Tweet
Considerations and suggestions about the Apolyton Edition.
Well, first thing, I would like to thank the Apolyton team for all theit efforts to make CTP2 a better game. Without you, guys, the game wouldn't be so good and enjoyable. Here I will write my considerations about AE mod, giving some personal hints. I know it's a too-long-post, but I think that the Apolyton developers might find it useful.
1) Stealth Bombers and Stealth Fighters should be... well... "stealth"! In the game they are normal, instead. I turn them into that category by modifying the units.txt, but I ask myself why you didn't considered to do that from the very beginning.
2) Earlier in the game, Warriors and Swordsmen (Samurais), are quite useless. Since Warriors should be the offensive counterparts of Hoplites, while the Hoplites have a offensive rating of 10 and a defensive rating of 15, Warriors are just 10/10. I change them into 15/10.
The same is between Samurais and Pikemen: Samurais is 20/10 while Pikemen are 15/25 (I am not sure about that, I don't know it by heart, but let's continue to consider my example). I modify Samurais to 25/15. This way, defenses are better matched with contemporary offensives. What do you think about that?
3a) The "upgrade unit" feature is VERY expensive and useless for the human player because of that. I give the "Free AI units-upgrade" option to improve the game difficulty, but actually I almost never upgrade my own troops. There is a way to lower the economic cost of the upgrade?
3b) There is a way to upgrade with a single click all of the units of the same kind? When I want to upgrade, just so to speak, Pikemen to Infantrymen in all of my cities, it's a pain in the ass (provided I have that huge amount of gold, though): I have to activate all of them -one by one- and to upgrade all of them -one by one- as well. It takes *ages*, causing to me a very bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome (and irritating my bowels, as well).
4) Always speaking about upgrades, there is a tricky fact about land distance units: Artillery can be upgraded to mobile-SAM, and mobile-SAM can be upraded to War-walker. Finally the War-walker can be upgraded to Leviathon. The problem is that Artillery and Leviathon are the only land-units that are able to bombard the sea, so, before developing the Leviathon (which costs a hell lot of production), you have to maintain Artillery in order to defend your coastal cities from enemy ships. Unless you build warships while waiting the production of the bloody Leviathon, your land sea-bombing units will be outdated for a long while. I give to the War-walker the ability to bombard the sea as well. Consider that.
5) The only active water-defense in the game is the Morey Striker. The Kraken become outdated once the Dreadnaught become available, which happens quite soon after the Kraken is available. At a certain point we will have a less powerful active water-defense (Morey Striker), a outdated submarine unit (Kraken) and a powerful submarine unit (Dreadnaught). On the surface, the Plasma Destroyer will dominate the seas, but it's nothing compared to the Dreadnaught. To better balance things and to maintain the usefulness and the effectiveness of Kraken and Morey Striker, I remove from the Dreadnaught the ability to take enemy cities and I removed them from the upgrading path Submarin-Nuclear Submarine-Morey Striker-Kraken-Dreadnaught; now I have an upgrade path as Submarine-Nuclear Submarine-Dreadnaught (since those three have the same tactical purpose -to control the ocean deeps-), while Morey Striker and Kraken are stand-alone units, since their purpose is totally different from the other submarine units. Kraken will be the only water unit that is able to conquer enemy's undersea-colonies.
6) Bombing Range (BR). It's possible to extend the units' BR. I give a BR of 2 to Artillery, Warship and Destroyer, of 3 to Mobile-SAM, War-walker and Plasma Destroyer, of 5 to the Leviathon (to better justify its freaking production cost and to compensate its few movement points). This way, beside giving more value to some distance units, it slightly improves the difficulty of the game, since your troops and naval transports will be sooner under the range of bombing-units. More than that, since the discovery of the Explosives (with the availablity of Artillery), your Infantry will be less useful and your troop-ships have to stay farer from coastal towns, or they will be drowned along with their cargo :-D. At the most advanced stages of the game, when the AI will start defending its cities with Leviathons, it will be necessary to bring your troops by sea with Crawlers rather than with Troop-ships. All of that will give to the game a more realistic touch and will improve the usefulness of the slow Crawlers. It will be very hard to conquer a enemy isle, as well, and 1x1 islands will be a nightmare to conquer at a certain stage. :-D
7) I delete the Theocracy government requirement from the Televangelist, otherwise no one would use it. I also improved a lot the amount of money the Televangelist and the Priest can gather from converted cities, otherwise it would not be worthy the effort.
8) Since many special attacks are considered "atrocities", I improved dramatically their effects, because having all of the AI civilizations angry with you just because you killed 3 or 4 population with a stupid pandemy, wasn't a balanced reaction. Now Pandemy kills 75% of the population, a nuclear blast gives more pollution and might even totally destroy the city and so on... Special units will be actually... very "Special" ;-).
9) Diplomats are always expelled from AI, even when allied, making it impossible to found an embassy or to organize a party. I removed the "Canbexpelled" feature from them (as some sort of diplomatic immunity :-P). If Diplomats are used to lock a land passage, they have to be killed (the AI do not mind killing civilians, so it will not unbalance the game, but will make Diplomats a little more useful by giving to them a little strategic function).
10) I noticed that AI make an extensive use of Lawyers, but no AI will expel or kill the enemy ones. Why?
11) AI do not use Corporate Branch. It's a pity.
12) I see that AI never "pirate" my trade routes. It's simply undetected for some reasons or it really doesn't?
