Change minimum city distance?

[Mortac]

I would like to change the minimum city distance from the current 4 tiles to 3 tiles. I've googled this but it seems everything I find is outdated or simply doesn't work. I downloaded available mods but they either don't work or the game won't even start when I add them to the mod folder.

I'm literally stuck and need help. Does anyone know how to change this setting? Is there a working mod for this available somewhere that changes this setting and nothing else? Or is there anyone out there that could make such a mod and make it available?

 

[LeeS]

1. It's been literaly years since I played around with this Define, but as I recall you have to start an entirely new game in order for it to have any in-game effect.
2. The game's controlling DLL allows cities on different landmasses to be one tile closer than the setting for this define
3. mods that are placed in the game's "Mods" folder are not automatically enabled, and have no effect until they are enabled.
4. You must always start a game through the modded games (ie, MODS) menu, and always reloaded a modded game via the modded games menus. You can never click the "Back" button and go into the standard "SINGLE PLAYER" menus.
5. If simply placing a mod into the game's MODS folder located at ~\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\ is causing the game not to even start for you, then you are doing something fundamentally wrong as this should not be a possible outcome of placing a mod into the game's MODS folder.
6. The name of the define is MIN_CITY_RANGE and is found in table <Defines>. A mod to change the standard setting of "3" to "4" would need this code (in XML):

   <GameData>
   	<Defines>
   		<Update>
   			<Where Name="MIN_CITY_RANGE" />
   			<Set Value="4" />
   		</Update>
   	</Defines>
   </GameData>

   This code would have to be placed into an XXXX.xml file and the file would have to be given an UpdateDatabase type of action. whoward69's what ModBuddy setting for what file types tutorial
7. There are numerous mods available on Steam Workshop that do exactly what you want, or something similar but with different minimum "range" values. The same mods are probably also available for download here from CFC downloads. They are not outdated nor can they be outdated since Firaxis has never changed the Define "Name" for this attribute of the game.

If you run a non-windows machines (Mac, Linux, Whatevers) this is probably part of the issue. Mac machines want mods (as I recall) in some other "library" location than where windows machines want mods to be located, and running mods on Mac for civ5 is something most of the modding community is not very expert at.

 

[Mortac]

Thank you for the detailed reply!

Regarding (5): I simply placed a downloaded mod in the correct mods folder (it is correct because I have a couple of other mods there that work just fine) and the game wouldn't load. I tried three times. When I removed the mod it started properly again on the next attempt. The game has never refused to start before so while I understand what you say it also seems extremely unlikely that the game would for the first time in years not load exactly the three times the mod was added.

I'm also on a PC with Windows 10 so there is no OS issue.

The reason the mods weren't working were probably because I didn't make a new game, then. I assumed it would work on existing games.

Thank you again!