Download (http://www.jan.vandercrabben.name/tam/?page_id=2) at the TAM Website.

Psst, somebody forgot to update the sticky :)

Edit: Wow, he's quick! :P

Hi! Great stuff!

I have already played half through a game as the Phoenicians, had a very early war with the Hitties, and it seemed like AI vs AI wars appeared more often too. (Hitties declared the war on me)

But I have one boring thing to report. The Smithy doesent work anymore, even when I have both copper and thin connected to the city.... I have seen people been complaining about this before, but it has never happend to me before..... :/

Seems like the Great people are ancient now, got a few Great engeneers, and they had the right graphics.

Still the Sid's tips says "founds hinduism" on the Polytheism tech.....

Thanx for releasing the new version guys!

I have already played half through a game as the Phoenicians, had a very early war with the Hitties, and it seemed like AI vs AI wars appeared more often too. (Hitties declared the war on me)
If you want to try more fun stuff, run the game as a custom scenario and enable the "Aggressive AI" option. :)

If you want to try more fun stuff, run the game as a custom scenario and enable the "Aggressive AI" option. :)

Cool! I'll try that for my next game as the romans! :D I'm glad it's the weekend tomorrow! ;)

If you want to try more fun stuff, run the game as a custom scenario and enable the "Aggressive AI" option. :)
In my first game of 1.94, playing as Briton up to 760BC (epic speed, custom scenario, agressive AI). The AI diplomacy changes are amazing! Everyone I've met has been annoyed with me (good), looking at the diplomacy screen everyone is at least annoyed with everyone else:woohoo: with the exception being Rome, must try them next that looks like fun. Congratulations to Seven05, some inspired work there.
Rome & Greece were at war. The Gauls & Germans had just signed a cease-fire, the Germans had also attacked Rome!
Just before I quit I had a look at the W/B to assess the "Eastern Situation" and found the Lydians had all but finished off the Hittites, a strong Egypt, a fairly strong Nubia and Persia, Babylon & Medes doing very well. There were plenty of Barbs but not the overwhelming stacks of 1.93, again congratulations are due.
The only bug I've seen so far is the Smithy, as AndreasS mentioned, is not giving the armour bonus but overall this latest version has taken TAM to an even higher level of Olympian greatness!

Sorry for the semi-off topic, but speaking of smithies, let me basically repeat something someone else said earlier. Try this. Research Copper Working (you want it anyway for spears) and immediately build a smithy and hire an engineer. Then research Masonry (you need to go down that path anyway for taverns and cottages, at least.) Your first great person will have arrived in plenty of time to complete, say, The Sphinx, the turn after you learn Masonry. See how easy that was? I didn't realize it until I tried it!

Yeah, that's been my trick since day one. In fact with a philisophical leader you can get two great engineers and rush the sphynx and great lighthous and have plenty of time to get a third for the riches of Kroissos.

As for the AI it will be more aggressive on smaller maps. I can adjust that so the aggression levels are more equal on any map size but it's a tricky balance. You should still be able to get to pleased status with a few AI civs, maybe even friendly with one or two. They still have some trouble trading anything except technologies amongst themselves with enough frequency to make a difference.

two great engineers and rush the sphynx and great lighthous and have plenty of time to get a third for the riches of Kroissos.
And that's what I call Real Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!

Greetings! Long time lurker, first time poster :)

Just wanted to throw in my accolades for a job well done on this mod in general. I played and loved TAM in Civ3 - and the legacy continues into Civ4 in a version I love even more! Way to go Thamis, Shype(sp?), etc.

Congrats on the release of 1.94 - and excellent work on the AI Seven05. I was an early guinna pig for some of the changes and gave a bit of feedback. Great stuff. :)

Lurker! Now that you've shown your face here I can't tell all of the stories about the horrible ways your empire collapses :P

Love the AI changes, the more war the better. :lol:

Just wanted to throw out that I'm also having the smithy promotion not being applied on v1.94.

Also, in the earlier versions the Archers and Skim never received a smithy promotion. I wasn't sure if it was just designed that way or if it wasn't receiving it due to a bug. This causes me to not really use them later in the game. If it's designed this way, I"m sure it's just due to a balance reason that I'm just missing. I only mention due to the smithy not working on any units now and thought it might be the same bug or whatnot.

