Realism Invictus

[keldath]

hail to platyping!

 

[Erfeo]

Looks like my civics screen as well, but I still not in credits?

It is! Trust me, I would have credited you if I had ever released the modmod.

 

[sami_snow]

for some reason armenia's pagan temple gives a bonus to egypt's unique monument, obelisk. don't see that being too useful

 

[Shuikkanen]

for some reason armenia's pagan temple gives a bonus to egypt's unique monument, obelisk. don't see that being too useful

Quick question since loading up the game takes forever with the SVN. Are you viewing it when playing as Egypt, or Armenia? I think that if you're viewing bonuses granted by something in civilopedia, it always shows them from the point of view of the civ you're playing, even if it didn't actually apply.

 

[sami_snow]

playing as armenia

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

OK guys, time for another round of answering your questions.

So my guess is that the game take more time now to load graphical feature. Could be a bit anticlimatix to have to create a duel map each time i want to play your mod, before i'm able to go back to my real game :/

That's graphical paging at work. It is now off by default and you can turn it on at your own discretion.

Edit : just realised that i no longer have the berber encountered by default when starting my game as egyptian. You guys are really the best

Thanks. High time I remembered to correct that.

edit2: I got a Memory Allocation Error on turn 1... odd. My computer is well above what should be needed. Back to the official release, heh.

Graphical paging at work, again. You can update the SVN to latest version, make sure it is off in game options, and you should be able to play normally.

Two more little graphic bug :

- was making a carth path, on tree tile. First did no problem, the connexion with the second was good, but when i make the third, the second one (in the middle) transformed in a red dot. Alt/tab did resolved the bug.

- was looking in the city scree, press escape to go out, and i was back on the map... but i still had the city screen on. Meaning i could move units or give order to worker, but i had the two blue rectangle on each side with the city info. Alt/tab corrected the bug, but the game crashed a few seconds later.

...aaand likely graphical paging at it again. This is basically an emergency measure meant to stop memory allocation CTDs, but when you're not suffering from it, it is best to keep it off.

Problem is this.... it crashes when fun starts....
Please find a way to fix that maf problem that really devastates such a perfect achievement.

(i got a relative strong pc with 1 gb dedicated vram -quad core - and 4 dd3 gb ram so the hardware is not the problem... as long as my saves reach 4 mb the game starts to crash and that hearts !!!)
i got 64 bit windows 7 as os ..... Please i beg you help us to finish our attaimpts .... its so unfair to play a game for weeks and suddenly all our effort ...puffffff!!!!

thanks in advance!!!!!

Hm... It seems that MAF problems of 32 bit systems started when save size hit 1 Mb, and for 64 bit systems they start at 4x that... I guess that makes it basically inevitable. If you are using SVN, try graphical paging and see if it helps you avoid those. Otherwise, wait for 3.3 where it will be included. Oh, and one more thing you can do is play random maps. Even huge random maps in my experience rarely get past 2 Mb size.

I would say, horses are powerfull enough in military direction. And if your civs uses pastoral nomadism they give nice hammers and food too. Also - cows and other animals can be used to crop fields too.

Yep, I realize that the role of animals in agriculture is probably not reflected adequately enough, but for now it is as good as it's going to get. We simply don't have enough small things to tweak at the early period of the game - any bonus we assign will really be huge at that stage.

- The infoscreen over a salt resource shows that it requires Stonecutting, but in fact it is enabled now by Pottery with building the Salt Pit only.

Technically it is true what it says there. You can build salt pits from Pottery, but your cities will benefit from salt only if you have Stonecutting. We used to have this with many resources, but it was confusing to people, so we removed it. Will probably remove this one too.

- Skirmisher units dont have to require Woodworking, as previous must have tech Bronze Working already has Woodworking as a prerequisite.

I guess so. Isn't really a bug, but a redundancy. Quite boring to fix (have to go through many XML entries for that), but I'll probably get to it sometime.

Just upgraded to SVN a few days ago and have played a few games. And met a really frustrating feature/bug.

Should each open border grant +1 (or thereabouts) culture to a city? It's happened in several games I played (and I play with max civs, so 33 at the moments) and either my cities or another civ's cities got insane culture boosts from open borders. This has had a negative impact in both situations.

Only for civs that have positive or friendly relations to you. In current SVN this has been further nerfed to only civs that are friendly. I feel that now it isn't overpowered anymore.

- Greek Pagan Temple Temenos gives 1 to Egyptian Obelisk. Is this intended?

That's just a small terminological inconsistency. The default building of monument class was called "obelisk" instead of "monument". Everything worked well despite that, but since people were getting excited about it, I fixed that.

- Meditation requires Mysticism although previous tech Philosophy already requires it too

Removed the dependency.

Even with packing art assets, the SVN version of the game still takes 5+ minutes to load. Is that expected behavior?

Have you, by chance, forgotten to actually remove the loose files you packed? If so, the game will still start slow.

Anyway... thought/suggestion for an ancient era world wonder:

Tel: Basically, representing the rebuilding (over time) of the city on top of itself, leading to it becoming a hill.

Bonuses could include the tile becoming a hill, +1 trade route, and +2 to Great Merchant.

Ancient era is already kinda packed with wonders; besides, we don't currently have XML tags with these precise effects.

I disagree. While river tiles are definitely better one doesn't have to place a city near a river to gain the bonuses exept to build the aforementioned levee. I'll try to explain again. First the city near a river (or any source of fresh water) receives only a little bonus of 2 while fresh water in real life is crucial for a city to grow considerably. Second the city on a river doesn't receive any trade bonuses while I'm pretty sure in real life the riverside city would be much more favourable than the one at some distance.

