Art of War mod released!

Art of War is centered around a single radical change. Every military unit requires a population to train. This single change has far reaching consequences on how war is fought, both on the battlefield and domestically.

This mod has a larger scope than my previous Civilization 6 mods and I plan to expand it over time. In this post I am going to go over what the mod changes, why those changes were made and what my future plans are for the mod.

Links and Resources

• Workshop page
• CivFanatics discussion thread
• Download from CivFanatics

What changes does this mod make?

1. Military units require population to train.
2. Military policies grant faster population growth.
3. Revamped District adjacency
4. New location-dependent effects for Buildings.

Changes to Policies

• The military policies that boost unit production now also boost city growth.
• Military policies no longer boost ranged unit production. Instead they boost anti-cavalry production.

Changes to Districts

Adjacency bonuses have been completely redone. The Encampment is now a livestock yard, providing production from Pastures. While the Industrial Zone now focuses on mining production from Mountains.

Changes to Buildings

Buildings have been changed to make them more dependent on the local resources the city has access to. Harbor buildings (Lighthouse, Shipyard, Seaport) all boost Finishing Boats.

The Stable provides production from Horses while the Barracks provides production from Iron and Niter. Access to these strategic resources will reward rulers who specialize their cities to infantry or cavalry production.

The Workshop provides production from Coal, Oil and Uranium. Making cities with those resources the best locations to start or expand your industrial revolution.

Why were these changes made?

There were 3 core issues I wanted to address:

1. Housing limits mean Food is a relatively weak yield
2. Military Policies generally provide less benefit than Economic Policies
3. Early game rush strategies could cripple even Deity AIs

Having every military unit require a population had promise but it didn’t work well alone. It needed support from other systems. Adding a growth boost to Military Policies helped players regrow lost citizens while making Military Policies more attractive economically.

District Changes

The District system has the potential to make optimal city development highly sensitive to local terrain. In the base game the adjacency from other city districts undermines this. Districts can be configured in a standard triangle formation and still get adjacency bonuses that are only one yield smaller than a city with matching terrain.

Some Districts, like the Encampment, didn’t provide enough yields to be worth building most of the time. While other districts, like Industrial Zone, had adjacency bonuses that were too easy to fill.

What is the future of the mod?

Like my previous Civilization 6 mods (Sapping Engineers and Settlers Retreat) Art of War is experimenting with a distinct design. Unlike those mods the idea of having military units consume population has too many implications to be evaluated in isolation. I am already looking at additional changes like starting cities with two citizens, or starting players with a second Settler at the very beginning.

Longer term I am looking at making significant changes to the tactical game. I want to reduce the effectiveness of timing attacks and increase the effectiveness of combined arms. Given the fundamental forces favoring timing attacks in Civilization 6 it will require changes to multiple parts of the game before this goal can be achieved.

For now my interest is in hearing your experiences with the mod. How does needing citizens to create military units shape your strategy and approach to war?