Well let's see what we've both done.
Slightly upped artillery damage.
Probably not a bad idea, but haven't gone down this road.
Formers have no prerequisites to eliminate "AI at turn 100 without improvements" problem, aggravated by techstag.
Solved this problem by changing the Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer weights on this tech to more appropriate values. The key insight for me is that building roads is a method of
conquest. So I assigned a non-zero value in that category. This causes Spartans to be able to research it readily.
Added sonar buoy - sea version of sensor array, but don't remember whether they work.
Thought about this at one point, since Call To Power did it. But forgot.
I believe, 1N-2M-0E forests were the original intention of game designers,
They're like that in Civ II. To be honest I don't care. I mean heck in my mod almost anyone can do Free Market with very little consequence and make +1 energy / square, so who's counting?
Added a new tech, Advanced Naval Algorithms, inserted between Doctrine:Initiative/Doctrine:Air and Homo Superior/Nanometallurgy. The Maritime Control Center, Subsea Trunkline, Carrier Deck and Repair Bay have been moved to it.
I just shoved most of those things into D:I and called it a day. It's a powerful conquest technology, I don't have a problem with that. D:I and D:A feed Orbital Spaceflight in my mod, you get nukes. Subsea Trunkline I give in Planetary Economics, same as the regular game. AFAIAC it's a Build ability and it should be in a Build tech. Build for me is anything that makes you money or minerals.
Hovertanks have been moved to Monopole Magnets to make them actually appear on the battlefield while it still matters.
I did same thing about early relevance, but gave them a repurposed Organic Superlubricant to implement it. My "hovertanks" are sliders, they run on grease!
Foil and cruiser chassis have been swapped in all but carrying capacity. This makes early AI invasions less of a joke, and allows Unity Foil to pop Unity Pod (not in fungus) and run out from emerged IoD. Benefits Pirates slighly.
Interesting concept. I just made foil and cruiser chassis types cheaper, comparable to speeders and hovertanks on land.
Air power is nerfed - needlejet chassis cost doubled, chopper range reduced to 3.
Kept my planes the same. Choppers reduced to 6.
If I could, I'd also installed a rule "air unit cannot reduce land unit's health below 10% outdoor, 50% in base or bunker" to reduce chop&drop and promote use of ground forces.
I'm not into artificially requiring a kind of unit. Iraq war proved to me that air strikes
do obliterate units. JDAM bombs are very accurate nowadays, this isn't WW II anymore.
Plasma Shard is upped to 14 for more uniform weapon strengths progression.
Yeah 13 was stupid.
Amphibious Pods are allowed for Probe Teams.
Yep. Orbital inserted drop amphibious probe is pretty effective late game.
Air Superiority has been moved to Synthetic Fossil Fuels to allow defense against air before air attack, assuming tech parity.
Not for me! I just say you have to not suck at your tech research. If someone gets air before you do, you can die. Single player against AI, it's never a problem in the real world. I don't honestly care about multiplayer. If some day a whole lot of multi players use my mod and clamor for a change, then I would consider it. I'm not really seeing any
logical reason why someone would be capable of air defense in the absence of air power. It's just a game mechanical reason that players don't want to be whacked on "unfairly". Well I say do more Conquer research if you think it's unfair. Granted, I revised the entire tech tree to separate all the categories more cleanly, so researching Conquer means you're getting conquer techs.
SAM Rover predefined unit makes this change questionable.
I haven't found my own SAM units to be all that effective in real combat, so I'm hesitant to have AIs build them.
Clean Reactor has been moved to Nanominiaturization, but made free, as it costs an ability slot.
I repurposed Frictionless Surfaces and renamed it Single Sided Surfaces. I do
not believe in giving it away, but I did lower the cost from 2 to 1. Did that with everything actually. Have to work so hard to get all this crap, think it should all get used before the game ends.
Mind Worms and Spore Launchers cost is reduced to 4 rows to help native-heavy factions.
Yeah, they might be overpriced. I'll have to think about that.
By the way, Planet Cult in my games is quite competitive, although not great.
