Quo's Combined Tweaks v7.0.19 BETA

[Skutai]

I really like this mod, with the exception of your boost to terrain around the Oasis. Combined with Petra or Russia's tundra bonus, it makes desert or tundra MUCH better than fertile grassland or hills. Kinda silly. Boost the Oasis if you must, but leave the surrounding hexes alone. My humble recommendation. Cheers.

 

[isau]

isau updated Quo's Combined Tweaks with a new update entry:

Quo's Combined Tweaks v2.3

This update brings the first major changes to policies in a while. I am working from left to right along the tree. Assuming nothing in this version explodes, the next few updates should work their way all the way across.

There is also a brand new building in this patch, with a few visual issues with its icon, but otherwise working.

New Building: Ambassador's Suite
The Ambassador's Suite can be built in Entertainment Districts in the hopes of attracting the attention of the world's...

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[c4c6]

"No Resource Musketmen: Musketmen no longer require Niter. Niter still exists as a resource, but should no longer cause the AI to get "stuck" unable to upgrade."

What do you think about loosening also the iron requirement? I like a lot the civ4 approach: use copper as strategic resource too.
The corresponding unit ("new" generic Axeman or the original <weaker> Swordsman) would be earlier available, but weaker.

 

[Mordino]

Changes to Walls
Walls now require either a Barracks or a Stable to build.

i dont like it, so i use old version, encampments need pop limit, i dont have it on a small city, but small city need walls for barbarian

 

[isau]

"No Resource Musketmen: Musketmen no longer require Niter. Niter still exists as a resource, but should no longer cause the AI to get "stuck" unable to upgrade."

What do you think about loosening also the iron requirement? I like a lot the civ4 approach: use copper as strategic resource too.
The corresponding unit ("new" generic Axeman or the original <weaker> Swordsman) would be earlier available, but weaker.

Thanks for the suggestion. Long term, that might be a possibility. The challenge would be finding a suitable unit model and then making sure it appeared somewhere on the tech tree that is reasonable. It might be possible to steal one of the various unique units as a stand in, but I'm not sure off the top of my head which one would work well.

 

[isau]

Changes to Walls
Walls now require either a Barracks or a Stable to build.

i dont like it, so i use old version, encampments need pop limit, i dont have it on a small city, but small city need walls for barbarian

Keep in mind that in the oldest version of this mod available, Walls required an Encampment. In this change, they still require an Encampment, just also a Barracks or Stable. The reason for this change is that in order to make the Walls require an Encampment, I had to make the Walls buildable in the Encampment, and that resulted in some in-game weirdness. With this change, the Walls are once again built in the City, so the game and the AI understand it slightly better.

To be honest this is still one of my favorite changes in this mod. It requires some decision making about which cities you think deserve an Encampment to protect them. Border cities? The capital? It's up to you. And it also lets you watch enemy territory and quickly determine which locations are capturable and which will be a challenge. Most importantly, it creates some variability in the capabilities of AIs to take cities. Running this mod with AI++ (a recommended combo) I frequently see AIs succeed at capturing cities. Sometimes even mine if I'm not careful.

If there is widespread dislike of this mechanic, I can consider moving it to the Hardcore ruleset. But so far I am pleased with it where it is. Unfortunately we don't yet have mechanics to add checkboxes and the like to let people easily disable or enable it on its own.

 

[c4c6]

The challenge would be finding a suitable unit model and then making sure it appeared somewhere on the tech tree that is reasonable.

Logically @ Bronze Working. Along with Spearman. But without those horsespecific ability - Axeman is simply a weak Swordsman.

Or @ Iron Working. Completely parallel with Swordsman. Just a 'Swordsman light' for the players without iron (but with copper).

 

[isau]

isau updated Quo's Combined Tweaks with a new update entry:

Quo's Combined Tweaks v2.4

This update expands the 'Tantrum' side of the code. Most of these changes are largely behind the scenes. There are also some additions to the Hardcore rules.

The number of lines of new code is low, but there is a lot of testing and balancing with these changes. I think I have them close to right, but I welcome your feedback on how these changes impact the game.


Changes to All Versions (Except the 'Leaders Only' Ruleset)


Turn Time Revision for AI Agenda Reactions

• ...

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[isau]

isau updated Quo's Combined Tweaks with a new update entry:

Quo Combined Tweaks v2.4.1

I normally try to wait at least a day or two between updates, but during my recent edits I uncovered two bugs in v2.4 that required fixing. This update corrects those issues and adds a few other small additions I had been working on.


Bug Fix: Border Expansion Rate

• I made a small update to this code behind the scenes in the last release that had the unintended effect of lowering border expansion rates below where they had been in the previous releases. That should be fixed...

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[White Out]

wow, im glad i check this mod out. some really intelligent, logical, balanced changes.

im envious when people do stuff like this and i dont even consider it. well done

 

[isau]

Thanks White Out. This started as a mod just for me and as it got bigger I decided to share with the community, so I'm glad you enjoy it. Coding is my stress breaker (weird I know).


Also, if any players of the Basic ruleset are out there, can you share your thoughts on whether you would prefer the Basic Ruleset include the new rules I've added to Hardcore that extend most agreements with the AI from 30 turns to 50? I don't play Basic rules outside of testing, with the Hardcore rules being a better reflection of my personal gaming habit. The change means two things in practical terms:

• When you ally with an AI, it lasts much longer and may make the AI feel more consistent
• Fewer pop-ups

But also:

• Once you make a decision you have to stick with it for a while

I can't take full credit for the idea to extend the relationships from 30 to 50, this concept is borrowed directly from the excellent Civ 5 mod "Vox Populi." I thought the rule worked very well there and in Hardcore, at least, seems to be working here too.

