Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

I'm on SVN 5535 (most recent at this time) and Classical era techs are only at +50% tech cost though they should be at +100% (turn 138).

Yeah, that one's on me. I recently adjusted the switch to +50% to occur at 2500 BCE instead of 2000 BCE (due to changed early tech pacing), but forgot to adjust the text to actually tell the players about it. Will fix. Well spotted!

 

[Joij21]

Even the food aspect isn't great because you need 3 of them to free up a citizen, but settling 3 of any other great person is going to give you more value than 1 freed up citizen. Maybe some buildings should improve the food yield of great merchants.

Great Doctors with +3 +2, regular doctors +1. Then give some wonders that grant them , and special great medical works that grant other effects.

Great Statesman would be nice, could like maybe make political theorem works like Machievielli's Prince.

 

[[Y]]

Yeah, that one's on me. I recently adjusted the switch to +50% to occur at 2500 BCE instead of 2000 BCE (due to changed early tech pacing), but forgot to adjust the text to actually tell the players about it. Will fix. Well spotted!

So on top of techs being faster to research, classical era techs are additionally easier to research early? I spun up a few new games today to get a feel and each is absolutely flying through the ancient era. I'm regularly pushing for Literature as early as I can (was already halfway done with it by turn 138 in that previous game) and I don't feel even slightly deterred by the increased cost. AI also like to research Mining as early priority around the same time. I'm sure it still has some impact, but doesn't feel like much of an impact.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Like literally never happens in my game, even with farms all over the place. What game are you playing?

This was actually during my second "serious" attempt at the game (and my first win) around Christmas of 2021, and on Prince; so this would have been version 3.57, but the only thing that has changed directly since then with respect to food/growth mechanics here to the best of my recall was something which would actually make this more prevalent, if anything (being that the industrial upgrade to the shipyard now yields another +1 for a net of 4 on bare coasts). Could be though that your map is simply a more desolate, war-torn world which isn't afforded this luxury.

Here's a good resource if you want to see highlights from version to version. Once again, that game was either 3.55 or 3.57 (can't remember if I had updated to the then most recent version as of starting it or not), but either way, it's totally possible to see cities get that big (though, as with the Tokyos, Beijings and New York/New Jersey, etc. metropolises of the real world, only the most impressive handful get quite to such a point, but upper 20s and lower 30s populations are quite common for "good cities" at the closing stage of the game in my experience): https://www.moddb.com/mods/realism-invictus/articles

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Great Doctors with +3 +2, regular doctors +1. Then give some wonders that grant them , and special great medical works that grant other effects.

Great Statesman would be nice, could like maybe make political theorem works like Machievielli's Prince.

I mean, all good ideas, and all have crossed my mind at a certain point, but to be completely frank with you, good ideas are cheap. Any of these, to be implemented properly (with lists for every civ, splashes, etc), needs about 100 man-hours at least. Which is not cheap at all. I have lots of such good ideas that could collectively keep me busy for the next one or two centuries.

So on top of techs being faster to research, classical era techs are additionally easier to research early? I spun up a few new games today to get a feel and each is absolutely flying through the ancient era. I'm regularly pushing for Literature as early as I can (was already halfway done with it by turn 138 in that previous game) and I don't feel even slightly deterred by the increased cost. AI also like to research Mining as early priority around the same time. I'm sure it still has some impact, but doesn't feel like much of an impact.

As the cost increases per tier are the steepest around the Ancient/Classical era border (see the graph I posted several pages ago), the Classical ahead of time penalty, even at 100%, was never much of a deterrent - it basically made a tech cost as if it were two tiers ahead. The change had less to do with tech costs anyway, and more to do with the separate change of how many years per turn would pass at any given point in game - again, early timescale was somewhat dilated (since the number of turns per game stayed the same, obviously this means that some later timeframes were slowed down), so it's quite pointless to compare "old" 2000 to "new" 2500; 2500 is simply where the first time scale shift now happens, and thematically it fits better to shift from the first neolithic ahead of time era at 2500 in any case. So all in all it's less of a balance decision (as the impact is minimal in any case, as you correctly note), and more of a balancing one.

 

[Ahnarras]

I have lots of such good ideas that could collectively keep me busy for the next one or two centuries.

