Realism Invictus

[tebriz]

I am testing with latest SVN (5519) and barbarians get two Great Generals in the same turn. Is it possible theoretically if not a bug?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I suspect that's when the first barbarian city spawned - and they "cashed in" all GG points accumulated by that time.

 

[AspiringScholar]

What a pleasant surprise it was catching back up here!

These might be known, but when looking at the tooltip for the Aqueduct as a possible building, the "Net Effect" will only show reduced pandemic chance if there is no Well in the city. If there is a well in the city, it shows the +2 as a net effect, but not the improved pandemic mitigation. And for the Noria in particular, the net effect doesn't show the health gain from providing a source of fresh water to a city with no current fresh water access.

Having read this whole thread from front to back (and then mid to front, since I started posting a handful of years ago ), would it embarrass you if I mentioned that you yourself made this same comment already about three years ago?

In all seriousness though, this would be a great improvement if tooltip effects could account for obsoletion of the buildings they replace. I just do mental math after having learned what replaces what, but it would make for a cleaner presentation and less confusion for new players, for sure.

I ended up doing both approaches. Only resource/improvement by default, but can be switched to show all tiles (note to all you heretics, this update is VERY not save-compatible).

This is fantastic! Not only a brand new feature usefully tailored to a very Civ IV specific gameplay problem, but also a filter for customizing the extent of it. I thought [Y]'s suggestion for resources only was practical, since it didn't seem feasible to apply everywhere, but losing a mature town or tactical city adjacency tile as Ahnarras said can make a very significant difference, especially when playing as a more compact empire where every spit of land is precious and intentional, but I certainly prefer being apprised of the whole gamut, so I know where to wage a culture war and where targeted conquest can help "backfill" productivity for my already highly invested in cities.

Nah, it won't be final, I'm not going anywhere. In fact it's so non-final I'm considering a minor rebranding.

Although from inductive reasoning, I and surely several others always knew that this was perpetually at least either halfway true or always possible, this kind of candid statement is nevertheless very exciting to hear (and certainly helps me salvage the feeling of having spent the better part of my leisure for the past four years intensively playing this masterpiece with enthusiasm ).

--

Also, a handful of thoughts from my recent game on SVN 5514 (so, all of this should be applicable to the current subversion, since none of it has to do with any bug reports):

Spoiler :

- I've mentioned this before, but it seems that the espionage mission for destroying buildings does not scale with the cost of the building targeted. In RI, that is rather significant (especially in the industrial era and later, where these costs were deliberately made to be prohibitively expensive without discounts from resources or prior investment in industrialization). Consistently, I get my precious and vital steel mills in particular destroyed by spies (even consecutively, after reconstructing them!), when they often take far longer to construct than any contemporary wonder (which, for their part, are always exempt from destruction via espionage mission anyway). I would suggest, if possible, causing the mission to scale with the price of the buildings targeted, or at least to make certain buildings such as steel mills which often require an enormous investment from the player and are crucial for the late game competition to be exempt from such a casual means of destruction.

- This is another one which I have mentioned before, and perhaps Walter may these days find it tasteful or fitting to what he wants to do, so I will bring it back up: Free Religion (especially considering its unlimited scientist slots) would in my opinion be better placed with Enlightenment rather than Humanist Thought, where it currently feels anachronistically early. Since religion in Civ IV (and even RI) doesn't have any mechanic for syncretism, and all major faiths are modeled monolithically and exclusive to one another, the kind of tolerance which the technology represents is inter-religious rather than intra-religious. The humanist Reformers of the Christian faith were (some of them) ecumenists, not secularists. We have, for instance (among a few other notables who might better be placed as artists or priests, in game), one Paracelsus (mostly clandestine in his scientific musings), one Michael Servetus (who was executed by a fellow member of what the game would also call Christian, for heresy), both of them advancing chemical and medical science quite a lot in their own right (and intensely religious, at least as far as they present themselves in their writings, which either only testifies to the fact or of hiding from authority which wouldn't accept it otherwise), but I can't bring myself to imagine them each as placeholders for any hypothetical number of scientists which the states of the day would support or endorse, but rather the one or two that you'd get from a library and university, otherwise; and furthermore, their both meaningfully being humanists in the renaissance sense intended by the technology, it would be centuries before any kind of real, enshrined secularism took meaningful hold (during the Enlightenment, in nations which were still predominantly religious for entire spans of living memory thereafter), so in Civ terms, nobody in this day would actually be running the "Free Religion" civic, and we don't have any massive sectors of the population engaged in any kind of coordinated (or even correspondent) hard research in this era (as the gameplay exploit with this civic allows the player to do with a well-fed city); so, to me, this civic's placement (with Humanist Thought almost certainly being the clone of the much more generic "Liberalism" under the vanilla's tech tree, which allowed the same) feels like a leftover of the vanilla game's laudable and necessary abridgement of the early modern and modern periods to fit its streamlined gameplay and truncated treatment of history, which RI needn't remain conformed to.

