Realism Invictus

I think that realism invictus doesn't need many changes, because when you change you can also make the game worse or make it unbalanced, for example civics are fine as they are, because they should be understood as temporary alternatives, for example should I build a wonder faster? should I prepare for war? do I need more food? so it changes based on what I have to do at the moment. So as alternatives they are almost perfect at the moment. The only thing I would focus on is making espionage more attractive, if ever adding a civic just for this aspect. For example, the counter-espionage system is boring, especially on large maps with many civilizations, the great spy could be made more useful.
 
But since Y, Drakarska, JDCP and AspiringScholar liked your post, I suppose there is a widespread sentiment that it's good to attack me personally rather than discussing (or simply ignoring) the ideas I bring up.
Interesting. I wasn't aware that liking a post constituted a personal attack. Since you have apparently taken so much umbrage in my emoting a simple "like" to a post, please, allow me to expound upon my reasons for doing so in order to assist in alleviating your overall angst in something as trivial in agreeing to a post.

1) I have been playing RI since I've joined CivFanatics, which has been at least a day or two, considering my join date. I have seen a variety of revisions, a lot of input from fellow civvers, an even greater amount of patience from Walter and team in dealing with said input, and if I'm being honest, quite a bit of testy exchanges from posters who feel that their over inflated sense of entitlement is not being catered to. The overall tone of your posts comes across as such, hence the reason for my egregious liking of the post. The fact that you appear to be taking it as a personal attack merely enforces that opinion.

2) This is an SVN version, which means it is still in testing phase, and not finalized for the next major release yet. While Walter and Team take the input and ideas from the players, as the Creators of this mod, they have the actual final say in what gets into the final release, your personal ideas and requirements non-withstanding. TBH, I feel like I really shouldn't have to explain to someone that Modders who create their works of art freely to the community shouldn't have to cater to everyone's "wish list".

3) Here's an idea. Perhaps if you took a bit of time and learned some minor modding skills, you could achieve what you desire out of this mod. As an example, The Bird Man has his own modding tweaks in his thread, as do I. Additionally, there are quite a bit of interesting ideas over in the modding forums which you may peruse at your leisure.

In the end, I find it puzzling that you would consider liking a post as a personal attack. You are of course, welcome to block not only myself, as well as anyone else that you feel are personally attacking you with a simple "like" click. After re-reading Forum Rules, just to be sure, it doesn't appear I violated any, just by clicking a like button. However, since for some odd reason you considered it a personal attack, I hereby apologize for clicking the like button without considering your sensitivties before doing so.
 
I think that realism invictus doesn't need many changes, because when you change you can also make the game worse or make it unbalanced, for example civics are fine as they are, because they should be understood as temporary alternatives, for example should I build a wonder faster? should I prepare for war? do I need more food? so it changes based on what I have to do at the moment. So as alternatives they are almost perfect at the moment. The only thing I would focus on is making espionage more attractive, if ever adding a civic just for this aspect. For example, the counter-espionage system is boring, especially on large maps with many civilizations, the great spy could be made more useful.
Agreed. However, espionage has always been problematic ever since vanilla. Trying to streamline it effectively in a major mod like RI is a royal PITA.
If you are interested, over in the mods forums, there is a mod-comp called Super Spies. If you have a bit of modding skills, you should be able to merge it in and have a bit of fun. Also, if your interested, Platy has some excellent python mod comps that could make your game more enjoyable should you wish. I highly recommend you take a look.
 
I think my current Carthage game has gotten to my breaking point, so I'll share some observations:

As an aside before replying to the rest of your post, I have noticed over the years that you really are a Carthage fan. I've only played one serious attempt with them, and while admittedly it went fairly well, I think that had more to do with external factors than the bonuses offered by the civ itself. I have trouble seeing much appeal (on paper at least) and would be curious what kind of case you make for them. On the positive side of things, their leader roster has a lot of strong, synergistic traits, so I can definitely see that much at least, but otherwise, the pagan temple comes across as rather weak in only offering a single additional :commerce: while the unique improvement does the same (in addition to the extra happiness from dyes, which is itself already effectively a 2:) resource, so the marginal benefit of the improvement as a ratio is actually a bit lower than if it increased a resource offering only a single point on its own. Likewise, the Cothon is only a slightly cheaper harbor (which, until quite recently, wouldn't even offer its extra trade income in many cases when it debuts due to the way that trade modifiers used to be truncated!), and the agora only adds +5%:science:, which I wouldn't think is paltry, but it doesn't seem especially potent either.

On the unit side, the Barbary Pirate does indeed seem strong, but spiritually analogous to the Wako that Japan gets, and for a city conquering unit, comes at a time which generally falls between Archery Training and before Gunpowder that is particularly tough for offensive warfare. The Numidian Cavalry seems solid, but primarily as a counter to horse archers, which are somewhat rare (though admittedly quite a nuisance when encountered), and, having the same base stats as a plain horseman, unless you catch the other units which it's strong against stray and alone, it seems that it likely won't be the one fighting them, and in such situations, the plain horsemen would already perform well.

Definitely not trying to knock Carthage, but am curious to hear what your reasoning is for liking them so much. I'm also not especially familiar with their distinctive roster, as that may have some hidden gems in it.


City Conquering
I feel that conquered cities are too functional. In the past, after conquering several cities I usually had to enter a reconstruction period to let the conquered cities come into use as I build them back up. This led to a very organic rhythm of alternatively growing the empire then maturing the empire and things felt pretty balanced. This time, the new cities were up and running right away. The surviving buildings gave enough happiness that there wasn't the typical starvation period where the population plummets, so instead of having the city reduce to 4 citizens, two of which are too angry to cooperate, I would have a fully cooperative 6 or more citizens off the bat. And having the walls be able to rebuild right away turned each conquered city into an immediate bastion. Usually I really have to invest in defending a conquered city but I didn't feel that this time, just stuck some irregulars there and moved on. There wasn't much to deter me, or others, from just conquering all we wanted.

And I think that's what happened with the Pontic empire. They formed from barbarian cities and immediately went to war with Poland, conquering it entirely. After that they went to war with Austronesia, and conquered them entirely, too. Then it was India's turn... They went from a brand new civ to sitting at the top of the scoreboard fast. In a way it was actually beautiful to watch, since although Mithridates IV proved a capable conqueror, he was terrible at keeping the empire afloat. After taking half of India the Pontic empire imploded, Polynesia returned and in force, getting most of its original territory and some that was India's before Mithridates took it. Poland at some point returned too, though just one city, so maybe liberated. Fifty turns later and the Pontic empire no longer existed. It was cool to watch this flourish and withering of an empire, though that ending still didn't justify the conquering spree, and it couldn't have imploded in a non-separatism game.

I think a better experience was when conquered cities had to be invested in before they were really utilizable, when 75% or more of the buildings were destroyed. It made losing a city more serious, too, whereas now it's not much of a concern if I can take it back easily. I haven't done that yet with a developed city, but I worry it will be like it was never conquered at all...

At first, I didn't particularly like having to rebuild so much after conquering or losing and then retaking a city, but you have made a good case and I agree that war should be destructive and conquest should entail a sunk cost which should be weighed in and considered beyond simply building units. (In the later game, we do have the ministries as well which were designed to simulate more efficient and vested institutional infrastructure, after all.) From a pacing and balance standpoint, too, making buildings too durable could result in too much "supercharged" conquest. Since the change concerning this was implemented, I myself haven't noticed too much of this, but haven't played a game to the point where I would normally wage total war and would be taking note of such things. On paper, it does seem mildly problematic. Perhaps it was a bit excessive before, though? I'm not sure what the right balance is, as you obviously don't want a city to be obliterated just because it changed hands, but some felt degree of ransacking and plunder should be expected nevertheless.

Stack Aid
Logistic Problems doesn't feel like much of a problem. At least until late medieval (I don't usually play far into Renaissance, so I don't know what it's like when melee units and cavalry start fading out). Right now, a stack just needs 4 melee units and 4 cavalry units to give all units in the stack +24% strength (including each of those melee and cavalry units, only need 3 of each if we don't care about that). With 8 units, that's only -10% strength from Logistic Problems, so it's a +14% gain, which is fine. If the stack hits 15 units it gets LP V, which gives -25% strength, just a tad more than cancelling out that +24% bonus, while keeping any other bonuses the units might be getting, such as first strikes from recon aid or ranged said. And it can keep that up until the 29 unit mark. So the worst case scenario for these stacks is that the Assault aid and Mobility aid get cancelled out, while still getting first strikes, and any city defense/city attacking bonuses that might be given. The other LP drawbacks aren't that impactful, since terrain movement cost only affects units with 2+ movement to begin with, retreat odds is reduction only affects a small minority of situations, and the healing penalty only applies to friendly and neutral territory, while big stacks are typically invasion stacks in enemy territory. So while it's possible to get a better deal by micromanaging stacks, there's still no actual danger to creating stacks of doom (as the AI is fond of doing) so long as it has 4 melee and 4 cavalry units.

Here I might be able to offer something more concrete than merely my subjective preference or mere anecdotal experience. On the note of the latter, I will mention briefly though that I did test modifying this and played several entire games with much more punishing stack aid penalties (primarily, reducing first strikes from Tier III and upwards, so that especially overcrowded, classic SoDs were totally uncompetitive against medium stacks which consequently had to be more specialized. Interestingly, the AI seemed perfectly conscious of where to cap these, and was generally more fond of more scattered and smaller stacks. Whether it's directly "aware" of the penalties or not, Karadoc's AI seemed to know how to work with it appropriately in light of the user modification.

Secondly, on the actual calculation, while I agree that it could be perhaps fine-tuned somewhat better (the reduced first strikes actually worked quite well, in my experience), the comparisons which you're drawing are between a giant stack of doom maxing out several of the different aid categories, on the one hand, and then an individual unit on the other. A swordsman in a stack suffering from the second to last logistics penalty but also possessing Assault III, Mobility III, Recon III and some tier of Ranged and Siege Aid will have numerous defensive advantages and the coverage of first strikes and fight with approximately the same amount of :strength: as another swordsman, but a smaller, more focused stack could be only at Tier II, and have Mobility and Assault Aid maxxed out, netting +24% over that individual swordsman! First strikes a big a deal here, which is why I think penalizing them at high levels of supply issues might be a great idea, but in terms of plain strength, specialized stacks against ponderous, hulking ones might still end up being quite competitive depending on various individual circumstances, especially with Civ IV's combat where only a few percentage points' worth of difference can be quite significant.

Non-Forest Skirmishers
I brought this up before but I don't think anyone responded to it. Desert-based civs (and some others) have skirmishers that don't get any forest bonuses. While I like the flavor, in practice it amounts to them not being able to use forests for defense while most other civs and barbarians can. Can their skirmishers get at least a +25% bonus to attacking in forests? That's not enough to make the +50% defense go away entirely, but it makes the attack feasible. Or alternatively, maybe forest skirmishers should only get forest bonuses while the other skirmishers get hill bonuses, or something like that. I know non-forest skirmishers are currently cheaper, but being able to make 7 skirmishers for the prices of 6 doesn't balance against not being able to deal with enemy stacks sitting on forests while those enemy stacks can deal with yours sitting in forests.

But doesn't that defeat the point of them being specialized, as the same argument applies to these when an enemy is in a desert? They both have 2 movement cost, and often have to be traversed (deserts being no exception with Totestra's love of Earth-like large central deserts).

I think that realism invictus doesn't need many changes, because when you change you can also make the game worse or make it unbalanced, for example civics are fine as they are, because they should be understood as temporary alternatives, for example should I build a wonder faster? should I prepare for war? do I need more food? so it changes based on what I have to do at the moment. So as alternatives they are almost perfect at the moment. The only thing I would focus on is making espionage more attractive, if ever adding a civic just for this aspect. For example, the counter-espionage system is boring, especially on large maps with many civilizations, the great spy could be made more useful.

One thing you might try is using Great Spies as super scouts! They get 2:move:, are invisible to all units, and can explore the entirety of your landmass without paying any heed to open borders. On the note of separatism, too, settling them in a problematic city is actually quite effective, too.
 
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As an aside before replying to the rest of your post, I have noticed over the years that you really are a Carthage fan.
👀
Spoiler :
Screenshot 2024-11-05 at 10.23.16 PM.png


I have trouble seeing much appeal (on paper at least) and would be curious what kind of case you make for them.
Well, it's actually a mix of things. I do like them as a Civ, but more importantly I like Elissa. Seafarer and Charismatic are two immensely powerful traits:

+1 trading route to cities, even if just coastal cities, is no small benefit. That's a source of commerce that doesn't need to be worked, like a tile would need to be, and that grows naturally over the course of the game and as you construct buildings to improve it. Compare to Financial: It only adds a single commerce and only to tiles that already have 3 commerce, and you only get that benefit if you work the tile. You're probably never getting more than 5 or 6 extra commerce in a single city with Financial, and even that is only if you build improvements to get that minimum 3 commerce, and only if you work those tiles. And you'll have very few cities set up to reap such a benefit. By midgame, however, a single extra trade route can generate 4-6 commerce per turn on its own, and do it in pretty much every coastal city you have.

Seafarer also gives your ships Sailor Training, which adds first strikes and a hefty 25% bonus to fighting barbarian ships. That makes it significantly easier to safeguard your water tiles and those first strikes make a big difference in early naval combat, when there's very little setting ships apart in strength (minimal defense bonuses, etc).

