Realism Invictus

[tebriz]

My game keeps crashing at the same turn in the very early stage (around 2500 BC) since the latest SVN update. I’ve barely ever experienced a crash with this mod before, so it’s likely related to the recent performance improvements introduced in the latest update.

 

[Ahnarras]

Not at all yes I get you I was never the type of guy to bother so much about these things, but once you step into the domain of high difficulties you can't avoid checking that everything is running to its best. Yet I agree, lower difficulties are still fun and very relaxing. The main reason to play on high difficulties is not only that the opponents get stronger, but also that it forces its system upon you, you don't get many bonuses so you have to go use whatever the game throws at you and carry ahead with it, because there's so much variety and pretty much any strategy for any scenario on which you find yourself, it's very entertaining to try to succeed into a world where everything can go wrong. In lower difficulties you'll usually be able to attain victory even if you make countless mistakes along the way, can't say the same about the opposite case.

That doesn't meant it's a necessarily superior experience, just that it's a very different one. They're very distinct from each other in the fact that you just can't apply the same strategies expecting the same results. I went higher as soon as I got bored of playing on noble and prince, but I'm sure that once I reach deity and manage to master it (probably in 50 years lol) I'll just go back to settler and continue having fun. You should do the same, no reason to change what already works right?

I just want to take a moment to thanks this amazing community we have playing this mod. On every, and I mean EVERY other online gaming community I've played on for the last 10 years, trying to even suggest that I'm playing suboptimal (or no-meta) and that I'm okay with staying in lower difficulty would have me flamed and taunted to oblivion. Here ? Your answer is amical and supporting.

Thanks you

Smartmap do give you a lot of single-tiles of coastal water - I'm not so sure about the RI Planet_generator - mostly because I can't remember - but also because it doesn't matter for me as I only use those map-generators to make a startmap I can "work" with as I want. My maps are all "handmade" and that "job" often takes 10-12-14 days before I'm satisfied. This "strange" feeling I have for my maps - that they have to look nice (call it beautiful - that might be a better word) is also the reason why I want to have both the original CoastalWalterTile and the new Freshwater Lake. They look different - they have different yields - and the features have a lot of settings the terrain doesn't have - it's "just" to find a good mix.

I would love to play such fine-tuned map myself, but I just can't push me to do it myself : discovering the map is one of my favorite part of the game, be it early on foot with my surrounding or later in Renaissance with world exploration and finding new continents / islands. Having to manually edit each map before playing it would void that. But it does make me wonder : would there be a way to add some of yours (if you are willing to share, of course) map into the base files just like we have scenario ?

I'm asking more for the sake of it / for the others, as I'm already investing too much time in R:I to justify a new game before a few years, but it sounds cool just to imagine a file with a few dozens handpicked maps.

Nothing RI ever changed. Probably a vanilla thing, probably stemming from the fact that Wonders are being competed for, so the game "activates" it at the beginning of the game turn (not an educated opinion, just a guess).

Yeah things tends to happens in a certain order at the beginning of your turn. I just had a bad surprise with that : I was building my 2 last Monastery on my newly obtained cities, and was in parallel researching the Humanist Thought (which make those building unconstructible). Well, despite having the building supposedly "finish" on the same turn that I should discover the Tech, the Tech was still considered discovered "first" in that turn, and I've had a pop-up telling me the production of my monasteries couldn't finish.

Maybe. But generally, they are cheap for a good reason. You are supposed to have a lot of them - and that definitely goes for the per unit increase. Irregulars should normally form the bulk of your army.

Does Irregulars cost less in maintenance/gold per turn compared to regulars units ?
I'm usually going for Regulars units everywhere in my cities, as I found Irregulars to be quite weak and easily destroyed by an invading army. I only use them to flood ennemy lands with numbers at the start of an invasion.
I get that I could have "more" of them in my cities to compensate, defending by numbers instead of quality, but I'm already struggling with gold as it is, so if Irregulars needs as much gold to maintain than a Regular I'm not sure it's worth it.