Someone please donate a full dev team to this guy

 

[AspiringScholar]

Someone please donate a full dev team to this guy

Only recently, I was just separated as an auxiliary from a good dev team who would almost certainly love to work on something like this instead of slavishly making bricks without straw in an impossible timeframe to sate the whimsical hubris of our mutual shamelessly dishonest and obliviously clueless taskmasters... With all that my exposure within the world of American S&P 500 tech company work can confer, I second this heartily. This man is a diamond in the rough and deserves more credit for the great and longstanding quality of a non-commercial project than any contemporary one holding their hat out for dollars today for unimpressive slop (or shackled subordinately to the EULA themselves in spite of good work), sadly all too representative of the contemporary world game of development and software at large.

 

[tebriz]

OMG, I love this mod so much. Let me tell you a story: I hadn’t played it for about 10–14 days because I was on vacation. I just started a new game a few minutes ago with the latest SVN - and guess who is the first neighbour I met? None other than Thomas Jefferson, the very leader I suggested should get the Seafarer trait in recent change. I mean, what are the chances?

 

[zoob]

Rounding! -50% would turn all 1 point gain instances to 0.

Ok, thats true. But wouldn't it be possible to calculate min. 1 Great General point for a battle no matter the malus?

 

[Joij21]

Only recently, I was just separated as an auxiliary from a good dev team who would almost certainly love to work on something like this instead of slavishly making bricks without straw in an impossible timeframe to sate the whimsical hubris of our mutual shamelessly dishonest and obliviously clueless taskmasters... With all that my exposure within the world of American S&P 500 tech company work can confer, I second this heartily. This man is a diamond in the rough and deserves more credit for the great and longstanding quality of a non-commercial project than any contemporary one holding their hat out for dollars today for unimpressive slop (or shackled subordinately to the EULA themselves in spite of good work), sadly all too representative of the contemporary world game of development and software at large.

Don't they microdose? Commune with DMT jesters?

I mean it would explain the quality of most that comes out of large studios.

 

[genealogyxie]

I suggest you try following your own advice and circle back to us with where it took you.

so are you saying I should focus on building soldiers and invading my neighbors instead of building up my cities?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Someone please donate a full dev team to this guy

1) To donate something, one must first own it. That sounds... wrong.
2) Please no! I already have one job, managing a dev team is not how I want to spend my free hours!
3) In all seriousness, I'd love to have people I could delegate bits to - but unfortunately, for that they'd have to be on at least my level, or my perfectionist self would just spend more time redoing stuff after them. This is easiest to accomplish on the coding side, as I'm a rather mediocre coder. I'd love to have a good 2D artist working with me, but a good one - like, better than 90% of DeviantArt for instance. And a dedicated 3D artist would also be great to have, but this one would need to have a very specific skillset relevant to Civ 4, which is really not something even most good 3D artists have these days.

OMG, I love this mod so much. Let me tell you a story: I hadn’t played it for about 10–14 days because I was on vacation. I just started a new game a few minutes ago with the latest SVN - and guess who is the first neighbour I met? None other than Thomas Jefferson, the very leader I suggested should get the Seafarer trait in recent change. I mean, what are the chances?

I wonder how he took his personality change - I guess he'll let you know via his actions in this game.

Ok, thats true. But wouldn't it be possible to calculate min. 1 Great General point for a battle no matter the malus?

I mean, it would technically be possible, but rather a lot of hassle with the source code for such a minimal change.

so are you saying I should focus on building soldiers and invading my neighbors instead of building up my cities?

I am not saying you should do anything, you do what you like - but if you feel buildings are worthless I guess you could try doing without?

 

[Alekseyev_]

Well no, that's not quite what I'm getting at. More like it's frustrating that the time victory is at 2015 rather than 2050 like vanilla, which means when the tech slows down it makes it just that harder to actually pull off a victory. Even with the time victory turned off, even if I win past the date, because the end score takes into account the speed/time it took you to win you end up getting the Dan Quayle rank.

Like last time I went for the more straightforward domination victory with time off but it took me all the way till the 2130s to win! And because the game then considers me too slow it basically says I'm Dan Quayle! See the thing is even with domination there's no cuirassier type rush in the Renaissance like in vanilla, so on larger game maps you're invading stacks are too slow and things really don't speed up till WW2 tech. But WW2 tech sometimes takes too long in time before the game Dan Quayle's me. Preferably I'd prefer to win in the 18th or 19th centuries, since that was about the reasonably expected victory time when you'd win vanilla especially with the cuirassier rush.

Honestly we need movement two light cannons and some kind of cavalry unit that receives no penalty attacking cities while taking full advantage of it's withdrawal chance.

It really sounds like you just want to be playing vanilla Civ4? You can't really expect to be able to apply vanilla strats in a total conversion mod as intricate as this. Also, who cares about the rank at the end, what matters is the fun during the match!