Charismatic can add +1 happiness to each city. Actually it's +2 by the endgame, but I never reach Broadcast Tower to enjoy that. :P

Charismatic reduces XP needed for promotions by 25%, and that's huge. It lets your units be more impactful, getting more promotions per exp than non-charismatic leader's units. A militaristic leader might give each of their units +2xp right off the bat, which will put the unit one promotion ahead of a brand new charismatic leader's unit, but at 8xp, the charismatic leader's unit has one promotion over the militaristic leader's units. This is very helpful on higher difficulties, where you need to be able to get a lot done with fewer units.

And as I've mentioned before, Revolutionary isn't that bad of a drawback, and it is entirely cancelled out in Elissa's case. For me, this trait combo makes her the best leader in the game for playing a high difficulty and needing to max every advantage you have.

the pagan temple comes across as rather weak in only offering a single additional :commerce:
It's not flashy, but don't discount the impact of an additional commerce in the very early game. Keep in mind that the Humanist trait's most prominent feature is just +1:commerce: on the city tile (though on the other hand, it's pretty universally acknowledged to be a bad trait). I usualy push for Judaism to better capitalize on the extra seafaring trade route, so I don't typically build the pagan temples, but they make an impact. Especially if you get Statue of Zeus. Tuh-duh, you just gained a 4th trait. :lol:

the unique improvement does the same (in addition to the extra happiness from dyes, which is itself already effectively a 2:) resource, so the marginal benefit of the improvement as a ratio is actually a bit lower than if it increased a resource offering only a single point on its own.
The ratio might be worse, but it's still an extra happiness! But the magic of the Trading Colony isn't that it gives happiness or has an extra commerce, it's the Dye Works, which lets you turn any Andosol fertile soil into a source of Dye. In my last game I had neither any Dye or Andosol, so I didn't get to make use of it, but I've had games where a city had two Andosol tiles in its BFC, meaning +2 happiness and a extra Dye that I can trade away for big money to crank the research rate higher.

Likewise, the Cothon is only a slightly cheaper harbor (which, until quite recently, wouldn't even offer its extra trade income in many cases when it debuts due to the way that trade modifiers used to be truncated!)
It's not just a cheaper harbor, it also gives +25% trade route yield. And when you have 3 or more trade routes already (default, seafarer, river dock, plus maybe also merchant families, trade fairs, and great lighthouse/Hanseatic League), that's a lot of extra income. Technically not as powerful as Dravidia's Payanam, but with 4 of Carthage's leaders giving an extra trade route (compared to Dravidia's 1 seafarer), it's very significant. Getting access to Cothon is one of my major economy spikes in games.

the agora only adds +5%:science:, which I wouldn't think is paltry, but it doesn't seem especially potent either.
I forget it gives that extra, so yeah, not very potent. :lol:


On the unit side, the Barbary Pirate does indeed seem strong, but spiritually analogous to the Wako that Japan gets, and for a city conquering unit, comes at a time which generally falls between Archery Training and before Gunpowder that is particularly tough for offensive warfare.
The problem here is that you're slotting it after Archery Training. If you rush Rudder, which is not at all deep into the Medieval techs, and have a good economy (and if playing as Carthage, you ought to be building around naval trade and economy), you'll have an 8 strength melee unit that can attack cities from across a river at no penalty and with an innate +50% city attack bonus at a time where most civs are still using 4 strength Composite Bowmen. A rank 3 or 4 bowman on a hill might give a Barbary Pirate a run for its money, but a bowmen with less is going down without a fight. When playing Carthage, you start the Medieval era by conquering a neighbor. Carthage gives you everything you need to do it. In my last game I conquered most of Rome (hey hey). I probably could have conquered them entirely but I wasn't expecting the newly conquered cities to be so productive, and did my usual peace treaty to let what I conquered build up (plus I had a bunch of island barbarians to conquer with more promising resources).

The Numidian Cavalry seems solid, but primarily as a counter to horse archers, which are somewhat rare (though admittedly quite a nuisance when encountered), and, having the same base stats as a plain horseman, unless you catch the other units which it's strong against stray and alone, it seems that it likely won't be the one fighting them, and in such situations, the plain horsemen would already perform well.
Numidian Cavalry is pretty lackluster, yeah. It's absolutely great at taking out horse archers, but as you said, that's not a regularly encountered problem. They can also do a decent job defending against skirmishers. I mostly see them as cheaper horsemen that start with some handy promotions, and they've never served as a cornerstone of my military strategy.

In addition to this, they have a very strong militia, with +40% against archers instead of +25% (though less needed now with the archers doing down to 2) and +75% against cavalry instead of +50%, so they're very capable of holding out against barbarian rushes in the early game. And these are the nerfed militia: back in the day they used to have one of the 4-strength militias (along with Egypt), and boy was that a show of power.

Ther galley also gets +10% coastal strength and a first strike chance, which is pretty good, but especially so when layered on top of the seafarer bonuses.

Overall, to get the most out of Carthage, you have to play it like Carthage's actualy history. This isn't a civilization you want to be turtling with and playing tall. It's strongest elements are in the first half of the game, so you want to expand out broadly, using your extra sea trade routes, extra trade route income, and pagan temple commerce to finance things. Chase down the useful wonders, primarily Great Lighthouse, and if you can, the Colossus as well. The Great Merchant points will give you extra financial fuel to build a wide empire. I aim to have 4-5 cities by classical and 10 by Medieval. Then 15 after getting access to Barbary Pirates (which needs to be as early as possible), and 20 by the time I reach Reinnaisance. Get Hanseatic League for more trade routes. Build only the military you need to patrol your territory, to fight border wars, and to expand, using charisma to hold the line. Medieval should give you a military boom and a commerce boom allowing you to start playing more forcefully.

That's actually my general approach regardless of which Civ I play, but Carthage is just fine tuned to do it very well.

At first, I didn't particularly like having to rebuild so much after conquering or losing and then retaking a city, but you have made a good case and I agree that war should be destructive and conquest should entail a sunk cost which should be weighed in and considered beyond simply building units. (In the later game, we do have the ministries as well which were designed to simulate more efficient and vested institutional infrastructure, after all.) From a pacing and balance standpoint, too, making buildings too durable could result in too much "supercharged" conquest. Since the change concerning this was implemented, I myself haven't noticed too much of this, but haven't played a game to the point where I would normally wage total war and would be taking note of such things. On paper, it does seem mildly problematic. Perhaps it was a bit excessive before, though? I'm not sure what the right balance is, as you obviously don't want a city to be obliterated just because it changed hands, but some felt degree of ransacking and plunder should be expected nevertheless.
Yeah, a middle ground could be good, or maybe an alternative obstacle if there's a good option.

