So, I havent played civ since like civ 2 or 3 and my son got civ 6 for the switch for xmas, which I played long enough to make me want to get a civ game for the pc, because if i'm going to play I want mods. So, after looking over this site, I decided to go with civ 5 for a few reasons - its where all the mods were, I could get the game with all the expansions and DLCs for like $10, and I felt more comfortable running some of these RAM consuming mods on the comps I have (semi-new laptop with 8GB of ram but no video card is what I use instead of the older pc with 4gb of ram but a much better graphics card).
@Gedemon after getting into some of the mods and checking them out, I decided that yours were the ones that really aimed toward something I would like, and I started following your progress on here, although admittedly, I haven't made it through all 30 pages of discussion yet. I was dismayed to learn that you had abandoned civ 5 for civ 6, (that's just because civ 5 is what i'm running) but I think I've made a fair assessment of what you're modding goals are - to create a more historically representative version of the game. I appreciate that goal very much and I want to help in whatever way I can. I'm not a coder, but I do run a lot of hours of ai observation to make sure the mods are doing what I think they're supposed to. 99% of my time in-game is doing this. Even though I'm running civ 5, I think I may be of some assistance with the dev of your project here, and I've compiled a list of things that stand out to me.
I'm mostly focused on the ancient era right now, 1, being that I know more about the real history of that era than the others, and 2, because it is the most skewed part of any civ game I've played - the game always wants to rush you through it, when in fact, it was the longest era of any. My assumption is that ancient era = bronze age, classical era = iron age. And, being that the game starts you out at 4000BC, that means that the Ancient era is roughly equivalent to 3000 years, giving the game the benefit of some of the earliest iron ages taking place around 1000-700BC. The game makes it last sometimes much less than half that time, presumably for gameplay reasons like not giving civs with unique ancient era units advantage and to let you breeze through their tech and policy trees - neither of which I'm interested in.
But let me just get to what I think are helpful observations (I'm long winded, I know). In civ 5, my game is focused around your YNAEMP mod (with the extra civs and CS) and your Historical Spawn Dates mod, which are the couple of bases of this overhaul mod you're doing (I've not played with the RED mod yet because it seemed so focused around WWII at first glance). I also use the IGE to be able to observe that the mods are working with the AI in a meaningful way, I use the Ancient Mediterranean Civs pack that you link to, and I use the Ironman mod because I want to mess with time and slow the game down. I'm glad you have decided to release the mod you're working on in different pieces because so far what I've read seems like you have focused quite a bit on unit/city micromanagement, which is way more intricate than what I would want for a broadview civilization sim/strategy game. But some of the concepts, you've come up with, if dumbed down a bit, could be very useful, IMO.
- The first one that jumps out at me is the unit food supply. While adding a level of micromanagement that could be a bit tedious, I think it could be very useful to historical accuracy, not just for troops crossing barren deserts and tundras, but also for scouts and the ability to create a dynamic version of the "known world" throughout the ages. I've noticed in a lot of my games that Egypt will start where you put them, but will build their 2nd or 3rd city way down in south Africa where there are plenty of good city spots. Controlling the food rations of scouts and other units is a good way to make for better migration patterns, and how much of the world they can survey at the start of the game. Of course, you may have to kill or alter the unit's ability to get food from the yield of a tile, since nearly every tile has a food yield. (maybe if they can only get food from the yield of a tile you already own, something like that).
- The next thing I've noticed is that the giant earth map changes the dynamic of civ growth and behavior a LOT, especially when paired with the Historic Spawns. With both of these mods in place, basically there is so much space at the beginning of the game that there are no wars until BC is almost over with. I use the ancient Mediterranean civs, along with the cradle of civilization civs. I plug in everyone's starting positions in the xml and I give them all historic start dates (I changed a good bit of this sql to reflect when they became a true civ, as opposed to when they were just a bunch of scattered tribes). So, the start of my game goes something like I've got Egypt with their starting location moved to the mouth of the nile (to get them out of the way of nubia who comes in later and often conflicts with Egypt's second city along the nile), Sumer starting over there by the Persian Gulf, and the Mesoamerican civ from the Cradles pack starting between north and south America across the globe. Harappa (the civ not the CS) comes in at -3300, and Persia and Nubia are next at -3200. Even with a couple civs coming in after that there is hardly any war (unless Egypt gets agitated with nubia) until Assyria hits the map at -2500 and gets a few cities spread out. So, even with the aggression mod on, war doesn't even make an appearance until after -2000, and even with the Ironman slowdown, this means that most civs are well into the classical era by then, making most of the ancient era unique units obsolete by the time any civ gets to use them. The same is true with the large Mediterranean map. The large earth map (greatest earth) gives the best experience (the first war is usually between 3500-3000BC) in that regard, but with all the Mediterranean start ups that I use + the Ironman slowdown, the area gets crowded pretty quick after -1000, but again, switching to the Large Mediterranean map produces the same issue - ancient units being obsolete.
- This leads to my next point...I think I read that your stance on barbarians and CS are not as relevant to the game as true civs, for the purposes of what you're trying to achieve. I would personally urge you to rethink that! Not only could some of the "ancient units being obsolete" problem be rectified by giving civs barbarians to fight with in the ancient era, but they both hold historical and gameplay value as well! While city states can't conquer land, and it's technically true that any civ throughout history COULD conquer land, some of them just didn't. But, regardless of that, city states impart a part of the gameplay that would be hard to do without. Because they can't expand, they use their production for unit spam (which yes can be annoying) but also provides a means for non-military inclined civs to defend themselves. Eg - how much of a pushover would ghandi be if he couldn't befriend city states? Any dom victory civ could just roll over him like his civ was nothing more than a few barbarian encampments? Barbarians, IMO, are even more useful and important than CS. While you can only get a finite number of civs and CS in any game, barbarians are useful in that they don't count against that number. And the way that the AI plays them is useful to historic context as well. A spawn of units on the map that you can't make friends with, nor can they take a city as their own, but can destroy cities. That's historically significant to the opportunity to create a "dark age" or the collapse of the bronze age, or anything historically similar. When barbarians started to take roman territory, they didn't understand their advancements, nor did they see them as useful They didn't move in and take over their tech and culture, they just destroyed it. One of the things that I'd like to do in my games is use the barbarians to represent cultures that led to civilizations and empires(which is why I switched the spawn dates). It's proving to be very challenging because I use IGE and I need to "reveal all" in order to see the AI progress, but when I do that, the barbarians can't spawn units or encampments. But what I would like to eventually do is go into the World Builder and place encampments at every civ's start position, then in the game, place a very advanced unit in the encampment (so that other civs can't knock it out and build there) and then let the camps spawn era appropriate units to interfere with the civs, in order to provide a way for them to make use of their ancient era units and to add the historically accurate sense that before these spawning civs were empires, they were just loosely organized tribes and city states.Then when the civ spawns in, it destroys the barbarian unit and encampment (I could be wrong but I think this is already in the code), which, sadly, it wouldn't be able to do if there was a civ or CS there. This also potentially having a big impact on migration patterns. To me, the barbarians are as important to the early eras as warmongering is to the industrial era (without warmongering there isn't much chance of a WWII occurring in game without much outside influence.
Ok, I have a lot more, but that's way more than enough for now. Let me know if any of it is of interest to you. If not, I won't post the rest.
