[RI] A Realism Invictus walkthrough

[Nitrah]

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I tried out the Realism Invictus mod for BTS and absolutely fell in love with it. Since there is not terribly much in the way of gameplay discussions of the mod on the forums, I figured that I would try posting a gameplay walkthrough. It is my suspicion that several of the settings make the mod have a pretty steep learning curve and scare some people away. They’re not hard to adjust for, but if you play the game the way you play un-modded BTS the barbs will eat you in short order.

Disclaimers:
1) I am not a master Civver. I currently play on the Monarch level, but could probably move up to Emperor. I do not claim to have the best, or most optimal way to play the mod, but I do survive the initial barbarian onslaught more than 90% of the games I start, even if I’m in the middle of a landmass.

2) I have played this game ahead a little ways (just before 2000BC) to ensure that the start wasn’t isolated and would be interesting. I have paused the game now and am going to write out the events to there and turn this thread a little more interactive.

3) You WILL need a computer with a 64-bit operating system to run the mod. I actually pushed up my planned computer upgrade because of this. Playing small maps on a 4 year old 32-bit machine, I was able to get to 1000BC occasionally and past there once or twice before memory access failures caused a CTD.

4) If you don’t like long games, you may want to give this thread a pass. The mod was designed for ‘realistic’ settings which has as many turns as a marathon game, but there are 2 to 3 times as many techs, so you’re not clicking ‘end turn’ 50 times to get bronze working. The mod does have 3 faster settings and 1 slower setting, so it’s worth trying out even if you don’t like marathon, but I’ve never played them so I can’t give any advice how they’re tuned.

My goals for this thread are the following:
* Showcase the Realism Invictus mod
* Have at least one war in each era (ancient (depending on map), classical, medieval, renaissance, industrial, modern (if the game goes that far)). This is why I picked a large map over a standard sized one.
* Show how to deal with raging barbarians with fogbusters and defenders
* Show how to keep the economy from crashing early
* Have fun!

I picked the following settings for the game:
Tectonics, large, 60% landmass, wet. Monarch difficulty, no goodie huts, no random events. I normally play with them on, but it appears that the general consensus around these forums is that people don’t like them, so I turned them off. Tectonics generates interesting landmasses with plenty of chokepoints. IMO, It works very well with the mod.

Our leader is this fine fellow:


Nader Shah Afshar
RI has modified the leaderhead bonuses and given each leader a drawback as well. Nader is Militaristic, Charismatic, and Cruel. Militaristic and Charismatic are similar to BTS. Instead of being assigned Combat 1, your melee, mounted, gunpowder, and armor units are given several experience points to spend on their first promotion. Charismatic no longer gives straight happiness, but you can draw happiness from monuments which come fairly early. This is a big bonus, as you will shortly see. Additionally, you are given a modest +1 relations with all AIs and your units train faster. His drawback is mild, in that it merely counteracts the charismatic bonus to training.

He leads the Persians. In my opinion, the Persians are the easiest civ to learn the game with, which is of course why I selected them for this walkthrough. They have 3 ancient to classical era national units, including the immortals which are buildable with archery, require no resources, are modestly powerful, and can heal while marching. They also have a national elephant unit which is buildable without ivory, and their own cataphract (heavy cavalry) which is has some extra buffs compared to the standard cataphract. The immortals are the reason that I find the Persians are the perfect starter civ. They are able to build them almost immediately and they can either wage an early war or effectively defend against the raging barbarians. These units are counterbalanced by weaker-than-average axemen who have a malus against archers but a better bonus against melee and a chariot with a modest bonus against archers.

Without further ado, the start:


Looks reasonably good to me. Riverside corn will help push out workers and settlers once I control the immediate area. The clams are only modest until a fishing dock and lighthouse can get built, but I won’t turn them down. Also visible are pearls – an early commerce and classical era happiness resource. I have no good moves with the warrior to expose much of the map to the south, and I wouldn’t want to move off of the coast anyway. I move my warrior 1NW to ensure there isn’t another seafood resource, and finding nothing, settle in place.

 

[Nitrah]

The first selection of what to build is where the mod starts to divert from BTS. The standard start is to build a worker and start improving your tiles. This is NOT the best start in RI. Raging barbarians are defaulted to on in this mod. Additionally, workers and settlers are relatively more expensive. The first worker would take 29 turns to complete if you start from size 1, and the barbarians start showing up around turn 50 on Monarch difficulty. They will then immediately start running into your borders and even if you’ve managed to build a defender that can survive them, they’ll pillage anything your worker has set up.
Additionally, take a look at the tech tree:


That’s right – there are no starter techs for any civilization. That means that even if you did get the worker out first, he either wouldn’t be able to work much, or you wouldn’t have any tech to protect yourself against the barbarian archers. Warriors don’t stand up to them well unless you’re on a forested hill, and even then, they tend to just walk on by if there is a pillageable tile or weakly defended city nearby.

First build is a Medes Warrior, Persia’s flavor version of the warrior. He has a slight bonus to fighting in deserts. Unfortunately, deserts seem to be pretty rare in Tectonics maps. They’re usually covered in plains once you go inland. I switch around my worked tiles to a 1F2H tile to push him out faster.

Spoiler :

My SIP reveals horses to the south (outside of the BFC) and some sort of an island to the NW. My scouting operations will be to move Southeast and then sweep clockwise around my city. Depending where I end up, my first warrior out will move South to pick up the clockwise sweep and the starter warrior will turn back east , or the first warrior will move east to start a wider clockwise sweep.

For tech, I almost always research toolmaking first, followed by archery. The archer unit holds up to barbarians much better and actually can stand a chance of protecting the area. I have in the past researched Mining Lore first, followed by moving to archery, but I wouldn’t ever have a settler by the time ML is done anyway, and you only have until turn 50 or so until the barbarians come, so the sooner you can get archers out, the better. If you have goodie huts on, it’s not quite as critical, as you could use the cash from popping huts to fund upgrades of warriors to archers. If I have a coastal start with several fish or commerce sites nearby, I have also started with fishing, since barbarian galleys don’t come for a little while, meaning you have some safe upgraded tiles.

