The mod is in hibernation but that doesn't mean we can't dream about the things we would like to see in the future.

So please list down the things you would like to see.

I personally would like to see Zhuge Liang and other Strategists in the game since they were so important in both the history and the novel.

I'm not sure how strategies can be implemented. Any ideas?

No clue. I would like to see a building that can convert rice resources into gold (not sure this building already exists)

Strategists would have to be implemented in a differnt way, and hopefully the team will eventually decide to make a system for that.

I would like to see some more economic buildings, and maybe a few more UU's for each nation. They don't have to have nifty tricks of thier own, just something to make them different.

What I really want to see however are leader heroes for most of the initial leaders. The leader death/succession is to good to waste!

Unlimited number of national wonders per city. I don't see why it should be artificially limited. I can change it myself though, so if you feel it is right, don't do anything.

Improved farm yield. I'd love to see farms get another +1 food from some tech. But if it is a balance issue, can you at least tell me which tech would be thematically most appropriate to increase farm yield?

I would not mind more happiness resources but I can live with the current number.

Fix damage to city fortifications for units led by strong bow (ranged attack) general. The unit I tested is Liannu Catapult, no promotions modifying damage, the general is Yue Jin. I have seen them do 8% damage to cities with 100% defense bonus and unmistakeably walls built. And 2% when bombarding a city with only 20% defense from culture. Aren't walls supposed to reduce fortification damage?

how about implementing the idea of food supply in the game.Any unit in neutral or enemy lands shall get their life minus every turn. So make a unit name camp that have an AOE effect any units withing this AOE will not get their life minus and also get some bouns the camp should also act like a fortress albeit a moving one and that its def bonus is lesser than a fort.Also this unit will automatically be destroyed in lets say 20 turns unless he is supply by another new unit name food supply.This idea i believe will make the game more fun as its more realistic in warfare

Well, the problem with food supply is that the AI has really no clue how to work with it... even if it did, the human would have such a large strategic advantage that the AI would be doomed from the start.

What I would like to see in the game is a promo or a unit ability that immobilizes an enemy unit or stack, call it confusion or something, Fall from Heaven has a pretty good system for temporarily immoblized units that maybe you could take a look at. It would add a nice element of randomness, and while not gamebreaking, could force players to stand and fight instead of retreat if confronted by an unexpected stack.

That and a fire attack ability that has a set % chance of going off in a battle, it could create a temporary terrain improvement (flames) that do damage to enemy units entering the tile, with initial damage also done in python. That too would add a slight random element, you would get an initially devestating attack, but might be hampered if say the flames went off on a narrow pass. Alternatively, you could implement a system much like Fall from Heavens magic system where you click a button to attempt a strategy ( in their case, it's magic). The AI understands that it's to 'hit' the button whenever possible, so it would fit well if it was an ability given to a few select units (or legions). The FfH team is quite friendly when it comes to borrowing functions from their mod, so if it interests you, you might want to look into that.

I really like your idea about the flames and the use of tactics. Maybe something for the advisors in the future?

how about implementing the idea of food supply in the game.Any unit in neutral or enemy lands shall get their life minus every turn. So make a unit name camp that have an AOE effect any units withing this AOE will not get their life minus and also get some bouns the camp should also act like a fortress albeit a moving one and that its def bonus is lesser than a fort.Also this unit will automatically be destroyed in lets say 20 turns unless he is supply by another new unit name food supply.This idea i believe will make the game more fun as its more realistic in warfare

Well, the problem with food supply is that the AI has really no clue how to work with it... even if it did, the human would have such a large strategic advantage that the AI would be doomed from the start.

Food is The problem in that era, so I understand it's really cool if we could put it into the game. As Kenjister pointed out, we have to teach AI how to use whatever mechanic we come up with. So it's all up to whether we could invent a mechanic that's both fun and AI friendly.

What I would like to see in the game is a promo or a unit ability that immobilizes an enemy unit or stack, call it confusion or something, Fall from Heaven has a pretty good system for temporarily immoblized units that maybe you could take a look at. It would add a nice element of randomness, and while not gamebreaking, could force players to stand and fight instead of retreat if confronted by an unexpected stack.

