Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

Take it up with Ancient Egyptians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_axe

 

[AllTheLand]

- Wouldn't it be nice if the book of plants also boosted wineries?
- It would be good if the absolute values for tile culture were shown in addition to the percentages.
- There are still several techs with half-point epidemic changes
- I think the first upgrade to food production from pastures comes too late
- Something is seriously bugged in the new selection of defensive units for bombardment - my cannons are targeting useless trebuchets instead of actual real defensive units. It seems to not try at all to actually select the best defensive unit.
- The villages and towns giving +1 epidemic to the nearest city is in my opinion way too punishing. While it incentivize not building only towns around a city (although I wouldn't really do that myself), it more importantly creates a strong incentive to just get rid of them. Having 4-5 towns around a city triples or quadruples its epidemic rate. Villages are arguably worse than hamlets in many situations because trading one gold for 1 epidemic point is usually not worth it. After the printing press it changes the equation somewhat, but small cities are usually best served by maximizing food outputs, and big cities where the happiness and health caps mean that you actually don't want exploited tiles to be on max food are already epidemic-limited.
- Apart from being a "no upkeep" civics, is there any point to the "forced labour" civics? Is sacrificing population to build things faster really powerful at that stage of the game? I'm asking, because it looks ratherunattractive to my eyes. You lose a lot of health, happiness and epidemics, and while the forced work camp gives additional production and helps with the unhappiness, it also makes the epidemics situation even worse.
- The logistic penalty for cities is giving a big penalty for healing, but it's actually a lot weaker than probably intended. The 25% or 35% strength penalty is maybe thought of as very large, but fortified defensive units will easily get +100% and with a hill not rarely +150% or +200% bonuses. Because the 35% strength penalty is additive, going from +200% to +165% is actually not much of a problem, while all the support bonuses are easily activated. So with archer and recon unit support, this means first attacks. As a result, cities (on a hill especially) with 20-30 units inside are incredibly obnoxious to take, and the AIs may take dozens of turns to take such cities even if they themselves attack with massive stacks, because they keep evaluating (correctly) that a normal attack doesn't work. A civilization with a single city left reduced to size 5 or 6 because it can't even properly work its surrounding tiles can hold out for a ridiculous amount of time unless faced with a human player ready to throw wave after wave of attack. My proposal : add a penalty to first strikes to the highest levels of urban logistics penalty. Having a food cost of military units and having defending units starve to death is somewhat tempting but it introduces too much extra problems.
- Because the AI has so many free units, a civilization with a single remaining city is not going to be lacking money to keep up the 30 unit stack either.
- And the trade route logic seems to not take into account blockades, or is very generous with river trade.

Spoiler This city can still get trade route revenue... :

- I don't know what's up with the AI giving itself as a voluntary vassal, and then breaking away 20 turns later without having lost any city (or its master having become weaker), but it's annoying. The breakaway message accusing of not having properly defended them is also annoying when that's clearly not the cause.
- The AI is really stupid about handling health and city quality. I'm seeing a case where the AI has a size-5 city it has controlled for a very very long time that could easily be a size-10 or 12 city if the AI spent a little time building some health-boosting buildings and gathering some food to grow the city, instead of constantly pumping out worthless military units while tech and money-giving buildings are neglected. This is perhaps a case of the AI trying to "keep up" militarily, but in the process putting itself in a much weaker position.

 

[JDCP]

Do any of you ever use foreign trained units? can they even be used? I have never, ever seen them on a game Also do you guys ever use units that use food (say, Warband/Conscripts/Irregulars) when attacking a city? I like to use Levy's as cannon fodder when assaulting medieval cities as they somehow manage to weaken units defending, they're amazing.

 

[pecheneg]

This week, I took a picture of a XVIII-XIX century (as labelled) British gun of a caliber comparable to these new RI "cannons", as it looked surprisingly like those, including the lack of dolphins.

