Inconsequntial question on the Realism Invictus AI

[Fluffball]

Run away! Run away!

[Amicalola]

Huh, they even have a great general. Barbs must work very differently in the mod.

[Fluffball]

TWO great generals in that stack.

As far as I can tell their cities use almost the same AI as a normal civ. They will build all the buildings, can build up some massive stacks, and even conduct amphibious attacks. 

I think this is because if a few barb cities are left alone together they form an actual colored civ and they'd be too far behind otherwise.

[Amicalola]

Sweet temples indeed! Looking at the diplo indicators, apparently you’re not as hated as I seem to be, is that mostly coming from the +2 from Politician trait? I would assume you’re much more ahead of your opponents than I am, and I was getting -4 and -5 from that modifier alone. Or is that part of ticking the “AI plays to win” box?

I was stuck with the 'we hate you because you are ahead' or whatever from specifically Tigranes of the Armenians (who has been thoroughly whooped by Gustavus Adolphus anyway) for about 100 turns, before he forgot about it, for some reason. Otherwise, it hasn't shown up much at all. I seem at least as ahead in score as you, so I'm not sure why I'm not getting the modifier. Politician is bringing me from 'cautious' to 'pleased,' but it's not removing that modifier (according to the 'pedia), and Tigranes was annoyed regardless while he had it.

Did you play on any further? I was curious to see how our games differed - I have run into an unexpected obstacle in mine: it turns out the more cities you settle, the more tech costs increase! So I am dominating the food and MFG demographics, but only keeping up technologically despite the absurd uber-temples. Not sure if I will bother playing on, because it seems a bit pointless to play a civ and not use any of its features. Although the tech scaling is a challenge, the map/game feels almost won already, because of my bizarre spawn location. So I'm considering a Huge Emperor game next, or a world map game, although the odds of finishing either might be <5%. What is the earth map that you mentioned, Fluffball?

I was also curious to see if you were as crippled by the unhappiness feature with later eras as me. I wasn't prepared at all for the Classical era, and it really slowed me down there.

[El Grillo]

I abandoned that game in favor of doing some more research into the mod. The tech scaling per city, for example, is implemented as a flat percentage of the base cost for each additional city, 12% on Standard and 10% on Large. I'm not a fan of this mechanic at all, so I might turn that game option off along with the Open Borders Tech Transfer option.

Classical unhappiness is messy because a lot of resources need Classical or later buildings to get the happiness bonus, the main options seem to be the net +2 from swapping out of Despotism into Republic/Autocracy, +1 from adopting an Ancient religion, and +1 from non-Pagan temples. There is one oddball option of the Jewish Prophet wonder Qumran, which gives +1 happiness in all cities (EDIT: nope, only to its own city) per 20% tech slider, but that requires teching up to both Monotheism and Meditation, then building 2 Temples and a Synagogue and running priests, so it would require a dedicated beeline to get up and running in time.

For the world maps, go to Play Scenario or Custom Scenario from the main menu. Oddly enough, you can only play a single leader per civ, unless I'm missing something.

[Fluffball]

The tech increase per cities is something I turn off, but also look at turning off the increase in unit production cost per unit you already have in that role (so for every ranged mounted unit you have, the next will take more hammers etc.)

Tech transfer is better the harder the game is, it's like a known tech bonus except only for people you have open borders with. If you're doing a oracle game and are way ahead it kinda encourages you to just not have friends.

The world scenario is ENORMOUS. It's extremely cool as a tough ancient era experiment kinda thing but it's too big to play to completion as something other than maybe a year long project. It's a lot more doable as a custom scenario where you can at least turn off scaling.

[Fluffball]

Oh another thought on happiness, don't forget several of the early civics get happiness just from from barracks and walls, and the walls are surprisingly useful against early barb swarms (especially those pesky 3 move light cavalry). It can be tough finding time to build those but for your bigger cities you might have to. Getting out of rule of fear certainly helps too.

