Realism Invictus

[Joij21]

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 wouldn't say that's exactly true. It really began in the 1970's when the Japanese created just in time manufacturing. So first with Japan, then Korea, then they were testing the waters with China in the 90's by seeing what they could do in former treaty ports like Hong Kong & Singapore, and finally moved most production to mainland China throughout the 2000s. Also I feel like it wouldn't hurt to extend the timeline a little further ahead, cool things like FPV drones and whatnot have happened in that time.

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...

Yeah like I'm not sure how precisely it would be implemented, that's why I was thinking it would be like a whole new type of slavery altogether using a different civic with different synergies, mostly cash crop related. Though I suppose it would be more about giving a stability bonus to far off cities via preventing the emergence of a national bourgeoisie through the creation of a dependent collaborator bourgeoisie that's dependent on the Imperial core's manufactured goods.

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.

Well as of now culture doesn't exactly decay when you raze cities. It lingers for a long time and quickly turns to border gore/balkanization if you have to many revolts or the barbs get lucky and take a city. Now while that is realistic for the old world where genocide was more slow, mostly due to more tech parity leading to fiercer resistance. In the new world America for instance basically bulldozed all the natives from like one coast to the other. A whole continent in like only a hundred years! And there isn't really any lingering native culture anymore irl like what you would have in a more old world/Balkan context. Those descended from the survivors are on reservations and are far below the populations they once were with no recovery or possibility of revolt that you tend to see more in Latin America, and that's a hundred years + after the initial bulldozing.

I mean this is really more the exception rather the rule throughout history, but it was made possible due mainly to disease and lack of tech parity with the colonizers. Also other imperial cultures tended to attempt to integrate or enslave most conquered people's, only genociding those that refused to integrate or collaborate. The United States on the other hand, well let's just say didn't have the most reasonable approach to race apon it's founding...

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

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.

Oops, this one was supposed to be global in its effects. And no, I don't think it'd be a bit much - how many mines do you usually have active per city? I am not sure the overall effect would reach what, say, +1 trade route in each city would provide.

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.

As with everything else, it's a building representative of the overall infrastructure: the logistics of modern commerce. It's not just a warehouse, it's basically a consumer-oriented supply chain that culminates in either home deliveries or high street shops or mega malls - which is why the retail store was also rolled into it. As for the railway stations, since highways replace railways, so does a highway-affiliated building replace a railway-affiliated one. Building a railway station in a hypothetical new city that will likely not see any rail built going into it looks weird.

I wouldn't say that's exactly true. It really began in the 1970's when the Japanese created just in time manufacturing. So first with Japan, then Korea, then they were testing the waters with China in the 90's by seeing what they could do in former treaty ports like Hong Kong & Singapore, and finally moved most production to mainland China throughout the 2000s.

Again, this is mostly for consumer goods (though shipbuilding, for instance, was affected majorly as well, but we can't really have unit production outsourced to other civs without overhauling a lot of core design concepts of Civ 4).

Also I feel like it wouldn't hurt to extend the timeline a little further ahead, cool things like FPV drones and whatnot have happened in that time.

This is not something I'd be interested in doing any time soon (likely ever); the scope is too daunting. You underestimate the number of things that really happened and need proper modelling; it's not just slapping a couple of units onto the tech tree. It's basically a whole new separate era with several dedicated mechanics.

Yeah like I'm not sure how precisely it would be implemented, that's why I was thinking it would be like a whole new type of slavery altogether using a different civic with different synergies, mostly cash crop related. Though I suppose it would be more about giving a stability bonus to far off cities via preventing the emergence of a national bourgeoisie through the creation of a dependent collaborator bourgeoisie that's dependent on the Imperial core's manufactured goods.

I'll have it rolling around in my head for a while; maybe I'll come up with something next year.

Well as of now culture doesn't exactly decay when you raze cities. It lingers for a long time and quickly turns to border gore/balkanization if you have to many revolts or the barbs get lucky and take a city. Now while that is realistic for the old world where genocide was more slow, mostly due to more tech parity leading to fiercer resistance. In the new world America for instance basically bulldozed all the natives from like one coast to the other. A whole continent in like only a hundred years! And there isn't really any lingering native culture anymore irl like what you would have in a more old world/Balkan context. Those descended from the survivors are on reservations and are far below the populations they once were with no recovery or possibility of revolt that you tend to see more in Latin America, and that's a hundred years + after the initial bulldozing.

It doesn't decay, but it isn't exactly representative of anything in particular either. One unit of culture is a very abstract thing and isn't, say, one unit of population; it might be useful to think of it as a "footprint in history" the inhabitants had. So even if there are zero, say, Cherokee living currently on the tile "x", it can have some Cherokee culture - locals know that this used to be Cherokee land, even if it is no longer very relevant to them and none identify as Cherokee anymore. The culture of an inactive civ can only go down in relative terms, so it's not "living culture". In game terms, think of Americans plopping several thousand culture during the last couple of centuries on tiles that had a couple hundred at most previously.

