Well, that sucks. Are there older versions of the map generator I could get my hands on? Maps with unrealistic weather tiles are just no fun to play.
Hold your horses, mate.
Take a look at my post on page 487, dated Jul 12, 2023.I don't want the barbarians to settle cities. I recall that I changed something in a file to stop that from happening. If anyone knows. I also stopped global warming from making the planet into a desert. Maybe it was the same file. If anyone knows, then it saves me some time looking around.
There surely is. It's not "fun" to see airplanes and battleships when the game-year is 'round 1000 AD. At least that's how I and many others here feel. Before this feature was made, I had to change the <icost> up (and a few times down) to get what I wanted. This "task" was both difficult and took a long time each time a new version/update came out. Now I can have my focus on what I really want to change in the tech-tree and leave the general ajustments I want to a few simple changes in CIV4EraInfos.xml file.
Hi all.
I am looking into trying this extensive mod after not having played CivIV for a long time. I have installed it and read a bit in its manual and this thread. I have a few questions before I start diving into it.
1) The original game has unique buildings per civilization which revert to a standard building (or the unique building of your civilization) when you capture a city with such a building. This mod has both unique buildings and unique terrain improvements and limited buildings (version of the original game national wonders). What happens when you capture them? Especially with the unique terrain improvements. Those are not directly captured as they are not in s city, just in the culture region of a city. Do these change depending on the dominant culture on the tile?
2) I have read something about the game hanging after playing for a while in the AI turn. That seems like a bit of a nightmare scenario after having played a long game. How often does it happen? Can it be avoided? What can you do about it if it happens? Is one of the modmakers looking into it?
3) I recall having used the Better Bat AI Mod with the game before as it held many conveniences and AI improvements. And I know that many of the features of that mod got implemented in other mods. Is that also the case with Realism Invictus?
4) I am thinking about leaving the revolution setting switched off. I have read that the AI is not so great in dealing with the revolution part. And I myself also like to keep some control over my civilization. I do like some challenges and problems along the way, but it shouldn't become too random. Any views on this revolution part?
5) I don't want the barbarians to settle cities. I recall that I changed something in a file to stop that from happening. If anyone knows. I also stopped global warming from making the planet into a desert. Maybe it was the same file. If anyone knows, then it saves me some time looking around.
6) I liked to play at epic speed, but looking at the start, it seems that a settler is far more expensive in this game at normal speed than it was in the original at epic speed. Are you supposed to expand slower?
7) Any reason to play with the setting that punishes you for getting ahead of history? It feels a bit weird to be held back by a year value in the real world.
8) I looked at the map size modifiers and the percentages for things like distance from capital went up. I hope that doesn't mean that on a large map, you get larger penalties at the same distance from the capital. Maybe it is a divisor? None of the other parameters seem to be.
9) Any map settings that people advise with this mod? I used to play on the larger maps, but not so often the largest.
Thanks for any feedback.
Thanks. That seems simple enough!
I would also like my empire and the AI empires in a typical game to progress approximately according to the speed of progress of the real world history. Not so much because I value the year count so much, but mostly because I would like to enjoy certain eras of history for a decent number of turns and not skip over them in a flash. Likewise, I wouldn't want it to take a much longer time than in real history, where for instance writing would be invented in 1000AD.
It is good to heard that this issue doesn't pop up that often and that you managed to work around it every time. But it is not clear to me why the declaration of a war a few turns before the issue popped up would remedy the situation. Neither is it clear how you identified the culprit. How did you guess what civilization was causing the problem and why did you try declaring war on them. Is there something known about the nature of the hanging game issue that would make this a logical course of action on your end?
Thanks for the feedback. I may try it in a later game. Is there always a way to stop a revolution if you are willing to invest enough resources and recognize the problem on time?
I agree that the settling of barbs into a real civ does sound fun. But I really disliked how in the normal game, settled barbs would mess up the spot where you can build your cities. You'd get these half usable sections of land left over. That is especially annoying in a mod where inefficient cities slow down your technological progress. And I play without city razing, so I can't remove the badly place barb city.
