Realism Invictus

[Erfeo]

I hope I wasn´t just too lazy, but: how and when are units "promoted" with Supply Problems ? Is there anything I can do to avoid it ? Or to "unpromote" them ?

Move some units from that tile. Supply Problems exist to limit the amount of units can have on the same tile. There should be a bar that gives detailed info above the unit panel (in the lower left)

 

[Brant_Flir]

Suggestion: Have you considered allowing Catapult/Trebuchet/Bombard/Cannon/Artillery to fortify an take advantage of the fortify bonus in the defense? This seems reasonable since when performing an assault or setting up in the defense, these types of units would be dug in to have the greatest effect on the enemy and to cover specific principle directions of fire in both offense and defense and a final protective line in the defense.

 

[cfeyyaz]

I still can't deal with quotes as elegant as you guys do, but I'll do my best:

I wrote:

I'd like to discuss about battles:

8. City defence: Lets assume a city has just been built on a hill square. A standart, untrained 3 strength archer gets 50% hills bonus, 50% city bonus. Assuming it is also fortified, so that it gets a %25 bonus. So its defending strength is 6,75. And it has a first strike. So this cheap, primitive, untrained unit is already a solid defender. A swordsman, which is a formidable unit will lose against such a unit most of the time. The iron age bowman is even more stronger when defending, it is an incredible 9.

First of all, I think the archer shouldn't get a 50% bonus automatically. A newly found settlement with some huts and tents shouldn't be giving such defensive advantages. I think the archer should get its bonus, first when the city builds fortifications, i.e. palisades or walls. I hope this is not very complicated to implement, because we have already attacking malus for mounted units, when walls are present.

Ok, you can argue that archer is a ranged unit and the heavy melee units are struggling running up to the hill and they die out before they can reach the enemy, hiding behind huts and tents, shooting from windows whatever. But then, the best units to attack archers should be the archers. But this is also not the case. They don't come into consideration in Civ 4 if you are planning to attack a city.

Hawkwood answered:

Unfortunately, it is quite complicated to implement, and moreover would surely confuse many players. Also, from my first-hand experience of siege mode in Mount & Blade multiplayer, which I feel manages to approximate a real assault on a fortification quite well: defending archers are deadly; attacking archers are just moving targets - while they sometimes manage a good shot or two, you have a much better chance of survival if you are instead well-armored and carrying a shield. Then there are much more chances that, as an attacker, you actually live long enough to cause some serious harm to enemy.

It is sad to hear that it is hard to implement. :/ I don't think it would confuse many players though. I propose that wall gives further advantage for defending ranged units, which is pretty self explanatory.

I wrote:

9. Ok, in reality it was very very difficult to attack and invade a fortified city. Instead we see long lasting sieges, hoping that the city surrenders because of starvation, diseases etc. Of course, we don't have such mechanism in civilization, we should rely on direct attack to capture cities. And the odds of surviving when attacking a city is currently quite poor. Therefore I'd propose to tilt the balance slightly in attackers' favour. I'd really prefer a more dynamic capturing and recapturing and re-recapturing of cities. Why? I have two reasons:
a) Every time a city is captured, many improvements has to be rebuilt. So it will not be so easy to end up with many perfect cities so early in the game.
b) The AI really likes to assemble large armies. He invests a lot in them, but at the end, he can't see the benefit of them, he can't invade any cities, and eventually gets overplayed by a smart human player, who possesses a modest military for defense and invests in libraries etc. instead.

Hawkwood answered:

Tipping the balance in attackers' favor is very dangerous from balance point of view. It creates a positive feedback loop - the stronger you are, the stronger you will inevitably become in future. Also, you are forgetting one thing - while defenders indeed lose less units, they suffer from the very fact that the war is conducted on their territory - pillaged countryside can hurt your civ quite a bit, and AI is actually good at it.

I agree that AI does a good job by pillaging countryside. As a result the targeted civilization will collapse at some point. So playing purely defensively is not a good strategy at all, which is good. But my actual the point is, you have already tipped the balance well in the favor of defenders by implementing iron age archers, and made it already very difficult for the attacker.

