Hi, it's really nice to see Extramodmod still being developed
.
I had a couple of questions on game settings.
I've played 5-6 games recently on the latest beta (no bugs/issues whatsoever). My settings are:
Monarch difficulty, Epic speed
Large Erebus Continent map script
Low sea level, all others default
2 extra civs (for a total of 11, including myself). Out of these, 2 good 2 neutral 2 evil, all others random.
First, in all the games I played, I noticed that the much-awaited AV vs good fight never really came about at all. Mostly nobody bothers founding the Ashen Veil, if they do they don't convert to it, and if they do convert to it they just get pummeled by another AI (damn SoK stacks!) before they can summon the Infernals. Basium never gets summoned either, so it feels like I'm missing out on a really fun aspect of the game (units dying and being reborn, the world turning to hell, Basium killing demons, etc.)
Does anyone have any tips on what game settings could bring about this late-game good vs evil, Infernals vs Mercurians fight? Any specific civ combos/map scripts/even maps? One thing I've tried is to keep Tebryn in the game, but even then he very often gets killed before he has the chance to get AV rolling.
Second, out of the games I played, one game particularly stood out because I faced a strong runaway AI. Falamar took an early tech lead, wiped out 2 or 3 civs (incl. AV Tebryn), and went on to win a Domination (Quick) victory (!) before I could stop him. I don't remember the last time I saw the AI win domination in any Civ4 game, so that was pretty impressive! But it turned out this game was an anomaly. In all other games, I didn't really face any challenges from a runaway AI. After pre turn-200 wars, the AIs just seemed to settle into the game and not really do anything much. I want to raise the difficulty, but I'm sceptical of playing on emperor because fighting massive early-game warrior stacks makes it really not fun for me.
Any suggestions on how I could increase the chance of getting runaway AIs, without actually raising the difficulty? Sorry this may sound like I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too, but I've abandoned too many games now because there was no challenging opponent by the mid-late game, and I really want to use the cool archmage/high priest spells