As I mentioned before, horses are visible from the start. That brings me to another major difference between BTS and RI: Hidden resources. The resources you can see at the beginning are basically anything your typical caveman might be able to eat. You can see all of the grain resources, all of the fish resources, and all of the animal food resources. Additionally, you can see horses, elephants, furs, spices, pearls, amber, and wine. All metals and gems are hidden. Dye, Silk and Incense are hidden. New resources Cotton, Hemp, Tobacco, and Prime Timber are also hidden. There are several other resources that become revealed later in the game, and tons more that are manufactured through constructing refining buildings (Cotton to clothes, iron to steel and steel to firearms, for example). You really don’t know for sure how good your start is right at the start.


On with the game-
I start moving my warrior South and East toward the river.
On turn 3 (3955BC), I find a pretty good early commerce site with some elephants and plains cows. One more turn and I reveal dry corn nearby. This will make a great production & commerce site with access to two food resources, the ocean, and a river with plenty of elephants (which provide 3C when near the river). Later, will allow for a mix of farming and cottaging. It will miss the pearls on the first ring, but that’s OK.


On turn 6 (3910BC), my warrior finishes. I’m still moving the starter warrior East/Southeast, so this warrior goes West/South. I start building another warrior using the 3F1C tile. Warrior is promoted to woodsman 1.

On turn 9 (3865BC), I find what has the potential of being a decent production site, although the potatoes may be isolated. I will need to explore a little more to see how the land lays. It’s all inland – and as a result dry, so any city will need food to be worthwhile.


On turn 11 (3835BC), I research Toolmaking. Allows me to build scouts, hunting camps, increases worker speed, and gives me access to Archery and several other techs.


On turn 12 (3820BC), I come across Lincoln. He came from the South.


And I find his borders to my SE on turn 14. He may be my first target due to the close proximity. Scouting later reveals that Washington is not on a hill.


My warrior to the south reveals a pocket mountain range. This is a fortunate turn of events because it will greatly simplify barbarian defense. I have ocean to the north, a mountain range to the South, a small mountain range East with some defensible passes. I should be able to place 3 or 4 archers and completely kill any close barbarian spawns.


On turn 18, my third warrior is built. I send this one east with a woodsman 1 promotion, and starting building yet another. I shuffle the tiles to 1F2H to get the 4th warrior on the turn archery is finished.
I find the coast to the SW of Lincoln, and then find a break in the mountain range.

On turn 24 (3640BC), I discover Archery. I research Metal lore next to show me if I’ve got any copper nearby and if there are any luxury metals. My warrior which finishes this turn gets a City Garrison 1 promotion and fortifies. I start building archers to fogbust the surrounding area. 26 turns until the barbarians come.


Turns 24-33 are pretty uneventful. My east warrior took a big hit from a jaguar and needs to rest. The SE warrior is scouting around Lincoln’s area. The South warrior looped around the mountain range to see what’s on the other side
Turn 34 (3490BC) was eventful. An archer is built, and I move him to fogbust the elephant/cow area. I start building another one to move south. I locate the Aztec borders in the fog. I later find out that the leader is Acampichtli. I also finish Metal Lore this turn. I start on stonecutting next to reveal stone and marble. It is a tech which is needed for roads and also for writing which is my typical third order of business.
My capital:

Area to the southeast:


Likely city placement:



Area to the far SE:


East (with resting warrior):


Aztec borders:


And here I’m going to pause (3490BC, turn 34). I have one archer moving out to fogbust. I want two more and I think I can keep my valley fairly well covered. I will also want to start on my immortals for defending against barbs and start a settler. I have one warrior moving to the Aztec lands to my SW around the mountain range. One warrior is scouting around the American territory to my SE. One warrior is resting and almost ready to explore what looks like Jungle to the east. If I have an opportunity to steal a worker from either the Aztec or the Americans, I’m going to take it. My capitol is size 2 with one border pop. The next border pop takes a long while in RI unless you have a decent amount of infrastructure or a wonder. I also only have one more pop to grow before I hit my unimproved happy cap. I’ll talk more about happy caps, buildings, happy resources, and the early civics in the next post. Lastly, my capitol has not one, but two sources of luxury metals. This is a pretty nice turn of events, but I definitely don't have enough food nearby to take full advantage of it. I'm going to need to farm pretty much every flatland to work all of the hills.
Tech-wise, as I said earlier, my typical third target is writing. Tech trading is done differently in this mod. I'll go into a little more detail next post once I get writing which opens it up.

 

[Jwitti]

Yay! Looks good Welcome to Civ IV S&T btw If anyone says the word epic disregard them.

 

[stingo]

Great review. I also play RI only. I love the tech tree and the way how things are connected to it. It is very well thought out. The only gripe I have are revolting barbs which I do not know how to make automated and smart defense against. It is a chore to always battle them, but at the same time I do not want to disable them. They play an important role by putting needed pressure. Keep on going!

 

[Ambassador]

Top! Your capital placement is excellent. With that much commerce available your early game will be a walk in the park.

 

[goldys_lackey]

thanks for doing this walkthrough. I'm very unawares of all the various mods so this will be an epic glimpse for me to see what i've been missing.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Yay! Looks good Welcome to Civ IV S&T btw If anyone says the word epic disregard them.

This post is just... epic, man.

Sorry, I had to. Subscribed, though.

 

[Nitrah]

Thanks for the welcomes all,

Stingo, hopefully the placements I use for my fogbusters give a little insight how to mitigate the assault. This game isn't going to be the best for showing a full-power raging barbarian invasion because of the nearby terrain, but the concept is similar for the middle of a Pangea with noone around.

Ambassador, I honestly almost re-rolled the game when I finished mining lore because of all the shinies. I didn't because I had already thrown out two games worth of notes up to turn 50ish because of bad starts (one isolated on a tiny iceball island, the other smack in the middle of a huge range of hills with no food or copper as far as the eye could see).

