Total Realism 2.4 (final Warlords version)

[Walter Hawkwood]

Ladies and gentlemen, my dear fellow CFC members, I am overjoyed to present, after a long period bordering on oblivion, a new version of the legendary Total Realism mod. The mod was one of the first comprehensive modpacks ever made for Civilization 4, and it has been around ever since, constantly improving.

Total Realism 2.4
final Warlords version​

With this release, we are closing the development under Warlords, and moving on for the future BtS release. This version is the result of over a year's work improving every aspect of Total Realism 2.3, and, as you can guess from the development period length (almost 2 years since the last major version!), the changes are innumerable. Therefore, just let get you a total sum-up instead (I ask you in advance to forgive me for not giving precise figures on many occasions: with that many stuff around it becomes quite hard to even count it all) of what Total Realism mod stands for:

Spoiler :

• The only mod for Warlords to incorporate the innumerable interface tweaks made by BUG mod.
  
• Over 120 new techs across every era. Most techs have voice acting.
  
• 20 new civics, 3 for each category except religious. “Old” civics are also reworked, in many cases completely so.
  
• Over 60 new conventional promotions, including new promotions exclusive to naval units; this doesn’t cover the traditions and doctrines, providing another 60 unique advantages to your units.
  
• 60 new leaders for existing civs, each with his own personality (3 of them has been since independently added to BtS).
  
• 2 new leader traits: Seafarer and Agricultural, to make sure there are many unique combinations to try out.
  
• National values, that work like less powerful leader traits, but are assigned to civs instead of particular leaders; 8 in number.
  
• 1 new civ. Despite our original intention to add no new civs, Poland kind of got added in; now it is as well-developed civ as any other, offering a rich gameplay experience.
  
• 8 broad new unit categories (like Light Cavalry, Submarines, etc.).
  
• Over 35 new land unit classes (like Fusiliers, Hussars, Armored Cars etc.).
  
• Over 20 new naval unit classes (like Sloop, Ship of the Line, Dreadnought etc.).
  
• 11 new air unit classes (like Jet Bomber, Early Fighter etc.).
  
• Unique limited national units for each civ (42 in total, since many civ have more than one).
  
• Too many individual new units for me to even estimate their number, bringing both flavor and strategy differences for each civ (expect to field lots of different phalanx as Greeks and learn to love the desert as Arabs); I guess “hundreds” wouldn’t be an understatement.
  
• Unique artstyles assigned to civilizations; many buildings change their looks according to the era and to the particular civ that built them.
  
• Over 50 new regular buildings to construct in your cities (Schools, Caravan Houses, Manufactories etc.).
  
• 25 new special industrial buildings used to convert some resources into other ones (ranging from smithing Bronze to producing Microchips).
  
• Over 30 new World Wonders to give you an edge over opponents.
  
• Over 30 new resources, some to be harvested, some to be produced by your industries.
  
• Unique great people; when a great person is born, expect to see his/her artistic rendition or photo and either find out his/her biography or to learn a quote of his/hers. 1007 total – imagine that for a moment!
  
• Deadly pandemics will devastate the cities of rulers that are careless with sanitation
  
• Great Generals can now found military traditions and discover Great Doctrines, increasing the combat capacity of your troops
  
• Inquisitors can purge the heathen from theocratic cities
  
• Slaves and serfs can start rebellions that you will have to put down by force
  
• Unique stack aid bonus component: units will get significant aid bonus from combined arms tactics. Using diverse army composition has never been as beneficial before.
  
• Institute slavery, and capture slaves from combat – or free them if you’re fighting a slave-holding nation, while you are not.
  
• No more pharaohs trading blueprints! Watch techs spread passively from neighbor to neighbor instead, as was really the case in history (you can use the old tech trading system if you prefer, though).
  
• World religions are starkly different from each other, each having its own unique drawbacks and advantages - from spread rates to denying specific resources.
  
• Place your faith into any of the religion-specific unique units; every religion has one, and they all serve different purposes.
  
