Realism Invictus

[TheBirdMan]

If any wonders why I have so many restarts, it's only because of changes in the prereq. of ressources I make for buildings. I'm still trying to find a good balance. What's happens is, that sometimes when I reload after a change, I get the "unable to compress" message and the game abort. Same as we are used to, when Walter made an incompatible version update.


BTW: Did I mention, that protecting against spy-actions are important???? A spy just destroyed one of my carpenters........

 

[schueler]

I concur with your idea of alcohol actually reducing health at the large scale. -4 points is definitely too hefty though game-wise.

 

[TheBirdMan]

I concur with your idea of alcohol actually reducing health at the large scale. -4 points is definitely too hefty though game-wise.

As for now it's "only" -1 - at least for the time being. Tobacco is -2 (guess you can see I do not smoke )-

 

[AspiringScholar]

Wait, previously you had one stonecutter with an input of only one limestone output six masonry materials? That seems pretty extreme! I personally like the "you need to find two limestone" limitation, since paved roads in the early game are supposed to be a rare luxury.

Although there have not yet been any comments about my special "adjustments", so a little about my "thoughts" about beer, wine and alcohol (personally, I rarely drink anything with "percentages" other than beer)....

Spoiler :

First it's "funny", that we have 3 distillries, that all depend on the same technologies TECH_PHARMACY,_BOTANY TECH_GLASSBLOWING and the same build class BUILDINGCLASS_MARKET.


Well I miss "the beer". Not the kind we know of today, but an ancient "kind of beer". One like this an archaeology professor said first time he tasted beer made the way "they" did in ancient days: As long as no one died from it, it would be a successful project.

So here it is - it says "Vodka" - but that's only because of my already known lack of programming skills. It's beer! Just look at the required ressource, building and tecnologies. Available quite early.
View attachment 657529

Next is Brandy - based on wine. No changes are needed here.
View attachment 657533

Last is Rum. This is pushed back to a later era and time. As you can see, it's depended on the Merchants Adventures. At the same time, Sugar (and potatoes) becomes visible and not at any earlier time.
View attachment 657534

As you also know. Alcohol is consumed on taverns. True. But I say: In fact all places where people have meet for one-or-another-reason. I have included caravanhouses. I might include Markets too, but I'm not sure yet......
View attachment 657536

Besides I have also changed a bit of what's gives happiness from using time in a Tavern....... You can smoke there. And you can drink coffee if you like. Now we know (should know), that both tobacco and alcohol isn't that healthy, so tobacco gives -2 to the health and alcohol -1. This changes also gives somewhat more epidemics in the cities... Considering how it is today in many places those numbers could even be -3 or -4 without being too unrealistic.
View attachment 657537

Next part will be about how I use the CannedFoodFactories.

And regarding the alcohol, there was someone earlier in the thread who asked why beer wasn't a named resource in the game, and Walter's answer was that, since it is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous beverages in the history of the world (even more so than drinking water in some cases), it is supposed to be implicitly part of the tavern building. (To me, that begs the question why the tavern doesn't provide +1 happiness on its own, but there might have been a reason for that mentioned at the time which I simply can't remember.)

And with the actual liquor-sourced alcohol resource in the game, I myself asked why it doesn't provide unhealthiness, since not only is consuming alcohol in any sizeable quantity pretty unhealthy, but the actual historical arrival of hard liquor was a massive health-crisis. I proposed making it generate -1 health and buffing the happiness bonus to +2 to compensate. He said that it actually used to work exactly that way in the past, but the problem was that the AI would never trade for it, apparently because it's coded to regard the malus as something to avoid completely (so for some reason, livestock's epidemic chance increase must not apply here), so he reduced the happiness bonus to +1 and got rid of the unhealthy malus altogether. Good point on tobacco too, but I guess the same reasoning would apply here too.

 

[Drakarska]

I'm still kind of curious as to why Rice can't be used make alcohol. Seriously? Saki? Or variations there of through out Asian cultures?
As to the Limestone. I've personally tweaked mine to 1LS-2MM, as most maps I play there is hardly more than a few spots of LS anywhere close to my starts.

