Quo's Combined Tweaks v7.0.19 BETA

I got some extra time this week to work on some extra features, so I'm sneaking a few late features in cycle 3.14.

General Changes

• Aqueducts
  • Removed the radial fresh water bonus from Aqueducts for performance reasons. This is now an exclusive feature of Roman Baths, mainly in order to limit the hit to performance checking for radial bonuses creates in the late game.

Changes to Civs

• India
  
  • On completing a Holy Site, Ghandi now receives a free Settler upon building in the Capital, and a free Builder everywhere else

• Poland
  • Jadwiga may now purchase buildings for Commercial Hubs by expending Faith

• Germany
  
  • Barbarossa now receives a Gold bonus equal to 6 times their Gold per turn when they capture a foreign city
  • Note that this is not the bonus I wanted. I spent way too many hours trying to make this a much bigger bonus for capturing City States only, but the maze of trying to make this work with existing game mechanics without resorting to Lua proved too difficult to solve quickly. In the meantime, Germany has this. I hope to be able to come up with a better solution using Lua sometime in the near future.

• Arabia
  • Increased bonus gold for foreign cities following Arabia's religion to 3 (up from 2).

Changes to Governments

• Theocracy
  • Removed the bonus to building Holy Sites
  • New bonus: Cities with a Holy Site receive +2 Food, Production, and Faith
  • Rationale: Most Theocracy players already had lots of Holy Sites before they got the Theocracy government, so a bulk of the original bonus was wasted.

Balance

• Slightly lowered (again) AI bonus Culture in late eras when playing in Hardcore Science mode

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug introduced in v3.14.6 that broke Russia's bonus to production for Industrial Zones adjacent to Tundra hills

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This is patch to fix the issue with Walls from the previous Beta release. Note I bumped up from 3.14.6 to 3.14.8 while skipping .7.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to build Ancient Walls outside of the Capital

Various bug fixes, updates, and minor changes, as well as a partial rollout of the "MyScratchpad" feature.

MyScratchpad
A sql file called MyScratchpad is now included in the mod folder. This file can be used to input your various changes to the mod. Some sample code is included in this file.

• This file loads after all files included in this mod, so you can reference any object created or manipulated by the mod.
• If you are using a database query tool, you can query tblQuoDebug to see if the file is loading. It loaded if it is listed in the window as having an x_Open and x_Close status of 1.
• The idea in the future is that you can also print messages from this file to the game so you dont need a separate tool to check your code, but that is on hold for now due to some issues with communicating between the Gameplay and Text databases.
• The idea here is you can now manipulate various aspects of the mod without having to directly edit the Gameplay files. Just put your changes in this file instead. If you mess something up, delete your custom code from here and everything should work fine again.
• I plan to add more examples of stuff in this file in the future.

Changes to "Hardcore Science" Rules

• Cut AI bonuses per district roughly in half, particularly as the bonus ramps up in the later eras.

Changes related to Anti-Cavalry

• - Changed formula for converting Anti-Cavalry to Ranged units by increasing their Combat values but decreasing their Ranged attack capability
  • Original formulas: Range = Combat - 5, Combat = Combat -5
  • New formulas: Range = Combat -7, Combat = Combat +7
• Changes to promotions
  • Increased bonus versus Cavalry of the Anti-Cavalry promotion 'Echelon' from +5 to +10
  • Increased bonus versus Anti Cavalry of the Melee promotion 'Zweihander' from +7 to +15
• Barbarian Spearmen now have -10 Combat Strength when ranged Anti-Calvary option is enabled to make taking Barbarian camps stills reasonable.

Changes to Civs

• Germany

• Germany now receives +1 production from each additional district beginning with the third district built (changed from fourth)
• Germany now receives +2 moves for Heavy Cavalry beginning in the Modern era

Various

• Palaces are now considered among the possible pre-reqs for building Walls. This is so that City States are able to construct them.
• Stonehenge now once again unlocks at Astrology. Justified by Astrology's increase in cost and Masonry already having lots to offer.
• The code that disable sea ice has been removed, since Firaxis fixed this issue in a patch.

