thecrazyscotsman's Omnibus 1.2.3

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice, I'll upload my version later when I get home but I can already detail what I changed

NB: I'm not using improved water yields anymore as the harbor has been addressed in a patch by Fireaxis


changes to better city specialization:

1) increased specialist yields of encampment, commercial, harbor and holy site district to balance them vs the others ( encampment gives 2 production 1 culture, harbor gives 3 gold 1 science, commercial gives 5 gold )

2) changed back specialist slots to 1 per building as even with the buff they are still not particularly powerful and I prefer a more gradual increase in slots. ideally specialists would give great people points but sadly I don't know how to code this

3) changed electronics factory to a power plant UB, yields reverted to vanilla ( 4 production in a 6 tile radius )

4) removed additional adjacency bonuses from commercial district as they seemed not needed ( a well placed commercial district gives 5 gold, a well placed campus gives 3 science, seems balanced enough ) , reduced adjancency bonus from city center for aerodrome to 2 gold ( 4 gold seemed overkill )

5) restored aerodrome requirement for fighter planes as one of Fireaxis patches addressed the issue with AI not building planes already

6) changed commercial district yields from city states to 4/2/2 and encampment yields to 2/1/1 to make em balanced vs the other city state types

7) halved culture per district from Kumasi and Nan-Madol suzerain bonus to keep em balanced with other CS yields ( taken from city state balance mod )

8) added +3 culture to broadcast tower from Grand Opera policy ( it was missing from the current version )

9) changed harbor district adjancency bonus from naval infrastructure and economic union to 50% to balance it vs the other adjacency buff policies, since the shipyard now gives production adjacency bonus

10) changed free market policy to give 5 gold per building to keep it balanced vs grand opera and rationalism

11) removed cistern, water plant and changes to sewers as I feel the additional housing devalues aqueducts and housing from improvements, plus fireaxis halved sewers cost in the latest update ( and Quo's combined tweaks which I use moves it earlier in the tech tree )

12) changed temple from flat yield to adjacency bonus, changed scripture policy to 50% bonus and simultaneum policy to 3 faith per holy site building. however, I think I'm going to revert the temple to flat yields and use Rush's Religion Rebalance mod which gives adjacency bonus to belief buildings, as the temple seems too early and cheap to get that bonus and keeping it flat means it's more balanced vs the stave church UB


changes to buffed resources:

1) removed aqueduct changes as I felt +1 food in 2 tile radius was overpowered, and Quo's combined tweaks already handles the aqueduct nicely ( 6 tile radius, 2 food from plantations and great engineer points )

2) added gold bonus to street carnival as it was missing from the current version

3) reduced culture from theater resources to 1 as per latest Omnibus version

4) added yields to Tlachtli and Basilikoi Paides for DLC compatibility

5) reduced water mill to 1 production ( was 2 ) to make it more balanced vs workshop as per Magil's suggestion

6) housing from coastal and no fresh water increased by 1 ( I was already using this tweak regardless of your mod, but I feel it goes very well together with your change in housing for granary and water mill )

7) I think I'm going to reduce faith from holy site resources to 1 since 2 seems a bit too much and Rush's religious rebalance also buffs the holy site

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

here you go, I bundled together Better City Specialization and Buffed Resources and adapted the Text xml from Omnibus mod

 

[Guynemer]

Excited to have you back, Scot. It'll be interesting to contrast how you modernize the Omnibus with my current preferred overhaul, Quo's.

 

[Kars]

I have to think about which parts of your mods I miss most in the current version. About city specialization. In some mods I saw the industrial zone gain +1 from adjacent lumber mills. I really liked it gives more options for civs that start in a weak production bias. Not shur how balanced it is but just a thought I wanted to share.

I think it's best to keep in mind that some changes might be difficult for the AI to handle and should be avoided. I've seen some mods that enhanced my game, made me happy and suddenly I realized around +/- 1000 ad that the AI messed up with the changes of the mods.

I loved your policies, buildings and tech/civic tree changes, but it's hard to say what is best for the current version of the game. Your policies (another good example: Rule with Faith) gave us some more meaningful choices.

