Getting Started

[Thalassicus]

Basically here's the timeline of things:

1. At CiV's release we could build cities 2 tiles apart, and ICS was also an issue.
2. I fixed the ICS problem so 3-4 tile spacing the ideal for city placement, but is not forced on the player.
3. I changed the AI so it favors 3-tile spacing.
4. I tested out removing the option for 2-tile spacing for a while, but didn't like how limiting it was, so I kept it in the game.
5. Firaxis removed 2-tile spacing in the March 1st patch. I left it in the game, as it was before the patch.

I feel the ICS problem was fixed in these mods last November, so I see no reason to restrict our flexibility by removing the 2-tile spacing option from the game.


@Erendir
Right, the +50% as oil thing is scattering lots of small deposits all over. Since I reduced the size of the deposits it ends up being less total quantity though.

@QDI
Most of WWGD is left active in this mod, only the AI willingness to go to war / become friends is left at vanilla values for now. I've noticed a few modders seem to be a little burnt out lately, possibly because of the frustrating recent ModBuddy issues. For a while we couldn't upload mods at all, then when that was fixed, whenever we upload mods it crashes ModBuddy and breaks our accounts.

Since most of the bugs seem to be fixed for now, I'm taking a break and watching the early seasons of Smallville a second time. It's getting close to the end of the show and it's fun to go back ten years, watch it all over again before the last episode.


@jerseymike25

I buffed culture significantly:

• Artists buffed from 1 to 3
• Landmarks buffed from 4 to 6
• Museums buffed from 5 to 0.5/pop
• National Epic buffed to +50% and 2 artists (was 0, 0)
• Opera House buffed from 4 to +50%

The free policy mechanic was a "quick fix" that only took a few minutes back in November, and I've been working on these longer-term solutions since that time. The policy-per-era has been replaced with the buffs above. Basically I want to equalize things so it's about as challenging to win with A as with B:

• 1 free policy per era, 6 trees required for Utopia.
• All the new buffs to artists, etc, 6 trees required for Utopia.

 

[Txurce]

Enjoy your break, Thal.

Presumably commentary continues. Nearby Vienna has 6 units on turn 15, playing Immortal. By turn 19, the Cape seemed to have 8. All of them were out in neutral territory. That seems... excessive. I was having a hard time moving my scout!

 

[Sporhund]

Enjoy your well-deserved break.

Your modpack has raised CiV to a level where it is not only playable (march patch did that), but actually a truly enjoyable experience. Thank you.

 

[Txurce]

I just finished an Immortal game using v5.4 where I played a little differently and launched my spaceship in 1600, or 50 turns better than my usual 280-some turns on good games. I mention that to make some observations.

Like me, most civs had surprisingly widely-spaced cities. My five coastal cities topped out at 60 million people at turn 230 - probably a record for me - which ranked me 6th out of 8. Arabia had 170 million people by this point, with only a few more cities than me. These numbers strike me as surprisingly big, and not what I remember as the norm.

My science also smashed my record, hitting almost 2500 beakers before I turned it off. Again, the AI was right there with me. Someone built the Manhattan project in 1320, and the turn I launched was also the year of the first vote for the UN. In my prior game, the UN was built in the early 1600s. Again, this seems unusually fast, even for Immortal.

The other major point was that there was no war on my continent of four until the Mongols went on their late-game CS rampage, and Polynesia consequently declared war on them. On the other continent everyone eventually fought the Aztecs, but not each other. The Mongols and Aztecs were the only civs who were denounced. I had a one-warrior army until I picked up a few CS units late in the game, and no one came close to threatening me. (The Mongols were the only ones on my border.)

The point here is that I don’t think v5.4 includes the “peaceful AI” part of WWGD, but I could have sworn it was there in full (peaceful) force.

 

[Minet]

Furthermore the new official patch leads to a small pop-up on the right side with terrain info. It appears immediately when the mouse trigger is anywhere on the map. As this is a very nice feature (otherwise one has to wait long for terrain info to appear) I miss it after enabling the newest mod-version.

Same here. I was already used to this popup. As Yps says it came with the last patch, I guess I had it from an other Mod (maybe Copasetic's UI Tweak?). Does anyone else have this popup by default when the MOD is activated, or did someone add an other MOD to get it?

btw: Thanks for your great work guys!

 

[Thalassicus]

You can set the wait time in the options menu to 0 seconds and the hover tooltip appears immediately with that information (and more).

 

[DC0]

Thalassicus thank you for good mod. In Civ5 Mod browser there are two "Civ5 Unnoficial Patch + Thal's Mod Combined". One is version 5, another is version 17. Both are dated 05.03.2011, but v.17 is dated slightly earlier in hours. Which one is latest?

 

[Mentos]

For the latest non-beta build, best you check here which leads to this download location.

Don't trust the bad mojo online-browser!

