changelog.txt
his file lists all the changes that have been made to the LWC mod 
since the creation of the readme.txt. When a new version is released always 
check the changelog.txt file for information on what has changed.


02/02/02:

-Note: Ok, at first I just wanted to add an entry because of the funny date, but 
now I have some changes.

-Ironclad, Super-Battleship: No longer have "turn to attack" flags set on them, 
the effect of which I am clueless of. But let's just make-believe...

-File name change: The .bic file for this version of LWC is now LWC Mod ERP5.bic

-Fruit: Renamed to Bananas. Conflicted with the idea of Grapes, seing as how 
Grapes are fruit and all...


-NEW VERSION: Long Winded Changes, Early Release Preview 5 (ERP5). Changes the 
bonus resources provided by most resources (all changes are increases), tweaked 
the disappearance probability on Horses and Iron to make them 'move' less, 
changed Fruit to Bananas, fixed all the building bugs (including not being able 
to build some, and the coastal defense installations), minorly tweaked some unit 
costs, tinkered with a few naval unit abilitys (added Blitz to some...), and a 
few more minor changes.

The file is now called "LWC Mod ERP5.bic" to avoid confusing people. Load it as 
a Scenario to play with the changes. You must start a new game to see the 
changes, you can't just change the file name and load a saved game.

This version is a reccommended update for all users, and will not break (or 
effect) any old saved games. You will however need to reinstall the addon packs 
(like extra unit animations and non-labeled resource file), though those addon 
packs have not changed for this version.

NOTE: When unzipping the mod remember to OVERWRITE all the files it asks you 
about, or the mod may not install properly!


01/29/02:

-All Buildings/Bugs: Due to some earlier mentioned bugs, the only building which 
still gives a "defensive bonus" (against land attacks that is, as the coastal 
installation improvements still give a defensive bonus to protect from naval 
bombardment) is Walls. The problems with Palace finally pelted me into removing 
it's bonus.

Other than "you can't build it in any city size 2 or above", the defensive bonus 
only effects city size 1, which simply doesn't offset being practically unable 
to build a Palace elsewhere. *sigh* So close, and yet...

I also removed the bonus from AI Governing Prototype, which I totally forgot 
that it actually had.

-Credit: I totally forgot to mention it, but the graphic from for Fruit is 
actually the graphic for "Bananas" from "The Mod With No Name". I was just going 
to use it as a temporary place holder, and it still pretty much is, but I don't 
know when (or if) a suitable replacement will be available, so I just wanted to 
be sure it's source was acknowledged.

-Costal Gun Placements: Now has 6 cost instead of 5. Still a fine bang for your 
buck when navys oppress yah, but was silly how cheap it was before. 10 shields 
makes little difference in gameterms, but I feel better about it. It also 
probides a 12 naval bombard defense, instead of the oddly high 15 it did 
provide.

-Costal Fortress: I totally forgot to update this one after I made all the 
changes to the naval units, leaving this a totally useless improvement. It now 
provides 15 naval bombard defense instead of 12, and a 30 naval power instead of 
12! Now worth building in situations where navys are a considerable threat to 
your citys and need a quick patch-up (while sending in your own navy, 
hopefully).

-Horses, Iron: Both have a +10 disappearance ratio, which I'm hoping will just 
be enough to massage them down to still disappearing and reappearing a 
reasonable amount of time, without being too stable.

I personally saw the pleasantness of the moving around, as it certainly adds 
more urgency to things. At one time I had 3 sources of Iron, yet soon after I 
had only 1 source of iron, which I was already trading away! I believed I ended 
up cancelling that route, but I'm thinking it may have ticked off the Chinese 
(whom I was trading it too). 

I also managed to tick off the entire world when I made peace with the Greeks, 
whom I got the entire world to declare war upon - just a middle link in a line 
of bad decisions, leaving me widely detested. But much like Microsoft and Bill 
Gate's, I'm left with all my bridges burned but with such a large resource and 
territory advantage - as well as a reasonable lead in technology (due mostly to 
unsavory political maneuvering, well-timed devastating invasions leading to the 
extinction of my greatest rivals/neighbors, and heavy funding to research and 
development) - that my new enemys (all of whom were my allies to various degrees 
in past times, turned enemys by my often ruthless opportunism as much as my 
political gaffes and lack of consideration of world opinion) can do nothing to 
stop me, and are too afraid (and too weak) to explicitly state their displeasure 
of me. 

They may insult the memory of the War Charioteers and Horsemen that died in the 
service of "The Peerless Golden Age Army of Egyptian" history (the topic of so 
many legends, originally formed by but a comparitively few great men who 
overcame great odds to ensure Egypt's future as the grandest nation ever 
imagined) with their self-righteous ingratitude,  shake their fists as my 
Peerless Cavalry cut down the infidels who seek the death and enslavement of us 
all, curse me as I utilize captured and refurbished artillery against the enemys 
who sought to use them to destroy this peerless land, and constantly nay-say our 
new Utensils of Defense (tentively refered to as "Tanks" and "Aeroplanes") - but 
make no two ways about it, when their so-called "Empires" are brought under the 
Enlightened Rule by The New Golden Age Army, these blasphemers will hang their 
heads in disgrace for but a few moments before becoming the kind of filthy 
mindless sycophants who dirty our streets, seek to steal our hard-owned gold, 
and all the while can speak only good of The Enlightened Rule.

No matter, they will serve us through life (whether they intend to or not) and 
perhaps one day their children will see the light of truth and join us brothers 
and sisters of Eternal Egypt.


But I wanted to leave Egypt's warlike past behind, I really did. I may be King, 
but I'm no despot. And as a sign of this I made a formal rival - the Greeks - my 
friends, only to have them invade my lands. After the quick destruction of their 
empire and the dubious peace deal that angered the rest of the world, I formed a 
full Democracy! Oh how we prospered...for a while. But as reperation for my past 
snubbing of my allies, and to gain back territory that had turned traitor after 
the war, I agreed to war the Greeks one final time. 2 completely decisive 
battles later the Greeks were down to but 1 city, ready to fall, when suddenly 
riots filled the streets in protest! How could these fools not see wisdom in 
this decision to rid the world of such a lying traitor?

Clearly, common Egyptians are not capable of ruling such a grand empire, so I 
have been forced to reinstate the Enlightened Rule and declare that this shall 
be a new Golden Age for Egypt, which shall see our homeland become united and 
impenetrable, leading to the fall of the primordial enemies of global welfare!


...good god, I've become a warmongering despot without actually wanting to. 
Hmm...kind of makes one consider the infamous figures of history in a less 
deified/putrified light.



Anyway, thus is one major problem with Civ3: It doesn't prompt you about doing 
something that'll offend another civ, leaving you guessing as to what does and 
does not violate treatys, leading to all kinds of problems presented by 
ill-explained game mechanics. *sigh*

But hey, it's actually quite fun. I think I'll go finish that game now *WEG*.