 

[thecrazyscot]

@[to_xp]Gekko - I'm a fan of quite a few of your updates! Thanks for posting them. I've rewritten and combined the Better City Specialization and Buffed Resources mods into one now, with the current features listed below. I took the opportunity to fix some mistakes and omissions from the previous versions, and included triggers for compatibility with all current DLC as well as Vanilla.

I'm no longer adding in the Cistern and Water Treatment Plant buildings, maintained the Vanilla 1 specialist per building, and included multiple other changes. I'm stubbornly keeping my Aqueduct changes, because for some reason I just really like that particular tweak - but it's very easy to remove

I still haven't touched the Holy Site buildings, should they follow the same pattern as everything else? I'm also sticking with my modular system so that this doesn't touch the Harbor - that's taken care of by Improved Water Yields.

@Kars - that's certainly cool idea, but adding a further production buff to the Industrial Zone seems at face value to be "too much" in terms of extra production given everything else (you can get some pretty high production with the Factory!). I'm not ruling it out, but maybe some further playtesting would show whether the district needs a buff.

@Olleus - We came back to modding at pretty much the same time I've just started updating, combining, and streamlining my collection of mods. My current mods are Improved Forts and Engineers, Improved Water Yields, and the soon-to-be-released City and Resource Specialization. I'm working towards re-releasing the bulk of the features included in the Omnibus, perhaps in a more modular fashion since the Workshop now makes it easy to keep things automatically updated. I'd like to hear about your plans, though - I'd be happy to avoid redundancy.

WIthout further ado, here's the current changelog - I'd love to get some feedback!

City and Resource Specialization: Current Changelog

Districts and Buildings
Changed how the Industrial, Commercial, Campus, and Theater district buildings work:

• 1st tier building now provides a small base yield
• 2nd tier buildings now provide the requisite yield equal to the district's adjacency bonus
• 3rd tier buildings now provide a 15% yield boost (with the exception of Power Plants, which provide +4 regional production)

Sewer now provides +1 Amenity

New Adjacency Bonuses

• Aerodrome: Major Production bonus for each adjacent Industrial Zone. Major Gold bonus if adjacent to a City Center. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.
• Neighborhood: Major Gold bonus for each adjacent Entertainment Complex. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.

Specialists

• Increased Industrial, Campus, and Holy Site Specialist yields to 3
• Increased Commercial Hub Specialist yields to 5
• Increased Encampment Specialist Production yield to 2

Resources and Terrain

• Aqueducts provide +2 food to Oases. Aqueduct provides +1 food to all tiles within 2 range.
• Campuses provide +2 science to Mercury and Uranium
• Commercial Hubs provide +1 gold to Furs, Salt, Cotton, Dyes, Silk, Spices, Sugar, Tobacco, and Silver.
• Encampments provide +1 production to Copper, Iron, Horses, and Niter.
• Barracks provide +1 production to Copper
• Stables provide +1 production to Horses
• Armory provides +1 production to Iron and Niter
• Entertainment Complexes provide +1 culture and +1 gold to Cocoa, Truffles, and Ivory.
• Arenas provide +1 gold to the same resources.
• Zoos provide +1 culture to the same resources.
• Holy Sites provide +1 faith to Stone, Incense, and Wine.
• Shrines provide +1 faith to the same resources.
• Industrial Zones provide +1 production to Gypsum, Aluminum, Coal, and Oil.
• Theaters provide +1 culture to Coffee, Tea, Marble, Diamonds, and Jade.
• Amphitheaters provide +1 culture to the same resources.
• Granary base yields are removed and housing is reduced to 1. Provides +1 food to Bananas, Cattle, Citrus, Deer, Rice, Sheep, and Wheat.
• Water Mill resource bonuses are removed. Now provides +1 food, +1 production, and 1 housing.

