Suggestion: That the epidemic risk % in the city screen shows "overflow" negative risk, such that you can easily see how much can raise the risk without going over 0. For example if you want to build forge you have to make the entire calculation yourself to see if the risk will go over a current display of 0% risk (this 0% risk might actually be for example -2.5% and then there is ample room to build forge, but if it instead actually is 0% then a forge would give you a 1% risk, and dismantling buildings are unfortunately not an option). Why not have the computer do that calculation for you? There's no reason to not show the actual negative risk value.
Very nice UI suggestion. Noted for the future.
Suggestion 2: In my Aztec playthrough that is now at the end of the middle age I noticed that I can't build any distilleries because I have no access to wheat, sugar or wine (which made me try and research it a bit on ze internetz). As far as I understand maya and especially aztec had and came to have extensive experience with alcoholic beverage production, and aztec knew how to do some distilling, using native plants for this purpose. Although it was not for social or leisure use but strictly religious and ritualistic. Are there any plans for implementing meso american alcohol resources in the future, has this prospect been considered or am I bringing a whole new suggestion to the table?
Take a read of the following research document (that I found on the internet, I know one should not just readily believe everything that you randomly look up on google.... but it seems credible doesn't it?):
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/PublicHealth/research/centers/CAIANH/journal/Documents/Volume 7/7(2)_Abbott_Use_of_Alcohol_1-13.pdf
I don't believe it was
distilled alcohol, but rather just fermented stuff. There is a rather important distinction here; before distillation was invented by Arabs and independently Chinese in around 1000 AD, and put to use in Europe and elsewhere for alcohol production several centuries later, alcoholic beverages were much weaker, with the strongest being around 20% (~fortified wine). Distilled alcohol was much stronger, around 40% commonly found in whiskey/vodka etc. nowadays, and even stronger in some cases. That basically led to a revolution in human alcohol consumption around mid-second millennium AD. Many less advanced cultures actually came close to collapse (or collapsed) because of alcoholism related to an influx of new much stronger beverages that were not accounted for by their cultural code. If we came to Europe around 1700, we would likely be horrified how literally everyone (including most babies and almost any iconic historical figure of the time you care to imagine) was unacceptably drunk by modern standards all the time. It was rather common for people to die of alcohol overdose - not poisoning mind you, but reaching a lethal concentration of alcohol in the blood, something thankfully much rarer these days.
Long story short, while eventually everyone would distill alcohol from anything remotely sugary (even potatoes; brannvin from potatoes was actually the major factor for potato spread in Scandinavia, for example), it first needed a distillation process to be discovered and spread, so not before late Medieval era in Civ 4 terms. And in theory it would mean that you should distill from any crop available in RI, but for gameplay balance reasons, that doesn't work, as it would create a very definite overabundance of alcohol resource. What I
was contemplating is giving many (all?) civs their national alcohol variants as flavor distillates, so for example Slavic civs (Poland and Russia) would keep their vodka from Wheat, while Amiericans would have bourbon from Corn, and Scandinavians would get brannvin from Potatoes. This basically means that every civ gets one source of crop alcohol, plus two high-sugar substrates (grapes and cane sugar) that are common to everyone. I will probably do it some day. It doesn't add much to gameplay, but has some flavor potential.
One thing that really, really winds me up though is the AI's constant, tiresome and ultimately futile wars. I've had several games recently that have just got bogged down early medieval era because several AI's, both weak and powerful take it upon themselves to trek half way across the planet to declare war on me when they have weaker or comparable strength AI empires on their doorstep that they would be better attacking. It ruins the realism for me.
I understand the AI will declare war from time to time, but as an example they are trekking 30+ turns to declare war on me. My strength is comparable. My cities well garrisoned. There are weaker civs with other religions on their own borders. They have nothing to gain from this war, save the slight chance that they raze a city, which is highly unlikely give the size of my defensive army.
Is there something I'm missing? I'm going out of my way to be friendly with some of them, gifting them money, resources, trading and agreeing to requests to close borders, declare war etc... yet there seems to be no method to stop them attacking seemingly randomly.
It's got to the point where I would happily mod some files to lessen the chance of the AI declaring war on the player, is this something that can be done? I'm happy with everything else on monarch difficulty. I can keep pace at this level, any less and I run away with it, any more and I think I would break something in frustration.
