The reason I made this one harder to build settlers is because I wanted to slow down the process of settling cities straight away - I am the kind of guy who likes to add realism because that's what I like in gameplay. The way it is set normaly is too unrealistic. By the year 2000BC there is already a fairly large civilization with either a strong army or economy and well on its way to knowing most of the world.
Anyway, I played the game to 50ad, and I discovered that it worked really well. You will notice that not everyone will take off straight away. If there were 16 Civs, only 6 of them would take off early in the game. The others would struggle a bit (trying to find wood and stone by using colonies - this is really the only way to do it.) Once you've got those two resources you can start producing settlers.
By the time it reached about 0AD, every civ except two had managed to pull its self out of that struggle stage and become a civilization that can defend itself. The other 2 were struggling in the desert. But I kept a close eye on them to see how they were coping, and the AI does seem to try and build colonies in far off places with very long roads back to the capital (funny really, its as if I tortured them).
Rather than everyone having a fair go STRAIGHT AWAY! you end up with a really good diverse set of Civs, ones that are strong, ones that are weak, ones that are in between; and you just don't know what's going to happen next. This really made the game very interesting, things constantly changed, rather than "Oh, they're gonna be one of the big guys at the end of the game."
And rightly so, because the romans were the big ones, and are they today? no, and that's how this game will play too.
Anyway, I played the game to 50ad, and I discovered that it worked really well. You will notice that not everyone will take off straight away. If there were 16 Civs, only 6 of them would take off early in the game. The others would struggle a bit (trying to find wood and stone by using colonies - this is really the only way to do it.) Once you've got those two resources you can start producing settlers.
By the time it reached about 0AD, every civ except two had managed to pull its self out of that struggle stage and become a civilization that can defend itself. The other 2 were struggling in the desert. But I kept a close eye on them to see how they were coping, and the AI does seem to try and build colonies in far off places with very long roads back to the capital (funny really, its as if I tortured them).
Rather than everyone having a fair go STRAIGHT AWAY! you end up with a really good diverse set of Civs, ones that are strong, ones that are weak, ones that are in between; and you just don't know what's going to happen next. This really made the game very interesting, things constantly changed, rather than "Oh, they're gonna be one of the big guys at the end of the game."
And rightly so, because the romans were the big ones, and are they today? no, and that's how this game will play too.
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