Realism Invictus

[fdrpi]

Small bug: When set to build research, the city governor decides to assign merchants, not scientists. If you want science production, this is of course sub-optimal.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Is there any way to see the number of units in a stack which is so large that the tooltip "goes through the ceiling" of the screen? While you would know that you're dealing with a massive army in any case, the combined arms promotions actually inflate the size of the tooltip already. If not, that's fine (and I suppose it kind of makes sense as being merely an indefinite swarm at that point), but if there is a way to do this, it would be important to know for gameplay.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Hmmm. I don't know.

What I'm doing is counting the number of troops of each different types in the enemy stack and then add some 12-14 units listed in the top unit-by-unit. It's not accurate - not at all. But you will get a good guess.

 

[sazhdapec]

If you can restrain yourself open Worldbuilder, choose a Unit Mode in the menu and click on a stack. It will show you everything.

 

[TheBirdMan]

I'm serious, it has completely ruined diplomacy in my game, only my vassals dont hate me.

.

They do! Just you wait an see.......

Ohhh, sorry. Sleeping time for me now

 

[AspiringScholar]

Could someone take a look at this? For some reason the diplomatic interaction with India is as though I am at war with him, but we are in fact at peace and even at friendly relations. This must be a bug.

Also, another small suggestion for the next update: could we have avoid unhappiness turned on by default, since there is no equivalent to whipping angry citizens as with vanilla BtS, and it's easy to miss a city growing into unhappiness? I turn it on after each new city I acquire, but there's not a reason to leave this off, to my mind, so I think this would improve play a bit.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

On the whole clock tower thing - I'm not replying individually, but generally speaking I agree with all of you.

1) It is always sad to take something out completely (though TBH it will take me approximately 20 minutes to add a new building, and ~5 to take it out, so no big lament for a wasted effort)

2) That said, if a building adds nothing to the gameplay, it better not be there, and the way the clocks currently are, they add nothing.

3) There is a major historical reason to have this building - personal watches started actually being available to the general public (as opposed to very rich people) roughly by XX century, so most people would learn their time from a fixed timepiece. As such, they did play an important role in facilitating various aspects of the city life, especially commercial.

4) All that said, it becoming an upgrade to the city square is the solution I'm currently leaning to.

Small bug: When set to build research, the city governor decides to assign merchants, not scientists. If you want science production, this is of course sub-optimal.

While I'll take a look, what AI does with specialists is highly situational - so I suspect it doesn't most of the time (which of course means that catching it actually doing it might be tricky). But actually there might be some weird (but actually working) logic to it - say, a city that has a very high gold output modifier (and thus a merchant produces much more gold than a scientist would research) is better off assigning merchants for your actual research output, as you can then increase the research rate higher and have more research in total.

Could someone take a look at this? For some reason the diplomatic interaction with India is as though I am at war with him, but we are in fact at peace and even at friendly relations. This must be a bug.

The answer is in the relations tooltip - "You stopped trading with us". Either due to an Apostolic palace resolution, or due to accepting someone's suggestion. It will last for a certain amount of turns (I guess 15, like a truce).

Also, another small suggestion for the next update: could we have avoid unhappiness turned on by default, since there is no equivalent to whipping angry citizens as with vanilla BtS, and it's easy to miss a city growing into unhappiness? I turn it on after each new city I acquire, but there's not a reason to leave this off, to my mind, so I think this would improve play a bit.

Oh, I do the same myself, but this one is the way it is for a very different reason. I don't want to answer a hundred "why aren't my cities growing" questions from new players (and I know from experience most players will ignore manuals and even in-game pointers). I might try to make it a toggleable option off by default, but no promises, since this is UI realm again.

 

[[Y]]

ll that said, it becoming an upgrade to the city square is the solution I'm currently leaning to.

Leaning into the "clocktowers are built into other buildings" theme, what if it became an upgrade to multiple other buildings? +1 to market, +1 to ironworks, +1 to religious buildings, etc. And maybe balanced out with a +1 pandemic chance since people are at the same place at the same time or something like that.

 

[AspiringScholar]

On the whole clock tower thing - I'm not replying individually, but generally speaking I agree with all of you.

