Realism Invictus

[TheBirdMan]

Allowing myself to quote myself from before, a resource that everyone has is a resource that might as well be removed entirely. Resources exist to exert pressure on players to procure them.

Unless it's needed for a building. Fx. you need 2 Stones to make 1 Stonecutter (consumes 2 Stone and produces 1 Masonry - one of the best functions in RI in my opinion).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Unless it's needed for a building. Fx. you need 2 Stones to make 1 Stonecutter (consumes 2 Stone and produces 1 Masonry - one of the best functions in RI in my opinion).

You might actually be old enough (same as me) to remember the first instalments in that series*, but there's this long-standing German game series called "Settlers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers

Your personal changes always remind me of it - basically trying to turn RI into turn-based Settlers. Not sure if you know these games - if you don't, I feel they might be right up your alley, as they are all about building resource conversion chains.
-------
* It may still be going, but I'm not sure how good the recent ones are; I know the ones that were around in the 90's and the early 00's

 

[TheBirdMan]

You might actually be old enough (same as me) to remember the first instalments in that series*, but there's this long-standing German game series called "Settlers"

I'm from 1957 so...... I know the game by title, but I have never played any of it's versions. Not yet that is - but thanks for reminding me about it.

No at that time I was busy playing CallToPower (I) PlayByEmail via Apolyton.net. We had great fun with that back in those old days and even kept a "ladder", showing how well or bad we did play the game (CtP PBEM Challenge Ladder. That fun more-or-less run out in the sand in 2008 or so. BTW - some of those have also (might still be) been active here on CivFanatics (fx Solver and Ricketyclic).

 

[Alekseyev_]

Back from a longer trip through Morocco, where I got to see both the Berber Civilisation's unique improvement and unique building
Certainly makes me play this civ in my next match. But looking at the Berbers, Sahel and Carthaginians in depth also raised some design questions I hadn't noticed before:
- Berbers have the Barbary Corsair ships as unique unit, Carthage has the Barbary Pirate melee unit as unique unit - what's the idea behind this split?
- Sahel have Tuareg camel riders as unique unit, why them instead of the Berbers that the Tuareg are part of?

No, why?

Just the very... flowery writing style. Sorry if I offended you.

Forgot to mention this in the last post, but keep in mind that there is Notre Dame, a world wonder that gives +1 happiness and +1 health to all cities on the continent (so less than the effect listed above and with some restriction), and the wonder comes at the opposite end of the medieval era. I think the effect above being available at Guilds is far too strong.

Good point. It would be too much. Perhaps just the health and epidemic chance, then.

I agree this one is basically a "win more", and the effect is rather uninspiring. I'll keep an open mind for its effects, but I have to tell people once again that inflation is not a gameplay mechanic in Civ 4. It is not something that players meaningfully interact with at any moment in the game. It's simply a linear adjustment to all costs as the game progresses that could be simply called that ("time adjustment") rather than a name that evokes something much more meaningful and complex.

I wouldn't even call it a win more. It is most likely not going to give you anything beyond the -1 epidemics chance, since you're already drowning in health and happiness under welfare state. Hence why I think it should do something, anything, else that actually gives an immediate impact. Even just reducing the +25% maintenance from welfare state to +20% would be good.
Regarding inflation: Good to know, wasn't really aware - I'll keep it in mind for the future. I'm curious though, do you know by chance whether it is per person or global? In FfH2 there is an event that can either raise or lower inflation by 3%, and now I wonder whether that affects just the player it triggers for or everyone.

Of course! Thanks for reminding. The button is even already there, I just need to point to it.

Just saw it in the latest SVN, thanks!

How about sending a Great Merchant on a trade mission in a far-away city? around the middle-age this can yield ~3k gp which I find enormous. I usually use the gold to upgrade like 20/30 units instantly, which can turn the tide of a difficult war as well as boost the overall power ratio, and this without affecting the science research %. Best use of the GM I find...

I think many people (including myself here) that don't play at the highest level tend to favour the long-term options of GPs over the instant, one-time effects and therefore overlook the huge potential those can have. You have a very good point there.

I’m also curious about other players’ preferences. After a lot of experimenting and months of testing on massive maps I’ve come to realize that it’s possible to go too far with map size. These days I still play on fairly large setups, but I’ve found a sweet spot that balances realism, performance, and fun.

