Realism Invictus

[[Y]]

Finishing 20+ games would take me approximately 200+ days, with the finishing point being "I'm completely dominating the AI in every possible way", not one of the standard victory conditions. The game isn't my life, so I'm of course going to comment on things before I have full-knowledge of every detail. Of course I'm going to say things that are wrong from time to time and someone will have to point out I'm wrong, but that's the nature of such discussions. If everyone that wrote in this thread making false assumptions about some aspects of RI was prevented from posting again, there wouldn't be anyone writing, including Walter.

The problem isn't that you were wrong, it's that you often have a very determined and instructional tone when providing feedback. "This is to good. This is too bad. XXX needs to be done." And all before having sufficient experience to weigh in with full knowledge and understanding of how RI works. We all want to hear what you have to contribute, and appreciate all that you've contributed thus far, but it would help if you showed a tad more humility and instead of trying to sound like an authority passing a verdict, you asked more questions about why things are as they are, and allowed those of us that have spent more than 200, 400, 600, or 800+ days playing the game (or in the case of Walter, literally making the game) to help fill your understanding.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I personally hate it when there is an abundance of resources everywhere, especially strategic ones. One of the best parts of the game is to secure all necessary resources for development, civs that lack resources resemble civs that have fallen behind at some point of history which is cool. If there is no snowballing AI there is no fun at all.
Even late game can be problematic if you have no gold = no microchips. (unless you get GA and Minecraft) Its so bloody boring when your starting fatcross has two cows, horses and Iron, yeah and next city has saltpeter and coal behore you know it. yawn.
I almost always play Totestra or perfect mongoose with perfect world style resources, hopefully that balance wont be changed for that mapscript

I won't crank it up insanely high, but as I admitted earlier, the amounts of late-game resources were balanced many years ago, and back then the rate of AI civ attrition was definitely higher, so at least a modest increase is indeed warranted.

Hi @Walter Hawkwood,
any feedback about this (possible) bug?

No, not yet. And no promises either; all this chances stuff is really obscure so I'm not sure I'll find anything even when I look.

One idea I had at some point is that engineers could help boost the production of craftsmen, but making it easily understandable to the player and well-balanced could be tricky.

Specialists influencing specialists is indeed overcomplicated and moreover will require quite a lot of new AI evaluations.

By the way, why are artists generating science too?

Ask Sid Meier? That's how they have been since vanilla Civ 4. I'm kinda ok with that at the moment, though if engineers get research, then artists can get espionage instead.

Python, oh no...

Oh no indeed. Basically any interface changes that are not simply additonal text in mouseovers are Python.

What if instead of allowing to turn espionage off, the option only allowed to turn spies and spy missions off, with the generation of espionage points and passive missions still enabled? I suspect most people who turn espionage off do it because they don't like getting their cities hit with various forms of AI sabotage, rather than out of a dislike for the passive system allowing to see charts, research, etc.

I'm actually very ok with this idea, but I need to check how easy/hard it is to implement.

Speaking of not really dealing with quantities, I've found that RI's resource transforming system allows to make quantity matter more compared to base Civ4 (except the horrible corporation system), since the number of transformer buildings is limited by the number of base resources. However, this also makes the trading of some kind of resources much less interesting than in BtS... This incentive to not trade away extra resources make the situation much worse for smaller civilizations.

I feel it's the other way round - sure, input resources are usually not traded for, but especially later in game you get more output resources for trading.

EDIT: This actually seems so extreme that I'm starting to assume that the limitation on how much a resource can be used is per-building (so you can't build two steel factories with only one coal or only one iron, but you can build one steel factory and one chemical factory that makes plastic). This of course changes the balancing point - but the fact that without coal, a civ is just condemned to roll over and die is clear from how many things absolutely require coal, with coal to make energy to power high-production in the industrial age being also so necessary.

Yep. I am trying to communicate this in-game in several places, but alas, it's not very intuitive and I'm out of ideas on how to communicate this better.

In my current random map game, my strongest rival, the Byzantines, completely absorbed all the territory the English, and got territories from other places too, with a total of 24 cities under its control. It's helped by my modmod reducing numcities maintenance (about 120 gpt instead of 180 gpt in their case) and it's extremely successful for an AI. Nonetheless it has only two coals and is still not going to have enough...