Also, side tangent, why can't we build tunnels? Connecting an island or land mass via a tunnel would be awesome.
I'm looking at a couple of other mods, and seeing if the code can be used in RI. May take me awhile.

 

[TheBirdMan]

And regarding the alcohol, there was someone earlier in the thread who asked why beer wasn't a named resource in the game, and Walter's answer was that, since it is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous beverages in the history of the world (even more so than drinking water in some cases), it is supposed to be implicitly part of the tavern building. (To me, that begs the question why the tavern doesn't provide +1 happiness on its own, but there might have been a reason for that mentioned at the time which I simply can't remember.)

I actually had forgotten this - but now I remember the writings about this.

In my opinion the Tavern comes much too late to represent what Walter wrote. And that is the reason why I bring it in my personal "variant" of RI.
I also remember this (after reading it again):

And with the actual liquor-sourced alcohol resource in the game, I myself asked why it doesn't provide unhealthiness, since not only is consuming alcohol in any sizeable quantity pretty unhealthy, but the actual historical arrival of hard liquor was a massive health-crisis. I proposed making it generate -1 health and buffing the happiness bonus to +2 to compensate. He said that it actually used to work exactly that way in the past, but the problem was that the AI would never trade for it, apparently because it's coded to regard the malus as something to avoid completely (so for some reason, livestock's epidemic chance increase must not apply here), so he reduced the happiness bonus to +1 and got rid of the unhealthy malus altogether. Good point on tobacco too, but I guess the same reasoning would apply here too.

Well - that was interesting to read again. As I just recently got my 1st. Tobacco-tile cultivated and that I'm right now is 5 turns away from making my 1st. Tavern then......


So right away to the tradescreens to see...........

Spoiler :

Well - 2 nations seems to be ready to buy alcohol...

So far so good.

Let's see if any wants my tobacco - I do not need it yet......

Ok then - until proven otherwise I say: False Alarm. And I do hope it doesn't change. See, I could only find a few - very few - tobacco-tiles on the map I could see, so I loaded WB. And did notice, that I had forgotten to check that ressource. There was nearly no tobacco-tiles on the whole map (24.000 tiles). Now there are - I added 18-20 tiles in total on roughly 9-10 locations. Then I hope some trading-offers will find place.....

Edit 13 turns later (at turn 632): Looks good .

Spoiler :

 

[TheBirdMan]

I'm still kind of curious as to why Rice can't be used make alcohol. Seriously? Saki? Or variations there of through out Asian cultures?

It could - if we had more distilleries...... Or if we had a Cereal mill, that consumed Wheat, rice (and any other kind of cereal-sorts - even "dried" corn (fresh corn is considered a vegetable)) and produced a basic product called ..... Cereal (surprise). That Cereal would then be used in all distilleries, that produced Vodka, Whisky, Snaps, Saki and other alcoholproducts like these. And the Cereal could also be used in markets, supermarkets etc as a generic product giving more food to the city, while the "special" basic ressources could give health (or the opposite), happiness and/or any special what-ever-possible....

Also, side tangent, why can't we build tunnels? Connecting an island or land mass via a tunnel would be awesome.
I'm looking at a couple of other mods, and seeing if the code can be used in RI. May take me awhile.

Guess Walter could if he would..... using same concept as the ChineseCanal, that I changed to a ShipsCanal in my "variant".

 

[TheBirdMan]

Wait, previously you had one stonecutter with an input of only one limestone output six masonry materials? That seems pretty extreme! I personally like the "you need to find two limestone" limitation, since paved roads in the early game are supposed to be a rare luxury.

Correct.

That's because some buildings consumes 2-3 or even more masonry to be builded. My intention is, that not all buildings should be constructed in all cities......due to lack of the required ressources. But what would the "normal" situation be, if you "wanted" to do something, but hadn't the ressources to do it? Get them I guess - even by nasty means (in this game that is)......


