History Rewritten (Original Thread)

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

How about you give Sentry to Protective? It fits with the idea of the trait.

 

[civ_king]

How about you give Sentry to Protective? It fits with the idea of the trait.

The sentries keep a watchful eye over the area to protect the people?

 

[Xyth]

Busy weekend (mostly) over. Birthday parties for 2 year olds are exhausting! Before I begin responding to all the excellent feedback and suggestions over the last couple days I have a question I'm hoping people can clarify for me. I spend far more time modding than playing and it's been a very long time since I played standard BTS so I'm embarrassed to say I'm unsure of the full answer to this:

In standard BTS, when you trade a resource via diplomacy which benefits of the resource do you receive? So for example, if an AI leader gives you Ivory in a diplomacy deal which of these do you receive:

1) The ability to build War Elephants
2) The +1 production that Ivory has on an unimproved tile
3) The +1 production and +1 commerce that Ivory has when a camp is built
4) The +1 happiness
5) The +1 happiness from the Market

 

[Azoth]

Busy weekend (mostly) over. Birthday parties for 2 year olds are exhausting! Before I begin responding to all the excellent feedback and suggestions over the last couple days I have a question I'm hoping people can clarify for me. I spend far more time modding than playing and it's been a very long time since I played standard BTS so I'm embarrassed to say I'm unsure of the full answer to this:

In standard BTS, when you trade a resource via diplomacy which benefits of the resource do you receive? So for example, if an AI leader gives you Ivory in a diplomacy deal which of these do you receive:

1) The ability to build War Elephants
2) The +1 production that Ivory has on an unimproved tile
3) The +1 production and +1 commerce that Ivory has when a camp is built
4) The +1 happiness
5) The +1 happiness from the Market

You receive benefits 1, 4, and 5. I don't know how you could possibly receive 2 or 3, because those benefits are tied to working an actual Ivory tile.
Edit: Note that you only receive those benefits in your capital and in cities connected to your capital. If you settle a new city somewhere, you need to connect it by road (or river, etc.) to your existing trade network before you can build War Elephants, etc. there.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Expansive: +1 food/city, +50% settler, double Harbor + Sewer.

Humane: +100% Golden Age length, +2 health/city, +1 happy for Aqueduct + Bath + Hospital.

Industrious: +1 hammer/city, double Kiln + Forge + Factory + Industrial Park.

Aggressive: Commando on Melee + Mounted + Gunpowder + Armored, +100% pillage gold,
double Barracks + Drydock.

Charismatic: +2 happy/city, +1 XP/battle, -25% War Wariness.

Imperialist: +100% Great General, no resistance in captured cities, -33% hurry cost.

Protective: double Well + Lighthouse + Smokehouse + Public Transportation,
City Garrison I + Medic I on Archery + Gunpowder,
Sentry on Mounted, Naval, Helicopter + Recon, Interceptor I on Air Units,
+1 happy for Walls + Harbor + Castle + Jail.

Tactical: Combat I on Melee + Gunpowder, Flank I on Mounted + Armored + Naval,
double Stables, all Military civics available on Turn 1.

Enterprising: +1 trade route/city, Navigation I on Naval,
Double Custom House + Tavern + workboat

Financial: +1 commerce/city, +1 merchant slot/city, double Bank + Market + Wall Street

Judicial: no anarchy, double Cemetery + Library + Jail + Courthouse + Security Bureau

Organized: -50% Civic Upkeep, +50% worker speed

Philosophical: 100% GPP, double School

Creative: +25% Wonder Production, +1 artist slot/city,
+1 happiness for Theater + Library + News Press + Broadcast Tower

Diplomatic: +2 relations/civ, +50% trade routes, +2 espionage per city,
spy specialists get 2 science (they usually get one science).

Progressive: -50% upgrade cost, +1 scientist slot/city,
double Observatory + News Press + Laboratory

Spiritual: +1 priest slot/city, double Temple + Monastery + Great Temple,
priest specialists get 1 culture (they usually get 0 culture).

Traditional: One free specialist slot per Wonder,
double Monument + Stadium + Civic Square,
half time for culture boost to buildings or +25% culture, initial civics (despotism, etc.) cost nothing.

