Realism Invictus

[[Y]]

Is there any way to reduce/remove the bonus that barb-turned-civs get after uniting? If I remember what I saw in the world builder correctly (and understood it properly), they get a 150 turn bonus or so of +50 military unit production. Is that right? It's been a while since I investigated, but it's been a thorn in my side for a while.

From a play experience, that bonus is very negative. On emperor it's hard enough to afford a decent military, and having a neighbor pop up that's technologically advanced and pumping out units non-stop is not enjoyable. And worse, it usually happens after investing a lot into building an invasion force meant/designed to take on barb cities, but as soon as you're ready they unite. If you choose to invade anyway, you're facing an endless tide of skirmishers keeping your army on "wait to heal". The AI isn't good at defeating your army, but it's suicidal and "we can build more" tactics are sure to prevent you from getting anything done. And if you change your mind on invading, then all the hammers and gold spent on training up your army were a waste, and you're now stuck paying the upkeep costs (or deleting the units).

I like the revolutions component, and barbarians uniting is a great feature. But they're getting way too many bonuses. I think they should be weaker and vulnerable, both from a realism perspective and a game design perspective. If I wanted more capable and sturdy civs in the game, I'd turn off revolutions and add more starting civs. United barbarians should pose more of a threat than just barbarians, for sure, but they shouldn't be as formidable as they are, and maybe not formidable at all.

Edit: Just noticed that the game has Pacal II The Sheild (603-683), though wikipedia attributes those years and titles to Pacal I with Pacal II being a later ruler in the 8th century.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Is there any way to reduce/remove the bonus that barb-turned-civs get after uniting? If I remember what I saw in the world builder correctly (and understood it properly), they get a 150 turn bonus or so of +50 military unit production. Is that right? It's been a while since I investigated, but it's been a thorn in my side for a while.

In addition to the military units they build quite a few settlers and expand quickly I've noticed. It IS a strong bonus, and really makes you prioritize taking out barbarian cities near your land before they have a chance to settle down. Once the settling starts, it tends to go nuts for a few turns BUT all barbarians globally are stunned / unable to move for a turn each time that happens so if you see one new civilization, you can sometimes rush over and raze the problematic city before it converts.

I think they should be weaker and vulnerable, both from a realism perspective and a game design perspective. If I wanted more capable and sturdy civs in the game, I'd turn off revolutions and add more starting civs. United barbarians should pose more of a threat than just barbarians, for sure, but they shouldn't be as formidable as they are, and maybe not formidable at all.

Here I tend to disagree. I play with raging barbarians turned on and find that even on emperor a few of the AIs won't survive the onslaught. Generally speaking, the number of barbarians unifying is close to the number of civs that were wiped out, so the overall number of civs doesn't increase that much. I think the churn is a great way to show the rise and fall of civilizations. In my opinion, the ex-barbarian civs should be reasonably equivalent to the starting civs and while they may be a touch overpowered at the moment, I would hate to see them relegated to second class citizens.

 

[aantia]

I would personally like it if the anti-barbarian promotions still worked against them. There's no logical reason for it, but it feels bad when you build up your anti-barbarian task force and the bastards proclaim themselves civilised just before you get there.

 

[sazhdapec]

I would personally like it if the anti-barbarian promotions still worked against them. There's no logical reason for it, but it feels bad when you build up your anti-barbarian task force and the bastards proclaim themselves civilised just before you get there.

That's why I never make these upgrades except a starting warrior.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

That's why I never make these upgrades except a starting warrior.

Pacification is great on a few skirmishers or chariots to deal with barbarian incursions or slave revolts. But I agree, your shock troops need city raider and your defensive troops need combat or city defense. No reason to have a large "anti-barbarian task force".

 

[Pavel Tulisov]

Hi, can somebody please tell me what file do I need to edit so I can build cities right next to each other?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Thanks for the clarification. I'm assuming there's some sort of scaled down version of this after the first spawn? I've seen as many as three in a row while taking a big capital city.

The exact same formula applies; since it's almost never 100% even in the first instance, and subtracts culture that is used to calculate the probability each iteration, it scales down naturally. In theory a very lucky city can spawn more, just as a very lucky unit can win many combats in a row.

Is there any way to reduce/remove the bonus that barb-turned-civs get after uniting? If I remember what I saw in the world builder correctly (and understood it properly), they get a 150 turn bonus or so of +50 military unit production. Is that right? It's been a while since I investigated, but it's been a thorn in my side for a while.

From a play experience, that bonus is very negative. On emperor it's hard enough to afford a decent military, and having a neighbor pop up that's technologically advanced and pumping out units non-stop is not enjoyable. And worse, it usually happens after investing a lot into building an invasion force meant/designed to take on barb cities, but as soon as you're ready they unite. If you choose to invade anyway, you're facing an endless tide of skirmishers keeping your army on "wait to heal". The AI isn't good at defeating your army, but it's suicidal and "we can build more" tactics are sure to prevent you from getting anything done. And if you change your mind on invading, then all the hammers and gold spent on training up your army were a waste, and you're now stuck paying the upkeep costs (or deleting the units).

I like the revolutions component, and barbarians uniting is a great feature. But they're getting way too many bonuses. I think they should be weaker and vulnerable, both from a realism perspective and a game design perspective. If I wanted more capable and sturdy civs in the game, I'd turn off revolutions and add more starting civs. United barbarians should pose more of a threat than just barbarians, for sure, but they shouldn't be as formidable as they are, and maybe not formidable at all.

Sorry, but I don't feel that way. If you'd like to see them simply as fodder for being conquered, then turning off the feature would give you exactly what you want - the barbarians in the game already are. What I wanted from this component are actual civs that can claim a decent place under the sun and not just fodder for others. Even with a bonus, I rarely see barbarian-derived civs rise to one of the top positions, which I'd like to see happen at least from time to time.

The fundamental problem of why they need the bonus to stay at least competitive is actually a rather fundamental one - it's in the way a typical Civ 4 game is set up. Before starting on any given (random, not talking about pre-built scenarios here) map, the map generator finds all the best city founding spots on the map, and sweetens many of them some more - those become the starting locations of the initial civs, and they are the best ones that particular game has to offer. This means, by definition, any barbarian civ will have an inferior starting territory - and in a world where not only all the best places are already taken from the start, but those civs already had time to pick out the second-best spots around them too. Contrast that to barbarian cities basically spawning wherever nobody is looking, if that would be a legal city spot. In gameplay terms, that means that those civs start basically at least a couple of difficulty levels above the rest.

Edit: Just noticed that the game has Pacal II The Sheild (603-683), though wikipedia attributes those years and titles to Pacal I with Pacal II being a later ruler in the 8th century.

It's complicated. To quote Wiki:

In modern sources his name is also sometimes appended with a regnal number,[N 5] to distinguish him from other rulers with this name, that either preceded or followed him in the dynastic lineage of Palenque. Confusingly, he has at times been referred to as either "Pakal I" or "Pakal II". Reference to him as Pakal II alludes to his maternal grandfather (who died c.612) also being named Janahb Pakal. However, although his grandfather was a personage of ajaw ranking, he does not himself appear to have been a king. When instead the name Pakal I is used, this serves to distinguish him from two later known successors to the Palenque rulership, Kʼinich Janaab Pakal II (ruled c. 742) and Janaab Pakal III, the last-known Palenque ruler (ruled c. 799).

That said, Pakal I does seem like the less confusing option.

Pacification is great on a few skirmishers or chariots to deal with barbarian incursions or slave revolts. But I agree, your shock troops need city raider and your defensive troops need combat or city defense. No reason to have a large "anti-barbarian task force".

This. Pacification retains its usefulness in situations where the main combat you intended to see for a while is against rebels (slavery/serfdom), and that's actually the main use of the promo IMO, not the map-wandering barbarians. A warmonger planning on lots of external wars has much less need of it.

Hi, can somebody please tell me what file do I need to edit so I can build cities right next to each other?

Answered elsewhere: http://www.realism-invictus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2098

 

[[Y]]

Even with a bonus, I rarely see barbarian-derived civs rise to one of the top positions, which I'd like to see happen at least from time to time.

I see this happen in my games, though it usually only happens when they unite as a normal civ, and not as a minor civ. Though even the minor civs barbarian unites have their heyday now and then.

The fundamental problem of why they need the bonus to stay at least competitive is actually a rather fundamental one - it's in the way a typical Civ 4 game is set up. Before starting on any given (random, not talking about pre-built scenarios here) map, the map generator finds all the best city founding spots on the map, and sweetens many of them some more - those become the starting locations of the initial civs, and they are the best ones that particular game has to offer. This means, by definition, any barbarian civ will have an inferior starting territory - and in a world where not only all the best places are already taken from the start, but those civs already had time to pick out the second-best spots around them too. Contrast that to barbarian cities basically spawning wherever nobody is looking, if that would be a legal city spot. In gameplay terms, that means that those civs start basically at least a couple of difficulty levels above the rest.