All in all I love the little things like the GP being dressed for the era and text fixes. The AI is prob my fav though. Seems like they wage war a bit more w/o me instigating it in some form.

Keep making (updating) this mod and I'll keep downloading the latest versions. Can't wait to see what ya'll do with Warlords. :D

I made this post in the original TAM thread, hopefully Thamis will find it soon and update all his other download mirrors:

My apologies, my apologies. When I sent the updated Python file through email it must have saved it as a .txt document in .py format or something of that sort. I opened up the version included with TAM only to notice that it was seriously messed up and commented lines were taken out of comments and on their own lines which ruined the whole code.

That is why the smithies were not working. However, I did upload a new version of the mod onto the FTP: everything is exactly the same except the appropriate python file is included in proper format, meaning this should not break any savegames. The smithies do work :)

The edited version is TAM_v1.941.exe and can be downloaded here (http://www.jan.vandercrabben.name/tam/civ4/tamdev/TAM_v1.941.exe).


Seven05 and Jet, can you guys make suggestions to prevent your cheap advantage-taking tactic? Jet, I'm pretty sure you made a suggestion in the past about other requirements for that technology but I don't remember it. Can you post it here again?

LastWordz, glad that you've decided to lurk no more and to post here. As a member of the TAM development team I'm happy that this mod "brought you out." I agree that Seven05 did do excellent work on the AI, and that has greatly improved the TAM experience for everyone. Again, I'm glad you enjoy TAM :)

Statement about new AI behavior.

Mid game, here are the results :
- Kroisos +12 (+2 open borders, +4 trade, +5 war help, +2 ressources, -1 spark). I gave him tribute 3 times, surprising not to see it, i guess it is included in the +4 trade or in the +2 ressources.
- Taharaqa 0 (+2 resources, -1 refuse religion, -1 refuse to help).
- Minos -4 (-1 trade ennemy, -3 declared war)
- Aeetes -5 (-2 refuse to help, -3 refuse to help in wartime)
- Hammurabi -6 (refuse tribute -6). In my opinion there should be a limit to how negative 1 category can be, like tribute, help during wartime.
- Suppi -6 (-2 refuse to stop trade w/ennemy, -2 trade with ennemy, -2 refuse tribute)
- Hiram -8 (-2 tribute, -5 wartime, -1 refuse stop trading). same comment with the quite impressive -5 to refuse help, since he repeats always the same demands.

2 other civ are crushed (egypt, median, never saw the others). i must precise i'm under free religion since my neighbor and ally switched religion i had to keep him as an ally.

What sounds surprising to me is to have so bad relations with traditionnally peaceful civs like babylon and phoenicia just by refusing their repeated askings for tribute and/or help in wartime. In another hand, if you are generous with a civ (here, Kroisos, since he was very very powerful), it opens you the trade with them, and with trade good relationship comes.

And that's what I call Real Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!

But everyone can do it, so it's balanced. :-)

What sounds surprising to me is to have so bad relations with traditionnally peaceful civs like babylon and phoenicia just by refusing their repeated askings for tribute and/or help in wartime. In another hand, if you are generous with a civ (here, Kroisos, since he was very very powerful), it opens you the trade with them, and with trade good relationship comes.

Thanks for that insight. We'll have to balance this out a bit more. We can define how likely a civ is to give tribute, and we'll work on it more.

But everyone can do it, so it's balanced. :-)

Well, it's not necessary balanced, because just one Civ can benefit from doing it...... ;)

Lurker! Now that you've shown your face here I can't tell all of the stories about the horrible ways your empire collapses :P

Yeah - I have a horrible habit of running into major deficits - too much of a "builder" style of play while trying to be an empire... bad me!

- Thanks for the welcome Shqype! It really is an excellent mod - one of the few that I've played regularly on both Civ3 & Civ4. And I figured since Seven was now involved I'd chime in - he needs someone to keep his ego in check! :p (I'll prolly regret that remark when he decides to kick my butt in a LAN game over the weekend.....)

