Realism Invictus

[Walter Hawkwood]

Clicking the obsolete bronze icon in the tech tree at Bessemer Converter causes a python exception and a blank pedia page.

Thanks, fixed.

Are Hussars and Cavalry mixed up in the unit classes? Hussars wield swords and are "ranged mounted", while cavalry wields rifles (even needs firearms) and is "charge mounted".

Hussars are light cavalry, which normally didn't really try charging anything unless having an overwhelming advantage (rear action, or surprise), and were used more for scouting, raiding and skirmishing. Whereas "cavalry" is more of a mixed bag representing generally heavier XIX-century cavalry, which often had lances in addition to carbines, and would sometimes still be used to charge enemies down, though by that time the distinction is certainly much less pronounced, as by late XIX century there was in truth no cavalry whose main role was to conduct charges.

What does the tech era icon before the locomotive (industrial techs at 50%) display?

Phrygian cap, a common revolutionary symbol:

 

[JDCP]

WOW, just... WOW I don't know what sort of dark magic you casted upon this unit model for it to look THIS GOOD Walt, but I'm amazed beyond comprehension. I don't know how to explain, but I get a different feeling from this texture work compared to the one I've seen in the previous versions of the mod, a strange sense of maturity, as if you've already mastered the art of painting tiny soldiers. No doubt this update is going to be fantastic.

It's perfect, literally perfect, I can't take anything from it nor wish anything else to be add. The original unit was already threatening with that big sword, nothing in the left hand, standing with an intimidating pose... but this, wow man way to go!

RIP the Celtic Knight without helmet, I'm gonna miss that bearded fella, but the new one looks amazing too I'm impressed with the new models.

Hussars are light cavalry, which normally didn't really try charging anything unless having an overwhelming advantage (rear action, or surprise), and were used more for scouting, raiding and skirmishing. Whereas "cavalry" is more of a mixed bag representing generally heavier XIX-century cavalry, which often had lances in addition to carbines, and would sometimes still be used to charge enemies down, though by that time the distinction is certainly much less pronounced, as by late XIX century there was in truth no cavalry whose main role was to conduct charges.

This is very interesting, considering the Ulanen (a light cavalry, as far as I know) are the modern (heavy) cavalry for the Germans, I kind of get why this is the way it is, but I wonder if I'm missing an interesting fact about them...

Would be really rad to see one of them with a spear, just a thought haha

PS: love the new icons too!

 

[Alekseyev_]

The exact same way as between two air units. Those land/sea units also have some base interception power and those promos help raise it. For instance, a Mobile SAM has 250 interception power - more than an early jet fighter, but less than a supersonic one (BTW, help me out here on UX - should the interception power be tooltipped with "%" or without - it is not exactly percentage itself, but it translates directly to % when compared to evasion?).

Hmm. Since it translates directly into a percentage, the % makes sense. Just feels a bit number-inflationary having "my 500% SAM shoots down your 450% evasion fighter!".

Thanks, a definite inconsistency between the availability of the route itself and the build action. Fixed. In process I realized my "hacky" way of showing Autobahn as a German unique route (implemented before I could even code stuff, purely via XML) is actually better than the stock way of displaying routes...

Now I'm curious to find out more, if you don't mind explaining the technicalities in short. Also, which of the two techs is the right one for the autobahn?

Yeah, I know, it's an "old shame" of mine - early on, when implementing dynamic names, I tried avoiding all non-default Latin characters for compatibility sake. This turned out to be a misplaced worry, but by that time, Germany was already done, and I never got back to fixing their city names. Thanks for looking up the specific ones I need to fix.

I thought so - but then I saw that some cities do have diacritics, so I figured I might as well comment on it. I forgot Königsberg, by the way.
And while talking about Königsberg: What do you think about Winrich von Kniprode as a leader for Germany? He was quite a significant figure for the Teutonic Order, which as a whole is well represented by the existing German civ, but it could be nice to have a leader for it. After all, it was a more or less sovereign nation for over two hundred years. (For traits, I think financial + fanatical make a lot of sense, 2nd positive could be conqueror, militaristic, administrator, charismatic or spiritual - many seem applicable and I'm not sure. Militaristic might be the least interesting due to similarity with Frederick, but would of course synergise nicely with Teutonic Knights. But then so does conqueror. Perhaps charismatic would be the most distinct from the existing other leaders.)

By the way Militaristic is abbreviated as "Agg" in the leader selection for a custom game. I think it's the only trait with a wrong abbreviation though, and it's clear how that came to be.

In the most basic terms, you're kind of right, but only if we think the peak shouldn't be in one's borders for that (would be ok for something that, say, gave a yield bonus directly to the tile, as it'd have to be worked first to provide the effect). Otherwise, we need to factor in tile control, which can change several times during a game turn, which means the check should happen any time the tile changes control, which is not the end of the world, but not a one-and-done thing either (the one-and-done approach is indeed great for something that doesn't change during the gameplay, for instance recently that's how I handled AI understanding of isthmuses - a rather costly calculation, but only done once when the map is generated).

