C3C Enhanced Edition Preview

[SayHayKid]

Last year I came back to Civ3 after over a decade. It is one of my all-time favorite games, along with the Baldur’s Gate series, that I always come back to. As much as I love the epic game, I got tired of following the same script every game. So, I started researching other mods, stealing (err borrowing) others’ ideas, and aggregating them into my “House Rules” mod. Then I stumbled across the large mod packs like Rhye’s, RAR, CCM, Worldwide, etc., and was blown away. I liked various aspects of the different mods. So, I started creating my own “epic mod” for internal use, aggregating these ideas.

But … with that, I put the horse before the cart. I was adding all these bells and whistles before really focusing on balance and gameplay. Even though I am 90% done with the larger epic mod, Global Hegemony, I decided to scale back and start by creating a simpler “game balancing” mod that plays close to the original epic game. I wanted to include the AI balancing tweaks generally agreed upon by the Civ Fanatics community (plus some of my ideas) and incorporate some of the new graphics created by the community. Much like Beamdog did with my other favorite game, Baladur’s Gate, when they released the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition.

Thus, I present a preview of … C3C Enhanced Edition. I am not doing anything new that other great mods haven’t done, I am just incorporating the ideas I found most interesting. I have planned out all the changes, new units, new buildings, new Civs, etc. in a spreadsheet. I have already added them to the BIQ, and as of this past weekend, completed the arduous task of updating the Civilopedia.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback.

TECH TREE

I wanted to keep the tech tree similar to the epic game. However, I did a fairly major overhaul of the Ancient Era. Firstly, I wanted to greatly enhance the naval aspects of the game (additional improvements, ships, etc.) Secondly, each starting tech aligns with a specific trait for each CIV.

• Agricultural = Pottery
• Commercial = Writing
• Expansionist = The Wheel
• Industrious = Mining
• Militaristic = Warrior Code
• Religious = Ceremonial Burial
• Scientific = Masonry
• Seafaring = Boat Building

*Lastly, inspired by @Theov, the first row of the tech tree is not tradeable. This allows for some interesting tech choices early game and allows time for Ancient units to be more useful.

ANCIENT ERA

The new tech tree for Era 1, along with other changes I incorporated, has made for some interesting strategic choices. Depending on your starting position (and your starting traits) you'll usually want to choose between Pottery or Bronze Working. If you have an abundance of grasslands, most likely you'll want to research Bronze Working. If you have lots of plains, you'll probably want to research Pottery. However, you won't want to put off Bronze Working for too long because the improved Barbarians will be a big surprise. Then you have a choice between growth, happiness, trade, or building up your military.

• Getting to City-State quickly gives you an early government that removes the Despotism penalty.
• Going for Boat Building early opens your trade network. You can't enter neighbor's territories without a Right of Passage. If you wait too long for Naval exploration you will be blocked along the coast and won't be able to explore without negotiating a ROP.
• Thinking about neglecting the Religious techs for a while? The Marketplace no longer doubles the effects of luxuries. So, if you want to continue your rapid expansion, you will need some happiness buildings.
• What about the Military techs? You'll be in for a big surprise (literally) when the second Barbarian unit comes rumbling through your territory.
• Monarchy and Republic have been tweaked and both come at the end of Era 1. Are you a builder? You'll likely want to go with Republic. Most of the techs leading up to Republic support this strategy. Going to war in Republic? You better be quick and decisive or watch your cities be engulfed in disorder. Want to take it to your neighbors early? Then Monarchy might be the way to go, but you better capture cities fast to increase support for your military.

AGE OF DISCOVERY

I really want to change the Era 2 tech tree to bring the Naval techs towards the beginning of the tech tree ala CCM by @Civinator. But ... the goal for this initial "lite" version of C3C Enhanced is to keep the gameplay as close to the epic game as possible. So, the extensive re-working of this era will wait for the non-lite version where I forego trying to keep gameplay similar to the standard game. Feudalism no longer has a government. It was moved to Era 1 as City-States. Its only real use was for ICS, but ICS is no longer a viable strategy with the changes in C3C Enhanced. You have three choices at the start of the era. Are you suffering to keep your citizens happy? You might need some Cathedrals. Don't have horses and/or iron? You might want to go with Engineering for Crossbowmen.

