akjone02
Nov 28, 2006, 02:57 PM
After getting some responses to my initial post I have decided to go ahead with this mod. I will keep updating this thread with current news.
Please post your ideas, concerns, general thoughts, requests for info, offers of help, and anything else that you want to :)
Mod Summary:
I enjoy the occasional quick game, but I've always wanted to try a long civ game with ages that are long enough to be considered almost games themselves, with rising and falling empires, and multiple periods of prolonged war and peace.
Epochs will attempt to lengthen ages while still trying to simulate actual history. For example, the stone ages will be lengthened but there will not be huge civilizations of 15 pop cities at that time.
To do this I will be introducing a huge number of new technologies. These techs will not add new buildings and units, but rather upgrade various things, such as city health levels, and unit power. In theory, this will stretch the length of ages in a realistic way, not by directly changing research cost, production speed, or game turns, but by encouraging more time spent in each era researching technologies to improve civilization levels.
It is my hope that introducing new techs and tweaking the core values of things like city health and unit power I will be able to create a longer, realistic game without imposing artificial limits and costs.
Goals
1: Lengthen the game
2: Divide the ages into more distinct periods of times, with lots of history taking place in each (nation power rising and falling, wars and peace, etc).
3: Do not lessen the current realism level of the game by causing unrealistic behavior during unrealistic time periods (ex: stone aged global civs)
4: Touch as little of the core game as possible and still accomplish these goals
5: Make the mod as compatible as possible so that you can combine it with other mods that you enjoy (example: the mod that lets you steal tech when you capture a city, etc).
6: Finish as quickly as possible so I can play it ;)
Design
Military
Units will remain the same, with no new additions. In order to use a unit, however, you must first research that unit's required technology which will be named the same as that unit, for example, "marine."
Units will be upgraded by new technologies that are specific to them. In the marine example, after researching the "marine" tech and gaining access to the unit, you may research techs like "m16" which will give a +1 to the strength of the unit or "snipers" which will give +1 first strike chance. These new techs will work much like individual unit upgrades but will be applied to all units of a particular type. There would be movement increases, cost reductions, etc.
Some techs will effect multiple unit types, for example, "m16" will give a bonus to certain gunpowder units other than marines. Techs for mounted units will effect knights as well as cavalry (for the most part). Not all techs would apply this way. For example, a technology specifically effecting axes will not upgrade all melee units, just axemen.
These new technologies would not be at all necessary. A civ could completely ignore the archery tree for example, concentrating instead on mounted units. In this way different civs would be more specialized in particular types of units. Indeed, researching all upgrades will take a prohibitively long time.
Fully upgraded early units will be superior to later game unupgraded units. For example, archers will be better than early gunpowder units, until gunpowder upgrades are researched. This accurately simulates real life where guns took a while to hit their stride.
Domestic
With longer ages it will be necessary to be slightly more heavy handed towards early game penalties to domestic issues. Rather than rely on purely on buildings for bonuses, there will be technologies that increase certain things like tax collection and city health.
All values will start much lower than they do currently. At the beginning a city may only make it to size 3 or 4 before running into serious health issues. Simply researching a technology such as "cooking meat" will give an immediate +1 to all cities, no building required. This will limit explosive growth too early in the game.
Current Status: Version 0.0
Still in the researching phase, getting all the info together and writing down what is gonna happen so that I don't do a lot of work for nothing ;) I appreciate any help and advice that people can give me.
Please post your ideas, concerns, general thoughts, requests for info, offers of help, and anything else that you want to :)
Mod Summary:
I enjoy the occasional quick game, but I've always wanted to try a long civ game with ages that are long enough to be considered almost games themselves, with rising and falling empires, and multiple periods of prolonged war and peace.
Epochs will attempt to lengthen ages while still trying to simulate actual history. For example, the stone ages will be lengthened but there will not be huge civilizations of 15 pop cities at that time.
To do this I will be introducing a huge number of new technologies. These techs will not add new buildings and units, but rather upgrade various things, such as city health levels, and unit power. In theory, this will stretch the length of ages in a realistic way, not by directly changing research cost, production speed, or game turns, but by encouraging more time spent in each era researching technologies to improve civilization levels.
It is my hope that introducing new techs and tweaking the core values of things like city health and unit power I will be able to create a longer, realistic game without imposing artificial limits and costs.
Goals
1: Lengthen the game
2: Divide the ages into more distinct periods of times, with lots of history taking place in each (nation power rising and falling, wars and peace, etc).
3: Do not lessen the current realism level of the game by causing unrealistic behavior during unrealistic time periods (ex: stone aged global civs)
4: Touch as little of the core game as possible and still accomplish these goals
5: Make the mod as compatible as possible so that you can combine it with other mods that you enjoy (example: the mod that lets you steal tech when you capture a city, etc).
6: Finish as quickly as possible so I can play it ;)
Design
Military
Units will remain the same, with no new additions. In order to use a unit, however, you must first research that unit's required technology which will be named the same as that unit, for example, "marine."
Units will be upgraded by new technologies that are specific to them. In the marine example, after researching the "marine" tech and gaining access to the unit, you may research techs like "m16" which will give a +1 to the strength of the unit or "snipers" which will give +1 first strike chance. These new techs will work much like individual unit upgrades but will be applied to all units of a particular type. There would be movement increases, cost reductions, etc.
Some techs will effect multiple unit types, for example, "m16" will give a bonus to certain gunpowder units other than marines. Techs for mounted units will effect knights as well as cavalry (for the most part). Not all techs would apply this way. For example, a technology specifically effecting axes will not upgrade all melee units, just axemen.
These new technologies would not be at all necessary. A civ could completely ignore the archery tree for example, concentrating instead on mounted units. In this way different civs would be more specialized in particular types of units. Indeed, researching all upgrades will take a prohibitively long time.
Fully upgraded early units will be superior to later game unupgraded units. For example, archers will be better than early gunpowder units, until gunpowder upgrades are researched. This accurately simulates real life where guns took a while to hit their stride.
Domestic
With longer ages it will be necessary to be slightly more heavy handed towards early game penalties to domestic issues. Rather than rely on purely on buildings for bonuses, there will be technologies that increase certain things like tax collection and city health.
All values will start much lower than they do currently. At the beginning a city may only make it to size 3 or 4 before running into serious health issues. Simply researching a technology such as "cooking meat" will give an immediate +1 to all cities, no building required. This will limit explosive growth too early in the game.
Current Status: Version 0.0
Still in the researching phase, getting all the info together and writing down what is gonna happen so that I don't do a lot of work for nothing ;) I appreciate any help and advice that people can give me.