Suggestions and Requests

[mitsuko]

I think you should make it so that cities can't be built on tundra tiles. The Russian city spam is pretty ridiculous. Siberia as a whole should be a lot more sparce than it is now. In the case of important tundra areas (NE Canada, southern Alaska, and a couple of Russian cities come to mind), you can always put a single grassland so cities can be built there.

I would also like to see jungles be unremovable except for when building plantations. It's a lot more realistic than having all the world's jungles reduced to giant swaths of pristine grassland.

 

[narvego]

It is no need now to have a "Computers" technology to build few military units, like:

Mobile SAM
Jet Fighter
Gunship
Guided Missile

Modern jet fighters and gunships (like AH-64), guided missiles (like Tomahawk) and also a land-based mobile anti-air units are huge computerized systems. They really need advanced hardware and software. But no in Civilization.

I think, that we need to have a "Computers" or even "Robotics" technology to build these units. This gonna be more realistic.

 

[Chep]

Could Indonesia get some minor buffs please?

The reduced food production from plantations on Jungle tiles and the removal of the 1-3? Forest tiles in their core really hurt them, on top of the changes that made Pataliputra harder to conquer & spying more expensive by removing the easy access to a great spy (and I think trade routes used to be worth more commerce early on).

Plus the fact that they have no production but are heavily penalized for whipping makes their game really annoying (since your relations stability will pretty much always be bad and unstable civs tend to stick around quite long now, meaning you get penalized for opening borders which you need for trade routes & to profit from your UP).


What I am thinking of:
- give them 1-2 more Buddhist Missionaries
- give their UB the added bonus of "1 non-state-religion in this city is ignored when calculating Domestic Stability via religious unity" (since Konfucianism, Hinduism and Islam all have a high chance to spread to your cities)
- or give them some other kind of bonus (start with Currency for example, or using Absolutism - not saying they should start with Civil Service).

 

[Leoreth]

Indonesia is sort of on the low priority end of my agenda. Some other changes are going to hit that will make balancing them easier afterwards.

 

[Chep]

okay, but I think giving them 1-2 more Buddhist Missionaries at spawn could still be an easy little "bandaid" to make the earlygame less RNG-dependent.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Spawn Indie cities in Russia on the Mongolian flip zone(like Qazan which spawns) . So instead of fighting just 3 armies(which can even run away to.. Anatolia or wherever else) you need to totally repel the mongols from Russian lands, changing russian gameplay. The mongols will start to attack Russian from the Indie-flipped cities. instead of appearing at random cities which can be undefended or overdefended.

 

[Xfactor]

I wanna ask when is Persia as in 1500ad Persia gonna get added to the starting screen selection?

 

[Leoreth]

The mechanism by which civ spawns and autoplay work makes this impossible unless they are available right from the start. I intend to change this later on to enable this, but as of now I can't change it.

 

[Mouthwash]

I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up before (or maybe it has), but we don't really need the ability to remove fog of war in the early game. It should be made impassable until a certain tech is discovered, or allow in only certain units, like explorers. And to slow down exploration, they could have to actually pass over a tile to reveal it. Map trading would allow you to extend the fog of war, to travel through neighboring civs and whatever they've explored. No more Chinese contact with Europe in the eleventh century!

Not sure if it's feasible, though. I can't find any mod for Civ IV that does it.

The mechanism by which civ spawns and autoplay work makes this impossible unless they are available right from the start. I intend to change this later on to enable this, but as of now I can't change it.

The Thais and Byzzies have a conditional spawn, too, but they're available in the loading screen. What's the difference between them and Iran?

 

[DarkLunaPhantom]

The Thais and Byzzies have a conditional spawn, too, but they're available in the loading screen. What's the difference between them and Iran?

Thai and Byzantine civs have their own player slots, unlike Iran which uses Persia's player slot.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up before (or maybe it has), but we don't really need the ability to remove fog of war in the early game. It should be made impassable until a certain tech is discovered, or allow in only certain units, like explorers. And to slow down exploration, they could have to actually pass over a tile to reveal it. Map trading would allow you to extend the fog of war, to travel through neighboring civs and whatever they've explored. No more Chinese contact with Europe in the eleventh century!

Not sure if it's feasible, though. I can't find any mod for Civ IV that does it.

It should be possible with basic XML even. But I think this would be a huge change and I don't know what the overall impact on the game would be. I mean exploration is one of the four X's.

The Thais and Byzzies have a conditional spawn, too, but they're available in the loading screen. What's the difference between them and Iran?

Thai and Byzantine civs have their own player slots, unlike Iran which uses Persia's player slot.

That's right. The conditional spawn is not the issue. It's the fact that spawn dates are strictly coded for player slots. That means that if Persia has already spawned, autoplay doesn't work anymore for Iran in the same slot. I'm currently using some ugly trickery to bring them to life as Iran again, and I'd rather remove that than to add more workaround code that would enable them to have proper autoplay.

