Realism Invictus

[Major Tom]

The point is that these effects were never the goal, and at least some of us find them to be detrimental to the gameplay experience. That's already been discussed, and I just wanted to add actual examples in case anyone was wondering about it.

Great example especially with good screenshots. I got your point too.
Unit and city costs ok in the screenshot. So income must improve.
But perhaps the play style just have to be more like imm and deity in the base game. There you simply can’t afford not to have overlapping cities.

so making my first few cities compact and overlapping isn't a great long term strategy. It'll help in the short term, but mean that for the rest of the game, I'm stuck with two cities that don't have great yields, that are placed suboptimally, and that I have to pay upkeep on

Long term strategy: When will you work all 21 tiles in a city? Helper cities are great for cottage growth and also for ad hoc food and hammers.
Cities automatically connect via river and coast without fishing and sailing as long they are within cultural borders. Financial situation improved.

OK, perhaps this is still has nothing to do with your point, but my point is to play the map and use all possible means. Life’s become harder and we have to adapt but it’s not hopeless.

Do you have the starting save?

 

[[Y]]

Great example especially with good screenshots. I got your point too.
Unit and city costs ok in the screenshot. So income must improve.
But perhaps the play style just have to be more like imm and deity in the base game. There you simply can’t afford not to have overlapping cities.

Long term strategy: When will you work all 21 tiles in a city? Helper cities are great for cottage growth and also for ad hoc food and hammers.
Cities automatically connect via river and coast without fishing and sailing as long they are within cultural borders. Financial situation improved.

OK, perhaps this is still has nothing to do with your point, but my point is to play the map and use all possible means. Life’s become harder and we have to adapt but it’s not hopeless.

Do you have the starting save?

You're continuously not discussing the impacts of the tech changes and whether they're desirable and instead forcing discussion on my play choices. While my play can definitely be improved, it is not the subject of the discussion. I will not be responding any more.

 

[Ahnarras]

I won't speak for Major Tom, but as for myself, I'm quite happy with the slower Ancient Era, so I can't really much comment more on the tech changes.
Is it slower ? Yes. Do I enjoy it like that ? Yes. Do I mind having to wait 15-20 turn for a tech ? No, it's the way I like to play it (was never able to enjoy a game if not on marathon speed in the vanilla game).

So, for myself, the changes are... good ^^
I totally understand that it's not your point of view, but as those both way of playing contradict each other, I'm not sure what to add here.

Major Tom trying to gives you hint for earning more gold (thus reducing your research time, which seems to be the main problem here) seems logical to me as an answer.
The only other answer available would be "whelp guys, the change screw things up too much and everyone dislike it, so time to revert it". And that's what we are not trying to do here ^^

In the end of the day, a game will never be able to satisfy every gamer as we all have different goals while playing.

 

[AspiringScholar]

It does seem that an improvement was suggested to keep the increased ancient tech costs overall but to mitigate this for the first couple of tiers, which seem to be the ham-stringing ones where your initial options are mutually interdependent. It has been a bit tougher for me on monarch/emperor but the opening has still felt playable, though I am certainly not playing on immortal and can't speak to that.

 

[Major Tom]

Is it slower ? Yes. Do I enjoy it like that ? Yes. Do I mind having to wait 15-20 turn for a tech ?

Agreed. Came to this mod beginning of November (3.6) and played a few games on Monarch for rapid play through just to see how the mod is behaving (used to play IMM in base game). Before the worker was out I had almost 3 techs in the bag. Felt strange. Initially tech choices didn’t require much planning and offered few interesting choices. One game with 3.7 and the beginning requires more planning, which feels fine.

In the end of the day, a game will never be able to satisfy every gamer as we all have different goals while playing.

True, but in addition think this game offers immersion and satisfaction on any level if you have an open mind to play the map and adjust accordingly.

Edit: Maybe I will eat my words when starting a new game the coming weekend, on immortal.

 

[[Y]]

I won't speak for Major Tom, but as for myself, I'm quite happy with the slower Ancient Era, so I can't really much comment more on the tech changes.
Is it slower ? Yes. Do I enjoy it like that ? Yes. Do I mind having to wait 15-20 turn for a tech ? No, it's the way I like to play it (was never able to enjoy a game if not on marathon speed in the vanilla game).

