Txurce
Deity
It sounds to me like you won't get quite so much out of your sprawling puppet empire, but that it's still a viable way to play.
Getting Started
- Thread starter Thalassicus
- Start date
It sounds to me like you won't get quite so much out of your sprawling puppet empire, but that it's still a viable way to play.
Tomice
Passionate Smart-Ass
It is so annoying to me that I can't choose what a puppet builds that I couldn't imagine someone would see this as an advantage 
Then again, I manage all my workers manually and micromanage tile yields, at least if I'm in a challenging situation.If you don't like this part of the mod, it's probably not hard to remove it. I haven't found the right file, though
doktorstick
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2008
- Messages
- 142
MOAR PUPPETS! 
I notice that the AI's will leave cities they take over as puppets. Does the civ-ai or the puppet-ai control the civ-ais puppets? Meaning, in essence, do the civ-ais have the same disadvantages as players when they have puppets within their borders. How will these changes affect the civ-ais?
I notice that the AI's will leave cities they take over as puppets. Does the civ-ai or the puppet-ai control the civ-ais puppets? Meaning, in essence, do the civ-ais have the same disadvantages as players when they have puppets within their borders. How will these changes affect the civ-ais?
Ahriman
Tyrant
I think AIs suffer the same penalties.
That is a good point though; if we make annexation more desirable, will the AI respond and annex more? Should we force it to do so? It might not understand the changes.
Its hard to know without seeing the annexation AI code. Is it based on city size or value? On the short-term happiness hit (and whether there is enough excess happiness)?
Certainly the AI won't understand that annexing will remove the science/culture yield penalties.
That is a good point though; if we make annexation more desirable, will the AI respond and annex more? Should we force it to do so? It might not understand the changes.
Its hard to know without seeing the annexation AI code. Is it based on city size or value? On the short-term happiness hit (and whether there is enough excess happiness)?
Certainly the AI won't understand that annexing will remove the science/culture yield penalties.
doktorstick
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2008
- Messages
- 142
@doktorstick
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
I remembered another problem in the officially released balance mods. Even though I did not have Philosophy, I was able to request a Research Agreement.
Txurce
Deity
In my last game, using v 25 and WWGD, America puppeted two French cities, then razed the third (a large one).
Txurce
Deity
I played a game skipping the SBU due to the tip in this thread and had only one late-game freeze (it restarted without a repeat of the problem). That was a marked improvement over my recent games, where turns 250+ would lead to several freezes, some requiring a lot of experimentation to overcome.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Did it annex either puppet?
VimesUK
King
@Txurce - yeah I just miss the SBU altogether now and I no longer have any crashes etc.
Txurce
Deity
Funny you ask - I checked after you posted earlier, just before I finished. No annexing. And one was a typically small, early game conquest.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Since it's been a few days and major bugs have probably been found, I'm going to start updating the readmes and put out the public release.
==================
I've been using Specialized Barbarian Units since October and never encountered any problems, so I don't think it's a problem with the mod. I think it's a combination of things:
==================
I have never once seen an AI annex a city, in vanilla or with any mods. I suspect that since puppets are basically the same AI, the developers simply didn't code in anything for it.
Though not an ideal solution, I'll have the Governor's Mansion only appear in human cities. Think of it as an AI buff...
More and more I'm finding that the problems I'm starting to run into are due to a lack of the full SDK, in particular the AI segments of the code. I hope they do release it (like with Civ 4), hope all the layoffs and people leaving doesn't make them cancel that plan with Civ 5.
==================
@guczy
I haven't tried out true start locations maps, to be honest. I think they'd have to be adapted to the recent changes to strategic resources... in vanilla they're so abundant it's not really a limitation, but in these mods they're scarcer.
@doktorstick
I can completely understand the desire to automate things, I often do so with my workers in the late game. The cumbersome production queue interface in Civ 5 does make it more difficult to set up things for cities in advance, too. Still, I feel that for gameplay purposes, it's best for annexation to be the ideal route.
The nerfs to puppets can very easily be disabled by opening up this file:
and comment out this line:
like this:
Then save the file.
@Zyxpsilon
Thank you for that link!
@doktorstick
Very odd that you could get a research agreement early... I'll check that, thank you.
