A stolen good idea

I won't pretend to know thing one about modding TW games, since I haven't started and probably won't. I do play a highly modded version of another TBS game that I did myself that I'm very happy with.

I also won't claim this is my idea, since it belongs to someone else who modded the same game I did. While I'm very happy with my own mod to that game, I will say that his is the 'mod of choice' in that community.

His idea seems like it would work here, since as near as I can tell all TBS have the same basic problem, that being dumb AI is the root of all evil.

I've looked over a lot of the discussions here and seen a lot of familiar themes. Change unit costs so the AI builds balanced armies, it gives the player even more opportunities than it gives the AI. Boost incomes so the AI doesn't go broke, the player goes from hugely wealthy to building forts out of gold bricks. Etcetera, etcetera.

The solution is, for whatever faction you want to play, you load a modded game where all the other factions have the ability to build cheap good units that aren't available to that faction. He just made a separate mod for each playable faction.

As near as I can tell the engine has the capability. The Danish make Vikings everywhere they go, so it seems like it would be possible to create, for example, a unit called 'AISpearmen' that would be enabled for every faction other than the one being played. Give them the same attributes as regular spearmen and adjust their cost, or whatever it is you have to do to get the AI to recruit armies effectively. Let the AI factions build really cheap boats they can pop out in a year and they might build a trade fleet that can rival the player.

Is it a pain in the butt to switch out all the files required because you want to play as faction X instead of faction Y? Maybe. Is it a lot of work to package all those files into individual mods for however many factions? No doubt. Did it really work great on a different game? Go to forums for SMAC and see what people think of the SMAniaC mod.

Yes, it is possible, and as long as you keep it simple, you could probably do it in just a few days... I'd thought of doing this before but I could never be bothered get around to it. :cool4: