RevolutionDCM is a BTS 3.17 merge of these mods:
Revolutions
Dales Combat Mod
Influence Driven War
Super Spies (for RevDCM)
Better BTS AI
Solver BTS patch plus variants (Dresdon thanks!)

This forum thread is intended for discussion of RevolutionDCM such as bugs, ideas for the future etc.

RevolutionDCM can be downloaded from:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8322

RevolutionDCM also has addon packs that may be downloaded from:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11402

RevolutionDCM Configuration is via XML in the file:
/RevolutionDCM/assets/XML/GlobalDefinesAlt.xml
Virtually all individual mod components can be turned on or off except for Super Spies and Better BTS.

Revolutions mod Configuration is via the file:
/RevolutionDCM/revolution.ini
And also within the custom game setting screen

Note: RevolutionDCM is not scenario compatible. It is designed for single player or perhaps multiplayer games.

Build notes:
------------
v0.97
- updated to Better BTS 0.45h
- included autolog.ini to disable autologging bugs if desired. Otherwise delete and BUG will regenerate a new ini.

v0.962:
- Fixed espionage culture bug in Better AI as per Dresdon report
- Recompiled the DLL for 50 civs as requested on the RevolutionDCM forum
- Included the latest makefile to compile this mod
- Included Jdog5000 patch to fix barbarian civ
- Included new more "BTS" looking spy promotion icons (thanks Lord Tirian)

v0.961:
- Updated to Revolution 1.65c

- Updated to BUG 3.5

- Autolog for tracking minor civs disabled due to incompatibility (assets/python/contrib/autologEventManager::onChangeWar(self, argsList)

- Rolled back the exotic and foreign advisor screens to the pre-BUG versions because of incompatibility with minor civs. Compatibility will be restored at a later point.

- Various small non fatal python bugs exists in BUG 3.5 regarding autologging. Suggest using autologging but turn off python error popups in CivilizationIV.ini. You can keep python logging to file turned on.

- Core RevolutionDCM now contains Super Spies 1.3 by default and this mod is thus no longer an addon.

- Be sceptical about some of the DCM air bombing options such as active defense, air bombing, fighter engage. The better BTS AI is now a substantial upgrade on the aerial AI in many cases superceding DCM. Of course DCM options can still be turned off and on via XML.

- The Super Spies AI is very similar to Better BTS AI except that counter espionage is more diligently executed in SS and AI city poisonings have been reduced somewhat. See the docs/superspies readme file for a bit more detail.

- Extra espionage missions in Super Spies (assassinate and bribe) are turned off by default in order to preserve standard espionage. Again, see the docs/superspies readme for more information.

v0.951:
- Updated to Dresdon's unofficial BTS Solver patch 0.19.1
- Updated Revolution Inquisition to 1.04 and re-enabled it as an addon
- Enabled BTS 3.17 Next War as an addon incorporating both Super Spies 1.23 and Revolution Inquisition 1.04
- Addon packs seperated out as a seperate zip file available at the bottom of this post.
- Stealth destroyers cannot range bombard even though the text says they can. This is a DCM issue.

v0.95:
- Updated to Better BTS AI 0.36
- Updated user interface to BUG 3.0
- Updated Super Spies to Better BTS AI 0.36 and BUG, but omitted the espionage AI changes because this specialised area is covered by TSheep already.

v0.94:
- Updated to DCM 1.7

I should acknowledge the merge tools used for this mod, Winmerge, Codeblocks, VC 2008, as well as Microsoft VCToolKit and the Platform SDK.

The "issues" that this latest build (0.962) have are:
1) Stack attack can still occasionally loose control of the interface for the user
2) Stack attack sometimes induces ranged bombard units like treb's to have excess success rates
3) Stack attack seems to induce an opportunity fire effect with ranged bombard units even if opp fire is off
4) Archer bombard is still potentially unbalanced
5) Any or all of the disabled options can be re-enabled but there is a risk of unbalanced game play or a CTD
6) DCM RtW is not implemented
7) Multiplayer mode might not work
8) BUG ini file has been renamed to RevolutionDCM.ini
9) Minor Civ handling in the BUG civ scoreboard is not Revolution mod equivalent. Minor Civs do not display until they become full civs and are contactable. This behaviour might be addressed at a latter stage.
10) Stealth destroyers cannot range bombard even though the text says they can. This is a DCM issue.
11) DCM air options could possibly be turned off because default AI behaviour is now better.
12) Non fatal Python bug in BUG 3.5 means that python warning popup's should be turned off until the issue is resolved. You may want to keep the supplied autolog.ini because it reduces some very low urgency python errors for this bug component that do not impede game progress. The suggestion is to turn off python popups with HidePythonExceptions = 1 in CivilizationIV.ini. A good idea is to copy across your own BUG 3.5 ini files so that you do not have to reconfigure the interface by hard.

To change any options in this mod:
1) edit the file: \RevolutionDCM\assets\xml\GlobalAltDefines.xml
2) Revolutions options can be changed via \RevolutionDCM\Revolution.ini or within the custom screen.
3) BUG options can be changed via the \RevolutionDCM\RevolutionDCM.ini file or CTRL-ALT-O in game.

[B]To install an addon follow the readme with included with the the addon or follow this guide:
If an addon is redded out it means you haven't installed it properly:

1) Copy RevolutionDCM_xxxbts317.zip into your mod folder and delete any RevolutionDCM folder already there.
2) Right click on the zip and select "extract here"
3) Once extracted, right click on the addon zip and select "extract here"
4) It will ask to overwrite and you select "yes to all"
5) This procedure is not compatible with games in progress. You will have to start a new game.

Basically what it is doing is manually overwriting every single file in the RevolutionDCM folder, that is required for an addon to work. If you follow this procedure, the addon will show up as green when you start a new game or you will notice that the addon has changed the launch screen.

Good Idea!! Particularly helpful for modders who would like to get both comps intos their mods. It is also nice for those who might like playing both comps without the trophies that come with a full modpack.

Will a download link be available soon, or are you still working on the merge?

Good Idea!! Particularly helpful for modders who would like to get both comps intos their mods. It is also nice for those who might like playing both comps without the trophies that come with a full modpack.

Will a download link be available soon, or are you still working on the merge?

Good point on the download link! There is now a download link in my first post of this forum. Be wary about using this mod. It is a beta only with very limited testing and may not work in contexts other than single player.

Enjoy!

This is perfect. I was looking for a mod just like this. I commend you for a good job.

This is perfect. I was looking for a mod just like this. I commend you for a good job.

Thanks and trust that you enjoy it. You commend me, but I commend Jdog5000, Dom Pedro II, Dale and Bhruic. They are the brains and the one's to be commended, not me. I have only the instinct that a combat mod such as Dale's would compliment Revolutions and thus compliment BTS, without detracting from any of them. It would be impossible for me to return to vanilla BTS after playing Revolutions and DCM.

Please feel free to direct my attention to any obvious merge bugs.
Cheers.

Sounds like a good combo, glider1. Did you include all the features of Revolution - I mean the full mod? I'm looking to include just the revolution bits, but I don't know if that's possible.

Sounds like a good combo, glider1. Did you include all the features of Revolution - I mean the full mod? I'm looking to include just the revolution bits, but I don't know if that's possible.

The perspective is that the Revolutions Mod is actually the base of this merge so all code and assets in Revolutions are included, even the game customisers. I have absorbed Dale's combat mod as a battle enhancement addon and excluded all Dale's game customisers.

It would definetly be possible to do another mod of this mod which excludes all of the Revolutions customisers as well, although it would take a little attendence to detail because you probably have to exclude both c++ code and python code from the python assets as well in order for nothing to complain. You could discuss this in the Revolutions forum if you wanted.

If you have played Revolutions, I think it's primary aim is as an enhancement of BTS stock play, and is not really a scenario mod, although I guess it could be artificially configured as one to suit particular aims.

Cheers.

So far there do appear to be bugs in the DCM mod version 1.3 component of this modpack. Stack attack, archer bombardment and a couple of the bomber missions are flawed in small ways. Refer to the DCM website for more details.

When RevolutionDCM loads it doesn't indicate which components of DCM are active, however you can still activate and deactivate individual DCM components using the GlobalDefinesAlt.xml file which is found in:
/MODS/RevolutionDCM/Assets/XML/GlobalDefinesAlt.xml

Cheers.

The only issue so far detected is that large late game field stack attacks seem to cause CTD's. Typical world builder field test stacks are 4xinf, 4xsam, 4xmarines, 4xcav, 4xtank, 4xartillery, 4xhelicopter verses the same enemy stack, each stack on grassland.

For precisely this crackup stack attack was removed from Merged Mod, I believe.;)

Mmm... I didn't remove the code, but I've suggested to use Stack Attack with caution, in particular in multiplayer games. I've switched it off personally, but that's more to do with the weird bug involved with air units.

Which version of BTS is this for? I am getting an XML load error

"Failed loading XML file xml\Civilizations/CIV4TraitsInfos.xml. [.\FXml.cpp:133] Error parsing XML File -

File: xml\Civilizations/CIV4TraitsInfos.xml
Reason: Ellement content is invalid according to the DTD/Schema.

Expecting: {x-schema:CIV4CivilizationsSchema.xml}iHappiness.

Line: 14,17
Source: <iMaxAnarchy>-1</iMaxAnarchy>

Which version of BTS is this for? I am getting an XML load error

BTS 3.13 sorry about that. Just assumed everybody would be on latest version. :rolleyes:

Sorry, I too should have said I was using BTS 3.13. I get the exact same error with the World of Civilization mod as well. However others are fine eg "History in the Making", TAM and so on.

Just in case any one is interested I've attached a couple of updates to the foreign and domestic advisor screens that I have written to provide more information very useful to playing Revolutions.

The Foreign Advisor now has a "change" tab which indicates the change in relations between all and any civ you have come in contact with since you last viewed the screen. This is very handy for keeping up to date on civ relations when there are large numbers of civs such as in Revolutions which sometimes can mean a 30x30 relationship matrix to stay in touch with!

The Domestic Advisor now adds information to the food column to indicate how many turns are left before a city is due next to grow. The amount of turns is in brackets next to the food number and mimics the same behaviour as the culture column. This is very handy for the Revolutions mod when you have a large number of cities on "the edge" and you don't want them to inadvertantly fall into ill health or unhappiness.

