Realism Invictus

[tebriz]

I've got some new respect for legislator!

Legislator have always been my favourite trait in RI.
P.S. I am quite surprised to read the comments and see that people just realize what an awesome trait the Legislator is

 

[[Y]]

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.

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.

Legislator have always been my favourite trait in RI.
P.S. I am quite surprised to read the comments and see that people just realize what an awesome trait the Legislator is

A large part of that is that it isn't really visible. You have to go into the financial adviser to see it, but there's no cause to do that on the regular. And since that number grows gradually and slowly throughout the game with inflation, there's rarely a change that makes you feel the impact and think "oh, damn those civic maintenance costs!" Changing civics doesn't even usually make you feel it since those changes have huge impacts anyway.

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.

I agree in general. I think what the explanation above doesn't account for is the ease of building it. Even if it has marginally more use than a normal farm/windmill and marginally less utility than other spammable NIs, it has the benefit of being qualified to be built just about anywhere, not limited by irrigation or hills, so you get more timars than you would farms and windmills. I think it's still a very strong NI. Not too strong, but something noteworthy. And while it might be just one hammer more per farm it replaces, it basically turns the stable into a better workshop, so worthy of being built in each city without a doubt.

And for a nitpick, I did consider the Serfdom scenario when I accounted for manors.

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).

Agreed on +1 not being much of a help. +10% sounds like a good upgrade.

For an experiment, it could be interesting to remove the research increase entirely and see if it affects how the AI progressive leaders perform.

-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.

I feel you here! I usually pay 4000-5000 gold to upgrade my composite bowmen into longbowmen and 10,000-20,000 gold to upgrade units in the rennaisance. Progressive's savings would be a huge gold saver! But usually, at these points in the game, generating gold isn't difficult. If you manage your economy well, you put your research slider down to 0 for 10-20 turns and boom, you have one of the most modern armies on the planet. Generating research is much harder to do, and the 5% fails to impress in that regard. So if looking at it with the lens of "what problems does Progressive solve", at the current rate, it doesn't solve much that can't be handled already. Hopefully a bump to 10% changes that.

 

[FlimsyWhimsy]

I feel you here! I usually pay 4000-5000 gold to upgrade my composite bowmen into longbowmen and 10,000-20,000 gold to upgrade units in the rennaisance. Progressive's savings would be a huge gold saver! But usually, at these points in the game, generating gold isn't difficult. If you manage your economy well, you put your research slider down to 0 for 10-20 turns and boom, you have one of the most modern armies on the planet. Generating research is much harder to do, and the 5% fails to impress in that regard. So if looking at it with the lens of "what problems does Progressive solve", at the current rate, it doesn't solve much that can't be handled already. Hopefully a bump to 10% changes that.

If what it takes to upgrade an army is 10-20 turns of 0 research slider, then Progressive would make it 5-10 turns, thus getting in some extra turns of research. But I guess what you meant is that at this point in the game, tech costs are just much higher than army upgrade costs and converting 10-20 turns of research into army upgrade gold isn't going to affect research on the large scale.

 

[Ahnarras]

On topic : +1 per scientifist would also means pushing the player towards spamming them, which isn't a great feeling for those of us (me ) that tends to play more with tiles improvements than specialists.
A flat % of has the perk of being useful no matter how you wanna manage your empire.

Also, pushing your science cursor to 0% for 20 turns seems harsh to me : you are missing 1-3 technologies during that time, just to modernize your army ?
I guess it makes sense if you are running full farms+specialists, but I'm glad I have a few Mines/Watermill per city so that I can just produce new units to replace the old ones ^^

Off topic : I was noticed that a Great Artist, named " José Joya "
I'm playing with the game sets in English so probably something went wrong with his name.

 

[PKSRoman]

"Motherland call" great wonder need to be nerfed :/

I was modern Fascist - State, modern era and declare war on Imperium with 7 vassals. i Get 7 units for every vassal and +1 free unit for attack Imperium.few turn later when separatists start to show, i declare war on them too for free units.I had 30 cities so 8 units free in every city = 240 free units total on start of the war.
so i jump from 100% STR vs 80% my STR enemy Imperium to 100% STR vs 45% enemy Imperium in 8-10 turns.Yeah, its perfect to steamroll the world and win the game but very unrealistic.Maybe just add -1 population per every free unit nerf? if i losing almost 10 population in every city it wouldn`t be so sugar-sweet win.

It's as realistic as if Stalin had sent every living man to the front, say 30 million people, and it would have had no impact on the economy.Russia has now sent 1-2% of its men to the front in Ukraine and is already facing significant problems.

