The Bloody Hell Mod

Goal: To provide an alternative economic and military progression to enrich the gameplay experience.

Current Version: v1.2


Simple List of Changes:
Double # of Leader Traits
Rearranged Leader Traits
3 Leader Traits per Leader
Wonder Benefits Restructured
Time Flow Slowed
Technology Progress Slowed to match time
City Growth Slowed to match time
Great Leader Production generally increased
No Goody Huts
No Starting Technologies
Slightly Longer Golden Ages
Major Strength boost to all units
Unique Units generally better relatively
Units Generally Cheaper
More Invisible Units
More Units Can Violate Borders
Technology Effects altered slightly
Terrain Yields More Resources
Deserts & Tundra provide small benefit
Terrain Improvements more powerful


Flow of Play:
The Mod is designed for play to flow in a particular fashion. Early play revolves around choices. You will can choose to focus on a particular technology path early on (military, economic, religious) and be stronger in that area but weaker in others. Alternatively, you could focus on well-rounded growth and become a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none. Early wonders do not provide powerhouse/must-have benefits. If you chose to build a wonder, you will be slightly better off but not massively so. The Ancient and Classical Eras provide players opportunities to structure their empire to suit their own needs. There is less of a "rush" to get a particular wonder or resource. The low cost of military units allows you to expand or contract your army to fit your needs. Civilizations with early unique units (Aztecs, Persians, Romans, Greeks, etc) may find offensive warfare to be very profitable, but generally defenses are going to be stronger than you are used to due to more AI unit construction.

As you work into the Medieval and Renaissance Eras, you are going to find your civilization maturing. You will be able to pick up those things that you may have neglected earlier (wonders, religions, military strength). By this time period you will be able to field fairly large armies (armies you might have to wait for the modern era to field before). Your invisible scout units will have had plenty of time to evaluate the enemy. Your cities will be stronger and well developed. This is when the true strength of the mod comes into play; combat on a large scale. This slows down your perception of the game because of unit movement. Your will be able to spend an hour or more fighting a long difficult war with your most advanced neighbors without advancing through the years that much. Your units will get a lot of combat in before they need to be upgraded. Civilizations with free promotions or powerful mid-game units (England, France, Spain, China, etc) will truly shine. Wonders become more powerful during this era and more valuable.

Unless you are playing a peaceful game or surrounded by many enemies, you should have eliminated all (or at least most) of your neighbors by the time you hit the Industrial or Modern Eras. You can push for a particular victory that you are aiming for. You will be able to field a large navy capable of transporting an invasion force to your overseas foes if you want to push for a conquest victory. You may have only a little conquering left if you are going for Domination. Cultural, Diplomatic, and Space Race victories can be attained by directing your efforts to achieving their conditions as well. Civilizations with late game advantages will be able to actually use them. American Navy Seals and German Panzers will actually be useful units. At the end of the game, your victory will have been hard fought and enjoyable. Wonders during these Eras are very expensive and very powerful.



Notes:
Excel Spreadsheet detailing unit changes included in zip file for those interested

Unzip into the Mods folder in your Civ4 directory. Then run Civ4, Click Advanced, and Load a Mod. Choose Bloody Hell, and you are off!

DOWNLOAD FROM THIS THREAD ON APOLYTON (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=4162323)

ENJOY! Comments are appreciated.

I like it when missionaries are tinkered with for some reason. The idea of making them invisible is cool. Can missionaries of the same religion spot each other? Can spies spot missionaries and scouts?

Another mod I've read about claims to allow christian missionaries to pass into closed territories. Could those holy city religious wonders be altered to improve the functionality of your missionaries? Perhaps at least those generated from the holy city? One small benefit to tack on could simply be that the holy city gains the ability to build special missionaries that perform similarly, but aren't the same unit and therefore exceed the cap for total existing missionaries you can have.

I know in huge maps I can only make 3 missionaries of a given faith at a time, and often that's a PITA when I'm trying to convert entire nations. I think having the holy city wonder ought to help me out a little in spreading the faith. Currently they only help you enlist cities that haven't developed a faith yet, which isn't a substantial benefit in the later game.

