Quo's Combined Tweaks v7.0.19 BETA

[Guynemer]

I just recalled one other bug from the previous build; haven't tried the new one yet.

I was friends with Cyrus; whenever I built a pairidaeza, the tile improvement would not appear, but was replaced with a red exclamation point. It was still workable, and provided the proper yields.

It looks like this is not necessarily a QCT issue, but an issue with certain unique improvements that has popped up with GS. See this thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-exclamation-on-tiles-how-to-fix-this.642540/

 

[isau]

I just recalled one other bug from the previous build; haven't tried the new one yet.

I was friends with Cyrus; whenever I built a pairidaeza, the tile improvement would not appear, but was replaced with a red exclamation point. It was still workable, and provided the proper yields.

It looks like this is not necessarily a QCT issue, but an issue with certain unique improvements that has popped up with GS. See this thread:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-exclamation-on-tiles-how-to-fix-this.642540/

Thanks for sharing this. Looks like this is the result of how they adjusted how mods load in GS. Not sure how long it will take to fix. Will try out the comments in that thread.

 

[Grathocke]

Not sure if it is QCT, but my Rock Bands are in another language (not sure if Spanish or Portugese)--the tool tip and the unit name in the build list. The actual band name and promotions are still in English.

Won as Eleanor; didn't notice any other obvious bugs with the 7.0.5 build.

I don't know about the rock bands since I haven't gotten past the Medieval. However, several leaders I've met have what appears to be Portuguese subtitles. Definitely not espanol.

 

[isau]

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

Quo's Combined Tweaks v7.0.9 ALPHA

Fixed some bugs and added a couple of features to improve gameplay for GS.

Changes

• Changes Western Europe for Gathering Storm.
  • Still has -1 production from forest/rainforest
    
  • New: Can no longer build Recon units
    
  • New: Units unlocked by techs prior to the Medieval period now have -1 Vision
    
  • New: Now receives +100% production toward Medieval Walls(in addition to existing ability to bypass the bedrock requirement for this style of wall)
  • Still receives a free...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[DanaLea]

New: Can no longer build Recon units

Wait... no recon units? So no scouts?

Well, guess I'm never playing Western Europe again. LOL

 

[isau]

Wait... no recon units? So no scouts?

Well, guess I'm never playing Western Europe again. LOL

Do people actually build many Scouts? I haven't built one in ages because (especially in this mod with the extra movement) it didn't seem like a good hammer investment.

We can see what the community thinks about these changes to Western Europe. I think, of the various lists of banned units, Recons are probably the least consequential (hence why I backed it up with -1 vision to other units). Possibly it's just too much though.

Funny fact in the meantime: in testing this I discovered if you lower a unit's sight to 0 or lower it runs around on the printed version of the map instead of tiles, never revealing any underlying terrain.

 

[Guynemer]

Scouts are a great way to get early era score; once they get the Ambush promotion, they are terrific at mopping up barbarian camps, as well as being extremely effective at razing enemy territory.

I don't build a lot of them, but three or four are pretty effective.

 

[isau]

If the consensus is that the changes to Western Europe are unfun I can undo them. I didn't think Recon units were very popular. I've never been entirely happy with the Western Europe sphere design, but I will default to player opinion since you guys play the mod more than I do.

 

[Grathocke]

Something just crossed my mind and I thought I would run it past you. Is it possible to have a generic biome for downloaded leaders? I say leaders as opposed to civs because there are several leaders available for many of the standard civs, as well as custom civs with their own leaders. It seems as though it would enhance these leaders in the same way the generic friendship bonus does.

 

[isau]

Something just crossed my mind and I thought I would run it past you. Is it possible to have a generic biome for downloaded leaders? I say leaders as opposed to civs because there are several leaders available for many of the standard civs, as well as custom civs with their own leaders. It seems as though it would enhance these leaders in the same way the generic friendship bonus does.

It's possible, but I'm not sure what the generic biome/sphere would do. Generally I recommend that if you install fan-made leaders and want to assign them to biomes that you do it in the MyScratchpad.sql code, like this:

INSERT OR IGNORE INTO CivilizationTraits
(CivilizationType, TraitType)
VALUES ("CUSTOM_CIV_NAME", "QUO_TRAIT_BIOME_NAME") ;

Custom_civ_name is the database name of the civ you are installed.
Biome_name is the name of the Biome (look in Code/Biomes.sql for the database list of Biomes, in the Types table. They have names like QUO_TRAIT_BIOME_ASIAN_STEPPE etc)

The only other thing you need to worry about is making sure Quo's Combined Tweaks loads after the fan made civ, to be sure the MyScratchpad can operate on the fan-made civ. Qo's has a LoadOrder of 10100 to try to force it to load after most other mods, so that MyScratchpad loads at the very end of the process.

