Upcoming Scenario: AoD redone

[Wernazuma III]

In the past week two weeks, I've playewd a bit with the AoD Conquest and decided to make it better. I changed the map a bit and went on thinking, until the changes were everytime more different from the original. I'd like to hear your opinion about my ideas:
1) New Civs: Tupi, Araucans, Plains Indians, Pueblos, Songhay
2) New Units: Advanced Indian Units (muskets, horses), Indian Flavor units, African Flavor units
3) New Resources: Cacao, Slaves, Bisons, Turkey etc.
4) Changed concepts: Gold and Silver Mines often get depleted, there's few "Large Deposits" that guarantee stable large profit. While all other goods now produce treasure less frequently, those improvements give one treasury every 2 turns
5) Reworked Techtrees (not too much changed)
6)Larger Timescale (1490-1740)
7) New concept: Indian Musket units. Native Americans need the "Weapons" resource in order to build musket units. Only Europeans do possess the resource (and they possess several).
8) The Songhay have Arab Slave Markets who pump out Treasures every 5 turns
9) No more Colonists; instead newspapers and wonders House of Trades and Emigration Campaign which produce free Settlers (Newspaper every 25 turns, the wonders every ten)
10) New strategy for Native Civs: After discovering "Syncretism", aim for the wonder"Papal Recognition". Papal Recognition will boost the technological advancement considerably until reaching counter-reformation.
Other post-conquest wonders for the natives are "European Mercenaries, a wonder with high maintainance, but which keeps building Pikemen (in my scenario a better unit than in standard game, like Swiss Pikemen)

Now, I'm sure that these ideas need a lot of testing and actually I don't really play too much CivIII, I mod more than I play...
Would anyone of you be interested in playtesting and balancing the scenario?
Do you have more ideas? Especially more "post-conquest" indian wonders/improvements?

Thx, Wernazuma

[Slax]

Do you have reasons for these changes?

[Wernazuma III]

Well, there's several reasons.
1.Africa was void space and definitely needed a civ there, so I introduced the Songhay.
2. In the AoD mod, the "civilized" American civs are the biggest obstacle in America to the Europeans, while in reality it was the uncivilized, more nomadic people.
3. The changes with the gold and silver has historical background. The whole Spanish wealth in its golden age came from basically two(!) mining regions in America: Zacatecas (Mexico) and especially Potosà (Bolivia). The wealth generated by those mines came to Spain in the Silver Fleets, the most important targets for the pirates. With the benefits of that silver, Spain could afford its very expensive wars in Europe.
On the other hand most mines (especially gold mines) only yielded lare profits for a very short time and then got depleted within few decades.
4. In AoD, Indians never come to get musket units. However, if the civilized nations hadn't been destroyed so quickly, they surely would have adapted and at least when getting weapons from European traders, Indians learned quickly how to use them.
That's the most important reasons.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

But don't gold and silver mines continue to generate treasure after the resource that allowed them to be built disappears?

Making them deplete would just rotate them around the map allowing for a larger number of mines to be built.

[Wernazuma III]

That'd be really bad! I haven't tried out yet. That would f*ck up my whole concept.

[Kuciwalker]

I know the SoZ requires Ivory for it to produce units. Maybe if the wonder requires a resource in the city radius, and it's not, then it will stop working too.

[Wernazuma III]

Could anyone verify or falsify the allegation?