Realism Invictus

[JDCP]

- The civilopedia pages about cannons don't indicate the maximum percentage of damage they can inflict in distance fighting mode, or how much they inflict per hit, as far as I can tell.

There are many, many entries of the Civilopedia that could receive more attention and you can notice this with a quick read through it. It is nothing that I mind but it's still a fact. I enjoy reading some of it and sometimes I wished pages gave more information about certain things, but as it is right now it does an excellent job at keeping the player in touch with the most basic things of the game.

A part of me desires a page with some useful strategies (specially of combat) written on, aside of the very basic tips in the help section. Also a page with stuff like wonders put in the order in which they start to appear (like buildings have but with eras). There are many things that this mod changes in all the aspects of the game, explaining the common behaviour of the AI when attacking would be a good start (no, really, in a mod where stacks are supposed to be almost nonexistent how the hell was I going to know that the computer was going to land 20 man-at-arms in my capital? JESUS CHRIST!!! ). A better explanation of what role certain units have in the field would also be appreciated. Sure it is cool that I'm still learning and that's very fun, but when I discover a new strategy that would have helped me win my previous games makes me think about how much time I spent pushing to the front with the wrong units and all the time lost because of it when instead of, say, throw Levy's into enemy stacks I could have used charged mounted units to weaken positions. Whatever, I guess that's a very inherent characteristic of the fun of this game, so the other part of me doesn't want it to happen

If anything else is to say, I love the work that was done redesigning the overall aspect of the Civilopedia, the original looked like utter garbage, this in the other hand is very comfortable and easy to navigate. Whoever did it has my gratitude No joke, I cringe at reading the old civilopedia still whenever I play other mods, this is the way boys!

This has nothing to do with the aforementioned, but I kinda miss corporations expanding throught the world was a fun thing to do.

 

[pecheneg]

Oh, my apologies. I somehow managed to skip part of the message – fixated on the "Orleans" picture. Favorite toys, yes.

Thanks, interesting info!

You are welcome .

The French having "named" systems replacing one another whereas other countries didn't, to my knowledge, gave the impression that they were more systematic - but I guess they were simply more creative with branding!

Well, it's not even about the PR of the French – they were just the leading military power in Europe. As a result, although the wave of Griboval-style transformations began in Austria two decades before Griboval, the brand still became Griboval, not Liechtenstein.
As for standardization as such, both the ideas and their implementation are very old, from the 16th century. Let's say the characteristic combination of 3-6-12-24 pounds is Carl 5th. Accordingly, the same Austrians before Liechtenstein (and Valliere) had guns "of the 1716 model, etc.
However, Europe was patchwork, and development was very uneven. Accordingly, even in Prussia at the beginning of the 18th century, mortars could be cast "without any system" (c), etc. In general, the German stick discipline seems to have become a reaction to the almost Turkish mess even in the "serious" German states.

Does this have something to do with Britain being far more navy-focused?

Well, in principle, English exoticism can be rationalized, yes. A huge pile of large-caliber guns in the fleet, for which there were huge stocks of ammunition, a significant proportion of "amphibious" operations, when the guns were delivered mainly by sea, etc. But the problem here is that 23 types of cannons alone is a good reason to assume that the guys had obvious problems with rationality. And if you dig a little deeper…
In general, even twenty years after Valliere, there was still a holivar in England between lovers of fashionable Parisian things and "experienced practitioners". The latter stated that fashionable small gaps are evil, and the main thing is that an artillery scoop (shufla) should pass between the core and the barrel wall to fill the powder. In general, everything is like under Mother Ecatherine... ugh, Elizabeth, we don't need these Frenchies, we beat them even under Eisencourt.
The British loved, could, practice ultraconservatism – you can observe such a mentality with might and main in the twenties and thirties. Mainstream ideas in British bomber aviation, for example, are all the same, all the same. Such is the eternal nature of English chivalry (c).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Is there an actual reason for the mod to not have a North Korean leader despite having a Southern one (Syngman Rhee)? I wanted to beat some DPRK ass.

Aesthetic consistency mostly. Since flavour units are the same irrespective of the leader, and all late-game units for Korea are South Korean - and unlike with Chinas, I really feel having two Korean civs would be an overkill (and unlike China, historically after the Three Kingdoms era, Korea was pretty monolithic). The funny thing is, I made Syngman Rhee out of Kim Il Sung leader who was in RI many years ago once I made the principal decision to go with South Korea for modern units.

I also find it curious, and admitedly a very good implementation, that both Greece and Rome have Byzantine leaders. although I indeed would have preferred them to be together on a separated CIV, the work already done is not bad

Yeah, this one was tricky. I wanted to have Justinian represented, but he could equally go both ways - ultimately, I settled on Roman for him, as he was the last emperor to actually hold Rome, and Latin was still dominant as the court language in his time. Later Eastern Roman emperors were already culturally Greek, and had little to do with actual Rome, so the decision there was much easier.

