I feel that's an oversimplification / too modern take on things. The amount of bigotry towards "barbarians" was roughly constant throughout the entire Roman timeline, and that was one of the major drivers for the latinisation of the population - people in the provinces who wanted to advance in life had to take up Latin (or Greek in the East) cultural mannerisms. The problem with this approach, obviously, is that it cannot rapidly accommodate rapid change in social makeup. So it did indeed create a lot of internal tension with integrating a large number of new peoples, but even then, examples like Stilicho don't actually allow us to properly gauge how much of the rejection was driven by bigotry - and how much in his case by being objectively bad at what he did. If anything, his example is a hallmark of how high someone with Germanic origins could reach in the West despite their origins.
I see your example of Eastern Rome assimilating the slavs over the centuries is very valid, I see a crucial episode of where anti-German bias doomed the Western Rome (and let's not forget originally Eastern Rome treated the Visigoths horribly too):
In the early 5th century, the Western Roman Empire faced severe threats both internally and from external groups. At this time, the emperor was Honorius, who reigned from 395 to 423 CE. Known for his weakness and heavy reliance on advisors, Honorius ruled mostly from Ravenna, a city chosen for its strategic defensibility rather than its connection to the empire’s heart in Rome. Meanwhile, the Visigothic king Alaric, a formidable military leader, sought to secure a stable future for his people through negotiation rather than destruction.
Before the Sack of Rome in 410 CE, Alaric made repeated attempts to come to terms with the Roman authorities. One of his most significant peace proposals included a request for subsidies in gold and grain to support his followers, an official Roman military command (the rank of
magister militum), and the right to settle his people on lands within the empire, potentially in Italy or Gaul. These demands were moderate and pragmatic, reflecting Alaric’s desire to integrate the Visigoths into Roman society as federated allies rather than to destroy the empire’s core.
The Roman Senate, deeply aware of the city’s vulnerability and suffering, strongly supported accepting Alaric’s terms. At the time, Rome was experiencing severe famine as a result of the ongoing siege, and morale among the population had plummeted. Many senators believed that agreeing to Alaric’s demands was a reasonable price to pay to avoid the devastation of the city and the loss of countless lives.
However, ultimate power did not rest with the Senate but with Emperor Honorius. The emperor was heavily influenced by his principal advisor and general, Flavius Olympius. Olympius harbored strong anti-Germanic sentiments and distrusted so-called "barbarians" profoundly. Guided by these biases, he persuaded Honorius to reject Alaric’s peace offer, arguing that granting a military command and settlement rights to a Gothic leader would undermine Roman sovereignty and dishonor the empire’s traditions.
With negotiations finally broken off, Alaric resumed his siege of Rome. On August 24, 410 CE, the Visigoths entered and sacked the city. This catastrophic event marked the first time in nearly 800 years that Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy, delivering a profound psychological blow to the Roman world and signaling the accelerating decline of the Western Roman Empire.
I think it's safe to say that "classic" Civ in its design peaked in Civ 4.
Very safe to say. I would go further, that while Civ IV is peak Civ, Realism is peak Civ IV
That's a good point. I could never really get into the Civ 5+ style of things. I think it's safe to say that "classic" Civ in its design peaked in Civ 4.
The 1 UPT being so weird is also a side effect of the reduced scale. 1 UPT on Civ3 sized maps would work a lot better than 1 UPT on Civ 5-7 sized maps. (Though ideally you need even more tiles, far more probably.) Had such great hope for hexes vs squares and how the latter favour diagonal movement, but in the end hex-movement is just weird in its own way, with "straight" movement in some directions being more equal to a snaking pattern.
I'm actually thinking back... I remember one of my bigger gripes when starting to play Civ 4 was how the "traits" were no longer a civilisation thing, but now attached to leaders. Never liked this focus on persons over the more grand and abstract civilisations when it came to this stuff. It's undoubtedly good for gameplay, though, allowing this great mix and match of civs and (leader-) traits.
This is why I appreciate Realism so much, adding flavor to all the civilizations. No easy feat for sure!
My biggest gripe with Civ V was the 1 UPT. I always played with mods that allow me to stack. To me Civ V already felt too much like a gameboard compared to Civ IV, but I still enjoyed for what it was. I did appreciate its stunning graphics. While Civ VI, the graphics really turned me off and it went to far for me in the gameboard style. From what I heard, Civ VII only continues this trend.
None that I know of. The fundamental problem (or rather one of the problems) with World Maps is as you described - trying to squeeze a dozen of civs into a rather small part of the map.
I saw that reported before (by you?), so that should be much better in the recent SVN revisions. From what I see in hands-offs, AI consistently includes more siege units in their city attack stacks.
The siege issue was originally reported by me for my Triassic game.
Glad that improvements have been made on it already
Makes me wonder how different my game would have gone
The funny thing all the whining and crying over "this isn't Civ" because of changes to the gameplay in Civ 7 -- gameplay changes that have become de rigueur since Civ 3 -- apply as much to Realism Invictus as it does to Civ VII.
