Long Winded Changes (LWC): Mod for Civ3 (totally open to debate and discussion)

[Plutarck]

I believe the readme.txt says it all, so I'll just post the thing here (minus various parts not needed here but worth reading, such as the installtion instructions)

Note: It's rather long because I explain just about every change, and there are alot. None area all that major. It's just a whole ton of little tweaks and alterations for all kinds of different reasons. I'll have to cut it into more than one post, LOL.

All intelligent/reasonable input welcomed and encouraged


Long Winded Changes: Mod for Civilization 3 (LWC Mod alpha-v0.0.1)
Created by Plutarck, aemuli@yahoo.com



WARNING: This mod is considered to be in the Alpha stage of testing, and has been released only to get other's opinions as to what is and isn't a change for the better.


PURPOSE OF THIS MOD:

The purpose of this mod is to alter Civ3 in ways that make it more balanced to allow multiple valid strategys for victory, less frustrating, more historically accurate, and just generally a whole lot more fun to play.


HOW YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE:

For this mod I utilize what I call the "Plutarck Community Process". If you can convince the Plutarck Community (i.e. me) with an intelligent argument which stands the test of reasonability and helps accomplish the above mentioned purpose of this mod, then I will make the changes for the next version of this mod and do my best to give you the credit for the idea/argument. I don't have the best of memorys, so tell me if I manage to forget to give credit where credit is due.


WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGES

Changes this mod makes, in order of how the tabs appear in the editor:


Citizens:

Tax Collector requires Currency.
Scientist requires Literature.

Collecting Taxes without having some form of Currency (even if that Currency is Grain, as it was in Ancient China), and having Scientists who can't read doesn't seem very sensible. This has no real effect on gameplay, but it made sense to me.

Up for debate: Do Tax Collectors and Scientists need to have their effectiveness increased? If so, by how much? As is they seem to be unused until vastly later in the game (if they are ever used), but even the most minor improvement to their effectiveness would double their current output. Much playtesting is needed to confirm, so they have been left as-is.


Civilizations:

No change.


Civilization Advances:

Monarchy cost reduced from 24 to 20.
The Republic cost reduced from 28 to 24.
Technology named "Synthetic Fibers" has been renamed to "Synthetic Materials", which is more fitting for what it actually "does".


Combat Experience:

No change.


Culture:

No change.


Difficulty Levels:

No change.


Diplomats and Spies:

No change.


Eras:

No change.


General settings:

Wealth cost changed from 8 shields to 6 shields. It was too high before, but 4 is too low a cost to start out with.

Forest value in shields changed from 10 to 20. Previously if you had 1 worker clearing the forest it would basically only give you 1 extra production per turn to the city it went to. This makes the effect of all that extra timber more pronounced without becoming unbalancing when multiple workers are hacking away.


Governments:

Monarchy: Diplomats are now Veteran. I'm still not sure what effect this will actually have (if any at all), but it's worth a try. Supposedly it increases the chance of success in a diplomatic mission with lower cost, but I'm not sure how pronounced this effect will actually be. Missions aren't very useful anyway, and with Steal Technology you usually have to pay more than it would cost to just buy the tech from the same Civilization as you want to steal it from. But I figured this would nicely reflect all the backstabbing and cloak-and-dagger dealings that are so common within Monarchys.

Communism: Draft limit changed from 2 to 3, Citys now support 5 units instead of 4. Communism should be considerably better at war than ancient Monarchy, and it was nearly unnoticable an upgrade. It is now more considerable without being rediculous.

Improvements and Wonders:

Palace: Now adds Resistant to Propaganda, Reduces Corruption (while the capital city supposedly has no corruption, it's worth ticking just in case as I seem to occassionally noticed some tiny amount of corruption anyway. It can't hurt, right?), and Allows City Size Level 2. Also gives +1 Happyness in city. Historically the Capitals of empires have always been the most luxurious places of living, and the City Size keeps everyone on even footing even if they weren't lucky enough to start next to a river. It also gives 2 bombard defense to reflect the extra structural defense of a Palace, and gives a 10% bonus to defense of the city to reflect the Royal Guard that surely protects the Capital.

