Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

The problem is much less creating a forest where there never used to be a forest, and much more creating back a forest where there used to be one. There is a strong incentive to cut down most forests during the early eras of the game, but no way to grow back any of it, which is completely unrealistic and can be quite annoying in the late game.

From gameplay point of view this is clearly a strategic decision to be made - whether to chop for short-term gain or to keep for later. It is not "completely unrealistic", as deforestation was a constant reality throughout human history, while reforestation is, at best, a hallmark of certain areas in post-industrial era.

Countries with quickly expanding populations that keep cutting down forests may give the impression that growing them back is not happening, but if you look at the EU, forested areas have been increasing for decades (despite an increase in logging output).

True, but most of the EU reforestation is late XX - XXI century, almost beyond the scope of RI. Definitely not at the end of medieval or start of Renaissance.

The +1 unhealthiness is already a stretch, more for flavor reasons than because it really makes sense, I assume that the change would only keep the penalty active, not trigger potentially 2 or 3 unhealthiness at once?

If there should be an american source of unhealthiness, it would rather be something like processed food... But a game like Civ is not well-suited to deal with the dynamics behind modern sources of disease.

I'll probably just remove it outright. It was a silly modifier in the first place.

 

[AllTheLand]

From gameplay point of view this is clearly a strategic decision to be made - whether to chop for short-term gain or to keep for later. It is not "completely unrealistic", as deforestation was a constant reality throughout human history, while reforestation is, at best, a hallmark of certain areas in post-industrial era.

In most situations, at least when it's not hilly, keeping the land exploited for agriculture gives higher yields. The general reason we don't see mass-scale reforestation efforts is not so much that it cannot be done and more so that benefits are usually limited (for humans). In game terms, lower yields from the tile. And Civ4's resources system can't really represent the diminishing benefits we have in the supply of resources.

It's too bad that you can't really derive a benefit from tiles outside of the exploitable area of a city. It's not rare to have a couple tiles outside of any city exploitable area, if you could put national parks there to give a slight benefit to surrounding cities that would be neat.

As an aside, I started a new game using the SVN version, the tweaked Totestra map and a few tweaks to civics. I'll try to minimize reloads and see how the game evolves.

True, but most of the EU reforestation is late XX - XXI century, almost beyond the scope of RI. Definitely not at the end of medieval or start of Renaissance.

Yeah, end of medieval or start of renaissance is definitely too early.

The example I gave of a new forest created in an area with no previous forest is from the mid-XIXth century, realistically giving that ability to the end of the industrial era would fit.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

In most situations, at least when it's not hilly, keeping the land exploited for agriculture gives higher yields. The general reason we don't see mass-scale reforestation efforts is not so much that it cannot be done and more so that benefits are usually limited (for humans). In game terms, lower yields from the tile. And Civ4's resources system can't really represent the diminishing benefits we have in the supply of resources.

Well, I'll actually disagree with you here. In mid- to long-term, deforestation IRL led to significantly reduced yields in many places, mostly due to desertification. A very good example of this is Spain, where agricultural output fell sharply in large part due to deforestation, with a lot of Spanish territory that used to be good arable land becoming a desert. While desertification and soil degradation aren't really modelled in Civ at all, they were extremely important factors in real history. IRL, that, of course, did not stop deforestation, partly due to short-termism, partly due to lack of relevant knowledge. And before anyone pitches to have that modelled in RI: while it wouldn't be inconceivable mechanically, it would end up very unpopular as the effect of man-made landscape change throughout history was almost exclusively detrimental for humans, so that would be a mechanic that would make things progressively worse for everyone. "Ugh, I hate that my farms turn to deserts after 500 years have passed!" And from a historical realism perspective, it would be really out of character to actually allow players to counteract/prevent it, as that's simply not something people did back then. Hell, even the Sahara is mostly a man-made desert!

It's too bad that you can't really derive a benefit from tiles outside of the exploitable area of a city. It's not rare to have a couple tiles outside of any city exploitable area, if you could put national parks there to give a slight benefit to surrounding cities that would be neat.

You mentioning national parks actually put another image in my head that I hadn't even considered before. An ability to plant forests would lead to a very gamey tactic of foresting all tiles of your national park city.

 

[TheBirdMan]

True, but most of the EU reforestation is late XX - XXI century, almost beyond the scope of RI. Definitely not at the end of medieval or start of Renaissance.

For about 500 years ago or so, the Crown (guess the order came from the Crown) ordered that acorns should be sown in larger areas. The aim was that a few hundred years later common oak trees of the right size and quality was available for the fleet. The last time this was done was in the early 19th century after some heavy losses of ships - we had a bit of trouble with the English at that time . Well, the Oaks are ready now - but our fleet do not need them anymore. Or do they - seems like the ships we have now do not work as intended .