 

[manarod]

I'm playing my first game with your mod on marathon speed on emperor difficult with the new patch and i have some ideas to share.
It's obvous that the capitol must be the most popolated city (because of policies and MCS) but my Moscow was in tundra. Not a big problem until industrial era, when moscow reached its maximum population. I built the national treasury in my second city, that was bigger than the capital, and the oxford university in moscow because that where the place of the national college.
So i have some ideas to move forward the fact that the capital must be the bigger city always.
I love how you change the MCS, but instead of the number of cities what do you think of use the population of the cities, giving more bonus to the most populated cities and removing the bonus for the capital? The capital at the begining will still receive most of the bonus, but after classical era the player could manage better the bonus of MCS. I propose also a national wonder that will give to the city a 200%/300% concentration of bonus from MCS (just as the capital receive now) and a % bonus on the food recieved.
Also i don't like the change to the hospital. At the time i was able to to build it it was useless for moscow, because it has reached maximum population. I like more when the hospital added food

I have also noticed that the CSs have a very small territory, is there a way to much the border expansion of the cs with the one of major civs? More titles will make the cs more challenging at the late stages of the game

In my game i was able to gain a large quantity of gold without villages, the bonus from resource and building is not a little high?

One last thing, the prerequisites for the nation epic are absurd, the are no way i will build a barrack in every city (even with the krepost). Could be another prerequisite for that wonder (form exp gained as in civ4)?

I hope i have explained my ideas well and to have been useful for your wonderfull mod

 

[truetom]

One last thing, the prerequisites for the nation epic are absurd, the are no way i will build a barrack in every city (even with the krepost). Could be another prerequisite for that wonder (form exp gained as in civ4)?

I'd be in favour of getting to Epic wonder by the amount of exp units gained so far. After all, monuments are placed in this way.

 

[Thalassicus]

@manarod
I tested out varying MCS food based on population at one point, but the feedback I got indicated people didn't like how frequently city food changes as a result.

I like the idea of a national wonder that increases food.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the hospital. These are the effects it's had:

• Food storage
• Flat food increase
• Percent food increase

#3 is used in the mod. Food storage just made cities grow faster, while a food increase also lets them grow larger. So for example if you're getting 20 from farms and build a hospital, you now get 25.

Citystates don't build cultural buildings, which is why their border expansion is so slow. I could give them something like double expansion or such.

I've been considering ways to nerf gold income from rivers for a long while, which I feel are the main source of the income problem. It's difficult to produce an effective solution though.

Two things about the Heroic Epic:

• After building the barracks, we can just sell them again.
• It has a very low per-city cost increase modifier.

 

[skodkim]

Hi Thal

Just noticed that you changed the name and mod ID of the uploaded v 5.6 making the update non save game compatible with previous versions. Any reason for this?

I have a great game going on with v 5.4 and while I would like to play on with that I'd aldo love to update to the newest version.

Keep up the good work - you're really one of the key stones behind making this game enjoyable!!

\Skodkim

 

[SlightlyMad]

I'm hesitant to see increased city-state expansion speed. On one hand, maybe it would actually mean it makes sense to conquer them every once in a while, but on the other it could be very un-fun to lose tiles to them.

 

[Mentos]

I also like the City-State expansion as it is. They should stay the little children in a game of megalomanic bros.
What I've noticed in my last 400+ turn session that they often chose water instead of land tiles. It was also disappointing to see that they sometimes didn't care to repair pillaged tiles for milleniums.

 

[Txurce]

It was also disappointing to see that they sometimes didn't care to repair pillaged tiles for milleniums.

This is not a bug, so it can wait for Thal's return - but it's worth flagging for a future mod revision. Given how little a CS has to do, tile repairs and upgrades (coal, for example) should be a priority.

 

[Mentos]

I watched once a Worker who fooled around in a City-State.
It was only busy planting mines on resource-less hills or just parking somewhere instead of repairing the stable on the sheep-hill which has been burning since thousands of years.

I'm not familiar yet with all those parameters but maybe following reduction in TBC favors Water expansion too much.

		<Update>
			<Where Name="PLOT_INFLUENCE_WATER_COST" />
			<Set Value="0" />
			<!-- 25 -->
		</Update>

 

[truetom]

It's frustrating to be an ally to a CS which has, say, oil but it doesn't do anything to exploit it. Built a farm ones and it stays as it is. Can't send my worker to make an oil well.

 

[Mentos]

Oh yes, City-States have a certain pitiful aura about them that makes you want to give them foreign aid.

 

[gandalf51]

I don't understand why they removed the possibility to take back tiles with culture of towns like in civ4.

Hi Thal

Just noticed that you changed the name and mod ID of the uploaded v 5.6 making the update non save game compatible with previous versions. Any reason for this?

I have a great game going on with v 5.4 and while I would like to play on with that I'd aldo love to update to the newest version.

Keep up the good work - you're really one of the key stones behind making this game enjoyable!!

\Skodkim

Yes, I would like to finish a game once ^^
Although I suppose you just have to keep the Civ V Unofficial Patch and Thals Balance (v 5).modinfo from v5.4

 

[Thalassicus]

I had to change the name/ID due to some difficulties with ModBuddy uploading. This should be the one and only time the name/ID ever changes.

I don't think it's possible to get the citystate AI to use their workers better.

I made water tiles about equal in yield value to land tiles in this mod, so it's important they be valued equally for border expansion.