Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

A little late but I have done this the "long way" and created quite a few different ones (alts) for both the Huge world map (which I customized to my liking as well) and the Europe scenario (which is my fav to play).
All you have to do is start a game choosing the desired scenario and play as the FIRST empire listed. (TeamID=0 or Egypt in the Huge world map). If you dont start the game as the first civ listed (or the one with teamID of ZERO) the AI would already have moved their first moves prior to your civ going, so the save would not be "at the start". Anyway, just FYI on why.
As soon as the game is started:
zoom way in and cover the mini map with your hand (if you dont want to see anything around you or what the map would look like)
go into worldbuilder (options worldbuilder) and SAVE AS any name you want (Huge_World_Map_Alt1 or some such)
then exit the game
open up that save in notepad++ (usually saves to \\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\WorldBuilder)
Should see something like this at the beginning of the save file:

Why go through all this dance routine if you can simply do the same to the scenario file itself?

Thanks I actually have lasso on didn't know I could fix it with that. Have you managed to find a way to widen that window? :d

Yeah. It's the first parameter of setHelpTextArea function. Note there are several instances of it throughout the file. Also unfortunately note that there seems to be a hardcoded (in exe?) upper limit to it, which is already what it is in RI. So you can make it smaller if you wish, but not larger, really.

This says it's gonna give me 1 happiness even though I don't have any incense. (unhappiness from elizabeth)

As pointed out, temples have a +1 base happiness.

1) A bug in SVN 5334, probably still there. An Mexican Aztec major film studio Estudios Churubusco cannot be built, it's not in the list of what a Great Merchant can do.

That's less of a bug and more of a lack of content. Aztecs don't have a unique Great Merchant, so nobody gets to build their unique film studio. If/when I finally scrape together at least a couple of what can pass for Aztec GMs, this will be constructible.

2) There is a hotkey conflict with siege units that can bombard units. The same button B activates both unit and city bombardment.

Thanks, one of those is now a shift+

A typo in a new feature that explains defenders spawning (SVN 5343)

Thanks, not so much a typo as an "less or equals" situation. Fixed the text.

two questions: 1) is there an option for standardized naming? Call me old fashioned, but I'm not fond of the flavor naming and I wish every swordsman was called "swordsman". Sometimes I can't even tell what types of enemy units I'm up against. And workers have zero reason to be called anything other than "workers". 2) Is it possible to revert the vanilla behavior of culture instantly converting once a civ is wiped out? Cultures surviving the death of their civ might be realistic, but it isn't fun. It makes conquest very unrewarding and it makes Revolutions completely atrocious, since the breakaway civ survives after death, which is completely nonsensical. Rebels should fully reintegrate after being crushed, having half your empire becoming "foreign" for the rest of the game is reason enough to abandon said game.

No to both - but see suggestion below.

Other than that, this is the first RI version that I actually recommend. Good to know the plethora of anti-fun mechanics RI previously had were either ditched or made optional. Things like "smart barbarians", nonstop slave rebellions with gigantic stacks, state religions getting deleted (lol), and punishing the player for using the same unit (almost like...an ARMY) were all terrible ideas I smile whenever I disable them. Per-city research cost is the only "arguable" major change (that I also remove), all others are strictly terrible. In short, if it isn't broken, don't fix it, Civ 4 is gr8.

It sounds strange to me that someone would play RI (version after version, no less) only to turn most features off. What's left of it then? Perhaps some of the better mods that aim at minimal new features, such as Advanced Civ (https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/advanced-civ.26111/) might be more your cup of tea? At the very least all units have normal names there, and instead of unfun new features, the dev focuses on what makes Civ 4 gr8 in the first place (and no, I'm not being sarcastic, this is a genuine suggestion as I sincerely feel you're misplacing your time/affection).

 

[TheBirdMan]

HELLO-HELLO-HELLO (again)

About the tech-penalty......

Thanks for your continued support,

do I take it then that the 50% penalty is not implemented - or that it is, but never goes away ?

The impression I get from playing the game is that research is still somewhat faster than you intended it to be, is that correct ?

I just came across the same "feeling" in my present game where I'm (finally) is in lead of the techs.


Being in year 1230, what "normally" would be the late Medival era - I am able to research industrial techs in only 15 turns.


