Realism Invictus

[AllTheLand]

- The influence of doctrines on power ratings is very exaggerated in my view. Getting the doctrine which makes future siege weapons stronger, which has a very limited impact on real army effectiveness, boosted my strength rating by something like 15%...
- Enemy spies repeatedly destroying buildings in cities can become quite unnerving. When I look at how much it would cost me to do similar things, it's hundreds of spy points, but somehow the AI can spam this mission over and over again. Even with the reduction in cost for spies that stayed a long time in place.
- I don't bother to send spies on foreign soil, because the few times I tried, they got caught within 10 turns in enemy territory, often not even lasting 5, although I didn't appear much behind in spy points gathered. Meanwhile the AI spies are feasting, and it's also mostly useless to try to make my own spies for counter-espionage missions.
- There should be a delay between when a city is lost to barbarians and when it can be settled as a new civ. I had the case of losing the city and it settling as a 1-city civ the very next turn and spawning new defenders. What about "barbarian cities can't be settled in new civs if the occupation timer is still ongoing"?
- The upgrade cost of irregular units into new irregular units seems too high to me. I find it generally more economical to simply make new stronger irregulars and delete the old weaker ones. If slave and peasant uprisings can afford to spawn plenty of irregulars, it shouldn't cost me 100 gold a pop to upgrade a 4-Str. irregular into a 6 Str. one.
- I had the "city spawns irregular from culture" mechanism saving one of my city, it was a pleasant surprise.

You're far from the first person complaining about it. So far I haven't seen a compelling reason to change them significantly. They are quite powerful when they first appear, sure, but also quite niche. I do see (and have contemplated) a valid reason to have an intermediate medieval upgrade, but that would be a tremendous effort to have it done properly, and I am not sure if I'm prepared to commit.

I think that "quite powerful when they first appear, but also quite niche" is underselling it. They are the best unit by far at squashing slave revolts and at eliminating invading armies, they have a good ability to survive thanks to the mobility allowing to retreat and to accumulate experience (charioteers have the mobility, but their combat odds are too low in most situations to be able to get experience, and the promotions that make them better at what they are good at are much weaker than the specialist hill fighting promotions), and they are very important in attacking stacks as long as you have some hills or forests on the way to the enemy city. They have some weaknesses when defending, but most of their fights will be attacking.

I can understand that researching the historical data and modelling the new units would be a huge amount of work, so I understand you don't want to commit to it, but I hope it could happen in the future. Just 5 Str. instead of 4 Str. would be a massive upgrade and make the wait to explorers not feel so long.

I'm not sure they're even supposed to have an "economy" - I don't think the barbarian player plays by the same game rules as everyone else. In the code you tend to see a lot of exceptions being made for the barbarian player specifically.

Yeah, the barbarian player is supposed to represent many different barbarian tribes that are always at war with normal civs, not a single unified civ, so it has a lot of special rules. So not being able to really get money in is probably as designed. But I stand by my general assessment that barbarian cities are not threatening enough, and the build mismanagement I pointed out also reduces their ability to output military units.

Agreed on Augustus, on Caesar I am actually not sure how much of his military fame was from him actually being a good commander and how much is simply good publicity (both from himself as he was definitely not beyond embellishing his own accounts and from the later cult of his personality). I guess that argument could be put forward for many historical personalities, but I feel this is especially true in the case of Caesar. He always gave me more of a vibe of a charismatic politician who was also a military leader (as most of his contemporaries were) rather than the other way around. Maybe this also specifically comes from contrast with Pompey, who was genuinely a good military leader but lacked personal charisma away from the battlefield.

Although Caesar military success was built to a large part due to strategic and political abilities, such as finding good opportunities to intervene in Gaul and managing to get himself allies, and perhaps less than for others on raw tactical abilities, I don't think that disqualify him from being considered as highly accomplished militarily. His battle record, although helped by luck and competent subordinates, is excellent. His conquest of the Gauls alone make him one of the most successful conquerors in History, especially as this conquest proved very durable and influential. Caesar was not Alexander the Great, Gengis Khan, Timur or Napoleon, but he was definitely above-average militarily compared to leaders generally considered as successful.

Sure, it's easy enough, but generally speaking I don't feel RI needs more leaders as it is now. Asking for more leaders is akin to asking for more civs - sure, there are a lot of good candidates, but at some point, one has to stop adding stuff. IIRC, currently all positive trait combos are covered at least once (and that's a huge amount of combos), and I feel that it's a reasonable amount to stop at.

Sounds like a modmod someone could make, but I would definitely not undertake it personally.

Ok.

DynamicCityNaming.py: there is a dictionary in there that assigns the names based on specific leader/civ, and of course, it is incomplete almost by definition, as it will only ever be as complete as people (myself mostly) make it. I tried to cover most cases where cities were actually called another name at some point in history, or when there were historical neighbours with strong claims towards them (such as almost everything neighbouring Germany ), and also Latin names for most cities, simply because they are usually readily available. But other stuff, such as, for instance, Japanese names for European cities, which are more of a realm of fantasy, I didn't bother implementing.

My case was between Spain and France, so the sort of case where it's reasonable to have entries. On a side note, it was particularly funny because there is a big west-east mountain range, and I spawned to the north of it as the French and Isabella with Spain was to the south of the mountains.

I'll send you a dictionary update later.

Hm, I think it is a (good) design philosophy question - should civs be able to flip barbarian cities by culture?

My own answer would be yes, as you might expect.

It shouldn't be the easiest way to deal with them, but when your own culture is clearly dominating inside the barbarian city, the people from your culture would be much more motivated to be living in a civilized state rather than in a barbaric, backward state. They would fundamentally consider the barbarians as inferior and being ruled by them would offend them more than simply being ruled by a foreign culture which they can at least recognize as civilized.

 

[PKSRoman]

Does anyone also think that instead of the great wonder art “Minecraft” there should be a “Terminator” movie ? Minecraft as a wonder can already be built in the modern era when computers are barely invented and “Terminator” and bonus microchips somehow fits better here

 

[Takofloppa]

Enemy spies repeatedly destroying buildings in cities can become quite unnerving. When I look at how much it would cost me to do similar things, it's hundreds of spy points, but somehow the AI can spam this mission over and over again. Even with the reduction in cost for spies that stayed a long time in place.

