Right, forgot about that. Take your time.
I finished my Farm Land System, I still think it could have a place in your map. (Giving farm return based on the tileset under the crops.)
I'm mostly against such a system but we'll see about it. What resources do you need the paths for?
From a pm after a playtesting run with Fin, posted here to allow more people take part on the suggestions:
Fingolfin said:
Pson said:
Is there anything else you remember besides these?
-Elephant fear aura not affecting enemy elephants
-Reduce building hp ~20%
-Increase unit hp ~20%, appropriate upgrades
-God choice with required dummy unit (everyone has at start, remove once upgraded)
-Villas not garrisonable, unload with trigger
-Slightly increase pike collision
-Unit tool tips with clear roles
-Double(?) the repair time
Only one thing: try to add a slight sense of countering. I know you say you want units to be balanced by their natural stats, but there are so many aspects of ancient combat that you simply cannot recreate, such as pikemen being useless on their own, and their strength in syntagma formation depending on the attacker coming from the front. The fact that it says all unit counters cav also kinda discourages you from getting cavalry at all, despite it being the key to Alexanders victory. Cavalry should counter all ranged units, they should be quite strong vs swordsmen, quite weak vs spearmen and very weak vs pikemen. If they haven't already: Seleucids should get a cavalry bonus (because they were the only ones who had heavy cataphracts).
-Pikes are cost-ineffective unless massed, and I could reduce their turn rate a lot to bring them even closer to their natural attributes (extra vulnerable to being surrounded). In mass they will beat anything melee, especially cavalry, but are slow and vulnerable to ranged, especially skirmishers who are bonused vs them.
-Spears are meatshields (especially tough with some upgrades for several civs) bonused against cavalry.
-Swords have slighly less defense but considerably more attack and often more speed than spears, without a special role. Rome can mass more and stronger swordsmen, even more so by sacrificing their Spearmen with the Marian Reforms tech.
-Skirmishers are good vs melee infantry, short-ranged and fast to train. While weak when not protected by melee, they have high-ish hp and for some civs they can act like semi-infantry with extra buffed hp (peltasts, thureophoroi), while for others they become better at hit and run with extra speed.
-Archers have low attack, low hp and they are long ranged, cheap, slow-ish to train with smaller collision than skirmishers and ability to become semi-siege with fire arrows. Extremely weak when unprotected but strong in masses.
-Gastraphetes are extra long ranged and have high attack, low fire rate, which differentiates them from other ranged troops but they might need a bit more special role. Very weak when unprotected.
-Rams are heavily anti-structure,
Ballistas anti-structure that can become anti-troop as well with fire rate upgrades and
Onagers anti-structure with aoe (especially good vs low collision units like pikemen and archers).
-Cavalry Skirmishers are very fast and slightly bonused vs ranged infantry, workers and support (representing raiding/skirmish/light cavalry good vs anything light).
-Heavy Cavalry is not a specialized unit, but they're fast and very powerful. They should be effective vs anything but anti-cav.
-Elephants are expensive tanks, melee aoe and anti-structure, best stopped by tank + ranged/siege and secondarily by anti-cav. They'll also run amok when damaged (turn neutral hostile) when I re-add the trigger.
Overall cavalry is powerful, or at least will be if it's currently not properly balanced. More expensive, slower to train, limited due to extra effort/cost to build stables compared to other troop structures. A generally less numerous and more elite force like in reality. Seleucids get the Hellenistic Catafracts and Armored Elephants upgrades and they also get the default Macedonian cavalry bonus so their cavalry is potentially the strongest amongst the first civs and subfactions.
I think it's a system that can work with fine-tuning here and there, without adding extra hard counters.
Edit: Just finished a game vs AIs with the most important changes applied (unit, building and tech stats altered). It felt much better, there's enough time to micro your units in most cases now.
