The Sword of Islam 1.0 Discussion

embryodead · Dec 7, 2012

Fourth Crusade is an event that happens roughly 50% of the time, and spawns independent crusaders outside Constantinople. It leads to collapse of Byzantium quite often in my experience.

Druzes are also in as possible mercenaries. Also, during the Crusades they fought on Muslim side, especially Fatimid's.

There's a setting that makes Crusaders unlikely to vassalize and it's certainly not common, but allowed.

Mongol power seems to vary from patch to patch, even though I haven't touched them directly for ages. They're certainly weaker than in 0.3, where they used to wipe most of the map almost always. Probably after some AI changes the AI Seljuks and Khwarezmids are just stronger and survive often. This may be balanced further, yes.

This was also discussed before - spawning of vassals creates problems I'd rather avoid, i.e. if you were at war with Seljuks, and made peace, then a few turns later Zengids spawned, Seljuks would have automatically to declare war on you again etc.

Nor'easter · Dec 8, 2012

First time I played this mod I played as the Byzantines and, as happened in real life, the Fourth Crusade took me completely by surprise and I lost Constantinople. Although I eventually re-took it, it was a blow from which I never really recovered -- again, as in real life.

Second time I played as the Byzantines, of course, I knew the Fourth Crusade was coming, so I made sure Constantinople was well-garrisoned and was able to hold them off.

The Turk · Dec 8, 2012

embryodead said:
Same as before - it's not possible to do the switch properly mid-game, except for the name, which I found confusing, given there's a civ with that name, with different flag & unit art, and no UU.

I'm a tad confused, so can you change the name from the Ghorids to Delhi Sultanate? I don't care as much about the flag, but the name change would be cool.

@Nor'easter

The 4th Crusade varies from time to time, but simply put, like in most games your first run through is always the coolest and more profound, because you don't know whats going to happen. Shamefully you can't have as much variation the second, third times around. I personally think the 4th Crusade should happen more often, since it was so integral to this time period, like the Ayyubids were to the Fatimids.

Nor'easter · Dec 8, 2012

The Turk said:
@Nor'easter

The 4th Crusade varies from time to time, but simply put, like in most games your first run through is always the coolest and more profound, because you don't know whats going to happen. Shamefully you can't have as much variation the second, third times around. I personally think the 4th Crusade should happen more often, since it was so integral to this time period, like the Ayyubids were to the Fatimids.

That's exactly right. Add in the devastation of the Seljuk and Mongol invasions and it really felt like replicating the history. Unfortunately, as you noted, the second time around you know what's coming, so you can prepare for it. It's still a challenge to see how well you can do, but not the same as the first time surprise.

youtien · Dec 14, 2012

Just won a Ottoman game in Caliph. Domination victory is easier than UHV for Ottomans, for you have to wait till 1660 or conquer cities just before 1660. I conquered all the cities and got -100 ~ 200 in stability, it forced me to open GA and settle Nobatia and Africa and achieved domination victory with 33% of the land.

youtien · Dec 14, 2012

youtien said:
Just won a Ottoman game in Caliph. Domination victory is easier than UHV for Ottomans, for you have to wait till 1660 or conquer cities just before 1660. I conquered all the cities and got -100 ~ 200 in stability, it forced me to open GA and settle Nobatia and Africa and achieved domination victory with 33% of the land.

Ottoman is like the final boss in other games, so powerful UP, UU and they have near no foreign threat nor any trouble from Europe. Mamluks got 50+ units in Jerusalem, I waited until I got light cavalry(wheellock) and sweeped them. Safavid is no match either.

Mamluks built the Taj Mahal in my game, I bought city planning from them and stole the civic tech. The only problem is late-game stability.

Ulugh Beg Observatory is the most powerful wonder in late game, I rush it every time.

Pavel Chichikov · Dec 16, 2012

Is it just the way I'm playing my games, or are constantly-respawning-mega-Abbasids quite common?
Seljuks should at least begin at war with them, no? They're usually Pleased/Friendly due to mutual enemies and being Sunni.

How do the idea of Sinkhs as an Indian Sufi-type addition sound?

teriaky · Dec 18, 2012

I always play on Sultan difficulty and the Byzantine are so strong that they always crush the 4th crusade.

Askiya · Dec 19, 2012

Pavel Chichikov said:
Is it just the way I'm playing my games, or are constantly-respawning-mega-Abbasids quite common?
Seljuks should at least begin at war with them, no? They're usually Pleased/Friendly due to mutual enemies and being Sunni.

How do the idea of Sinkhs as an Indian Sufi-type addition sound?

I agree, it is very rare to see the Seljuks attack the Abbasids in my game. And do you mean Sikhs?

Jusos2108 · Jan 3, 2013

Few small issues that I have noticed in my recent domination games:

If the CotF declares Holy War on you, but you sign peace before it is declared, the other nations still declare war on you. Maybe it should be impossible to sign peace right after you have initiated a Holy War.
This is probably a BTS bug, but free buildings are not visible in tooltip while hovering over a city (for example Observatory with the free observatory wonder).
Either I don't know how the preparation bonus for spies is supposed to work or then it is not working (see screenshot below).
The overall population in the demographics seems to be a bit too low.
And finally a request: Could you impleted the shorter disorder times for city conquest from DoC, the current ones can be more than ten turns, which is tedious and unrealistic.

