Sorry for taking so long to answer, but I was (and still am) in Italy for my post-3.2 vacation. I will try to quickly cover stuff that has been posted last week. We will resume the work on RI shortly, and will likely try to push out 3.2.1 with fixes to all major bugs in a reasonable time.
Its an option in some other mods where you can start say on noble and go up the ladder ending up on diety as the game progresses.
That actually sounds like a great idea. Is it already implemented anywhere?
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On the whole, I thing that the beginning of the game is tremendously difficult (which is ok by me) but if you manage to get through, you'll win pretty easy.
Yes, making later game more challenging (first of all through smarter AI is very much a priority to us).
Great job guys. Thanks and god bless!!!
Thanks! That is very nice to hear.
You really need to implement the versions of the sentry missions that only wake up for unit of specified domains. I am really tired of, for example, having a galley wake up so that it can attack a revolting slave because it can't do it. Really. There is nothing a galley can do to a land unit. It is just incredibly irritating, especially since just about every other mod has this function by now.
Doesn't sea patrol for naval units do exactly that?
Also, the reason the mod changes your graphics settings and such (which does not normally happen when you change mods) is that you have used more than 3 modder options (those things that show up in the regular game's Options dialog - you've addd something in the neighborhood of 6 past the PLAYEROPTION_MODDER_3 which is normally the last in the CIV4PlayerOptionInfos.xml file). The settings for these are not stored in the save game or ini file. They are stored in your user profile (which is a binary file of unknown format handled by the .exe, not the DLL). If the number of them which is stored in the profile does not match the number the game is using then it considers the profile to be invalid and wipes it out, replacing it with one it generates with some default settings (like, typically, a resolution of 1024x786 or something like that, and changing your sound to Mono) and the newly required number of options. And then. of course, when you switch to some other mod, or play without one, that newly adjust profile has the wrong number of options in it again so it wipes out your option settings again.
I figured this out back when Caveman 2 Cosmos added additional modder options (which have have been removed, largely because of this issue). My post in their forum about this and how to do the workaround is
here. It has more complete instructions on implementing this workaround.
Thanks, that was extremely insightful! We might also choose to reduce the number of custom options.
Two little bugs: Two techs are missing voice quotes, pharmacy & algebra.
Thanks, we will try to fix this. These techs were added after we did all the voiceovers.
With slavery, maybe impliment the draft option in such a way that slave auxillaries can be recruited?
I feel that back in the day many ancient civs really could whip up a big army in a reletively short period of time, but the quality of these slave soldiers were rather poor.
Thanks, we'll consider this. Some form of early draft option will be both realistic and good for balance.
3.2, Nomadic Forager seems to be missing art:
I'll check it and fix if I can reproduce that. Just for the record, what is your GPU?
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Still, I won't push around the creators the mod since they are masters of their creation. Just suggesting and pointing out things. Now, I shall think about suggestions, but the whole post rather exhausted me. Later then.
P.S. BTW, I hope I didn't annoy people because that wasn't my intention. Neither to look all shiny and pompous.
Let me state that we value the opinions you voice, and definitely take them into consideration. But you should also keep in mind that you're an extremely competitive player who is keen on pushing RI to the limits and exploiting every weakness you find to win. It might seem strange to you, but I think we have nobody with such a playstyle in our team, and thus you provide some much needed perspective. We will try to accomodate to your observations, but we ourselves are not used to this kind of gameplay.
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In addition, this mod is not really designed for the express purpose of being beaten, but rather it seems to strive towards creating a gaming experience that at least somewhat mirrors paths that history could have credibly taken (not re-enacting it, per se, but emulating it, with different initial conditions) and while it naturally has to make a ton of sacrifices to maintain game balance, most of those are par for the course for any civ game (same units walking around the map outside your territory for centuries) and can reasonably be expected to be overlooked (at least this mod doesn't have archers that can rain arrows on people over a hundred kilometers away, I'm looking at you CIV5). The difficulty levels seem to be there so you can find your own comfort zone, whether that means being constantly challenged and winning only occasionally, or winning most of the time. I think I'm safe in saying that this mod is mostly for those who like the "re-enact history in your own way" -side of things a bit more than the "pure game" -side of things. Let's take the slavery debate for example. Personally I hate the civic, because I find the idea of working your slaves to death in order to create an army just plain weird and I don't care how much it's a cornerstone for beating the AI on ridiculous difficulty settings, it puts me off. Thinking it's actually drafting makes it at least palatable, but the units that are built should reflect this.