- Minor flavor comment: why isn't the UH-1 "Huey" represented in any of the infantry transport helicopters in game, when it is one of the most iconic of these per its role in the American participation in the Vietnam War? Perhaps only the Mi-17 would be comparable in this role in historical warfare (to scale, at least). It is presently the default Gunship, but I don't think that this is the appropriate classification between the two, since as a "gunship" it (to the best of my knowledge, and I would welcome correction) fought very few armored vehicles (the intended target which this unit class hunts), but instead was mostly armed with defoliants and high explosives intended for soft targets, while indeed being intended as a primary means of infantry transport in otherwise logistically inaccessible terrain. This leaves the question of what the default Gunship ought to be modeled by, and I might suggest something later, from a conflict which actually saw significant anti-tank warfare from helicopters, even if only to a relatively small scale. (This further complicates what the "advanced" gunship ought to be, if the first real candidates are effectively these anyway, and Firaxis's aforementioned laudable streamlined truncation for helicopters didn't translate well into RI). The Americans get the Chinook, but this is for both infantry and tanks (though as a default unit and with a different paint job, at least), and (were such a class to exist) would more properly be the "advanced" helicopter transport rather than the default. The Huey just feels out of place and strange that its main operator doesn't even get it.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Having read this whole thread from front to back (and then mid to front, since I started posting a handful of years ago ), would it embarrass you if I mentioned that you yourself made this same comment already about three years ago?

That's the thing though, three years ago I was in no shape to potentially fix that. Now I might be.

Although from inductive reasoning, I and surely several others always knew that this was perpetually at least either halfway true or always possible, this kind of candid statement is nevertheless very exciting to hear (and certainly helps me salvage the feeling of having spent the better part of my leisure for the past four years intensively playing this masterpiece with enthusiasm ).

I mean, I am having fun. That's the only reason I keep working on this mod, and so long as this holds true, I see no reason to stop. It doesn't have any finite scope or goal to be achieved and call it a day.

- I've mentioned this before, but it seems that the espionage mission for destroying buildings does not scale with the cost of the building targeted. In RI, that is rather significant (especially in the industrial era and later, where these costs were deliberately made to be prohibitively expensive without discounts from resources or prior investment in industrialization). Consistently, I get my precious and vital steel mills in particular destroyed by spies (even consecutively, after reconstructing them!), when they often take far longer to construct than any contemporary wonder (which, for their part, are always exempt from destruction via espionage mission anyway). I would suggest, if possible, causing the mission to scale with the price of the buildings targeted, or at least to make certain buildings such as steel mills which often require an enormous investment from the player and are crucial for the late game competition to be exempt from such a casual means of destruction.

It does scale with the building cost though, even in vanilla.

- This is another one which I have mentioned before, and perhaps Walter may these days find it tasteful or fitting to what he wants to do, so I will bring it back up: Free Religion (especially considering its unlimited scientist slots) would in my opinion be better placed with Enlightenment rather than Humanist Thought, where it currently feels anachronistically early. Since religion in Civ IV (and even RI) doesn't have any mechanic for syncretism, and all major faiths are modeled monolithically and exclusive to one another, the kind of tolerance which the technology represents is inter-religious rather than intra-religious. The humanist Reformers of the Christian faith were (some of them) ecumenists, not secularists. We have, for instance (among a few other notables who might better be placed as artists or priests, in game), one Paracelsus (mostly clandestine in his scientific musings), one Michael Servetus (who was executed by a fellow member of what the game would also call Christian, for heresy), both of them advancing chemical and medical science quite a lot in their own right (and intensely religious, at least as far as they present themselves in their writings, which either only testifies to the fact or of hiding from authority which wouldn't accept it otherwise), but I can't bring myself to imagine them each as placeholders for any hypothetical number of scientists which the states of the day would support or endorse, but rather the one or two that you'd get from a library and university, otherwise; and furthermore, their both meaningfully being humanists in the renaissance sense intended by the technology, it would be centuries before any kind of real, enshrined secularism took meaningful hold (during the Enlightenment, in nations which were still predominantly religious for entire spans of living memory thereafter), so in Civ terms, nobody in this day would actually be running the "Free Religion" civic, and we don't have any massive sectors of the population engaged in any kind of coordinated (or even correspondent) hard research in this era (as the gameplay exploit with this civic allows the player to do with a well-fed city); so, to me, this civic's placement (with Humanist Thought almost certainly being the clone of the much more generic "Liberalism" under the vanilla's tech tree, which allowed the same) feels like a leftover of the vanilla game's laudable and necessary abridgement of the early modern and modern periods to fit its streamlined gameplay and truncated treatment of history, which RI needn't remain conformed to.