Eventually I've ended up disabling it in the code completely - while there are things that can be done to counter enemy spies, it's obviously never 100% effective and rebuilding something for 20th time (especially in commercial cities that do not have a lot of hammers) gets very tedious and frustrating. On the other hand I like espionage, so I didn't want to turn it off completely.

 

[trashmunster]

I think that "quite powerful when they first appear, but also quite niche" is underselling it. They are the best unit by far at squashing slave revolts and at eliminating invading armies, they have a good ability to survive thanks to the mobility allowing to retreat and to accumulate experience (charioteers have the mobility, but their combat odds are too low in most situations to be able to get experience, and the promotions that make them better at what they are good at are much weaker than the specialist hill fighting promotions), and they are very important in attacking stacks as long as you have some hills or forests on the way to the enemy city. They have some weaknesses when defending, but most of their fights will be attacking.

I can understand that researching the historical data and modelling the new units would be a huge amount of work, so I understand you don't want to commit to it, but I hope it could happen in the future. Just 5 Str. instead of 4 Str. would be a massive upgrade and make the wait to explorers not feel so long.

I don't understand you. First you tell that skirmishers are kinda overpowered (which is true, but not gamebreaking). Then you propose to add even stronger skirmisher for middle ages, so they will dominate even more? Whats the point? To exploit them even more?

Agree with barbarian cities being not very intimidating, although making them spam countless armies can make game annoying and outright stunt neighboring civs severely, since player can cheese out barbs with promotions and skirmishers, AI wont...

 

[JohnCarterOfMars]

- Enemy spies repeatedly destroying buildings in cities can become quite unnerving. When I look at how much it would cost me to do similar things, it's hundreds of spy points, but somehow the AI can spam this mission over and over again. Even with the reduction in cost for spies that stayed a long time in place.
- I don't bother to send spies on foreign soil, because the few times I tried, they got caught within 10 turns in enemy territory, often not even lasting 5, although I didn't appear much behind in spy points gathered. Meanwhile the AI spies are feasting, and it's also mostly useless to try to make my own spies for counter-espionage missions.

You need to do a counter-espionage on your enemies to protect against this. It lasts for 75 turns, so you should set a reminder about 70 turns later to dispatch a spy to the country to renew your counter-espionage against it.

 

[JDCP]

No easy way.

I see, thanks Walter, Would you or anyone around here recommend me some good sources to learn the making of modmods and scenarios? any threats or specific documentation for RI around? Id like to tailor this mod to my tastes and I'm willing to learn new things

 

[RezerCuid]

By the way, there is such a mission as stealing technology or disrupting rocket science. Why is the cost of espionage in remote cities less than in cities that are near the capital?

 

[JDCP]

By the way, there is such a mission as stealing technology or disrupting rocket science. Why is the cost of espionage in remote cities less than in cities that are near the capital?

That makes a lot of sense, those cities/colonies don't have as much security as the surroundings of your empire's HQ (and technically the flow of information should be bigger in the mainland than in remote lands, which might difficult the tasks of a spy). IDK that's what makes the most sense to me I rarely send spies to places that aren't near my rival's capital though.

 

[AllTheLand]

- I had full vision on a friendly civ city because of passive espionage effects. I noticed it was going for a wonder I wanted too and I made big changes to my production plans to try to get it done faster, I even prepared spies to try to sow discontent in the city building wonder. Ten turns later, I notice the AI cancelled the build of the wonder in the city that was going to get it in ~15 turns, and started to build it in another city where it would need 50+ turns.
- The two spies I had produced were redirected to another civ. The first one lasted two turns on enemy territory, the second one lasted three turns. The effectiveness of AI spy units compared to the effectiveness of player spy units feel extremely unfair. The bludgeon method of "you can't spy on us if we raze your cities to the ground" is still there, but that's not really what a spying system is about...

You need to do a counter-espionage on your enemies to protect against this. It lasts for 75 turns, so you should set a reminder about 70 turns later to dispatch a spy to the country to renew your counter-espionage against it.

How am I supposed to do that when such a mission costs hundreds of spy points and when my spy can't last 5 turns in enemy territory? And the cost of doing such counter-espionage missions on all the civs that I suspect might be doing spy missions would consume nearly all my spy points production. To only get partial protection, and if I understand what the tips about the system say, spending the points in any mission (and so also in a counter-espionage mission) would also reduce my h2h spy points, reducing the costs for the enemy to do spying missions in my cities? I might as well keep the spying points to get view on their research state and on their cities, that information is at least helpful and doesn't require me to add an entire micro-routine for doubtful benefits.

I don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but from what I can see when playing, the spy system looks completely rigged against the player, at least at the difficulty I'm playing in. To be sure, I'm not really putting gold into the spy slider, but I'm assuming that if I have almost enough spy points against a civ to be able to see its city, the head-to-head spy points spending is not a sufficient explanation.

 

[JDCP]

How am I supposed to do that when such a mission costs hundreds of spy points and when my spy can't last 5 turns in enemy territory? And the cost of doing such counter-espionage missions on all the civs that I suspect might be doing spy missions would consume nearly all my spy points production. To only get partial protection, and if I understand what the tips about the system say, spending the points in any mission (and so also in a counter-espionage mission) would also reduce my h2h spy points, reducing the costs for the enemy to do spying missions in my cities? I might as well keep the spying points to get view on their research state and on their cities, that information is at least helpful and doesn't require me to add an entire micro-routine for doubtful benefits.

I don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but from what I can see when playing, the spy system looks completely rigged against the player, at least at the difficulty I'm playing in. To be sure, I'm not really putting gold into the spy slider, but I'm assuming that if I have almost enough spy points against a civ to be able to see its city, the head-to-head spy points spending is not a sufficient explanation.

I'm not an expert, but I would recommend you to start developing a good ''intelligence department'' consisting of spies, espionage points and buildings to obtain information about your neighbors as soon as you get the alphabet, get at least one city to produce great spies (there are a good amount of wonders that produce them, they come handy) and assign some of your income to espionage so you can do missions here and there.

Every turn counts so you can get to them before they get to youMaybe you can't prevent them catching some of your spies, but you can definitely prevent some of them from trespassing your borders. What I mean is that they can't catch ALL your spies, like with inquisitors or missionaries eventually one will succeed and I keep the belief that the computer sends a lot of spies to you.

