Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

Started a 5069 World Map game (Armenia), and I'm somewhere mid-late Renaissance right now. AI behavior in line with what's been described in the past. France wiped out early, Germany a bit later. Netherlands a dominant force early but seems to have faded. Portugal still the tech leader (though I'm getting close or maybe just passed him) and was doing some kind of One City Challenge thing until about 700AD, and just built its third city a few turns ago (on the N American east coast). Berbers seemed to have had no problem steamrolling Carthage.

It's not a "some kind of One City Challenge thing". Netherlands, Portugal and Israel are city-states, and can't settle new cities until Renaissance. Netherlands got permanently removed in 5070, as without them Europe seems to function somewhat better (at least I don't see France and Germany die every game).

I'm a little mixed on Alliances. It sounds like a good idea up front, though you get a snowballing effect on the dogpile behavior. Early game, it was all of the full nations wiping out the African minors. Recently, they genocided Spain which had been underperforming. I don't know what recourse you have when 10+ nations simultaneously war declare because one was in a bad mood and picked a random fight.

It looks like 5070 has good potential, I'll probably start a new game and see how it changes the above. I'm not sure about the alliance-dogpile effect, though changes in how the AI picks fights may temper it a bit.

Well, in 5070 AI is more picky both about alliances and about declaring wars. Should lessen the alliance pile-ups somewhat. And yeah, since it is a new feature, there is definitely some more balancing to be done. We're working on it.

Just out of curiosity, how does it work if an Alliance would force you to declare war on one of your own allies? A allied to B & C, B declares war on C, what does A do? Or A allied to B & C, B allied to C&D, A declares war on D, C would go to war with A but what does B do? There's a lot more permutations, especially on the World map.

I actually don't know, but my guess would be that defensive use of alliances gets priority over offensive use. So in that case, A would come to C's aid in your first example.

Related Alliance question: Does the AI have any clue on how to exploit Alliances (I'm struggling as the human to figure it out)? I still get typical AI behavior when a "friendly" leader will dial me up before starting a war to try to suck me in (I almost always refuse, as it's generally not worth the trickle-down relationship hit with all of the target's "friends"). Then, the next turn, I'll be drawn into the war regardless because of our alliance, effectively mooting my refusal.

Well, AI doesn't really seem to know how to exploit basically anything. Once you peer under its hood, especially when it comes to diplomacy, most AI processes are pretty simplistic when it comes to planning and execution, and most are just probability-driven.

A quick answer to my own question: I suppose that the (Realistic?) best defense from being dog-piled by allied nations is to be in many alliances yourself. Of course, this is of no help to the minor civs who won't open borders or ally with anyone, and thus invite a world war every time the massed civs attack one.

Well, minors are supposed to be cannon fodder. But we'll be trying to introduce more diplomatic relation variables that will lead to less alliance sprawl, and more dynamic alliance system as a whole.

 

[Jayman1000]

Some of my units are not receiving siege aid. Examples are Fusiliero, Infanteria Ligeria and Mounted Shooter are not receiving siege aid from my bombards. Meanwhile other units are receiving siege aid, examples are Native War Elephants, Crusader, Jaguar, Mounted Quahtin.

From this it seems like "gunpowder era" (like mounted shooter that is charge mounted, not actually gunpowder, but it wields a gun and this seems to be the shared thing for them) units are not receiving the siege aid from bombard, but the "pre-gunpowder era" units are. If this is on purpose what is the reasoning behind it?

According to civilopedia actual gunpowder units should also still receive siege aid. Fusiliero is a gunpowder unit, but it also does not receive the siege aid?

Spoiler :

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Some of my units are not receiving siege aid. Examples are Fusiliero, Infanteria Ligeria and Mounted Shooter are not receiving siege aid from my bombards. Meanwhile other units are receiving siege aid, examples are Native War Elephants, Crusader, Jaguar, Mounted Quahtin.

From this it seems like "gunpowder era" (like mounted shooter that is charge mounted, not actually gunpowder, but it wields a gun and this seems to be the shared thing for them) units are not receiving the siege aid from bombard, but the "pre-gunpowder era" units are. If this is on purpose what is the reasoning behind it?

According to civilopedia actual gunpowder units should also still receive siege aid. Fusiliero is a gunpowder unit, but it also does not receive the siege aid?

Spoiler :

View attachment 476106View attachment 476108

View attachment 476109

Which revision are you playing? I've changed that recently; the actual reason was that there would be no more than 4 aid types per unit. I've raised that limit in one of the latest revisions.

