Hi civ2units,
So I finally had some free time this long weekend to play your scenario and I will say I haven’t been disappointed.
To be honest I wasn’t sure what to expect at the beginning. How would the different powers interact with one another and particularly against Spain, the main protagonist? Will it be challenging?
In the end, my fears were quickly allayed, as it is clear that you invested a lot of time researching the period. To date there have been a plethora of events and hot spots to keep me, the human player, on my toes.
I normally like to give the developer a rough play by play to allow them to determine if the game is behaving as they expected but I will avoid doing so this time as it might reveal too many spoilers so I will merely give a very high level breakdown.
Initially, my main focus was on capturing the 40 objective points of the cities of the Caribbean, Central and South America. A task I was able to complete on January 1953 (turn 72) when I captured the last objective city of Angostura (Paramaribo).
In Europe proper, I engaged in two relatively brief wars against France (who has been at war with the ever increasingly powerful Protestant League probably for the last 20 or more turns). I lost Berlin to the Rebel faction relatively early in the game, and won’t really be in a position to recapture it and some of the more choice objective cities of northern Germany until I’m fully ready to take on the League myself.
I’ve remained at peace with England since the beginning, and have done some minor trading with it’s cities to enrich my own coffers and exchanged a few techs. As the scenario has mandated, all powers are allied with the Neutral Alliance and therefore we cannot interact with it.
Little did I suspect that attempting to resurrect the Byzantine Empire would compel me to direct at substantial amount of my resources at the Ottoman over time. At first, I though it would be a relatively easy tasks, as I had captured Saloniki and Burgas and was moving on Constantinople. But a major offensive on its part forced me to redirect my efforts to avoid disaster and led them to push me back to Durazzo. As a consequence, to redress the balance, in addition to building up my own forces I’ve had to recruit large numbers of mercenaries in northern Italy to beat back the enemy and retake the initiave.
At this time, I’ve reached January 1560 (turn 87 of 267). After researching the advance, I switched to ‘Administrative Monarchy’ (aka Communism) back on July 1954. My current tax/science/luxury rates are 30/40/30. My research rate is down to one advance every 3 turns and my income of 919 thalers against a total cost of 500 provides me a surplus of 419 per turn.
I’m also pulling an additional 700 thalers per turn for having completed the El Dorado, Inca Empire, Colonization of Cuba, Treasure Fleet, White Gold events. The Italian Wars bonus, which I was also receiving, expired back in 1526.
As a consequence, my treasury already stands at 18,372 thalers, which allows me to purchase any improvement or units I desire (thankfully not enemy cities as there are no diplomatic units in the game, i.e. conquest is the only means by which a player can acquire enemy cities as it should be).
As I’ve only played a third of the scenario so far there may still be some events to come that might already address some of my feedback so I will wait before doing so. All the same, I believe there are three suggestions I feel may be worthwhile to provide:
Privateers: To date, Spain appears to have a free hand in the Caribbean, with no opposition from any of the European powers, and thus is able to sail it’s vessels without fear of losing them. I believe Privateers didn’t come into there full until the early 1600’s but as I understand it French Corsairs did start raiding Spanish shipping in the early 1500’s. As such, perhaps you could consider generating Pirate ships out of some of the Rebel (aka Barbarian) cities of the Caribbean (you could use the available Biplane spot to add the barbarian ship).
Government forms: When I switched from the Absolute Monarchy (aka Monarchy) to the Administrative Monarchy (aka Communism) form of government, I went from a state where I had pretty high corruption, especially in my Caribbean and American cities, to no corruption whatsoever.
At a tax/science/luxury rates of 30/40/30, I went from:
A 375 income, 355 cost for a surplus of 25 thalers, and one advance every 6 turns
636 income, 355 cost for a surplus of 281 thalers, and one advance every 4 turns
Add to this the bonus income received from the various events and you can quickly reach the 1000 thaler surplus per month.
Prior to the switch, I had researched bureaucracy as soon as possible and started building City Hall’s (aka Courthouses) to offset this penalty, which seemed entirely appropriate for the period. Once I switched, I no longer needed to build the City Hall’s, which was time consuming but provided a real benefit.
As far as I’m aware high levels of corruption amongst state officials where pretty much standard fare for the period. You also have to take into account all the inherent difficulties of the time in terms of transportation, storage, diseases, etc to factor in that loss and waste were just a part of daily life.
As such, I personally would recommend that you remove the ability to research the more modern forms of government (Communism Democracy and Fundamentalism) and limit the player to the two prevalent forms of government of the epoch, i.e. Absolute Monarchy (Monarchy) and Noble Republic (aka Republic).
Neutral Alliance: I’m not certain if this was your intention or not but as no player, human or AI, can interact with this power, does it make sense to allow this power to build units?
Currently, there are a relatively fair amount of its units that are wandering around the European part of the map, which are interfering with movement of the active players. I imagine the numbers will only continue to increase as the game progresses and I fear this may become burdensome. As you cannot interact with the power, you cannot ask it to leave the vicinity of your own cities or go to war with it to at least eliminate some of the more bothersome units.
If this was your intention, i.e. to have the Neutral be a nuisance then I understand but if it wasn’t I would recommend you either prevent them from being able to build any units at all or severely limit the numbers that it can?
As I’ve mentioned, for now I will hold off on any further recommendations until I’ve played a full game.
Otherwise, this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience which has also turned out to be a educational journey in which you’ve included many interesting historical facts. May I also commend you on the rich selection of images you’ve selected for the various events (it must have taken you a significant amount of time to collect them all).
I like some of the small but nice touches you added to the events, like renaming some of the cities upon their capture and converting some of the terrain tiles to rich plantations.
I love the diversity of units whose stats are well balanced, i.e. there are no overpowered units (except perhaps a few of the special naval units which you done by design).
I love the map design as well and the terrain graphics, especially some of the resource tiles you created. Very nice!
Finally, I should congratulate you on your play testing as I've found no bugs/issues related to the events. They all appear to be working flawlessly to date.
I might not have much time to continue playing in the next couple of weeks but I will keep you posted when I have more feedback.
In the meantime, truly great job!
EDIT: I'm not certain if this was scripted but the Catholic League just opened discussions with me to declare war on the Protestant League as part of our alliance agreement, which I have agreed to do. This may answer some of my previous concerns with regards the Neutral Alliance.