That's a really good point that I missed entirely. Yeah, I can see how that would complicate things a lot.

Phrygian cap, a common revolutionary symbol:

Aha! I was sure it was a hat but I had no clue what kind. Thanks!

----------------------

And hey, I have more things. Now that Democracy was given -25% maintenance from number of cities, I think the distinction between it and monarchy is pretty unsatisfying.
Before constitutional (and now feudal) monarchy was added, I think you had a pretty solid distinction between the different govts:

Confederation: Maintenance reduction with only a minor downside, but no other bonuses​

​

Autocracy: better than monarchy with developed cities during paganism, due to imperial cult, +10% military production and -10 separatism, but worse in new cities due to initial +1 unhappy.​

Monarchy: solid all around, better than autocracy past paganism, especially with feudal land tenure (*since removed)​

Dictatorship: worse for your GP and worse base government cost, but good for forceful happiness and for reducing the cost of a standing army.​

​

Democracy: Happiness and health, option for far more happiness and health via centralised constition or a lot of culture, GP bonus and a free specialist via federal constitution. But increased maintenance costs compared to the authoritiarian governments as it is the distance factor, rather than number of cities, that has a reduction.​

​

Theocracy: great for priest-maxing with organised religion and buddhism or christianity for the priest wonder, also nice with a well established state religion and keeps separatism in check nicely. Downside of no maintenance cost reduction at all.​

​

Republic: Great for GPs but maintenance makes it small empire only. But worth it early on that case.​

So...
Now that monarchy has been given constitutional monarchy, which is about equal to centralised constitution (1 happy & 1 health less in all cities, 1 health & 1 happy more in the capital in total, +25% general rate) and also arrives far earlier than the latter, monarchy was elevated to a position of being able to both cover democracy's speciality and have the superior maintenance reduction. This of course made democracy suddenly a lot worse in comparison, so now it was buffed to also have the better maintenance type. But now we have the case where a centralised democracy doesn't really do anything significantly different than a constitutional monarchy, except coming later, and a "naked" democracy isn't worth going for at all either.

Hence my petition would be to see if the civics shouldn't be driven apart a bit again, by reducing the access of monarchy to free, every-city happiness and health (that being democracy's thing) and having democracy have the maintenance downside instead.

Lastly I would like to say that while I really think enlightened absolutism is much better not requiring free religion, I was generally quite a fan of dual-civic buildings. Such as feudal land tenure, imperial cult, or even local automony in a way. I think they offer interesting interactions.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Yeah, I did. Ran into a significant problem by early XVI century and now sit waiting for it to be fixed in a patch.

Hey, that means you got through almost two hundred years first without major issues, so that's probably a good vouchsafe that one won't encounter something like this in their first 20ish hours of play.

I'm going to watch all the tutorials and let it steep a bit while I focus on tried-and-true and beloved RI for my strategy gaming through the year, I think, but it seems like the purchase was a worthwhile investment, regardless, and I'm pleased so far.

Isn't it how it is right now? WW2 fighters have 120 interception power, whereas early jets have 160 evasion - this makes them untouchable by default, but with a couple of interception-increasing promos you can push into the territory that allows you to intercept them. The theoretical interception cap for a WW2 fighter with all Interception promos is 220, which is quite comfortable for intercepting fresh early jets.

Ah, good point. I hadn't considered that these promotions stack, and was thinking off the cuff that these were singular ones. I bet several of the P-51 pilots of 1945 qualified for a few "interception" promos by that point.

By the way, I'd like to reiterate another brief thanks for adding these promotions in the first place, as well as improving the air combat system as a whole. I had a lot of feedback on it in a long game last year, and you kindly actioned most of it (to a degree of effort I'm not aware, but appreciate regardless). Air combat in the context of everything else in your campaign is so much fun, and it's only so much better for being able to do things like actively target enemy interceptors and clear the skies for yourself. Late WW2 through mid Cold War is probably my favorite era of warfare in the entire game, trailed closely by late medieval through early renaissance (see below!).

View attachment 748293
WOW, just... WOW I don't know what sort of dark magic you casted upon this unit model for it to look THIS GOOD Walt, but I'm amazed beyond comprehension. I don't know how to explain, but I get a different feeling from this texture work compared to the one I've seen in the previous versions of the mod, a strange sense of maturity, as if you've already mastered the art of painting tiny soldiers. No doubt this update is going to be fantastic.

It's perfect, literally perfect, I can't take anything from it nor wish anything else to be add. The original unit was already threatening with that big sword, nothing in the left hand, standing with an intimidating pose... but this, wow man way to go!

RIP the Celtic Knight without helmet, I'm gonna miss that bearded fella, but the new one looks amazing too I'm impressed with the new models.

This is very interesting, considering the Ulanen (a light cavalry, as far as I know) are the modern (heavy) cavalry for the Germans, I kind of get why this is the way it is, but I wonder if I'm missing an interesting fact about them...

