Zooasaurus
Warlord
So i don't need to install Realism Invictus that i downloaded from web?
1. Anyone else think the javelin guys available with weaponsmithing are overpowered?
I'm far from getting wrecked by them. I'm finding that they're my panzers of the ancient world. Except for attacking cities, they make axemen and swordsmen redundant. I would rather see skirmish units as a promotion rather than an actual unit.
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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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Is there a way to tune the probabilities then? For example, lower the chance to get caught while moving or standing on a tile but increase the chance to fail the espionage missions.
I've already noticed that AI "builds" local crafts, research and culture. And it seems that AI does that when all other possible things are built. So this logic could be used with the proposed buildings. Another problem I see here though is that AI tends to abort production which in this case would be a huge waste.
1) Unit cost increase
I think this is great. It encourages to build diverse armies and makes it harder to have a lot of units. But this change leads to strange situations. For example, I had only two 7 cataphracts and the next 9 medium cavalty cost less! I would like to resolve this by increasing costs of all units in the upgrade tree not only the ones I have and can build.
The other thing is I don't like that no resource units (those produced like workers and settlers) also become more expensive. Much more expensive. Aren't they supposed to be the bulk of the armies? For example shouldn't they soften the enemy stacks so that more valuable units had greater chances to win? Please remove the increased costs for this type of units.
2) Kitab-i Bahriye science work
It's ability is Free Sentry promotion for units built in this city. I didn't check everything but not all types of units recieve the promotion. The Sentry link leads to ranged mounted and helicopter units promotion but the description of the work suggests that the promotion is for water units. Can you clear this please?
3) Some converter buildings give additional bonuses and some don't. For example, brick factory just makes stone out of coal but cotton mill also gives some and a free craftsman. How do you decide which converter buildings should have a bonus?
4) Some civics are still weaker. Monarchy is totally useless, Caste System has a pretty heavy drawback, paganism can't be played to its most potential due to early world wonders, and you nerfed pagan temples, though it's an early civic so it's more or less ok.
@Walter
Any plans to integrate this mod?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497863
Thanks for your efforts!
@Walter Hawkwood:
Long time no see Walter
I have a few things on mind first do you remember my little feature request a long time ago?
is there any chance to get this?
Second ViterboKnight had released his source code for city states
is there also any chance that you implement it?
As an add on to my earlier post:
I'm sure that you've heard this before, but Tribal Forts are fun spoilers. As an example, I'm playing Greece, and I've invested in a massive military build up to take Lycia:
5 rams, 5 hoplites with 1 pip in city attack, four Hoimoi with pip in strength, 5 dorphoi with pip in strength, 2 war chariots with 2 pip in strength, 5 Ekdromoi with pip in city attack. I attack...and don't do any damage at all. None. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Lycia was conquered a LOT, including by the Greeks before the gundpowder age. But it's pretty much invincible to me. However, the ai has manged to conquer it with a a few militia....what gives? I get the concept, but honestly, tone it down a bit, please. If I've got a stack that could take any city in the game, I should be able to take down a tribal fort.
Or maybe someone can tell me how to edit tribal forts myself?
Few thoughts about increasing unit cost.
At first i loved it. It forces you and AI to have more diverse armies and reduces number of units, but problem started at mid Renaissance era. As i invented flintlock musket i upgraded my most experienced units to wojsko kwarcienne (as i play as Poland), and started recruiting new musket guys, and in a few turns cost of new unit was just to high. It took 12 turns to recruit one in city with lots of hammers and heroic epic, upgrade cost of one unit was in thousands. Worst thing is that 2/3 of my garrison units was still outdated (bowman, medieval bowman, lewy, swordsmen etc). It is really pain in the ass and it is getting worse on larger maps, where you have more cities and more garrison units. In earlier eras it wasn't that much of a problem because you have more selection of units. After yous invent flintlock musket you don't get that many types of units. You have musket men, irregulars, light infantry, man at arms and pikemen. In medieval you had swordsmen, man at arms, medieval swordsmen, crossbowmen, levy, pikemen, recon guys, foot knights, crusaders and some civilizations got longbowmen. If one type of units cost to much you can fortify other type of unit (i don't mention cavalry, because i don't use cavalry as garrison units so high cost of cavalry is not a problem). In earlier eras outdated units are still pretty useful because in highly fortified city even simple bowman are useful. Against musket armies, all medieval units are just cannon fooder, so you want to upgrade your garrison units as fast as possible but when cost of single soldier is higher then cost of great wonder then there is something wrong. Problem is getting worse when you get new cities (by conquest or settler), because you don't have enough units (even outdated), to fortify them and new units cost is ridiculous. Drafting help a little but it forces you to run civics with draft option.
