Realism Invictus

[[Y]]

Maybe revert the ancient era tech costs back but increase the costs of classical era techs or revert the costs of just 2-3 starting rows of techs?

My take is that ancient era techs should be split up so that there more ancient era techs overall, but a greater total research cost than at current. That way the early unlocks that actually provide the initial game content can be researched at a fair rate, but with less immediate impact, and the ancient era will still feel longer overall.

This gives the opportunity to separate discovery of limestone from building Stonehedge/Pyramids, and maybe push the Greath Baths later too. This would have a double benefit as it's very difficult to build these wonders on higher difficulties, since the AI already starts with techs needed to reach those wonders, and has the research bonus and hammer bonus to close on them before the player, at a time when the player has no real means to challenge that advantage. It would be nice to feel like I could actually try for them.

Also an opportunity to add more religion/cult related techs.

I think the core of it is that the ancient era felt slow because there was so little to do in it. The first 100-200 turns fly by because you move a unit, click end turn, and repeat. There are very few decisions to do or interactions to have that flesh out the gameplay at this time, so it feels shorter than later eras. Increasing the research costs of techs just means you're doing that same unengaging loop for longer. There might be more real time passed before you see the classical era splash screen, but the gameplay isn't any more interesting or engaging. The fix doesn't even have to be a longer ancient era, it just needs to make the existing ancient era have more to do. That's easier said than done (and might even spoil the feeling of a fledgling civilization), so I still feel the best option is to make longer total research through a greater number of cheaper techs.

 

[giorgio1234]

I meant that, once the problem has occurred, it remains even if you reload the game, until you exit the game.
I say this because I reloaded the savegame several times yesterday, and each time it gave the situation I reported.
Anyway, I will be even more careful in the next games, in order to see if I can understand what triggers the problem.

Hi @Walter Hawkwood,
I started a quick game on a small map with an easy level, in order to focus more on the problem.
I reached a situation that is cleary wrong, this time I restarted the civ4 executable and, just to be sure, even the pc , so it should be reproducible.
It seems that the problem is in the swordmen, even before getting the gunpowder.
Unfortunately, even this time I was unable to catch the exact moment in which the problem occurs (it seems that every time I get caught up by the playgame ).
Anyway, maybe this time you can understand something. I attach two savegames.
In the first one there are 7 swordmen in play, but if you try to build a new one you see a cost of -15% (negative).
In the second one (a few turns later) there are still 7 swordmen in play, but the construction cost has gone to -60% (even more negative). Also, if you try to upgrade the 4 wardbands located in Pella to swordmen, you will see that the upgrade cost is ridiculously low, and after the upgrade the cost of building swordmen has gone to 0%.
I hope that with these you can understand where the problem is.

 

[sahbaz]

I have a question about aliances since they are enabled now in 3.7 update, i am playing for a while now and i don't see option to form aliance with anyone, can someone tell me what exactly is needed to see this option available ?

 

[Major Tom]

The AI’s war decisions are quite questionable now. Progressed to 1500AD and during the last 100 turns or so, I have had 3 incoming stacks from far away dowing out of the blue. Pleased relationship, no shared borders, Monarch level. My military is top notch so beating them easily from cities and surrounding hills. I don’t complain. Lots of generals, promotions and cash from peace deals.

Don’t they have any filter to avoid such remarkable losing decisions? especially when they have more juicy targets near their homeland.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Actually somewhat recently, I had to take some pause to admire the light glinting on these in particular, and was surprised that that was somehow doable within Civ IV's engine and after all of the descaling necessary when porting a lot of the higher quality unit models. I'm not sure how you managed that but they look great!

Shiny metallic things are one of the bits that Civ 4 engine can actually do quite well, as it's one of the few with a dedicated shader.

However I kind of agree that before 3.7 the early game (ancient+classical) used to be over quite fast. But it seems that the starting technologies that give options to do and reveal resources need to stay relatively cheap. Maybe revert the ancient era tech costs back but increase the costs of classical era techs or revert the costs of just 2-3 starting rows of techs?

Yeah, making the first few rows cheaper was something I am also leaning towards.

Also an opportunity to add more religion/cult related techs.