On the engineer rush...

There are TONS of great people created in the course of a game, even at normal speed. Increasing the base value would make it too hard to get the first, perhaps increasing the rate of increase would be a good start but then that would make philisophical somewhat less potent. Maybe a slight increase to both would help reduce the total number you see in a game. LastWordz can attest to the insane number of wonders I can build while playing as Mycanae, very few of them taking more than one turn to complete.

With engineers specifically could we reduce the amount of production they contribute when "rushing" a building. At the current value they can build any wonder in one turn (any that I've tried anyway), so building wonders is all about getting great engineers and has nothing to do with production or access to bonuse that increase the speed of building wonders.

Why not have great engineers build a special building (like the scientist's academy) rather than complete another? It would go well with the scheme of things and if they could only build one per city it would help control the power of them without making them worthless. An example of their building could be a workshop that gives a production bonus of 10% for having access to each of the following resources: stone, marble, copper, tin, iron So, potentially you could receive a 50% bonus to production in that city.

Just some random thoughts. If you're only concerned with defeating the wonder rush you need to limit the number of great engineers or their effectiveness when rushing construction.

Statement about new AI behavior.

Mid game, here are the results :
- Kroisos +12 (+2 open borders, +4 trade, +5 war help, +2 ressources, -1 spark). I gave him tribute 3 times, surprising not to see it, i guess it is included in the +4 trade or in the +2 ressources.
- Taharaqa 0 (+2 resources, -1 refuse religion, -1 refuse to help).
- Minos -4 (-1 trade ennemy, -3 declared war)
- Aeetes -5 (-2 refuse to help, -3 refuse to help in wartime)
- Hammurabi -6 (refuse tribute -6). In my opinion there should be a limit to how negative 1 category can be, like tribute, help during wartime.
- Suppi -6 (-2 refuse to stop trade w/ennemy, -2 trade with ennemy, -2 refuse tribute)
- Hiram -8 (-2 tribute, -5 wartime, -1 refuse stop trading). same comment with the quite impressive -5 to refuse help, since he repeats always the same demands.

2 other civ are crushed (egypt, median, never saw the others). i must precise i'm under free religion since my neighbor and ally switched religion i had to keep him as an ally.

What sounds surprising to me is to have so bad relations with traditionnally peaceful civs like babylon and phoenicia just by refusing their repeated askings for tribute and/or help in wartime. In another hand, if you are generous with a civ (here, Kroisos, since he was very very powerful), it opens you the trade with them, and with trade good relationship comes.

A lot of the current values, especially for "memory" effects are inappropriate for the various leaders. I'm working on a lot of those now and this is exactly the type of feedback I need, many thanks :)

PS- If you keep an eye on the AI thread I'll post a test update there for people to try out

Seven05 and Jet, can you guys make suggestions to prevent your cheap advantage-taking tactic? Jet, I'm pretty sure you made a suggestion in the past about other requirements for that technology but I don't remember it. Can you post it here again?
I think what I said before was suggesting moving one of the engineers to aqueduct, which was done (thanks!) Personally it seems like probably the best change would be to just remove the engineer from smithy.

Optionally you could then do other things to balance smithy, like remove one unhealth (but you want unhealth in general), or add a production bonus (but smithy is probably too early, since carpenter is also early), or make them required for heavy units.

Having an engineer only at aqueduct is closer to the way things are balanced in vanilla. I think you can still get them earlier than in vanilla, but not by that much. If engineer rushing is rare, then as Seven05 said building a wonder is more than just a race for the tech that enables it, and the Industrious trait is worth something.

Or as Seven05 suggested you could reduce the hammers from engineer rushing. That would make engineers more balanced with other great people. But to balance the effect of an engineer at smithy you'd probably have to reduce the hammers so much that engineers were clearly worse than other great people.

==================
Speaking of great people, I think right now building a shrine is only borderline competitive with settling the great prophet, especially since it's hard to influence which city becomes the holy city, whereas you can settle the prophet anywhere. Seems like the shrine should be somewhat better in most cases. For example they might act like Spiral Minaret, or give an improved version of the religion-specific benefits of cathedrals.

