So I played a game of Civ4 for the first time in years...

[Afforess]

...and got my butt kicked.

Prince Difficulty, fairly standard settings. I played as Rome. I got stick in the northern half of a continent, with a mixture of a few good tiles, deserts and tundra. I had no access to copper or iron. I did very well in the first half of the game. I expanded quickly, was able to move up the tech tree and threaten my neighbors. But then when iron working became available, my downward slide began. No copper. My arch-nemesis, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire had copper. There was an unclaimed iron ore deposit on a desert near him. I threw a few archers & settlers there, and workers to build a road down.

Spoiler My Not So Great Start :

The turn the road to the new settlement was finished, Charles declared war. My settlement only had 2 archers defending. It was immediately captured and razed, my two workers captured. A poor start to the war.

My losses continued. Without any iron or copper, I could not build units that could confront Charles 10 STR swordsman. My best unit available was a 5 STR archer. I could churn out 2 archers a turn, but they were just a buffer. Charles pillaged many improvements in my southern cities before I had enough archers to push him out. (I should point out I did not have a tiny army before the war, I kept a minimum of 3 archers in every city, plus reserves for killing barbarians).

Charles would not talk to me. There were no religions on our continent despite being 450 turns into the game, and many found. This worried me, as it implied everyone on our continent was behind other civilizations.

The war dragged on. I created a 8-archer + GG army that pushed south into Charles territory. A size 8 city had only 2 units defending. I attacked, and captured it with only 2 units in my army left. I razed it. Charles was now willing to talk, but only would grant peace if I gave up a size 8 city with wonders. Not happening. I beelined Theology, hoping Christianity would allow me to spread a similar religion to both of us, get peace while I grab later military techs.

It was not to be. I was 65% done with Theology when Charles got it. And he founded Christianity. That is when I gave up.

Maybe someone else can salvage my game?

Resource distribution:

Spoiler :

Political Map:

Spoiler :

Most recent save:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49805/AutoSave_AD-0534.CivBeyondSwordSave

I guess my comment for this mod so far is that not having iron or copper makes you have a *massive* disadvantage. The longer tech tree means it could be 500-600 turns from discovery of Iron until you unlock units that no longer need it. That's plenty of time to go from first to last...

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

...and got my butt kicked.

Prince Difficulty, fairly standard settings. I played as Rome. I got stick in the northern half of a continent, with a mixture of a few good tiles, deserts and tundra. I had no access to copper or iron. I did very well in the first half of the game. I expanded quickly, was able to move up the tech tree and threaten my neighbors. But then when iron working became available, my downward slide began. No copper. My arch-nemesis, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire had copper. There was an unclaimed iron ore deposit on a desert near him. I threw a few archers & settlers there, and workers to build a road down.

Spoiler My Not So Great Start :

The turn the road to the new settlement was finished, Charles declared war. My settlement only had 2 archers defending. It was immediately captured and razed, my two workers captured. A poor start to the war.

My losses continued. Without any iron or copper, I could not build units that could confront Charles 10 STR swordsman. My best unit available was a 5 STR archer. I could churn out 2 archers a turn, but they were just a buffer. Charles pillaged many improvements in my southern cities before I had enough archers to push him out. (I should point out I did not have a tiny army before the war, I kept a minimum of 3 archers in every city, plus reserves for killing barbarians).

Charles would not talk to me. There were no religions on our continent despite being 450 turns into the game, and many found. This worried me, as it implied everyone on our continent was behind other civilizations.

The war dragged on. I created a 8-archer + GG army that pushed south into Charles territory. A size 8 city had only 2 units defending. I attacked, and captured it with only 2 units in my army left. I razed it. Charles was now willing to talk, but only would grant peace if I gave up a size 8 city with wonders. Not happening. I beelined Theology, hoping Christianity would allow me to spread a similar religion to both of us, get peace while I grab later military techs.

It was not to be. I was 65% done with Theology when Charles got it. And he founded Christianity. That is when I gave up.

Maybe someone else can salvage my game?

Resource distribution:

Spoiler :

Political Map:

Spoiler :

Most recent save:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49805/AutoSave_AD-0534.CivBeyondSwordSave

I guess my comment for this mod so far is that not having iron or copper makes you have a *massive* disadvantage. The longer tech tree means it could be 500-600 turns from discovery of Iron until you unlock units that no longer need it. That's plenty of time to go from first to last...

I think it's always been like that, more or less, about iron and copper. If you have obsidian you can build axemen which are 5 strength but + 50% against melee. Or rush for Feudalism which gives you longbowmen, strength 8 + 20% city defense. If you didn't have iron, copper or obsidian then that was a hard start... but the only way I see to prevent this would be to add another resource independent unit in classical era. Or do you have any other advice?