Another tip? try out easier difficulties with this strategy, this is a new field so it's gonna take some time to get used to it. I'm still getting the hang out of it but that's what I have learned. Good luck friend
EDIT: Oh also, politician trait might help you to obtain espionage points more easily, avoid the negative trait arrogant though, some of my fav leaders like Victoria have it sadly

 

[JDCP]

Does anyone also think that instead of the great wonder art “Minecraft” there should be a “Terminator” movie ? Minecraft as a wonder can already be built in the modern era when computers are barely invented and “Terminator” and bonus microchips somehow fits better here

Yes this is a good idea, but instead I think Terminator, as the big hit it was, should instead give a bonus to cinema and tv station or directly just produce hit movies. there are more weird things like, how come Star Wars doesn't produce hit movies but the Seven Samurai, one of the many inspirations for George Lucas epic fantasy, does? I feel this is for balancing given that SW already gives a nice bonus to one of the game victories, but IDK...

The case with Minecraft is a bit weird here, instead of needing computers it needs television which is fudging weird, must have been an error. If I could give any suggestions well... this is dumb but I think it would be cool to instead of using Minecraft as the great work we should use CIV itself hahathis takes me back to a random event where some of your civilians would make Civilization INTO the actual game (fourth wall break, lol) and they let you choose some nice bonuses.

I believe I speak for everyone here when I say Civilization had a big impact in our lives. At least for us who grew up playing it. Same goes for Minecraft and many other games, they have inspired a lot of people just as any other kind of ''art'' has, since they have become, we may want it or not, a cherished part of our cultureThe amount of people who found a passion for history and politics kickstarted by CIV is insane, as the kids who became interested in architecture or engineering with Minecraft. Those great works don't reflect that sadly.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but from what I can see when playing, the spy system looks completely rigged against the player, at least at the difficulty I'm playing in. To be sure, I'm not really putting gold into the spy slider, but I'm assuming that if I have almost enough spy points against a civ to be able to see its city, the head-to-head spy points spending is not a sufficient explanation.

I certainly do not play on either Immortal or Titan (and the latter seems to be actually impossible even for Immortal players, from what I've read throughout this entire thread from anyone who's commented on attempting it), but it seems that your complaint in general is that it strikes you as unfair that neglecting an entire layer of player/AI interaction on one of the hardest difficulties results in the player getting swarmed. Isn't that exactly what you would expect in that case?

In vanilla Civ IV, it seemed to be the orthodoxy of high level play that you either use espionage exclusively for its passive intel or else go for a very carefully micromanaged espionage economy that was all or nothing, with a middle approach being suboptimal and relying on the AIs' hard-coded 20% slider position to offset some of your penalty against their, making playing into it yourself too costly relative to the latter. In RI, espionage has another important layer in providing stability as a countermeasure to war-weariness, as well as a greater relative value to research in many cases owing to much more variable tech costs and the lack of trading and brokering, so less than minimal or maximal slider positions are sometimes a warranted and good idea (at least on Monarch, but I feel that I can make a general comment about RI's differences to the unmodded game in this regard). This also, of course, makes plain BtS's mission cost being a function of relative spending much more meaningful, since you might actually be warranted in matching or exceeding the AI's output of EPs without going all-out on a tech stealing espionage economy, unlike the base game at high levels where you could never be competitive without doing this.

I do agree that the building sabotage is too excessive. In my experience, it can be significantly curtailed by the counterespionage (which really isn't that expensive, and seldom threatens the loss of intel bonuses but may prevent you from offensive espionage yourself) but it is still more prominent and frequent than I feel is immersive, since the AI seems to regard it as the most valuable mission and seldom attempts anything else, and it's somewhat immersion-breaking that you have massive terrorism all over the place as soon as early modern point multipliers like jails show up. I would suggest increasing the price of that at least, but I might just get rid of it altogether, as I can't think of many historical examples prior to the Cold War era where this is significantly apparent.

 

[AllTheLand]

I'm not interested in centering my whole strategy around espionage just in order to not get buildings constantly sabotaged

Other thoughts:
- I see that cities revolting because of cultural pressure still happens in RI. However, there is no notice about the likelihood of such a revolt before it happens, unlike in AdvCiv.
- What about giving +1 happiness to the artist specialist? In Civ3 you could get specialists whose only purpose was to make other citizens happy.
- In my current game, I'm using a modmod which buffs aristocracy's free units support. I also appreciate that Aristocracy allows special noble units and a limited form of conscription which can be very practical, although the general game design of Civ pushes for constant standing armies, not reflecting at all the more temporary natures of feudal levies. I'm also with a legislator leader making the high upkeep less relevant and wanting to go to Monarchy, which is a civic which goes very well with Aristocracy. Nonetheless, I'm still thinking that civil service is probably a better option with my other civics, and Plutocracy + Hanseatic League would also be better. All that to say: the vanilla Feudal Aristocracy civic is too weak in my opinion. If you go for anything but Monarchy + Servage especially.
- I suppose that Inclusivity's one draft per turn is merely a reflection of draft being common in the era it is available at, and still purposefully inferior in drafting to other late-game legal civics? Because I don't see how it would boost drafting at all, or how it would be more suited for drafting than Civil Service. Romans did a lot of drafting.
- Why does Monasticism gives +1 gold to cottages? Cottages are at their best when they grow into villages and towns, but as soon as the tile has been worked for 30 turns the monasticism boost of +1 gold disappear. It helps a little when building new cottages, but that's a weak bonus.

I certainly do not play on either Immortal or Titan (and the latter seems to be actually impossible even for Immortal players, from what I've read throughout this entire thread from anyone who's commented on attempting it)

I said it earlier in the thread but to clarify again - I'm using a custom difficulty level, which has all Titan bonuses for the AI except the headstart bonuses are mostly removed (0 free workers instead of 2, 2 free military units instead of 4), because my experience with Immortal was that the start is very difficult but once mostly catching up on tech and military power, the AI is not a serious threat anymore, and I have more fun being neither way behind nor way ahead. Standard Titan with all headstart bonuses for the AI would probably lead to being too behind early on, being the target of a DoW and losing.

but it seems that your complaint in general is that it strikes you as unfair that neglecting an entire layer of player/AI interaction on one of the hardest difficulties results in the player getting swarmed. Isn't that exactly what you would expect in that case?