Greetings to all of you out here! Have been ghosting around the TAM thread for a long time now,and as all others would like to thank you for a fantastic mod!

Oh and the last update 1.94 I am now playing with rome on prince and it is truly amazing! the AI`s started whacking eachother around 2500 bc with a vercingeteroix vs viriato battle and soon arminius and argantonio were involved in the war both against viriato and a bit later basically all possible constellations among them.Not to many years later i got a message that the phoenican empire was destroyed.Meanwhile I went to war with decebal and stole one city,and although I had a great advantage over him militarywise he was very reluctant to make peace with me and it took many turns before I finally got a cease fire with him,peace treaty still out of the question.I think this was very cool and a somewhat realistic reaction to an aggressor.After a long while peace was made but i didnt secure the town i captured good enough I think, because suddenly he started demanding things from me. After the war the relation was - 3 but when he made 5 demands in 10 turns or so,and i refused them all of course, an invasion from him came shortly after.ubercool!!

If possible I would like to have the possibility in the diplo screen to make demands that are totally unrealistic like it was back in civ3, to be able to irritate them.I used to do this tactic a lot to spare me the penalties for waging war and with the new changes in relationship building with the AI, I would say this is quite important since my good relationship with agamemnon which i worked so hard for over a 2000 year period could be ruined if I had to go to war with his other best friend.I would rather see it possible that "the other best friend" ruined his relationship with agamemnon after I demanded say a city or a few techs in tribute from him.The response of course;a declaration of war against me.Hopes some of this makes sense.

And again thank you guys for the countless hours you spend to make this incredible mod!! :goodjob:



-Leiv Ericsson currently only a thousand miles from the north pole

If possible I would like to have the possibility in the diplo screen to make demands that are totally unrealistic like it was back in civ3, to be able to irritate them.
I can add that to the to-do list, it should be possible with some tweaking to the UI scripts. I actually use that tactic myself but I'm suprised at how often they give in, of course I have insanely massive armies most of the time so they're probably scared to death of me.

The huge med map still has farms etc, making the barb city strong when it appears. On the small med map I suspect the Aggressive AI setting is no longer helpful, but I haven't tested it.

The huge med map has grassland floodplains at 81,1 and 82,1.

I have to make congratulations about AI behavior since 1.94, i was very surprised when two times (in two different games) i was in bad relations with Hiram, but answered positively for a war-help demand. He opened borders immediately, and had the good idea to close them as soon as i have made peace with the common ennemy.

Really nice, much smarter than before, since it is useless to ask to declare war if he prevents his ally from reaching the common foe.

So LastWordz and I had a nice LAN game Saturday, made it up to about 340AD before calling it quits. I played as the Lydians, he was the Romans and we were using my test update for the AI.

I found it easy to make and keep friends, with both the Kolchis & Phoenicians pleased with me early in the game and steady trade with the Mycaeneans and Dacians. The Hittites are very unpopular in the region and I was able to encourage both the Phoenicians & Kolchis to join me in my war against the Hittites for less than 100 gold each. All of my starting cities were ok, but I lacked the "really good" cities that are possible in Greece or Italy so war moved slowly until I was able to adopt the Migration civic.

The first Hittite war gained three cities for my empire at the cost of about a dozen assorted hoplites & axemen. I really felt the lack of free promotions for my combat units during conquest compared to my experience with the Romans & Mycaeneans. I needed more units and with lower overall production it was hard to build up the larger army.

After the first Hittite war I declared war on my old friends the Phoenicians and took Tyre out from under the Egyptians who were also at war with them. Apparently that upset the Egyptians who quickly declared war on me. The war with Egypt was uneventful, they landed a number of chariots on my shores but they were quickly dispatched. I was able to destroy Egypts economy with a short pillage run around Pi-Ramses, after I finished destroying 6 fully developed towns I don't think they ever recovered (certainly not once the Romans atacked them).

Once at peace with Egypt I was able to conquer the two remaining Hittite cities and strengthen my trade relations with the Scythians, Dacians and Illyrians (open borders with all three, some resource exchanges and several resource for GPT).

