Beta 12

[Tigranes]

I know we've been here before and this was discussed sinse early Alpha's, but seriously -- what is the point of having extra papal State Civilization?

The institution of Pope can wonderfully do without special Civilization. One still can get messages about what pope is doing.

But in the present state the very existance of Papal State civilization is completely useless. It adds no twist to gameplay, rather it takes away from it. The control of Rome can be an exciting strategy for Human player, which is not far from real history. Byzantine Empire, France, HRE, Normans, Arabs, Austrians were able to get their troops inside the Rome but in our game we cannot. The only excitement for the human player is to be able to meet the Pope in person, while Papal State civilization remains completely inconsequential.

Even

During the Renaissance, the papal territory expanded greatly, notably under Popes Alexander VI and Julius II. The Pope became one of Italy's most important secular rulers as well as the head of the Church, signing treaties with other sovereigns and fighting wars. In practice, though, most of the Papal States was still only nominally controlled by the Pope, and much of the territory was ruled by minor princes. Control was always contested; indeed it took until the 16th century for the Pope to have any genuine control over all his territories.

If we want to keep Papal State civilization anyway than we either need to make it AI-only controlled heavily scripted very special Civ which should bug human player (Popes were often rivals for secular Rulers, demanding cash and preventing to change civics unless a new resource -- Investiture is bought from Rome), or make it a one-city-challenge-playable Civ with some exciting espionage-only UHVs. Here is just one set of possible Papal State UHV:

1. One idea I have is to make Cardinal as a new UU for Papal State who can act like a Great Spy inside catholic Nations -- Infiltrate him in London and send Spies (legates) to collect tithes (steal treasury) to meet certain UHV goal, for example -- collect 10K Gold in stolen(collected) money. Disable gifting money to fight the possible exploit of stealing gifted treasury.

2. Found and expand 2 Religious Corporations to certain number of cities.

3. Send Spies (legates) to influence civics, destroy Pagan shrines and close Protestant Churches, gift Religious Prosecutors, send missionaries, collaps Protestant Civs to ensure there are 10 Civs in Post Reformation Europe with (say) 20 Faith Points each.

 

[AbsintheRed]

That is something old from Rhye. He replaced the National Epic bonus with the Leaning Tower and then made the national Epic the same as Triumphant Arch. I guess he just didn't update all the XML and Python under-the-hood.

Cool, then I can update it without any problems
Thx!

 

[3Miro]

If we want to keep Papal State civilization anyway than we either need to make it AI-only controlled heavily scripted very special Civ which should bug human player (Popes were often rivals for secular Rulers, demanding cash and preventing to change civics unless a new resource -- Investiture is bought from Rome),

This is the current situation, although the Pope doesn't really bug the player too much. Maybe we can change this by adjusting the parameters in the Pope's AI behavior.

or make it a one-city-challenge-playable Civ with some exciting espionage-only UHVs. Here is just one set of possible Papal State UHV:

This is not hard to do, I actually thought about adding playable Pope, but I am wary about balance. You can play with the Pope as is, all you need to do is enable it in the WB file. It is just that currently this is not very exciting.

1. One idea I have is to make Cardinal as a new UU for Papal State who can act like a Great Spy inside catholic Nations -- Infiltrate him in London and send Spies (legates) to collect tithes (steal treasury) to meet certain UHV goal, for example -- collect 10K Gold in stolen(collected) money. Disable gifting money to fight the possible exploit of stealing gifted treasury.

This could be the a good UHV, although the AI for the new Unit would be horrific to write.

2. Found and expand 2 Religious Corporations to certain number of cities.

This can be done as is. The Pope can found corporations. He is a bit behind in tech, so this may be somewhat hard to achieve.

3. Send Spies (legates) to influence civics, destroy Pagan shrines and close Protestant Churches, gift Religious Prosecutors, send missionaries,

The Pope AI currently does exactly that.

collaps Protestant Civs to ensure there are 10 Civs in Post Reformation Europe with (say) 20 Faith Points each.

How about make sure there are no Protestant nations after the Dutch spawn (1580), so you have to convert or kill them. I think converting all players (incl Russia and the Ottomans) may be too ambitious.

You basically want playable Pope. We can do that, but I will need to pay with the AI about asking to declare war, so you can insight "crusades" against other nations (not like the real Crusades).

 

[AbsintheRed]

I know we've been here before and this was discussed sinse early Alpha's, but seriously -- what is the point of having extra papal State Civilization?

The institution of Pope can wonderfully do without special Civilization. One still can get messages about what pope is doing.

But in the present state the very existance of Papal State civilization is completely useless. It adds no twist to gameplay, rather it takes away from it. The control of Rome can be an exciting strategy for Human player, which is not far from real history. Byzantine Empire, France, HRE, Normans, Arabs, Austrians were able to get their troops inside the Rome but in our game we cannot. The only excitement for the human player is to be able to meet the Pope in person, while Papal State civilization remains completely inconsequential.

