TETurkhan Test of Time (Map & Mod)
- Thread starter TETurkhan
- Start date
On page 45 or so I mentioned some shortcomings of my game in 1.8x with Romans on Monarch.
Tet asked if I could try 1.92 with Romans on Deity. I did this, and I finally have something to report. What I wil say will make most sense when seen contrasted to my report on the earlier version with Monarch. I will break up my report into two postings, one one with a narration of my game, and another (more important one) with my analysis.
-- Romans, Deity, Tet 1.92 w. cities ---
Recall that I was worried that Roman Legionaries were too cheap and too powerful. The ultimate test of whether that's true is to try the game on Deity.
Game plot - This is optional reading. Feel free to skip to the next post with the analysis. ---
As Rome, I started out in a pretty good position to get a leg up on trade, because I immediately had contact with several neighbors. Putting a warrior in each town made initial contact much faster. In the first round I managed to pick up all the available sciences from my neighbors, plus all of their initial workers. I used some of those to walk around Europe and get everyone on my contacts list. The scout was also very useful.
I rush-built temples as fast as I could. I figured it was better to do it earlier, because I would be forgiven sooner. Anyway, there is nothing really worth building until Iron Working is discovered. That finally happened in 1800BC - I think the Turks found it. I wasn't doing any science except the one "nerd" citizen, working on Mathmatics. I had lots of money to spend. When Iron Working came around, every tile of Italy was mined and every town had a temple and barracks. I had already produced quite a few veteran spearmen waiting for Iron to show up.
Meanwhile, there was a very early and very devastating war: the Songhai destroyed all of the Cartheginian towns in Northern Africa, and took over Carthage itself. When the Spaniards saw this, they destroyed the two Iberian cities that belonged to Carthage. For the rest of the game, Carthage only had Sardinia (Since Corsica fell to me by culture).
My plan of action was simple, and dictated by the new pre-distributed wonders. I was very lucky to be close to the most important wonder of all, Bach's Cathedral. The plan was to walk over the Celts in the Alps and to my best to take the Germans and Berlin. This part was pretty exciting. On Deity the AI produces a flood of units, and if it used them more effectively I probably would not have won those wars.
During this war, something very scary happened. After I attacked Germany, Scandinavia, Turkey and Russia all declared war on me. Since it was the first war for all these countries, I expected a flood of all their excess archers to start invading. Fortunately, I managed to get Hungary on my side, and since they all had to go through Hungary to get to me, I was basically shielded. The Viking provocation also gave me an opportunity to take Copehagen once I got done with Germany.
Maan, Bach's Cathedral made a huge difference. I could afford to build decent-sized cities, and even all the rush-building that I did because of the incredible construction costs was taken in stride. Basically, Bach's Cathedral turned the game from Deity to Regent difficulty, because each city got two free content people.
But I wasn't done. I had to turn on Hungary, my former ally. They occupy the best land in Europe, and I always want either a palace or a Forbidden Palace in Budapest. I did an FP there with a leader. This was the toughest war in the game. My resources were really stretched, and several of my city invasions just barely succeeded.
Once Hungary was mine and the Forbidden Palace was built, I knew I was unstoppable, so I started fooling around a bit. I probably should have wiped Europle clean, but I have a soft spot for Poland and France, so I let them live and concentrated on Greece. Greece is a big deal because Constantinople is the gateway to great riches. Also, the Oracle added yet more contentment to my empire. It became pretty easy to get my cities to make a Legionary in every turn. When I built embassies, I noticed that even with Deity bonuses, my rivals could not even build a swordsman each turn, not even in their capitals.
My initial plan was to push for Persia and rebuild my palace somewhere there, so that I get the benefit of those rich lands as well as Europe's. I abandoned that plan, though. For one thing, I noticed that corruption in 1.92 is worse than before, so I was worried that Budapest could not pull all of Europe on its own. Also, I was producing fast enough.
After Greece, I had an interesting decision to make. The Abyssinians, who are very tough, had sent Impi through Egypt and took Jerusalem. I needed that city as a staging ground for my attack on Egypt. Yeah, how could I resist all those wonders? But there were maybe 40 Impi running around in the Arabian desert. In the end, I went for it, deciding only to defend my towns and one supply road.
On a longshot, I had my nerd citizen investigate construction, and amazingly, he discovered it before anyone else in the world (... on Deity!?).
Because my vast mobs of Legionaries required no mainatence gold, I made lots of workers, and they quickly fortified my important exposed roads. The Abyssinians then turned their attention to Persia. But because I was scared of further mobs of them coming from Africa, I made an alliance with Egypt to fight them. The consequence was that the Abyssinians took Suez, because they happened to have a big mob nearby when war was declared. That was wonderful for me, because I took it from them two rounds later. Now, the Abyssinians in Asia were cut off from their African supply routes, and they gradually killed themselves in suicide runs on Persian cities.
Now I got cold feet about taking Egypt, not because I thought it would be hard, but because it seemed so mean. Cleopatra liked me and stuff. But then she made peace with the evil Abyssinians and became "annoyed" with me for some reason. That was a sign, well that and my suspicion that she was selling some of the sience that her Library gave her for free. She had to die, about as quickly as legionaries can walk across Egypt. I don't think I lost more than 8 units in the whole war, and I made almost twice that many each turn.
The reason why the science trading pissed me off is because I wanted world progress to go as slowly as possible. The longer it takes for Legionaries to go obsolete, the more time I have to kick ass. When I controlled the library, I made sure to not sell anything, except to completely harmless and backwards rivals. In my analysis, you'll see this worked too well.
I was not in Egypt very long when the Songhai declared war on me (c. 250BC), out of the blue. Luckily they did it before their Impi were within striking range. In the few turns that I had, I turned Egypt into a fortress. I a fortified road from Benghazi to Thebes, and from Thebes to the Red Sea. Then I also had a fortifed road east of the Nile from Thebes to Napata. These were the only Egyptian cities that were exposed, and by the time the Songai got to them they had walls and able defenders. Despite the fortifications, the Songhai could have broken through my box and rampaged around in Egypt. They never tried to do that, though. They just threw themselves at the cities like a bunch of suicidal lemmings. At one point, they lined up about 90 veteran Impi to take Benghazi. I thought they would succeed. Fortified legionaries in a walled city are hard to kill, but after about 40 attacks, things were looking grim. Even a great leader that was born in the defense had to go hand-to-hand with an Impi. Then, after about 60 Impi died and I thought Benghazi would fall, the Songhai retreated. That was really fun. Altogether, about 300 threw themselves at my fortified cities. In the whole war I lost about 10 legionaries, but countless many survivors turned elite and there were several great leaders.