Based on the current traits, Azoth's suggested traits, and the discussions of others.
I look forward to Xanth trying to put together his ideas with those of others, to come up with a draft list for version 9.0.4.

 

[civ_king]

XML Error
Tag: BONUS_CATTLE in Info class was incorrect
Current XML file is: xml\Events/ CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml

I got that twice and also the same thing once with BONUS_ELEPHANTS at the start of each game

 

[Xyth]

You receive benefits 1, 4, and 5. I don't know how you could possibly receive 2 or 3, because those benefits are tied to working an actual Ivory tile.
Edit: Note that you only receive those benefits in your capital and in cities connected to your capital. If you settle a new city somewhere, you need to connect it by road (or river, etc.) to your existing trade network before you can build War Elephants, etc. there.

That's what I thought, thanks for clarifying. I was certain that you got 1 and 5, and certain you didn't get 3 but it's a little unclear from the XML structure which what happened with 2 and 4.

XML Error
Tag: BONUS_CATTLE in Info class was incorrect
Current XML file is: xml\Events/ CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml

I got that twice and also the same thing once with BONUS_ELEPHANTS at the start of each game

I accidently included a couple of 0.9.4 files in that patch. I've updated it with the correct ones, you can redownload it from the same place. Cheers for the report.

Okay, now for responses to things posted while I've been busy. Non-trait related stuff first:


Well vs. Aqueduct

I keep forgetting that the Aqueduct doesn't do all that much in Civ4. I'll see what I can do to balance out the effects between it and the Well relative to their cost and availability. The Aqueduct getting fresh water source instead of the Well seems to make sense.

One of these as prerequisite for the Bath might be good too.


Tavern

I experimented with making the Tavern's commerce increase as various techs are discovered (that's where that Text_Trigger_ Key_Event_ Tavern_Riding message comes from). I was unsuccessful but I have an idea to retry it in the future. In the meantime lowering the Tavern's commerce to 2 seems reasonable. Maybe raise its cost to 100 as well.


No happiness/health direct from Resources

As mentioned earlier, due to AI reasons there is a possibility I may need to reverse this change. Hopefully not because it would seriously mess up many of the new buildings. I'm working on it.

Of the alternatives mentioned, I can't find any built-in method of changing how much unhealthiness/unhappiness extra population causes. I could code it manually but I suspect that doing so may cause more AI issues than it's solving. I've tested fractional health/happiness and it works for terrain features (forests, jungles, etc) but will not work for resources or buildings.

Obviously it isn't balanced well enough in 0.9.3 but how are people feeling about the concept now, having played a bit more? Here is how I hope the change will act once it is properly balanced:

• City growth will be slower in the early to mid game due to the need to build or trade sources of happiness and health
• Once built up and connected, cities should be capable of growing just as big as they could prior to the change, possibly even bigger
• Planning infrastructure plays a much more important role in keeping your cites healthy/happy.
• Resources are desirable, you want to seek them out and you want to trade for them with the AI (maybe more +% yield bonuses are needed, like how Salt, Dye, Cattle are atm)
• You might actually need to use the culture slider for happiness from time to time

Let me know what you think of this, if you think anything should be different or added, and which of these goals are close or not close to being achieved. Also let me know if there are any other health/happiness sources or penalties that should be considered alongside all this.


Resource filter on the globe layer

i.e the menu you get just above the minimap when you zoom all the way out with resource icons toggled on. Unfortunately there is no way I can make this function properly without reverting the entire change. It annoyingly requires the SDK


Minor patches

I'll do these whenever there are important bugs to fix or severely broken mechanics. I can't do them easily for balance changes or new features because everything is very interconnected and it's not fun manually replacing 10-20 files each time. It also means I have to effectively develop two different versions at once (0.9.3+ and 0.9.4) and that's a recipe for me getting things mixed up.

 

[Howard Mahler]

It seems to working well so far in version 9.0.3.

(I am only in 800 AD, and will want to play longer into a game to give more specific feedback.)

Assuming you do not have to revert to direct benefits from resources, I suspect there will be minor tweaks that could improve things:

1. Systematically comparing all the different health & happiness resources, and doing a little balancing of effects and timing.
2. Making some special resource tiles more special.
3. Making sure there are enough unhappiness and unhealthiness effects from buildings, civics, etc. to make things challenging but not too challenging at all of the different times of the game.

