Civ4 Realism Mod (Extended Gameplay and tweaks)

[DrJambo]

Some cool ideas here! How did you increase the value of gold awarded through capturing cities (as opposed to pillaging land improvements)?

 

[JakeCourtney]

Keep the good Ideas flowing everyone.

 

[Littlelisa]

I still think captured cities need to keep very least 200 culture or so or a % of what they had. It dont make sense culture is reduced to 0 and you have no borders. But its good no razing so you have to try and hold onto your victories.

Hmm also if its possible to have improvements stack on a square, how about a costal defence improvement, can only be built on any square next to the ocean, it has a combat strength. So when enemy tries to land units they instantly go into battle with the 'costal defences' and can be killed. (only if your at war with them)

If the defences are beaten the improvement is destroyed.
Ships maybe would also be able to bombard the improvement.

 

[Lightzy]

I still think captured cities need to keep very least 200 culture or so or a % of what they had. It dont make sense culture is reduced to 0 and you have no borders. But its good no razing so you have to try and hold onto your victories.

Hmm also if its possible to have improvements stack on a square, how about a costal defence improvement, can only be built on any square next to the ocean, it has a combat strength. So when enemy tries to land units they instantly go into battle with the 'costal defences' and can be killed. (only if your at war with them)

If the defences are beaten the improvement is destroyed.
Ships maybe would also be able to bombard the improvement.

city defenses are already there, just abstracted.
I think its pretty safe to assume that any city with a coastline has some coast defenses

keep in mind that the biggest problem with most of these ideas is getting the AI to use them.
you can't put stuff in just for the player, because it can ruin the game

 

[Littlelisa]

True
Hard to get AI to do some things
Does the AI ever bother with forts as well? Ive not seen one yet.

Though i still think captured cities need to maintain some of their culture.
When expanding by war, unless you take over everyone, your peacefull neighbours seem to gain more land than you from your conquests.
But i do like being forced to hold cities, i used to just burn them down to weaken the AI, so they can never recapture.

Having to try and hold them and dealing with increased costs is much more realistic, but 1 city i captured even after the rioting was over was reduced to 3 tiles due to no culture and being to close to another friendly civs borders which suddenly expanded.

 

[Lachlan]

Jaynus ??? Where are you ? Can you add me to yours credits for idea splitting empires ?

 

[Krafweerk]

Krafweerk:

Dunno, man.
For some reason I can't agree with anything you say :>

For one thing, making a new tech tree is completely unnecessary and seperating branches of it (such as military, gov, bio, etc) is simply servered from reality.
Would guns be invented without chemistry, metal working, physics, etc?
biological weapons without medicine and biochemistry?

Would anyone have bothered researching chemistry if they didnt want to make a gun? Youre looking at it backwards. Nessescity is the mother of invention. You dont research something unless you need it.Only in astro sciences will you be researching something, only for knowledges sake, and end up discovering something completely unrelated and useful.

People thinking hrmm...we gotta get out of this rain, led to construction, which set the stage for people who were thinking...hrmm there has to be a better way to get water into our cities. This also opened the door for people who were thinking hrmm we sure do need something around our city to keep stuff out..though construction could be applied to all of these things, they are not interdependant. They also arent dependant on any other branch of scientific thought. While the theory can be applied to forts, aqueducts, walls, mines, etc etc, if there was no need for walls, no one would have invented them, if there were no need for mines, no one would have invented them...or researched them...or worked on improving them.

The point is, just because I research chemistry, it doesnt mean it needs to automatically give me guns. I may not need gunpowder...though I may need combustion engines. Nothing is an enevitable. Why are military and civic advancements paired together, raising research costs, and limiting my choices.

Take a look at the CivIII mod, Double your Pleasure...it spread the tech tree out enough, and removed alot of the interdependancies, and worked quite while. It gave you more options...which really is what a realism mod is about. Giving us options vanilla Civ doesnt.

And secondly..
WE ARE all speaking chinese and russian...
chinese is the most common language on earth.
after that, spanish, and I'm pretty sure that after that -- russian.

