Separatism in it's current iteration is whacky and unplayable. Sadly
I suggest turning it off.
Revolutions is the only thing that kept me coming for more civ4 but they always were pretty badly balanced. This one, however, requires a few more iterations and I am sure that authors would make it great if they had the luxury of time.
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It's not. The separatism makes it a lot more interesting, and adds so much flavour when segments of an empire break off and form their own. You just didn't wanna get used to it! That's fair, but don't go bad-mouthing my favourite mechanic ;P
It does adds flavor, it is a lot more interesting. But it appears to me that you have never played with it anywhere beyond the Renaissance era.
Since the biggest contributing factor is war-weariness any actual late-game fight ( more than 20 vs 20 ) will end up in a blood bath that will skyrocket your/your enemies separatism in MULTIPLIERS of 2x/3x etc.
This translates into a perfectly developed and well-off empire literally collapse on itself because of one major battle( maybe a few).
Here's a small example of my recent game that explains the process:
- If you want to capture a heavily fortified enemy city you have to suffer casualties in the process ( you need to soften up enemy high tear units and protect your veterans ). In my game, I skyrocketed to 146% separatism just from 3 turn conquest war of Constantinople ( I lost around 6-10 units ).
- This means that even NEWLY conquered 18 pop city had over the threshold separatism even with -500 bonus.
- This then led to several of their previously occupied cities to simply oust my forces and join them as well as my OWN city on ANOTHER continent joining badly losing Ottomans.
- I had exactly 0 options to counteract it in the cities without that -500 bonus despite the heavy garrisons and having all the money in the world. Even knowing all the mechanics, you just don't have enough tools.
- This was before any of the civics that provide crazy War Weariness penalties. This means that as you go further into the eras every single AI empire will collapse and fragment from some petty wars against insignificant mongrels.
- Nothing about this scenario makes sense.
The system requires tuning and balancing. It is too raw and not tested enough to provide adequate checks and balances for it to be enjoyable or challenging.
AI just shoots itself in the foot while the player is left puzzled and annoyed by the game element that is out of his control.(the fact that you KNOW why that happens, doesn't mean that you can actually control it)
Here's a screenshot of a city that ruined my entire empire in 3 turns:
https://imgur.com/X37TNi1
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P.S. I am a huge proponent of revolutions and always insist on playing c2c with this option on, but the AI there is handicapped even without this option so it doesn't matter much. And I enjoying changing civs to a newly emerged rebel factions and fighting my old empire.
Realism Invictus provides a good challenge and an enjoyable experience even without revolutions. As it was balanced around that.
I am playing with Separatism off and having the best time of my life. The first-ever civ game that I could enjoy playing even in modern era( usually by that time you don't have any challenge anymore and it becomes boring)
P.S.2 Admittedly the best thing the team did for the health of the game is to remove the Great Library cheese.
Cheers!
