Hi everyone! Long time no post.
Though those of you who follow our SVN must have seen that we were still working quite hard all this time. I have also found some time to do hands-on playtesting, something that I definitely don't do enough these days.
2) Screenshot included. It re-centers the message in a bigger form. I'm not sure but you might be right that the cheat code prevents the Ctrl-F1 to work. I've never tried the debug mode as there are some problems of keys with a French keyboard.
Alternatively, a new screen with a scrolling bar could be created showing even more clearly all units. But it is a bit more complicated and also implies a combination of key strokes.
I'm figuring all this python stuff for myself now. I think I'll be able to integrate this one soon enough.
The answer is certainly yes, the scenario IS designed specifically with RI. No oth I could upload it now, and it would be playable, but I'm not yet happy with everything so far.
Additionally, I've begun work on a Roman scenario
Thanks for the response.
So, how are those scenarios doing?
The Turks waged a genocide against the Armenians and attacked and killed a lot of Greeks. Similar situations in the Balkans also. After Iran had their revolution lots of Christains left. Christians also fled Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood was elected, although they were not a Theocracy. I would also assume that many people of different faith also left Saudi Arabia after their "reformations" became much more strict when it came to practising other faiths.
The way I see things is. Inquisitions wipe out entire faiths from countries/cities. Theocracies oppress and slowly weed out different faiths though random violence and emigration. People do not stay in places where they are being oppressed or persecuted if they have a choice. Some stay, but I'd imagine in many cities under theocratic governments you have large amounts of emigration of minority faiths without the government going in and slaughtering people. The the question is, after this emigration is this small minority big enough to make a cultural impact that is worth representing, or has this faith pretty much died out in this city for all practical purposes?
Remember that in RI, you don't have to be a Theocracy to wipe out other religions - you just have to have a Militant faith, and you can do this even as a Democracy.
Anyway, I agree that faith differences ideally should play a bigger negative role in RI, but currently we won't be doing this for gameplay reasons - AI just doesn't comprehend this concept well enough, so this would have a lot of exploit potential in player hands. It might already have...
My main beef with the way the religions work is that far to many religions spread to every city far too soon when even in the modern era cities wouldn't be so diverse.
...
I think where our opinions differ is at what threshold should minority religions be considered significant enough to be represented culturally in a city and also, if they are actively being oppressed/persecuted and emigrating in large numbers would these populations grow to an insignificant amount or die out in at least some cities in the country?
No, I actually agree with you here. Religions should be harder to spread, especially to places that already have established confessions. We will likely tweak this, but unfortunately it can't be achieved through XML alone.
I like civman's idea of prophets creating religious orders like the military doctrines (think of corporations): Christian monastic orders (conventual Franciscans), sufi orders, etc. which would have to be spread manually and would give special bonuses. Maybe the orders could be available only when you have a certain religion as state religion and would cease functioning when you switch to FR or another religion.
Examples of bonuses could be:
Franciscan Fraternity: +1health, +1culture per city
Jesuit Order: +2 science and +1culture per great priest
Naqshbandi tariqa: +1 XP for units built in the city
Bhakti: +1 happy face in the city, two with hemp
Maybe certain units and buildings could be linked to these orders as well.
That is something I can see implemented. My main concern here is to make all religions balanced in this regard.
Two questions:
1) I just noticed that forts no longer act as cities for ships, so can no longer be used to build canals. Is there anything else to build canals ?
If it is so, that's unintended. I'll look into it.
2) I was never offered the Great Schism as a tech and nobody else has founded orthodoxy. How does one get it ?
No way. It isn't supposed to be researched in normal games. Orthodox Christianity is only used in the Crusades scenario thus far.
I think I'v found a decent solution to war spam! I check the box "no city razing" and i noticed a huge improvement of the game mechanics. Because my problem with this really awesome mod is that the AI is not COMPETITIVE enough, and that if you defend well in the earlier phases of the game, then you will almost certainly WIN. AIs keep destroying each other, then building settlers, then destroying each other again... Huge waste of resources and time, since you need 10+ turns to build a settler in the early stages. Right now I am playing a game on Immortal Difficulty and I just got to the modern era, and I am comfortably leading the pack (by over 600 points). Why? Because the Romans in this game started a war against Carthage (the next 2 best civs) and destroyed 15+ cities, conquered none. This is really not only bad for game mechanics, but highly unrealistic. Never in the history of this stupid mankind wars were fought just to destroy cities. Not to mention that in the early phases of the game, the AI almost always destroys the cities after conquest.