By the way, which mapsize were you using? I'm trying to make the game as balanced as possible but right now the farther you go from blitz-noble-large, the less the game is balanced.
Finally I wouldn't worry too much about techs discovering on other continents: once you get in touch with those civs you get a big boost from tech diffusion if you're lagging behind too much.

 

[Rezca]

That's only if you're playing with Tech Diffusion on though. I'm still divided as to if I like it or not. I like the concept, but still feel it's a bit strong. Basing it on difficulty like.... Settler/Chieftan/Warlord the player gets a bigger research boost when behind and the AI get a lesser one, and on Prince upwards the AI gets the better boost and the Player only gets a minor one.

I was just playing a game and had a start with no Copper on sight, but I had Elephants just a few tiles away. That was the only thing keeping Byzantium from eating me alive (Who had horses and copper, the former was only a tile away from their capitol) until I could hook up some iron in the desert wastes between our empires, and later popped a copper by sheer luck in a city I planted.

I almost missed Tech Diffusion in this game though, since Isabella was just running away madly with power and tech. Best part of it all was the mod kept thinking I was doing well so was increasing the difficulty every 50 turns despite that. She had almost twice my score and her power rating was 0.3, so obviously Warlord is too easy for me - let's shoot it up to Prince difficulty! Hah. Four other AI had 0.8 to 0.6 power ratings, and still... I don't understand what the Min/Max rating is supposed to be, so I leave them at -1. Funnily enough the previous game I had to restart it was constantly lowering the difficulty. I don't understand Flexible Difficulty enough I guess. I wasn't in second place, or even third, but I was still hopelessly behind in power just like in this game.

She never declared on me though. Yet anyway. She made a few tribute demands and I gave them, she asked for me to declare on someone, and I did that... Despite our religious tensions (Confucian for her, Buddhist for me) we were actually at Cautious. Fun!
Wars started breaking out down there for some reason, and for a while she was tearing Aztecs apart, but that dropped her power rating a bit in the process.
Fun thing to note was I spotted the Aztecs moving a few ships up the coast to a Mayan city I had just taken, and checking their info, it stated it was destined to land one tile south of that very city. War declaration would follow?
Hit End Turn and yup she declared ^^ Killed the stack on the next turn surprisingly.


Anyway. Isabella was running around with Bombadiers and Elephant Bombards when the rest of the world was still using longbows and macemen as their best units, but I somehow was the first to make it to Matchlock, so that might actually be a turning point. She was on the opposite end of the continent, and while everyone down there was all lovey dovey for a long time (Until Bismarck went Hellenism, then everyone started declaring on him) and now Isabella's picking fights with her former friends for some reason. Keeping them busy so that's fine by me.

I'm curious as to how Tech Diffusion would have influenced that. I wouldn't have spent so much time building up an espionage economy to steal from Bismarck I guess.

 

[Kryanni]

I guess my comment for this mod so far is that not having iron or copper makes you have a *massive* disadvantage. The longer tech tree means it could be 500-600 turns from discovery of Iron until you unlock units that no longer need it. That's plenty of time to go from first to last...

Haven't been playing since the last, uh, 4 revisions of the SVN, but yeah that does seem like the case.

I tend to play with raging Barbarians though, and I suppose I'm more ticked off that disorganized rabble can scrape together better tech than the actual named civs. I mean, once barb Axemen show up then any civ without the early metals is living on borrowed time.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@Rezca, I know, Tech diffusion still needs improvements. I'm planning to cut it to 1/4 for human players and make it scalable for handicap level. That should be more balanced and at the same time it shouldn't hinder AI too much, because the main problem has always been that AI was always being left behind in techs and was hence performing poorly as the game moves beyond renaissance.

 

[RyoHazuki]

One thing that i´ve noticed in my several last games, its the low appearance rate of some resources, specially some that are quite important for the progress of the game. Im talking about horses, iron and copper (but specially horses).
Its usual when you appear with no one of those 3 resources, having big problems to defend yourself from your neighbours -dont misunderstand me, its also very funny to manage to get a vital resource when you cannot find it near your cities-, and it makes the game quite dificult in high dificulty levels (which i really like), but i feel that both iron and horses should be present in the map a bit more, since in real history almost every civ in the world was able to find/get them easily in their borders. Lastly i feel that its easier to find elephants than horses .

I was forgetting, it could deppend of the map type.. (i dont know, ill check) I usually play on fractal/giant/medium.