That's a rather Eurocentric view of the situation, all things considered, and one might argue that with Asian religions, the civic comes way too late instead, but that's the sad reality of us trying to squeeze all the different shapes at hand into one mould. All in all, I'd say depending on specific examples, one can justify placing Free Religion almost anywhere on the tech tree, and where it sits now provides a nice watershed with the medieval era. I am not too staunchly opposed to moving it, but as I remark above, I see no universally compelling historical argument for placing it anywhere, and no compelling gameplay argument for placing it later (also, if Enlightenment tech is considered specifically, Democracy civic should be moved somewhere else then, as there's a strict one civic per tech policy).

- Minor flavor comment: why isn't the UH-1 "Huey" represented in any of the infantry transport helicopters in game, when it is one of the most iconic of these per its role in the American participation in the Vietnam War? Perhaps only the Mi-17 would be comparable in this role in historical warfare (to scale, at least). It is presently the default Gunship, but I don't think that this is the appropriate classification between the two, since as a "gunship" it (to the best of my knowledge, and I would welcome correction) fought very few armored vehicles (the intended target which this unit class hunts), but instead was mostly armed with defoliants and high explosives intended for soft targets, while indeed being intended as a primary means of infantry transport in otherwise logistically inaccessible terrain. This leaves the question of what the default Gunship ought to be modeled by, and I might suggest something later, from a conflict which actually saw significant anti-tank warfare from helicopters, even if only to a relatively small scale. (This further complicates what the "advanced" gunship ought to be, if the first real candidates are effectively these anyway, and Firaxis's aforementioned laudable streamlined truncation for helicopters didn't translate well into RI). The Americans get the Chinook, but this is for both infantry and tanks (though as a default unit and with a different paint job, at least), and (were such a class to exist) would more properly be the "advanced" helicopter transport rather than the default. The Huey just feels out of place and strange that its main operator doesn't even get it.

OK, so lots to unpack here from different angles. Somewhat unrelatedly to each other:

1) The heli transport class is, in and of itself, just there because it was there for quite a while. It's one of the very very few features of RI I'm pretty sure AI can't use (would be happy to be proven wrong, but currently the heli transports use a naval transport unit AI, which I am not even sure can ever work on non-naval units). And no, I'm most definitely NOT coding a new unit AI for all-terrain transports. This is way beyond me.
2) The very existence of this unit class is also somewhat tenuous from realism perspective: it is a rather unfortunate mix of tactical vs strategic scale. A unit in Civ 4 is (in modern times) roughly a division in scale; there was never in history a military logistical operation involving transport helicopters with over 1000 personnel being transported, so one might argue historically helicopters have never transported a Civ 4 unit.
3) Visually, from the get-go, I decided transport helis should be very distinct from gunships, and as such, only medium/heavy transport helis were ever considered for that unit class (or rather those two). Even Mi-8, which is used for several civs, is far larger than UH-1.
4) As for using UH-1 as the default gunship, this is due to certain civs (like Arabia or Greece) never having procured a purpose-built early gunship like Mi-24 or AH-1, whereas UH-1 was used extremely widely, and often refitted to a gunship role. So it's probably the best fit for a "budget gunship" as a default unit. An alternative would be a similar gunship conversion of Mi-8, but since it's currently used as a flavour transport, it'd lead to visual confusion.

