Suggestions and Requests
- Thread starter Leoreth
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1SDANi
The Fading Memory
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If they have tributaries and elective? By building commerce, missionaries, work boats, spies, etc.
If they don't have tributaries? By building anything that's not a building.
merijn_v1
Black Belt
I’m not sure about the culture part, but I’m pretty sure that monasteries still allow missionaries after they are obsolete.
You only need one monastery to being able to build missionaries even after SM. But only in that city. This can be very tedious and it is obviously preferable if multiple cities have that option.
It is only a real problem if you couldn’t build any monastery before SM. (Late spawn, no religion spread etc.) Then you are not able to build missionaries (except when running Monasticism) I don’t know if monasteries are destroyed upon city conquest, so I don’t know if that is a method of acquiring a monastery after SM.
JHLee
Prince
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The problem as it is now is that you cannot build any new monasteries after SM.
This can get especially frustrating if you need to spread your religion to newly settled colonies,
because your colony cities can't build monasteries and so cannot produce missionaries
which means you have to build them at home and ship them across the sea.
Imagine playing as the Dutch or English with multiple colonies in America, South Africa, Australia, South Asia, etc.
Publicola
King
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I'm doing some research on the Mandinka (Mali Empire) and learned for the first time that Timbuktu was not the capital of the Mali Empire, but was a rather late addition to the empire, annexed by Mansa Musa some hundred years after the empire began. The actual capital was located in the city of Niani, to the southwest (near the headwaters of the Niger river).
It's been a while since I've played a game as Mali, but is this at all reflected in that civ's setup? I don't remember settling Niani as my capital, last time I played.
It's been a while since I've played a game as Mali, but is this at all reflected in that civ's setup? I don't remember settling Niani as my capital, last time I played.
The Mali spawn at Djenne now, which I think is 2SW of Timbuktu. There were also terrain changes at that time.
Publicola
King
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Hmm. Per this map, Djenne should only be 1 SW of Timbuktu, and Niani would be another 2 S 1 W of that -- so Niani would be on the plains tile 1 S of where Djenne is settled in-game. Djenne's probably more important in the long-run, since Niani was abandoned after the Mali Empire fell. OTOH, neither Djenne nor Timbuktu were ever the capital of Mali. (Yes, Mansa Musa built a 'grand palace' in Timbuktu, but he used the Niani palace for conducting the business of the empire, meeting ambassadors, etc. Mansa Musa was also kinda obsessed with Timbuktu, certainly compared to his successors, and his Timbuktu palace seems to have vanished from the historical record some time after his death.
Fortunately, if I'm reading the new Big Map right, West Africa will have enough space for both Niani and Djenne to be settled.
I'd also like to see Mali get its start around 1235 AD, with Timbuktu as a pre-existing independent city several tiles away. Given that Mansa Musa peacefully annexed Timbuktu in 1324, after returning from his hajj to Mecca, I see two ways we could 'flip' the city to Mali control. Either have it happen automatically in 1324 (or the nearest turn to that year). OR, have the city flip to Mali control after Mali sends its first Great Merchant to Mecca.
hnrysml
Warlord
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I was about to link that exact map too, it seems to be from a reputable source, and it has useful information for the city names, terrain (especially in regards to savannah) and placement of resources and rivers in West Africa... unfortunately I can't compare with the map in development at the moment, but I'm sure someone could use it to make useful suggestions.
Genghis Khaiser
King
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- Aug 10, 2012
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The same way Portugal, Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands have their own Trading Company events, other nations should have their own. My idea is them either researching something like Railroad or Ballistics, building a Trading Company or setting a Stock Exchange. My suggestions:
- America: Any three of the following: Alaska, California (Los Angeles and/or San Francisco), Cuba, Hawai, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Texas.
- Germany: Possibly, but any two of these: Namibia, Kenya, Togo, Cameroon, New Guinea.
- Russia: Siberia (Novosibirsk or Krasnoyarsk), Vladivostok, and Alaska (Novoarkhangelsk/Sitka/Juneau).
1SDANi
The Fading Memory
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California and Siberia are currently AI only events so I'd very much like this change. I wonder if the other conquerors events could be handled similarly...
1SDANi
The Fading Memory
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I have implemented this mechanic on my local version and can confirm that with some small tweaks the AI can handle it just fine.
bluepotato
Prince
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Could Mexico's spawn be conditional? Most new world civs don't spawn if the civ controlling their area is stable, and having to recapture your colony even if you're stable (or solid) just doesn't feel right. Also, even if you manage to keep the AI Aztecs alive (which is hardly doable btw), they will flip the Mexican flipzone at the theoretical Mexican spawn date.
canexpthat
Chieftain
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- Feb 4, 2014
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I've loved RFC ever since I played the hell out of the original one way back. And now with DoC, the changes made to tech and units alone make this mod as good as any Civ4 mod out there even without the events and stability that make RFC DoC super special. This is a write-up of all of my thoughts I've had while playing DoC. Some may already have answers or solutions that I just don't know about. Most are my suggestions, especially regarding clarity of explanations of game mechanics. At the end are questions I have that I just don't know the answers to (not suggestions). Warning: the whole thing is very long 
So core/historical area tiles are provided in-game (ctrl + k). Perhaps information on flipzone tiles should be somewhere in-game as well? Stability tiles are important for stability, but flipzone tiles are very important for long-term play. There is a Flipzones.png in the Maps folder in the DoC Mods folder, but I don't know how up to date it is, and it should be in-game anyway, like the stability map tiles. I know that it can also be fun to play blind with regard to flip zones so that you don't know exactly when or how your cities will get flipped/warred in the future, and perhaps the intention of flipzones is to make it really hard for the player or AI to last past a certain date, but it's still information that might as well be available in-game.