Yes, there were no dolphins even on the vast majority of Western guns. First, a lyrical digression.
Dolphins, as you know, are needed in order to raise the cannon barrel. At the same time, the wooden carriages were fragile and wore out even just from prolonged firing. As a result, the "rearrangement" of the barrel to a spare carriage is a routine and very frequent procedure even for field guns (decent armies always carried additional "empty" carriages with them).
Siege guns are generally "lego". In preparation for shooting, they not only rearranged the trunnions into "combat" nests, but also changed the marching wheels to "combat" ones. At the same time, the "combat" wheels in the campaign worked as the wheels of the gun limber. Anyway, the barrel was clearly superfluous in such a procedure.
Now, armed with this sacred knowledge, let's move on to the actual reasons not to make "dolphins" on guns.
1. The obvious one. A lightweight barrel that can be lifted without fiddling with ropes.
2. Less obvious. There were practically no Dolphins on cast–iron guns - simply because cast iron is fragile, especially then. Meanwhile, cast iron was the overwhelming part of the fortress artillery of that time and, with rare exceptions, naval artillery. (1) In turn, fortress and naval artillery totally prevailed over field and siege artillery in terms of the number of barrels.
3. Dolphins were not on "specialized" guns – for example, bow galleys. Which, among other things, rarely fired: mostly in the "point-blank range before boarding" mode. At the same time, almost all outdated or/and worn-out guns ended up in fortresses before being sent to the smelter. Where they were often stuck for centuries. (2).

Further, the "dolphins" were subject to two specific effects
1. Stolen. The bronze was expensive.
2. Broke it off. For frequent use + often, ugly storage of old guns in fortresses.
As a result, the old artillery was often deprived of everything that was easily sawn off and broken off. By the way, in the photo to the previous "cannon" post, a wingrad (? -i didn't find what it's called in English) is broken off at the nearest barrel.

And one post-effect. Which is called "the irrepressible desire to make beautiful." As a result, cannons that ended up in museums were just as often deprived of dolphin debris. This phenomenon, for example, is observed in the museum of the Black Sea Fleet.

Notes:
1) The Turks, for example, used only bronze artillery in the navy for a long time. They had quite a lot of copper, with cast iron casting – obviously not very much. And finally, it may have been influenced by the fact that even heavy ships in the Mediterranean were built with light hulls. I suspect that they were afraid to overload them with cast iron. In any case, the side effect was that the Turkish ships were under-armed. Bronze was clearly not enough for them, as a result, the guns were less than they should be, based on the size and "rank".
2) And again the Turks as an example. There is an old European myth that even in the 18th century they had mostly iron (namely iron, made of welded strips, not cast iron) guns of large calibers, but with light artillery it was not very good. The reason is banal – in the Turkish fortresses, which finally began to be taken, there was absolutely unthinkable junk lying around almost from the time of the storming of Constantinople. The Europeans often had the same thing, but...

ironically, the smaller one in the background with prominent dolphins is Ottoman

Yes, I suspect that this is a cannon from the time of Selim 3 or later, when the Turks began pouring European-style guns. In general, a separate humor is that Napoleon, during the Egyptian campaign, encountered modern guns of the French model, the production of which was organized by French engineers. But perhaps they have used dolphins very sporadically before. However, I am not very sure about this, and it is difficult to separate Turkish euro guns from captured ones.

Casemate loos are an excellent feature that I'm surprised I never saw on other ships.

Yeah, I liked it too. However, given the traditions of French shipbuilding, I am partly surprised that they did not use barbettes.

PS "Asian" to be continued.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Yes, there were no dolphins even on the vast majority of Western guns. First, a lyrical digression.
Dolphins, as you know, are needed in order to raise the cannon barrel. At the same time, the wooden carriages were fragile and wore out even just from prolonged firing. As a result, the "rearrangement" of the barrel to a spare carriage is a routine and very frequent procedure even for field guns (decent armies always carried additional "empty" carriages with them).
Siege guns are generally "lego". In preparation for shooting, they not only rearranged the trunnions into "combat" nests, but also changed the marching wheels to "combat" ones. At the same time, the "combat" wheels in the campaign worked as the wheels of the gun limber. Anyway, the barrel was clearly superfluous in such a procedure.

Not just what I have quoted here but.......

This is just specialist knowledge at a very high level

 

[pecheneg]

This is just specialist knowledge

Thank you very much . It's just a family tradition. My paternal relatives, as a rule, were big guys, and... There are wonderful courageous lines about this.

Why straight to the Grenadiers? I'm not very big.
I don't want to rush to where the fight is thickest.
Bayonets, a butt and a bullet are not a mother-in-law and pancakes.
Save me mom from the damn war.

Why straight to the Grenadiers? Is the whole wagon train
Already maxed? I don't regret crying.
Let's get up to the cannon, or it's better to go straight to headquarters.
I don't care what they say "woman", I adore women.

 

[AllTheLand]

Do any of you ever use foreign trained units? can they even be used?

