Realism Invictus

[Zooasaurus]

So i don't need to install Realism Invictus that i downloaded from web?

 

[pioswa]

nope.

 

[krasny]

Two questions:

1. Anyone else think the javelin guys available with weaponsmithing are overpowered?

2. How do modify the game files to prevent workers from constructing slash and burn farms? OR how do I remove slash and burn farms from the game?

Thanks.

 

[sazhdapec]

1. Anyone else think the javelin guys available with weaponsmithing are overpowered?

They are powerful indeed but have some weaknesses. Skirmishers are vulnerable to counterattacks and charged mounter units after the chariot, extremely weak when attacking cities, they don't receive bonuses on flatlands. If you're getting wrecked by them try training more archers and chop the forests. And don't forget: skirmishers become outdated pretty fast when you discover iron working. Hope this helps)

 

[krasny]

I'm far from getting wrecked by them. I'm finding that they're my panzers of the ancient world. Except for attacking cities, they make axemen and swordsmen redundant. I would rather see skirmish units as a promotion rather than an actual unit.

 

[sazhdapec]

I'm far from getting wrecked by them. I'm finding that they're my panzers of the ancient world. Except for attacking cities, they make axemen and swordsmen redundant. I would rather see skirmish units as a promotion rather than an actual unit.

Then I suggest you to increase the difficulty

 

[krasny]

The difficulty I'm playing on is perfect.

 

[cfeyyaz]

@krasny:

To remove slash and burn farms from the game you must go to the file:
Civ4 -> Beyond the Sword -> Mods -> XML -> Units -> Civ4UnitInfos

You can open up with a text editor, for example Notepad.

There you can see what a worker can build or not. There is this text under every civilization's workers:

<Build>
<BuildType>BUILD_SLASH_AND_FIRE</BuildType>
<bBuild>1</bBuild>
</Build>

You must change <bBuild>1</bBuild> to <bBuild>0</bBuild> for every worker unit. As a result, the workers will never be able to build slash and burn farms anymore. I hope this helps.

 

[Muninn]

Relatively casual Civ player here. I'm not sure how good (or more likely, bad) of an idea this is, but it's something I thought of and thought I'd throw out here for consideration by people who have a better handle on game balance and historicity than I.

As things stand right now with regards to a city's cultural boundaries, the first one is really important because it provides the additional 12 tiles that can be worked, but while the expansions after that can provide resources, it strikes me as a little odd that increasing the city's cultural influence only really benefits your civilization as a whole and doesn't have any direct effect on the city itself aside from an increased defensive bonus.

My idea was this: What if each cultural expansion also provided +1 food, production, and commerce on the city tile itself? This would provide a minor-but-concrete representation of the additional influence that the city in question has on the surrounding territory.


Also, I haven't played any of the SVN versions, so this might be irrelevant, but what about applying an increasing cost modifier to World Wonders to make it more difficult (but not impossible) for a small number of civilizations to build all of the wonders. Like, your first wonder would cost 100% of its base cost, then the second would be 120% or 125%, then 140% or 150% for the third... (It sounds as though you've applied a similar mechanic to units themselves, so my apologies if this is a mechanic that's already been considered or implemented)

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

"

But isn't that a form of representation? Where minorities (or women) could have their representation in government and have similar rights as majority(men). I always had a hard time imagining "Social justice" as separate legal civic that is totally different then representation (totally different bonuses). In my opinion "Social justice" could have been national wonder associated with representation and free religion. (it is strange to have militancy and social justice at the same time).

It is, but basically there is a very clear distinction here between aiming to represent certain layers of society or aiming to represent most citizens, when it comes to running the country.

If by oppression; you're referring to slavery, then that is really a different can of worms than the modern social justice movements. Slavery was institutionalized oppression that was codified into law in the US Constitution that blacks were 3/5ths of a man and therefore could be enslaved. That is a very different situation than "minority rights." Something that specific and determinative in a constitution really has nothing to do with a common law system since it is not subject to change through judicial rulings, or is open for alternate interpretations. To change the law it would required an amendment to the constitution, which had to be ratified though the judiciary of every state individually. The constitution is essentially the only document that judges do not have the power to strike down in a common law system, however they are able to change it through rulings based on their interpretation of the document if sections of it are non-specific.

Nope, by oppression I mean roughly the next century after the abolition of slavery. Jim Crow laws and such. The whole system of racial segregation was built on a series of laws.

It's not a question of which is more conductive of a free inclusive society. I can provide arguments for the negatives and positives of each. My point is concerned with how each system functions primarily (what it allows, what it doesn't allow). Also "Social Justice" is not inherently a positive, or negative concept and whether it manifests itself for better, or worse really depends on how the concept is applied within the society.

Typically for changes to the law to take place under a civil law system codified law needs to be passed by elected officials to change the law. With a common law system a judicial ruling based on an interpretation of a codified law is enough to change the law. Essentially with common law - unelected, appointed, supreme court judges have the ability to strike down law, or amend laws (by changing the legal interpretation of said law). There's actually been a lot of debate surrounding this issue and it's implications as of late. This example is mainly concerning Canada, but references the US as well, however this example would apply to any common law country that grants non-specific rights and freedoms to individuals.