Postponing/avoiding stability checks by not advancing tech seems to be a real tactic to deal with temporary instability. But is this tactic a feature or a loophole? There is something immersion-breaking about it. "Wow, my empire is completely collapsing, but if I just stop research, I can potentially last for centuries like this while I change around some stuff to increase stability." I understand that historically, adoption of a new technology can lead to instability, but that's really not the same as this potentially gamey phenomenon imho that you can stretch a lot. I'm not saying we gotta have stability checks every turn, but I'm just throwing the idea out there of whether it makes sense for civs to just postpone stability checks by turning research down to zero. For a historical explanation, I can understand discovering a tech that advances you to the next era causing a stability check. But anyway, what I'm arguing for is stability checks that can't be gamed so much by turning the science slider to 0.
More in-game explanation of inflation. Does it increase with time/era/pop/cities/tech? Leoreth explained it as "just a thematic name for the mechanic that accounts for your growing economic base over the course of the game." (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/can-we-do-something-against-inflation.648314/#post-15509856). Maybe just call it something else, as "inflation" implies a technical economic phenomenon that just invites questions and confusion from players (this "inflation" in the game is a relic from the original RFC, right?). How about completely incorporating it into rising civics costs, which is my next question:
Is there any in-game note and explanation on civic costs rising? I think I've noticed that even if you don't ever change civics from the beginning, civic costs rise with time, or is it rising with era/pop/cities/tech? Also, there ideally should be an option to switch back into the ancient starting civics, for example Chiefdom (which has low costs), because if you get the tech for Despotism (which has medium costs) and switch into it, you literally can't switch back into Chiefdom for the lower cost even though you technically have the prerequisite for Chiefdom (which is no prereq). I actually think just merging the "inflation" mechanic costs into rising civic costs and getting rid of the "inflation" mechanic is better. Rising civic costs makes historical and logical sense. "Inflation" doesn't really, unless you can reset inflation to 0 during economic/civic revolutions (currency redenomination?), or inflation rises when you spend more gold or foreign trade causes more currency to enter your economy, etc.
An in-game note of when certain civics become outdated and cause stability penalties would be nice.
Would like better descriptions of some UHVs. E.g. The Chinese golden age UHV should just say "32 turns of golden age experienced" since that seems to be the actual UHV requirement. I first assumed "experience 4 golden ages" meant 4 golden ages triggered, so that the Great Mausoleum wouldn't help (not that it matters for China in my experience since China is unlikely to get Zoroastrianism). I also first assumed that there was no need to "finish" the last golden age to get the UHV, only the need to start that last golden age. If a golden age "experience" as the UHV means it is triggered by the "finish" of a golden age, it made me wonder whether starting a new golden age during an existing golden age might cause the mod to think that the first golden age hadn't "finished" and thus might only count one golden age "finish", so I figured the mod must be counting golden ages by when they're triggered, not when they "finish." Only after searching and reading the forums did I come to know that it's 32 golden age turns to get the UHV.
During congresses, let the player somehow see (center the map view on?) the cities that the player can ask for. Maybe give the player a menu list of the cities he can ask for and let the player click through the cities on the list, where with each click the map centers on that city. As of now, you literally can't see where these cities are, which is an issue if you don't recognize those city names. (The current way is better than original RFC where you couldn't see the cities that other civs were asking for, but currently you still can't see the cities that you ask for.) Or the congress shows the list of cities to you on the turn before the actual turn of the congress vote so that you have that turn to look at the cities on your own time.
Is there a way to not have both jungles and rainforests exist? It looks like the difference is that you can settle on rainforests but not jungles, but that's kinda confusing. Also are there any ways (loopholes) where rainforests/jungles can be cleared away? It feels like some of them disappear before microbiology. Certain improvements? City razed? If it's city razed, that seems like a loophole. If it's certain improvements that clears jungles/rainforests, that should be explained in-game in the Civilopedia. There is a China strategy guide that says you can found/gift/raze cities in the jungle to build and conquer your way into India. It's impressive, but gamey. Even in a game where I'm playing China and have no intention of going into India, I still want to easily know the rules of the tiles as I build along my southern border.
Maybe a replacement for marshes in Siberia? Make them ice tiles and then make ice tiles inaccessible for non-scout units? Are marsh tiles in Siberia even needed? I kinda recall them having a some sort of purpose in the original RFC to prevent civs from having such early easy access to Siberia, but in my recent playthroughs of RFC DoC, it doesn't seem like early Siberian access needs to be blocked that way. Or if it does, maybe use a different tile, like ice. It feels weird to travel around tundra and forests and suddenly there are patches of tropical/humid looking marshes.
The F2 screen can be a lot clearer on how to show and explain stability level vs stability score and stability checks. At the very least the screen should clearly separate and label your Stability Level (Shaky, Unstable, etc.) and your Stability Score, which is numerical. The way they're just placed next to each other with the one label of "Stability" is confusing for players who haven't already taken the effort to really understand the stability mechanics. And only through experimentation or searching the forums would someone realize that the number is your stability score on your previous stability check. There is literally afaik no way of knowing what your current stability score is. To find out what it is now, you have to trigger a new stability check and watch that number update. An alert message at the top of the screen showing "Your stability level has been updated" or something like that would be great, too (I think another comment mentioned this), just like those other alert messages like "A Great General was born" etc.
Change the name of the stability level Shaky to something else like Neutral. Because what it is, is Neutral. It's weird that the level between Unstable and Stable is called "Shaky." Or that the moment you start the game with a settler in 3000BC, the game tells you your stability is Shaky.
Perhaps there should be one stage of collapse before a complete gameover collapse. A gameover collapse means a player either accepts the game over and never plays that game again or just reloads an older save. There is literally no option to try to rebuild your way back. What if a collapse causes you to lose all your cities but your capital (I remember old RFC did this?) or you lose all your cities except half of your cities in your core area, which you get to keep. These are your loyalists, basically, and you can now try to fight and rebuild your way back. A further collapse can bring you down to just your capital or cause a final gameover, for example. A complete collapse as of now encourages players to keep stability while they're still alive, which is good, but it doesn't allow interesting comeback stories because there's literally no comeback - the game straight up brings you to the main menu after a complete collapse.
