Realism Invictus

[Roland Johansen]

OK, took a look at this one finally. I am curious what thought process led to you blaming the innocent seafood for you flipping to Judaism. You have an overland neighbour who runs Judaism, and a majorly Jewish civ.

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He just flips you to Judaism through espionage from time to time.

That's a funny story. It sounded like a very weird bug when it was described, but this makes a lot of sense.

I must say, a very annoying opponent who is changing your civics. I never encountered that in normal CivIV. Good luck with that AspiringScholar!

 

[Soulmate]

You are going to be doing it faster bc the lower AI econ cost do translate into a more solid tech - I'm playing on Inmortal and I have been living off tech research from the AI and I'm pretty sure the renaissance tech is going to be done before the full discount applies.

Oh, I see how it is... Thanks!

 

[AspiringScholar]

OK, took a look at this one finally. I am curious what thought process led to you blaming the innocent seafood for you flipping to Judaism. You have an overland neighbour who runs Judaism, and a majorly Jewish civ.

View attachment 692502
He just flips you to Judaism through espionage from time to time.

Whoops, haha...

I associated it with the seafood trade because that was the only action I took when I noticed the religion switch the following turn in multiple instances. That could probably be roleplayed in some interesting ways, but is otherwise somewhat embarrassing.

 

[PKSRoman]

My question about Forced labor civic was kinda ignored, are there any good uses for that civic?
I just cant imagine a situation where it might help, instead of hindering your progress.
Any feedback or opinion would be much appreciated.

Forced Labor is quite OP
concentration camps work like second factory + reduce war wearness
just put some in cultural and enjoy fast production of units

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.

Power Plant is late game building. Its only suggestion but should give pure +4 and +6 compared to "coal plant with +4 event"
+6 to because one nuclear power plant gives as much energy as three coal power plants (+2 ).I even asked ChatGPT about it.A nuclear power plant with such bonuses would be welcome in civilizations that rely on having large populations (and lack of good health resources).

I actually feel it's all right for certain resources to lose their relative worth over time. Salt, for instance, intentionally transitions from fairly rare and valuable to nearly worthless in the modern era. But I agree there might be some nonsense cases, such as when a farm over pigs provides more food than a pasture. These cases I try identifying and fixing, and input on those is welcome.

This glassware who give +1 too should be obstolete (in indrustal era?)
I'm tired of refusing “great” trade offers from my vassals or allied civilizations that want to trade glassware in exchange for coal or uranium fuel

"a farm over pigs provides more food than a pasture."
-2 to pasture when you discover "barbed wire" or "Fetilizers" or "Farming Mechanisation" or something similiar (because civs rely more on grains then on food from meat) . i think changing it is rather simple to add

Salt can be obstolete when you build "Desalination Plant" - because you make salt from this plant so typical "salt pits" become obstolete. (I know it's a simplification but this game is also a simplification and an attempt to replicate what it was like in the real world)

+1 to all your cities and -0,50% to epidemic chance after you build this national wonder lets say.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I got so excited reading these that I automatically updated my SVN and realized that I just killed my game as Rome which was going very well.

If it's not possible to roll the SVN back to the previous revision, I'll probably just start a new game, and some of these changes prevent this from being altogether disappointing.

Spoiler :

All quotes from SourceForge for the 5396 commit:

- "Communist countries (running Planned Economy civic) now get mutual diplomatic penalty with those that don't, for a more dynamic late game; the amount of penalty depends on particular leader's personality (can be seen in Pedia)
Many leaders will now be more or less willing to adopt Planned Economy and, to a lesser extent, other leftist civics (can be seen in Pedia)"

This seems like a fantastic change! The AI in general already wasn't averse to adopting the "leftist" civics in my games, but the ideological appraisal of them resulting in a diplomatic drift should make for some more definitely exciting late game play. Functioning psychologically as an analogue to how this already applies to religion in the front half of the game seems entirely appropriate and warranted, since secular political affiliation often manifests emotionally and behaviorally the same way anyway, replete with its own crusades and moralizing coercion.

Any breath of fresh air into diplomacy is going to top my list of what I am pleased to see added or improved.

- "Consistency: land units can traverse normally impassable terrain features (forests/jungle/swamps) in friendly territory, same as naval units with ocean. Also coincidentally resolves a reported infinite loop"

Does this mean that I can walk over mountains if they're within my borders? Forests, jungles and swamps were never impassible in the first place, so I am not quite sure what this means.

"Privateers (and Heavy Privateers) now limited to 12 per game, so it is possible to kill them all off for good. Once 12 Privateers have been killed, no more can be built by any player in a given game. Also, now both normal and heavy Privateers limited to 3 per player (was 4 for normal, 2 for heavy)"

Great idea, but should this not scale with map size?

