1.16 released

[Xyth]

As usual, some things made the cut, some things didn't and will possibly appear in a later version. Note that this version introduces new gamespeeds and makes significant changes to the calendar and existing gamespeeds. These are intended to better suit HR's more expansive techtree but will probably need a fair bit of tweaking still before they fit perfectly. Your feedback in this thread would be very helpful for this process.

You may have noticed that version has been called 1.16 instead of the 0.9.6 that you might expect to follow on from the previous version (0.9.5). This is because I've decided to adopt a new version scheme from here on. Firstly, although the mod still has some rough edges I feel that at some point (not entirely sure when) it ceased being a beta. Secondly, I was running out of numbers; '1.0' was approaching and seemed to signify some sort of finished or final version that may have once been the plan when I first started working on HR but certainly isn't anymore.

This version is the 16th version of History Rewritten released - thus the 16 in 1.16. The next version will be 1.17, and so on. Much simpler!


Download (~290 MB)


--- Version 1.16 ---

Civilizations
• Portugal: Carrack (UU) now available at Compass

Leaders
• New Leader: Te Rauparaha (Polynesia)

Traits
• Financial: how often interest is received now scales with gamespeed

Technology
• Employment: also requires Masonry
• Polymers: renamed Composites again
• Property: no longer requires Masonry
• Reassigned the free techs the AI gets on higher difficulty levels

Civics
• Authoritarianism: GPP penalty increased to 50%
• Free Religion: now has low upkeep
• Redistribution: Cottage growth penalty removed, now has -50% trade route yield

Specialists
• All specialists now give +2 GPP (reduced from +3 GPP)

Buildings
• New National Wonder: Refinery
• Forge: Copper and Iron bonuses increased to 10%
• Kiln: Peat bonus increased to 10%, cost lowered to 50
• Laboratory: now unlocks at Electricity
• Royal Cemetery: also requires Masonry
• Stable: Horse and Elephant bonuses increased to 10%
• Increased the chance that certain buildings will survive conquest

Wonders
• New Wonders: The Colosseum, Porcelain Tower, Brandenburg Gate
• Angkor Wat: now unlocks at Civil Service
• Great Library: now unlocks at Philosophy
• Hagia Sophia: redesigned (lets you capture enemy UBs)
• Kremlin: renamed Saint Vasily's Cathedral since that's what it actually is
• Notre Dame: now unlocks at Patronage
• Shwedagon Paya: now unlocks at Ethics
• Sistine Chapel: brought in line with similar wonders of its era
• Taj Mahal: also causes golden ages to improve diplomatic relations
• Temple of Kukulkan: was accidentally named 'The Pyramids'
• Several wonders have had their costs adjusted
• New wonder movies should now display on OSX

Units
• New Unit: Pirate
• Dromon: now able to pillage and blockade, has upkeep costs
• Frigate: now available earlier at Optics
• Galleass: now has +25% coastal defense instead of +50% coastal attack
• Galleon: now available at Charter
• Ironclad: strength increased to 20
• Mobile Artillery: was accidentally named 'Artillery'
• Privateer: strength reduced to 9 (from 10)
• Ship of the Line: now available earlier at Meteorology
• Torpedo Boat: strength increased to 18, movement reduced to 3

Promotions
• Reverted experience change to standard BTS progression

Religions
• Shrines: now require Temples instead of Great Temples
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause all religions to be founded at once

Terrain
• New Terrain: Savannah
• Reefs: less common and shorter overall, no longer grow
• Ocean trade now unlocks earlier at Compass (+1 trade route moves to Meteorology)

Resources
• Coffee: revealed at Horticulture
• Gems: revealed at Mining
• Incense: revealed at Ritual
• Sugar: revealed at Crop Rotation
• Tobacco: revealed at Horticulture

Improvements
• Workshops: no longer cause pollution

Routes
• New Routes: Paved Road, Highway
• Routes have been rebalanced to include the new route types
• Routes now have a small gold cost to build (but not to maintain)

Miscellaneous
• New Game Speeds: Saga (1200 turns), Odyssey (1800 turns)
• Adjusted number of turns in a game (Quick: 300, Normal: 600, Epic: 900)
• Calendar revamped for all game speeds
• Cities can now build culture at Artisanry (formerly Patronage)
• Numerous Civilopedia texts added
• Enabled Wonder Movies, Religion Movies, and Tech Splash for Multiplayer​

 

[Mr. Sulu]

I followed the installation procedures you gave for installation and proceded to open the mod, but I ran into a box stating:

Load Error
GCF Error: failed to initialize the primary control theme

Then it "launches" and crashes a second later. What am I doing wrong? The new update looks great by the way.

