Hardwood plantations, and many plantations in general for the new resources don't seem to add any benefits in tile yields, or just seem under-powered. (although I think you said you will address this in the next update)

Change the agora:
The agora provides an artist specialist slot. This means that if you are able to build this in most of your cities early on you get a huge influx of great artists, while not having any great work slots to use them for. It's not a huge issue since you can just use them to make golden ages instead but it does seem a bit unbalanced.

Reduce the amount of food buildings:
If you manage to build most of the available buildings in a city, you can get some very large city sizes by the early medieval era of 30-40 pops (took me about 250 turns playing on standard speed). This results in there being quite a few unemployed citizens since there aren't many specialist slots available at that tech level.

Will add more suggestions as I go through my play-through.

@TopTierCuttingEdgeMLGPro - you're right - the "Yields" for improvements was commented out in the published version. I've fixed it in the current Hotfix. Unfortunately, I'm having a real problem getting the Hotfix published. Steam is rejecting all my updates and new releases at the moment. Have tried everything, even written to Steam Customer Support, although I'm not expecting much.

I'll keep trying to get it published, but may have to move over to Civfanatics to published, which is something I'm trying to avoid, as it is more complicated for players if I do (they will have to download the mod archive, move it from Downloads to the game's MODS folder, then unzip the mod into a new folder. Lots of extra steps, lots of room to make mistakes and irritate players).

Good catch on the Agora - I guess I hadn't noticed during testing, that even though the Agora only adds Artist Specialists, in the early game, this means lots of early Great Artists. The hotfix has the Sicyonic School adding a Great Work of Art slot. This building has a limit of 4 per civ, but also requires a city be near a source of Clay, Dyes, Pomegranate, or Red Berries - so it might be too restrictive to solve the lack of GWA slots.

I am considering adding a GWA slot to either the Musaeum (Requires a Statues resource to build) or Pergamene School (Requires a nearby source of Stone or Marble) or both.

As you can see, it's not easy to build all 3 in any city. Heck, it might be hard to build even one early on. What do you think the best mix would be? I definitely want to make sure there are plenty of slots in the early game, as that's how the Great Artists make their best impact: GWA's early. After mid game, I generally never use them for anything besides Golden Ages, as there's not enough turns to make it worth creating GWA. But in the Ancient or Classical Eras, creating GWA's make the most sense.

Odd you mention Food surpluses, as I was talking about the same issue a day or so ago with one of my collaborators. The reason Food is so overrepresented in bonuses for buildings is I was trying very hard to avoid science bonuses, because I was/am pretty sure this has a good chance of breaking the late game, especially if WAW is also enabled. Just too many ways of multiplying early research levels.

So, I went (perhaps) too far with Food, as it really doesn't impact much except for Happiness. I lowered the Happiness bonus from Luxuries from 4 to 2, to make this more of a challenge, especially since AWAW adds a lot of Luxuries itself.

Originally, AWAW had an "Events" system, consisting of the usual suspects: plagues, volcanos, floods, droughts, etc. These events happened every 10-20 turns, and had a pretty good effect of lowering population/food stocks. I realized a lot of players wouldn't want this, so I stripped it out of the main AWAW mod, along with the Mercenary and Slave units.

These 3 features are now "Companion Mods" - and Mercs and Slaves are completed but due to the same Steam problem, I can't publish them yet... The events system is also completed, but needs more testing to try and balance it out. I'm trying to make the negative events impactful but not game-breaking. It's not easy to get those number right, and I'm expecting once it's finally out, everyone might have a different threshold for pain.

So, I can nerf some of the food bonuses from buildings, or leave things the way they are and let players get used to fighting the Happiness problem all throughout the game, or let them enable the Events mod, and let that solve some of the population explosion problem the natural way. What do you think?


I really appreciate the suggestions. They are all valuable, and will help me with the biggest challenge the mod faces: getting the "balance" of things just right.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm enjoying the mod so far!

Possibly relevant info:
On my current playthrough I am playing as Rome on standard speed on a standard sized europe map (trying to make the roman empire) on prince difficulty on domination victory only. I have the max amount of civs/players (22) in the game.

