I'm starting this thread to allow people to put in their 5 cents.

Bonedog has asked whether it's possible to change leaders for the preset scenarios. Is it possible to create a dialog box that would pop up at appropriate times in mid game to choose a different leader? E.g. When Sun Ce dies in 200 (in history at least), a box could pop up allowing Sun Quan to assume leadership, with his attributes. This would be like Europa Universalis where different sovereigns have certain strengths and weaknesses.

Or just allow the various leaders to be available in the starting menu.

Two (very) minor suggestions:

- the "Talented-hiring Bureau" building should read "Talent-hiring Bureau" (or perhaps just Talent Bureau/Office)
- the Imperial Court proposal "Establist a new empire" should read "Establish..."

I think that's a great idea about being able to change leaders mid game. It can affect other leaders attitudes toward you. I am concern how much work it'll be for the coding team to implement this though or if it's possible at all.

FFH lets you change leaders mid game. It causes crashed if playing multi-player, but if you are going for single player you can check out code from there.

Actually, making changing leader happen in the middle of the game is not that hard.:) jdog's ChangePlayer which comes with Better AI can do that with ease. You can do it during the game too, using ctrl-shift-P if I remember right.

If we really do that, we need to make sure how this will happen. Do you really like the idea that Sun Ce will die in 200AD and be replaced by a less competent little brother? I love Sun Ce and am not very fond of that.;)

And the 'coding team' is actually...not many people. I need to recruit some new heroes to come on board.:D

Two (very) minor suggestions:

- the "Talented-hiring Bureau" building should read "Talent-hiring Bureau" (or perhaps just Talent Bureau/Office)
- the Imperial Court proposal "Establist a new empire" should read "Establish..."

Thanks a lot.:)

And the 'coding team' is actually...not many people. I need to recruit some new heroes to come on board.:D

well I'm no pro but I could help if you need it. Anything to do with XML or 2D art I can do. I've even made a few rough models of new units with nifskope and blender. Oh and did I mention I'm in school currently for computer programming. I already use Visual Basic 05' Express like 20 times a week.

Zheng's Academy needs some incentive for the human to build, e.g. easier with marble. Right now I never build it but aim for Tianlu Library because if you get the 7 school event, you can either get a free early tech (besides the one you got building the library), libraries are worth more science or get a free scientist. Zheng's takes way too long and isn't worth it.

It's often confusing what the various civ traits mean. (I only found out after playing Liu Zhang that they have the Incan power of terraces, and whatever Wang Lang's "educative" means just eludes me). Rhye's opening screens are useful because they tell you what the unique power is (even though it still takes playing the game to discover that certain ones are harder to implement than others, e.g. Mongols). Maybe having an explanation pop up when you mouse over the trait would help.

Also, for the non-ROTK fan who would like a little guidance as to which civs to start with, we can have on the menu 1-5 stars for
starting situation (Cao Cao and Yuan Shao being the best, Shan Yue and Gongsun Zan the worst)
economy (Zhang Lu's shrine makes him potentially 4 stars)
culture (Liu Biao and Liu Zhang would be at least 4 stars)
production (Zhang Yang isn't bad, at least 4 stars)

Zheng's Academy needs some incentive for the human to build, e.g. easier with marble. Right now I never build it but aim for Tianlu Library because if you get the 7 school event, you can either get a free early tech (besides the one you got building the library), libraries are worth more science or get a free scientist. Zheng's takes way too long and isn't worth it.

I plan to make Zheng's to get 50% marble bonus and 100% stone bonus. This bonus may seem to be a bit high. But considering that Zheng's can be built very early and at that time normally no one can have both marble and stone, I think it would be Ok and give more civs the possibility to build it.:goodjob:

Also I think there are too many :) now in the game. So I plan to reduce the happiness bonus. i.e. Some buildings will produce less happiness bonus, and Despotism will give 1 :mad: face at every city.

