I am currently playing the Europe scenario. I have met about 10 civs or so. Israel and Egypt are my neighbors. Egypt has a different religion than I do, Israel the same. I have also helped Israel out in a war. Some civs (understandably) dont desire open borders right off (I really like this addition as I felt it was way too easy and beneficial to civs), but a couple of turns later they will want them. Then, very quickly they will drop them again...and want them again, etc.. Even the top event scroll will say "so and so will sign open borders" then you go to sign with them and they decline. So it's alot of annoyance seeing that and then asking for open borders only to be turned down, even if you ask "What do you want for this?", it’s no good. I just ended up saying, "You know what, If you dont popup and ask me for open borders, Im not going to worry about watching the top event scroll"
Israel, whom I would expect to want them and keep them, as we are "friends", basically does the same thing, although not quite as frequent. Now, I havent paid attention to my relative power level, im up towards the top in score and mediocre on military power right now. I’m their nearest neighbor with Egypt a close second. Not sure what I was power wise at each iteration, but it happened constantly anyway.
Another civ was Turkey, really far off, but friends with me really fast. They too would sign open borders and then drop them alot. Essentially, it seems as though the UI will only have them open for 10-15 turns or so then drop for awhile (maybe even another 10-15) and want them again. Just some details on it. I can share the save if wanted?
Would be cool to have the feedback based on the latest SVN changes - is it better now?
BTW, What's the goal of the changes? To make war less common with distant civs? Open borders harder to achieve? Science harder to maintain? I would love the fact that some civ doesn’t march halfway across the world because you offended them. I mean, sure, your relations should suffer. They should “go after you”, as far as trade embargoes and open borders, spy’s, etc, but not really feasible to send an army marching a thousand miles because you pissed them off.
There are several goals, as there are several changes that are basically unconnected:
- AI should declare less pointless wars; basically, AI should be smarter at picking their fights and go to war when there is something to be reasonably gained from it. If it is a faraway war, then AI needs to commit more to it to actually stand a better chance at meaningful results.
- AI should treat open borders in a more instrumental way. Vanilla behaviour is basically a simple attitude check. Now AI should be better at weighing actual benefits open borders would bring. This covers all the different aspects - area denial through closed borders, trade, tech transfer.
I figured as much. Makes sense, especially on the huge world map. Still, it seems the UI is late in arriving for that civ. Now when you do get it..wow...you become a machine, but I'm usually far behind by that point, as my cities are small compared to other civs and im also teetering on changing out of the PN civic.
Not all NI's are "born equal". But I've been on a fence for some time on whether Turks actually need a buff in some way.
I think it would be also interesting if the Timar could be build in desert and tundra tiles to get Ottomans better suited to the place of start in the world map
TBH, that would make those tiles workable but terrible. Remember that an improvement adds the same amount to any terrain it's built on. Building it on 0 food tiles would result into something like 3
1
- not generally something you'd want your city to work under most conditions anyway.
Hello there, thought I should post something after following this mod for about a year and share my thoughts on a couple of things (as gleamed from games on somewhat higher difficulties)
First of all: Thank you for your mod, creators of Realism Invictus! I find Civ 4 BtS on its own (especially the visual and flavor aspects) to be a bit lacking and basic. But with RI Civ 5 and Civ 6 look and play like a child's mobile game relative to this masterpiece of flavor, immersiveness and gameplay.
Thanks, always nice to hear! Keeps our gears turning, you know.
After I beat the game on Immortal on standard sized Totestra pretty reliably (AI plays to win, always by Conquest, seldom domination, never saw the need/risk to continue game for any other win), I moved to Titan on a Pangea-style map and took the first somewhat jungle-start after generating around 4 to 5 tundra starts w/o land food resources (but plenty of sea resources). Did advance pretty good with acceptable levels of save-scumming but ultimately seems to be second place, as the top civ already got about 4x the army unfortunately, which is currently conquering my ally. (Nothing impossible though).
These are some serious skills. I wouldn't try tackling Immortal myself... BTW, that is a thing to consider - the mod is generally balanced around the difficulty level I usually play, which is Monarch. The more one deviates from that, the more anomalies one can expect as the mod wasn't really tested on anything significantly higher or lower than that.
I find civics to be an extremely interesting part of this mod, and last Titan game I was really considering most of them at some time, few were useless. Some thoughts from me, cool if you shared yours:
- Despotism: First change most games, only really (somewhat) superseded by Dictatorship; Used when you have enough luxuries and not enough people bathing (epidemic). Used every game.