Library and University: Reduces Corruption. Better access to information and government documents makes it harder to be corrupt without being discovered. Educated people are harder to fool...kind of. At this time there is no way to fine-tune exactly how much corruption is reduced, so this will have to do.

Aqueduct: Now adds +1 happyness. I know how happy I'd be if I could suddenly get a nice glass of clean water without having to squeeze it out of a weed. I would have liked to just "reduce unhappyness due to overcrowding by 2", but that is not currently possible.

Police Station: Adds Resistance to Propaganda and Reduces Corruption. I can't help but laugh that I'm adding reduced corruption to a police station, but it's reasonable from a game play standpoint, even if I totally disagree from a real life standpoint

Great Lighthouse: Cost reduced from 40 to 30. Not a very valuable wonder and it is usually built so late as to be obsolete too quickly to be worth building at all. This makes it slightly better. Considering that the Great Library costs 40 shields while giving 4 more culture and is far more useful in nearly all games, the reduction is warranted. It now costs as much as the Hanging Gardens and Oracle, yet it produces 2 less culture and is still considerably less useful than either of them.

The Oracle: Now adds 1 happyness to the city it's in. Made sense and helps balance it with Hanging Gardens.

Sun Tzu's Art of War: Now costs 50 shields instead of 60 and produces 3 culture instead of 2. Helps balance out the wonder, but now makes far more sense culturally as The Art of War is even studied by modern military strategists and, along with the other Great Chinese Mility Classics, changed the way warfare was thought about and conducted. Now at least it produces more culture than The Great Lighthouse As to the cost, the Pyramids still cost 10 resources less, produce 1 more culture, have 2 characteristics (which cause golden ages) instead of just 1, AND the Granary is arguably more useful than a Barracks, so it remains well balanced for the reduced cost. Though the the fact that the Art of War was a freakin' BOOK makes it odd that you only get a Barrack in every city on the continent, it could prove unbalancing to give it to every city without ever becoming obsolete so I have left it as-is.

Note on "Gain in Every City..." Wonders: As the amount of citys you can have in an empire is far less than in other Civ games (much less fit on a single continent), Gain in Every City wonders are considerably less powerful than usual. While still excellant if you can manage to build them, they are far more balanced than in the other games.

Magellan's Voyage: Now gives Safe Sea/Ocean Travel, just in case you still have some old un-upgraded ships laying around. With the more accurate sea-lane maps and seafaring understanding the great voyage of Magellan brought your galleys should at least not get freakin' lost in the Sea. Doesn't really make the Wonder more important to build, but at least there is one more insignificant reason to build it.

CONTINUED...

 

[Plutarck]

Leonardo's Workshop: Costs 50 shields instead of 60 and produces 3 culture instead of 2. The Wonder is almost never actually worth the time to build unless all the other wonders have already been built. Even then it does not provide the great usefulness of the Workshop of Civ2 where all your units instantly upgraded themselves, but instead only makes it less costly to do your upgrading. You still need a barrack in the city to do it. All in all the reduced cost seems more reasonable. But more importantly the great Leonardo created designs for a working parachute (as was recently tested and confirmed) hundreds of years before the first flying machine (even the hot air baloon), the tank before steam power had even begun to be looked into, and the submarine before even the first Frigate had been built. His fame (and the price Bill Gate's paid for his notebook) to this day makes 3 culture at least reasonable, and now it rightfully produces more culture than the The Great Lighthouse

One last thing: It was formerly just Militaristic, but is now also Scientific. Kind of a no brainer if you ask me, and I'm surprised it wasn't already Scientific.

Smith's Trading Company: Now costs 55 shields instead of 60. Has practically no effect at all on building it, but as it only pays for Marketplace and Bank (each of which only costs 1 maintenance a piece) it isn't a very good wonder anyway. It's certainly no Adam Smith's Trading Company of other Civ games, which is good; those were horribly unbalanced.