Update will follow:

 

[Nitrah]

3475BC through 2180BC

3475BC, I move my warrior SW to find Tenochtitlan on a hill and meet Acampichtli, one of the new leaders of the Aztec. I probably should have mentioned this when I started, but RI has many more leaders. Each faction has a minimum of 3 possible leaders to pick from, and they typically have vastly different traits. Additionally, they cover the entire history of an area. For example, not only do you get Trajan, Julius Caesar, and Augustus Caesar, but you also have Mussolini and Pope Alexander VI Borgas as possible leaders of Rome.

Since I have my first archer, let me talk a little about fogbusting and raging barbarians. This is not specific to RI, but applies to BTS as well, and would work just as well there with raging barbarians turned on or off. Fogbusting stops barbarians from spawning anywhere that A) is visible from player or AI borders and B) is within 2 tiles in any direction of a unit. I am pretty sure – and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong – that that includes barbarian units unless raging barbs is turned on. Once the barb unit has spawned, it follows specific rules depending on how many cities are in the world. For example, it will only enter your borders to attack a city or pillage a tile if it can do it after the first turn until a certain number of cities are founded. Then it will enter borders if it can do it after the second turn. I don’t know the exact numbers here, and I’m sure you can look them up. The reason I mention this is because all of those rules are void if raging barbs is turned on. A barbarian spawned in the boondocks, 20 tiles from a city will start trecking towards your civilization to pillage and destroy. I am also fairly certain that barbarian units do not keep other barbarians from spawning with raging barbs turned on. This means that you have two options to deal with it. First, you can build up a few defenders and wait inside your city for them to come to you to get experience. In RI this may be a valid strategy if you pick an imperialistic leader because barbarians give great general points. Not so in standard BTS. The other option is to strategically place fogbusters to keep the barbarians from spawning close to your borders. This will keep any barbarians which DO spawn closer to another civ, and they’ll go pick on someone else. It won’t be foolproof, especially if you don’t have any hills to post up on. They will sneak through occasionally, so you’ll need two or three units guarding your borders and critical resources, but you can easily handle the trickle that come through. Take a look at the two screenshots below. The first shows three sites that if an unit is placed will keep barbarians from spawning anywhere less than 8 tiles away from my borders.

Spoiler :

The second is where I actually am placing my units. If I have to move an archer to attack a barbarian sneaking by, it won’t make an immediate gap. It also puts them on forests to protect them against fast moving, terrain ignoring, barbarian light horsemen which will show up sooner or later.

Spoiler :

I hope this shows how starting at the coast or between mountain ranges helps significantly. Starting inland isn’t hopeless though. You will need a few more units to get “safe”, but it’s doable. I usually post two units in the same side to block off a section of map, then build one archer to defend my city, one to defend any critical resource, and one as a floater. If I have horses by then (because I captured a worker, usually), I’ll use a chariot as the floater. Once that is done, I’ll pump out some more archers to guard the rest of the map. It takes a little longer, but you can make it up.


Enough digression: on with the game!
Turn 40 I find a worker of Lincoln’s working a horse pasture.


The Americans get an upgrade to the smokehouse as one of their UBs which gives two experience to recon and light cavalry units, so their light cavalry will be doubly dangerous if they get horseback riding before I can take them out. They are also the worst enemy of the Aztec, so I won’t take any diplomacy hit from stealing it.

Turn 41 I attack and steal the worker. I will move my archer a little southeast to fogbust and intercept.

Turn 42, Lincoln does not move an archer out of Washington to take me on. A little worried that he has another nearby archer scout, I move NW and find why he didn’t have anyone to spare – his first settler has moved out to the North.



Turn 43 (3340BC), I am safely escorting the worker out of American lands, my second fogbusting archer is built (moving to the southern point detailed above) and Persepolis hits size 3. This is the starting, ancient era happy cap for the capital. Secondary cities have it even tougher – to start off, they can only grow to size 2.

Take a look at the next screenshot which covers the civics.

Spoiler :

As you can see, Barbarism is all sorts of bad. It makes distant cities unfeasible to start and gives 1 for the first 6 cities. Luckily, it is offset by Rule of Fear in the legal branch which gives you the ability to build Mob Justice giving 1 at the cost of -50% for the city. This isn’t a permanent way to write off a culture victory – in RI, many of the civics have buildings and even world wonders tied to them. Once you change out of Rule of Fear, your culture returns to normal. Other starting buildings tied to civics are the Hunters Cabin tied to Natural Economy and the Pantheon and Pagan temples tied to Paganism. I have built hunters cabins occasionally when I need to settle poor land to capture bronze or horses or if I haven’t unlocked the building of wealth or science yet and the city has low food output. The pagan temples are a new feature which gives a reason to not develop your own religion. It has several wonders associated with it and is a pretty neat feature. The only downside is you need to make up your mind to go for it soon. If you don’t get Stonehenge (which gives each pagan temple 1 ), it’s not the greatest. It also has synergies with running slavery, giving each pagan temple 1 . The bonuses from the various civilizations’ pagan temples are all different. Persia has the Mithraist temple, which is one of the better ones, but doesn’t work well if your land is food poor. It gives +15% , +15% , and -1 . Slavery now eats up some food as well, so you need to really be cranking out some surplus to put these all over. On the other hand, the happy cap is really low anyways, so you won’t need a lot of surplus to still work the good tiles in each city.

Continuing on, turn 44 has my east warrior kill a wolf. Normally, this wouldn’t be anything to post, but this particular wolf gave the warrior his 6th XP. There are no barbarian experience caps on units in this mod, which is good considering how many of them there are.

On turn 45 (3310BC), I discover stonecutting. I see no stone anywhere nearby which writes off me working to get Stonehenge, but I do have marble in the first ring of where I’m going to put my third city (to get the horses). Nice. I want to start on the wheel next, but first I turn off research to save up some cash. If I’m walking a warrior all the way back to my borders, I’m going to upgrade him to an archer when he gets there. I also meet Augustus Caesar this turn. I’m pretty sure his scout came from the south.


On turn 51, third archer completes and my worker is back in my borders and I start him working on a goldmine. Normally, I wouldn’t bother yet, or if I didn’t have as many hills and forests around, I’d finish the tile to 1 turn away from completion. In this case, however, with the favorable terrain and having 3 archers out already with one more getting promoted soon giving me a good buffer, I take the gamble and let him get to work. I start work on my first immortal. If I were playing anyone other than Persia, I’d be starting either a settler now, or a worker if I hadn’t stolen one yet. I set my research to 100% again.