Installation is simply a matter of copying them into the screens folder of the mod. Read the readme for a little bit more detail. I'll be incorporating the screens into the next release of RevolutionDCM.

Have you thought of incorporating the BUG mod. The Civ4lert component of it alerts you if a city is going to grow on next turn indicating in particular if it will become unhappy, or unhealthy. Other components are nice in general.

This is not to say that your innovations for foriegn and domestic advisors are not good. They would actually be very nice if added to what the BUG advisors have.

Thanks for the tip. I'm trying to keep this merge tight but you have well observed that the Bug mod isn't that big an "overhead" it seems. I'll check it out in more detail when I do the next merge build. I'm just waiting for Dale to release DCM 1.4. What is it with the claims about the Bug mod fixing the graphics even unit graphics?
Cheers and thanks.

Not to complain, but I can't download this-"ERROR: File not found."

Would you mind reuploading this? DCM is good, revolutions is good, so a combination sounds great.

Not to complain, but I can't download this-"ERROR: File not found."

Would you mind reuploading this? DCM is good, revolutions is good, so a combination sounds great.

I am getting the same problem.

A lot of stuff was lost last week when the upload server was hacked. Can someone please upload this again? Thanks.

I am getting the same problem.
Just uploaded a slightly updated version of RevolutionDCM with the interface changes I highlighted in post 15. The versions of Revolutions and DCM are unchanged. I'm waiting for Dale's next release version 1.4
Cheers.

Uploaded again with version 0.31. Version 0.3 had some of the "buggy" components of DCM disabled. They are all re-enabled again in 0.31. Dales implementation of "archer bombardment", air bomber missions and stack attack are not absolutely perfect as of version 1.3. Ranged bombardment, intercept, battle effects and opportunity fire are pretty darn good except battle effects can sometimes persist too long in rare cases.
Cheers.

Hey glider,

This is great of you to put these together. What version of Revolutions is currently included? Jdog recently released version 1.4, will this be updated to include it if it has not been already?

Thanks.

Hey glider,
This is great of you to put these together. What version of Revolutions is currently included? Jdog recently released version 1.4, will this be updated to include it if it has not been already?
Thanks.

Thanks for that Amra. Yeah it's a superb combination, Revolutions and DCM. As it stands now both versions are 1.3. As soon as Dale get's 1.4 working, I'll merge with Jdog's latest and upload.

I recommend playing on Terra maps. That way you get to enjoy Jdog's great innovations on barbarian civs, with minor civs popping up as well in the new world. It is a great map type for Revolutions.

I'm currently into about 350 turns of normal speed game and as it stands the mod is great. There is an interesting "phenomenon" that I would love Jdog to incorporate into Revolutions but that would be pointless without DCM. Because of DCM's battle field effects, you can get into an interesting situation where two warring civs fight a war on your territory damaging the country around one of your cities for many turns. If you as leader did nothing about it by breaking up the fight between them, your citizens in that city should be entitled to revolt I think. They could hypothetically overthrow your rule in that city and close borders with the two warring parties, using a newly spawned rebel leader that makes the decision about open border policies and stops the warring. However this cannot happen in reality because the Revolutions code is not aware of DCM (yet). I should talk to Jdog about it.

Whatever even now in version RevolutionDCM0.2 it adds an unexpected strategy yet again, do you stop the war because of the battle field damage by closing borders with the two warring parties? It can hit your own productivity pretty hard.

Cheers.

@glider1

This sounds like an exciting game indeed! I have a lot of fun playing Rev1.4 and I am glad your adviser screens were included there. I guess you also suggested including civ4lerts, so thanks a lot for this. I am looking forward for your next release of the combined 1.4 version of both mods.

@Amra

As Glider said Revolution really shines on Terra maps. For best results start with less than the default number of civ for the map size. On huge map start with only 4 or 6 then watch the old world gets alive and filled with new civs. One even better way to experience Revolution in action is playing one of the maps jdog adapted for the mod. They are found here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=259824

Thanks glider1 & Kalimakhus for the info. :goodjob:

@glider1
I've had some requests (including from kalimakhus) to merge my modpack with both Revolution & DCM and I was wondering if I could use your next version that would include DCM 1.4 and combine it with my Basic modpack that is out now. With big credit to you in my forum, of course. :D

That would save me a lot of effort and, I'm sure, head banging against the wall frustration. :wallbash: Thanks in advance.

Thanks glider1 & Kalimakhus for the info. :goodjob:
@glider1
I've had some requests (including from kalimakhus) to merge my modpack with both Revolution & DCM and I was wondering if I could use your next version that would include DCM 1.4 and combine it with my Basic modpack that is out now. With big credit to you in my forum, of course. :D

That would save me a lot of effort and, I'm sure, head banging against the wall frustration. :wallbash: Thanks in advance.

Yeah no problem. RevolutionDCM was pretty much intended to be kept tight for such a purpose as you describe. Remember I'm just the hack. The real champions are Jdog, Dom Pedro II, Dale, Bhruic etc.

The one thing I have to remember is to keep RevolutionDCM tight. I have been tempted to include "Better Ship Scale" because I think it does a much better job at rendering ship scale than vanilla. However that might end up polluting other mods when it is incorporated in large "scale mods" such as yours. I guess if you wanted you could retrofit RevolutionDCM and remove "Better Ship Scale" if it clashes with yours. What do you think?

Yeah, I'm looking forward to Dale's 1.4 release. Jdog releases much more regularly.

Cheers.

I'd love for this mod to include the Influence Driven Combat mod :D

I played 1 game so far as the Holy Romans. It's 1975 or so and there is a raging war against Arabia. It looks like a world war with all of the accumulated vassals on both sides. Initially there were only.. 9 civs, but now it's up to around 24 with all the revolutions :) I didn't really appreciate the impact of DCM until the Arab's produced a stack with 18 artillery units in it. Talk about unstoppable!!! While sitting outside of 1 of my cities I tried bombarding them with my 2 arty units.. the counter battery fire nearly wiped out all of my defenders :( Needless to say they took the city, so I've been largely ignoring them and instead taking out his Eastern vassals.

Oh, and a big difference vs graphics intensive mods (eg Amra's BtS Basic), no "out of memory" problems :) Keeping fingers crossed..

1 change I will suggest is to reduce the potency of balloons. They are overpowered to begin with, but DCM makes it even worse with the support they provide. Isn't there supposed to be a max collateral damage limit? In DCM there really can be a "killer stack", so I think part of using DCM has to be better tuning of units with bombardment.

Oh, and a big difference vs graphics intensive mods (eg Amra's BtS Basic), no "out of memory" problems :) Keeping fingers crossed


You raise a good point there. At least this merge keeps all the best game play of BTS while still being playable for people with two year old machines and without broadband connections (My game is in the modern era with 28 nations and is sucking just over a gig of ram....Therefore older machines would need at least 1.5 gig).......

On the artillery stack, I take it you had no cavarly......

On the airship and bombardment observation, post that on the DCM forum. You may have a point.......

Cheers.

glider,

from your merging experience what is changed in the civilization and unitinfos.xml? I want to merge this with my personal mod which uses varietas delectat.

Thx

glider,
from your merging experience what is changed in the civilization and unitinfos.xml? I want to merge this with my personal mod which uses varietas delectat.
Thx

Between BTS and RevolutionDCM there's at least a dozen real changes to do with air units especially bombers and the addition of an A-bomber. The merge with delectat shouldn't be too bad although I'm not familiar with it.

It would be nice to combine RevolutionDCM with delectat, another quality mod. Are you aware that there exists such a merge already?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=8227

Cheers

Thx glider,

Yeah I have VDRN but I'm not really a next war guy and it adds some other stuff to. My personal mod was based off of VD and has some other stuff aded (especially all my leaderheads) so I'm hoping to add RevDCM to it. though I may have to start fresh.

though I may have to start fresh.

The good news is that the Revolutions component of RevDCM doesn't interfere with any unit definitions and the DCM component only stuffs around with the unit definitions a little. I'm only guessing but VD would not stuff around at all with the C++ DLL (assumption) and only adds to the assets like XML etc (assumption). VD wouldn't even stuff around with Python would it? If that's the case, then if you WinMerge compared VD with RevDCM, WinMerge should really only be reporting a heap of changes to the XML and other assets (assumption)!

If VD only stuffs with the unitinfos.xml file even better, then you could just do a merge of RevDCM unitinfos into VD unitinfos and then copy all VD's assets and unitinfos.xml back into RevDCM and you'd be done. :crazyeye: That would be achievable in an hour of work?

If I had a better internet connection I'd knock up a version for both of us because I think VD would be nice with RevDCM, but that won't happen when the only connection I've got to the internet is via a mobile phone!:blush:

Cheers.

glider!,

When I attempt the merge I'll list all the changes for everyone. Just to help those that want to merge additional stuff too.


PS DAle released DCM 1.5

It lists Revolutions 1.3. What about 1.4 update?

glider,

i 've looked through VD 3.6 and your mod. I think your unitinfos.xml can replace the vd one with no problem and the vd unitartdefines can replace yours except for the missing atomic art defines that needs to be added at the end (VD uses the better ship scale which I prefer). Over the next few days I'll attempt a merge and let you know how it goes.

glider, Over the next few days I'll attempt a merge and let you know how it goes.

I'll have out a new RevolutionDCM in the next day or two which will updated for DCM 1.5 and Revolutions 1.4. It's currently compiling now and just needs some basic testing.

Cheers.

Sweet...now all I need is Amras combined with the latest update of your mod, Glider and I'll have CIV V!

I'll have out a new RevolutionDCM in the next day or two which will updated for DCM 1.5 and Revolutions 1.4. It's currently compiling now and just needs some basic testing.

Cheers.

:cool: When you release i'll attempt a nerge and post what needs to happen.

I hate to say it but this mod is no longer fun.....

It is STUPENDOUS FUN!!! A combination of intrigue and mayhem on a massive scale. The game is too good now. It has become ridiculous....

Dale has definetly improved his mod again, and it is more stable including stack attacks (still a report of a CTD but better so far it seems). Do a large modern era stack attack, sit back and enjoy the mayhem :D. If you don't end up with a smile on your face you better go see a shrink.... ;)

Of course, Jdog and Dom Pedro have done a simply superb job yet again. Revolutions is an indispensible realism addon to civ, extremely clever, beautifully coded and stable.

Three cheers for the big brains of modding!

