hmmmmmm if no one minds a part time lurker throwing in his two cents i'd like to talk a bit about what i think of this fantastic mod and some of my peeves which i would enjoy seeing dealt with. hopefully it all comes out to some nice constructive criticism. and i appologize in advance for repeating what others have already said, again, and again, not to mention my long windedness; i've tried my best to read the thread....but anywaysssss; this is what i think so far:
on religion -
i think the addition of the dualism tech and zoroastrianism is cool; it makes a lot of sense in making religion more "open-ended".
but is does this mean confucianism should be let go? as far as i know confucianism (though not really a "religion") was as important to chinese culture and moral self-definition as any other major religion. also it's prime for cool temple effects, the entire pre-industrial chinese government/education/social system was based on it. i'd like to see decreased corruption, slightly decreases research, and a happy face for rice for example.
on a similar note why are we dealing with taoism? (my apologies to any actual taoists out there) what is its influence on world events? what government has ever referenced it? besides its complex systems of spirituality (which seem more similar to shamanism than religion) what does it offer in way of dogma? it has a kind of divine relevator (ala moses, jesus, budha, mohamed) but besides that it seems to me that it's completely out of place in the vanilla game, and a shame to have replaced confucianism in this version. plus the temple effects come off as arbitrary and overly punitive.
this dominant religion thing is confusing to me, is judaism the only one? so far i've always gotten it first and stick with it as my official religion till free religion. still, i see it spreading ALL OVER the world even without my missionaries. also it's mentioned that official jewish states can't be affected by other missionaries, but this doesn't seem to work with me, damn egyptians had an army of swamii (sounds funny heehee) all over my juju.
on great generals (from the field) -
i've played as mali, china, egypt, and russia. the russians didn't seem capable of making leaders. like whenever a russian unit got the promotion it just generated a wild axeman....weird right? i didn't notice this with any of the other civs, but i guess it could affect any of the ones i didn't try. am i the only one who's had this happen? is it some kind of random error with that one game?
i also think maybe the hurry build action for these guys seems a little weak, i was getting offered like 16 sheilds for one....bogus imo, if i'm gonna blow my cool general on something that isn't even a wonder it should be able to do some actual good on a bank or university or factory or something!
here's a situation tied to that one problem of the big stacks. say i've got a stack of macemen (or whatever) that's kind of big but still below the crowd limit. now this stack gets attacked by another stack of mongol archer weinies which make me a few generals which unfortunately put me over the crowd limit. now my stack is all bunched up and getting a crowded penalty (sheesh all we did was give a few individuals a promotion!). now i guess in a way the new general bonus off-sets the penalty but i don't think this is so tidy.
on assasins -
i notice this topic has been dealt with a bit already. so on the common issue of the balance and usage of these little buggers, could i vote to see them made as national units and countered by something like unlimited spy units (maybe even another special "sheriff" unit that can find and kill them even if we're at peace)? it just makes more sense to me this way.... like these silly japanese ninjas that bug me from time to time. i just am NOT cool with being able to watch a ninja walk into my country sit down in my city and have to wait and see if my novice assasin will get the roulette win or not. the consequences are just too great for this kind of thing to happen especially the border issues!
another issue i've had is when i've sent my assasins into other countries it doesn't always "work". by this i don't mean it doesn't accomplish it's mission but it doesn't ever activate. it just sits there like a spy, i guess i shouldn't complain too much because i've put the assasin to so much devestating effect before. still, does anyone know what might cause this?
on knights -
again i'll try not to beat the dead horse but these guys are just too much, how about a blitz ability instead of collateral damage? the movement is pretty rediculous imo too. could i also throw in my vote for some special condition like cathedral to build requirement?
on ice and terraforming -
more repetition, but i'm gonna echo; the ice encroachment is out of control. also it seems that hudson bay (in canda) is way too productive, i always thought it was mostly forzen at least in the more northern lats?
i can't figure out if i'm doing the terraforming thing wrong or it's just non-functional. now, i've never gotten to the modern era, i either win or my computer gives up on me before i get there; so i'm not really commenting on the "advanced" stuff. as far as the land-to-water/vice-versa goes, it's beyond me. i have the demolition unit do the action and wait for them to finish. now there's a crane there and it says a city needs to work it for like 24 turns to work. ok, i work it for 24 turns and instead of a nice lake, inlet, bay or canal all i get is a crappy city ruins.....BOGUS! so my guess is this is just non-funtional.
i'm assuming this land-to-water thing would be mostly used for making canals in panama or sinai or to make a neat little inlet to a city that's just too far from the coast. is it possible to make like an actual "canal" worker improvement, as opposed to altering the whole terrain square? does this work on any level or are the sea/land qualities just too far engrained into the game?
on airpower -
the stack crowd thing really blows chunks when you have an airforce. i can't have a border city with a decent land defence and bomber capabilities without making things rediculous to manage.
zeppelins are cool, but maybe too cool? too me the vision of skies filled with massive dirigibles carpet bombing clueless pre-combustion (meaning NO fighter defence) cities is fantastic, it's also completely unrealistic. and isn't this mod supposed to up the realism? so i was thinking maybe making it so that these guys could keep the ability to lower defences, do recon, and transport units (even this is kind of wishy washy imo), but take away the airstrike or at least colateral damage of it. the whole point of building real bombers is to replace ineffective zeppelins.....
