Civ4 Realism Mod (Extended Gameplay and tweaks)

[Simetrical]

I'd also like to be able to work with ice and desert in the late game. I know like nothing about the lifestyles of those who live in such regions, but I've heard something like a proverb about growing dates in deserts and I know we have wildlife that live in icy regions such as: seals, polar bears, fish, penguins, etc.

Indeed. It should be noted that desertification can be reversed. All politics aside, certain areas of Israel that now produce plenty of crops were desert a century ago, coaxed into holding soil and growing produce by the diligent efforts of Zionist settlers. The same has happened in other places—although of course, the reverse is also possible, both from natural and artificial causes.

Salt isn't something we devour with our every breath, but it is necessary for our bodies. . . . Another history channel moment for me is rubber. . . .

Salt and rubber are both definitely important additions.

Could a moderator please seperate the wheat from the chaff?

As a moderator elsewhere, I can tell you that it's a pain to split a 300-post thread properly. vB 3.5 makes it easier, with inline moderation, but it's still a pain.

There is a tendency of people to just dump random ideas into threads. That is because they dont know how a message forum is supposed to work.

There is a tendency of people to object to this kind of thing. That is because they haven't been worn down by seeing it happen in every thread on the Internet, which it does. Most of the discussion here centers around the mod, there's just some side discussion. Like, uh, this discussion you started.

1. Bunkers - they can come before Flight tech, yet if Flight isn't existing how does one know how to build a bunker against it? This should come with Flight or later techs.

I think you'd be able to figure out how to build a bunker as soon as your enemy starts bombing you.

14. Be able to Farm desert with Biology

I do think we need a "reclaim desert" improvement somewhere, if that's possible. Should turn the desert into grassland or something, but take a while.

 

[belgradar]

Only let grasland return around lakes and rivers

 

[Rei]

does this mod work with other mods like the SuperCivs Mod (new civs) ?

if it doesnt it would be pretty sweet if those mods could be included to work with this mod

 

[oper]

1. In 1075 AD I was Researching Corporation. I think the later techs need about a 50% more to research time around Gunpowder and all techs past it. This should slow it down and keep it along the real timeline.

5. I didn't like the Ironclad it couldn't protect my coastline at all against Isabella's one frigate going around demolishing around 10 fishing boats. I ended up having to take my frigates escorting my galleons to the new continent, and come and chase it down while I built new frigates/ironclads in my cities. One Ironclad even lost to this one Frigate. 12 vs 8 I believe. I think the Ironclads are too slow for movement to even be used as coastline defense. The weren't any better than a Frigate and can't move into ocean squares. The Ironclad could use alittle boost.

7. Cathedral symbol under Music Tech - Whats this for?


1. Bunkers - they can come before Flight tech, yet if Flight isn't existing how does one know how to build a bunker against it? This should come with Flight or later techs.
2. Bomb Shelter- Again I don't believe they had bunkers created when they didn't even have Nuclear bombs on the drawing boards. This should be moved to Fission or later.

to the first question i completely agree, there should be added research time to allmost all techs. I cant prevent getting riflemen in the 14-15 century. maybe adding 10% to the 3rd era, 15 to the 4th and 20% to the 5th & 6th.

Ironclads should stay as they are. yes they are slow, but thats how they were. Just because you dont like its speed, does not mean it should be changed.

try looking at the cathedral in your build screen, you'll find out (+2 if its the state religion, and some other stuff).

concrete facilities were on the drawing board from the mid 19th century, other stuff drop from the skyes aswell as airplane dropped bombs (shells spring to mind) so simply building below ground level would not be a big change.

 

[Rei]

I found a bug in your mod , I used a Great Artist to try to expand the borders of one of my newer citys with "great work" and it didnt activate at all or expand the borders the artist just disapeared

 

[Agraza]

Did the city actually gain the culture? The great work doesn't necessarily expand your borders, it just gives the city a ton of culture, which will usually grant it some territory. If you attempted this near a foreign city with a lot of culture, the effect would be negligible.

 

[ibcoltscrew]

I found a bug in your mod , I used a Great Artist to try to expand the borders of one of my newer citys with "great work" and it didnt activate at all or expand the borders the artist just disapeared

You were probably in Anarchy... be sure you have a governement in place before you use your great artiste.. it happen to me too and i was wondering why.

 

[Rei]

Did the city actually gain the culture? The great work doesn't necessarily expand your borders, it just gives the city a ton of culture, which will usually grant it some territory. If you attempted this near a foreign city with a lot of culture, the effect would be negligible.

no it didnt gain the culture

You were probably in Anarchy... be sure you have a governement in place before you use your great artiste.. it happen to me too and i was wondering why.

