- This has been mentioned before, but while logistics is an interesting concept which can be punitive if stack composition isn't particularly varied and adds plenty of depth to combat, I still don't think it's utilizing its full potential as a mechanic, and overwhelming death stacks are still the way to go, if possible, since aid bonuses and the ability to both soften and absorb with superfluous cannon fodder units easily outweighs the maximum penalty of -25%. In real life terms, particularly in the late game with mechanized warfare, combat width is an important factor of tactics which here isn't really represented. Could you create an additional tier of logistics which caps the maximum penalty at -50%? I think that would make some division of forces more natural and common. I don't know if the AI would understand that, however, or if it even presently "knows" that it's taking the -25% penalty when it superstacks its units.
I don't know if AI "knows" and that's the main reason I am anxious of creating more severe penalties. All in all, I don't know if there is
any AI code behind this feature - I mean I
hope there is, but...
- Does anyone ever not run free market once it becomes available? It could be that I simply haven't branched out and experimented with alternative strategies (and indeed, the AI sometimes runs PE and tends to perform well), but on paper it just seems like the obvious choice too much of the time. In fact, PE's elimination of maintenance from distances of cities seems fairly underwhelming. To straight up swap that with number of cities maintenance would be hugely overpowered, but by this point in the game, for whatever reason, distance maintenance tends to be pretty minor if not almost negligible, relative to the former, unit costs, civic maintenance, etc. In fact, it seems somewhat counterintuitive to me, because far-flung commercial empires like the United Kingdom under Victoria, very much used free market in civ terms, and yet their various colonies all around the world would end up benefiting more from PE than a cohesive, land empire, while in real life these tended to be the ones that attempted this. In any case, FM seems like a necessary crutch without which conquest isn't even feasible to sustain, and that you're left with few good alternatives at this point in the game, and so I wonder if some balance revision might be in order here.
In its SVN incarnation, Protectionism feels like a viable alternative to me. Depending on actual circumstances, you might actually end up making more commerce from it - and with an added benefit of not "feeding" your opponents. I kinda like where these two civics are right now - whether Free Market is a viable choice for you depends on whether there are any good trading partners to be had - if other major civs run Protectionism (which is dependent on particular leaders and definitely is quite common), you are probably better off too - or alternatively try "persuading" someone to adopt Free Market (which is also something that happened quite a lot, especially in XIX century) to make yours more lucrative.
- Likewise, the separatism reduction bonus from Welfare State looks like it could use a buff. -5 is not even quite the equivalent of 2 garrison units, while I would think that most people living in a state which prioritizes the wellbeing of its people would make tolerating the current regime something its people would be more willing to do. Otherwise, it's an expensive and not particularly lucrative civic IMO, so I don't think this would risk making it OP. (EDIT: I got this crossed with Inclusivity, a much stronger civic as it's well-poised for cultural wins, but Welfare State could still probably use this, as it still doesn't seem particularly attractive, even for a dedicated "tall" civ.)
If you look at the system as a whole, you might notice I really dislike handing out passive separatism modifiers - almost all of it depends on dynamic things, such as espionage output, war weariness etc. Civics themselves might provide small modifiers, but they definitely affect lots of other separatism-related factors indirectly, which is how I wanted it to play.
- The Union Rifleman (and perhaps all of this category) uses a bolt-action combat animation. I know that these animations aren't particularly realistic, but mentioning in case you'd like to switch it out with the flintlock combat animation.
Animations are, among other things, a way to easily visually distinguish between different units - and in this case, riflemen are using a unique animation that no other unit uses, which is why I'll probably keep it this way.
- Why can you build the rifled cannon unit before researching the rifled artillery technology? I understand that "artillery" and "cannon" are not strictly synonymous, but maybe consider a name revision here which doesn't sound redundant.
Yeah, good catch. I'll rename the technology.
- What's the rationale for cinematograph being a prerequisite for infantry logistics?
It's generally the "Early XX century cultural tech", and I wanted to reflect that WW2-era militarism was largely reliant on new cultural media that arose in the first half of XX century.
- How do you feel about cities acting like canals? In game terms, that can be hugely impactful. In real life, it makes little if any sense. Even forts working as canals is a quite a stretch, given the expense and construction time of real canals relative to what also functions effectively as a simple landing strip in the game. I'm not necessarily in favor myself of eliminating this function, just want to call it out for possible discussion, because it's kind of weird.
It's a vanilla mechanic that works well for game purposes. I don't really want to touch it in a major way.
- In answer to your question, I am confirming that same-turn unit scaling cost increases in fact do not happen for me. I have saves and screenshots if you'd like to see them. If I save up 5K gold and want to upgrade all of my riflemen to trench infantry, and, say, upgrading one costs 300, it costs 300 for the next, and so on, within the same turn.
