Modding
I’m starting to shift my thoughts back to modding again. I will adapt the project to the next Civ V expansion pack, and want to get things stabilized by September. I like the second expansion more than the first one. I’m looking forward to improving it further. I plan to get started sometime in the next few weeks.
Close to home
The green park bench symbol shows where my family and I used to play on the playground while visiting grandma as children. Grandma’s home was a few houses away from the playground. She would always tease grandpa when he snuck us cookies with a smile before we left our visits. They moved out of this location several years ago.
The town has about 2800 residents of mostly Czech ancestry (from a country just east of Germany). Czechs love music, technology, and kolaches, a delicious roll-like pastry with fruit topping. Try a kolache some time if you can find real ones. Beware imitations that fake it by substituting soft roll bread with greasy doughnut dough.
It feels bizzare, because a few paces away from my childhood playground was the epicenter of an agricultural fertilizer storage explosion that destroyed much of the northern part of town yesterday evening. It’s strange. The things I see in the news feel oddly disconnected from the childhood memories I have of the place. It’s like distant cities thousands of miles away I hear about so often, separate from the place I remember in recollections from ten years ago. It doesn’t feel like the same place.
I don’t know why I’m posting this here. I don’t usually use this space as a personal blog. I do not even want replies or comments or sympathy.
If you want to reply, I ask you instead contact your national Red Cross or Red Crescent society to help people in your own communities, anywhere you live in the world. Donate a little time, money, or blood. Even help in small ways because everything counts. People often focus on big flashy events, and forget the untold thousands of lone individuals seriously injured each day in mundane accidents like falling down stairs.
Beyond this, I don’t know. I’m just going to move on with my day to day life.
Best of wishes,
Thalassicus
Vacation
I’m on a break from modding for a while, to focus more on friends and family. I plan to start working on this project again as summer approaches. I hope everyone has a wonderful spring!
Project collaboration
I’m working on several features to make it easy for people to contribute changes to the project.
Most importantly, the project will now be kept up to date all the time on github.com/Thalassicus. If you want to improve to the project simply:
- Get your personal “forked” copy.
- Make changes.
- “Pull” your changes back to the original project.
- I will review the request prior to adding it to the project.
Click for details.
With a normal project like this, Github allows changes to the root project once a project administrator approves the changes (called a “pull request”). I will do this review process. This will ensure ensure Communitas remains a high-quality expansion pack for Civ 5. 
In addition, I am moving the detailed patch notes to the wiki, so anyone who contributes to the project can include their changes in the patch notes. The news site civmodding.wordpress.com will focus on general news, and summaries of the most important changes in each patch.
Updated workshop
I updated the steam workshop versions of the project today. I forgot to apply the hotfix there a month ago, then got so involved with my job I didn’t have time to read bug reports indicating the workshop version was not updated. Oops! Sorry about that.
Most chosen beliefs: founder
Click to vote for the enhanced beliefs you choose most often.
Gem 1.14 (Civup 2.6) Beta 2
Click to download the beta.
Barbarians
- Reduced likelihood of early Barbarian horsemen.
Leaders
- Egypt: War Chariot is 125%
of Chariot (was 140%). - China: Citadels now start with 1
, and gain +2 with the Training tech (was 3, 0).
Terrain
- Slightly reduced the amount of territory people start with when surrounded by lots of inhospitable land like Snow (too many barbarians).
Misc
- Possibly fixed a bug involving strange happiness and yield effects.
- Panzers now have equal strength as Modern Armor (not equal cost).
- “Play speech” settings in Civup_Options now works correctly (on/off flag was reversed).
Beta delay
A combination of job-related work, and a thorny bug in the latest beta will likely delay the full release of this beta cycle. I can hopefully get it done within the next week or two, but it will take more time than expected.
Gem 1.14 (Civup 2.6) Beta
This open beta is a TEST work in progress for advanced users to play around with. Stability and balance of beta versions cannot be assured. In my free time away from job & family, I’m currently working on implementing the simpler parts of the Leaders plan in this beta test.
Click to download the beta.
Click to discuss new leader strategies and interesting experiences.
AI
- Reduced the quantity of vanguard units AIs aim for in wartime.