Funny thing is, we have the Khmer rouge in the game as a unit, but we don't have Pol Pot! I do must admit I didn't expect to see that unit in the game and even if it's just a replacement for the conscript, that's pretty fudging cool.

Were Khmer upgraded to a playable civ and furnished with a set of 5-6 leaders, Pol Pot would have been one for sure.

- The civilopedia pages about cannons don't indicate the maximum percentage of damage they can inflict in distance fighting mode, or how much they inflict per hit, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, that'd be reasonable.

- The civilopedia pages for tile improvements don't indicate how much worker time they require, and that can be annoying when you are going to get a new tile improvement and would like to know if you need more workers.

While I can see how it might be helpful, the worker speed is modified so much during the game that having base improvement costs would be quite misleading.

- New cities really, really need a separatism starting bonus. Destroying a barbarian city, and founding a new city, and getting 30% separatism from the start because the area is culturally dominated by barbarians is really terrible. The settlers in the new city are supposed to be your own people coming from one of your own cities...

I guess. I don't play or playtest with separatism.

I know that vanilla mechanic, but, apart for animal husbandry, all RI requirements work as "AND" requirements (i. e. there are no optional requirements), and having the future tech costs all wrong when going more than one tech ahead in the tech tree is a significant issue, as it misleads the player when evaluating tech paths (and perhaps the AI too, I'm not sure).

If it's not intended for a tech to be accessible through two different paths, then getting the discount when going through the only path is bizarre.

IDK. Maybe. To be completely honest, you're the only person all these years to notice this, much less consider it an issue worthy of attention.

But I think 10% tech penalty is really harsh, it will usually be much worse than high upkeep. When thinking about real life, it may seem appropriate, but for balance I think it's not quite right.

Unironically, the tech penalty becomes less relevant as you go later into the game, because -10% when you just have +20% bonus in your cities loses you 1/12th of your science, but -10% when you have +65% bonus (after observatories) loses you below 1/16th.

As you indicated yourself, since it's additive, it's not "really harsh" at the time the civic is realistically available. One would likely be losing no more than 5% of real research output, if even that.

There are many, many entries of the Civilopedia that could receive more attention and you can notice this with a quick read through it. It is nothing that I mind but it's still a fact. I enjoy reading some of it and sometimes I wished pages gave more information about certain things, but as it is right now it does an excellent job at keeping the player in touch with the most basic things of the game.

Yeah, the entry quality is... variable. Throughout the years, different people have added different stuff. I try to improve some of the poorer ones if something catches my eye, but I'm sure a more systematic approach could have helped.

A part of me desires a page with some useful strategies (specially of combat) written on, aside of the very basic tips in the help section.

Someone would have to write them, and that someone is most definitely not me.

This has nothing to do with the aforementioned, but I kinda miss corporations expanding throught the world was a fun thing to do.

The mod shows its age! By the time BtS was out, we already had our own industrial-era systems in place and corporations simply didn't make much sense.

 

[pecheneg]

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.

That's a rather radical departure from the Civ 4 design philosophy where each combat is treated as an independent event. Not necessarily a taboo, but something that needs a lot of thought and theorycrafting so as not to have a slew of unintended balance consequences.

Well, actually, I have already pestered with the idea of limiting protection episodes to Keldath and this has already been implemented in DOTO https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/doto-advciv-modmod.236605/page-177

Spoiler :

At the same time, I also quite like the alternative mechanics of reducing the number of first strikes for shooters. Another thing is that weakening the defender, which applies ONLY to shooters, is an outright path to imbalance and anti–historicity.
And yes, of course, I completely agree that this will be a very, mmm... extremist step that will require a radical redrawing of the balance.
There are, however, several "oak" options without changing the mechanics and radically shaking up the balance. For example, in reality, for a very long time there was a specific class of weapons for shooting from a stop. For example, the familiar field crossbow (the so–called "one-pound") is only one of the common varieties. The second is a "two–pound" crossbow weighing 13-15 kg, specifically for fortress shooting. At the same time, crossbowmen generally received a much more serious bonus in fortresses than is "generally accepted". For there were things in the fortresses that dramatically accelerated loading. In general, it looked like this (in the picture, by the way, a two-pound crossbow).

Then the era of fortress "muskets"/rifles began, and it lasted until the 1870s. There are a lot of varieties for every taste. At the same time, they were distributed globally and could be used in field battles. The Swedes, in relation to Poltava, note this sneaky cheat of Peter, for example. In general, you can not suffer and just give out enlarged rifles and crossbows to the standard "shooting" infantry, getting a specific class of defensive units. But this, of course, is lyricism - it is purely theoretical reasoning.

