dunkleosteus
Roman Pleb
UPDATE: I've released the mod
After talking about making a mod on the forums for a long time, discussing ideas, etc. etc. I actually sat down a few weeks ago and started working on something. After getting pretty invested, I decided to actually package it into something I can release on the workshop, and I wanted to share my progress here, as well as get feedback.
The basic premise of this mod is to change how you play the game. The most significant thing I've done is reduce the food yield of all tiles by 1. This means grassland tiles provide 1 food instead of 2, it means plains provide just 1 production, it means tundra has no yields and it means flood plains are 2 food, not 3. In a history class I took in university on water use and hydrology, one thing my professor wanted to make abundantly clear to us was that the reason agriculture was adopted was not because it provided better lives for people or more nutrition (it's actually the opposite) it's that farmed land can support 100 times as many people per square kilometer. This figure stuck with me. When I look at Civ 6 (or most civ games) and see that a grassland provides just enough food to support 1 citizen, that means to me that you could have a city with 30 population, no buildings, no districts, no features and no tile improvements, just all city tiles as grassland, and that city would not starve. Every citizen would go out and mull around in an empty field and that would provide enough food for what is surely many millions of people. Somehow. So my solution to this problem is to make it so that all the tiles (save flood plains, but those have their own problems) are unable to support a pop by themselves.
So what does this change about the game? It puts a much stronger focus on farming in the early game. I've had games of Civ 6 where I don't actually build ANY farms unless I have wheat or rice. There are just so many better things to do with builders, like improving resources. In this mod, you really, really have to focus on farming.
With that in mind, I've made numerous changes to the tech tree, like changing which techs require which others, adding bonuses, etc. For example, I've added an ability that gives +1 food to farms adjacent to rivers when you research irrigation. Irrigation also unlocks the ability to build farms in deserts (though since deserts have no food, these farms only provide a single point of food on their own) and the ability that each oasis provides +1 food to adjacent farms. (Oasis yields were changed from 3 food, 1 gold to 2 food, 2 gold). When you unlock Early Empire, all farms gain +1 gold. Historically, food was wealth. The more farms you controlled, the wealthier you were. Food was pretty much a currency and this was true for millennia.
I've allowed camps to be constructed without animal husbandry, and allowed them to be built on sheep and cattle (not horses though). You can still build pastures on them. Pastures still give +1 production and camps give +1 gold. It means you're able to hunt your local cow herds before you learn how to herd them though, which I think is cool.
There are a number of changes I've made to Eurekas as well, such as changing the bronze working Eureka to "Build a copper mine". Most of these changes are to make Eurekas more in line with the spirit of the technology or civic rather than the game-purpose (ie bronze working is a "military tech" so they gave it a military eureka. I don't like this)
I've made all unique units (and many non-uniques) require a strategic resource. This was before the recent live stream announcement that all uniques will have resource requirements in GS.
I made a video on youtube showing off many of the changes I've described above, and I guess I can link that now.
Since then however, I've made more changes. I've added a new project to the city center which is called City Management. It provides a small amount of gold, culture, science and food, (5% of the production to each) as well as provides +1 amenity while active. I haven't done this explicitly, but I recommend this mod be played with reduced production times for buildings and units, and this gives a stable thing to work on in the mean time. The production cost of this project is 99,999 which means you'd likely never finish it. It doesn't provide anything extra when completed either, it's only purpose is to give you something you can do at the end of the game without having to put it back into production every few turns.