I also have WAW enabled, as I was curious at how this mod would impact that in the late game. As well as the unique units and tile improvements companion mods.

I currently have quite a large empire spread across the mediterranean with lots of puppeted cities (from a lot of conquesting) around a core of a few large (and overpopulated) cities in Italy.

Happiness has been an issue (understandably), often being between -10 to 0, but I have managed to prevent it from dipping below -10 for most of the time due to policy choices, all the luxuries on the map, and trading with the AI. As I'm moving into the renaissance era happiness is improving as I'm unlocking new techs/buildings.

By turn 325 (start of renaissance) I've unlocked most of 4 different social policy trees. The protectionism policy boosted my happiness from 0 to 80 due to how many different luxuries there are, but it went away pretty quick due to accelerated city growth.

Great prophets are costing a lot now at 4700 faith each. This isn't really an issue since I have high faith production, but it could get prohibitively expensive over time.

Great artist slots:
I found that on average I was only getting one great artist produced per city, so I think making it possible to have one or two extra slots per city would be enough.

Food surpluses:
I think it would be good to nerf the food bonuses for this mod since I'm not sure it makes sense for cities to be this well populated early on (I should mention that the AI has normal sized cities, although this is prince difficulty). Then you could maybe keep the old values for the Events mod (I haven't tried the events mod yet so idk).

Mont Saint Michel:
It's very expensive to construct at 1760 production, compared to 375 for the Chichen Itza which is at a similar tech level. I was wondering if this is for balance or just an oversight?

Tech descriptions:
You're probably already working on this but many of the tech descriptions need an update. eg. for economics it says it will allow you to build windmills when it doesn't.

Interesting report. It sounds like Happiness is a challenge early on, so perhaps the balance on that is acceptable? With so many new luxuries, I was worried Happiness would no longer be much of a challenge. So, I nerfed it from 4 to 2, which sounds about right, but with so much food available, keeping it positive requires a lot of effort, I think.

I'm thinking Protectionism policy needs a nerf, based on what you said! Maybe setting the ExtraHappinessPerLuxury down from 2 to 1?

I've already added a note about adding GWA slots to both the Musaeum and Pergamene School (both Ancient buildings, but hard to build a lot of them as they require a Statues luxury resource, or a nearby worked source of Stone or Marble). These requirements should limit them to only a handful of cities, meaning there will be a few extra GWA slots, but not too many. Add these slots to the Sicyonic School (which is also is limited to 4 per civ, plus needs a nearby worked source of Clay, Dyes, Pomegranate, or Red Berries). Maybe with all the chances for a building, but heavily restricted, we can arrive at that 1+ GWA slots per city, on average.

On City Growth - I'm tempted to adjust the GrowthPercent setting in the GameSpeeds table. Its original settings are 100 for Standard, 150 for Epic, 300 for Marathon, and 67 for Quick. You can think of it as a relative speed for a city to grow. If I changed these to add 25 to 50% slower growth, I wonder if that would be enough to make city growth seem a bit more appropriate? So, Quick would be about 100, STD = 150, Epic 225, and Marathon about 400. May have to make the change and test that out.

The Events mod isn't published yet. The code is basically done, but I haven't tested it enough yet. I've spent the last couple of days trying to get the Mercenaries mod published, but Steam won't accept any new mods or mod updates from me. Not sure what the problem is, so who knows when any of those will be released.

The basic cost for Chichen Itza is 300 hammers. Mont St. Michel is 350. For some reason, the latter has a setting that would grow its cost based on the number of cities in the empire. Many other AWAW wonders have this setting, but for MSM, It shouldn't be there. Probably something I had in in the early design and changed part of the definition but not all. Another good catch.

Several of the game's normal text keys need updating. I'll get to those much later, as getting those updated is a bit of a pain - finding the correct key, and then making sure you don't corrupt the localized text database. Not difficult, but not painless, either.

However, much of this is on hold. No reason to work on something I can update on Steam...

Thanks for the reports!

Would be amazing to have a way of stopping the tech tree at the end of the mod

There are companion mods that stop the tech tree at specific eras if that's what you mean?