Yup, basically baseline early game military-oriented civic.
Confederation: Second change for most games, good addition. If you are not fast enough in settling cities, you are done and will be eventually conquered. On the other hand, you should under no circumstance whatsoever settle a city in the early game, which can't get itself quickly up, running and making you cash or troops, which happens if you settle without resources. Resources happen to be spread, so your cities happen to be too. You will have to invent national debt and put your science slider below 0 into the negative if you want to do this without Confederation in the early parts of the game. (Pay attention to "No Upkeep" even in the late game, from "Low to High" to "No Upkeep" can be like having additional ~2-3 science cities in a 18 city empire.)
Glad to hear it works in a meaningful way. As the most recently added civic it obviously had the least amount of fine-tuning.
Republic: Idk but if I'm using Republic, I probably already lost the game or am isolated on a smallish island (which is really the same). Paying MORE money, just to have some more happiness (with cities growing above the resource based or nice river tiles), is rarely worth it, if there is still a place to put a somewhat nice city. (and deny it to the AI). Especially with latest changes it comes to late, in a time, where the treasury is probably running on the trinkets from the looted neighbors capital and you still need those really important farming techs (often Water pump, with me having a jungle start 50% of the time). Don't pay the greedy politicians (yet).
Here one has to remember that not all civics are intended for the way a human player typically progresses. The idea of Republic is for smaller civs to be able to punch above their weight. Human players generally don't want to
be the "smaller civs".
Monarchy: Why pay for happiness if there's Monarchy and people worship you for your existence (*cough* Britain)? Combined with Traditional Customs and religion it solves your happiness problems, and your cities become limited by epidemic chance. (If not later on, you probably have to few towns in your cities). Used every game.
Yup, Monarchy is basically
the baseline government. If you don't have any specific needs, Monarchy is your civic. Which is kinda the problem too, from design perspective, since if you don't have any specific needs, what exactly are you playing? One can see my struggle with meaningful mid-game civics here...
Theocracy: No money saved, for - well - what? Less War exhaustion sounds nice, but in the applicable times of the game (medieval warfare, maybe including muskets) I don't see how I could rack up dangerous levels of war unhappiness. Medium upkeep must be noted. But it allows a early priest specialist strategy, which does not seem so bad, especially because early GProphets provide nice amounts of cash, and green town cities are some of the production starved cities in civ, yet require the most buildings. Never (on higher difficulties) seriously tried the focus on priest and as such: Never used in game and seems weak.
Yeah, it was kinda more meaningful with Revolutions on by default. Now I'm not really sure myself what exactly its niche is.
Democracy: Often a guilty pleasure when it becomes available, and you will know why: All these election campaigns which don't matter still cost money but bring those ecstatic yellow faces, allowing your cities to grow. BUT. Most of the time, I get to the tech, I am required to have a sizeable empire anyway (at least 12 Cities on standard sized maps) and a fitting array of luxuries to sell in my cities. So while my people get happy, they don't wash themselves enough to prevent them from being culled by cholera etc. Town-less Cities still profit and Federalist Parliament (+ Statue of Liberty if you can get it) are a nice combo. It puts a dent in your research and military budget and gets somewhat negated by prolonged wars with higher casualties becoming more prevalent, so only take it if you can use the happiness, not for the combo or other reasons alone.
Later in game, one gets more instruments for controlling health in civic, tech and wonder forms. But generally speaking, it's a late game civic for when you aren't really planning to conquer any more. A civic for finishing your cultural or space victory in peace.
Dictatorship: The civic the game often ends in. 25% more hammers to troops is nice and is not really somewhat your neighbors can argue with. Surprisingly - when compared to other civics except Democracy - very little happiness differences. Can be used to bring conquered cities more quickly online, not really for core cities, since your troops should be shooting at other people not your own. High Upkeep will stress your relative in charge of the treasury a bit more, the reduced GPeople-Points have been irrelevant to me (difference of a city square at this stage of the game) and the guns will hopefully persuade your opponents to concede. Used large majority of the games.
And if you do want to keep conquering, obviously, this one is your civic of choice. Pretty transparent.