Being the way I am (not happy unless I'm at war) I quickly turned on the Kolchis and took three of their largest cities in a few short turns followed by two more slightly later. By this time I had fire catapults & swordsmen so my casualties were substantially lower. The Kolchis' capital was a long three-turn fight, I had to kill probably 24 units to take it, mostly spearmen and javelineers with a few chariots that he pulled back to the city near the end. I lost my open borders with the Scythians in the middle of the war and was unable to conquer the final Kolchis city in the north.

With Babylonian culture giving me a headache I quickly shifted my armies south and slaughtered the babylonians. In a few short turns I had conquered four of their cities, their archers were effective but my fire catapults were better. And we stopped with a crash as I was preparing to take the city of Ur, their new capital.

Now, a few general observations:

The biggest issue I noticed with the Lydians which I suspect is an issue for all civs with a mounted UU is that their UU is poor at best. With the penalties for attacking/defending cities the use of their UU is severly limited. The saddleback trait (Flanking I for all cavalry) is also pretty weak. Rather than re-doing the UUs I would suggest simply reducing the cost of producing them for all mounted UUs, this way they wouldn't be less powerful and more expensive to produce. I would also recommend changing the Saddleback trait to either Combat I or Mobility promos for cavalry (since this opens up additional promotions for new units with Combat I + barracks or gives them a more obvious bonus with mobility(-1 terrain movement costs)).

A change to dense forests should be considered. Currently they act like vanila Civ 4 jungles so they are worthless. If they were to add the same production bonus to tiles that regular forests do and provide some production when chopped (perhaps even more than regular forests) that should solve the problem with them.

One thing about dense forests: There is no problem with them. :) They are meant to strongly disable all the northern civs until the late game. Once the northern civs can chop them, they get significantly better and cause the fall of Rome, so to say. :)

Good points about mounted UUs and the Saddleback trait.

Makes sense then :) Unfortunately they don't get Ironworking until it's too late to do anything about Rome (at least when a human is controlling the Romans).

And if the human is controlling the Northern Tribes they get iron working so early that Rome is dead. ;)

One thing I forgot to mention was the unit upkeep. I think I figured out what is giving the AI such a hard time with unit upkeep. Since we have increased initial upkeep it affects things likes settlers & workers and the AI builds tons of workers. I lost count of how many I captured and disbanded in that last game, probably around 20 maybe more. I built four of my own and ended up keeping six that I captured so I could run around with two stacks of five workers each and build improvements very quickly.

Increasing the initial number of free units just encourages the AI to build more workers. I think a good option would be to use the additional military upkeep in civics, pick one branch of civics and have every civic in the branch increase millitary unit upkeep and return the initial unit upkeep to 1. Another option would be to return the initial unit upkeep to 1 and increase support costs since that would have more of an effect on the ability to wage war than on the ability to defend yourself.

I just played as Egypt until 1100 BC. I experienced two wars: One with Aetes declaring against the Hittites and one with Dido against me. As I completely forgot about the military I just decided to quit for tonight and applaud you for this gameplay were you have actually to care about military :)

I played the test version of Seven...

One additional thing: Thamis, you already know the plain-floodplains (and hills) around Memphis in the normal map, don't you? ;)

One thing about dense forests: There is no problem with them. :) They are meant to strongly disable all the northern civs until the late game.
Combined with grasslands in the north, the basic idea of the mechanism is great.

Once the northern civs can chop them, they get significantly better and cause the fall of Rome, so to say. :)
In my experience with the huge med map on marathon, the growth of additional dense forests stifles AI-controlled northern civs so much that by then it will be too late for them. Have you seen otherwise on that map?

Hello,

Is anyone else having trouble building observatories? I can't build more than one at at time and in some cities not at all.

On the engineer rush...

There are TONS of great people created in the course of a game, even at normal speed. Increasing the base value would make it too hard to get the first, perhaps increasing the rate of increase would be a good start but then that would make philisophical somewhat less potent. Maybe a slight increase to both would help reduce the total number you see in a game. LastWordz can attest to the insane number of wonders I can build while playing as Mycanae, very few of them taking more than one turn to complete.

