Realism Invictus

[Ahnarras]

Hello again ! It's bug report time, once again I'm still on the same, old SVN game, so perhaps those are already corrected, but just in case :

- One of the Slaves Rebels from Medieval Time (the S6 Levy) seems to have some trouble with spearholding. Pointy side is going backward.
It's only the guy with the spear, and, fun fact, it's only when he is in the middle of the formation. When he is on the side, he is holdwing is weapon all fine.

Spoiler :

- When trading ressources with another Civ, and he's coming back to announce that he will cancel the trade, there is an option to negociate.
Weirdly enough, while doing so, I'm sometime unable to "take out" some of the ressources on my side. Like, for exemple, I was trading Masonnerie Materials & Fish against something, I go to renegociate, I can click on Fish and it will be taken out of the deal, but clicking on Masonnery Materials does nothing and the ressource seems to be stuck in the trade window. The only way I found to correct it is to completly exit the trade and go back on the "welcome screen" of the diplomacy and launch a new trade from the start, and you can then click and unclick on the ressource to put it in/out of the deal as normal. I've attached a saved to demonstrate, just click next turn and Cyrus should pop up for trade.

- Not sure if a bug or just a weird gameplay thingy, but I found a difference of behaviour between AI vassals and my own vassals. To give an exemple, let's say that Attila is at war with Elizabeth :
If I decide to accept him as a Vassal, that will autolaunch a war between me and the english.
If Jules Cesar decide to vassalize Attila, the same won't happens. Instead, the war between Attila and Elizabeth will immediatly ends with a peace treaty.

It only seems to happens on the Civ already at war with the vassal. If me (or Cesar) is at war with another Civ, when Attila joins, he will correctly be put at war with that Civ in both case.

Until next time !

 

[[Y]]

- When trading ressources with another Civ, and he's coming back to announce that he will cancel the trade, there is an option to negociate.
Weirdly enough, while doing so, I'm sometime unable to "take out" some of the ressources on my side. Like, for exemple, I was trading Masonnerie Materials & Fish against something, I go to renegociate, I can click on Fish and it will be taken out of the deal, but clicking on Masonnery Materials does nothing and the ressource seems to be stuck in the trade window. The only way I found to correct it is to completly exit the trade and go back on the "welcome screen" of the diplomacy and launch a new trade from the start, and you can then click and unclick on the ressource to put it in/out of the deal as normal. I've attached a saved to demonstrate, just click next turn and Cyrus should pop up for trade.

That's how it's always been, I think. Since you're "negotiation" an existing deal, it's limiting you to the resources you were trading. It's a nearly useless functionality, but exiting and starting a new trade is easy enough.

- Not sure if a bug or just a weird gameplay thingy, but I found a difference of behaviour between AI vassals and my own vassals. To give an exemple, let's say that Attila is at war with Elizabeth :
If I decide to accept him as a Vassal, that will autolaunch a war between me and the english.
If Jules Cesar decide to vassalize Attila, the same won't happens. Instead, the war between Attila and Elizabeth will immediatly ends with a peace treaty.

It only seems to happens on the Civ already at war with the vassal. If me (or Cesar) is at war with another Civ, when Attila joins, he will correctly be put at war with that Civ in both case.

Are you sure it's not that Caesar is entering the war and immediately signing a peace treaty with Elizabeth? A lot can happen during the AI's turn, so could be worth checking logs to see if there's a fuller story. I'll keep an eye out in my own games too to see if I have the same behavior.

 

[Noyyau]

- When trading ressources with another Civ, and he's coming back to announce that he will cancel the trade, there is an option to negociate.
Weirdly enough, while doing so, I'm sometime unable to "take out" some of the ressources on my side. Like, for exemple, I was trading Masonnerie Materials & Fish against something, I go to renegociate, I can click on Fish and it will be taken out of the deal, but clicking on Masonnery Materials does nothing and the ressource seems to be stuck in the trade window. The only way I found to correct it is to completly exit the trade and go back on the "welcome screen" of the diplomacy and launch a new trade from the start, and you can then click and unclick on the ressource to put it in/out of the deal as normal. I've attached a saved to demonstrate, just click next turn and Cyrus should pop up for trade.

