A new mod enters the ring - Introducing "Close to Home"

[Gaspar]

I had the following kanoodling in another thread and was asked to repost it here, so I am doing so.  I cut the links as they refer to an active spoiler thread.

It seems obvious from the start that a TR bonus would be very powerful early, unlike FIN all you really have to do is the same stuff you would normally do to benefit from it.  Anything that does that much heavy lifting with minimal investment is going to be strong, especially when it starts working from the time you've connected city 2.

The question really is how strong you want it to be.  Its clearly the worst trait in base BTS.  I think the traits in base are best thought of as carry traits and support traits.  In base BTS I think FIN, EXP, CRE, IND, SPI are the carry traits and AGG, CHM, PHI, ORG, IMP and PRO are the support traits.  Some of those are stronger than others, I'd also suspect that PHI was meant to be a carry and SPI was meant to be support but no need to quibble.  Anyway, in this mod I think PRO moves to a carry trait and probably a top 3 carry.  IDK how codable it is but it might be more thematic if it only boosted internal routes.  I've always supported a balance approach that tried to buff the weaker traits rather than hard nerf the strong ones, so maybe this isn't too good in comparison.

On the traits, I think the point of the carry-support breakdown is twofold.  One, what the carry traits have in common, assuming you make the aforementioned PHI/SPI swap, is that they form the basis of economy.  The support traits do something else.  Two, I think the goal should be that a good synergistic combo of support-carry would be as good as a carry-carry.  Support-support is necessarily going to be trickier, but they'll have types of games where they shine.

If you discount base FIN and PRO, which are outliers in terms of strength and weakness, I think there is a fair number of those sorts of combos:  Would you rather play EXP/IMP or CRE/IND?  I think its close enough that both work.  So I guess if I we're modding, which would never happen, I'd be aiming to balance the carry traits against one another and the support traits against one another while trying to be thematic.  I also think a lot of the KrillMOD style changes where you basically just give something a discount that doesn't make thematic sense but works for balance (PRO granaries or whatever) are the wrong direction, while entirely changing how a trait accomplishes balance while staying true to the theme is right direction, like the PRO TR bonus.  

So if you rank the base BTS carries something like FIN, EXP, CRE, IND, PHI which is what I think most people would rank them, then I would leave CRE alone, buff IND and nerf EXP a little and buff PHI and nerf FIN a bit more.  You probably still have a trait hierarchy but its closer to home.  Likewise I think the support traits would be ranked something like SPI, ORG, IMP, CHM, AGG, PRO which can be quibbled with you're doing the same thing in clusters.  Of course, the support traits are trickier - how do you meaningfully nerf SPI without fundamentally changing what it does?  I guess you increase the number of turns between swaps but that's hard to do without either being meaningless or a hard nerf.  I might just keep SPI as the baseline there and try and bring the other 5 up to its level.

Anyway, its food for thought.

[Charriu]

I don't know if this has been discussed before,  but I wanted to point out an observation wrt the modified inflation mechanic:
As I understand it,  this is meant to prevent people from rushing through the tech tree at later stages of the game.  Instead of increasing tech costs like other mods do,  that is achieved by increasing costs for fast techers, where the driving formula for inflation is (All techs you discovered / All available techs) * Maximum turn number.
We haven't seen yet how this plays out over the course of a game in later ages, but I see two issues that might give players incentives that nought not really be intended:
1) it encourages piling up ever more gold before you rush through a number of tech's. If you pile up gold for many turns,  then research ten techs,  you pay a lot less than saving for and researching each tech one by one. However,  planning gets more difficult,  as you have to account for you're rapidly increasing costs while researching. Third could actually provide for some interesting situations where players are tempted to delay (military) techs for longer than is healthy in order to keep their costs down.
2) it encourages deep beelines, avoiding not strictly necessary techs as long as possible or altogether. Your cost increase is driven buy the number of techs researched,  so Archery has the same weight as Guilds or as Assemly Line. I personally don't like this, as I don't think played should be punished for trying you leverage a great variety of aspects of the game.  This could be addressed by making the formula dependent on researched beakers vs total beakers ion the tree, although that would likely require some sort of nonlinear formula,  as the later techs are so much more expensive,  and then you need finetuning which I guess this was intended to avoid...

It's not necessarily meant to prevent people from rushing through the tech tree at later stages. The goals of these changes are as following in decreasing priority:

1. Bring down overall tech level back to a somewhat "normal" in Tech trading and Advanced start games. Because of those two game options all players can rush through the tech tree before inflation starts kicking in. With the inflation tied to tech progress you start feeling the inflation sooner.
2. Give the tech leaders a slight disadvantage so that other might can come closer to tech parity.
3. Prevent rushing the later tech stages

Please do remember that this is not a replacement of the existing inflation mechanic rather its an addition. Inflation still works and increases as normal with every turn. It's just that if you are teching faster then this turn pace inflation kicks in sooner. As for your arguments: Yes there is the possibility of encouraging piling up more gold, but this was already in place due to binary research. There's also always the question of if those techs are worth the increased inflation or not. So there is quite a lot of choice in there. As for your other point yes it encourages deep beelines. I looked into weighting techs in some way, but decided against it for now, because I didn't want to make it to complicate and it's a lot more hassle to code it.

