Shilling for RFC: Dawn of Civilization mod for Civ 4

[greenline]

As thestick mentioned, you have to download the mod as a zip from the github develop branch, and then extract it in your local mods folder for BeyondTheSword. Note that the latest update to develop has changes to the civic tree, compared to the civics I showed in my sample games.

With how the AI tech modifiers are set in the mod, if you play on Emperor difficulty, you are basically going to be behind in tech no matter what. People generally have to rely on espionage economies to keep up. Monarch is the level where you can reliably tech and keep pace with the AI if your economy is good.

[Amicalola]

I downloaded and installed the development branch of the mod, however when I try to launch the game never loads the mod (steam stops saying "game running" after a min or two). But I don't actually get an error. Anyone experienced this issue or know how to solve it?

[greenline]

How are you launching the mod? I do it by launching the standard Civ 4 bts executable, then doing 'load mod'. (Note that once you extract the files into your mod folder, you have to rename it to "RFC Dawn of Civilization"

[Amicalola]

I'm loading the mod in the same way and have renamed it. :/

[greenline]

The only other things I can think of:

If you are using the modified BTS executable that is used by CtH / pitboss, it might cause issues. I have had it crash on me before, so I use the vanilla launcher for the mod.

If the mod is installed in the wrong folder - there is an identically named mod folder that holds saved games instead of mod files.

If the game loads up the main menu and only crashes when you try and play, you have to start the mod through 'Play Now' once it loads instead of 'Custom Scenario'.

Sadly that is the extent of my troubleshooting knowledge. Your best bet if it still does not work after that is to poke around on the CivFanatics forum for the mod: https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/rh...ation.452/

[Amicalola]

I believe it must be an issue with the mod itself (or how I installed it), as all my other mods load fine.

[Amicalola]

Well, a random restart the other day got it working. No idea why. But I've been having a lot of fun!

I have been trying some of the historical victories; a few are not too bad, but most seem very difficult. India for example, I was able to achieve on the first try, and same with Arabia (which was a really fun game). Whereas Assyria I could only get to ~250/375 gold (and got smacked by the sea peoples soon afterwards before I could do the rest). Or Carthage the first goal was fairly straightforward, but left my in a position where I could not fight Rome's scripted conquerors. Any general tips for the mod, greenline?

[Magic Science]

Any general tips for the mod, greenline?

greeline is on a trip and unable to access the forum through the 15th.

[greenline]

The notes I would have are twofold. First, the civics changed a lot from when I did my test games. Despotism used to be the superior choice - whipping was then nerfed to be a lot weaker, so there is plenty of reasons to pick Monarchy (happy from garrisoned units and -25% distance maintenance and 50% bonus production to foodhammer units) or Republic (+1 free specialist in your top 3 cultured cities) as the early government civic instead. Vassalage is no longer the One Right Choice for the medieval era - now you have Theocracy (+2 hammers per state religion building, +2 happy for cities with state religion) as a strong competitor, and later bureaucracy (25% production to buildings already in your capital). Slavery and Manorialism are now mostly evenly balanced - Caste System is junk except for victories needing high population.

I can also give some notes on civs I have tried to go for a historical victory with for so far.

Egypt - a lot depends on where you settle your capital rather than always settling in place. You need to maximize commerce early and it seems to be better to settle south to grab both stone and marble in the capital BFC. Writing first seems to be the tech path, odd as it sounds, to get obelisks online faster for the culture + priests. Great Prophets are good for bulbing the necessary wonder techs. One great engineer from the pyramids is good for rushing the great lighthouse.

Babylonia - very poorly balanced at the moment. There are just too many civs that tech fast enough to steal techs from the first goal. Guys on the forums apparently have a strategy for threading the needle, but I haven't gotten it to work.

Greece - only way to make this work is to rush Egypt with your starting army. Then bulb techs while slowly conquering the rest of the middle east and building the necessary wonders.

Phoenicia - the unique power lets you cash rush units for cheap. So the path to victory here would involve bulbing or trading techs for numids and markets. You can not bother settling Lebanon and send both settlers to Carthage and Sicily, getting the palace built in Carthage for free. African coastline goal would need to involve sending scouts south into the Sahara / jungles, there's no realistic way to get to Compass in time to send ships through the capes. All of this seems barely possible, but with very very tight deadlines and setups I have not managed to get working.

Persia - seems luck of the draw for how many wonders the AI will build that you can reasonably conquer.
Assyria - if you build barracks -> spearmen nonstop at the capital, you can capture babylon and syria in 20 turns. Hittites have the biggest potential army to face, while Egypt either needs a navy or strong culture to cross the Sinai desert. Conquering both would in theory be enough for the gold and level 3 units. One of the three settled people in the capital can be a great general. The best bet for the other 2 is squeezing great people from egyptian wonders.

Maya - you have to beeline Calendar / Writing ASAP and conquer Danibaan (the native stone city) with your starting army. Other then that, as long as you build the wonder, you should be OK if AI China is not completely out of control.

Ethiopia - 5 Incense is easy to get if you settle Yemen and another city on the Arabian peninsula along with Somalia. You can run a ton of priests in a city in the great lakes region that has a lot of food, but I have no idea how to get pleased relationships with a bunch of AI christian civs.

Toltecs - build the pyramid of the sun wonder, run specialists for GPP points. Settle a city in texas for the last population goal. Easy.

Kushans - the unique unit (7 str horse unit with city raider promotions) is so broken that you can conquer practically all of India and Persia with three of them. So all you need to do is build the religious buildings, then conquer / settle the silk road, and not collapse. Also easy.

Mande / Mali - very tough because the tech modifiers for this civ are atrocious despite having really good land available. I think you need to do a lot of bulbing, but it is hard to get priests early on.

France - make sure Paris has some workshops / lumbermills, because you need the production. Paris needs to do nothing but build culture buildings and wonders until reaching legendary culture. The other cities can pick up the slack for most of the other goals. Spam cities in North america without workers when possible, all you need is culture to boost land ownership. In Europe focus on acquiring vassals rather than conquering when possible to avoid collapse. Italy is good to conquer rather than vassal because it has a shrine on the 600 AD start.

Moors - you have a ton of economy from the extra orchard food that makes it viable to get La Mezquita and the settled specialists early. The main problem I had was conquering cities in West Africa. Compass is still very hard to reach by the deadline, so you need camel units to go through the desert. There is a camel resource you can reach past Carthage, but it is hard to conquer that and 3 cities in Spain at the same time.

Java - the UB makes building the wonders easy. The population goal is reachable by conquering the malays with the UU ASAP. Getting islam to spread is really annoying - they say to find a muslim civ and open borders with them, but it is still luck of the draw on whether you get a spread in time to build the cathedrals.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I git clone'd the repo, tried running it, immediate CTD when trying to start a game.