I mean this is really more the exception rather the rule throughout history, but it was made possible due mainly to disease and lack of tech parity with the colonizers. Also other imperial cultures tended to attempt to integrate or enslave most conquered people's, only genociding those that refused to integrate or collaborate. The United States on the other hand, well let's just say didn't have the most reasonable approach to race apon it's founding...

But all that said, I did have a concept of a wonder (tentatively Empire State Building, both fitting thematically and being notable enough) that would instantly convert up to 25% of foreign cultures to your nominal one when built, which would basically achieve the effect of totally wiping out smaller cultures. Depending on what your civics currently are, this effect can be seen as anything from an "immigrant melting pot that welcomes all and forges a new identity" to a "systematic genocide of minorities".

 

[Joij21]

Again, this is mostly for consumer goods (though shipbuilding, for instance, was affected majorly as well, but we can't really have unit production outsourced to other civs without overhauling a lot of core design concepts of Civ 4).

You wouldn't need to do a major overhaul, you still get hammers but they come from foreign trade routes.

This is not something I'd be interested in doing any time soon (likely ever); the scope is too daunting. You underestimate the number of things that really happened and need proper modelling; it's not just slapping a couple of units onto the tech tree. It's basically a whole new separate era with several dedicated mechanics.

Fair Enough.

It doesn't decay, but it isn't exactly representative of anything in particular either. One unit of culture is a very abstract thing and isn't, say, one unit of population; it might be useful to think of it as a "footprint in history" the inhabitants had. So even if there are zero, say, Cherokee living currently on the tile "x", it can have some Cherokee culture - locals know that this used to be Cherokee land, even if it is no longer very relevant to them and none identify as Cherokee anymore. The culture of an inactive civ can only go down in relative terms, so it's not "living culture". In game terms, think of Americans plopping several thousand culture during the last couple of centuries on tiles that had a couple hundred at most previously.

I think this has questionable assumptions. If what you say is true, the fact is the culture isn't really overcome fast enough, so even though it's technically a "dead culture" you can still have a revolt whereby the original civ that used to be there spawns back to life as the rebels even if you razed all their cities they just takeover and flip the cities you plop down there.

It would be the equivalent of a bunch of hippies (who are white btw) deciding to larp as Native Americans 100 + years after the fact because they're dissatisfied with current conditions, starting a civil war and proclaiming Chicago to be the capital of their neo-Sioux white larp empire. All because they have some vague memory of a culture which they have no relation to that once existed there.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I think this has questionable assumptions. If what you say is true, the fact is the culture isn't really overcome fast enough, so even though it's technically a "dead culture" you can still have a revolt whereby the original civ that used to be there spawns back to life as the rebels even if you razed all their cities they just takeover and flip the cities you plop down there.

Define "fast enough". XIXth century lasts about 300 turns on the default speed, and XXth about 500. More than enough to stomp almost any previous culture into oblivion, especially if we're not actually talking about a proper rival civ (in case of the US in-game, we're talking about either "barbarians" in a case of a random map, or tribal civs specifically designed to be a speed bump if we're talking scenarios).

It would be the equivalent of a bunch of hippies (who are white btw) deciding to larp as Native Americans 100 + years after the fact because they're dissatisfied with current conditions, starting a civil war and proclaiming Chicago to be the capital of their neo-Sioux white larp empire. All because they have some vague memory of a culture which they have no relation to that once existed there.

Fits lots of historical examples rather perfectly, though... In the XIX-XXth centuries, new national identities were often built in part on vague "ancestry" ideas, even though the populations of those areas likely had no direct connection to said ancestors, culturally or genetically (I will not be doing any specific examples here so as not to offend anyone's national pride ).

 

[Alekseyev_]

I really feel bad about spamming you so much with things, but there is an issue with separatism. Cities can join revolts that don't make sense: In an experienced example at hand, 3 cities in America (all pop 3) were in the yellow separatism level. One city in northern Africa had red separatism, caused by a lot of lingering Berber culture. When the latter city rebelled and became part of the Berber empire again, those 3 cities in northern America joined and also became part of the Berber empire - which had exactly 0 culture there, never having even found the new world prior to this event. Certainly came as quite a surprise, and prompted a reload.

My takeaway from this is that cities should not necessarily join any revolt even if having some separatism of their own. Particularly cities separated by a huge ocean and having instability from completely different cultures (various natives vs Berber). I could see there being a global breakup of a large empire triggered in one place, but they should still not all join the triggering culture but rather decide individually per city.

Lastly, for the case that cities revolt neither to an existing player nor to barbarians but rather to a new derivative civ, what do you think about presenting the player with the option to play as the rebelling faction from then on? Obviously inspired by the British Empire and its American colonies.