Edit. By the way - I have "moved" the paved roads to the early rennaissance era. Sure paved roads were made very early in history. In the cities and special religious places that is..... If "any" should have paved roads earlier, then it could be.... the Romans. And maybe a nation or two more (see I do not mind, that unique improvements, buildings and/or units not are that unique at all).

So make long paved roads between cities is a somewhat bigger job, that need more "administration" and skill. Therefore:

 

[Hafenguy]

In my current game, play on almost realistic and with tech trade on (civs can only trade technologies they have researched themselves).
I am in the year 200 BC in the Middle Ages.
Is this due to tech trading or the speed of the game?
Technology transfer is turned off.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Is this due to tech trading or the speed of the game?
Technology transfer is turned off.

I'm at year 10AD - and have just discovered my first medieval tech - Guilds...... Don't enable Technology Brokering or Technology Trading. The RI isn't meants to be played with any of these settings on.

 

[Hafenguy]

Mhh ok in the instructions it said that you can also play with tech trade. If you turn off tech diffusion but then that is probably not more current.

 

[TheBirdMan]

You can play with what-ever combination you want to. No problem in that.

It's up to you to find the combination you like. Above screenshot is my preferred choices.

If I start with only a few nations, I often turn Revolution ON for say the first 500-1000 turns.
If I want a game with a lot of units, I turn NoUnitCostScaling to ON.
If I want to slow down expansion for all nations in the start of a game, I have Babarians ON for (again) 500-1000 turns.

 

[Hafenguy]

How can you change settings while game is running?

 

[TheBirdMan]

Enter Worldbuilder.

Spoiler :

Confirm "Enter"

Open Gameoptions (2nd line 1st row)

Choose the setting(s) you want to change (I have choosen NoTechnologyTrading here).

When finished, exit Gameoption and exit WorldBuilder (1st line, last row)

When out, restart the game. Often you can get on by reload your game from a savegame file - but I always restart the gameengine too - just in case........

 

[aantia]

The breakthrough to the mediaeval era is actual realistic earlier than seems intuitive - the Roman and Chinese empires reached that point, then turned their research right down to pay their massive maintenance costs (in Civ4 mechanical terms).

I keep coming up with ways to rework separatism (mostly by connecting it more to other systems), then realising that my plans would prevent the realistic decline of the great empires in that era.

 

[AspiringScholar]

The breakthrough to the mediaeval era is actual realistic earlier than seems intuitive - the Roman and Chinese empires reached that point, then turned their research right down to pay their massive maintenance costs (in Civ4 mechanical terms).

I keep coming up with ways to rework separatism (mostly by connecting it more to other systems), then realising that my plans would prevent the realistic decline of the great empires in that era.

What kinds of changes do you make exactly with respect to separatism?

 

[aantia]

What kinds of changes do you make exactly with respect to separatism?

My main goal is to cut out the need to station units in the city, because that seems like a horribly complicated thing for the AI to do. My current idea is to rely primarily on the separatism events, and have them drain the economy of the city's owner until they can't afford to keep it oppressed/appeased. I'd also like to link separatism to maintenance in some way, because the things that increase (distance, empire size) and decrease (good governance via courthouses etc, forms of government that promote empire-building) maintenance costs should also logically apply to separatism.
I've had other ideas in the past, but none that survived thinking through their implications. Not that these have; I just haven't thought about them that much yet.

 

[AspiringScholar]

My main goal is to cut out the need to station units in the city, because that seems like a horribly complicated thing for the AI to do. My current idea is to rely primarily on the separatism events, and have them drain the economy of the city's owner until they can't afford to keep it oppressed/appeased. I'd also like to link separatism to maintenance in some way, because the things that increase (distance, empire size) and decrease (good governance via courthouses etc, forms of government that promote empire-building) maintenance costs should also logically apply to separatism.
I've had other ideas in the past, but none that survived thinking through their implications. Not that these have; I just haven't thought about them that much yet.