I'm all for a longer ancient era! I just want that extra time to go to a phase of the game where there's meaningful gameplay, not just exploring and trying to survive against animals. For me the core experience of Civ is the competition with other civs throughout the ages. The little bit at the beginning where you only have one or two cities, locked improvements, and an unstable economy is just a small stepping stone that's more a necessary formality than it is part of the game. Adding more time to that phase while still keeping short the phase of the ancient era where you're actually engaging with other civs feels backwards to me. I don't want more time to have a warrior or scout walk through a black map, I want more time for my chariots, skirmishers, and spearmen to contend with my neighbors over territory before axemen and horseman/horse archers show up to dominate the scene.

15-20 turns feels fine to me! That's what it used to be like before the changes. It's the 30-35 turns that I'm unhappy with.

The only other answer available would be "whelp guys, the change screw things up too much and everyone dislike it, so time to revert it". And that's what we are not trying to do here ^^

You're oversimplifying things. There's way more nuance to it than that. And as I said earlier, multiple times, and am feeling very unlistened to about, is that a longer ancient era is good. It just needs to exist in a balanced way. One of the key things I've been trying to emphasize is that the current length of the ancient era is the consequence of multiple changes. Suggesting an experiment with one of those changes being reverted while the others are kept is not undoing everything, it's fine tuning. That's how game development goes: You change things, see how they play out, make smaller adjustments based on that feedback, repeat.

I'd appreciate it if there was more cooperation in your posts rather than putting up an attitude of "well I like it, so you just have to deal with it and change how you play".

 

[Törnqvist]

Hi! Can someone please explain why my city refuses to grow ("growth restrained")? I have "avoid unhappiness" enabled, but surely there is room for one more population (4 happiness, 3 unhappiness)?

I'm playing the latest version. I know temporary happiness no longer counts when avoiding unhappiness but there is no temporary sources in this city. Also I think I've seen this on previous versions as well.

If I disable "avoid unhappiness", then it would grow to size 3 in the next turn.

EDIT: Okay so I let it grow just to test, and it did indeed become unhappy - "we resent being ruled by a foreign culture" due to the barbarian culture. So this causes more unhappiness with higher population?

 

[RamsesII]

Holy Mary what is this? ... I don't want to encounter that unit during the Middle-Ages for sure...

Spoiler :

 

[AspiringScholar]

Holy Mary what is this? ... I don't want to encounter that unit during the Middle-Ages for sure...

Spoiler :

View attachment 715952

You needn't worry - it only exists in the Crusades scenario!

 

[RamsesII]

Quick update on my Egypt game, huge earth map, Noble difficulty :

- game works perfectly fine, AI turns remain under 10 seconds
- 850AD, 18 cities - conquered Carthage, Nubia, Ethiopia, present day Yemen
- leading all main scoreboard metrics with roughly double yields / score points compared to runner up
- am about half-way through Middle Ages
- founded Solar Cult religion, which has now spread to 4 other civs

I have enjoyed every minute so far, it's been 60hr of amazing gameplay. A few feedbacks:

- the flavour of the mod is just incredible, favouring immersion
- depth and attention to details are (by some margin) superior to the best civ3 mods I knew of (Rhye's, MEM, TAM); the pedia is so accurate and exhaustive
- several gameplay mechanics seem very smart and balanced: for instance both maintenance cost and research scaling with empire size, calling for cautious and timely wide play
- the unit stack logistics concept is great; at one point I was hitting -25% strength malus and it forced me to rethink my attack, splitting my units in separate stacks which made it more challenging
- the civics are varied and probably call for very different "beeline" type of strategies when setting up an economy (for instance I stayed clear of slavery whilst it does seem very strong, but also dangerous)
- I love the depth - again - of the various promotions which make the hell of a difference when warring / I am still mostly picking always the same ones whilst I am sure there are better choices to be made on occasion
- the GUI is dense but very intuitive, it did not take me too long to figure out how it works
- I have noticed a few smart moves from the AI, such as timely counter-attacks or ambushes
- I also love the very long duration, marathon style, and how each era so far has felt almost like an entire game of Civilization
- the difficulty level (up to now!) has been a little underwhelming; had a very good starting location with Egypt, managed to found 4 cities and picked my immediate neighbours in sequence and relatively easily
- (only) one Asian civ tried to challenge my leadership and sent a massive stack... that got obliterated by a fort I had built at about present-day Suez and which was manned by several composite bowmen
- I only had one military failure when my larger army was incapable of taking the Arabian capital Mecca, because of the super strong defense inside it (after its walls had been torn down)

English, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Portuguese and Mayans are dead.

