Hi all,

I've already been working hard on v1.10 :)

Zuul's More Buildings mod is added, and colonies will begin with the basecamp & carpenter's shelter. I've also changed the PriceChangePercent calculation for Europe price changes from 2% to 1%. This should halve the amount of price changes keeping the European economy more stable for longer. It'll still collapse if you overload the economy, but you'll have a lot longer to do it. BTW, silver was on a 10% calculation for price changes, so that explains why silver collapsed to zero in a couple of loads. This has been adjusted inline with the other yields.

Oh, and I hope people don't mind too much that the REF will be loads harder as you scale up handicap in terms of unit strength. The King now doesn't disband half the REF on the first turn. This was fixed by changing the transportation unit from standard galleon to a war galleon (unique for Kings) and making it act like the vanilla MoW transports.

Here's the current changelog:


1.10 Changelog:
* Zuul's More Buildings mod added
- Base Camp & Carpenter's Shelter default buildings
* Unit Changes:
- New unit: War Galleon - unique unit for Kings
* REF Changes:
- REF uses War Galleon instead of Galleon for transporting units
- REF unit's strength is influenced by handicap level
- REF no longer disappears
- REF lands units MUCH better
* Economics Changes:
- Silver YieldPriceChangePercent brought in line with all other yields (10 -> 1)
- YieldPriceChangePercent halved (2 -> 1)
* Other Changes:
- AI more immigration
- All players on huge map
- Western nations no longer start on top of each other

* Remaining Bugs:
- Trade route list doesn't work right after sorting
- Ermak leaderhead slightly too high in box

Didnt you change Western starting points in 1.09? Certainly in my latest game I had to find the Aussies, and havent met the Chinese yet (i'm russian)

Never mind.

Your changes to slow down the price drop in Europe is welcome. However, given the rarity of silver on the map, the small amount that can be mined per turn and the fact that silver is a precious metal, I should think that it would be worth a LOT of money and keep it's value a very, very long time. I usually never even bother mining silver because it isn't worth it long term.

Wish list item. Any chance you can put some variables in an XML file to allow us to customize the price ranges and drops? I'd also like to see an edit that would always make sure the finished good is worth at least a couple of gold more than the raw good used to make it. Put a switch in an XML file to turn that feature on and off if you like.

Your changes to slow down the price drop in Europe is welcome. However, given the rarity of silver on the map, the small amount that can be mined per turn and the fact that silver is a precious metal, I should think that it would be worth a LOT of money and keep it's value a very, very long time. I usually never even bother mining silver because it isn't worth it long term.

Silver still needs to crash when you move too much of it. Spain 17th Century.

Wish list item. Any chance you can put some variables in an XML file to allow us to customize the price ranges and drops? I'd also like to see an edit that would always make sure the finished good is worth at least a couple of gold more than the raw good used to make it. Put a switch in an XML file to turn that feature on and off if you like.

Look through Civ4YieldInfos.xml I suspect most of what you want to do is in there.

I'm glad you want to incoporate my mod. But note that the new buildings I have don't use any new graphics.

Would be nice if the combind unit feature I had planned was in it too. Like cart + colonist = a colonist with 1 berth. Galleon + 2 cannons = War Galleon, and so on.

From the other thread.

Noted mate. I'm not overly fussed by the building graphics. I don't think I'll be using the increased berth idea. I think the AI would have trouble with it. It's got enough problems with galleons, let alone adding this onto it as well. :)

Silver still needs to crash when you move too much of it. Spain 17th Century.


Didn't say, "Never". I said a long time. Meaning it should take a lot for it to crash. But it looks like I can mod that with what's in YieldInfos so I'm good with that.


Look through Civ4YieldInfos.xml I suspect most of what you want to do is in there.

From looking at it (if I understand correctly what the tags do) it looks like there are two things I'd like to see. One is a tag that relates a finished product to a raw product so that the finished product will never be worth less than Raw + 1. Also, a tag that represents a hard floor (value the price will never go below).

If you look at pictures of the real Bolivar, you can see that the col leaderhead doesn't even remotely look like him, but ekmek has made a very good Bolivar leaderhead: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11474
You should really use that for Bolivar.