But the whole Egyptian defense was a side project. I wasn't sending waves of reinforcements there, and I made no attempt to strike back at Songhai cities. The main project was the gathering of a vast army in Arabia. First I conquered the Arabs, which I did reluctantly, because they never did anything wrong to me and I liked Abu. They were fighting the remaining Abyssinians and not doing very well at it. But then I got impatient with them and I could't resist the wonderful Hanging Gardens of Baghdad.
Another side project to which I commited limited troops was the conquest of Poland and then Russia. The Russians had dozens of toops running aimlessly through the forest. If those troops had been defending their cities, it would have been a real war, but as it was, it was a walkover.
Oh, and the easiest side project of all was the conquest of France. That took exactly two turns. Spain tried sending a huge mass of veteran swordsmen to war with someone. I didn't let them pass, but I got a mean idea: I would trap them south of the Pyrrenese until Toulouse had walls, and then I would declare war and let them attack. Again, this was very entertaining, as archers and swordsmen tried in vain to beat down Toulouse. About 60 Spanish units died this way, and maybe six of mine. At this point it was the first century BC and I was just fooling around.
I finally walked over Persia in AD 50 because I had about 1000 unemployed Legionaries who were tired of sitting in a garrison. Then I thought I'd make things interesting so I contacted every single civilization that I knew and declared war on them. So far, that's going my way, though parts of my empire should have been better reinforced--especially Russia. Some of my outlying cities might fall to the Chinese, but they're ignoring me for now, as they got themselves into a war with India (who earlier took all of Cambodia). Anyway, remember that this is a Deity game in the first century AD, and it wasn't exactly played meticulously or expertly.
Tet asked if I could try 1.92 with Romans on Deity. I did this, and I finally have something to report. What I wil say will make most sense when seen contrasted to my report on the earlier version with Monarch. I will break up my report into two postings, one one with a narration of my game, and another (more important one) with my analysis.
-- Romans, Deity, Tet 1.92 w. cities ---
Recall that I was worried that Roman Legionaries were too cheap and too powerful. The ultimate test of whether that's true is to try the game on Deity.
Game plot - This is optional reading. Feel free to skip to the next post with the analysis. ---
As Rome, I started out in a pretty good position to get a leg up on trade, because I immediately had contact with several neighbors. Putting a warrior in each town made initial contact much faster. In the first round I managed to pick up all the available sciences from my neighbors, plus all of their initial workers. I used some of those to walk around Europe and get everyone on my contacts list. The scout was also very useful.
I rush-built temples as fast as I could. I figured it was better to do it earlier, because I would be forgiven sooner. Anyway, there is nothing really worth building until Iron Working is discovered. That finally happened in 1800BC - I think the Turks found it. I wasn't doing any science except the one "nerd" citizen, working on Mathmatics. I had lots of money to spend. When Iron Working came around, every tile of Italy was mined and every town had a temple and barracks. I had already produced quite a few veteran spearmen waiting for Iron to show up.
Meanwhile, there was a very early and very devastating war: the Songhai destroyed all of the Cartheginian towns in Northern Africa, and took over Carthage itself. When the Spaniards saw this, they destroyed the two Iberian cities that belonged to Carthage. For the rest of the game, Carthage only had Sardinia (Since Corsica fell to me by culture).
My plan of action was simple, and dictated by the new pre-distributed wonders. I was very lucky to be close to the most important wonder of all, Bach's Cathedral. The plan was to walk over the Celts in the Alps and to my best to take the Germans and Berlin. This part was pretty exciting. On Deity the AI produces a flood of units, and if it used them more effectively I probably would not have won those wars.
During this war, something very scary happened. After I attacked Germany, Scandinavia, Turkey and Russia all declared war on me. Since it was the first war for all these countries, I expected a flood of all their excess archers to start invading. Fortunately, I managed to get Hungary on my side, and since they all had to go through Hungary to get to me, I was basically shielded. The Viking provocation also gave me an opportunity to take Copehagen once I got done with Germany.
Maan, Bach's Cathedral made a huge difference. I could afford to build decent-sized cities, and even all the rush-building that I did because of the incredible construction costs was taken in stride. Basically, Bach's Cathedral turned the game from Deity to Regent difficulty, because each city got two free content people.
But I wasn't done. I had to turn on Hungary, my former ally. They occupy the best land in Europe, and I always want either a palace or a Forbidden Palace in Budapest. I did an FP there with a leader. This was the toughest war in the game. My resources were really stretched, and several of my city invasions just barely succeeded.
Once Hungary was mine and the Forbidden Palace was built, I knew I was unstoppable, so I started fooling around a bit. I probably should have wiped Europle clean, but I have a soft spot for Poland and France, so I let them live and concentrated on Greece. Greece is a big deal because Constantinople is the gateway to great riches. Also, the Oracle added yet more contentment to my empire. It became pretty easy to get my cities to make a Legionary in every turn. When I built embassies, I noticed that even with Deity bonuses, my rivals could not even build a swordsman each turn, not even in their capitals.
My initial plan was to push for Persia and rebuild my palace somewhere there, so that I get the benefit of those rich lands as well as Europe's. I abandoned that plan, though. For one thing, I noticed that corruption in 1.92 is worse than before, so I was worried that Budapest could not pull all of Europe on its own. Also, I was producing fast enough.
After Greece, I had an interesting decision to make. The Abyssinians, who are very tough, had sent Impi through Egypt and took Jerusalem. I needed that city as a staging ground for my attack on Egypt. Yeah, how could I resist all those wonders? But there were maybe 40 Impi running around in the Arabian desert. In the end, I went for it, deciding only to defend my towns and one supply road.
On a longshot, I had my nerd citizen investigate construction, and amazingly, he discovered it before anyone else in the world (... on Deity!?).
Because my vast mobs of Legionaries required no mainatence gold, I made lots of workers, and they quickly fortified my important exposed roads. The Abyssinians then turned their attention to Persia. But because I was scared of further mobs of them coming from Africa, I made an alliance with Egypt to fight them. The consequence was that the Abyssinians took Suez, because they happened to have a big mob nearby when war was declared. That was wonderful for me, because I took it from them two rounds later. Now, the Abyssinians in Asia were cut off from their African supply routes, and they gradually killed themselves in suicide runs on Persian cities.
