Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

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.

I think there is a modcomp somewhere on CFC for that or something very similar... In general I must say I am quite dissatisfied with the way espionage is implemented in Civ 4 (too much micromanagement). If I were to overhaul espionage one day, I'd probably get rid of the spy units entirely and make a system closer to Civ:BE.

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.

I wish I had. I am not so organized as to write out my code wishes; I usually just throw them at Josh (our code guy) and hope he gets to it. Anyway, contact me through a PM if you wish to help us with small code bits. I think there is always more room for that.

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.

I think it is... But that shouldn't preclude some smaller changes.

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).

We are very aware of the issue, and we'll be looking at ways of fixing that.

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?

I am not sure if we can specify decimal ratios, and lowering the ration from 2 to 1 would be too great a step.

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.

That was already done with later buildings. We may see after additional testing if we need to increase it more.

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.

Interestingly, I think what you are saying is actually possible. But it would require a tremendous amount of effort, and also it will have a disadvantage from a modder's point of view: currently you can see ALL the things you can do to a unit in XML. If we do this, you will constantly have to check up on schema file to see your opportunities.

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.

Maybe. Though I must say that we tend to apply the KISS prinicple to our design lately. I prefer to have systems that players find easy to understand and use. For example, right now you can always be sure what your bonus will be.

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.

Yep, we're aware of that and trying to fix this all the time. It is already significantly better than it was. If you have any particular observations you could share with us regarding this, they may be useful.

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:

It is not really revolutionary per se, not how production upgrade was, at any rate. Most bonuses are still there, just moved for logical consistency and better distributed throughout the tech tree (for example, a marketplace doesn't provide you with gold - it boosts trade; it is tax collectors who actually bring you gold). It also aims to make most buildings have a better, singular purpose and eliminate smallish bonuses like +5% that are not really useful for players and just clutter stuff up.

The biggest change is probably the lack of scaling gold from shrines.

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.

This is represented by you in game by physically protecting routes from barbarians. Remember that unless running Feudal Aristocracy, a castle is merely a fortification, not a seat of local authority, and its current stats reflect it. With FA, you can build several upgrades to your castles that enhance their functionality.

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.

I have to playtest to give you an answer on this one, to get a "feel" for the issue.

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?

That's what you get for commenting on an ongoing multi-part upload. It doesn't.

... 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.

Historically, river trade was more important than sea trade for a very long while. Before oceangoing ships, coastlines were technically just long dangerous rivers with one bank. If you look at most big cities both historically and nowadays, you'd see them founded on rivers, most often as trade posts.

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

I think I will have to answer you separately on this one; anyway, we're getting mightily off-topic.

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...".

Hm, do you have any realistic suggestions regarding that?

 

[zoob]

Hi all.
Usually i play world map large or huge with all kind of civs until i outperform AI or fail on Immortal.

Big ups to latest changes on SVN and those awesome new resource images

Some things came to my mind playing last game...

- I love that AI combines different unit types very good. Maybe there is even more improvement in ancient combat bonus system. Now you need at least 2 battering rams to give siege bonus to str 3 melitia and above units. I would like to have at least one battering ram in city attack stack to let small siege bonus for the other units to kick in. As far as i see it the aid bonus is calced due to the sum of of relevant unit types.

Experimental proposal:
* Battering ram could give better siege aid if upped to 3 with -50% vs melee, archery units and recon units. Acts as a primary unit for siege aid and city bombard only
* The same way 1 scout could give better recon aid if upped to 2 with -50% vs melee and archery units (drop bonus vs. animals). Same cost as warrior. Acts as a fast unit for wounded enemies and recon aid

- Unit overcrowding malus (like -x% str) is not shown in the combat preview. I hope it is calced

- Bronze Working 4 swordsmen: in latest SVN unit cost raise per additional unit too low. With food cities you can spam those now in 2 or 3 turns. I suggest from 3% to 10%

- National Parks (like french Terrior Wineyard) in enemy terroritory effect my own city. Is this intended?

