Realism Invictus

[AspiringScholar]

Wouldn't it help to make the effect of war weariness for stability less impactful (at least for AI)? I always play with revolutions since it adds a lot of immersivity and depth, although I remember some time ago I saw a similar thing described by @Pepo where the number one opponent after being defeated by me went into a rebellion spiral trying to reclaim cities and then losing them again. I don't complain because it was fun to watch (and I didn't like them anyway), but just wondering.

If I find where in the XMLs are revolution factors, I will try to balance it for myself and check how it works.

This was already done for 3.6, and since then I haven't seen this manifest as a problem in general. Is this really what everyone has has been seeing in the official release, since then?

 

[AlfaLeporis]

I don't see this as a problem per se, watching how big empires disintegrate is fascinating and one of the reasons I play RI - although playing for war weariness is a pretty effective strategy, especially in the late game against big (or even over-expanded nations), so there's probably still some room for experiments here.

 

[Roland Johansen]

(When playing with revolutions) Isn't it a bit boring from a gameplay (not realism) point of view that however successful an AI empire is, it cannot really handle the revolution risks well and therefore a big AI empire will always disintegrate in a war with some war weariness maybe combined with a targeted spying effort. It basically means that you can't lose a bit later in the game after surviving the early game. At least, that is what I read here from everyone using the revolution option of Realism Invictus.

In a game, I always like to keep the risk of losing as long as possible in a game. From the moment that I know that I will win, the game becomes a lot less interesting.

 

[AlfaLeporis]

On the other hand sometimes it prevents AI from snowballing, and I would rather increase the difficulty level than disabling revolutions if I see that I'm getting ahead too soon. Also, I like to role-play instead of just going into a particular victory and watching such a dynamic world is very satisfying.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't want to keep the AI from possibly snowballing. If it can't possibly snowball, how is it ever going to win the game?

Besides, civilization is a game that favours the defender who has better movement in their territory and gets less war weariness. And the civilizations that aren't part of a war can often develop more quickly and can pounce on the weakened war mongers. Just being aggressive doesn't necessarily make the AI win the game. The game usually doesn't snowball that hard without revolutions.

 

[AlfaLeporis]

I guess we just have different play styles so honestly no point in trying to convince each other - as long as we all enjoy the mod.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Agreed. I was just checking what the appeal was to people who liked the option.

 

[trashmunster]

Agreed. I was just checking what the appeal was to people who liked the option.

the appeal is that in real history overextended empires collapsed many times, sooner or later. Emulating it in game is must have.
AI can win cultural and space victory, never saw it winning diplo in this mod.
Domination victory can happen too for AI with revolutions on so it's not too bad.

Besides having no revolutions makes the game much easier for player also.

 

[Pepo]

the appeal is that in real history overextended empires collapsed many times, sooner or later. Emulating it in game is must have.
AI can win cultural and space victory, never saw it winning diplo in this mod.
Domination victory can happen too for AI with revolutions on so it's not too bad.

Besides having no revolutions makes the game much easier for player also.

Nah, if the AI doesn't understand the mechanics to fight it is making the game easier for the player.

And really I think what bothers me the most is that the AI doesn't go to war against the revolters or how the cities turn peacefully. I think that if the AI actually fought against rebels it would suffer less from it.

 

[AlfaLeporis]

In my experience AI mostly tries to reclaim lost cities sooner or later, at least in my case I've seen it multiple times - how many times have you tried to play with revolutions on? Not sure what you mean by "how the cities turn peacefully", isn't it the point of this option when a particular city becomes hard to hold?