Now I got cold feet about taking Egypt, not because I thought it would be hard, but because it seemed so mean. Cleopatra liked me and stuff. But then she made peace with the evil Abyssinians and became "annoyed" with me for some reason. That was a sign, well that and my suspicion that she was selling some of the sience that her Library gave her for free. She had to die, about as quickly as legionaries can walk across Egypt. I don't think I lost more than 8 units in the whole war, and I made almost twice that many each turn.
The reason why the science trading pissed me off is because I wanted world progress to go as slowly as possible. The longer it takes for Legionaries to go obsolete, the more time I have to kick ass. When I controlled the library, I made sure to not sell anything, except to completely harmless and backwards rivals. In my analysis, you'll see this worked too well.
I was not in Egypt very long when the Songhai declared war on me (c. 250BC), out of the blue. Luckily they did it before their Impi were within striking range. In the few turns that I had, I turned Egypt into a fortress. I a fortified road from Benghazi to Thebes, and from Thebes to the Red Sea. Then I also had a fortifed road east of the Nile from Thebes to Napata. These were the only Egyptian cities that were exposed, and by the time the Songai got to them they had walls and able defenders. Despite the fortifications, the Songhai could have broken through my box and rampaged around in Egypt. They never tried to do that, though. They just threw themselves at the cities like a bunch of suicidal lemmings. At one point, they lined up about 90 veteran Impi to take Benghazi. I thought they would succeed. Fortified legionaries in a walled city are hard to kill, but after about 40 attacks, things were looking grim. Even a great leader that was born in the defense had to go hand-to-hand with an Impi. Then, after about 60 Impi died and I thought Benghazi would fall, the Songhai retreated. That was really fun. Altogether, about 300 threw themselves at my fortified cities. In the whole war I lost about 10 legionaries, but countless many survivors turned elite and there were several great leaders.
But the whole Egyptian defense was a side project. I wasn't sending waves of reinforcements there, and I made no attempt to strike back at Songhai cities. The main project was the gathering of a vast army in Arabia. First I conquered the Arabs, which I did reluctantly, because they never did anything wrong to me and I liked Abu. They were fighting the remaining Abyssinians and not doing very well at it. But then I got impatient with them and I could't resist the wonderful Hanging Gardens of Baghdad.
Another side project to which I commited limited troops was the conquest of Poland and then Russia. The Russians had dozens of toops running aimlessly through the forest. If those troops had been defending their cities, it would have been a real war, but as it was, it was a walkover.
Oh, and the easiest side project of all was the conquest of France. That took exactly two turns. Spain tried sending a huge mass of veteran swordsmen to war with someone. I didn't let them pass, but I got a mean idea: I would trap them south of the Pyrrenese until Toulouse had walls, and then I would declare war and let them attack. Again, this was very entertaining, as archers and swordsmen tried in vain to beat down Toulouse. About 60 Spanish units died this way, and maybe six of mine. At this point it was the first century BC and I was just fooling around.
I finally walked over Persia in AD 50 because I had about 1000 unemployed Legionaries who were tired of sitting in a garrison. Then I thought I'd make things interesting so I contacted every single civilization that I knew and declared war on them. So far, that's going my way, though parts of my empire should have been better reinforced--especially Russia. Some of my outlying cities might fall to the Chinese, but they're ignoring me for now, as they got themselves into a war with India (who earlier took all of Cambodia). Anyway, remember that this is a Deity game in the first century AD, and it wasn't exactly played meticulously or expertly.
Analysis (referring to above game description):
The original question was whether Legionaries are too tough and/or too cheap. I think the answer is a qualified yes. I say qualified because steps could be taken to minimize the power that Legionaries have to dominate.
One obvious fix would be to make research go faster so that they quickly become obsolete. The problem is that even against musketmen they can put up a good fight, and muketmen cost 60 (30 for Deity AI) while Legionaries cost 10. The Legionaries will win that fight. An extreme version of early obsolescense would be that Legionaries become unbuildable at the advent of Monotherism, replaced by a superior, more defensive unit which costs 50 or 60. If Rome discovers Monotheism when they're supposed to according to history (400AD), that would pour some cold water on the Legionary plans. Of course if Rome has the Great Library, they should discover Monotheism when the Israelites and others did, well before 600 BC.
In this case it's a moot point because in the game itself, nobody even had Currency by 150AD. That's amazingly slow science for a Deity game, much slower than Earth history, even. Of course, this is all to the benefit of Legionaries.
A more simple solution would be to make the Legionaries cost more shield, something like 20.
In any case, they should cost gold to maintain. I can't believe I had an army of 1000 units scattered around the world, and I was paying no maintenance costs. In the previous version I played, where Legionaries did cost 1 gold/turn, I tried to kill them as quickly as possible, but because my empire was so vast, literally hundreds of them were en route their battle at any given time, seriously straining my treasury. But I think that's realistic. Far away wars in ancient days should be more expensive than nearby ones.
About the pre-built wonders: I really like the idea, but you should compensate for the fact that inevitably, the wonders will be concentrated in Europe. That gives a huge advantage to any agressive European power. It's just too tempting and too easy to simply sweep through Europe, one small country at a time. One simple way to reduce the temptation is to give all European cities free walls. Actually, that's a great idea. You might want to go further and designate a special European defender, who costs the same as a spearman and defends like a pikeman. Then the pikeman would be 1.4.1 and every other defensive unit would also get a bump of 1.
Alright, that's to adress the ready conquerability of Europe. Now to address intercontinental campaigns: The Greeks are the gateway to/from Asia. They should be harder to cross. I'd say the Hoplites should defend at 4, and at least some of the cities should begin with a Barracks. (Remember Sparta?) In my game, most of the Hoplites I fought were regulars.
Not to say that we want to stop the Legionaries, and none of these countermeasures would. But they would make things more difficult and more interesting.
On a general note:
Because of the slowness of scientific research, special care must be taken that events in the ancient era don't by themselves decide the course of the game. Unlike in the real world, huge ancient empires don't "rot from the inside" in Civ3. Modest gains should be possible for civilizations that traditionally thrived in the ancient era, like the Romans. But steps have to be taken to make sure those gains really are modest and not something like the conquest of India in the BC times (which is very easy on 1.92/Deity).