Edit: I´ve been doing some check and it seems to be enough iron, horses or elephants for almost everyone, so its been only a bad assumption

 

[RyoHazuki]

...and got my butt kicked.

Prince Difficulty, fairly standard settings. I played as Rome. I got stick in the northern half of a continent, with a mixture of a few good tiles, deserts and tundra. I had no access to copper or iron. I did very well in the first half of the game. I expanded quickly, was able to move up the tech tree and threaten my neighbors. But then when iron working became available, my downward slide began. No copper. My arch-nemesis, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire had copper. There was an unclaimed iron ore deposit on a desert near him. I threw a few archers & settlers there, and workers to build a road down.

Spoiler My Not So Great Start :

The turn the road to the new settlement was finished, Charles declared war. My settlement only had 2 archers defending. It was immediately captured and razed, my two workers captured. A poor start to the war.

My losses continued. Without any iron or copper, I could not build units that could confront Charles 10 STR swordsman. My best unit available was a 5 STR archer. I could churn out 2 archers a turn, but they were just a buffer. Charles pillaged many improvements in my southern cities before I had enough archers to push him out. (I should point out I did not have a tiny army before the war, I kept a minimum of 3 archers in every city, plus reserves for killing barbarians).

Charles would not talk to me. There were no religions on our continent despite being 450 turns into the game, and many found. This worried me, as it implied everyone on our continent was behind other civilizations.

The war dragged on. I created a 8-archer + GG army that pushed south into Charles territory. A size 8 city had only 2 units defending. I attacked, and captured it with only 2 units in my army left. I razed it. Charles was now willing to talk, but only would grant peace if I gave up a size 8 city with wonders. Not happening. I beelined Theology, hoping Christianity would allow me to spread a similar religion to both of us, get peace while I grab later military techs.

It was not to be. I was 65% done with Theology when Charles got it. And he founded Christianity. That is when I gave up.

Maybe someone else can salvage my game?

Resource distribution:

Spoiler :

Political Map:

Spoiler :

Most recent save:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49805/AutoSave_AD-0534.CivBeyondSwordSave

I guess my comment for this mod so far is that not having iron or copper makes you have a *massive* disadvantage. The longer tech tree means it could be 500-600 turns from discovery of Iron until you unlock units that no longer need it. That's plenty of time to go from first to last...

One of the problems "Usable mountains" have, is that some resources usually appear on them. In your case, you have two obsidian in two mountains, and you wont be able to get them until you discover mountaineering. With obsidian and your horses, you could have built light cavalry, found at stirrup, which can even face pikeman in open field, besides of swordsman and longbowman.

In any case, longbowman is your only chance to defend yourself for the moment. It would be a good idea to send a ship to the east, it seems to be something there... maybe some lonely iron mine!

 

[Afforess]

One of the problems "Usable mountains" have, is that some resources usually appear on them. In your case, you have two obsidian in two mountains, and you wont be able to get them until you discover mountaineering. With obsidian and your horses, you could have built light cavalry, found at stirrup, which can even face pikeman in open field, besides of swordsman and longbowman.

In any case, longbowman is your only chance to defend yourself for the moment. It would be a good idea to send a ship to the east, it seems to be something there... maybe some lonely iron mine!

I do seem to remember that bug, resources being placed on peaks but not why it happens. It has something to do with the dll changes I made. I think if that got fixed then there would have been an extra copper on the continent, and none of this would have happened.

Oh well. I plan on continuing the game and posting updates as I go. I'll post more saves too.

Edit:

I checked. Apparently whether a resource is eligible for peak placement is controlled in the xml. (<bPeaks>1</bPeaks>). I suggest that resources that are discovered *before* Mountaineering have this disabled. Mountaineering is rather late game, so no one will care about copper/iron on peaks by that time.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I do seem to remember that bug, resources being placed on peaks but not why it happens. It has something to do with the dll changes I made. I think if that got fixed then there would have been an extra copper on the continent, and none of this would have happened.

Oh well. I plan on continuing the game and posting updates as I go. I'll post more saves too.

Edit:

I checked. Apparently whether a resource is eligible for peak placement is controlled in the xml. (<bPeaks>1</bPeaks>). I suggest that resources that are discovered *before* Mountaineering have this disabled. Mountaineering is rather late game, so no one will care about copper/iron on peaks by that time.

You're right Afforess, I'll push this change into next update, probably during the weekend.

 

[RyoHazuki]

You're right Afforess, I'll push this change into next update, probably during the weekend.

Thank you very much. I wasnt using Usable Mountains because of that "problem".