I wasnt in Anarchy ... I was playing as the Indian Civ which never has anarchy

 

[mayonaise]

well theres tons of throwing around of ideas and little playtesting so i thought i'd add some- i finally "finished" a game (actually quit because it was getting so bogged down) with this mod and noticed quite a few things-

1. great people need to be reduced. i was getting a great person every 3-4 turns with pacifism. i was able to catch up from being way behind in tech to way ahead in a very short period once this kicked in.

2. technology is still too fast. i had riflemen by 1200 a.d. i think this is largely due to great people. if you have them discover techs, with the frequency you get them, you zip through the tech tree.

3. i think units need to be toned down a tad, not for my sake but the ai's. i had a terrible time keeping up with the ai, although i had two of my neighboring countries attacking, and the whole world mad at me (more on that later). some of his cities had 20-30 units in them, and he would regularly send stacks of 10 units after my cities. lucky me had a barb city spamming on me too.

4. religion is really out of whack. i dont know if it had to do with the slowness of tech developing in the early game, but the entire globe (earth map 18 civs) went buddhism... except me and the folks over in the new world. by the time civs had techs for new religions, buddhism was already rooted in their cities. they were all friendly and they all hated me.


5. i think with the increase of units and time, something should be done to allow you to better shore up your borders. with the ai creating SO many units, going to war is a death nell for every improvement in your entire country-- regardless of whether you are winning or losing. unit spam of chariots and horsemen running around pillaging, and within just a few turns your whole country is bare. i got so tired of rebuilding workers and all those improvements every 20-30 turns i just gave up on it. later in the game the chinese declared war on me, and the were significantly smaller. fortunately i had bribed everyone off me at the time, so it was just me and china. despite having a quarter my forces, he pillaged everything because i simply couldnt keep up. maybe make it take longer to pillage.

6. i dont think the ai handles the gunsmiths like you wanted. they dont understand that beyond 1, its not valuable. the ai just doesnt seem to be able to differentiate that it has no benefits. if you have 1 its as good as 100.
perhaps the solution would be to somehow make it better to have more?

the early game was a blast. i had a complete long ancient era war, and also a midevil war. both were satisfactorily long (maybe too long as i was getting thumped!) tech pace felt good until i hit the midevil ages. i didnt pay enough attention but i think this was strongly influenced by great people. i also strongly feel more techs need to be added in the later stages. overall, the first 3/4 of the game were a blast, but it really fell apart in the end

 

[Tactilus]

to the first question i completely agree, there should be added research time to allmost all techs. I cant prevent getting riflemen in the 14-15 century. maybe adding 10% to the 3rd era, 15 to the 4th and 20% to the 5th & 6th.

Ironclads should stay as they are. yes they are slow, but thats how they were. Just because you dont like its speed, does not mean it should be changed.

try looking at the cathedral in your build screen, you'll find out (+2 if its the state religion, and some other stuff).

concrete facilities were on the drawing board from the mid 19th century, other stuff drop from the skyes aswell as airplane dropped bombs (shells spring to mind) so simply building below ground level would not be a big change.

Firstly, I don't mind it being slower than Frigates or Caravels because at the beginning they were, what I do mind is that Frigates have 3 times the speed of the Ironclad. We are talking about 6 vs 2 speed here. But, how accurate it is to use the worst prototype Ironclads against the best Frigates?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad

"While a ship of the line could resist some damage, it was terribly vulnerable to fire and found itself completely outclassed by the new developments in naval armament beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century. Combined with the phenomenon of the steam engine, the ironclad warship could outfight, outgun, and eventually outrun even the most powerful three decker."

Secondly, some Ironclads were able to go out on the ocean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gloire
and the La Gloire sister ships Invincible and Normandie
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)
And probably even the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobukseon
It has sails on it, so I assume it could go anywhere the wind took it.

Yes, I do think Ironclads need a boost.

As for the bunkers, we are not talking about bunkers being built for shells here, or small arms fire, we are specifically talking about a Bunker or Bomb Shelter that is the counter to get destroyed by Airplane bombs or Nukes. So, in order to counter the destructive force of those effects, one needs to know the destructive power by math and impliment a thick enough wall to prevent damage. You wouldn't have been able to forsee the future and predict a 6 foot concrete bunker would prevent damage from a non-existant weapon.

