Hi MellowOctopus. Thanks for posting and the many great comments. I like long posts with lots of ideas. When working on the mod sometimes it seems like an echo chamber in my head when I'm trying different solutions so I appreciate other insights a great deal.
First off, the governments. This has been an area where I've long been split two ways. On one hand, from a modder's perspective, having more governments opens a lot of options. Different governments means you can actually control building options and autoproduced units in addition to the governement-specific stuff like war weariness and corruption. From a player's point of view, though, fewer options are better. Why choose anything less than the best government, like Republic or at least Monarchy in a normal game? The AI certainly isn't going to do so. Also, I did look at the option of having civ-specific governments when making the game but had a few hang-ups. First off, either a special government is more powerful than normal governments, in which case there's no reason to have anything else, or it's less powerful and there's no reason for it to exist. Second, if it is more powerful, the player will naturally stay with it as long as possible since governments don't go obsolete. If the Roman Republic government type, for example, is great in the ancient era, why switch to something else in Medieval times? You could ride it all the way to the next type, like the Venetian Republic or whatever. Civ-specific governments by necessity limit player choices. If you're the Poles, you would choose the "Commonwealth" government when it's available every time you played Poland.
This is why I settled on the model of having basically two government choices for the first half of the game. Rather than being very specific, they are intentionally broad and ambiguous. A room full of political scientists could split hairs on what these governments are like in the real world and whether reality matches the model, but in Civ-world we can demarcate them clearly. Autocracy represents a centralized government with bonuses in commerce and an emphasis on city growth and science (which in turns emphasizes luxuries as an unhappiness-counter). Feudalism, which may be renamed Aristocracy, represents any number of decentralized power where the local rulers are running the show, and the player gets his bonuses by having lots of small cities and can conduct better warmongering. This is why I think the Chiefdom/Kingship dilemma works fairly well, since it is a tough choice. As much as possible, I like the game to be about finding those sweet spots where you really agonize over when to start a war or switch governments, and knowing that delays can have bad consequences. On what difficulty levels are you seeing the AI ride Chiefdom that much? On monarchy and emperor I always see them leap to autocracy, but I don't play higher than that. And if the AI is riding high on a crappy government, I don't see how civ-specific gov'ts can overcome that. I do like your though of adjusting the worker rate better, though.
I'm at the point where I don't know whether it's better to expand individual civ options or reduce them. More civ techs and buildings give more flavor, but how much do they add? The options for improvements and wonders are so limited that it's hard to get excited about yet another building that adds 50% commerce or doubles city defenses. Honestly I was not happy with all the extra buildings in Worldwide 2. Even though they have some nice graphics I thought many just clutter up the game and aren't very useful. I want to give things like the Town Hall or the Rathaus the axe because even though I like the concepts I don't think they're that great in practice. The 256 spots in the building list are going to be premium real estate in the expansion and nothing will be spared.
The civ balance is quite deliberate. I like the idea that not all positions are equal. It gives the player more of that feeling of having 'favorite civs', and for the experienced player you have the option of essentially playing with a handicap. Japan gets a nice boost in Medieval times with the Kamakura Samurai (a blitzing, bombarding knight!), but that is turned on its head by the Enlightenment. I recently have been playing a game as Japan, my first game of worldwide in a long time, and was rushing to strengthen my position before the Enlightment. I hit my Golden Age and promptly turtled up, trying to catch up in science and improve my infrastructure while hawking lots of trade deals post-mercantilism and biding my time until I could get Meiji Riflemen and start a new brawl.
The Balkans, as you said, are a tough position and I like your idea of having something cool for the Balkan Wars-WWI era. I didn't want to go so far as to include Austria, although Hungary gets pulled in the Enlightenment Era, when the Balkans join the
five other civs swallowed by the Turks during this time (fully 25% of all civs in the game are part of the Ottoman Empire for 3 mini-eras, which made choosing units a real B). This applies to Greece as well, who really get screwed, though they have a monster advantage in ancient times. I think you are very correct that this time period is crucial in the game and is the first real breakout period where a science lead gives you a tremendous advantage. I would like to expand options for grenadiers. I played with their stats a lot in testing, and like you said they are devastating on the offensive. More people will be getting a unit similar. For example, Edo Era Japan will probably have the Firaxis samurai as an offensive unit (although weaker than a grenadier), and then an ashigaru or doshin unit for defense as the fusilier stand-in.
