Civ4 Realism Mod (Extended Gameplay and tweaks)

[Michel Keijzers]

Since this thread is about natural civ, there is something a little unnatural in the game. I have to admit this idea is not from myself but from SimCity.
If you build a road or rail it costs maintenance. I think it should be done in Civ too. Altough I like to build lots of roads and rail I don't 'think' about it ... I juist built wherever possible. In reality this would be strange since maintaining such a network would be very costly. To reflect this a 'maintenance cost' for roads and/or rail could be used. Even a building cost would seem natural. Tough the same would be applicable for building farms (building cost; not maintenance cost), forts (maintenace costs can be applicable here too), mines etc.

 

[Phoenix Set]

Your Mod is great Jaynus! I can't wait for you to do more to it. I just play your Mod now instead of the released version of the game, keep up the good work.................

 

[Lachlan]

Jaynus where you are ? The patch don't arrive now !

 

[VippiN]

Bravo for the first mod that has enabled me to have a decent pre-gunpowder war.

 

[Krafweerk]

I agree that the Civ 4 economy is a really poor reflection of reality. Perhaps "resource collection" and "production" should be separated. Presently, we have "hammers" which kind of abstractly represent your ability to make things.

Perhaps, we should change this. Now, maybe "hammers" represent generic raw materials that you need to make things. Once you have the requiste raw materials collected, you need to use your work force (usually in big cities with factories etc) to produce what you need. The amount of stuff your people can make would depend on the work force size, a rating on how industrialized / efficient your workers are at that particular task, and finally you'd be limited to the amount of resources you have available.

I.e, You're trying to make a tank. You have lots of "hammers" or raw resources lying around (ontop of any other specific resource required), you have a large work force, but you don't have any factories to make the tank parts in this city. This might mean that it would take you a long time to build the tank, despite having a large work force. They still don't have the requiste industry to build the tank parts efficiently. Lets say instead you wanted to build an aircraft of some sort. This city might indeed have some sort of aircraft parts factory. So, you have the raw resources, you have a large work force, and your people are really good at their particular task. So the same city might be bad at making tanks, but good at making aircraft.

Also, perhaps this might mean that you could either buy / trade for raw resources (hammers.) You would want to trade raw resources to your big cities, where you will have the required factories and work force to pump out the goods. Once you get things like railroads, you should pretty much be able to instantly and easily transfer raw resources to your big cities.

Anyways, I just pulled this example out of my nether-regions. But, some way to separate raw resources (hammers) and the actual ability to produce things with those resources would be interesting. I think the way to make Civ4 more dynamic and interesting (such that more land doesn't always mean more power) is to make the economic system more realistic.

Pulled from the unmentionables or not...thats a spot on idea...

 

[Krafweerk]

@Simetrical

I think we're getting away from game oriented discussion...I was trying to relate real world concepts to game concepts...but I think ive proved to myself now that as complicated as the real world is, translating all that into a video game is beyond anyones ability

As for China in the WTO...damn, I need to pay more attention to the news. Last I heard everyone was freaking out that they even wanted in at all!

As for why manfucatured goods are so important, its that they relate to production. Production is one of the key features of Civilization 4. Units, buildings, etc, the "fun" thats to be had is producing things and watching your civilization grow...

 

[Agraza]

I love the mod, but the memory leak that eventually causes errors and crashes in civ 4 is even worse when I use this mod. I can tolerate a huge map with the standard ruleset all the way to the finish, but with this mod, on a huge map, I can barely get past 1400 AD before the game wants to crash on me every other turn. I'm only able to to play standard and smaller sized maps using this mod if I expect to make it to the finish. I hope the large issues of civ 4 are handled soon, but if you can find and smooth out the reasons why your mod increases the problem I'd be able to appreciate your work even more.

As to the content, I agree with others that with this mod I can finally take the time to fight other civs early on, even multiple civs, and still remain competitive with the ones who remain neutral.

 

[Samuelson]

Janus has abandoned us!!!

 

[mayonaise]

be patient... theres nothing more annoying to a person that is doing something for free for the benefit of others than those same people being pushy and impatient...

 

[JakeCourtney]

be patient... theres nothing more annoying to a person that is doing something for free for the benefit of others than those same people being pushy and impatient...

This mod is going to be pure fun once ICBMs have been updated. I don't think Jaynus abandoned us. He must he hard at work or he is waiting for the patch. Who knows, but this mod is good and I think it will get better.

 

[Kolyana]

I'm definitively interested in the mod ... good work :tup:

One thing - just my humble opinion:
>> - Removed riflemans (and redcoats) +25% vs. cavalry bonus (a bonus against a moving target, wtf?!)

I'm inclined to AGREE with REDCOATS getting the bonus and it could probably be argued that all musketmen of the period should get it. For starters, there is the "rock, paper, scissor" mentality of the game, and so these are the units to use against cavalry, but - real-world example - historically such units [massed musketmen] formed squares which were DEVASTATING to enemy cavalry. Back in the era of the Napoleonic war, the Sqaure was THE formation of choice when faced with enemy cavalry and there were very, very few recorded instances when squares were defeated when they managed to form up. From this point of view, I can easily imagine the +25% bonus being realistic. Thinking in terms of "hitting a moving target? wtf?" is, to my mind, thinking in terms of modern rifles and that's not how the musket was used ... because of it's inaccuracy, units consisted of hundreds upon hundreds of men formed in columns, lines and squares; it wasn't one man trying to snipe off a hurtling cavalryman, but rather 200 muskets opening up all at one time.