All the above considered, I'm inclined to remove transport helis altogether as a unit class (strategic uses of transport aviation are adequately covered by the airlift ability in the cities) - this can free Mi-8 to be used as a default early gunship instead I guess, and have UH-1 either removed altogether or be used specifically for those civs still on generic gunships that never procured Mi-8 (which is the very much a minority of nations worldwide).

 

[SebastianP]

What did you have in the city as defense, and what were the attacking units?


I get that sense too, the AI will only target a city if the algorithm shows it has favourable odds. Which makes sense right, just like we would. However the AI does make significant tactical blunders, it is not too hard (in Monarch at least) to expose them in open field...

I think I had two musketeers in the city, in good old Civ 1 tradition thinking "two units are OK if not a front line city" ... they got annihilated real quick. That one wasn't about AI pre-calc of battles, that was more of a dominance issue I think. (their stack of doom vs. my sloppy defense, my fault!)

The reason I have got this feeling about the pre-calc of battles is that I had various situations where the attacker's chance was like 5% ... and it won. And that happened multiple times. Not every time. But it happens a bit too often for my taste - just like the 0%-chance-of-retreat-in-battle-yet-manages-to. I'm sure some of you had that happen too

Question: If I'd like to play RI on a normal size world map, what would be the best way to go about? There isn't one included with RI, could I "convert" an ordinary Civ IV map for RI? If so, how? Any tutorials? Any good sources for RI compatible maps, preferably earth maps?

 

[Alekseyev_]

On the transport heli topic: I always think that an appeal of Civ games is that you don't only show/play things that have happened in history, but also things that did not but perhaps could. A massive airlift campaign could be one such legendary endeavours.

For a personal experience, I have definitely used them a lot in the past. For example I was staging a post-nuking blitzkrieg that combined naval landings and rapid followups with transported troops. I think I had about 40 helicopters in play at the peak, half of either class to transport troops and armor. Sadly most games reach conclusion far before the modern age, but that time it didn't (leading to the briefly mentioned nuclear exchange) and I really enjoyed the rare helicopter gameplay a lot.

 

[le_harv]

Oh absolutely. That is totally in line with how I already removed the message for GPs born to civs unknown to you.

My observation opened a small can of worms for me! I appreciate this might not be a priority but wanted to share anyhow.

‘Xxx has formed yyy civilisation’ also gives away who you might discover later. Could you perhaps change this to say ‘A new leader has established a new civilization’

One of the random events that pings a message that one civ is helping another with strategic resources also gives away who you might meet if you haven’t met one of the parties yet.

Not related but a small one…

Perform counter espionage has a 100% success rating. But your spy can still sometimes be apprehended.

 

[[Y]]

After experimenting with Progressive and Philosophical over multiple games, I think I'm writing them both off as practical traits, at least for higher difficulty tiers.

Progressive

We had a lot of discussion over Progressive's research increase percent, but ultimately I feel the number here isn't important. It's an effect that's very useful while you're ahead, but not one that will help you catch up from behind. If you don't have the economy to generate a lot of base research, you will always be behind civs that do have the ability to generate a lot of research, or those that generate a moderate amount of research but have a trait that lets them dominate in some other regard. This is further exaggerated in game settings that provide the AI with more advantages and/or settings that increases costs for the player, which result in lower research rates. You mentioned that AI progressive leaders seem to perform better than average and I guess this is why.

The buildings with faster production from Progressive also contribute to this, as the earliest of these buildings comes at the end of the medieval era (Clock Tower) with the rest being Renaissance or later. It would be a bit more useful if it hastened buildings that would help keep you research-competitive throughout the entire game, not just the late game.

In a past evaluation I also said this:

To try to measure it more objectively, I decided to look at it as a free bump up on the research scale, and to assign it a gold value equal to the the amount of gold that bump up would cost. At the moment (on the save with the Great Lighthouse in effect), a bump up is about 24 gold. So rather than thinking of Progressive as giving me 5% research, I'm going to think of it as giving me 25 gold per turn. I loaded the turn 1 autosave for this game and it has a gold value of 0.5, meaning humanist is better here.

But I've realized since that this logic is wrong. The gold value is being assigned to a single 5% tick up the research slider, but this research increase is based off of total commerce generated, whereas the progressive research increase is based off of current research generated. So in the scenario above, Progressive's current research bonus of 10% would be worth 50 gold while the research slider is at 100% and 0 gold when it is at 0% (not accounting for any direct science generated), and would scale in value proportionally between the extremes. In my experience, it's very rare for the research slider to be above 60%, without building your entire game around optimizing this value.