Edit: one more random thought, if trying the world scenario, I highly recommend Europe, N. Africa, or Asia. There are only 3 native American 'real civs' and the rest of the new world is filled in by semi-civs that can't do much. Meanwhile there's like 45 real civs plus tons of barbs and semi-civs in the old world. I'd tay away from civs you know to be geographically limited like England as well. There's 3 realcivs on those islands alone and good luck getting ahead on a decent difficulty with that.

I think the idea would be to conquer the islands and then use the city tech penalty to stay competitive with the probably now monstrous historical AIs like the Mongols or Persia until you can colonize the historical British empire. But the early game would be very slow.

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hi, decided to chime in after looking at the discussion here - as I'm the current author/caretaker of RI, I might help you with any questions you might have.

One general comment though - tech scaling usually gets a knee-jerk negative reaction, and I can understand that (and even supplied a means to turn it off), but it was only implemented after lots of actual testing, and at the very least I feel one should give it a try. In practice, it doesn't exactly make larger civs automatically research slower than smaller ones - Civ 4 game mechanics mean that at least when playing optimally, and until one has literally dozens of cities already, each new city not only provides its own additional output (which, with even +10% cost increase would mean that, until your 10th city, it more or less able to offset the malus on its own) but also improves other cities you have through additional resources, trade routes and a multitude of other factors. Even with the tech cost scaling on, generally, it's the bigger (though sometimes not the biggest) civs that lead in research.

One question I have after looking at the screenshots is why are you still playing 3.5? 3.55 has been out for many months and contains lots of fixes and improvements (and yes, I can tell from screenshots, as 3.55 has a new interface theme).

[Amicalola]

Hi, decided to chime in after looking at the discussion here - as I'm the current author/caretaker of RI, I might help you with any questions you might have.

One general comment though - tech scaling usually gets a knee-jerk negative reaction, and I can understand that (and even supplied a means to turn it off), but it was only implemented after lots of actual testing, and at the very least I feel one should give it a try. In practice, it doesn't exactly make larger civs automatically research slower than smaller ones - Civ 4 game mechanics mean that at least when playing optimally, and until one has literally dozens of cities already, each new city not only provides its own additional output (which, with even +10% cost increase would mean that, until your 10th city, it more or less able to offset the malus on its own) but also improves other cities you have through additional resources, trade routes and a multitude of other factors. Even with the tech cost scaling on, generally, it's the bigger (though sometimes not the biggest) civs that lead in research.

One question I have after looking at the screenshots is why are you still playing 3.5? 3.55 has been out for many months and contains lots of fixes and improvements (and yes, I can tell from screenshots, as 3.55 has a new interface theme).

Hi Walter, awesome to have you stop by.  

FWIW, I quite like the tech-scaling feature instinctively, although I can see why others wouldn't. I don't like it for the sake of allowing small civs to keep up with big ones, but rather for encouraging optimal city locations (as opposed to vanilla, where tile-sharing and trying not to leave any tiles unworked is optimal). I always saw cities as the large regional hubs between towns, so this makes a lot more sense thematically to me. As a gameplay feature, I think it makes sense for the reasons you mention, although I haven't played a full game to see if it breaks down in the late-game, which would be my biggest concern. I also really like tech exchange mechanic, and it breaks the game a lot less. In normal Civ4 I turn tech trading off, because the game just becomes an exercise in maximising that.

To be honest, I just downloaded the version that showed up on the main page when I googled the mod. I didn't realise there was a patch! (Edit: exact same as Grillo). I read the manual, but must have not noticed the version numbers. But I'll download the new version tonight and start playing that instead; thanks for the link. I am curious: what settings/map do you personally play the mod on? I have been struggling to  decide what I want on and off, other than Vassals which I intuitively strongly dislike.

[El Grillo]

Hello and welcome to Realms Beyond! I wasn’t aware that there was a newer version, I found this website http://www.realism-invictus.com/ via Google search and it had a download link for 3.5.

I hear you on tech cost scaling, I think there are already additional factors here making new cities worse for longer until they begin net contributing, but I will accept that it’s an intended part of the game and something to be aware of.