Large Map and New Civilizations are now playable

[AOS9001]

Decreasing flood plains would probably help slow down the Arabs too. Between the Mongol invasion destroying the bronze age irrigation networks and ongoing salinization, Mesopotamia should get brutalized. Even in the 19th century Iraq was a shadow of what it had been in the 12th century.

 

[TsimTsigal]

Mesopotamia became relatively poor region much later than it could affect Arabian snowballing. While i agree in spirit that lategame Mesopotamia should be nuked (in sense of resources and economic strength, stupid), it's not the solution.

1SDANi's idea of increasing from floodplains seem to be the solution (and ofc resource depletion is a must imho). First, it gives an incentive for Arabs to utilize their UB more. Second, it makes floodplains increasingly worse tile as game progresses while keeping their early game importance which fits history of floodplain-rich regions. Third, it makes Mesopotamia and Egypt (and therefore Arabia) much more vulnerable to plagues, which can trigger (or help trigger) Arabian collapse.

 

[AOS9001]

That's an elegant solution, I like it!

 

[Hickman888]

Floodplains already give:

1. 0.4 per tile
2. -1
3. Lost their river adjacency
4. Take 25% longer to construct improvements on (for desert floodplains)
5. Cottage improvements take longer to mature on floodplains

Do we really need to discuss another nerf for floordplains, giving cities even more for working the tile?

 

[Dracosolon]

If the goal is for Arabia to have less from its terrain, wouldn't a softer solution be to have fewer resources (or ones that affect fewer cities) within its historical territory?

 

[Glorfindel of Gondolin]

Well if the idea is to limit the Arabian power, core region reduction could make it harder for them later on, and maybe even collapse them as they overextend.
That way while they are powerful, if they extend their power too much they will get into trouble.
Their core area is huge, and maybe taking a few northern cities out of it will improve gameplay.
And even simulate the Arabian invasions of the Roman and Persian empires.
It will also delay their tech progress.

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

One thing that could also work to weaken Arabia is to strengthen the Mongol and Seljuk invasions. Also the Ottomans to finish them off.

We could also use barbarians and Crusaders to keep them busy.

 

[Dracosolon]

Apostolic Palace's crusades would also reduce how many civs they can trade with.

 

[Leoreth]

Good ideas.

I agree that Mongol and Seljuk invasions need to scale with the military power of their targets. But if the goal is to balance Arabia it is also a chicken/egg problem. Part of the reason those invasions do not measure up is because Arabia needs to be balanced. I do not want to escalate everything in the game because Arabia is doing too well.

Regarding floodplains, I actually tried the additional unhealth during development but I did not like it. Especially for early civilizations like Babylonia and Egypt it feels just too limiting to get that much unhealth you cannot do anything about at the time. All the other floodplains nerfs are things I have added afterwards as an alternative. I still think reducing access to food/health resources and removing floodplains over time in the Middle East is the better way to go.

Meanwhile I have also intensified mechanics to degrade cottages and other improvements over time. A collapse can now also destroy some additional improvements, and flipping or conquering cities also reduces the cottage development (to a more limited extent). These additional effects only apply in the early game eras. I am also looking into making the effect of plagues more felt.

I think part of the issue is that there seems to be too much stability right now, especially from the 3000 BC start, so I am going to spend some attention on that as well. The main issue here is that everyone is able to build up too much and there is not that much disruption. More timely and frequent collapses, together with the above changes, would help a lot.

For the time being I have returned to addressing bugs, but I am going to make further changes like the ones discussed above at a later point.

 

[Tigranes]

Ok, @Leoreth , I think we need some lessons in DoC geography with the new map. So, apparently, Irkutsk (lake Baikal) and Chita (Trans Baikal) are different continents. My European Itapu Dam provides clean energy to the former but denied it to the latter. Perhaps a little reference map with continent lines can be posted here?

I realize there are regular regions (shown in white in tooltip) and UHV regions (shown in blue). Sometimes they don't overlap, for example Russian UHV Siberia is much larger than Siberia region. But how to locate invisible continent lines? You have stated its pretty straightforward, but it is not. North Africa being one continent with the Middle East is pretty familiar to us by now, but I could use some guidance for the rest of the map, please.

 

[Leoreth]

It depends on the particular game mechanic, which is why I'd rather not surface this more.

What you are talking about is the game rules definition of continents, which determines continent based wonder effects but more importantly AI behaviour.

By basic game rules, every continguous land mass (even islands) are considered their own continent. However, for gameplay purposes, the American continent is divided into North America and South America (should be self-explanatory) and the Eurasiafrican continent is divided into "Europe", Sub-Saharan Africa, South-East-Asia, Denmark, and Scandinavia.