City States

• Scientific, Cultural, Religious, Industrial, and Militaristic type bonuses are now 2/1/1
• Commerical type bonuses are now 4/2/2
• Reduced Kumasi's unique Culture bonus by 50%
• Reduced Nan Madol's unique Culture bonus by 50%
• Reduced Papal Primacy Policy bonus from 100% to 50%

Policies

• Updated the Free Market, Grand Opera, and Rationalism policies to provide bonus yields to each building of the proper type instead of a 100% increase (the % increase didn't stack properly with bonus yields from district adjacency bonuses)
• Science and Culture buildings get +3 to their yields
• Commerical buildings get +4 to their yields
• Reduced 100% adjacency bonus policies to 50% (Holy Site and Harbor increases were not changed)

Miscellaneous
Decrease science generated per population from 0.7 to 0.5

Compatibility

• Compatible with the Summer 2017 Update
• Compatible with Vanilla and all current DLC
• Includes compatibility if a mod adding the Gold resource is active

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

@[to_xp]Gekko - I'm a fan of quite a few of your updates! Thanks for posting them. I've rewritten and combined the Better City Specialization and Buffed Resources mods into one now, with the current features listed below. I took the opportunity to fix some mistakes and omissions from the previous versions, and included triggers for compatibility with all current DLC as well as Vanilla.

I'm no longer adding in the Cistern and Water Treatment Plant buildings, maintained the Vanilla 1 specialist per building, and included multiple other changes. I'm stubbornly keeping my Aqueduct changes, because for some reason I just really like that particular tweak - but it's very easy to remove

I still haven't touched the Holy Site buildings, should they follow the same pattern as everything else? I'm also sticking with my modular system so that this doesn't touch the Harbor - that's taken care of by Improved Water Yields.

glad to hear that

I think Rush's Religious Rebalance mod already handles the holy site very well by making the belief buildings a lot more interesting. it works best with Scripture policy giving 50% instead of 100% boost since it adds adjacency bonuses to some of the belief buildings. I've now reverted the Simultaneum policy to vanilla since I've changed the temple back to flat faith.

regarding the current changelog:

1) I'd keep power plant at 3 production and make electronics factory replace it giving 4 production

2) New adjacency bonuses for aerodrome and neighborhood sound good, although I think I'd prefer the aerodrome getting major adjacency from commercial hub instead of city center

Perhaps entertainment complex could get some adjacency bonus as well, like bonus gold from commercial hub and bonus culture from theater square

3) I think the Papal Primacy bonus already gives 50% not 100%

4) I'd make Free Market give 5 gold per building instead of 4 to make it more balanced vs Rationalism and Grand Opera

5) I really like the change you've made to encampment buildings in Omnibus, making them give double production which applies only to units. however I could not get this to work without the full Omnibus mod. If this could be added to the standalone version ( alongside with the egypt Iteru tweaks ) I think you could leave militaristic CS bonus at vanilla values and instead make industrial CS bonus apply also to units, to keep them balanced vs each other

 

[V. Soma]

Hello, Scot! Have you thought of adopting ideas from the Unit Stack and Overhaul mod?

eg. ranged and melee unit on the same tile and ranged having 1 range...

 

[Kars]

Can't wait to try this! I'll give some feedback after playing a game when you're ready for a release.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I think Rush's Religious Rebalance mod already handles the holy site very well by making the belief buildings a lot more interesting. it works best with Scripture policy giving 50% instead of 100% boost since it adds adjacency bonuses to some of the belief buildings. I've now reverted the Simultaneum policy to vanilla since I've changed the temple back to flat faith.

I'll leave the Holy Site alone for now, I may come back to it though in the future though...

1) I'd keep power plant at 3 production and make electronics factory replace it giving 4 production

I'm actually trying to decide whether or not I want to keep my current system with the Industrial District altogether. I really like in the vanilla game how both the Factory and Power Plant provide regional production, so I'm considering going back to that, particularly in light of another change which I think is needed: increasing the population required per district to 4. With the buffs to food present in this mod city growth is a bit faster, especially since the Aqueduct is a "free" district, just about every city will probably end up having one considering it's food bonuses. With that in mind, it might be better to make all the Industrial District buildings (including the Workshop) provide regional production.

