Cities of Marble

Machiavelli24 · Feb 2, 2014

Cities of Marble

There are many cities of brick but can you build a city of marble? With new and modified National Wonders you'll be able to specialize your cities like never before, raising the small and obscure city to glory and greatness!

Key Mechanical Differences:

National Wonders no longer cost more production the more cities a player has.
Many National Wonders provide a free building in newly founded cities.
Multiple new National Wonders.
Significant changes to existing National Wonders.

|

Highlights:

Heroic Epic: now gives a free Great General upon construction -- useful if you are planning to swiftly conquer a vulnerable neighbor or if you need to make a heroic defense against an invading horde!

National College: instead of giving a large science boost the National College now gives you scientist slots and a single free tech upon completion. Do you complete the National College early to get a critical technology? Or do you delay building the National College in order to grab an expensive technology for free?

Circus Maximus: now provides additional happiness from every Circus and Colosseum in your empire, providing a critical boost for expansionist empires.

Grand Waystation: a new National Wonder for Caravansaries. It provides an additional trade route and extra copies of luxury goods, supporting all kinds of trade.

Great Temple: now gives faith for every religion that has at least one follower in the city it is built. Trade routes from the city will spread your religion faster and the foreign religion the trade route brings back will improve your faith generation!

Diplomatic Mission: a new National Wonder for Constables that provides an additional spy and delegate. By hook or by crook you will achieve your agenda.

National Intelligence Agency: on top of improving spies it now provides happiness for every Courthouse and Police Station, ensuring a player who seeks to conquer the world won't have anything to fear from their new subjects.

The Steam Workshop entry has screenshots of the National Wonders which can also be seen above. If you like the mod and want me to prioritize development of it let me know by rating it and making it one of your favorites on Steam and by posting here.

Download Locations:

The Steam Workshop entry.
From CivFanatics.

FAQ:
Q: Why did no changes happen after I started a game with this mod?
A: Are you running Civ 5 in a language other than English? English is the only currently supported language in Cities of Marble.

Q: Can I play with only some of the National Wonders but not all of them?
A: Yes you can! See the "How to disable specific National Wonders" section below.

Q: Is this mod compatible with mod X?
A: This is not an easy question to answer but here is a good rule of thumb. If mod X changes any of the National Wonders it will not be compatible. But if mod X doesn't than it is almost certainly compatible.

How to disable specific National Wonders:
It is easy to disable the changes this mod makes to specific National Wonders. Doing so would allow you to play with the unaltered version of the disabled National Wonder.

Go to your 'Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS/Cities of Marble (BNW) (v X)/National Wonders' directory. Inside you will find files for each National Wonder (Grand_Temple.xml, Oxford_University.xml, etc).
For each National Wonder you want to disable, change the names of any files with its name. For example, changing 'Grand Temple.xml' to '_Grand_Temple.xml'.

Known Issues:

None currently known.

Change log:

Spoiler :

chumchu · Feb 6, 2014

I like this! It is more balanced than the current situation, now that all NW are strong instead of some. Maybe the grand waystation is a bit too strong but on the other hand who builds caravanseries? Will try it out!

I personally dislike the requirement of having to build the prerequisite building in each city. There is a mod removing that requirement but these NW might then be too strong. =)

Machiavelli24 · Jun 24, 2014

The Glory and Greatness update for Cities of Marble is now live! This huge update adds almost a dozen new National Wonders, from the Grand Bathhouse and Grand Shrine in the early game to the National Archives and Wall Street in the late game. Many existing National Wonders have been changed, such as Oxford University now boosting Research Agreements and the Grand Amphitheater now providing 50% Culture generation.

demondance · Jun 25, 2014

I will try it seems interesting

Buridan · Jun 30, 2014

I think those culture based wonders could contain a slot for great works:
Grand Amphitheater - writing slot
National Archives - art slot
Public Broadcast Network - music slot

TPangolin · Jul 3, 2014

I feel like I'd love this mod so much more if it had custom icons.

Machiavelli24 · Jul 4, 2014

I do have custom icons (provided by Woodan) for the "Grand Amphitheater" and "Order of Knights" that I will integrate soon. Sadly I am not an artist and can't make a dozen icons for the other National Wonders. It would be a huge quality of life improvement for users to not have to look at a dozen palace icons over and over, but unless I can convince someone with artistic skill to volunteer it is unlikely to happen.