 

[Timothyy]

On the other hand sometimes it prevents AI from snowballing, and I would rather increase the difficulty level than disabling revolutions if I see that I'm getting ahead too soon. Also, I like to role-play instead of just going into a particular victory and watching such a dynamic world is very satisfying.

it sometimes more helpful for AI.
when AI over-expanded, their tech will slowed behind. Break them help them getting back to the tech race.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I think we are starting to make stuff up. A bigger empire doesn't research slower. A less developed empire researches slower.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I thought that the inflation was calculated as (turn number - iInflationOffset) * iInflationPercent * iInflationPercent
where the first iInflationOffset and iInflationPercent are from CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml and the last iInflationPercent is from CIV4HandicapInfo.xml

But that not close to what I am seeing. The inflationoffset for the realism speed is 150, but inflation starts to increase after something like turn 100. So, I am missing a parameter in that formula. Anyone know how the formula works?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

You mean that the units without 'unit cost scaling' start off more expensive and only after several levels of scaling, the scaled unit costs get to be higher?

I think I actually lied about this one. Confused it with tech cost scaling per city, which when turned off does apply a static cost increase. Though it does sound reasonable, and I might end up implementing it; then again, people who turn unit cost scaling off apparently want to have more units in their games, so it may be better to just leave it untouched.

I have some feedback regarding the SVN5395:
1) The icons for separatism in Event Log and in the popus that show after the global separatism modifiers change are messed up. In event log, the health icon is used instead of "separatism fist" icon and in the popup, the "happy face" is shown instead of "separatism fist" (screenshots below). Ignore this, if this is itentional
2) The tech "Propaganda" has different era and tech cost than the other tech of the same tier (screenshot below).

Thanks, fixed both.

And really I think what bothers me the most is that the AI doesn't go to war against the revolters or how the cities turn peacefully. I think that if the AI actually fought against rebels it would suffer less from it.

Eh, I went ahead and added a war declaration unless the resulting revolter is almost as strong as the original civ. From my testing this should make the games with separatism quite a bit more boring, as most revolters just get reintegrated or force-vassalized now.

I think we are starting to make stuff up. A bigger empire doesn't research slower. A less developed empire researches slower.

Well, technically it does, with per city tech scaling, but for that to actually offset the positives of owning said cities, a civ should be really really overextended, from practical experience.

I thought that the inflation was calculated as (turn number - iInflationOffset) * iInflationPercent * iInflationPercent
where the first iInflationOffset and iInflationPercent are from CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml and the last iInflationPercent is from CIV4HandicapInfo.xml

But that not close to what I am seeing. The inflationoffset for the realism speed is 150, but inflation starts to increase after something like turn 100. So, I am missing a parameter in that formula. Anyone know how the formula works?

I think it's a bit of code introduced in K-Mod to dynamically tweak inflation. I went and threw it away after checking, as it felt unnecessarily complicated, and might even have caused some inflation-related bugs that are sometimes reported.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I think we are starting to make stuff up. A bigger empire doesn't research slower. A less developed empire researches slower.

Because the price of technology increases marginally for every new city in your empire, rapid expansion does in fact slow down your research in the short to medium term, sometimes significantly or even cripplingly.

--

New feedback from recent play on 5394.

Spoiler :

- I am 90% sure that this is a problem with my mouse and not the game, but I wanted to put it out there in case anyone else was experiencing anything similar. Single clicks are often resulting in double clicks in the game, which is annoying and can be problematic if it results in making an unintended decision which cannot be undone. (My Logitech mouse has had a faithful life of service for over 12 years of extensive use, so I hardly blame it.) I have noticed it once or twice outside of the game, but seemingly not as consistently. The reason I have an inkling of doubt, is that I also noticed that the tooltips in game are being "sticky" even if the cursor is in place (which should rule out any hardware being responsible). For instance, the unit upgrade icon often fails to pull in the tooltip displaying the price of upgrading the unit unless I click away and click back, even if I re-hover the cursor over it. I am not sure if anything was changed with respect to the UI but wanted to report these in case it is not just me experiencing this.

