Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[dcode147]

How common is it for France, HRE/Austria and Spain to fight over the Italian peninsula with the inclusion of this version of Italy? Is there some way to make it so that in at least 50% of the games, you'd see an Italy dominated by a foreign power in the 18th century?

What is the algorithm for a nation to accept being a vassal state? Maybe something that can help replicate Italy's time of weakness after the renaissance is to either

-Adjust France's power of entente so that other powers are more prone to be France's vassal. This makes sense historically since French rulers (such as Charlamagne, Louis XIV, and Napoleon etc...) routinely tried to establish their relatives as rulers of neighboring countries. This in conjunction with increased French/Spanish/HRE aggression towards Italy might make Italy more likely to be someone else's vassal state in the 18th century.

-Hardcode it so that 50% of the time by year x, Italy will automatically become the vassal state of the strongest continental European AI-controlled civ. By the year 1861, Italy will automatically renounce being a vassal state and spawn with a few more units (kinda like a rebirth as the modern Italian state).

 

[Leoreth]

France and Germany behave quite warlike towards Italy, and given its production they are able to defeat them in most situation. Still, the AI is not aggressive enough for my tastes, but I'll wait for your observations until I intervene there.

I don't know how to affect the vassal probability yet, but would have to search for it anyway because I'd like to make Netherlands and Portugal more inclined to stay independent. But wouldn't it generally be better if Germany/France conquered Italy outright, rather than just vassalization?

 

[dcode147]

An outright conquered Italy means we won't get too many chances to see the Italian Empire and that civ's UU. Plus it's harder to experience WWI/WWII-esque situations when Italy's taken out of the game earlier on.

Right now, it seems like there's two interesting periods of Italian history this current version of the mod seeks to represent--the Italian renaissance and the Italian Empire.
I do agree Italy should still be easily conquered though. But make it easier to be a vassal state is the only way I see it right now for it to be possible for an Italian AI to recreate both parts of its history.

Oh, also making civs like France and Germany even stronger so that they're able to conquer Italy only makes the Viking's job that much harder. And it makes it more difficult to recreate history where England conquers half of France and Russian invades Germany.'

 

[dcode147]

Another question. So what is being done to strengthen the Arabs and also make Muslim powers in general more of a threat to Spain and North Africa?

I was wondering if one of the following would work. All of them involve delaying the founding of Spain to something like 1072 (when Castille and Leon unified).

- Have 1 or 2 independent cities placed in Spain that are really highly prioritized on Arab war maps. If Arabs are AI controlled, spawn galleys, camel archers etc... in a certain Arab controlled North African city (or maybe even in Spain itself). Also maybe you could consider flipping one of the independent Spanish cities into Arab control in like the year 720 or something.

If Arabs are human controlled, then they don't need the help. So human players will need to conquer North Africa and the independent cities in Spain on their own in order to achieve the UHV.

- Have a separate civ representing historical Moroccan empires (eg: Berbers, Almoravids, Almohads etc..) with capital at Marrekesh. Prior to 1000AD, their main opponents will be the French with whom they will fight over Spain and Southern France for. Later on they will fight newly spawned Spain and serve as a counter balance in Africa to Mali.

- Autorazed independent cities representing Al-Andalus and Moroccan empires.

 

[The Turk]

Dosen't Italy respawn anyway in the 19th century, as the Italian Empire, if it collapsed earlier? Isen't that how you implemented them? I personally would have preferred ONLY seeing the Italians respawn under Garbaldi/Carvour (or however you spell their names), but as it stands, I think you should just allow AI Renaissance Italy to be a lot easier to be conquered by France/Germany and even Southern Italy by Spain; which I would like to see more of.

Sort of on a side note, I would STRONGLY urge you to include a Palermo/Syracuse independent city (and later Byzantine city, when you include them), which then flips to the Spanish, or something along those lines. I think that would be pretty cool! And remember, for the Byzantines, in 600AD, you need to recreate Justinian's Empire, stretching from Spain to the Western edge of Mesopotamia

As for this whole AI Arabia conquering Spain idea, I have to say it would be near to impossible. Basically AI Arabia would never assault Spain from the water. I would therefore propose, shrinking Spain's spawn zone to just the North of the country, and instead have independent Muslim/Christian cities in Southern Spain (From Lisbon Westward). And have them slowly by slowly ebb away to the Spanish. Each city would give a culture/science boost to the country that conquered it. Therefore allowing Spain to catch up to the rest of Europe. I hope that makes sense, if you need any clearing up, let me know .

 

[dcode147]

Dosen't Italy respawn anyway in the 19th century, as the Italian Empire, if it collapsed earlier? Isen't that how you implemented them? I personally would have preferred ONLY seeing the Italians respawn under Garbaldi/Carvour (or however you spell their names), but as it stands, I think you should just allow AI Renaissance Italy to be a lot easier to be conquered by France/Germany and even Southern Italy by Spain; which I would like to see more of.

