Welcome to Dawn of Civilization

Dawn of Civilization
The spiritual successor to Rhye's and Fall of Civilization

Welcome to the main thread for the Dawn of Civilization mod. Rhye's and Fall of Civilization is among the most popular mods for Beyond the Sword. If you also think it has the best game experience, we already have one thing in common.

RFC is not in active development anymore, but in my opinion there are still many ways to improve on it to make it an even better history simulator and an even better game. In this way, Dawn of Civilization intends to become RFC's spiritual successor in continuing where it left off.

Already interested? Here's the download:

DOWNLOAD DAWN OF CIVILIZATION v1.18

In particular, among the goals of DoC are:

• Representing parts of the world not represented by RFC
• Improving on historical accuracy without sacrificing gameplay
• Offering new content in the form of civilizations and victory types
• Improving and optimizing existing RFC features
• Adjusting base game elements to better suit a historical mod

Rhye's and Fall was created more with the intention of taking the normal BtS content into a framework that makes it a historical simulator. Dawn of Civilization looks beyond that and tries to make an even better history simulator by including content beyond what BtS offered. This is most evident in the inclusion of additional civilizations, but also in many rule and mechanic changes.

In my opinion, a good historical simulator always also has to be a good game. This is why perfect historical accuracy isn't the goal of DoC - playing this game is about making interesting decisions and seeing their impact on the world. So instead of forced or scripted historical events, DoC tries to include events and mechanics that encourage developments along historical lines without making them a certainty. DoC also isn't a kitchen sink mod - every feature included has to serve a clear purpose in improving historicity or gameplay experience.

All of this shows in the following main features of Dawn of Civilization:

• Completely new, enlarged world map of 80x125 tiles including new terrains, features, and resources
• Completely new tech tree covering 141 technologies over 7 eras (based on and inspired by History Rewritten)
• Selection of 61 playable civilizations, each with their own leaders, unique units, buildings and powers, and unique historical victories
• Included 36 new and changed 22 existing buildings
• Included 104 new and changed 24 existing wonders
• Included 12 new and changed 2 existing projects
• Included 16 new land, 6 new sea and 4 new air units
• Major changes and redesign of many existing units
• Completely new selection of 42 civics from 6 categories
• Included additional unique units, acting as second unique units for many civilisations
• Extended game length: 100 turns added on Normal game speed
• Completely new rules for civilization births
• The world map is now implemented as a Custom Map instead of Scenarios for consistency and modularity, and the game is now started using Play Now
• Completely new respawn rules allowing civilisations to return in historically appropriate time periods, starting with appropriate tech based on their neighbours and members of their cultural group, as well as initial buildings and military units
• Trading Company Conquerors: events for European colonial civilisations (Spain, France, England, Portugal, Netherlands) to acquire colonies in Africa and Asia peacefully or militarily
• Transatlantic Slave Trade
• Barbarian spawn redesign: additional units, spawn patterns and attack behavior AIs
• New immigration mechanic: population can migrate to your cities in the New World if your capital is also in the New World
• The Mercenary mechanic has been removed
• Completely new, redesigned stability system
• New Unique Religious Victory condition depending on your state religion
• Changed the Space Race Victory by replacing the Alpha Centauri spaceship parts with modules for a Mars Colony, adding additional space projects as requirements
• Redesign of the Congresses system
• Expanded Apostolic Palace and United Nations mechanics
• New difficulty levels
• New rules for cultural border expansion
• New specialist: Statesman
• New Great Person type: Great Statesman
• Resources only provide happiness and health to a limited number of cities depending on the number of controlled resources
• Redesign and expansion of the rules around city conquest and its consequences
• Unique "Dawn of a Civilization" introduction screens for every civilization
• Redesign of the Victory code
• Religion specific soundtracks
• Female Great People: included female Great People names for all civilizations, female Great People spawn with appropriate graphics
• New scenario: starting in 1700 AD
• More extensible and varied Dynamic Civilization Names mechanic
• Extensive refactoring of DLL modifiers and maps and exposing them to Python, reducing the time required to improve the mod and making it easier to create modmods
• Completely redesigned system for religion spread
• Increased importance of culture levels
• Overhauled Global Warming rules to make it appear later in the game to greater effect

A complete list of all features can be found here.


I hope you have fun playing this mod! If you have bugs to report, ideas to improve the mod, or any feedback at all, you're welcome to participate here in the development forum. I'll follow up with a list of places to go around here.