I am not really sure how that distinction would translate into gameplay mechanics in our mod. While I have enough knowledge to realize the differences between civil law and common law, I do not "feel" them enough and see enough of their tangible consequences to build Civ 4 civic effects from that. One more thing - I think historically all countries stuck with one or the other, I can't really recall any that changed from one to the other. Does such a permanent thing merit being a civic?

That's basically my point. Social Justice isn't a wide enough concept to have it's own civic, imo. It can easily be absorbed into other more substantive civics. On it's own it's simply an ideology.

The same point can also be made regarding some other civics, for instance Collectivism. I think driving ideologies are important enough in XX century to have their representation as civics.

I think there is something wrong with released vassals. i released one and 10 turns later they declared independence and stopped being my vassals. They had few town, some units and that is it. They didn't loss any ground, in fact they gained few cities i conquered and instantly gave them, but still they ware tiny civilization (5 cieties i had 40 or so). I think that, disabling peace vassalization of the ai, forces your peace vassals to brake vassal state at first turn it is possible. In that case granting independence have little of value.

Yes, I guess this is an unfortunate consequence of all civilizations refusing to peacefully vassalize. Truth be said, it could be fixed with some careful civ/leader tweaking, as we have specific colonial civs releasable, but we treat disabled peaceful vassalization as a temporary measure, so I am not sure if we will do it.

A few notes from many many enjoyable play throughs with the svn lately:

1. Vassals are actually working really well for me: that is, half the civs in the game don't vassalize when the first powerful civ gets the right technology. I've only seen one civ vassalize in about 10 games. I assume this is the desired outcome?

Yep, currently you can only gain vassals through force-vassalization.

2. Barbarians are stacking in hordes, sometimes 20 thick. Great fun for a human player, though the ai usually loses 3-4 civs a game to them. Since the raging option is is optional, this seems reasonable to me. (I've touched on the naval issue earlier, obviously)

It is also factored in our game balance - we start with several more civs per map size by default than vanilla Civ 4.

3. The Celtic recon unit Balboe(?) is getting a 40% attack bonus vs cities, which I think was meant to be a penalty.

I have the game open right now, I checked and saw that Balroae have the normal -40% city strength. Not sure how you got the result you saw. Perhaps it was a total bonus when attacking a particular city in game? If the attacked unit was a melee one, the resulting total bonus could still have been positive despite -40% city strength.

4. Longbowmen. I see that some civs have had their hitpoints bumped from 7-8. Longbowmen have always seemed like the most overpowered unit in the game to me, and I'm curious why their stats were increased. Yet the one civ with a unique longwoman, Korean, doesn't get a hit point boost. Personally, I think that they should all have 6 hp.

All longbowmen are 8 (including Korean flavor longbowman). Not all civs get them (roughly half of them), and they are late and expensive. Arquebusiers that come not long after are almost as good and significantly cheaper. Also, crossbowmen were boosted to be almost on par with longbows in many tasks (lower base strength, but higher bonuses).

5. I'm getting a common scenario where a civ becomes very friendly (yes, "friendly") toward me at the begining of the game, and later too, without any good reason. Usually because our civics are similar. However, they always refuse to sign open borders, even with a yellow happy face. In some cases, this happens in the first 10 turns post contact (the friendly thing).

That is easily possible in early game if you are running their favorite civic, and there aren't yet many factors that could cause a divide between you (like different religions, friends/enemies etc.), especially if your leader has a relations bonus from traits. As for open borders, that depends only on particular leaders - some leaders like open borders better than the others.

6. Jungle. I googled it to see if anyone else had a recent thread on it, but didn't find anything. Jungle is a real problem. It makes you sick and prone to epidemics. It offers virtually nothing in terms of growth or production. It makes barbarians and invaders hard to kill. But the worst thing about jungle: you can't cut it down for a loooooooong time. Why? Is it easier to cut down forests than jungle? Were there no civilizations in jungle until later in time? No, there is no rational explanation that I can think of for making jungle wait to be hacked down. And Real Mongoose makes a LOT of jungle. So, why not make jungle clearable earlier?

Yes, jungle is a problem by design. There are some civs that fare better against it (Mayans), but in general it is a terrain feature to be avoided. And yes, there were no bronze age or earlier civilizations that we know of that thrived in jungles. The closest thing would be earliest Indian civilizations, but those vanished without a trace before Classical antiquity even started.

7. I love the Maya, they're great fun to play, as well as many of the new buildings. This is such a wonderful mod. Having made one large one for another game, I can really appreciate how much time is spent to even make minor changes here. Thank you to everyone who contributes. Any chance of having the Dutch and Portuguese available soon?

Definitely not very soon. Adding a civ as playable is not a decision we make lightly, there are seldom more than 1-2 new civs per new version. This one already has Mayans and Hungarians.

8. When I regenerate maps, often my units are placed on the water, and I get an error message.

Interesting. Never ran into this one myself.

9. Agrarian leaders are not building their Hunter's Cabins faster.

Because it is a hunting-gathering, not an agricultural improvement. It is almost the opposite of agriculture.

10. Real Mongoose doesn't place oasis tiles, which makes Arab bonus improvement useless.

It does, but very little. I try to make it place more, but as of yet I am still unsuccessful.