The difference between the different maps is striking. On the regular (mid size) map, the AI will storm Yijing without bombardment of the 150% defence, since it can routinely wipe out that starting army (I'm lucky if Zhao Yun doesn't get killed or captured the first move). On the other hand, the large map I actually can keep Yijing, and can even capture one of his cities because my swift riders don't get killed.

The main difference is that in the large map, Yijing is on a hill and across the river, so that the AI doesn't dare to attack. Why not do the same for all 3 maps so that Gongsun Zan can be playable? Another thing that might help is to place Yuan Shao's army a little farther away from the action so that you have time to actually prepare your Zhao Yun for more defense.

If I may suggest, I've seen mod that allow the player to increase/decrease culture/research/spy in 5% increment/decrement instead of 10%. I found that's quite useful where I can have more freedom in adjusting those settings.

This is a small modification in GlobalDefines.xml. You can actually do it yourself if you like. You will need to open Beyond The Sword\assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml file in notepad and find the following lines:


<Define>
<DefineName>COMMERCE_PERCENT_CHANGE_INCREMENTS</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

Copy these lines to The History of Three Kingdoms\assets\xml\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml. You can put them in the end of the file before the last line. Change 10 to 5 or even 1 if you like.

Just a thought: Jianye (which is the name that most people are familiar with) is actually the same as Mo Ling, so maybe after a certain date it can change to it (e.g. after 222)? Or may be even start with Jianye?

In the three kingdoms era treaties and pacts were often made over the exchange of coin. As it stands, requests to stop trading or go to war are not programmed to include a trade - they are always demands. It would be flavourful if the computer made these requests in the same way they calculate "what do you want for this" when you ask them to go to war or make peace as a player.

Requests for gifts are also somewhat troubling in that the relation penalty is permanent wheras the means of reaching the point of 'friendly' may be composed of factors that will degrade over time. Perhaps the 'you gave us help' modifier could be permanent, and serve to illiminate (or reduce) each count of 'you refused to help us'. It would also be extremely cool if the computer had a chance to contact the player to return the favour once the gift counter got so high or even just to placate the other nation into not attacking.

Anyhoo
my 2 cents ^^

Actually, I've had several offers of "free" resources from friendly AIs. I.e. when you ask for a resource and ask them for they want, sometimes they don't ask for anything back. So it's not a peace treaty but a free resource. Of course this is in monarch and you have to have a pleased or friendly AI to do this. Cao Cao never does this (he always asks for an extra resource when trading) while Liu Zhang and a really friendly Sun Ce did it to me.
Yuan Shao, cocky bastard that he is, also sometimes gives me free techs early on, especially if I'm at war with the same enemy. Maybe this is their way of reciprocating without breaking the current Civ 4 AI.

On the other hand, I agree with Evalis. There's no way to overcome the -10 and -5 negative modifiers between certain civs (Sun Ce vs. Liu Biao, Yuan Shao vs. Gongsun Zan, Cao Cao vs. Lu Bu). I tried very hard to placate them but the AI still eventually attacks. Maybe these "preset" bad humors can dissipate in time?

yea, I was just thinking something along these lines earlier today. By the end of the game, usually any civs with different beliefs than me usually end up hating me. Sometimes even if they (or I) switch beliefs they still hate me for a long long time if not forever. Granted this is a problem that CIV4 BTS has introduced, not the HotTK team, but it would be a nice improvement to have these negative events or whatever erode slowly with time.

In my Zhang Yang game, I switched to Revival a long long time ago. Any civs using Revival love me (I've force converted all my vassals though now a couple have switched to indifference but they still like me), Liu Biao and his vassal like me (cause I've been tech whoring with both of them), and everyone else absolutely hates me. There is no grey area, no cautious leaders, they all either love or hate me.