As it is, it creates an interesting incentive to rush and hoard all of the available privateers, which should make the "age of piracy" more exciting and acutely felt, as well as nullify the annoying and anachronistic pirate ships showing up in the modern era, which are nothing but a nuisance at that point, but can still require some tedium to deal with replacing fishing boats and putting up one defending ship in far off islands which otherwise don't warrant having naval protection.

- "Removed unreachable victories (space & diplomatic) in Deluge and Crusades scenario. Should results in better AI priorities."

I love the medieval period, so I find this scenario quite interesting (especially since it represents much of the Old World, not just Europe), and every time I play it, the Mongols (which have a special unit just for this scenario designed to be an absolute menace to most of the whole world) never do anything. What I tend to notice is that they just adopt Taoism and remain peaceful with China. Hopefully this puts the bloodlust in them!

One suggestion I have for it (which, I feel, will be somewhat offensive to your efforts and inspiration) is to flip the map back to a north orientation. I doubt that that's even possible outside of completely redrawing the map, but every time I play Crusades, I Shift + Right Click so that it's at least halfway north-adjusted. I get the historical reason for modeling it on a T&O map, and that medieval people generally had a loose sense of geography for the most part so this might be truer to the world as they experienced it, but I just can't get over the fact that east is functionally what is seared into my mind as "north." Knowing the approximate political geography of the historical world at the time and then having to "translate" it to this in a scenario map which is supposed to represent these correct locations feels like trying to write with my left hand.

- "Naples can no longer break free of Austria in the Deluge scenario (it is more of an administrative subdivision than a separate country at the time)"

They tend to do well against the other Italians anyway, so if they're unable to declare their own wars, this would probably be good for balance as well.

- "Slaves are now guaranteed to die when building an improvement (75% chance might as well be 100%), but build twice as fast as normal workers (thought about them building improvements instantly, but not sure if too powerful)"

This is interesting, though I am curious how it will play out (as worker utility is a rather large factor in expansion pace and economic growth as it is). With the changes made to increase improvement construction time based upon underlying terrain in 3.6, especially, building improvements with slaves has felt almost inconsequential (especially since revolting city slaves will "free" them en route, which requires a lot of shuffling around and micromanagement which is more tedious than fun).

This does go against the original idea of having them be less efficient by design. From a historical standpoint, however, this makes me wonder which idea is more correct: being worked to death and producing an improvement faster, or producing it much more slowly because you're unskilled and unrested/underfed and (still likely, and now certainly) dying afterwards? Is there much of an argument from history in addressing this question? I can see that one plausibly going either way, honestly. From a gameplay standpoint, it's probably more "fun" that they be faster and more useful, though the balance implications are hard to gauge on paper.

- "Slave/serf revolts will only spawn where they can reach the city of origin (no more spawning on a one-tile island or the other side of a strait)"

Nice. Having to either deal with a big thorn in your side revolt that will meander around to another city or hear a misleading marching sound notification every turn if it's not worth it or doesn't matter should improve the playing experience. Do they still spawn with the same distance from the home city logic, as you explained earlier?

- "Pedia lists additional clarifications for some obscure mechanics, such as farms requiring 1 or more food on a tile to be built, and cultivations explicitly mentioning replacing fertile soil with a resource"

This is a nice quality of life improvement! I also have been keeping a note on some text edits to some clunky entries the Pedia in general, which I can start listing here if you'd like. (I recall you saying that text edits for such things are always welcome, since the breadth of the whole thing is both too large to fully quality-control and also pose no functionality risk to change.)

This is a nitpick, but why does sea ice show that it has a cost of 16, but is also impassible? Perhaps that line should be omitted.

Also, this was something that you actually mentioned in my first feedback post years ago, but hills don't currently have an entry in the Pedia as it is. I feel that including them (if possible) would be in step with the spirit of this change.

- "New set of cultivation icons, matching current icons for the relevant resources"

Beautiful! I particularly like how they share a common and sleek ear of grain to signify what it does against the image of the relevant resource you recognize already. I don't even remember what they looked like previously.

- "Roman ballistae come a bit later (with Siegecraft) but are now able to bombard city defences"

Thank you for making a tweak here! Both of those seem sensible, though it did make enough sense to me that launching a giant spear at a wall probably isn't going to be a great way of bringing it down. Scorpions wouldn't have been able to, of course, but were large Roman ballistae otherwise generally capable of this?

- "Some leader and unit art updates"

I have noticed this for a while and have been meaning to ask: are virtually all of these new leader art updates AI-generated? There's a certain "look" that AI art typically has, at least by default if not otherwise specified (unusually vibrant, very high contrast, a preference for warmness in the color palette) and these seem to be the stylistic traits for just about every single new leader portrait I've seen, as I've recognized that they were different.

