Hi civ2units,
As promised here is my final update with my feedback/recommendations. Feel free to use as little or as much of it as you deem useful.
As indicated, I completed my play through on July 1599 (turn #166 of 267), after I captured my 90th objective point (the English island city of Anguilla) and completed the Kingdom of Heaven event (i.e. the capture of Aleppo, Damascus, Jaffa and Jerusalem). Only the 3 point objective city of Cologne remains, currently, out of my grasp as it is controlled by the Neutral Alliance.
At this time, my treasury stands at 125,653 thalers. At a tax/science/luxury rate of 30/40/30, I generate a surplus of 300 thalers per turn (not counting the 750 bonus thalers garnered from the special events) but could easily increase that surplus to 2000 thalers per turn by increasing the tax rate to 50%.
I have a research rate of 1 advance every 3 turns (though I could easily increase that to 1 per 2 turns with a minor income deficit), and currently own 64 advances from the original 29 I started with. Given that 25 tech are unavailable to research at all in the game and 8 are ‘special techs’ that means there are only roughly 66 techs you can own in total. As such, am in the process of researching the last 2 available techs, i.e. Siege Weaponry and Cavalry Tactics.
In terms of military power, Spain remains the dominant power with 626 active units versus 141 units for its closest rival the Protestant League.
To start, here are a couple of questions:
- Is there a reason why the more advanced Noble Merchant trade unit only has 2 movement points when it’s more primitive version the Supply Wagon has 4?
- Given its historical importance, particularly in the context of the Habsburg/Ottoman struggle for dominance, shouldn’t Constantinople be an objective city?
Some recommendations:
1.
Governments types to prohibit: As I’ve mentioned previously, and as I believe you discovered when you reviewed my last save game, the Administrative Monarchy (Communism) and Merchant Republic (Democracy) forms of government are much too powerful for the era as not only do they remove corruption entirely but they allow the player to generate some crazy amounts of gold and significantly increase the research rate.
Though Theocracy suffers a 50% penalty in science, it too can generate some crazy amounts of gold, particularly the more happiness buildings you have.
As such, I would strongly recommend you limit the game to the much more historical Absolute Monarchy and Noble Republic forms of government.
2.
Mercenaries: the Mercenaries are much too cheap to acquire. As I indicated in a previous thread, they were the main source of recruits that not only allowed me to stem the Ottoman tide but launch my own successful counterattacks.
What does it matter to the human player to pay a onetime cost of 80 or 125 thalers for a Pikemen or Doppelsoldner, which can remain in play for the remainder of the game free of charge, when your treasury stands at 20-30,000 thalers? It’s a mere pittance.
It’s no secret that many a monarch of the era bankrupted their state’s finances to pay for the mercenaries to wage their wars.
As such, I would recommend at least one of the following:
As we did in Napoleon with the French naval units, that you subtract a monthly fee for each mercenary in your army. In my game, I believe I maintained the maximum number 47 mercenaries. Now if you imposed a cost of say 10 thalers per turn for each unit that would have cost me 470 thalers per month. That fact alone would have gone a long way to limiting my monthly income surpluses and would have made it much more challenging to counter the Ottomans.
Or
At least double or triple the hiring cost for each type of mercenary AND home each of them to the city they were generated in to reflect the basic cost of maintaining these units.
In either case, again as we did in Napoleon, it would be useful to be able to press a key to allow you to bring up a chart to see how many Mercenaries you had in your inventory and how much they cost your treasury each month (assuming you implemented option 1)
3.
Caribbean and North America: after I conquered the last objective city of Angostura in the New World in January 1553 (turn #72), there basically was all most no further military activity in the region for the next 94 turns of my game (save for some limited Privateer raids, see next section below). As there are no objective cities in North America, my activities were primarily restricted to exploration.
Probably adding some additional objective cities in North America, and adjusting the victory conditions accordingly could bring some additional impetus to the area. I understand, that a large part of the colonization of that continent by the Europeans didn’t truly start until the early 1600’s but I did find some activity prior to that date (France established the settlement of Fort Charlesbourg in 1541, the English had a settlement near St-John’s in 1583, the Spanish already ventured into Texas as early as 1519 and established St-Augustine in Florida around 1565).
This is entirely your decision, but I believe a designer could be forgiven for taking some degree of liberty with the starting historical dates for some of these colonisations in order to take advantage of the entire map and provide a corresponding challenge to the player.
4.
Privateers: even though the event file did generate some Privateers ships, prior to 1600, there weren’t that many and all they were able to do is launch Shore Bombardment attacks against my cities in the Caribbean killing a number of my ground units in the process. Ultimately, many were either destroyed during these attacks, or I was soon able to dispatch some of my own naval units from Europe to the area to hunt down the remainder.
But at no time were any of my cities in jeopardy of being seized by these naval Pirates.
As such, I have two recommendations here:
a) Increase the number of Privateers generated and add a Privateer (aka barbarian) land unit which has the ability to capture cities
b) As we did for Napoleon, create sea zones in the Caribbean, whereby each enemy vessel units located within any of these zones subtracts an amount of gold from your treasury.
With these modifications, players won’t be able to be as complacent about the defence of the region anymore.
5.
Science: given that there are only roughly 35 or so techs to research in a 267 turn game that gives you on average of 1 tech every 7 turns. But as I indicated previously, as was easily averaging 1 tech per three turns long before I reached turn 166, which means even prior to being granted the Pike and Shot advance, I had to research around 20 or so Future Techs, which in an objective based scenario has no value.
After receiving the Pike and Shot tech, I only had another 6 or so techs to research, which I could easily manage to do in a dozen or so turns.
As such, I recommend you perhaps increase the tech paradigm from the current 30/10 to 40 or 50/10 (or if possible or feasible add some additional techs to research?).
6.
AI builds: I’ve attached the “Scenario Casualties Tracking_Reformation.xls” excel file which outlines all the units that each power build and lost for your review. I use this file in all my own projects as it allows me to determine which units each power builds or doesn’t and permits me to make adjustments to play balance.
In the BUILDS tab, I’ve compiled the list of units each power built by category (artillery, cavalry, infantry, naval, etc). You’ll notice, for example, that France and England built almost no artillery or cavalry units and that Spain (aka the Habsburg) built almost 5 times more artillery than all other powers combined and was the power that built more units than any other individual power.
Add to this the fact, that Spain always had the most up to date weapons technology, and it was never overpowered on the battlefield.
As such, some adjustments to these numbers more in favor of the AI might be in order to bring about a more balanced challenge.
7.
Settler units: with the “Extra Settler flags” feature of ToTPP 0.16 it is now possible to prohibit settler units from founding cities. As per the guide you can control this in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section of the rules file.
Here’s the code for preventing your settler and engineer units from building cities:
Code:
@UNITS_ADVANCED
11011110, 00000000, -1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 100011010000 ; 0 Peasants
11011010, 00000000, -1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 100011010000 ; 1 Engineers
11011000, 00000000, -1, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 11010000 ; 2 Galley
In the end, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Cologne was off limits to my conquest, I probably could have achieved a major victory 5 or 10 years earlier. In essence, for the reasons I’ve enumerated above, Spain might be a little too overpowered. And I think some of my recommendations might help to redress some of that imbalance.
Otherwise, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I really had a great time playing your scenario. It’s extremely creative and full of unexpected and interesting events that help keep you on your toes!