 

[AllTheLand]

IDK. Maybe. To be completely honest, you're the only person all these years to notice this, much less consider it an issue worthy of attention.

I very much doubt however that I was the only person that was misled by it at some point. When playing, the player is not constantly cross-checking if game tooltips are wrong or not.

Removing the "OR prerequisite" tech bonus might also be just what's needed to slow down the pace of tech research, since apparently it speeds up nearly all techs in the game, and since it looks like tech generally advance too quickly.

As you indicated yourself, since it's additive, it's not "really harsh" at the time the civic is realistically available. One would likely be losing no more than 5% of real research output, if even that.

I don't know how you came to the "no more than 5%" conclusion. When it's first available, you only have libraries that give % science (and I suppose a great work of science or two, but most cities won't have it) and it's about 8%. Because science deals with huge amounts of commerce, a few percents are very significant. Once you get universities and observatories, it's about 6%. My proposal taking away 1 science from select specialists and buildings would yield a 3-5% penalty from a rough estimate in my current game, depending on how many scientist specialists are used. By discouraging the use of scientist specialists, it would also subtly reduce great scientists.

I think it's also quite problematic that militancy's penalty become smaller and smaller as time goes on, so that the civic is at its worse in the historical period where it was most prevalent and effective. I think it would be more adapted for it to start smaller and become more and more significant (although no higher than the current penalty) as you get into late renaissance and industrial times.

Yeah, the entry quality is... variable. Throughout the years, different people have added different stuff. I try to improve some of the poorer ones if something catches my eye, but I'm sure a more systematic approach could have helped.

Many entries are empty, have content that was originally meant for something completely different, or outdated content.

I was thinking of making new entries for the leader traits.

 

[[Y]]

Well, in fact, conditionally suburban monasteries were just an "alternative" branch of settlements – from a "hermit's hut" to a full-fledged suburb. And it would be interesting to reflect this. At the same time, the demographic penalty from mass celibacy should also be taken into account for the monastic system as a whole.
In general, the differences from the standard line may be as follows.
1. Less commerce. The hermit's "starting" hut/house is generally zero. At the same time, as an option, there is some chance to find a specific bonus "relic". After that, commerce grows dramatically. Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages and later was a huge business and... an excuse to organize a fair.
2. Growth is slower.
3. At the same time, there is less epidemic penalty and there is a bonus to happiness starting from the second or third level.
4. Higher defense indicators. At the same time, the maximum figure should be even higher than that of a standard fort.
At the same time, in order to increase the demographic penalty, it is possible to build monasteries only by a specific one-time worker (monk/hermit), who consumes an impressive amount of food during construction. And the same unit can build monasteries in cities.
Unfortunately, there are no corporations in RI. However, theoretically, the construction of "hermits" can be linked to specific corporations. For example, the Benedictine Order. It is founded, of course, by the prophets. At the same time, it is clear that a more intricate scheme requires more significant bonuses for monasteries.

That's an interesting take on it, but I think it's too focused on providing a historically faithful monastery improvement and doesn't address the problem I was trying to solve, of providing religious civics more things to interact with to provide them with a clear usecase and identity.

That's not an Archer thing, but an elusive bug that sometimes crops up in pedia in general, where many units are "offset" to be considered as replacing a unit of one tier higher. I ran into it a couple of times for other units too, but was never able to predictable reproduce it.

Huh. It happens all the time for archers for me, no trouble reproducing it. Is there anything on my end I can check that might be helpful to share?

My own take on it was more or less what you pointed out. Militancy and Pacifism are special-purpose civics, with strong advantages and drawbacks, whereas Civil Religion and Monsticism are the two "default" civics - one cheap with marginal usefulness unless you invest into a later building (Monasticism) and one expensive with a generally useful bonus (Civil Religion).

Okay. Personally I don't think these are enough, but I've already made my case and won't push for the sake of pushing. If they're meant to be the default, can they become available earlier? At least Monasticism, as right now the "default, cheap, marginally useful" religious civic doesn't become available until halfway through the classic era. That wasn't problematic when you got +1 happiness with Paganism, but that's changed. Now you can found a religion early, but until discovering Priesthood it only offers +1, and maybe some drawbacks (eg no health from shellfish with Judaism, or no health from cows with Hinduism). When you get to Priesthood you can finally get that +1 happiness, but you got to pay big for it (and the civic itself doesn't help compensate for that cost) and at a time when money is scarce. It's not until Meditation that you can finally get the happiness as a standard fact of life. I feel that making civs wait that long is too big a nerf, especially when the initial nerf was intended to prevent double dipping religion happiness with paganism benefits, and not to prevent dipping into religion at all. Maybe the Meditation tech can still be a requirement for building missionaries without monasteries.