==================
I've been using Specialized Barbarian Units since October and never encountered any problems, so I don't think it's a problem with the mod. I think it's a combination of things:
- I set "AffectsSavedGames" to 0 for a while as I was testing out some things with enabling/disabling mods
- Forgot to set it back to 1
- When beta testing I drop everything I'm using into a zip.
- Others download the zip.
- Chaos!
==================
I have never once seen an AI annex a city, in vanilla or with any mods. I suspect that since puppets are basically the same AI, the developers simply didn't code in anything for it.
Though not an ideal solution, I'll have the Governor's Mansion only appear in human cities. Think of it as an AI buff...
More and more I'm finding that the problems I'm starting to run into are due to a lack of the full SDK, in particular the AI segments of the code. I hope they do release it (like with Civ 4), hope all the layoffs and people leaving doesn't make them cancel that plan with Civ 5.
==================
@guczy
I haven't tried out true start locations maps, to be honest. I think they'd have to be adapted to the recent changes to strategic resources... in vanilla they're so abundant it's not really a limitation, but in these mods they're scarcer.
@doktorstick
I can completely understand the desire to automate things, I often do so with my workers in the late game. The cumbersome production queue interface in Civ 5 does make it more difficult to set up things for cities in advance, too. Still, I feel that for gameplay purposes, it's best for annexation to be the ideal route.
The nerfs to puppets can very easily be disabled by opening up this file:
and comment out this line:
like this:
Then save the file.
@Zyxpsilon
Thank you for that link!
@doktorstick
Very odd that you could get a research agreement early... I'll check that, thank you.
Txurce
Deity
I've been using Specialized Barbarian Units since October and never encountered any problems, so I don't think it's a problem with the mod. I think it's a combination of things:
Other than the obvious "must have mod active to load" thing that flag does, I think it might also store some data into savegames, and having it disabled was causing problems for a few people. I really enjoy the mod and encourage everyone to use it.
- I set "AffectsSavedGames" to 0 for a while as I was testing out some things with enabling/disabling mods
- Forgot to set it back to 1
- When beta testing I drop everything I'm using into a zip.
- Others download the zip.
- Chaos!
Glad to hear it - I also enjoyed it.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
I've uploaded the 'last' (probably) beta version before the upcoming public release.
The main difference between 1.9.28 and 2.0 is the readmes. The Combat and City Development readmes in particular have lots of new stuff, so for anyone helping with beta testing, please skim over those to check for errors!
The main difference between 1.9.28 and 2.0 is the readmes. The Combat and City Development readmes in particular have lots of new stuff, so for anyone helping with beta testing, please skim over those to check for errors!
sfchammer
Chieftain
If it helps, I was having the same problem as madfox and scide.... no unit interface so i could not tell my units do do anything via those function buttons...eg, fortify etc. It was not just great scientists, but all units. Using 1.09.28 beta and the following, Attila Mods (v1.3), Diplo Willard (v6), City Willard (v3),Free Research Balance Mod (v2.1), Hover Info (v1), Info Addict (v10), Specialised Barbarian Units (v2), Tectonics (v6) Trading post mod, WWGD (v3) and the Liberation boost mod (v1.11). I basically put most of the recommended mods in from the OP.
After I deleted the Liberation boost mod (I went through them one by one) all appears to be working fine again, so perhaps that mod is where the issue lies?.
Hope that is of some help.
Thanks for all the hard work by the way, I am only just giving this mod a try now. Looking forward to seeing how my next game pans out...I was about to give up on the game.
After I deleted the Liberation boost mod (I went through them one by one) all appears to be working fine again, so perhaps that mod is where the issue lies?.
Hope that is of some help.
Thanks for all the hard work by the way, I am only just giving this mod a try now. Looking forward to seeing how my next game pans out...I was about to give up on the game.
Polycrates
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,288
Hi Thal,
Ive just finished a game with 1.09.20 (yeah, I know, but Ive been time limited and you put out new versions so fast
) and wrote down some more observations as I went. So apologies if youve already changed some of these things in later test versions. I'll put it all in this general thread for now, hopefully individual bits don't get too lost in the flow.
99% of the things I picked up are totally trivial nitpicks, but theres one thing that I think is significantly unbalanced and thats the gold. Theres WAY too much of it mostly from the combo of larger cities/better trading posts/cheaper gold buildings/more production to build gold buildings - all having a multiplicative effect that drastically alters mid-to-late-game revenue.
This has big cascading effects on everything else.