-20% is capital + tavern. Kicks in a bit later. But yes, reasonable.

I like -20% a lot better than -25% tbh. And it already rounds down to 3 espionage points at those 4 -> 3.2 you get from the palace, so the tavern actually gets you the missing 0.8 to get 4.

I still think the Hanseatic League shouldn't have been removed. Even though the Great Lighthouse would get obsoleted earlier, it's +1 trade route was replaced by the League's +2 which combined with merchant families was cool.

Also what's the point of free market when merchant families seems objectively better with the maintenance reduction? Maybe free market should have +2 routes rather than giving the same +1 as merchant families. Infinite merchants seems useless since IMHO great merchants are one of the lousier great people you can produce (though not as bad as great spies they are objectively the most useless), also by that point in the game great people inflation is much higher so producing great people becomes less important unless the frew great persons you do produce are scientists & engineers (artists only if going for cultural victory)

Hanseatic was only +1 as well. It basically simply succeeded the great lighthouse. As for free market, did you completely ignore the +50% commerce from trade routes it gives? It's multiplicative and happens after all other modifiers, so a trade route that previously gave 8 commerce will now give a whole 12 with free market. It's light years ahead of merchant families when it comes to creating more commerce from trade routes.

Still new at the game but I am surprised that Great Merchants seem to get little love. I always go for the cash upfront (better pv) and usually I time them so as to instantly upgrade a huge bunch of my army, which I find super powerful. At least once it has saved my butt from a war that was not going in the right direction, and in another instance it has enabled me to blitz a neighbour with which I had more or less military parity before the upgrade. Which other GP has that kind of insta mega boost in one's power curve?

You may be new, but you are using them better than most people here. When watching expert players (of vanilla) like Lain or Henrik play immortal or deity, that's often exactly how they are using merchants, too.

Civ 4 (and so also RI) is a game about economy. It's about generating commerce so you can generate more research so you can build more advanced units so that you can conquer more cities so that you generate more hammers so that you can build even more units so that you can conquer even more cities so that you can generate even more commerce so that you can generate even more research so that you can generate even more advanced units so that you can yada yada yada. It's a game about economy and maximizing the yield and impact of that economy.

Of all the economy values in the game, gold deflates in value the most. 1 gold can make a huge difference on turn 50. 1 gold is not going to have any impact on turn 500, and even less on turn 1500. The other economy values can ultimately be used to win: research to get a science victory, hammers to build an army, culture to get legendary cities, etcetera. More gold doesn't actually do anything, it's only ever exchanged for one of the other economy values which then in turn get you a win.

Because of that exchange, it's better to get a great person that yields that other resource directly rather than indirectly through gold. And especially so because the longer the game goes on, the exchange rate of gold to other economy values gets worse and worse. The 4 GPT from the merchant may be used to crank up the research slider by 30% in the ancient era, but not even by 5% in Rennaisance. But the +4 beakers from a scientist continue to push you forward, especially when you have +50% sciense from an academy, +40% from a great work of science, and +whatever it is you get from the national academy (unlocked a whole era ahead of the national stock exchange, too). Meanwhile, you'll trade your useless marble to an AI civ for 17 GPT and make the great merchant feel insignificant.

I don't think this math checks out. While it is true that gold costs increase as the game goes on (and so do science costs), any commerce that you have to convert to gold in order to cover some cost is a commerce you did not convert to science. So whether you get +6 gold or +6 science from some specialist, over a longer amount of turns it will lead to the same net scientific progress. Because unless you are running a profit at 100% slider, you will always have to spend turns at lower research percentage, whether by doing binary research or by simply running balanced spending percentages.

And besides that, don't neglect the food! The +1 food from a merchant is far better than the +1 hammer from the scientist, since it not only raises the growth cap of a city, but can also speed up the growth throughout the entire game or let it work a less food-yielding but more hammer or commerce heavy tile.

Great Doctors with +3 +2, regular doctors +1. Then give some wonders that grant them , and special great medical works that grant other effects.

Great Statesman would be nice, could like maybe make political theorem works like Machievielli's Prince.

I've seen [great] doctor specialists in the Community Civ V mod and great statesmen in the german BASE mod. In both cases, they are pretty mediocre, and did not feel like they add much at all. Just look at great spies, which came with the BtS expansion, and how underwhelming they often feel compared to the other great persons. (I am usually happy about my first spy, since he will be on recon duty for the rest of the game and can never be uncovered by an enemy, then my second spy and later all get relegated to golden age triggering.)

