Civ4n5 - a halfway between Civ4 and Civ5

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Feb 6, 2006
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Yet another Mod for Civ4!
Why?
Well, I have never liked Civ5 too much, although I must admit that there are several features and mechanics that sound nice. Therefore, being Civ4 the best of the series in my opinion, I’ve tried to merge into it the new Civ5 features I like, in order to make a sort of “perfect game”!! :)
I have called it CIV 4 and a half! A halfway between Civ4 and Civ5!
In addition, there are a number of minor changes (bugfixings, rebalancements, and mainly UI changes).


City-states

I’ve tried to implement city-states in a way as closest as possible to the Civ5 way.
They are minor, independent entities, only consisting in a single city. They play their own game, they cannot win a game, cannot found religions or corporations, cannot build wonders, cannot vote, and also cannot make war or peace on their own.
There are several types of city-states, and each type gives different advantages if you have good relations with it. Maritime city-states will provide you food. Mercantile city-states will provide very rich trade routes. Militaristic city-states will periodically gift you military units. Religious city-states will inspire Great Prophets births. Cultured city-states will increase culture in your cities.
A warmonger civilization could instead decide to attack a city state, and it could also be a easy war. However, the received diplomatic hit is quite heavy.
Periodically, city-states will ask for different kind of helps or favors (build a road from your capital to theirs, destroy a close barbarian city, gather some Incense, build the Great Wall, etc). If you fulfill their request, your reputation with them will greatly increase.
You can also decide to gift a city-state some gold, to increase your reputation with it. However, gold gifts can be done only at certain intervals, so once you gifted some gold, you have to wait some time to be able to do it again. Every time you do a gold gift, you will receive a little bonus from the city-state, also depending on the type of city-state. You can also choose to gift the city-state one of your units, and still receiving a reputation increase.
Allied city-states will follow their allies in their wars, and do their best to fight these wars. They cannot declare war or make peace on their own, but they simply follow their allies (if the allies declare war, they do too).


Religions

There is a small change about founding religion, but with great impacts.
Religions are no longer founded by the first to discover certain techs, but they need a Great Prophet to be used for this purpose. Consequencely, most techs that were used to found religions now provide a free Great Prophet instead.
This means that, if you want to play the same way as before, you can still tech Meditation and be the first, receive a Great Prophet, and use it to found the religion.
But if you want to play it differently, you can use the Great Prophet in other ways (settling, bulbing, golden age,…). And you can also obtain a great prophet in another way (as with the Egyptian obelisk) and found a religion anyway.
Each player can found ONLY ONE religion. Also, there is a maximum number of religions that can be found (depending on the world size). So, on a tiny map, with the standard 3 civilizations, there can be max 2 religions, and they must be founded by 2 different civilizations.
Religions can still spread to other empires, and a civilization can adopt any religion he likes, even if he hasn’t founded it. This hasn’t been changed by this mod.
After you founded a religion, you have the possibility to BOOST it (as in Civ5), by using a Great Prophet for this purpose. Boosting a religion will allow you to choose a doctrine and receive unique bonuses in all your cities with that religion (other civilizations will NEVER receive bonuses from your doctrine). The first to boost can choose between 8 available doctrines. Already chosen doctrines cannot be chosen again by other civilizations. However, every doctrine requires a certain technology, so you might choose not to boost right away, and wait to discover the tech that unlocks the doctrine you need the most. Some available doctrines are Ceremonial burial (that gives +2 happy faces in the cities), Defenders of the faith (+20% defense to units inside cities) and Interreligious studies (+2 espionage to libraries and universities).