Anyway - guess some other nations also had this problem (lack of Oak and other types of wood for ships that is) from time to time. But otherwise you are probably right that areas were not sown just to get new forest.

 

[Roland Johansen]

What you see is that most through human history, the local perception of forests was a nice one-time resource to be used and not think about the long-term consequences.

But in case of oak trees and large wooden warships and sufficiently organised national governments, there have been deliberate forest planting efforts in areas where forests had been cut away in the decades before. This happened because the long-term value of these oak trees for the country as a whole were recognised by the government.

Then after the era of large wooden warships, the long-term value of forests diminished again and the value of forests for soil preservation and rain patterns was not yet recognised sufficiently.

Now, in modern times, the value of forests for the long-term preservation of the land is scientifically recognised and we see large scale afforestation and reforestation projects. The biggest is the one in China, which of course has the type of government that can nationally push such projects. They planted 47000 square kilometres of forest, doubling the forested area of the country since 1980.

Afforestation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It is the same with any tile improvement. If we humans see the value, then we do it. It's not that we could not plant forests during most of history. It is just that they locally weren't worth it during most of human history.

It is not so much different in civilization IV. During most of the game, you are better off with a different tile improvement. Only late game, you would want to, especially in cold areas where also in the real world most of the modern organised wood production takes place.

The god-like organised reforestation of tiles by perfectly organised planting efforts by the player is no different from the god-like organised placement of structures of chain irrigated farms, towns, mines, water mills and windmills to top-down perfectly make use of the lands.

Planting forests is a lot less weird than that, with the standard game rules, a player can conquer a size 30 modern city, immediately obliterate it to nothing and rebuild it one space to the south.

 

[LanceV]

Oh, this is a bug that I very much want to find and fix before the next release! It's a shame that you couldn't provide the saves.

I wasnt aware that this bug was actually notorious. So i loaded back another save of the game and passed turns, to see whether it happens again. I attach two saves:
bug1 is probably not so helpful, as it is from AFTER the new units were created from nothing. You can note that Afghanistan has 1506 Armored Cars. The graphs show the peaks in the military power.

bug2 is hopefully more helpful. If I pass the turn Afghanistan goes from 0 Armored Cars to 158. Not as impressive as the 1500 of before, but still apparently created from nothing. Note, that to get from the bug1 save to the bug2 save I deleted the 1500 Armored Cars with the world editor. Hopefully this does not obscure the origin of the bug. The first time it happened there was no previous world builder usage involved.

While looking at the save you might also want to have a look at the number of cities maintainance point:
Compare the city Libyan of Afghanistan to Birmingham of England.
Both have 21 Pop, but the number of cities maintainance of Birmingham (230.07) is much higher than Libyan (67.09). Why? Afghanistan has much more cities, so it should be higher, except for the AI advantages. Does that mean the AI only pays like 20% number of city maintainance?

I'll probably just remove it outright. It was a silly modifier in the first place.

Well, IMO it not more or less silly than one additional happiness due to hit musicals. I like this malus, since it makes it more characteristic and fits image of the civilization. Also it is already one of the strongest unique buildings (also the latest), so this small malus makes is mor in line with the others.

 

[AllTheLand]

Some thoughts:
- The techs that enable Slavery and Metallurgy now give "+0" to epidemic odds. The epidemic odds should be completely removed from the tech instead of displaying the +0. Perhaps giving a full +1 to one of those would make sense. Although honestly, what was wrong with having some things changing the value by 0.5?
- The building cost of cart paths and basic roads is so similar that I find myself building almost no cart path at all, at most one or two. Cart paths are available earlier, but not that much. I think cart paths should be made cheaper.
- Isn't 12 turns quite short for golden ages considering how much more turns RI has? Over the course of the game you have more time to get GPs for golden ages, but since repeated golden ages get more and more costly, it doesn't fundamentally alter this calculation.
- I swear there is a way to see what are the next techs that a great person will unlock, but I can't find it anymore.
- Does the AI wait to get a pagan temple before valuing the pyramids and stonehenge ? They seem remarkably easy to get as a player.
- The AI research speed at the start is astounding. But once open borders happen, it's reasonably easy to keep up.

Also it is already one of the strongest unique buildings (also the latest), so this small malus makes is mor in line with the others.

It should be the strongest, when looked at as compared to the base building, precisely because it is the latest. Getting bonuses from a unique building early in the game is much stronger than getting them right at the end.