Here I might be able to offer something more concrete than merely my subjective preference or mere anecdotal experience. On the note of the latter, I will mention briefly though that I did test modifying this and played several entire games with much more punishing stack aid penalties (primarily, reducing first strikes from Tier III and upwards, so that especially overcrowded, classic SoDs were totally uncompetitive against medium stacks which consequently had to be more specialized. Interestingly, the AI seemed perfectly conscious of where to cap these, and was generally more fond of more scattered and smaller stacks. Whether it's directly "aware" of the penalties or not, Karadoc's AI seemed to know how to work with it appropriately in light of the user modification.
That's really good to know! I never thought about modifying it locally, but I might give your changes a try. Do you still play with those settings?

Secondly, on the actual calculation, while I agree that it could be perhaps fine-tuned somewhat better (the reduced first strikes actually worked quite well, in my experience), the comparisons which you're drawing are between a giant stack of doom maxing out several of the different aid categories, on the one hand, and then an individual unit on the other. A swordsman in a stack suffering from the second to last logistics penalty but also possessing Assault III, Mobility III, Recon III and some tier of Ranged and Siege Aid will have numerous defensive advantages and the coverage of first strikes and fight with approximately the same amount of :strength: as another swordsman, but a smaller, more focused stack could be only at Tier II, and have Mobility and Assault Aid maxxed out, netting +24% over that individual swordsman! First strikes a big a deal here, which is why I think penalizing them at high levels of supply issues might be a great idea, but in terms of plain strength, specialized stacks against ponderous, hulking ones might still end up being quite competitive depending on various individual circumstances, especially with Civ IV's combat where only a few percentage points' worth of difference can be quite significant.
That's true. I might have been overzealous in my rant and failed to consider this. At some point I got it in my head that Logicstic Problems was meant to help curtail stacks of doom, and maybe it's fair to say it does this through opportunity costs, but my expectation was something more direct. I'll pay more attention to this in my next few games and reevaluate.

But doesn't that defeat the point of them being specialized, as the same argument applies to these when an enemy is in a desert? They both have 2 movement cost, and often have to be traversed (deserts being no exception with Totestra's love of Earth-like large central deserts).
Specialization is cool, but how often are you actually fighting in deserts? No one is stationing their stack in an Oasis as a defensive hold out. But the odds of starting near forests is pretty high, and enemies having the advantage on your home turf is grievous. It might be less felt is Civs were pushed to start near their historical landscapes, but that's not what we have.
 
Visual variant for a Hungarian Bowman (4)
 

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I feel that conquered cities are too functional... The surviving buildings gave enough happiness that there wasn't the typical starvation period where the population plummets, so instead of having the city reduce to 4 citizens, two of which are too angry to cooperate, I would have a fully cooperative 6 or more citizens off the bat

Actually.
1. The usual vanilla scheme with the zeroing of the building is absurd. If the buildings were not wooden, their purposeful destruction before the age of gunpowder required long and simply heroic efforts. As a result, the complete destruction of the city in the style of "Romans and Carthage" is a rare exclusive.
And after the spread of gunpowder, this required a firm determination to spend a rather expensive and scarce resource in huge quantities.And even more so, no one has ever purposefully destroyed a city if it was needed as a base for further offensive.As a result, the destruction of cities by 90% as a common situation is already the era of TNT.
2. As for the almost mandatory population reduction at times, it should be borne in mind that game cities actually contain not only the urban population, but also the population of the rural district processing tiles.And here, even with a very keen desire to kill everyone, there were often not enough opportunities. Meanwhile, even in the Bronze Age, such a desire was not a universal rule.


In the past, after conquering several cities I usually had to enter a reconstruction period to let the conquered cities come into use as I build them back up. This led to a very organic rhythm of alternatively growing the empire then maturing the empire and things felt pretty balanced.

Well, the mod still strives for realism. The nuance is that in reality, a creeping offensive rarely gives imperial results. Rather, it all comes down to a tug of war: an insufficiently weakened opponent takes revenge.This is more or less effective in two cases
1. The enemy is passive and the main problem is the fortresses, which can only be taken slowly and creakily.
2. The same thing, but the main problem is logistics.

The standard scenario for empire growth looks like this.
Stage 1. Balance of power and homeostasis. A hundred years of "wars over a conditional forester's hut", etc.
Stage 2. Someone gets a decisive advantage/superweapon - technical, organizational, ideological. Or, on the contrary, the neighbor or neighbors are catastrophically unlucky.It is better to have both factors for super success.
Stage 3. Local blitzkrieg. We promptly strangle the most problematic or the most delicious neighbor.
Stage 4 The domino effect. More conquests – more resources – more advantage. War feeds war.
That is, exactly what you are protesting against is happening.
Then there is a slowdown in growth and a return to homeostasis. Less often – disintegration.

Some empires go through one cycle and then this mechanics is especially visible.The classics are the Persians, Macedonians, Mongols, Arabs. I remind you that it took Cyrus the Great 29 years to conquer the whole of Western Asia, destroying three great powers. Philip and Alexander the Great met in 36 years.
And in fact, there are many more such figures. As an example, the Parthian Empire. it arose, in fact, in one step. Mithridates is the 1st, for a maximum of 33 years.
The map is for clarity
Spoiler :

1920px-Conquest_of_Mithridates_I.svg.png



As we can see, almost classical borders, then only "file revision". In Western Asia, such a blitz is the standard up to and including the Renaissance.

China, the age of howling kingdoms.Qin, which began as a small second-rate kingdom, has a more extended cycle.
1. The first blitz of 316 BC, the doubling of the territory and the transition to heavyweights.Map of 350 BC.
Spoiler :

800px-Streitende-Reiche2.jpg


2. 234 BC. Plans for minor annexation, a deterrent attack against Qi with a "positional deadlock"... and then famine in Qi, blitzkrieg and a full-fledged "domino" Capture of the entire ethnic China in 14 years. And in six more years – "proto-Vietnamese kingdoms in southern China and North Vietnam proper.

The Mediterranean with its mountainous peninsulas is not very conducive to blitzkrieg, however…If we take the most detailed period of Roman history described in the textbook "around Caesar", then it is surprisingly short. The reforms of Marius brought such a result. 74-30 BC is the capture or vassalization of almost the entire "Roman East" practically within the classical borders, Gaul, rather large Numidia and Egypt. In the next 24 years – access to the Danube throughout, the capture of Portugal/Lusitania, the official annexation of vassal Galatia.Etc.

And I think that's what happened with the Pontic empire. They formed from barbarian cities and immediately went to war with Poland, conquering it entirely. After that they went to war with Austronesia, and conquered them entirely, too. Then it was India's turn... They went from a brand new civ to sitting at the top of the scoreboard fast. In a way it was actually beautiful to watch, since although Mithridates IV proved a capable conqueror, he was terrible at keeping the empire afloat. After taking half of India the Pontic empire imploded, Polynesia returned and in force, getting most of its original territory and some that was India's before Mithridates took it. Poland at some point returned too, though just one city, so maybe liberated.

