New BETA Version - 4.4.2 (December 31, 2023)

[4CV]

I'm not familiar with it and searching the forums hasn't turned up anything newer than 2017.

Discussion from Discord / VP / Modder Domains /Jarcast

Jarcast — 16.01.2024 21:33
if you don't mind the messed up calendar you can give it a try and provide a feedback

!(7) Jarcast's Prehistoric Era for VP (v 1).zip

drive.google.com

Google Docs
!(7) Jarcast's Prehistoric Era for VP (v 1).zip

 

[epicivfreak]

Discussion from Discord / VP / Modder Domains /Jarcast
Jarcast — 16.01.2024 21:33

Ok, it's got that notion of Barbarian Animals, so that's going to be a No from me.

It's also got a prolonged (& thus pointless, IMHO), prehistoric era. I don't want that. I just want the player to have a choice in initial tech choices, at the very least.

 

[looorg]

Discussion from Discord / VP / Modder Domains /Jarcast

Jarcast — 16.01.2024 21:33
if you don't mind the messed up calendar you can give it a try and provide a feedback

!(7) Jarcast's Prehistoric Era for VP (v 1).zip

drive.google.com

Google Docs
!(7) Jarcast's Prehistoric Era for VP (v 1).zip

I tried it this morning, it's a bit wonky. Getting some time to getting used to. There is not a lot to do in the early prehistoric days. Still somewhat entertaining but barely. As mentioned you can't really do to much. So far I found trying to create choke points with rockthrowers for the Lions appear to be somewhat working until they spawn in behind you ...

You can't really get a large army since you have no gold. You practically have to demand tribute from city-states just to have a tiny little gold buffer. Lions are vicious, perhaps there should be some kind of reward for defeating one like a little bit of food. There will be many many deaths.

Also get your Intrepid (scout) to Trailblazer III asap so you can go in the water. There are no sea-lions, or Krakens or anything -- yet.

The thing I still can't understand is how is the AI getting culture. There are no culture buildings. Yet they are somehow getting culture and getting social policies. This is what is utterly destroying me in prehistoric time. As soon as they starting getting that it's basically game over for me and I drop to the bottom of the score list. They are already gaining social policies and I can't even get any culture generation statrted. There is the Blombos cave wonder and cave paintings. But nobody is near them in the start. Yet they are somehow gaining culture from something. But once they have it they can just get an enormous pop boom, science from kills etc etc depending on what path they took. I have a grand total of 4 culture I got from a city-state, they have 2-3 policies somehow. So it's not really working very well if they are getting the AI bonuses this early.

/EDIT/ You need to play with a civ with a strong inate ability that can work even in prehistory -- Aztecs (faith and gold on any kills), France (free units on kills, some times -- i have to try and see if I can tame some lions) ...

Being the Crade of Civilization isn't to hard, but I'm not sure if it is not a trap to build it. You can probably better off just making Rock throwers etc.

I have only been able to "cheese" a good start with Monty. Kills give faith gives a pantheon and then pick something that gives culture such as Open Sky, Stars and Sky, God King, Nature or Renewal. Or something location based. Even tho it's so tempting to take God of War or Tutelary Gods. I picked God King due to my terrain.

So many dead rock throwers ...

MONTY: Save all the gold and buy Jaguar warriors. Just spam them out as many as you can, ignore limits -- prehistoric eagles are a thing.

I think there might be something wrong with the map-script tho, every single tile around every single city is filled with jade. Not just mine, all civs look like this, and the city-states. According to the stats there are 649 tiles with jade on the map ... Not to mention it utterly screws all the cities as it will be hard to build anything but quarries. Not going to IGE+ that to remove all the jades.

It jade bombed the world when you discovered agriculture. So all the city-states and all the prehistorical starting cities are just filled with jade tiles so you can't build anything else on them. But cities you started with a settler doesn't have the jade spam, like the one you get early from authority.

