Alright, time for a big post after I didn't get around to it for a bit.
And of course it's a part of the drive to eliminate the wonders that weren't actually physical constructions that has already claimed several other wonders (and isn't over yet). Unlike the vanilla United Nations, the Hansa didn't even have permanent physical headquarters. So there was really no way it'd have stayed.
What do you think about turning some non-physical wonders into "projects"? There are very few of those in RI, but I guess those serve as a non-corporeal way to build something with hammers, but to then not exist in a location.
Also makes it immune to conquest, however, so there's that.
Does this not happen between the same players on a random map, only on scenarios? Does it specifically happen on Huge map or on all scenarios with leader choice? What happens if you wait for the other player to finish loading?
It seems to break only on the huge earth map. Large earth map & random map scripts were fine. We did not test Deluge or Crusades however, will have to check those soonish.
I'm lowering the volume in the next SVN update, but I'll trust you to give me feedback - as I have it off all the time, I am not able to gauge an adequate level myself.
Definitely better, thanks!
That's the general problem with late-game content: even if there is a critical bug in a mechanic that isn't even reached in 80% of the games, it can unfortunately stay undetected for a really long time. If there was a single UN resolution that crashed the game horribly, or a faulty flavour ICBM for one civ, that could have just sat there for years...
Indeed. Right now I'm still in the a while ago mentioned MP match on the huge world map, and we're at 1100 AD with the score about 5% up and down between us two human players, so I'm hoping this one gets to the late game at least.
Generally, I find the biggest issue with games is that point where you are nowhere close to any victory condition (and neither is anyone else), but you know that you are going to win no matter what, if you keep playing and passing turns, because the AI can't ever catch up to you again. Here I would like to suggest a feature or rather two, one perhaps a bit controversial.
Many of FfH2's modmods, like MNAI, have some game options with challenge settings. One that I like a lot is "increasing difficulty". In MNAI, this raises the difficulty for all human players by 1 level every 75 turns (with a match in total taking about 400-550 on default speed IIRC, so significantly less than in RI). This is quite nice because it can allow you to start on a more even footing with the AI, allowing a bit more of a relaxed expansion, but then as the game progresses, cranks up their bonuses (and slightly reduces yours) so it remains more challenging than if you were just cruising on your same starting difficulty. I find that it helps the gameplay a lot, keeping it challenging as the game goes on without overwhelming you right at the start. Maybe this would be a good option to also have in RI, of course scaled differently regarding the turn interval.
The second idea I had is a sort of rubberbanding scripting for some AIs, a concept generally frowned upon a lot in gaming but that I think could have some merit here if consciously used and kept optional. Instead of gradually increasing the bonuses all AIs get and/or reducing yours, when the humans get too far ahead of the AIs, maintain the given difficulty but pick a couple select AIs and start giving them noteworthy bonuses. Besides production/food/commerce bonuses, this could include a great general rising up, a free tech ahead of everyone else (perhaps even ignoring some prereqs, or just gifting them alongside) being given to the AI, and so on. Could potentially be accompanied by a notification about some unexpected developments in that country far abroad. Ideally it would buff multiple civs over the course of a game, and the more distant, the better.
You could see this effect triggering as an acknowledgement that you reached the critical mass, and basically won, so here's a challenge to keep you on your toes and keep the game interesting for another quarter of the total turns. Keeping going all the way until the late game to actually reach a victory condition before anyone else should be far more interesting and entertaining this way.
Of course, this would have to be gated behind a game option so that a fair game is maintained by default.
It's not exactly a "clone" of the Apostolic Palace or the UN. It's completely different in scope, while using the same mechanics. The only purpose of Comintern is to pick an additional effect to Planned Economy, and switch between those (and I feel it made for both a fun and involved effect,
and for a rather historical representation of how the real one worked - nominally an international org, in reality a vehicle to enforce the current Soviet dogma on the world's communist parties). It's basically a wonder that can have one of several effects that apply not just to your civ, but to all civs running a particular civic (which also means they're not quite as powerful as that of a "real" wonder, as you can switch between those at will - if you control the Comintern vote at least, but then again you absolutely should if you're going to build it
).
The comintern is a reall cool idea, and having a globally changing civic is amazing. Big respect for implementing this! Will this also function with diplomatic victories off?
Also, do you think you could add a game option to allow the UN even with diplomatic victory off? They can be quite interesting with all their effects, and losing all of that just because you don't want the anticlimactic "win the game" vote is always a bit sad. If the implementation is difficult, I know FfH2 has votes regardless of diplo options (there depending on the council civic), and the German BASE mod has UN without diplo as gameoption, although I am not sure if its code is public. I could personally do without the apostolic palace, since its votes are usually highly annoying and the religion-boundness of it makes the voting very uneven on top, but I guess it could have an option as well.
A bit of feedback (SVN 5516)
4) After buffing hot springs park improvement German unique improvement thermalbad got powercerpt. Technically it offers unique bonuses hot springs park lacks but still.
I have to say, the buff to hot springs parks and nature preserves was a really great idea. I think if you want to buff the thermalbad, that's probably best done via bonuses from later buildings, such as +yield from a clinic and tech(s) like medical science, and of course the tourist resort (if you ever get that + a thermalbad within the same latitude!).
It mainly suffers from lack of building places, though. Which brings me to another dear topic:
Scenario feedback!
