The End of Isolation and Birth of the Modern World

The End of Isolation and Birth of the Modern World
Version 1.2
By Head Serf



The world has been thrust into a new age in history where some of the mightiest nations of the modern world are just beginning to unite. Germany is divided between Prussia and the German Confederation, while Italy is preparing to invade Austria in the Third War of Italian Independence. France under Napoleon III is trying maintain its diminishing importance among European powers and Spain has become a trade magnate with its Cuban colonies. Across the Atlantic is the fractured United States of America, the south now in a new Confederacy that has turned the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania into killing fields. And with a substantial influence in both worlds sits Queen Victoria of England its colony of Canada.

Download File
http://forums.civfanatics.com/./downloads.php?do=file&id=3496

Installation Instructions
1. Download the zip file to your Mods folder.
2. Extract all to the Mods folder.
3. Copy and paste the WBS (World Builder Save) file to the Public Maps folder.
4. The address of the assets folder should look like this:

Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Mods\The End of Isolation\Assets

The address of the WBS file should look like this:

Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\PublicMaps

5. To play, start Civ4 and click "Advanced" and then "Load a Mod". Click on the one that says "The End of Isolation".
6. After it loads go to "Play a Scenario" and pick "The End of Isolation 1.1".



The Civilizations included are:
Playable
United States of America
Confederate States of America
Great Britain
Spain
France
Prussia
Austria
Italy

Non-Playable
The Netherlands
Denmark
Portugal
The German Confederation

Every playable civilization has their own unique unit.

The map is 120 by 44 and was made by me. The zip is very small, only about 800 kb.

All boats have a very high movement. Ship of the Line and Galleons have 45. This is so that they can cross the Atlantic in a reasonable amount of time. To balance this, coastal squares now have a movement cost of 10. That means boats can move 5 spaces in coastal squares. It takes 4 turns for a boat from Seville, Spain to get to Havana, Cuba.

The new unit "Enslaved Worker" can only be built under the civic slavery, and takes half the hammers of a normal worker to build.

As of version 1.2 religion is now a part of the game. The three religions are Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. Islam is very, very minor and only exists in North Africa.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know.

Version 1.1
-Italy is now playable and they have a new UU, the Italian Redshirt
-Complex balancing to keep Italy from being to powerful to early
-The Austrian Grenademan now has slightly different stats
-Marketplaces are now in the cities of powerful European nations
-Forges are now in all European cities
-Spain has lost some buildings in some of their cities

Version 1.2
-Enslaved Workers are added as a unit
-Urban Militia are a new unit
-New art for British Heavy Ship of the Line
-Religion is added
-Full civilopedia entries for almost every new unit
-Small balancing adjustments including moving the Italian capital to Turin and improving French and English relations

Special thanks goes to KaiserBenjamin for coming up with the idea and giving me much needed background information on the time period.
I also appreciate the work of Rabbit, White and AlazkanAssassin for several of their units included in the scenario.

Reserved for later use

Looks like a good scenario! When given the choices as who to play, though, it said you could play as Isabella of Spain... Anyway, I'm getting back to playing!

I figured out how, I made a mistake... Sorry about that.

I just looked through everything and downloaded it again and nothing is wrong, it's working fine for me. Make sure you have the mod loaded when you go to play and the WBS file named "The End of Isolation 120 by 44" is in the "Public Maps" folder. Also check to make sure that no names have been changed.

Would be nice if the non playables were playable

OK, I've played, not through, but until the late 1860s as Prussia. I have to say I like it a lot although Austria was really hard to take down. However I think Spain and Italy are overpowered. By 1870 Spain was a virtual non-power only slightly stronger than say, the Dutch. But according to the scoreboard they're extremely powerful, like, in the top 4. I'm not sure how best to fix this problem but I think it is an issue because it drastically alters the balance of power. Maybe give them weaker techs or less starting buildings or a bad financial situation or something.

