Thanks for the great mod!
It improves the AI by a lot and does have some very reasonable balance changes. Clearly a lot of work has been put to this mod and the results are great.
Although I am generally pleased with the mod I find some changes by it to be questionable and think that there are possible improvements, so I post this feedback. I also post how to perform changes (mostly reverts) to the mod which I prefer, so any like-minded individuals can follow suit.
I color my changes to the mod in light green color. I played on version "1.10".
Hereditary rule has been changed to give 1 happiness per 2 military units in a city and 25% extra happiness from resources. This makes happiness levels very dependent on resources, which puts player in a very difficult situation if land doesn't offer many happiness resources. For example in one game my empire of 6 cities covering large land area had only one happiness resource (wine), so I was completely gimped happiness-wise. Happiness from buildings is not a very good alternative, because they usually don't give much happiness, often depend on happiness resources themselves and are quite costly. Hereditary rule offers a way of getting happiness regardless of resources, so it can be used in every game as a fallback if needed. It has good synergy with building garrison units as they give both defense and happiness when player uses hereditary rule.
In manual it is written that "The BtS ability is fiddly, encourages players to train lots of Warriors and never upgrade them (or generally to train more units than needed), makes it too easy to grow cities without buildings and is a poor fit flavor-wise (would fit for a military dictatorship". Actually it is usually a good idea to train archers or other good city defenders as they can additionally defend the city. Outdated units can become valuable in future too as they can be upgraded when needed. Growing cities is usually difficult and buildings are often not viable alternative. Generally I can't understand the rationale for nerfing hereditary rule. I haven't seen anyone say, that it is overpowered. People usually use slavery and whip away unhappy population, but I prefer to run hereditary rule and grow my cities big. It is an alternative strategy, which have been nerfed for no apparent objective reasons.
I reverted changes to hereditary rule by changing in "Assets\XML\GameInfo\Civ4CivicInfos.xml" CIVIC_HEREDITARY_RULE iHappyPerMilitary 1 -> 2 and iLuxuryModifier 25 -> 0.
As I described in
here unhappiness from emancipation should be halved by changing in "Assets\XML\GameInfo\Civ4CivicInfos.xml" CIVIC_EMANCIPATION iCivicPercentAnger 400 -> 200.
Revolt mechanic is very frustrating, forcing player to keep in conquered cities disproportionate military garrisons compared to the city sizes in order to avoid chances of city revolting. For example in noble difficulty game at 880 AD for cities of recently destroyed enemy:
4 pop city with 9 power (longbowman + archer) and one previous revolt has 4.7% chance of revolt needing +6 power for suppressing.
8 pop city with 12 power(2 longbowmen) has 9.3% chance of revolt needing +31 power (4 macemen!) for suppressing.
4 pop city with 14 power (macemen + longbowman) has 5.3% chance of revolt needing +11 power to suppress.
Next turn 8 pop city revolted having 2 turns of revolt with 29.9% chance to decrease turns, which means on average 6 real turns of revolt.
Even 10% chance of revolt per turn has 47% chance of revolt per 6 turns and 5% chance of revolt per turn has 40% chance of revolt per 10 turns, which means that pretty much total suppressing is necessary for safety. In case of revolt city doesn't produce anything (so can't increase its culture too) and loses culture from all its tiles which can be very dangerous because allows enemy units to use roads on those tiles (so they could easily attack defenders damaged by revolt). I can't be expected to keep 3 macemen in 4 pop city to eliminate chance of revolt potentially disabling entire city and allowing enemy units free roaming.
There is unhappiness penalty for foreign culture in city (for example 4 unhappy faces for that 8 pop city I mentioned earlier) in addition to needing to fight against culture of other AIs in order to keep control of tiles which is enough to motivate player to produce its own culture. There is no need for this extremely punishing and unfun revolt mechanic. Attacker is disadvantaged in Civ IV combat already, needing to have numerical/technological advantage over defender in order to successfully conquer. Having to keep entire armies in conquered cities to suppress revolts is just not feasible. 2 city garrison units from current era should be totally enough for keeping order in city of any size.