1) It is always sad to take something out completely (though TBH it will take me approximately 20 minutes to add a new building, and ~5 to take it out, so no big lament for a wasted effort)

2) That said, if a building adds nothing to the gameplay, it better not be there, and the way the clocks currently are, they add nothing.

3) There is a major historical reason to have this building - personal watches started actually being available to the general public (as opposed to very rich people) roughly by XX century, so most people would learn their time from a fixed timepiece. As such, they did play an important role in facilitating various aspects of the city life, especially commercial.

4) All that said, it becoming an upgrade to the city square is the solution I'm currently leaning to.



While I'll take a look, what AI does with specialists is highly situational - so I suspect it doesn't most of the time (which of course means that catching it actually doing it might be tricky). But actually there might be some weird (but actually working) logic to it - say, a city that has a very high gold output modifier (and thus a merchant produces much more gold than a scientist would research) is better off assigning merchants for your actual research output, as you can then increase the research rate higher and have more research in total.



The answer is in the relations tooltip - "You stopped trading with us". Either due to an Apostolic palace resolution, or due to accepting someone's suggestion. It will last for a certain amount of turns (I guess 15, like a truce).



Oh, I do the same myself, but this one is the way it is for a very different reason. I don't want to answer a hundred "why aren't my cities growing" questions from new players (and I know from experience most players will ignore manuals and even in-game pointers). I might try to make it a toggleable option off by default, but no promises, since this is UI realm again.

Ah, probably was just an AP resolution which passed and which I didn't notice. Thanks for taking a look.

Identified the following minor typo: when encountering Kobdo Kunctai of the Mongols, she says that she would punish people by making them eat steak without utensils (a reference I'm not really understanding, honestly) and then follows that with "Is not it better to have my friendship that this humiliation?" That should be "than." This may not even matter at all but I thought you might want to know little tiny things like that as I encounter them.

 

[SR-71]

Hi there!
After years playing this great mod I've decided to do my own scenarios, like American Civil War, and others.
But I'm completely lost at this point, so i'd like to ask: which tools do I need for editing the map? Since I'd like to use RI scripts, units and so, do I need anything more or specific for RI?. There are some tutorial about vanilla, but Do you know any specific tutorial for RI too?
Thanks on advance

 

[Snowygerry]

On the whole clock tower thing - I'm not replying individually, but generally speaking I agree with all of you.

1) It is always sad to take something out completely (though TBH it will take me approximately 20 minutes to add a new building, and ~5 to take it out, so no big lament for a wasted effort)

2) That said, if a building adds nothing to the gameplay, it better not be there, and the way the clocks currently are, they add nothing.

3) There is a major historical reason to have this building - personal watches started actually being available to the general public (as opposed to very rich people) roughly by XX century, so most people would learn their time from a fixed timepiece. As such, they did play an important role in facilitating various aspects of the city life, especially commercial.

(...)

Also military - the original clock towers were actually "bell towers" - to sound alarm in case of fire or attack, also a lookout point in otherwise flat landscapes.

The clocks were added later in most cases.

 

[Zap0]

On the topic of the City Square, I'm not particularly happy with that building either - mainly because unlocking it disables your ability to build new Monuments, which are much cheaper (60 iirc instead of 100+) and have the same main effect, that being the +1 to pop your first border in a new city. Making it available to build alongside it's upgrade like the Blast Furnace may be an option, but I can see it being silly to have one of the cheapest buildings in the game available for a long time. Maybe finally disable it with the clock tower.

The Monument and the City Square just have different use cases. The Monument is primarily an option to pop the second ring for small, newly founded cities. The City Square is something you put in larger, established cities to multiply existing output and benefit from the bonus.

So what are the options? Making it a building line Monument -> City Square -> Clock Tower, or making it Monument -> Clock Tower with the City Square separate. Could shuffle around the + from the City Square to the clock tower, adjust costs a bit - but then the City Square would look awkward, being a cheap building with small bonuses.

Since the Clock Tower was used for (commercial) coordination, assigning a small bonus (5-10%?) to it instead may be an option. That would put it in the City Square category of "makes established city a bit better, not good for new city".

 

[Deder]

I cannot belive but it works.
I found simple solution to black water
Find how to enable cheats. ( easy tutorials so i do not repeat )
Press lambda, and write: graphics.togglewater
Press enter.