Assuming you do have to revert to direct benefits from resources, and make no other changes, I believe that health and happiness will not be much of a challenge (for most starting positions.)

In 9.0.3 when you for example hook up a Spice or Silk plantation all you get is the benefit of the improved tile. Later on you get other benefits. If you instead got an immediate +1 happiness, as in BTS, then at a given point in the game you would have much more happiness and health then you would in 9.0.3. If 9.0.3 is approximately in balance, which I think it is, then this change would ruin that balance.

"No happiness/health direct from Resources

As mentioned earlier, due to AI reasons there is a possibility I may need to reverse this change. Hopefully not because it would seriously mess up many of the new buildings. I'm working on it.

Of the alternatives mentioned, I can't find any built-in method of changing how much unhealthiness/unhappiness extra population causes. I could code it manually but I suspect that doing so may cause more AI issues than it's solving. I've tested fractional health/happiness and it works for terrain features (forests, jungles, etc) but will not work for resources or buildings.

Obviously it isn't balanced well enough in 0.9.3 but how are people feeling about the concept now, having played a bit more? Here is how I hope the change will act once it is properly balanced:

• City growth will be slower in the early to mid game due to the need to build or trade sources of happiness and health
• Once built up and connected, cities should be capable of growing just as big as they could prior to the change, possibly even bigger
• Planning infrastructure plays a much more important role in keeping your cites healthy/happy.
• Resources are desirable, you want to seek them out and you want to trade for them with the AI (maybe more +% yield bonuses are needed, like how Salt, Dye, Cattle are atm)
• You might actually need to use the culture slider for happiness from time to time

Let me know what you think of this, if you think anything should be different or added, and which of these goals are close or not close to being achieved. Also let me know if there are any other health/happiness sources or penalties that should be considered alongside all this."

 

[Simon_Jester]

Hello, everyone.

Real life intervened with a bit of a vengeance, which more or less locked down my ability to get involved with this. Clearly a lot of interesting things have happened, and my involvement has been partly overtaken by events. I have a few ideas, though, and I'd like to PM Xyth some of my Civilopedia draft ideas.

Tech tree suggestions were written before 0.9.4 came out, and with only a partial playthrough of 0.9.3, but I want to get them out on the table anyhow.


1) Because we're looking at a lot more happiness and health-producing resources, plus more buildings that produce health and happiness, but relatively limited increases in food productivity on the map... it seems to me that the game as now written makes it too easy to build up very large cities, due to the proliferation of ways to eliminate their health and happiness problems through the global resource trade network.

Can we do anything about scaling the health and happiness penalties? Doing +2 unhealth and +2 unhappiness per citizen might be excessive, but what about +1.5 each? Or having arbitrary +X unhealth/unhappiness penalties applied at certain city sizes, over and above the per-citizen cost? Or making more buildings have unhealth/unhappiness costs?


2) Personally, I suggest you place Labor Union *after* Assembly Line; historically, the greatest successes of the labor movement came during the 20th century, when widespread industrialization was already common. You've got labor unions as one of the prerequisite techs for things like indirect-fire artillery, and *two* techs before World War-style battleships; this is a pretty serious anachronism. Labor Union also makes a logical prerequisite for one of the more advanced 'social' techs, like Feminism or Civil Rights; without the labor movement and the general increase of social awareness of lower-class issues, it is very unlikely that we could have gotten the level of freedom and equality found in the modern era. There should be some contacts between the 'industrial' side of the tree and the 'social' side of the tree; ideally there should be cross-links but that's challenging to do.


3) Tanks should have an additional prerequisite; Total War might be a good choice. Historically there wasn't much incentive to invent the damn things until WWI broke out, after all, and they made very little tactical difference until WWII. Plus, having tanks become available with Total War fits the kickass picture you picked for that tech.


Also,
4) MAJOR LATE GAME NAVAL REFORM PROPOSAL:

I *love* that you make ironclads tougher and faster; in the main game they're so small an improvement over frigates that it's hard for me to imagine them being particularly useful except in very strange wars. Though I think a picture of one of the Civil War turret monitors, the "cheesebox on a raft" designs like USS Monitor, would suit better- those were the ones that were limited to coastal waters after all. The big ones with sailing rigs were a lot more seaworthy.