I think the +25% should not be removed. imho.

 

[Simetrical]

. . . are you saying that you should have some amount of research dumped into every tech that would be obvious to your people, every turn, but with a diminishing return (perhaps with limit as time goes to infinity of 0)?

Yes. However, for the sake of fun, this should be vastly smaller than the amount you get by actively researching, which would work fairly similarly to now.

If the "obviousness" is some sort of dynamic function of variables involving how much contact you have with others with the tech, how much use the tech would be for your society, other techs that would naturally lead to a new area (like if you had iron working and all sorts of metallurgical knowledge, it would help you to get steel), etc etc, I think the obviousness scale would probably be a good addition and is a fairly good simulation of the actual reasons for tech development.

Precisely.

There are a lot of good ideas here, but the fact that this is a game, means we should strive first for good game play then for total realism recreation.

Rarely is realism exclusive of gameplay, but where it is, nobody's saying we shouldn't accomodate. The problem of movement speed is going to have to be brushed under the carpet, for instance.

Obviousness factor of techs + tech availability + civs strengths... its just getting way too bogged down

I'm confident that this system could be worked out to be pretty intuitive, with only a slightly steeper learning curve than the existing tech system.

As I tried to suggest in my earlier post, the best thing for the modder to do would be to make a list of GAMEPLAY priorities.. Problems he sees in the game that need fixing, and find the least disruptive ways to accomplish them.

Ah, but the problems we see in the game are realism problems, and so the only way to accomplish them is to make the game more realistic. jaynus said in the first post that this mod would have a somewhat steeper learning curve than vanilla Civ. Some of us view that as an acceptable sacrifice.

Civ is indeed a game of 'what might have been', but it isn't a blank board.
You get to control what your civ is doing, but not what its made of.. so to speak.
It comes with the assumption that 'civ world' is the same as ours.. technology is the same as ours, that people form communities and cities, that the laws of physics are the same, that natural resources are the same.. that guns are built in the same way

That the laws of physics and the laws of social dynamics are the same, yes. That the course of history is the same based on those, no. Any plausible historical scenario should be possible, ideally.

Also, chemistry WAS needed to create guns.
It's just more basic chemistry than what we have today, that's all. Examining the qualities of elements/compounds and how they react to things is as chemistry as chemistry gets.

Well, depends on how exactly the mix of black powder was discovered, which we'll probably never know. If one guy finds that a mix of saltpeter and charcoal is useful for something or other and starts using it for something, then accidentally discovers that it explodes if sulfur is added as well, that's not chemistry, that's coincidence.

Same with physics.. action-reaction is a physics concept. just really basic physics, but they DID need to understand it in order to make use of it, as we do now but on a more advanced level

By which logic, moving your arm requires you to know the concepts of action and reaction, and so pretty much all human beings over the age of a week or two know the laws of action and reaction. Those laws, so defined, would then be a prerequisite for anything, so I'm willing to concede that they'd be a prerequisite for guns.

If you build a road or rail it costs maintenance.

Indeed it should, but there will be large technical difficulties with implementing this. Specifically, the AI will be totally screwed, as will worker automation. This will have to wait for the SDK and then some.

the memory leak that eventually causes errors and crashes

Strictly speaking, it's been concluded, there is no reason to believe Civ 4 has a memory leak. Memory mismanagement, maybe. But I'm getting off-topic again.

 

[JakeCourtney]

Yes, I don't think there is a memory leak pers se, but there can be optimizations done.

 

[Ryoken]

I think people are missing an important point: realism does not equal fun. In the obsession to get down to the "real", lets not lose sight of the "fun".


I will use the example of the Neverwinter Nights RPG game series to illustrate how realism can "go wrong". The game is very open and people can mod all sorts of things. So they did. Some people started trying to apply the 3rd edition D&D rules as tightly as possible. At first, it was good but then they started going too far.

You needed to buy food in order to keep your energy up. You needed to sleep regularly. They started tracking your time. 24 hours without rest, you started to feel tired. Long time without food, you felt hungry. You needed to get your weapons repaired. Magical weapon? You need St. John's Wild Oatmeal to repair that, happy hunting. No more carrying huge quantities of cash, you need to convert it into gems then back into cash to buy stuff. And so on.....and so on..... and so on.....

That is just tedious. So in the rush to get "real", lets not get "real boring". OK?

 

[Agraza]

Call it what you want, it's a problem. The linked thread is full of both people who know no more on the topic than myself and those who do and still argue with others who also claim to. It crashes the game, it's related to memory. For me that categorically falls under the term memory leak as much as LCD and CRT are both display technologies.