As covered earlier, I will not be adding any new techs, as I'm not getting new quotes.

I started a quick game on a small map with an easy level, in order to focus more on the problem.
I reached a situation that is cleary wrong, this time I restarted the civ4 executable and, just to be sure, even the pc , so it should be reproducible.
It seems that the problem is in the swordmen, even before getting the gunpowder.
Unfortunately, even this time I was unable to catch the exact moment in which the problem occurs (it seems that every time I get caught up by the playgame ).
Anyway, maybe this time you can understand something. I attach two savegames.
In the first one there are 7 swordmen in play, but if you try to build a new one you see a cost of -15% (negative).
In the second one (a few turns later) there are still 7 swordmen in play, but the construction cost has gone to -60% (even more negative). Also, if you try to upgrade the 4 wardbands located in Pella to swordmen, you will see that the upgrade cost is ridiculously low, and after the upgrade the cost of building swordmen has gone to 0%.
I hope that with these you can understand where the problem is.

The good thing is, this time it's an actual effect that exists within a save and I can reproduce that on my side. The bad thing is, still no idea why or when that happens, as you admit yourself.

I have a question about aliances since they are enabled now in 3.7 update, i am playing for a while now and i don't see option to form aliance with anyone, can someone tell me what exactly is needed to see this option available ?

Did you research the Imperialism tech already?

The AI’s war decisions are quite questionable now. Progressed to 1500AD and during the last 100 turns or so, I have had 3 incoming stacks from far away dowing out of the blue. Pleased relationship, no shared borders, Monarch level. My military is top notch so beating them easily from cities and surrounding hills. I don’t complain. Lots of generals, promotions and cash from peace deals.

Don’t they have any filter to avoid such remarkable losing decisions? especially when they have more juicy targets near their homeland.

"Now" is a strong word - I think they've been questionable since forever.

 

[Major Tom]

"Now" is a strong word - I think they've been questionable since forever.

Haha, good answer, can’t disagree. But in 3.7 AI seems to be more aggressive. Did you change anything in that regard?

 

[Takofloppa]

The AI’s war decisions are quite questionable now. Progressed to 1500AD and during the last 100 turns or so, I have had 3 incoming stacks from far away dowing out of the blue. Pleased relationship, no shared borders, Monarch level. My military is top notch so beating them easily from cities and surrounding hills. I don’t complain. Lots of generals, promotions and cash from peace deals.

Don’t they have any filter to avoid such remarkable losing decisions? especially when they have more juicy targets near their homeland.

Do you have by chance a save file somewhere before one of the war declarations? It kind of intrigues me, so I could take a look at it to at least understand what's going on there.

 

[AspiringScholar]

For my part regarding the ancient era, I find it quite preoccupying having to fight (sometimes bitterly) for contentiously premium city spots. The idea to add small quests sounds fun, but seldom am I bored during this phase, though I can only speak anecdotally of course.

On an unrelated note (and speaking of light glints), how about importing the water from Colonization into RI? It looks quite a lot better, and I would imagine should be easily done since they are built on the same engine.

 

[Ahnarras]

I will have to add my voice to AspiringScholar : I think that Ancient Era is already quite interesting enough, with the exploration and settling remplacing the micro-management of an empire that come later in the game.
Also all the fighting against barbarians (of course, that won't apply if you put single soldier on hill everywhere to void their spawning mecanism, but I don't do that and have usually a lot of tension from barbs even when they are not enraged).

Perhaps a bit anecdoctical, but Ancient Era is also the first thing a new player encounter when he wants to try this mod. For a beginner, there's already a lot of stuff going on, even more so if they are not familiar with the base game. Making them feel overhelm could make them miss a lot of good stuff later on ^^

 

[Takofloppa]

Also regarding potential quests, I'm not really a fan of this which is also why I very dislike that new narrative system in Civ7 they're pushing now - there are games where it works, but in Civ I don't like when something tells me to do X or Y to get Z as it derails me a bit from my own world I'm already immersed in. But it might be just my weirdness, so adding some checkbox to make it optional would probably solve this issue.

 

[Major Tom]

Do you have by chance a save file somewhere before one of the war declarations? It kind of intrigues me, so I could take a look at it to at least understand what's going on there.