I am a sucker for scenario maps, and a big fan of the world maps and europe map in particular, especially for single player I like them more than random maps, probably playing 20% RM to 80% scenario. In multi player, we're about 60% RM to 40% scenario. Here we tend to play on standard to large maps for random maps, going through different scripts and never really finding something to settle for. Again referring back to FfH2, there we really love ErebusContinent and WorldOfErebus and probably have played 60+ matches on those two collectively, but for a more "real life" setting like vanilla or RI, none of the random maps really do it for us long term - not sure why.
I think I personally love detailed maps with plenty of smaller islands that still feel worth settling, such as Crete and Cyprus on the Europe map, or Austronesia as an archipelago chain that's still great to settle - while also having huge landmasses in other areas of the world. I think this level of detail, with vastly different types of terrain placement, while they are all viable in their own ways, is hard to replicate within a random map script.

Talking about RM - @Walter Hawkwood do you think it'd be possible to have an option that allows non-hunter-gather unplayable civs to be selected in RM for AI players? Such as having the Mesopotamians or Nubians appear natively in place of a normal playable civ here and there sometimes.

A bit of a hot take here, but recently I've been losing patience with resources that aren't visible right away but are revealed in the ancient era. While there's an enjoyable dopamine hit from having those resources become revealed, there's a much more impactful disappointment when you found a city and ten turns later finish researching Stonecutting and regret not settling that city 1 tile to the right. They're all revealed early enough that getting visibility isn't a balance issue (as may be the case with resources revealed in the classical era or later), so unfortunate placing of ancient era cities feels like being the butt of an unfunny joke. Nobody gained anything, we just lost something.

Is there any possible way to hint at tiles that have resources? Maybe tiles with copper and limestone have +1 before being revealed (and subtracted from the post-reveal hammers so the end value is the same), so that we know something is there, just not what and which technology reveals it. I imagine there isn't anything like that, or even if there is, that there isn't any intention of delivering the feature, which is understandable. I'll likely just modify my local setup to remove these resources being hidden in the first place.

I agree to AspiringScholar here. I can't really agree to your complaint - the research order you go for in the ancient age, and whether you go for early settlers, all play a huge role in the early game regarding your settling locations. I think the system is very interesting as it is, and quite like the tradeoffs and decisions it entails.

In my very first test after enabling the “ahead of time” penalty, Christianity is finally founded before Islam! I think that never happened in my like last 20 games when this option was off - Islam was always founded first.

Still, it’s not entirely historically accurate - there was only about a one-century gap between their founding dates in this run (Christianity in the 5th century, Islam in the 6th).

But is historical accuracy completely desirable anyway? I feel like the modmod Rhye's and Fall - Dawn of Civilization attempts this to a level that feels a lot like railroading, at which point I wonder why I am even playing the scenario rather than watching a documentary, as so much of it is taken out of gameplay decisions and instead forced by predetermined scenario constraints. A big draw of the Civ game series are the historical what-ifs - such as what if religion X was founded before religion Y.
As for this particular case, I think that the respective technologies just offer a different value to the researcher, and the Islam religion is arguably the strongest in the mod. So it makes sense for the AI to value religious law much higher than theology, and thus favour an earlier founding of Islam compared to christianity.

Allowing myself to quote myself from before, a resource that everyone has is a resource that might as well be removed entirely. Resources exist to exert pressure on players to procure them.

Fully agree here.

I've been thinking about another "QOL" thing. The technology Dualism does absolutely nothing for anyone but the first researcher, and Polytheism is the same once the Temple of Artemis has been constructed. Later on, Elephant Taming becomes entirely useless once war elephants are phased out of usefulness. Yet, they remain researchable and will always be the first techs you'll conquer from an enemy. This always feels disappointing, gaining some beakers on a completely worthless tech. And when not gaining them that way, they remain dead options presented to you on every new research selection. My suggestion would be to very simply give their research or conquest a tiny purpose in that they remain a prerequesite to a later tech. For dualism and polytheism, knowledge of both of them could be needed for Humanist Thought. For elephant taming, it could be needed for Biology. This way, when you conquer any of the three, you'll know that you at least saved yourself 1 turn later on down the line, or you can choose to research them yourself earlier on (such as during a time of most techs costing +50% or more due to reaching a new era) as you know it'll have some use. (And it cleans the tech selection list which won't have Dualism stuck on it forever.)