I'm not sure where the Jade bomb comes from but it's from somewhere between start/spawn and Agriculture. Some of the early wonders or something created all that jade. It was not there on the turn 00 save.

 

[jarcast2]

I tried it this morning, it's a bit wonky. Getting some time to getting used to. There is not a lot to do in the early prehistoric days. Still somewhat entertaining but barely. As mentioned you can't really do to much. So far I found trying to create choke points with rockthrowers for the Lions appear to be somewhat working until they spawn in behind you ...

You can't really get a large army since you have no gold. You practically have to demand tribute from city-states just to have a tiny little gold buffer. Lions are vicious, perhaps there should be some kind of reward for defeating one like a little bit of food. There will be many many deaths.

Also get your Intrepid (scout) to Trailblazer III asap so you can go in the water. There are no sea-lions, or Krakens or anything -- yet.

The thing I still can't understand is how is the AI getting culture. There are no culture buildings. Yet they are somehow getting culture and getting social policies. This is what is utterly destroying me in prehistoric time. As soon as they starting getting that it's basically game over for me and I drop to the bottom of the score list. They are already gaining social policies and I can't even get any culture generation statrted. There is the Blombos cave wonder and cave paintings. But nobody is near them in the start. Yet they are somehow gaining culture from something. But once they have it they can just get an enormous pop boom, science from kills etc etc depending on what path they took. I have a grand total of 4 culture I got from a city-state, they have 2-3 policies somehow. So it's not really working very well if they are getting the AI bonuses this early.

/EDIT/ You need to play with a civ with a strong inate ability that can work even in prehistory -- Aztecs (faith and gold on any kills), France (free units on kills, some times -- i have to try and see if I can tame some lions) ...

Being the Crade of Civilization isn't to hard, but I'm not sure if it is not a trap to build it. You can probably better off just making Rock throwers etc.

I have only been able to "cheese" a good start with Monty. Kills give faith gives a pantheon and then pick something that gives culture such as Open Sky, Stars and Sky, God King, Nature or Renewal. Or something location based. Even tho it's so tempting to take God of War or Tutelary Gods. I picked God King due to my terrain.

So many dead rock throwers ...

First of all, thanks for trying it out and for your feedback.
The mod is basically an early beta that still needs tons of work (and time that at the moment I haven't) in terms of content and balance, that's why it's still hidden in the dark alleys of the VP discord.

You are right that there is not much to do, and this highlights an evident trade-off between historical accuracy and engaging gameplay.
Prehistoric life is mostly survival and exploration to some extent, and very very very slow progress in knowledge acquisition and cultural progress (that's why you start at 3 million BC and between turns tens of thousands years pass, at least at epic that's the only game speed calendar I have more or less managed to balance so far).
I tried to represent survival struggle with an unfair battle against a stronger and vicious lion unit (the only animal unit I added btw). I can add a reward like yields bonus or a grant "hero" promotion to the killer, there are many possibilities for this.
On the other hand, I had to think of some gimmick to represent hunting-gathering, so we have the forager who basically constructs an invisible dummy improvement that removes itself on completion on visible resources in exchange for food and production/gold per turn.
I cannot represent one crucial element that is nomadic lifestyle because without founding a city you can't even open the tech tree. Implementing a nomadic mechanics would be neat but unfortunately it requires heavy DLL coding I don't have skill for.

Then there's the whole matter of balancing civ unique abilities.
For now I addressed only India, whereby they don't get the pantheon at start but at Burial tech (that is when the first Faith building unlocks).
In a polished version, you should not be able to "bug" the game using a certain civ because their gimmick would be postponed until the Upper Paleolithic tech tier (the column before Agriculture) or Agriculture at latest, in order to avoid unbalance and snowballing (and also to be historically accurate as human cultures started branching out around 80-40 thousand years ago).