Vanilla behaviour, you should also see a "clear table" button in the lower part of the lower squares with the resources being negotiated, that, as it says, will clear the negotiation, without the need to exit the trade screen.

 

[Kathy]

In wonder, if the roman ballista works properly in game in your mod, because when I added it to my mod, it always crashed the game when I did a test and let it attack another unit.
It is a problem I had with one of my units, too, because of an error with missing nodes, which still remain in the string pallet of the attack animations.

 

[RezerCuid]

In RL, there is a setting called "Per city research cost," and it's time to upgrade it. For example, let's take 10% for each city and reduce the percentage with each new city.
2 - 10%
3 - 9%
4 - 8%
5 - 7%
6 - 6%
7 and next - 5%.

If it is 8%, then
2 - 8%
3 - 7%
4 - 6%
5 - 5%
6 and next - 4%

This is half the original amount. This is because large empires are lagging behind.

 

[Ahnarras]

Are you sure it's not that Caesar is entering the war and immediately signing a peace treaty with Elizabeth? A lot can happen during the AI's turn, so could be worth checking logs to see if there's a fuller story. I'll keep an eye out in my own games too to see if I have the same behavior.

But shouldn't he have a ~10 turns of "I don't wanna talk to you right now" from Elizabeth for declaring the war ? At least that's what I'm facing when I vassalized someone and am autoput in a war because of that.
And I don't received the pop-up saying the master and the opponent Civ even start the war, or sign a peace between them. Only that the new vassal and his former ennemy do peace.

Also I gived this exemple but the behaviour was consistent for my whole game : AI vassalize X, X was in war with Y, AI doesn't declare war at all against Y and instead X and Y go for peace immediatly.

That's how it's always been, I think. Since you're "negotiation" an existing deal, it's limiting you to the resources you were trading. It's a nearly useless functionality, but exiting and starting a new trade is easy enough.

Oki, I didn't remember seeing that before but as you and Noyyau said, it's not a big problem anyways.

This is half the original amount. This is because large empires are lagging behind.

Are you in Medieval times ? I noticed big empire lagging behind during Medieval Era, between all the wars and few opportunities to make their big empire useful.
As soon as I hit Astronomy & Banking, my 13 cities strong empire really launched and the gap is becoming bigger each turns. Same for every other big empires : the more they progress into the Renaissance tech, the faster they go, and I start to noticed how smaller empire are really starting to lag behind (and being conquerred, as the gap between Infantry of the Line and the previous medieval units is quite huge).

 

[giorgio1234]

Hi @Walter Hawkwood ,
in the attached savegame (SVN version, revision 5502), it's possible to build the national unit cho-ko-nu beyond the 6 allowed.
I don't know if there's any building or civic that allows that, but I haven't found any.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I tried a casual random map game with switchable leaders until late classical as Dravidia, and 1 turn before the middle ages I saved so I could go for the financial, humanist and progressive leader each after the tech completion. (I think it might be the only civ that has all 3 of these traits separate without a counteracting negative trait on those leaders, e.g. isolationist.) Also deliberately did not go for colossus since it'd skew the results.
I did not build for any particular strategy and at this point had basically no hamlets or villages, just casually cruising along unfocused.
None of those traits: 402 research/turn
Progressive: 414 research/turn
Financial and humanist: both 425 research/turn
(All at 100% research spending for the comparison, every other fraction favours the non-progressive results in comparison)
This definitely raised my opinion of humanist, since it works from turn 1 and outperforms progressive and can for the early game keep up with financial, but I also know that had I played for the financial trait from the start I'd have a lot more money tiles and probably more income as well.

Thanks, that's a very informative test! I will definitely consider its implications, and will probably run a couple of my own tests.

Will Himeji castle be disabled in "no vassal state" games?

Yes, obviously, as it's meaningless there.