Ideally, civs are able to build their unique terrain improvement somewhere near their starting area, at least once. It doesn't have to be in the starting tile's fat cross if you decide to settle there, but at least in some place you can realistically settle within the first 100 turns. For pretty much every civ, this holds true - barring Germany. On the huge world map, there is exactly one hot spring in Europe: Within the fat cross of Paris. Now in the face of history, this might provide for some laughs, but I think it's not ideal. In my opinion, the south of Germany would do well with at least one such hot spring, so that a German player can make use of their national improvement without having to exterminate the French or colonise Iceland first. The Europe map has a similar issue, there are some hot springs near eastern czechia and further east, but that's again a location likely contested and arguably a bit far from either of the two Germany players' starts.
Besides hot springs:
Huge world map: Transoxiania shows a distinct lack of plantation resources near their starting area and a fair bit beyond that even, this is much nicer for them on the Europe map. Also, I think the Celtic starting location is very, very sad, with almost no resources and a lot of weak tundra.
Europe map: Hemp is a lot more crucial now than before shipyards needed naval supplies to construct, so it needs to also be a lot more common all over the map. Right now I believe there are 13 sources, the majority of which are in the far east.
It's mostly about Craftsmen, but I can boost their production modifier.
I'd like to refer back to my comparison of the three lategame labour civics:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/post-16737368
I also described my local edits (+1 craftsman hammer from civic, +1 mine & quarry hammer, cash rushing) that I reapply every update to this day, but even with them I find myself basically never using forced labour. But I think it has a purpose at least now.
In the newest update, I saw you made Democracy reduce maintenance from number of cities instead of from distance to capital. I would argue to undo this change, as Democracy was already the best government with all its highly beneficial effects, and now it took the one selling point of the authoritarian governments as well. Number of cities is nearly always going to be a much, much more important part of your maintenance expenses than distance to capital, so that was the biggest benefit that autocracy, monarchy and dictatorship could give, and the only reason to even remotely consider one of the three over democracy. Furthermore, having all 4 of these civics have the same effect on maintenance (of 7 in total) loses some diversity between them. I personally always thought it was really cool, for example, to mix-and-match between these different minus-25%-maintenance-from-X governments and merchant families and state property and their respective -25% and -75% to distance. (Both of which are also cool and should be kept!)
That reminds me, I forgot to reply to this:
Forgot to respond to this last week. Interestingly, for me it's the other way around, with distance tending to be the worse upkeep. Probably varies with playstyle, since I tend to go wide early and can stretch pretty far. That said, I think what you said about civics is also true for number of cities (Despotism, Monarchy). Though I guess you can double up on distance with Merchant Families and, if I remember right, Democracy?
In either case, I think being true to the idea of imperialism would encourage it to reduce distance costs. Empirical figures are usually pushing their civ boundaries, not increasing the settlement density in their existing borders.
I'm curious how you manage to get a distance modifier get larger than the numbers one. Here are two screenshots from a game on the huge Europe map, as Greece. Screenshot 1 shows the final extent of my empire when I stopped playing, showing the maintenance in my distant-most city. Screenshot 2 is after I used the world builder to flip all my non-Greece cities to the netherlands, and then showing my maintenance for the now most-distant city, to get an idea of the maintenance of a non-conquering civ that just settles its native area. I am running Monarchy + Merchant families, meaning both types of maintenance are reduced by 25% in the screenshots.
Aaand finally two more minor AI issues: The AI doesn't know to transport workers to improve island tiles within the BFC of a city on a different landmass. (Reference example, the copper within Carthage's capital fat cross on the huge earth map) Do you think they can be taught to move workers via a transport for such cases with reasonable ease, or is this unreasonably much work? (With AI code, this would not surprise me at all)
I've also observed that the AI seems completely inept at times at conquering another nation's capital. Again using the world map as an example, I've seen Spain (who had Iberia besides Lisbon) conquer all of Portugal's cities (in France) with ease, but then proceed to spend aboug 300 turns just walloping around Lisbon, of course razing the country side and reducing the defences to 0%, but then either not attacking at all, or with too little force. The exact same thing happened with England and the Celts, England could not conquer their capital at all throughout at least 300 turns. The defending AIs are just holed up in the city with a stack of composite bowmen and warbands (and some other leftovers), and the attackers move around with a singular stack that far outsizes the defenders, but is either insufficient to attack (the chances for the first unit to win the combat is abysmally low, but by suiciding 3-4 levies you can easily take the other defenders afterwards), or simply doesn't dare to.
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In other news, I'm still pondering the branding question, and I'd like to focus-group-test a variant with you all: "Humanitas Invicta".
I'm personally very invested in the "Realism Invictus" name. In youtube comments of a recent video by Suede I saw a lot of people mention it (and also defend it against a wrong allegation lumping it together with more kitchen sink mods), none of the usernames there I saw active on this forum. I think there's a large crowd of people (I belonged to it too until late 2022) that know the mod exists, and every once in a while remember that perhaps there was an update, go online, check and potentially download, and then happily play offline for another year or a few. A rebrand doesn't really do these people a favour, since it'll be confusing to many what the situation with the updates is, links will be broken, and so on. I know it's not like you have to sell a product, so "brand recognition" is of no monetary value, but the recognition does help people when talking about the mod, recommending it to others, looking up information and media on it.... I really believe it'd be best to just accept the imperfect name, with an imperfect reference (although it likely still is the most "realistic" Civ4 mod by far!). Even with all the imperfection, it's one of, if not the most polished mod there is for Civ4 and people that know the mod treasure it just this way.
I never thought you would do that (and you probably haven't done so either...)
I ran countless hands-off test games recently (and not-so-recently), and in exactly none was Orthodoxy founded. So I fully suspect that's something you did.
not out of stubborness, but recognition.
