Realism Invictus

[Sykriss]

This is such a helpful post, thank you very much for going to all of the trouble to research this and explain these individual values! I personally want to turn the merely "known" modifier back on, but I'd also like to reduce the formal tech transfer from open borders without totally turning it off (+40% for only one civ feels like overkill, and as I mentioned before, you already indirectly get a research boost from open borders due to commerce in trade routes with them), and I can't find where that feature is located. (I looked through all of the XML and Python folders, and it didn't seem to be there.) Do you know where this can be found?



Excellent idea making the logistics penalties really steep. I've made that suggestion before but simply didn't know where to modify the values. While it wasn't game-breaking per se that SoDs were still net positives with their various aid bonuses, it did seem counterintuitive to what the mod was aiming to do by implementing them in the first place. I've gone ahead and made the same changes you describe (and I slightly increased the strength penalty on the lower penalties too), and now will start a new game. I'm a bit doubtful that it's going to stop the AI from doing death stacks (which, if true, will benefit the human player massively), but we'll see. Karadoc AI is smart and it's a psychopath, so maybe it will be able to recognize the reduced strength and avoid doing that. We'll see!

I've been playing basically non-stop since I made my earlier post with the supply changes, and I haven't seen the AI send out stacks higher than 10-15 so far. That being said, I haven't made any observations past the Medieval era, as I haven't been able to make it that far yet, lol.

My current game is looking really good, however; still playing as Otto I of Germany, I started on the top half of a continent with just Dravidas by me and a one tile pass at the southern end that leads to the rest of the continent. I forward settled the Dravidians so they couldn't expand, then colonized the vast majority of the small continent I started in. With two perfect spots for dedicated floodplains/cottage commerce cities, and my capital a production powerhouse, I was able to fund a campaign against my blocked off, two city neighbor, and stomped them hard with pikemen and crossbows before they had access to that technology. Tried to re-settle his lands, but the cultural differences caused the city to rebel, so I'm waiting for the culture to flip then I'll settle it. I then sent the rest of that army into the Southern pass, finding my Indian neighbor there vastly undefended; with three stacks of ten, and a six stack of cataphracts, I was able to push through the strait, razing four or five cities in the process and setting myself up for a perfect entry point into the rest of the continent. Not to mention that I now have access to knights, foot knights, Doppelsoldners, with trebuchets hopefully accompanying them. I later figured out that the timing on my invasion couldn't have been better; it seems the Indians had sent an invasion force South just prior to my invasion, so that explains why everything was minimally defended. Trying to go for a domination or conquest victory, which seems particularly difficult in RI. Not sure if I should settle the lands I conquer or just raze everything. Maybe settle high commerce spots first? My civ is already pretty large, and I'm worried that further expansion will cripple my economy/cause separatism, but I'd like to keep up the war momentum before my rival civ can catch up. Attached my current save in-case anyone is curious. Definitely having a blast this time around!

 

[AspiringScholar]

I've been playing basically non-stop since I made my earlier post with the supply changes, and I haven't seen the AI send out stacks higher than 10-15 so far. That being said, I haven't made any observations past the Medieval era, as I haven't been able to make it that far yet, lol.

My current game is looking really good, however; still playing as Otto I of Germany, I started on the top half of a continent with just Dravidas by me and a one tile pass at the southern end that leads to the rest of the continent. I forward settled the Dravidians so they couldn't expand, then colonized the vast majority of the small continent I started in. With two perfect spots for dedicated floodplains/cottage commerce cities, and my capital a production powerhouse, I was able to fund a campaign against my blocked off, two city neighbor, and stomped them hard with pikemen and crossbows before they had access to that technology. Tried to re-settle his lands, but the cultural differences caused the city to rebel, so I'm waiting for the culture to flip then I'll settle it. I then sent the rest of that army into the Southern pass, finding my Indian neighbor there vastly undefended; with three stacks of ten, and a six stack of cataphracts, I was able to push through the strait, razing four or five cities in the process and setting myself up for a perfect entry point into the rest of the continent. Not to mention that I now have access to knights, foot knights, Doppelsoldners, with trebuchets hopefully accompanying them. I later figured out that the timing on my invasion couldn't have been better; it seems the Indians had sent an invasion force South just prior to my invasion, so that explains why everything was minimally defended. Trying to go for a domination or conquest victory, which seems particularly difficult in RI. Not sure if I should settle the lands I conquer or just raze everything. Maybe settle high commerce spots first? My civ is already pretty large, and I'm worried that further expansion will cripple my economy/cause separatism, but I'd like to keep up the war momentum before my rival civ can catch up. Attached my current save in-case anyone is curious. Definitely having a blast this time around!