Tachywaxon, very much this. While we will try to accomodate the "cybersports" approach, you should try to keep in mind that creating a challenge for hardcore Civ 4 gamers wasn't high on our priorities list (though we are flattered that our mod can work this way as well).
Lastly I'll report a couple of things:
The "National Sports League" -event works correctly, but the bonuses for Arenas don't cross over for the new Stadium buildings, which doesn't seem logical, especially given the description of the event.
The "Harbormaster" -event still would like to grant the bonus to Naval units, apparently, and the Caravels you used to achieve it don't benefit at all (being Sailing Ship units, IIRC). This you likely knew already. Nothing has changed, everyone, you still need to pick the option that grants a bonus to harbors, because that's the only one that works.
Noted. Will be fixed.
Are the barb cities that appear without any units to defend them (or in some cases, with only a battering ram!) intentional? Cause they're like reusable 5 gold goody huts if they start appearing next to your border on a corner.
We're trying to solve this issue, but it is quite elusive. At least barbarian generals don't attach themselves to rams anymore...
1.) Post 3928 reported a peculiar problem w/all black screen behind units and forests. My copy of 3.2 did the same thing, and, after reading the above-mentioned post, I repeated the same procedure and got the same results. It works, mostly, but having it do that is a little unsettling and makes me wary about other things in the mod.
Once again, for our information, please specify your GPU.
2.) The Pastoral Nomadism civic is a valiant attempt to emulate the steppe nomad cultures that appeared c. 3000 bce and continued until the dissolution of the Mongol states. ... Difficult to do, I imagine, but if history is the driving theme of the mod, then not being able to emulate this aspect leaves a large "hole." The steppe nomads had an unmistakable impact on the civilized states to their south, east, and west until the advent of firearms.
You can't even imagine how difficult it would be to implement. Unfortunately, Civ 4 engine and rules are suited only to simulate sedentary civilizations (which is, come to think of it, quite strange given that Mongols are one of the stock civs). Civilization series was always centered around cities, and cities are a hallmark of sedentary civilization. While it requries some suspension of disbelief, think of "cities" of nomadic civilizations as the approximate centers of the nomadic trails of the tribe inhabiting that particular area.
3.) There does seem to be something seriously wrong with the unit control interface. Lots of new missions, and that's good, but the vertical slider sometimes disappears altogether. Other times, one row of missions, usually the top row, vanishes. I finally had to give up my first test game when all my Christian missionaries' interfaces vanished...
Thanks, noted. We will try to solve this.
4.) The auto-spread for missionaries doesn't work anymore? I actually have to take time and send each one into unknown territory individually? ...
Well, you shouldn't use automated missionaries as scouts who a priori know where to go. If you scout the territory with some military unit first (which can be automated), missionaries will know their targets when automated.
5.) Monarchy has been moved a considerable distance in the tech tree, forward of CoL, Civil Eng, and even Armor Craft. Not sure what the rationale is here either. I take it that there is a specific criteria for defining "Monarchy" and "Despotism." I'm curious about these definitions.
"Despotism" is all instances of the ruler wielding an unrestricted power, usually ascribed to his divine heritage. It is most common in Asia and New World. "Monarchy" is there to reflect the tradition where the nominal single ruler is bound by some obligations or laws, which is the way it usually was in Europe from Middle Ages, where the ruler was considered the first among peers, not a divine being.
6.) No problem about slavery. I never use it anyway. Despite what everyone claims, that revolting slaves are just there for units to acquire exp. points, I find them defeating units sent to kill them, and pillaging developed squares. Too much trouble for not enough reward. Avoid serfdom too, for same reasons.
I find the fact that some players love slavery/serfdom and some hate it indicative of the fact that we did everything right.
7.) The culture bomb was certainly a handy way of claiming and securing land without the expense of settling a city. Probably it was overpowered too. No argument there. After reviewing the options for my first few GAs, however, all I could think to do with them was either settle them or bulb them. The other options just weren't attractive enough. Kudos on the historical effort though. And no, I can't think of anything else to do with them either, if one isn't going for a culture win.