With engineers specifically could we reduce the amount of production they contribute when "rushing" a building. At the current value they can build any wonder in one turn (any that I've tried anyway), so building wonders is all about getting great engineers and has nothing to do with production or access to bonuse that increase the speed of building wonders.

Why not have great engineers build a special building (like the scientist's academy) rather than complete another? It would go well with the scheme of things and if they could only build one per city it would help control the power of them without making them worthless. An example of their building could be a workshop that gives a production bonus of 10% for having access to each of the following resources: stone, marble, copper, tin, iron So, potentially you could receive a 50% bonus to production in that city.

Just some random thoughts. If you're only concerned with defeating the wonder rush you need to limit the number of great engineers or their effectiveness when rushing construction.

I agree with this completely. Engineers right now are abosulutely game breaking in my opinion. No point to even build a wonder because just about everytime, some other civ will pump out a Engineer and a city with 2 population will complete in one turn :rolleyes:. The it is now is simply not fun and it cheapens that 'epic' feeling of actually completing a wonder. Only way to counter is Engineer cheese right back.

To make matters worse, I would say 90% of all the great people born in my last two games were Great Engineers. I really like idea of a special production based building instead. It would be nice since many of the captial cities are lacking (production wise) to begin with. This would also cause resources to be bit more important/strategic.

Hello,

Is anyone else having trouble building observatories? I can't build more than one at at time and in some cities not at all.

That's normal. You need a certain number of libraries to build observatories. Same with Alchemists. I don't know the precise number, it's something like 1 observatory for every 4 libraries.

Just a quick note to say that I'm loving the Civ IV version of the mod. I'm actually enjoying playing it more than the "epic" game!

a have two things,
first there are two floodplain tiles on grassland in the Nubian capitals fat cross. i didnt know if this had already been brought up but i thought i would mention it.

and second, every time i build a wonder that isnt from the original game my computer tries to load the video thing and crashes. i was wondering if there is a solution to this becasue right now if i want to keep playing i cant build any wonders.
thanks

There is a No Movies option in the general Civ options.

and second, every time i build a wonder that isnt from the original game my computer tries to load the video thing and crashes. i was wondering if there is a solution to this becasue right now if i want to keep playing i cant build any wonders.
thanks

There is a No Movies option in the general Civ options.
where do i go to disable them?
thanks for the help

Hi,

just a little AI report from another game playing with Carthage so far until 700 BC:

The AI is now very likeley to have an early war. This, for example, killed Hiram early on (I don't know who was it). Another war was in my area: Rome declared on Illyria. Tis war set back both significantly, both are medium size powers. The third war was between Argantonio and Viriatio and ended with a peace treaty as did the second one.

So far I'm very satisfied with the war choices of the AI. Interesting to report as well: I as Carthage have some civs who are annoyed with me from the beginning. That is Caesar, Mycenae (quite strange, I think) and some minor. Towards Rome almost everyone is annoyed. Towards the other few hardly anyone. Sounds good to me.

Last but not least I'd like to state that military is a good protection against greedy neighbours. This time I concentrated less on wonders and more on military and I've gotten a peaceful start.

This evening or tomorrow more on the process of this game.

where do i go to disable them?
thanks for the help

Go to the main menu.

Okay now click your LEFT mouse button on Advanced.

Then click your LEFT mouse button on Options.

Then click your LEFT mouse button on Graphics.

Then click your LEFT mouse button on No Movies so there is an X in it.
I know its counterintuitive but the X actually means that that option is on, in this case that No Movies are played.

Then click your LEFT mouse button on Exit.

Then click your LEFT mouse button on Go Back.

Now you are back to the Main Menu. If you need any more help just let me know.

The AI is now very likeley to have an early war. This, for example, killed Hiram early on (I don't know who was it). Another war was in my area: Rome declared on Illyria. Tis war set back both significantly, both are medium size powers. The third war was between Argantonio and Viriatio and ended with a peace treaty as did the second one.
I think what I like most about the early wars is that you never really know for sure how they'll turn out. I've had games where the Phoenicians took out the Hittites early in the game and others where the Hittites dominated the region for one example. It's also nice that sometimes it puts them at a disadvantage to go to war early and other times it helps.