 

[[Y]]

Had a thought after starting a new game: What if pigs could spawn in forests, and it was possible to build camps on forest pigs and jungle pigs? Possibly instead of the current exception where you can remove jungle from pig tiles (but not other jungle resources). I imagine this would yield less food than pasture pigs, but maybe give an extra gold. So while deer with a camp would be +2, pigs with a camp would be +1, +1. This would also make the vast forest spaces that Totestra often generates less of a food desert, since currently no food item other than deer spawns on forests, and those only spawn under special conditions. It's kind of wild that a forest can't help feed a town in RI (unless you're Russian or tundra living).

I swear there is a way to see what are the next techs that a great person will unlock, but I can't find it anymore.

On the left side of the tech tree. But you have to access the tech tree directly, through the button or a "See full picture" when choosing a tech. Accessing the tech tree from the civopedia doesn't show the great person unlocks.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I've given up on attempting to reply to everything of interest, but on the note of forests, an idea I suggested not too long ago was to make actually "chopping" forests replaced with an improvement (say, a "timber gathering operation") that significantly increased and would eventually deplete the forest altogether, similarly to how slash and burn farms used to work. As it is currently, the yield returned from chopping has been massively reduced while the investment to do so has been massively increased, reversing a major aspect of the "now vs. later" strategic dynamic of whether or not to chop. Other than a major use case for clearing farmland, removing an entire forest as a concerted effort just for the sake of getting rid of it seems to be much less common in history than it simply being depleted due to gathering resources from it without thought for preserving it, and its incompatibility with all non-farm improvements is unwarranted from a realism standpoint as well (and the game even allows most improvements to coexist with forests anyway!), which would make even the rather arbitrary need to randomly completely efface them from the earth in order to build other improvements null, but perhaps situationally less attractive to build there due to retained longer improvement construction times. I think this would model ancient deforestation much better and make for more fun gameplay.

I don't even see conflict with the later lumbermill once it arrives (which would represent these more modern sustained forestry operations), as you would then still be presented with a "now vs. later" approach to land use for , rendered more meaningful now that there is even an appreciable amount to be gained in the short term.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The god-like organised reforestation of tiles by perfectly organised planting efforts by the player is no different from the god-like organised placement of structures of chain irrigated farms, towns, mines, water mills and windmills to top-down perfectly make use of the lands.

Well, it feels out of character to me. I mean, theoretically, nobody could have prevented ancient Egyptians from using penicillin, it is remarkably easy once you know what it does - but antibiotics didn't happen until the XX century. In an alternative Earth, they might have been discovered by accident by a polymath priest in the early Bronze Age, there was nothing technically preventing that. But acting based on modern knowledge in ancient eras feels wrong to me.

Planting forests is a lot less weird than that, with the standard game rules, a player can conquer a size 30 modern city, immediately obliterate it to nothing and rebuild it one space to the south.

Wasn't it more or less exactly the plan Hitler had for Moscow if he managed to take it? We're simply lucky nobody crazy enough was successful enough in our world.

I wasnt aware that this bug was actually notorious. So i loaded back another save of the game and passed turns, to see whether it happens again. I attach two saves:
bug1 is probably not so helpful, as it is from AFTER the new units were created from nothing. You can note that Afghanistan has 1506 Armored Cars. The graphs show the peaks in the military power.

bug2 is hopefully more helpful. If I pass the turn Afghanistan goes from 0 Armored Cars to 158. Not as impressive as the 1500 of before, but still apparently created from nothing. Note, that to get from the bug1 save to the bug2 save I deleted the 1500 Armored Cars with the world editor. Hopefully this does not obscure the origin of the bug. The first time it happened there was no previous world builder usage involved.

Thanks a lot for this! I think I managed to fix the issue; at least what I did prevented it from occurring in your save and theoretically should prevent it in all other cases. I'll upload it in the next revision.

While looking at the save you might also want to have a look at the number of cities maintainance point:
Compare the city Libyan of Afghanistan to Birmingham of England.
Both have 21 Pop, but the number of cities maintainance of Birmingham (230.07) is much higher than Libyan (67.09). Why? Afghanistan has much more cities, so it should be higher, except for the AI advantages. Does that mean the AI only pays like 20% number of city maintainance?

I'll dig deeper into that at some point.

- The techs that enable Slavery and Metallurgy now give "+0" to epidemic odds. The epidemic odds should be completely removed from the tech instead of displaying the +0. Perhaps giving a full +1 to one of those would make sense. Although honestly, what was wrong with having some things changing the value by 0.5?

Theoretically nothing was wrong, I just went for more consistency with health and happiness, for which Civ 4 doesn't do fractionals. The +0 was actually +0.5 that didn't display correctly (but still applied). Thanks for pointing those out.

- The building cost of cart paths and basic roads is so similar that I find myself building almost no cart path at all, at most one or two. Cart paths are available earlier, but not that much. I think cart paths should be made cheaper.