I have linked here, the 1.10 release candidate. The reason I'm allowing testing of this early is because I want feedback on the AI and REF changes.

In YOUR opinion, what do you think of the AI and REF now?

Unzip the linked file to your desktop, and move into the Assets folder of the Mod. The zip file only contains the XML files and the new DLL file of the mod, so you MUST have 1.09b installed fully and functioning before this 1.10 RC will work.

NOTE: Not official release, so will be unsupported. This will be superceded with 1.10 release once it's uploaded after testing of this RC is complete.

Enjoy. :) http://rtw.apolyton.net/aod2/XML_1.10_rc.zip [~2.3 Meg]

Changelog of this RC:

* Zuul's More Buildings mod added
- Base Camp & Carpenter's Shelter default buildings
* Unit Changes:
- New unit: War Galleon - unique unit for Kings
* REF Changes:
- REF uses War Galleon instead of Galleon for transporting units
- REF unit's strength is influenced by handicap level
- REF no longer disappears
- REF lands units MUCH better
* Economics Changes:
- Silver YieldPriceChangePercent brought in line with all other yields (10 -> 1)
- YieldPriceChangePercent halved (2 -> 1)
* Other Changes:
- AI more immigration scaled to handicap
- All players on huge map
- Western nations no longer start on top of each other

Dale, you crank out updates way too fast. :) Can you release source code for CvGameCore.dll? I want to add the improved AI to my modmod for Mare Nostrum (if you don't mind).

Dale - Can you include the "work time" of a petty criminal/indentured servant/free colonist in the box that pops up when you hover over them?

I.E.

"8 turns to a free colonist"
or
"12 turns to an Elder Statesman"

Never criticize the man for releasing stuff too fast ;-) We've all been down the too slow road lately :-)

Never criticize the man for releasing stuff too fast ;-) We've all been down the too slow road lately :-)

True, Dale has to replace a whole modding scene. :)

Downloaded and I am going to test today. :)

Dale,

This was an amazing update!

Let's start.

REF land units:

+2 governor, +3 for patriot, and +4 for revolutionary.

+2 bonus is a suuuuuuuper hard challenge. Don't forget that a 10% bonus veternacy would further increase the difference. ;)

+4 is not beatable at all.

REF naval units:

MoWs for patriot level have 26 strength opposing 10 for SoLs. Basically, 26 vs 16 with max bonuses. This is not beatable at all again. :)

For revolutionary 30 vs 10. Totally impossible.

The only guy who has a chance is Simon. :)

Statistics:

100% Rebel Sentiment Dragoon with Formation and Veterancy 2:
4 + 2 + 0.8 + 1 = 7.8

Patriot Dragoon with Formation and Veterancy 2:
7 + 1.75 + 1.4= 10.15 Ups! :)

Revolutionary Dragoon with Formation and Veterancy 2:
8 + 4 + 1.6= 13.6 Too hard.



Veteran Soldier with Veterancy 1, and Minuteman 1 defending a fortress with 100% revel sentiment and full fortification bonus:
3+1.5 (RS)+0.3 (V,1)+0.6 (M,1) +4.5 (Fortress) +0.75 (Fortify) + 1.5 (Vet Sold)=12.15

Patriot Artillery attacking city (125% bonus):
7 + 8.75 = 15.75 No go!

Revolutionary Artillery attacking city:
8 + 10 = 18 Same.

Suggestions:

- I would down all REF bonuses a bit to max +2 for revolutionary (from +4), I think this would be satisfactory.
- MoWs are unbelievably strong. I think +1 to +2 bonus would be enough. +11 is excessive, let alone +15. ;)
- Another alternative is include the promotion continental army with better stats. :)

From the other side if you want to have revolutionary, as hard as deity is for C4. It is fine. Patriot would remind me immortal... but still think all bonuses are a bit too much. ;)

Yeah on Revolutionary I want the REF to wipe its ass with you. :D

This one change I believe doubles the difficulty. Though I did think < Rev was a bit too hard. I'm thinking tone down the others, but leave Rev where it is. :)

Tone down a bit please. :)

MoWs and arti need to come down a lot.

That 30 Rev MoW is scary as hell. It can take like 5 SoLs...

Dale, even at mere conquestador land REF units get a +1, and MoWs +4!