Looking at this in the PY-file EventManager.py.... well, it is as it should be with a penalty of only 100%.... I think (remember I'm not a programmer, but I'm fairly good at math/logic).

if (gc.getGame().getGameTurnYear() > 1100):
CyGame().setAheadOfTimeEra(5)
for iTech in xrange(gc.getNumTechInfos()):
TechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(iTech)
if TechInfo.getEra() == 1:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(0)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 2:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(0)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 3:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(50)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 4:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(100)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 5:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(200)

Now I changed a little in the penalty - just to test the difference. And now I will be 23 turns to complete a industrial sci. Much better I say (even though it's still too fast for my taste).......

if (gc.getGame().getGameTurnYear() > 1100):
CyGame().setAheadOfTimeEra(5)
for iTech in xrange(gc.getNumTechInfos()):
TechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(iTech)
if TechInfo.getEra() == 1:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(0)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 2:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(0)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 3:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(50)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 4:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(250)
elif TechInfo.getEra() == 5:
TechInfo.setAheadOfTime(400)



I know this particular game has been very "kind" to me and most of the AIs too. Not so many deadly wars, relative many open borders between us and more "open markets" instead of "protectionism" than I normally see.

I guess it's all because of the very big map I'm using this time - The border-pressure isn't a big issue anymore. Besides I'm playing with a distance of 6 tiles between the cities to avoid too many cities to be founded (the size of the savegame would "explode" if I didn't do that).

 

[Samson]

Is it intensional that paddlesteamers are not of class Sailing ships or transport ships, so get access to few promotions? They cannot get navigation promotion for example.

 

[WaywardRogue77]

Why go through all this dance routine if you can simply do the same to the scenario file itself?

I’m not sure what you mean? I wanted several different leader versions of the same scenario, so I created various ones called (alt1, alt2, etc for my own liking. Could be called aggressive leaders or passive leaders, etc but I wanted different options for said scenarios) if you mean you could do it from the world builder somehow inside the scenario I’d love to know how for sure. That’d be awesome.
I’m probably misunderstanding what you mean I guess.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Is it intensional that paddlesteamers are not of class Sailing ships or transport ships, so get access to few promotions? They cannot get navigation promotion for example.

They, and all the later transports, are generic naval ships, yes. One isn't expected to fight too much with them, and as such to hand out lots of promotions. It's not intentional per se, just never cropped up before you pointed that out. I guess they can do with some other common promos too.

I’m not sure what you mean? I wanted several different leader versions of the same scenario, so I created various ones called (alt1, alt2, etc for my own liking. Could be called aggressive leaders or passive leaders, etc but I wanted different options for said scenarios) if you mean you could do it from the world builder somehow inside the scenario I’d love to know how for sure. That’d be awesome.
I’m probably misunderstanding what you mean I guess.

I mean why start, open in Worldbuilder and save? Why don't you just make copies of the initial scenario file and edit them (in Notepad++ or otherwise), without even needing to launch RI in the first place?

 

[Viking3857]

Здравствуйте, обновление по моду идут? Или 3.57 является последней? Спасибо за ответ.

 

[Samson]

Здравствуйте, обновление по моду идут? Или 3.57 является последней? Спасибо за ответ.

Welcome to Civ Fanatics . This is a primarily an English language forum, and you are likely to get a better answer if you also post a translation. This is what google things you are saying, which looks plausible:

Hello, is there a mod update? Or is 3.57 the latest? Thanks for the answer.​

 

[TheBirdMan]

Well, I can answer that question.


The answer is both "Yes" and "No". Version 3.57 is the latest version. But there is a new release from 15th Dec 2021, that solves the "Black Terrain Issue". Call it ver 3.57 (a)........

 

[ElderWolf]

Hmm still crashing even with process lasso thing. Maybe I done it wrong? Is there a step by step guide somewhere?
Otherwise I give up if I can't play past 200-300 turns.

 

[AspiringScholar]

A couple of potentially silly questions:

- As a suggestion for the new update, could we have variable anarchy ranges for revolutions between civic changes? I was just reminded that this was on a range in Civ 3, and this actually makes more sense both in historical terms and in modelling a sense of strategic risk when changing civics, especially since many of the civic trees model natural progressions which otherwise don't present much of a strategic crossroads in choosing to change, and merely one turn of anarchy (unless playing with the spiritual trait), or more if changing multiple civics at once, guaranteed, feels too concretely prescient to represent the uncertainties entailed in changing the structures of government concomitant with what changing the fabric of government or society would entail in real terms. Possibly this could scale with city maintenance the same way that civic maintenance is calculated? I also don't know how difficult this would be to program, but if it wouldn't require a great effort in programming, I'd suggest something along these lines, if possible.

