I played a game with one or your recent patches. I played Epic speed, Arabia, King difficulty, and had trouble with unit production. For instance in late game it was 35 turns to make a tank in my size 28 city with a factory, but I could build an Observatory in 15 turns.
It wasn't a great roll on Continents, lots of grassland, yet I was tied with about 3 civs for empire size. I ended up never producing units and purchased one every 5 turns when I could afford one and had an army about 2/3 of my max capacity due to near constant wars with Hiawatha. We went nuclear since we were dead even on empire size and at a stalemate even with 5:1 ratio on killing his units.
So I was thinking about nukes and how irritating it was all my veterans got evaporated and how long it would take to rebuild my army. A nuke was comparable to building a tank in my game. In reality, the first nuke would take a very long time to make, the yield would be small, maybe one tile. As you learned the process your nuke would take less time and yield a larger blast radius.
How about a concept that the first unit, or building, takes longer to build, but is discounted the more you make (capped at an ideal production value). Might make the game a little friendlier to warmongers or large empires. The AI already spams units like crazy so not sure how to make that balance.
Repetition Discount would make sense with buildings. You learned how to make an aqueduct in your capital, so the next one you already have the plans and just need to adjust to the site conditions.
With units, your first tank would take awhile to get right, then you can crank them out using the plans for the first (maybe use the repetition discount starting with industrial age units).
No worries if you don't want to tweak the game more. Just an idea.
*just occurred to me Rome already has this ability with buildings, haven't played in awhile. Well maybe the unit discount is worth considering, or changing Romes ability and giving everyone repetition discount.
It wasn't a great roll on Continents, lots of grassland, yet I was tied with about 3 civs for empire size. I ended up never producing units and purchased one every 5 turns when I could afford one and had an army about 2/3 of my max capacity due to near constant wars with Hiawatha. We went nuclear since we were dead even on empire size and at a stalemate even with 5:1 ratio on killing his units.
So I was thinking about nukes and how irritating it was all my veterans got evaporated and how long it would take to rebuild my army. A nuke was comparable to building a tank in my game. In reality, the first nuke would take a very long time to make, the yield would be small, maybe one tile. As you learned the process your nuke would take less time and yield a larger blast radius.
How about a concept that the first unit, or building, takes longer to build, but is discounted the more you make (capped at an ideal production value). Might make the game a little friendlier to warmongers or large empires. The AI already spams units like crazy so not sure how to make that balance.
Repetition Discount would make sense with buildings. You learned how to make an aqueduct in your capital, so the next one you already have the plans and just need to adjust to the site conditions.
With units, your first tank would take awhile to get right, then you can crank them out using the plans for the first (maybe use the repetition discount starting with industrial age units).
No worries if you don't want to tweak the game more. Just an idea.
*just occurred to me Rome already has this ability with buildings, haven't played in awhile. Well maybe the unit discount is worth considering, or changing Romes ability and giving everyone repetition discount.
