I have really enjoyed 2.7, there has been really positive changes to the AI and large performance improvements. Thanks for all the hard work.
My suggestions and observations:
General -
The possibly of a power entering from the Pacific or South to prevent the clustering together of all the powers in the Northern continent, which leads to slower development and more conflict and many parts of the map untouched.
- I leave this to the map makers. We can't really do this in general due to how the random map generator / starting positions work.
Roads should automatically be built on the tile a settlement is founded on and they should upgrade with the town hall to represent the towns infrastructure as it grows.
- Already implemented for a while. When a townhall is built, the city tile gets a free plastered road. When the trainstation is build, the city tile gets a paved country road. (Not totally sure if those are the atual names!)
Maybe rename coastal ships to flotilla or fleet as they seem to represent many boats. The term small / large boat also seems a little odd when all the other units have historical names.
- We need to find some better names for them, maybe someone can contribute better names (English & German)
The AI loves to spam massive stacks of coastal ships, which are then easy targets for privateers.
- Agree, will have the AI produce less of them. Generally it underproduces wagons and overproduces coastal transports.
Increase the space between cities to two squares. This will prevent the AI from spamming cities that cannibalise each others resources.
- Easily modifed in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml
Russian AI seems to be poor at building roads.
- There is no reason why it should be better or worse, the Russians should behave just like any other AI.
To move or change the value of the Religious Founding Fathers, Nathaniel Hawthorne's bonus is very strong in comparison to Tome de Sousa.
- There are many imbalances at the moment, I don't really have the time to correct them since I want to focus on AI work. Patches are welcome!
The AI's reaction to declaration of Independence is strange, Simon Bolivar gave me units but several turns later declared war at pleased with a really weak invasion force.
- This is just silly AI behavour. I'll add it to the list of stuff to look at.
I feel you should take a look at rebalancing the constitution mechanic. Perhaps "All men are free" should allow you to turn the slaves into free colonists. "Right to Bear Arms" should do more than add a trivial boost to colonists.
- The constitution (or civics) are rather silly and imbalanced. An overhaul is needed at some point. We really should merge in
@Nightinggale 's civeffects and get a proper tech tree and civics, but that would require a lot of programmer time. Anyone feel like stepping up ?
I'd like to see more boom and bust events, this would require you to make the most of your specialists and all the new resources in the game, and add more challenge. As of now the players economic strategy just seems revolve around having to prepare for diminishing returns.
- Not too hard to implement and could be done in python. This is something someone could contribute without having to understand (too much of) the DLL.
I would like to see more challenge in the Revolution, perhaps as happened in history pre-rebellion the King could deploy units or build forts in your lands. Or the Rebellion rate would be capped at 75% relying on you facing a little more struggle at the start of the Rebellion, rather than a universal consensus that the Rebellion is good.
- The revolution aspect is the weakest point of the game in my opinion, but we don't have resources to rework it.
Military -
If the Natives kill units like rangers / native mercenaries etc they don't receive guns, this should be brought in line with the other units
- I agree that the natives should be able to plunder weapons from all armed units. Added to the list.
Take away the ability to attach Great Generals to scouts and settler militias, the AI likes to do this does this to with obviously suboptimal results.
- More poor AI decision making. Added to the list.
When natives offer to sell you mercenaries it seems that you can always get them for half price by choosing "That is too expensive" option.
- Currently the only downside is a 50% chance to get the tribes's attitude towards you reduced by 1 point. I agree that this is not enough and I'd like to rework it into being a chance for the tribe to refuse contact instead (like when bargaining fails)
During colonial wars enacted by your King there seems to be no end point or recognition of the war, destroying the opposition colonies doesn't provoke a reaction from your King and also doesn't seem to have any bearing on your relationship with the hostile King.
- I am working on having offensive wars against fellow Europeans have more consequences.
Tweak the Kings AI it seems to love landing units either directly outside the strongest cities or in remote areas which leads to problems in attacking.
- I don't have enough data about what the King does since it happens so late. If you have a save where the King behaves poorly, do upload it for inspection! I have noticed that the king does rather poorly on island maps and terribly when the bulk of the players cities are far inland / towards the west, protected by borders of other players or large bodies of water.
Economy -
Financial demands from the Church / Pirates / King and Tribes selling units, should increase with income / rebellion level as its trivial to buy slaves and pay off Pirates during the late game.
- I agree that they should scale with the game progress \ wealth if of the player.
The Tool factory seems inexpensive compared to other comparable buildings.
- Not sure
The Corvette seems to be overpriced in comparison to its abilties.
- Several ships should have some form of gentle rebalance and I like the proposal in the "A little bit about ships..." thread,
Change the prices and resources of the late game wagons, as of now they are far too cheap. The final wagon, seems to serve no purpose as it is outclassed by the carriage. The carriage being able to carry other wagons is also pretty exploitative.
- Need some consensus here. Wagons shouldn't be too expensive for many reasons (the primary one being the AI). As for the carriage carrying other wagons, that sounds a bit like an exploit! I'll look into it.
I feel you should raise the price of Merchant ships in Europe, or require that the high end merchant ships demand a port with a dock to function, as of now why build anything other than the Galleon?
- I agree that galleons are too much of the "ultimate ship", good at everything and simply a replacement for all other ships. Note sure what the best way is to correct this though.