------------------

I noticed that there are some land/sea unit promotions for air interception. How do these rates of like 15% interact with the air evasion system now that the rates have been changed to the hundreds?

Germany has Autobahn listed twice on the tech tree: Once at Combustion Engine, once at Assembly Line.

Also, some German cities should have slightly different spelling: Munchen -> München, Koln -> Köln, Munster -> Münster (Munster also exists, but is a far, far smaller and less well known town, so I am certain it is meant to be Münster.), Monchengladbach -> Mönchengladbach, Saarbrucken -> Saarbrücken, Lubeck -> Lübeck, Mulheim -> Mülheim, Dusseldorf -> Düsseldorf, Hanover -> Hannover, Osnabruck -> Osnabrück, Wurzburg -> Würzburg, Gottingen -> Göttingen.

Two more things I forgot to reply to:

Feels like a lot of effort to code something completely new (and mechanically effects on buildings from tiles in city radius are completely new and wouldn't be trivial to code nor be free from performance impact) for an effect that's more symbolic than real...

Curious about the performance impact part. Here's what I would think about an implementation: When a city is settled, scan the BFC for peaks once, save that number in a variable of the city. Then for the mining building, just give hammer/commerce for that variable. If a peak would somehow be removed by an event, that event would have to update the city variable, but to my knowledge there is no such case, even the volcano event retains the peak under the volcano feature. Am I missing something, for example does reading a city variable for the building require it to be done every turn and would cause a performance cost?

Yes, and it was designed to be an inherent danger of civic change. But thinking about it I'm not sure if they actually should.

I think it shouldn't. Otherwise you'll reach a point in the later game where only spiritual civs or those in a golden age or with the Christo Redentor can ever change civics anymore. I could definitely see there being a downside to anarchy with separatistic cities, but with espionage points fixed at 0, the player has no real agency in fighting separatism short of massive unit stacks everywhere. (Since even with native culture, larger cities will have some degree of separatism due to a) size, b) trade route or older owner culture and c) religions. Usually, espionage can be used to target separatism, by dedicating a pop slot to an informant or using the commerce slider, but during anarchy even the permanent ones like taverns and jails are zero'd.

If all unstable cities trigger the events that prompt you to choose lenient governor and the likes, that's already a solid detriment. But in my experience, only one of these can trigger per turn and I am not sure how long the backlog lasts. After a recent 3 turn anarchy I am sure I got about 6 such events on the following turns although I had more than 10 separatistic cities during the anarchy phase.

 

[RamsesII]

Civ 4 (and so also RI) is a game about economy. It's about generating commerce so you can generate more research so you can build more advanced units so that you can conquer more cities so that you generate more hammers so that you can build even more units so that you can conquer even more cities so that you can generate even more commerce so that you can generate even more research so that you can generate even more advanced units so that you can yada yada yada. It's a game about economy and maximizing the yield and impact of that economy.

Thanks for the elaborate answer, yes I agree with this.

Of all the economy values in the game, gold deflates in value the most. 1 gold can make a huge difference on turn 50. 1 gold is not going to have any impact on turn 500, and even less on turn 1500. The other economy values can ultimately be used to win: research to get a science victory, hammers to build an army, culture to get legendary cities, etcetera. More gold doesn't actually do anything, it's only ever exchanged for one of the other economy values which then in turn get you a win.

Not sure I agree. First, all currency costs do rise, so if 1 gold is obviously more valualble on turn 20 than turn 2000, so is 1 science, 1 hammer and 1 culture. Maybe not in the same proportion, I have not checked, but the scaling is there.

Then let's take a situation, which happens almost in every game I played so far, where I have 10 cataphract regiments. I have finally discovered the tech (which must be late medieval) to train cuirassiers, which are a massive boost vs cataphracts. Now how do I get an army of 10 cuirassiers to destroy that large stack from my main rival civ which has prevented me from breaking into their defenses? if I use hammers, it is going to take - if I'm lucky - 10 turns in my 5 more producctive cities to train cuirassiers, or 20 turns in total. If I have one great engineer, well I get one regiment instantly. And I may have to disband in the process all or part of my cataphracts to avoid unti cost scaling. I can use my "science allowance", slide it to 0% and generate max gold. As a ROM I may be able to upgrade a cataphract to a cuirassier every other turn, so again, say 20 turns. A great scientist will not help in this process. Neither will a great prophet, nor a great artist. But if I have a great merchant... load it on a boat, and in 4 or 5 turns, I have instant gold to upgrade at once my horse aarmy into 10 cuirassiers. In that sense, great merchants can act as sort of military great persons. I still think it is powerful when used at the right time, and quite unique.

