Realism Invictus

[SinkingDutchman]

Firstly, compliments on this very entertaining mod. Much more fun than Civ5. I love the new resource system and the diversity in units.

Secondly, I'm not sure if I understand the aid bonus. Does one also receive the bonus when attacking from a stack?

Thirdly, for curiosity's sake, do you plan to include the Dutch? I understand there's little space for them in the world map with France and Germany being too close, but perhaps for random maps?

Fourthly, is the excessive trait not a bit...excessive? I mean losing 20% of your commerce seems like a more serious penalty than missing some spy points or some foreign trade route coins.

 

[ostar]

Since the Great Spies are BTS, obviously they've just been added for this mod version. Will Great Person popups work for them? I have noticed there are no Great Spies dds files. Would adding those I've created for my use work still, if I put them in the proper path? Or is further programming needed for those?

On that note, I know the existing Great Person Popup mods only have about half the G. Spies completed. I finished them all for my use, including the 'code name' ones like Atlas, etc. For those I used a famous historical quote about espionage and spying like:
"Be subtle! Be subtle! And use your spies for every business." - Sun Tzu
and
"In general it is necessary to pay spies well and not be miserly in that respect. A man who risks being hanged in our service merits being well paid." - Frederick the Great
and
"Emperor Justinian would spend nothing; and, indeed, abolished the very name of secret agent from the [Byzantine] Empire, the result being, many disasters..." - Procopius

If the team wants to use the about 2-3 dozen Great Spy images I have for this mod so they don't have to remake them all, I can send them to you.

I tried to attach some of these in three different formats, but no luck. It could be my proxy server).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Firstly, compliments on this very entertaining mod. Much more fun than Civ5. I love the new resource system and the diversity in units.

Thanks!

Secondly, I'm not sure if I understand the aid bonus. Does one also receive the bonus when attacking from a stack?

Yeah, it works both ways, when defending and attacking - if you are attacking from a stack. You should keep in mind that if, for instance, you have a cavalry unit in a city getting all the nice aid from other units stationed there, and you point it to attack a unit two tiles away, the cavalry will LOSE the aid by the time it reaches the enemy, and the combat chance you evaluated from afar will be inaccurate. Always evaluate your chances only when already in position to attack!

Thirdly, for curiosity's sake, do you plan to include the Dutch? I understand there's little space for them in the world map with France and Germany being too close, but perhaps for random maps?

Well, of course we have plans to eventually add them. They have lots of nice interesting stuff available for them. The world map concerns me indeed, but we'll think of something.

Fourthly, is the excessive trait not a bit...excessive? I mean losing 20% of your commerce seems like a more serious penalty than missing some spy points or some foreign trade route coins.

Not 20% of commerce, but only 10% of your gold. It is quite a mild penalty - as most players rarely play below 50% research, that basically means that less than 50% of your commerce ever goes to gold - and that means that you rarely ever lose more than 5% commerce from your malus.

Since the Great Spies are BTS, obviously they've just been added for this mod version. Will Great Person popups work for them? I have noticed there are no Great Spies dds files. Would adding those I've created for my use work still, if I put them in the proper path? Or is further programming needed for those?

You can just add them, and the mod will recognize them, if the name is accurate.

On that note, I know the existing Great Person Popup mods only have about half the G. Spies completed. I finished them all for my use, including the 'code name' ones like Atlas, etc. For those I used a famous historical quote about espionage and spying like:
"Be subtle! Be subtle! And use your spies for every business." - Sun Tzu
and
"In general it is necessary to pay spies well and not be miserly in that respect. A man who risks being hanged in our service merits being well paid." - Frederick the Great
and
"Emperor Justinian would spend nothing; and, indeed, abolished the very name of secret agent from the [Byzantine] Empire, the result being, many disasters..." - Procopius

If the team wants to use the about 2-3 dozen Great Spy images I have for this mod so they don't have to remake them all, I can send them to you.

I tried to attach some of these in three different formats, but no luck. It could be my proxy server).

That would be very nice of you. Doing the popups is an interesting task I like, but there are simply too many of them - you might have run into the fact that roughly 1/3 of popups still uses older art that I intend to remake to blend with the others better.

You can use some external file hosting, like Rapidshare or Megaupload, to share your files. They will be very appreciated.

