Rhye's of Civilization - the fastest loading mod Expanded

[Asclepius]

This was fixed in the version I have. Being required for era advancement, those techs are discovered much earlier and now wonders get built on time.

OK, great!

A few other things whilst I think of them:

1: This has been mentioned before but I want to bring it up again, the anarchy period when switching governments. You have introduced new government types but there is little point in trying them out as I doubt if anyone could afford more than two 8-turn periods of anarchy in a full game. Please consider giving each civ the Religious trait (2 turns) and give the religious civs something else to compensate. Otherwise all the new Govs will rarely get used.

2: Something has affected the turn load time from the Industrial period onwards. It is extremely slow ( ) and I dont remember RoC ever being like this. (Yes, I now know its not the random barbarian camps!)

3: Latest game, England was almost an entire Era ahead of everyone else! (Into the Modern Era whilst most are late Medieval or early Industrial.)

4: From the Industrial Era onwards there is almost continuous war (good thing ) but this affects the AI's ability trade and research (I think) so the tech race slows down as the game progresses. Maybe consider lowering the minimum turn rate to 4 in the modern era? Or, at least something to keep research up.

 

[Asclepius]

Of course there are...
I would think of aircrafts like F-104 Starfighter, F-8 Crusader, F4 Phantom, Mig-21, Mig-23, Draken, Mirage III and the most used by many many countries F-5.
Think the F4 Phantom and F-5 still flies in many AirForces today.
These would be some Vietnam era jets. The earlier would then be 50's during Korea. The latest from mid-70 onwards.

My little adds on this mods for sure, whatever you might do Rhye.
The jump from P-80 Shootingstars, Meteors (late 40's) to todays F-16, Mig-29 are just many times bigger than between a Sopwith Camel and a Hurricane.

Cemo

PS remember that rocketry made the rocket come forward, supersonic speed made the jets develop into spaceshuttles.
Rocketry have lots of goodies. Scuds, V-1, V-2, early straight jets P-80, P-59 Airacomet, FJ-1 Fury and such.
I think one talks about 4 generations of jets in avionics.

Well said! I'll definitely miss not being able to upgrade my Hawker Hunter's to BAC Lightenings

 

[Rhye]

1: This has been mentioned before but I want to bring it up again, the anarchy period when switching governments. You have introduced new government types but there is little point in trying them out as I doubt if anyone could afford more than two 8-turn periods of anarchy in a full game. Please consider giving each civ the Religious trait (2 turns) and give the religious civs something else to compensate. Otherwise all the new Govs will rarely get used.

How many turns does a religious civ has to wait, and how many a non-religious?

This must be chosen carefully because there are collateral effects like religious wonders causing a non-desired golden age, or the halved xost of rel. improvements (easily fixable), not to mention rumours that said that AI goes crazy with 3 traits instead of 2.

2: Something has affected the turn load time from the Industrial period onwards. It is extremely slow ( ) and I dont remember RoC ever being like this. (Yes, I now know its not the random barbarian camps!)

Really? Since what version? I didn't notice anything...

 

[Asclepius]

How many turns does a religious civ has to wait, and how many a non-religious?

Religious = 2 turns
Non Rel. = 7/8 turns (don't remember exactly, there is always one turn of "recovery" after anarchy anyway.)

Basically, Religious only skip one full turn.

Really? Since what version? I didn't notice anything...

I don't remember if the turn slowdown happened in previous RoCX versions but it is definitely a problem in 0.5 which is the last version I have. (My PC is pretty quick as well, so its not down to that.)

 

[Rhye]

well I didn't change anything in particular since 0.42 except adding units.

If you have got some savegames that are particulary slow, send them to me and I'll try to analyse them. But I don't see the reason for a slowdown, now that there's no longer the palace guards problem

 

[Blasphemous]

About the problems with giving everybody the religious trait, basically the problems with wonders and improvements can be solved by removing the religious tag off of all of them, and giving the religious civs an era_none tech that would be required for some 1-beaker bonus techs that give them special, cheap, religious improvements that the rest of the civs would not be able to build. Or something else using an era_none trait.
Also the rel trait would need to be renamed "Normal".

 

[Asclepius]

well I didn't change anything in particular since 0.42 except adding units.

If you have got some savegames that are particulary slow, send them to me and I'll try to analyse them. But I don't see the reason for a slowdown, now that there's no longer the palace guards problem

OK. I'll send you my last save this evening when I get back.

 

[Rhye]

About the problems with giving everybody the religious trait, basically the problems with wonders and improvements can be solved by removing the religious tag off of all of them, and giving the religious civs an era_none tech that would be required for some 1-beaker bonus techs that give them special, cheap, religious improvements that the rest of the civs would not be able to build. Or something else using an era_none trait.
Also the rel trait would need to be renamed "Normal".