 

[Agraza]

Could you make tundra farmable in late game? I refer to the squares not along a river, which I've already been able to farm. I once read about how russia used helicopters to help develop remote tundra. The quality of the program was poor, but from what I read they had a substantial effect. If it can have an effect when done badly then it doesn't seem absurd that a future tech could perform more admirably. Perhaps you would farm them with a consumable unit, to make the point of devoting resources to developing that land.

I'd also like to be able to work with ice and desert in the late game. I know like nothing about the lifestyles of those who live in such regions, but I've heard something like a proverb about growing dates in deserts and I know we have wildlife that live in icy regions such as: seals, polar bears, fish, penguins, etc.

I think gems is a little bit of an over simplification, but being that the game doesn't have much social focus I'm willing to let it go. I don't think that pearls ought to be considered as part of that group though, and would like to see them in the game.

I've been wondering about the, uh, quantity of a resource you have. For example you have 2 horse resources. How many horse units can you really generate with that, per turn? 2? 5? 10? I'd think there would be a limit as to just how far reaching a resource is.

I'd like for resources to have more impact locally, by allowing the creation of specific buildings and units, and less impact remotely, disallowing the creation of those specific units and buildings unless you have more of the resource from elsewhere, where it isn't being fully exploited. Then you could allow certain technologies or buildings to expand the spread of certain resources.

I think there ought to be wood resources, special ones, that benefit the defense % of walls, castles, cities (in general), forts, and in some way affect the power of wooden ships. Perhaps having them simply allows you to generate stronger ships of a given type, at a similar speed to the generic ones. Unless you want to change lumbermills or develop a new improvement, I think you could allow the collection of special woods via the camp improvement, which doesn't require you cut down forests to build.

I also think archers and catapults could benefit from special woods. I think fir or yew or whatever was used to make good bows. And maybe you could build trebuchets or just extend the attack of cats to range when in posession of hard wood.

Mines can discover resources. Why can't farms? Maybe you finally decide to plant corn in tile 186, but since giving workers the ability to plant the corn is a little overpowered, we just simulate it by having it randomly pop up where farms are.

Oh, and I think apples are a pretty epic food too. Then you have an excuse to have orchards (or just use plantations). In fact they're one of the most popular fruits in european and middle eastern history, being desired more than seven millenia ago.

Edit - Salt isn't something we devour with our every breath, but it is necessary for our bodies. We ought to be eating something near 3 pounds of salt a year (I think). I'm sure we get a ton of that from the meat we eat, but salt was a huge resource in ancient times. It was traded for gold in some places. In ancient times I think some civilizations had large salt farms, but in modern times we have salt mines. Blame the history channel for this addition. I just watched a program on mining and they features these cavernous salt mines that are thousands of feet deep. It is still a booming and imporant business. I think salt ought to be a resource with health/commerce benefits.

Another history channel moment for me is rubber. Apparently it changed the world once upon a time, and our modern day lives are completely dependent on having it. When rubber starting becoming big it was a huge economic benefit to those who developed it, so I think it ought to be big money, but more importantly modern military and domestic technologies are dependent on it. I think it ought to help mobilize all units to different degrees.

 

[Michel Keijzers]

I have another wild idea ... however possibly already mentioned by others. Anyway this is my view on it:

Currently the world is divided in two poles (ice caps) and everything in between. Climates are modeled by terrain tiles. However, some cultures are adapted better to colder temperates than others and others to hotter temperatures.

As mentioned before somewhere, terrain effects could be different per unit (i.e. tanks moving through jungle with big penalty while infantry with less penalty) ... also tiles effects for civilizations is a next possibility. Mongols having less problems with dry areas, Incas with jungles etc. Maybe some civilizations are better acquiring food from certain terrain types etc.

I assume this is a massive change since each tile would have a list of modifiers (per civilization) ... however it is about natural changes .... possibly the same as my last idea (road/rail maintenance) ... something for the SDK.

 

[Ad Hominem]

I really like the specifics of this mod and wish to try it out, but want to integrate another mod - the Leaders mod - in it.

I've checked and the two mods have only one file in common - CIV4GameTextInfos_Objects.xml. So, I just copy all the files of the Leaders mod into the folders of this mod and nothing rewrites - but that one file. What would it take to make them work together? Haven't tried it yet (@work and away from home 'puter) but gonna try it tonite.

 

[Michel Keijzers]

Just combine it with a text editor ... I don't think the two will cause problems to merge. However take care of the correct XML taggings.

There are difficulter files to merge (eventhandler.py or something like that).

good luck!

 

[Ryoken]

MODERATOR REQUEST

It is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor the development of this mod due to the sheer volume of comments. Because this was the first major mod, the lion's share of the comments from random people about new ideas for implementation is going on here and not in some general place.

I want to be able to quickly tell when Jaynus is updating the mod AND I want to be able to read through people's ideas for mod implementation; however I think they deserve seperate threads. There are more mod designers than just Jaynus and random ideas for mods should not be posted in his development threads. At first, the comments in this thread WERE actually pointed at the actual mod. Now they just appear to be "hey I thought of this random idea!".

Could a moderator please seperate the wheat from the chaff? Thank you