Realism Invictus

[Samson]

I like Germany having the Autobahn! It's nice to have a civ get something that late. Not hugely realistic, but they are known for them.

By the standards of unique improvements I would say the German autobahn stands out as realistic. No other country I am aware of runs a speed unlimited road network safely.

 

[[Y]]

By the standards of unique improvements I would say the German autobahn stands out as realistic. No other country I am aware of runs a speed unlimited road network safely.

True, but RI has no civilian commuter units, outside of great people, missionaries, and the like. I don't think that military convoys responding to a border dispute are heavily concerned with speed limits, at least not in a way that would meaningfully differentiate between the autobahn and a highway in any other country.

Imagine if the reason France got occupied by Germany was because the roads had a 40 km/h speed limit.

 

[AspiringScholar]

That is a good point above that I hadn't considered, that the game only models civilian traffic through trade routes, in which regard all roads are equivalent.

A thought for a unique German improvement could be some kind of modified forest preserve, maybe? I am not entirely sure off hand, but I think German parks are more open-access and common than elsewhere in Europe, so maybe making them give two happiness instead of one could be an idea. I'm thinking of the Black Forest of course, but also smaller parks throughout the country would probably qualify.

--

More SVN playtesting observations and comments...

Spoiler :

Just a few more observations from play so far. I was going to build up a longer list of things I found, but this "no trade network available" bug is a serious handicap, so I'll just mention what I have so far and then continue if the issue can be identified/fixed. Not only have I lost a huge amount of income from foreign trade, but started on my own large island and have very few resources, so I can't even trade for the ones I lack:

- As mentioned above, there might be something wrong with the totestra map script. To be honest, I don't even know what the script is supposed to be, but just tried it as it was RI specific. I have no horses, copper, iron, or coal on an island large enough to settle 10 cities. It could just be bad luck, and maybe I have the motherload of oil or bauxite or something to compensate, but that seems a bit strange. Furthermore, I also didn't have a single land-based food bonus (only a few seafoods), which is rather odd. Just want to make sure this is normal, as I understand that sometimes you draw the short end of the stick with resource allocation. To compensate for the lack of strategic resources, I deliberately founded Islam just so that I could at least have 5 mobile attack units, which is a decent compromise. The fact that I can't trade for things though is basically game-breaking, so I'm going to have pause for a while.

- The "no trade connection" thing I originally thought was from switching to merchant families, as I had said, but on second thought, it might be a bug tied to researching optics, since I believe I had just researched this when I noticed it. It could have been from the civic change, though.

- Could you consider re-implementing the experienced unit pre-requisite for the heroic epic? I didn't realize that that was taken away, but I also don't understand the rationale behind that. While it makes intuitive sense to me that something like the Iliad would only command an enduring legacy on the basis of purporting to recount real heroic feats of combat, the bonus to unit production is considerable and probably too easily gotten otherwise, so maybe even something like making a unit go down the pacification promotion line to get enough XP from barbs and rebels, or fight an actual war would be a good idea, so that it wouldn't be fulfilled virtually by default from fighting barbs and place an incentive on early war at a time when you are heavily pressured by them.

- The influence religion spy action appears to have no espionage cost. This is a pretty powerful tool in game terms, and, historically speaking would be of a seismic scale and difficult to carry out. I used it successfully many times in this playthrough and think it should probably be very expensive, but still possible.

- The Mujahid receives defensive bonuses as a cavalry unit. This is cool and in my situation of lacking horses, I appreciate it, but is it intentional?

- The caravan house boosts trade route income by 25%, but, if you're confined to domestic routes, it rounds down to have no effect at that stage in the game. Perhaps making it more expensive (or limited in number) and obsolete earlier while bumping it to 50% rounding up would make domestic trade routes increase from 1 to 2 and cause the building to be meaningful in this context. I understand if that's not really the idea (and many buildings are worthless outside of their intended context, after all), but just a thought, since in the case that you don't have foreign trade available, it is a waste.

 

[TheBirdMan]

What is Germany famous for (in case the germans Autobahn could/should be replaced in the RI mod)?

Well fx.::
Printing Press (earlier than anyone else).
Carabiner (for mountainclimbing.... not for this game I think - at least not unless a new terrain-level between hills and mountains are added (have read somewhere else, that someone think he have made it))..
Cars (before the americans).
Jet-engine (not for this game as it's a military invention).
Television earlier than anyone else.


