Rise And Rule Revisited (epic mod)

[MilsB]

Observations:
A. Jan 510AD Iroquise Monarchy:
1) 2 Spearman + 2 American Catapult, they are not attacked by the Carthaginians and they stay and continuously bombard a Carthaginian city! The Carthaginians have many archers and Chariots + enough Catapults (I saw the units moving towards a city near the attacked one)... do they get stuck in a small unit? They don't have the "courage" to attack? "AI" a "bit unclear"...!
- In 570AD the Carthaginian city was captured...
2) A 7/7 Brave can't beat a Chariot or a Spearman with 2 lifelines...
- An Elephant Rider cannot defeat a Spearman with 1 life... Absurd and annoying!

B. Jan 810AD:
– American spearman amphibious attack!?
– American Heavy Horseman attack and destroy 1 Carthage Catapult which maintains a position without soldiers for its defense!

 

[Civinator]

Observations:
A. Jan 510AD Iroquise Monarchy:
1) 2 Spearman + 2 American Catapult, they are not attacked by the Carthaginians and they stay and continuously bombard a Carthaginian city! The Carthaginians have many archers and Chariots + enough Catapults (I saw the units moving towards a city near the attacked one)... do they get stuck in a small unit? They don't have the "courage" to attack? "AI" a "bit unclear"...!
- In 570AD the Carthaginian city was captured...

This seems to be no specific problem of RARR or C3X, but may be a general problem of Civ 3.

2) A 7/7 Brave can't beat a Chariot or a Spearman with 2 lifelines...
- An Elephant Rider cannot defeat a Spearman with 1 life... Absurd and annoying!

This is a general problem of the Civ series and even with tons of additional hitpoints for more advanced units this problem cannot be solved completely, as the random battle calculations seem to have constallations, where one unit cannot survive the battle, even if it has all advantages possible. There is a reason for this emoticon:

– American spearman amphibious attack!?

Yes, the spearmen in RARR have this flag. This is the setting of the old creators of RAR and I didn´t want to change here anything, if it is not completely needed.

– American Heavy Horseman attack and destroy 1 Carthage Catapult which maintains a position without soldiers for its defense!

This sounds like a problem of C3X, not of RARR. The question about the tactics for an offensive land artillery, that has lost its escort, is interesting.

Are there any experiences about that problem by other players of RARR, using the C3X mod ?

 

[tjs282]

Are there any experiences about that problem by other players of RARR, using the C3X mod ?

Oh yes, this behaviour is 'normal' for the Flintlock patched .exe, and not just in RARR, but also the base-game.

When the escorting defender of a "Bombard-pair" gets killed out of a stack, the AI will frequently retreat the now 'undefended' bombard-unit, even though it would have been safer staying in the stack. And if a rival player -- whether human or AI -- has a military unit within movement range, and the bombard-unit has D=0, and that rival Civ also has the tech/ability to build them, taking the opportunity to capture that now-undefended bombard-unit is a no-brainer.

I finished a DG game the other day (Inca, Std 60% Archi) with >120 captured bombard units, nearly all of which had been passed around between my various neighbours before I got my sticky mitts on them.

Spoiler Boasting :

I took quite a few off the French and the Americans, but most of them came from the Ottomans (after they'd eaten the Chinese, the Germans and the Hittites). Although upgrading the ~100 assorted Cannon + Trebs was expensive, using them to redline nearly all Ozzie's remaining dozens of Sipahi in 1-2 turns made it all worthwhile!

That got me the Cav- and Tank-Armies I needed to cross the border to capture Tientsin and its Aluminium, then my Modern Armour offensive began in earnest, and even though Osman had MechInf and TOWs in every city by that point, I mopped up his ~35% land territory in about 10 turns, for a win by Domination

.

 

[Civinator]

Oh yes, this behaviour is 'normal' for the Flintlock patched .exe, and not just in RARR, but also the base-game.

