Your favorite mods and custom civs?

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teakbois

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Jun 27, 2012
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I haven't done much with mods in Civ V

I'm interested in mods and custom civs that add depth to the game without messing with balance. It would be nice to have a bunch of civs that fit perfectly with the official ones that we have but provide some new playstyles
 
Also, mods that improve the AI in some of its weak areas (mostly combat, especially naval).
 
Many custom civs do try to 'one-up' the vanilla civs in terms of complexity, but I think Tomatekh's Sumer is one of the most true to the vanilla playstyle - elegant, potent, and straightforward.

And not to be too self-promoting, but I find my Milan and my Norway civs to be the more elegant of my designs.

In the same vein, I'd recommend More Civs' Gauls or Minoa; very vanilla-style bonuses I feel.

If you're after immersion, you might like my Cultural Diversity mod - this adds more diversity amongst the civs, including for soundtracks and era splash screens, without affecting gameplay. There is an optional "starting bonuses" mechanic, but this can be turned off if you're concerned about balance.

I'd also encourage looking at Sukritact's Events & Decisions. You may consider it to affect balance too much, but it's at least worth a look - it adds an enormous amount of depth to the game.
 
My favorites go to Tomatekh's Caral and Sumer, ryanjames' Andorra and Lanna, JFD's Bavaria and Scotland, CL's The Dene and Canada, MoreCivs' Minoa and Phoenicia.

But yeah, that's just me, take it with a grain of salt.
 
Mods I'm currently using and would recommend:

Mestizo Music
Iroquois City Names
Dynamic Culture Overview
Cultural Diversity
No Spy Freeloaders
Civ IV Leader Traits in Civ V
Randomize City Names
City-State Diplomacy
Separate Great People Counters
BarbIE
Historical Religions Complete
More Mercantile Mod
Gibraltar, Reef, and Krakatoa Fixes

- Plus a bunch of civs, but I'm still testing a bunch of those. I think CSD may have a conflict with something else during wartime, but I'm still trying to track that down.
 
Well, there's always Civilization Appropriate General and Admiral Names (a really stupendous and awesome mod if I do say so myself :shifty:).

Has no real gameplay effect, so adheres to increased immersion without disturbing game balance. :mischief:

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You really can't go too far wrong with just about any of JFD/Janboruta/et al's Civilization Mods, since JFD doesn't tend to stack a trillion extra capabilities into his Civs. They are generally more focused than the average Vanilla Firaxis-delivered Civ. Or at least less bland anyway (America). But the point at which you start trying to decide whether JFD-Civ-X is more something-or-other than one of the MoreCivs Offerings, or less something-or-other than one of the CL Modded-Civs is where everyboy's indivudal flavor and preference really starts to define the difference between the sublime, the good, the bad, or the googly.
 
JFD said:
Many custom civs do try to 'one-up' the vanilla civs in terms of complexity, but I think Tomatekh's Sumer is one of the most true to the vanilla playstyle - elegant, potent, and straightforward.

And not to be too self-promoting, but I find my Milan and my Norway civs to be the more elegant of my designs.

In the same vein, I'd recommend More Civs' Gauls or Minoa; very vanilla-style bonuses I feel.

If you're after immersion, you might like my Cultural Diversity mod - this adds more diversity amongst the civs, including for soundtracks and era splash screens, without affecting gameplay. There is an optional "starting bonuses" mechanic, but this can be turned off if you're concerned about balance.

I'd also encourage looking at Sukritact's Events & Decisions. You may consider it to affect balance too much, but it's at least worth a look - it adds an enormous amount of depth to the game.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the recommendations (Not just JFD, but others as well)

The Events and Decisions mod kind of inspired this, I saw Marbozir using it in a Let's play I watched (Sweden was his Civ) and it looked like it helped the Deity AI at the end. Still, the end game is my least favorite part so I was thinking about trying it out anyway. Im not quite up to deity yet anyway.

Some interesting looking civs there. Must be tough to come up with unique but balanced civs. But then, there are civs like Poland that have unbalanced UAs as it is and some UUs are really powerful while others are just barely upgrades.
 
My favorite modded civs:

1. JFD's Germans
2. Rawsasquatch's CSA
3. More Civilizations' Hawaii*
4. JFD's Carthage*
5. JFD's Poland*
6. legui's Philistines

*alternate version of a vanilla civ.

Otherwise, I play with cultural diversity, piety and prestige and exploration continued expanded(by JFD), Events and decisions(by sukritact), and lastsword's promotion converting mod(can't remember the mod's exact name, it is a small mod, but it can change the game sometimes). Oh, and tomatekh's mods are great. Tarcisio's mods are fun to play against, and Colonialist legacies has very... 'Cool' mods. Also, DJS, ryanjames and firebug have very interesting mods. :D
 
There are two mods I use as standard for my games:

Culturally Linked Start Locations - Civs and city-states start close to each other depending on their cultural art style. So, for example, any European civs selected would start the game near each other. Makes games feel much more realistic.