Here is what I did about this feature:

1. I implemented my tracking tool, so that we can better see how this feature effects overall performance in a game and how often it comes into effect.
   
2. There's always the option of making this into a game option or tie it to the Tech Trading and Advanced Start options.
   

I would like to wait and see how the data turns out.

I had the following kanoodling in another thread and was asked to repost it here, so I am doing so.  I cut the links as they refer to an active spoiler thread.

It seems obvious from the start that a TR bonus would be very powerful early, unlike FIN all you really have to do is the same stuff you would normally do to benefit from it.  Anything that does that much heavy lifting with minimal investment is going to be strong, especially when it starts working from the time you've connected city 2.

The question really is how strong you want it to be.  Its clearly the worst trait in base BTS.  I think the traits in base are best thought of as carry traits and support traits.  In base BTS I think FIN, EXP, CRE, IND, SPI are the carry traits and AGG, CHM, PHI, ORG, IMP and PRO are the support traits.  Some of those are stronger than others, I'd also suspect that PHI was meant to be a carry and SPI was meant to be support but no need to quibble.  Anyway, in this mod I think PRO moves to a carry trait and probably a top 3 carry.  IDK how codable it is but it might be more thematic if it only boosted internal routes.  I've always supported a balance approach that tried to buff the weaker traits rather than hard nerf the strong ones, so maybe this isn't too good in comparison.

On the traits, I think the point of the carry-support breakdown is twofold.  One, what the carry traits have in common, assuming you make the aforementioned PHI/SPI swap, is that they form the basis of economy.  The support traits do something else.  Two, I think the goal should be that a good synergistic combo of support-carry would be as good as a carry-carry.  Support-support is necessarily going to be trickier, but they'll have types of games where they shine.

If you discount base FIN and PRO, which are outliers in terms of strength and weakness, I think there is a fair number of those sorts of combos:  Would you rather play EXP/IMP or CRE/IND?  I think its close enough that both work.  So I guess if I we're modding, which would never happen, I'd be aiming to balance the carry traits against one another and the support traits against one another while trying to be thematic.  I also think a lot of the KrillMOD style changes where you basically just give something a discount that doesn't make thematic sense but works for balance (PRO granaries or whatever) are the wrong direction, while entirely changing how a trait accomplishes balance while staying true to the theme is right direction, like the PRO TR bonus.  

So if you rank the base BTS carries something like FIN, EXP, CRE, IND, PHI which is what I think most people would rank them, then I would leave CRE alone, buff IND and nerf EXP a little and buff PHI and nerf FIN a bit more.  You probably still have a trait hierarchy but its closer to home.  Likewise I think the support traits would be ranked something like SPI, ORG, IMP, CHM, AGG, PRO which can be quibbled with you're doing the same thing in clusters.  Of course, the support traits are trickier - how do you meaningfully nerf SPI without fundamentally changing what it does?  I guess you increase the number of turns between swaps but that's hard to do without either being meaningless or a hard nerf.  I might just keep SPI as the baseline there and try and bring the other 5 up to its level.

Anyway, its food for thought.

I don't want to get into much detail here as I will address traits with the upcoming change log, which I will post soon. PRO and FIN will be addressed in there. But thanks for the feedback.

[Charriu]

This is only the changelog compared to version 1.1. All differences between versions are in yellow. If you prefer a clean changelog just look at the second post of this thread.

Changelog version 1.4 RC1

Tile Yields and Improvements

• Lumbermills: Available at Machinery, +1 commerce, +1 commerce with Electricity, Lumber mills now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers
  
• Forest preserves: +1 commerce, now +1 commerce on the corner of rivers like above
  

Game Mechanics

• Drafting: Rifles now cost 2 pop to draft. A city must now end a draft at size 6 instead of size 5 (So size 8 to draft a rifle, size 7 to draft a musket).
  
• AP Resolutions: Declare War (on a non-member), Force Peace (between two members), Religious victory, and Assign City are no longer eligible resolution actions.
  
• Fail-gold: You never get fail-gold if you also completed the wonder somewhere else (so no National Wonder fail-gold, or doubling up on a wonder to guarantee yourself a paycheck. The game still informs you that you received "0 gold" from your hammers).
  
• Toroidal Maintenance: Now return city maintenance as if the map were Cylindrical.
  