 

[Xyth]

I followed the installation procedures you gave for installation and proceded to open the mod, but I ran into a box stating:

Load Error
GCF Error: failed to initialize the primary control theme

Then it "launches" and crashes a second later. What am I doing wrong? The new update looks great by the way.

Wrong location, wrongly named or double nested folder. Double check your installation path thoroughly, check the notes in the trouble shooting thread. If you still have no luck, please post the exact path of where you've installed the mod and I'll see if I can help.

Given you've had 0.9.5 running already (and assuming you've placed the new version in the same place) I'd guess something is wrong with the folder name. It should be 'History Rewritten' with no version number. Some unarchivers change the name of the folder to match the archive. Let me know how you get on.

 

[Mr. Sulu]

Well I followed the instructions and I'm getting the same error

Heres my path
ben(my name)/Library/Application support/Steam/SteamApps/common/side meiers's civilization iv beyond the sword/Beyond the Sword/ mods
After this I open up the "Beyond the Sword" file below it and place it in the mods folder
The reason I open the second "beyond the sword is as the first one only has the Civilization IV mods (American Revolution, Desert War) while the second one I open has Gods of Old, Age of Ice, Broken Star etc.

 

[Xyth]

EDIT: Ignore this post, the one below is clearer

 

[Xyth]

The key thing here is the location of the BTS application itself. Wherever the application is, there should be a folder called Mods in the exact same location. That Mods folder is the place where HR needs to be. There can't be any extra folders in between. For clarity, this the relationship that matters:

<identical path>/Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app
<identical path>/Mods/History Rewritten/History Rewritten.ini

There's nothing I can do to HR to change that expected layout. It's hardcoded into BTS itself.

 

[Mr. Sulu]

The thing here is that this is the exact same place I have placed History Rewritten, PAE and other mods and it's worked perfectly before. I just don't kno what's changed. I use the unzip app TinyExpander by the way.

 

[Xyth]

Do the paths (and names) for Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app and History Rewritten.ini align exactly like I describe above? I've not made any changes to HR that could affect this. If I had it would break in the non-Steam versions too.

One thing to try, find the file /History Rewritten/Assets/XML/Art/CIV4ArtDefines_Misc.xml. Move it to the desktop temporarily and then try launch the mod. If that works there might be further steps we can take.

 

[Mr. Sulu]

Okay, it launched without the CIV4ArtDefines_Misc.xml but it's obviously then missing many graphics and jumbles the text, but the game does launch without a hitch.

 

[Xyth]

The key thing here is the location of the BTS application itself. Wherever the application is, there should be a folder called Mods in the exact same location. That Mods folder is the place where HR needs to be. There can't be any extra folders in between. For clarity, this the relationship that matters:

<identical path>/Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app
<identical path>/Mods/History Rewritten/History Rewritten.ini

Do the paths (and names) for Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app and History Rewritten.ini align exactly like I describe above?

I still need to know the answer to this before we can proceed any further.

 

[wanderm]

The thing here is that this is the exact same place I have placed History Rewritten, PAE and other mods and it's worked perfectly before. I just don't kno what's changed. I use the unzip app TinyExpander by the way.

If it helps, I completely deleted the 0.9.5 folder before unzipping 1.16 into the same place.

Just a little thing. I am another that is really impressed with the "World" random map, and have tried the Massive size for the first time. Given that I have installed extra RAM on a newish computer for this very purpose, I was wondering whether there was a way to increase the total number of civs from the default 16? I feel the map size can and should support 24 or more, but appreciate that this may be too heavy for a lot of PCs.

 

[Xyth]

Just a little thing. I am another that is really impressed with the "World" random map, and have tried the Massive size for the first time. Given that I have installed extra RAM on a newish computer for this very purpose, I was wondering whether there was a way to increase the total number of civs from the default 16? I feel the map size can and should support 24 or more, but appreciate that this may be too heavy for a lot of PCs.

I hate to say it but extra RAM won't help much. BTS is a 32bit programme and is only able to make use of 2GB of RAM at once. Once that is used up you get a Memory Allocation Failure, even if there are several GBs of RAM free for the rest of the system. This affects all mods, it's frustrating as hell and there's no way to change it.

I don't know how VRAM interacts with this.

One thing you can do though (if you haven't already), is to unpack the files HR_Structures.fpk and HR_Units.fpk using Macapaka (Mac) or PakBuild (Windows). This will severely increase the time the mod takes to load but it will also help BTS make better use of memory and reduce the occurrence of MAFs. Let me know if you need any help with this.