I did have a concept of a wonder (tentatively Empire State Building, both fitting thematically and being notable enough) that would instantly convert up to 25% of foreign cultures to your nominal one when built, which would basically achieve the effect of totally wiping out smaller cultures. Depending on what your civics currently are, this effect can be seen as anything from an "immigrant melting pot that welcomes all and forges a new identity" to a "systematic genocide of minorities".

That sounds like a really cool and interesting wonder! If it could have a condition of X% of foreign culture, that'd be even better.

Oops, this one was supposed to be global in its effects. And no, I don't think it'd be a bit much - how many mines do you usually have active per city? I am not sure the overall effect would reach what, say, +1 trade route in each city would provide.

I think +2 commerce per mine in every city is better than +1 trade route, at least during the mid-game until free market. But free market is the better civic and benefits more from that +1 trade route than merchant families would, so I'd still say that free market's great work might have a higher impact by the time it comes around. Could be just fine!

By the way, I randomly came across a youtube let's play of the RfC DoW mod and saw that it has improvements giving things like "+2 commerce from improved sugar", if such effects are interesting to you I'm sure the functionality could be borrowed from there.

That actually give me another idea. Peaks are entirely dead terrain economically speaking, which as an avid player of Civ3, where they can be improved with mines, always feels pretty sad. Now IRL there's not a terrific amount of mining done in high altitude mountains, but the "peaks" ingame represent not just the very peaks but also the entire mountain ranges inbetween. It's always quite sad to settle with them in your BFC, since even though it of course takes forever to get to 20 population (and then you'll likely have a fair share of specialists), it's a theoretical lower cap to your city's output.
Making workers able to move onto them and improve them opens a whole can of worms, so I had a much simpler idea: What do you think about a building for mountainside mining operations, e.g. at mechanized mining, that provides +1 hammer and/or commerce per peak? It's a really minor bonus at that stage, and could feel like a consolation prize compared to a full improved tile, but it wouldn't require poulation to work the tile and thus have its own small upside. And yeah, really indeed be a tiny consolation prize for having those peaks in your city range for so long.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I really feel bad about spamming you so much with things, but there is an issue with separatism. Cities can join revolts that don't make sense: In an experienced example at hand, 3 cities in America (all pop 3) were in the yellow separatism level. One city in northern Africa had red separatism, caused by a lot of lingering Berber culture. When the latter city rebelled and became part of the Berber empire again, those 3 cities in northern America joined and also became part of the Berber empire - which had exactly 0 culture there, never having even found the new world prior to this event. Certainly came as quite a surprise, and prompted a reload.

My takeaway from this is that cities should not necessarily join any revolt even if having some separatism of their own. Particularly cities separated by a huge ocean and having instability from completely different cultures (various natives vs Berber). I could see there being a global breakup of a large empire triggered in one place, but they should still not all join the triggering culture but rather decide individually per city.

Ugh. You're not the first to report it. It's intentional on my side; these cities are already unhappy enough to not want to be with you - why not throw their lot with some foreign rebels then? But again, since people think it's a bug, it's easier for me to treat this as one than explain this time after time. Revolts to existing culture will now require at least 5% of said culture to join.

Lastly, for the case that cities revolt neither to an existing player nor to barbarians but rather to a new derivative civ, what do you think about presenting the player with the option to play as the rebelling faction from then on? Obviously inspired by the British Empire and its American colonies.

While the player switching mechanism already exists, I am not sure if it messes up anything, as it's not normally used, and I have zero observations relating to it. So while the idea itself is nice, and I even know how to implement that, I will probably not, at least for now. Maybe next year, with plenty of time for testing.

That actually give me another idea. Peaks are entirely dead terrain economically speaking, which as an avid player of Civ3, where they can be improved with mines, always feels pretty sad. Now IRL there's not a terrific amount of mining done in high altitude mountains, but the "peaks" ingame represent not just the very peaks but also the entire mountain ranges inbetween. It's always quite sad to settle with them in your BFC, since even though it of course takes forever to get to 20 population (and then you'll likely have a fair share of specialists), it's a theoretical lower cap to your city's output.
Making workers able to move onto them and improve them opens a whole can of worms, so I had a much simpler idea: What do you think about a building for mountainside mining operations, e.g. at mechanized mining, that provides +1 hammer and/or commerce per peak? It's a really minor bonus at that stage, and could feel like a consolation prize compared to a full improved tile, but it wouldn't require poulation to work the tile and thus have its own small upside. And yeah, really indeed be a tiny consolation prize for having those peaks in your city range for so long.

Feels like a lot of effort to code something completely new (and mechanically effects on buildings from tiles in city radius are completely new and wouldn't be trivial to code nor be free from performance impact) for an effect that's more symbolic than real...