Some of the new health resources seem rather tacked on, and don't contribute much.
The idea of the new resources in ExtraModMod is not to offer new options, but to give more diversity in one way or another. I'll ellaborate later in this post.
- Bisons are already represented by cows.
Bisons appear in tundras, while the rest of Animal Husbandry resources do not. In fact, tundras are mostly without health resources besides this one. Bisons were added to partially offset the disadvantage of starting in a cold area of the map. I'm open to a better option for a resource that fits this role, but I chose bisons because the Doviello seem to be able to find them in the tundra to train their Bison Riders.
- Penguins? Providing commerce? Really? I adore penguins personally, but this is really weird.
Penguins as a resource are based in the original Fall from Heaven event. In FFH2, the event creates an special improvement that provides happiness, and uses the following text:
Fall from Heaven 2 said:
Penguins have settled on a cold coastal part of your empire. Their antics entertain your people.
From these things, it makes sense to me to consider that the people of Erebus would use them as circus animals or pets. That's why they grant commerce, and why they grant additional happiness with Carnivals.
- Mushrooms being mined doesn't make sense. Plantations would be better. Also, they shouldn't appear both on map at start and by event.
Underground mushrooms are a common fantasy trope, and that's what I'm trying to represent with requiring mining to extract them. Why shouldn't they appear both on map start and by event? Mushrooms are far more rare than other resources by design, to take into account this. The same applies to Penguins (which are even more rare).
You didn't specifically mention other resources, but I'll explain my reasoning behind them in order to answer your conclusions.
ExtraModMod said:
Amber is a happiness resource that requires a mine.
Amber exists because I knew that I needed to offset the creation of health resources that appear in certain parts of the map by also providing some happiness resources.
ExtraModMod said:
Salt is a health resource that requires a quarry.
The same reasoning I used for Bisons applies to Salt. Salt only appears in deserts, which are usually devoid of all other health resources.
ExtraModMod said:
Shrimps are a new maritime health resource.
Shrimps appear at low latitudes, while Crab appears at higher latitudes.
ExtraModMod said:
Stone is extracted from quarries, and it increases the building speed of certain buildings.
Stone is meant to be a minor strategical resource. Many useful buildings and civilization specific buildings that are desirable to have in most if not all cities can be produced faster if Stone is available.
Overall it disrupts the balance, offering too many health resources and making it much easier to keep your cities healthy, making those health buildings unneeded.
All of these resources (except Amber, Mushrooms and Stone) share something in common; they are specific to certain parts of the map. It is unlikely that you will get them all at once, and in most cases you will only have one of them. This means two things: their impact is not as huge as you may believe on first look, and they encourage trade between different civilizations. This was one of my goals with the new resources, as without them you either have certain resources (if you happen to be in a temperate part of the world) or you don't.
Having said that, I would also like to add that having more health resources does not make health buildings unneeded; they allow to get bigger cities along with health buildings. I believe that on average you should have only one more health by city than in normal FFH2, which is not very game breaking.
Also, bear in mind that although some health resources have been added, the only new happiness resources are Amber and Penguins, with the latter being extremely rare. Therefore, in most cases you will just have slightly bigger cities that are less happy. This improves slightly the benefits of using slavery and other population sacrifice mechanics, and in my opinion fits with the FFH2 setting
I think it would be better if there were more fantasy resources, offering slightly different gameplay. Like Unicorns giving +1 strength to mounted units and so on, functioning like early nightmares, but being extremely rare, which bring me to another issue....
That's more complicated from a lore point of view, as adding some kind of useful, fantasy resource that plays a significant role in the game without it appearing at all in FFH2 lore would be in my opinion changing the lore of the game. Something like what you suggest would not lead to slightly different gameplay as it would change balance too much, even if the resource is rare, as having the bonus implies a big advantage. It would also deprive the player of the usual plethora of options that FFH likes to present, as the optimal choice if you have unicorns would nearly always be to use mounted units.
2) Events - I have really bad vibes from Unicorn events. In practically all fantasy settings, unicorns are extremely good and pure creatures. It felt really weird to have my elves wanting to kill it for food of for its horn and not a single option to keep it alive.
I agree with what A Moon said; Fall from Heaven 2 is dark fantasy, and eating an unicorn is far less weird than some of the stuff you can read on the lore. For example, Os-Gabella story has some very disturbing moments that still manage to horrify me even when reading them for a fourth or fifth time. Having said that, I agree that the event should have a "good" option. Any ideas?
I have also never understood what option 4 is meant to do.
Some of the EMM events also don't offer explanation why a certain option is unavailable to you.
Which ones?
3) The options I choose when I want to start a custom game aren't being saved, so I have to select Living World, All Unique Features and so on... every time I want to start a new game.
I've always assumed that this was broken in FFH for some reason, but I have never really looked into it. Does it work in vanilla FFH2 or MNAI?
4) There is something weird with Sheiam, and I'm guessing it's tied to playing with AI No Building Requirements option ON. Sheiam is building Minotaurs, Mobius Witches and Manticores from the beginning. It might be because they are now buildable but have no tech requirement, so with No Building requirement, AI can build them from T0.
I even forgot that option existed. I have created a task to give these units a technology prerrequisite for beta2:
https://bitbucket.org/Terkhen/extramodmod/issue/240/technology-prerrequisites-for-planar-gate
5) Barbarians are acting weird - walking around my territory with no clear goal, only occasionally pillaging and attacking cities. Goblins often leaves their forts empty, while animals are now supersmart and it seems they often won't attack unless they have good odds which is rather weird.
What this post says applies to 0.5.0-beta1 too:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=13607344#post13607344
Please consider providing feedback using that form; we have learned that getting impressions for this particular topic without the whole context of the game leads to making wrong assumptions.
I don't believe that animals should attack mindlessly; a tiger should be smart enough to avoid an army.
Also, unicorns are delicious.
I agree; I always think of this when I get the unicorn event.
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