Although, now with constitutional monarchy, there really is no point for a mid-late game autocracy at all. (I thought that the distinction between "autocracy" and "monarchy" was that already, that "autocracy" is an absolute monarchy while "monarchy" is more a constitutional monarchy.)

Well, Autocracy kind of cedes its role to Dictatorship around that time, so this is intentional.

I created my own separatist script in Python — it took me two days to get it just the way I wanted.

Good for you!

- One of the Slaves Rebels from Medieval Time (the S6 Levy) seems to have some trouble with spearholding. Pointy side is going backward.
It's only the guy with the spear, and, fun fact, it's only when he is in the middle of the formation. When he is on the side, he is holdwing is weapon all fine.

Thanks, I fixed it (and a couple of other units that behaved the same way).

- When trading ressources with another Civ, and he's coming back to announce that he will cancel the trade, there is an option to negociate.
Weirdly enough, while doing so, I'm sometime unable to "take out" some of the ressources on my side. Like, for exemple, I was trading Masonnerie Materials & Fish against something, I go to renegociate, I can click on Fish and it will be taken out of the deal, but clicking on Masonnery Materials does nothing and the ressource seems to be stuck in the trade window. The only way I found to correct it is to completly exit the trade and go back on the "welcome screen" of the diplomacy and launch a new trade from the start, and you can then click and unclick on the ressource to put it in/out of the deal as normal. I've attached a saved to demonstrate, just click next turn and Cyrus should pop up for trade.

As others pointed out, I believe it's vanilla behaviour.

- Not sure if a bug or just a weird gameplay thingy, but I found a difference of behaviour between AI vassals and my own vassals. To give an exemple, let's say that Attila is at war with Elizabeth :
If I decide to accept him as a Vassal, that will autolaunch a war between me and the english.
If Jules Cesar decide to vassalize Attila, the same won't happens. Instead, the war between Attila and Elizabeth will immediatly ends with a peace treaty.

Diplomacy is the single most asymmetrical mechanic in Civ 4 when it comes to humans vs AI, so I'm not surprised in the slightest.

In wonder, if the roman ballista works properly in game in your mod, because when I added it to my mod, it always crashed the game when I did a test and let it attack another unit.
It is a problem I had with one of my units, too, because of an error with missing nodes, which still remain in the string pallet of the attack animations.

It most certainly does in RI (and would have been reported by players long ago if it were problematic). One caveat though is that it is a purely ranged unit in RI, so it never gets to attack in the traditional Civ 4 way - so that's probably what you're getting with it.

and it's time to upgrade it

It's time for anything RI-related when I decide it's time.

in the attached savegame (SVN version, revision 5502), it's possible to build the national unit cho-ko-nu beyond the 6 allowed.
I don't know if there's any building or civic that allows that, but I haven't found any.

You wouldn't be able to build more than 6; it was queueing more than 6 that was allowed. But seeing how it was confusing for the players, I fixed it to work the same as with other limited units, where you can't queue more than you can build (I could actually see the merit of queueing more than possible to build - you could simply queue two cities to build all 6, for instance, and never worry about their relative production - they would build a total of 6 no matter how many which city did, without you having to micromanage it manually).

 

[RezerCuid]

None of those traits: 402 research/turn
Progressive: 414 research/turn
Financial and humanist: both 425 research/turn

Where did you get 400 science from, after 5 years of playing and dozens of games, I've never had more than 220 at 60-70%, at the end of the classic era.
HOW!?

 

[RezerCuid]

I created my own separatist script in Python — it took me two days to get it just the way I wanted.