The first that comes to mind is Protectionism. Now I don't know why I would ever, ever use that. I'd probably even use Craft Guilds over it. It gives you your Crafts Guild powered Craftsmen in the renaissance, making them useful in more situations and gives them one gold as well. I will ignore the additional gold from some resource improvements because this is pretty insignificant. Can also give a minute amount of happiness, makes merchants more viable (but which are limited in their number to 2-3). And it allows you the heavy privateer. So. What's the deal? Well the Free Market is the deal. Unlike the real world Free Market only rewards you with copious amounts of cash, especially with continents, and the Stockmarket-Tech around the corner, while Protectionism only hurts you, taunting you with more hammers to build your outdated army. Even if you don't have any trade-partners - First, what the f*ck is your diplomacy doing, no open borders is probably losing you more tech than choosing Protectionism, put some stacks of gold on some AIs Table - internal trade routes still supply my research in this case with FM by at least 30% and I am not building too few towns. Heavy Privateer is not so useful, as having such a substantial Tech-lead to make it useful should be in the form of Grenadiers putting their bowmen to shame and to make their harbors shut down for good.
TLDR: Please buff it, I can't even construct a scenario where it is useful, even without trading partners. Best of all: Close to all AIs adopt it for a rather substantial time for unknown reasons. Better not to think about what it would do with all the money and its cost reduced tech and units otherwise. (Quick afterthought: I have thought about the pretty decent merchant on protectionism, which would IMO outclass town-economy as far as is applicable (meaning both combined, remember no infinite merchants) But, FM just piles the Gold on you, without you doing anything - esp. if you get to the habit settling next to rivers and ocean where possible and logical - in addition to your economy. )
Yeah, I am struggling with Protectionism/Free Market. Have yet to find a meaningful balance / suitable niches that would make each viable/non-viable under certain circumstances.
Now I don't know you, but some time ago I did not pay Monasticism the respects it deserves. First of all - you know me and my playstyle by now - celibate monks don't demand the worldly luxuries like the Priest of OR resulting in Low vs High Maintenance costs respectively. Second, getting a plus 1 Gold on Cottages lets you set up new commerce cities more smoothly (i.e. without research running dry for a long time) and it does allow some shenanigans when playing a Financial leader on a riverheavy map. But completely outshining that is the mini-serfdom it includes: +1 Food on your farms. For some gold (for me it was usually 2 Gold), but you can choose your offending completely plain-cities without food resources, w/o having to pay upkeep for troops to stay in your green cottage city with a single farm. At this stage city garrisons are still somewhat costly to upkeep, but the absolute incredible power of this civic is, to allow you to run Free Commoners AND have somewhat productive larger plains cities. Of course on plains heavy maps like most of the PW3 maps I experienced, the combination of both puts those silly Machines of the Industrialization to shame and makes you colorblind to green and brown (and would make Polands Folwarks probably to the equivalent of garden eden.)
Thanks! I actually keep forgetting myself that Monasticism is now an actually good civic in most my games...
Don‘t you think that longbowmen are a bit overpowered? They have a base strength of 8, on par with the specialized assault unit (men-at-arms) and only a bit weaker than knights, which are available quite late and only under certain circumstances. Plus they get a bunch of powerful bonuses. And, most importantly, longbowmen have no real weakness. There is no specialized counter-unit. If it were not for the unit cost scaling, I would compose my armies almost exclusive of longbowmen. If the enemy places a handful of them in a city on a hill, you can discard this city as a potential conquest target until you get grenadiers or at least bombards to weaken them a bit before assault. This imbalance gets even worse if this enemy has the trained archers doctrine.
Compare that to the balance in the classical era: bowmen have a base strength of 4, and you have stronger infantry units (Axemen, Swordmen) to stand a chance against them. Plus the spearmen get a bonus against archers. While still a tough nut to crack, it’s quite possible if you field the right attack stack. I actually prefer this classical balance over the medieval balance. Why not decrease the longbowmen’s base strength to 7, or buff another unit to suit as a suitable counter?
I understand where you're coming from. Though the way the military logic is designed right now, the overall defensive/offensive advantage should oscillate over time, and longbowmen are a part of the Medieval defensive focus. They
are supposed to have no hard counter when they arrive. There is no meaningful defensive bump until fusiliers after that.
I think the militaristic trait is overpowered, especially compared to the conqueror trait. Melee and gunpowder units are the backbone of every army because you have more unit types which means unit scaling doesn’t hurt as much as in case you wanted to field massive cavalry armies. And cavalry cost scale much faster. than militias/irregulars and those have no resource requirements. This means, even if you have the conqueror trait, the units that get the XP bonus will always only make up a fraction of your army. I’d suggest to reduce the XP bonus for militaristic leaders to 2.
I actually agree with this. Especially given other advantages (like barracks being able to provide happiness under Autocracy you'll be running anyway as a militarist), this civic could stand a nerf. I'll reduce the amount of free XP to 2.