After a couple of play-throughs, I added Humanism as a prerequisite for Matchlock. Muskets came too soon after Pikemen since Pikemen were moved to Chivalry. Chivalry came as a response to Knights and other cavalry. Also, Muskets are no longer defensive. Historically they replaced archers and crossbows and needed to be supported by pikes for defense.

Finally, the big change that you will notice, you can no longer beeline for Military Tradition and Cavalry for early domination. Cavalry has been moved to Nationalism (Cuirassiers and Grenadiers are now available at Military Tradition) and Military Tradition has several additional prereqs. I am still not sure about having Naval Ordnance as a prerequisite for Military Tradition or Military Tradition as a prerequisite for Naval Ordnance. I want the Age of Sail to not be over too soon with the arrival of Ironclads, but I also don't want the Napoleonic era to be too quick with Rifleman and Cav at the start of the next era. I am thinking of switching it so Military Tradition comes first. Cuirassiers and Grenadiers need more time before being obsolete.

INDUSTRIAL AGE

The big change in the Industrial Era is that steel is now a prereq for Infantry and Nationalism is required. Before you could beeline to Infantry without having research Rifleman. It also delays Infantry a bit before you get to the "World Wars". The era ends with the discovery of the Nuclear Bomb that ended World War II. Another goal that I had was no empty techs. Every tech provides something. For example, Zeppelins and Einsten's Lab GW were added to Atomic Theory.

Partisans come with Communism. They can not be built, only upgraded from Serfs (Era 2 worker upgrade). Initially, I gave them Hidden Nationality, but that wasn't working so well. They do however treat All Terrain As Roads and are the first non-wheeled combat units available (can move across mountains, through jungles, and wade through marshes. They also can pillage which NO fast units in the game can do any longer nor can Infantry and their subsequent upgrades.

MODERN ERA

The big change to Era 4 is that NONE of the techs are tradeable. Also, building the various spaceship parts requires your cities to have an "aeronautics" industry (must have an Air Force Base which requires a Factory). There are some new Attack Helicopters that have Lethal Land Bombardment (removed from Bombers), a Special Forces unit (massively upgraded version of the Modern Paratrooper), and Nuclear Subs, Missile Destroyers, and Missile Cruisers that can carry Cruise Missiles. Plus, a couple of new Great Wonders including the Sydney Opera House and Climate Change to help those going for a Cultural Victory.

NEW CIVS
Some of the original Civs overlap, or are less memorable, in an overcrowded part of the map. I wanted to bring in some under-represented African Civs and also fill in some empty areas on the map. There will be two biqs. One with the original Civs and one with the new Civs.

I plan to replace:

• Sumeria (Babylon covers the Mesopatamians)
• Hittites (Crowded area and more deserving Civs in the region)
• Byzantine (Greece and Rome have them covered)
• Celts (England becomes Britain)
• Portugal (Western Europe is over-represented and they are the least "iconic")

The additions:

• Mali
• Ethiopia
• Khmer
• Polynesia
• Nubia/Brazil/Siam

I am not sure about Nubia. They rivaled Egypt in power for a time, even ruling Egypt for a stretch and building their versions of the Great Pyramids. However, the region is pretty crowded including Ethiopia. Other Civs that I have been considering: are Siam and Brazil. Not sure if Siam and Khmer both make sense, I went with Khmer to represent the region. If I take Portugal, Brazil could pseudo-represent them in addition to adding a large "modern" Civ in an under-represented region. But .... what memorable/historic contributions have they made? What would they have as a UU? Others have suggested the Sioux. That area of the map is under-represented, but the Native American tribes just don’t excite me all that much. Plus, they don’t have any historic structures, monuments, cities, scientific advancements, etc. At least, the Mesoamerican Civs had grand cities and iconic structures.

I also re-assigned some of the traits of the original Civs. You can see those highlighted in Red with the new Civs highlighted in Green.

