A question before playing with your xml: the resources are restricted
a) only at start, but they can spread afterwards (by farms and so) or
b) they are completely restricted and won't ever spread out of its continent
I say it because if is a) I'm very interested, because it's the most realistic and interesting, but if is b) I prefer should be a)
I don't know really yet if this feature is limited/controlled by this file so I ask.
Thx again for your contribution
A system where resources can be spread as IRL is very much what we want to have one day. For now that doesn't happen, except for crops - those can be "discovered" by later farms.
In general, I'd like to comment on resource distribution and make some points:
- Resource clustering into particular spots is there to encourage more trade between civs.
- Stone and marble are intentionally very limited; they are set to spawn in less instances than there are players. They are supposed to be very useful assets that aren't easy to come by.
- It might very well be that some other resources are unintentionally rare; I will review the custom resource xml and probably incorporate some changes from it to RI.
Here it is an savegame as example of what I'm speaking about. In this savegame you can see how tha Spanish Ai forms two great stacks
in only 10 turns and which is worse
with only 6 cities!!!!! 
I have 7 cities, and cannot replace losses and maintain so much ones, and having money and time for research, and so, having one religion, and religious money buildings, which AI has none... I think herés the proof that the game is unbalanced and the AI overpowered.
I think that at present the AI seems to have all the benefits of
Barbarians and
none of this disadvantages 
I enjoy a lot with the new challenging barbarian tribes, but I cannot stand to see the Ai civ making the same. Something it's exaggerated IMHO
Greetings
P.S. Simple Arithmetic: Two stacks +- 40 units/6 cities=6.66 units per city. 10 turns(peace)/6.66 units=
1.5 turns per unit using all cities and without taking in consideration
the time for moving them to an extreme of the map to another... Completely unfair, it isn't?
Before recent revision in higher difficulty levels AI had a very large advantage in unit production, among other advantages. We're toning that down except for the highest difficulty levels.
Still, players should understand that AI on higher difficulty levels is
supposed to get unfair advantages. It is what difficulty levels are mostly about - giving bonuses either to players or to AI.
Also it's the fact that I was not sure that which for me is unfair, could be considered "challenging" or "amazing" for others, so I was not sure if you consider it a problem or not. If you got the problem, I'm used to be absolutely patient and wait for the solution, as was on sooo many others SVN
Fortunately, your team normally gets the solutions usually sooner than later...
Indeed, that's why we have multiple difficulty levels. One can choose his own level of comfort. Also, of course, we are constantly trying to improve balance, but it is very much up to players to find the difficulty they are comfortable with.
Resuming, the problems IMHO are:
- AI overpowered/overproducing out of control, resulting in bizarre amounts of units camping on the countryside
- Difficult levels not balanced, resulting in too much difficult for a very low level game
We're considering introducing some more difficulty levels, both easier and harder.
- AI excessive overstacking, with very reduced penalty in case. This degenerates on nearly impossibility of field combat for player
Working to fix that.
- Application in battle of bonus/malus (specially stacking malus) and AIDs, which due to bizarre AI stacking, makes nearly a suicide attacking and moving on the field (as said above)
You're
supposed to be better at that than AI.
Unlike human players, AI actually doesn't know the aid system rules - one of the very few cases where AI isn't aware of some rules and gameplay options in RI. In general we try to avoid such situations, but since there wasn't a single complaint about that over time, we consider AI handling of stack composition to be adequate. Still, a player has the opportunity to create much better balanced stacks with better aid bonuses.
- Bizarre Espionage rampage for the AI, perhaps in relation with the above overpower issues, so I cannot play with the option activated (fortunately there is that option)
Most likely due to AI love for spy specialists, should be toned down a lot in nearest revisions.
- Strange combat odds (a real nightmare for me, sincerely...)
- Resource distribution and amounts (I prefer, as an example, the
Antmanbrooks .xml)
As I indicate above, most of resource distribution decisions are intentional. A player shouldn't really be capable of running a juche system where everything needed is inside the civ's territory. Trading for resources is very encouraged.
- Cavalry flanking bonus on cities, specially with defenses (absurd and unrealistic)
Will likely get rid of that.
- City attack/defense bonuses/maluses for AI and player, seem not to be active for the AI
This one is very unlikely. While I can't guarantee with 100% level of confidence, it is very likely that you are just falling victim to
confirmation bias. When the combat system is working as you expected, a person doesn't seem to remember that (after all, this is a normal occurrence) - but when it behaves unexpectedly, you remember it very well. And since you aren't likely prone to making suicide charges with 10% or less probability of winning, you don't get many chances to get unexpected victories you remember - OTOH, since you often attack with a high chance of success, you are getting much more unexpected defeats. Hopefully I explained it well enough.
P.S. That doesn't by itself mean that there can't be any bugs in combat calculations - but a proper way to confirm them would be gathering statistical data and it wouldn't likely be visible in a normal game, and it is likely not what you are encountering.
I can't really judge C2C to harshly, as the only system that I can get it to run on is the significant others WIN 8 lappy. From my limited play, I would say it's an interesting mod. Still, my personal preference has always been RI, especially the Earth map scenario. My only gripe would be TT's. But that aspect of Civ has always been an issue... Of course, if the RI Gods have somehow significantly improved TT's, I'd be more than happy to make them an offering of the wife's home made CC Cookies
.
Let's say that C2C just has a different design philosophy and leave it at that.
As for TTs, I think we did more to improve them than any other mod. I don't think any other mod has such an array of speed-enhancing improvements as we do. Of course, most of them don't have as much content as we do, so this kinda balances that out.
Still, rest assured that we try our best to minimize the strain RI puts on systems in all aspects - starting from optimizing textures and all the way up to very complex coding.
I play with the Immortal difficulty (but at least a good starting location
), and I don't think AI is playing unfairly. In contrary, I win very lucky battles occasionally. I got beaten by a superpower or a backstabbing neighboor later in the game anyway, but before that point I can beat my other weak neighbours.
Well, AI on Immortal IS playing unfairly in a lot of its aspects, just not the combat odds.