 

[Grathocke]

Thanks. I'll try that.

 

[Peter1982]

Hi, is hellenic sphere valid now with the -10% loyalty?
I swear I remember -40% from old times (which would have been a reasonable downside for the good ones) but when I played (last couple of months) it was just 10% I barely noticed. It made me feeling this sphere too "good" and when I played hellenic leader I just switched off.
Just asking your oppinion not ask for nerf lol.
(The Truth is that on Emperor-immortal difficulty the game was "slow enough" and I got 200% during the long renessaince Era which seemed overkill for coin (I built Big Ben with 100k ) but on Diety it was pretty fast to get only 40-50% for much shorter time.)

Btw yesterday I finished my first GS (and first religious play with Russia on diety) - without AI+. Well the AI stucked with warriors/archers in Rennesaince (I did not update either as almost everybody was friend after I killed close rival Spain ) - nobody could kill each other, well the AI has serious problem with good upgrade with the new system (however I saw 100/100 iron horses in the trade screen). No Niter musketmans are good but it seems it will be not enough. But disabling resources for more units would break the concept of the game.
I do not know if I dare try GS with AI+... I saw that the AI behaviour changed a lot and I do not know what happens. I am not impressed by the AI without AI+ - with AI+ at least they moved together but there were strange moves too.
Next time I may try a domination game on diety and see how pain is that resource system and the AI (in the GS update notes they may defend cities better). My favorit domination leaders are hellenic though...

One game experience is not too much so I may be wrong - I play more to see better.
I skip few days or a week - the updates come fast. I do not have the motivation to try the vanilla game again though...or at least with which mods if not Combined tweek. I almost agree with all the new features - I do not know if the AI adepts properly to the changed civics though (e.g. AI does not rush misticism civics and religion is easy to get).

 

[isau]

Hi, is hellenic sphere valid now with the -10% loyalty?
I swear I remember -40% from old times (which would have been a reasonable downside for the good ones) but when I played (last couple of months) it was just 10% I barely noticed. It made me feeling this sphere too "good" and when I played hellenic leader I just switched off.
Just asking your oppinion not ask for nerf lol.
(The Truth is that on Emperor-immortal difficulty the game was "slow enough" and I got 200% during the long renessaince Era which seemed overkill for coin (I built Big Ben with 100k ) but on Diety it was pretty fast to get only 40-50% for much shorter time.)

Btw yesterday I finished my first GS (and first religious play with Russia on diety) - without AI+. Well the AI stucked with warriors/archers in Rennesaince (I did not update either as almost everybody was friend after I killed close rival Spain ) - nobody could kill each other, well the AI has serious problem with good upgrade with the new system (however I saw 100/100 iron horses in the trade screen). No Niter musketmans are good but it seems it will be not enough. But disabling resources for more units would break the concept of the game.
I do not know if I dare try GS with AI+... I saw that the AI behaviour changed a lot and I do not know what happens. I am not impressed by the AI without AI+ - with AI+ at least they moved together but there were strange moves too.
Next time I may try a domination game on diety and see how pain is that resource system and the AI (in the GS update notes they may defend cities better). My favorit domination leaders are hellenic though...

One game experience is not too much so I may be wrong - I play more to see better.
I skip few days or a week - the updates come fast. I do not have the motivation to try the vanilla game again though...or at least with which mods if not Combined tweek. I almost agree with all the new features - I do not know if the AI adepts properly to the changed civics though (e.g. AI does not rush misticism civics and religion is easy to get).

It was originally 40% but I lowered it to 10% after complaints that 40% was brutal. The thing is that the penalty stacks with other penalties, in particular, with the penalty for falling into a Dark Age, which is -50%. The -40% penalty on top of that meant a total of -90% penalty. This is on top of -3 loyalty per turn during the Renaissance.

I could consider re-upping the penalty to around -20% (for a total of -70% in Dark Ages).

There are also other ways I could implement the penalty. The challenge always being making it a hurdle that is not too frustrating to play, and that the AI can, if not exactly master, at least not fumble over.

