Realism Invictus

[RED.RED]

Maybe this was always the case and it's just now dawning on me, but has anyone else noticed cultural diffusion with other civs which aren't even bordering you? It actually seems like it's coming from trade. If so, that is really cool, because it softly models immigration on that basis, and with minority nationality as a source of unhappiness, has strategic bearing as well.

Did you fight a war with those civs? There's a game option (I forget the name) that allows successful battles (a unit is destroyed) to build very small amounts of cultural influence in the area where the battle took place.

 

[aieeegrunt]

You can trash all of his improvements and starve his citizens. Also, I find the AI often concentrates its defenders during a war, so you can just walk around the city (destroying the roads as you go) and assault the next one.
Another option is to use your spies. You can destroy defensive building, or even provoke a revolt in one of his cities. Unhappiness from your spy + war weariness could well trigger a rebellion if you play with separatism.

My strategy once Medieval times happens is simply to loot and trash and never attack a city with more than one or two units

 

[AspiringScholar]

Did you fight a war with those civs? There's a game option (I forget the name) that allows successful battles (a unit is destroyed) to build very small amounts of cultural influence in the area where the battle took place.

No! Matter of fact, this has been one of the most peaceful games of RI on monarch I've ever played: the only one where I was never DoWd. Here's a save. I never fought a singe war with the Nguni, yet they're somehow fairly well represented in my capital. My second thought was the spread culture spy mission, but I've had no breaches of espionage and, moreoever, my own culture is deep in their empire too, and I've not performed this spy mission once.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I really have difficulty playing in Monarch, usually I am able to out-tech my adversary in Prince, but in Monarch, we are currently on par. So I prepare a lots of troops playing as Mongols, lots of city attackers with 3 raider promotion, even 3 raider+star, as I played as Genghis Khan as the leader-head, I fought against the bottom of nation: Cao-Cao. But the combat odds against Cao-cao bowman is always very low, like 1.7-2 percent, I sacrifices 4 chariot to do some collateral damage, and I continue to attack the city full forces, all of my units is gone, the bowman, not even scratch, it's really frustrating.

While I don't normally comment on strategy advice discussions (I feel player-to-player discussions are more productive here) and a lot of meaningful stuff has already been posted in reply, one thing that surprised me is that nobody is talking about first strikes, even though this is the original issue you're complaining about. First strikes are the key factor between a defender surviving without a scratch to kill 10 more units and some actual damage being done. In a siege stack, I always bring enough archers and recon units to provide meaningful aid - even though they don't usually get to attack, they can be the difference between losing ~3 and ~15 units, or between taking the city or failing. And if you have designated "first wave" units you're considering expendable, with some free XP to spare, it might be a good idea to give them Drill promotions instead of the most obvious City Attack, to ensure they're guaranteed to do at least some damage.

OK no problem. As I recall he was posting about Realism Invictus with screen captures. Just made a short jump and landed in a mud puddle! Is this where to post if I hit strategy issues or just figuring out what the mod is doing, or maybe other places?

Welcome to the forum. Feel free to ask any questions, technical or otherwise, you might have. I'd be interested to see a link to the original postings that brought you here as well, if possible.

How would I do that without having the previous version installed? since it's only an .exe?

Install a previous version, copy the Assets/Sounds/Tech somewhere, install the new version, copy it over the new version's files.

Maybe this was always the case and it's just now dawning on me, but has anyone else noticed cultural diffusion with other civs which aren't even bordering you? It actually seems like it's coming from trade. If so, that is really cool, because it softly models immigration on that basis, and with minority nationality as a source of unhappiness, has strategic bearing as well.

I do believe we had a mechanic for cultural diffusion through trade routes, but I wasn't sure if it was still working. I guess it is. It's mostly cosmetic anyway, as the amounts shouldn't be large.

 

[fdelbene]

1. (Road building) Time should be also dependent on terrain type.

Isn't it already?

Not in latest stable.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I do believe we had a mechanic for cultural diffusion through trade routes, but I wasn't sure if it was still working. I guess it is. It's mostly cosmetic anyway, as the amounts shouldn't be large.

Not entirely cosmetic this time around. In my large, non-border cities, it's significant enough to generate at least one unhappiness (which by late renaissance isn't such a big deal, though it's hardly a drop in the bucket either). In addition to the cosmetic touch, I also like how this puts a small caveat on trade, after having been buffed hugely as a source of commerce in the mod. Do you remember if the degree of diffusion scales with the amount of commerce in the route?

