Realism Invictus

[AspiringScholar]

early and semi-constant warface is (imo) extremely important on high levels to maintain a high xp army core. Keep in mind that a significant portion of an AIs represented strength will be garrisons, and you can generally match an even tech AI deathstack to deathstack until .5ish ratio. To some degree you just need to reroll for good defensive geographies, especially on larger maps where its often not feasible to lock down a good defensible chunk without going into spiraling overextension. Otherwise, religion and diplomatic manipulation more broadly are also much more important as its key to use all the tools at your disposal (hi esiponage) to play the AIs off each other and generally unstable as possible. More production cities can help as well, or just being able/willing to spam out a whole flood of irregulars as fodder. The later you go the more the game favors tempo/first strike attacks (strategically not the promo, though that's also good) since it takes way longer to build up a good city than it does to crack it and overrun a chunk of an empire. Ships and/or amphibious traits are very helpful in this regard, and you shouldn't underestimate the value of quickly sacking a few cities to spike their war exhaustion for a favorable peace (and space!). In general your actions will be very informed by the various specific AI personalities and geography that you're dealt, which is a long way of saying "it depends" lmao

I am only just now getting comfortable on Monarch (though I am used to playing with raging barbs, which makes the early game substantially more difficult) and haven't even attempted emperor yet, but thanks for the insight! How long have you been playing the mod, altogether? I am coming up on two years of pretty regular play, being a longtime casual player of Beyond the Sword beforehand. When I jumped right in, after a couple of trial games just to learn the mechanics while I was reading the manual, my first serious attempt at Prince (it recommended going down one difficulty level from what you're used to in the base game) was easy and I won on the first try, but Monarch was a big jump from that. I imagine Emperor will be similarly steep as Bluedoom mentions.

For me, the sweet spot is needing to have a plan and think carefully about the right choice to make or else I will lose, but not so punishing that it becomes a true optimization problem where precise calculation errors rather than general courses of action decide winning or losing. While I'm sure that kind of thing is gratifying at a high enough level of play, at a certain point it can detract from the immersion and get too serious for what is (for my purposes) ultimately supposed to be a fun diversion.

 

[Ramius007]

How you guys handle single enemy on your continent, when you have alternative options to expand, and he is rather peacefull?

 

[bluecivdoom]

How you guys handle single enemy on your continent, when you have alternative options to expand, and he is rather peacefull?

Tbh I've really seen the AI actually be peaceful, if they can invade they usually invade

That said, if you think that you can defend against any invasion and that the AI is not a threat, you can either just devote most of your resources towards building your economy, or you can prepare for a war where you take out the AI and take over the continent. I think the latter is much better, personally speaking.

 

[BenkofAmerica]

For those interested, I have a handmade map of North America at a scale of 900 square miles per tile (similar scale to the Europe map). I originally made this map a few years ago but have just recently updated it and converted it to the newest game version. It should be very accurately scaled as I've measured everything on google earth, although some artistic liberties were taken for aesthetic and playability considerations. I've had a ton of fun playing this so I thought I'd share it.

Features:
- Huge map size.
- Renaissance start.
- Standard game options and victory conditions.
- Raging primitive barbs.
- 16 Civs with one settler start.
- Fully detailed with terrain features, etc.
- Resources loosely based on real-world deposits/production areas (post Columbian-Exchange).
- Most start locations based on real-world city locations.
- Map wraps, so you can travel between East and West coasts by sea, although ocean is huge so it doesn't feel awkward.

Game is reasonably balanced for a fun, builder style, but could use some tweaks if you want to make it very competitive. Play on a harder difficulty than normal if you want a real challenge. Only 'bug' is that the latitudes are not accurate so you sometimes get snowy conifers growing in Mexico. Let me know what you think.

 

[FireBlaze]

I am only just now getting comfortable on Monarch (though I am used to playing with raging barbs, which makes the early game substantially more difficult) and haven't even attempted emperor yet, but thanks for the insight! How long have you been playing the mod, altogether? I am coming up on two years of pretty regular play, being a longtime casual player of Beyond the Sword beforehand. When I jumped right in, after a couple of trial games just to learn the mechanics while I was reading the manual, my first serious attempt at Prince (it recommended going down one difficulty level from what you're used to in the base game) was easy and I won on the first try, but Monarch was a big jump from that. I imagine Emperor will be similarly steep as Bluedoom mentions.

For me, the sweet spot is needing to have a plan and think carefully about the right choice to make or else I will lose, but not so punishing that it becomes a true optimization problem where precise calculation errors rather than general courses of action decide winning or losing. While I'm sure that kind of thing is gratifying at a high enough level of play, at a certain point it can detract from the immersion and get too serious for what is (for my purposes) ultimately supposed to be a fun diversion.

on and off the past year, i've gotten two games to the start of modern, one to industrial and maybe a dozen or so at various techs before, from Emperor to Diety (dont play diety its the optimization problem). I cut my teeth on various other mods before this and had been watching/reading some diety gameplay from around the forums to get a better idea of how to conceptualize stuff and level up. Titan's pretty fun in terms of game length challenge without it feeling like you have to go full break the game of diety imo.