That's how it's supposed to be working if you're upgrading to a unit with the same role - but it should stay this way next turn too. Upgrading riflemen to trench infantry should have fixed costs all the time, as they have the same roles and the same cost increases per unit.
- How is the USMC national unit for America conceptually different than the US Marine distinctive unit? I know that marines in general aren't something that America exclusively has, so it should also have a marine unit, but then why not make the NU replace the existing one? Or is it because the modern Marine Corps, being a sort of prestigious and elite force (at least here, it has that image), is treated categorically separately from WW2-era infantry since this reputation is more recent, and supposed to represent infantry of the GWoT era, instead? Just curious here. I think it's a fitting special unit for America.
Thanks for asking - this is something I've been meaning to change for quite a while. In the new SVN update, you'll find that US now has a separate line of marine units, to reflect its unique relationship with this service arm.
- Again, could you please reduce the volume for the "City X celebrates 'We love the [leader] day!'"? It is so common in the late game and for some reason overcrowds all of the rest of the sound. I like having a sound notification but if I can't figure out how to reduce the volume there, I might just delete that audio file.
Sure. Reduced.
- Airports seem a bit too expensive IMO. All of my mainland cities were fully industrialized with power, and these still ended up taking close to 30 turns to build in most of them, even with several craftsmen. Also, since air units for some reason do not get experience from combat, if you don't buff the cost of the airport, could you at least give them experience out of the gate in cities which have one?
A modern international airport is kind of a "world wonder" class project IRL. These buildings are really expensive by design. And on air unit experience, look at the new SVN update
- You can build the war factory before researching assembly line. Is this an oversight?
Not really, as otherwise, it would
de facto make it a prerequisite to Infantry Logistics tech as a whole, as its output is required for everything the tech unlocks.
- Would it be possible to display the combat odds menu continuously while watching a defensive combat animation, the same way that it shows while hovering over an enemy before attacking? I'm not sure if that would be relatively simple or difficult, but if it's manageable, that would improve play a lot. It's difficult to keep track of specific combat odds from the combat log, especially in turns which have many battles, and this way you could read and study what's going on for the 10-15 seconds that the animation is taking place.
Probably, but by someone far more knowledgeable than me.
- Would it be possible to modify the air bomb cities mission to reduce gold a-la privateers, as well as city defenses, so that having air superiority and running continuous strategic bombing raids is punishing to the victim, rather than simply being preparatory for an invasion?
That's an interesting idea. I'll think about it.
Then WHY does the game not crash??? Anyone here, who have a good (or bad) guess???
TBH it might be more or less anything. For instance, a common CTD before I fixed it was linked to AI splitting a group of ships on another civ's border - which, depending on a map, could happen all the time or not at all.
also think that bonuses for suppressing separatism should be higher. Modern totalitarian state (or even pre-indrustal absolutism) can manage public anger better then their counterparts from centuries past.
-30 to separatism in case of dictatorship should be the absolute minimum, maybe even -45
-10 its literally 3 poor-equipped militia units.
or looking at it from another angle: each unit in a dictatorship adds an additional -3 to separatism by being stationed in a city (-6 in total)
See above; I am not a fan of big static modifiers. Dictatorship tremendously helps you with separatism in an indirect way, allowing you to have more units in your cities (and less war weariness compared to Democracy when you're fighting a war).
Bug report: Nubia, Israel, Huns and Khmer in world map don't generate their realistic great people correctly. It seems that their GP are mixed together. In my recent game, Gurion appeared in Nubia and Jayavarman VII appeared in Huns.
That's because they don't have civ-specific GP lists. All those guys are on a generic "Minor civ" list. I might or might not give them separate ones at some point.
have issues with automated workers/recommended improvements giving poor suggestions like replacing farms with slave farms with no slavery civic present or replacing mechanized farms with regular farms, both are strict downgrades. Also replacing plantations with farms, yielding n+1 food at the cost of n commerce and one silk. Any way to improve this other than the avoid replacing existing improvements setting?
Yeah, I've seen this one myself and tried hunting down its cause with no success. Might fix it one day if I find the cause.
Also, my friend is reporting that his city governors/automated cities are making units. Any way to turn this off? I don't ever remember this happening to me, is this a feature of this mod or is there a setting for this somewhere that I turned off a long time ago and forgot about?
TBH, I don't use city governors at all, so I wouldn't know about it. I don't think RI changed anything specifically in this regard.
1) War weariness seems to be a culprit behind these catastrophic AI collapses. Is there anyway to reduced some of the extreme increases for that modifier? One thing I was thinking is perhaps deferring some percentage of a large increase in the separatism modifier over the next 5 turns or so. I don't know if the AI could learn it or how complicated this would be to implement, but what if for example, say the war weariness modifier increases 20% in a turn (which can have large impacts on separatism in many cities) this triggers a notification to the player - "Separatist groups are beginning to mass in [city name] for the next 5 turns." Then if separatism is set to increase 20% in a city, that increase would be slow rolled (+4% per turn) into the separatism calculation over the next five turns so there's more time for the AI to react.