For land units, I think +1 should be good enough for governor, and +2 for for patriot and so on.

Artillery units don't need the 125% bonus any more.

Regarding MoWs, I think difficulty should scale with veterancy bonuses, or else building a navy would become completely pointless.

Specifically, for Governer, Veterancy I (+1.5), for Patriot, Veternacy II (+3) and for Revolutionary, Veterancy III (+4.5). I find these bonuses strong and challenging.

I'm thinking removing the handicap bonus from MoW's and just leaving it on the land REF units. That should solve the problem.

I will also re-adjust the scales so that the third difficulty level is 100% of vanilla, and the first two are less than 100% (so weaker than vanilla REF) and higher difficulties are more than 100% (stronger than vanilla REF).

Cool. Can we just add veterancy I for all MoWs, regardless levels?

Sounds good.

Dale - Can you include the "work time" of a petty criminal/indentured servant/free colonist in the box that pops up when you hover over them?

I.E.

"8 turns to a free colonist"
or
"12 turns to an Elder Statesman"

I love this idea as well. ^_^

It would also be nice to see the same report for students. I occassionally have mis-enrolled one (wrong skill to study) and would have liked to pull him out and re-educate him before he graduates, but if you have multiple students it is hard to know who is studying what for sure.

Not a major issue, to be sure, but it would help if it's doable without too much coding.

Cool. Can we just add veterancy I for all MoWs, regardless levels?

Okay so changes since the beta test:
- REF strength changes only occur on land units
- MoW is strength 15 at all levels (as it was)
- Pilgrim land REF units strength 50% of normal
- Conquistador land REF units strength 100% of normal
- Revolutionary land REF units strength 150% of normal

Bug report of v1.10

*Ships starting in west should face east not west.
*China does not always start on west side.
*Sometimes you can't add more players in a custom game.

Bug report of v1.10

*Ships starting in west should face east not west.
*China does not always start on west side.
*Sometimes you can't add more players in a custom game.

Thanks for the post. :)

1. That's facing, thanks for that. I forgot. :blush:
2. If there's not enough space on the west, they could start on the east. When it occured, was there a tiny amount of western Homeland sea zone?
3. Custom game or custom scenario?

3. I think he means the following...

If you go at custom game, and close all slots (from bottom to top) slots will disappear leaving always one closed slot active.

If you open the last closed active slot, the one below it appears again as a closed active slot.

The bug is sometimes opening the last active closed slot does not force the one below it to open. Hence, you will never be able to open again the slots you've closed, unless you go "back".

That's a vanilla issue, it is hard to reproduce -although it will happen if you try 2-3 times. You can get around it by going "back" and restart a fresh menu.

2: That was probably the case. This will be a very good starting possition for china.

3: Not scenario. Caribbean and fairyweather small size.
At least 3 times the scroll list was not expanded to new slots.


One more thing, in my building mod pirates could build town hall with crosses. Hopefully you fixed the crosses in it (repaced the building with one without any slots). Have not checked.


Edit:
Wagon Train should need Hose Pasture (Or Stable).

I'm playing my first 1.10 game now (the RC version you posted a number of days ago). Not close to the revolutionary war yet but I will say that the AI seems much improved. I'm only playing on Patriot level (after reading about the Revolutionary changes I wasn't going to attempt it), but the other Europeans are giving me a serious run for my money.

Gherkin, don't try yet. :)

It's great fun for play testing though!

Progress is still happening for 1.10, albeit slowely due to work. :)

Current changelog for 1.10:


