What changes do you like to play with?

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, since our hopes of a REAL scenario editor are quickly dwindling, I have been content to making slight alterations to the game. My first change was to make all new governments. I changed Monarchy to National Monarchy, renamed Republic to Classical Republic, and changed Democracy to Federal Republic. I created new governments: Confederation, Absolute Monarchy, Constitutional Monarchy, and Fascism. Each one of these types has a different purpose. Confederation helps the peaceful, far-flung empires. Absolute Monarchy is the pre-cursor to Communism. Constitutional Monarchy is for those who don't really want to commit themselves to democracy or militarism. Fascism is for the super-aggressive.

Another more recent change is that all animal and foot units have a population cost because a portion of the people are committed as the troops. That has proven quite interesting. The war-mongering civilizations find it a little bit more difficult to fight like they used to. Its not impossible to build up a huge military with this system, but you have to have a good infrastructure ahead of time.

Then I made other smaller changes. I gave Armies 2 MP with Blitz. I gave AEGIS Cruisers Blitz. I strengthened bombard strength of artillery units across the board. I also increased the MP of all ships based on propulsion and weight, so Ironclad actually was left alone. I also increased the likelihood of fighters intercepting bombers slightly.

I also cut border expansion in half from 10 to 5.

I play all my games on these settings, but I want to know if anybody else plays with their own settings and if so, what are they?

[ixnay]

I'm not much of a tweaker...the most I ever do is allow for 16 civs on a tiny map, which makes for some interesting games...

[Worthingtons]

I almost started a thread on this .. Interesting subject...

I make quite a few changes...

Increase Optimal number of cities by about 50-100%
Make several City improvements Reduce Corruption
Slow down Technology
Cant remember other's off hand...

For my next game though, to make it less tedious,More interesting for combat and more realistic...


Increase Unit Support in Monarchy
Increase Cost of Units from 1 to 2
Army Capacity =4 and 5 with Pentagon
Armies 100 shields cheaper
Make Archers/longbows more powerful
Increase Worker Speed
Decrease Corruption even more

[Pius Popprasch]

I also increased the abilities of artillery. I think that the reason for the artillery being so weak is the lack of an appropriate A.I. routine. Units which the A.I. doesn't know how to handle have got poor stats.

[DrFell]

I like to play the game as it is, mainly because I like to play competitively, and thus a standard rule set is required.

[Thrawn05]

I changed the resources so that they can't appear and disappear from the map. What's there is there. That makes the game more fun, since usually there is only civ with the only supply of the worlds Oil. Just like in real life .

[fezick31]

I usually make the following changes:
-------------------------------------------------
Workers: 3MP (I used to make them alpine, but then they can't use railroads)

Settlers: 2MP

I speed up the research rate

I modify Rome's Civ Specific Traits (to M/S, i think)
-------------------------------------------------

That's really it. I haven't played enough yet to mod it heavily (other than grahics). The AI tends to handle the increased movement without a problem (this also serves to speed up the growth of empires, which is why I did it). The change to Rome doesn't effect the AI, as I always play as Rome.

[planetfall]

After first few games, never play standard rules. Can't recall all mods and prefer only to make mods based on changes that make sense historically not changes to make the game easier.

These are the major ones:

1. default happy=7
2. worker productivity same for republic as democracy
3. privateer= offense=3. {still takes a gang of them, but they can do something}
4. max cities == 70
5. police station 1/2 cost
6. police station: reduces corruption
7. catheral: reduces corruption
8. catheral: reduces war weariness
9. Nuclear power: not explode
10. factories: no pollution
{would like 1/4th pollution but can't figure out how to set that so set no pollutioni}
11. Carriers: load 24 units
12. bombers: range 8 tiles
13. destroyers: range 8
14. carriers: range 7
15. AESIS: range 8
16. Transport: range 7
17. Bombers: slightly higher bomb power
18. artillery: range 3
19. Increase frequency of:
coal
uranium
al
oil {very very slightly}

20. AESIS: see subs
21. Nucl subs: range 7, power 16
{probably will revert closer to standard and start using tactic nukes on them. didn't know they could carry nukes. But should have at least 2x power of reg subs. Reg subs default.}




Minor for scenario play
1. stealth bomber, hidden nationality
{weird game}
2. added one characteristic to republic
{makes AI's go to republic, changing back after this game ends}


These changes make for a very interesting game because Air:Sea:Land powers are more evenly balanced. Speedup of workers means less worker micromanagement.

Still have to deal with corruption and population pollution, but have more time to develop infrastructure to handle problems. Navies still take a long time to position but timing is about right. Air range looks about right. Would rather have range 6 for bombers and 10 for stealths, but that is not currently possible in editor.