 

[Jayman1000]

Well, on my screenshots the Crusader is receiving 5 aid types, while the Fusiliero is missing the siege aid and thus only receiving 4. I think Im on 5068. How do I make sure to know what revision Im on? How do I check it in SVN? I tried opening SVN log through right clicking the Realism folder and it showed the following seen below. Does the bolded text means that is the version installed?

EDIT: Ok so reading through 5069 changes I see "-Units can now have more than 4 aid types". So when Im on 5068, as I believe I am, a 4 aid limit is expected (but for some reason some units receive 5 anyway). But my post is obsolete then, sorry.

SCREENSHOT:

Spoiler :

 

[[Y]]

Well, in 5070 AI is more picky both about alliances and about declaring wars. Should lessen the alliance pile-ups somewhat. And yeah, since it is a new feature, there is definitely some more balancing to be done. We're working on it.

Could we get the option to disable alliances? I like the concept, but I usually play with ~30 civs, and even with the improved selectivity, it's still ridiculous. I just had a good game go down the drain because 12 civs declared war on me. Nevermind the military threat, many of those civs were friendly and strong trading partners. Even if I settled for peace with each of them, my economy would be devastated.

Here's a thought, though it would probably be difficult to implement: If a civ is in an alliance, it can only start wars that all of its allies would approve of.

Without that, I doubt it will ever be a reasonable mechanic in such large games (exception being world maps, but those maps are designed to limit maneuverability and interactions with native forts, etc, so I'm not counting them).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Could we get the option to disable alliances? I like the concept, but I usually play with ~30 civs, and even with the improved selectivity, it's still ridiculous. I just had a good game go down the drain because 12 civs declared war on me. Nevermind the military threat, many of those civs were friendly and strong trading partners. Even if I settled for peace with each of them, my economy would be devastated.

Here's a thought, though it would probably be difficult to implement: If a civ is in an alliance, it can only start wars that all of its allies would approve of.

Without that, I doubt it will ever be a reasonable mechanic in such large games (exception being world maps, but those maps are designed to limit maneuverability and interactions with native forts, etc, so I'm not counting them).

Alliances are not yet working as intended. You are playing SVN, which means you're getting a work-in-progress. We either will get them to work better (as in not starting world wars all the time), or remove them completely. Their introduction in the first place happened when I saw that vanilla defensive pacts basically broke warfare - after defensive pacts arrived, nobody ever went to war as everybody was a part of a web of pacts much stronger than any particular civ. I could just remove them, or give them a second chance as alliances. It is quite obvious that they need additional work to properly function (though I must add that ~30 civs are not being a default kind of balance, and RI will likely not ever be balanced to play that particular way).

For now we need to see the exact problems they cause and go about fixing them. And with that you can be quite helpful. As a matter of fact, you can be more helpful than people who LIKE alliances, as you are more inclined to highlight problems with them.

So tell me please what exactly happened - what revision were you playing (5070 or earlier), were all the 12 civs attacking you allied to a single civ that declared the war, or were some civs that didn't directly have an alliance with the aggressor dragged into it, etc.

 

[[Y]]

Sorry! I didn't mean to sound too critical. I like alliances in concept, but as you yourself said, 30 civs isn't standard, and players shouldn't expect it to be standard. For that reason I thought it might be practical to allow toggling alliances off, and have minimal impact on players that enjoy crowded games.*

This game was on rev 5070. I wish I could give you the details of the alliances, but in a bout of frustration I immediately quit and started a new game, losing all the autosaves. The most recent hard save was from a few hundred turns earlier, and shows only a handful of alliances. No dogpiles were made before they declared war on me, I think. This was in late medieval/early renaissance.

However, there were almost no pointless wars, from what I could see. Weaker civs didn't declare war on me with a vendetta, like they used to. So I'm happy to report that those improvements are on point and a pleasure.

*I know this attitude probably makes me sound like a pain in the ass, but when it comes to playtesting, I'm always happy when I get to be an advocate for a minority playstyle.

 

[D.Wilkso]

Hi, great mod. I've been playing it for years. Really appreciate all of the hard work and historical accuracy you've put into this.

I'm looking to make a WWII scenario on the huge world map, however I'm horrible at editing game files. It's the flags I'm having a problem with. I'd like to change the current flags to WWII era flags, but don't know how to edit them. If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it. And does RI have any WWII era flags included in this mod that are unused?

 

[le_harv]

Some feedback on Alliances for you. Currently using 5070 and thoroughly enjoying every update to Realism Invictus. Current game is large, random global highlands map on the 0.5x speed, mid renaissance at present, no special options other than the defaults.