Apart from the flavour reasons already stated by others, there is a gameplay/flavour reason I dislike the monastery as a potential improvement - as a building, it selectively impacts research and culture - whereas as a yield-generating improvement, you'll basically derive taxation and even manpower (even if the improvement generates no production, the food from it can be used to build levies), which makes monasteries - historically very economically segregated - too integrated into the general economy.

I'm not well educated on monasteries in general, but wasn't it common for them to sell produce and perform services? That's the impression I have of western monasteries, with maybe eastern monasteries being the fully detached model. And if one way or another that's not a factor in RI, why do fortified monasteries offer exactly that bonus?
With FMs already in the game, the precedent is already set.

As for the research and culture, it's easy enough to find another way to represent that. Or have an "Urban Monestary" vs a rural monestary improvement. Personally I think with tech research bonus, the bonus from monastaries isn't really needed anyway. Though it could be interesting if instead of +10% research they offered a direct +1 research, emphasizing them as something more useful in smaller cities with less commerce, but less of a contribution in major cities generating 11+ commerce.

Yeah, Judaism as one of the major religions in Civ 4 was a somewhat weird design decision in vanilla, given no civ in game ever ran it as a majority religion (with a probable very minor exception of early Ethiopia, but even then, I am not sure if it was adopted much past the elites and a minority of population), and a lot of mechanics (missionaries, monasteries - even the concept of building a temple in every city!) don't make a lot of sense for it. Aside from Judaism, all major religions have/had a monastic element to them - even Judaism might actually have, as the Qumran finds look a lot like a de facto monastic community.

Obviously I'm bias, but I think Judaism makes sense in the game. While the list of historical powers with a majority Jewish population is short for sure, we've done a good job of being relevant and impactful across other nations (for better or for worse). There may well be an alternate universe where it becomes a common religion among historical powers, much like in how some Civ games it's a common state religion and in others it has no presence whatsoever. Though "temple in every city" is certainly a Jewish trademark, and in all corners of the world. My uncle once had a chance to visit a Jewish temple in India and had interesting stories to share about it (though I can't remember them, sadly).

On the subject of Qumran, while I regularly found Judaism in games, I never build it as it's an unhappiness trap. +1 happiness per research slider sounds nice, but in practice that slider goes up and down frequently, and allowing a city to grow just means it'll become unhappy whenever you have to tone down research rates, and you will have to turn it down sooner rather than later.

- New cities really, really need a separatism starting bonus. Destroying a barbarian city, and founding a new city, and getting 30% separatism from the start because the area is culturally dominated by barbarians is really terrible. The settlers in the new city are supposed to be your own people coming from one of your own cities...

The settler might be the founding people from your original community, but there's still the existing populace that needs to be ruled over, and they don't appreciate being ruled by people they deem to be outsiders... Thankfully you can mitigate the separatism by bringing more military units to police the local populace. I think the current system does quite well here!

Though, Walter, on this subject, reducing separatism from unhealth might be in order. When a new city (or even an existing one) has unhealth from jungle or flood plains it can become unruly. While it makes sense that they would be unhappy about the the filth, in practice what happens is the city rebels, and then the new civ's city has even worse health since it loses whatever passive health benefits it got from the origin empire (like fish and other global modifiers). And it doesn't really make sense for unhealth to directly affect separatism. If that's desired, then excessive unhealth should probably add unhappiness, and contribute to separatism through that.

 

[AllTheLand]

- Does anyone else feel that the the availability period of baroque and later great artworks is quite short? Even with many civs, great artists are usually not produced in that great numbers (although the AI also seem to prefer settling artists as great artists rather than making the great works of art, I'm not sure why). Baroque art being interrupted by Nationalism hurts. Of course, techs being researched quickly make this more palpable.

The settler might be the founding people from your original community, but there's still the existing populace that needs to be ruled over, and they don't appreciate being ruled by people they deem to be outsiders...

The game has no representation whatsoever of "tile population" so it's not possible to get a solution that's satisfactory in all situations, but the scenario you outline would be better represented by some sort of armed revolt, much like we have with slavery and servage, rather than by the officials ruling the city wanting to leave the civilization that's ensuring their military protection against the unhappy local population and providing them with all sort of key trade goods.

Machiavelli noted that sending settlers to a conquered land was by far the most effective way to hold it, because only some of the natives lose their land to them (compared with general tax hikes to finance a big occupying army hurting everyone) and since their position very much depends on their home country ruling the land, they will be the most fervent defenders of said rule. In modern history, this is very apparent with Northern Ireland loyalists who descend from protestant settlers.

Thankfully you can mitigate the separatism by bringing more military units to police the local populace. I think the current system does quite well here!