- Regarding : Playing world map, i think there is too much health in ancient times. When cities grow to max pop, i would like to have my cities suffer from severe unhealthiness issues with not having any health buildings (e.g. well) build.
When a city is unhealthy there is now just a food -1 penalty. Maybe city epidemics increase by 3% each unhealthy level?
Now there are ways to get around: granary with crop resources give fast health, smokehouse with those common animal resources (+ animal husbendary) gives plenty and hey there are maybe even sea resources around...
I heard a few weeks ago you want to redesign health in RI anyway. Looking forward to it

Small idea for example:
* Aquaeduct: need mountain or hill in city vicinity, acts as a source of fresh water

- I dont like the warehouse building with its current +1 +1

Happy holidays

 

[sazhdapec]

Experimental proposal:
* Battering ram could give better siege aid if upped to 3 with -50% vs melee, archery units and recon units. Acts as a primary unit for siege aid and city bombard only
* The same way 1 scout could give better recon aid if upped to 2 with -50% vs melee and archery units (drop bonus vs. animals). Same cost as warrior. Acts as a fast unit for wounded enemies and recon aid

I agree but let's tune the numbers because your ram could kill a chariot with a realistic probability.
There is a mechanic that allows to modify the unit's strength if it is near a special unit (special promotions 'fear' or 'horses scared'). I suggest to use it with a ram: buff the strength of a ram to 3 but if it is not near a city it receives -100% strength. Yes, they would become pretty powerful near a city but this is a good reason to fight more battles in an open field.
However, I'd like to point out that though it's logical to receive a siege bonus if you have a ram in a stack it would be much easier to attack cities since you don't have to overcrowd the stack to receive the bonus.
As for a scout do you feel it's right for such an early recon aid? Or do you think this light unit should enhance major battles? I think it's better to introduce an 'improved scout' with say archery: 2 strength, 20% withdrawal chance, better tribal villages, -40% city strength, +25% hills/forest attack, roughly same cost as militia.

- Bronze Working 4 swordsmen: in latest SVN unit cost raise per additional unit too low. With food cities you can spam those now in 2 or 3 turns. I suggest from 3% to 10%

First you could spam those when they had 0% cost increase. Second since shortswordsmen are people the city with lots of food and growth potential can definitely make lots of them.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

- I love that AI combines different unit types very good. Maybe there is even more improvement in ancient combat bonus system. Now you need at least 2 battering rams to give siege bonus to str 3 melitia and above units. I would like to have at least one battering ram in city attack stack to let small siege bonus for the other units to kick in. As far as i see it the aid bonus is calced due to the sum of of relevant unit types.

Experimental proposal:
* Battering ram could give better siege aid if upped to 3 with -50% vs melee, archery units and recon units. Acts as a primary unit for siege aid and city bombard only

Rams are low strength by design, and are not intended to provide aid. Because really, how helpful to you is a battering ram in combat - not for bringing gates down, but in actual combat? A catapult could serve as a primitive form of artillery support for you, but ram?

* The same way 1 scout could give better recon aid if upped to 2 with -50% vs melee and archery units (drop bonus vs. animals). Same cost as warrior. Acts as a fast unit for wounded enemies and recon aid

Its upgrade (skirmisher) arrives too soon for it to really matter. There are very few major wars before that.

- Unit overcrowding malus (like -x% str) is not shown in the combat preview. I hope it is calced

Perhaps you've noticed that about other maluses too. Civ 4 engine doesn't apply maluses - it applies them as a bonus to opposing side.

- Bronze Working 4 swordsmen: in latest SVN unit cost raise per additional unit too low. With food cities you can spam those now in 2 or 3 turns. I suggest from 3% to 10%

That is as intended. They are unremarkable units even at the tech they're discovered. Quantity vs quality approach, if you will.

- National Parks (like french Terrior Wineyard) in enemy terroritory effect my own city. Is this intended?

No, that's a cool vanilla Civ 4 bug you found

- Regarding : Playing world map, i think there is too much health in ancient times. When cities grow to max pop, i would like to have my cities suffer from severe unhealthiness issues with not having any health buildings (e.g. well) build.
When a city is unhealthy there is now just a food -1 penalty. Maybe city epidemics increase by 3% each unhealthy level?
Now there are ways to get around: granary with crop resources give fast health, smokehouse with those common animal resources (+ animal husbendary) gives plenty and hey there are maybe even sea resources around...
I heard a few weeks ago you want to redesign health in RI anyway. Looking forward to it

Yes, perhaps you are right regarding too much health early on. We should probably redesign health system in such a way that it too would be a real growth limiter in early eras.

