My suggestions for the new RFCDoC

[Nikas Kunitz]

l have suggestion about Russia's unique strength: new cities appear with a monastery and an ostrog. The reason is that removing the ostrog production bonus would critically complicate the colonization of Siberia, as each city requires the production of one settler, one or two workers, one or two strelets or crossbowmen, and one Orthodox missionary. Thus, colonization has a significant impact on the economy at first, and the central government did not strongly support Siberia's development for quite some time. Siberia's population was extremely small until the 20th century. For context, at the end of the 19th century, there was not a single city in Siberia larger than 100,000 residents.
Regarding the possibility of expanding cities to the 4th cultural ring, this removes the precondition for active development of Siberia in the 20th century, when technological advances and increased centralization of the state created the foundation for the development of eastern Russia.

Simply put, my proposal for a unique power is very similar to the Arab one, but the Arabs use it when capturing cities, while Russia uses it when founding them. It would also highlight the importance of the church in Russia before the 20th century.

Based on my experience playing Russia, to achieve a historical victory, Siberia needs to be colonized. However, the need to produce numerous units simply paralyzes the development of Western cities, and the increasing costs of maintaining cities and units are extremely slow to pay off, as Siberian cities require at least a monument or monastery and a catorga. As a result, the economy is simply paralyzed for 100 years.
The method of maximum historicism is impossible to apply, since the initial colonization of Siberia took place with very little government intervention, which is impossible to implement in the game without rewriting half the code.

First of all, I think Renaissance era free buildings should be changed to have jail instead of aqueduct. Aqueduct in general seems rather specific and advanced building to me, so having it as free building in this era seems a bit awkward to me. Having free jail will help greatly for expansion of colonial civs, by allowing founding more far away cities with decreased maintenance from the start. This purposefully includes Russia with its ostrog replacement for jail, allowing to found cities as quickly as you build settlers, without worrying about maintenance so much, while making them more productive from start. Free ostrogs and the UP I suggested are backbones of rapid and effective Russian expansion that it should have from its late 1472 start. Besides, I think most colonial settlements (not just Russian) had some sort of jail from their foundation (many colonies began as penal places in the first place), but nothing like aqueducts.
I don't really understand how expanding to 4th cultural ring decreases need for development of Siberian cities as late as XXth century. Quite the opposite, UP I suggested is intended to quickly and widely expand cultural borders on mostly unimproved Siberian terrain, without need for additional cultural buildings, that will stay that way until XIX-XX centuries as it was in reality.

Secondly, I think we just should make newly founded cities to start with civ's state religion, maybe with some civic prerequisite. This is just more logical (settlers carry their religion with them, with some church often being the first "cultural building" they build in newly founded settlement) and should help with spreading religions faster and more realistic, especially in new overseas colonies (I noticed many/most cities in Americas often remain without any religion all the way into XIX century). This will save the time needed to build a missionary to spread religion to every newly founded city, making missionaries needed only to spread religion to other civs, that also can be seen as more realistic. Also, it will remove the minor "flavour" problem of some unrealistic religion randomly spreading to your newly founded city. In general, additional religions beside the state one should spread to larger cities, or be kept from before. Also, not directly about that, I think we need to do something with inquisition and autoremoving of religions, like Ottomans removing everything but Islam in Anatolia in Balkans, or Mughals removing Hinduism from all of India except the holy city.

As such, two of points of your suggested UP I consider worth adding as general features for all civs. Not denying its creativity, in my opinion it is a bit too specific (regarding the specific buildings and religion) and kinda generic as well, being crossover of Arabian and American (regarding what Dracoscolon suggested below) UPs.

 

[Dracosolon]

One thing I'm not sure about: Isn't it realistic for Siberian cities to be hard to develop? I don't know much about these places, but my assumption is these are isolated, low population areas.

 

[TsimTsigal]

One thing I'm not sure about: Isn't it realistic for Siberian cities to be hard to develop? I don't know much about these places, but my assumption is these are isolated, low population areas.

Absolutely. Even now approximately 80% of Russian population is European. Siberia suffers from both harsh climate and being isolated from major trade hubs (which is why Trans-Siberian Railway is so important). If anything, Civ4 was designed by die-hard Malthusians and doesn't account for these factors, which results in ahistorically big Siberian cities.

 

[vovadk]

One thing I'm not sure about: Isn't it realistic for Siberian cities to be hard to develop? I don't know much about these places, but my assumption is these are isolated, low population areas.

It's not that cities in Siberia are incredibly difficult to develop. It's important to consider that Siberia is a fairly large region. While its southern part vaguely resembles the Volga region in terms of efficiency (I'm not referring to real history, but to the specifics of this mod), the central part is similar to the western part, but the large number of swamps reduces the potential of cities. The northern part, however, is extremely inefficient, and cities are built there solely for the sake of resources.

But this is precisely about potential.

The difficulty of colonization stems from two factors:

1) difficult relations with the Central Asians. Until the 18th century, the southern part was constantly in danger, which diverted resources needed for colonization and security, slowing the process.
2) financial costs due to the growth of the number of cities, which are not dependent on their size.

Cities themselves would be able to prove themselves in the 19th century, after the discovery of chemistry, when farm fertility increased and more people could be funneled from farms to homes or cities.

However, there are two or three places where cities can compare to those in European Russia, but they still need to be developed.

Developing cities isn't difficult; finding resources for their development is more difficult, and a significant amount is needed in the early stages—both financial and production.

As for real history, the central government in Russia didn't particularly develop Siberia until the late 19th century, largely due to a lack of funds, as active participation in foreign policy forced the maintenance of a fairly large army.

Regarding the isolation of the regions, that's debatable. Before the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, logistics indeed didn't allow people to move to Siberia quickly enough, unlike in the United States. However, this issue was resolved in the 20th century. It was in the 20th century that the active development of Siberia began. For example, the population of Siberia and the Far East in 1897 was 5.7 million; in 2000, it was 24 million. By comparison, Russia's population grew 2.5 times during the same period. Cities, meanwhile, grew exponentially, with the populations of Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk growing almost 100-fold.