When soldiers give -3 separatism a pop and you get a +40 penalty from wrong culture, it's really not fun...

When a city exists for a long time, you can go under the assumption that over time soldiers to keep the unit up are being drawn from the local population, so they might be of the wrong culture/religion and be more willing to switch sides (although you don't actually lose your units when separatism happens iirc), but when an army of 10 units that could easily obliterate any hostile force can't hold a size-1 city because there is a lot of foreign culture, it's really annoying.

Developed cities have larger population and time to get buildings, so you can have for example a prison and spy specialists to help keep things in check, but a new city has no infrastructure and simply cannot do it.

Perhaps the separatism modifier given by soldiers should be made dependent on the city's population. I think that's a change that's elegant in its simplicity that would improve many situations, not just new cities.

 

[JDCP]

Does anyone ever use archers/crossbowmen when attacking enemies? lol, I only find them useful for defending cities it doesn't help that ranged aid only serves for that same purpose. I really like these units (specially crossbows that got the mercenary promotion which is cool) but I don't find much use for em, anyone knows any crazy strategies for those?

Also, whoever made the model of the Fekete Sereg deserves a medal for the details, not only it represents the iconic variety of the army (showcasing 3 different types of soldiers) but also, one of em has a firearm that looks like a hand cannonI would have preferred a cooler looking gun (considering the already present arquebusier got a nicer and bigger gun) but I guess that's the more accurate portrayal they could go for.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Does anyone ever use archers/crossbowmen when attacking enemies? lol, I only find them useful for defending cities it doesn't help that ranged aid only serves for that same purpose. I really like these units (specially crossbows that got the mercenary promotion which is cool) but I don't find much use for em, anyone knows any crazy strategies for those?

Also, whoever made the model of the Fekete Sereg deserves a medal for the details, not only it represents the iconic variety of the army (showcasing 3 different types of soldiers) but also, one of em has a firearm that looks like a hand cannonI would have preferred a cooler looking gun (considering the already present arquebusier got a nicer and bigger gun) but I guess that's the more accurate portrayal they could go for.

They're also very useful as stack defenders in the field, as they have few counters and also get additional bonuses defending in hills.

 

[JDCP]

They're also very useful as stack defenders in the field, as they have few counters and also get additional bonuses defending in hills.

I thought skirmishers did a better job at that, but you're still right. Still, offensive with these guys doesn't seem to be a good idea

 

[AspiringScholar]

I thought skirmishers did a better job at that, but you're still right. Still, offensive with these guys doesn't seem to be a good idea

Ironically, it's against undefended recon where you'd precisely want to!

 

[[Y]]

The game has no representation whatsoever of "tile population" so it's not possible to get a solution that's satisfactory in all situations, but the scenario you outline would be better represented by some sort of armed revolt, much like we have with slavery and servage, rather than by the officials ruling the city wanting to leave the civilization that's ensuring their military protection against the unhappy local population and providing them with all sort of key trade goods.

There is an armed revolt, it's just abstracted. The situation isn't that the governor of the city is pissed at you and deciding to go solo, it's the people in the city upset with your rule and ousting the governing agents and putting their own government in place. And when most of that population is culturally barbarian or a foreign civ, they'll feel pretty incentivized to do that, unless you really keep them happy.

When soldiers give -3 separatism a pop and you get a +40 penalty from wrong culture, it's really not fun...

When a city exists for a long time, you can go under the assumption that over time soldiers to keep the unit up are being drawn from the local population, so they might be of the wrong culture/religion and be more willing to switch sides (although you don't actually lose your units when separatism happens iirc), but when an army of 10 units that could easily obliterate any hostile force can't hold a size-1 city because there is a lot of foreign culture, it's really annoying.

It starts at -6 and goes down to -3 about halfway through the game. Maybe the problem is that -3 isn't enough?

Does anyone ever use archers/crossbowmen when attacking enemies? lol, I only find them useful for defending cities it doesn't help that ranged aid only serves for that same purpose. I really like these units (specially crossbows that got the mercenary promotion which is cool) but I don't find much use for em, anyone knows any crazy strategies for those?

As @AspiringScholar said, they're good midgame stack defenders. While at war I'll usually make a stack of 1-2 crossbowmen, 1-2 pikemen, and a few light cavalry and have that go deep into enemy territory to disrupt roads and strategic resources.

They might have been comparable to skirmishers before moving skirmishers to 3 strength, but now a skirmisher defending with a +100% defense bonus is still roughly on par with crossbowmen with no bonus. In terms of aid it's a bit of a mixup. recon aid giving retreat odds is a waste when defending, but unlike recon aid, ranged support aid only gives first strike chances, not guaranteed first strikes. But with the strength difference between them now I'll probably always use crossbowmen.