• Inflation: Inflation still occurs with increasing turn numbers, but in addition if (All techs you discovered / All available techs) * Maximum turn numbers is higher then the current turn, inflation takes the calculated turn from techs as a base for the calculation.
  
• War Weariness: War weariness declines faster after the war ended
  
• Religion spread: Spreading religions via missionaries to your own cities never fails
  
• Global warming: Removed
  
• Espionage: Active missions removed
  
• Espionage: 'No espionage' option fixed, see bugfix section for more details
  

Techs

• Agriculture: Cost 40 instead of 60
  
• Mysticism: Cost 60 instead of 50
  
• Fishing: Cost 50 instead of 40
  
• Metal Casting: Cost 300 instead of  450
  
• Alphabet: Cost 250 instead of 300
  
• Mysticism: Now adds +1 commerce to Palace
  
• Astronomy: Add Paper as another prerequisite
  
• Refrigeration: lose +1 sea movement
  

Buildings

• Castle: Obsoletes at Corporation instead of Economics
  
• Customs House: Cost 120 instead of 180, also applies to all UBs based on Customs House (Feitoria)
  
• Colosseum: -25% war weariness
  

National Wonders

• Red Cross: Cost 200 instead of 600
  
• West Point: Cost 550 instead of 800, +5 XP instead of 4, Requires a level 5 unit instead of 6
  

Wonders

• Resource modifiers: All wonders that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.
  
• Great Lighthouse: +1 trade route in coastal cities instead of +2
  
• Statue of Zeus: Obsolete at Gunpowder
  

Unit mechanics

• Flanking: Flanking strength (used to calculate damage from flanking strikes) of all units reduced by 50%.
  
• Circumnavigation: +1 trade route in all coastal cities instead of +1 movement and can be achieved by everybody
  
• Coastal blockade: only blocks trade routes, blockaded cities can still work blocked tiles.
  
• Free Wins against Barbs: All units that can act as MP get Free Wins against barbs as long as a settler is present in the same tile. Does still reduce your Free Wins towards Barbs
  

Land units

• Scout: +200% +0% vs animals (+200% gained with Hunting) instead of +100%, no tech required, that way everybody starts with a scout, movement 1 (+1 gained with Hunting)
  
• Swordsman: +20% +25% city attack instead of +10%, also applies to UUs Jaguar Warrior and Gallic Swordsman
  
• War elephant: Strength 7 instead of 8, does not apply to Khmer UUs, requires Ivory or Iron, does apply to Khmer UUs
  
• Explorer: Gains Flanking
  
• Airship: Cannot see submarines
  
• ICBM: Cost 1500 instead of 500
  
• Tactical Nuke: Cost 750 instead of 250
  
• Nukes: Nukes never create fallout on tiles containing strategic resources.
  

Naval units

• Work Boat: no longer require any tech (still require Fishing to work water tiles).
  
• Galleon: Requires Paper and Astronomy, Dutch UU still only requires Astronomy
  
• Privateer: Required techs are Gunpowder and Astronomy instead of Chemistry and Astronomy
  
• Submarine and Attack Submarine: Flanking vs Transports
  

Corporations

• Tech: Discovering the corresponding tech for a corporation earns you an executive of that corporation. To settle the HQ you still need a great person.
  
• Sid's Sushi Co.: Food bonus per resource 0.25 instead of 0.5 and culture bonus per resource 1 instead of 2, maintenance costs halfed
  
• Mining Inc.: Hammer bonus per resource 0.75 instead of 1, maintenance costs 3/4 of original
  

Civics

• Serfdom: +1 hammer on Farms and Watermills, +1 commerce on Windmills +1 commerce on Farms, +1 hammer on Watermills and Windmills
  
• Emancipation: lose unhappiness bonus, gain +10% Hammer in all cities
  
• State Property: Lose +10% Hammer in all cities
  
• Environmentalism: Available at Biology instead of Medicine, remove Corporation costs
  
• Vassalage: Medium cost instead of High
  
• Nationhood: Low cost instead of No Upkeep
  

Traits

• Financial: +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce +1 commerce on water tiles with a harbor in place, +100% production of bank
  
• Expansive: Remove Worker bonus, add +100% production of Aqueduct
  
• Creative: Reduce Library bonus from 100% to 50%, Remove production bonus for Colosseum
  
• Charismatic: +100% production of Monument, +100% production of Colosseum
  
• Imperialistic: +100% production of Stable
  
• Aggressive: +1 happiness on Barracks -25% unit maintenance cost and +100% production of Jails,
  
• Philosophical: +150% GPP instead of +100%
  
• Protective: +75% trade route yield (like Harbors do) +50% trade route yield, +25% trade route yield with Walls
  

Civs

• UBs no longer obsolete at any time. Affected civs are Celts, Egypt, Ethiopia, Native America, Spain
  
• America UB: NEW Immigration Station - Harbor replacement, +3 Great People Points, +1 happy from Hit Musical, Singles and Movies
  
• America UU: NEW Minuteman - Musket replacement, Starts with Guerrilla 1 and Woodsman 1.
  
