First of all, LoR is amazing and is certainly deserving of the "unofficial expansion pack" title. It's probably doubled my playtime of Civ4. Thanks to everyone who has ever contributed to it.
Here's a couple suggestions for future stuff, hopefully they won't be terrible, but feel free to let me know if they are. Lots probably require a ton of work, so don't feel like these are demands, just ideas that you can incorporate or not.
Maybe Bugs/Fixes
- In Revolutions, when "rebel uprisings" happen (the ones where a new civ is created with no cities, but tons of units around their parent civ) they often tend to simply mill about the landscape without attacking cities, even if they could conquer them, albeit with high casualties. I think perhaps the game is using "civilization class AI" when it should be using the "lemming/pillage" AI of the barbarians, if that makes sense. Rebellions need to achieve something or they usually die out. They can't sit in the hills forever. This also leads to exploitable events where you can declare war on the three longbowman that revolted against your neighbor and milk the "mutual military struggle" bonus for centuries.
- overuse of machine guns. I've noticed that when AI civ's develop machine guns, they spam them crazily, and try to use them as main stack units. I think this might because they seem, to the AI, as good units on paper -- but it's not very scary when 10 machine guns and 1 paratrooper rolls up to my town.
- I know you've nerfed the Enlightenment trait, but I think that just about any flat science rate bonus is too strong. I've been reduced to almost exclusively picking non-enlightened leaders for myself and my AI opponents, because otherwise they wreck everyone. 5% might be ok, but 10 and 15 are super amazing for a game that is basically won by your tech rate.
- AI's need to use Great Generals as warlords more often. I often capture border towns and find great generals settled there, but have almost never seen a warlord. I imagine this is probably very difficult to fix.
- AI's don't use air power effectively enough, especially in the "bomb the city you are trying to attack to rubble before invading it" category. Again, no idea how to truly fix this.
Suggestions/Improvements:
- Ranged Bombardment combat odds. It's possible this is in the game now, but that I don't know how, but it would be good to be able to see the chances of it working, so I could compare against the chances of directly sending in the cannons. Also, naval units range bombarding other naval units could almost be resolved as regular combat, instead of using siege logic. Modern naval units would be fighting at very long distances anyway, well, if there were modern naval engagements.
- Revolutions mod needs to be harsher on players. The AI's are very bad at handling it, so it seems only fair that it be tougher on humans, perhaps in line with the difficulty level.
- more random events, especially those with civic/tech dependencies. One of my favorite events is the "slave revolt" because I feel that it's a realistic consequence of player choices. I also feel like they should be more extreme. The "wedding" event is a great candidate -- it usually doesn't have a drastic effect on the situation, but I'd like to see more events that precipitate wars or strife. The more they relate to Revolutions the better -- like if you don't react to a random event the way your people want, the revindex goes way up. I guess I have more fun the more unpredictable the game is, as long as I have the ability to react to it in a fun way. Volcanos blowing up my cities is no fun, but if the volcano blows up my city, I should be able to convince my Theocratic society that the neighboring civ was responsible for it, what with their pagan ways, and declare war on them. Or perhaps me not responding to it will convince the people that I'm not satisfying the gods, thereby increasing their revindex.
- an extension of the above, as you progress into more liberal civics like rep/u.suffrage/free religion/environmentalism there should be more events of things "out of your control" like "your Democratic people vote to go to war with Egypt" or "your Pacifistic people vote to end the war with Greece" or "your Environmental-minded people vote to tear down the drydock in Rome" to which you can react by granting their request and getting happiness/reduced revindex, or not doing so, and suffering the opposite.
- extension of corporations earlier into history. I love corps, but I usually feel like the game is won before they get used extensively. It would be great to see some kind of intermediate "religion/corp" device that comes into play before corps become extensive and after most religions are established and holy war battle lines have been drawn. Maybe "guilds" that are activated, well, by discovering guilds, and not require a great person. They should be a lot weaker than corps, and only use 1 or 2 primitive resources, and their presence in cities should be overwritten when a corporation is opened there. They would also provide a "consolation prize" to civs that don't get one of the cool corporations.
- negative relations effects for radically differing civics. The unhappiness effect of having slavery (while others have emancipation) is great, but it should go beyond that. Civs with emancipation should dislike civs with slavery, civs with theocracy should not like civs with free religion, and civs with state property should dislike those with free markets.
- shipping lanes. I realize trade is mainly abstracted in Civ, but it might be cool for markets/harbors to periodically generate "traders" (I'm pretty sure "spawn a unit periodically at this location" logic exists in the game) that can be sent to other cities on mini trade missions (like great merchants) for small amounts of cash. Plus it would give more motivation to actually control the seas. I don't usually feel very intimidated by AI naval forces. Cruising up and down narrow straits torpedoing hapless merchant ships seems like fun.
