New Mod - Tiles Overhaul

I just uploaded my Civ 5 Brave New World mod: "Civ 5 - Tiles Overhaul Mod". You can find it at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...0960913&searchtext=Civ+5+-+Tiles+Overhaul+Mod.

If anyone can tell me how I can give the mod a better homepage, let me know. Also, if anyone likes the mod and wants to create a better homepage for it, with proper link and image etc, feel free. (Not that anyone would bother cleaning up the page. Just putting it out there.)

Here's a basic description of the main changes in the mod. Feedback is welcome.

- One liner: Major changes to tile output and movement cost, making tile selection and roads much more important.

- Major changes:

1) production, food and gold require either a resource or tile improvement, making city location and specific tile purchases much more important;
2) tile movement costs increased, making roads and rail much more important;
3) three specialists allowed in workshop for production, library for research, market for gold, and amphitheater for culture;
4) each market you build adds one trade route slot, giving trade routes a bigger role;
5) workers, workboats, and scouts cost only 10 production;
6) scouts can move 9999 hex per turn to allow for early plundering of ancient ruins;
7) late game unit XCOM Squad's cost made prohibitive because the unit is way too powerful.

Best played with fractal land type, as the almost continuous land-bridge layout makes road and rail infrastructure really critical and deathly important.

- Minor changes:

1) clock moves 20 years per turn all the way through the game, as I became annoyed with the weird passage of time in the original game;
2) deep ocean hex cost only 2 movement points where coastal hex cost 4, because navigating near shore is more dangerous than out at sea;
3) all units can embark onto water and move through deep ocean tiles from the beginning;
4) most luxury resources produce 1 gold, silver produces 2 gold, gold produces 3 gold, and gems produce 4 gold; but after improved by mine, plantation, work boat, etc, luxuries produce an extra 5 gold, while silver, gold and gems are doubled;
5) lumbermills are available from the start;
6) grassland and plains produce no food until you build a farm, except next to a river where they produce 1 food until you build a farm;
7) deserts cannot be farmed;
8) ice and some natural wonder tiles are now impassable;
9) you can see the whole map from the start so you can make sure you start in a nice spot; it also gives you a lot of happiness right from the first turn for having automatically discovered every natural wonder on the planet.

- Strategy changes:

1) With this mod, the focus is on specific tile output. Gone is the old system of gathering food, production and gold all from the same tile, as in grassland and plains. Instead, in this mod you gather production only from forests, hills and strategic resources. You gain food only from farms on grassland and plains, from boats in fish and whale hex, and camps/ranches on animal resources like deer and cows. You gain gold only from silver, gold and gems, plus a few other luxury resources. So the point is that tiles are much more limited in their scope, with a much more specialized function, making it much easier and faster deciding what improvement to build on a tile and where to put your citizens to work. It also makes picking the place to build a city much more important. If you don't have a lot of forests or hills or strategic resources around, you won't produce much production. Purchasing hex is now very important in order to add the right hex to your city early on.

2) This mod also increases the importance of creating a road and rail network. I have increased the movement cost of all terrains, so that most units will move only one hex per turn, not two. Horses can move two hex, and mechanized three (if I remember correctly). However, roads and railroads still provide the same speed as in the original game. So roads and rail are much more valuable in my mod than in the original game.

3) I have also added specialist slots to some basic buildings including the market, the workshop, the library and the amphitheater. This allows you to put some population in those buildings to speed up gold or production or research or culture when you really need them most. It's also a great way to work on producing Great People for an added boost.

4) Each market adds one trade route slot, so you can have a trade route for each city you own, making trade routes much more important in the game, as they were in ancient times. If you send caravans or cargo ships from several cities all to one city, you can speed up the production of World Wonders. Just keep in mind that as per the original game, once a trade route is assigned, it lasts for 30 turns and cannot be changed until the turns expire. Also, to send production to another city via trade route, the city of origin needs to have a workshop. To send food, the city of origin needs to have a granary. Gold can only be received on trade routes with other civs or city states. Cargo ships deliver twice the amounts as caravans, so use ships whenever possible. The sending city doesn't lose any food, production or gold that is delivered to the receiving city. So in effect, caravans and cargo ships actually generate food, production and gold. It's like having extra citizens working in the receiving city each turn. You can see how trade routes can be extremely valuable, and I wanted to increase their use in my mod.

5) Early help: To speed up your advancement early in the game, I reduced the cost of workers, work boats and scouts. Also, scouts can move 9999 hex per turn to allow you to rummage through ancient ruins really quickly for some really great early game bonuses like free technologies and large doses of culture, even the odd free pop survivor and weapons upgrade.

Note on fixing tech tree bug:

In mods that modify the tech tree, a bug causes the tech tree to lose its scroll bar, preventing you from seeing the tree past the first page. You may find the same problem when playing my mod.

To gain access to the scroll bar, simply start a new unmodded game and then get back to my modded game. Just follow these steps:

1) Save your game.