Then there's the mystery of civs getting 2-3 policies around the time the human player has researched half Upper Paleolithic tech tier, which let AI to snowball like crazy.
One of the reasons I think is the opener of Progress that gives Culture from researching techs. Given there are double number of techs you get double yields.
In an erlier version of the mod it was even worse: once you clicked the progress opener, the culture bonus was so much you got another policy for free (so you go from 0 to 2 policies in one turn).
In the version you played I already tried to sandbag the problem by nerfing the culture bonus to 1/3 (Policy_YieldFromTechRetroactive is 5 instead of 15).
Other reasons may be the Dolni Vestonice wonder that has a filled Great Work slot (i.e. +3 culture) on construction, or the opener of Tradition, or a friend/allied cultural CS.

All in all, I realized that the way I would like to represent Prehistory is inevitably constrained by what the game allows me to add and bend to my will.
It's the whole "slinger compromise" all over again. It's not historical accurate but it's necessary for a better gameplay.
That's the main reason I posted the early build: to have feedback from players so we can go together towards a playing experience that is enjoyable.

 

[looorg]

First of all, thanks for trying it out and for your feedback.
The mod is basically an early beta that still needs tons of work (and time that at the moment I haven't) in terms of content and balance, that's why it's still hidden in the dark alleys of the VP discord.

You are right that there is not much to do, and this highlights an evident trade-off between historical accuracy and engaging gameplay.
Prehistoric life is mostly survival and exploration to some extent, and very very very slow progress in knowledge acquisition and cultural progress (that's why you start at 3 million BC and between turns tens of thousands years pass, at least at epic that's the only game speed calendar I have more or less managed to balance so far).
I tried to represent survival struggle with an unfair battle against a stronger and vicious lion unit (the only animal unit I added btw). I can add a reward like yields bonus or a grant "hero" promotion to the killer, there are many possibilities for this.
On the other hand, I had to think of some gimmick to represent hunting-gathering, so we have the forager who basically constructs an invisible dummy improvement that removes itself on completion on visible resources in exchange for food and production/gold per turn.
I cannot represent one crucial element that is nomadic lifestyle because without founding a city you can't even open the tech tree. Implementing a nomadic mechanics would be neat but unfortunately it requires heavy DLL coding I don't have skill for.

Then there's the whole matter of balancing civ unique abilities.
For now I addressed only India, whereby they don't get the pantheon at start but at Burial tech (that is when the first Faith building unlocks).
In a polished version, you should not be able to "bug" the game using a certain civ because their gimmick would be postponed until the Upper Paleolithic tech tier (the column before Agriculture) or Agriculture at latest, in order to avoid unbalance and snowballing (and also to be historically accurate as human cultures started branching out around 80-40 thousand years ago).

Then there's the mystery of civs getting 2-3 policies around the time the human player has researched half Upper Paleolithic tech tier, which let AI to snowball like crazy.
One of the reasons I think is the opener of Progress that gives Culture from researching techs. Given there are double number of techs you get double yields.
In an erlier version of the mod it was even worse: once you clicked the progress opener, the culture bonus was so much you got another policy for free (so you go from 0 to 2 policies in one turn).
In the version you played I already tried to sandbag the problem by nerfing the culture bonus to 1/3 (Policy_YieldFromTechRetroactive is 5 instead of 15).
Other reasons may be the Dolni Vestonice wonder that has a filled Great Work slot (i.e. +3 culture) on construction, or the opener of Tradition, or a friend/allied cultural CS.

All in all, I realized that the way I would like to represent Prehistory is inevitably constrained by what the game allows me to add and bend to my will.
It's the whole "slinger compromise" all over again. It's not historical accurate but it's necessary for a better gameplay.
That's the main reason I posted the early build: to have feedback from players so we can go together towards a playing experience that is enjoyable.

There is no blame in my comment. I think the modmod is commendable and quite interesting. As noted there probably wasn't that much to do, or it was lots of things to do but they are not easy to represent here. Lots of toil just to gather food and survive.

As far as I can recall from history lessons in school isn't that how they sort of did it, lots of warriors/rockthrowers etc gather around and try and trap and kill beasts. There are still meaningful choices to make early on. Even tho it might not at first glance look like it.

