Just been through a full game on Large Map - Marathon.
I'm posting this here because most of it is related to suggestions (or gripes on my part). If you want me to post any of it in the bug thread or on the ROM thread then give me a kick and I will do so
It's posts like these I love. Lots of in-depth comments and critiques. AND is only as good as the players who play.
Firstly I had very few crashes, I did notice however that the majority were all around the industrial period (just before and just after reaching the era change). But it cant have been more than 4 or 5 at that period and in a Marathon game that is very easy to live with. Probably 10 or so crashes during the whole game. Thats one every 100 turns maybe which is great. Vanilla probably crashed that amount.
I've worked hard to make it as stable as possible. I get less crashes than that (1 per 350 turns), but I have been trying to debug them. Good news, I have fixed 4 separate CTD causes. Bad News, I caused 3 of them.
But wait there is 2400+ turns in a Marathon game!?! I won almost 1000 turns in and this is where my first gripe begins. I had managed to tech my way to nuclear waepons and beyond before 18th century.
The AI does have some issues. It is greatly hindered by it's inability to conduct siege warfare in AND and RoM. Then, in the late game, the AI fails to see the importance of ammo factories. I have corrected this. In my latest test games, the AI have been much more likely to get heavy siege units and will now recognize ammo factories for what they are. Expect a smarter AI in AND 1.60.
Now I am no master at Civ, I've been playing since Civ 1 back when I had an Atari STE but I have never been one of those players that breaks the game down into numbers, Min/Maxing everything. For me that just kills the spirit of the game. But yet I managed to gain such a tech lead so early on even with tech diffusion that I could have actually won a domination victory much earlier. I have always played at Noble level and I have never been so far ahead. I play Noble because the idea of Civ to me is that everyone AI included, gets to play on a level playing field. So as I am sure some people will say go up a difficulty, to me that is another chunk off of the spirit of the game. I see alot of people saying that with new versions of ROM they had to drop difficulty, for me it is the oposite and that is not a good thing. Granted there was a few options that I will be eliminating from my next game that made life easier for me, the chief culprit was fixed borders. I love the concept but it gives the player way too much advantage over the AI.
Fixed borders is definitely a sticking point. It wasn't developed by me, but by Dexy, another modder. It's an interesting concept, but the AI sucks at claiming territory. I plan on revisiting it in the future to fix that. The good news is that you can just turn it off.
Mobile Artilery comes way too early. You get it with logistics and it becomes a very powerful unit so early on. Surely it should have the prerequisite of Robotics and Computers.
Probably a good idea. I've been addressing the chief problems with RoM, but so far, technologies have not been among them. (That's not to say there isn't problems with techs, I know of several funny issues, for example, the wheel is not a prereq for the Future Tech. Absurd. ) I will add those prereqs, hopefully that will make things a bit more difficult for the human.
This one is related to BUG, I was pleased to see in the bug options that they finally added an aiport icon to the city bar, however it does not appear to work with any of the airport buildings.
I saw this in the BUG features, but AFAIK, it was never turned on because RoM has tons of types of airports. I don't know exactly how it works, I need to consult the BUG team.
This one is cosmetic, the workers appearance doesn't change until the modern era now for some reason, surely that should be put back to the industrial. It just looks weird, like I had some kind of slave workforce during the industrial revolution.
Lol. Aesthetics matter. A lot. I'll see what the issue is for that.
When scrolling down on the victory screen the text displays double.
Could I see a screenshot? If I remember, this was a bug in the 1.50 Beta's, but I corrected it a while ago...
With the amount of air units that can be held in the variety of airports, I would really like to see air units un able to be built or held in cities without them. Failing this at least a reduction to 1 air unit per city without an airport.
Perhaps they could be held in other cities, but not repaired?
It seemed strange to me that I could build the UN mission without anyone building the United Nations. Surely it should be a prerequisite for doing so... Like the manhatten project.
The UN Mission was added by Zappara, I don't really know what's up with that.
Is the Manhatten project now supposed to be a National wonder? Again seemed strange as only one in the world can be built.
I thought it was a project.
Sea tunnels, I love the idea but i think there should be some restrictions otherwise you just end up with a road network in the sea. I'd like to see this reduced to coast tiles only. If its possible to do, coast tiles only and a max of one ocean tile.
Perhaps a gold per turn cost? That way people couldn't go wild with them. I'd need to teach the AI that though.
Warlords. This has already been discussed, you can have way too many of them. I'd be happy with just being able to build one of each type. And even then there is probably too many
I'm not a fan of them either. I may make them a game option.
Mountains. Orginally I unchecked this option as I like the bottlenecks that mountains (sometimes) create. But after trying it I loved the Idea of having my cities being able to work them.
Your initial reaction is similar to many others. And I doubt you know how far the Mountains Mod has come. (Initially, it wasn't a option and mountains were always passable.)
I'd like to see however, military units being alot more restricted by them, by either:
Only alowing military units to traverse them by getting the mountaineering promotion (make it easier etc to get it)
Or
Only allowing military units to traverse them if they are in a stack with a leader unit that has mountaineering promotion. Make the promotion only available to leaders and again make it easier for them to get it. Dont know if this one is possible.
Or
Only allow military units to traverse them if a road is present (or at least restric the wheled units/tracked etc units)
Workers should stay as they are with regard to mountains.
There actually is a mountaineering promotion. It's only available to great generals (and there was a bug in AND 1.55, so that no units could use it, I have corrected this for AND 1.60 (I seem to say that alot.)
The Idea about roads is interesting, but the AI might have issues. However, Mountains do cost extra movement to cross, don't expect any tanks or fast moving vehicles to be able to move past them in 1 turn. (And if you put a fort and one or two riflemen on them, they turn into invincible fortifications).
Edit: Oh I forgot this one and I never thought I would hear myself saying it but I really think the Wonder/National wonder limit should be raised slightly. I almost ran out of cities to build things in. Does this scale btw with map size?
It does not scale with map size. However, I did raise the NW limit to 6 and the WW limit to 5 and added an unlimited wonder game option.
(in case of coal), or 2
