Caveman 2 Cosmos

Uh, at that game speed 500 years is 4 turns. Perhaps you mean 5000 years, which is 40 turns?

Anyhow, "normal" barbarians, rather than Neanderthals, won't start to show up for a while after the start of the game. The absolute soonest it can be on that game speed is, I think, 70 turns in (at immortal or deity difficulty). At Noble difficulty it would be starting around turn 175 or so. I both think the Neanderthals and the animals count towards the target number of barbarians that the code uses so if a bunch of those are still around you won't see many, if any, regular barbarians.
 
You would see barbarians released from goody huts now and then up to the points mentioned still. If you see them early in the game, that's how they got there ;)
 
Thanks for the prompt response guys- i did a recce in a canoe and found a barbarian city with a few barbs in it so it looks like they are getting started now.

Cheers
ColonelFlag
 
Hi, have been playing this mod on and off foquite some time now and wanted to comment on a couple of points:

  • Hunting: Let me prephase this by saying that I actually like most aspects of hunting: It adds something to an otherwise slightly bit broing part of the game, it works well with the setting (as in nomadic lifestyle, cities taking forever to grow) and you have to think about where and how you use your subdued animals. However, there are a couple of issues with it:
    • Hunting shouldn't produce Great Generals! While not actually that problematic in and off itself, it leads to the Town Watchmen problem I describe below. But even aside from that, it just seems weird that hunting some animals would produce Great Generals. In my current game I managed to get about 10 Great Generals by mainly hunting animals and killing the occasional barbar on the way.
      My proposition: Hunting (as in "killing neutral animal units") does not produce Great General points or produces them at a much lower rate. Hunting could instead produce Great Hunter points that can build some of the buildings that are right now built by subdued animals ("Great Hunt" comes to mind).
    • Hunting shouldn't give unlimited XP. While animals usually only give XP till level 3 (10/10), there is the Hunter promotion that removes this restriction. This might not seem like a big deal, but with the sheer amount of animals around the map in the early stages of a game and the virtually nonexistant risk of losing a properly promoted unit while hunting, you can get to ridiculous levels with some units. I got a Stone Spearman to 1090 XP/Level 34 before upgrading, giving him pretty much every combat promotion there is in the game at this tech level. While this is definitely an exception (and it did take some time), getting units to level 15 is actually pretty easy.
      My proposition: Remove the promotion alltogether, make it increase the level up to which you gain XP but not remove the restriction completely or reduce the XP gained from fighting animals from a certain point onwards.
    • Hunting should still be somewhat risky. After getting a Tracker with Hunter II and maybe one or two terrain specific promotions, there is really no threat of this unit ever dieing. This directly ties in to gaining unlimited XP, because while you may originally still have to watch out where you are going with the unit (due to the terrain specific promotion), you can get pretty much all the major terrain promotions pretty fast and then just stomp every animal without even losing much HP.
      My proposition: Increase roaming Barbarians in the early part of the game, maybe even make them specialized "Hunting Unit Killers" but make those unable to enter a Civ's territory.
    • Hunting shouldn't be independent of distance from own city. Because of the big benefits you get from hunting I usually always have the maximum number of hunter units (Trackers and later Hunters) roaming the map to just kill everything. As mentioned before, there is no risk involved and if I happen to in fact lose one they are easily replaced. It might happen that I kill or subdue something half around the globe, in a position from which my Tracker/Hunter would take upwards of 60 turns to return home, and I instantly gain the bonus food/hammers or even the subdued animal into my closest city. Not only does this feel stupid from a realism perspective, it makes hunting stronger than it should be: I shouldn't be able to accumulate subdued animals and hunting boni from around the world, or at least not that easy.
      My proposition: Make Hunting units accumulate food/hammer boni by killing animals but make them have to unload them by returning to a friendly city (this might be hard) and make subdued animals not spawn in the closest city but rather on the unit that subdued them (this should be easy?). Both changes combined should add another level to the Hunting game mechanics, but even just having to walk subdued animals home would be a huge change towards not hunting at the other end of the world.