 

[tebriz]

"Motherland call" great wonder need to be nerfed :/

I was modern Fascist - State, modern era and declare war on Imperium with 7 vassals. i Get 7 units for every vassal and +1 free unit for attack Imperium.few turn later when separatists start to show, i declare war on them too for free units.I had 30 cities so 8 units free in every city = 240 free units total on start of the war.
so i jump from 100% STR vs 80% my STR enemy Imperium to 100% STR vs 45% enemy Imperium in 8-10 turns.Yeah, its perfect to steamroll the world and win the game but very unrealistic.Maybe just add -1 population per every free unit nerf? if i losing almost 10 population in every city it wouldn`t be so sugar-sweet win.

It's as realistic as if Stalin had sent every living man to the front, say 30 million people, and it would have had no impact on the economy.Russia has now sent 1-2% of its men to the front in Ukraine and is already facing significant problems.

I agree with you from a gameplay perspective. But from a historical point of view, it’s actually a common misconception that the USSR won the war simply because of high casualties. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, but only about 9–10 million of them were soldiers. If we include Germany’s allies (since Germany didn’t fight alone on the Eastern Front), total Axis losses in the USSR amounted to around 7.5–8 million. That gives a casualty ratio of just 1:1.3. And if we consider that the Soviet military losses include many who died in German concentration camps—where nearly half of all Soviet POWs perished—the actual ratio would be even lower.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I agree in general. I think what the explanation above doesn't account for is the ease of building it. Even if it has marginally more use than a normal farm/windmill and marginally less utility than other spammable NIs, it has the benefit of being qualified to be built just about anywhere, not limited by irrigation or hills, so you get more timars than you would farms and windmills. I think it's still a very strong NI. Not too strong, but something noteworthy. And while it might be just one hammer more per farm it replaces, it basically turns the stable into a better workshop, so worthy of being built in each city without a doubt.

And for a nitpick, I did consider the Serfdom scenario when I accounted for manors.

You mentioned bonus commerce from manors, but not food (which farms get but timars don't). Timar only matches farm's food output if on Pastoral Nomadism. And while you technically can have more timars than you'd have farms and windmills, doesn't mean that you should - you were probably going to use the tile for something else, like a mine or a town. So realistically if you lock yourself into nomadism, you're getting no more than ~5 net extra production per city. Not too shabby, but nothing groundbreaking. I'd say the best use case is in case of a city on flatlands with no fresh water access - there it really shines even without nomadism, but it's not something most of your civ hopefully consists of.

Off topic : I was noticed that a Great Artist, named " José Joya "

Thanks, fixed.

"Motherland call" great wonder need to be nerfed :/

The easiest nerf is probably to not count vassals.

But more generally speaking, all modern-era wonders are supposed to be at least somewhat OP. At that point in game it only makes sense to invest in constructing something awesome.

 

[[Y]]

You mentioned bonus commerce from manors

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.

So realistically if you lock yourself into nomadism, you're getting no more than ~5 net extra production per city.

The production bonus isn't dependent on Pastoral Nomadism, though. Should it be?

Also, pushing your science cursor to 0% for 20 turns seems harsh to me : you are missing 1-3 technologies during that time, just to modernize your army ?
I guess it makes sense if you are running full farms+specialists, but I'm glad I have a few Mines/Watermill per city so that I can just produce new units to replace the old ones ^^

Probably depends on game settings and research position. In my games, researching a tech without a bonus takes 20-30 turns anyway, so its not as major of a setback. On top of that, having someone declare war on you can have similar impacts on research rate, and getting a huge boost to your power ratio mitigates that. A militaristically competent civ can more easily carry on researching dilligently than a civ that becomes a target.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The production bonus isn't dependent on Pastoral Nomadism, though. Should it be?

It isn't, but you're losing out on food otherwise, so I'm assuming it's the case of keeping food parity with farms. Otherwise, it's not even a clear advantage.

 

[[Y]]

It isn't, but you're losing out on food otherwise, so I'm assuming it's the case of keeping food parity with farms. Otherwise, it's not even a clear advantage.

When comparing to farms with Serfdom active, right? I guess because I never use serfdom, I don't account for that extra food by default. Which then makes the Timar much more appealing to me without needing PN to sweeten the deal.

 

[globosud]

I’d like to report a bug: the workboats can't leave the city — sometimes they work fine, but other times they can't move onto certain tiles. These are coastal tiles within my borders, and there's no apparent reason. I think it's a bug."