As for adding more civs, you can start a custom game which allows you to add or remove civilizations to a map. Note though that BTS has a hardcoded limit of 18 civilizations (including the human player) on any one map. If you're on Windows you can search around for a custom DLL that allows more than 18 civs. So long as the DLL contains no other changes that might interfere with History Rewritten you can just drop it into the Assets folder and it will work. On Mac, however, this is impossible as Mac BTS doesn't support custom DLLs.

If you want to permanently change how many civilizations are on any particular mapsize you can edit the file /History Rewritten/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4WorldInfo.xml. The tag you need to change is <iDefaultPlayers>X</iDefaultPlayers>, where X is the number of civilizations not counting the human player.

I don't know how much of an effect adding more civs will have. BTS loads much of it's graphics in advance (which is part of the problem) so in theory it shouldn't matter what civ all those graphics belong to, just the quantity. In practice... well, I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

 

[Mr. Sulu]

By the way, I play Civ IV BTS using Steam, just in case that changes anything, anyway I believe I have followed your instructions. One thing though, the Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app (And Civilization IV Warlords.app) are both just textedit files which appear to be connected to the Beyond the Sword file, from which you can launch the BTS Application and put in mods.

 

[wanderm]

I hate to say it but extra RAM won't help much. BTS is a 32bit programme and is only able to make use of 2GB of RAM at once. Once that is used up you get a Memory Allocation Failure, even if there are several GBs of RAM free for the rest of the system. This affects all mods, it's frustrating as hell and there's no way to change it.

I don't know how VRAM interacts with this.

Sorry for bringing up that MAF issue once again. Maybe the dedicated graphics card will help? It certainly helps with visuals: low settings aren't much fun.

One thing you can do though (if you haven't already), is to unpack the files HR_Structures.fpk and HR_Units.fpk using Macapaka (Mac) or PakBuild (Windows). This will severely increase the time the mod takes to load but it will also help BTS make better use of memory and reduce the occurrence of MAFs. Let me know if you need any help with this.

Okay done... can live with the loading times.

As for adding more civs, you can start a custom game which allows you to add or remove civilizations to a map. Note though that BTS has a hardcoded limit of 18 civilizations (including the human player) on any one map.

Thanks for this. It is possible to override with a custom DLL, but I suspect is a lot of trouble.

If you're on Windows you can search around for a custom DLL that allows more than 18 civs. So long as the DLL contains no other changes that might interfere with History Rewritten you can just drop it into the Assets folder and it will work. On Mac, however, this is impossible as Mac BTS doesn't support custom DLLs.

I tried four. One (Rhye's) practically worked, but had not a few cosmetic issues.

If you want to permanently change how many civilizations are on any particular mapsize you can edit the file /History Rewritten/Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4WorldInfo.xml. The tag you need to change is <iDefaultPlayers>X</iDefaultPlayers>, where X is the number of civilizations not counting the human player.

Easily done; if one likes crowded maps this would benefit smaller ones as well? I essentially doubled the default settings. Thanks for the tip!

I don't know how much of an effect adding more civs will have. BTS loads much of it's graphics in advance (which is part of the problem) so in theory it shouldn't matter what civ all those graphics belong to, just the quantity. In practice... well, I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

That will take me a while to answer, I'm afraid. But an increase from 16 to 18, especially coupled with smaller files, doesn't seem significant. That said, any little is much appreciated!

Again, thanks!

 

[Xyth]

By the way, I play Civ IV BTS using Steam, just in case that changes anything, anyway I believe I have followed your instructions. One thing though, the Civilization IV Beyond the Sword.app (And Civilization IV Warlords.app) are both just textedit files which appear to be connected to the Beyond the Sword file, from which you can launch the BTS Application and put in mods.

If it's just a text file then it's probably some sort of alias or link for Steam that points to the actual application. There is a Beyond the Sword.app? Is that in the same folder as a Mods folder and is that the folder you've tried placing History Rewritten in? And where Final Frontier et al are located?

The file I asked you to delete should revert the interface font to the default and will potentially make the included premade maps not work correctly. What other effects do you see? Just in case it's the only solution we have.

Also, just on the offchance, have you tried deleting all versions of HR that you have and redownloading? Just in case your download got corrupted somehow.

Sorry this has been so frustrating for you, not having the Steam version myself makes it very hard for me to troubleshoot. It might be worth asking over in the Civ4 Mac forums of CFC too, AlanH over there knows his stuff very well and might be able to figure out something that I haven't so far.

 

[Xyth]

Sorry for bringing up that MAF issue once again. Maybe the dedicated graphics card will help? It certainly helps with visuals: low settings aren't much fun.

A better graphics card with dedicated VRAM should certainly make a difference.

Thanks for this. It is possible to override with a custom DLL, but I suspect is a lot of trouble.