You can make them when you have a weapon resource through trade but don't have the corresponding tech, for example getting gunpowder before you get the arquebuse tech. It's situational, but it can absolutely be useful, especially if you want to focus on other techs first but can get the resource through trade. You have a limit on how many you can make at once, but it's still better than nothing.

Also do you guys ever use units that use food (say, Warband/Conscripts/Irregulars) when attacking a city? I like to use Levy's as cannon fodder when assaulting medieval cities as they somehow manage to weaken units defending, they're amazing.

It's a matter of timing. When first available, irregular units are strong, then they lose power and their utility drops, until the next irregular-line unit that makes them dangerous again.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

- Wouldn't it be nice if the book of plants also boosted wineries?

The scientific work? There are several "books of plants" there - do you mean Kitab-al Nabat?

- It would be good if the absolute values for tile culture were shown in addition to the percentages.

Added a note for the future.

- There are still several techs with half-point epidemic changes

How many times do I need to hunt them down?! Should be gone now.

- I think the first upgrade to food production from pastures comes too late

Early on, pastures can be boosted by Nomadism for quite a while before it becomes outclassed by farms. The gap is deliberate, so as not to overlap with the period of Nomadism viability.

- Something is seriously bugged in the new selection of defensive units for bombardment

Thanks, I revisited and did some more in-depth testing, and eliminated some superfluous code that was only making things worse.

- The villages and towns giving +1 epidemic to the nearest city is in my opinion way too punishing. While it incentivize not building only towns around a city (although I wouldn't really do that myself), it more importantly creates a strong incentive to just get rid of them. Having 4-5 towns around a city triples or quadruples its epidemic rate. Villages are arguably worse than hamlets in many situations because trading one gold for 1 epidemic point is usually not worth it. After the printing press it changes the equation somewhat, but small cities are usually best served by maximizing food outputs, and big cities where the happiness and health caps mean that you actually don't want exploited tiles to be on max food are already epidemic-limited.

I'll think about it.

- Apart from being a "no upkeep" civics, is there any point to the "forced labour" civics? Is sacrificing population to build things faster really powerful at that stage of the game? I'm asking, because it looks ratherunattractive to my eyes. You lose a lot of health, happiness and epidemics, and while the forced work camp gives additional production and helps with the unhappiness, it also makes the epidemics situation even worse.

With good farms, late-game cities can pump out population really quickly, especially while it's relatively low - a recently conquered city with low pop can rush a lot of stuff in a relatively small time.

- The logistic penalty for cities is giving a big penalty for healing, but it's actually a lot weaker than probably intended. The 25% or 35% strength penalty is maybe thought of as very large, but fortified defensive units will easily get +100% and with a hill not rarely +150% or +200% bonuses. Because the 35% strength penalty is additive, going from +200% to +165% is actually not much of a problem, while all the support bonuses are easily activated. So with archer and recon unit support, this means first attacks. As a result, cities (on a hill especially) with 20-30 units inside are incredibly obnoxious to take, and the AIs may take dozens of turns to take such cities even if they themselves attack with massive stacks, because they keep evaluating (correctly) that a normal attack doesn't work. A civilization with a single city left reduced to size 5 or 6 because it can't even properly work its surrounding tiles can hold out for a ridiculous amount of time unless faced with a human player ready to throw wave after wave of attack. My proposal : add a penalty to first strikes to the highest levels of urban logistics penalty.

I know what you're talking about, but I'm reluctant to make defensive overcrowding more punishing. As best defenders are always picked first, debuffing them too hard can quickly result in paper-thin defences, as by the time the debuff is gone, so are the best defenders - and we can't consistently teach AI not to overcrowd.

- And the trade route logic seems to not take into account blockades, or is very generous with river trade.

I don't recall us doing anything with that, if that's an issue then it's a vanilla one. Might indeed have something to do with rivers, as I recall blockades definitely disrupting trade routes over sea tiles.

- I don't know what's up with the AI giving itself as a voluntary vassal, and then breaking away 20 turns later without having lost any city (or its master having become weaker), but it's annoying. The breakaway message accusing of not having properly defended them is also annoying when that's clearly not the cause.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about, it is quite annoying. Also, AI pledging vassalage to someone on the other side of the world who can't consistently protect them in case their neighbour decides to eat them - I feel AI vassalage logic deserves a good detailed look at some point.