1.10 Changelog:
* Zuul's More Buildings mod added
- Base Camp & Carpenter's Shelter default buildings
- Warehouse, Expansion, Custom house sale percentage = 10%, 25%, 50%
- Warehouse buildings excess sale amounts from (CITY_YIELD_DECAY_PERCENT * excess) to (overflow sale percent * excess)
* Unit Changes:
- New unit: War Galleon - unique unit for Kings
- Servant now 20-40 turns indenture
- Criminals now 40-80 turns sentence
- Indenture and sentence now scaled to GameSpeed
- Western Civs now start facing east
* REF Changes:
- REF uses War Galleon instead of Galleon for transporting units
- REF land unit's strength is influenced by handicap level
- REF no longer disappears
- REF lands units MUCH better
* Economics Changes:
- Silver YieldPriceChangePercent brought in line with all other yields (10 -> 1)
- YieldPriceChangePercent halved (2 -> 1)
* Other Changes:
- AI more immigration scaled to handicap
- All players on huge map
- Western nations no longer start on top of each other
- King no longer able to win economic, production or pirate victory
- Pirate fortresses no longer bomb their own ships
- New XML tag in Civ4EuropeInfos.xml iWestTripLength to store trip times for western nations
- Exposed CvCivilizationInfo::isFromWest() to python
- Exposed CvEuropeInfo::getWestTripLength() to python
- Target values for trade, production & pirates no longer reset for saves
- "All Men are Free" now gives two free colonists

* Remaining Bugs:
- Trade route list doesn't work right after sorting (Jeckel???)
- Ermak leaderhead slightly too high in box (Ekmek???)
- Europe change to Homecity

Could you give an example of a excess sale? I don't understand the last change.

Could you give an example of a excess sale? I don't understand the last change.

Warehouse holds 300, warehouse has 400 cigars, excess sale of the 100 over.

Cool stuff mate! Could you please explain, what are the values for "overflow sale percent"?

Is it 10%, 25%, 50%? Same with the price?

Dale are you also adding an option, where you can stop these sales? because i dont really want them to happen, as i dont want them to effect prices nor taxes. So prefer to ship them to Europa or natives myself...

and with option, i mean in the game, so i can click it off, until the revolution is in full swing, where taxes at least nolonger matter... :)

If you want to ship them to Europe or the natives yourself, then do so. If they weren't sold, then the goods would just be destroyed.

If for some weird reason you can't ship the goods fast enough, then build lots of wagon trains and use those as portable warehouses.

There ARE reasons for not wanting all of your excess to go poof in the wind. Especially with some of the raw materials, as well as guns and tools. It would be nice to have an option somewhere to maintain the current sell-off rate on a per-town basis, at least. Granted, for the processed goods (rum, cloth, cigars, coats) the vast majority of the time you would rather they were all sold but there are occasional reasons for not doing so.

True, in original col. you were able to determine yourself what goods and when the CH would sell.

Let alone I would never use anything that sells less than 100% of the price.

Dale what what are the values for "overflow sale percent"?

Is it 10%, 25%, 50%? Same as the price?

Great work so far.

Dale could you please separate the music files and the sailing movie to something like :Media Pack: so that users with slow internet (dial up) like me could easily download the mod. I know that it would create some confusion but everyone here would probably know how to add the media pack back if someone wanted the extra stuff.

I agree. Make it a mod-modcomp

- Ermak leaderhead slightly too high in box (Ekmek???)


could you post a screenshot? I don't have APD DL'd at the moment (too much marenostrum going on)

Please note that sell-of is not 100% of excess. The amount of excess sold off is the same as the percentage of Europe price for that building. So for warehouse, 10% sold at 10% price. Then 25% sold at 25% price. Then lastly CH sells 50% of excess at 50% price.

could you post a screenshot? I don't have APD DL'd at the moment (too much marenostrum going on)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7875595&postcount=5

thats not one of mine :dunno:

Ooops! Sorry, I thought he was yours. :)

Hey out of curiosity, are you going to be putting in the art from the blu mod that has the conquistador for Spain and the new uniforms for the French, etc?

Please note that sell-of is not 100% of excess. The amount of excess sold off is the same as the percentage of Europe price for that building. So for warehouse, 10% sold at 10% price. Then 25% sold at 25% price. Then lastly CH sells 50% of excess at 50% price.

Hi, I joined this forum just to comment and help with this, but first off I have to say thanks to Dale for making this Mod... you pretty much saved a game that was horribly put together off the shelf.

Anyways, re the above, I tried running 1.10 and the custom house would not sell more than 10% of the excess per turn. The price seemed to be correct (although it said 60% on the building when you scroll the mouse over it). The other thing is, and I'm not sure how easy it is to fix, but is it possible to set the level at which it'll start selling? Ie, sell anything over 100 units (and perhaps sell 100% of it)?

