I had an idea last night about adding in a new continent for the Mediterranean.
The attached pic shows it in several stages.
Red, 3000bc -> ~500bc, shows iit in early antiquity
Blue, 500bc - 500ad shows it during the late antiquity
Yellow shows it from 500ad to the mid 19th century and the scramble for Africa
Lastly the green shows the dissolution of the Mediterranean continent with its last pieces being absorbed into Asia and Africa
That looks very good! I don't think I can create an entirely new "Mediterranean" continent, though (I've never seen where Rhye declares his continents), so I guess I'll just fuse your early Mediterranean with Europe (ain't much going on in Europe then anyway). The extension to Siberia makes also sense (though the current steppe republics should stay Asian).
These are imo after playing probably close to 50 starts as classical civs, the barriers to a realistic classical period in general, and if you are thinking about tackling Rome, you really need to deal with the whole period in general, in order to make it work the best.
-Babylon too strong, lives to long. Persia and Greece rarely become neighbors which means they rarely are in conflict. This is also effected by:
-Phoenicia does not act properly. The AI civ should be actively colonizing the mediterranean and Anatolian coast more. As well, they need to move their capital and hence their focus from the east to north Africa
What often happens, is this sort of buffer zone exists between the west and the East made up of Sur, Jerusalem, Babylon, Gordion. Often times these will be under a too strong Babylon, or a collection of Independants. Because of this Persia rarely expands into this area, comes into conflict with Greece, to ultimately weaken them for Rome. Instead these three regions (Perisa, Rome and Greece) only interact with the "buffer" neighbors.
I don't think the buffer zones themselves are the problem, but rather that they're lying along the continental boundaries which the AI doesn't like to cross.
I agree that Babylonia is usually too strong and that Phoenicia stays at the Levant for too long. The best solution should be to make Persia more offensive in this direction, as they are who defeated them historically. More barbarian incursions in form of more active Hittites (maybe I take Hattusas away and give them more units instead) could also help.
-A combination of movement speed and production times make it difficult for Rome to cover the distance it needs to on the map.
My suggestions to fix this:
Persia and Greece need to be more interested in the Levant. Something needs to draw Greece east and Persia west. Perhaps just using relationship modifiers with each other might help to get them fighting more.
Again, Greece's behaviour, it's mostly the continent barrier. Though I also already see a too crowded Anatolia becoming a problem. The whole area needs more tiles to fit in a halfway decent city on both north and south coast (most prominent Greek cities like Ephesos or Pergamon would mess things even more up, being so close to Constantinople).
Rome needs to be more expansionist. this is tough due to production and distance. As well the AI doesn't seem to like sending troops overseas. I think Phoenicia is key to fixing this. If Rome was coded for Total war with Phoenicia, and Phoenicia was coded to found more cities, then this would force Rome out into the world. I like the idea of UP being gain an army (2 Legions and two catapults maybe) when you conquer a city in a new continent. this kills both birds with one stone, as when you conquer your first African and Mid Eastern city, you are given troops, at that city (maybe after revolt). the AI will not send them home, they will use them in that area, which will guarantee expansion. As well, in effect you are gaining free hammers, and free movement, which is like free turns, effectively lengthening the time-frame for conquest.
So I understand you suggest a UP that gives a large army for the first city conquered as opposed to one unit for every city? You might have a point in having the army not spawn in the capital, because that brings back the whole transportation issue ...
What about having a large army spawn
on declaration of war at the enemy's borders? Would differ more from the Mongols' UP and also be more useful for the AI because it doesn't have to carry its troops to conquer the first city.
The other barrier is the barbarians. In my experience as playing Rome the barbarians are a little excessive. In particular, they come at you from too many angles. [...] Could this be tied to stability maybe?
It was already said that the Romans didn't have any problems with the Gauls and Iberians after they were conquered, and the Germanic peoples also were no serious problem until the third century. So I think we're better done in representing the former with Celts (who stop spawning once their area is pacified) and decreasing the latter's spawn rate until 300 AD.
