Bad Ronald's Custom Colors and Flags (v3.0)
(Compatible with Warlords and Vanilla)
(Compatible with Warlords and Vanilla)
This mod is designed for both Warlords and vanilla Civ 4 (if you do not have Warlords, the only consequence will be an extraneous directory in your 'My Games' folder). The mod primarily makes two changes: all nations were given new custom flags (hung vertically) and most nations had their colors changed (some only slightly and others entirely). I have included all of the alternative flag options in the same zip as the defaults.
Flags:
For many nations – America, Arabia, England, France, Greece, India, Japan, Korea (South), Mali, Mongolia, Russia and Spain, the flag used is that of the modern nation. Two other flags are historical, but nevertheless actual, flags from an earlier period in the nation's history. These flags are: China (Imperial China), and Germany (Imperial Germany); in both cases, the modern flags are included as alternative flag options. The final actual flag is that of the Ottoman Empire; the flag was used at the end of the Ottoman Empire and is also the modern flag of Turkey. In the case of Russia, I used the modern flag, not because it fits well with the leaders – it doesn't – but because I feel it would be even worse to have Stalin with the Imperial flag or the Catherine or Peter with the flag of the Soviet Union (I wish each leader could have their own, but I don't think this is possible).
For all of the other nations (nine), I have created flags which are designed to both incorporate the symbols of the civilization and conform to modern flag specifications (so that they match the real ones). Like all of the actual flags, they are hung vertically (though it may be more difficult to visualize this at first since they're... well, not real
). In some cases, I have borrowed patterns from other modern flags, but this does not necessarily imply any connection between the two; I chose somewhat unusual patterns to make the flags stand out so that it's easier to quickly identify which nation an enemy unit belongs to. I will describe each of the flags I've created in the following list (alphabetically by nation):
- Aztecs – the flag features a diamond shape (like Brazil or Arkansas), with a black diamond on a bright green field, and the symbol in the center is the Aztec imperial banner which represented authority
- Carthage – this flag features four quadrants with either a white symbol on an orange field or orange on white; the first symbol (in the position of honor, i.e., the top/left, and the lower right quadrant) is Tanit, the goddess of the Moon and fertility; the second symbol (in the top right and bottom left) is a palm tree which was a symbol of Tanit
- Celts – this flag is modeled to a limited degree after the many European flags that feature some type of cross (Scandinavian, St. George's, etc.), except a Celtic cross is used
- Egypt – for this flag, I used the somewhat less common pattern of a horizontal bicolor (seen in the modern flags of Poland, Indonesia, Ukraine, etc.) with an encircled Eye of Horus in the center and a small black line separating the two light colors, beige and white (called fimbriation)
- Inca – I borrowed the unusual design of the Bavarian flag for this background pattern, while the symbol is a Chakana which represents many things including: the Southern cross, the three tiers of Inca life, the twelve months, and the hole in the center represents Cuzco as the center of the Inca empire
- Persia – the pattern is a horizontal triband with a slightly larger central band (like Spain), and the symbol is a Zoroastrian faravahar
- Rome – this flag features a gold saltire on a dark purple background, with laurels encircled in the center; SPQR is written on the saltire around the laurels (though it's difficult to see except in the larger version next to the minimap or when using the larger flags option)
- Vikings – I designed this flag to mimic the design of the Scandinavian cross (since the Scandinavian countries are the closest modern nations to the Vikings) with fimbriation around the cross (as in Norway and Iceland) but it isn't a cross at all; it's actually the Icelandic version of Thor's hammer (notice how it stretches out towards the edges)
- Zulu – this flag features a dark brown slash over a black field with the Zulu shield in the center
Colors:
When compared to the Firaxis default colors, in general the colors that I've chosen are darker (I think it looks more fitting in most cases). I've also done my best to avoid colors like pink, though the Vikings and Inca are somewhat close with medium purple and lavender, respectively (it's hard to avoid with 24 civs).
Another difficulty was deciding which of the many civilizations that seem best as red get the coveted color. I opted to make the Ottomans, English and Japanese red (I don't particularly like the standard green color for the Ottomans), with the Ottomans cardinal red, the English crimson, and Japanese a fiery red. The Russians were given white (with blue as a secondary color), I gave up all hope of making Rome red, and they are now a very dark purple, instead. China could also have been red, but I opted to make them gold with red as a secondary color (I chose red as a secondary color so that both the Imperial Chinese flag, which is gold with a red sun, and the flag of the PRC would both seem to fit the Chinese player color).
In other cases where the civ colors may seem similar (Carthage with orange and India with saffron; China with gold, Mali with pale yellow and Spain with yellow; the Celts with very dark green, the Arabs with standard green, the Aztecs with almost neon green, and the Persians with pale green; and finally the Americans with bright blue, the French with navy blue, the Greeks with powder blue, the Koreans with turquoise, and the Mongols with cyan) I placed the civs on maps with all of the other civs in their color range (and also the whole red, orange, yellow gamut) to ensure that they are distinguishable – and for the most part they are very easy to distinguish. However, it may prove slightly difficult to tell the Ottomans and Japanese (but not the English whose color is very dark) apart when they are on different continents or far away from one another, but this was probably unavoidable without using some shade of pink (which wasn't acceptable) – they aren't terribly close, though, see the main picture and note the slight orange hue of the Japanese color and its relative brightness vs that of the Ottomans.
To Install (repeated in the readme):
- Unzip the file directly to '%Your Documents Folder%\My Games\'
- (or) unzip the file elsewhere and copy the folders 'Warlords' and 'Sid Meier's Civilization 4' to the same directory
- Please, choose "yes to all" when prompted to overwrite files
- Navigate to '%Your Documents Folder%\My Games\Warlords\' and:
- Delete the all of the .dds files in '\art\Interface\TeamColor\'
- Delete '\xml\art\CIV4ArtDefines_Civilization.xml'
- Delete '\xml\interface\CIV4ColorVals' and '...\Civ4PlayerColorInfos'
- Delete '\xml\civilizations\CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml'
- Delete '\xml\misc\CIV4DetailManager.xml'
- Navigate to '%Your Documents Folder%\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\' and:
- Delete the files in the same locations specified above (the directory structure and filenames are identical)
Thanks to Kai Fiebach for his excellent Civ 4 Graphics Scaling Tool and everyone who commented in the 2.0 thread.