Wide/tall empires

Civ5 shows that small empires might be as competitive as large ones, in certain fields (like culture).
In this mod, this is implemented through the number of cities in an empire.
Every civilization can have up to 6 cities without any negative consequences. From that point on, if it keeps founding or obtaining more cities, the empire will become more and more difficult to manage.
These are the consequences (for every city from the 7th on): +1 unhappy face in every city, +10% to civics upkeep, +5% to the required culture for border pop and to the required culture for a cultural victory. Also, for each 2 extra cities, the number of buildings required for a National Wonder increases by 1 (if you want to build Oxford University, usually you need to have 5 universities, but if you have 8 cities, that you will need 1 extra university).
In addition, if you have more than 6 cities and you lost your capital city, there are chances that a civil war starts that splits your empire in 2. This means that half of your empire will split away and form and independent empire.
AI will carefully analyze whether he wants (or needs) to play a TALL empire, thus limiting its expansion to up to 6 cities, razing every extra conquest. For example, if an AI is going for a culture victory, he immediately switch to play a TALL empire.


Combat between stacks

Most of the reasons of the eternal struggle between “Civ4 stacks of doom” and “Civ5 carpets of doom” lie here. Civ4 allows infinite units in a tile, while Civ5 allows only 1 military unit in a tile. Warfare is drastically different between these two games. And however, stacks of doom are too strong, while carpets of doom get to a difficulty to move units around.
I have tried a lot of different solutions, but I always get stuck with the AI (which is quite difficult to implement in an effective way), so I ended up with a relatively small change, that should try to mitigate the effects of the stacks of doom, without breaking too much the balancement of the game, but just enhancing in some way some already existing features.
Siege units are now more deadly with their collateral damage, hitting more units than usual. This means that, if a stack of doom is on its way against your city, you can use siege units to heavily damage a great number of units in the stack. This alone should encourage players to avoid putting all the units in the same stack.
This doesn’t mean that siege units become monsters. Mounted units are now more effective in flank attacks. Some promotions (Flanking 1 and 2) allow to do flank attacks even if the attacker doesn’t survive the fight, giving a way to damage siege units more easily.
Again, this doesn’t mean that now siege units are sitting ducks. If siege units are defended by spearmen, pikemen or riflemen, these units have the ability to try to block an enemy flank attack, although they just provide a fixed, non-stackable chance to do that.
In conclusion, now the combat between stacks includes heavy collateral damage (usable either when attacking a well defended city, or when countering large invading stacks) and heavy flank attacks against sieges (mainly used when countering invading stacks). Now, stacks of doom seem no longer invincible, but more manageable instead.
The AI has been instructed to get the best use from these new tactics.


Special “leveling” events

I call them “providence” :), in order to try to rebalance some games, to never leave the strongest strong forever or the weakest weak forever.
Sometimes, some particular events (shown with a popup to the player, and a blue major message in the message log) will try to help the weakest civilizations, or to halt the strongest ones. If the chosen weak civilization is particularly hopeless, or if the strongest one is particularly unstoppable, the effect of the event could be even greater.
Helping events can be a sudden golden age, a free discovered tech, or a population boom.
Halting events can be an anarchy, a population drop, or a bonus resource being extinguished.


Other changed game mechanics

  • Rivers now greatly limit the unit movement. Without a bridge, if a unit crosses a river, it will spend all its movement points, and couldn’t move any more in that turn. This is obviously noticeable only with units with 2 or more movement points.
  • Enemy cities and units now form a Zone Of Control in the land around. You cannot move slipping near an enemy unit. You must either fight it, or move back.
  • To establish a maritime connection between cities, a harbor is now needed in both cities. Also, you can create an air connection between cities, building airports in the cities you want to connect.
  • Military garrison in the cities must now be appropriate with the current technology level, in order to avoid unhappiness in the city. If you have discovered Gunpowder, you can no longer rely on warriors or spearmen to get the people happy, but you will need a couple of more modern Musketmen.
  • World wonders now become obsolete if ANY known civilization discover the corresponging tech. So, it’s no longer all up to you. A civilization could even decide to discover a tech JUST to obsolete a wonder of its enemy.