-Note: Well, I've run into that big problem that comes with the Industrial Age- 
Mind-numbing boredom. I mean, I want to like it. I tried to like it, really. But 
it's awful. Really, really, painfully annoying. So much so that I don't think 
that at this rate I may ever manage to finish a single game, yet I can only 
imagine what it's like on even bigger maps. I'm going to try an Archipelago map 
and see how that goes.

The main problem is that on just a Standard size map, 70% land on Continents, 
full amount of civs available on that map (though 3 have been destroyed at this 
point, all falling under my rule), at the end of the industrial age the game 
takes about 10 seconds of "thinking", 5 seconds for each AI (give or take) with 
all the enemy/friendly display options off (no Animation or Show), and about 
10-20 seconds of the screen jumping around to zoom on in my workers - even 
though I turned off Animation and Show for automated movement! - Every Turn! 

And what do I get to do once I can finally control the game again? Well, I'm 
basically surrounded by enemy navys, so I would have to s-l-o-w-l-y go through 
the 10-20 turns it'll take to build my post-Mass Production navy to crush the 
fleets of 4 civilizations (all wooden ships) - all of whom who are at war with 
me, if that comes as any surprise.

So they're being a pain by bombarding me, but that's all they can do. Because 
the AI cannot really mount a sensible invasion, and due to the infinate movement 
of railroads (allowing me to deal with a threat nearly anywhere on my continent 
instantly), all they can do is make my turn take forever by bombarding the crap 
out of me all over the place, though it has a comparitively tiny effect on me.

But because of how everyone is at war, the only options for government are 
Monarchy (my only good choice) and Communism, leaving the "try to keep him busy 
while we take over his tech lead" idea impossible - even if just accidentally 
done.

When the AI actually trys to invade me they dump all their units out in one 
place - in the north, where I have the least infrastructure but also the most 
defense, though I could just move all the defense back to the south in one 
turn... - yet having very few defensive units in the stack. So I just throw my 
extra Cavalry at the AI, last time killing at least 10-15 units (most were 
Cavalry, with maybe 1-2 Rifleman at most, and a few uselessly outdated units) 
before they had a chance to attack me.

And for me to mount an invasion - which could at least be a little challenging, 
considering - I'd have to wade through all those ships. That leads me to a 
chance I made listed below, but that's not the point.

When it comes down to it, there are 2 key problems: Performance, and Bad AI 
Tactics. On the former, an AMD-750 with 526MB RAM and a GeForce2 could run 
Anarchy Online really well (considering all it's problems early on when I was 
playing), and Civ3 _should_ run great in comparison, but let's overlook this 
problem as "temporary" (as a no-look workers option could solve a big part of 
the problem here).

The latter however, is simply unavoidable. With the same resources as the AI I 
could at least have established a small beachead by camping out a bunch of 
rifleman in a mountain and trying to sludge forward towards a city, perhaps even 
getting the chance to raze a few citys. But the AI just dumps an ill-defended 
stack onto a hill and get's massively slaughtered.

But on the whole, the AI doesn't seem to understand the idea of protecting a 
city with proper defenses after taking it over. When going through my game's 
Replay I noted a war between the Germans and the English, and the AI somehow 
managed to trade 2 citys back and forth, back and forth, every few turns. City1 
taken, City2 taken, City2 lost, City2 taken, City1 lost, City2 lost, City2 
taken, City1 taken - each city at least switched hands 5 times.

This tells me that the AI doesn't know how to secure it's captured citys 
properly, which certainly jives with my experience. Such as on my home continent 
the AI landed like 6 cavs to take our enemy's city, yet when World War broke out 
and I attacked I found but 1 pitiful cavalry remaining in the city. 


Seing how as I have no control over any of this, we'll move along to some things 
I have managed to fix...

-Destroyer, Modern Destroyer, AEGIS Cruiser: Now have the Blitz ability, 
allowing them to attack once per turn. The main excellant use for this is 
cleaning out an outdated navy of wooden warships, which are still annoyingly 
capable of sinking Destroyers (though at least it's a Little reasonable, though 
it's still pretty rediculous how a 50 Attack ship managed to loose 4 HP to a 10 
defense ship), while Battleships should still pleasantly cruise along with 
relative impunity (but if attacked my a large amount of ships...).

Definately should clear up a late-game related problem I at least was having.

-Infantry, Modern Infantry, and Mech Infantry: Now can Pillage. At first there 
was too much pillaging, but now there seems to be too little. Might (hopefully) 
help out the AI a bit too, but mainly it makes good gameplay sense and isn't 
anethema to realworld activitys.

-Later-game Air and Naval Units: Naval units have had their cost _minorly_ 
increased/decreased by 1-2 cost either way, and some Air units have had their 
Rate of Fire increased.

-Transport Plane: Now available with Advanced Flight instead of Synthetic 
Materials, and costs 18 instead of just 16. Just came too late before, and it 
should have a much nicer effect now in a place where people actually might care 
about it. Gives a reason to develop Advanced Flight, too. Now it does seem to 
conflict with Helicopter at first, but Helicopter is cheaper and can execute 
Recon missions, though it does have a smaller range and only a 1 transport 
capacity. Should be ok, though we'll see more after testing.

-Resource: I've now given multiple resources a boost in what extra resources 
provide, making them a bigger boon to the city that actually gets to work on 
them. The changes are as follows (the bonus applied to them, not what their 
final values are):

Horses: +1F (food), +1C (commerce).
Iron: +1S (shield), +1C.
Saltpeter: +1S, +2C.
Coal: +1S, +2C.
Oil: +2S, +2C.
Rubber: +3S.
Aluminum: +2S, +2C.
Uranium: +1S, +3C.
Grapes: +1F.
Incense: +1C.
Silks: +1S.
Gems: +1S.


The result is that now you'd really like to work on resource squares, rather 
than just want to have them within your borders of control. I believe this more 
considerably reflects the great value of such resources, as well as increasing 
the importance of the techs that reveal them (as if they weren't already 
valuable...), and I felt the bonus' they provided were just way too 
insignificant.


01/27/02:

-Harbor, Airport: Now Reduce Corruption. One more reason for the AI to build at 
least a harbor (which it should do alot more than it does, even now), and it 
makes sense to me anyway.

-Forbidden Palace: Costs 27 instead of 30.

-National Bank: Costs 35 instead of 40.

-National Constitution: Costs 40 instead of 45.

-Bug: Shrine and Pyramids' Effect didn't have their own entries in the 
civilopedia, but now do.

-Banking: XY location on the tech tree tweeked, so it doesn't just barely 
overlap Musical Theory anymore.

-Minimum Research Time: Now 3 instead of 4. Seems not so much to apply to 
current techs since it's hard to get them down to 4 turns anyway, but should 
help catching up on old out-dated "optional" techs.


01/26/02: 

-Forbidden Palace, National Bank: Due to 2 nearly simultaneous bugs reports, one 
for each of these items, I have discovered that any city improvement with a 
defense bonus will be removed from the possible build que upon reaching city 
size level 2 (7+ pop). Thus, neither of these will have any defense bonus from 
now on.

