The Ancient Mediterranean MOD

[Gladi]

I don't see archers as pure city defenders, like civ4, until fortifications, that's why they don't have native + city defense. Javelineers are low cost units, especially good against archers, so it's a good idea to have some around to protect your troops. Obviously, they aren't going to be your main troops, just support as it's supposed to be. With promotions, they have a broad range of usefulness.

However, the diff between Archers and Skirmishers are the promotions. Archers are more about support and defense, and skirmishers are more about support, mobility and some offensive capablities.

So what is the role of SKI? Cannon fodder?

 

[thamis]

Holy guacamole! Loads of replies.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Ok...

Skirmishers: I think they should rather get a bonus against heavy infantry. Weak unit, high withdrawal change, and good against heavy infantry (cuz heavy inf is too slow).

Archers: Should get more first strikes than Skirmishers. Skirmishers should get only 1 first strike.

Remember, first strike is a VERY POWERFUL tool.

Siege Tower: I suggest that this should be the 3rd promotion, only available to late-game units (i.e. those that come in the Imperial Age).

Elephants: We could give them trample bonus, which comes after the 1st +10% pomotion and which gives slight collateral damage. I don't want them to be too strong. The thing with collteral damage is that any unit that does collateral can win in any situation as long as you bring enough of them along.

General balance: Up to the Imperial Age, spear-units should be the leading units, power wise. Then, heavy swords and heavy cavalry should take over. I think you've already done that nicely in your chart, Karhgath.

Now here comes another idea...

As different units have different qualities when fighting, how about we give them different defense boni?

Spears: +20% in flatlands, +10% in hills
Swords, Axes: +15% in forests, jungles
Archers: +25% on hills, (not sure if this is possible: +100% across river)

And, also not sure if this is possible, Light Cavalry should generally get +1 sight radius, how about that? Light Cavalry gotta be weak, high withdrawal chance (it shouldn't be over 75% including all promotions though), and more of a scouting-harrassing unit.

 

[thamis]

HEY THAMIS thx soo much I registered just to thank you for creating the ALPHA and OMEGA mod For any civ game. this mod got me playing ((after countless uninstallation and reinstallation's due to the fact that TAM was not in my life!))civ III for about a year till Civ IV came out. I wish i can help you in any way but i have no skill but i will be learning programming this christmas vacation. soo i might as well learn XML and Visual Basic. i will learn them and from that day i will help wou with XML.

By the way i was thinking (for gameplay purposes) the siege towers, im my opinion, were an important asset and helped to produce victory for the besieger. soo why dont you make the Siege tower in the game have the ability to carry units and like a transport have the unit attack from the siege tower giving the unit a bonus attack on cities or forts. its a stupid idea but you will make good out of it guys.

Thanks again thamis and his helpers you guys did a great job in civ III TAM v. 2.5 and it is inevitabe you will do better this time around with Civ IV

Thanks, we're doing our best.

 

[alinurdengizich]

thamis,
thank you for your great work it's very funny to play with different countries but i have a complain... i think sid's leaderheads are ridiculous will you add new ones?? Merry christmas !!

 

[Karhgath]

@Thamis
I don't think we can give + defense bonus on flatlands... since terrain now works differently, grass/plain is now a base terrain, so a hills or forest is usually on a plain or grass... this would give them + defense on all terrain.

 

[MilkmanDan]

Units can have different/bonus sighting ranges IIRC, so bonus for light cav should be doable.

A way to balance the elephant 'trample' bonus would be doable with a small python tweak (I haven't looked real in depth and I don't specifically know python but I have looked at the event API) for on unit death... have it cause damage to units in the stack from elephants panicking and trampling friendlies. That might be a bit unfair for attack failures and I can't recall offhand if there's a separate event for dying while defending. Doesn't seem to be, just onUnitKilled. Still doable I think. (Python is on my list of languages to learn, mostly because of CIV.)

Spear bonus on open ground is good but hills probably not. It already has a bonus and the unwieldy formations typical where not very good in broken terrain. That's why the roman's dropped the phalanx in favor of a more flexible formation.