Have you noticed problems with the AI's handling of it since global WW was massively scaled down? That seems like an interesting approach, but maybe superfluous (at least in my games), since I usually see no more than 1-3 revolutions per game since that change was made, and none of the previous balkanization. It seems to be in a good balance right now. (After all, I don't think revolutions are something that are never supposed to happen in the first place.)

In my recent win on Monarch, though, I did have to devote a rather huge garrison to hold down some cities (though it was a massive, sudden expansion), so tying it directly to maintenance would be really cool if you could get that to be implemented smoothly.

EDIT: Also, on the note of the discussion about research speeds, does anyone know if tech transfer as a feature of RI removed the pre-existing "neighbor bonus" of the vanilla game? I don't think so, but just checking. I started up a new game and am playing with no tech trade or transfer, and want to see what the tech pace ends up looking like.

 

[aantia]

Have you noticed problems with the AI's handling of it since global WW was massively scaled down? That seems like an interesting approach, but maybe superfluous (at least in my games), since I usually see no more than 1-3 revolutions per game since that change was made, and none of the previous balkanization. It seems to be in a good balance right now. (After all, I don't think revolutions are something that are never supposed to happen in the first place.)

In my recent win on Monarch, though, I did have to devote a rather huge garrison to hold down some cities (though it was a massive, sudden expansion), so tying it directly to maintenance would be really cool if you could get that to be implemented smoothly.

I'm half Croatian, so I liked the balkanisation
I'd like to see a high chance of empires collapsing under the right conditions (i.e. if the leader is incautious), and I would find it very much easier to work out the optimal action to take if it doesn't need to be weighed against all the other things military units are needed for. If the only considerations are 'am I too over-extended to start a war of conquest,' 'what should I build next,' and 'which option should I choose in this one event' I think it would be much easier to find a safe default course of action for the AI - which can then be modified by the existing AI personalities, so Genghis Khan will conquer the known world before it all comes crashing down, and so on.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I'm half Croatian, so I liked the balkanisation
I'd like to see a high chance of empires collapsing under the right conditions (i.e. if the leader is incautious), and I would find it very much easier to work out the optimal action to take if it doesn't need to be weighed against all the other things military units are needed for. If the only considerations are 'am I too over-extended to start a war of conquest,' 'what should I build next,' and 'which option should I choose in this one event' I think it would be much easier to find a safe default course of action for the AI - which can then be modified by the existing AI personalities, so Genghis Khan will conquer the known world before it all comes crashing down, and so on.

This is a complete aside, but I'm glad I started that new game - I finally am getting leaders I've either never seen or haven't seen in many, many games (while it's felt like I have seen the same set of people the last 10 or so games which has gotten a little stale), and I found out that, even in the classical era, seafarer leaders under confederation can REX and the cities will pretty much pay for themselves right away if you build caravan houses and markets with some priority. Building Stonehenge and settling great prophets under pastoral nomadism is running me a great early game economy, without a single cottage or single improved luxury resource (except one wine)! Also, I'm glad I finally gave Carthage a try, since their unit roster is kind of a hidden gem for the time period, which probably shouldn't be a surprise given the lifetime of the ancient empire lol... Their militia get a +40% bonus against archers, which of course are the most common tough barb spam of the tower defense phase of the early game for those of us who play with raging barbarians, which is pretty huge, and their galley replacement is absolute unrivaled (especially if you play seafarer of course) against any peer. Playing Carthage feels like a microcosm of the financial explosion you get in the renaissance, except it happens in the classical.

On the note of the separatism, I'm curious what you mean exactly by "a safe default course of action" which goes beyond war declaration calculus, build selection and selection of event options, since it's pretty dynamic how it is? I'm not at all trying to shoot down your ideas, but I do really want to know, since I'm not a programmer by any stripe and I think you said that you were in a previous post, and, even though I'm not only really glad that this mechanic exists at all in this mod but also that it is in a pretty good degree of polish with multiple dynamic factors, it's still not perfect and likely not going to be changed by the guy who so fortunately made it.