WoooooooooooooW!
I just started the game yesterday and you have already released the update o_O.
Thank you for so fast and good work =).

:rolleyes: DCM 1.5 seems to have some critical bugs. Be carefull!

I found it, nevermind

My idea of current perfection would be to combine RevolutionDCM
with Chiyu's fabulous Extra 3.13i MOD
Anyone have any luck? I've been using winmerge, have a little programming experience but can't get a working copy, yet, and would love a working copy.
I'd settle with a good merge with JKP1187's NOT JUST ANOTHER NEXTWAR MOD.
It would be great if some of you guys would team up. Thank you for all you guys do!

I have a strange bug - no interface while playing the new version. It looks the same like when I pressed the "H", but I don't press anything.

I have a strange bug - no interface while playing the new version. It looks the same like when I pressed the "H", but I don't press anything.

Did you by chance try to replace the dll with one of Dale's DLLs that allows more civs? If you do this (I also tried) then the game loads but you get no interface. I had to get rid of Dale's higher DLL and get back the revolutionDCM dll.

I hope that helps.

I'd like to share my first game with the updated Mod. Holy @#$%! I started on a Large Terra Map with Raging Barbs and Aggressive AI on Prince level and chose Brennus. Oh, and I purposefully reduced the total civ count to 10, hoping to see some minor civs etc...

The Barbs are rediculous! Thank God I built the Great Wall!

It's only about 300 AD or so, I expanded like crazy, and started getting revolution warnings when I got to around 6 cities under Despotism. Slavery is a big kicker in the Revolution warning, fyi, so avoid as long as possible. First, the rebels wanted Budica, then they wanted Napolean, and when I rejected them this time, I had 4 cities revolt! Napolean's Archers showed up around those cities, and it was all I could do just to hold them off.

Napolean at one point had 3 of my cities! 3! Which left me with 4 cities, and two of them were locked in a struggle to hold off Napolean's Archers. Archers are very strong in DCM by the way.

I had to switch to Slavery to pump out some military units just to keep from being over run! Slowly but surely, I was able to build a small army of Archers, Axemen, and a couple Horse Archers, and as my State Religion is Christianity...I set about doing God's work restoring and reuniting my people. :evil:

The revolution or civil war lasted for nearly 400 years of game time! However, I did eventually conquer the French upstarts and am now rebuilding my infrastructure and trying to get to Monarchy ASAP so I can switch out of Despotism.

Elsewhere in the World, Charlemagne has risen as the leader of a Minor Civ, there are two civs in the New World, and the Egyptians must have had a revolt, but with only the one city, they were taken out by the Revolutionary forces of the Ethiopians.

What a mess :evil:

Let me tell you that on Prince, the RevolutionDCM mod plays like Emperor.

Very nice challenge indeed!

I just have unpacked the contents of new zip in a new folder. That's weird...

I just have unpacked the contents of new zip in a new folder. That's weird...

Try unpacking it in your desktop, then cut the folder, then past it into your BTS/Mods directory, see if that works.

It's not working.
The main problem is that I don't even get the "aiautoplay on; barbarianciv on; ..." popup window. Thus I don't have a "dawn of man" window and such. Everything is at its place.
I reverted back to the 0_31 and it's fine.
There should be something about versions compatibility broken. I have a pure english BTS 3.13 with no additional patches applied.
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5397/civ4screenshot0000hw2.th.jpg (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0000hw2.jpg)

It's not working.
The main problem is that I don't even get the "aiautoplay on; barbarianciv on; ..." popup window. Thus I don't have a "dawn of man" window and such. Everything is at its place.
I reverted back to the 0_31 and it's fine.
There should be something about versions compatibility broken. I have a pure english BTS 3.13 with no additional patches applied.
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5397/civ4screenshot0000hw2.th.jpg (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0000hw2.jpg)

Very weird...I have BTS 3.13 also. I deleted the previous version of revolutionsDCM prior to install of new version of the Mod...did you do that also?

For sure, many times ). I tried it in different ways...
P.S. Civfusion which merges DCM 1.3 and Revolutions 1.4 along with other things has the same problem for me... Must be something with merging the latest versions of the DCM and Revolutions...

P.S. I've found it... Revolutions 1.4 mod ruins the pathfinding of the game and it cannot be played in russian Windows.

I'd like to share my first game with the updated Mod. Holy @#$%! I started on a Large Terra Map with Raging Barbs and Aggressive AI on Prince level and chose Brennus.

Nice combination of settings for a suitably chaotic game well done! Raging barbs is particularly nasty in some situations but "aggressive ai" doesn't necessarily mean total war. My game it just means "grumpy uncooperative and standoffs". Cool.
Cheers.

:rolleyes: DCM 1.5 seems to have some critical bugs. Be carefull!

Yeah I'd be interested to know what the worst of them are. I'm assuming that stack attack can cause CTD's, that archer bombardment might be unbalancing and that some of the bomber missions are unbalancing too. However these are just assumptions.

At least you can turn options off. That's cool. Even having ranged bombardment or battle effects is worth it.

Cheers.

For sure, many times ). I tried it in different ways...
P.S. Civfusion which merges DCM 1.3 and Revolutions 1.4 along with other things has the same problem for me... Must be something with merging the latest versions of the DCM and Revolutions...

P.S. I've found it... Revolutions 1.4 mod ruins the pathfinding of the game and it cannot be played in russian Windows.

That seems like a good find Deon. Could you pass that onto the bugs forum of Revolutions?

The order of debugging merges is that if it crashes on load or during the game it's most likely the DLL. If the interface is missing but the game loads thats most likely Python. If you are technologically inclined you could enable Python logs and debugging to find the source of Python related bugs that can occur in a mod.

Cheers.

I have 2 python exceptions on start, they were not in the prev. version of your mod so I think they are the problem. Also I get the same exception errors with the clean Revolutions 1.4. I've posted this in the rev. bug thread and I hope it can e fixed... You know, it's hard to fix something that runs smoothly on your machine. Because I don't want to lose this part of civ4 :(.

Archers are a tad strong, but if they weren't then Barbarians aren't something you fear. Also, it makes you consider researching Archery, and finally, Archers were strong units throughout history. Name one major battle where they weren't featured in history (prior to knights and gunpowder)?

I haven't experienced the bombing mission yet, as I start new games allot, because the beginning is the most fun for me up through the middle ages.

Bombers can't kill units outright (is this still correct?) but they do allot of "shock" as well as "real" damage. Can you imagine hunkering down in your trenches, getting carpet bombed for a few hours prior to a massive land assault??? If you survive, odds are that many in your group wont or if they do, then they could be seriously injured or mentally too shocked to mount much of a defensive effort. Artillery (ever since the days of Archery) and then later Bombardment (Catapults, Cannons, Bombers...) have been pinnacle force multipliers in every major land engagement. You could tweak Archer damage from bombardment perhaps and you could reduce "accuracy" but I wouldn't remove it, nor would I weaken them much than they are now.

Raging Barbs with DCM is a bit much though, and without the Great Wall, your empire can be under allot of pressure, especially if you play on a map that you setup to load up the barbs in hopes of seeing new civs spring up from the ashes.

To me, inducing chaos is what this mod is all about. Glider1 is right about Aggressive AI making the AI less amenable to you, and not necessarily a stronger military opponent, especially on the higher game difficulty settings. However, Raging Barbarians is a serious challenge increase on a large map that is sparcely populated.

I just started a game this morning as Alexander with a large map, low water level on Continents with only 10 AI preset. This way, technically, the starting continent should be even more sparcely populated. I'm on Monarch and in Normal speed, at around 1650BC or so, I only have two cities, am working on the Great Wall, and have killed 3 Barbarian Archers already. There are no civs to the North of my start...and there's allot of land up there on my continent...should be fertile ground I think...for chaos!

This mod really does bring some excitement back to the game. I hope Deon's issue does get sorted out. Hopefully, Revolutions will come out with a fix.

To merge with Varietas Delectat I did this and it worked.

- DL'd VD3.6 and created a separate folder for it in mods
- modified RevDCM.ini to have modular loading set to 1
- copied the fpk files in VD/assets and put it in the matching RevDCM/Assets
- copied the VD/assets/modules folder and put in the corresponging RevDCM/assets/ folder
- then I merged the attached text files. I have created a zip of the ones I merged or copied over from VD3.6 - started a game and looks like no problem. The part I was concerned about was that I copied the formations over but not VD's unit.xml but I'm not sure what the changes were, but the game started normally and I played a few turns. If we run into problems we'll have to do merging of these two files - probably adding dale's new xml tags to the vd unit.xml.

@EKmek

Two files do actually need to be merged rather than copied over from VD to RevolutionDCM. The unitInfos.xml and artdefines_unit.xml. I merged both files. You may like to include them in the zipped xml folder for others to use.

@glider

The modified default number of players per map size might be good for DCM as it almost forces intensive war so early. It however may defeat the purpose for Revolution as it leaves no space for barbs to have cities and doesn't allow civs to expand early and get large enough for revolutions to start kicking in. Actually for best experience with Revolution it is recommended to start the game with less players than the default number, and allow the world to get filled with new civs spawning through either rebellious factions or barbs cities.

The problem in the CvPath.py.
If the game isn't installed in the default folder (i.e. I can't do it due the disck structure) some of the interface isn't loading (it's from alerts mod in revolutions 1.4 I guess).
I tried to place the old cvpath.py in the python folder for the revolutions 1.4, and it works.
Fix it please if you have a time.

@EKmek

Two files do actually need to be merged rather than copied over from VD to RevolutionDCM. The unitInfos.xml and artdefines_unit.xml. I merged both files. You may like to include them in the zipped xml folder for others to use.

You have "CIV4UnitInfos.xml.BAK" in the zip folder. Is it intentional?

@Kalimakhus

is that bak a back up or should it replace the file? I did copy the artdefines entry for the atomic bomber did i miss something else for DCM?

thx fo rthe help.



@EKmek

Two files do actually need to be merged rather than copied over from VD to RevolutionDCM. The unitInfos.xml and artdefines_unit.xml. I merged both files. You may like to include them in the zipped xml folder for others to use.

@Ekmek

Sorry, I didn't notice you did that. I made my merge separately. In this case only the units xml file I provided should be needed. There are some modifications in the VD version of this file that worth having.