 

[RezerCuid]

The negative trait of the Foreign leader is too heavy, I would reduce the speed limit for workers to -15%

 

[tebriz]

The negative trait of the Foreign leader is too heavy, I would reduce the speed limit for workers to -15%

Really?! Foreign seems like the least harmful negative trait of all.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I’d like to report a bug: the workboats can't leave the city — sometimes they work fine, but other times they can't move onto certain tiles. These are coastal tiles within my borders, and there's no apparent reason. I think it's a bug."

Not a bug. They can't explore so they can't make a move that would explore a tile.

Really?! Foreign seems like the least harmful negative trait of all.

I tend to agree; as it's additive to the speed bonuses from tech, it quickly becomes irrelevant.

 

[Sathar]

Sorry if it's been brought up already, but shouldn't Noble Families be disabled when leaving Feudal Aristocracy?

 

[globosud]

Not a bug. They can't explore so they can't make a move that would explore a tile.

I tend to agree; as it's additive to the speed bonuses from tech, it quickly becomes irrelevant.

It was a tile where they were already working on a resource, then the resource was plundered. I rebuilt the work ship, but it couldn’t leave the city. If you can, please check if it’s working properly, in case there is actually a problem.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Sorry if it's been brought up already, but shouldn't Noble Families be disabled when leaving Feudal Aristocracy?

Of course they should. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

It was a tile where they were already working on a resource, then the resource was plundered. I rebuilt the work ship, but it couldn’t leave the city. If you can, please check if it’s working properly, in case there is actually a problem.

Can't say I've seen anything like that then.

 

[globosud]

Of course they should. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Can't say I've seen anything like that then.

I think the issue is related to the fact that the tile is treated as unexplored, even though it has already been explored. Because after a while, the problem seems to disappear.

 

[Ahnarras]

Good evening, gentlemen. I just unlocked the Fintlock technology and I'm currently confused as hell, trying to understand if something is seriously bugged on my side or not.
I'm looking forward to upgrade (with gold) most of my medieval soldiers into the new units that are available : Line Infantry (Mamlouk) and Bachi-Bazouk.

So far, Line Infantry seems to work as intended : I can upgrade almost every unit into it, but it has a hefty cost (around 500 to 1000 gold per unit). It's wild, but I can understand the cost : it's a big upgrade, I'm making something like 800 gold per turn (with at 0%) so it's not like it's totally impossible, and obviously, as I play with the option that increases units cost the more you build them and have 14 cities to defend, the increases must it hard.

What I truely don't understand are the Irregulars, the Bachi-Bazouk.
First, they are dirt cheap. I understand that Irregulars are "meh" compared to regulars units, but they cost a flat 10 gold per unit. No increase at all, I can upgrade my whole army for 150-200 gold, which seems weird looking at how that is not even a fifth of what a single Line Infantery would cost me. Is it intended that this is only a token price and that everyone unlocking Flintlock is suppose to drop all swords and go full rifles on the very same turn ?

And now, for the (perhaps ?) buggy part : the Saqalibah, my National Unit, seems to be the only unit that see it's upgrading price increase the more Bachi-Bazouk I own.
When I have no Bachi-Bazouk, the Saqalibah -> Bachi-Bazouk upgrade price is the same as for everyone else, a flat 10 gold pieces.
But if I upgrade my others medieval units first, and then try to upgrade the Saqalibah once I already own a few dozen Bachi-Bazouk, suddently they need more gold to be upgraded. And it seems to follow a logic : the more BB I have, the more pricey the Saqalibah upgrades is.

It won't really ruins my game, as the obvious counter is to just upgrade all Saqalibah before I start upgrading the rest of my units, but I wanted to check how normal this is (and knowing if there is something wrong with the upgrade price and little me upgrading my whole army for 150 gold is cheating or not )

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Nah, it's working as intended. Irregulars are cheap, and their cost increases the least with the number, so most of your medieval units (that you have built in a reasonable number by now, save for your NU which you couldn't have, as their numbers are limited) are more expensive than irregulars. 10 gold is the cheapest base upgrade price, when the target unit is cheaper than the one being upgraded from. It is also very much NOT recommended to upgrade to irregulars unless you want the units to stay in the irregular line for the rest of the game, as upgrading from them afterwards to any regular unit will be even more expensive. So yeah, you definitely can upgrade all your medieval units to irregulars for cheap, but unless you want them to stay irregulars after that, you probably shouldn't, unless you urgently need to. So no, you're not cheating, you're cheating yourself out of having a decent army later on.