11. Ragnar's greeting is messed up.

Thanks for pointing out. Fixed.

A really small detail which has been bugging me for a while:

The Sacerdotal Palace enables 1 citizen to be turned into a Priest.
But it's requisite civic, Theocracy, already allows infinite Priests.

Fixed. Not bugging people is good.

I just got through a world map scenario with the Zulu empire, and found that they seem to be missing a custom longbow unit graphic (it's just the generic longbowman), as well as a generic Cuirassier unit. From what I've seen, both of the other African civilizations (Mali and Ethiopia) have their own respective and unique units for those two!

Thanks, fixed that. For some reason, they were missing. Especially mysterious in case of longbowman, because the actual unit was there, just not enabled for the civ.

Is there a way to tune the probabilities then? For example, lower the chance to get caught while moving or standing on a tile but increase the chance to fail the espionage missions.

I thought about it a bit more, and it would not make sense. The game has no way of distinguishing your spy merely passing through a civ you have no intention of spying on, and a spy in a civ you actually want to spy on. If we lower the chance for them getting caught passing through, we lower the chance for them getting caught anywhere. Anyway, yes, all the probabilities are there, you can tweak them.

http://forums.civlovers.com/showthread.php?p=6063340

I've already noticed that AI "builds" local crafts, research and culture. And it seems that AI does that when all other possible things are built. So this logic could be used with the proposed buildings. Another problem I see here though is that AI tends to abort production which in this case would be a huge waste.

The problem here is that we are forcing AI to choose. It would be a choice between building it and something else - and currently AI has no metric to inform it that this particular choice would be better for it or worse.

Anyway, I just realized that improving the central tile is basically equal to just a building that gives +1 hammer, +1 commerce or +1 food. We already have some of those. I don't think we need to have more (what I do think, though, is that many later buildings should be more expensive, which we already did since my last post).

1) Unit cost increase
I think this is great. It encourages to build diverse armies and makes it harder to have a lot of units. But this change leads to strange situations. For example, I had only two 7 cataphracts and the next 9 medium cavalty cost less! I would like to resolve this by increasing costs of all units in the upgrade tree not only the ones I have and can build.

Agree with that. Will need some coding, but we'll get there.

The other thing is I don't like that no resource units (those produced like workers and settlers) also become more expensive. Much more expensive. Aren't they supposed to be the bulk of the armies? For example shouldn't they soften the enemy stacks so that more valuable units had greater chances to win? Please remove the increased costs for this type of units.

We tried the high cost increase, didn't feel right. Now their cost increase will be much less.

2) Kitab-i Bahriye science work
It's ability is Free Sentry promotion for units built in this city. I didn't check everything but not all types of units recieve the promotion. The Sentry link leads to ranged mounted and helicopter units promotion but the description of the work suggests that the promotion is for water units. Can you clear this please?

Yep, a holdover from when ships could get that promo. Will change to navigation.

3) Some converter buildings give additional bonuses and some don't. For example, brick factory just makes stone out of coal but cotton mill also gives some and a free craftsman. How do you decide which converter buildings should have a bonus?

More or less arbitrarily, judging on how lucrative such facilities were in history as businesses. Textile industry, for example, was the backbone of British economy for quite a while, but bricks didn't really make anyone a fortune, only sturdier buildings.

4) Some civics are still weaker. Monarchy is totally useless, Caste System has a pretty heavy drawback, paganism can't be played to its most potential due to early world wonders, and you nerfed pagan temples, though it's an early civic so it's more or less ok.

I'd disagree about Paganism. I stick to it if I have a successful start - it is quite possible to grab both Stonehenge and Pyramids, making your pagan temples pretty uber, but even one of those makes it worthwhile for quite long.

Also, I find myself using Caste System quite often - unlike Slavery, it doesn't really suffer from painful transition period where you have to rebuild all your agriculture. And of course no revolts - though some treat them as an advantage...

As for Monarchy, I also feel very strongly that we didn't do enough with it. It should be much more viable, and we'll get there eventually.

@Walter

Any plans to integrate this mod?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497863

Thanks for your efforts!

Not in near future, unless we get some outside help. We have our own big component to keep our code wizard occupied.

@Walter Hawkwood:
Long time no see Walter
I have a few things on mind first do you remember my little feature request a long time ago?

is there any chance to get this?

Second ViterboKnight had released his source code for city states

is there also any chance that you implement it?

See above. It would be a cool thing to have, but for now we simply have no manpower to integrate it. I, for instance, wouldn't know where to start. I am more a graphics and XML guy.

As an add on to my earlier post:

I'm sure that you've heard this before, but Tribal Forts are fun spoilers. As an example, I'm playing Greece, and I've invested in a massive military build up to take Lycia:

5 rams, 5 hoplites with 1 pip in city attack, four Hoimoi with pip in strength, 5 dorphoi with pip in strength, 2 war chariots with 2 pip in strength, 5 Ekdromoi with pip in city attack. I attack...and don't do any damage at all. None. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Lycia was conquered a LOT, including by the Greeks before the gundpowder age. But it's pretty much invincible to me. However, the ai has manged to conquer it with a a few militia....what gives? I get the concept, but honestly, tone it down a bit, please. If I've got a stack that could take any city in the game, I should be able to take down a tribal fort.