2) New adjacency bonuses for aerodrome and neighborhood sound good, although I think I'd prefer the aerodrome getting major adjacency from commercial hub instead of city center

Perhaps entertainment complex could get some adjacency bonus as well, like bonus gold from commercial hub and bonus culture from theater square

I went back and forth about which bonus to give to the Aerodrome, and having major adjacency from the commercial hub should provide a little more flexibility, so I'm cool with reverting that. I don't think the Entertainment Complex needs any adjacency bonuses because it indirectly buffs yields through the added amenities.

3) I think the Papal Primacy bonus already gives 50% not 100%

Sorry, right - I meant that with my previous changes Papal Primacy was now actually providing a 100% bonus, so I just adjusted the values to keep it at 50%.

4) I'd make Free Market give 5 gold per building instead of 4 to make it more balanced vs Rationalism and Grand Opera

They do need to be balanced, but I think they might need to be balanced the other direction! Instead of buffing Free Market even further, I think it may actually be more balanced to decrease Rationalism and Grand Opera to 2 per building, as an extra 9 science or 9 culture per district stacks up really quickly with lots of cities. Thoughts?

5) I really like the change you've made to encampment buildings in Omnibus, making them give double production which applies only to units. however I could not get this to work without the full Omnibus mod. If this could be added to the standalone version ( alongside with the egypt Iteru tweaks ) I think you could leave militaristic CS bonus at vanilla values and instead make industrial CS bonus apply also to units, to keep them balanced vs each other

They still haven't fixed Iteru? Hm. Alright, I included those fixes.

I also liked the Encampment buildings providing buffs to unit production, so I went ahead and included that as well. You may have had trouble getting it to work because I had to create a new dynamic modifier - if that wasn't included it wouldn't work. I honestly hadn't thought about making the Industrial CS bonus a general production bonus, but I like that idea and went ahead and implemented it (I think...).

Hello, Scot! Have you thought of adopting ideas from the Unit Stack and Overhaul mod?

eg. ranged and melee unit on the same tile and ranged having 1 range...

I have some plans for addressing how units interact with strategic resource, but I don't have anything further to share on that front. I'll need to take a look at that carefully since it introduces some pretty big changes to the core gameplay, and through my mods I generally try to enhance or streamline existing systems rather than such a complete overhaul. I won't rule it out, I just need to think about it

Can't wait to try this! I'll give some feedback after playing a game when you're ready for a release.

Thanks!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

City and Resource Specialization: Current Changelog

Districts and Buildings
Changed how the Industrial, Commercial, Campus, and Theater district buildings work: [considering making all Industrial Zone buildings provide regional production instead]

• 1st tier building now provides a small base yield
• 2nd tier buildings now provide the requisite yield equal to the district's adjacency bonus
• 3rd tier buildings now provide a 15% yield boost (with the exception of Power Plants, which provide +4+3 regional production)

Sewer now provides +1 Amenity
Encampment buildings no longer provide a base yield, rather they now provide bonus production towards Units

• Barracks and Stables: +2 unit production
• Armory: +4 unit production
• Military Academy: +6 unit production

New Adjacency Bonuses

• Aerodrome: Major Production bonus for each adjacent Industrial Zone. Major Gold bonus if adjacent to a City Center Commercial Hub. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.
• Neighborhood: Major Gold bonus for each adjacent Entertainment Complex. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.

Specialists

• Increased Industrial, Campus, and Holy Site Specialist yields to 3
• Increased Commercial Hub Specialist yields to 5
• Increased Encampment Specialist Production yield to 2

Resources and Terrain

• Aqueducts provide +2 food to Oases. Aqueduct provides +1 food to all tiles within 2 range.
• Campuses provide +2 science to Mercury and Uranium
• Commercial Hubs provide +1 gold to Furs, Salt, Cotton, Dyes, Silk, Spices, Sugar, Tobacco, and Silver.
• Encampments provide +1 production to Copper, Iron, Horses, and Niter.
• Barracks provide +1 production to Copper
• Stables provide +1 production to Horses
• Armory provides +1 production to Iron and Niter
• Entertainment Complexes provide +1 culture and +1 gold to Cocoa, Truffles, and Ivory.
• Arenas provide +1 gold to the same resources.
• Zoos provide +1 culture to the same resources.
• Holy Sites provide +1 faith to Stone, Incense, and Wine.
• Shrines provide +1 faith to the same resources.
• Industrial Zones provide +1 production to Gypsum, Aluminum, Coal, and Oil.
• Theaters provide +1 culture to Coffee, Tea, Marble, Diamonds, and Jade.
• Amphitheaters provide +1 culture to the same resources.
• Granary base yields are removed and housing is reduced to 1. Provides +1 food to Bananas, Cattle, Citrus, Deer, Rice, Sheep, and Wheat.
• Water Mill resource bonuses are removed. Now provides +1 food, +1 production, and 1 housing.