Redaxe · Jul 9, 2014

Looks very promising!

However there are a few things I don't agree with - Please take this as positive feedback, I like the work you're doing here...

Firstly

The Grand Temple. Remove the requirement for multiple religions to get additional faith from this Wonder.
Since the Grand Temple can only be constructed in a Holy City its sole purpose is to boost that Civ's religion by producing more faith for religious buildings, missionaries, prophets or holy warriors and increasing religious pressure. Having it as a sortof 'religious tolerance' centre where multiple faiths can come and worship their own gods goes against the niche that this building fills (and also against history.... if for instance we look at Grand Temples in history such as the Ancient Israelite Temple of Jerusulem, the Hagia Sophia, St Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel etc.... none of these religions would have allowed worshippers of other religions to use their facilities for inter-faith purposes.

The Heroic Epic - A free Great General is unnecessary as you can already get an early General from the Honour Tree and this change weakens one of the few reasons why a player should dip into the Honour Tree. The +15% morale bonus was good and is great tool for an early warmonger to quickly get access to elite units and I use this strategy quite a bit.
I see you moved this benefit in the 'Knights Order' at Steel but this is really too late in the tree to benefit a serious warmonger and the requirement to have armouries in every city is too steep. By the medieval age you want to start specializing your cities and it gets too hard to get every building in your cities. I think you could keep the Knights Order & its Morale bonus but make it so that you cannot build it in the same city as the Heroic Epic. That way you can have separate cities that can both build units with the Morale Promotion. The cost to get the Knights Order is high and a second city with Morale promotions is very desirable but at least this way it's not essential.

Thirdly the National College. I think this is one Wonder that does need some changes made from the official game as the +50% bonus really hurts a wide Civ.
Having 2 scientist specialists though doesn't really solve this issue either as wide civs simply don't have the population to work these tiles and arguably at this point in the game a tall Civ won't get much benefit either if they have guilds and universities to staff as well as trying to keep their cities growing, which in the long-term is actually more important.

The other thing is if I build the Great Library the free tech gets me too the National College and another free tech launches me further towards Education so I think that is a technology beeline that shouldn't be rewarded.
I think it would be better if you removed the free technology and instead replaced it with +4 science per turn and +1 science from City Connections and +2 science from Customs Houses, Academies and Manufacturies (and keep the 2 specialists). Maybe you should also add +1 science to strategic resources worked by this city. After all science is not just theoretical but also has a lot of its roots in material sciences.

This way the benefit of the National College is good for both tall civs (which will more likely work the specialists and have Great person tile improvements) and also for Wide Civs (that have many cities & benefit from connections which sort of represents scholars travelling to the NC from regional cities). The benefit to Great person tiles also makes this wonder build up in value over time as well.

Machiavelli24 · Jul 10, 2014

Don't worry Redaxe, you won't offend me. I like hearing other people's perspectives, it can help bring my attention to areas where the design weak or confirm concerns I already have. Cities of Marble has undergone much less iteration than my other two main mods.

Grand Temple
My thinking with the Grand Temple is that as a religion mixes with other religions it can assimilate qualities of its "competitors" that provide value to its followers. As the high priests of religion X gain exposure to religion Y they can adapt their message to make religion X more appealing to followers of religion Y.

Game-play-wise the extra religious spread from the Grand Temple makes starting trade routes from the city an effective way to convert a city. The "back pressure" won't risk converting the holy city to something else due to its natural +30 pressure but it will likely add a follower of the other religion to the holy city, providing the extra faith generation.

The National College
The national wonder that defines civ 5. The entire structure of the early game is defined by the extreme science jumps that happen at Universities and the National College. The effectiveness of the National College is one of the factors pushing against wide expansion in Civ 5 that I am trying to reign in with this mod.

In theory if you don't blitz for the National College you are suppose to be able to get more out of the free tech. In practice blitzing for the National College is still mandatory because you need to start getting Great Scientist points ASAP to get Academies as fast as possible.

While I agree the Great Library is overpowered I'm not too worried about it because on Deity it is almost impossible to get and balancing World Wonders is outside the scope of this mod. This is a somewhat flippant answer but while I want to reduce the University blitz science structure that dominates civ 5 there is only so much I can do to change that structure in a mod constrained to National Wonders.