Sort of on a side note, I would STRONGLY urge you to include a Palermo/Syracuse independent city (and later Byzantine city, when you include them), which then flips to the Spanish, or something along those lines. I think that would be pretty cool! And remember, for the Byzantines, in 600AD, you need to recreate Justinian's Empire, stretching from Spain to the Western edge of Mesopotamia

Yeah, maybe there is an Italian respawn. I haven't played it yet. In general, I'm of the belief that the less respawns the better. Most of the time, they're just really annoying and I lose the huge stack of units I conquered the area with.

I think having a Spanish influenced southern Italy is a cool idea. The only downside is that placing cities greatly reduces the amount of freedom a player has as to where he would like to put his cities. Though Syracuse/Palermo might be nice especially considering the city/area's importance to many civs (Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Spanish, Vikings, Arabs, Italians) at some point in their histories.

AIs tend to be good at conquering independent cities. So maybe it doesn't necessarily need to flip to Spain but rather only a high priority on the war map?

 

[dcode147]

Sorry for all the post spams, but one more suggestion. I'm not sure what you're thinking about doing for special quests/ civ-specific quests, but if you want to prevent the build settlers from conquerors event captured city exploit, then you can change the conditions for conquerors to

-Get Aztec conquerors for first civ with "city in North America or the Caribbean and sight of Mexico"
-Get Inca conquerors for first civ with "city in South America or the Caribbean and sight of Peru"

in conjunction with the +300% settler cost outside of core area.

 

[AdrienIer]

Did you also add paper as a starting tech for Netherlands ? It's not in your changelog...

Edit : the victory screen for Italy still says "be the first to discover optics".

 

[Leoreth]

An outright conquered Italy means we won't get too many chances to see the Italian Empire and that civ's UU. Plus it's harder to experience WWI/WWII-esque situations when Italy's taken out of the game earlier on.

Right now, it seems like there's two interesting periods of Italian history this current version of the mod seeks to represent--the Italian renaissance and the Italian Empire.
I do agree Italy should still be easily conquered though. But make it easier to be a vassal state is the only way I see it right now for it to be possible for an Italian AI to recreate both parts of its history.

You're right, I try to capture both of these eras. But wouldn't a vassal Italy be rather uninteresting anyway? It'll be better if they get completely conquered during the Industrial Era and then respawn (untriggered) due to its master's low stability.

Oh, also making civs like France and Germany even stronger so that they're able to conquer Italy only makes the Viking's job that much harder. And it makes it more difficult to recreate history where England conquers half of France and Russian invades Germany.'

Don't worry, I won't make them stronger, they're already strong enough. It's Italy that was made weaker on the military front.

Another question. So what is being done to strengthen the Arabs and also make Muslim powers in general more of a threat to Spain and North Africa?

[...]

In general, I don't like to interfere that much via preplaced cities etc.

Arabia has a similar problem like Mongolia: the player, much less the AI, isn't able to recreate their historical fast expansion. I'm therefore considering to give them some kind of their own "conqueror event", let's call it "horde event". So when Mongolia first discovers Persia or Russia, they get a stack of units. Same when Arabia discovers Spain's core. It would obviously need some balancing, but it's the best solution I could come up with. Why should the Europeans have all the fun?

Dosen't Italy respawn anyway in the 19th century, as the Italian Empire, if it collapsed earlier? Isen't that how you implemented them? I personally would have preferred ONLY seeing the Italians respawn under Garbaldi/Carvour (or however you spell their names), but as it stands, I think you should just allow AI Renaissance Italy to be a lot easier to be conquered by France/Germany and even Southern Italy by Spain; which I would like to see more of.

Sort of on a side note, I would STRONGLY urge you to include a Palermo/Syracuse independent city (and later Byzantine city, when you include them), which then flips to the Spanish, or something along those lines. I think that would be pretty cool! And remember, for the Byzantines, in 600AD, you need to recreate Justinian's Empire, stretching from Spain to the Western edge of Mesopotamia

Italy doesn't have a triggered respawn, they could only respawn if their masters stability is low (just like everyone else).

As already said, the "AI conquering Italy" performance is something I'd like you to test. Spain conquering Sicily will remain unlikely, I fear, though.

I'd better leave Sicily empty to have something to settle for Italy.

I'd like to have the Byzantines playable in 600 AD, so having their first goal deadline then would be difficult.

Is tend to be good at conquering independent cities. So maybe it doesn't necessarily need to flip to Spain but rather only a high priority on the war map?

AIs are still more reluctant to declare war on a proper civ than on independents.

Sorry for all the post spams, but one more suggestion. I'm not sure what you're thinking about doing for special quests/ civ-specific quests, but if you want to prevent the build settlers from conquerors event captured city exploit, then you can change the conditions for conquerors to

-Get Aztec conquerors for first civ with "city in North America or the Caribbean and sight of Mexico"
-Get Inca conquerors for first civ with "city in South America or the Caribbean and sight of Peru"

in conjunction with the +300% settler cost outside of core area.

