Makes several adjustments to the Archaeology gameplay, including changes to pacing, a new project to gain Artifacts from Wonders and a new Town Focus.
The idea of the mod is to make Archaeology focus more on the different layers of history the game provides and give more routes towards it as an attempt to make it a bit more enjoyable and immersive. This mod is not recommended when starting a game in Modern Age since it grants additional gameplay features from having Buildings and Wonders from previous Ages.
The first thing this mod does is change how the different actions for Explorers are unlock in order to provide a nicer pacing curve, as well as adjusting the number of required Artifacts for victory.
The idea of the mod is to make Archaeology focus more on the different layers of history the game provides and give more routes towards it as an attempt to make it a bit more enjoyable and immersive. This mod is not recommended when starting a game in Modern Age since it grants additional gameplay features from having Buildings and Wonders from previous Ages.
Pacing Changes
The first thing this mod does is change how the different actions for Explorers are unlock in order to provide a nicer pacing curve, as well as adjusting the number of required Artifacts for victory.
- Natural Wonders First: Instead of unlocking the excavation and research of Exploration Artifacts directly at Natural History, the civic unlocks the Artifact from Natural Wonders ability. This allows the early stage of Artifact hunting to last a bit longer without permanent changes to the world, and also helps getting your Explorers around different continents early on with less permanent stakes.
- Exploration Archaeology at Nationalism: The next Artifact stage is now at Nationalism, which comes after Political Theory. This creates a decision of focusing on ideology or going directly to Nationalism to start grabbing Exploration age artifacts which helps distinguish the militaristic and cultural paths a bit more. It also makes thematic sense; your people are gathering artifacts from the previous age as they build their National identity.
- Antiquity Archaeology still at Hegemony: The final stage remains at Hegemony, as it requires both Nationalism and Globalism, providing a nice final point. Thanks to the other changes there's less of a gap where you can no longer do anything with your Explorers, so the transition to Antiquity excavation is smoother.
- More Expensive Explorers: Explorers are 50% more expensive and also have a stronger cost progression, so you need to really commit your resources into spamming them (the Mastery bonuses from Natural History help deal with this).
- New Policies: Two new policies (Grand Tour and Sequence Dating) have been added to help push towards Culture Victories; one increasing production towards Explorers and Museums and the other granting +1 Movement and faster excavation speed to Explorers. Both of these are at civic masteries, rewarding players who have strong culture output fore the Culture Victory.
- More Artifacts Required: The amount of Artifacts required for victory is increased from 15 to 25, preventing victories coming too fast and out of nowhere.
- Aesthetic Changes: All the texts about "Researching Artifacts" have been renamed to "Identify Archaeology Sites" for clarity, and also the ability's description now mentions that identifying artifact locations reveals them for all players and not only for you, but grants you an Artifact. Additionally, Civic Unlocks of the different Archaeology stages now have clearer icons.
Survey Wonders from previous Ages
The mod also adds a new mechanic; you can now use production in projects to survey Wonders from previous ages. This grants an additional path to victory aside from Explorers and Overbuilding, which favours civilizations that own a lot of wonders (whether through building them in the past or through conquering cultural powerhouses of previous ages). These projects are unlocked at the Mastery of Nationalism (for Exploration Age Wonders) and the Mastery of Hegemony (for Antiquity Age Wonders) so they require you to invest a bit of culture to unlock, but they can grant an edge to attain victory specially if the world runs out of Artifacts, provided you have enough production at the cities.
This allows you to also pursue the Cultural Victory in a more aggressive manner, as you can try and claim cities with Wonders early on and then unlock the projects to gain their Artifacts. Having many cities with old Wonders is key to producing many artifacts at the same time.
Each Wonder surveyed provides one completely Artifact. Unlike other artifacts these have completely unique art and names to enhance the flavour and immersion, and they also provide different yields related to the original bonuses of each wonder.
Heritage Site Towns
A new Town specialization has been added for the Modern Age: Heritage Site
Only Towns with buildings from previous ages may be turned into Heritage Sites, providing Culture from each Exploration and Antiquity age Constructible in the Town. Additionally from the Culture boost which is helpful to unlock each of the Archaeology stages, they also allow the purchase of Museums and grant an Artifact Slot to Temples, Libraries, Universities, Academies and Amphitheatres; so converting bigger cities from older ages to Heritage Sites can allow you to turn them into beautiful touristic attractions with many slots for your Artifacts. This is particularly useful if the town has a "Golden Age University" or a "Golden Age Amphitheatre" as both are ageless buildings and are bound to remain around by the Modern Age. (And, once again, if you conquer an older cultural capital you can just turn them into Heritage Sites to enhance your culture game).
Heritage Sites also reward you if you kept some constructibles from previous ages; giving an age to those cities where you built many Unique Improvements that you felt bad removing.
Slight Ottoman Rework
The Ottoman's Unique Ability has been reworked to work with the new changes. Overall, the double artifact ability tended to break the balance of artifacts a bit too much. Ottomans now instead unlock the projects to survey Wonders from Exploration and Antiquity on their first civic, allowing them to still gain an advantage towards getting more Artifacts (other players need Masteries of relatively late Civics), this still fits well with the intended purpose of picking Ottomans if you had a strong cultural heritage or if you wanted to conquer a civ with a strong cultural heritage. Additionally, they gain Unit Production from Artifacts, which fits into their Cultural-Militaristic niche nicely.
However, if you miss the Double Artifact ability, that's now the effect of the Cultural Dark Age Legacy Card, since that's a better place for potentially game-breaking bonuses.
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