I have temporarily left Palace untouched, because I too much like the bonus 
given from it. Let's hope I will not be forced to change it due to the inherant 
flaws in Civ3's design.


01/24/02:

-Town Defenses: Being in a Town now gives a 10% bonus to defense. Nothing 
special, but I think it's a nice addition.

-Shock Troops: Now has the Join City ability.

-Palace: Now gives a 75% bonus to defense and has a cost of 3. On the latter 
point, I'm thinking it has absolutely no effect on the game whatsoever, so just 
call it my little way to protest it taking 70 turns to rebuild a Palace early in 
the game (they really should have scaled out the increased cost better...). As 
for a defensive bonus, note that I have not changed any of the other 
improvements that give extra defense (ie, Forbidden Palace and National Bank). 
Now you should have to really blow the crap out of the enemy capital to take it 
(Canons are now especially useful here), or have a big lead in technology of 
your forces (as in my last game, where I used 2 Cavalry and 2 Knights to take 
Paris, though I could have done it with only Knights...this was before I changed 
the bonus up, you see).

-ISSUE: Economics is kind of a sucky tech now that it has no effect on the 
Wealth improvement (I'm finding that it works very well this way), but if Stock 
Exchange was added I don't think it would be good for it to become available so 
soon after Banks (1 tech later, that is...you probably won't even have built 
your first bank by then). Any ideas for what to do with this tech?

I was thinking it could be moved to the Industrial Age. Hmm...

Here's an idea: What if I deleted Economics, moved the Trading Company to 
Banking (and increased the research cost of that tech accordingly), made the 
Stock Exchange available with The Corporation (requires a Bank be built in the 
city to construct), and made Wall Street require 3 Stock Exchanges before being 
built?

-Jaguar Warrior: To be honest, I have no idea what this friggin thing should 
upgrade into. Swordsman seemed bad, seing how as it pretty much fills in a 
different role, but Man At Arms is too far away. So for now I'm trying 
Horseman...hopefully it won't backfire, since there isn't much extra gold lying 
around in the ancient age anyway.

-Tech Costs: Mysticism(+2), Polytheism (+5) (3 more than the original game), 
Monotheism(+1), Gunpowder(+4), Metallurgy(+6), Military Tradition (+5), 
Astronomy(+4), Education(+2), Music Theory (+2), Banking (+4), Navigation(+2), 
Theory of Gravity(+2), Sanitation (+5), The Corporation(+20), Refining(+10), 
Steel(+10). All Middle Age changes are more than made up for with the deletion 
of Chemistry and Economics (Economics hasn't been "deleted", but isn't available 
for research anymore none-the-less). The Industrial Age will still start a 
little earlier than it had previously, none the less, but both the Middle and 
Industrial Age seem considerably more interesting now.

-Democracy: Back to requiring Banking now, seing how as Economics is gone for 
the time being.

-Sewer System: No longer adds happiness.

-National Bank: No longer listed as becoming available with Banking, purely so 
Banking wouldn't have so many icons. It has no effect on gameplay, seing how as 
you have to build 5 Banks for it to become available.

-Military Academy: Costs 37 instead of 45.

-Heroic Epic: Costs 25 instead of 20.

-Great Wonders: No Great Wonders - such as Theory of Evolution and Smith's 
Trading Company - have "X many buildings must be built" requirements anymore. 
It's a nice idea (perfect for small wonders), but less developed civs already 
have trouble actually building a Wonder on Monarchy+ levels anyway, and such 
requirements only make things worse. Having a 3+ total tech lead on everyone 
else already comes with a big wonder advantage anyhow (often allowing big 
production citys to finish them before anyone else gets a chance), so I see no 
need to make matters worse.

-Hanging Gardens: Now available with Polytheism.

-Magellan's Voyage: Finally, I've figured out how to fix this wonder without 
unbalancing it. It now allows veteran sea units to be produced in all of your 
citys and Increases Luxury Trade in the city that builds it.

-Pyramids: I've decided to finally "fix" this one, though I do so with 
hesitation...but I'm going to do it anyway. Having it give Granarys is 
just...bad. For one thing, it just screams "Pop Rush! Pop Rush!", and it's worth 
building a Granary in every city anyway (unlike Barracks, which are only useful 
in some citys). If it only provides 10 Granarys you would have built anyway 
you've saved 60 shields by expending 40 shields, plus the Great culture it 
provides, plus the 10 gold you'll save Every Turn because you don't pay the 
maintenance on the Granarys, plus how it can trigger a golden age for 2 
characteristics, plus how it's easier to have your 1 big city build a wonder 
than for a bunch of small citys to build their own (each of which can easily 
take 15-20 turns to build their own), plus how conquered citys will immediately 
gain a Granary (which is why I _almost_ decided to change Sun Tzu's War Academy, 
but didn't) no matter how many times they switch hands, and...well, isn't that 
enough? Oh yeah, and it never expires.

So without further adue, this is what it does now: Still considered Industrious 
and Religious, and still produces 4 culture. City that builds it only effects: 
Increased Luxury Trade, Resistance to Propaganda, Reduces Corruption. All Citys 
On Continent: Produce +1 culture a turn.

It may not Sound like much at first, but it's quite an excellant deal and never 
expires. Assuming you ever get a chance to build it, which I probably never will 
as long as I'm playing Monarchy levels and above ;)

But it's definately worth building if you can do it.

-Shrine: New Improvement. Someone mentioned this, and I think either korn or 
monkspider put it in their mods, but it popped into my head while changing 
Pyramids.

The Shrine comes with Ceremonial Burial (instead of Temple), costs 3 to build, 
provides 1 culture, and makes 1 person happy in the city.

-Temple: Now available with Polytheism, and requires a Shrine be in the city.

-Bank: Now has 2 maintenance instead of 1.

-Recycling Center: Has 3 maintenance instead of 2.

-Research Lab: Has 3 maintenance instead of 2, costs 22 instead of 18 to build.

-Stock Exchange: New Improvement. Available with The Corporation, like a 2nd 
Bank (requires a bank be built in city). Costs 22 to build, requires 3 in 
maintenance.

-NOTE: I've made a few other minor changes, and all changes should accurately be 
reflected in changes.txt.



-NEW VERSION: Long Winded Changes, Early Release Preview 4. Oh so many changes, 
oh so little time. Basically I almost totally re-did all the units (cost, 
requirements, attack, defense, ZoC, etC), changed UU for America and England to 
more functional and useful units (the Minuteman and Longbowman, respectively), 
addition of multiple naval units (and changes of existing ones), 7 buildings 
(including a small wonder or two), some changes to the tech tree, tweaking of 
tech costs, changes to multiple wonders, a horde of small bug fixes, largely 
updated civilopedia, a fixed tech tree (display should be about perfect now), 
and a rearranged unit list.

To play you will need to load LWC Mod ERP4.bic as a scenario, rather than LWC 
Mod.bic.


01/23/01:

-Tech Cost: Ceremonial Burial(+1). This is mainly so that it isn't weighted so 
insignificantly at the begining of the game, and is now equal with Pottery, 
Bronze Working, and Warrior Code.