My complaint is more that all my attempts to interact with the system built around the spy units feel so punishing and unfair that I feel forced never using it. Why invest 100 hammers into a spy that's going to accomplish next to nothing? The contrast of my own spies being uncovered extremely fast with the AI being able to send spies deep in my territory is striking. I'm notified from time to time about an enemy spy being uncovered, but if I combine the rate of sabotage my main rival was able to unleash during our war (I'm fairly sure which civ was behind the repeated destructions) with the rate at which I got notifications about spy caught, it's obvious that my likelihood of catching an enemy spy is much lower than the likelihood of the AI catching one of mine. Even assuming my enemy has a counter-espionage mission active, the difference appears to be more than a simple doubling.

I can see from the passive effects how much the AI has collected espionage points, I can see from the thresholds of the passive effects what's my relative investment in spying them, but despite being at an advantage (because of all their spending), my missions cost much more. I used ctrl+shift+L to check, my (former) rival has a 62% modifier on spying mission costs with 868 SP available against me, while I have a 160% modifier on spying mission costs against this rival with 1645 SP available. With such a modifier, why put gold into espionage when I could put it into army and raze an enemy city? It will damage my enemy hundredfold more than sabotage would. EDIT: After playing around, I'm starting to think that the all-time spy investment is what counts for the relative costs of missions, and that spending on missions doesn't change it. Since I didn't really have much opportunity to spend my own points, there was nothing making it obvious to me. I suppose this design makes sense, but the in-game information is not very helpful to understand how the system works...

The player is already much more limited financially because tech research is slower, there is much less free units, all maintenance costs are much higher than for the AI... So the ability to invest on the spying slider is inherently much more limited than for the AI, and this crazy difference in espionage cost is unjustified. Even at the AI's discounted costs, there is only a few missions I could see as cost-effective in limited situations, but with the costs I'm offered, I'm skeptical it's ever a good play to use any. If the best play is to never touch the system and just passively accept that the AI is going to be annoying with it, then I'm going to say the system is poorly balanced.

I do agree that the building sabotage is too excessive. In my experience, it can be significantly curtailed by the counterespionage (which really isn't that expensive, and seldom threatens the loss of intel bonuses but may prevent you from offensive espionage yourself) but it is still more prominent and frequent than I feel is immersive, since the AI seems to regard it as the most valuable mission and seldom attempts anything else, and it's somewhat immersion-breaking that you have massive terrorism all over the place as soon as early modern point multipliers like jails show up. I would suggest increasing the price of that at least, but I might just get rid of it altogether, as I can't think of many historical examples prior to the Cold War era where this is significantly apparent.

A counter-spying mission was (assuming my spy survives long enough to do it) costing me around 500 spy points. That's too steep a cost to just reduce for a limited time how much damage a single civ can potentially do against me. Building spies and investing into the missions is going to cost me more than just rebuilding the damaged buildings, and even if the AI doesn't send spy on my territory I'm already being damaged. At least, when not doing counter-spying missions, the AI is forced to invest something to do damage.

I'm still in the middle ages, if this gets much worse when the jails show up, I'm going to simply modmod the cost of building sabotage as a temporary measure.

 

[[Y]]

@AllTheLand Do you station spies in your own cities? Spies act as spy-catchers and can catch enemy spies in your cities before they have a chance to act.

Hm, I think it is a (good) design philosophy question - should civs be able to flip barbarian cities by culture?

I don't think they should, for what it's worth. They might gain another civ's culture, but in my imagination, barb civs are ruled by an authoritarian figure that does what it needs to do to control the city. But, an event quest that centered on "liberating" a barbarian city with your culture could be interesting.

Agreed on Augustus, on Caesar I am actually not sure how much of his military fame was from him actually being a good commander and how much is simply good publicity (both from himself as he was definitely not beyond embellishing his own accounts and from the later cult of his personality). I guess that argument could be put forward for many historical personalities, but I feel this is especially true in the case of Caesar. He always gave me more of a vibe of a charismatic politician who was also a military leader (as most of his contemporaries were) rather than the other way around. Maybe this also specifically comes from contrast with Pompey, who was genuinely a good military leader but lacked personal charisma away from the battlefield.

I can get behind that reasoning, but I think that that mentality points towards making him Imperialistic. What you're describing sounds exactly like someone who should get +1 happiness from Castrum and more frequent great general emergence. What if Caesar got that, and to balance things out, Augustus got Humanist instead of Imperialistic? I wouldn't describe the historical figure as Humanist, but extra commerce per city, and longer golden ages, both feel appropriate for him.

You're far from the first person complaining about it. So far I haven't seen a compelling reason to change them significantly. They are quite powerful when they first appear, sure, but also quite niche. I do see (and have contemplated) a valid reason to have an intermediate medieval upgrade, but that would be a tremendous effort to have it done properly, and I am not sure if I'm prepared to commit.

What if Skirmishers had an upgrade to a 5-strength unit with none of its current bonuses? The purpose would be to have a slightly stronger unit available with +1 Vision range promotions and providing stack aid to others better than a 4 strength can in an era where many units are 6 to 8 strength.

There should be a delay between when a city is lost to barbarians and when it can be settled as a new civ. I had the case of losing the city and it settling as a 1-city civ the very next turn and spawning new defenders. What about "barbarian cities can't be settled in new civs if the occupation timer is still ongoing"?

The thought germinating in my head recently is that for a barbarian city to settle, it needs to have generated some minimum amount of culture. Absolute value of culture, not the percentage ownership. Reaching the culture threshold is what entitles that otherwise barbaric settlement to now be considered a proper civilization. This could even replace the random mechanic entirely: A barbarian city that reaches 500 culture or whatever could immediately become a proper civ, drawing in the other nearby barb cities. Would also give players a reason to send in spies and destroy culture related buildings to postpone such a conversion, which would be neat when you're in the midst of building up an army to take on it and don't want to see it suddenly become a much bigger challenge.

Also, maybe setting barbarians should automatically be at war with their immediate neighbors, seeing as they were recently raiding those lands. Doesn't make sense for a barbarian city to settle and suddenly I'm the one getting diplomacy penalties for retaliating. Or maybe instead of war, they should get a temporary diplomacy penalty with neighbors, to assure there's no "you attacked my friend" penalties generated.

 

[JDCP]

I'm still in the middle ages, if this gets much worse when the jails show up, I'm going to simply modmod the cost of building sabotage as a temporary measure.