Spoiler :

Jusos2108 · Jan 19, 2013

More stuff from my Mughal game:

-For some reason Kabul didn't flip to me

Spoiler :

-I got the Lengendary culture goal, eventhough none of my cities had 25k culture

Spoiler :

-I also got this exception many times

Spoiler :

Jusos2108 · Jan 19, 2013

embryodead said:
Mongol power seems to vary from patch to patch, even though I haven't touched them directly for ages. They're certainly weaker than in 0.3, where they used to wipe most of the map almost always. Probably after some AI changes the AI Seljuks and Khwarezmids are just stronger and survive often. This may be balanced further, yes.

Concerning Mongols, playing as Seljuks I noticed that the Khwarezmids flipped the cities (Urganj, Kniveh, Bukhara, Samarkand) that Mongols had conquered back in less than ten turns after losing them; making them stable again during the mongol invasion, which resulted to them surviving until I won domination victory around 1350.

Willi_Tell · Jan 19, 2013

First: This is a fantastic mod and I have a lot of fun with it - thank your very much!!!

But: As the SoI map is focussed on Middle East, Iranian Plateau and India, it would be cool to have some Palms shown, don't you think?

So, for my personal pleasure I ported the Palm Forest from RFC:Europe over to SoI and IMHO it just looks very nice:

Spoiler :

I recommend to implement the palm forest just as an eye candy, with no impact of gameplay. This would also be the easiest way technically (no build infos, no ability for worker to chop) as you only have to edit one single file (CIV4FeatureInfos.xml) - and add the graphic folder, of course... :mischief:

I suggest to place palm forest on the map mainly on plains (flatland and hills as well), but IMHO it also fits very well on some semi-desert tiles (and it looks fantastic over camel-resource...)

Cetrix · Jan 19, 2013

(edit : it's ok)

SanJose · Jan 20, 2013

also, possible change in the cards like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi

stoferb · Jan 20, 2013

I knew about the 4th crusade from history although I wasn't sure how it would play out in my byzantine game. But I think the attack was far too weak. I uppgraded my defenders, hired some mercs and was already spamming units for another war anyway. Only a few trebuchets isn't enough to knock down that special wall of constantinopel. They should get atleast twice as many units, especially seige.

Pavel Chichikov · Jan 20, 2013

Willi_Tell said:
First: This is a fantastic mod and I have a lot of fun with it - thank your very much!!!

But: As the SoI map is focussed on Middle East, Iranian Plateau and India, it would be cool to have some Palms shown, don't you think?

So, for my personal pleasure I ported the Palm Forest from RFC:Europe over to SoI and IMHO it just looks very nice:

Spoiler :

I also added some alternate terrain graphics (mainly from "Total Realism/Realism Invictus") and reworked some of the Improvement Graphics (mine and windmill smaller, new Farm field, lighter roads, etc.)

I recommend to implement the palm forest just as an eye candy, with no impact of gameplay. This would also be the easiest way technically (no build infos, no ability for worker to chop) as you only have to edit one single file (CIV4FeatureInfos.xml) - and add the graphic folder, of course...
I suggest to place palm forest on the map mainly on plains (flatland and hills as well), but IMHO it also fits very well on some semi-desert tiles (and it looks fantastic over camel-resource...)

Nice! But they shouldn't be in the Kurdish/Christians parts of now-Syria.

embryodead · Jan 25, 2013

@Willi_Tell
I didn't quite like that Palm Tree graphic in RFCE, though on that screenshot it looks quite fitting actially, so I'll probably end up adding it for 1.1 update, simply as a feature variation as you suggested. Thanks!

@Jusos2108
The exception isn't game breaking but will have to be fixed, thanks. Same for the Legendary culture calculation - it counts total city culture, instead of your culture only.

Kabul not flipping is by-design (by Rhye's design even). There's a cap on the maximum number of cities a new civ can flip - if there's too many, some farther from core will be skipped. I don't recall the formula, but it's not a fixed cap. Anyway, in SoI it happens with Safavids & Mughals sometimes, since they come late and flip large areas.

embryodead · Jan 26, 2013

Hmm unsure about the palms. They're too different/loose to be forest variation, and when used as an eye-candy irremovable feature, they look natural, especially when an improvement is built over them (so that only 2-3 trees show up) but when unimproved, they may be confusing... it's not clear what is a forest, and what is just decoration.

Thoughts? Pic from India attached.

This could be turned into "woodland" feature though I didn't think distinction between forests and woodland was necessary in SoI, where forests aren't common.

AbsintheRed · Jan 27, 2013

I made them unchoppable in RFCE
So it's doesn't really matter if it's not clear on first sight that a given tile is real forest or not
Works reasonably well there IMO

The Sword of Islam 1.0 Discussion

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