And many-many things more. Just take a view here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_inventions_and_discoveries

Edit: By a second thought. Now I know how to make my own mod to the routes, then leave this as it is. It's not that important.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Suggestion for the tavern.

As taverns doesn't give anything to the islamic nations, how about to add tobacco as a bonus, that gives happiness to those nations only?'

And btw, change it to 2 happy-faces for both tobacco and alcohol (book) AND give add 2 unhealthy faces too at the same time.......

 

[Snowygerry]

Suggestion for the tavern.

As taverns doesn't give anything to the islamic nations, how about to add tobacco as a bonus, that gives happiness to those nations only?'

And btw, change it to 2 happy-faces for both tobacco and alcohol (book) AND give add 2 unhealthy faces too at the same time.......

My taverns are cleanly run upper class establishments - what are you on about ?

But I can see a few gentlemen enjoying a pipe or cigar in a corner - why not

 

[TheBirdMan]

Well in my youth I most often came to the smaller places, where beers, smoke (even though I don't smoke and never have done so - my only bad habit I say ), billard and dices was "it" and where mostly everyone knew each other .

If the "landlord" had a piano and could sing a little, that was ok too .


Now a little serious: I got the idea a some time ago, when I read something about where waterpipe smoking started. It seems like that was In Persia, from where it was spreading to the MiddleEast. From there? Well probably along each and every traderoute. That area is mostly islamic now-a-days - so yes - why not?

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Suggestion for the tavern.

As taverns doesn't give anything to the islamic nations, how about to add tobacco as a bonus, that gives happiness to those nations only?'

And btw, change it to 2 happy-faces for both tobacco and alcohol (book) AND give add 2 unhealthy faces too at the same time.......

Do Taoists get new jewelers then to counteract how theirs are lackluster? What about all of the health resources the Jewish don't have access to? Religions having drawbacks is one of my favorite design choices and honestly I think it is well balanced as-is.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

I haven't had a chance to play as much as I would like, so this report only covers through the late medieval / early renaissance of the latest changes.

• The new city squares feel great to build, particularly as I was playing as Greek (side note: the agora civilopedia entry has not been updated to reflect the changes). I have not researched printing press yet, so I'm interested how that transition will feel, but overall I think this is the right direction for the lines of culture buildings to take.
• Clock towers also feel good when they are available, but they've led to some shadow-nerfs to other buildings that I am a bit concerned by:
  • Grocers always felt underwhelming to me, and now with the lack of gold they really stink. Would it be too much if each subsequent food resource gave an additional +1 food as well as the +1 health they already provide?
  • If you already have a storyteller circle, there's almost no incentive to upgrade it to a school which feels... odd. Furthermore, it's weird that Algebra does not discontinue storytellers. I'm not sure what the solution is here but I think schools could use a small buff or revert to their previous state and disconnect them with clock towers.
• I like how Feudal Aristocracy no longer has a malus to GP. However, the unique buildings still feel pointless. I get both constables and heraldic chambers are cheap to build, but they have so little impact it doesn't feel worth the time. Slave markets give huge buffs with big detriments. Manors are immediately useful and become game changing with the wonder. Guild halls start out weak but can be quite powerful if you stick with it. I think constables and heraldic chambers need a full redesign.
• My Greek civilization was next to a aggressive Hindi state. He attacked me with elephants and I thought, "no worries, my Homoioi get good bonuses vs elephants, I'll build those". Except of course, I forgot the Armoured Howdah is not actually a "War Elephant" and therefore my bonus did not apply and my army was routed. This seems like its an edge case but it's not the first time it's happened: I will find myself anticipating that my chariot will get a bonus vs axeman, only to learn that the cool looking axe-wielding bad guy is actually the other civ's distinctive swordsman and therefore my bonus vs axemen does not apply. In general, I like specializing units vs TYPES but hate bonuses vs SPECIFIC UNITS which gets muddled with distinctives and uniques very quickly.
• Missionaries and inquisitors failing to do their one task is an annoying, noninteractive use of the random number generator. I'd argue this is one place where gameplay should trump realism - bombards don't have a small chance to explode each time they fire, because although it might be historically accurate, it would suck as gameplay mechanic. If the goal is simply to make religion harder to control, I would be ok with a large increase to the production costs of these units. Or at the very least, the unit should not be expended on a failed attempt. Who ever heard of an evangelist retiring and disappearing because no one listened to him the first time around?
• Another minor UI complaint - if you have a stack large enough to reach the second line of unit icons, the rightmost unit is now hidden behind the "force end turn" button. This got me once and ended my turn in the middle of a city assault.
• There is some sort of missing texture that appears to only occur with Italy. Uploaded a screenshot.
• Finally - I'd like to revisit a previous question I had. Is there any hope of minor civilizations becoming fully implemented and human playable? I play on large maps with raging barbarians and barbarian settling turned on. Thus, the early game is filled with a lot of delicious churn with many civilizations rising and falling. By mid game its almost impossible to tell who was an original civ and who was a latecomer. The side effect of this is, I frequently see Portugal and Israel and Lithuania become strong, imposing civilizations... and it's bumming me out that I can't play as them. I understand the original design was to focus on civs that are interesting in multiple periods of history: Romans becoming Italian, Aztec becoming Mexican and so forth. But if we're honest, the inclusion of America starting from white European settlers has always made that feel disingenuous. I think that with effort some of these other civs could be satisfying in all eras - and I'm happy to donate my limited skills if it's only a question of effort required.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Do Taoists get new jewelers then to counteract how theirs are lackluster? What about all of the health resources the Jewish don't have access to? Religions having drawbacks is one of my favorite design choices and honestly I think it is well balanced as-is.