If something led to a huge one-turn increase, wouldn't it be some catastrophic development that logically should lead to this? Anyway, I'll think about the war weariness thing.
2) Would it be possible for a vassal to fully join an existing civ once diplomatic relations reach a certain level and that joining civ has been a vassal for a set amount of time?
Most definitely beyond my skills.
-There is no entry for hills in civilopedia
Yeah, has been reported before, and it's one of the more mysterious bugs - I don't know why this is.
-bug (?) with GP "Choose desired discovery" tech command (the right bulb icon on bottom panel when GP is selected) doesn't work. If I select a tech to discover, the panel just flickers and reopens without placing the order) - not sure if this is a BUG, vanilla or RI feature.
Yeah, it's a BUG feature that never worked properly in RI. I'll just kill it for good.
-In the tech tree, the icons that show what tech will be bulbed with great prophet, always show the same tech. If you hover the cursor over the icons everything displays correctly, but the icon on the main panel always stays the same (I found out that it shows "The great schism" tech, although it is disabeld for custom starts). It would be really great if this could be corrected (I find these icons/buttons very useful for planning what to do with great people).
Thanks, fixed this one.
-some of the splashes for great wonders, great works... are blank (don't remember which ones, will let you know if I run into more; it is also possible that I just messed up my SVN update)
All should be there - so I'll appreciate any concrete pointers if any are missing.
-the event with the plane crash is very frequent - sometimes I am getting it every turn. Could this be toned down?
Event frequency hasn't been touched in any way, so this might be some kind of vanilla issue. Also, this is definitely not something that happens all the time - as I haven't seen it a lot in my own games.
Perhaps most issues with separatism could be solved with just some modifier tweaking. I understand that any major updates to the mod are over, but perhaps these are just minor balance issues that can be solved relatively fast (but I am no mooder, I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement). I am also willing to test some adjustments myself, if someone can tell me how to tweak that (if it is even possible with just some notepad skills
) and report the results.
I'll try to make some minor improvements going forward, but as I've "given up" on this feature as on-by-default, it's not a high priority for me.
Or written in another way: Does the use of a so-called round map the game so much more resource-demanding that the game itself becomes more unstable (remember, I'm playing a very long game on a very large map with many active nations - so it requires a lot of resources)?!
I don't think it makes any kind of major difference.
I was wondering what is currently going on with the mod. Since it seems to still actively being improved.
I am interested in potentially helping out with it or maybe making mod-mod of it. I have a decent chunk of ideas. But, I am fairly new to Civ 4 modding. Although, I have done xml and python mods for a decent chunk of other games. And I code as part of my job. So, I think it souldn't be too hard to figure out. I have been looking through a bunch of the pinned tutorials as well a the ones in the modding wiki.
It is still being improved - you can check out the SVN log for particulars.
https://sourceforge.net/p/civ4mods/code/5362/log/?path=
If you have a decent chunk of ideas, I'd recommend you tinker around with your own copy of the mod first, to get a feel of how to do what (I started the same way many years ago). Will be happy to answer any particular questions you might have.
I like the change to Civil Service! It's still more of an edge case, but +10% Hammers in the early game including units can be worth it, if Happiness or Health or Cash in the somewhat weaker Legal Civics are not required (when youre capped by epidemics). Local Bureaucracy was stronger before, but still very nice with an industrious leader, while central bureaucracy -epidemics and hammer boost everywhere is nice, really lends itself to colonial empires.
I feel it's now a decent option if you plan on going colonial.
Watermills have become meta, as seen with the AI exploiting them to the moon
They're insanely strong tiles giving +3
flat and another +1
with an easy Blast Furnace which should go everywhere anyways. Mechanical Engineering bumps them to +5
and possibly to +6
with a not too difficult Levee. Mines at that Tech give measly +2
while Lumbermills including but also requiring the Forest give +3
. That means all flat land Citites with more than 5 Watermill Spots should become Production Cities while hilly Cities without Forests become basically worthless for
and should be windmilled and cottaged until food runs out. I like how powerful watermills feel, but the alternatives are way too weak, esp. mines which are after slavery incredibly weak and mechanized mining and nitroglycerin don't really change it (because of Labour Union -1
leaving only +3
until the end
). I'd suggest buffing mines or weakening watermills by 1
. Maybe give watermills only 1
at mechanical engineering through levee? Or give mines two hammers with mechanized mining or through the ironworks building)
Yeah, that's my feeling somewhat as well. I'll probably nerf them down a bit and buff mines.