- Minimum AI army composition changes to a new set of units after gunpowder units appear.
Armies
- -10% combat penalty when resources get pillaged (was 20%) (penalty mostly hurt AIs).
- +100%
experience and -10% strength with Blitz (was 100, -25). - +25% defense with Trenches and Guerrilla ranks 1, 2, 3 (was 15, 15, 20).
- Recon 2 allows use of enemy roads.
- Moved faster pillaging from Survivalist to Recon 2.
- Removed Survivalist.
Cities
- _
Barbarians
- Camps are defended by Chariot units less often.
Faith
- Merged the Missionary and Great Prophet (mostly redundant).
- Merged the offense and defense enhanced beliefs (too specialized individually).
Leaders
- Half maintenance for unique warriors (Aztec and Polynesian).
- Carthage starts with a Trireme.
- Carthaginian civilians can embark from the start of the game.
- Carthaginian Cothons (harbor) give 1 Tyrian Purple luxury resource (Phoenicians were earliest traders of this luxury).
- Byzantine Basilica (temple) gives instant faith and unlocks early.
- Ethiopia gets faster
rate from each Alliance, and higher 
vs civs with more cities (peaceful tall). - Ethiopian Stele (monument) gives
from 
population (peaceful tall). - German Panzers (tank) are stronger.
- Korean Hwach’a (trebuchet) are 10% weaker outside friendly territory (isolationist).
- Ottoman Janissaries (musketman) heal every turn, and gain a bonus near friendly military units (quickly replaced losses).
- Songhai ranged units move faster, and vanguard units see farther (mobility).
- Swedish Allotment gives +1 from Farms (military history).
- Swedish Folkskola (public school) gets extra and appears earlier (one of the earliest public systems).
- Swedish Carolean (musketman) heals after destroying enemies (known for their charges).
Policies
- Spoils of War: Killing units salvages gold, and +25% rewards from capturing Citystates.
Research
- Increased late tech costs 10%.
- Theology no longer requires Currency.
- Trade no longer requires Pottery.
- Moved Villages back to Trade (original location).
- Moved the freshwater village bonus to Optics (was Sailing).
- Shrines, Wealth, and Research have no tech prerequisite (early game options were restrictive).
Civup: Interface
- The game now autosaves every 15 minutes. You can control this in the Interface tab of Game Options (ctrl+o).
- City and national happiness now show on city view screens (by NoSkill and whoward69).
- The top bar now shows faith “stored/needed”, instead of “stored (turns remaining)”.
- The “declare war” button for citystates now indicates capturing a CS gives a reward equal to 40 turns of alliance.
- Added new versions of the Detect icon (eye).
- The Civup_Options file now contains options to disable speech for specific parts of the game:
- Starting a game (default off).
- Getting a wonder (default on).
- Getting a tech (default on).
Civup: Mod Tools
- Added a “Pillage” flavor for units.
Misc
- City-health defense buildings should now correctly increase max city health in loaded games.
- Lines on building tooltips which change mid-game should show correctly now.
- Disabling gold gifts in the Civup_Options file is now independent of the “using CSD” option.
- Oral Tradition and Monument to the Gods pantheon effects should now match the tooltips.
- Buildings which increase river yields should show their ability correctly now (hydro plant, indus sanitation).
- The faith cost to purchase units with the Holy Warrior belief now reliably depends on unit production costs.
- Fixed bugs causing AIs to have more happiness than intended, and less of other yields than intended.
- Liturgical Drama should now correctly list the Theater as its connected building (not Amphitheater).
- Made changes to improve compatibility between this project and Gedemon’s Earth maps.
- Humans and AIs now use different technology_flavor tables, allowing more fine-tune control of AI tech choices.
- Corrected costs for Theatre, Smithy, and Workshop.
- Removed Air Repair (redundant with March).
- Fixed “good for” mistakes with Stone Works, Merchant Navy, Seaport, national wonders, and policies.
- Sistine Chapel should now work correctly.
- Mongol Khans can now start golden ages, like normal great generals.
- Buildings which give a city instant food/prod/culture/population should now work correctly.
- v.2 Smithy now has cost appropriate for its tech level.