Or it could be like that Crusader wonder in civ3, producing units every few turns to reflect the ongoing development of the faith in the holy city.

Nice comments. Thank you.

I will think about it as I make more changes to the mod. I plan on making a time/building/wonder upgrade to the mod after I get some more play-testing in.

For example; I plan on making the Pyramids trigger a golden age and dropping the cost. I think it is too overpowered and unrealistic in its default state.

VERSION 1.1 Released!

Changes for v1.1:

Dropped Archer and Mali Skirmisher to 6 power
Altered Terrain / Improvements to give more resources in general
Modified Epic Game Speed: Added 30 turns to the game, slowed everything further, city growth & improvements very slow
Modified Normal Game Speed: Old Epic
Modified Quick Game Speed: Old Normal
No Goody Huts
Start with 500 gold in Ancient Game Starts
Major City Specialist Modifications

Check Excel Spreadsheet for full details on changes.

Download from Here (http://s13.invisionfree.com/Virtuous_Design/index.php?showtopic=35&st=0)

My playtesting has revealed that the AI apparently goes unit crazy due to the low cost of the units. In my current game, the Aztecs just fielded about 10 units per city.

They only garrisoned 3-5 in their border cities for some reason, but held massive reserves in their core cities. In this war, I had just gotten my feudal army put together. I organized three armies of 5-7 macemen (promoted Praetorians from my first war) and 3-5 knights each. I also kept a few longbowmen to move in after capturing a city to defend it, but not use for offensive weapons. Now normally (un-modded), the forces I brought would have been enough to capture the cities and repel counter-attacks. I got a big surprise.

I launched a quick strike against their three border cities. But they launched a massive counter-attack at the center of my invasion line and captured the center city, pushing me back. I was able to use cavalry on the open plains to cut through their push towards my own border city. Meanwhile, they launched a second counter-attack against a 2nd captured city, saved only by the timely arrival of several cavalry reinforcements. The war then continued as I tried to cut them with cavalry before they got to my cities, but I took heavy casualties.

I lost more units in this war alone than some entire games from start to finish. 25 or more units. The AI really goes wild with the units. I had never seen them use a stack of 15 units before. Jeez. It was like a damn Orc horde. They even fielded combined arms. Because I had a slight tech lead, they had to meet my army of macemen, knights, and longbowmen with their axemen, spearmen, crossbowmen, archers, and jaguar warriors. I assumed that my tech lead would carry the day, but even at 3-1 or 4-1 kills, I was losing units. I lost at least 25 units, they lost probably 75-100 units.

It was the most units I had ever seen on the screen at one time. A true bloodbath. Ah, it was great.


I do think, however, that the AI's unit frenzy is causing them to lag behind in technology. I recommend playing at 1 difficulty level higher than you are used to, because I normally have to struggle on Noble to keep a tiny lead in tech, but they are a tad slower and so I have a sizeable tech lead now. And they build fewer wonders too, I have noticed.

So up the difficulty and prepare for a bloody hell :D

Some great ideas here, Ryoken. :)

Thanks! I have been taking a Civ4 break and playing a lot of Counter-Strike the past couple days, but I plan on doing some more updates later this week.

I think I will rebalance some existing changes and mod wonders.

v1.2 Released!

Primary Post Updated with Download

Main Innovations:
Leader Trait Modifications (8 new leader traits)
Wonder Modifications

Well done, Ryo. I must say, your mod name has a flair for the dramatic.

Gotta name it something. Keep in mind, the original name was linked to the original concept; more warfare. That has evolved a bit, but I still enjoy warfare.

Add version number and last update date on first post thanks :-).

I think there is a problem with invisible explorers. I was just playing a game in which is shared an island with the japanese. I managed to take all their cities in the island, leaving them with only one city in another island that was just one square in size.

At this time i was begging for peace, regardless of my vastly superior force and landmass, because the damm japanese had an explorer in my main island, and even thou they had no cities there, that explorer was invisible and could kill my workers. So it would roam my territory invisibly and by the time i declared peace i had lost 5 workers and had to hide the rest in cities. I could see the enemy explorer in the Military advisor map but not on the main screen. I moved attack units to the exact square the explorer was, including another explorer hoping they could see eachother, but nothing happened. I couldn't kill it. Additionally, i was hoping that by declaring peace that damm thing would be moved off my territory but since that specific unit can cross closed borders, it went nowhere with the peace declaration.

