Hi all,
Firstly, I want to give thanks for the incredible mod. Been playing it for years, and no other gaming experience can match the depth and intricacy of RI. You guys do a fantastic job.
I've had a few ideas come to me while playing, or questions, and figured I might pitch/ask some here. Most are stuff I think would fit well with the realistic orientation of the mod.
-Since cart paths are a natural by product of activity, what if working a tile gave a random chance at having a cart path spawn there?
-I always found it weird that a civilization can fully immerse itself in a religion even though it never researched the ideas behind that religion (can a civilization that hasn't researched Dualism really understand what Zoroastrianism is all about, etc?). I think it would be a nice change if adopting a religion only gave you access to the base bonuses (+1 happiness in worshiping cities, resource restrictions, etc), but you had to research the actual technology behind the religion before being able to build any temples, monasteries, or whatnot. This would also prevent some of the early religion-founding technologies from becoming useless to cultures that don't found the religion (Polytheism and Dualism being the worst cases, as they're just clutter if you aren't trying to found their respective religions or build Polytheism's wonders), and encourages more decision making when choosing which religion to adopt ("three of my cities have Taoism and only one has Buddhism, but i'm only one technology away from Meditation and haven't even researched Alphabet yet, hmmm")
-Have you considered having a civilizations first city
not automatically include a Palace? It feels weird that all civilizations have the same building (more or less) and have it across all government civics. I know some civics try to "obsolete" the palace, but what if the palace simply wasn't a standard structure? What if you had to build one in order to adopt any palace-based government civics? This would also allow government styles without strong central government (such as city-states) to put more emphasis on their own governing style (such as each city requires a courthouse or has severe penalties under the civic). The Native American sub-cultures already have something similar organized, why not make that sort of thing available to players too? One last thought about it: Not starting with a palace also givers players more diverse strategies in the early game (rush a palace for a strong central city, or focus on settling other lands in order to get the best territories?)
-I've recently been learning more about ancient/medieval warfare, and am incredibly surprised at the importance of supplies and supply routes, which most shows/movies/etc seem to ignore in their depictions of warfare. Civ IV kind of recognizes it by including military supply costs, but simple gold deduction doesn't reflect the nature of military supplies in a realistic way. Changing this system for RI feels like something that should be done. Here's a quick spitballing of how I think this can interact with aspects of RI:
-Units outside of a civ territory can be required to have a supply unit with it. Maybe only for a stack of troops in excess of a certain number (so you can have 2-3 units travel no problem, but anything larger requires a supply unit).
-Each supply unit can accommodate up to a certain number of units, so larger stacks would require more supply units.
-Supply units could be able to interact with terrain, possibly building improvements in hostile territory to either increase defense, or "farm the land" to improve supplies further, or even simply be available to settle territory immediately after destroying a city.
-Supply units might have difficulty moving through certain terrain. This can prevent large stacks from entering jungles or deserts, etc.)
-Some national units could target supply units first when attacking, or deal them flanking damage (in the same way that cavalry can damage siege units)
-Leader traits can interact with supply units
-Puts a new emphasis on campaign strategies and advance routes.
-Diplomatic relations can use some work. I understand why RI emphasis the need to build up a large army and appear intimidating or else face invasion, but this often times removes from the game's fun factor. I always play on the largest possible maps and with 25 civs or so, and frequently have diplomatic trouble simply from the amount of civs present:
-Having 8-9 civs constantly harass me with invasions simply because they're stronger becomes a major setback that's hard to recover from. I can't say how many games I've played where i was always at war with at least one invader at all times. If I don't have access to horse or copper, I'm an automatic target for my neighbors, if for no other reason than they are able to maintain a larger army than I can, always putting me behind in military strength. Even if I have one of those resources, keeping it safe can be a problem. Maintaining enough of a military to hold off invaders both at my cities and at my military resources usually leaves me at very little research, which just means that the AI will be coming back with stronger units before I can reach matching unit upgrades.
-Playing with so many civs also has a huge impact on diplomatic relations. Almost every game I play, 9 out of 10 of the AI civs end up disliking me because I: a. refused to help them at war time (usually because I'm already at war with 2-3 other civs), or because I attacked their friends (because another civ asked me, and i didn't want to risk them getting mad at me). The AI is always asking me for military help, regardless of my military strength and how many wars I currently have going on, and each such request usually means more civs getting angry at me than civs getting happy with me. The worst part is that AI civs never make each other mad in this way. since they have the "I currently have enough on my hands" request blocking, they don't ask each other, meaning they never get mad at each other, putting me at the bottom of everyone's diplomatic barrel. There's got to be a way to improve this.
-I usually try to fix this by asking other civs for military help in order to foster good relations, but when I go to the diplomatic screen, I only get the option to demand their help as tribute. This only strains my diplomacy more, since any attempt at asking for help/creating a common enemy usually only causes more stress with the civ I'm asking to help me.
Thanks for reading, and for everything else.
-Y
. Anyways i wanted to ask why i can't select promotions for the units in the worldbuilder in the last SVN (4370)?