And how do you solve the problem of the trigger of golden age for religious civs?

 

[onedreamer]

How many turns does a religious civ has to wait, and how many a non-religious?

This must be chosen carefully because there are collateral effects like religious wonders causing a non-desired golden age, or the halved xost of rel. improvements (easily fixable), not to mention rumours that said that AI goes crazy with 3 traits instead of 2.

Actually, I wouldn't really choose to give religious trait to all civs... first off this would kill this trait, if everyone had it, second if someone wants to try a government, he can save the game and go back to it if he doesn't like it... I don't think it's that great problem.

About Feudalism, since when Firaxis introducted it, I always wanted to play with it, dunno why I guess it's just that it's a quite long historical part of the world... I'd like to spend most Middle Age in the Feudalism but it simply sucks too much. I've been thinking about solutions to improve it, and I could only come up with two:
a) give it +1 commerce like Democracy and Republic, support of 5-0-0 and high unit costs, like 3 or 4. This way you'd have to keep your towns small or you'd have to pay high maintainance costs for your army. Keeping your towns small means you wouldn't take as much advantage from the +1 commerce as you can do with Republic or Democracy. This should be tested though.
b) give Feudalism a gov. specific building and/or small wonder that makes it worth it.

Lastly about the anarchy period between change of government. Actually it's not so simple. It depends on how many cities your civ is made of, level of difficulty and of course the random factor ^^. If you are religious it's 2 turns at high levels but if I don't remember bad it's 1 turn at low levels... although I think I played only once at low levels and for error

 

[Blasphemous]

And how do you solve the problem of the trigger of golden age for religious civs?

You untag those wonders. For a wonder to trigger a GA it needs to be tagged with the right traits.

 

[Blasphemous]

onedreamer, the thing is that in reality there is never more such a logn period of anarchy as there is in the game. Nations switch their form of government many times throughout history, and they don't suffer horribly for it.
I think the anarchy thing was put in simply so you can't just choose a peacetime gov't at times of peace and quickly switch to a wartime gov't for war... But I don't think that's necessary, at least not in RoX... The wartime gov'ts will penalize you for using them even if the switch itself is cheap.

 

[onedreamer]

Nations switch their form of government many times throughout history, and they don't suffer horribly for it.

I strongly disagree with both statements. First off it's false that nations switched their form of government many times throughout history. You may say that humanity experienced different form of governments throughout history... but that's a totally different statement. Second, take Iraq as an example. A Despotism gov. just fell and they are trying to install a "democracy" or something similar there. Do you think that this passage was and will be a nuisance ? Do you think that France, USA and Russia didn't suffer from their revolutions ? Do you think that if -hypotetically speaking- tomorrow there will be a military golpe in USA and a Despotism arises from it, USA (and the whole world) won't suffer horribly for it ? It may be me, but I think exactly the opposite. A change of gov. is not like the passage from Republicans to Democratics at the head of government... it's very close or even coincides with a social revolution, thus the period of anarchy and unrest that civs experience in Civ3. Kudos to the developers for implementing it, and you wanna kill it.

Not to mention that in terms of game balance, the bonus that religious civs got from the gov. change will vanish.

 

[Blasphemous]

Well, Saddam's regime died pretty young, I don't know exactly but I'm sure what is today called Iraq saw at least a couple other gov'ts between 4000BC and now. And I highly doubt that the situation in Iraq will continue and not improve within the next decade (about the amount of time the nation would be in anarchy in-game if it switched to Democratic Republic from Despotism) without stabilizing into some form of government. Currently in-game nations see over a century of anarchy at times in the earlier half of the game. That is simply unhistoric. Of course nations suffered, but they did not suffer decades of complete anarchy. Remember, the Anarchy in the game is not simple instability or major messiness, it's a situation in which the government is unable to do pretty much anything, or in which there is no governemtn at all. No nation in history had more than a few years of that between different forms of gov't, or at least none that I can think of.
The Religious trait bonus can be balanced, that's not the issue to worry about.

 

[onedreamer]

Blasphemous you have to realize that Civ3 is a game and not reality. After you do this, try to think more throughly.
"Currently in-game nations see over a century of anarchy at times in the earlier half of the game. That is simply unhistoric"
Why, moving from one city to another (if you're lucky) in one turn (=from 100 to at least 10 years until late middle age) is historical ?
It is true that it never happened that a change of gov. caused decads of unrest and anarchy, but Civ3 is a game, and I think the current system to represent the trouble that a gov. change would cause is ok. If you make the change of gov. last 1 turn for everyone how much trouble will you have ? None.
Also I think playing Civ3 and taking the place of a famous leader (like Caesar for example) involves a bit of role playing. Switching between govs as if nothing kills this part of the game that I like much and makes of it "just" a rush to victory.