Not a bad thing, you're free to change the game as you wish, the more fun you have with it the better

- Why does Monasticism gives +1 gold to cottages? Cottages are at their best when they grow into villages and towns, but as soon as the tile has been worked for 30 turns the monasticism boost of +1 gold disappear. It helps a little when building new cottages, but that's a weak bonus.

Well monasticism is the secluding of oneself, usually on rural lands, to practice a certain cult. Right? Cottages represent isolated settlements in the surroundings of the urban land where monks do their business. So it makes all the sense of the world that once those settlements grow too big monastic orders just go away and are replaced by more suitable services such as monasteries, temples or cathedrals.

Id say that monks become too damn niche for the people living the rural life as lil cottages become full fledged settlements, so they switch to priests or something

 

[AllTheLand]

- What about putting a 1-food penalty on farms (including civ-specific farms) that are built on animal resources (cows, pigs...)?
- I just discovered that vassals increase the number of cities maintenance cost. If there is one thing I would expect as an advantage having vassals over holding land directly, it would be to not increase city upkeep... What's even the point of having vassals otherwise?

@AllTheLand Do you station spies in your own cities? Spies act as spy-catchers and can catch enemy spies in your cities before they have a chance to act.

From what I've read, spies only help on the tile they are on, and again it's only partially effective. The hammer cost and upkeep cost to get 10 or 15 spies to protect all cities is prohibitive, I'd rather invest in the espionage slider.

They might gain another civ's culture, but in my imagination, barb civs are ruled by an authoritarian figure that does what it needs to do to control the city.

The same argument could be put for civilization ruled by autocracies and dictatorships, and still culture flip is possible for them, they just get a moderate anti-separatism bonus.

In the case of barbarians, it should be kept in mind that they do not present the same degree of state power as a normal civ. Their control over their territory is more limited, and the percentage share of tile culture reflects firstly who is living there.

There are two general scenarios to explain a massive rise in culture:
- Arrival of high numbers of settlers. Those would be intrinsically hostile to the current rulers. The case of Texas is a textbook example. The weaker the state receiving such an influx, the more susceptible it is to this.
- Cultural conversion of the formerly barbarian population. If you get things like 65% or 75% of the population giving up on their ancestral culture, you can bet that this happened to a even higher degree in the political and economic elite.

Perhaps barbarians should be more effective at suppressing foreign cultures on their territory (I talked with Walter about some ideas on changes to the spread of tile-culture and it was mentioned that currently, culture on tiles only can go up, and perhaps they should also go down), to reflect more hostile treatment towards encroaching settlers. But if settlers or cultural conversion lead to a majority foreign culture, a barbarian state (which should be seen more as a collection of tribe chieftains than a unified whole led by a single ruler) would not have the centralized power to keep it under control for long.

The thought germinating in my head recently is that for a barbarian city to settle, it needs to have generated some minimum amount of culture. Absolute value of culture, not the percentage ownership. Reaching the culture threshold is what entitles that otherwise barbaric settlement to now be considered a proper civilization. This could even replace the random mechanic entirely: A barbarian city that reaches 500 culture or whatever could immediately become a proper civ, drawing in the other nearby barb cities. Would also give players a reason to send in spies and destroy culture related buildings to postpone such a conversion, which would be neat when you're in the midst of building up an army to take on it and don't want to see it suddenly become a much bigger challenge.

I think that's a fairly interesting idea!

Also, maybe setting barbarians should automatically be at war with their immediate neighbors, seeing as they were recently raiding those lands. Doesn't make sense for a barbarian city to settle and suddenly I'm the one getting diplomacy penalties for retaliating. Or maybe instead of war, they should get a temporary diplomacy penalty with neighbors, to assure there's no "you attacked my friend" penalties generated.

A temporary diplomacy penalty would make sense.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

- The influence of doctrines on power ratings is very exaggerated in my view. Getting the doctrine which makes future siege weapons stronger, which has a very limited impact on real army effectiveness, boosted my strength rating by something like 15%...

Yes, and it's kind of intentional. As in, I agree that it doesn't reflect their real utility, but I feel having it this way is better for game balance. Remember that power is not a game stat that influences anything apart from AI decision-making. In early game, all civs will get a roughly equal amount of generals thanks to barbarians (unless they are in relatively rare circumstances where the can control their whole landmass, but then they aren't under direct threat of a war early on anyway), and most likely get a roughly equal non-zero amount of doctrines/traditions, which means the power ratings in early game, where there are fewer units, get a major "static" component, and do not fluctuate as much. In my anecdotal evidence it leads AI to being not as reckless early on, and more civs surviving until later. Yes, it's artificial, but it's simple, it's there, and it seems to work quite well.

- Enemy spies repeatedly destroying buildings in cities can become quite unnerving. When I look at how much it would cost me to do similar things, it's hundreds of spy points, but somehow the AI can spam this mission over and over again. Even with the reduction in cost for spies that stayed a long time in place.
- I don't bother to send spies on foreign soil, because the few times I tried, they got caught within 10 turns in enemy territory, often not even lasting 5, although I didn't appear much behind in spy points gathered. Meanwhile the AI spies are feasting, and it's also mostly useless to try to make my own spies for counter-espionage missions.

Espionage is a very opaque vanilla mechanic, but the general explanation to this particular gripe is the imbalance between total espionage generated throughout the game by you and your AI rivals, and a lot of this imbalance comes from the difficulty level, as there aren't many ways of generating espionage in the first half of the game. Here's a good writeup (even if a visually very annoying one): https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-complete-guide-to-espionage.638613/

- There should be a delay between when a city is lost to barbarians and when it can be settled as a new civ. I had the case of losing the city and it settling as a 1-city civ the very next turn and spawning new defenders. What about "barbarian cities can't be settled in new civs if the occupation timer is still ongoing"?

Yes, an interesting edge case. I agree there needs to be some kind of a cooldown.

- The upgrade cost of irregular units into new irregular units seems too high to me. I find it generally more economical to simply make new stronger irregulars and delete the old weaker ones. If slave and peasant uprisings can afford to spawn plenty of irregulars, it shouldn't cost me 100 gold a pop to upgrade a 4-Str. irregular into a 6 Str. one.