- Very dumb question, sorry... how do I check the current build of the mod? I don't recall updating it, but ever since the toned-down barbarians were mentioned, mine have been a night and day difference in ease. They were initially very difficult, and now are hardly more than a mild nuissance. I liked the former scenario better. If I simply select "raging barbs," will it be equivalent? I might have installed 3.57 but can't find this confirmed anywhere in-game.

- And a bug report: I can upload the save if necessary, but my monasteries are still showing a 10% science bonus in the city screen even when I am not running their respective religions as a state religion. Furthermore, it doesn't add up to the total shown for research modifiers, so it's only a minor thing, but this looks like an error.

 

[Soulmate]

Glad to see the mod is still active! This was probably already answered a lot, but I couldn't find anything with a simple search so help me out please: how to unlock non-playable nations and can you actually play with them without crashes?

 

[Vengyre]

Hi, registered specifically to drop some feedback.

Overall, a fantastic mod. Not as bloated as some others, but not overly simplistic either. My favorite way to play Civilization. I really appreciate how each civ plays differently: as Incas, you can sustain an empire on hills which would be impossible otherwise (like on a Huge World Map, where Incas get quite a special start), whereas as Romans I've stayed with slavery all the way into Renaissance.

Some thoughts/complaints.

1. Crash issue persists. I am currently using Process Lasso with advanced rule: "Trim Virtual Memory" when working set of memory is >825 MB, with 1 sec duration. But the game still crashes a lot. Huge World Map in the 1775 crashes every 20 turns or so, to the point I've dropped it. Save file is over 5 MB. Europe map in 1750 (3.5 MB save file) crashes occasionally as well, maybe every 50 turns or so. I've noticed that info screen in particular can be very crash-prone.

2. Inquisition diplomacy penalties are way too severe. It's the 18th century and many empires still have the -15 relationship modifier for removing their religions, which I did in the early middle ages. I've decided to increase the memory decay rate 5 times. Will see if this gets better.

3. Pasture food resources are terrible! Especially pigs. Pastures scale very badly, and they provide increased epidemics chance, which is far more important than health (I usually don't have any issues with health, but epidemics can be a threat, especially in the middle ages).

4. Doom stacks are still strong. I've got zerged by a country which just made 40 irregulars, and thrown them onto my 20-man protected city. Meh, feels kinda cheap. 35% power reduction is still not enough imo. But I guess increasing this value will cripple AI a bit too much?

5. Shwedagon Paya is kinda useless. I've tried to do a very early Cult of Personality, and it was... okay I guess? Speaking of Cult of Personality, it kinda needs some propaganda units that remove religions. Running Free Religion very early is pointless since you can't build religious communities - maybe those should be tied only to civic, not tech?

6. Tech cost scaling with city count seems too steep. Mostly for the AI. In my Giant Earth game, I've united the entire South America, had 30 cities, and the only one who was constantly ahead of me tech-wise was Indonesia, which had 2 (!) cities, and did nothing other than just sit on their island. Whereas major powers in Old World, which had similar amount of territories, were way behind. Imo it punishes expansion way too much, I'll try reducing it and see how it fares. While player can benefit from expanding later on, it punishes AI too much while rewarding "doing nothing" from it's part.

7. Cultures decay way too slowly. I've conquered a barbarian city in Classical era, and in the 1750 it is still 10% Barbarian, resulting in 1 unhappiness. Idk, seems absurd? From my understanding, this is designed for the Revolutions module, but since Revolutions in general don't work that well for Civ, maybe it should be tweaked? I'd tweak that myself, but have no idea where to look.

That's quite a list, but despite all that I really enjoy this mod, so thanks for your efforts!

 

[CastleRum]

how to unlock non-playable nations and can you actually play with them without crashes?

path to Civ4/BeyondtheSword/Mods/Realism/Assets/XML/Civilizations
Open the CIV4CivilizationsInfos.xml file with notepad or whatever word processing program
Find the civ you want to make playable, find the line under that civ's section that reads <bPlayable>0</bPlayable> and change the 0 to a 1.

I've never crashed from this.

