Quo's Combined Tweaks v7.0.19 BETA

No changes between this version and previously posted version, but the last version uploaded as v1.7 did not upload correctly. This version should correct that and provide the listed changes.

I had a little more time this evening than anticipated and was able to roll out v1.7 faster than expected.

This update focuses mainly on some of the weaker Unique Improvements and fixing regional buildings which became really poor with Firaxis' December patch.


Improved Regional Buildings

• The Hammer bonus of factory increased to 6 (up from 3)
• The Japanese Electronics Factory now provides 8 hammers (up from 4)
• Power Plants now provide 8 hammers (up from 4)
• Zoos now provide +3 amenities from entertainment (up from 1)

Improved Great Wall

• Chinese Districts now receive a +1 adjacency bonus for every 2 sides of the district bordered by the Great Wall improvement

Improved Egyptian Sphinx

• Sphinxes now provide an adjacency bonus of +1 Faith to Holy Districts (think of how Mountains work) and + 1 Culture to Theater districts (think of how Wonders work)

Improved Ziggurats

• Ziggurats now provide a +1 production adjacency bonus to production when built next to an Industrial Zone, essentially as if they were mines or quarries. Thus, Sumeria is now the most flexible civ for determining locations to build Industial Zones, as long as you're willing to surround the zone with Ziggurats

Various Text Updates
Not a lot to say about this, but the text overall has been improved so that is clearer what has been changed.

Another bunch of changes aimed at making the game stronger. Some of these changes may be a bit more controversial than previous changes, but after playing a game with them I think they are in the best interest of how the mechanics work.

Here's what new in v1.6:

+1 Range for All Early Siege Units

• Siege units desperately needed buffs, in particular due to how his mod gives extra mobility to so many units. Effective in this patch, Siege units now all have a minimum range of 3. Siege units that already had Range 3 are unchanged.

Earlier Unlock for Barracks, Stables

• Each of these has moved one tech forward, to Stone Working and Animal Husbandry respectively.
  
• Change was made because of earlier unlocking of Encampments. Now you have some buildings you can put in your Encampments, and more decisions to make on when to build your units.
• But also, this helps the AI tremendously, as it is more likely to be able to upgrade its units.
  
• The Stable now costs 80 production, the same as Barracks (down from 105).

Urban Defenses Ability Removed from Civil Engineering Civic

• Cities no longer get the ability to attack just because you researched this
  
• This ability made it outrageously difficult for the AI to attack cities
  
• Long story short, if you want to defend a city, you need to think about Encampments or units

Improvements to Greek Hoplites

• Greek Hoplites now receive +10 bonus to fighting Infantry (Warriors/Swordsmen, etc), meaning they no longer get slaughtered by ancient Warriors and are more worth building.

Changes to Norway Stave Church Officially Supported

• Altho it leaked early in the last patch, the new, better Norway Stave Churches are now official. These can be built in City Centers without requiring you to build Holy Sites. You can purchase Apostles in city centers with this building even if you lack a Holy Site there.
• Unknown: Whether the Stave Church's faith bonus to adjacent forests works in the city center. I adjusted the code so it should work, but it doesn't seem to be reported anywhere on screen. It may be I just don't know where to look. Testing continues. In any case, the intent is ultimately for the church to function the same as always, just not require a Holy Site.

FYI--next patch will be looking at how the December patches changes impacted regional bonuses from Factories, Power Plants and Zoos, and whether/how much to change those values.

This is a patch to correct a minor omission in v1.5 that caused the Harbor hammer adjacency bonus that was added in 1.4 and supposed to be removed in 1.5 to still apply.

I had not planned on making this release today, but there were a few things that were half done when I realized the need to patch, so you get some bonus materials.

Better Norway (start of implementation)

• The Stave Church unique building is now built in the City Center instead of in a Holy District. Its prereq building is the Monument. This technically works, but needs some adjustments. I believe you still need a Holy District to purchase Apostles in a city with the Stave Church, but this has not been thoroughly tested.

More stuff is planned for Norway soon to bring it up to the level of the other civs.


Minor Map Tweaks

• Stone is 50% less common
• Strategic resources are 2.5 times more common
• Iron now gives 3 science (up from 1)
• Salt and Mercury no longer appear in water (this is due to an issue with map scripts)
• Uranium only appears in water--here's an incentive to field a navy. Protect your nuclear assets!
  

A couple of new goodies and some balance fixes in today's patch.

Better America
America now has two abilities restored to it from Civ 5:

• All American land combat units now receive +1 Vision
• America now purchase tiles for 20% less Gold than other civs (stacks with policies that lower tile purchase costs)

Better Egypt

• The Egyptian Chariot Archer now has the benefits of a Cossack-it can move and shoot on the same turn, and has +5 combat strength inside your own borders. To balance this, its base combat strength has been reduced.
  
