Irateationation

[Lohrenswald]

Alright so I just had another ragequit moment

I've never mentioned it before but I've thought about talking about it for years, and basically the mod is too hard. For most civs, some are easy

Now it could be there is some base civ4 skill I lack, but I doubt that's the case

Anyway so compared to the original mod there's 5 difficulty levels up from 3, and I think the civilopedia says the middle one is considered "regular". So the lowest difficulty level, "heir" should fill the spot of "very easy". It seems to me the point of a "very easy" difficulty level should essentially let you stumble across victory by accident. But for most civs it's almost incomprehensibly hard, where even from the start it's almost impossible to even think of how you can win. HRE Germany is an example on the current dev patch. I've struggled with for example vikings and rome and arabia recently as well. Mali has seemed impossible in every iteration of the mod I've played

I don't know why this is the one who broke the camel's back. Japan hasn't been on my list of the incomprehensibly difficult. But I think it's always felt like a tall order, especially in doc where I struggled for a long time with the first goal. I've now figured out how to do it, played on with china collapsing etc. etc. no reason to go over that

now for reasons I don't fully understand indonesia comes back with a million infantry. If I'd save money to upgrade all my units I'd have fallen behind in tech. If this mod is balanced around doing binary research, that should change, especially again on very easy difficulty

if anyone can win with this file please share in detail.

If there's any obvious mistakes I've done I'm going to say it's not obvious and whatever that would be needs to be communicated a lot clearer. It's been very long since I've played the base game and I don't want to test my skills there again, I did win several games on easy difficulties and I contend those skills for those levels don't atrophy, so you'd do hard to convince me to anything else than the mod being too hard

 

[Lohrenswald]

also sorry about the language and the like "accusations" but I get mad so much trying to play this mod because I like it on so many levels but it's so hard

I'd like to have an easy time when I choose very easy difficulty

 

[Leoreth]

The difficulty levels are not really controlling the UHV difficulty, but rather the overall performance of your civilization compared to the AI. Depending on how much the challenge of a UHV depends on your performance compared to an AI (e.g. goals about conquest or getting something first) and doing something on time, the UHV difficulty will be sensitive to the difficulty setting to a different degree.

Also, due to its focus on history, the window of available difficulty levels is deliberately narrower in this mod than in the base game, because outliers just make the game go off the rails too easily from a historical perspective. The better way of looking at this is that there are three difficulty leves: Heir, Regent, and Emperor, with Monarch and Paragon being variants on Regent and Emperor that help the AI without constraining the player.

I also don't think there should be a difficulty setting where you can just coast to UHV without much challenge (although there are probably some UHVs where this is the case). I don't entirely agree with the characterisation the UHVs are puzzles but the idea that you have to learn to solve it through repetition and learning the constraints and options available to you is part of how I want them to play. I do not want UHVs that reward you for just playing like you would anyway.

I do acknowledge however that considering how much of a focus UHVs are as the "standard" way of playing the game, it is understandably counterintuitive that difficulty settings have so little of an impact on it. I don't know what can be done about that, but I think part of it is that the difficulty of the UHV should be communicated better. I don't really like the current "star ratings" for civilizations and a revised categorisation for that could communicate the focus and difficulty of their goals instead.

 

[Hickman888]

Alright so I just had another ragequit moment

I've never mentioned it before but I've thought about talking about it for years, and basically the mod is too hard. For most civs, some are easy

Now it could be there is some base civ4 skill I lack, but I doubt that's the case

Anyway so compared to the original mod there's 5 difficulty levels up from 3, and I think the civilopedia says the middle one is considered "regular". So the lowest difficulty level, "heir" should fill the spot of "very easy". It seems to me the point of a "very easy" difficulty level should essentially let you stumble across victory by accident. But for most civs it's almost incomprehensibly hard, where even from the start it's almost impossible to even think of how you can win. HRE Germany is an example on the current dev patch. I've struggled with for example vikings and rome and arabia recently as well. Mali has seemed impossible in every iteration of the mod I've played

I don't know why this is the one who broke the camel's back. Japan hasn't been on my list of the incomprehensibly difficult. But I think it's always felt like a tall order, especially in doc where I struggled for a long time with the first goal. I've now figured out how to do it, played on with china collapsing etc. etc. no reason to go over that

now for reasons I don't fully understand indonesia comes back with a million infantry. If I'd save money to upgrade all my units I'd have fallen behind in tech. If this mod is balanced around doing binary research, that should change, especially again on very easy difficulty

if anyone can win with this file please share in detail.