Would be really rad to see one of them with a spear, just a thought haha

PS: love the new icons too!

The foot knights and men-at-arms are some of my favorite models, too! The "flavor" of this era altogether is one of my favorites from historical interest, but you also get a really cerebrally pleasing complex interaction between a huge variety of units and unit categories in gameplay itself: heavy cavalry with knights, light cavalry of different stripes ranged and melee (and several unique units feature here), elite armored all-purpose infantry, merely pretty good generalist infantry, different kinds of decent all-round but specialized infantry like pikemen against cavalry, obsolescent but oftentimes still viable classical era melee units, and poor but abundant levies; early gunpowder with bombards and arquebusiers, the first ocean-going ships, etc, and nothing is really completely dominant overall and it leads to very interesting combat. This era (and the late industrial/early modern) stand out as unique in featuring this "cornucopia" of combat matchups, whereas in most other eras, a couple of individual units predominate in importance and you don't get this same richness of variety (e.g., warband in classical and line infantry in later renaissance, for instance).

Late medieval infantry eye-candy:

Spoiler :

Hounskull helm and classic Plantagenet heraldry really stand out here to me. I also appreciate how these classes of units don't necessarily just brandish swords, as with this war hammer (or battle axe? - I can't tell).

Looks like a true elite of his society from the garb as well as the armor. This shield is unique and interesting. Is it supposed to be bronze, because of the color? T

Halberds are cool and the animation for these is quite fun to watch, as well. I don't often see these depicted in medieval units in games.

Just the variety of cultural flavors displayed in the designs and armor drip off of these units:

 

[Alekseyev_]

The unit models truly look fantastic. It is a shame that during regular gameplay (ok, I spend way too much time in the civilopedia to not count that as part of gameplay too) you really have to use the combat zoom to see them in their full glory.

 

[JDCP]

I wanna report something weird with the latest SVN, I had shock 2 in one of my units (a warrior, to be precise) and the tooltip didn't show the melee bonus percentage of both promotions. I haven't tested anything so I don't know if this was a visual bug or something serious, but I wonder if the same happened to anyone else Because I had a few more promotions in that unit (land tactics and city defense) and those percentages were showing.

as with this war hammer (or battle axe? - I can't tell).

I don't know much about medieval arms but that's a pole axe isn't it? I'd swear they are supposed to be longer, so I'm probably wrong but that's the first thing that comes to my mind when looking at it.

The variety in weapons as you say is really nice to have too and I agree many of these tend to be left out of other games and make the modfeel refreshing, like the Bardiche!!! The Turks go full chainmail with a mace and shield combo, Mongolian foot knights are very unique and somehow diabolical looking (have you looked at their eyes? They look possesed!).

Could write a ton of paragraphs just detailing what I like of each unit, but for the sake of not cluttering this thread I'll just say I love all the details these units have, almost as if they were to come alive. I value a lot the inclusion of the noble houses because now I have even more reasons to pick feudal aristocracy besides fashioning the coolest (and strongest, let's not belittle them) army in the world

All this aside, I just realized in this new game we have a new diplomatic victory with the comintern! I recall reading something about this here but I forgot and was very surprised to see it ingame. And also, the great library now gives a bonus in tech transfer? That's such a great idea! There's gonna be a ton of new things to learn with this update.

Autocracy: better than monarchy with developed cities during paganism, due to imperial cult, +10% military production and -10 separatism, but worse in new cities due to initial +1 unhappy.

Now that you mention it this is the strategy I'm trying to follow in my early game haha, it's really easy to pull that autocracy/paganism combo as long as you get the wonders associated with the temples.

I used to think paganism was no more than a novelty, but in my past games trying it out and this one it's surprising how good the bonuses are for the early game. You can settle and expand a city really fast with this, and once the new city stagnates you just pull out a barrack and everything runs again.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I don't know how to explain, but I get a different feeling from this texture work compared to the one I've seen in the previous versions of the mod, a strange sense of maturity, as if you've already mastered the art of painting tiny soldiers.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I do take a lot of pride in the unit model work I did for this version.

RIP the Celtic Knight without helmet, I'm gonna miss that bearded fella, but the new one looks amazing too I'm impressed with the new models.

Technically he wasn't too inaccurate, just somewhat low-quality. It was basically this guy:

But since I was reworking anyway, I took the opportunity to do a bit of distinction here; now the Celtic foot knight and mounted knight are both Irish, but with a twist. The foot knight represents the old Gaelic elites and use the heraldry of Irish túatha (petty kingdoms). The Irish traditionally didn't have heavy horses, so someone wearing heavy armour was more likely to fight on foot. The mounted knights, conversely, represent the newer Hiberno-Norman elites, used to fighting on horseback and using the heraldry of Irish lordships. Their equipment also reflects this, with the foot knights using relatively outdated pieces, such as great helms and coats of plates, and numerous locally made leather elements, whereas the mounted ones are kitted out in the latest continental military fashion.

