My Personal Modifications

[CivMonger]

After playing the game for a while, I have noticed a few things that I like and some things that I don't like. Also, I think everyone will agree with me when I say some units seriously suck
-Tripling the amount of optimal cities to reduce corruption (still annoying but no totally corrupt cities)

-Reducing the time it takes to get techs. tiny-60, small-80, standard-100, large-140, huge-180 may be off a bit there

-If you want to slow computer expansion, increase cost of settlers

-Give helicopters greater range, let them carry any type of units, let them carry 2 units. OMG!!!! they are almost useful now (artillery movers)

-Face it, marines are unsalvagable

-Give radar artillery 2 movement

-Give privateers bombard of 2, lets you hassle A.I. and cut off resources (very uniffeciently though)

-Make some of the units upgradable, bombers to stealth bombers (not fighters though), privateers to destroyers, open to suggestions for swordsman and cavalry. maybe cavalry to tanks?

-Make iron works require iron in the vity radius, and coal in the civilization. (you can build it now )

I'm open to any other good modifications. I may even implement some of them

 

[Zouave]

This is an old topic indeed; suffice it to say there are very many changes needed in the mess Firaxis gave us - and only SOME can be Edited.

Espionage costs are a frigging joke, be it for the tech, the Small Wonder, or spy functions. WAY too high and very ineffective.

Resources esp. iron and coal are much too scarce.

Military units are ridiculous - gunpowder-era foot units need to be much stronger than swordsmen and pikemen, for instance. Knghts should be 5.2.2, and cavalry 6.4.3. Frigates need to be stronger. There should be more units, also: there was a big difference between the early musketmen of around 1600 and the bayonet armed more advanced musketmen of 1805 (much betyer offensively).

I could go on. I have spent hours trying to get right the values Firaxis slapped together. Good luck with that.

 

[Anglophile]

Admittedly I do not agree with all the initial values Firaxis used. I particularly agree with Zouave for the need of another infantry unit between musketmen, which I think are about right and WWI infantry. 18th/19th Century infantry were much better on defence and attack than the originals due to more accurate and reliable (still not wonderful) muskets, then rifles and, as Zouave states, bayonets.

The good thing is that I am able to use the editor to change most of what I don't like - and more capable people like Plutarch, have added many new units. My mod of the LWC mod pretty well meets all my requirements. I know most people think that the whole espionage thing is out of whack, but since I use it very little, it is not an issue for me. I suspect that the editor will get ever better although there may remain a few hard-coded things some of us would like to mod, but what the heck, it's already a good game with a pretty good editor.

 

[simwiz2]

Originally posted by CivMonger
-Reducing the time it takes to get techs. tiny-60, small-80, standard-100, large-140, huge-180 may be off a bit there

-Face it, marines are unsalvagable

-Give radar artillery 2 movement

-Give privateers bombard of 2, lets you hassle A.I. and cut off resources (very uniffeciently though)

Reducing Techs- Are you serious? Maybe you need to turn the level down a bit, because techs come too fast for my liking - frigates are obsolete by the time you build them.

Marines Unsalvageable- They are very useful if you know how to use them.

Rad Arty 2 Move- Great for 1-turn artillery blitzing the AI i suppose howie blitz anyone?

Give Privateers bombard- What a mess. Those irritating masses of frigates that mess up my irrigation during wartime, would now be privateers messing it up during peacetime. And the human would use it more effectively, to destroy city improvements that cost shields. It would cripple the AI.


Overall it sounds like most of what you did just makes the game easier for you. Im not against mods or anything, but for this particular mod you could accomplish almost the same thing by turing the difficulty level down a notch.

 

[CivMonger]

The changes that I made affect all the civs, not just me. After I made some of the changes, for the first time I actually saw the AI use privateers. It was kinda annoying but it didn't take long before I blew him out of the water with privateers of my own. As for privateers being annoying with bombard, it takes like 7 or 8 shots to hit a road, so its not a big deal. The artillery movement is so that it can actually keep up with the tanks somewhat. Blitzing on them would be too powerful. 2 shot artillery would do too much dmg. The tech reduction thing is cause I usually play on huge maps, which have a default rate of 240 or so, making you need about 4 or 5 cities before you get lower than a tech every 40 turns.
-nother change, make swordsman and other non-upgradable old-age units upgrade to marines. That way, you can get some easily and it eliminates being able to build swordsman, and other old things. Haven't throughly tested this out yet. All feedback is appreciated.

 

[Anglophile]

I also play huge - actually fully expanded 256x256 - maps and have upgraded the movements of just about everything except 1 MP older (pre-modern) infantry units. I also increased the road movement rate. Otherwise I just spend the entire game moving things towards other things. I think that my radar arty has movement 3 - but low attack/defence and high bombard. It does exactly what it is supposed to - provide mobile heavy support to motorized/ armoured units. Attack with it, it dies; get it attacked, it dies - doesn't change the game balance, just makes it an actually useful unit in mobile modern warfare. I especially recommend significantly increasing the movement rates of naval units; otherwise you'll be lucky to circumnavigate the world before the spaceship leaves.

As to lowering the tech rates, I too vote against it. They are so high for larger worlds because you will have a lot of cities and a lower multiplier will quickly get you to the 4 turn minimum and lead to games where your tech level is way ahead of your civ's production capabilities. Huge maps make for long games and this would be a way of reaching the end faster, but I think it will detract from the overall game experience. But the great thing about the editor - you don't have to listen to us, you can play the game you want.

 

[simwiz2]

"Blitzing on them would be too powerful. 2 shot artillery would do too much dmg"

Thats not what i mean. What i meant was that with a standard 2-tile border (the city radius) giving rad arty 2 moves allows something similar to the Modern Armor Blitz, where you take tons of 3-move MA's, appear out of nowhere along your RR's, attack a border city, and capture RR's, bring more up, repeat. As it is now rad arty have to spend a turn moving into enemy land, then fire NEXT TURN, giving the AI a chance to reinforce/counterattack. WIth 2 move, they spend one movepoint and they are in range of a city. This, in the hands of an experienced player, would be devastating and overpowering. It would be as bad as the howitzer-blitz of civ2. (Pumping out nothing but howies and using RR's to wipe out enemy civ in 1 turn)

 

[CivMonger]

I see a flaw in your artillery blitz plan. You said a good player. That why I can put this in the rules and not unbalance things, I only play on regent at the moment, and I tend to win, but any higher....:die!: either that, or become somebodys *female dog* either way, I can't hack it past regent.

 

[Dirk Aurel]

Hmm...

Everything for game balance,who needs realism when we have Civ3.The game is good,but the combat sys is obsolete.Two movement Radar Arti would let them blitz,maybe weakening their bombardment attack instead would be better,think 12B same as Arti or maybe 14B.The higher values of citizen and building defense in 1.17 justifies modifying your RA.

It still remains questionable though that bombers,subs etc. are weakend only because the game doesn´t support proper anti-aircraft and anti-sub warfare...wish they´d sort the combat system out.

As for changing things with the editor;fix them CivMonger,a lot of the values and abilities need fixing,try not to unbalance the game but do as you like,the editor allows a lot of modifications.


P.S:You can´t be causing too much harm,on another forum they had TIE fighters and even Darth Vader himself