The Medmod VI

New Version Posted: Version 6 is now posted. A detailed list of the changes is below.

Policy costs: The increase in base cost has been increased by about 30%, while the increase in cost per city has been reduced by about 25%. This change was made after a game in which Gandhi turtled up and had 30 policies by 1850.

City Growth: Cities now require 1/8th more food to grow. Cities were growing a little too fast for the timeline, now that the tech increases have lengthened the game.

Civ Traits: The English now have 30% longer Golden Ages, ala the Persians, and the Turks now have a 40% chance of converting land barbarians, ala the Germans.
The Germans' chance of conversion set to 40%, the Persians' GA bonus reduced to 30%, and the Indians' unhappiness bonus reduced to 30%.

Longbowmen lose their extra range, but add combat strength, the indirect fire ability and a 50% bonus versus mounted units. Overall, they should be a significantly more useful unit now. Indirect fire and mounted bonus taken from historical facts.

Embarked units now have 1 visibility.
Battleships now have 5 movement.
Garrisoned units now add 25% of their str. to city str., up from 20%.

The cost of buying plots reduced by 10 gold.

The happiness bonus from Harbors and Seaports replaced by a science bonus.
Stadium happiness reduced to 4.
Hydro Plants add an extra gold to river tiles in addition to their prod. bonus.
Statue of Liberty set back to its original prod. bonus.

AI unit upgrade priority increased again.
Influence cost of River tiles reduced to zero, so hopefully cities will acquire them more easily.

Oligarchy's city attack bonus reduced to 50%, since the base attack has been raised by 50%.

Lachlan said:

I think that minimal 2 hexes between cities is better on Standard Maps

4 hexes is nice for Huge Maps

And what not 1 hexe only like in Rhyes Mod ? two-three cities from different civs would lead to war...

Cities are not all condemned to be overpopulated...

Click to expand...

Do you read this ?

What is your answer ?

I will download version 6

EDIT : tried your mod !

A big problem : put 22 civs and not city states in Huge Earth, my starting position is surrounded by 6-7 settlers of others civs...

(1) Wes gives instructions for modifying the min distance between cities in the 4th post. He understands that ppl vary about how this should be set.

For those reading, I play on Large Pangea maps with 8 civs and 13 city-states, and the increase in distance between cities is designed for the extra room available from these settings.
If you would rather set the distance back to 3 spaces, simply open up the Global.xml and change the Value of the first setting from 4 to 3:
<Update>
<Where Name="MIN_CITY_RANGE"/>
<Set Value="4"/>
</Update>

Click to expand...

(2) Making things change with map size is not as straightforward as you would think, so probably best to set for whatever map size you usually play.
(3) Did you click eliminate starting bias (advanced setup menu)? This happened to me when I clicked it on an earth map. Everyone tried to start in Egypt's spot. Might be something about the earth map itself.

Wes, Got V6 going,,,Thanks for all the ongoing tweeks to improve the game experience. One thing I noticed though, is when viewing the TechTree - Research Agreements still show up in the Philosophy oval even though they have been removed. Am I seeing things?? Thanks - Jim

Lachlan said:

Do you read this ?

What is your answer ?

I will download version 6

EDIT : tried your mod !

A big problem : put 22 civs and not city states in Huge Earth, my starting position is surrounded by 6-7 settlers of others civs...

Click to expand...

Setting the minimum distance between cities to 4 was the very first change I made to the game, back when the default was 2, and I stand by it for the type of games that I play. The AI does a fine job of adjusting to it, too. It also makes a simple cure for ICS, which so many people have gone to all kinds of trouble in trying to address.
You have to take more care in planning where to found your cities, since you can end up wasting some land if you just put things anywhere, but I think you'll like the change once you get used to it.

I don't think the mod would cause the problem you're having with the Earth map.

One thing I noticed though, is when viewing the TechTree - Research Agreements still show up in the Philosophy oval even though they have been removed. Am I seeing things??

Click to expand...

They still show up, both in the tech tree and the diplomatic Trade list, but they never become active. (They stay greyed out.)

Btw, if you really like the mod, now that it's grown and matured some, I wouldn't just hate it if some of you gave the thread a 5-star rating sometime.