-Palace, Forbidden Palace: Now have 35 bombard defense, instead of 30, and make 
1 person happy in their city.

-National Bank: Now has a 25 bombard defense, and provides a +25% defense bonus 
to units in it's city.

-Note: The .bic file for ERP4 will be named "LWC Mod ERP4.bic" instead of "LWC 
Mod.bic". The reason for this is to prevent errors that would occur in 
previously saved games of LWC, because of my re-arranging of the order units 
appear in the .bic file. So the most that could happen when upgrading is a few 
odd little unit icon graphics errors (though I don't think there will be any), 
but all civilopedia and pediaicon problems will be fixed.

Therefore, there is once again "no reason not to upgrade". You can even still 
play games from ERP3 by loading that .bic instead...though I have no idea why 
you would want to :)


01/22/01:

-Settler, Pioneer: Well, didn't take long to figure out that 3 pop is too much 
for early on (slows things downs entirely more than I want, thank you verra 
much). I'll try increasing their cost to 4 and taking 2 pop away like they use 
to, and try it again...


01/21/01:

-Army: Now cost 30 instead of 35 (from the original 40 cost) have Blitz and, as 
a note on an unmentioned older change, Zone of Control (which is nearly useless, 
but good to know). 

Now, the reason for the decrease in cost is because you have to remember than an 
army is useless without units to go into it. To make an Army of 3 Knights, for 
instance, you must expend at LEAST 510 shields (51 cost). 210 of that is 
knights, meaning that for the same price as 1 full Army of Knights you could 
build 7 Knights. What would you prefer: 7 Knights, (and thus 7 attacks a turn) 
or 1 Army of 3 Knights (with 1 attack per turn)?

Still doesn't change the fact that Armys are about as well implemented as 
submarines, but perhaps with all the other changes it'll be worth building a few 
Armys here and there.

-Resources: I've removed the disappearance of luxury resources, because it seems 
that Civ3 doesn't just move them, but actually gets rid of them some of the 
time! 

I have also tinkered with some resource disappearances, so let me know how you 
like all the changes when you get a chance to try them.

-Forest: For the time being I have decided to remove the mining ability from 
Forest. It just doesn't fit well with Hills, will provide more production than 
is "good" (especially due to more shields being available anyway, I don't want 
it to totally offset the increase in unit costs), and the AI (rightfullly) ends 
up mining every Forest once it can get the bonus from it (as soon as it switches 
to Monarchy/Republic) - which has both an ugly aesthetic effect and ends up 
causing the AI's population to be low because all it's Workers are busy mining 
when they should be irrigating.

Thanks to Carlos for pointing out these problems and noting how luxury resources 
really do _disappear_, thus allowing me to make the proper changes.

-Battlefield Medicine: Now allows you to build larger armys. So now with 
Pentagon and this you can have 5 unit armys.

-Barbarian, Raider: Now have Zone of Control.

-Defensive Footsoldier Gunpowder Units: Now have Zone of Control and bombard 
strength like arrow units do now (but cant't Bombard, of course). Offensive 
footsoldiers won't get the "defensive bombard" thing until Marines, but from 
Musket Infantry on they do get Zone of Control. 

Along with the increase defense of the Musketman by 1 (and an increase in it's 
attack by 1, balanced by the increased cost of the Gunpowder tech), this should 
make such units on the whole to be more powerful, as well as making real life 
sense.

-Musketman: As mentioned above, Musketman is now a step UP from Pikeman, not 
DOWN as it was before. It was a step down because the Pikeman was 1/3/1 at 3 
cost, while the Musketman was 2/4/1 at 6 cost. So you can have 2 Pikeman, or 1 
Musketman that has 1 extra point of defense. If both are Regular that's 8HP vs 
4HP...yeah, that makes lots of sense.

And you thought it was bad that you didn't have access to saltpeter early in the 
Middle Ages, haha!

Anyhoo, it's now 3/4/1 at 5 cost, plus it has zone of control and if in a stack 
of units it will randomly do 1 point of damage to the attacker (not for every 
Musketman that's in the stack, just 1...don't ask me why, ask Firaxis).

-Tech Cost: Gunpowder(+4).

-Musketeer (French UU): Now has +1 defense when compared to Musketman, rather 
than +1 attack. With Musketman having 5 defense instead of 4 now, it's much less 
big of a deal for Musketeers to have 6 defense than for them to have had 5. I do 
believe I can declare this UU "fixed", and now quite useful!

-Minuteman (American UU): Has +2 attack and +1 move when compared to Rifleman

-Note: Oh...my...turkesbury...I think I'm actually done rebalancing all the 
units! With exception to pumping up the defense value of a few units (such as 
Infantry, which weren't nearly as powerful on defense as they should be), 
especially later ones, I had very little to do to "fix" most of the land units.

However, fixing naval units was a pain in the ASS! Good sweet lords of the 
realm, I can't believe how much work I've done to naval units since starting. 
But now I am of the opinion they are FINALLY as powerful, varied, and important 
as they should be!

One bad side effect though: I'm thinking that aircraft will end up being useless 
against them. I know, I know, but I can't do diddly HooHah about it. If I don't 
boost naval unit stats as hugely as I have, they just won't balance against each 
other anywhere near how they should. However, as an idea: Ironclads now have 
stats of 17/27/4, and Battleships have 95/87/6. Compare that to the Mech Inf 
with stats of 12/20/3, and you can see that if I boost planes/bombard units then 
they'll be unbalanced against land forces. But if I don't they will be pretty 
freakin' useless against ships (as if they weren't near that already...), but 
just fine on land.

So I really have no good choice in the matter. All I could do would be to give 
water tiles a defensive bonus so as to lessen the amount I have to boost stats, 
but to be honest...no. No thank you sir, I'd really prefer it if you didn't 
viciously beat me with that barbed crowbar.

So I'm afraid aircraft will be highly inneffective against industrial/modern 
ships. But I think you'll find it's a worthy trade off to have truly interesting 
wars at sea. It's not like aircraft can really sink ships anyway :)

-Combat Calculator: Can now support Attack and Defense values up to 110. I'll 
update the online version when I release ERP4.

-Tech Tree: I've finally fixed it, so _everything_ should display juuust right. 
I even fixed some "errors" in the original Civ3 layout, such as Mysticism not 
being in line with the other techs, et al.

-Military Academy: Now requires 4 Universitys be built instead of 7 Barracks, 
due to the conflict with Sun Tzu's Art of War. Thanks to frust for informing me 
about this bug...extremely annoying.

-Theory of Evolution: Requires 5 Universitys instead of 4.


01/19/01:

-Mining: Costs 16 turns instead of 12. Mining is a bit more valuable now, and 
also curbs the "mine all the grasslands" problem a little.

-Fortress: Costs 12 turns instead of 16. Is there 

-Plant Forest: Costs 20 turns instead of 22. I'd make it 18, but I don't think 
the AI knows how to use it, so it would purely be for the benefit of the player.