• Arabia UU: Camel Archer starts with March
  
• Babylon UB: only +1 health, Makes city act as a source of fresh water
  
• Byzantium UB: add +2 artist slots
  
• Byzantium UU: Strength 11 instead of 12, first strike immune like normal knight
  
• Celts UB: +1 culture
  
• China UU: max 75% collateral damage instead of max 60%
  
• France UB: +1 free specialist instead of +1 artist
  
• Germany UB: Assembly Plant available at Steam Power instead of Assembly line, +2 hammer
  
• Germany UU: NEW Riesengarde - replace Grenadier, available at Chemistry, starts with Pinch
  
• Inca UB: +1 culture instead of +2, Cost 70 instead of 60 Makes city act as a source of fresh water instead of +2 culture
  
• India UU: movement 2 instead of 3, start with Mobility promotion, Cost 70 instead of 60
  
• Japan UB: NEW Tatara, Forge replacement - +2 XP to Melee, +10% hammer bonus with coals
  
• Khmer UU: Stays at 8 strength instead of base units now 7 strength, requires Ivory or Iron
  
• Maya UU: Starts with Woodsman 1
  
• Native America Tech: Hunting/Agriculture instead of Fishing/Agriculture
  
• Native America UB: Available at Archery instead of Mysticism, additional +1 XP for gunpowder units, never obsoletes
  
• Rome UU: Strength 7 instead of 8, only +10% city attack compared to base unit, cost 40 just like base unit
  
• Russia UB: Replace University instead of Laboratory, only +1 free scientist
  
• Spain UB: Never obsoletes, +2 XP for naval units
  
• Zulu UU: Remove Mobility promotion
  

Leaders

Also included are three new leaders for the missing trait combos

• LieuYe (ORG/PRO)
  
• San Martin (CHM/CRE) and
  
• Nebuchadrezzar (IND/PRO)
  

Events

The following events have been removed from the game:

Negative Events:
1. Forest Fire
5. Washed out
10 Careless apprentice
11. Famine
12. Slave revolt
15. Farm Bandits
18. Fugitive
19. Pestilence
21. Faux Pas
22. Joyous Wedding
23. Wedding Feud
24. Left at the Altar
26. Tornado
29. Looters
30. Brothers in need
31. Hurricane
32. Cyclone
33. Tsunami
34. Monsoon
35. Blizzard
36. Volcano
37. Dust Bowl
42. Clunker Coal
43. Sour crude
50. Mining accident
52. Setbacks
54. Great depression
55. Bermuda triangle
70. Influenza
71. Solo Flight
77. Ancient Olympics
78. Modern Olympics
80. Earth day
92. Cigarette Smoker
93. Heroic Gesture
94. Great Mediator
99. The Huns
100. The Vandals
101. the Goths
102. The Philistines
103. The Vedic Aryans
104. Holy ritual
132. Spoiled grain
135. Industrial fire
155. Slave revolt warning
160. Defecting agent
161. Jail
162. Spy discovered
163. Nuclear protests
165. Broken Dam
169. Toxcatl
170. Dissident Priest
172. Rogue station
174. Impeachment

Remove (Too good):
9. Hymns and sculptures
20. Marathon
28. Bards tale
64. Federal reserve
139. Partisans
167. Golden Buddha

Quests (Too good):
13. Blessed sea
121. Harbomaster
125. Sports league
149. Guns Butter
151. Overwhelm
152. Corporate expansion
153. Hostile takeover

New game options

No City Trading: Unable to trade cities, cities appear untradable in diplomacy screen
No Map Trading: Maps appear untradable in diplomacy screen
No Wonder resource modifiers: Resources do not affect world wonder or world project construction speeds.
No Immediate Peace (Peace treaty negotiations are only possible after 5 turns)
True AI Diplo: All single player trade items are also available in MP

BUG integration

BUG fully integrated
New BUG feature "Grid for graphs"
New BUG feature improved Active advisor screen

Cosmetic changes

Adjusted placement of techs in the tech tree, so that the Paper requirement for Astronomy looks nicer

Additional bug fixes

The No Espionage game option now works properly:

    GSpy points are converted into Great Merchant points.
    Espionage no longer gets converted into culture.
    Cultural expansion now happens at normal values.
    Spies cannot be built.
    Graphs are always visible on contact.

Workboats no longer count as military units for upkeep. They're also no longer considered a military unit so a War Academy will not speed their production.

Trade route turn order bug.

Foreign trade route cities lost permanently when your city using those routes is destroyed (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch).