My logic for cart paths was to have something for when you absolutely need to connect a resource really early on; it is relatively useless and not cost-effective by design.

- Isn't 12 turns quite short for golden ages considering how much more turns RI has? Over the course of the game you have more time to get GPs for golden ages, but since repeated golden ages get more and more costly, it doesn't fundamentally alter this calculation.

Come to think of it, I guess it is. I think it was more or less ok early on, but later the game length got increased at some points, whereas the GA length didn't get adjusted to match. I'll increase it.

- Does the AI wait to get a pagan temple before valuing the pyramids and stonehenge ? They seem remarkably easy to get as a player.

I don't know, they actually might. I'll have to check.

It should be the strongest, when looked at as compared to the base building, precisely because it is the latest. Getting bonuses from a unique building early in the game is much stronger than getting them right at the end.

Indeed, and that was my approach to all the stuff that arrives later in the game.

Had a thought after starting a new game: What if pigs could spawn in forests, and it was possible to build camps on forest pigs and jungle pigs? Possibly instead of the current exception where you can remove jungle from pig tiles (but not other jungle resources). I imagine this would yield less food than pasture pigs, but maybe give an extra gold. So while deer with a camp would be +2, pigs with a camp would be +1, +1. This would also make the vast forest spaces that Totestra often generates less of a food desert, since currently no food item other than deer spawns on forests, and those only spawn under special conditions. It's kind of wild that a forest can't help feed a town in RI (unless you're Russian or tundra living).

An interesting thought! Worth considering.

 

[arizzi]

I get a freeze shortly after this save. The game still seems to respond however it chugs endlessly. Happens consistently but not after any particular action. This is on the latest svn. Separate small issue, I believe the name of the script is shown when strategic bombing a city. Something like REDUCE_POPULATION....... etc.

 

[pecheneg]

True, but most of the EU reforestation is late XX - XXI century, almost beyond the scope of RI.

In fact, everything is much older and more radical.

At the same time, the British took up the case relatively late – because the situation on the islands was relatively prosperous compared to "axial" Europe. For example, Germany became radically bald after 1750, with a wild shortage of timber and horrors (perhaps, exaggerated) such as the formation of quasi-desert areas. As a result, the more organized Prussians were puzzled by the question back in the deep 18th century. First of all, by planting their scarce pine.
And since the beginning of the 19th century, the craze has become all-German, and in the context of romanticism, nationalism and other pathos.
At the same time, the real turning point came after 1850, when private monetary interests took the place of romanticism and centralized Prussian violence. In the 1850s, the Germans got distracted from philosophy and realized that they were sitting on a huge pile of coal in the most developed and logistically convenient part of the country, and coal has been used in metallurgy for 120 years. As a result, the demand for firewood fell sharply. In parallel, the demand for timber has grown, because of the massive railway construction (sleepers) and the general construction boom. Prices have increased and the exploitation of forests has become more profitable than agriculture in the same area. As a result, the forest stopped being cut down for firewood at the first signs of appearance and began to be purposefully grown to a the timber state + resumed as it was cut down.
Simply put, the vast majority of the current German forest is artificial plantations, and with a displaced species composition. Natural coniferous forests in the lowland part of Germany have never been widespread, now there are plenty of them there.
Approximately the same scheme was in Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands.
At the same time, all this pales against the background of a rather stubborn terraforming in Mother Russia. Old Soviet books cry that tsarism was wrong, and between 1696 and 1914, only 0.7 million hectares of forest were planted in the steppe - that's more than two Belgia in area. They began to do this systematically from about the 1780s (planting forests along the Irtysh defensive line). At the same time, with special fanaticism, the forest was planted in the most arid areas, where it never grew at all. And not even without success.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Well, it feels out of character to me. I mean, theoretically, nobody could have prevented ancient Egyptians from using penicillin, it is remarkably easy once you know what it does - but antibiotics didn't happen until the XX century. In an alternative Earth, they might have been discovered by accident by a polymath priest in the early Bronze Age, there was nothing technically preventing that. But acting based on modern knowledge in ancient eras feels wrong to me.

The invention of forest planting unlike penecillin was there and was used to create new forests for the wooden shipbuilding industry. The only reason people didn't create forests throughout most of history was because there was little short term value in forested areas. And that is exactly the same in the game. Players won't start planting forests en masse because there is little value in it. In almost every case, other improvements are better. Except for late game non-river tundra tiles, exactly where the modern lumber mills are.

Wasn't it more or less exactly the plan Hitler had for Moscow if he managed to take it? We're simply lucky nobody crazy enough was successful enough in our world.

