Over the past year, whenever I saw a thread that discussed changes to the game I thought sounded interesting, I would copy and paste it to a Word document.
Here's what I have so far. It is unedited; some of it may be old, but some of it's good stuff. You may recognize it as some of your
own work.
(I didn't save who it was quoted from). These are not
my changes! Just other people's ideas.
Renamed "Map Making" to "Sailing," and transeferred the "trade maps" ability to "Navigation." The world was getting discovered too fast. This slows it down some. Good world maps didn't come about until men could safely navigate the oceans.
Moved "trade communications" from "Writing" to "Astronomy" This was an attempt to slow down the tech trading. It helps some.
Moved "Military Alliances" & "MPP" to nationalism. I'm really pleased with this change so far. From my perspective, Ancient wars were mostly one on one. It wasn't until later when nations became nations that all the politics behind warfare started to come about.
I made all ancient units upgrade to at least rifleman. I just don't like to see warriors running around in 1903.
added several buildings I felt were more than needed: school, college, church, stock exchange, newspaper, observatory, etc. the computer players just love them. they build/get them before other normal game improvements. this is specially noticeable when bombarding a city, even a small one.
Worker Jobs:
Railroads now become available with Industrialization
Irrigation now requires Pottery
Mining now requires Masonry
Improvements:
Barracks now require Warrior Code
Temple and Cathedral now reduce corruption.
Optimal number of cities (corruption):
From To
Tiny 12 16
Small 14 19
Standard 16 22
Large 24 30
Huge 32 40
What I am doing now is increasing the tech minimum to 8 and maximum to 80. It lets me play war with my early units. I was finding that by time I had enough legionaries or swordsmen or samurai to launch a decent attack the AI was building infantry and tanks - or at least it seemed that way . So now I have large stacks of early Romans on the rampage - until they run into large stacks of early Egyptians and Persians.
If I might add, a two case example.
Attacker Attack=5 5hps
Defender 1, defense 5, 10 hps
Defender 2, defense 10, 5 hps
Defender 1 has a 50% chance to avoid taking damage (and inflict it in return). It can survive 9 such hits, and dies on the 10th.
Defender 2 has a 66% chance to avoid taking damage (and inflict it in return). It can survive 4 such hits, and dies on the 5th.
Moreover, if defender 1 survives 5 attacks by the attacking unit before killing it (ie 50%), he still has 5 hps which puts him on an equall footing with the attacker right behind the first one.
Whereas if defender 2 survives with 2 hits, he is significantly weakened against the next one.
I would also mention someone elses idea in a mod. Infantry low defense high hps, tanks high defense low hps. This allows for two specific kinds of anti-unit artillery, which will be relatively ineffective against the wrong unit. Anti personnel with high rate of fire but low attack (kills infantry well and quickly, passable against tank) and anti-tank with low rate of fire but high attack (hits and kills tanks quickly, hits infantry easily but takes several turns to kill).
I remember there was a HUGE debate about this months back. The fact is, Chariots DO come before horse riding. That's why they rode chariots, cos they couldn't just ride the horses. This may be surprising, but mostly has to do with the fact that horses then were very different from horses today. They were too small to ride, and it took centuries of breeding to get them to ridable size (there was yet another leap in horse size later that allowed Knights with all that heavy gear). BTW, I've been in places in Indonesia where the horses today as still laughably small and completely unrideable.
So something like Horse Breeding is perhaps better than Horse Riding.
CITIZENS
Tax collectors - Give 3 gold, require Currency
Scientists - Give 3 science, require Invention
TERRAIN
Jungles also have Game and Incense
Plains also have Game
Flood Plains also have Game
Tundra turns into Grassland with global warming
WORLD SIZES
Tiny: Min distance = 14, optimum cities = 16, science = 80
Small: Min distance = 16, optimum cities = 20, science = 100
Standard: Min distance = 18, optimum cities = 24, science = 120
Large: Min distance = 20, optimum cities = 32, science = 160
Huge: Min distance = 24, optimum cities = 40, science = 200
Minimal Tech time: 2 turns (If you do it high, you can only get tech by trading)
Max Tech time: 80 turns
Chance to Intercept air Missions: 66% (changed from 50%)
Tax collectors renamed "Merchants" and produce 2 coins. Come with currency.
Scientists produce 2 beakers. Come with education.
All units have twice more hitpoints
All bombard units have twice their rate of fire
Swordsmen-like upgrade to riflemen (to do it with 1.17, you have to make your swordsmen upgrade to legionaries and legionaries upgrade as immortals, and then immortals upgrade to riflemen).
Longbowmen upgrade to riflemen
Frigates, privateers and Man-o-wars upgrade to destroyers
Ironclads upgrade to battleships.