Pending update
I plan to release an update sometime next week. This is going to be a major update, probably with a beta test in advance of the public release.
I’m working somewhat slower on this project recently due to family and job-related matters.
Most chosen beliefs: enhanced
Click to vote for the enhanced beliefs you choose most often.
Civ 5 online multiplayer – with mods!
Check out this video:
Thanks TheAdipose for this information! I’m going to find a way to bundle Civup and GEM together for people in the future who want to use this method to play modded multiplayer.
Gem 1.13.4 (Civup 2.5.2)
I released this version ahead of schedule to hotfix a bug involving Wat Phra Kaew and the city production queue.
Cities
- 3
4 city tiles (was 2 4). - Removed the Great Hall (too many choices can be overwhelming).
- Moved Iron to Mining (people felt mining needed a buff).
- Moved the Smithy to Bronze Working (early production was too low).
Misc
- Fixed a bug causing Wat Phra Kaew to halt interface processing.
- Added many new historical civilopedia entries for policies (thank you ExpiredReign!).
- Fixed bugs possibly preventing translations from working.
- Fixed a bug causing AIs to have no priority to get religion or spaceships.
- Selecting technologies on the tech tree should lag less now.
- Barbarian chariots can now be upgraded.
- Fixed a bug in the civilopedia involving techs which increase yield of improvements.
- Fixed a few bugs where culture did not match tooltips.
- Fixed a bug with “+yield for improvement” descriptions on tech entries in the Civilopedia.
Pending update for Feb 1st
I plan for a relatively small update this Friday focused on stability and bugfixes.
This update will also include further small economic tweaks to reduce the overflow of early-game building choices, lessen the dependence on gold as a construction source, and give more positive rewards for peaceful players to invest in techs on the lower half of the tree.
I expect to complete the overhaul of Leader themes and bonuses by the end of February.
Click to join the Leaders discussion.
In recent days, a combination of family and work considerations reduced my free time to work on the Communitas project. I expect to have about 10 hours per week to work on this now, down from 30. I still plan to continue development on Communitas for months or years ahead, but progress will go more slowly. 
Gem 1.13.3. (Civup 2.5.1)
Barbarians
- Barbarian chariot attacks use all moves (was 1 move).
- Delayed the turn barbarians can enter civilized territory on medium difficulty levels.
(People were getting frustrated by barbarians.)
Cities
- +1 Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium with a Factory.
- The 1 on Villages now requires Writing.
Policies
- Scholasticism: 2 per citystate friend, and 3 per ally (changed to new system because vanilla version is not modifiable).
Research
- Horseback Riding now links to Civil Service (was Currency).
Misc
- Fixed a compatibility problem for building tooltips between Civup and some other mods like IGE.
- Fixed bugs with building tooltips “experience for domain” and “yield for building” (Great Lighthouse, Neuschwanstein).
- The “invest in me” citystate quest no longer appears with USING_CSD set to 1 in the Civup options file.
- Jade Hall should now provide its intended bonuses (was incorrectly doubling some bonuses).
- Fixed a bug causing AIs to think they were always at war, and build too many units (because everyone’s at war with the Barbarian player).
- Swords to Plowshares belief should correctly detect wartime status now.
New upload
If you downloaded Civup v2.5 earlier today, re-download Civup. The new version of the Civup file should work. Sorry for the delay – I went out to eat with family just after releasing the update.
Gem 1.13.2 (Civup 2.5)
This version updates the system which creates tooltips for buildings. This will dramatically help the project in the long run, but might contain a few oversights here and there. Click if you notice any information apparently missing from a tooltip.
AI
- Reduced “Good for” ratings of the City Hall.
Armies
- +33% vs ship promotion is now available to Fighters and Bombers at level 2.
- Added the Amphibious promotion to soldier and gun units (situationally useful).
- Removed the Ambush promotion from soldier and gun units (spears and anti-tank can still get ambush, raising importance of these counter units).
Barbarians
- Reduced the respawn rate for barbarian camps.
Cities
- 4 basic yield per city (was 2) (early construction was too slow).
- 15
national income (was 12). - Harbors no longer increase fish yields (warehouse already does this).