UNIT LINES
I wanted to make Ancient Era warfare (especially the use of chariots) a little more interesting, fill in some of the gaps (e.g. Musketman to Rifleman), balance some of the units (make Infantry more valuable), and balance some of the UUs. Naval Warfare and the naval units have also been expanded (I like to play on Archipelago or Continents with 70%/80% water).

Currently, I haven't added "flavor units" for the full "Enhanced Edition" effect. For testing purposes, I have left them out. Maybe for the initial "Lite" version of the mod, I will keep it with the generic warrior, the generic spearman, etc. Then add flavor units (African Tribal Warrior, Asian Tribal Warrior, European Tribal Warrior, etc.) in the expanded version of the mod. The community has made some really nice units that could Enhance or modernize the look and feel.

FOOT UNITS
There are quite a few changes in UUs. Even with the new City-States government allowing for a viable early Golden Age, I moved some of the early UUs to later in the timeline. Swordsmen were too overpowered. Their defense has been lowered to 1. They will need to be supported with Spearman and/or cavalry. Also, all three lines merge at Grenadier.

MOUNTED UNITS
I split the Ancient cavalry into two lines. Light and Heavy. This, along with delaying Horseman, gives Chariots more time to shine. It also allows spreading out of the Knight UUs. Chariots and Horseman have the same ADM values, but Chariots can Blitz. Horsemen have the advantage that they can ignore certain terrain and don't need roads to fully take advantage of their faster movements. Chariots are a good early investment because they upgrade to Companion Cavalry (Ancient Cavalry available to all Civs), but the trade-off is if you don't have iron, you can't upgrade. If you don't have iron, Horsemen are a great option since iron isn't needed to upgrade to Horse Archers.

NAVAL UNITS
I added a Naval Power line to the Ancient Era with War Galleys plus added Piracy. Initially, Piracy was going to be the "Naval Power", but I like having a separate non-Pirate line. Seafaring Civs can build War Galleys after discovering Ship Building. Non-Seafaring Civs however have to rely on Pirate Galleys. Either way, you won't want your regular Galleys exploring the world and/or transporting settlers without some support from War Galleys or Pirate Galleys. The Pirate Haven SW adds a 50% tax bonus to simulate "pirate booty" and auto-produces Marauders (amphibious attackers). In addition, ALL Sefaring Civs have a UU naval unit (along with Korea because Turtle Ships are cool). This is in addition to any other UUs they may also have.

AIRCRAFT
I boosted Fighters so hopefully, they will do a better job of intercepting bombers, added strategic bombers, and removed LL bombardment from all aircraft and LS bombardment from Bombers. Plus, I added Attack Helicopters.

 

[SayHayKid]

GOVERNMENTS

*Changes are highlighted in red

Like most people, I pretty much always go for the Republic slingshot. Then stay there for the rest of the game. It seemed weird to me to change to an Ancient Era government and never progress as a Civilization over hundreds or even thousands of years. So, after reading through some discussions I have tried to tweak the governments, including, what to do with everybody’s least favorite government, Feudalism. I also removed Forced labor from all Governments except Despotism. Even if forced labor may have been historically accurate for that era or particular government, they AI would too often whip themselves into oblivion.

IMPROVEMENTS

I added some industrial/modern happiness buildings: Radio Tower and Television Station. Marketplace no longer has the luxury bonus effect, so Metros might need more happiness. Plus, I have builder tendencies, so more stuff to build. Added some additional seafaring improvements.

SMALL WONDERS

There are a couple of new Small Wonders. The Palace is SW and it gives a pretty decent boost to city defenses (coupled with an overall boost to city defenses of 40%). It also produces veteran land and sea units simulating the "royal guard" and "royal navy". Pirate Haven gives a 50% boost to tax revenue to simulate "pirate booty" and also produces a Marauder (early amphibious unit every 5 turns). The Provincial Capitol is a new SW for Democracies and gives the same benefits as the Forbidden Palace. The Forbidden Palace is now the Summer Palace and only available to Monarchies.