 

[Mouthwash]

It should be possible with basic XML even. But I think this would be a huge change and I don't know what the overall impact on the game would be. I mean exploration is one of the four X's.

Exploration is somewhat less meaningful when you know where every resource and mountain is going to be. I don't see how it could affect gameplay in an unrealistic manner either, since you can define fog of war completely for each civ. Even you've done this to some extent, blocking the West African coast off in the classical era.

Anyway, if we were forced to eke out the map tile by tile, wouldn't you think that was more fun than just taking a unit around to highlight things? More true to the spirit of exploration? Imagine- map trading becomes meaningful! You don't get an instant view of the Americas upon contacting the Aztecs!

A couple more thoughts:

1. There should be less fog on water, because this is historical (so that China can contact the Tamils, or the Arabs Indonesia).

2. Tundra should also be blocked off until a certain tech or unit. Siberia shouldn't be explored so early, and there aren't enough northern civs for this to dramatically affect gameplay.

 

[Tigranes]

Please consider removing Crab 1 NE of Bridgetown. Barbados now has less than 300, 000 people, while in 1727 it is now the same size (7) as New York! Why the Crab?

 

[Hojsimpson]

Any city near the coast can grow a lot, but islands mostly suck unless you put resources near it. There is no problem with a big Barbados and a Smaller New York. Another Kind of coast tile with less food can solve the "problem" although I dont see it as a prproblem

 

[Leoreth]

Exploration is somewhat less meaningful when you know where every resource and mountain is going to be. I don't see how it could affect gameplay in an unrealistic manner either, since you can define fog of war completely for each civ. Even you've done this to some extent, blocking the West African coast off in the classical era.

Anyway, if we were forced to eke out the map tile by tile, wouldn't you think that was more fun than just taking a unit around to highlight things? More true to the spirit of exploration? Imagine- map trading becomes meaningful! You don't get an instant view of the Americas upon contacting the Aztecs!

A couple more thoughts:

1. There should be less fog on water, because this is historical (so that China can contact the Tamils, or the Arabs Indonesia).

2. Tundra should also be blocked off until a certain tech or unit. Siberia shouldn't be explored so early, and there aren't enough northern civs for this to dramatically affect gameplay.

Yeah, I didn't mean to disagree, it's certainly appealing and I think introducing more restriction could actually improve both realism and immersion in the game experience (we all try to contact Europe as China but we know we probably shouldn't). It's just that such a change could have a huge impact on the game and I want to think it though before actually making it.

 

[Big Heb]

There is a lot of overlap between the 600 AD and 1700 AD scenarios; for the most part, the way that 600 AD plays out tends to replicate 1700 AD's city placement rather well. The same isn't the case for 3000 BC to 600 AD. Most of it surrounds the Alexandrian conquests wiping out much of the old cities, which for a historical simulation I imagine should happen in a majority of cases.

First, I suggest moving Egypt's settler 1S from its current starting position in v1.12. It will still settle modern Luxor, but in a more historical position. Then, they should most often next settle Memphis (otherwise no Cairo later).

If such scripting is possible, I think AI Greek conquest in the window of the Alexandrian conquests (i.e. when they get armies spawned in Egypt and Mesopotamia) should also script some changes to the cities in those areas. If Memphis is conquered by the Greeks in the turns after their armies spawn, Alexandria should be auto-settled. An ancient world game with Alexander conquest but without Alexandria just looks wrong. If Babylon is conquered, it should be auto-destroyed and auto-replaced with Seleucia 1E. When (or if) the Persians, Romans or Byzantines reconquer it, it would rename to Ctesiphon, and rename to Baghdad on Arabian flip. If Tyre is conquered, it should be auto-destroyed and auto-replaced with Antiochea ad Orontes 1N. Beyond the Phoenicians, Antioch played far more historical significance than Tyre, and it's better for gameplay as it doesn't crowd as much with Jerusalem.

Everywhere else should be good, I think, except maybe also spawning indy Merv and Herat later on, and they tend to not be settled by the Persians, since right now only indy Samarkand is spawned on 3000 BC.

Thoughts?

 

[Hojsimpson]

Antiochia was an important city and also is better than Tyre, Egypt is weird because in higher difficulty levels like Monarch is razed by barbarians and after the raze other civs settle there. As Turkey you need to control Al Qahira but due to city placement it was impossible to settle or conquer it

 

[ezzlar]

Sometimes I think too much attention is given to city placements.

 

[Leoreth]

Sometimes I think too much attention is given to city placements.

By min maxers or historical connoisseurs?

 

[ezzlar]

Used to be both but the min max discussion is pretty much settled now. Nowdays it's more a mixture of history buffs and local patriots "living in the city but on the other side of the river".