If there's any obvious mistakes I've done I'm going to say it's not obvious and whatever that would be needs to be communicated a lot clearer. It's been very long since I've played the base game and I don't want to test my skills there again, I did win several games on easy difficulties and I contend those skills for those levels don't atrophy, so you'd do hard to convince me to anything else than the mod being too hard

I played around with the save game for a few turns, and I don't think you should abandon this game yet. You are way ahead in the tech race, having already researched 3 Global technologies, and no competitors having even entered the Global era yet. So your tech goal is all but assured, and you shouldn't worry about turning down the tech rate for a few turns. Even with the Indonesia respawn, you still have about 20 turns to reconquer or vassalize them, which is definitely doable! I would recommend to tech to Aviation, build several bombers, and collateral damage the hell out of them. Also, sell some technologies and upgrade your military to Infantry and Howitzers. You're also in the process of building tanks, keep building them. It will be tight, but you should be able to at least vassalize the Indonesians before 1940. But I do agree the amount of military that they respawned with is a little absurd.

Looking at the rest of your empire, it looks pretty good. You are decently stable, have your territory goals nearly controlled, and are blasting ahead in technology. There are just a few things I'd recommend.

• You should be running Egalitarianism, not Individualism. You have a lot more specialists than you do cottages, and you will also be able to assign more engineers in your core cities that lack .
• Every new era, newly founded cities receive free buildings upon being settled. If you have an established city that lacks these free buildings, you can expend a settler on the city to receive those buildings immediately. You are in the global era now, so you should be training settlers to help out your newly conquered cities. They will receive libraries, forges, markets, jails, courthouses, and more!
• You are running Democracy, so you should have immediately began construction of the Statue of Liberty after adopting it, giving you a free specialist in all cities. With as many cities as you have, this would be a big help, especially with Egalitarianism.
• You need to be making use of your , investing it into your closest competitors, so that you can steal their technologies and their !
• Build your national wonders, such as the Military Academy and Ironworks.

 

[Derdan]

Have you checked out the guides? https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/gameplay-guides.535/
Even with the rapid rate of changes to the mod, most of them should still be highly relevant.

I think you should post a thread asking for advice playing as Japan or any other civ. Japan is definitely one of the hardest UHVs in the game!

 

[Hickman888]

I wanted to see if I could retake Indonesia with the save you provided, and I was able to.

Spoiler 2nd Goal Complete :

Their infantry ended up turning into Riflemen after a number of turns, which made it a lot easier. Use as many bombers as you are able to, and you have to play a little smart with landing on the island of Java, as their military is so large. I used bombers to collateral damage their stacks, and I attacked them from my transports, not landing on the island and letting their artillery counterattack. Eventually I killed enough of them that they capitulated, 4 turns before the deadline. Also, Russia will spawn Vladivostock when they research Railroad, which ended up being in the mid 30s, so be prepared for that. Give your game another shot

 

[Lohrenswald]

@Leoreth I understand what you say, and it's convincing (as an aside I've also been kinda not liking the star rating system, and expected they kinda don't do anything). I can complain further by moving the goalposts, which is kinda bad form, but:
So yea like taking the difficulty aside I see how the puzzle aspect is a different thing. Now I have some counterexamples to this still, at least to some extent. HRE Germany has a goal that (asuming 600 start) means you need to take rome very quickly, and in the current patch Rome is so well defended that I think it's impossible for you to take it quick enough. I don't know if skipping barracks to get units quicker works, but like in previous patches I did solve the hre germany uhv puzzle, but now I find the first step impossible to do.
There's also arabia, which is a civ I really liked playing in the past, where I know find that like, the short time you have to be the most advanced civ and also make enough units to take marocco and spain and also protect against turks to be too tall of an order. This I feel isn't untied to the regular difficulty settings

On almost the complete opposite spectrum is argentina, which I've tried playing multiple times and failed over and over. Whatever strategies I refine have never worked. And you know in those late game turns things take an eternity . And I guess that's what really frustrates me, the huge time sink that goes to every attempt. It's hard to justify, and I feel I waste time. I never got into like competitive shooters or whatever but I feel this mod is pretty high on the list of games that make me ragequit, and that's never fun and I don't like doing it. I guess maybe I'm bad at strategy games in this regard in general, and should just avoid it, but as I said I do really like this mod in like concept and feel and so on, it's really the difficulty that throws me off so much.