airfeilds......yeah give us some damn airfields already!!!!!! (please?)
on combat in the field -
ok i think i might be going off into crazy dream land here, but i know i'm not the only one who thinks zones of control need to come back. it would be great if it could be done.
i was also thinking that some of these new things would be cool: how about penalties for being surrounded or flanked? is this doable? i'm guessing the ai would be a nightmare to sort out in any case but maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. the situation of logistics in enemy territory really comesinto play when we talk about realistic wars. maybe making a way to errode a unit's health in enemy territory? on the otherhand i guess the healing and movement penalties do work to this effect somewhat. still big stacks deep in enemy territory feel a little too secure imo. one more cool thing might be to have an assasin type unit that can target a unit in a stack (like a submarine does or the ninjas in civ3)
on resources -
i love the new resources, cotton, lemons (????maybe citrus would make more sense?), pearls, potatoes, and the rest (HEMP!); all sweet. i was thinking that the dependance on calander/plantations is kind of crappy though. like shouldn't coffee and cotton be tied to merchantilism somehow? do we really think hemp was all that usefull for making happy faces before modern times? maybe even change it to a purely production bonus until something like medicine or even an environmenal civic comes in?
another problem i'm seeing with the resources here is that it seems too easy to get every resource. like every civ seems able to get if, not a wide variety of resources, then a whole lot of a few kinds. anything you can't get yourself you can trade for even if you aren't super friendly with your neighbors. so serious trade and colonization pressures never come up in my games (and i'm dealing with monarch level difficulty here).
i was thinking of maybe a way to make the quantity of the resources you have or can trade for as important as having them in the first place. like making a difference between rare/luxury resources (perhaps only in your own country) and common/staple items. so my chinese country has let's say one bannana plantation, and six rice fields. now it makes sense that only a few people, either at the highest social levels or in the local region, could benefit from the bannanas but everyone would be able to enjoy the rice. then i meet the indians who have lots of bannanas but no rice. i could trade them two or three rice if i wanted to give them a staple (or one if i wanted to "restrict" my export) in exchange for a bannana or two (even though i already have one) in order to get the "full" benefit for them. so now if i want to give more rice to persia in exchange for a lemon, i've got to think more about how much rice i have left to trade and i'd only be able to get enough lemons to make a portion of my population happy.
the other problem i see in resources pretty obvious and i think really hurts the game in general as far as the realism factor goes. this is the problem of mineral/fossil resources. i mean the idea of bottemless pits of gold, infinite oil, and coal as easy to get as rice is just silly. maybe this mod has the oil feilds dry up like in the vanilla version (which is lame too, random, and VERY rare), but the random event thing doesn't seem to have anythign to do with consumption. i wish i knew more about how the game's guts worked, but i have NO idea how to deal with this but i'm sure something could be done. how about making free market dry up oil and gold at a very high rate, or giving each resource tile it's own worked-turns limit.
there's gotta be something that can be done to stop 300 years of cheap oil for everyone!
on technology -
i really like the new way of doing techboosting with borders. i always thought tech trading was way out of balance in the regular game. tech conquest rules, i missed it sooooooooo muuuuuuuuuch. but what about tech donations? like i think my weakling allies could use some help sometimes and it would be in everyone's best interest if i could get them building their own cavalry for once....
i also appreciate that more breaks in the tech tree were put in, like what part of history did sid forget when he made polytheism a pre-req for monotheism? uhhh-derrnngh
on AI -
i haven't noticed any problems with the ai that aren't in the regular game. still, since this is "total realism", seeing greek explorers in the gobi desert just doesn't fly in my book. the ancient world should be way "smaller" (or does bigger make more sense?) than the renaissance world.
on barbarians -
i like the idea of having the world full of established barbarians, i just think they're too weak. asia and africa are just way too easy to gobble up imo. it makes europe irrelevant. i figured that the intention was to make europe's tech go way faster than asia or africa and penalize those with being surrounded by tough barbarians. but yeah they're just way too easy to knock over and make for easy and to me super cheap paths to massive early expansion.
on maintaining the empire -
even on monarch the maintainence costs are just way too low for distance. it never slowed me down for one second, especially since the rat race of technology trading is gone i have no problem building a a healthy super empire way before it seems reasonable.
is there a way to perhaps introduce an imperial decay or something? i'm guessing there is already a move to put this in with the revolution mod and barbarian maturity mod, but i think this would be a huge step forward maybe the hugest for this particularly supreme conglomerate of civilization ecstacy!
thanks guys!!!! i think this is gonna be the next RaR and it's already the best thing going for IV (and that's not taking anything away from the brilliant fall from heaven).
RULE ON!
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The name of the mod notwithstanding, realism can be exaggerated. Easily. It's a game, the main focus should be playability. Personally, I think it's great to get some early air power, whether it is realistic or not. But why not? As I understand, dirigibles WERE used in real world military. But they were just too vulnerable to even the earliest airplanes (biplanes). Which they're supposed to be in the game too...
