[GS] Wondrous Wonders (Updated for Gathering Storm) 3.1.0

[Chiya]

I think I asked this before or something along these lines but how would one go about "isolating" only specific parts of this mod to only use them? Right now we only use the NationalWonders part with our multiplayer games and everything's nice, but as far as Wondrous Wonders go we'd only want specific wonders to be changed from the vanilla game. I don't really know anything about modding so I don't suppose that if I just found the lines that deal with these wonders, preserved them and deleted the rest it would function as intended with just these wonders?

 

[Magil]

In order to do that, if you only want to modify specific World Wonders, the primary things you'd need to delete are these:

• In the WorldWonders.xml file, delete anything that references the Wonder under the <Buildings>, <Building_YieldChanges>, <Building_GreatWorks>, and <Building_GreatPersonPoints> headers. I've only actually changed a handful of the wonders on that level so it only really affects a select few.
• Also in WorldWonders.xml, you can leave anything under most of the other headers alone. Except for <BuildingModifiers>, you'd need to find everything that references the wonders you don't want changed and remove it there (BUILDING_STONEHENGE, etc.). That's the most important step, since that's where most of my modding is actually applied to the Wonders--remove this, and my modifiers will still hang around but won't be used anywhere.
  
• The WorldWondersText.xml file contains updated text for the Wonders describing their new effects. You don't need to change this, but if you don't they'll have the incorrect tooltips. To fix it, remove anything that references the Wonder there.
• ThemingBonus.xml only affects theming bonuses. You can remove any entries there you don't want, or even remove the file entirely.

Sorry, there's no very easy way to isolate different parts of the mod without going into the code.

 

[Chiya]

Thanks for the detailed response. I'll be sure to give it a go later .

 

[Magil]

In regards to the latest update: I did some quick tests with Firetuner, and uploaded this mod to the workshop. So far, tentatively, everything looks good, but I haven't had time for a full test game yet. Let me know if you encounter any problems.

 

[Arkenor]

I just wanted to check. Wondrous Wonders has been uploaded to Steam by someone called Napstablook. That's you?

 

[Magil]

I just wanted to check. Wondrous Wonders has been uploaded to Steam by someone called Napstablook. That's you?

Yes.

 

[ITcore]

Does the "Add Trade Route" modifier still work properly for the Great Zimbabwe? I was getting error's for just trying to add a trade route to a new district and wondering if the trade routes were changed fundamentally with this patch.

 

[Arkenor]

Does the "Add Trade Route" modifier still work properly for the Great Zimbabwe? I was getting error's for just trying to add a trade route to a new district and wondering if the trade routes were changed fundamentally with this patch.

The patch made the additional trade routes from Harbours and commercial hubs no longer stack. Perhaps the source of your problem.

 

[Magil]

Does the "Add Trade Route" modifier still work properly for the Great Zimbabwe? I was getting error's for just trying to add a trade route to a new district and wondering if the trade routes were changed fundamentally with this patch.

The patch made the additional trade routes from Harbours and commercial hubs no longer stack. Perhaps the source of your problem.

I looked at the code, and it looks to me like what they did is change Commercial Hub/Harbor to have a modifier which adds a Trade Route to a district, but the Harbor has a requirement that says it only adds a Trade Route if there's no Commercial Hub.

MODIFIER_PLAYER_ADJUST_TRADE_ROUTE_CAPACITY should still work as normal. If it didn't, the Great People that added Trade Routes would also be affected. Were you using MODIFIER_PLAYER_DISTRICTS_ADJUST_TRADE_ROUTE_CAPACITY? That one, which is used for Carthage, may work differently.

 

[ITcore]

I looked at the code, and it looks to me like what they did is change Commercial Hub/Harbor to have a modifier which adds a Trade Route to a district, but the Harbor has a requirement that says it only adds a Trade Route if there's no Commercial Hub.

MODIFIER_PLAYER_ADJUST_TRADE_ROUTE_CAPACITY should still work as normal. If it didn't, the Great People that added Trade Routes would also be affected. Were you using MODIFIER_PLAYER_DISTRICTS_ADJUST_TRADE_ROUTE_CAPACITY? That one, which is used for Carthage, may work differently.

I was modifying a district directly. I used SetTradeRouteCapacity. I'm guessing that tag doesn't work like it did before, I haven't had a chance to take a deep look into the new files just yet.

 

[Magil]

Magil updated Magil's Wondrous Wonders with a new update entry:

I'd like to get some feedback on these changes before I push this to the Workshop:

• Removed ExclusiveBuildings for the National Heritage Site and all National Wonders in the Holy Site district. They can now be built in the same city.
• Added a very small amount of Outer Defense Health to National Wonders. This will cause them to be destroyed upon capture.
• National Wonder cost re-balanced for later eras.
• Slightly reduced the Culture yield of some National Wonders.

Notably, I have finally bit the bullet and decided I'm going to add Outer Defense health to National Wonders. This lets them effectively function as Walls, so a city that builds them will have fortification health (though much less than that provided by walls) and have a ranged attack. However, National Wonders will be destroyed upon city capture.

This means you can no longer acquire more than one National Wonder via conquering other player's cities (though I believe that if you can get the cities gifted to you, it'd still let you have multiples). I've tested this and they aren't obsoleted by Civil Engineering like Walls are, which is good (I'm not sure how wall obsolescence is handled).