Small idea for example:
* Aquaeduct: need mountain or hill in city vicinity, acts as a source of fresh water

Too easy to get fresh water then.

- I dont like the warehouse building with its current +1 +1

Me neither. Will probably think of something...

 

[[Y]]

Hm, do you have any realistic suggestions regarding that?

Don't know much of the history of jungle living, but there are plenty of tribes and natives that prove it's possible, and cultures have prospered in them. RI already recognizes this with several cultures, but fails to allow any civ to achieve it aside from those that actually are jungle/tropical civilizations.

I think all that's necessary is boosting forest/jungle with the Hunter Gatherer civic, and some improvements that can increase yields on resource tiles, but without providing access to that resource (ie, the resource can be cultivated enough for nearby inhabitants to use, but not enough for it to become a main trade item).

Rams are low strength by design, and are not intended to provide aid. Because really, how helpful to you is a battering ram in combat - not for bringing gates down, but in actual combat? A catapult could serve as a primitive form of artillery support for you, but ram?

I've been thinking for a while that it would be cool to see different types of siege units provide different types of bonuses. So a battering ram wouldn't provide much benefit, but a siege tower could provide a fair boost specifically against archers, etc.

Yes, perhaps you are right regarding too much health early on. We should probably redesign health system in such a way that it too would be a real growth limiter in early eras.

I always thought it would be a huge improvement if cities had to be founded on fresh water tiles until some technology is reached (aqueduct?). Perhaps different technologies can increase the range from fresh water (default to requiring fresh water, when a well is available it can go one further, aqueduct can make that two tiles further, etc).

In terms of game play, this forces all early cities to have a natural health source (fresh water), and the global health bonus can be dropped/removed.

It also limits how many cities can settled. The game currently has a ridiculous ancient/cultural eras expansion boom. This change would help reduce that boom and put an emphasis on building fewer, but strong cities early on, rather than rushing to build as many settlers as possible before all the good resources are taken. This also makes the Creative trait more useful, as it will be a way to claim resources that are too far from fresh water to settle directly.

Lastly, it also will put much more emphasis on waging wars over the good river tiles, which would add a nice realism to the early game. It always frustrated me that the Fertile Crescent era isn't well represented in RI, but putting an emphasis on settling rivers can easily recreate such history.

 

[eadric]

I recently completed a game with the latest SVN and wanted to give some feedback.

It was a custom game on a Huge map (I customized Totestra for RI, it makes amazing maps), 12 players, Monarch difficulty. I played as Russia for the first time.

While I really liked a lot of the changes you guys have made since 3.25, the balance seems to be a bit off. It was one of the easiest RI games I have ever played; none of the other civs ever attacked me as my strength rating was so impressive, I was nearly a full era ahead in techs, and was able to build nearly all wonders. I won in 1715 AD by a cultural victory (possible because I founded Zoroastrianism).

It's tough to say exactly why the AI struggled so profoundly in this game. I will start a new game on a higher difficutly level, and with a less overpowered civ, and see how it goes (It takes me a few months to finish a game though, so you may have a new build out by then!). I suspect some of the problems stemmed from the new unit cost upgrade. The AI warmongers like it did in 3.25, seemingly unable to calculate that the higher unit costs result in a civ falling behind in infrastructure if they are constantly at war. I do like the concept of higher unit costs to reduce the "stack of doom" effect, it just needs some tweaking.

The new "great works of science" built by Great Scientists are cool and add some enjoyable flavor, but the AI did not build any of them in this game. As such, I was able to monopolize all of them in one city. Undoubtedly this was another factor in the ease of victory. I don't know if the AI just needs to be taught to value these new great works appropriately, or if they aren't actually able to build them due to some bug.