So all in all, it's a trait that will let you do amazingly well if you're already ahead of the curve, but you likely won't be ahead of the curve, as the civs ahead of the curve will have two traits that both contribute to them pushing the curve forward in the first place.

Suggestions:

• Instead of increasing research by +10%, it can provide a free tick up the research scale, so that your research scale goes from a minimum of 5% up to 105%. This should generate much more research value than a flat +10% research since it's based off total commerce generated, regardless of how much of that commerce is going to culture/espionage/gold. The downside is that it doesn't scale direct research (such as from scientists), but I think that's a worthwhile compromise.
• The trait can provide a +50% tech transfer bonus. This would allow it to help with rebounding when behind, and will even tie in historically to RI's progressive leaders, such as Peter the Great, who's claim to fame is bringing Russia up to speed with existing advances from the western world.

Philosophical

This used to be a favorite trait of mine, but after playing a Bilquis game up to the early Renaissance, it's not as strong as it used to be. I think the halving of great person points from wonders nerfed this trait pretty seriously. Earlier it was easier to gain leverage from Philsophical after building a wonder without needing to rely on assigning specialists in a city.

The trait worked very well with wonders because you could build a wonder that generated a desired great person type (Pyramids for an engineer, or the Great Library for a scientist, etc) and fairly reliably get that type, without having to be concerned about which specialists are being used. In my current game, however, it felt like I was always getting the great person I didn't want simply because it was more practical to work the specialist for the undesired great person. Specifically, my cities liked using priests from my temples for the gold and hammers (2 of each with civil religion and a temple) rather than the scientist (+3 beakers), and this was the right call on the AI's part, because the hammer and gold combo had more value (the gold let me increase research rate, so I'd get more total science than with the scientists, or compartively close to it). But now my cities were generating great priests whereas I wanted great scientists.

I could have assigned scientists instead of priests to increase the odds for a great scientist, but this requires a much more detailed level of micromanagement and tedium, as well as lost opportunity costs from not working the more valuable specialist. And I could still end up with a great priest if I got unlucky. This severely limited the utility of the trait.

Second to that, while it does yield some early initial great people, by the mid game the cost to generate a great person was so high that it felt as if I didn't have the trait at all. It would still take 75-100 turns to generate a great person. And since other civs now have access to Schools (+10% birth rate), Universities (+25% birth rate), National Epics (+25% birth rate in all cities, +25% more in building city), and have access to civis that bump up great person rate (Pacifism, Representation, Republic with Senate), it felt like the trait bonus was relatively inconsequential.

As I'm typing this out, I'm also realizing that I might be overvaluing higher birth rates in the early game, too. While it's nice to accrue some great prophets and great merchants to get bonus gold in the early game, maybe the better play is to lower birth rates in the early game (such as with Caste System, and Fanatial leaders), wait for scientist (and maybe engineer) specialists to both become more commonly available and have increased outputs, and then switch gears to maximizing birth rates. Since I would have had relatively few great persons before now, the cost to generate a great person should be fairly low, allowing me to crank them out en masse and monopolize great works of science/wonders. If this is the practical approach, I definitely don't want a philosophical leader!

Suggestions:

• 

The trait is concentrated on a pretty singular effect, but the effect is drowned out by similar effects from other sources throughout the game, requires a lot of tedium in order to utilize effectively, and has the highest impact in the early game, when specific specialists/great persons are more available and practical, skewing the possible output from the trait. I think it strongly needs a secondary effect, or new effect altogether, since the great person generation strategy is very different now than it was in vanilla Civ 4.

Having read this whole thread from front to back (and then mid to front, since I started posting a handful of years ago ), would it embarrass you if I mentioned that you yourself made this same comment already about three years ago?

I'm embarrassed it took me three years to bring it up a second time!

Thanks, a good observation. I'm not sure if those actually serve a meaningful purpose.

I like the idea of allowing units that are bad in cities some means of compensating for that, but the flipside of that coin is that these units aren't actually bad at city combat to begin with. Skrimishers, at least, while they're bad at attacking ranged units in a city, are at an advantage attacking melee units in a city, are at normal odds attacking other recon units in a city, and a moderate disadvantage attacking cavalry in a city (-40% vs -25%). They don't really need that city combat buff, they're typically more than capable city attackers once the archers are worn down.