"I don't know exactly but I'm sure what is today called Iraq saw at least a couple other gov'ts between 4000BC and now"
Well you said that nations changed their governments many time throughout history. The fact that Iraq is geographically located where once was part of Persia, doesn't make of them the same nation.

 

[Blasphemous]

In this mod we are attempting to make the game more like real history. So maybe we can't make land movement completely realistic because it would unbalance combat, but Rhye put in a system that lets caravels get from Europe to the Americas in two turns or so and that works fine, and it's much more realistic. I think nations should be allowed to switch governments every now and then, and for those that don't have forced resettlement the 1-2 turn anarchy should be enough of a penalty, as all governments are balanced in such a way that you always lose something when switching between government types (though there is some direct progression between governments of the same type in RoX, like Constitutional Monarchy being simply a better version of Oligarchic Republic in every way.)

 

[Aeon221]

The game's period of anarchy and unrest is simply an example of correlation being taken as causation!

A change in government, at least for one of the brutal modern changes, causes civil war and violence; it does not cause a total economic shutdown.

It CERTAINLY does not cause it for five hundred years.

Look at England; in game terms, it has changed from despotism=> monarchy => feudalism => monarchy => absolute monarchy (stuarts and cromwell) => constitutional monarchy => parlimentary democracy

In game? Despotism => Oligarchy => Democracy (or Constitutional Monarchy if you are feeling risque)

Is that a big difference? YES! Did England suffer massive eruptions of violence and economic stagnation, lasting for hundreds or thousands of years during each switch? NO! DEFINITELY NOT!

Some of its greatest periods of prosperity were during periods of what would be total stagnation in C3C; for instance the 1650s, where England began catching up with the Dutch, or from 1688 onward, after the Glorious Revolution.

Telling me that a civ deserves to be crippled for 5-8 turns because of an arbitrary decision by a bunch of programmers is like telling me that doughnuts taste better when made of cement!

If you really want to think about it, the nations with the largest problems with anarchy have historically been RELIGIOUS civilizations. The entire middle east (in modern times), the Balkans (also in modern times), France AND Germany in the 17th century... the list could go on forever.

So give religious civs a bonus tech with uuber cheap temples and a fanatic suicide bomber or something later on. And double the price of temples so that they stay at their normal price ;p

 

[Rhye]

You untag those wonders. For a wonder to trigger a GA it needs to be tagged with the right traits.

In this case true religious civs are disvantaged because no wonder will trigger a GA for them unless it has their second trait

 

[Rhye]

You should tell me if being religious means 0 or 1 or 2 turns of Anarchy. That makes much difference. That is important both in terms of gameplay and history.
The truth seems in the middle: of course in many cases there were civil wars, and they were long. But 8 turns of anarchy seems too many in any case. Unfortunately there isn't a middle way, and we must choose between them, always keeping in mind that religious civs should have an appropriate and balanced new trait, in case of a change.

 

[Rhye]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce that you are now browsing the pages of the BIGGEST thread in CFC!!!! We just surpassed Double your Pleasure!

 

[onedreamer]

Aeon, your timeline of England govs is quite puzzling. Where did you take it off from ?

Anyways, I agree with Rhye, the truth is always in the middle (roman proverb ). I never said "that a civ deserves to be crippled for 5-8 turns because of an arbitrary decision by a bunch of programmers ", but I also don't think that changing gov. should be just a matter of 1-2 turns for everyone. And just so you know, you get 5-8 turns of unrest when turns are much less than 100 years each. Previously you will get 3-4 turns. In my opinion, exactly these numbers (3-4 turns) should be the correct ones. And YES, it took hundred years of unrest to pass from the end of the Roman Empire to Feuds. And YES, it took few decads of revolutions afterwards.. so time periods are not so wrong as you depict them. Some revolutions were harsher than others, but in any case they came as a result of economic stagnation (ie: people was starving, that's why they rebelled, heh...) most of the time, so once again you're wrong.
Also change of gov. throughout history were actually social revolutions, and in most cases they even defined the end or the beginning of new historical eras. Even in Civ3, government techs are all placed at the end or the beginning of eras, and that is not a case. If you wanted to be realistic, it shouldn't even be possible to trigger such a change whenever you want.

Rhye, to answer your question I think it depends on the level of difficulty. At diff. Deity it takes 2 turns it you trigger it manually. But if you answer yes to the pop up of your advisor about changing gov. when you research a new tech, it will be only 1, apparently, cos it actually starts at the end of the previous turn.