Ancient republics mod

[Lynxes]

Ok, here goes! The Ancient republic mod was at first designed to simulate the Greek and Roman democracies and republics, basically to go back to the "Republic" in earlier Civ versions. The trick was to make it somewhat weaker than Hereditary Rule, save in special cases, and make it take the place of Representation later in the game. Take a look at the Civic, I think it's fun and makes another road than religious expansion viable.

Down the road I started changing a few things here and there. Thanks to Frontbrechers "Lost Units" Mod I could include Cataphracts (called "Mounted Swordsmen"), as well as Crusaders and Mujahids as religious special units. Inspired by John Keegan's book "The history of warfare" I also included Regiments as a gunpowder unit between musketmen and rifleman (using War of independence sculpt) and beefed up Spearmen, Horse Archers and Longbowmen. As I know many others have done, Cannons now are linked to Gunpowder. Marines were replaced by a generic Modern Infantry unit, fitting well with the AK47 the sculpt is carrying. Religions got some individually specific advantages linked to Cathedrals, balanced by Cathedrals becoming obsolete with Radio to show the doubts of the modern age. I also changed the French UU to a unit linked to the French Revolution, and replaced the weak Hermitage wonder and Jail building with two new buildings: Art museum and Police station. For the whole list of changes, see the readme file below and the Civilopedia.

Please send me questions and impressions, this is a v. 1.0 and I might make some changes. Thanks also to n003lb for the cleaned-up FormationsInfo file which was causing me major headaches!

/Joakim Löf, Uppsala, Sweden

To download follow this link, enter "Ancient republics":

http://www.3ddownloads.com/Strategy/Civilization 4/Mods

Apologize for the large file size, didn't know how to make it smaller than this. Even when zipped, it's 144 MB (ouch).

 

[grumpylad]

Downloaded, after install seem to have hit a problem. The mod loads ok but as soon as first city builds the game exits. Tried it four times, any suggestions

 

[Lynxes]

Ah, my mistake, there's two config files in the folder- try and delete the one named "Republic mod 2". Will fix this ASAP.

/joakim

 

[JFogg]

I dunno. I thought the politics types in Civ 4 were kinda funky- Representation is different than Universal Suffrage? No ancient republics? What? But then I started to think about them more, and I really do think that they're well designed and correspond to meaningful historical systems. Although they're named really badly.

Take the difference between Despotism and Hereditary Rule. I was miffed that I couldn't be an ancient republic- how come all nations have to have Hereditary Rule? But then I realized that, if I just thought of "Despotism" as meaning "local, decentralized government"- whether government by city-states, local chieftains, or whatever. And when you get the "Hereditary Rule" civic it represents your nation being united under a single strong ruler- something I'm pretty sure that just about all nations passed through. So if you're playing the Greeks, when you have "Despotism" it means, essentially, that all of your polis-es have their own little governments, be they oligarhic or democratic or whatever, and when you get "Hereditary Rule" it means that Alexander comes down out of Macedonia and forces everyone to unite under his rule. Or China- they're a bunch of little dukedoms until one of them conquers all the others and becomes Emperor.

Then take Representation vs. Universal Suffrage. It got me thinking when I started a game in the Industrial age and every one of the AIs, without exception, adopted Representation. Judging from when you get Representation- Renaissance/Industrialish- and that the tech you get it with is "Constitution"- it seems that "Representation" represents the sort of not-really-democratic but constitutional government that started in England, with Parliamentary rule, and eventually spread to most of the institutions of Europe in the 19th century. Then Universal Suffrage represents the extension of the voting qualification to everyone.

Anyhow, that's my spiel on things. I don't mean to degrade your work or anything; take it for what it's worth.