  • Town Watchmen/Riot Control Promotions: Empire Stability and Crime are interesting concepts, but Town Watchmen and especially the Riot Control promotion tree nullify those completely: Have an unstable town that threatens to fall away from your Civ? Stick a Watchmen with Riot Control 5 in there, problem solved. Have a crime ridden city that has more crime "buildings" than real ones? Stick a Watchmen with Riot Control 5 in there, problem solved. Now, this problem is twofold: Actually getting a level 5 Watchmen isn't that easy (if you don't have a dozen settled Great Generals due to Hunting), because they can't attack and aren't especially good against a specific unit type (which you could try and abuse by baiting the AI to suicide onto it), but it might be possible with a perfect set of civics and buildings. However, this only means that you need more Watchmen (having only Riot Control 3 instead of 5 means you have to about double the number), it does probably still allow you to completely ignore the mechanics. The main problem is, that Riot Control does both, prevent revolts AND reduce crimes. You don't have to really think about it, you just stick them in every city and that is that.
    My proposition: Limit the number of Town Watchmen having an effect per city (initially only one, increasable by building for example the Town Watch) and seperate rebellion suppresion and crime fighting. This way you do now have a primary way to combat crime and rebellions, but it still is an interesting mechanic that requires some thought and not pure spamming.
  • Gold: I like how buildings cost gold maintenance (actually can't remember if that was the case in unmodded BTS) and can produce gold independently of commerce, but the early game gold economy feels weird. There aren't a lot of buildings that cost gold and there is really nothing to spend gold on: You can't rush buy stuff because you don't have the civic, you don't need a big military (not many barbarians in the early game, Hunters easily take care of wildlife and distances between early civs are too big to realistically wage a war, not to mention that you couldn't keep the city with Revolutions even if got it). Now, the main gold balance in the earlygame of unmodded BTS was expansion in my experience: If you had a positive balance or had a stash due to tribal villages, you would just found a new city and sooner or later this would balance things out. However, this is not possible in C2C because of the rather harsh penalties for settling more than the "allowed" number of cities (and because for a long time you can't even build a Settler unit in the beginning). And because everyones expansion is limited by this, there is no need for a big military because spaces between empires remains bigger for a longer time. This, combined with the bigger returns off of tribal villages (and the bigger number of tribal villages due to the water ones) means that you just accumulate gold for the first part of the game and start with a huge bank once money becomes semi relevant (as in you can rush buy stuff and/or you can expand over the happiness limit and/or you need an army). In my current game I am sitting on 50k(+250/turn) gold, with 30 of 15 allowed cities.
    My proposition: Remove gold until you have Currency (or some other relevant tech). This might be drastic, but it would emphasize the "caveman" aspect of the game and it would mean that you have to actually manage your gold once it becomes relevant. This would also mean removing all gold gains/gold costs of the buildings up to this point, so when you start there you basically start at 0/+0 gold.
  • Superseemonsters: Again, I like the idea that see creatures can be promoted to gain huge boni against ships once they win a fight against them and are then a real threat to ships in that region, but this seems to happen way too often. In my current game I have 4 of those, of which I managed to kill 1 by throwing a dozen war galleys at it. But there is a Marlin with 4 base strength and both promotions, netting him +540% against wooden ships, I can't realistically think about taking him out any time soon. With that being said, they don't really do anything. They really only block access to the Unexplored Islands in that region, because scouting the coast can be done by land units as well and ships are confined to the coast in the early game anyway. It might be annoying when you want to settle on an island or have some Working Boats built in an older city improve a newly founded one, but those aren't major influences.
    My proposition: Tone down both promotions so that the second level is where the first level is at right now but make them block sea trade and/or work on water tiles either permanently or occasionally, so that you will want to take them but are actually able to do so if you really push it hard enough.
  • Upgrading units: Is it intended that upgrading a unit resets its gained XP but not the XP required for the next level? Upgrading my Stone Spearman with 1090.3/1090 XP to a Javelineer got him to 0/1090 XP, which basically means he will never again gain an additional level. Granted, this is an extreme example because of how Hunting currently works (see above), but this is annoying even for more realistic levels (0/37 means the next promotion is rather far away as well).
    My proposition: Upgrading should keep the current XP.

