darkciv 2

[evertebrate]

​

Now added to the download database: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=19477

Hello!

After being absent from these forums for quite some time, I have finally finished my large mod project darkciv 2, successor to my mod darkciv. As I am sure no one remembers that one anymore, here is the link to my old release thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322407
Basically it was a mod that changed Civ 4 BTS to be much darker toned and realistic in a sense that being free or oppressive actually mattered and running a police state or any other dictatorship as well as being a free democracy had actual (positive and negative) consequences.
In darkciv 2 this largly remains the same, although I changed large parts of the new gameplay to be less static.
I want to post this announcement first, to be sure there is any interest in the mod at all and to finish some testing before a release. A beta I posted some months ago went unnoticed so I want to be sure there is any interest at all this time. Uploading and writing readmes and such is time consuming.
Here are some (not all) of the new features in darkciv 2:

- AI leaders change dynamically depending on the oppressiveness of society. For example an oppressive Russia would be lead by Stalin and a free England would be lead by Churchill. Oppressiveness can change over the course of the game, depending on several factors, mainly how well the AI player fares in the game. Meaning a free AI player failing in war or economics would slowly become more oppressive.
I tried to keep these changes logical and without hindering the overall AI strategy.
Oppressiveness also influences how a AI player acts, both in civic choices as in actual gameplay.
- The player's oppression is calculated from civic choices.
- You can form regimes. A regime is a combination of (mostly 2) civics with a particular civic opression value. Regimes give special bonuses.
- Some buildings only work in oppressive societies.
- Some graphical details have been changed to be les comical. No more smiley faces for unhappiness or unhealthiness.
- You have three new actions in the city screen: Ethnic Cleansing removes foreign culture an population from the city, Inquisition removes non-state religions and confiscates money from unbelievers, Lawsuit removes foreign corporations for gold.

There are many more features in the mod including almost everything from the first darkciv, 2 new civs, many new leaders, new barbarian activities, recreations of the two classic civ-2 scenarios WWII and ROME, civil unrest and cvil wars, unique civilization traits and some changes to the base game balance, buildings and units.

Here are some screenshots I took from the mod:

The title screen

Spoiler :

The new city screen

Spoiler :

some civics

Spoiler :

martial law

Spoiler :

oppressive building: the slave market

Spoiler :

Civilopedia entry for the new regimes concept

Spoiler :

the fascist state regime unique unit: stormtrooper

Spoiler :

generic ingame screenshot 1

Spoiler :

generic ingame screenshot 2

Spoiler :

 

[SamSniped]

...looks like I will be the first to say that this looks AMAZING! I will definitely try this sometime soon.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Oh my god! You made my dreams come true. You have no idea how long I have been wanting to hear something like this!

 

[evertebrate]

Added it to the download database

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=19477

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am having issues with the thing having no interface background. As in, the text is there but nothing else. I think you left something out of the upload or something...

 

[evertebrate]

You are right, I forgot to change one litte thing in the theme file. I'm going to make a new upload soon, in the meantime, you need to unpack the attached Civ4.thm file into the darkciv2\Resource folder and overwrite the old file. That should fix the problem.

edit: I updated the file in the download database to contain the fix

 

[veBear]

You should fix the link on the DL page... I had to copy-paste it.

 

[Dumanios]

This looks cool!

 

[evertebrate]

I am already working on the next version. I made some drastic changes in the religion system. Religions are now founded by building their shrines with Great Prophets. The Monument has been replaced by "Pagan Temples" (40, +1, +1 with Paganism, 1 Priest slot). You can use these to have early culture and happiness and the Priest slot can be used to spawn a Prophet to found one of the world religions. The old darkciv religions Teotlism, Hellenism, Aesir Myth and Amonism are now meant to be represented by these pagan temples. In fact the Obelisk, Totem Pole and Sacrificial Altar now replace the Pagan Temple as Unique Buildings.
Judaism and Confucianism have been removed from the mod. The 6 world religions are now Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Taoism.
The second new thing will be Crusaders. In darkciv 2 the crusader was just a unit to be built if you had a state religion. I now have made Crusaders for all 6 religions, just like there are missionaries for all religions. Stats are: 12, 2, and they instantly spread their respective religion on city capture.
Its all done, but just needs some more testing before a release.

 

[evertebrate]

Here is a screenshot of all the different crusaders. Of course all of them, except for the Cristian Crusader are improvised "what if" units. Most of them I downloaded here at civfanatics and just added a religious symbol somwhere on the texture.

 

[Yazata]

Not sure of this is where I ought to be asking, but I seem to have made a mistake unzipping the mod; I've got the folder with everything in it, but I can't seem to access it from the mods list, or anywhere else for that matter. Any idea what I've done wrong? I'd really like to play this, it looks awesome.

 

[evertebrate]

Not sure of this is where I ought to be asking, but I seem to have made a mistake unzipping the mod; I've got the folder with everything in it, but I can't seem to access it from the mods list, or anywhere else for that matter. Any idea what I've done wrong? I'd really like to play this, it looks awesome.

you need to put the darkciv2 folder in your \Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods folder.

 

[Lark]

You might consider putting some explanation in the Civilopedia. The Regimes entry refers to oppressiveness, as does that for the Slave Market, but I don't see any reference for Oppression itself. I have no idea if I'm "Oppressive" or if I'm whatever you consider the opposite to be.