I've also started adding 4 new technologies. They are Philosophy, Alchemy, Biology and Medicine. Philosophy requires Writing and Astrology and is required for Mathematics. I've moved the campus from Writing to Philosophy and changed the library. Public libraries weren't really a thing until closer to the renaissance and the idea of an educational campus is at least a classical innovation. Instead, writing unlocks a building called the "archive" which is a place for the court scribes to keep track of transactions and taxes. It provides +1 science and +1 production at the cost of 2 maintenance, but it's the only real source of science before Philosophy. The library building in the campus has been renamed to "School of Philosophy". It provides 2 science and 1 culture. Alchemy requires military engineering and education. It reveals niter and mercury and gives +1 science to workshops. If I can think of other bonuses to add to it, I will. It's required for Gun powder. Biology requires Sanitation (and chemistry does not). Biology gives +1 science to Jungle tiles (also wish I could do more with it, give me any ideas you have). The eureka for Biology is to discover natural history. Medicine requires Chemistry and Biology. The eureka for Medicine is to have 3 medic units. Medicine unlocks the Hospital building. The hospital is mutually exclusive with the research lab (which was unlocked in the prereq tech, Chemistry). The research lab in AgRev gives +6 science. The hospital gives science equal to the adjacency bonus of the campus. It also provides +4 food, +3 housing, and +1 Amenity. While the research lab comes earlier and provides better science (as you'd need a maximum adjacency campus to match it), there are policies like "double campus adjacency bonuses" which also double the yields of any hospital you have. They provide an alternative to help your cities grow if you're not looking for a science-heavy game.
When Gathering Storm is released, I plan to continue to update my mod and I hope to release it soon. I'm currently having troubles with getting my icons to load and I want to learn how to make my new buildings show up in the campus or city center visually. If anyone can help with that, I'd really appreciate it.
One other change I should have mentioned earlier is the Feudalism farm bonus of +1 food for every 2 adjacent farms ended up being really, really powerful, since you'd carpet most of your land with farms. Instead I made it +1 food for every 3 adjacent farms, and this only improves to +1 for every 2 adjacent farms when you unlock that later tech. All farms do however get +1 food with industrialization, which should cause population explosions when you reach that tech.
A building which I haven't added but would really like to is the Moat. It would be unlocked with Military Engineering and go in the Aqueduct. It would negate the effectiveness of Siege Towers (and possibly battering rams, but those might still function against a door). I'd want to make them show up visually on the map though and I don't know if I can add that effect to negate siege towers.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I'd really appreciate the feed back.
After talking about making a mod on the forums for a long time, discussing ideas, etc. etc. I actually sat down a few weeks ago and started working on something. After getting pretty invested, I decided to actually package it into something I can release on the workshop, and I wanted to share my progress here, as well as get feedback.
The basic premise of this mod is to change how you play the game. The most significant thing I've done is reduce the food yield of all tiles by 1. This means grassland tiles provide 1 food instead of 2, it means plains provide just 1 production, it means tundra has no yields and it means flood plains are 2 food, not 3. In a history class I took in university on water use and hydrology, one thing my professor wanted to make abundantly clear to us was that the reason agriculture was adopted was not because it provided better lives for people or more nutrition (it's actually the opposite) it's that farmed land can support 100 times as many people per square kilometer. This figure stuck with me. When I look at Civ 6 (or most civ games) and see that a grassland provides just enough food to support 1 citizen, that means to me that you could have a city with 30 population, no buildings, no districts, no features and no tile improvements, just all city tiles as grassland, and that city would not starve. Every citizen would go out and mull around in an empty field and that would provide enough food for what is surely many millions of people. Somehow. So my solution to this problem is to make it so that all the tiles (save flood plains, but those have their own problems) are unable to support a pop by themselves.
So what does this change about the game? It puts a much stronger focus on farming in the early game. I've had games of Civ 6 where I don't actually build ANY farms unless I have wheat or rice. There are just so many better things to do with builders, like improving resources. In this mod, you really, really have to focus on farming.
With that in mind, I've made numerous changes to the tech tree, like changing which techs require which others, adding bonuses, etc. For example, I've added an ability that gives +1 food to farms adjacent to rivers when you research irrigation. Irrigation also unlocks the ability to build farms in deserts (though since deserts have no food, these farms only provide a single point of food on their own) and the ability that each oasis provides +1 food to adjacent farms. (Oasis yields were changed from 3 food, 1 gold to 2 food, 2 gold). When you unlock Early Empire, all farms gain +1 gold. Historically, food was wealth. The more farms you controlled, the wealthier you were. Food was pretty much a currency and this was true for millennia.