 

[JakeCourtney]

Do we still have no word on Jaynus and his update? And where the heck is the damn PATCH!

 

[JakeCourtney]

I sure hope he didn't abandon this mod. Otherwise we need someone else to carry up with the mod.

 

[Jecrell]

I sure hope he didn't abandon this mod. Otherwise we need someone else to carry up with the mod.

*twiddles thumbs a minute*
Mmmm, a dream job.
I could probably get to work on it this weekend if Jaynus still isn't around. I suppose I should read up on this thread some more to see what you guys want. And if it's small, I could probably make some changes tonight.

But I'm not big on hijacking projects -- so it might be better if I started from scratch with some fresh ideas.

 

[Cytadc]

Have played several games with the realism mod with mixed results. Have had very rapid tech advances in most cases even without pacifism. I think a large part of this is rampant tech trading. For those that have seen rapid tech I ask how many civs do you play with? I notice slower tech advances with fewer civs and faster with more. I prefer 18 and in that case tech advances very rapidly. Perhaps tech trading not enabled until later? If the problem is tech trading then increasing tech costs will only have minor impact on tech rate increase.

Have not had the same problem of not being able to keep up with the units for the most part. But I am more military inclined until late game. Especially in early game when I build all the buildings and can't build research etc... I tend toward many many units and then just keep them going until later.

I myself don't use pacifism as I tend to military conquest but have noticed that the AIs that tend towards the use of pacifism due get very large amounts of great leaders. This coupled with tech trading (the pacifism civs always seem to have more tech and trade it quite well, india is almost always a tech powerhouse and always seems to use pacifism) may fuel the too rapid tech advances.

Noticed the same problem with muskets. No use to produce more than one gunsmith but the AI does.
Possible solutions:
Gunsmith also has a +10% gunpowder unit production or military production or just plain production thus it isn't a waste to build more than one

Have units before the discovery of gunpowder that can be built but only via the trade of muskets.
Example: In one game where I started on the new world and was thus technologically behind the old world I was offered a trade deal for muskets. Made me think if there was a unit to build before the gunpowder tech it would be a good deal. Similiar to native americans. They didn't build gunsmiths but they certainly used guns as time progressed. IE: Horse Archer + Musket -> Early Musket Cavalry? Would allow those tech ******ed new world nations (ME!) to keep up in military quality to a limited extent until catching up with tech.

OR (my personal favorite if possible, doubt it)
Redo the way resources work. Instead of you have to have X resource to build Y make it every instance of X reduces the cost of Y by Z!

Thus the more oil or iron you have the better off as costs to build units and buildings become reduced. Perhaps diminishing returns the more you have so after X amount of resouce it becomes better to trade it away for something you don't have so much of.

This would obviously be much harder to accomplish if even feasible.

 

[screwtype]

OR (my personal favorite if possible, doubt it)
Redo the way resources work. Instead of you have to have X resource to build Y make it every instance of X reduces the cost of Y by Z!

Thus the more oil or iron you have the better off as costs to build units and buildings become reduced. Perhaps diminishing returns the more you have so after X amount of resouce it becomes better to trade it away for something you don't have so much of.

This would obviously be much harder to accomplish if even feasible.

I think that would probably be feasible actually.

I like your idea, but I think I'd change it so you don't need iron or oil or whatever to build units in the modern age at all. The assumption being that these commodities are plentiful enough for everyone to have some access. Then, every iteration of a developed resource you have in your territory just subtracts from your build time, or adds to the number of such units you can build in total, or something.

This would get rid of the rather silly lategame effects of having frigates share the same world with nuclear subs and so on.

 

[Jecrell]

Okay -- after looking over this thread...
You guys want way too much for any one man to do alone. Sorry, but, I'm gonna have to pass on this job.

 

[teev_L]

I am new to this forum but I have read through all 17 pages of posts, and I am impressed at the ability of the people contributing to stick to the topic and discuss the issues. Good work on giving many nights of tireless reading.

I have played the mod and have also come up with a few issues, alot that have been covered before. I am going to attempt solutions that I think would work but I havent looked into modding Civ4 so they may not be possible.

1) Tech trading is too large a problem towards the later stages of the game.
This could be alleviated by adding techs but That just makes the game tedious as each tech needs to "do" something. There is no point researching a technology (game wise) if it has no benefit to you immediately, like a new unit or building etc.
Another solution that i don't believe has been thrown out there is having different techs required to trade different techs (I know that is a stupid way to explain it but bear with me). Say the alphabet allows tech trading, surely just knowledge of the alphabet would not be sufficient to understand a technology like engineering which is heavily laden with math and complex blueprints. I propose that alphabet allows you to trade techs within that age. This way each age has a technology that is required by both parties before tech trading can proceed in that era.