Which map size? For a Large map, 24 is pretty par the course for mid-game top-3 civ.

Walter: what about allowing to tie open border deals with resources and gpt? A small state with a critical resource could get a tech boost from trading away the resource.

I don't see why not, but again I don't know how hard/easy it is.

I figured out that the converter buildings work in an unintuitive way (I say unintuitive, because the basic experience you get from converter buildings such as the bronze forge is that you need more resources to get more converter buildings working... Why could you use one coal twice on two different buildings but not twice on two times the same kind of buildings? It goes against natural expectations) after thinking that needing 4 coals is too crazy to not have been noticed and patched previously. My remark about how a civ without coal is dead in the industrial age stands, and all my comments about health and happiness too.

You can use 1 iron to build unlimited swordsmen. Why not use 1 iron to build unlimited swordsmen AND make 1 steel AND make 1 canned food? It is quite reasonable within Civ 4 logic when you think about it. 1 unit of resource is an amount that allows you to do an unlimited amount of stuff in your civ, basically, but it can only convert the same amount (1) of all other resources.

One thing I have no special comment on and I'm curious about is multiplayer. @Sinocpm said in the previous page that he's currently playing a multiplayer game with @AspiringScholar, and my question is how does it work? Is the turn-by-turn nature of the game preserved (but how do you play enough turns for the game to not last years?) or is it possible to move units at the same time (which is unfair in its own way)?

Simultaneous turns are an option that existed since vanilla Civ 4 and can be turned on/off. I found they work quite well in my own MP games, much reducing the overall turn times. Then again, I'm a very cooperative player so I don't know how this plays out in a player vs player war.

The problem isn't that you were wrong, it's that you often have a very determined and instructional tone when providing feedback. "This is to good. This is too bad. XXX needs to be done." And all before having sufficient experience to weigh in with full knowledge and understanding of how RI works. We all want to hear what you have to contribute, and appreciate all that you've contributed thus far, but it would help if you showed a tad more humility and instead of trying to sound like an authority passing a verdict, you asked more questions about why things are as they are, and allowed those of us that have spent more than 200, 400, 600, or 800+ days playing the game (or in the case of Walter, literally making the game) to help fill your understanding.

And so the cycle continues! That has happened so often by now (several times just this year!) that I generally ignore the overall tone of comments and go straight to the point unless the person is being outright rude. It's fine.

 

[AllTheLand]

Some civs have to die without player intervention, if everyone will get balanced amount of resources it will be simply boring.

More resources on the map doesn't mean that everybody gets a fixed amount of all resources.

Yes, smaller maps are better for game length, you are right. But I'm a sucker for continents and civs that have some depth, if a civ has no strategic depth and get its capital on the border or if you easily can span coast to coast of a continent on most generations, I feel disappointed. I also have more fun with more than one or two neighbouring civ, although Totestra tends to put everyone in a circle around a desert.

Before I forget, as an attachment here is an enhanced version of the custom Totestra script I shared previously. It tones down very short rivers and reduces the likelihood of huge plain areas without any river. I think it generates quite nice river systems overall.

The problem isn't that you were wrong, it's that you often have a very determined and instructional tone when providing feedback. "This is to good. This is too bad. XXX needs to be done." And all before having sufficient experience to weigh in with full knowledge and understanding of how RI works. We all want to hear what you have to contribute, and appreciate all that you've contributed thus far, but it would help if you showed a tad more humility and instead of trying to sound like an authority passing a verdict, you asked more questions about why things are as they are, and allowed those of us that have spent more than 200, 400, 600, or 800+ days playing the game (or in the case of Walter, literally making the game) to help fill your understanding.

My tone is not meant to offend, and I'm open to corrections when I say things that are wrong. Which has happened, and will happen again, I'm sure, I'm only human and I make mistakes.

That being said, although I don't have full knowledge of some aspects of the game (and especially of anything late game since my games so far have ended before), I typically provide arguments or examples to support my assertions, and my assertions about non-subjective elements are mostly right.