So I don't know what more to conclude. I'm mad so many uhv's seem unobtainable. I've tried many of them several times. I'd be willing to try more if it didn't take so much out of me. It feels like such a huge defeat to not meet a uhv goal.
Sorry for the mixed critique.

I played around with the save game for a few turns, and I don't think you should abandon this game yet. You are way ahead in the tech race, having already researched 3 Global technologies, and no competitors having even entered the Global era yet. So your tech goal is all but assured, and you shouldn't worry about turning down the tech rate for a few turns.

I might be stronger in this game than in these previoous games I compare with, but I've lost before (as both japan and germany) from a position of seeming strength. I'm particularily worried about america hitting exponential growth

Even with the Indonesia respawn, you still have about 20 turns to reconquer or vassalize them, which is definitely doable!

This is the type of sentiment I usually don't feel. Thinking back and seeing your reply I do feel different in this specific case now. I still feel for example arabia is generally too hard in this regard, but that's really another thing.

also sorry about this like reply to individual sentences, but this is what my brain mode is right now. On the bullet point list:
Egaliterialism and statue of liberty I get are mistakes. I think I chose civics a bit by eye. And here maybe my claim of being not terrible at the game falls a part a bit. Statue of liberty I guess I felt in this game like the amount of turns going into building it compared to getting "one specialist" didn't feel so great. But probably you are right and I'm mistaken. I could build it in Tokyo, which I haven't been using to make units, but somehow I still feel like I always have something better to do (again probably wrong).
Settler joining is a very good advice. I have noticed it and been aware, but somehow it's never really clicked. Does it say anywhere in the civilopedia what buildings you get per era? I feel like that ought to be there. But anyway that could be somewhat gamechanging.
On the point of espionage I really have to rescind what I said about being somewhat decent at civ4. That is an aspect of the game I never really tried to get into. And I've probably overestimated the utility of the passive espionage bonuses to things like tech stealing.
On national wonders I'm kinda just stupid, being indecisive about where to put things.wondering if something's better another place. And I've been bad at adjusting to this mod's limited wonders per city.
But like, do you have reccomendations for where they should be? I think the city with highest production is the manchuria one (which probably should have been one south to get the corn), but it's far away. And here's another thing I'm dumb at: even though I essentially need to keep everything I've conquered to win, I still have like in my mind ideas about like, wonders ought to be in the core cities to not lose them. I guess china is pretty secure now, but Indonesia wasn't, so like, I didn't really have time to build any of them there, but like say I did somehow, it's like such a shame to lose them in this way.
Also never looked properly into if you can rebuild a national wonder if you lose the city it was in. But I'm guessing the answer to that is no.

I attacked them from my transports

that's been another big problem I've had, especially with america, but I guess it could work.

heir infantry ended up turning into Riflemen after a number of turns, which made it a lot easier.

This is extremely weird, you know. I'd never guess something like that would happen

Also, Russia will spawn Vladivostock when they research Railroad, which ended up being in the mid 30s, so be prepared for that.

that's another thing I didn't know. I had Vladivostok a bit in mind, but I never felt justified in settling that part of manchuria. And maybe that doesn't change it anyway.

I will give the game another try though

Have you checked out the guides? https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/gameplay-guides.535/
Even with the rapid rate of changes to the mod, most of them should still be highly relevant.

I think you should post a thread asking for advice playing as Japan or any other civ. Japan is definitely one of the hardest UHVs in the game!

Haven't checked the guides. I guess I've been wanting to try myself. I watched videos of the original mod in the past, and like, well with game guides in general I feel often it ends up the player ending up inexplicably lucky, and that's being of little help. I shouldn't be so dismissive I guess.
Maybe I shouldn't bring up this, kinda mudding my point perhaps. In an earlier version of doc, I played arabia, won pretty spectacularly, felt it was really fun, kinda started thinking of arabia as one of my fevourite civs. And now I feel arabia is so much harder and almost impossible to do. I guess I shouldn't say this without looking at it, but I'm kinda expecting the arabia one to be on an earlier version that was drastically easier, or based of some inexplicable luck.
Also there's hre germany which I had mastered and won a few times, that now just seem completely impossible.