Spoiler Egypt colonizes central Africa :

Spoiler Pharaoh fails to take Mecca :

 

[RamsesII]

You needn't worry - it only exists in the Crusades scenario!

Thank God !

 

[RamsesII]

Hi all,

I have a few "newbie" gameplay related questions to you RI veterans (don't know whether this is the best thread for this):

- I understand separatism/revolution is turned off in the earth map scenarios, right? Can a city still culture-flip and defect to another civ? RNG based?

- when I saw the yields from Manors, I went Serfdom, castles and manors everywhere. It took a while but I have gotten repeated and large peasants uprising, which I have so far quelled but at the expense of significant military resources that are not available to fight expansion wars. I guess this is the normal "hidden cost" for getting the manor's fantastic yields but wanted to check whether any of you had any more advice on this civic and building. And I guess slavery and slave farms are very similar (I had totally ignored them in my game).

- early game I had the impression that there was a hidden cap on GW either my civ or a specific city could build. Does this exist?

- maintenance cost increase with every additional city in the empire. My understanding is that it's a flat increase for all cities with every new city count? So like if I have 10 cities and conquer another one, my maintenance costs increase by 1gpt for each of the original 10 cities + xgpt for that 11th city. Is this roughly how it works?

- same question on tech research increasing costs with empire size. How does the maths work? Linear? A fixed science cost increase per additional city?

- Knights have always been in all other civ games I played, a pretty crucial military unit. I noticed that in RI it can only be built with a certain civic, which comes with other global implications. Can I reasonably expect to run through my game without a single knight or is that a bad idea?

- there are several minor nations (which I understand are non-playable), such as Bantu kingdoms or Portugal, which are not barbarian. They seem to serve little other purpose than limiting other civs extension because of the super strong tribal fort unit. But they don't research much, expand much, trade much and don't seem to be aggressive neither. Am I correct?

- other maps and scenario, in particular Europe map, Crusades and Deluge. Any specific feedback on those? Balanced? Fun? Attention to map details, resources placement, realistic terrain features etc...? That huge earth map I find is amazing in the quality of its geography.

That's all for now !

 

[Ahnarras]

- Yes, cities can still culture-flip even on the world map. When creating a new game, you can also choose to set-up a scenario (on the main screen, solo then last option), and you will there be able to personalize as much as you want a lot of options.

- No limit on the GW, be it in your civ or in a particular city. But they are all Unique building, meaning that if someone manage to complete it before you, it's gone ! If you were mid-construction, you are compensated with a bit of gold though..

- I think maintenance is a bit more complicated than that, as there are some doctrine that raises/reduces that cost. Also, the distance between the capital and a new city is taken in count to determine the price of the maintenance, not just the number of cities. Farther city needs more gold than close one (and I believe that the distance cost is hit by a big malus if you are settling on another continent, but not 100% sure about this one).

- Concerning the minor nations, you are correct. They are only there to slow down expansion and to recreate the feeling of the colonial era.
I don't think they are able to build settlers so they can't expand, there science output is like 10% of a normal civs (and they usually have many cities right from the start of the game, so their economy is a total mess). They are able to trade without restrictions, but they lack the technology to put improvements on their ressources.

I will let the experts answer on the rest

 

[[Y]]

- when I saw the yields from Manors, I went Serfdom, castles and manors everywhere. It took a while but I have gotten repeated and large peasants uprising, which I have so far quelled but at the expense of significant military resources that are not available to fight expansion wars. I guess this is the normal "hidden cost" for getting the manor's fantastic yields but wanted to check whether any of you had any more advice on this civic and building. And I guess slavery and slave farms are very similar (I had totally ignored them in my game).