Note: I am playing on Emperor, Giant, C2C_Planet_Generator_0_68 , Eternity, but I don't think any of the problems described is difficulty specific.
 
Welcom eto CFC and caveman 2 Cosmos.

  • Hunting:
    • Hunting shouldn't produce Great Generals!My proposition: Hunting (as in "killing neutral animal units") does not produce Great General points or produces them at a much lower rate. Hunting could instead produce Great Hunter points that can build some of the buildings that are right now built by subdued animals ("Great Hunt" comes to mind).
    • Hunting shouldn't give unlimited XP.
      My proposition: Remove the promotion alltogether, make it increase the level up to which you gain XP but not remove the restriction completely or reduce the XP gained from fighting animals from a certain point onwards.
    • Hunting should still be somewhat risky.
      My proposition: Increase roaming Barbarians in the early part of the game, maybe even make them specialized "Hunting Unit Killers" but make those unable to enter a Civ's territory.
    • Hunting shouldn't be independent of distance from own city.
      My proposition: Make Hunting units accumulate food/hammer boni by killing animals but make them have to unload them by returning to a friendly city (this might be hard) and make subdued animals not spawn in the closest city but rather on the unit that subdued them (this should be easy?). Both changes combined should add another level to the Hunting game mechanics, but even just having to walk subdued animals home would be a huge change towards not hunting at the other end of the world.

1. Even I have suggested this. It requires a couple of changes the hardest one is getting the graphic for representing a Great Hunter. The others are in the dll and outside my expertise. Discussions on this are in the Advanced Great People thread.

2. We could limit the promotion to hunters but since their job is to attack animals I don't think there should b a limit. Note: if the Unlimited XP option is chosen this promotion is not in the game anyway so every unit will be back to getting points from animals.

3. We have tried a few things to make it dangerous to hunt but have not come up with a successful mechanism yet. One thing we have not tried is duplicating certain animals giving the duplicates greater strength. The main problem here is when should the stronger animals spawn.

The current improved AI on the barbarians means that spawned barbarians are joining with the units built in barbarian cities to better attack later. Perhaps we need a new unit AIs for spawned barbarians only unit destroyers (hunts player units out in the wild).

@Koshling & others currently we are not seeing these wandering barbarians. Is it possible to have spawned barbarians not behave the same as those built?

4. There is already an option to have subdued animals not appear back at the nearest city. In the folder Assets/XML file A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.XML search for DONT_ESCORT_SUBDUED_LAND_ANIMAL and change the value 1 to 0. You will now need to escort your subdued animals home. This was the default but people complained about the amount of micro managing required. The AI knows what to do.

Accumulating food and other boni - the only way to make it work with what we have and have the AI "understand" it would be to have units that represent the :food: and :hammers: we would need graphics for that.

  • Upgrading units: Is it intended that upgrading a unit resets its gained XP but not the XP required for the next level? Upgrading my Stone Spearman with 1090.3/1090 XP to a Javelineer got him to 0/1090 XP, which basically means he will never again gain an additional level. Granted, this is an extreme example because of how Hunting currently works (see above), but this is annoying even for more realistic levels (0/37 means the next promotion is rather far away as well).
    My proposition: Upgrading should keep the current XP.


  • Standard BtS behaviour. If you want them to retain their exp you need to check the option that does that Unlimited XP.
 
@Koshling & others currently we are not seeing these wandering barbarians. Is it possible to have spawned barbarians not behave the same as those built?

Two ways we could approach this:

1) Make two (or more) barbarian players. This is non-trivial but since I plan to do I anyway to separate animals from other barbs, it would be a relatively easy follow-on action from that later. Provided one of them never got any cities I suspect they'd behave more or less as we want

2) (easier and possibly better anyway) Create a new AIType for wandering barbs and have the spawn code create spawned (as opposed to built in barb cities) units with that AI
 
I would prefer 2) myself. I also note that barbarian spawn is still handled by the dll not by the C2C spawn system. I don't know what affect tha is having on anything.