Theory of Evolution: The cost to build is 60, which I believe is what is was in the first place and is thus unchanged. Just wanted to make sure I didn't change it and forget to mention it.

Cure for Cancer: Now produces 2 happy faces in the city that produced it instead of one and produces 4 culture (it may have done that already, but it might have only produced 3 before...can't recall). I just couldn't get past the fact that curing cancer only made 1 citizen happy in each city that I wanted to tweak that at least a tiny bit. Seems too large an achievement to give too small a reward...but 2 happy in every city may be unbalancing from a gameplay standpoint.

Longevity: Now produces 2 happy faces in the city that built it instead of 0, and produces 4 culture instead of 3. Common', you're telling me a longer healthy life wouldn't make anyone happy whatsoever?

Iron Works: Now produces 1 culture instead of 2. I'm sorry, but it's an overglorified blast furnace. I strongly considered giving it 0 culture, but Small Wonders should at least give 1 culture...and it makes alot more sense than 2 culture, at least.

Forbidden Palace: Reduces Corruption like it did before (though I ticked it in the Improvements box as well as the Small Wonders box, so it may have some extra effect), but also Allows City Size Level 2, which is what the Aqueduct currently does. The Palace does the same thing and I figure it makes since as the extra construction to build such a large palace surely comes with extra provisions and some source of fresh drinking water (which is what I think the Palace surely does). Also gives a Defense bonus of 10% to reflect the Royal Guard that surely garrisons the palace, and gives 2 bombard defense to the city to reflect the added defenses that come along with any kind of Palace.

Wall Street: Use to have no characteristics, but now carries the Commercial characteristic. This one is a big Duh, if I do say so myself. Must have been an oversight.

Battlefield Medicine: Use to be only Militaristic, but is now Militaristic and Scientific. Not as big an oversight as with Wall Street, but it seems odd to me that a Small Wonder which requires 5 Hospitals to build is not considered scientific. This has no real effect on gameplay as the chances of a Scientific civilization building Battlefield Medicine without having done any other Scientific wonder AND not already having triggered their Golden Age via Special Unit is so utterly remote that it is hardly worth consideration. Thus this change is purely cosmetic.


Natural Resources:

Aluminum: The ratio of it's appearance use to be 120, but is now 150. The reason for this is that while you can in fact survive without Oil (more on that in the Units section) at least defensivily (though launching a major assault without Oil until the end of the Modern Era is still unlikely, and it's still harder than if you had oil), surviving without Aluminum from the Early-Middle Modern Era on is pretty well impossible. Without Aluminum you cannot: Launch an effective attack, stage a very effective defense, OR build a spaceship. You basically can either win through Culture or Diplomacy, and that's about the only prayer you have. And you won't know until you've got Rocketry (which is when Aluminum is revealed), which is in the Modern Age. Not nearly enough time to plan for a culture victory, and finding out you're pretty much screwed in the Modern Age because you lack 1 resource is completely unenjoyable and provides far more frustration than it does a "challenge". And I know of wars fought over Oil, but I have yet to hear of The Great Aluminum War. Aluminum remains still 10 points more rare than Horses or Iron, so you're still by no means guaranteed to run into it. Maybe you'll have a Great Aluminum War after all

The rest of the Strategic resources remain as-is as none are totally do-or-die as is the case with Aluminum. I'm aware that Oil use to be this way, but you'll see that's no longer quite the case. I've considered illiminating the need for aluminum on some of the units, but in real life I know of no particular substitute for it or synthetic alternative. Then again it could be because aluminum is so dirt cheap, it's easily recyclable, and there is plenty to go around...But I remain open to being convinced that Aluminum is not needed for later modern units.

Incense: Now adds 2 commerce instead of 1 to reflect it's religious and cultural significance as well as offset the fact that the stuff almost always appears in the Desert and I've yet to see it on a Hill. It can also now appear in Jungles now, though the setting for that is on the next tab.