City States

• Scientific, Cultural, Religious, and Industrial type bonuses are now 2/1/1 [Militaristic reverted to vanilla]
• Industrial city states now provide a general production boost to Industrial Zones instead of only towards buildings, districts, and wonders
• Commercial type bonuses are now 4/2/2
• Reduced Kumasi's unique Culture bonus by 50%
• Reduced Nan Madol's unique Culture bonus by 50%
• Reduced Papal Primacy Policy bonus values to 50% of new values

Policies

• Updated the Free Market, Grand Opera, and Rationalism policies to provide bonus yields to each building of the proper type instead of a 100% increase (the % increase didn't stack properly with bonus yields from district adjacency bonuses)
• Science and Culture buildings get +3 +2 to their yields
• Commercial buildings get +4 to their yields
• Reduced 100% adjacency bonus policies to 50% (Holy Site and Harbor increases were not changed)

Miscellaneous
Decrease science generated per population from 0.7 to 0.5
Increased population requirement per district from 3 to 4
Fixed Egypt's Iteru ability to extend to Aqueducts, Neighborhoods, and Aerodromes

Compatibility

• Compatible with the Summer 2017 Update
• Compatible with Vanilla and all current DLC
• Includes compatibility if a mod adding the Gold resource is active

EDIT: attached current version of the mod to this post. I will upload to Steam Workshop and officially upload it to Civfanatics when I've got a final version.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'm actually trying to decide whether or not I want to keep my current system with the Industrial District altogether. I really like in the vanilla game how both the Factory and Power Plant provide regional production, so I'm considering going back to that, particularly in light of another change which I think is needed: increasing the population required per district to 4. With the buffs to food present in this mod city growth is a bit faster, especially since the Aqueduct is a "free" district, just about every city will probably end up having one considering it's food bonuses. With that in mind, it might be better to make all the Industrial District buildings (including the Workshop) provide regional production.

actually the 4 pop per district is already a feature of BCS it's definitely a good change as it makes each district more meaningful.

I think the industrial district is fine as it is, also keep in mind that the Winter patch changed regional yield buildings so their effect does not stack anymore. it's a big nerf even though it was overpowered before, Quo's combined tweaks addresses this by doubling the yields from regional yield buildings.

see, that's why I disagree with your change to the aqueduct, with all that bonus food it becomes a no brainer and you want to build it everywhere which kinda goes against the concept of "better city specialization" I guess changing it to 1 radius instead of 2 would be more reasonable, also considering the last patch made it cheaper to build.

I went back and forth about which bonus to give to the Aerodrome, and having major adjacency from the commercial hub should provide a little more flexibility, so I'm cool with reverting that. I don't think the Entertainment Complex needs any adjacency bonuses because it indirectly buffs yields through the added amenities.

it seems like the entertainment complex is considered one of the weaker districts in vanilla and this mod makes the other districts more powerful, in my games I end up only building one Complex to build the Colosseum and that's it. I think some culture and gold from adjacency would make it a bit more appealing without making it overpowered, similar to how you've handled the aerodrome

here's how I would set it up:

• Aerodrome: Standard Production bonus for each adjacent Industrial Zone. Major Gold bonus for each adjacent Commercial Hub. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.
• Entertainment Complex: Standard Culture bonus for each adjacent Theater Square. Standard Gold bonus for each adjacent Neighborhood. Minor Gold bonus for adjacent district tiles.

since you can build only one entertainment complex per city but multiple neighborhoods, I think it's more interesting to have the neighborhood boost the entertainment complex rather than the other way around. it seems like you want to make the aerodrome require population again which I would agree with, therefore it makes sense to only add adjacency bonuses to population requiring districts

They do need to be balanced, but I think they might need to be balanced the other direction! Instead of buffing Free Market even further, I think it may actually be more balanced to decrease Rationalism and Grand Opera to 2 per building, as an extra 9 science or 9 culture per district stacks up really quickly with lots of cities. Thoughts?

