Resource Yield Changes
One of the things I thoroughly missed when migrating from Civ4 to Civ5 were the awesome yields of some resources, mainly food and some of the luxuries. The high yields of, for example, Corn, always got me excited when I found a spot with three corn fields in the vicinity. I just knew this city was going to be great, that I would be able to turn it into a Great Person machine, a production powerhouse (if hills were nearby) or a research center.
In Civ5, on the other hand, special tiles are often only marginally better, sometimes actively worse, than base tiles. Not only does this remove a lot of interesting decisions and emotions concerning city placement, it also contributes to the fact that small cities are so good in this game. High yields for certain tiles make it more interesting to add them to a larger city rather than to your next ICS city, and they give you more of an incentive to spread out your empire rather than settle a dense cluster of cities.
Improving resource yields also allowed me to add some more diversity to resources. Some are better at certain things than others: Sheep add some gold, but Cows are better at generating food. Wheat is best, especially if improved by Civil Service or Fertilizer. Gold, Marble, Dyes and especially Incense now add some culture when improved, allowing you to set up cultural powerhouse cities if you have multiple copies.
The new yields are (first column base yield, second column improved yield)
Iron 2H 4H
Coal 2H 4H
Horse 1H2G 2H4G
Oil 1H2G 2H4G
Aluminum 1H1G 2H1G1S
Uranium 1H 2H2S
Wheat 2F 4F (plus CS, etc.)
Cow 1F1H 3F1H
Sheep 1F1G 2F2G1H
Deer 2F 4F
Banana 2F1G 4F1G
Fish 2F 3F1G
Whale 1F1G 1F2G2H
Pearls 1F2G 1F5G
Gold 2G 3G1C (6G1C with mint)
Silver 2G 5G (8G with mint)
Gems 3G 6G
Silk 3G 6G
Fur 2G 5G
Cotton 2G 5G
Marble 1G1H 2G1H1C
Incense 2G 2G2C
Dyes 2G 4G1C
Ivory 1G1H 4G1H
Spices 1F1G 1F4G
Sugar 1F1G 1F3G
Wine 1F1G 2F2G
Note that some of these are done by adding new dummy improvements, so don't worry if "Build a Mine" appears three times in the Mining technology, this is working as intended.
Changes to City Growth and Culture Spread
Testing turned out that the previous balance for both food and culture was off in the late game, and even felt a bit fast in the early game. Higher food yield for food resources and hospitals in the late game interacted in unattractive ways with this, to aggravate the problem.
I returned to using something closer to the vanilla functions, with superlinear increases in bucket growth to slow down the late game land grabbing and city growth. The formulas I'm currently using are:
Food: 25 + 4n + n^1.6 (vanilla: 15 + 10n + n^1.8)
Culture: 15 + (3n)^1.3 (vanilla: 20 + (10n)^1.1)
The aim of the culture formula is to allow enough growth in the early game but slow it down enough that you won't get new tiles every other turn once you have broadcast towers up. In vanilla, this was a lot higher especially for small n
The food formula is meant to allow you to grow to something like size 15 quickly enough if you focus on food. Keep in mind that I slowed the tech speed, so compared to your research, this will be a lot faster than vanilla.
City maintenance and other anti-ICS tweaks
The fundamental reasons why city spamming is so effective in this game are twofold: Firstly, the cost of founding a new city is quite low, even compared to growing your old cities. Secondly, a new city will become profitable quite quickly because happiness fails at seriously hindering expansion.
Most mods I've seen that try to address ICS focus on tackling the second reason by nerfing happiness. In my opinion, this is the wrong way to go and similar to using an axe when a carving knife will do the job. Yes, happiness can be made so bad that you can't ICS anymore, but the result is almost invariably a gameplay that doesn't appeal to me because you can't expand anymore even if you have a good spot for a new city.
My approach is somewhat different and closer to how things worked in Civ4. Below are the changes I made to the system:
City Maintenance
I re-introduced a City Maintenance cost that increases non-linearly with the number of cities. It is quite simple at this point: The nth non-capital city you found costs you n gold per turn. So the first city after your capital costs 1, the next 2, the 10th 10 and so on.
