Quo's Spheres of Intrigue v8.0.13

This version updates the mod for the latest New Frontier Pass civilizations and fixes some bugs.


UPDATES

• Added a Sphere for Byzantine, Gaul, Vietnam, and Portugal

BUG FIXES

• All civs should be able to select Governors (due to addition of newly added civs to their respective spheres)
• Removed the Friendship Gift provided by the Maya. This gift was causing a crash to desktop if the mod was used by a player who did not own the Maya expansion pack.

Note that no new Friendship Gifts have been created for the new civs. Befriending one of them will grant +1 Trade Route as long as that setting is enabled in MyOptions. In addition, Maya no longer have a unique Friendship Gift.

This is the first attempt to balance the mod for the Expedition Pass content.

Philosophical Changes
This mod began 4 years ago as a way to correct issues with the core game. Thus, there were many 'extras' built in that seem clunky now. I am in the process of removing those where necessary, in particular, leaders with fussy changes to their abilities.


Changes to Civs

• Removed all changes this mod made to the following civs:
  • Arabia
  • Malaysia
  • India (Ghandi)

Changes to Spheres

• Updated text descriptions of several spheres
• Hellenic
  • Founding a city now adds Medieval Road to all tiles within 3 hexes
• Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Units now pass freely through forest/rainforest
• Native America
  • Units with Stealth are now Recon, Ranged, and Anti-Cavalry. This ability now unlocks in the Medieval era rather than the Industrial.
  • Settlers now always have Stealth and +3 moves.
• Eastern Europe
  • Now begins with Bronze Working unlock
  • Now receive a free Anti-Cavalary unit when a city hits 5 population (this is in addition tothe free anti-cav when game reaches the appropriate era)
• New World
  • Now receive free anti-air gun when world reaches the Atomic era (no longer a free WMD)
• Mainland Asia
  • Now once again receives free tiles on expending a great person in a city, tho the era cutoff and num of tiles has been adjusted (receive 8 tiles prior to the renaissance era, changed from 12 tiles prior to the medieval era)

New Friendship Bonuses

• Gran Colombia now provides access to Haciendas
• Maya now provide +6 combat bonus in within 6 tiles of the capital
• Ethiopia now provides access to Rock Hewn Churches

Bug Fixes

• Menelik should now properly have access to Sub Saharan Africa districts

This patch fixes some minor compatibility issues with the Menelik/Secret Societies patch.

• Fixed a bug that caused duplicates of Secret Society governors to be created in games featuring Secret Societies
• Added Menelik to Sub Saharan Africa
• Fixed Alt Cathy's sphere information not showing in the character select screen
• Fixed Alt Teddy's sphere information not showing in the character select screen
• In MyOptions, lowered defaults for securing a Golden Age back to their defaults due to Golden Ages being harder to get in latest versions of the game. You can push them back up if you wish.

Note that Menelik, like other leaders added in the latest patches, does not currently have a unique friendship gift. He provides +1 Trade Route instead, the generic gift given by custom civs.

This patch fixes some minor compatibility issues with the Menelik/Secret Societies patch.

• Fixed a bug that caused duplicates of Secret Society governors to be created in games featuring Secret Societies
• Added Menelik to Sub Saharan Africa
• Fixed Alt Cathy's sphere information not showing in the character select screen
• Fixed Alt Teddy's sphere information not showing in the character select screen
• In MyOptions, lowered defaults for securing a Golden Age back to their defaults due to Golden Ages being harder to get in latest versions of the game. You can push them back up if you wish.

Note that Menelik, like other leaders added in the latest patches, does not currently have a unique friendship gift. He provides +1 Trade Route instead, the generic gift given by custom civs.

The following updates have been made:

• All changes made to Policies in previous versions have been removed
  
  

Updates to Spheres

• Asian Pacific
  • Removed the Pacific Harbor district from the game
• Mainland Asia
  • Removed flag that prevented building Industrial Zones
  • Removed ability to build mines on flat land
  • Removed ability that provided 12 tiles on using a great person in the early game eras
  • New malus: Siege units have -1 Range (this is the return of an old ability this sphere used to have)
  • New ability: All governor types available to this sphere allow double dipping (so there are more choices available than other spheres, but there are a handful of governors you still cannot access)
  • New ability Every 3 population adds : +3 ranged combat strength to cities

Minor changes to make the mod compatible with latest changes.

• Fixed a crash to main menu caused by a change Firaxis made to policies
• Added Gran Colombia to the New World sphere
• Added Maya to the Native American sphere

For now both Colombia and Maya have generic friendship bonuses (+1 trade route) rather than a custom bonus like other civs have.

No major changes in this release. This version simply removes the Alpha tag of 8.0.6 which still appears to be functioning smoothly.

This version fixes a crash to main menu when the mod is played with the Summer 2019 patch. In order to accomplish this (for now) the Beliefs edits made by this mod are removed (for now).


Features

• Temporarily removes the modifications to Beliefs made by this mod in order to prevent crashes to desktop when played with the Summer 2019 patch

This update is fairly small, altho the code was painstaking. Most of the credit goes to @LeeS for supplying much of the Lua code needed to make things work.