And they are pretty good on the offensive, with bonuses against melee and cavalry. They lack the skirmisher's ability to ignore (or exploit in the case of cavalry) hill and forest defenses, so they seem bad in comparison, but no unit offers that again until explorer in Renaissance, so it isn't a fair comparison. Crossbowmen is a strong reason you defend your stack instead of confidently walking out in the open field.

 

[AllTheLand]

There is an armed revolt, it's just abstracted. The situation isn't that the governor of the city is pissed at you and deciding to go solo, it's the people in the city upset with your rule and ousting the governing agents and putting their own government in place. And when most of that population is culturally barbarian or a foreign civ, they'll feel pretty incentivized to do that, unless you really keep them happy.

The people of the size-1 city are my settlers, not the random barbarians that lived in the area, that would be unable to defeat my normal-sized military escort.

Under the theory you give as a justification, the american colonies of England would all have revolted in the 1600s to join the native indians, because there wasn't 200K english soldiers guarding each colony...

The current mechanics are particularly stupid in the common situation where the tile culture is very low. So it wouldn't even take that long for tile culture to be good enough to avoid the massive revolt, but it's unlikely to reach that point without a big military stack. When playing with an empty new world, this situation occurs every other city founded there...

The other common situation where they'd be a high foreign culture is conquered land - and in this case, if I just conquered land, the same reasoning that provide for reduced separatism in conquered cities (gameplay-wise because you really need time to get some time to get the situation under control, lore-wise because you just beat their army and the remaining population can't do a successful uprising against your military adminstration) also justifies reduced separatism for new cities in conquered lands.

Also, "really keep them happy" doesn't work, because excess happiness does nothing at all to reduce separatism. They can drown in happiness and still revolt.

EDIT: I also think it's not quite right that sharing your state religion and having no wrong religion just gives a 0 rating on separatism. It should give a small negative value, I think. Similarly, the zero point for culture should not be at 100% your civ's culture, but rather at something like 80%, with additional culture giving negative separatism.

 

[sazhdapec]

@AllTheLand
Why do you have an "I want EASY" mindset? Nerf AI starting bonuses, nerf AI multiplicators so that it doesn't research fast, nerf upkeep, nerf maintenance, buff civics, nerf separatism? Can't you just enjoy the game as it is? Try adapting to the game instead of trying to adapt the game to your liking. Play some diverse games through ALL eras before you make any balance conclusions.

 

[pecheneg]

hat's the impression I have of western monasteries, with maybe eastern monasteries being the fully detached model

Conversely. Just in case, I remind you that Orthodoxy is actually originally the religion of "trading" nations. And it's not just about the Greeks. If you look at the early medieval chronicles, the crowd welcomes the Frankish kings in Frankish, Latin and "Syriac" (a variant of Aramaic). In general, the Phoenicians have not gone anywhere.
And the historical center of Orthodoxy is also the largest trade and financial center of medieval Western Eurasia.
At the same time, Catholicism is initially the religion of a "post–apocalyptic" region with a de-monetized and natural economy.
In general, it is not surprising that the military-commercial nobility of ancient Russia preferred Orthodoxy.
Anyway, Orthodox monasteries in Russia are a traditional source of credit and not only. In 17th-century Russia, two of the three largest fairs, including the largest in size, were monastic. And not at the venue, but actually. That's how it worked in Nizhny Novgorod. "Every year, at the expense of the monastery, rows of wooden collapsible benches were erected on wooden floors, forming a Gostiny Dvor (first mentioned in 1683), which was surrounded by wooden fortress walls with four movable towers and one deaf one." And next to the "bank", yes.
Bryansk, the first third of the 18th century. "The Svensky monastery received income from landowners, merchants and other trading people for apartments in monastic cells, for trading places, for a bathhouse, for basements. For the protection of trade shops. In addition, the monastery's own wine shop brought income. It can be seen from the monastery archives that in 1732, 662 shops and huts were traded at the fair".
Nuances.
1. A distillery worked for the wine "shop".
2. It was the largest monastic business, but clearly not the only one. At the fair, 30% of the exported hemp was purchased, and, by a strange coincidence, the monastery actively produced it.
3. The shops were also like this. "The Greeks traded separately from other merchants in a specially built gostiny dvor for them. Between 50 and 199 Greek merchants came to the country every year. They were carrying things that went to the needs of the palace: precious fabrics and stones, pearls, jewelry, expensive weapons, horse harness."
In general, it is a "closed" monastery, built into international trade from Amsterdam (hemp) to Istanbul.
At the same time, the gradual decline of the Bryansk fair was due to the fact that the actual border crept south, and the Svensky Monastery began to compete, for example ... the new monastery fair, 30 kilometers from which I am now sitting (it still exists).
Well, yes, this is a chemically pure experiment. Mother Russia in the 16th-17th century had: a disgusting climate, poor soils, an extremely continental situation in the "age of sail" and a terrible shortage of mineral resources. At the same time, the industrial development of the Urals and especially Altai at that time was something like a Martian program. But "mother" had a Byzantine-Chinese/Horde bureaucracy and - by Catholic standards - a "bourgeois" church . Deliberately creating monetary enclaves in the midst of a seemingly hopeless natural economy.
As a result, the Catholics in the neighborhood, who started with a giant head start, were out of luck

 

[AspiringScholar]

@pecheneg, I enthusiatically enjoy reading these erudite and niche historical "footnotes" from you!