Craig

Re the changes to the other Euro colonies, wow what a difference. They were definitely too wimpy before, however I'm pondering that the immigration for them might have increased a little too much. I was blown away by the number and size of cities the comp had very early in the game, and I was only on Conquistador level to try it out.

Might require a bit of a strategy change from how I was playing before with wimpy comps. I'd be interested to see how others have found it.

Craig

Hi craigdh. The 1.10 you're using from above is a "beta" of the AI changes. :) The economic changes are not reflected in it yet. You'll get all those goodies (and a better scaled AI to handicap than the 1.10 test) when I fully release 1.10. :)

Thanks Dale

@ Craig Yup, I also have the same feeling now. AI gets too much help.

Let alone with so many AIs now, the FFs are not distributed as they should.

You can still have some fun, if you disable all AI - till it gets balanced- and play against indians, and pirates.

The 1.10 you're using from above is a "beta" of the AI changes. The economic changes are not reflected in it yet

Yes, new AI is pretty impressive. I played a few games and AI player populations always outnumbered me. And I like it. My only remaining concerns about AI are
- city placement: AI player still founds cities in stupid places (eg ice, desert without any resources and food to grow)
- AI warfare: AI player is too passive. I played a game in govenor handicap + agressive option and I survived first 500 turns with an army of 2 dragoons and a soldier (I had 6 settlements with 3 of them in constant danger). Russia attacked me a few times but only with cannons, one by one. If they had mobilized 4 or 5 units at once, I would have been lost. :)

< Ahem > So, the point is to make the AI beat us at every level, no matter what? :P

With all that help AI can whipe our ass in three turns.

There is no way to have a long game in patriot any more, cause the AI will DoI in ~150 turns. It also has an empire 3-4 times mine! And believe me I am a wacko expansionist. :P

I tend to disable it, and play against pirates and indians only.

Koma, I have never, ever been attacked by AI colonial forces. Natives, sure, but AI colonials have never made a go for even the least defended of my cities.
However, running on v1.09, I find the AI far better able to defend its own home territories against my invading armies. In previous versions I could send in one or two dragoons and wreak havoc. With a couple canons, I could wipe them out. Now I'm finding the AI has mobilized a few dragoons - something it had never done before. In the very early game I find one or two enemy dragoons ready to eliminate my invasion force, and later in the game as many as six or more. This forces me to include a couple soldiers in the force, slowing the whole thing down, but since the soldiers get defensive bonuses on woods & hills, that's usually enough to ensure success, as long as I keep my dragoons in the same squares with the soldiers. At least until the AI dragoons have been eliminated.

It's a good thing that the AI nations are able to grow and present more of a threat. I'd like to see them being even more aggressive.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

On what difficulty level do you play mate? Have you been able to DoI before AI?

I think the AI is just gathering forces to defend the King and early DoI. It knows it will win faster like that. You can notice AI almost always delclares war on nearby powers, but doesn't give a damn about players being 1000 tiles far away.

If your colonies are right next to its nose, it will attack.

< Ahem > So, the point is to make the AI beat us at every level, no matter what? :P

With all that help AI can whipe our ass in three turns.

There is no way to have a long game in patriot any more, cause the AI will DoI in ~150 turns. It also has an empire 3-4 times mine! And believe me I am a wacko expansionist. :P

I tend to disable it, and play against pirates and indians only.

I just want to point out here, that except for an economic boost, the AI is "unfetered" now. Basically I have removed all the restrictions on the AI. So what you saw in the 1.10 beta is quite literally the AI without penalties.

This is what I've done:
- boosted amount of gold AI gets in trade (scaled to handicap)
- fixed bug where AI wasn't rushing immigrants
- fixed bug where AI wasn't arming colonists in Europe
- fixed bug where AI wasn't correctly determining how to defend cities
- modified the AI behaviour a little bit to streamline and increase its performance

That's about it I'm sure.

EDIT:
Oh, and I fixed up some issues the King AI was having with its REF landing and attacking.

I'm playing a game with the RC version of 1.10 at Patriot level. I tried a small map and it's interesting because the AI's are constantly crawling all over each other (and me). The rapid expansion of the AIs and the lack of space makes for lots of aggressiveness between the nations. Personally I like it. You really have to change your tactics to arm up quickly because the AI won't simply sit around and wait for you to out-earn it.