Or maybe someone can tell me how to edit tribal forts myself?

I am getting more and more inclined to remove them altogether or leave them only in some select places. They are no longer as needed as they were before. I'll experiment with removing them and see if I like the results.

Few thoughts about increasing unit cost.

At first i loved it. It forces you and AI to have more diverse armies and reduces number of units, but problem started at mid Renaissance era. As i invented flintlock musket i upgraded my most experienced units to wojsko kwarcienne (as i play as Poland), and started recruiting new musket guys, and in a few turns cost of new unit was just to high. It took 12 turns to recruit one in city with lots of hammers and heroic epic, upgrade cost of one unit was in thousands. Worst thing is that 2/3 of my garrison units was still outdated (bowman, medieval bowman, lewy, swordsmen etc). It is really pain in the ass and it is getting worse on larger maps, where you have more cities and more garrison units. In earlier eras it wasn't that much of a problem because you have more selection of units. After yous invent flintlock musket you don't get that many types of units. You have musket men, irregulars, light infantry, man at arms and pikemen. In medieval you had swordsmen, man at arms, medieval swordsmen, crossbowmen, levy, pikemen, recon guys, foot knights, crusaders and some civilizations got longbowmen. If one type of units cost to much you can fortify other type of unit (i don't mention cavalry, because i don't use cavalry as garrison units so high cost of cavalry is not a problem). In earlier eras outdated units are still pretty useful because in highly fortified city even simple bowman are useful. Against musket armies, all medieval units are just cannon fooder, so you want to upgrade your garrison units as fast as possible but when cost of single soldier is higher then cost of great wonder then there is something wrong. Problem is getting worse when you get new cities (by conquest or settler), because you don't have enough units (even outdated), to fortify them and new units cost is ridiculous. Drafting help a little but it forces you to run civics with draft option.
Overall the idea i good, bot it need a few changes. For example remove 25% cost increase on irregulars, levies and militia units. They would become main garrison units for large empires. In that case smaller countries could afford to fortify their cities with professional soldiers, but it would be harder for large empires to protect their borders because their garrison would be composed mainly of irregulars.
Other nice thing (but i don't know if possible) could be option to upgrade units to better but outdated type. For example if i have invented flintlock musket then it would be nice if i still could upgrade my bowmen to arquebus guys when cost of musket guys is to high.

Heard, agreed and changed.

Other nice thing would be decreasing cost of units if you have more resources needed to build that kind of unit. IE every source of iron will decrease cost of iron based units by 10%, in that case more resources you have the easier it gets to recruit large army. It would give player more reasons to secure resources he already have, and make a dilemma if you want to trade that resource, and in case of war you could brake trade treaties with other players to boost your unit production. Maybe food resources should decrees cost of every unit by 5%, large armies require large quantities of food, and empire with lots of food can handle larger military. Resource bonuses should apply only to units that have increased cost.
Also maybe it should be enabled to get additional resources from every player, not just demand that resource from vassal player, but I don’t know how if it is possible and how Ai would handle that.

You pointed out the main problem in the last sentence. For a relatively small gameplay change, it will require a HUGE rewrite of AI. Currently, AI doesn't know extra instances of resources can have any utility beyond selling, and now they would need to be able to evaluate the comparative value of those options. That's also the main reason why our converter buildings don't actually consume resources - AI would need to decide if they needed raw or processed resource more, and in case of several different options for processing (as with iron), which one is the best. AI simply can't do it.

Hi, I'm playing SVN 4913 at the moment and some observations I've made with Korea is that they seem to be missing some early middle-ages units. As an example I play on Emperor level and I've been at war with a strong Roman Empire since about 300-400 AD and I'm now at about 1500 AD. It's been permanent war... but I'm always on the back foot. Partly because I'm behind in the science race but also because I think there's a sizable gap in the time that stronger middle age units become available to Rome than they do to Korea.

Rome and Korea both have access to Silla Spearmen/Auxilla (4), Gakgung Bowmen/Auxilla Bowmen (4), Asian Skirmisher/Velite (4), Silla Axemen/Marian Legionary (5), Silla Swordsmen/Imperial Legionary (6) and Righteous Militia/European Levy (6) at the same time.

Then there's a gap when Korea can usually get Hwarang (7) before Rome can get Balestriere Genovese (6) and Spadaccino Lombardo (7) but not long for Korea to make the most of their Hwarang which is limited to 4 units. Then Rome kicks ass, because their units are a step ahead of the Korean's units for some time, Rome has two unlimited strength 7 land units vs Korea's four Hwarang units.

I think the same advantage applies to most of the other civs bar Korea.

It seems like Korea are missing a Crossbowman unit and Medieval Swordsman unit.

By the time Korea gets to catch up with Choson Pikemen/Swiss Guard and Militzia Communale (8) it's still imbalanced as Rome gets a unique unit plus the standard Pikeman unit. So Rome has an advantage here too. They get a unique unit as well as the standard unit whilst Korea had to make do with a limit of 4 of their unique units and nothing else on par for centuries.