 

[Sivistys]

I may have stumbled upon a bug. I had hinduism spread in one of my cities even though I'm running theocracy and hinduism is not my state religion. I thought theocracy should prevent that (it does say so on the civic description, double-checked that one ).

Well, went to test inquisition and hindu-neighbour Indians didn't really like that - declared war on me even though we had been in peace like 1000 years and they even don't have army that would have any chance against me

 

[Bate1999]

Thanks for your help Walter Hawkwood and Hian the Frog! I was able to make the changes to the air units in vanilla Beyond the Sword and so on… now to just look at airlifts.

 

[UKScud]

Congrats on a fanastic mod....I've played it this last week and it's brilliant!

 

[zoommooz]

Ive already said how good this mod is, but serioulsy, I am just coming into the medieval era and it just keeps getting better and better. I feel that this really is the best civ 4 mod bar none. (and I am only a third of the way through). In fact, I have decided to update my system (windows xp pro, 32-bit, 2.0GHz processor 4GB ram), so my question is what is the best system to run this mod as fast as possible, and with the ability to complete the game even on the world map. Really cost is not an issue, nor is its ability to do other things, I am upgrading solely to play this mod, thats how impressed I am.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I may have stumbled upon a bug. I had hinduism spread in one of my cities even though I'm running theocracy and hinduism is not my state religion. I thought theocracy should prevent that (it does say so on the civic description, double-checked that one ).

Well, went to test inquisition and hindu-neighbour Indians didn't really like that - declared war on me even though we had been in peace like 1000 years and they even don't have army that would have any chance against me

Committing inquisition has a flat chance that an an offended civ will declare a war on you. You can use this to your advantage for creating provocations.

As for the spread, I will check - last time I saw it, Theology worked fine.

Ive already said how good this mod is, but serioulsy, I am just coming into the medieval era and it just keeps getting better and better. I feel that this really is the best civ 4 mod bar none. (and I am only a third of the way through). In fact, I have decided to update my system (windows xp pro, 32-bit, 2.0GHz processor 4GB ram), so my question is what is the best system to run this mod as fast as possible, and with the ability to complete the game even on the world map. Really cost is not an issue, nor is its ability to do other things, I am upgrading solely to play this mod, thats how impressed I am.

Always nice to hear that people like our mod. One thing you should do for sure is upgrade to a 64-bit OS (Win7, I guess); be sure to get a relatively modern video card with a lot of video memory (this is probably the main factor; our mod has a LOT of textures to store there). I don't think Civ4 can take advantage of multi-core processors, so here don't expect to see much speed improvement (although individual cores of modern CPUs also perform better than older ones). More than 4 Gb of RAM will be helpful; other than that, I don't know. I guess a faster HDD can also help, but to what extent, I don't know.

My own system has 64-bit Win7, an old-ish Core I3, an Nvidia 200 series video card and 4 Gb RAM. I am able to finish games on huge maps (although they lag quite a lot towards the end, but not in "unplayable" area), and I get a serious slowdown on World Map around the year 1400 (I don't really play it a lot, but do many hands-off tests). So anything better than mine can be reasonably expected to perform better.

 

[Darkphoenix]

I may have stumbled upon a bug. I had hinduism spread in one of my cities even though I'm running theocracy and hinduism is not my state religion. I thought theocracy should prevent that (it does say so on the civic description, double-checked that one ).

Well, went to test inquisition and hindu-neighbour Indians didn't really like that - declared war on me even though we had been in peace like 1000 years and they even don't have army that would have any chance against me

Did any events go off? (Not just for you, for an hindu civ)

I think there might be a spreading of religion events, and I do not know if it takes into account Theocracy.

 

[Snake Pliskeen]

In my last game on the world map I've tried a new civ for me, the Turks. You cant imagine how funny was to play with them! They are not imperialistic but they get 6 generals before 1 AD without fighting a single war! Only fighting barbarians, so I could found all traditions and 2-3 doctrines! Now I'm slowly conquering all barbarian cities using catapults to weaken their strong forts (in my opinion too strong) before to launch a great Asia conquest. As previous versions, this is the best mod to play with. Maybe only Rise of Mankind-a new dawn can be at such levels. Thanks guys to give us such a funny time!