This city maintenance isn't very noticeable at first but depending on your playstyle it can soon develop into your largest expense. For each new city to be a profitable addition to your empire, it has to provide more in terms of research, gold or production than the last one had to.
It still makes sense to found or conquer your 20th city, if it's in a good position allowing it to grow quickly to a decent size. But it won't turn in an immediate profit, like in vanilla.
To find out how much city maintenance you pay, hover over the gold income in the top panel or open your economic overview. The City Maintenance tooltip in the economic overview will also tell you how expensive the next city you found will be, so be sure to check it when you make your decision about founding a new city.
City maintenance is influence both by your difficulty level and by the size of the map you play. The way these modifiers work is that they are
multiplied, not added. So if you have a 1.5 multiplier for playing Deity and a 1.5 multiplier for playing a tiny map, you'll end up with 225%, not 200%:
Code:
[B]Difficulty setting[/B]
Settler: 0.5
Chieftain: 0.75
Warlord: 0.9
Prince: 1
King: 1.1
Emperor: 1.2
Immortal: 1.3
Deity: 1.5
[B]Map Size[/B]
Duel: 2.0
Tiny: 1.5
Small: 1.25
Standard: 1
Large: 0.75
Huge: 0.5
Trading
Trading in vanilla yields 1.25*pop + 1 where pop is the population in the city you connect to your trade network. This favours small cities because of the fixed +1
In PWM the formula is pop - 1. It is, overall, lower than in vanilla - but then again you can more easily get large cities in PWM so it's ok in my opinion.
Base Tile Yield
Another reason why founding new cities rather than growing old ones is so good in vanilla is because the base tile is generally quite powerful. It adds at least 2F2P1G and each maritime city state ally adds +2 food to it. There are also a number of policies that increase it, such as Communism.
In PWM, I lowered the minimum yield to 2F1H. Your city will now not be as productive from the get-go, and in fact needs some hammer tiles (improved ones, preferably) to become useful. This also makes city placement more interesting: If you found a city on a hill, it will have +1 production. Near a river, +1 gold. On the other hand, an improved hill adds +3 production (with more later) so you may still end up better in the mid-term if you settle next to the hill unless you still have enough of them to work.
Additionally, Maritime city states now only add +1 food per city when you're at friends, with an additional +1 for the capital and another +1 for the capital if you're allied. This doesn't increase with hitting the Renaissance anymore. Maritime CS are now a lot worse than before but I think they are still useful enough to warrant getting them.
Settler Cost
Settlers cost 200 hammers now, their cost more than doubled. In vanilla, settlers were a lot too cheap. Your city growth is now halted for quite some time when building a settler, which introduces some interesting decisions re buying settlers or stopping horizontal growth altogether.
Improved Palace Yield
The palace is now even stronger than before. This change is partly to compensate for the lower base yields and increased settler cost but also to make expansion not quite as science-savvy. I was also unsatisfied about the low culture yield of the palace, especially compared to playing France.
The new yields are: 3 culture, 5 gold, 5 science, 4 production
Specialist changes
I would dearly like to separate the GPP pools for each of the Great People but this would be very hard to do without access to the C++ sources. For now, I settled on lowering the scientist yield to 2 science.
Both the library and the university have one scientist slot now, and the additional slot for the Wat (the Siamese unique university) is gone.
Combat Changes
Combat Modifiers
Flatland now doesn't yield a penalty anymore, except for Marsh and Fallout. Hills and forests provide a +50% defense bonus now. The flanking bonus has been upped to +25%
What these (plus increased hit points) amount to is that staying in formation is now a much more sensible decision. In fact, I've seen the AI use the flanking bonus exceedingly well, better even than I did because I wasn't used to the new balance, sometimes piling a +75% or even +100% bonus on my poor defenders.
Unit Maintenance
Unit maintenance now doesn't change with time anymore. Instead, maintenance is now a
unit attribute. This change has, in my opinion, a lot of interesting effects: Workers are now not so expensive to maintain anymore, you have considerations of quantity vs quality (the most extreme example of this is the Knight), Great People don't cost maintenance, it makes sense to keep old units as garrisons for Military Caste, and you don't have invisible unit maintenance creep anymore even though you don't change your army at all.