Germany's melee unit roster is so good. Somewhat recently, I thought they were a relatively underpowered Civ because they don't have anything that really jumps off the page, but if you look at the subtle buffs their melee units get, it's actually rather impressive. Basically all of their ancient and classical era melee units receive a pretty hefty buff of one sort or another. My thoughts on the Doppelsoldner are mixed: it's really cool of course, but it arrives at an awkward time, because it's still not good enough to reliably take out longbows in castles in offensive warfare, but it's also so close to the arrival of gunpowder that it doesn't have much of a shelf-life as a UU. That said, it's still one of the strongest possible melee units in the entire game, and extremely solid all-around until gunpowder.

And... I already lost my new game in less than two hours of playing... Playing Monarch with raging barbs probably made going for founding a religion a bad idea. I played whack-a-mole with an endless onslaught that eventually got the better of me, and of course, I had some bad combat rolls, but it happens. The engaging challenge of this game makes me like it all the more for that: the variety of barbarian unit types, the tactical decisions of "do I move off of this hill and lose my fortify bonus to bait the barb archer away from my city while its defender heals?" and such really make this a lot of fun to play. Even though I got wiped out right at the beginning, it makes me like this game even more, because it really provides a thrilling challenge and there aren't really any exploits that you can comfortably rely on and keep it from being that way. Too bad though, because the map was beautiful and I had a fun time trying out the Dravidians. I loaded a new game as South China, and check out this start! Can you say pastoral nomadism?

 

[AspiringScholar]

 

[Sykriss]

View attachment 659785

Definitely a solid start, no doubt. Similar to the start I got in my current game; it's actually the first time I went pastoral nomadism, lol. My run is still going nicely, conquered one of the smaller civs at the 'entrance' to that Southern continent, all while maintaining 60-70% research slider. They had a perfect spot for a commerce city and weren't utilizing it, need the extra money since many of the future cities I settle/conquer will be quite far away from my capital. It looks like I'll be in for a decent fight with the Celts after the Zulus fall, as they have access to HRE swordsman, crossbowmen, their UU, medium cavalry and longbowmen. I was hoping to have an edge with bombards, but after reading that they don't do collateral damage and are limited to defending, I don't think that'll make a difference. I already have an edge with my knights and Doppelsoldners, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to break through their longbowmen without waves of irregulars.

I'm also pretty happy to say that it seems the AI limits their stacks to 12-14 units, after observing a war between the Celts and the Zulus. Will continue observations to see if they're really deterred from doom stacks with the logistics changes, but it seems to be working thus far. If the KMod AI takes into consideration the debuffs from logistics penalties it should surely be working.

 

[fnsnad]

Definitely a solid start, no doubt. Similar to the start I got in my current game; it's actually the first time I went pastoral nomadism, lol. My run is still going nicely, conquered one of the smaller civs at the 'entrance' to that Southern continent, all while maintaining 60-70% research slider. They had a perfect spot for a commerce city and weren't utilizing it, need the extra money since many of the future cities I settle/conquer will be quite far away from my capital. It looks like I'll be in for a decent fight with the Celts after the Zulus fall, as they have access to HRE swordsman, crossbowmen, their UU, medium cavalry and longbowmen. I was hoping to have an edge with bombards, but after reading that they don't do collateral damage and are limited to defending, I don't think that'll make a difference. I already have an edge with my knights and Doppelsoldners, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to break through their longbowmen without waves of irregulars.