Is it possible to give cavalry bonus attacking on open ground?

Also, is it possible to give a defender a 'lessen attacker withdrawal chance'? Thus faster units could reduce withdrawal chance while still allowing good withdrawal chances against slow formations. i.e. a phalanx is going to find it very hard to engage an attacking horse archer (95%+ withdraw chance with all promotions maybe?) while a javelineer under ideal circumstances (all promotions) might only have a 60% withdraw chance attacking a swordsman.

 

[MilkmanDan]

@Thamis
I don't think we can give + defense bonus on flatlands... since terrain now works differently, grass/plain is now a base terrain, so a hills or forest is usually on a plain or grass... this would give them + defense on all terrain.

Can you give a penalty on hill/forest? If so, give bonus on plain/grassland/tundra? and a penalty on hill/forest to remove that bonus.

 

[Karhgath]

Is the composite archer too powerful? it's as powerful as a spearmen... they probably can't fortify tho, so the spearman is better at defense... until city defense promotions kicks in for the archers.

Maybe reducing composite archer to power 4 and adding a new archer with Mil. Training? I think I'll do that.

 

[Karhgath]

Modding will probably be required to give attacking bonus on terrain, since only defensive bonus on terrain is implemented right now.

As for lessen withdraw chance, it will require moding but is something I want to do.

Oh, yeah, thanks for the tip on giving + on grass/plains/tundra and - on hills/forests.

** Unit Chart is updated

 

[thamis]

thamis,
thank you for your great work it's very funny to play with different countries but i have a complain... i think sid's leaderheads are ridiculous will you add new ones?? Merry christmas !!

Of course, we'll eventually have completely ancient leaderheads. The Sid ones are only placeholders. OF COURSE!

 

[thamis]

A way to balance the elephant 'trample' bonus would be doable with a small python tweak (I haven't looked real in depth and I don't specifically know python but I have looked at the event API) for on unit death... have it cause damage to units in the stack from elephants panicking and trampling friendlies. That might be a bit unfair for attack failures and I can't recall offhand if there's a separate event for dying while defending. Doesn't seem to be, just onUnitKilled. Still doable I think. (Python is on my list of languages to learn, mostly because of CIV.)

This is a good one, I like that. We should keep that very low, though.

Is it possible to give cavalry bonus attacking on open ground?

Would be good... we gotta look into that. But I think we should keep the heavy modding stuff for later, let's first get the mod rolling. But let's all keep that in our minds, and see if we come across anything that would permit it.

Also, is it possible to give a defender a 'lessen attacker withdrawal chance'? Thus faster units could reduce withdrawal chance while still allowing good withdrawal chances against slow formations. i.e. a phalanx is going to find it very hard to engage an attacking horse archer (95%+ withdraw chance with all promotions maybe?) while a javelineer under ideal circumstances (all promotions) might only have a 60% withdraw chance attacking a swordsman.

Excellent idea. I'd like that, but again, I think that would require some serious modding including python.

 

[thamis]

Is the composite archer too powerful? it's as powerful as a spearmen... they probably can't fortify tho, so the spearman is better at defense... until city defense promotions kicks in for the archers.

Maybe reducing composite archer to power 4 and adding a new archer with Mil. Training? I think I'll do that.

I think we should reduce the powers of archers and give them back their city and hill defend role.

I know Dale is working on a true stack attack mod (I've seen a beta version on Firaxis test site). Once that is implemented, it would be cool. Archers would be in the back, and shoot over the front-line units at the enemy's front line units. Cavalry would flank in if the others don't have cavalry and attack the archers fro behind. Good stuff here.

 

[thamis]

On the updated unit chart:

Armored Infantry, shouldn't that be in the Heavy class?

Why would Javelineer get a bonus vs SKI? Archers should have no problems to kill javelineers, because they don't have shields. Spearmen and heavy infantry should get some kind of bonus against archers, rather than SKI. I think the withdrawal chance would be good enough for the javelineers.

