Wow, I just found this mod and am astounded by the quality.
The features are great of course, but also very well documented and noob friendly, and I love that it's technically loosely coupled. Great work!
So I just gave it a first try and have some feedback, suggestions & questions.
Of course, I'm aware development with extra constraints can be a lot of complex work, but I'll let you sort out whether my ideas are Good / Bad / NotWorthIt / Impossible and will just focus on delivering them here.
My setup worked fine, but just so it's shared : I launch via run.bat, am using Win7 and don't bother with Steam (Game yells with some SteamAPI_init() error at launch, which doesn't seem to have any impact on solo). ATM, I just loaded saves from recent games, made without the mod and checked the features. All was fine.
Let's start with what looks like
issues to me :
- Destroyed_wonders_can_be_built_again APPLIES despite enable_wonder_districts being off.
Very handy with theory of evolution and great scientist(s) to re-rush it, but probably not intentional. More generally, I expect the "enable_district" option(s) being set to false to make this whole section consequenceless. An overlook, I guess ?
Btw, vanilla Civ3 has a known bug, where bombarding a city with virtual walls given by Great Wall can make the "next building" get destroyed instead (I recently destroyed a great lighthouse with... a catapult !).
Not C3X's fault, but maybe it should include an option to fix this ?
This also makes me suspect of the completed_wonder_districts_can_be_destroyed option now xD (I didn't test, but just wonder(!) whether it could create a similar bug).
- Batch commands didn't seem to work for me when using hotkeys (e.g. Ctrl-I instead of Ctrl+click to mass "irrigate"). Might be related to the complexity of modifying the interface but I assume hooking commands to a hotkey should be doable. (I barely use mouse, so I'm not sure I'll ever use the feature if I have to click)
- In diplomacy, "Would you care to offer something in exchange for..." didn't give me the max gold I could ask for. Of course, a right click on the gold amount fixed it, but the purpose of this mod option is to remove such convolutions. (can share a save)
- Toggling debug mode requires to type "D E B U G", but typing D tries to disband the active unit, preventing from toggling the mode unless all units have been played. I assume B would also try to build on a settler, etc. Maybe a button somewhere would be better ?
Now, here are
improvements I'd enjoy. I tried to order them by importance... to my eyes, which is of course
very subjective :
1) Making the game easier to decipher in general feels like a good direction. C3X improving QOL made me think of several extra options to help learning & understanding the game.
- "Show explained Culture conversion chances".
Could be displayed by pressing a key when hovering a city to check its flip chances for every country around (Hey, [Ctrl]-alt-C are free !), but a permanent display over each city of the summed chances of flipping in % would be even better.
- "Culture conversions relocate troops" (instead of vanishing them).
Maybe the code from "Your troops will move automatically" might be reused here ? An option so saved troops suffer some bombardment sounds fair too. I'd set this off by default anyway, since it alters balance... but I assume many players would appreciate a nerf of the original "BS".
- "Display tech costs in tech tree"
e.g. with a number above the rectangles
- "Show detailed corruption calculations"
Would be incredibly valuable (so maybe one day I could understand how it works 
)
- "Show despotism wasted yield"
e.g. As black shield/food/commerce when it applies (might need new art, but community is wonderful, so I wouldn't even be surprised it already exists)
- "Show combat modifiers summary"
Probably when hovering over an enemy attackable/bombardable unit. Ideally, with a potential results breakdown. I assume players overlooking or not even knowing some terrain/river/city bonuses is a very common issue.
Maybe the display of some of those extra infos should be toggled by pressing ALT in advisor/city/world screen, or when hovering specific elements ? Potential for UX improvement looks great here !
2) Prefixing saves name with TURN NUMBER so they are ordered properly would be nice.
Having BC and AD mixed UP makes me so mad...
3) Allowing Autosaves at end of turn (either instead or in addition to saves when turn starts).
Going back in the game recently, I took the habit of saving at the end of EVERY turn because of disorders. I know C3X should fix this, but such autosaves could still be handy sometimes.
4) A hotkey to toggle the minimap doublesize might be useful.
One might also think of a button next to the existing "show geography" one, or even an option to auto-toggle it when hovering over the minimap.
Similarly,
show_territory_colors_on_water_tiles_in_minimap could be a map option with button & hotkey as well, since it's a double-edged one too.
5) Unit grouping looks neat, but I'd probably like to only enable it if stack is bigger than a parameter (e.g. 20 units).
It seems to miss visual clue(s) to me, like a red "MANY UNITS HERE" line above tile contents.
Brainstorming around it, what bugs me with large stacks is mainly the need to scroll for accessing buttons. Maybe I don't like grouping at all, and would just prefer the wake/fortify all buttons (and maybe pedia ones?) be moved above of units instead of sinking under massive stacks ?
Also, options to change the list item's colors per row depending on the number of units might be nice too (like, yellow for 2/3 units, orange up to 10, and red for 20 or above ?)
6) I have a save where game tells me I get literature in 2 turns, but I actually get it in one.
From what I see, it's because one worker completes a road, increasing my science output from 16 to 17. (
I don't know the arcanes of things like the interturn)
- I'm afraid making the prediction take every details in account might just be too complex, but adding (in F1 or F6 advisor) a detailed teching status similar to what was made for cities prod would help a lot already.
- Also, an option to have a warning or automatically lower spending when player is wasting on research would be handy. Hitting the 4 turns minimum cap while having reached all the beakers too fast, or even just keeping 100% when you could lower to 20% can be a major waste, but having to think about both lowering then raising again every few turns is pretty tedious and leads to mistakes.
6) While I'll personally never play MP, I think making the mod's coolest features compatible with multiplayer would be one of the most welcomed (and impactful) additions for the community. I don't know the barriers and limits yet.
7) The AI improvements (for artillery/workers...) look nice, but should IMO all be disabled by default.
Probably with a global "Improve some vanilla rules/behaviors" setting, like for districts ?
8) Hotkeys for play/pause/step on the replay screen would be handy.
And finally two simple questions:
- Does setting the max number of cities disable the associated code (and hence any potential regressions/issues induced) ?
That's how I'd love it. There's already too many cities in any standard game for my taste anyway !
- The do_not_pollute_impassable_tiles feature puzzled me : do such tiles exist in base games, or is it for mod's "Civ6 mountains" and alike ?
The only case of unreachable tiles I thought of would be a volcano on a small island in a lake where one couldn't build boats, but I'm not even sure this can exist in the first place, and don't even know if volcano polluted tiles account the same as factory ones for global warming.
And it works!
When I stopped playing year ago the size was already at 35.1MB uncompressed/1.63.MB compressed. I guess the limit is 37~ MB unless Flintlock did any work on that issue.