Now I know the game isn't balanced and is better for it, but this seems like quite a gap in firepower for Korea during the middle ages. I hope this observation helps bring a potential gap to your attention.

Thanks for the great work.

Not all civs have all units. In general, Korea has to contend with the low quality of their melee units. To compensate that, they have excellent archers and horse archers. Beelining for Archery Training might be your best interest as Korea. You get those sweet (and unlimited) str 8 longbows, while Rome doesn't. And your horse archers, both basic and advanced are among the best there are.

Relatively casual Civ player here. I'm not sure how good (or more likely, bad) of an idea this is, but it's something I thought of and thought I'd throw out here for consideration by people who have a better handle on game balance and historicity than I.

As things stand right now with regards to a city's cultural boundaries, the first one is really important because it provides the additional 12 tiles that can be worked, but while the expansions after that can provide resources, it strikes me as a little odd that increasing the city's cultural influence only really benefits your civilization as a whole and doesn't have any direct effect on the city itself aside from an increased defensive bonus.

My idea was this: What if each cultural expansion also provided +1 food, production, and commerce on the city tile itself? This would provide a minor-but-concrete representation of the additional influence that the city in question has on the surrounding territory.

The idea itself is not bad, but it requires quite a lot of code work for a relatively small gameplay effect (those +1 bonuses are eclipsed by one worked tile, so a pop 5 city will still be better than pop 4 city that expanded two more times)

Also, I haven't played any of the SVN versions, so this might be irrelevant, but what about applying an increasing cost modifier to World Wonders to make it more difficult (but not impossible) for a small number of civilizations to build all of the wonders. Like, your first wonder would cost 100% of its base cost, then the second would be 120% or 125%, then 140% or 150% for the third... (It sounds as though you've applied a similar mechanic to units themselves, so my apologies if this is a mechanic that's already been considered or implemented)

That is a very good idea, and we are already looking into implementing that. We're not yet decided on particulars, but it will likely be implemented in some way in future.

 

[Muninn]

I have the game open right now, I checked and saw that Balroae have the normal -40% city strength. Not sure how you got the result you saw. Perhaps it was a total bonus when attacking a particular city in game? If the attacked unit was a melee one, the resulting total bonus could still have been positive despite -40% city strength.

Another thing is that the way that Civ IV handles penalties is a bit wonky mathematically. Basically, no unit is ever considered to have a penalty: instead, the game essentially merges the penalties and bonuses into a single net combat modifier, the absolute value of which is then applied as a bonus to whichever unit had the larger bonus. The end result of this system is that in combat one unit will always have a bonus of +0%, and the other will always have a bonus of at least +0%. As such, a Balroae's "penalty" will usually manifest as a +40% bonus to to their opponent (unless the opponent has a larger penalty to begin with).

The combat odds window reflects this (note that all of the bonuses and penalties will be listed under one unit), so maybe what was seen was the Balroae's -40% city strength being counted as the defender's bonus?

I thought about it a bit more, and it would not make sense. The game has no way of distinguishing your spy merely passing through a civ you have no intention of spying on, and a spy in a civ you actually want to spy on. If we lower the chance for them getting caught passing through, we lower the chance for them getting caught anywhere. Anyway, yes, all the probabilities are there, you can tweak them.

http://forums.civlovers.com/showthread.php?p=6063340

Tangential spitball idea here: What if Spy units gained experience for completing successful missions, and had promotions for things like "-10% chance of being caught while traveling through rival territory","-10% cost/+10% chance of success when performing [MISSION or GROUP OF RELATED MISSIONS]", "+1 vision range", and "+1 movement"

It doesn't address the original point directly, but it would allow things like creating spies that specialize in traveling through several civilizations to perform missions against distant rivals.

Not in near future, unless we get some outside help. We have our own big component to keep our code wizard occupied.

See above. It would be a cool thing to have, but for now we simply have no manpower to integrate it. I, for instance, wouldn't know where to start. I am more a graphics and XML guy.

Do you have a code wishlist anywhere? I don't have experience with modding the Civ IV SDK, but I'm a programmer and would be willing to spend a few evenings poking around to see how to implement something simple but low-to-moderate priority if you guys have a way to receive and approve submissions from non-team members.

Unless, of course, the big component your code guy is working on (RevolutionDCM, perhaps?) means they're working in lots of files and having somebody else poking around and making different changes in those same files would just cause more problems for them.

The idea itself is not bad, but it requires quite a lot of code work for a relatively small gameplay effect (those +1 bonuses are eclipsed by one worked tile, so a pop 5 city will still be better than pop 4 city that expanded two more times)

The actual numbers could be tweaked, possibly scaling at higher levels (ie. a large boost upon achieving Legendary, since that's only likely to happen late in the game anyways), or as a percentile boost to existing production instead.

But ultimately, since (as you pointed out) the main issue is amount of work to implement it, it's more or less a moot point.

 

[cfeyyaz]

First of all, I'd like to praise the developers for the recent changes. This increase cost mechanism seems to be a quite clever idea despite my previous skepticism and your recent tweak of the shortswordsman cost is also good. I also like the new buttons much, they are nice and authentic. AI's choice of the worked tiles seems also to be working consistently now; something that I'm glad to see.

