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Okay. I can imagine you people are about as welcoming of newbies as any other forum anywhere, so I won't be surprised if before the day is out I'm inundated with flames insulting everything from my CTP2 mod ideas (pitiful and amateurish) to my dress sense (straight out of Withnail and I, but that is beside the point) but this was the first place I found.
First things first. I never learned SLIC (I have a busy life) so a lot of my ideas have had to remain just that, ideas. But the rest of them I've been able to implement by the Mickey-Mouse expedient of laboriously altering the text files, like I used to do with good old Civilization 2. This is what I've done and playtested, and I'd like your comments/suggestions on it.
1. I suspect this will get people shouting at me, but I added extra lines in the Tileimp.txt which made Roads, Railways and Maglevs generate extra resources as well as reducing movement costs. I forget what the exact figures were, but roads generated a bit of extra commerce on grassland and plains, railways generated a middling amount of commerce on grassland and plains plus a small production bonus for forests, hills and mountains, and maglevs gave middling bonuses for everything. The reasoning behind this was firstly, that it works in Civ 2
and secondly, that in Real Life (TM) transport infrastructure does help trade and industry as well as making it easier to move troops around. However, I did find it odd that the AI almost never took advantage of this. In my experience it hardly ever bothers to connect its cities up with roads, never mind slap them down everywhere for a trade bonus. My suspicion is it won't take any notice of my lovely additions unless I tell it to, meaning the dreaded SLIC.
2. This will get even more people shouting at me, but I stubbornly persist in thinking it's all for the best. I've changed the movement bonuses. Roads cut it to 1/5, railways to 1/10, and maglevs to 1/20. Why? Well, it's all a question of making defence strategy more realistic. In Real Life (again) a good defensive policy is not to let every city in the empire recruit its own garrison and then park it in the city waiting for threats to arrive. That policy did work in Civ 2, but it became decided shaky in the Call To Power series. If you hate long theory discussions, look away now.
My friends hated CTP1, chiefly because the "combat system was rubbish. Musketeers and Cannons defeating Tanks and Bombers? Which idiot wrote this game?" So I devoted much thought to the question of why defence had to be so much stronger than attack (don't argue. It was) in CTP2, and read a few military handbooks. Because units can fight as a group in CTP2, it means force can be <i>concentrated</i> against a target. In normal CTP2 an attacker can concentrate his forces, but a defender can't afford to. If you send all your armies to one point to anticipate a threat, the enemy may - indeed probably will - strike from elsewhere. So each city has to have its own garrison, which necessity dictates must be relatively small. Hence defence has to be made stronger than attack to balance the game. "Pah", I thought, "I have a much better way to do this." And lo!
If units can move faster within their own borders, a national defence army can be created by each city contributing a Hoplite or a Musketeer or Machine Gunner or whatever, and the high-production cities each producing an attack and a ranged unit. This army can be moved to wherever it is needed, and the game becomes not only more realistic, but I reckon more interesting to play. Of course, this needs more work. I really ought to increase the support costs of units so their numbers can be constrained more effectively, but I haven't worked out what good values for the new ones would be.
3. I gave the Shallow Water tile a movement cost of 0.5. This means Coracles can outpace a snail, and that naval transports can zip around the coast quick as lightning, while long ocean voyages take a lot longer. I liked the idea and the effects of that, even though realism kind of went out the window there.
4. I overhauled the naval units, making them faster (I won't go into detail unless you ask me to). I also gave all ships except the Crawler and the Troop Ship an attack value of some kind. It annoyed me when you saw enemy coracles maurauding into your coastal regions and couldn't send your coracles in to sink them (by chucking rocks, I suppose, but it's the principle of the thing). Furthermore, I made sure the Troop Ship was obtained by Oil Refining and the Submarine by Internal Combustion. In addition to technical considerations, it struck me as rather ridiculous to see U-boats and 15th century galleons floating about in the same navy.
And that's about all I've been able to implement. What I'd really like to do (but don't know how to) is add a new diplomacy option, namely a demand saying "Make Peace With...." like in MOO2. I figured, the most powerful nation in the world need only rattle its mighty sabre to stop puny little countries fighting their petty wars. The Pax (insert country here)a, if you will. And it's annoying, when you're trying for a simple diplomatic victory and you keep failing because two tiny pathetic civs insist on bickering, (because you can't tell em to stop it!) Hey, it happens in the real world. So if anyone can tell me how to engineer that, it would be much appreciated.