I believe invisibility must be limited to units with no military strength.

Interesting. I have not encountered this myself. The Scout has no attack power, they must have been using an upgraded Explorer or something. I will look into this today.

I've mirrored this at http://civilization4.filefront.com/ for you Ryoken :)

Thanks Jamie. For some reason, probably my ineptitude, I cannot get v1.2 to host up on my personal forum. It says file size is too large, but I have maximum permissions as an Admin and plenty of space. Weird. Anyway, thanks!

I have traced the problem of worker-theft to the Explorer unit which still had a combat power of 4; not zero. I have changed this. I dont feel like releasing a whole new version for this problem, so if you want to change it open up the Units XML file and search for Explorer then change its power to zero.

However, if anyone has any ideas for something I could build into a version 1.3 as a major expansion of the mod (I dont have any good ideas for regular buildings yet, for example), I would be happy to hear any ideas you have.

Here is the FileFront link (http://civilization4.filefront.com/file/The_Bloody_Hell_Mod;51187) btw; for anyone interested.

Played the Mod quite a while now and i'm not that happy. There are some imbalances in my humble opinion.

My neighbour (aztec) has cities about 34, 28, 27, 24
even a city, 21 with only 10 own spaces around it.
Thats bout rifling-age

My biggest city is 19, followed by 17

I had a big lead in science, having developed gunpowder
and military science as they (the leading rest) were about
guilds (and no literature, drama)
suddenly, in about 20 turns the aztec had develloped rifling,
leaving me 4-5 steps behind.

difficulty: warlord (on noble, they kept killing me - no luck getting iron)
on other mods i normally play noble
size: large
speed: epic

It may be, that "agricultural" is a bit overpowered.

I find this mod generally makes for easier games. I get way ahead in tech compared to the "year" it is, i think tech needs to cost more. Or maybe i'm not fielding the huge armies i'm supposed to, and i get too much gold for tech. I've been playing random civ in continents maps.

As for future additions to the mod, i think the modern era military could use a touch up. Navy could get nuclear versions (like a bigger carrier), cruise missiles (and a ship to launch them), nuclear sub (could also shoot cruise missiles), missiles could have 2 versions, nuke and conventional. Maybe consider adding biological payload that takes out only city population but carries a diplomatic penalty (and war weariness from public outrage maybe). Air should have a precision bomber/fighter that destroys buildings (can we choose the building?) and maybe an AWAC plane with large sight radius and maybe a combat bonus.
Maybe add a terrorist unit that works like a spy but can produce terrorist attacks that don't really do much damage but cause lots of war weariness, which could lead to less "free" regimes as a way to control it.

Many of these suggestions appeared before in other threads or mods. I can't look up each one of them but i'm hoping the original authors don't mind their use or that they'll make themselves heard otherwise.

Good Feedback. I thank you deeply for without feedback the mod cannot move forward.

Notarz:
Large cities are not, per se, bad. I knew that by increasing food yields, I would be increasing city cize. Now the Aztecs are Agricultural, so they should have bigger cities, I think maybe your city sizes have a lot to do with your land-use policies. Are you building farms? If you are building more cottages/workshops/mills, then you are naturally going to have less food but more hammers and commerce.

I too have also noted a dramatic acceleration of AI tech speed during the late Renaissance era. I do not know why all of a sudden they surge forward. Perhaps someone else could illuminate this for me, but in the Late Renaissance the AI surges in technology.

Regarding Agricultural being overpowered, that is difficult to measure. The reason stems from the fact that Agricultural is paired with other traits. A leader like Montezuma who has Agricultural & Industrious can be a powerhouse early-wonder builder, no doubt. Faster growing early cities and quicker wonder building is a nice combo. But is it more powerful than Mansa Musa's Agricultural & Communal combo which leads to truly huge cities? And to compare outside of Agricultural, look at Bismark who has Organized & Expansive, leading to a stacked -75% to Civic Upkeep. Bismarck's weakness is that this is his primary advantage; as his non-upkeep related trait bonuses amount to only +1 health and a barrage 1 promotion for his siege units. Napoleon is powerful as well, combining Communal & Productive, leading to large industrial cities capable of quick building times.