I've noticed a lot of players complaining about the AI razing every city on the map. I had this problem for ages, too, and was very frustrated with it. This game, I turned off culture flipping of cities, and the excessive razing problem was completely gone. It seems the AI is placing too much value on the culture present in a city, so they just go around razing the entire map. Not sure if there is an easy fix for this other than disabling the culture flipping option - I have tried editing the AI razing function and have had no success.

One last balance issue, regarding the "Trained Archers" doctrine. I have always viewed this doctrine as overpowered. Once a unit gets to level 3 and has the full line of promotions from this doctrine, it is virtually indestructible due to the combination of first strikes and first strike immunity. With the change in this SVN to 8 strength longbows, the need for a nerf has only increased.

Thanks for your work on this wonderful mod!

 

[Dejagore]

Anyone tried 3.25 version over multiplayer ? Is it stable (no OOS) ?
Also - is it better to play long multiplayer games over steam or via direct IP ?

 

[Drakarska]

Anyone tried 3.25 version over multiplayer ? Is it stable (no OOS) ?
Also - is it better to play long multiplayer games over steam or via direct IP ?

3.25 is stable with direct IP, as my 4 boys and I usually play on my days off ( much to the chagrin of the significant other... Well, at least we still rate fresh baked cookies ). There is also a couple of game sites ( forget which, I'll ask my oldest) that you can connect to and find peeps to MP with. As for long game, Direct IP is best ( We usually play Earth 18 or modded games) as the OOS issue is significantly less than using steam.

 

[AbsintheRed]

3.25 is stable with direct IP, as my 4 boys and I usually play on my days off ( much to the chagrin of the significant other... Well, at least we still rate fresh baked cookies ).

Sounds perfect

 

[Routalempi]

Wow, it seems that the version 3.3 has been released as a christmas surprise! Really curious to see what has been added to the mod in the last few months since I haven't played the SVN for a while.

Happy holidays for the R:I team and players!

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hey everyone! For this Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, we are proud and pleased to bring you the official 3.3 version of our mod. For those who have been waiting specifically for that, no, we didn't implement the Revolution component fully yet, so it is not included in 3.3. Still, here is a short list of changes as compared to previous 3.25 version (that is, one and a half years' worth of changes).


• Buildings almost never provide %production bonuses, workshop tile improvement does not exist anymore
• New specialist: craftsman, generates no GP points, but with appropriate technologies and civics can generate large amounts of production
• New buildings and effects to simulate gradual shift to industrial production (craftsmen) from cottage industries (worked tiles)
• Electricity now very important for industrial production and many modern buildings


• Two new playable civilizations: Hungary and Mayans. Both have NBs, NIs, lots of flavor units, leaders etc.
• All playable civilizations now have at least 5 leaders
• New leader trait: conqueror. Improves cavalry, siege units and rural logistics
• Many existing leaders had their traits and favorite civics changed
• Zulu civilization expanded to include all Nguni peoples and renamed to reflect that


• Reworked late-game health and epidemic prevention; pandemic colony gone, many new medical projects for increasing global health and lowering epidemic chance
• Castles totally reworked and can be improved with various add-ons under Feudal Aristocracy
• Effects of pagan temples now better balanced and more diverse
• Rebalanced and switched around gold, commerce and trade bonuses
• Religious shrines now provide a fixed gold income instead of scaling to number of cities
• New buildings: Trade Fair, River Port, Tax Office, Workshop, Print Shop, Newspaper
• New wonders: Ford Motor Company, Bayer AG
• Many wonder effects rebalanced
• Many buildings now get flavor versions for various cultural artstyles


• South China and Germany have new National Improvements
• Mines for precious metals now a separate improvement that advances differently from regular mines
• Food crop plantations are now more useful
• Flat terrain features (such as fertile soils) no longer block line of sight
• PerfectMongoose map script tweaked to produce more hospitable maps and correctly place flood plains and oases


• WW2 armored cars and Humvees removed
• New units: Composite Bowman, Early Crossbowman (both only available to some civs), Galleass, Mountain Infantry (WW1 and WW2 versions)
• Added many new flavor units to various civilizations
• Rebalanced and reworked upgrade lines for most ships
• Reworked upgrade trees for most land units
• All combat unit classes increase in costs per number of units already built