And some few points that I want to talk about:

1. The unit upgrade costs are a bit messed up with the inclusion of cost increase system. You say that you are willing to solve the problem with some programming. But I can't really see immediately, how this will be possible. The unit upgrade tree is very complex. For example, an archer can be upgraded to both crossbowmen or longbowmen. On the other hand, you can upgrade a pikeman or a men-at-arms to a fusilier. But you can also upgrade the men-at-arms to a grenadier. :S Furthermore, there are special cases like the roman shortswordman (polybian legionary) can be upgraded to axeman (marian legionary) which can be upgraded to the swordsman (imperial legionary).

How about a temporary solution maybe - increasing the base cost for upgrading a unit from 10 to lets say 40, but decrease the gold per hammer ratio?

2. One problem is that the units become very expensive. Well, it is not the problem itself. The problem is the buildings become so cheap compared to the units. The question whether you should build your 11th swordsman or a library becomes too easy to answer, since the swordsman costs much more and it strengthens your already strong army only a tiny bit more.

Therefore, I would slightly increase the buildings' cost and/or slightly decrease the base cost of military units.

Please keep in mind that in ancient world there were only a handful of big cities with libraries and theaters and hospitals and bathhouses, whereas most of my cities in a Civ IV game have all the buildings almost all the time.

Also, one game has +1500 turns. Therefore, a library would still be a very good investment, even it would cost double the . So I wouldn't be too worried about expensive improvements.

3. I know it would be very time consuming to implement but: How about reorganizing the XML files in a different way, since we have sooo many flavour units and buildings?

For instance, you simply define a base unit spearman with 4 and lets say +100% vs cavalry. Then if arabian spearmen, it gets 10% desert strength. Then if celtic spearmen, it gets -25% vs. cavalry so that it is +75% in total. That way, if at some point you decide that all spearmen are too strong vs cavalry and they should be nerfed, you can do it by changing the attributes of the base spearmen. Wouldn't that make your work much more easier and pleasant in the long term, since it seems that you will never ever stop to improve your mod?

I personally love to alter things in games; editing stats of buildings, units, civics... optimizing the game to the best point possible! But I simply can't do it with your mod! It is so complicated, and also it is mentally exhausting if you want change things like adding +10% vs archers to every swordsmen or so.

4. Nevertheless, your mod is already very well balanced overall. Surely one can fine tune one thing or the other, but in my opinion they would be superficial. I think it is time for you to address the main features/problems in the game:

a. Tech diffusion: It is a great, revolutionary feature, and it is for me the signature feature of your mod and maybe the main reason why I only play your mod! But it is too simple. Make it a bit more dependent on other factors: Distance, relationships,... I think this has been discussed several times. But I just wanted to encourage you one more time.

b. Trading in diplomacy: AI's evaluation of how valuable a resource is, is terrible, and should be reworked. This is something that you are definitely aware of, but once again, I just want to encourage you.

 

[cfeyyaz]

@ Muninn:

I always thought that -40% city attack to balroae is identical to +40% to the defender and I didn't care about that much. But suddenly after reading your post I realised that I was wrong!

For example: If we think about a unit having -100% city attack, it would have 0 and will definitely lose the battle. Whereas +100% to the defender makes the defender only twice as tougher.

So you are right, Civ IV calculation seems to be strange. Can anyone clarify, in which cases the defender/attacker gets the bonuses/maluses?

 

[Muninn]

@ Muninn:

I always thought that -40% city attack to balroae is identical to +40% to the defender and I didn't care about that much. But suddenly after reading your post I realised that I was wrong!

For example: If we think about a unit having -100% city attack, it would have 0 and will definitely lose the battle. Whereas +100% to the defender makes the defender only twice as tougher.

So you are right, Civ IV calculation seems to be strange. Can anyone clarify, in which cases the defender/attacker gets the bonuses/maluses?

The game begins by tallying up the bonuses as you'd intuitively expect them to work. For the time being, we'll call these tallies ATTACKER.BONUS and DEFENDER.BONUS.

The game wants whichever bonus is lower to become a +0 bonus. So the bonuses get changed as follows:

ATTACKER.BONUS = ATTACKER.BONUS - min(ATTACKER.BONUS, DEFENDER.BONUS)
DEFENDER.BONUS = DEFENDER.BONUS - min(ATTACKER.BONUS, DEFENDER.BONUS)​

...or in laymans terms, it subtracts whichever bonus is smaller from both bonuses. (In this case, smaller means "less than the other" and not "a more minor change". So a -100% penalty is smaller than a +5% bonus).