@Glider

I merged RevolutionDCM as an Add-On for Rise of Mankind (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=238801). Thanks a lot for making this possible and easier. :goodjob:

The add-on can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9087

@Glider

I merged RevolutionDCM as an Add-On for Rise of Mankind (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=238801). Thanks a lot for making this possible and easier. :goodjob:

The add-on can be found here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=9087

Thanks. The merge still does take me a few hours to make happen properly so appreciate it. I'm glad it works too! Relative to a game of civ (game I'm playing now has been going for 100 hours), modding time is just a drop in the civ "time consuming but fun" ocean :)

As for Deon, once it clarifies exactly what needs to happen regarding the Python error, I'll post a fix.

Archers are a tad strong...
I haven't experienced the bombing mission yet...
Raging Barbs with DCM is a bit much though, and without the Great Wall...
To me, inducing chaos is what this mod is all about.....
I just started a game this morning as Alexander with a large map, low water level on Continents with only 10 AI preset......
This mod really does bring some excitement back to the game...


At least it looks like the outright bugs in archer bombardment are gone if you have gotton through looks like two early games with this mod. That's good.

As for bombing missions etc, I haven't actually played a late game yet either with this latest release. However during testing of it on autoplay, I noticed that it seems more stable and just possibly, better utilised by the AI (only a vague perception). At this stage I'm inclined to leave these options on.

Raging barbarians. Wooow. Heavy. The other issue is that minor civs are immune to the Great Wall aren't they? This seems to make the whole issue about barbarian defense more complicated....

You probably are already aware that Terra maps are an exceptionally good option? That way you get to play two different map styles in the one game. A crowded old world and a new world that is left to the barbarians...

Yeah the enjoyment levels have definetly gone up. Revolutions is very cool. Late game you even get "Osama Bin Laden" effects happening. If you conquer a nation, a guerilla uprising can happen led by the conquered leader. These guerilla's have no territory it seems and can even dissapear from view. You have to get them because they incite civil unrest in the conquered territories that are still loyal to the guerillas. But because they have no territory they are hard to track down and cause a lot of Revolution troubles!

Such a beauty. Just be careful on your health and your social life. You have to learn how to balance civ with the rest of your life otherwise it can become a serious addiction issue worse than alcohol!

Cheers.

@glider

The modified default number of players per map size might be good for DCM as it almost forces intensive war so early. It however may defeat the purpose for Revolution as it leaves no space for barbs to have cities and doesn't allow civs to expand early and get large enough for revolutions to start kicking in. Actually for best experience with Revolution it is recommended to start the game with less players than the default number, and allow the world to get filled with new civs spawning through either rebellious factions or barbs cities.

You probably know about Terra maps? Very cool. Good point with the various starting options. There are many starting possibilities with Revolutions! I know someone who is achieving fun games starting only with themselves and domination victory turned off!

Terra - Huge - 4 to 6 Starting civs. These are my best settings for revolution. They gave me a couple of exciting full of action games. Raging Barbs? Well, if you got a solid heart. Tried it twice and out lived it once.

Let's not forget the earth map JDog prepared based on Rhye's map. With 4 civs starting it is quite fun. I recommend it for everybody.

i saw that the revolutinion.ini and the DCM.ini files have differnt options but the RevolutionDCM.ini doesn't have those. does that mean it won't work right? (the game started fine, but that doesn't mean the mod is working as intended)

i saw that the revolutinion.ini and the DCM.ini files have differnt options but the RevolutionDCM.ini doesn't have those. does that mean it won't work right? (the game started fine, but that doesn't mean the mod is working as intended)

Civ seems to automatically generate the ini files. The RevolutionDCM ini file is useless and can be ignored I think that even goes for the DCM ini file. This does not not apply to the Revolutions ini file! That one is packed with stuff. Dales real configuration file is the XML file you probably already know about.
Cheers.

Terra - Huge - 4 to 6 Starting civs. These are my best settings for revolution.

That was my choice for a long time. Just start with four to six of the ancient civs every game (Egypt etc etc) and then watch the others spawn. You then have some traceability and can see how the ancient civs progress compared to the spawned civs. I'm currently doing twelve nations on a huge Terra map to start out with on aggressive ai. I kinda like the chance for a bit of crowding early on....

Aggressive ai has to be an important consideration for one fact. Corporations. Once you learn how to manage corporations, the human player has a huge advantage over the AI late game because of corporate resource trading the AI doesn't fully comprehend. With aggressive AI turned on, the AI is generally more difficult to trade with. This makes the hoarding of corporate friendly resources difficult to achieve because the AI's are simply less likely to trade because of their uncooperative approach to diplomacy. Thus the benefits of corporations are significantly more difficult for the human to exploit.

Aggressive ai has to be an important consideration for another reason. The space race. I think late game the ai's are just not real good at organising the space race compared to a human. However with aggressive ai on, the AI is generally very well prepared militarily if it needs to use it. The military pressures are so high, that it forces the human to have to divert production to military just for the sake of the *potential* for war. Thus the space race too is more difficult for the human to pull off and is more time consuming. Also, armies are expensive and this makes the end game just more difficult generally. I'm referring to Monarch level.

From my perspective, the main weakness of the AI is late game strategy. If I can make it more difficult for the human late game compared to the AI, that leads to better games....

Aggressive AI is a pretty good option. Sometimes all it actually means is that a civ might have a bit more tendancy to declare on you. However often on the higher difficulty levels when the human is pushed to the limit on defense during the midgame, the AI does very well having a little bit extra tendancy to attack.

The main drawback of aggressive AI could be culture and domestic stability under Revolutions. I'm not 100% whether an AI will still attempt a culture win on aggressive AI. I think so but not sure. Culture is an important aspect for the AI to create stable large civs under Revolutions.

Definetly I can say that on aggressive AI the the AI will still go for a wonder victory, building cultural wonders for the sake of their magnificence. Now that is not overtly "aggressive" so it's a good sign for the aggressive ai option I think.

Whatever, plenty of chaos is fun.

Keep in mind that I don't play a lot of civ (yeah right!!!).....

I only roughly finish four games to the end each year (that's roughly 300-400 hours of play per year and two to three months per game). I basically try every which way I know how to win on Monarch no matter what the starting position is (that is probably impossible and tundra starts aren't much fun!) Never give up if you are in the top ten nations. Once the late game starts, you can catch up quite a few places. First place is the goal of course.

Cheers

PS) another great option is random personalities. After a while playing civ, it becomes more fun to try and second guess a leaders personality from their behaviour rather than know what it is straight up. Surprisingly, random personalities doesn't seem to detract too much from the AI's strength, and sometime by fluke, can make an AI very strong, stronger than vanilla.

Playing a game as the dutch, I've reached the late 17th Century, and so far all has gone smoothly as far as functionality is concerned. Suddenly, as end my turn just before I discover Rifling (linked? I know not) the screen goes black, the game closes and I get a 'Beyond the Sword has had to close' report. I tried reloading and playing through again, and still the same bug.

I have a fully functioning computer which meets recommended requirements, and I have never experienced such an error with mods before.

I hope you can help, this mod combines two of my favourite mods.

Here's a copy of a save just before the bug:

Tboy .. I assume that you tried reloading the game and still got the same error. Try to disable some parts of DCM in the GlobalDefinesAlt.xml. Start with Stack Attack and if doesn't work disable other components as well. In many cases you can proceed with your game.

I have to disable parts of it? Curses... hope it's a minor one. Thanks anyway.

After reloading to an earlier stage of the game and playing through, no error seems to have occurred. Must have been some irritating coincidence. Thanks very much for the advice though.

is it possible to choose the components to use? , is there a configuration file?

Thnaks for this add-on, it's super.:)

@dasvidania

For DCM you can turn parts on/off from GlobalDefinesAlt.xml file in Assets\xml\ folder. Open the file in notepad or better download the free Notepad++. Either case there is a tag for each component that enables or disables it. There are also some option for further tweaking how the components work.

For Revolution there is Revolution.ini file. The file has many options along with very detailed explanation of what they do. You can turn whole components off and on again and you can change the way they work in several ways.

@glider

Very nice write up!! Aggressive AI is supposed to cause the AI to build more units as a general rule. This is at least what Firaxis guys said about it in BTS. The AI will still seek to get cultural and spaceship victories.

On another side, Revolution 1.41 is out any ETA of the next RevolutionDCM. The new release solves several issues which promises more stable games.

As for Deon, once it clarifies exactly what needs to happen regarding the Python error, I'll post a fix.
Change the default path to the path from registry. That's all.

Thanks Kalimakhus ;)

I used Ranged Bombardment as add-on for Rise of Mankind and here i fund 2 button for ranged bombardement. One is for wall etc. and the otherone it damages unit.
With RevolutionDCM i have only one button and i can't damage unit (only if i attack directly the unit whit siege weapon for example).
Nice to use archer to bombard enemy. :goodjob:

good job!

Oops, I didn't notice there's 1.41 up =).
Anyway I manually fixed your issue in 1.4 and it's already fixed in 1.41.
But wait a bit, it looks like 1.41 have some bugs about options, read the bug thread.

Oops, I didn't notice there's 1.41 up =).
But wait a bit, it looks like 1.41 have some bugs about options, read the bug thread.

Will have to wait agree. Jdog is in the middle of redesigning Revolutions to be even better, and is being hit by a few "Python" issues in the last couple of releases since he incorporated the "BUG MOD".

Cheers.

@glider

Aggressive AI is supposed to cause the AI to build more units as a general rule. This is at least what Firaxis guys said about it in BTS. The AI will still seek to get cultural and spaceship victories.



That's good news thanks for that. The other "issue" about aggressive AI is the UN. After 100 hours into my current game, many AI's appear to stall on researching Mass Media and prefer military techs (there is a world war going on so kinda makes sense!). It's only the second place civ that has researched it. I've sold Mass Media around the globe to over twenty different civs and made a bucket load of gold out of it. It will be interesting to see what happens with the UN on aggressive AI.

The upside of an aggressive AI increasing it's military size is that it will be able to better quash rebellions. The down side is that the AI has to deal with financial problems....

On another issue regarding game options I'd be interested to get your thoughts. Last couple of games (four months duration!), I've gone for the start option of the standard eleven or twelve nations on a huge Terra map but on NORMAL speed not Epic or Marathon. The reasoning essentially is that a Terra map on huge with a standard number of nations is almost like a smaller size Continents map you would tend to play on Normal speed. This is because half the map is actually inaccessible until Astronomy.