Luckily for me I field the largest army in ancient China so they can't do much about it even if they do hate me :p

oh and I just remembered why I stopped by. I wanted to discuss the cost of upgrading units. To me it seems ridiculous. I forget all the names, but to upgrade the strength 10 cavalry unit to the strength 14 cost like 600 something gold. I can produce said 14 strength cavalry unit in 1 turn in a few different cities (even on epic speed). I know for a fact none of my cities can produce anywhere close to 600 gold in 1 turn by itself. Put that into perspective.

Its actually more efficient to just keep pumping out newish units than to upgrade older ones. Hence, I end up deleting or sending to the slaughter all my old units. If I get huge surpluses of gold then I just run over budget till I run out again (playing turns losing 100 something gold per turn just to keep from wasting the gold, in the late game gold becomes very plentiful, I guess from demanding tribute and capturing cities somehow I amassed a few thousand).

I do not like to save gold. I like to spend it to improve my empire, but not as inefficiently as it is spent to upgrade old units. Its painful to spend 600 gold to upgrade a unit, its painful to send it to slaughter, just to let it die so I don't have to pay maintenance on it, and its especially painful to just delete it cause its costing me more than its worth.

This in fact hurts the AI's more than you would like to know. When the AI's get a new military tech, they basically set they're science spending to 10% or even 0% until they have upgraded all their old units. They really waste alot of science and gold doing this.

sorry for my little rant ;)

I was re-reading my Chinese history and the term Princedoms rang a bell in my head: didn't the Jin Dynasty crash because of the War of the 8 Princes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Eight_Princes
It weakened the central government enough for the 5 Wu tribes to basically take over northern China.
So maybe after knowing Princedoms, have it built in so that there is a small but finite chance for any unhappy cities to become barbarian. This will allow smaller civs who don't know Laws of Jin to have a fighting chance.

That's a good idea, but barbarians are weak in late game. Maybe they could receive some defence units as the city converts.

Well, in RFC, when a civ collapses, it disintegrates into barbarian and independent civs (the cities keep their units), and there are 2 separate independent civ each with their own tech rate. Maybe give the newly indy city the same techs as its parent?

(The expectation is that you should be able to conquer that city back but with some trauma to your empire, just like the Jin Dynasty)

just some small things that bothered me with how some of the units vs their counters are discovered. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like some units come too early and others too late. For an example, in normal BTS stuff like spears and pikemen are generally available quite a bit of time before horse archers and knights, respectively. This seemed to not be the case with some units vs counters in HotTK. The elite pikemen was the very last unit I unlocked.... I had knights perhaps 50 turns before that....

Same with Dao Dun Swordsmen, and Guardians.... really after I unlocked those, I hardly built anything else, except some trebuchets and knights occaisionally. The AI's really love to build Guardians... almost to the point that they ruin themselves, by not having any other unit types around except maybe an archer or two.

The AI's also really really love to build walls, outer walls, inner walls, stone sentinel maze ect... They usually build these on top flight priority. If I were them, I'd be building forges and metal works ect. first and foremost, then units if necessary secondly, then anything else.

so AI would be improved if they built things in this order:

1) anything that increases production
2) units necessary to deter an attack or defend. If at war they should basically built units non-stop
3) culture and commerce increasing buildings
4) anything else

The Chen Xiao or whatever the trireme looking boat is comes entirely too early, to be the deadliest warship.

just some small gripes that could be easily adjusted ;)

But sometimes the best building is not production. For example, I usually go first for granary first (if I don't have a religion), or advisor mansion (if I have one). Even if I'm at war, if I have enough units I don't build them.

When I look at my espionage, I find that what the AI needs to do is to stop building stupid things like workers and long building projects when the enemy has enough force to capture the city imminently.

yea, unfortunately the AI will never "pause" production like us humans will. For an example, sometimes I will start constructing a building, even with no intentions of finishing it right away. I just do it so my city will grow. Then once it grows I'll switch back to producing a unit if I need one.