-Clear Forest: Costs 12 turns instead of 10. They do provide an extra 5 shields 
now, and deforestation should take a bit more effort (since it comes with few 
consequences).

-Clear Pollution: Costs 22 turns instead of 24.

-Fruit: New resource. Like Oasis for Jungles, but gives +2 food and +1 commerce.

-Mountains: Now provides 1 commerce instead of 0. Thus it now has a base of 
providing 2 production and 1 commerce, and when roaded and mined provides 4 
production and 2 commerce.

-Tundra: Now has 2 movement cost instead of 1.

-NOTE: While playing with units in the LWC calculator I suddenly realized a 
whole new dimension of units that needs to be tested. Cost must be factored 
together with stats to decide what is a more powerful unit. I have failed to do 
this up till now, because I was assuming that 1 old unit would equal 1 new unit; 
which can reasonably be true because of how production increases over time, but 
we'll put that aside for now. Thus the LWC combat system still works pretty darn 
well, but I'm refiguring the details now. Consider this:

I had given the War Caravel (WC) a Cost/Attack/Defense/Movement of 7/8/6/4, and 
the Ship of the Line (SL) 10/13/10/5. I figured this would allow the WC a 
reasonable chance of success if attacking first (36% chance, it turned out), but 
it would be pretty easily thrashed if the SL attacked first. However, I failed 
to factor in cost.

For the cost of 21 (210 shields ingame, though the AI can build it for less on 
higher difficulty levels) you can build 3 WCs, and for 20 cost you can build 2 
SLs. If 3 WCs attack 2 SLs (assuming all ships are Veteran), one right after the 
other, the WCs have roughly a 68% chance of victory (2% less of a chance if all 
ships were Regulars)! That means it is actually better NOT to be able to build 
the SL so you can just build WCs instead, as it regards ship to ship warfare! 
Obviously not acceptable, even if that's only when the WCs are on the attack.

If the WCs have only a 7 attack the chance of success is reduced to 55%, but 
that still isn't all that good. But if the SL also gets 11 defense, then the 
problem is altogether solved, leaving a (reasonable) 46% chance of success (20% 
when 1 on 1) when attacking. But if the SLs attack first then they have an, 
appoximately, 80% chance of success.

This is of course ignoring other factors involved, but it's not a bad rule of 
thumb to go by. So warfare should be alot more balanced now, without tipping the 
scales too much in any one direction.

One more calculation which is important to make: Figure the chances of 2 
attackers winning against a defender, not just one. Otherwise the stats may look 
good at first, but once you add another attacker right behind you see that it 
gets pretty darn Ugly.

-NOTE: It is only now that I realise how awful and difficult Civ3 is to actually 
make "good", because of the lack of any ability to give increased hit points to 
units as well as the lack of firepower (and to a lesser extent, armor). Why?

Well, I'll tell you why. To get the ships balanced properly so that it's 
actually worth developing in technology to conduct warfare, by the advent of 
Steel I must have ships with 37 Attack and 30 Defense. It's not even the second 
half of the industrial age! It's a darn good thing the maximum stat for a unit 
goes over 99, because otherwise I'd have very little room left for the Modern 
Age!

To figure out the chance of one unit winning over another with such high numbers 
(and I mean with only a LITTLE accuracy), you just about HAVE to use a combat 
calculator or just settle for "well, this should be a better than 50% chance of 
not totally loosing...I think. ...well, I guess not."

I sware, the more I think about the sickeningly sad state of Civ3 the more I 
like the idea of accepting the offer to join the Clash of Civilizations 
development team - after I finish with the LWC Mod, of course (don't want to let 
anyone down, and I'm sure I can make Civ3 at _least_ be a major step forward for 
the series...as long as you only count Civ1. Otherwise, I might as well try to 
bend the golden gate bridge with the power of "PSI"...which might actually be 
easier, come to think of it).

Ah well, never let it be said that I did not make headway into doing the 
impossible in my lifetime. :D

-NOTE: By the way, did I mention that Civ3 handles Submarines like a complete 
POS? I didn't? How, I must have LOST MY FREAKIN MIND. X-|

-Nuclear Attack Sub: Has now been deleted and will not be in the LWC Mod any 
further. I find that there is simply no need for it, and it's whole use is now 
completely taken by the Nuclear Submarine that comes with Civ3.

-NOTE: Oh, how cruel the hands of fate! I soo wished to make a Naval Army 
(Armada, perhaps?), but guess what? There isn't an AI Naval Strategy for Army, 
as there is for Land! So if I added it, and it didn't crash the game (as 
unlikely as THAT is), only the player could use it! *weeps*

-Factory, Manufacturing Plant, Coal Plant, Nuclear Plant: Changed.

-Oil Plant: New improvement, alot like Coal Plant, Nuclear Plant. More expensive 
to maintain, but produces less pollution and requires Oil instead of Coal, as 
well as making 1 less person unhappy (compared to Coal Plant).

-Automated Factory: New improvement, takes the place of what Manufacturing Plant 
use to be.

-National Bank: New Small Wonder. Yeah, another Forbidden Palace, but this time 
for the later Middle Ages. Inspired by the Bank of England.

-Mass Transit System: Back down to production 1 pollution, because it seems 1 = 
25% increase. Bother...

-City Dump: No longer requires a Sewer System be in the city.


01/18/01:

-Settlers, Pioneers: Now take 3 pop points to build. This is purely for testing 
purposes, but in theory it seems like a reasonably good idea...we'll see.

-Civilizations: I have incorporated some city/leader names from the "Changes to 
some annoying name errors, plus Canada civ" mod by Wyz_sub10. The Iriquous first 
20 or so citys are now new, with the old ones following right behind (with a few 
removed). The Zulu's capital is now properly Ondini, and "Zimbabwe" has been 
removed, along with my changing around of leaders and adding "Bongoza", who led 
Zulu enemys (the Boers) into an ambush at the Battle of Opathe. Germany now 
has...Hitler. If Stalin can be counted as a leader of Russia, Hitler can be 
counted as a leader of Germany - and if you look over the leader lists, you'll 
probably notice worse butchers than either of them, so just delete his name if 
you have a problem with it.

There are also plenty of other little changes in city and leader names, but not 
worth listing every little change.

For those who didn't know, I already had included Sevorak's city/leader name mod 
since at least ERP1, which is why you'll note that there are far more city and 
leader names for all civilizations.

-Errors: Fixed a few more civilopedia errors.

-Catapult, Trebuchet, Canon, Artillery, Radar Artillery: Now capturable again.

-Note: Three cheers for Gramphos, for creating a Unit Organizer from my request! 
I really, REALLY love having my units back in order now. You don't know how nice 
it is unless you play around and try to compare the units like they were.

Definately will ease my unit comparisons and customizations.


01/17/02:

-Errors: Fixed some civilopedia errors, and added correct requirements and 
effects of small wonders.

-Minuteman: New unit, now the unique unit for America instead of F-15.

-F-15: No longer available in the game, but it may be used for something later. 
For now it has no tech requirement and is not available to any civilization.

