Play Report:
Played as England, Prince, standard continents, standard speed.
Awesome
. I'm going to take this one piece at a time.
*Resource mod treated me well. I restarted once and found that both times the resource distribution was fair and still had alot of "luck of the draw" element to it, much like real life.
Great. There's still a lack of stone appearing, but that can be fixed.
*Found I was researching techs at an alarming rate. Of course then I realized the AI was researching them faster than me. Became quite a race. What bothered me was that certain advanced technologies and eras were being reached far too early, across the board. I know this has been addressed with the gradual research mod. I feel however that the price of all techs should be uniformly increased, or the science provided by all buildings and wonders should be minimized. Or both. I found I was through an era before my units could do me any good. Personal design philosophy: If you do not have time to build up the eras units before technology has surpassed them... and if when you look at your build menu there are two dozen buildings to choose from because your production can't keep up with advancements... tech is increasing too quickly. What's the point of having the tech if you don't get a chance to use it?
I know how you feel, but unfortunately it seems to be the only way to propel players to the later eras is to speed up the tech pace considerably. From the update post in D's thread to the one posted here, tech sped up by about 33%. The slightly conforting fact is that the AI usually values techs similar to the player thanks to the flavors, so they won't just zoom through the eras.
I think the most effective way to go about this will be to stretch the game from 500 turns to 800-900. This will provide a little over 100 turns per era. The biggest problem here is that the AI has to be good enough to survive that long. I feel that it makes good decisions on the techs and buildings once wonders are put in check, but the lack of workers improving the land and complete inability to stage wars means they will be really easy to knock out, providing the player a huge advantage. I think once the DLL gets out some of the more experienced modders will put together a truely challenging AI, but until then...
*AI very fond of building wonders. I saw no favoritism towards vanilla wonders over modded wonders. Do not know what their building habits were but I have a feeling the monopoly system might confuse things a bit.
That was me.
I overcompensated for the flavors on the wonders so they spam them whenever. I will lower them significantly, but it will be hard to find the balance where they still build them. In the game's mind, standard buildings have an average of 65 Flavor "points", spread throughout different categories. The wonders have an average of 115. Obviously, some will be better than others, but I can see how the extremes take over.
Also, while looking through FireTuner, I saw that the AI greatly favors units over buildings. I think this is because I introduced several -Gold flavors on the buildings with maintenance. I'll reduce these as well to bring the buildings into better standing.
AI Japan massed troops of advanced and varied types near my border and attacked systematically. I do not feel he made smart decisions, choosing poor terrain and making poor attack decisions. He still beat me for a while and took one of my cities before I pushed him back. I don't know how AI works but that type of thing is a miracle to me.
Haha, yeah the Tactical AI is a doozy.
I, however, did not change anything here, so what you were experiencing was essentially vanilla AI.
*Happiness hard to come by, but balanced and challenging. Very positive experience here. The building system makes much more sense than vanilla. I was thinking trade routes should provide happiness as well as gold. That makes sense to me. Also, perhaps a little bit softer penalty for annexation and puppetizing. Razing should be very frowned upon.
Glad you liked it. I often annex the cities that I conquer when happiness (or gold to buy a courthouse) permits, because this is truly a game that favors large empires. Trade routes do provide gold, but I don't think there is any way to have happiness come through a connection. If anyone else can verify this, please let us know. As for razing, I there is a strong diplomacy hit from the Civ you took the city from, and I'm pretty sure that the global scene disapproves as well.
Overall a very very positive experience. My biggest plus was the challenge to control happiness and the war I fought with Japan. Ruthless. My biggest drawback, I was fighting that war in 300BC with crossbowmen and later with muskets.
Glad you liked it! When did your game end (turns and date if possible)?
Questions:
Do you plan to introduce a new system for dealing with city states? There is so much potential here and I feel it is a very glossed over portion of the game. I'm willing to share ideas.
I was not planning on it, but I can see the appeal for it. I had been playing with them off for a long time, but now I'm warming up to them again. I really like the concept of City-State Diplomacy mod by Gazebo, but I would like even more depth, if possible. When the DLL hits we will be able to add new quest and other designs to the system, so yeah, there can definitely be new "stuff" to deal with CS.
Do you plan to work on the naval system at all? Very glossed over in EVERY iteration of civilization and in almost every mod I've ever played. It could be a very challenging and interesting portion of the game with just a little work.
I will not personally, but I expect some of the other modders will once access to the DLL is granted. There are many people who dislike the Naval AI, and while it has gotten better from patch to patch, it is still severly lacking. It will have to be brought up to speed when water cities and the like are put in.
Do you have any plans for AI diplomacy tweaking?
Maybe later down the road, but it's not too much of a priority. I am going to mess with AI flavors though, at least to the point where they value expansion and production more. And if only I could get them to spend their money...
Do you have any plans (and this is a big one) for reworking the monopoly system? I see it's worth and I really hope it comes out straightforward yet complex and challenging. Willing to share ideas here too.
Yes indeed. If nothing else, I want to spread out the bonuses, so that some resources have science yields associated with them (poppy, uranium), some have culture (silk, incense, marble (?)), etc. I have put a little bit of thought to this, up to and including deleting some redundant resources, but I'm open to any ideas you or anyone else has about how this system can work.
Thanks for a great mod man. I'll continue to post.
Please do. It's always nice to hear that your work is appreciated.
Votes noted. My votes go to 1 and 4, mainly because I think the overall picture itself is better on 4 than it is 3.
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Since I have been getting this a lot, let me address the thread itself. I want this thread moved over to the Project Developement section soon, so that players can post in the threads that directly deal with their experience (Game Reports, Bug Reports, Buildings, etc). However, I do not want to ruch this move for one reason: player traffic. As it is now, the Modpacks section of the forum gets more people coming through than the Projects. In my experience, the only people who consistenly go to the Projects (lol) are the ones that are already following a mod. Because this is a new thread, I want people who browse through the Modpacks section to notice it, read about it, and then decide whether or not they want to be a part of it. So rest assured, we will get a position in the Project Developement section, but I want to wait a week or two for any last minute "converts."
**EDIT**
Added a Known Issues section to the OP. If you spot a problem that is not listed there, post and I will see to fixing it