 

[AspiringScholar]

After more careful play of my own and continuing to read through this whole thread (on page 261 now), some new ideas have come to mind; some of my own, and others being the relayed suggestions of others which seemed to be received favorably at the time, but don't seem to have made it in the current rendition of the mod. I wholeheartedly respect the position of Walter not to undertake any kind of overhaul or fundamental mechanical change, so in each case I've tried to temper the suggestion with that in mind, endeavoring to work within the framework already enabled by the game's engine. Some are simply minor tweaks or aesthetic changes, but a few would be a bit more involved if still (by my sincere if still non-programmer assumption) something easily workable within the purview of the existing mechanics. If some of these are excessive, I don't mean to be inconsiderate or blithe towards the desire not to undertake any ambitious changes, but suspect some of these might be interesting and simple enough to be worth suggesting. Once again, many thanks for such a high-quality game experience that I get to enjoy for free.

I will go ahead and spoiler this for the sake of everyone's screen real-estate, as it's quite long. I even have more suggestions, but decided not to mention some which are more conjecture and outlandish and not perceived to be working within already existing mechanics, as these.

Spoiler :

- Would it be possible to make early oceangoing vessels take damage for each turn they are in ocean and outside of their civ's cultural borders, and eventually sink? In Civ3, there was a risk of sinking for wooden ships, and from both a realism and gameplay standpoint, it's somewhat disappointing and uninteresting that early transoceanic ships in the age of sail are guaranteed safe passage and indefinite tenure out at sea, when these early voyages were in history quite dangerous and seldom completed unscathed; furthermore, I think it would add to the fun of exploration as the player in the game, as you seek to circumnavigate the world, or find other civs, or explore the coastline of the new world: imagine instead of just building one caravel which is guaranteed (outside of war, or privateers from someone much more advanced) to accomplish all of this for you at no additional risk or expense, you have to send out multiple voyages to scout out and get an idea on the resources and good city spots of the new world are in a terra map, and face the risk of losing settlers and other valuable units as you begin colonizing. I think that this would be a relatively simple change to enhance gameplay quite a bit, and make this area of play more historically plausible and exciting. The way I propose this to be done is to inflict variable collateral damage to ships of a certain class (and I'm thinking for simplicity's sake, to restrict this only to the age of sail, perhaps even only the pre High Seas Warfare classes, as later ships are obviously far more reliable), only, to enable a total destruction once strength reaches zero, if possible. (AI pathfinding with planned invasions should be irrelevant as well, if later sailing ships are excluded from this, I would think.) I don't know if that's obtainable via the collateral damage mechanic, but it seemed like a first-blush way to accomplish this simply. I vaguely recall mentioning something about this a while back, so if apologies if I'm repeating myself in any way.

- Is tech transfer currently tied to active trade routes, or is it still simply a function of having open borders diplomatically? This was discussed a while back, and Walter said that this was the intention for the system and ought to be implemented eventually, but AFAIK it still does not function this way.

- There was also talk about a more passive espionage system than in BtS. Was there any previous development here that was shelved and could be added back in? Even simply codes for new mission types?

- Someone had mentioned the nuclear arms race being represented exclusively by ICMBs as somewhat disingenuous to history, since, obviously, their first (and only, in war) use was in being dropped as a bomb from a conventional aircraft, making rocketry and all of the industry, technology, and infrastructure (silos) associated with that superfluous to the actual historical arms race. Walter had actually responded at the time that he concurred with the argument and that it would actually be quite workable within the existing "world wonder unit" system, but that there wouldn't be a unit to represent this effectively. I suggest reskinning the guided missile (one-use, per being a disposable unit and functionally a world wonder) and making it (unlike later tactical nukes or ICBMs, which are naturally supposed to be superior) vulnerable to fighter interception, as this seems to be a workable way to include it in such a way that it is more true to an authentic representation of the weapon while also being an interesting gameplay feature which would affect play meaningfully and isn't just a bell and whistle.