How are the timelines playing out in your games? I seem to have finally hit the sweet spot for me with the increased food requirement and an 8% increase to the research requirement, which, given that I play with fewer, and therefore larger, civs, would seem to mean that things should be about perfect for a default game.

Btw, if you would like to change the research rate, all you have to do is go into CIV5Worlds.xml, and change this line for the size map that you use: <ResearchPercent>100</ResearchPercent>

Hi Wes, Please pardon me if I'm off base as I'm new to modding,,,,, but in the first section in your Medmod v6 Buildings.xml file, within the <building> tag, where you are updating the NumCityCostMod for National Wonders, why does the Where tag say "BuildingType" instead of just Type ?

JammerK said:

Hi Wes, Please pardon me if I'm off base as I'm new to modding,,,,, but in the first section in your Medmod v6 Buildings.xml file, within the <building> tag, where you are updating the NumCityCostMod for National Wonders, why does the Where tag say "BuildingType" instead of just Type ?

Click to expand...

That was a bug. It should say Type throughout the entire Buildings section. Thanks for the catch.

Glad to help Wes, especially since I have adopted so much of your terrific Medmod. As I learn modding, I've noted inconsistency by Fraxis, for example in this scenario in some places one needs to spell-out BuildingType and others its just Type. I also wish Modbuddy would provide more function, such as an XML source code view of the sections updated/added etc. so one could verify that their changes were applied as intended. As it is, you don't even get an error message and most debugging is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And I can never determine why I get invalid references on ArtDefine_landmarks - fortunately most of those don't seem to hurt.

It's so much inconsist as it is annoying with all the similarities. I can understand why they did things the way they did, it just makes it awful easy to make syntax errors.

Btw, for those of you reading, if you notice anything about the mod that doesn't seem to match the readme, please speak up. General comments and suggestions are always welcome, too.

I think I have about made all the changes needed to the basic game, so I am open to suggestions for expansion, especially unique units or buildings for factions. If there are any factions that always seem to be weak, I would be especially interested in that info as well.
On the flip side, it seems that the Persians are still somewhat overpowered. If they get any kind of decent starting position they always seem to be a threat to run away with the game. Their income is always much higher than that of comparably-sized civs.

Yeah, especially with a GP focus, Persia can run (extra-long) GAs when they need to, helpful for war with the +1 movement. Especially vs rivals with the great wall -- grrr, hate that thing.
One idea I had just today is it would be cool to make a hero unit by using a GG on a unit to grant it the promotion to always fight at full strength when wounded, like the Japanese trait. I kinda miss hero units from FFH2
But how hard that is to do, I haven't a clue.

I really have enjoyed playing your mod for quite a while now, and have never had a reason to complain before, but now I do.

I always play the English and I don't like that you've taken away the uniqueness of their unit. The 3-hex shots are fun; more power is nothing exciting......

Can you explain please, why this idea took root in your brain?

P.S. I stuck some stars on here...

Questdog said:

I really have enjoyed playing your mod for quite a while now, and have never had a reason to complain before, but now I do.

I always play the English and I don't like that you've taken away the uniqueness of their unit. The 3-hex shots are fun; more power is nothing exciting......

Can you explain please, why this idea took root in your brain?

P.S. I stuck some stars on here...

Click to expand...

I removed the extra range since it wasn't very often that you could shoot that far, and replaced it with the indirect fire ability, so that you can shoot 2 squares away over any terrain. If I had to choose one or the other, I would rather have the indirect fire.

New Version Posted!

Version 7 of the mod is now up, both as a zip file in the initial post, and on the Gamespy hub. Detailed changes below:

Chichen Itza's effect reduced to 30%, since it can be a game-changer in the hands of the Persians, for instance.
Iron and Wheat now upgrade like other resources (+1 for being there, and +2 for being developed), and Chemistry has been returned as Iron's tech bonus.
I kept getting Rifling and Infantry a little sooner than needed, so I made Military Science as a preq for Rifling, and Railroad as a preq for Replaceable Parts.
Tech preqs added for Electronics and Lasers to prevent beelining to Mech Inf and Mod Armor.
Anti-tank and -aircraft guns reduced to 27 str., so as to make them more specialized.
Legions have 3 movement.
Unique Units now remain buildable after their immediate successors arrive, so that you can continue to build them for their abilities and immediately upgrade them if you like.
Crossbowmen and Longbowmen now upgrade to Cannon, so as to make use of their promotions.
JammerK's bug fix included, so now National Wonders shouldn't cost as much.

