First of all: Yay, the forum is back up! Hopefully less troubles for it in the future.
Second, I want to mention that I found this mod on ModDB, where it's near the top of the list for Civ4 mods, or was on the day I looked. Guess not too many modders post there, but - as we all now know - CivFanatics is not invincible, so having mods listed on other sites is a good idea. Never would have seen it, otherwise...And I'm very glad I did. This modmod is AWESOME!!!! So glad to see it being worked on actively.
I cannot praise you enough for doing this.
Third: I'm testing out the Richesse, and I wholeheartedly endorse LeBashar's comments on the nanotech. It's way too underpowered. Some considerations: it's later game than, say, Fremen bonuses or Atreides, because of the resource costs, plus many of the relevant promotable units themselves are generally later technology - so that's a small negative; it requires a landing stage that I could be using to import mentat juice or Sligs, it requires resources I may or may not have access to on TOP of the nanotech... etcetera. Long story short, for a house 'advantage', nanotech has many structural challenges for a player to overcome. Which means its benefits should be strong to compensate - and, well, they are not. On the whole, they are *less* useful than other house-specific or offworld import-specific promotions.
For all the opportunity costs associated with getting nanotech, I expect better unit promotions - or I won't even bother importing it.
That said, house balancing plays a role: the Richesse have a really solid advantage with the 'no building sickness' and sharing city production. Then again, they have a hidden disadvantage - no slavery! No sacking your population for early production bonuses... that really should be in the civilization's description in the start menu and in the 'Pedia. It caught me by surprise, but it makes sense.
I don't agree with LeBashar that the mirrors are overpowered; they just get hammers a few techs earlier... they don't get more of them. They do get one more gold though, which is nice. I found myself fairly evenly distributing cottages and mirrors, based on terrain and my civ's economic needs, so well done there.
I would even go so far as to say industrial towns are underpowered, since by the point in the game where you have enough time put into them to be towns, you often would rather have the gold income (I sit right on top of the Personal Property civic as soon as I get it...) My recommendation: add that hammer earlier.
I highly recommend making towns and villages trade a coin for a hammer.
Strenuously recommend it.
Jumping-up-and-down and waving my hands shouting like a loon, over here, is me recommending you make those villages hammer-wielders just like their townie descendents are.
Just tell me if I'm not being expressive enough on this opinion. I can do more.
For nanotech, like LeBashar I recommend:
Crystal: Needs help. I suggest it bumps up its bennies with either: adds +1 move; or halves move costs; plus its current benefits. More move when victoriously attacking is nice in theory, but in practice it rarely comes into usefulness. It needs a lot more to be value-added; especially since nanotech has such high opportunity cost.
Diamond: Heal while moving? Almost good enough, for what it is. Maybe add a small bump, a +5% heal rate, as a counterweight to the nanotech opportunity costs. If you did, I'd prioritize this promotion, maybe make it the 2nd or 3rd promotion for fighter/scout units; Otherwise, as it is right now I'd probably put this promotion late on my list of upgrades - or 4th or 5th - if at all. It's much more useful for my scouts, than for my Stacks Of Doom- those I can usually sit down when I need them to heal, it's better they be able to take on city defenders in the first place, which means they're getting other strength boosters or heal bonuses. Do my doomstacks want diamond shinies? Nope, they don't. Which is a shame. I want my expensive nanotech upgrades to be more attractive than that; they should be the ones doomstacks go for *first*, not *last*.
Nitrate: Its current bonus is an embarrassment. Give it the Uranium bonuses instead. Simple.
Stravidium: Weird suggestion. Give it a reduction in attack strength of 10 or 20% (maybe because that stravidium stuff is heavy! Who knows!) with a massive general-purpose defense increase of +50 or so - or split it, 15% homeguard (within borders) defense, 5% city defense, and a 30% general-purpose defense (because it's really heavy!!)... it's the polar opposite of a Zeal promotion. It makes all those suspensors/thopters/etc. far more useful as scouts (who risk surprise ambush, and play defense a lot), and allows this house's mechs to be relevant in city defense, but you wouldn't want to use those same units to attack anything unless you absolutely had to.
Uranium: Target weakest, brilliant suggestion from LeBashar. To make it really tasty, you could add that small collateral damage to it; so with a Uranium promotion, the attacker goes after the softest target AND hurts all those hard targets along the way. I'd say that's fairly in keeping with the general idea of nukes anyway, you know? Moreso than a +1 strength. And it's totally appropriate for an endgame promotion - I would actually work hard to get access to it. I call it the Terrorist nanotech.
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Long post short, it's your baby so you do what you want with it. I'm already enjoying your modmod enough to be tangled in the minutiae, which is all the endorsement it needs. My 'needs fixed' list is less of a 'need' thing and more of a 'nerd' thing, in all probability. So, you do you. Fix what you think needs it.
But, if you do decide to keep working on it... ya know, just in case.. then House Richesse, in my humble yet oddly overexpressive opinion, needs some love.
You seem stressed out in the last few of your posts. I really hope you don't let events get you down. Frankly, every project in all of human history had something or other go wrong, unexpectedly, or unpleasantly, and usually it was several somethings all in a bunch. It's those folks who keep going anyway that make real contributions to the world. So don't let it get to you, mate.