in other Civ 4 mods and the vanilla version you scramble to find the best new city spots based upon nearby resources, preferable at least three in the 21 tile grid of workable squares
the key to city improvement in this mod is getting the correct technologies in order to literally create food out of thin air.
once all the food techs have been discovered and you are fortunate enough to also get the "Fungus Amongus" Wonder giving you another two free food, you can start a new city on 21 grid of BARE ROCK (absolutely zero resources in any of the grids) and still get the total food up to 20 - meaning a city of size ten.
the Genetic Screening civic is available from the start and gives an unlimited engineer specialists, each of which contribute two hammers to the cause.
the net result of the above analysis is that the ONLY non-food tiles worth improving are hills since this gives two possibilities, either at least three hammers (one more than the eng specialist) from a mine or at least three coins from a customs outpost (in addition to the base number of hammers).
early on I built mines on the hill tiles but eventually realized customs outposts (more coins instead of hammers) are the way to go providing you have access to all the food techs to rapidly get your city up to size 9 (or 10 with the "Fungus Amongus" Wonder).
the only other tiles better than using the eng specialist for every single one of your workers is of course a tile which already produces some food.
1) a flood plain which provides three food
2) a water tile which provides one food
(after the "E-M shielding" tech and making an Ion Shield improvement)
NOTE:
the Civilopedia says the "Simple Electrolysis" tech enables water tiles to be worked. it turns outs that this tech reveals the hammer in the water tile but NOT the food. (and working the water for only one hammer does not make game sense with an eng spec who works two hammers is available instead if the Genetic Screening special option civic is selected.)
the much later "E-M shielding" tech and its Ion Shield improvement are necessary to reveal the one food that can be worked in a water tile. I found the island cities to max out at a staggering 17 to 19 pop even on a bare rock island with no resources.
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at the noble level the AI is clueless how to exploit the above analysis and always get its food production up to at least 18 to populate a city with at least a size of nine. not all the AI civs bothered to create ports, and of those that did, not one never moved colonists into the ocean to start cities on islands.
one particularly clueless AI civ after year 300 of a quick game still had only one size 2 or 3 city and was only then building mines!!! (others on this board have posted about the "frozen AI engineers" that create this problem and the problems with using an automated engineer in general.)
the only "problem" I had with my AI opponents was that the number 2 and 3 powers (after myself) attacked me simultaneously and unprovoked (except for the fact I was building near their territority).
I ended up having to give up some territory to buy time to get a strong enough army to beat them back. by year 446 of a quick game (17 years after the official end of the game due to a Spaceship victory on my part) I had wiped out one of these two civ's and had forced the other to offer one of its last three cities plus gold not to finish it off as well.
the civ I wiped out at the end was particularly inept in its military deployment. it sent a stack of almost all its units to a tile without a defense bonus. apparently it was heading off to attack my nearest city.
since this AI civ only had prism warriors and UAV platoons to my stealth warriors (at this late stage in the game!), this whole stack disappeared in only two turns. the whole conquest of the civ only took eight turns.
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in retrospect I should have gone out to sea and built island cities earlier rather than wasting time fighting meaningless land wars. the only land wars worth fighting are to maintain cities with resources on their tiles or with hill or flood plains tiles.
after the wars stopped and I was able to build new cities elsewhere undisturbed the AI fell further and further behind since its population maxed out and it was slow to build new techs.
I ended up with over 75% of the moon's population, and easily as much as that of the area in the two large land masses. however the game must count every single one of the islands since the victory screen on F8 does not reflect this actual huge lead in land
this is the only game of this mod I have played, but I found it quite strange the entire moon did not contain either titanium or plutonium resources. hence all the advanced units requiring these resources are never built by any civilization. (I later found out that these resources and some tile improvements such as Glasshouses only occur on Moon-map versions of the game.)
in the absence of strategic resources in a non Moon-map version play of SotM, the powerful units turn out to be successively the UAV platoon, the prism infantry, and the stealth warriors.
the most powerful mobile unit available without strategic resources (a non Moon-map version play of SotM) is the lowly lunar rover at a strength level of two.
is it a design flaw that these two strategic resources never appeared on a non Moon-map based version of SotM? or just luck?
(BTW it would nice if the lunar rover unit was visually a tracked vehicle [already done for the radio cars and UAV platoons] instead being the nonsensical Spanish conquistador of the vanilla Civ 4 game.)
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another "feature" of a non Moon-map version of SotM is that for a Terra map the moon is in effect a giant size golf ball with island dimples. this means the lowly non-oceaning going skiffs can traverse the entire moon. this raises balance issues since a string of nearby island cities can thus be started fairly early in the game.
some of the tech improvements playing a non Moon-map version of SotMare are currently vaporware such as glass houses, algae farms, and boreholes. (the first two however ARE implemented with a Moon-map based version of SotM.)
the first page of the SotM mod should list all the improvements and buildings that are not implemented yet itemized by lack of occurence for both Moon-map and non Moon-map play.
having played both versions, I know the list is different for both versions.
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I found it confusing at the start of the game that the bunker and biodome improvements are mutally exclusive. I spent several iterations of building one on top of the other before realizing this.
the civilopedia entries for these two techs need to highly emphasize that the two are mutually exclusive. other commentators on this board have also noted this.
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regarding terrain features, the crater rims are such a dark black that roads through them are entirely indistinct with a non Moon-based map.
please make crater rims tiles lighter in color. it was due to the dark black crater rim tiles I initially did not try this mod when I first downloaded it.
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the lunar dust seas (dust oceans) are navigatable by naval units (listed as skimmers in the Civilopedia) for non Moon-map versions of SotM.
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one terrain feature that would be nice to implement is gorges. they could be as impassable as mountains or (preferably) require a movement cost of three (like a vanilla Civ 4 jungle). in the latter case there should be no equivalent defense bonus for being in a gorge. in fact it would be a bad idea to build a city in a gorge, so there should be a negative defense factor.
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a humorous additional improvement would be lunar golf course (to complement the already implemented jet park). the golf course should get a bonus of happiness based upon the number of units nearby the city it is in.
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one missing improvement from vanilla Civ 4 is the fortress tile improvement. (this improvement can be made by a military engineer in a Moon-Map based game of SotM.)
I found myself wanting to build a fort occasionally to defend my borders and was frustrated there is currently no way to make a defensive improvement in open (non-city) terrain.
see my post later day on suggested improvements of terrain tiles so that 90% are no longer have building a road as their only possible improvement. (tiles are much more improvable in a Moon-map version of SotM.)