Here are some other minor notes/questions:
- What does the "person" icon mean in the separatism causes? It seems to give around 2-9 separatism in each city, but I don't know what's behind it.
- Hussars don't need horses, while Cuirassiers and Pistoleers do, why is there a difference between these units that all come at Cavalry Tactics?
- Should the Mayan Football Stadium be a distinctive building? Given as it's only a later continuation of the Ball Court. (Like it is done for Rome with the Arsenale?)
- I think Moneylenders should be substantially cheaper. Usually, civic-dependent buildings like slave markets, hunter's cabins, imperial cult, local bureaucracy are pretty cheap, but for plutocracy, the building starts at 160 hammers on realistic speed compared to 60-80 for the others.
- Should loyal administrators reduce local separatism like the forbidden palace?

 

[Logoncal]

Oh so the res starvation is a core mechanic of this mod?
Thats a interesting way of wanting bloodshed in the games

 

[Alekseyev_]

Let's assume everyone has prime timber, horses, copper and iron within their starting location's fat cross. What do these resources add to the gameplay now?

 

[Piemaxx]

Thanks for the quick reply! Is there a table somewhere with what "legendary" means in this mod as a function of game speed and anything else that matters? I was guessing that it was 100,000 fame but that seems not to be the case, and I can't find the information in the civilopedia or the mod's (very nice) manual.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Let's assume everyone has prime timber, horses, copper and iron within their starting location's fat cross. What do these resources add to the gameplay now?

Without resources, you will get a dull game and a very-very-very dull map to look at.

If you fx have no need for above resources, you do not need the associated buildings either. Then you do not need...... etc. etc. etc.

 

[Joij21]

I have a question.

Do vassals get a research penalty? Every time I vassal other civs or see them get vassaled by rival civs, they tend to stagnate/tech up very slowly. However, once they become independent again it's almost like they begin to tech up faster.

 

[JDCP]

Let's assume everyone has prime timber, horses, copper and iron within their starting location's fat cross. What do these resources add to the gameplay now?

I was hesitant to add anything to this conversation, but hey f*ck it, I personally don't see what the problem with resources is. I never suffered (at least to the point of it being a dealbreaker to me) from lacking timber or stone (and I have played early games without them A LOT) and I can trade them if it's that big of a deal, usually later in the game though, which is understandable. There's only one instance on which I really struggled without a resource and that was masonry materials, a resource that must be produced, which can be hard to get not gonna lie (and I'm sure they're intended to be that way, so i don't complain) and even then you can do well without it.

I like the idea of lacking resources, otherwise I have very little interest in invading other's because then I really don't have much to gain from them, and I'm too much of a pacifist to enjoy war without reward. To quote Call to Power "Without need, no lack, without desire, no need..."

So I agree with Walt on this one, even if it's a pain in the ass cause I gotta be honest timber can be pretty hard to get in some scripts

Late game resources are another story, as you can procure ALMOST anything on your own given that by that time you MUST own so much land that every resource available must already be in your territory.

I feel they might be right up your alley, as they are all about building resource conversion chains.

Never heard of this but does sound very interesting to play

While I agree that there is a certain kind of player expecting the whole game to last 1-2 hours

This is crazy! I wouldn't be so hooked to Civilization 4 if games were to be that short.

I can also see how the slowest-paced part of the mod, being the very first one new players get to experience, can adversely affect their perceptions.

I can confirm this, the opinions of friends I've sent this mod seems to follow this idea, although the general consensus from them seems to be that it is a bit too overwhelming rather than slow.

RI can really take some time to get used to, and I can see why because I too felt that way at first. But this feeling fades quickly once you've played just the enough games to feel at home with it.

Thats a interesting way of wanting bloodshed in the games

hehe yeah, it really makes you anxious for it.

Do you think it feels artificial?

 

[Logoncal]

It kinda does, but for some resources.
Example, i understand resources like luxuries being rare commodities. But not Iron and limestone!

 

[PKSRoman]

but there's this long-standing German game series called "Settlers":

Die Siedler !!
but i prefer eng named version
Name "settlers" came later
This game still have a warm place in my heart

No at that time I was busy playing CallToPower

Oooh, Call To Power, too loved those version of Civ. or those fantasy mods
Civ 2 was awesome but from perspective of time.. too simple now..

