How To Play Civ At Its Best

[rcoutme]

One of the biggest problems I see is that you upgrade ancient cavalry to knights, but ancient cav is obsoleted by Metallurgy. Knights are created by Chivalry. Mettalurgy is only one tech behind making Cavalry. This would seriously screw up your upgrade system.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Originally posted by civ_badger
Thanx for all the replies posted. While some of you might not agree with me, Ranos' comment basically says what I didn't: playing with outdated units SUX.

Then upgrade them, or use them. There's plenty to do with outdated units besides march them to the frontline into a deathtrap.

To Chieftess: What were you trying to say the problem was with having a minimum research time of 1? Right now, without the changes, already having a research length of 4 for all techs (as has happened to me before I started 'tweaking') means that it's totally useless to build wonders such as Copernicus' observatory, save for cultural reasons.

She covered like 15 different reasons why that mod is a bad idea for balance issues. That's just one of them, but another big point. Copernicus' will always be useful, since you don't have to devote as much money to science you can turn your research down(still getting it in 4) and save some cash.

To everyone: These changes aren't about making the game any easier. These changes are about making the game more realistic. You want easy? Run the game on chieftain. You want a realistic game where everyone is trying to be first to break out of the pack? Run this game on Deity or Sid.
-- I didn't kill the game. I made it more like the real world. --

It may have not been your intention to make it easier, but that's exactly what you did. Without testing it, I'd say this mod easily drops difficulty level by 2 places. And as others have pointed out you have made changes that are very unrealistic: galleys turning into battleships, cavs upgrading to tanks, and last time I checked the only thing Ancient wonders do today is a tourism bonus.

 

[Ranos]

@ RegentMan

So if upgrading from a Frigate to an Ironclad is so ridiculous, why aren't you complaining about the upgrade chain in the artillery area? First unit is a Catapult made of wood and rope. But that upgrades to a Cannon molded from iron. How do you explain that? Then they just cut off the end of the cannon and weld on some more metal to make it into an Artillery, right? And of course that continues on to become a driveable vehicle that launches rockets. How does that make sense with your problems in my upgrade chain?

Still not convinced? How can the Tank upgrade to a Modern Armor? How about Fighter upgrading to Jet Fighter? Now what about Galley to Caravel to Galleon? Just glue that new wood on?
And the final blow to your problem is... Galleon to Transport. Your complaint of iron and wood and how do you do that applies to that last upgrade. That was put in by the programmers.

If an axe can be taken away and replaced with a sword and shield, why can't a wooden ship be taken out from under the crew and be replaced with an armor plated one that sits just above the water line?

The upgrade cost is the cost of converting the equipment that a unit uses to the newer stuff. The troops in that unit are constantly being replaced so you don't have to do any retraining.

Any other problems?

EDIT: This is a strategy game that does its best to represent the rise and fall of civilizations throughout history. For it to be truly realistic, it would require a supercomputer and a staff of people controlling different aspects of your empire. The point is to balance realism and gameplay.

For me, having old units in modern times is too annoying. Now I could march them off into battle or use them for crowd control, but you don't see any of those types of units in our nation these days. Why? The men were retrained and their horse was replaced with a tank. Their frigate was replaced with an ironclad which was later replaced by a destroyer.

This helps balance gameplay and adds more realism, IMO.

 

[Hygro]

Originally posted by RegentMan
Just because a type of war machine is obsoleted by another doesn't justify upgrading to it. Ironclads replaced frigrates, destroyers replaced ironclads. Can you imagine changing a naval vessel from a wooden surface ship to an iron, almost submerged warship? Now can we turn that into a destroyer? I think not.

Many Ironclads were made by taking frigates and slapping Iron to them, including the CSS Virginia (Merrimeck was the Union frigate name before the southerners upgraded it)

 

[Gengis Khan]

Originally posted by Ranos
@ Gengis Khan

So if upgrading from a Frigate to an Ironclad is so ridiculous, why aren't you complaining about the upgrade chain in the artillery area? First unit is a Catapult made of wood and rope. But that upgrades to a Cannon molded from iron. How do you explain that? Then they just cut off the end of the cannon and weld on some more metal to make it into an Artillery, right? And of course that continues on to become a driveable vehicle that launches rockets. How does that make sense with your problems in my upgrade chain?

I don't have a problem with the upgrade chain, it's set up the way it is for balance issues not to be 100% realistic.

Civ is a strategy game, not a simulator. There's a big difference.

Like I've already stated before, how you play is up to you. If you enjoy playing with that mod more power to you, have fun with it. But when you come on here & say your mod is "How to play Civ at it's best", when your mod has completly disregarded balance, especially in favor of the human player, expect some people to disagree with you.

 

[sir_schwick]

What is all this talk of realism? It is more realistic in the sense that ages are distinct in terms of combat and units. Defensive and transport units upgrade throughout time to save players the headache of constant replacement. By making most offensive units oly upgrade one or two times, a player can't just make hordes of units and constantly pay gold. The artillery one isn't 100% logical, but it makes it a lot less annoying to maintain an arty force.
If one really cared about the upgrade issue, I would eliminate the upgrade between GAlleon->Transport, Pikemen->Musketmen, Rifleman->INfantry. If one wanted to get super-realistic, eliminate old to modern infantry and tanks and jets.

 

[Ranos]

Oops. Just realized I made a mistake. Sorry Gengis Khan, my last post should have been directed at RegentMan. Don't know how I made that mistake. I'll edit it.

@ RegentMan

Please read my last post.

 

[RegentMan]

Alas, some realism had to be sacrificed to make the game more enjoyable. What would not make the game enjoyable would be to make all the offensive units upgrade to the modern era. With your upgrade chain, all you need to do is pump out chariots in the ancient age, save gold, and bam! instant tanks. Need defenders? No problem. Just build hundreds of 10 shield warriors right before nationalism and once that's discovered, instant rifleman. While some of the upgrades aren't realistic (galleon -> transport, for example) they make the game less stressful. If you still have ancient units running around, you should have used them when they mattered. Simply disband warriors and archers in corrupt colonies to speed up their construction projects. Quit whining that you'll need to take your cities off wealth to build tanks. You just can't build all the necessary improvements and sit back and upgrade. That'd be too easy.