I looked into that and there is definitely something wrong with AI razing logic. That will be high on the list of things to be fixed.
Guys, another thing: does any of you live around Freiburg, Germany? Would be nice to meat sometime. The drinks are on me
None from the team at least, AFAIK. Many years ago we used to have a German team member, but we no longer do.
I second this, balancing not suppose to be punishing, 1 sick person is easier to fix than -10 percent of wealth for Islamic temple. I also found the tribalfort not in anyway realistic, it also punish my AI for having eternal war with Bantu and Sawahili, not to mention they who only have medieval equipment, even me using gunpowder sometime having difficulty facing a tribalfort that station in city, they are really like a ghost than a unit.
Well, I've been thinking a lot lately about this tribal fort stuff. We will probably do something to get rid of them in our scenarios, or at least greatly decrease their importance. The main problem with removing them is that it causes AI "scramble for Africa" in early Iron Age instead of XVIII-XIX century as it was historically. Basically, some places should somehow stay off limits to major civs until relatively late.
Thanks for the rationale, Walter. The wife and I disagree but understand (she really likes Boudicca and I'm just not a Brennus guy because we don't know much about him/them (although your traits are about what I'd expect, heh.)
Thanks, always nice to see polite dissent here!
I can also see your reasoning - some people, though not ultimately very successful, have a lot of cultural and symbolic importance, and that is also a valid approach when choosing leaders for civs, just not the one we chose in this case.
My solution is the following, and I hope we could discuss this:
1) I think tech diffusion should not be connected to open borders. It makes sense that if you have land borders with a nation, some tech should diffuse, even if you dont have open borders. This way I give a chance to isolationist leaders, which are right sitting ducks.
2) Connect tech diffusion with spying points. Set some level of espionage for the tech diffusion. In fact, you already have this levels. Have, lets say, 4 or 5 different levels, with 5% bonus per level, a max of 25% lets say. It doesnt really make sense that a civ that is on the other side of the globe I havent even discovered yet gives me 30% bonus because I have some open borders agreement... This way, the AI, which is investing a lot in espionage, might just end up on the wining side...
3) The only underdeveloped aspect of this game is the espionage and the limited possibilities of spies, the lack of promotions, etc.Why not have spy infiltrate in a foreign city, in order for you to get that 5% bonus, for example? The mission would consume the spy, and each turn to chance of being discovered should grow. Why not have spies assigned to your city, in order to defend from foreign infiltrators. Have a small sign, like the religion symbol, to indicate that you have a spy in your city, or in a foreign city. This way you wont have annoying units just sitting around in your city, mixing with the units, and you would now very quickly if one of your towns if defended or not.
Yeah, I believe we won't be touching these values until we can overhaul the whole tech transfer system. I think linking it to espionage is actually a brilliant thing to do, thanks for the idea!
Confirm I have same thing, it's not just a bad download on your part. Not all map scripts work with RI, the added terrain and features probably mess them up.
The one I use is PerfectMongoose.
The Huge World Map scenario is fun, often the mod gets is balanced around it, but I will warn you that many PCs have slow down issues with it eventually, especially with memory.
I've also read that CommandingHeights makes for a well balanced game as well.
Indeed, RI may mess up some of the standard map scripts. One thing I should note regarding your post is that we usually balance the mod around random maps, not the World Map scenario.
By the way, is Hungary going to have an unique improvement soon? I would really like to play as them more, but without an UI they are obviously not as good as the others. If there are any hungarian RI players on this forum: what kind of improvement would you add to represent your country?
Yeah, it definitely is, but the terrible lack of fantasy on our side prevents us from doing that. So far we just couldn't think of a decent improvement for Hungary.
So yeah, if any Hungarians are reading this, your input for a unique and fun improvement would be much appreciated.
- It may just be this game, but religions aren't being spread like plague anymore which is nice. You end up with more of a multi-polar world.