Overall the idea i good, bot it need a few changes. For example remove 25% cost increase on irregulars, levies and militia units. They would become main garrison units for large empires. In that case smaller countries could afford to fortify their cities with professional soldiers, but it would be harder for large empires to protect their borders because their garrison would be composed mainly of irregulars.
Other nice thing (but i don't know if possible) could be option to upgrade units to better but outdated type. For example if i have invented flintlock musket then it would be nice if i still could upgrade my bowmen to arquebus guys when cost of musket guys is to high.
Other nice thing would be decreasing cost of units if you have more resources needed to build that kind of unit. IE every source of iron will decrease cost of iron based units by 10%, in that case more resources you have the easier it gets to recruit large army. It would give player more reasons to secure resources he already have, and make a dilemma if you want to trade that resource, and in case of war you could brake trade treaties with other players to boost your unit production. Maybe food resources should decrees cost of every unit by 5%, large armies require large quantities of food, and empire with lots of food can handle larger military. Resource bonuses should apply only to units that have increased cost.
Also maybe it should be enabled to get additional resources from every player, not just demand that resource from vassal player, but I dont know how if it is possible and how Ai would handle that.
Hi, I'm playing SVN 4913 at the moment and some observations I've made with Korea is that they seem to be missing some early middle-ages units. As an example I play on Emperor level and I've been at war with a strong Roman Empire since about 300-400 AD and I'm now at about 1500 AD. It's been permanent war... but I'm always on the back foot. Partly because I'm behind in the science race but also because I think there's a sizable gap in the time that stronger middle age units become available to Rome than they do to Korea.
Rome and Korea both have access to Silla Spearmen/Auxilla (4), Gakgung Bowmen/Auxilla Bowmen (4), Asian Skirmisher/Velite (4), Silla Axemen/Marian Legionary (5), Silla Swordsmen/Imperial Legionary (6) and Righteous Militia/European Levy (6) at the same time.
Then there's a gap when Korea can usually get Hwarang (7) before Rome can get Balestriere Genovese (6) and Spadaccino Lombardo (7) but not long for Korea to make the most of their Hwarang which is limited to 4 units. Then Rome kicks ass, because their units are a step ahead of the Korean's units for some time, Rome has two unlimited strength 7 land units vs Korea's four Hwarang units.
I think the same advantage applies to most of the other civs bar Korea.
It seems like Korea are missing a Crossbowman unit and Medieval Swordsman unit.
By the time Korea gets to catch up with Choson Pikemen/Swiss Guard and Militzia Communale (8) it's still imbalanced as Rome gets a unique unit plus the standard Pikeman unit. So Rome has an advantage here too. They get a unique unit as well as the standard unit whilst Korea had to make do with a limit of 4 of their unique units and nothing else on par for centuries.
Now I know the game isn't balanced and is better for it, but this seems like quite a gap in firepower for Korea during the middle ages. I hope this observation helps bring a potential gap to your attention.
Thanks for the great work.
Relatively casual Civ player here. I'm not sure how good (or more likely, bad) of an idea this is, but it's something I thought of and thought I'd throw out here for consideration by people who have a better handle on game balance and historicity than I.
As things stand right now with regards to a city's cultural boundaries, the first one is really important because it provides the additional 12 tiles that can be worked, but while the expansions after that can provide resources, it strikes me as a little odd that increasing the city's cultural influence only really benefits your civilization as a whole and doesn't have any direct effect on the city itself aside from an increased defensive bonus.
My idea was this: What if each cultural expansion also provided +1 food, production, and commerce on the city tile itself? This would provide a minor-but-concrete representation of the additional influence that the city in question has on the surrounding territory.
Also, I haven't played any of the SVN versions, so this might be irrelevant, but what about applying an increasing cost modifier to World Wonders to make it more difficult (but not impossible) for a small number of civilizations to build all of the wonders. Like, your first wonder would cost 100% of its base cost, then the second would be 120% or 125%, then 140% or 150% for the third... (It sounds as though you've applied a similar mechanic to units themselves, so my apologies if this is a mechanic that's already been considered or implemented)
Another thing is that the way that Civ IV handles penalties is a bit wonky mathematically. Basically, no unit is ever considered to have a penalty: instead, the game essentially merges the penalties and bonuses into a single net combat modifier, the absolute value of which is then applied as a bonus to whichever unit had the larger bonus. The end result of this system is that in combat one unit will always have a bonus of +0%, and the other will always have a bonus of at least +0%. As such, a Balroae's "penalty" will usually manifest as a +40% bonus to to their opponent (unless the opponent has a larger penalty to begin with).I have the game open right now, I checked and saw that Balroae have the normal -40% city strength. Not sure how you got the result you saw. Perhaps it was a total bonus when attacking a particular city in game? If the attacked unit was a melee one, the resulting total bonus could still have been positive despite -40% city strength.