Also : Logistic. Is it really a good idea to have 15-20 Irregulars instead of 7-10 Regulars in a city ? Would the number compensate the Logistic malus ?

I don't know; I have to digest this one properly. The balance implications need to be considered. Also, my previous statement on them was far too Euro- and China-centric, and it was not quite as universal as I made it sound. Many other places, such as the Eastern Mediterranean, never saw prominent battle axe use.

I think that having skirmisher + spearman + barracks + autocray already made Bronze Working quite a worthy tech.
Putting axeman on a separate, later tech seems the best move to me : they are costier and stronger, making them the "best" unit of their era. It's only logical, from a gameplay perspective at least, that they come after.

Again, why? Transfer of ideas happened much easier than transfer of bulk goods - for instance, writing has only been separately invented 2 or 3 times IRL, everyone else got it "through tech transfer". And separating trade routes from resource trade is just weird - if one can transport strategic quantities of ores or stone, other goods should definitely be possible too.

I think it has more to do with how the world map is. As desert/tundra doesn't harm units, and AI seems to be eagier to open border with everyone, there is no real obstacle for a korean scout that want to go to spain or south africa.
But as you said, it's more of a "we people don't think ancient egyptian would trade with far-east civilization" whereas real world says otherwise.

The size is only used for World Maps and it's intentional that it's more punishing, as those are more resource-dense than a typical random map and as such the relative value of a single city is higher.

I knew it ! I was sure there was something fishy about how much of / I had in my empire !
So... Todo list : one point higher in difficulty & a random map with less ressources.

... Also start a twitch account or something so I can somewhat justify the numbers of hours I spend on this game.

 

[RezerCuid]

By the way, another glitch, or maybe it's intended that way, but in any case it's illogical Because on a huge world map, the cost of maintaining cities from their number is 2 times higher than on huge and giant maps. And the size of the card don't select
Maybe you need to put a giant map size there.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Oh, really? I only checked the very first technologies (their cost was not changed), so I thought the rest of the technologies is unchanged as well

Tech costs were lowered in a prior SVN revision (5482) in anticipation of the upcoming changes.

My game keeps crashing at the same turn in the very early stage (around 2500 BC) since the latest SVN update. I’ve barely ever experienced a crash with this mod before, so it’s likely related to the recent performance improvements introduced in the latest update.

Please share a save.

Does Irregulars cost less in maintenance/gold per turn compared to regulars units ?

No, they don't.

Also : Logistic. Is it really a good idea to have 15-20 Irregulars instead of 7-10 Regulars in a city ? Would the number compensate the Logistic malus ?

If you can afford to station 7-10 regulars per city, you're already well set. But for cities that don't need to be heavily defended (not on a hostile border etc), swapping those out for irregulars will be more effective at least production-wise.

By the way, another glitch, or maybe it's intended that way, but in any case it's illogical Because on a huge world map, the cost of maintaining cities from their number is 2 times higher than on huge and giant maps. And the size of the card don't select

Yes, intentional. You are supposed to have fewer cities on the Huge World map than on a huge random map, since it has 4x more civilisations.

 

[TheBirdMan]

I would love to play such fine-tuned map myself, but I just can't push me to do it myself : discovering the map is one of my favorite part of the game, be it early on foot with my surrounding or later in Renaissance with world exploration and finding new continents / islands. Having to manually edit each map before playing it would void that. But it does make me wonder : would there be a way to add some of yours (if you are willing to share, of course) map into the base files just like we have scenario ?

Maybe it will work - read this first (specially the "disclaimer" in post #11 about distance between cities).
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/r-i-my-personal-spin-off.683863/page-7
If I did it right back in X-mas time last year, you should be able to download the map from post #12

Edit a couple of hours later: Also remember, that I might have (no - I know I have) placed resources on hilltops or other places that you cannot get hold of because that location is different from the default value and thus, you have no improvement to utilize that resource.

 

[tebriz]

Please share a save.

Here it is. The crash happens few turns later (you can put it on autoplay for 10 turns and it will crash).