I can't affect AI behavior directly, unfortunately, and our coders so far have found no indication of what exactly is wrong with it. I've seen such behavior myself; not every game definitely, but now and then absolutely. That also happens with AI on AI too, by the way, but players are less likely to notice pointless wars when they are not happening to them. I'd hate for this to keep happening in the final RI release, but so far I saw no way to stop this from happening.
Actually Republic does not give +2 happiness from the get go without senate as you claim. Literally the only thing it gives you is +1 in the 8 largest cities and increased maintainence costs. Then another +1 comes with senate much later, along with the great person boost. Actually the maintenance cost is generally very hard felt. Usually will greatly reduce the percentage that you can allocate to research. Perhaps a -25 distance penalty or so would help alleviate that while still encouraging players to stay small.
Despotism gives you -1 but with +2 bonus from barracks and walls. Also gives you a fantastic building that gives +1 happiness and culture early on (imperial cult/bixi). Later on also has plenty of other buildings that give you another +1 in combination with other civics. Overall even when I play small, I am better served by despotism. It furthermore gives military production bonus. (And an additional happiness bonus to barracks on top of the initial happiness bonus that barracks get anyway if you have a leader with imperialist trait.)
Never claimed it gives +2 happiness from the get go; said it was +2 over Despotism, with its inherent -1 taken into account, with said 2 happiness indeed available for Despotism to compensate for with buildings - which are investment in time/production. And on higher difficulties in early game you have to be very conscious of opportunity costs for time investments.
I'll also add that I agree with above that maintaining troops outside your border should be more expensive. Failed military campaigns should be devastating. If I wipe out an entire invading force, there should be serious consequences back home. A larger aggressive civ will generally be able to replace armies extremely quickly. One potential measure could be a boost to war weariness. Perhaps war weariness could accumulate faster the larger your civ is. That should deter relentless war mongering that snowballs.
That would mostly harm AI civs who wage war in less time-efficinent manner than players. I am generally reluctant to implement stuff that hurts AI more than players.
Actually I had an idea that I really love. Why not tie military units to food production or population size. All those soldiers have to be fed after all. They could also be tied to population. Since the population levels are exponential (meaning that a size 8 city is orders of magnitude larger than a size 5 city), this could work well with the tall vs wide balance. Quite a few ways to implement this actually.
In practice, wide empires still on average have more population: the way resources work in Civ 4, a wide empire will generally have more luxury and health resources, and thus be able to grow their cities to larger population limits. So tying it to population would actually likely benefit wide playstyle more, at least if no measures are taken at the same time to ensure tall playstyle somehow results in larger cities.
While scouring the internet I found this old mod here Super Forts:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/super-forts.444512/
It seems to provide exactly what I was thinking concerning taking territory with forts. However how difficult would it be to merge/use it with RI and perhaps this is not even something the RI devs would want, but I'd personally love to able to do it in RI
Had a look at it, and it seems quite promising, especially the part where AI seems to be aware of how to use it (at least that's what the author claims). As for how hard, it is not for me to answer.
Insane SVN update. I've been waiting for it for so long! Boy the nerfs are severe!
However there are some issues with World Map Huge.
1) No Neth world map "crashes" at the start of the game. The regular world map huge doesn't have the same problem.
That's strange. I'd obviously not have uploaded the map if it did what you are showing. It works fine on my side. Could anyone please chime in and see if it works or doesn't for them? Then we can determine if there is a problem on your side that prevents it from working, or my side that somehow makes it work.
2) MOAR marble and stone for Rome?
Rome is kind of out of tiles to cram additional resources to. There is only so much land in Italy
3) Why is the new starting place of China X:91 Y:58? May I humbly suggest X:90 Y:59?
Because that's where Chang'an really stands/stood, to my knowledge.
4) Austronesian Sunda Warriors' behaviour is still UNITAI_SETTLE. Is this intentional?
No, could have missed one.
5) Silures barb city... Walter, what is your opinion on optimization of city placement? Should they occupy just some cool spots or should their estimated placement be "perfect" so that as many as possible (resource) tiles are worked by cities?
It definitely shouldn't be "perfect" IMO. I also believe that placing two "perfect" cities is often a worse strategy in Civ than placing three with some overlap, despite OCD issues. Lost opportunity to work more tiles kicks in quite late, compared to the added benefit of having another city. True in vanilla, but even more true in RI, where later in game there are more ways to produce food from less tiles while having most of the population occupied as specialists. Not only will a city grow to work all the tiles comparatively late, but by that time you might already
not want to work some of the tiles in favor of making these pops specialists.