Finally, realism :) . Personally, I really missed such historical surprises with global geopolitical upheavals in a short time.

nd having the walls be able to rebuild right away turned each conquered city into an immediate bastion.

The nuance is that in reality recovery might not be required at all. I remind you that in the most optimistic case for themselves, the besiegers simply made several local breaks in the wall or / and broke the gate. An assault with ladders (escalade) or a siege tower without ram generally led to purely cosmetic repairs.
Another thing is that the initial construction of walls in theory should be a very expensive pleasure. However, there are no simple options here.
 
That is probably one of the best summations for a game mechanic that I have ever witnessed on these boards. Especially considering how many attempts in various mods of addressing said issue. Well written Good Sir, I sincerely tip my hat you.
 
@pecheneg I appreciate you responding to my posts and adding all that history knowledge, but I feel that in just about each of these situations you responded strictly to historical accuracy and ignored the actual substance of what I was saying, which regarded gameplay, not history.
 
but I feel that in just about each of these situations you responded strictly to historical accuracy and ignored the actual substance of what I was saying, which regarded gameplay, not history.

Well, this mod strives for historical accuracy and this is a very reasonable position. The real story is the best and most interesting 4X game. The hit of the season. In particular, because it is a total "replayability", unpredictability and a lot of drive. I understand your penchant for "meditative" quiet play. But for me personally and, I think, for many, one of the most attractive features of RI is the constant rebel movement with the need to monitor sudden changes and respond promptly to them. At the same time, there were still not enough sudden blitzkriegs from yesterday's bearish corners and steep peaks of yesterday's hegemons, which are rich in real history.
 
Agreed. However, espionage has always been problematic ever since vanilla. Trying to streamline it effectively in a major mod like RI is a royal PITA.
If you are interested, over in the mods forums, there is a mod-comp called Super Spies. If you have a bit of modding skills, you should be able to merge it in and have a bit of fun. Also, if your interested, Platy has some excellent python mod comps that could make your game more enjoyable should you wish. I highly recommend you take a look.
yes I created my own modmod based on r.i. 3.4, with many phyton additions, new huge world map, europacentric, practically europe is larger by a third, slightly enlarging the map of the original scenario, for better gameplay, I created new forts, new religion, with new models, film, then I added the reformation and counter-reformation and more
I'll link you to a part to help you understand the proportions of Europe compared to the original scenario
 

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many phyton additions,

Hm... Could you gradually lay out the functions as mod components? I would be very grateful. People often make great mechanics in their mods. After which they leave and... And the new generation can only look at the mysterious artifacts left by the ancient masters with a hungry look. Thinking about how cool it might look to combine the work that has ALREADY been done.
 
There are, however, several "oak" options without changing the mechanics and radically shaking up the balance. For example, in reality, for a very long time there was a specific class of weapons for shooting from a stop. For example, the familiar field crossbow (the so–called "one-pound") is only one of the common varieties. The second is a "two–pound" crossbow weighing 13-15 kg, specifically for fortress shooting. At the same time, crossbowmen generally received a much more serious bonus in fortresses than is "generally accepted". For there were things in the fortresses that dramatically accelerated loading. In general, it looked like this (in the picture, by the way, a two-pound crossbow).
If I understand your suggestion properly, it's about introducing a separate lineup of defensive city-only units?
I very much doubt however that I was the only person that was misled by it at some point. When playing, the player is not constantly cross-checking if game tooltips are wrong or not.

Removing the "OR prerequisite" tech bonus might also be just what's needed to slow down the pace of tech research, since apparently it speeds up nearly all techs in the game, and since it looks like tech generally advance too quickly.
Which is exactly what I'm alluding to - if a player not constantly cross-checking doesn't notice something during normal gameplay (and if not a single person reports that they did notice it for literal decades), doesn't that mean it's a rather insignificant issue?

I'm not even sure that it's that particular effect. In the same link, there's a lot of other modifiers in play, like the slight cost reduction for all civs that already know the tech (a sort of vanilla "proto-tech-transfer".

All of that is not to say I won't be looking into it. I'll have a look and if there's something obvious, I'll probably change/fix that.
I don't know how you came to the "no more than 5%" conclusion. When it's first available, you only have libraries that give % science (and I suppose a great work of science or two, but most cities won't have it) and it's about 8%. Because science deals with huge amounts of commerce, a few percents are very significant. Once you get universities and observatories, it's about 6%. My proposal taking away 1 science from select specialists and buildings would yield a 3-5% penalty from a rough estimate in my current game, depending on how many scientist specialists are used. By discouraging the use of scientist specialists, it would also subtly reduce great scientists.
Realistically, you'll have at least 1 of great scientific works / an academy at that point (maybe some science-boosting wonders as well), and it will be in a city that will be contributing most to your research, maybe as high as half total. I can run some hands-off tests but I am quite sure a real civ at that point in game would be much less affected that the just-library scenario you've outlined.
I think it's also quite problematic that militancy's penalty become smaller and smaller as time goes on, so that the civic is at its worse in the historical period where it was most prevalent and effective. I think it would be more adapted for it to start smaller and become more and more significant (although no higher than the current penalty) as you get into late renaissance and industrial times.
I'd say, for Europe, the "most prevalent" era was the mid-late Renaissance (30-years war, 80-years war, French Wars of Religion, English Civil War period); one could interpret this as the Crusades-era civic, but a lot of its actual effects, such as mass Inquisitions, are a later historical development. For the Islamic world, it's mostly even later, roughly starting with the advent of Wahhabism, so XVIII century onwards.
Many entries are empty, have content that was originally meant for something completely different, or outdated content.