This is exactly the opposite of the argument that you used before. You said 'forest creation didn't happen in real history even though it could have, so it shouldn't be in the game'. Now you are arguing, 'cities could be raised in modern times even though it never happened, so modern city raising should be in the game'.

Thanks a lot for this! I think I managed to fix the issue; at least what I did prevented it from occurring in your save and theoretically should prevent it in all other cases. I'll upload it in the next revision.

For people in ongoing games: any way to avoid it?

Had a thought after starting a new game: What if pigs could spawn in forests, and it was possible to build camps on forest pigs and jungle pigs? Possibly instead of the current exception where you can remove jungle from pig tiles (but not other jungle resources). I imagine this would yield less food than pasture pigs, but maybe give an extra gold. So while deer with a camp would be +2, pigs with a camp would be +1, +1. This would also make the vast forest spaces that Totestra often generates less of a food desert, since currently no food item other than deer spawns on forests, and those only spawn under special conditions. It's kind of wild that a forest can't help feed a town in RI (unless you're Russian or tundra living).

Interesting idea. Although you will also get an extra production, so the value of the improvement should maybe be a bit less.

I've given up on attempting to reply to everything of interest, but on the note of forests, an idea I suggested not too long ago was to make actually "chopping" forests replaced with an improvement (say, a "timber gathering operation") that significantly increased and would eventually deplete the forest altogether, similarly to how slash and burn farms used to work. As it is currently, the yield returned from chopping has been massively reduced while the investment to do so has been massively increased, reversing a major aspect of the "now vs. later" strategic dynamic of whether or not to chop. Other than a major use case for clearing farmland, removing an entire forest as a concerted effort just for the sake of getting rid of it seems to be much less common in history than it simply being depleted due to gathering resources from it without thought for preserving it, and its incompatibility with all non-farm improvements is unwarranted from a realism standpoint as well (and the game even allows most improvements to coexist with forests anyway!), which would make even the rather arbitrary need to randomly completely efface them from the earth in order to build other improvements null, but perhaps situationally less attractive to build there due to retained longer improvement construction times. I think this would model ancient deforestation much better and make for more fun gameplay.

I don't even see conflict with the later lumbermill once it arrives (which would represent these more modern sustained forestry operations), as you would then still be presented with a "now vs. later" approach to land use for , rendered more meaningful now that there is even an appreciable amount to be gained in the short term.

I agree partially. With the current values, I have not chopped a forest to get its production added to the city. I only did so to clear the tile for a different use. So, there is no short term versus long term consideration.

You do want to keep this ability to remove a forest to create a farm just to give the player agency in improving their cities.

An improvement that slowly uses a forest until it is gone sounds interesting. But I think it is against the design philosophy of not having lots of sources of production in the early ages of the game, besides some mines and production resources. And you wanted to give it a high production value. So, I am not so sure whether it fits with that design philosophy.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The invention of forest planting unlike penecillin was there and was used to create new forests for the wooden shipbuilding industry. The only reason people didn't create forests throughout most of history was because there was little short term value in forested areas. And that is exactly the same in the game. Players won't start planting forests en masse because there is little value in it. In almost every case, other improvements are better. Except for late game non-river tundra tiles, exactly where the modern lumber mills are.

True, but then again, considering the gameplay perspective, doesn't that argument still hold for later eras as well, maybe even more so? A farm has far more utility than a forest in the modern era, except for the city with the National Park.

This is exactly the opposite of the argument that you used before. You said 'forest creation didn't happen in real history even though it could have, so it shouldn't be in the game'. Now you are arguing, 'cities could be raised in modern times even though it never happened, so modern city raising should be in the game'.

No, that's not the exact argument, as I referred to an actual state leader who had actual documented plans of doing that. But to be honest, what does "razing a city" even mean in a modern context? There were basically no buildings left standing in Dresden post-WW2, and of course, there were nukes dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - yet all those cities are still there. Were they "razed" in Civ 4 terms and refounded on the same spot later? Were they not "razed"? Especially now that culture (= local population) stays behind in all cases when the city itself is razed.

For people in ongoing games: any way to avoid it?

Don't play huge maps. That's an integer overflow from building too many units that's realistically only reached by the largest civs on huge maps. In an ongoing ongoing game, one could try to specifically poach the dll from the upcoming SVN commit, but no guarantees.

I agree partially. With the current values, I have not chopped a forest to get its production added to the city. I only did so to clear the tile for a different use. So, there is no short term versus long term consideration.

You do want to keep this ability to remove a forest to create a farm just to give the player agency in improving their cities.

An improvement that slowly uses a forest until it is gone sounds interesting. But I think it is against the design philosophy of not having lots of sources of production in the early ages of the game, besides some mines and production resources. And you wanted to give it a high production value. So, I am not so sure whether it fits with that design philosophy.