- This is a tentative idea (and suggested with some reluctance because it is in a good state of balance currently, even if it is often tedious and annoying) but the slave revolts are almost ridiculous when you have a large empire and are running slavery as a key engine of your economy. I am playing as Rome, admittedly, which is designed to thrive on this civic, but having more than 10 mature and thriving cities and having settled and conquered an extensive area, the revolts are enormous and happen quite regularly. The lemming is a little bit better I guess, but I am still consistently seeing large stacks turn around with their last handful of units uncommitted, and oftentimes there are multiple at once roving around and making me shuffle my workers and have to reorganize my cities' labor allocation once they're dealt with, only to repeat this again some few turns later. Even though this is a realistic feature, it's more irritating than fun I feel, especially since you can't do anything to manipulate their frequency or severity besides deliberately curbing your expansion, which seldom if ever would outweigh this in an individual calculus. What I would suggest alternatively is to replace slave revolts with a temporary "building" which takes effect on the same random probability but is temporary and has a 50% chance of ending every turn (vis-a-vis the epidemic), which reduces productivity or otherwise inflicts some kind of malus, and also provides a small amount of experience to units built while it is in effect. That would remove the tedious reorganization of your workers and tile management which I find to be the most "unfun" aspect of it as it is now, though I like the concept and strategic balance of how it works currently. It's just kind of annoying, sometimes so much so that I will intentionally run a sub-optimal civic just so that I don't have to deal with this every few turns for a vast span of the game.

- This is related to another suggestion I had made before, but I feel that the lumbermill comes a bit too late for what it represents, historically, especially since chopping has been marginalized as an alternative. In the very early game, an unimproved forest is a good source of (and I do like how in RI, the "passive" yield from base terrain is often more significant in this regard) but once you're deep in the classical era, it doesn't feel right that no improvement to the tile is available until you research guilds. Some kind of rudimentary improvement seems like it would be a better fit, perhaps even along the lines of the previous suggestion of making it like the old slash and burn farm, which increases output significantly but eventually would deplete and remove the forest completely, with a lumbermill representing a more sustained logging industry instead.

- Along those lines, why is Guilds a medieval technology when it (in European history, at least) represents an old Roman institution? Even the Pedia references this origin. It seems like it should more appropriately be a classical technology (both in terms of gameplay, as above, as well as historically speaking), so I am curious what the rationale for this is.

- It seems that the pasture is not producing the right amount of on a plains hill in my game (save included), but it is calculating correctly elsewhere on flat land. I am not sure if it is the terrain feature or type that is responsible (or however else to narrow it down), but I am pretty sure that this is an actual bug so I wanted to point it out. Look at the sheep pasture worked by my northern city, Sirmium.

- In the same save, I have a galleass that reflects damage even though it is fully healed. (Look in the bottom left corner of my coast, I believe.)

- This is perhaps inconsequential, but I noticed that the monastery does not allow one to run a priest specialist. Shouldn't it, though? The Christian monastic orders (even the pre-mendicant ones that weren't state-sponsored) attracted quite a large following which I feel could be plausibly modeled by their being a "priest" in game terms.

- The Pedia entry for the farm has "+1 from Serfdom" coupled with another "+1" in the same line, while other individual modifiers are listed in their own line. Decoupling that would look a little cleaner.

- Giving my workers the command to automatically build routes seems to have them ignoring viable (if still low priority and likely to be untraversed) desert tiles within my cultural borders. I can include the save if you'd like to take a look and I'm not missing something here.

- The soundbite that plays for the powder mill sounds anachronistic. I recognize that it is shared with some other industrial building in the game, but it doesn't have a "renaissance" flavor which it seems that it should, since post-renaissance gunpowder units don't require the then-novel manufactured resource anyway.

- My revolting peasants (and I am not sure if this applies to both peasants and slaves, but I noticed it with the former) seem to be healing en route to their target city without stopping to properly do so (which, apparently, they're not supposed to be able to do anyway). Is this intentional, or am I missing anything?

- Does unit cost ever exceed +1/unit outside of the select few "special premium ones" that have additional costs explicitly mentioned in the Pedia entry for them? In my game, I am paying 202 for 150 units in the early renaissance, when as far as I know, no unit has an additional cost such as is the case with industrial capital ships, modern armor and such.