First things first. I never learned SLIC (I have a busy life) so a lot of my ideas have had to remain just that, ideas. But the rest of them I've been able to implement by the Mickey-Mouse expedient of laboriously altering the text files, like I used to do with good old Civilization 2. This is what I've done and playtested, and I'd like your comments/suggestions on it.
1. I suspect this will get people shouting at me, but I added extra lines in the Tileimp.txt which made Roads, Railways and Maglevs generate extra resources as well as reducing movement costs. I forget what the exact figures were, but roads generated a bit of extra commerce on grassland and plains, railways generated a middling amount of commerce on grassland and plains plus a small production bonus for forests, hills and mountains, and maglevs gave middling bonuses for everything. The reasoning behind this was firstly, that it works in Civ 2
and secondly, that in Real Life (TM) transport infrastructure does help trade and industry as well as making it easier to move troops around. However, I did find it odd that the AI almost never took advantage of this. In my experience it hardly ever bothers to connect its cities up with roads, never mind slap them down everywhere for a trade bonus. My suspicion is it won't take any notice of my lovely additions unless I tell it to, meaning the dreaded SLIC. 2. This will get even more people shouting at me, but I stubbornly persist in thinking it's all for the best. I've changed the movement bonuses. Roads cut it to 1/5, railways to 1/10, and maglevs to 1/20. Why? Well, it's all a question of making defence strategy more realistic. In Real Life (again) a good defensive policy is not to let every city in the empire recruit its own garrison and then park it in the city waiting for threats to arrive. That policy did work in Civ 2, but it became decided shaky in the Call To Power series. If you hate long theory discussions, look away now.
My friends hated CTP1, chiefly because the "combat system was rubbish. Musketeers and Cannons defeating Tanks and Bombers? Which idiot wrote this game?" So I devoted much thought to the question of why defence had to be so much stronger than attack (don't argue. It was) in CTP2, and read a few military handbooks. Because units can fight as a group in CTP2, it means force can be <i>concentrated</i> against a target. In normal CTP2 an attacker can concentrate his forces, but a defender can't afford to. If you send all your armies to one point to anticipate a threat, the enemy may - indeed probably will - strike from elsewhere. So each city has to have its own garrison, which necessity dictates must be relatively small. Hence defence has to be made stronger than attack to balance the game. "Pah", I thought, "I have a much better way to do this." And lo!
If units can move faster within their own borders, a national defence army can be created by each city contributing a Hoplite or a Musketeer or Machine Gunner or whatever, and the high-production cities each producing an attack and a ranged unit. This army can be moved to wherever it is needed, and the game becomes not only more realistic, but I reckon more interesting to play. Of course, this needs more work. I really ought to increase the support costs of units so their numbers can be constrained more effectively, but I haven't worked out what good values for the new ones would be.
3. I gave the Shallow Water tile a movement cost of 0.5. This means Coracles can outpace a snail, and that naval transports can zip around the coast quick as lightning, while long ocean voyages take a lot longer. I liked the idea and the effects of that, even though realism kind of went out the window there.
4. I overhauled the naval units, making them faster (I won't go into detail unless you ask me to). I also gave all ships except the Crawler and the Troop Ship an attack value of some kind. It annoyed me when you saw enemy coracles maurauding into your coastal regions and couldn't send your coracles in to sink them (by chucking rocks, I suppose, but it's the principle of the thing). Furthermore, I made sure the Troop Ship was obtained by Oil Refining and the Submarine by Internal Combustion. In addition to technical considerations, it struck me as rather ridiculous to see U-boats and 15th century galleons floating about in the same navy.
And that's about all I've been able to implement. What I'd really like to do (but don't know how to) is add a new diplomacy option, namely a demand saying "Make Peace With...." like in MOO2. I figured, the most powerful nation in the world need only rattle its mighty sabre to stop puny little countries fighting their petty wars. The Pax (insert country here)a, if you will. And it's annoying, when you're trying for a simple diplomatic victory and you keep failing because two tiny pathetic civs insist on bickering, (because you can't tell em to stop it!) Hey, it happens in the real world. So if anyone can tell me how to engineer that, it would be much appreciated.
I discarded that after one game. The thing is, I usually end up winning the games I play long before I even discover Maglevs (I'm thinking late 20th century technology, tops). 
but that would be evading the issue. 
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