 

[qadams]

I have finally bit the bullet and decided I'm going to add Outer Defense health to National Wonders. This lets them effectively function as Walls, so a city that builds them will have fortification health (though much less than that provided by walls) and have a ranged attack. However, National Wonders will be destroyed upon city capture.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I have a question about the Exclusive Buildings thing. Is it supposed to prevent a player from putting more than one national wonder in a city or only in a district? In other words, can I place, say, one national wonder in a Commercial Hub, and another one in an Industrial Zone, but both in the same city? I don't think your mod allows that right now, and I wish it would.

 

[Magil]

This makes a lot of sense to me. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I have a question about the Exclusive Buildings thing. Is it supposed to prevent a player from putting more than one national wonder in a city or only in a district? In other words, can I place, say, one national wonder in a Commercial Hub, and another one in an Industrial Zone, but both in the same city? I don't think your mod allows that right now, and I wish it would.

They are intended to be somewhat exclusive, inspired by Civ IV's limit of two National Wonders per city. Most National Wonders cannot be built in the same city unless they share the same district, to encourage specialization. There are some exceptions.

 

[qadams]

They are intended to be somewhat exclusive, inspired by Civ IV's limit of two National Wonders per city. Most National Wonders cannot be built in the same city unless they share the same district, to encourage specialization.

Ah, okay, now I see what you're doing there. Thanks for the explanation!

 

[Magil]

To elaborate what I mean by specialization, it's this kind of thinking I want to encourage: when I want to build the Library of National History, I will generally look to where I can get the best Campus adjacency bonus, since the nat wonder effectively doubles that. A +3 bonus will get you more than a +1 bonus when you decide where to build this. Since the Library of National History has Great Writing slots, it might make you want the Great Library World Wonder. If you do have that wonder, you'll want to put Great Works of Writing in the city that has the Library of National History, since it provides a science boost for Great Works of Writing, and the science multiplier will get you even more science out of that. What I don't really like is stacking everything in one big super-city that does everything well. I don't think that's very interesting.

Now, I should mention a few things in this thread: first of all, I have uploaded two new mods to the Steam Workshop: Wondrous Wonders (National Wonders only) and Wondrous Wonders (World Wonder Overhaul only). These are basically what you'd expect; versions of the mod that contain only National Wonders, or only the World Wonder overhaul (slightly changed to account for missing effects). They can even be run together, though they are incompatible with Wondrous Wonders itself obviously. I'm not planning to upload them here, as keeping so many different places up-to-date as I change things is tedious.

However, I will keep the main mod of Wondrous Wonders up to date both here and on Steam, and expect a new version of that to come around shortly. This version will have some changes to the Colossus and Great Lighthouse to account for the new way the Commercial Hub and Harbor interact (sometimes, the Great Lighthouse would provide you with a Trader even though you didn't have a trade route available--nothing unbalancing or game-breaking but somewhat odd).

 

[Magil]

Magil updated Magil's Wondrous Wonders with a new update entry:

Australian Summer Update

The following has changed in this version:

• The Great Lighthouse no longer provides a free Trader when a Harbor district is built. Instead, it gives +1 sight to all naval units.
• The Colossus no longer provides a free Trader and additional trade route capacity. Instead, each of your cities with both a Harbor district and Commercial Hub increase your trade route capacity by 1, and whenever one of your cities builds a Harbor district, you receive a free Trader unit in the city that builds it.

 

[BlackEmperor]

You probably know it, but the DLC added two new wonders. The Apadana (+2 envoys for every wonder you build in the city) and the Halicarnassus Mausoleum (grants a Great Admiral and Great Admirals and Great Engineers gain an additional charge for their abilities). Any ideas for these? Or do you think they're strong enough already? (I haven't tested them yet)

Oh yeah, the Apadana also seems to have two Great Work slots that can have anything.

 

[Magil]

I'm going to take a wait and see approach to these Wonders and maybe play a few games to see how I like them as they are.

Edit: You can feel free to keep using this mod however, it appears there are no conflicts with the latest patch.

 

[BlackEmperor]

Alright, I see. Good to know there are no conflicts!

If I may make two suggestions that just came to my mind (I haven't tested the wonders yet though, so again no idea whether they'd be necessary at all), I think that reducing the envoy bonus from the Apadana to 1 and have it apply to all wonders constructed by this civilization instead would make it better (I can only speak for myself, but I don't tend to build more than 3 or maybe 4 wonders in the capital and even less in other cities). But I don't know how well that would fare on smaller maps with less city states (I tend to play large maps with many of them). It would theoretically allow 32 additional envoys over the course of the game if you build the Apadana first and manage to build all other wonders afterwards.
As for the Halicarnassus Mausoleum, I kind of think that one or two Great Work slots that can have sculptures would make sense. Its ability on its own sounds already quite powerful to me.

 

[Tolerant]

Hello everyone! Some days ago I've checked this mod. I've made text localisation in Russian. But only for half of this mod, because I used only World wonders. The idea with national wonders isn't bad. it's good, but it's just not for me. Don't see the good reason to complicate the district buildings system...especially with the duplicates of existing buildings. But new effects for World wonders is great. It's really big and very organic improvement. But in overall it's a very solid work.