The AI's will never do this, its just one of their limitations inherited from BTS. To kind of "fix" this I would propose that the AI should and in fact could fairly easily take into account how powerful their imminent rivals are. If they are more than 150% or so weaker then their imminent rivals, they should be mass producing units. I know they have full capability of massing troops, heck I can build a gigantic army with 5 cities in 20 turns. The espionage thing that shows how powerful rivals civs are could be used. For example, Lu Bu starts the game out at war with Cao Cao, I would imagine when they begin the game, the Lu Bu/Cao Cao power ratio is probably around 2.0 (Cao Cao being 200% stronger than Lu Bu). They hate each other and are at war, Lu Bu's AI should produce nothing but units to begin the game until they are either dead or the war is over.

Somehow it should be possible to take these ratio's combined with relative attitudes and proximities to determine whether or not the AI should be on a strict unit producing frenzy. I know the HotTK team knows how to find if the civs are close to each other, thats how they limited vassals so you have to have a border with them before they'll become one.

I in fact use these same ratio's to determine who, when, and even how I will attack, shouldn't the AI's? Perhaps they do to some degree, but honestly when I see civs getting overrun time and time again, trying to produce buildings and wonders it just amazes me.

I would also agree they have what I would call "too many workers", but honestly the AI uses them so inefficiently, they need about a dozen more then I would to do the same task. They build roads and other worthless crap first instead of improving currently worked tiles. Of course this was also inherited from BTS, but still it could be tweaked to lessen the effect.

In fact, it's not that the AI has no efficient workers, it's that they use them to build roads in your empire. They do it partly for exploration sometimes but it's still a bad idea to improve other civs' infrastructure and pay maintenance while they are migrant workers in your country without a visa.:lol:

Don't know if this is because of BTS's AI, but it would be nice to have a hostile but much weaker civ vassalize to you spontaneously, especially if they see an overwhelming stack right outside their borders. (E.g. me as Cao Cao vs. Kong Rong). They are willing to capitulate but a spontaneous vassalization is preferable.

Also, when the AI refuses to vassalize even with good relations and it says "your land is too far away," does it mean your home location is too far away? What if I moved my capital closer to them and had land adjacent to theirs? (Me vs. Gongsun Du, after I conquer Kong Rong I have land right next to theirs).

The "too far away" notice is dependent on your closest land. For instance, in my Sun Ce game, Ma Teng kept giving me that message until I captured Li Jue's Capital (took lots of luck, crazy unbombardable defence!). After my borders popped, Ma Teng vassilized willingly.

For a minor suggestion of my own, how about increasing the amount of land and pop that a vassal counts for in a domination victory? In most of my games so far, I vassalize almost all of the other AI's but that alone keeps me from a domination and forces me to go for a conquest. It would be a nice change to get a domination every so ofter. It really isn't that important though.

Yes, I found that out after I destroyed Gongsun Zan and Gongsun Du was willing to vassalize.

I think the large and huge maps make domination much harder than conquest because you cannot build in lots of empty land which will never allow you to get to 50% land unless you conquer all of them.

I vaguely remember reading about this guy in the novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Ci
A quote:
Zuo Ci wielded amazing Taoist power and was described as psychic. He studied on the Mount Emei in Sichuan, where he found The Book of Concealing Method (遁甲天書), from which he learned to "ascend to the clouds astride the wind, to sail up into the great void itself;" and how "...to pass through mountains and penetrate rocks; ...to float light as vapor, over the seas, to become invisible at will or change [his] shape, to fling swords and project daggers so as to decapitate a man from a distance."

It would be nice to include a special wonder (world? national?) that requires the presence of Religion in the city that would allow you to teleport units from where the wonder is located to another city (i.e. airport). Maybe it needs something like 12 Spagirism Workshops to work all that magic.

Also, when the AI refuses to vassalize even with good relations and it says "your land is too far away," does it mean your home location is too far away? What if I moved my capital closer to them and had land adjacent to theirs? (Me vs. Gongsun Du, after I conquer Kong Rong I have land right next to theirs).