- One aesthetic and purely non-mechanical detail that I noticed and really appreciate is how the technology Military Industry differentiates the look of line infantry, which is otherwise unchanged mechanically. Prior to researching this tech, they have a distinctly more 18th century look, often with a tricorn hat and thick woolen blazer, but afterwards they acquire an appealing Napoleonic visual which decidedly feels like it belongs to that era more than the former, even if technologically they were hardly different in the infantry. Along those same lines, I noticed that light infantry immediately debuts in Napoleonic form, which feels dissonant with the above and its peer units in the early flintlock era, even if it's not quite jarring either. Would it be possible to do something similar here, and have a "pre-Military Industry" light infantry that perhaps looks a little more rustic and informal? Going straight from armor-clad 16th century "explorer" to early 19th century standard-uniform and drilled light infantry feels like it's skipping something, and the change of appearance already takes effect with the line infantry anyway.

- On another visual note, I have to say that I think it would have been better to reposition the T-Posing grim reaper than to replace it with a hazy pile of skulls, for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, cities that are are the most likely to suffer epidemics in the first place, and they already get a conflicting visual "green haze" emitting from them which is likely to obscure the one thing that keeps the small bone pile visible. Secondly, the reaper carrying a scythe and an hourglass is cool and is a recognizable symbol of a classic emblem of death. My original comment had to do with repositioning it, but as a figure I think it is almost ideal. Putting it on horseback ("And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him") and making it appear more natural would be the better alternative in my opinion, as here: https://i.discogs.com/hdkfmgqwfWzWx...E2MDg5/OTgxLTE2MDMyNDMy/NjMtMzY1Ni5qcGVn.jpeg

 

[Roland Johansen]

Well, technically it does, with per city tech scaling, but for that to actually offset the positives of owning said cities, a civ should be really really overextended, from practical experience.

I don't think we are saying something different here.

There is a per city tech scaling which means that a bigger empire needs more research points to research a technology. But that doesn't mean it researches slower as it also produces more research points. When it gets split up, it needs fewer research points to research a technology, but it also produces fewer.

Just blatantly saying that an empire that gets broken up will research quicker is not correct. When it gets split up, it loses a number of cities that produce research and give resources needed for health and happiness.

What is true is that a smaller better developed empire can outresearch a bigger underdeveloped empire. But when an overexpanded empire breaks up, it likely also loses a bunch of well developed cities like an enemy capital with many resources that was conquered before.

That's why I went against the comment made before. It was too simple and generally not true.

I think I actually lied about this one. Confused it with tech cost scaling per city, which when turned off does apply a static cost increase. Though it does sound reasonable, and I might end up implementing it; then again, people who turn unit cost scaling off apparently want to have more units in their games, so it may be better to just leave it untouched.

I don't like the unit cost scaling as a principle and therefore don't use it. But I don't want very cheap units. I haven't played enough to assess that, but from the little I played, it does seem that the unscaled unit costs are low when compared to buildings. I would be interested in a flat increase of unit costs when playing without unit cost scaling.

I think it's a bit of code introduced in K-Mod to dynamically tweak inflation. I went and threw it away after checking, as it felt unnecessarily complicated, and might even have caused some inflation-related bugs that are sometimes reported.

Ok, I hadn't expected that. I know that in normal Civilization IV, the cost balancing element called 'inflation' increases linearly throughout the game, until you reach the end of the normal timeline and then it stops (as you can't improve your technology anymore, it needs to stop increasing or your empire would slowly go bankrupt in the future).