Yes, like this one - there is an "End at ... Era" for all the early Era, and the other main mod ("World at War") - which covers the second half of the game also has similar mods. Basically, between AWAW and WAW, you can stop tech tree progress in every single Era.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2424964147

Lateen sails navy require Harbor, which, however, closed till compass two eras ahead. I think the fix is obvious.

Not sure if this is still active, but I thought I did give some feedback with my recent playthrough.

I did a 12 civs, 24 city states game on standard size custom map as Indonesia, Emperor difficulty. Map didn't have much of an advantage for my civ in this case.

I was on track to win by the Enlightenment Era, and as of the World War era; I am the highest in culture, tourism, faith, gold per turn (although Egypt did had 200k stocked up...) and number of technology and total land. I don't think I did that great of a job in micromanaging my cities but the amount of new happiness certainly helped a lot with making my empire big.

Anyhow, I was pretty weak from the Ancient Era to Classical Era; but my scout explored an ancient ruin and became a mounted archer -- which suffice to say, is incredibly overpowered. I farmed a city-state and barbarians for xp, and got enough for blitz and extra movement + range. This probably single-handily saved a city being captured by Poland. Along with Kris swordsmen, and more mounted archers, I was able to take the Pacal's capital (after they backstabbed me in a DoF) later on without any siege units. Then with mounted crossbowmen, I repeated the same strategy with Carthage and at this point I had a pretty nice chunk of land.

Enlightenment Era comes in and I realized Elizabeth was like, 12 techs ahead of me. I didn't notice at first because I was busy catching up to Egypt, who were best buds with me but I started to prepare for her. Not quite sure if the "declare war on another civ" trade was patched or not, but Egypt was pretty eager to declare war on her even though they had a DoF... (My spy did report that he was plotting). Then with a nice army of bombards and fusiliers, I went to war. I was also around the end of the era so when La Belle Epoque did come, I spammed purchased enough Great Scientists to get Imperial Rifleman/Field Gun. Problem is, the mounted crossbowmen and bombards were so much better than their upgrade units, I just didn't upgrade them at all. Field guns are kind of mediocre. It is essentially a 50 vs 130 strength on cities, (and city defense were at 100 - 120 at this point) so wasn't much point to upgrade my bombards. So after proceeding to shred England (and take all their wonders), that was pretty much game. Pacal and Napoleon did a joint war on me but with Great War Infantry vs Fusiliers, there really wasn't any competition. I also just didn't upgrade the mounted crossbowmen as its future upgrades (calvary, armoured car etc) was just not at the same level -- and with field marshal + the 33% fletching promotion? + all other promotions, they were still pretty effective.

So in general, I felt like some of the unit upgrades just didn't make sense. And mounted archers are WAY too overpowered. It was basically keshiks but accessible to all civilizations. Also mercenaries seems a bit op... especially the Lil Bombard. It has an extra range, insane damage on cities, and is unlocked way too early...

I also did experience some bugs:

- I keep getting chain gangs from random parts of the world. It seems whenever a civilization killed a barbarian/city state unit, for some reasons, I gain ownership of the generated slave.
- I think Great Artists generating golden age, should've went down? I can't quite remember if it did in vanilla, but with Chichen Itza and other boosts, each expended Great Artist was a nice 17 turns. Infinite golden age.
- I did have a crashing bug, which took me a long while with IGE to debug. I had Denmark declare war on the Incas, and for some reasons, it kept crashing on Denmark's turn. Their army was at Cusco, and I for the life of me couldn't figure out until I just... deleted all their units around there. Might've been the Denmark Great Artist and Great Scientist in one tile, but still crashed when I moved/deleted only them.
- Since two combat units can fit in a tile, there seems to be some issues with "swap" moving and having melee units attacking while there's two in a city.
- Nature Preserve seems to cost a lot of production at its technology... It takes me around 15 turns while other buildings would take maybe 3 - 4 at standard turn. Not sure if this is intentional or not.

Still loved this run though! Classical Era was really fun and this is probably the first time I painted the map without razing cities due to unhappiness.