I’m playing on a Huge map with Epic speed on a Perfect World mapscript as Hyksos
1. I think removing the option of giving +1 population from nomadic huts would be a good idea. Adding additional population in the Lithic Era seems like a bad idea.
2. Defense on all flat land tiles should be 0, just like grasslands, because there’s a clear line of sight. Hills should have a lower defense than forest, but higher than flat land tiles, say +15. A -15% defense penalty for Marsh seems irrational to me. It’s realistically just as defensible as forest or maybe hills to me.
3. I hated when Civ4 added animals as a concept, so naturally I don’t like seeing them here either. If you want to give unique units to the barbarians, do that, because that’s fine, but seeing a Barbarian Wolf for example, attacking my city is just so silly & completely throws immersion out the window.
4. Hunters are able to explore far too much terrain early on, so I’d recommend dropping the defense from 5 to 1 or 2. They’ll die often then & exploration should be slowed. The only other options I see are either limiting how far from the city a unit can travel (there’s a Civ4 mod that did this, I think the option was called Limited Movement), or implementing some sort of Tile Attrition that damages the units so they absolutely have to return to your territory to heal periodically. Maybe both.
5. Adding the concept of gaining experience by exploring (from Vox Populi) would be nice, I’m missing that. It gives you another reason to go out & explore, instead of going total-turtle in your one city early on, which is too beneficial. It would also go well in combination with #4 above, in that if the Hunter is able to gain enough experience, it could be promoted to the point where it’s defense is enough to survive longer stretches outside of your territory.
6. Getting free Gatherers from nomadic huts also seems like a bad idea, as they can do so little early in the game that they’re likely useless units.
7. Maybe break the Lithic era up into Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic & Chalcolithic eras. This would allow a player to better start where they’d prefer. Also, there should be a direct jump from Paleolithic to later “Lithic” eras, so that those that do start in the Paleolithic can entirely bypass eras, at the cost of massive research costs, of course – in certain start situations, I’d think the cost would be worth it.
8. Shamans should be available a bit earlier
9. Workers should be available a bit later
10. Being able to purchase a portion of buildings/wonders is another feature I’m missing from Vox Populi.
11. Forest Garden doesn’t show a tile graphic after being built.
12. Overall, I’d suggest that every building & wonder have at least one terrain or resource requirement.
13. In the city screen, it says each citizen consumes 2 food, but it’s actually 3
14. I think Civ5 & all it’s mods, usually combine forest/jungle defense bonuses with hills & Saga of Man is apparently not doing that, which seems weird to me.
15. Trade routes should come earlier. These things happened way earlier than most people think.
16. Reduce Archer’s attack radius to 1
17. Reduce the cost of a canoe to that of a scout, as it’s basically a scouting boat, in fact, most early stuff to build seems over priced to me & should all be about 270 gold
18. At this point in my gameplay, I’m thinking you might want to consider making this mod off of Vox Populi. I’ve been playing that mod for so long, as have so many others, that I feel like I’m missing a lot of those elements (as I’m sure others would also feel).
This is great feedback thanks. I'll respond to your points but my memory might be a little fuzzy because I haven't touched this since December. I see you are using examples from Civ IV mods. When I began this project it started out as a mod mod of Caveman 2 Cosmos but then decided there was too much reverse engineering I needed to do.
1. I agree about extra pop in the Lithic Era that's why I balanced growth so that the additional pop is difficult to maintain. My logic is that the villagers have decided to join your civilization.
2. I will take your idea about flatlands into consideration. Marsh is difficult to maneuver in.
3. Man vs. environment is actually very realistic. Especially before the rise of civilization. There is very little evidence of warfare prior to the Neolithic. I think of cities prior to civilization as temporary settlements and I don't think animals attacking is out of the question. As a matter of fact, I believe I gave mammoths the promotion that prevents city attack in my new version. I'll consider all animals. The animals go obsolete sometime in the Classical Era anyway, I believe. FYI, I started overhauling my tech tree to start the game at 20,000 b.c. because I find permanent settlements by nomadic tribes to be a bit immersion breaking.
4. I agree with you about hunters. I've been trying to come up with ideas to limit exploration. Making them weaker would definitely work. Tile attrition would be awesome but I haven't figured out a way to do it. I wanted this for snow and desert. Limiting the range is also a good idea but I can't find a way to do it. I believe I gave hunters the promotion that makes them more powerful when in range of the city to discourage exploration but I know this doesn't really work.
5. So in my newest version I took the time to assemble a mod pack to go along with this project. I believe I added a mod by WHoward that adds a promotion for exploration xp. So this should be possible. Unfortunately I don't know a way to limit the hunter's range.
6. You might be right about this. I don't like workers standing around either.
7. My first version had a Paleolithic and Neolithic era. But I was experiencing a crash whenever I would start the Neolithic. I tore my mod apart trying to find the cause but couldn't find the problem. So I combined the eras and the problem went away. I might separate them later on but for the moment game stability is my priority.
8. Just trying to be historically accurate.
9. Workers didn't really exist before permanent settlements.
10. If there is a mod somewhere for this I might add it. There might be something like this in WHoward's pack but not completely sure.
11. Done. In the new version berry bushes appear.
12. I did this in my original mod that's on Steam. But decided that this was too penalizing for most generic buildings. Wonders, for the most part, will require something terrain related.
13. It's set at 2 to limit growth.
14. This sounds familiar to me. There was something in the code preventing me from doing this. I'll take another look at it.
15. You are right. I had a historical reason for doing what I did. I think it had to do with the beginning of trade for profit.
16. I have considered doing this.
17. I believe I did this already in my new version.
18. I actually began doing that but ran into some compatibility issues with other mods I wanted to use. I think it was related to the DLL. Ultimately I decided to base this on Whoward's DLL. Many of his mods are also part of Vox Populi. Anyway I have a grand vision for this mod and things get tricky when I have to undo what others have done.
@DImensiondog The project is still at a stand still. I have other priorities at the moment but I am looking forward to diving back into this. It's just a massive time sink and requires my full attention.