Thoughts?

 

[isau]

isau updated Quo's Combined Tweaks with a new update entry:

Quo Combined Tweaks v2.5 - The Emoji Update

In this update I concentrated on something that had been bothering me for a long time, the general readability of the policies, technologies, and civics screens.

This update has two goals:

• Make the technologies, civics, and policy screens generally more readable at a glance
• Retain compatibility with mods like CQUI

To achieve the second goal, I avoided making any direct edits to the Lua code that displays these elements, and instead directly updated database strings....

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[isau]

I really like this mod, with the exception of your boost to terrain around the Oasis. Combined with Petra or Russia's tundra bonus, it makes desert or tundra MUCH better than fertile grassland or hills. Kinda silly. Boost the Oasis if you must, but leave the surrounding hexes alone. My humble recommendation. Cheers.

Sorry, somehow I didn;t see this comment until now. In the long term I have a change planned for the "thermal spots" in Tundra to tone them down just a bit, probably dropping from 3 food to 2. They are very nice spots for now. I agree Peter can make pretty good use of them if you get lucky. They are, on some level, considered part of his payback for some of the things he loses in this mod. His border explosion on planting a city, for example, tends not to be as strong here because everyone's borders expand so quickly. And his leader AI was always terrible.

Keep in mind you can't build farms on Tundra. I might be able to tweak the Thermal Spots just a tiny bit to keep them away from features like hills that allow mines (they already can't appear next to grassland or plains hills). But, part of the design of them was always to give the player a chance to find some really exciting places to settle, or to invade a neighbor out of jealousy. In this sense, the Thermal Spots are basically just really strong Natural Wonders. They are found in Tundra to give players a reason to explore that territory.

 

[TheBossInTheWal]

Enjoying the mod for the most part. The AI seems to not be too powerful early, but is doing better at fighting wars. On emperor level. However I think the fast border expansion is too fast. The AI can expand much faster than the player early and the amount of cities that can be placed declines very fast.

 

[isau]

Enjoying the mod for the most part. The AI seems to not be too powerful early, but is doing better at fighting wars. On emperor level. However I think the fast border expansion is too fast. The AI can expand much faster than the player early and the amount of cities that can be placed declines very fast.

Glad you liked it. The fast border pops are intentional. They are timed, more or less, with the border pops from Civ 4. In Civ 4, the cities popped in a radial shape instead of tile by tile. Here they go one by one, at more or less the same rate when you account for how long it would take a civ 4 city for its big pop. It's intended to put pressure into the game. You can win tiles back by building a Wonder on a tile, which will culture bomb them. France can also culture bomb with chateaus. And of course there's the new Poland civ.

If you truly, truly hate it and want to mod it out, you can find the code in the Gameplay folder, in the Quo_Rules_Code.sql file. Scroll down and find the Border Expansion Rate section. Delete everything in that section (or if you feel comfortable with code, change the value from 200 to something else) and you should be good to go.

 

[White Out]

Have you considered increasing costs of military units bought with theocracy? I feel it's way, way too cheap

 

[isau]

Have you considered increasing costs of military units bought with theocracy? I feel it's way, way too cheap

Hmm. I haven't considered it. It may be something I could in a standalone mod that is enabled from the Additional Content screen, if I can figure out where pricing is done. In my experiences with Theocracy, it tends to feel about "right" to me. But that could be because of the settings I play on (Standard speed and map size, Quo's Hardcore rules). If a lot of people are having issues with faith buys, and I can find the place to do it, I could possibly do a small mod to change that.

That said, there are a few things that IMO are currently too powerful and need a nerf in the Hardcore ruleset. The first thing that sticks out is trade routes, in particular, the stacking they do with the Great Zimbabwe, policies, and city states. I'm also looking at easing the restrictions on where Wonders can be built, to un-nerf the AI in its ability to compete for them.

 

[shufl]

I think there may be a bug in the "Corvee" policy; it seems to **add** 30% to the build time rather than reducing it. (My construction time jumped from 36 turns to 45 with the policy selected).

I'm using v2.5 (Quo's Combined Tweaks), installed yesterday. Other mods are
CivicsTimeX2
Detailed Worlds
Larger Worlds 2.3
Research Reminder
ResearchTimeX2

Possibly it's a conflict issue? But it seems unlikely to me. That said, I'm frightfully new to playing with mods.

Otherwise, really enjoying all the tweaks so far. I was initially a bit skeptical about the settlers tweak 'cos I do like to nab them from the AI in the early game but I think the greater freedom in sending settlers out does counter balance this. I've only played England so far and I really like the tweak to the RND. The no walls without encampment is a nicely inspired move.

 

[isau]

I think there may be a bug in the "Corvee" policy; it seems to **add** 30% to the build time rather than reducing it. (My construction time jumped from 36 turns to 45 with the policy selected).

I'm using v2.5 (Quo's Combined Tweaks), installed yesterday. Other mods are
CivicsTimeX2
Detailed Worlds
Larger Worlds 2.3
Research Reminder
ResearchTimeX2

Thanks for sharing that. I am not familiar with most of those mods. Looking in the database, the shortened build times should be working correctly. I think it may be a conflict between mods. Do any of those modify building production times somehow?

 

[isau]

isau updated Quo's Combined Tweaks with a new update entry:

Quo Combined Tweaks v2.5.1

This update is relatively short on front-end features, but introduces some tweaks to Wonders and changes to balance in Hardcore.


Wonders No Longer Require Adjacenct Districts

• One of the major features of this mod is the ability to Culture Bomb other civs with wonders, and yet most wonders suffered severe restrictions on placement that made this very difficult.
• I was also finding the level of pre-planning for wonders to be too exhausting, both for me and for the AI to...

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