That and a fire attack ability that has a set % chance of going off in a battle, it could create a temporary terrain improvement (flames) that do damage to enemy units entering the tile, with initial damage also done in python. That too would add a slight random element, you would get an initially devestating attack, but might be hampered if say the flames went off on a narrow pass. Alternatively, you could implement a system much like Fall from Heavens magic system where you click a button to attempt a strategy ( in their case, it's magic). The AI understands that it's to 'hit' the button whenever possible, so it would fit well if it was an ability given to a few select units (or legions). The FfH team is quite friendly when it comes to borrowing functions from their mod, so if it interests you, you might want to look into that.

These ideas are both good, I will consider them within the big picture of advisors. I haven't played FfH. In FfH, when a unit cast a spell, is there any particular animation?

Thanks, after I was read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms books, I was thinking about how awesome the strategies used in battle were and how those could possibly be implemented in the CIV engine. Of course it might of also been inspired by a need to see Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu doing something in the mod besides languishing in unused leader spots. I'm really looking forward to see what you guys have in store for the Advisors phase!

Yeah, in FfH, they have animations tied to the spell. I'd definitely recommend the mod to play, or if fantasy isn't really your thing, just to look at because it's loaded with new functions that could be very useful in a mod.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the animations don't involve any actual unit movement or anything, usually some other effect seperate from the unit.

Nice to see some new promotions. But I still don't like the unstructured victories (it's either domination or cultural). How about some simple UHVs? It shouldn't be too hard to code--what's needed is just another Victory.py file.

Forts could be make more usefull as in like forts in civ3 any enenmies beside them shall be bombarded provided there arfe archers or catapults in them

Nice to see some new promotions. But I still don't like the unstructured victories (it's either domination or cultural). How about some simple UHVs? It shouldn't be too hard to code--what's needed is just another Victory.py file.

I remembered you gave me some UHV ideas before. Can you give me some more? Because I'm unsure how to implement them.:)

Forts could be make more usefull as in like forts in civ3 any enenmies beside them shall be bombarded provided there arfe archers or catapults in them

I will keep that idea in mind, thanks.

So RFC's UHVs are based on the following basic concepts, all having to do with accounting for some part of the game fulfilling certain criteria that can be easily verified by game mechanics. The tough part is to tell the game how to check them without slowing the game to a crawl.

1. The max: achieving max units (whatever type), resources, gold, culture, population or land by or in year x. Controlling x number of shrines/cities/% of land also counts.
2. The quickest: discovering techs, building wonders, adopting a certain civic, etc
3. Getting vassals or DPs in a certain year
4. Never having done something also counts (e.g. never lost a city to barbs or any other civ until certain year)
5. Doing any of the above but at a fixed number (e.g. building x number of buildings by year x, getting y gold in year z, etc) This may be challenging based on the civ played (e.g. it might be easy for Cao Cao to get 10 cities in 210, but difficult for Shan Yue) Spreading Revivalism to 50% of population would be tough to do, but not so for Unification.
6. Making sure the AI doesn't do something

A lot of the above can be achieved indirectly, e.g. as Inca to have no other civs other than Portuguese in Brazil, it must found cities all over or be ready to military take them from the AI. If Sun Ce has a goal of limiting Cao Cao's expansion south of Shou Chun, he must war on the necessary warlords (maybe even Liu Bei).

So as you can see, the ideas can be limitless. I suggest reading RFC's Victory.py file for ideas on coding (obviously I'm no programmer). I'm also not very up to date on the book, so tiny civs like Shan Yue I might have a hard time coming up with victory conditions.

Most of the first 2 criteria in RFC are historic (e.g. Rome has a lot of infrastructure at the height of the empire and the 2nd criteria requires at least the Western Empire to be built). The 3rd criteria is often a challenge against what has happened in history (for Rome it's to have never lost a city to barbarians until 1000 AD). Something like this for HOTK would be for Liu Zhang to vassalize Liu Bei, or for Cao Cao to conquer x number of Sun Ce's cities around the time of the Battle of Red Cliffs. Since there are so many minor civs in ROTK, many of their criteria would have to be ahistoric--e.g. for Gongsun Zan to survive beyond a certain year.

