Realism Invictus SVN 4710

[donblas]

So I circled back to Civ 4 again after playing some other games, and updated to the newest SVN. Here are some thoughts from an hour long game before I lost.

- They rebalanced the early game military units! Militia are now awesome against archers. This along in my opinion is worth the pain of building SVN.
- Cities now take a long time to grow, like 2-3x longer. This keeps you from hitting the happiness cap so darn early, and slows the game down. It also makes loosing population from disease more painful, which isn't bad theme wise.
- However, it meant I spent 20-30 turns hitting next turn waiting for a settler and moving my scout. I'm thinking the slow growth might be a bit too far.
- They nerfed farms that don't have fresh water early game, which makes some sense. However, it really makes starting position mean a bunch. If you don't have either a: river, cows\pigs, fish + islands, wine or other easy to improve resources that also give food, it can put you in a crunch early on. I kinda wish you started with a scout to making finding a better starting position "easier" beyond rerolling the map.
- I think the slower start might have made it easier to catch up to the AI. I caught up score wise with them faster than I remembered.

I'm looking forward to playing more tonight. I'll post more thoughts then. Let me know if you want to try the SVN version, I'm happy to point you to the docs \ help with the art file.

 

[donblas]

I forgot, I saw some graphics glitching that I haven't seen before. Zooming into a unit would sometimes swap it with another and zooming out would "fix" it. It would be related to Roman settlers\warriors. I'll see if I can reproduce tonight.

 

[zoob]

Let me add some infos about my current game on Monarch, playing as Carthagian, Huge World Map, SVN 4709. Great fun so far

Portugal drove me into a war with Spain and after a long fight i managed to conquer them.
After a while a landed in Italy and fought off Rome, even before researching those mighty African Elefants. My Axeman are good City Raiders.

Here's some detailed input...

Minor issues:
- Tolls & Taxes has Roadbuilding as a prerequisite. Previous (one earlier) Trade needs Roadbuilding too
- Skirmisher does not need Woodworking as prerequisite because previous Bronze Working needs it already.

General considerations:
- Tech Transfer:
As in main thread already pointed out, the boni could be given only if trade routes are possible.
Nation with open border|old bonus|suggested bonus
1 |+ 50% |+ 25%
2 |+ 75% |+ 50%
3 |+ 100% |+ 75%
4 |+ 125% |+ 100%
5 |+ xx % |+ 100% <- cap at 100%

- Tribal Union:
Right now you really have to switch to Despotism with 3 Cities settled, otherwise those 3 cities cost way too much. I suggest upping Tribal Union a bit, which i think should not be as bad for a small empire.

Number of Cities cost: +25% -> 0%
Distance to capital cost: +25% -> +50%

Small Civ with capital and 2 other cities not far away from capital should be affordable.

Another idea is to move Hunter cabin to Tribal Union.
In 99% of my games first i do is switching to Animal Husbandary to get the addional 1 , i dont care about slower worker speed. This way, civs staying on Tribal Union with their 3 cities, get an additional 1 from Hunter Cabin, which is good imo.

- Library:
I really like the idea of only giving 1 scientist slot, instead of 2 as many other buildings do in that era

- Skirmisher:
Skirmisher counterattacks are really hard, even well designed stacks. They have +25 hills strength for some nations. And no unit counters their attack really.
I suggest setting current archers +75% Attack vs. recon to +50 % vs Recon in general.

Well, really interesting game. But without some minor saving/loading war is not easy for me.
Good Game