I have seen the culture/social policy thing on all of them. It doesn't seem to matter if it's Tradition, Progress or Authority. They all I guess have somewhat interesting quirks such as what happened when you get the pop boost in Tradition? But Authority is clearly the easiest I would say since the Lions and such become a little less deadly. Plus they now give yields beyond the XP.

I'm not quite sure where they get theirs from. They had 2 policies each when I still had like 4 culture points in total from a city-state. I'm not quite certain where or how I got my culture but it was the pantheon and something and then when you got that rolling I was able to catch up quite quickly while they stalled out. So it's something giving them a mad boost and then they don't really have the infrastructure that keeps it going, so it's a one time culture boost of sorts. But as noted all of a sudden they have multple policies and have just leaped in tech to, but that gap closed as soon as I get my pantheon and unlocked policies myself. When I was still researching Adornments/Hafting they already had unlocked social policies and was tech wise at Figurative Art (this is Deity/Marathon tho and not standard speed and things so there might be extra wonk there).

The settler I got from authority was used to found a city pre-agriculture. But it can't build any of the pre-historic buildings except the weaver. Are all those buildings tied to the capital?

 

[looorg]

I figured out where the jade-bomb comes from. It's when you complete the Oldowan industry building. It just spams out jade in all possible tiles.
I'm not even sure that is actually it. I played a small game with just a few civs, figuring I could just IGE+ away the jade from that one building and then be done with it. Nope. It keeps spawning back from other things to. I wonder if all the buildings spawn it or something. It currently makes it somewhat unplayable cause as soon as Agriculture is reached it's more or less game over as your starting city is really weird as you can only really work quarry tiles.

// EDIT //
Perhaps one of the reasons it feels kind of slow and such in the start is that there isn't really much to do, except some careful moving and hitting next turn. You could find the city-states for the pittance of resources if you are first, and locate the other players. But scouting is very, very, dangerous.

In the normal game you have the ancient ruins to try and find, none of that here since I guess we are the ancient ruins. So there is nothing before us to create them. But it gave purpose to the exploration. Now there is only peril and risk. Exploration in that regard isn't really rewarded for more then a glance of the surroundings where you in many techs later will found a second city.

Basically you turtle down, scout a few tiles out from the start so you know the area for some good secondary cities. Then back home. Turtle down so that when the Lions come you can counter attack with 2-3 units and hopefully it won't eat to many of you. But running out scouting for nothing is sort of like burning hammers and gold. You could do it early and try and go for Trailblazer III and then into the sea, and ontop of mountains, for safety scouting.

So what is needed is really something worthwhile to do in the beginning. Purpose. Something beyond just turtle down in or around your area and stay there. There has to be some actual benefit for the early scouting, some kind of risk, reward and benefit.

Something beyond finding the natural wonders of the world.

I though the French capture ability was not working, but once I unlocked archery I could capture a Lion

 

[Stalker0]

Is the AI back to massive production and science pre Renaissance
Did the AI get more combat bonuses in this version?
In a few games I roll AI's way too early (trebs+longswords) but in most I get hammered so hard (on emperor), example in current game I shoot 4 archers to a composite on flatland do 60 dmg in total comp shoots back does 65 and they leave me so far behind in techs.
I guess I could lower the difficulty, but what I really want is a less front loaded AI.
(Also in prev game I killed endless amount of japanese troops while he gladly rolled over a cs and far into austria not caring the slightest about losses.)

The latest version did just that. The bonuses in the early game were reduced but with a large boost in renaissance to compensate.

Definately provide feedback if the game feels more difficult overall…but it’s not due to more bonuses in the early game. Also the combat bonuses were not changed i believe just economic

 

[andersw]

The latest version did just that. The bonuses in the early game were reduced but with a large boost in renaissance to compensate.

Definately provide feedback if the game feels more difficult overall…but it’s not due to more bonuses in the early game. Also the combat bonuses were not changed i believe just economic

The boost looks like its there much much earlier, more like in Classic than Renaissance Era.