In the trade screen with other rulers, when hovering over a resource, it would be nice to be able to see how many cities that type of resource can supply, like saying "supplies 3 cities", for both your resources and the other ruler's.
More in-game explanation and consequences of your choices upon taking a city: install governor vs sack and take what you can vs raze vs spare city, etc. Maybe a tooltip when you hover over each choice?
State in-game, perhaps somewhere in the scenario launch screen, that the game on this version is only tested on and designed to be played on Regent/Normal or whatever the settings are. Could also include text like: "Epic speed may be recommended for conquest UHVs." (according to this comment
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-289#post-15471486).
"Not tested yet on Monarch/Paragon", etc. The more info the better. I would like to know if the game hasn't been tested on some difficulty level just so that I know what I'm getting myself into. This is a great, amazing, complex mod. There is no obligation for the mod to be playable on all different game levels and speeds, but it would help if there was a simple declaration at the beginning about which levels and speeds that the mod has been tested on/is designed for.
Either eliminate/re-do/explain more what the star ratings are for every civ in different aspects (trade, production, culture, growth, starting situation). I have a feeling they can just be eliminated.
I wonder if goody huts can be eliminated. UHVs tend to be designed with very tight and optimal game play necessary, especially for early era civs. Huts are a weird imbalance thrown in there. And no guide for a UHV should start with "send your warrior halfway across the continent to grab the 3 huts scattered around there." There's something immersion-breaking about the warrior exploring half the continent in 1000 BC. So maybe even eliminate huts from future DoC versions, although that may be controversial.
Kind of related to the above: If there is a desire to make exploration harder (for example, make it harder to be able to have an ancient warrior/boat unit go across a continent on his own), make it so that units that have been outside of your culture can lose health and even die. Resupply points become necessary to keep such an exploring unit alive, either with Open Borders civs, or perhaps forts. Scout units lose health slower so that they can survive longer in the wilderness on their own. Ties in with a previous comment's idea about "circumnavigation of Africa" (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-292#post-15510650) and the importance of naval bases for Age of Sail/modern expansion (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-292#post-15497092). It would also do away with the cape feature that blocks ships before compass, which seems like an artificial shoe-horned solution - though it seems like the Polynesian UHV design is heavily dependent on the placement of these capes.
Another name for "Pagan Religion"? How about folk religion, folk beliefs, folk mythology, etc? Since Hinduism is polytheistic and thus "pagan" in that sense.
More in-game explanation of the settler's "free building" ability. The civilopedia might as well say what are the free buildings a settler founding a new city gets in each era or whatever the conditions are.
Feels like 80% of AIs that become a vassal to another civ collapse on that very turn, but it looks like the forum is already well aware of this.
Overextension stability penalty-decreasing buildings like Jails and Courthouses should have that in their in-game descriptions (I don't think they do right now). Do/should Administrative Centers and Versailles/Forbidden Palace type buildings/wonders also decrease overextension penalty? If so, they should have that in their descriptions, too.
Be able to set free any cities you don't want (currently I think it's only either colonies or cities that had previous rulers?). This would make it easier for civs to stabilize themselves. You can even give civs a temporary stability penalty for releasing or gifting away cities so that you penalize human players who might game this mechanic.
Add somewhere in the Civilopedia or launch screen that there is no tech-brokering in DoC?
An "idle" build option for cities, where the city literally doesn't build anything if selected from the build menu. Could be nice for some early era civs.
Do/should vassals be willing to give all their techs to their masters? I know vassal resources work like this, but I vaguely remember not being able to demand vassal's techs in the same way, but since my memory is vague, that might not have been with DoC. It might've been vanilla BtS.
I've seen cases where I wanted my city to neighbor an active AI civ city instead neighboring a Native/independent as the culture was stronger when the city was owned by Native/Independent. Don't know if that's working as intended or not, especially if the city has been Native/Independent for longer than the active AI. A previous comment mentioned this, too. (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-291#post-15483859)
Some of the civic bonuses are either just weird or seem way too geared towards specific civ UHVs. Meritocracy gives +2 food for paddy fields? Is this just an artificial design to allow China to get GPs for its UHV? Seems strangely artificial.
Civs with "area-dependent UHVs" like England currently get a region label when they hover over tiles. How about additionally giving a continent-label to all civs, so they know what tiles will count as colonies for them if they want to expand beyond their home continent, as well as know the boundaries of effects of continental-effect wonders.
Edit the pop-up menu for when a new civ spawns and you're given the option to switch to it, adding a "Don't Ask Me Again" option, or add an overall game option somewhere in the Options menu or somewhere like that that allows you to toggle off or on being asked if you want to switch to a new spawning civ. I don't need to be asked 20 times in a 3000 BC China game whether I want to switch to every single new civ that spawns, not to mention get nervous every time to make real sure I don't mistakenly select Yes lol.
When I played 3000 BC China, the game (not my civ) was very unstable in the early ancient stages especially, I think, when I had a scout wander the middle east to contact civs there. I got a lot of "fatal_error memory allocation" crash to desktop issues even though I have played a lot of DoC before and even Caveman 2 Cosmos (probably the heaviest Civ4 mod out there?) in the past without such bad crash-to-desktop or freezing issues. The instability actually goes away as the game progresses, weirdly enough, going into medieval and renaissance periods, where there are more civs and units around. I unfortunately don't have a save file demonstrating this situation, but if I can get one, I'll post it.