The upside of normal speed on a huge Terra map are multiple. Game strategy is emphasised much more on a turn by turn basis. Offensive unit deployments, railroad construction and colonisation become more of an issue feeding back to more critical tactics. Games become much more thickly concentrated on a turn by turn basis (there is always something interesting happening every turn) and exploration directions and choices are much more critical as well.

Warfare is much more regionally based too (mainly between neighbours), because units can't travel as far because they have less turns to do and still be effective. This tends to be quite "realistic" to me and could quite possibly disincline the AI to declare ridiculous hypothetical wars (only a guess).

The downside of Normal speed on a huge Terra map with standard starting civs are two fold. It hypothetically favours the defender over the attacker because if an army has travelled a long way to begin it's attack, it might be obsolete by the time it starts and the defender can potentially build defensive units within a few turns.....

On this basis I'd probably reject normal speed if I were not playing Revolutions. However with Revolutions, the whole issue about invasion and conquering is much more difficult generally. You have to win the support of the conquered peoples and also crush nationalist uprisings. If you think of it in terms of what the AI has to do, it struggles to get that right more than a human does. So Revolutions tends to swing the game balance in the favour of humans once you learn how to deal with rebellions.

If however you play on Normal speed with the Revolutions mod, the defender is a little bit more advantaged relative to the attacker. This restores some of the balance to the Revolutions mod because AI invaders are more likely to fail with the invasion, which is probably in their interest because of the rebellions that will ensue that the AI cannot deal with anyway!!!

What I think I'm finding is that what actually pans out is that AI invasions fail more than fifty percent of the time, but they do get the benefits of wrecking their enemies economy and obtaining plunder etc which suits the AI's needs quite well. Occasionally they do even succeed in holding conquered lands long term....

The whole thing is about trying to make it harder for the human relative to the AI especially once you get to Monarch difficulty. Beyond Monarch, I think the game becomes a little stupid because the human always has to play excessive catch up exercises because of the AI's huge production and research advantage.

The other disadvantage of Normal Speed on a huge Terra Map is regarding colonisation. It can take fifteen turns or so for a galleon to sail all the way to the new world. This means colonial planning has to be done correctly. You have to prepare at least three galleons with workers, defenders, settlers to give the colony a chance when the investment in the journey time is so big. By the time modern transports come and especially air transport, the problem is simpler. Personally as far as my own experience has shown, it means that colonising abroad on normal speed has to be quite well thought out.

Perhaps this travel time disadvantage might favour the human over the AI and so slightly break the the idea unfortunately.... Time will tell. The experience I've had is that by the time you make it to the new world with all those galleons, the minor civs are already making solid progress in settling it, and so the prospect to build a big colony abroad is not that good unless you wage war. The AI on Monarch is still able to successfully colonise the new world especially along the coast lines so it seems ok. You'd have to compare the success of AI colonisation on marathon verses normal speed over many games.....

The last advantage of Normal speed is that you are doing less waiting around for turns to tick over. Because normal speed games are event rich turn by turn, it's even worth the investment in real time to sit back and watch all the enemy and friendly moves each turn.

Cheers.

PS) turn off time based 2050 victories if you really want to enjoy the late game....

Good analysis. I've been going back and forth between normal and marathon speeds myself ever since I started playing Civ4. I also had some interesting stops with the epic speed and I should say it is worth more attention. I feel it might be more balanced. I played with Revolution on earth map with 4 starting civs on epic speed and it was quite good.

Out of my experience normal speed generally puts the human player to a higher level of challenge. Terra maps make even a little more challenging and still Revolution will add yet a little bit as well. The rational behind it is that the human player has got an advantage that grows each turn. With more turns this advantage will make a wide gap early era-wise. On higher difficulties it means that the human will catch up quickly with the AI i.e. within ancient era. On normal speed the human player may not be able to catch-up before the Medieval era. At this time the AI has built large empire and is in a position to give the human player some hard time. In later stages it is also unlikely that you will be the first and only one who made it to the new-world. In some marathon games I would have built my third colonial city when an AI Caravel makes its first appearance in other have of the world. In my current game on normal speed I had to compete with two other civs for getting the bonus of being the first to prove earth is a globe. (BTW. I just have a thing for this race I have to win it in every terra game or I will be very sad and usually a civ that beats me to it will be annihilated in a nasty manner).

About time limit, I almost always win my games or abandon them (for being a sure win) before 1920. At some moment I am all rich and powerful that it is almost impossible to keep calm I just have to go wipe one AI after the other (If you played civ3 it just felt that they deserved it :lol:). It doesn't make a difference if one or more AI are powerful the modern era warfare is too complicated for them to win against the human player.

It doesn't make a difference if one or more AI are powerful the modern era warfare is too complicated for them to win against the human player.

Yes, you are probably right. It will take a lot of work on the AI to make it understand the modern era. That will come with time....

However, I'm not normally as wealthy as you by 1920 but am usually in the top five nations. The next 100 years is spent trying to claw up the final five places and ensure that an AI doesn't win the space race or cultural win. There's still a bit of challenge in the last 100 years if a top three AI DOWS on you and is already got a head start on the space race. This is another reason why aggressive AI can be a good option...

However you have to turn off the 2050 time limit win because this can really shut the game down arbitrarily in a handful of cases....It's a pity to play through 100 hours on a game to have it end "arbitrarily" especially when the score at 2050 is not necessarily a real reflection of how well the civ has done relative to others....

One thing is for certain. Normal speed certainly doesn't mean a game plays through quicker on RevolutionDCM because the complexity levels rise so quickly and there are so many things to do per turn, that you spend as much real time on a normal speed game as you do on a marathon game!

Cheers.

I also had some interesting stops with the epic speed and I should say it is worth more attention. I feel it might be more balanced.

I think Epic speed is the reference speed for Jdog's development of Revolutions and this could be why you are experiencing it as more balanced for Revolutions. However, Jdog has written the code to scale correctly to any speed.....

Cheers.

WOW...I had some time on my hands this weekend and would love to share my experience.

**I personally think that movement rates should increase with map size, but since they don't I don't play on Huge or larger maps, even Terra size Large should warrant unit speed increases.**

Game Settings: Monarch, Large Terra, Normal Speed 6 total Civs, Choose your religion, and everything else = default.

Starting Civs = Me (Holy Roman), Ramsess II (Egypt), Qin Shi Huang (China), Mansa Musa (Mali), Alexander (Greece), Montezuma (Aztec).

In Ancient times, the Malinesians have revolted many times, so have the Aztecs. A few minor civs have risen to become Kingdoms in the new world. There are now about 18 civs in my game, 5 are in the new world. I have had to aggressively trade techs and manage my sprawling empire (hit 20 million around 1300 AD).

It is currently in the early 1800's. I have now been in the #1 position for the last 100 years solid, but I am not leading the tech race, yet. I had lived in peace with China and Egypt, and between the three of us, we have held the top 3 spots since time imemmorial. The three of us have also been in heated competition for wonders, culture, economy, and religion. I founded Christianity (gunning for Meditation early on), and spread it to China and Egypt. However, Egypt founded Jewdaism soon after I began spreading Christianity, and by the early middle ages, Egypt was the Holy Center of the world with the Apostollic Pallace and 3/4s of the old world under Jewdaism as their state religion. I held onto my Christian faith. Through careful diplomacy and tech trading etc...I managed to stay on every one's good side (no doubt helped by not having Aggressive AI on).

Although I had joined in on a couple wars (I have been in a state of War with two small civs who revolted between Mansa and Monte for ever), my army never fired a short or struck a blow against an enemy. Until 1590 AD...

Mansa was racing up the tech tree, Qin was popping great scientists, merchants and engineers like no one's business, and Ramsess II was pissing me off. First off, did I mention that Qin and Ramsess shared my North and western borders? Ramsess' capital, Thebes, had 6 Great Wonders, including the Sistine Chapel, the Apistollic Palace, the Great Lighthouse, Chichinitza, and a couple others...and was challenging my cultural position in the world. Not to mention that his holy city of Heliopolis was also a major culture mecca.

It took me nearly 100 years to build a force that I was comfortable would take Thebes. (10 Galleons full of Trebs, Curiassers, Musketmen, and Crossbowmen) I also built several spies to help protect my border cities, and to aid in my initial assault. I had only just gotten to the point where I could build Grenadiers, but didn't have many of them, so stationed them in defensive positions along my border with Egypt. About the time I had managed to station my Armada of Doom outside of Thebes' cultural borders but within a one turn drop distance, Ramsess had finished Steel! I was still 5 turns away from Steel...Cannons could meen the end of any hope in crippling Egypt.

I had a spy stationed in Mempis, Ramsess' border city within 4 tiles of two of my own border cities, which I had made little more than military production and gathering centers. By a hugely fortuitous event, I had popped a Great Spy in the late 1400s, and had already used him to infiltrate Egypt.

It was now or never, basically, and Thebes already had twelve defensive units, approximately 4 of each of these: (a mix of Macemen, Longbowmen, and Crossbowmen - I don't know why he didn't have Musketmen). I DOW, used my spy to steal Steel tech (SWEET!!!), and dropped my troops in an adjacent tile, and stationed my Galleons in proximety to nearby peninsula cities to cut off some trade routes and protect my coastal cities from any emerging Egyptian naval units. I was also building some Frigates to help on the Naval side.

Turn one, IBT after drop and spy mission and blockade initiation, Egypt fortifies their three key cities, including Thebes, so now, I have to also deal with a few more trebs and a couple other defensive units. I bombard the city's defenses, knocking them down to nearly 20%...too high from my previous experience with DCM and the defensive mix in there...one more turn outside the walls...meanwhile, Egypt's fleet of galleys has managed to sink a few of my galleons! and a couple Caravels are in the waters now too!

Turn two, I maneuver my Galleons to take out a couple Caravels and protect the majority of them while a my new Frigate makes its way up. I bombard again and then launch all of my units into Thebes in a stack attack with over 8 Musketmen, 8 Curiassers, and 10 Crossbowmen...what a battle! One day, I am going to reload that save file and watch the battle in slow mode, lol. I didn't take the city...and of the assault forces, I only have 1 badly wounded Musketman, and 3 badly wounded Curiassers, and all of my Crossbowmen.

IBT, Egypt is sending in reinforcements, but none reach Thebes, and inside are three badly wounded Egyptian Longbowmen.

Turn three, my fleet has secured coastal supremacy and locked down the blockade of the three Egyptian cities most likely to launch a sea-born reprisal. The Apistollic palace announces a vote to end the war against Ramsess II! I say NO! I launch all of my units 10 trebs, 10 Crossbowmen and the wounded members of the first assault into Thebes! I am victorious with no casualties, but many of my crossbowmen are somehow moderately injured.

Outside of Thebes, Egypt has a Cannon, 2 Macement, and 2 Longbowmen, and 2 Crossbowmen stationed.

Turn four, IBT, a Revolt occurs! Two of the coastal cities that I was blockading are now Babylonian cities, with several longbowmen in them! Initially, I'm at peace, so my fleet is kicked out of the cultural borders, but in the same turn, Babylon accepts Egypt's terms of subjugation! So then, they DOW on me. I fortify my units in Thebes and start healing them up. I am starting to muster a second wave of invasion forces (still realing from the shocking casualties of my first wave.) I reposition my fleet now to blockade Babylon. Another new Frigate is on its way.

Turn 5, the Apistollic vote results come in...the War is over bah! I am building a new invasion force and mustering them in a border town waiting for an excuse...I go to peace with Babylon and Egypt.

Several turns later, I now have a new invasion force ready with Curiassers, and Grenadiers, and Cannons, and a handful of Crossbowmen, and several Musketmen as well.
**Military Science cuts production of Longbowmen and Crossbowmen, but Riflemen and Musketmen, and Grenadiers cannot Bombard...hmmmm....**

I have a larger fleet ready now, and prepositioned for a new blockade.

I kick off the second phase of my war with Egypt, this time I will have to contend with cannons too. Thebes is in open rebellion also, but I have never actually seen the Persian rebels, who have sacrificed themselves twice already against my stack in Thebes.

This time, my war goes much smoother. The Grenadiers and Cannons make quick work of two of the Southern border towns, then the Curriasers, aided by Coastal bombardment take out the two Babylonian Coastal cities, then my reinforcements come in, and I now have taken out Babylon, and have two large conquering forces, with Cannons, Grenadiers, and Crossbowmen and Musketmen, who start to become Riflemen and Cavalry from Curiassers.

I take Heliopolis and another important city whose name escapes me.

I sue for peace, as my own people, start yelling about rebellion, due to the war weariness, and my open defiance of the Apistollic pallace, and the sudden expansion of my empire, etc...

Ramsess II now only has 3 cities left, but taking him out could mean the fracturing of my own empire...two of my main cities were threatening to revolt! I had to bribe one of them already. And, naturally, my conquest of Egypt was pissing off China and other member nations of the Apistollic palace.

I sued for peace, and am going to have to focus on incorporating the Egyptian culture into my own...no easy task, and my culture slider is now at 20%, but thanks to my financial prowess, I am still able to research early Industrial techs in 6 turns...oh, but did I mention that Egypt stole Military Science from me!!!

This mod forced me to sue for peace...that's awesome! The challenge was incredible! I've never spent so much time to planning out my invasion force, and my naval blockades, spies, etc...all into such a huge and fast-paced war. I felt that my first invasion force could have been lost actually...30 units...can you imagine? The kitchen sink, the frigerator, the garbage disposal and the microwave all went into taking just one city...

This game so far has played like one big roller coaster. Slow and steadily climbing, and then woooooosh! and then a rapid climb higher than before, then wooooosh! I am now wishing I could tell everyone to leave me alone for the rest of the day, just so I can fortify my position in Southern Egypt, and prepare for an invasion of China...another Industrious competitor, who could spoil my chances at a space race victory...

Let's face it, a domination win is impossible under these conditions, and i had to abandon culture a long time ago, although a strong cultural position has certainly kept my large empire stable.

Too bad I have to go to work today...

Addiction...I have found you!

On closing, I think Archer Bombard is crazy strong. It gave my Trebuchets (did I mention Galleons sunk by Archers?) and Curiassers serious pause. I think Archers should only have defensive Bombard or Stack Attack Bombard, but they can still take out too much of a unit IMHO. I know this reverses a previous statement I made, but where as in the early game it makes sense, by the middle ages, especially the late middle ages, they should have reduced impact, instead, Crossbowmen are still your elite force, lol. I think Military Science is now a waste, lol...I wanted Crossbowmen more than Grenadiers in final analysis. That thought just feels wrong on so many levels. But this is the ONLY thing I would consider changing. Everything else is awesome and has reignited my love of civ.

I think Epic speed is the reference speed for Jdog's development of Revolutions and this could be why you are experiencing it as more balanced for Revolutions. However, Jdog has written the code to scale correctly to any speed.....

Cheers.

See my previous loooooooong post. Normal speed is not for the faint of heart, and make sure you have about 4 hours to blow, because you are going to be on the edge of your seet, biting your finger nails to bloody stubs!!! Epic is like sipping your poison of choice rather than chugging it.

Reading these last few comments, I'm inclined to laugh hysterically. I always play on normal speed with tiny maps (because movement doesn't scale with map size), and I've discovered some interesting side effects in Revolutions that jdog didn't foresee. See the Revolutions mod forum.

WOW...I had some time on my hands this weekend and would love to share my experience.

Addiction...I have found you!

On closing, I think Archer Bombard is crazy strong. It gave my Trebuchets (did I mention Galleons sunk by Archers?) and Curiassers serious pause. I think Archers should only have defensive Bombard or Stack Attack Bombard, but they can still take out too much of a unit IMHO. I know this reverses a previous statement I made, but where as in the early game it makes sense, by the middle ages, especially the late middle ages, they should have reduced impact, instead, Crossbowmen are still your elite force, lol. I think Military Science is now a waste, lol...I wanted Crossbowmen more than Grenadiers in final analysis. That thought just feels wrong on so many levels. But this is the ONLY thing I would consider changing. Everything else is awesome and has reignited my love of civ.

Yeah my first reaction was to laugh as well! Cool stuff and this type of complexity and mayhem is excellent to hear about, especially when I hear that the AI put up a bit of counter-mayhem as well. Most impressed was I that the AI pinched a tech off you too (You deserved it).

Yeah archer bombardment is certainly controversial. I'm not sure whether to turn it off next game. I don't have any experience so far with archer bombardment because of it's previous bugs forcing me to turn it off. The only comment is that yes a crossbowman army could be still more effective than a grenadier right at the moment of military science, but soon these crossbowman will become obsolete even with archer bombard. It's inevitable. So the army would seem to be only effective for a short time there after especially if you need a war right around the time of military science. What does a crossbowman upgrade too and how much does it cost? The issue is whether Musketmen are obsolete generally because of crossbowmen and archer bombard. What about that?

I gather from your game, all DCM components seem to be working in terms of crashes?

Cheers.

We do have a kind of dilemma here. Technically speaking all gunpowder units (except for grenadiers) are ranged units. They basically hit at distance with limited or non milee capabilities. Historically early gunpowder units were slower than crossbowmen and longbowmen. They also had shorter range.

Now the problem is that what the barrage ability in DCM represent is the archer units ability to shot indirect volley of projectiles (arrows) at the enemy causing collateral damage. Gunpowder units don't have such ability though later units (with larger range) can deal a similar damage. Up to Riflemen they only used to shot at a relatively short distance.

Anyway, I like that corssbowmen can be more effective than Grenadiers as historically the later were not that powerful or essential as they are represented in the game. Just imagine a bunch of Grenade throwers charging at crossbowmen in real life. The later would annihilate them so easily.

Yeah my first reaction was to laugh as well! Cool stuff and this type of complexity and mayhem is excellent to hear about, especially when I hear that the AI put up a bit of counter-mayhem as well. Most impressed was I that the AI pinched a tech off you too (You deserved it).

Yes, it was one of my best WTF moments in that game, getting a tech pinched by the AI. I admit that after pinching a tech from Ramsess, my espionage points were pretty low compaired to him, and the temptation was probably unavoidable for the AI, but still, it is exceptionally rare to have an AI do more than decimate a few improvements against me, even on Monarch. It was one of the better experiences in that game.

Yeah archer bombardment is certainly controversial. I'm not sure whether to turn it off next game. I don't have any experience so far with archer bombardment because of it's previous bugs forcing me to turn it off. The only comment is that yes a crossbowman army could be still more effective than a grenadier right at the moment of military science, but soon these crossbowman will become obsolete even with archer bombard. It's inevitable. So the army would seem to be only effective for a short time there after especially if you need a war right around the time of military science. What does a crossbowman upgrade to... I believe they upgrade to Machinegunners...the defensive only 18 :str: units with a 50% bonus versus gunpowder units and possibly to the Anti tank mortar infantry units (what's their name again?)

and how much does it cost? I believe the upgrade is on the order of 150 or so gold.

The issue is whether Musketmen are obsolete generally because of crossbowmen and archer bombard. What about that? My experience is that Musketmen are nearly useless. Granted, a crossbowman attacking a Musketman on equal terrain (let's use the example of a grassland tile no forest, etc...) would most likely lose. However, if the Crossbowman were attacked by the Musketman, the Musketman would lose. A stack of 2 Crossbowmen would bombard the Musketman about 10-20% in round 1, and if the Musketman didn't move, and were fortified, then he would definitely be dead in the next round. Hard to say really whether the Crossbowman is still better in one on one combat than the Musketman. I'd say it is situational. But here's why I found it exceptional to keep large numbers of them in my armies, especially when I was on the cusp of cannons...the Archery Bombard. With ten Crossbowmen, I was decimating defensive troops in preparation for my assault. They were much better at this than my Trebuchets, lol! I found it much more efficient to take the walls down with my Trebs and then bombard with my Crossbowmen, rather than to relie on my Trebs alone. Plus, when the enemy would attack my assault force, my Crossbowmen were practically killing them before they hit my front line, lol.

This last part was great, but why can't stationary gunpowder units do this also??? Ok, so maybe that's built into the :str: number of these advance units, especially Rifleman and beyond, but there's definitely an apparent overlap period, where holding onto hordes of Crossbowmen really holds an advantage that the AI doesn't appear to realize.

It could be a small window, but my game that I just wrote about definitely highlights this window in red hot neon!

I gather from your game, all DCM components seem to be working in terms of crashes?

I have not had any crashes...but I haven't gotten to the point where I am stack attacking with Infantry yet either though, which appears to be where the DCM CASA CTD appears to occur as reported in Dale's thread.

