Things I'd like to change

[Theben]

1. Why are spearmen only available with copper/iron? Didn't people make spears w/o metal? Why are Skirmishers "archers" when they look like (and are as strong as) spearmen?

2. Change the chariot/horse bonus to +25% on flat terrain. Make sure it doesn't work on hills or forest. This could alter with certain UUs. Camel Archers, FE, could be +50% in desert.

3. Why is Slavery with Bronze Working? IIRC the Aztecs slaved a lot of people but didn't have much iron or bronze. They did have a priesthood, tho. Move Slavery civic to Priesthood.

4. Change the bombard units back to how they worked in CivIII with a few minor variations. Say if you're attacked and have a bombard unit that wasn't used last turn, it could fire a blast at the attacker. No captures tho, if you overrun them they get destroyed. And don't let them attack sea units, but allow them to defend, as above.

5. End the instant build of slavery. Instead, have it cost 1 or 2 food/turn and increase unhappiness. In return you get x2 or x3 hammers produced. Same for buying things, except all you lose is money.

6. Why don't leader pictures advance as the ages advance? They did that in CivIII and CivI. Bring it back!

7. I can BUILD a new unit, but I can only BUY an upgrade. I want to be able to BUILD an upgrade!

8. Have archers and spearmen w/hunting. Swords and axes with bronze. Make them weaker now, stronger with better tech. FE, archers=STR3, +25% with bronze, +25% more with iron. Spearmen=STR3, +50% with bronze, etc.

9. Allow other techs to have more influence. Like Radio gives a +5% to all units (better communications). Medicine gives +1 health to all cities upon discovery. Not just a few big things (free tech with Liberalism), a lot of little things.

That's all for now. Maybe more later whem I think about it. So which ones can I mod into the game now, and which are "wait for Civ5"?

[snoopy369]

Re: Things I'd like to change

Originally posted by Theben
1. Why are spearmen only available with copper/iron? Didn't people make spears w/o metal? Why are Skirmishers "archers" when they look like (and are as strong as) spearmen?

Easy to mod in part 1, part 2 is not so easy (you'd have to change the skirmisher's appearance). Just remove the copper requirement from the XML file.

2. Change the chariot/horse bonus to +25% on flat terrain. Make sure it doesn't work on hills or forest. This could alter with certain UUs. Camel Archers, FE, could be +50% in desert.

Not too hard to do I don't think, not sure if 'flat' terrain bonus is a possibility but you could always give it a general increase (say, +25% to its total power) and then a negative terrain bonus in hills/forests.

3. Why is Slavery with Bronze Working? IIRC the Aztecs slaved a lot of people but didn't have much iron or bronze. They did have a priesthood, tho. Move Slavery civic to Priesthood.

Easy to do (in the XML files).

4. Change the bombard units back to how they worked in CivIII with a few minor variations. Say if you're attacked and have a bombard unit that wasn't used last turn, it could fire a blast at the attacker. No captures tho, if you overrun them they get destroyed. And don't let them attack sea units, but allow them to defend, as above.

IMO stupid to do (as bombard was completely broken in Civ3). Use Dale's Combat Mod instead (over in creation forum), I think part of that does fix ranged combat to be more interesting.

5. End the instant build of slavery. Instead, have it cost 1 or 2 food/turn and increase unhappiness. In return you get x2 or x3 hammers produced. Same for buying things, except all you lose is money.

Not realistic to mod in (without extensive SDK modding).

6. Why don't leader pictures advance as the ages advance? They did that in CivIII and CivI. Bring it back!

You could mod that in with python I believe.

7. I can BUILD a new unit, but I can only BUY an upgrade. I want to be able to BUILD an upgrade!

Not realistic.

8. Have archers and spearmen w/hunting. Swords and axes with bronze. Make them weaker now, stronger with better tech. FE, archers=STR3, +25% with bronze, +25% more with iron. Spearmen=STR3, +50% with bronze, etc.

Could be done with XML generally.

9. Allow other techs to have more influence. Like Radio gives a +5% to all units (better communications). Medicine gives +1 health to all cities upon discovery. Not just a few big things (free tech with Liberalism), a lot of little things.

Radio is probably not feasible without SDK modding at least to add an XML tag, Medicine might be doable in the XML or with python.

[Wiglaf]

Would any of these really improve your quality of life? I have a hard time thinking you'd go home at night and say, damn, it's a good thing my leaderheads age over the course of the game now. Don't know how I got by without it!

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Would any of these really improve your quality of life? I have a hard time thinking you'd go home at night and say, damn, it's a good thing my leaderheads age over the course of the game now. Don't know how I got by without it!