-Military Academy: Now available with Education instead of Military Tradition, 
and is down to costing 45 instead of 50. Academy, University...makes sense to 
me. The effect should be armys becoming available earlier now, so that should 
make things a bit more interesting on the whole. And remember, to build it you 
only need to have 7 barracks built in citys you control, so don't think you 
_have_ to use a Leader to build an Army. Hell, I STILL haven't gotten a leader 
since I've been playing the game, which is why I changed the way Military 
Academy became available.

Now you can actually build Heroic Epic at some point, so long as you got have a 
victorious army. Yay :)

-Jungle: Now provides 1 less shield to start, but can be mined providing +1 
shield. So it will start by providing 1F/1P, with a road it will give 1C, and 
once mined it will give 2P instead of 1P. But if you're going to go to all that 
trouble you'd probably do best to Clear it out instead.

-Longevity: Now gives an Aqueduct to all citys, in addition to everything else 
it does. I could have added a "Longevity Effect" with the "allows city size 2" 
ability and have Longevity provided that, but then if you built it you'd want to 
go into each city and sell any Aqueducts you have. So this is the best way of 
doing it, even if it doesn't make the most sense in the world. The effect 
remains the same :)

I could also have had it allow city size 3 in all citys, but we'll just stick 
with this instead. Easier and more balanced, I think.


01/14/02: 

-Error: Forgot to add the change to World Sizes in changes.txt, and clarified 
the change in pillaging there too (archer-type units can't pillage).

-Many Units: Many units have had their bombard strength changed, and some have 
had their rate of fire increased. The result of earlier changes was too high a 
chance of destroying buildings/citizens while the early bombard units were 
nearly useless. Along with other changes bombard units should now be highly 
useful units (even the early ones), but not over-powered.

-ISSUE: I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but land bombard units can no longer be 
captured. After playing with the changes, would you prefer it if they were 
capturable?

-QUESTION: When bombarding units, do the defending units defense values get 
modified as if they were being attacked by any other unit (like for being 
fortified, terrain, city defenses, etc)? I would really think they were, and am 
acting as if that's true.

Also, do Citizens and Buildings get any bonus from terrain or city improvements 
(like Walls)?

-Defense Bonus: Citizens and Buildings now have 18 and 14 defense, respectively. 
With the increased effectiveness of bombard units the chance of devastating a 
city is far too high, far too early, for far too little of a production 
requirement.

-Multiple Resources: The resources with the highest disappearance probability 
have now had that amount decreased, so they are a bit more stable now. They 
seemed to move a bit too much as before, but they'll be tweaked more in the 
future if need be.

-Tech Cost: Squirearchy(-2).

-Many Units: I've made a bunch of changes to units, from changing their stats to 
changing the technology they become available with. Quite the bucket'o'changes. 
Let me know what you think!

-Difficulty Levels: I've majorly reduced the barbarian combat bonuses on the low 
difficultly levels and raised the Optimum City Amount by 5% per difficulty 
level. The reason being that, for instance, on Chieftain the barbarian bonus was 
800%. That means that a Warrior (1 attack originally, but it would be given an 8 
attack after the bonus) attacking a Barbarian (2 defense) that's fortified on a 
mountain would have a 74% chance of victory if they were both Conscripts, a 78% 
of both were Regulars, or a 87% chance when it's Regular vs Conscript (which is 
almost always the case)! 1 lone Regular Warrior fortified on a flood plain could 
stand up to 3 Raiders (which have 3 attack) 77% of the time, and 6 of them (one 
after another) more than 28% of the time! 

Chieftain should be pretty easy, but it makes barbarians totally irrelevant 
(that is, just free sources of gold). Basically all levels have been somewhat 
moved "up" one, so while Chieftain/Warlord/Regent/Monarchy/Emperor/Diety was 
800/400/200/100/50/0, it is now 400/200/100/75/50/25. The other levels have also 
been tweaked, so barbarians should finally be quite reasonably dangerous! 
Muahahaha! (the bonus added to Diety level is because barbs were just a tad too 
powerful without the player having any bonus against them...and it makes 
real-life sense, too)

-Military Academy: Now costs 50 to build instead of 60.

-Archer-type units: Now have a 0 range bombard ability (heard the idea in the 
forums, and want to see if it works like I hope it will), giving them one free 
"bombard" against an attacking unit. I hope it'll be as good as useful as I 
think it will be, but testing will show if I'm right. I may also have to give 
them Zone of Control, but we'll see.

-Chemistry: Chemistry has basically been removed, with it's position now filled 
by Metallurgy (the exact explanation is that Chemistry and Metallurgy have now 
been rolled in together as one tech). Other than having both Chemistry and 
Physics (both useless techs, in that they serve no function on their own) often 
coming one after the other, this also serves to solve the problem of the naval 
units equipped with cannons becoming available before canons were invented!

There will still be a problem with the "new" naval unit that comes available 
with astronomy, in that it requires saltpeter to build yet comes available 
before the gunpowder advance. You win some, you loose some. If a tech tree 
overhaul is done then this is something that can be addressed, but otherwise 
we'll just...well, ignore it, like everyone else has to ignore Frigates becoming 
available before Metallurgy.

-Longbowman: England's Unique Unit is now the Longbowman, rather than the 
Man-O-War. The Longbowman is now no longer available to other civilizations, and 
it's now functionally replaced by the new Crossbowman unit. The other idea for 
England is the Red Coat, but this will work for now.

-Crossbowman: New unit, taking the functional place of the Longbowman unit for 
all but England.

-Man-O-War: Now renamed to the Ship of the Line, and made available to all civs. 
It is functionally the same now as the Frigate/Man-O-War.

-Frigate: Now renamed to War Caravel, made available with Astronomy, and is 
available to all civs. It's current function is replaced by the Ship of the 
Line.

-ISSUE: I wish to change the American UU to some ground unit, but I don't know 
what it should be. The prime candidates I can think of is the Minuteman 
(available in the industrial age, like an improved Rifleman?) and the 
M1-A1/Abrams Tank (upgrade to Modern Armor, perhaps?). For now I'm going to try 
out making it the Minuteman, and we'll see how it goes (I don't know what I'm 
going to do with the F-15...might just leave it out for now).

The reason for these 2 UU changes is because you cannot trigger a Golden Age 
without the unit winning a battle. The Americans have it the worst, but the 
English suffer from it to a lesser degree. The other is that ground units are 
useful on all maps in every situation, while naval units really are only useful 
on more land-filled (especially Pangea) maps.

However, I believe that all civs should have 2 UUs, for more reasons than I want 
to even get into. Depending on the results of ERP4, I think this would be a good 
thing to implement reasonably soon. However, I want plenty of feedback and 
debate as to what the 2nd UU should be for each civ. I also believe that 
overhauling the governments is a more pressing issue, which should be done 
first.

With a smoothed out unit system, smoothed out tech tree (not over-hauled or 
largely changed, just smoothed out a bit in terms of cost, because I think I've 
fixed the major other problems already), added UUs, and an overhauled government 
system, I think I will be ready to call it LWC version 2.0! 


