Yakk said:
Very well done.
I'm in the middle of a "highland, ridge-lines, thin, small-lakes", with raging barbarians and normal gamespeed.
The barbarians are winning. There are 3 civilizations left, and the only NPC civs that have not been wiped out are the ones behind my empire.
I saw a column of barbarian troops, stacks 3 to 8 deep, marching along a road for about 5 turns... (that is on the order of ~100 barbarian troops...)
Raging barbarians is sick in this mod. =)
Impressions of the mod in general:
If you lack copper, you are pretty screwed unless you go for dwarf/elf troops. Dwarven troops are better than elven troops, because you can build cities on hills.
Archers are strong defensive units that dont require copper, and the Drown are arguably the best early game attacker and don't require copper either.
Warriors, even max-XP warriors, get destroyed by axemen. Would a shift of +1 combat strength ruin the game?
(scouts: 2, warriors: 3, dwarves/elves/hunters/horsemen: 4, axeman: 5)
It would make a high-XP warrior a match for a low-XP axeman.
Alternatively, the rareness of the iron/copper ores could be delt with by making the resources "high quality copper/iron".
Hatchetman: Strength 4
Axeman: Strength 5 (requires copper or iron)
or, give barracks +50% production of the units it builds with copper or iron.
I like the copper reliance because it forces players to adopt different strategies based on their location. If we made these changes players could always axeman rush (with more or less effeciancy) regardless of situation.
Axemen should be able to cut down forests. This gives them a toy like the dwarven mining.
That will probably be given to some of the axeman UU's (Orcish Axeman, etc) but probably left out of the default one.
The large amount of availiable +% defence in terrain is rather sick. Might I propose that forest/hill +% defence abilities grant +% attack in the same terrain?
The problem is that this would be calculated form the tile the unit is coming from. So an elven archer attacking from a forest into a desert would get the bonus, but not one attacking from a desert into a forest. Since this seems counterintuitive I left it out.
Tech in the ancient eras is agonizingly slow. I assume this generates a nice long ancient era on purpose? =)
Yeap.
Maybe the "adept" type units should be renamed "arcane". Saying a spell is an "adept" seems wierd to me, but saying a mage is "arcane" works.
This is a great idea, I'll change it.
The "must build unit factory before building unit" is interesting. It causes cities to specialize as factories of certain kinds of units (because building the factory at more than one location can be less efficient). Could this be extended somehow?
Yes, and a lot of methods have been considered. Including a full colonization style equipment making system (deer and cotten allows you to make meather vests, iron and a weaponsmith allowed you to make longswords, etc). In the end we have to find a way to combine a system that allows strategic options without needless complexity.
I suspect we won't go far from the model presented in phase 1. If we do develop something more elaborate it will probably be for a few specific units. so I wouldn't expect to see much of a change here.
How good is the AI at understanding mutually exclusive buildings? Is there a way to teach it about them?
The AI doesnt understand that buildings allow units. I had to really boost the AIWeight to get it to build them. The AIWeight does a decent job, you could also intercept the AI choose production function and add in your own logic if you wanted to have more control over it.
Dwarven Stronghold: Extra dwarf production, penalties on non-melee unit production. Bonuses for hills/mines. Bonus promotion (hill I?) for dwarves/melee?
Elven Grove: Extra elf production, penalties on non-archer unit production. Bonuses for forests/treehouses. Bonus promotion (forest I?) for elves/archers?
Human Castle: Extra horse unit production, penalties on non-melee unit production. Bonuses for planes/farms. Bonus promotion (mobility I?) for horses/melee?
I would expect to see things like this in the civ details. The elven civ would get "elven" bonuses, the dwarven civs get "dwarven" bonuses, etc. In phase 1 you tend to think of the religions as races, but they just allow requirement of a handful of racial units. In phase 2 more detailed races will be introduced that will give full sets of racial units, civ specific buildings and such.
. Worldbuilder revealed that the AI players all got druids. I probably won't start in another era again because it seems to pretty much disallow religion founding, but running around with three werewolves was darn funny.
)Organized warfare is a pre-requisite along with ironworking for a tech called "blacksmithing" which lets you build macemen. There is also an "advanced military tactics" tech that lets you build a commend post, chicken(heh) itza, gives access to various military civics, and leads to more advanced units later. I like the idea of the blacksmithing tech letting you build a slightly weaker unit without iron. I have swordsmen tenatively back in with a tech after blacksmithing, but moving them down to the same tech at their original game strength could work. They could have an upgrade later.