- more need to seize resources. Not sure how to do this without making resources super powerful, but lots of the time I have 1 cow and I don't see any reason to invade the next country to take their cow, because it won't help me. I can't even steal it and sell it to others, because they are already trading for their own cows. Hmm, lots of my ideas are ways to make the game more war-torn. Maybe I should just play with "always at war." Perhaps this could be accomplished by simply reducing the # of available "location specific" resources like incense or dye, so that there is just one place that provides it, and even then, not enough for everyone, so people have a reason to beat each other up over it.
- lower the recon air mission sight radius (and perhaps add special reconaissance planes with increased radius, or maybe a promotion), maybe down to just the 9 tiles around the chosen location. I feel like one flyby gives me perfect intel on an entire continent, making spies almost useless. Also, recons should be able to be shot down if they occur within the radius of an enemy patrolling fighter, and you shouldn't be able to choose tiles for recon flights if you don't have open borders (or war, obviously) with the owner of the tile.
- infantry units should be invisible in forests or jungles, or perhaps take drastically less siege/air damage while in them. Cottages/village/towns should provide defensive benefits, and perhaps be negated by the attacker having the urban warfare promo.
- bombers (ground attack planes, bombers, jet bombers, stealth bombers) should be much worse at attacking ships, maybe to the extent of not inflicting collateral. Light bombers and fighters should be the preferred choice. Maybe bombers could just be bad at attacking ships until you discover rocketry, or whatever it is that enables cruise missiles, perhaps by enabling an "Exocet" promotion, like how they get an anti-helo one.
- more military options for spies like sabotaging units or bribing them. One of my favorite alternative playstyles in Alpha Centauri was to simply stockpile cash as the Morganites and bribe any enemy units that invaded.
- enable "hurry with gold" much earlier and perhaps just make the U suff. civic just give some kind of bonus to it. It seems weird that I can be a medieval king with coffers bursting with gold but nothing to spend it on except the culture/science/spy slider. I do love the serfdom "build units with excess food" effect.
- pillaging/bombing cottages should cause unhappiness in the city for 10 turns or something, with the resultant revolutions effects.
- perhaps nerf the value of individual trade routes while increasing the available number. Hopefully it would have zero net effect on peacetime trade, but increase the cost of going to war. Losing trade should be a serious consideration when going to war even with a small civ, but usually I don't even notice because all my routes swap to other available cities in friendly empires.
--
Anyway, me wasting an afternoon rambling. Take it how you will.
Here's a couple suggestions for future stuff, hopefully they won't be terrible, but feel free to let me know if they are. Lots probably require a ton of work, so don't feel like these are demands, just ideas that you can incorporate or not.
Maybe Bugs/Fixes
- In Revolutions, when "rebel uprisings" happen (the ones where a new civ is created with no cities, but tons of units around their parent civ) they often tend to simply mill about the landscape without attacking cities, even if they could conquer them, albeit with high casualties. I think perhaps the game is using "civilization class AI" when it should be using the "lemming/pillage" AI of the barbarians, if that makes sense. Rebellions need to achieve something or they usually die out. They can't sit in the hills forever. This also leads to exploitable events where you can declare war on the three longbowman that revolted against your neighbor and milk the "mutual military struggle" bonus for centuries.
- overuse of machine guns. I've noticed that when AI civ's develop machine guns, they spam them crazily, and try to use them as main stack units. I think this might because they seem, to the AI, as good units on paper -- but it's not very scary when 10 machine guns and 1 paratrooper rolls up to my town.
- I know you've nerfed the Enlightenment trait, but I think that just about any flat science rate bonus is too strong. I've been reduced to almost exclusively picking non-enlightened leaders for myself and my AI opponents, because otherwise they wreck everyone. 5% might be ok, but 10 and 15 are super amazing for a game that is basically won by your tech rate.
- AI's need to use Great Generals as warlords more often. I often capture border towns and find great generals settled there, but have almost never seen a warlord. I imagine this is probably very difficult to fix.
- AI's don't use air power effectively enough, especially in the "bomb the city you are trying to attack to rubble before invading it" category. Again, no idea how to truly fix this.
Suggestions/Improvements:
- Ranged Bombardment combat odds. It's possible this is in the game now, but that I don't know how, but it would be good to be able to see the chances of it working, so I could compare against the chances of directly sending in the cannons. Also, naval units range bombarding other naval units could almost be resolved as regular combat, instead of using siege logic. Modern naval units would be fighting at very long distances anyway, well, if there were modern naval engagements.
- Revolutions mod needs to be harsher on players. The AI's are very bad at handling it, so it seems only fair that it be tougher on humans, perhaps in line with the difficulty level.
- more random events, especially those with civic/tech dependencies. One of my favorite events is the "slave revolt" because I feel that it's a realistic consequence of player choices. I also feel like they should be more extreme. The "wedding" event is a great candidate -- it usually doesn't have a drastic effect on the situation, but I'd like to see more events that precipitate wars or strife. The more they relate to Revolutions the better -- like if you don't react to a random event the way your people want, the revindex goes way up. I guess I have more fun the more unpredictable the game is, as long as I have the ability to react to it in a fun way. Volcanos blowing up my cities is no fun, but if the volcano blows up my city, I should be able to convince my Theocratic society that the neighboring civ was responsible for it, what with their pagan ways, and declare war on them. Or perhaps me not responding to it will convince the people that I'm not satisfying the gods, thereby increasing their revindex.