Because of that exchange, it's better to get a great person that yields that other resource directly rather than indirectly through gold. And especially so because the longer the game goes on, the exchange rate of gold to other economy values gets worse and worse. The 4 GPT from the merchant may be used to crank up the research slider by 30% in the ancient era, but not even by 5% in Rennaisance. But the +4 beakers from a scientist continue to push you forward, especially when you have +50% sciense from an academy, +40% from a great work of science, and +whatever it is you get from the national academy (unlocked a whole era ahead of the national stock exchange, too). Meanwhile, you'll trade your useless marble to an AI civ for 17 GPT and make the great merchant feel insignificant.

I see where you're going, but there are other ways - I think - to increase gold % output in a city, such as banks, stock exchange, and probably others...

The great merchant wonders are tempting but not necessary. Glasswork is nice but always generates 2, meaning you can trade another civ for it without needing your own glasswork. Or conquer it. Same for movies, etc. The newer ones are civic specific and world wonders, so you can easily be late to the game and miss out on them. And most of them come so late that you don't want to risk getting a great merchant (or 4) when the wonder gets built by someone else, leaving you stuck with a measly +4 GPT.

Even the food aspect isn't great because you need 3 of them to free up a citizen, but settling 3 of any other great person is going to give you more value than 1 freed up citizen. Maybe some buildings should improve the food yield of great merchants.

Generally I'm happy with two great merchants, one to secure a glasswork and one to secure an opportune golden age. Any further great merchants are settled with a shrug or stored away for when I sadly get a great prophet but can at least get another golden age.

Trade mission with massive upfront cash is what I prefer to use them for.

 

[AspiringScholar]

why'd y'all nerf the potency of the infrastructure and building improvements like libaries, universities, granaries, forges, etc.? It's at the point where it seems that it's almost unreasonable to ever build any libaries, forges, etc. because you could make more money on your investment just by building armies and invading your neighbors just for the people

While I don't expect that to go over especially well, I am sincerely curious how something like that would turn out if you were to try it in earnest and share the results here! It might work somewhat well in the very early game, but I suspect you'll hit a really low growth-ceiling before much time elapses, vertically and horizontally.

Civ 4 (and so also RI) is a game about economy. It's about generating commerce so you can generate more research so you can build more advanced units so that you can conquer more cities so that you generate more hammers so that you can build even more units so that you can conquer even more cities so that you can generate even more commerce so that you can generate even more research so that you can generate even more advanced units so that you can yada yada yada. It's a game about economy and maximizing the yield and impact of that economy.

Though you are a much stronger player than I am, your argument also applies to the long-term gains which investment in the frontloaded early economic advantage can give you. The settled gold may be relatively insignificant and underwhelming taken on its own by the latter half of the game, but if it financed the military edge needed to conquer an early neighbor, then ultimately the yield from that conquest throughout the rest of the game isn't irrelevant as a factor. I'm not saying that they're necessarily better or worse than anything else, specifically, but that it seems that your contention about the cyclical nature of what ought to be sought seems not to be accounting for the indirect output from what you can achieve with the early yields, in an economic rather than accounting sense.

It really sounds like you just want to be playing vanilla Civ4? You can't really expect to be able to apply vanilla strats in a total conversion mod as intricate as this. Also, who cares about the rank at the end, what matters is the fun during the match!

It seems this way to me too, for whatever it's worth. Considering that my games in vanilla took about 5ish hours, and my games in RI take about 50ish hours, I think one should temper their expectations accordingly...

Probably most of us would agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with vanilla as a standalone game anyway, but the design philosophy is just simply different and much more small and streamlined in scope. For those who want to feel and experience the grand sweep of history more thoroughly and immersively without altogether erasing the parameters of the game's core mechanics and abstractions, there is no better option!

By the way...

Spoiler :

Somewhat unrelated, but has anyone played Europa Universalis V so far? I have begun to dabble in trying to learn the game, and it looks promising and impressively massive in scope and granularity! Seems that Paradox actually released a feature-complete game at release with few immediately obvious significant problems "out of the box" - it's just going to take me a long time to learn it properly. Curious what others' thoughts are, if they've paid any attention to it or played it.

And besides that, don't neglect the food! The +1 food from a merchant is far better than the +1 hammer from the scientist, since it not only raises the growth cap of a city, but can also speed up the growth throughout the entire game or let it work a less food-yielding but more hammer or commerce heavy tile.