 

[Hafenguy]

Will the production costs for military units and spies decrease again at some point?

 

[RezerCuid]

+10 to the epidemic for each trade route is too much, +5 - +6 would be more balanced

 

[why7at]

훌륭한 모드를 만들어 주셔서 감사합니다. 게임 후반부에 랙이 발생하나요?

 

[why7at]

First off, this is a fantastic mod—thank you. I do have one suggestion.
In the Rise of Mankind (ROM) mod, there are two kinds of Open Borders: the original type that allows military units to enter, and a trade-only version where military units cannot cross.
Would you consider implementing something similar?
Historically, allowing a foreign army to move through one’s territory has been a very serious issue. i'm korean so For a Korean example: in 1592, Japan’s stated pretext for invading Joseon was, “Open the way so we can attack Ming.”

used transrator

 

[RezerCuid]

I also want a type of open border that allows trade but not troops. And if the borders are not open, then you can't trade with that civilization at all, like cows and wheat

 

[defund_anime]

Warms my heart to see this mod is still being worked on. I think I need to jump back into CIV 4 soon and have some fun.

 

[[Y]]

Suggestions:

• 

One option that occurs to me is to shift gears and instead of Philosophical letting you get more great people, it makes your great people better. Flavorwise, your empire is a place where the leaders in each field are free to do what they do well, giving an extra beaker to great scientists, extra hammer to great engineers, extra food to great merchants, extra gold to great prophets, and extra espionage to great spies. Maybe it also gives an extra culture to each. This way it doesn't become overshadowed by other birth rate effects, provides a unique and effective benefit, and frees you up to pursue any great person generation strategy you like.

It also allows you to get more value out of great people in conquered cities.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Question: If I'd like to play RI on a normal size world map, what would be the best way to go about? There isn't one included with RI, could I "convert" an ordinary Civ IV map for RI? If so, how? Any tutorials? Any good sources for RI compatible maps, preferably earth maps?

Vanilla maps are incompatible, and there's quite a lot that needs done to a vanilla map to change it.

On the transport heli topic: I always think that an appeal of Civ games is that you don't only show/play things that have happened in history, but also things that did not but perhaps could. A massive airlift campaign could be one such legendary endeavours.

I mean, to me it's more like having a Civ 4 unit of "berserker" or "sniper". A clearly "tactical size" unit (with a quantity measured as individuals or tens at most) as a strategic unit (where a unit of infantry can be around 50,000 or a unit of tanks over 100). The total current US (to take the world's largest transport heli operator) Chinook fleet is maybe enough to transport one armoured division. To me, that transcends far beyond the "perhaps could" point, beyond the realm of plausible. There may possible be an alternative universe where rotor aircraft are far more prominent than in ours, but then again, so might be hot air balloons or zeppelins, but I'm not seeing anyone advocating for those being a viable alternative to strategic bombers.

My observation opened a small can of worms for me! I appreciate this might not be a priority but wanted to share anyhow.

‘Xxx has formed yyy civilisation’ also gives away who you might discover later. Could you perhaps change this to say ‘A new leader has established a new civilization’

I can, but I am not sure I want to; at least to the inhabitants of the same landmass, this even can plausibly be known even if they don't know the capital of the new civ in question (but restricting it by landmass is definitely something that can be done).

One of the random events that pings a message that one civ is helping another with strategic resources also gives away who you might meet if you haven’t met one of the parties yet.

Now you're just nitpicking. Surely that is something that can be plausibly known to someone who knows one of the civs.

Perform counter espionage has a 100% success rating. But your spy can still sometimes be apprehended.

Nothing changed about it in RI; whether intended or not, this is vanilla behaviour.

After experimenting with Progressive and Philosophical over multiple games, I think I'm writing them both off as practical traits, at least for higher difficulty tiers.

Thanks for a lot of thought and testing you clearly put into that! Lots of food for thought, obviously. One thing that we'll have to contend with, though, is that it'll always be the case one way or the other - so long as traits apply to different aspects of the game, their comparative utility will always highly depend on context, whether difficulty level, map geography (Seafaring on a map with no water?), or even simply individual playstyle. Doesn't mean they are all ideally balanced as they are now, of course.