Maintenance is rendered far less important; even with a developed empire with pretty much every building, lots of railroads and a big army my maintenance ran only to about 1/3 of my total revenue (no policies affecting maintenance either). So I was never concerned about the cost of any given building or unit because they were really a drop in the ocean of my total revenue.
Purchasing and upgrading units was a no-brainer. In particular, it was very easy to just buy a barracks everywhere, build the Heroic Epic and buy the other xp buildings in one city and just buy the majority of my units from there, one unit per turn (where they would all have crazy combat bonuses as well). To be honest, I think bought units getting xp feels like a cheesy exploit anyway, and I would very much favour having purchased units created with no xp.
There was no sense of saving up and using my gold to prioritise things that could use a little boost; rather I often had more gold than I really knew what to do with and ended up just buying huge amounts of only semi-important infrastructure, plus signing heaps of research agreements, plus buying city states, plus buying and fully upgrading units, etc. I really enjoyed games where there always seemed to be a bunch of things you desperately wanted to spend money on, but could only really get one or two.
It became even more so when I got the -25% gold cost Commerce policy and captured Big Ben I was buying everything that looked even vaguely useful across a whole bunch of cities and still had too much money. It was almost pointless to ever build anything with hammers.
I think the biggest culprit is the tech-related boosts to trading posts. I understand the rationale of similar river boosts for food, production and gold for rivers first then other tiles later. I actually REALLY like how youve implemented it with hammers. But rivers give extra gold already, and unlike food and production, theres also no time when non-river tiles catch up. The rivers already give the bonus of focusing your gold on a single tile; even getting more food by plastering the riverside only works if you actually WANT food on all those tiles, and a gold-based city is still going to be better for most of the game with about a 50/50 riverside split of farms to trading posts. So I think even without further boosts, riverside farms vs trading posts and now vs mines/lumbermills are a real tradeoff rather than an obvious choice. Next game, Ill also test my harsher idea of only trading posts and plantations giving any riverside gold and see if that works better.
Sorry to sound so negative about it, its just that the excess of gold really dominated the game.
The other stuff won't fit, so next post. Much more positive, I promise
Ive just finished a game with 1.09.20 (yeah, I know, but Ive been time limited and you put out new versions so fast
) and wrote down some more observations as I went. So apologies if youve already changed some of these things in later test versions. I'll put it all in this general thread for now, hopefully individual bits don't get too lost in the flow.99% of the things I picked up are totally trivial nitpicks, but theres one thing that I think is significantly unbalanced and thats the gold. Theres WAY too much of it mostly from the combo of larger cities/better trading posts/cheaper gold buildings/more production to build gold buildings - all having a multiplicative effect that drastically alters mid-to-late-game revenue.
This has big cascading effects on everything else.
Maintenance is rendered far less important; even with a developed empire with pretty much every building, lots of railroads and a big army my maintenance ran only to about 1/3 of my total revenue (no policies affecting maintenance either). So I was never concerned about the cost of any given building or unit because they were really a drop in the ocean of my total revenue.
Purchasing and upgrading units was a no-brainer. In particular, it was very easy to just buy a barracks everywhere, build the Heroic Epic and buy the other xp buildings in one city and just buy the majority of my units from there, one unit per turn (where they would all have crazy combat bonuses as well). To be honest, I think bought units getting xp feels like a cheesy exploit anyway, and I would very much favour having purchased units created with no xp.
There was no sense of saving up and using my gold to prioritise things that could use a little boost; rather I often had more gold than I really knew what to do with and ended up just buying huge amounts of only semi-important infrastructure, plus signing heaps of research agreements, plus buying city states, plus buying and fully upgrading units, etc. I really enjoyed games where there always seemed to be a bunch of things you desperately wanted to spend money on, but could only really get one or two.
It became even more so when I got the -25% gold cost Commerce policy and captured Big Ben I was buying everything that looked even vaguely useful across a whole bunch of cities and still had too much money. It was almost pointless to ever build anything with hammers.
I think the biggest culprit is the tech-related boosts to trading posts. I understand the rationale of similar river boosts for food, production and gold for rivers first then other tiles later. I actually REALLY like how youve implemented it with hammers. But rivers give extra gold already, and unlike food and production, theres also no time when non-river tiles catch up. The rivers already give the bonus of focusing your gold on a single tile; even getting more food by plastering the riverside only works if you actually WANT food on all those tiles, and a gold-based city is still going to be better for most of the game with about a 50/50 riverside split of farms to trading posts. So I think even without further boosts, riverside farms vs trading posts and now vs mines/lumbermills are a real tradeoff rather than an obvious choice. Next game, Ill also test my harsher idea of only trading posts and plantations giving any riverside gold and see if that works better.