I was thinking of making new entries for the leader traits.
Ah ok, at least when it comes to empty entries, it's likely the German translation. I think the guy who did the translation in the first place didn't bother with Pedia texts. I think the original English pedia is in a relatively decent shape.
Huh. It happens all the time for archers for me, no trouble reproducing it. Is there anything on my end I can check that might be helpful to share?
I can't think of a way you could provide any meaningful help, but this does prompt me to take a closer look. Maybe see if it's reproducibly all the time for archers in your case and if it occurs for any other unit classes.
When you get to Priesthood you can finally get that +1 happiness, but you got to pay big for it (and the civic itself doesn't help compensate for that cost) and at a time when money is scarce. It's not until Meditation that you can finally get the happiness as a standard fact of life. I feel that making civs wait that long is too big a nerf, especially when the initial nerf was intended to prevent double dipping religion happiness with paganism benefits, and not to prevent dipping into religion at all. Maybe the Meditation tech can still be a requirement for building missionaries without monasteries.
I'm not sure "pay big" at the time when it first becomes available is accurate. Civic upkeep can pick up quite a bit by late medieval but IIRC it's almost nonexistent early on, regardless of the actual civics.
I'm not well educated on monasteries in general, but wasn't it common for them to sell produce and perform services? That's the impression I have of western monasteries, with maybe eastern monasteries being the fully detached model. And if one way or another that's not a factor in RI, why do fortified monasteries offer exactly that bonus? :p
With FMs already in the game, the precedent is already set.
Well, what monasteries certainly didn't do was they didn't directly contribute to state activities, by paying taxes, providing manpower and such, and to me it feels an important distinction. The Celtic FMs are a relatively special case and are closely modelled on Ireland specifically, where monasteries held very considerable power and often acted as independent actors in politics. Irish monasteries had something quite uniquein the form of "permeable monasticism", where people could move both in and, more importantly, out of monastic structure at any stage in life, unlike elsewhere where getting into a monastery was basically a permanent deal. That, and the outsized economic role of abbeys, basically led to a very special status of monasteries in Ireland, more or less on par with traditional feudal lords.
Obviously I'm bias, but I think Judaism makes sense in the game. While the list of historical powers with a majority Jewish population is short for sure, we've done a good job of being relevant and impactful across other nations (for better or for worse). There may well be an alternate universe where it becomes a common religion among historical powers, much like in how some Civ games it's a common state religion and in others it has no presence whatsoever.
I agree, but such a Judaism that became a common religion among historical powers would probably look much differently from the one IRL - at the very least, it would probably, by necessity, have been a missionary religion. Which is a good reason to keep some "generic" common traits for religions in-game that they might lack IRL (missionaries, monasteries etc).
Though "temple in every city" is certainly a Jewish trademark, and in all corners of the world. My uncle once had a chance to visit a Jewish temple in India and had interesting stories to share about it (though I can't remember them, sadly).
Well, synagogues aren't exactly temples, are they? From what I know about Judaism, it is very particular about only having one Temple at a time (at most, obviously, since for the last almost 2000 years there are none). Synagogues aren't treated as temples. But that's semantics of course.
Though, Walter, on this subject, reducing separatism from unhealth might be in order. When a new city (or even an existing one) has unhealth from jungle or flood plains it can become unruly. While it makes sense that they would be unhappy about the the filth, in practice what happens is the city rebels, and then the new civ's city has even worse health since it loses whatever passive health benefits it got from the origin empire (like fish and other global modifiers). And it doesn't really make sense for unhealth to directly affect separatism. If that's desired, then excessive unhealth should probably add unhappiness, and contribute to separatism through that.
Unhappiness from unhealth feels wrong to me. The systems were always distinct and without any direct interaction. I am more ambivalent on separatism bits, as I don't have an opinion on separatism balance. I guess separatism from unhealth can go.
- Does anyone else feel that the the availability period of baroque and later great artworks is quite short? Even with many civs, great artists are usually not produced in that great numbers (although the AI also seem to prefer settling artists as great artists rather than making the great works of art, I'm not sure why). Baroque art being interrupted by Nationalism hurts. Of course, techs being researched quickly make this more palpable.
Well, the way I see it, the works from different art eras are all roughly similar, so it isn't really important whether a particular era lasts long or not - unlike scientific works, they never go obsolete, so the only concern at any given time is having enough of those for GAs to build - and therefore the more eras there are and the quicker they change, the better. So I can't see why it "hurts".
The game has no representation whatsoever of "tile population" so it's not possible to get a solution that's satisfactory in all situations, but the scenario you outline would be better represented by some sort of armed revolt, much like we have with slavery and servage, rather than by the officials ruling the city wanting to leave the civilization that's ensuring their military protection against the unhappy local population and providing them with all sort of key trade goods.
I always thought that "tile culture" was the shorthand for "tile population".
Perhaps the separatism modifier given by soldiers should be made dependent on the city's population. I think that's a change that's elegant in its simplicity that would improve many situations, not just new cities.
I think an even easier change would be to forbid cities under 5 to rise up on their own (only to tag along), in the same vein as cities under 5 don't lose pop to epidemics. Would be easy to remember too.
Also, whoever made the model of the Fekete Sereg deserves a medal for the details, not only it represents the iconic variety of the army (showcasing 3 different types of soldiers) but also, one of em has a firearm that looks like a hand cannon:clap:I would have preferred a cooler looking gun (considering the already present arquebusier got a nicer and bigger gun) but I guess that's the more accurate portrayal they could go for.
Thanks, I consulted quite a lot of sources when I worked on it, for an authentic look. The guns correspond to the ones I saw in the illustrations; they would normally be fired from a pavise, but unfortunately I don't have a corresponding animation I could use, so the guy just hauls the pavise with him.
Under the theory you give as a justification, the american colonies of England would all have revolted in the 1600s to join the native indians, because there wasn't 200K english soldiers guarding each colony...
And they actually did in the early days! Some of the early colonies, after running into initial troubles, would go over to live with the natives. That's probably what happened to Roanoke. The main reason why it didn't happened more is due to the native societies themselves collapsing and dying out due to devastating epidemics.
@pecheneg, I enthusiatically enjoy reading these erudite and niche historical "footnotes" from you! :)
So do I, and I must confess that I sometimes intentionally "feed" you a topic to have your comments on it. ;)
Considering how clunky the system is, I'd probably be better turning it off completely.
As did I - remember, it is off by default!
City Conquering
I feel that conquered cities are too functional. In the past, after conquering several cities I usually had to enter a reconstruction period to let the conquered cities come into use as I build them back up. This led to a very organic rhythm of alternatively growing the empire then maturing the empire and things felt pretty balanced. This time, the new cities were up and running right away. The surviving buildings gave enough happiness that there wasn't the typical starvation period where the population plummets, so instead of having the city reduce to 4 citizens, two of which are too angry to cooperate, I would have a fully cooperative 6 or more citizens off the bat. And having the walls be able to rebuild right away turned each conquered city into an immediate bastion. Usually I really have to invest in defending a conquered city but I didn't feel that this time, just stuck some irregulars there and moved on. There wasn't much to deter me, or others, from just conquering all we wanted.
In reply to this and further discussion below it: what if we'd be more selective on what building types likely get destroyed and what don't? It could both reduce the frustration of conquering a wasteland and still necessitate substantial investment.
I know, I know, the elephant in the room is the AI (not) being able to use these bonuses effectively. But I think that's a problem that ought to be addressed directly at this point. I know that's a big ask, but I think that's something the stack system, with it's ubiquitious influence, needs. Though if the bonuses line up with the ways AI uses those units already, maybe it's not as big of a problem as imagined.
Well, if that's a request to me, then I will readily confess that I am unable to address the stack AI on my own. I simply do not have enough skills and knowledge to do so, and by a rather large margin. I'd love to, but I simply can't.
Non-Forest Skirmishers
I brought this up before but I don't think anyone responded to it. Desert-based civs (and some others) have skirmishers that don't get any forest bonuses. While I like the flavor, in practice it amounts to them not being able to use forests for defense while most other civs and barbarians can. Can their skirmishers get at least a +25% bonus to attacking in forests? That's not enough to make the +50% defense go away entirely, but it makes the attack feasible. Or alternatively, maybe forest skirmishers should only get forest bonuses while the other skirmishers get hill bonuses, or something like that. I know non-forest skirmishers are currently cheaper, but being able to make 7 skirmishers for the prices of 6 doesn't balance against not being able to deal with enemy stacks sitting on forests while those enemy stacks can deal with yours sitting in forests.
I didn't address them specifically yet, but I do remember this.
Agreed. However, espionage has always been problematic ever since vanilla. Trying to streamline it effectively in a major mod like RI is a royal PITA.
Very true. As a later-added system, I feel it wasn't really all that well thought-out in vanilla.
If you are interested, over in the mods forums, there is a mod-comp called Super Spies. If you have a bit of modding skills, you should be able to merge it in and have a bit of fun. Also, if your interested, Platy has some excellent python mod comps that could make your game more enjoyable should you wish. I highly recommend you take a look.
Is Super Spies any good balance-wise? Should I take a closer look at it?
Here I might be able to offer something more concrete than merely my subjective preference or mere anecdotal experience. On the note of the latter, I will mention briefly though that I did test modifying this and played several entire games with much more punishing stack aid penalties (primarily, reducing first strikes from Tier III and upwards, so that especially overcrowded, classic SoDs were totally uncompetitive against medium stacks which consequently had to be more specialized. Interestingly, the AI seemed perfectly conscious of where to cap these, and was generally more fond of more scattered and smaller stacks. Whether it's directly "aware" of the penalties or not, Karadoc's AI seemed to know how to work with it appropriately in light of the user modification.
What are the specific values that you used?
But doesn't that defeat the point of them being specialized, as the same argument applies to these when an enemy is in a desert? They both have 2 movement cost, and often have to be traversed (deserts being no exception with Totestra's love of Earth-like large central deserts).
Deserts are both generally less common and more importantly less likely to have around your cities than forest most of the time (as one would likely avoid settling in a desert, given options), so I understand how these are not an equal
Visual variant for a Hungarian Bowman (4)
Noted.
Hm... Could you gradually lay out the functions as mod components? I would be very grateful. People often make great mechanics in their mods. After which they leave and... And the new generation can only look at the mysterious artifacts left by the ancient masters with a hungry look. Thinking about how cool it might look to combine the work that has ALREADY been done.
I must mention here that RI already includes a lot of Platy's python stuff. Even the current separatism implementation is very very loosely based on his original component (though it's so much of a Ship of Theseus at this point, I'm not sure any original code remains).
 