This is very interesting, considering the Ulanen (a light cavalry, as far as I know) are the modern (heavy) cavalry for the Germans, I kind of get why this is the way it is, but I wonder if I'm missing an interesting fact about them...

Would be really rad to see one of them with a spear, just a thought haha

Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of the right animations, but almost all cavalry by the WW1 era carried both a lance and a carbine (or even a full-length rifle, but for aesthetic reasons I used carbines in all cases), and little to no body armour, so the distinction between light and heavy cavalry disappeared completely. So whether the cavalry in question was called "uhlans", "dragoons", or even "cuirassiers", there was by that time very little practical difference between them. By the classification from earlier eras, almost all WW1-era cavalry, whatever it was called, were de facto dragoons.

Hmm. Since it translates directly into a percentage, the % makes sense. Just feels a bit number-inflationary having "my 500% SAM shoots down your 450% evasion fighter!".

Yeah, those are all my feelings exactly, and I feel removing the % would somewhat eliminate the inflationary effect, but might make everything more opaque for a new player.

Now I'm curious to find out more, if you don't mind explaining the technicalities in short. Also, which of the two techs is the right one for the autobahn?

Civ 4 has no "unique route" concept, so to properly reflect it in pedia and elsewhere, I created a dummy improvement, which is referenced in the tech tree and on German civ's pedia page, for instance. But I absent-mindedly set it to the wrong tech, so there was a discrepancy between it and the actual build action, so both were displayed in the tech tree. Now there's a single entry correctly displayed at the Assembly Line.

And while talking about Königsberg: What do you think about Winrich von Kniprode as a leader for Germany? He was quite a significant figure for the Teutonic Order, which as a whole is well represented by the existing German civ, but it could be nice to have a leader for it. After all, it was a more or less sovereign nation for over two hundred years. (For traits, I think financial + fanatical make a lot of sense, 2nd positive could be conqueror, militaristic, administrator, charismatic or spiritual - many seem applicable and I'm not sure. Militaristic might be the least interesting due to similarity with Frederick, but would of course synergise nicely with Teutonic Knights. But then so does conqueror. Perhaps charismatic would be the most distinct from the existing other leaders.)

Germany has more than enough militaristic leaders already. If (and that's a big if) I ever add more leaders to it, it'll be someone with a different paradigm, like Ludwig II of Bavaria (his traits basically write themselves).

By the way Militaristic is abbreviated as "Agg" in the leader selection for a custom game. I think it's the only trait with a wrong abbreviation though, and it's clear how that came to be.

The trait used to be called "Aggressive", and that's a leftover from that. I'll correct for consistency.

That's a really good point that I missed entirely. Yeah, I can see how that would complicate things a lot.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of such small practical aspects that one becomes acutely aware of having actually started to modify the game code. "How hard can it be to, say, prevent a route automatically spawning on city tiles if your civ can't actually build it". Turns out, the answer is "much harder than it sounds". I feel like I shared this tidbit already, but it seems pertinent here: the word "unfortunately" is currently found 39 time in RI code, mostly in comments inherited from K-Mod.

But now we have the case where a centralised democracy doesn't really do anything significantly different than a constitutional monarchy, except coming later, and a "naked" democracy isn't worth going for at all either.

To be frank, this is the case with modern constitutional monarchies and democracies as well - the difference is cosmetic. But maybe I could factor in some culture bonus (countries that either keep the monarchy "out of cultural tradition" like the UK or where it is a part of national identity like Norway).

Lastly I would like to say that while I really think enlightened absolutism is much better not requiring free religion, I was generally quite a fan of dual-civic buildings. Such as feudal land tenure, imperial cult, or even local automony in a way. I think they offer interesting interactions.

Those are weird - they are either irrelevant or create very specific pidgeonholes, and AI is really bad at understanding those (or rather chooses not to most of the time, as AI "thinks" with flavours, and two civics in question usually don't have synergistic ones, so the flavours get averaged into a mush).

Hey, that means you got through almost two hundred years first without major issues, so that's probably a good vouchsafe that one won't encounter something like this in their first 20ish hours of play.

True, though I do consider myself lucky - a friend of mine got cut short by another earlier on. Anyway, I will reserve the judgement on actual gameplay until they sort out at least the gamebreaking stuff (they just had to roll back one of the major changes of 1.05 as it broke more than it fixed). BUT...

I'm going to watch all the tutorials and let it steep a bit while I focus on tried-and-true and beloved RI for my strategy gaming through the year, I think, but it seems like the purchase was a worthwhile investment, regardless, and I'm pleased so far.

...whoever designed their UI should be shot out of a cannon in the direction of Poland. That's literally the worst UI in my recent memory, maybe ever. I was familiar with most mechanics from the get go as I kept up with the dev diaries, but still I found myself absolutely helpless the first time I started the game, and many hours later my main enemy is not any rival country, but the atrocious UI, which makes it extremely non-trivial to do literally anything, not to mention learn any useful info.

as with this war hammer (or battle axe? - I can't tell).