I tried four. One (Rhye's) practically worked, but had not a few cosmetic issues.

Yeah it's not something I have much experience with, being on a Mac. The one from Rhye's will cause issues for sure, it has a lot of other features specific to that mod only. Perhaps try the one at this link, it seems to only affect the civ limit and nothing else:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234779

Easily done; if one likes crowded maps this would benefit smaller ones as well? I essentially doubled the default settings. Thanks for the tip!

Yep, you can make crowded smaller maps with this setting too.

That will take me a while to answer, I'm afraid. But an increase from 16 to 18, especially coupled with smaller files, doesn't seem significant. That said, any little is much appreciated!

No hurry, hope it goes well!

 

[Mr. Sulu]

If it's just a text file then it's probably some sort of alias or link for Steam that points to the actual application. There is a Beyond the Sword.app? Is that in the same folder as a Mods folder and is that the folder you've tried placing History Rewritten in? And where Final Frontier et al are located?

The file I asked you to delete should revert the interface font to the default and will potentially make the included premade maps not work correctly. What other effects do you see? Just in case it's the only solution we have.

Also, just on the offchance, have you tried deleting all versions of HR that you have and redownloading? Just in case your download got corrupted somehow.

Sorry this has been so frustrating for you, not having the Steam version myself makes it very hard for me to troubleshoot. It might be worth asking over in the Civ4 Mac forums of CFC too, AlanH over there knows his stuff very well and might be able to figure out something that I haven't so far.

The Beyond the Sword.app is located "underneath" the Beyond the Sword file, it's not an individual file as there is no "dot", it is only superimposed below the Beyond the Sword folder. the Beyond the Sword.app is blank and I install the mods in Beyond the Sword file which is where all of the other Civ IV BTS mods are located. By the way, not having that file results in many pink icons, along with pink building and units models. For example, if you go through the Civiliopedia the Brandenburg Gate Model will be pink, and it's pedia text will be messed up, as the text is layered on top of each other (in some of the entries).

 

[Howard Mahler]

Great. Always happy to hear there is a new release.
I am looking forward to trying it.

Going forward, some possible things on the to do list based on past discussions (I am sure you have others):

1. See if Aqueduct and other buildings can be required for certain city growth levels and also to add some unhappiness.

2. Look into ways for players to adjust science speed of their game (don't know if latest release includes this.) (Even with the new speeds, I think this would be a worthwhile addition.)

3. Review again strength of naval units. (I know you made some changes. I am not sure if you had a chance to look at my suggestions.)

4. Review last portion of the tech tree for possible additions and revisions.

5. See if one can find another way to add unhappiness for Authoritarianism.

6. Review random events, particularly quests. (Probably a longer term project.)

As always there should be a review of how the changes made in the latest edition are working out.

Again thanks.

 

[Xyth]

The Beyond the Sword.app is located "underneath" the Beyond the Sword file, it's not an individual file as there is no "dot", it is only superimposed below the Beyond the Sword folder. the Beyond the Sword.app is blank and I install the mods in Beyond the Sword file which is where all of the other Civ IV BTS mods are located. By the way, not having that file results in many pink icons, along with pink building and units models. For example, if you go through the Civiliopedia the Brandenburg Gate Model will be pink, and it's pedia text will be messed up, as the text is layered on top of each other (in some of the entries).

Actually that file doesn't and can't affect the textures of buildings and units. Pink models means that the needed texture files can't be found at all. Have you unpacked any of the FPKs? If so, it seems very likely that the unpacked files are in the wrong place. If HR_Interface.fpk was unpacked incorrectly then this would most likely be the cause of the GFC Error you were getting.

However, if you haven't touched the FPKs at all then this strongly implies that your download or unarchiving process was incomplete or corrupt. The overlapping text means that the GameFont files are missing or broken, and these are not kept in the FPKs.

You need to completely delete all copies of History Rewritten you have in any mod folder (check you don't have multiple copies, this can mess things up too), redownload, perhaps unarchive with a different application (I highly recommend The Unarchiver - it's free and available on the MacAppStore), and then reinstall.

 

[wanderm]

Try the one at this link, it seems to only affect the civ limit and nothing else:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234779

It worked! Thank you so much for seeking this out. A crowded map is the way to play Civ IMHO, and HR already ticks so many other boxes!

It is a pity it's only for Windows.

For the record, I needed only the DLL file from the download, placed in the HR "Assets" folder.

More civs will probably affect tech speed (as other things do), and result in some lag times in the late game (which is to be expected). I'd love to be able to give the definitive playtest, particularly on the different game speeds and world sizes, but I'd need to be a bachelor again.