good rule edits, anyone?

[theDragon]

Hey--- is that Rhye's Civ Mod for Conquests only?
Cuz if it is: that means im going to have to buy that expansion to keep up with everyone here at Apolyton! Good enough excuse right? ..... Yea but seriously, vanilla mods are extinct, and I was wondering if Rhyes was one of the last ... or if it was a Conquests only mod. Thanks for the help, Ya'll rock!

[Xorbon]

As a few people have already said, make all arty units airliftable. I'd also suggest doing the same for workers, scouts, and explorers, but not settlers.

In a mod I've made, I gave arty units (except for radar artillery) the 'foot unit' flag. That way, they can be airdropped by helicopters. You can do the same for workers, too.

Give cruise missiles the 'tactical missile' flag so they can be carried by nuclear subs.

[GodKing]

One of the fun ones I do occassionally is to change the barbarian units around a bit - such as giving them privateers. Makes life with lots of barbs very interesting.

[Theseus]

Here is a veeeery extensive mod:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=3541313#post3541313

They got a nice write-up in the latest issue of 'Computer Gaming' magazine.

[hexagonian]

Enable rails on the last tech available in the game.
Increase production time for all roads.

[joncnunn]

Things I've tried:

1. Double hit points : Works well reducing randomness.

2. Making less terraign able to support cities : AI could not handle it. For that matter, the AI seems to stop expanding if confronted with a large section of marsh on an RGM under the standard rules. [Not bother to try to place cities on the far side of it by land]

3. Made mining impossible in grassland & plains : AI could not handle it. Resulted in AI having extremely low shield cities in grassland areas.

4. Made several wonders require a luxary resource : AI could not handle it. It traded the luxaries needed to build an unbuilt wonder that could be built now at the same price as one that only allowed an already built wonder.

5. Made several wonders require it to be within CR : Better than above, but still the AI couldn't really handle it, in many cases leaving the luxary in a gap between it's cities.

6. Increasing luxaries & resources : Worked, found a ratio that restores Vanilla level lux & resources.

7. Making Govt techs untradable (combined with moving Police Station to Nationalism): AI couldn't handle. AI now wasted a bunch of time researching techs they didn't use.

8. Making all optional techs required : That worked very well. It made the GL and to a lesser degree Oracle and Temple of Artiemis much more valuable.

9. Making Mettalurgy require Navigation. Works but had no real affect on gameplay.

10. Making Democracy require Metalurgy & Free Artistry, FA require PP & MT. This works.

11. Giving Depotism, Monarcy, Republic, Fuedalism a metro unit support cost of 0. Worked great as an incentive to leave those Republic for Democracy as Metros come on line.

12. Reducing Republic's support for med size towns from 3 to 2. This works in making it difficult to possibly have the army size to go to war with a Republic.

13. Making Privateers adviable with Astromeny. Works: Becomes a popular naval build for the AI for a while.

14. Made Ancient Calvary upgradable to Regular Calvary. Overpowered this wonder.

15. Made Cruisaders upgrade to Guerrillas. Seems to work ok.

[Mace]

I'm experimenting with:

1) making mountains impassable except to foot units, Keshik, Pachuti Scout, etc. Once you build a road/rr, you're fine.

2) making ocean impassable terrain. Only select units (caravel, and later) will have the ability to move in the ocean type. This might hurt AI too much on contacts, though. But I like the idea of ancient-era isolation...

3) making irrigation not available until the middle ages
(1st agricultural revolution/wheeled plow/crop rotation).
After all, in the ancient world, only river valleys (i.e. Civ3, floodplains, grasslands, etc.) had large population cities.
Pop increased in two doses: the 1100's and 1200's, and then later in the 1800's (industrial rev). In Civ3 game-terms that equates to irrigation and railroads/transport/refrigeration in my book.

4) re-enable THE PLAGUE. !!

I'm not for airlifting too many modern units. In the real world, we have fast sealift ships that do that. C5's and C-141s, even a whole wing of them, can't carry a significant number of tanks or mech. inf. and equip. to make a difference.

[Willem]

Originally posted by joncnunn

2. Making less terraign able to support cities : AI could not handle it. For that matter, the AI seems to stop expanding if confronted with a large section of marsh on an RGM under the standard rules. [Not bother to try to place cities on the far side of it by land]

That's not my experience. I've made it impossible to build cities on Desert and Tundra and it hasn't stopped the AI from trying to go around them.

3. Made mining impossible in grassland & plains : AI could not handle it. Resulted in AI having extremely low shield cities in grassland areas.