See my sad confession below

This shield is unique and interesting. Is it supposed to be bronze, because of the color?

I can't speak for Bakuel who designed the unit, and I didn't find the exact item it was based on, but generally speaking Middle Eastern cavalry shields of the time would go with metal+lacquer or metal+leather, which explains why even non-metallic bits are quite glossy.

Halberds are cool and the animation for these is quite fun to watch, as well. I don't often see these depicted in medieval units in games.

Strictly speaking, this is not exactly a halberd, but rather something that is in the process of evolving into one out of a dane axe, a close relative of a sparth axe, or indeed a poleaxe. Polearms are a continuum anyway.

Just the variety of cultural flavors displayed in the designs and armor drip off of these units:

I can't really take credit for most of those, as they are first and foremost Bakuel's work (though I did feed him a lot of source material), but yeah, as much as I trust his method, I usually double-check and often tweak even his work. And his attention to detail is (was?) rather admirable - the first one of the batch you posted, for instance, is the Abbasid abna palace guard, a speculative but well-sourced reconstruction based on Chinese contemporary sources mentioning black robes (black was the Abbasid official colour).

I wanna report something weird with the latest SVN, I had shock 2 in one of my units (a warrior, to be precise) and the tooltip didn't show the melee bonus percentage of both promotions. I haven't tested anything so I don't know if this was a visual bug or something serious, but I wonder if the same happened to anyone else Because I had a few more promotions in that unit (land tactics and city defense) and those percentages were showing.

Could you provide a bit more detail and/or screenshots?

I don't know much about medieval arms but that's a pole axe isn't it? I'd swear they are supposed to be longer, so I'm probably wrong but that's the first thing that comes to my mind when looking at it.

Oof, time for a confession. That is indeed a poleaxe, and they are supposed to be longer. It's just I really wanted to have a poleaxe-wielding foot knight for England, but there is no good animation that represents the way people fight with them IRL. But I also really wanted English knights to have shields with heraldry on them, and that is kind of incompatible with two-handed animations in any case. So I had the knight wield it with one hand, but then again, he's not superhuman, so I shrank the poleaxe to the size that could be wielded one-handed. All in all, I know that it's historically implausible - but not impossible, as there were indeed "mini-poleaxes", though they weren't at all common. His contemporaries would likely consider him to be a bit weird, but not extravagantly so.

All this aside, I just realized in this new game we have a new diplomatic victory with the comintern! I recall reading something about this here but I forgot and was very surprised to see it ingame.

Not a diplomatic victory, no. While it is an international organisation, there is no associated diplomatic victory. Its only raison d'etre is giving additional bonuses to the Planned Economy civic.

 

[Takofloppa]

...whoever designed their UI should be shot out of a cannon in the direction of Poland.

We don't want that UI guy here either As a fan of EU4 I will wait at least a few months before buying, so they (hopefully) fix most of the annoying issues and improve AI (very wishful).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

We don't want that UI guy here either

That was a reference to this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry_I

"But he was recognized and dragged out by the boyars, who killed him lest he successfully appeal to the crowd. His body was hacked to pieces, burned, and then the ashes fired from a cannon towards Poland."

As a fan of EU4 I will wait at least a few months before buying, so they (hopefully) fix most of the annoying issues and improve AI (very wishful).

My main hope - though I am not sure how realistic - is that they relax the checksum requirement so that UI mods don't invalidate Ironman and achievements. The game is very moddable from what I see, but I'd love to have an ability to have basic QoL features added by mods to not invalidate the game.

 

[tebriz]

I just started a game with my usual map settings on Totestra, but the world is without ANY rivers (latest SVN 5538).

 

[LanceV]

Just ended my fifth Realism Game this year. It was still svn version 5526, so some comments may be outdated.

*The rework of some of the civis is absolutely great (Aristocracy, Planned Economy, the new economy wonders...). They are much more unique now and also better balanced among each other.

*The biggest issue was that the ahead of time tech penalty didnt seem to work (I checked that it was NOT deactivated in the options). That lead to a super fast tech progress (Medival at 400BC, Rennaissance at 300AD, Industrial at 1050AD, Modern at 1640AD). Not only me, but also the Computer oppenents (which at least made the game not super easy). Was that a known issue in this version, or was my savegame somehow corrupted?

*The Advanced Bomber Upgrades Area and Precision Bombardment didnt seem to do anything. Also Area Bombardment has 4 levels, where the first three are supposed to give additional targets, while the last increases the damage.

Some things In think I already menioned earlier in this thread, so maybe it works as intended. But since I noticed them again I will point them out.

*The art eras usually require the previous era as well as a couple of buildings of the time. On the standard map size that I played it was usually 3 or 4 buildings each. Except Romantic Art, that required 9 theatres (=3 operas). That is far more difficult than even all the later eras.

*Some middle eastern civs have a carpet maker instead of a tailor as a distinctive building. It is functionally identical, except that it is not obsoleted with the designer. Other buildings that are not obsoleted like the russian bath are considered unique buildings.
It is also a relatively powerful bonus, so would be worth to be pointed out, if intended.