I have always thought barbarians should fight each other. This would be realistic and help this problem out without being too deterministic (lessening the spawns). So in some games the barbs would be more united, in others divisions outside your borders would help you out. Would it be possible to have barbarian stacks be hostile to other barbarian stacks?
That's not possible within the barbarian civilization itself, but we could make some barbs into Celts instead, who could then be hostile towards each other.
Cheaper legions I think makes sense considering the speed in which Rome could field them. I also think having Greece more likely to capitulate to Rome might be useful.
I don't know if it would be good to see that. I'd prefer Rome to take them over completely.
Turkey in msot of my games remains vacant til the Turks come :/ Since that was such an important region for the Greco/Persian conflicts I've always wondered why Greece doesn't colonize it like it did. I think that might draw Persia into conflict with Greece as it should be.
Yeah, it's the continent barrier plus pre existing Gordion (which I'll remove soon) here. I've seen games where Greece had three cities in the Ukraine area (even Chersonesus), so the settler potential for Anatolia is definitely there.
Persia on the other hand needs to overcome Babylonia and Phoenicia first.
I just played as Ethiopia and was sad when I founded Protestantism and got no credit.
Sorry again for that, but it's fixed now.
Thanks! Will include some of them.
Arabia doesn't get enough stability in Spain, it is nearly all foreign core to them unlike history
as you can see they controlled quite a bit
Okay thanks, will be taken into consideration once the Arabs are actually able to get there.
Also could you make Portugal settle on the wine? more historic and powerful
So you mean Lisboa one tile south? This would make Spanish Sevilla impossible ...
@Roman ideas:
If they get a unique building in the form of "Roman Road" or something, rather than the Forum, that just might be one of the most unique things in the game. This would clear up the UP for something much more conquest oriented. I think that is something we should seriously look in to.
I still don't know if an improvement really can be a UB ...
I had an idea in history class today, when Cuba was mentioned as a very wealthy Spanish colony because of sugar, and how Jamaica was one of Britain's most valuable assets, as it's sugar production was one of the main sources of money for their over 9000 navy. Maybe from 1400-1900 or something, sugar with a plantation should get a commerce bonus, to represent the amounts of money it generated for the Europeans?
Instead of a commerce bonus, I though of a special kind of corporation for the resources sugar, spice and silk that can't be founded but automatically spreads to every city founded in the Carribean / the Spice Islands and India / along the Silk Road and creates gold (and maybe food) according to its specific resources. So you get extra benefit for controlling all of these resources.
Edit: I swear I saw a link to the most recent version somewhere in the previous pages, but I found nothing when looking again. Has this revision 20 I saw back there been added to the official version here on the site?
Not as an unpackable download yet, but the most recent version is still there at the SVN (link and guide in the first post).
A lot of good ideas have already been suggested and I'm really glad to see that.
I think there are 2 ideas we should consider while discussing all this.
1) I don't think civs should be limited to one UU, UB and/or UP. I would be completely okay if an occasional civ had an additional UU, UB, or UP, especially in cases where unit graphics are conveniently available (such as the case with the French Musketeer) and in cases when the code is ready-made (as in the case of Romans keeping their Roman Roads UP and gaining an additional UP). I don't mean to say every civ deserves a whole slew of new UU, UB and UP features. I just think civs can be a tad bit more unique from each other.
I fear that we'd open a can of worms with this one. Some general rules we should stick to. Maybe we can preserve replaced unique assets in some other way, with wonders for example.
2) One of the main reasons this revamping of Rome discussion is going on is because although human players have demonstrated playing Romans well, the AI is incapable of living up anywhere close to Rome's history. I think we need to realize that for most changes we suggest, human players will be able to take so much better advantage of than AI civs. I believe (not only in the case of Rome), that AI players should get benefits other than just some random production and research boosts. AIs should get a few scripted unit spawns in its capital (like free Legion spawn every x turns in capital) or other events to help it out more so than humans. That way we can have the AI play Rome competitively without making Rome a cakewalk for human players.