I've allowed camps to be constructed without animal husbandry, and allowed them to be built on sheep and cattle (not horses though). You can still build pastures on them. Pastures still give +1 production and camps give +1 gold. It means you're able to hunt your local cow herds before you learn how to herd them though, which I think is cool.
There are a number of changes I've made to Eurekas as well, such as changing the bronze working Eureka to "Build a copper mine". Most of these changes are to make Eurekas more in line with the spirit of the technology or civic rather than the game-purpose (ie bronze working is a "military tech" so they gave it a military eureka. I don't like this)
I've made all unique units (and many non-uniques) require a strategic resource. This was before the recent live stream announcement that all uniques will have resource requirements in GS.
I made a video on youtube showing off many of the changes I've described above, and I guess I can link that now.
Since then however, I've made more changes. I've added a new project to the city center which is called City Management. It provides a small amount of gold, culture, science and food, (5% of the production to each) as well as provides +1 amenity while active. I haven't done this explicitly, but I recommend this mod be played with reduced production times for buildings and units, and this gives a stable thing to work on in the mean time. The production cost of this project is 99,999 which means you'd likely never finish it. It doesn't provide anything extra when completed either, it's only purpose is to give you something you can do at the end of the game without having to put it back into production every few turns.
I've also started adding 4 new technologies. They are Philosophy, Alchemy, Biology and Medicine. Philosophy requires Writing and Astrology and is required for Mathematics. I've moved the campus from Writing to Philosophy and changed the library. Public libraries weren't really a thing until closer to the renaissance and the idea of an educational campus is at least a classical innovation. Instead, writing unlocks a building called the "archive" which is a place for the court scribes to keep track of transactions and taxes. It provides +1 science and +1 production at the cost of 2 maintenance, but it's the only real source of science before Philosophy. The library building in the campus has been renamed to "School of Philosophy". It provides 2 science and 1 culture. Alchemy requires military engineering and education. It reveals niter and mercury and gives +1 science to workshops. If I can think of other bonuses to add to it, I will. It's required for Gun powder. Biology requires Sanitation (and chemistry does not). Biology gives +1 science to Jungle tiles (also wish I could do more with it, give me any ideas you have). The eureka for Biology is to discover natural history. Medicine requires Chemistry and Biology. The eureka for Medicine is to have 3 medic units. Medicine unlocks the Hospital building. The hospital is mutually exclusive with the research lab (which was unlocked in the prereq tech, Chemistry). The research lab in AgRev gives +6 science. The hospital gives science equal to the adjacency bonus of the campus. It also provides +4 food, +3 housing, and +1 Amenity. While the research lab comes earlier and provides better science (as you'd need a maximum adjacency campus to match it), there are policies like "double campus adjacency bonuses" which also double the yields of any hospital you have. They provide an alternative to help your cities grow if you're not looking for a science-heavy game.
When Gathering Storm is released, I plan to continue to update my mod and I hope to release it soon. I'm currently having troubles with getting my icons to load and I want to learn how to make my new buildings show up in the campus or city center visually. If anyone can help with that, I'd really appreciate it.
One other change I should have mentioned earlier is the Feudalism farm bonus of +1 food for every 2 adjacent farms ended up being really, really powerful, since you'd carpet most of your land with farms. Instead I made it +1 food for every 3 adjacent farms, and this only improves to +1 for every 2 adjacent farms when you unlock that later tech. All farms do however get +1 food with industrialization, which should cause population explosions when you reach that tech.
A building which I haven't added but would really like to is the Moat. It would be unlocked with Military Engineering and go in the Aqueduct. It would negate the effectiveness of Siege Towers (and possibly battering rams, but those might still function against a door). I'd want to make them show up visually on the map though and I don't know if I can add that effect to negate siege towers.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I'd really appreciate the feed back.
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