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

In my last game on the world map I've tried a new civ for me, the Turks. You cant imagine how funny was to play with them! They are not imperialistic but they get 6 generals before 1 AD without fighting a single war! Only fighting barbarians, so I could found all traditions and 2-3 doctrines! Now I'm slowly conquering all barbarian cities using catapults to weaken their strong forts (in my opinion too strong) before to launch a great Asia conquest. As previous versions, this is the best mod to play with. Maybe only Rise of Mankind-a new dawn can be at such levels. Thanks guys to give us such a funny time!

In my hands-off tests, in many intermediate versions of the map the AI-led Turks indeed went on a conquest rampage around early Medieval era, and wound in top-3 civs most of the time. I'm doing some very intensive testing for 3.01 World Map currently.

 

[Sivistys]

Did any events go off? (Not just for you, for an hindu civ)

I think there might be a spreading of religion events, and I do not know if it takes into account Theocracy.

Just checked from the save on that turn and indeed: "Inspired hindu missionaries from the Indian city of Pataliputra have greatly expanded the influence of their religion".

That event would really hurt when running state atheism

 

[Hian the Frog]

In my last game on the world map I've tried a new civ for me, the Turks. You cant imagine how funny was to play with them! They are not imperialistic but they get 6 generals before 1 AD without fighting a single war! Only fighting barbarians, so I could found all traditions and 2-3 doctrines! Now I'm slowly conquering all barbarian cities using catapults to weaken their strong forts (in my opinion too strong) before to launch a great Asia conquest. As previous versions, this is the best mod to play with. Maybe only Rise of Mankind-a new dawn can be at such levels. Thanks guys to give us such a funny time!

Played by a human, the Turks can be devastating. This civ is one of the "long run" civ. I mean there that you start slowly because of the barbarian pressure - that can be great - but as soon as you can get more powerful units you - slowly again - expand by conquering barbarian cities and your neighbors. Later, you will encounter that same problem as all civs: too much cities = high upkeep (maintenance), so less gold and research.

OTOH, played by the AI, the Turks can either become one of the strongest civ or beeing simply destroyed.

In all cases, we are pleased to read that you have fun playing RI.

 

[Hian the Frog]

Thirdly, for curiosity's sake, do you plan to include the Dutch? I understand there's little space for them in the world map with France and Germany being too close, but perhaps for random maps?

Yes. One day, we will include the Dutch.

You have to know that adding a civ in RI is very time consuming. We need to:
- find the art files and add all the units (basic units, National units, unique units).
- add at least one more leader to have some choice. There, we have an idea about the Dutch next leader.
- add all the Great People. Dutch, like most of the European, simply have too much famous Great People to add. We will have to decide on 5-6 per Great People types.
- find the art files and add all the buidings and national wonders.
- testing... simply, testing.

As you can read, it's a lot of job. Nevertheless, Netherlands are on the top three of the civs we will like to add.

 

[zoommooz]

Just a couple of things:


1. Is it WAD that some unquie units are more expensive, but seem to have identical stats? (ie the russian missile crusier is more expensive then the stock cruiser, but has identical stats[it does use a differnt fuel type])

2. What do you think of the possibilty, in the name of realism, to add more xxx% bonuses vs particular older unit types when using modern ones. (ie with a strenghth of 24, and Apache gunship could be quite easily taken down by a few 15 strenghth calvalry. I feel that these types of unit should be able to take on at least 5-6 and win, and if you have to make them more expensive to balance them, so be it. Its just that I hated losing these types of battle in the vanilla.

3. On the large world map, with regards to the ark of the covernet (and probably the other holy place wonder, it seems that somthing might be done in regards to aquireing it. For example, not only do you need 16 cities to even start to build it (16 synagoes, 4 great synagoges) but these have to be 16 quite dveloped cities. While I can appreaciate that that it should be hard to get (and I love things that are hard to get) by the time you do have 16 developed cities the wonder is more then likely about to go obselete (in my current game, mid way through the medieval period only one cive even has 16 cities)

4. Just a small bug, In the civilpedia, quite a few of the national tradition have in their description (one step down, in term of what the buidling provides to each unit built) incorrectly linked, so that provide units with the skimisher promotion is linked to the skimisher unit, rather then the promotion of the same name. Incedently, each of these incorrect links occurs when their is a unit and promotion of the same name.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Just a couple of things:


1. Is it WAD that some unquie units are more expensive, but seem to have identical stats? (ie the russian missile crusier is more expensive then the stock cruiser, but has identical stats[it does use a differnt fuel type])

Yeah, a lower/higher price is also a kind of flavor.