- +10%
on Shrines and Temples with Wat Phra Kaew (was +5 gold/culture) (now the originally intended bonus). - 1 policy from Hermitage (was 4 culture +25% culture).
- +1
-2 Stoneworks. - 300% Settler purchase modifier (was 400%).
- +2 engineer points from Itaipu Dam.
Leaders
- Longbows no longer have -1 sight penalty or indirect fire.
Civup: Interface
- The Civilopedia should now display building information in a more organized way.
Misc
- Using CSD with Civup hides individual gold gift buttons, instead of the entire gift menu.
- The Sanitation System now correctly shows its name, instead of the Indian unique version.
- Hunter ships should be able to correctly get the Merchant Raider promotions.
- Religious Idols should give the correct yields now.
- Spoils of War should work against citystates now.
- World Church belief should now correctly increase culture.
- Aircraft should be able to get the March promotion now.
- Citystates should no longer build the new wonders.
- The “free building” line on building tooltips should now display renamed or unique buildings.
- Cultural Diplomacy policy effect should now match the tooltip.
- Barbarian ships should now be upgradeable.
- Lighthouse and Harbor have their correct costs now (multipliers were switched).
Pending update
I’m working on a major overhaul to the system which shows informational tooltips for buildings. This will save hundreds of hours of work in the future, support more accurate information in Civilopedia entries, and reduce translation time necessary for this core part of the project by about half.
The next update will include another round of bugfixes. Later next week, I also intend to start a new discussion about the upcoming leader overhaul, and will include a few of the simpler changes in this week’s release.
I plan to adjust balance in this update between construction (building stuff) and research (getting new stuff to build). Click to vote for which direction you feel things should go in, or if you feel things are balanced.
Gem 1.13.1 (Civup 2.4.1)
AI
- AIs should make purchase decisions somewhat more intelligently.
Cities
- Scaled culture and faith income & costs so 1 point of culture or faith has approximately the same value as 1 point of other yields.
- Building maintenance equals 33% of typical income (was 25%).
- 33% * income Lighthouse maintenance (was 0%).
- 16% * income power plant maintenance (was 0%).
- +1 Libraries.
- Trade route income is now 3 + 25% population (was 4 + 25% pop).
- Early national happiness is now 8 free + 6 palaces + 4 piety (was 12 free + 4 meritocracy).
- Demolished buildings no longer return gold (caused balance problems).
- Renamed for realism:
Old New Amphitheater Theatre Colosseum Arena Theatre Publishing House Stadium Cinema Aqueduct Sanitation System Medical Lab Vaccinations Broadcast Tower Radio Station Police Station Supermax Prison Palace Capital Forge Blast Furnace Workshop Smithy Ironworks Foundry
Faith
- 2 on fishing boats with God of the Sea (was 3).
- 2 on fishing boats with God of Tranquility (new).
- 1 on open tundra with Dance of Aurora (tundra becomes plains) (was faith).
- 1 on jungle with Sacred Path (jungle becomes grassland) (was culture).
- +25% for ancient/classical wonders with Monument to the Gods (was 15%).
- +25% surplus food from Fertility Rites (was 10%).
Leaders
- Chinese paper makers give an immediate +200 when constructed.
- Huns get 100 from defeated barbarian camps (was 200).
- +13% Samurai.
- +15% Chu-Ko-Nu.
Opportunities
- Updated to match new estimates for the value of each yield. Click for details.
Policies
- Rearranged the Honor tree.
Research
- Renamed Mass production to Mass Media.
- Swapped Submarines (now radio) and Hollywood (now mass media).
Terrain
- 40 from clearing forest, and 20 from jungle (was 50 and 25).
Civup: Interface
- The “choose tech” notification should always appear at the start of the game now.
Misc
- Fixed many typos. Thanks ExpiredReign!
- Captured cities now default to puppet status if we choose no options.
- Updated policy tree descriptions.
- Fixed a bug with the Stoneworks’ “Good for” tips.
- Added some code to make the game fail more gracefully when things go wrong.
- The all-cities yield modifier from the Churches of Lalibela should work now.
- Fixed a problem caused by editing the Civup options file in regular Windows Notepad.