Sorry no. The last DOW was from the Moroccan dude. My empire is on the top of the scoreboard with 13 cities. He was third with 6 cities. I will let you know next time it happens.

 

[Major Tom]

Also regarding potential quests, I'm not really a fan of this which is also why I very dislike that new narrative system in Civ7 they're pushing now - there are games where it works, but in Civ I don't like when something tells me to do X or Y to get Z as it derails me a bit from my own world I'm already immersed in. But it might be just my weirdness, so adding some checkbox to make it optional would probably solve this issue.

Agree, Events and goody huts off to level field in game and also better to analyse across games.

 

[sazhdapec]

My empire is on the top of the scoreboard with 13 cities.

I think I've found the reason! AI is quite jealous in recent patches. If you want to be a scoreboard leader prepare for inevitable wars.

 

[Major Tom]

I think I've found the reason! AI is quite jealous in recent patches. If you want to be a scoreboard leader prepare for inevitable wars.

Right, that’s maybe the reason. The other was the Indonesian monkey (he looks like that), second on scoreboard with 7 cities. Here thou, we had different religions the first time and I refused a couple of requests. But still. After dumping his stack from the other continent, he slammed his transports in my frigates with 0.3% chance to win. I have checked ‘AI plays to win’ but that sort of kamikaze can’t be a winning strategy.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Did you change anything in that regard?

Not directly, but I suppose one of the countless bugfixes or balance changes might have led to some changes.

On an unrelated note (and speaking of light glints), how about importing the water from Colonization into RI? It looks quite a lot better, and I would imagine should be easily done since they are built on the same engine.

You would imagine that . In fact that's totally impossible, and a good example of how a better shader makes all the difference. The engine is not the same, but rather slightly updated in case of CivCol, and water shaders are among the most notable differences.

Also regarding potential quests, I'm not really a fan of this which is also why I very dislike that new narrative system in Civ7 they're pushing now - there are games where it works, but in Civ I don't like when something tells me to do X or Y to get Z as it derails me a bit from my own world I'm already immersed in. But it might be just my weirdness, so adding some checkbox to make it optional would probably solve this issue.

Which is why I was thinking of something like "build your own civ" version, where you'd pick one of 7 (by the number of AI flavours, to guide AI leaders towards flavourful builds) objectives to pursue to get the lasting effects you want, rather than being handed one specific without your own input.

Right, that’s maybe the reason. The other was the Indonesian monkey (he looks like that), second on scoreboard with 7 cities. Here thou, we had different religions the first time and I refused a couple of requests. But still. After dumping his stack from the other continent, he slammed his transports in my frigates with 0.3% chance to win. I have checked ‘AI plays to win’ but that sort of kamikaze can’t be a winning strategy.

For some reason, people think that checking "AI plays to win" will make AI smarter. Often it's the opposite, as AI players pick a specific victory type and pursue it to the detriment of all else. If there was a magical button that made AI play better, why would I make it toggleable? AI plays differently with it on, and not necessarily better - and definitely less to my liking, which is why it's off by default.

 

[[Y]]

I know the message has been heard, but I wanted to share an example of what it's been like for me.

Here's a screenshot of my current game, turn 221:

Spoiler :

There's simply no commerce whatsoever in the starting area to fuel research. Best I can do is 1 commerce from a tile. There's that gold tile up north, but I didn't know about it when settling the cities, and it could have made a difference. But it would have left me without the prime timber to the west, which I wanted in order to be able to build enough militia to have some power rating--and even with that, I'm still significantly behind in power. Ethiopia is doing worse, but they are at war with China, which is the current powerhouse in the world. I could have tried to get the pearls for commerce, but that would mean needing to research storytelling, building a circle, waiting for border growth, and then waiting to research fishing and waiting to build some worker boats. Which is all time not spent researching towards pastures, farms, and mines.

My completed research techs at current are: Toolmaking, Woodworking, Early Metalworking, The Wheel, and Animal Husbandry. That's all I've managed to get by turn 221. I've since been working towards Storytelling so that I can get some storyteller circles in play, but it's been taking ages (And I mean that literally, in game terms: It's 9 turns away from removing ahead of time penalties for Classical era techs). At one point it was sitting at 100+ turns of research, before I set my capital to build Local Crafts, after I felt I finally had enough military to hold up against barbarian raids and mitigate AI warmongering (if I even have enough to impact that).

