Use of Mods in GotM

@comatosedragon That's not a change; those are mods with AffectsSavedGames set to false. That feature been supported since the release of the SDK at least. It does not apply to CQUI, which leaves AffectsSavedGames set to true (the default), so you cannot add CQUI to a game in progress. Most newer UI mods set it to false, including Sukritact's work and my own Map Tacks mod.

 

Well, nuts. I got all excited for nothing.

 

A few things on the subject.

• It's perfectly possible to open a GotM saved game with CQUI enabled. I've done it for several of the previous GotM but i didn't submit them Until it's officially tolerated like EUI for Civ5 was (if it ever happens) i'd rather play with a decent UI than get the ranking. However you have to manually alter the modinfo file to add <AffectsSavedGames>0</AffectsSavedGames> This is easier if you keep the mod outside of the workshop's mod folder so steam won't auto update it (but you might be late to get improvements and bug fixes of course).
• While it's perfectly possible to load a save created without CQUI, the mod will alter the save and i don't know if a save created with CQUI could be opened without the mod. There's a number of features that wouldn't work without storing additional information in the save game file. The ones i can think of are :
  • Production queue as mentioned by BWS
  • The mods options are stored in the saves themselves as there's no real way to store global options (a rather unpractical system which was originally my idea sort of allows it by using sql files but it's not terribly user friendly)
  • Trade routes auto-renewal mechanism have to be stored somewhere, if only the details of which TR should be auto-renewed.
• As a result while CQUI doesn't change the way you play, apart from allowing a larger number of cities before player boredom becomes the factor limiting expansion, it will alter the saved games which probably is the reason they didn't add that tag. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the game a mod allows you to open a vanilla save but you then need to keep the mod (as far as i know). It's both way or neither.

At least since CQUI alters the saves, this could probably allow the GotM team to detect whether the mod was used unlike EUI which could be totally hidden so they can choose to allow (or tolerate) CQUI willingly rather than because they couldn't do anything about it anyway.
As far as i'm concerned i'll keep playing with the mod even if it means i never submit a game as long as this workaround works for me.

 

Such as?

I don't think it has any meaningful impact on game mechanisms. Overflow (including cutting trees) is added to the "bank" even if you have nothing currently in production, i've cleared forested tiles to place a district there and got the production when the district started. If you add a district to the queue, you have to select it's location immediately when you add it so it's not different from placing it, starting something else and then building it when you really want it to "lock" the cost. You can't EG add a district to the queue to lock it's cost and then place it after your borders included the tile you wanted. The queue won't allow it.

Again, i don't have any issue playing the games for fun without the ranking but i'd be extremely surprised if any feature of the mod could be used as an advantage compared to players without the mod (apart from being able to manage more cities before you want to throw your computer out the window of course )