Sure - this mod is well balanced already - it's the best mod ever made as it is. But next release will most likely be better .. .


Anyway - This will never prevent me from write about or even agitate for something I think might be interesting. Nor will this prevent me from writing what I'm doing/using/maybe_going_to_use of self-made semi-mods in my own games - based on thiis mod..

Who knows? Maybe one of my ideas could be useful either in a official release or as inspiration for other players?!

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Sure - this mod is well balanced already - it's the best mod ever made as it is. But next release will most likely be better .. .


Anyway - This will never prevent me from write about or even agitate for something I think might be interesting. Nor will this prevent me from writing what I'm doing/using/maybe_going_to_use of self-made semi-mods in my own games - based on thiis mod..

Who knows? Maybe one of my ideas could be useful either in a official release or as inspiration for other players?!

Absolutely, it was never my intention to stifle discussion! Just in my opinion, your proposed change would make Islam too strong. Mujahids, free spreading through conquest and the Kaaba is one of the best unique buildings already. Perhaps your "hookah lounge" could work as a unique building for Persia or something?

 

[TheBirdMan]

No-no-no. Now you misunderstand me. Discussions are fine, that's here an idea can be tested. At least in theory. It was the end of your post "and honestly I think it is well balanced as-is." that tricked me.

 

[Coq]

EDIT2: So it really seems to have helped, but I'm up to the Renaissance era now and the MAF crashes have resumed. Not as frequently as they used to, but I'm afraid they'll get worse as I reveal more of the map and tech up....

In essence I am reiterating my plea for assistance, if anyone has any other suggestions.


EDIT : Well! Should have read the main page more carefully... I tried setting up a watch dog with the Process Lasso program recommended on the main page, also set my priorities for CPU and RAM to High and haven't had a crash in half an hour now.
Even managed to raise my graphics back up to high without issue! Hope this keeps up

Hello!

I modded this recently and have been having a blast playing on a large map with 25 or so civs... I had a bit of troubles at first getting the game not to crash, but installing an older version of DIrect X and running the game in windowed mode seemed to fix everything.... that is until now.

I'm halfway through medieval era and the game is starting to crash rather frequently with Memory Allocation Failures. Reducing the graphics seemed to help at first, but everything is now on low already and things keep getting worse. I fear I am fated never to finish my current game, which is a real bummer because it's been super interesting so far....

I was wondering if there are any modern solutions to this? I have scoured the Internet for advice, but most of what I see seem to be people recommending a hardware upgrade, which is completely absurd because my 16 GB DDR4 RAM and Radeon 6800 XT could run 15 instances of this game without a hitch. (the game never seems to go above 800mb of RAM usage, my VRAM is also barely loaded)

I've turned graphics to low, windowed mode, single unit graphic, memory paging... am I missing anything? Any RI-specific options I could try?