 

[Peter1982]

It was originally 40% but I lowered it to 10% after complaints that 40% was brutal. The thing is that the penalty stacks with other penalties, in particular, with the penalty for falling into a Dark Age, which is -50%. The -40% penalty on top of that meant a total of -90% penalty. This is on top of -3 loyalty per turn during the Renaissance.

I could consider re-upping the penalty to around -20% (for a total of -70% in Dark Ages).

There are also other ways I could implement the penalty. The challenge always being making it a hurdle that is not too frustrating to play, and that the AI can, if not exactly master, at least not fumble over.

Fair enough. AI could be even more frustrated with maluses than the human player. However on higher level the AI does not really get dark age. It is difficult to balance the game for all the difficulty levels / speed setup.
I do not even know how it is good for balance - good domination Alexander/Gorgo are toned down (a bit more difficult to capture and keep new cities) for what reason when other domination civs are not punished for domination. Well it is difficult.

The gold bonus seemed too OP on lower level (below diety-immortal) and on standard speed. I could be so advanced and got more than 100-150% bonus to gold and during a golden age Rennesaince Era the gold income was ridiculous. On diety however it was pretty balanced as the era progress was faster and I had less time to accumulate great people. There are other strong spheres out there - with weird ones I do not like therefore I rather not play with them...

 

[Ewsforos]

is the mid ok now for GS?

 

[isau]

Fair enough. AI could be even more frustrated with maluses than the human player. However on higher level the AI does not really get dark age. It is difficult to balance the game for all the difficulty levels / speed setup.
I do not even know how it is good for balance - good domination Alexander/Gorgo are toned down (a bit more difficult to capture and keep new cities) for what reason when other domination civs are not punished for domination. Well it is difficult.

The gold bonus seemed too OP on lower level (below diety-immortal) and on standard speed. I could be so advanced and got more than 100-150% bonus to gold and during a golden age Rennesaince Era the gold income was ridiculous. On diety however it was pretty balanced as the era progress was faster and I had less time to accumulate great people. There are other strong spheres out there - with weird ones I do not like therefore I rather not play with them...

If the gold bonus is too high I could look at scaling it back or moving it to an earlier era. The Renaissance era was picked because it is thematic though.

Can you give me feedback on which spheres you don't like? I have ones I am happy with and less happy with personally. But I am always curious about which ones people find unfun.

 

[Kebutus]

Is Poland supposed to be in the Scandinavian sphere?
Cause they show up as Eastern European in the civ selection screen, but as Scandinavian in-game + in the civilopedia.

 

[Peter1982]

If the gold bonus is too high I could look at scaling it back or moving it to an earlier era. The Renaissance era was picked because it is thematic though.

Can you give me feedback on which spheres you don't like? I have ones I am happy with and less happy with personally. But I am always curious about which ones people find unfun.

During my current domination diety game it is not too high. I would barely recruit great persons lol.
It can be too much only on lower difficulty where the eras are longer and easier to aquire more great persons. But in that case the game is already over so not the sphere doing too much.

E.g. I do not like New Word sphere - not to settle until classical era. But I never tried just it sounds pretty weird. I always settle 1-2 early even on diety. I would behind a lot without it. But who knows maybe next time I try it.

 

[isau]

Is Poland supposed to be in the Scandinavian sphere?
Cause they show up as Eastern European in the civ selection screen, but as Scandinavian in-game + in the civilopedia.

They should be in the Eastern Europe sphere. Poland used to be part of the "Boreal Europe" sphere, which turned into "Scandinavia" in a recent update. Seems like I updated the character select screen but the in-game civ is broken.

 

[isau]

During my current domination diety game it is not too high. I would barely recruit great persons lol.
It can be too much only on lower difficulty where the eras are longer and easier to aquire more great persons. But in that case the game is already over so not the sphere doing too much.

E.g. I do not like New Word sphere - not to settle until classical era. But I never tried just it sounds pretty weird. I always settle 1-2 early even on diety. I would behind a lot without it. But who knows maybe next time I try it.

The New World sphere is definitely a different gameplay experience. Remember that although you can't settle you can still conquer. It does mean you get your Settlers rather late. The bonus though is since every one of your districts Culture Bombs you can harrass your neighbors and steal their land.

For a while I've been on the fence about allowing New World to also steal tiles with Farms. It's certainly thematic for these civs.

New World is personally one of my favorite spheres to play/encounter in game because of how differently they play. You can always reassign civs with MyScratchpad or turn spheres off completely in MyOptions if you dislike them.