I hear your position, and it has some merit. I am not sure if gameplay would actually benefit from raising the importance of rivers, but we might do something about it. We're currently discussing it internally.

And some additional issues in 3.25 I'd like to discuss.

1) Why is it so frequent even possible when my spies are caught on CIV A territory when they are moving through CIV A to mess up with CIV B?

That's vanilla Civ 4 behaviour. We didn't change anything there (nor do I know how to, really).

2) Is there a way to know which building is created by a ministry so I don't waste my sabotage building mission? (espoinage)

3) Holy places (the ones that receive for cities) are so very powerful. A little nerf plz?

Yep, some kind of nerf is definitely en route.

4) Supercarrier promotion is not available to carriers.

Strange, will check. Should be available.

5) How do bombers earn experience? Why not like artillery when bombing health points?

We didn't modify air units in any fundamental way. Perhaps we'll do so in future.

6) Why is it possible to upgrade 20 infantry to 24 semi-modern infantry when 28 mechanized infantry is available but it's not possible to upgrade 24 semi-modern infantry to 28 modern infantry when 32 IFV is available.

That's a technical quirk of how upgrading in Civ 4 works. If you can upgrade a unit to two different ones, you will have that option. If only one upgrade "path" is available, the unit will be able to upgrade to only the best unit available. Mechanized infantry doesn't upgrade to Modern infantry, therefore Semi-Modern infantry is considered a separate upgrade path from Mechanized infantry. OTOH, Modern Infantry upgrades to IFV, so it's a single upgrade path.

7) Is this model (shock troops) correct? Magazine all right? What gun is this?

Spoiler :

Yep, it's correct. It is MP-18 if my memory serves me right. In many modifications it had the magazine on the side. As a side note, other shock troops are also armed with era-approrpiate, though often rare weapons, such as Chauchat and Fedorov Avtomat.

8) What is the purpose of gunboat ships? Can't imagine how I'd use them.

It's the only ship of the era that doesn't require any resources to be built, and also the cheapest one. It has no place in battle against heavier ships of the era of course, but it has quite a few uses. It can be quite cost-effective as barbarian-beater, it can be a stopgap measure for those without coal or steel (usually not the human player by the time it is researched) and it is able to upgrade to small but toothy torpedo boat later on.

9) AI leaves a lot of cool units in the rear. For example, it would protect all cities (even the ones that are far away from the front) with 3 riflemen when fighting the main battle with outdated fusiliers. Can't it calculate that's not necessary?

Well, nobody says AI is brilliant. We try to improve it, but it is still bound to be quite underwhelming compared to a decent human player.

10) AI civs have low income in the trade table. When I try to sell another civ the resource I can see that they would pay me more if they had more income.
So I thought that maybe it's a good idea to limit fund allocation to research/culture/espionage with civics like it was done in civ2-civ3.

This is not a bad idea, though we'll see how hard it is to implement.

11) Another idea to counter the everlasting expansion. A chain of very expensive buildings (or projects so they can't be hurried) that become available with techs and after completion give the city tile or . So instead of building expensive military or inefficient research/wealth/culture there is an option to improve the existing tiles rather than to conquer more tiles.

Well... Do you really trust AI to decide whenever is one or the other appropriate? Or will it lead to an even more misguided AI? We try to not add anything with potential to further screw up the AI ability.

The civics have been cleverly grouped into religious, economic, labour, government, and legal. I really like this concept. I am really impressed with how you chose to represent the religious civics and incorporate cult of personality and what you did with Theocracy and Militancy. However, I have noticed some inconsistencies with the government and legal civics. I have a few issues, one of which is with Despotism and Dictatorship and also with the way Federalism and Representation are represented.

I always find myself using Despotism right up until when Federalism/Representation is available, but I always think at that point I should be switching to Dictatorship, not Representative Federalism since the needs of my empire hasn't changed. I'm still a large imperialistic, militant power, usually with a strict religious civic and a Dictatorship would be appear to be the more logical, sophisticated extension of that. Specifically a Federalist Dictatorship. I think that Federalism and Representation, should be represented a different way because the way the civics are at the moment allows some odd combinations and also a lack of some possible combinations for example:

You cannot have: A Federal Democracy, Dictatorship, Monarchy, Theocracy.
* These should be possibilities.

You can have: A Representative Dictatorship, Despot.
* These should not be possible.

Representation is not compatible with every government civic. It is only compatible with Monarchy, Republic, Democracy, Theocracy. Perhaps some new buildings could be created to represent it's effects, such as a "House of Commons" for a Monarchy and a "House of Representatives" for a Democracy, Republic, and Theocracy. Representation would not be compatible with several legal civics; Plutocracy, Feudal Aristocracy, and Rule of Fear.

Well, adequately formulating civics took a lot of effort and the job is still not 100% finished. I am also not totally happy with how we currently have those, but I'd like to offer some counter-thoughts.

1) Representation already makes most sense under Democracy, as it enables Parliament. I was thinking of introducing additional penalties under some civic combos, but hasn't gotten there yet.
2) An example of Representative Dictatorship: First French Empire is best represented by this civic combo. Representative Despotism is trickier of course, but those civics' timeframes of relevance barely overlap. Representation can be thought to be compatible with Feudal Aristocracy for example through the institution of Estates General. It was definitely a representative assembly and yet also definitely a feudal structure. Same can be said about early British parliament.
3) Nevertheless, I agree that some of the choices are suboptimal. For example, currently Federalism is a direct upgrade to Democracy, and is thus somewhat redundant.

