Realism Invictus

[xondrax]

Germany does not have unique improvement, is it intendet? I remember they had begwerk. (playing 3.3)

 

[Shuikkanen]

Germany does not have unique improvement, is it intendet? I remember they had begwerk. (playing 3.3)

Bergwerk was removed, and now they have Autobahn. Autobahn is a route though, so the game doesn't count it as a unique improvement, even though for all practical purposes it is.

 

[xondrax]

Bergwerk was removed, and now they have Autobahn. Autobahn is a route though, so the game doesn't count it as a unique improvement, even though for all practical purposes it is.

Thank you!

edit: btw, I just lost on turn 15 to 5 barbs spawning near my city from tribal village ...

 

[sazhdapec]

More feedback.

1) Regarding this behaviour: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14186064&postcount=5658
I have an observation: these are not his distinctive units. If I give the AI his distinctive units through world builder the problem does not occur. The question, however, remains: why does AI do that?
2) What do you think of removing the semi-modern infantry upgrade to motorized infantry and the modern infantry upgrade to IFV thus leaving two separate trees: the slow (1) infantry and fast (2) mech infantry?
3) A request: more compact view of giant enemy stacks. The current variant does not show everything when there are too many units. The game shows most of them individually (because of the upgrades I guess).
4) Is there a way to make different logistics values on different terrains: highest on flatlands, worse on hills, far worse on forests/jungles?
5) Gems are not metals. Maybe they should be revealed by another tech? Mining or city planning (because of a jeweler)?
6) More idiotic AI behaviour:
- AI likes to separate single units (often powerful) from a stack and just send them for slaughter where main army can't help them.
- AI can build insanely expensive units in freshly built cities
- AI does not retreat when facing a city it can't capture. This is especially fun when it stands near a city controlled by another AI. Because until the defending side can't kill the stack in one turn it won't attack too.
7) So maybe introduce some sort of penalty if an army is in enemy territory for a long time, for example, increasing supply costs: first turn zero per unit, second - one and so on (minus of course supply costs modifiers).
8) I've played the release version, Japanese civ as Oda Nobunaga. I must say Wako is super cool: 100% city attack with 20% bonus to usual defenders right away plus amphibious is pretty powerful.
I liked the great change in production-costs ratio: I have never built research or wealth (being industrious) which I think is an awesome result of your work.
I also noticed that AI had razed cities a lot. Even in strangest situations.
Unfortunately I couldn't finish the game because after the save became nearly 3,5Mb the program started to crash after several turns.
9) A request: increase distance from palace maintenance drastically in one of the svn versions to see if this would help against giant empires (especially the early ones).

 

[Routalempi]

btw, I just lost on turn 15 to 5 barbs spawning near my city from tribal village ...

Weirdly enough this has happened to me too a lot lately. I just lost three games in a row this way, and I'm not sure if it was only bad luck or if something has been changed in the game. This issue isn't new though and because of that I play most of the time with goody huts off. There's nothing worse than seeing an amazing city spot and then losing to a random swarm of barbarians that AI got from a village ten turns later...

Actually fixing this shouldn't be too difficult as goody hut rewards are modifiable via XML. Probabilities and number of barbarians spawning can be changed easily and maybe having a limit of one barbarian per village could be a good idea? Might have to check that out and try to fiddle with those values. (I wouldn't cry if the whole feature was removed from the mod though, even if it makes the scouts a little bit more useful.)

But that's the idea: it should be expensive to make an army of modern units. Besides you don't have to defend all cities with the coolest infantry available and you definitely don't have to upgrade everything.

Idea for increasing unit costs isn't bad, as it makes AI use bigger variety of units and reduces the total number of units in game. However I feel it changed the game balance much more than it first seems. For example in the early game building more units ínstead of upgrading the old ones is now far easier because of the lack of income when compared to hammers. And if there's one thing that always irritated me in Civ games, it's those units far behind in tech tree that AI doesn't upgrade for hundreds of years.

In CIV series it has always been too easy and comfortable to be a large empire. I hope this is not the last step to changing this.

Yes, I agree that having a wide empire shouldn't be easy. But, in my opinion military size shouldn't be the biggest limiting factor in how large your empire could grow, and I would rather limit it by economic disadvantages and difficulties in foreign relations, as it works now. The upcoming Revolutions mod merge could make managing large empires more of a challenge too.