Your Agricultural comment, however, is noted and if I find further evidence of an overpowered nature, I will take steps to cull it.

CautionToTheWin:
If you field a small army, you may face a difficult war with the AI. I got hit by Genghis Khan once so hard that I had to restart the game. Keshiks just flooded over the border and I couldnt even save myself by going back 2 autosaves. It was vicious.

I have noticed that in some ways the early-game is easier. But as I said to Notarz, the mid-to-late game tech acceleration by the AI is very powerful. I actually like that the AI poses a greater tech threat later on. But if you think it is too easy, just up the difficulty. :D

Regarding unit modifications, I am kinda satisfied with the units as they stand right now. Maybe I will revisit them later, but not in the immediate future. Those are good ideas though.

Thank you for your reply, Ryoken.

When i said that the game seemed easier, i meant when compared to other mods (slower tech balance and realism mods) on the same difficulty level (noble). I am letting you know this not out of pride but becuase it may be a symptom of the AI mishandling one of your changes.

So yesterday finally hattie fielded a large armie against me. She was 1st in score and i was second, we had a large land border and i was begging for it with low defenses. Lost a couple cities and set every other city to muquetmen. Hattie had mostly archery and melee, so I tried a strategy of musquetmen with strentgh and anti-archer/anti-melee promotions liberally sprinkled over them. It worked decently and i recovered all my cities plus razed a badly placed AI city before i accepted peace (hattie started asking for peace as soon as the tide turned). This meant that for almost 100 turns, all i produced were military units. All this to say that even so techs were taking only 1 or 2 turns to research, and i didn't even had universities and stuff that i could have built in peacetime. It was the year 900 when i had gunpowder and military tradition, without any tech beeline.

From my experience, your emphasis on the military is a bit lost because of the too fast tech progression. Many things add to research now (better specialists, bigger cities, everything is more productive) and that may require a larger tech cost adjustment.

As with regards to suggestions, please be more specific so we can suggest on those issues that you are willing to change.

Good feedback. I will definitely look into increasing medieval-and-up technology cost.

Glad you finally had a big war. I dont actually have a specific area I am looking for suggestions on. I have been enjoying the past several games with the mod, though I do see a need for some increased tech cost later on.

Ok Im playing a game with this mod right now,I have some early feedback for you regarding the early game. Overall I like the changes but needs tweaking.

You got the big army capability down; Im churning out massive armies loaded with every specialist (siege,melee,archery,cavalry). However, something is occurring beyond reduced maintenace costs. My production and food are way out of whack on the up side. Ive never seen a tile produce more than a loaf of bread and more than a bag of gold plus some produciton all at the same time; espeically not in the classical era. It appears that because I like to load up and link up every resource within 50 miles, I am getting insane bonuses to my production/food.

This has left me with a massive score/tech lead over the computer. I have a score of over 1500 in 700 AD on Prince mode and my columns (8 man stacks) of Musketmen are starting to march out of my core production centers. Against this, the most powerful computer opponent has a stack of 5 Archers at his capital city (per my spy-scout) and a score of 496.

At start I blitzed the computer throwing all my production into Archers form the get go (build BArracks until get Archery tech); normally I can blitz 1-2 AIs before the tech differentials force me on the defensive. This time, I blitzed 5 AIs and could have kept going. THe power differentials between Archers and Warriors allowed me to do this ( I know the ratio is the same but the balance is different). On a side note, the changes you amde to Quechachas (INcan Warriors) make them scary in the early game.

The AI is somehow being impacted in terms of its decision making. I dont know where exactly, Ive seen it build some stacks 6-7 deep. Despite being on Aggressive though, the computer is not mobilizing the resources correctly. Its like they arent getting the same bonuses from the resources as I am. At start I poured my tech into military stuff so I couldnt use all the resources I conquered; but after my inital round of conquest, I grabbed the basics and had workers go out and get everything. Prior to the resources being active I was running a nasty deficit, struggling to keep up 40% Research; with resources I was at like 80%, making gold profit, and had 7 cities churning out nonstop units. I am thinking the resources are providing a large difference relative to the AI. Im not sure why.