Early diplo feels crazy important:
I feel its very much tip-toe to try and avoid any angry neighbours early on but in some games it feels unavoidable.
One angry neighbour is fine, two or three and its probably over (depending a bit on which the neighbours are).
Early CS tribute could be part why some AI's are angry but I doubt its the full story and its a must, if you have few or no nearby CS this massive nerf to the early game.

Bad neighbours (this isnt a new thing):
Worst case neighbours Aztecz (strong uu and agressive personality), Iroquois (insane uu in ai hands) , remove all forest/jungle if you can/have time, zulus, denmark (AI berserkers can trade with your tercios) and songhai (runs around you in circles, avoid settle near rivers at all cost).
Persia WILL go to war with someone early at golden age, be watchful.
With the bad neighbours a war will be rough, if I get two pronged when Im still in classic its likely over.

So much to do, not enough yields (this is good):
Its a lot of choices needed in early game, with science, production, units, wonders etc I can really feel the lowered gold yields, the low gold mean I cant afford to buy many units.
Depending on what civ I play I expect to be atleast 5 techs behind in Classic worst case as much as 10 which is too much.

Improving:
I should probably (like in current game) build way more skirmishers but that costs production that isnt science/culture and in some terrains they arent as good.
It feels like a rush first for comp bows and then to steel just to survive, how on earth do you survive going a different path I have no idea.
AI still need to improve on expanding, plenty of unsettled good lands.

Wars:
With ... I should probably say a bit of luck I can get joint wars, but I need to consider who Im warring, some will just destroy my friend and laugh at the lossed it takes vs me, while others are more likely to crumble early.
I have games where I hammer Japan with endless kills using hawatchas getting absolutely nowhere while he stomps a nearby AI at the same time and a similar situation where zulu and Aztecs does the same.
There are a few AI's that can pull this off.
The dream scenario is double punching an AI that is bad at wars and once at gunpowder hopefully be ready for some more serious opponents, like in current game me and greece punched a great teching Maya who just didnt have much of a chance.

Wonders:
There are at times a decent balance but the old issue is often prevelant that the top tech AI will grab most wonders, especially an AI that runs away a bit at Renaissance Era.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

In my case thing are quite different; early game especially as authority even without civs that have early UU or war related UA it's a breeze walk -even on Deity- until early renaissance... later on when whoever gets frigates and their melee counter parts on onehand and lancer & muskets on the other hand rolls way too hard for anyone else to be able to catch up.
In my latest Deity game as Songhai i got an average start next to Carthage who was the Tech & policy leader and the aggressive Aztecs.
I managed to get both as vassals in medieval and got my self an entire continent's worth of land, Vassals & city states then i hit a wall.
There were two other continents
one south with Egypt, England and Austria were everyone was chilling, warring every now and then but without any change in borders whatsoever, the last continent had Tradition Greece with 15 cities that almost wiped off spain in renassiance.
ffw 100ish turns they are in industrial era with iron clads with the rest of us barely catching up in frigates, got fusiliers while everyone else still using Tercios and no way any one would be able to cross the ocean with his Ironclads and the Spanish Navy at his disposal -got Spain as Vassals ofc.-.
i called it a loss and quit.

 

[jarcast2]

View attachment 684377

I figured out where the jade-bomb comes from. It's when you complete the Oldowan industry building. It just spams out jade in all possible tiles.
I'm not even sure that is actually it. I played a small game with just a few civs, figuring I could just IGE+ away the jade from that one building and then be done with it. Nope. It keeps spawning back from other things to. I wonder if all the buildings spawn it or something. It currently makes it somewhat unplayable cause as soon as Agriculture is reached it's more or less game over as your starting city is really weird as you can only really work quarry tiles.

// EDIT //
Perhaps one of the reasons it feels kind of slow and such in the start is that there isn't really much to do, except some careful moving and hitting next turn. You could find the city-states for the pittance of resources if you are first, and locate the other players. But scouting is very, very, dangerous.

