I respect your right to not play the game if you feel it's so unbalanced or handicapped with bugs/issues. However for many - it seems you can do three simple things to make Apollo a real challenge for those of us who are fairly skilled but not CiV deity gods.
No mods needed, just an exercise in self control.
1. Don't enable frenzied aliens. They seriously hamper the AI lot more than you
2. Don't abuse the negative health lack of penalty. Self control yourself to play as if negative health was crushing, and simply keep health at 0 or higher all game.
3. Don't build autplants
Use, abuse, spam TRs all you want, but if you just do these simple steps, even with power of TRs (limited to 2 per city without the autoplant) with zero balance mods or lot of more complicated self restraint issues, for most players this will create a fairly challenging Apollo game.
Btw - I put frenzied aliens at #1 because unlike frenzied barbs, the AI (or human) has no competitive units that can take them on early game, seriously hampering the all important early expansion that helps jump start their empires. It's just that humans can work around frenzied aliens more efficiently than the AI.
No mods needed, just an exercise in self control.
1. Don't enable frenzied aliens. They seriously hamper the AI lot more than you
2. Don't abuse the negative health lack of penalty. Self control yourself to play as if negative health was crushing, and simply keep health at 0 or higher all game.
3. Don't build autplants
Use, abuse, spam TRs all you want, but if you just do these simple steps, even with power of TRs (limited to 2 per city without the autoplant) with zero balance mods or lot of more complicated self restraint issues, for most players this will create a fairly challenging Apollo game.
Btw - I put frenzied aliens at #1 because unlike frenzied barbs, the AI (or human) has no competitive units that can take them on early game, seriously hampering the all important early expansion that helps jump start their empires. It's just that humans can work around frenzied aliens more efficiently than the AI.