So far I've played 4 games of vanilla ciV, 4 on epic, large/huge map, 1 on normal speed/standard map. All played at noble or prince. I've always played RoM/AND on epic with as large of maps as my computer could handle.
Buildings cost waaay to much. I think Firaxis' intent was to have this work in concert with the maintenance model to discourage the 'build everything everywhere' play. I would rather lower the building costs, and perhaps increase maintenance for them in some cases. I'm still unsure about the building bonuses overall. It's clear that Firaxis erred on the side of caution on many of the bonuses.
Wonders are really not very wondrous. They need more bonuses, I would prefer more of the 'provides x building type in all cities' bonuses.
Improvements likewise need boosts, and it'd be nice to see some more options that split bonuses. For example, mines might give 4
, and farms might give 4
. Maybe having something that gives a 1/3 distribution. Might be a bit confusing until more graphic packs are available.
I really, really like the 1upt combat system. It's much more interesting than SoD method. There are some problems currently though. First, archer ranged attacks are too powerful. The damage there needs to be reduced, and possibly moving the cover promotions lower in the chain. Gunpowder units should receive an inherent bonus against archery units. Not because of some real life comparison, but because I think making musket men/riflemen units both melee type and ranged type is a bit overpowered. Reintroducing grenadiers as the gunpowder equivalent to archers would probably work.
One big problem with 1upt is your military clogging up the map when you aren't at war. They get in the way and obscure your tiles. Maybe there would be a garrison improvement, that when a unit enters it (hacking the embarkation code) the unit turns into a 'garrisoned' unit (hacking the air unit code) which would let multiple units stack. Effectively storing some of your units. Leaving garrison would consume the units move, just like disembarking. Even if the garrison held a dozen units, you'd only be able to redeploy 6 at a time.
I originally thought that 1upt would be made less tedious with maintenance and the limited strategic resource model. As it turns out, you can still have tons of units, even early in the game. Unit maintenance should be increased significantly, especially non-strategic based units. Concurrently, the amount of resources gained from one strategic bonus tile should be reduced a bit. As it is now, even if you only land one iron tile, you typically have plenty of iron available for a number of iron based units. In the 3 games where I've made it into the industrial age, the oil supply is so high, it's hardly a limiting factor for units.
I'm assuming you guys are already planning on expanding the social policies considerably, and I look forward to it. Love that method over civics.
Rule the World? Kings and Emperors? One More Turn? Fabulous Freetime Killer?
