Own pillaging: I simply had no idea I could do that lol, funny how there are still basic things in the game that I have yet to discover. And the way you describe it, it does make sense that there is no ability to remove/pillage a road or transportation improvement.
Polluting extraction: I agree with you, necessary for any civilization and not simply replaceable by more sustainable food production. However, sustainable food production and commerce production still can substitute to some degree for hammer production in terms of overall resources available, even if building structures themselves might be slower.
The way I play HR already I use far less mines and quarries than the AI does and I make sure that my use of pastures and camps still allows me to keep some parity in terms of buildings and research. I almost never chop unless I'm actually building an improvement that requires clearing the square.
I know that in vanilla BtS most strategy guides emphasize chopping significantly but I have always found ways to avoid that and still find success in cultural or diplomatic victories. HR has made that even more possible in the way you've made camps, pastures, orchards more attractive options. I have had a lot of success using basically just mines and quarries where I actually am lucky enough to have a valuable resource.
However, I'm still figuring out just how many mills and workshops I want build to keep up with other civ's while still keeping my populations high (in numbers) with good health and happiness.
I look forward to reading your responses to some of my ideas of resource depletion and land use degradation (even for food production) in the other thread.
Jungle improvements: your explanation makes sense, I will be satisfied with orchards and plantations. Since I don't play a lot of war, I guess I can live without using elephants until a lot later lol.
AI dissent: I usually play Noble because of the way I'm choosing to develop my civ. I'm not sure I could survive much longer on higher difficulties because I'm doing so much less chopping and mining, but I guess that would be worth exploring. The dissent of civ's around me as they race ahead in development is what keeps me viable so far.
Bad People: I think it is the addition of nonstate actors that interests me. Bandits, Robbers, Guerillas sound good. A specialist that reduces or destroys production would be good, although I wouldn't call it Mafia. A unit that reduces Faith or raises Dissent (through religion) would be good, but not called a witch. Certainly there have always been renegade preachers, mahdi's, prophets, and yes even witches/prophetesses, although for the game I'd prefer a name that recognizes that such figures were as revered as they were reviled, depending on who was in power lol.
Limitations of modding: It must be incredibly satisfying to realize that you, through hard work and experience, have found ways around the built-in limitations using a mac! Maybe you shouldn't advertise that they aren't as binding as people think lol, or you will be swamped with requests for things that turn out to be extremely tricky and time consuming
Mountains: I completely agree with you that having that impassable barrier is a very significant factor. I definitely use it in every single game, as one of my main strategies is to plant cities--no matter how far away--to block access to other civs. Then I keep closed borders for as long as possible to allow myself time to develop while the others rush ahead. Eventually I catch up.
I think the mod that allows for mountain passage also gives an option that this should negatively impact the units as they cross. But if all of these options cause performance hits, they aren't worth it. Better maybe that mountains stay as they are.
In quite a few of my more recent worlds there have been big chunks of land space cut off by mountains with no passes available. I guess that is why crossing mountains seemed like an attractive option lol. It seemed silly that I would have to use boats to transport workers to develop squares within my city itself because there is no way to get to them, plus no way to build roads.
Spies: bummer about added missions, but it will be interesting to see what you can do if you decide to look into it further. I think however that using missionaries in spy-like ways is actually more interesting to me and perhaps easier, as their missions would be comparable to existing spy missions that affect culture, dissent and religion.
Forts: what you say makes sense. That is the only way I've used forts in any case. I just liked the idea that in the mod they act as mini-cities and can be contested in the same way. So, you plant a fort and place a warrior on a resource outside your culture zone. You don't have to build any infrastructure or anything else like an actual city, just a road access. It can be won away from you by another unit, and you can go back and forth. That way you get use of the resource but don't have to build a city to use it. At least that is how I understand it works, like I said the game crashes for me so I don't have a lot of experience playing it just yet (this is A New Dawn).
Cultural borders: I agree with you about the expanding cultural borders being more realistic. If you've ever looked at those ethnographic maps of europe, the Caucasus, or the eastern Med, you will see the rather spectacular patchwork quilt of cultures that exist even today, but certainly covered the vast majority of space until the great upheavals after the two world wars. Nationalism makes for fixed looking maps but cultural uniformity is still contested even today. Maybe just skip the idea of fixed borders in the game.
I didn't know about the 20%, I will definitely take note of that in my future games! Yes, I think expanding culture and religion along trading lines, even domestically, would be great.
I almost always build cultural buildings right from the start, so I don't even know what 'free' culture my cities are getting lol. Do cities actually still expand into territory quite a bit without them?
Do you have any idea if there are built in limits to the size of cultural borders? I almost always play for cultural victories and I haven't really noticed that my cities stop expanding their cultural borders, but I've never really paid attention. If there is a limit, no matter the population size, it would be kind of cool to know the max size in terms of territory that any city can get, even with legendary culture.
Diseases: Yes, please. I seem to remember reading someone proposing a Genocide option, which in no way would I want to have even in a game. But certainly even scouts and explorers spread diseases long before more direct cultural contact. It would be interesting if there was a way to have disease AND immunity spread along with contact and change over time depending on cultural strength, trade and diplomacy/borders. Especially if it just mimicked something already calculated in the game, with increases and decreases. PAE has plagues and leper colonies, stuff like that would be interesting in HR.
Future stuff: If you never take on that end of the tech chart, I'm okay with that lol. Like you said, better to keep the earlier parts of the mod as fantastic as they are. Perhaps if you find great stuff in other mods that have really focused on the later eras, it might be possible to just adapt and borrow and transfer over what you can. When you are in the mood
Animals: I think maybe we are revealing our western bias here lol, since animals are still actors in some parts of the world, and not just for zoos. I was in India a few years ago and even though there are only 2000 or so tigers left in the entire world (an absolutely devastating and depressing bit of info), there was a killing of a villager where I was staying. Some people were upset, but not in the way say americans might be, calling for a War on Tigers. (Although to be fair, things have changed. Cougars kill a few hikers every so often and yet many people nearby still want them protected and not just hunted and removed.)
Certainly the big game animals that manage to survive horrific poaching rates in Africa today still trample farms and cause problems. Even in these places, there is a respect for these animals among many (but not all), they aren't just nuisances to be destroyed, many people there still think they have as much right to exist as humans. Goes back to the religion and culture thing. Until the last century, when protecting animals so Big White Men could hunt them, the big animals ran all over the place and always had to be dealt with, culturally and economically.
Even in eastern Europe today there are areas where wolves are something people worry about. My brother lived in rural Bulgaria for a few years and said he had no idea until then that this could possibly be true. (What is very tragic though is that wolves native to the western hemisphere do not and never have hunted humans, unlike old world wolves, which definitely have a long history of hunting humans; this didn't stop them from nearly being exterminated and even now it is a huge struggle to get them reintroduced, as here in my state where I live.) However, the lone bear in Italy was killed recently. I think that sums up the european view, sigh. Perhaps only in Europe and parts of North America were animals so thoroughly wiped out that we think of them as relics of the past, or something only for Exotic Other places and zoos/preserves. Although the Maori did a good job of it too where you are lol. (You are a kiwi right?)
But I think in the game it would be great to have animals that roam around and occasionally wreak havoc. Animal damage would be a small cost to pay if a civ gets other benefits from having them around and the environments that spawn them, as suggested in my other post. If it doesn't cause performance issues of course, what really counts is that the game works!
"? To be not free. (Upgrading 200 units in sigle turn for free.)
Maybe it will be bether to ignore it.
