Since you plan to finish your work on version 3.7 quite soon
Actually I got held up longer than I expected the last 2 days working on the second Favorite Civic thing, but primarily working on another big trait overhaul. I thought of a lot of new things to do with traits (in addition to some good ideas from
Platyping's new trait mod that really got me started on this), and I'm
much happier with the end result now, but it still took an extra day of work lol. (Don't worry, most of what was there before has been left alone; it was mainly about buffing the weaker traits. I'll be curious to see what you guys think of these changes though hehe.)
Moreover, the horse archer upgrades to Marauder, that has speed 3 as well. Since horse archers don't carry an metal equipment with them, there is no reason why they should be slower than the Marauder. And they should be faster than the chariot. I have seen that you have already enhanced the chariot, which is good. Also, enhance all unique units that replace the horse archer.
Agreed about being faster than the Chariot (and, by extension, the War Dog
). The level 3 speed was
supposed to be a Marauder exclusive for the Medieval Era, after all significant exploration is presumed done so the high speed doesn't make that too easy. And as a special differentiating factor between the Marauder and Knight.
Still, the Horse Archer is also later in the Classical Era now than it used to be (the Horseback tech used to be one column to the left if I remember correctly), and I agree with you about both the history and gameplay aspects of this. (An alternative gameplay solution I actually did consider once a long time ago, is to give Mounted units access to the Raider promotions, but that's not really their role, and it makes them compete with melee, especially Swordsmen, too much.)
So, long story short, I will gladly bump them up to 3 speed! Good idea.
I am cautious about making their withdrawal rate any higher though. 30% is readily boosted to 60% with Flanking 1-3, and to 90% with Tactics added (and for me at least, Mounted units are always my favorite place to put Warlords, so I
do usually wind up with Tactics on some of them; plus I also typically upgrade a lot of high-level War Dogs into Horse Archers, heh).
My latest version of the system reserves base withdrawal values higher than 30% for exceptional situations, which currently includes Valkyrie, Scout Mech, and Kraken (40%); Helicopters and Submarines (50%); and Sandworm and Siege / Artillery units (60%). I'm not convinced HA's are in quite the same league. 30% is standard for high-speed units, matches Cavalry which is the same basic idea, and still beats what most units have.
I did have a lot of these withdrawal values lower in the past, but that was in an ill-conceived attempt to avoid Base + Flanking + Tactics going over the 90% limit except on Subs (b/c if you do go over, it causes any remaining +withdrawal promotions to become unavailable on that unit, potentially blocking access to Flanking 3 with its FS Immune bonus for completing the set). BUT! One of the last remaining things on my now-fairly-short to-do list for 3.7, is to implement an alternate solution to this problem that I've had in mind for a while now. In anticipation of that, I went ahead and redid a lot of my base withdrawal values a month or two ago, which is why they have a lot of 40, 50, and 60%'s now. ... Just saying.
Also, I would point out that one of the unique Horse Archers, the Numidian Cavalry, DOES have 40% withdrawal as one of its boosted stats, by way of starting with Flanking 1. So there's that too, heh.
Gorilla/Orang-utan:
Are you aware that these are peaceful animals, that do not attack humans unless they feel very threatened? So they should not attack, like the Mammoth. They could reward with a little gold when killed.
Interesting. I sort-of knew that, but didn't think of it in any case. I can probably make that change, though the gold reward for killing Mammoths and Rhinos was specifically for their ivory tusks and horns; I'm not sure what the primates would have that'd be of monetary value.
Btw, I forgot to mention the Barbs picked up 2 new unique units a couple weeks ago, in addition to their Wild Axeman: the Shaman (a Stone Spearman) and the Witch Doctor (a Slinger). I imagine you may want to use these on your Africa map as well, so just a heads-up so you can start thinking about where you want to put them.
In case of the rhinoceros, it should be ok that it can attack. There are two subvariants of the rhinoceros: black rhinoceros and white rhinoceros. I know that one of them can become really aggressive even when you are still far away (don't remember which one). But it won't eat you, it will just kill you.
I agree, but I don't think I can allow this from a gameplay standpoint. My initial implementation of the Mammoth a while back allowed
them to attack, and it was very,
very bad. For Prehistoric players they were just as good at shutting down your whole empire as Sandworms are due to their high strength, except that, unlike Sandworms, they were not restricted to Deserts, and they were not world-quantity-limited. It was a disaster, lol. My Rhino unit has slightly different stats from the Mammoth, but the same 5 str, so I really HAVE to make them passive. Sorry. Polar Bears are bad enough as it is.
Lastly, a minor Sevopedia change:
Mention in hill terrain type, that the effect of hill terrain is -1 food, +1 production
I'm pretty sure you mentioned this before, but I could be wrong... I haven't gone back over the forum suggestions yet.