I wrote:

10. You have been working hard on the AI of siege engines recently, with all these bombardment etc. It is a complicated task. Why not getting rid of this ranged attack altogether and doing the following: For example, a bombard gets a rather high strength of 8 or even 10 and attacks normally, but can cause a rather low maximum damage (for example 20%). This way it will survive most of the battles, doing the same effect as the ranged attack. In some cases it will get wounded, but this represents such effects like the machinery gets older and needed to be repaired and the ammunition gets lower. The more modern artillery gets a slightly higher maximum damage, and also some collateral damage. That way, it will be quite robust and AI will understand and manage the siege weapons more easily.

Hawkwood answered:

So basically you advocate us going back to vanilla BtS system?

Yes, I advocate going back to vanilla BtS system, but with one huge different: I set the damage cap way lower. Assume that: Let's take a unit, and give it 99 strength, 99 first strikes and, a maximum damage of 20%. When attacking, they will do the exactly same thing as today's bombard with ranged attack, and the AI will be able to understand and manage them much better.

Of course, we shouldn't give those units 99 str, because AI will probably start building nothing else but bombards. But for bombards, something like 8-10 str should do the trick, you can give it defensive malus too, if you wish. Few years ago, I used to play Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn, and I used to edit XML extensively, and I also changed the siege units as I've explained. And it just worked fine.

To support my view further that AI can't manage siege weapons properly, an example from my most recent game: I was invading Washington's territory in the late classical/early middle ages. He had a lot of catapults (I guess about 50% of his all troops), and he was trying to attack my invading army with them in the beginning of his turn, followed by an attack by other few units. Obviously, he is hoping to wear down my army with catapults, and destroying it with other units later; a behaviour we see in vanilla Civ. The problem is, that the AI doesn't realize that the catapult has no wearing down effect anymore, and their catapults are no match to my Chasquis Scouts on the hills, they also come with many first strikes, so most of the time they defeat those catapults without getting any damage.

 

[satan1000]

hi
I've got a problem with the mod. Is anybody know how to fix it? Thank's to you
http://zupimages.net/up/15/07/5w10.jpg

 

[Pomphis]

A question: I am playing the world map scenario. The list of civs on the right side has grown so long thanks to all dead civs still being listed that my civ can no longer be seen and clicked on. Is there a way to remove the dead civs from the list ?

 

[rkade8583]

Ctrl-Alt-o and go to the scoreboard tab. There's an option to not display the deaders.

 

[Brant_Flir]

Found a possible bug regarding the World Unit "Great Bombard". While the bombard cannot enter a forest, it IS able to enter a "Prime Timber" plot that has a logging camp constructed on it.

I am assuming the forest is destroyed by the logging camp for one of two reasons: (1) IOT avoid duplicating production bonus and (2) to not grant enviromental bonuses for logging.

Would the Great Bombard be able to be made to be unable to "enter forests, jungle, and plots containing prime timber"? I believe that this would solve this issue.

EDIT: Above issue was discovered in the v3.25, not tested in SVN. Also this was in Transoxian territory. Not sure if it might have something to do with a unique logging improvement if they have one.

 

[Shuikkanen]

Found a possible bug regarding the World Unit "Great Bombard". While the bombard cannot enter a forest, it IS able to enter a "Prime Timber" plot that has a logging camp constructed on it.

I am assuming the forest is destroyed by the logging camp for one of two reasons: (1) IOT avoid duplicating production bonus and (2) to not grant enviromental bonuses for logging.

Would the Great Bombard be able to be made to be unable to "enter forests, jungle, and plots containing prime timber"? I believe that this would solve this issue.

EDIT: Above issue was discovered in the v3.25, not tested in SVN. Also this was in Transoxian territory. Not sure if it might have something to do with a unique logging improvement if they have one.

Perhaps the forest beneath had simply been destroyed for some reason? It doesn't remove the resource, so it can still have the logging camp built on it, just not a lumbermill anymore. The net result is one less production for the lack of forest. Maybe it was the random event forest fire (although I think these don't happen on resource squares) or the Transoxians built another type of improvement on top of it for some reason at some point, which removed the forest.