13) AI never signs treaties with other AIs and never found embassies aywhere. AI doesn't propose advanced treaties to me for the same reason. That sucks. How can it be implemented? (I already tried to install the Diplomod, but it gives me errors, even if I carefully follow the installation instructions).
14) Just because I don't like to stop at 13.
1) Stealth Bombers and Stealth Fighters should be... well... "stealth"! In the game they are normal, instead. I turn them into that category by modifying the units.txt, but I ask myself why you didn't considered to do that from the very beginning.
2) Earlier in the game, Warriors and Swordsmen (Samurais), are quite useless. Since Warriors should be the offensive counterparts of Hoplites, while the Hoplites have a offensive rating of 10 and a defensive rating of 15, Warriors are just 10/10. I change them into 15/10.
The same is between Samurais and Pikemen: Samurais is 20/10 while Pikemen are 15/25 (I am not sure about that, I don't know it by heart, but let's continue to consider my example). I modify Samurais to 25/15. This way, defenses are better matched with contemporary offensives. What do you think about that?
3a) The "upgrade unit" feature is VERY expensive and useless for the human player because of that. I give the "Free AI units-upgrade" option to improve the game difficulty, but actually I almost never upgrade my own troops. There is a way to lower the economic cost of the upgrade?
3b) There is a way to upgrade with a single click all of the units of the same kind? When I want to upgrade, just so to speak, Pikemen to Infantrymen in all of my cities, it's a pain in the ass (provided I have that huge amount of gold, though): I have to activate all of them -one by one- and to upgrade all of them -one by one- as well. It takes *ages*, causing to me a very bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome (and irritating my bowels, as well).
4) Always speaking about upgrades, there is a tricky fact about land distance units: Artillery can be upgraded to mobile-SAM, and mobile-SAM can be upraded to War-walker. Finally the War-walker can be upgraded to Leviathon. The problem is that Artillery and Leviathon are the only land-units that are able to bombard the sea, so, before developing the Leviathon (which costs a hell lot of production), you have to maintain Artillery in order to defend your coastal cities from enemy ships. Unless you build warships while waiting the production of the bloody Leviathon, your land sea-bombing units will be outdated for a long while. I give to the War-walker the ability to bombard the sea as well. Consider that.
5) The only active water-defense in the game is the Morey Striker. The Kraken become outdated once the Dreadnaught become available, which happens quite soon after the Kraken is available. At a certain point we will have a less powerful active water-defense (Morey Striker), a outdated submarine unit (Kraken) and a powerful submarine unit (Dreadnaught). On the surface, the Plasma Destroyer will dominate the seas, but it's nothing compared to the Dreadnaught. To better balance things and to maintain the usefulness and the effectiveness of Kraken and Morey Striker, I remove from the Dreadnaught the ability to take enemy cities and I removed them from the upgrading path Submarin-Nuclear Submarine-Morey Striker-Kraken-Dreadnaught; now I have an upgrade path as Submarine-Nuclear Submarine-Dreadnaught (since those three have the same tactical purpose -to control the ocean deeps-), while Morey Striker and Kraken are stand-alone units, since their purpose is totally different from the other submarine units. Kraken will be the only water unit that is able to conquer enemy's undersea-colonies.
6) Bombing Range (BR). It's possible to extend the units' BR. I give a BR of 2 to Artillery, Warship and Destroyer, of 3 to Mobile-SAM, War-walker and Plasma Destroyer, of 5 to the Leviathon (to better justify its freaking production cost and to compensate its few movement points). This way, beside giving more value to some distance units, it slightly improves the difficulty of the game, since your troops and naval transports will be sooner under the range of bombing-units. More than that, since the discovery of the Explosives (with the availablity of Artillery), your Infantry will be less useful and your troop-ships have to stay farer from coastal towns, or they will be drowned along with their cargo :-D. At the most advanced stages of the game, when the AI will start defending its cities with Leviathons, it will be necessary to bring your troops by sea with Crawlers rather than with Troop-ships. All of that will give to the game a more realistic touch and will improve the usefulness of the slow Crawlers. It will be very hard to conquer a enemy isle, as well, and 1x1 islands will be a nightmare to conquer at a certain stage. :-D
7) I delete the Theocracy government requirement from the Televangelist, otherwise no one would use it. I also improved a lot the amount of money the Televangelist and the Priest can gather from converted cities, otherwise it would not be worthy the effort.
8) Since many special attacks are considered "atrocities", I improved dramatically their effects, because having all of the AI civilizations angry with you just because you killed 3 or 4 population with a stupid pandemy, wasn't a balanced reaction. Now Pandemy kills 75% of the population, a nuclear blast gives more pollution and might even totally destroy the city and so on... Special units will be actually... very "Special" ;-).
9) Diplomats are always expelled from AI, even when allied, making it impossible to found an embassy or to organize a party. I removed the "Canbexpelled" feature from them (as some sort of diplomatic immunity :-P). If Diplomats are used to lock a land passage, they have to be killed (the AI do not mind killing civilians, so it will not unbalance the game, but will make Diplomats a little more useful by giving to them a little strategic function).
10) I noticed that AI make an extensive use of Lawyers, but no AI will expel or kill the enemy ones. Why?
11) AI do not use Corporate Branch. It's a pity.
12) I see that AI never "pirate" my trade routes. It's simply undetected for some reasons or it really doesn't?
13) AI never signs treaties with other AIs and never found embassies aywhere. AI doesn't propose advanced treaties to me for the same reason. That sucks. How can it be implemented? (I already tried to install the Diplomod, but it gives me errors, even if I carefully follow the installation instructions).
14) Just because I don't like to stop at 13
.
Comment