I'm also pretty happy to say that it seems the AI limits their stacks to 12-14 units, after observing a war between the Celts and the Zulus. Will continue observations to see if they're really deterred from doom stacks with the logistics changes, but it seems to be working thus far. If the KMod AI takes into consideration the debuffs from logistics penalties it should surely be working.

I hope someone with knowledge of kmod AI can speak about this as I would love to know as well. Also, in your games do the AI split up the stacks? I hope you can also speak to how the AI handles stacks in later eras as in my games, due to the settings, I often encounter stacks of 20+ units minimum, usually more towards 30+. Especially because I almost exclusively wage total war only when it hits industrial/modern.

This is such a helpful post, thank you very much for going to all of the trouble to research this and explain these individual values! I personally want to turn the merely "known" modifier back on, but I'd also like to reduce the formal tech transfer from open borders without totally turning it off (+40% for only one civ feels like overkill, and as I mentioned before, you already indirectly get a research boost from open borders due to commerce in trade routes with them), and I can't find where that feature is located. (I looked through all of the XML and Python folders, and it didn't seem to be there.) Do you know where this can be found?

You're very welcome! And to answer your question, sorry, I don't know. But I did want to say since my original response post, I tweaked the values to be these now:

<DefineName>TECH_DIFFUSION_WELFARE_THRESHOLD</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>85</iDefineIntVal>

<DefineName>TECH_DIFFUSION_WELFARE_MODIFIER</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>3000</iDefineIntVal>

 

[fnsnad]

Ok, this is absurd. Each row is 25 troops, so about 180 troops total. AHAHA. And this is one stack (albeit probably their largest by far), and they are only the fourth largest military in this game. This is with unit cost scaling on too.

 

[JohnCarterOfMars]

Excellent idea making the logistics penalties really steep. I've made that suggestion before but simply didn't know where to modify the values. While it wasn't game-breaking per se that SoDs were still net positives with their various aid bonuses, it did seem counterintuitive to what the mod was aiming to do by implementing them in the first place.

If you don't mind my asking, how many AI civs do you usually have in your games?

I play with 40 AI civs on a huge map. I wonder if the number of civs in the world affects the ability of civs to create SoD? With so many other civs, it's easy to make enemies by attacking friends of friends, and so one would think that the ability of a hostile civ to amass an SoD should limited by their economy and ability to trade with fewer and fewer friendly civs.

My game (still 3.55) has several vassal blocs that have formed, and nobody is trying to start WW2. WW1 started when Ashoka attacked me (Thomas Jefferson) -- I was #1 and he was #2. He sneak-attacked me and I sunk is his landing force. I then stopped all research and became a wartime production civ, rapidly built up my navy and destroyed his naval fleet, then sent my land forces to destroy his cities one by one until my cities started protesting the war.

I accepted Ashoka's terms for peace, and then the rest of the world started attacking Ashoka. I finally wiped him out many years later. My world has had small wars between minor civs, but no more World Wars between the major blocs. That's not to say that the stopped building units -- they have and they're garrisoning cities, but nobody has dared to form an SoD to go on a rampage.

 

[TheBirdMan]

My input to this issue:

I play legendary games only (3.255 turns) on gigantic maps (160*100 upto 200*128 (I'm still modelling on a extrahuge gigantic flat map, size 208*144, but I'm not satisfied with it's "look" yet - it has to made with max. 10.000 landtiles to be playable to the end)), 12-24 nation including my own. And I say: I have not had any problems with SoD in my games. Oh yes, I have seen Barb-cities with 100+ units in it and I have seen Barb-armies with 70-80 units..... but I do not see this as a problem. More kind of a challenge.

See there is one thing, that most oftens works in those situations. And that is patience. Take your time to soften them up. Give them a few cities "for free" if you need it - they will leave troops behind in those cities...... Sooner or later, you will have the upperhand - if you are patient.