 

[aantia]

Hi, registered specifically to drop some feedback.

Overall, a fantastic mod. Not as bloated as some others, but not overly simplistic either. My favorite way to play Civilization. I really appreciate how each civ plays differently: as Incas, you can sustain an empire on hills which would be impossible otherwise (like on a Huge World Map, where Incas get quite a special start), whereas as Romans I've stayed with slavery all the way into Renaissance.

Some thoughts/complaints.

1. Crash issue persists. I am currently using Process Lasso with advanced rule: "Trim Virtual Memory" when working set of memory is >825 MB, with 1 sec duration. But the game still crashes a lot. Huge World Map in the 1775 crashes every 20 turns or so, to the point I've dropped it. Save file is over 5 MB. Europe map in 1750 (3.5 MB save file) crashes occasionally as well, maybe every 50 turns or so. I've noticed that info screen in particular can be very crash-prone.

2. Inquisition diplomacy penalties are way too severe. It's the 18th century and many empires still have the -15 relationship modifier for removing their religions, which I did in the early middle ages. I've decided to increase the memory decay rate 5 times. Will see if this gets better.

3. Pasture food resources are terrible! Especially pigs. Pastures scale very badly, and they provide increased epidemics chance, which is far more important than health (I usually don't have any issues with health, but epidemics can be a threat, especially in the middle ages).

4. Doom stacks are still strong. I've got zerged by a country which just made 40 irregulars, and thrown them onto my 20-man protected city. Meh, feels kinda cheap. 35% power reduction is still not enough imo. But I guess increasing this value will cripple AI a bit too much?

5. Shwedagon Paya is kinda useless. I've tried to do a very early Cult of Personality, and it was... okay I guess? Speaking of Cult of Personality, it kinda needs some propaganda units that remove religions. Running Free Religion very early is pointless since you can't build religious communities - maybe those should be tied only to civic, not tech?

6. Tech cost scaling with city count seems too steep. Mostly for the AI. In my Giant Earth game, I've united the entire South America, had 30 cities, and the only one who was constantly ahead of me tech-wise was Indonesia, which had 2 (!) cities, and did nothing other than just sit on their island. Whereas major powers in Old World, which had similar amount of territories, were way behind. Imo it punishes expansion way too much, I'll try reducing it and see how it fares. While player can benefit from expanding later on, it punishes AI too much while rewarding "doing nothing" from it's part.

7. Cultures decay way too slowly. I've conquered a barbarian city in Classical era, and in the 1750 it is still 10% Barbarian, resulting in 1 unhappiness. Idk, seems absurd? From my understanding, this is designed for the Revolutions module, but since Revolutions in general don't work that well for Civ, maybe it should be tweaked? I'd tweak that myself, but have no idea where to look.

That's quite a list, but despite all that I really enjoy this mod, so thanks for your efforts!

I want to answer these, although Walter might well chime in to correct me.

1. I don't think that scenario can actually be completed, unfortunately.
2. I partially agree with this; I feel like it might be best to have a lower maximum penalty, but national grudges like that should persist for many centuries, realistically.
3. They're better than not having a food resource on that tile. I don't think all resources should be equally good.
4. No comment; I can't be bothered to do the maths on that.
5. I like Cult of Personality, especially if you have an isolated start and can avoid getting religion until you unlock it. I do agree that it's a bit of a problem for only use of the Shwedagon Paya to be unlocking Cult of personality, though. Decoupling religious communities from the tech might be enough to fix that: then the Shwedagon Paya would be good if you have tons of religions or none, which is nicely symmetrical.
6. I disagree - I think techs should actually be more expensive for very small empires than they are now, because any one-city civ (in a normal game) can easily outperform medium-to-large civs in tech, and I think they ought to perform about the same (athough I can't remember if that was the actual intention behind the mechanic).
7. I don't believe cultures actually decay at all, you just reduce their percentage of the city's total culture as you produce more of your own.

 

[CastleRum]

Europe map in 1750 (3.5 MB save file) crashes occasionally as well, maybe every 50 turns or so. I've noticed that info screen in particular can be very crash-prone.

I've attached (I hope; it's my first time trying to attach a file here) a version of RI Europe map where I trimmed off about 20% of the map size, which has helped make that map more playable for me with regards to faster turn load times and fewer later game crashes. Give it a try if you want.