I also think that the Legal Civics are quite good up until Social Justice. I think Social Justice could be absorbed into two separate civics. You have two competing systems of Social Justice - The Soviet-Style Collectivism system of social justice/equality based off of political expediency, with no actual legal protection to individuals and then you have the Western Supreme Court System of alienable rights and freedoms to individuals based off of the courts' rulings from interpreting their Constitutions, Bill of Rights, Charter of Rights etc. though an English Common Law system.

But it already is! We already have separate Social Justice and Collectivism civics.

I suggest getting rid of Social Justice as a civic and creating some sort of court system. Perhaps "Common Law" which would originate quite early on, but would receive additional buildings such as a "Supreme Court" and aspects of Social Justice could find it's way there when "Common Law" is combined with the proper Government Civics. Common Law would be a good alternative to "Civil Service," which is "Civil Law." Civil Service could also receive a Supreme Court building. Most of the world still uses Civil Law today, not Common Law.

Supreme Court should not be able to be built with Common Law or Civil Service while running the following Government Civics because the Leader assumes judicial authority:

Despotism
Dictatorship
Theocracy

The only potential issue I see is that you could not run a Democratic or Republic Federalist Common Law, or Civic Law system, which is a bit problematic to me. For this reason I think it would be best to represent Federalism the same sort of why as I have suggested for Representation, but only allow it to be represented through the following Government Civics: Democracy, Republic, Dictatorship, and Theocracy by building a "Parliament" building. Federalism is actually more of a legal civic, because it's not a form of government it's a legal way to govern. Federalism is compatible with every government civic that's currently available, except Despotism - It would lack the legislation and bureaucracy necessary for a Federalist form of governance. Federalism would also be compatible with most legal civics.

It is an intriguing suggestion. I know too little about the evolution of legal practices to comment right now, but I will be sure to do some research. What current "legal" civic category represents is rather the nature of power that the state enjoys over its citizens - where the power comes from. Is it derived from force of arms, or from tradition, or from the collective voice of the people (etc...)? "Legal" in the sense of what is the legal basis of power for the state, or the answer to "Why the people from "Government" civic category rule over us?".

If you have any additional thoughts, or some of these ideas peak your interest let me know. I'd like to discuss them a bit further and perhaps refine them a little more. If I have any new ideas I'll bring them up in a 2nd post.

Always willing to discuss more. As mentioned above, I don't consider our civics perfect yet.

Another thing. Perhaps this is a difference in North American/European definitions, but to me you have named a Republic a Democracy and a Democracy a Republic. The major difference between the two is that a Republic has a Constitution and often a Bill or Rights, or Charter of Rights that grants unalienable rights to individuals that the government cannot revoke. A Democracy does not do this. Ancient Greece was a pure Democracy where the majority ruled, but there was no protection of unalienable rights to individuals. With the will of the majority anything could be possible legally. With a Republic many things are off limits unless you amend the Constitution, which is nearly impossible.

Yeah, I guess it is a terminological difference. In RI it is basically used to separate Classical Republic from modern democracy. It may very well be that in American legal practice, the two have precise definitions - but not being a US lawyer, I am not aware of them. They are used in our mod in their historiographical sense, rather than in modern legal one.

It would be nice when browsing civics if you listed under each option not only it's base effects, but it's additional effects when it's related buildings are built, so people playing the game can make a more informed decision of what civic to choose instead of having to refer to the Sevopedia and look up all of these buildings, for example:

Despotism
-Base effects

Enlightened Absolutism
- what other civic is required
- building effects

Mandate of Heaven
- what other civic is required
- building effects

It definitely would be. Truth be said, those buildings are also a rather clumsy attempt at creating civic synergies, and an even better way to implement them would be to just have civic synergies as gameplay effects. We considered such a system for a while, but unless we get our hands on more coding people, we just don't have enough time/resources.

Two other small things: Armenian Gruz infantry (part of the man-at-arms upgrade tree) cannot be upgraded to a handgunner, or even a fusilier. I only had a chance to play as these guys, so I can't speak for other civs. I could see the reason to not upgrade them to a handgunner, since a mixture of gunpowder and melee units were still pretty conventional during certain time periods, but surely you should be able to upgrade them to a fusilier.

If you're playing SVN, Man-at-arms line upgrades to Grenadiers (and later units), not regular infantry.

I understand why bronze working is required before you can switch to Despotism. It makes sense, however I find on higher difficulties this limits you to 1 or 2 cities for quite a long time early on. That makes it a bit of a grind for awhile. I don't oppose bronze working as a requirement. I agree with that. I would just like to be able to build another city, or a larger army before that point.

Well, higher difficulties are higher for a reason - they place more restrictions on players. I, for example, consciously choose not to play at the highest difficulty level that I can be successful at, but rather 1-2 lower, to be able to cut down on micromanagement and reduce the luck element (including frustratingly bad luck).

Civopedia misinformation: The history of Fekete Sereg says it starts with "Mercenary" and "Drill I", but it starts with "Mercenary" and "Leadership".

Fixed.

Japanese Traditional Fishing for Islands privides 1 food and 1 commerce.
Civopedia states 1 hammers and 1 commerce.

You probably looked wrong. At Traditional Fishing pedia page, you probably hovered over Island feature rather than improvement itself, and saw the bonuses Islands provide.

Hi,
Love the mod and have been playing it for years. I do have a question concerning the latest version.
I usually go for a cultural victory but when I received my first Great Artist I noticed the option of using him to add cultural points to a city was removed. I just wanted to know if it is still possible to win a cultural victory, how many cultural points are required to achieve legendary status, and what new strategies I should look into.
Thanks.