Wow. I agree with that comment.

Wodan

[Theben]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Would any of these really improve your quality of life? I have a hard time thinking you'd go home at night and say, damn, it's a good thing my leaderheads age over the course of the game now. Don't know how I got by without it!

Yes. My life would be complete.

[Krill]

1. Return Espionage back to Warlords 2.08 (ie fix it).
2. Remove Walls and Castles slowing of bombardment.
3. Let catapults kill (and other seige units)
4. Remove flanking from damaging cats.
5. Decrease settler costs in Modern and Future (by 33%-50%)
6. Make every start have atleast 3 flood plains or a food resource that gives +4 food

[The Priest]

Krill it sounds like you used to like rolling around with a huge stack of catapults, and are narked that on their own now they can't capture anything, are at risk from horse archers, and can be slowed by walls.

But surely this is forcing a more subtle game, which is good?

[wodan11]

Actually sounds like Krill wants to play Civ3.

Wodan

[Krill]

Nice contribution to the thread Wodan You are a much better troll than Wiglaf, I'll have to give that to you.

[Krill]

Originally posted by The Priest
Krill it sounds like you used to like rolling around with a huge stack of catapults, and are narked that on their own now they can't capture anything, are at risk from horse archers, and can be slowed by walls.

But surely this is forcing a more subtle game, which is good?

Not really; all it did was unbalance the game now because cats are useless in every situation except when you have resources, and when you are defending. Consider that if you attack with catapults, all the defender has to do is to attack the stack with Flanking HA and the HA will collateral the cats, all of that collateral being put straight on the cats (with maybe the cats dying). If the defender attacked with catapults instead none of the attackers cats will get any damage at all and nothing would die, so if you don't have horses you are now at an even bigger disadvantage, nevermind the fact that HA can kill everything excepting spears, and cats can't kill anything at all. And they cost the same, but cats are harder to get to in the tech tree...And then you have to face the problem of walls, which need to be bombed down, but you can't do because all of the attackers cats are going to be dead from the HA stack. So there is no point building any catapults at all if you plan to attack, just build a crapload of units and suicide them at the walled city because it's the only semireliable way of taking the city, CR swords and combat HA are best (with mixed in chariots) and a few defensive axes and spears as guard.

Makes for a brilliant strategy game, I can tell you

As it is Cats have been nerfed into oblivion. The raise in cost and making the anti seige promo available after combat one (so available to HA with stables, or swords with vassalage, so not hard to get to really compared to cats) was enough to make cats mortal, but Firaxis made the game even more defense orientated than was necassary IMO. Rolling around with stacks of cats was OK against a crap AI and n00b MP players, but with the raise in cost and promo change shouldn't let it work and don't.

If Firaxis want it fixed, removing flanking is a must, but the first testing step they would try (not that they will as there is only one patch to go on CIV) would be to make cats only get a limited amount of health removed from flanking HA and to also have the collateral from the HA spread over the other units in the stack and the damage that would land on none catapult units ignored, so collateral from teh HA and catapults are treated identically. The second thing would be to halve the effect of the walls affecting bombardment, and using the current decreased rate from walls as the rate for castles (Sitting outside a castle with accuracy trebs for 5 turns bombing it down...or would do if the trebs didn;t die from teh HA attack...isn't exactly conducive to a good attack, and there is nothing an attacker can do to nullify it. Not good for a strategy game...). If that was enough (and it might be) then that would be a good change to the game. Letting cats kill again would be the last change, and it would be a desparate one. It might not be needed if the above changes were made, and probably shouldn't because it would then make defending easier than the corresponding easing of attacking.

[Wiglaf]

A very verbose post that made me dizzy. Try to clear up your thoughts prior to these long posts in the future, you are simply trying to disorient people with rambling.

Not really; all it did was unbalance the game now because cats are useless in every situation except when you have resources, and when you are defending.

They're worthless! Except in 50% of combat situations and when you have resources. Otherwise worthless!!1

[Krill]

Wiglaf, if you want me to spam, I'm happy to oblige.

[Krill]

The issue isn't whether cats are good or bad, the issue is wether attacking is too hard or too easy and how this is affected by the catapults nerf in BtS.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Krill
Nice contribution to the thread Wodan You are a much better troll than Wiglaf, I'll have to give that to you.

Well THAT'S not hard.

Though, I must agree with his comment. Rambling posts may very well have valid points but they bury it in incoherency and lack of any semblance to an organized presentation, which has the net effect of diminishing your own argument in self defeat. Might as well not bother.

Wodan

[Krill]

Unfortunately fo you it's also grammatically correct, so either refute it or accept that I'm right