 

[ThirdOrbital]

While I don't normally comment on strategy advice discussions (I feel player-to-player discussions are more productive here) and a lot of meaningful stuff has already been posted in reply, one thing that surprised me is that nobody is talking about first strikes, even though this is the original issue you're complaining about. First strikes are the key factor between a defender surviving without a scratch to kill 10 more units and some actual damage being done. In a siege stack, I always bring enough archers and recon units to provide meaningful aid - even though they don't usually get to attack, they can be the difference between losing ~3 and ~15 units, or between taking the city or failing. And if you have designated "first wave" units you're considering expendable, with some free XP to spare, it might be a good idea to give them Drill promotions instead of the most obvious City Attack, to ensure they're guaranteed to do at least some damage.

Fascinating idea. I had noticed that the first strikes from stack aid were significant, but I never considered giving drill specifically for my expendable suicide units. I'll have to try that in my next campaign.

 

[[Y]]

You can trash all of his improvements and starve his citizens. Also, I find the AI often concentrates its defenders during a war, so you can just walk around the city (destroying the roads as you go) and assault the next one.
Another option is to use your spies. You can destroy defensive building, or even provoke a revolt in one of his cities. Unhappiness from your spy + war weariness could well trigger a rebellion if you play with separatism.

Yes and no... we can't firebomb or launch corpses over the walls if that's what you mean, but other than that I'd say it's mostly representative.

I'm mostly thinking of things like starving out the defenders. We can starve out a city in RI, and lower it's citizen count, but as long as the defending civ can afford to pay the unit upkeep for the defenders, they're neither dying off nor becoming weakened.

My suggestion would be if the defender has a huge number of units built up in the city at any point in the game just forget about trying to conquer that city for the time being unless you have much more advanced units, can lure them out of the city or slowly pick away at the defenders with some very highly promoted first strike and/or withdraw units plus a GG in your stack. If not, as mentioned above, be prepared to swap units for at least a 3:1 loss. When I go on the offensive I usually build my armies with 25%-75% of the units (depending on the amount of defenders and how badly I want the city) being cheap throw away units (short swordsmen, levys, irregulars, etc.) with a city attacker promotion. The Holy War doctrine is also excellent for this. I grab it every game if I can. Calvary units with collateral damage are good too once the city defense multiplier has been reduced down to 0%, but are quite expensive so usually not worth it (save the vast majority of those for the field unless you're desperate). I'll suicide run these units into the city to weaken their defenders until I'm confident enough my more expensive veteran units can easily take them out. Also take note of what kinds of units your enemy is using and mix a few cheap units with the appropriate promotions into your stacks to deal with those.

To add to this, use your national units! They are cheap by design. I used to think I was using them well by protecting them so they can build up promotions, but after experimenting, they're much more useful as sacrificial units going in when the odds are low, since they're so fast to replace and come out with tons of utility without needing promotions. I think Walter once said that this was the idea behind making them so cheap, and he's right about that effectiveness.

While I don't normally comment on strategy advice discussions (I feel player-to-player discussions are more productive here) and a lot of meaningful stuff has already been posted in reply, one thing that surprised me is that nobody is talking about first strikes, even though this is the original issue you're complaining about. First strikes are the key factor between a defender surviving without a scratch to kill 10 more units and some actual damage being done. In a siege stack, I always bring enough archers and recon units to provide meaningful aid - even though they don't usually get to attack, they can be the difference between losing ~3 and ~15 units, or between taking the city or failing. And if you have designated "first wave" units you're considering expendable, with some free XP to spare, it might be a good idea to give them Drill promotions instead of the most obvious City Attack, to ensure they're guaranteed to do at least some damage.

Welcome to the forum. Feel free to ask any questions, technical or otherwise, you might have. I'd be interested to see a link to the original postings that brought you here as well, if possible.

Install a previous version, copy the Assets/Sounds/Tech somewhere, install the new version, copy it over the new version's files.

I do believe we had a mechanic for cultural diffusion through trade routes, but I wasn't sure if it was still working. I guess it is. It's mostly cosmetic anyway, as the amounts shouldn't be large.

Another thing I haven't considered trying! I've never compared it to city raider, but I'll be curious to see how a swordsman with Drill II compares to a swordsman with City Raider II.

Usually I use skirmishers for stack aid bonus.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Another thing I haven't considered trying! I've never compared it to city raider, but I'll be curious to see how a swordsman with Drill II compares to a swordsman with City Raider II.

I actually just tried to do a little experiment using world builder for this very idea but then I realized / remembered that melee units cannot receive the Drill promotion line. It might still be interesting in the gunpowder era but this is far less compelling than I initially thought.

 

[[Y]]

I actually just tried to do a little experiment using world builder for this very idea but then I realized / remembered that melee units cannot receive the Drill promotion line. It might still be interesting in the gunpowder era but this is far less compelling than I initially thought.