How you guys handle single enemy on your continent, when you have alternative options to expand, and he is rather peacefull?

Depends on why they're peaceful and if I expect it to be a long term thing. I'd consider expanding elsewhere/wherever is richest uncontested first and then maybe using them as a crash dummy against other AI before turning them into a beaker/xp/gold farm. Maybe shoot for a peacevassal if i'm that much stronger, though honestly i've been burned enough by peacevassals leaving on a whim that anyone on my actual border i'd probably try to cap even if they're friendly.

 

[Ramius007]

on and off the past year, i've gotten two games to the start of modern, one to industrial and maybe a dozen or so at various techs before, from Emperor to Diety (dont play diety its the optimization problem). I cut my teeth on various other mods before this and had been watching/reading some diety gameplay from around the forums to get a better idea of how to conceptualize stuff and level up. Titan's pretty fun in terms of game length challenge without it feeling like you have to go full break the game of diety imo.


Depends on why they're peaceful and if I expect it to be a long term thing. I'd consider expanding elsewhere/wherever is richest uncontested first and then maybe using them as a crash dummy against other AI before turning them into a beaker/xp/gold farm. Maybe shoot for a peacevassal if i'm that much stronger, though honestly i've been burned enough by peacevassals leaving on a whim that anyone on my actual border i'd probably try to cap even if they're friendly.

I had Themistocles recently on my continent, so really peacfull leader who dont build units, we were devided by "Himalaya" (Totestra like feature of glacial hills in the middle of continent), in short i decided to colonize islands in other direction already settled by barbs, but Themistocles tech development speed left my Sohei monks against muskets, Greece despite having way less cities had 500 points adventage in reneisance (i was deep in the medival at the time), yet after contacting other civs i still were too good and get massive "ahead of us" diplo penalty against few other civs... seems like AI on immortal, even isolated easily tech way ahead of human history

 

[pecheneg]

I Only 'bug' is that the latitudes are not accurate so you sometimes get snowy conifers growing in Mexico. Let me know what you think.

Mexico is mostly highlands, on average one thousand to two thousand meters, but... There are higher areas, and there the snow is banal. And yes, there are coniferous forests there - they start already from about half a kilometer.

 

[Ramius007]

Why player dont have acces to crosbowman, like AI and AI build crossbowman even if they have access to longbowman, it's a glitch, bug?

 

[bluecivdoom]

Why player dont have acces to crosbowman, like AI and AI build crossbowman even if they have access to longbowman, it's a glitch, bug?

You might be playing a civ that doesn't have crossbowmen, you should be able to recruit both if you have access to both

 

[Ramius007]

You might be playing a civ that doesn't have crossbowmen, you should be able to recruit both if you have access to both

Now noticed, China use national unit as vanilla crossbowman, also AI finally started to build longbowman, but seems they not focus on them

 

[spitfire303]

Hi, I have just discovered this mod and installed it. I play a giant archipelago map with 40 civs on emperor level. For now I have just one question. I've chosen the slowest speed ... I think: Realistic. What puzzles me is the tech discovery speed. From the very beginning each tech is like... 17 turns or so. So I don't have a time to build a unit or a structure in the city and the new tech is laready there... I am missing something? I was used to have musch slower pace like in CIV 6 (moded Marathon). Thanks for your help.

 

[bluecivdoom]

Hi, I have just discovered this mod and installed it. I play a giant archipelago map with 40 civs on emperor level. For now I have just one question. I've chosen the slowest speed ... I think: Realistic. What puzzles me is the tech discovery speed. From the very beginning each tech is like... 17 turns or so. So I don't have a time to build a unit or a structure in the city and the new tech is laready there... I am missing something? I was used to have musch slower pace like in CIV 6 (moded Marathon). Thanks for your help.

It should scale with time, on the slowest speed your units will have much more longevity even if you're late to build them, because production doesn't scale well with speed

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Hi, I have just discovered this mod and installed it. I play a giant archipelago map with 40 civs on emperor level. For now I have just one question. I've chosen the slowest speed ... I think: Realistic. What puzzles me is the tech discovery speed. From the very beginning each tech is like... 17 turns or so. So I don't have a time to build a unit or a structure in the city and the new tech is laready there... I am missing something? I was used to have musch slower pace like in CIV 6 (moded Marathon). Thanks for your help.

I also love long, slow ponderous games wherein you have plenty of time to explore each tier of unit and building before they become obsolete. In my game settings (emperor, raging barbs, huge map, totestra) even in Legendary techs were flying by too quickly for me (and too fast for historical accuracy). I created a new game speed in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml to have Legendary levels of production but 2x slower research and also used CIV4CommerceInfo.xml to cut the default tech transfer bonus in half. Still testing the resulting balance but so far I'm loving how this plays.