Changes to Policies

• Colonization now provides to '+1 Culture in cities without Monuments, +1 Food in cities with Monuments.' (rather than just the culture)

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug with Russia's bonus to Production from Tundra hills applying to all players instead of just Russia when Russia was in the game

Just 1 bug fix, but potentially a big one:

• Fixed a bug that was intended to halve the cost of Settler units that ended up applying to all units.

Some minor updates and bug fixes.

• Settlers
  • The code that was supposed to reduce Settler cost based on the num of buildings in the city center has been removed.
  • Settlers now simply cost 50% less than they did (basically back to what they cost prior to the Summer patch.
  • Swapped Colonization and Urban Planning back to their original positions (undoing change from a few patches ago). Currently thinking about some additions to the Colonization policy since it is fairly niche right now.
• Governments
  • Fascism now also provides +2 Range to Anti Cavalry (in addition to Ranged units) if Ranged Anti Calvary option is turned on.
    • Yes this stacks with Gorgo's unique, so you can in fact have Range 3 Anti Cavalry with a Fascist Gorgo. It's gonzo, but the end game should be IMO.
• Changes to the unlocks for various types of war Casus Belli
  
  • Holy Wars now unlock at Theocracy
  • Protectorate Wars now unlock at Political Philosophy
  • Liberation Wars now unlock at Civil Service
• Changes to unlock of some buildings and units
  • Quadriremes now unlock one tech earlier (Celestial Navigation)
  • Shrines now unlock at Mysticism, like Holy Sites do
  • Lighthouses now unlock at Astrology, like Harbors do
• Big fixes
  • Fixed text in Spain/Philip's ability that said he got +2 GPP toward a Great Prophet with each kill. This was bumped to +4 in the last patch but the text not updated. Should now correctly indicate +4.

This small update attempts to correct a possible bug on Firaxis' part that is resulting in civs being too ready to move from neutral to friendly and to formally declare friendships.

• Changed min threshold for a Civ to declare friendship to 15 (up from 5)
• Changed min threshold for a Civ to flip from neutral to friendly to 5 (up from -5)

This has not been extensively tested but seems to produce much more precarious relationships than before. There is no MyOption at the current time to shut this change off as I am rolling it out as a quick fix in part of the existing "Tantrum code". Will make a decision later whether to change the implementation, particularly if Firaxis addresses this themselves.

Just bug fixes this time to try to close off issues for people who do not have various DLCs installed and are unable to run the mod:

• Hopefully fixed a bug with the Aztec DLC turned off causing a crash to menu when starting the game
• Hopefully fixed a bug with Nubia DLC turned off causing a crash to menu when starting the game

This update makes no changes to gameplay. What it does is change the unique ID of this mod so that it is no longer identical to the modID used by the Steam copy of the game. The reason for this is to hopefully solve an issue for many players who have both the Steam and CivFanatics versions installed.

Please note that you will need to visit the Additional Content screen to enable this new version of the mod in order to activate it.

This version of the mod going forward will be known as the "Quo's Combined Tweaks CivFanatics Edition." In the event you do end up with both the CivFanatics Edition and the Steam Edition installed at the same time, they should no longer conflict with each other (hopefully).

As has been the case in the past, Beta tests will be done with the CivFanatics edition. The Steam edition will receive updates every month or so as each Beta ends.

I'm rolling the version number up because of the fairly major change to Anti Cavalry units.

Changes in this release.

Changes to Anti-Cavalry
This change builds on the removal of the cavalry-slowing ability that Anti Cavalry had in previous releases.

• Anti-Cavalry are now considered Ranged units. They have a Range of 1 (allowing them to attack the next hex over without taking damage back).
  • Their Ranged power is calculated by taking their Combat power and reducing it by 5.
  • The Anti Cav unit's Melee power (for defending) is then deducted by 7.
  • Anti-Cav can no longer take cities.
    
  • Promotions should still work, but if you find any that are not working properly, please report.
  • There is a MyOption to turn this feature off and simply use normal Anti-Cavalry.
  • Watch out for Barbarian Spearmen! They can and will attack you without moving from their camps.

