Now, I don't know if this is still a work in progress and if you take any suggestions/ideas/feedback, but nevertheless I do a have a few about the gameplay.
I have played this mod with the two included maps about 7 times now, at prince level, with various civs. My suggestions are based on that experience and my purpose is to make the game more fun and also maybe a bit more historicaly acurate (vast empires, quick campaigns, more interesting war). Some of the suggestions below are about the mod itself and some about the map design. Some may not be doable or may be totally wrong...
Naval & Sea changes:
- Make the
Fishing Boats cheaper (for game balance, now the civs that are inland with one settler can improve many tiles, but it takes one fishing boat for every sea resource for the coastal civs)
- Make available at an earlier time a
Ship with Ranged Combat so that it can be actually usefull and make naval warefare more important).
- Make the
Harbor available at an earlier time (this is very crucial for been able to create colonies without losing cash, image the Phoenicans or the Greeks without colonies).
- Make all the Military Ships (without ranged combat ability) able to
go though enemy territory without casing casus belli (so that they can actually explore the map and not just sit there when they meet a civ that won't agree to Open Borders))
- Make availabe at an earlier time a Military Ship that can
cross ocean tiles
Other Changes
-
End-game wonders: 1)Increase the cost for building St. Peter’s Basilica so that it takes more time to build since it is a so important wonder 2) Add new 2 new World Wonders: Crusades and Jihad. They can be built only in a holy city and they provide bonus for free unit maintenance (for example 10 free units, you figure it out) and increase religious pressure for the city. No civ can build both of them.
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End-game unit: Holy Warrior (mounted). It requires iron + copper + horses, it has a lot of movement (5), ignores terrain, has no defense terrain bonus, but has bonus against cities and each civ can only have 5 of them at the same time.
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World Wonders: Increase the build cost of the wonders that provide free buildings in all the cities and at the same time increase the number of wonders that do so (make more wonders that provide free buildings in every city, of course this would take a lot of time and planning, just an idea)
-
Warfare: Decrease Base City Defense value and increase the build cost of defensive buildings (thus making the cities more difficult to defend). This way we can re-create great historical campaigns (like for example the campaign of Alexander the Great) something that with current mod is very difficult, especially if the enemy cities are in mountainous areas. Also this would drive players to build more defensive buildings only in the cities that really matter.
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Science: Do something about the science-bonus of Babylon (it is over-powered right now) or offer some choice to slightly increase science at the early part of the game for all the other civs.
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Religion: Allow to buy Great Persons with faith before the Dark Ages. Reduce the cost in faith of the military units that one can buy in that way.
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Happiness: We want to make Great Empires (like the Persian, the Macedonian or the Roman Empire). With the current balance of happiness this is very difficult (at prince level) even with the help of religion and the right social policies. My suggestion is either to add more items of the same luxury resource, so that the civs can have more to trade) or increase the amount of happiness each luxury provides. Maybe also decrease somehow the unhappiness caused from puppet cities (maybe with a wonder, or a social policy, or by default).
that's all...