This! Considering that the free +1 distributes across all the mouths being fed, you can effectively divide your population into this number and then subtract it from the per capita food cost for each citizen, which makes all tiles "exchange rate" vis-a-vis better.

I noticed that there are some land/sea unit promotions for air interception. How do these rates of like 15% interact with the air evasion system now that the rates have been changed to the hundreds?

I'm simply taking a guess and may be misunderstanding something, myself, but since the formula for interception is "Intercept - Evade" and that the values for each increase successively as aircraft upgrade, if fighters of the same generation are fighting each other, the effective percentage being worked with will be 50% by default (Biplanes, though, are an exception with 30% default interception chance among themselves for whatever reason), even though each value climbs by generation. So, among contemporary aircraft, the 15% margin modifying a default 50% is rather significant.

Among dogfights between classes of fighters, it can either make no difference (as with the WW2 era "Fighter" with 120% interception and the (sub-sonic, debut) Jet Fighter having 160% evade by default, where obviously an additional 15% does not bridge the gap* - though, with the subsonics facing their upgrades, the stats are 210% interception vs. 220% evade, meaning that the promotion makes interception possible in the first place.

*Shouldn't the unlikely but not impossible ability to intercept apply to WW2 fighters vs. subsonic jets, as well? IIRC there were a handful of downed Me-262s from P-51s in 1945, and while that isn't particularly significant in the twilight hours of WW2 in real life, it does speak to the hypothetical possibility in a way that might be better modeled in-game.

I think it shouldn't. Otherwise you'll reach a point in the later game where only spiritual civs or those in a golden age or with the Christo Redentor can ever change civics anymore. I could definitely see there being a downside to anarchy with separatistic cities, but with espionage points fixed at 0, the player has no real agency in fighting separatism short of massive unit stacks everywhere. (Since even with native culture, larger cities will have some degree of separatism due to a) size, b) trade route or older owner culture and c) religions. Usually, espionage can be used to target separatism, by dedicating a pop slot to an informant or using the commerce slider, but during anarchy even the permanent ones like taverns and jails are zero'd.

Yes, I agree here as well. I want it to feel tough and weighty, but not a guaranteed, massive setback. I once fought a massive civil war and reconquered the defecting empire, but it would be better if the punishment for this came at the expense of the concessionary events and such, or at least for the player to be equipped with something to combat a huge spike in separatism besides an impossibly large stack in each city at the time of a civic change.

(Here is, by the way, a good use case for settled Great Spies, as their output of raw not tied to conversion from can really help hold down an unruly and prime city, even if this isn't practical for the point about large empires in the late game, overall.)

If all unstable cities trigger the events that prompt you to choose lenient governor and the likes, that's already a solid detriment. But in my experience, only one of these can trigger per turn and I am not sure how long the backlog lasts. After a recent 3 turn anarchy I am sure I got about 6 such events on the following turns although I had more than 10 separatistic cities during the anarchy phase.

Perhaps secession itself could be somehow made to be delayed until after the anarchy period ends, that way you can at least leverage your slider at that point to combat the high revolt risk, while also having to take the hits from the concessionary events (but still being able to feasibly change civics in the first place)?

--

As I realize that we're closing in on release, a few cosmetic observations if they're of any value, and a quick question about an existing mechanic:

- Robert the Bruce looks a bit odd. His eyes look "off" somehow (almost flesh-colored in low-contrast with his face, and not quite looking in the same direction from what I can tell) and his cheekbones are incredibly bulbous while his temples and cheeks are quite sunken in, though at the same time his neck is rather thick in a way which suggests that he is not gaunt enough to warrant this.

- Though this is something I'd mentioned before, will we have the plastic red fishing buoys removed from the nets of pre-modern fishing boats before the official release? The look really anachronistic as it is.

- Also, the medieval era fishing boat "hut" icon to indicate that the tile is being worked is also anachronistically of a XIX century cutter, with slender hull and little freeboard and a lateen sail. It's not as glaring as the above in my opinion, but would it possible to have something more appropriate to the medieval era shown for this? Even in renaissance, this kind of vessel wouldn't look appropriate in the first half of the era, so maybe making a cutoff at Naval Engineering (when similar-looking sloops show up) be a cutoff point?

- Does the XP cap from barbarians apply to the unit's own individual combat experience against barbarians, or just the max XP threshold they happen to have before fighting one? I thought that that was how it worked, but I had a somewhat highly promoted unit which was unable to gain any XP from a barbarian which I don't believe had ever fought any (slaves, serfs or otherwise) and it made me question whether the limit is actually a ceiling set against their XP overall, or if it indeed does account for that unit's actual XP gained from fighting barbarians. It could be that this unit already had and I simply forgot about it, but would like to know.

