This definitely illustrates our differences in taste.
I love the chaotic drama of 30+ civs, of neighbors conquering each other and having 20+ city civs by the end of medieval (including myself, hopefully), and of managing the build queues (though micromanaging tiles I can do without). The demands and requests to join to war I hate, doubly so because the AI civs don't give each other the diplomacy malus for not complying (I never see it in their relations at the Glance diplomacy screen, at least), but I can bare with it. It's part of making the map feel like a living, breathing place rather than just a tactical battleground map.
Hearing your elaboration on how this enhances a feel of scale and grandeur or improves strategic depth as opposed to simply increasing tedium is something I would be interested in. Fundamentally, it is still the same excellent game at the end of the day and so huge maps are still quite fun, but it doesn't seem to me that any meaningfully additional strategic depth is offered by them, while it does extend the timeframe and micromanagement required to play through a game for what ultimately constitutes a similar significance. It seems reasonable to me that the impression of grandeur is heightened by having basically every civ in every game and constituting something fun on its own, as is simply having an enormously vast world with lots of unexplored or easily overlooked corners, but how that translates into deeper strategic depth or has meaningful bearing on individual decisions you make seems less clearly connected to me, though I might be overlooking something here.
Taking the example of diplomacy, for instance: does having 30+ civs on the map make individual decisions over open borders or war declarations more interesting? If you have a bloc of 6-8 civs all aligned and trading with each other, how does that impact your decision making about a new agreement over that same group being 3-4 of the same instead? It
does unequivocally mean having to deal with more annoying requests and demands on a regular basis, however. I'm not trying to shoot down your position (and certainly not trying to take away any fun you have with it) but am genuinely curious how this provides more strategic depth or a sense of a living and breathing world, even if I can agree that the higher scale is appealing to a sense of an epic game. Those are not quite the same things, though.
An important point to highlight about my position is that if diplomacy were more dynamic and engaging, I would certainly agree with you. Unfortunately, while passive modifiers are fairly complex and tied to other gameplay decisions in a pleasing way, the actual ability to conduct it is disappointingly narrow, and the vast majority of interactions take an annoying and stilted form: both from the standpoint of the AI's ongoing, incessant demands for things you have no incentive to agree to and taking a continuous hit for it, and the fact that you can't even request the same of them 80% of the time unless they actually are inclined to agree (and, as you say, they don't even have penalties for refusal among themselves), so it feels very straight-jacketed against the player. I wouldn't mind it so much by interpreting these rather unrealistic point-blank ultimatums representing an organic "drift" of relations when differences are present which effectively does the same thing as a passive modifier would if they are going to continuously make demands anyway, but the fact that this is only stacked against the player and that you can't even make the same demands of the AI at all means that it's still a one-way street which doesn't really model that holistically in a way that it probably could half-decently do if those facts were not the case.
There's also the fact that your range of options in diplomacy are fairly meager, if admittedly not bare-bones: bilateral open borders agreements, declarations of war, wholesale alliances, civic/religion conversion demands and resource trading. That's not the worse thing ever and it still feels like you can in some basic way interact with other civs, but even within the scope of Civ's engine, in Civ 3 you had conditional or targeted alliances, and could trade GPT for technology unlike in Civ IV (with the removal of tech trading in RI, quite sensible and gameplay enhancing elsewhere, itself still leaving a gap in diplomatic interaction, as well). I get it that we're working with a diplomacy engine which is both hard-coded and quite aged at this point (and I am somewhat spoiled by the old Paradox titles having simply more options to interact on various levels), but I still think we should make the best lemonade we can with the lemons we have, and throwing every civ possible into a game just exacerbates these fundamental problems in my view.
These are the primary reason why deliberately preferring a maximum number of civs seems strange to me: I am not sure how this somehow has any depth-enhancing bearing on decisions, and it ultimately just means clicking through more high school clique behavior which is railroaded against the human player.
They're definitely more versatile, but as economy becomes more and more important as the game goes on, especially if you like large empires (like I do), it makes the most sense to dedicating grassland cities to economy, and letting the plains towns focus on military production. That's been my experience at least, especially since grasslands tends to be towards the coast and away from danger, while plains are in the middle of the continent and closer to the frontlines.
I am curious about the notion of city specialization in RI. I softly do so, but I wonder if it is something I should lean into more. For instance, I realize that it's a waste to build XP bonus buildings in low-production cities and avoid that, but as buildings as a whole are much more important in RI and not something that can be near-universally ignored as in the base game, I find that the majority of buildings are worth building in every city, and often I do construct the majority of buildings in the majority of my cities as priorities permit. It's funny to me how the simple change making Wealth and Research as production items have a value of 50% instead of 100% in unmodded BtS seismically upends the "just build or whip/buy units or build wealth or research, noob" mentality of snooty deity players in the base game, who would with just that tiny modification often be presented with some meaningful choices here instead...
It absolutely is. I just feel like I can reach sufficient quantities of espionage without a trait. I rarely use spies aggressively so I don't need excessive amounts of espionage, and deprioritizing any small civs that aren't a threat usually means I have more than enough to see the bigger civs. I'd rather use my traits for elements that always need scaling up without end (namely finances, happiness, and promotions, which is why Charismatic is my top trait).
I mean, you're a better player than me! I see a lot of value in Politican, but you could be completely right that its apparent value is exaggerated. (Again, though, with diplomacy, just having people at pleased removes a lot of the annoyance of entering a new turn...)
Thanks! I could copy it from 3.6, but having it available for people who don't have a local copy would be ideal. As trashmunster said, the old style fits in really well with the unit graphics. Double edged sword there as contrast can be useful sometimes, but I like the holistic feel of them matching up.
I'm not an artist by any stripe, but I'm curious what is meant here? Smoother base terrain textures are somehow jarring with the features and unit models, I guess? Could someone elaborate please? The previous terrain didn't look particularly bad in my opinion, but it did have a more "messy" and pixelated look which I'm happy to see removed, myself.
It's clear that I didn't explain myself (sorry, English is not my native language).
I'm not suggesting to implement anything, but only to remove a check in the stack attack, according to which the best attacker unit is replaced by a sacrificable one, if its odds are less than 68.
Oh, then the misunderstanding is mine! I thought you were talking about stack defender selection, which the player has no immediate control of. (I have a newfound hate/love of the Celts, by the way, where in a rather interesting pair-up I had Militancy III, offensively unstoppable Crusaders defended by excellent Longbowmen, against these guys who can pick out and target both melee and cavalry with their UU and circumvent the whole defender advantage of Civ 4's combat model...) Celts might be one of the strongest civs in the game, paired with their very respectably UI on top of that. I still conquered and subjugated them, though (while admitting that England is one of the conventionally "OP" civs).
on plains probably silently adds up (even from farms) more than I have properly noticed or given credit, but on hills (forested or otherwise bare with mines), plains are certainly important in my opinion, but on flat land at least, I think grassland is superior, personally, as riverside grass can later be a nearly self-sustaining production tile with a watermill, a commerce tile with a town, or an abundant source of food with a farm. I find them to be more versatile overall, and hence a bit stronger between the two.
The newer terrain styles to me just look bland. It looks like someone spilled their cucumbrer-and-kale juicebar drink over the map and now it's stained. There's no richness to it, and when I see the map it just looks like units and terrain features are standing on some flat stains. The older style has more of a vibrance to it, and depth from the colors in the textures. It's still flat, but feels less flat through the various shades. I think what makes the newer ones have more contrast with units, in my eyes at least, is that the flatness of the design makes it more easy for unit and terrain feature art to pop, whereas with the older style, units and terrain features have an easier time blending into the background.