Regarding some previous comments regarding Tibet's accessibility (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-295#post-15544715): Maybe give them some UP or UU where units can move on and through mountain peaks. Analogous to how e.g. war elephants can move through jungle/rainforest. Or a Great Wall/Russian winter-like UP: all enemy civ units in Tibetan culture or core/historical area lose some health every turn (explained as high altitude sickness, difficulty of supplying units in that terrain, etc). If a UP like that is made strong enough, you could even open up some other mountain passes in the map if you want to give more geographical options to Tibet. I don't know if the barbarian melee units that periodically appear in Tibet should have or not have the ability to resist "high-altitude sickness." If they represent native Tibetan rivals to the Tibet civ, then they should have that resistance.
Economic recession causing instability using "total final commerce" (final gold income + beakers) feels a bit modern, even capitalist. Instead, using food yield would make sense for pre-modern agrarian societies. Or... if something like the greater of [food yield % change] vs [total final commerce % change] is in a downtrend, then that causes instability. This will make it more generous for civs, if that's what's desired (there were comments saying that the recession instability mechanic was causing too many collapses). You can even incorporate production as well for even more generosity. Take the greatest value of [food yield % change] vs [total final commerce % change] vs [total production % change] and measure the trend of that.
Some of the religious requirements for wonders in the Civilopedia are confusing to read. Khajuraho requires "Hinduism and (Hinduism or Buddhism)". It'd be better if they just clearly said "Requires either X OR Y in city" or "Requires X AND Y in city." I first thought it was something like "Requires Hinduism as state religion and (Hinduism or Buddhism) in the city to be built" when I first saw the requirements for Khajuraho. Honestly, I still don't really know what the religious requirements are sometimes lol.
Another thing that the Civilopedia has that's sometimes confusing is when sometimes the icon for your state religion icon is used in the explanation and it's hard to tell whether the effect is for cities with that religion (whether or not it's your state religion) or whether the effect is for cities with your state religion, whatever that religion may be.
Easily accessible in-game explanation that the starting "Pagan Religion" in a city is automatically eliminated from the city when it first has a religion spread to it. I assumed for a long time that since I never got a "[Pagan Religion] has disappeared from this city" message or sound effect/notification, all cities must still be keeping the Pagan Religion but that it's just somehow hidden from the city screen or something.
Is there a way or an option to show wonders (grayed out) in the city build menu that have their tech requirements fulfilled but not religious requirements fulfilled? I often forget if there's a nice wonder that I can build but just need to spread some religions around to my big production cities, or perhaps even settle a city near a neighboring civ to try to grab their religion. There's no way to tell when looking at the city build menu right now if there are wonders "I'm missing" due to not having a religion. They can be shown but grayed out in the same way that cathedrals and baths are shown but grayed out when their building requirements (enough temples, aqueducts) haven't been reached. The option should allow you to toggle it on and off, so that if you don't want 10 grayed out wonders clogging up your menu, you can go back to not seeing them.
Harappa's UP only has an effect when a city's base net food is positive and surplus food isn't being used for production. If it's 0 (stagnating) or negative (starving) or surplus food is being used for production (e.g. building workers or settlers, etc., even if wonders like the Pyramids are built), the UP has no effect. If this is working as intended, I feel that more in-game explanation would be nice for the player. More here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/harappa-strategy-guide.568218/page-2#post-15556631
Questions:
Once you get a religion spreading in your civ, are you able to use religious prosecutors (and changing state religions around) to force a city "back" into paganism? Is this the way to get relatively late pagan wonders, like the Silver Tree Fountain? But if that's the case, late ancient-early classical pagan wonders become kind of out of reach or not worth it, I find. Too late to avoid getting religions into your city, but too early before you get religious prosecutors (needs Doctrine, a medieval tech), and too late if the wonder will become obsolete soon.
What's the difference between Independent, Native, and barbarian cities?
I'm playing with the BUG mod and I can't see the blue stability icon in the scoreboard. Is that stability icon still a part of DoC? If so, how can I get it back? I really like those icons.
What I see:
What I miss seeing:
So core/historical area tiles are provided in-game (ctrl + k). Perhaps information on flipzone tiles should be somewhere in-game as well? Stability tiles are important for stability, but flipzone tiles are very important for long-term play. There is a Flipzones.png in the Maps folder in the DoC Mods folder, but I don't know how up to date it is, and it should be in-game anyway, like the stability map tiles. I know that it can also be fun to play blind with regard to flip zones so that you don't know exactly when or how your cities will get flipped/warred in the future, and perhaps the intention of flipzones is to make it really hard for the player or AI to last past a certain date, but it's still information that might as well be available in-game.
Postponing/avoiding stability checks by not advancing tech seems to be a real tactic to deal with temporary instability. But is this tactic a feature or a loophole? There is something immersion-breaking about it. "Wow, my empire is completely collapsing, but if I just stop research, I can potentially last for centuries like this while I change around some stuff to increase stability." I understand that historically, adoption of a new technology can lead to instability, but that's really not the same as this potentially gamey phenomenon imho that you can stretch a lot. I'm not saying we gotta have stability checks every turn, but I'm just throwing the idea out there of whether it makes sense for civs to just postpone stability checks by turning research down to zero. For a historical explanation, I can understand discovering a tech that advances you to the next era causing a stability check. But anyway, what I'm arguing for is stability checks that can't be gamed so much by turning the science slider to 0.
