Ah-ha! The first player feedback since I released 0.3! You win a prize!
I've enjoyed what I've seen so far, it's a very cool and original concept. There's a couple of things which seem out of place.
1. There's no naval tech path. Including a lighthouse might make coastal cities grow too large, but enabling clams, whales and increasing the commonality of fish ought to considered. Harbours could be required for health bonuses from these foodstuffs. As lousy as a movie it was, you ought to track down and watch Waterworld for some ideas here.
Good suggestion. I had in mind a "part 2" of the game, where part 1 was to put your initial continent under one rule, and then part 2 would be to go overseas and see what happened in the rest of the world. So I was postponing any long-distance naval options for that. But, a lighthouse and some type of motorboat unit would be good additions. I will put it on the list.
2. I find it hard to believe that the survivors of a nuclear holocaust wouldn't be trying to use horses in some manner. I'd be inclined to include a few mounted units. To maintain play balance, these units could be swifter than foot units, cheaper than wheeled units, but suffer -25% penalties when attacking or defending against wheeled units.
Good point. I am not sure if you looked closely at the cow resource in the game -- zoom way in. A horse with a similar problem may be hard to ride
But this would definitely add diversity to the units. I will put it on the list.
3. The game feels like you don't have enough time, especially if you want to go towards a Cultural Victory. Give more 100 more turns please.
That is an easy change to make. But, are you able to make progress towards a cultural victory? If the barbarians are not beating you up, and the other AI players are not driving over you with tanks, then perhaps I should make them more aggressive.
4. Thunderdome ought to be a Wonder. Arena ought to be the equivalent of a colloseum. Thunderdome can povide an arena in every city.
Some earlier ideas by jefmart1 had a whole progression called "blood sports", which I may come back to. I definitely had in mind a national wonder or world wonder for thunderdome. In fact, one thing I wanted to experiment with was a "Compete" action button for a thunderdome. You could bring any unit there, compete, and either take damage (if you lost) or get XP (if you won). You'd need four smaller thunderbowls to construct the thunderdome wonder.
5. Aside from diplomatic bonuses / penalties, Values don't have any effect on the game. You might want to take a leaf out of the space mod that came with BtS and give each value a "temple" Some kind of building that has a definite benefit, but acts as a temple in terms of money towards to the "holy city" of that value.
Yes, Final Frontier was where I got the idea for visions. I wanted to have each vision have an effect like a civic, but it turns out religions don't have xml tags to have any real effects. I thought about making the vision choices into the government civic. But then its diplomatic effect is much smaller and its effect would be the same as the other columns of the civics chart. I want it to be more important.
I had not noticed that Final Frontier gave religion-specific buildings. I will go double-check on that; maybe this type of religion-specific building is the right way to make the visions have a stronger effect on the game. Thanks for the suggestion.
In addition to your comments so far, what did you think about the units? Are there certain units which you did not find yourself building?
Also, if you could write a couple of paragraphs of an "after action report", just to tell me what sorts of things you did during the game, that would help. Nothing fancy, just more details, you could PM it instead if you want.
but when it works its a quick (and for me the only) solution
it even has barbed wire!