I mean, didn't most forest clearance historically happen exactly for that, freeing up space for farming? The "production from chopping" is a rather gamey concept that was added in Civ 4 and is a rather high-level abstraction. How exactly does chopping down a forest help me train a swordsman quicker?

 

[pecheneg]

In general, I carefully suggest adding the following as a gaming option. Making it possible to restore forests early enough, but before the technology of the conditional 1850th is an extremely problematic occupation.
So: reforestation becomes possible, starting with the "scientific experiment" technology, but remains very time-consuming/expensive. This roughly corresponds to reality. At the beginning of the 16th century, the same Venetians/Frenchmen also understand in principle what needs to be done, but they cannot control it.
Accordingly,
1. Productivity is initially higher with the "feudal aristocracy" and "civil service".
2. Then the bonus is given either directly by the technology of the "administration" or the office.
3. Then the construction of national wonders: enlightened absolutism and romantic art
4. All this works more efficiently if there is access to coal.
5. Naturally, the "microscope". It is, let's assume, responsible for all early biology, including the beginning of scientific forestry.
6. Finally, reforestation becomes relatively easy with the transition to coal metallurgy (blister steel).
7. Well, then everything is clear – the whole line of advanced biology, etc.
This is something that is relatively easy to implement by simply editing XML.
Less conservative: as a result of planting efforts, not the forest itself appears, but an analogue of the savanna – "young forest/woodlands". Turning into a full-fledged forest after N moves. And so is the natural spread of the forest. In an artificial version, this will add difficulties to the process.
I have ideas on how to add MORE sacred realism , but... It's already laborious there.

 

[pecheneg]

Now you are arguing, 'cities could be raised in modern times even though it never happened, so modern city raising should be in the game'.

Well, in fact, although Hitler was unlucky with Moscow, the total or almost total destruction of fairly large cities in the USSR during World War II was by no means uncommon. At the same time, it's not just about the fighting, the Germans purposefully destroyed everything they could during the retreat.
Results:
The destruction in Sevastopol (109 thousand in 1939) was close to 100%. Of the 6,402 pre-war residential buildings, 7 large dilapidated buildings and 180 damaged small private houses have been conditionally preserved.
Novgorod, 49 thousand 98%, 40 houses out of 2346 have been preserved.
In general, cities with 90+% of the destruction can be listed for for quite a long time.
The largest of the catastrophically destroyed:
Stalingrad. The NKVD report: "As a result of fierce aerial bombardment and prolonged stubborn fighting in the Stalingrad area, the city was almost completely destroyed. The largest industrial enterprises have been put out of operation. Municipal enterprises, communication enterprises, cultural institutions and the housing stock of the city were completely destroyed. Railway depots, a sewing factory, a hardware factory, a dairy factory, and a soap factory were destroyed by 95%. In the Hardware Factory, the equipment suitable for work has been preserved only in one of the workshops. The buildings of all theaters, the Palace of Pioneers and the Palace of Physical Education were completely destroyed. Only 40 out of 800 communal houses have been preserved, and about 500 out of 13,500 private households remain."
The population (1941) - about half a million. 250 thousand turned out to be under occupation, after the liberation of the city, 7761 remained (hijacking to Germany, the Gestapo and the "brave" Wehrmacht; apart from, of course, direct military losses).
Rostov-on-Don, 503 thousand (1939), 85% destruction.

 

[AllTheLand]

I think I remember the AdvCiv feature that I'm missing in RI:
- The diplomatic bonus for a common war is linked to actually fighting the war. War means no trade and forcing the other side to consider the need to divert troops in case of an attack, so it should always give at least a +1 bonus to have a common war. But to get a big common war bonus, you should need to actually fight.

Other thoughts:
- The AI seems quite fond of senseless attacks. I had a wounded skirmisher in a forest that got attacked by a battering ram (!). I was in the process of mounting a big attack against a city after a drawn-out process. I wonder if this might be tied to the AI not wanting to hit the logistics penalty, because I think their city was filled to the no-penalty limit. Although later on they did fill the city to the brink (with a lot of horsemen, curious choice to build that unit).
- I also had the AI attack a revolting slave unit that had crossed into my borders, while we were at war. They removed a problem for me and the unit that did the cleaning was easy pickings afterwards.

True, but then again, considering the gameplay perspective, doesn't that argument still hold for later eras as well, maybe even more so? A farm has far more utility than a forest in the modern era, except for the city with the National Park.