 

[AspiringScholar]

On the note of praising the cornucopia of historical representation that RI is so replete with, I'd like to put in a specific word of appreciation for the Crusades scenario. It feels very alive, and exploring a map where I generally know already where things should be (but they're twisted out of a geographic proportion which didn't yet exist in the minds of its inhabitants), feels adventurous and immersive (sending a rather expensive spy across an as-yet unknown North Africa and meeting Gao and other great West African kingdoms, but who then suddenly went missing, yet left traveling tales of meeting these people was rather cool, as these cities were all historically placed and not randomly distributed), as do the longstanding rivalries which you must contend with. The predominant scarcity of economic development amid a world full of strife and imminent warfare makes any investment in the former rather costly, but rewarding to achieve. All this in the era of warfare where cavalry is dominant in the field, cities are relatively easy to defend but hard to dislodge from siege, and skirmishers are still situationally useful but no trump card in rough terrain anymore, is particularly fun. Everything feels scarce and dangerous, and you can't really "prepare for war" by having reasonably well developed cities and respectable defenses beforehand as you often can in a random map. I've dabbled in the scenario several times before (initially, I had a lot of trouble seeing past the east-oriented map, but now I have come to like it ), though recently made a properly serious attempt as the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which ranks as one of the more interesting experiences I've had with this game. I'll be coming back to this one, as I love the medieval period and how expansive this scenario is as a sandbox for it.

The Knights Templar and Hospitaler are extremely powerful units, as is the default Crusader with the holy war doctrine that they start with. This was helped by the fact that I got the event for the great military instructor, so with the stable, Baldwin I's conqueror trait, and the military order house, the former two were coming out of the gate with 10XP! I was assailed by the Emirate of Damascus and Hedjaz, each in turn perilous defenses which I came out narrowly ahead of, due to mobility restrictions and rough terrain not favoring my cavalry-dominant army and my glass-cannon Crusader infantry, but I slowly began to conquer, and invested in the culture and wellbeing of my starting cities. However, a foiled taboo marriage between one of my nobles and the court of Saladin presented me with the opportunity to maximize domestic benefit to his chagrin, and chagrin he recalcitrated: instant declaration of war! A bitter back and forth in Gaza (where Conrad of Monteferrat, the previous savior of the kingdom, shockingly fell to an unexpected assault from the fog), then he rallied the bulk of his army and wiped mine out, then immediately carpeted me with pillagers and it was then effectively game over... but such a fun experience. I lasted until only the middle of the XIII century with no notion that I was about to get the rug pulled out from under me unexpectedly, as I was just then seemingly on the ascendency. Great scenario!

A handful of thoughts and comments from the campaign, though:

- The Fursan is still titled Mobile Guard in its strategy entry within the Pedia

- Is it possible to improve the appearance of the net of fishing boats (and derivatives such as traditional fishing and proa fishing boats) in the Pedia window? I noticed that the Scandinavian line simply lacks this altogether, and looks much better for it.

- I'm curious, which exactly is the "surprisingly detailed" mappa mundi that the Crusades scenario is based on? The manual mentions that it is English (hence the upscaling of that region), but I would be curious to see it myself, if you could cite it!

- What, exactly, is the historical rationale for being able to hurry production with gold under serfdom as opposed to the other early civics? I don't see how a hierarchical agricultural economy somehow facilitates this over slavery, caste system, or even tribalism. Is it strictly for game balancing reasons?

- This is a visual bug, but in my campaign, once I had conquered Tabuk, the walls did not properly surround the city (though they did before), instead cleaving through its middle. Save attached.

 

[AllTheLand]

- The size of revolts depends on the population of cities they are associated with. But still, a 15-strong peasant revolt seems a tad excessive? Also the spawning location seems to not be very tied to the city triggering it. I had a revolt associated with my capital spawn 3 tiles away from my capital but only 1 tile away from another city, which I lost as I didn't have enough time to bring reinforcements to hold. I have to admit that revolts being also a threat instead of just a way to easily get XP and GG points is good. Although in general the way revolts assault fortified castles and can take them just through human waves, instead of rampaging the country side (I don't remember them pillaging any sort of tile improvement), is somewhat jarring.
- Desert shrubs make the construction of roads slower, is that intended? Unlike other forms of vegetation, you can't chop them away, and realistically desert shrubs aren't an impediment in the same way denser vegetation can be.