- The AI is really stupid about handling health and city quality. I'm seeing a case where the AI has a size-5 city it has controlled for a very very long time that could easily be a size-10 or 12 city if the AI spent a little time building some health-boosting buildings and gathering some food to grow the city, instead of constantly pumping out worthless military units while tech and money-giving buildings are neglected. This is perhaps a case of the AI trying to "keep up" militarily, but in the process putting itself in a much weaker position.

In many cases I have the opposite impression, that AI is overzealous when prioritising health-related buildings. I also feel they generally tend to overbuild militarily, but then again, that is largely a factor of accounting for a human player who may or may not have an aggressive playstyle - you're more of a turtle player (partly by necessity due to your preferred difficulty level), while a more aggressive player might leave with an opposite impression of AI not building enough units.

Do any of you ever use foreign trained units? can they even be used? I have never, ever seen them on a game Also do you guys ever use units that use food (say, Warband/Conscripts/Irregulars) when attacking a city? I like to use Levy's as cannon fodder when assaulting medieval cities as they somehow manage to weaken units defending, they're amazing.

If you as a player need to rely on those, your game has likely taken a bad turn. They are a means to arm a civ that can't normally make the units of that tier yet - say, your vassal, or even just a random civ that is fighting against your rival.

Yes, I suspect that this is a cannon from the time of Selim 3 or later, when the Turks began pouring European-style guns. In general, a separate humor is that Napoleon, during the Egyptian campaign, encountered modern guns of the French model, the production of which was organized by French engineers. But perhaps they have used dolphins very sporadically before. However, I am not very sure about this, and it is difficult to separate Turkish euro guns from captured ones.

It must have been very convenient for the French to capture cannons that were already compatible with their ammunition calibres! Though I am actually not sure how universal Gribeauval system was at the time - did other European countries cast "Gribeauval-compatible" cannons at the time? I don't think other countries (save maybe for Britain) at the time had their own unified calibre systems, so it might have been a good idea to simply copy the French one.

 

[[Y]]

I'll think about it.

I'll encourage this too. Villages/towns are already in competition with specialists, and specialists don't require you to invest turns to get the full benefit. Hamlets also lack the "prevent growth" options cities have, so you can't choose to prevent the hamlet from growing into a village unless you stop working it, at which point you effectively don't have a hamlet. I'm also not sure why they were given pandemic increases in the first place--were villages and towns seen as OP? Usually what I see is that people didn't care for them even before they got this penalty.

On the subject of pandemics:

*Is there any chance resource pandemic values can be added to the panel in the top right of the city screen, along with the happiness and health from resources?
* The pandemic chance tooltip in the city screen doesn't have a "+" in front of positive values, which is standard across all other positive values in the city screen tooltips.

Added a note for the future.

In addition to absolute value of culture, could there be a way to see culture values on tiles outside of cultural borders? There have been times I founded a city only to discover that it's immediately 99% foreign culture, which led to problems. I've seen this happen with AI, too. In one game, it settled a city, and 5 or so turns later it revolted and joined my empire. Cheapest Settler I never had to build.

---

I'm still on my first game with the early game balance changes, and so far it's been pretty good! Archers felt a little weak, but never in a game breaking way. They have their purpose and do it well, but didn't dominate the landscape like they used to. I like that. I do think their hill defense needs a buff, though. 25% on a 2 strength unit isn't much. Similarly with skirmishers. I've been surprised at how well they've held up at 3 strength, but they aren't the power house they used to be. Chariots are still relegated to support units, though.

Tangentially related, in the pedia, civ specific archers are listed as replacing composite bowman instead of the base archer.

 

[pecheneg]

It's going to be long again.

It must have been very convenient for the French to capture cannons that were already compatible with their ammunition calibres!

Well, there is no direct mention of this right away. But...
1. In principle, the Turks had their own "caliber" system built not around the pound, but around the "okka" - a little less than 3 pounds, 1280+ grams
2. However, yes, I strongly doubt that the French began to convert their cannon samples to Turkish calibers. However, it's not just that.

Though I am actually not sure how universal Gribeauval system was at the time - did other European countries cast "Gribeauval-compatible" cannons at the time?