Increased settler production outside of core would suffice to fix this problem (thanks for reminding me of that issue), changing the conqueror event would only hinder the AI in conquering the new world, I fear.

We could even completely disable settlers in overseas cities before you've discovered Astronomy.

Did you also add paper as a starting tech for Netherlands ? It's not in your changelog...

Edit : the victory screen for Italy still says "be the first to discover optics".

I didn't touch the Netherlands yet, they'll get their share in 1.7. I wanted this update to only bring the Italians on the line.

And it seems I forgot to apply that change. Damn.

 

[dcode147]

Okay, so what did you think about pushing the Spanish spawn by several hundred years? I think that way if you try your horde event in Spain, Spain won't get completely obliterated and Arabs will have a chance to fight with France over the territories.

 

[Leoreth]

I'd rather leave Spain as it is. Why are you so keen on seeing France and Arabia fight over Iberia? There wasn't that much conflict between them, Tours and Charles Martell are repeatedly exaggerated in popular history these days.

Edit: a new patch for proper UHV display. Full version will be updated soon as well.

 

[AdrienIer]

I'm not so sure about the "3 universities" UHV... If you're going for the UHV, it means that you have to beat China to education which means getting it before 1400. That leaves you almost 2 centuries to make 3 universities, and you have 3 cities on start, + the possibility to attack France in case it's weak enough, so you get 2 to 5 good cities (Venice is good enough, any city in the south terrible). the old one was a bit more challenging.
On an other subject, I'm glad you lowered the production rate of Italy, but on viceroy it's still way too easy to outnumber the AI (I know it's Viceroy, but knights in 4 turns and longswordsmen in 3 is really a high prod rate. It's hard to get there with France's unproductive cities for example). Could you lower it again ?
Finally, is it very hard and/or time consuming to make the modmod multiplayer-friendly ?

 

[Leoreth]

I'm not so sure about the "3 universities" UHV... If you're going for the UHV, it means that you have to beat China to education which means getting it before 1400. That leaves you almost 2 centuries to make 3 universities, and you have 3 cities on start, + the possibility to attack France in case it's weak enough, so you get 2 to 5 good cities (Venice is good enough, any city in the south terrible). the old one was a bit more challenging.
On an other subject, I'm glad you lowered the production rate of Italy, but on viceroy it's still way too easy to outnumber the AI (I know it's Viceroy, but knights in 4 turns and longswordsmen in 3 is really a high prod rate. It's hard to get there with France's unproductive cities for example). Could you lower it again ?
Finally, is it very hard and/or time consuming to make the modmod multiplayer-friendly ?

The second UHV is deliberately easy, it's only there to occupy some of Italy's production so that they're not able to build up an army. I'm still considering to include three banks into the goal, though.

Let's see how Italy fares on Monarch (it's the only difficulty I really balance for).

Making the modmod multiplayer-friendly would require to port all of its features to RFC MP (read: a lot of work).

 

[DisposableHero]

Where would you reccomend founding Italy's third city? I was toying with the idea of somewhere in the northwest (Genoa, Milan, etc) but space is at a premium. Seems it might be wiser to go somewhere in the south or on Siciliy itself.

Just fired up Inca. Seems that the Dawn of Man text isn't showing up for them?

 

[AdrienIer]

It did for me... I build my 3rd city between the dye and the wine, but it's not a good spot. I would advise attacking France if they're not too big. In my last game they just came out from a war with Germany so I just picked them up : Marseilles is a good city now, and with Paris and Bordeaux it's just a great heartland.

 

[Leoreth]

I usually found Genova on the stone for historicity. Catania (1E of the Sicilian wine) is good as well. But most of all, make sure you can found Durazzo (1S of copper) after Byzantium collapses, but before Turkey occupies it.

Edit: is China researching Education before you a serious problem? They never bothered me in my tries, but I could tone their research probability down, they get their universities from Paper anyway.

 

[DisposableHero]

Had a weird one where the HRE collapsed not long after Italy spawned :/

Also noted that they don't start with any galleys, which I thought was odd considering the history (especially of Venice).

 

[Leoreth]

Good point about the galleys.

Edit: Venice has two galleys now

 

[DisposableHero]

I wanted to start again with a stable Germany, but in the end got carried away with loading multiple times just to see what the situation was at the Portugal start over a couple of hours. Interestingly, about 50% of the time the Vikings founded either Aarhus or Hamburg (and once or twice even a second city where the Netherlands spawn). Germany tends to settle Essen slightly more than a city above the copper, and nearly always goes for Memel over Riga. Russia tends to favour St. Petersburg, though its very close.

On the vast majority of occasions, though, either Germany or the Vikings capture Kiev. In fact, its so rare for Russia to conquer it that its more surprising when it does than it doesn't.

 

[Cethegus]

Would dropping its status from Independent to Barbarian help anyhow?