- an extension of the above, as you progress into more liberal civics like rep/u.suffrage/free religion/environmentalism there should be more events of things "out of your control" like "your Democratic people vote to go to war with Egypt" or "your Pacifistic people vote to end the war with Greece" or "your Environmental-minded people vote to tear down the drydock in Rome" to which you can react by granting their request and getting happiness/reduced revindex, or not doing so, and suffering the opposite.
- extension of corporations earlier into history. I love corps, but I usually feel like the game is won before they get used extensively. It would be great to see some kind of intermediate "religion/corp" device that comes into play before corps become extensive and after most religions are established and holy war battle lines have been drawn. Maybe "guilds" that are activated, well, by discovering guilds, and not require a great person. They should be a lot weaker than corps, and only use 1 or 2 primitive resources, and their presence in cities should be overwritten when a corporation is opened there. They would also provide a "consolation prize" to civs that don't get one of the cool corporations.
- negative relations effects for radically differing civics. The unhappiness effect of having slavery (while others have emancipation) is great, but it should go beyond that. Civs with emancipation should dislike civs with slavery, civs with theocracy should not like civs with free religion, and civs with state property should dislike those with free markets.
- shipping lanes. I realize trade is mainly abstracted in Civ, but it might be cool for markets/harbors to periodically generate "traders" (I'm pretty sure "spawn a unit periodically at this location" logic exists in the game) that can be sent to other cities on mini trade missions (like great merchants) for small amounts of cash. Plus it would give more motivation to actually control the seas. I don't usually feel very intimidated by AI naval forces. Cruising up and down narrow straits torpedoing hapless merchant ships seems like fun.
- more need to seize resources. Not sure how to do this without making resources super powerful, but lots of the time I have 1 cow and I don't see any reason to invade the next country to take their cow, because it won't help me. I can't even steal it and sell it to others, because they are already trading for their own cows. Hmm, lots of my ideas are ways to make the game more war-torn. Maybe I should just play with "always at war." Perhaps this could be accomplished by simply reducing the # of available "location specific" resources like incense or dye, so that there is just one place that provides it, and even then, not enough for everyone, so people have a reason to beat each other up over it.
- lower the recon air mission sight radius (and perhaps add special reconaissance planes with increased radius, or maybe a promotion), maybe down to just the 9 tiles around the chosen location. I feel like one flyby gives me perfect intel on an entire continent, making spies almost useless. Also, recons should be able to be shot down if they occur within the radius of an enemy patrolling fighter, and you shouldn't be able to choose tiles for recon flights if you don't have open borders (or war, obviously) with the owner of the tile.
- infantry units should be invisible in forests or jungles, or perhaps take drastically less siege/air damage while in them. Cottages/village/towns should provide defensive benefits, and perhaps be negated by the attacker having the urban warfare promo.
- bombers (ground attack planes, bombers, jet bombers, stealth bombers) should be much worse at attacking ships, maybe to the extent of not inflicting collateral. Light bombers and fighters should be the preferred choice. Maybe bombers could just be bad at attacking ships until you discover rocketry, or whatever it is that enables cruise missiles, perhaps by enabling an "Exocet" promotion, like how they get an anti-helo one.
- more military options for spies like sabotaging units or bribing them. One of my favorite alternative playstyles in Alpha Centauri was to simply stockpile cash as the Morganites and bribe any enemy units that invaded.
- enable "hurry with gold" much earlier and perhaps just make the U suff. civic just give some kind of bonus to it. It seems weird that I can be a medieval king with coffers bursting with gold but nothing to spend it on except the culture/science/spy slider. I do love the serfdom "build units with excess food" effect.
- pillaging/bombing cottages should cause unhappiness in the city for 10 turns or something, with the resultant revolutions effects.
- perhaps nerf the value of individual trade routes while increasing the available number. Hopefully it would have zero net effect on peacetime trade, but increase the cost of going to war. Losing trade should be a serious consideration when going to war even with a small civ, but usually I don't even notice because all my routes swap to other available cities in friendly empires.
--
Anyway, me wasting an afternoon rambling. Take it how you will.
isn't really worth it. So my suggestion is add a bonus if a civ has a monopoly (in their then known world) on a certain resource. Makes for some interesting scenarios as civs scramble ver newly discovered resources, on Terra maps especially. Suggestion: if a civ has a monopoly on a resource, the Palace gets 5
for every resource it owns (the exact amount and mechanism is of course open for balancing). That sounds like a lot, but empires were build on monopolies, and empires subsequently collapsed when their monopoly was broken and they couldn't afford everything any more without the monopoly income. The monopoly system ends when a known civ discovers Corporation.
