First off, amazing mod or mod-mod.
Everyone working on this deserves a huge round of applause, amazing work, high-quality and all for complete strangers for $0. Who would even dream of complaining/criticizing?
Well, I wouldn't...
Buuuuuttttt... I might have a couple of suggestions, issues I'd like to bring up. I've noticed a couple of things that have been happening and I wanted to either confirm it, or ask if something could be added, changed about it.
Disclaimer - I've only played a couple of games so far on Governor and I haven't finished any game as of yet. I usually play Huge/Marathon. Also, most of my issues (I believe) have to do with the Plantation side of things, not sure if they can be changed.
Too Many Colonists Learning by Doing/Schools Almost Needless - At first I was ecstatic to see one of my indentured servants turned free colonist, then eventually expert lumberjack. It brings back one of those lucky features from the last game and it's realistic. If you're doing the same task over and over, even if you started as a novice, you'll eventually be a master. It just takes time.
In my current game I've had converted natives, indentured servants, free colonists become carpenters, lumberjacks, farmers (lots of those) and in some cases, distillers and a couple have become Statesmen.
All that is great but... with all of these colonists learning-by-doing, what's the point of having schools/large schools/colleges/universities? Only to train Veteran Soldiers (which would still be worth it, maybe)? Also, why bother sending a free colonist to learn from the natives if they can just learn by doing it. If you just forget about training and put your colonist into action you get the frutis of his labor while he learns how to master the craft you've assigned him. So it seems that schools, colleges, universities and native knowledge is greatly devalued. Am I wrong in observing that?
Maybe the learn-by-doing ability should be only for manual labor. If you're a lumberjack, you'll learn a lot by doing. If you're an Elder Statesman, you need a LOT of education and training to even begin your work. Just a suggestion to maybe make schools useful again.
Coffee/Indigo Practically Useless Shortly After Starting, Need An Refined Product/Next Step - I'm about 100 turns in and Indigo and Coffee are almost useless. My King keeps raising my taxes on coffee and I keep bowing to his demands because no one outside of Europe pays for coffee/indigo. Am I right? Maybe Europeans do, but they never have enough money to make it worth dealing with. If I hold a party, indigo and coffee will become COMPLETELY worthless. Already they're not profitable. The price ranges from 5-7? Then drops to 2-3 or worse. With taxes taken out that not even worth the trip. The same goes for Indigo.
I LOVE the idea of added resources. I love the wheat/buffalo, gold, indigo, coffee... but just like all of the other raw products (outside of lumber, gold, silver & food) they need a refined product. Indigo could be made into a dye... it could even be combined with cloth to make Clothes and become a third-level product, even more valuable to Europe/Natives. The base resources, indigo and cotton, grow in the same area so it wouldn't be a major hardship to get them combined. I'd liken it to Automobiles in Railroad Tycoon 2... you needed coal & iron to make steel and you needed rubber to make tires and then you needed steal and tires to make cars. Took some effort but it was worth the ending bottom line.
Coffee would be harder to do, I'm not sure what you can make coffee into other than... coffee. Maybe it could be added to lumber and made into trade goods, not sure. That would mean trade goods would have to cost more. I'm sure someone could come up with something smarter than this.
But as it stands, coffee and indigo outlast their value within the first 50 turns. I love these additions so I'd love to see them developed further if possible.
European Powers Are Cake To Take Over - Not sure if this has to do with playing under Patriot, but I was minding my own business when France declared war on me. I was thinking I was toast since I had NO troops in my border towns. I thought I was lucky to get soldiers into place before an attack... then... nothing.
Crickets... all quiet. I equiped a could of soldiers with horses and sent them into enemy territory and I walked into six/seven settlements before finally finding some resistance... which was easily brushed away. Thanks France.
The only drawback was France was bff with half the Natives and one of them declared war and I looked back and saw my original colonies in flames. I loaded an autosave and kept bribing the crap out of France's bros with gold/products I wasn't going to sell for much anyways and I was able to completely conquer their lands.
I wasn't even trying. They picked a fight they could even hope to win, practically unprovoked.
Is this normal? has anyone else seen this? Do I need to be less of a puss and play at a higher difficulty? I wanted to dip my toes in before I got my arse handed to me in a mod I'd never played before.
That's all I got so far, but I can't say enough about the game. I don't think I can play the vanilla game ever again. The skins, added tribes/nations, all of it is just too good to ever leave out. It's all done extremely well, very impressive work guys. Thanks for all of that.