Meanwhile, the AI have built Stonehenge (completed on turn 49! I never even had the opportunity to compete), Pyramids, Great Bath, Moai Statues, Nazca Lines, Statue of Zeus, and Ishtar Gates, and have founded Hinduism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. The Celts are already researching weapon smithing. Peeking into Worldbuilder, the greeks currently have 6 cities, the French 7, China 7, Ethiopia is sitting at 3 after losing one to China, and the Celts have 6. Elsewhere in the world the US at 11 cities. And I'm here with 3 and struggling to maintain even a 10% research rate.

I've almost set up a trade network between Qart-Hadash and Hippo Regius, but it's taken a long time because any waterway connections would require fishing and/or sailing to enable, and connecting by road requires that I research the wheel, then spend time building paths, which can be 25+ turns on a single tile when you have to go through forests.

There's no hope for me in this game, and this is what every game has been like. Pre 3.7 this would have been a very playable start, but right now even trying is a waste of time. Maybe if I went first for Storytelling it could have been different, but that would have meant it would take me longer to get access to Militia and be able to hold off barbarians. And if going for storyteller is the only practical choice, with every other choice being a mistake, then it's very upsetting gameplay.

 

[Major Tom]

And if going for storyteller is the only practical choice, with every other choice being a mistake, then it's very upsetting gameplay.

Well, trade routes helps a lot. Connecting my cities is my top priority. To ease this, city placement are quite compact. Tile sharing is of great help. Chopping more trees is good too making a riverside grass land tile for an extra commerce. Often find myself prioritising the techs for river and coastal connections. And then sprint for writing for foreign trade routes and the juicy tech rebates of 40-60-100%.
Story telling usually later and that for border pops foremost.

Your screenshot shows you are working forest tiles for two food and one hammer. Why not a tile with one food and one commerce if needed.

The context is monarch level since I am new to this mod, but play imm or deity in base game. Not sure what level you are playing?

Edit: Is all your commerce from palace going to city maintenance or do you have too many units and away costs? Could be interesting to see your financial advisor screenshot. And do your capital build help at all here? 10% of a few hammers = 0 commerce and 0 science, I think.

 

[[Y]]

The context is monarch level since I am new to this mod, but play imm or deity in base game. Not sure what level you are playing?

I'm playing on Immortal.

Well, trade routes helps a lot. Connecting my cities is my top priority. To ease this, city placement are quite compact. Tile sharing is of great help. Chopping more trees is good too making a riverside grass land tile for an extra commerce. Often find myself prioritising the techs for river and coastal connections. And then sprint for writing for foreign trade routes and the juicy tech rebates of 40-60-100%.

I tend to play wide, and like larger empires, so making my first few cities compact and overlapping isn't a great long term strategy. It'll help in the short term, but mean that for the rest of the game, I'm stuck with two cities that don't have great yields, that are placed suboptimally, and that I have to pay upkeep on.

Your screenshot shows you are working forest tiles for two food and one hammer. Why not a tile with one food and one commerce if needed.

Edit: Is all your commerce from palace going to city maintenance or do you have too many units and away costs? Could be interesting to see your financial advisor screenshot. And do your capital build help at all here? 10% of a few hammers = 0 commerce and 0 science, I think.

Currently the commerce is going towards city and unit maintenance. And the Local Crafts helps more than you'd think. Before that I was running on 0% research with no excess income, with it I was able to go up to 10%.

Here's the financial advisor:

Spoiler :

I do have a lot of units, but that's necessary in RI where the AI is very happy to declare war on you if you seem weak (and oftentimes even if not). Reducing my army for financial gain will mean I likely end up with an enemy stack on my doorstep soon enough.