Changes to Civilizations

• Greece (Gorgo)
  • Removed feature that allowed Gorgo to gain +3 influence points per turn when at war with at least 1 major civ
  • Gorgo now gains +10% culture and +5% to all other yields if she has declared a surprise war in the past 50 turns (not adjusted for game speed)
  • Gorgo also receives +1 range to all Anti-Cavalry units. This feature turns off if you turn off the ranged ability for Anti Cav in the Myoptions, tho her text will still claim to add +1 range.
• Greece (Pericles)
  • Removed feature that allowed +3 influence per turn when at peace with all civs
  • Now gets +20% toward building districts when at peace with all civs, changing to -10% toward districts when at war with at least one civ
  • In essence, build now, war later
• Poland
  • All Anti-Cavalry now receive +1 Movement
• Spain
  • Spain no longer builds Holy Sites in 1/2 time
  • Instead, Spain receives 2 GPP points toward a Great Prophet with every kill
  • Siege units within 8 tiles (I think, this is hard to test) of a foreign city with a rival religion now have +1 Movement.
    • This feature is particularly hard to test. I welcome feedback about it. I expect to have to do at least some bug fixing to get it right.
• Norway
  • Removed the movement debuff effect added to Berzerkersin the last patch. Just too overpowered.
  • Tried to give Berzerkers 2 attacks per round but it didn't work. So instead they can now move after attacking, like a Cossack.
• Russia
  • Now receives 2 free Uranium upon entering the Atomic era.

Policy Changes

• Swapped Urban Planning and Colonization on the Civics tree.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused bonuses to building Settlers that were meant to apply to a single city not performing correctly. There may still be some issues with this. Please report any you encounter.

This update implements some balance changes based on the Summer patch and some other general shifts based on conversations in this forum.

Changes to REX rules.

• Cities now receive +10% hammers toward building Settlers for each building in their City Center. This includes any building added by mods. The Palace is also included as are Walls (which require a Stable or Barracks, but are constructed in the City Center).
  • This change is intended to offset the massive increase Firaxis made to Settlers in the Summer patch + the fact that this mod changes the Colonization policy. I do not want players to have to rely on the Colonization policy to be able to build Settlers.

Changes to Pikemen

• Due to concerns about performance, Anti Cav units have lost their ability to drain movement from Calvary units. I will explore future changes to Anti Cav in a future patch. The old code for this has been repurposed and moved to the Norwegian Berzerker (see below) who appear from just one civ and for a shorter period of time, hence lower impact on performance.

Changes to Civs

• Changes to Norway.
  • The various changes this mod originally made to the Stave Church have been removed. The Stave Church now operates identically to the new version released by Firaxis in the Summer patch (e.g. +1 hammer from water resources)
    
  • Each Norwegian Berzerker adjacent to an enemy drains 1 point of Max Movement. If the unit is drained to 0, it loses its turn entirely. It can still defend, but not attack or move.
    • This works similarly to the old rules for Anti-Calvary, which have been removed for now.
• Changes to France.
  • Updated Catherine's text to reflect that she now receives her first Spy completely free and spies also receive a bonus level.
    
  • In other words, Cathy keeps all her abilities this mod added previously in addition to Firaxis' new stuff.
• Changes to Arabia.
  • Arabia now receives +1 science +2 gold from each foreign city following its religion (changed from +2 science +0 gold

Note that Greece is not yet updated but likely will be once I have time to write code that justifies the time commitment.

Other general changes:

• Removed code that cut cost of Sewers in half since Firaxis just added code to do the same
• The Steel tech no longer provides Urban Defenses. UD are available only from the Communist government.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused having too many Settlers to drain the player's Gold supply.
• Fixed a bug with the new Goddess of the Hunt belief that provided a much bigger bonus to XP than the intended 25%
• Fixed a bug with Nubia's friendship gift applying to all units, instead of just Ranged units

This release attempts some minor rebalancing in light of the Summer patch that was released earlier this week, and also adds some longer term features I had in planning for a while.

New Features:

• Nubia now has a friendship bonus (+50% XP for Archery Units)
• Better support for modded civs.
  