But I suggest a bit of an additional naval reform as well. Remember Civ II and its Cruiser unit? I recommend the following for post-steam naval surface units:

Ironclad:
Attack 15, move 3, bombard 12%/turn, cost 150, requires coal, available [whenever]
Cruiser:
Attack 30, move 6, bombard 12%/turn, cost 180, requires coal or oil, available [mid-industrial, simultaneous with destroyer]
Destroyer:
Attack 22, move 8, *no bombardment,* can see submarines, +50% vs submarines and attack submarines, intercepts aircraft at 30%, requires oil or uranium, cost 150, available [mid-industrial]
Battleship:
Attack 40, move 5, bombard 20%/turn, cost 220, requires oil or uranium, available [late industrial]
Carrier:
Attack 16, move 6, carries aircraft, cost 180, requires oil or uranium, available [late industrial, possibly post-battleship but only slightly]
Missile Cruiser:
(As normal)
Stealth Destroyer:
(As normal)

Upgrade paths:
Battleship -> Missile Cruiser
Ship of the Line/Ironclad -> Cruiser -> Missile Cruiser (but more expensive to upgrade this way than to go from battleship to missile cruiser)
Frigate -> Destroyer -> Stealth Destroyer

(I had doubts about upgrading destroyers to stealth destroyers until I realized that in the late modern era, the destroyer's AA role is taken by the missile cruiser and its antisubmarine warfare role is taken by the Attack Submarine, making it superfluous anyway)

The destroyer becomes more of a specialist vessel, as historically true. It gets a bonus against submarines to make up for its reduced strength.

The cruiser's role evolves over the course of the period; towards the beginning it can play 'big naval bruiser' quite effectively, though it is comparatively more vulnerable to submarines and not strong enough to take on destroyers with total impunity. This is in keeping with the "armored cruisers" of the late Victorian and WWI period, which were quite strong and scaled up fairly seamlessly into the 'battleships' of the period.

Once battleships show up it becomes less important in this role, but is fast enough to play surface escort for carriers properly (historically carriers were almost always faster than battleships of the same generation, usually by 20% or more).

The cruiser also serves as a low-cost alternative to the battleship. Personally, I like the idea of making it require coal-or-oil; this means that a nation can at least have a navy in the "World War" era without large supplies of oil, though it'll be a very limited navy (vulnerable to submarines and air attack, and less flexible).

You may not actually want to do this; one obvious problem is model availability. But I feel it would add more depth to the naval warfare, which for most of Civ IV has the major drawback of boiling down to "build a ton of the best ship on offer"

 

[architekton]

At start-up, having loaded the mod and selected a saved game, I now get "Failed to uncompress game data" followed by a fairly rapid crash to the desktop. I don't even get the chance to click "OK" before it's gone!

 

[Xyth]

I've decided not to try and catch up on responding to all the trait related posts or I'll never get time to actually work on trying out the suggestions and assembling a draft list. I have read everything though and will comment in more depth when I post said list. Probably still a couple days away.

2. Making some special resource tiles more special/

Of the resources currently in, which do you think need to be boosted most?

Can we do anything about scaling the health and happiness penalties? Doing +2 unhealth and +2 unhappiness per citizen might be excessive, but what about +1.5 each? Or having arbitrary +X unhealth/unhappiness penalties applied at certain city sizes, over and above the per-citizen cost? Or making more buildings have unhealth/unhappiness costs?

In 0.9.3 I've removed the +1 health that food resources have and the +1 happiness that luxury resources have. You can still get health/happiness from resources via buildings such as the Granary and Grocer, and from newly added buildings such as the Tavern and Tannery.

It still requires a fair bit of balancing but the goal is to have a similar amount of health/happiness available in a game despite having many new resources and buildings.

2) Personally, I suggest you place Labor Union *after* Assembly Line; historically, the greatest successes of the labor movement came during the 20th century, when widespread industrialization was already common. You've got labor unions as one of the prerequisite techs for things like indirect-fire artillery, and *two* techs before World War-style battleships; this is a pretty serious anachronism.