Why be concerned that the ability to grow forests will lead to abuse, then? And regarding the National Park city, the entire design of that national wonder doesn't make sense. The point of a national park is to boost happiness (and to preserve natural areas), places like Yellowstone are important but they are not hosting millions of scientists, engineers, etc.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I get a freeze shortly after this save. The game still seems to respond however it chugs endlessly. Happens consistently but not after any particular action. This is on the latest svn. Separate small issue, I believe the name of the script is shown when strategic bombing a city. Something like REDUCE_POPULATION....... etc.

Thanks, that was very useful. Fixed (and it was a rather important bug linked to the new Air Superiority mission). If you want to continue this particular save, you will likely be able to by just updating dll without everything else (after I upload the revision of course).

The diplomatic bonus for a common war is linked to actually fighting the war. War means no trade and forcing the other side to consider the need to divert troops in case of an attack, so it should always give at least a +1 bonus to have a common war. But to get a big common war bonus, you should need to actually fight.

Interesting, I'll look into it, maybe it won't be too hard to port.

Why be concerned that the ability to grow forests will lead to abuse, then? And regarding the National Park city, the entire design of that national wonder doesn't make sense. The point of a national park is to boost happiness (and to preserve natural areas), places like Yellowstone are important but they are not hosting millions of scientists, engineers, etc.

True again, but not something I'll likely redesign anytime soon. All in all, the forest discussion was far too extensive already for something that would take quite some effort to implement properly - effort that I'd prefer to spend elsewhere currently anyway.

 

[AllTheLand]

I started my game with the South Chinese on Immortal difficulty, picking the agrarian and legislator leader.

The South Chinese have a unique farm that makes me revise my opinion on the Folwark - the South Chinese farm doesn't give gold but gives its +1 food boost as soon as you get Autocracy, gives an extra boost to rice, doesn't require running serfdom (it restricts to Autocracy until Dictature, but that's not such a bad deal really) and get up to +2 food over a normal farm once you have the required techs. This seems more powerful and flexible to me. Agrarian means that as soon as tiles reach 6 foods from farm, it will increase to 7, so food production is going to be massive with happiness, health and epidemics as the main things to be overcome.

Legislator is not very strong in the early game (although the +1 production to the city tile is still quite helpful when cities are still small), but it scales extremely well.

Spoiler Civic changes :

I played with the following changes to civics:

Number of cities maintenance:
Despotism: +25 -> 0
Autocracy: -25 -> -50
Confederation: -25 -> -50
Republic: +25 -> -25
Theocracy: 0 -> -35
Monarchy: -25 -> -40
Democracy: 0 -> -35
Dictatorship: -25 -> -60

Protectionism: 0 -> -10
Welfare State: +25 -> +15

Distance of cities maintenance:
Monarchy: 0 -> -25
Democracy: -25 -> -35
Dictatorship: 0 -> -20
Welfare State: +25 -> +15

Misc.:
Aristocracy: 0,07 free military units per population (the static boost of 8 free units is really weak if you get up to a decent size and the civic seemed too weak overall considering its high upkeep rate)

Spoiler First part: spawn and early expansion :

On a large map, start with a coastal city and a variety of food resource (Totestra seems rather generous with those, I didn't change the odds).

I have no stone and no marble anywhere in sight. By "anywhere in sight", I mean that I could completely conquer my two closest neighbors and still not have a single of those (I did spot some marble 2 civs away). Although I did slightly boost probabilities for those before running the generator.

I think this is related to the mod asking to place that resources only on plains and deserts, which means that coastal areas (that are mostly grassland on Totestra - completely grassland without my map generation tweaks) are devoid of those. I think all hills should have the possibility to get stone, it would make the distribution less random.

Because of the multiple animal resources, I ran nomad pastoralism for some time, although I'm not sure it was really worth it. I stayed light on defense for a while, but I was never intensely attacked by barbarians. I think that the "Keep the new world empty" option simply makes the main continent too crowded (despite picking 10 civs instead of 12). I expanded first north then east to claim more cows and sheep, and was happy when wood was revealed near my second city. I had barbarians come at one point and destroy the timber camp that I had built, but in the end I secured this resources that unlocked the critical "Carpenter" building (I maintain that enabling this building makes timber the most crucial single resource in the early game).

For the first time I used some "Lynch justice" because I was so desperate for happinness.

I got Stonehenge and missed the Pyramids by only a few turns, but if I had known for sure that the AI underprioritized those so much, I would have started them earlier and got both. In other games I might have reloaded to try and get both, but I decided to go with the flow with this game and reload in much more limited cases, and never more than two or three turns back.

Spoiler Second part: Fire in the West :

My plan for further expansion was to try and get all the way to the sea I could see in the West, but Napoleon had settled new cities at a remarkable pace, with no less than 3 cities in my intended expansion area but also many other cities further north. I only managed to really put one city where I wanted it to and was directly starting to clash culturally with the French.