I don't necessarily dislike that, personally, but (were I the curator of the mod) would lean more into the actually extant and most authentic depictions and representations of the leaders from real history instead, and as it is, there is still a bit of artistic inconsistency (which you are likely already aware of and addressing to your taste anyway), for instance: Hayam Wuruk has a nice portrait, but it definitely makes him look more like a cartoon character than true to life, which is rather dissonant with a lot of these glowingly luminous and "realistically toned" new ones.

Some have a slightly ashy color-pencil texture (which I actually rather like and think stylistically fits Civ 4's UI the best, particularly with the original tech icons, such as my avatar here), while others look more like watercolor. Some also look like oil canvases. What I am curious about is whether there is supposed to be an underlying "type" for all leader portraits or if this is either deliberately or approvably miscellaneous, because basically all of the new ones have the same style, and look apart from the existing ones, and I would hope that the already good leader portraits wouldn't need to change to conform to a new uniform style for that reason alone.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Apologies for the double-post, but an idea just came to me. Perhaps this is warranted for balance reasons, but, the Americans have a pretty strong civ overall (particularly in the second half of the game) though their leaders offer a fairly poor mix of traits overall. Not only is that off-putting from a "hard-gaming" standpoint, but, I feel that as one of the few playable civs represented in RI that really only shine in (and, in America's case, technically properly began to exist) in the later eras, its lack of full representation here feels particularly out of place. The timeline of RI is supposed to end with the aftermath of the Cold War, in some ambiguous late 20/early 21C timeframe, which was exactly the time when the United States reached its triumphal geopolitical zenith, so the fact that we have no Cold War president as a leader (but, for instance, we have Konrad Adenauer for Germany) feels out of place. Though it falls within the hazy twilight between contemporary politics and "hardened" history, I feel that several of the US's Cold War presidents are actually the most interesting and "important" to include in modeling the civ and its "end of the timeline" flavor, especially when the majority of its unit roster is in the late industrial and modern eras, because as it is, we only have WW2 and earlier America represented in the game leadership wise, when that war was the formative incident that brought about American hegemony over most of the modern world in the first place (and in the eyes of most everyone else, America was a barely legitimate backwater until the 20C anyway), and America would have technically "won" the game under one of these leaders, so some kind of representation there feels important for that reason.

I looked through the trait combinatorics, and came up with a few possibilities that could be interesting (especially in light of, and admittedly prompted by, the line of thought with the "anti-communism" dynamic introduced by the current commit). I tried to pick either the most characteristic, unique or historically forceful examples in choosing a Cold War US candidate, and while a handful would be viable picks, ultimately I think that Ronald Reagan is the most appropriate of them all in fronting this list (the next picks would be Truman, who I wouldn't include because he was FDR's vice president and successor, so too close to him anyway, and Lyndon Johnson, who was perhaps the most consequential of US Cold War presidents but his own administration was so indecisive and marked by cultural and social changes beyond the scope of his own personality that attributing these to his personality and leadership by roping them into his leader in the game feels dishonest), and I think would be a good candidate for being fully represented in the game.

My suggestion would be: Ronald Reagan (Financial, Politician; Excessive)

This combo doesn't currently exist (the two positive traits are shared by Gustav Vasa of Scandinavia, but excessive is a far-cry from schemer, which, I don't think Reagan was). The financial makes obvious sense to me for the "decade of greed" that the American 1980s became known as and for the rentier society which much of its economics fomented (which, for instance, is why I wouldn't want to give Reagan a bonus in any form, that having been shifted offshore in the 1970s already) and for the obvious sympathy that Reagan had for capitalism with his "Reaganomics" and its positive association with American culture.

Politician as a trait was as close as I could get in thinking of how a Hollywood actor would be modeled in the game. He had an excellent speaking ability and that would make him a candidate for charismatic too, but I don't think this often took a martial form as that trait is clearly shaped in this game, and he himself had only nominal military experience, so that seemed inauthentic. Politician seems warranted for his warm talks and success in meeting with Gorbachev and that he will in fact (at least for some while, in the English speaking world) go down in history as "the great communicator" which I feel the diplomatic relations bonus is appropriate in representing.

Excessive also makes complete sense because he was the first US President to start the snowball of huge budget deficits and national debt rolling. Though profit margins and capital stocks were rising in the '80s (which I think Financial correctly models), Reagan ran the budget massively in the red in revamping the military and in generally believing that America was on the side of good against an "empire of evil," which I think exactly takes the form of what an "excessive" leader in civ-terms would think in blithely overspending for such a purpose.

Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), Ronald Reagan was the president that pretty much checkmated the Soviet Union (even if the actual collapse occurred under Bush the Elder), and in Civilization, the game is won when someone "effectively" rules the world, which I think certainly applies to the United States in the 1990s, there being no comparable threat whatsoever in that aftermath. So, for that reason, I think that he should be included, not least for all of the above but additionally because there is very little "modern world" representation otherwise and the United States already sort of "won the game" in our own historical timeline anyway.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Power Plant is late game building. Its only suggestion but should give pure +4 and +6 compared to "coal plant with +4 event"
+6 to because one nuclear power plant gives as much energy as three coal power plants (+2 ).I even asked ChatGPT about it.A nuclear power plant with such bonuses would be welcome in civilizations that rely on having large populations (and lack of good health resources).

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You can make any power plant in real life arbitrarily large. You may be able to say something about efficiency of power plants and then nuclear fission plants often don't score that well as the safety measures around them are so expensive.

A large language model allows the creation of a nice text. The content of the text doesn't have to be factual.

This glassware who give +1 too should be obstolete (in indrustal era?)
I'm tired of refusing “great” trade offers from my vassals or allied civilizations that want to trade glassware in exchange for coal or uranium fuel

There are many things that once were complex but we can create at a huge scale nowadays and that seriously reduces their market price. But still, the ability of mankind to create glass has made our lives a lot better. It has in many cases not been replaced by something else, its use as a material has actually dramatically increased since the middle ages because we became capable of mass producing it.

It has traversed a similar path as your example of salt. Salt is still a resource that has improved our lives, but it is just very easy for mankind to create it en masse nowadays.

Both resources should ideally in game be able to be produced easily by the industrial age. So getting access to them or their effect through some small wonder does make sense. I like that idea. In gameplay, it does reduce the value of using a great merchant to create glass, but you'd still have access to it earlier in a game.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Whoops, haha...

I associated it with the seafood trade because that was the only action I took when I noticed the religion switch the following turn in multiple instances. That could probably be roleplayed in some interesting ways, but is otherwise somewhat embarrassing.

To be fair to you, the notification for that is surprisingly understated and easy to miss for something so

I got so excited reading these that I automatically updated my SVN and realized that I just killed my game as Rome which was going very well.

If it's not possible to roll the SVN back to the previous revision, I'll probably just start a new game, and some of these changes prevent this from being altogether disappointing.

It is not just possible but actually very easy. If you're using TortoiseSVN, you have an "Update to revision..." option in the right-click menu. That's how I jump back and forth between them to fix the reported bugs.

Power Plant is late game building. Its only suggestion but should give pure +4 and +6 compared to "coal plant with +4 event"

I actually implemented my own rework of power plants since already. Now, everything better than coal has its own limitations.

This glassware who give +1 too should be obstolete (in indrustal era?)

Why? It actually gets additional buff there. In industrial era you can actually squeeze 3 out of it.

"a farm over pigs provides more food than a pasture."
-2 to pasture when you discover "barbed wire" or "Fetilizers" or "Farming Mechanisation" or something similiar (because civs rely more on grains then on food from meat) . i think changing it is rather simple to add

I feel you misunderstood what I was trying to convey here. It's an illustration of something I didn't want happening late game.

Salt can be obstolete when you build "Desalination Plant" - because you make salt from this plant so typical "salt pits" become obstolete. (I know it's a simplification but this game is also a simplification and an attempt to replicate what it was like in the real world)

That would force people to build a rather expensive building to get the bonus back. I'm quite comfortable with where the balance is now, salt-wise.

This seems like a fantastic change! The AI in general already wasn't averse to adopting the "leftist" civics in my games, but the ideological appraisal of them resulting in a diplomatic drift should make for some more definitely exciting late game play. Functioning psychologically as an analogue to how this already applies to religion in the front half of the game seems entirely appropriate and warranted, since secular political affiliation often manifests emotionally and behaviorally the same way anyway, replete with its own crusades and moralizing coercion.

Any breath of fresh air into diplomacy is going to top my list of what I am pleased to see added or improved.

What I'd like is feedback on the impact of that. Currently in my test games the diplomatic penalty seems adequate, but all of my testing was hands-off.

Does this mean that I can walk over mountains if they're within my borders? Forests, jungles and swamps were never impassible in the first place, so I am not quite sure what this means.

No, it's specifically for terrain features like forests and such. Most of the time, it's not an issue, but in RI, there are a few units (Great Bombard, Russian Gulyay-Gorod, etc.) that have cross-terrain issues. In particular, I wanted to avoid the situation where upon a peace treaty, one's units with such restrictions would be ejected somewhere they can't get out of.

Great idea, but should this not scale with map size?