Yeah I'm not particularly happy with that section of the tech tree (Labour Unions through to Explosives and Total War), historicity got a bit jumbled. I've added it to my todo list.

Labor Union also makes a logical prerequisite for one of the more advanced 'social' techs, like Feminism or Civil Rights; without the labor movement and the general increase of social awareness of lower-class issues, it is very unlikely that we could have gotten the level of freedom and equality found in the modern era. There should be some contacts between the 'industrial' side of the tree and the 'social' side of the tree; ideally there should be cross-links but that's challenging to do.

Actually it's very easy to do! I've added quite a few crosslinks to the techtree in 0.9.3. One such example is that Labour Union also requires Welfare now. In 0.9.4 I will make Labour Unions a prerequisite for Civil Rights. This makes perfect sense and I'm surprised I overlooked it.

3) Tanks should have an additional prerequisite; Total War might be a good choice. Historically there wasn't much incentive to invent the damn things until WWI broke out, after all, and they made very little tactical difference until WWII. Plus, having tanks become available with Total War fits the kickass picture you picked for that tech.

That makes good sense too. I'll do that until such time that I improve that section of the techtree. Also added to Modern Armour.

4) MAJOR LATE GAME NAVAL REFORM PROPOSAL:

I like it. I'm sure I can find appropriate art for a Cruiser somewhere. I'll try get it in for 0.9.4 if I don't get too bogged down in everything else.

At start-up, having loaded the mod and selected a saved game, I now get "Failed to uncompress game data" followed by a fairly rapid crash to the desktop. I don't even get the chance to click "OK" before it's gone!

Did you apply the small patch from post #1034? If so it's possible it broke saved game compatibility with games started prior to applying it. Sorry, I should have warned everyone

 

[architekton]

Yes, I applied the patch.

Ho well, I had just about finished exploring the world with my 7 movement caravels (!) and was getting ready to colonise some lovely islands once I could build ships to transport everybody in...

I'll start a new game, no problem.

 

[Xyth]

Good news, I can keep the 'no happiness/health from resources' change, the AI will cope. The only casualty is the resource filter on the globe layer.

Now to get it balanced...

 

[Azoth]

Good news, I can keep the 'no happiness/health from resources' change, the AI will cope. The only casualty is the resource filter on the globe layer.

I'm sorry to say this, Xyth, but the more I play 0.9.3, the less I like the 'no direct happiness and health from resources' change. (I've actually switched back to 0.9.2 temporarily.) The main issue I have is that my standing in the game is now heavily determined by the local resource mix. A temperate Sheep/Cows/Fur/Cotton starting location is a godsend: a quick hop to Textiles and I'm set for the early game, with +2 happy, +10% commerce, and +10% hammers. By contrast, a more tropical Pigs/Banana/Sugar/Elephant region is painful to play, with the resources providing little benefit in the opening millennia. That last isn't a hypothetical example, either; it's the exact resource mix available to Mali players on the various world maps, and pretty common on any random map with a jungle-floodplain region.

(As a side note, the various commerce bonuses for Hit Movies, Stageshows, and Singles also feel very lopsided, especially since the player usually builds all the associated wonders, then enjoys a whopping +30% commerce bonus and very little incentive to trade that advantage away.)

Howard suggests a thorough review and rebalance of the various resources but I wonder how much that will help. At the end of the day, there will always be some resources whose associated buildings are available in the ancient era, and others that cannot be used until medieval times. Under the standard system, empires gradually raised their health and happiness caps as they grew, picking up about one new (and therefore valuable) resource with every city they founded. With the new system, health and happiness comes haphazardly, entirely dependent on the specific resources available and the players' tech path. I can't say I find it much to my liking.

 

[architekton]

I get the feeling that there ought to be a limit on the number of religions that can be founded. At the moment, every civ founds their own religion, with the result that there are automatic "you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" penalties across the board. I don't know whether this affects Defensive Pacts, but my gut feeling says it does: if everybody has a built-in hostility to everybody else's religion, they're not going to reach the required relationship very easily, if at all.

 

[Xyth]

The main issue I have is that my standing in the game is now heavily determined by the local resource mix. A temperate Sheep/Cows/Fur/Cotton starting location is a godsend: a quick hop to Textiles and I'm set for the early game, with +2 happy, +10% commerce, and +10% hammers. By contrast, a more tropical Pigs/Banana/Sugar/Elephant region is painful to play, with the resources providing little benefit in the opening millennia.

