Realism Invictus

[Roland Johansen]

Actually, my own take is that, on average, tech progress should probably be faster than IRL. Given that a game lasts a finite number of turns and ends in 2020 (IIRC, but somewhere along these lines), we'd want to reach the end of the tech tree in most games, not just the 50% with better-than-average circumstances, which means that real history should be treated not as a median case, but as a reasonably bad scenario.

Ah, I never play with time victory enabled, but you of course need to take that into account.

The alternative to researching slightly faster than in real life would be to let the game end a bit later than 2020. But either option is ok with me.

 

[globosud]

how can I reactivate the defensive pact, which file should I modify?
I easily reactivated them, as no technology activated them. I prefer defensive pacts, because in my opinion, deactivating them penalizes the A.I.

 

[trashmunster]

The problem here is that, generally speaking, power plants are all very similar to each other gameplay-wise. A small health penalty is all the difference we really get. IRL, different countries have very different approaches to their power sources - I don't have any productive ideas how to recreate this distinction in RI gameplay-wise.

I think the easy solution would be to give nuclear plant some hammers, maybe two as a more careful approach. And I suppose limit them to amount of uranium resource civ has.(maybe that's the case already)
It pains me greatly to see completely redundant building in this, otherwise close to perfect mod. (better than any civ game or other 4x strategy, and that not an flattery, just a fact)
Even mob justice has its uses, nuclear plant is utterly pointless, I think it should be at least useful.

About tech progress in my experience it tends to be a bit faster than real life, then in the first half of 20th century it gets slower then reality but eventually evens out and in 2000smth space victory is almost always achievable, sometimes by AI.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It is a bit weird to give them a production bonus. Their power doesn't get more stuff done than other power.

Nuclear power doesn't give any carbon emissions, so it should be fairly healthy, compared to other sources of power. There is just this risk of a meltdown. And in real life, nuclear power is fairly expensive to build and seal away the waste, but it came around earlier than solar and wind power.

I don't see how a connection to a world wonder is negligible. Very nice to get power in every city.

 

[globosud]

if it helps, in realism there is a change to the mechanics of the defensive pact, they are not canceled when you declare war, so they are both offensive and defensive, but by modifying the BBAI_Game_Options_GlobalDefines file you can only make them defensive

 

[trashmunster]

It is a bit weird to give them a production bonus. Their power doesn't get more stuff done than other power.

Nuclear power doesn't give any carbon emissions, so it should be fairly healthy, compared to other sources of power. There is just this risk of a meltdown. And in real life, nuclear power is fairly expensive to build and seal away the waste, but it came around earlier than solar and wind power.

I don't see how a connection to a world wonder is negligible. Very nice to get power in every city.

Yeah? Well in case you don't know, and you don't in this mod power plants give production bonus, coal plant gets event with +4 hammers. It's an abstraction. Access to nuclear power in real life allows bigger flexibility of energy generation resulting in better production conditions, irl most countries with nuclear power are industrially developed. Gameplay wise this argument is even more pointless, the whole game idea is to have options that give different bonuses for different situations, not to have a building you don't need, that in real human history plays a crucial role in energy generation.

 

[doctoraristotelicus]