I haven't noticed this kind of thing happening often though. The AI seems to understand to hack away the jungle from under bananas (that is, before they can build plantations but after they can clear jungle), but leave the beneficial savannah beneath elephants alone, for example.

 

[Brant_Flir]

I haven't noticed this kind of thing happening often though. The AI seems to understand to hack away the jungle from under bananas (that is, before they can build plantations but after they can clear jungle), but leave the beneficial savannah beneath elephants alone, for example.

Yeah, this was the first time that I noticed it as well. I just thought it was strange.

 

[Pomphis]

Ctrl-Alt-o and go to the scoreboard tab. There's an option to not display the deaders.

Thank you. Now the next question: I discovered america and the list grew even longer. Is there anything besides simply using the worldbuilder and transferring territories of smaller civs to adjacent larger civs ?

 

[civman110]

Thank you. Now the next question: I discovered america and the list grew even longer. Is there anything besides simply using the worldbuilder and transferring territories of smaller civs to adjacent larger civs ?

If you go into options for the UI you can remove the minor civs from the list and you can also re-size the list of civs.

 

[Brant_Flir]

I have noticed a trend in playing World Map scenarios in v3.25. After about the renaissance era, literally every turn several empires will cancel open borders with me, and then immediately re-open them with me if I select "reconsider" and choose open borders. They seem to do this every turn.

 

[Sathar]

It's been a while since I've played the SVN, it's good to see progress still being made.

For random (non-World Map) games, what's the current recommendation for Vassal States, enabled or disabled?

 

[Drakarska]

It's been a while since I've played the SVN, it's good to see progress still being made.

For random (non-World Map) games, what's the current recommendation for Vassal States, enabled or disabled?

Kind of depends on your personal preference. Personally, I play with them on just to add a bit of spice in my games.

 

[HannibalBarka]

It's been a while since I've played the SVN, it's good to see progress still being made.

For random (non-World Map) games, what's the current recommendation for Vassal States, enabled or disabled?

I play them disabled, but I also lowered the % necessary for domination victory (territory size, not population) else it takes for ever. The way they are now is just not OK (it's actually too easy for the HP).

 

[cfeyyaz]

Hi,

I've already tested one of the changes that I've proposed last month. My proposal was: Levee gives +1 for watermills instead of the all river tiles. I've been pleased with the change so far.

You know, the levee has been the strongest improvement in my opinion. In many cases, it even doubles the output of the city. After building it, your underdeveloped cities start to catch up quickly and your already developed cities start pumping military units. But actually, the real production boost should come later, with the industrial revolution.

With the change I made, my production rate has greatly decreased in the renaissance and early industrial eras. Before the change, I was able to build every building in many of my cities by the time of early industrial age. However, I can't currently catch up. I can't build everything that I invented. And even I have an advanced and vast empire, several neighbours of mine slowly starts to become quite powerful and are attacking me form time to time, which forces me to neglect my cities and keep my military power up.

So long story short: I'd nerf the levee, because:
1. the decisive production boost should come with the industrial revolution.
2. the lack of production forces the player to think more carefully about whether to build city improvements or units.
(3. The AI seldom builds cities on the riversides, but I almost always do. With the levee being so powerful, it is not very problematic for me to outplay the AI starting from the renaissance and industrial ages.)

I've been pleased with the effect so far, and I hope you would consider it

 

[Loke.be]

hi
I've got a problem with the mod. Is anybody know how to fix it? Thank's to you
http://zupimages.net/up/15/07/5w10.jpg

Had this problem many times...
But it is not happening here with the last SVN.

If you want to keep your current version, the temporary solution that worked for me was to delete the realistic terrain package...

 

[zhardan]

Hi,

I've a CTD with last SVN version (4826 revision). Uploaded the save game.
Only need play one turn to crash.

 

[sami_snow]

yes, I've thought for quite some time that levee was way too strong

also thank you devs for changing the open borders tech bonus.

 

[Brant_Flir]

EDIT: Disregard