From purely cultural output, Great Works are more attractive than settling IMO. The options for GA are now more balanced than before, I think.
8.) Still no Europe map? Disappointing.
Sorry. We might have one Eastern Europe-based scenario in the next version, though.
Civilopedia:
- Buildings: Import Tariffs has a placeholder "xxx (Wikipedia)"
- National Wonders: Collective Farming references State Property civic (now Planned Economy) and should say "provides" and "allows".
- Technologies: Industrial: Targeting System has a typo in the history section, "rangefinders where mounted on warships" (should be "were").
Noted and will be fixed.
- World: Improvements: Slash and Burn Farm has a link to Depleted Land, which doesn't exist (and should). This new improvement is one of the first things a new 3.2 player will notice since it's available from the start of a game, so the documentation for it should be complete. (Does Depleted Land ever disappear? I think I might have observed a barbarian unit pillage one...)
Yes, it can and should be pillaged. We will probably make this more transparent and obvious in 3.2.1
Hints:
- There's a hint that says Courthouses provide an espionage bonus. Except for allowing a citizen to become a spy, they don't.
- There's a hint that says Fortifications provide a defensive bonus. They don't.
- There's a hint mentioning the Aggressive trait, which has been renamed Militaristic
- There's a hint about the Bureaucracy civic, which has been renamed Civil Service
- There's a hint about tech differences meaning more for naval units than land units due to "less defensive opportunities" (should be "fewer").
- References to BUG should probably be replaced with "Interface Options", since that appears on the menu now, and "BUG" doesn't appear anywhere that I've noticed.
Noted, and we have BUG as our component, which is clearly reflected in the credits. So I think BUG references are justified.
About the new food system: the importance of irrigation, and of the Agrarian trait bonus, have decreased due to the enormous yields on farms. Maybe make irrigated farms provide +2 instead of +1 now? Making chains of irrigated farms from distant rivers used to be an important part of mid-game worker tasks...
Good suggestion. We'll consider it.
A comment on A.I.: all the A.I. players seem to build cities regardless of the effects on their maintenance. This is a good strategy in BtS, but fails badly in R.I., leading to most of my games ending up with every A.I. civilization falling behind in the tech race sometime in the medieval/renaissance eras on difficulty levels where the A.I. doesn't get a giant tech bonus. Perhaps some A.I. personalities should take into account their current science level when deciding whether or not to build a new city? Maybe based on traits, e.g. Expansive/Legislator continue current behavior, while Progressist/Philosophical become more cautious and others somewhere in between?
Yeah, that's on our to-do list, more or less. AI should definitely expand less aggressively.
Final note: shouldn't it be "Progressive", not "Progressist"? (Both words are real, and mean almost the same thing, but the former is much, much more common.)
Like it. Will change.
I second the need for documentation for this. I was a bit confused at first when I couldn't find any info on whether Depleted Land ever disappears (yes, although not on its own) and if it has any negative effects besides preventing a new Slash and Burn farm built (no) so was a bit too wary, where I could've been slashing and burning wantonly until other options became available. It's a brilliant improvement by the way. Both in flavor and execution
Yes, we'll rework it a bit to be more transparent in that regard. Actually I meant to do that pre-3.2 release, but forgot about it completely.
The way I've been able to tell, Depleted land disappears if the forest is removed, or if another improvement is built on the forest. This leads to a rather funny "exploit" where you could build a lumbermill and then immediately slash and burn it to gain the food bonus instead. I haven't seen any barbs pillaging depleted lands yet, but if they can, and do, it uh... maybe should be changed. Otherwise I will totally direct early barbs to a forest square before taking them out just so I can benefit from their... wanton destruction of fields by planting more trees?
Moreover, you can even do it yourself! This is actually its intended mechanics, where it can be reimplemented on any tile indefinitely, but keeps your units constantly busy.
I checked before posting; the cities are reporting a 3% increased chance of epidemic the turn after building a clinic, after accounting for the decrease in chance due to less unhealthiness. Also, the previous buildings (Aqueduct and African Bath in my current game) reported correct values, graphically, if I remember correctly...
We will likely overhaul health and epidemic values in a major way; I already have it outlined. It will concern colonies and clinics as well.
I know you guys dont like the idea of adding even more resources but i feel chilis may be something worth mentioning.