Withdrawal: I don't think we should ever give more than 40% withdrawal chance. These units also get the potential promotions!

Thus...

- Horse Archer & Mounted Jav: 40% withdrawal
- Heavy Horse Arch: 35%
- Light Cav: 30%
- Chariot: 15%

And...
- Elephant: WHY 50%? Because they don't die so easily?

About the flatland defense: Is anyone positive that this would be possible?

 

[onedreamer]

A way to balance the elephant 'trample' bonus would be doable with a small python tweak (I haven't looked real in depth and I don't specifically know python but I have looked at the event API) for on unit death... have it cause damage to units in the stack from elephants panicking and trampling friendlies. That might be a bit unfair for attack failures and I can't recall offhand if there's a separate event for dying while defending. Doesn't seem to be, just onUnitKilled. Still doable I think. (Python is on my list of languages to learn, mostly because of CIV.)

I don't really think it would be unfair on attack failures. Whether it is a footman that attacks an elephant and gets thrown 50 meters away, or the elephant to have the initiative, the effect on the moral of the other men would most probably be the same
Anyways, are you sure that it would actually apply on attack ? Since I believe the fight takes place on the defender's square, there wouldn't be the stack of the attacker there.

@Karghath
Javelineers are not archers killer but rather the other way around. They were used in the front lines to weaken defensive lines, after shooting their javelins they would withdraw. I also don't think they should get a bonus vs heavy just because they're slow... I think they should just have 1st strike and withdraw, that's enough to represent them correctly, it will be a unit meant to weaken the enemy lines with a high % of survival. But if you really want to give them bonuses, I think vs MED is the best.

 

[onedreamer]

About the flatland defense: Is anyone positive that this would be possible?

I don't know Python, but can't you give a defense bonus in general EXCEPT hills/forests ?

 

[thamis]

I just checked the XML. It seems to be possible to give modifiers for certain terrains. What I don't know is whether that modifier also applies when that terrain has a feature on top of it.

Thus: Does Spearman on Forest with fighting bonus on flatlands mean:
Grassland +0%
Spearman Bonus on Grassland +25%
Forest Bonus +25%

Or does the grassland bonus go away when it has a feature? Gotta check that out.

Also, it seems to be possible to make units be built more quickly with a certain resource. Thus the idea of making all units available but giving those with the right resources a distinct advantage would work out.

 

[Gladi]

IJavelineers are not archers killer but rather the other way around. They were used in the front lines to weaken defensive lines, after shooting their javelins they would withdraw. I also don't think they should get a bonus vs heavy just because they're slow... I think they should just have 1st strike and withdraw, that's enough to represent them correctly, it will be a unit meant to weaken the enemy lines with a high % of survival. But if you really want to give them bonuses, I think vs MED is the best.

Bright day
Yes it should be enough to represent them in realistic terms, but we need to find way to represent them in CIV terms.

Thamis- interesting to hear about (resources)

Q: What will armies primarily consist of? MED or HEA?

 

[MilkmanDan]

I just checked the XML. It seems to be possible to give modifiers for certain terrains. What I don't know is whether that modifier also applies when that terrain has a feature on top of it.

Kargath seemed to think it possible with bonus for grassland/plains/tundra and corresponding penalty for hills (to make the bonus go away)

Also, it seems to be possible to make units be built more quickly with a certain resource. Thus the idea of making all units available but giving those with the right resources a distinct advantage would work out.

I was going to make a suggestion of a combat bonus for appropriate special resources. You can have a stone (or copper) axeman but with iron it's more effective. Some units wouldn't have stone or bronze equivalents. One way to implement would be multiple units with the bronze/copper obsoleting the stone, which is obsoleted by the iron. Could even go to having different costs between them.

 

[Spirit_Viriato]

I have a very good pc, and in the last times of the mod, the ralentization is very big. Maybe the mod must to have less civs.

 

[Ergobyt]

How i can play this mod?

I copy the files into civ iv dir and load the mod but in single player mode i just can select load savegame, the rest of the options arent enabled.

My civ is 1.52

Thanks