Economy: Gem v1.13 (Civup v2.4)
This update focuses on improving economic balance. I originally intended to update leaders now, but it got bumped back when we discovered high-priority mistakes with economic calculations.
I added a direct download sidebar to the news site.
Armies
- Unit maintenance changed to ( cost / 50).
- 100% strength Hunter Ships with +25% vs units (was 125% with +0%).
- Triremes and Galleass now count as Capital Ships with +50% vs cities.
- Capital Ships now have the same movement speed as Escort Ships.
- Embarked unit strength equals 50% the strength of a Soldier unit of the same tech level (was 30%).
- Merged the Amphibious promotion with the +100% embarked strength promotion.
- Removed the +150% vs bomber promotion from fighters (not an intended bonus).
- +25% strength Gatling and Machine Guns.
- WW2-era land armies now correctly have their intended +1 move speed (rocket artillery were bugged). (Represents rising mobility during and after WWII.)
- Citystates start with Sentinels instead of Warriors (upgrade requires no strategic resources).
- The Morale promotion now applies to aircraft.
Cities
- Rebalanced all buildings.
- Building maintenance changed to 25% of the building’s expected income at a typical time of construction.
- Trade route income equals (3 + 0% capital pop + 10% city pop) (was 2 + 15% + 25%).
- Doubled compensation from losing world wonder races.
-33% Golden Age duration from Great People.- Click to discuss the changes below.
- Capital Building (new)
8 national happiness.
City defense bonuses from old palace.
Counts as a free City Hall. - Palace
4 national happiness.
Limit of 3 per empire. - City Hall (new)
1 1 2 - 0 free national happiness (was 12).
- 2 2 basic yield per city (was 3, 3).
- Capital Building (new)
Espionage
- +50% counterspy with Constable (was 25%).
- +25% counterspy in all cities with Supermax Prison, national limit of 1 (replaced Police Station).
- Focused the Intelligence Agency on the spy bonuses. It requires no buildings, and does not give a cost modifier.
- Removed the Great Firewall (to consolidate espionage bonuses).
Faith
- 2 from God of the Sea (was 3 production).
(Coastal areas need science more than gold or production.)
Leaders
- Unique warriors upgrade to spearmen.
- Suleiman: captured barbarian ships cost 50% maintenance (was 100%).
Opportunities
- Granary settler/worker choice unlocks in the Medieval era (was Classical).
Policies
- Liberty: +1 Palace in oldest 3 cities, and +2 culture per city.
- Moved 5 national happiness from Meritocracy to Piety (returned to original location).
- Tradition: 1 per 1 (was 2 per 1).
- Moved 2 per culture building from Monarchy to Ceremonial Rites (returned to original location).
- +2 yield for defense buildings from Landed Elite and Republic (returned to original values).
- Police State: Double production and +2 city happiness for espionage buildings.
- United Front: +25% counterspy, and +5 production Constables.
- Merchant Navy: increases science instead of production (coastal empires have plenty of gold to build things, and need more science).
- Honor
- Spoils of War: gold from kills, and yields from citystate capture.
- Professional Army: lower unit maintenance and upgrade costs.
- War Epics: happiness from culture buildings.
- Discipline: great general, faster generals, and strength for adjacent units.
- Finisher: happiness and culture from garrisons and barracks.
Terrain
- Fishing boats should now be buildable on features if the game places resources there (isles, reef).
- Natural wonders which are not mountain peaks are now passable, and considered rough terrain.
Civup: Interface
- Setting USING_CSD to 1 in the Civup options file disables the capability to bribe citystates.
- Hovering over reward buttons for Opportunities re-centers the map on the opportunity (workaround for the game core yanking the camera away after the mod displays the opportunity).
- Happiness from citystates now displays on a separate line of the top bar happiness tooltip.
Civup: Mod Tools
- Moved all text to sql files (was xml).
- Created placeholder files for translations.
Misc
- Game text should no longer show double ” apostrophes in situations using a single apostrophe.
- Possibly fixed a bug causing yield icons to disappear in the city view.
- Fixed a bug with unit maintenance.
- Fixed a bug with great person improvement build times on jungle.