Same thing, though I've bumped my food requirements for citizens from 2 to 3 so I get low shield cities as well. But the AI does actively mine Hills etc.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Mace

1) making mountains impassable except to foot units, Keshik, Pachuti Scout, etc. Once you build a road/rr, you're fine.

Works for me. It might hinder the AI somewhat, but I end up with a much more strategic game. I've even made Jungles impassable to most units.

2) making ocean impassable terrain. Only select units (caravel, and later) will have the ability to move in the ocean type. This might hurt AI too much on contacts, though. But I like the idea of ancient-era isolation...

This won't hurt the AI, as it doesn't go for suicide runs anyway. In fact it probably balances things out since the human player might take the chance to cross the Ocean.

[Dis]

interesting ideas here. I have to try these out.

[Mace]

Originally posted by Willem
Works for me. It might hinder the AI somewhat, but I end up with a much more strategic game. I've even made Jungles impassable to most units.

A couple of mods do this: I think Rhyes or DyP does it. I haven't played it enough to see how the AI handles it.
Their settler/spearmen stacks could still cross the mtns so I don't think it hurts their REX too much. But it might hurt their warfighting...depends what they use. In the real world, mountains were a big barrier (Alps, Himalayas, Taurus range (Byz and Arab border in Asia Minor...).

I don't want to do any mod to hurt the AI. The AI needs all the help it can get, (except on the highest diffs where it has all the unit and production bonuses).

This won't hurt the AI, as it doesn't go for suicide runs anyway. In fact it probably balances things out since the human player might take the chance to cross the Ocean.

Good point. Rhyes of Civ mod does this mod to ocean terrain. I have tested it and really do like it. Keeps the human player isolated in the ancient world. Another thing Rhyes does is reduce the move of curraghs to 1. I am not sure if I like that or not...yet.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Mace

Their settler/spearmen stacks could still cross the mtns so I don't think it hurts their REX too much.

I have an early Settler that's wheeled so there's limits to where the AI can go. I like it myself since I can sometimes find choke points that prevent any AI Settlers from crossing into my territory. I admit though that the AI sometimes gets a terrible starting position and becomes useless, but that's only the occasional one and there's 14 others in the game so I don't really worry about it to much.

I do have a non-wheeled Settler come up with Magnetism, so the Jungles can be developed then.

[Mace]

Originally posted by Willem
I have an early Settler that's wheeled so there's limits to where the AI can go.

Doesn't that weaken the AI's REX quite a bit?

I do have a non-wheeled Settler come up with Magnetism, so the Jungles can be developed then.

What about the Mayan civilization, who developed a civ out of Jungle without magnetism? So did Ankgor (Thailand) and to some extent, India, and Inca.

But generally I agree with you, jungle should be a significant barrier/hindrance to development before at least bulldozers and Agent Orange got invented...

[joncnunn]

On #1: What your describing will hurt the AI, it's not going to want to road tiles unless it's either inside it's cultural boundary or it's also part of it's irrigation chaining.

On #2 : Actually, it would help the AI, AI never tries suicide galleys, and this disallows human suicide galleys.

On #3: I think the AI can handle this about as well as a human. It's going to be tough on anyone starting in plains /desert, even with a river. It would also greatly reduce one of the advantages of the over-powered agricuture traight.

I do note though that under Despotism, the 3rd food is lost.

Originally posted by Mace
I'm experimenting with:

1) making mountains impassable except to foot units, Keshik, Pachuti Scout, etc. Once you build a road/rr, you're fine.

2) making ocean impassable terrain. Only select units (caravel, and later) will have the ability to move in the ocean type. This might hurt AI too much on contacts, though. But I like the idea of ancient-era isolation...

3) making irrigation not available until the middle ages
(1st agricultural revolution/wheeled plow/crop rotation).
After all, in the ancient world, only river valleys (i.e. Civ3, floodplains, grasslands, etc.) had large population cities.
Pop increased in two doses: the 1100's and 1200's, and then later in the 1800's (industrial rev). In Civ3 game-terms that equates to irrigation and railroads/transport/refrigeration in my book.

4) re-enable THE PLAGUE. !!

I'm not for airlifting too many modern units. In the real world, we have fast sealift ships that do that. C5's and C-141s, even a whole wing of them, can't carry a significant number of tanks or mech. inf. and equip. to make a difference.

[joncnunn]

I'm refering to a virtual all grassland area, no hills or plains.

AI does not know that it's needs to plant forests on some of the grassland no shield tiles to increase sheild production.

Originally posted by Willem

Same thing, though I've bumped my food requirements for citizens from 2 to 3 so I get low shield cities as well. But the AI does actively mine Hills etc.