• Every religion has two Great Wonders associated with it to further spice up religious development.
  
• Enjoy our custom-built World Map and bear in mind Total Realism was designed to be compatible with random maps, and many custom map generation scripts for even more replayability (and more unpredictable multiplayer games).

If you need more information than this list offers, you can read more on the main distinctive features of our mod in our manual, or ask a question in this thread, in our subforum here on CFC or on our own development forum.

FAQ

Spoiler :

1. Q: What is Total Realism?
   
   A: It’s a mod for Civ 4 Warlords. Sure, yeah, we know BtS has been around for some time already, and most mods are made for BtS. Well, we decided that we could take our time and release the last version for Warlords that we are satisfied with. Yep, this version, and if you are reading this, it means we were successful. This also means that you can now safely assume that we’re developing Total Realism for BtS (“Total Realism Platinum”, I guess).
   
   
2. Q: Have you been around for long?
   
   A: We sure have been. The first public version of Realism mod for vanilla Civ 4 was released in November of 2005, thus making the mod almost 5 years old already eek, one of the oldest mods for Civ 4. From February 2006 the mod is in hands of Houman, who has been the team leader since, and still is. From March of the same year, we are based on Sourceforge, and Sourceforge SVN repository has proven to be an excellent way of organizing our work. In December 2006 we ported the mod to Warlords, adopting the name “Total Realism Gold” and it has been developed for Warlords ever since. 2.4 will be the last Warlords version, as the work on BtS port is already underway.
   
   
3. Q: What does the mod do? Does it add new units, buildings, civs, leaders, technologies, features etc.?
   
   A: Lots and lots of stuff. For a long answer, check the spoiler above.
   
   
4. Q: I liked some element from your mod (piece of artwork, concept etc), and I want to use it in my own mod. May I?
   
   A: By all means you should do it! Total Realism by itself draws heavily on the creations of other Civ4 community members, especially on CFC. We would be delighted if some part of our mod would help other fellow modders to create better stuff.
   
   
5. Q: I have a question/bug report/suggestion. Where do I go?
   
   A: We have a forum specifically for those needs. We invite you to visit http://civ4.houmie.com/forum/ for all your TR community needs. We leave no post unanswered! If you are having trouble accessing our forum, you can ask in our CFC subforum here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=202
   
   
6. Q: I liked your mod very much. How can I help your team?
   
   A: Well, first of all, if you have any specific skill, ranging from C++ to audio recording, anything that you think could be useful to TR, you can join our team. Basically, that is how we get team members – all of us, including myself, were at one moment just fans who offered their help in working on the mod. If you don’t think you have any skills valuable to the mod, you can just play it – every player who shares his/her impressions, voices suggestions, reports bugs is an asset to the team. They help improve TR almost as much as any team member. Also keep in mind that you CAN’T give us money for our work, because TR is strictly non-commercial. We have no account for donations and aren’t going to get one. You may, however, buy a team member a drink if one happens to be in your vicinity (the chances of which are quite good, since we have team members in many countries – see the credits section).
   
   
7. Q: I feel you treated some group/ideology/nation/religion unfairly in your mod. You give it too much/too little credit. :-(
   
   A: We are VERY sorry you have come to this conclusion. We’re trying to be fair and to carry out a balanced approach to all the stuff. After all, this mod started as an attempt to correct some unfairness/onesidedness present in vanilla Civ4. If you think we should know your opinion, please share it with us at our forum (see above), and we’ll discuss it.
   
   
8. Q: Can I use a custom map with your mod?
   
   A: No. Unfortunately, custom maps don’t work with TR. The reason behind it is all the new resources we add that will obviously be missing on a map not specifically made for our mod. If you have enough experience, you can make a map TR-compatible by placing all the appropriate resources on it by hand – if you ever do so, feel free to send it to us, we will likely include it in our next release. So the only custom map you can play TR on is the world map that comes with it.
   