GREAT WONDERS

The big change to Great Wonders is that they all require prerequisite buildings before they can be built. The Ancient Era GWs only 1 require one building, but the later era ones require 3. Several Ancient Era GWs also require the new stone resource. A couple of the GW benefits have been changed, but the vast majority stayed the same. For example, the Great Wall no longer puts walls in every city (they couldn't be destroyed) and instead produced a Wall Guard every 5 turns plus reduced War Weariness across your empire. Some new GWs were added to later eras. The Oracle gets the "learn every tech known by two" to simulate The Oracle's mystical ability. The Great Library instead places a Library in every city on the same continent.

I have also been thinking about giving all GWs a significant defensive boost to make "sniping wonders" by the human player harder.

WORLD SIZES

DIFFICULTY

*Changes are highlighted in red.

I wanted the difficulty to scale more logically instead of just ... BOOM AI gets a bunch of extra units. I am hoping that other changes to beef up AI means they won't be needed. We shall see.

TERRAIN

*Changes are highlighted in red.

You can no longer build cities in Desert, Tundra, or Jungle terrain. I also removed airfields and radar. AI doesn't use or defend properly. No more popping an airfield on the edge of a new continent and rebasing all your bombers in one turn. Movement in ALL land terrain is 3 and ALL water terrain is 2. For land units, this combined with "ignore terrain" allows for some interesting changes to mounted and mechanized units. For naval units, combined with "ignore terrain" it speeds up ancient ships along the coast while slowing large modern ships (which move faster in sea and ocean).

RESOURCES

Ivory has been moved to a strategic resource and renamed Elephants. They allow for the Elphant Rider and a couple of UUs. Timber and Stone have been added as strategic resources. Stone is needed for several early Great Wonders along with Walls (with the new Barbarians you may want to build a couple). Timber is needed for Medieval and Renaissance Ships.

RULES

I beefed up the Barbarian units as one of the ways to slow ICS. I didn't want to introduce auto-production of settlers/workers, as I wanted this to play close to the epic game. City defenses of every size have been beefed up in addition to the Palace. Cities, and especially capitols, should be harder to take. This works well in conjunction with the improved use of artillery by the AI via the Flintlock patch. Also, armies have been replaced by the General (gives +1 movement and +4HP). **Only a single unit can be added.

 

[SayHayKid]

Some things that I tried that I didn't end up keeping:

• Originally I moved "irrigation without water" up to pottery. I coupled this with no terrain starting with more than 1 food, but had the same total bonus after irrigation. However, coupled with City-States removing the Despotism penalty early, cities grew way too fast. It may have worked better if I also increased food consumption to 3. I moved irrigation without water back to the Industrial era.
• Mountains, jungles, and marshes are all impassable by wheeled units. I also made most units (including all Era 1 combat units) wheeled. I really like this. But ... I also tried making the ancient-era Worker wheeled. The idea was that roads couldn't be built on mountains until the Middle Ages. At Feudalism you could build a Serf that could then enter all terrain and improve. However, I didn't think about Iron being mostly found in mountains. This was a HUGE adverse effect since most ancient-era units required iron. By the time you could build Serfs to mine iron, many of the units that required iron were obsolete. So now I am thinking of removing the ability to build roads on mountains altogether. While not 100% realistic, I like the effect on gameplay. Mountains will now simulate major mountain passes like the Himalayas. Some later units are NOT wheeled and can pass.
• Removing upgrades of artillery and all ships. There just weren't enough cities and time to build whole new fleets and artillery. I liked the idea of man-made inventions having to be built new, but it just didn't play as I wanted. However, wooden ships can not be upgraded to metal ships.
• I initially gave Expansionst Civs an Oxen Settler that had a movement of two and was a little cheaper than the regular settler. Civinator suggested in another thread that removing the ability to trade the first column of techs would hinder Expanionsit Civs. However, they actually get an advantage. In three test games through the first era and a half, they are usually the most successful Civs (even after I removed the improved settler). With goodie huts, they have the advantage of getting out of the non-tradeable first-row techs faster. They are often ahead in the tech race and have larger more prosperous empires.