 

[aantia]

I have a couple of event issues to report from my last game, played in r5344.
1: I had an event that gave a buff to my Autobahns, something about having great engineers. Unfortunately it fired when I was playing Korea, in the early Industrial Era, so it wasn't appropriate at all.
2: Although inflation has been taken out, there is still at least one event that interacts with it, the one where you can choose to pay a lump sum of cash to reduce inflation.

 

[Vengyre]

They're better than not having a food resource on that tile. I don't think all resources should be equally good.

The problem is that not getting pigs is better than getting pigs. I'd build farm/mine/windmill/cottage over pasture anytime.

6. I disagree - I think techs should actually be more expensive for very small empires than they are now, because any one-city civ (in a normal game) can easily outperform medium-to-large civs in tech, and I think they ought to perform about the same (athough I can't remember if that was the actual intention behind the mechanic).

Yeah, that's my point. Small civs are way too effective at science. Therefore large AIs are always behind tech-wise compared to small ones.

I've attached (I hope; it's my first time trying to attach a file here) a version of RI Europe map where I trimmed off about 20% of the map size, which has helped make that map more playable for me with regards to faster turn load times and fewer later game crashes. Give it a try if you want.

I'll give it a try, thanks. I'd gladly cut all the Ural/India stuff for the sake of better stability.

 

[sazhdapec]

Although inflation has been taken out, there is still at least one event that interacts with it, the one where you can choose to pay a lump sum of cash to reduce inflation.

Inflation has not been taken out. It is still there. If you want to see its effect hover over your expenses. The event that interacts with it takes effect the following turn.

Hi, registered specifically to drop some feedback.

I wanted to sit out this discussion but seeing some of the points lead to misconceptions I'll add my opinions.

3. Pasture food resources are terrible! Especially pigs. Pastures scale very badly, and they provide increased epidemics chance, which is far more important than health (I usually don't have any issues with health, but epidemics can be a threat, especially in the middle ages).

I'm not sure what version you're playing so my comment may not apply. I hardly disagree. Until recently I had issues with a pig pasture but since it was buffed I like it too. Yes, pastures scale badly but they are great in the earlygame. And if you increase your difficulty you'll suddenly discover that you need all the you can get your hands on.

6. Tech cost scaling with city count seems too steep. Mostly for the AI. In my Giant Earth game, I've united the entire South America, had 30 cities, and the only one who was constantly ahead of me tech-wise was Indonesia, which had 2 (!) cities, and did nothing other than just sit on their island. Whereas major powers in Old World, which had similar amount of territories, were way behind. Imo it punishes expansion way too much, I'll try reducing it and see how it fares. While player can benefit from expanding later on, it punishes AI too much while rewarding "doing nothing" from it's part.

It's not tech cost scaling. It's the AI making BILLIONS of useless units that cripple its economy. And even if a small civ outperforms a bigger one in technology it can still be overwhelmed by force.

7. Cultures decay way too slowly. I've conquered a barbarian city in Classical era, and in the 1750 it is still 10% Barbarian, resulting in 1 unhappiness. Idk, seems absurd? From my understanding, this is designed for the Revolutions module, but since Revolutions in general don't work that well for Civ, maybe it should be tweaked? I'd tweak that myself, but have no idea where to look.

As aantia pointed out culture does not decay. Just make more of your own culture. I wanted to add that it doesn't feel unrealistic that people can remember their heritage even after a thousand years.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Здравствуйте, обновление по моду идут? Или 3.57 является последней? Спасибо за ответ.

3.57 is the latest currently released version. The development still continues, so there will be more releases.

Hmm still crashing even with process lasso thing. Maybe I done it wrong? Is there a step by step guide somewhere?
Otherwise I give up if I can't play past 200-300 turns.

Crashing after 200-300 turns at standard RI speed is definitely not normal, lasso or not. What are your system specs?

- As a suggestion for the new update, could we have variable anarchy ranges for revolutions between civic changes? I was just reminded that this was on a range in Civ 3, and this actually makes more sense both in historical terms and in modelling a sense of strategic risk when changing civics, especially since many of the civic trees model natural progressions which otherwise don't present much of a strategic crossroads in choosing to change, and merely one turn of anarchy (unless playing with the spiritual trait), or more if changing multiple civics at once, guaranteed, feels too concretely prescient to represent the uncertainties entailed in changing the structures of government concomitant with what changing the fabric of government or society would entail in real terms. Possibly this could scale with city maintenance the same way that civic maintenance is calculated? I also don't know how difficult this would be to program, but if it wouldn't require a great effort in programming, I'd suggest something along these lines, if possible.