 

[AspiringScholar]

My take would be to emphasise artists and works of art. And wonders, of course. As for "interior" culture, if you're playing with separatism on (not by default), it's important to keep your empire culturally homogenous. Otherwise, basically the same logic as in vanilla - or rather K-Mod, which increases the cultural "strategic depth", by making the culture of the cities not immediately on the border but still adjacent to it more impactful for the border pressure.

Interesting. Could you (or anyone) please explain how this works, or let me know where that is documented? I wasn't aware of this mechanic. Cultural solidarity as an input for stability of large "core" cities with revolutions on was a priority I was aware of, but not this.

Just the very... flowery writing style. Sorry if I offended you.

Oh, none taken; but thanks. This is far from the first time I've gotten that, and unlikely to be the last. While it's admittedly a fair impression from my spontaneous choice of words, it can just be a bit discouraging because it often seems to give off a tone that I absolutely do not intend to have.

- Hussars don't need horses, while Cuirassiers and Pistoleers do, why is there a difference between these units that all come at Cavalry Tactics?

Ironically very much to the point of this recent conversation about the redundancy of ubiquitous resources, I believe the rationale here is that by the approximate time of the real-world Napoleonic era, large warhorses had spread in large numbers throughout the world and were something that pretty much everybody had; hence no need for it to be a strategic requirement for cavalry units anymore. Cavalry Tactics -> Military Science seems to be the chosen dividing line for this, as it is. While hussars share the former as a requirement, they're unique in the group you mention for also requiring the latter. (Waiting for Walter's or perhaps @pecheneg's erudition to expound on that, though. )

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

- Sahel have Tuareg camel riders as unique unit, why them instead of the Berbers that the Tuareg are part of?

Malinese didn't as much, but all later Sahelian empires (Songhai, the Jihad states) had a very major Tuareg component to them that is otherwise not reflected anyhow. In contrast, Tuaregs were never a major part of the Maghrebi states. So while linguistically close to the Mediterranean Berbers, the realities of the Tuaregs during the recorded history (last 1500 years or so) were always linked to the Sahel.

- Berbers have the Barbary Corsair ships as unique unit, Carthage has the Barbary Pirate melee unit as unique unit - what's the idea behind this split?

In medieval eras or later, since both civs draw on the Maghreb, the concept is that Berbers are its western part (roughly Morocco), while Carthage is its eastern part (Algeria and Tunisia). Tunisia was long dominated by the Ottoman corsairs, starting with its conquest by Hayreddin Barbarossa (who is even one of the three figures in the Carthaginian national unit). For centuries, they used it as a base to wage "maritime jihad", and were, let's say, a real menace not just to European shipping, but also to the coastal settlements, raiding and abducting people into slavery even as far North as Iceland.

But what is today Morocco had its own pirate tradition, not subordinate to the Ottomans, or anyone really, a bona fide pirate republic. They were no slouch as a pirate menace either; as just one example, for several years they held an island in the mouth of the Bristol Channel as one of their bases of operations! So much for the dominance of the Royal Navy...

So, to sum it up, what the "Barbary pirates" were wasn't a monolithic group; there was a big chunk affiliated with the Ottomans, and a big chunk more westerly operating independently. I tried doing justice to both.

Regarding inflation: Good to know, wasn't really aware - I'll keep it in mind for the future. I'm curious though, do you know by chance whether it is per person or global? In FfH2 there is an event that can either raise or lower inflation by 3%, and now I wonder whether that affects just the player it triggers for or everyone.

It is tracked per player, but mostly for the purpose of game difficulty levels - under Noble the player gets a substantial discount and AI a substantial handicap, while above Noble the humans stay at 100%, while AI starts getting a discount. Basically, it's a form of gold bonus/penalty that increases over time. Still always (from what I know, save from the singular case of being modified by events) a flat modifier to a flat number that gradually increases over time.

I think I personally love detailed maps with plenty of smaller islands that still feel worth settling, such as Crete and Cyprus on the Europe map, or Austronesia as an archipelago chain that's still great to settle - while also having huge landmasses in other areas of the world. I think this level of detail, with vastly different types of terrain placement, while they are all viable in their own ways, is hard to replicate within a random map script.

Have you tried messing with PlanetGenerator's settings? From my experience, it can produce exactly what you're talking about - diverse maps with both continents and archipelagos (and small singular islands) well represented.