What I meant is that the cost of building a settler at the 'realistic' speed was already higher than the cost of building a settler in the regular game at epic speed. Are you supposed to expand slower than in the normal game or are there some tricks to build settlers quicker. I haven't really explored all the options yet. I know that farming and food are really scaled differently and therefore I could see that settler building speed increases a lot after a few inventions. But at first glance, I thought that settler building would be slower than in the regular game at epic speed. Is that correct? are you supposed to focus differently than some controlled expansion in the early game?
Thanks for the suggestion on map size and number of civs. I will consider your advice. But I do like larger maps.
I used to play large or huge maps in the standard game, because you have little control over what happens in the wide world on other continents. But I surely didn't want to go huge in my first game. And I saw that there was a map size above huge in the mod. So I wanted to limit it to large.I tried a few maps with the RI_Totestra map generator supplied with the Realism Invictus and it seemed to produce very nice maps. But I can't quickly see if it is missing something. The mod has so many features. Did the mod really add map generators that potentially don't work well with the mod features?
<Define>
<DefineName>GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
</Define> <Define>
<DefineName>GLOBAL_WARMING_PROB</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>Hi,
. Am I just cursed with having to go to worldbuilder every time to go check and fix the map by hand?
Both BUG and K-Mod (that further builds on BetterAI) are included.
I personally play with it off. Mostly because it turned out to be rather micromanagement-heavy.
It is perfectly playable with it off. OTOH, I really don't like the "punishing" mindset. It adjusts, yes, but if you're ahead in tech, you'll still be ahead, just by a smaller margin. It evens out the outliers a bit.
You wouldn't believe how many times people pestered me because they reached ironclads in 1600 or planes by 1800. Apparently, that arbitrary year number was very important for some - to the extent I contemplated simply removing the "year" and just leaving the "turn #". You'll be fine either way, with it on or off. As you mention yourself, a lot depends on the actual map settings and game circumstances when it comes to tech pace (for instance, even the same map with 8 Gandhis or 8 Genghis will progress at quite different speeds), but since a lot of people seemed to aggressively miss that, to the point of hurling insults, I just sat down and created a little rubberbanding mechanic that helped with the pacing. It's not as prohibitive as, say, in EU4, where you can't research any tech more than 10-15 years ahead of time no matter what you do, it simply pushes the average game's tech progress to be in line with the turn count for the chosen game speed's number of turns.
You can by adjusting XML. Note, though, that it works both ways, and AIs love their spies. You will get drowned in hostile missions most of the time if you do.
It is actually a vanilla issue that has never been quite pinned down. It is something concerning privateers (and hidden nationality / always hostile units in general) and AI group logic. I did recently implement a workaround that circumvents the particular recently reported case; I'm not 100% satisfied with my solution, nor am I sure if it is universal - but that's precisely because the issue is so rare that I don't have enough test cases.
Yeah, the default speed is already quite a bit slower than vanilla. And yes, it is not quite recommended to expand at a breakneck speed. The balance of a lot of things is rather different to vanilla even where mechanics are similar; I suggest just getting a feel for the balance by trying.
That concerns a random map generator that you got somewhere else (most likely on this forum) and try using with the mod. The ones that come bundled are tried and tested.
Since the scope of the mod ends with the XX century, global warming is simply off. Its real effects were felt only in the XXI century, and TBH, since humans did so little to avoid it before, there's no realistic way for it to have happened earlier (humanity was basically speedrunning it in XIX/XX centuries IRL); the mechanic is relevant way past the intended end date, so the easiest way was to just turn it off.
Picture 1 is most definitely the elevation map at work; that's basically an inland plateau, a cold(er) desert akin to Gobi IRL. In picture 2 I'm mostly seeing swamps mixed in with tundra to the further south if you're talking about the centre of the screenshot. It does inspire me to play with rainfall a bit; realistically, while cold bogs are a thing, generally, the extreme latitudes are very dry IRL.
That is good to hear. It doesn't sound like a very stringent limitation, but I think I will play with it off if the game is well-balanced for the average play through. I don't mind getting a bit behind or in front of history.
