Dawn of Civilization General Discussion

[Tigranes]

Arquebusier: strength 10, reduced cost to 70
- Musketman: +10% against Arquebusier, reduced cost to 90

Nice updates! I just have this observation about my quote: this makes sense, but what does not -- is the ability to train both at the same time . With my espionage I can see AI is confused and building both and the whole thing feels bizarre. In real life by the middle of the seventeenth century, gunsmiths figured out how to build a trigger that was not prone to go off whenever the gun was dropped, at which point the musket replaced the arquebus. Civilization franchise always used the logic that better weaponry makes previous troops obsolete. Arquebus replaced by Muskets replaced by Rifles replaced by Infantry. That's how things are in this mod except for Arquebus Musket transition.

By the way in our current game Marines replace Infantry, which is also strange. Why? Marines. The few. The proud. Not every soldier became marine with the advance of technology. The last and only logical replacement of Infantry should be Mechanised Infantry. Marines and Paratroopers can serve as additional elite troops alongside with Infantry.

 

[Leoreth]

I think that's because Arquebusiers also upgrade to Grenadiers, but that's not really necessary.

 

[Pepo]

Quick question: where I can get the SVN for the mod,if possible? I see that you release release candidates, are those the most updated version of the mod?

 

[Leoreth]

I am not using SVN, but you can always get the latest version of the mod from Github. See this post for details.

Whenever I create and upload an installer for the mod bundled with all optional modules, I call it a release and assign a new version number (current is 1.14, upcoming is 1.15). Release candidates are basically "betas" for these releases, if no issues are found with a release candidate or I only need to make minor fixes they become a proper release. While I use all the development time to get as much feedback as possible from players using Git, I try to make these as widely accessible as possible and regard them as a final sprint towards release. Having five release candidates like this time and such a long time between them is already extraordinary, but a necessary consequence considering how huge a change 1.15 is compared to 1.14.

 

[Pepo]

Oh I completely missed when looking for it I really wanted to try out your mod. Any first time advises?

 

[Leoreth]

Welcome to DoC then!

If you have never played a RFC based mod, the two most important things to get used to are stability and that game difficulty is mostly determined by the civ you play. Therefore I would suggest to start with a stronger civ that is also more lenient with historical expansion. Good candidates for that are European civs like France or England. China is also a good choice if you want a very long game (from 3000 BC potentially into modernity), although they can expand less and face some challenges throughout the game (barbarians and Mongols).

 

[1SDANi]

Oh I completely missed when looking for it I really wanted to try out your mod. Any first time advises?

Cottages are insanely good for your economy. Fully matured and with the right civics, they can drive a nation's entire economy by themselves. This is true also in Vanilla Civ 4 and BTS. Basically, Cottages are the lifeblood of every nation with vast stretches of resourceless food providing land's economy. That last point is important, the Greek and Roman peninsulas don't have much land without resources, and so there's few areas to place cottages, and any terrain with 1 or 0 food on it must be backed up with another terrain with 3 or 4 food. In short, your cities will grow best when you do not have a net negative in food. And more citizens means more units to protect your empire.

Also, be sure to only build the bare essentials in each city. It's much more important to build workers, settlers, and military units than a building that gives little benefit. Here's some buildings and reasons on why you might want to build them:

Spoiler Buildings and Reasons :

Granary/Aqueduct:

• Will you whip often (whipping = rushing using Despotism)
• Will your city grow a lot after the granary is built

Library:

• Are you focusing on science and your city produces a lot of commerce
• Does your city have a lot of excess food and you want a Great Scientist
• Are you running Republic and you want a Great Scientist

Market (Most of the time is not essential, but putting this here for civs like Rome and Mali):

• Are you focusing on gold and your city produces a lot of commerce (Most players won't focus on gold enough for this to be useful in my experience)
• Does your city have a lot of excess food and you want a Great Merchant
  
• Are you running Republic and you want a Great Merchant

Theater:

• Are you focusing on culture and your city produces a lot of commerce
• Is your city producing a lot of culture, has a lot of excess food and you want a Great Artist
  
• Is your city producing a lot of culture, you are running Republic and you want a Great Artist

Monument:

• Do you not have access to a religion and want to give a new city it's BFC

Weaver:

• Is your city not producing much culture, has a lot of excess food and you want a Great Artist
• Is your city not producting much culture, you are running Republic and you want a Great Artist

Forge:

• Does your city output a lot of production
• Does your city have a lot of excess food and you want a Great Engineer
  
• Are you running Republic and you want a Great Engineer

Jail/Courthouse:

• Is the city not in a Core or Historical region and you are teetering on instability? (They increase stability by 1 each in Contested, Foreign, and Foreign Core lands)
• Are you focusing on Espionage?

