Dawn of Civilization General Discussion

[adhiraj.bose]

Hi, I am trying to get back in the game and intend to play out my interactive story with the latest version of the mod. I have an installation file which was downloaded on 31st August of 2016. Was that the latest available version ? Or have there been any changes since then ?

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, the latest release was 1.15 which came out around March of this year.

 

[Logoncal]

Hi, I am trying to get back in the game and intend to play out my interactive story with the latest version of the mod. I have an installation file which was downloaded on 31st August of 2016. Was that the latest available version ? Or have there been any changes since then ?

That was probably 1.14. If you're going to download 1.15, prepare for a treat because alot has changed

 

[1SDANi]

I've noticed that it's exceptionally easy for a player to conquer just about every nearby nation with a stack of 15 units. Wouldn't there historically be some issue to a nation that spends 20+ turns building up an army, and then waging campaigns against every nearby nation? I understand that the game is balanced more for UHVs, but whenever I play this way I end up with 10-30 Stability (20 of which being from economic growth) which invariably offsets any instability from war, unstable vassals, and bad relations.

Wouldn't other nations band together to stop a player who just wiped out the entirety of non-British Europe?
Wouldn't there be a lot more instability from being in near constant war for 500+ years?
etc?

 

[Temüjin VIII]

There's the war weariness mechanic, but in my experience I haven't felt it that much. Or maybe because I typically wage shorter wars that end as soon as I accomplish what I want to do. As the mechanic contributes unhappiness, and consequently stability, I think this should be revised to make its effect more adverse in the long run.

 

[Enyavar]

Wouldn't other nations band together to stop a player who just wiped out the entirety of non-British Europe?
Wouldn't there be a lot more instability from being in near constant war for 500+ years?
etc?

More instability from near constant war... There is war weariness, and I also think it is a bit too low. But even if you triple it from -1 to -3, it is still outweighed by the massive growth bonus that you get when you dominate the huge boni of Europe.
Still the solution to long wars leading to war weariness is: Do short wars like hospitallerz mentioned.
In my recent France Run (described in detail in the Guide section), I wiped out Rome,Spain,England,HRE within 20 turns and afterwards had a grave-like peace in the entire neighborhood. There were some other short wars with HRE, Spain, Portugal and Thais but overall, there was peace. Especially because I knew when and where to stop to not have overextension issues.
And other nations DID band together. To some extent anyway. My Napoleon was the hated worst enemy of Vikings, Russia, Poland, HRE, not to mention the non-christian civs... but they didn't declare war on me because I was stronger than any five of them combined.

But let us look not at how games go, but instead historically:
The second point: Near constant war was the natural state in Europe; if you look at that list you will hardly find a century when any important nation wasn't at war. As long as you devastated the others, your own Empire was doing fine. The era of Louis XIV was a "golden age" for France, he reigned from '61 to '15 and fought: Spain (1667-68), Dutch (1672-78), Spain and Dutch (1683-84), HRE, Netherlands, Dutch, Spain and Italy (1688-1697) and finally HRE-Spain and England (1701-1714). If not at war, he prepared for the next. Other nations were similarly at near-constant war, though it was just as often internal squabbles.
So, no, in my opinion winning wars should not lead to instability, but rather to a substantial stability bonus that lasts for several checks. Weariness still occurs independently, of course. While losing a war should only matter to overextended or economical weak civs.

The first point however is one that is not really put into game mechanics imo: Nations banding together to stop a common threat. That is the very historical concept of the Balance of Power. Especially England, as a matter of principle, always opposed the strongest continental alliances even when it could have been part of them! Leading to diplomacy systems like Stately Quadrille. The current diplomacy system however doesn't allow quick AI mood swings. France doesn't ally itself with Russia and Ottomans to fight against a dominant HRE-Spain alliance - because the diplo system rewards long-time investments in relations, not power balances. Even so, the religious difference alone would still be more meaningful than "+3 Together, we three would make strong allies against that dominant guy."
Usually, that dominant guy is the human player, because the AI doesn't play well enough to break out of its historical box. (And when one of them does it regularly, they are nerfed like China.)

 

[1SDANi]

the AI doesn't play well enough to break out of its historical box. (And when one of them does it regularly, they are nerfed like China.)

That's a very good point. It would be interesting to see some slight variance in each nation's power between games. Would lead to much more dynamic gameplay. Probably should be optional though, to avoid RNG upending UHV games.

 

[Enyavar]

Correction to what I posted earlier today: Not even China in 1.15 breaks its historical box, area-wise. Only tech-wise, with its caravels frequently showing up in high-mediaeval Europe.

That's a very good point. It would be interesting to see some slight variance in each nation's power between games. Would lead to much more dynamic gameplay. Probably should be optional though, to avoid RNG upending UHV games.

Variation is already there! Even when I played 1.15 only for a few months, I've seen really large as well as never-more-than-one-city Byzantines; Greece advancing on India as well as Greece settling the Balkan and failing any conquest in Asia+Africa; Huge Mughals that were leading in tech after China was down as well as weak Mughals that were dominated by (comparative) Tamil tech lead; England only having two Canadian colonies at its height and England that colonized the full Eastern Seabord and India.
Major factors in Europe are how the Schism and the Reformation go down; major factors in Asia are how well Turkey and Mongols are doing in their conquest. Sure, with most civs like Babylon, Persia and Ethiopia it is a question of WHEN they go down, not IF.

What I meant with "out of their box" is more like the OMG-moments in that dedicated thread down there: "Create an ahistorical super-stable empire and keep it for long enough that it matters". Like Spain overpowering France and Italy early on, and THEN colonize successfully without having France respawning. That's fairly easy for humans to do with the correct strategy, but nigh-impossibly hard for the AI.
And I doubt that such OMG-empires are what you really want.

 

[1SDANi]

Correction to what I posted earlier today: Not even China in 1.15 breaks its historical box, area-wise. Only tech-wise, with its caravels frequently showing up in high-mediaeval Europe.



Variation is already there! Even when I played 1.15 only for a few months, I've seen really large as well as never-more-than-one-city Byzantines; Greece advancing on India as well as Greece settling the Balkan and failing any conquest in Asia+Africa; Huge Mughals that were leading in tech after China was down as well as weak Mughals that were dominated by (comparative) Tamil tech lead; England only having two Canadian colonies at its height and England that colonized the full Eastern Seabord and India.
Major factors in Europe are how the Schism and the Reformation go down; major factors in Asia are how well Turkey and Mongols are doing in their conquest. Sure, with most civs like Babylon, Persia and Ethiopia it is a question of WHEN they go down, not IF.

What I meant with "out of their box" is more like the OMG-moments in that dedicated thread down there: "Create an ahistorical super-stable empire and keep it for long enough that it matters". Like Spain overpowering France and Italy early on, and THEN colonize successfully without having France respawning. That's fairly easy for humans to do with the correct strategy, but nigh-impossibly hard for the AI.
And I doubt that such OMG-empires are what you really want.

I should stop making comments immediately after waking up...

 

[Sinsyne]

Switched to the current git, in 11 out of 12 tries Babylon builds the Oracle super-early, turn 80 on Marathon well before the Greek spawn. Previously(some January or February git) Babylon had the Pyramids like nine times out of ten(estimate, didn't count back then) when I'm spawning as Greece.

Anyone else having this experience of Babylon consistently ending up with the same non-Babylonian wonder?

 

[JHLee]

Yeah, in the current version, Egypt builds the Oracle and Babylon builds the Pyramids very often.
This makes the Greek UHV very hard to achieve since you need the Oracle to research Mathematics before Roman spawn.
-------


Two topics:

1. The new great wonders.

They all have interesting effects and nice graphics, but I am worried that:
a) most civs won't have the leisure to build them while aiming for UHVs. Especially since few of these new wonders are boosted by resources.
b) AIs will spend too much hammer building wonders and not utilizing them effectively (ex. not building spies after building the Alamut) thus weakening themselves severely
c) these wonders will make the leading civilization snowball out of control (a few civs I can think of are England, China, and the USA)

Therefore I suggest:
a) adding some boost resources.
- ex. Stone boosts Aqua Appia.
b) add more requirements (civics, resources, religions, improvements/terrain feature inside city radius).
- ex. Burj Khalifa requires at least two desert tiles within city radius and doesn't boost flood tiles. Molle Antonelliana requires at least two peak tiles within city radius.