Makes for more interesting play having to coordinate a combined air:sea:land strike than standard rules which overemphasize land only strikes. Amazing how fast the AI's build SAMS.

Only had the game since Christmas so still learning what I like and what enhances playability. If anyone is interested in exact list of changes, I can get them on request.

[Tarquelne]

Lots of cost tweaks for Improvements and Wonders. The ones I've found most usefull are more expensive, the ones I've found less usefull are cheaper.

Lots of "tweaks" to military units, esp. modern units and naval. The only alteration I made to change the overall balance is the offenisve units are considerably more expensive. I'm also currently trying out having units cost 2 rather than 1, or cost 1 pop. point to make.

Added 2 Industiral/Modern high-culture Improvments, 1 high-culture small wonder and 1 high-culture Modern Great Wonder. (Newspaper, Radio Station, BBC, Madison Avenue)

Made the "Age of Sail" last longer. The tech tree is slightly altered, and what techs give what units is changed, so now Frigates, etc. come earlier, ocean-spanning trade routes come earlier, and Ironclads come in a little bit later. I did this just for fun, not because I thought it was more realistic.

I've made Cultural boundries increase faster. I did this to try to make "cultural warfare" more active. I don't know if it worked, but I've come to like it.

I keep winning wars as a Democracy (others have said this is "impossible", I don't know where they're comeing from) so I made Communism a bit better - IIRC, get 1 extra "police" unit, a couple of extra "free" units for Metropolises.

Slightly Decreased the frequency of a few of the Strategic Resources. (Oil, Coal, and Horses, I think it was.)

[planetfall]

Oh, also decreased range of ironclads to 2.

Look at the history, they were about unstopable but took forever and ever to get into position.

PBS has an interesting series about naval warfare and if you haven't seen it you should find their session on ironclads in the civil war.

[Jaybe]

Raised Optimal Number of Cities by 50%.
Eliminated all combat advantages over barbarians.

JB

[Adagio]

The tweaks I have done is:

- All ships have 1-2 more movements points
- Some Wonders (both minor and great) have more culture points and some has less culture points
- Added gevernment Theoracy (Haven't testet the second version yet, first try made the game crash)
- Added more city names (not mine, but one posted the mod with more city names in the file section a whle ago)
- Changed the Americans to Ind/Sci
- Explorers/Scouts now have a movement rate of 3
- Resurces never dissapears
- And maybe some other minor changes I can't remember at the moment

[hetairoi22]

I haven't played enough to seriously start "tweaking"...

I have added to units though: The Caravan and the Ranger.

The caravan comes available with currency. It costs 120 shields (may change this later) and it allows you to hurry production of
improvements (does that checkbox [hurry improvements] also allow the unit to hurry wonders)?

I think it would be fun to have two seperate checkboxes in the editor. Namely Hurry improvements and Hurry wonders. And you could perhaps also be able to write in the editor, how many shields that the unit would add.

BTW, my caravan unit costs 1 pop point and can join cities.

My ranger is a modern explorer. Available with Repleacable Parts and requireing no resources. It moves three sq. per turn no matter the terrain. Its stats are 2/2/3.

I have a question, BTW, the "All Squares as Terrain" ability, what exactly does it do? Is it like Civ2 where 1 MP = 3 moves per turn (disregarding terrain) or is 1MP = 1 move per turn, disregarding terrain?

EDIT:
"- Explorers/Scouts now have a movement rate of 3"
Guess that explaines my last question, no? I did this too, BTW.

H22

[planetfall]

jaybe: agreed I also have reduced player advantage against barbarians. I am now playing at warlord level except changed advantage vs barbarians to none as that makes the game more fun. If they are barbarians, they should not always be just goodie huts with never any costs.

herairoi22: added units? didn't think this was possible outside mod paks. I need more experience before mod paks. Also I don't bother with explorers. It is easier and cheaper to buy world maps from other civs for a bit of gold.

[woody]

I try not to modify much. Just things that I find are broken or annoying.

I made almost all units have upgrade paths to modern units. Not too early, because I don't want to give too easy an upgrade path. But, I just wanted the darn ancient units out of my build list! Eventually, everything upgrades to the best unit of that type.

Fixed the bug with war chariots being obsoleted by horsemen. Made the F15 upgrade from a fighter. Made the stealth fighter a "fighter", and jets upgrade to it.

+2 to the offense of marine and paratrooper. For now, it seems okay considering they also have special abilities. Weaker than tanks, but able to do some unique things that make up for it.

Set the movement of carriers to 5, so it would keep up with battleships and destroyers during automatic gotos.

Set the rush-build and draft penalty turns back down to 20.

Sometimes I double the research costs for everything, so that the game tech doesn't move along too quick. Just a preference of mine. I also often play with more civs (16) and less resources, so competition for them is higher.