When you start a new Franchise in a Madden NFL game, you get 2 options:

• Use preseason rosters,
• Use current active roster.

For simulation users looking to start a new Franchise in the preseason, neither of these options is ideal. The preseason roster gives you all of the preseason players, but it does not include ratings changes, updates to player likenesses, or roster changes that occurred during or after preseason. The current roster, on the other hand, is up-to-date, but only includes each team's active 53-man roster. Practice squad players are all independent free agents.

If you choose the active roster, then every team will start the preseason with only 53 players, and CPU teams don't bother to fill their rosters during the preseason. This wreaks havoc with preseason play, since CPU teams will go into preseason with only 2 quarterbacks, or only 3 running backs, and so forth. So when it comes time to sub in all the backups in the 2nd half, things potentially break down, since the rosters aren't really deep enough to facilitate pulling out all the starters.

So I have taken it upon myself to try to partly resolve this problem. I have uploaded a shared roster file that restores most practice squad players onto every team's rosters. I went through every team, and added all of their practice squad players to their rosters. I used the rosters from ESPN, going into week 2, and looked for every practice squad player in Madden's free agent pool, and added them back to their team's roster. This included any currently inactive players who were listed on each team's injured reserve.

I have manually restored many practice squad players onto their team's roster.

This roster will allow sim Franchise players to use a roster that maintains major roster transactions that occurred during or after preseason (such as Micah Parsons being traded from the Cowboys to the Packers), as well as any ratings updates that EA applied after the preseason, while still giving all the teams some of their practice squad players back. These extra players can play in the preseason, and can be added to teams' practice squads after the preseason.

This roster is called "PLUSPRACTICESQ", and it is currently available on Madden 26's in-game roster share menu. I created this roster on PS5, so I'm not sure if it's available for XBox or PC players to download. Does EA have "cross-play" for file sharing? If you're playing on XBox or PC, and cannot find or download this file, then don't get mad at me; direct your anger towards EA.

I recently uploaded a new Civilization V mod onto the Steam Workshop. The new mod adds a National Park building that is unlocked with the Scientific Theory technology. The National Park can be built in cities that contain natural wonders, and the National Park will provide bonus Gold, Science, and Culture to all natural wonders within the city radius, as well as provide 3 global happiness.

National Park building adds gold, culture, and science to all natural wonders within the city,
as well as providing 3 global happiness.

UPDATE (July 18, 2013 9:35 PST): National Park updated for Brave New World expansion

I have updated this mod for the new Brave New World expansion. If you have BNW installed, the National Park will now be unlocked with the Railroad technology, and the building will improve the Tourism output of your city.

If you are still playing Gods & Kings, the mod does not change the prereq or functionality of the National Park for that expansion. Updating the mod should not affect saved games for G&K players.

Thanks for playing, and enjoy!

UPDATE (July 24, 2013 10:30 PDT): National Park changed to provide +5 tourism instead of percentage modifier

Version 4 of my National Park mod has been published. The update changes the 25% conversion of culture to tourism so that the building provides a static +5 tourism. This was accomplished by using the TechEnhancedTourism and EnhancedYieldTech properties so that Railroad (the unlocking tech) adds +5 tourism to the building. This is the same method that is used for the Eiffel Tower world wonder.

This was done so that the National Park will always provide a substantial tourism output to the city (equivalent to 2 1/2 Great Works), regardless of how culturally strong the city is. Since many Natural Wonders do not generate large amounts of culture, I couldn't expect that a city containing the National Park would necessarily have enough culture for the 25% conversion to be worthwhile.

The only major downside to this change is that the Airport and Hotel don't synergize quite as well with the National Park. Aw well, can't be perfect, I guess...

UPDATE (March 5, 2014 11:15 am PST): Yields of BNW natural wonders fixed

Apparently, I had neglected to include yield modifiers for the new Brave New World natural wonders. I have just uploaded a revision that addresses this issue so that all natural wonders in the game now include the bonus culture, gold, and science from the National Park building.

This fix is available in Version 5 of the National Park mod.

I did discover one other issue: it appears that Isabella's trait ("Seven Cities of Gold") does not double the bonus yield provided by the National Park. It seems that the core game does not check the Buildings_FeatureYieldChanges table when applying Spain's trait. This will likely require an update to the game DLL, which I do not have the time to implement at the moment. I hope to be able to update the mod to address this issue at a future date.

In anticipation of the upcoming Brave New World expansion pack for Sid Meier's Civilization V, I've been working on some mod projects.

Today, I published a small resource mod called "Just a pinch of salt" that adjusts the yield of the salt luxury resource. By default, salt is a very strong resource to start near, as it provides +1 food and +1 gold base yield. Since it shows up frequently on plains, these tiles give your fledgling city a 2 food, 1 production, 1 gold tile out of the gate. With the addition of a mine, the food and production yield goes up by 1.

Extra food from salt requires building a Granary.

This mod aims to scale back the power of salt a little bit by removing the base +1 food modifier and moving that bonus to require the construction of a Granary building. In addition to it's existing bonuses, the granary now adds the +1 food to salt.

• Salt: +1 Gold base yield.
• Granary: +1 Food from salt worked by the city.

Total salt yield after building Granary and mine.

Once you have mined the salt and built a granary in the city, the total output of the salt tile is the same as in the unmodded game.

The mod can be downloaded from Civilization V's in-game mod browser by searching for "just a pinch of salt", or through Steam by visiting MegaBearsFan's Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=145306648).

In anticipation of the upcoming Brave New World expansion pack for Sid Meier's Civilization V, I've been working on some mod projects.

Today, I published a small resource mod called "Copper Buff" that improves the effectiveness of the copper resource in the game. Currently, copper is a fairly weak luxury resource, since it doesn't get buffed by any buildings in the game. This mod adjusts the Forge and Mint buildings to provide a bonus towards nearby copper as follows:

• Forge: +1 Production from copper worked by the city.
• Mint: +1 Gold from copper worked by the city.

Both buildings can be constructed in a city if copper is present within the city's borders.

Forge and Mint improve nearby copper.

The mod can be downloaded from Civilization V's in-game mod browser by searching for "copper buff", or through Steam by visiting MegaBearsFan's Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144822605).

Now that Gods & Kings has rearranged the tech tree, I decided I would revisit my old Code of Law mod and update it for the new expansion. That updated version is now uploaded onto the Steam Workshop.

The primary intent of this mod is to move the Courthouse building away from Mathematics so that players do not gain access to the building that nullifies unhappiness from city occupation at the same time that they unlock the first siege weapon. This way, overly-aggressive players who beeline to Iron Working and/or Mathematics so they can capture cities will have to take a minor detour through the culture and science path of the tech tree in order to be able to annex those cities and start using them as unit-farms.