If you enjoy the mod and want show your appreciation and support, you can buy me a coffee on ko-fi:



(I develop the mod in my free time, so you're not funding its development this way. You're literally just buying me a coffee! Or probably something similar of equal value, I'm not much of a coffee drinker.)

How to Access the Mod

The mod is available in two forms: the regularly updated development version and the completed official release version. They each have their own advantages and downsides.

Release Version

• Available on the official Mod Download Page
• Released infrequently: currently latest release is RFC Dawn of Civilization 1.18.0
• The release is delivered as an Installer to simplify installation
• It comes with compatible Modules (see below) that can be optionally installed
• Represents a stable, well tested state of the mod that is less prone to bugs and imbalance
• Is optimized for less disk space, better loading times, and better game performance

Development Version

• Available on the Mod Github Page
• Immediate access to fixes, balance improvements, and new features as they are developed
• Requires manual installation using either:
  • Git Client: more complex setup, easier and faster updates
  • Direct ZIP Download from Github: no extra setup, entire mod must be downloaded for each update
• Modules must be installed manually and may become incompatible until a future release
• Become part of community discussions of recent changes and support mod development by giving feedback and reporting issues
• Ongoing development may result in bugs, imbalance, and savegame incompatibility - but also the ability to address problems quickly based on player feedback
• Longer loading times and reduced performance compared to the release version

You can choose your preferred version of the mod based on what suits your preferences. I genuinely appreciate everyone who is willing to participate in the ongoing development of the mod by playing the git version and giving me immediate feedback despite the potential of issues.

Conversely, I also want to note that this is a mod developed in my free time, and regardless of the version you choose there is always the possibility of bugs and issues.

Dawn of Civilization Modules

Along with the core mod, you can install additional modules for DoC. These modules contain several aesthetic improvements, such as game graphics, sounds and interface changes. Their modular nature allows players to install them based on their preferences.

Modules are intended for the release version, and can be installed using its installer provided at the link above. Due to ongoing development of the git version, it is possible that they are not compatible with it. My commitment is to keep modules compatible with the release version, but not necessarily with the development version at all times.

While modules are still compatible, they can also be used for the development version. In that case, they must be installed manually from their own Github repositories linked below.

Varietas Delectat and Ethnic City Styles for DoC | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

Varietas Delectat by avain is a mod providing civ specific art for units and cities for all civilizations present in Beyond the Sword. In this module, I have adapted this feature to DoC and extended it to all new civilizations added here. Much of the additional art used comes from the History Rewritten mod by Xyth and the Realism Invictus mod by Walter Hawkwood. In some cases, that means that a new civilization shares the art styles of an existing one: for example, Mexico shares the Spanish art styles. I have also changed several specific unit art types to better fit the context of this mod.

In addition, ethnic city styles are more dynamic in DoC, and besides civilization and era can also be determined by other factors such as present religions and previous owners. In particular, an algorithm is included that assigns appropriate art styles to independent cities and units based on their location and origin.

You can find instructions on how to manually install Varietas Delectat with the development version in this thread.

Soundtrack Module | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

The soundtrack module addresses the Eurocentrism in the default Beyond the Sword background music. In particular, the Christian chants during the Medieval era break immersion when playing a civilization with a different religion. With the soundtrack module, the music in various eras now depends on the state religion, making use of some tracks included in BtS and some additional ones bundled with the module. In addition to the default soundtrack for Christian civilizations there are now soundtracks for the Middle Eastern (Islam/Zoroastrianism), South Asian (Hinduism/Buddhism) and East Asian (Confucianism/Taoism/Buddhism) religious groups. For civs without a state religion the Classical Era soundtrack extends into the Middle Ages.

To manually install this module, copy its Assets folder to integrate it into the existing Assets folder of the base mod.

HUD Color Module | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

This module simply changes the HUD color of the mod to dark gray.

To manually install this module, copy its Assets and Resource folders to integrate it into the existing Assets and Resource folder of the base mod.

Mod Setup Troubleshooting

If you run into problems setting up the mod and running it for the first time, please consult this checklist first. Most problems people encounter are because one of these items, and it might get your mod running without even having to ask for help.