Thanks to the unit creators, especially Delta Strife and Imperator, we really have the option to expand the 19th century properly. The Era 2 artillery bombard will probably get nerfed a little, and there is going to be a late 19th century cavalry (merging the cavalry/dragoon line) and artillery with the introduction of breech-loading/recoil reduction style guns. The progression will probably be called Cannon=>Artillery=>Howitzer, pretty similar to Civ 2. In the mid era 3 Modern Era, there's going to be a World War style cavalry that accompanies machine guns and infantry and will be a weaker blitizing 3-move alternative for people without oil who can't get tanks and recon units. I'm going to be testing the possibility of Reverse Stealth Attack, too. Since we can't have the Civ4 bonuses like anti-tank, anti-cavalry, etc. then this will be a way for weak civs lacking resources to counter stronger civs. Machine gunners will be dirt cheap defenders, maybe with one lower hit point than infantry, that have reverse stealth attack against cavalry and infantry. Basically these units will have stealth attack against machine gunners, which forces them to attack the machine gunners in a stack before any one else and will grind them down before they can attack the stronger defenders. The same thing will apply with anti-tank troops that force armor units to deal with them first. At the same time, artillery will probably get stealth attack against artillery and infantry in the style of Storm Over Europe. Along with its 2-movement and blitz this may give the AI the opportunity to counter-battery your bombarding artillery. These changes will coincide with BIG price increases. There are going to be new production building bonuses (the manufacturing plant, +25% production for rail station and mass transit), but the cost of units will be much higher, especially power units like the tank. Thus, anti-tank units really have a chance for the poor civ to defensively inflict punishment on power civs to defend themselves.
The game will still rely on what I call Time Echelonment of units. That is, rather than having a variety of units available all at once or the heavy hand of autoproduction, certain units are very powerful for brief periods and thus the AI will end up with unit variety over time. The dragoon and the marine are good examples of this. This method will be expanded on and adhered to in the expansion. Also, upgraded units will generally not have resource requirements while new units will. Infantry and machine gunners won't need resources but aircraft and tanks will need that rubber and oil. This way resource depravation won't cripple your defense as bad as it will your offense. The new motorized infantry that comes with Mobile Warfare doesn't replace the Infantry unit but stands alongside it. It's a powered up defender that can protect offensive tank forces and is great for the wealthy player, but poor defenders can still rely on cheaper foot infantry.
By the time the game reaches late era 3 and era 4, you're really only there by choice. Hard core warmongers will really have things decided in era 2. Therefore these late times are really meant to have interesting options while you pursue victory conditions like the UN or space race. I like Era 1 because it's the most civ-like. Adjustments there are really only going to support that kind of freedom. I want the player to really be able to choose his direction: early warmongering, science, building, expansion, etc. with maximum freedom before the deliberately restricted Eras 2 and 3 with their mini-era choke points. Era 4 will probably open up some again, although there's going to be a science/hegemony-centered 1950s, a 1960s mid-level unit upgrade wave, some more BS in the 70s, and then a second unit upgrade era in the 80s-90s. This will give some space for the interim introduction of different units like Phantom jets and BMPs and stuff.
Some other things being playtested include the elimination of mines from plains, grasslands, and desert, and raising the food per citizen from 2 to 3. This is a drastic change and will have many effects. Irrigating from the sea will be introduced very early, and irrigation on grass and plains will give +2 food. The tentative plan is:
Grass: 3 food (possible +1 shield), 5 when irrigated
Plains: 2 food, 1 shield, 4 when irrigated
Desert: 1 food, 1 shield, 2 food when irrigated
Forest: 1 food, 2 shield
Hills: 1 food 1 shield, 3 shield mined
Mountains: 1 food 1 shield, 3 shield mined
Tundra: 1 food, 1 shield, 2 food when irrigated
The intention is to slow production and growth slightly, plus make the map prettier. I want to introduce more bonus resources through the ages as discussed by Pounder, but early tests in this area have been very poor. I've got a lot more testing before introducing changes this radical since everything has a ripple effect.
MellowOctopus, I am very interested in hearing about multiplayer worldwide.
None of my friends play civ, or any computer games for that matter, so I have no experience in this area. I think it must change your play style a lot from the predictable computer. The WW3 game will have a separate multiplayer version so maybe worldwide could get the same treatment if needed. Thanks for the great comments and looking forward to more insights!
PS: If you think this post is wordy, don't even get me started on unique units and how with a little testing and a lot of palette work I'm going to see about restricting ICS, spies, elite units and mini-armies with the dreaded and underrated Build Army option.
for a great job on this mod. Your work is fantastic and I have played your mod for about a year now. I play many other mods as well but yours is most certantly one of my top 3 if not my favorite mod out there for any version of the civilization series. I have played civ 3 since it first came out, and i have played most every mod, multiyplayer, and many other civ 3 related things. I have followed your thread on this mod for quite some time, but i was never a member, until very recently. I had a some sugjestions for you about this mod, i know you are working on other projects, and some of my ideas for you, if you were to accept them, would be a big undertaking, but i hope you will consider some of them! They are all constuctive coments in i speak directly about the game.
I don't have the time, but I can be a historical consultant, material finder, and I can also try to balance things, and I can also go about analising world time periods, as I am a history nutt