Afforess, i played your game for a while and... Bad thing! I managed to get peace while conquering Constantinople and giving it to Carlos V.. but its about 80 turns until i could get Feudalism. The enemy is too powerful, but getting some revolts! It could be an unpredictable game,

 

[Arakhor]

Spot the Spaniard calling him Carlos V, though technically he was Carlos I & Karl V.

Hey, Afforess. I barely play Civ IV too, but I hang around here occasionally.

 

[Afforess]

Spot the Spaniard calling him Carlos V, though technically he was Carlos I & Karl V.

Hey, Afforess. I barely play Civ IV too, but I hang around here occasionally.

I haven't had the game installed .... since forever. I don't even use the same computer I did back in my modding days.

@RyoHazuki oh boy. I will see how well I fair.

 

[Arakhor]

Oh, likewise. What with a new computer and all, I had to reinstall Civ IV just to take another bash at it again!

 

[RyoHazuki]

Spot the Spaniard calling him Carlos V, though technically he was Carlos I & Karl V.

Right, and right. The funny thing is that me and the emperor share the same name! it would have been strange for me to call him Karl V even if it is the right way!

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

You're right Afforess, I'll push this change into next update, probably during the weekend.

On second thought, wouldn't that be enough for Iron/Copper/Obsidian? I mean, those are strategic resources needed to survive early stages of the game. But I think Stone, Gems, Gold, Silver and similar can be left out of this change. It's not a big problem if you have to wait until Mountaineering to get those resources, I think.

 

[RyoHazuki]

On second thought, wouldn't that be enough for Iron/Copper/Obsidian? I mean, those are strategic resources needed to survive early stages of the game. But I think Stone, Gems, Gold, Silver and similar can be left out of this change. It's not a big problem if you have to wait until Mountaineering to get those resources, I think.

I would add stone, since it usually appear in mountains and its needed to boost many wonders during the early game.

 

[JosEPh_II]

+1 to Stone and possibly Marble as well.

JosEPh

 

[Afforess]

I would add stone, since it usually appear in mountains and its needed to boost many wonders during the early game.

Agreed. Iron/Copper/Obsidian/Stone should be good enough. Those matter the most.

Progress on the save. I kept up the war. Mostly because Charles V would not agree to peace. I made a breakthrough in my war efforts. Korea agreed to peace with me (Charles V had bribed them to declare war ages ago, I never bothered to do anything as they are a landlocked city-state). Korea also agreed to trade several techs for 6 Hwachas (UU catapult replacement).

I used those and a stack of archers to grab Constantinople and fend off Charles. I continued amassing a massive archer stack, giving up on peaceful ways to end the war. It was clear to me that this war would only end after one of us was dead. I marched to Numidian with 7 archers, 2 horseman, 6 Hwachas, 2 catapults. A 5 turn siege proceeded, with me emerging the new owner of the city.

The results were that I lost most of my units in the stack. I kept 5 of the Hwachas, 1 of the catapults, 2 archers. I reinforced the city, and began the process again. I proceeded to replicate this tactic on the next southern city. Korea also voluntarily became a vassal of Siam. Siam then proceeded to declare war on Charles too. This distraction helped, and Siam made good on their war with Charles, grabbing 2 more of his cities.

I gained access to elephants with one of Charles cities that I captured, but have not yet been able to use it to build stronger mounted units.

Spoiler Spoils of War :

Save: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49805/Afforess AD-0858.CivBeyondSwordSave

Siam stumbled upon a russian boat somewhere. They sold me contact with Lenin for 80 gold. I then traded techs for contact with most of the rest of the Russian continent. I then traded each of those civs for any techs + gold for contacts

 

[aggri1]

... I suggest that resources that are discovered *before* Mountaineering have this disabled. Mountaineering is rather late game, so no one will care about copper/iron on peaks by that time.

I disagree - if playing with Resource Depletion. I find that having some iron or copper or other depleting resource on mountains is a way to ensure that there'll still be some available later on.

I was quite annoyed with the "Resource Depletion" mechanic recently when all six of my iron mines ran out at the same time (literally on the same turn!). That's just silly. I think they should deplete individually, one at a time, and not in-aggregate.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I disagree - if playing with Resource Depletion. I find that having some iron or copper or other depleting resource on mountains is a way to ensure that there'll still be some available later on.

I was quite annoyed with the "Resource Depletion" mechanic recently when all six of my iron mines ran out at the same time (literally on the same turn!). That's just silly. I think they should deplete individually, one at a time, and not in-aggregate.

That's a different problem. Depletion could occur at the same time even after you've discovered mountaineering, so that's a separate issue to solve.