So though engineering the march of the Legionaries in the game is historically realistic, realism requires us to also engineer the downfall of the Roman era and the flowering of other cultures. Doing the latter is indeed hard. So, for example, what steps can we take to see to it that the Spanish develop the awesome Armada and dominate the seas for centuries? That's just one example... realistically, Spain in the game is one of those "nothing" countries, which seems unjust. They definitely need some special cheap naval units. I only bring this up because one natural reaction to what I'm saying goes like this: "So you're telling me that Legionaries kick ass... fine! They're supposed to!" True, but many other things are also supposed to happen that can't, because the game has no mechanism to dissolve the Roman empire and let others have their turn.
Of course we can't fix that limitation, but we can take steps to minimize it. One of them is to make sure that all or most the European powers hold their territory into the modern era. That requires strong defenses and able defenders. Especially with its wonders, Europe is such a rich continent that the game ends once it falls under a single power. Any steps to prevent that would surely improve the Tet mod.
Here is how I picture the improved version: Europeans should have very good attack units, but truly excellent defeder units, on par with or better than the Tibetan monk. The strong defenders will prevent any single European state from expanding too much, so their attackers do not pose much of a threat to the world, because as long as European states don't grow they will never produce the attackers in huge numbers. This contrasts with vast countries like India and China, which should have tons of crappy units. Europeans may well conquer stuff outside of Europe, but they won't make much there because of corruption. What's important is that the states in Europe keep their integrity as long as possible. For this they all need super defenders. And this I think is the best answer to the Legionaries question. I'd be happy to see them left alone if every other state in Europe had defenders as good as the Tibetan monks, and cities that come with walls. That would force players to do something more creative than the obvious and boring "roll through Europe" plan. (One thing I just thought of: can you create a new city improvement which cannot be built but may come native in the city, which adds a 50% defensive bonus on top of any other defensive bonuses from walls or whatever? If this is possible, I think every European city should have one - in addition to better European defenders. Oh, and like Temples, the defensive bonus thing should disappear if the city ever changes hands.)
OK, enough on the "European Integrity" stuff. On to some more specific observations about gameplay in 1.92/Deity.
1. The AI is certainly not shy about declaring wars, something which rarely happened in 1.8/Monarch. It seems that they have many units which they are eager to burn off. Unfortunately, they use far too few of these units to protect their cities. In my game, the Russians had about 30 spearmen running through the forest when the last Russian city was destroyed... with only 3 spearmen protecting it. And it's not like the 30 in the forest didn't have enough time to get into a city. Well, maybe that's an AI limitation you can't fix. Anyway, because of the way the AI fights wars, they usually emerge in a very weakened state because they send to many units forward, all without concentrating their attacks in a specific place. (There are exceptions to this, like the glorious Songhai suicide run. But that happens too rarely. Typically, they send 8 attackers against a city every turn. If they waited 4 turns and sent 32, may have had a chance to break through.)
I know that this may not be mod-fixable, but it's important for overall gameplay because most of the civilizations you face quickly become mere shells of their former selves because just about all of them have gone through very costly wars. In my game, Tibet basically destroyed Persia and India's military power, to the point where you could almost walk in and take over an Indian city. Yet the Tibetans actually took very few cities because they didn't want to commit enough troops to defeat three spearmen. All that makes it too easy for the human player. I guess that's why we should play Deity.
I think I like the fact that we can't build settlers. That was one of my complaints in 1.8x - that the AI spends too many shields on settlers and not enough on defending itself. That problem has been fixed. However, some of the civilizations, especially in Africa and the Americas have as their greatest strength the capacity to expand. To compensate them, I think there should be lone barbarian settlers scattered in the uncharted lands. And I'm not talking about the way we have it now, with a stack of 5 settlers guarded by forces that can't be defeated before the industrial age. I'm serious. It pissed me off that a maxed-out army of legionaries, the world's strongest attackers, could not defeat the weakest of the barbarians, a 13 hit-point Hun. The army had 90 hit points - many of its members were elites. Now, that's just silly. I'd much prefer smaller prizes, like a single settler, for a fight that a full ancient army could actually win. Of course, the ones with the first shot would be the states who are the closest, which is as it should be. Europeans a navy or powerful expeditionary forces could also get in on it. I think this is a great idea, but the present barbarians are stupidly tough.
Somehow Arabia found a cache of attainable settlers and made a bunch of cities down the east coast of Africa, and the Vikings must have defeated some barbarians and founded Reykjavik and Helsinki. Other than that, by 150AD, no cities were built, and many were destroyed. I do understand the sense behind waiting for Astronomy before allowing colonizers, but that's little consolation if the game is long over by then. It seems to me that Astronomy should just come sooner, but also that armed expeditions into the badlands should leave a decent chance for new settlements long before the age of astronomy.
Another thing that's new in 1.9x is the pre-distribution of wonders in their historical locations. Unfortunately, the great majority of those wonders are in Europe or around the Medeterranean, including all of the crucial "happiness" wonders. That makes it too easy for an ambitious power to settle the game early on, simply by conquering the few pushover states in Europe. I can't emphasize enough why new versions of the mod must make this very hard to do, forcing the player to try something more interesting and creative, possibly involving sciences discovered after the ancient era. Hey, this is a mod after all, and the idea of special rules for Europe should be taken seriously. After all, history goes that way as well.
Because there are no wonders to build, constantly staying on the cutting edge in science becomes less important. Also, great leaders become far less important. I got at least 10 in my BC rampages. Most of them made armies. Unfortunately, the AI didn't know how to handle the new "fightable" leaders at all. In fact, though I saw several great AI leaders, all of them were used for city defense. There was an elite great leader guarding Berlin and Baghdad, for example. Now, given it's the ancient era, these leaders do a decent job as guards - but a simple army can destroy them every time. The AI was not shy about building armies in the 1.5 Tet mod (from the PTW cd), and that added some spice to the game. (I personally destroyed at least 7 full Chinese armies). The biggest problem in not cashing in the great leader for an army is that no other great leaders can be created. That's just poor strategy for the AI. I have a feeling that the problem began when the leaders got hit points. Oh, and I also got the problem of leaders created while a city is conquered, and not having the city turn into my property. This is no big deal, as you can simply select another unit, walk it into the city, and then the changeover happens.
