Some Suggestions/Comments (Independents)

[Marmoteo]

Hi! First of all, awesome mod. I played the vanilla version of TAM and I loved it. It is great to see it running on BTS and going smoothly so far. Great maps and buildings. I have some ideas and comments I'd like to share, I dunno if they've been already mentioned.

- Independents: I know this is not RFC and I'm not saying it should be emulated. But I think the map can be sort of empty sometimes, and there is usually no early wars (AI not aggressive enough). So I believe a solution to that might be two civs (one for north africa/middle east and another for europe) which are in war with everyone. And they spawn cities in historical areas with historical names. This might also help the AI to conquer historical areas and stop the need for spawning settlers like crazy if you wish to have a big empire.

I played a game with the Egyptians on Noble, entered the world builder to see how everyone was doing. I saw the comments on the economy, but I didn't suffer anything so far. Been running my science at 80/100% most of the game and having a surplus. Got the pyramids and the sphinx so far, just for playing historically and left the AI to build the other wonders. Noticed that the AI is quite slow at research and they don't tend to built wonders. It took them ages to build the Oracle.

Love the high costs on settlers, which I guess were made to stop an early spawning. Also the different buildings with small % bonuses on production, science, etc.

Anyway, I'll say it again. Great mod! Keep up the good work

Cheers

[Marmoteo]

Hi again. About the expansive trait... I don't really get it. Do i get +1 food in cities with trade routes? (+1 for each trade route?). Cause I got Pasargadae, which has 10 base food (+1 because of the extra 15% from Sea Cult), and it is connected to my capital. Susa, only has 3 base food (working on the wooden hills).

Thanks!

[Astat]

i think you need at least 10 base as the 10% of a city's total food production are being rounded down.

[Whitefire]

You're misunderstanding the effects of the civics. Cult of the Sea gives +1 for state religion in a city and +10% in all cities. Cult of the Sun gives +25% in cities with state religion and 10% in all cities.

But your point stands with the trade routes not giving +1 food. It doesn't work in any of my cities.

[Marmoteo]

Ah, yes, haha. Sorry, I meant Cult of the Sun!

[graywarden]

Expect some major changes with the Cults as we continue to expand the use of the added features of BTS. The team is working hard right now on the next version, hopefully we can begin testing it soon.

[Marmoteo]

Great! Looking forward to it . But my problem wasn't really with the cults, it was more with the 'expansive trait' which I think is not working.

[Whitefire]

Instead of adding independents to the map, why not add in a few more civilizations? The IVC or The Mauryans could easily be added, starting near the Indus.

EDIT: The problem with independents is that they quickly become Barbarian cities or they become the most powerful faction in the game, since they have far more land than any other civ.

[ambrox62]

Next map pack release will contain an alternative 24 civs huge map (128x64 plots) without eastern barbarian area

[Marmoteo]

Yeah, true. Adding a couple of civs sounds good too. Plus it would add a bit of flavour in case somebody would like to take in a sort of Alexander the Great conquest up to north-western India. Is there any ancient Civilization near Samarkand? Cause that area is the one that it is quite empty.

I'm quite happy with the huge map at the moment. I believe it is quite detailed and functional.

[Deon]

The comment about Nubia.

I think Nubians need some tweak. Now they're too far to south and have very few good places for their cities...
This way they don't get fun from wars and don't get fun from building big empire too. When you play as Nubians it seems like you're playing alone (well, Duel with egyptians, especially when they block you with their culture, and the only option is to fight against prett yHatshepsut (well, pretty with leaderhead used by me...)). There's a HUGE desert which gives nothing... And "blocks" your access to the carthage (not really blocks, but make the way TOO long).
I talk about huge map.
I think it would be nice to change it someway...
1) You can make a high desert barbarian threat, scripted someway... To ensure the player is busy.
2) Also you can add some minor civ like those barbarians, so you may lead diplomacy contest with them and occasionally get the war.
3) Add "oasis"-places, so the Nubians would have a possibility to expand to west. Just a few, they'll make a lot of fun. Also making a special UB for Nubians which greatly reduces the maintance/maintance from distance to palace, you will turn them in the real desert-expanders, making the desert somewhat living, not a dead HUGE place...
If you have some good ideas about Nubians, please implement them. Or maybe they can be removed on the HUGE map and some another civ could be placed? I like them, but Egyptians sometimes seem to be enough for the N-Eastern Africa...
Anyway you decide, I hope it will be even MORE fun =).
Thank you.

[Deon]

Marmoteo
This area is usually busy, I don't remember ho occupied it last time... But definitely not the real-world civs, so idea is neat.

[EDIT] There were Persians and Babylon. But no barbarian indian tribes, which were full-fletched civilizations at that time.

[Deon]

...->Persia(Darius)->Midia->Girkania...
Also Macedonia would be nice too =).
But maybe it's a different time...
Alexander's march started ~330 A.D..

[graywarden]

Deon,

have you downloaded the MapPack? There is a Huge/24 civ map in there. If you know how to manipulate your maps you can load it in v.074. You will find all our available civs in the Huge Meditteranean Map

[Marmoteo]

Deon,

About the Nubians, I think that in the huge map they have plenty of space to expand, at least to build 5 decent cities. And also, Nubia never really expanded much anywhere. They survived more than the Egyptians because they weren't captured by the greeks/persians/romans so early, but they always stayed on that area.

I was also talking about the huge map when I said the eastern area looked quite empty, that's why I agreed to the suggestion of Whitefire on the IVC/Mauryans. Which i'm not completely sure but weren't they in the vanilla TAM ages ago?

[Deon]

I believe the Nubians are at their place. I only wanted to note that they're a bit "lonely", poor guys =) (in fact of gameplay). But next time before I post the post like the post about Nubians above (TRIPLE POST! ) I will think twice. There's nothing bad in "historical realism". If they were supposed not to have a lot of diplo encounters in RL, then they actually should be the same in game.

[graywarden]

Theres an article in this months National Geographic regarding the interaction between Nubia and Egypt, and how for 75 years the Nubians ruled the Egyptians. Some good stuff.