On the note of praising the cornucopia of historical representation that RI is so replete with, I'd like to put in a specific word of appreciation for the Crusades scenario. It feels very alive, and exploring a map where I generally know already where things should be (but they're twisted out of a geographic proportion which didn't yet exist in the minds of its inhabitants), feels adventurous and immersive

I think I should give it a try. What difficulty were you playing at with the Kingdom of Jerusalem? It seems they have one of the most tricky starting positions being mostly surrounded by natural enemies.

EDIT: The scenario seems to be in the "legendary" 0.5 speed? With 350 turns available and everything being incredibly slow (over 20 turns to get a worker out, which is absolutely required to connect some basic resources), what is to be done? The core of Civ gameplay is balancing different kind of investments, but if a building requires 10% or 15% of the total turn count to be done, investing in it is probably an awful idea. Likewise for technologies. Am I missing something?

 

[JDCP]

I personally hate it when there is an abundance of resources everywhere, especially strategic ones. One of the best parts of the game is to secure all necessary resources for development, civs that lack resources resemble civs that have fallen behind at some point of history which is cool. If there is no snowballing AI there is no fun at all.
Even late game can be problematic if you have no gold = no microchips. (unless you get GA and Minecraft) Its so bloody boring when your starting fatcross has two cows, horses and Iron, yeah and next city has saltpeter and coal behore you know it. yawn.
I almost always play Totestra or perfect mongoose with perfect world style resources, hopefully that balance wont be changed for that mapscript

You know I kinda love it that having Minecraft is an actual advantage, it's so dumb it's great

 

[JohnCarterOfMars]

Engineers... They kind of are, aren't they. But more generally speaking, their original "niche" (generating production) is taken, so they are a bit devoid of purpose as specialists. Simply giving them more production feels like a buff for the sake of buff. More research?

For engineers, what about a role in tech transfer?

I don't know if you can count up the number of engineers a civilization has, but I would think that a civ can't do much with the tech from another civ if they don't have engineers to understand it and commercialize it in their own civilization.

There has been a recent debate about how tech transfer works. How about basing it on the number of engineers a receiving civ has to understand the technology?

 

[AllTheLand]

That would kill tech transfer in the first half of the game, and it wouldn't be possible to balance properly for the second half.

 

[JDCP]

hahaha I have been having this insanely funny graphical error in the game were three barbarian warriors attack my archers, but the two at the sides just flee and leave the one in the center alone fighting, so my archers just obliterate the poor guy. I'm starting to think it's a hidden combat mechanic, barbarians are deadshi(t) scared of Roman archers!

 

[TheBirdMan]

Speaking of not really dealing with quantities, I've found that RI's resource transforming system allows to make quantity matter more compared to base Civ4 (except the horrible corporation system), since the number of transformer buildings is limited by the number of base resources

Why not use 1 iron to build unlimited swordsmen AND make 1 steel AND make 1 canned food? It is quite reasonable within Civ 4 logic when you think about it.

We got a wonderful system when transformer buildings came into this game. This made the 2nd, the 3rd and even 4th and 5th number of a resources much more important to have. Why the development was stopped when it was only what I would call "half done" - I don't know. But it seems that there is not much interest in it "in wider circles". I don't understand it - but..... then I continue to do it myself, the best I can.

And if you want to get paved roads without having access to two limestones, you'll need two coals. But you'll have fun afterwards when you want to use that coal for something else and discover Civ4 doesn't have a "delete building" option without opening the world builder.

No, even with the present converter system, a ressource can be used one time in each of the production lines. It is (still) on the edge of reality - but both acceptable and understandable, I would say.

You can use 1 iron to build unlimited swordsmen.

But you can let a Forge consume this iron and make training of swordsmen dependable of this. Fx. that we need both a Barrack (consuming Timber) and a Forge (consuming Iron) to train a skilled swordsman in a city. That way you still can train unlimited number of swordsmen in any city, but only trained swordsmen ("borned" with 1 exp. point per building) in cities, that have buildings to equip and/or train them properly (again - I'm doing this already and it (also) works as intended - even for the AI).

And yes, if you (hopefully) choose to consume resources to a greater extent, then there must be more resources available. But fortunately it is quite easy to adjust in the file CIV4BonusInfos.xml.

Besides, I have used the same principle as we have for theater -> opera, that "we" - for example - need 3 buildings of one kind somewhere in our nation plus 1 building of another kind to build 1 building of a 3rd kind in the same "category" but with a greater importance (school + library --> university). Just on a very larger scale, that includes many more buildingtypes.