One last thing: It seems that as version numbers of the Tet mod get higher, so does the cost of city improvements. I imagine that the idea behind it was to make the ancient era less eventful, since everyone spent a long time waiting for their temples and barracks to get built. The practical upshot of this is that rush-building becomes an indispensable strategy. That may not be bad, but we know the AI is terrible at rush-building, so in effect it's another unfair advantage to the human. It doesn't help that one citizen seems to be worth 120 shields now. The official game patches are tending in the direction of lowering the rewards for pop rushing. Maybe that's lazy of Firaxis, and the better solution would be an AI that knows how to effectively rush-build. But they didn't give us that, and the Tet mod does too much to highlight this AI weakness. I have to think that the Firaxis decision to reserve the use of rush-building for emergencies might be the wise one. If you had to sit and dilligently wait for a barracks to be built, that really would slow down the military buildup and make the ancient era less eventful (which needs to happen).
In general, this mod plays too much to AI weaknesses and not enough to its strengths. One of its strengths is quick and logical expansion, but that's out when settlers got removed. The new Tet mods basically require rampant militarism and rushing, two things the AI is terribly weak at. As a result, an average player like me can easily beat the world with ancient-era units on the highest difficulty setting. That's a bad sign. Unlike with the Europe thing, I don't have any specific recommendations about how to fix this, but I want to flag it as a worry I have.
Alright, that's enough of me talking about my worries. The reason why I dwell on them so much is because I really love the Tet mod and the inspiration behind it. If it didn't exist, Civ3 would have long been deleted from my computer. Tet's noble goal is to do a good job lining up the game and world history. Much of it works, and I want more of it to work. I can't promise to test future versions because it takes sooo long, but since I invested all this time into "testing", I thought I should write up some observations for the benefit of those who come after.
The original question was whether Legionaries are too tough and/or too cheap. I think the answer is a qualified yes. I say qualified because steps could be taken to minimize the power that Legionaries have to dominate.
One obvious fix would be to make research go faster so that they quickly become obsolete. The problem is that even against musketmen they can put up a good fight, and muketmen cost 60 (30 for Deity AI) while Legionaries cost 10. The Legionaries will win that fight. An extreme version of early obsolescense would be that Legionaries become unbuildable at the advent of Monotherism, replaced by a superior, more defensive unit which costs 50 or 60. If Rome discovers Monotheism when they're supposed to according to history (400AD), that would pour some cold water on the Legionary plans. Of course if Rome has the Great Library, they should discover Monotheism when the Israelites and others did, well before 600 BC.
In this case it's a moot point because in the game itself, nobody even had Currency by 150AD. That's amazingly slow science for a Deity game, much slower than Earth history, even. Of course, this is all to the benefit of Legionaries.
A more simple solution would be to make the Legionaries cost more shield, something like 20.
In any case, they should cost gold to maintain. I can't believe I had an army of 1000 units scattered around the world, and I was paying no maintenance costs. In the previous version I played, where Legionaries did cost 1 gold/turn, I tried to kill them as quickly as possible, but because my empire was so vast, literally hundreds of them were en route their battle at any given time, seriously straining my treasury. But I think that's realistic. Far away wars in ancient days should be more expensive than nearby ones.
About the pre-built wonders: I really like the idea, but you should compensate for the fact that inevitably, the wonders will be concentrated in Europe. That gives a huge advantage to any agressive European power. It's just too tempting and too easy to simply sweep through Europe, one small country at a time. One simple way to reduce the temptation is to give all European cities free walls. Actually, that's a great idea. You might want to go further and designate a special European defender, who costs the same as a spearman and defends like a pikeman. Then the pikeman would be 1.4.1 and every other defensive unit would also get a bump of 1.
Alright, that's to adress the ready conquerability of Europe. Now to address intercontinental campaigns: The Greeks are the gateway to/from Asia. They should be harder to cross. I'd say the Hoplites should defend at 4, and at least some of the cities should begin with a Barracks. (Remember Sparta?) In my game, most of the Hoplites I fought were regulars.
Not to say that we want to stop the Legionaries, and none of these countermeasures would. But they would make things more difficult and more interesting.
On a general note:
Because of the slowness of scientific research, special care must be taken that events in the ancient era don't by themselves decide the course of the game. Unlike in the real world, huge ancient empires don't "rot from the inside" in Civ3. Modest gains should be possible for civilizations that traditionally thrived in the ancient era, like the Romans. But steps have to be taken to make sure those gains really are modest and not something like the conquest of India in the BC times (which is very easy on 1.92/Deity).
So though engineering the march of the Legionaries in the game is historically realistic, realism requires us to also engineer the downfall of the Roman era and the flowering of other cultures. Doing the latter is indeed hard. So, for example, what steps can we take to see to it that the Spanish develop the awesome Armada and dominate the seas for centuries? That's just one example... realistically, Spain in the game is one of those "nothing" countries, which seems unjust. They definitely need some special cheap naval units. I only bring this up because one natural reaction to what I'm saying goes like this: "So you're telling me that Legionaries kick ass... fine! They're supposed to!" True, but many other things are also supposed to happen that can't, because the game has no mechanism to dissolve the Roman empire and let others have their turn.
Of course we can't fix that limitation, but we can take steps to minimize it. One of them is to make sure that all or most the European powers hold their territory into the modern era. That requires strong defenses and able defenders. Especially with its wonders, Europe is such a rich continent that the game ends once it falls under a single power. Any steps to prevent that would surely improve the Tet mod.
Here is how I picture the improved version: Europeans should have very good attack units, but truly excellent defeder units, on par with or better than the Tibetan monk. The strong defenders will prevent any single European state from expanding too much, so their attackers do not pose much of a threat to the world, because as long as European states don't grow they will never produce the attackers in huge numbers. This contrasts with vast countries like India and China, which should have tons of crappy units. Europeans may well conquer stuff outside of Europe, but they won't make much there because of corruption. What's important is that the states in Europe keep their integrity as long as possible. For this they all need super defenders. And this I think is the best answer to the Legionaries question. I'd be happy to see them left alone if every other state in Europe had defenders as good as the Tibetan monks, and cities that come with walls. That would force players to do something more creative than the obvious and boring "roll through Europe" plan. (One thing I just thought of: can you create a new city improvement which cannot be built but may come native in the city, which adds a 50% defensive bonus on top of any other defensive bonuses from walls or whatever? If this is possible, I think every European city should have one - in addition to better European defenders. Oh, and like Temples, the defensive bonus thing should disappear if the city ever changes hands.)
OK, enough on the "European Integrity" stuff. On to some more specific observations about gameplay in 1.92/Deity.