  • There is now a feature that will automatically detect civilizations without Friendship gifts and provide them with "Friends receive +1 Trade Route" (the same as Egypt).
  • If it is a leader only and not a full new civ, it will instead get the Friendship gift of the base Civ (for example, if you are playing a mod that adds a new leader to India, friends get the India bonus "Can build Stepwells")
  • Civs that get these bonuses don't list them in the game. There isn't any way I can figure out to display it, sadly. Altho if you do happen to be the player playing a modded civ, you will notice an extra Trait on the loading screen telling you about the friendship gift you provide to others.
    
  • There is a MyOption to disable these Friendship gifts, in case modders are manually adding them.
• I have added a Pop-Up Screen that displays your MyOptions settings prior to starting your game. This is a fairly minor addition in terms of gameplay but was a big hurdle for me to figure out how to do. Now that I know though I can possibly use this in the future for other updates.

Balance Changes:

• Monument to the Gods now provides +30% production toward ancient and classical wonders (down from +40%)
• Goddess of the Hunt now provides +25% XP for ranged units (instead of +15% Production)
  
• Spain's adjacency bonus for Commercial Hubs next to Natural Wonder is now +7 (up from +5). This is meant to account for those tiles often already being very good.

What's Coming Next

• I will need to evaluate the changes Firaxis made to France and Norway and decide if I need to make changes on my end in response. In particular, the Stave Church building has changed dramatically and will need a review.

Please report any issues in the forums, and have fun!

This patch makes Quo's Combined Tweaks compatible with the Summer Update. Please note that this is merely a maintenance patch to ensure the mod functions with this patch. It does not include any new features, such as a Friendship bonus for Nubia, or other balance adjustments in light of changes made in the Summer patch. That will be coming shortly in a followup patch.

It's been a bad day for me.

This is another emergency patch after the v3.12.1 emergency patch managed to break the game even worse.

For now all code related to the Beta test of REX balancing has been removed. This version is functionally identical to the version now on Steam (except for the version number). I'm going to take some more time Alpha testing the implementation and will roll it back out again when its ready for Beta.

Sorry for the inconvience.

This is an emergency patch of v3.12.0 which rolled out earlier today. It removes the Gold penalty for founding a new city. This patch is necessary because the original implementation was too broken for testing.

This patch still has the 1% penalty to science, culture, and gold per city founded (for now).

Once again, this patch is only intended for people in Beta testing the upcoming versions of the mod. For the more stable versions of the mod, use v3.11.9, the "official Steam release."

This release comes on the heels of this afternoon's publish of v3.11.9 and push to steam. PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A STABLE AND BALANCED BUILD, I RECOMMEND USING THE VERSION HISTORY FEATURE TO DOWNLOAD THAT BUILD INSTEAD OF THIS EARLY BETA.

REX Rules Build
This build makes an attempt to balance the rate of expansion. It is still subject to change. The new rules are as follows:

• Cities without Districts (except for the Capital) now penalize you by 5 gold turn.
  • This penalty is removed if you build at least one district in the city.
• Every city you control (except the Capital) also penalizes you globally by 1% Culture and 1% Science.
  • This penalty cannot be removed.
  • Right now if you actually somehow hit 100 cities, this would zero out your culture and science. I am not sure if there is some way to prevent this. I am unsure if there are players playing games with 100 or more cities.

The idea is to strike some kind of balance between expansion and awards.

Keep in mind the following:

• This feature will eventually be a MyOption feature you can adjust. It is not for now however, because I want to make sure everyone is beta testing with the same features. I will add the MyOption settings to adjust it or turn it off at a later time.
• This is still subject to lots of change. A lot of it depends on the AIs ability to cope.
• I realize this heavily penalizes one-tile Island cities. A workaround for that is being created and is not ready just yet. Partly this is because the system is still in its infancy.
• A part of this update was rolled out in the previous patch (3.11.9_ with the changes to Colonization. So those changes should be seen in light of this change.
• I am particularly interested in observations of AI failing to adapt to this change, especially on lower difficulties. It may be the case I need to lower their penalty or adjust it in some way to keep them from going under. Higher difficulty AIs generate more cash and worry me somewhat less.

