Realism Invictus

[sami_snow]

thank you for putting in the bars to help calculate crowding penalties!!!!
'
but it needs to be harder to round the cape of good hope in the early game

 

[Manco Capac]

^
last SVN?

I don't recall those bars...

 

[sami_snow]

yes i just downloaded it today

 

[Manco Capac]

Ah ok. It's new then. thx

 

[burebeesta]

your crowding interface is excellent! thanks alot.
by the way, what's the name of that song played at the beginning of the game?

 

[Daft73]

.....
by the way, what's the name of that song played at the beginning of the game?

You can find all songs in your RI Assets folder

Spoiler :

Your song title is here...

 

[Drakarska]

Ooooohhhhh! Daft Punk. There's an idea for when DOW'ing Monty. My Thx for the idea

 

[Daft73]

Ooooohhhhh! Daft Punk. There's an idea for when DOW'ing Monty. My Thx for the idea

Your welcome, I'm glad my laziness(cutting img), was an inspiration for you Drakarska

 

[Hian the Frog]

I noticed that most ressources need a building to give the health bonus, but not the sea ressource. Why don't add something like a fishmonger's shop, in an early tech?
And, i'm not sure if this could be done, but it could give a little wealth bonus if the city is near a river, and a bigger one if on the coast.

You're right. Maybe we will add it one day.
I don't like the "free" health bonus. They should come with a building, like nearly all other bonus.

 

[Manco Capac]

You're right. Maybe we will add it one day.
I don't like the "free" health bonus. They should come with a building, like nearly all other bonus.

Then, how to deal with newly settled cities (or even far worse captured cities where most happy buildings got destroyed) where era unhappinesses+various other sources lead to a city crippled to one or two workable pop. That leads to really long time of setting up happy buildings (and we all assume the great and inexpensive Mob Justice won't be around by that time) and since slavery is doing no good in Realism Invictus (seriously, I say that in bold!), it feels there should be more resources without building supports. There is some wonders, the hemp, but there are two few of them...perhaps it would be advisable to make certain happy buildings indestructible by city conquest, thus it won't be overwhelmed by motherland unhappiness+era ones.
About industrial era, it's a whooping +6 unhappiness. That's huge!

I think there should be work around that more than adding the fishmonger shop. How many times I pray the map generator gives me both hemp and whales because there are the two soles resources without building support.

As always, it's important to think about the balance first.

Another point (unrelated to the previous one) is slavery itself.

The point of slavery in Vanilla BTS was resumed in two points:

Make every city productive (because most things need hammers) through either pure hammers or food. City low in hammers? No problem, slavery was there to equalize.

Urgency militia. What strikes between Warlords (the expansion) and BTS was the AI capacity to whip lotsa units when the city is under siege. I vividly recall how easy is war in Warlords with infantry where I could roam around without the AI whipping tons of units. Since BTS, it makes the AI harder to take out in term of cities and that is a good point!
Marathon speed in vanilla BTS also shows the problem of a well set up invasive army versus a victim not ready for a way. Normal speed in vanilla BTS show the perfect balance where you can still takes the AI pants down, but not entirely as it still can prepare a little welcoming party. In Realism Invictus on Realism speed, it's basically the same problem as we had in marathon (1600 turns for RI and 1500 turns for marathon). The invasive forces (when well prepared) have quite a lead against the victim. Since Realism Invictus made slavery really weak (same for chops), all we can whip are archers in urgency. Perhaps an occasional swordman if pop6 (which doesn't normally happen soon because of the happiness building limitation) or pop2 if was already begun for awhile...

That's the main problem! Archers do nothing good against the K-mod AI! If that was the base AI, I wouldn't brood at all; that would be the same put a strategic city on a hill near their borders and let the stacks suicide themselves. That simply doesn't happen in K-mod unless feeling a small chance of winning and heck no, I won't gamble 25% chance the stack can invade the city since losing cities are always the worst scenario.
The main problem with archers are their are only good for sitting the city for defense and if there are too many of them, the stack simply roam around and pillage everything. When your capital is next to another AI and stuck with archers, well, let's say au revoir all those villages and towns (which aren't really renewable like a mine or farm).
It's not like we don't prepare; we could prepare in advance a welcome party for any invador, but most often, the odds attacking a stack with one or two promotions are ~50-60%. Well, suffice of bad luck and you lose most of your armies. Way to renew in urgency. Nope, slavery is doing no good. Only archers per two pops and that's harsh on a city of 6-7 pops (classical era; often the worst).
Strangely enough Realism Invictus+K-mod are not working well together as it favors the attacker by a great extent. And it was proven that a game that favors the attacker is no good for balance. Defense should always be the one favored. SMAC (Alpha Centauri) was one game that immensely favored the attackers (and defensive upgrade are often too late) and I recalled that was a mess. You need to prepare well your "attacking" (for avoiding mass pillaging) defenses and since the odds aren't that good, that can lead to doom situations. That happened to me twice (IMM difficulty) and never I was more enraged. And the dude attacking me (Cetshwayo) suffered from 7 workers stolen by me since his first two free workers. Yeah, one could say, if I hadn't attacked, he wouldn't be on my back, but the way the lands were distributed, his peninsula gives a single path towards as sole potential victim and knowing K-mod AI, I expected he would attack me sooner or later. And despite losing 7 workers (thus stoneaged for a while), he gives me tense moments. A weakened AI caused troubles, how would it be a full intact civ. My other neighbour is also damaged by a neighbour, thus I don't wanna imagine two intact civs working together against me on IMM.