But those are covered under spices already! Dravida even has its National Improvements and unique cultivation option that mentions peppers specifically.
In my current game I managed to build the Apostolic Palace. I'm finding the effect (+2 hammers per state religion building) to be overpowered, partly because my state religion is Judaism, so I have a Yeshiva and a Synagogue giving every city +4 hammers, plus cathedrals in 1/3rd of cities, and the two great wonders, and monasteries before the Renaissance.
Yeah, I guess the effect should be nerfed.
I noticed recently that I couldn't build the Apostolic Palace in the Huge World scenario. Something about needing three team members? How does that work?
IIRC (and I might be wrong), Apostolic Palace can't be built when Diplo victory is disabled, and that might be the case with our World maps.
About the locking tiles; that is really a good idea (although I never played Civ5).
We'll look into that and if it is realistically easy to implement.
The AI should be taught to use the bombard function because it makes industrial age easier time for the human player.
Working on it!
Horatius made a point here. I would be curious to know to what size/difficulty/number of civ... the dev team balance the game.
On my side, on the nowadays rare occasions I play for non-playtesting reasons, I usually play non-competitive 2-3-player multiplayer on a huge random map on Monarch. The balancing is mostly aimed at the default RI settings on large-huge random maps and bundled scenarios. But we try to weed out balance issues when they are discovered in non-standard situations as well.
I found an error in the civilopedia regarding fertile soil improvements: instead of presenting the bonus as a +, it gives minus the bonus like a malus. I was initially shocked, but realized fast it made no sense.
You must be referring to cultivation improvements. Check below for a full explanation. TL;DR: it currently works as intended and displays proper values.
In summary, I guess what I am suggesting is making things a little less strenuous eary-game if you are able to acquire the right resources, and some added difficulty for the player late game.
That is a keen strategic observation of a thing that is troubling me as well. Early game is a bit too random, and late game a bit too easy. We will be trying to fix that.
I cant assign spy specialist in the city screen. Occasionally a citizen gets auto assigned so I can confirm that the specialist works just not the assignment buttons.
Noted and will be fixed.
About the new soil terraintypes do I need to use the included mapscripts or will any do?
They are terrain features (like forests), not terrain types. Most (but not all) random map generators will place them.
I found a python exception while playing my second game when having the first contact with another civilization. I wonder if it is related to it being a game with Unrestricted Leaders on.
Thanks, noted.
I would also like to point that
http://www.realism-invictus.com/ still points to downloads of 3.1.
Yeah, we haven't gotten to changing that yet.
The guns of the transoxian Uzbek Rider are pink when they are dropped by a dying unit.
Will be fixed.
I'm not sure if you're supposed to exploit slash and burn -farms by pillaging them before they become depleted and build them again.
Yes, you're supposed. Moreover, you can pillage depleted land. As you correctly noted, it requires the investment of time from your units.
Now that I've started playing 3.2, it's officially time to fire the team at Fraxis and just hire you guys. The improvements to the World editor are phenomenal, and I love the new "islands" terrain. Great job guys.
I have to note that improvements for World Editor are a third-party component, made by Platyping. Islands, though, we can take full credit for.
A few more bugs and suggestions:
- Buildings: Military Academy currently show Strategy info for Science Academies, and the first line of the Background section needs to be edited for grammar. That first line should probably be moved into the Strategy text, too.
- All the civilopedia pages documenting improvements which give a chance of getting a resource should mention that they need to be worked for that to happen. The cultivation improvements should change "small chance of discovering X" to "large chance", or possibly "100% chance".
- There's a Hint about Paganism benefiting from Slavery. I'm pretty sure that benefit doesn't exist any more.
- I'm still occasionally getting strange random events. This game, I got metal decks for my carriers before researching Power Projection or building any carriers. Also, the fourth option for the Merchant Inheritance event failed to show the name of the city, and all text following the place where the name of the city should have been was rendered bold.
- When building an improvement that will replace an improvement already present, the tooltips usually show the net effect, but they fail to do this for railroads and electric railroads replacing older routes, instead showing (falsely) that, e.g., an electric railroad will increase food production on a plot with a workshop and a regular railroad.
- In the Domestic Advisor you can sort the cities, but doing pretty much anything will cause the sort order to go back to default. It should stay in the last requested ordering until a different ordering is requested.