I tried to mostly focus on internal improvements first because I was really struggling with happinness and although open borders let me catch up most of my initial tech disadvantage, switch to autocracy and back to normal farming, I didn't feel the time was right yet to make an army. I also managed to snatch the Statue of Zeus despite not having any helping resources. My first GP, a Great Prophet, was simply settled in my capital for long-term revenue.

Nonetheless, I was gearing up for it and when I founded a city North-East of Nantes that started to pressure it culturally I knew that conflict was coming up. Napoleon happened to make an interesting play, attacking me first, in 1560BC. I had delayed army-making slightly too much and got punished with a city razed to the ground on the opening round of the war.

However, this would prove to be the only success of the French in this war. Their offensive force soon strayed too deep into my territory where I could whittle them down and finish them off. The South Chinese are remarkably good at spamming recruits with all the food I had, and along with a couple support units, my army assaulted the unfortified cities of Nantes, then Lille and finally Marseille. I razed the first two of those cities, but decided Marseille was actually well placed. I kept it, saving me the additional investment of a settler and waiting for early buildings to complete. I then made peace. Although I was not impressed by the military resistance I was seeing, I needed time to regroup before attacking fortified cities and to settle the now empty areas.

The end of this war in 1320BC was a turning point for two other reasons. One, I had gotten the Drama tech and started the process of building the unique chinese-themed theatre. Two, Marseille was actually built right on top of a natural source of Dye. This meant that, at the cost of putting a little gold into the culture slider, I would suddenly have significant room to grow my cities larger - soon to be the largest in the world in population.

Spoiler Third part: Prosperous peace :

Soon enough, I switched from Rule of Fear to Traditional Customs, focusing again on internal improvements. I was very reluctant to cut forests even though I should likely have cut down some more, because I lacked the visibility of knowing whether later or not I would regret not having them. Agrarian leaders make workers fairly cheap to produce, but because of unit upkeep costs I restrained myself from making that many of them.

With soon a variety of food sources (pigs, sheep and cows; rice, corn and potatoes) and the cheap food buildings of agariaran leaders, I could mostly avoid city lacking healthiness, although the growth of cities would soon challenge that. When the event for testing a medicine happened, I refused to conduct the experiment because the unhappinness penalty is so brutal that it would have broken my realm.

I went for the Great Lighthouse in my capital and used my second GP (a great artist) to make a great work of art in Marseille, to convert culturally the area. The best option, the Bust, was taken away, so I went with the Mask.

Still baffled by how easily I could get the few wonders I tried for (although again, I missed the Pyramids), I decided to continue this way. I wanted ultimately to get techs first to completely secure things, but I was still content at this stage to only research techs that benefited from an open borders boost and to not run the slider too high - it's better financially to slow down when boosted by tech trade and to then the use accumulated cash to speed through techs not benefiting from such assistance.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was waging war far in the West against Jadwiga of Poland. He took a city early in the war, but strategically this didn't make any sense. I bid my time but I had the intent to eventually attack to get the good tiles of Paris and to eliminate the menace represented by a warmongering neighbour.

The situation in 950BC:

 

[f1rpo]

The diplomatic bonus for a common war is linked to actually fighting the war. War means no trade and forcing the other side to consider the need to divert troops in case of an attack, so it should always give at least a +1 bonus to have a common war. But to get a big common war bonus, you should need to actually fight.

Interesting, I'll look into it, maybe it won't be too hard to port.

On the plus side, it's not a truly sprawling change, the bulk of the code is in CvTeamAI::AI_changeWarSuccess/ AI_reportSharedWarSuccess and CvPlayerAI::AI_getShareWarAttitude. I do remember it being difficult not to get the three parties (A achieves a war success of the expense of B and C - maybe by keeping a vigilant eye on the power graphs - learns of this) mixed up when implementing this. Well, hopefully this aspect won't need further work at this point. The formulas are fairly ad-hoc and obscure (and DLL-hardcoded), and I'm not sure that the balance is right. Perhaps a small (but substantial) contribution should be rewarded more.

self.plateGrowthChanceX = 0.38
self.plateGrowthChanceY = 0.4

[...] Use fewer plates, meaning each plate can get bigger before running into another plate. I think this helps yields more stable continent shapes, but I'm not sure.

I've also felt that plateGrowthChance was making the biggest difference when trying to get PerfectMongoose (which uses a land generator based on Perlin noise by default but still has the PerfectWorld land generator as an option) to generate bulkier landmasses – while the impact of the plate count was less clear. rippleAmplitude seemed relevant too – though I've lowered that mostly for smaller map sizes and kept it at 0.65 for Huge maps (0.75 originally). So, mostly just replying to ... commiserate.