Real Epic, a mod for Civilization IV
Version 1.0.1, released September 8, 2006
by SL (Shadowlord on Apolyton and CFC)

Despite the name of this mod, the intended game speed is normal or quick, not epic. This mod is, however, intended to give a more epic game than epic, thus the name of the mod.

This mod should be compatible with Warlords (unless the python scripts which tell the AIs to prioritize mining, the wheel, and pottery somehow turn out to be incompatible, but that's probably unlikely).

Goal & Description of the mod

• The goal of this mod is to:
  • Allow wars to take place in each era
  • Make technologies have a far greater impact on wars and development, as per real history
  • Eliminate or reduce the likelihood of having your military units go obsolete almost immediately after they become available.
  • This is mainly intended for singleplayer, although it could probably be used for multiplayer as a means to play mainly in one era.
• These things are accomplished by multiplying research costs (for ALL difficulty levels and speeds) by 10x, extending time, and multiplying city culture requirements by 3 (to prevent cultural victory consistantly ending the game in the medieval or renaissance era). Note that 10x research costs does not necessarily come out to 10x slower research, due to a number of factors.

List of features

• 10x higher research costs for all techs
• 3x higher city culture thresholds.
• Many more turns in the game. (Years/turn may not be quite accurate yet, although it's probably most accurate in normal speed, and least accurate in epic and marathon)
• Inflation is slower, but perhaps too slow.
• I've added an "Idle" process which turns production into +10% commerce, +10% science, and +10% culture. This is, of course, not very efficient, but it is mainly intended to be a way to avoid having to constantly make and disband units because you have no other build options. This process is available from the start of the game. It uses the 'coins' icon that commerce uses, for now (I don't know how to make new icons or I would think about combining the three existing process icons, or making a 'zzz' icon).
• AIs prioritize researching mining, the wheel, and pottery now, in that order. Also, if they lack fishing and agriculture and the wheel, they'll research agriculture before the wheel (since either fishing or agriculture is needed for pottery). This should help reduce the number of civs which get stuck in the ancient era. These technologies are recommended to the player as well, if researchable.

About game speeds

• Normal speed is the intended playing speed, although you can use the other speeds if you like. Only normal and quick have year/turn set up decently - Epic and Marathon both have 6050 turns and 1 year/turn, which will make your year very bizarre.
• For the normal game speed, there are 1350 turns. The first 900 turns will take you to 1600 AD, and then there are 450 1 year/turn turns after that. More specifically, the first 100 turns will take you to 2800 BC (12 years/turn), the next 120 turns will take you to 1600 BC (10 years/turn), the next 140 turns will take you to 400 BC (8 years/turn), the next 160 turns will take you to 480 AD (6 years/turn), the next 180 turns will take you to 1200 AD (4 years/turn), the next 200 turns will take you to 1600 AD (2 years/turn), and then it's 1 year/turn from then on.
• Quick game speed is 903 turns, with the year/turn rates based on the ones for Normal but sized to 2/3.
• All game speeds above normal are 6050 turns at 1 year/turn, which will probably result in crazy incorrect year numbers for the tech level.

Known Bugs and things which I am considering changing/fixing

• Inflation is a little slow.

Advice

1. You have to be careful before you get pottery - it is easy to end up with a weak economy, leading to a slow tech rate, and if you build too many troops or go to war, your income will tank. If you are planning a war before pottery, I'd advise building up a stockpile of 500+ gold before starting the war. In the meantime, coastal cities are useful for producing a bit more gold, even if you can't grow the population much. It IS possible to capture enemy cities with just warriors, but not necessarily easy. Your economy and research rate will suffer badly while you're at war, but you may be able to recover due to gaining new land from the war, if you disband parts of your army until you get unit upkeep sufficiently low again.
2. Religions are very useful early on, as they will grant you +1 happiness per city, letting you get another population in each city. Monasteries help improve your culture and science rates, and temples also allow another population per city.
3. Great prophets are one way to pull out of a crashed economy, since they can discover religions for you, or act as a gold-producing specialist, or found holy buildings which give you +1 gold per city with that religion.
4. Stonehenge is more useful than normal, as it will help you pump out several Great Prophets. The Oracle is also VERY useful due to the large research costs.

To install

There are multiple ways, and each has advantages and disadvantages:

1. Unzip this into the Mods folder, so that there is a Mods\Real Epic\ folder. This won't break existing saved games, but you won't be able to use this with them either. You'll also have to load the mod every time you play, and you can only have one mod loaded at a time...
2. Or, to have this mod always active, unzip this somewhere and then copy the files from the "Real Epic" folder into CustomAssets. If any of the files already exist (from another mod, probably), then you'll have to merge them together (I suggest using WinMerge). This approach may cause weirdness if other mods which modify any of these files are loaded normally.
3. Or, to merge this with another mod, unzip this somewhere, move the files from this mod which aren't in the other mod (move them into the other mod's folder), and then merge the remaining files' contents into the files in the other mod's folder (Using WinMerge).

Changes in 1.0.1

• Removed the AIAutoPlay component (as its custom CvGameCoreDLL may be (read: probably is) incompatible with Warlords.

Changes in 1.0

• Clear your cache (hold down shift while Civ is restarting after loading the mod) to make sure Civ IV notices that some files in the mod have changed.
• Really fixed the bug or bugs which was causing the Normal speed games to end at 1600 AD. Unfortunately, your current games will NOT be fixed if you load them after updating the mod. Apparently Civ IV got confused when I put a comment tag inside the GameTurnInfos section (It was valid XML, but it looks like Civ IV quits looking for GameTurnInfo elements if it hits any other kind of element, including comment elements).
• Quick has turns/year speeds now.
• jdog's excellent AIAutoPlay mod component is included with this mod now - it's incredibly useful for testing (it only took several hours to go to 1600 AD with that going, rather than a week or two if I were playing myself).
• I've fixed inflation, although it seems to be rather slow right now. (So it might get tweaked further)
• AIs should now prioritize researching mining, the wheel, and pottery. If they lack fishing and agriculture and the wheel, they'll research agriculture before the wheel (since either fishing or agriculture is needed for pottery). These are recommended to the player as well, if researchable.
• Research/weath/culture are 100% efficient instead of 50% efficient now. (Firaxis made that change from vanilla to warlords)

Changes in 0.4

• Attempted to fix a bug which was causing the Normal speed games to end at 1600 AD. (The fix didn't work - Apparently the problem was a comment tag, not the number of years going above 6050. Or maybe both.)
• Set speeds for quick, although I haven't tried them.
• Normal has 1350 turns and quick has 903 now. In vanilla Civ IV, normal has 460 and quick 320 turns. (That's almost but not quite 3x as many turns)
• I was unable to set the game to last beyond 2050 AD, as Civ IV considers that invalid (which is why it was ending Normal speed games at 1600 AD). If this isn't enough to reach end-game techs by 2050, I may need to make it hit 1 year/turn sooner, so that I can add more turns.