddism) + 5% (dyes)
Once again, we either give one wonder to each religion, or none at all. I actually favor the second approach, as I'm not sure AI is able to adequately evaluate the need to construct a particular religion-linked GW.
Nataraja
1) +10
+1%
for every bronze resource up to five. +5%
if under Hindu state religion.
My feeling is that giving the original bonus +1 hammer to bronze forges is actually both more elegant and significant (for 1% bonus to amount to even 1 hammer, a city has to have 100 base production!) than what you suggest.
Discobolus
1)+10
+5%
+5%
for marble to every arena building in the empire
Original statue was made of bronze. Also, the effect "+% for a resource to a building" requires new XML tags IIRC.
Along the River
Finally, more use for cotton resource!
1) +10
+5% (cotton) +5 (silk)
This might be a nice flavor addition. I like it.
Wayang
1) 10
+5% (for cattle; to represent leather made puppets) +5% (timber; wooden puppets)
as it thrives in popularity amongst high class population in the city theater.
Actually, I think that giving bonus culture to theaters is quite a powerful effect: unlike other cases, the main point of theatre is culture production, and this GW makes it 50% more effective. Maybe we could throw in additional +1
from timber and cotton in that city, for more flavor.
Maybe having GW's that interact with civics could be a possibility? Like, Triumph of the Will gives happiness with Dictatorship and 1984 gives happiness with Democracy.
I wouldn't go there for the sake of AI. I'm not willing to force the poor guy into such complex strategic decisions.
edit: Not to be argumentative but the differences between Despotism and Monarchy still don't quite make sense to me. Monarchy is supposed to represent a king with restricted power but absolutism is attached to Monarchy as well. And Despotism mostly represents non-European monarchs from the medieval era on, but Divine Right is attached to it which is a European tradition.
Yes, I guess Absolutism is, to some extent, a relic of an older time when there was no Monarchy/Despotism dichotomy. Then again, we must understand that Absolutism in Europe arose exactly as a reaction to limited power monarchs wielded before, and in turn was usually replaced by limited forms of monarchy within a couple of generations, and thus can be considered a legitimate evolutionary stage in European monarchic tradition.
Divine right to rule is a concept not exclusive to European tradition; if you want a non-european flavor, we could rename it "Mandate of Heaven", but in practice it would be the same.
I've been testing the mod for some time and I wrote down some suggestions over time which I want to share with the community and the developers. Some of these changes aim to make the game even more difficult and challenging:
1. The guild monopoly civic is far inferior compared to merchant princes. With its special building and great wonder, it is about as good as the merchant princes. Therefore I think the guild hall should give +1
to workshops, which will make the guild monopoly an early version of the protectionism. Also the guild monopoly civic might give bonus for the industrial plantations, just as the merchant princes giving a bonus to normal plantations.
That's an interesting suggestion. Will be considered.
2. In most of my games, the religion spread seems to be too quick. Almost all cities cities have 3-5 religions by the time they reach the renaissance. This means, monasticism and free religion are the only real choices. Therefore, let's decrease the missionary success rate and also implement the religion decay (unpopular religions disappearing with the time), as in some other mods.
To be sure, are you mostly playing World Map or random maps? It is very hard to balance religion spread speed to work well for both.
3. With 3
eaten per citizen, the effect of unhealthiness became even less important. The effect of the unhealthiness might be strenghtened in the following way: ...
Interesting, but you are forgetting that unhealth has a dramatic effect on epidemic chance, which you almost never have in excess.
4. tech diffusion: Tech diffusion is indeed one of the most important concepts in Realism Invictus. The idea is simply excellent. However, the execution is a bit poor. As the whole Civilization game revolves around the scientific progress, the tech diffusion should have been modelled much more detailed. Because at the moment, there are two types of AI civs for me: The ones I like which would sign open borders when they're cautious, the the ones I don't like, who wouldn't. I think the tech diffusion rate should be calculated in according to following:
a) whether you have an open border or not.
b) how good the relationship between civs is
c) the distance between capitals - the ideas would spread much slower between -let's say- between Mali and Japanese than French and Spanish
d) whether the civilizations share same civics and religions - This will add an interesting aspect to diplomacy: At the moment the AI constantly keeps asking us to adept useless religions and civics, even he wouldn't have any direct benefit at all, if we adept this specific civic or religion. After this change, having same civics with an technologically advanced neighbour might become a desirable option.
e) the comparison of espionage points: The one who has more espionage points will benefit from tech diffusion more.
f) ...
In theory you are right, but in practice implementing that would mean a real lot of additional in-between turn calculations, which would have a significant negative impact on performance.