 

[pecheneg]

I enthusiatically enjoy reading these erudite and niche historical "footnotes" from you!

Thank you very much, it's nice to hear .

 

[AllTheLand]

@AllTheLand
Why do you have an "I want EASY" mindset?

If I just wanted it easy, I would play in Monarch and have a game that's a breeze from the start. If your takeaway from my posts here is that I want to make this mod easy, you haven't paid attention.

But since Y, Drakarska, JDCP and AspiringScholar liked your post, I suppose there is a widespread sentiment that it's good to attack me personally rather than discussing (or simply ignoring) the ideas I bring up.

Nerf AI starting bonuses

I already spelled out a few times why I'm doing it.

Completely eliminating any chance of getting some wonder or founding some religion, losing out on a lot of key content, and just hoping that the AIs will be dumb enough with unit control that the repeated early wars will allow to expand a bit instead of being smothered to death, is not my cup of tea. As much as I like good starting positions, AI headstart bonuses also make bad starting positions unplayable.

And with the AIs being smarter about open borders now, being a tech laggard from the get go creates a serious risk of death spiral.

nerf AI multiplicators so that it doesn't research fast

I have no clue where you got that from, as I have not done such a thing.

nerf upkeep

The only thing I discussed about unit upkeep was having more advanced units cost more upkeep...

nerf maintenance

If you think the limitation to mass conquest should mostly be an artificial financial punishment based on the number of cities, that's your opinion. I'd prefer more meaningful mechanics.

buff civics

I want more meaningful choices in a strategy game, shocking I know.

nerf separatism?

Considering how clunky the system is, I'd probably be better turning it off completely. You only seem to think of my suggestions on a "easy-difficult" scale, forgetting about scales such as "boring-engaging", "unrealistic-realistic", "railroaded-open ended".

If you don't understand how having 70% separatism from turn 1 on a newly founded new world colony is bad gameplay, or if you think that a city with 95% core culture should have separatist tendencies because of culture, you should refrain from judging gameplay suggestions.

Can't you just enjoy the game as it is? Try adapting to the game instead of trying to adapt the game to your liking.

You seem to think I have been a negative influence on RI and want me to stop posting my observation.

I must grant you that you are doing a very good job at making this place unwelcoming. I don't know why I'd bother making more AI improvements to get spat on.

Play some diverse games through ALL eras before you make any balance conclusions.

Yeah, obviously I need to play into the modern eras to make comment about what happens in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance... Next I'll also need to play full games with all the leaders and civs before being able to comment on leader traits and custom improvements...

 

[AspiringScholar]

For my part, you should know my position as I elaborated at length in plain and unconfrontational language, and you didn't respond to that portion. You're just making sweeping pronouncements about entire building blocks of the game's balance without having even played through a whole game. That difference in perspective is significant. For instance, you made a big talking point of how culture is significantly undervalued overall and then just here your major problem with separatism is symptomatic of neglecting it. I for one said that I value the insight and feedback you've had, but you as a new player are speaking really declaratively in your assertions to several people here who have been playing the mod at a high level for many years without sharing the problems you're encountering and contending that sweeping changes should be made across the board. It comes across more that you are trying to dictate changes for everyone else than that you are honestly sharing an impression as you are familiarzing yourself.

 

[[Y]]

I think my current Carthage game has gotten to my breaking point, so I'll share some observations:

City Conquering
I feel that conquered cities are too functional. In the past, after conquering several cities I usually had to enter a reconstruction period to let the conquered cities come into use as I build them back up. This led to a very organic rhythm of alternatively growing the empire then maturing the empire and things felt pretty balanced. This time, the new cities were up and running right away. The surviving buildings gave enough happiness that there wasn't the typical starvation period where the population plummets, so instead of having the city reduce to 4 citizens, two of which are too angry to cooperate, I would have a fully cooperative 6 or more citizens off the bat. And having the walls be able to rebuild right away turned each conquered city into an immediate bastion. Usually I really have to invest in defending a conquered city but I didn't feel that this time, just stuck some irregulars there and moved on. There wasn't much to deter me, or others, from just conquering all we wanted.