 

[JDCP]

specific skillset relevant to Civ 4

What skills does CIV4 modelling require besides the basics of 3d modelling tools like Blender or (in the hefty side, but perhaps most faithful) 3dsmax? Just curious this time, don't think the answer will serve me for much as of now.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

A general comment: some recent posts have several very specific pointers/suggestions/reports, like wrong characters and buoy colours and weird-looking portraits. That's the exact kind of comments I love this close to a release - quickly actionable, with no knock-ons on the overall balance.

I noticed that there are some land/sea unit promotions for air interception. How do these rates of like 15% interact with the air evasion system now that the rates have been changed to the hundreds?

The exact same way as between two air units. Those land/sea units also have some base interception power and those promos help raise it. For instance, a Mobile SAM has 250 interception power - more than an early jet fighter, but less than a supersonic one (BTW, help me out here on UX - should the interception power be tooltipped with "%" or without - it is not exactly percentage itself, but it translates directly to % when compared to evasion?).

Germany has Autobahn listed twice on the tech tree: Once at Combustion Engine, once at Assembly Line.

Thanks, a definite inconsistency between the availability of the route itself and the build action. Fixed. In process I realized my "hacky" way of showing Autobahn as a German unique route (implemented before I could even code stuff, purely via XML) is actually better than the stock way of displaying routes...

Also, some German cities should have slightly different spelling: Munchen -> München, Koln -> Köln, Munster -> Münster (Munster also exists, but is a far, far smaller and less well known town, so I am certain it is meant to be Münster.), Monchengladbach -> Mönchengladbach, Saarbrucken -> Saarbrücken, Lubeck -> Lübeck, Mulheim -> Mülheim, Dusseldorf -> Düsseldorf, Hanover -> Hannover, Osnabruck -> Osnabrück, Wurzburg -> Würzburg, Gottingen -> Göttingen.

Yeah, I know, it's an "old shame" of mine - early on, when implementing dynamic names, I tried avoiding all non-default Latin characters for compatibility sake. This turned out to be a misplaced worry, but by that time, Germany was already done, and I never got back to fixing their city names. Thanks for looking up the specific ones I need to fix.

Curious about the performance impact part. Here's what I would think about an implementation: When a city is settled, scan the BFC for peaks once, save that number in a variable of the city. Then for the mining building, just give hammer/commerce for that variable. If a peak would somehow be removed by an event, that event would have to update the city variable, but to my knowledge there is no such case, even the volcano event retains the peak under the volcano feature. Am I missing something, for example does reading a city variable for the building require it to be done every turn and would cause a performance cost?

In the most basic terms, you're kind of right, but only if we think the peak shouldn't be in one's borders for that (would be ok for something that, say, gave a yield bonus directly to the tile, as it'd have to be worked first to provide the effect). Otherwise, we need to factor in tile control, which can change several times during a game turn, which means the check should happen any time the tile changes control, which is not the end of the world, but not a one-and-done thing either (the one-and-done approach is indeed great for something that doesn't change during the gameplay, for instance recently that's how I handled AI understanding of isthmuses - a rather costly calculation, but only done once when the map is generated).

I think it shouldn't. Otherwise you'll reach a point in the later game where only spiritual civs or those in a golden age or with the Christo Redentor can ever change civics anymore. I could definitely see there being a downside to anarchy with separatistic cities, but with espionage points fixed at 0, the player has no real agency in fighting separatism short of massive unit stacks everywhere. (Since even with native culture, larger cities will have some degree of separatism due to a) size, b) trade route or older owner culture and c) religions. Usually, espionage can be used to target separatism, by dedicating a pop slot to an informant or using the commerce slider, but during anarchy even the permanent ones like taverns and jails are zero'd.

If all unstable cities trigger the events that prompt you to choose lenient governor and the likes, that's already a solid detriment. But in my experience, only one of these can trigger per turn and I am not sure how long the backlog lasts. After a recent 3 turn anarchy I am sure I got about 6 such events on the following turns although I had more than 10 separatistic cities during the anarchy phase.

Ok noted.

Somewhat unrelated, but has anyone played Europa Universalis V so far? I have begun to dabble in trying to learn the game, and it looks promising and impressively massive in scope and granularity! Seems that Paradox actually released a feature-complete game at release with few immediately obvious significant problems "out of the box" - it's just going to take me a long time to learn it properly. Curious what others' thoughts are, if they've paid any attention to it or played it.