On turn 53, Lincoln gets over my sneak attack and signs a peace treaty. It was probably the 4th archer which did it, although he surprisingly has more troops than me. Probably a side effect of him being industrious which now affects more than wonders by giving +1 on every tile which already gives 3. Also on this turn, I move too quickly with my east warrior and end up on a hill instead of the forest I was moving through right next to the first barbarian archer. Turn 53, right on time. He dies the next turn, but did discover a really interesting peninsula. Don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in Civ before.


I also have a barbarian archer moving in from the southeast.


On turn 55, I meet Robert the Bruce of the Celts to the west of the Aztec

The Roman archer kills the incoming barbarian archer, and I research The Wheel on turn 59. This gives the first of many types of roads, the cart path. Cart paths connect cities and tiles for trade purposes and only remove any movement costs for terrain (e.g. making hills cost 1 move). I very rarely spend the time to build them since roadbuilding comes right afterwards, which I take a detour from my writing goal to get. For some reason, the AIs never seem to prioritize it, and I find it’s very important to consolidate land, so I get it next. Also on turn 59, my 3 fogbusting archers are in place. I have 1 backup archer (the promoted warrior who scouted the American territory).

My first immortal finishes on turn 61, and I feel that I am safe enough to start expanding. I start the long build that is the settler. My first gold mine is finished as well, so I get a huge influx.

Turn 67 gives me roadbuilding, and I finish the second gold mine. I start building a road from Persepolis out to the elephant/corn/cow site. By the time I get my settler there, I’ll have the road complete and roads built on the cow and one ivory site as well, ready for upgrading. I select pottery as my next research on the way to writing.

On turn 69 (2965BC), Flaming Ammunition gets built somewhere in the world. I was only able to get this once – strangely on the first time I played RI. Every other time, someone else gets the great general first. Flaming Ammo is a doctrine – basically, it’s a world wonder which is buildable by great generals. They give your units a new promotion line. Some of them are extremely powerful. Luckily Flaming Ammo isn’t so great. They almost all become obsolete after a modest amount of time. Flaming ammo goes early in the middle ages, for example. It basically gives archer units promotions which give bonuses to attack cities and buffs against various types of units.

On turn 74 I finish pottery and start on writing. At some point during these last turns, I connected my gold mine to Persepolis. In BTS, this would instantly raise my happy cap. In RI, you actually need to provide more than just the gold bars to your cities to make them happy – you need to build a jeweler first. The early luxury resources you want to find and hook up are as follows:
- Gold, Silver, and Gems. Revealed by Metal Lore. Converted to by a jeweler which you can build with city planning
- Ivory and Furs. Converted to by a caravan house which you can build with trade. These two are typically the ones I want to find first because the caravan house also gives an extra trade route to the city it’s built in
- Wine. Converted to by a tavern. Comes with Tolls and Taxes which comes after Trade
- Amber & Pearls. Converted to by a Market. Comes with Currency which comes after tolls and Taxes.
If you have none of these resources nearby, your best plan of action is to go through the lower half of the tech tree. Try to get Stonehenge and switch to slavery so your pagan temples give 2 each, and then switch into civil service (a reasonable switch in its own right) and try to get the Coliseum which will make your arenas give 2 each and your slave markets also give 1 . This is simplified if you have stone and marble nearby that you can hook up. Imperialistic and Charismatic rulers also have it slightly easier as well as each has a building which gives 1 .

Going for a religion is another option, although the early ones spread pretty slowly, and you can’t build missionaries right at the start. I have usually been able to get Judaism without much problem, and could most likely get Buddhism or Taoism just as easy. At Monarch, I could probably get either Zoroastrianism or Hinduism, but you need to make up your mind to get them early as they go fast, in my experience. Taoism works especially well if you are extremely resource poor, but I’m going to cover the religions in a later post.

You can also suck it up and stay small while you research your way to both Calendar and Irrigation. This opens up the plantation happy resources, of which there are many.

If all of that fails, or you think it’s going to fail, your last option aside from reloading is to beeline for Dynastism and stay in Rule of Fear. This will have your capital have a happy cap of 7, and your secondary cities have happy caps of 4. Slavery still will give your pagan temples another 1 and Arenas give the same. If you place your cities well, you should be able to get some functional secondary cities with that size. You can certainly get enough to crank out an army to take some resources from someone else.

 

[Nitrah]

Enough rambling. On turn 82 (2770BC), I complete writing. Lincoln, Robert, and Augustus will all sign OB with me. This is a very big deal because it allows technology transfer. In RI, you don’t participate in tit-for-tat trading of technologies. Instead, technologies are treated much more organically (one could even say more realistically). If you have open borders with someone who has a tech you haven’t researched, you get a +50% bonus to your efforts. For every other civ that has it, you get another +25%. All three have plenty of techs that I need, due to my beeline, so I open borders with all three. I am not worried about Lincoln getting access to my techs because I have no military techs which he needs, and because I’m getting +75% or +100% on most techs, my bonus outweighs his. I would want to work on agriculture next, but no one else has it right now, while all three have animal husbandry, so I select that. 4 turns to completion – yes, please!


As an aside to the developers of the mod if they’re watching – why don’t AI civs ever prioritize writing? It seems like it is an extremely powerful tech to be the first to attain, but they usually all mess around on the lower side of the tech tree each trying to go for Hinduism or Zoroastrianism. You would think that someone – maybe a progressive leader, for example, would prioritize writing while seafaring and financial leaders might prioritize the trade -> tolls -> currency path. It may just be my luck or my difficulty level, but I haven’t really seen this.

The techs are going to come fast here. I only have one warrior out scouting to the far SW, and my worker is roading up the new city site.

Turn 86 I finish Animal Husbandry and start Storytelling (so my new city can grow to size two and I can get some small buff to research). The storytellers circle, and several other buildings like the sawmill all provide extras to the city they’re built in (for example, +2 for the SC, +1 for the sawmill). This is yet another reason to hold your workers back until it’s safe to go out. Your city core can provide some extra early production compared to BTS.

