Kael said:
No, the Lanun are the pirates of the world but they are human.
Yes, in 1.0 the Drown, Fireballs and Meteors all travel on land and sea. The Drown are exactly as you describe, able to travel on the land and coast tiles but not enter the ocean tiles.
Close, but not quite.
What if the Drown
could only go 1 square away from water, be it a river, a lake or an ocean.
For this to work, land "away from water" would have to be different than "land near water".
Adding "feature" of "Landlocked", and making the "Landlocked" feature impassable for "The Drown", might provide an interesting weakness for "The Drown". They would be able to travel off the coast, on the shore, and up riviers -- but they couldn't invade the center of a continent.
But, as I noted, I haven't checked if this is possible. There are features (like flood plain), and there is a section in the unit data for making certain features impassable -- but I don't know if it works. =)
(At the least, one would have to "process" an existing map and add in the "landlocked" feature to every landlocked tile -- or change the map generation scripts.)
The ai hates the unit enabling buildings (it doesn't cost in the fact that they allow it to build units) and has to be pushed to build them, although it could be more efficient with its builds but i dont think it overbuilds to badly.
I'm just comparing it to my own strategy, which has units being built at unit factory cities and transported out, significantly reducing the number of unit factory buildings I have to build.
I seriously doubt the AI does anything like this.
Then again, simply giving the AI a production bonus would make up for any inefficiencies. =)
I dont like just tossing bonuses but I do agree with you that the t4 buildings are to bland. The reason for this is that the t4 buildings weren't in the origional design doc. The plan was to units to have to get to a certain level before they could get promoted to t4 units. When I wasn't able to do that I added the t4 buildings, so they tend to be kinda bland. I will review that for phase 2.
Ah! That does explain it.
You might want to make the previous-teir buildings a prerequisit for the next teir. Making druids and beastlords in cities that can't build hunters seems strange. =)
The "true elves" that are introduced in phase 2 wont be able to chop forests or jungles. The "elven" and "dwarven" aspects that we have now aren't racial, they are just a nature worshipping and an earth worshipping religion. In phase 2 you will have true racial civs that have more distinctive flavors.
*nod*. Still seems strange that the nature-worshipping civ is more productive than the earth-worshiping civ.
Lumbermills start out equal to mines, because they can be built on top of forests. And they can be built anywhere a forest is -- which can be built anywhere -- while mines can only be built in hilly terrain.
Hill:
-1 food
+1 production
mine:
+2 production
earth worship tech:
+1 gold
end result:
-1 food +3 production +1 gold over base terrain.
Terrain options:
Grass, hill: 1 food 3 production 1 trade
Plains, hill: 0 food 4 production 1 trade
Forest:
+1 production
Lumber mill:
+1 production
nature worshiping tech:
+1 production
end result:
+3 production
Terrain options:
Grass, flat: 2 food 3 production
Grass, hill: 1 food 4 production
Plains, flat: 1 food 4 production
Plains, hill: 5 production
So the nature-worshipping folk can get 3 to 4 production from flat land and 4 to 5 from hilly land.
The earth-worshipping folk get 3 to 4 production from hilly land, and 0 to 1 from flat land. (Well, they could build workshops in the flat land)
The nature-worshiping folk are more productive than the earth-worshipping folk, even in hilly terrain -- and outside of hilly terrain (where there tends to be lots of food) they kick the earth-worshippers arse.
This doesn't fit how I'd view nature and earth worshipping religions. =)
Proposal:
Change hidden paths to +3 trade from lumber mill (or an alternative below)
Change dwarven mining to +2 production from mines
Goal:
Using Earth-worship-tech Mines in the hills should be better than Nature-worship-tech lumbermill forests.
End result:
Nature:
Grass, Flat, Forested: 2 food 2 production 3 trade
Grass, Hilly, Forested: 1 food 3 production 3 trade
Plains, Flat, Forested: 1 food 3 production 3 trade
Planes, Hilly, Forested: 0 food 4 production 3 trade
Very decent. It allows a civ to live in a forested area with only a bit of farmland to feed itself, and provides an alternative to cottage-spam.
Earth:
Grass, Hilly: 1 food 4 production
Plains, Hilly: 0 food 5 production
More production for the earth-worshippers. They have to find their food and trade elsewhere.
Addition:
It makes more sense for "camps" to be the preferred improvement for nature-loving civ's than lumbermills. What if hidden paths unlocked a "camp" improvement (that goes anywhere) that adds +1 production +3 trade to a forest?
Addition 2:
A tech that gives +1 food from mines (dwarven farming) and +1 food from lumbermills/camps (elven harvesting) might be worthwhile. I understand this would be a 1.0 or later thing, and maybe better delt with as a dwarf/elf innate advantage. . .