5. Tech transfer from conquest: In the current system, being peaceful and trying to keep making open border agreements eall the times is the key for success in long term. Let's give the players a choice between war and peace, by letting the tech from conquest much stronger. During the crusades, the European learned much from the Arabians. Cities and provinces changed hands constantly, which allowed a great interaction between both cultures. An interaction that is as strong and influential as in peace time. Therefore, conquering an important (large) city at least until medieval times should almost always result in an acquired tech to demonstrate this interaction accurately, in my opinion.
Doesn't it already work that way? Tech conquest from taking important cities is already pretty strong.
6. I don't like the idea, that the city center provides 4
. In contrary it should provide much less, and here is the explanation: The very first civilizations thrived in the Mesopotamia and along the Nile, where they could grow crops. In the Realism Invictus however, your ancient civilization will thrive only if you have gold, fur or elephants in its radius. In Immortal difficulty, your capital will reach size 3, the other cities only to 2. So you don't really need crops (well, unless you want to train a lot of weak shortswordsmen). By decreasing the
given by city tile to 1, your early civilization would have to research irrigation and start building farms much quicker in order to allow the cities to grow further and afford further citizens to work in mines etc. If you think 1
on city tile is way too low, then we may give the granary +1
. Together with the hunting lodge, the city will produce 3
initially, so the city will become self sustaining at least.
There is some truth to what you're saying. Lately, I've been thinking that we are indeed imposing too strict a penalty on early happiness, thus making food production early on too irrelevant. That's a good point and it will be considered.
7. Special event: Drought. Just as Pandemic strikes your cities, Drought might strike them too. I recently read, how the long term famines influenced the history of ancient egypt so greatly. Just like the pandemic, drought should be a building that appears for some turns, causing farms and slave farms to produce -3 food each (to make sure, that your city will lose some of its population hehehe) Again, this change should stress the importance of having and irrigating a crop around your city. Your city can endure the drought, or at least recover a lot quicker from it.
Cruel, but I like it.
8. Revolting units might come in greater numbers and start with Commando. This way, they will be much annoying and may discourage you from slavery or serfdom. Now, I like running those civics, because the rebels provide a lot of experience and Great General points. Then you have to make sure that ALL of your cities are well defended.
There are already people who never run slavery/serfdom due to having to deal with rebels. I think they are balanced well enough as they are now.
9. Greek Water Wheel: ...
We'll think about it, but in truth I don't find that too much of an issue...
I've noticed what seems to be an odd graphical bug with the ocean terrain in World Builder.
Sometimes when loading a map, I like to amend it by breaking up big continents (Especially where there's an unpopulated New World, to allow circumnavigation). But when I do, I get these weird graphical glitches when turning tiles into ocean. Here's a screenshot of what I mean, where I have used world builder to turn some land tiles (near where the ice was connecting to the land at the top of the picture) into coast. As you can see the ocean is blurry and untextured. Any ideas?
That's what you get for placing coasts next to deep oceans. It is simply not a supported graphical transition, and thus tends to look weird. Still works, though.
1. I agree with you on Guild Monopoly: it is far weaker than other competing civics. I've found the same with Civil Service and Caste System -- has anyone found a use for them? If so, I'd love to hear it so I don't feel stuck playing the same way every time.
Civil service is a better option for a builder-type play where you don't need to build a lot of units in the near future. It gets added awesome with colosseum wonder. I actually tend to use caste system a lot myself, as it not only allows for a somewhat happier population (which can lead to significantly better economy), but also (especially at war) doesn't keep a part of your military tied up hunting rebels.
8. Personally, I've found the revolting units to be more of a headache than anything else, though they do provide helpful experience. The most ridiculous thing I've seen is slaves spawning with better weapons than my own armies! How can slaves have muskets when my nation hasn't even researched the requisite technology? That's plain silly.
If you reached Renaissance era, you already know black powder. So it is reasonable to assume they have at least some early gunpowder-based handguns, if not muskets per se. Anyway, that era saw a dramatic increase of staying power that armed common folks had on the battlefield against older feudal-based armies even when gunpowder weapons weren't directly involved; consider, for instance, hussites.
All I see is I'm making efforts for either being ignored (or strongly opposed, but I don't mind since it's part of the discussion) or being berated because I'm imposing too much my ideas and talking too much. Because seriously, the only corrollary I see of those reactions is STFU.
Hey, as you can see I only post here about once a week sometimes. That doesn't mean that you're being ignored. As for arguing with you, I can understand why some people don't really wish to do that.