Game: Now adds 2 food instead of 1. Hunting remains an important source of food for many people even today, and that was especially true in ancient times. This change reflects that while remaining balanced with other resources (for instance Cattle produce +2 food and +1 shields). While Game now has the same bonus as Wheat, few animals eat game in the forest while birds love to fill their bellies with wheat (birds consuming crops remains a trouble today in Argentina, as I learned on a hunting show I once saw and is reflected by the fact that you can hunt such crop-eating birds to your heart's content in
Argentina without breaking any laws). Makes sense to me.


Terrain:

Jungle: If you've played any random map games at all you have surely found the horrid problem with jungles. They are pretty much the swamps of the other Civ games, yet they cover an utterly rediculous amount of the land surface rendering huge tracts of land totally unusable unless you like the first 3 castle's you build being destroyed (Monty Python reference. You may laugh with me now. Ha. Ha...ok, it wasn't exactly the most appropriate since we're talking about jungles now and not swamps, but there you have it). And swamps didn't even have the Disease effect!

I have end-run this entire problem by giving Jungles +2 shield production, making their output the same as a normal forest. From a gameplay standpoint it allows enough production to actually allow citys to survive in heavy jungles (and judging from some of the ancient monuments in places such as Africa and Brazil, these changes are not unreasonable), while still remaining highly undesirable due to disease, high movement cost (still 3 as opposed to the forests' 2), and inability to improve the tile with anything but roads. Clearing Jungle's still doesn't give any resources, unlike forests. This is not editable at this time, else I'd at least make it give 5-10 resources.

I have also added Incense to the possible resources which can appear in the Jungle, which makes perfect sense to me.

When Civ3 gives ya lemons, Edit Them till they taste like Oranges! (You may laugh with me now. Ha. Ha.)

I considered giving forests 2 food and 1 production, but unimproved or with roads it would be just as good as an enhanced grassland. Seems too big of a switch, so if it was good enough for the other Civilization games than it's good enough for Civ3.

Note: If the commonality of Jungles becomes editable it may be a good idea to change their output to 1/1/0, though I like them as I've left them now.

One last note:

All other terrain remains unchanged.


Units:


CONTINUED...

 

[Plutarck]

Civilizations are now allowed to build the unit their Special Unit replaces, so long as some previous unit can upgrade into that unit. The reason for this is evident with Japan, for instance. Their Samurai replaces the Knight, but this has the effect that they are unable to upgrade their Horsemen to Knights. This is rather annoying and not all Civs suffer equally, so I remidied it. Civs like the Germans and Americans, for instance, remain unchanged as nothing can be upgraded into the unit their special unit replaces.

Special Unit changes:

Egyptian War Chariot: Formerly being only a 1/3rd cheaper Horsemen that could trigger a Golden Age, it is now basically an Impi which gets +1 attack due to the fact that it requires Horses to build. So the war chariot goes from 2/1/2 to 2/2/2 without any other change. The AI will consider it an Offensive unit (and rightly so), and the Egyptians get an excellant utility unit which can be used to defend, explore, or attack. Great for dealing with barbarians. This does not unbalance the unit as it is not any better an attacker than the Horsemen, but now they are not quite so easily killed in a pre-emptive strike or counter-attack. It does not give the Egyptians a big leg-up, but it is now a unit that is definately worth builing for anyone playing as an Egyt-pian (note: that is an almost unoticable reference to the song. I'll let you figure it out...on second thought, forget I mentioned it)

English Man-O-War: Formerly having 3/2/4 (which is a +1 attack improvement over the Frigate. It also has +1 bombard as compared to the Frigate, but that is neither here nor there.), I have now given it +1 defense bringing it up to 3/3/4. It is now just as effective an attacker as it is a defender, which is both historically reasonable and makes good game-play sense. It also gives it some chance of surviving the Ironclad which will soon come into action, so the English still have some ability to maintain Naval Superiority. I also allow the Man-O-War to be upgraded to the Ironclad. After all, the first Ironclads were in fact captured ships which were retrofitted with armored plating. Frigates can also be upgraded to Ironclads now, just to keep the English player on his or her toeshoes (this negates any unbalancing effect, even if it is just a little bit off historically as the ships retrofitted into Ironclads were bigger than Frigates, I believe).