Turn 89 I finish storytelling. I start on agriculture despite no one else having it yet. I need to get the corn farmed. However, I turn off my research to get some cash reserves for 2 turns while doing it. Someone researches it towards the end giving a turn or two of +50%.

Turn 94 (2590BC) I finish my settler. Lincoln founds Boston somewhere (his 3rd city). I start on a second Immortal and send the settler to take the ivory/cows city.

Turn 95 I research Agriculture and start on fishing. Everyone has it, although they’re all landlocked. Oh well.

I found Pasargadae in a well roaded area. I start building a storyteller’s circle, and my worker pastures the cows, followed by one of the elephants. My capitol has hit its temporary happy cap, and I want to get some commerce online before I get another city, so there is no reason to divert the worker to farm the corn quite yet.


Turn 97 I finish Fishing. Work on Mysticism due to the research bonus
Turn 100 I finish Mysticism and start on Weaving. I find no hemp or tobacco close-by, but there is a site with Hemp over near the eastern peninsula and some more way far to the SW past the Aztec lands.
Turn 104 I finish weaving and start on woodworking. I now have all techs owned by other players. Cotton is revealed outside of Washington, and there is one far up on the peninsula. There are no dyes or silk visible.
Turn 105, I meet Nelson Mandela of the Zulus. I find it a little funny that the biggest warmonger civ in BTS can be run by one of the biggest doves. Plays very differently.


On turn 107, the Aztecs declared war on Lincoln. Good – keep him occupied while I get my army ready to kill him.
On turn 109, my worker finishes improving the elephants and I move him toward the corn around Persepolis. I send my first Immortal to scout the jungles to the east and then move down into Lincoln’s territory.

On turn 111, I take a pause to debate founding Hinduism. I have enough of a tech lead to probably get it if I want.
Religions aren’t static +1 per religion, temples for +1 regardless of religion in RI. Each has specific bonuses and drawbacks.
Hinduism is one of the two first religions you can get. By adopting it, you no longer get from cows when you build smokehouses. To make up for that, in addition to the +1 for the religion and the temple, you also get +1 from cows when you build the temple and +1 from spices, which I don’t see on the map. With a great person, they can build the Kamakya Temple which gives +1 and +1 to every city on the continent. Additionally, their Cathedral (Hindu Mandir) gives another happy from cows and lets them train the Guru. The Guru (only 1 can be in play at a time) acts as a miniature great engineer, providing an infusion of hammers to the target city. Their holy place gives +1 to citizens.

Zoroastrianism is the other very early religion. They have no real drawbacks. Their temples provide +1 in addition to the standards. Their cathedrals (Fire Temple) provide +65% instead of the standard +50%, and give +1 from spices. They also allow the training of the Dastur. 2 of these can be in play at once, and they can be burned in a city for +300 (over half the way to get to ring 3). Their great temple is Adur Farnbag which gives +25% to all cities, and an additional +25% the city it’s built in. Their holy place gives +1 to artists. Clearly this religion is focused towards those going for a cultural victory.

I am not planning on going for a cultural victory for this game. They’re pretty boring to play, IMO, and I imagine they’re pretty boring to follow as well. I also have limited health resources nearby, so without spices even in view yet, I decide to pass on Hindiusm. I have yet to found it. One of these days the stars will align and I’ll give it a try.

I’ll go into the other religions once I get closer to them in the tech tree.

I forgot to write it down, but somewhere in here I finished woodworking and started on sculpture to get my monuments for the +1 . There is prime timber in the mountains near Lincoln and one up on the peninsula. You can see the one near Lincoln in the last screenshot.

On turn 114, Stonehenge was built.

On turn 115, my storytellers circle finishes in Pasargadae and I start on an Immortal (my 4th)

On turn 117, I finish my third immortal in Persepolis and start on a work boat. Hindsight, I probably should have built another archer, but my goal was to build more workers and settlers once I have taken care of Lincoln. It’s not a bad build though – I’ll be able to raise the happy cap in 2 turns with monument builds and I need a tile to work.

On turn 118, Nelson Mandela researches sculpture. I open borders with him to shave a turn off the research. He’s probably also pretty far away, and is generally an amiable fellow, so he’ll make a good trading partner.

On turn 119, I finish sculpture. I once again have all techs that everyone else has, so I decide to start on Sailing. To expand past 4 cities, you really need to get commerce running, and that includes the trade routes that you get from the caravan house. I also have worked to get the great lighthouse in several recent games, but looking at my land and planned path of growth, will probably give that wonder a pass this time.

On turn 121 I finish my 4th and last immortal. I start on an archer to go to war with them. Stacking disparate types of units together gives them additional combat bonuses. Putting archers in the stack gives first strikes. Having melee units in the stack gives extra strength and city attack. This is counterbalanced by severe penalties if you have more than 15 units in your SoD, so you need to group your tasks forces up with some forethought. I find Boston this turn, and it’s not on a hill either.

Lincoln’s territory:


On turn 123 Lincoln researches architecture. I switch my research focus. Might as well milk him while he’s still around.

On turn 125, Pasargadae has its borders pop. My work boat finishes in the capitol and I start on a monument.

On turn 126, the archer finishes and I send my war party out. I should be able to take out Washington and Boston with minimal casualties and then sweep back to take out New York (which is on a hill). I will try to get bronze working and a few units of cannon fodder to soften the defenders there up by the time my war party gets there.

On turn 128 I complete my first forest chop at the capitol. Chopping wood becomes available at woodworking instead of bronze working. It also doesn’t give near as much an influx, so it’s not something that I generally prioritize. On the other hand, chopping down jungle also gives a modest amount of hammers as well.

On turn 129 I complete Architecture. This allows the construction of cottages and the first siege engine of the game, the primitive ram. They’re weak, slow, cheap, can only defend, and you can only build three of them. They also are the only thing which can lower city defenses in the ancient era. Another reason to bring them is that they give siege aid which gives bonus first strike chances and city attack bonuses. Because they’re so weak, they don’t give much, though. If I have some free hammers, I’ll make one or two to help take New York.