- Another idea someone had mentioned was refugees, and Walter had said that he concurred that this is a very important aspect of history which sadly just isn't modeled by Civilization IV's game mechanics. I believe I may have found a way that they could be, at least theoretically! In the same way that captured slaves use the unit functionality of the great engineer in hurrying production, albeit significantly scaled-down, this made me wonder if an analogous unit, "the refugee," could similarly apply a scaled-down function of the great artist's culture bomb, to instantly install foreign nationality in the nearest cities it finds! Their odds of spawning could be something similar to partisans when attacking a city, or a random "revolt" vis a vis slaves/serfs, if razed, perhaps, and they could use the same pathfinding logic as slaves in serfs in seeking the nearest city to "attack" by joining it. This foreign culture would then constitute a problem for the host city in the form of instability from separatism, and unhappiness for "resenting foreign rule," (and also represent social problems like the racism and xenophobia of the native population against the minorities) those latter two already being written into the game in the form of foreign culture within the city. (This would also rudimentarily model cultural diasporas in such a way that the interior of every civ isn't curiously 100% homogenous, and make contentious border regions more naturally diffused than simply a dichotomous distribution of outputs.) In gameplay terms, I think this could add a considerable layer of depth and a lot of fun for something which appears to me to have the building blocks for it already there.

- This would just be a matter of flavor, but would you consider verbally titling/labeling the tech eras next to their cool individual icons? For instance, "high medieval" for the crusader shield, and so forth.

- Epidemics in my games always seem to be local and don't seem to be spreading a long trade routes to other cities. Isn't that how they are supposed to function? Also, I think epidemics as a whole could be buffed a little bit, to be more deadly in some cases. They usually are just a few turns and a few population unit deaths, but something like the Black Death should be capable of, in the span of 5-10 turns, reducing all of your cities by a third of their population or more. Neglecting health infrastructure or overexpanding vertically is punished by them, and they are more than a nuissance, but more like a thorn in the side rather than a truly seismic disaster as they sometimes were. Would implementing any changes to severity within the existing mechanical functionality be difficult, and do you agree with this reasoning?

- Someone mentioned being disappointed by army sizes not meaningfully corresponding to population sizes, such that small empires can still afford to field considerable armies, etc., but their main gripe was that manpower itself wasn't really represented by any population loss from battlefield deaths, or required to train units. I don't really mind that personally in this game, since "hammers" can be taken to represent fighting age men as a resource, too, and the time to train units could loosely represent this ability to be replenished, notwithstanding that the relative number of men in a military unit is necessarily much smaller than a whole population unit of the city, but where I think a tweak could be made and that this poster had a point, is with force limits. As it is now, we have the base unit support by default, and then thereafter it is an additional free unit for every 0.24*population, but going beyond this is always only one additional gold per turn... The value of a single commerce equating the support of a unit facilitated by, say, an entire 4 population city, is simply not reasonably on par, to my mind, and furthermore, the relative value of one single unit of commerce diminishes substantially as the game progresses. This does mean that low population civs aren't really hindered much by their dearth of manpower in fielding a sizeable army, perhaps even comparable to that of a much larger civ, comfortably. Historically speaking, overall population and fieldable manpower do of course have a high P value, where greater concentrations of fighting-age men being in the professional army at any one time being somewhat rare and usually the result of an especially martial society, not one merely marginally wealthier than it is populous. I think this phenomenon could be more faithfully represented by the game. If I could suggest something simple, how about approximately doubling the free support value WRT population, and also doubling unit cost in excess of this? I mentioned something about simply doubling unit cost and Walter said that then the AI wouldn't know it was overspending, but could we circumvent this by altering the values for free support, so that it knows what it should be aiming for with unit build? I also think this would combine quite nicely with scaling unit costs to prevent snowballing, which I suspect would be the next source of reluctance beyond any potential AI unit-build complications.

- The shortswordsman is a little overpowered, I think. Perhaps (especially given its title) make it require a strategic metal, or increase its hammer cost? It's a quite reliable, cheap, and easily-spammed unit. I think in scenarios where one doesn't have copper or iron, they simply fare too well to be lacking weapons made from these, or are otherwise disingenuous to this lack by wielding "shortswords" anyway. Something just seems kind of wrong about that, when you would otherwise have to rely on archers and militia. Was this a matter of balance so that if you don't have these resources, you're in a virtually unwinnable position if you get attacked by someone who does?

