1- the most important conceptualization of the game is enjoyment, not strategy.
Ahh but is an easy game fun? Or if a scenario is too easy is it worth playing again and again. I happen to like a lot about this mod/scenario except that some of weaknesses I described make it excessively easy. The easiest maybe the Arabs who need only control 3 holy cities, expand Islam to 40% of the cities and subdue North Africa, Egypt and Spain. Spain is the hardest to take on but the rest are all quite managable. I've found the best way to do it is get really strong, take India develop it, develop the Middle East so that they will accept a vassalage agreement, but taking enough cities to force that isn't any harder.
I personally want a game that requires good strategy to win even if some are easier to win with than others simply because it will always make the scenario infinately replayable.
ROC is a mod for Civilization, not Civilization. Hence Rhye's intent is not to make Civ more of a strategy or a sim, since Civilization is something else. You play this mod when you don't want to play that. It's not a patch, an expansion, an improvement, nothing of all this, it's a mod, and as such it's something different. Or did you want ROC to be the same as Civ
Well to be fair I think Rhyse is better than Civ IV because Civ4 is too biased towards an overtly militaristic approach over a developmental one. And by that I mean people tend to few Civ as a contrast between the strategies of militarism i.e. building almost exclusively military with limited development or expansion and settler spam. Id like to see development employed as a third strategy, one where the player uses military along with expansion to out play his opponents and by that I mean there are clear advantages for developing your cities to their maximum potential. Too often it seems quite easy to neglect building all the improvements for your cities if you can get other things like resources so that ultimately there is little to gain by doing so. I would like to see a more intrinsic advantage for doing so than I have thus far seen.
The brake to settlers spam is a matter of scale. A game with 20+ civs, in a 124x68 map is slow and unplayable if every civ builds 20 cities easily. If you liked that, switch back to civ3 giga maps, where 31 civs would fill the whole world by 500 AD.
But here is where I think you are wrong. First settler spam was never the problem people made it out to be in Civ3. The problem had far more to do with the weaknesses of the AI, the lack of culture boundaries(i.e. national boundaries) terrain problems i.e. grasslands were so inherently productive and abundant that there was no reason to not go bananas with settlers. Civ4 has solved some of these already and as for the last with the terrain your map has it dealt with that by using large amounts of unarable land(which was a great feature I might add, so no cities in the heart of the Amazon jungle). In fact by my count South America can support a maximum of only about 24 cities with far less than that being likely. North America around 26. Austrailia probably more than it should because it is not as barren as it should be, but after that there really isn't a lot of free land, and what there is in the Americas, Africa and Austrialia will probably be consumed by a few opportunistic powers. This playout which seems very common to this scenario was extremely well done since in every game I've played its always the Dutch, British, French, Spanish and Portugese that become the colonials and if you figure there are only about 50-60 cities to be built by 5 powers it figures that only a few would get the bulk of it and afterwards fight with every one else to preserve to take it away from them. Again this part was well done the problem that I have is not that stability is a bad idea but that it is too restrictive at present and undermines the full fruition of the colonial ambitions of these powers in the New World, Asia and Africa. Afterall, why be a colonial power and do it half way?
Again my suggestion is to ease up the stability some or modify it to make it more adaptable. You mentioned there are other penalties for over expansion in Europe what are they? The only ones that seem to matter are foreign opinion, the loss of your cities and the maintanence cost. The maintenance cost doesn't seem to be a problem, maybe it could be higher so that in order for colonies to pay for themselves they would have to develop a great deal and build banks and markets. But again it seems there is an upward limit on how big you can get and Spain could never, or should I say would never want to actually build an empire as large as it did in the New world as it would kill its research and ultimately collapse.
I'd just like to see instability due to empire size and city number as a more controllable feature e.g. you can build 40 cities but to stop from them breaking off or your empire collapsing you would need to build a giantic army to be maintained in the cities of the colonies so as to keep them down. This has the ancillary benefit of making a colonial power in a strategic weakness to a more centrally located empire since their army must remain spread out in order to hold the thing together. And historically this drain of manpower was exactly what happened.
Does that mean 30 civs with 30 cities each...NO!!! It means that the AI might pay attention to California more than they do because it would be worth it to do so and more importantly once all the free and is grabbed up the pressure intensifies to focus on minor powers to take them down i.e. the game becomes more competitive when the big sharks start gobbling up the smaller ones and or restorign destroyed civs.
4. Recreating the Spanish Empire, as well as other civ's one, is definitely possible. The AI for sure is able to do that.
I have never seen this! The Spanish usually build some cities in SAmerica but totally neglect Mexico, Texas and California. In fact the only time the Aztecs have been conquered is when I've done it but that may be more due to AI stupidity. If the Spanish ever do creat to fruition their empire in LAmerica then its only in the mid to late 20th century by which time I've quite playing because I've already won. Again maybe the problem is that I haven't played deep enough into the 19th century because I've never had to but that again would suggest its a bit easy.
1. You say "the Americas and Asia are almost totally irrelevent to the grand scheme of balance of power...Every game is merely a struggle to dominate Europe" and "I do think that expansion in Europe ought to be more difficult than expansion in the colonies would be." Sounds like you aren't aware of how it works. There are different kind of penalties for overexpansion in Europe and in the colonies.
Uh yeah I understand it, its just not that hard to get. The first time I played I tried to build a large empire and failed because it collapsed, but I ultimately still won because my culture boundaries restored to me the metropole but I realized what the heck was the point of founding all those cities all it did was waste time to build the settlers and slow down my research. In every subsequent game I've played the same modified strategy. I always focus on Europe looking to weaken early what is likely to be my strongest neighbor(basic tactics really). If I'm France its Germany, Spain its France, Germany its Russia but regardless because it is "cheaper" to expand in Europe than abroad it is a better strategic move to concentrate on Europe. Also maybe you aren't aware that the reason this is true is because such expansion is Zero Sum i.e. if France expands in Europe because it takes Mainz, Hamburg and Berlin from Germany even if this costs France some stability it is still worthwhile because the expansion weakens the strongest rival. Ultimately, for the various minor powers like Portugal, Holland Spain etc who can't are undermaned against the Germans or Frence and likely to lose in the European struggle it is necessary to take early North Africa since it is unoccupied since these are close enough to the metropole they are effectively considered the "homeland" and are easy to manage.