Banish the heretic. Civ IV is pure civ. Realism is the very purity of Civ IV.
Don't get me wrong though, I had plenty of enjoyable games on Civ V
Or perhaps the Jurassic (Triassic ?) map ? Does it have the same problem as the world map, or are the Civ starting position more spaced out (and is the map overloaded in ressources too, or normal amount ?)
I've been enjoying my Triassic game. I think there's more room for civs to spread out but at the same time harder for a situation where one civ just gets very large. Basically, they all have rivals to contend with. At least from playthrough, I needed the extra resources to trade for some luxury resources to keep my 20+ pop cities happy (and I'm in Medieval times!!!). So, you won't have access to all the resources, even with 20+ cities. Give it a try! Quite fun! Maybe Walter should make a scenario for the Triassic era...
Now that you say it, I may have already spoken of that point a few weeks earlier, my bad !
Don't feel bad! I reported it too where there where 1000 years wars over one city.
No particularly thought provoking ideas. Mostly was thinking about two things:
- More niche bonuses. Right now most bonuses are just +% STR and +X First Strike/Chances. It would be nice if spearmen and pikemen provided a bonus against mounted units, etc. This helps alleviate the "aid outdoes stack penalties" problem, since it would reduce the general STR bonuses from melee and cavalry units, which are the cause of that problem, and add more situational aid, which you might not want in that particular stack.
- Units that provided unique bonuses. There's some of that at the moment, with national units that provide fear or inspiration, but there's a lot of room for national units or limited units that provide specific or interesting bonuses. For example, the Gulyay Gorod, instead of being a unit that defends strong itself, can be a unit that provides a defense bonus aid and immunity to first strikes aid. Helepolis, instead of having massive bonuses to city attack, can give units 5% collateral damage when attacking cities (if it's possible to limit it in that way--I don't think I've actually seen that before). I don't actually think these would be good examples to follow through on, but they're practical illustrations of what I mean.
If you get the chance, check out the new Carthaginean city the world builder, or with spies, to see what it has. AI is very good as using artists and great artists to push culture. It's very likely Elissa settled a great artist there. I usually see this happen once or twice a game.
It would certainly be nice if vassal civs considered the power ratio and threat of war when deciding whether or not to end the vassalage. Typically in my games there's a civ abandoning one master civ in favor of another every turn. Makes the whole system feel very inconsequential. But that's more a vanilla problem than RI, I think.
Funnily enough, I recently put that back in for my local RI.
Or rather, I thought I did. But what I actually downloaded, from Christopher Tin's own website, were the "Rehearsal Instructions" for Mado. So when I started RI, the main menu soundtrack was an audio recording of Japanese rehearsal instructions
Been a busy few weeks and I haven't played RI in a bit, and I don't think I'm returning to my previous game. It was the first time I've hit the industrial era in a
long time, so I thought I'd share my thoughts. Bear in mind that my impressions might change with repeated play and these are just initial impressions ("initial" in that I may have deeper impressions
if I get to this stage again, which a poor bet
)
My most dominant thought throughout the late renaissance and the early industrial was that it felt like I had a lot of homework. Stuff I had to do for the sake of doing, not for the sake of gameplay or enjoyment. Although accessing new resources like clothes and steel, it largely felt like I was just playing a game of upkeep. I researched Bessemer Converter! Now I get to build the Foundry, something that's a slight improvement on the blast furnace. I researched Labor Movement! Now I get to build something that's a slight improvement on the Print Shop. I researched Civil Industry! Now I get to build something that's a slight improvement over the Trading Post. None of these upgrades make for interesting gameplay. Upgrading to the new building is just a chore.
In general, it felt like this stage of the game was largely just "do more of what you've been doing". Entering into the industrial gives you more happiness resources/buildings and more food with mechanized farms, but the gameplay is still the same, you're just hitting bigger numbers. There's nothing that really changes the shape of the game or makes you feel like you're entering into a new phase of history. Just art upgrades that cost hammers.
For comparison, earlier eras all have elements that will reshape the game or open up new avenues of play. Trade opening up in the mid/late ancient era, expanding your borders in classical, chopping down jungles, discovering gems and iron, initial wars of expansion, exploring the ocean and finding new continents/islands, being able to settle and trade across the ocean... All of these have an exciting element where they shape things about your gameplay that were previously unavailable.
But there isn't much of that in the later game. New resources like oil and bauxite are revealed, but they don't have the impact of earlier resources. Iron is revealed at a time where you might only have 5 cities with 5 population each, and getting +3
hammers to a tile or two in your empire is a big difference. And if it's not in your empire, it's probabyl in a place you can settle. That's interesting and fun! Bauxite is revealed at a time where you may have 15-20 cities with 15-20 population. The production bonuses from the tile and Foundry are more fun fact than interesting and fun. And if it's not in your empire, you have to go to war for it... which means the game will slow to a crawl with all the unit management and combat animations, and those are on top of the already lengthened time between turns.