Talking about RM - @Walter Hawkwood do you think it'd be possible to have an option that allows non-hunter-gather unplayable civs to be selected in RM for AI players? Such as having the Mesopotamians or Nubians appear natively in place of a normal playable civ here and there sometimes.

I personally wouldn't, as they are half-baked compared to full civs, but <bAIPlayable> exists, so knock yourself out.

I've been thinking about another "QOL" thing. The technology Dualism does absolutely nothing for anyone but the first researcher, and Polytheism is the same once the Temple of Artemis has been constructed. Later on, Elephant Taming becomes entirely useless once war elephants are phased out of usefulness. Yet, they remain researchable and will always be the first techs you'll conquer from an enemy. This always feels disappointing, gaining some beakers on a completely worthless tech. And when not gaining them that way, they remain dead options presented to you on every new research selection. My suggestion would be to very simply give their research or conquest a tiny purpose in that they remain a prerequesite to a later tech. For dualism and polytheism, knowledge of both of them could be needed for Humanist Thought. For elephant taming, it could be needed for Biology. This way, when you conquer any of the three, you'll know that you at least saved yourself 1 turn later on down the line, or you can choose to research them yourself earlier on (such as during a time of most techs costing +50% or more due to reaching a new era) as you know it'll have some use. (And it cleans the tech selection list which won't have Dualism stuck on it forever.)

Or even adding some minor useful effects to those. I'll have a think.

- What does the "person" icon mean in the separatism causes? It seems to give around 2-9 separatism in each city, but I don't know what's behind it.

Exactly that, population. There is a fixed per-population increase.

- Hussars don't need horses, while Cuirassiers and Pistoleers do, why is there a difference between these units that all come at Cavalry Tactics?

Hussars don't come at Cavalry Tactics. While they do require it, you'd have to have a rather skewed tech development for it to be the bottleneck for them. The main tech they require is Military Science, which is the last tech tier before the Industrial era. At this point (and for all the later cavalry units, whether light or heavy), it is assumed that horses have disseminated enough around the globe to not be limiting factor for anyone, so cavalry stops requiring them (basically a "bring your own horses" arrangement - cossack units have it even before that, and it's always "bring your own camels" for all the camelry).

- Should the Mayan Football Stadium be a distinctive building? Given as it's only a later continuation of the Ball Court. (Like it is done for Rome with the Arsenale?)

How come? It's directly better by providing two more happiness and cheaper than the building it replaces. Had the Ball Court not existed, it'd be an excellent unique building on its own merit, whereas the Roman one is only marginally better.

- I think Moneylenders should be substantially cheaper. Usually, civic-dependent buildings like slave markets, hunter's cabins, imperial cult, local bureaucracy are pretty cheap, but for plutocracy, the building starts at 160 hammers on realistic speed compared to 60-80 for the others.

Compare the bonus per hammer cost to the tax office, available to everyone; you'll clearly see that it's much cheaper already.

- Should loyal administrators reduce local separatism like the forbidden palace?

Maybe. A good suggestion.

I have a question.

Do vassals get a research penalty? Every time I vassal other civs or see them get vassaled by rival civs, they tend to stagnate/tech up very slowly. However, once they become independent again it's almost like they begin to tech up faster

Depending on the version you're playing (release or SVN), the answer is either "no" or "hell no". Vassals are supposed to get a massive tech transfer bonus from their overlords, but it was broken in 3.72 and only repaired several months ago. The problem with release-version vassals is that by the time they become vassals, they are usually reduced to such a sorry state that they wouldn't be able to do much either way (this is something that is no longer true in SVN and thus the upcoming release version either). It's not that they had a penalty, it's simply once you're reduced to 1-2 cities (often not even your best ones), you simply can't do much.

Interesting. Could you (or anyone) please explain how this works, or let me know where that is documented? I wasn't aware of this mechanic. Cultural solidarity as an input for stability of large "core" cities with revolutions on was a priority I was aware of, but not this.

See the == New culture system == section here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/k-mod-far-beyond-the-sword.16331/. It's all very under-the-hood, so players typically don't notice it.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Thank you, that was a very informative post! I'll have some reading to do now.

Have you tried messing with PlanetGenerator's settings? From my experience, it can produce exactly what you're talking about - diverse maps with both continents and archipelagos (and small singular islands) well represented.