Rebalancements changes

  • I have always hated the fact Chariots fight melee, Horse Archers fight with bows, and Keshiks fight melee too! Historically, it was exactly the opposite, expecially for Keshiks (the most fearful horse archer army in the history)! Therefore, now Chariots fight with bows and required Archery. Horseback Riding unlock a melee Horseman. Keshiks now fight with bows and require Archery. All these changes imply corresponding changes with First Strikes.
  • I have always found nonsense that Phalanx replaces axeman! Now, the greek unique unit replaces spearman, and its unique bonus is to nullify the bonus that enemy axemen might have against him.
  • I have changed the Persian Immortal to simply be a cheaper replacement of the chariot, with a halved production cost.
  • I’ve tried to differentiate Grenadier from Rifleman. Now, grenadier continues the “archer” line, meaning that only archer units can upgrade to this unit. Its combat bonuses have been replaced by a city defense bonus.
  • In order to gap a hole with the new “Combat between stacks” game mechanic, cannons have been given a bonus when attacking machine guns.


User interface changes


  • A new “Find city” button in the main screen allows to find and locate a known city in the world. All the known cities are listed, sorted by city name or by civilization.
  • A new “Great people” progress bar in the main screen (near the research bar) shows and recaps the current progress of points towards the next Great Person.
  • In the main screen, the city bar of your cities will show an Espionage icon, if some counterespionage protection is active in that city (by a stationary spy, or specific espionage buildings).
  • In the main game screen, moving the mouse on a city of yours, if your empire is able to hurry a production (with gold and/or people), the current hurry cost is displayed. Also, for any known city, the list of all world wonders inside that city is displayed.
  • The score panel of the main screen is slightly changed in order to make it more compact. Only the very essential information is shown. The missing information has been moved (integrated with some more stuff) in a new screen of Foreign Advisor (see below, “Recap” tab).
  • In the Foreign Advisor screen, a "Recap" tab has been added, to list every civilization you have met, and the main known information about each of them (traits, score, current research, defensive pact, espionage status, etc).
  • In the Foreign Advisor screen, a "Armies" tab has been added, to list every civilization you have met, with the units it is currently able to train with its current technology level (if you have enough knowledge on him).
  • In the Foreign Advisor screen, a "City-states" tab has been added, to list every city-state you have met, your current relations with them, their requests, and all the known information about them.
  • In the Financial Advisor screen, a "Discoveries" tab has been added, to list the next 4 techs that each Great Person is able to discover.
  • In the Financial Advisor screen, a "GP Points" tab has been added, to recap the generation of Great People Points in all your cities.
  • The Religious Advisor screen has a new tab, "Boosts", that shows and recaps all the available doctrines to boost religions, and if they have already been picked by someone.
  • In the "Members" tab of the Victory screen, the number of turns for the next turn of votes is displayed.
  • In the Info screen, a "Wonders" tab has been added, to list every world wonder, specifying if it has been built, when, and by whom (if you know him).
  • In the Info screen, a "Milestones" tab has been added, to list every unique bonus (like "First to Liberalism", or "First to circumnavigate the world"), if it has been obtained, and by whom (if you know him).
  • In the "Graph" tab of the Info screen, it is possible to see the details of the power numbers of your civilization.
  • The statistics screen has changed, and shows how many units you have killed against particular enemies, and some other battle statistics (as the highest battle chance for which you lose, or the lowest battle chance for which you won).
  • I have renamed the “Native Americans” civilization to “Sioux”, simply because it seems to be that it better fits.


New game options

I’ve had some fun in creating new game options, to give a game a bit of craziness, or simply for some more challenge (ever heard about One City Challenge?).