Hmmm - guess I need to make some needed updates on page 1 in my spinn-off to explain (also to myself) what I'm actual doing.........

 

[[Y]]

Right now (at least on 3.6, can't speak for later), forest starts are challenging, at least on Totestra. They tend to encompass large swathes of land, and have almost no food production (Citrus fruit, which don't come into play until much later, and more recently pigs, but I'm stuck on 3.6 so I don't know how often that comes into effect). They might have great plantation-based resources, but you don't get to see those until researching some techs, and even then have to wait longer until they actually contribute something. On top of that they provide defense bonuses for invaders, limit your vision, and add extra work to building improvements. So in effect, forest starts are very desert-like, lacking food or useful resources. Is there something that can be done to help that out?

I remember back in the day slash and burn farms could be built on forests, too, but maybe that's too much. What if the Hunter's Cabin gave forest tiles +1 instead of just generating a singular food for the city? This would allow forest tiles to become 31, or 22 on hills, which I think is fair, especially compared to the early game food powerhouse Pastoral Nomadism can be. These aren't amazing yields, but can help a city build up, and provides a basis for wonder building, which currently requires a favorable hammer-generating resources . This bonus wouldn't be compatible with Pastoral Nomadism, so it's an either/or situation (and I'd argue that PN comes out ahead by a fair margin there), and is gone with adoption of Craft Guilds or Merchant Families

 

[AllTheLand]

Although I am not running slavery anymore, the slave markets are still showing up as supposedly giving me gold in the finance advisor. I don't think they are actually giving anything, but there is a bug one way or another.

 

[RezerCuid]

I think the longbowmen(8) and crossbowmen(6) of Europe should be more armored

 

[AllTheLand]

I have noticed an AI that keeps switching in and out of pastoral nomadism... The civics evaluation function seems to be producing unstable and illogical results.

The food production pattern of the purple player shows well the switches:

 

[AllTheLand]

Another bug, the displayed science per turn next to the control buttons seems incorrect. It shows me +3100 per turn but the real rate the top bar fills at is +3750 per turn. I'm not sure why that happens.

 

[[Y]]

Another bug, the displayed science per turn next to the control buttons seems incorrect. It shows me +3100 per turn but the real rate the top bar fills at is +3750 per turn. I'm not sure why that happens.

Is the top bar including the tech transfer bonus? Tested locally and it seems to be that, though the math might be off. At 11 research per turn and 40% tech transfer bonus, my completed research went from 27 to 46. On the next turn it went to 65. Then with 12 research per turn it went to 86. The actual bonus seems to be 70-80%?

 

[AllTheLand]

The tech I was researching was not discovered by anyone else, so there shouldn't be a tech transfer bonus active. Your own example indicates that something is off, because 11 * 1.4 is definitely not 19.

I only noticed the discrepancy because I was doing an all-in to get the scientific method first and it was shown as completing it in 5 turns although I was shown to generate 3100 a turn and needing ~18600 to get the tech.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Right now (at least on 3.6, can't speak for later), forest starts are challenging, at least on Totestra. They tend to encompass large swathes of land, and have almost no food production (Citrus fruit, which don't come into play until much later, and more recently pigs, but I'm stuck on 3.6 so I don't know how often that comes into effect). They might have great plantation-based resources, but you don't get to see those until researching some techs, and even then have to wait longer until they actually contribute something. On top of that they provide defense bonuses for invaders, limit your vision, and add extra work to building improvements. So in effect, forest starts are very desert-like, lacking food or useful resources. Is there something that can be done to help that out?