Please share it

 

[globosud]

Please share it

The system is still in the testing phase. My separatism system seems to be working well and doesn’t cause any slowdowns. This system activates around the middle of the medieval era; before that, everything remains as it is now. To improve balance even further, I created two types of High Council: with 1 to 3 cities, you get specific economic, military, and technological bonuses (and more), along with a special promotion that activates for all units — a sort of 'call to arms'. From 4 to 7 cities, the previous bonuses are deactivated, a different palace with fewer bonuses becomes active, and the promotion is replaced with a lighter version. From 8 cities onward, everything returns to normal — all bonuses and boosts are lost.
The goal is to make small civilizations, even if weaker in numbers, stronger in terms of technology and economy. The Python script is fully modular, has no nested loops, and is highly optimized. Once I’ve tested it thoroughly, I’ll consider making it public.Right now, I’m working on a Python script that applies a high diplomatic penalty to players who expand too much, scaling based on their growth. This way, attacking smaller civilizations won’t always be the best choice anymore."The A.I., which now doesn’t focus solely on conquest, will be on par with those that tend to expansion.All civilizations, as they get conquered, become more focused and have strengthened defenses. Sure, they can still disappear like now, but they will put up a tough fight and can even rise again, thanks to bonuses that disappear only after the seventh city."

 

[giorgio1234]

You wouldn't be able to build more than 6; it was queueing more than 6 that was allowed. But seeing how it was confusing for the players, I fixed it to work the same as with other limited units, where you can't queue more than you can build (I could actually see the merit of queueing more than possible to build - you could simply queue two cities to build all 6, for instance, and never worry about their relative production - they would build a total of 6 no matter how many which city did, without you having to micromanage it manually).

Sorry, I have not understood.
You're right, I tried it and units can be queued beyond the allowed limit, but they can't really be built; excess ones are converted into money.
But you also said you removed this feature, but in the savegame of the previous message units can still be queued beyond the limit.
Or did I misunderstand what you said?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Sorry, I have not understood.
You're right, I tried it and units can be queued beyond the allowed limit, but they can't really be built; excess ones are converted into money.
But you also said you removed this feature, but in the savegame of the previous message units can still be queued beyond the limit.
Or did I misunderstand what you said?

I removed it in the SVN revision I uploaded this morning. I think this one is actually save-compatible to the previous one, so you can update your SVN, test it with the same save and see the difference.

 

[[Y]]

Is the Turkish national improvement, the Timar, supposed to be (almost) strictly better than a standard farm? A farm has no natural food generation and gets +1 from irrigation, Irrigation Systems, and Iron Working. The timar starts at +2 and gets an additional +1 from Land Tenure, matching the farm's output, while also getting +1 from ekibi (Turkish stables). On top of that, the timar can be built on top of hills, doesn't require irrigation, is boosted by Pastoral Nomadism while farms have less output under PN, and gives +5% defense (though that can act against you, too). For an improvement meant to replace windmills, it sure does an amazing job outperforming the farm!

The farm only gets the food advantage if the city has a manor or monastic order, both of which require adopting a specific civic and constructing a civic-related building. The Timar feels crazy good compared to the other spammable national improvements. The Anden, Olive Grove, and Highland Pasture require hills, the Fortified Monastery requires hills along with Monasticism to really shine, the Cattle Trek and Grazing Ground depend on Pastoral Nomadism to be of any real use, the lovischche requries forests, the pet kot, jungles, and the various national farms require flatlands. But the timar can be built on low or highlands, without irrigation, doesn't depend on any civics, and matches or excedes the food output of all contemporary improvements. Farms only outyield it for food (total yield is still on par, I believe, due to the timar's hammer bonus) while running specific civics, and the windmill only outyields it in the rennaisance.

That's a strong national improvement!

 

[Prester John 2]

After years of playing Civ5 and Civ6, being aghast of what Civ7 was turned into, I finally came back to RI which is the pinnacle of what Civilization can become and was destined to become.

 

[[Y]]

Thoughts on the 5% bonus after playing an Ataturk game to early/mid Medieval period:

It's... very meh. It's generating about 25 per turn. I'm currently on turn 691, 463AD, with a total income of 305 gold per turn. By happenstance I'm getting these numbers the turn after I finished researching Borough Rights and obsoleted the Great Lighthouse. After loading the most recent autosave to factor in the world wonder, I'm seeing 30 per turn and a total income of 333.