I expect to make several changes to this system in the coming weeks as I fine tune it. Please post your observations and suggestions. The end goal is to get the rate of expansion relatively close to Civ 4-- doable, but not reward simply spamming Settler after Settler in the early game.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback during this beta period for patch 3.11. This is the end of the Beta period. This version makes a few final bug fixes and has been officially pushed to Steam.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with Egypt's Sphinxes not providing their radial bonus to desert hills. Again. This time it should actually work.
• Added some safety code in case a player tries to load the mod without having installed the Aztec DLC.

Note that the descriptions of the mod on the Summary page of this forum have not yet been updated to reflect v3.11. I will update as soon as possible.


What's Next?
I'm working on a new system that is yet to be announced. I'll be back with information once I'm able to share implementation details. In the meantime please enjoy and thanks again.

This release features some close to final tweaks of the "Government Edition." There may be one patch after this to close down bugs if any arise before the publish to Steam (probably happening at the end of next week).

Changes to Policies

• I have finally gotten around to changing the Colonization policy, which I have had the goal of addressing since I started this mod. This policy no longer gives +50% Production to Settlers. It now provides +1 Culture to all cities that do not have a Monument. Thus, its role is now a stop-gap that can let you delay the building of Monuments for a time, or force border pops early while still building Monuments.
  • This change is specifically intended to avoid the current situation where there is a time period in the game where the strategy is to just spam Settlers as fast possible in the window when the policy is active.

Updates to Unique Improvements
The unique improvements were some of the first items to get tweaks way back when this mod came out in November 2016. I have done another balance pass with them, with the following changes:

• Sumerian Ziggurats can now only be built on rivers, and cannot be adjacent each other. The bonus Production for being adjacent to a Industrial District has increased from +1 to +2.
• French Chateaus no longer unlock early (Drama and Poetry). They unlock at Humanism. They still get +1 Housing. Given how powerful the culture bomb of this improvement is + Firaxis own changes to it I think it's still an excellent UI.
• Spain's Missions now once again unlock at Exploration (instead of Theology). Otherwise they keep the various bonuses this mod adds.

General Balance Changes

• Catherine now once again receives her extra spy at Castles instead of Astrology. The super early spy proved impossible to defend against in multiplayer. Keep in mind though that Cathy's surveillance ability gives you a "active" view of the capital hex whether you have a spy there or not.
• Brazilian Street Carnivals now immediately add +1 population in the city in which they are built. They no longer provide global population rate bonuses. This was how I always wanted it to work, and only recently did I figure out how.

Changes to Tech and Culture Trees

• In an effort to further close down problems with Great People vanishing too fast, several technologies that didn't previously have pre-reqs now do. In particular, the Medeival era is affected. You can no longer get to the Renaissance in just 3 techs by beelining Cartography.
  • As a net result of above, it now takes almost the same amount of science to get to any particular location on the tree
• Similar changes (altho fewer of them) have occurred to the Civics tree. In the case of the Civics tree, effort was made to make the middle tier governments make slightly more sense in their positioning. Now all 3 of them are on "dead-end" civics you don't have to take to advance.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with Catherine's new early surveillance ability that caused it to not work if you met the opponent normally before they discover Astrology
• Fixed a bug in the description of the Colonial Offices policy that claimed this policy gave a 50% increase to Population growth in cities on other continents. The correct number is 30%.

We're getting close to the end of Beta for v3.11, so this patch features mainly bug fixes and fine tuning to a few mechanics.

Two features I've discussed recently (Russian translation and updates to Spain) are not included in this patch. I've pushed those back in favor of getting a bunch of basic stuff finalized first so we can push to Steam.



Balance Changes

• The 3 entry level governments that all used to unlock together at Political Philosophy are now split into different civics in order to encourage more diversity in civic choices.
• Moved the Diplomatic League policy (receive 2 tokens when you apply a token to a city state where you have zero tokens) to State Workforce to ensure all governments with a green policy slot had alteast one green card to play.
• In addition to +2 Movement, Classical Republic now also provides Settlers with Stealth so they have a better chance of surviving in the wild on their own.
• France. Updated the mechanism that trigger's Catherine de Medici discovery of other civilizations when they research Astrology. When this mechanism triggers, now a full introduction will be provided, and she will have visibility of the capital's location.
  