• Definitely seeing 'smarter' wars in the sense that AI isn't doing anything too crazy, less permanent war and less obvious disparity in forces.
• Flip side is alliances, great idea in concept but I think it's working opposite as intended. What I have observed is when one party declares war, it's alliances automatically declare war, even if you have a great relationship with them. I can't recall but I could have sworn my own alliances declared war on me because of this effect. Plus side is, there are no ill effects to relations with alliances dragged into war with you, they may amass a force (seemingly reluctantly) but after you don't suffer any diplomatic penalty. In these situations it's also tricky to tell who was the initial aggressor when 4 people declare war on you at once. I assume the first aggressor is the one with a pile of units at my border!

Old news now but the escalating unit costs is genius and makes the game so much more manageable. Still getting to grips with escalating tech costs but so far i like it, makes me think much more strategically.

EDIT---

In my game, Austronesian's allied with German's and Dravidian's. I as England was also allied with German's and Dravidian's. I declared war on Austronesian's, German's sided with them while Dravidian's chose my side.

 

[krasny]

There is a bug in the build window, when one mouses over a building or unit one gets a turns to build figure, however when one clicks on the item the turns to build figure in the build queue sometimes gives a greatly different figure, which is true. Does this bug carry over into the summary screen?

 

[siggi4ever]

HI i have a question about multiplayer stability. sometimes when i and some friends create a game and click start the game crashes during loading screen. there just a windows message that the game crashed. and sometimes there is an oos failure at the start when the created game has loaded. what could that be? we play on windows 7 and 10 mixed via evolve. evolve is a vpn client.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...desktop-when-ingame-exit-to-main-menu.611243/

the last post said something about pak size. and some post above someone wrote that loading times and ctd stopped by using several little pak data

 

[Shuikkanen]

There is a bug in the build window, when one mouses over a building or unit one gets a turns to build figure, however when one clicks on the item the turns to build figure in the build queue sometimes gives a greatly different figure, which is true. Does this bug carry over into the summary screen?

Hammer overflow from a previous build? When you hover over it, it shows how quickly you could build it immediately, because you have some production left over. But when added to the build queue with something else preceding it counts it as if you built it from scratch.

 

[krasny]

Sometimes the actual build time is greater than the mouse over build time.

 

[krasny]

For example, I moused over SS Docking Bay, it indicated 18 turns to build, I added the docking bay to the build queue, it indicated 5 turns to build, was was accurate.

 

[Sathar]

Enjoying my 5070 World Map playthrough.

Random thought of the day: Maybe building the medical projects (Germ Theory et al.) should consume beakers as well as hammers, similar to building irregulars with food. It feels a bit odd adding craftsmen to "build" Germ Theory faster. It would also give cities with boosted Scientists (like from Science wonders) an advantage to construct these. To balance, build cost would probably have to be raised (although dumping all of what's likely a major city's science output for a dozen turns or more would already be a fairly steep price).

Sorry if this has been discussed before, RI has a lot going on and it's tough to keep track of every idea

 

[arizzi]

What about increasing production costs as the number of cities rises? I actually think this would deal with the issue of tall vs wide even better than the research cost does. I believe civilization 6 does this in some form. This would reduce the military problem, and also perhaps limit snowballing. It would also force specialization more. As it is currently, I feel like production in RI is too fast. There is little strategy in terms of what buildings to build because I know I can build them all relatively soon. This is on Monarch and below, for higher than that idk. Like I mentioned before I feel the rate of production right now is fast enough to nullify most of the opportunity cost of buildings or military units.

Would this be difficult to implement?

Another benefit is that it would render more useful the less used communist/fascist civics such as forced labor. And would help to reduce the insane amount of units that cause problems later in the game.

For republic, I would say that if the above were implemented, republic could work fine as it currently does. Without production cost increase, I really think republic should offer at least 1 extra happiness, so 3 total happiness to make it useful for smaller civs. I read your post but production is never a limiting factor in my games. Its also just a difference of vision. And I think republic should more often be the best choice for smaller civs I would do this by having it offer + 2 happiness right off the bat. And in my experience it is nowhere near useful 20 percent of the time. More like 10-5%.

In my current game the mongols attacked me but I have the problem that I keep decimating his invading force, but he refuses to surrender. I can't attack him back because of lack of open borders with an intermediary civ. I just feel like it should be more of a penalty for engaging in such a war. Could war weariness be increased perhaps?

 

[Sathar]

5070 Huge World Map (Armenia, Emperor) progressing, now early Industrial (I just got Military Industry, though my first Firearm factory is still a turn away).

My city count is at 17. I could build/take several more but I'm scared to because it's already taking me ~12 turns per tech (feels like forever) and I can barely manage the inflated unit build/upgrade costs (neither of these things is necessarily bad).