D'oh! Guess it works if you're sacrificing archer and skirmisher units, but that's not viable from a hammers perspective. Shock is much cheaper to build and usually with less competition from a cost-per-unit perspective.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I actually just tried to do a little experiment using world builder for this very idea but then I realized / remembered that melee units cannot receive the Drill promotion line. It might still be interesting in the gunpowder era but this is far less compelling than I initially thought.

Likely far too expensive for your hypothetical "throwaway" category, but why not try this with archery units, which can?

 

[[Y]]

Likely far too expensive for your hypothetical "throwaway" category, but why not try this with archery units, which can?

Cost more hammers, don't get food benefits to production, you'll have 2-3 per city adding to the production cost, and they are at usually equal to the defender's strength, whereas swordsman/axemen will have a natural strength advantage.

Then again, I usually don't build the 3 strength archers because I don't want to have to replace them all after Iron Working. Maybe I should build them but as soon as Iron Working is researched, I'll throw them against a city to bring the cost of building 4 strength archers down. I'm trying to be tongue-in-cheek there, but maybe that's actually valid.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Cost more hammers, don't get food benefits to production, you'll have 2-3 per city adding to the production cost, and they are at usually equal to the defender's strength, whereas swordsman/axemen will have a natural strength advantage.

Then again, I usually don't build the 3 strength archers because I don't want to have to replace them all after Iron Working. Maybe I should build them but as soon as Iron Working is researched, I'll throw them against a city to bring the cost of building 4 strength archers down. I'm trying to be tongue-in-cheek there, but maybe that's actually valid.

The decision whether or not to build archers before composite bowmen is a particularly interesting one. Most of the time, I go with archers first because they are available within the first 60 turns, and I play with raging barbarians, which take priority in the early game. Their city defense bonus is good enough to give them winning odds against all non-strategic resource units of the ancient era, and once they get fed their two city defender promotions from barbs, you're virtually safe during the barb phase of the game with even just one. The times I've gone with relying on militia for city defense instead, they tend to get picked off whereas the archers tend to hold firm as garrisons.

That said, it's really expensive to upgrade them to composite bows later, which do become quite important in their own day, so maybe you're onto something there with that approach... The catch 22 seems to be that those original archers are likely going to be promoted city defenders by the time you'd want to sacrifice them, so experimenting with drill would be much less viable with them.

 

[[Y]]

Most of the time, I go with archers first because they are available within the first 60 turns, and I play with raging barbarians, which take priority in the early game. Their city defense bonus is good enough to give them winning odds against all non-strategic resource units of the ancient era, and once they get fed their two city defender promotions from barbs, you're virtually safe during the barb phase of the game with even just one. The times I've gone with relying on militia for city defense instead, they tend to get picked off whereas the archers tend to hold firm as garrisons.

I don't play with raging barbarians so I can't comment on that situation, but generally speaking, I find that if you're depending on your city garrison to protect against barbs, then you aren't controlling them in the field. And if you aren't controlling them in the field, then they're pillaging your improvements and holding you back from progressing in the game. For a strong game, the goal with barbs isn't "don't let them take your cities", it's "don't let them disrupt your cities' output".

 

[AspiringScholar]

I don't play with raging barbarians so I can't comment on that situation, but generally speaking, I find that if you're depending on your city garrison to protect against barbs, then you aren't controlling them in the field. And if you aren't controlling them in the field, then they're pillaging your improvements and holding you back from progressing in the game. For a strong game, the goal with barbs isn't "don't let them take your cities", it's "don't let them disrupt your cities' output".

Oh, that would be virtually impossible with raging selected. There aren't enough "grace period" hammers to build enough units to spawnbust effectively, and thereafter they enter even just your BFC at a rate of 1-2 units per turn. With terrain defenses especially, you simply can't attack and heal at a rate fast enough to "control the field." I do literally have to garrison my improvements until early classical, yes.

In fact, I find the intensity of raging barbs to be too much, but every time I play with the option unselected, I barely see any barbs at all, and so concluded that it was still the better choice. I like that instantly being threatened feel, but it makes the ancient era play like a tower defense game, for sure.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Likely far too expensive for your hypothetical "throwaway" category, but why not try this with archery units, which can?

I cringe at the suggestion of throwing expensive archers away, but the results are interesting. I set up an attacking stack with 4 catapults, 4 cataphracts, and 4 skirmishers for aid bonuses. I then added 6 bowmen and gave them each city raider 2 for the first test, and drill 2 for the second. Defending was 6 bowmen with city defense 1 and 6 warbands. After attacking with the 6 bowmen, the resulting status of the defenders is attached.

In every instance, the city raiders had higher combat odds. One even won outright at a ~2% probability! However, another dealt no damage whatsoever and the remaining four were hit or miss. Meanwhile the drills did better, more consistent damage - despite having ~0.5% chance of ever winning outright. In other words, city raider was higher risk / higher reward while drill was actually the more conservative play. Not at all what I was expecting.