   
9. Q: Can I use custom map generation scripts with your mod?
   
   A: Unlike the previous question, the answer is most likely “yes, you can”. The majority of map generation scripts, if they weren’t made specifically for some other mod, will generate perfectly playable random maps in TR. Of course, we haven’t tested every single script out there, but some of more popular ones, like PerfectWorld, can give you an excellent TR playing experience, better than the scripts that come bundled with Civ4. We recommend you experiment and find the one that suits your needs.
   
   
10. Q: Will you extend your mod to the future? There is so much cool stuff you could add…
    
    A: No, extending the tech tree to the future is beyond the scope of our mod. As it is, even expanding it to the present is beyond it – currently it is considered to extend as far as late 1980’ies. That’s why we also aren’t including any contemporary leaders – they are simply beyond our scope. We strive to model human history, and contemporary events (and even more so hypothetical future events) have not become history yet.
    
    
11. Q: Will you add more civs? At least my favorite one(s)?
    
    A: No, and there are several reasons for it. First of all, our World Map is pretty cramped as it is, and will become even more so when we eventually add BtS civs (most likely, not all of these will even make it). Then, with the amount of attention every civ gets in our mod (leaders, units, Great People, etc.), it would be a titanic job to add even one – since it is not a matter of simply adding a couple of leaders, a UU and a UB. A “civ” that is considered a standard on CFC, for example, would look terribly incomplete in our mod, and would require much more work to blend in than what already went into its making. We have added one custom civ so far (Poland), and believe us, we wouldn't like to go through that agian.
    
    
12. Q: Why don’t you use animated leaderheads?
    
    A: Once again, several reasons. The first and the strongest of those is that I’m the person responsible for adding these, and I don’t like Firaxis-style animated cartooney leaderheads. Ever since Civ 3, I always substituted them for beautiful works of art I could find. These painters are worth checking out! There are also two additional reasons that reinforce this principle: first of all, since I can make those static leaderheads myself, I am not bound to wait for someone to make me an animated leaderhead – and thus I can put in any leader I can possibly find, and you will notice that we have more leaders than most other mods. And lastly, static leaderheads eat up much less system resources. In a mod as big as ours, every little bit counts.
    
    
13. Q: Can you make it so that civs found cities in historic places and appear at historic periods? Rhye’s does it.
    
    A: No, implementing these features (as well as some other stuff present in Rhye’s) would limit our mod to world map only. While we consider the work of Rhye to be a top-class mod, we are developing a more flexible product, that is suitable for a broad spectrum of random maps.
    
    
14. Q: Why did you turn off tech trading?
    
    A: We have implemented tech transfer component instead. If any civ you have open borders with knows the tech you’re researching, you will research it much faster. We feel it does a better job at simulating tech spread than Civ4 default “tech trading” (which really only happened from late XIX century IRL). You can turn tech trading back on if you don't like that feature, but then don't forget to turn our Tech Transfer component off in the game options, as the two aren't meant to function toghether.
    
    
15. Q: Where can I get more info on how stuff works and advice on how to play your mod?
    
    A: We have a manual - not too detailed, but designed to give you a basic understanding of all the mod's significant features. You can get it here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=14388 Also, in-game hints have been rewritten to provide useful TR-specific advice (and if you didn't know, you can read all hints in the Pedia!).
    

Screenshots

An industrial city showcasing some industrial structures.

Spoiler :

Some medieval units: French Voulgier, English Billman and Anglo-Saxon Axeman and Indian Footman.

Spoiler :

Some more medieval units: Slavic Levy, Celtic Muire, Arabic Faris and German Doppelsoldnert.

Spoiler :

Some Napoleonic-era infantry: Ottomans, Russia, Poland, USA.

Spoiler :

Some more Napoleonic era-infantry: Sweden, Prussia, France, England.

Spoiler :

Some of the more exotic units - Russian Gulai-Gorod and Indian Siege Elephant.