I'll give it another shot. In general, is there an overview of what the different RI_ map scripts do differently? I never know what to go for.

Hussars don't come at Cavalry Tactics. While they do require it, you'd have to have a rather skewed tech development for it to be the bottleneck for them. The main tech they require is Military Science, which is the last tech tier before the Industrial era. At this point (and for all the later cavalry units, whether light or heavy), it is assumed that horses have disseminated enough around the globe to not be limiting factor for anyone, so cavalry stops requiring them (basically a "bring your own horses" arrangement - cossack units have it even before that, and it's always "bring your own camels" for all the camelry).

Ah, I missed that detail. That makes sense.

How come? It's directly better by providing two more happiness and cheaper than the building it replaces. Had the Ball Court not existed, it'd be an excellent unique building on its own merit, whereas the Roman one is only marginally better.

I see your point.

Compare the bonus per hammer cost to the tax office, available to everyone; you'll clearly see that it's much cheaper already.

I wouldn't see it that way - rather, the building is a vehicle for an every-city cash bonus that can be upgraded later. Look at imperial cults, they cost a fraction of what arenas cost, but unless using the culture slider, give you the same reward. And local bureaucracy is not far behind the much more expensive forges, often a good building to start a city with. Also, since it directly competes with civil service, who gets the +20% hammers in all cities instantly, getting your +20% money in your cities up quickly would help plutocracy a lot in this comparison. The later ones are fine at their price, since they just upgrade on the existing bonus and come at a stage of much more developed cities.

 

[Joij21]

@Walter Hawkwood I have some other questions. Or I guess more like pet peeves.

First, were you going to eventually financialize the late game economy to represent offshoring/globalization and the shift away from raw production to service based economies? Maybe make it so capitalist civs incur a runaway inflation effect if they have too many factories/hammer producing buildings past the industrial era, requiring adoption of an offshoring civic that disables or deletes all heavy industry buildings across your civ and boosts trade route yield, gives hammers from trade routes, lowers inflation, and cheapens the cost of rushing with gold. Then have some kind of import/logistics building that acts as a replacement requirement for the machine tools factory for power plants (even though we sent most of our industries overseas we still gotta keep the lights on for service industries, we just import the tools and equipment to maintain the grid/plants from China).

I also find slavery to be unrepresentative of modern transatlantic slavery, it's clearly based on classical/Islamic forms of slavery. There needs to be a way to have like a British imperial system whereby there are no slaves (and consequently no slave revolts) in the metropol while allowing slaves to exist only on other land masses in the imperial periphery (a.k.a. the colonies). European colonialism simply doesn't exist right now in the mod, so it's impossible to say get the commerce bonus that slavery gives plantations for your overseas cities that exist in more tropical places while your temperate metropol (which contains your best cities) is immune to slave revolts. I mean the whole reason most European empires where divided like this between the garden vs the jungle was precisely because it limited slave revolts to only the crappy intentionally underdeveloped colonies, this also keeping the colonies submissive through making them dependent on manufactured goods from the more well developed core via the constant trashing of local colonial infrastructure should slave revolts actually occur while also providing cheap raw materials for the mills back in said core. There should probably be some kind of mercantilism based civic that when pared with slavery changes it's behavior, or simply allows you to have slaves in the aforementioned manner but without the slavery civic which would then only represent classical slavery.

And lastly there needs to be settler colonial genocide to represent states like America and the Israel civ. Like an ability which razing cities/improvements of other civs removes all foreign culture on the tile/surrounding tiles, enabling pure gentrification and replacement by ones own native culture (essentially forcefully expanding the cultural core via settler colonial genocide). I'm not sure how OP it would be so I'm not sure if it should be a civic but rather like a civilizational super power that's exclusive to the American (and possibly Israeli) civ, and this kinda opens up a larger discussion about making civs in general have the special power system that RFC has for different civs that's thematic but created interesting gameplay between various civs. So America's genocide ability would be called Manifest Destiny (Israel might be Call of Zion, who knows) and other civs like Russia would be General Winter, Japan Bushido, etc.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I wouldn't see it that way - rather, the building is a vehicle for an every-city cash bonus that can be upgraded later. Look at imperial cults, they cost a fraction of what arenas cost, but unless using the culture slider, give you the same reward. And local bureaucracy is not far behind the much more expensive forges, often a good building to start a city with. Also, since it directly competes with civil service, who gets the +20% hammers in all cities instantly, getting your +20% money in your cities up quickly would help plutocracy a lot in this comparison. The later ones are fine at their price, since they just upgrade on the existing bonus and come at a stage of much more developed cities.