The top of the scoreboard is Egypt, who built a stack of doom and vassalized 4 or 5 civs mostly during the Medieval/Renaissance. My other competitor is Spain, who wiped out most of Europe early. Both are around 30 cities, and their tech has slowed to a crawl (lucky for me).

I'm the tech leader for the last 50 turns or so. I finally passed Portugal (I didn't realize that they're a City State -- I'm used to starting next to Jerusalem and Babylon but always assumed the rest of Europe were full civs!).

Egypt (I think) went to war with me (I think) about 20-30 turns ago, and the result was that I was suddenly at war with just about everyone in the Old World, except Carthage who respected our Alliance, and Japan who stayed neutral. England and I think it was Mali both broke our alliances -- I think that was just random luck (I think when Carthage was checked, no one had made us fight each other yet, but by the time England was looked at, a war declaration in the chain already had disabled our alliance).

I was scared silly when the fighting broke out, I was behind Egypt and Spain in power (0.8 on both), and I got of glimpse of Egypt's SoD -- initially 70+ units deep. Tech wise my units were ahead, but not by much*. My saving grace was that everyone was at war with everyone. Spain could have made my life miserable, but was dealing with a guerrilla fight from Russia, and technically was itself at war with Egypt -- while I don't think they had a lot of contact, I'm sure he was as scared as me. Eventually, the civs I wasn't engaged with finally negotiated and went back to open borders/trade. Spain and I settled, though after I "liberated" Athens (one step closer to the Western Med without going through Egypt, though Spain/Berber still control my access to the Atlantic in that direction).

Egypt's SoD has been attritted to nothing (it reversed a couple of times to roll over Persia plus he split it into roughly three stacks with a bad mix (all the cannon and cavalry together, with the fusiliers in a different fight, bad mistake)). I think the fight has gone out of him, but I'm just about to get my Riflemen and I'm a bit eager to use them. Unfortunately, I really don't have any viable military goals. There are several worthwhile cities I can take, but I really don't want to pay the maintenance/tech cost (I already razed 3 or 4 cities, some not so small). I might just grab that Turk (Egypt-vassal) city in Tibet** first, but this war's about done.


* -- I've said in the past that I don't usually "waste" a precious General on Doctrines that go obsolete, but when the fighting broke out I really felt I needed an edge. I had a choice of Manoeuvre Warfare and Patriotic War. I ruled out MW as going obsolete too soon (though I'm realizing now that breech-loaders are further away than I think), but I'm really rocking the Motherland bonus. I already had too many Fusiliers built by the time I picked it to take maximum advantage (build time for a new Fusilier at one of my major centers is 10-12 turns), but I'm getting a lot of mileage from the new units with Motherland.

** - Update: I just took it, and chuckled with delight when the city spontaneously renamed itself from "Istanbul" to "Constantinople"

 

[Sathar]

Just two more quick thoughts/points about Alliances that may not have been clear above.

While I'm not sure that the "Free-for-all" effect of Alliances in their current form is intended or desirable, there are some positive effects:

1) It mitigates somewhat arizzi's issue about being unable to fight back through neutral territory for the simple reason that very often, you are at war with that neighbor as well. I had no (current) beef with Persia, but being at war with them meant I didn't have to worry about them suddenly closing their borders. On the flip side, I had to resist the urge to go and pick off the occasional Russian Revolting Peasant, because my "good deed" would not go unpunished just because neither of us had bothered to engage the other up until now.

2) Dog-piling is less of an issue because, as in my game, instead of 12 against 1, it's 12 against 12 or nearly so, and even smaller/weaker civs stand a chance of defending themselves because the empire that they're trying to fend off is busy with a lot of bigger fish.

 

[le_harv]

On a different game with 5070 I am experiencing some curious incidents with the alliances. In short, everyone seems to be allied with each other except me. This results in a pile of civs declaring war on me at once, often 10 civs at a time. Now this normally wouldn't be an issue as my experience previously is that an alliance dissolves as soon as war is declared and can be picked up again after. However the alliances are not breaking after war is declared as if they were permanently locked in an alliance. Permanent alliances was not selected upon game inception and looking at worldbuilder it's not activated. I've attached my latest save to take a look (please ignore the sorry state of my empire, I'm no pro).

EDIT - To be honest, I've gone back to 5068. The alliances aspect stopped being fun when it felt impossible to break any alliances. You make some headway and then bang, 12 civ dogpile. I've only got so many stacks of doom of my own to go around! The game devolves into a constant state of war for me which means I am just unable to keep up the pace of growth and fall behind.

 

[sazhdapec]

WOW! Improvements in the World Builder!
Unfortunately the scenario I edited somehow became "unloadable". When I select it at the start of the game the CIV4 programs just hangs.