---
Lastly I would ask RI team again if removing possibility to build slash/burn farms in forests was intended or not? This change was made few weeks ago in the SVN, and I didn't see any patch notes regarding it.

 

[0ttovonBismarck]

Great mod. I've enjoyed playing this mod for many years and I just wanted to thank the people who created it, so thank you!

 

[Brant_Flir]

I just updated from 3.25 to 3.3, and I noticed some things.I am sorry if these have already been brought up, I'm back on page 280 trying to catch up.

My current game is world map huge as Greece with Alexander the Great as leader on Monarch difficulty.

I love the new unit cost system. Makes wars much more strategic and more fun.

That being said, I have noticed some odd AI behavior. The AI does not take into account units one block away from my city. I have discovered if I move most of my units out of my city to the adjacent slot, the AI will move their army to attack the city, even though there is an 8 unit stack one square over on a road, and as soon as they are caught in the open, I can move them back and attack in one turn annihilating their army. I have been able to use this tactic on multiple AI on multiple occasions. I do not recall this tactic being viable on 3.25.

Another side effect of the unit cost system I have ever seen is that city states are much larger threats. The Jews are one of the strongest countries on my world in the classical Era and have founded three religions. Babylon is also a strong nation. I like this side effect.

 

[Shuikkanen]

Another side effect of the unit cost system I have ever seen is that city states are much larger threats. The Jews are one of the strongest countries on my world in the classical Era and have founded three religions. Babylon is also a strong nation. I like this side effect.

I can testify to Israeli having quite often been a strong nation on the world map even before 3.3. My guess it's a combination of being better situated than most other city states, having a barb city to the north they quite often manage to conquer (since it's only protected by one barb fort, which will be destroyed (70-80% chance) if the israeli haven't yet fought a barb unit the first time they attack that city), strong preference for going for a religion which isn't normally a priority for any civ, a unique building which makes their cities hard to conquer, and I guess David's personality also results in a strategy which works for them.

And like any other city state, their Palace is on steroids. They can out-science any normal civ for quite long as a result.

But yeah, I'm sure the 3.3 unit cost system helps them even more.

 

[Ambassador]

Hi there,

which map generator do you guys use if you want to play with a new world? Terra doesn't work for me (only land, no sea).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hey everyone! Not much to hear from us lately, as some RL issues slowed our progress, but the 3.35 patch content is mostly ready.

Aaaand more!
1) Japanese distinctive unit replacing Galleass is O-atakebune. Japanese Armoured Carrack is also O-atakebune (though it has its own name in the description).

Fixed.

2) A stable (and thus horses) is required to get 2 XP for war elephants.

While it's not very intuitive, moving elephants to their own unit combat would be too cumbersome. Think of that as availability of experienced animal handlers in general. After all, it gives XP to camels too.

3) An idea for a national (world?) wonder - army standardization - reduce base cost increase for all units by 1%. Unfortunately I don't have a clue where to put it.

We don't have tags for that unfortunately. Still, an interesting fix for late-game unit cost escalation is in the works. It won't remove it altogether (since having it is kind of the point), but it will be more manageable and better spread out across eras.

4) Why is a work boat considered a military unit? It's cool that it's being built faster with rule of fear but it can't even fight.

Spoiler :

I guess it shouldn't be. BTW it's not as cool as you put it, because you also pay support for it, as it's a military unit.

5) Encountered a bug in an event

Spoiler :

Yeah, ran into something like this a couple of times myself, but couldn't put my finger on what exactly was wrong with the event.

6) Forced labour civic is sooo bad: for additional 15% epidemics you get -25% war weariness and an ability to sacrifice population which is not that profitable even in slavery era.

Remember labor camps too. Their special feature allows you to have hordes of craftsmen with little food.

7) Is there a way to settle a worker in a city for food like it was done in civ3? And what do you think about this?

No and IIRC can't be done via standard Civ 4 means.

8) How are civs being sorted in the espionage screen?

No idea. All advisor screens are third-party components.

9) Is there a way to autodistribute EPs to activate certain passives like 'can see demographics' or 'can see research'? I play with lots of civs and I want to be well informed of, for example, their military might. Checking if I have enough EPs every turn is pretty tiresome.

I agree that it would be cool, but see the above answer.