• Great Scientists are now able to construct era-appropriate Great Works of Science
• Great Merchants are now able to found three types of enterprises in industrial-modern era: car factories, pharmaceutical companies and movie studios. Most civilizations have flavor versions of those
• Any playable civilization, when running out of historical Great People names, will now spawn people with random, yet plausible civ-specific names


• AI should now be less eager to attack cities with cavalry
• AI will refuse peaceful vassalization
• AI leaders will remember good things done to them longer and will quicker forget bad things
• AI will be much more rational when deciding whether to raze a city they have taken
• AI should now be smarter when deciding what tiles to work


• Rebalanced and replaced many civics; many civic combinations now have additional effects through special national buildings
• Reduced relations bonuses and maluses from traits
• Rebel slave and serf strength now depends not on era, but on weapon technology available to player (same as player’s irregular unit line)
• Many tech prerequisites and costs reworked
• Open borders no longer provide free culture under any circumstances
• Reworked many in-game buttons, especially for units and resources. Units no more use vanilla-style buttons
• Some tweaks to pedia: filter leaders by playable status, show unit upgrade trees for a selected civ, show building upgrade chart
• Significantly improved performance due to various dll optimizations
• Special characters in unit and building names should no longer display erroneously in some cases
• Upgraded the version of K-Mod used in RI to 1.44b
• Merged in graphics paging for dealing with memory errors (can be toggled in graphics options)

Get the new version here:

Full version (download link).

Light version (download link).

Happy holidays everyone!

 

[Shuikkanen]

The download page has a typo. The redirection link misses a colon after 'https'

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The download page has a typo. The redirection link misses a colon after 'https'

A forum quirk. It assumes all links should start with http://, therefore it automatically tried to create a link that looks like http://https...

Fixed.

 

[sazhdapec]

Wow! This is unexpected!

 

[Dejagore]

Many thanks to Realism Invictus team for this holiday gift. Will start a new multiplayer session right now!

 

[zoob]

Great release. Time to celebrate

 

[Michkov]

Have you got an archive version for 3.3 to download as well?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

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.

You see, here I think we run into different interpretation of what "Legal" civic category represents. You are being very straightforward in your opinion that it represents the legal system of a country. I had a less direct thing in mind when I designed that category - "Legal" to me was "where the current government derives its legitimacy", that is, mostly the underlying ideology of the state.

In this light, "Civil Service" is what we saw in, say, Roman Republic (and other classical republics), where the government was founded on the eagerness of citizens to enter service to serve the state. Basically, it is an ideology of channeling personal ambition into government service.

With this interpretation in mind, I am not sure if it should be able to survive until modern times. I don't think there are states anywhere founded on that principle. Most modern states are founded instead on the idea of representation - of being founded by and for people, and of government (or at least the legislative branch in most modern democracies) existing as a means of their participation in ruling the state.

Don't know much of the history of jungle living, but there are plenty of tribes and natives that prove it's possible, and cultures have prospered in them. RI already recognizes this with several cultures, but fails to allow any civ to achieve it aside from those that actually are jungle/tropical civilizations.

Notably, none of these cultures seemed to have continuously prospered. Neither early Indian civilizations, nor classical Khmer, nor Mayans did not survive for long, and jungle was quick to reclaim what was left for them.

I think all that's necessary is boosting forest/jungle with the Hunter Gatherer civic, and some improvements that can increase yields on resource tiles, but without providing access to that resource (ie, the resource can be cultivated enough for nearby inhabitants to use, but not enough for it to become a main trade item).

But from gameplay point of view you make a valid point and a plausible suggestion. I will consider how this could be done in an interesting way.

I've been thinking for a while that it would be cool to see different types of siege units provide different types of bonuses. So a battering ram wouldn't provide much benefit, but a siege tower could provide a fair boost specifically against archers, etc.

I believe that currently the stack aid system is abstract enough so as not to go into this kind of detail. We can't really make combat in Civ series very realistic, as it is already a rather bizzare mix of tactical and strategic.

I always thought it would be a huge improvement if cities had to be founded on fresh water tiles until some technology is reached (aqueduct?). Perhaps different technologies can increase the range from fresh water (default to requiring fresh water, when a well is available it can go one further, aqueduct can make that two tiles further, etc).