I mean, all upgrade costs are calculated the same way, it's simply the cost difference in hammers converted to gold at a ratio + 10 gold. Giving irregulars a simple discount on all upgrades would mean that building an irregular and upgrading them to a regular unit would become even more powerful (it already is a valid strategy, I feel often overlooked by players who have relatively high commerce and food and low production). And giving them a discount only so long as they upgrade to another irregular sounds very niche.

I think that "quite powerful when they first appear, but also quite niche" is underselling it. They are the best unit by far at squashing slave revolts and at eliminating invading armies, they have a good ability to survive thanks to the mobility allowing to retreat and to accumulate experience (charioteers have the mobility, but their combat odds are too low in most situations to be able to get experience, and the promotions that make them better at what they are good at are much weaker than the specialist hill fighting promotions), and they are very important in attacking stacks as long as you have some hills or forests on the way to the enemy city. They have some weaknesses when defending, but most of their fights will be attacking.

I can understand that researching the historical data and modelling the new units would be a huge amount of work, so I understand you don't want to commit to it, but I hope it could happen in the future. Just 5 Str. instead of 4 Str. would be a massive upgrade and make the wait to explorers not feel so long.

Well, as I mentioned, I did consider it and don't rule it out completely, but the scope of this would mean it's unlikely I'll start on it before the next release as it's something that would be unlikely to be done, tested and polished by Christmas.

Yeah, the barbarian player is supposed to represent many different barbarian tribes that are always at war with normal civs, not a single unified civ, so it has a lot of special rules. So not being able to really get money in is probably as designed. But I stand by my general assessment that barbarian cities are not threatening enough, and the build mismanagement I pointed out also reduces their ability to output military units.

I agree with your general assessment, but I mostly accepted it as a part of game balance - to me, the appearance of barbarian cities did indeed always signal that the barbarian pressure on my civ was going down. I felt that it was more or less intentional - "these guys have their own cities now, I guess they're less interested in constantly attacking us". I can definitely see a possibility of a different balance where barbarian cities are a credible threat, and it wouldn't be too hard to achieve (say, by supplying some barbarian versions of buildings with hefty production bonuses), but I am actually not sure we want that happening.

Although Caesar military success was built to a large part due to strategic and political abilities, such as finding good opportunities to intervene in Gaul and managing to get himself allies, and perhaps less than for others on raw tactical abilities, I don't think that disqualify him from being considered as highly accomplished militarily. His battle record, although helped by luck and competent subordinates, is excellent. His conquest of the Gauls alone make him one of the most successful conquerors in History, especially as this conquest proved very durable and influential. Caesar was not Alexander the Great, Gengis Khan, Timur or Napoleon, but he was definitely above-average militarily compared to leaders generally considered as successful.

I can easily see why you brought up a "three traits per leader" idea while talking about Caesar - there are certain keystone figures in our perception of history that capturing them with some limited stats may feel excessively reductionist (Napoleon is another great example, with a profound effect he had on all facets of European historical development). Hell, for some even assigning them to a certain civ feels too reductionist - hence no Charlemagne despite him being one of the most notable figures in European history.

My case was between Spain and France, so the sort of case where it's reasonable to have entries. On a side note, it was particularly funny because there is a big west-east mountain range, and I spawned to the north of it as the French and Isabella with Spain was to the south of the mountains.

I'll send you a dictionary update later.

Sure! I think I covered a lot of cases along French/Spanish border, but as I said, that work can never be 100% complete.

Does anyone also think that instead of the great wonder art “Minecraft” there should be a “Terminator” movie ? Minecraft as a wonder can already be built in the modern era when computers are barely invented and “Terminator” and bonus microchips somehow fits better here

When coming up with Great Works, I made a conscious effort to represent more cultures/countries/civilizations - this is not an attempt at an objective or even subjective ranking of the "greatest" ones, but rather an attempt to represent the eras through a variety of mediums and cultural influences. While some inevitably get more than others, late game already has several American pieces. Having two American movies in the same era feels redundant. Minecraft is a) originally Swedish, b) a computer game, which is otherwise an unrepresented medium, and c) originally a one-man work, which is ideal for something generated by a GA.

By the way, there is such a mission as stealing technology or disrupting rocket science. Why is the cost of espionage in remote cities less than in cities that are near the capital?

Espionage is almost completely untouched in RI compared to vanilla.

- I had full vision on a friendly civ city because of passive espionage effects. I noticed it was going for a wonder I wanted too and I made big changes to my production plans to try to get it done faster, I even prepared spies to try to sow discontent in the city building wonder. Ten turns later, I notice the AI cancelled the build of the wonder in the city that was going to get it in ~15 turns, and started to build it in another city where it would need 50+ turns.

I am actually not sure whether this is intentional or not - it kind of feels like a thing I do sometimes when I realize I need money more than that particular wonder.

How am I supposed to do that when such a mission costs hundreds of spy points and when my spy can't last 5 turns in enemy territory? And the cost of doing such counter-espionage missions on all the civs that I suspect might be doing spy missions would consume nearly all my spy points production. To only get partial protection, and if I understand what the tips about the system say, spending the points in any mission (and so also in a counter-espionage mission) would also reduce my h2h spy points, reducing the costs for the enemy to do spying missions in my cities? I might as well keep the spying points to get view on their research state and on their cities, that information is at least helpful and doesn't require me to add an entire micro-routine for doubtful benefits.

I don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but from what I can see when playing, the spy system looks completely rigged against the player, at least at the difficulty I'm playing in. To be sure, I'm not really putting gold into the spy slider, but I'm assuming that if I have almost enough spy points against a civ to be able to see its city, the head-to-head spy points spending is not a sufficient explanation.

You're very welcome to investigate behind the scenes, but I am reasonably sure that the "completely rigged against the player" part is self-inflicted by you. You mentioned that you upped the per-era bonuses AI gets, and since the total espionage generated over time figures in a lot of calculations, and sources of espionage are relatively few, you seem to have given AIs a total dominance over yourself when it comes to espionage. Most players (even playing unmodified Immortal in RI, but especially lower difficulty levels) would never run into such a gross imbalance.

The case with Minecraft is a bit weird here, instead of needing computers it needs television which is fudging weird, must have been an error. If I could give any suggestions well... this is dumb but I think it would be cool to instead of using Minecraft as the great work we should use CIV itself hahathis takes me back to a random event where some of your civilians would make Civilization INTO the actual game (fourth wall break, lol) and they let you choose some nice bonuses.