Because the most populated nation on earth is china...so obviously chinese speak chinese.

I certainly dont know it, and I could care less about learning it. China and prussia have been some of the largest civilizations since the beggining of time. How many times have either of them ruled the world?

Lets count shall we.

...

...

Hopefully the point has been made.

I urge you to check out the cia factbook (google it) about russia and china. They are FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR from leading economic powers. I have more sway in my small toe over geo-political issues than russia or china...its just that they have alot of really big bombs.

Oh, and also, it was the hinderberg disaster that crossed out zeppelins really,
And that's because germany didn't have helium, so they filled em up with hydrogen instead, which is very highly flammable and dangerous. The explosion itself was probably caused by the layer of outer coating on the baloon, which made it catch fire from even slight electrical currents.
Point is, after hindenburg, nobody wanted to be in a zeppelin.

Zeppelins actually have huge potential. You can build flying cities like that.
Loaded with so much heavy weaponry that nothing much is likely to be able to get anywhere near.. you can even build armor casing AROUND the balloon. it doesn't mind.. And even if someone DID manage to blow up the balloon, you could equip the zeppelin with thrusters to give it a comfy landing..

I think you just like zeppelins. I dont believe that you believe what you just said.

We'll take world war two for example...assuming you can make a reasonably safe zeppelin, as safe as a Lancaster, Wellington, He111, B17, etc...explain to me how youre going to attach enoughs to this huge floating target to make it safe from attack.

Its fact that the defensive guns on B17s were ineffective...even in good formation, with trained crews, nothing can stop a fighter from shooting you down...you may get him too, but he's gonna make it to you, and shoot you.

Battleships are another example. Or carriers...how many carriers and battleships were sunk by aircraft? How many AAA guns do those have?

Bizmark, Arizona, Yorktown, Lexington, Kyoto, the list is as long as my arm.


If world war two wasnt proof that zeppelins have no place in the modern military I dont know what does. It shows example after example that the advantages a zeppelin would have (Size, armament, ability to move large amounts of equipment and personnel, staging area for aircraft) were the same advantages other pieces of equipment had, and all of those same pieces of equipment were found to be totally ineffective.

Sheer size just makes you a bigger target. Thats why no one uses battleships anymore...armament is expensive, and usually ineffective in stopping a deterimed adversary...hence why we dont build Tiger like tanks anymore. Large amounts of troops and equipment on one transport is a bad idea. Hence why we moved to convoy "conga lines" in response to the uboats. Lastly, a staging area for aircraft is the grand prize, because if you knock that out, you knock out your opponents ability to effectively attack you. Such a prime target requires DOZENS of other smaller vessels to defend it...a "taskforce" if you will.

We already have a navy, why do we need another one in the air.

The only advantage left to a zeppelin would be fuel consumption....though since no large standing army has had fuel shortages in 100 years, I doubt that would be an attractive feature.

What world war two taught us is that small units, small tanks, small planes, that can very quickly and quietly get into, and out of, enemy territory and hit a target, is the wave of the future. A smaller faster unit is going to be more effective at penetrating enemy defense than a larger slower one.

 

[ERLoft]

Just a small suggestion - working the 'Lost Units' mod into this seems like a good idea! Not positive they're compatible, but I'll probably try to compare some of the files after I finish my current game to see if it works.

 

[Shadowlord]

Jaynus ??? Where are you ? Can you add me to yours credits for idea splitting empires ?

Wasn't empire-splitting in both Civ I and II? And isn't Trip working on an empire-splitting mod for Civ IV? So how can you claim that it's your idea?