I know that a lot of that is just the nature of Civ 4, but it feels like RI's content in the late game exaggerates what Civ4 introduced. The industrial is already a very long time period with more techs than any other era, and it has the least to offer for it. If that's unavoidable, then there's a big part of me that would rather do away with all the ceremony of upgrading buildings and incremental boosts and just automatically get access to the benefits so that I can concentrate my time and energy onto the aspects of the game that are more engaging.
For the sake of not turning this into a novel, here's what else I took notes on during the game, in plain, unelaborated note form:
- Consistent happiness too abundant
- Every happiness early on is a win
- Later on it’s an “oh that’s nice”
- happiness gain outweighs growth gain
- Buildings that provide happiness don’t obsolete until way after discontinued
- More buildings going obsolete earlier on and requiring replacements puts more pressure on building choices and priorities
- Feels like doing a Windows update rather than sustaining an empire
- Could be more interesting if there were more ephemeral happiness bonuses that vanished after an era or two, and fewere consistent sources of happiness, requiring constant look out for next sources of happiness
- Buildings like Bread and Circuses
- Temporary tradable resource generation (eg glasswork if glasswork only lasted 200 turns)
- Allows different civs to have the resource throughout the game
- Encourages more trade and diplomacy connections
- Resources that obsolete fast (like Whales, which currently aren’t worth it, but would be if there were much fewer happiness resources and knowledge that there would be more temp resource later).
Opportunity to remove the unhappiness/unhealthiness from era progression and instead obsolete baseline happiness resources as they become normalized by society through tech research.
Interesting, though in my Medieval Triassic Egyptian sprawling empire where I have many 20+ pop cities in medieval times, my cities are LITERALLY hanging on by luxury resources, with a few I have from trade. Though, I realize that is probably an extreme example given my empire, I imagine many players have cities that don't approach those numbers, so managing their happiness is much easier. Any potential solutions I think of, makes me thing how the AI will handle it? For example, civ changes in theory should actually cause much more disruption since you are literally changing how the nation and society are run, but AI would collapse itself with that mechanic. Maybe factories and similar buildings should add unhappiness since historically the movement of people from the countryside to the cites was very stressful. Huge increase in anxiety is reported in diaries.
Really puts you into perspective what being the leader of a nation feels like today doesn't it?
Doubly so with AI, robotics, and biotechnology all coming to a head now. How industries will be revolutionized, but society as well. We'll have many growing pains for sure. I think world leaders should play a game of civ iv realism to help prepare themselves.
Oh I get it now, this is very interesting to think about. Devolution right? Like a crisis... How do you figure this would work in the game? This sounds like a very good idea but I can't imagine it. It would be very fun to see a highly advanced society slowly revert into a minor power with an outdated lifestyle because of the own player actions. You can already do that ingame, but it's not well understated or varied enough to feel like an actual mechanic. Sometimes it feels like the only thing that can beat you is the strongest enemy civs, when in reality, it's nobody but your own failure to succeed.
I think this is why I like Realism so much, each era requires different mastery. In the military sense, what unit types dominates continuously fluctuates. Even non military affairs in how to run your country changes. For example, my Egyptian empire in Triassic is a behemoth. However, I am about to enter the renaissance, but my empire very much runs as a classical empire. Very reliant on a large priest class that lives off my huge farm surplus. I couldn't even adopt feudal aristocracy since I needed plutocracy to keep my budget from collapsing. I wonder if my society will delvolve in the later eras?
Interestingly, Walter working on adding noble families for feudal aristocracy has me very excited. I think the more the eras are fleshed out the better. Where one empire has a really good setup in one era may not fare so well in the next.
maybe your ideas are revolutionary and I'm looking down on them just because of how foreign they seem to me.
I'm sure you're right about that last statement. But how did something like developing a mod, which takes a lot of effort, managed to turn into an exciting activity instead of feeling like a shore? Many mods are abandoned by their authors simply because they eventually lose motivation, but it doesn't seem like you have ever done so, maybe you have indeed done so in the past, yet you're still here kicking.
I haven't seen it happen in New World (as I haven't played since 2024 
It's been about 20 years? I hate to say it, but it is time to add the next military shift. For too long, have we grown to comfortable in maxing out at the end with our tanks, jet planes, and aircraft carriers. We are use to having mobility. We are use to industrialized symmetrical warfare that came about due to industrialization. What the last two years have shown us that we are now entering the age of the DRONE. Asymmetrical warfare is being industrialized before our very eyes, which will change everything.
) After all, Ukraine has ushered in this new age of warfare and they are the leaders in it.
from the capital being generated every turn from turn 1. It takes a while to undo that.
Having a dissenting opinion is not a crime here, whether one agrees or disagrees with the person in question. Sorry if I sound abrupt, but I'm seeing a real decline in people's ability to disagree in a civil manner, especially in the last decade, and I would much rather not have that here.
doesn't seems to behave like that.
)
Thanks Walt. I'll subscribe ASAP.
and hell even some new games reject this stuff, good devs.