*In my opinion the fact that missionaries can fail to spread a religion in your own city doesnt add much to the gameplay, but generates just tedium (especially when one wants to switch to free religion civic). Its fine that there is a chance to fail in foreign cities.

*The modern carrier unit has a basically pointless +10% interception chance. The interception chance of infantry was recently increased, maybe also increase for the carrier (or get rid of it completely)?

 

[AspiringScholar]

True, though I do consider myself lucky - a friend of mine got cut short by another earlier on. Anyway, I will reserve the judgement on actual gameplay until they sort out at least the gamebreaking stuff (they just had to roll back one of the major changes of 1.05 as it broke more than it fixed). BUT...

...whoever designed their UI should be shot out of a cannon in the direction of Poland. That's literally the worst UI in my recent memory, maybe ever. I was familiar with most mechanics from the get go as I kept up with the dev diaries, but still I found myself absolutely helpless the first time I started the game, and many hours later my main enemy is not any rival country, but the atrocious UI, which makes it extremely non-trivial to do literally anything, not to mention learn any useful info.

Though I've not played extensively yet and will defer to your judgment with respect to using routinely it in-game, I actually feel inclined to be generous to its UI. It's certainly cluttered, yes (and even I in my brief time playing so far have run into a couple of clunky and awkward hangups, like when Philip VI of France got excommunicated and yet this was not obviously shown anywhere past the initial message); but at the same time, the immensity of information it contains and displays (not only to accommodate all of the significantly more granular mechanics vis a vis the previous titles with cleaner UIs, but the extremely granular and extensive map modes for even hyper-specific minutiae, should you want them, for instance, and I believe that this is the first Europa Universalis title to have its own "Pedia") leads me to ask what kind of alternative is to be expected without gutting several of these new mechanics in the first place. I'd much rather have a messy and cluttered UI which actually presents the tidal wave of information that the substance of the game is really woven from and interacted with than one which hides much of this in order to appear sleek. I expect much of the major oversights in the UI will get ironed out in time, but much of the criticism of it I see is generalized and holistic in a way which begs the question for an alternative, I find.

For what it's worth, too, I do appreciate how they seem to have gone back to a "text-heavy" menu approach as in my favorite EU3, as I found that EU4 overindulged icons in place of lists which have numbers and words be the workhorses. EU3's UI had some problems, no doubt (like wanting to know if you have more than one heir, or what the actual age of your ruler is, not just when their reign began), but in general, I much prefer this kind of display:

Spoiler :

Over this:

 

[AspiringScholar]

These look so much better, thank you!

Medieval:

Renaissance:

 

[Takofloppa]

Excuse me if it was mentioned somewhere already, but it caught my eye today - were there any farm-related changes that possibly made them overall less visible? The main case is the ones on grasslands, as shown on screen, the contrast between them and the terrain is not too great and they kind of blend into the same green. It might also be just my poor memory as I didn't really play RI for quite some time, so don't mind me then if that's the case.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Excuse me if it was mentioned somewhere already, but it caught my eye today - were there any farm-related changes that possibly made them overall less visible? The main case is the ones on grasslands, as shown on screen, the contrast between them and the terrain is not too great and they kind of blend into the same green. It might also be just my poor memory as I didn't really play RI for quite some time, so don't mind me then if that's the case.

Not at any recent time; last year maybe. But yeah I can certainly see what you mean - it's not even that the blending is overdone, but the grassland's overall tone matches the farm fields too well. I'll see what I can do to make them stand out a bit more.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Setup: SVN ver 5532. 192*144 tiles (29,648 tiles of which 15,000 (exactly) are land tiles. 26 nations.

In 5½ days I've reached halfway through the game (Realistic so 1100 turns have been played).

Without a single crash, mind you! And the time spent per turn? Well, of course it takes me some time. But with the AI part..... less than a minute I would say.

Ok - I got a little "belch" after turn 1098, so I had to change the graphics settings from "High" to "Medium". But I can't complain about that - considering the size of the map and the number of nations in the game.

Spoiler Some screenshots :

WorldBuilder - showing placement of the nations in this game. Though I do not like the real Worldmap scenario, I normally make the setup so that all nations - more or less - are placed "correct" in relation to each other.

My first game - ever - as the Russians. Ohhh, I forgot to mention - the difficulty level here is only "Prince". I went 1 level down after being kicked too hard playing as I usual do (Monarch-level).

A regular spider spin (well I seldom use this one).

Last screenshot is the actual placement.

 

[Takofloppa]

Shaka's horsemans have big red bubbles instead of units themself, seems like only one horse is always displayed correctly (SVN 5538).

 

[TheBirdMan]

Is this really true? Has the Trade been opened in a way, so you can send/give away or recieve more than 1 "unit" of any bonus to or from the same? If so, then

Spoiler Am I dreaming - or just misunderstanding? :

 

[JDCP]

A question just popped out of my mind, how come the anti clerical trait doesn't cover the pagan temples? Am I missing something?