On turn 131, Pasargadae finished another guardian archer. Building a monument next.

On turn 132 (2180BC), Zoroastrianism is founded somewhere and my strike force is ready to attack Lincoln.


I forgot to note it, but my scout to the Southwest got eaten by an archer. He explored a good ways and found a lot of resources in the snow as well as another strange peninsula - this one facing west. Tons of fur, some more hemp and silver, a stone, and a deer resource are all visible down there. It's a long ways away, however.

I have now written up to my current turn in the game. I welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions with how to proceed. I will try to update once or twice a week from here on in. Updates will probably either be less detailed or much shorter than this one was. The amount of time these take is surprising (3 hours for this update).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

This thread is very much approved by RI team for being educational and entertaining. Subscribed.

Your concern about AI prioritizing techs is justified. This was an issue I was planning to look into; it isn't very serious, but some techs should indeed get more love from AI - and they will in the next version.

Great review. I also play RI only. I love the tech tree and the way how things are connected to it. It is very well thought out. The only gripe I have are revolting barbs which I do not know how to make automated and smart defense against. It is a chore to always battle them, but at the same time I do not want to disable them. They play an important role by putting needed pressure. Keep on going!

You will be delighted to learn then that we are adding more unit automation features in the next version, and they may ease your gripes.

 

[stingo]

You will be delighted to learn then that we are adding more unit automation features in the next version, and they may ease your gripes.

Really, new automation features? It was me who merged Afforess automations, but I still find they do not always work good enough. Unless there are some other features coming.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Really, new automation features? It was me who merged Afforess automations, but I still find they do not always work good enough. Unless there are some other features coming.

Ah, sorry, it was you in the first place ; what do you consider "not working good enough" in them currently? Since there are a lot of AI tweaks upcoming, including some stuff for pathfinding and unit handling, AI and automated unit behaviors will likely improve.

 

[kazapp]

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I tried out the Realism Invictus mod for BTS and absolutely fell in love with it. Since there is not terribly much in the way of gameplay discussions of the mod on the forums, I figured that I would try posting a gameplay walkthrough. It is my suspicion that several of the settings make the mod have a pretty steep learning curve and scare some people away. They’re not hard to adjust for, but if you play the game the way you play un-modded BTS the barbs will eat you in short order.

Disclaimers:
1) I am not a master Civver. I currently play on the Monarch level, but could probably move up to Emperor. I do not claim to have the best, or most optimal way to play the mod, but I do survive the initial barbarian onslaught more than 90% of the games I start, even if I’m in the middle of a landmass.

2) I have played this game ahead a little ways (just before 2000BC) to ensure that the start wasn’t isolated and would be interesting. I have paused the game now and am going to write out the events to there and turn this thread a little more interactive.

3) You WILL need a computer with a 64-bit operating system to run the mod. I actually pushed up my planned computer upgrade because of this. Playing small maps on a 4 year old 32-bit machine, I was able to get to 1000BC occasionally and past there once or twice before memory access failures caused a CTD.

4) If you don’t like long games, you may want to give this thread a pass. The mod was designed for ‘realistic’ settings which has as many turns as a marathon game, but there are 2 to 3 times as many techs, so you’re not clicking ‘end turn’ 50 times to get bronze working. The mod does have 3 faster settings and 1 slower setting, so it’s worth trying out even if you don’t like marathon, but I’ve never played them so I can’t give any advice how they’re tuned.

Hey wait a minute... I'm
1) a monarch player
2) a marathon player
3) using 64-bit Windows 7
...that loves playthrough threads!

Bookmarked!

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The first selection of what to build is where the mod starts to divert from BTS. The standard start is to build a worker and start improving your tiles. This is NOT the best start in RI. Raging barbarians are defaulted to on in this mod. Additionally, workers and settlers are relatively more expensive. The first worker would take 29 turns to complete if you start from size 1, and the barbarians start showing up around turn 50 on Monarch difficulty. They will then immediately start running into your borders and even if you’ve managed to build a defender that can survive them, they’ll pillage anything your worker has set up.

I'm not convinced that this analysis is correct or complete (although the conclusion looks reasonable). 29 turns is about three techs of research time, and if you can reach a unit tech by that point, you've another 20 turns to train two.

The big problem as I see it, is the happy cap. Have a careful look at the pictures - 130 turns into the game, and the capital is still capped at size 3. The satellite city is capped at size 2.

In Vanilla/BTS, gunning worker first makes sense because once you manage to improve irrigated corn you'll be working that tile for the rest of the game. Here, with no cap room and no way to convert the food power to something useful, you'll work the corn for 10 turns before you have to re-assign your tiles. Eventually, the surplus food will be handy to produce a settler, but until then you might as well let it be pillaged.

Also worth noting is the food math. The foodbar fills at 4 * ( 10 + current pop), so in the opening 44 food for the second citizen, 48 food for the third. 92 food before you hit the happy cap. So you can train a worker (29 turns), improve the corn (10? 11? turns), work the corn for another 10 turns, and hit pop 3 on turn 50 or so.

OR you can simply grow naturally, and hit the happy cap on turn 31 - 2 turns later than the worker appeared.

For that matter, it may not even be worth growing early. The city tile gives two hammers, so you get 5/turn at size 1, or 7/turn at size 3. Yay for a 40 percent improvement.

Not sure how this AI reacts to worker steal, but that's got to be worth thinking about - a crippled AI isn't going to be much worse than the barbarians you are already seeing.

DISCLAIMER: I only downloaded the mod after this thread started, and obviously don't know ANYTHING about it yet. So pay more attention to the corrections below than to this.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I'm not convinced that this analysis is correct or complete (although the conclusion looks reasonable). 29 turns is about three techs of research time, and if you can reach a unit tech by that point, you've another 20 turns to train two.

That's a pretty insightful analysis, especially for a person who never played RI before. The biggest deal with early workers, however, is the constant barbarian pressure early on, which will result in one's inability to keep improved tiles from being razed. Keep in mind that this game showcases an almost ideal scenario, with a mountain range on one side and a neighbor on the other to keep barbs to minimum, coupled with competent fogbusting and a civ with powerful early units. In many games, one finds himself holed up in his cities until somewhat later eras; the only tiles that would stay improved in that case would be the ones with a unit posted on them.