I noticed that the inflation numbers had changed from CivIV BtS, but I guess that the basic mechanics will be the same as in the normal game then after the change back that you mentioned above, right?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

- I am 90% sure that this is a problem with my mouse and not the game, but I wanted to put it out there in case anyone else was experiencing anything similar. Single clicks are often resulting in double clicks in the game, which is annoying and can be problematic if it results in making an unintended decision which cannot be undone. (My Logitech mouse has had a faithful life of service for over 12 years of extensive use, so I hardly blame it.) I have noticed it once or twice outside of the game, but seemingly not as consistently. The reason I have an inkling of doubt, is that I also noticed that the tooltips in game are being "sticky" even if the cursor is in place (which should rule out any hardware being responsible). For instance, the unit upgrade icon often fails to pull in the tooltip displaying the price of upgrading the unit unless I click away and click back, even if I re-hover the cursor over it. I am not sure if anything was changed with respect to the UI but wanted to report these in case it is not just me experiencing this.

I am almost certain it is an issue on your side; I haven't been experiencing anything similar.

The lemming is a little bit better I guess, but I am still consistently seeing large stacks turn around with their last handful of units uncommitted, and oftentimes there are multiple at once roving around and making me shuffle my workers and have to reorganize my cities' labor allocation once they're dealt with, only to repeat this again some few turns later.

So it didn't work as well as I had hoped. Will tweak further.

- This is related to another suggestion I had made before, but I feel that the lumbermill comes a bit too late for what it represents, historically, especially since chopping has been marginalized as an alternative. In the very early game, an unimproved forest is a good source of (and I do like how in RI, the "passive" yield from base terrain is often more significant in this regard) but once you're deep in the classical era, it doesn't feel right that no improvement to the tile is available until you research guilds. Some kind of rudimentary improvement seems like it would be a better fit, perhaps even along the lines of the previous suggestion of making it like the old slash and burn farm, which increases output significantly but eventually would deplete and remove the forest completely, with a lumbermill representing a more sustained logging industry instead.

My subjective feeling is that it is where I want it to be. Ultimately, from the gameplay perspective, I like how few ways there are pre-medieval to get additional production, while in medieval era you're presented with several new options.

- Along those lines, why is Guilds a medieval technology when it (in European history, at least) represents an old Roman institution? Even the Pedia references this origin. It seems like it should more appropriately be a classical technology (both in terms of gameplay, as above, as well as historically speaking), so I am curious what the rationale for this is.

I generally treat late Roman history (post-Constantine or somesuch) as being in Medieval technological era; likewise, China also entered "Medieval era" at roughly the same time.

- It seems that the pasture is not producing the right amount of on a plains hill in my game (save included), but it is calculating correctly elsewhere on flat land. I am not sure if it is the terrain feature or type that is responsible (or however else to narrow it down), but I am pretty sure that this is an actual bug so I wanted to point it out. Look at the sheep pasture worked by my northern city, Sirmium.

I'll investigate.

- In the same save, I have a galleass that reflects damage even though it is fully healed. (Look in the bottom left corner of my coast, I believe.)

Same as above. I'll have to upload a new revision before taking a look at the save though.

- This is perhaps inconsequential, but I noticed that the monastery does not allow one to run a priest specialist. Shouldn't it, though? The Christian monastic orders (even the pre-mendicant ones that weren't state-sponsored) attracted quite a large following which I feel could be plausibly modeled by their being a "priest" in game terms.

Monastic Order building does have exactly that!

- The Pedia entry for the farm has "+1 from Serfdom" coupled with another "+1" in the same line, while other individual modifiers are listed in their own line. Decoupling that would look a little cleaner.

Yeah, I see what you're talking about and I agree it's weird. I may look into that at some point.

- Giving my workers the command to automatically build routes seems to have them ignoring viable (if still low priority and likely to be untraversed) desert tiles within my cultural borders. I can include the save if you'd like to take a look and I'm not missing something here.

I'm absolutely not messing with automations. That's way above my skill.

- The soundbite that plays for the powder mill sounds anachronistic. I recognize that it is shared with some other industrial building in the game, but it doesn't have a "renaissance" flavor which it seems that it should, since post-renaissance gunpowder units don't require the then-novel manufactured resource anyway.

Yeah, I agree. I'll change it to a different one.