Spanish Minerias have a small chance of discovering gold/silver/gems. However, since they're replacing Precious Mines, they can only be built on tiles that already contain one of those resources.

At SVN 4929.

Yep. No detrimental effects on the gameplay, but might be annoying to look at. I guess I'll remove it.

A while back I did some work on a modmod that had some similar ideas in it: http://i.imgur.com/C5SCmBg.jpg?1

It adds a Power Civic Type. Basically, Government determines the head of government. Legal determines how to the state relates to its subjects/citizens. And Power determines the dominant socio-economic class. Federalism has been moved to the Legal type allowing for such things as a Federal Dictatorship.

I looked into disallowing certain combinations of civics but that isn't possible, you can only encourage combinations with building that require both civics.

Yep, you can't as of now. I think your mod is kinda cool, but to me the relation of state to subjects is inseparable from dominant socio-economic class. I think this category only enhances potential for impossible matches, which, as highlighted in discussion above, are already present in some sense in RI now (one that hasn't been mentioned yet is Theocratic Free Religion, for instance ).

I'd love to see a "social justice" civic with pros and cons (and, for the record, I hate the movement personally but I will not deny the effect it has had on the countries it is prevalent in.)

Or is this the "old school" definition? (egalitarianism)

We have had a "Social Justice" civic for years now.

And think more MLK than SJW. After all, the scope of our mod ends at 1985.

Playing again after taking the summer off. The implementation of the scaled production cost increase for each unit is a FANTASTIC change. Thanks!

I would like to attract attention of all SVN players to the fact that we need feedback on those recent features. Do they need adjustment? What is their impact on balance, from your perspective? Etc. Go on, we thrive on your feedback!

I'll bypass all the cool new stuff in the latest snv version (and there's a lot of it, well done!), and simply suggest that something needs to be modified with naval barbarians. They spam a lot of ships, mostly triremes. It's great that one can at least build triremes without bronze, but they are incredibly slow. I've built 15 before 1000AD and lost all of them. I even made one a General hoping to gain some advantage, because here's the major problem: the large number of spawns of relatively strong units would be rough, but endurable. So would the extremely slow train times for naval units without bronze. But naval units get no xp bonuses vs barbarians, so even my trireme with four stars plus 10 percent vs sea units was killed by a plain old vanilla trireme...after the other 4 vesells in his stack died in the previous 50 turns. It's incredibly frustrating to lose unit after unit vs a countless spawn of longships. Can sea vessels please have barbarian bonuses like land units?

Thank you!

Actually, I agree. Pirate Hunter promo line has long been needed. We will probably implement that soon.

Looks like my civics screen as well, but I still not in credits?

Mostly because this is not a screenshot from our mod. We don't use your civic screen.

Anyway, we still use lots of your other stuff, and your absence from our credits is inexcusable. There'll be a special thanks to you there in 3.3 version.

for some reason armenia's pagan temple gives a bonus to egypt's unique monument, obelisk. don't see that being too useful

See above. This is just a terminological quirk. I'll fix it anyway, so that people don't get worked up about it anymore.

 

[rkade8583]

Your response to me made me laugh. It took me an hour but I finally got the SVN going and the art zipped up so it loads in a timely manner and, just as you said, Social Justice screams MLK.

Just like it should.

 

[Erfeo]

Yep, you can't as of now. I think your mod is kinda cool, but to me the relation of state to subjects is inseparable from dominant socio-economic class. I think this category only enhances potential for impossible matches, which, as highlighted in discussion above, are already present in some sense in RI now (one that hasn't been mentioned yet is Theocratic Free Religion, for instance ).

I agree that the dominant socio-economic class will always determine the form the state takes, but how it affects the state isn't universal. For example, you can say that capitalists prefer a liberal state but there are also historical examples of capitalists backing authoritarian regimes. Which impossible matches do you foresee in my system? There are certainly some unlikely ones, but you'll always have that when combining modern and pre-modern civics.

I was actually planning to remove Theocracy altogether. It doesn't combine well with other civics and true theocracies (rule by clerics) are very rare. The only ones I can think of are the Holy See and the Dalai Lama government. I think that the other states that we might consider running the Theocracy civic can just as well be considered (elective) monarchies or republics.

 

[civman110]

Well, adequately formulating civics took a lot of effort and the job is still not 100% finished. I am also not totally happy with how we currently have those, but I'd like to offer some counter-thoughts.

1) Representation already makes most sense under Democracy, as it enables Parliament. I was thinking of introducing additional penalties under some civic combos, but hasn't gotten there yet.
2) An example of Representative Dictatorship: First French Empire is best represented by this civic combo. Representative Despotism is trickier of course, but those civics' timeframes of relevance barely overlap. Representation can be thought to be compatible with Feudal Aristocracy for example through the institution of Estates General. It was definitely a representative assembly and yet also definitely a feudal structure. Same can be said about early British parliament.
3) Nevertheless, I agree that some of the choices are suboptimal. For example, currently Federalism is a direct upgrade to Democracy, and is thus somewhat redundant.

Good point. Those are interesting examples. I like you idea of a penalty under certain civic combos. I think that would work well.

But it already is! We already have separate Social Justice and Collectivism civics.

I may have worded that poorly. What I meant is that "Social Justice" on it's own really isn't a civic. It's more of a singular element within 2 civics (and is manifested slightly differently in each) - Collectivism and Common Law.