  • Dynamic leaders: a game in which leaders will change over time. Leaders start without any trait, and will periodically gain traits based upon how they are playing (with a lot of wars, chances are high to get Aggressive). Also, AI civilizations will have leaders that change from time to time, so if the nearby India is initially led by Ghandi, at a certain time you will found that this pacifical man has been replaced by a fellow named Genghis Khan.
  • Full defensive: you cannot exit your borders! No unit can go outside your land. The unique units allowed to exit are non military units (workers, settlers, etc), workboats and cargo ship. This only applies to human players; AI can play normally!
  • Invisibility: quite a challenge. All AI units are invisible to human players. This means, an AI can normally see any other AI unit. The difficulty is only to humans! If an invisible unit attacks you, it suddenly becomes visible, fights, and then gets invisible again. If instead you run into an enemy (invisible) unit and trigger a fight, you will suddenly see the target, fight, and then the target will get invisible again.
  • Human-killer barbarians: to have some more challenge from barbarians. With this option, barbarian units will be much more effective in fights and difficult to defeat. This extra difficulty only applies to human players!
  • Human-killer AI: an extreme challenge, expecially with aggressive leaders nearby, and it only applies when an AI unit attacks a human player. When such an attack occurs, the AI unit will always win, regardless of the combat chance, without suffering any damage! The only way to defeat its units is to ATTACK them, since in this way combat occurs normally. Note that this option will not alter the AI attack logic: the AI will still try to avoid fights when chances to win are low, but if such a fight should happen, he will surely win.


Download page: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=24341

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Nice, interesting and different :D

Its nice to see this 10 year old ancient game can still produce new mods.
The features looks interesting, you certainly opened up the hood and tweaked the engine quite a bit, and it definitely differentiates from existing mods.

Good job :goodjob:

ps. dont forget to put up some screenies ;)
 
wow!

1. a new mod for this "10 year old ancient game", awesome!
2. city states for civ4! superb.
3. new refreshing features! awesome.


this project seem to have taken a while to be made, so well done , thank you.
sound like a great mod. gonna check this out.

and could you upload the source code as well? :)
 
Registered just for this. Any other plans for this mod?

Like the client states mod? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=497863



Manufactured goods? Like 2 coal + 2 iron=1 steel?

Have a good day.

Of course I think future releases will be unavoidable, event just for fixing the bugs that will eventually come out!

I'm glad to have new ideas to implement. The manufactured goods could be a nice idea, to use with a game option (in order to avoid to add more and more features to the standard game, I'd rather use a game option to enable it). I have already tried something similar, but I never came out with a sensible idea, so it could be clear how it should work:
  • The possible "recipes" (which resources make which resource)
  • How they can be activated (some needed building to work them, or else)
  • The effects of the manufactured good (which is the purpose of having "steel", for instance?)
After having (or making up) answers to these questions, I could start with it.

About source code, well, after all I have no problems in sharing it, if some ideas could be spread to other mods (after all, there is EVEN a single line of code of MINE in the last patch of Civ4BTS!!!:)). I just need some time to clean it from all the crap and crazy comments I have written for myself as reminders!!!!:):)
 
(after all, there is EVEN a single line of code of MINE in the last patch of Civ4BTS!!!:)).

Oh wow, color me officially impressed. It's been a very long time I did not see anything new here. May I ask how did you manage to make developers to include your code line? Private communication as a beta tester or what?
 
I am getting a CTD on Hemisphere map with random settings if I delay founding the first city for the second turn.
 
Oh wow, color me officially impressed. It's been a very long time I did not see anything new here. May I ask how did you manage to make developers to include your code line? Private communication as a beta tester or what?

I cannot tell whether you are ironic or not. Of course, I intended just to be so when talking of myself, I don't want to talk big about myself, I just wanted to say that I am quite happy when I can be of any help to the community (I highligthed the SINGLE line, meaning that it is a very minimal contribution!!:) It is only a self-satisfation matter!!).

However, I just reported here in the forums a bug that I found in the SDK, together with the fix. In the next patch, I have found my fix in the new source code!
 
You have brought the greatest thing i liked about Civ5 but which wasnt enough to make me want to move to Civ5: City States. You are a :king: I also subscribe to the SDK release as i am really intrested in City States for my mod.

On side note:
Manufactured goods? Like 2 coal + 2 iron=1 steel?
I think there is something like this in Realism Invictus where a forge for example lets say turns copper into bronze by consuming that copper and giving a bronze resource(from what i saw in the XML it adds two new tags). Not exactly sure if this is what people are talking about but maybe it can help as reference and balance material.