I am not convinced that a second barbarian nation for animals (and other units created by events) will be a good solution. I suspect it will destroy the hunting experience.
 
I would prefer 2) myself. I also note that barbarian spawn is still handled by the dll not by the C2C spawn system. I don't know what affect tha is having on anything.

I am not convinced that a second barbarian nation for animals (and other units created by events) will be a good solution. I suspect it will destroy the hunting experience.

Why? It would have no impact on the hunting system until the appearance of regular barbarians, and we can always up the spawn rate a bit if we need to. It has the benefit of making he barbarians more challenging (they will have the benefits of animal buildings and xp from hunting). Also gives you more reason to wipe out local barbarians, since they will be competing with you for resources.

We can make it a game option whether the animal and barb players regard one another as enemies anyway, and if you choose to not have them do so I don't see how it would impact the player's hunting experience at all...
 
Welcom eto CFC and caveman 2 Cosmos.

1. Even I have suggested this. It requires a couple of changes the hardest one is getting the graphic for representing a Great Hunter. The others are in the dll and outside my expertise. Discussions on this are in the Advanced Great People thread.

2. We could limit the promotion to hunters but since their job is to attack animals I don't think there should b a limit. Note: if the Unlimited XP option is chosen this promotion is not in the game anyway so every unit will be back to getting points from animals.

3. We have tried a few things to make it dangerous to hunt but have not come up with a successful mechanism yet. One thing we have not tried is duplicating certain animals giving the duplicates greater strength. The main problem here is when should the stronger animals spawn.

The current improved AI on the barbarians means that spawned barbarians are joining with the units built in barbarian cities to better attack later. Perhaps we need a new unit AIs for spawned barbarians only unit destroyers (hunts player units out in the wild).

@Koshling & others currently we are not seeing these wandering barbarians. Is it possible to have spawned barbarians not behave the same as those built?

4. There is already an option to have subdued animals not appear back at the nearest city. In the folder Assets/XML file A_New_Dawn_GlobalDefines.XML search for DONT_ESCORT_SUBDUED_LAND_ANIMAL and change the value 1 to 0. You will now need to escort your subdued animals home. This was the default but people complained about the amount of micro managing required. The AI knows what to do.

Accumulating food and other boni - the only way to make it work with what we have and have the AI "understand" it would be to have units that represent the :food: and :hammers: we would need graphics for that.

1. I would argue that those are independent problems: First you could disable gaining Great General points from killing animals (this should be easy) and then later on implement the Great Hunter and other "Advanced Great People". As I said, gaining Great General points from killing animals leads to at least one problem later one and makes no sense whatsoever.

2. I don't think limitting the Hunter promotion to Hunters solves the problem. My level 34 Hunter is still pretty much mowing down (as in >99% win chance) everything that walks around in the open, the only thing that it can't do is capture cities. I think we can agree that such "super units" are a bad thing? I mean they are kind of fun for a while but they are clearly overpowered and overpowered units are usually bad for the game. Getting so many levels also kind of defeats the purpose of having different promotions, considering you just take all of them.
I feel like as long as you don't at least reduce the XP gain drastically beyond a certain point, there is no good solution for this problem. Sure, you could make Hunters suck against everything but animals (-99% against everything but animals), but this would only mean that gaining those levels is ultimately irrelevant because after you get both HunterI and HunterII you don't really need any more promotions to fight animals. By limiting the XP to say 17 (which should be level 5 I think) you would at the same time make Hunting more risky because now Barbarians are actually a threat to your Hunters, depending on the terrain you are on.

3. As I mentioned just above, I think it could be enough to limit the XP gain. Would have to see how the percentages math out on different terrain, and maybe you want to spawn some more roaming Barbarians earlier but all in all it might just be that super units are just boring.

4. Can I change that and reload an old save or will it break something/not take effect? I figured that having the Hunter actually accumulate food/hammers would be quite difficult to realize, still I think this would be a great addition to the hunting gameplay.
 
1. ..... (this should be easy) ......
:rotfl: Sorry, it just gets me every time someone says this. I could do it but then you would not get exp for killing animals either! It needs to be done in the dll.