It is an intriguing suggestion. I know too little about the evolution of legal practices to comment right now, but I will be sure to do some research. What current "legal" civic category represents is rather the nature of power that the state enjoys over its citizens - where the power comes from. Is it derived from force of arms, or from tradition, or from the collective voice of the people (etc...)? "Legal" in the sense of what is the legal basis of power for the state, or the answer to "Why the people from "Government" civic category rule over us?".

Ok. I'm looking at it in a similar, but slightly different way. I see it as - what is the mechanism that the government uses as it's legal authority? Is it tradition, civic law, collectivism, rule of fear, etc.

Basically Civic Law and Common Law overlap in some areas, but they also have their differences. Common Law is more fluid and susceptible to change based on case precedents decided by judges' rulings on what would be considered "grey areas." This is why Social Justice can be accommodated within a Common Law system. Civic Law can be more black and white and places a greater importance on codified law, rather than judicial rulings, or opinions.

Yeah, I guess it is a terminological difference. In RI it is basically used to separate Classical Republic from modern democracy. It may very well be that in American legal practice, the two have precise definitions - but not being a US lawyer, I am not aware of them. They are used in our mod in their historiographical sense, rather than in modern legal one.

Ok. That clarified things a bit. It seems that this is the reason for the difference in Modern definitions of Republic and Democracy: At the time the US Constitution was created the UK had a Constitutional Monarchy, not a Representative Democracy and it seems that this is why the difference in terminologies originated. Republic often signifies rule absent a monarch and when European countries moved away from that kind of rule often their monarchs were kept symbolically, so they needed a new terminology to reflect this.

Where the real difference seems to be is - What exactly is a Classical Republic and how does it differ from a Direct or Pure Democracy?

"Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10 advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Examples

Representative Democracy or Republic =/= Direct Democracy =/= Classical Republic.

Governance actually varied quite a bit from Athens, to Sparta, to the Roman Republic and in regards to Athens wikipedia is quite contradictory depending on what page you view. "Republics were not equated with classical democracies such as Athens, but had a democratic aspect." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic Athens would actually be classified as a "Direct or Pure Democracy." There are also other examples of Direct Democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#History

It's seem to me that your definition of a Classical Republic is more aligned with a Classical Roman Republic, while I assumed the civic to be representing more of an Athenian form of governance (which is a Democracy, not a Republic). The rest is a difference in terminologies.

It definitely would be. Truth be said, those buildings are also a rather clumsy attempt at creating civic synergies, and an even better way to implement them would be to just have civic synergies as gameplay effects. We considered such a system for a while, but unless we get our hands on more coding people, we just don't have enough time/resources.

I actually like the building concept a lot. I think it's really good for the reason that it makes changing civics more difficult to do and revolutions more costly. It also gives you the option of increasing civics usefulness as technology advances.

If you're playing SVN, Man-at-arms line upgrades to Grenadiers (and later units), not regular infantry.

Ok. I just happened to win before I got the chance to find that out on my own.

Well, higher difficulties are higher for a reason - they place more restrictions on players. I, for example, consciously choose not to play at the highest difficulty level that I can be successful at, but rather 1-2 lower, to be able to cut down on micromanagement and reduce the luck element (including frustratingly bad luck).

But then I find the restrictions on the human player to not be stringent enough late game. Playing on Emperor or Immortal I am often able to eliminate all major competition shortly after the Renaissance then after that it's just knocking off the remaining under-developed civs one by one.

Personally, I find that this early cap doesn't add much for difficulty do to the fact that instead of minding my own business early on and going for a wonder, or two and researching techs. I quickly build a massive army and wipe out all of my neighbours and loot their gold then slowly colonize the surrounding area once the cap is lifted. Otherwise I end up having only 2 cities and my rivals often have 4 each and they all eventually gang up on me because I am the weakest.

The # of cities cap is a good way to add difficulty and has helped a lot with runaway civs, but on it's own it is limited in it's usefulness. I'm not suggesting to scrap it, but to reduce it slightly and also add difficulty by other means; especially in the late game. A multifaceted approach that doesn't force the player into an extremely aggressive style of play out of necessity would be ideal. Late game the # of cities cap is great for slowing down runaway civs, but once again it leads to a lot of razing of cities rather than building, research, developing culture, and expansion. On Emperor you max out at about 45 cities on the large world map for what is possible to maintain economically, so your only alternative is to raze enemies and move on.

I'll try and come up with some ideas. I noticed in the latest SVN you have added increased production costs per additional unit and upgrade. I thought this was a really good idea. If you could apply the right amount of pressure from several different angles to increase difficulty I think it would allow for alternative strategies on higher difficulties. Perhaps something with research?

 

[Erfeo]

I think that democracy and republic are not mutually exclusive terms. All democracies are republics to an extent, since the voting process has to be guided to laws. And most republics have at least some democratic elements to them.

For the purposes of the game, a classical republic is simply any pre-modern republic. It's true there is a lot of variety within, with the direct democracy of Athens on one end and the aristocratic Sparta on the other end. But Sparta and Athens are two extreme outliers, most republics are closer to the middle of that scale. And within the wide scope of the game, these differences aren't that significant and can fit in the same category.

 

[Erfeo]

I think that democracy and republic are not mutually exclusive terms. All democracies are republics to an extent, since the voting process has to be guided to laws. And most republics have at least some democratic elements to them.

For the purposes of the game, a classical republic is simply any pre-modern republic. It's true there is a lot of variety within, with the direct democracy of Athens on one end and the aristocratic Sparta on the other end. But Sparta and Athens are two extreme outliers, most republics are closer to the middle of that scale. And within the wide scope of the game, these differences aren't that significant and can fit in the same category.