Maybe this weekend I'll get to see some more modern elements. My game time during M-F is not long enough to really play a late stage game like this one. Turns were taking 2-5 minutes with all of the combat and MMing and troop deployments going on.

My next phase would involve solidifying my new cities and either getting ready to finish Ramsess off or preparing to take on China. At either rate, I now have two very large land armies and a decent sized fleet for what I need.

Would anyone like to have my last save to push through the modern era? If for nothing else than to get to a point to test RevDCM in high combat with modern units?

I could supply it tonight when I get home if there's interest.

We do have a kind of dilemma here. Technically speaking all gunpowder units (except for grenadiers) are ranged units. They basically hit at distance with limited or non milee capabilities. Historically early gunpowder units were slower than crossbowmen and longbowmen. They also had shorter range.

Now the problem is that what the barrage ability in DCM represent is the archer units ability to shot indirect volley of projectiles (arrows) at the enemy causing collateral damage. Gunpowder units don't have such ability though later units (with larger range) can deal a similar damage. Up to Riflemen they only used to shot at a relatively short distance.

Anyway, I like that corssbowmen can be more effective than Grenadiers as historically the later were not that powerful or essential as they are represented in the game. Just imagine a bunch of Grenade throwers charging at crossbowmen in real life. The later would annihilate them so easily.

True. Your points are very accurate historically speaking, and I support what Dale's vision is. I also like how the Archer Bombard really makes you throw the kitchen sink and several appliances into any war with a major civ...after all who wants to fight a push over? I suppose my biggest beaf is what those Egyptian Longbowmen did to some of my blockading Galleons. How can a Longbowman, even 4 units of them take a Galleon down to 30% in one round so that a Caravel or Galley stands a good chance of taking them down?

Your answer could be they might have used flaming arrows to set fires to the deck, etc...But my Galleons would in reality be far enough to be out of bow shot. I can live with the decimating impact of Crossbowmen and Longbowmen in the field...I mean, just look at the movie 300, or Troy, or Braveheart, etc...a rain of arrows has a sickening impact on light ground forces until rifles.

Is there a way to prevent Archery Bombard from affecting sea and potentially air units?

When will you be able to merge it with Revolutions 1.42 (fixes few bugs and pathfinding issue)? I want to play your mod...

@kwarriorpoet

It happened once to me that a #@$%& AI that has the Great Wall used one of his Great Spies to infiltrate me. (I guess it because I don't think there is a message tells you that "oops you've got infiltrated"). Anyway the next thing was The Secrets of so and so was stolen by a f$$%% enemy spy. I think I was robbed off 3 techs at that time.

Your points about Galleons is true. There is no way that any ranged unit except for canons and artillery can harm a ship. I don't know if a negative modifier for archery units against ships may affect the damage dealt by them in bombardment. i.e. if we give longbows -80% against naval units would it do the trick?

Your answer could be they might have used flaming arrows to set fires to the deck, etc...But my Galleons would in reality be far enough to be out of bow shot. I can live with the decimating impact of Crossbowmen and Longbowmen in the field...I mean, just look at the movie 300, or Troy, or Braveheart, etc...a rain of arrows has a sickening impact on light ground forces until rifles.

Is there a way to prevent Archery Bombard from affecting sea and potentially air units?


Anyway good one and I do think you have a point there. I noticed you have put it up to Dale in a thoughtful intelligent way that might make Dale look into it and not get turned off. Well done and loved the write up on that game of your's last weekend.

@Kalimakhus
I do see your point on crossbowmen and agree that I kinda like archer bombardment all the way up to military science and a fraction beyond. Seems ok and also fun but it is controversial....

What do you think of the AI's use of archer bombardment in the field? Another interesting thing will be to see how the AI uses ranged bombardment with artillery....

@Deon
Yeah I'll try and do an update merge soon. Can you in the meantime make the modification to the Python that you actually correctly suggested to Jdog!?

Cheers.

It's changing
def _getInstallDir():
{anything you have, usually registry key}

to

def _getInstallDir():
civ4Dir = os.getcwd()
return civ4Dir

os.getcwd returns the directory the program (beyong the sword.exe in this example) is run from.

os.path.join(_getInstallDir(), "Mods") - to define the Mods directory if needed.

Also it fixes the path for MacOS if there's a problem.

It's changing
def _getInstallDir():
{anything you have, usually registry key}

to

def _getInstallDir():
civ4Dir = os.getcwd()
return civ4Dir

os.getcwd returns the directory the program (beyong the sword.exe in this example) is run from.

os.path.join(_getInstallDir(), "Mods") - to define the Mods directory if needed.

Also it fixes the path for MacOS if there's a problem.

Looks like it's not just Python but C++ code that has to change with Jdog's latest Revolutions build. That means another merge won't happen for quite a few days. Once C++ is involved, there's *lots* of potential for mistakes and as well a merge needs to be tested before being released. I won't be able to get a look at it until at least the weekend.

Cheers.

Here is my current save file from the game I just wrote up. I have not advanced it yet from that point. I thought some of you would like to fire this up and do some of the dirty work so to speak :) It's all just for fun, though anyway :)

It's 1802AD, the newly conquered cities of formerly great Egypt are restless. You control the Apistollic Pallace, but it only holds sway with Jewish believers. Should you wish to wielf the power of the Pallace, you'll have to convert many of your cities to Judaism to increase your influence, and you may need to change your state religion to Judaism.

You may also want to consider blitzing the rest of Ramsess' cities to the North...but you must always keep a wary eye on China...the Tiger in the West...

Elsewhere, Mansa Musa reigns over his technological empire, bathing in his wealth, and the western end of the Old World is full of chaos and civil wars. In the New World, young nations are being born...how will you deal with them?

is it about to go out the version 2.0 of of "Rise of Mankind", a new version of RevolutionDCM mod it will also go out?

Thanks a lot for all this mods,game experience it's superb!

Here is my current save file from the game I just wrote up. I have not advanced it yet from that point.

Although still in the middle of a late game RevDCM0.2 game, it's a good idea to share around *interesting* game saves that are actually like a full blooded "scenario". Doesn't happen often that the complexity level meshes perfectly with the moment, but when it does it's cool. Some scenario's are complicated enough to be able to get more than one human head involved I think. Your game settings are almost standard which make the concept even better. Cool.

@dasvidania and deon
Jdog is getting hit with small bugs on his latest Revolution releases as he attempts to wrap up this version and concentrate on a new even better Revolutions. So for now, I'm gunna have to wait until the bugs get sorted out before attempting another release of RevolutionDCM.

@anyone
I'm pleased to report that the UN has been built and utilised by the AI on aggressive AI setting which seems to confirm that leader attitude and unit production are the main changes on aggressive AI. I will probably never play another game without aggressive AI turned on. It seems to make for a more competitive game on Monarch. With around 28 nations on a huge terra map in the 21st century and in the midst of a world war, time between turns is around 2-4 minutes on a Intel Duo T5400 CPU which makes the late game still worth while to play in my humble opinion. With two Gigs of RAM this type of computer makes for the perfect CIV 4 RevolutionDCM computer but probably totally obsolete when Civ 5 comes along......

Cheers.

@Glider1

I am particularly interested in knowing if you experience any MAFs. I mean 28 civs on a huge terra and already beyond 2000, even with 2GB it seems pron to MAFing. By the way, do you toss in VD for flavor or do you go with plain BTS + RevolutionDCM.

I've been contemplating the idea of turning off time limit along with domination, and culture victories on a huge terra map. I just don't wonna invest in such game if MAFs would make it impossible at some moment to keep going.

Hi Glider. I'm getting a hang - that is the turn time never ends and I have to end process with task manager.

I'm playing revolution/inquisition.
My question is where should I post the bug report and save ?? Here or in the rev/inq thread ?

@Glider1

I am particularly interested in knowing if you experience any MAFs. I mean 28 civs on a huge terra and already beyond 2000, even with 2GB it seems pron to MAFing. By the way, do you toss in VD for flavor or do you go with plain BTS + RevolutionDCM.

I've been contemplating the idea of turning off time limit along with domination, and culture victories on a huge terra map. I just don't wonna invest in such game if MAFs would make it impossible at some moment to keep going.

By MAF I had to think for a moment. I think you mean disk fragging and not "Mass Air Flow" which I get too :rolleyes:

I think the trick is to have plenty of graphics memory. I run this game I've been playing for the last two months between two different computers. On the XP box the graphics card has 512MB of dedicated memory. Thus the 2G system memory handles disk swapping pretty well. You are right that it does take a huge chunk of memory and the game takes up to five minutes to load initially. However once loaded, it swaps to the desktop back and forth real nice. On the Vista x64 box the graphics card has only 256MB of dedicated RAM and so part of the rest is shared with system memory. However the disk swapping algorithms in Vista x64 are noticeably more efficient and so halving the graphics memory has no effect. All in all it's really stable so long as you turn off certain DCM components known to be volatile.

I was "incorrect" last post on time between turns in the 21st century. It can be highly variable but seems to be in the region of 2-6 minutes per turn on a core duo. Now that's not bad at all considering that on normal speed, the detail per turn is so high that during a war, I'm easily spending 45 minutes on a single turn dealing with all the various issues...

As for the late game, it is a hell of a lot of fun most definitely if you have colonised and are running DCM. Dale's work like fighter engagement add to the tactics. Strategically, it is really hard to hold a big colony abroad because of various civil instabilities combined with conquered leaders that re-emerge in unstable regions in the new world. What also is cool is that inevitably, the minor civ that was inhabiting the fertile temperate regions of the new world before you arrived, if not quickly *removed* expand rapidly and become a major player in the new world. They tend to fall under your radar because their growth is so meteoric that you imagine they can't be competition...but on aggressive ai.....they are.

Also, the minor civs that become full blown in the new world, can actually fight each other for a while until they sense that you are stealing a lot of territory from them as a coloniser, and they will stop warring each other and begin to cooperatively harass the coloniser. In my game now I am facing a situation where Hatshepsut and Napoleon were fighting it out big time in the new world. I propped up the weaker party Napoleon to maintain the status quo so that I could continue colonising in peace after having conquered Japan there. However now Hatshepsut and Napoleon have made up, Hatshepsut has invaded me big time and Napoleon is harrassing me psychologically threatening to DOW. Simultaneously, the conquered leader Toku keeps re-emerging in unstable regions of the new world, and whenever he does so, my colonised population cheer for him behind closed doors, whenever I turn my back on them.....