Am I the only one to find the levee quite useless? I rarely ever built water mills and the +1 health bonus is negligent most of the time. Also, what’s the point of the “creates fresh source of water”? Don’t cities already carry irrigation? It would make sense if you build it if there is a river in the city vicinity, but the city itself is not situated directly at the river, but that is not possible.
It's for carrying irrigation over hills with cities. And +1 health is progressively more important the higher your difficulty level is and the worse your overall situation is.
I think the fortified monastery is a bit overpowered. You get it very early on, and it allows you to use tiles (hills) the other civs can use for other things than hammers only after they entered the medieval age. And you cannot only use those tiles somehow, but they get massive (and balanced!) yields if you run monasticism. Only in the late industrial age windmills finally surpass them. Plus the fort bonus. This makes fortified monasteries extremely strong in early and mid game, and much stronger than other hill unique improvements such as timar or anden. I’d suggest nerfing them.
Yup, it probably is somewhat. Been nerfed a couple of times too. Though there is really nothing more fun than taking a Celtic city from a nearby monastery they generously built for you...
But sometimes the theme of the unit is anachronistic. For instance, composite bowmen precede Swordsmen in tech tree, but for Persians the former are Sassanid Bowmen and the latter are Seleukid Pezhtaroi. Achaemenid Bowmen seem to be a more appropriate. Per Wikipedia:
It's anachronistic in terms of the fact that it comes from a time when it did actually arrive later than swordsmen in RI... Now it does indeed require a name change, I guess. It's still representative of Sassanids as well though, it just should cover earlier periods too - so I'll give it a non-dynastic name.
Hi is there a way to play a middle size World Map with this map?
No.
Your first city (conquered or self-settled) should better be in reach of your capital to have reduced maintainance costs which could be a pain early on (especially if you are not on depotism). So you could connect your new cities by cart path (or road if you have it). In addition most early on wonders are built in the capital in any case, just because mostly is your biggest city at that point which generates most hammers. With my change suggestion I just want to delay international trade routes a bit.
I already tried this change in a game some years ago and it went quite well. What do others think about it?
While I agree with you it would have the desired effect, I'm not sure I want to actually delay those. Archaeological evidence shows that coastal trade was actually characteristic even for tribal stages of development, putting its arrival at beyond the starting point of RI. By the time we can speak of actual cities, trade relations certainly already exist along most coastlines and major rivers. It's just like with vanilla "Hunting" tech - you're telling me at 4000BC humans have to research hunting they've been practicing for tens of thousands of years at this point? The compromise of having to unlock those at all is due to the fact that indeed not all peoples, from what we can gather, could build seaworthy boats by 4000BC. But by the time of the "Sailing" tech, which gives you the first seafaring boats, the coastal trade was definitely not only possible but actually happened.
We could split resource availability (i.e. plotGroups) and trade routes. Allow resources to be gathered and sent via rivers and coast, but lock trade routes behind, say, Trading and perhaps foreign trade routes behind Tolls and Taxes.
What do you think, Walter?
See above; I don't really feel it's justified from historical perspective.
It would be awesome see this implemented to the RI for the scenario maps it can be a great improvement please Walter take this on consideration
I don't feel like it. Seems like a big investment of effort for what is mostly a visual flavour change.
Dualism is a pretty useless tech in case you don't want to found Zoroastrism so why not associate some ancient wonder to it like Ishtar Gate to give some other reason to research?
True, and a good suggestion.
Russian national improvement is build very fast making very easy for them to develop new cities with only forest tiles around
Well, it's literally just hunting grounds. Also yields almost nothing from pillaging. Same with Mongols and Ngunis.
Villages and mines can be built on the top of hot springs breaking the aesthetic of the game
Your suggestion here? Disallowing it would turn it into a plainly negative feature, and its tile to useless.
AI almost doesn't build Slash and burn farms in jungle tiles, they are also built too very fast
The speed for those, OTOH, is an artifact of the time when they played a very different role. So yeah, I'll increase this one.
Pigs become overpowered with +2
in the latest svn versions
Being a bit worse than rice, but with a pandemic malus and religious restrictions from 2 religions is what being overpowered means these days?
but doubles the surplus of your farms to 2 
-Budget might be only around 23 per turn.
(correctly in most cases) inferior to 1% epidemic. 
So don't connect your pigs to the trade network or farm or windmill them. (Also doesn't mean they need to be buffed)
