Changes:
2/29/2020 9:33 PM: Uploaded files.
3/9/2020 6:40 PM: Added all the relevant details about the scenario to this post. Also released a balance patch:
- Made sabotaging production cheaper.
- Renamed buildings that are not identical to base game (barring maintenance).
- Rebalanced temples ("altars") to cost more but provide more happiness, effectively solving what you get from slaving.
- Gave Defender V +1/-1 Atk/Def
- Removed enslave ability from Boarders.
- Fixed some AI prefs.
- Renamed the game and search folder.
- Changed assets used for some units to ensure they were unique.
3/10/2020 12:25 PM: Fixed bugs with the previous release, and made a few changes:
- Boarder II changed from 6/2 to 6/1.
- Boarder III changed from 9/3 to 7/2.
- Boarder IV changed from 12/3 to 10/2.
- Altars now produce 5 happiness (and display this correctly in the civilopedia).
3/10/2020 6:13 PM: Edited gunpowder mercenary units to reflect new changes.
3/16/2020 3:21 PM: Made changes:
- Every mercenary faction now gets a unique unit of their mercenary, allowing them to build the most advanced version without the requisite resource.
- Rogues no longer have a cost penalty of 4 shields, nor do they upgrade to normal mercenaries.
- Defender III changed from 3/6 to 3/5.
- Defender IV changed from 4/8+ to 5/6+.
- Defender V changed from 6/9++ to 7/7++.
- Inquisitor's 2 movement has been replaced with ATAR.
- Assassins gain ATAR at level V and stealth attack / 3 defense at level III.
- Cavalry graphics changed.
5/14/2020 10:45 PM: The civ 3 community is remarkably lucky! My graphics card isn't in great shape, and Civ III is the only game that really works. Not only that, but these problems are occurring right at the start of summer, when I do most of my game design stuff.
- Illicio win condition now works correctly. Before it wouldn't let you build more than the first monument, because the second monument required that you have the first monument, but it didn't count as a building, so that prerequisite could never be filled.
- Also replaced the spaceship movie with a less interesting (but slightly more relevant) one.
- Fixed a bug where mercenary factions couldn't load their own mercenaries onto an army.
- Added Outposts and Hermes' Lookout. Archives no longer carry the airdrop functionality, because they had too much maintenance and production cost early on.
- All the National Wonders are now more expensive. They still seem a little cheap! I was able to get half of them by the end of the game. Maybe not, though; it was a weird game where I had no real fighting to do.
- Did some much-needed changes to propaganda. While it might need a nerf in its current state, you no longer have to click "do propaganda" a billion times to win cities.
- Propaganda is far more likely to succeed and scales better for large cities, but is also quite expensive.
- Added more culture ratings, so that weak enough cultural influence can put a complete stop to propaganda efforts, and high cultural influence makes propaganda far, far stronger.
- Drafting has been changed:
- Illicio and Estivas both draft Soldiers exclusively.
- Formatan draft Recruits exclusively.
- Mercenary factions draft the Commodore. It's a unique settler unit that costs 1 population, has 2/2 stats, and normally costs 40 shields -- but if you draft them, you get them instantly, and free! This additional option is incredibly hard to use very well balanced.
- Added City Blueprint, allowing you to cut maintenance across the empire on the less used improvements.
- Shieldbearer has been renamed to Squire (as it doesn't carry a shield), and given 3 defensive bombard instead of 1.
- Starts in Despotism always. The civilized factions suffer the anarchy as well now.
- I tried starting everyone in their chosen government; it removed strategic depth of when to go into anarchy, and threw off the balance of power a bit in favor of the mercenaries. Which is more balanced -- but it's not supposed to be
- Removed turn penalty from civilized teams. Maybe that wasn't there at all.
- Normalized starting units -- mercenary factions get their own flavor at level III, and a rogue at level II, rather than two generic ones at level II and III.
- Added coastal batteries, a ranged sea unit that is stuck at port. They are quite expensive, and building ships has proven a better defense. These are slotted for more changes in the future.
- Siphasi and Pirum Cell abilities swapped; though they seem equally good for both, the idea of a priest acting as an undetectable spy is easier to explain than the Pirum being in the same spot.
- Oracle has been renamed to Grand Temple to fit the monotheistic theme of religious content for this scenario.
- Elite has been renamed to Paladin to avoid Elite Elites and other such ambiguities.
I can now say that this game is best played with human opponents in acc mode on 80% pangaea, or 60% continents. You have some leeway, of course, but here's the reasoning:
- Archipelago is massively in favor of the colonists. You might expect it to favor the Pirum with their amphibious crew, but no -- the colonists get two settlers, totally unimpeded by early enemy strikes. That lets them snowball unlike any other faction. I was Illicio. It was very nice.
- Watery continents can have the same problem. As the Formatan, I was able to wipe out three factions without breaking a sweat, and then play peacefully. As the Formatan. I won score. 60% continents might work at tiny+ or the recommended size, because coast connects the tiles and aggressive commodore expansion across a coast should counter that sort of plan.
- I don't say that this is better with human opponents because I've played with human opponents; I say that because the AI is dumb, and gets dumber the more interesting strategic decisions I add. The archcraft are a joke because they don't use them as artillery, even when specifically flagged as artillery -- so I flagged them as attackers too. The Pirum were fine -- honestly terrifyingly strong -- but the addition of commodores means they spend all their time building commodores and then using them as defenders. If you want to play this, you will need as many humans as you can get.
- Accelerated production just reduces the turns to 100, which is better for multiplayer games.
