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New Horizons: A total conversion [vanilla]

New Horizons completely changes every Virtue, Military Unit, Colonist, Spaceship, Cargo, Tile Improvement, Terrain and Resource yields and more! New Horizons is more than a mere "balance patch" that tries tweak a few things around the edges while keeping the body the same. With a holistic eye New Horizons makes changes that combine to be more than the sum of their parts. Old heuristics will need to be replaced, new strategies will need to be learned, get ready to experience a new Beyond Earth.

This mod does NOT work with Rising Tide. For Rising Tide use Echoes of Earth.

You can watch a Let's Play by Firaxis of the mod in the video above (they were playing with an old (pre-military) version of the mod).

• Completely replaces all pre-game choices (Colonists, Cargo, Spacecraft)
  
• Completely replaces all ring 1 and 2 techs and buildings (early and mid game play very differently)
  
• Completely replaces every Military unit
  
• Completely new Virtues
  
• Changes to tile Improvements
  
• Changes to Terrain yields
  
• Changes to expeditions
  
• Changes to the orbital layer and orbital units
  
• Changes to city strength and scaling
  
• Other smaller changes

This mod adds Promotions and Worker tile construction actions. Unless you enable all the mods you want to play with twice the unit panel in the lower left corner will not render correctly. To do this enable all the mods want to play with, but instead of setting up or loading a game instead click back to see your list of enabled mods again. Then click accept a second time and proceed to start your game as normal.

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Early game buildings either provide one-time bonuses to get your economy humming or are highly dependent on the local terrain and resources. The land you have access to will influence what techs and buildings you want to prioritize.

Overview
Alien units outclass human units during the early game. Military units don't scale in strength or cost as much -- making timing attacks weaker and it is easier to hold off foes that are slightly higher on the Affinity level. For basic units, their pre-Affinity level 4 upgrades do not increase their combat strength or production cost at all.

Marine
Cheap to build, Marines require no strategic resources and have the most efficient production to combat strength ratio. Some upgrades will let them heal faster, making them most effective at protecting vulnerable ranged units.

Rangers
Unable to damage cities but effective at killing other units. They also cost no strategic resources to build.

Armor
Fast but unable to gain defensive bonuses Armor is best used on offense or flanking hostile ranged units.

Artillery
Not as mobile or effective against units as Rangers but is able to damage cities. It also heals adjacent enemies.

Affinity Units
Each Affinity has a unique tactical style. Advanced affinity units come online sooner and fill unique battlefield roles. Each ultimate affinity unit has the ability to attack twice per turn, making them deceptively more effective than their combat strength alone implies.

One major change to the Virtue trees is that no Virtue within the trees provides Health. Instead Health comes from the synergy Virtues. Every depth-based synergy Virtues provides Health as does the all the level 1 synergy Virtues. Players can combine various Virtues and experiment with different paths through the Virtue trees without gimping their Health.

The Virtue trees themselves have also changed.

Security: focus on military strength and orbital development. While this tree contains many Virtues that provide a military edge it includes just as many Virtues that support a strong economy. It includes bonuses for Arrays and Nodes.

Expansion: focuses on settling a large number of cities and exploiting large swaths of land. It includes bonuses for Biowells, Terrascapes and Domes.

Development: focuses on growth and leveraging high population cities. It rewards Wonder spammers, Culture generation and keeping lots of positive Health. It includes bonuses for Manufactories and Academies.

Commerce: focuses on trade routes, covert ops and specialists. It encourages fostering positive relations with stations and trading with other major colonies.

Many improvements now have restrictions on them that make it harder to coat every hex with the same improvement. Farms can only be built next to rivers, manufactories and academies compete for limited flat ground. Arrays and Domes can only be built on hills. Biowells require forests, marshes or floodplains.

• Manufactories: +3 Prod, -3 Maint
  
• Academies: +3 Sci, -1 Maint, -1 Unhealth
  
• Domes (req Hill): +2 Energy, +2 Cul (replaces basic tile yield)
  
• Arrays (req Hill): +1 Orbital Coverage, -2 Maint
  
• Biowells (req Forest, Marsh, Flood Plain): +2 Food, +1 Health, -2 Maint
  
• Terrascapes: +3 Food, +1 Prod, -2 Maint (replaces basic tile yield)

Many resources have had their yields tweaked slightly. The biggest changes have been to the affinity resources which now provide:

• Xenomass Well: +3 Food, +2 Health, -2 Maint
  
• Floatstone Quary: +3 Culture, -2 Maint
  
• Fraxite Mine: +3 Science, -2 Maint

Food and Health vs Science
Various parts of New Horizon emphasis a trade off between growth and Health vs raw Science. Everyone requires Science in Beyond Earth, the question becomes how to get it? Growth and Health, to maximize the science each population automatically provides, or a smaller population working Academies, building Science buildings?

Production economy vs Energy economy
In Beyond Earth energy is much weaker than other yields and is often only good for paying maintenance or activating the beacon. New Horizon will try to make it possible to create an energy based economy that purchases the majority of its units and buildings. The current changes are not yet enough for this to be true, but they are laying the groundwork for later versions of the mod which will reward energy generation.

It requires 2 expedition charges to salvage a location. You'll need to acquire a source of additional expeditions before you can start salvaging what your explorers uncover. Currently extra expeditions can be acquired from the Lab quest, Supremacy 1 and the opening Virtue in Security.

See discussion thread to participate in the conversation about how future development should incorporate Rising Tide's new mechanics.