2) Go to the main menu, click Single Player, click Play Now. This starts a new un-modded game.

3) When the new game loads, load my modded game that you saved.

When you get back into my modded game, you will have access to the full tech tree, with workable scroll bar.

What I think happens is that by starting an unmodded game, the game's memory is refreshed with standard tech tree parameters which somehow stay in memory even when reloading a modded game. Only when you exit Civ 5 completely and get back into a modded game directly does the tech tree bug get picked up again.

scouts can move 9999 hex per turn? that means they can move around the whole map in 1 turn??

Yup, they can. And if the computer AI uses them too, you don't notice any lag time. Even with 9 other civs in the game, it doesn't lengthen the amount of time you wait between turns when the AI cycles through the other civs.

However, there are times when the scout ends its turn early. For example, if you send the scout into a water tile, its turn ends immediately.

Also, if you send your scout into an ancient ruin and it is upgraded to another unit, like an archer or spearman, the upgrade will end its turn immediately, and you no longer have a scout. But the interesting thing is that if your scout turns into an archer, it gains a special ability where it ignores all terrain costs. It will be able to move two hex regardless of what it travels through, be it forest or hills or water. This means you can move one hex and still fire on barbarians in the same turn, which is something an ordinary archer can't do in my mod, since I increased the terrain movement cost.

Keep in mind that even though the mod reveals the entire map from the beginning, ancient ruins and barbarian camps are still hidden. So you still need to move your scout everywhere on the map to find them, which is why I gave it such a high movement allowance. Usually I need to build about 4 or 5 scouts in order to find all the ancient ruins on a map, since I lose many scouts as they get converted into advanced soldier units.

Another interesting thing about ancient ruins is that they sometimes give you different results if you change the order you plunder them. For example, if you plunder 3 ancient ruins in a row, you might get gold, culture and an ancient map uncovering the nearby area, which is useless to you since the entire map is already reveled. If you reload the game and take the turn again sending your scout to different ancient ruins, you sometimes change up the bonuses you find.

Alternatively, when setting up your game, you can put a check mark next to "New Random Seed". This will give you different ancient ruin results each time you reload the same turn. This way you can skip all the wasted gifts, like barbarian camp reveal and small amounts of gold, in order to get the really good bonuses, like technology and culture.

When scouts convert into archers that ignore terrain costs, I will pair two such archer units together and send them around the map attacking barbarian camps (only two hex per turn, though, as they lose their super high allowance once they stop being scouts). If you choose the "Honor" social policy early in the game, you can then score extra culture with each barbarian unit you kill. You can thus use these fast archers to earn at least two or three social policies really quickly early in the game.

Also be sure to use your scouts to meet as many city states as you can reach, as they pay you 30 gold pieces if you discover them before another civilization does. You can gain around 500 to 600 gold within the first few turns simply by making contact with city states. You can then use the bonus gold to purchase important hex in your first few cities. Remember that in my mod, you get production only from forests, hills and strategic resources.

One last point, the scout is useful only during the first few turns of the game. Once you have discovered everything, it ceases to be a factor. That's when the game really begins. The first 4 or 5 turns just serve as a really good launch into the game with the help of some super-scouts and a completely revealed map with extra happiness points. Once you get past this early stage, that's when the mod gets really challenging, but without the headaches of micromanaging tile use. Tile use decisions are now made fast and simple.

That's the main objective of my mod, to simplify tile use decisions. Everything else is just bonuses.

so you lose the scout after you get a goody hut unless it's an upgrade?

also here's your link

if you want to browse the workshop in your browser use this link

Thanks for the link.

Actually it's the other way around. You loose the scout ONLY when it gets upgraded by a goody. If the ancient ruin gives you culture, gold, tech or anything other than an upgrade, the scout is still yours and you can continue moving him as his turn is still not over. You can plunder a string of 6, 7, 8 or more ancient ruins and it's still the scout's turn.

The only things that end a scout's turn are an upgrade and moving into water. My mod allows embarkation onto water from the start of the game.

i just tried this it reveals the whole map from the very beginning?!

Yup. I like to plan my cities well in advance. I usually aim for about 10 to 12 cities before I'm ready to conquer the world. So I like to see if the area around me has the resources I will need (horses, iron, coal, oil, aluminum, luxuries, etc.).

I just set "map visible" to true. But all that does is reveal other civs, city states, and resources. You still have to move units around the map to get updated positions of ruins, barbarians, and opponent units.

One advantage to having the map revealed from the start is that all natural wonders are immediately discovered and their discovery is credited to you, giving you about 12 happiness or so depending on the size of the map. Some players will find this helpful, as I have read a few complaints by some players who find themselves always lacking enough happiness. So the extra happiness at the beginning is very helpful, allowing you to ramp up food production and pop generation in your first few cities very quickly for a faster start.