1. The AI is certainly not shy about declaring wars, something which rarely happened in 1.8/Monarch. It seems that they have many units which they are eager to burn off. Unfortunately, they use far too few of these units to protect their cities. In my game, the Russians had about 30 spearmen running through the forest when the last Russian city was destroyed... with only 3 spearmen protecting it. And it's not like the 30 in the forest didn't have enough time to get into a city. Well, maybe that's an AI limitation you can't fix. Anyway, because of the way the AI fights wars, they usually emerge in a very weakened state because they send to many units forward, all without concentrating their attacks in a specific place. (There are exceptions to this, like the glorious Songhai suicide run. But that happens too rarely. Typically, they send 8 attackers against a city every turn. If they waited 4 turns and sent 32, may have had a chance to break through.)
I know that this may not be mod-fixable, but it's important for overall gameplay because most of the civilizations you face quickly become mere shells of their former selves because just about all of them have gone through very costly wars. In my game, Tibet basically destroyed Persia and India's military power, to the point where you could almost walk in and take over an Indian city. Yet the Tibetans actually took very few cities because they didn't want to commit enough troops to defeat three spearmen. All that makes it too easy for the human player. I guess that's why we should play Deity.
I think I like the fact that we can't build settlers. That was one of my complaints in 1.8x - that the AI spends too many shields on settlers and not enough on defending itself. That problem has been fixed. However, some of the civilizations, especially in Africa and the Americas have as their greatest strength the capacity to expand. To compensate them, I think there should be lone barbarian settlers scattered in the uncharted lands. And I'm not talking about the way we have it now, with a stack of 5 settlers guarded by forces that can't be defeated before the industrial age. I'm serious. It pissed me off that a maxed-out army of legionaries, the world's strongest attackers, could not defeat the weakest of the barbarians, a 13 hit-point Hun. The army had 90 hit points - many of its members were elites. Now, that's just silly. I'd much prefer smaller prizes, like a single settler, for a fight that a full ancient army could actually win. Of course, the ones with the first shot would be the states who are the closest, which is as it should be. Europeans a navy or powerful expeditionary forces could also get in on it. I think this is a great idea, but the present barbarians are stupidly tough.
Somehow Arabia found a cache of attainable settlers and made a bunch of cities down the east coast of Africa, and the Vikings must have defeated some barbarians and founded Reykjavik and Helsinki. Other than that, by 150AD, no cities were built, and many were destroyed. I do understand the sense behind waiting for Astronomy before allowing colonizers, but that's little consolation if the game is long over by then. It seems to me that Astronomy should just come sooner, but also that armed expeditions into the badlands should leave a decent chance for new settlements long before the age of astronomy.
Another thing that's new in 1.9x is the pre-distribution of wonders in their historical locations. Unfortunately, the great majority of those wonders are in Europe or around the Medeterranean, including all of the crucial "happiness" wonders. That makes it too easy for an ambitious power to settle the game early on, simply by conquering the few pushover states in Europe. I can't emphasize enough why new versions of the mod must make this very hard to do, forcing the player to try something more interesting and creative, possibly involving sciences discovered after the ancient era. Hey, this is a mod after all, and the idea of special rules for Europe should be taken seriously. After all, history goes that way as well.
Because there are no wonders to build, constantly staying on the cutting edge in science becomes less important. Also, great leaders become far less important. I got at least 10 in my BC rampages. Most of them made armies. Unfortunately, the AI didn't know how to handle the new "fightable" leaders at all. In fact, though I saw several great AI leaders, all of them were used for city defense. There was an elite great leader guarding Berlin and Baghdad, for example. Now, given it's the ancient era, these leaders do a decent job as guards - but a simple army can destroy them every time. The AI was not shy about building armies in the 1.5 Tet mod (from the PTW cd), and that added some spice to the game. (I personally destroyed at least 7 full Chinese armies). The biggest problem in not cashing in the great leader for an army is that no other great leaders can be created. That's just poor strategy for the AI. I have a feeling that the problem began when the leaders got hit points. Oh, and I also got the problem of leaders created while a city is conquered, and not having the city turn into my property. This is no big deal, as you can simply select another unit, walk it into the city, and then the changeover happens.
One last thing: It seems that as version numbers of the Tet mod get higher, so does the cost of city improvements. I imagine that the idea behind it was to make the ancient era less eventful, since everyone spent a long time waiting for their temples and barracks to get built. The practical upshot of this is that rush-building becomes an indispensable strategy. That may not be bad, but we know the AI is terrible at rush-building, so in effect it's another unfair advantage to the human. It doesn't help that one citizen seems to be worth 120 shields now. The official game patches are tending in the direction of lowering the rewards for pop rushing. Maybe that's lazy of Firaxis, and the better solution would be an AI that knows how to effectively rush-build. But they didn't give us that, and the Tet mod does too much to highlight this AI weakness. I have to think that the Firaxis decision to reserve the use of rush-building for emergencies might be the wise one. If you had to sit and dilligently wait for a barracks to be built, that really would slow down the military buildup and make the ancient era less eventful (which needs to happen).
In general, this mod plays too much to AI weaknesses and not enough to its strengths. One of its strengths is quick and logical expansion, but that's out when settlers got removed. The new Tet mods basically require rampant militarism and rushing, two things the AI is terribly weak at. As a result, an average player like me can easily beat the world with ancient-era units on the highest difficulty setting. That's a bad sign. Unlike with the Europe thing, I don't have any specific recommendations about how to fix this, but I want to flag it as a worry I have.
Alright, that's enough of me talking about my worries. The reason why I dwell on them so much is because I really love the Tet mod and the inspiration behind it. If it didn't exist, Civ3 would have long been deleted from my computer. Tet's noble goal is to do a good job lining up the game and world history. Much of it works, and I want more of it to work. I can't promise to test future versions because it takes sooo long, but since I invested all this time into "testing", I thought I should write up some observations for the benefit of those who come after.
I just have to check this beacaue the numbers look strange (?).
Is this the way the time scale in ver 1.93 shall be?
First 5 turns = 100 years each.
Next 50 = 50 years.
Next 105 = 10 years.
Next 64 = 20 years.
Next 116 = 4 years.
Next 48 = 2 years.
Next 462 = 1 year.
Is this the way the time scale in ver 1.93 shall be?
First 5 turns = 100 years each.
Next 50 = 50 years.
Next 105 = 10 years.
Next 64 = 20 years.
Next 116 = 4 years.
Next 48 = 2 years.
Next 462 = 1 year.
anarres
anarchist revolutionary
A question about research: Isn't it true that the AI doesn't do 'token' research, they always put a decent percentage in, even if they are still doing minimum-turn research?