I just want to express my gratitude to everyone responsible por the creation, improvement and maintenance of Realism Invictus. I have played Civ IV for many years in my childhood and early adolescence, and started experimenting with BTS recently, as I decided to go back to the game. One thing I started to feel as missing was time and content enough for each era to have their own vibe, so I started looking for mods and expansions. I played a little Caveman to Cosmos, but I felt like they overdid it, it was just too much. In RI I found a perfect balance and have been having tons of fun wiith it. Even in Vanilla I rarely got to win on Noble nor anything above it, I guess because I've never really put much effort into becoming better at the game, but playing it for -- let's say -- contemplative reasons, recreating (or trying to) some moments of history that I think are memorable in their own way. As I said on another post, I am generally incompetent at all kinds of games, one reason why I never enjoyed multiplayer. As I started my experiments with RI, I felt like some of the mechanics made it almost impossible to recreate some world scenarios, such as the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union, the Ummayad Caliphate, much less maintaining them (I will concede that in real history they didn't last long, but I've also used to Civ IV to sort of wake up from the nightmare of history, as Stephen Dedalus would say, that is, making things work when they haven't really (yes, I know the original quote didn't refer to this, I'm just trying ot be fancy)). Instead of complaining, I accepted it was probably due to my incompetence, so I kept trying and retrying, going through the posts in this forum to get some tips, and now I am actually able to achieve my goals, at least in lower difficulties (the Soviet Union is still a bit hard). One thing I miss is the possibility of recreating the Portuguese Empire, as the Portuguese are only available on Huge World Scenario (which my poor computer can't handle beyond the Renaissance) and the Europe Scenario (which doesn't have the Americas, so I can't colonize Brazil), so sometimes I go back to RFC for that. As I said, I play only for that kind of aesthetic fun (the improved graphics really help with that -- going back to RFC is always a shock), so I don't think I'll be trying higher difficulties until the lower ones get really boring (I'm still very far from that). Anyways, I just wanted to share a bit of my experience and say how glad I am that this mod exists and is still playable.

 

[trashmunster]

RI, I felt like some of the mechanics made it almost impossible to recreate some world scenarios, such as the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union, the Ummayad Caliphate, much less maintaining them (I will concede that in real history they didn't last long,

Oh attempting to recreate russian empire history on world map was fun. Used large map for the same reasons as you, huge starts to crash around renaissance. Got all the historical territories around appropriate times, the best part that was most realistic is the siberian expansion that could happen only with gunpowder units, before that its pointless to fight siberians. Whta is also cool is how overextended empire can shatter even if its fairly strong unit-wise. That recreates fall of roman or soviets.

The only drawback of earth scenario is that I never saw derivative colonial powers rise to superpower level. So no irl USA somehow. Though in random games stuff like that happened sometimes. Young civs became major powers

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yeah? Well in case you don't know, and you don't in this mod power plants give production bonus, coal plant gets event with +4 hammers. It's an abstraction. Access to nuclear power in real life allows bigger flexibility of energy generation resulting in better production conditions, irl most countries with nuclear power are industrially developed. Gameplay wise this argument is even more pointless, the whole game idea is to have options that give different bonuses for different situations, not to have a building you don't need, that in real human history plays a crucial role in energy generation.

I don't see a production bonus for any of the power plants themselves in the civilopedia.

In my opinion, the nuclear plant shouldn't give any emissions as it doesn't create carbon emissions in real life. But it does create unhappiness. That's a good way to differentiate. And in real life, it is expensive (in construction and locking away nuclear waste). A way to differentiate could be that it actually has a small maintenance cost (1) to it. But it should not have the unhealthyness.

The number of people that have died due to gas and coal plants (estimates in live reduction due to emissions) is far far higher than that of nuclear plants. But of course, nuclear plants do give that feeling of unrest as we all have heard about catastrophic meltdowns, while death caused by emissions is very invisible.

Before the ultimate late game solar plant, you could then have the choice of cheap dirty coal, lightly polluting gas or hydro, or unhappiness creating nuclear. Pick your pain depending on what you lack (happiness, health, some resource).

 

[trashmunster]

I don't see a production bonus for any of the power plants themselves in the civilopedia.

Its event based

 

[Roland Johansen]

Hey, Walter, if I may ask, why does Solar not obsolete everything? It is the most expensive, needs most technology and is the cleanest. But it gets obsoleted by a dirtier version of hydro energy. Playing the latest 3.61 distributed version. (Maybe something was changed afterwards.)

 

[AspiringScholar]

It is a bit weird to give them a production bonus. Their power doesn't get more stuff done than other power.

Nuclear power doesn't give any carbon emissions, so it should be fairly healthy, compared to other sources of power. There is just this risk of a meltdown. And in real life, nuclear power is fairly expensive to build and seal away the waste, but it came around earlier than solar and wind power.

I don't see how a connection to a world wonder is negligible. Very nice to get power in every city.