4. Can I change that and reload an old save or will it break something/not take effect?

Yes you can change that variable and then load a save safely. I do it fairly often.

edit
1. I would argue that those are independent problems: First you could disable gaining Great General points from killing animals (this should be easy) and then later on implement the Great Hunter and other "Advanced Great People". As I said, gaining Great General points from killing animals leads to at least one problem later one and makes no sense whatsoever.

Not going to happen. You can't remove something if you don't have it's replacement yet. I am currently testing three National Wonders (or Traditions) eventually they will be built by Great Hunters but for now they will be built by Great Generals.

Actually you can already turn this off. Just turn off the Barbarian Generals option. This can be done via WorldBuilder I think. No Great General points will accrue from fighting animals or barbarians.

I think it could be enough to limit the XP gain.

Currently there is no way to put a limit on the number of exp a unit can get. It would be overridden by the Infinite exp option anyway. It may be better to limit what promotions are available to the unit and unit line.
 
Hunting shouldn't produce Great Generals! While not actually that problematic in and off itself, it leads to the Town Watchmen problem I describe below. But even aside from that, it just seems weird that hunting some animals would produce Great Generals. In my current game I managed to get about 10 Great Generals by mainly hunting animals and killing the occasional barbar on the way.
My proposition: Hunting (as in "killing neutral animal units") does not produce Great General points or produces them at a much lower rate. Hunting could instead produce Great Hunter points that can build some of the buildings that are right now built by subdued animals ("Great Hunt" comes to mind).
As DH explained, this is a project on the books already.


Hunting shouldn't give unlimited XP. While animals usually only give XP till level 3 (10/10), there is the Hunter promotion that removes this restriction. This might not seem like a big deal, but with the sheer amount of animals around the map in the early stages of a game and the virtually nonexistant risk of losing a properly promoted unit while hunting, you can get to ridiculous levels with some units. I got a Stone Spearman to 1090 XP/Level 34 before upgrading, giving him pretty much every combat promotion there is in the game at this tech level. While this is definitely an exception (and it did take some time), getting units to level 15 is actually pretty easy.
My proposition: Remove the promotion alltogether, make it increase the level up to which you gain XP but not remove the restriction completely or reduce the XP gained from fighting animals from a certain point onwards.
I just replied, in another thread, how I'd alter Hunters and Scouts to enhance their roles while bringing them into better balance in a manner in which all those XP wouldn't throw them out of whack. Animals are not only wild and neutral... there are also animal units employed by civs such as Canines (and soon Felines as well) which would make the Hunter an appropriate trump card counter to those units.

Hunting should still be somewhat risky. After getting a Tracker with Hunter II and maybe one or two terrain specific promotions, there is really no threat of this unit ever dieing. This directly ties in to gaining unlimited XP, because while you may originally still have to watch out where you are going with the unit (due to the terrain specific promotion), you can get pretty much all the major terrain promotions pretty fast and then just stomp every animal without even losing much HP.
My proposition: Increase roaming Barbarians in the early part of the game, maybe even make them specialized "Hunting Unit Killers" but make those unable to enter a Civ's territory.
Agreed. As noted in the other thread, some anti-hunter promos could be good and it would not be too difficult to optimize those for barbarian selections in the AI.

Additionally, I'm looking to greatly deepen the abilities animals have, making them rather unique to one another and more than just a walking strength score and food/production grab pack. Refer to the Combat Mod added abilities (links provided in the Modder's Documentation thread first post) - most of those new tags are inspired by and planned to be implemented onto animals. This deepening of animal abilities means that hunters will need more than just strength against animals to be effective at bringing them down and surviving in the wilderness themselves.