Any help / direction to a relevant discussion / guide about this would be greatly appreciated!

 

[ThirdOrbital]

• The new city squares feel great to build, particularly as I was playing as Greek (side note: the agora civilopedia entry has not been updated to reflect the changes). I have not researched printing press yet, so I'm interested how that transition will feel, but overall I think this is the right direction for the lines of culture buildings to take.

Well I just researched printing press and found a potentially unintended side effect - since printing press obsoletes agora, and I am a charismatic leader, building the printing press will remove a happy point AND 5% beakers. Yuck.

 

[RED.RED]

Not sure if this has already been fixed or not...

I'm on r.5357 and some Roman units are not displaying correctly (see below images).

Spoiler romans :

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Pushed out an update a week ago that's inspired by the autobahn-related discussion. Every civ now has Highways as their last route tier, instead of the improved railroad - better visually distinct too. Germany still has Autobahn which is still better.

I do find it interesting that the player is expected to build a new blue water navy from scratch whereas other major transitions such as swords to gunpowder or propellers to jet engines occur without much fuss. But if that is working as designed, hey, it's your prerogative as designer. I know it's a big ask at this point, but would there be any appetite to spice up the early navies with other designs beyond "big galleys"? I'm no naval historian, but what about things like light hemiolias or tower ships with artillery? Taking Total War as an inspiration, the naval battles are usually comprised of some combination of ramming, boarding, and shooting. I think I'd be on board with the big galleys becoming my cheap shore defenders if I had more variety to play with in the early years, ideally with different upgrade paths. In the perfect world I would also love to see ships with a ranged bombard capability but I think I read previously that there were AI difficulties with that.

TBH, ancient naval combat was that dull. It basically came down to ramming or boarding. The stuff TW series does, while having some root in reality, isn't representative of any real combat dynamics of the era. Being confined to the shores, I don't see what weaker, faster ships would additionally bring gameplay-wise, while the ranged stuff, as you correctly mention, is AI-dependent, and AI refuses to use this.

And I am actually fine with that - naval combat increases in complexity over time, with new abilities/counters/strategies appearing throughout the whole game. It starts very basic but ends up a complex rock-paper-scissors with aid bonuses, and submarines and carriers to further confound stuff. Anyway, to sum it up, I don't envision any major naval overhaul coming.

The "net effect" indicator of epidemic-reducing buildings does not work properly if the new building obsoletes a prior building. For instance, if you build an aqueduct in a city that does not have a public well, the net effect is correctly +4 health -4% epidemics. If, however, there already was a public well, the net effect only shows +2 health (and leaves off the -2% epidemics). The same happens transitioning from aqueducts > waterworks.

I'm not surprised, and I will have a look but I can guarantee it will produce any results. Interface stuff. Ugh.

Realist art is unlocked by steam engine, but you can never actually build it until you unlock railroad. If I'm not mistaken it's the only one that shows up before you can start building the prerequisites.

Thanks, I'll probably move it to Railroad.

At some point the 3 Gorges Dam moved all the way back to Computers... once upon a time it was one of my favorites to build when it came much sooner but now I can't imagine spending that many hammers on it. Just about every city should have power long before I get to that tech. Perhaps it could be unlocked earlier or have a different bonus?

It was basically something every player wanted to build 100% of the time and it took out a chunk of the game related to managing electric supply. Additionally, the real-life Three Gorges Dam was built in 2012, so it was ridiculously misplaced on the tech tree (I supposed during Civ4 initial development it was still supposed to be Hoover dam, but they changed it later while leaving it where it was). The suggestion on tweaking the bonus I do like though, and I will think about it.

There is something fluky with the "thriving in peacetime" baby boom random event. I experienced it >20 times in my game, and it bore no obvious relation to when a war was actually ending. I've never experienced this in any other playthrough though so it might not be worth worrying too much about.

I can't say I've observed this myself. Does it occur every game?

For some reason, I switched to Merchant Families, and it booted all of my foreign trade routes and disabled resource trading, saying that I'm not connected to a trade network (as though it was protectionism). So, I switched out of merchant families to craft guilds, and they are still disabled. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Save attached for reference.

I have no idea what could have caused this - please keep me posted if something like this occurs in your other games.