EDIT: nvm the bug

P.S. I got a game till the medieval age(Noble Diff), highlands map, the ZoC was pretty intresting sometimes it forced me to stay out in an open area since there was no other way to get to the hill next to the city since lots of mountains but it also opened the posibility of guarding on a hill with forest next to the city that blocked access(map favourized defensive positions also, will test more later;)).
 

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I cannot tell whether you are ironic or not. Of course, I intended just to be so when talking of myself, I don't want to talk big about myself, I just wanted to say that I am quite happy when I can be of any help to the community (I highligthed the SINGLE line, meaning that it is a very minimal contribution!!:) It is only a self-satisfation matter!!).

However, I just reported here in the forums a bug that I found in the SDK, together with the fix. In the next patch, I have found my fix in the new source code!

No, why would I be ironic? This is quite an accomplishment and there is nothing wrong with being big. I liked many of your ideas in the mod. Apparently there is also an issue with the interface: tech progress bar was shifted to the right to make room for the great people bar, but tech name remained centered and thus somewhat offset from the tech bar.
 
No, why would I be ironic? This is quite an accomplishment and there is nothing wrong with being big. I liked many of your ideas in the mod. Apparently there is also an issue with the interface: tech progress bar was shifted to the right to make room for the great people bar, but tech name remained centered and thus somewhat offset from the tech bar.

Can you please post a screenshot of your screen, since I cannot reproduce the problem?
Maybe the issue shows only in particolar conditions, and I want to fix that too.


In addition, in the meantime I have found a couple of points that need a fix:
  • The "settings" screen shows also the city states you have met, with a confusing, erratic text. This will be removed (only CIVs will be shown there).
  • The "city-states" screen will also show how many turns left for every active mission.


SDK code on its way...
 
:goodjob:

Not that it's the only interesting thing to mention about your mod, but the City States component looks so important in itself that you could even propose it as a standalone mod component.

I suppose it's a lot of work but totally worth it! :king:
 
Of course I think future releases will be unavoidable, event just for fixing the bugs that will eventually come out!

I'm glad to have new ideas to implement. The manufactured goods could be a nice idea, to use with a game option (in order to avoid to add more and more features to the standard game, I'd rather use a game option to enable it). I have already tried something similar, but I never came out with a sensible idea, so it could be clear how it should work:
  • The possible "recipes" (which resources make which resource)
  • How they can be activated (some needed building to work them, or else)
  • The effects of the manufactured good (which is the purpose of having "steel", for instance?)
After having (or making up) answers to these questions, I could start with it.

About source code, well, after all I have no problems in sharing it, if some ideas could be spread to other mods (after all, there is EVEN a single line of code of MINE in the last patch of Civ4BTS!!!:)). I just need some time to clean it from all the crap and crazy comments I have written for myself as reminders!!!!:):)

Thanks for your quick response!

I thought about taking a stab (my first time) merging the dll from the client states mod and your mod. Plan on releasing the source for the dll? Or, do you plan on definitely merging the client states mod?

Have a good one...
 
Release updated to fix the two points listed above (about the Settings screen and the City-states screen). If you want, you may download and replace your existing version without any problem (no savegame compatibility issue).

Besides, the SDK code is also online:
Click here to download
Who wants to look at how city states are handled can keep two main points in mind.
1- a method IsCityState will tell whether a player is actually a city-state or not. This will recurr all over the code and the python scripts.
2- an "addCityStates" method in the CvGame class will be run at the beginning of the game, to pick random city-states and find random locations where to put them. It also initializes these players.
 
Thank you very much for the source code. It all looks quite professional...
 
Thank you very much for the source code. It all looks quite professional...

Concur. Thank you very much.

EDIT: Looked at the Dll source files. I thought it would be a straight file merge. I was mistaken. This requires a knowledge of how the code works...so if the client states mod is merged, GREAT (I would gladly donate to a paypal account for this alone and if this is ongoing like a gigantic map setting). Otherwise, completely understandable if this is not merged, as we all have real lives...

Thanks again for uploading...
 
Can you please post a screenshot of your screen, since I cannot reproduce the problem?
Maybe the issue shows only in particolar conditions, and I want to fix that too.

Spoiler :
 
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