Hi
Four small but nifty modifications that I'd really like to see made to BtS:
1. I'd like to be able to "stack" counter-espionage. Currently when I use a Spy unit to perform CE against an AI civ, that AI civ gets a penalty for performing other espionage missions against me for 10 turns. Once this is done, I cannot perform another counter-espionage against the same AI civ before those 10 turns are over, and the game doesn't let me know how much CE effect there is left (it's possible newer versions of BUG shows this, but BUG 4.2 does not).
My idea is that it should be possible to do multiple CE missions even in the same turn, but if already have a CE count against that AI, then each additional CE mission only adds +7 turns duration to the CE effect, rather than a full +10. This way if I'm careful and keep track of time I can spend 4 Spy units - one at a time - to achieve a total of +40 turns of CE on one AI civ, but if I'm sloppy and just send a stack of 4 Spies at once and burn them all right away, I get only 31 turns of CE effect. But it's much more convenient.
2. I'd like for Great Spies to be able to do Counter-Espionage too, either adding a really long duration (maybe +60 turns, without stacking penalty, i.e. regardless of what the current CE count for that AI civ is), or else add a greater CE effect. AFAIK regula CE doubles the espionage point cost of missions against you, so Greater Counter-Espionage could triple the cost for a duration of 20 turns (adding "beneath" any on-going regular CE effect).
3. I'd also really like to be able to build stacks of units. Currently there's a point beyond where more production capacity doesn't help because I'm still stuck in the turn-based lockstep of not being able to produce more than one unit per turn per city. Even if my city has a huge production and is boosted by various Wonder (such as Heroic Epic) and special ressources.
One solution is to tweak the game so that it simply becomes possible to build more than one unit per turn.
Another is to modify the game data so that new options become available to build, which are stacks of various units, each containing 3 or 4 of the same type of unit and with a hammer cost that is 3 or 4 times that of the regular singular-instance unit. Ideally military units should be build as a stack and "appear unified" once built, whereas Workers especially should appear as individual units, e.g. if I've set newly built workers to automate, then I usually don't want an entire stack of them moving around.
If some kind of stack build is implementeed then it is important that this is not just military units but also Workers and (in light of my request #1 above) Spies.
4. Being able to "sacrifice" a Workboat to build a Ferry Route that all land units can pass over. This would be particularly useful for island empires using automated Workers, because currently the AI cannot figure out how to move my Workers (or Missionaries) between islands. These Ferry Routes could be multiple tiles long, each tile costing one Workboat sacrificed (in the same way you sacrifice a Workboat to make a Fishing Boat or Oil Rig), and should be vulnerable to pillaging from barbarians and enemy AI civs, just like Fishing Boats or Oil Rigs are. (It would be ideal if the AI coul do this too, but I very much doubt that's possible, so it'd be of benefit to human players only.)
These changes would really take the game to another and higher level for me, I'm sure. But I'm not at all able to make game mods myself.
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Peter Knutsen