As for some of your specific ideas for the National College, I may make changes to the National College in future versions. There are some technical limitations that make some of the ideas tricky to implement but in general I would be trying to ensure that the National College provides a way for Wide play to generate science to the same degree that Tall play can.

Order of Knights
This is more a symptom of how National Wonders work in civ 5, the hard part isn't building the National Wonder, it is building the unlocking building in every city. Many of the National Wonders that require high tier buildings are simply not feasible to build, no matter how good they are. And it forms a non-trivial disincentive to play wide.

My hope with Order of Knights is that exp becomes more valuable the more of it a unit has. There is a huge jump in power if a ranged unit gets range or two attack (melee units don't have anything as extreme but march is useful as can Cover upgrades). This can make building Armories more palatable (since they stack with Heroic Epic's +30 exp), but building mass Armories is still likely to be too costly.

Machiavelli24 · Jul 23, 2014

The "All roads lead to Rome" update for Cities of Marble is now live. This update focuses on making it more palatable for wide empires to get National Wonders. National Wonders no longer increase in production cost the more cities a player has. National Wonders are generally more expensive than contemporary buildings but cheaper than contemporary World Wonders. Many National Wonders now provide free buildings to newly founded cities, making expanding in the mid game more reasonable.

Skaz881 · Jul 25, 2014

I don't think the +1 population from the Great Bathouse is working correctly.

Machiavelli24 · Jul 25, 2014

I see the issue, replace "Cities of Marble (BNW) (v 4)/National Wonders/1 Food/1 Grand_Bathhouse.lua" with:

Code:

function GrandBathhouse_GivePopulation(playerID, iCityX, iCityY)
	local player = Players[playerID];
	local city = Map.GetPlot(iCityX, iCityY):GetPlotCity();

	if(player:GetBuildingClassCount(GameInfoTypes["BUILDINGCLASS_GRAND_BATHHOUSE"]) > 0) then
		city:ChangePopulation(1, true);
	end
end
GameEvents.PlayerCityFounded.Add(GrandBathhouse_GivePopulation);

Skaz881 · Jul 25, 2014

Grand Temple has the same problem, I applied the same kind of fix to it.

sidewinder fang · Aug 28, 2014

I've found an odd bug, some of the national wonders show up in the buildings list in the civalopedia rather than the national wonders section, I haven't noticed any other bugs and they seem to be working fine apart from that (IE, you can still build them normally) Screen shots below and for reference I'm not using any other mods, sorry about the poor quality.

http://i.imgur.com/gDxQGXO.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nJLtUBu.jpg

SnowyNix · Feb 2, 2015

I feel like I might try my hand at making some custom icons, and I feel like this mod would be perfect practice. You might hear from me soon.

Warden123 · Feb 7, 2015

As much as I like your mod I must ask... Any chance for unique at for b these? The same image just seems... Monotonous.

Machiavelli24 · Feb 8, 2015

SnowyNix, I would welcome any icons you can provide for Cities of Marble. Having unique icons would be a huge quality of life improvement for everyone using the mod. I would be happy to release an update to incorporate any icons you provide.

calcul8or · May 15, 2015

Hey, Machiavelli, if you are still interested, I've put together a few icons. If you like them, I'll plug away at some more.

Spoiler :

They are: Grand Bathhouse, Waterworks, CDC, Grand Waystation, Aerospace Museum, National Clinic, West Point. Let me know if I should keep working on them, thanks.

Machiavelli24 · May 16, 2015

Cool! Thanks for working on these icons. I'll incorporate them into the mod and release an update that includes them. I'll probably will need more time than I'll have this weekend but I'll try to get it done within the week.

calcul8or · May 16, 2015

Machiavelli24 said:
I'll probably will need more time than I'll have this weekend but I'll try to get it done within the week.

No problem and no hurry.

Cities of Marble

Mod creator

Warlord

Mod creator

Warlord

Chieftain

Just the worst person

Mod creator

Emperor

Mod creator

Mod creator

History Major

Mod creator

History Major

Chieftain

At Least I Can Talk

Warlord

Mod creator

Warlord

Mod creator

Warlord

Similar threads