Spoiler :

Information for fellow modmakers

We always felt our work to be a community effort, and as such we would very much like to give back to community as well. Our mod has tons of stuff incorporated into it, and much of it can currently only be found in it - we'd like that to change. Releasing all the units, buildings etc. from the mod separately on CFC is not an option, not only due to the sheer amount of separate items, but also due to the fact that our own involvment in its different bits and pieces varies greatly - from making stuff from scratch to redoing the textures and reshaping the models to even simply resaving stuff in a more efficient way (say, removing unused alpha channels in textures).

Therefore we urge you all to thoroughly pillage our mod for content. I can assure you, even if you already saw this particular unit/building/improvement/whatever on CFC, please take your time to compare, and in over 80% of cases you'll find that our version has been improved in some aspect. You can use any of our stuff without asking, but it would be nice if you informed us, just so we can enjoy the fact our work is being appreciated by the community.

Credits and thanks

Spoiler :

Current team members (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum):
• Anaztazioch – Simon Sienko (Poland)
• Hian the Frog – Yann Dubois (France)
• Houman (UK/Persia)
• Josh – Josh Sjoding (USA)
• Mexico – Peter Bodnar (Slovakia)
• Vitez – Tomasz Stępczyński (Poland)
• Walter Hawkwood (Russia)

Former team members (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum or on CFC):
• 12monkeys (Germany)
• Ankenaton (USA)
• charly1977 (Germany)
• el_zozo (France)
• israfil (Canada)
• jaynus
• Kristine
• Nightravn
• Phatlip
• PTFeilong
• Tahnkout (Turkey)

Thank you very much, for without your input, Total Realism would never get where it is today!

Special thanks go to the people who have provided a great deal of help to us testing our mod and giving us lots of useful feedback (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum):
• BareJag (Finland)
• Cruel (Brazil)
• Freakwave
• gforce (Canada)
• Harrier
• Iamwinterborn
• Ignacio (Argentina)
• riesscar
• spleskan_kur
• Sukkels88
• RonZeroRange (USA)
• VenGence (Canada)

Thank you very much, for without your help, innumerable bugs were found and fixed, and the mod was balanced in a way that would not be possible without your input.
We would like to thank the following CFC members whose work was included in our mod or otherwise helped it grow (due to the length of the list, I am certain that we couldn’t list everyone; the mod is a true product of Civ4 modding community):
TheLopez, Wolfschanze, asioasioasio, Rabbit White, Snafusmith, MaxRiga, The Conquests, Nevermind, C.Roland, Ploeperpengel, Notarzt, Chalid, sharick, Chamaedrys, esnaz, ArdRaeiss, ComG, baal_isidro, seZereth, Hunter, LittleRedPoint, heroes182, Expositus, Von Zeppelin, Robo Magic Man, nautil, tlucky4life, RogerBacon, Dom Pedro II, Mumin, krowtrobot, Zuul, Aranor, Hell's Angel, villo, Tremo, Snaitf, Frontbrecher, Bhruic, SupremeOverlord, Cafegio, AlazkanAssassin, Stone-D, Thalassicus, Optimizer, Master Lexx, Mylon, Patricius, naf4ever, abbamouse, Sevo, Willowmound, TheFourGuardian, danrell, Chugginator, Bakuel, bernie14, sepamu92, Zerver, GarretSidzaka, Cham, GeneralMatt, Polycrates, ambrox62, coffee_junkie, The Capo, zenspiderz, charle88, ermelinho, AchillesZero, JustATourist, Deliverator, Xenomorph, NikNaks93, Refar, Nicholas Hawkwood, Deon.

Additional thanks go to the creators of BUG mod: Alerum68, Cammagno, EmperorFool, NikNaks, Ruff_Hi and everyone else credited in-game in the “Interface Options”.

Some artwork was taken from the following games (every single of them is very nice, so give them a try!): Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Sid Meier’s Railroads, Sid Meier’s Colonization, Axis & Allies, Kohan 2: Immortal Sovereigns, Blitzkrieg, Empire Earth 2, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Age of Empires 3, Anno 1404, Anno 1701.

Additionally, many units are directly based or inspired by these user-created mods to Total War game series: Rome Total Realism, Europa Barbarorum, Ogniem i Mieczem, Napoleonic: Total War, European Wars, Rusichi, Broken Crescent.