And don't forget the synergy between unique powers/buildings/units and UHVs--for example, Portugal's UP helps it to reveal more of the map even though they spawn later than the Dutch, who have the same UHV at a different year. Something like Ma Teng to have the largest number of horsemen, Sun Ce having the largest navy in the world would be fitting.

I too am a fan of RFC, and UHV's sound like they could cut down especially on the late game mop-up for the bigger civs, and provide an alternative method of victory for the smaller ones. The only real hard parts would be to ensure they're hard enough so the AI doens't win by survival (since only Liu Yao tends to die off in any short time), and to make sure they're fun.

I think it would be quite challenging though to come up with UHV's since the game isn't as structured as RFC.
Still, they're fun to brainstorm, especially since it usually brings to light some either really cool challenges or an awesome synergy that a civ has with a certain playstyle.
I was thinking though for Cao Cao, we could have a UHV that requires rapid expansion to various cities he controled by certain dates, though it could be problematic since time flies so quickly in the game.


EDIT: A new item for the Wishlist! A Yellow Turban Rebellion scenario!

I'm new to Civ IV so i don't know yet how many options it has. But perhaps certain events would be interesting such as the Yellow Turban Rebellion arising from a certain year in an early scenario?
Basically certain events from the books that suddenly take place at a given date.

can the ingame fort graphics be change to that of others? i would very much like the fort graphics to be similar to that of the game name "legend of cao cao" forts, hope stmartin u understand what i m talking about.And there are also some nice music from tt game too.Can also take into account of that game terrain graphics too

can the ingame fort graphics be change to that of others? i would very much like the fort graphics to be similar to that of the game name "legend of cao cao" forts, hope stmartin u understand what i m talking about.And there are also some nice music from tt game too.Can also take into account of that game terrain graphics too

I'll take the music suggestion, and leave the rest to Bakuel.:)

how about having "ZHOU" region meaning provincial territory. The place where gong sun zhan is You zhou,yuan shao reigon is Ji zhou so on and so forth. Only by controling all the cities in that "zhou" will u be able to built that region unique units as in Ji zhou makes jizhou crossbowman while controlling all the cities of youzhou will allow u to make white horse units but all these units can only be made in those specified regions only.Also having control of all the cities in that region have a bonus to all those cities in it.The bonus could be like reduce maintainence or all units built have more exp

That do sound like a good idea, and relatively easy to implement too, we could make an event, trigger it when a player take control of all cities of one Zhou. The key thing is, I don't want it to be purely aesthetic, but to have some game play value as well. We need to come up with something that's really attractive to players, so they are really motivated to conquer all the cities. Also, the bonus should not be overpowered.

The Zhou concept, that is, political provinces, will be in the game eventually, I was thinking putting it in the game when 'political heroes' are in the game too, so that we can have a little bureaucracy thing. I was thinking about assigning cities to heroes.

Whatever happened to the Ambush and Raiding promotions that were in earlier, but didn't have an effect? It would be nice to see those implemented in some way or another.

I removed them for the time being, the concepts are good, but hard to do with promotions. We will consider making them into unit actions like pillaging.

Cna the emperor civic also be gain rather den juz use yaun shu. i have a minor suggestion
,that is u can gain the emperor trait provided you gain enough "zhou" which you are going to implement soon

I also support a change for the emperr civic. Perhaps you can make the Temple of Abdication buildable by either running Rebellion or by having a certain number of cities? That way, you can become emperor in the late game without having to switch your civics.

Finally, could you please buff Emperor? Currently, it's near worthless due to the higher unit support costs, and the benefits from the other gov't civics far outweigh the city maintenece boosts.

I agree that Emperor Civic and lots of other old stuff in the Mod needs some work. However, that's not likely to happen in the next release because of the already huge amount of new content in it. After that, we will be able to take some time and play-test to do some revision work.

Great!
I have a request for the AI heroes though. Would it be possible to give them even more bonus xp from battles? Since you already have some in place (right?) it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to add, and it would really help the AI alot with their horrible promotion choices.