Hunting shouldn't be independent of distance from own city. Because of the big benefits you get from hunting I usually always have the maximum number of hunter units (Trackers and later Hunters) roaming the map to just kill everything. As mentioned before, there is no risk involved and if I happen to in fact lose one they are easily replaced. It might happen that I kill or subdue something half around the globe, in a position from which my Tracker/Hunter would take upwards of 60 turns to return home, and I instantly gain the bonus food/hammers or even the subdued animal into my closest city. Not only does this feel stupid from a realism perspective, it makes hunting stronger than it should be: I shouldn't be able to accumulate subdued animals and hunting boni from around the world, or at least not that easy.
My proposition: Make Hunting units accumulate food/hammer boni by killing animals but make them have to unload them by returning to a friendly city (this might be hard) and make subdued animals not spawn in the closest city but rather on the unit that subdued them (this should be easy?). Both changes combined should add another level to the Hunting game mechanics, but even just having to walk subdued animals home would be a huge change towards not hunting at the other end of the world.
We're thinking very alike here. I'm looking at eventually giving units a carrying capacity for yields. They can thus go out and collect those yields and then bring them back to cities to drop those yields off. This will GREATLY impact the role difference between scouts and hunters. Scouts would be for far roaming exploration while hunters would tend to then center more around your lands so they could quickly return and drop off what they've accumulated. Equipment improvements would also expand a unit's ability to carry yields (for example: varying quality Packs and Pack Animal assistants would increase the amount a unit could carry.)

Town Watchmen/Riot Control Promotions: Empire Stability and Crime are interesting concepts, but Town Watchmen and especially the Riot Control promotion tree nullify those completely: Have an unstable town that threatens to fall away from your Civ? Stick a Watchmen with Riot Control 5 in there, problem solved. Have a crime ridden city that has more crime "buildings" than real ones? Stick a Watchmen with Riot Control 5 in there, problem solved. Now, this problem is twofold: Actually getting a level 5 Watchmen isn't that easy (if you don't have a dozen settled Great Generals due to Hunting), because they can't attack and aren't especially good against a specific unit type (which you could try and abuse by baiting the AI to suicide onto it), but it might be possible with a perfect set of civics and buildings. However, this only means that you need more Watchmen (having only Riot Control 3 instead of 5 means you have to about double the number), it does probably still allow you to completely ignore the mechanics. The main problem is, that Riot Control does both, prevent revolts AND reduce crimes. You don't have to really think about it, you just stick them in every city and that is that.
My proposition: Limit the number of Town Watchmen having an effect per city (initially only one, increasable by building for example the Town Watch) and seperate rebellion suppresion and crime fighting. This way you do now have a primary way to combat crime and rebellions, but it still is an interesting mechanic that requires some thought and not pure spamming.
My proposition is similar but more extensive. I do feel you're right that those two effects should be divided into their own promotion lines thus giving more diversity as you suggest.

I also feel that the Riot Control promo lines should be more limited by tech. When I designed the Healer promos for Disease fighting, I staged out the access to each level by medical tech progression. I think that our anti-crime promos could use the same treatment. But I didn't dive into that suggestion with the team yet because I feel crime is in a balance status where we currently NEED all levels of the promos to control it if we're on certain traits. So if we can get those really strong crime increasing factors somewhat toned down, then we can safely stage out the Crime Fighting promos by tech achievement a bit more. In fact, my work on the medical ones suggested that we might want even more stages for those than we have now so as to reach into the future eras further. The same may prove true for Crimefighting promos.

To add to the diversity factor on Law Enforcement promos, I have two more promotionlines in mind, one to make the unit good at finding and chasing out of town (or attempting arrest anyhow) of Criminal and Ruffian units that have snuck into the city and are 'hanging out' there. And another is based on some proposed changes to the 'disease system' that once generalized to include the crime mechanism would be appropriate to introduce: one that helps the city overcome crime waves that are taking place there. I'll talk more about that in the future once that mechanism gets more developed.

Ok, that's about all I'll address at this time.

Two ways we could approach this:

1) Make two (or more) barbarian players. This is non-trivial but since I plan to do I anyway to separate animals from other barbs, it would be a relatively easy follow-on action from that later. Provided one of them never got any cities I suspect they'd behave more or less as we want

2) (easier and possibly better anyway) Create a new AIType for wandering barbs and have the spawn code create spawned (as opposed to built in barb cities) units with that AI
#2 makes the most sense to me and strikes me as probably being easier to accomplish overall. But since you're dividing up the animals I can see why #1 might be tempting.
 
Personally, generating Great General points by fighting animals does make sense, as in that era most of what would be 'fought' would be by hunting. If you look at them deeply enough, it's not that hard to see how most military tactics 'evolved' from hunting. Still, I'm wondering if the rate of gain could be slowed to a crawl at the beginning, and increase as various techs are unlocked (Hunting, Tracking, Warfare, etc).

As to high level units I can think of two possibilities to limit them while still allowing them to be useful during their era. Whether either is possible, I don't know. Either of these could also be game options, assuming they can be done at all.
A: Make it so that any unit cannot be upgraded once it hits a predetermined level. This level could vary by game-speed, map size, and/or civics. This would represent a highly specialized unit being unable to be changed and retain it's skill.
B: Make it so that a high level unit costs more to be upgraded. Perhaps normal costs up to 5th level, double at 6th to 10th, triple at 11th to 15th, etc.
 
Still, I'm wondering if the rate of gain could be slowed to a crawl at the beginning, and increase as various techs are unlocked (Hunting, Tracking, Warfare, etc).
Could be done via civics.

A) Would probably be kinda backhanded I think... don't level that guy or he can't upgrade doesn't sound fair to the player really.
B) This is a very interesting concept. The cost code is complex and unpleasant to attempt to read - tried once - didn't like it. But the idea is a good one I think.
 
B can be coded in 5 mins

If it's that simple, it might be better to make the upgrade cost go up by 20% per level after 5th. This would allow for a smoother progression of costs, and would probably be more 'realistic' anyway.

I agree that A isn't the best way to do things overall, and many people would not like it, but if it were a Game Option, then people could choose to do it to themselves. I guess the question is, is there anyone who would use it? Also, if the initial limit were say, 10th level or so, then most of a player's units would not ever hit that anyway. Just the really active Hunters, in the early game anyway.
 
B can be coded in 5 mins

Yes, it can easily be coded. However, getting the costs right for C2C's gold situation is another matter entirely. ;)

@Magnus: I'm thinking more of 5% additional cost per level after 4th or so, as that is where most units start after free xp and all that. But whatever numbers we come up with it should be easy to add.
 
Personally, generating Great General points by fighting animals does make sense, as in that era most of what would be 'fought' would be by hunting.

Mmm... do you remember the mechanics that make units lose promotions? I have got loads of great generals and great people with their boni... Attached to the units or cities, or just waiting. Probably it is possible to implement the mechanics that will make generals and great people die out (not to have them existing for thousands of years), including those added to the cities?.. so you have some great people units for somewhat 100 turns?..

The idea with different barbarian players fighting each other sounds really great!

Hunters with carrying capacity? Perfect idea! And probably reduce the subdue chance to evade everyone having horses or elephants too early...

Another thing I noticed is that when other leaders gain traits, the trait's large descriptions do not permit to read about that leader's attitude towards you... You just read large papersheet of "Agricultural: gives... ... ..., Philosophical... ... ...".

I might suggest also make huge envy penalties for the leader nations to provoke the lesser nations unite their force to counterbalance the leading nations...

And finally, it should be so sweet to make the revolutions happen more often, in your empire and the others, to have more political variety. Since my nation and 4 other nations managed to clean up all their respective continents from their rivals, there is almost no chance to see some nation splitting. What if anytime you try to change civics, there may be a great chance to have part of your country to split for the reason they didn't want to change those civics... For example, You are Republic under Federative... And you try to change something, for example, state religion, and half of your territory falls into the same nation, but AI rival player (Independence wars, antislavery wars, religious wars.... etc.) Probably that might be managed with events... (In Hittie Republic a leader emerges to make a Youruba Hittie Empire, a civil war starts...). Even when using a spy to change your neighbor's civics might provoke that, simulation of a rupture between conservatives and reformers to cause a full scale civil wars, including your rivals doing the same to you :) .
 
Then there are the promotions and buildings that reduce the cost of upgrade! However it is trivial to code.as simple as
New cost = old cost * (1 + integer divide(level/ levels per increase)* increase percentage)​
 
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