This is also a good direction to follow (if we don't want to make the pope playable)
The only thing I have against it, that controlling Rome is very powerful. Keeping the catholic shrine and having some kind of control above the pope is too much

 

[AbsintheRed]

This is also a good direction to follow (if we don't want to make the pope playable)
The only thing I have against it, that controlling Rome is very powerful. Keeping the catholic shrine and having some kind of control above the pope is too much

An idea may be:
Conquering Rome is possible:
If you are catholic, you won't keep the city. Only put a new pope in charge
Automatic peace with Rome and the city flips back to the Papal States right away
With a few swiss guards probably, while your units are moved back to neutral territory
The new pope means you get +20 faith points, while all the other nations get -5
Maybe some additionally increased chance of building temples/monasteries in your cities and gifting gold to you

If you are not a catholic, you keep the city (or rather try to keep it)
All catholic nations declare war on you
If a catholic civ manages to take the city back, the previous things happen. That civ's pope will be in charge

 

[merijn_v1]

Do we realy need all vanilla pedia texts, just for the Russians? IIRC, those texts are shipped with the Russian version of Civ IV. So they already have all the texts (and translation). Only the "custom" texts should be in the game.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Do we realy need all vanilla pedia texts, just for the Russians? IIRC, those texts are shipped with the Russian version of Civ IV. So they already have all the texts (and translation). Only the "custom" texts should be in the game.

I'm not just copy-pasting those texts, but also uniformizing the civilopedia (Firaxis wasn't consistent if you compare Civ IV vanilla, Warlords and BtS texts) and making small updates/fixes every here and there
All of those extra texts are less then 1 megabytes, even if we add everything.
You have to download them once, and they are not slowing down the mod at all.
To be more exact, they may even make game loading slightly faster, because AFAIK the game engine search through the given mod's XML folder first for the correct entries.
So I don't really have anything against them

 

[Tigranes]

You basically want playable Pope. We can do that, but I will need to pay with the AI about asking to declare war, so you can insight "crusades" against other nations (not like the real Crusades).

All I suggest is to make Papal State Civ relevant and consequential. Right now it serves only decorative purposes -- does not affect anybody, just sits there and asks for Open Borders. Never seen any other effect as Human player. Gifts of gold or built churches could be done without extra civ. I thought that IF you want this civ to stay than she can be 1 city espionage challenge civ -- very unique in RFC world, I never seen any heavily espionage based UHVs. UU Cardinal or Jesuit -- a lesser copy of Great Spy should not be hard to code. AI Papal State can be given some espionage bonuses and harass players with Spy-Monk-legate activity. Poisoning water can be viewed as Inquisition, sabotage of buildings and improvements can represent a struggle with local secular authorities.

For human Catholic player Rome can become important Civ to interact with if it will generate some Rome-only resource -- Investiture or Bishops, without which one cannot build any religious building -- selling this resource will make Rome rich and able to keep up with science (its a one city challenge after all). High Faith points and Friendly Pope make that resource cheaper to get. (For comparison, my Austria was paying 256 gold to England for Atlantic Access). Even Colonial Projects might require Bishop resource. Special tech or Wonder can finally break that dependency.

And Jesuits where VERY ambitious and effective -- they were everywhere from Anglican Britain to Orthodox Russia -- False Dmitri was their idea to control and possibly bring Catholicism to Russia. Perhaps 51% of all people in Europe Catholic could be a good goal (more that all other religions)? Austria then will focus on specific anti Protestant activity and Pope on pro-Catholic.

Just remember, please, to dramatically increase the cost of religious conversions and civic changes -- one can convert England for 500 points currently.

Anti-Rome-bread-espionage activity of Human controlled Civ will simulate the struggle for investiture and will bring additional dimension to the game. Renaming Spies as Agents will help too -- they already look like wandering Monks.

 

[dragodon64]

An idea may be:
Conquering Rome is possible:
If you are catholic, you won't keep the city. Only put a new pope in charge
Automatic peace with Rome and the city flips back to the Papal States right away
With a few swiss guards probably, while your units are moved back to neutral territory
The new pope means you get +20 faith points, while all the other nations get -5
Maybe some additionally increased chance of building temples/monasteries in your cities and gifting gold to you

If you are not a catholic, you keep the city (or rather try to keep it)
All catholic nations declare war on you
If a catholic civ manages to take the city back, the previous things happen. That civ's pope will be in charge

If we don't go with a playable Papal States, this should definitely be implemented.

In addition to what you said, I think there should be a very high chance for other Catholic countries to declare war on any civ at war with the Papal States. And Catholics should get -1 FP for every turn for Catholics at war with the Pope, which should, like war weariness, be annulled upon peace.