I think 3 and 5 is best, for example in vanilla free market gives 3 gold from market, 5 from bank and 7 from stock exchange so 5 per building is the best approximation, the math is similar for the other buildings ( 2 yields would make it weaker than it was in vanilla )

They still haven't fixed Iteru? Hm. Alright, I included those fixes.

I haven't seen it mentioned in Fireaxis changelogs so I assume they did not consider it something that required fixing, but I do think it's a good change to implement.



I'd also recommend to increase the base housing for non fresh water cities by 1, rivers are already very good early on and your change to granary and river mill makes it even more so.



by the way, do you think the new version of the mod is also compatible with the previous patch ( before the summer one ) ? I'm holding off updating until CQUI is updated as well, which sadly looks like it might take a while

 

[thecrazyscot]

see, that's why I disagree with your change to the aqueduct, with all that bonus food it becomes a no brainer and you want to build it everywhere which kinda goes against the concept of "better city specialization" I guess changing it to 1 radius instead of 2 would be more reasonable, also considering the last patch made it cheaper to build.

I view growth-related buildings and districts to not be included in the "specializations", because you either want your city to grow or you don't. If you want it to grow you will want all the growth related things you can get, and if you don't want it to grow you will avoid them, especially if they add additional food.

it seems like the entertainment complex is considered one of the weaker districts in vanilla and this mod makes the other districts more powerful, in my games I end up only building one Complex to build the Colosseum and that's it. I think some culture and gold from adjacency would make it a bit more appealing without making it overpowered, similar to how you've handled the aerodrome

I think 3 and 5 is best, for example in vanilla free market gives 3 gold from market, 5 from bank and 7 from stock exchange so 5 per building is the best approximation, the math is similar for the other buildings ( 2 yields would make it weaker than it was in vanilla )

I'd also recommend to increase the base housing for non fresh water cities by 1, rivers are already very good early on and your change to granary and river mill makes it even more so.

Hm, you make some good points (and great suggestions!). I'm running a test game right now, and will probably adjust the values.

by the way, do you think the new version of the mod is also compatible with the previous patch ( before the summer one ) ? I'm holding off updating until CQUI is updated as well, which sadly looks like it might take a while

I don't think there would be a conflict from reviewing the patch notes again...

 

[Smity2k1]

So glad to see these popping up on the workshop

 

[thecrazyscot]

Looking through the list of changes (for the standard ruleset) I can essentially only see things I like. There are maybe three things I don't fully understand:

• There seems to be a *lot* of of extra housing. Does this kill the balance of the game a little?
• Why the reduction to CS bonuses? It feels like CS ought to stay important. I'd rather change the number of required envoys from 1/3/6 to 2/4/7 than halving the benefits. Or maybe have the benefits of CS envoys scale with era?
• The aquaduct, harbour, and sewers have been improved in recent patches. Maybe the changes this mod makes on top is overkill?

For housing, in my upcoming update I've removed the Cistern and Water Treatment plant buildings which I had originally added in, so the housing situation should be pretty similar.

I reduced the CS bonuses because of the changes to the Tier II buildings in each district. With that building providing a yield = to the district's adjacency bonus, CS bonuses can become really overpowered really quickly if they stay at their current levels as their bonuses increase the district adjacency bonuses. I think it's fairly balanced, and CSs are still very helpful increasing your adjacency bonus which is then duplicated by the Tier II building.

