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

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:

1. Get your personal “forked” copy.
2. Make changes.
3. “Pull” your changes back to the original project.
4. 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.

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).

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.

I’m working somewhat slower on this project recently due to family and job-related matters.