More in-game explanation of inflation. Does it increase with time/era/pop/cities/tech? Leoreth explained it as "just a thematic name for the mechanic that accounts for your growing economic base over the course of the game." (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/can-we-do-something-against-inflation.648314/#post-15509856). Maybe just call it something else, as "inflation" implies a technical economic phenomenon that just invites questions and confusion from players (this "inflation" in the game is a relic from the original RFC, right?). How about completely incorporating it into rising civics costs, which is my next question:
Is there any in-game note and explanation on civic costs rising? I think I've noticed that even if you don't ever change civics from the beginning, civic costs rise with time, or is it rising with era/pop/cities/tech? Also, there ideally should be an option to switch back into the ancient starting civics, for example Chiefdom (which has low costs), because if you get the tech for Despotism (which has medium costs) and switch into it, you literally can't switch back into Chiefdom for the lower cost even though you technically have the prerequisite for Chiefdom (which is no prereq). I actually think just merging the "inflation" mechanic costs into rising civic costs and getting rid of the "inflation" mechanic is better. Rising civic costs makes historical and logical sense. "Inflation" doesn't really, unless you can reset inflation to 0 during economic/civic revolutions (currency redenomination?), or inflation rises when you spend more gold or foreign trade causes more currency to enter your economy, etc.
An in-game note of when certain civics become outdated and cause stability penalties would be nice.
Would like better descriptions of some UHVs. E.g. The Chinese golden age UHV should just say "32 turns of golden age experienced" since that seems to be the actual UHV requirement. I first assumed "experience 4 golden ages" meant 4 golden ages triggered, so that the Great Mausoleum wouldn't help (not that it matters for China in my experience since China is unlikely to get Zoroastrianism). I also first assumed that there was no need to "finish" the last golden age to get the UHV, only the need to start that last golden age. If a golden age "experience" as the UHV means it is triggered by the "finish" of a golden age, it made me wonder whether starting a new golden age during an existing golden age might cause the mod to think that the first golden age hadn't "finished" and thus might only count one golden age "finish", so I figured the mod must be counting golden ages by when they're triggered, not when they "finish." Only after searching and reading the forums did I come to know that it's 32 golden age turns to get the UHV.
During congresses, let the player somehow see (center the map view on?) the cities that the player can ask for. Maybe give the player a menu list of the cities he can ask for and let the player click through the cities on the list, where with each click the map centers on that city. As of now, you literally can't see where these cities are, which is an issue if you don't recognize those city names. (The current way is better than original RFC where you couldn't see the cities that other civs were asking for, but currently you still can't see the cities that you ask for.) Or the congress shows the list of cities to you on the turn before the actual turn of the congress vote so that you have that turn to look at the cities on your own time.
Is there a way to not have both jungles and rainforests exist? It looks like the difference is that you can settle on rainforests but not jungles, but that's kinda confusing. Also are there any ways (loopholes) where rainforests/jungles can be cleared away? It feels like some of them disappear before microbiology. Certain improvements? City razed? If it's city razed, that seems like a loophole. If it's certain improvements that clears jungles/rainforests, that should be explained in-game in the Civilopedia. There is a China strategy guide that says you can found/gift/raze cities in the jungle to build and conquer your way into India. It's impressive, but gamey. Even in a game where I'm playing China and have no intention of going into India, I still want to easily know the rules of the tiles as I build along my southern border.
Maybe a replacement for marshes in Siberia? Make them ice tiles and then make ice tiles inaccessible for non-scout units? Are marsh tiles in Siberia even needed? I kinda recall them having a some sort of purpose in the original RFC to prevent civs from having such early easy access to Siberia, but in my recent playthroughs of RFC DoC, it doesn't seem like early Siberian access needs to be blocked that way. Or if it does, maybe use a different tile, like ice. It feels weird to travel around tundra and forests and suddenly there are patches of tropical/humid looking marshes.
The F2 screen can be a lot clearer on how to show and explain stability level vs stability score and stability checks. At the very least the screen should clearly separate and label your Stability Level (Shaky, Unstable, etc.) and your Stability Score, which is numerical. The way they're just placed next to each other with the one label of "Stability" is confusing for players who haven't already taken the effort to really understand the stability mechanics. And only through experimentation or searching the forums would someone realize that the number is your stability score on your previous stability check. There is literally afaik no way of knowing what your current stability score is. To find out what it is now, you have to trigger a new stability check and watch that number update. An alert message at the top of the screen showing "Your stability level has been updated" or something like that would be great, too (I think another comment mentioned this), just like those other alert messages like "A Great General was born" etc.
Change the name of the stability level Shaky to something else like Neutral. Because what it is, is Neutral. It's weird that the level between Unstable and Stable is called "Shaky." Or that the moment you start the game with a settler in 3000BC, the game tells you your stability is Shaky.
Perhaps there should be one stage of collapse before a complete gameover collapse. A gameover collapse means a player either accepts the game over and never plays that game again or just reloads an older save. There is literally no option to try to rebuild your way back. What if a collapse causes you to lose all your cities but your capital (I remember old RFC did this?) or you lose all your cities except half of your cities in your core area, which you get to keep. These are your loyalists, basically, and you can now try to fight and rebuild your way back. A further collapse can bring you down to just your capital or cause a final gameover, for example. A complete collapse as of now encourages players to keep stability while they're still alive, which is good, but it doesn't allow interesting comeback stories because there's literally no comeback - the game straight up brings you to the main menu after a complete collapse.
In the trade screen with other rulers, when hovering over a resource, it would be nice to be able to see how many cities that type of resource can supply, like saying "supplies 3 cities", for both your resources and the other ruler's.
More in-game explanation and consequences of your choices upon taking a city: install governor vs sack and take what you can vs raze vs spare city, etc. Maybe a tooltip when you hover over each choice?
State in-game, perhaps somewhere in the scenario launch screen, that the game on this version is only tested on and designed to be played on Regent/Normal or whatever the settings are. Could also include text like: "Epic speed may be recommended for conquest UHVs." (according to this comment
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-289#post-15471486).
"Not tested yet on Monarch/Paragon", etc. The more info the better. I would like to know if the game hasn't been tested on some difficulty level just so that I know what I'm getting myself into. This is a great, amazing, complex mod. There is no obligation for the mod to be playable on all different game levels and speeds, but it would help if there was a simple declaration at the beginning about which levels and speeds that the mod has been tested on/is designed for.
