Second, the 'Mercy Rule' for the mastery victory... isn't really very merciful. The last game I played I had to attack all ten other civs and force them to capitulate before the countdown started. I was about 15 techs ahead, had three times as many wonders as 2nd place, way more culture, etc. I kept looking at the mastery score and saw that mine was at 200 while 2nd place was at 70 something, with all the others below 40 once I'd forced them to becomes vassals. Is there some way for me to edit this victory condition myself and make it come sooner?
Dunno about adjusting how soon it comes into effect, but far as I know the Mercy Rule looks at the scores on the Scoreboard and not the Mastery Score... Though I could be wrong. When you have a ton of AI present it does seem to trigger a tad.... Late. When you're already several leagues ahead of the AI on the Mastery board there's really nothing you can do to lose, even if you tried. And yet, the game still feels you're not "ahead enough" to trigger Mercy Rule.
Third, I'm seeing some very lackluster tile improvements from AI. Even though I'm only on noble, I've had games where a copper source RIGHT next to an AIs capital hasn't been mined for a long ass time. I guess this fixes itself when setting the difficulty higher, but as I'm quite happy on noble in terms of everything else, I'd like it if there was something I can tweak in the xmls in order to get their asses moving in terms of improving tiles.
It's like that in BTS too, though it's not nearly as bad. I don't think it' something you can tweak in the XML, and the difficulty setting doesn't affect AI performance in logic making: They play just as badly on Settler as they do Deity. All the difficulty does is how many freebies and cost reductions they get and how badly you're penalized in the same categories.
Fourth, and this really is a very minor one, is that the Chinese unique unit is way too overpowered. Whenever I roll China randomly for a game, I instantly quit to main menu, as I already know that rushing Cho-ko-nu and throwing them in the general direction of enemy cities is a mind numbingly easy way to win.
One thing you could do is take Protective off of the Chinese leaders, since that'll make you work a little harder to get those Drill IV's out of the gate. Or lower their collateral damage in the XML...
And lastly, is it possible to make the experience that great commanders get adhere to dynamic XP? It feels far too tempting for me to pick out a few strong units with hill/forest defense promotions and sit them close to a barbarian city along with a great commander. I did it in my last game and ended up with five promotions on him before even going to war with anyone. At that point, it was basically GG.
I'd suggest not using Great Commanders option at all if it's too tempting to abuse them. They're not built for playing against the AI, and in fact probably the only reason they're still an option is for people who use them in Multiplayer. Other options that severely cripple the AI:
>Raging Barbarians (Though it can just as easily nip you in the back as well)
>Surround and Destroy (especially when coupled with Great Commanders)
>Ruthless AI
>Revolutions (It can make for a varied game, and the AI has improved here... But it still makes it harder for the AI than it does you)
>Realistic Culture Spread (To a minor extent)
All in all, if the game ends up being a little too easy, here's some suggestions;
>Play on larger maps with more AI. Continental-style maps tend to be harder to at least conquer AI's since overseas AI are able to develop better
>Start on a higher difficulty, like Prince or Monarch.
>Enable Flexible Difficulty and set it to 10 ~ 20 turns. What this does is if the game sees you're doing well, it'll bump your difficulty up, which means shelling out more (a lot more) money for city and army maintenance, harsher Revolution penalties, longer research times, etc. At the same time, if the world starts leaving you in the dust, your difficulty will eventually go down - which obviously does the reverse effect, allowing you a chance to catch up (No guarantees though!)
>Do the same for the AI. If they start falling behind, they'll drop down to Settler. Expect these AI to start mopping up World Wonders and techs before the AI in the lead. This actually nipped me pretty hard in my current game, where the Olmec declared war on me and I fought them back until they dropped to Settler.... They already had a slight tech lead over me, but then their lowered research times let them pull half an era ahead of me. Archers, Axemen, and Ballista vs Longbows, Swordmen, and Catapults was.... Difficult. It allowed them to put up a hell of a fight before I finally beat them down, and at this point most of the world was ahead of me in tech. It took centuries to catch up.