2) Religion seems to be annoying and useless in a managemtent sence.
Having a state religion of christianity should cause persecution and unhapiness for each non state religion in a city. This would be removed with the adoption of the free religion civic, but would represent the negative affects that ALL religions have. Note that all religions do have there bad sides.

3) Boredom at the start of the game.
Don't get me wrong but i love the longer playing style but its the first number of turns where production and reasearch are so slow that nothing can really be done. What if it were possible to turn a citys population into a sort of nomadic unit. As early towns were merely stop overs for travellers it seems plausable that a citys population might want to up and leave. These people could be used to settle say an outpost or "colony" that has a chance each turn of becoming a fully fledged town. Or the colonies could be made obselete with a certain tech, when they become obselete they have a chance of becoming a town, some make it and some dont. This gives you a choice of growing your empire in a different way to the usual settlers. It would be cheaper but you may not end up with any usefull towns.

4) More producable resources.
The muskets are a good start with the resource theme. Most of todays modern materials have to be heavilly refined of even synthesised before they are ready for use. Uranium mus be heavily processed to seperate the U235 from the much more common but reactively useless U238. Thus i believe that an enrichment plant should be required before uranium can be used. Also most of the fission bombs (note H-bombs are fusion bombs not fission) are plutonium which also must be made from uranium in a breeder reactor. Plastics are mostly made from oil, Rubber which was originally from a plant is now almost entirely sinthesised from oil and other resources, Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, there are numerous other examples.

Sorry for the long post but these are a few of the ideas that i have had for this realism mod over the course of reading the replies. I have many other ideas and once i remember them i will have them up here.

 

[Smidlee]

Have played several games with the realism mod with mixed results. Have had very rapid tech advances in most cases even without pacifism. I think a large part of this is rampant tech trading. For those that have seen rapid tech I ask how many civs do you play with? I notice slower tech advances with fewer civs and faster with more. I prefer 18 and in that case tech advances very rapidly. Perhaps tech trading not enabled until later? If the problem is tech trading then increasing tech costs will only have minor impact on tech rate increase.

This is true with any civ game. Less civs ususally leads to less tech trading equals a slower game. Yet it does seem CIV4 is the fastest to enter modern age according to the game years. This is cause by having so many different routes in the tech tree you can take.

 

[Cytadc]

This is true with any civ game. Less civs ususally leads to less tech trading equals a slower game. Yet it does seem CIV4 is the fastest to enter modern age according to the game years. This is cause by having so many different routes in the tech tree you can take.

I think you are right about the problem being the open ended nature of the Civ4 tech tree, however as for the issue being in previous civs...
I never noticed it much in other civ games once you got past 4 or 5 civs as the tech tree limits meant if you had more everyone was researching at least one of two or three technologies only (assuming rough tech equality) thus instead of going to each leader to get a new tech when trading you would vissit each one and see where you could get the best deal and normally would end up only trading with one or two. This also tended to more tech domination by a small number though as eventually only a few leaders had new techs and would trade for them amongst themselves and everyone else lagged behind. I see less lagging behind in this game but too much jumping ahead...

Perhaps certain techs should have a no-trade flag to denote things that can't necessarily be traded away... physical techs with plans etc sure, but what about concepts. Often, historically, such things as philosophy from one nation would influence another nation but rarely did it result in wholesale adoption. Should theological, religious techs be tradable? From a realism point? Or failing that even just from a game ballance point?

I also like the idea of multiple techs for different ages required for tech trading.

Having a state religion of christianity should cause persecution and unhapiness for each non state religion in a city. This would be removed with the adoption of the free religion civic, but would represent the negative affects that ALL religions have. Note that all religions do have there bad sides.

I would also like to see negative religious effects. Perhaps an unhappy smily if theocracy and city has religion other than state or reduction in military construction rate? A reduction in production under organized religion for each non-state religion say -5%?
As it is I try and grab as many religions as possible in the early game and spread them across my empire in my spare time just to get more happy faces when free religion comes out as there are no negatives to having all of them in every city at any point in time, unless an enemy has the religious shrine and gains 1 gold from each such city. And even that is only a negative by proxy (helping potential enemy) with no direct effect on me.

 

[Simetrical]

For those who are interested, I started a discussion of realistic tech trees here.