I see where you're coming from, though hammer for hammer it's still the cheapest gold bonus one can get. But I suppose it can go a bit lower still.

I have some other questions. Or I guess more like pet peeves.

All very valid observations, thanks for in-depth write-ups. All of those did cross my mind before, so see my comments below.

First, were you going to eventually financialize the late game economy to represent offshoring/globalization and the shift away from raw production to service based economies? Maybe make it so capitalist civs incur a runaway inflation effect if they have too many factories/hammer producing buildings past the industrial era, requiring adoption of an offshoring civic that disables or deletes all heavy industry buildings across your civ and boosts trade route yield, gives hammers from trade routes, lowers inflation, and cheapens the cost of rushing with gold. Then have some kind of import/logistics building that acts as a replacement requirement for the machine tools factory for power plants (even though we sent most of our industries overseas we still gotta keep the lights on for service industries, we just import the tools and equipment to maintain the grid/plants from China).

Production in Civ 4 is used for military units and buildings, neither of which were really subject to offshoring, so modelling deindustrialisation and transition to service-based economies would be rather meaningless from gameplay perspective. Also, as the scope of RI ends with the XXth century, the main offshoring effects were not yet fully being felt even around the year 2000. As I admitted many times, if the scope of RI extended to the present day, A LOT of additional game systems would be needed to simulate all the global processes in the last 25 years.

I also find slavery to be unrepresentative of modern transatlantic slavery, it's clearly based on classical/Islamic forms of slavery. There needs to be a way to have like a British imperial system whereby there are no slaves (and consequently no slave revolts) in the metropol while allowing slaves to exist only on other land masses in the imperial periphery (a.k.a. the colonies). European colonialism simply doesn't exist right now in the mod, so it's impossible to say get the commerce bonus that slavery gives plantations for your overseas cities that exist in more tropical places while your temperate metropol (which contains your best cities) is immune to slave revolts. I mean the whole reason most European empires where divided like this between the garden vs the jungle was precisely because it limited slave revolts to only the crappy intentionally underdeveloped colonies, this also keeping the colonies submissive through making them dependent on manufactured goods from the more well developed core via the constant trashing of local colonial infrastructure should slave revolts actually occur while also providing cheap raw materials for the mills back in said core. There should probably be some kind of mercantilism based civic that when pared with slavery changes it's behavior, or simply allows you to have slaves in the aforementioned manner but without the slavery civic which would then only represent classical slavery.

This is mostly fair, and indeed, more effort could be put into representing post-classical slavery, both as practised in the European colonies and in the MENA region, though gameplay-wise you're not exactly right, as both the rebellion risk and the slavery effects on the improvements are linked to the slave markets, so players can pick and choose where to implement it - not to the extent that's true with Serfdom though, where you can 100% control if you're having revolts in any specific city or not. Maybe it is worthwhile to also implement it that way.

More generally, though, gameplay-wise, it's very hard to find good mechanics for Slavery to keep it viable in some cases into the XIXth century while being abandoned in the medieval era in many others. Maybe indeed some late-Renaissance era building that further enhances the outputs of select improvements...

And lastly there needs to be settler colonial genocide to represent states like America and the Israel civ. Like an ability which razing cities/improvements of other civs removes all foreign culture on the tile/surrounding tiles, enabling pure gentrification and replacement by ones own native culture (essentially forcefully expanding the cultural core via settler colonial genocide). I'm not sure how OP it would be so I'm not sure if it should be a civic but rather like a civilizational super power that's exclusive to the American (and possibly Israeli) civ, and this kinda opens up a larger discussion about making civs in general have the special power system that RFC has for different civs that's thematic but created interesting gameplay between various civs. So America's genocide ability would be called Manifest Destiny (Israel might be Call of Zion, who knows) and other civs like Russia would be General Winter, Japan Bushido, etc.