The fact is that, quite independently of Griboval, in Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, the caliber of guns was a multiple of a pound, while there were not so many values. As a result, the "caliber lines" at least partially overlapped in almost any pair of countries. At the same time, in the second half of the 18th century, the number of calibers decreased everywhere and the "sects" of "twos" (French, 2/4/8 pounds) and "threes" (3/6 British, Prussians, Russians) finally took shape in light artillery. Everyone had 12 and 24 pounds.
Another thing is that the weight of an artillery pound varied greatly depending on the country. However, it was possible to identify groups where he was extremely close. For example, the Russian artillery pound differed very little from the Dutch one – which is quite logical - and even less from the French one.
And this theory had little to do with practice before Griboval and Co. Because the gaps between the walls of the barrel and the core were still huge. As a result, the incompatibility was at the edges of the distribution – so, the Prussian core (the largest) no longer fit into the Saxon 12-pounder (it is the smallest).
However, at the same time, more "large-caliber" Prussians, of course, could use ammunition with a smaller caliber, just the efficiency of the gun and accuracy decreased. Moreover, as a last resort, it was possible to use projectiles with a difference of pounds – say, 8-pounders could, in principle, shoot 6-pound cores.
After Liechtenstein/Griboval, standards tightened, but not extremely. The Russians and the French did not interfere with using each other's ammunition when the calibers matched, for example.

I don't think other countries (save maybe for Britain) at the time had their own unified calibre systems, so it might have been a good idea to simply copy the French one.

Standard caliber systems as such have existed for almost everyone since the 16th century. At the same time, what really set the British apart from this background was the preservation of a zoo of types even in the second half of the 18th century. Even if we take only cannons, the British have
1. large calibers up to 42 pounds have been preserved
2. an atypical number of varieties of guns of the same caliber for the continent.
Another thing is that in reality, calibers before the invention of horizontal drilling walked a lot on their own, simply because of a specific technology. However, the British did not represent anything advanced in reducing gaps, in addition, they were far behind the French in time.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Once again, lots I'd like to participate in the conversation about here but I've been caught up with real life somewhat recently, though still have enjoyed reading along. A quick question in the meantime as it pertains to the discussion surrounding TheBirdMan's asking about the autoplay testing: can that be a reliable way to test for MAF errors, or would those have to be encountered in real play? I would think, on paper, that they would be viable for this, but truthfully I didn't even know that this existed until somewhat recently and always thought that Walter was resorting to his cryptic magic when referencing autoplay testing, not that it was a built-in feature of WorldBuilder accessible to the lowly laymen like me...

 

[pecheneg]

And to finally start the topic of "alternative dolphins". Let's look at the classic bombards. It is clear that their trunks also had to be lifted and moved. And, even more significantly, the barrel had to be fixed on the carriage somehow, and the trunnions were invented at a typically medieval pace. That is, a modest 200 years.
We can look at the mainstream about this right on the unit "The Great Bombard". Simply put, it is a small bracket and a ring inserted into it. And this is a small culverin of the same era, 50+ mm

There were other options

Spoiler :

- see, for example, Tsar Cannon.

And here's a whole set.

However, this is already a lyric. Next, the "trunnions plus dolphins" option became mainstream. However, even in Europe, the "trunnion + ring" variant was occasionally used. Indeed, occasionally – but there is a Russian bureaucracy that had a very atypical habit, even for Europe, of making drawings of almost everything that fell into the playful hands of Mother Russia. And there were a lot of them. I generally get the impression that rare European guns after 1700 are easier to find in Russia than anywhere else. So, let's look at one of the albums.

1.

2.

3.

In this regard, by the way, three questions arise. 1. Bombards without any brackets, rings, etc. like "Mons Meg" were like that initially, or is it often the result of late bitter losses? 2. Exactly the same question applies to early classic guns without dolphins. 3. Isn't there a dozen articles on this topic somewhere in paid access, which they desperately hope to "sell" thirty years after publication? In Russia, I note, that this would be in the public domain and increase site traffic. But the mysterious Western soul is alien to crude calculation and materialism, yes.

 

[pecheneg]

By the way, the monstrous Austrian bombard lying above under the cut has a rather direct relationship to the RI units. It is not difficult to notice that the "bombard" from EU4 is actually an ordinary mortar. If we fall into conspiracy theory and try to think well about the developers, you can assume that they have heard about "bombards-mortars" out of the corner of their ear. The nuance is that all kinds of "tsar cannons" / long bombards are actually not extreme archaic, but the third generation of European artillery. There was a "mortar-shaped" intermediate link between them and the "iron pots". The reasons for this are funny, but it won't be a very long, but rather boring explanation.