Note: One deviation from historical accuracy in the game is the fact that the Man-O-War and Frigate have the same movement, when in fact the Frigate should be faster. This cannot be properly changed without having an unbalancing effect, so we'll just have to put up with it.

Privateers: Formerly having the piddling stats of 1/1/3, they now have 2/1/3. They may actually be useful now other than to draw out the AI's ships like crazy. This in no way unbalances them against other naval powers, while making them somewhat useful for taking potshots at enemy ships.

Normal units:

Infantry: Formerly requiring Rubber to build, they no longer do. I'm sorry, but it simply does not make sense that you can't build infantry for lack of rubber. I don't care how bad the effect of STDs are during war-time, rubber isn't a deal breaker! (Note: Condoms were mostly not made of actual rubber, oddly enough, despite the slang term "rubber". the first condoms were made of sheep and goat intestines (which, incidentally, did have microscopic holes that were bigger than HIV. contrary to pseudo-scientific myth, largely predicated as propaganda by certain conservative religious organizations, modern latex condoms have no such holes which allow the passing of HIV through them under naturally occuring circumstances - and 99.9% of condoms made today are made with latex or a non-latex synthetic replacement, for those allergic to latex), and only for a comparitively short time made of thin rubber until they were replaced by latex or non-latex synthetic materials.)

...sorry for that tangent, but the fact remains that Infantry should not require rubber to build, and they no longer do. They are the best defender for Civs without access to Strategic resources, and can still be Drafted. Let the resource deprived rejoice, as heaven and nature sing.

Infantry may now also Clear Jungles, Clear Forests, and build Forts.

Mechanical Infantry: Mech Inf may now Clear Jungles, Clear Forests, and build Forts.

Modern Armor, Stealth Fighter, Stealth Bomber: All post-Synthetic Materials (the tech formerly known as Synthetic Fibers) no longer require Oil or Rubber. This reflects the fact that synthetic rubber has now almost entirely replaced "natural" rubber, and that oil replacements are also available (even if they are more expensive in large quantitys). Besides, you don't exactly fill up a Stealth Bomber with Unleaded. You use specially mixed jet fuel, of course, which is mostly a chemical mixture; it may contain some oil, but it is no longer a neccessity.

While making the game more accurate, this also has the effect of making it possible to survive if you are unlucky enough to have no access to Oil. Formerly you were pretty much shut out of a conquest victory, but now you can concentrate on scientific advancement to reach Synthetic Materials and Stealth.

Unfortunately you're still just as screwed if you don't have aluminum...ah well, haven't heard of anyone having too much trouble in accessing it, but perhaps some other alteration will be needed later.

Catapult: Raised Bombard Strength to 5 from the former 4. A wee bit more useful before the advent of Canon, but hardly something to telegraph home about.

Cruise Missle: Bombard Range increased to 6 from the utterly rediculous original of 2 (the range of a cruise missle is farther than an artillery shell, isn't it?). I would prefer if there were a lower powered Tomahawk Missle and the Cruise Missle became available with something like Smart Weaponry, but this change sufficiently makes Cruise Missle a usable option.

Frigate: The Frigate can now be upgraded into the Ironclad, while before it was entirely non-upgradable.

Transport: Trans. Capacity reduced from 8 to 6. A single transport carrying the amount of units a Communist Metropolis can support just doesn't seem quite right. 6 seems a far more reasonable figure, and upgrades nicely from it's predecessor's (the Galleon) capacity of 4.

AEGIS Cruiser: No change, but a ponderance: should it require Aluminum to build, or should just Uranium be enough? For that matter, should it even require Uranium at all? I'm not really sure, but I'm not so sure AEGIS Cruisers are nuclear powered...but it's possible. However, do they use Plutonium, or Uranium like most land reactors?