Of course, the happy cap is another reason workers are relatively useless early on - only relatively, mind you - but still, until one has means of getting additional happiness (detailed above), a city will only work 1-2 tiles anyway.

 

[HannibalBarka]

That's a pretty insightful analysis, especially for a person who never played RI before. The biggest deal with early workers, however, is the constant barbarian pressure early on, which will result in one's inability to keep improved tiles from being razed. Keep in mind that this game showcases an almost ideal scenario, with a mountain range on one side and a neighbor on the other to keep barbs to minimum, coupled with competent fogbusting and a civ with powerful early units. In many games, one finds himself holed up in his cities until somewhat later eras; the only tiles that would stay improved in that case would be the ones with a unit posted on them.

Of course, the happy cap is another reason workers are relatively useless early on - only relatively, mind you - but still, until one has means of getting additional happiness (detailed above), a city will only work 1-2 tiles anyway.

There is also another reason why not rush for a worker. You can defend an improvment on a hill or a forest, defending one on flat land is too much risk. Mining that early has no benefit (unlike vanilla) because a mined hill produce just 2 H like a plain forest (maybe 1C if next to river). That leaves improvment on resources on hills or resources on forest that do not clear the forest once improved. And we're talking about early improvement, so that leaves the Calendar-Irrigation ones. The only case when I build a worker early on is actually when I see a tile of that kind: glod, silver, deer, etc.

 

[Nitrah]

Like others have said - the main reason not to build that worker first is because it would be a waste of time. Even if you go archery first and then worker techs, you would only be able to get out 2 archers before the barbarians start showing up. That's enough to protect your city (barely) and protect your worker (also barely). You won't have any extra to protect the tiles you've already improved, and they'll just get pillaged. Not to mention the fact that there is a good chance that you have lost your starting warrior, so you'll be blind, and you won't have any archers outside your borders to fogbust any sectors around your borders. You'll drown in barbs and die.

Thanks for watching all - next set is coming up now.

 

[Nitrah]

2180BC through 1470BC PART 1
Well, it looks like I made a moderate miscalculation. Nothing devastating, but I didn’t get my desired outcome.
One side effect of taking breaks which I didn’t realize is that you spend some time to analyze your situation in between and come up with better plans forward. That being said, before I moved, I switched my research to bronze working, wanting to get some backup units before the assault on New York.
I also realized that I haven’t talked about one of the coolest features of RI – the unit tree! Each civilization has its own roster of flavor units. They’re all based on the standard model, but they have semi-unique (there is a little overlap) names and features. Some are cheaper, some are more expensive, and some have more or fewer bonuses/maluses than the standard. The UUs from BTS no longer replace a unit in the tree. They are now limited build, national units. The ancient and early classical standard units are as follows:
- Archers (strength 3) with archery. Counters light cavalry and gets hill & city defense bonuses
- Militia (strength 3) with woodworking. Light spearmen. Slight bonuses against heavy cavalry (chariots & cataphracts)
- Chariot (strength 4, move 2) with the wheel & horses. Bonus against huntsman. Ours has a bonus against archers as well. Penalties against city
- Spearmen (strength 4) with bronze working & copper or iron. Bonus to defense against melee and bonus against heavy cavalry
- Horse Archer (strength 6, move 2). Bonus against melee & mounted, especially on the attack. Weak against cities. Archers shred them due to their +110% bonus.
- Short Swordsmen (strength 4). With bronze working. Resourceless, builds with food. Bonus-less is standard. Ours get a slight bonus against recon units. These are the unit to build if you have no nearby strategic resources. They’re weak, but are a way to avoid needing to reload.
- Axemen (strength 5) with weaponsmithing and either bronze or iron. You need to have copper and a bronze smith somewhere for the bronze. They are great against melee units, but bad against heavy and light cavalry. Ours has a penalty against archers.
- Huntsman (strength 4, move 2) with weaponsmithing. Good on the attack against melee units.
- We have immortals (strength 4) with archery. Bonus against melee & archers. Starts with combat 1 and March.

Spoiler :

2170BC, turn 133: I declare war on Lincoln. Mandela does not like this one bit. I get a -2 to relations for attacking his friend. Luckily, no one else cares. I finish my monument in the capital, raising my happy cap and start work on a ram. Hinduism is founded.

Spoiler :

Turn 134: Mandela converts to Hinduism. My assault force is ready to attack Washington.

Spoiler :

My first immortal with the cover 2 promotion has an 89% chance of victory. He wins. #2 is CR1 with 75% chance, also victorious. The other two attacks have 95%+ chances and both win. I decide to raze Washington. The site would fit my future dotmap, but I don’t have workers to connect to it or work its tiles, units to protect it, and due to the distance, it would cost almost 7g per turn, doubling my expenses. I get 132 coins from the victory.

Spoiler :

Turn 135: All of my immortals get promoted. I put CR2 on three of them and cover 3 on my veteran. Hindsight, I probably should have put cover 1 on the other three as well. I move them towards Boston. They’ll heal on the way.

Turn 137: My first ram is finished and I start building a second. Pasargadae has the first pandemic of the game. Each city has a chance every turn of getting a pandemic which cuts hammer and commerce by 25%. The chance is made significantly worse by jungle, of which Pasargadae has 3. There are plenty of buildings and techs which reduce the chance.

Spoiler :

My immortals take out Boston with easy odds and start moving towards New York.

Spoiler :

Turn 139: I finish Bronze working, giving me the option to build Kardakes (Shortswordsmen) as well as barracks. My options for tech are pretty wide open here. I decide to work on trade. Hindsight, I probably should have worked towards mining (which increases the outputs of my mines by +1 to bring them in line with BTS output as well as give access to slavery).

Spoiler :

Turn 140: My ram finishes and I start on a settler. Plan is to plant him to take the horses.

Turn 142: My immortals get to New York. He has 6 defenders, and my highest combat odds (the cover 3 immortal against a militia) is 60%.