So far I'm very satisfied with the war choices of the AI. Interesting to report as well: I as Carthage have some civs who are annoyed with me from the beginning. That is Caesar, Mycenae (quite strange, I think) and some minor. Towards Rome almost everyone is annoyed. Towards the other few hardly anyone. Sounds good to me.

In general they should go to war with "logical" enemies but at the same time it's nice to have a little touch of randomness to keep them from being too predictable. Pending the decision on Warlords I have some more complicate AI routines to add to the DLL that will really help with their ability to wage war.

Last but not least I'd like to state that military is a good protection against greedy neighbours. This time I concentrated less on wonders and more on military and I've gotten a peaceful start.

I like going to war in TAM, as a result I tend to build a powerful offensive military and rarely get attacked. This is another place with room for improvement with the AI, it would be nice if less powerful civs would join forces to attack rather than waiting for one of them to declare war before others possibly join in.

Minor bug report with diplomatic victory, on last turn.

Just finished game (32 hours game, pheew !), i had a bug in last turn with diplomatic victory in 481 AD (huge med map, prince difficulty).
Last turn, i had the text "taharqa wins a diploamtic victory" and screen was forever staying on "waiting for opponents turns" (like if computer was busy, but staying a very long time). Waited for 5mn, nothing moved, i could not validate anything by typing enter or space. Hopefully, i could access the menu, so i could save game, then reload and on next turn i had victory popup and it validated diplo victory.

As a general feedback i will once more repeat i am surprised with the low AI science even if they do not spread madly.

- - -

A lot of the current values, especially for "memory" effects are inappropriate for the various leaders. I'm working on a lot of those now and this is exactly the type of feedback I need, many thanks :)

I keeped a lot of saves, if you need some more reports with relations during the game, i can give more values.

Steel weapons incorrectly requires timber and Iron, instead of Iron and Charcoal.

Cham

That is correct, the texts incorrectly list charcoal as a requirement (it was changed to timber in 1.93 I think). The charcoal resource should probably be removed from the game at this point.

I think what I said before was suggesting moving one of the engineers to aqueduct, which was done (thanks!) Personally it seems like probably the best change would be to just remove the engineer from smithy.

Optionally you could then do other things to balance smithy, like remove one unhealth (but you want unhealth in general), or add a production bonus (but smithy is probably too early, since carpenter is also early), or make them required for heavy units.
Or, +1 happy from gold and/or silver and/or gems. Some benefit besides the weapons upgrade seems desirable, so that there is some motivation to build them in multiple cities, beyond the convenience of being close to a war front.

I've been playing without smithies allowing the engineer (and no counterbalancing benefit), and the AI still builds them and uses them in decent quantity. Wonders are still very possible to get at Monarch; the disadvantage is the greater chance of a surprise stack of 10 javelineers or 20 chariot archers up one's butt - just as it should be.

Hello,

I wanted to mention that the war weariness seems too high. I was attacked by a civ and immediately all of my large cities had 5 or 6 unhappiness due to war weariness. This seems excessive as I was attacked and not an agressor. I'm using 1.94 at Monarch, Epic with Republic as the government. Is this level of unhapiness intentional when not an agressor? Can anyone tell me if the war weariness can be modified and how?

Many Thanks

I rather think the flood plains in Egypt are what make it more accurately reflect their rise in early history. Think about it...they quite literally burst onto the scene and dominated a large piece of Northern Africa and parts of Asia Minor and then fell under the might of European Empires and pressure from their neighbors, not to mention constant wars with the Hittites, et. all.

Without the flooded plains, the Egyptians are much weaker. Granted, in Human hands they're very strong, but then, you need a large military, and the desire to just sit and build every wonder known to man is pretty strong isn't it?

I think it's fine.

After all, if I play one of the other civs, I can still out score Egypt, and I can still eventually muscle it out of my way. :P

Hello,

I wanted to mention that the war weariness seems too high. I was attacked by a civ and immediately all of my large cities had 5 or 6 unhappiness due to war weariness. This seems excessive as I was attacked and not an agressor. I'm using 1.94 at Monarch, Epic with Republic as the government. Is this level of unhapiness intentional when not an agressor? Can anyone tell me if the war weariness can be modified and how?

