Cities & Coolness

Updated 04 January 2016

This page has not yet been fully updated to reflect changes in v1.06 in Arulco Vacations

This particular Tweak was really easy, trouble-free and very powerful. This Tweak sets the stage for the entire campaign. Let's hope I did not jinx myself here!

The Cities file controls Town Loyalty, Militia Training (in conjunction with the Facilities file tweak and the INI file tweak), and certain Strategic Map display characteristics. I did not tweak the Strategic Map settings. However, Town Loyalty and Militia Training got big tweaks -- and were finetuned for v1.05.

The Coolness By Sector file controls the quality of the Enemy forces and their equipment. Yes, you can readily see how important this file can be to your campaign! It works in tandem with the Gun & Item Choice picklist tweaks.

The Cities file has been changed to allow Militia Training in all cities. That means San Mona and Estoni are ripe for revolt. San Mona will turn into a free-for-all because Kingpin will not like you messing around in his little gangster kingdom. So be aware that training militia in San Mona will be an adventure in itself, and possibly all-out war. I also tweaked Kingpin, his mob and the civilians on-Map, so think twice before starting this little war within a war.

Note: San Mona militia training is turned off in v1.05, but will be turned back on with the first v1.05 patch.

Every city also had the control setting for Town Loyalty tweaked to make it much harder to increase Town Loyalty. This represents the people fearing the Queen's retribution for helping you and the rebels. The Queen feels no compunction toward slaughtering her citizens, and the citizens know that. You will be told by named and nameless civilians multiple times as you travel around Arulco that you have turned their cities into battlefields and they are not certain you can or will protect them.

 

Now that is truly reflected in the increased difficulty you will experience winning them over to your side, and keeping them on your side. It was way too easy to get full-up on militia very quickly in the vanilla version -- and that just makes the whole war a walk in the park. No more will you have maximum Militia two days after entering a city. Even Omerta's loyalty to you is not automatic anymore. Combine that with the tweaks in the .INI file that raise the bar regarding Leadership's effects on militia training -- and you have a whole new game as far as that aspect is concerned.

The Coolness By Sector tweak re-designs the map of Arulco as far as the quality of personnel and equipment of the Enemy forces. The vanilla file was a straight-forward progression from low to high, north to south. Now there are pockets of high and low Coolness in relation to the geography and population of Arulco. Expect higher Coolness along roads and lower Coolness off roads. Expect higher Coolness in cities, military bases, prisons and other places where concentrations of Enemy forces are stationed. Expect lower Coolness in places that are in the mountains, the desert, or otherwise in the countryside. Expect higher Coolness where gun-running smugglers are, as well. Expect higher Coolness in strategically important sectors, and lower Coolness in other sectors. Expect Coolness to increase the further south you go just like in the vanilla file, and for the same reasons -- to reflect game play advancement and the fact that you are getting closer to the Queen. The difference here is that it is not a uniform increase across the map. Now this file takes into consideration what is actually within each sector.