 

[tebriz]

Tech costs were lowered in a prior SVN revision (5482) in anticipation of the upcoming changes.

Ah, in that case, the reduction still doesn’t seem sufficient to me . The rate of tech transfer in early game has been nerfed not just by lowering the tech transfer values directly, but also by making it dependent on having a trade connection.
I play with a +20% initial / +20% additional tech transfer rate, but I don’t feel that technological progress is too fast—in fact, it actually lags behind real historical timelines a bit. I’ve considered increasing the rate further, but I’m hesitant because once Paper and Scientific Method are discovered, the transfer rate would jump to +40%/+40%, which might be too much.

 

[tebriz]

By the way, another glitch, or maybe it's intended that way, but in any case it's illogical Because on a huge world map, the cost of maintaining cities from their number is 2 times higher than on huge and giant maps. And the size of the card don't select
Maybe you need to put a giant map size there.

The very same question was raised by me today. You can see the answer to my question few posts earlier. In case you want to lower maintenance for WorldMap scenario, you can do it by modifying
CivWorldInfo.xml - the very first map size there (if I am not wrong its name is “Special”).

 

[RezerCuid]

Thank you

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Here it is. The crash happens few turns later (you can put it on autoplay for 10 turns and it will crash).

Thanks, fixed it (and no, it had nothing to do with performance improvements, just some new AI evaluations). Uploaded the new revision that should be savegame-compatible.

 

[tebriz]

I play with a +20% initial / +20% additional tech transfer rate, but I don’t feel that technological progress is too fast—in fact, it actually lags behind real historical timelines a bit. I’ve considered increasing the rate further, but I’m hesitant because once Paper and Scientific Method are discovered, the transfer rate would jump to +40%/+40%, which might be too much.

An update on the said earlier - I have changed my mind after testing a few games today. I don’t know what exactly has been done to AI from tech transfer rate evaluation point of view, but AIs advance in technology much faster now I will lower tech transfer rate to 16%/16%. Let’s see what happens.

 

[Ahnarras]

If you can afford to station 7-10 regulars per city, you're already well set. But for cities that don't need to be heavily defended (not on a hostile border etc), swapping those out for irregulars will be more effective at least production-wise.

Yup, I've seen the tip saying the same on the loading screen and was "oh yeah, that's a smart idea".
Then I checked for a city which wasn't at risk of being invaded by an hostile opponent.

... I'm still searching

But the more we discuss the huge world map, the more I understand how different it seems to be compared to a randomly generated map of the same size. I've only minded the "bigger & more Civ" till now, but I realize now that there is also a lot of other tuning done. I didn't even realize that city maintenance could be different from one map to another !

That made me think : when you were tuning and balancing your mod, did you have a specific difficulty level in mind ?
I'm asking more precisely in regard due to hapiness/health bonuses, as those tends to be reduced the more you up in difficulty.

 

[tebriz]

That made me think : when you were tuning and balancing your mod, did you have a specific difficulty level in mind ?

I guess it is the Nobel difficulty level. Because at the end of the day this the the difficulty level AI is playing.

 

[Luís Felipe Silva Pinto]

* IMO foreign trade is possible to early. I propose again to delay trade on rivers to Sailing and trade on coast to Ship Building. In my current game as Poland, after Sailing, I can trade with half of discovered (far away) Civs already. This seems not very realistic for ancient era.

Agree for a gameplay perspective a little, but historically in Ancient Age trade like this was already there, a lot of mediterranean states traded with Brittanic people already, Rome traded with Indians between the egypt territory via the ocean to there, so long range trade like that were already a thing for sure.

 

[Luís Felipe Silva Pinto]

"Play Now!" option have Separatism mechanic enable or i need to play via "custom game" to enable it? I want to start with a few or standard number of civ and late game have more culture and civs.

 

[[Y]]

From a gameplay standpoint, it would give an additional “flavour ” to the game if cities were first connected by rivers, and later by sea after researching a more advanced technology.