I don't feel there's any need for a specific mechanic to represent that. Basically, one almost always conducts a genocide of some sort in Civ 4 by generating their own culture in the newly settled cities where some residual culture of a different civ remains. Think about it - the cultural makeup changes without being directly tied to population numbers; you are either replacing the local population with settlers, or forcing them to adopt your culture. "Culture" in Civ 4 abstracts away a lot of nasty stuff that people did historically.

 

[Alekseyev_]

I think a major factor making slavery/serfdom unattractive in the later game is that you a) face 10+ power gunpowder unit stacks, which are A LOT harder to fight off than 6 strength melee units and b) you can't dismantle buildings, so once you construct a slave market or manor, you're stuck with it forever while running that civic. Now even if you could do that, I find it hard to imagine a situation where I'd forego basically all bonuses from a given civic category in my main, developed territory, only getting the slavery/serfdom benefits in colonies.

For me, flintlock + administration has consistently been the point where I immediately switch away to free commoners or even working class. Right now in my current MP game (huge world map), I've been running slavery as Germany for basically the entire game (I did get the Colloseum though), with the current technological progress of the two human players being the column of Sextant on average. Certainly felt a bit of a lock-in with the +20% money in most of my cities (Due to an extensive empire and lots of slave revolts, I probably had 20+ Gladiators), but by the time Irregulars come around I hope to switch to Working Class (saving on 2 turns of anarchy later), or if not, Free Commoners. My main way of using something akin to the classic intercontinental slavery has been to send lots of captured slaves first to Iceland and recently to America to rush buildings there, but of course this isn't exactly how the slave trade worked then.

I always felt that merchant families with the +1 commerce to plantations did a bit of that representation, but maybe that was just misinterpretation on my end.
Not sure how the American colonisation slavery could be properly represented in a way that would make it worth doing abroad, but also unattractive to do at home. Slavery/serfdom as they are are certainly threatening with the revolts, but absolutely worth going for for the benefits. And the revolts can be a further benefit, your units can get a lot of experience and generate great generals.

By the way, is it possible to increase the yield value of a resource? Thinking that salt & iron discourse could be more generally applicable if it added +2 commerce to salt and iron sources anywhere in your land. On my first impression of that project, I missed the part that it only affects one city, and thought it was quite insanely strong, but limited to one city it really has the potential to quickly be quite lackluster. But if it affected mines in all cities that'd certainly be a bit much.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I always felt that merchant families with the +1 commerce to plantations did a bit of that representation, but maybe that was just misinterpretation on my end.
Not sure how the American colonisation slavery could be properly represented in a way that would make it worth doing abroad, but also unattractive to do at home.

This is just a sketch thought (and I have no idea how easy this would be to actually implement), but the game does already distinguish "colonies" as separate entities with respect to city maintenance anyway, so perhaps some kind of similarly passive additional bonus for slavery which only applies to your on-shore "cities" proper, which would be insulated from the drawbacks, while siphoning all of the liabilities overseas? I am not sure if the game recognizes a difference between cities and colonies beyond the question of maintenance costs themselves, though. I also think this would need to be paired with a separate contemporary civic to distinguish it from classical slavery, probably either mercantilism or free market, and maybe could be utilized by a building enabled by this combination.

At the same time, I think that in Civ terms, the chosen civic for the "Labor" category is supposed be taken as the "primary, dominant" form of labor defining the society (as with classical slavery in many cases), not strictly its legality or existence. In the age of Atlantic slavery, I'm not sure that that's quite appropriate, where the soft bonuses to commerce and luxury tiles effectively represent this already. The only thing that we're missing in this picture is colonial slave revolts, and I'm not sure that that would be something particularly fun to have included IMHO.

 

[Alekseyev_]

I have another thing I would like some feedback on: I think that the Logistics Hub should not replace the Retail Store, and perhaps not even the Railway Station either. For the Retail Store, I think the building is fine as-is, and functionally very different regarding the way population would interact with it compared to a B2B Logistics Hub. Railway Stations also remain highly relevant to this day and age, and truck-based logistics hubs only add onto it.

Therefore my suggestion is:
Either: Keep Retail Store as the end of its building-line. Remove all retail store effects from Logistics Hub, keeping the remainder.
Or: Keep Retail Store as the end of its building-line. Keep Railway Station as the end of its building line. Make Logistics Hub independent of the two, and have its effects be only the delta between retail store + railway station and current logistics hub. Optionally reduce price. Optionally have Logistics Hub require a Railway Station first.