In terms of game play, this forces all early cities to have a natural health source (fresh water), and the global health bonus can be dropped/removed.

It also limits how many cities can settled. The game currently has a ridiculous ancient/cultural eras expansion boom. This change would help reduce that boom and put an emphasis on building fewer, but strong cities early on, rather than rushing to build as many settlers as possible before all the good resources are taken. This also makes the Creative trait more useful, as it will be a way to claim resources that are too far from fresh water to settle directly.

Lastly, it also will put much more emphasis on waging wars over the good river tiles, which would add a nice realism to the early game. It always frustrated me that the Fertile Crescent era isn't well represented in RI, but putting an emphasis on settling rivers can easily recreate such history.

I wouldn't want to restrict early settlement options too much. Though I agree that the importance of arable land in early history is somewhat downplayed in our mod, but there have to be other ways of representing that without nerfing everything else too much.

While I really liked a lot of the changes you guys have made since 3.25, the balance seems to be a bit off. It was one of the easiest RI games I have ever played; none of the other civs ever attacked me as my strength rating was so impressive, I was nearly a full era ahead in techs, and was able to build nearly all wonders. I won in 1715 AD by a cultural victory (possible because I founded Zoroastrianism).

Well, this demonstrates an unfortunate truth of Civ series as a whole that we didn't yet fully prevent in our mod as well - if you get ahead, you're ahead for good. You must have gotten a lucky start, and just kept on building on that.

It's tough to say exactly why the AI struggled so profoundly in this game. I will start a new game on a higher difficutly level, and with a less overpowered civ, and see how it goes (It takes me a few months to finish a game though, so you may have a new build out by then!). I suspect some of the problems stemmed from the new unit cost upgrade. The AI warmongers like it did in 3.25, seemingly unable to calculate that the higher unit costs result in a civ falling behind in infrastructure if they are constantly at war. I do like the concept of higher unit costs to reduce the "stack of doom" effect, it just needs some tweaking.

OTOH, it should have helped those civs that would otherwise be easily crushed by such warmongers. Despite one's perceptions, not all AI leaders are compulsive warmongers. I have some suspicions on how to make AI more effective, but I have to test them out first.

The new "great works of science" built by Great Scientists are cool and add some enjoyable flavor, but the AI did not build any of them in this game. As such, I was able to monopolize all of them in one city. Undoubtedly this was another factor in the ease of victory. I don't know if the AI just needs to be taught to value these new great works appropriately, or if they aren't actually able to build them due to some bug.

They are able to build them, and they normally do. Once again, you must have gotten un/lucky.

I've noticed a lot of players complaining about the AI razing every city on the map. I had this problem for ages, too, and was very frustrated with it. This game, I turned off culture flipping of cities, and the excessive razing problem was completely gone. It seems the AI is placing too much value on the culture present in a city, so they just go around razing the entire map. Not sure if there is an easy fix for this other than disabling the culture flipping option - I have tried editing the AI razing function and have had no success.

I think we already dealt with this issue by now. Currently, AI should be much more rational in the way it handles cities.

One last balance issue, regarding the "Trained Archers" doctrine. I have always viewed this doctrine as overpowered. Once a unit gets to level 3 and has the full line of promotions from this doctrine, it is virtually indestructible due to the combination of first strikes and first strike immunity. With the change in this SVN to 8 strength longbows, the need for a nerf has only increased.

Thanks for the observation. I'll consider a nerf.

Have you got an archive version for 3.3 to download as well?

Do we need to? I was under impression that it wasn't really needed.

 

[keldath]

3.3 yeay! the best mod in the world of civ4.


EDIT
i keep getting fails upon download, something with down loader not verified,
could you please supply another source link? perhaps for the lite version at first?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

3.3 yeay! the best mod in the world of civ4.


EDIT
i keep getting fails upon download, something with down loader not verified,
could you please supply another source link? perhaps for the lite version at first?

Sourceforge has a lot of different mirrors for downloading, just select a different one. Anyway, you can also get it from ModDB if it doesn't work: http://www.moddb.com/mods/realism-invictus/downloads