A somewhat related note: Firaxis should include "Either Or" resource support so, for instance, a Battleship could be built if you had Oil OR Uranium, to signify the fact they can be built using standard engines or nuclear reactors to power them.

Destroyer: No change, but I strongly considered giving Destroyers the ability to see submarines. But Destroyers become available before submarines, and are the main naval force in the game. Doing this would largely negate the whole use of building submarines, and that isn't something we want to do. So the AEGIS Cruiser and other subs are your only defense against subs.

Nuclear Submarine: Formerly having 6/4/3 (the same as a normal submarine) I have changed it to 8/4/4. The speed increase makes sense for real life accuracy (even though the diesel powered sub was excellant in Down Parascope, it was mostly due to it's Great Leader ), and the increased attack allows it to have an even chance in taking out a Destroyer.

Note: The normal Submarine cannot be upgraded into the Nuclear Submarine for real-world accuracy, but mostly because the AI considers the Submarine as a Naval Power, while it considers the Nuclear Submarine as a Naval Missle Transport. This may need tweaking, but choosing two options for AI strategy is greatly discouraged by Firaxis. Let's hope the AI can figure out it has better attack without extra help.


Worker Jobs:

No change.


World Sizes:

No change.

 

[slothman]

Modern Armor, Stealth Fighter, Stealth Bomber: All post-Synthetic Materials (the tech formerly known as Synthetic Fibers) no longer require Oil or Rubber. This reflects the fact that synthetic rubber has now almost entirely replaced "natural" rubber, and that oil replacements are also available (even if they are more expensive in large quantitys). Besides, you don't exactly fill up a Stealth Bomber with
Unleaded. You use specially mixed jet fuel, of course, which is mostly a chemical mixture; it may contain some oil, but it is no longer a neccessity.[/qoute] Oh well I was going to Mobil to fill up my recently aquired stealth bomber. AEGIS Cruiser: I would make it need aluminum. It does use rockets. Destroyer: Since they are "Submarine destroyers" I would remove the AEGIS ability to see subs and add it to them.
I would also make destroyers available after subs. Smith's Trading Company: doesn't it also pay for harbers and airports since they help with commerce? Iron Works: I probably would make it give 0 culture even though it's a small wonder. Maybe even negative (can you do that)? Remember Pittsburg had a plethera of factories and people didn't exactly considure it a cultural base of America. Aluminum: I would make it
less common than horses but less than iron. Germany in some war or another, I don't remember which, could have had problems since it had a limited supply of iron. I would also make aluminum visible with electricty since that was required to turn bauxite - aluminum ore - into actual aluminum. Sun Tzu's Art of War: I would make it's culture back to 2. Even though it is significant in military, It's civilian uses are limited. How many people do you know who have read it or even heard of it. Firaxis says the culture is a "ars and sciences" bases thing so I waould say 2 is enough.

 

[T__]

In my opinion something should be done about the frigate and galleon, it's kinda wierd that a warship should loose to a transport 50% of the time, this makes it almost impossible to mount an effective defense against invasions on islands maps, and gives very little reason to build the frigate, except for bombardmant purposes. The frigate should proably have an attack of 3, but then the rest of the naval units has to be changed to reflect this. I also think that wooden war ships is availible to late in the game, they are replaced by the ironclad after 2 or 3 advances. I've also been playing with the tought of introducing a dreadnought class ships that are weaker and slower than battleships but only require coal and iron, as the first battleships (HMS Dreadnought) were as far as I can remeber coal burners

what do you all think about this ??

T

 

[Plutarck]

Now that you mention it, Naval units do need a lot of work.

For one thing, Astronomy comes WAY too late in the game. Quite a bit of shifting around is needed with technology, such as the fact that Map Making does not require Mathematics but Astronomy comes towards the end of the Middle Ages and requires Education, which is somehow a prerequisite for Physics, etc.

However techs are not really editable very easily right now thanks to the fact that you have to align the techs with X/V coords without a tool to help you do it, among other problems. I'll still try to play with it though and see what I can do, but for now I know of no way to add a technology. We'll see if anyone can figure something out.