So in other words, the possible scenarios are as follows:

One unit has a bonus, the other has nothing: Works exactly as expected.
One unit has a penalty, the other has nothing: The penalty becomes a bonus for the other unit. For example, if a Bomber (-50% vs. sea units) attacks a sea unit, it turns into a Bomber (+0% bonus) attacking a sea unit (+50% bonus)
One unit has a bonus, the other has a penalty: Same as penalty-vs-nothing, but with the bonus added in. So a Bomber (-50% vs sea units) attacking an sea unit with +25% vs Air units becomes Bomber (+0% bonus), Sea Unit (+75% bonus)
Both units have bonuses: The bonuses are reduced by an equal amount so that the smaller one becomes zero. A Swordsman (+10% city attack) vs a defending Spearman (+25% from city defense) becomes Swordsman (+0%), Spearman (+15%)
Both units have penalties: Same as with two bonuses: We add until one unit has +0 and the other has a bonus. So a Knight (-40% city attack) vs an Explorer (-40% city defense from unit, but the city's defense bonus still gives it +25% for a net value of -15%) will become Knight (+0%) vs Explorer (+25%)​

Interestingly enough, you mentioned initially thinking +40% to yourself and -40% to your opponent would be identical before thinking about it and realizing otherwise. What the game is essentially doing is making it so your initial interpretation is correct, at the cost of making it so that penalties don't do what you'd think they do (ie. your revelation about what a -100% actually means in game)

 

[cfeyyaz]

I see that you are working on a revolutionary financial upgrade. At first sight, things are looking promising. I just want to add a few suggestions, and maybe you consider them:

1. A castle would provide some military presence in the region and therefore would prevent banditry. This would encourage trade. Therefore castle might give +1 or +2 to caravan house.

2. I'd like to see the merchant specialists earlier, so that one can generate a great merchant. Currently, we can generate a great merchant only after researching currency, or by building the Temple of Artemis. However, we know that the ancient Egyptians organized several great trade expeditions to the Land of Punt more than a thousand years before the invention of currency. Such an expedition would be the equivalent of a great merchant being established in a foreign city in the Civ IV game.

3. Why does clock tower give +20%? Isn't it a bit too much? For instance, why is the impact of building a clock tower greater than the invention of printing press?

4. (more to come, maybe...)

 

[sazhdapec]

1. A castle would provide some military presence in the region and therefore would prevent banditry. This would encourage trade. Therefore castle might give +1 or +2 to caravan house.

Military presence doesn't prevent banditry on its own. And the lack of banditry on its own doesn't encourage trade.

3. Why does clock tower give +20%? Isn't it a bit too much? For instance, why is the impact of building a clock tower greater than the invention of printing press?

Did you calculate this? The description says otherwise.

Spoiler :

 

[cfeyyaz]

... 4. I'm a bit skeptical about river dock.

a. I think the +1 for tiles adjacent to river is already simulates the trade along the river.
b. The benefit of river dock is identical to the normal harbor. But I think a city should benefit more from sea trade than river trade.

@sazhdapec:

1. Of course it does. Trade can only thrive, if you keep the trade routes secure. I was also trying to find good applications for the castle for better gameplay. In vanilla Civ IV, castle gives +1 trade routes, and it seems that the developers of this game would be also agreed with me.

3. I was talking about the very recent upgrade, SVN 4947.

 

[civman110]

I apologise ahead of time for the long post, but this is a very complex and often misunderstood topic.

Nope, by oppression I mean roughly the next century after the abolition of slavery. Jim Crow laws and such. The whole system of racial segregation was built on a series of laws.

Which were struck down, or were never legal due to already existing laws once the Constitution was amended, which essentially leads back to my first point - that it was institutionalized in the Constitution. Federal law after the Civil War actually provided legal protection to former slaves. Republicans in the South tried to enforce these laws during that entire century, but were opposed by Democratic opposition, the KKK, and fringe elements in the Republican party.

What you're referring to is criminal activities and also the illegal abuse of the judicial and legislative system by Woodrow Wilson and others. The segregation laws were always unconstitutional and were illegal without having to write any new laws and eventually all of these new illegal laws (Woodrow Wilson's segregation laws) were overturned, but it took time. In some cases new law was written to enforce already existing civil rights law (which was entirely redundant from a legal standpoint, but makes sense politically considering the political environment).

For example:

"During the Reconstruction period of 1865&#8211;1877, federal law provided civil rights protection in the U.S. South for freedmen, the African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and former free blacks. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, having used insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting. Extensive voter fraud was also used."

"Blacks were still elected to local offices through the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease."

"Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat elected from New Jersey, but he was the first Southern-born president of the post-Civil War period. He appointed Southerners to his Cabinet. Some quickly began to press for segregated workplaces, although Washington, D.C., and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War."

"Wilson introduced segregation in federal offices, despite much protest from African-American leaders and groups. He appointed segregationist Southern politicians because of his own firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of black and white Americans alike."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws#Origins_of_Jim_Crow_laws

From a legal standpoint the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was redundant, since segregation was already considered unlawful in existing federal laws. During the Reconstruction period Republicans in the South were trying to enforce the current civil rights laws on the books, but faced a lot of heavy handed political opposition.

"1865 to 1877 following the Civil War... A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U.S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau protected the legal rights of freedmen (former slaves/blacks), negotiated labor contracts, and set up schools and even churches for them."

"President Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) supported Radical Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans in the South through the use of the Enforcement Acts (to enforce the existing federal laws) passed by Congress. Grant suppressed the Ku Klux Klan..."

*Just a note, apparently wikipedia considers "radical reconstruction" to be Republican supporters of civil rights and makes no mention that the Ku Klux Klan operated as a wing of the Democratic party... Wikipedia also refers to the Democrats as "moderates" during this time period. If they didn't support the Enforcement Acts I cannot fathom what was so "moderate" about them, especially since the KKK was a Democrat voting block.