 

[[Y]]

Only for civs that have positive or friendly relations to you. In current SVN this has been further nerfed to only civs that are friendly. I feel that now it isn't overpowered anymore.

Hmm. Updated to most recent SVN and it's still counting civs with positive relations.

Regardless, is it possible to make this feature optional? For me, personally, this has been a source of non-stop frustrations since it has been implemented. In part this is due to flawed diplomacy (see spoiler) that guarantees that AI will benefit from this more than the player, and in part due to the setting I use (I always play with each Civ included, 33 at the moment, so it's easy for this boost to become ridiculous).

I understand why some people might like and appreciate this feature, but for those of us that don't, an option to disable would be much appreciated.

Spoiler :

I've been tracking global AI civ relations over a few games, and have yet to see "You refused to help us during wartime!", "You demanded tribute from us!" or "You refused to pay us tribute!" between their relations. As far as I can tell, they are unable to ask/demand/refuse these of each other. This means that the diplomacy penalties can only apply to the human player, which means the human player will always be at a diplomatic loss compared to the AI.

Have you, by chance, forgotten to actually remove the loose files you packed? If so, the game will still start slow.

Yep, files are removed. Only art files left are the movies... Hrm. Maybe I messed up the process, or it's a side effect of other computer problems (The hard drive is partitioned, but not properly... Might have an effect....). The wait isn't too much of a problem, so I'll live with it.

I would like to attract attention of all SVN players to the fact that we need feedback on those recent features. Do they need adjustment? What is their impact on balance, from your perspective? Etc. Go on, we thrive on your feedback!

As far as I can tell, it's only affecting recon units at the moment, and I can't say I've noticed much of a difference.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I was actually planning to remove Theocracy altogether. It doesn't combine well with other civics and true theocracies (rule by clerics) are very rare. The only ones I can think of are the Holy See and the Dalai Lama government. I think that the other states that we might consider running the Theocracy civic can just as well be considered (elective) monarchies or republics.

There are more examples that I can think of (for example, modern Iran or Heavenly Kingdom in mid-XIX century), but theocracy surely is a rather exotic form of government. That said, all the non-exotic ones are already covered quite well, I think.

I may have worded that poorly. What I meant is that "Social Justice" on it's own really isn't a civic. It's more of a singular element within 2 civics (and is manifested slightly differently in each) - Collectivism and Common Law.

Basically, Social Justice civic as it is now stands for the enfranchisement of minorities in your societies (cultural, racial or otherwise). I don't really think common/civil law distinction have much to do with this. As US history shows, you can equally well oppress and protect minorities under common law. Moreover, as of now (feel free to sway my opinion with examples of contrary), I don't feel that common law is more conductive to free and inclusive society than civil law. Modern continental Europe functions under civil law and manages quite well in that.

Of itself, I think a category that reflects legal structure could be an interesting one, and I can think of several civics besides common/civil law immediately - religious law (sharia for example), law by decree etc. That might be an interesting addition, but I wouldn't replace any other category with it.

Where the real difference seems to be is - What exactly is a Classical Republic and how does it differ from a Direct or Pure Democracy?

"Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10 advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Examples

Representative Democracy or Republic =/= Direct Democracy =/= Classical Republic.

Governance actually varied quite a bit from Athens, to Sparta, to the Roman Republic and in regards to Athens wikipedia is quite contradictory depending on what page you view. "Republics were not equated with classical democracies such as Athens, but had a democratic aspect." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic Athens would actually be classified as a "Direct or Pure Democracy." There are also other examples of Direct Democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#History

It's seem to me that your definition of a Classical Republic is more aligned with a Classical Roman Republic, while I assumed the civic to be representing more of an Athenian form of governance (which is a Democracy, not a Republic). The rest is a difference in terminologies.

Yes, you are rather spot on here. We don't really include a civic for direct democracy, as it is probably even more exotic for large enough entities than theocracy. Our republic civic is more based on Rome and Carthage than Athens (representing a city state with under 100000 people is probably not the scope that constitutes an in-game civilization). We used to have "City States" civic for a civilization that was fragmented into numerous nominally (or effectively) independent small states, like Ancient Greece or Holy Roman Empire during its later part, but we removed it after we found that we couldn't do anything fun or interesting with it.

But then I find the restrictions on the human player to not be stringent enough late game. Playing on Emperor or Immortal I am often able to eliminate all major competition shortly after the Renaissance then after that it's just knocking off the remaining under-developed civs one by one.

Personally, I find that this early cap doesn't add much for difficulty do to the fact that instead of minding my own business early on and going for a wonder, or two and researching techs. I quickly build a massive army and wipe out all of my neighbours and loot their gold then slowly colonize the surrounding area once the cap is lifted. Otherwise I end up having only 2 cities and my rivals often have 4 each and they all eventually gang up on me because I am the weakest.

The # of cities cap is a good way to add difficulty and has helped a lot with runaway civs, but on it's own it is limited in it's usefulness. I'm not suggesting to scrap it, but to reduce it slightly and also add difficulty by other means; especially in the late game. A multifaceted approach that doesn't force the player into an extremely aggressive style of play out of necessity would be ideal. Late game the # of cities cap is great for slowing down runaway civs, but once again it leads to a lot of razing of cities rather than building, research, developing culture, and expansion. On Emperor you max out at about 45 cities on the large world map for what is possible to maintain economically, so your only alternative is to raze enemies and move on.

