Hi Rhye
After reading through your thread yesterday afternoon, I rushed home to download the mod last night.
I booted up a Monarch game with the Chinese, and I was immediately impressed with the graphics (although the little yellow squares on the LM hills etc. are a bit annoying - any way to get rid).
After playing through to about 740AD with the Chinese, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed of the game and having fun, but a glance at the Scores and power graphs showed me running away with the game, fun, but too easy. Probably my choice of civilisation to be honest.
So instead, I thought, "time for a challenge". I'm an emperor/demi-god level player normally, so I decided on the Portuguese on emperor, and this game is turing out to be much more enthralling so far.
My main observations from both games so far:
- Why is it so difficult for China and the other East Asian Civs to make contact with India? It seems this can only be done by circling all the way around through Central Asia, then down via modern day Afganistan/Pakistan, or via the coast all the way past Indochina any Malaya. I'm no historian, but contact between the two civs occurred pretty early in reality didn't it.
- I might be immagining things, but tech trades seem really screwed up. One minute I check via diplomacy with Germany to trade him my newly discovered Construction for his recently discovered Monarchy (I know 'cos he started the Hanging Gardens), but I cant see Monarchy to trade. On other occasions I know I'm ahead in tech over civs like the Zulu, but I try to trade with them to strip them of some of their gold, but I can't see any techs available to trade to them. I understand that you have made some of the tech's non-tradeable to slow down the tech trading pace, but it all seems a bit weird to me at the moment. Might take some getting used to! Would it be possible to get a list of all the non-tradeable techs.
- The difference between Monarch and Emperor in this mod is much more pronounced than it is under standard rules. With the value and population cost of settlers (and hence towns) having risen so much, starting with 2 settlers is a really big boost for the AI. I can hardly imagine what sort of a beast the AI would be at Sid level! Starting with 3 settlers, when it would take the human player, even in a European starting location, some 40 turns even to churn out their first settler. Scary! Dont think I'll be trying that any day soon. This change also fundamentaly changes a lot of standard game-play strategies. For more "disadvantaged" nations, in weaker starting locations, it is much more of a viable strategy to capture rather than try to expand "manually", and killing a wandering enemy settler/warrior pair means so much more than just a couple of free slave workers in this mod. Essentially, for the human player at least, there is a much increased incentive to be aggressive early. Even when pitted against a "strong" civ the human player can pretty much eliminate them as any sort of force to be reckoned with if they can take 2 cities from them before 0AD. As the Portuguese, on Emperor level, a concentrated attack on Spain on about turn 150 has led to them being booted out of the Iberian peninsula, and a few turns later, I have the largest population in the world, just from capturing 2 cities, and getting another via peace negotiations. Good fun, but a fundamental change to the game dynamic.
- In general it can feel a bit limiting being unable to settle towns on forest or hills, I wasted various settler moves finding this out, but I guess I'll get used to it.
- RE Medieval Settlers and Modern settlers. I understand the rationale behind making them more expensive in terms of shields and population. But why are they always the same stats, 0/0/1? It feels like a much bigger investment for the player, but with no benefit whatsoever. How about giving the med. Settler a defensive point or two, and the modern settler the same, plus 2 movement points?
That's all I can think of at the moment, but I love the way you've managed to speed up the game on a huge map, without making too may fundamental changes to the way it plays. Good Job Rhye.
Cheers
Kello
After reading through your thread yesterday afternoon, I rushed home to download the mod last night.
I booted up a Monarch game with the Chinese, and I was immediately impressed with the graphics (although the little yellow squares on the LM hills etc. are a bit annoying - any way to get rid).
After playing through to about 740AD with the Chinese, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed of the game and having fun, but a glance at the Scores and power graphs showed me running away with the game, fun, but too easy. Probably my choice of civilisation to be honest.
So instead, I thought, "time for a challenge". I'm an emperor/demi-god level player normally, so I decided on the Portuguese on emperor, and this game is turing out to be much more enthralling so far.
My main observations from both games so far:
- Why is it so difficult for China and the other East Asian Civs to make contact with India? It seems this can only be done by circling all the way around through Central Asia, then down via modern day Afganistan/Pakistan, or via the coast all the way past Indochina any Malaya. I'm no historian, but contact between the two civs occurred pretty early in reality didn't it.
- I might be immagining things, but tech trades seem really screwed up. One minute I check via diplomacy with Germany to trade him my newly discovered Construction for his recently discovered Monarchy (I know 'cos he started the Hanging Gardens), but I cant see Monarchy to trade. On other occasions I know I'm ahead in tech over civs like the Zulu, but I try to trade with them to strip them of some of their gold, but I can't see any techs available to trade to them. I understand that you have made some of the tech's non-tradeable to slow down the tech trading pace, but it all seems a bit weird to me at the moment. Might take some getting used to! Would it be possible to get a list of all the non-tradeable techs.
- The difference between Monarch and Emperor in this mod is much more pronounced than it is under standard rules. With the value and population cost of settlers (and hence towns) having risen so much, starting with 2 settlers is a really big boost for the AI. I can hardly imagine what sort of a beast the AI would be at Sid level! Starting with 3 settlers, when it would take the human player, even in a European starting location, some 40 turns even to churn out their first settler. Scary! Dont think I'll be trying that any day soon. This change also fundamentaly changes a lot of standard game-play strategies. For more "disadvantaged" nations, in weaker starting locations, it is much more of a viable strategy to capture rather than try to expand "manually", and killing a wandering enemy settler/warrior pair means so much more than just a couple of free slave workers in this mod. Essentially, for the human player at least, there is a much increased incentive to be aggressive early. Even when pitted against a "strong" civ the human player can pretty much eliminate them as any sort of force to be reckoned with if they can take 2 cities from them before 0AD. As the Portuguese, on Emperor level, a concentrated attack on Spain on about turn 150 has led to them being booted out of the Iberian peninsula, and a few turns later, I have the largest population in the world, just from capturing 2 cities, and getting another via peace negotiations. Good fun, but a fundamental change to the game dynamic.
- In general it can feel a bit limiting being unable to settle towns on forest or hills, I wasted various settler moves finding this out, but I guess I'll get used to it.
- RE Medieval Settlers and Modern settlers. I understand the rationale behind making them more expensive in terms of shields and population. But why are they always the same stats, 0/0/1? It feels like a much bigger investment for the player, but with no benefit whatsoever. How about giving the med. Settler a defensive point or two, and the modern settler the same, plus 2 movement points?
That's all I can think of at the moment, but I love the way you've managed to speed up the game on a huge map, without making too may fundamental changes to the way it plays. Good Job Rhye.
Cheers
Kello