So the way way too late in game observation, i noticed that there are many more positive terrain features that help troop defense then hurt defense, I am going to exp. with trying a little less forest defense (35%) ---reason thats alot still esp with forest promotion, flood plains -15% defense --reason low exposed flat ground seems shaky unless you fortify---likewise plains -10% same basic reason, troops are more exposed ---- this would even up the features somewhat, make forts more usefull, make the associated promotions more usefull or used more. this also would make troops attacking cities ai and yours a little more exposed to counter attack which the ai handles really well in my games. esp from calv and archers. may even add a bit more to the swamp - %

Interesting.

I m modding RI into my way and I have a problem:
I change all archery units to have maximum 25% damage to others ( so now they are important in offensive to melt down defense - and they have a high chance to do it and do not die b. of max 25% dmg ) . The problem is that after melting down all defenores to 75% health sometimes archers can still attack, but there is no help showing the odds of attack, also in that cases AI has a problem b they want to melt down defense first and big stack of units can be immobalized by one single unit - also AI gain infinite exp by that - ). That ability of max dmg I have in vanilla BTS and other mods - there no problem with it.

Other solution is making archers ranged bombardment but i dont know how it works - can anyone tell me how it looks when AI use it?

To give them ranged bombardment, just have a look at how it's done with some artillery units.

Also I see that RI still has hotfixes, any idea how to merge those with my modded RI so i dont lose my changes?

The latest installer already includes all the hotfixes to previous versions. If you're referring to the currently ongoing development, it's probably not the best idea to merge your changes with the SVN version. Wait for the next release and merge that.

- As mentioned above, there might be something wrong with the totestra map script. To be honest, I don't even know what the script is supposed to be, but just tried it as it was RI specific. I have no horses, copper, iron, or coal on an island large enough to settle 10 cities. It could just be bad luck, and maybe I have the motherload of oil or bauxite or something to compensate, but that seems a bit strange. Furthermore, I also didn't have a single land-based food bonus (only a few seafoods), which is rather odd. Just want to make sure this is normal, as I understand that sometimes you draw the short end of the stick with resource allocation. To compensate for the lack of strategic resources, I deliberately founded Islam just so that I could at least have 5 mobile attack units, which is a decent compromise. The fact that I can't trade for things though is basically game-breaking, so I'm going to have pause for a while.

Try generating several maps and look at them in WB to see if it is really as problematic as you say.

- Could you consider re-implementing the experienced unit pre-requisite for the heroic epic? I didn't realize that that was taken away, but I also don't understand the rationale behind that. While it makes intuitive sense to me that something like the Iliad would only command an enduring legacy on the basis of purporting to recount real heroic feats of combat, the bonus to unit production is considerable and probably too easily gotten otherwise, so maybe even something like making a unit go down the pacification promotion line to get enough XP from barbs and rebels, or fight an actual war would be a good idea, so that it wouldn't be fulfilled virtually by default from fighting barbs and place an incentive on early war at a time when you are heavily pressured by them.

It was never taken out. I don't know what gave you that idea - it is even clearly stated in pedia.

The influence religion spy action appears to have no espionage cost. This is a pretty powerful tool in game terms, and, historically speaking would be of a seismic scale and difficult to carry out. I used it successfully many times in this playthrough and think it should probably be very expensive, but still possible.

It has a cost that scales with the civ's willingness to adopt said religion. You probably ran into a case where just asking them politely would have had the same result.

The Mujahid receives defensive bonuses as a cavalry unit. This is cool and in my situation of lacking horses, I appreciate it, but is it intentional?

TBH I don't remember. But I'll allow that.

The caravan house boosts trade route income by 25%, but, if you're confined to domestic routes, it rounds down to have no effect at that stage in the game. Perhaps making it more expensive (or limited in number) and obsolete earlier while bumping it to 50% rounding up would make domestic trade routes increase from 1 to 2 and cause the building to be meaningful in this context. I understand if that's not really the idea (and many buildings are worthless outside of their intended context, after all), but just a thought, since in the case that you don't have foreign trade available, it is a waste.

Yes, it's by design. Investing in trade infrastructure only makes sense if your actual trade is lucrative enough.

Suggestion for the tavern.

As taverns doesn't give anything to the islamic nations, how about to add tobacco as a bonus, that gives happiness to those nations only?'