Ah Walt I see you actually took upon yourself to change the French starting flag, nice even though I think I preferred the phallic one even if this might be more fitting. Will you upscale it though?

edit: a few turns in and I'm starting to like it but it being less pixelated would be good to have. Is it just me or now all the flags just look nicer?

ok another edit: I take it back, not all look that nice, the french confederation flag doesn't look very good to me The upscaling kinda worked for some flags, but there seem to be others who didn't take it kindly.

It looks weird, like something's wrong with it. Maybe I'm being overdramatic about it, but I think the older one looked more pleasant to the eye. Maybe it's because it looked darker, I recall it doing so.

Could you provide a bit more detail and/or screenshots?

I think this was SVN5538

Spoiler screenshot from my game :

have a look, the 57% bonus of shock I and II isn't being displayed, while all the other bonuses are, only these two promotions are being left out. I did some testing too using the worldbuilder in another game:

Spoiler test :

I also tested if the promotions actually work, and it seems they do because the tooltip for combat DOES show:

Spoiler combat :

While it is certainly conforting to know it does work, I wonder what caused this, I remember this bonus percentage showing in previous builds

off topic but all this testing made me want to sit and play Guess I know what I'll be doing for the next 2 hours.

Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of the right animations, but almost all cavalry by the WW1 era carried both a lance and a carbine (or even a full-length rifle, but for aesthetic reasons I used carbines in all cases), and little to no body armour, so the distinction between light and heavy cavalry disappeared completely. So whether the cavalry in question was called "uhlans", "dragoons", or even "cuirassiers", there was by that time very little practical difference between them. By the classification from earlier eras, almost all WW1-era cavalry, whatever it was called, were de facto dragoons.

Ah expectable, what are the aesthetical reasons for this? If we were to have the right animations, couldn't we manage to have 3 different animations for the modern cavalries? Kind of how the (AMAZING) Fekete Sereg has 3 and the Hospitallier have 2? Or is this something that would go against your aesthetics regarding the late industrial and modern era units?

I say so because I notice unit models "standarize" reaching the late eras, which is understandable, but I wonder if we could try to diversify their looks and animations to reference the varied roles of infantry in the modern era. Just thinking, it would be really cool to have the anti tank units also fashion some AT rifles instead of only missile launchers At least for the late industrial unit, though one could argue that AT rifles still deserve representation in modern units because they are still used, more as antimateriel than anything.

Barring all that, how hard is it to make an animation for a game like CIV4? I remember once downloading one from this website for the game, so I know they can be made.

big red bubbles instead of units themself

This is caused by missing meshes right? I had the same problems the first time I tried to replace an unit model young me was very confused.

Has the Trade been opened in a way, so you can send/give away or recieve more than 1 "unit" of any bonus to or from the same

Oh this is really weird... probably a mistake? on the other hand, also interesting.

Without a single crash, mind you! And the time spent per turn? Well, of course it takes me some time. But with the AI part..... less than a minute I would say.

It's been really long since I had a crash while ingame, really long.

 

[[Y]]

I don't think this math checks out. While it is true that gold costs increase as the game goes on (and so do science costs), any commerce that you have to convert to gold in order to cover some cost is a commerce you did not convert to science. So whether you get +6 gold or +6 science from some specialist, over a longer amount of turns it will lead to the same net scientific progress. Because unless you are running a profit at 100% slider, you will always have to spend turns at lower research percentage, whether by doing binary research or by simply running balanced spending percentages.

I'd love to see a proper analysis of this throughout the game! I lack the skills, and probably motivation, to do it.

The difference between them as early as the Medieval Era, is that a 5% shift and up down the science scale can be a matter of 20+ gold per turn, and only getting more drastic as the game goes on. While the +4 gold from a single Great Merchant is able to buy multiple shifts up the science scale earlier in the game, now it takes 5 Great Merchants just to push the scale up by 5%. With the right buildings (say, Toll House for +15% gold, Tax Office for +25% gold, and Moneylenders for +20% gold), that Great Merchant is only yielding about 7 GPT, and you'd need 3-4 of them in order to crank up the science research reliably (reliably as in able to do it when there would be 0 excess GPT without the merchants). The GM doesn't even get more gold output from buildings/wonders until the Renaissance and is stuck with the base +4 GPT.

In contrast, the Great Scientist starts with +4 beakers, gets more beakers from classical era wonders, and with the right buildings (+25% from library, +10% with monastery, +50% from academy, +40% from a great work of science) starts generating 9 beakers a turn. 11-13 if you have the right great work of science. If you have the Great Library (+1 beaker to GS), Cheomseongdae (+2 beakers to GS), and Gondeshapur (+25% science), Great Scientists in your science city can each be generating 20 science per turn, reliably, in late classical, even if your science scale is at 0. Of course, you probably won't be getting 20 SPT from any Great Scientists because you'll be using them for great works of science, which'll yield even more science, are available as soon as the classical era, and don't depend on adhering to any civics, unlike the Great Merchant wonders.