 

[slaxton]

i believe youve asked for a few ideas on potential wonders and buildings you could add to the mod... well in the canadian mod they were discussing the CN tower as a wonder. i like this idea, it makes alot of sense to me. you could add a tech, something like microwave communications (perhaps right before radar or whatever), that allows cities to build microwave towers that replace a radio tower when built and gives a slightly better bonus, and the cn tower would provide a free mircowave tower in every city.
another wonder that was being kicked around in the canadian mod was the NHL. some suggested that it should offer a free collosseum in every city, but then others countered that, saying thats too big a bonus... well, lets think about this first shall we? the nhl couldnt be built before refridgeration (infact it would probably come a few technologies later, but i havent really looked t see where it would fit in best). if im not mistaken, refridgeration is something like 3/4ths of the way through the game, at a time when i typically have a collosseum built in 80% or so of my cities..... suddenly a free collosseum in the others doesnt seem like such a huge bonus. infact it seems prefectly reasonable.

also, i believe someone in here suggested that you make a trainyard or something as a building (not a national wonder or anything), that would allow you to ship 50% of productivity from one city to another. i really like that idea. i also think you should be able to build something like a freight terminal, which allows you to ship your surplus food from one city to another to aid in its growth (sort of the way a settler or worker diverts surplus food into its own construction). although thinking about it im not entirely sure how you would go about making that work without the SDK. perhaps once you build the freight terminal you can then build a transport truck unit (called "ship food" say) in one turn, and you move that unit to whatever city you want to augment, and as long as the unit is in that city, the other cities surplus food is sent automatically. set it so that when the city that built it changes its production from ship food to something else, the unit is automatically disbanded.

another thing. i havent really looked into this so please lemme know if im wrong, but whats the deal with spys exactly? is scotland yard a national wonder? (i havent played civ since thinking of all this so i havent been able to check). and if not, does that mean if you arent the civ to build it, you cant build spys? that doesnt seem right to me, when there are are many agencies around the world who do train spies, there was talk of adding camp x to the canadian mod as a wonder (a very secretive spy school from the ww2 era i believe, someone posted a wiki link in the canadian mod topic if anyones interested in more info). so if it is a matter of, only one nation can train spies, perhaps you could add other spy schools aswell, but make them so that if your civilization has built one, you cant build the others.

oh, and about my earlier suggestion of APCs, well, even if you only made troop transports (trucks) that would still be awesome. or maybe like a jeep and then later a hummer. can transport 3 infantry, movement of 2, no terrain penalties. maybe make them only slightly better then infantry, and just for balance issues, can only defend.

and finally. if you need a reskinner, please let me know, my brother has been doing reskinning for some time now and has offered his skills. and if you know what program to use/how to access/replace the models, id be happy to help you in modeling (buildings or units, although i may need some help with animations; never worked on those before, just static objects)

 

[Gulio]

One thing I would LOVE would be a super bridge.

You know when you have 1 ocean tile between 2 land points and you have to move men from shore, to ship, to shore...

It would be awesome that later technology would allow you to construct bridges accross these land masses (there would be maintenance costs to support them).

---

Another would be to have structure in the seas that can manufacture ships, or a place in the ocean that has a area of control that allows your units to heal / fule up while over the ocean.

I havn't really played the ocean lines yet... I usually kill the enemies 1000 AD...

 

[LzPrst]

sigh. just lost a long post

heres a suggestion. make barbs attack in groups after iron working is discovered, and also have them prioritize attacking strong cultures. and giving them horse archers\horsemen\camel riders as main attack units.

reduce food production until iron working, except on flood plains. make food production set the maximum size limit of cities and set trade as the actual growth producer.

make units built with iron cheaper than those built with bronze if possible.

all these have historical reasons. I'll explain more if needed, after thursday when I have my history exam...

 

[1c0n]

i like the civ splitting, and miss it.
another one i like was from MOO and possibly civ 1 (cant remember, been a long time) was a chance of gaining a tech for capturing a city.

wouldnt want that one to allow just any tech, maybe a percentile chance of gaining 1 tech within a range of the victors current tech level. would be silly for a civ to get robotics off me if they somehow happen to take one of my cities with a horse archer. and maybe make it only possible if you founded the city or if you possesed the for x turns and possibly only after a certain population level. dunno, would make sence, how many times do they need to take cities before they start to figure out how to use stuff lying around... aslo, what are the odds the citizens of said city will "forget" what a computer is.