01/12/02:

-World Sizes: Optimal City Amount _slightly_ increased (1 for tiny and small, 2 
for normal and large, 3 for huge). Thus, corruption should be a weeeee bit 
lighter now.

-Note: I'm not sure if the 1.16f patch did this, or if it always did, but it 
seems that when you transition between ages that corruption suddenly decreases a 
little. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but it certainly seems that way to me, 
though it could just be the citys getting older.

-Diplomats and Spies: A few costs minorly decreased (exact amounts listed in 
changelog.txt). Can't change Steal World Map though, which sucks :(

-BUG: I forgot to include 2 graphics files (buildings-small.pcx and 
buildings-large.pcx) with the mod, so buildings weren't showing up in the build 
que quite like they should. In a word:  OOPS! Shouldn't have caused any crashes, 
however. It'll be fixed in ERP3.

-Golden Age: Now lasts 25 turns instead of 20. A few aspects involved, but now 
it's just more pleasant (and important) to take advantage of your Golden Age as 
best you can. That and it should also provide a nice little speed boost to the 
game, to offset other changes that may slow things down a bit.

-Error: Added some things in changes.txt that I forgot to add before (like the 
changed unit HPs).

-Civilopedia Update: Many, many entrys have been updated now in the civilopedia, 
but at this time I have left the "Description", which is entirely historical, 
alone for now. The vast majority of unit, tech, improvement, and wonder 
information is now reasonably reliable!

The only exceptions are the Scientific Method's requirement not being mentioned, 
and I skipped Small Wonders for now.

-Civ3 Civilopedia Bugs:

Note: All mentioned bugs have been fixed by me.

1) The Longbowman was listed as an excellant attacker in the ancient era, yet it 
becomes available in the middle ages. Hm...thought on second thought, maybe it 
was intentional (har har). It's changed now, since they are actually pretty good 
attackers now.

2) Pikeman are listed as "excellant defenders, especially against mounted 
units", even though they have absolutey NO bonus against mounted units!

3) Multiple unit entrys mention then "Bronze Age" and the "Iron Age". These 
particular entrys should relate to gameplay, not history, thus they've now been 
changed to the "Ancient Age". Warriors and Archers have not been changed, as 
they're descriptions seem purely historical anyway.

4) Clarification has now been added to entrys such as the Impi, where it says a 
unit will retreat "unless fighting another fast unit". It now says "unless 
fighting another equally fast unit", because a 2 movement unit won't run away 
from a 2 or 3 movement unit, but a 3 movement unit can run away from a 2 
movement unit (according to my information).

5) Samurai currently has the entry "[Japanese Samurai], are are dedicated 
unmounted warriors armed with excellent weapons." Notice the extra "are".

6) The entry for JS Bach's Cathedral has an extra space between the last letter 
and the period that ends the sentance, like so "city .".

-Mass Transit System: Now produces 4 pollution instead of 2.

-Magellan's Voyage: Now available with Navigation again.

-BUG: Grapes and Precious Metals don't show up right in the Civilopedia, but now 
are fixed.

-Addition: Specials Ops Team and Modern Destroyer now has it's own custom 
civilopedia graphics, to go along with the (optional) unit animation addons.



-NEW VERSION: LWC ERP3. This version fixes bugs (like a missing unit folder, 
among others), adds some customized cilvilopedia graphics, contains many updates 
of the civilopedia (as well as fixes some errors it contained originally), and 
tweaks quite a many different settings and unit stats.

All users should upgrade to this new version, because you won't loose your saved 
games! In short, there's no reason not to upgrade. And remember: Send in those 
saved games!


01/11/02:

-Side-Effect: I found an odd side effect with giving Palace a defense bonus. If 
your city is sacked by barbarians, there's a chance they'll destroy the Palace 
(whoops!). Can't do anything about it and the positive aspect of the bonus is 
very good, so just be sure and defend your capital from babarians :)

-Bug: I didn't include the Trebuchet unit folder with ERP2, but it will be 
included in ERP3. There are also some other problems with Trebuchet, but all 
should be fixed.

-Unit Changes: I've changed the rate of fire for quite a few naval units and 
aircraft. 

-Todo: Change various Civilopedia entrys (like for Map Making) for techs and, 
most of all, units, so people can jump straight into the game and be able to 
rely on most of the Civilopedia to give correct information.

-Catapult: I forgot to have it upgrade into the Trebuchet, but it's fixed now.


01/10/02:

-Error: I forgot to mention that Coracle is now available with Pottery, instead 
of nothing.

-Error: I also forgot to mention that Caravel no longer sinks in the ocean!

-Tech Costs: Squirearchy(-6), Printing Press(+2), Navigation(-2), Theory of 
Gravity(-4).


01/09/02:

-Error: Forgot to note War Galley becoming the Barbarian Sea Unit in 
changes.txt.

-Barracks: Now available with Warrior Code instead of nothing.

-Note: Added entry to changes.txt about the changes to units that can Pillage.

-Mech Infantry: Can no longer Pillage.

-BUG FIXS: Crashes from building Battle Field Medicine, Intelligence Agency, or 
the 3 new wonders should now be completely fixed with the new version. Somehow 
pediaicons.txt didn't have their entrys right...I haven't a clue as to why. 
*shrug* Thanks goes to daithos for telling me about it and posting a .sav that 
allowed me to find the problem.

I have also recently discovered that, for reasons I haven't confirmed at this 
time (so I won't mention them), the bottom of pediaicons.txt has gotten cut-off. 
This now explains why earlier versions of the LWC Mod has crashed when 
transitioning to the Modern age. However, that was only partially cut off. 

The entire bottom section got cut off this time, resulting in a crash every time 
the age transition screen popped up! I have found an intact version of the file 
and copied the section where it should be, thus every crash bug reported has not 
been completely fixed. Many thanks to Igbe for being the first person to inform 
me of this!

-Volunteerism: Cost -10.

-Multiple Units: From the late Middle Ages on, units are now more expensive to 
build (will be tweaked more as I get more information and more debate occurs). 
In the early Industrial Age it's not unusual for Cavalry to take 1-3 turns to 
build in medium sized citys (12-15), which isn't desirable. I want to hear what 
everyone thinks about this. Should units be more expensive later on? Less? Tell 
me what you think!

This will have the effect of smaller citys (and citys with high corruption) 
being unsuitable for building units, but I think that's the way it should work. 
I haven't toyed with the buildings yet, but we'll see.

I haven't redone the costs of the later naval ships, but I'll probably do that 
later.

-Sewer System: Reduces pollution by 3 instead of 2.

-City Dump: Reduces pollution by 4 instead of 2.

-NEW unit: Trebuchet, bombard unit. Available with Feudalism, costs 6, 1 
defense, 10 bombard strength, and 2 rate of fire, requires Iron.

-Cannon: Now has 3 rate of fire instead of 2, and has it's cost increased (as it 
should be more useful now...hopefully).

-Artillery: Now has 2 movement, up from 1, cost increase.