Universities feel a bit weak compared to other building options (or building units) at similiar tech. With only +15%
I often felt the build time too high and kept putting it at the end of the queue time and time again, probably even behind observatories. I mean my slider is mostly at 30% to 35% and more than 50% is probably a good time to build more units, but it seemed pretty low priority compared to other science buildings or earlier versions of it.
In one of the latest SVN updates universities kinda found a new purpose in life. See if you like them more now.
There might be a bug (?) with constitutions: If you change your capital, you may build the other constitution, but the old one remains active! I didnt test if finishing the new constitution removes the old one, but it doesnt seem so. So this way you could get double benefits.
Yeah, this one's a bug, it's been reported before and I'll definitely fix it at some point.
Clothes seem a bit useless, but maybe thats an oversight. You can produce them in the Renaissance but it does absolutely nothing until consumerism with the supermarket, which is a stage you rarely if ever get to. It's pretty difficult to obtain early on with the need for dye. Maybe it should give happiness with the retail store? It used to be so earlier, don't know why it changed.
Good catch. They are supposed to provide +1 happiness on their own as well.
Glassware is a nice addition and idea! Makes the tech and GM way more interesting. Only thing I have some thoughts on is the enabling of the foreign trading post. As most AIs will dutifully use their GM to obtain 2 Copies of Glassware pretty much everyone has it and can build the trading post. I liked it a bit more, when the foreign trading post (with 50% trade income) was a rarer building, you could only get by 1) luck or by investing in getting the rare ressources like sugar, tobacco or coffee, opposed to being another building pretty much everyone can and should build eventually.
Yeah, I can see your line of reasoning. I'll consider it.
Arquebusiers. I can't really find a use to them or atleast I seldom recruit them. On paper they are pretty nice. A bit late to be running around with 8 Strength when Spearman got theirs an almost an era before, but the attack modifiers make it useable. The problem is, that these guys share a cost-slot with Crossbowmen and Longbows. With Civs with Longbows you almost have no reason to get them instead of Longbows. Longbows are the superior defender in cities, forts and hills with an extra First Strike and it is the only thing that keeps cities safe against stacks with high numbers of city attackers. +35%-50% Attack against Melee and Charge Mounted Units makes getting Arquebusiers are not quite as important. The problem still exists with crossbowmen: You usually have an era full of crossbowmen recruited to defend stacks or cities and when you unlock Arquebusiers you have a +200% cost penalty or get rid of the crossbowmen, which would be extremely expensive production wise. Arquebusiers are also not terrible useful in actual combat; They cant really take cities, as Longbows still shred them like they shred Men-at-arms and melee units in a city are usually not the biggest problem. And field battles or battles from a fort still heavily favor cavalry protected by Archers. You could break the enemies Archer defense with them and then slaughter them, though you would need many, but that would prevent you from raising enough Archers to defend your own stack. Thus I almost never recruit these guys, but continue to shove Spearman, improved Cav, Levy and Men-at-Arms down the AIs throat, until I get to Flintlock Muskets. This is unfortunate because there are so many nice National Units and history wise I am skipping from late medieval warfare straight almost to Napoleonic warfare, about 300 years :-(Maybe make them cheaper than Longbows (currently they are even more expensive) which would fit wonderfully with history, as Arquebusiers being easily trained and effective opposed to the life long training required for Longbowmen. So while any Longbowmen are not necessarily worse than these guys, you should be able to bring a boatload more Arquebusiers than Longbowmen to a battle which would be the incentive to recruit them instead. Give Pike and Shot the viability and supremacy it had in our timeline!
Yeah, I get what you're saying. While a (weak) line of defense is that not everyone gets to build longbows, I'll give some more thought to the balance here.
The Grand Arsenal is a bit meh. The +25% ship building speed in one city is almost nothing and not noticeable. A shipyard later give 25% everywhere, prime timber, naval supplies all give 25% aswell. For being a world wonder and limited to republic I think at atleast deserves a +50% if not even more to +100%. It is pretty much the only navy wonder, for small civs under threat to be conquered, and it would be so fitting if that civ could atleast use the Grand Arsenal to secure their independence through naval forces, well, just like Venice. But right now it gives you almost nothing (remember, with shipyard, the cost increase and the ressources it may give you only effectively 5- 10% more ships from that city) and laughs at you for being able to build it.
Hm, I remember at some point when it was conceived, it was meant to produce two copies of each ship it was building. I guess it was lost somewhere along the way. I'll give it a buff.
I have just installed this mod and read the pdf, most of the comments in the last 20 pages here and i am about to begin my journey into The reality of the undefeated.
I have a brain boner drooling at the expectations of this mod ... see ya on the flip side fellow Viccys
Looking forward to your comments and questions!
- and I promise to play 2 games without making any of my own changes............