Either eliminate/re-do/explain more what the star ratings are for every civ in different aspects (trade, production, culture, growth, starting situation). I have a feeling they can just be eliminated.
I wonder if goody huts can be eliminated. UHVs tend to be designed with very tight and optimal game play necessary, especially for early era civs. Huts are a weird imbalance thrown in there. And no guide for a UHV should start with "send your warrior halfway across the continent to grab the 3 huts scattered around there." There's something immersion-breaking about the warrior exploring half the continent in 1000 BC. So maybe even eliminate huts from future DoC versions, although that may be controversial.
Kind of related to the above: If there is a desire to make exploration harder (for example, make it harder to be able to have an ancient warrior/boat unit go across a continent on his own), make it so that units that have been outside of your culture can lose health and even die. Resupply points become necessary to keep such an exploring unit alive, either with Open Borders civs, or perhaps forts. Scout units lose health slower so that they can survive longer in the wilderness on their own. Ties in with a previous comment's idea about "circumnavigation of Africa" (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-292#post-15510650) and the importance of naval bases for Age of Sail/modern expansion (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-292#post-15497092). It would also do away with the cape feature that blocks ships before compass, which seems like an artificial shoe-horned solution - though it seems like the Polynesian UHV design is heavily dependent on the placement of these capes.
Another name for "Pagan Religion"? How about folk religion, folk beliefs, folk mythology, etc? Since Hinduism is polytheistic and thus "pagan" in that sense.
More in-game explanation of the settler's "free building" ability. The civilopedia might as well say what are the free buildings a settler founding a new city gets in each era or whatever the conditions are.
Feels like 80% of AIs that become a vassal to another civ collapse on that very turn, but it looks like the forum is already well aware of this.
Overextension stability penalty-decreasing buildings like Jails and Courthouses should have that in their in-game descriptions (I don't think they do right now). Do/should Administrative Centers and Versailles/Forbidden Palace type buildings/wonders also decrease overextension penalty? If so, they should have that in their descriptions, too.
Be able to set free any cities you don't want (currently I think it's only either colonies or cities that had previous rulers?). This would make it easier for civs to stabilize themselves. You can even give civs a temporary stability penalty for releasing or gifting away cities so that you penalize human players who might game this mechanic.
Add somewhere in the Civilopedia or launch screen that there is no tech-brokering in DoC?
An "idle" build option for cities, where the city literally doesn't build anything if selected from the build menu. Could be nice for some early era civs.
Do/should vassals be willing to give all their techs to their masters? I know vassal resources work like this, but I vaguely remember not being able to demand vassal's techs in the same way, but since my memory is vague, that might not have been with DoC. It might've been vanilla BtS.
I've seen cases where I wanted my city to neighbor an active AI civ city instead neighboring a Native/independent as the culture was stronger when the city was owned by Native/Independent. Don't know if that's working as intended or not, especially if the city has been Native/Independent for longer than the active AI. A previous comment mentioned this, too. (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-291#post-15483859)
Some of the civic bonuses are either just weird or seem way too geared towards specific civ UHVs. Meritocracy gives +2 food for paddy fields? Is this just an artificial design to allow China to get GPs for its UHV? Seems strangely artificial.
Civs with "area-dependent UHVs" like England currently get a region label when they hover over tiles. How about additionally giving a continent-label to all civs, so they know what tiles will count as colonies for them if they want to expand beyond their home continent, as well as know the boundaries of effects of continental-effect wonders.
Edit the pop-up menu for when a new civ spawns and you're given the option to switch to it, adding a "Don't Ask Me Again" option, or add an overall game option somewhere in the Options menu or somewhere like that that allows you to toggle off or on being asked if you want to switch to a new spawning civ. I don't need to be asked 20 times in a 3000 BC China game whether I want to switch to every single new civ that spawns, not to mention get nervous every time to make real sure I don't mistakenly select Yes lol.
When I played 3000 BC China, the game (not my civ) was very unstable in the early ancient stages especially, I think, when I had a scout wander the middle east to contact civs there. I got a lot of "fatal_error memory allocation" crash to desktop issues even though I have played a lot of DoC before and even Caveman 2 Cosmos (probably the heaviest Civ4 mod out there?) in the past without such bad crash-to-desktop or freezing issues. The instability actually goes away as the game progresses, weirdly enough, going into medieval and renaissance periods, where there are more civs and units around. I unfortunately don't have a save file demonstrating this situation, but if I can get one, I'll post it.
Regarding some previous comments regarding Tibet's accessibility (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/suggestions-and-requests.533868/page-295#post-15544715): Maybe give them some UP or UU where units can move on and through mountain peaks. Analogous to how e.g. war elephants can move through jungle/rainforest. Or a Great Wall/Russian winter-like UP: all enemy civ units in Tibetan culture or core/historical area lose some health every turn (explained as high altitude sickness, difficulty of supplying units in that terrain, etc). If a UP like that is made strong enough, you could even open up some other mountain passes in the map if you want to give more geographical options to Tibet. I don't know if the barbarian melee units that periodically appear in Tibet should have or not have the ability to resist "high-altitude sickness." If they represent native Tibetan rivals to the Tibet civ, then they should have that resistance.
Economic recession causing instability using "total final commerce" (final gold income + beakers) feels a bit modern, even capitalist. Instead, using food yield would make sense for pre-modern agrarian societies. Or... if something like the greater of [food yield % change] vs [total final commerce % change] is in a downtrend, then that causes instability. This will make it more generous for civs, if that's what's desired (there were comments saying that the recession instability mechanic was causing too many collapses). You can even incorporate production as well for even more generosity. Take the greatest value of [food yield % change] vs [total final commerce % change] vs [total production % change] and measure the trend of that.
