Thanks to
@gapetit I have a TOT version of this scenario.
There are a few changes that I want to make to this scenario, taking advantage of TOTPP and Lua.
The first category of changes are to simply use the features of TOTPP and Lua to integrate the house rules into game mechanics:
No pillaging of stackable terrain
No fortresses on mountain squares
Cities can only be founded on Colony Sites by Colonists
Only size 6 cities can build colonists
Use the 'Colony Sites List' in the Read me folder to name cities
New cities gained from goody huts must be disbanded asap
City walls must always be in place. If destroyed use CivCity to rebuild
Only Citizens are allowed to join a city to boost its size
City walls to prevent loss of population, and fortresses for stackable terrain can be handled by TOTPP features. Stack kills on mountains should be easy with Lua, and I'm pretty sure I can stop fortresses from being built (or, I just swap out the construction tech). Unit attack stats will have to be changed to reflect these differences.
I already have code to forbid construction of colonists for cities below size 6.
Forbidding the construction of cities was something we did in Over the Reich, and I should be able to do it here as well. An event to automatically use the prescribed city names should also not be that difficult. By changing fertility values of tiles, I should be able to make the AI build cities only on colony sites (or I could just teleport the city to a nearby site). I think this would prevent goody hut cities.
The onCityFounded event also runs for goody hut cities, so I could also prevent (or teleport to a colony site) goody hut cities from being created, rather than count on the player to disband them.
Maybe I could prevent non-citizens from joining cities, but I'm not sure.
The second category of changes would use the extra capabilities of Lua to make what I think are fairly obvious improvements:
Perhaps the most key change I would like to make would be to generate captured slaves at the location where they are captured, rather than having them sent directly to the capital. It might also make sense to generate a 'treasure' unit to be 'redeemed' for cash at the capital, rather than being immediately given that cash.
I also think that it makes sense to have events increase the military defences of cities/rich villages when nearby towns are plundered or conquered.
Furthermore, I'm inclined to think that the Strategos should offer some kind of bonus to other units, rather than simply being a monster attacker. However, I'm not sure what that bonus should be.
The last category of changes would change the game in order to make it shorter, so that a PBEM might be feasible, or just to improve multiplayer in general:
The game as it stands lasts 414 turns, and the Persian invasion starts around turn 210, I believe. This is obviously far too long for a PBEM. If turns represent 5 years, then the Persian invasion starts around turn 42, and the scenario is 83 turns long, which seems in the realm of feasibility. The 'problem' is that I don't really want to redesign the entire scenario, so I need mechanisms to accelerate the speed, while not changing the basis of the game too much. Here are my thoughts:
Allow ships to restore to full movement points 4 times in a turn, but only if they are adjacent to land, and there are no enemy warships nearby. This would allow the ships to have the same 'speed' as if the turns were 1 year long, but still force them to follow the same pattern of movement relatively near the coast, and allow for interception (or at least forcing an enemy to bring in a warship to kill yours). This would make land forces comparatively slow, but I'm not sure that is a huge issue. In the game I played, it seemed like exploring the interior was a bit too efficient. I guess the Etruscans would be most affected by this.
I might use Lua events to calculate the food surplus and give cities extra food each turn based on that, so they grow at the same rate they otherwise would. Perhaps I would also bestow shields to speed up production, though I'm not quite so sure about that.
I'm not sure what to do about technology acquisition. One possibility would be to cut the tech cost, so techs are researched more quickly. Another, which I lean towards, is to have, say, a 1/3 chance for each civ to transmit its technology to another civ with the prerequisites each turn (maybe 1/6 if at war). This would speed up technological progress (unless, I suppose, everyone followed the exact same tech path), and would act as a nice 'catch up' mechanic. Technologies from trade would still be reduced relative to the years passed, but I'm not so concerned about that, since trade is generally too powerful anyway.
Does anyone have any thoughts on any of this? Would there be interest in playing a PBEM of this if it were done relatively quickly? If there's little interest in a PBEM, I would focus on a 'feature showcase' rather than carefully considering balance.