On the flip side, the AI seems somewhat reluctant to utilize it's force (I assume because they are trying to build up for the WoI). Also it seems to respect your defenses. So, it balances out.

Personally I -love- the AI changes.

I like the fact that the AI is a little more challenging, however they're pretty much impossible to compete with size-wise... that and they seem to setup tiny cities absolutely everywhere.

How about them triggering native hostility? I know with the changes that if I expanded that way plopping cities down all over the natives that they'd certainly attack me (and given how much stronger the natives start unit-wise, this is a realistic impediment), but I haven't seen too many instances of the other colonies running into more native trouble than usual.

Hmmm... AI has always a tiny REF to oppose. I know it because I've sent my guys to observe just from curiosity.

AI always achieves DoI win way too easy and way too fast.

Also there are many AIs (more than 3), and this means the FFs are now divided by 5 or 6 and not 4.

For anyone who thinks something else, please post a game on patriot level where you do beat the AI with a DoI win -trigger eco and industrial wins off. It seems AI is always a step ahead than me. Also you are not allowed to delcare war on any other European. Why? Just to prove you are able to DoI win, before AI does.

Even if I make war and completely beat 2-3 AI powers, the reamining AIs always have the time to expand and achieve DoI about 1650-1700. I try to avoid load save spam, and this means I have also casualties, when i fight them.

Something very similar with the game you posted Dale.

When will we get the final version of 1.1 ?

Prinz, I tried what you'd asked, playing on Patriot and seeing if you could beat the comp to DOI... I went right to 1792 and the comp actually never declared independence at all. Kind of odd... what made it more odd was that by about 1630 any of the other euro colonies were probably capable of it but just didn't do it. I'd long since given up before 1792 and just pressed enter through each turn... if I didn't do that I theoretically could've won but it would've been a crappy victory as any of the comps could've long beat me to it, they just would've 'let' me catch up and win.

Ridiculous how fast the computer expands on Patriot. By the early 1600's most of their numerous colonies are double digit in size, and have stacks of 10+ military units in each. Plus they seem to have an endless fleet of frigates. And they seem to have no trouble with the natives... in the beginning the natives seem perfectly happy to let them build settlements like crazy all over their land :P

Cool. Really it's weird it didn't trigger DoI.

When a declaration happens surprisingly their King has a ridiculously small REF.

Thank you very much for what you did. Now you may realise, I am not crazy. :)

I haven't been paying attention to the size of the AI REFs, but if it is significantly smaller then I find that to be counterintuitive, since the AIs seem to prioritize bell production. I have to ramp it up pretty quickly to keep up with them, which of course gives me a rather large REF to struggle with.

I haven't downloaded the 1.10 beta Dale so I don't know if you corrected Zuul's bug or not, but for pastures, imaxworkers should be set to 1, not 2.

first of all, thanks for the great mod.

second, this is my first post. hello all.

im test running the 1.10v. two runs (huge, fairyweather, marathon) and got following bugs:

1) played portuguese and no other "major" europeans appeared, only china/russia/australia and pirates.

2) played english, got economic victory on turn three. barely discovered the new world and.. bang! im the champ.

1) Should be random between all nations.
2) That's a bug.

1) so it randomly selects between all nations with the maximum of civs on a map being 5?

edit: figured it out

in the mean time. try three.

disabled australians and set pirates as comp only (changed respective values to 0 in civinfo xml, that should do it right?).

started a game with the english as george washington... and the first ship that hails me is john adams in nifty orange colors. is this supposed to be (didn't find this in the original forums)?

edit: think i found the answer here.. its the defaultplayers in civ4worldinfo.xml file isnt it? btw, i think it is actually pretty cool to have all the leaders on the map at the same time. ill try it out.

edit: tried it. pretty ok, aside from the colors. also there is no way you can recruit any of the founding fathers this way.

also, as pointed out by others before, the ai expanding is ridiculous. they just drop their stuff at random places. and might i say, im playing explorer/conquistador difficulties atm (noob).

edit: try four with all the leaders. turn 100, i got two colonies, carefully planned, closest ai has five colonies. my first one is bigger than theirs, but the biggest still belong to ai and are twice as big. hope this made sense. i'm not saying that i'm surprised, but still... can't the ai be a little less... inhuman?

another thing i have noticed, is that ai seems to get a (bunch) galleon(s) real quick. is this a bug somehow? it just seems as if the start out with a gold bonus or something (explorer difficulty).

frigates too (patriot)

Tried running a game on conquistador yesterday. Got to 1652 and declared independence... one of the AI euro colonies won an economic victory the next turn. Pretty early for an economic victory I'd say. Especially since by then I had only traded 30,000 goods myself vs their 100,000.