And I think that's what happened with the Pontic empire. They formed from barbarian cities and immediately went to war with Poland, conquering it entirely. After that they went to war with Austronesia, and conquered them entirely, too. Then it was India's turn... They went from a brand new civ to sitting at the top of the scoreboard fast. In a way it was actually beautiful to watch, since although Mithridates IV proved a capable conqueror, he was terrible at keeping the empire afloat. After taking half of India the Pontic empire imploded, Polynesia returned and in force, getting most of its original territory and some that was India's before Mithridates took it. Poland at some point returned too, though just one city, so maybe liberated. Fifty turns later and the Pontic empire no longer existed. It was cool to watch this flourish and withering of an empire, though that ending still didn't justify the conquering spree, and it couldn't have imploded in a non-separatism game.

I think a better experience was when conquered cities had to be invested in before they were really utilizable, when 75% or more of the buildings were destroyed. It made losing a city more serious, too, whereas now it's not much of a concern if I can take it back easily. I haven't done that yet with a developed city, but I worry it will be like it was never conquered at all...

Stack Aid
Logistic Problems doesn't feel like much of a problem. At least until late medieval (I don't usually play far into Renaissance, so I don't know what it's like when melee units and cavalry start fading out). Right now, a stack just needs 4 melee units and 4 cavalry units to give all units in the stack +24% strength (including each of those melee and cavalry units, only need 3 of each if we don't care about that). With 8 units, that's only -10% strength from Logistic Problems, so it's a +14% gain, which is fine. If the stack hits 15 units it gets LP V, which gives -25% strength, just a tad more than cancelling out that +24% bonus, while keeping any other bonuses the units might be getting, such as first strikes from recon aid or ranged said. And it can keep that up until the 29 unit mark. So the worst case scenario for these stacks is that the Assault aid and Mobility aid get cancelled out, while still getting first strikes, and any city defense/city attacking bonuses that might be given. The other LP drawbacks aren't that impactful, since terrain movement cost only affects units with 2+ movement to begin with, retreat odds is reduction only affects a small minority of situations, and the healing penalty only applies to friendly and neutral territory, while big stacks are typically invasion stacks in enemy territory. So while it's possible to get a better deal by micromanaging stacks, there's still no actual danger to creating stacks of doom (as the AI is fond of doing) so long as it has 4 melee and 4 cavalry units.

On occasions where the stack hits 30 or more units, then the penalty goes up to -35% and is finally felt, effectively making it -11% strength. It's finally a problem. But it isn't really a problem before then, and even stacks with 30 or more units that lose eventually become a stack fo 29, which is still a lot of units.

With first strikes being a huge pain in the ass, and defending stacks usually having them in spades from aid, and the rest of the system often cancelling itself out, I'm starting to wonder if a better game experience comes from not playing with stack aid in the first place. I like it in concept, but reflecting on all the years I've been playing with it, it feels like much of it often does just cancel itself out, and the parts that don't (first strikes) have an impact that usually makes the game feel unfair (eg 3 units failing to even damage an archer). If all it's doing is giving me a small min/maxing high while not actually addressing any game problems (ala stacks of doom), it feels like it's more a distraction than a deep game feature.

This isn't to say that I think stack aid really needs to be removed, but I think some rebalancing could be good. Maybe mobility aid should help cancel out first strikes, or provide a bonus only when fighting in an open field, or only offer attack bonuses. Recon aid could give a defense bonus to hill and forests instead of first strikes. If the bonuses are more situational in this way, instead of a flat +% strength or more first strikes, then the logistic problems will really start to be felt, and there would be more worth to evaluating what sort of composition a stack should have.

I know, I know, the elephant in the room is the AI (not) being able to use these bonuses effectively. But I think that's a problem that ought to be addressed directly at this point. I know that's a big ask, but I think that's something the stack system, with it's ubiquitious influence, needs. Though if the bonuses line up with the ways AI uses those units already, maybe it's not as big of a problem as imagined.

Non-Forest Skirmishers
I brought this up before but I don't think anyone responded to it. Desert-based civs (and some others) have skirmishers that don't get any forest bonuses. While I like the flavor, in practice it amounts to them not being able to use forests for defense while most other civs and barbarians can. Can their skirmishers get at least a +25% bonus to attacking in forests? That's not enough to make the +50% defense go away entirely, but it makes the attack feasible. Or alternatively, maybe forest skirmishers should only get forest bonuses while the other skirmishers get hill bonuses, or something like that. I know non-forest skirmishers are currently cheaper, but being able to make 7 skirmishers for the prices of 6 doesn't balance against not being able to deal with enemy stacks sitting on forests while those enemy stacks can deal with yours sitting in forests.