That and a fire attack ability that has a set % chance of going off in a battle, it could create a temporary terrain improvement (flames) that do damage to enemy units entering the tile, with initial damage also done in python. That too would add a slight random element, you would get an initially devestating attack, but might be hampered if say the flames went off on a narrow pass.

That's a good point. Fire played a major roll in several battles, most famous of which is "RedWall" (or as we originally call it, "Fire burning connecting boats"). Another common "terrain" based attack is rolling rocks down a hill. Sun Jian, the patriarch of Wu, got his head cruched by a rolling boulder (granted he got shot by a few arrows first).

Maybe have a promotion that gives a worker-like ability for a tile improvement, "fire"? So once the "improvement" is done, the fire rages for X number of turns, causing damage to ANY troop that enter (like the existing swamp/jungle), OR someone has to use a worker to "extinguish" the fire. So if XuHuang sees GuanYu coming down the pass, he could set a tile on fire, and retreat. GuanYu has to either charge through the fire and suffer the damages, or send a worker into the fire to put it out first, giving XuHuang a chance to escape. And here's a good one: Huang Gai can set a WATER tile on fire! Good luck putting that out! (work boat?)

Great!
I have a request for the AI heroes though. Would it be possible to give them even more bonus xp from battles? Since you already have some in place (right?) it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to add,and it would really help the AI alot with their horrible promotion choices.

I have wrote the hero promotion AI for the next release, I think they are pretty competent and flexible now. Also, I have added a little new mechanic in the next release: any hero have a chance to gain free XP every turn. The chance is determined by whether or not the hero is above the average XP of all heroes. (human and AI are the same here)

How many experience your heroes usually get? The AI Lu Bu heroes usually got 70 XP around 100 turns, sometimes Zhang Ren got 100+ XP around 100 turns. Using that mechanic mentioned above, all heroes will have at least 30+ XP around that time. I would like to know if this mechanic sounds fine or not.

That's a good point. Fire played a major roll in several battles, most famous of which is "RedWall" (or as we originally call it, "Fire burning connecting boats"). Another common "terrain" based attack is rolling rocks down a hill. Sun Jian, the patriarch of Wu, got his head cruched by a rolling boulder (granted he got shot by a few arrows first).

Maybe have a promotion that gives a worker-like ability for a tile improvement, "fire"? So once the "improvement" is done, the fire rages for X number of turns, causing damage to ANY troop that enter (like the existing swamp/jungle), OR someone has to use a worker to "extinguish" the fire. So if XuHuang sees GuanYu coming down the pass, he could set a tile on fire, and retreat. GuanYu has to either charge through the fire and suffer the damages, or send a worker into the fire to put it out first, giving XuHuang a chance to escape. And here's a good one: Huang Gai can set a WATER tile on fire! Good luck putting that out! (work boat?)

That's some good point. I'll take a note on that. In the next release, there will be several 'active abilities', different from current 'passive promotions', for legions. I won't say too much about them now, since we have finished only 1 such ability. However, I'm proud of that finished one.:)

That's great about the AI promotion choosing!

As for average experience, I've never really seen any others except Lu Bu break the 100 XP barrier, since Zhang Liao defects and then gets beat up by his former lord, and I really don't know what Gao Shun is doing...
I wish the battles you're seeing in Han Zhong were happening in my game; usually Zhang Ren and Zhang Wei lead the charge but promptly loose due to the massive advantage the defenders get in that region. Usually Zhang Ren dies in my games due to his low vitality.
The passive XP gain sounds like a great idea though! I can't wait to see it in action, along with that currently unknown unit ability/action!