Yeah, I did. Ran into a significant problem by early XVI century and now sit waiting for it to be fixed in a patch.

Among dogfights between classes of fighters, it can either make no difference (as with the WW2 era "Fighter" with 120% interception and the (sub-sonic, debut) Jet Fighter having 160% evade by default, where obviously an additional 15% does not bridge the gap* - though, with the subsonics facing their upgrades, the stats are 210% interception vs. 220% evade, meaning that the promotion makes interception possible in the first place.

*Shouldn't the unlikely but not impossible ability to intercept apply to WW2 fighters vs. subsonic jets, as well? IIRC there were a handful of downed Me-262s from P-51s in 1945, and while that isn't particularly significant in the twilight hours of WW2 in real life, it does speak to the hypothetical possibility in a way that might be better modeled in-game.

Isn't it how it is right now? WW2 fighters have 120 interception power, whereas early jets have 160 evasion - this makes them untouchable by default, but with a couple of interception-increasing promos you can push into the territory that allows you to intercept them. The theoretical interception cap for a WW2 fighter with all Interception promos is 220, which is quite comfortable for intercepting fresh early jets.

- Robert the Bruce looks a bit odd. His eyes look "off" somehow (almost flesh-colored in low-contrast with his face, and not quite looking in the same direction from what I can tell) and his cheekbones are incredibly bulbous while his temples and cheeks are quite sunken in, though at the same time his neck is rather thick in a way which suggests that he is not gaunt enough to warrant this.

Yeah, this is my attempt to salvage a real reconstruction-based portrait by adding some hair (I doubt he was Mr Clean IRL). I liked the fact that it was supposed to be true to his actual likeness, which is rarely seen in portraits of medieval leaders. But I suppose it's just a weird portrait in the first place, and can't be salvaged.

- Though this is something I'd mentioned before, will we have the plastic red fishing buoys removed from the nets of pre-modern fishing boats before the official release? The look really anachronistic as it is.

- Also, the medieval era fishing boat "hut" icon to indicate that the tile is being worked is also anachronistically of a XIX century cutter, with slender hull and little freeboard and a lateen sail. It's not as glaring as the above in my opinion, but would it possible to have something more appropriate to the medieval era shown for this? Even in renaissance, this kind of vessel wouldn't look appropriate in the first half of the era, so maybe making a cutoff at Naval Engineering (when similar-looking sloops show up) be a cutoff point?

Thanks for reminding; I'll action those.

- Does the XP cap from barbarians apply to the unit's own individual combat experience against barbarians, or just the max XP threshold they happen to have before fighting one? I thought that that was how it worked, but I had a somewhat highly promoted unit which was unable to gain any XP from a barbarian which I don't believe had ever fought any (slaves, serfs or otherwise) and it made me question whether the limit is actually a ceiling set against their XP overall, or if it indeed does account for that unit's actual XP gained from fighting barbarians. It could be that this unit already had and I simply forgot about it, but would like to know.

The cap means that above a certain amount of XP, the unit can't gain any more XP from fighting barbarians. I didn't even suppose it could be interpreted in any other way. There is no separate "XP gained specifically from fighting barbarians" being tracked anywhere.

What skills does CIV4 modelling require besides the basics of 3d modelling tools like Blender or (in the hefty side, but perhaps most faithful) 3dsmax? Just curious this time, don't think the answer will serve me for much as of now.

I mean, the basic game-related 3d modelling skills of today are rather different from the ones needed 20-25 years ago. These days, AO and lighting and normal maps do a lot of fine detail work on models, so base textures can actually be rather basic - and that's ok as it works great in a game with a modern graphical engine. Likewise, the ability to convey more with less when it comes to polycounts is certainly less critical for modern 3d modellers. There's a lot of stuff like this, which means that modern game dev skills are somewhat applicable, but definitely not directly translatable.

 

[RezerCuid]

Thanks for reminding; I'll action those.

But in the industrial version of this improvement, it's better to leave the buoys

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Of course; the painted buoys IRL are a XIXth century onwards thing, so Industrial-Modern era.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Clicking the obsolete bronze icon in the tech tree at Bessemer Converter causes a python exception and a blank pedia page.

Are Hussars and Cavalry mixed up in the unit classes? Hussars wield swords and are "ranged mounted", while cavalry wields rifles (even needs firearms) and is "charge mounted".

What does the tech era icon before the locomotive (industrial techs at 50%) display?