I like the idea of differentiating them a little more, but yeah, the nuclear plant's lack of a massive unhealthiness penalty is already the advantage to my mind, and it comes at the price of being more expensive anyway (not only in sheer hammer costs, but in requiring a successful nuclear program, which is actually something of a complex hurdle in this mod).

if it helps, in realism there is a change to the mechanics of the defensive pact, they are not canceled when you declare war, so they are both offensive and defensive, but by modifying the BBAI_Game_Options_GlobalDefines file you can only make them defensive

Unfortunately, this setting actually doesn't work (at least in my playtesting). I deliberately wanted to try that, and positing "2" in the BBAI file still behaves as if they were default DPs that cancel when triggered by any new war.

Hey, Walter, if I may ask, why does Solar not obsolete everything? It is the most expensive, needs most technology and is the cleanest. But it gets obsoleted by a dirtier version of hydro energy. Playing the latest 3.61 distributed version. (Maybe something was changed afterwards.)

I tried to find where this was documented and have given up after a few minutes' search, but I believe this was strictly to retain the alternative options. In many late game scenarios, health is superabundant and you'd much rather build a coal plant in a newly founded city in some small island somewhere which won't realistically hit its health cap than be forced to invest in expensive power infrastructure for every single city lacking it once it becomes available.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I like the idea of differentiating them a little more, but yeah, the nuclear plant's lack of a massive unhealthiness penalty is already the advantage to my mind, and it comes at the price of being more expensive anyway (not only in sheer hammer costs, but in requiring a successful nuclear program, which is actually something of a complex hurdle in this mod).

The nuclear plant in the game is still unhealthier than the gas plant, while a gas plant has carbon emissions and a nuclear plant does not. I do agree that the nuclear plant is very costly in real life, both in building (safely) and in storing the nuclear waste securely. But it doesn't have the emissions of a gas plant. Of course, in real life, it does create unrest, so the unhappiness addition is a creative way to do that.

I tried to find where this was documented and have given up after a few minutes' search, but I believe this was strictly to retain the alternative options. In many late game scenarios, health is superabundant and you'd much rather build a coal plant in a newly founded city in some small island somewhere which won't realistically hit its health cap than be forced to invest in expensive power infrastructure for every single city lacking it once it becomes available.

The route of obsolete doesn't help with what you say. According to the Civilopedia it is:

Coal -> Gas -> Solar -> Hydro. Nuclear is not part of this upgrade path. So, I guess if you add a Hydro plant to a city with a Solar plant, you just create some extra unhealthiness and a chance for a dam break. I am probably missing something here, but I don't know what.

 

[jamnole]

Thanks for all the work and information! Question from an RI newbie, and player returning to Civ in general after almost 2 decades "away". I have tried to figure this out on my own, including the RI PDF manual and some forum type searches.

Can you play with only a limited # of civilizations / nations? How?

I tried RI (Custom Game) and had 12 listed, but met about 8 in the first 25 turns alone (!!), meaning we were all slammed up against each other in a small area on the map. That implies there were a whole lot more than 12 civilizations.

I personally like operating space and to explore and develop without having to intensely battle for space and resources from the very start.

Thanks you.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Could it be that you chose a map script with an old world and a new world and everyone starting in the old world? That makes the start more crowded. It is for instance one of the options in the Totestra map script.

Also, if there is a slow expansion initially and land is left open for a long time, then barbarians can appear, they can settle cities after a while. And new in this mod, those cities can develop into full blown civilizations. But I doubt that is your case. As you are saying it was crowded from the start and that means little space for developing barbarian cities.

If you do start with an old and a new world, then the new world could get settled by barbarians that after a while develop into full blown civilizations.

 

[AspiringScholar]

The nuclear plant in the game is still unhealthier than the gas plant, while a gas plant has carbon emissions and a nuclear plant does not. I do agree that the nuclear plant is very costly in real life, both in building (safely) and in storing the nuclear waste securely. But it doesn't have the emissions of a gas plant. Of course, in real life, it does create unrest, so the unhappiness addition is a creative way to do that.


The route of obsolete doesn't help with what you say. According to the Civilopedia it is:

Coal -> Gas -> Solar -> Hydro. Nuclear is not part of this upgrade path. So, I guess if you add a Hydro plant to a city with a Solar plant, you just create some extra unhealthiness and a chance for a dam break. I am probably missing something here, but I don't know what.