Agreed. However, espionage has always been problematic ever since vanilla. Trying to streamline it effectively in a major mod like RI is a royal PITA.
If you are interested, over in the mods forums, there is a mod-comp called Super Spies. If you have a bit of modding skills, you should be able to merge it in and have a bit of fun. Also, if your interested, Platy has some excellent python mod comps that could make your game more enjoyable should you wish. I highly recommend you take a look.
I've seen the superspy mod, but it increases the complexity too much and I think it disadvantages the A.I.. The mechanics as they are in R.I. It can be fine, we just need some incentive to make it more useful, and make it a real alternative to war and technological research. Thanks for the advice anyway
 
If I understand your suggestion properly, it's about introducing a separate lineup of defensive city-only units?
Yes, the introduction of a separate line of special "garrison" troops in this case is one of the options. By the way, in the field and during the siege of foreign fortresses, fortress rifles were used to shoot enemy gunners and other interesting things, but this is a separate, very lyrical topic. Well, the most obvious thing is that you can locally play with the characteristics of fortress artillery. In reality, cast-iron guns were cheaper than bronze ones at times, for example. There are many options.
Naturally, this is in case of necessity to strengthen protection when changing game mechanics. Аn inseparable pair of "me + an auto-translator" can be very easily misunderstood :crazyeye:.
So do I, and I must confess that I sometimes intentionally "feed" you a topic to have your comments on it. ;)
:) I'm glad you liked it.
I must mention here that RI already includes a lot of Platy's python stuff. Even the current separatism implementation is very very loosely based on his original component (though it's so much of a Ship of Theseus at this point, I'm not sure any original code remains).
Yes, his understanding of separatism also somewhat confuses me, let's just say. For the whole experience of the 1980s and 90s teaches that its intensity in the USSR grew, including, in parallel with the fall in the number of sausages. There are some reflections on this, but nothing particularly interesting.
 
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Well, this mod strives for historical accuracy and this is a very reasonable position. The real story is the best and most interesting 4X game. The hit of the season. In particular, because it is a total "replayability", unpredictability and a lot of drive. I understand your penchant for "meditative" quiet play. But for me personally and, I think, for many, one of the most attractive features of RI is the constant rebel movement with the need to monitor sudden changes and respond promptly to them. At the same time, there were still not enough sudden blitzkriegs from yesterday's bearish corners and steep peaks of yesterday's hegemons, which are rich in real history.
Realism is great, but blind obedience to it is not. RI, while doing a great job of realism, already makes a lot of sacrifices in terms of gameplay. Enough so that I'd say that RI is less about realism and more about immersion.

But anyway, my comment wasn't about realism or lack thereof in RI. It was about you responding to my posts in a way that ignores what I was trying to say, and I feel you can do better in that regard. In addition to citing history, maybe you can make historically accurate suggestions that would address the issues I was presenting. But to take what I said, ignore the intentions behind it, and then leverage it to a make history lecture just makes me feel unheard. I would appreciate it if you could put more effort into engaging with the substance of what I was saying when you respond to my posts.

I also think it's incorrect to label my play style as meditative or quiet--I've mentioned multiple times that I like fast expansion, engaging with other civs, and having to think about how I manage my empire. My want is for a game that's more empire management than just a military logistics simulator, but being able to take a city and immediately put it to use without any considerations makes it more of such a simulator.

I can't think of a way you could provide any meaningful help, but this does prompt me to take a closer look. Maybe see if it's reproducibly all the time for archers in your case and if it occurs for any other unit classes.
Huh, weird. So far every time I looked at the archer page it always listed as replacing the composite bowmen, but now that I'm trying to reproduce it, it shows up correctly. I'll keep an eye out for when it happens again and see if there's any trigger to it. I'm guessing it might be an in-game memory problem where it gets confused? I'll report back if I can find anything useful.