And yet, that mod is good as hell. It proposes different ways to win (I just discovered Pastoralism is good sometimes (a lot of early production) or Agrianism other times and that is proof there is not a single line of play!) and the AI is challenging (being a bunch of psychpaths). I am addicted to Realism Invictus like I was my first days to BTS/Warlords. I like how it turned out, but I feel some stuff related to slavery should be tuned. Maybe augment the hammer ratio for units...it certainly needs brainstorming. I know late industrial era leads to correct conversion food-hammer rates thanks to the third "stock" building (added to smoking hut and granary) and augmenting the hammer rate for slavery may screw up the late game, hence the brainstorming factor.

Simply said, the K-mod AI is a really destructive one where one that hates your face force to be in a never-ending war (punctuated by 10 turns enforced peace deals immediated ended by a new once the occasion found by the AI). If sandwiched by two or three AI's then it's a goodbye because they'll stone-age ya.
It's being one EMP and another half and now my first IMM game and I clearly see the pattern. Almost all games with many AI's on a continent lead to one or two AI's stoneaged to a ridiculous extent. The spanish suffered from that and survived with one city at 1 pop for over 1000 years.

Starting IMM, the human can't keep up with two opposite AI's, especially if slavery is underwhelming (which primary function should allow urgency "defensive and attacking" defenses).
You see, there's Titan and deity difficulties...how to batallion there if IMM can be infernal most of time you're not isolated.

BTW, it's not a free rant just to annoy people. I really like this mod, but I feel slavery is a missing key to make the whole perfect. True slaves can be the hidden piece, but that is not sufficient and rely on wars to get them (which are anyways useless for units pumping). On Realism speed, which is the speed by default, it should be easier to raise an army either for good defenses or for attacking purposes. As it is now, it feels a wrong choice in city builds will lead to a quick downfall because slavery can't palliate it.

Last point: the difficulty. One could say, just tone down the difficulty. Yes, I could. Problem is the AI doesn't keep up well around industrial age if the human amassed lots of victorious campaigns and created an empire. It was near 1500 AD and I was about to enter modern times and the biggest AI was barely entering industrial age and that era is long and numerous in techs! Late game becomes uninteresting when the AI can't keep up and hence the IMM+ purposes. Problem is the early game; it feels a huge gamble for survival and it shouldn't be like that I think.
Some say remain small and you'll face later challenge, but that's an artificial way to aid the AI and I don't think that's fun to play peaceful when the AI is constantly pummeling you (K-mod).

 

[Manco Capac]

Again, my purpose isn't hurting the team work. It's a pretty impressive mod, but I feel a bit disconcerted when most players concern are rather trivial when game balance is far more important.
Don't get me wrong, on prince to monarch, the problems aren't much surfacing yet because the AI is on toe with the player, but starting EMP and especially IMM, the problems can be fatal.
For now as it is, it feels like Titan and deity difficulties are irrelevant as winning consistently on IMM seems flickering.

That reminds me of RFC : DoC (Dawn of Civilization) case where the preatorians/legionaries (already rather good in vanilla BTS) are boosted with 25% against axemen (basically the sole counter unit against preats!!!!) and one dude (definitely not caring about balance but just for historicity sake) says let's add another 25% against melee units. Wowsers, that's too much for a unit already powerful! Why don't allow Romans get early tanks in the process?

Hence my "chauvinist" attitude favoring balance over historicities. There is nothing bad with historical add-ons, but when it crushes the balance, it makes not a game, but a history book (like 100% chance Spain conquers South America without a lost unit all the games).

 

[Manco Capac]

I'll see later about Great Works unbalance. I talked about it, but forgot to continue on that topic on the heat of the semester end. I'll see later (tomorrow I suppose) how to lift those Great Works to make them relevant against settled GArtists.

 

[Jwitti]

(and then there's me sitting here like, Wow I can hardly keep up on a good Prince game.........)
I do agree that balance should be higher-priority than historicity, but also I think this mod shows that overall, most of the major civs (that is, the ones in the game) are balanced. While the Spanish did crush the Incas and Aztecs, that was majorly due to disease and comparative advancedness. If the Celtiberians faced the Incans under Capac, it would have been a fair fight.

 

[Manco Capac]

^
In fact, it wasn't directed towards World Map because as far as I recall, with the SVN I have, it bugged. I strictly play random maps with solely major civs. The problems I pointed out is at a deeper layer, which is slavery being overly underpowered as it is now.
The way you can't whip much units against pillage stacks mean you can't correct little mistakes and lil mistakes like starting such and such buildings can lead that having more more unit built organically (meaning without whip) would have saved the day.
K-mod often leads to unexpected wars because it's now unpredictable and slavery was there in vanilla BTS to aid against unpredictable with urgency whips. Now, all we can whip at decent pop cost are archers, which are irrelevant against stoneaging forces (the pillaging stacks).