10. Just like we have three types of plantations (industrial, food crop and normal) we can have two types of mines: normal mines, and precious metal mines...
While this adds another improvement to an already long list, the logic behind this suggestion is sound. We'll consider that. After all, the value of gold before, for instance, currency should be much lower than later on.
also, why does the AI austronesian never expand past his first city?
This question is driving me nuts. I really don't know why and I am very frustrated by that.
So its working as intended? That's crazy (and dumb). Is this present on all difficulty settings?
It doesn't seem particularly realistic, for a start, and is extremely frustrating for the player.
We're working on countering that. I can't promise it will be fixed in 3.2.1, but we know something should be done there.
I toyed with the idea and yes, it's true it makes no sense (in term of realism) how hammers and commerce are king during the very early stages.
The problem lies in excessive food has no use. While a low food capital, which can always be resolved in RI thanks to its stronger farms, one prefers to not reach the happy cap lest to start getting angry citizens, which can't really be ridden through slavery whips as it tends to make things worse.
And yes, if one has deer, furs, elephants, minerals, you got the best capital for the early game for the following reasons:
1) Best beeline of techs: Toolmaking==>Mineral Lore==>Stone Cutting, allowing slow growth, good production and earliest access to strong early wonders that enhance your economy.
2) Easy access to Archery in case
3) Can spot minerals before others
And that is true it makes no sense because earliest forms of civilizations didn't thrive on luxuries like that. It's not like the extraction is done without effort: it needed workforce that doesn't cultivate and and needed to be fed.
Here comes the most realistic idea that could help a little. A new type of specialist (or redesign the terrible Citizen specialist). As the excerpts note, surpluses of food gave the chance of a civilization to start specialized form of work:
Artisans.
And there we have the solution to pure food capital interesting in production (and perhaps commerce).
That new specialist, the Artisan, is a former form of the better specialists that give
The Artisan gives NO
but higher return in production and commerce.
What I suggest is the Artisan giving 4
Of course, that is still under discussion what it will bring, but it must bring a better ratio that the early citizen because any rational player will see that spending 3
for getting only 1
make no sense as almost every available tile will be better.
Actually, we have plans that very much mimic this line of thought. We didn't implement them for 3.2, since it would take a long while to balance right, but in short, moving the main productive force to within the city (and much more radically so after the industrial revolution) is on our to-do list.
Here are my PC specs, do you guys think I will be able to run a standard size random map on my PC (till the late game)?
Windows XP SP1
Pentium Dual Core E5300 with 2.6GHz
1 GB RAM
Just went through the manual, the ideas are great
You didn't list the two most important stats: your GPU and whether your OS is 32-bit or 64-bit.
yes I think trained archers is a little strong. especially when you found islam and have trained archer mujahiddim
Hum-hum, we might have to nerf that...
And one thing that should be changed immediately because it's broken is the unhappiness spy missions. Cost too low and literally famish a city down to size 1. It's too overpowered, trust me!
Aaaaaaand done!
Hi there, I'm really enjoying this mod, it is a great improvement of the game without touching to core gameplay too much. I would, however, like to see some of the 'non-playable' civs to be playable, particularly I would very much appreciate a playable Israel, also modeled after the modern state of Israel (leaders could be fx Ben-Gurion, Menachen Begin or Shimon Peres), perhaps in RI 3.3?
That might happen, but don't hold me to my word. We are very conservative when it comes to adding playable civs to RI, and while Israel has many strong points to speak for it, it has a very obvious and almost 2000 year-long discontinuity across half the game eras, which could only be filled by fantasy units.
Indeed, very surprised I haven't seen this and even more that Walter Walkwood said to me there is simply no mean at all to play unplayable civs when the file was there.
I said there was no easy way. And there still isn't. What you get through this action is a half-baked civ that has no NI, only one NU, one leader, lacks a lot of other stuff and can't even build settlers. I wouldn't call it a playable civ.
Thx for the back up.
How'bout a new type of hammer process but with food instead?
Instead of converting hammers into something else, perhaps food into hammers or commerce (with a ratio of less than 1:1).
It's simple to code, will symbolicly represent the mass of artisans and make our early growth limited, preserving the city population under the happy cap.
As it is for now, making workers after workers, or settlers or food 4
warriors will dwindle the economy more and more.
An interesting concept. While I doubt it is immediately useful as suggested, I think there is something in this idea that could be further developed.
goes into your culture missions. You use all your empire resources(i,e. hammers, food or commerce) into your culture victory. When doing pure culture, except your three main legendary cities, all culture invested by 100% 
to represent the liberties that the city-states have.