 

[Gral'Tok]

Hum why does a civilization advance but not in this game?

Why does each civilization use the same politics for 6000 years, why no evolution. I think it could be fun to have a certain evolution of the traits(philosophy, creative, etc...) of your leader. Maybe each era you choose one of your traits and you get assigned a random one.

That would work better if each civilization would start with random traits. (would be a fun as a side option in the beginning).

 

[slaxton]

Maybe each era you choose one of your traits and you get assigned a random one.

That would work better if each civilization would start with random traits. (would be a fun as a side option in the beginning).

um... correct me if im wrong, but when you start a custom game thats already an option. although it wont change later in the game.
instead of having the civs change traits each age, would it be possible to add more leaders for each civ and then set up a random election every age, where the leaders could change or possibly stay the same?
maybe have it partially based on what kind of techs theyve discovered (or havent. you dont need to discover all the techs in an age to move up right? i havent really paid attention, although i will now) on what traits their "people" will vote for?

 

[kschmitz2]

I have installed the Realism Mod in my \My Documents\My Games\...\Mods folder, following the instructions. I edited the Civ4.ini file to automatically load Realism at start up. I verified that "Realism" is in the upper right corner of the screen at start up. I am able to start and play a custom game.

When I try to load a saved game, I get the message "Mods\C:\Documents and Settings\{ME}\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization4\Mods\Realism" needs to be loaded, click yes to restart. When I click yes, it can not find the file. This is obvious, if the path I listed above is correct. I tried to clear my assets folder, with no success. In the instruction page, there was some mention to clearing the catch folder. Where is this folder? Is there something that I am doing wrong?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Karl

 

[Gral'Tok]

Thank you slaxton, that is kinda where I wanted to go... I just thoguht that each age would be easier.. and that some people won't want to go with someone else gandhi to lead them so why I didn't put up the election idea.


May I suggest that you request a folder for your mod? so that we coudl better navigate between new idea, testing bug release.. history.. stuff like that would make it so much easier. (I agree with whoever wrote about rigid thinking or stuff like that..) this is becoming chaos.

I'm sure tehy woudl do so... mod that I use in my custom asset. is Bad Ronald's Flags and Colors Mod v2.0

What I woudl liek to use is teh great person mod

 

[Lightzy]

Lisa:
Agreed completely.
I've just had the freakin greeks steal 2 newly captured cities from me.. I'd go further than leaving the city some of its culture though.. It can still be turned outright by a nearby civ that has a lot of culture..

I think it'd be best if newly captured cities were under 'martial law' for several turns and impossible to be flipped, in addition to keeping a bit of their culture (but not too much :>).


Kwif,
necessity is indeed the mother of invention, but you follow it through with reasoning which ammounts to saying that people invented the wheel because they needed tanks, or that people invented plastics because they wanted to build spaceship components.
People came up with ideas/products, and tried to sell what they came up with to as many different markets as they could
So plastics for example, is used everywhere from tupperware to bombs.


As for china and russia.. that depends on what you define as 'rule the world'.
If being the biggest and most populous doesn't satisfy you, then I don't know what would.
Perhaps its more correct to say that NOBODY ruled the world yet? and that our 'game' of 'civ' is yet far from its conclusion?

As for zeppelins.. navies don't use aircraft carriers anymore?
and if a single carrier could move much much quicker than a ship, and carry a much greater load of aircraft and munitions?
As a weapons platform its not that bad either, but perhaps we ARE getting technologically advanced enough to phase the idea out.. but back in history, if they did it right, it could have worked.

not to mention the potential of zepellins as luxury airliners

 

[Reservoir Duck]

@Karl

The mod is installed in the wrong directory.

Install the mod in c:\programs\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods or where you else specified the path when installing cIV

 

[belgradar]

mabey iudea was already ofered but i think special units for each age of reasserch would be nice instead of only one that we get now