I think unit number restrictions already do.

As it is, it creates an interesting incentive to rush and hoard all of the available privateers, which should make the "age of piracy" more exciting and acutely felt, as well as nullify the annoying and anachronistic pirate ships showing up in the modern era, which are nothing but a nuisance at that point, but can still require some tedium to deal with replacing fishing boats and putting up one defending ship in far off islands which otherwise don't warrant having naval protection.

Since you're limited to 3, that would require deliberately getting them killed repeatedly. While it is a theoretically possible tactic, I'm sure there would normally be better ways to spend your resources.

I love the medieval period, so I find this scenario quite interesting (especially since it represents much of the Old World, not just Europe), and every time I play it, the Mongols (which have a special unit just for this scenario designed to be an absolute menace to most of the whole world) never do anything. What I tend to notice is that they just adopt Taoism and remain peaceful with China. Hopefully this puts the bloodlust in them!

Mongols in the Crusades scenario, the bane of my life. So much I've tried to make them more aggressive, and yet nothing works. In my latest test game, they actually ignored Southern Song, which then proceeded to win the game...

One suggestion I have for it (which, I feel, will be somewhat offensive to your efforts and inspiration) is to flip the map back to a north orientation.

It's not just offensive, it's simply impossible from a technical standpoint.

This is interesting, though I am curious how it will play out (as worker utility is a rather large factor in expansion pace and economic growth as it is). With the changes made to increase improvement construction time based upon underlying terrain in 3.6, especially, building improvements with slaves has felt almost inconsequential (especially since revolting city slaves will "free" them en route, which requires a lot of shuffling around and micromanagement which is more tedious than fun).

Yeah, my general line of thought was that I myself would only ever use slaves to construct buildings, as I already had workers to build improvements.

This does go against the original idea of having them be less efficient by design. From a historical standpoint, however, this makes me wonder which idea is more correct: being worked to death and producing an improvement faster, or producing it much more slowly because you're unskilled and unrested/underfed and (still likely, and now certainly) dying afterwards? Is there much of an argument from history in addressing this question? I can see that one plausibly going either way, honestly. From a gameplay standpoint, it's probably more "fun" that they be faster and more useful, though the balance implications are hard to gauge on paper.

Interestingly, it is both, historically speaking. History shows that societies based on slave labour could easily outgrow and outproduce those that weren't, but only, and crucially, if they kept getting more slaves (usually as spoils of war, but the triangle trade also applies here). Once the percentage of people born into slavery rather than enslaved began to grow, the economy would suffer.

Nice. Having to either deal with a big thorn in your side revolt that will meander around to another city or hear a misleading marching sound notification every turn if it's not worth it or doesn't matter should improve the playing experience. Do they still spawn with the same distance from the home city logic, as you explained earlier?

Still the same otherwise. It's mostly to avoid stupid situations that are well-illustrated by world map's Austronesia for instance, where I often see a one-tile island with 20-30 rebel slaves who simply have no means of getting anywhere from there.

I also have been keeping a note on some text edits to some clunky entries the Pedia in general, which I can start listing here if you'd like.

Sure!

This is a nitpick, but why does sea ice show that it has a cost of 16, but is also impassible? Perhaps that line should be omitted.

You might not have noticed that, but modern (WW2 era and onwards) destroyers can traverse ice, simulating icebreakers. I may actually make a nuclear icebreaker as a world unit some day, if I find a decent model.

Also, this was something that you actually mentioned in my first feedback post years ago, but hills don't currently have an entry in the Pedia as it is. I feel that including them (if possible) would be in step with the spirit of this change.

I still have no idea why that is so and how to fix that. It equally applies to vanilla Civ 4, no hills in their pedia either.

I don't even remember what they looked like previously.

Basically the same but sloppier and with resource icons that haven't been used for a long while now.

I have noticed this for a while and have been meaning to ask: are virtually all of these new leader art updates AI-generated? There's a certain "look" that AI art typically has, at least by default if not otherwise specified (unusually vibrant, very high contrast, a preference for warmness in the color palette) and these seem to be the stylistic traits for just about every single new leader portrait I've seen, as I've recognized that they were different.

I don't necessarily dislike that, personally, but (were I the curator of the mod) would lean more into the actually extant and most authentic depictions and representations of the leaders from real history instead, and as it is, there is still a bit of artistic inconsistency (which you are likely already aware of and addressing to your taste anyway), for instance: Hayam Wuruk has a nice portrait, but it definitely makes him look more like a cartoon character than true to life, which is rather dissonant with a lot of these glowingly luminous and "realistically toned" new ones.