I think that just means that you don't have connected borders. I haven't had anyone deny me for that reason when I did share borders, but its not like I play this 24/7 so it may have slipped through the cracks, or possibly the AI's had multiple reasons, this not being the biggest.

About the civs spontaneously vassalizing... some of them basically already do. When I suddenly landed a 60 stack on Gongsun Du's land (only 2 tiles from his current capitol) he capitulated instantly with no battles nearby.

I had taken his 1 city that isn't connect to the rest though, but that was quite awhile before that, while he was still Yuan Shao's vassal.

Yuan Shao was just the opposite, he wouldn't capitulate until he only had 2 (maybe 3) cities left, and was probably only 10% of his former glory. It was like the Chinese Alamo with him, except no survivors this time.

I think that just means that you don't have connected borders. I haven't had anyone deny me for that reason when I did share borders, but its not like I play this 24/7 so it may have slipped through the cracks, or possibly the AI's had multiple reasons, this not being the biggest.

About the civs spontaneously vassalizing... some of them basically already do. When I suddenly landed a 60 stack on Gongsun Du's land (only 2 tiles from his current capitol) he capitulated instantly with no battles nearby.

I had taken his 1 city that isn't connect to the rest though, but that was quite awhile before that, while he was still Yuan Shao's vassal.

Yuan Shao was just the opposite, he wouldn't capitulate until he only had 2 (maybe 3) cities left, and was probably only 10% of his former glory. It was like the Chinese Alamo with him, except no survivors this time.

Wow! I saw quite the opposite in my Sun Ce game. I took Ye after knocking out his main stack and poof! capitulation! He still had a good 15 cities left. Of course my power was about 3 times his and I had almost the rest of the civs as vassals. Only Cao Cao and his vassals remained, and they were surrounded.
I found it pretty nice that the AI did that actually, since resistance would of meant total annihilation, and now Yuan Shao's troops could aid me in the final battle with Cao Cao.
Perhaps it could me modified so that after your power rating is 4x greater than the AI's power, they would vassalize automatically? It would greatly reduce the endgame grind and would lead to some epic showdowns between alliances.

For the major civs, it's a little illogical to see the civ called by the name of the leader. E.g. Sun Quan asked me to protect Sun Ce (the civilization) by being their master. It would make much more sense for the larger civs to be called their traditional names, e.g. the state of Wei, Shu and Wu. For smaller states who are still loyal to Revival maybe calling them by their traditional names is more appropriate, e.g. Xuzhou (Liu Bei), Jingzhou (Liu Biao), Liangzhou (Ma Teng), Four [Korean]Commanderies of Han (Gongsun Du), Shu Han (Liu Bei if he ever gets to Chengdu).

Rhye's dynamic naming of civs should be applied to provide more variety. E.g. when Wei goes from despotism (state of Wei) to oligarchy (Kingdom of Wei) to emperor (Wei Dynasty, even though the diplo hasn't been won yet); or Yizhou (under Liu Zhang with Revival) turning to Kingdom of Shu (when he goes to Division), or when Sun Quan vassalizes, the State of Eastern Wu is called the Province of Wu. (Sun Quan did nominally vassalize to Cao Pei in 220)

Just started playing and like this mod, and have been enjoying it, however, just a few issues with graphics.

The CPU had an empty throne (event?) happen. I do not know the technical details of this, but I believe it caused his Leaderhead to become a vandalized version of the Sid Leaderhead.
Could this problem either be fixed or a different leaderhead be used? I am uploading images from Portal: Three Kingdoms (a Magic: The Gathering set) which would not be good quality due to the size (W: 256 pixels, H: 208/207 pixels), but are something to go off of.

I don't "get" why donuts are used as the button for Strong Belief. I am uploading a possible substitution, which is sized to be made into a button.