Build culture double production.

Build wealth/research/culture + production automation double production.

Proposed trades including cities, where the cities no longer exist to be trades, are not cancelled (note: I consider this a bug because proposed trades are already cancelled if a player lacks the requisite e.g. resources/gold. could be considered not a bug).

Production decay counter on a type of build (e.g. axeman) is not reset after completing one if the next item in the queue is of the same type (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch).

Feature growth/disappearance rates, and bonus discovery (mine pop) rates, do not scale with game speed.

Diplomacy Pausing: Diplomacy windows do not occur on game login whilst the game is paused.

Autosaves: Autosaves are generated at login and log out; log out saves are saved to a folder specified within the global defines XML file. Default location is C:\temp.

Maximum player number increased to 52

Additional alterations have been made to enable hosting of games on the pitboss server belonging to Zulan. These changes are detailed here

Added bugfixes from Unoffical Patch https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/u...19.324024/:

CvCity::init - Building a city on floodplains no longer removes floodplains, they'll still be there if city is destroyed (from Mongoose SDK)
CvCity::getProductionModifier (three versions of this function) - Changed to allow mods to create negative production modifiers (thanks NotSoGood)
CvCity::setBuildingHealthChange - Fixed several copy/paste and logic bugs affecting bonus building health from events, especially after city conquest (thanks Emperor Fool)
CvCity::setBuildingHappyChange - Fixed several logic bugs affecting bonus building health from events, especially after city conquest
CvCity - Added function getNumActiveWorldWonders()
CvCity::PopOrder - Fixed issue introduced by prior attempt to fix handling of buildings with player limits. Building classes which set iMaxPlayerInstances should now work correctly regardless of what iExtraPlayerInstances is set to. (thanks ztjal)
CvCityAI::AI_yieldValue - Fixed issue causing city governor and AI to heavily weight food when building gold or any other form of commerce. Produced unexpected and poor results for human player, did not help AI either.
CvCityAI::AI_doHurry - Fixed several bugs where AI would incorrectly think it was getting a great deal on a pop/gold rush when it was actually doing the other kind of rush. (thanks Pep)
CvPlayerAI::AI_isFinancialTrouble, CvCityAI::AI_updateBestBuild, and CvPlayerAI::AI_getMinFoundValue - Fixed bug in calculating expenses when AI has negative gold per turn
CvCityAI::AI_cityThreat - Fixed bug when AI is running crush strategy, wrong int was divided
CvCityAI::AI_neededDefenders - Improved efficiency and minor tweaks
CvCityAI::AI_chooseProduction - Fixed bug reducing AI production of workers, and a similar issue for barb players producing too many
CvDLLButtonPopup::launchFreeColonyPopup - Removed cities whose liberation player you are at war with from popup.
CvPlayer and CvDLLWidgetData - Fixed bug where you could acquire unlimited free techs from Oracle or Liberalism (thanks Emperor Fool)
isPotentialEnemy in CvGameCoreUtils - Fixed bug leading to AI launching invasions when unable to declare war, troops eventually got bounced when war was declared
CvGameTextMgr::setBuildingHelp - Fixed issue in mods with display of exposing spies text for buildings which lower espionage defense (thanks Afforess)
CvGameTextMgr (many places) - Fixed issues where unhappiness and unhealthiness from civics or buildings would incorrectly show up as -(unhappy face) instead of +(unhappy face) in several circumstances. (Thanks EmporerFool, Grave, Afforess)
CvGameTextMgr - Game will now properly display info for buildings which generate unhappiness in an area or globally, or produce state religion unhappiness (should these ever come up in mods)
CvPlayer::canFound - Changed handling of founding on water tiles so that Python callback has final say if it is turned on
CvPlayer::removeBuildingClass - Fixed issue with removing buildings when building class was maxed out for some mods (thanks EF)
CvPlayer::canTradeItem - You can now ask AI members of your own team to change religion or civics (thanks denev)
CvPlayerAI::AI_civicValue - Fixed crash bug in multi-player simultaneous turns games created by necessary re-timing of AI_doSplit (thanks to TheOnlyDJCat for debugging help)
CvPlayerAI::AI_conquerCity - Fixed bug where cityAcquiredAndKept event reported wrong player in some circumstances (thanks Maniac)
CvPlayerAI::AI_targetGold - Fixed bug causing AI to not bother with budgeting for expenses for first 40 turns of scenarios and advanced start games
CvPlayerAI::AI_foundValue - Added missing division for iClaimThrehsold (thanks denev)
CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue - Stealth boats do not make good escorts since they often don't defend, so AI is now very unlikely to use them as escorts for transports.
CvPlayerAI::AI_getHealthWeight - Fixed bug for mods where civics with negative iExtraHealth were evaluated incorrectly (thanks phungus420)