From my experience, AIs change civics more often than players. As your suggestion amounts to lengthening the anarchy time (as it is currently 1 turn per civic change, one can't really do shorter than that), I fear it will disproportionately disadvantage the AI.

- Very dumb question, sorry... how do I check the current build of the mod? I don't recall updating it, but ever since the toned-down barbarians were mentioned, mine have been a night and day difference in ease. They were initially very difficult, and now are hardly more than a mild nuissance. I liked the former scenario better. If I simply select "raging barbs," will it be equivalent? I might have installed 3.57 but can't find this confirmed anywhere in-game.

Never felt the need to implement, so there is no immediate method to check from within the mod. The easiest is to find the installer you've used.

To answer your question, yes, the difference is "Raging Barbarians" was on by default and now it is not. So yes, it's as easy as turning it back on.

- And a bug report: I can upload the save if necessary, but my monasteries are still showing a 10% science bonus in the city screen even when I am not running their respective religions as a state religion. Furthermore, it doesn't add up to the total shown for research modifiers, so it's only a minor thing, but this looks like an error.

As this doesn't affect actual gameplay and lies within the cursed realm of UI, I will have a look but can't guarantee any results.

This was probably already answered a lot, but I couldn't find anything with a simple search so help me out please: how to unlock non-playable nations and can you actually play with them without crashes?

Answered before me; to elaborate a bit, civs in Derivative_CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml are designed to be able to play as normal, and as such enabling them should lead to no errors, though the amount of content for them is much less than for any stock playable civ. Civs in OtherCivs_CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml exist for specific scenario purposes and shouldn't be made playable.

1. Crash issue persists. I am currently using Process Lasso with advanced rule: "Trim Virtual Memory" when working set of memory is >825 MB, with 1 sec duration. But the game still crashes a lot. Huge World Map in the 1775 crashes every 20 turns or so, to the point I've dropped it. Save file is over 5 MB. Europe map in 1750 (3.5 MB save file) crashes occasionally as well, maybe every 50 turns or so. I've noticed that info screen in particular can be very crash-prone.

I've actually been wanting to remove the Huge World Map altogether, but there are always "I love the map and don't care that I won't be able to reach industrial era" people around to dissuade me. I should simply add a disclaimer at its start to warn players they likely won't be able to complete a full game on it.

2. Inquisition diplomacy penalties are way too severe. It's the 18th century and many empires still have the -15 relationship modifier for removing their religions, which I did in the early middle ages. I've decided to increase the memory decay rate 5 times. Will see if this gets better.

Pardon my nosiness, but what exactly was the purpose of going around and removing other peoples' religions? What did you want to achieve?

3. Pasture food resources are terrible! Especially pigs. Pastures scale very badly, and they provide increased epidemics chance, which is far more important than health (I usually don't have any issues with health, but epidemics can be a threat, especially in the middle ages).

I feel you're far too focused on the late game. Resources aren't meant to be equally valuable all throughout the game, and animals are designed to be more valuable early on. TBH, there are definitely some legit situations where one could prefer to farm over pigs in the late game, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

4. Doom stacks are still strong. I've got zerged by a country which just made 40 irregulars, and thrown them onto my 20-man protected city. Meh, feels kinda cheap. 35% power reduction is still not enough imo. But I guess increasing this value will cripple AI a bit too much?

I generally don't like the "git gud" type post, but from what you've described I got a feeling that if what you're saying was true, the defensive stack was really suboptimal. To confirm my feeling, I did an experiment: https://imgur.com/a/2RG6cOf. 20 units contemporary to Irregulars (mid-Renaissance) representing roughly the composition I'd use to defend a city, attacked by 40 irregulars. Everything else assumed to be the worst-case scenario for the defender - flatland city with no defenses, a leader with a trait negatively impacting military units (note that the negative trait on the attacker side doesn't matter as it subtracts first strike chances, which Irregulars wouldn't get anyway), and no pre-bombardment of the attacking stack by the cannons (which one would normally be able to do since a stack of irregular would normally take at least one turn to get into position for attacking a city). While they did take some losses, the defenders held convincingly. I actually replicated that several times and none of the cases resulted in the city being taken.

