Thanks for feedback! Before I answer them, let me just ask, did you guys encounter any crashes when using the mod? I've been getting a few crash reports on Steam (with commenters, of course, providing no additional information, so I have no real way to track the crashes down).
@Stef09
- Okay, the jail intelligence is because I accidentally had the lua check for BUILDINGCLASS_JFD_PRISON instead of BUILDINGCLASS_JFD_JAIL (so currently the prison will actually give +1 despite the description). I actually meant to have both provide +1 but then at some point during coding conflated the two buildings in my head and thought there was only one "jail" building
- The costs are actually a percentage of your current great spy generation threshold. I wasn't sure what to set them at, so they likely need to be re-balanced (though the kidnap GP mission is supposed to be prohibitively expensive). Kidnap GP is 50% of your threshold, steal GW & partisans are 25%, and destroy resource is 12.5%. However, each espionage building (constabulary, police station, intelligence agency, firewall) in the nearest city increases the cost by 2.5% each. Because it varies slightly based on the espionage buildings in each city, it makes it difficult to show ahead of time (though the espionage building thing was sort of just a throw away effect added for flavor, so I was thinking about removing it anyway).
- I like the idea of destroying buildings, but I'd have to think of how to do it interface wise. Unless, I just go with a random building. I also thought about a map mission, and I was sort of hinting at it by giving the unit extra movement/sight and the ability to enter rival territory. My concern with it as a mission was that it's something you would do early game but not at all late game after you already had the map. So, it required generating enough great spies early enough for it to be useful, and I wasn't sure of the balance in terms of how quickly spies would be generated / you acquired intelligence. But, early game focused missions are something I might revisit once I'm more settled on the overall balance of the mod / yields.
- To be honest, I would never use the sell secrets mission either. I've never really cared about score victory and any mod that gives the player a free dummy policy already inflates your score by 4 for each dummy policy, making it unreliable. I don't know. Originally, the mod didn't have intelligence. Great spies were generated by great spy points and the more powerful missions actually cost research. When I decided to add the intelligence system, I felt the only way to justify adding a yield was if it actually did something outside of the great spy system. So, I added the ability to reveal resource plots, and then I needed something to spend it on end-game (so it wouldn't be a complete dead-end investment). Looking at what already existed in the game, player score seemed like the main victory type that the other great people didn't already directly benefit (scientists can indirectly through future tech, but, whatever), so I added it as the spy's niche. I'm very hesitant about giving the great spy a direct bonus to science or techs. As stealing techs is the main ability of the standard spy, I didn't want the great spy's abilities to overlap the standard spy's usefulness too much.
- The great spy actually does already level up if it returns. The mod keeps track of it up to 4 times but doesn't do anything with it (because I was too lazy to code it and was going to add it to an update
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@Watchington
I actually agree that the wonder is very poorly named considering the art used. It never really made sense to me that the CBP went straight to St. Basils based on the icon, despite the wonder-splash, quote, and pedia stuff being focused on the Kremlin (i.e. either way, some of the assets would be wrong). The main reason why I kept it as Kremlin is that in past civ games the wonder has always been named the Kremlin and was often used for espionage bonuses. So, I was purposefully keeping with civ tradition
I'm not against renaming it, but icon art is hard to come by these days. All the best icon artists - Janboruta, Leugi, Sukritact - have largely moved on to Civ VI modding. In terms of The Motherland Calls, the main issue is that, in my opinions, the CBP went about adding it wrong. If you're adding two wonders, with one of them identical to an existing wonder, it makes more sense to me to simply update the text/art of the existing wonder instead of deleting it and adding two entirely new wonders. This is what I did and ensures a consistent baseline related to the game files and more compatibility with other mods that might also edit that wonder.