I believe I speak for everyone here when I say Civilization had a big impact in our lives. At least for us who grew up playing it. Same goes for Minecraft and many other games, they have inspired a lot of people just as any other kind of ''art'' has, since they have become, we may want it or not, a cherished part of our cultureThe amount of people who found a passion for history and politics kickstarted by CIV is insane, as the kids who became interested in architecture or engineering with Minecraft. Those great works don't reflect that sadly.

I agree with a suggestion that Civilization would also be a very decent fit, but it's still American, so ultimately when I was coming up with a list, I considered it but went with Minecraft. I'm open to tweaking its effect - it works quite well from gameplay perspective, but I agree it's not very flavourful.

- I see that cities revolting because of cultural pressure still happens in RI. However, there is no notice about the likelihood of such a revolt before it happens, unlike in AdvCiv.

I think that's an AdvCiv-specific thing. I'll take a look if that's something that can be easily lifted from there.

- What about giving +1 happiness to the artist specialist? In Civ3 you could get specialists whose only purpose was to make other citizens happy.

Happiness from specialists is one of those "would be nice to have if it was already in, kinda hard to code right as AI needs to use it well" features. Also, I think the mechanic from Civ3 quite gracefully transitioned into happiness from culture slider.

- In my current game, I'm using a modmod which buffs aristocracy's free units support. I also appreciate that Aristocracy allows special noble units and a limited form of conscription which can be very practical, although the general game design of Civ pushes for constant standing armies, not reflecting at all the more temporary natures of feudal levies. I'm also with a legislator leader making the high upkeep less relevant and wanting to go to Monarchy, which is a civic which goes very well with Aristocracy. Nonetheless, I'm still thinking that civil service is probably a better option with my other civics, and Plutocracy + Hanseatic League would also be better. All that to say: the vanilla Feudal Aristocracy civic is too weak in my opinion. If you go for anything but Monarchy + Servage especially.

As I shared with you privately, I am also somewhat dissatisfied with FA and I'd like to rework it to be more interesting. I suspect that won't make it into the upcoming release version though, or if it will it'll be a rather truncated version of the vision I have for it.

- I suppose that Inclusivity's one draft per turn is merely a reflection of draft being common in the era it is available at, and still purposefully inferior in drafting to other late-game legal civics? Because I don't see how it would boost drafting at all, or how it would be more suited for drafting than Civil Service. Romans did a lot of drafting.

Broader draft base, as you are less reluctant to conscript minorities.

- Why does Monasticism gives +1 gold to cottages? Cottages are at their best when they grow into villages and towns, but as soon as the tile has been worked for 30 turns the monasticism boost of +1 gold disappear. It helps a little when building new cottages, but that's a weak bonus.

Yeah, it's supposed to be weak; it somewhat sweetens building new towns as the early stage is less unappealing for a city to work, but it's not something that's decisive for the civic. It represents smaller settlements that sprung around monastic communities (and later often grew into towns of their own).

I can get behind that reasoning, but I think that that mentality points towards making him Imperialistic. What you're describing sounds exactly like someone who should get +1 happiness from Castrum and more frequent great general emergence. What if Caesar got that, and to balance things out, Augustus got Humanist instead of Imperialistic? I wouldn't describe the historical figure as Humanist, but extra commerce per city, and longer golden ages, both feel appropriate for him.

I could get behind an Imperialistic Caesar, and the thought crossed my mind before, but I didn't do it for a simple reason of terminological dissonance - Caesar is the last pre-Imperial Roman leader, and having him as "Imperialistic" feels too jarring to me, as if someone was calling him a "Roman emperor".

The thought germinating in my head recently is that for a barbarian city to settle, it needs to have generated some minimum amount of culture. Absolute value of culture, not the percentage ownership. Reaching the culture threshold is what entitles that otherwise barbaric settlement to now be considered a proper civilization. This could even replace the random mechanic entirely: A barbarian city that reaches 500 culture or whatever could immediately become a proper civ, drawing in the other nearby barb cities. Would also give players a reason to send in spies and destroy culture related buildings to postpone such a conversion, which would be neat when you're in the midst of building up an army to take on it and don't want to see it suddenly become a much bigger challenge.

I feel that would be a hassle to code and wouldn't necessarily be better gameplay-wise. As it stands now, you can already keep a particular barbarian city from becoming a civ indefinitely by keeping some units next to it.

Also, maybe setting barbarians should automatically be at war with their immediate neighbors, seeing as they were recently raiding those lands. Doesn't make sense for a barbarian city to settle and suddenly I'm the one getting diplomacy penalties for retaliating. Or maybe instead of war, they should get a temporary diplomacy penalty with neighbors, to assure there's no "you attacked my friend" penalties generated.

From flavour perspective, I feel them starting at peace is justified. It's not like they suddenly "became" Dutch or Japanese or Berber in one turn when they settled - them no longer being "barbarian" simply denotes a change how they're perceived by the already-established civs. They are no longer "barbarians" that can be simply attacked on sight, but rather peers who should be dealt with as equals.

- What about putting a 1-food penalty on farms (including civ-specific farms) that are built on animal resources (cows, pigs...)?

Sure, why not.

- I just discovered that vassals increase the number of cities maintenance cost. If there is one thing I would expect as an advantage having vassals over holding land directly, it would be to not increase city upkeep... What's even the point of having vassals otherwise?

Do they? I didn't know that. If it's true, I'd love to rectify it.

 

[AllTheLand]

hence no Charlemagne despite him being one of the most notable figures in European history.

Lies, I got him as a Great General while playing as the French. (I know what you meant of course)

You mentioned that you upped the per-era bonuses AI gets

I maybe talked about something like this a while ago, but for my current and recent games, I've stuck with the default modifier for my difficulty.

and since the total espionage generated over time figures in a lot of calculations, and sources of espionage are relatively few, you seem to have given AIs a total dominance over yourself when it comes to espionage. Most players (even playing unmodified Immortal in RI, but especially lower difficulty levels) would never run into such a gross imbalance.

Yeah, on lower difficulties that's going to be less of a problem.

When playing BtS and AdvCiv, I also mostly neglected espionage so I was never very familiar with its workings.

Now I get the system a little better, but I think that UI/pedia improvements to better communicate to the player how the system works would be useful. I doubt I'm the only player that gets confused by the espionage system.