When the escorting defender of a "Bombard-pair" gets killed out of a stack, the AI will frequently retreat the now 'undefended' bombard-unit, even though it would have been safer staying in the stack. And if a rival player -- whether human or AI -- has a military unit within movement range, and the bombard-unit has D=0, and that rival Civ also has the tech/ability to build them, taking the opportunity to capture that now-undefended bombard-unit is a no-brainer.

Yes, these are my observations, too. But in the example of MilsB the catapult "maintained" a position without an escorting defense unit and I interprete "maintained" as staying in that location and not retreating. May be this has to do with the setting of civspecific catapults in RARR to avoid such situations of mass-capturing of AI land artillery by clever human players.

 

[vmxa]

I have always been torn by that part of the patch. It seemed like a good idea, but it has a large draw back. Humans will kill the escort and gain a unit. At times I would have to delete the unit as I could not get it back to safety. I still have it on, but I think I should drop that one. It seems to hurt the AI and not help. At least in AW games.

 

[Civinator]

I have always been torn by that part of the patch. It seemed like a good idea, but it has a large draw back. Humans will kill the escort and gain a unit. At times I would have to delete the unit as I could not get it back to safety. I still have it on, but I think I should drop that one. It seems to hurt the AI and not help. At least in AW games.

There are two ways to fix that problem:

1. You can give each civ civspecific land artillery units. As no other civ can build such a unit, it will be destroyed and not captured in this situation.
This is the way I set the land artillery in the RARR mod.

2. You can give each land artillery unit a defense value. In that case the defending unit will be destroyed when loosing the combat.
This is the way most real land artillery is set in CCM 3.

 

[vmxa]

I would favor number 2. Overall I am leaning towards dropping that "fix". If the AI is unable to handle the process, it is better that they use the resources for something else. All the bombardment units the make that they send out are almost never going to helpful to them. Those resources may be put to better use. For now, I am staying the course to allow them to
shock me on a rare occasion. From time to time, they show up with a stack of bombardment units and they are covered by 3 or 4 units and are able to do some damage. They have to attack
at the right site, at the right time, so it is not common.

 

[Civinator]

The disadvantage in solution 2 (defense value added) is, that combat between two stacks with masses of land artillery is lasting much longer. In CCM 3 this is not such a problem, as there is not so many "real" land artillery in that mod.

 

[tjs282]

For me, the main human 'abuse' of C3X (in the stock game) is that every bombard-unit captured makes it easier to capture another one. And that Catapults can then be upgraded all the way to (Radar)Arty.

While that can of course be expensive, captured bombard-units cost no maintenance, so saving up the needed cash is not really an obstacle -- at least for a human who can trade competently, and manage their (Republic's) economy even halfway efficiently. However, neither of those conditions really apply to the AI -- especially given their tendency to sign random MPPs which then trigger the Industrial-era world wars, revolts into Fascism, and subsequent economic implosions.

Breaking the upgrade-chain at an appropriate point (my choice: between Trebs/Hwach'a and Cannon), and giving Arty+ a nominal D-value to prevent them being captured, can therefore go a long way towards mitigating the human-controlled Arty-SOD (such as I described above).

An HP-handicap on Arty+ also reduces the extended battles/ game-time needed to destroy it.

 

[Coq]

Hello! I started a game with this mod for the first time and am having a blast so far. Hadn't played Civ III in a few years and this is a great way to freshen things up.

One thing has been bugging me and I am wondering whether I am experiencing a bug or if I just do not understand the whole Supply shipment mechanic.


So I built a coffee plantation IN MY CAPITAL which is built DIRECTLY on a coffee tile. The supply shipment thus spawns IN my capital. I can have a unit pick it up in there, but it never does anything. The unit stays red and cannot pick up anymore shipments, but it never gives me any money. I tried moving it out of the city and back in, out wait a turn and back in, nothing. I tried moving the shipment out of the city first, then picking it up and moving it back in. Nothing.


Am I doing something wrong or is the combination or do these shipments simply not work when they originate from the capital itself?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[tjs282]

Sounds like you might have forgotten to activate Supply Shipments in the game rules (on the Choose Your Civ + Opponents screen) before you started your game?

