I wanted to give my personal opinion about the new version and a bit of a critic about some things . I suppose this is the right thread to post it. Also in some parts I may seem to negative, but overall I'm enjoying the new version and I'm liking how the mod is shaping
So after playing my last game on V28, I came back with V37 and ,oh boy, it has improved a lot. The first thing to comment is that the increased difficulty compare to other versions, while not making the game as challenging as vanilla or other mods, it is much less of a park walk as it used to be and it makes the game more interesting. Also it was the first game in which I reached SL at a logical date (around 5000 BC) and I wasn't leading. I had read that it goes off after he further the tech tree you go (tech turn times have significantly been shortened compare to prehistoric) but overall it is a huge progress compare to previous versionsAlso I wanted to comment on the expanded combat mechanics introduce. Although I personally dislike SM, I really like the expanded invisibility levels and stealth combat is also an interesting concept although I see one major flaw as being unable to see units that had just moved to a jungle or a forest and you know they are there. I also find the expanded withdrawal options interesting , although I never liked defense withdrawal on cities.
Moving on there are a lot of things that are good changes but for the sake of keeping it concise I would just mention then such as different NPC teams, hunting has been improved (although I think it should be harder and provide less exp, but be more rewarding in yields. Also why butcher animal was removed?), worldviews or the different upgrade paths for improvements, to mention a few
As for other mechanics , I felt there are some of them that are under used and could be reworked. Specifically education and disease.Both are very bland mechanics: you build buildings and they increase or decrease the level, giving autobuildings that give some different modifiers. Education should be reworked to be a modifier to global tech cost depending on the time and one way to keep wide vs small balanced tech wise. Disease risk meanwhile should be used like in RI plagues: the bigger the score, the bigger the chance for an outbreak of a disease. The current autobuilds done with disease should be moved to meet other criteria. Anyway both are vague because I intend to suggest about then deeper in the future
The other mechanic with autobuilds is crime, and it is broken and uninteresting. Broken because not only it goes up without alerting the player (the lack of notifications makes checking each city a very tedious task), but due to the nature of the autobuilds you get it can easily led to a death spiral. Seriously mugging giving -14 Gold is ridiculous, that without counting the extra rev modifiers that should be taken out (also on buildings, revolutions whould be more interesting if only civics and circumstances affect them, not buildings).All of this are problems of balance, but the real problem is that crime mechanic is a very uninteresting mechanic. As a player, you need to crush crime in all your cities swiftly and without mercy, because the moment it starts growing it will get out of control and destroy your cities. Crime is inherently bad , but it shouldn't be. Crime should rather be a threat that auto regulates , that the only interaction need by the player is to make sure it doesn't get out of control. What I mean by auto regulates is that the lower it is the harder it is to reduced it and the higher it is the harder it is to increase it. Crime level would have different equilibrium points in which crime would be at a stable level. What I mean by equilibrium is that while small shocks would not move them (ex: a thief entering the city), bigger changes would move the level to a new equilibrium ( ex: another thief enter the city, and now crime level moves to a new equilibrium) Thus some crime will be the optimal strategy, as players wouldn't be losing too much money on either law enforcement nor by crime itself. However if you spent to little you will reach a level in which your empire would have real problems. The system himself would even be better if cities would have moments in which crime spikes(due to an epidemic, sacking) and in which citizens react against crime and reduce it to lower levels, similar to a chaotic system . Finally I don't think the AI know how to use the current system, so a crime mechanic that semi-autoregulate will probably improve the AI. Off the player will still had an advantage, specifically when it comes to using cops and criminal units, but overall I think it will improve the overall experience.
Finally the big problem the mod faces is the lack of meaningful choices compare to vanilla and I suspect the main reason are the huge amount of unnecessary buildings. Civics also suffer somewhat from this in some sections (Ex: language section for example is all of no-brainers choices, and should probably be axed) , but when I need to build a bark gatherer, and I'm going to build it in all my cities, then it isn't a choice. Think of vanilla for a second: as the player you were taking meaningful decisions most of the time , by city specialisation, by investing more or less on science , by getting more soldiers , etc. In C2C there are still meaningful choices but they are far less of them, in a good example of "more is not always better". In C2C there is a huge amount of buildings, but you are probably going to build the same in all your cities because there isn't really a balance. Also while the elephant trainer building for cities with elephant is a good idea, the sail maker buildings isn't as you are going to build it anyway. I would suggest cutting a lot of the current buildings, reduce the production chain s and making the remaining buildings more expensive but more rewarding. Also the autobuilds mechanic (probably the hidden gem of the mod) could be use so that when you get a ruby mine, you don't need to build a ruby mine. The player shouldn't be directing all the buildings the city gets (seriously, the amount of control the player get on buildings order would be ridiculous in RL, even on state-owned economiws) , but focus more on decision making. Building balance should also be reviewed, removing most of the +1 production/food/ gold bonuses and intead giving % modifiers, specifically after prehistoric era. Finally the economy side should also be looked at and the slider should again be an strategic choice
Overall I think that C2C have a lot of potential and it is from a technical point impressive. What it lacks are more interesting player interactions and more depth, done by removing no-brainers choices and making then though decisions
. So I guess DH's 10 turn start offset for Spawns is not working anymore.