Special thanks to King Louise Assurbanipal from Total War Forums and Zold Gorynych from Sich: Total WarS forums.

You can download the installer for the mod here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/civ4mods/files/

 

[ambrox62]

Congratulations
I'm really surprise for such huge effort to update TR for WRL
It means that TR people are a strong and excellent modding team

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Congratulations
I'm really surprise for such huge effort to update TR for WRL
It means that TR people are a strong and excellent modding team

Well, we are in process of moving to BtS - 2.4 for Warlords is actually the direct result of this process. But yeah, I am surprised myself we made it this far.

 

[Castor_Troy]

Although my last TR game was around 1 1/2 year ago i kept an eye on it not only as a player but also as a modder. I would like to congratulate the Total Realism team and also mention that your work was not only a direct source but also a source of inspiration for my mod. Great job!

 

[Hian the Frog]

I will test it ! It seems to be a very mod..

More seriously: next step will be porting it to BtS. A huge job again !

 

[The Capo]

I have a question, I was unable to unpak the FPKs for some reason. Does anyone know why? I am using Pakbuild 2.15, everytime I have tried it says unable to open the file or something like that.

Great mod by the way, this is easily the best mod I have played for Warlords!

 

[Bakuel]

Congrationals on the release!
Total Realism was one of the first mods I ever played and in my humble opinion the best mega mod pack around.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

I have a question, I was unable to unpak the FPKs for some reason. Does anyone know why? I am using Pakbuild 2.15, everytime I have tried it says unable to open the file or something like that.

Great mod by the way, this is easily the best mod I have played for Warlords!

I have an even earlier 2.14, but I had no trouble unpacking it. Did you go for PAK->Unpack? That's the way to do it, not File->Open.

 

[Propunk]

Walter:
I've puchased an win7 pro 64bits, I've installed it and civ4 following the recommendations in the forum and I'1m still getting freaking MAFs. My pc is a 64 bits. Can you please give a hand?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Walter:
I've puchased an win7 pro 64bits, I've installed it and civ4 following the recommendations in the forum and I'1m still getting freaking MAFs. My pc is a 64 bits. Can you please give a hand?

But of course you are! Did you follow the first step from here? No matter your OS, you still have to first tweak the .exe file to handle large amounts of memory.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Awesome!!!
Which version of Warlords does TR compatible with?
IIRC 2.3 was perfect with 2.08 AND 2.13. Is this the same?

 

[Hian the Frog]

Awesome!!!
Which version of Warlords does TR compatible with?
IIRC 2.3 was perfect with 2.08 AND 2.13. Is this the same?

TR 2.4 is compatible with 2.13 version.

 

[Grishnash]

Congratulations!!! Awesome work you guys! I can't wait to play it, it looks great!!!
Now it's just waiting for BtS!

Thanks TR team!

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Congratulations!!! Awesome work you guys! I can't wait to play it, it looks great!!!
Now it's just waiting for BtS!

Thanks TR team!

It's not waiting for BtS, it is actually advancing towards it at a good pace!

 

[Shiggs713]

great job guys. legendary mod

 

[Imrahil66]

thank you very much and congrats for releasing 2.4 TR mod
its one of my most favourite mods

Imrahil

 

[Propunk]

Thanks, Walter. Everything fine now.

 

[Manifold]

I guess, this mod contains all available units for civ4 and much more. the building are the killer bomb. i will take some more playrounds next...but i am already convinced, it would be a great session

 

[Freakwave]

Thank you TR team for your dedication and determination to keep going!! respect!



Got to hurry the BtS since you will soon have to start working on TR for Civ5!



Again thank you!

 

[coalman]

Thanks for the mod. The graphics are great and the new promotions are interesting. The only issue I have is the over abundance of barbarians. You cannot build anything with all the barbarians. No civilizations could have risen out of the ancient level with this many barbarians. They also get horseman and swordsman before I can. I think it's out of balance and needs a little tweaking.