Some have a slightly ashy color-pencil texture (which I actually rather like and think stylistically fits Civ 4's UI the best, particularly with the original tech icons, such as my avatar here), while others look more like watercolor. Some also look like oil canvases. What I am curious about is whether there is supposed to be an underlying "type" for all leader portraits or if this is either deliberately or approvably miscellaneous, because basically all of the new ones have the same style, and look apart from the existing ones, and I would hope that the already good leader portraits wouldn't need to change to conform to a new uniform style for that reason alone.

Yeah, a lot of them are AI-generated, probably more than you can tell. While I would love to have the historical portraits available for all of them, in lots of cases, there simply aren't any available in a good enough quality. I actually put a lot of effort in every of those, trying to work with the sources available to generate something that looks plausible. I feel the result looks better than simply using whatever's out there.

Spoiler Here's Ismail Samani, for example :

I am also trying to avoid using wildly clashing styles where possible. Obvious 3d model screenshot (such as Civ 5 Sejong used until recently) or a pencil sketch (formerly used for Parameswara) simply stand out too much.

The timeline of RI is supposed to end with the aftermath of the Cold War, in some ambiguous late 20/early 21C timeframe, which was exactly the time when the United States reached its triumphal geopolitical zenith, so the fact that we have no Cold War president as a leader (but, for instance, we have Konrad Adenauer for Germany) feels out of place.

A reasonable suggestion, and America is the civ that's simplest to add a leader for, due to their regular censuses. I'll consider Reagan or maybe Kennedy.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I would definitely put Reagan over JFK, personally, and not for political sympathies but rather for relative notoriety and weight of impact, and because most of the latter's meaningful decisions actually came to fruition later in other administrations, such as the Apollo Program and the escalated commitment to the Vietnam War. Kennedy also didn't even quite have three years as president, and (while averting disaster in the Cuban Missile Crisis is notable, that could have had as much to do with luck or some other passive factor as a singular incident than skilled leadership), and otherwise wasn't particularly impactful enough in that span of time to feel individually representative of the time period at large.

 

[Roland Johansen]

- "Communist countries (running Planned Economy civic) now get mutual diplomatic penalty with those that don't, for a more dynamic late game; the amount of penalty depends on particular leader's personality (can be seen in Pedia)
Many leaders will now be more or less willing to adopt Planned Economy and, to a lesser extent, other leftist civics (can be seen in Pedia)"

Interesting indeed. Is this symmetrical? Capitalists hate communists and communists hate capitalists. The way that it is worded above seems to be unidirectional towards only the communists being hated by the capitalists. Is it also similar to religions in that it those nations with similar political affiliation like each other more?

This does go against the original idea of having them be less efficient by design. From a historical standpoint, however, this makes me wonder which idea is more correct: being worked to death and producing an improvement faster, or producing it much more slowly because you're unskilled and unrested/underfed and (still likely, and now certainly) dying afterwards? Is there much of an argument from history in addressing this question? I can see that one plausibly going either way, honestly. From a gameplay standpoint, it's probably more "fun" that they be faster and more useful, though the balance implications are hard to gauge on paper.

If it works better in our brains, we can also view the group of slave workers as a larger group than a normal group of workers. Their maintenance is still the same as a normal group of workers because they are not paid and malnourished. But the bigger size of the group allows them to get more done.

Also, this was something that you actually mentioned in my first feedback post years ago, but hills don't currently have an entry in the Pedia as it is. I feel that including them (if possible) would be in step with the spirit of this change.

Agreed. I was also thinking about that one when I mentioned the requirements of terrain improvements, but found it slightly less important. But it would indeed be good to have. Also because some tile improvements require hills.

Apologies for the double-post, but an idea just came to me. Perhaps this is warranted for balance reasons, but, the Americans have a pretty strong civ overall (particularly in the second half of the game) though their leaders offer a fairly poor mix of traits overall. Not only is that off-putting from a "hard-gaming" standpoint, but, I feel that as one of the few playable civs represented in RI that really only shine in (and, in America's case, technically properly began to exist) in the later eras, its lack of full representation here feels particularly out of place. The timeline of RI is supposed to end with the aftermath of the Cold War, in some ambiguous late 20/early 21C timeframe, which was exactly the time when the United States reached its triumphal geopolitical zenith, so the fact that we have no Cold War president as a leader (but, for instance, we have Konrad Adenauer for Germany) feels out of place. Though it falls within the hazy twilight between contemporary politics and "hardened" history, I feel that several of the US's Cold War presidents are actually the most interesting and "important" to include in modeling the civ and its "end of the timeline" flavor, especially when the majority of its unit roster is in the late industrial and modern eras, because as it is, we only have WW2 and earlier America represented in the game leadership wise, when that war was the formative incident that brought about American hegemony over most of the modern world in the first place (and in the eyes of most everyone else, America was a barely legitimate backwater until the 20C anyway), and America would have technically "won" the game under one of these leaders, so some kind of representation there feels important for that reason.