That's exactly how it works, though. Fishing unlocks trade by river, and Sailing unlocks trade by coast. With some play styles that might not be a noticeable delay, since by the time you found your first city or two you've already unlocked both of those techs. But there are other play styles where it's much more felt. I tend to rush 2 Settlers right away at the start of every game, and trust me, I feel every turn that passes by until both of those techs are unlocked. The flavor is very alive. Both Fishing and Sailing are early on my research list for this reason.

To balance this, we could increase the tech transfer rate. By the way, I really like the new tech transfer system, but I think the early-game transfer rate is a bit too low. I’ve modified it to +20%/+20% (instead of the default +20%/+10%).

An update on the said earlier - I have changed my mind after testing a few games today. I don’t know what exactly has been done to AI from tech transfer rate evaluation point of view, but AIs advance in technology much faster now I will lower tech transfer rate to 16%/16%. Let’s see what happens.

The world-wide research pace can vary a lot between game to game. I've had some games where the AI gets miles ahead fast and I end up just dropping from that game. I've also had games where the AI seemed to be very slow to research. It's hard to evaluate and figure out just how well tuned the research rates are, and which game elements are most responsible for deviations from the ideal rate.

Another thing to consider is that AIs don't always research in the most balanced of ways. Sometimes they will spike hard in a certain direction while ignoring other "core" techs for a long time. I've had games where civs would only research Alphabet or Mining while others are entering the medieval era. And these civs would be leaders on the scoreboard and significant world powers, not the lagging civs that are struggling to survive. So sometimes it can seem like the same AI civ is highly advanced and highly lagging, since one second it's researching a tech bordering the medieval and the next they're researching bronze working. But overall they're balanced out.

I've considered bringing this up, since it's weird to see, and maybe leaders are prioritizing their preferred techs too much. But it doesn't seem to be holding them back, so I figured why interrupt--if it's working for the AI, it's working! I've actually caught myself doing the same more and more.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

"Play Now!" option have Separatism mechanic enable or i need to play via "custom game" to enable it? I want to start with a few or standard number of civ and late game have more culture and civs.

You need to use Custom Game to turn it on.

Another thing to consider is that AIs don't always research in the most balanced of ways. Sometimes they will spike hard in a certain direction while ignoring other "core" techs for a long time. I've had games where civs would only research Alphabet or Mining while others are entering the medieval era. And these civs would be leaders on the scoreboard and significant world powers, not the lagging civs that are struggling to survive. So sometimes it can seem like the same AI civ is highly advanced and highly lagging, since one second it's researching a tech bordering the medieval and the next they're researching bronze working. But overall they're balanced out.

I've considered bringing this up, since it's weird to see, and maybe leaders are prioritizing their preferred techs too much. But it doesn't seem to be holding them back, so I figured why interrupt--if it's working for the AI, it's working! I've actually caught myself doing the same more and more.

Well, that's what one gets for leaning significantly into leader personalities. If you'd like them to be much more "optimal" with their tech choices, use AI Plays to Win; at this point, tech preferences should be the major difference between having this option on and off for most of the game (until AIs start pursuing winning strategies).

 

[[Y]]

Well, that's what one gets for leaning significantly into leader personalities. If you'd like them to be much more "optimal" with their tech choices, use AI Plays to Win; at this point, tech preferences should be the major difference between having this option on and off for most of the game (until AIs start pursuing winning strategies).

I like it this way. Just took some adjusting. I've gotten so used to all AI civs researching the tech tree in a balanced rate that this behavior seemed pretty unnatural to me, but I think that it's great that civs now set themselves apart with some being leaders in military tech and other in commercial tech.

 

[RezerCuid]

I'll also put in my 5 cents, let the AI explore ALL the ancient technologies, and >50% of the technologies of its era before moving on to the Middle Ages. ALL classical technologies, and >50% of medieval technologies for the transition to renaissance.
It will be more balanced.

 

[Luís Felipe Silva Pinto]

You need to use Custom Game to turn it on.

When we talk about separatism its to get revolutions right?