There is still a lot of fun late game but you are completely correct to say that crashes and computer slowdowns would be a big kill joy. I recommend a 512MB graphics card on XP combined with 2G ram and a Core Duo processor. That should keep the monkey off one's back so long as you never ever entertain the idea that such a computer would be adequate for CIV 5 if that were ever to emerge.....

As for the late game monkey on your back, there is one other issue. Obsession. To control the deep immersive psychological split with reality that one faces playing civ and restrict game hours to just an hour or so a day, you have to take notes. I run notepad in the background and record the "history" of the game as it unfolds. This way I get a sense of continuity in my mind which is nothing more than a psychological "trick" that I use that gives me the ability to stop playing for the day or night and get on with the real world, feeling that there is a thread between one game session and the next that I can let go of...However that notepad narrative "thread" is already up to three thousand words in only one game!

Cheers.

PS) Yeah I've thought about turning off domination victory too. However under Revolutions, it's very difficult for an AI to pull off a domi victory so it's not an issue. A human can achieve it though even with Revolutions running. At some point your people love you for all that conquering :) I've never contemplated turning off culture wins, because if an AI actually does win by culture on aggressive ai, as far as I'm concerned they deserve it!

Hi Glider. I'm getting a hang - that is the turn time never ends and I have to end process with task manager.

I'm playing revolution/inquisition.
My question is where should I post the bug report and save ?? Here or in the rev/inq thread ?

Not sure what "inquisitions" is but there are so many reasons why a machine can hang it's hard to give advise. If you can narrow down the fault to a mod component, then definetly post to the bug forum of that mod. Dale with DCM in particular likes save game uploads that target the exact nature of the problem, so that he can debug. Jdog on Revolutions seems to have the intuitive ability to debug without a save game in many cases.

Cheers.

@Glider1

By the way, do you toss in VD for flavor or do you go with plain BTS + RevolutionDCM.



Although tempted by the graphics candy of VD, I just keep it too pure unadulterated game play revolving tactics and strategy on RevolutionDCM. The default unit graphics are fine for me except that I do merge "Better Ship Scale" for myself (if you or anyone is interested let me know). Ships look much better to my eyes simply by changing their scale.

However, it would be impossible for me to live without Dales battle effects graphics. Zooming out to the globe view looking at the world from space, and being able to see conflict regions burning below, is just too much coolness.

Cheers.

Not sure what "inquisitions" is but there are so many reasons why a machine can hang it's hard to give advise. If you can narrow down the fault to a mod component, then definetly post to the bug forum of that mod. Dale with DCM in particular likes save game uploads that target the exact nature of the problem, so that he can debug. Jdog on Revolutions seems to have the intuitive ability to debug without a save game in many cases.

Cheers.

wow ,i get stupider every year. I mixed you up with jdog. He put out a mod comp called revolution/inquisition that merged in the inquisiton mod. - sorry, wrong forum.

Anyway i played from a much earlier save and it solved the issue. I think it was a problem with Darius appearing. I the second play through, Darius wasnt picked, Cyrus was. There may be some issue with Darius.

Jdog's latest build of Revolutions (1.42) has not had any stability issues so I have spent the time to incorporate it into another build of RevolutionDCM. Check the readme for more information.

Some more observations on game balance starting options under RevolutionDCM:

1) Space race win on a huge map on monarch difficulty is too easy for the human. This is because a human's civilisation often contains so many cities allowing the human to multitask space ship construction far better than the AI. On a standard map size with less cities available to the human, the issue is not as bad. This is because the human cannot multitask the construction as easily and is forced to serialize the construction in a similar fashion to the AI. Conclusion: on huge maps the space race win option = OFF

2) On Terra maps, to inhibit the tendancy for one nation in the northern temperate region to become a global super power and thus dominate the geopolitics of the globe for the rest of the game, start a Terra map with double the numbers of initial starting civs relative to the default number for the map size. This has the tendancy to break up the super power earlier, before they have time to integrate their society properly.

3) On toroidal huge terra maps on aggressive AI, monarch level and space race victory turned off. In this combination the AI builds big armies and is not distracted by the space race. Because the AI can attack by sea in all directions, they then generally have more chance of success with naval warfare partly because of the element of surprise they have available to them. Although the human has the same benefit and can exploit that benefit even better than the AI, the human does not necessarily have a military strength advantage in order to utilise it. This is a good game option as well because it makes playing as a tundra civ more fun. The tundra civ can engage northward or southward by sea and conquer other rival tundra nations as a strategic option.

4) Culture win and aggressive AI - Although aggressive AI is a very good option to consider, as far as I can tell the AI will not pursue a culture win strategy on aggressive ai (not fully sure of this). On normal aggression, it is capable of occasionally achieving a noteable cultural victory.

Any thoughts?
Cheers.

These starting options are interesting indeed:

1) Woowee under RevolutionDCM latest build, you have the option to start all civs including yourself as a minor civ and thus total war. Combine this with archer bombardment and the pre-writing phase is very interesting indeed. :crazyeye: Diplomacy seems to begin on neutral terms only once writing begins. Thoughts?

2) Experiments with Terra map resource options reveal that "standard" distributes all types of resources in both the new and old worlds. However "balanced" is not at all balanced. It should be called "unbalanced". In this distribution, all types of resources are distributed in the old world but very little variety of luxuries or other resources in the new world. The effect of the latter could be very interesting. Minor civs in the new world will always struggle relative to the old world but it all depends on how the old world plays out itself. Colonization of the new world would hypothetically be easier to achieve but more difficult to hold onto because the new world returns are less. It could make colonization less attractive. At a guess it would seem to make the new world very unstable and changeable as well, with constant colonial successes and failures against minors in a low resource yield environment. Thoughts?

Cheers.

A new release of RevDCM is out now combining in Influence Driven War. It appears to be very stable but the court is out on what effect it will have on game balance in a Revolution and DCM context.

Started game last night with RevDCM's newest version and had some fun :D Early in the game when I had just 4 cities built the revolution part started to kick and I wasn't exactly prepared for that, had no gold to bribe the cities so eventually I lost control of my empire and AI player started playing it for some 30 turns. During this time one barbarian city nearby converted to chinese city state and waged war.. I had Great Wall but that didn't help anymore since those attackers weren't barbarians anymore. Watched how AI tried to defend my cities - I got control back just at the end of war, enemy had one troop left near my city and I had one troop inside the city. Luckily I was able to kill it.

Now after this I noticed one thing. The plot that was used near city by those attackers is marked as battlefield and there's smoke coming out even though it's now dozen turns or more since there was war in that square. That plot was turned to battlefield when AI was controlling my empire and now that I'm back in control, that plot doesn't change back to normal state. It worked correctly in other plot where I was killing barbarians before this whole revolution thing. Might be small bug somewhere?

I'm enjoying this so here's :trophy: for you. Got to play this more to see how the influence driven war mod component affects game once most of the map is under control of players.

@Zappara

Battle effects can be annoying. I usually turn them off as they also add load on the display card. Anyway the number of turns the battle effect will continue to exist on a plot is supposed to be based on how many battles took place there. Each combat between two units counts as a battle. So a stack of ten attacking another of the same size will count as ten battles. Battle effect lasts for two turns per each battle so in the above example it would last for 20 turns. Now I don't personally like this formula but it is how Dale implements this thing. Bottom line I turn it off and live with a clear view. BTW the sound effect as well seems too much especially when it is all about a punch of pathetic warriors kicking each others butts in the wilderness.

@glider

Thanks for the new version. Now with IDW in the mod it truly represents that way I think Civ4 should be from game play point of view. This is with only minor exceptions to be honest. Enhanced Tech Conquest and a couple of Shqyp's SDK components are these exceptions. Of course this is a personal point of view though when it comes to Revolution and DCM I am quite sure many people agree with me that they define the future of any coming CivV (if indeed this will be developed).

I have released a new version of my Add-On that integrates RevolutionDCM into Rise of Mankind. Needless to say I am quite grateful for your work as it spares me a lot of time and pain. :goodjob:

Concur that battle effect duration is not working properly in some cases. It is true that it does slow the graphics card in some cases no doubt about that.

At this stage it is still going to be interesting with IDW. It's a solid concept no doubt. The question is the AI.....
Cheers.

Started game last night with RevDCM's newest version and had some fun :D Early in the game when I had just 4 cities built the revolution part started to kick and I wasn't exactly prepared for that, had no gold to bribe the cities so eventually I lost control of my empire and AI player started playing it for some 30 turns.

The really good thing here is that you just let the chaos happen without giving up. Yes Revolution is more difficult but the rewards are also greater if you get it right. Handing over control to the AI is never an easy thing to do psychologically. When this happens the way to think of it is like you did, when you get control back, it's a new scenario, a new challenge.

Cheers.

@glider1

Yea, it was bit odd situation just to sit there and watch AI play those turns - actually I think it did lot better job there than I did :eek: At least I learnt to use slavery more effectively :lol:

@glider1

Yea, it was bit odd situation just to sit there and watch AI play those turns - actually I think it did lot better job there than I did :eek: At least I learnt to use slavery more effectively :lol:

Agree on that. I lost control of my leadership too. The AI seemed to switch in and out of slavery for specific reasons where as I tended to set, forget and pay the price!

Cheers.

To anyone playing this mod in it's latest incarnation, STACK ATTACK IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH IDW. Turn stack attack off. Influence from plunder works with SA but not influence from combat. It doens't mean that the mod crashes, it just means that SA negates the effect of combat influence in IDW.

Thanks to Kalimakhus for finding this! :goodjob:
Cheers.

stack attack is the best part :mad: I wish I saw this before I upgraded from 0.60 :(

As mentioned in the Rise of Mankind 2 mod, is there anyway to limit the amount of rebellions?

As mentioned in the Rise of Mankind 2 mod, is there anyway to limit the amount of rebellions?

From memory, if you look through the Revolutions forums (encyclopaedic proportions) at one point there may have been a discussion about Revolutions in the context of mods with greater than six religions. For the moment, experiment with these settings in Revolution.ini:

; Unhappy cities with your state religion plus another religion can join a religious revolution
AllowStateReligionToJoin = False

; Adjust influence of various factors in inciting a revolution
ReligionModifier = 0.5???