The new maintenance costs are displayed in the unit tooltip in the game. I haven't added it to the Civilopedia yet.
Unit Cost
All units are now cheaper, the more so the more modern the unit is. This is likely to not be spot-on balanced yet so be sure to give me some feedback
Upgrades
Are
removed. There are a number of reasons for this change, the most important one is that the player is much better at keeping his units alive than the AI, and highly upgraded veterans that are immediately upgraded to the best techs are a huge part of why combat is so easy in Civ5.
Without upgrades, you have to constantly create new units if you want an up-to-date army. It also creates a situation where veteran units with older weaponry can compete with newer, but untrained units. This point is further strengthened by a flatter unit strength progression when compared to vanilla.
Hit points and healing
In vanilla, units die fast and heal fast. This contribtues to a situation where the player can get insanely good combat results against the AI. In PWM, units have 20 hitpoints and healing of units is reduced to 1 hp, everywhere.
These changes combine to turn hitpoints into more of a resource: Unit hit points can not be easily restored anymore while at war, so you might be better off to let your old units die and produce reinforcements to replace them. Some healing is still possible, which allows you to keep a few veterans alive should you so desire, and to avoid some AI pitfalls.
All healing promotions, including March, have been removed. Especially instant healing.
City Defenses
Cities are now stronger. They start out at 10 strength, the palace provides an additional +5 instead of +2. Cities also have 30 hp, so you'd better bring reinforcements and do a lot of damage to capture them.
Unit strength
The unit strength progression over the ages is now significantly less steep. This, together with no upgrades, removes some of the worse effects of slingshotting army techs and makes for a more continuous development of your armed forces. Old veterans or unique units can now successfully fight against newer unit types.
Fortification Bonus
I removed the fortification bonus because I felt turtling in formation was a bit too strong and that it promoted letting the AI come to you somewhat more than I like with the removal of the flatland penalty. Needless to say, this was also removed because the AI very rarely fortifies its units sensibly.
Experience from combat
Has been simplified a bit. Melee combat now always yields 4 xp, ranged combat always yields 2, no matter if you attack or defend or what you attack.
Strategic Resource Abundance
In PWM, strategic resources are much more scarce, and the yield is more random. This makes hunting for the best iron deposits much more interesting and also makes strategic resources work more like they should: As a cap on the number of strong units.
Siege units
Siege units now have a different role than in vanilla. The catapult and Trebuchet are both weak against land units (get a -50% penalty) but get a +100% bonus against cities and a +50% defense bonus against ranged attacks.
More modern types of siege units, cannons and beyond, don't get the penalty against units but also don't get the extra city or ranged attack bonuses. They have a higher base ranged attack, though, so they shouldn't be worse at taking cities.
Because they are so important for taking cities, siege units don't require iron anymore.
Mounted units
I followed the community-established logic that will also be featured in the next patch and gave mounted units a -30% attack penalty against cities (tanks also have -30% now). In addition to this change, I redesigned the roles horsemen and knights fulfill.
Horsemen are now a flanking unit: They keep their 4 moves but their strength is reduced to 9. They have two primary roles of providing flanking bonuses to other units, possibly attacking with high flanking bonuses, then retreating to safety; and to harass enemy archers and catapults.
Knights are now a very strong unit that dominate the flatland. They keep the 18 strength from vanilla while Longswords are now at only 15. Knights, however, now cost 1 horse and 1 iron and they have a high maintenance cost. Basically, knights are meant to break enemy formations and destroy their units but if Longswords have strong terrain, they keep the advantage.
Barbarians
Barb encampments spawn fewer units and they yield 50 gold on being destroyed now. Barbs are also indirectly boosted by the low healing and higher HP because they never heal.
One of the most important government functions in the early game is now to protect your citizens from barbarians. Consider yourself warned in case your empire is pillaged.
Tech and Policy Changes
I haven't done much in these areas yet, but there are some small changes that I felt were too important to leave out
Tech costs
Techs are now significantly more expensive, with a multiplier that depends on the era. The best way to check this out is to see for yourself. I'm not sure modern techs are properly balanced because I only really tested up to medieval so far.