• Egypt's bonus to producing districts and wonders on river tiles has been doubled (now 30%, up from 15%)

Balance Fixes to Adjacencies from Patch 1.4
First the bad news. I had to roll back some of the changes to City Center adjacencies from the last patch, as they proved a little too overpowered. Here is the new list of adjacencies:

• You now get +1 Gold from each adjacent ocean tile after researching Sailing (down from +2)
• NEW: You now get an additional +1 Gold from each adjacent ocean tile after researching Cartography
• You now get +0.5 Hammers from each adjacent ocean tile after researching Celestial Navigation (down from +1)

Additionally, the following change was made to Harbors:

• The +2 Hammers per adjacent sea resource has been removed. When I added this, I forgot the Custom House already provides a Hammer bonus equal to the adjacency of the Harbor. Thus, putting this in accidentally quadrupled the possible bonuses.
• The harbor still provides +2 gold per resource (up from +1)

I am continuing to evaluate the balance of sea tiles and may adjust further. The idea in the end is that sea tiles should be valuable--after all, why expand to the sea and have navies if sea tiles are worse than land tiles?

Please report any issues in the forums.

This update brings the Combined Tweaks mod up to speed with some new features in the December patch.

Change list:


City Center Receive Adjacencies from Ocean Tiles Upon Researching Certain Techs

• On acquiring the Sailing tech, your City Centers gain an adjacency bonus of +2 Gold per adjacent Ocean tile
• On acquiring the Celestial Navigation tech, your City Centers gain an additional bonus of +1 Hammer per adjacent Ocean tile

You can see this bonus when you roll over the source of Gold or Hammers in the city screens.


Better Harbor Adjacencies

• The gold bonus for sea resources next to a Harbor is now +2 (up from +1)
• You also now receive a matching Hammer bonus (so, an additional +2 Hammers per sea resource adjacent to a Harbor)
• In other words--Harbors next to Sea Resources are potentially VERY powerful (compared to being pretty poor in the Vanilla game), but you need a perfect location
• KNOWN ISSUE: Note that the tooltip when placing the Harbor only reports the hammer bonus, even though you get both hammers and gold.

Earlier Embarking for Scouts (Astrology)

• Scouts can now Embark onto coastal water at the Astrology tech.
• The cost of the Astrology tech has been somewhat increased to balance this

Culture Bombing Chateaus

• The French Chateau now performs a Culture Bomb when it is built, stealing tiles in the radius surrounding it. The severe restrictions on placement (only rivers) balance this nicely. This is now a very powerful improvement and you should be wary of French players who settle near you along rivers.

Bug Fixes

• The Russian Lavra now correctly appears at Mysticism, like the district it is based on

New stuff:

This concentrates mainly on the order of certain districts. It appears the AI is coded to handle districts in a very specific way that tends to overemphasize Holy districts, and set the AI back. To combat that, and also add more gameplay fun, I have moved several districts around.

Encampment - No longer has prereqs. Note that since the Palace is a walled structure, building an Encampment in your capital will allow you to fire it.

Walls/Medieval Walls - Now require an Encampment in the city (updated from having no requirements). This is to make cities much more variable in terms of capturability.

Holy District - Now unlocks with the Mysticism civic (moved from Astrology)

Harbor - Now unlocks at Astrology. This may seem slightly weird, altho Astrology appears one tech earlier than the Harbor's old tech, Celestial Navigation. Change made to encourage AIs to build more Harbors.

Stonehenge - Moved to Masonry so that players have a chance of actually grabbing it sometimes.

Sewer (building) - Moved to Mathematics and lowered production cost. This should help some with the Housing crunch in the mid-game.

Other general updates: Text for modded leaders now correctly shows in the selection menu.

I have added a number of new features to the Combined Tweaks mod. All changes are documented with comments in case you want to remove anything. I may release some of the newer changes as individual mod components if people are interested.

Remember that the stuff I put in the "combined" mod is just a reflection of how I personally play the game. I play for a while, look at what's not fun, and add stuff. So with that in mind, here's the new stuff.

- Circumnavigation. It is now nearly always possible to sail completely around the world on Fractal and Continents maps. On other maps this may or may not work. This is achieved by removing sea ice completely from the map.

- Thermal spots in Tundra. These appear as Oases in the Tundra. These warm spots provide gold and food to all adjacent tiles. Now you will occasionally find a few great spots littered among the Tundra--scout for them!

- Water minerals. Salt, Mercury, and Uranium can now appear on water tiles. This is somewhat unrealistic, especially early in the game, but the change made to make the sea a little more interesting.

- Earlier French spies. France now gets its first Spy at Writing instead of Castles. Catherine is now a serious threat, and you should deal with her accordingly. The Spy is very expensive to build that early, but much more practical than at Castles. (If this proves overpowered I can be persuaded to move the Spy back somewhat).

- Aqueduct Engineers. Each Aqueduct or Bath you build now provides +1 point toward Great Engineers.

- Updated text strings. Thanks to Gedemon and Horem for assistance in getting these set up. Many of the changed resources in the mod now contain a note attached to their description explaining the change. (Note that Spain/France, updated text only shows once you start the game and click the leader icon. Unfortunately does not show when selecting the leader from the menu.)

This is a small update to Quo's Combined Tweaks to add faster border popping to the mod.

- City borders now expand much faster.
- To balance the increased value of Monuments this creates and also the value of Rome's free Monuments, Monuments are now 50% cheaper to build.

With this new update, you should expect there to be much greater competition for tiles than before. At higher difficulties, AIs that start with 2 settlers can very quickly begin to grab valuable tiles. It's still not perfect, but the world will fill out faster.

Note that this mod breaks the preview that shows number of turns to claim next tile. There is no immediate fix I have for this at this time. Hopefully the faster border pops make it much less an issue anyway.