- My revolting peasants (and I am not sure if this applies to both peasants and slaves, but I noticed it with the former) seem to be healing en route to their target city without stopping to properly do so (which, apparently, they're not supposed to be able to do anyway). Is this intentional, or am I missing anything?

Interesting. I'll check.

- Does unit cost ever exceed +1/unit outside of the select few "special premium ones" that have additional costs explicitly mentioned in the Pedia entry for them? In my game, I am paying 202 for 150 units in the early renaissance, when as far as I know, no unit has an additional cost such as is the case with industrial capital ships, modern armor and such.

Inflation?

- One aesthetic and purely non-mechanical detail that I noticed and really appreciate is how the technology Military Industry differentiates the look of line infantry, which is otherwise unchanged mechanically. Prior to researching this tech, they have a distinctly more 18th century look, often with a tricorn hat and thick woolen blazer, but afterwards they acquire an appealing Napoleonic visual which decidedly feels like it belongs to that era more than the former, even if technologically they were hardly different in the infantry. Along those same lines, I noticed that light infantry immediately debuts in Napoleonic form, which feels dissonant with the above and its peer units in the early flintlock era, even if it's not quite jarring either. Would it be possible to do something similar here, and have a "pre-Military Industry" light infantry that perhaps looks a little more rustic and informal? Going straight from armor-clad 16th century "explorer" to early 19th century standard-uniform and drilled light infantry feels like it's skipping something, and the change of appearance already takes effect with the line infantry anyway.

It's not a specific tech, it's switching to Industrial era - same as workers change their look at that transition. But I love the idea with the light infantry - I even have some corresponding units. I don't think I'll do it for every single one, but for the ones (mostly European) that look distinctly Napoleonic, I'll definitely implement separate early looks, something from XVIII century.

- On another visual note, I have to say that I think it would have been better to reposition the T-Posing grim reaper than to replace it with a hazy pile of skulls, for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, cities that are are the most likely to suffer epidemics in the first place, and they already get a conflicting visual "green haze" emitting from them which is likely to obscure the one thing that keeps the small bone pile visible. Secondly, the reaper carrying a scythe and an hourglass is cool and is a recognizable symbol of a classic emblem of death. My original comment had to do with repositioning it, but as a figure I think it is almost ideal. Putting it on horseback ("And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him") and making it appear more natural would be the better alternative in my opinion, as here: https://i.discogs.com/hdkfmgqwfWzWx...E2MDg5/OTgxLTE2MDMyNDMy/NjMtMzY1Ni5qcGVn.jpeg

Aww, I thought my viruses flying around looked cute. I think I'll stick to this concept, but will refine it to be more visually distinct from simple unhealth.

I don't like the unit cost scaling as a principle and therefore don't use it. But I don't want very cheap units. I haven't played enough to assess that, but from the little I played, it does seem that the unscaled unit costs are low when compared to buildings. I would be interested in a flat increase of unit costs when playing without unit cost scaling.

I'll take it into consideration. I generally don't test and balance non-standard game options, so I wouldn't know the current balance with it off.

I noticed that the inflation numbers had changed from CivIV BtS, but I guess that the basic mechanics will be the same as in the normal game then after the change back that you mentioned above, right?

Yes, should be. I think the rest of the code there is vanilla.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I'll take it into consideration. I generally don't test and balance non-standard game options, so I wouldn't know the current balance with it off.

Probably something like half the cost increase you see when building the latter units of a type with unit cost scaling. If you build 11 units of a unit type with a +10% cost increase per unit, then it means the first unit cost nothing extra and the last one cost 100% extra, on average 50% extra.

Maybe slightly less than half as the first units that you build are always more important than the later ones. But half is a good estimate.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yes, should be. I think the rest of the code there is vanilla.

Good to hear. That formula seemed good enough for a cost balancing mechanic like inflation.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Pushed an SVN commit with even more AI adjustments and bugfixes - very much in need of thorough testing. Hopefully no new bugs. Very save-incompatible.