 

[RezerCuid]

The Zulu foot knight(9) looks like trash

 

[AllTheLand]

- I've noticed something very strange. Technologies that have the same nominal cost (same column in the tech tree) and both no displayed tech research bonus are displaying as needing a different number of turns to complete. For example, I have division of work shown as needing 9 turns and explosives shown as needing 11 turns. I think it's related to prerequisite techs in some way, because it's techs that don't have their immediate prerequisite tech researched that are displayed as needing more time: I have mercantilism (direct prerequisite linked with an arrow for division of work) but I don't have metallurgy (direct prerequisite for explosives, although it's also a prerequisite for division of work it's in the top-right corner of the tech box rather than linked with an arrow).
- What if the Creative trait gave a bonus to the tech research of some art-related techs? I think this could be an interesting way to boost some weak traits.
- I don't like the current balance of religious civics.
-- Paganism is in a fine spot, and I suppose freedom of religion is fairly good (although the incentives to spread a lot of religions to get benefits from them all is completely illogical).
-- I'm not sure about the cult of personality, the unlimited spies and the happiness bonuses are good, but losing benefits of state religion is harsh and the civic doesn't even have a way to remove religions while taking penalty hits from them.
-- But I really don't like the balance of the remaining 4 civics. Militancy gives a huge scientific and cultural penalty. What I do is I switch into militancy after starting a golden age, purge all wrong religions with inquisitors, and switch back out of it afterwards. Spiritual leaders can make good use of it too. But I would never stay in it longer than required to purge wrong religions that create separatism issues. It's also illogical that militancy, which is themed around aggressively spreading the religion, can be prevented from training missionaries in cities that got built or captured too late to be able to get a monastery.
-- Monasticism allows to spread your religion without having a monastery, which is only ever useful because you can't build monasteries past a certain point of the game. Still, usually you can afford to build missionaries in your old cities and send them to the newer cities, so the civic is mostly carried by the +1 food bonus you can get from (standard) farms after getting a special building (and to a lesser degree, its culture boost). However this also causes a penalty to city maintenance... I think it needs some small nudge to be better.
-- Civil religion is terrible in my opinion. High upkeep costs. Unhappiness from wrong religions, without any tool to remove wrong religions. All that to get a 25% building construction bonus (which is usually less good than it sounds like because of resource bonuses) and a 25% spy points bonus? And a small boost to the productivity of priests, but that's really minor. Yes, buildings usually take the bulk of hammers, so boosting them is the most important production boost that one can get, but since a lot of cities reach naturally a point where they spend a lot of time transforming hammers into wealth, the benefit seem a lot more dubious.
-- Pacifism is my go-to. I don't think it's poorly balanced, the low upkeep cost and the great people bonus is balanced out by severe military handicaps, so there are leaders and situations with which it should be avoided and where monasticism should be preferred. But its drawbacks, mostly punishing the waging of prolonged (especially offensive) wars, are manageable in a way the drawbacks of Civil Religion and Militancy are not. Unironically, Pacifism shines with Imperialistic leaders, because the Great General penalty is more than compensated by the bonus Imperialistic leaders get.

The scientific work? There are several "books of plants" there - do you mean Kitab-al Nabat?

I mean the scientific work that gives +1 food to banana, citrus and sugar plantations.

I know what you're talking about, but I'm reluctant to make defensive overcrowding more punishing. As best defenders are always picked first, debuffing them too hard can quickly result in paper-thin defences, as by the time the debuff is gone, so are the best defenders - and we can't consistently teach AI not to overcrowd.

I guess I wish first attacks could be exhausted or limited in some way. All combat is sequential, but we can understand multiple attacking the same turn as representing not multiple units queuing like Brits, to attack one after the other, but multiple units assaulting at once.

If units that defends could get a temporary debuff on first attacks after defending several times in the same turns (say -1 first attack after defending twice and -2 first attacks after defending four times), that could help a lot of the issues around cities that, despite their defensive bonus being reduced to 0%, are outrageously difficult to attack. The debuff would be gone the next turn.

 

[AspiringScholar]

The Zulu foot knight(9) looks like trash

Could you try to be less unhelpful and rude in your posts? Your comments are almost all whiny one-liners about how the appearance of something is generically not to your liking, and often at odds with the real thing it is depicting.

I looked, and did notice that he is missing his left trapezius, though. Might be hard to hunt heads if his own isn't braced in place stably...

