Boa’s Great Negotiators Tweak

Tweaks the Great Negotiators’ leader abilities to solve the problem of the original abilities being underwhelming, making them more interesting to play as.

NOTE: Due to popular request, I have uploaded versions of the mod that are split into
three separate parts. Please enjoy~

LEADER – ABRAHAM LINCOLN

LEADER ABILITY – EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
Industrial Zones and each of their buildings grant +1 Amenity and a free melee unit requiring no resources to create or maintain. +1 Gold and -2 Loyalty to Plantations. Nationalism increases both to +2 Amenity and +1 Diplomatic Favor, and +4 Gold and -8 Loyalty respectively, and adds +5 Culture to unimproved Plantation resources. Builders trained in cities adjacent to a Plantation have an extra charge. +5 Combat Strength against free cities.

LEADER – NZINGA MBANDE

LEADER ABILITY – QUEEN OF NDONGO AND MTAMBA
May declare a Protectorate War with Defensive Tactics. Sending a Trade Route to a city-state grants one Envoy there. +1 Diplomatic Favor per city-state suzerainty. +1 Science, Culture, Faith, and Gold per sent Envoy. The Kongolese capital’s continent grants the following bonuses: +10 Loyalty to cities, -10 Loyalty outside it. +7 Combat Strength against other civilizations. +3 Food and Production to Trade Routes.

LEADER – SALADIN (SULTAN)

LEADER ABILITY – THE VICTORIOUS
+100% Flanking and Support Bonus to all Combat and Religious units. Conquered cities are converted to Arabia’s majority religion. +1 Amenity and Diplomatic Favor from Worship buildings.

NOTE: The way I structured this mod is the result of me working between trying to achieve specific functions in the leader abilities while still being able to work with the existing code. Firaxis made a lot of stuff too hardcoded that we modders can’t resort to custom functions, so some of the bonuses I put here are more of… compromises based on ideas that are unfortunately physically impossible to mod directly.

THE ORIGINAL IDEA
Admittedly, the ideas for the way this mod works aren’t mine either. Someone on reddit came up with the original ideas and they sounded not only quite fun, but a lot more interesting than the originals, so I recommend checking the original post that inspired this mod!

SUPPORTED LANGUAGES

• English 🇬🇧

MODDER’S THOUGHTS

The leaders of the Great Negotiators Pass, in terms of gameplay are quite… underwhelming, especially after the stakes were taken so high with the way the kits of the New Frontier Pass civs worked, and we went back to vanilla civ quality… Not to mention, the "Great Negotiators" ironically, as many people have pointed out, did not have any real "negotiating" bonuses…. so upon finally obtaining the Great Negotiators Pack, I spent a week tweaking the Great Negotiators’ leader abilities to make this mod, hopefully solving the problem of the original abilities being underwhelming, making them more interesting to play as.

ABOUT LINCOLN
Lincoln’s Industrial Zone stuff give amenities instead of extra loyalty cause I noticed the feedback to the DLC saying they prefer the vanilla bonus more, so naturally, I added it. (And let’s be real, extra amenities are more useful than extra loyalty. That particular bonus in the expansions is almost as underwhelming as my Hidden Mist mod’s Mist Academy, at least before the Seven Ninja Swordsmen update was released. Also, freed slaves = extra happiness doesn’t it? I’m sure a lot of black people were really happy to not be someone’s slave when they were freed at last…)
Lastly, Lincoln didn’t go off trying to conquer Canada or Mexico (which btw was already being invaded by France around that same time) during the Civil War, hence why the +5 Combat Strength only applies to free cities now.

ABOUT NZINGA
I feel especially sorry for Nzinga here, she got the worst of the three, if we’re talking about good leader abilities that reflects their historical achievements, hence why unlike Lincoln or Saladin, by technicalities, I just gave her an outright complete rework despite the mod being labelled a "tweak".
Also, went for a “+7 Combat Strength against civilizations on your home continent” type of bonus cause I can’t find a way to code a combat bonus specifically against civilizations from other continents while preventing her units from becoming Redcoats. So basically, a continental Frederick Barbarossa but for major civs instead of city-states, that will have to do for now.

ABOUT SALADIN
Just like with my coding dilemma with Nzinga, I would’ve originally made it "+1 Diplomatic Favor for each foreign religion following Arabia’s religion", but the hardcoded problem I mentioned in the Mod Elements section is preventing me from doing so, so I did the next best thing I could think of, which is the bonus that is up.

So far, I’ve also seen the leaks for the Great Commanders Pack. Thankfully, it looks like so far I won’t have to create another tweak, I find them as satisfying as Julius Caesar’s ability… though in the chance I do make a tweak, it’ll probably be for Nader Shah, but who knows? Alright, now back to working on COTR art and Naruto city-states for me! I’ve done my job here, which was to give those three leader abilities I can be entertained by.

PS, side note, I’m actually also ready to abandon this tweak if in the near-future Firaxis manages to pull themselves together and make much better abilities, will leave it for people who are still dissatisfied in that case.

DISCLAIMERS

• I will not be taking any other mod creation requests, I only want to make mods of things I am personally interested in.
• I will also do my very best to keep this mod as updated and high quality as possible, no matter what happens.
• Comments giving constructive criticism of my mod are welcome, and appreciated. Feedback is a very big reason to the effort improving the quality of the mods I make. And this mod in particular, I am extra open to feedback, as this is a modification of an existing leader from an official, not a new civ or leader which I am more accustomed to making.
• Translations of this mod are very much welcome, please be sure to contact me so we can work together and I can apply your translation.

SPECIAL THANKS

• Reddit user u/DxLaughRiot for sparking the original philosophy behind the functionality of this mod! (Seriously tho I really appreciate it like, I didn’t wanna spend more than a week on this mod xD it would’ve taken longer if I tried to conceive the idea myself, I have stuff to do~ )
• My friends Kevin Liu and UzukiShimamura卯月 (and his friends) for the very helpful feedback to the initial drafts of this mod!