One big problem is the fact that Sea-worthy vessels come far, far too late in the game, and the first naval unit also takes a bit longer than it should. The first naval unit should come with a tech which requires Alphabet, but does not need Writing (it's stats should be 1/1/2 and transport 1 unit). "Ship Building" sounds about right, which should have a cost to research the same as Pottery. That unit should be the Trireme, with a similar graphic to the Galley but less Sleak looking.

The next unit should be available with Map Making (who's prereq. is Writing and Ship Building), which is Sea worthy but sinks in the oceans. It should be 1/1/3 but carrys 2 units. This is the current Galley, with the only change being making it sea-worthy.

Also there must be an early warship added with Map Making, having 2/1/3 stats, being sea worthy, having 1 rate of fire, and carrying no units. The earliest war ships were available in the ancient ages (at least in Egypt, without a doubt) so it's about time there was one. Hm...however, we could call this the Fire Trireme, but where those really sea worthy? Perhaps we'll just leave it out and call this unit the Warship (if anyone can think of a better name, say so).

Moving on to the Middle Ages...

The Frigate should definately beat transports at least 65-70% of the same. However the Frigate does have a 2 rate of fire, while the Caravel and Galleon have 0...but I guess that doesn't really effect much.

How about dropping the Caravel to 1 defense from it's current 2, which means all it gains is 1 transport capacity when it's upgraded from the Galleon. Seems historically correct and sensible to me. After all, all they really did was transport goods, troops, and settlers.

Now about the Galleon...I don't know what do to. I think the Frigate should have 3 attack, but then the Man-O-War must be given 4 attack, and the Ironclad given 5...this seems fine, but there remains one problem. When Transport becomes available, there must become a warship available with it.

This sounds like the PERFECT place for a Dreadnought, which requires Coal. However since Steel has already been invented first...but isn't steel nothing but specially prepared Iron? So, shouldn't the Transport require Iron, and weren't the first Transports utilizing Coal?

Here's an idea! This is what we can do:

The Ironclad gets 5/4/4 stats.

Move the Transport to being made available with Steel, make it require Coal and Iron. Give it the stats 1/3/4, transports 5 units. Add the Dreadnought which requires coal and iron (also made available with Steel), with the stats 7/6/4. The Ironclad still has a chance against it, but the old wooden warships won't stand up against it with any reliability.

Combustion will not add anything at this time. Only with Mass Production did the combustion engine truly become used in naval warfare. Before that it was just too expensive and unreliable.

The Destroyer is thus moved to becoming available with Mass Production. It's stats are made 10/7/5 and given the ability to see Submarines. This was the true role of the Destroyer in the first place, and it now becomes it's main mission in life. This would also be a good place for a new ship called the Cruiser, which is the "middle-weight" naval power which is better and more expensive than the destroyer, but can't see submarines, has 5 movement, but is significantly stronger. The Battleship should have it's movement lowered to 4. These aren't modern retro-fitted battleships of today, and were certainly not nearly that fast. It should also be a little more expensive; there really weren't that many battleships around in world war II.

A new ship called something like a Modern Tranport, or Troop Carrier (or whatever you prefer) should be added with Amphibious Warfare. It will be a 1/4/5 carrying 6 troops.

Now Destroyers are fast anti-sub ships used especially to take out Transports and old wooden ships, and to defend from the coal-burning Dreadnoughts. Cruisers are the mainstay of the navy used mostly to engage in naval battles. The Battleships should be expensive and not quite as fast, but they are the most fearsome ships on the seas and can pack one hell of a punch. But their cost is definately prohibitive, so most will opt for Cruisers and Destroyers to do their dirty work.

I think submarines are ok in this picture, but I'd have to see the other changes to figure out if they need a tweak I haven't already done.


That should fix naval warfare all the way up to the Industrial Ages, at very least.


I'll release my newest version today or tommarrow, which is much improved over this old version. I'll also post it in the completed modpack forum and email in the announcement since it will be totally usable and playable (unlike the current version).