Spoiler :

 

[Nitrah]

2180BC through 1470BC PART 2

Turn 143: I see the first Nomad raider barbarian. These nasty little buggers are move 2 and ignore terrain costs. Archers are the only counter to them.

Spoiler :

Turn 144: I attack with my veteran and lose. The next best odds are 24%, so I retreat and change my builds to a new immortal and a shortswordsman.

Turn 145: I finish trade, giving me gold trading options. I select Philosophy next to open up the paths to Dynasticism. Hindsight again – probably should have gone mining first.

Turn 149: I finish my shortswordsman and realize how big a noob I am. Chariots give small amounts of collateral damage. I start roading to the horse site, and I decide to switch the placement 1NE to get it in the first ring, so I don’t need to wait 40-50 turns to get them hooked up. The place will stink for food, but I need military more than end-game cities right now. It will be able to work the silver, and the cows I gave up can be worked by a city on the outcropping past the mountain range.

Spoiler :

Turn 150: My replacement immortal is ready in Pasargadae. I split the assault force up to go hunt barbarians for experience. Build is a worker, already in process.

Turn 152: Doctrine: Coastal Raiding is finished. This gives a new tree to your galleys and triremes which increase their attack, retreat chance, visibility, and movement, but progressively make their defense worse as they take the promotions. It’s pretty neat, and I’ve worked toward it when based in island chains. I still haven’t gotten a general yet, so I couldn’t have gotten it even if I wanted it. Side effect of efficient fogbusting.

Turn 154: I spot a roman chariot, so they’ve got horses

Turn 156: The Americans have researched bronzeworking, giving access to shortswordsmen

Turn 158: I finish my second worker in Pasargadae and start on a smokehouse

Turn 159: I enter the classical era when I research philosophy. This gives each city +1 . I start on Elephant Training. Again – mining should have come earlier. I was in reactive mode to get some better units.

Spoiler :

Turn 160: My immortals find a barbarian city. It’s on a hill, so I pass on by.

Spoiler :

Turn 161: I find dyes to my east.

Spoiler :

Turn 162: I find the Celtic borders SE of Lincoln.

Spoiler :

Turn 164: I find the Roman borders right next to the Celts.

Turn 166: My smokehouse is finished, and I start an archer for the horse city. The barbarians found a city across the mountains. It’s on the hill. Will need to be extracated eventually, but they can’t hurt me for now.

Spoiler :

Turn 167: Exploring the celt lands shows that they’re all kinds of awful. No food. Hills. Tundra. Mountains. Gross.

Spoiler :

Turn 168: My settler is finished and I take my roads down and found Susa the same turn. Start work on a storytellers circle. I’m getting some small culture from my open borders – 40 turns to expand. My workers double up on the horses.

Turn 169: I found Bibracte. Rome has researched city planning.

Spoiler :

Turn 171: I connect my horses, and switch production to 2x Arabe Nezam (chariots). I start moving my immortals back. Rome adopts civil service.

Turn 172: I find the Zulu borders past the Celts.

Spoiler :

Turn 175: I finish my first chariot. I promote him Barrage I. I plan to use these guys like I would suicide catapults.

Spoiler :

Turn 176: I finish Elephant Taming. I start work on mining next. I have as my unique unit an elephant that not only doesn’t need ivory, it doesn’t need a large stable. The stables are expensive, and the elephants are as well, but they’re very powerful. I start work on mining next, but have to save up some money first. I also start working on an elephant.

Spoiler :

Turn 180: Robert researches weaponsmithing. I turn on mining research – 13 turns

Turn 182: Statue of Zeus built in Rome, giving him pagan temples in all his cities.

Turn 184: Mandela adopts pacifism, meaning he has gotten Philosophy

Turn 186: My immortals get back to New York. Lincoln has huge defense. 12 units in the city and an additional 5 nearby. Blast. I should have attacked New York first and built new units. Either that or accept a peace treaty after my first unit was lost. I incorrectly thought he might have tried to build another settler instead of spamming units. I can’t take the city with it looking like that, so I extort 70g from Lincoln for a peace treaty and start moving my army back to my borders. Very disappointing turn of events.

Spoiler :

Turn 192: I finish mining. I don’t think I have enough food to justify the loss due to switching to slavery at this point, and I’m not at war, so I can’t capture any slaves (a new feature – on successful attack, there is a chance to capture slaves who can be burned for 30h of production). It would completely stop growth in Susa as well. I pass on the civics swap for now.

Turn 193: My galley finishes and I send him Southwest. Aside from the work boats (which can’t explore), galleys have a base movement of 4. This fixes one of my major gripes about standard BTS. In the ancient era, you shouldn’t be able to walk somewhere faster than you can sail there.

Turn 194: The Aztecs have placed a city that will keep me from taking the copper. This is not good for him. I am going to need that copper.

Spoiler :

Turn 196: I finish weaponsmithing. I am working towards getting the Helepolis, so I start with metal casting. I start moving my army south to clear out the Aztec which greatly increases my maintenance, so I need to turn off research for a time.

Turn 197: My galley finds the Inca (Pachacuti) on an island west/northwest of the Aztec. He is #1 in score and has Zoroastrianism, although he doesn’t have contact with anyone else on my continent. He also won’t open borders so I move my galley back to explore the island near my capital.

Spoiler :

Turn 198: The Inca have an extra salt to trade. It is a commerce resource available with stoneworking. It also provides a health with a granary. I trade him my extra gold, as I don’t want to give him access to elephants.

Turn 201: The Aztec has plopped another city down in the pass. Sucks to be him.

Turn 202: My resource trade sways the Inca to open borders with me. I open borders, increasing my trade by 3 per turn due to foreign trade. Putting caravan houses down will be a priority now.

Turn 203 (1470BC): The island is a single tile with only a clam resource. Basically only good as a place to make barbarian galleys. Will need to park a galley up there to fogbust eventually.

Spoiler :

I spot an Aztec settler moving along the pass with my army right next to him. I am ready to attack with an elephant, 4 immortals, 4 chariots, 2 archers, and 2 rams. His city is on the hill, but it’s poorly guarded, with only 1 archer and 2 militia.

Spoiler :

Here I am going to pause again. Thanks for reading! I welcome any advice!