I saw it a big later both in game and in the manual. Although it wasn't yet clear that a version of BetterAI had been included. Good to hear that the modding community of CivIV kept using each others contributions!
This was not a reply to me, but it interests me anyway. I was planning to play with the increased costs of units off. I do like all the other additions that favor the use of combined arms like the already existing rock-paper-scissors mechanics and the added aid bonuses. And (less related), I also like the limited units per tile. But the increased cost one seemed a weird one to me and I guess others too as there is an option to switch it off. But I guess I will up the spy costs themselves then a bit to avoid too many espionage actions.
Good to hear that you understand a bit where it is coming from and that you are looking into it. I didn't know about such an issue in the base game. I saw some other posters comment that they went into the world builder to stop a war between two parties or they declared war themselves. Of course, everything you change will have a ripple effect on the game and may stop the issue from occurring, but would there be a more systematic way to do so if it occurs. The approaches of these players seem to be a bit of a random roll to make the game go in a bit different direction and then avoid the issue. Would you for instance go into the world builder and look for a privateer that is the culprit and move it a few squares?
I like the epic of the normal game, so I think the slower progress at the start will be enjoyable to me. Maybe a bit slower than I was used to. But I haven't played in a long time, so I am not that used to anything anymore. I read a bit about the concepts that are behind the changes and like the ever more effective farming plus the ever more efficient craftsmen. I guess that there are more ways to keep the larger cities happy, but I will see.
Ah, ok. Then it makes more sense!
Ah, good to hear. I don't mind a global warming mechanic per se, but didn't like the one in basic CivIV. And you are right that it is a fairly recent problem. So, the two values of global warming probability in that file just don't do anything. Good to hear.
Given the tech costs increase exponentially as you progress anyway, you'd be surprised how little even a major malus does in practice. A +100% tech cost basically delays one by 2-3 techs, as 3 columns further, a tech already costs about +100% more.
Actually, the cost increase of spies is independent from the rest of the units, and will be there anyway. But I urge caution with turning off unit cost increases - while the option is definitely there, it is one that's harder to balance around, and this might not be the intended experience. But some people do play that way.
The only two ways of fixing that when it occurs are to either go into WB and start deleting random stuff (I'd start with any privateers one can find) or post the save here and hope I can provide a solution. But you are getting really worked up for something that 90% of people don't ever experience.
This was one of the changes in this mod that don't sit well with me. In reality, men gets more and more efficient in producing something when they create it in great quantity. Whether it is the tanks of WWII which were produced en masse and got better quality and cheaper to produce in the more and more specialized and improved assembly lines, or the master smith that in wartime gets to produce more and more swords and armour and gets a personal skill in producing the best quality steel swords. The increase in cost rubs me the wrong way. Glad to see that it is just optional.
Worked up is maybe worded a bit exaggerated. But I did ask how often people experienced it and someone said 3 in 40 games. I tend to play bigger maps and not play so quickly, really getting into a game and deliberating what I should do.
I think the cost scaling is a good balance thing in RI, but you have kind of a point. Though, I think typically the massive production scales during wartime are more from converting civilian factories and workforce over to manufacturing for the war effort. It's less that a single factory or a particular worker is producing ten times what it could before because it has so much experience and more that all the factories making high-heeled shoes start making combat boot instead or something. And I think the game captures this by increasing city production rather than adjusting cost. Like reallocating worked tiles or specialists to increase production at the cost of other yields. Or even just outright switching all your cities from making civilian buildings to producing units.
Locking modified assets is generally a very bad idea when playing with mods - means any problem you have, however small, can't be fixed on the fly.
In reality, manpower was also a thing. Raising the 10th legion / longbowman troop would likely be much harder than the first, as suitable candidates would have been progressively harder to find and would require more time and effort to train to the same standard. For most of human history, manpower considerations would outweigh any economy of scale.
TBH I don't remember changing anything in this regard.
freemusicarchive.org
There are indeed more problems with having a big military in the real world.