In the normal game you have the ancient ruins to try and find, none of that here since I guess we are the ancient ruins. So there is nothing before us to create them. But it gave purpose to the exploration. Now there is only peril and risk. Exploration in that regard isn't really rewarded for more then a glance of the surroundings where you in many techs later will found a second city.

Basically you turtle down, scout a few tiles out from the start so you know the area for some good secondary cities. Then back home. Turtle down so that when the Lions come you can counter attack with 2-3 units and hopefully it won't eat to many of you. But running out scouting for nothing is sort of like burning hammers and gold. You could do it early and try and go for Trailblazer III and then into the sea, and ontop of mountains, for safety scouting.

So what is needed is really something worthwhile to do in the beginning. Purpose. Something beyond just turtle down in or around your area and stay there. There has to be some actual benefit for the early scouting, some kind of risk, reward and benefit.

Something beyond finding the natural wonders of the world.

I though the French capture ability was not working, but once I unlocked archery I could capture a Lion

The Jade likely comes from the Liangzhu wonder I added that unlocks at Social Hierarchy one tech tier after Agriculture. There's lua involved, so I probably messed up something in the code.
Anyway this thread is the wrong place where to discuss it. It would be better to open a new dedicated thread in mod repository.
But that will happen around the second half of next week, as I am busy with an irl deadline until Feb 20.

 

[Zanteogo]

Just a question on spies, as I am using an older version and want to check before I get the new one.

Is great work stealing back in? (Rather than copying as in my current version). The patch notes seem to imply as much.

It's a deal breaker for me. GW's take too much effort to make and the AI is brutal with it, particularly if you are in the top spot.

If anyone can answer this much appreciated!

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Just a question on spies, as I am using an older version and want to check before I get the new one.

Is great work stealing back in? (Rather than copying as in my current version). The patch notes seem to imply as much.

It's a deal breaker for me. GW's take too much effort to make and the AI is brutal with it, particularly if you are in the top spot.

If anyone can answer this much appreciated!

In the latest version as of now, it's actually stealing, and not even the capital is protected (there were versions where you could stockpile them there, as spies could not steal from there, only from other cities).

I'm using mods which add more great people in general, so for me it's not that much of a problem, but I see why for some it's more than just an annoyance. Maybe something could be proposed in next congress session in this regard. In the meantime, you can always steal from others

 

[Zanteogo]

In the latest version as of now, it's actually stealing, and not even the capital is protected (there were versions where you could stockpile them there, as spies could not steal from there, only from other cities).

I'm using mods which add more great people in general, so for me it's not that much of a problem, but I see why for some it's more than just an annoyance. Maybe something could be proposed in next congress session in this regard. In the meantime, you can always steal from others

Shame, guess I will just keep using my older version then.

Suppose I can just turn espionage off as well, which is also a shame as I love all the other aspects of it, other than the great work stealing.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Shame, guess I will just keep using my older version then.

Suppose I can just turn espionage off as well, which is also a shame as I love all the other aspects of it, other than the great work stealing.

Had a quick check at the files, maybe you can try to comment out this part in ...Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(2) Vox Populi\Database Changes\Events\NewCityEvents.xml

Spoiler code snippet :

This could break some UI elements and other things that may depend on it, however.

 

[Zanteogo]

Had a quick check at the files, maybe you can try to comment out this part in ...Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(2) Vox Populi\Database Changes\Events\NewCityEvents.xml

Spoiler code snippet :

View attachment 684509

This could break some UI elements and other things that may depend on it, however.

May also break when the AI looks to do it, and can't?
Not sure if the AI works that way?
Could see the AI being unable to use it's spies at all because the ability to steal disappeared. That or the game just does a CTD?

 

[Revolutionist_8]

May also break when the AI looks to do it, and can't?
Not sure if the AI works that way?
Could see the AI being unable to use it's spies at all because the ability to steal disappeared. That or the game just does a CTD?