To try to measure it more objectively, I decided to look at it as a free bump up on the research scale, and to assign it a gold value equal to the the amount of gold that bump up would cost. At the moment (on the save with the Great Lighthouse in effect), a bump up is about 24 gold. So rather than thinking of Progressive as giving me 5% research, I'm going to think of it as giving me 25 gold per turn. I loaded the turn 1 autosave for this game and it has a gold value of 0.5, meaning humanist is better here.

For comparison, my civic upkeep is 107. If I had Legislator, I would be getting 53 gold per turn, which can be converted into +10%. I have 8 coastal cities and the average trade route is 4 gold, so seafarer would be giving me 32 commerce per turn. I have 19 tiles with 3+ commerce being actively worked, so Financial would give me 19 extra commerce (less if I didn't have the Colossus). Humanist would give me 13 commerce. So overall the boost is outperforming financial and humanist in terms of research output, but lacks the flexibility to be applied to gold, culture, or espionage, and performs worse than seafarer and severely worse than legislator. I've got some new respect for legislator!

 

[AspiringScholar]

I've got some new respect for legislator!

I'm somewhat surprised that this one isn't more popular or talked about. Since civic maintenance is mechanically an extension of city maintenance, this effectively is a subsidy for wide expansion, and can take the blunt out of adopting more expensive civics which one might otherwise be reluctant to do, wide or tall.

 

[Ahnarras]

So overall the boost is outperforming financial and humanist in terms of research output, but lacks the flexibility to be applied to gold, culture, or espionage,

Seems like a good way to balance it : you either go for raw benefits, or go with something more versatile than you can use as you needs it according to how your game is developping.

Since civic maintenance is mechanically an extension of city maintenance, this effectively is a subsidy for wide expansion, and can take the blunt out of adopting more expensive civics which one might otherwise be reluctant to do, wide or tall.

Probably because it's something that's easy to overlook. I needed a moment before taking doctrine cost into accounts when switching : it's easy to get lost in the "this one gives X% to distance from palace and a bonus gold to some improvement and oh yes it works with a specialist too so let me see how many of them I have in my empire to see if it's worth it or not..." and by the time you finished checking everything, you have forgotten that this new doctrine has a different cost.

So a trait giving a bonus to something overlooked would seems weak, until you take the time to do the math.

On another topic : IA really HATES barbarians, don't they ? I've had Japanese going to New Zealand just to raze a barbare camp, and now it's the Greeks that are fighting deep in Siberia. They don't even try to settle there, or keep their conquest, they just raze the camp... I guess they are doing it for the gold you earn while doing so ?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Is the Turkish national improvement, the Timar, supposed to be (almost) strictly better than a standard farm? A farm has no natural food generation and gets +1 from irrigation, Irrigation Systems, and Iron Working. The timar starts at +2 and gets an additional +1 from Land Tenure, matching the farm's output, while also getting +1 from ekibi (Turkish stables). On top of that, the timar can be built on top of hills, doesn't require irrigation, is boosted by Pastoral Nomadism while farms have less output under PN, and gives +5% defense (though that can act against you, too). For an improvement meant to replace windmills, it sure does an amazing job outperforming the farm!

The farm only gets the food advantage if the city has a manor or monastic order, both of which require adopting a specific civic and constructing a civic-related building. The Timar feels crazy good compared to the other spammable national improvements. The Anden, Olive Grove, and Highland Pasture require hills, the Fortified Monastery requires hills along with Monasticism to really shine, the Cattle Trek and Grazing Ground depend on Pastoral Nomadism to be of any real use, the lovischche requries forests, the pet kot, jungles, and the various national farms require flatlands. But the timar can be built on low or highlands, without irrigation, doesn't depend on any civics, and matches or excedes the food output of all contemporary improvements. Farms only outyield it for food (total yield is still on par, I believe, due to the timar's hammer bonus) while running specific civics, and the windmill only outyields it in the rennaisance.

That's a strong national improvement!