This means the AI will be throwing away huge amounts of money in to research while you coast along at 1 beaker per turn.
I'm not sure how this problem could be tackled, or even if it's true (but I think it is).
This means the AI will be throwing away huge amounts of money in to research while you coast along at 1 beaker per turn.
I'm not sure how this problem could be tackled, or even if it's true (but I think it is).
Sangria - the tech scale you listed is right for the world map and city versions - however the just mod version is somewhat different...
anarres Interesting. Not sure how to find this out - I will look into it though.
Spork Awesome analysis!!!
You just earned yourself a spot in the credits 
anarres Interesting. Not sure how to find this out - I will look into it though.
Spork Awesome analysis!!!
You just earned yourself a spot in the credits I need some help here plain and simple.
In the beginning when the mod was first made I wasnt inclined to ask for outside assistance. But, after reading the posts in this thread, especially since the posting of 1.90 it is very clear that many of you know this mod inside out. Not only are you picking out flaws, but you are also offering solutions that show you have a very deep understanding of the game, the mod and the editor.
Replying to posts, offering technical support along with working on the new version is just too much for me. I would be very appreciative if some of you could come forward and offer some help. Your names would of course be included in the credits and you would be the first to get the latest updates. I am certain with a good team in charge of this mod it probably will become one of the greatest ones ever made for Civ III. If you are interested then please email me at teturkhan@hotmail.com, subject line: TET Team.
As for all you testers, some of you like spork whom I never knew about until now, please please please compile all your points about the mod, and if able investigate solutions to those problems and send them to me via email. You have no idea how valuable this information is. If you like this mod, then know that any and all input you offer is given serious consideration and by doing so you can make a definite difference in the mod's designed.
Thanks and I will be checking my email box!
TETurkhan
In the beginning when the mod was first made I wasnt inclined to ask for outside assistance. But, after reading the posts in this thread, especially since the posting of 1.90 it is very clear that many of you know this mod inside out. Not only are you picking out flaws, but you are also offering solutions that show you have a very deep understanding of the game, the mod and the editor.
Replying to posts, offering technical support along with working on the new version is just too much for me. I would be very appreciative if some of you could come forward and offer some help. Your names would of course be included in the credits and you would be the first to get the latest updates. I am certain with a good team in charge of this mod it probably will become one of the greatest ones ever made for Civ III. If you are interested then please email me at teturkhan@hotmail.com, subject line: TET Team.
As for all you testers, some of you like spork whom I never knew about until now, please please please compile all your points about the mod, and if able investigate solutions to those problems and send them to me via email. You have no idea how valuable this information is. If you like this mod, then know that any and all input you offer is given serious consideration and by doing so you can make a definite difference in the mod's designed.
Thanks and I will be checking my email box!
TETurkhan
Kal-el
Deity
Hey Tet,
A possible solution to some of the Euro Power balance could be to not place the wonders from the start. Not only does it give the Euros a lot of power it isnt historically accurate. And we all know that the goal of this mod is historical accuracy. I know that you want the Wonders to be built in the proper cities and I have a way for that to happen without pre-placing them.
1) Make a new resource for each city that you want a wonder to be built in, e.g. Resource Rome, Resource, Alexandria, Resource Athens, etc.
2) Place these City Resources under each corresponding city
3) Make the appropriate Wonders require said City Resource be within the city radius in order to be built.
4) Now those wonders will only be able to be built in the city of your choosing.
I recommend that you then lower the costs of each wonder so that they can be built rather quickly by even the lowliest city. Otherwise you will see the AI spending inordinate amounts of time building the wonders when they should be building other things.
Hope that helps,
Kal
A possible solution to some of the Euro Power balance could be to not place the wonders from the start. Not only does it give the Euros a lot of power it isnt historically accurate. And we all know that the goal of this mod is historical accuracy. I know that you want the Wonders to be built in the proper cities and I have a way for that to happen without pre-placing them.
1) Make a new resource for each city that you want a wonder to be built in, e.g. Resource Rome, Resource, Alexandria, Resource Athens, etc.
2) Place these City Resources under each corresponding city
3) Make the appropriate Wonders require said City Resource be within the city radius in order to be built.
4) Now those wonders will only be able to be built in the city of your choosing.
I recommend that you then lower the costs of each wonder so that they can be built rather quickly by even the lowliest city. Otherwise you will see the AI spending inordinate amounts of time building the wonders when they should be building other things.
Hope that helps,
Kal
Kalel Great Idea! 
- And the resources could have techs that are pre-req for the resource to ensure they are built around the right time... this combined with the addition of city improvements etc for European Civs from the age of exploration through industrial age would do great! Funny I thought of doing this for city improvements but it didn't dawn on me to apply it to wonders as well - ??? mental block 
thanks Kalel!
- And the resources could have techs that are pre-req for the resource to ensure they are built around the right time... this combined with the addition of city improvements etc for European Civs from the age of exploration through industrial age would do great! Funny I thought of doing this for city improvements but it didn't dawn on me to apply it to wonders as well - ??? mental block thanks Kalel!
anarres
anarchist revolutionary
TETurkhan,
I have done some enquiring and it appears that the AI will always put in a large percentage of commerce to research, even when they cost *lots*.
The only solution I can think to this is to lower the tech cost level, or to change the 'cost' factor for the different difficulty levels. Changing the cost factor will also knock-on to the production costs too, but so what eh? If Deity TET is like a Regent or Emperor vanilla game then I say change cost factor from 6 to 5 for deity, 7 to 6 for emperor, etc.
HTH,
anarres
I have done some enquiring and it appears that the AI will always put in a large percentage of commerce to research, even when they cost *lots*.
The only solution I can think to this is to lower the tech cost level, or to change the 'cost' factor for the different difficulty levels. Changing the cost factor will also knock-on to the production costs too, but so what eh? If Deity TET is like a Regent or Emperor vanilla game then I say change cost factor from 6 to 5 for deity, 7 to 6 for emperor, etc.
HTH,
anarres
Kal-el
Deity
I do what I can.
Could you also make it to where a Palace is required before you could build certain wonders? (I know that not all wonders are located in the capitals but alot of them are) If Kal-El's resource idea was used then the AI might end up building Shakespeare's in Edinburg or Magellen's in Madrid where they are not historically suppossed to be. However, even if this wasn't possible the trade-off of having the wonders built at around their correct historical times would outweigh any consequences.