Unfortunately there's no way to fix this for the current game, but if you do it for the next game, they should work properly.

 

[Civinator]

Coq, thank you very much for your kind words about RARR. As usual, tjs282 beat me in the answer as I made some additional screenshots for answering your question. My guess is, too, that you have not enabled the option "Capture Shipments" when starting RARR.

Your strategy to move the supply shipment outside the capital and then to remove it back escorted to gain the 25 gold is correct, if the option for supply shipments is enabled. Unfortunately the AI civs are not capable of that maneuver, when the supply shipment is produced directly in the capital. This is why the gain is set to only 25 gold, the same amount when a barbarian village is destroyed.

As you can see in some posts above your post, the next version of RARR is in the works and I hope that I can improve the description of supply shipments a little bit, per example by adding the hint in the player set up screen, that enabling the option Capture Shipments is needed to let the supply shipments work in the game. There will also be some other explanations as I did it in CCM 3. Per example it was found, that enabeling additionally the option "Victory Point Scoring" when starting a game (as written in the RARR civilopedia) is not needed to let the supply shipments work. Here is the description for supply shipments in CCM 3:

 

[Coq]

Ahh it was my first game and I wasn't sure what that option was, that must indeed be the problem. Okay well I'll just disband my wagons as they spawn for this game and fix this for my next one, then.

Thanks for the swift replies

 

[Civinator]

Okay well I'll just disband my wagons as they spawn for this game and fix this for my next one, then.

Or you use some of them in your curent game as scouts, as they don´t trigger unit support costs and the AI civs are not able to use them, too.

 

[Gmelchett]

I've now played a few games (up until around Industrial ages) with RARR 1.8 and every time during war the AI players seem to favor razing cities to the ground instead of capture them. In my current game, I'm now at around 1300 AD and the Greeks have wiped clean two continents clean of all populations. Is this a new change? Or is it just that during my games with 1.8, I've gotten civilizations that favors razing than capturing

Another question, "Temple of Zeus" -- no civilization ever seems to be able to build it during my games with 1.7 and 1.8 Does anyone have the same experience?

 

[Civinator]

1.There was no change in favor of razing cities in RARR 1.8. You can exclude razing cities completely by enabling that option in the scenario.c3x_config file of RARR 1.8.

2. The Temple of Zeus needs incense in the city that should build it.

 

[Gmelchett]

1.There was no change in favor of razing cities in RARR 1.8. You can exclude razing cities completely by enabling that option in the scenario.c3x_config file of RARR 1.8.

Thanks, I'll try with that setting.

2. The Temple of Zeus needs incense in the city that should build it.

Yes, but the issue is that I've never seen it being built. It has never been present for me, nor has the computer have built it in any game(I think) that I've played. Anyone else experience that?

 

[ynot56]

I really like your new era 3 tech tree.

Have you thought of something for the labor union city improvement? It is currently worse than the park, more expensive and later in the tech tree.

I think it is probably better to change the removal of pollution to increased happiness. Also, there is a good possibility for requiring three to create a small wonder.

I don't think this is possible, but I was wondering if you could have a small wonder that improved worker efficiency?

 

[Civinator]

Have you thought of something for the labor union city improvement? It is currently worse than the park, more expensive and later in the tech tree.
I think it is probably better to change the removal of pollution to increased happiness. Also, there is a good possibility for requiring three to create a small wonder.
I don't think this is possible, but I was wondering if you could have a small wonder that improved worker efficiency?

I agree, that in my eyes this building is the lamest of the complete RARR mod, too. There are not so much possibilities for the setting of this building, that have a connection to the results of labour union. Additional happiness in the cities coming from workers who are more satisfied cause of their better working conditions - but what is with the inhabitants of a city who are angry by not driving busses, trains and so on due to strikes ?

A small wonder, making workers twice as expensive and let them work only each second turn, brings no benefit for the game.

All in all, giving one additional happiness, in my eyes at present seems to be the best solution for that building, but I am always open for good ideas.

 

[ynot56]

I built the Great Wall and it did not appear to give my cities city walls.