For context, since I'm not sure how long you've been playing, a few months back an update was made to lengthen ancient era. Before that civs would regularly hit classical techs before the intended time, and I believe the intention of the change was to prevent that. So by making ancient era techs more expensive, the ancient era lasts longer, but also has the side effect that it takes longer to get to the bare necessities of building a civilization. Some examples of the increase:

33 -> 45 (~36% increase) - Fishing, Storytelling, The Wheel, Agriculture, Toolmaking
45 -> 52 (~15 increase) - Woodworking, Stonecutting, Weaving, Pottery
55 -> 65 (~20% increase) - Early Metalworking, Roadbuilding, Sailing

This also came at a time when adjustments were made that had AI not prioritize writing (which allows open borders) and to not be as amenable to open borders even when it's an option, so the tech transfer bonuses that were previously abundant were cut down significantly. This lead to the situation above: comically long research times for the player (The AI, with all of its bonuses from difficulty, has a much easier time weathering the changes). So before you might research Storytelling with a +60% bonus at a cost of 33, but now often researching it with low to no bonus at a cost of 45.

That's a very drastic change, especially when the most affected techs are the ones earliest ones, and both give you access to buildings/improvements needed to manage your economy, and reveal resources that can be useful for the economy even when not improved (Early Metalworking revealing gold and silver, Weaving revealing silk, cotton, and dye, Mysticism revealing tobacco and hemp, etc). That's a lot of compounding effects. It might not be as big of a deal on monarch (haven't given it a try), but on immortal it's felt quite heavily, at least for me.

I'm sure there's more I can do to micromanage to improve the situation, but that's not the point. The point is that these effects were never the goal, and at least some of us find them to be detrimental to the gameplay experience. That's already been discussed, and I just wanted to add actual examples in case anyone was wondering about it.

 

[Ahnarras]

Hmm... Having half your treasury in units and the other half in cities upkeep is indeed bleak, but I'm agreeing with you on the fact that there's probably not much you could have done to prevent that.
If I would have to play that map (but IF are easy, as they say), I would have waited before placing the third city to place it close to the goldmine and use that ressource to fuel the development.

But I also understand that waiting to explore the map means being late to settle your third city, and I'm unsure how much that would have impacted your game on the long-term.

Perhaps the main problem isn't the changes, but your difficulty level ? After all, Noble is suppose to be the "normal" difficulty, and Immortal is already a few steps ahead on that if I remember correctly.
It would makes sense that playing in "ultra-hard difficulty" makes some bad start just impossible to win. It doesn't make the game unplayable, as you can still aims for another kind of personnal victory condition (if only by trying to survive to the end game date?).

To make a parallel, it would be like launching a Dark Soul game and going buttnaked in for the challenge, then wondering why it's so hard.
Perhaps try to tone down the difficulty level, or reroll your map until you have a somewhat decent start ?
(I hope I'm not sounding too harsh, not trying to be condescendant but just trying to offers solution. Christmas was a period of new patch/mods for a lot of games I'm playing, and it's a mess on all of them, trying to adapt to the new changes ^^)

 

[[Y]]

(I hope I'm not sounding too harsh, not trying to be condescendant but just trying to offers solution. Christmas was a period of new patch/mods for a lot of games I'm playing, and it's a mess on all of them, trying to adapt to the new changes ^^

Not coming off too harsh at all, but I do think you're missing the spirit of what I'm trying to say.

I'm comparing the experience playing on immortal now to the experience of playing on immortal before these changes. It is now much harder to progress at the start of the game then it was before. If this outcome was the intention of the changes, then I would agree that going back down to emperor would be the right approach. But the intention wasn't to add more obstacles, or to slow down the player compared to the AI, etc. The goal was to give the ancient era more time overall, so it doesn't feel like it's over before it really began, and to bring research rates more in alignment with where they should be historically. Those are both good goals, but the strenuous economy is an unintended byproduct of the implementation. Ideally the goals would be fulfilled without the economic strain and allow the difficulty levels to remain at their preexisting tuning.

It might even be worth undoing the ancient era tech cost changes and see if the changes to AI tech prioritization and open border logic are alone enough to properly align the tech rate with historical accuracy.

For fairness, I only started playing immortal back in August or September, so I do expect to be doing poorly. But not this poorly, and I wasn't doing this poorly on immortal before the various changes impacting rate. So I feel this is less a reflection on my skill level and more a reflection of the changes, with the question of whether the impact the changes had are desirable.