Not a big update, but probably the last for the basic game, unless bugs pop up. The timeline continues to be dead-on for me, and I have played about all the factions now, so I think they should be fairly well balanced. Comments and suggestions are welcome as always, though.

WesW said:

I removed the extra range since it wasn't very often that you could shoot that far, and replaced it with the indirect fire ability, so that you can shoot 2 squares away over any terrain. If I had to choose one or the other, I would rather have the indirect fire.

Click to expand...

Well, not me. Arrows shouldn't be able to have indirect fire (try doing that in real life). And yes, you could not always shoot three hexes, but that made using them to their full advantage took a little more planning (which I liked, a LOT).

Hey Wes, Ive been playing your mods since before I was educated I think since the original medieval total war. A heartfelt thanks for these.

I just want to thank you for a mod that WORKS. so many modders these days have all sorts of great ideas but end up making such a jumble of things that the mod inevetiably crashes and becomes unworkable and unfixable. Your mods have always been incredibly reliable and for modern life which doesnt give infinite time to fiddle on the computer like it did back in college I greatly appreciate the consistency of your work.

Since you asked for requests, how about incorporating tech diffusion into your mod? The other (if I could be so bold) stuff I would love is a modern bomber before the stealth bomber, (bugs me that I am flying lancasters along with F-22's), an ocean going dreadnaught before modern battleships, and make cruise missles more powerful.

But I am getting greedy, thanks again for all your hard work!

Burrito X

Thank you for the nice sentiments. It makes me feel a little better about posting that history section at the end of the mod readme.
As for the new units, would they really add anything to the game from an ability perspective? I mean, if you squeeze in another layer of units between the existing ones then their stats would have to be in between, and it just seems like all you would be getting are aesthetics. I haven't even looked at adding new units, so I don't know if people have done new animations, if those are necessary, etc. (Adding new stuff was a lot easier back in the day. )

Btw, if you like the mod, take a minute some time to thank Spatzimaus, since he was the one who gave me the encouragement to learn how to use Modbuddy and create this mod.

Also, have you guys looked over the upcoming patch info? BIG changes. I already know there are some things I'm going to change, like the buff to the Germans and the reduced happiness to colosseums and theatres. I'm also going to set unis and schools back to their current settings so as not to upset the timeline I've worked so hard on to get right. What are your thoughts?

Hi WesW,

Regarding your change in Ver. 7.0 about obsoleting unit as soon as the upgraded version of the unit is available to build, I don't remember when I loose unit from my build queue in vanilla game, but if I lack Uranium I just build regular subs and not nuclear subs, what will be the case in your mod when I discover the newer unit but lack the right resource?

Like Bomber (oil) -> Stealth Bomber (aluminium)
Tank (oil) -> Modern Armor (aluminium)

If I have built none and when I need them I'll have none because of the absolution?

Thanks

I didn't obsolete the units that high in the tech chart, so there is no worry. IIRC, I went up through Riflemen or maybe Infantry, and that was it. I didn't obsolete ships or planes.

question: I seem to generate in inordinate amount of gold in your mod (thousands and thousands). Is this intended?

BX

To WesW :

Came back to your Mod !

I discovered that i liked 4 hexes separation between cities...

This game is faster on Standard Map...

Of course i play currently on a map standard size with 10 civs and 10 city states, game is revamped seriously !

Games are more interesting : i'm in 1800's and i'm at early renaissance age, i play level 4 of difficulty...

Do you know AI Equalizer in Mod Components section of Civ 5 ?

Because AI is not concerned by problem of happiness, not like the human

It's not nice that AI has systematically more happiness than human player, why the AI could not down in unhappiness ?

I will try soon a game with your mod with Rhye's converted earth map (advanced), just DLC, one with Polynesians and Vikings, from Bob_

Hope your mod will evolve again !

EDIT : just tried the Rhye's converted earth map (advanced), with 4 hexes separation it would be too difficult to have certain city spots, what map size you like to play usually ? I sat back to 3 separation tiles, for Rhye's converted earth map (advanced)...