Barracks:

• Will you build a lot of military units

Stable:

• Do you already have a Barracks and will build a lot of Cavalry

Health Buildings:

• Is your city's unhealthiness drastically reducing growth time

Religion Buildings:

• Are you planning on building a +yield religious building wonder
• Temple:
  • Is your city unhappy
    Are you focusing on culture (The Cathedrals increase culture by a lot)
• Monastery:
  • Do you have the Holy City (+1 Gold per city following the religion is really good)
  • Are you teetering on instability (Religious Unity is powerful)
  • Do you want your cities to expand their borders quickly (+1 Culture means they gain a BFC in 10 turns AKA you don't need to build culture buildings for it)
  • Is many of your cities unhappy (State Religion increases happiness by 1)

Those are the main necessary buildings for early game, not sure about late game. I've only played it a couple of times. In short, build what is absolutely needed and then pump out workers, settlers, soldiers, and any other buildings you unlock along the way that you absolutely need. You'll get a feel for what you can do without as you play.

 

[Pepo]

How feasible it is to go for a non historical victory condition as Babylon is? I did try two games (emp difficulty) and both times other civ beat me to getting the techs (First time when Greece appeared, second time I believe they were the Chinese), it seemed at bit RNG dependant. I was thinking of continuing the game and going for a cultural victory, but maybe I should choose a latter civ to do that

 

[Tigranes]

How feasible it is to go for a non historical victory condition as Babylon is? I did try two games (emp difficulty) and both times other civ beat me to getting the techs (First time when Greece appeared, second time I believe they were the Chinese), it seemed at bit RNG dependant. I was thinking of continuing the game and going for a cultural victory, but maybe I should choose a latter civ to do that

You can always check UHV guide subforum here, I just did it two days ago. Yes, Construction is a bit luck dependent because of China. You can always beat Greeks and Indians if you play accurately though. Real pain is the Construction tech. If China belines for it from the start -- they will get it before you. Some people may recommend sending initial militia to China (and assuming it survives declare war on them and harass hoping they will focus on military techs instead).

 

[Orbii]

How feasible it is to go for a non historical victory condition as Babylon is? I did try two games (emp difficulty) and both times other civ beat me to getting the techs (First time when Greece appeared, second time I believe they were the Chinese), it seemed at bit RNG dependant. I was thinking of continuing the game and going for a cultural victory, but maybe I should choose a latter civ to do that

Babylon has really good land in their core, and decent land surrounding them, so they're not in the worst position for a non-war victory condition. They also can secure the strong early wonders easily, setting up a good foundation to snowball off of. However, they face two big problems:

1) Inflation. As the game goes on everything gets more expensive, especially for a 3000 BC civ. Babylon might also have poor modifiers when it comes to inflation (and other things) which will become very obvious when the Europeans (who have strong modifiers) spawn.

2) Conquerors. Babylon faces many, very strong, aggressive neighbours, all with better modifiers: Greece, Persia, Rome, Arabs, Seljuqs, Mongols, Ottomans, and Iran. Off the top of my head only Seljuqs explicitly spawn death stacks against you, but the rest are very likely to declare war and send strong armies into Mesopotamia.

Persia, Arabs, Ottomans, and Iran also flip your land (excluding Babylon). Seeing as a cultural victory needs three cities, it's almost guaranteed one of them will be targeted by a flip at some point. Refusing the flip will lead to your units defecting due to the desertion mechanic. The Arabs also tend to get large spawns of troops in Mesopotamia on their flip.

All in all its not impossible to run Babylon past its UHV date. I've done it into the 1600's playing without any real victory condition on Monarch (after beating UHV), and the above challenges can be beaten with enough military and preparation. Balancing that with a cultural victory and Emperor difficulty, however, might be tough.