I'm not sure "pay big" at the time when it first becomes available is accurate. Civic upkeep can pick up quite a bit by late medieval but IIRC it's almost nonexistent early on, regardless of the actual civics.
I actually just hit Priesthood and adopted Civil Religion in my new game, so I can offer some real world numbers! Well, virtual world numbers. Right now, at turn 220, 1300 BC, I have to pay 3 GPT for Civil Religion, compared to 0 for the low maintenance civics (though I suspect they're factional, since autocracy and traditional custom are showing up as 0 GPT, but tribalism is shown as 1). That might seem small, but at a time where military is critical for defense, every gold counts. Maybe it's a fair price for what you get out of Civil Religion, but it sure would be nice to have an option that let me get that +1 happiness without costing me more than 1 GPT, even if it offers no other benefits.

Well, what monasteries certainly didn't do was they didn't directly contribute to state activities, by paying taxes, providing manpower and such, and to me it feels an important distinction. The Celtic FMs are a relatively special case and are closely modelled on Ireland specifically, where monasteries held very considerable power and often acted as independent actors in politics. Irish monasteries had something quite uniquein the form of "permeable monasticism", where people could move both in and, more importantly, out of monastic structure at any stage in life, unlike elsewhere where getting into a monastery was basically a permanent deal. That, and the outsized economic role of abbeys, basically led to a very special status of monasteries in Ireland, more or less on par with traditional feudal lords.
Ahh, that's cool to know. I didn't understand how impactful they were in Ireland, so that aspect was lost on me. I just assumed they provided shelter in times of need, and weren't so inherently involved as described.

I agree, but such a Judaism that became a common religion among historical powers would probably look much differently from the one IRL - at the very least, it would probably, by necessity, have been a missionary religion. Which is a good reason to keep some "generic" common traits for religions in-game that they might lack IRL (missionaries, monasteries etc).
Good point, I agree with that.

Well, synagogues aren't exactly temples, are they? From what I know about Judaism, it is very particular about only having one Temple at a time (at most, obviously, since for the last almost 2000 years there are none). Synagogues aren't treated as temples. But that's semantics of course.
"Temple" and "Synagogue" are used interchagabely, and at least in the US, people say "I'm going to temple" much more frequently than they say "I'm going to the Synagogue". That's also reflected in their names, such as "Temple Beth Shalom" or some lofty name like that. In Hebrew the term is Bet Knesset, and from what I'm able to google, "Synagogue" comes from a greek translation of that (and apparently "shul" is just the yiddish term, I didn't know that).

Looking at the wikipedia article for temples, it offers this:
Since the 18th century, Jews in Western and Central Europe began to apply the name temple, borrowed from the French where it was used to denote all non-Catholic prayer houses, to synagogues. The term became strongly associated with Reform institutions, in some of which both congregants and outsiders associated it with the elimination of the prayers for the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple, though this was not the original meaning—traditional synagogues named themselves "temple" over a century before the advent of Reform, and many continued to do so after.[17] In American parlance, temple is often synonymous with synagogue, but especially non-Orthodox ones.

Having only one temple rings a bell, but I think that's more to do with having only one proper Holy Place. It's in reference the temple in Jerusalem, Beit Ha'Mikdash, which basically translates to "house of the holy". While it's often called "the Temple", I think that is more in line with calling a place "The City", despite there being many cities.

But yeah, for game terms, just semantics, depending on how we interpret "temple". In Civ, I just take it to mean a place of worship.

Unhappiness from unhealth feels wrong to me. The systems were always distinct and without any direct interaction. I am more ambivalent on separatism bits, as I don't have an opinion on separatism balance. I guess separatism from unhealth can go.
Thanks. I'm curious how this will affect AI civs, since they tend to build cities in unhealthy areas without much consideration for it.

I think an even easier change would be to forbid cities under 5 to rise up on their own (only to tag along), in the same vein as cities under 5 don't lose pop to epidemics. Would be easy to remember too.
I like that. I'm slightly worried about cities growing to 5 population and instantly revolting, but maybe that's not an actual problem.

In reply to this and further discussion below it: what if we'd be more selective on what building types likely get destroyed and what don't? It could both reduce the frustration of conquering a wasteland and still necessitate substantial investment.
That would probably be the simplest thing to do. If people feel very strongly against building destruction, I think there are other options too, though more involved. One other simple solution with separatism is to get rid of the buiding providing -500 separatism and just forcing the player to deal with a city that's eager to revolt, but in trade for that having a very functional city. That won't help in non-separatism games, though, but it will provide the additional emphasis on culture generation that has been brought up. Maybe creative leaders could get +100% culture generated in cities with 50% or more foreign culture or something like that, turning them into a good post-conquest setup.

Well, if that's a request to me, then I will readily confess that I am unable to address the stack AI on my own. I simply do not have enough skills and knowledge to do so, and by a rather large margin. I'd love to, but I simply can't.
I know. And as I expressed in response to AspiringScholar, my initial critique was probably more passion than reason and I need to revisit my own thoughts on it. I might try to recreate AspSch's changes and see how the AI handles it.

I didn't address them specifically yet, but I do remember this.
Wonderful, thank you. :)

Deserts are both generally less common and more importantly less likely to have around your cities than forest most of the time (as one would likely avoid settling in a desert, given options), so I understand how these are not an equal
Funny thing is, Deserts are still very traversable once you get a few roads down, and that happens pretty early on in games. I've been tempted to see what it would be like if Roads and Paved Roads couldn't be built on desert tiles (until some tech was unlocked, maybe). Probably won't make a gameplay impact, but it would make deserts feel more authentically desert if the only way to connect with them was through the occasional river that passes through or cart paths.
 
Pigs from camps don't count as resource you have until you research Animal Husbandry. Once you have Animal Husbandry, you get the pig resource regardless of whether it's a camp or a pasture.

I've been liking the pig camps, by the way!
 
Is Super Spies any good balance-wise? Should I take a closer look at it?
Mostly. I had to adjust some values to make it more balanced for the AI. Because, you know, the AI is an idiot.. LOL.
My biggest takeaway from SS is that spies would go back to their originating cities instead of all the way back to the Capitol. Oh, and the more eclectic spy ops were kind of fun as well .
've seen the superspy mod, but it increases the complexity too much and I think it disadvantages the A.I.. The mechanics as they are in R.I. It can be fine, we just need some incentive to make it more useful, and make it a real alternative to war and technological research. Thanks for the advice anyway
Agreed. TBH, it took me quite awhile going through all the XML and hunting down issues, especially for the AI. I almost gave up several times and said screw it. However, my youngest was adamant that we try to complete everything and joined in assisting me with all the changes. The final result was well done for the the scenario I was creating for one of Dacub's TTT mods.
IMO, for a mod as big as RI, SS will take some time to merge successfully. Will it be worth it? That will be subjective, depending on changes. I, personally, think it would assist the espionage in the game. But it will take awhile to do all the XML tweaks.
 
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