I remember back in the day slash and burn farms could be built on forests, too, but maybe that's too much. What if the Hunter's Cabin gave forest tiles +1 instead of just generating a singular food for the city? This would allow forest tiles to become 31, or 22 on hills, which I think is fair, especially compared to the early game food powerhouse Pastoral Nomadism can be. These aren't amazing yields, but can help a city build up, and provides a basis for wonder building, which currently requires a favorable hammer-generating resources . This bonus wouldn't be compatible with Pastoral Nomadism, so it's an either/or situation (and I'd argue that PN comes out ahead by a fair margin there), and is gone with adoption of Craft Guilds or Merchant Families

Interesting thoughts, but I would consider this to be a fairly strong and also unwarranted buff, personally. Some things that come to mind in counterargument are that, first of all, they are a very significant source of , not only early in the game when they are abundant but indefinitely, which appreciates in value considerably in acute times where becomes especially problematic and hard to counter. They are also a potent source of (both unimproved on hills right away matching any non-strategic metal mine in output until early classical slavery mines without requiring the investment of worker time or technology, and especially so in the midgame with lumbermills, which will outcompete craftsmen until machine tool factories come out in the "second" industrial revolution). They are powerful assets! In my games, chopping is something I often carefully consider when keeping one isn't overwhelmed by a strictly obvious opportunity cost, but oftentimes they present me with a difficult dilemma due to their significant delayed value weighed against that.

On the military note, we were just talking about the decisive effect of skirmishers. Assuming you don't have one of the flavor ones that are even better in forests, their native +50% already negates the defensive bonus a would-be invader gets, so that if you promote them to woodsmen even once, the forests actually become defensive liabilities for the attackers! Getting the first tier of promotion is rather easy in the vast majority of circumstances, and with a second and third, they're far from safe havens for an invading army.

The third thing I have in mind is that, in giving them a subsistence level of with a relatively cheap building available almost immediately, cities wouldn't require any bonuses to grow quickly to their caps (as the city tile itself starts you with a net positive 4), which feels wrong to me. You even recently made a really good point with "fish," for instance, representing not the strict and exclusive presence of fish in a water tile (else there would be no in water tiles otherwise), but a known and predictable breeding ground or migratory location where they're found in high concentrations. By the same logic, "deer" should work the same way, in my opinion. Non-bonused water tiles don't support population subsistence until the renaissance with shipyards, and I feel that that's appropriate. If fishing docks don't enable this in normal water as an ancient era building, a similar ancient era building shouldn't for forests. (It would also indirectly rob the Russian UI of its special and unique flavor in this regard, too.)

 

[AspiringScholar]

I think I should give it a try. What difficulty were you playing at with the Kingdom of Jerusalem? It seems they have one of the most tricky starting positions being mostly surrounded by natural enemies.

This was on monarch, but as it's preconfigured scenario, the "real" difficulty is of course more a matter of your position and not the penalties and handicaps of the formal difficulty level. I felt it was quite hard relative to a random map monarch game!

EDIT: The scenario seems to be in the "legendary" 0.5 speed? With 350 turns available and everything being incredibly slow (over 20 turns to get a worker out, which is absolutely required to connect some basic resources), what is to be done? The core of Civ gameplay is balancing different kind of investments, but if a building requires 10% or 15% of the total turn count to be done, investing in it is probably an awful idea. Likewise for technologies. Am I missing something?

Well, when your cities are stuck at size 3 or 4 unless you build that market, it might make good on its costly investment even within that narrow span of time...

That is part of what I was getting at, though, in everything feeling expensive and scarce. I started with mostly unimproved land and no workers, for instance. Palestine had just been conquered at the scenario's starting date, of course, but generally low economic development overall appears to be the norm from other factions I've tried in it. The victory condition in that scenario is to have the highest score by the end of the timeline, by the way (omitting the Mongols, who are supposed to at least scourge the world with their 30 horde unit!), which is of course much narrower than any of the other conventional victory conditions.

Apologies for the double post. I don't know how to quote someone else in an edit.

 

[AllTheLand]

This was on monarch, but as it's preconfigured scenario, the "real" difficulty is of course more a matter of your position and not the penalties and handicaps of the formal difficulty level. I felt it was quite hard relative to a random map monarch game!

I first launched it on immortal and saw that my cities were having massive health issues from the start, including an unavoidable day-1 famine in Jerusalem. I checked that I would have to start the scenario in Prince to not have a diseased city from the get go...

I can abuse the AI's military stupidity, but I prefer managing economy, culture, tech, and it needs time to be relevant.

I'll try at Monarch too, because from what I saw in my test, the Kingdom of Jerusalem looked extremely unforgiving (which, admittedly, is historically accurate).

Apologies for the double post. I don't know how to quote someone else in an edit.

Use the normal method to get a quote in a new post, then copy-paste from the new post (without publishing it) into the editing screen of the old post.