you know, things get pretty funny when you make the statue of zeus a small wonder.

[pauli]

oh, man. i urge everyone to try this:

a: bump ivory back up to civ3 appearance rates.
b: make soz a small wonder.
c: play a 31 civ game on pangaea, huge map.

this is a riot. other than my initial war to kill off four of the civs who spawned in my immediate neighboring squares, every war has consisted of ancient cavalry charges, backed up with some swordsmen and now med inf. you know a war's coming when a stack of ac appears on a border.

next game, i'm making another seven soz's for the other luxuries... and setting them never to obsolesce.
(ok, ok, i'm also going to cut the rate to 10 turns )

oh, and i find it interesting to watch the celts use a mix of ac and gs in their apparently doomed effort to stave off the iroquois. the extra hitpoint is *definately* helping the ac stay alive a bit longer.

[Antrine]

Yes, here is my list of 'small wonders'

Hanging Gardens
Colossus
The Great Lighthouse
Sistine Chapel
Magellan's Voyage
Copernicus' Observatory
Leonardo's Workshop
JS Bach's Cathedral
Newton's University
Smith's Trading Company
Heroic Epic
Forbidden Palace
Pentagon
Statue of Zeus
Mausoleum of Mausollos
Knights Templar
Secret Police HQ
Cure for Cancer
Longevity
_______
none obsolesce
All have a range of costs, building requirements such as 5 Cathedrals, 4 Marketplaces etc. or the building of lesser related 'small wonders'
Many produce units
As well do other 'city improvements'
________

Yes, it rocks and rolls
Especially with every govenment (difficulty) set at 'no advantage' against barbarians. Huge map with 150 barbarian huts set at 'raging' and with the default barbarians as range extended (2 moves) 'berserker' units and the advanced barbarians being 'cossacks'.

Though my forces were necessarily large I got hit very early in the 'second age' Medival with no less than hundreds of 'cossacks'. Much was lost, however I am recovering but some lands remain so invested they are off limits to all civs.
I had to build some 40 forts most hastily to keep the borders intact. Pikeman are a godsend against even gun wielding 'cossacks'. Although you must have a lot of them...

[ducki]

Those sound like interesting and crazy mods, respectively. j/k Antrine, yours sounds interesting too.

You guys got these somewhere for d/l?

[Antrine]

I'm working on it, play tested again late, almost ready I think no glaring balance problems so far. I'm on build 15. There is such a difference in play between the restless and raging of barbarians that two versions may be advisable.

[vmxa1]

With the requirements of 5 of this and 4 of that, the rich will just get richer. I would expect a real killer AI at higher levels.

[Antrine]

I am not well versed in the nuances of going up the difficulty ladder, outside of my experience with CIV ll, so I created two difficulty levels and named them Imperium and Imperium I with only telling difference being the start mixture for the AI Civs.

Rich getting riching or an AI slogging down with two few cities trying to build wonders. So I compensated with four pre-built cities, one size 10 so the AI can blissfully waste it on wonder building and a mix of 15-19 starting settlers for each AI. So by turn 5-8 all easily have at least 20-24 cities. Big Huge map (360x306) so eight empires are still spread out. I made it so the primary Human starting civ is surrounded by six of the AI's like hands on a clock at 11, 2, 4, 6, 8 and lastly 9. So at any one time there are at least four full fronts to contend with. Position 8 is South America and position 9 is North America so the Atlantic Ocean is barrier for a Age and half.