- On the city screen, many tooltips show a list of buildings which could affect an attribute (e.g., hovering over hammers will show buildings that could increase production). R.I. has enough buildings that sorting this list to put the largest bonus at the top would be useful. Also, putting the buildings that can't be built yet in the current city in a separate section would be helpful.
- Barbarian naval units often end turn on a reef, and take damage. The barbarian A.I. could be taught to avoid reefs, but a more fun solution might be to give barbarian naval units a promotion that prevents them from taking damage from reefs. Maybe call it "Local Navigators" or "Shallow Hulls".
Thanks, all noted!
Kudos to you for compiling the list!
Hey everyone,
I have started
playing exploring RInvictus 3.2 after I thoroughly devoured Pie's Ancient Europe Mod (verdict: excellent!).
I am so far tremendously enjoying it, though I have noted some small issues and have a question regarding the Barbarians:
- I may not have understood it right yet, but there are not only improvements that according to Tachywaxons post give -2
-5 
, but e.g. potato cultivation says -5 -5 . Am I missing out something here or is that a bug as well (or exactly the same bug you described?)?
- The Civpedia Link to "Depleted Land" is missing, bonuses for Slash and Burn Farms are not shown. Again, I don't really know whether there's something I just didn't manage to understand yet.
- I cannot find a way to thoroughly reduce barbarian raids. Is there any way to do so? I started playing the "World: Large" scenario three times now. a) "Play Scenario" mode, b) Custom Scenario with "Raging Barbs" unticked, c) Custom Scenario with "Raging Barbs" unticked and a tick in the box for "no Barbs". The difference is exactly zero. I always chose the Chinese Empire, to ensure equal starting conditions. Somewhen around 3300BC I encounter at least one raiding party of 4+ Barbs attacking me. This keeps repeating basically every 5 to 10 turns with varying sizes of 4-6(?) Barbarians. I'd like to turn it off or at least vastly reduce the strength of Barb forts. Any hints or solution to my initial Barbarian question?
Regarding cultivation improvements: please read below.
Regarding barbarians: in case of World Map scenarios, there isn't much you can do to stop them. Their cities and units are pre-placed and will be present regardless of options chosen. The options will affect random maps.
Just found the special unique improvement behavior weird to what is described. It says small chance I get the special resource, but both time I put it on Androsols, I got the resource the first turn of working the special tile. Honestly, I don't see the point of having a nice +2
+5
if that is for one turn. And man, those tiles were awesome...but only for one turn.
I felt getting those two dyes (playing Carthage) instanteneously like a bad luck.
And now onwards to explaining the cultivation improvements: they exist for one and only purpose - to spawn corresponding resources. The discovery chance is set to 100%, so that one turn discovery you report is very much them working as intended. The awesome bonus is there only to ensure that AI will also work them for that one turn (there is currently no way of directly coercing AI to work some tile that I am aware of). The negative bonus associated with resources is there to make the improvement completely useless after the resource is spawned - it can then be replaced by a normal improvement for that resource.
was infinite. Definitely K-mod+RInvictus really doesn't mesh well on high difficulties. Anyways, does anyone get weird maps out of special RInvictus mapscripts? Like a map of all grass, rivers, some resources and nothing else. 
, but the effective outcome still presents +6 
. A Great Work just giving +1 to random buildings in an empire of, let's say, 5-6 cities, doesn't cut out and makes either the GArtist or the best Great Work of the art period better. What I suggest isn't to boost the cultural bonus to the random building, but better: MOAR of the these miscellaneous bonuses as that add more strategic depth. For example, since Great General aren't settle-able anymore, that +1 XP along a barrack and either a right civic or Sun Tzu Wu's Art of War wonder makes units of two promos for non cruel or charismatic leaders. That makes an interesting choice where the GArtist adds more flavors to the gameplay and finally, makes the appearance of the GArtist less "aw man" and more "hmmm, let's see how I can turn it out interesting according to the given Great Work choices". 
is lost. And I suspect given RI was there since the beginning of Civ4, it wasn't changed like vanilla BTS. 
to Solar Cult buildings (a mini Apostolic Palace just for one civ and the Apo. Palace can be cumulative). Even without Sun Cult yet. That hammer bonus is supposed to represent the power of artisans of Solar Cult. 