 

[Plutarck]

A quick last note: You can't add techs at this time using the editor, so that will have to be left out. I'm also not really confident about the ability to add units, which is still bugged and can't really be done. So most of the mentioned changes in naval warfare will be left out in the version I'll be releasing next.

We may need to wait for the editor patch, or at least for a more advanced independent mod tool, to do any real naval balancing like I mentioned above.

 

[T__]

hmm, I haven't tried the editor yet, but I guess we are limited to moving units around the tech-tree, and renaming techs. The only solution as far as I can see is moving the Frigate (,privateer and Man-O-War) to Astronomy, making the caravel a pure transport, moving the iron clad to industrialization, and changing the stats of warships so that they can beat transports, your alterations seems good, dropping the def of the caravel and galleon to 1 and increasing the attack of the privateer to 2 would acctually make the privateer useful for preventing "friends" from setteling on your continent. Moving the firgate to astronomy will possibly make it available before the discovery of salpeter, but since it requires slapeter, gunpowder will have to researched before frigates can be buildt. If your planning to make the destroyer see subs, then the ageis cruser will be redundant, so it can be renamed crusier and put in the industrial ages.

This is not the kind of fix I would have wanted, but with the limitations that exists, it'll have to do

T

 

[maestro156]

Are you certain you want to modify the numbers of resources? It seems to me that the scarcity of resources is one of the key points to the game. I'd be more in favor of reducing resources rather than increasing them. I think that decreasing unit dependency on resources is going to make the wars a lot less interesting. And with resources, historical accuracy isn't really important. This was a balancing act so they chose a few resources and built the units around them. I do agree with your idea of making certain that an infantry defender can be built with few resources though.

Oh and good work on the modifications overall.

 

[Plutarck]

I do want to ensure that Resource Wars still occur, but in the case of Oil (for instance) you were basically screwed until the end of the game if you didn't get it immediatly before the AI could start building the highly defensive oil units.

The way I want it to work instead is go more along a kind of Resource Age, which is both historically accurate and non-frustration from a gameplay standpoint. Early on it's clearly iron, which then gives way to saltpeter (though iron remains important until past the Steel advance), which then both go obsolete soon in favor of Coal and the coming oil.

The problem is then that Oil goes from mid industrial all the way to th end of the game, and if you don't have it you have no chance of building any of the good units.

Rubber and Oil should then be the key match, but once you've reached the end of the modern ages you need only Aluminum. And without Aluminum, you're pretty much SOL, being totally unable to win the game.

Given how long it takes to discover aluminum it's rather unfair that you can play an entire game and then at the very end you pretty much discover you're screwed.

That can still happen now as Aluminum remains more rare than Iron, but it won't happen as often as it did. Oil remains great in the mid-industril until late-modern (as it should).


So hopefully it won't really hurt such aspects at all, while reducing the chance that you'll be totally shut out of anything but a Survival "victory".

 

[maestro156]

You've thought it out well, and justified your decisions. I guess we'll need to playtest to see if it works out as you planned.

 

[Dazed]

Your patch sounds like it could really add to the game. Please post when you are going to have her ready, because i dont want to start a new game till i use your patch (or the officialpatch Looking forward to staging wars again with your modified stats. One thing, i think that you should flag a few more buildings for corruption. maybe two, but you know better than me. Good work and thank you

 

[maestro156]

Well now I can see your point regarding the resources. I got stuck on one game without access to horses or iron and my nearest neighbor had both. I was beaten to a pulp in the early Middle Ages when they decided they didn't want me on their island anymore . I was playing highest ocean and archipelago so I didn't have access to anyone else, unfortunately. But I can now see how the lack of resource can be a problem. Not sure if I want to solve the problem though as it does often lend itself to interesting situations.

 

[Plutarck]

Long Winded Changes beta v0.1 is now COMPLETED! Woohoo!

I'll post it now in the Completed Modpacks forum and email the announcements to Civfanatics and Apolyton

I think it really improves the playability of the game. I'm going to go play with it now too