 

[[Y]]

-- Paganism is in a fine spot, and I suppose freedom of religion is fairly good (although the incentives to spread a lot of religions to get benefits from them all is completely illogical).
-- I'm not sure about the cult of personality, the unlimited spies and the happiness bonuses are good, but losing benefits of state religion is harsh and the civic doesn't even have a way to remove religions while taking penalty hits from them.
-- But I really don't like the balance of the remaining 4 civics. Militancy gives a huge scientific and cultural penalty. What I do is I switch into militancy after starting a golden age, purge all wrong religions with inquisitors, and switch back out of it afterwards. Spiritual leaders can make good use of it too. But I would never stay in it longer than required to purge wrong religions that create separatism issues. It's also illogical that militancy, which is themed around aggressively spreading the religion, can be prevented from training missionaries in cities that got built or captured too late to be able to get a monastery.
-- Monasticism allows to spread your religion without having a monastery, which is only ever useful because you can't build monasteries past a certain point of the game. Still, usually you can afford to build missionaries in your old cities and send them to the newer cities, so the civic is mostly carried by the +1 food bonus you can get from (standard) farms after getting a special building (and to a lesser degree, its culture boost). However this also causes a penalty to city maintenance... I think it needs some small nudge to be better.
-- Civil religion is terrible in my opinion. High upkeep costs. Unhappiness from wrong religions, without any tool to remove wrong religions. All that to get a 25% building construction bonus (which is usually less good than it sounds like because of resource bonuses) and a 25% spy points bonus? And a small boost to the productivity of priests, but that's really minor. Yes, buildings usually take the bulk of hammers, so boosting them is the most important production boost that one can get, but since a lot of cities reach naturally a point where they spend a lot of time transforming hammers into wealth, the benefit seem a lot more dubious.

Don't forget that these all have the unstated benefit of giving you +1 happiness from state religion, which is not available to paganism, free religion, or cult of personality. Walter, is it possible for the civic descriptions to be phrased as a bonus to those civics, rather than as a malus on paganism?

 

[AllTheLand]

Yeah, I'm well aware of that +1 happiness of course, but when comparing between the 4 true state-religion civics, it's the same for all of them. Although I agree with your proposal, it would be better if the display showed it as a bonus for civics that get happiness from state religion instead of a malus on paganism.

What's your personal experience with religious civics? Do you think some tweaks are warranted?

In general, I understand the happiness penalty from wrong religion for the "civil religion" civic and if anything, such penalties should apply in even more situations than just that civic and militancy, but with the importance of open borders for tech sharing, the uncontrollable auto-spread of religions from holy cities, and the conquest of foreign cities, a lot of cities end up with a 1-happiness penalty compared to monasticism or pacifism, so I think it's in a really problematic spot.

 

[[Y]]

I need more time to play with them and experiment. Historically I just stuck with paganism the whole way through, since it outweighed the others by a significant factor. Now that that's not an option without giving up the +1 happiness, I'm basically back to square one in figuring them out. In my current game I'm using Organized Religion, since it was the first one available and the +1 happiness across most of my cities was worth the upkeep. I don't care much for the building bonus. It's nice to have, but it's not a major factor, such as getting maintenance cost reductions or extra happiness. I founded a religion so thankfully only one city has a different religion, and if that wasn't the case, I'd never have put it on. Though I just recently got access to monasticism so I'll probably switch to that to keep the +1 happiness without the happiness penalty and lower costs, though really I just see it as a civic that gives me +1 happiness from state religion.

 

[[Y]]

Looking at them again now, weighing them realistically against my various needs, I do think that some need to be reworked, and a few rebalancing acts might be in order. The problems are primarily that Civil Religion and Monasticism lack any real purpose. They aren't solving any problems or supporting a playstyle, whereas just about every other civic serves a specific purpose. Militancy and Pacifism are great in this regard, but suffer from having their drawbacks be universal while their benefits are mostly for cities that have your state religion, but religion spread in RI is a dice roll. There's no guarantee that you'll have enough cities with your state religion to justify applying the drawbacks across your entire empire.

Civil Religion: +1 from priest. Okay, but requires you to have a priest, and for using that priest to be more impactful than working an actual tile. +25% espionage in all cities, but most cities aren't generating espionage in the first place. +25% building bonus, which is nice, but again, not actively solving any problem my empire is actually facing. Three unrelated and niche bonuses that don't build towards any unified end and that largely only apply to cities with state religion, which is not a factor the player can control, but in all cases costing a lot in upkeep and potentially making cities unhappy from circumstances that cannot be controled. I'll still take it over nothing if my religion is spread throughout my empire enough, but not an option if the empire is lacking in religion or if many other religions are present as well.