That depends on the world setup. After this feature was introduced I started adding fewer and fewer starting civs to my roster. I went from making every full civ present from the start to having only... 14? I think. On the largest map possible. So the barbarians in my games have a lot of good places to settle, though it's true that the later unifications are in a much worse predicament than the earlier ones. One of my gripes is that on emperor, I'm not often able to expand fast enough to get the good spots before barbarians do, hence the frustration when they settle and unite before I'm able to afford an army to take out those 4 archers on a hill that the AI civs suicided against enough to get them to three ranks of the city defense promotion...

I should have probably been more clear on what I was asking, though. I'm not looking for the base game to change. I fully understand your perspective and @ThirdOrbital perspective. I was hoping to learn which local files (if any) I can update to tweak the situation more to my liking.

It's complicated. To quote Wiki:

Ahh, thanks! I didn't read the article, just happened to notice that after clicking through the Pakal disambiguation page, which lists him as Pakal I. Though even the wiki is inconsistent, as searching it for "Pacal II" takes you The Great's page, where he's described as being Pakal I. Searching for Pakal I, though, takes you to Janahb Pakal.

Edit: I have 17 starting civs, not 14.

 

[Joseph65]

Hello, I am a long time fan of RI and deeply grateful to all involved in the creation and upgrading of the Mod. Version 3.55 is fantastic and I adopted it some months ago. Unfortunately I encountered some times the black graphics bug, but managed to resolve it by simply re-launching. What really bothers me now is that every game I have tried in 3.55 crashes after about 1000/1100 turns. The crash is sudden, happens as I hit the end of turn button and causes the game to exit directly to the desktop. As you can see, I am an old geezer who has very limited understanding of technology, so I am not apt to describe any better what happens. Still, can anyone help to work around this problem ?

 

[keldath]

Joseph65,
post a save game please.

 

[Joseph65]

Joseph65,
post a save game please.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

That depends on the world setup. After this feature was introduced I started adding fewer and fewer starting civs to my roster. I went from making every full civ present from the start to having only... 14? I think. On the largest map possible. So the barbarians in my games have a lot of good places to settle, though it's true that the later unifications are in a much worse predicament than the earlier ones. One of my gripes is that on emperor, I'm not often able to expand fast enough to get the good spots before barbarians do, hence the frustration when they settle and unite before I'm able to afford an army to take out those 4 archers on a hill that the AI civs suicided against enough to get them to three ranks of the city defense promotion...

One has to remember that the map generator doesn't just pick the best spots, it also "sweetens" them almost always with an extra resource or two. So even if you place fewer civs, barbarians are actually worse off than starting civs anyway. I am reluctant to spawn more resources for settling civs though, as I feel it will disrupt the resource balance - means a map will end up with more resources overall if this option is turned on.

I should have probably been more clear on what I was asking, though. I'm not looking for the base game to change. I fully understand your perspective and @ThirdOrbital perspective. I was hoping to learn which local files (if any) I can update to tweak the situation more to my liking.

All the basic stuff is handled by BarbCiv.py, and there are some variables externalized in the beginning of the file; if you just want to tweak the post-settling bonus though, you can go to BUILDING_ENTHUSIASM in Separatism_CIV4BuildingInfos.xml (it's actually the same bonus that revolting civs get, to kickstart them).

Posted a savegame

You're in luck; it seems I already fixed that particular CTD post-3.55 release. Take the attached dll and replace the one you have in Beyond the Sword/Realism Invictus/Assets, and see if it fixes that for you. On my side, I clicked through ~10 turns without crashing.

 

[[Y]]

One has to remember that the map generator doesn't just pick the best spots, it also "sweetens" them almost always with an extra resource or two. So even if you place fewer civs, barbarians are actually worse off than starting civs anyway. I am reluctant to spawn more resources for settling civs though, as I feel it will disrupt the resource balance - means a map will end up with more resources overall if this option is turned on.

I agree that they don't need more resources. My point was that there are many variables that influence a newly settled barb civ's experience, and right now it feels like the settling barbs with the best experiences still get bonuses meant to balance out the worst of their possible experiences. Which is great for them! But less enjoyable for me, the player. Maybe it's just a reflection of my play style, but I often feel like the early game on emperor can be very difficult when it comes to expansion and conquering barbs. If you get a start with the appropriate resources for the economy and militarism you need, great. But when there's no copper nearby and your starting city is trying to grow off of two crab resources, a barb city settling just prompts a "well, **** it". It's not the worst thing, but it sure does feel like the player is getting punished for not having the right setup to deal with something already challenging.