10) Yabusame (Improved horse archer) can't be built after the research of Flintlock Musket since this tech makes essential archery range obsolete. But the next unit in the upgrade line - Hussar - won't be available until Military Thought.

Hm... Will see that it's fixed. It will now be only discontinued with Flintlock.

11) 'Market Relations' and 'Stock Market' techs have the same icon.

Oops.

12) Do computer players have weaker conditions regarding logistics?

No, I don't think so. Remember that certain leader traits do, though.

13) And the most important thing: please please please keep improving the AI. It's becoming less and less interesting to fight a stupid but cheating machine. Placing units on a swamp near an enemy, declaring a war only to attack a city with bare skirmishers, placing cities almost exclusively ON resources (ignoring rivers and seashores), attacking civs on the other side of a continent on a giant map, deciding to attack when it sees a single archer in a city but not a stack several tiles away, asking to help in war when I'm already at war and being OFFENDED if I refuse, leaving powerful units behind (which I already mentioned), giving strange or unnecessary promotions, not using cool new features like extremely powerful forts, making improvements in places that are not worked by any city and so on.

Unfortunately, on this point, there is very little we can do. We just don't have enough manpower on our hands - our only coder is already almost 100% busy with just fixing bugs. So unless we find a separate AI coder, there is very little that will happen to AI in future.

Thanks! Your mod is awesome and so are you.

BTW, am I the only one who doesn't really use neither monarchy or repubic in RI? Despotism -> Federalism seems to be the obvious choice for a big civ. Or am I missing something?

Thank you, always nice to hear. We rebalanced early government traits for 3.35 so that now all of them are more obviously useful in various situations. Though big empires should probably still go for Despotism or Monarchy.

Hmm. What is razing non-commerce tiles yielded different prizes? Such as Grazing Grounds, pastures, etc. giving a food boost to your closest city, and razing mines and quarries providing a hammer boost to the nearest city.

Not possible without lots of additional coding. Also, I am not sure how razing a mine would rake in additional production - do your soldiers quickly mine out everything that enemy workers couldn't?

True. But maintenance (unlike upkeep) is not critical since it can be reduced with buildings. Republic also gives you early happines without buildings, and you don't often have that many cities until renaissance. Theocracy prima facie is unattractive but imagine the combo: christianity+theocracy+civil religion. Democracy is just weaker federalism but I guess devs will make them more unique.

Indeed. Ran a very nice game recently where I had an isolated start and ran Republic up until Democracy became available. Tall development actually pays off, if you still have a reasonable number of cities.

Isn't making one megacity with national park a little unrealistic? I mean worlds largest agglomerations have nothing to do with national parks, and in fact national parks are less densely populated then ie industrial regions.
I think that first and final advantage of national park is that it gives specialist for every preserver. I always thought that no unhealthiness rule was dumb. More realistic approach would be to just let national park generate specialists, and maybe give a little bonus to global epidemic rate (as your population will be healthier if they spend vacation on unpolluted wild land).

Well, it's not so much unrealistic as it is not very fun - when you have an obvious strategy you always pursue, it's a poor design decision. Still, adding some epidemic reduction to National Park seems logical, both at local and global levels - though of course, not unlimited.

Also, no-one ever riots in London because they can go see Shakespeare's plays when they feel bad, right? Right?

I do agree, trying to make Mega-City One where no-one ever gets sick and everybody's happy isn't realistic. But it is fun...

Actually, come to think of it, London is kinda low on riots compared to other major cities...

Solid work on the latest SVN, but I think that making slash and burn farms buildable only on jungles was not that good of a idea. As it was before, ability to build them on forests could save you from terrible starting places. Also I'm still not sure about the new unit build costs. They work well in the early game but as the game progresses unit upgrade costs become ridiculous and it's very difficult to have enough good units to defend a large empire.

New promotion buttons and unit models look great!

Slash-and-burn as it was implemented before was too much micromanagement spam. We had to do away with it. And now it still serves the purpose of salvaging terrible starts, maybe even more so, because it makes jungle somewhat bearable.

2) What do you think of removing the semi-modern infantry upgrade to motorized infantry and the modern infantry upgrade to IFV thus leaving two separate trees: the slow (1) infantry and fast (2) mech infantry?

Not really a fan of this idea. Basically, "slow" versions of infantry are not intended to be parts of a well-equipped modern army. They are only there for those civs that can't produce mechanized units. IRL, in major modern armies, all infantry is mechanized.