Cavalry upgrade to Tank. (as you see it, I don't like having tons of useless units in my production list)
Galleys have 4 moves; Caravels have 6; Frigates, Galleons, Man-o-wars and Privateers have 8; ironclads and subs have 10; Carriers and nuclear subs have 12; Every more modern sea unit has 15.
French are white, Barbs are pink, English are red, Romans are orange.
Added some city-names.
Airports produce + 50% gold.
Increased optimal city #s by about 25% and added "reduces corruption" flag to police station. I like to play on a modified MarlaMap, reducing corruption is a must. (I also changed almost all tundra on that map to mountain, which eliminated about 100 AI towns from the game - turns took too long, otherwise. Besides, a metropolitan greenland just doesn't sit well with me...)
A ton of stuff was moved around; most resources now appear several advances before you can use them, to give more time to trade or plan. Every Small Wonder now has a prerequisite tech, so that it appears on the tree. Some units were moved also, so that every tech now gives something (unit, wonder, modified rule); no more worthless prerequisite techs.
Removed Theory of Gravity tech (moving the wonder to Physics), added Nautical Science (off Invention, required for Astronomy) which gives Caravels and Privateers; Privateers no longer require Saltpeter but can't sail on oceans until Caravels do.
Amphibious War was moved MUCH earlier (off of Steam Power, required for Combustion), and gives Ironclads (now 6(4)/4) and Marines (which are now 6/4/1).
Some techs now have more requirements; Electricity is now needed to get Steel, which keeps people from rushing to Replaceable Parts.
New buildings:
Armory: a late-game City Walls, basically gives the 100% Metropolis bonus even to towns, and helps defend against bombardment
Sewer System: reduces pollution by a set amount (3 or 4, I'm still tweaking), at Sanitation. This is great, since it allows you to make Factories in the Industrial era without having totally out-of-control pollution.
Harbor was split into Docks (+food, ancient era), Harbor (trade links, middle ages), and Shipyard (veteran units, middle ages); Docks are a prerequisite for the other two.
New Small Wonders:
Internet (research bonus, one happy person in each city, one unhappy person in each city, and a few other things)
Hollywood (one happy person in each city, increases money in home city)
Taj Mahal, Statue of Liberty, Arc d'Triumph: act like Forbidden Palace, but each has extra requirements (Cathedral, Harbor, and two victorious armies), higher costs (400/500/600), and comes later in the game than the ones before it.
New Great Wonders:
Theory of Relativity (acts like Theory of Evolution but comes in the Modern Era)
KGB (acts like the Great Library but comes at Espionage)
Citizens: like a lot of other people, I made Tax Collectors and Scientists come at later techs and add 2 instead of 1.
Units:
HP goes 3/4/5/7. Naval units move much faster. All bombardment units have Rate of Fire doubled (to make up for the HP scaling) and their range increases by 1 (usually). Swordsmen and naval vessels upgrade. Archer units have a defensive bombard ability (range 0, rate of fire 1, power = attack power) which makes them good support units to stack with the main attack. More units have Zone of Control. Armies get Blitz. Submarines have hidden nationality. Battleships get Blitz (so they can bombard like crazy).
Barbarians are Swordsman, Knight, Privateer. Now, they're an actual threat; their conscript level still works against them, but it's no longer safe to use Warriors to scout everywhere.
Then, in a later version I added a dozen or so new units; some Sniper-type units (the continuation of the Archer line), some attack infantry (so it now goes Swordsman - Man at Arms - Marine - Paratrooper - SEAL, with Samurai being a UU replacement for Man at Arms), a skirmisher line (like the Impi), an upgraded Worker (the Engineer; he can be airlifted and is 0/1/2; faster, and is destroyed instead of captured), the Pirate (upgraded Privateer), Trebuchet (between Catapult and Cannon), some modern units (Modern Battleship, Supercarrier), the Balloon (0/0 Air unit, only does the Recon command), and two new varieties of Army.
) i've done two tests and had good results. So, here's what i did: democracy was changed to a low war weariness. Another change to take note of is i moved communication trading to navigation, so that tends to slow down research for non expansionist civs dramatically. i created a map where i had one settler and the ai could not contact me, just let the ai's duke it out. I took note of the first civ to hit a new age and here's the numbers:
.... i have always given cavalry an attack rateing that is the same as that areas version of infantry because Cavalry in no era ruled the battlefield the way that they do in CivIII and in reality where only good if the enemy broke up formations ( think about it... the Islamic Cavalry at Poitiers, the persian cavalry against Alexander's Phalanx, the French Cavalry at Waterloo couldn't break the British square formations) The cavalry could only break disciplined infantry if it had the ability, the time, and the resources to lap around and flank it and or hit it from the rear. Now granted thier are exceptions to the rule... though a few of them i don't count because I don't believe that infantry was good enough/wasn't motivated properly (like dictatorships and such).
)
) to become modern superpowers. The non-superpowers would use more Guerrilla units and Mech-Infantry instead of Modern Armor. 
