What have you changed?

[Qnuc.dk]

some mods... all DL from this site! which definitely are bonuses!

wonder splash info (better than the original?!)
resources icons (easy to spot strategic resources)
ppl mood smiley icons
irrigation graphic (better that the original?!)
more city names (no more new Berlin or Berlin 2 cities)
tidier railroad (no more sea sick)

and made units upgrade-able (no more silly legions in 20th century from the AI)


I looooove mods
Now only waiting for scenarios/campaigns/missions map
(common Firaxis, help us, better or new editor please )

[Jaybe]

Under Difficulty Levels I changed Attack bonus against barbarians to 0% at Regent level and above, reduced it substantially at lower levels.

Other than using a bunch of SnOOpys graphic mods, that's it.

[Jurassic Joe]

I haven't changed anything.

Tank treads do have rubber in them. Each section of track has a block of rubber on it. I was in 1st AD in West Germany 85-90. Your right they did put sections of track on the front of the shermans to blunt the effect of the panzerfausts.

[Bambul]

I've redone the unit tree a bit. Longbowmen and Swordsmen go to Riflemen, UU are uncluded in the normal tree, wooden naval units, ironclads, subs and destroyers become obsolete (though can't be upgraded) and stealth fighters were removed alltogether. This was mainly so I didn't get 15 build options for units only, in addition to wealth, palace, power plants, wonders and any buildings that a city hasn't built yet.

Man-O-Wars and F-15's were reaplced by US Marines and SAS (both identical stats, use Marine graphic, Marines with Amphibious Warfare, SAS with Adv Flight). Mainly because air and naval units seemed a bit trivial for UU, gives Civ's an easier chance of trigering a Golden Age. They are both special forces, 10/10/1 (I also upped Marines and Para's a/d by 2 each), paradrop and amphibious attack, can see 2, move all as road (so can't use rail but thats not their design).

Some graphics changes.

Wealth is now 6shields/gold, 3s/g after Economics.

Musketmen are 2/5/1, cost 40, Musketeers are 3/5/1. Infantry move 2. This reduces Cavalry win ratio with Musketeers and disallows retreat with infantry, infantry also becomes a good all-round unit (10 defence, 2 move, same attack as Cavalry).

Military Academy doesn't need an army.

Thats all I can remember off the top of my head. They are all personal preferences/tweaks.

[Calorman]

Thanks for your opinions guys. It seems that msot people agree that the naval units are a bit slow and submarines are woefully underpowered (though I'm not sure if making them as powerful as a battleship is really fair is it Barnacle?).
I also like the idea of making marines a bit stronger since they can't do much as is.
Since I don't use helicopters at all in their designed capacity I must just tinker about with those to.

I also like the ideas for reducing corruption (especially the centralisation of banks code monkey) since this is something of a game killer.

BTW Moraelin, I got to speak with my dear old dad and he told me that the caterpillar track itself was made of metal but the treads on the outside were most definetly made of extremely thick, hard rubber. I think you misunderstood me and thought I was talking about the track, not the treads.

[cassembler]

1) made tundras equivalent to plains (irrigation and all)
2) added up to 16 civs to any map size
3) attempted to remove roads from hills and mountains, but failed miserably...

[Spiffor]

What I changed :

Governments :
Made monarchy pop-rush its buildings. Now I can consider switching to Monarchy. But I don't do it always. Democracy is not immune to propaganda anymore. Communism can draft 3 citizens, and have 5 military police. I did this because i found Republic/Democracy far too powerful, and the IA never got out of this path. Now I can see commies all over the place.

Civs :
Changed English into red and Romans into Orange. Changed French into white and barbarians into pink (good way to get rid of this hoorible pink), removed the "s" from Lyon and Marseille.

Units :
Doubled the HP of all units. The results are more like expected (i.e Tanks won more often against spearsmen ). Doubled all artillery rate of fire as well.
Early ranged units (until musketmen included) have a one range / one rate of fire bombard, with their attack rating as bombardment rating (a longbowman bombards with a force of 4). So they have a free shot wen attacked. As almost avery more modern unit is ranged, this advantage has no more meaning after gunpowder.
Doubled the speed of all ships. Now they are useful.
Upgrade longbowmen swordsmen, legions and immortals to riflemen. Upgrade frigates / privateers / man'o'wars to destroyers. Upgrade ironclads to battleships. Upgrade Cavalry to Tank. I didn't like being able to produce Swordsmen in the modern era, and I didn't like seeing such old units at the AI's

People :
Taxmen are now called merchants and produce 2 money per turn. You have to discover currency before you can have merchants.
Scientists now produce 2 science, and need education to exist.

Techs
You may now trade contacts after discovering radio.

Improvements :
Airports now produce +50% money.

I'm very happy with the editor... now that I'm used to the idea making scenarios is impossible. It is possible to customize many things, and the AI understands it well, as much as normal Civ3. They even use their boosted Triremes much better than I do, and I have at last modern units only waiting for me in enemy cities.

[Code Monkey]

A general observation: I see a lot of people mentioning that they make it so a unit becomes obsolete but doesn't upgrade. There is a problem with this: it doesn't work to stop you and I'm not certain if it stops the AI either. You can upgrade any unit that's been pointed to upgrade to another unit whether "upgrade unit" is checked or not by using shift-U (the upgrade all command). This will invoke any "valid" upgrade for that unit.

If only you can get around it by doing so, fine, control yourselves and all is fine, but if it doesn't stop the AI then you might as well upgrade too. OTOH, depending where your opinion of the AI is, you might want to give them this handicap. Personally, I have no problem with upgrading anything and everything because I view it as allocating funds for buying new equipment for the existing military.

Another observation that ties in with something Dan Magaha said in another thread, balancing changes to combat values gets tricky because bombard issues. City improvements become more vulnerable as bombard strengths of units are increased (I've seen people mentioning increasing all stats exponentially ). I see in the editor there is a place to give each improvement a bombard defense rating - does anyone know if this is the same equivalent as a unit's defense, or, for that matter, does anyone know how the city bombardment mechanics work? In my own personal mod there's an effective ceiling for unit defense at 28 for mech infantry along with a bombard max of 24 for Radar Artillery because I'm afraid to go much further for fear of turning bombardment into a weapon of mass destruction on city improvements.

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by Spiffor
People :
Taxmen are now called merchants and produce 2 money per turn. You have to discover currency before you can have merchants.
Scientists now produce 2 science, and need education to exist.

Now this I like. Off to my editor again

[muppet]

Originally posted by Jumping Choya
Hmmm....maybe there's a thin rubber coating on the trigger so it's more comfortable? Or maybe they have a rubberized butt plate? Or maybe they're using rubber bullets?

That's It!!

That explains why they lose so often to spearmen.

You see... the combat is balanced....

[Moraelin]

Hmm... Well, as you've probably noticed by now, my native tongue isn't English. Or even vaguely similar for that matter. I guess I've been using the term "thread" for a different part of the tank. So which part is the thread and which part is the track, please?

[Libertarian]

Your native language isn't English?

[...bowing and scraping before a great man...]

[Calorman]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Hmm... Well, as you've probably noticed by now, my native tongue isn't English. Or even vaguely similar for that matter. I guess I've been using the term "thread" for a different part of the tank. So which part is the thread and which part is the track, please?

Thread is the wrong word to use. You should be saying tread which refers to the part of a shoe/wheel/tire etc that comes into contact with the ground (to tread is to step somewhere). Thus, tank treads are the rubber bits on the outside that touch the ground and the caterpillar track is the big long bicycle chain-like thing that lies underneath (and moves around the tank wheels).

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Calorman
It seems that msot people agree that the naval units are a bit slow and submarines are woefully underpowered (though I'm not sure if making them as powerful as a battleship is really fair is it Barnacle?).

Real life isn't fair... it's real.

A battleship's only defense against a WWII submarine was to go fast & zig-zag to try to make it hard for the sub to get into position to take a shot. Most of the armor is above the waterline and doesn't help against torpedoes. It has absolutely no ability to fire back, or even know it is under attack until the torpedo hits (unless lookouts spot the torpedo wake, which late war torpedoes already got rid of). It did take a lot of fish to sink a battleship, though. So, BB's needed a bunch of destroyers milling about hoping to catch the sub before it shoots, and sink it or chase it away before it can finish of the BB that any hits from the first torpedo spread probably slowed down a lot. Not many BB's got sunk by subs, but a lot of them got crippled and sent back to port for months.

With modern (nuclear) subs, none of that even helps anymore. Subs are as fast or faster than any skimmer. Tordedoes are both wire-guided and acousitical homing, so zig-zagging doesn't help. Torpedoes have bigger warheads and are designed to explode under the target, where the water density magnifies the explosive effect. Ships up through medium size just break in half. A fairly small number of fish would do for a battleship. Modern surface ships designed as ASW escorts have very little chance of nailing a nuke sub (personal experience from naval excercises in the 1980's). The best chance you have (born out in actual naval tactics) is to send your own subs in before your skimmers to clean out any enemy subs in the area, because nuke subs are much better at killing each other than anything else is at killing them. This is what I was trying to model, and I think I did it as well as possible given the limitations of the current Civ3 editor & combat system.

Originally posted by Code Monkey Another observation that ties in with something Dan Magaha said in another thread, balancing changes to combat values gets tricky because bombard issues. City improvements become more vulnerable as bombard strengths of units are increased (I've seen people mentioning increasing all stats exponentially ). I see in the editor there is a place to give each improvement a bombard defense rating - does anyone know if this is the same equivalent as a unit's defense, or, for that matter, does anyone know how the city bombardment mechanics work? In my own personal mod there's an effective ceiling for unit defense at 28 for mech infantry along with a bombard max of 24 for Radar Artillery because I'm afraid to go much further for fear of turning bombardment into a weapon of mass destruction on city improvements.

Modern warfare is hugely destructive. In WWII, the cities that actually got fought over looked like they had been nuked by the time it was over. Today, the average artillery shell is almost twice the diameter as in WWII (203mm vs 105mm), which greatly increases the size of the explosive charge (and the explosives are more potent). Tank main guns have undergone a similar escallation (120mm vs 76mm). A 1950's vintage F-4 Phantom FIGHTER carries a bomb load equal to a WWII B-17 heavy bomber. If you ever have two first world armies fighting Stalingrad-style over a city...