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Oh, that would be virtually impossible with raging selected. There aren't enough "grace period" hammers to build enough units to spawnbust effectively, and thereafter they enter even just your BFC at a rate of 1-2 units per turn. With terrain defenses especially, you simply can't attack and heal at a rate fast enough to "control the field." I do literally have to garrison my improvements until early classical, yes.

In fact, I find the intensity of raging barbs to be too much, but every time I play with the option unselected, I barely see any barbs at all, and so concluded that it was still the better choice. I like that instantly being threatened feel, but it makes the ancient era play like a tower defense game, for sure.

+1 for raging barbarians - with this turned off, why bother having barbarians at all? They are trivially controlled with a handful of units and you're in zero danger of losing a city. Perhaps if there were an intermediate setting I would use it but there needs to be SOME risk to early expansionism.

 

[AspiringScholar]

It is fun that they are a true challenge on raging, and you stand a real risk of being seriously set back (or even outright losing) right at the beginning of the game. Makes the neolithic world feel dangerous and wild, not some Garden of Eden full of low-hanging fruit to be plucked whimsically. I also happen to really like the flavor of the barb unit catalogue and enjoy seeing it featured diversely. Feels like a big letdown when they don't show up and give you a hard time.

 

[[Y]]

I cringe at the suggestion of throwing expensive archers away, but the results are interesting. I set up an attacking stack with 4 catapults, 4 cataphracts, and 4 skirmishers for aid bonuses. I then added 6 bowmen and gave them each city raider 2 for the first test, and drill 2 for the second. Defending was 6 bowmen with city defense 1 and 6 warbands. After attacking with the 6 bowmen, the resulting status of the defenders is attached.

In every instance, the city raiders had higher combat odds. One even won outright at a ~2% probability! However, another dealt no damage whatsoever and the remaining four were hit or miss. Meanwhile the drills did better, more consistent damage - despite having ~0.5% chance of ever winning outright. In other words, city raider was higher risk / higher reward while drill was actually the more conservative play. Not at all what I was expecting.

Thanks for experimenting! I'll start using this next time I'm playing. I'd probably put it on skirmishers since the drill combined with their chance to retreat is probably the best yield. Their city malus doesn't matter as much since their purpose isn't to win, just to inflict harm by countering the defender's first strikes.

On raging barbs - I forget if the higher difficulty levels have more barbs, but that could be a factor (I play on Emperor, not sure how that compares with your settings). The other thing about higher difficulty is that the early game is not a "Garden of Eden" where you can take your time getting your empire together. It's a race against the AI to get your empire setup ASAP so that it can stand a chance long term. And since units and cities are expensive, and you have less finances, you can't just drop a city anywhere. It needs to be a city that gives you what you need right now. In other words, there might be fewer barbs giving you a hard time, but it's still intense, and doing well means playing the early game well and to you advantage.

I'd also be concerned about raging barbs preventing you from learning how to set up a good early empire, which is crucial at higher difficulties. Have you tried upping the challenge level and seeing how that left you feeling about the early game?

 

[AspiringScholar]

Thanks for experimenting! I'll start using this next time I'm playing. I'd probably put it on skirmishers since the drill combined with their chance to retreat is probably the best yield. Their city malus doesn't matter as much since their purpose isn't to win, just to inflict harm by countering the defender's first strikes.

On raging barbs - I forget if the higher difficulty levels have more barbs, but that could be a factor (I play on Emperor, not sure how that compares with your settings). The other thing about higher difficulty is that the early game is not a "Garden of Eden" where you can take your time getting your empire together. It's a race against the AI to get your empire setup ASAP so that it can stand a chance long term. And since units and cities are expensive, and you have less finances, you can't just drop a city anywhere. It needs to be a city that gives you what you need right now. In other words, there might be fewer barbs giving you a hard time, but it's still intense, and doing well means playing the early game well and to you advantage.

I'd also be concerned about raging barbs preventing you from learning how to set up a good early empire, which is crucial at higher difficulties. Have you tried upping the challenge level and seeing how that left you feeling about the early game?

I am getting pretty comfortable on Monarch, so not at your level but I wouldn't call that a low difficulty setting, either. It's usually around renaissance when things take a turn for the worse with me if they do, so I don't know that my early game is a weak point. I won my first prince game on RI in one try and it felt quite easy, but thereafter the jump to monarch was steep.

How do you qualify a "good early empire"? Usually by mid-classical I out-tech all of the AI and maintain pretty comparable power ratios, unless there's an early runaway civ.

Also, I wasn't saying that the game itself was easy, just that the availability of uncontrolled (by player or AI) land is much less of a given. One thing I appreciate about this mod is the AI's competence to rush you quite early if you're unprepared or it thinks it's in a position to succeed by doing so.