I could maybe post more about individual civ's like you said. I have some mental barriers about it, but I won't be boring with the details about that.
I guess one problem is I could end up being apologetic about my mistakes like I sort of have been in this post? Which isn't helpful.

Some of my problems have been like, about how I like the mod conceptually I maybe go into it wanting a more chill time, and I don't actually engage with the mod as it is, rather more like how I'd want it to be (which I would be less mad about if it loaded turns and such faster but that's obviously a futile complaint).

I don't know how to cap off this rambling posts. I think some of my complaints are valid, a lot might be I'm struggling with changing things I do I at some level don't want to change. That's really beside the point of the mod itself, but since I'm the one complaining it's to some extent about me too.

I guess one final thing Leoreth if you've looked this far into the post I am like curious if you'd check the save game and see how much infantry indonesia gets if you feel it's appropriate because it feels pretty excessive to me, even if it is winnable

 

[Lohrenswald]

 

[Hickman888]

@Leoreth I understand what you say, and it's convincing (as an aside I've also been kinda not liking the star rating system, and expected they kinda don't do anything). I can complain further by moving the goalposts, which is kinda bad form, but:
So yea like taking the difficulty aside I see how the puzzle aspect is a different thing. Now I have some counterexamples to this still, at least to some extent. HRE Germany has a goal that (asuming 600 start) means you need to take rome very quickly, and in the current patch Rome is so well defended that I think it's impossible for you to take it quick enough. I don't know if skipping barracks to get units quicker works, but like in previous patches I did solve the hre germany uhv puzzle, but now I find the first step impossible to do.
There's also arabia, which is a civ I really liked playing in the past, where I know find that like, the short time you have to be the most advanced civ and also make enough units to take marocco and spain and also protect against turks to be too tall of an order. This I feel isn't untied to the regular difficulty settings

On almost the complete opposite spectrum is argentina, which I've tried playing multiple times and failed over and over. Whatever strategies I refine have never worked. And you know in those late game turns things take an eternity . And I guess that's what really frustrates me, the huge time sink that goes to every attempt. It's hard to justify, and I feel I waste time. I never got into like competitive shooters or whatever but I feel this mod is pretty high on the list of games that make me ragequit, and that's never fun and I don't like doing it. I guess maybe I'm bad at strategy games in this regard in general, and should just avoid it, but as I said I do really like this mod in like concept and feel and so on, it's really the difficulty that throws me off so much.

So I don't know what more to conclude. I'm mad so many uhv's seem unobtainable. I've tried many of them several times. I'd be willing to try more if it didn't take so much out of me. It feels like such a huge defeat to not meet a uhv goal.
Sorry for the mixed critique.


I might be stronger in this game than in these previoous games I compare with, but I've lost before (as both japan and germany) from a position of seeming strength. I'm particularily worried about america hitting exponential growth


This is the type of sentiment I usually don't feel. Thinking back and seeing your reply I do feel different in this specific case now. I still feel for example arabia is generally too hard in this regard, but that's really another thing.

also sorry about this like reply to individual sentences, but this is what my brain mode is right now. On the bullet point list:
Egaliterialism and statue of liberty I get are mistakes. I think I chose civics a bit by eye. And here maybe my claim of being not terrible at the game falls a part a bit. Statue of liberty I guess I felt in this game like the amount of turns going into building it compared to getting "one specialist" didn't feel so great. But probably you are right and I'm mistaken. I could build it in Tokyo, which I haven't been using to make units, but somehow I still feel like I always have something better to do (again probably wrong).
Settler joining is a very good advice. I have noticed it and been aware, but somehow it's never really clicked. Does it say anywhere in the civilopedia what buildings you get per era? I feel like that ought to be there. But anyway that could be somewhat gamechanging.
On the point of espionage I really have to rescind what I said about being somewhat decent at civ4. That is an aspect of the game I never really tried to get into. And I've probably overestimated the utility of the passive espionage bonuses to things like tech stealing.
On national wonders I'm kinda just stupid, being indecisive about where to put things.wondering if something's better another place. And I've been bad at adjusting to this mod's limited wonders per city.
But like, do you have reccomendations for where they should be? I think the city with highest production is the manchuria one (which probably should have been one south to get the corn), but it's far away. And here's another thing I'm dumb at: even though I essentially need to keep everything I've conquered to win, I still have like in my mind ideas about like, wonders ought to be in the core cities to not lose them. I guess china is pretty secure now, but Indonesia wasn't, so like, I didn't really have time to build any of them there, but like say I did somehow, it's like such a shame to lose them in this way.
Also never looked properly into if you can rebuild a national wonder if you lose the city it was in. But I'm guessing the answer to that is no.


that's been another big problem I've had, especially with america, but I guess it could work.

