Khift
Prince
Rhye, do you mind if I suggest some unit changes, possibly for the expansion pack?
Khift said:One thing you might want to do, though, since you really don't like the distance between Man-At-Arms and Guerilla would be to add a sort of offensive pikeman with Military Tradition. Maybe 4.3.1, 40 shields, considering how often Pikemen were still used as cannon fodder in that era. It would certainly fit in the "poor man's army" chain you describe. Mayhaps you could make it 3.3.1 instead, that might fit better.
Khift said:While it would be great to have a more indepth transition between the Medieval and Industrial Ages, the only way to allow for this would be to shift all of the Industrial and Modern units' stats up some to give you some play room. As of right now, I still think that units like the Crusader and Berserker are too powerful when compared to the early Gunpowder units, and while adding more early gunpowder units would be very nice to do, there simply isn't enough room in the unit stats to let that happen.
Sounds good.Khift said:2. The F-15
The more I think about it, the less I like the F-15. First of all, it never really dominated the world - although they never fought, IF the F-15 was better than the Russian MIGs, it wasn't by much. Second of all, they only fought in two wars, the Persian Gulf wars, and they didn't make the difference in those wars, they were simply the icing on the cake. And third of all, gameplay wise, they are useless.
And so I thought about the possible replacements. Minutemen didn't cut it either, and everyone has Marines. However, another airplane seemed to stand out: the B-29 Superfortress. In it's time period, it was truly the biggest, baddest bomber, and without it our victory in the Pacific would really be in jeapordy. It made a big difference in the Korean War, too, and is still in use today - it's just that good.
It also makes sense in gameplay. I think most every Civ player you can think of would agree that Bombers are more useful than Fighters. Maybe give them 16 bombardment as opposed to the standard 12. You can also find some good sprites of them in the Unit Library.
Khift said:the Keshiks were horse archers! When I looked through the Unit Library yesterday, I saw a good Horse Archer animation there. I think it was on page five... Either way, I think that animation would work much better than the current one.
3. The Immortals
I went looking for a replacement, and I found what probably caused the developers to use the Immortals in the first place - the fact that the Persian army was quite nondescript.
Mayhaps you could give them a well-dressed Swordsman replacement that has an extra defense point to emulate their quick response, or maybe have a Swordsman replacement that costs less (20 shields preferrably) to show that they could organize and raise a larger army than others at the time. Either way, it's not very definitive, and I can't say I'm comfortable with any of the options.
Next thing: Early Naval Units
I really think that there needs to be more diversity with those early naval units. Having nothing but Galleys for a quarter of the game is just boring. My suggestion is to add a pair of units - the Trireme and the Galleass. The Trireme would be available with Map Making, 30 Shields, 2.1.3, no transport.
Khift said:The Galleass would be available with Gunpowder, 40 shields, 3.2.4, no transport. Of course, this would cause one to need to adjust all of the naval units attack and defense scores, so I went ahead and did this for you:
Khift said:Awright.
First off, a couple of the Unique Units bother me. Some are too weak, some are too historically inaccurate, some are both.
1. The Keshik
First of all, the Mongols were a plains civilization. They didn't live in the mountains, and in general they avoided the mountains when they conquered. It makes no sense for the Keshik to have the mountain crossing ability.
So I thought about this. It seems to me that this would work better for the Keshik: 4(2).2.2 50 shields, requires Horses, defensive only bombard. This setup does two things: it makes the Keshik much more numerous, creating a truly Mongolian horde, and it weakens the Keshik's ability to keep those cities that they conquer.
For the record,on April6-9 1241 AD the Mongol army forced the alps covering 270 miles in under 3 days in the snow,and were still strong enough to crush the army of King Bela of Hungary on April 12th...this one example is an excellent reason for their ignore movement penalty on mountains.
Also the USA B-19 and B-17 both are not and have not for many years been in service. You may be referring to the B-52. The F-15 is a veteran of much action in the middle east, albeit usually flown by the IDF. The ratio of air-to-air kills for/against is also heavily in the F-15 favor in its history,which also included air-to-air victories over top-line MiG-29 a/c
And it seems unusual that anyone would take out the USA as a civilization,especially one where there is expectations of reaching the modern era,while leaving in civilizations much out of their prime even by the time the US was born... overall however,I must say, great mod to a great game guys.
Ron