3) A request: more compact view of giant enemy stacks. The current variant does not show everything when there are too many units. The game shows most of them individually (because of the upgrades I guess).

Interface modding isn't really my expertise. The best we could hope for is integrating someone else's component, if it exists.

4) Is there a way to make different logistics values on different terrains: highest on flatlands, worse on hills, far worse on forests/jungles?

Not now, and anyway I don't even want to think about the AI nightmare it would create.

5) Gems are not metals. Maybe they should be revealed by another tech? Mining or city planning (because of a jeweler)?

True and logical. Will probably move it somewhere later on the tech tree (though not to City Planning).

7) So maybe introduce some sort of penalty if an army is in enemy territory for a long time, for example, increasing supply costs: first turn zero per unit, second - one and so on (minus of course supply costs modifiers).

Would be rather easy to do, but again, hard on AI. And even for players I don't think it would be a fun mechanic, as it would basically put timers on their campaigns as well.

9) A request: increase distance from palace maintenance drastically in one of the svn versions to see if this would help against giant empires (especially the early ones).

Tried that, didn't help. Just slowed world development to a crawl, as everyone lived on 0% science.

Great mod. I've enjoyed playing this mod for many years and I just wanted to thank the people who created it, so thank you!

And thank you as well! It wouldn't be here if people didn't enjoy playing it for many years.

Hi there,

which map generator do you guys use if you want to play with a new world? Terra doesn't work for me (only land, no sea).

When I want a new world, I usually use PerfectMongoose.

 

[sazhdapec]

Remember labor camps too. Their special feature allows you to have hordes of craftsmen with little food.

Hmm... Labour camp gives one happy face (which is strange), consumes one food and gives one hammer to each craftsman. Definitely not the thing I would ever build.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hmm... Labour camp gives one happy face (which is strange), consumes one food and gives one hammer to each craftsman. Definitely not the thing I would ever build.

Oops, was under impression they were already unnerfed. Totally slipped my mind. Coming in the next update.

BTW, the happy face is in the right place - remember, it is not only happiness, but also lack of unhappiness (which can happen if you round up all the dissenters and throw them away into a camp).

 

[sami_snow]

Walter - I agree with you. Forced labor is quite strong. Keep as is (but labor camp can be made more interesting). Monarchy needs a buff. Someone was mentioning republic - republic is quite strong indeed, i often rush to philosophy to go for republic/pacifism

 

[Pepo]

What are you guys going to do with the increasing cost feature? As I stated before, I think that it hurts late-game a lot and it isn't realistic

 

[Shoobs]

I am unable to, at all, get the world maps to work. The only one that does work in the Triassic one.

 

[PunchGiraffe]

I'm Having some trouble with the installer, it can't seem to locate my beyond the sword files, and any files associated with it seem to not want to work with the installer when asked to manually find it. Any help?

 

[Colon]

What are you guys going to do with the increasing cost feature? As I stated before, I think that it hurts late-game a lot and it isn't realistic

I don't like it very much either. If it's the idea to punish big empires, wouldn't it be better to tweak city maintenance?

 

[arzac93]

I don't like it very much either. If it's the idea to punish big empires, wouldn't it be better to tweak city maintenance?

Yes it would be, but in my games, the AI doesn't seem to give two horsehockys about city maintenance.

 

[Shuikkanen]

I don't like it very much either. If it's the idea to punish big empires, wouldn't it be better to tweak city maintenance?

Also, Walter Hawkwood just addressed this in the post above, regarding increasing distance to palace maintenance.

Tried that, didn't help. Just slowed world development to a crawl, as everyone lived on 0% science.

 

[Routalempi]

Slash-and-burn as it was implemented before was too much micromanagement spam. We had to do away with it. And now it still serves the purpose of salvaging terrible starts, maybe even more so, because it makes jungle somewhat bearable.

Thanks for the answers! I agree with the micromanagement part, but I kind of feel like slash/burn farms were good for the games balance as they "evened out" the difference between the worst and the best starting spots. Now, if you get a start without a food resource nearby you are basically screwed (at least on the higher difficulties) and most of the time end up regenerating the map. Maybe there could be some kind of a new way of improving forest tiles to be able to survive from the occasional bad start?

Any updates on the progress of the Revolutions mod merge? It's been years and we are still anxiously waiting.