This is extremely weird, you know. I'd never guess something like that would happen

that's another thing I didn't know. I had Vladivostok a bit in mind, but I never felt justified in settling that part of manchuria. And maybe that doesn't change it anyway.

I will give the game another try though


Haven't checked the guides. I guess I've been wanting to try myself. I watched videos of the original mod in the past, and like, well with game guides in general I feel often it ends up the player ending up inexplicably lucky, and that's being of little help. I shouldn't be so dismissive I guess.
Maybe I shouldn't bring up this, kinda mudding my point perhaps. In an earlier version of doc, I played arabia, won pretty spectacularly, felt it was really fun, kinda started thinking of arabia as one of my fevourite civs. And now I feel arabia is so much harder and almost impossible to do. I guess I shouldn't say this without looking at it, but I'm kinda expecting the arabia one to be on an earlier version that was drastically easier, or based of some inexplicable luck.
Also there's hre germany which I had mastered and won a few times, that now just seem completely impossible.

I could maybe post more about individual civ's like you said. I have some mental barriers about it, but I won't be boring with the details about that.
I guess one problem is I could end up being apologetic about my mistakes like I sort of have been in this post? Which isn't helpful.

Some of my problems have been like, about how I like the mod conceptually I maybe go into it wanting a more chill time, and I don't actually engage with the mod as it is, rather more like how I'd want it to be (which I would be less mad about if it loaded turns and such faster but that's obviously a futile complaint).

I don't know how to cap off this rambling posts. I think some of my complaints are valid, a lot might be I'm struggling with changing things I do I at some level don't want to change. That's really beside the point of the mod itself, but since I'm the one complaining it's to some extent about me too.

I guess one final thing Leoreth if you've looked this far into the post I am like curious if you'd check the save game and see how much infantry indonesia gets if you feel it's appropriate because it feels pretty excessive to me, even if it is winnable

The thing with the historical goals in this mod is, it often requires you to use every resource at your disposal in order to achieve a goal, and even then, you might barely complete it with only a turn or two to spare. For example, HRE. Their goal of taking Rome is very tight, but you can quickly train several militias (basic melee unit without resource) and then use your treasury to upgrade them to swordsmen, once you get a mine on the iron. This way, you can approach Rome with several more swordsmen than normal. Arabia, I would recommend switching to the Elective civic (more ), and use the Citizenship civic to buy yourself a large military to complete your conquests. Use your great people to bulb technologies to keep in the tech race, and build the holy shrine of Islam for more gold. I wouldn't get too hung up over not being able to beat Argentina. I'm of the opinion that the 3 modern South American civilizations (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia) are really the only few civilizations that are in need of some kind of update. All of this to say, playing through the civilizations in this mod will require adapting to nearly every playstyle that Civ 4 has to offer.

I also realized the Infantry didn't change into Riflemen. I actually put off researching Social Services (and Infantry) until after Indonesia spawned, so they came in with the best unit that I had at the time, Riflemen and Howitzers. If I had researched the technology, they would have had Infantry. Using the settlers to build free buildings is the single best thing you can do for your game, as it shot up your stability, research, and gold. In the building list in the Civilpedia, the Library, for example, will say "Free on Renaissance and later starts", but there is no single list you can see all of the free buildings. Build your Ironworks in a city with high production. Build your Military Academy in a city with high production, but doesn't already have settled Great Generals, as the Military Academy allows your units to be promoted very quickly. Pick a city that you want to focus on , and build your central bank there, and run as many merchants in that city as you can. Putting wonders in non-core cities does carry a risk of losing them upon a civilization respawn, but with a strong military, you should be able to easily retake that city.

This was the force Indonesia came back with, holding 5 cities.

Spoiler Indonesia Respawn :

I think their military strength is programmed to correlate pretty closely with your own, at the time of respawn, but I'm not sure.