CvPlayerAI::AI_getHappinessWeight - Fixed bug for mods where civics with negative happiness effects from troops, largest cities, or war weariness were evaluated incorrectly
CvPlayerAI::AI_bestPlotEspionage - relevant weights are 0, +- 50, +- 100, so comparison for Agg AI should be < 51 instead of < 50
CvPlayerAI::AI_changePeacetimeTradeValue and CvPlayerAI::AI_changePeacetimeGrantValue - AIs you haven't met yet will no longer get angry at you for trading with their worst enemy (thanks Sephi)
CvPlayerAI::AI_doDiplo - Fixed issue where team is sneak attack ready but hasn't declared war, AI would still demand tribute. If other team accepted, it blocked war declaration for 10 turns but AI still launched invasion and was then bounced when it could eventually declare.
CvPlayerAI::AI_getStrategyHash - Fixed incorrect counting of destroyers as mobile anti-air
CvPlayerAI::AI_getTotalFloatingDefendersNeeded - Fixed poor decision by AI if it has captured one or two cities on someone else's continent, it would minimally defend its new cities
CvPlayerAI::AI_getStrategyHash - Fixed several bugs where player ID was used where team ID was intended
CvPlayerAI::AI_targetCityValue - Fixed issues with valuation of cities with inactive world wonders, multi-holy-cities
CvPlayerAI::AI_commerceWeight - Improved valuation of generating culture in human player cities when culture bar is > 50% (ie, player probably going for cultural victory)
CvPlayerAI::AI_bestTech - Fixed potential rare crash bug in mods where units with no transport capacity can upgrade to units with transport capacity (thanks Afforess)
CvPlayerAI::AI_missionaryValue - Fixed copy and past bug causing overvaluation of missionaries for AIs going for cultural victory early in the game.
CvPlayerAI::AI_unitValue - Fixed potential crash bug in looking up AI_unitValue for UNITAI_MISSIONARY units without passing a valid CvArea*
CvSelectionGroup::continueMission - Fixed issue causing units with multiple orders to forget their later orders under certain circumstances. (thanks Pep)
CvTeam::doTurn - Added barbarian passive tech fix from Mongoose SDK
CvTeam::shareCounters - Fixed bug causing inappropriate overflow research and effectively free techs when forming a Permanent Alliance
CvTeam::addTeam - Fixed bug where, if civs A and B join in a permanent alliance, they get the max of A and B's espionage points against C but C just keeps its point against A and loses its points to B if that's higher
CvTeam::shareCounters - Fixed bug in permanent alliances when No Tech Brokering is turned on, where a civ would often become unable to trade a tech they had researched after entering a permanent alliance.
CvTeamAI::AI_doWar - use bFinancesProLimitedWar for limited war calc instead of max war version
CvTeamAI::AI_calculateAreaAIType - Fixed incorrect index usage (thanks cephalo)
CvUnit::convert - Fixed potential issue in mods where units with transport capacity might upgrade to units without (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::shouldLoadOnMove - Fixed issue with all terrain land units moving onto water tiles with transports in them (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::canMoveInto - Removed strange behavior where setting a unit to be unable to enter a terrain type would be overridden by features (forrest, fallout) (thanks TC01)
CvUnit::isIntruding - Kept 3.17 unofficial patch feature that vassal spies are never caught in master's territory
CvUnit::canAirDefend - Land units which are on transports can no longer defend against air attacks (from Mongoose SDK)
CvUnit::collateralCombat - Kept 3.17 unofficial patch feature which allows mods to enables barrage promotions for collateral damage units
CvUnit::canSpread - Moved Python cannot spread callback to end of function where it belongs, will speed up those mods which use this callback a little
CvUnit::canRangeStrikeAt - Added check for whether target plot is visible (thanks God-Emperor)
CvUnitAI::AI_spreadReligionAirlift and CvUnitAI::AI_spreadCorporationAirlift - AI will no longer airlift multiple of the same kind of missionary or executive to the same target spread city on the same turn
CvUnitAI::AI_paradrop - fixed bug with valuation of terrain bonuses causing paradrops to avoid bonuses in some circumstances when intention is clearly to encourage landing on bonuses and pillaging
CvUnitAI::AI_settleMove - fixed bug when settler cannot reach a city site in an area (blocked by mountains, other player). Caused settler to wait infinitely in city instead of loading into transport.
CvUnitAI::AI_assaultSeaMove - Fixed bug where unit type was used when unit AI type was intended
CvUnitAI::AI_specialSeaTransportMissionary - Fixed minor bug in valuation for executives

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Good changes overall but another nerf to fin? I would say it’s worse than almost all traits now.

To weigh in on the inflation debate, I think it is fine despite the gold saving. At some point you have to turn the slider on, and whoever turns it on first and slams the gas pedal is going to get to knights or maces first and wreak havoc. To counteract beelining, make part of the inflation penalty based on techs per era?