Forts could and should be made more useful. Firstly, make them to minus 1 food plus 1 production n plus 2 coins on the plot they are built.Secondly, they give a zone of control.Thirdly, any factions unit on that particular fort gives them that tiles territory.Fourthly, workers can be change into militia while they are in the forts these militias cannot leave their faction cultural borders though, they are design for def once converted they cannot turn back to workers,suggest them to have a strg of 2 while they get stronger as the games goes on.Fifthly, a building should be implemented that boast espoinage points with regards to the numbers of forts within that city cultural borders, forts expose invisible units.And lastly tiles of improvements that is right next to a fort cant be pillage and barbarians should be programme to attack wherever possible units in the forts first.And certainly thanks and give a big hug to the team that make this mod u all have been excellent, now back to 2.4 for me wuhahahaha

Forts could and should be made more useful. Firstly, make them to minus 1 food plus 1 production n plus 2 coins on the plot they are built.Secondly, they give a zone of control.Thirdly, any factions unit on that particular fort gives them that tiles territory.Fourthly, workers can be change into militia while they are in the forts these militias cannot leave their faction cultural borders though, they are design for def once converted they cannot turn back to workers,suggest them to have a strg of 2 while they get stronger as the games goes on.Fifthly, a building should be implemented that boast espoinage points with regards to the numbers of forts within that city cultural borders, forts expose invisible units.And lastly tiles of improvements that is right next to a fort cant be pillage and barbarians should be programme to attack wherever possible units in the forts first.And certainly thanks and give a big hug to the team that make this mod u all have been excellent, now back to 2.4 for me wuhahahaha

There are some gems in these ideas, but frankly speaking, except for the expose invisible unit function, none strike me as ingenious and a must. I would decline making huge changes to fort for now. "We have enough on our hand".

I have played a couple of games and I am having a lot of fun. There is one part of the legion system which I find hard to use. Perhaps the problem is that I do not read Chinese. Each hero has ratings for melee, mounted, archer, siege and naval. I guess the scale is F,D,C,B,A,S, where F cannot "legionize" any units, D can legionize 1, and so on up to S controlling up to 5.

I find it very hard to see what the levels of a particular hero are. In fact most of the time I find it impossible to figure out. If the hero is not part of a legion, the letters are displayed next to Chinese characters. I cannot see enough difference between the tiny characters to tell which is melee, which is mounted, etc. So I can see a unit has "D (character) B (character)", but I cannot tell what rating it goes to. For non-Chinese players, perhaps a horse icon or an arrow icon would be easier to understand, or at least to tell apart. And when the hero is part of a legion, I do not think there is any way to see the ratings at all.

I have resorted to keeping a piece of paper next to my keyboard where I write down each hero's current and potential rating. Then I update it when the hero levels up. But when the hero loses a combat, I think it loses one random level. Since I cannot see what the levels are, it is hard to keep track of which level has been lost.

Am I missing something in the interface? It would be great if there was an easy way to see this without having to try to track it on paper.

Well, I don't read Chinese, but a little tip I noticed helps for non-asian people when it comes to characters is to look at them as pictures instead of thinking of them as letters. I just remeber that the light squiggly line is Archer, slightly slanted and bigger character is Melee, and the big complex one is Cavalry. As for Naval and Seige you don't really need to remeber since only Yue Jin really upgrades the seige path and I almost never use naval legions.
I'm slightly opposed to removing the characters though, since once you lead to recognize them, it adds tremendously to the feel, and IMO that immersive factor far outweights any difficulty in learning them. I hope you get to learn them soon, it's truly a wonderful feel! I also agree with the difficulty of checking hero levels when they're not attached to a legion.


Finally, a hero doesn't lose any combat levels when they're defeated, so you might of mistaken something else for that. Perhaps a different hero?
Oh, and one last thing, there is a hero screen that you use for recruitment, and on the bottom of the screen is an Info button. Clicking on that will give you data on all the heroes in the game, their xp, xp to next level, unitcombatlevels in each class, their potential unitcombat levels, thier core troop promotions, thier legion promotions, and finally, their legion members! I don't know if you've already seen that or not, but it's a very useful sceen. If you don't know how to get to the hero screen, it's the helmet icon where the corporation icon once was. Hope that helps!

@davidlallen

I'm so glad that you like HoTK! As for the difficulty with interface, I'll consider them carefully and make proper changes. Also like Kenjister said, there's an hero advisor screen you can always refer to, it's in the old place where corporation advisor button used to occupy.

Thanks for the suggestions. Here is a screenshot to show my problem. I have just captured a city, and I mouse-over the city to remind myself what is there. I have several heroes and I have just captured several new heroes.