I'll try and come up with some ideas. I noticed in the latest SVN you have added increased production costs per additional unit and upgrade. I thought this was a really good idea. If you could apply the right amount of pressure from several different angles to increase difficulty I think it would allow for alternative strategies on higher difficulties. Perhaps something with research?

There isn't really much to do with late game difficulty, unfortunately, at least nothing we have found to work well. That's actually one of the scourges of Civ series itself - you are usually facing decreasing, not increasing difficulty as you progress through the game.

Hmm. Updated to most recent SVN and it's still counting civs with positive relations.

Regardless, is it possible to make this feature optional? For me, personally, this has been a source of non-stop frustrations since it has been implemented. In part this is due to flawed diplomacy (see spoiler) that guarantees that AI will benefit from this more than the player, and in part due to the setting I use (I always play with each Civ included, 33 at the moment, so it's easy for this boost to become ridiculous).

I understand why some people might like and appreciate this feature, but for those of us that don't, an option to disable would be much appreciated.

I am an idiot; I forgot to implement that.

Anyway, feel free to remove the effect in CIV4CommerceInfo.xml; I think we'll end up removing it too.

As far as I can tell, it's only affecting recon units at the moment, and I can't say I've noticed much of a difference.

Should be affecting all types of units if you have any of the last revisions (from last two-three weeks or so).

2) Is there a way to know which building is created by a ministry so I don't waste my sabotage building mission? (espoinage)

Sorry, missed that one in my big answer post. No, not as far as I know unfortunately.

Hi,
Love the mod and have been playing it for years. I do have a question concerning the latest version.
I usually go for a cultural victory but when I received my first Great Artist I noticed the option of using him to add cultural points to a city was removed. I just wanted to know if it is still possible to win a cultural victory, how many cultural points are required to achieve legendary status, and what new strategies I should look into.
Thanks.

Again, sorry I missed yours too. Direct "culture bomb" was removed. Instead, there are "great works" that can be created by artists that generate lots of culture over time. I think using artists to culture bomb your cities wasn't the best strategy to winning a cultural victory even in vanilla Civ 4 (a settled GA would generate more total culture by the time you'd win a cultural victory). Anyway, cultural victory is still very much possible, though since there are more culture-generating buildings around, the caps have been raised. They are map size dependent, so I can't just give you exact figures.

 

[pioswa]

"

Basically, Social Justice civic as it is now stands for the enfranchisement of minorities in your societies (cultural, racial or otherwise).

But isn't that a form of representation? Where minorities (or women) could have their representation in government and have similar rights as majority(men). I always had a hard time imagining "Social justice" as separate legal civic that is totally different then representation (totally different bonuses). In my opinion "Social justice" could have been national wonder associated with representation and free religion. (it is strange to have militancy and social justice at the same time).

 

[civman110]

Basically, Social Justice civic as it is now stands for the enfranchisement of minorities in your societies (cultural, racial or otherwise). I don't really think common/civil law distinction have much to do with this. As US history shows, you can equally well oppress and protect minorities under common law.

If by oppression; you're referring to slavery, then that is really a different can of worms than the modern social justice movements. Slavery was institutionalized oppression that was codified into law in the US Constitution that blacks were 3/5ths of a man and therefore could be enslaved. That is a very different situation than "minority rights." Something that specific and determinative in a constitution really has nothing to do with a common law system since it is not subject to change through judicial rulings, or is open for alternate interpretations. To change the law it would required an amendment to the constitution, which had to be ratified though the judiciary of every state individually. The constitution is essentially the only document that judges do not have the power to strike down in a common law system, however they are able to change it through rulings based on their interpretation of the document if sections of it are non-specific.

Moreover, as of now (feel free to sway my opinion with examples of contrary), I don't feel that common law is more conductive to free and inclusive society than civil law. Modern continental Europe functions under civil law and manages quite well in that.

It's not a question of which is more conductive of a free inclusive society. I can provide arguments for the negatives and positives of each. My point is concerned with how each system functions primarily (what it allows, what it doesn't allow). Also "Social Justice" is not inherently a positive, or negative concept and whether it manifests itself for better, or worse really depends on how the concept is applied within the society.

Typically for changes to the law to take place under a civil law system codified law needs to be passed by elected officials to change the law. With a common law system a judicial ruling based on an interpretation of a codified law is enough to change the law. Essentially with common law - unelected, appointed, supreme court judges have the ability to strike down law, or amend laws (by changing the legal interpretation of said law). There's actually been a lot of debate surrounding this issue and it's implications as of late. This example is mainly concerning Canada, but references the US as well, however this example would apply to any common law country that grants non-specific rights and freedoms to individuals.

"What changed with passage of the Charter was that rights and freedoms were given constitutional status, and judges were given the power to strike down laws that infringed on them."

"... most political questions in the United States eventually end up as judicial questions. The same is now true of Canada. Our courts are currently involved in Charter litigation on everything from assisted suicide to prostitution and polygamy.

The problem in all of this is that the Charter is anything but self-executing. It is full of vaguely worded rights and the social science evidence that courts have at their disposal in adjudicating Charter claims is anything but determinative. As a result, judicial decisions interpreting and applying the Charter are bound to be controversial. Reasonable people can and do disagree about the interpretation and application of Charter rights. So do reasonable judges, as evidenced by the number of closely divided decisions in the Supreme Court.

That is why not everyone concerned about rights thinks that it is a good idea to give judges the power to strike down democratically enacted legislation."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...s-given-judges-too-much-power/article4101032/

Now for example, take the issue of legalizing prostitution. Most people can make well reasoned arguments both for and against it and that's precisely why IMO, this is something that should be decided by the citizens through their elected officials and not by appointed, unelected supreme court justices, but I digress... My point is that it is much easier to change law under a common law system through the judicial branch of the government, rather than submitting legislation to an elected body, obtaining the support of a majority of elected officials (usually from several government branches) to pass the law, then the judicial branch must approve it - in a common law system the other branches of government can be bypassed by judicial decree. My point is that when it comes to creating law, a civic law structure places more weight on the will of the majority by design. In a common law system the majority opinion and sometimes even the other branches of government are largely irrelevant when it comes to social issues.

Of itself, I think a category that reflects legal structure could be an interesting one, and I can think of several civics besides common/civil law immediately - religious law (sharia for example), law by decree etc. That might be an interesting addition, but I wouldn't replace any other category with it.

IMO, we already have that. Through combinations of Government, legal, and religious civics.

"

But isn't that a form of representation? Where minorities (or women) could have their representation in government and have similar rights as majority(men). I always had a hard time imagining "Social justice" as separate legal civic that is totally different then representation (totally different bonuses). In my opinion "Social justice" could have been national wonder associated with representation and free religion. (it is strange to have militancy and social justice at the same time).

That's basically my point. Social Justice isn't a wide enough concept to have it's own civic, imo. It can easily be absorbed into other more substantive civics. On it's own it's simply an ideology.

 

[[Y]]

I am an idiot; I forgot to implement that.

Anyway, feel free to remove the effect in CIV4CommerceInfo.xml; I think we'll end up removing it too.

Thanks, will do!

Should be affecting all types of units if you have any of the last revisions (from last two-three weeks or so).

Hmm. I'll check again, but I don't remember seeing it in the tooltip for the early game melee units. I may have just missed it... That said, I still didn't feel much of a gameplay difference (but perhaps it's not very drastic early on in the game), and Mongolia was still able to raise a sufficient army of axemen and skirmishers to level the Turkish empire...


By the way, do you guys still need Python developers? I don't have much experience with it, but I can pick it up pretty easily if you need someone to dive into the code and fix some things.

 

[pioswa]

I think there is something wrong with released vassals. i released one and 10 turns later they declared independence and stopped being my vassals. They had few town, some units and that is it. They didn't loss any ground, in fact they gained few cities i conquered and instantly gave them, but still they ware tiny civilization (5 cieties i had 40 or so). I think that, disabling peace vassalization of the ai, forces your peace vassals to brake vassal state at first turn it is possible. In that case granting independence have little of value.

 

[kiwi_lifter]

A few notes from many many enjoyable play throughs with the svn lately:

1. Vassals are actually working really well for me: that is, half the civs in the game don't vassalize when the first powerful civ gets the right technology. I've only seen one civ vassalize in about 10 games. I assume this is the desired outcome?

2. Barbarians are stacking in hordes, sometimes 20 thick. Great fun for a human player, though the ai usually loses 3-4 civs a game to them. Since the raging option is is optional, this seems reasonable to me. (I've touched on the naval issue earlier, obviously)

3. The Celtic recon unit Balboe(?) is getting a 40% attack bonus vs cities, which I think was meant to be a penalty.

4. Longbowmen. I see that some civs have had their hitpoints bumped from 7-8. Longbowmen have always seemed like the most overpowered unit in the game to me, and I'm curious why their stats were increased. Yet the one civ with a unique longwoman, Korean, doesn't get a hit point boost. Personally, I think that they should all have 6 hp.

5. I'm getting a common scenario where a civ becomes very friendly (yes, "friendly") toward me at the begining of the game, and later too, without any good reason. Usually because our civics are similar. However, they always refuse to sign open borders, even with a yellow happy face. In some cases, this happens in the first 10 turns post contact (the friendly thing).

6. Jungle. I googled it to see if anyone else had a recent thread on it, but didn't find anything. Jungle is a real problem. It makes you sick and prone to epidemics. It offers virtually nothing in terms of growth or production. It makes barbarians and invaders hard to kill. But the worst thing about jungle: you can't cut it down for a loooooooong time. Why? Is it easier to cut down forests than jungle? Were there no civilizations in jungle until later in time? No, there is no rational explanation that I can think of for making jungle wait to be hacked down. And Real Mongoose makes a LOT of jungle. So, why not make jungle clearable earlier?

7. I love the Maya, they're great fun to play, as well as many of the new buildings. This is such a wonderful mod. Having made one large one for another game, I can really appreciate how much time is spent to even make minor changes here. Thank you to everyone who contributes. Any chance of having the Dutch and Portuguese available soon?

8. When I regenerate maps, often my units are placed on the water, and I get an error message.

9. Agrarian leaders are not building their Hunter's Cabins faster.

10. Real Mongoose doesn't place oasis tiles, which makes Arab bonus improvement useless.

11. Ragnar's greeting is messed up.

 

[Shuikkanen]

A really small detail which has been bugging me for a while:

The Sacerdotal Palace enables 1 citizen to be turned into a Priest.
But it's requisite civic, Theocracy, already allows infinite Priests.

 

[Commoner]

Pretty awesome mod. I've been playing it for a few years now, and I'm quite amazed by the longevity of Realism Invictus. I just keep coming back to it.

I just got through a world map scenario with the Zulu empire, and found that they seem to be missing a custom longbow unit graphic (it's just the generic longbowman), as well as a generic Cuirassier unit. From what I've seen, both of the other African civilizations (Mali and Ethiopia) have their own respective and unique units for those two!