No, those probably not, the game is pretty modular in that regard. The AI doesn't have a UI, it's calling internal functions, but there could be runtime errors and consequently undefined behaviours, if those functions are depending on this event. I'd ask axatin either here or on discord, I think he can help you.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I'm still experiencing Citystates declaring wars on Vassals either mine or Ai's for no reason.

 

[frktest]

Is the RED unit mod not working for anyone else? Textures are missing on some units. I cleared the game cache and reinstalled community patch, but no dice.

RED is working for me, I have some graphic errors, most on event icons on the right side of the window but RED it is too beatiful thus I do accept that.

 

[greenfieldpark]

The boost looks like its there much much earlier, more like in Classic than Renaissance Era.

Early diplo feels crazy important:
I feel its very much tip-toe to try and avoid any angry neighbours early on but in some games it feels unavoidable.
One angry neighbour is fine, two or three and its probably over (depending a bit on which the neighbours are).
Early CS tribute could be part why some AI's are angry but I doubt its the full story and its a must, if you have few or no nearby CS this massive nerf to the early game.

Bad neighbours (this isnt a new thing):
Worst case neighbours Aztecz (strong uu and agressive personality), Iroquois (insane uu in ai hands) , remove all forest/jungle if you can/have time, zulus, denmark (AI berserkers can trade with your tercios) and songhai (runs around you in circles, avoid settle near rivers at all cost).
Persia WILL go to war with someone early at golden age, be watchful.
With the bad neighbours a war will be rough, if I get two pronged when Im still in classic its likely over.

So much to do, not enough yields (this is good):
Its a lot of choices needed in early game, with science, production, units, wonders etc I can really feel the lowered gold yields, the low gold mean I cant afford to buy many units.
Depending on what civ I play I expect to be atleast 5 techs behind in Classic worst case as much as 10 which is too much.

Improving:
I should probably (like in current game) build way more skirmishers but that costs production that isnt science/culture and in some terrains they arent as good.
It feels like a rush first for comp bows and then to steel just to survive, how on earth do you survive going a different path I have no idea.
AI still need to improve on expanding, plenty of unsettled good lands.

Wars:
With ... I should probably say a bit of luck I can get joint wars, but I need to consider who Im warring, some will just destroy my friend and laugh at the lossed it takes vs me, while others are more likely to crumble early.
I have games where I hammer Japan with endless kills using hawatchas getting absolutely nowhere while he stomps a nearby AI at the same time and a similar situation where zulu and Aztecs does the same.
There are a few AI's that can pull this off.
The dream scenario is double punching an AI that is bad at wars and once at gunpowder hopefully be ready for some more serious opponents, like in current game me and greece punched a great teching Maya who just didnt have much of a chance.

Wonders:
There are at times a decent balance but the old issue is often prevelant that the top tech AI will grab most wonders, especially an AI that runs away a bit at Renaissance Era.

This is pretty close to my experience as well on immortal. Quite hard. Have to make tough choices. Cant focus on everything. I also agree that war tech has to be prioritized. With spearmen and sometimes swordsmen before library tech. And after library have to beeline longswordsmen.

I like the difficuly as is. It should be hard on the 2nd hardest diffoculty. If i find it too hard i can drop a level.

One thing is i can still expand way faster than the ai. Which costs me in short term but I find it worth in the long run.

 

[statusquo]

Quick question, i was pretty sure i saw commit that made Tour from great musician to give +1 happiness in all cities instead just some in capital, was this for testing purpose or it was too OP, cause
description does not suggest it?
EDIT: Hmm, seems like when you make actual action, the description is correct, so only choosing free GP is the issue, i will add a bug github
PS: Still seems like too OP Its worse then public works, but its insta and in every city.. Hmm, maybe by the time civs usualy have it its not that impactfull, but at the time
you can take it from Artistry policy or first musician from Celts it is kinda impactfull, but at the same time it is one time thing, so i quess its is kinda ok-ish..