- Fixed an erroneous Siege flavor on the Temple of Artemis.
- All leaders which start with an advanced UU should get non-upgrade rewards from ancient ruins (added Attila and Pacal).
- IsVisible and ShowInPedia building fields should now properly control visibility of non-wonder buildings in the civilopedia.
- Fixed a bug causing citystate alliance and friendship notifications to show messages like “you gained 0 food”.
- The +1 Range promotion no longer replaces with a movement promotion when upgrading to Gatling Guns or Machine Guns.
- Opportunities should no longer add the basic yield of terrain to itself when altering other yields.
- The City Limits mod component should work properly now.
Civup v2.3.2, Gem v1.12.2
Cities
- 40% Research Labs (was 50%).
Terrain
- Jungles take the same time to improve as forest (was about twice as long).
- Chopping jungles gives 50% the production of a forest (was 0%).
- Increased jungle bonus resource density to the same as tundra (both give 1 food unimproved).
Civup: Interface
- The icon now shows on tiles which give happiness (natural wonders, and some opportunities).
Misc
- Increased AI priorities of the Courthouse.
- Ranged ships now have the intended +0% vs cities, with +30% from the Naval Siege promotion.
- Indian war elephants now unlock at the correct technology.
- Knowledge opener should correctly give +1 science to science buildings.
- The railroad production modifier in the capital should show on tooltips properly now.
- Removed the capital railroad bugfix building (now done in code).
- Fixed a bug with the City View.
- Fixed a bug with capturing cities.
- Submarines have just one attack bonus, as intended.
- GEM should now load after the Citystate Diplomacy Mod, if you have CSD installed.
Civup v2.3.1, Gem v1.12.1
AI
- Added City Defense priority to archers and vanguards.
- Added Healing and Detection priorities to vanguards.
Armies
- -5% Horsemen and Knights.
- +10% spears and pikes, with no defense bonus.
- Ships of the Line and Ironclads require 1 iron (was 2 and 4).
(Less iron on maps.)
Espionage
- -25% slower tech steal rate.
Faith
- One with Nature pantheon: +1 every yield from Natural Wonders (was +10 faith).
Leaders
- Askia: Ranged units move faster.
- Attila: Defeated barbarian camps surrender for double gold.
- Bismark: Scientists and Engineers equally give 2 2.
- Harald: Faster and stronger embarkation, and melee units pillage faster.
Research
- Added a new ancient-era “Military Training” tech on the middle path between horse and iron paths.
- Moved Sentinels and Barracks to Military Training.
(These are useful for both paths.)
Terrain
- Leaders with an early strategic resource unique unit now get 2 copies of the required resource under their capital (was 1 copy).
(Helps avoid resource starvation.) - Rebalanced G&K-specific Natural Wonder yields to improve variety.
- Plantations can build without removing jungle.
(Helps jungle-based effects like the jungle pantheon.)
Civup: Interface
- Added several new font icons.
Misc
- Added an option to show a 3-radius ring around cities in the Civup options file.
- The production panel should now show correct turn estimates until completion.
- Temporarily disabled the InfoAddict embedded in Civup until I can ensure it works correctly with the full version.
- Wonder production modifiers from buildings should work in modmods now.
- Moved the barbarian XP limit to the GEM options file.
- Merchant Raider 2 and 3 promotions are now correctly available to hunter ships.
- Fixed the tooltip for the Naval Siege promotion.
- Marsh-clearing requires just The Wheel as intended (not wheel and mining).
- Battering Rams are now better vs cities than catapults, as intended.
- The Tradition finisher and Democracy policies now give the correct effect indicated on their tooltips.
- Archers and Mounted Archers can now correctly get the volley and indirect fire promotions.
- Fixed a bug causing lower than intended AI value for unique units which require no strategic resource, but whose parent unit does require a resource.
- Possibly solved a bug causing unit maintenance to unintentionally rise from an inflation effect towards the endgame.
- National happiness from mod effects should now work correctly (was city happiness in the capital).
- City happiness should display properly on the top bar happiness tooltip.
Pending update
I plan to release an update on January 3rd, which will fix several high-priority issues.