Some of the religious requirements for wonders in the Civilopedia are confusing to read. Khajuraho requires "Hinduism and (Hinduism or Buddhism)". It'd be better if they just clearly said "Requires either X OR Y in city" or "Requires X AND Y in city." I first thought it was something like "Requires Hinduism as state religion and (Hinduism or Buddhism) in the city to be built" when I first saw the requirements for Khajuraho. Honestly, I still don't really know what the religious requirements are sometimes lol.
Another thing that the Civilopedia has that's sometimes confusing is when sometimes the icon for your state religion icon is used in the explanation and it's hard to tell whether the effect is for cities with that religion (whether or not it's your state religion) or whether the effect is for cities with your state religion, whatever that religion may be.
Easily accessible in-game explanation that the starting "Pagan Religion" in a city is automatically eliminated from the city when it first has a religion spread to it. I assumed for a long time that since I never got a "[Pagan Religion] has disappeared from this city" message or sound effect/notification, all cities must still be keeping the Pagan Religion but that it's just somehow hidden from the city screen or something.
Is there a way or an option to show wonders (grayed out) in the city build menu that have their tech requirements fulfilled but not religious requirements fulfilled? I often forget if there's a nice wonder that I can build but just need to spread some religions around to my big production cities, or perhaps even settle a city near a neighboring civ to try to grab their religion. There's no way to tell when looking at the city build menu right now if there are wonders "I'm missing" due to not having a religion. They can be shown but grayed out in the same way that cathedrals and baths are shown but grayed out when their building requirements (enough temples, aqueducts) haven't been reached. The option should allow you to toggle it on and off, so that if you don't want 10 grayed out wonders clogging up your menu, you can go back to not seeing them.
Harappa's UP only has an effect when a city's base net food is positive and surplus food isn't being used for production. If it's 0 (stagnating) or negative (starving) or surplus food is being used for production (e.g. building workers or settlers, etc., even if wonders like the Pyramids are built), the UP has no effect. If this is working as intended, I feel that more in-game explanation would be nice for the player. More here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/harappa-strategy-guide.568218/page-2#post-15556631
Questions:
Once you get a religion spreading in your civ, are you able to use religious prosecutors (and changing state religions around) to force a city "back" into paganism? Is this the way to get relatively late pagan wonders, like the Silver Tree Fountain? But if that's the case, late ancient-early classical pagan wonders become kind of out of reach or not worth it, I find. Too late to avoid getting religions into your city, but too early before you get religious prosecutors (needs Doctrine, a medieval tech), and too late if the wonder will become obsolete soon.
What's the difference between Independent, Native, and barbarian cities?
I'm playing with the BUG mod and I can't see the blue stability icon in the scoreboard. Is that stability icon still a part of DoC? If so, how can I get it back? I really like those icons.
What I see:
What I miss seeing:
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- inflation: this mechanic exists since the base game and is there for good reason.
- civic upkeep: scales with your number of cities and population, also for obvious reason. Large civilisations have more disposable income to support their civics. Diegetically, the larger an empire, the more needs to be expended to maintain its social structure. There isn't really any connection to inflation here and they should not be conflated.
- congresses: I guess its possible to add another option that lets you move through all available sites in order, but it's quite a bit of work.
- economic stability: food ultimately translates into commerce, so it is already captured.
- pagan religions: pagan religions are just the conceptualisation of the absence of a religion, so they cannot be "present" in a city or be "restored" to it. If a city does not have a religion, it is considered pagan. If a civilisation does not have a state religion, it is considered pagan. That's all.
- Independents/Natives/Barbarians: barbarians have special AI that makes them generally more aggressive toward the player, and they have special rules surrounding them (e.g. combat experience limits). Independents and Natives are each "minor" civilisations that have some limitations, most notably that they do not engage in diplomacy. Natives are also always at war with all players while Independents will revert to peace after some time without warfare. Besides that, there are aesthetic differences in city and unit models.
- BUG display: with the default settings those extra symbols should be displayed, maybe you had the BUG mod installed outside of DoC and its settings are overriding it? The displayed columns should be configurable in the BUG config.
- civic upkeep: scales with your number of cities and population, also for obvious reason. Large civilisations have more disposable income to support their civics. Diegetically, the larger an empire, the more needs to be expended to maintain its social structure. There isn't really any connection to inflation here and they should not be conflated.
- congresses: I guess its possible to add another option that lets you move through all available sites in order, but it's quite a bit of work.
- economic stability: food ultimately translates into commerce, so it is already captured.
- pagan religions: pagan religions are just the conceptualisation of the absence of a religion, so they cannot be "present" in a city or be "restored" to it. If a city does not have a religion, it is considered pagan. If a civilisation does not have a state religion, it is considered pagan. That's all.
- Independents/Natives/Barbarians: barbarians have special AI that makes them generally more aggressive toward the player, and they have special rules surrounding them (e.g. combat experience limits). Independents and Natives are each "minor" civilisations that have some limitations, most notably that they do not engage in diplomacy. Natives are also always at war with all players while Independents will revert to peace after some time without warfare. Besides that, there are aesthetic differences in city and unit models.
- BUG display: with the default settings those extra symbols should be displayed, maybe you had the BUG mod installed outside of DoC and its settings are overriding it? The displayed columns should be configurable in the BUG config.
canexpthat
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2014
- Messages
- 80
Thanks very much your replies!
-What is the reason for the inflation mechanic? How does it grow?
-Economic stability: I figured that the reason a recession causes instability in the game, intuitively, is that a recession causes lower disposable incomes or higher unemployment, and thus people are less satisfied, and this causes social instability. But this, to me, is a very modern intuition. In feudal and older times, I think it's less commerce and more lower food production that causes social instability. In some places in feudal/ancient times, taxes were paid by grains. And lower food production obviously means higher chance of famine (another idea is starvation in a city causing temporary instability). Generally, most people in feudal/ancient times lived in order to literally just have a decent roof over their heads and enough food, not to earn more disposable income. As long as there was land available and people around, there was something to provide to others - I don't think ancient farmers and town artisans really became unemployed during a recession the way people become unemployed in modern capitalist times. (Ancient merchants and government revenue I'm sure suffered during recessions). The reason I suggested incorporating food production into the "recession trend formula" is because there were comments saying that the economic instability mechanic was causing too many collapses, so I figured incorporating food production in a way that the mechanic will be more forgiving and cause less collapses might be a possibility.
