Update – v5.0

This update should be fully compatible with patch 1.0.1.217. If you find any bugs please drop by the Reporting Bugs thread. I expect to release v5.0 on Thursday, this is a preview of the patch notes.

I’ve re-organized the mod package to clearly distinguish between CiVUP and TBC. Each one has a distinct goal:

• CiV Unofficial Patch: minimal gameplay impact like BUG from Civ 4, fixing bugs, missing information or critical problems with the game and its user interface.
• Thal’s Balance Combined: increase the choices and interesting decision-making opportunities available to the player by tweaking the power of various strategies.

To use only CiVUP simply add an “_” underscore to the “TBC – Thals Balance Combined” folder name, and it’s disabled.

Changes from this mod included in patch 1.0.1.217 (removed from these mods or altered for v5.0):

• Scaled up tech costs throughout the game (slight change for early eras; close to double for Modern).
• Aqueduct building added for early food storage.
• Moved an artist from Temple to Opera House.
• Moved a merchant from Bank to Stock Exchange.
• Improved policy rate for both large and small empires:
  • Liberty tree culture improved.
  • Tradition tree culture improved.
  • Artist specialist yield improved.
  • Removed the 1 free policy per era.
• Liberty tree policies give free units.
• Colossus no longer goes obsolete.
• Permanently fixed the Krepost/Angkor Wat bug so they use independent plot cost attributes.
• Mine and Trading Post improve yield with techs.
• Lumbermill improves yield with earlier techs.
• Improves yield of nearby resources:
  • Granary.
  • Stable.
  • Forge.
  • Lighthouse.
• Buffs:
  • Market.
  • Stable.
  • Workshop.
  • Nuclear Plant.
  • Solar Plant.
  • Lighthouse.
  • Palace.
  • Great Person improvement base yields.
  • Tradition tree.
  • Liberty tree.
  • Aztec culture gain from kills.
• Nerfs:
  • Paper Makers.
  • Base yield of fish.
  • Food from Sugar plantations.

Civ V Unofficial Patch

• Everything on the top bar is now clickable.
  • If you have a Great Person coming up, clicking that section of the top bar will bring up the city where the GP will be born in. If there’s no GP points generated in any cities, this section now shows current Great General progress, and clicking it brings up the military overview. In addition, the tooltip for this section has been reorganized to present more information in a way that’s also easier to visually scan over at a glance.
  • Strategic and luxury resources have been combined into one resource section. The result is visually very similar to before, but is much more optimized on the code side, and now shares a tooltip with uniform formatting. The gem icon now shows surplus luxuries instead of total. Resources completely absent from trade are now grayed out on the tooltip, so it’s easier to find which luxuries you need. Clicking the resource section now brings up the diplomacy overview.
  • Clicking happiness or golden age sections brings up the economic overview, where the happiness tab is located. I’m not sure how to tell it to focus on a particular tab.
• Added to the unofficial patch (for compatibility reasons):
  • Sneak’s custom notifications system (modder’s tool).
  • Alpaca’s DiploCorner(modder’s tool).
  • Morlark’s “Smarter TechTree Pipes” bugfix(modder’s tool).
  • The “Hover Info” mod by Adam Watkin. Hovering over a worker’s unit flag shows “turns until complete” when the worker’s building something.

• The city production list now automatically sorts by category, fixing the problem where mod units/buildings always go to the bottom.
• The resource list now show how much is imported from citystates, and deducts these from the displayed “surplus” quantity.
• Fixed a bug with vanilla city view’s display of food income. It now splits display of all yields into base, base modifier, surplus, surplus modifier, and total. Only relevant information is displayed. This was rather complicated, and took about a day to finish rewriting some rather jumbled vanilla code, so please point out any errors.
• Fixed Maritime City-States.
  MCS now give 2 (3 when allied) per era to the empire as a whole, split among all cities. How much MCS food a city is recieving can be seen in its city window when hovering over the food at top-left.
• Fixed research agreements.
  5% of the joint research of two players with a Declaration of Friendship adds to Science every turn. This requires Philosophy and an active Declaration of Friendship, and replaces the “free tech” mechanism of research agreements.
• Fixed the bug with flag promotion display.
• Promotions now update melee/ranged status as soon as a unit is upgraded, instead of when you end your turn.
• Clicking the turn timer or date on the top bar now opens InfoAddict if you have it installed.
• Redesigned the purchase modifier on tooltips so it’s easy to tell, at a glance, how cost-efficient things are. It now shows (/) as a percent multiplier.
• The clock now remembers if you change it between 12/24hr time formats.
• Added translations in Deutsch for building tooltips (thanks Berkan!)
• Added a temporary partial fix for starvation notices appearing when a city is not starving. The notification no longer appears, and I’m trying to figure out how to hide the sound effect + glow that occurs on the city. This notification display is coded in the c++ side of things so it’s difficult to get rid of or change.

Balance – Combined

City Development

• +1 on sea tiles from a Seaport.
• Moved +1 on sea tiles from the Lighthouse to the base coast terrain.
• National wonders now require the prereq building in 80% of cities. This requirement must be met when construction is started (or resumed), and is not interrupted each time a city is added to the empire (but the cost does go up as normal).
• Harbors
  Removed resource bonuses
  Returned maintenance cost back to vanilla 3/turn
  +50% for sea units (was 25%)
  +15xp for sea units (was 0)
• +15xp for air units with an Arsenal.
• 100 Watermill (was 120).
• Moved the Camp improvement to Archery to improve the value of the Archery tech.
• Reduced the cost of the Trapping tech.
• Aqueduct and Baths of Trajan moved to former ‘trapping’ tech, which is now Sanitation. Sanitation is a Classical Era tech focusing on population growth and the economy, unlocking Aqueducts, Baths, and Villages.
• To match the Firaxis developers’ trend of gradually deflating gold numbers (both trading post income and building maintenance expenses) I’ve done:
  • 1 villages (vanilla)
  • Reduced purchase costs
  • Reduced unit maintenance costs

Combat

• Citystates start with defensive units.
• Knight tech now requires only Civil Service and Horseback Riding.
• Cavalry tech swapped with Fertilizer.
• Capturing cities now displays a notification on the right side of the screen instead of at the center.
• Reduced Maritime capture bonus to 4.
• +25% cost for Longswords’ tech.
• Siege units rebalanced:
  • Weaker against land units.
  • Stronger against fortified units and cities.
  • Promotions more important.
• Fighters/bombers now use aluminum. (Cumulatively, all aircraft now use aluminum while modern land/sea units use oil.)
• Size of aluminum deposits increased.
• Land units deal half damage to ships.
• Submarines can get the Scouting and Survivalism promotion paths. Rank III of either one unlocks Supply (like Targeting III does).

Leaders

• Arabia’s trait now increases trade route income by 10% (about 1 per 8 citizens)(was +1 per city).
• Aztec sacrificial captives are now sent to the lowest-culture city to be sacrificed (adding to that city’s culture).
• Replaced the American Pioneer with the Pioneer Fort, unique Walls providing +50% surplus food in the city.

Policies

• Updated Tradition and Liberty trees to match vanilla.
• Tradition – Landed Elite:  replaced ICS-friendly +2 per city effect with a small science bonus for specialists.
• Liberty – Republic:  11 per city
• Removed the free policy per era mechanic.

Research

• This component has been completely included in the core game and is therefore obsolete.

Terrain Improvements

• Great person improvement base yields included in the core game and now obsolete. I still have the tech increases for these in the mod.

WWGD

• Added to the Balance – Combined package, Sneaks’ “What Would Gandhi Do” mod addresses issues with AI diplomacy.