Things should fall into place when you understand what "Europe" is: it includes the geographic definition of Europe, but also the Middle East including Persia, Egypt, and Nubia, as well as Urals, Siberia, and Amur, but not Denmark and Scandinavia. The reasoning is easiest to follow if you ask yourself "should the AI walk a settler/army there or ferry it with ships".

The remaining continents are what is left over of Asia and Africa. I think that is the context in which I said it is straightforward. You can infer the other continents once you understand "Europe".

 

[TsimTsigal]

Why Denmark is a separate continent? I presume it has something to do with Norse/HRE dynamic (although HRE probably is prevented from expanding into Denmark by settler/war maps), but can't guess precise reason (unless continents HAVE to be continous landmasses and Denmark is de facto Scandinavia_part2)

Also meditated a bit on the exact reason of Arabian overperformance - it seems that, if nerfing floodplains further is out of question (btw, what exactly gone wrong with extra from them?), reducing the core indeed can work. Middle East/Egypt/Mesopotamia have lots of food that lead to Arabs having pretty much unlimited (for an AI) expansion stability; reducing their core here will have drastically opposed effect (lots of pop will begin to reduce stability rather than to indirectly increase it).

Another random thought about too much stability in 1.18 - haven't tested this yet, but probably there must be something about "more cities -> each city matters less -> losing/gaining a city is less likely to trigger recession/growth". Since stability doesn't matter much until you are collapsing, lack of +12 growth bonus is less noticeable that lack of -12 recession malus.

 

[Tigranes]

Why Denmark is a separate continent? I presume it has something to do with Norse/HRE dynamic (although HRE probably is prevented from expanding into Denmark by settler/war maps), but can't guess precise reason (unless continents HAVE to be continous landmasses and Denmark is de facto Scandinavia_part2)

Well, if I understood correctly The reasoning is easiest to follow if you ask yourself "should the AI walk a settler/army there or ferry it with ships".

We don't want Vikings to walk from Denmark to Sicily. We want them to sail to Mediterranean

 

[Nyayr]

Maybe instead of more troops per stack, the Seljuks have more waves? But I rarely see the Turks exist in 1500+ games now, taken over fully by Arab, Byzantine vassals exist sometimes.

 

[TsimTsigal]

We don't want Vikings to walk from Denmark to Sicily. We want them to sail to Mediterranean

Nothing stops them from landing in Central Europe and go to Mediterranean by foot, though - they are on same continent, after all.

Maybe instead of more troops per stack, the Seljuks have more waves? But I rarely see the Turks exist in 1500+ games now, taken over fully by Arab, Byzantine vassals exist sometimes.

Wave attacks are generally pretty weak in Civ4, due to how healing, production and city defence work. And, if anything, conquerors are a crutch. Ideally the Turks shouldn't be some unstoppable wave of ten billion units; Seljuks were essentially one of the straws that broke (or rather vassalised) back of Abassid Caliphate's camel, which was in slow but steady decline since around 900 AD.

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

How big is Arabia's core right now? It'd make sense for it to be Hejaz, the Levant and Baghdad.

We could also increase Egypt's chance of respawning though.

 

[lethrgy]

it is indeed only those areas right now

 

[Nyayr]

That is about 3 decent cities and 1 massive one 'Babylon' and whatever you can slap in lower Mesopotamia/Arabia on the right. Arabia has a massive historical area though, they also rarely overextend, and the massive benefit of a large Babylon bolsters then by tons. I have never seen them collapse in any past 1500s game either, and usually lead in tech, together with the French. Their units also are massive good in the Middle Ages, as is their policies and being the only Islamic religion till the Moors (who they often vassalize).

Unlike history, they have little internal strife, that can be emulated.

 

[triplebassist]

Speaking of the Arab stability map, while the AI doesn't make incursions into the Maghreb and Iberia, should those be either reduced to conquest or removed from the Arab stability map entirely? It feels like a pre-Moorish artifact that never got removed.

 

[WhiteEyes]

Maybe instead of more troops per stack, the Seljuks have more waves? But I rarely see the Turks exist in 1500+ games now, taken over fully by Arab, Byzantine vassals exist sometimes.

Maybe the weaker Byzantines also contributes to Arab snowball?
When I'm playing as Arabs Justinian are always willing to open border (unlike 1.17 where you have to bribe him or wait for Basil II).

Byzantine will now declare war to Arabs like 50% of the time, but there's also a large chance that they lose iron access to barbarian invasions, and later lose Constantinople to Bulgar Lancers.