We can always counterbalance the better production values by making the UHV more demanding. We can always include more cities and territories (the goal doesn't include the whole Roman Empire anyway) or even increase the numbers of required buildings in the infrastructure goal. I don't think recreating an actual Roman Empire will ever be easy, even for the human player.
It's like you read my mind exactly!
In any case, I would still respectfully disagree. With Mongolia's total war against China, I think it is less important for China to collapse from a capital being captured. In any case, with a capital change, China's capital won't have to remain Luoyang(Dongdu) anyway. The current map in that area also overemphasizes the amount of resources near Beijing--the city had always been considered far away from China's production and agricultural center. Moving around a few resource tiles to make Luoyang(Dongdu) a better ancient age city and adding a scripted capital shift I believe will do much more justice to Chinese history without significantly affecting gameplay.
That's true, but I at least currently don't want to get into the trouble of redesigning China's whole landscape and the according settler maps (else a different spawn would mean different cities).
Question regarding the capital changes. Are these changes automatic only for the AI, or also for human players?
I think it might be a good idea to only make these capital changes automatic only for AI players. Then reduce the cost of palaces by like 30%. That way players can more easily control if and when they wish to switch their capital without the cost of switching capitals causing much hindrance to the player.
Only for the AI I think. I don't like to take decisions out of the player's hand.
Is it possible for the AI capital switches to be probabilistic? In particular, I am wondering if it is possible for
Arabs: Mecca => either Baghdad (80% of games) or Cairo (other 20% of games)
Some other examples where capital change might work out well...
Scandinavia/Sweden: Oslo => Stockholm (80% of games)
Russia: Moscow => Saint Petersburg (~year 1712 in of 50% of games) => Moscow (~year of 1910 in 100% of games)
Portugal/Empire of Brazil: Lisbon => Rio de Janiero (10% of games)
Egypt: Memphis => Alexandria (30% of games, assuming chances of city being founded are greatly increased and resources moved to make city pretty amazing) => Cairo (100% of games)
I thought about that too, but as a first step, we should take probability out and make on definite switch that triggers at the right moment (date / conquest).
What are you planning to do about the locations of Babylon and Baghdad? I always found historically important cities separated by one tile to be particularly annoying. What do you think about fudging the geography so Babylon and Baghdad are on the same tile.
Babilu will definitely become Baghdad, and I'm thinking about placing a independent Tisfun/Ctesiphon on the same tile in 600 AD that also becomes Baghdad.
Makkah might lose its resources, but better some turns after their spawn so they don't get crippled shouldn't they expand in time. The clam 1S makes sense to me in the 600 AD scenario. But instead of Bayrut, I'm gonna place Byzantine Antiocheia on the Alexandretta tile.
Also for Cairo and Egyptian start, what about moving Cairo 1S and Egyptian start 1N? I feel like changes like these reduce the awkwardness of playing a post 600AD civ from a 3000BC start.
Yeah, I always wanted to do that, but never had the time to visit that region.
Unless there have been some changes, Baghdad encompasses a couple of tiles, and one of those is Babylon's tile. And I like the idea of moving that clam resource near Sparta one tile south. It makes Hesperides or Cyrene/Barca better city sites earlier. I also believe a fish resource 1 east of the island of crete (only accessable from a city on said island) would be used because crete was an important ancient city and sometimes greece founds the city so why not give it a little bit better chance to grow quicker (so it can work the bronze and still grow).
Agreed on both seafoods
I just want to say that Stockholm is a more logical choice for the Kingdom of Sweden than Oslo... maybe in the rennaisance era, the Vikings could get their capital switched to ANY city in Sweden if Stockholm isn't a city by then?
Possible, but it's a preliminary solution anyway before Sweden becomes it's own civ later.