5. Shwedagon Paya is kinda useless. I've tried to do a very early Cult of Personality, and it was... okay I guess? Speaking of Cult of Personality, it kinda needs some propaganda units that remove religions. Running Free Religion very early is pointless since you can't build religious communities - maybe those should be tied only to civic, not tech?

Yeah, it's kinda situational. Though locking into Cult of Personality early on, especially with a Charismatic leader, is a niche but legit strategy.

6. Tech cost scaling with city count seems too steep. Mostly for the AI. In my Giant Earth game, I've united the entire South America, had 30 cities, and the only one who was constantly ahead of me tech-wise was Indonesia, which had 2 (!) cities, and did nothing other than just sit on their island. Whereas major powers in Old World, which had similar amount of territories, were way behind. Imo it punishes expansion way too much, I'll try reducing it and see how it fares. While player can benefit from expanding later on, it punishes AI too much while rewarding "doing nothing" from it's part.

I feel the precise balance here is a matter of personal taste, but generally speaking, I have no problem with smaller AIs being more advanced than larger ones. Also from what you wrote, it might be an Earth map-specific issue, as the general the density of cities there is usually much higher than in a comparable random map. Admittedly I don't care for the scenario balance as much as I do for random maps, but I'll see if I should tone it down in that specific case. I wouldn't know as I didn't launch the world map scenarios in quite a while.

7. Cultures decay way too slowly. I've conquered a barbarian city in Classical era, and in the 1750 it is still 10% Barbarian, resulting in 1 unhappiness. Idk, seems absurd? From my understanding, this is designed for the Revolutions module, but since Revolutions in general don't work that well for Civ, maybe it should be tweaked? I'd tweak that myself, but have no idea where to look.

Culture doesn't decay. Why exactly does having a persistent disgruntled national minority seem absurd?

1: I had an event that gave a buff to my Autobahns, something about having great engineers. Unfortunately it fired when I was playing Korea, in the early Industrial Era, so it wasn't appropriate at all.

I'll check.

2: Although inflation has been taken out, there is still at least one event that interacts with it, the one where you can choose to pay a lump sum of cash to reduce inflation.

Why does everyone think the inflation has been taken out? It's another one of those persistent beliefs that I don't feel are founded in anything in the actual RI.

 

[Vengyre]

I've actually been wanting to remove the Huge World Map altogether, but there are always "I love the map and don't care that I won't be able to reach industrial era" people around to dissuade me. I should simply add a disclaimer at its start to warn players they likely won't be able to complete a full game on it.

This is a shame as it is a very well designed map, I usually don't like Earth maps for Civ, but this one is great.

Pardon my nosiness, but what exactly was the purpose of going around and removing other peoples' religions? What did you want to achieve?

I meant removing religions from the cities I've conquered. This hugely pisses off everyone following that religion simply because there is a lot of cities, which would make sense if it didn't persist for so long and wasn't so drastic. As it is right now, imo it's not worth it at all, it ruins relationships for the rest of the game, more than anything else you could do.

No one hates me for declaring wars, but some distant followers of Taoism absolutely hate me (-15 modifier) because I've been removing Taoism in the cities I've conquered. Even if they aren't even religious anymore and switched to free religion hundreds of years ago. And thousand years have passed. Idk, it's almost like hating medieval Italian states for persecution of Christians during Roman times.

Ideally, I think there should be something like a cap for negative mood (like -6 max or something, maybe dependant on leader, so religious ones would actually really hate you, while anti-clerical wouldn't care much). Another thing I could think of is having the modifier mostly disappear when they switch to no state religion. But as a quick fix, I've tried make them to forget this faster by changing their diplo values.

I generally don't like the "git gud" type post, but from what you've described I got a feeling that if what you're saying was true, the defensive stack was really suboptimal.

Ehh, maybe, I don't really remember what my stack was. I forgot that other than 40 irregulars, my opponent also had some support units like trebuchets, so those could've contributed as well.

Why exactly does having a persistent disgruntled national minority seem absurd?

It'd make sense if it was some sort of advanced civilization that got conquered, but if it is barbarians or some primitive tribe, realistically, I think they should get assimilated quickly. Or at the very least we could pretend that they got integrated into the culture and accepted the 'civilized' way of living. But it seems there's no easy way around it.
Again, I am talking about an issue I've encountered on pre-made maps, where there's a lot of pre-placed barbarians.