New Stability Rules

[Leoreth]

Those were added for pushback when Russia was stronger, I will try if they are still necessary.

 

[Tigranes]

4 out of 5 times latest American runs from 3000 bc Russia barely made it outside of it's core. In general Russia and USA need help to become superpowers.

 

[Temüjin VIII]

4 out of 5 times latest American runs from 3000 bc Russia barely made it outside of it's core. In general Russia and USA need help to become superpowers.

Ran a 600 AD game recently (today's commit not included). Seems like Leoreth already fixed the Russia issue. They already settled cities in Siberia without external help, although they were a bit more spread out than I expected it to be.

 

[Leoreth]

Russia is very volatile right now. If they survive the Mongols without trouble, they are often very strong by the 1700s. If they don't, colonisation of Siberia and tech will lag behind.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

Russia is very volatile right now. If they survive the Mongols without trouble, they are often very strong by the 1700s. If they don't, colonisation of Siberia and tech will lag behind.

That... sounds pretty reasonable actually? It'd be nice if the Vikings (/Swedes) held them down a bit when/if the Mongols happened not to wreck them though.

 

[pole475]

4 out of 5 times latest American runs from 3000 bc Russia barely made it outside of it's core. In general Russia and USA need help to become superpowers.

I've run about 6 American 3000 BC today and Russia have expanded into Siberia in all of them.

 

[Tigranes]

I've run about 6 American 3000 BC today and Russia have expanded into Siberia in all of them.

how far did she go? One city East of Ural mountains ? Will it look like this in 1801?

Spoiler Ready? :

 

[cmakk1012]

When it does that, no matter how historical, Russia always becomes a monster that eats Persia or Turkey....

 

[Caesar Augustus]

how far did she go? One city East of Ural mountains ? Will it look like this in 1801?

Spoiler Ready? :

Yeah but a lot of that land was merely claimed rather than populated and exploited. A "realistic" 1801 Russia as it would be represented in civ IV has a thin chain of low-population, low-culture colonies along the southern edge of that territory with the northern half or so empty.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah but a lot of that land was merely claimed rather than populated and exploited. A "realistic" 1801 Russia as it would be represented in civ IV has a thin chain of low-population, low-culture colonies along the southern edge of that territory with the northern half or so empty.

But you can clearly see many settled towns in the north and east, including Petropavlovsk on that map, it was settled 1740 and granted town status 1812. And this is our typical Russia with latest version:

Spoiler Pathetic :

When it does that, no matter how historical, Russia always becomes a monster that eats Persia or Turkey....

Well, somebody needs to eat Turkey. I rather see Russia as a monster than Dutch, Ottomans or Portugal circa 1950.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

But you can clearly see many settled towns in the north and east, including Petropavlovsk on that map, it was settled 1740 and granted town status 1812. And this is our typical Russia with latest version:

Spoiler Pathetic :

View attachment 484416

Well, somebody needs to eat Turkey. I rather see Russia as a monster than Dutch, Ottomans or Portugal circa 1950.

Civ IV doesn't aim to represent every podunk middle-of-nowhere town as a city. Yes those towns existed and it would be cool if Civ were capable of representing claims and light settlement of that sort without the sort of heavy population and economic exploitation that being in the BFC of a city implies but it doesn't do a good job of it and IMO "empty" is closer to accurate than would be a fully occupied Siberia.

 

[Tigranes]

It is not just claims, it is a lot of activity going on there. Yes, I know not all the size 1 cities are equal for our map. But "empty" is no go for our purposes. We don't want Asiatic Russia to be empty by 1800 and then half settled by 1950. Same goes to America by the way. So just realize what are you arguing for? Nothingness? Roaming "Sibir" barbarians with muskets and horses and empty virgin terrain?

 

[Caesar Augustus]

It is not just claims, it is a lot of activity going on there. Yes, I know not all the size 1 cities are equal for our map. But "empty" is no go for our purposes. We don't want Asiatic Russia to be empty by 1800 and then half settled by 1950. Same goes to America by the way. So just realize what are you arguing for? Nothingness? Roaming "Sibir" barbarians with muskets and horses and empty virgin terrain?

Not empty, no. Again, an accurate representation would be a thin line of low-pop, low-culture cities snaking their way to the Pacific. Somewhere around 6 of them I'd guess? With mostly empty terrain north of that. I'd imagine that those 5-7 original cities would be quite well developed by the mid-20th century, with a good number of small, northerly outposts clustered around mineral resources.

I would not mind at all if the American Great Plains were considerably less developed prior to the late 19th Century as well, now that you bring it up. Actually (and I'd been meaning to mention this), I think when the new map comes out it would be great if the Mississippi were moved a bit W, thereby expanding the historically more prominent Eastern seaboard at the cost of the midwest.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

All that said Russia should have a more than fair chance of ending up as the "endboss" most powerful civ during the 20th century and if that isn't happening more than once in a while they should be looked at. The issue with Russia, generally, is that in Civ land=power, and Russia has access to more land than almost any other civ. The problem being that, while they had all of of that land for a couple hundred years prior, we don't want them to really come into their own until the late game, and it's very difficult in this engine to represent a nation that is rich in land without leading in, well, everything else. And of course any roadblock you come up with to slow them down is going to have at least a chance of stopping them completely.

 

[Leoreth]

I have learned a bit more about the settler AI when fixing the Portuguese and Russian settlement issues earlier. I think there is still some condition that just causes the AI to stop making settlers even in the presence of good spots to settle, and I have also seen cases where the AI decides to only have at most one settler active at the same time. It's still not clear to me what the interplay is between the part of the AI that selects plots to found cities on and the one that decides to build settlers. Either could be the problem for insufficient activity. At least now I know how to change which plots the AI considers explicitly, which is already very useful and something I plan to make use of in the future. But in general this needs to be monitored more closely, which isn't something I want to do before release.

 

[KeeperOT7Keys]

In my recent History Rewritten game I noticed AI civs don't settle new cities when they are in a war, could it be a case in vanilla too? maybe wars with independent civs are triggering this (but I suppose not since everyone is usually already at war with seljuks and natives)

 

[Leoreth]

It could make AIs more cautious though, will check that.

 

[Finbros]

There were never any Siberian Cuirassier in real life.

Yes, there were no Sibirs (though there was another minor conflicts with natives)
Cuirassiers can be just renamed into Rebel Cossacks (they were real pain, two centuries from Bolotnkov to Pugachev). Probably — for historical accuracy — spawn points should be shifted west, to Urals and Volga.

 

[ales_]

I don't know whether the building suggestions a player receives are related to the AI decision process, but the game will never suggest you build a Settler if you already have one on the same landmass/continent.

 

[Leoreth]

They are, it's the same logic. The game basically suggests what the AI would do.