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My review of the Alternate Sci-Fi Mod (before it crashed for good)
First let me start with the things that I like...
The city expansion graphics are beautiful. Unfortunately for me, I had the the city graphics mod installed which made it so after the renaissance the core city graphic and the sprawl graphics were always one age off. The loss of productivity from not being able to build farms under the sprawl I think is adequately offset by the fact that you can trade the goods to other civs. I was actually quite gratified that there was a market for my civilization's celebrities and businessmen. Good riddance!
Someone posted that the value of said trade routes were insanely high. This is true, but after saving and restarting my game once (and ever after) the goods' value went back to a normal level.
Also, the frenzy AI is challenging to play against (in the first two levels, at least)
In my game (playing the Japanese), I had an alliance with the French who were small and, I thought, rather non-threatening. They sent some settlers through my territory and built two cities in some swamp I wasn't interested in in the southern end of my empire. I ignored them for 400-some years while I concentrated on the English and Nigerians who were waging a very competent war on my northern frontier. Suddenly the French show up in the middle of my territory with three stacks of 12 infantry, and proceed to take over fully half of my empire before I could stop them. They didn't even bother to cancel our alliance. This kind of Machiavellian backstabbing would never have happened with the regular AI. It made the game quite challenging.
Now for stuff that, while interesting, I didn't think worked so well.
The Amazons are waaaay to powerful and seriously unbalancing. In the version I downloaded (1.03), the Amazon governments were *not* required to build the amazon units. In the early game, the combat bonuses of the amazon warrior and archer are small, but in large stacks the comulative effect makes them invincible. I wiped out two empires with one stack of 10 amazons, then felt like I should stop there because I felt it would be unsporting
Ditto for the Bowazon and the Rake. The bowazon has nearly the ranged attack of a cannon, moves twice as fast, and is available right at the beginning of the renaissance. I know the bowazon is expensive to build initially, but the fact that they can almost never lose at that stage of the game makes them quite economical as well. Many stacks of 12 fell to my stack of two bowazons and two valkyries.
The rake has a higher attack than infantry, cavalry, and the fascist and is available earlier. I used a stack of four to wipe out 12 English cities guarded with infantry and catapults.
I suppose the above would all be fair if the AI used the same units against me, but the AI barely uses Amazons at all, and then hardly ever effectively. On a couple occasions the AI used a rake to "assassinate" my border guards, which was interesting (but by then I had tanks...)
I reckon if the Amazons were (a.) restricted to Amazon governments, and (b.) *disbanded* when the government was changed they might not be so unbalancing. Also, if under those governments the AI gave priority to those units, or even built them exclusively (now *that* would be a challenge!!)
I can't say much about the zombies, as I think they may have crashed my game. By chance in my game they showed up on a small island and were very slow getting off. I sent a squadron of 6 interceptors to try to take out a stack of three, but they fell quickly to the zombies' anti-air zombie weapons. C'est le guerre...
The best way to deal with them that I came up with is to catch them in the shallow water and pound them with submarines.
All in all, great mod! This is the most fun I've had playing civilisation yet!
First let me start with the things that I like...
The city expansion graphics are beautiful. Unfortunately for me, I had the the city graphics mod installed which made it so after the renaissance the core city graphic and the sprawl graphics were always one age off. The loss of productivity from not being able to build farms under the sprawl I think is adequately offset by the fact that you can trade the goods to other civs. I was actually quite gratified that there was a market for my civilization's celebrities and businessmen. Good riddance!
Someone posted that the value of said trade routes were insanely high. This is true, but after saving and restarting my game once (and ever after) the goods' value went back to a normal level.
Also, the frenzy AI is challenging to play against (in the first two levels, at least)
In my game (playing the Japanese), I had an alliance with the French who were small and, I thought, rather non-threatening. They sent some settlers through my territory and built two cities in some swamp I wasn't interested in in the southern end of my empire. I ignored them for 400-some years while I concentrated on the English and Nigerians who were waging a very competent war on my northern frontier. Suddenly the French show up in the middle of my territory with three stacks of 12 infantry, and proceed to take over fully half of my empire before I could stop them. They didn't even bother to cancel our alliance. This kind of Machiavellian backstabbing would never have happened with the regular AI. It made the game quite challenging.
Now for stuff that, while interesting, I didn't think worked so well.
The Amazons are waaaay to powerful and seriously unbalancing. In the version I downloaded (1.03), the Amazon governments were *not* required to build the amazon units. In the early game, the combat bonuses of the amazon warrior and archer are small, but in large stacks the comulative effect makes them invincible. I wiped out two empires with one stack of 10 amazons, then felt like I should stop there because I felt it would be unsporting
Ditto for the Bowazon and the Rake. The bowazon has nearly the ranged attack of a cannon, moves twice as fast, and is available right at the beginning of the renaissance. I know the bowazon is expensive to build initially, but the fact that they can almost never lose at that stage of the game makes them quite economical as well. Many stacks of 12 fell to my stack of two bowazons and two valkyries.
The rake has a higher attack than infantry, cavalry, and the fascist and is available earlier. I used a stack of four to wipe out 12 English cities guarded with infantry and catapults.
I suppose the above would all be fair if the AI used the same units against me, but the AI barely uses Amazons at all, and then hardly ever effectively. On a couple occasions the AI used a rake to "assassinate" my border guards, which was interesting (but by then I had tanks...)
I reckon if the Amazons were (a.) restricted to Amazon governments, and (b.) *disbanded* when the government was changed they might not be so unbalancing. Also, if under those governments the AI gave priority to those units, or even built them exclusively (now *that* would be a challenge!!)
I can't say much about the zombies, as I think they may have crashed my game. By chance in my game they showed up on a small island and were very slow getting off. I sent a squadron of 6 interceptors to try to take out a stack of three, but they fell quickly to the zombies' anti-air zombie weapons. C'est le guerre...
The best way to deal with them that I came up with is to catch them in the shallow water and pound them with submarines.
All in all, great mod! This is the most fun I've had playing civilisation yet!
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