 

[TheBirdMan]

And now to something completely different.

Isn't this loverly?

You can see, how the area is polluted by a yellowish fog of "unhealthiness and malaise" hanging over the city, due to it's use of wood for heating their homes, for coocking, for production (forges)....... Epidemic modifier here is +12 and there is absolutely nothing I can do. Actually it's going to become worse upto "our" days in the late game.

It's just what I wanted (some of) my changes to do. Because I do not believe, it is specially healthy to live in a big city...

 

[JohnCarterOfMars]

My input to this issue:

I play legendary games only (3.255 turns) on gigantic maps (160*100 upto 200*128 (I'm still modelling on a extrahuge gigantic flat map, size 208*144, but I'm not satisfied with it's "look" yet - it has to made with max. 10.000 landtiles to be playable to the end)), 12-24 nation including my own. And I say: I have not had any problems with SoD in my games. Oh yes, I have seen Barb-cities with 100+ units in it and I have seen Barb-armies with 70-80 units..... but I do not see this as a problem. More kind of a challenge.

See there is one thing, that most oftens works in those situations. And that is patience. Take your time to soften them up. Give them a few cities "for free" if you need it - they will leave troops behind in those cities...... Sooner or later, you will have the upperhand - if you are patient.

I, too, play with real time (3,200 turns). I'll have to try a "giant" map next time. I was trying to find a safe memory-limit game since my experience with the "real" scenario (55 civs in their original locations). That game bogged down in the end turns). I reduced it to 40 civs, but I will try that on the giant map next time.

Also, I don't use raging barbarians, but I do use pretty much everything else. I haven't had an SoD issue, presumably because so many civs makes it harder for any one of them to militarize rapidly. Maybe it's the lack of resources due to civs controlling smaller territory in the beginning?

 

[TheBirdMan]

I, too, play with real time (3,200 turns). I'll have to try a "giant" map next time. I was trying to find a safe memory-limit game since my experience with the "real" scenario (55 civs in their original locations). That game bogged down in the end turns). I reduced it to 40 civs, but I will try that on the giant map next time.

X.-wrapped map: 6.500-7.000 landtiles, max 18 starting nations. Hopefully 7-9 in the late game. Flat map: 8.000-10.000 landtiles, max 24 starting nations. Hopefully 10-12 in the late game.

One thing more: The more snow- and deserttiles, the better. Also distance between cities to be set to 4 (or 5 (max. number of cities 200-220 in total)). Else you will not be able to finish a long game with a time-victory (in case no other kind of victories happens earlier).

 

[AspiringScholar]

Definitely a solid start, no doubt. Similar to the start I got in my current game; it's actually the first time I went pastoral nomadism, lol. My run is still going nicely, conquered one of the smaller civs at the 'entrance' to that Southern continent, all while maintaining 60-70% research slider. They had a perfect spot for a commerce city and weren't utilizing it, need the extra money since many of the future cities I settle/conquer will be quite far away from my capital. It looks like I'll be in for a decent fight with the Celts after the Zulus fall, as they have access to HRE swordsman, crossbowmen, their UU, medium cavalry and longbowmen. I was hoping to have an edge with bombards, but after reading that they don't do collateral damage and are limited to defending, I don't think that'll make a difference. I already have an edge with my knights and Doppelsoldners, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to break through their longbowmen without waves of irregulars.

I'm also pretty happy to say that it seems the AI limits their stacks to 12-14 units, after observing a war between the Celts and the Zulus. Will continue observations to see if they're really deterred from doom stacks with the logistics changes, but it seems to be working thus far. If the KMod AI takes into consideration the debuffs from logistics penalties it should surely be working.

It's a really powerful civic when your capital's BFC has plenty of livestock (and seafood as a bonus) but no grain. It's gotten nerfed twice because so many people complained that it was OP. Originally, the -25% improvement and -50% wonder construction time weren't there.

