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Legendary Headstart

The Legendary Headstart Mod adds a variety of bonuses to all major civs at the start of the game. The intent is to provide a richer variety of playstyles, based on the sometimes legendary head starts these bonuses sometimes provide.

There are 18 bonuses in all – some of which are much more powerful than others:

1. Faith: Adds Faith - if the game starts before the Industrial Era, otherwise adds Gold. Can also spawn 1-2 Great Prophets. Adds an Era-appropriate melee unit, then adds the "Faster Healing" and "Foreign Lands Bonus" to existing combat units.
2. Science: Adds 1-3 free Technologies, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
3. Gold: Significant amount of Gold added to treasury
4. Culture: Adds 1-3 free Policies, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels. Adds gold if no cities exist.
5. Happiness: Golden Age progress boost; additional starting Happiness
6. Great People: Adds 1-3 Great People (of your choice), more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels. If there is no city, a gold bonus is awarded.
7. Infrastructure: Adds 1-3 extra Workers, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
8. Expansion: Adds 1-3 extra Settlers, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
9. Melee Units: Adds 1-3 Melee units, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
10. Mobile Units: Adds 1-3 Mobile units, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
11. Ranged Units: Adds 1-3 Ranged units, more for later Era starts and easier difficulty levels.
12. "Peace" Focus: Adds 1-3 extra Settlers and 1-3 extra Workers.
13. "War" Focus: Adds combat units, similar to #9, and #10 and/or #11.
14. "Commerce" Focus: Adds smaller amounts of Faith, Gold, Culture, and Golden Age progress

New Bonuses (V3):

15. Trade Baron: Adds 1-3 Trade Routes and/or 1-3 Great Merchants
16. Cornucopia: Grants Pottery if not discovered and builds a Granary in the Capital, if one has not already been built. Adds 10-30 food to the capital.
17. Heraia: Adds 2-5 population to the capital. Adds 25-40 food. Spawns 1-3 Settlers if the civ has no cities.
18. Armilustrium: Adds Walls to the capital, 50% chance of adding a Castle, and 1 Great General. If the civ has no cities, 1-2 Great Generals will spawn.


Please note: Starting in V3, these bonuses are applied at the beginning of the human player's 2nd turn. This provides all civs the chance to build a capital so they will be capable of getting the full benefits of all the Legendary Bonuses.


Additionally, the benefits are adjusted, based on game difficulty, speed, and starting Era. Generally speaking, when the mod adds units, it randomly adds 1-3. It adds more units if the game starts in a later Era, or if you are playing at an easier difficulty level.


The mod uses 5 possible methods to decide which bonus a civ will get:

1. Completely Random: this means that a civ could get any one of the 18 bonuses. (40% chance)
2. "War" Priority: the civ will get a bonus from a list of #9, #10, #11, #13, or #18. (10% chance)
3. "Peace" Priority: the bonus will be selected from a list of #1, #2, #4, #5, #12, #16, or #17. (10% chance)
4. "Commerce" Priority: the bonus will be either #3, #7, #8, #14, or #15. (10% chance)
5. Leader Flavor: the bonus will come from whatever Flavor is the highest for that civ's Leader. If there are more than one flavors with the highest number, the mod will select a random flavor with the highest value. (30% chance)


Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to MariusMagnus and Nutty on civfanatics for helping me fix a few bugs and add some improvements that hopefully make the mod more "Legend…." wait-for-it…. ;)



Please note: the mod is quite stable, but is still in BETA form. Please let me know if you're seeing any problems or have any suggestions. Thanks!