Code:------------------------------------------------------------------------ APOLYTON UNIVERSITY MOD 1.16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (based on player 1's Patch Suggestion Mod) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This MOD serves as a base for the Apolyton University curriculum, which aims to improve the skills of participants through discussion of their strategy in a series of common games. The goals of this MOD (in rough order of importance) are to: - Improve the AI. - Present the player with more strategic decisions. - Change as little as possible, to preserve the unmodded Civ3 flavor. - Preserve historical accuracy. - Reduce micromanagement. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GROUND UNITS ------------ Action: Increased attack of Riflemen by 1 Increased attack of Infantry and Guerillas by 2 Reason: Make these units better-used by the AI. Comment: The AI sometimes uses these units for attack. Action: Increased attack and defense of Marines and Paratroopers by 2 Reason: To make these units more valuable, and the optional techs tied to them worth researching. Comment: They are as expensive as Tanks, yet their stats are still much lower. Action: Reduced defense of Modern Armor by 2 Reason: To encourage combined arms. Comment: The AI protects its offense-flagged units with defensive units anyway. Modern Armor was too good for its cost (and still is). Action: Added zero-range bombard ability to Archers (2), Bowmen (2), Longbowmen (4), and Guerillas (8). Added Zone of Control to guerillas. Reason: To make Archers, Longbowmen, and Guerillas worth building at the same time as Swordsmen, Medieval Infantry, and Infantry. Comment: Combined Arms! Stacks of units with archers have some benefit. The AI often puts archers in its cities for counterattack. The AI sometimes builds Guerillas, even with access to rubber. Action: Increased cost of Cannon and Hwach'a by 20, and their ROF by 1 Reason: To balance this unit compared to other ground bombard units. Comment: Under the standard rules, catapults are always more cost- effective than cannons. With this change, cannons are more cost-effective when bombarding a defender of strength 8 and above. Increased cost and ROF means that you need less units to do the same amount of damage (less micromanagement). Action: Increased Musketeer movement by 1 and lowered its attack by 1 Removed AI offense flag. Reason: To make the AI use this unit properly. Comment: Still remains in the spirit of the original unit. A defensive unit that can be used in an offensive role: supporting knights. Action: Keshiks gain ability to ignore movement penalties on Hills. Elephants gain ability to ignore movement penalties in Jungles. Reason: To strengthen these rather weak unique units. Comment: How can a Keshik take more time to move in mountains than in hills? Elephants are have familiarity and endurance in jungles. Action: Reduced cost of Conquistador by 10 Reason: To strengthen this unique unit without making knights obsolete. Comment: They replace 20-cost explorers, after all. Action: Increased bombard range of Cruise Missile by 2 and ROF by 1 Reason: To strengthen this unit, since fighters now have lethal bombard Comment: Civilopedia says Cruise Missiles have a range of hundreds of miles. ROF=4 means it has an extra shot and a chance to kill healthy veteran units. Action: Cruise Missiles can no longer be loaded into transports. Reason: To remove an exploit used only by human players. Comment: This unit could be moved into transports, but not loaded from cities. The AI did not know to use this exploit. Action: Koreans can now capture Cannons. Reason: To strengthen this weak civilization. Comment: Koreans used to destroy Cannons of other civs. They can now capture them and upgrade them to Hwach'a or Artillery. Action: Added airlift flag to Catapult, Cannon, Hwach'a, Artillery, Radar Artillery, Explorer, Scout, Leader. Reason: To reduce micromanagement. Comment: You can airlift tanks, why not cannons? Leaders can use planes. Action: Removed explore command from Leader, Catapult, Cannon, Hwach'a, Artillery, Radar Artillery, Settler, Worker, Tactical Nuke. Reason: These units are not meant for exploring territory. Comment: Minor point. Reduces erroneous commands. AIR UNITS --------- Action: Increased ROF of Fighters and Jet Fighters by 1 Gave all fighters lethal sea bombard (and AI air bombard flag) In addition, F-15 and Stealth Fighter have lethal land bombard Reason: To balance fighters versus bombers. Comment: Fighters are now effective for finishing off weak targets. Carriers with Fighters become a naval offensive threat. Stealth Fighters are a viable alternative to Stealth Bombers. The following table shows the change in cost-effectiveness of each air unit in bombarding. Action: Increased Helicopter, Paratrooper, and Bomber range by 2 Increased transport capacity of Helicopter by 1 Reason: To make these units more useful. Comment: It is now somewhat easier to land troops behind enemy lines. Increased naval movement of this mod without this change would have made it easier for ships to stay out of bomber range. NAVAL UNITS ----------- Action: Added one movement point to all ships after Industrialization. Reason: To strengthen naval units and to reduce micromanagement. Comment: Naval movement was too low compared to late-game land and air movement. Action: Added one additional movement point to Carrier Reason: To reduce micromanagement of carrier protection. Comment: Battleships and Carriers do not have a big difference in speed in real life. Action: Reduced the cost of the Privateer by 20 Added one movement point to Privateer. Reason: To make this unit more useful Comment: It was not a cost-effective unit. Privateers should be cheaper than the more powerful Frigates. Action: Moved prerequisite of the Ironclad to Industrialization. Increased cost of Ironclad by 20. Increased attack strength of Frigate and Wan-O-War by 1. Reason: To make Frigates more useful. Comment: Frigates became obsolete too fast. Ironclads were more cost- effective for bombarding than Battleships. Action: Ironclad upgrades to Battleship Reason: To compensate for reducing the life of this unit by making it available later. Comment: Civilopedia says that the ironclad was "the