Honestly, without stealing those two workers from Cetshwayo, I don't where I would be by now. Maybe dead.

Yeah, sometimes, I feel it would be nice to play just for playing (i.e. my brain being wired like that), but my gratification is mainly from challenging games. Of course, not crazy-bat challenges like one made by Drewisfat user playing deity K-mod. That's insane and unfunny when you see all is gamble and every turn can be your fall. A good game is where you have a little control of the situation, not in the hands of the a bunch of psychopathic AI's.

 

[Jwitti]

I was more commenting on the real-life balance naturally inherent. if the Spanish and Incans were to spawn near each other, it'd be roughly even if you take a human out of the scene, and in RL, if the Incans of the 1500s met the people of Spain in the year 360ish they'd be roughly even. (I think.. generals and leaders are what makes the difference anyway)

Which is what makes the game so interesting- what if the Chinese had been the up-and-coming new nation fighting for elbow room against the Romans? what if the Native Americans that faced the English faced Charlemagne instead?

so you shouldn't have to get rid of historicity to balance the game, at least not much.

I do agree that there should be some sort of way to get a quick defending army- perhaps finding a way to implement a ridiculously cheap, weak unit (like the militias already in the game, but cheaper) that's only available with enemies in sight.. maybe only a certain civic (serfdom comes to mind)

 

[Horatius]

I'm not sure if slavery is that weak like Tachy said.
The extra hammers in mines and gold from slave market and exp from fighting slaves seem very important in the game.

The focus in the problem of whipping units fast is maybe a little too much. One wants slavery to work like in BTS...
But a proper military city will train units fast enough, and there's even units that are built with food...
It seems you're supposed to build an army as time goes by, of course, not whip an army out of nowhere like in BTS.

Yeah, slavery is the one of the things that makes the human beat the crap out of the diety BTS (stupid) AI, and since it doesn't work here in the same way, IMM+ is hard indeed. Actually, unless one enjoys a grind, one probably should stay below IMM, if not below EMP.

I mainly whip for buildings. You need a lot of them here.
More than the trouble of having an army (units are not that expensive compared to inflation,etc), the price of cities really made me scratch my head in the times I played this mod - a quite impressive mod, btw.

 

[Darkphoenix]

I'll see later about Great Works unbalance. I talked about it, but forgot to continue on that topic on the heat of the semester end. I'll see later (tomorrow I suppose) how to lift those Great Works to make them relevant against settled GArtists.

One of the latest updates (r4599), says "- Raised culture output of Great Works to 10."

I'm looking forward to the updates being applied the World Map (no fertile lands in world map yet, correct?), and try the stuff out on a couple of random maps.


Had my last final today, so free time, here I come!

 

[Manco Capac]

Hey people, if you got any time, take a min a cheer this guy up. I find it really sad each time someone tries to break the ice there, (s)he gets totally ignored. It's been three people who tried there since then who got cold shoulder...literally a big one (it was same for me when I tried a serie of writeups). I know it's early but I suspect it's gonna end like the others because S&Tips people are pretty narrow-minded when it comes to something outside base BTS...which I don't really understand but that's not mah biziniss.

What I mean S&Tips people altogether cheer themselves up for base BTS, but cohesion is rather weak for any mod pop (except RFC: DoC, which is a peculiarity).

 

[teks]

I found forts to be a great way to help with defense. Rather then dropping units into cities, and praying they can hold out as resources get pillaged, a few well-set forts can provide defense bonuses rivaling a castle with additional offensive bonuses as well.

With forts sat up, I normally leave my cities with one defender, and leave the active defenders inside forts on the borders around mountains, on hills, and bordering rivers. This works really great defending the rear of the empire, or for turtling up during peacetime.

Of course, it all depends on the cards you have and the terrain your left with.

Another thing about archers...
Archers may be crappy defenders, but they do additionally provide a ranged defense bonus to the other defenders. I don't play the beta stuff, so if thats no longer true. too bad.

 

[Darkphoenix]

Another thing about archers...
Archers may be crappy defenders, but they do additionally provide a ranged defense bonus to the other defenders. I don't play the beta stuff, so if thats no longer true. too bad.

Its been nerfed somewhat, the bonuses make more sense now in the way they are distributed.

Ranged Aid I - +3% City/Hills defense
Ranged Aid II - +6% City/Hills Defense, 1 extra first strike chance
Ranged Aid III - +12% City/Hills Defense, 2 First Strike Chances

Recon Aid I - +3% Withdrawal, 1 extra first strike
Recon Aid II - +6% Withdrawal, 1 extra first strike, 1 extra first strike chance
Recon Aid III - +12% Withdrawal, 2 first strikes


No more "It's worse for me to be on a hill than a grassland since the enemy has recon", archers are better on defense, an attacking force gets better mileage out of recon but it provides decent bonuses for defense as well.