[Charriu]

• Astronomy: Add Paper as another prerequisite
  
• Galleon: Requires Paper and Astronomy, Dutch UU still only requires Astronomy
  

Cosmetic changes

Adjusted placement of techs in the tech tree, so that the Paper requirement for Astronomy looks nicer

It was stated by some players that this change was not close at home and I agree. My main purpose with this change was to push the Galleon to a later stage and with that early across-ocean naval landings. Delaying Galleons also helps the Portugese UU to shine. I still think that the astro bulb was not noticed by the developers as from the position in the tech tree it is clear that it was not intended to be teched that early. But as Sulla already mentioned some things develop out of the community and are meant to stay. Therefore I reduced the nerf. You can now bulb Astronomy as with BtS, which helps everybody who wants the early ocean trade or the observatory (France). But to keep my nerf to the galleon they now require Paper. With this the effect of the initial change stays mostly in tact, but you can bulb Astronomy as long as you do it before teching Civil Service or Paper. After that you can tech those two and build yourself some Galleons. This change also leaves you the decision to either go for Galleons with Civil Service and Paper after Astronomy or go for Privateers with Gunpowder after Astronomy. Of course the previous Astronomy change also nerfed the Dutch pretty hard, which is why their UU still only requires Astronomy.

• Colosseum: -25% war weariness
  

This was previously discussed.

• It gives the player more agency with regards to war weariness
  
• It improves an underused building
  
• It improves all the UBs replacing it, namely the Babylonian, Greek and Mayan UB
  

• Free Wins against Barbs: All units that can act as MP get Free Wins against barbs as long as a settler is present in the same tile. Does still reduce your Free Wins towards Barbs
  

A change which will go unnoticed by most players. Loosing a settler to an early barb on a low dice roll just hurts the player and also the map balance in MP. With this change that should no longer happen. Please note that the scout does not work with this change as the scout does not act as an MP. Now there is a slight possibility to exploit this change by purposefully moving a settler with your stack against a barb city or on a barb entering your territory. The later is a minor concern as you would have to have a settler at hand in that moment and why would you delay settling a city for this. The first certainly can happen. We'll see how much impact it will have.

• Scout: +200% +0% vs animals (+200% gained with Hunting) instead of +100%, no tech required, that way everybody starts with a scout, movement 1 (+1 gained with Hunting)
  

This is a very interesting case. The initial change regarding movement actually is closer to BtS, but not closer to the meta we here at RB are playing for years. Therefore it was rightfully asked to be removed as it hurts the fun part in the beginning. Still I wanted to give the Hunting tech something meaningful which you want almost from the beginning. Now without Hunting scouting becomes a lot more dangerous. If this is also too much I would opt to go with the standard +100% vs animals and increase it to a +300% with Hunting.

• Swordsman: +20% +25% city attack instead of +10%, also applies to UUs Jaguar Warrior and Gallic Swordsman
  

Swordsmen still felt a little bit too weak. Hopefully 5% more will make the difference.

• War elephant: Strength 7 instead of 8, does not apply to Khmer UUs, requires Ivory or Iron, does apply to Khmer UUs
  
• Khmer UU: Stays at 8 strength instead of base units now 7 strength, requires Ivory or Iron
  

Only real change here is that the war elephant now also requires Ivory or Iron. With that I also reduced the length of the changelog. Question: I'm adressing some changes that affect civs UUs and UBs in different parts of the changelog like here. Should I mention this change in the Civs section, too? It is redundant information, but not mentioning it there may lead to some people overlooking the impact on civs.

• Explorer: Gains Flanking
  

Ok, show of hands. How many people built explorers ever? Nobody? I thought as much. By the time you can built them most of the meaningful exploration already has happened, which is probably the main reason nobody builts them. Now Flanking does nothing to improve the unit itself, as it only applies when you attack with this unit and explorers can't attack. But it opens up the next promotions which is sentry. Previously you had to get 4 promos on an explorer to go Combat 1, 2, 3 and then sentry. That's near impossible to achieve with no barbs in play at this stage. With Flanking you only need one promotion easily achieved via Barracks and you can get sentry.
Now I here some people crying. Giving out almost free sentry promoted units is too much and hurts the game balance to which I say:

• You already can easily built sentry mounted units with Barracks and Stables
  
• Those sentries are even better as they can fight
  
• Explorers are unlocked with Compass, which is rarely a tech you research immediately or early like Horse Back Riding.
  

• Submarine and Attack Submarine: Flanking vs Transports
  

I must have done something wrong, because this change didn't work as intended. In addition I removed the change as it makes naval landings too hard in the later stages of the game.