And btw, change it to 2 happy-faces for both tobacco and alcohol (book) AND give add 2 unhealthy faces too at the same time.......

As others pointed out, this is a part of the balance. It still gives the espionage point to Islamic civs.

As for unhealth - it actually used to work that way many versions ago until we observed that it made AI absolutely abhor any resource with negative effects. While a good moral example, this didn't really work well gameplay-wise. And I don't really want to descend into AI's guts to try figure that one out when the alternative of not having resources with negative effects is much easier.

The new city squares feel great to build, particularly as I was playing as Greek (side note: the agora civilopedia entry has not been updated to reflect the changes). I have not researched printing press yet, so I'm interested how that transition will feel, but overall I think this is the right direction for the lines of culture buildings to take.

Greeks and Romans were special cases I forgot to address - thanks for reminding, I'll think of something.

Clock towers also feel good when they are available, but they've led to some shadow-nerfs to other buildings that I am a bit concerned by:

• Grocers always felt underwhelming to me, and now with the lack of gold they really stink. Would it be too much if each subsequent food resource gave an additional +1 food as well as the +1 health they already provide?
• If you already have a storyteller circle, there's almost no incentive to upgrade it to a school which feels... odd. Furthermore, it's weird that Algebra does not discontinue storytellers. I'm not sure what the solution is here but I think schools could use a small buff or revert to their previous state and disconnect them with clock towers.

Well, they still provide the same effects, just with an additional building as a prerequisite. As for discontinuation, Schools have several tech prerequisites, so making one tech discontinue storytellers might lead to a situation where you can't build either.

I like how Feudal Aristocracy no longer has a malus to GP. However, the unique buildings still feel pointless. I get both constables and heraldic chambers are cheap to build, but they have so little impact it doesn't feel worth the time. Slave markets give huge buffs with big detriments. Manors are immediately useful and become game changing with the wonder. Guild halls start out weak but can be quite powerful if you stick with it. I think constables and heraldic chambers need a full redesign.

Still a WIP. Didn't get around to changing those yet.

My Greek civilization was next to a aggressive Hindi state. He attacked me with elephants and I thought, "no worries, my Homoioi get good bonuses vs elephants, I'll build those". Except of course, I forgot the Armoured Howdah is not actually a "War Elephant" and therefore my bonus did not apply and my army was routed. This seems like its an edge case but it's not the first time it's happened: I will find myself anticipating that my chariot will get a bonus vs axeman, only to learn that the cool looking axe-wielding bad guy is actually the other civ's distinctive swordsman and therefore my bonus vs axemen does not apply. In general, I like specializing units vs TYPES but hate bonuses vs SPECIFIC UNITS which gets muddled with distinctives and uniques very quickly.

Elephants are weird in general. They should probably be their own unit combat class instead of cavalry, but would be extremely frustrating to code. As they are now, elephants also fear elephants (though I am not sure this is totally unrealistic - I don't know any historical precedent, but I'd imagine an elephant would be very wary of fighting another elephant).

Missionaries and inquisitors failing to do their one task is an annoying, noninteractive use of the random number generator. I'd argue this is one place where gameplay should trump realism - bombards don't have a small chance to explode each time they fire, because although it might be historically accurate, it would suck as gameplay mechanic. If the goal is simply to make religion harder to control, I would be ok with a large increase to the production costs of these units. Or at the very least, the unit should not be expended on a failed attempt. Who ever heard of an evangelist retiring and disappearing because no one listened to him the first time around?

That's a vanilla thing. I am not sure how easy or hard it would be to take it out. To counter your argument though, there's been plenty of missionaries from different religions who have been "retired" by the people they were trying to preach to. They are usually called "martyrs"

Another minor UI complaint - if you have a stack large enough to reach the second line of unit icons, the rightmost unit is now hidden behind the "force end turn" button. This got me once and ended my turn in the middle of a city assault.

Can you share a screenshot of that?

There is some sort of missing texture that appears to only occur with Italy. Uploaded a screenshot.

Fixed in the last revision.