Italy is also overpowered compared to their real condition at the time. They had just unified and were technologically backward compared to the rest of Europe. In this game they are as powerful as France or Prussia.

Other than those balance issues, I'd say it plays very well although I'm sure some people will find other aspects of the game they'd like fixed.

The computer also doesn't seem to fight itself very much. So far the only declarations of war have been against me...

In my playtests the computer seemed reasonably active. The Americans restarted their war against the Confederates in about 1865 and France invaded Spain and Prussia invaded the German Confederation, but I think you're right. I really need to add some more friction between the English and French and the Italians and Austria and Austria and Prussia. This'll be one of things I'll add in the next version I guess. I'll also try to get Italy a UU and make them playable. The problem with the Sicilian Farmer is that it might be of only limited use to the Italians since Italy already has plenty of roads and connections. I was thinking of maybe making them those Italian Redshirts from the earler wars of Italian Independance.

Would be nice if I could be the Germans to see if I can challenge the top countries like Germany would be doing a few decades later

I haven't had a chance to really play it yet, but I started a game and looked around a bit, and it looks pretty good. Although I do have one suggestion already, and that is that it might be a good idea to already have forges in most cities. I'm looking forward to actually playing it through.

Please add "Mods\The End of Isolation" to the modpath in the wbs file so that the scenerio will automatically load up the modfiles.

Ok, played for awhile as the French and here are some of the things that I noticed.

1.) I don't think the French had ironclads at the time

2.) There is not much of a reason why the old world and the new world should ever meet. The distance is simply way too far to lodge any kind of military campaign either way and even if you did manage to capture some cities, the culture revolts would render them pretty useless. To remedy this I would suggest that you perhaps increase dramatically the distance that troop transporting ships can travel so that there is at least the possibility of engaging in a cross ocean war.

3.) France (I'm sure most nations too) has too many resources for there to be any meaningful trade between the civs. I would suggest that you drastically reduce the resources in the old world.

4.) Since scientific research has been disabled there is no reason to build any of the science buildings or put any money into science. I'm guessing that you intended for everyone to put their taxes at 100%?

Other than that it looks like a great effort from what I can tell. Good luck

In response to hypo:

1. I thought I fixed that and I thought I checked but I guess not. I really didn't mean to have that, I wanted only the USA and CSA to have ironclads.

2. Well, I don't know if you checked, but the boats move 5 spaces in coastal and 45 spaces in ocean, and as I said, it only takes 4 turns for units from Seville, Spain, to get to Havana, Cuba, which is in the new world.

3. I will definately take that into consideration for the next version of this map.

4. Yep, 100% tax. I did this because their were very few scientific things going on in the 1860's.

just a thought about austria: it's quite bad that it's totaly at the edge, even though you could at least give them one more city at the balkan, fiume (nowadays rijeka) would be quite good i think. elseways it's quite annoying to play with austria.

That's true but Austria has, I believe, the best special unit. That Grenedier is a beast. It can totally destroy riflemen by the bushel, is superior to other grenediers, and is as decent as anything else against canons. All you need is a few riflemen to fight calvary and you're set.

Should I reduce it's power by one? Austrians were one of the main European countries to use Grenadiers, or as they called them, Grenademen.

Every time I load the game I get a screen telling me I'm defeated. I don't claim to be the best Civ player, but I would like to at least get one turn...can anyone help?

You need to have the mod loaded when you start the scenario. If you do and it still doesn't work, check to make sure the mod folder is in the right place.

I'm not sure. I was able to take down Austria as Prussia so clealry they're not an unstoppable force. They're certainly tough though. *shrug*

This is like a scenario of what been happening around the world DURING the united states civil war. now you can wage wars during the civil war, if this senario allows it... too bad i can't play it on my computer, cause it lags the hell everytime. I have a 3.0 GHz intel pentium processer, radeon x600 with hyperthread memory, 256.0 MBs, and 1 GB on RAM.