Many Thanks

I would imagine that you were at war with another civ for quite a long time before that. But yes, in general war weariness should be reduced, as war was seen as rather normal in ancient times. It's possible and we'll change it.

Hi,

just a little AI report from another game playing with Carthage so far until 700 BC:

The AI is now very likeley to have an early war. This, for example, killed Hiram early on (I don't know who was it). Another war was in my area: Rome declared on Illyria. Tis war set back both significantly, both are medium size powers. The third war was between Argantonio and Viriatio and ended with a peace treaty as did the second one.

So far I'm very satisfied with the war choices of the AI. Interesting to report as well: I as Carthage have some civs who are annoyed with me from the beginning. That is Caesar, Mycenae (quite strange, I think) and some minor. Towards Rome almost everyone is annoyed. Towards the other few hardly anyone. Sounds good to me.

Last but not least I'd like to state that military is a good protection against greedy neighbours. This time I concentrated less on wonders and more on military and I've gotten a peaceful start.

This evening or tomorrow more on the process of this game.

I am a big time builder also. It is hard to build wonders and a strong military, but I have managed it, but I am at war most of the game too, though. Obviously, I have much to learn in terms of mastering the balance.

Ok, when I use WB to make the changes that I suggest, every other civ gets two warriors now, versus one warrior in a random location. This is something that I do not believe is an issue in the normal map.

Is there a way to make my changes, and use the tweaked map with this mod and keep the random warrior location aspect without leaving Babylon with only one starting warrior and everyone else with two?

Sure, it's quite easy to do that. Read the two tutorial links in my signature.

Hi,

just played a game as Dareios of Persia on the huge map. While all the other civs battled one against the other, nobody wanted to fight me, so I enjoyed a very peaceful game building and expanding slowly, just fending off the barbs.
Is it correct that my units could only achieve experience points up to 10/17 versus the barbs. Any further combat brought no change. Is further promotion only versus "regular" enemy units possible?

Waterloo

Is it correct that my units could only achieve experience points up to 10/17 versus the barbs. Any further combat brought no change. Is further promotion only versus "regular" enemy units possible?
Waterloo

Aye, that's correct. It's like that in regular Civ4 as well. I think you can get to level 4 off barbarians, and only level 2 off of animals. To get higher exp you have to kill other Civ's units.

I just found a rather strange bug with the smithy.When i had gained access to tin and moved my already copper promoted units in and out of the city,it actually removed the copper promotion.:eek: The reason i found out was that i had lost access to copper due to some trade arrangement.As soon as I got my copper back I got my proper bronze promotion,but I suspect that any weapon promotion is a lasting deal, or do my spearmen eat copper during less fortunate times?:crazyeye:

On the engineer rush...

There are TONS of great people created in the course of a game, even at normal speed. Increasing the base value would make it too hard to get the first, perhaps increasing the rate of increase would be a good start but then that would make philisophical somewhat less potent. Maybe a slight increase to both would help reduce the total number you see in a game. LastWordz can attest to the insane number of wonders I can build while playing as Mycanae, very few of them taking more than one turn to complete.

With engineers specifically could we reduce the amount of production they contribute when "rushing" a building. At the current value they can build any wonder in one turn (any that I've tried anyway), so building wonders is all about getting great engineers and has nothing to do with production or access to bonuse that increase the speed of building wonders.

Why not have great engineers build a special building (like the scientist's academy) rather than complete another? It would go well with the scheme of things and if they could only build one per city it would help control the power of them without making them worthless. An example of their building could be a workshop that gives a production bonus of 10% for having access to each of the following resources: stone, marble, copper, tin, iron So, potentially you could receive a 50% bonus to production in that city.

Just some random thoughts. If you're only concerned with defeating the wonder rush you need to limit the number of great engineers or their effectiveness when rushing construction.
Thanks the AI is way more aggressive than in previous versions. Even Virato has a pair in this version. I agree that the engineers should only be able to build something akin to a workshop or design school.