Also, not so much a suggestion, but a contribution. I am uploading a few Icons which can be used by those who are interested (The three Icons are in "HoTK Icons.rar"). Previews included.

Once again, great mod.

@generalstaff

Thanks, and thanks again, we will make good use of these graphics! The Sid leaderhead is due to the death of previous leader, we will do something about that.

Thanks, and thanks again, we will make good use of these graphics! The Sid leaderhead is due to the death of previous leader, we will do something about that.

Thanks for the explanation about the Sid leaderhead. I don't think it would have bothered me so much if that Civ was not bugging me for Open Borders literally every other turn.

Hi there :)

I'm really amazed by your job... Really good mod, full of interesting ideas :)

It's not really a suggestion but I didn't know where else to ask for this... Do you have some .psd template or similar for the specialists buttons? Especially just the ring so I can change the pictures inside; I really love the design of those icons! :D

Another question: it's meant to be played in scenarios, right? But I still can start a normal game and play it all fine or will there be some issues?

Anyway, keep up the good work!

@Opera

Thanks.

The specialist icons are made by koap, may be he has a template for it. I've told him about your question.

As to random maps, they are playable, everything the scenario has the random maps have. Also you can build City Wonders in the particular city you choose, while in scenarios all the city wonders are already placed in specific cities. Another thing is the emperor will be randomly placed on the map, guarded by a barbarian unit, waiting for you to rescue him.

The downside of random maps RIGHT NOW is it's not very balanced. Some factions start with hero, some not.

The specialist icons are made by koap, may be he has a template for it. I've told him about your question.Thanks!

As to random maps, they are playable, everything the scenario has the random maps have. Also you can build City Wonders in the particular city you choose, while in scenarios all the city wonders are already placed in specific cities. Another thing is the emperor will be randomly placed on the map, guarded by a barbarian unit, waiting for you to rescue him.

The downside of random maps RIGHT NOW is it's not very balanced. Some factions start with hero, some not.Okay, I guessed so. I may try one some day.

Also, the prisoners mechanics seems really great. For now, I haven't seen any hero taken as prisoner though, all being executed. But I've only played for an hour or so... I'll try to give more feedback later ;)

Any chance of including the Mercenary mod? Would be great for getting unique units like war elephants in the game more often. Maybe make their tech 1 era ahead so that it's not pointless to hire them.

We'll put some mercenary stuff in when we develop Zang Ba's Mount Tai bandits faction furture.

Actually, making changing leader happen in the middle of the game is not that hard.:) jdog's ChangePlayer which comes with Better AI can do that with ease. You can do it during the game too, using ctrl-shift-P if I remember right.

If we really do that, we need to make sure how this will happen. Do you really like the idea that Sun Ce will die in 200AD and be replaced by a less competent little brother? I love Sun Ce and am not very fond of that.;)

And the 'coding team' is actually...not many people. I need to recruit some new heroes to come on board.:D

Along those lines, I was playing a random game as Sun Ce. There happened to be a kingdom owned by Sun Quan. I attacked it and captured Sun Quan, and then persuaded him to be my general. The opposing kingdom was somehow still lead by Sun Quan, even as he (Sun Quan) attacked it...

@Raize

Hey, you are playing the latest beta 4 right? I have caught the bug and did something about it before uploading beta 4, but I always have a feeling the bug is still there.

I was playing the beta 4 that was released as of around 18 hours ago.

Is it possible to create your own leader and/or hero? That was one of the fun part of ROTK2, where you could create 1 ruler/hero with a follower. I think it'd be fun to put yourself in the game.

Maybe the player could "take over" a faction, and replace the existing ruler with one of their own design, along with the hero. So I'd remove Liu Bei, and have Dave as the ruler of Shu. And give a certain amount of points to use towards designing the hero's potential upgrades.