2. The Byzantines need a rework on their Unique Assests.

The Byzantine UP, power of bribe, looks quite nice on paper because bribing barbs doesn't require espionage points neither has failure chances.
But since it costs too much money (140 gold for a horse archer) it is much cheaper to just kill them with your own units,
even if you do have the excess money for bribery after you reach your UHV goal.
The fact that it is impossible to bribe oghuz just adds salt to injury.

The Byzantine UU, cataphract, is the most useless unit they can produce in the middle ages.
They cost too much hammer and are directly countered by the camel archers, keshiks, and janissaries.
Even the oghuz are no easy match in open terrain.
Their uselessness, combined with the OPness of longbowmen and horse archers in the recent versions,
discourages the Byzantine player to build any cataphracts.

The Byzantine UB, hippodrome, adds 1 happiness from horses and gives 1 happiness per 10% culture slider.
Well, I cannot think but these effects may be to weak for an UB... perhaps more XP to mounted units might be better?
Not too sure about this.

 

[Leoreth]

(b) is already the case for the wonders you mention, the AI takes some reasonable minimum requirements into account when considering a wonder that relies on specific terrain around the city.

 

[1SDANi]

Does the "Refuse Flip" button have any strategic use?

If I understand the systems correctly, after refusing a flip some of your units will change sides every couple of turns for 10 turns. This makes abandoning and staying out of the flip zone for 10 turns superior to defending the cities and lose massive amounts of units to both death and flip.

Superior to even that strategy for refusing flips however is never refusing them in the first place.

• If you allow a city to flip you lose the city and have to wait 10 turns before being able to strike back
• If you refuse a city flip and wait out the unit flips you are very likely to lose the city, incur 10 extra turns of war weariness and losing war penalties, and have to wait 10 turns before being able to strike back
• If you refuse a city flip and attack you lose massive amounts of units, require an economy crippling number of units in the first place, and get to keep the cities.

The second option is an inferior version of the first and the third has such massive investments and costs that I fail to see any reason a player would choose it.

 

[Sinsyne]

The advantages of refusing a flip as I see it are the ability to wage war instead of having to outwait the spawn protection(say you have enough units to wipe them out within a few turns and are willing to sacrifice some flipping units) and getting the city in the flip zone captured which you may actually want to happen if you stupidly built walls or even a castle there and are lacking siege units. That actually happened to me once.

I think culture may also be different? The flip converts your previous accumulated culture as I understand it but the city getting captured may not.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

I've noticed that it's exceptionally easy for a player to conquer just about every nearby nation with a stack of 15 units.

Maybe DOC should have a stack limit like some other mods?

Does the "Refuse Flip" button have any strategic use?

Refusing a flip worked for me when I was China and Tibet turned up. This is because I was able to wipe out Tibet almost immediately before units started defecting. Still normally it doesn't work out well. When I was the Harrapa and refused to flip to Persia I soon ended up with almost all my cities having no units left in them!

 

[1SDANi]

Woah, I did not think it was possible to outrun the flip. Neat!

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

Are the new Wonders incorporated into their respective scenarios?

 

[RevivalCircus]

Hey! I'm back home so I can play this mod again on my Windows desktop (never figured out how to play on Mac). Unfortunately, my Windows desktop is pretty slow and old, so when the game gets really advanced like 1900's, the game crashes due to Memory Allocation Failure every 10 turns or so. I'm pretty sure it's because the world is so large and complicated, so the computer can't handle it.
Any ideas what I change on Civ 4 options or do something with my computer to fix this issue? Thanks!

 

[Leoreth]

Are the new Wonders incorporated into their respective scenarios?

Yes. Let me know in case I missed one.

 

[JHLee]

(b) is already the case for the wonders you mention, the AI takes some reasonable minimum requirements into account when considering a wonder that relies on specific terrain around the city.

You sure?.. Cause I've seen AI Pheonicia build the Hanging Gardens in Carthage.