Inconsequntial question on the Realism Invictus AI

[Amicalola]

I've been playing a new game the past couple of days, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I spawned in with a great Pastoral Nomadism capital, but not much else. I had a very nearby neighbour (Ataturk of the Ottomans), who settled the second city that I wanted. I settled a bad 2nd city that could grow to size 2 only - but had 10 hammers with that, and 1st-ring copper/horse. I'm Henry V, whose traits scream 'Kill Everyone!" but not much else. 

 

So uh...

Chariot rush! I was able to snipe an archer/worker/settler pair with my first chariot, and then suicide a 2nd to take the Ottomans' 2nd city. Then I used Shortswordsmen (the early 'militia' unit that can be built with food/hammers) to bum-rush the capital, pillaging Ataturk's cows with the chariots so he couldn't make them himself. That's when I thought to take a picture:


I was able to take Ankara with the last unit of the stack, and that was it for Ataturk. I think there's a huge powerspike at those militia units, they're amazing for rushing (having free City Raider on them was certainly helpful too). The capital could make them in about 2-3 turns, compared to 8 turns for other units. 

Here's the Britannic Empire at T150 (side note - the dynamic names feature is great):


I'm settling up the floodplains river to get those 3-food cottages going soon. The land to the south isn't much better than the land to the north, so I'm glad I went through Ataturk instead. Otherwise, I built Stonehenge in York (+1 happy from Pagan Temples), which combined with Charismatic should be enough happiness to start growing soon. The 'Nemetons' are the English pagan temple, with +1 food for their bonus. Probably above average as far as Pagan Temples go; +1 food is nice, but the food box for a size 2 city is ~100 so it's not as overpowered as it sounds. The Chinese version gives +20% food storage on growth!  Ankara has mostly sucked so far, but just popped borders for those sweet Pastoral Nomadism cows (my games seem to involve a chronic lack of grain).

Things got very hairy with the barbs (including a great general Odoacer!) between about T110-140, which my traits also helped with. But in the last 10 turns they've calmed down a bit, so I'll see if that lasts.

The big AI oddity so far is that Genseric founded Judaism. He then attacked the Mayans, and they got a random event peace a turn later, with the visible Mayan city (León) completely empty, but the Carthaginian stack also gone - that in itself was weird. But somehow, in that 1 turn of war, Genseric also lost the Jewish holy city... and he's the one who attacked!  No idea how that happened.

[Fluffball]

I wonder if they had a huge combat defeat and the forced peace from the event came with the usual bargaining terms, involving giving up a city? It is indeed weird!

For those wondering, the food/hammer units are "irregulars". The benefit is that pretty much any city can crank one out in an emergency, the downside is they are often significantly weaker than the "regulars" ( I think about 20%?)

By the way, many reading may not realize since I don't recall this in the manual, bigger cities automatically sac population at random to generate irregular troops if the last unit dies in an attack. So if you attack a size 10 city for example, it may generate an irregular troop each time it looses it's last unit up to a point. It's usually totally inconsequential since they are weak units with no promotions and no fortify bonuses, but it's a pretty nice twist. It's not guaranteed it generates any at all, but if you get really unlucky attacking a size 20 city you could generate like 5 of them or something.

[Amicalola]

Ah, you're right, I did mean 'irregular' instead of 'militia.' Oops, thanks for the clarification.

Also interesting about bigger cities, I didn't know that.

[Fluffball]

Oh I wasn't trying to correct you, just explaining it if anyone is new to the mod. Militia is a good term for them too since you pretty much only build them for garrisons and emergencies.

Edit: Or like conscripts in a rush war like you did.

Also BTW, what is your leaders negative trait?

[Fluffball]

I rolled a Prince map on the huge earth custom scenario (turning off all the scaling stuff and espionage.) I wound up with David of Israeli whose most important trait (for now) is Militaristic, which gives bonus experience on melee units among other things. It's a hysterical change from my previous Noble game fighting desperately for my life for hundreds years against the preplaced barb cities, to now having city raider 1 units without even barracks and about 10 AI capitals within easy striking range. So far I've taken the Egyptian, Nubian, and Arabian capitals.



Honestly I feel like this is already a won game and I'm going to intentionally select David again on Monarch difficulty.

[Fluffball]

I decided to play a few more turns because I was curious about the economy. Turns out I'm a fiiiriggen mess to have this many cities this early, and someone actually build the Oracle before I got fishing. My military dominance is so absolute I'm going to continue playing. I got my break-even science rate up from about 5% to about 30% and declared war on the Nubians. No point building settlers when I've got city raider 2 axemen coming out.

[haphazard1]

Does the mod have a "conqueror's plateau" effect like base Civ4? Or will continued aggression just keep stacking up more city costs and eventually bankrupt you?

[Fluffball]

Does the mod have a "conqueror's plateau" effect like base Civ4? Or will continued aggression just keep stacking up more city costs and eventually bankrupt you?

I'm not sure.  Keep in mind the game is made to be played with tech scaling enabled, so new cities with no infrastructure are a huge drain initially with that enabled.  There are also a bunch of new buildings that reduce maintenance and TONS of new civics. There are civics that reduce maintenance for distance to capital and some that reduce maintenance from number of cities,  and some that do both.  The solar cult religion helps reduce maintenance. There are buildings that give flat science or flat income. 

It's so different I can't tell what's going on and compare it to the base game, however you CAN always keep expanding as long as you build the necessary infrastructure and pick the right civics. Usually when I play one of the gargantuan maps my breakeven science rate is like 30%, but I'm still teching really fast. With tech scaling enabled I imagine you'd want to stop expanding at a point. Like I said,  new cities just plan hurt until you get them up and running, and at a point they probably just aren't worth it. In the later game there are "ministries" that automatically fill in your basic infrastructure in new cities, so with those built you might be able to start expanding again.

[Cyneheard]

The “conqueror’s plateau” is mostly due to the cap on # of cities maintenance cost - that cap doesn’t seem to exist from what I can tell, so probably not.

[Thoth]

If there is a cap on city maintenance I have yet to find it. Playing as Japan on the RI Large Earth Map (about the same size as the Huge 18 civs map that comes with civ) I have ~30 cities, my vassals have about the same combined. I'm paying > 100gpt per city in #of cities maintenance.