Just think of the first few turns of my mod as part of your setup phase. In the first 5 to 10 turns you'll get extra happiness, extra gold if you use your scouts to contact city states, a few bonus technologies and culture if you use your scouts to plunder ancient ruins, and you'll even get to make some diplomatic arrangements early on by using your scouts to meet other civs.

After these first few opening turns, that's when the mod gets challenging, for you really need to use your tiles carefully and plan your cities well. The mod makes tile use easier to plan, saving you a lot of time when deciding where to put your pops to work.

While the changes this mod makes aren't for me, there are a few design problems with this mod. If everyone can embark into oceans from the start, Polynesia's ability is now useless. If all natural wonders are credited to you at the start, then Spain wins every game.

True, Polynesia's advantage of being able to cross water before anyone else is now neutralized. But in a normal game, embarkation is made available with Optics, which is in the third column of techs, and can be researched in about 30 to 40 turns, depending on how soon you build a library and other science buildings. So Polynesia's advantage of starting with embarkation would cease to be an advantage pretty early in a normal game anyway.

For its part, Spain would have a definite advantage from the auto-discovery of natural wonders granted by the mod. But even that is limited, and does not mean an easy victory. On a large map there are about 12 natural wonders. Spain would receive 500 gold for being the first to discover each one, equaling 6,000 gold right from the first turn. But in a normal game where any civ can easily reach 100 gold per turn just from normal game play, that 6,000 gold is only 60 turns' worth of gold income, and would not guarantee an easy victory.

And where most buildings cost 500 to 1,000 gold to rush build, that amounts to some 6 to 12 free buildings. In an average game where you have 10 cities and at least 10 buildings in each city for a total of 100 buildings, the opportunity to rush build just 6 to 12 of your 100 buildings is hardly going to give you an automatic victory.

Spain also gets double happiness for discovering natural wonders, which means that it would receive 24 happiness in my mod from the start. But even in a normal game, Spain would have received those 24 happiness from discovering NW's anyway, only spread out over a greater number of turns.

Where owning 10 cities can give you as much as 100 happiness from buildings and policies, having Spain start with 24 happiness early in the game does not mean it will automatically win. All it means is that Spain can have 24 more people in all its cities, or some 2.4 extra pops per city on average. It's not enough to guarantee and auto-win. Besides, Spain would have those extra 24 happiness anyway.

Of course, I could always remove the mod's features of map reveal and embarkation from the first turn. But I usually play Rome or Greece or Japan and a few others. Map reveal and embarkation don't change my challenge.

Ultimately the player can choose to play an easier game or a harder one. If a player wants an easier time with my mod, he can play Spain and get the early bonuses from first discovery of World Wonders. If he wants a bigger challenge from my mod, he can always play any other civ.

Only Player 1 gets the bonuses from first discovery of Natural Wonders. By the time the AI plays its first turn, first discovery is already credited to Player 1. So even if the AI controls Spain as one of your opponent civs, it's not going to get the 6,000 gold, nor will it get 24 happiness from turn one. In fact, none of the AI civs get any bonus happiness from the first turn. Those first discovery happiness bonuses go only to Player 1.

Polynesia not only starts with embarking, but they can move across ocean, something normally unable to be done by any other civilization until the Renaissance. You've applied this ability to every civilization in the game without giving them something else to compensate.

Are we going to throw away the entire mod just because one civ loses one of its advantages? If we are going to throw it away because of one change, why play any mod at all?

I'd say the mod's dozens of improvements far outweigh one civilization's losing of one of its advantages.

Tell you what... if players want, I can come up with a core-version of my mod that removes automatic map reveal from the very beginning. I can also remove embarkation from the game's beginning, as well as the scout's super-charged movement allowance. After all, the mod's real engine is tile-use simplification. Map reveal, free-embarkation and super-scout movement are just minor additions that are not part of my mod's core gameplay.

If players want just the core-version of my mod without the extras, let me know and I'll put it out there. I have no problem with that. After all, I want you guys (and girls... all 3 of you) to have fun with it. So whatever makes it fun for you, let me know.

Note on fixing tech tree bug: (I added this note in my first entry at the top of this thread, as well as to the mod's description at its homepage.)

In mods that modify the tech tree, a bug causes the tech tree to lose its scroll bar, preventing you from seeing the tree past the first page. You may find the same problem when playing my mod.

To gain access to the scroll bar, simply start a new unmodded game and then get back to my modded game. Just follow these steps:

1) Save your game.

2) Go to the main menu, click Single Player, click Play Now. This starts a new un-modded game.

3) When the new game loads, load my modded game that you saved.

When you get back into my modded game, you will have access to the full tech tree, with workable scroll bar.

What I think happens is that by starting an unmodded game, the game's memory is refreshed with standard tech tree parameters which somehow stay in memory even when reloading a modded game. Only when you exit Civ 5 completely and get back into a modded game directly does the tech tree bug get picked up again.