On conquistador, while the euro colonies grew faster than me and plopped down lots of cities quickly, it was not ridiculous. Until the final version of 1.10 comes out, it's a good level to play on (with economic victory disabled).

I've been playing (with v1.09) at patriot level and things seem to go pretty well. the AI expands a lot, but they are still manageable.

In the early game, I destroyed two AI colonials nearby, then a third that was quite far away on the main continent by mid-game. Sending combined forces with infantry (for the added defense bonuses in woods and hills), canons (to reduce city defenses) and dragoons (to destroy enemy units) was essential. In the late game, I went against the Netherlands which had 8 very large and well-defended cities on a separate island. my first force of six soldiers was wiped out on the turn after landing. I sent another force of twelve soldiers (half veterans) just after getting the FF who gives defense bonuses for woods & hills, and they survived. After adding several boatloads of canons and dragoons, I was able to take out their cities one by one. I then sent the entire force against the English who had a similar empire on a different island at the other side of the map, which left me as the sole colonial empire on the map.

Sadly, since I've been playing on a sub-spec laptop, my game always crashes before reaching independence - too many units, too many cities. So I still don't know how the WoI would have gone. Well, I think, as I had two dozen Ships of the Line and well over 50 veterans in good defensive positions, and loads of canons.

The Netherlands and English had been very effective, and had "stolen" some dozen high-level FFs that I would have liked to have, but that's the game, eh? Making choices and competing with the AI.

If in newer versions (v1.10+) of the mod the AI is even more effective at higher difficulty levels, that would be good. It shouldn't be easy to win at higher difficulty levels. That's the whole point of scaling difficulty levels.

Great work, Dale.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

Is there anyway to remove the base camp thing?

Do you mean just remove the start building? Yes you can do that (but dont forget to change that the next building does not need it).

i've been toying with the idea of increasing the number of starting units. it should add a whole new dimension to the starting tactics and might be bit more realistic (columbus had three ships if i recall correctly..).

anyways, i was thinking about throwing in two-three caravels (or equivalents) at start and wider selection of units: the traditional soldiers and pioneers, but scouts seem tempting along with some master units depending on civ (a firebrand preacher for the english to represent the puritans etc). no more than 6 units though.

maybe 2 ships on large and 3 on huge. i only play huge myself anyway.

***

oh and independent of the previous idea i've currently played a game where i've given civs slightly different starting units than vanilla:

*french and dutch stayed as they were
*english got a colonist/soldier and preacher/pioneer (for affore mentioned reasons)
*spanish got a veteran/soldier and a veteran/pioneer (bloodhungry reconquista vets)
*portuguese got a colonist/scout and a colonist/pioneer (not a seasoned scout as i was afraid it would overpower them somehow. it actually didn't).

another thing i have noticed, is that ai seems to get a (bunch) galleon(s) real quick. is this a bug somehow? it just seems as if the start out with a gold bonus or something (explorer difficulty).

this is quite ridiculous. ill try and get some screenshots of the AI with three colonies and 4-6 galleons around 30 turns into game.

the earliest AI galleon i have seen is on turn 19 (!) on explorer/marathon/huge.

I did notice (RC version of 1.10) that the AIs seemed to have a plethora of galleons very early. However, I just attributed this to a presumed starting gold bonus. I figure they must start out with some cash and they use it on galleons.

However, I just attributed this to a presumed starting gold bonus.

can this starting gold bonus be confirmed to be the cause? and if, how can this be fixed :P (eg. what xml should i be looking at to tinker with)?

collarbones, IMO extra starting units should be an option to switch on or off on the custom games screen.

I finished a game yesterday and again my king won by economic victory before I could do anything.