Next to Gao Shun, for example, I can see he is A at something and C at something. Without a magnifying glass, I literally cannot tell what. On the other hand, when I look at the Cheng Pu core troop, I can easily see he has Combat I and City Attack III. These icons are easily distinguishable.

I agree that if I note down all four of the leader names on paper, and then go to the heroes screen you mentioned, I can scroll through the long list and find their stats, then write them down on paper, and come back to the main screen. However, that is a little painful.

Is it possible to use more colors, for example? Naval = blue, melee = red, mounted = green, archer = grey (clouds), siege = yellow (uh .. no reason)? Or perhaps to make icons similar to the combat 1,2,3,4,5 sequence which directly show the level, without needing another letter?

In the same screenshot, you can see my second problem. The heroes Lu Bu, Gao Shun and Zhang Liao are "unlegionized", that is, they are not part of any legion. So their letter ratings show up. However, I also have two heroes who are part of legions; He Qi and Cheng Fu. I can see the ratings of their core troops, but I cannot see their letter ratings. The only way to know their letter ratings is to unlegionize them so they show up as plain heroes, or else again, note down the names and look them up in the hero info screen. This problem is a little harder to solve, because we need to see both the hero ratings and the individual troop promotions. I do not have a good suggestion for this, except obviously to show both the levels and the promotions. But displaying all those icons may be a little long.

What I am trying to do when I look at this screen is to decide, for example, which leaders I should reinforce. I have some troops coming in one or two turns. I can either add them to He Qi's legion, or maybe the new heroes are better than him. There is no convenient way for me to compare multiple leaders with the current information.

Since the hero levels are such a critical part of play, I think it is important to display this information conveniently.

Hey, the color suggestion might actually work! On the other hand, you should be able to identify who has what if you keep playing... You can tell what level level the hero is by the Elite ____ blank promotion pretty easily. I can tell that Cheng Pu has a A in melee for example by the crowding of the stars next on the promotion. Since only a select few officers have an S aptitude, it's how I indentify all my legion troop aptitudes.

The other icons just take practice I suppose, looking at the size of the character is usually the best way for me. Plus it also helps to know the officers historical significance, that usually will tell you whether it's a priority to give them a legion or not. For instance Zhang Liao, the head of the five generals of Wei, should ALWAYS have a legion. His potential strength is just that great.
Cheng Pu, the seasoned veteran of the Sun Family also has good potential, but also lacks in the high end promotions. All of your officers are relatively well known though, except Luo Jun.


On a seperate note: What have you done giving Zhang Liao an upgrade in Archer aptitude? Oh, the horrors! It's probably best to simply specialize down one upgrade path so you can save those promotions for the really cool stuff. ei Assault, Tough and Triumph combo with Zhang Liao.

@davadlallen

I have made 2 modifications to main interface. First is now core troop will display the hero's unit combat levels too. Second is now all unit combat types will show, instead of only the ones that is not zero. They are always in this order: melee, mounted, archer, siege, naval. Those that are zero are denoted with '/' as in civilopedia. I hope this could make things a little bit clearer.

Thanks, I think that will help. In the hover text, can Chinese readers actually distinguish the icons, or are they too small? Even with Kenjister's suggestion to just memorize the shapes, I still can't distinguish them even after putting my face right up to the screen. You have suggested to put 10 characters, basically, the five icons and their five letters. If the five always appear in the same order, some players will rely on memorizing the order. Then it would be shorter to just put the five letters and skip the icons in this screen. I can certainly understand "ABD--" or similar, easily, and the letters are easy to read on the screen.

No, even I had a really hard time distinguishing the image, but yes, a little bit. I think just placing the ABCDS should work fine.

I just noticed in the bug thread that somebody was talking about Defensive Strikes. Since I didn't want to derail that thread, I'll show my support for the mechanic here.

Essentially a defensive strike is a free hit against an enemy that would weaken it before it makes the attack. Each unit that is capable of making a strike would get one per turn (unless it has Blitz) when attacked. Usually units would start with a low chance of defensive strike at the start (ex. 30% chance) but certain promotions would increase both the chance of a strike AND the damage it does. The damage is calculated using a formula that takes into account the relative strength's of the unit, the unit's level and the base damage of the strike. If I remember correctly, defensive strikes hit before combat begins, so it will vastly improve the defending odds if sucessful.