So all in all, it's a trait that will let you do amazingly well if you're already ahead of the curve, but you likely won't be ahead of the curve, as the civs ahead of the curve will have two traits that both contribute to them pushing the curve forward in the first place.

Suggestions:

• Instead of increasing research by +10%, it can provide a free tick up the research scale, so that your research scale goes from a minimum of 5% up to 105%. This should generate much more research value than a flat +10% research since it's based off total commerce generated, regardless of how much of that commerce is going to culture/espionage/gold. The downside is that it doesn't scale direct research (such as from scientists), but I think that's a worthwhile compromise.

I feel that will be extremely confusing for players (and might break some AI calculations too).

The trait can provide a +50% tech transfer bonus. This would allow it to help with rebounding when behind, and will even tie in historically to RI's progressive leaders, such as Peter the Great, who's claim to fame is bringing Russia up to speed with existing advances from the western world.

Sensible and in vein of integrating various aspects of RI. Not excellent in that tech transfer can technically be turned off in custom game options (even if that's not recommended). Also, I feel the fewer individual effects a trait has, the better.

Suggestions:

• 

The trait is concentrated on a pretty singular effect, but the effect is drowned out by similar effects from other sources throughout the game, requires a lot of tedium in order to utilize effectively, and has the highest impact in the early game, when specific specialists/great persons are more available and practical, skewing the possible output from the trait. I think it strongly needs a secondary effect, or new effect altogether, since the great person generation strategy is very different now than it was in vanilla Civ 4.

Good comment on the availability of other bonus sources (though the same can be said about "old" National Epic, and maybe to a greater extent - as it would often outright invalidate other cities when it comes to GP). I feel that the value of earlier GPs should not be underestimated - if one is doing almost anything other than just banking it, it's a lot of free yields, one way or the other (whether through settling one, or using literally any other function), and the earlier one gets it, the higher impact of those free yields.

Will the production costs for military units and spies decrease again at some point?

No? Why?

+10 to the epidemic for each trade route is too much, +5 - +6 would be more balanced

Yay, epidemics spread through trade routes now actually seems to work! Still a really low probability for something that lasts one-two turns, but at least it should be happening in more than one city, so realistic spread should actually occur!

훌륭한 모드를 만들어 주셔서 감사합니다. 게임 후반부에 랙이 발생하나요?

Highly depends on both your system specs and how ambitious a map you generate.

First off, this is a fantastic mod—thank you. I do have one suggestion.
In the Rise of Mankind (ROM) mod, there are two kinds of Open Borders: the original type that allows military units to enter, and a trade-only version where military units cannot cross.
Would you consider implementing something similar?

I'm terribly sorry, but it is extremely unlikely. I am not against the idea per se (if this functionality would magically appear in RI and work bug-free, I'd be overjoyed to have it), but I won't be spending my personal time and effort (and it'd require a lot of both) on implementing it.

One option that occurs to me is to shift gears and instead of Philosophical letting you get more great people, it makes your great people better. Flavorwise, your empire is a place where the leaders in each field are free to do what they do well, giving an extra beaker to great scientists, extra hammer to great engineers, extra food to great merchants, extra gold to great prophets, and extra espionage to great spies. Maybe it also gives an extra culture to each. This way it doesn't become overshadowed by other birth rate effects, provides a unique and effective benefit, and frees you up to pursue any great person generation strategy you like.

That is not a bad idea. But I'll roll it around in my head some more. Another idea that immediately popped up in my head based on your original observations is that this trait can also double the GP output from wonders (basically restoring it to how it was before)...

 

[tebriz]

One option that occurs to me is to shift gears and instead of Philosophical letting you get more great people, it makes your great people better. Flavorwise, your empire is a place where the leaders in each field are free to do what they do well, giving an extra beaker to great scientists, extra hammer to great engineers, extra food to great merchants, extra gold to great prophets, and extra espionage to great spies. Maybe it also gives an extra culture to each. This way it doesn't become overshadowed by other birth rate effects, provides a unique and effective benefit, and frees you up to pursue any great person generation strategy you like.

It also allows you to get more value out of great people in conquered cities.

Speaking of traits, I get the impression that economically oriented traits (not just financial, but also agricultural and production traits) are quite overpowered compared to military-oriented ones. This is especially true on the very large 6K landtile maps I’m currently playing, where military strength alone is never enough to dominate the world.

