My issue with the Believers is two-fold: They're a bit of a hodge-podge of abilites and the AI tends to play them rather poorly, in my experience. I think, one change could help them a bit: replacing the +1 happiness by +2 influence.
Free culture in each base is supposed to be a benefit of the positive Planet Attitude factions. Do we really want the Believers to play more rather than less similar to pro-Planet players??
Culture is indeed supposed to be one of their things though. How about mixing up two Civ5 concepts: Believer culture gets accumulated on player level and once you reach a certain threshold you get a golden age? The hard part to code for me would be the interface showing somewhere how much your golden age box has filled up.
[*]Something I noticed about Zak in his bio was that he was a "combat engineer"[/quote]
Yeah, originally Firaxis gave that faction +2 Support. And their faction icon was the tool used for the Scavenger spec ab button.
this should lead towards building a smaller, but advanced/well-equipped force - that's how the university should roll!
As Pfeffersack said, that's stepping on Spartan toes. Perhaps something more limited? A free Field Repair "march" promo for Artillery units only? That unit line is enabled on their tech tree Physics theme after all.
Don't like the name of the accuracy special ability at all - it's rather misleading, I think (bombarding general defenses and... accuracy?). And considering how vital it can be to actually bombard cities properly, I'd suggest a name that makes that function obvious. Suggestions: siege guns/weaponry, siegecraft, heavy artillery (SMAC name), explosive shells (the least suggestive one, though - sounds a bit more like a collateral spec ab).
I wouldn't mind Heavy Artillery. However the Planetfall equivalent of SMAC Heavy Artillery would actually be Range I + II, and as a consequence such a renaming could actually be more misleading. Do you still prefer to rename Accuracy to Heavy Artillery despite this?
- Anti-personnel: Krios guns, sonic hammer , sonic inhibitor
- Anti-tank: Garrus' ammo rounds, heavy weapons, M-100 grenade launcher(s) (my favourite)
- Skirmisher: neural graft (skirmisher is definitely one of the better names, but I like the "neural grafting" tech in SMAC and it would be nice to see the name as homage somewhere; having a crew equipped with neural grafts (and fits the preq tech, too!) would explain rather flavourfully, how it works - they "see" with the vehicles sensors!
The problem with these names is that they only make sense for infantry units as far as I can tell. These spec ab names need to fit for Infantry, Artillery, Choppers and Skirmisher for Submarines (though the name Skirmisher doesn't fit all that much for Subs either...). Shredder guns don't make much sense on tanks as far as I can tell. Does Sonic X on tanks and choppers? I can't really imagine how such a weapon would look. Perhaps Sonic X could be enabled by Social Psych, you know, since it affects human performance. A bit a stretch I guess.
Anti-Tank: perhaps another option is U-235 Shells. I guess that fits for all unitcombattypes. Plus then I can let that spec ab be enabled by Nuclear Physics.
Neural Graft fits for chopper pilots I think, but not really for submarines with its large crew.
Finally, I think the thunderbolt is quite a bit better than the interceptor - collateral damage is more than worth the loss of one square of range. If you'd decrease the interception chance of the thunderbolt to 75%, it would make the interceptor really "the" interceptor
Okay.
The precision/psychic terror spec ab/promo is pretty cool - and I like that it is very limited... but it might be a nifty idea to have one-missiles with that ability (separately from the thermobaric missile, though, because it might mess up the targeting of fungal towers
)
Rather than a new unit, why not let the thermobaric missile choose it as a spec ab? Then there should be at least two other spec abs though to make the choice more interesting. Fuel Nanocells and Barrage could fit. Would you be interested in making a spec ab button of Barrage I?
After having played (too) many Civ5, I think a embarkation-like spec ab might be interesting - allowing land units to travel on water outside your borders (with the usual penalty of being very fragile and unable to attack, of course). Means you have the choice between transports (which are better defended and allow more spec abs on your main force) or embarked units (which are more flexible).
The AI wouldn't know it should escort its embarked units when going into enemy history. Would require a lot of code to make that work for the AI.
While I agree with the need for change as said above, I very wary of any form of addiotional bonus. University is rather boring (because their strength lies in a well-known mechanism, which drives entire Civ4 too much anyway - accumulating tech, to a large part by trading), but by no means weak. Not in the hands of the AI, not in the hands of the human... So if boni are added, penalties need to come with them.
Perhaps, instead of Drones, technician specialists get +4 science from the Genejack Factories (doesn't require new SDK code, less work), but they cause the same revolt chance as drones do. Though that's still more flavour than a real gameplay chance, as you can avoid technician specialists like you can drones.