 

[fdrpi]

I have come to the conclusion that the tech tree has a bloat problem. While more engaging in the start and very end of the game, the industrial-era military techs in particular are slog. Thematically, I don't think many of them are important enough to be included, making getting through them boring and confusing.

The tech tree being so tightly connected to itself also paradoxically makes science victories less fun to play, as it reduces tech tree from a series of choices to merely an obstacle to overcome. Because to get all the space parts, you basically need every tech in the game, so deciding which tech to research matters way less. And while some prereqs are good and necessary, the fact that you need almost every military tech before you can start science stuff might on one level be accurate, it doesn't make for as good gameplay, at least in the Civ context.

Related to this, because the techs are so numerous, I don't have much difficult choices in my building queus. I can build faster than I tech for my established cities, so I run research way more than I ever did in unmodded Civ. This also eliminates a vector of player choice.

I can provide a list of techs I consider excessive. I could do the same for connections, but that would take longer.

 

[arythm1a]

I have come to the conclusion that the tech tree has a bloat problem. While more engaging in the start and very end of the game, the industrial-era military techs in particular are slog. Thematically, I don't think many of them are important enough to be included, making getting through them boring and confusing.

The tech tree being so tightly connected to itself also paradoxically makes science victories less fun to play, as it reduces tech tree from a series of choices to merely an obstacle to overcome. Because to get all the space parts, you basically need every tech in the game, so deciding which tech to research matters way less. And while some prereqs are good and necessary, the fact that you need almost every military tech before you can start science stuff might on one level be accurate, it doesn't make for as good gameplay, at least in the Civ context.

Related to this, because the techs are so numerous, I don't have much difficult choices in my building queus. I can build faster than I tech for my established cities, so I run research way more than I ever did in unmodded Civ. This also eliminates a vector of player choice.

I can provide a list of techs I consider excessive. I could do the same for connections, but that would take longer.

As someone with thousands of hours in RI, I completely agree with you - the industrial era is WAY too long. I think in general a shorter time to complete the game is not a bad idea, but if Walter wants to keep it equally long I would add some more ancient/classical techs to extend that era - feels like you blast through it in a few hours.

 

[Snowygerry]

Could be that has more to do with the timescale than the tech tree - somewhere in the 1700s the games switches from one/a few year(s) per turn, to several turns per year...

personally I like long games, why else would one play a "Marathon" mod,

if a game is no longer interesting I just "declare" victory myself and have another

 

[Samson]

The tech tree being so tightly connected to itself also paradoxically makes science victories less fun to play, as it reduces tech tree from a series of choices to merely an obstacle to overcome. Because to get all the space parts, you basically need every tech in the game, so deciding which tech to research matters way less. And while some prereqs are good and necessary, the fact that you need almost every military tech before you can start science stuff might on one level be accurate, it doesn't make for as good gameplay, at least in the Civ context.

I am not sure I agree that it is a problem that many techs are researched for what they lead to rather than what they give you, that is pretty common in the base game and most mods. I kind of agree about the lack of a choice between the space ship techs and military techs. In pretty much all versions of Civ (at least to 4) the end game balance is about not losing either the space race or a modern war, and the tech path is a big part of that. It seems like that choice is a bit played down in RI ATM.

Could be that has more to do with the timescale than the tech tree - somewhere in the 1700s the games switches from one/a few year(s) per turn, to several turns per year...

It is not that for me, I hardly notice the reported years. Turns only matter (except in culture doubling).

 

[Snowygerry]

I am not sure I agree that it is a problem that many techs are researched for what they lead to rather than what they give you, that is pretty common in the base game and most mods. I kind of agree about the lack of a choice between the space ship techs and military techs. In pretty much all versions of Civ (at least to 4) the end game balance is about not losing either the space race or a modern war, and the tech path is a big part of that. It seems like that choice is a bit played down in RI ATM. (...)

That is a good point yes, I wouldn't notice myself since I turn most victory conditions off - except domination and conquest, sometimes religious or diplomatic.

A perfectly good civ game shouldn't end because someone, somewhere launches a space ship imho

 

[Samson]

A perfectly good civ game shouldn't end because someone, somewhere launches a space ship

Ever since Civ 1 I have always seen the spaceship as the "proper" victory, demonstrating dominance of science, production and security. Each to their own of course.