Iron
Is now revealed with Bronze Working so you don't waste 20-30 turns researching Iron Working if you have no iron nearby. You can build mines but they won't connect the resource until you research Iron Working, so no Knights before IW, either.
Tile yield changes
I added a +1 production boost to mines for Dynamite and a +1 gold boost for trade posts for Economics. The Great Person improvements also become significantly more powerful with time:
- manufactory has 5 hammers + 1 at Machinery + 2 at Replaceable Parts + 2 at Robotics
- customs house has 10 gold + 5 at Currency + 5 at Banking + 5 at Globalisation
- academy has 8 science + 4 at Education + 4 at Scientific Theory + 4 at Computers
- landmark has 12 culture, + 5 gold at Archaeology, +10 gold at Mass Media
- citadels now do 5 damage per turn to adjacent units, +5 gold, +1 production, +3 science at Military Science
Great Person changes
Great persons are a work in progress. I'm meaning to make them more competitive to each other so it becomes situational which GP you want to get.
- Great Scientists now yield a number of beakers that depends on the number of techs you researched rather than granting you a free tech (500 + (number of techs)^2). Note: This is added to your currently researched tech instead of popping up an interface to choose one.
- Great Merchant missions now provide 500 gold + 250 gold per era
- Great Engineer provides 300 production + 100 production per era
- Great Artists haven't been changed yet but are planned to get a culture mission similar to the Great Scientist's tech mission
- GP improvements have been buffed, they now provide: Academy: 8 beakers, Citadel: 5 gold + 1 hammer, Customs House: 10 gold, Landmark: 12 culture, Manufactory: 5 production. In addition to this, they become much stronger as your technology progresses (see above)
Roads and Railroads changes
Roads and Railroads have been made a little more interesting and work now more like an improvement than a city bonus. Both provide +1 gold for any tile they are built on, to simulate trade and help you pay their maintenance.
The railroad production bonus you got for connecting your cities has been dropped and replaced by a tile bonus of 1 production if the tile has one of the following improvements: mine, gold mine, quarry, pasture, lumbermill, fort, manufactory or citadel
Other changes
This is a small assortment of changes that don't really deserve their own category.
Cheaper happiness golden ages
I didn't like how in vanilla you got a first happiness golden age (which was balanced ok) but then the cost of the next one doubled immediately, making it bad compared to spending your happiness on growth. The cost for each subsequent golden age now only increases by 100, so the first still costs 500, the next 600, and so on.
Each city now increases the cost of a happiness golden age by 5% (1% in vanilla)
We Love The King Day
I like the idea but at +25% to the food surplus, the WLTKD just meant another notification you have to click away. I increased the bonus to +100% so you get a more useful reward for acquiring the resource. It is, however, shortened to 10 turns now and has a (30 turn) cooldown period that should be active in vanilla but apparently doesn't work.
The idea behind this is that a WLTKD now provides a short-term population boost for your city (a quite significant one, I might add). It also allows a city to grow through unhappiness a lot more easily, so be aware of this if you're getting close to the very unhappy threshold. Obviously, a strong short boost is much preferable to a small but longer boost because it makes a lot more sense to switch to food working tiles. Make sure you time things so you're in a happy phase!
Sea tile yield
Is increased by 1 gold per tile. Sea tiles (both coast and ocean) with a lighthouse are now like a Trade Post on grassland, without the option of getting +1 science. This allows you to go for a commerce specialisation for coastal cities and makes working sea tiles at least somewhat useful.
Occupied unhappiness
Population unhappiness in annexed cities without a courthouse is now at 1.5/pop. This was changed to prevent Police State annexed cities becoming better than cities with a courthouse or self-founded ones.
Professional Army
Now provides +15 xp for melee, archery and gunpowder units. With upgrades removed I felt it necessary to change this to something more useful. I didn't address the Pentagon yet, so just don't build it.
Early Social Policies
With a higher palace culture, the first social policy was now changed to 45 culture (you get it in 15 turns with a normal civ, still faster than the first policy in vanilla).
Culture Spread
Coast tiles are now easier to get by culture. Your city will spread to a coastal tile before a forest or hill but after a flatland tile.
Workers uncapturable
I didn't like how in vanilla the best strategy is to take a worker from your enemies or a City State. Therefore, workers are now uncapturable.
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