Having loaded up the game to double check, what I think I was trying to find was a reference to the solar plant remaining buildable after the hydro plant becomes available (though now I am unsure, honestly, because the building upgrade path shows it being strictly obsoleted). The hydro plant is significantly cheaper, but it does require a strategic resource (concrete, which, admittedly, you likely wouldn't have made it this far without) and doesn't provide the +2 that the solar plant does, all else aside, so I think both should remain buildable, even if you already have a hydro plant and want to switch to solar for the health bonus. Also, I don't see this listed, but shouldn't the hydro plant require fresh water? Is that already a requirement, just undocumented? It wouldn't make sense to be able to build it inland.

My argument for the nuclear plant actually had the coal plant in mind as the alternative, which is, of course, much dirtier if also substantially cheaper. In many late-game cities, it's still my preferred power plant when the city is still developing, because it's much more accessible at a time when it's unlikely to hit its health cap, enabling the power-requiring buildings to be built as it grows up towards this, and can then be replaced later. I actually don't fully understand the rationale for the unhappiness from nuclear plants, however. Is that supposed to model the controversy surrounding them being implemented? Honestly, I'm not sure how contentious they were prior to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which would be well after they started being used. Currently, countries like France derive almost all of their energy from nuclear power and (though I am not a Frenchman) I doubt it is a controversial thing there.

Thanks for all the work and information! Question from an RI newbie, and player returning to Civ in general after almost 2 decades "away". I have tried to figure this out on my own, including the RI PDF manual and some forum type searches.

Can you play with only a limited # of civilizations / nations? How?

I tried RI (Custom Game) and had 12 listed, but met about 8 in the first 25 turns alone (!!), meaning we were all slammed up against each other in a small area on the map. That implies there were a whole lot more than 12 civilizations.

I personally like operating space and to explore and develop without having to intensely battle for space and resources from the very start.

Thanks you.

My guess is that this has to do with barbarian civs forming and possibly a few spawning from revolutions, as well. There are 9 starting civs on a standard sized map in RI to begin with, but that number often peaks to around 12-15 in most of my games at some point, before reconsolidating down to below the original starting number oftentimes.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Coal -> Gas -> Solar -> Hydro. Nuclear is not part of this upgrade path. So, I guess if you add a Hydro plant to a city with a Solar plant, you just create some extra unhealthiness and a chance for a dam break. I am probably missing something here, but I don't know what.

TBH, I don't recall the exact logic behind that.

Which means I will definitely revisit power plants and their effects.

Can you play with only a limited # of civilizations / nations? How?

I tried RI (Custom Game) and had 12 listed, but met about 8 in the first 25 turns alone (!!), meaning we were all slammed up against each other in a small area on the map. That implies there were a whole lot more than 12 civilizations.

I personally like operating space and to explore and develop without having to intensely battle for space and resources from the very start.

If you're not particularly attached to that game, I'd recommend opening WorldBuilder and looking at the map. There are several possible explanations, both given above are quite plausible, or might just be that particular roll of the dice. Play with map settings a bit, find your own comfortable balance...

 

[Roland Johansen]

Having loaded up the game to double check, what I think I was trying to find was a reference to the solar plant remaining buildable after the hydro plant becomes available (though now I am unsure, honestly, because the building upgrade path shows it being strictly obsoleted). The hydro plant is significantly cheaper, but it does require a strategic resource (concrete, which, admittedly, you likely wouldn't have made it this far without) and doesn't provide the +2 that the solar plant does, all else aside, so I think both should remain buildable, even if you already have a hydro plant and want to switch to solar for the health bonus. Also, I don't see this listed, but shouldn't the hydro plant require fresh water? Is that already a requirement, just undocumented? It wouldn't make sense to be able to build it inland.

Yeah, you're making the same points that I did. We agree. And probably you actually want to have a river for the hydro plant since a fresh water source can also come from a water building in Realism Invictus. And in reality, you need a bit more for a hydro plant.