1. The mod directory must be named exactly RFC Dawn of Civilization.
2. The mod directory must be located in the Beyond the Sword/Mods/ folder. The exact path depends on your system. You can determine that it is the correct Beyond the Sword folder by that it contains the Civ4BeyondSword.exe executable. Notably, My Games/Beyond the Sword/Mods/ is not the correct folder to place the mod.
3. The game must be set to English. The mod currently only supports the English language, and will not work at all if started with a different language.
4. If you are using the Steam version of Civ4 BtS, you have to switch to the "beta" version of the game in the Steam client to be able to use mods. Otherwise, you are going to receive errors such as "unable to execute file". See here for detailed instructions on how to do so.
5. If you are using an older version of Civ4 BtS, you have to manually patch the game to version 3.19. You can download the patch from the CFC Downloads section. Newer releases of the game, for example on Steam or GOG, come with this patch by default. However, you should always check that your game version is 3.19.
6. If you are using the development version and receive an error like "failed to read world builder file", this is an error caused by Github that I cannot do anything about and you have to fix it manually. To do so, get Notepad++, open the files in Private Maps/, and select Edit -> EOL Conversion -> Windows.

If you are still having issues after checking these steps, you can ask for help in the Bug Reports and Technical Issues thread.

Reporting Bugs and Errors

Please report any bugs and errors you encounter in the Bug Reports and Technical Issues thread. That way, hopefully I can fix your issue and enable you to continue your game, while at the same time improving the mod for everyone else in the future. Reports from players are incredibly valuable to me to keep the quality and stability of the mod as high as possible and I appreciate them a lot.

To help me fix your issue, please include as much information as possible. Even if you think the problem is obvious and easy for me to encounter on my own, your explanation avoids misunderstandings and wrong assumptions on my end.

The best way to report a bug is:

• Describe what happened and what you expected to happen
• If it's an error, please always include a screenshot of the error message
• Upload a save from before the error occurred with some instructions on how to trigger it (end turn, move this unit etc.)
• Tell me the version of the mod it's from (release or development version) so I know how to open your save - by default I will assume the most recent development version

It is important that the save is before the error so I can see what causes the error. That is not always possible if the problem has already occurred. It also helps me to test if a fix actually solve the problem. I am not asking for the save to prove that the error exists, but to help me find a solution.

Please configure your game settings to be able to report bugs effectively: open your Beyond the Sword/_Civ4Config file and change the following entries:
You may find those values at different places in the file with different capitalizations, so using the search function is recommended.

This has the following effects:

• Game logs will be created in the background: don't worry about logs, but I may ask for them if they are useful.
• Errors will be shown in the game instead of hidden: this is preferable to not knowing when things go wrong, and gives you an error to report to me that I can use to find the cause of the problem.
• The game will create autosaves every turn and keep 10 autosaves around: frequent autosaves allow you to share a save with me that is as close to the error as possible, which is very helpful in finding the cause. I recommend this setting unless frequent autosaves severely slow down your game.

When you report a problem, I may ask some clarifying questions or ask for saves. Even if you didn't feel the need to share one for the original report, please keep them around in case that happens. Note that I will not verbally acknowledge every report with a reply and a post. Instead, I will acknowledge that I have seen the report with the "Like" button. I always make a note for every bug report and will address it eventually. Depending on my current availability and other things that I am focused on, it may take some time.

Forum Navigation

Discussing the Mod
General discussion of the mod, including recent changes, takes place in this thread. This is literally the thread for everything DoC related without a dedicated thread (and not worth creating its own thread).

Update Log
I will use this thread to announce new changes made available to the Git repository.

Suggestions and Requests
If you have an idea on how to improve the mod or if there is something you've always wanted to see in RFC, this is the place to suggest it. Every idea is welcome and I appreciate when people like the mod enough to see their ideas in it. Please don't expect me to reply to every suggestion, however. Maybe I have already addressed the idea in one way or another in the past, maybe I am currently considering it without having anything to say (me considering stuff takes place at the back of my mind and can take months), maybe I have already similar plans that I don't want to reveal. In any case, don't take my silence as indication in whatever direction.

Bug Reports and Technical Issues
If you have found a bug, if something doesn't work like it looks it's supposed to, or if the mod plain out crashes, you can report it here. This thread is for problems of this kind for both the last release version and the current git development version. I can also help you there if the mod won't load for you or you have similar technical problems.

Forum Thread Index
This is an index of various other forum threads that have information on various subjects. It's also locked and not open to discussion, however on request I will include posts maintained by other users there.

Please do not respond to this thread. It exists only to share important information in a central location. If you want to discuss any aspect of it, please use the General Discussion thread.