For classical era rebels, skirmishers can do a pretty good job of taking care of them. In medieval, cavalry is probably better, but I very rarely take Serfdom unless I really need the growth from that food, so I'm not the best source of information here.

- maintenance cost increase with every additional city in the empire. My understanding is that it's a flat increase for all cities with every new city count? So like if I have 10 cities and conquer another one, my maintenance costs increase by 1gpt for each of the original 10 cities + xgpt for that 11th city. Is this roughly how it works?

For number-of-cities maintenance, yeah, pretty much that. It's usually not a whole 1 gold for city, though, and civics can increase or decrease the value. Civ 4 is very economy oriented, moreso than later Civs (and possibly earlier, but I haven't played those), so always keep an eye on your income levels, and try to be ahead on the curve on cost increases. It's harder to come back after falling behind than it is to get ahead then suffer a setback.

- same question on tech research increasing costs with empire size. How does the maths work? Linear? A fixed science cost increase per additional city?

I think it's +10% research cost per city, but I don't remember exactly.

- Knights have always been in all other civ games I played, a pretty crucial military unit. I noticed that in RI it can only be built with a certain civic, which comes with other global implications. Can I reasonably expect to run through my game without a single knight or is that a bad idea?

You can. I don't think I've ever built a knight, not even once.

- there are several minor nations (which I understand are non-playable), such as Bantu kingdoms or Portugal, which are not barbarian. They seem to serve little other purpose than limiting other civs extension because of the super strong tribal fort unit. But they don't research much, expand much, trade much and don't seem to be aggressive neither. Am I correct?

@Ahnarras did a good job of answering the question, but I'm not sure about the settler part. I remember at some point they had settlers, but their settles only unlocked at medieval or later techs, so they couldn't expand until those times. But I don't know if that's changed after adding the revolutions component/barbarian settling and derivative civ.

 

[RamsesII]

@Ahnarras , @[Y] : thanks a lot for the responses and advices.

No serfdom really? in most of my large cities, Manors yield food, hammers, science, culture and gold, like sometimes +10 yields of all types just through one building, which I found quite amazing. May I ask why you never go serfdom? because of the other global parameters of the civic? what about slavery earlier?

+10% science cost for each extra city is really a lot. Right now, about mid-point of MA, tech cost must be around 6,000 SC, my empire's science output is around 600 SC per turn. So essentially with every city I conquer, each science tech takes one more turn to discover. That is quite a lot, more crippling than the gold impact I find.

 

[[Y]]

No serfdom really? in most of my large cities, Manors yield food, hammers, science, culture and gold, like sometimes +10 yields of all types just through one building, which I found quite amazing. May I ask why you never go serfdom? because of the other global parameters of the civic? what about slavery earlier?

I tend to build my empires with a big focus on commerce and trade routes, so City Rights and the civic it unlocks have a lot to offer me. I prioritize getting there fast, especially to have a better chance at building the wonder it unlocks. So in practice that means I either get City Rights before I even access Serfdom, or the window between accessing serfdom and getting city rights is so small, that it's not worth switching to it and building manors which will soon be obsoleted.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Very lively here; I won't interject much and will generally leave you all to it. I'm aiming to release 3.71 by the month's end.

I'd appreciate it if there was more cooperation in your posts rather than putting up an attitude of "well I like it, so you just have to deal with it and change how you play".

I must second this - quite a heated exchange, which is surprising to me especially since a) most of you have been here for quite a while already and b) I already commented that I didn't really like the early tech balance myself and would make the ancient era somewhat cheaper, while classical somewhat more expensive.

EDIT: Okay so I let it grow just to test, and it did indeed become unhappy - "we resent being ruled by a foreign culture" due to the barbarian culture. So this causes more unhappiness with higher population?

Probably rounding down to zero before and up to one after.

- early game I had the impression that there was a hidden cap on GW either my civ or a specific city could build. Does this exist?

To add to what others posted, there is one notable exception - you can only have one Great Work of Science per city per scientific era (not quite equal to game era, but similar - the "sets" of great works unlock once per era early on, and then twice per era starting with Renaissance).