"The Enforcement Acts were three bills passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes which protected African-Americans&#8217; right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Passed under the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act to protect these rights."

^ This doesn't seem "radical" to me and this was in 1870 and 1871 almost 100 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Laws. Those racist and radical Southern Republicans supporting civil rights and suppressing the KKK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_Acts

"Meanwhile, public support for Reconstruction policies faded in the North, as voters decided the Civil War was over and slavery was dead. The Democrats, who strongly opposed Reconstruction, regained control of the House of Representatives in 1874; the presidential electoral vote in 1876 was very close and confused, forcing Congress to make the final decision. The deployment of the U.S. Army was central to the survival of Republican state governments; they collapsed when the Army was removed in 1877 as part of a Congressional bargain to elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era

As you can see the already existing federal laws post-civil war just needed to be enforced, but were illegally obstructed mainly by the Democrats & the KKK wing of their party plus small fringe elements inside the Republican party who allied themselves against Republican controlled state governments which enforced the existing federal civil rights laws.

...As I mentioned earlier, once the Constitution was amended, institutionalized oppression should have been over legally speaking and it was in many areas until obstructionist policies (which were never legal) by the opposition took hold often through illegal activities such as insurgent paramilitary groups, voter suppression, intimidation, new illegal federal segregation laws (Woodrow Wilson), etc. I believe this is enough to demonstrate that it wasn't the Common Law system that allowed minorities to be oppressed - it was dirty politics and illegal activities.

I am not really sure how that distinction would translate into gameplay mechanics in our mod. While I have enough knowledge to realize the differences between civil law and common law, I do not "feel" them enough and see enough of their tangible consequences to build Civ 4 civic effects from that. One more thing - I think historically all countries stuck with one or the other, I can't really recall any that changed from one to the other. Does such a permanent thing merit being a civic?

You may be right that both Civic Law and Common Law are too similar to warrant two civics, but I do believe that Civic Law (the Civil Service civic) should be a very viable option late game and receive additional benefits throughout the ages (or a Civil Law or Common Law option should be made available during the Middle Ages and then a Supreme Court later on) to reflect the progression of the Roman Legal system into modern day Civic Law. Many countries often have a mixture of both Civil and Common Law systems, but are predominantly one or the other.

In regards to countries switching from one system to the other. There's none I can think of off hand, so you could very well be right on that, however there has been the incorporation of elements from both legal systems in certain countries as I mentioned earlier.

The same point can also be made regarding some other civics, for instance Collectivism. I think driving ideologies are important enough in XX century to have their representation as civics.

Social Justice is a central element of Collectivism. There are also elements of Social Justice in Common Law and Representation as well, but it takes on a bit of a different form in Collectivism - which is mixed with other Communist ideologies, but nonetheless the ideology of Social Justice is already represented in several more substantive civics. On it's own it just seems redundant and lacking depth to be it's own civic imo.

 

[[Y]]

Yes, jungle is a problem by design. There are some civs that fare better against it (Mayans), but in general it is a terrain feature to be avoided. And yes, there were no bronze age or earlier civilizations that we know of that thrived in jungles. The closest thing would be earliest Indian civilizations, but those vanished without a trace before Classical antiquity even started.

I started a game today. I had 5 visible resources in my capital's area, and they were all covered in jungle, meaning I couldn't make use of any of them for hundreds of turns. I regenerated the map.

I don't think that jungle is broken by design. The design is fine. The problem is that a player should have methods of utilizing the jungle. There should be improvements, techs, or civics that allow the jungles to become practical, even before they can be chopped down. In this way, jungles aren't a randomly determined handicap, but a factor on play style, which is exactly what they should be. Chopping them down should come in later as a huge infrastructure sweep, such as having to replace all slave farms for regular farms when switching to peasant servitude.

As it stands, some civilizations are currently able to thrive in jungles (Maya, Aztecs, etc). It's cool that civilizations that have actually come from jungle terrains have it easier in the game, but that isn't a reason for all other civilizations to be penalized, and forbidden from adapting to such maps. When a map loads and I see jungle everywhere, I should think "Ahh, so I'm going to have to play this way" and not think "Ahh, so this game is pretty much a lose cause...".

 

[sazhdapec]

... 4. I'm a bit skeptical about river dock.

a. I think the +1 for tiles adjacent to river is already simulates the trade along the river.
b. The benefit of river dock is identical to the normal harbor. But I think a city should benefit more from sea trade than river trade.

Well, I've already explained this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13972007&postcount=5462
In short, you don't have to build a city near a river to get 'adjacent to river +1 bonus'.

1. Of course it does. Trade can only thrive, if you keep the trade routes secure. I was also trying to find good applications for the castle for better gameplay. In vanilla Civ IV, castle gives +1 trade routes, and it seems that the developers of this game would be also agreed with me.

Well, the main purpose of a castle is to defend better. If you don't need to ward off massive attacks there is no need to build a castle. The real gameplay issue is that most cities never see combat and for them a castle becomes useless.

3. I was talking about the very recent upgrade, SVN 4947.

Now in 4953 a clock tower boosts only the culture.