I changed in "Assets\XML\GlobalDefines_advc.xml" REVOLTS_IGNORE_CULTURE_RANGE 1 -> 0, which removed revolt chances from cities I mentioned earlier, making gameplay much more pleasant. I suggest making it the default or heavily reducing needed unit power for suppressing revolts. Changing REVOLTS_IGNORE_CULTURE_RANGE has a side-effect though, that decreasing occupation timer becomes too easy, usually being 100% chance for decrease.
Mod makes it so that workers have a 50% chance of being destroyed on capture. I found this to be unnecessary mechanic, because workers are usually needed for transforming captured lands according to the wishes of conqueror and this change only makes that more troublesome. AIs seem to have on average around 1 worker per city, which is usually too little (I prefer 1.5 per city although it is okay to have less late game). I often felt that I captured too few workers from conquered AIs, making building improvements and roads/railroads take too much time. Losing 50% of workers is also bad from the perspective of the conquered civ, because he can't capture them back.
I reverted this change by changing in "Assets\XML\GlobalDefines_advc.xml" BASE_UNIT_CAPTURE_CHANCE 50 -> 100.
I couldn't nuke an enemy city because it had 13% of my culture. I don't understand why should my culture (especially so low) in enemy city affect my ability to nuke it. Especially when I could raze cities regardless of culture.
I reverted this change to BTS behavior by changing in "Assets\XML\GlobalDefines_advc.xml" CITY_NUKE_CULTURE_THRESH 10 -> 101.
When AI is attacked, he should leave minimal garrisons in his cities, collecting rest of units into giant SOD and use it against the attacker (preferably attacking first in order to benefit from collateral damage). Currently they split their units, often even moving some units away from city I am currently attacking, which makes it easy for me to take that city and kill defenders effectively, which leaves even less units for the AI to defend next cities against me. Same happens against next city, etc. Often I am worried when approaching a city with many defenders but to my relief and surprise AI moves many of them away, letting me easily take the city. With each lost city AI becomes weaker by losing commerce, production and units. It is like AI performs divide and conquer tactic against itself, helping me by a lot.
If it is too difficult to make AI use the SOD tactic I described earlier, then at least avoid retreating units from cities, because it is not worth it to lose the cities and land. What is the point of AI losing all his cities except the last one, while retreating to that last city? I could just make peace at that point, leaving AI to huddle in his last city while I gain the benefits from having all his other cities.
In here Napoleon keeps 5 units defending Paris (easily crushed), while there are 9 units safe in Marseilles. Wouldn't it be much more logical for him to defend Paris with all these 14 units?
I gave AI ICBMs in worldbuilder but it didn't use them against other AI who had captured many of cities and was about to vassalize him. On couple more attempts I managed to get AIs to use 1-2 ICBMs out of many I gave them, which is weird, as they are clearly not taking full advantage of them.
For example AI used 2 ICBMs out of many against my border city, reducing its garrison to 2 macemen, super medic and worker, but didn't use any more ICBMs or invade with conventional units. After I used ICBMs against all his cities, he responded with one more ICBM against my capital. Only when I once more used ICBMs against all his cities, did he respond with attacking most of my cities with most of his ICBMs (although used 1 ICBM against each city, while should have used 2 for more effect)
AI (Napoleon from Southwest) settled city (Marseilles) behind both my and Suryavarman's (Jayendranagari) borders. He sent settler with archer through my land, even using my roads. Is this normal?
AI often doesn't remove jungle from ivory even after has built camp there, so that tile unnecessarily loses 1 food.
Once AI told me that he has to cancel the deal of one resource vs another, but when I offered the exact same deal again to him, he agreed.
AI offered me 5 gold for dye, 5 gold for incense and 9 gold for both, but when I made deal for one of them, the AI didn't want the other anymore, saying that he would have nothing to gain. It is weird, that I can sell both of them together, but can't sell them both individually.
AdvCiv doesn't calculate commerce bonus of financial trait during golden age correctly. In manual it is said, that financial trait adds 1 commerce to tiles with a natural yield (terrain, feature, river and hill) of at least 2 commerce or a total yield of at least 3 commerce.