City State Selection - I play with geographically/culturally themed civs for my games, such as all European civs or all East Asian civs etc. This mod lets you choose the city-states the game will load, so you can have city-states that are authentic to the game's theme, so no Hong Kong in a European civ game, for example.

Also, even if you don't use Steam, you can view Civ V mods there by popularity, rating and subscription - link.
 
Gameplay changes:
- Many DLL-VMC mods (No Followup from Cities, No More Civilian Traffic, Local Generals, etc)
- Separate Great People Counters (Machiavelli)
- Plenty of Custom Wonders by Pouakai and friends
- Race for Religion & Reform and Rule (Machiavelli)
- Events and Decisions

Civs:
- Sri Lanka
- JFD's Tojo Japan
- Light in the East's Safavids
 
DoctorMcGann said:
What's the point of Culturally linked start locations if you play themed games anyway?
Click to expand...
Ha, I picked bad examples! I think all East Asian civilizations use the Asian Art Style. There are instances where it's useful, though, even with themed civilizations. For example, Greece and Rome use the Greco-Roman style rather than the European. Ethiopia, Egypt and Morocco use the Middle East style if one was playing an African civs game. Ancient Mediterranean/Near East is one of my favourite setups and the mod'll separate the Greco-Romans from the Near Easterners.

I might have to go through the files and make a list of the cultural Art Styles for the civs as culturally-linked starts might not be necessary in some cases (and it does turn Starting Bias off). Still, if you're playing games with civs from more than one cultural art style then I recommend it.
 
Uh, uh.. There's also a modder not (yet) mentioned, who has made a couple of interesting custom civs: the Nuragic civilisation and the Corsican republic! ;) [emoji14]
.. Sorry, couldn't help myself.

In all seriousness, Events&Decisions, Piety&Prestige and CulturalDiversity are among the mods I almost always play with. There's also as bunch of minor mods that doesn't really do much gameplay-wise, but still enhances the overall experience, such as: unique cultural influence, civ names by policies, barbarian immersion, randomise city names, ethnic units and map labels, though the latter is known for causing long loading times between turns.
 
Trigan Emperor said:
Ha, I picked bad examples! I think all East Asian civilizations use the Asian Art Style. There are instances where it's useful, though, even with themed civilizations. For example, Greece and Rome use the Greco-Roman style rather than the European. Ethiopia, Egypt and Morocco use the Middle East style if one was playing an African civs game. Ancient Mediterranean/Near East is one of my favourite setups and the mod'll separate the Greco-Romans from the Near Easterners.

I might have to go through the files and make a list of the cultural Art Styles for the civs as culturally-linked starts might not be necessary in some cases (and it does turn Starting Bias off). Still, if you're playing games with civs from more than one cultural art style then I recommend it.
Click to expand...
Interesting, I had forgotten Morocco had Middle Eastern art. I didn't even know greco-roman was a thing.
 
Thanks onmy -

My mods are childs play compared to Hulfgar's stuff though. I use quite a few things from WHoward's site picknmixmods as well.
 
teakbois said:
I'm interested in mods and custom civs that add depth to the game without messing with balance.
Click to expand...

It doesn't quite fit into the criteria, but Anno Domini is an awesome mod if you want to try something slightly different from the vanilla game, if you happen to like the ancient era (rather than modern era stuff).
 
labriejp said:
I use quite a few things from WHoward's site picknmixmods as well.
Click to expand...

yeah but so do everyone else too mate, but anyway I like having masses of choice with aau on which or what unit Im going to use, no doubt that hulgars mods and imo are master pieces and i Love em, but yours too are brilliant and I have figured ways to allow them to work fine with others like "ethnic units" blood n iron" etc etc

anyways long story short, I like what I like and they just happen to be yours and H's
nice job to the both of you :goodjob:
 
Three that I almost always play with are the Iroquian City Names and Celtic City Names mods, both by gordonlucas, as well as the Better Polynesian City Names mod by Pouakai. I think their names speak for themselves; they replace the existing Anglo-Saxon Celtic city names, the English and French Iroquois city names, and the Polynesian city names that are actually countries/islands with more culturally-accurate city names.

I also always use the InfoAddict mod by robk, More Luxuries by Barathor, Ethnic Units by BrutalSamurai22, Religion - Beliefs Expansion Pack by BlouBlou, and Historical Religions by Tomatekh.

My favourite custom civs are:
Mass Effect Collection by Pluvia
Dominion of Canada by Legendary
The Goths by Tomatekh
The Finnish Civilization by Hypereon
 
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