This is fixable. Besides balancing the resources themselves there are also several ways I can balance their placement, even specifically around random start locations. The maps obviously need to be manually updated - at this stage they don't even have any of the new resources on them - but I want to get the balance of the mod itself right before starting on those.

At the end of the day, there will always be some resources whose associated buildings are available in the ancient era, and others that cannot be used until medieval times. Under the standard system, empires gradually raised their health and happiness caps as they grew, picking up about one new (and therefore valuable) resource with every city they founded. With the new system, health and happiness comes haphazardly, entirely dependent on the specific resources available and the players' tech path. I can't say I find it much to my liking.

This is the real problem, and you're right, it's not going to be fixed by balancing alone. I'm experimenting with an alternative system that restores health/happiness to resources but also tries to retain some of the purpose of the new buildings too. I'll let you know more when it's a bit more substantial.

(As a side note, the various commerce bonuses for Hit Movies, Stageshows, and Singles also feel very lopsided, especially since the player usually builds all the associated wonders, then enjoys a whopping +30% commerce bonus and very little incentive to trade that advantage away.)

Those bonuses were part of wider experiment that never came to fruition in 0.9.3. I should have removed them.

I get the feeling that there ought to be a limit on the number of religions that can be founded. At the moment, every civ founds their own religion, with the result that there are automatic "you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" penalties across the board. I don't know whether this affects Defensive Pacts, but my gut feeling says it does: if everybody has a built-in hostility to everybody else's religion, they're not going to reach the required relationship very easily, if at all.

The limit is 1 religion for every 1 civilization, scaling with mapsize. I hope to figure out some way of making that limit player adjustable. Prior to 0.9.3 it was fairly rare for each civilization to found their own religion, there were usually a few that had 2 or even 3. There are a few factors that may have affected this in 0.9.3, I'll look into it.

 

[Simon_Jester]

In 0.9.3 I've removed the +1 health that food resources have and the +1 happiness that luxury resources have. You can still get health/happiness from resources via buildings such as the Granary and Grocer, and from newly added buildings such as the Tavern and Tannery.

It still requires a fair bit of balancing but the goal is to have a similar amount of health/happiness available in a game despite having many new resources and buildings.

My vote would be to increase the number of buildings that contribute to unhappiness or sickness, actually.

That way, you still get value from the resources up-front, as Azoth pointed out there's an issue with that because otherwise your ability to improve your happiness/health caps is dependent on technological progress and infrastructure development and which resources are available.

If resource availability is decided in large part by terrain (and it should be; it makes no damn sense for bananas to be growing in Siberia), then you'd have to balance the game very carefully to make a "resource happiness/health only from buildings" system work without being unfair. Strikes me as more trouble than it's worth.

Whereas if you need to provide more health/happiness bonuses in a well developed city, on account of needing to provide extra health and happiness to cancel out the effects of otherwise desirable buildings, you reduce the scope of the problem.

Or, again, you can boost the effect of unhappiness and illness due to war weariness, civics, and other factors. A lot of civics might realistically cause unhappiness and illness, over and above the levels you've already applied to some of the civics.

I like it. I'm sure I can find appropriate art for a Cruiser somewhere. I'll try get it in for 0.9.4 if I don't get too bogged down in everything else.

What I'd like to see is something Late Victorian or WWI in aesthetic, so it doesn't just look like a clone of the US WWII-vintage art they used for the transport, battleship and destroyer*.

I'd advise looking at industrial-era mods for the artwork. Hmm. One place to go, and this is also a good idea if you're looking for nation-specific warships for the modern era would be the Tom's Naval Shipyard thread on this forum. Some good cruisers would be... here. Or here and here one that is dear to my heart (the Russian Pallada-class, which includes the famous cruiser Aurora).

That would help to close a big gap in the aesthetic evolution. We've got ancient oared ships, Age of Sail three-masters- and aesthetically that includes your new ironclads, though I still think you should stick to the original CSS Virginia design or to a 'cheesebox on a raft' monitor, since Civ IV ironclads are supposed to be limited to coastal waters whereas the big broadside ironclads with their sailing rigs were not.