The reason that the main civilization game doesn't pick recent leaders is obvious: too much recent political controversy, too many strong opinions. And of course, the US is extremely politically divided nowadays, so there is a risk here to get swept into that discussion.

Yeah, a lot of them are AI-generated, probably more than you can tell. While I would love to have the historical portraits available for all of them, in lots of cases, there simply aren't any available in a good enough quality. I actually put a lot of effort in every of those, trying to work with the sources available to generate something that looks plausible. I feel the result looks better than simply using whatever's out there.

Spoiler Here's Ismail Samani, for example :

[/URL]


I am also trying to avoid using wildly clashing styles where possible. Obvious 3d model screenshot (such as Civ 5 Sejong used until recently) or a pencil sketch (formerly used for Parameswara) simply stand out too much.

Nice use of modern picture generation tools!

By the way: great to read about the SVN improvements. Maybe I should move to the SVN too for my next game. Although the reported startup times of the game of 20 minutes scares me off a bit.

 

[sazhdapec]

Although the reported startup times of the game of 20 minutes scares me off a bit.

Depends on a machine. It's about 6 minutes for me.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Depends on a machine. It's about 6 minutes for me.

That's only for starting the game proper. Loading a game, playing the game, saving the game, those all take the normal amounts of time?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I would definitely put Reagan over JFK, personally, and not for political sympathies but rather for relative notoriety and weight of impact, and because most of the latter's meaningful decisions actually came to fruition later in other administrations, such as the Apollo Program and the escalated commitment to the Vietnam War. Kennedy also didn't even quite have three years as president, and (while averting disaster in the Cuban Missile Crisis is notable, that could have had as much to do with luck or some other passive factor as a singular incident than skilled leadership), and otherwise wasn't particularly impactful enough in that span of time to feel individually representative of the time period at large.

You might have noticed that I pick leaders not just because they are the most notable, but often because they offer a unique "spin" on a civ or have an interesting story to them. I'm not specifically pushing for Kennedy over Reagan, but you can probably see why he'd cross my mind. But Reagan is also distinct enough from all existing leaders to make it in.

Interesting indeed. Is this symmetrical? Capitalists hate communists and communists hate capitalists. The way that it is worded above seems to be unidirectional towards only the communists being hated by the capitalists. Is it also similar to religions in that it those nations with similar political affiliation like each other more?

As per my SVN note, "mutual". The feeling is mutual.

Also I didn't mention this specifically, but unlike with religions, there is no accompanying positive relation boost. After all, WW2 was started between capitalist countries, with USSR getting dragged into it two years later - and the two major communist countries of the XX century spent most of it hating each others' guts, to the point of limited military action.

The reason that the main civilization game doesn't pick recent leaders is obvious: too much recent political controversy, too many strong opinions. And of course, the US is extremely politically divided nowadays, so there is a risk here to get swept into that discussion.

RI also has this policy - for inclusion, the leader must have ended their political career at least 20 years ago or have started it no less than 50 years ago. Reagan seems to qualify already - though he didn't when RI started out! Shows the mod's age.

Nice use of modern picture generation tools!

Thanks, I'm actually reasonably proud of that one, and feel it is one of the more justified uses of generative AI tools. It steals nobody's bread, makes me no money and actually creates something that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also takes quite a lot of effort on my side despite being AI-driven (each leader takes lots of digging for reference pictures and dozens of iterations to get right).

By the way: great to read about the SVN improvements. Maybe I should move to the SVN too for my next game. Although the reported startup times of the game of 20 minutes scares me off a bit.

Installing on SSD helps a lot with the load times.

That's only for starting the game proper. Loading a game, playing the game, saving the game, those all take the normal amounts of time?

Nope, it's just the time from clicking the shortcut to the main menu, basically. Everything else runs absolutely the same as in the packed version, maybe even better (I think having unpacked assets makes the game almost immune to memory allocation errors).

 

[Roland Johansen]

A suggestion for the 3.61 release version.

I noticed that I never constructed the simple path you can build very early game after researching the wheel. It offers barely any speed improvement and it takes a long time to build, specifically not a lot shorter than the roads that come available fairly shortly after with roadbuilding. Also during the very early game, there is barely a reason to spend time connecting resources as they don't do a lot yet. So, I never saw a reason to let my precious early game worker spend time building the path improvement.

And once you have the better road improvements, there is little reason to build the older ones.

