T17
A couple pictures:
Capital grew to size two,Cow is improved next turn.
Demos,Top GNP is HAK I'm pretty sure with his holy city culture.
Top 5 Cities,HAK is the one who grew to size 3.Parkin and Kuro grew to size 2,Parkin grew last turn and Kuro grew this turn.
More land revealed,there's a nice river here.Good news because spots for good commerce cities are scarce from what I found so far,now just need some food here.
Now note that I
still haven't met anyone yet.This is almost definitely a consequence of the change regarding scouts being 1-move until hunting.This is a big change to scouting in scout starts in two ways:
1)Scout loses speed in scouting,obviously this will means you can cover the same amount of land in half the amount of time on flat ground.
2)Lose the number of options of moves that doesn't severely endanger the scout.By severely endangering the scout,I mean by ending a turn with a scout on flat ground.Moving from defensive terrain to defensive terrain is not always possible(or optimal to scouting),this is a big problem because you can't just run away like a 2-move scout if you encounter a barb. This problem is exacerbated when barb warriors start to spawn.
So in other words,not only does a 1-move scout will scout less land but it is also more like to die resulting in even less land scouted.
Scouting is very important in Civ 4 for several reasons.
1)Information. For every game,you need to know where you can settle,who your neighbours are and other information so you can plan your strategy.
2)Espionage. For every turn you don't meet another civ your 4 base espionage is simply wasted. Early game there's no easy replacement for these lost resources.
The goal of changes to Hunting in the Tide of War mod is to make Hunting less of a bad starting tech compared to Agriculture.
In base BTS,Hunting is simply inferior to Agriculture in almost every way as a starting tech. In ToW,Agriculture cost is reduced to be the same as Hunting and Scout lose 1-move. Does this makes the techs balanced?Obviously if you have Corn,Rice or Wheat at the start you want Agriculture.If you have Deer,you want Hunting. However,if you have Pigs,Cows or Sheep,what's better?Hunting or Agriculture?As stated above,I think the effect of Hunting on scouting is non-trivial. Is Hunting a better tech now if you need Animal Husbandry to hook up food?Well,that's why we are playing in this game.
Where I did settle however enabled me to share the cows,so it's not all bad.