I think - but don't take my word for it - that Josh has recently tweaked a bit the way religions spread. And yes, it seems much more natural.
It would be nice if you could spur some small growth by capturing and controlling resources as well. I really do like the recent reductions in gold from buildings, but may I suggest focusing on reducing gold bonuses mainly from buildings that are not tied to resources (like you did for banks) and perhaps give buildings such as markets, grocers, and trading posts small % bonuses if you control or trade for certain resources. Then perhaps you can earn an extra 5%-10% gold per building (on top of their current gold bonus) if you have all the required resources, which doesn't amount to a whole lot of extra gold per city, but may allow you to fund an extra 2-3 cities a bit sooner.
In the long run, I think it wouldn't matter that much, at least if implemented the way you're suggesting. That 1-2% would in most cases not even result in 1 extra gold.
Also the Aztec chinampa should receive all of the upgrades that farms do as you discover new techs.
Not really, it's quite inherently limited as a farming technique. But I agree that early on it should probably be more powerful than it is now.
Hi
After spending countless hours... (who am I kidding... It has been months now !
) playing RI I've got to say this is probably the best Civ 4 mod available today !
Thanks for making it guys. The only flaw is long loading time but I understand that it is an engine limitation. I have got one suggestion to make for the next release. I would relly like to see more severe punishment for exceeding the logistics limits (something like 50% more severe than it is now). It's because I saw AI's winning with stacks of 40+ cannons and 80 charge mounted units which I think is what You guys tried to avoid incorporating logistics limits (great idea btw
)
That's one thing that we're considering, but I am not sure if AI will handle it properly. Frankly, I'm afraid to implement it in case it breaks AI.
How exactly does the canal work these days? I have a friend that plays and he can't work out the best use for canals. How are they meant to be used?
Well, canals are among those improvements that could probably use an additional boost.
Perhaps now would be good time for a proper release? I'm beginning to feel like I'm missing a lot of improvements again, and I'm sure there are plenty of others like me who don't jump through all the hoops involved in getting and packing the cutting edge version.
Unfortunately no. We will probably refrain from that as long as we don't implement at least some parts of RevMod functionality.
Hey! just decided to try out civ 4 while waiting for my go-to civ 5 mod to get updated, and decided to play this mod which so far seems awesome, so thanks for that
I just have 1 quick question, not sure if its only in RI or vanilla too as I haven't played vanilla
Anyway is it possible to get the music to always play? Now it stops if i zoom in or out too much, or go to a town, but i would like it to just play always, and i haven't found a setting or found anything on google about this. Thanks!
Sorry, that's a limitation imposed by Civ 4 engine, and we modders can't get around it AFAIK.
I think AI:s being vassalized too easily is actually one of the biggest problems of the mod at the moment and it should be fixed as soon as possible. I play most of the time with vassals turned off too.
Yeah, peace vassal behavior was broken, so for now I killed it. In latest revisions AI can only be force vassalized. So all of you can turn Vassals back on.
I noticed that raging barbs on games starting after the Renaissance are horribly stunted. I think it is because they are not allowed to spawn in waves as in earlier ages. I tend to find they create cities and simply amass troops in them. Yet if you start a game in the earlier stages, the barbarians are vicious through all ages.
Well... We didn't really balance RI to play well in late starts. The fact that nothing is seriously broken in a Renaissance start is actually a surprise for me.
Why not have tech transfer have tiers?
Tier 1: You've contacted the government but have no land borders, roads, or sea routes.
Tier 2: Roads to, heavy barbarian influence ( aka, no close borders )
Tier 3: Sea routes potential, no open borders.
Tier 4: Sea routes, open borders
Tier 5: Closed borders but borders connect on land.
Tier 6: Open borders, land connection.
Or something along these lines.
In general I dislike tech transfer since it seems entirely arbitrary - I often refuse to sign open border agreements as I'm the tech leader. I don't want these peasants learning how to deal with my horse archer swarm. *cue Mongolia theme*
Short answers: affects performance too much and too complicated for players to easily comprehend and use. We keep it simple for those reasons. Anyway,
some overhaul of this system is long due.
) of units at the start.