Tangential spitball idea here: What if Spy units gained experience for completing successful missions, and had promotions for things like "-10% chance of being caught while traveling through rival territory","-10% cost/+10% chance of success when performing [MISSION or GROUP OF RELATED MISSIONS]", "+1 vision range", and "+1 movement"I thought about it a bit more, and it would not make sense. The game has no way of distinguishing your spy merely passing through a civ you have no intention of spying on, and a spy in a civ you actually want to spy on. If we lower the chance for them getting caught passing through, we lower the chance for them getting caught anywhere. Anyway, yes, all the probabilities are there, you can tweak them.
http://forums.civlovers.com/showthread.php?p=6063340
Not in near future, unless we get some outside help. We have our own big component to keep our code wizard occupied.
Do you have a code wishlist anywhere? I don't have experience with modding the Civ IV SDK, but I'm a programmer and would be willing to spend a few evenings poking around to see how to implement something simple but low-to-moderate priority if you guys have a way to receive and approve submissions from non-team members.See above. It would be a cool thing to have, but for now we simply have no manpower to integrate it. I, for instance, wouldn't know where to start. I am more a graphics and XML guy.
The actual numbers could be tweaked, possibly scaling at higher levels (ie. a large boost upon achieving Legendary, since that's only likely to happen late in the game anyways), or as a percentile boost to existing production instead.The idea itself is not bad, but it requires quite a lot of code work for a relatively small gameplay effect (those +1 bonuses are eclipsed by one worked tile, so a pop 5 city will still be better than pop 4 city that expanded two more times)
@ Muninn:
I always thought that -40% city attack to balroae is identical to +40% to the defender and I didn't care about that much. But suddenly after reading your post I realised that I was wrong!
For example: If we think about a unit having -100% city attack, it would have 0 and will definitely lose the battle. Whereas +100% to the defender makes the defender only twice as tougher.
So you are right, Civ IV calculation seems to be strange. Can anyone clarify, in which cases the defender/attacker gets the bonuses/maluses?
1. A castle would provide some military presence in the region and therefore would prevent banditry. This would encourage trade. Therefore castle might give +1 or +2 to caravan house.
3. Why does clock tower give +20%? Isn't it a bit too much? For instance, why is the impact of building a clock tower greater than the invention of printing press?
Nope, by oppression I mean roughly the next century after the abolition of slavery. Jim Crow laws and such. The whole system of racial segregation was built on a series of laws.
I am not really sure how that distinction would translate into gameplay mechanics in our mod. While I have enough knowledge to realize the differences between civil law and common law, I do not "feel" them enough and see enough of their tangible consequences to build Civ 4 civic effects from that. One more thing - I think historically all countries stuck with one or the other, I can't really recall any that changed from one to the other. Does such a permanent thing merit being a civic?
The same point can also be made regarding some other civics, for instance Collectivism. I think driving ideologies are important enough in XX century to have their representation as civics.
I started a game today. I had 5 visible resources in my capital's area, and they were all covered in jungle, meaning I couldn't make use of any of them for hundreds of turns. I regenerated the map.Yes, jungle is a problem by design. There are some civs that fare better against it (Mayans), but in general it is a terrain feature to be avoided. And yes, there were no bronze age or earlier civilizations that we know of that thrived in jungles. The closest thing would be earliest Indian civilizations, but those vanished without a trace before Classical antiquity even started.
... 4. I'm a bit skeptical about river dock.
a. I think the +1 for tiles adjacent to river is already simulates the trade along the river.
b. The benefit of river dock is identical to the normal harbor. But I think a city should benefit more from sea trade than river trade.
1. Of course it does. Trade can only thrive, if you keep the trade routes secure. I was also trying to find good applications for the castle for better gameplay. In vanilla Civ IV, castle gives +1 trade routes, and it seems that the developers of this game would be also agreed with me.
3. I was talking about the very recent upgrade, SVN 4947.