That would be fun but not very historical. :)
A better suggestion would be to allow you to choose between potential successors, e.g. Sima Yi vs. Cao Pi, Liu Shan vs Zhuge Liang, Sun Qian vs. Zhou Yu, etc. (I personally favor Liu Shan rather than Zhuge Liang with his spiritual/philosophical traits).

Haha

If you are preferring Liu Shan to Zhuge Liang, maybe some of the ruler traits could use some "flavor" reworking. I know that FfH has a "fool" trait that gives -25%:science:, which might be appropriate for Liu Shan.

Maybe he just acted like a fool to save his ass. Wikipedia says that he has no official historian of his own, and he may have been a genius after all to balance the "reconquista" and "status quo" factions in his court.
Even Dong Zhuo would be good to play if I could with the scenarios available.

Liu Shan is the smartest dude among all the last emperors of China.

His father is an ass that no matter how many times he lost and run and surrendered and served other people, he never took it personally and always managed to fall back stronger.

Liu Shan inherited this trait from his father, so even he is captured and 'psychologically' abused he still enjoyed his life like an ass.

If I may suggest, I've seen mod that allow the player to increase/decrease culture/research/spy in 5% increment/decrement instead of 10%. I found that's quite useful where I can have more freedom in adjusting those settings.

I concur, it really helps when you don't have a lot of money.

One thing I noticed is that sometimes the early civics make it hard to grow your city. Fine in the context of the scenarios, but really a pain when playing a separate game. I had serious food resources and still my city didn't want to grow.

Perhaps a custom game option to have a different list of civics that would include a more 'standard' starting civics. I mean I notice that if you're not careful, you start with Indifference and when you found a religion, you don't get the option to convert so if you aren't paying attention, it's easy to go quite a few turns before realizing you need to change civics.

Again, this would be only for non-scenario games.

Plus, shouldn't there be an option for ocean going vessels for non-scenario games? It's not critical; I find playing with the tectonic lakes 30% gives a good feel for the original type of map.

I'm back after a nice long period of college applications, homework, and tests! Either way, point is I fired up this wonderful mod once again, and took a fresh look at the minor issues. After taking this small break, I came up with a few nice small tweaks that could be made!

First of all, the Power civic. This is not the philosophy of Power, so I'm assuming it means something more along the lines of you value military strength highly. Currently, it does very little to help you militarily, and is one of the most harmful civics in the game. I propose that the no foreign trade routes penalty be removed, and replaced with a unit producion modifier, +25% maybe? In addition to that, perhaps the General Combat point accumulation bonus could be increased further to about +100% when in your borders.

Secondly, Emperor. Perhaps the bonus production could be added to ALL levels of cottage? Or even Hamlet and up? The way it stands, Emperor is a rather poor civic, when it really should be a really powerful one. Especially since there's an entire wonder dedicated simply to allow the Rebellion player to become Emperor.

Which brings me to my third point. Since Beliefs are political beliefs, it makes sense that they should be able to be changed relatively fast. The current commandery and advisor mansion converting mechanic is great, but I feel it still takes years to spread the belief you want to change to through your empire. Perhaps either the natural spread rate of beliefs should be increased, or Advocates made cheaper? Perhaps even make certain Advocates cheaper hammer-wise, making that specific belief easier to spread? (Here Rebellion comes to mind. I'd also see Division as a hard spread belief, since it should really be confined to your homeland)

My fourth point! There a few small tweaks that could be added to make each Belief's effects more in line with its goal, without being game-changing. For instance, Division is one of the more isolationist beliefs, next to Hermit. These Beliefs should have a +X% War Weariness modifier tacked on to each of thier buildings, perhaps around +10% each. Since War Weariness only applies when fighting outside borders, this works well to simulate opposition to expansionism (which would be Unification). Rebellion and Revival should get an opposite effect, with lessened War Weariness.