• Serfdom: +1 hammer on Farms and Watermills, +1 commerce on Windmills +1 commerce on Farms, +1 hammer on Watermills and Windmills
  

As much as I loved the +1 hammer on Farms it might be too strong. Now I still have to wait for actual results from the running PBs, but this is the option I would go with.

• Vassalage: Medium cost instead of High
  
• Nationhood: Low cost instead of No Upkeep
  

I felt that the Vassalage change didn't have that much of an impact mainly because the difference between Medium and High isn't that significant. Vassalage is also outshined by Nationhood in later stages of the game when the difference becomes more meaningful, which is one reason why I nerfed Nationhood. Right now Nationhood feels more like a no brainer in this civic tree, which is why I nerfed it a bit.

• Financial: +1 commerce on land tiles that have 3+ commerce, +1 commerce on water tiles that have 2+ commerce +1 commerce on water tiles with a harbor in place, +100% production of bank
  
• Aggressive: +1 happiness on Barracks -25% unit maintenance cost and +100% production of Jails,
  
• Protective: +75% trade route yield (like Harbors do) +50% trade route yield, +25% trade route yield with Walls
  

All of the these trait changes were discussed in much detailed on the previous pages, so I don't want to just repeat everything here. Main goal is to increase agency of the player. PRO shouldn't be as strong as FIN and FIN still felt too strong compared to others. Do note that I do extensive tracking about FIN and PRO in the upcoming games, which also includes tracking how the game would run with the previous change.

• Babylon UB: only +1 health, Makes city act as a source of fresh water
  
• Inca UB: +1 culture instead of +2, Cost 70 instead of 60 Makes city act as a source of fresh water instead of +2 culture
  

The Incan UB with its culture was still persived as too strong. With this change the culture is gone. The new act as a source of fresh water actually fits the Incan civ perfectly from a thematic perspective as it was a major achievment to cultivate the land this way. This bonus will have a lot more impact on a building you construct everywhere. Now it won't help every city and is most certainly map dependent, but it should make for some interesting new choices in city placement.
At the same time I felt the need to remove the bonus from Babylon. I don't want to avoid duplicate bonuses and with the improvement of the base building the Babylonian UBs isn't that terribly anymore.

• Byzantium UU: Strength 11 instead of 12, first strike immune like normal knight
  
• Rome UU: Strength 7 instead of 8, only +10% city attack compared to base unit, cost 40 just like base unit
  

The return of the previously nerfed units. Now why did I do this. The main reason is that without those UUs there isn't much other appeal to take those civs. Byzantium has one of the worst starting tech combos in The Wheel and Mysticism and their UB isn't that great. Rome on the other hand has a better tech combo, but their UB isn't the main reason you are going for Rome. There's also the case of Khmer, who did keep a great unit with higher strength.

• China UU: max 75% collateral damage instead of max 60%
  

Lastly the Chinese needed a nerf. They have one of the best tech combos paired with one of the best UUs. The previously were slightly nerfed by the cost reduction from Agriculture. Now this change should bring them back into line some more.

[Charriu]

Good changes overall but another nerf to fin? I would say it’s worse than almost all traits now.

To weigh in on the inflation debate, I think it is fine despite the gold saving. At some point you have to turn the slider on, and whoever turns it on first and slams the gas pedal is going to get to knights or maces first and wreak havoc. To counteract beelining, make part of the inflation penalty based on techs per era?

I don't think that everybody will agree on FIN being one of the worst. Do note that I keep tracking the old bonus in addition to the new one, so with a few more test games with this change, we should have better data to evaluate on. This is still in flux.

About inflation: I thought about a penalty based on techs per era, but so far I didn't find a satisfying solution.

[pindicator]

Charriu, with inflation when you get your data could you share what the change is? I can see what it's costing me in my game but I can't compare it to see how much more it is costing in gpt. Makes it harder to tell how much it really is affecting things.

[Mjmd]

Is there any way to tell if you've hit increased inflation due to this change vs normal inflation? Not a mechanic I'm very familiar with.

[Commodore]

Wait, you *buffed* China? The already-best-civ-remaining-in-game?

Also, I'd rather have some garbage-tier trait like Agg over this Fin.

[Charriu]

Charriu, with inflation when you get your data could you share what the change is? I can see what it's costing me in my game but I can't compare it to see how much more it is costing in gpt. Makes it harder to tell how much it really is affecting things.

I want to make all the data for every PB public after the game has finished.

Is there any way to tell if you've hit increased inflation due to this change vs normal inflation? Not a mechanic I'm very familiar with.

I will look into how to visualize this.

Wait, you *buffed* China? The already-best-civ-remaining-in-game?

Also, I'd rather have some garbage-tier trait like Agg over this Fin.

I don't understand? I plan to decrease the collateral damage done by CKNs. Or what am I missing?

FIN feedback is noted.