Sorry to sound so negative about it, its just that the excess of gold really dominated the game.
The other stuff won't fit, so next post. Much more positive, I promise
Polycrates
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,288
Other stuff:
On the other hand, I think you’ve got coastal cities just right. Coastal tiles feel worthwhile, only a little weak compared to the riverside trading posts. I don’t think coast needs scaling back, I think they ought to be just as much primary gold-generators as the riverside flatlands. Really nice. Edit: this version still had +1 coastal gold from harbour - I know I was going on about gold being too high, but this felt like a good amount of gold and a return on a fairly significant investment, to actually make coast tiles really desirable. I realise it makes the harbour very powerful though. The seaport feels a little weak for its cost – perhaps it could gain the +1 gold on coasts, or a boost to naval xp if you think that's too much.
Resource abundance is MUCH better, very cool. Iron deposits do still feel a little too abundant, though. And the single-oil resources just don’t quite feel worth the effort – and certainly not worth going to war over. Given that so many different things rely on oil now, I don’t think making all land oil resources give 2 oil is too much. The richer offshore deposits are a GREAT idea though.
Also, hydro plants don’t actually use aluminium, and spaceship factories use oil. Because of this, it was hard to judge the changes to aluminium vs oil usage, but my oil was in really short supply, and I was really wary about where to use my limited aluminium (before I realised the problem) so the balance seems like it’s probably pretty good.
Walls are awesome now. Attacking a strong AI, they built quite a few in response and it made attacking their cities considerably more difficult and absolutely reliant on siege. Really cool.
Although the free policies at eras were removed, it’s still saying I need 6 trees for the Utopia Project
The Piety tree has a little graphical glitch with the right-hand linkage arrow to theocracy – not sure if that’s just a limitation of the UI
A vanilla issue, but perhaps just brought into a starker contrast by the higher pop growth in your mod – the bias for acquiring new tiles from culture is really skewed against production tiles (hills/forests). Is this the sort of thing you’re able to tweak a little?
Buying units seems to be about the same cost as buying an old unit and then upgrading it (even without the Honour policy). Upgrading never felt expensive either, so I guess maybe that’s an argument for bumping up upgrade costs even more?
In the late middle ages-renaissance, there’s now a huge clump of techs where every tech leads to a new unit. Not sure how much you’ve changed the tree here, but it sort of feels like swordsmen, knights and trebs obsolete a little fast and don’t really get a chance to shine. I realise rejigging the tech tree is tricky, and I can’t suggest anything better, it just does feel very crowded right about there. Also in light of recent real-world events involving bankers, it does seem a little odd that the only prerequisite for Banking is Chivalry
The workshop says it gives +40% production but was actually giving +20%
The aqueduct is a great building. Fits really nicely, causes tough decisions on early builds, favours fewer and bigger cities, awesome. Really like it.
I think because the smokehouse and aqueduct are good builds now (I build both quite a lot but not automatically now, which I think is testament to their success), the watermill (poor old watermill) gets relegated to the 3rd priority food-related building (4th if there’s a lighthouse needed too). So by the time I would want to build it, 2 food 1 prod isn’t really worth the cost. I’ve come to think that +1 food for wheat is perhaps just powerful enough to make it worthwhile. EDIT: Saw your newer watermill changes, they just might do it!
Don’t know if it’s intentional, but you can build the military academy without the armory now. Not really an issue either way, really. And there’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re just perhaps a little boring. I wonder if the later, more expensive military academy could maybe give 15xp to land, air and sea units instead – since there’s nothing to give air or sea xp. I like what you’ve done with the arsenal/harbour for air/naval production, by the way.
I noticed the solar and nuclear plants are both back to 25% production boost. Given that they’re so late, so expensive, and there’s already plenty of other production boosts around by then that dwarf their contributions, they don’t really feel very worthwhile. 80% was on the high side, but what about 50%? Solar plants could also require aluminium, to balance them out a bit.
EDIT: Saw the new changes. The 100% for nuclear is fair given how rare uranium is now, but 25% for the solar plant still seems very low and not that exciting at that point in the game, even for a cheaper building.