On the note of the bombards, make sure to remember just because it says "can only defend," that only refers to actual, direct combat: the bombards still fight offensively via their ranged attack, which is pretty significant. With their ranged attack, they inflict damage, don't take any themselves, and gain XP. The wording is a little unclear, but don't let it dissuade you from using the guns.

Ok, this is absurd. Each row is 25 troops, so about 180 troops total. AHAHA. And this is one stack (albeit probably their largest by far), and they are only the fourth largest military in this game. This is with unit cost scaling on too.

Out of curiousity, what was your reasoning for ramping up the "behind" bonus even more? It seemed like you deliberately set it very high in the previous post and then raised it again. I just went ahead and turned on the default BtS mechanic again with tech trading and tech transfer off and will keep an eye on tech pace. So far (early classical) it feels right, but it's too early to tell for sure. Were I able to find and modify the relevant files for tech transfer, setting that at 20% initially and 10% marginally for additional open border civs which know the tech I think would be a good correction to try out.

If you don't mind my asking, how many AI civs do you usually have in your games?

I play with 40 AI civs on a huge map. I wonder if the number of civs in the world affects the ability of civs to create SoD? With so many other civs, it's easy to make enemies by attacking friends of friends, and so one would think that the ability of a hostile civ to amass an SoD should limited by their economy and ability to trade with fewer and fewer friendly civs.

My game (still 3.55) has several vassal blocs that have formed, and nobody is trying to start WW2. WW1 started when Ashoka attacked me (Thomas Jefferson) -- I was #1 and he was #2. He sneak-attacked me and I sunk is his landing force. I then stopped all research and became a wartime production civ, rapidly built up my navy and destroyed his naval fleet, then sent my land forces to destroy his cities one by one until my cities started protesting the war.

I accepted Ashoka's terms for peace, and then the rest of the world started attacking Ashoka. I finally wiped him out many years later. My world has had small wars between minor civs, but no more World Wars between the major blocs. That's not to say that the stopped building units -- they have and they're garrisoning cities, but nobody has dared to form an SoD to go on a rampage.

On random maps, I've only ever played the standard size with the default number of civs, though with barbarian civs and revolutions turned on, that ends up being about 10-15 by the mid-late game unless there's a lot of consolidation in that particular game. Occasionally I like to play the huge world map, but I find that the increasingly-long turn resolution ends up taking the fun out of it, because it ends up being like an entire minute only by the early ADs. I don't really blame the developers for that, since they're really redlining the engine to maximum and were candid about performance issues with it, but while the epic scale of that scenario specifically appeals to me quite a lot (particularly since all of the minor civs were individually written and placed in their historical locations), on a random map I personally don't see the allure of huge maps, and I find that standard strikes a good balance with a number of teams which is interactive but not tediously cluttered and a size where gaining or losing one individual city is still strategically meaningful. When the map is enormous, it feels like every expansion is too granular and doesn't carry much weight of its own. To each their own, though.

In fact, I've noticed myself that most of the people who post regularly in this thread say that they play the biggest possible maps with the most possible civs, and I'm a little curious why they find that more fun, even if performance isn't an issue.

 

[aantia]

In fact, I've noticed myself that most of the people who post regularly in this thread say that they play the biggest possible maps with the most possible civs, and I'm a little curious why they find that more fun, even if performance isn't an issue.

It makes the game more dynamic. It also makes the biggest AI empires even bigger and more powerful, which I like for a late-game challenge.

 

[fnsnad]

Out of curiousity, what was your reasoning for ramping up the "behind" bonus even more? It seemed like you deliberately set it very high in the previous post and then raised it again. I just went ahead and turned on the default BtS mechanic again with tech trading and tech transfer off and will keep an eye on tech pace. So far (early classical) it feels right, but it's too early to tell for sure. Were I able to find and modify the relevant files for tech transfer, setting that at 20% initially and 10% marginally for additional open border civs which know the tech I think would be a good correction to try out.