So this defensive strike mechanic allows defenders to weaken attackers before combat. Sounds like a little repetitive with the first strikes mechanic. Have I missed anything apparent?

Dang, I can't believe I forgot to mention the best part! A unit with a Defensive Strike ability can get the strike on any unit that attacks it's tile, regardless if it's defending or not. Basically it allows archery units to support the stack in defence without actually engaging in combat, much like in real life, where they would shoot volleys from behind friendly lines.

In FfH it can also shoot at units just passing it/standing near.

Anyway, I think the max 10xp from barbarians should be higher. At least 25.

In FfH it can also shoot at units just passing it/standing near.

Anyway, I think the max 10xp from barbarians should be higher. At least 25.

Isn't that a FF ability? I also support the higher xp cap against barbarians too though. Perhaps you can even bump it up to about 100, since the civs under constant barb pressure need any type of bonus they can get due to (usually) bad land.

I'd like to see some reward for exploration of map on no-city scenarios. For example, in vanilla Civ we've at least received +1 to naval movement from circumnavigating the globe. What about giving some small but pretty and flavour boni to one, who visits several important sites, or is first to the borders of the map, or something like that?

In FfH it can also shoot at units just passing it/standing near.

Anyway, I think the max 10xp from barbarians should be higher. At least 25.

Good Point.

I'd like to see some reward for exploration of map on no-city scenarios. For example, in vanilla Civ we've at least received +1 to naval movement from circumnavigating the globe. What about giving some small but pretty and flavour boni to one, who visits several important sites, or is first to the borders of the map, or something like that?

The exploration part of the Mod is non-existent right now. We'll do something about it at times.

I'd like to see a scenario with a start earlier than 194 that features Zhang Jiao and He Jin. The HotK scenarios I have are 194, 196, and 200; are there other scenarios floating around somewhere I can download? It seems like a waste to have the Yellow Turban faction implemented if they're only available in custom and normal games. Is it possible to select the HotK map for a custom game?

Actually, a combined Yellow Turban/Dong Zhuo scenario would be welcome, but almost all the factions would be anachronistic (e.g. where would Yan Baihu fit if Sun Jian were up north fighting Dong Zhuo? Is he allowed to expand unchecked in the south). That's where a "rise and fall" mechanism would be greatly useful.

I think I'd like a Fractal-styled mapscript that just adds a lot of rivers. Part of what makes me like this mod is that the scenario maps have a much different improvement flavor with the high river density.

I find major problems with FfH style defensive strikes. Firstly, any single unit can only do one defensive strike per turn, unless they have blitz, which gives them unlimited defensive strikes. Secondly, it is easy to get 100% chance of a defensive strike with correct promotions. Thirdly, again with correct promotions defensive strikes do ridiculous amounts of damage. I do not agree that a single unit cutting every attacker's strength by 40% is fun.

I guess defensive strikes are supposed to simulate combined arms tactics but they do a very bad job at it.

Well, the problems that you listed can simply be remedied by the lowering the damage and power of the promotions that boost defensive strikes. You also have to remember that only cavalry can gain blitz in this mod, meaning defensive strikes would be very limited. Finally, the defensive strike system is based on the comparative strength and level difference between the defender and the attacker. In FfH, the defender is often a heroic superpromoted Acher/Crossbow/Champion, but in HoTK the defenders are often the weakest units of all (strongest being the attack legions).

If done correctly, I think defensive strikes could work very well in this mod.

I find some defensive promotions very unreal. Viz. that Yan Baihu general coupled with a levy crossbow with warrior spirit, iron wall, defense 2 and bravery, plus 6-9 first strikes who made my advanced Danyang army with equal strength attack just have a 1-2% chance of winning.

With the 9 inner walls event, I used to just take the espionage with the Great Wall or 3+ attitude from all leaders. Now I usually take shock with all swordsmen because the defensive halberdiers are so strong behind walls.