The special resources still get a little dwarfed in the middle-to-late game, even with the relevant buildings, and could maybe do with a tech-based buff to tile yields as well? Perhaps something like plantations at Fertiliser, camps at Rifling, iron at Steel?
Vanilla issue, but planes gain xp really fast with very little risk. I’d suggest maybe dropping them from 4xp for an air strike down to 3?
The new Ottoman trait was good, and pretty balanced, I think. It was cool taking advantage of the separate GPP counts for different great people types and making some really GP-focused cities (not just limited to Great Scientists like Babylon). Seek’s changes balanced scientists pretty well too, I think.
Anyway I hate to sound so nitpicky, I had a hell of a lot of fun with this last game and I really do think the balance is getting really close to being just right. Really looking forward to the newer stuff with the puppets etc; sounds awesome!
On the other hand, I think you’ve got coastal cities just right. Coastal tiles feel worthwhile, only a little weak compared to the riverside trading posts. I don’t think coast needs scaling back, I think they ought to be just as much primary gold-generators as the riverside flatlands. Really nice. Edit: this version still had +1 coastal gold from harbour - I know I was going on about gold being too high, but this felt like a good amount of gold and a return on a fairly significant investment, to actually make coast tiles really desirable. I realise it makes the harbour very powerful though. The seaport feels a little weak for its cost – perhaps it could gain the +1 gold on coasts, or a boost to naval xp if you think that's too much.
Resource abundance is MUCH better, very cool. Iron deposits do still feel a little too abundant, though. And the single-oil resources just don’t quite feel worth the effort – and certainly not worth going to war over. Given that so many different things rely on oil now, I don’t think making all land oil resources give 2 oil is too much. The richer offshore deposits are a GREAT idea though.
Also, hydro plants don’t actually use aluminium, and spaceship factories use oil. Because of this, it was hard to judge the changes to aluminium vs oil usage, but my oil was in really short supply, and I was really wary about where to use my limited aluminium (before I realised the problem) so the balance seems like it’s probably pretty good.
Walls are awesome now. Attacking a strong AI, they built quite a few in response and it made attacking their cities considerably more difficult and absolutely reliant on siege. Really cool.
Although the free policies at eras were removed, it’s still saying I need 6 trees for the Utopia Project
The Piety tree has a little graphical glitch with the right-hand linkage arrow to theocracy – not sure if that’s just a limitation of the UI
A vanilla issue, but perhaps just brought into a starker contrast by the higher pop growth in your mod – the bias for acquiring new tiles from culture is really skewed against production tiles (hills/forests). Is this the sort of thing you’re able to tweak a little?
Buying units seems to be about the same cost as buying an old unit and then upgrading it (even without the Honour policy). Upgrading never felt expensive either, so I guess maybe that’s an argument for bumping up upgrade costs even more?
In the late middle ages-renaissance, there’s now a huge clump of techs where every tech leads to a new unit. Not sure how much you’ve changed the tree here, but it sort of feels like swordsmen, knights and trebs obsolete a little fast and don’t really get a chance to shine. I realise rejigging the tech tree is tricky, and I can’t suggest anything better, it just does feel very crowded right about there. Also in light of recent real-world events involving bankers, it does seem a little odd that the only prerequisite for Banking is Chivalry
The workshop says it gives +40% production but was actually giving +20%
The aqueduct is a great building. Fits really nicely, causes tough decisions on early builds, favours fewer and bigger cities, awesome. Really like it.
I think because the smokehouse and aqueduct are good builds now (I build both quite a lot but not automatically now, which I think is testament to their success), the watermill (poor old watermill) gets relegated to the 3rd priority food-related building (4th if there’s a lighthouse needed too). So by the time I would want to build it, 2 food 1 prod isn’t really worth the cost. I’ve come to think that +1 food for wheat is perhaps just powerful enough to make it worthwhile. EDIT: Saw your newer watermill changes, they just might do it!
Don’t know if it’s intentional, but you can build the military academy without the armory now. Not really an issue either way, really. And there’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re just perhaps a little boring. I wonder if the later, more expensive military academy could maybe give 15xp to land, air and sea units instead – since there’s nothing to give air or sea xp. I like what you’ve done with the arsenal/harbour for air/naval production, by the way.