With financial trait during golden age:
1. Riverside grassland/plains tile without improvement has 2 commerce (1 from river and 1 from golden age), with cottage has 3 commerce (+1 from cottage, but should have +1 from financial bonus too because total commerce is 3), with hamlet has 5 commerce (+1 from growing to hamlet and +1 from financial bonus)
2. Non-riverside grassland/plains with cottage has 2 commerce (1 from cottage and 1 from golden age), with hamlet has 3 commerce (+1 from growing to hamlet, but should have +1 from financial bonus too because total commerce is 3), with village has 5 commerce (+1 from growing to village and +1 from financial bonus)
Apparently AdvCiv doesn't include golden age commerce bonus into total yield before deciding whether to add financial bonus. This contradicts statement from manual "or a total yield of at least 3 commerce" and unmodded game (in it any tile with at least 1 commerce gets +1 from golden age and then +1 from financial trait too (because total yield is 2)).
This is a problem for my work-in-progress mod for automatic population assigning because it doesn't know whether the tile with 3+ commerce has financial bonus already applied or not during golden age, which affects calculations for potential future extra value of cottage with financial trait. Currently it uses logic of "If cottaged tile currently gives less than 3 commerce and player has financial trait, then add 1 to potential commerce in anticipation of financial bonus", which doesn't work properly during golden age due to aforementioned bug.
Sometimes on Pangaea I start in a position where I am immediately boxed in by nearest AI (his first city covers entire land bridge) with quite small peninsula for myself. This is very unfair, immediately leaving me in a disadvantegous position. I think that on Pangaea and Continents it should be guaranteed that no player/AI starts boxed in. Land bridge should be wide enough to let me quickly place a city there to guarantee access to the rest of the map. If it can't be guaranteed during map generation, then try to detect this situation and regenerate map in that case.
In this game Washington immediately boxes me in:
Sometimes on Pangaea one civ is placed on another landmass, much smaller than the main landmass, which severely handicaps him and gives civs on main landmass one less civ to interact with, reducing variety and fun in the game. Primary reason for playing on Pangaea is to play with all civs on the same landmass, giving everyone possibility to expand and interact with each other. Such isolated starts work against the main characteristics of Pangaea maps and so should not be generated.
In this game on Pangaea Alexander was spawned on his own landmass, where he built 5 cities and never interacted with anyone, until I won domination victory in AD 1640:
There appears to be too few grassland tiles and food resources on maps, which makes finding good cities (Heroic Epic, etc) too hard. Especially all starting sites should be very good in order to guarantee fair gameplay, but currently they are sometimes very bad. I saw in unmodded game starting site with 17 surplus food thanks to 3 seafood, etc while in AdvCiv games I often see starting sites which don't have enough food to work all their tiles, like this:
I reverted some changes to resource placement by changing in "Assets\XML\GlobalDefines_advc.xml":
1. SUBLINEAR_BONUS_QUANTITIES 1 -> 0. Not sure whether had any effect, but should result in somewhat more resources on maps by using unmodded resource placement.
2. NORMALIZE_STARTPLOTS_AGGRESSIVELY 0 -> 1. Great effect! Now basically all starting sites are good like in unmodded game, usually having 8+ food surplus and often being great Heroic Epic cities or great person farms (depending on whether are inland or coastal).
Currently when building an improvement on a tile where there is forest and when building that improvement causes forest to be chopped down, then forest will be removed (and hammers added to the city) at the end of building an improvement. I think that it is better to get hammers as quickly as possible so in such cases I always first queue chopping of forest and then building an improvement, which gives city hammers sooner. I would like that this would be done automatically, so when I would order building of an improvement on a forested tile, then chopping of forest would be done first.
It is weird that I have to temporarily decrease science slider in order to get positive gold surplus for offering gold per turn to AI in negotiations, even though I have large amount of gold and can afterwards immediately increase science slider back to previous level.
Why does one religion almost always die out in a city when another one spreads there? Currently all my cities have either 0 or 1 religions. In real life and in unmodded game there are often multiple religions in the same city.
In random event of fire destroying the forge in a city I picked the option of paying gold in order to preserve the forge. Forge was preserved, but game displayed incorrect message of "A fire has destroyed the forge in the ...".
Probably, since keldath did all the work, my memory of the matter has been (especially) transient.
. Maybe could some alterations be done if some mechanics are too extreme according to majority? Discussions can highlight possible improvements. It is very good, that you have explained your changes, rationales for them and ways to alter them so thoroughly so that people can modify the mod according to their preferences.
I rather keep getting asked about the absence of the option than why I haven't improved it.