We've got the oil-fired big-gun ships of World War Two, we've got the missile-firing modern ships and even the post-modern ship- the Stealth Destroyer is plainly the US Navy's DDX, which isn't due to hit seawater until 2015 or so.

What we don't have is anything from the Victorian era, the transition from sail to coal/piston to oil/turbine propulsion, the process by which ships stopped using fixed broadside guns and started using turret guns heavily. It was a very complex and rich era of naval history, because there were so many variables that hadn't been worked out and so much new potential to be tapped by the designers.

And yet Civ IV baseline just jumps straight from Civil War proto-ironclads to WWII destroyers, skipping something like 50 to 80 years of design evolution including some of the most beautiful steam-powered ships ever built.



*(The transport is, as far as I can tell, a Higgins boat. My good opposite** says the destroyer's a Gearing with an extra gun turret bolted on the back; the battleship is so obviously an Iowa that even I called it. Why no love for the Royal Navy and such? )

**Yes, I am someone's evil opposite.

 

[Howard Mahler]

F.Y.I.
In the game I am playing: 2 civilizations founded 2 religions each, 10 civilizations founded one religion each, and 2 civilizations founded no religion.

This is closer to each civilization founding one religion each than I remember from version 9.0.1, and is probably due to the change to the Cemetery.
It may be a feature rather than a bug.

Even though the Greeks founded 2 religions, their state religion is Pasedjet founded by Egypt. So there are three religious blocks with two civs. each. The remaining 8 civs. are the founders of their state religion and the only ones with it as the state religion.

Of course this is just one game.

If I were setting the "ideal" number of religions, it would be somewhere around 8 to 10 for a 14 civilization game, but 14 is not bad. (BTS has 7 religions every game.)

Even if you can not allow the player to choose the ratio, you could change the ratio from one per.

I think lots of player feedback would be useful.

Personally, I would "vote" for something like a maximum of 2 religions per 3 civilizations (round down), but with at least 5 religions allowed.

"The limit is 1 religion for every 1 civilization, scaling with mapsize. I hope to figure out some way of making that limit player adjustable. Prior to 0.9.3 it was fairly rare for each civilization to found their own religion, there were usually a few that had 2 or even 3. There are a few factors that may have affected this in 0.9.3, I'll look into it."

Some more saves from my game as Napoleon.

 

[Azoth]

This is closer to each civilization founding one religion each than I remember from version 9.0.1, and is probably due to the change to the Cemetery.

I suspect it is rather the result of removing the free Engineer and Scientist slots from Tactical and Progressive leaders. If priests are the only specialist available until the third column of the tech tree, then you can hardly be surprised if a great many Great Prophets are born in the ancient era!

So I wouldn't worry about it. Free Engineer slots aren't coming back in 0.9.4, but we seem to have reached a consensus on reintroducing the scientist slot, and adding merchant and artist slots to the mix. If we further unlock the Religion and Economy civics, there might be an even greater variety of specialists available early. In other words, the problem should sort itself out. Reducing the number of religions on offer per game is rather uncalled for, especially when religious diversity is one of the strong points of History Rewritten.

Edit: Note that Ritual, which unlocks Cemeteries, has replaced Agriculture as a necessary prerequisite for Property, which unlocks the very important Monarchy civic. Thus, the changes to the tech tree could have indirectly prompted the barrage of Great Prophets; prior to 0.9.3, it was perfectly possible to skip Cemeteries and the early religious tech branch entirely without foregoing Monarchy. Either way, it makes for a much more likely explanation than the changes to the Cemetery, a building which in fact remained functionally identical.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well, you want religious diversity, but you don't want every civilization on the map getting angry and declaring holy war on every other civilization on the map. If we're going to have an average of one religion per civilization, we do need some way of mitigating the "die, heathen!" diplomatic penalty. Otherwise the more spiritual leaders* are at risk of ending up fighting everyone, and so on.

There's also an interesting dynamic that can spring up when your own civilization didn't create its own religion- the impulse to capture the holy city for the benefit of taking over the religion's shrine is something I've found worthwhile in game.

*Spiritual leaders are the ones who get angriest when you don't follow their preferred religion, right?