Well, consider the real use cases. When a spammable improvement is barely better than everything else it replaces, you barely get any additional benefit. This is the case with Timar - its total benefit is quite limited. You get one per farm it replaces, and that's with an additional investment into a building you might not otherwise need. Compare Poland, where you get +1 and +1 per farm replaced - so you'd need twice as many Timars per city to get to the same marginal benefit (if we consider all yields as equal in value). And that's not considering that for full benefit, you'd need to run a civic that might not be optimal in many situations (whereas you're also not considering the likely scenario that at the time you'd be running Serfdom, so another +1 to farms). It's ok in that it provides a bit of everything, but its marginal benefits are relatively low compared to most other NIs.

Thoughts on the 5% bonus after playing an Ataturk game to early/mid Medieval period:

It's... very meh. It's generating about 25 per turn. I'm currently on turn 691, 463AD, with a total income of 305 gold per turn. By happenstance I'm getting these numbers the turn after I finished researching Borough Rights and obsoleted the Great Lighthouse. After loading the most recent autosave to factor in the world wonder, I'm seeing 30 per turn and a total income of 333.

To try to measure it more objectively, I decided to look at it as a free bump up on the research scale, and to assign it a gold value equal to the the amount of gold that bump up would cost. At the moment (on the save with the Great Lighthouse in effect), a bump up is about 24 gold. So rather than thinking of Progressive as giving me 5% research, I'm going to think of it as giving me 25 gold per turn. I loaded the turn 1 autosave for this game and it has a gold value of 0.5, meaning humanist is better here.

All of this seems to support bumping progressive to 10%. +1 per scientist might look better than it actually is, as you're unlikely to get anywhere near the amount of additional +5%. One interesting note though is that AI progressive leaders seem to generally perform better than average. Might have to do with their AI prioritising research more, or cheaper research-related buildings (which again means they are more attractive and built earlier by the AI).

 

[FlimsyWhimsy]

Thoughts on the 5% bonus after playing an Ataturk game to early/mid Medieval period:

It's... very meh. It's generating about 25 per turn. I'm currently on turn 691, 463AD, with a total income of 305 gold per turn. By happenstance I'm getting these numbers the turn after I finished researching Borough Rights and obsoleted the Great Lighthouse. After loading the most recent autosave to factor in the world wonder, I'm seeing 30 per turn and a total income of 333.

To try to measure it more objectively, I decided to look at it as a free bump up on the research scale, and to assign it a gold value equal to the the amount of gold that bump up would cost. At the moment (on the save with the Great Lighthouse in effect), a bump up is about 24 gold. So rather than thinking of Progressive as giving me 5% research, I'm going to think of it as giving me 25 gold per turn. I loaded the turn 1 autosave for this game and it has a gold value of 0.5, meaning humanist is better here.

For comparison, my civic upkeep is 107. If I had Legislator, I would be getting 53 gold per turn, which can be converted into +10%. I have 8 coastal cities and the average trade route is 4 gold, so seafarer would be giving me 32 commerce per turn. I have 19 tiles with 3+ commerce being actively worked, so Financial would give me 19 extra commerce (less if I didn't have the Colossus). Humanist would give me 13 commerce. So overall the boost is outperforming financial and humanist in terms of research output, but lacks the flexibility to be applied to gold, culture, or espionage, and performs worse than seafarer and severely worse than legislator. I've got some new respect for legislator!

-50% upgrade cost from Progressive is not negligible though. I had a game where I spent ~3000-5000 gold on upgrading my army and navy to Renaissance grade units (non-Progressive leader), it was around turn 800-1000. Progressive leader would make it ~1500-2500. So this alone is technically like 1.5-3 GPT with the big drawback of only coming into play in the middle of the match. I've also had cases of upgrading drafted irregulars when threatened by a surprise invasion, in that case Progressive could've really saved me in a pinch given how costly upgrading from irregulars is. But again, drafting becomes a thing only in Renaissance.

It's interesting how Legislator is possibly the best money-making trait (maybe outperformed by Seafarer for taller empires in the late game) while also rocking the first turns with +1. I'm inspired to play some more with it. This also makes me think just how burdening Populist could become in the later game even for not particularly wide empires. Having a minimum of 9 cities for the culture win still bumps up the civic upkeep quite high.