2. What do you think of the possibilty, in the name of realism, to add more xxx% bonuses vs particular older unit types when using modern ones. (ie with a strenghth of 24, and Apache gunship could be quite easily taken down by a few 15 strenghth calvalry. I feel that these types of unit should be able to take on at least 5-6 and win, and if you have to make them more expensive to balance them, so be it. Its just that I hated losing these types of battle in the vanilla.

There's already quite a lot of those, but we might have missed some. For instance, the gunships could probably use some, as you correctly pointed out.

3. On the large world map, with regards to the ark of the covernet (and probably the other holy place wonder, it seems that somthing might be done in regards to aquireing it. For example, not only do you need 16 cities to even start to build it (16 synagoes, 4 great synagoges) but these have to be 16 quite dveloped cities. While I can appreaciate that that it should be hard to get (and I love things that are hard to get) by the time you do have 16 developed cities the wonder is more then likely about to go obselete (in my current game, mid way through the medieval period only one cive even has 16 cities)

Are you speaking of the World Map, or the large map size? It is probably true that the requirements are a bit steep.

4. Just a small bug, In the civilpedia, quite a few of the national tradition have in their description (one step down, in term of what the buidling provides to each unit built) incorrectly linked, so that provide units with the skimisher promotion is linked to the skimisher unit, rather then the promotion of the same name. Incedently, each of these incorrect links occurs when their is a unit and promotion of the same name.

Yep, I'm aware of that; unfortunately it does so automatically, and I think that this is one bug that's quite easy to live with.

 

[zoommooz]

I was talking about the world map, and after a bit of exploring I found that basic (no world size, game speed modifications) has the requirment set at 2 great synagoges. So in a sense there is very little middle ground as I changed it to 1, which translated to two on the world map, but I thought perhaps three would have been about right (12 cities then), however due to the above point i feel that two 9eight developed cities required still seemed fine.

Cool about the bug, as you say easy to live with.

While on the topic of balance, I noticed someone in an earlier post complaining that the combat add system (specifically the hill attack bonus) was overpowered. I think perhaps all of them need to be looked at, as I am finding with the right combos (especially that lovely siege bonus) the ability to really overrun AI cities. Because, no doubt, the AI does not do a good job at using this advantage if feel that probably you could (just an idea by the way) either reduced the bonus curve ie 5-10-15 becomes 3-6-9, or better yet increase the bonus thresehold from 100-200: level 1, 200-300: level 2, >300: level 3 to 150-300 300-450, 450-650 repecectively. What this would do is make it damn hard to get the (substatial) tier three bonuses, and make the player flirt with the overcrowding promotion to get it (by the way the overcrowding promotion is so simply, yet so bloodly brilliant it a wonder no one has thought of it before)

Also, I think that the early siege's bombard ability is way overpowered, as that lovely 70% defensive bonus (walls+culture) you worked so hard to build up can be completely flatterned in a coupl of turns with 4-5 fairly cheap catapults. I feel that it should take a least around 5 turns to to this (addmititly, a play a 3400 hundred turn game, which prbably skewer my opinion somewhat in regard to this.

Please do not take my comment the wrong way, I am by no mean complaining about the mod, just a couple of ideas with (as I feel the whole idea of you mod encapsulates) the quest for as close to realism as the game, and balace allows.

Cheers

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Your points are quite valid, and they, among others are things we constantly tweak and try to find a decent balance for.

As far as aid bonuses are concerned, there is a psychological thing at work here. If you read the thread from the start, you have no doubt already run into complaints that 5% bonuses amount to almost nothing - which is not true, but you can see that all the values below that will be percieved as insignificant by the majority of players. Also, AI is not that terrible at stack composition itself, one can quite often see combined stacks that get good aid bonuses.

 

[TyphoidLarry]

I've downloaded the modpack, and I'd really like to try it, but I'm getting a strange installation error. Perhaps someone here can help. I'm using the Steam version of BTS, on a 64-bit processor with Windows 7. When I open the installer, the program fails to autodetect my BTS installation. I manually select the proper folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\). After clicking "install" I get the following error: Error opening file for writing Mods\Realism Invictus\Realism Invictus.ini. Attempting to retry does no good, and if I select ignore the installer has the same error for every single file in the mod.

Does anyone know what to do? I'd really like to try this mod. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The installer, unfortunately, is bugged and doesn't properly parse manually input path. Use archived version instead.