I ramped it up even more because I felt civs were still falling behind in tech too much for my liking. I think it's also partially due to how I like to play civ, focusing heavily on tech throughout the game such that I'm usually always the (or a) tech leader. Not only that, I mentioned before that I usually stay passive for the early eras until the industrial/modern era - that is when I go ham. It's because of this that it's not fun to obliterate lesser civs that only have longbowmen with my rifleman, and it feels like a waste that these awesome production cities I've so carefully built up are meaningless since I don't incur any losses. Of course, This especially compounds in the late game (around my game is around now), where just a handful of technologies are the difference between early tanks and main battle tanks. I want every civ to put up a fight by giving them atleast the tools to do so, no matter how small; I want to be forced to make strategic armies and battle plans to win wars rather than right clicking my stacks of tanks on their rifleman, it makes the game feel more dangerous and alive in the late game - which is where I love civ the most. This is also why (thanks TheBirdman) I also added a harsher ahead of time research penalty. With my changes in my current game, even the weakest civ is at most half an era behind, with the weakest in mid-late industrial and me being in early modern. Still, I'm debating on ramping up these bonuses even further as I find that I'm still a little too far ahead in tech in my current game because even this "half-era" tech lead is still quite huge.

My input to this issue:

I play legendary games only (3.255 turns) on gigantic maps (160*100 upto 200*128 (I'm still modelling on a extrahuge gigantic flat map, size 208*144, but I'm not satisfied with it's "look" yet - it has to made with max. 10.000 landtiles to be playable to the end)), 12-24 nation including my own. And I say: I have not had any problems with SoD in my games. Oh yes, I have seen Barb-cities with 100+ units in it and I have seen Barb-armies with 70-80 units..... but I do not see this as a problem. More kind of a challenge.

See there is one thing, that most oftens works in those situations. And that is patience. Take your time to soften them up. Give them a few cities "for free" if you need it - they will leave troops behind in those cities...... Sooner or later, you will have the upperhand - if you are patient.

What map script do you use? I love totestra and want to play on giant, but totestra doesn't seem to work with giant: producing a bugged out, huge grassland, map.

 

[eikson]

Hi, I found a possible bug with Polish Pikemen. They were garrisoned in a Polish city and I saw that the tooltip showed -120% defence for plains, desert etc.

 

[DN_sith]

Hi. Re-installed RI from 3.55 (uninstall) to 3.6 and got pink icons of units in civilopedia's unit upgrade chart. Default units icons are Ok. What my problem and what I'm doing wrong?

So, noone with same issue here? Re-downloaded three time from different sources — same here. Installer's log don't show any warnings or errors.

Hi, I found a possible bug with Polish Pikemen. They were garrisoned in a Polish city and I saw that the tooltip showed -120% defence for plains, desert etc.

May be Crusade doctrine? There something about +60% str and -120% terrain def with 3 promotions.

 

[AspiringScholar]

So, noone with same issue here? Re-downloaded three time from different sources — same here. Installer's log don't show any warnings or errors.

I haven't had that issue at all, if it helps. No idea what it may be coming from, other than that it might be a shader issue due to a hardware incompatibility. Do you have a dedicated graphics card?

 

[eikson]

I haven't had that issue at all, if it helps. No idea what it may be coming from, other than that it might be a shader issue due to a hardware incompatibility. Do you have a dedicated graphics card?

I'm playing on AMD internal graphics and don't have the issue. Sounds like a faulty download or faulty installation to me.

 

[pi4t]

Does the big world map still lead to MAF problems in the later eras even on a 64-bit OS? I know that some other modpacks (C2C in particular) have come up with some magic code which stops them, so I'm wondering if that got included in RI as well.

 

[DN_sith]

I haven't had that issue at all, if it helps. No idea what it may be coming from, other than that it might be a shader issue due to a hardware incompatibility. Do you have a dedicated graphics card?

Nope. 1050Ti, Win7x64 and Steam BtS. 3.57 was ok.

I'm playing on AMD internal graphics and don't have the issue. Sounds like a faulty download or faulty installation to me.

3 re-downloads of same size file from 2 sources, 5 installations with and w/o antivirus monitoring, no errors in the log each time. =\