I think it would be less of an issue if it wasn't so sudden. To spitball an idea (just brainstorming, not asking for implementation), I think it could be great if the settling process worked something like this:

1. Game chooses the barb cities to settle (same as it does now)
2. The capital becomes a proper civ with just that city, receiving minor economic and production bonuses, and combat bonuses within cultural borders, all for ~50 turns.
3. Game announces "<leader> is trying to unite all the <civ>'s peoples: <list of all cities>
4. Every 15-25 turns (selected randomly), one of the other cities in the list converts to that civ and gets the same bonuses.

This way, the civ still gets all of its cities, but doesn't have to deal with maintenance right away (and less research penalty for more cities), allowing it to get established with that first city. It also allows other players to see what's happening and respond, if they have the troops available. And even if there's a need to train up a conquering army, there will likely be another city or two joining before it was ready. Maybe even a mechanic where conquering one of those cities immediately prompts another one on the list to join the civ.

All the basic stuff is handled by BarbCiv.py, and there are some variables externalized in the beginning of the file; if you just want to tweak the post-settling bonus though, you can go to BUILDING_ENTHUSIASM in Separatism_CIV4BuildingInfos.xml (it's actually the same bonus that revolting civs get, to kickstart them).

Thanks! I reduced their production bonus to 20% and the duration to 75 turns, let's see how they do with that.

 

[aantia]

Now that's an interesting idea. It would certainly make the process interact with the player more, which can only be a good thing.
Even if it was simplified to an announcement that "<leader> will unite all the <civ>'s peoples: <list of all cities> in <number> turns" that would be fun. I have no idea whether that's possible with how you have the barbarian unifications set up, though.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Walter, do you still provide support for game crashes? If so, here are two different games (SVN 5285) both crashing during the AI turn.

Turns out I do, even if after quite a while! Caught and fixed the actual bugs that were causing those. Fun fact: your save 1 had two separate CTD-causing issues (one of which I fixed independently in a recent update). Next SVN update will finally contain the fix for the most annoying "delete this boat to proceed" CTD the source of which has long eluded me.

The game version is SVN 5315 but I modified the CIV4EventTriggerInfos.xml file to get the event for certain. To get the event just end turn.

Finally tested. Turns out, the inflation updates next turn after the event happens.

I have a little suggestion. An alert that warns you when a city is in danger of revolution. I have added the following code in Civ4lerts.py (and some additional lines not included here) for personal use but wonder if it could be helpful for everyone:

Thanks, finally got around to implementing it! Should make players' lives easier - at least for those who still play with Rev on.

Now that's an interesting idea. It would certainly make the process interact with the player more, which can only be a good thing.
Even if it was simplified to an announcement that "<leader> will unite all the <civ>'s peoples: <list of all cities> in <number> turns" that would be fun. I have no idea whether that's possible with how you have the barbarian unifications set up, though.

That's a very player-centric suggestion. It gives the player a clear advantage, as AI is unable to act on this info, unless the suggestion also includes coding an AI behaviour block, which I am unable to do.

While I understand wanting to have more agency, I don't currently have any ideas that give players more agency while not giving them a clear competitive advantage over AI. Currently, the barbarians settling are equally a surprise for players and AIs - perhaps even now less so for players, as they are aware of the general principle and can watch their surroundings for large barbarian cities. I promise I'll give it some thought.[/QUOTE]

 

[eXalted]

Thanks, finally got around to implementing it! Should make players' lives easier - at least for those who still play with Rev on.

Great! I won't have to add the script to every update anymore, appreciate it!

 

[aantia]

That's a very player-centric suggestion. It gives the player a clear advantage, as AI is unable to act on this info, unless the suggestion also includes coding an AI behaviour block, which I am unable to do.

While I understand wanting to have more agency, I don't currently have any ideas that give players more agency while not giving them a clear competitive advantage over AI. Currently, the barbarians settling are equally a surprise for players and AIs - perhaps even now less so for players, as they are aware of the general principle and can watch their surroundings for large barbarian cities. I promise I'll give it some thought.

[/QUOTE]


Heh, I thought when I wrote "which can only be a good thing" that that was just asking for someone to explain to me why it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. That does make perfect sense, though. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Grassland Farm]

Been replaying recently and having a blast, the mod hasn't aged one bit.
Greatly enjoying the huge Europe map - I'd love to play across continents but my old experiences always ended up being unbalanced.

 

[Colon]

Noticed a glitch where I can upgrade my Nguni bowman with one promotion to a African Longbowman, but not the one with 2 promotions. (I'm assuming it's because of the 2 promotions, as I don't have another such unit)

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Please provide a save for that; that shouldn't be the case, and probably something else is in effect - note for instance that you can only upgrade to longbowmen in a city with an archery range, same as required for building them.