(To give a Vanilla example, take a perfectly placed Campus completely surrounded by mountains - it gets a base adjacency bonus of +6 science. Currently, each scientific CS can provide +4 to that adjacency bonus, so let's say you have six envoys in two scientific CSs, that adds an additional +8 to the adjacency bonus, for a total of +14. Add Rationalism with its 100% boost to Campus adjacency bonuses and you've got a whopping +28 science from the Campus without any buildings. With my mod, the University would generate that +28 science as well, so in order to balance that out I've reduced Rationalism to a 50% boost and halved the total Campus boosts from scientific CSs. So with that same situation with the mod, you have an adjacency bonus of +15 which is then duplicated by the University.)

In regards to the Harbor, my Improved Water Yields mod replaces the recent changes to the Harbor instead of adding on to it as I don't think Firaxis did enough. For the Aqueduct Firaxis just lowered the cost, but I still think it should give another benefit beyond just housing, and for the Sewer the only change I'm making is to have it provide +1 Amenity as I still found the +2 Housing to be underwhelming in my test game.

 

[thecrazyscot]

All right, I've completed a full test game and have made the following changes:

• Reverted Grand Opera and Rationalism boosts to +3 per building instead of +2
• Reverted Free Market boost to +5 per building instead of +4
• Removed the Neighborhood adjacency bonuses
• Added adjacency bonuses to the Entertainment Complex: standard gold bonus for each adjacent Neighborhood, standard culture bonus for each adjacent Theater, minor gold bonus for adjacent districts. (Thanks, [to_xp]Gekko!)
• Increased base housing for non-freshwater cities by 1 (Thanks, [to_xp]Gekko!)
• Added a new Happiness level and restructured the positive Happiness levels:
  • Content: 0 - 1 Amenities, no bonuses
  • Pleased: 2 - 3 Amenities, +10% growth, +5% nonfood yields
  • Happy: 4 - 5 Amenities, +20% growth, +10% nonfood yields
  • Ecstatic: 6+ Amenities, +30% growth, +15% nonfood yields

Additionally, I have not yet implemented these changes but am planning to:

• Change all Industrial Zone buildings to be regional - production is still king, so with the Factory providing a +% yield boost to the city it's a no-brainer to build it in every available city
• Update the Ruhr Valley wonder to provide regional bonuses
  • Additional wonders may be looked at for regional bonus eligibility

Finally, there is a problem with increasing the population requirement for districts: the AI cripples itself by building Holy Districts as its first district in almost every city, this needs to be addressed, and I think these are the three possible solutions (if you have other suggestions I would love to hear them as well):

• Revert the change back to 3 population per district instead of 4 - this is the easiest and maybe best solution, but I still think increasing the requirement forces the human player to make more interesting decisions
• Make the Holy Site a "free" district - I do not like this idea as it would break faith generation and increase religious unit spam
• Give the AI small science and culture bonuses from Holy Site buildings - I don't like to give the AI more "cheat" bonuses, but this may actually be the most balanced way to address this

Thoughts?

And finally finally, I have an idea to overhaul how the Palace works to make it a regional building, which would benefit logical expansion at the beginning of the game, thoughts on that?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

the changes are looking good, I like the additional happiness level

I think the industrial zone is already fine as is, with workshop giving flat production, factory giving adjacency bonus ( not +% production ) and power plant giving regional production. making all 3 buildings work the same way is less interesting and might be too strong imo.

AI always building holy site first seems like an issue that should be handled in the AI code, but for the time being you could revert science from population to 0.7 to address that.

the Palace change sounds interesting but it also would be a rather radical change that might be best as a standalone mod imo.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I think the industrial zone is already fine as is, with workshop giving flat production, factory giving adjacency bonus ( not +% production ) and power plant giving regional production. making all 3 buildings work the same way is less interesting and might be too strong imo.

D'oh! And I just finished a game too! Yes, I actually meant the adjacent bonus, not the +% yield change. I feel like with the IZ you either have a more interesting district or more interesting buildings, but not both given how important production still is. Interesting buildings make it more likely to be placed in every (or almost every) city while making it essentially a 100% regional district makes the placement of it very interesting indeed.

AI always building holy site first seems like an issue that should be handled in the AI code, but for the time being you could revert science from population to 0.7 to address that.

Yeah, the AI code is the root cause of so many problems...