Monasticism: Like Civil Religion, multiple unrelated and weak bonuses that aren't usually solving anything. +1 from cottages is a small bonus that lasts at most 30 turns per cottage, if you build/have a cottage to benefit from it. +20% culture is nice, but cities have to already generate culture to benefit from it. Usable for border wars and conquered cities, but again, circumstantial usecases, and very limited effectiveness towards these usecases. Monastic Order is great, just comes pretty late relative to when Monasticism is unlocked. And building missionaries without a monastery is meh. For half the religions in the game, this bonus does nothing until the medieval ages, and by then they've probably already built monasteries anyway which makes the bonus redundant. And while it's helpful past the middle ages by allowing missionaries to be built after monasteries are discontinued due to Humanist Thought... Firstly, you still have monastaries from which to build them, since existing monastaries aren't obsolete, and secondly the whole discontinuation of monasteries at the onset of the rennaisance feels forced. I come from a Jewish background and while monastaries proper were never really a thing in Judaism (as far as I'm aware, at least), Shiur, which is a pretty close approximation for how monastaries serve in RI, is still a common place thing in Jewish communities. I won't speak for other religions, but this whole aspect needs reconsideration. It feels more like a statement on religion than a gameplay value. Anyway, Monasticism is still probably the religious civic I would most often go for, if only because I like founding Judism for that sweet trade route yield bonus, and having +1 happiness from that religion is useful, and it's the cheapest of the religous civics to maintain. But nothing that monasticism actually offers is of interest to me, just the lack of drawbacks relative to the others.

Pacifism: Looks fine to me, but can't really say. I'm usually at war more often than not (and not always by my choice), so the war unhappiness and the military unit production malus make this civic a no-go for me in just about every circumstance.

Militancy: I think this is the best designed of all the state religion civics, and I've seen some AI civs use it to great effect. But it also strongly relies on you having your state religion actually spread throughout the empire, since the drawbacks apply universally. Though it becomes available around the time most religions have access to missionaries, so that helps, and the inquisitor helps control the unhappiness drawback, so it's probably fine. It just requires a lot of spreadwork beforehand or else it causes more harm than good.

My 2 cents at this point is to rework civil religion and monasticism. I'm not really sure what Civic Religion is as a gameplay concept, since it's essentially the essence of having a state religion in the first place. There's also no flavor reason why a civ has to choose between civil religion, monasticism, and militancy. The Civic Religion wikipedia entry is pretty sparse on anything before Rousseau coined the term in the 18th century, too.

If I'm allowed to spitball ideas, I'd suggest the changes below. I'm terrible at naming things so don't take the names seriously.

• Removing the Monastery building
  • Why are monasteries in cities anyway?
  • Missionaries require temples instead
• Adding a Monastary improvement (which is replaced by the Fortified Monastery for the celts, though the fortified version retains hill requirement)
  • Unlocked with Meditation, or maybe Alphabet. I originally had Writing, but that feels too early
  • Same placement rules as cottage
  • +1
    
  • +1 with Calendar
  • Should be moderately useful early game, well rounded but not a dramatic increase in any specific yield. Should be easily outclassed by windmills, watermills, and serfdom farms, unless bolstered by religious civics.
• Reworking Civil Religion:
  • Civic meant to utilize religion to the benefit of larger population centers. Spend money to make money to spend money.
  • Effects:
    • High Upkeep
    • Double production speed of Temples and Cathedrals
    • +1 to monasteries, fortified monasteries.
    • +1 to Priest
    • +1 in cities with state religion
    • Can spend gold to finish production in a city with state religion
    • Can spend culture to finish production in a city with state religion?
• Reworking Monasticism:
  • Civic meant to utilize religion to improve people's lives and focus on community. Mitigates consequences.
  • Effects:
    • Low upkeep
    • +1 to monasteries, fortified monasteries
    • +1 to fortified monasteries
    • +1 to fortified monasteries
    • Monasteries, Fortified Monasteries give -1 pandemic rate in nearby cities
    • Monasteries, Fortified Monasteries give -1 separatism in nearby cities
• Pacifism:
  • +1 to monasteries, fortified monasteries.