forerunner of the modern battleship". Action: Frigate, Privateer, and Man-O-War upgrade to Destroyer Reason: To encourage building these units Comment: The upgrade cost is significant. Action: Increased attack of Submarines and Nuclear Subs by 2 Reason: To make these units (and hence AEGIS) more effective. Comment: Makes them more dangerous, but still vulnerable if attacked. Action: Galleys use 2 movement points to enter Ocean. Reason: To make the Great Lighthouse less unbalancing on island maps To make Caravels more powerful for exploring Comment: Humans recognize the value of the G. Lighthouse and build it at all costs when isolated. The AI has no such priority. Makes suicide exploration missions by humans less effective. Delays intercontinental contacts and settling of empty continents. This might make Explorers more useful. Action: Increased bombard strength of Battleships, and AEGIS by 2. Reason: To balance the bombard effectiveness of naval units. Comment: Ironclads, Destroyers, and Frigates were more cost-effective bombard units than Battleships. IMPROVEMENTS AND WONDERS ------------------------ Action: Added Communism-specific improvement (Secret Police). Reduces corruption, veteran units, cost 40, zero upkeep. Reason: To make Communism a competitive war-time government. Comment: Monarchy with a good FP placement is still better than Communism. But when built in every city, this improvement brings Communism to the level of Monarchy for empires with a bad FP placement (such as most AI empires). Action: Great Wall now also adds city walls to all towns in continent. Reason: To make this wonder worth building. Comment: This will mainly affect the outskirts of your empire (just like the real Great Wall), since core cities will be larger than size-6 after Construction. Action: Increased happy faces for Cure for Cancer by 2 Reason: To make this wonder worth building. Comment: In the late game, when most empires have access to 6-8 luxuries, 1000 shields for one happy face is just not worth it. Action: Longevity requires Sanitation instead of Genetics Reduced cost by 200 Reason: To make this wonder worth building. Comment: By the time of Genetics, most cities are already at max size Action: Military Academy no longer requires a victorious Army. Reason: To make Armies more common, and war for leaders less attractive Comment: The Heroic Epic still requires a victorious Army. Action: SS Life Support needs Recycling instead of Superconductor Reason: To force players to research more modern techs before launching Comment: The civilopedia mentions the importance of recycling for this. Action: SS Stasis Chamber needs Genetics instead of Synthetic Fibers Reason: To force players to research more modern techs before launching Comment: Cryogenics need an understanding of biology, including Genetics Action: SS Docking Bay requires Robotics instead of Space Flight Reason: To force players to research more modern techs before launching Comment: Just say you need robotic arms to load the docking bay. Action: Increased the cost of all SS components by 50% Reason: To make Manufacturing Plants a viable option. Comment: The AI still places a high priority on building spaceship parts Action: Increased the upkeep of Research Labs by 1 Increased cost of Research Labs by 40 Reason: To make building this improvement less of an obvious choice. Comment: The AI benefits as it generally builds these after the human. Action: Moved prerequisite of Pyramids to Mathematics Reason: To increase the value of Mathematics. Comment: The AI now researches this tech earlier, so the human cannot bank on getting it with minimum research and selling it. GOVERNMENTS -------------- Actions: Increased corruption for Republic from Nuisance to Problematic. Increased worker speed by 1 for Communism. Increased experience of Communist Spies/Diplomats by one level. Added 1 free unit per city for Democracy. Added 2 free units per metropolis for Democracy. Reduced all resistance modifiers versus Communism by 5. Doubled assimilation chance for Communism. Reason: To reduce the relative effectiveness of Republic and the relative weakness of Communism Comment: Non-religious civs rarely had a reason to be in any other form of government than Republic. Communism was never worth it, even for religious civs. GLOBAL CHANGES -------------- Action: Doubled value of Wealth Reason: To make this build option sometimes worth choosing. Comment: It's still better to build units and disbanding them in corrupt cities (instead of using Wealth and rush-buying), but at least now Wealth is more useful than it used to be. Action: Doubled effect of taxmen and scientists. Reason: To encourage 20+ size cities. Comment: This might benefit the human more than the AI for cities under max-size, and it adds some micromanagement. On the hand, having a few large cities rather than many small ones reduces micromanagement, and presents the player with another decision. Action: Doubled effect of entertainers Reason: To help the AI Comment: The AI uses entertainers instead of the luxury slider. Action: Reduced cost of propaganda by 50% Reason: To make this option worth pursuing. Comment: Playtesting has indicated that this reduction is not too much. Action: Taxmen require currency Scientists require Mathematics Reason: To increase the AI-value of these technologies. Comment: Marketplaces are important, often delayed to be built by the AI because of the low priority of currency. Mathematics was often ignored by the AI until late. Action: Reduced appearance ratio of all strategic resources by 25%. Reason: To help create "killer-AIs" Comment: AI civs without access to resources can be conquered easier, leaving fewer but stronger opponents. Action: Increased optimal number of cities for all map sizes by 50% Reduced percentage of optimal cities for all levels by 1/3 Reason: To make the AI more aggressive in pursuing land Comment: Is transparent to the human player, except for the fact that in delays the availability of the FP. Encourages the larger AI empires to capture (not raze) cities. May induce the AI to win by domination. The behavior of the AI in expanding was not changed after Firaxis made courthouses and police stations increase the OCN by 25% each.
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