THe overall impact is that the mod is much friendlier to large early empires than vanilla; it makes a domination strategy more viable than any other. Not sure if this was intended or not.

Also, some of the unit balances need to eb tweaked abit. For medieval and below, the Knight unit is overpowered. THere is not a single unit that was able to stop my Knights with 30% str promos. I was throwing Knights straight at Cities with out even bothering to haul up the Cats (espeically with the movement bonuses, the war goes so much faster). WHile realistic in terms of strength, I would suggest dramatically increasing the production cost of KNights. WHile a powerful force, they werent super common as large scale units due to cost.

Longbowmen vs Crossbowmen. Longbowmen are hands down better than Xbows in the mod. In vanilla they are fairly equal with Xbowmen being the more offensve versions. Here, Im not sure what the role of Xbowmen is; I have found I would almost always prefer a Longbowmen to an Xbow the way you have it setup.

Swordsmen are outdated by the time you get the tech listed. I got my Cats long before my Swordsmen. Could be just the way I do the tech tree is different, but Swordsmen really arent overpowered. They fill the role of early cats as a City takers for the Classical era.

SPearmen should get more of a bonus against mounted units. THey are useless agasint Knights as is, and they have a base strength higher than Chariots (so why bother?). In vanilla, a SPearman had a 50/50 chance of taking down a Knight; I always hurled my Spears at Knights. As is, SPearmen need some anti-mounted love or their anti-Mounted bonus become redundant.

Wonders:
The ORacle needs to be nerfed. It like 10x better than the other Wonders as it allows you to jump up fast into a higher level of tech. In vanaill,a its not so overpowered because there are other very useful wonders; but since you nerfed the other wonders, there is nothing that provides a comprable bonus. I always use this to grab a 20+ turn tech off an advnaced tech I jsut finished and then trade out with the AI to propel my tech well into the next era. Im usually very close to jumping into the next era beyond that; I went from Ancient to Medieval in like 30 turns. I dont even recall what happened during Classical times. ALternatively, consider adding some cool new bonuses to some of the nerfed wonders.

ON a different note, I would love to see you throw in some of the other mods into this one; several mods with new resources, alterantive religion rules, etc. have been put up. Note sure if its as simple as copying over into the assets folders or not, Ill get around to testing that aspect.

All in all, Im pretty happy with the mod, I find this more entertaining with lots of early wars vs the Tech Turtle model vanilla tries to enforce (I hate being forced to tech up all the way to Mech INfantry/MOdern Armor/SBs/JFs before having the resources to mass build heavy stacks). My only complaint is that the computer AI has been scripted to play Tech Tutrtle so even on ahrder difficulty settings all it does is advance faster (as opposed to putting up a good fight). A mod that would be to die for to combine with yours would be a new militant AI script mod; Ill keep my eyes out in case someone writes one.
Shouldnt be too difficult, the Desert War mod that comes with the game has a much better wartime focused AI (still needs refinement ot be more aggressive though).

I'll post more once I complete my current game. THanks for the ahrd work in putting this together.

D

Everyone should be aware that a cool little program called Mod-switcher can alow users to easily combine Mods together. It can be found here

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140188

Its not nessary for Mod authors to combine the latest hot Mods with their own. Users can simply download all the mods in question and merge them in any combination they desire. Another advantage will be that large mods such as this can stay modular and slim, rather then one big Amoeba of a Mod a cluster of seperate effects (roughly coresponding to the Bullet points of major changes) can be offered in a Package. The whole comunity will benifit from more flexibility and mod authors can more easily share and exchange their work. In additon Bug fixing and collisions are easily identified and corrected.

thank you for the link

I love your mod make pls for ver 152

I like your mod. MORE !!! :goodjob:

Mod gives errors on loading and it doesn't have marathon game speed, plz, add it :rolleyes: