Okay, I'm still on vacation, but I managed to scavenge some Internet time, so here I am. I won't really be back until Wednesday night, but in the meantime I can respond to a few people.
Sjru said:
On topic: I'm not really fond of "Age of Man",
Well, it was Ages of Man (note the plural), but I'm not too attached to that name either. It really is a bit too generic, but it's such an easy differentiation: three Ages, with Mythology, Empire, and Acension being the three basic stages in order, for the early, middle and late games. The bigger problem is just the obvious one: using the exact name of a game you're going to "borrow" resources and concepts from really isn't a good idea.
dinobot386 said:
Also, your balance mod seems to not be loading correctly, getting old effects from buildings and policies
Sounds like a cache issue, assuming you don't see a bug in the XML logs, but I can check it when I get back. It was all seemng fine when I tried it before I left, but things were a bit rushed.
dinobot386 said:
If you're going to do an AoM mod for the earlier eras, you're going to need a big event to happen for when myth units become unavailable and to explain why the gods are no longer interfereing with humans
Actually, that one's not too difficult. The answer was basically given to us back in Civ4: remember the Free Religion civic, how it'd basically remove all of the positive and negative religion-based things that came before? Or the Emancipation civic, that gave everyone who hadn't adopted it a happiness penalty? That's the sort of thing I'd use to end the process.
The way I was looking to implement it would be sort of a cross between the DUCKS mod and AoM. Basically, there'd be a custom policy, sort of like my SMAC start policy, that you'd start the game with. It'd have some major penalties (-50% science, -50% growth, etc.), which you'd offset through various deity-specific bonuses, and would cause your civ to generate a new yield called Favor through one of three methods (from combat, from religious buildings, from Priest specialists) similar to the three nations in the original AoM. There'd be a few things in common; I'd use that policy to reduce the Monument and Temple by 1 Culture (to +1 culture and +1 Happiness, respectively), but have each add 1 Favor. That sort of thing would really help the AI, of course.
To make this work I'd probably have to double the amount of time you spend in the Ancient and Classical Eras, partially by adding more techs to both (instead of having a Classical "Era" consisting of a pitiful five or six techs). These would be fleshed out with a few extra techs, mostly those that deal with religion (like Monotheism and such). So as time goes on, you'd use Favor points to "improve" your primary deity, similar to the current Policy branches (but using an entirely new UI window, which I'm ready to attempt). These purchased bonuses would generally add in ways that'd offset the massive penalties mentioned above, and periodically (say, every five techs or so, or maybe at specific techs) you'd add another minor deity to your pantheon (or maybe if you've gone Monotheistic, it instead builds your primary). These would add some bonuses, add some mythological UUs, add some special UBs, and so on. A god of Healing might provide all of your units with the Medic promotion (or the Immortal's double-healing one), a god of Knowledge might give you the Nethack Terminus' ability to warn you when other civs build Wonders and a small reesearch boost, a god of Pleasure might unlock the Empath specialists a few millenia early. This'd generally be accomplished through a custom Shrine building in every city, whose benefits would vary with your current deity choices.
I've already figured out a basic weighting mechanism for the AI to make it pick intelligently, based on three axes (Good/Evil, Law/Chaos, Activve/Passive), with the available choices for minor deities/domains depending on what you've taken previously (and yes, I'm going to crib the domains from D&D). That is, you start off choosing a Sun, Moon, or Earth deity as your baseline; pretty much any Sun god will be able to angle for a Healing sub-god, and maybe half of the Earth gods could get one depending on their other choices, but it'd be very unlikely that a Moon god could get one. That sort of thing. I'd probably tie the Favor mechanisms to the above choice for simplicity's sake, but it might end up being a separate axis (so that there'd be 9 basic combinations to work with).
But as time goes on the drawbacks inherent to the whole process start to get crippling, because most of the minor gods will be designed to be a zero-sum game; that goddess of Fertility might make your cities grow more quickly, but she might also lower productivity in your cities. A god of Healing might make your units heal better, but it'd also limit the kinds of medical research that made such a difference for early civilizations, because why bother trying to discover germ theory when you can just pray those diseases away? And sure, your primary god might now be able to throw lightning bolts at your enemies (say, like an orbital beam weapon!) but he's probably stifling the cultural growth of your empire in the long term.
So if you want to, you can end those Dark Ages and start the Enlightenment... which removes that custom Policy from your empire, suddenly speeding up your growth and research at the cost of removing your Shrines, with all those mythological abilities you've accumulated. And then, to make things worse, all units of "disbelieving" civs (those that have already reached the Enlightenment) woud receive an inherent bonus against the remaining Myth units. So while it'll hurt to lose all of those neat abilities, in the long run you'll want to give up direct contact with your gods. (But don't confuse this with the Piety branch, which is all about the socio-political aspects of worshippiing a God who doesn't answer, for culture and Happiness without the problems of dealing with an actual deity.)
So that's the basic idea for the AoM mod; I'm fine-tuning a lot of the details while I'm on my trip. Ideally, it'd basically be over by the time you reached the Renaissance, although I'm still trying to think if it'd be a good idea to make it advantageous to stay "believers" all the way to the end. Either way, I don't intend to add any victory conditions for it; it'd just act as a sort of alternate version of the first three Eras with a bit more "flavor".
As for the AoE mod, that'll focus far more on diplomacy, espionage (I'm trying to figure out how to implement true Diplomat and Spy units), pirates/privateers, exploration (with more powerful versions of the ancient ruins that might pop up in occupied territory, sort of like the Spore Towers and their Planetpearl yields...) and colonization. If Favor was the new Yield for the AoM mod, Loyalty would probably be the one for this mod, where distant cities might rebel (or at least stop being productive, a la the corruption stat of earlier games) if you haven't built up enough, and depending on your exact relationships you might get pulled into a World War against your will. I'd also move things like the KGB, Red Cross, etc. into this mod; it'd basically be everything up to the first nuclear weapons. I'm also looking to add a sort of random event system that'd extend beyond just that one era, with small bonuses and penalties popping up at random times.
Unfortunately, while AoA (the current SMAC mod) and AoM would probably be fine with the current XML/Lua, I'm pretty sure the Empire mod would need DLL access.
Anyway, back in a few days, although I might be able to squeeze some more Internet time out tomorrow.
And on top of that I didn't take a pic last night. 
If I see it again I will take a pic.