I'm skeptical reverting the science per pop change will be sufficient because the player will receive the same bonus, so I don't know if that would close the gap in any meaningful way. What if the AI got 1 science per Shrine?

the Palace change sounds interesting but it also would be a rather radical change that might be best as a standalone mod imo.

That certainly might be best lol

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I don't feel like the industrial zone is currently a no brainer due to the fact it's essentially trading present hammers for future hammers and it takes a while to break even. I do agree with the intention of making the decision of whether or not to build one more interesting though.

would it be possible to change the IZ buildings so they do not give production towards units? that would make the choice of industrial zone vs encampment more interesting and encourage specialization, atm I find myself only building encampments in particularly vulnerable cities.

1 science per shrine for AI sounds perfectly reasonable. another option would be unlocking the holy site a bit later, possibly only for the AI

 

[Kars]

Finally, there is a problem with increasing the population requirement for districts: the AI cripples itself by building Holy Districts as its first district in almost every city, this needs to be addressed, and I think these are the three possible solutions (if you have other suggestions I would love to hear them as well):

• Revert the change back to 3 population per district instead of 4 - this is the easiest and maybe best solution, but I still think increasing the requirement forces the human player to make more interesting decisions
• Make the Holy Site a "free" district - I do not like this idea as it would break faith generation and increase religious unit spam
• Give the AI small science and culture bonuses from Holy Site buildings - I don't like to give the AI more "cheat" bonuses, but this may actually be the most balanced way to address this

We could test a game with the small science and culture bonus. Maybe the revert option is better to see how the AI is handling the new district changes and try the third option after testing.

During my test game the Ai could keep up longer because I use Smoother Difficulty. Still the problem is pretty annoying, it was way to easy to get great people from some districts because all AI players weren't building some districts. Also this gave me the feeling the AI was only focused on a conquest and religious victories. The AI is already pretty bad but somehow they seemed to have no strategy or whatsoever.

I like the district changes so far. Choosing the right district is way more challenging now. Took ages to decide which way to go with my cities, love it!

Would love to test another game when you have an updated version.

 

[JordyMcCree]

Changing the palace to be regional is just another nerf to coastal cities, I'd prefer it to not be part of this mod.
Just finished a test game with the build you last posted, for reference I use 8 Ages of Pace, Smoother Difficulty, Rush's Religion Rebalance, Rush's Unit Class Balance, Real Tech Tree and all your mods (omnibus, forts and water yields.)

I played on Immortal and had a pretty difficult time winning, I managed to sneak in a religious victory out of nowhere as Peter but Persia was very close to winning a culture victory too (after taking over and eliminating the Aztec's.)

Maybe it was because I was playing Russia but it took me FOREVER to get all my districts up. Especially when going for a more culture driven approach to winning games you need to have a lot of districts; Commercial Hub/Harbour, Theatre Square, Industrial Zone in almost all cities and also the occasional Holy Site (religion enhances cultural victories a lot, especially with the rebalance mod) Campus (try and keep up in science) Entertainment district (amenities and appeal).

I felt I was at a massive disadvantage for not going the standard Campus, Industrial Zone, Commercial Hub/Harbour route. Even though I do agree you are specialising cities more, you simply need more districts for cultural victories and the change to 4 made the game fairly unpleasant for my playstyle.

The only other solution I can think of other than reverting the change it is to make certain districts not count against the district limit, for example making the Entertainment Hub, Commercial Hub/Harbour and Industrial Zone free.

 

[thecrazyscot]

@Kars @JordyMcCree Thanks for your feedback guys! I'm hoping to have the next version ready before the weekend (I'll be out of town) with some additional tweaks. One additional change I'm thinking of making is to remove the free trade routes from the Harbor/Commercial Hub and instead provide one for each city you have. As it is, one of those two is placed in every city because of the trade route, so uncoupling the trade route from the district may make them less of a "must build in every city".

@Olleus The Omnibus Mod as a whole is not yet updated to work with the latest patch, I'm working on updating individual components at the moment. The Better City Specialization component I'm currently tweaking along with the Improved Water Tiles essentially form the Standard ruleset of the Omnibus.