No offense and I love the modding community... but the Civ4 modding community has been extremely, extremely weaksauce compared to what the Civ3 modding community was able to do. There still has not been one truly standout mod to come out of the Civ4 modding community. Most of the truly great work has been done by one or two major modders, people like thelopez, etc... otherwise too many people that call themselves "modders" are little more than "gameplay tweakers" or people who compile the hard work of others and call it a "new great mod!"
The best mod compilations have gone the way of the dodo, Sevomod, etc, etc.
I'd definitely like to see Firaxis bust out some rebellion, civil war, AI tweaks akin to vassal states.
I have several responses to you.
First, the you say that "gameplay tweakers" are not modders. However, isn't tweaking the gameplay
modding the core gameplay. Hence, those "tweakers", imo, have every right to call themselves
modders. They may not go all out, but they still mod the current content.
Second, you also downplay "compilers". Well, the thing is, not everybody has the artistic talents to create new content. Hell, with a block of virtual clay, I'd be lucky to create anything that resembles a rock. But, that's the point of a community. Why do you think people make units and leaders, etc and put them out for others to download. Sure, the majority of users may just "compile" them into their own games that they never release... it is just for there own enjoyment, but those who may not have the artistic talent, but a talent for design can use them in their own scenarios or mods to be released. Here's a tip, open up the instruction manual that came with the game (the bounded peices of paper with the pretty pictures) and flip to the back where you should find a section entitled credits. It has a bunch of names of people that worked on the game. Each of those names did different tasks to make Civilization IV a reality. Some of those names may lack in talent on one aspect or another. For example,
Alex Mantaris, listed as
lead programmer for Warlords, may not be able to draw anything better then a stick man (this is pure speculation to prove a point, Mr. Mantaris, for all I know, could be a modern day Picaso), but
Steve Ogden, who is the
Lead Artist, might do nothing more than scratch his head when staring at a screen full of code (again, speculation...). Sure, one person could make the game from start to finish, but we'd still be waiting for even an Alpha version of Civ IV vanilla as we sit here. The Civ IV modding community is about teamwork, not greatness. And most of the key modders that you mentioned, like TheLopez, if you look through there notes and readme files, you will most likely find a list of acknowledgements for help in the projects that they create.
And that leads me to my next point. The moddability of Civ IV is been one of my chief complaints about Civ IV. While it may be one of the most moddable Civ games, it is not the easiest. As I said, I am no artist, but I was hoping that I'd be able to at least "tweak" the gameplay to fit my needs. Sure, I can, but not easily. I have to swim through an ocean of XML in order to find what I want to change. In some cases, I've found that I would have to modify several different files, just to acheive one effect, one change. This is a big hassle and deterent to those who are not code friendly. With Civ III, making changes to units or civs, or adding cities to a civ's list was a cinch when using a userfriendly database. With Civ IV, it is a huge pain. Modding code, whether Python, C, or XML, should be for the major modders... or programmers on a Mod team. To bring this point back to your original statements, that is the reason that you have less "mods" coming out. Those with the ability are spending most of their time creating utilities that allow the rest of us to do some tweaking, and maybe even some modding of our own, instead of building their own mods. To top it off, they have to tweak update, or change those utilities everytime a new expansion is releases (which seems to happen around the time that one of these utilities nears completion).
Well, I could go on and on about this post. But I'll stop here. But before I go, a couple of quick notes. I love Firaxis and the Civ series! I just wanted to clear that up in case anybody thought that was being critical. It is just that I am frustrated by the barriers that have been risen to me, as I always liked to tweak the games to my own preferences (for example, increasing unit movement on larger maps, something that I think should be part of the map size element). I am looking forward to the Civilizeditor that is coming out and I hope that the release of the new expansion won't stretch the development time too much. Oh, and in regards to the Civil War and Rebellion, I would estimate that about 80 - 90% of the people who post here wish the same thing.