Is there a chance we could get a goal for Germany to place a certain number of popes in power? The disadvantages to being at war with the pope should make it difficult to pull this off repeatedly.

 

[ViscountJoe]

I have played multiple expansionist games with both the Militarism and Imperialism civics and found the latter to be way more effective than the former, to the point that I think Imperialism should be nerfed. One simple fix would be to make Militarism medium upkeep and imperialism high upkeep (which kind of makes sense, if you think about it) rather than the other way around like it is now.

 

[3Miro]

I have played multiple expansionist games with both the Militarism and Imperialism civics and found the latter to be way more effective than the former, to the point that I think Imperialism should be nerfed. One simple fix would be to make Militarism medium upkeep and imperialism high upkeep (which kind of makes sense, if you think about it) rather than the other way around like it is now.

Good point. It is also worth noting that the Imperialism bonus is capped, while the Militarism one isn't.

Switching the Upkeep definitely makes sense.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Really? The Imperialsim bonus is capped?
I had no idea... what's the current cap?

 

[MariusMR]

Really? The Imperialsim bonus is capped?

Ditto! I use Imperialism religiously

 

[pogo935]

When is the next version coming out?

 

[Tigranes]

Here is the issue that I find the most unrealistic in Civilization series -- how horse climbs over the walls? Right now Cavalry is the most effective tool against the Archers of all sort -- which makes sense in an open field but not inside walled city. How about we fix that oversight? A simple wall will double the defense against Light and Heavy Horse (excluding Keshiks, of course as they can be viewed as entire complex Mongol Army).

One easy fix -- lots of changes in strategy and tactics of warfare! Different foot units will be encouraged, more diversity in the units you must build, importance of Stone (make walls a little more expensive) will be underscored. And did I mentioned more realistic sieges?

 

[3Miro]

Really? The Imperialsim bonus is capped?
I had no idea... what's the current cap?

Its pretty high, something like 10 or so. You can see it in the Stability.py file, whenever the expansion stability is recalculated (or search for imperialism).

 

[3Miro]

Here is the issue that I find the most unrealistic in Civilization series -- how horse climbs over the walls? Right now Cavalry is the most effective tool against the Archers of all sort -- which makes sense in an open field but not inside walled city. How about we fix that oversight? A simple wall will double the defense against Light and Heavy Horse (excluding Keshiks, of course as they can be viewed as entire complex Mongol Army).

One easy fix -- lots of changes in strategy and tactics of warfare! Different foot units will be encouraged, more diversity in the units you must build, importance of Stone (make walls a little more expensive) will be underscored. And did I mentioned more realistic sieges?

Light Cavalry already has penalty for attacking cities. Cavalry wasn't just horseman, every Knight for example was supported by a number of squares and other support soldiers. Mounted Troops are simply the highest trained and best equipt soldiers at the time, hence they are the best in most cases.

 

[booltimor]

Hello. I want to thank everyone involved in making this fantastic mod! I've just finished a game with venice, where my loose union of italian city states, constantinople, jerusalem and various other mediterranean outposts (including gibraltar for atlantic access) collapsed only a few turns before i could complete the first colonial project. My plan was to run an aggressive merchant specialist economy while hiring every mercenary I could get for rapid and early conquest... Too bad I couldn't keep up with the civics. I think that 3 turn revolution from merchant republic to monarchy really sealed my fate. Still, I think it's a sign of a great game when even in defeat you feel like you've had an excellent ride.

The only gripe I have with the stability system is that sometimes you conquer a city and camp your units inside for a quick rest, only to have the city and your whole goddamn army defect and declare an independent state. I knew I should've given those great generals a deskjob instead...

 

[AbsintheRed]

Glad you like the mod!
And welcome to CFC of course

The only gripe I have with the stability system is that sometimes you conquer a city and camp your units inside for a quick rest, only to have the city and your whole goddamn army defect and declare an independent state. I knew I should've given those great generals a deskjob instead...

You are right on this, and actually it had already came up a few weeks ago
The suggestion was something like this: When cities flip, there should be a cap that only 3-4 units flip with it, the others are moved back to your nearest tile

 

[steerpike_swe]

Here is the issue that I find the most unrealistic in Civilization series -- how horse climbs over the walls? Right now Cavalry is the most effective tool against the Archers of all sort -- which makes sense in an open field but not inside walled city. How about we fix that oversight? A simple wall will double the defense against Light and Heavy Horse (excluding Keshiks, of course as they can be viewed as entire complex Mongol Army).

One easy fix -- lots of changes in strategy and tactics of warfare! Different foot units will be encouraged, more diversity in the units you must build, importance of Stone (make walls a little more expensive) will be underscored. And did I mentioned more realistic sieges?

I think the horses will be fixed for the next version.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10877838&postcount=904