I noticed the solar and nuclear plants are both back to 25% production boost. Given that they’re so late, so expensive, and there’s already plenty of other production boosts around by then that dwarf their contributions, they don’t really feel very worthwhile. 80% was on the high side, but what about 50%? Solar plants could also require aluminium, to balance them out a bit.
EDIT: Saw the new changes. The 100% for nuclear is fair given how rare uranium is now, but 25% for the solar plant still seems very low and not that exciting at that point in the game, even for a cheaper building.
The special resources still get a little dwarfed in the middle-to-late game, even with the relevant buildings, and could maybe do with a tech-based buff to tile yields as well? Perhaps something like plantations at Fertiliser, camps at Rifling, iron at Steel?
Vanilla issue, but planes gain xp really fast with very little risk. I’d suggest maybe dropping them from 4xp for an air strike down to 3?
The new Ottoman trait was good, and pretty balanced, I think. It was cool taking advantage of the separate GPP counts for different great people types and making some really GP-focused cities (not just limited to Great Scientists like Babylon). Seek’s changes balanced scientists pretty well too, I think.
Anyway I hate to sound so nitpicky, I had a hell of a lot of fun with this last game and I really do think the balance is getting really close to being just right. Really looking forward to the newer stuff with the puppets etc; sounds awesome!
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
Thank you for pointing that out! I actually stopped using the Liberation Boost mod a while back, so that might be the source of the problem.
@Polycrates
I actually agree with you income is currently a bit high. I think I might do the Blizzard thing and delay the public release a few days to experiment with some more things in beta, like . . .
- Increase military unit purchase/maintenance/upgrade costs.
- Move +1
on water from terrain to the Lighthouse. - Move +1 on rivers from terrain to the Watermill.
I was discussing with my brother about the difficulties balancing the Watermill over the past half-year, and he suggested make it benefit from longer, more powerful rivers. Yield bonuses on rivers are a very close approximation, have precedent with the Hydro Plant, and might be a way to balance rivers while also boosting the watermill! I'm going to try it out. Alternatively, I could simply remove the river bonus and leave it up to improvements.
These bugs were fixed:
- Hydro plant / spaceship factory didn't require resources
- No policy per era
- Workshop, solar plant, nuclear plant not having effect (that XML file had a bug, and when a bug is found the game ignores the whole thing without mentioning it)
The Theocracy/Mandate link is a graphical bug only, something in the game's UI code I'm trying to figure out.
I can adjust the Border expansion tile selection priorities. I've put it on my todo list, thank you.
The only tech tree changes are a few link adjustments (and organizing to prevent overlap) so this is vanilla stuff. I'm hesitant to redo the tech tree much since it's A) difficult to do with the limitations and B) can significantly alter the game with small changes.
I'm not sure if it's always been this way, but the Military Academy requiring only a Barracks is part of vanilla.
The Solar Plant is now +25% for 150
, comparable to the windmill at +20% for 100. I could boost it to 30% to make them equally cost-effective.I want to try out the recent bonuses to resources for a while before altering them further.
You're not being nitpicky at all, this is really helpful playtesting feedback, exactly the sort of thing I need!
============================
Update:
I've been checking through AssignStartingPlots.lua and discovered start locations / resources do take rivers into account, regardless of whatever yield they may or may not have. This means rivers can safely be altered without affecting start location or resource placement.
Looking through CIV5AICityStrategies.xml, it appears settling near rivers is a basic AI strategy that also ignores yields, so this looks promising!
Txurce
Deity
My two cents on raising upgrade costs higher than v28 is that they already make me think twice as a builder. Because I don't have the combined pop from a large number of cities, I don't spam TP's, and therefore have to slowly upgrade my army.
I prefer the game-by-game imbalance of nearby horses vs iron that leads to variety in game play, and would opt for fewer resources if forced to choose, for the same reason. Your having made a resourceless army viable ought to guarantee that no start is unacceptably bad.
I like having to choose which cities get the coal, which units get the oil, and what to do with my uranium, so the current levels work for me. Clearly this is all a matter of gameplay taste.
I prefer the game-by-game imbalance of nearby horses vs iron that leads to variety in game play, and would opt for fewer resources if forced to choose, for the same reason. Your having made a resourceless army viable ought to guarantee that no start is unacceptably bad.
I like having to choose which cities get the coal, which units get the oil, and what to do with my uranium, so the current levels work for me. Clearly this is all a matter of gameplay taste.
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