And besides that, don't neglect the food! The +1 food from a merchant is far better than the +1 hammer from the scientist, since it not only raises the growth cap of a city, but can also speed up the growth throughout the entire game or let it work a less food-yielding but more hammer or commerce heavy tile.

I fully agree that the extra food is better than the extra hammer. I just don't think it's significant enough to make the great merchant more lucrative than other great people, including the great prophet, which trades the food for a hammer and 1 extra gold per turn (plus an additional hammer from Civil Religion, an ancient era civic, and an additional gold from a temple, also from the ancient era, for a total of 2 hammers and 6 gold).

Not sure I agree. First, all currency costs do rise, so if 1 gold is obviously more valualble on turn 20 than turn 2000, so is 1 science, 1 hammer and 1 culture. Maybe not in the same proportion, I have not checked, but the scaling is there.

All the currency forms get some form of inflation, yeah. I just feel that Gold gets it the worst, so my as well invest in the others.

Then let's take a situation, which happens almost in every game I played so far, where I have 10 cataphract regiments. I have finally discovered the tech (which must be late medieval) to train cuirassiers, which are a massive boost vs cataphracts. Now how do I get an army of 10 cuirassiers to destroy that large stack from my main rival civ which has prevented me from breaking into their defenses? if I use hammers, it is going to take - if I'm lucky - 10 turns in my 5 more producctive cities to train cuirassiers, or 20 turns in total. If I have one great engineer, well I get one regiment instantly. And I may have to disband in the process all or part of my cataphracts to avoid unti cost scaling. I can use my "science allowance", slide it to 0% and generate max gold. As a ROM I may be able to upgrade a cataphract to a cuirassier every other turn, so again, say 20 turns. A great scientist will not help in this process. Neither will a great prophet, nor a great artist. But if I have a great merchant... load it on a boat, and in 4 or 5 turns, I have instant gold to upgrade at once my horse aarmy into 10 cuirassiers. In that sense, great merchants can act as sort of military great persons. I still think it is powerful when used at the right time, and quite unique.

Well, in the situation that you have a great person on hand AND need gold within the next few turns, the Great Merchant is the obvious choice. But that also feels somewhat of a manufactured situation. Did you intentionally try to get a Great Merchant exactly at this point in time in anticipation of this event? Or have you been holding onto it for the past 150 turns, during which it has made no contribution whatsoever?

If you had a Great Artist, you could have used its "Discover a Technology" feature to discover Cavalry Tactics without having to invest the research time into it, and start building/upgrade those Cuirrisars 15-20 turns earlier, putting you right on track. If you had a Great Scientists, you could have settled it or gotten a great work of science, effectively moving up your research speed enough that you'd finish researching Cavalry Tactics 20 turns earlier than you would otherwise (along with many techs before it and many more after it).

Great Merchants abroad are also vulnerable to being attacked and destroyed while you're at war. Not always the case, but sometimes it is, and the AI loves having random skirmishes and horsemen spread across the map, making it easy for them to ambush the Great Merchant. You could give it an escort, but then you'd also have to pay supply costs for the GM and the escorts, which counters the gold generated from the trade mission. Overall support costs is less of a concern for GM, but that's a large part of why I don't bother with Disaspora Merchants.

Though you are a much stronger player than I am, your argument also applies to the long-term gains which investment in the frontloaded early economic advantage can give you. The settled gold may be relatively insignificant and underwhelming taken on its own by the latter half of the game, but if it financed the military edge needed to conquer an early neighbor, then ultimately the yield from that conquest throughout the rest of the game isn't irrelevant as a factor. I'm not saying that they're necessarily better or worse than anything else, specifically, but that it seems that your contention about the cyclical nature of what ought to be sought seems not to be accounting for the indirect output from what you can achieve with the early yields, in an economic rather than accounting sense.

You're absolutely correct! I'm always happy to get one or two Great Merchants and/or Great Prophets in the ancient and classical eras. I just don't want to get more than a combination of 2 of them, and I don't want to get any of either past the end of the classical era. And I'd probably still prefer to get a Great Scientiest to either of them.

- Robert the Bruce looks a bit odd. His eyes look "off" somehow (almost flesh-colored in low-contrast with his face, and not quite looking in the same direction from what I can tell) and his cheekbones are incredibly bulbous while his temples and cheeks are quite sunken in, though at the same time his neck is rather thick in a way which suggests that he is not gaunt enough to warrant this.

This has been bugging me since the art first showed up. Thanks for bringing attention to it.

Phrygian cap, a common revolutionary symbol:

Oh, a Papa Smurf hat!

---

I tried a few time to get a decent game with Alfred the Great going, but the -5% combat odds from Idealist have completely turned me off from trying further. It takes 50/50 odds and turns them into 66/33 odds, and that's more than I'm willing to take on as a detriment. Combat is volatile enough as it is, and a trait that makes it even more of a liability isn't worth the risk for me.