Changes to Spheres/Biomes

• Sub-Saharan Africa
  • There is a chance per turn for Rainforests to grow within 3 tiles of each of your cities
  • Background:
    • There is (currently)a 5% chance per turn per city for the growth to happen
    • The growth can happen on tiles you do not own (so if SS Africa is your neighbor, you could find Rainforest growing in your territory)
    • It is possible for the growth to happen over tiles that don't normally allow Rainforest, e.g., growth over horses

Please report any issues or bugs.

There's not a lot of change in this update, except to people who use downloaded civs a lot.

CHANGES TO MOD STRUCTURE

• Added 2 new "Scratchpad" files
  • MyScratchpad_Config allows you to add configuration items to the Character select screen
  • MyScratchpad_Text allows you to add or modify text strings in the Text database

Both of these Scratchpad files come with examples. This has been added so that players can manually add their own text to the mod, and make adjustments to the character select screen as they see fit.


BALANCE CHANGES

• Japan no longer gets +5 combat bonus on tiles adjacent to Coast, since this stacked with the Appeal bonus for ridiculous combat advantage. The new Appeal based combat ability is very strong.

BUG FIXES

• Turning off Spheres/Biomes in the MyOptions should no longer cause Governors to be disabled. Thanks for reporting this bug.

Some minor bug fixes and changes to spheres. It felt like this took days of work for (mostly)minor changes just due to how many things I tried that didn't work out like I hoped.

Sphere Changes

• New World
  • Now receives a free WMD in every city in the Atomic era
    • Too much? This comes super late so I'm not sure if its even a major factor. May need to tone down which locations get the effect. In any case, it should be capped by the max WMD silo size.
  • Now has access to one copy of every Governor type, as a special ability
• Asian Pacific
  
  • Now starts the game with closed borders
  • The Pacific Harbor should now show properly again in game
  • Increased the reliance on high-appeal tiles. The breakdown is now:
    • -1 Appeal or lower -5 combat
    • +1 Appeal or higher +2 combat, increasing by +2 for every point higher, up to max +8
  • You also now siphon health and faith when defeating a unit on a high appeal tile. This replaces the previous passive "extra heal on high appeal tiles"

This is mostly a bug fix release with a few small features.

Changes to Spheres

• The Western Europe sphere now receives Gold when they make a kill based on the number of unique Luxuries they have improved in their lands.
  • I added this because I found this sphere boring to play.
    
  • If you have a lot of Luxuries this can take a lot of time to process all the notifications. You should be able to continue your turn without waiting for them to complete. However, let me know if this is causing issues with gameplay.
• Asian Mainland
  • Mines without hills now have +1 production (making a non-hill mine as good as a hill mine
  • Increases amount of power provided by governors to +2 per Gov title(up from +1)

Changes to Governors

• Educator: Reduced Culture and Science per citizen to 0.75 (down from 1)
• Mariner: Reduced Production per citizen to 0.75 (down from 1)
• The Mariner now uses the Ambassador's art (for now, until/unless I can bring in my own custom graphics)
  
• Druid: Reduced Food per citizen to 0.5 (down from 1)
• Druid Charms of Nature promotion now provides an additional +1 Culture if a tile is Breathtaking
  
• Resource Manager: Moved Groundbreaker forward 1 slot, so it is now tier 2 instead of 3
• Some adjustments to which civs receive which governors
• Text changes to match names of governors listed on character select screen with names displayed in game

Bug fixes

• Fixed an icon issue with Mariner and Druid mayors
• Fixed a bug that accidentally added Macedon to the Asian Pacific sphere
• Fixed a bug that completely broke Sub Saharan Africa for all leaders
• Fixed a bug that made the Seaside Imports Mariner promotion unselectable

Known issues

• Mbanza graphic still not fixed (still no ETA--this ability may simply end up being removed)
• Sub Saharan and North Africa spheres don't fully register fan made civs added to these spheres(the civs will lack the bonus units or districts)

This update contains some changes to overall implementation and the addition of two new Governors.

The only sad thing is that despite hours (and hours and hours) of trying I could not find a way to bring new Governor art into the game. I know that it is possible, because I have seen an example of a mod where it is done, but I have very little experience with art assets. So for now, you new governors reuse existing game art.


New Governors

• The Mariner
  • Has abilities that tend to involve Oceans and water tiles
• The Druid
  • An alternative to the Cardinal that has some relationship with tile Appeal and unimproved tiles, as well as Faith in general

Implementation Changes
There is now a table in MyOptions where you can list fan made Civilizations you have installed and associate them with a Sphere. The code will mostly work at this point.

• Sub Saharan Africa is not yet fully implemented and custom civs added to this sphere won't get the extra districts. This is related to the ongoing saga of the missing Mbanza art.
• Registering a custom civ this way should take care of Governor availability.

Big Fixes

• Began fixing bugs involving the Pacific Harbor.
  • Shipyards should now gain bonus production based on Pacific Harbor adjacencies
  • Governor and policy cards that double adjacencies should now properly double adjacacencies for this district
  • Not fixed yet: Bonuses derived from Golden Ages