Good luck!

 

[Tigranes]

Can I ask an easy question? Why does AI even on default difficulty get such an outrageous discount for wonders? I get it, AI needs help and always has to cheat to be competitive, the question is why by so much in case of Wonders? For human Egypt Worker costs 90 for AI Babylon 81, 10% discount. Human Barracks are 55 and for AI it's 46, so 16%. Again, I get it. But Pyramids? It costs 200 for Egypt and 112 for Babylon! Whooping 44% discount. On default difficulty.

​

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

Yes, Construction is a bit luck dependent because of China. You can always beat Greeks and Indians if you play accurately though. Real pain is the Construction tech. If China belines for it from the start -- they will get it before you. Some people may recommend sending initial militia to China (and assuming it survives declare war on them and harass hoping they will focus on military techs instead).

I needed three tries for the Babylonian UHV myself. In the first two China got Construction in turn 55 / 56. I wasn't able to get it before turn 57, which was enough in the third run.

If there isn't a way to get construction before the chinese reliably, I suggest change to another tech to research first for Babylon. It is never fun to be dependent on random AI decisions.

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

Finished an succesful UHV game as persia with the Git-version (8.1.18). Very funny game with the recent changes to Persia.

Some observations:

There were no cities in Asia Minor. Greece nearly always fails to settle this area. Perhaps 1-2 autobuild independent cities in the region, to conquer for Greece and Persia (Byzantium, Gordion,..).

Rome collapsed early without appearant reason. Stability-problem?

Byzantine Empire declared independence out of my Persian empire, but Rome held only northern Italy (after its ressurection.) This is at least strange, but other non-conditional spawns are too.

The Byzantine army spawned on an island after I declined independence.

 

[Tigranes]

The Byzantine army spawned on an island after I declined independence.

Please give Leo the save right before it happened, I reported it but had no save, he wants to fix it.

 

[Leoreth]

I just noticed that Qizilbashi don't have a proper button, does anyone have an idea? Edit: oh nevermind I found secret buttons in the SoI files.

 

[Tigranes]

Protect Japan from respawns close to their UHV deadline

Great commit! Time to try Japan again!

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

Please give Leo the save right before it happened, I reported it but had no save, he wants to fix it.

Here it is.

 

[Pepo]

So after my third attempt as Babylon, I decided it was enough an went with Egypt. Much more easier game but it was fun I see what you mean that depends on the country the difficulty, as even though I was on monarch the AI didn't give me any trouble. Two things arise from my game:
- in my game I only build two cities in my historical area (one more flipped to the Ethiopians) as I didn't think I needed more. However I see that the cities in other people game are much closer together. While I now the benefits of keeping city space to minimum, doesn't maintance tank the economy?
- About unit spawning from thin air to simulate historical conquest, wouldn't be better if the games were much slower? I've nothing against the way it currently plays as it is the standard civ speed, but maybe a much slower tech progression would be needed. Ofc if done everything else would need to be reworked, so is more a question rather than a suggestion

 

[Leoreth]

Marathon game speed is an option for you I think.

 

[1SDANi]

So after my third attempt as Babylon, I decided it was enough an went with Egypt. Much more easier game but it was fun I see what you mean that depends on the country the difficulty, as even though I was on monarch the AI didn't give me any trouble. Two things arise from my game:
- in my game I only build two cities in my historical area (one more flipped to the Ethiopians) as I didn't think I needed more. However I see that the cities in other people game are much closer together. While I now the benefits of keeping city space to minimum, doesn't maintance tank the economy?
- About unit spawning from thin air to simulate historical conquest, wouldn't be better if the games were much slower? I've nothing against the way it currently plays as it is the standard civ speed, but maybe a much slower tech progression would be needed. Ofc if done everything else would need to be reworked, so is more a question rather than a suggestion

The main reason I use 3 cities in my core as Egypt is because the higher your core population is, the higher the population of periphery cities can be, and as such the more cities you can conquer. By having three cities each on the outside of my core region, my core cities can work more area outside of my core, and as such I'll be able to grow much larger.

There are slower game speeds. It's on the same page as Difficulty.