I would have to look at the code regarding the likelihood of spies being uncovered, still, because my 2 spies being caught within 3 turns was really unnerving.

Do they? I didn't know that. If it's true, I'd love to rectify it.

They do. My discovery went like this:
- AIs offered to become my vassals.
- I accepted.
- Two turns later, I was surprised that my num-cities maintenance was 10 gpt higher than before, although I got no new cities.
- I reloaded the last auto-save before accepting the vassals. Sure enough, my num-cities maintenance was lower.
- I then contacted the AIs and got them as my vassals again.
- My num-cities maintenance increased when comparing the values before and after.

Although I'm not sure if the increase is based on the number of cities or the vassal or a simple "one vassal counts as one city" system, it looked to me like the 2-cities civ and 1-city civ produced a similar increase.

 

[[Y]]

I could get behind an Imperialistic Caesar, and the thought crossed my mind before, but I didn't do it for a simple reason of terminological dissonance - Caesar is the last pre-Imperial Roman leader, and having him as "Imperialistic" feels too jarring to me, as if someone was calling him a "Roman emperor".

I fee like this logic is trying too hard to hold to very specific ideas. Yes, Caesar predates that idea of emperor as we know it. But he also held imperialistic ambitions that very much match up with this concept of emperor. And if we want to get into the technicalities of language, "Imperium" was something held by Roman Republic government officials and military leaders in general, and was used to describe the first citizens after the republic ("person with Imperium"). "Emperor" as we use it today is just a shallow simplification of that concept. And even considering Caesar to not be an emperor is debatable, he was certainly living the lifestyle at the end. So all in all, I feel the described reasoning is trying to strictly adhere to our retrospective classifications rather than offering a reflection of the historical figure as he was during his time. And it also brings into question other leaders with the trait. If Caesar fails the test, why does Mussolini pass? Is it really fair to disqualify Caesar when Vercingetorix is given the Imperialistic designation?

Sorry, Caesar is one of my favorite historical figures, so seeing him rendered as he currently is has always been a sore spot for me.

I feel that would be a hassle to code and wouldn't necessarily be better gameplay-wise. As it stands now, you can already keep a particular barbarian city from becoming a civ indefinitely by keeping some units next to it.

True, but that bit doesn't avoid other issues, such as AllTheLand's issue with losing a city to barbs and immediately seeing it settle as a new civ (though I think that would be very valid if it was set to be at war with others, kind of reminiscent of the Turks capturing Constantinople, declaring it their capital, and becoming acknowledged as a regional power). It also prevents a barbarian city forming and immediately becoming a new civ, since that barb city would have to generate culture first.

I might give coding this a try if I can figure out how to get logging to work in Wine-based Civ (which for some reason doesn't come with an .ini file I can edit). Can't really test what a function does or what values are without logs.

From flavour perspective, I feel them starting at peace is justified. It's not like they suddenly "became" Dutch or Japanese or Berber in one turn when they settled - them no longer being "barbarian" simply denotes a change how they're perceived by the already-established civs. They are no longer "barbarians" that can be simply attacked on sight, but rather peers who should be dealt with as equals.

Fair enough. I was typing up a response but realized nothing I had in mind actually contradicted this, so I'll have to frustratedly resign to agree with you.

- What about putting a 1-food penalty on farms (including civ-specific farms) that are built on animal resources (cows, pigs...)?

Sure, why not.

Is there an agricultural flavor to support this? Otherwise it feels very forced to me. As in, instead of reflecting incentives, it's punishing people for not using resources as the game designer intended for them to be used, which I think is more sour grapes than game balance. It's not like building a farm on cattle means that no one is eating cattle in that city, it just means that the cattle being bred and raised isn't significant in quantity or quality, same as how not having a source of Fish doesn't mean there isn't any fishing going on.

Do they? I didn't know that. If it's true, I'd love to rectify it.

Pretty sure that's always been the case, since Vanilla Civ4. Looking at the wiki, it suggests that the balance was getting happiness from having vassals, which I guess was removed in RI.

They do. My discovery went like this:
- AIs offered to become my vassals.
- I accepted.
- Two turns later, I was surprised that my num-cities maintenance was 10 gpt higher than before, although I got no new cities.
- I reloaded the last auto-save before accepting the vassals. Sure enough, my num-cities maintenance was lower.
- I then contacted the AIs and got them as my vassals again.
- My num-cities maintenance increased when comparing the values before and after.

Although I'm not sure if the increase is based on the number of cities or the vassal or a simple "one vassal counts as one city" system, it looked to me like the 2-cities civ and 1-city civ produced a similar increase.

That's still cheaper than having it increase both number of cities and distance to palace, no? And is not having to pay any costs for vassals any more fair? In theory the cost is having to defend that vassal, but in practice, no ruling civ ever does that (at least not player civs).

From what I've read, spies only help on the tile they are on, and again it's only partially effective. The hammer cost and upkeep cost to get 10 or 15 spies to protect all cities is prohibitive, I'd rather invest in the espionage slider.

I don't know the specifics about which tiles they effect, but having spies stations in my cities (or at least my biggest cities, newer ones don't typically need them) drastically reduces espionage actions taken against me. The AI usually loves to steal my gold, and paying maintenance is both almost cheaper and also is a prevantative for acts of sabotage. It took me a long while to be willing to try it, since I also wanted to avoid the hammer and maintenance costs, but the difference in a game before I station local spies and after is almost night and day, at least once an AI starts targeting me with their spies. If you haven't actually tried it yet, I recommend doing so before evaluating its worth.

 

[AllTheLand]

Is there an agricultural flavor to support this? Otherwise it feels very forced to me. As in, instead of reflecting incentives, it's punishing people for not using resources as the game designer intended for them to be used, which I think is more sour grapes than game balance. It's not like building a farm on cattle means that no one is eating cattle in that city, it just means that the cattle being bred and raised isn't significant in quantity or quality, same as how not having a source of Fish doesn't mean there isn't any fishing going on.

The point is that a significant part of the food bonus from animal resources comes from a passive bonus independent of what is later built on the tile. This is useful for the early game, before workers have improved everything. However, by the time Irrigation comes up, as long as you have a backup source of the resource for health-points (or if you don't need the health points and want to avoid the +1 epidemic penalty), building a farm instead of having a pasture is often a better choice since you can keep the passive boost from the resource. That's especially true for sheep which get a really weak boost from pastures.