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Features:
Goals
Map
AI & Tools
Gameplay
Interface
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Gem
Vem
Polls
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Patch Notes
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These are the main features of GEM. Click "Details" links below if you would like to see deeper information.

Requires: Civ V Unofficial Patch


Goals[]

We started this expansion pack because we believe Civilization is a fantastic game, and want to perfect it while remaining as close to the core experience as possible.

We think games should be intuitive to learn, challenging to master, and rewards should match the difficulty to complete tasks. We believe in finding balance between extremes. We set a high bar for adding new things to the game, and instead improve or replace existing objects when possible.

Details: Goals

AI[]

  • Smarter AI uses fewer bonuses, and acts more like a human in diplomacy, war, and city development strategies.
  • AI bonuses focus more on the late game, providing gradually rising difficulty.
Details: Gem - AI

Armies[]

  • Strategic resource units are more powerful and less common.
  • Strategic resources provide variety from one game to the next, focusing more on horses or iron in each player's territory.
  • Better unit balance from individualized maintenance for each unit type.
  • Vanguard units fill in the missing roles of detection and healing.
  • Capturing citystates gives a reward based on their type (with an Honor policy).
  • Naval units significantly more powerful, making a naval-oriented strategy a feasible option.
  • Promotions balanced to offer real choices.
Details: Gem - Armies

Barbarians[]

  • Barbarians give higher rewards and greater challenges.
  • They heal, have defense bonuses in camps, and are more aggressive.
  • More gold and experience from killing barbarians and clearing their camps.
  • More variety in barbarian units.
Details: Gem - Barbarians

Cities[]

  • Development matters more, like improving a river to get the gold bonus.
  • Better balance between "Tall" playstyles (with a few large cities) and "Wide" playstyles (with many small cities).
  • Shifted early yields out of the Capital to allow other cities to specialize, and provide greater balance between start locations.
  • Golden Ages are more powerful, less frequent, and Happiness continues to contribute to the counter during golden ages.
  • Improved the balance of production to gold in the early game to open up new strategic choices.
  • Many buildings improve resources, rewarding cities placed in clusters of similar resources.
  • Wonders are rebalanced and in some cases boosted, particularly for late game wonders. Several new wonders have been added, and existing wonders replaced by alternatives that are more important, more flavorful, or reflect better geographic balance.
Details: Gem - Cities

Diplomacy[]

  • Every type of citystate is useful.
  • City state bonuses are per-nation instead of per-city.
  • Can control citystate income distribution. For example, focusing a city on Food will send it a higher share of the nation's total maritime food supply, while setting Avoid Growth will send its share of food to other cities instead.
Details: Gem - Diplomacy

Espionage[]

  • Police Station redesigned as a Supermax Prison national building.
  • Espionage national buildings cost more like Projects (such as Apollo), and do not require buildings in every city.

Faith[]

  • Religious beliefs (particularly pantheons) rebalanced, so there are no longer obvious weak beliefs that are never worth picking.
  • Some faith per pop advantages to allow tall empires to accumulate in better balance with wide.
Details: Gem - Faith

Great Works[]

The Great Works mod component allows Great Artists to instantly provide a large amount of culture to a city, much like the Great Engineer's instant production. This component was created by Moriboe.

Leaders[]

  • More polished and balanced leaders. Leader bonuses focus on giving new strategies and ways to play, instead of just making us better at something we normally do anyway.
Details: Gem - Leaders

Opportunities[]

  • Opportunities bring back in the events of Civ4:BtS in a positive and fun way. They appear every few turns, and present a moral choice between valuable options, letting us enhance or change our society.
Details: Gem - Opportunities

Policies[]

  • Policies are more important and interesting.
  • Each policy tree has a clear specialized goal, while also providing a few choices good for any goal.
  • The number of policy trees needed before commencing the Utopia Project is increased 20%.
Details: Gem - Policies

Research[]

  • Research tree re-designed to open up new strategies and beelines.
  • Better spread of useful tech through bonuses and new units/buildings.
  • Better spread of economic bonuses on military techs.
  • Greater cost reduction for techs researched by many other leaders (lagging players catch up).
Details: Gem - Research

Terrain[]

  • Every part of the map is valuable, but in very different ways. Jungle regions play differently from open grassland, for example, by providing highly concentrated bonuses scattered among less-valuable average  tiles.
  • Terrain enhancements are more spread out among improvements, buildings, and technologies, rewarding strategy and skill.
  • Resources also spread more, rather than coming from a few super-large deposits.
  • Value of coastal cities and islands is improved, encouraging naval combat and trade.
  • Natural wonders balanced, and appear more often in usable places.
  • Jungle and Tundra rebalanced.
Details: Gem - Terrain
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