By the way, excellent idea Kal-el
By the way, excellent idea Kal-el
Kal-el
Deity
Originally posted by Zabba149
Could you also make it to where a Palace is required before you could build certain wonders? (I know that not all wonders are located in the capitals but alot of them are) If Kal-El's resource idea was used then the AI might end up building Shakespeare's in Edinburg or Magellen's in Madrid where they are not historically suppossed to be. However, even if this wasn't possible the trade-off of having the wonders built at around their correct historical times would outweigh any consequences.
By the way, excellent idea Kal-el
The Wonder will only be able to be built in the desired city. The City will rest on top of the City Resource. Therefore it would be the only city that has the resource within its borders.
D. Minky
Warlord
Kal-el, that's a great idea! And what's even better is that it easily opens the doors for more wonders to be built by certain races without worrying that China and India will build them all! You could add stonehenge, and if someone conquers the Celt's lands early on, they could still build Stonehenge and get the culture for it (although I know there are no Celts in Britain in this version). But the same concept works for any Civ... if Greece conquers Egypt (like they did in actual history), the Great Lighthouse and Great Library could still be built. You could even find a new graphic for small wonders like the Forbidden Palace so that only Asian countries can build an asian looking palace, and European countries get a castle-type of Forbidden Palace.
Melifluous
King
Sorry D.Minky and TET for posting here but...
WTH does YCHJCYADFMRF mean?
Sorry again for posting here, but I knew D.Minky would read this here
Melifluous
EDIT: edited for spelling, I cant spell whilst drinked, a common problem I'm sure
WTH does YCHJCYADFMRF mean?
Sorry again for posting here, but I knew D.Minky would read this here
Melifluous
EDIT: edited for spelling, I cant spell whilst drinked, a common problem I'm sure
D. Minky
Warlord
Your Curiosity Has Just Cost You A Dollar For Matt's Retirement Fund.
Now Pay up! ;-)
Now Pay up! ;-)
reedtwostep
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2002
- Messages
- 20
what about using governement types? they could be the key to avoiding situations like sporks. i know they cant be civ specific (at least not obviously in the editor) but there must be some way to use them to help in the fall of empires. its pretty well established that tet's mod will fairly accurately predict the rise of certain civs to power, the problem lies in making sure that they dont get too strong (especially when they are the human civ) and that history's course stays well on track.
so i bring up governments because it strikes me as a possible way to help the fall of certain civs at the right time. if it were possible to tease a civ into a certain gov type at its peak and then have that type allow for more culture flipping or kill city production via corruption, then situations like in spork's (awesome) game analysis will be less likely to come about.
what would be cooler is if we could specify civ specific gov types... for instance, "weimar republic" for the fall of germany, or a better example in a special "roman republic" or "french monarchy" or "arabic oligarchy" .. whatever, you could have some real fun with it.
either way, i just wanted to say my piece and see if anyone (who undoublably knows the editor and mod making better than me) could try out some experiements with gov types. i mean, if this mod is about reality, then im sure adding more gov types would make it more realistic
thanks for reading and keep up the good work
-reedtwostep
so i bring up governments because it strikes me as a possible way to help the fall of certain civs at the right time. if it were possible to tease a civ into a certain gov type at its peak and then have that type allow for more culture flipping or kill city production via corruption, then situations like in spork's (awesome) game analysis will be less likely to come about.
what would be cooler is if we could specify civ specific gov types... for instance, "weimar republic" for the fall of germany, or a better example in a special "roman republic" or "french monarchy" or "arabic oligarchy" .. whatever, you could have some real fun with it.
either way, i just wanted to say my piece and see if anyone (who undoublably knows the editor and mod making better than me) could try out some experiements with gov types. i mean, if this mod is about reality, then im sure adding more gov types would make it more realistic
thanks for reading and keep up the good work
-reedtwostep
I ran Greek in 1.7, and found it easy for Greece. I deliberately did not conquer when I could, trying to get into modern times.
Two things set me up. One, with initial MapMaking I found I could sell my map every few turns to all civs, pretty much for all their available cash. (I will try again in 1.93, and see how it flies.) As a resuilt, by the time I got to the industrial age I had 40,000 gold in my treasury. Enough to buy a battle ship on turn 2 of the build.
The other thing was the Templar KNights. In their time, they were unstoppable -- provided one had enough money to build fast, and a large enough power base to build many of them. In history, had the Templars had consistent good leadership, and had they not made the Powers That Be suspicious and jealous of them, they would also have been unstoppable.
I have a different issue now running Rome on 1.93. I had contacts with 27 civs by turn 15 or so, and generally swapped techs all around. I was unable to get three of the starting techs until I had enough to pay for them... about 400 gold, either direct pay or direct + GPT. Since it took 50 turns to research the first tech, nothing else was available until then. Yet over the years every other civ got all techs, although their cash stayed generally under 100G, often 0. Spain and Persia got Writing and Iron Working also on turn 50 (one each, and they swapped out) Other civs came in a turn or two later, and a new round of swapping happened. Since I did not have mapmamking, and could only swap maps with those that did, I did not have the tremendous cash inflow, and did not impoverish the others.
Maybe the communication swapping is not keyed to anything, but is just built in. ? I could not swap, but they all got my ID from someone long before I found more than a handful.
Two things set me up. One, with initial MapMaking I found I could sell my map every few turns to all civs, pretty much for all their available cash. (I will try again in 1.93, and see how it flies.) As a resuilt, by the time I got to the industrial age I had 40,000 gold in my treasury. Enough to buy a battle ship on turn 2 of the build.
The other thing was the Templar KNights. In their time, they were unstoppable -- provided one had enough money to build fast, and a large enough power base to build many of them. In history, had the Templars had consistent good leadership, and had they not made the Powers That Be suspicious and jealous of them, they would also have been unstoppable.
I have a different issue now running Rome on 1.93. I had contacts with 27 civs by turn 15 or so, and generally swapped techs all around. I was unable to get three of the starting techs until I had enough to pay for them... about 400 gold, either direct pay or direct + GPT. Since it took 50 turns to research the first tech, nothing else was available until then. Yet over the years every other civ got all techs, although their cash stayed generally under 100G, often 0. Spain and Persia got Writing and Iron Working also on turn 50 (one each, and they swapped out) Other civs came in a turn or two later, and a new round of swapping happened. Since I did not have mapmamking, and could only swap maps with those that did, I did not have the tremendous cash inflow, and did not impoverish the others.
Maybe the communication swapping is not keyed to anything, but is just built in. ? I could not swap, but they all got my ID from someone long before I found more than a handful.
Similar threads