- Knights have always been in all other civ games I played, a pretty crucial military unit. I noticed that in RI it can only be built with a certain civic, which comes with other global implications. Can I reasonably expect to run through my game without a single knight or is that a bad idea?

I'd say cavalry in general is something that is nice to have but not 100% critical unless you're supposed to be very cavalry-focused, like Mongols. Also, Conqueror trait allows one to circumvent the restriction on Knights if one absolutely must have them. Bear in mind also that while all civs' unit trees follow the same general layout, not all unit classes are available to all civs (as Egypt, for instance, you won't have longbowmen or pistoleers).

- other maps and scenario, in particular Europe map, Crusades and Deluge. Any specific feedback on those? Balanced? Fun? Attention to map details, resources placement, realistic terrain features etc...? That huge earth map I find is amazing in the quality of its geography.

I would personally recommend trying some random maps. There are some bundled random map generators that produce very nice geographies.

+10% science cost for each extra city is really a lot. Right now, about mid-point of MA, tech cost must be around 6,000 SC, my empire's science output is around 600 SC per turn. So essentially with every city I conquer, each science tech takes one more turn to discover. That is quite a lot, more crippling than the gold impact I find.

It's not as much as it seems. One has to remember that each new "column" of technologies costs from 10% to 40% more than the previous one, so a 10% increase is not that big in the grand scheme of things. Due to how resources and cities work in Civ 4, the benefits of a new city are more often than not multiplicative in nature, being not just the output of the city itself, but also the benefits it "brings to the table" for all the other cities in a civ.

I tend to build my empires with a big focus on commerce and trade routes, so City Rights and the civic it unlocks have a lot to offer me. I prioritize getting there fast, especially to have a better chance at building the wonder it unlocks. So in practice that means I either get City Rights before I even access Serfdom, or the window between accessing serfdom and getting city rights is so small, that it's not worth switching to it and building manors which will soon be obsoleted.

Always cool to read how vastly different people's viable strategies can be. I personally am 100% serfdom guy, beelining to it and switching ASAP.

Edit: a question to all anyone who tried out multiplayer, especially with more than two human players - any issues? Do you go OOS a lot? What did you use to set up multiplayer?

 

[RamsesII]

I tend to build my empires with a big focus on commerce and trade routes, so City Rights and the civic it unlocks have a lot to offer me. I prioritize getting there fast, especially to have a better chance at building the wonder it unlocks. So in practice that means I either get City Rights before I even access Serfdom, or the window between accessing serfdom and getting city rights is so small, that it's not worth switching to it and building manors which will soon be obsoleted.

Thanks, makes sense. If I may press on... how important are cottages in this strategy? do you typically build them on plots with a resource in lieu of building that resource's improvement? I was surprised, unlike other civ games I played before, how some of those resource improvements bring low yields, or at least at first before more yields are unlocked later.

 

[RamsesII]

@Walter Hawkwood : thanks for the explanations. Just a few things :

- I did train (just recently in fact) longbowmen as Egypt, you must be referring to a different unit?

- I will try random maps, it's just that I find so much pleasure in role-playing, what you described so eloquently in your manual as the "feeling of realism" / well I guess for me that feeling is increased with real geography, I push it to the point that I always rename a conquered city to that of a historical or current town in the area (as you may have noticed in my screenshots)

- got it on the science; I need to better understand what you said, ie the mulitplier effect to an entire empire of one resource hooked up to a single city (obvious to me for strategic resources but less for the rest)

Anyway I will dive back in my game

 

[AspiringScholar]

Edit: a question to all anyone who tried out multiplayer, especially with more than two human players - any issues? Do you go OOS a lot? What did you use to set up multiplayer?

I meant to reply to it earlier, but it's a shame about the water. Surely I wasn't the first to have that thought about modding Colonization's beautiful water in, though...

As to multiplayer, I've only been playing with one other player via DirectIP, but it's been quite stable. There was one OOS I got, and unhelpfully I cannot remember if that was pre or post 3.7. @Sinocpm, do you remember this one from about a month ago, and which version of the game it was in?