Finally - I'd like to revisit a previous question I had. Is there any hope of minor civilizations becoming fully implemented and human playable? I play on large maps with raging barbarians and barbarian settling turned on. Thus, the early game is filled with a lot of delicious churn with many civilizations rising and falling. By mid game its almost impossible to tell who was an original civ and who was a latecomer. The side effect of this is, I frequently see Portugal and Israel and Lithuania become strong, imposing civilizations... and it's bumming me out that I can't play as them. I understand the original design was to focus on civs that are interesting in multiple periods of history: Romans becoming Italian, Aztec becoming Mexican and so forth. But if we're honest, the inclusion of America starting from white European settlers has always made that feel disingenuous. I think that with effort some of these other civs could be satisfying in all eras - and I'm happy to donate my limited skills if it's only a question of effort required.

To reiterate what I already said before - I would not have included America as a playable civ were it not that in vanilla. Also removing it would probably be very unpopular with actual Americans who make up a very large portion of the player base. But no other post-colonial nation was included as a playable civ on its own since.

And no, it is not only a question of effort needed (though the effort would need to be rather tremendous). I simply feel there's enough stuff in RI as it is now. Someone following the SVN development could notice that almost NO actual new content has been added since the last release, and that's very intentional on my side. I no longer feel that RI needs any additional content; I'd rather what is there now worked and looked better. For the next version, my plan was to actually get rid of a bunch of stuff that doesn't really need to be there (such as flavour units with no real gameplay effect that can easily become artstyles instead).

EDIT2: So it really seems to have helped, but I'm up to the Renaissance era now and the MAF crashes have resumed. Not as frequently as they used to, but I'm afraid they'll get worse as I reveal more of the map and tech up....

In essence I am reiterating my plea for assistance, if anyone has any other suggestions.

Not really, no. There are limits to what Civ 4 engine can do, and while they are somewhat different on different hardware, one runs into those sooner or later. To ensure the "later" bit, you should probably opt for less civs. While everyone's mileage may vary, I've played full games on large and even huge maps with default civ numbers.

Not sure if this has already been fixed or not...

I'm on r.5357 and some Roman units are not displaying correctly (see below images).

It has. Thanks.

 

[[Y]]

Also removing it would probably be very unpopular with actual Americans who make up a very large portion of the player base

For what it's worth, I'm an American and am in favor of removing the American civ. Always felt out of place to me. I can only speak for myself, though.

 

[aantia]

In my opinion the cause of the America civ's discordant feel is that its ancient units aren't native american ones. All the other civs in RI have a nice progression through the ages, while the Americans are stuck with norse colonists four thousand years early. E.g. the Incans start off as actual Incans and become Peru in the modern era. (This isn't a suggestion that you should spend ages replacing all of their pre-mediaeval stuff, though.)

 

[[Y]]

In my opinion the cause of the America civ's discordant feel is that its ancient units aren't native american ones. All the other civs in RI have a nice progression through the ages, while the Americans are stuck with norse colonists four thousand years early. E.g. the Incans start off as actual Incans and become Peru in the modern era. (This isn't a suggestion that you should spend ages replacing all of their pre-mediaeval stuff, though.)

But the modern "American" is non-native. It's not the same people, genetically or ethnically, not a derivative body of government or culture, etc. Americans are quite literally an invasive force that took over the land from the native population. In this sense, the Norse units make sense (relatively).

If the "American" civ represented the pre-Europian inhabitants, it would not grow into the Americas of today, but would more appropriately be a civ that was conquered and wiped off the map. The civ on the land would then be a colony that separates from the English civilization. All that's to say that the game's mechanics already allow for the arrival of the modern American civ in a very accurate manner, but it is made impossible by its inclusion as a proper, full-fledged civ.

 

[aantia]

But the modern "American" is non-native. It's not the same people, genetically or ethnically, not a derivative body of government or culture, etc. Americans are quite literally an invasive force that took over the land from the native population. In this sense, the Norse units make sense (relatively).

If the "American" civ represented the pre-Europian inhabitants, it would not grow into the Americas of today, but would more appropriately be a civ that was conquered and wiped off the map. The civ on the land would then be a colony that separates from the English civilization. All that's to say that the game's mechanics already allow for the arrival of the modern American civ in a very accurate manner, but it is made impossible by its inclusion as a proper, full-fledged civ.

I don't disagree with you, but that's all true of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca civs as well, which are represented in RI as transforming into their modern post-colonial forms. I think the reason America seems weird is because of this.