All that to say if you like things a certain way, there's probably an xml or config you can fiddle with to make it work.

 

[Ramius007]

So far seems like all reaserch generating mechanics work too well, recently i found that in the renaissance you can gain 10k reaserch just from conquering cities, but even isolated civs have no problem being way ahead of time, it's rather striking thing that needs rebalancing in any future update

 

[ThirdOrbital]

It's been 7 months since the last update and seems unlikely that any other is coming soon so I'd recommend you tweak it yourself if you aren't happy! As mentioned above, if all you want to do is make techs harder to research it's an easy change to <iResearchPercent> in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml.

 

[EyeofUgin]

Fairly new player here, playing on monarch/huge/terra. I'm in the late medieval period, and having trouble breaking through longbowmen in hilled cities. I have crusaders, foot knights, and man-at-arms with city attack upgrades, and knights with retreat upgrades, but none of these seem to deal any significant damage to the longbows (even with city defenses at 0%).

Is this just a feature of the era, that longbowmen are exceptionally good at defending cities?
Do I just need more units? (I have roughly 10 city attack units to their 5 longbowmen, but again, I don't seem to deal any significant damage regardless.)
Or do I need higher tech to break through?

 

[TheBirdMan]

Do I just need more units? (I have roughly 10 city attack units to their 5 longbowmen, but again, I don't seem to deal any significant damage regardless.)
Or do I need higher tech to break through?

When you attack, you must not forget the Aid_system, where different type of troops supports other types in battle.

If you can, try to make attacks with smaller stacks of say 3-4 different troops - fx 1 or 2 unit(s) with City_assult promotion, 1 or 2 unit(s) with a "+xx% vs archers" and 1 or 2 mounted unit(s) able to make some "Collateral Damage" - then make your attack. If you loose, replace the lost unit and attack again. If you win, replace the wounded unit with a fresh. Never attack with single units only, seldom (but not never) attack with a stack of same type of units. Never include units with no City_Attack support in the attack. *)

You will proberly need much more troops to do above.....

It's dang hard to take cities, that are defended with (any kind) of archers until you get access to the bombard. Specially if some of the defending archers has the City_defense, Drill or Hill promotions (last only if the city are placed on a hilltop of course).


*) Edit: That is - if you after your "normal" attacks have your enemy down on the knees - then it might be a good decision to give it a try anyway...........

 

[Ramius007]

Fairly new player here, playing on monarch/huge/terra. I'm in the late medieval period, and having trouble breaking through longbowmen in hilled cities. I have crusaders, foot knights, and man-at-arms with city attack upgrades, and knights with retreat upgrades, but none of these seem to deal any significant damage to the longbows (even with city defenses at 0%).

Is this just a feature of the era, that longbowmen are exceptionally good at defending cities?
Do I just need more units? (I have roughly 10 city attack units to their 5 longbowmen, but again, I don't seem to deal any significant damage regardless.)
Or do I need higher tech to break through?

yes. its era feature, attack is weakest compered to defence in medival, later line infantry only have like 10% city bonus defence, longbowman otoh have significant city and hills defence bonuses

 

[ThirdOrbital]

Fairly new player here, playing on monarch/huge/terra. I'm in the late medieval period, and having trouble breaking through longbowmen in hilled cities. I have crusaders, foot knights, and man-at-arms with city attack upgrades, and knights with retreat upgrades, but none of these seem to deal any significant damage to the longbows (even with city defenses at 0%).

Is this just a feature of the era, that longbowmen are exceptionally good at defending cities?
Do I just need more units? (I have roughly 10 city attack units to their 5 longbowmen, but again, I don't seem to deal any significant damage regardless.)
Or do I need higher tech to break through?

I agree with others that longbows are tough to beat, especially with any sort of bonus such as hills or a protective leader. You didn't mention bombards - hopefully you have gunpowder and are making use of the ranged attack so you never fight a longbow at full health. It also may be worthwhile to give some suicidal units (arquebusiers or your own archers) the drill promotion line. Their combat odds will be horrible but their first strikes should at least wound the longbows so that your city raiders can have better odds. Nothing is more frustrating than sending in a man-at-arms only to watch him die without even getting to fight back.

Friendly heads up that the next tier, flintlock musket, is a huge step forward and nigh impossible to beat with outdated units. Don't let your precious knights meet line infantry!

 

[EyeofUgin]

Yep, makes sense. I'm on the cusp of gunpowder but I don't have it yet, and haven't played enough to know the changes that come about as a result.

My attack is a counteroffensive after I wiped an invading doomstack. So I thought I'd be able to roll right into a border city, but from what you guys said these longbowmen are definitely too strong for that with my current troops haha.

I took a good peace deal with them and am going to focus on repairing my economy and research after the war efforts before I try again.

Thanks for the help!