primordial stew
Emperor
Good suggestions! Here are some more tweaks to consider:
1) lower the disband threshold. Like other things the default is ridiculously high (1000). I'd guess this means no disbanding till -1000gpt?? India is running -867 due to their crazy large army. They have 22 airplanes in 1 city I can see. My poor ironclad went too far into Indian waters and was annihilated by wave after wave after wave of bombers.
2) Probably needs the SDK, but I'll throw it out there anyway.. bring back the collateral damage limit XML tag! The AI is nearly pathetic if it cannot easily kill units via bombardment. The thing that really hooked me on this mod was the reduced bombardment damage. I do agree that my poor ironclad should have been destroyed by the massive Indian air force, however vs ground units it should be extremely difficult to wipe them out completely via bombardment. Who needs to send in the infantry to mop up?
Perhaps there is a way currently to go in this direction by dynamically adding some new Cover promotions for fortified units? Moving unit are certainly vulnerable to strafing aircraft, etc.. bug dug in soldiers are much more difficult to harm.
Also, up hit points to reduce the effect of bombardment (MAX_HIT_POINTS)
3) Can you add some more unit icons? Like for Marines take the standard infantry icon and put an M over it. Special Forces gets an S over the paratrooper? That sort of thing. Should be trivial to do in the GIMP (or whatever). I can probably make the changes if you want this.
4) Change cities from immobile fortresses back into cities. There are a bunch of XML tags related to this.
a) set range to 0 (barbarians, esp with the "raging" option, are much more troublesome!!)
b) lower the tech factor scaling
c) increase defensive buildings influence (UPDATE Buildings SET Defense = Defense * 1.5 WHERE Defense > 0 ; )
d) reduce CITY_STRENGTH_UNIT_DIVISOR so that city defense is much more dependent on having a garrison unit, esp a strong one.
The idea is that undefended, non-fortified cities are easy to take. Fortified cities without a garrison are slower, but just a matter of time.
5) don't capture settlers as settlers.
6) naval strength/ranged strength need a look. Too many encounters are simply the first one to shoot wins.
7) Change the range of crossbowmen to 1, increase the strength and reduce the ranged strength. Possibly provide an upgrade path (light artillery?).
8) Add a longbowman unit which takes the place of the current crossbowman.
9) Shouldn't "tax office" add -1 happy and not have a specialist slot?
10) With machine guns (infantry I suppose), there should be an automatic promotion to get rid of the -10% flat terrain defense. Indeed machine guns made it much easier on the defender.
11) consider some sort of food bonus with oil. There were 2 very significant improvements to farm yield during the 20th century, oil/mechanization and pesticides. We just passed 7 billion people, and will be at 8 in.. 15 years? There were 4.1 million babies born in the US last year, which is ~340,000/month. Currently there are ~125,000 new persons (potentially) joining the work force each month, which should be not too much less than the birth rate ~18 years ago, so 3X in ~20 years!!!!!!
12) I've never been able to build Ministry of Finance or Holy War.
1) lower the disband threshold. Like other things the default is ridiculously high (1000). I'd guess this means no disbanding till -1000gpt?? India is running -867 due to their crazy large army. They have 22 airplanes in 1 city I can see. My poor ironclad went too far into Indian waters and was annihilated by wave after wave after wave of bombers.
2) Probably needs the SDK, but I'll throw it out there anyway.. bring back the collateral damage limit XML tag! The AI is nearly pathetic if it cannot easily kill units via bombardment. The thing that really hooked me on this mod was the reduced bombardment damage. I do agree that my poor ironclad should have been destroyed by the massive Indian air force, however vs ground units it should be extremely difficult to wipe them out completely via bombardment. Who needs to send in the infantry to mop up?
Perhaps there is a way currently to go in this direction by dynamically adding some new Cover promotions for fortified units? Moving unit are certainly vulnerable to strafing aircraft, etc.. bug dug in soldiers are much more difficult to harm.
Also, up hit points to reduce the effect of bombardment (MAX_HIT_POINTS)
3) Can you add some more unit icons? Like for Marines take the standard infantry icon and put an M over it. Special Forces gets an S over the paratrooper? That sort of thing. Should be trivial to do in the GIMP (or whatever). I can probably make the changes if you want this.
4) Change cities from immobile fortresses back into cities. There are a bunch of XML tags related to this.
a) set range to 0 (barbarians, esp with the "raging" option, are much more troublesome!!)
b) lower the tech factor scaling
c) increase defensive buildings influence (UPDATE Buildings SET Defense = Defense * 1.5 WHERE Defense > 0 ; )
d) reduce CITY_STRENGTH_UNIT_DIVISOR so that city defense is much more dependent on having a garrison unit, esp a strong one.
Code:
<Defines>
<Update>
<Set Value="13"/>
<Where Name="MAX_HIT_POINTS"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="100"/>
<Where Name="CITY_STRENGTH_UNIT_DIVISOR"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Set Value="0"/>
<Where Name="CITY_ATTACK_RANGE"/>
</Update>
</Defines>
The idea is that undefended, non-fortified cities are easy to take. Fortified cities without a garrison are slower, but just a matter of time.
5) don't capture settlers as settlers.
6) naval strength/ranged strength need a look. Too many encounters are simply the first one to shoot wins.
7) Change the range of crossbowmen to 1, increase the strength and reduce the ranged strength. Possibly provide an upgrade path (light artillery?).
8) Add a longbowman unit which takes the place of the current crossbowman.
9) Shouldn't "tax office" add -1 happy and not have a specialist slot?
10) With machine guns (infantry I suppose), there should be an automatic promotion to get rid of the -10% flat terrain defense. Indeed machine guns made it much easier on the defender.
11) consider some sort of food bonus with oil. There were 2 very significant improvements to farm yield during the 20th century, oil/mechanization and pesticides. We just passed 7 billion people, and will be at 8 in.. 15 years? There were 4.1 million babies born in the US last year, which is ~340,000/month. Currently there are ~125,000 new persons (potentially) joining the work force each month, which should be not too much less than the birth rate ~18 years ago, so 3X in ~20 years!!!!!!
12) I've never been able to build Ministry of Finance or Holy War.