-Radar Artillery: Now has 3 movement, up from 2, cost increase.

-ISSUE: With bombard units no longer being capturable because of their non-0 
defense value (except missles), will the increased movement (and thus the 
ability to flee) be a bad combination? I'm thinking it will be fine, but we'll 
see.

-Tech Cost: Pottery(+1), Feudalism(+2), Engineering(-2), Squirearchy(-1).

-Palace, Forbidden Palace: Now has 20 bombard defense instead of 12.

-REQUEST: EMAIL ME YOUR LWC SAVED GAMES! Zip 'em up, tell me what version of the 
LWC mod it is, and make them an attachment to an email to aemuli@yahoo.com

This goes for ALL versions, well into the future until I tell people to stop 
doing it!

Throughout the course of the game, if you wouldn't mind, save the games at the 
begining, middle, and end of each age. Exclude only the early and middle ancient 
age, as I have no need for those. I most desire saves from the late Middle Ages 
on, and personally prefer those from the difficulty levels of Regent or Monarch. 
However, I want the other ones too :)

This may also turn into a unique feature of the LWC mod later on, because when I 
get a good solid version of the LWC that everyone can play for multiple 
days/weeks I will request people send in some saves, which I can play around 
with and turn into a special kind of Scenario! 

I'm not sure exactly why, but playing a game someone else has already started is 
really quite enjoyable, and I find I can learn alot from it (and I'm sure others 
can too). I have many, many, many ideas for this, but for now I want the saves 
strictly for testing. Most of the LWC changes take effect towards the end of the 
middle ages, and I don't want to have to play all the way from the begining just 
to get there and decide something should be tweaked :P

Oh, and you don't have to be a really good player either, or even have been 
playing Civ3 that long! Behind or ahead, good or bad strategies, it doesn't 
matter to me! 


-NEW VERSION (at almost exactly midnight!): LWC ERP2. Fixes all known crash 
bugs, adds a new unit, tweaks land unit costs, increases bombardment unit 
strengths (including some aircraft), changes a few tech costs, and some other 
changes too.

All users should (and frankly, must) upgrade to this new version. Don't worry, 
you won't loose your saved games! The crash bugs will be fixed, but the new 
units and unit changes will _not_ be present, so you'll have to start a New Game 
to get the changes.

Note: This copies over the current add-on packs, so reinstall those after 
upgrading. There is also no need to uninstall/reinstall Civ3 :)


01/08/02:

-Note: Hadn't updated this, but I've been working on it and at this time, nearly 
midnight, the early release version has been completed!

-NEW VERSION: Long Winded Changes, Early Release Preview 1 (LWC_ERP1). View 
changes.txt for information.


12/11/01:

-Note: In the Apolyton General Forum I read a thread by E_T that detailed how to 
get units to upgrade into their civ-specific special unit counterparts. I will 
be testing this to see how desirable it's inclusion will be.

-Update: So far I believe I've finished doing all changes in the editor to 
everything but units, and I believe I'm done with the land units and maybe 
bombard units. That is I'm done to the point where they're ready for testing.

Now on to Naval and then finally Air units.


12/10/01:

-Note: I'm working on the units now, and I've noticed something. It seems that 
the battle system in the ancient age is mostly "OK", and I've never really had a 
problem with it anyway. Other than fixing the Chariot I can pretty much just 
leave it as it is.

For now I will simply ignore the historical points of the units and deal only 
with numbers themselves. This is because the way a Longbowman attacks and a 
Knight attacks are the same in every way except the Knight can retreat. The fact 
that mounted troops are aweful at attacking pikeman makes no difference in Civ3, 
and just can't be simulated at this time.

But the real problem comes in the Middle Ages with the introduction of the 
Pikeman. See, the chance of a Knight/Longbowman (4 attack) winning versus a 
fortified Pikeman (3 defense) out in the open is basically a 50/50 chance (using 
the Civilization III Combat Calculator). Now put that Pikeman fortified in a 
city or walled town and the Longbowman has only a 35% chance of winning (I won't 
mention Knight because it can retreat without being destroyed, but that doesn't 
effect it getting it's ass kicked). If the City/Walled Town was built on a Hill 
then the chance of winning is only 27%.

And for a unit with a higher attack you have to wait till Cavalry (6 attack). 
But by that time you've had the 4 defense Musketman available for a MINIMUM of 
the time it took to obtain Chemistry, Metallurgy, and Military Tradition. And 
the adds are only slightly better than it's predessor.

This is a whole which must be fixed. In the open it should be a reasonably 
simple matter for offensive units to beat defensive units. However it should 
clearly be much more difficult to beat them when they are in a defensive 
position. Remember, if a unit is fortified in a City on a Hill then it gets a 
+125% defensive bonus! Or 85% if it isn't on a Hill.

Basically the rest of the game goes in exactly the same manner, where lack of 
unit diversity throughout the ages (the defender usually comes right before or 
at the same time as the attacker). It doesn't have to be a huge difference, but 
it should be handled in a way that at one point the attacker has a better than 
50% chance of winning, and at another it's the defender with the 50%+ chance of 
winning. In the open the defender should always be at the disadvantage, but it's 
in fortified areas that wars of attrition can popup and where siege warfare 
becoems required.

So that's what I'm setting out to do. We'll see how it goes.

Oh, and one more thing to remember: When there is a greater chance of 
winning/loosing, then there is a greater chance a unit will see a promotion, 
which makes them even more effective. While that Longbowman vs Pikeman had a 35% 
chance when they were even in hit points, regular vs veteran means it will have 
only a 20% chance of victory, and against an Elite there is only an 11% chance 
of winning (that means you're going to have to throw a ton of units at that 
sucker). Good to remember 

-Note: Well, it's mid-day and I've been hacking away at this since about 7 am. 
Time to sleep now, hehe ;)

I did however get both combat calculation editors modified to work to my liking, 
so it should be nice and easy to figure out what units are or are not 
unbalanced.

I'll release it with the mod, because it's very interesting. For instance, 
giving Cavalry 8 attack instead of 6 doesn't seem to over power them. Yet at the 
same time the +2 defense that Rifleman has over Musketman seems to give it too 
much power...hah, who'd of thunk it?


12/08/01:

-Note: I'm totally remaking the mod and will be detailing everything I change in 
the file changes.txt. Should make it alot easier to see what the LWC mod 
actually changes.



12/07/01:

-Got the new Patch: I just got the new patch and have begun totally reworking 
the LWC mod to fully support the official patch changes.

-Note: I will temporarily be excluding the School of Stone Crafting and Stone 
Masons 
Workshop as they are causing the game to crash, but they may be readded once I 
figure out what was causing the trouble.

-City and Leader Names: I have integrated the city and leader name 
changes/additions made by Sevorak's citynames mod. I have also added 2 leaders 
to the Zulu: Dinuzulu and Zwelithini. Now all the civs are nicely rounded out.

-IMPORTANT NOTE: All changes made to the LWC mod are now recorded in the file 
oldchangelog.txt, which is still distributed with the LWC mod for old 
credits/issues/notes it contains.