 

[[Y]]

Sensible and in vein of integrating various aspects of RI. Not excellent in that tech transfer can technically be turned off in custom game options (even if that's not recommended). Also, I feel the fewer individual effects a trait has, the better.

Huh, I've been migrating to the opposite opinion of traits ideally having multiple distinct effects. Singular effects (ala Philosophical) can be hit or miss if something about the game makes utilizing that effect challenging or impractical. And if a trait is made impractical, that's a huge disadvantage throughout the game. Having multiple effects helps mitigate that by providing different middling-impact utilities that can shine in different situations. For example, if Imperial's great general boost amounts to very little in a relatively peaceful game, you still get the happiness bonus from the barracks and arsenal. Even if as a seafaring leader you don't have many coastal cities for extra trade routes, the free coastal ship promotion means you can have a triumphant navy to bully other civs. It's a practical form of redundancy.

Good comment on the availability of other bonus sources (though the same can be said about "old" National Epic, and maybe to a greater extent - as it would often outright invalidate other cities when it comes to GP). I feel that the value of earlier GPs should not be underestimated - if one is doing almost anything other than just banking it, it's a lot of free yields, one way or the other (whether through settling one, or using literally any other function), and the earlier one gets it, the higher impact of those free yields.

Those early yields have tremendous impact! It just feels bad that by the time you're able to generate great scientists and great engineers reliably, you're at a standard great person cadence. So in effect the trait helps you get more great prophets and great merchants, but that falls short of the promise delivered by the description "+50% great person [of any kind] birth rate".

Another idea that immediately popped up in my head based on your original observations is that this trait can also double the GP output from wonders (basically restoring it to how it was before)...

I like the effect, but flavorwise doesn't feel quite aligned with the idea of a philosophical leader. While I think Philosophical needs a buff, I like how the change to wonders made it rely less on wonders and it would be a shame to undo that. The effect feels more aligned with Imperialistic leaders anyway ("Our accomplishments will inspire others for generations!"), and could be a reasonable substitute for the semi-arbitrary +10% wonder construction (though maybe at 1.5x birth rate from wonders than a full double).

Speaking of traits, I get the impression that economically oriented traits (not just financial, but also agricultural and production traits) are quite overpowered compared to military-oriented ones. This is especially true on the very large 6K landtile maps I’m currently playing, where military strength alone is never enough to dominate the world.

In my experience, they're both important, and the best leaders have a mix of both. Economy traits are absolutely necessary for long-term survival and to get a winning edge across the game, but typically don't help short-term survival in do-or-die wars when a capable enemy invades. Ideally you'd have enough of an advantage to never be in that position, but realistically it happens at least once or twice per game even in the best of situations. So I think having a trait that yields immediate military impact is pretty crucial, but needs to be coupled with an economy trait, and the best leaders have that mix.

 

[Ahnarras]

Speaking of traits, I get the impression that economically oriented traits (not just financial, but also agricultural and production traits) are quite overpowered compared to military-oriented ones. This is especially true on the very large 6K landtile maps I’m currently playing, where military strength alone is never enough to dominate the world.

I don't have enough experience to comment on most of the stuff you guys are talking about (but I enjoy reading it !), but here's one thing I could add my opinion on : the military-oriented traits were foundamental in my current game, shaping a lot of the ancient world. I agree that they were outclassed while entering Renaissance, where Civ with more economic-oriented traits seems now to dominate, but who lived and who was lost in the first 200-300 turns seemed to be influenced a lot by having the Militaristic trait or not

I guess it's due to how populated the huge world map is, and how close the starting points are to each other. I can totally see those traits being less valuable on a random map with fewer Civ, where early wars are less of a trouble.

 

[tebriz]

I don't have enough experience to comment on most of the stuff you guys are talking about (but I enjoy reading it !), but here's one thing I could add my opinion on : the military-oriented traits were foundamental in my current game, shaping a lot of the ancient world. I agree that they were outclassed while entering Renaissance, where Civ with more economic-oriented traits seems now to dominate, but who lived and who was lost in the first 200-300 turns seemed to be influenced a lot by having the Militaristic trait or not

I guess it's due to how populated the huge world map is, and how close the starting points are to each other. I can totally see those traits being less valuable on a random map with fewer Civ, where early wars are less of a trouble.

I think you are absolutely right about how map settings influence it.