TLDR: Had Constantinople continued the fifth‑century practice of recognizing Gothic kings as imperial lieutenants—while limiting direct reconquest to Africa and key islands—the Byzantine state might have entered the 540s with a healthier treasury and intact Italian taxation. That reserve, in turn, could have funded larger frontier armies when plague, Persians, and Arabs struck in succession. The result would not be a Roman ‘renaissance’ in the modern sense, but a stronger, more federated Mediterranean commonwealth in which Gothic, Roman, and even Slavic elites all competed for imperial favor; whereas, the reconquest‑and‑overstretch model of historical Justinian failed.
I missed this post before, and I'm not going to discuss the more specific points from it, but overall, the developments you describe is more or less exactly what happened in Western Europe anyway under Charlemagne, which is exactly my point - it wouldn't have made a major difference in the long run. There would be minor discrepancies, sure, but nothing would go materially different. And yes, I totally agree with the point that Justinian's ambitions didn't exactly correspond to the means the empire had at the time - but that again circles back to the point that from the contemporary perspective, there was no "fall of Rome", he thought of himself as another Aurelian fixing a temporary crisis, so there was no reason for him to behave as modestly as you described.
- Reworking how the barbarian/primal Civ are behaving. I understand they are here only as "placeholders" to prevents some Civ from overdevelopping before finding gunpowders units, but some IA wasted a lot of time, money and troups trying to conquers them pre-colonialism. Perhaps making it impossible for them to be declared war uppon before some Renaissance Tech would help ?
Obviously my favorite solution would be to replace them with even more real AI civ, but I think it's a hardcoded problem and that the HWM already hits the max number of Civ or something like that ^^
As loath as I am to introduce scenario-specific stuff, I'll probably look into it.
- Perhaps reworking the islands, too, but I have no clue how. The current situation is good, with single tiles islands that have a few islands/rocky islands tiles around them, but still it makes for really poor cities. I've explored most of the islands near Madagascar, or on the west side of Africa, and I saw not a single spot where I would settle for any other reason than a purely strategical one (having a harbor somewhere far from my territory, and later an airport probably).
I mean, should they really
be viable? The Maldives or the Seychelles aren't really metropolises IRL.
Oh, I was afraid it was something like that. Then I have no idea how to activate it, or if it's even possible during an already-launched game, sorry
It's not hard at all;
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bts-in-game-debug-mode.279903/
Good point. I guess being born post the end of USSR and the last big wars on european soil has made me more sensible to today's situation.
Perhaps someone that endured the cold war is less phazed by all the screaming and posturing that we see on the daily on the news, a kind of "been there, done that" feeling.
Don't get me wrong, the global situation recently has made a turn for the worse, and will probably deteriorate further, but I just wanted to point out that it is doing so from a status quo that was unnaturally good by historical standards.
Edit : Can I be a nooby again and ask a question about a mecanism that I'm pretty sure is Vanilla ? It has been more than 15 years that I last used the Bombardment option, and I was wondering if the base strenght of the unit bombarding has any impact on the damage.
For exemple, would a Bombard with a lot of promotions/stackaid do more damage than a bombard with only the basic Strenght 6 and nothing else ?
In another way of phrasing it : is the 20% damage the target would suffers calculate with the strenght of the bombarding unit, or is it a % of the target's HP ?
Well, firstly, most ranged units have a limit over which the damage won't go, same as air bombers (typing that made me realise this is something that absolutely should be displayed in-game and is currently not).
Secondly, yes, the actual damage done, if not up to the damage limit, will be dependent on the attacking unit's strength, including promotions.
One thing that (yeah, I know, again) Civ 3 has that is quite good for such pre-made scenarios are bonus resources, resources that are neither needed for any construction, nor give happiness, nor are they even tradeable - all they do is increase a certain tile's yield. This is quite useful to buff certain locations on the map to make them be able to do more with less land. For example, a grassland or plains tile in western Europe has probably yielded more harvests and/or production across history than a grassland or plains tile in southern Siberia. But just being extra food/hammer/commerce, this doesn't also come with extra happiness (or health in the case of Civ4), so while it allows a city to grow even further and produce more, luxuries and happiness resources are still needed to make use of this. (Or thinking it in reverse, all this surplus can actually be made useful in this part of the world). Under vanilla Civ4 rules, each grassland, plains, etc. tile is just as productive in any part of the world, which favours areas with a lot of land for many improved tile working cities. So these resources are needed to actually make the more cramped locations competitive, but then you also get all the side effects such as massive availability or high health/happy bonuses. The map has lots of resources you'll only find in further away corners and will either have to trade for, or colonise. I think it might just be the case that the city is lacking the food to make use of it in your case. All in all I think the resource situation is quite good on the maps, even though there are some interesting differences. For example, in the large map, there is a uranium source in Scandinavia but not in Germany, on the huge map, there is one in Germany but none in Scandinavia. Also uranium: On the large map, North America has 4 sources, on the huge map, only 2. Particularly the changed power plant mechanics should make the acquisition of ever more coal & uranium an important target in the later game. Which of the two maps are you playing, and what civ?
That would just exacerbate the snowballing one would get when capturing in Europe. Remember, any map tweak that makes it easier to have just a few cities also makes it easier for a big empire that captures those cities.
Talking so much about colonies, this reminds me of
this idea I had over a year ago. Sadly my understanding of C++ and the game code isn't really sufficient at this point in time, but maybe Walter or Takofloppa find it interesting enough to give it a shot
Really a shame how the French can colonise Indochina but the game considers it
not a colony.
That would be a computational nightmare, unfortunately. Pathfinding is the largest performance hog in Civ 4 engine.
Edit: Lest I forget to ask, why is the huge map centered on Taiwan?
There is all kind of weirdness that happens in Civ 4 along the "seam" in the map. So it was chosen to have it go across the Atlantic, where there's the least amount of land around it.
Compared to valid, functioning scenarios and I can't see any functional difference. Not the first time I tinker with scenarios, first time I can't get it to even load.
Anyone has any idea or suggestions?
The most annoying thing about working on scenarios is that, unlike literally everywhere else in Civ 4, the error messages are completely non-informative. One can only try guessing what exactly went wrong in any given case.
I found an error on the hugemapworld, I don't know if it was intentional. The cities of Mvemba a Nzinga produce 500 culture per turn, while those of other civilizations produce 40/45 per turn. Is there a reason, or is it a mistake?
Sounds normal. Not just them, but all the tribal civs should have quite a strong cultural output, especially early on.
I looked below on the Levee question but didn’t see an answer. Are they supposed to require a river in the fat cross or to be on the river itself? The latter is the current functionality, which seems redundant.
And yet, it's a question that I
have answered, here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/page-684#post-16839910
To recap, on the river itself, and not redundant if the city is on hills. Cities on hills normally don't spread irrigation through themselves.