• Arabia. Saladin can no longer recruit Great Merchants with Faith or Gold. Changed because he has no Commercial Zones in which to expend most of them.

AI Changes

• AI Montezuma will now prioritize building the Templo Mayor National Wonder. This should not interfere with other mods that adjust AI.

New MyOptions added this patch

• There is now a MyOption to convert all Purple wildcards to Green cards, enabling you to play those cards in either the green or purple slot. This feature is turned OFF by default. Players who want to use it can enable it in MyOptions.
• There is now a MyOption for the multiplier used for the radial bonus provided by radial production buildings (Factories, etc). Default is 2. This feature is a holdover from back when Firaxis drastically nerfed these buildings.
• There is now a MyOption that controls the minimum number of copies of a strategic resource needed to buy or build a unit in a city without an encampment. The mod sets this to 1 by default (to help the AI and avoid the strategy of building units early and just upgrading).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in the Oligarchy government that gave troops +2 movement in unclaimed territory instead of +1
• Fixed a bug that caused Egyptian sphinxes not to provide their radial bonus to desert hills
• Fixed a bug where building a Stepwell as a civ other than India (because of a friendship gift or via American film studios) did not provide the water bonus

Infrastructure

• Moved some code files that are no longer used in the mod to the Legacy folder so they will not confuse other programmers seeking to follow the intent of this mod.
  
• Added Russian language files, although they are not yet "turned on" by the mod due to some issues with debugging.

This patch features numerous tweaks to balance and some features that message board players have requested, including some expansions of the MyOptions system. Many thanks to the players who have offered feedback.

Mod Structure Changes

• Changed how Setup code operates so that MyOptions are now written to the Text and Config databases in addition to the Gameplay database. In practical terms, this means it is now possible for changes made in MyOptions to be reflected in text strings.

Balance Changes

• The Monarchy government now provides +1 Culture to farms within 2 tiles (down from 3, which often lit the entire screen purple).
• When Hardcore mode is enabled (as it is by default) AIs get a rising bonus to culture and tech to help them compete with the player. They get their first boost when they enter the Renaissance, and the second in the Modern era. Reminder that their boost is based on the number of districts they build.
• Science buildings (Libraries, Universities, etc) no longer receive +1 Science above their normal base.
• The cost of Great People in later eras is now increased. Thank you to Clack for providing the base code.
• Updated friendship gift text to indicate what tech or civic you need to be able to build unique improvements that have a prereq.

MyOptions
Several items have been added to the MyOptions system.

• You can disable or enable the increased cost of Great People implemented in this patch.
• You can now turn back on the Wonder adjacency rules if you want them (and the text strings should update automatically when you do so).
• You can now turn on or off culture bombing with wonders
• You can now decide how many free city states tokens building a wonder awards (set to 0 if you want none).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with Egypt's ability description that accidentally listed the original description of the Iteru ability (involving faster construction along rivers) alongside the new ability
• Fixed a potential game crashing bug in the Civ Buffs Only ruleset. I doubt anyone encountered it, but nevertheless it is fixed.
• Removed Catherine de Medici's introductory animation when she discovers a player because they researched Astrology. It was causing human Cathy players to see a black screen when the ability triggered. Now she will just pop into the game with no announcement, like the conniving spying witch she is.

This patch features some balance tweaks to recently released code.

• The Oligarchy extra government bonus is now "Melee units have +1 moves in unclaimed territory." (Changed from providing a free Battering Ram, which simply made players delay building their encampments.)
• Egypt now unlocks free relic slots at Medieval Faires instead of on turn 1. Increased from 2 bonus slots to 4.
• Egypt now receives its free relics per city with an ancient or classical wonder upon researching Humanism instead of the moment the wonder is built.
• Added a description to Settlers explaining that they escape to the nearest city if captured.
• Restored Battering Ram tech unlock to unmodded values (i.e. unlocks at Masonry)