-That makes sense about Pagan religions. But to a new player, that's pretty awkward to understand without a full explanation like the one you just gave. When the Civilopedia tells me playing China that I need "Shendao" to build the Silver Tree Fountain wonder, I was quite puzzled. "Shendao sounds like Chinese paganism, ok, so where is Shendao in my cities?" was what I kept thinking. In terms of gameplay, if all my cities have a religion, is the procedure to get a religious prosecutor and eliminate all the religions in the city where I want to build a pagan wonder?
-Thanks very much for explaining Barbarians/Natives/Independents.
-Yeah, I did install the BUG mod separately, so that must be the issue. Thanks!
On inflation, the root of it lies in how commerce grows polynomially throughout the game, while most forms of upkeep cost grow linearly throughout the game. As technology improves, cities have better commerce modifiers across the board, leading to a compounding effect for income growth. While as I explained before, city and civic upkeep grow in relation to population, the amount of commerce produced by one point is much higher late in the game. Likewise, one unit will always cost one gold per turn, and while the number of units grows as the game progresses, this growth in number is in no proportion to the growth of income.
Inflation costs are always a percentage of your income, and this percentage grows over time, so there are additional costs to account for how overall upkeep costs make up a smaller percentage of your overall income.
When coming up with your interpretation, you are making the assumption that "commerce" is a property of capitalism, which is unfounded. Commerce in the game is an abstract representation of all forms of economic activity, including agriculture. Commerce is a property of all periods of human history, and periods of economic prosperity will lead to greater stability while periods of economic decline will lead to instability. I don't really follow the assertion that this is a phenomenon unique to history under capitalism, which is a very recent development. For example, recount instability in the Roman Empire or the effects of economic contraction in various Chinese dynasties. You are right to point out that food shortages are often interrelated with these economic crises, but as I pointed out this relationship is already represented in how food is correlated with population which is correlated with commerce.
Another important concern here is that food production is a very clear function of the terrain surrounding a city, and it will usually gradually grow as the population grows to both consume and produce it. There is very little to do to improve food production besides the obvious tile improvements and population growth. Which means once the optimal population level for a city has been reached, there will be no growth in food production anymore, and little available action to improve this. Likewise, very few events in the game will disrupt food production. In conclusion, there is very little variance in food production, making it uninteresting as an economic indicator in stability, and where it is this is already captured in commerce. Contrast this with commerce, where buildings, technologies, variance between specialists and cottages, as well as cottage growth, can influence the commerce that is produced independently of population growth.
Inflation costs are always a percentage of your income, and this percentage grows over time, so there are additional costs to account for how overall upkeep costs make up a smaller percentage of your overall income.
When coming up with your interpretation, you are making the assumption that "commerce" is a property of capitalism, which is unfounded. Commerce in the game is an abstract representation of all forms of economic activity, including agriculture. Commerce is a property of all periods of human history, and periods of economic prosperity will lead to greater stability while periods of economic decline will lead to instability. I don't really follow the assertion that this is a phenomenon unique to history under capitalism, which is a very recent development. For example, recount instability in the Roman Empire or the effects of economic contraction in various Chinese dynasties. You are right to point out that food shortages are often interrelated with these economic crises, but as I pointed out this relationship is already represented in how food is correlated with population which is correlated with commerce.
Another important concern here is that food production is a very clear function of the terrain surrounding a city, and it will usually gradually grow as the population grows to both consume and produce it. There is very little to do to improve food production besides the obvious tile improvements and population growth. Which means once the optimal population level for a city has been reached, there will be no growth in food production anymore, and little available action to improve this. Likewise, very few events in the game will disrupt food production. In conclusion, there is very little variance in food production, making it uninteresting as an economic indicator in stability, and where it is this is already captured in commerce. Contrast this with commerce, where buildings, technologies, variance between specialists and cottages, as well as cottage growth, can influence the commerce that is produced independently of population growth.
KeeperOT7Keys
did nothing wrong
It would be nice to have an easy way to scale unit upkeeps over the ages, I think it's one of the main problems in the game and would make inflation a bit unnecessary. An easy solution would be just scale with the total power of your units, like how soldiers count is calculated (each 
worth 1000 soldiers), and some units should become obsolete over time for defending cities so you don't get happiness from them.
edit:
to be more precise, as the game progresses both the number of units and the power of units increase. if the upkeep becomes linear with the total power of a country that would still make it somehow polynomial. of course unless player plays a completely peaceful/boomer game
worth 1000 soldiers), and some units should become obsolete over time for defending cities so you don't get happiness from them.edit:
to be more precise, as the game progresses both the number of units and the power of units increase. if the upkeep becomes linear with the total power of a country that would still make it somehow polynomial. of course unless player plays a completely peaceful/boomer game
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Enyavar
Prince
- Joined
- May 16, 2015
- Messages
- 517
This. At the start of some games, I garrison a Spearman in the capital. Then I have the tech for the upgrade to Heavy Spearman, then for Pikeneer, then for Firearms and eventually Infantry. Okay, at some point I will sacrifice the most outdated units as statistics-fodder in unwinnable fights (still doing the save-reload routines), but a Longbow garrison has no business protecting cities in the late game.
My suggestion: If a unit is two times outdated (e.g. a Spearman when you have the Company tech and could build Pikeneers), then it's no longer seen as a valid garrison in the cities. Just like the Scout/Explorer or the siege units. And the entire cavalry line should be outdated with the digital age.
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