When reading the description of a path, it seemed to represent a very basic improvement. I argue that the very basic path should take a lot less time to build than the later road improvements and if that were represented in the game, then it would become a more interesting improvement to use. If it takes only 30% of the time to build a normal road, then I could even see it being used after roadbuilding has been invented and you need some connection quick but don't have the worker resources to build proper roads. And I bet simple paths existed next to more elaborate roads in the ancient world, so that would be realistic.

 

[shkitur1]

Hi. i started new game on latest svn and found that on world map huge (i changed it a lot) and on world map large (i dont change this map) every civ have big diplomacy boost with every other civ in game. for exampe I have +13 diplomacy with every civ i met because of "you are the enemy of the free world". Some AI civ have boost even more. Armenia has +54 diplomacy with other civ with the same explanation "you are the enemy of the free world". In custom game there is no such a problem. Does anybody have same problem?
I also made changes in some files of this mod. may be that is why this happen

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I noticed that I never constructed the simple path you can build very early game after researching the wheel.

You mostly don't need to. It's basically an "emergency" route for when you really need to connect a resource or a city, but can't build proper roads yet. I don't want to make it cheaper so as not to encourage a path spam.

Hi. i started new game on latest svn and found that on world map huge (i changed it a lot) and on world map large (i dont chamge this map) every civ have big diplomacy boost with every other civ in game. for exampe I have +13 diplomacy with every civ i met because of "you are the enemy of the free world". Some AI civ have boost even more. Armenia has +54 diplomacy with other civ with the same explanation "you are the enemy of the free world". In custom game there is no such a problem. Does anybody have same problem?
I also made changes in some files of this mod. may be that is why this happen

Hm, interesting. This should only ever be negative and should only be in effect between communists and non-communists. I'll see if I can reproduce it (and fix if needed) on my side.

 

[Roland Johansen]

As per my SVN note, "mutual". The feeling is mutual.

Also I didn't mention this specifically, but unlike with religions, there is no accompanying positive relation boost. After all, WW2 was started between capitalist countries, with USSR getting dragged into it two years later - and the two major communist countries of the XX century spent most of it hating each others' guts, to the point of limited military action.

Some reading comprehension failure on my end on that first point. I didn't sleep so well.

Makes some sense on the non-existence of a positive relation boost. Interesting to hear about the motivation. Although Nazi-Germany wasn't really a pure capitalist country. People are supposed to do stuff for the country and the leader and less so for money in Nazi-Germany. Although NATO is an alliance between capitalist countries, it is more of a reaction to hating/fearing the communist block. Although if you extend that to more recent times, modern Russia and modern China is not (purely) communist any more. I also wonder how much of the capitalist-communist hate was really based on government policy and how much simply on the two most powerful countries in the world (at that point) being in competition. Then the leaders are just looking for a motivation to hate the other country. The US-China hate is not really capitalist-communist hate in nature any more. But real diplomacy is so hard to capture.

(By the way, I don't want to start a discussion on real world politics here. But you get that when contemplating how to model relations in a game.)

I actually question the huge diplomatic bonuses between countries of similar state religion. If you see the number of wars in Christian Europe and that wasn't all about Catholics versus Protestants either. But within the game, it does lead to some interesting block forming in diplomacy. And that block forming should maybe not be too strong in modern times in the game, so that the game gets a victor and not a winning block of nations.

Thanks, I'm actually reasonably proud of that one, and feel it is one of the more justified uses of generative AI tools. It steals nobody's bread, makes me no money and actually creates something that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also takes quite a lot of effort on my side despite being AI-driven (each leader takes lots of digging for reference pictures and dozens of iterations to get right).

It seems worth it to me. Thanks for the effort!

Installing on SSD helps a lot with the load times.

Nope, it's just the time from clicking the shortcut to the main menu, basically. Everything else runs absolutely the same as in the packed version, maybe even better (I think having unpacked assets makes the game almost immune to memory allocation errors).

That's good to hear. I have a fast computer with SSD. So, it may not be such an issue then. Just do something else for 5 minutes.

 

[shkitur1]

Hm, interesting. This should only ever be negative and should only be in effect between communists and non-communists. I'll see if I can reproduce it (and fix if needed) on my side.

I found that the number of points for "you are the enemy of the free world" is equal to teamID of the civ in scenario file. for example in RI crusade scenario Irish Kingdoms got +0 diplomacy because its TeamID=0, and Edward I Longshanks got +2 because its TeamID=2. Birger Jarl (TeamID=55) got +55 points

in other scenarios situation is same

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Yep, figured as much independently in the meantime. Almost fixed as well I think, now running a couple of hands-off test games. Will likely upload a fix today. Thanks again for pointing where to look.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

And the update is live. Very recommended to everyone who updated to the previous revision. Should be save-game compatible, but I didn't test if it would fix the relations in existing saves.