I made them Fundamentalist, which in my mod is very similar to Police State and has nothing to do with probe teams. I gave them IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist, no penalties. It toughened them up. But I will consider mindworm cheapening if they need to be tougher.
- Probe Foil -
Got that.
- XX Missile;
Hmm. The distinction between minor and major atrocities is a bit of a problem here. My missiles can hit anywhere on Planet, they're ICBMs. The AI uses them as such too. 3 XX misiles would be taking out almost any city. Problem is you're escaping the political consequences of wiping out cities. I dunno, think I would want to rewrite some rules before making it this easy to wipe out cities planetwide.
- AI Sub - surprise attacks on your shipping.
I think the AI just cheats when
I make a sub. Never seems to be invisible. I'm not really looking to have the AI grief me in new ways, that I don't get any advantage out of myself.
The Virtual World has been moved to Optical Computers to reduce early superprojects overcrowding and to turn despised tech to craved one.
I've changed just about everything that way. Can't get any Secret Projects until Level 3 tech. Optical Computers is the home for the Planetary Datalinks. The Virual World is now for Secrets of the Human Brain, which gives Knowledge and occupies the spot in the tree where Cyberethics was.
The Cloudbase Academy has been moved to Applied Gravitonics, making it more of a trophy prize.
I put it in Advanced Spaceflight.
Added 4 new facilities - Nuclear/Fusion/Quantum/Singularity Generator, with the maintenance of -3/-8/-20/-50. Unfortunately, AI doesn't build them, so sort of exploit.
"Sort of?" Not going there. Already can stomp the AI, don't need ways to make it more crippled.
Orbital Defense Pod cost has been reduced to 8 rows, livening up star wars a bit.
I've not thought ODPs to be especially expensive. In some of my games, AIs have built piles of them just fine. So many that I was annoyed by their spamming.
Police State has been given symbolic boost of +PROBE, as it fits thematically.
I went down that road for a few revisions, but it doesn't work. It's not worth anything, and I can only fit about 5 icons on the screen without it getting crowded and hard to read. I settled on a regime of "3 positives, 2 negatives" for Politics, Economics, and Values social engineering choices. I threw PROBE bonuses out of the game unless you choose Thought Control.
Free Market's draconian -5 POLICE has been partially transferred to Democratic and Wealth, settling at -3,
I eventually said to hell with the original game and put Free Market under the same +3 -2 regime as everything else. Democratic is -2 POLICE. Free Market, Knowledge, and Cybernetic are each -1 POLICE. So if you pick all of those you can get to -5. Plus I left 1 faction with a -1 POLICE penalty, the Caretakers. I'm anti-Aliens, I cut them down to ordinary faction level of power. Took their armor away.
angels.txt
Latest addition, courtesy of bvanevery - SE preference has been switched from Democratic to Thought Control to set them against Cyborgs and Drones.
pirates.txt
Latest addition, courtesy of bvanevery - SE preference has been switched from Power to Wealth to distinct them from "Sparta on water".
Yeah
someone needed to scream about these categories.
cyborg.txt
Growth has been severed to -2, as in my opinion they were overpowered.
They were, but IMO that's not a good way to solve it. I clipped their RESEARCH to -1. I don't think they should be super-University. BTW I seriously beefed up the University. No more drones per 4 workers.
caretake.txt, usurper.txt
Free Nerve Gas Pods.
Don't think I'm on board with that. Although it makes some sense for Alien vs. Alien combat, those are also the only cities that they can take without the population dropping to 1. So I don't see it as in their best interest to be frying alien cities. They should probably take them intact. Against humans, well in the original game the Aliens were already overpowered anyways. If the Aliens fight AI humans, well chemical weapons will piss them off implacably. Aliens were already dominating, so I don't think they need a chemical advantage. Finally, do chemical weapons trigger the wrath of Planet, when used by Aliens? Sure happens to me as a human using them against other humans! It's not pretty.
I don't plant forests on arid tiles.
Forests exist in arid climates in real life though. Plenty in Eastern Washington for instance. It's a desert, there's sage brush everywhere. Not all deserts are bone dry. Realism would make an arid forest catch fire easily, but that's not in the game.
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