Played a game as France to mid renaissance. 10 players, all of them these tweaked civs - France, Greece, England, Iran, Ottomans, Shoshone, Rome, Byzantium, China, Carthage. King difficulty, epic speed, large communitu map, 20 city states.
France is good. Its has a good push throughout the game. The UA gives some guaranteed production from classical, a (passively acquired) GG to secure some particularly vulnerable fronts. Tourism to production is a roundabout way to scale +2
from wonders to later eras (not that I dislike it). +3
from great works and GPTIs means goddess of beauty and tradition is a goto pick for France even in hilly starts, with 6
to work 2-3 specialists. Really, it cannot be understated how much better this makes manufactories placed on a barren hill for those opting to share the tile between the capital and a secondary city. But the large map I got had other plans, and I founded 8 cities and I had to take progress to pump those settlers out from secondary cities. I picked ancestor worship for some nice wide faith and culture, was unhappy for a while because I had only 2 luxes and until my last cities and the recent trade evaluations made buying tiles to develop them much harder.
Sainte Chapelle is very flexible. I founded a religion with synagogues and orders and those extra yields were quite nice. It does not boost faith bought normal buildings (like amphitheatres, universities through reformation beliefs. This is also stated clearly in the ingame help, so it is probably intentional). A holy site (through the prophet) gives +4
+ extra yields for those who want a direct grand temple replacement. The best strategy is probably to spend faith reforming and using this prophet for an enhancement, both of which I did first of all the civs. It comes with an artifact which unlocks a lot of different GP theming with salons before unlocking Archaeology. +10HP on cavalry is nice. I am yet to see if the upgrade discount works when they upgrade to landships. The 10%
to
conversion nets me about 22
in renaissance
Bombarde Mortier can be described with just two words. Boom Boom. Its a renaissance era siege in medieval era. 29CS means it can shoot units just fine even with siege inaccuracy, which is important to get some use out of quick study and get range. With orders and a war with Carthage, I was able to get range, volley on a couple of them and just range on a couple of them. I am not sure if having a cannon's worth of firepower to break castled cities made sieges fast or if it was the general warfare tweaks or just base VP tweaks but castled cities went down in about 10 turns with just a single bombarde mortier.
I am somewhat mixed about Mousquetaires. They have been moved from commando replacements to light company replacements and now unlock in gunpowder instead of acoustics. With bombarde mortier unlocking in machinery, I was hoping to go astronomy and build Chichen Itza and then to acoustics but I ended up going gunpowder for the unlock for my war against Carthage. Mousquetaires are what mounted melee should be like. I picked trailblazer 2 on all of them, allowing them to usually get 4 movement, ignore zoc, use terrain defence and fortify. Being able to move after attacking means I can stack some of that extra 10% CS for every hit from the UA. Very good synergy, but at 23CS, they trade blows against fortified pikes, longswords and its a bit of a losing matchup against fortified tercios, even with their 25% attack bonus. I still attack with them anyway because they can heal quite fast thanks to benevolence and survivalism means they do not have to go back to friendly territory to get decent heals.
But they look like they will not be able to keep up from industrial. Fusiliers get +15%CS against ranged units, they can pick cover 2, giving them a good 65%CS against ranged units and over 100% against the skirmisher line thanks to formation. Meanwhile, mousquetaires are good at defending once they get survivalism 2 in renaissance, but the raw CS disparity gets much higher in industrial with fusiliers and commandos, not to mention commandos unlock at dynamite, much later than Fusiliers. With increased tech costs on medieval era and later, and France needing to focus on getting the Louvre which is on a different tech path, mousquetaires will be bench warmers for much of industrial era.
Mousquetaires level up very quickly thanks to being a recon unit, which means they get access to nice promos like survivalism 3 but have little else to do after that. Medic is redundant with benevolence, you do not need more than a single spotter, that eliminates scouting (on all units except a couple). To keep them relevant in industrial it would be nice if they can get cover like fusiliers to tank, and/or get shock and overrun which could make excellent use of trailblazer 2 and the tweaked benevolence.
About general gameplay changes, the new horseman truly feels like the end of the world in an era where supply and maintenance is at a premium. Interestingly, with the recent removal of cover on the sword line, it might be a better idea to go for the spear line because with formation 1 they can protect themselves against skirmishers and counter horsemen. Longswords are definitely better with drill 1 and cover 1.
Not sure about the changes to city defence. Castled? cities with around 700HP still took about 10 turns to take with a single bombarde mortier. Early palisade unlock means base VP Japan gets a minor buff which they badly need.
Well is now better than water mills. It trades off 1
for 1
and then a scaler but the cost for the era is too high on water mills and it unlocks later. I settled a couple of cities next to lakes and oasis and not next to a river just for this reason and to get baths later on.
Now, about other civs, I must admit I was wrong about Byzantium being weak (it is probably weak in human hands though). I am still exploring their lands to see if Aplektons are indeed not terrible as I think but Byzantium, Rome and Greece are neck to neck in culture and science and a couple techs ahead of me. Byzantium spread their religion to half the continent and she has 3 votes in the congress now. Ottomans snagged Colossus and are as good as Rome in terms of science although they probably are struggling a little because of how specific their printing press is. I have no idea how Greece is so good but good for him. All of them opted for Industry and are probably going to kill me in world congress projects. Speaking of world congress projects, Rome has been swimming in production. With 20% in secondary cities, copper monopoly, progress, and golden ages thanks to his UA, he is pushing 45%-65% more production than us all. He built Chichen Itza, Summer palace, Sistine chapel and is competing with me for Porcelain tower.
Shoshone and England are guarded with England being much weaker than the above civs and me in culture. Good for me, I met England through Atlantic ocean. I can only contemplate how OP redcoats are when they attack someone over Pacific ocean. Still, I have refrained from settling an Island city right between us with 2 unique luxes for me, just because its renaissance era. Iran isn't doing too bad now but I expect them to fall behind as they have taken imperialism. China is the only civ that seems to not fare too well with a terrible economy and 2 techs and policies behind me. With how close everyone is, except for England and China, I think the mod is reasonably balanced but I am not sure how balanced this is with other civs from base VP.
Please consider moving the changes to GDRs and XCOM squads to a separate file to make it easy to add them back. They are so coooooooooool.