And my fifth point. Some leaders should have more of a belief present in their cities. For instance, I wouldn't mind seeing more Rebellion present in the Unification cities. Also, more Power spread about a bit wouldn't be bad either. That way, some leaders could have an easier shift in Belief (such as Cao Pi from Unification to Rebellion, and Ma Chao could also switch to Power).


Most of my points revolve around making the political scene a bit more dynamic. Right now, the Cao Clan and the Yuan family will always be Unification, and Yuan Shu is really the only leader who switches Beliefs.


And a final idea, which is more major than a few XML changes, is to have each Leader have a Hero unit. I really love the successions that occur, and the random leaders really make the game interesting. Especially when they get fun trait combos!

EDIT: And sorry about the wall of text... I just got carried off!

Play a no-city game with Yuan Shu and you'll find that he's easily the most overpowered player early on, since you can conquer anything without worrying about maintenance's effect on your economy. I agree it needs to be made easier to adopt (I suggested after researching Imperial Academy), especially by late game when most of the major players would have substantial empires to govern and appropriate pretensions to being emperor.

Yeah, Yuan Shu is crazy in no-city games! Only problem is I really like starting the game surrounded by stronger powers at a military disadvantage (like Lu Bu in the large map), so I usually play the preset scenarios.

Perhaps an event could be implemented once you reach a certain number of cities that either forces you to select Regent or Emperor as your civic? (And preferably blocks you from adopting "lesser" civics later on). Each Belief could have it's own different event text, and perhaps a different chance of the event occurring. The event would preferably repeat until you have chosen the Emperor civic.

Hi,

I have just tried this mod and I have been quite overwhelmed by it! Unfortunately my knowledge of the Sanguo period and the lore spun around it is rather non-existent... so I am unfit to make any judgments, I have a question though regarding the unitart: asmost of it is replaced (as have been many buildings), this helps a lot with the immersion- it is especially cool if you see that Guan Yu looks the part. THe legion system, faction traits, the emperor (I suppose, as rebellion faction leader, could you just not croak him? After all, it seems that you have earned the tianming* at this point)...

But as of now, there is still alot of placeholder art left- like the cellars with a satellite dish on, the byzantine kataphraktoi light cavalry, the Royal Guard (Roman Praetorians). the Quechua Yellow turbans and so on and on... (I can understand the use of Native American and other placeholder art for the non-Han "ethnic minority" units though) Then there are the belief buildings, the Yamen and some other stuff. On a lower priority, things like Great PEople could also get a redo (I hope for all of this there is the necessary art on CFC). Please do not get me wrong, I like this mod a lot, but I see those things as loose ends that could hopefully be tied up very nicely at some point, with as little hassle and time as possible I hope.

I first noticed this when I tried to bring the glory of Tianshi Dao or Wudoumi Dao to the Central Plains- relying partially on Gaulish Warriors (unfortunately trying to tinker with the xml myself only got the game to crash while loading). THey do have an interesting name though- Ghost Swordsmen... Are these sorts of units actually mentioned in a historical source? What's their real name in Chinese (ie which hanzi)?

One last thing. Will there be further scenarios in the future? Like Wei conquering Shu... or Jin against Wu... (still in the book) And will the Simas get their own faction for later on as well?

Apologies for this Great Wall of text...

*Mandate of Heaven. According to the likes of Mencius and Dong Zhongshu, your right to rule because of your benevolence and virtue among others. That's of course extremely simplified

PS in Chinese wangluo yuyan, I'd of course just say "zan"! I am doubtful whether CiV will be a good platmform for mods such as these... but there ares till too many interesting periods in Chinese history that can be used for modding... like the Zhanguo age (in more detail this time), the time from the end of the Tang dynasty to the beginning of the Yuan dynasty (An-Shi Rebellion, 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms, the political setup during the Song dynasty and so on), or the founding of the Ming dynasty (play Zhu Yuanzhang or one of his many rivals, or try to reclaim China for Mongol rule) the Ming-Qing transition, the Taiping rebellion, and so on and so on...