I actually don't fully understand the rationale for the unhappiness from them, however. Is that supposed to model the controversy surrounding them being implemented? Honestly, I'm not sure how contentious they were prior to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which would be well after they started being used. Currently, countries like France derive almost all of their energy from nuclear power and (though I am not a Frenchman) I doubt it is a controversial thing there.

For instance Germany stopped all their nuclear plants after Fukushima. Quite an exaggerated response, I think, but it does show that there can be unrest due to the building. I actually think it should only have an unhappiness effect (maybe larger so) and no unhealth effect. Maybe a low maintenance as it is expensive to get rid of the nuclear waste afterwards.

 

[Roland Johansen]

TBH, I don't recall the exact logic behind that.

Which means I will definitely revisit power plants and their effects.

Great, thanks for looking into it.

 

[jamnole]

Having loaded up the game to double check, what I think I was trying to find was a reference to the solar plant remaining buildable after the hydro plant becomes available (though now I am unsure, honestly, because the building upgrade path shows it being strictly obsoleted). The hydro plant is significantly cheaper, but it does require a strategic resource (concrete, which, admittedly, you likely wouldn't have made it this far without) and doesn't provide the +2 that the solar plant does, all else aside, so I think both should remain buildable, even if you already have a hydro plant and want to switch to solar for the health bonus. Also, I don't see this listed, but shouldn't the hydro plant require fresh water? Is that already a requirement, just undocumented? It wouldn't make sense to be able to build it inland.

My argument for the nuclear plant actually had the coal plant in mind as the alternative, which is, of course, much dirtier if also substantially cheaper. In many late-game cities, it's still my preferred power plant when the city is still developing, because it's much more accessible at a time when it's unlikely to hit its health cap, enabling the power-requiring buildings to be built as it grows up towards this, and can then be replaced later. I actually don't fully understand the rationale for the unhappiness from nuclear plants, however. Is that supposed to model the controversy surrounding them being implemented? Honestly, I'm not sure how contentious they were prior to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which would be well after they started being used. Currently, countries like France derive almost all of their energy from nuclear power and (though I am not a Frenchman) I doubt it is a controversial thing there.



My guess is that this has to do with barbarian civs forming and possibly a few spawning from revolutions, as well. There are 9 starting civs on a standard sized map in RI to begin with, but that number often peaks to around 12-15 in most of my games at some point, before reconsolidating down to below the original starting number oftentimes.

Having loaded up the game to double check, what I think I was trying to find was a reference to the solar plant remaining buildable after the hydro plant becomes available (though now I am unsure, honestly, because the building upgrade path shows it being strictly obsoleted). The hydro plant is significantly cheaper, but it does require a strategic resource (concrete, which, admittedly, you likely wouldn't have made it this far without) and doesn't provide the +2 that the solar plant does, all else aside, so I think both should remain buildable, even if you already have a hydro plant and want to switch to solar for the health bonus. Also, I don't see this listed, but shouldn't the hydro plant require fresh water? Is that already a requirement, just undocumented? It wouldn't make sense to be able to build it inland.

My argument for the nuclear plant actually had the coal plant in mind as the alternative, which is, of course, much dirtier if also substantially cheaper. In many late-game cities, it's still my preferred power plant when the city is still developing, because it's much more accessible at a time when it's unlikely to hit its health cap, enabling the power-requiring buildings to be built as it grows up towards this, and can then be replaced later. I actually don't fully understand the rationale for the unhappiness from nuclear plants, however. Is that supposed to model the controversy surrounding them being implemented? Honestly, I'm not sure how contentious they were prior to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, which would be well after they started being used. Currently, countries like France derive almost all of their energy from nuclear power and (though I am not a Frenchman) I doubt it is a controversial thing there.



My guess is that this has to do with barbarian civs forming and possibly a few spawning from revolutions, as well. There are 9 starting civs on a standard sized map in RI to begin with, but that number often peaks to around 12-15 in most of my games at some point, before reconsolidating down to below the original starting number oftentimes.

Re.: # of civilizations (nations): thanks! These were not barbarian cities / nations, but rather actual civilizations (whether playable or not by us, I do not know). Looks like "RI World Map scenario large" requires 50ish civilizations to be playing. (and that may be the primary point of RI - that, yes, all these folks are there, deal with it!)