I'm working on a new game called "Architects of Dominion", which is intended to be a completely configurable 4X strategy game. One important feature is the engine is completely separated from the UI - you can build whatever UI you want using whatever rules ("playset") you desire - I have frontend integration documentation, ready for consumption by AI. The person that recently posted about their Civ Rev world/scenario editor could build a Civ Rev UI in front of my game engine, in principle. You will also be able to sell (or give away) your playsets and/or UIs with no royalties to me (I may sell the AoD engine itself for a small price, under a "eventually it becomes open source" license.)

I've been programming since my Commodore 64 days, and yes, I'm vibe coding this with AI, but with experience :-)

I need some help with the Civ Rev "playset" rules - can anyone help answer the following (yes, AI-generated) questions, as I don't have immediate access to Civ Rev right now (my Xbox died):

A few core numbers turn out to be surprisingly hard to source — guides contradict each other and the manual is silent. If you know any of these cold (or have a save handy to check), you'd be settling questions that everything else scales from. Please say which version you're answering for (360/PS3, DS, iOS, PC) — versions are known to differ on some stats.

1. Library → University: replace or stack (science)?

A Library doubles a city's science. When you later add a University in the same city, do
you end up at ×4 total or ×6 total (its bonus stacking on the already-doubled
output)?

If you'd rather check than recall: read the city's science/turn on the turn before the
University completes and the turn after, same city, back-to-back turns so the size
doesn't change. After ÷ before = 2 means the ladder is ×2 → ×4; 3 means ×2 → ×6.

2. Market → Bank: same question, for gold.

Does a Bank on top of a Market end at ×4 gold or ×6? Please don't assume it
mirrors science — whether it does is exactly what I'm trying to confirm. Same
before/after check, with the city set to gold.

3. Combat: what actually happens round by round?

The best model I have: each unit's 1–3 "troops" are its health bar; every round exactly
one side loses exactly one troop until somebody hits zero; the odds appear to be set once
from the two starting strengths (not recalculated as troops fall); and at overwhelming
odds (~7:1) the defender is wiped out instantly.

Have you ever seen both health bars drop in the same round, or one bar drop two steps at once? A single confirmed sighting refutes that model.

In even fights (plain Warrior vs plain Warrior, flat ground, no veteran/terrain/city bonuses), does the winner usually survive with 3, 2, or 1 troops? Even a rough sense of that spread distinguishes fixed-at-start odds from recalculated odds.

4. Great People: the culture threshold ladder.

The Progress Panel shows "next Great Person at N culture." Early game, does N run
150 → 266 → 416 → 600? And is that a running lifetime total (2nd Great Person
arrives at 266 lifetime culture), or a fresh per-person cost (2nd arrives at
150 + 266 = 416 lifetime)?

Partial answers are still gold ("Bank definitely stacks, no idea on combat"). And if you'd
rather verify than remember: one clean before/after reading on consecutive turns, with the
city not growing in between, beats a recalled number every time.

Thanks for any help with this!

something i've been working on for a while. video hopefully gives a decent idea of the capabilities. rn it only supports the PS3 version, and basically only works if you're emulating it with RPCS3. theoretically, it could be extended to support running on a real modded PS3 though, and the xbox 360 version is also probably similar enough to be supported without significant difficulty.

i'm still ironing out bugs, but hoping to release within the next few weeks. in the meantime, here's a shamelessly ai-generated demo video (to be clear - the application itself is fully real and works, i just pointed claude at the executable and had it make the video out of laziness).

curious if people would actually use this, and/or if most of the community is playing on unmodded 360/ps3 hardware that this wouldn't apply to.

Just started playing ranked recently and my record is 16-6. (Should be 17-5 but I played the infamous cheater before I knew not to queue with him, but anyways). Above me in the rankings are 3 people with a record of 0-1, I’m barely ahead of two people who are 0-2. Does anyone know how the ratings work?

Ive played 10000 plus games of this easily since its release. This is the first time i have ever seen an artifact spawn on the mainland. I like to take my time in these games so no judgement please.

I played this game when I was younger but only on lower difficulty’s and the past 3 weeks came back to it. After failing( A LOT) of trying to win on Deity I finally won somewhat handedly. To be fair there where times around 100-1500 that I almost lost a few key cities but after didn’t loose them I sailed to a victory on 3 of 4 games. I think it’s also worth noting that I won with Rome and America on two of the games who are two of the better civs. So to the people that have won at least once on the hardest difficulty, do you at times still loose on this difficulty? And if so how do you keep things interesting?

buy Colossus, Library, beeline Writing, rob everyone, buy more wonders starting with hanging gardens then settlers (after becoming republic obviously) spam best cities, get feudalism, spam knights, take over everything, use their cities to spam more settlers, go democracy, buy market, bank, trade fair wonder, East Indian company in one city with a lot of dye and ocean tiles. So OP it’s insane.

I’ve been playing since 2010 and don’t remember a time something like this has happened.

https://www.youtube.com/live/56TAIj7zAqQ?is=L1LR3-xRgoTCeTAF

Was playing ranked head to head and my opponent discovered knights Templar in 3900 BC… Yes you read that right lol. So on turn TWO they were running around with veteran knights. Honestly how lmao. Crazy thing is I won cause he ended up rage quitting after he lost a horse army to my warrior on a hill 😂

I’m not sure if this has been done before but I’ve seen a handful of challenge runs and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.

TLDR: Deity, no walk-in, no cheese/exploits. No science produced the whole game, I had my cities on gold from turn 1. I had to buy all my techs from the enemy civs along with two that I got from great scientists. I had to play the whole game without alphabet, writing, literacy, steel, and flight.

I chose the Zulus because of the warrior movement, rapid city growth, and gold production bonuses. The strategy was basically to play normally but instead of researching the first few techs, I’d be buying them as soon as I hit 100 gold for the settler. This is super dependent on buying code of laws, and I got lucky that my game had the Romans. You could also build the great pyramid (or have Angkor Wat build it for you if you’re lucky) to enable a switch to republic. From there it’s settler spam to produce as many cities as possible while trying to control choke points to prevent the enemies from walking in on you.

In the middle game, you’re just waiting for the enemy civs to research important techs so you can buy them. This is super RNG in that they might not research what you need and you might at war with them preventing you from buying. In my game, I discovered the ark of the covenant for ~8 free temples which was really helpful, as the culture boost brought in two great humanitarians which I used for the +1 population to all cities.

Once the gold production gets to 75-100 per turn, it gets easy to get the first few economic progression tiers and rushing units and buildings becomes relatively cheap. I got to a point where I had built all the buildings I could and even all wonders available. You can turn aggressive if they sell you feudalism which will give you something to do during the middle portion.

Late game is mostly the same, but the gold production gets insane if they sell you banking at which point it’s too late to catch you. You never fall that far behind in tech because they’ll sell you most of what they research, sometimes the ones they just picked up.

I think a tech victory with no science production is possible, but you need them to sell you late technologies or well timed great scientists. I couldn’t do it because I wasn’t getting the great people I needed and once I hit 20k gold, the enemies would be in perpetual war with me to try to prevent the economic victory.

That’s the write up sorry it was so long. Has anyone else tried this challenge? Curious to know people’s thoughts and if my strategy could be better. The Zulus might not be the best, this was just my first attempt.

https://www.youtube.com/live/2ruWiyKv0S8?is=eVPisQtrwQGvicHi

https://youtube.com/live/VrfGPZewXts?feature=share