 

[SayHayKid]

I think I am pretty close to release. However, I still need to test the last two eras. Fixing bugs... I didn't do the upgrade line properly when upgrading to UUs, missing or wrong resource requirements for units, missing tech prerequisites, etc. OR ideas that didn't work and needed to be changed combined with the AI being tougher (even on lower difficulties or I am just rusty) I haven't made into the Industrial Era, yet.

On my most recent test run over the weekend, I got wiped by the English in the Middle Ages on Monarch! Doh! Playing as the Byzantines, Shaka declared war after I only had two cities up—that bastard. I sent out a Trading Boat and made early contacts, beelined to City-State to trade to newly discovered Civs, and lucked out by getting access to Ivory (I haven't had any iron in my 3 test games!). With Elephant Riders, I could hold the wave of superior numbers by the Zulu and eventually start taking territory. Unbeknownst to me, while I was busy paying back Shaka for his devious ways, the English were wiping out the French and amassing a HUGE army. They declared war on my rear while my troops were methodically wiping out the Zulu. Somehow the English were half an era ahead and had more troops than I had ever seen at this point in the game. Stacks of English Longbowman (their new 5/1/1 UU) and they had Knights and Pikes. I still hadn't found Iron. My Elephant Riders and Crossbowmen in limited numbers after a tough war with the Zulu were no match. They had 5 times my army and superior tech.

All the while my navy was in a continuous battle with Pirate Galleys (likely the English). Introducing Pirate Galleys into the 1st era has been a boon for improved naval activity. The AI builds them and uses them effectively. Even with my Dromon, I had my hands full.

I am really pleased with how the game is playing with all of these changes. It still plays like Civ 3, but kicked up. There are more strategic choices and the AI, at easier levels (and without extra starting units), is way more formidable. My goal to "not play the same script every game" seems to have worked. Depending on starting terrain, starting traits, and neighbors (damn that Shaka!) ... you have to decide between building the military or the economy, all while keeping citizens happy without the luxury boost from Marketplaces.

Archers and Crossbowmen with stealth attack abilities are pretty effective. You need a bigger stack of invading units. No longer can you bring a couple of Spearmen or Pikes to suck up the blows. Archers and Crossbowmen will pick off your weaker and injured units.

Some tweaks I am thinking about:

• The new Marauder unit (4/1/1 at Piracy) is a nice addition with early amphibious assault capabilities, but building x 5 turns may be too fast. if you get the Pirate Haven SW early, you can have a lot of Marauders.
• Thematically, only allowing Marauders (and later Pirates) to load onto pirate ships would be better. Not sure how to do this. Also, if I decrease the frequency they can be produced, should I make them Hidden Nationality? That might be TOO much.
• Having Watermills AND Windmills is WAY TOO MUCH of a production boost. I wish AI could better understand the "replaces others with this" flag" so that building a Windmill would replace the Watermill. I have a suspicion that in my last game, England had a lot of rivers, and based on where they were in the timeline and size of their force, they had a lot of cities with both a Watermill and a Windmill. I noticed in my cities it was too much and self-restricted not building both. Maybe restrict Windmills to requiring a Granary? Or just remove them altogether.
• I removed Military Alliances completely (with MPP at Nationalism). I am thinking maybe I introduce them at Feudalism? It might help smaller Civs against runaway AI Civs.
• Making Monarchy and Republic required. But then should Democracy, Communism, and Fascism also be required? Hmmm. One of the goals has been to let units of each era have time to play out. Delaying the Middle Ages just a touch wouldn't be bad. Or .... since the AI seems to highly value government techs, make them required AND non-tradeable?

 

[Ozymandias]

• Thematically, only allowing Marauders (and later Pirates) to load onto pirate ships would be better. Not sure how to do this. Also, if I decrease the frequency they can be produced, should I make them Hidden Nationality? That might be TOO much.

The typical approach for this would be to add the Cruise Missile Flag (but not Strategy ) to the Pirate Units and the "Carry Cruise Missile Flag" to the Prate Ships: then only Units flagged as both Foot and Cruise Missile can board and go. ""

 

[ZergMazter]

I'm intrigued

Cant wait till you release it to try it out.