 

[evertebrate]

You might consider putting some explanation in the Civilopedia. The Regimes entry refers to oppressiveness, as does that for the Slave Market, but I don't see any reference for Oppression itself. I have no idea if I'm "Oppressive" or if I'm whatever you consider the opposite to be.

You are right, I will propably write some more Civilopedia entries for the next version. btw oppressiveness is shown in the civic screen.

 

[evertebrate]

Updated to version 2.1

Changes:
- Two new civilopedia entries, explaining darkciv 2 concepts
- Religions are now founded by building their shrines with Great Prophets. Monument has been replaced by Pagan Temple. The five great religions are now Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Taoism. Indian unique trait changed to give a free Great Prophet at the start of the game.
- Crusaders are now a religion-specific national unit (7 allowed) and spread their religion on city capture. The Arabian unique trait now builds a free temple in addition to spreading state religion on city capture.
- Units are now represented by larger groups. This is purely aesthetical.
- The Democracy Regime now has the added feature that AI players cannot refuse to talk during war.
- The Leadership promotion for warlord units has been changed to give +25% combat strength to all units in the same tile as the warlord. The Warlords innate ability has been changed from free upgrades to +100% experience from combat. Free upgrades has been moved to Combat 5.
- Some miscellaneous changes to balance and AI.

This will be the last version uploaded for the time being.

 

[Jennvare]

I'll give this a whirl. I've been curious each time I see "DarkCiv" come up.

Hmm...Guess I cant get it. Something on gamefront keeps crashing my browser

 

[firehawkordy]

I don't know what is wrong with this mod, I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, no interface to play the game, used the patch that you uploaded but that did not work either. So I get this new version Saturday hoping it would work but I had the same result. Is there a key combo to bring up the interface? I really like the sound of this mod and when the map loads it's just begging to be played but I can't and it's bugging me but I'm running out of ideas on what is wrong.

 

[Halfmoon Smile]

I downloaded this and had no issues with the interface nor anything else. Have played 1 1/2 games so far, really like the additions you made, especially the regimes and ethnic cleansing.


A couple comments/questions:

Why do the civs have traits now instead of the leaders? I don't understand the function of the change.

Fanatics seem overpowered for when you unlock them.

It would be nice if non-oppressive civs didn't get angry at you for declaring war against someone committing atrocities or if there was a UN resolution to end particularly oppressive regimes (I haven't seen the UN yet, actually).

How do the barbarians horde spawns pick which tier of unit? I enjoy how challenging they are, but I saw tanks and modern infantry spawning in Mongolia's land when they tried to invade my vassal and I don't think any civ had that tech unlocked.

Spies level up way too fast.

Can you make the stormtroopers turn against players who decide to abandon secret police instead of disappearing?



Overall a fun mod and it runs fast even with a large map and 18 civs on my terrible PC. Thank you very much for the hard work.

 

[evertebrate]

I don't know what is wrong with this mod, I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago, no interface to play the game, used the patch that you uploaded but that did not work either. So I get this new version Saturday hoping it would work but I had the same result. Is there a key combo to bring up the interface? I really like the sound of this mod and when the map loads it's just begging to be played but I can't and it's bugging me but I'm running out of ideas on what is wrong.

you need to put the mod in the right folder. It wont work from the custom assets folder and it wont work if you rename the darkciv2 folder. Thats just the way civ 4 interfaces work unfortunately...

Why do the civs have traits now instead of the leaders? I don't understand the function of the change.

The AI leaders change over the course of the game. Leader traits would not only be confusing, but they would give the AI an unfair advantage as the player cant just change his/her traits midgame.

Fanatics seem overpowered for when you unlock them.

Do you mean when you unlock them regularly or with the Parthenon? I will look into this.

It would be nice if non-oppressive civs didn't get angry at you for declaring war against someone committing atrocities or if there was a UN resolution to end particularly oppressive regimes (I haven't seen the UN yet, actually).

Normally free civs should hate the oppressive civs. I see what you mean however and will look into it.

How do the barbarians horde spawns pick which tier of unit? I enjoy how challenging they are, but I saw tanks and modern infantry spawning in Mongolia's land when they tried to invade my vassal and I don't think any civ had that tech unlocked.

I already noticed myself that the barbarian rebels are a little too strong. The units are picked from all technologies of the civ that is nearest to the spawn point. I already changed the strength of these rebels in my version here, it will be included in the next release.

Spies level up way too fast.

Its 2 XP per succesful mission right now. I think it would be too slow if I changed that to 1.

Can you make the stormtroopers turn against players who decide to abandon secret police instead of disappearing?

It would be very hard to teach the AI how to deal with that, sorry.

Overall a fun mod and it runs fast even with a large map and 18 civs on my terrible PC. Thank you very much for the hard work.

I'm very glad to hear that

 

[Yazata]

Right, now that I corrected my silly mistake and I've played around a little, I'd like to say that I'm very impressed with this mod.

Aesthetically, everything is very appealing. You picked some of the best leaderheads out there, which really helps my feeling of immersion. Besides that, everything from the flag choices to the terrain and resources is absolutely gorgeous.

Gameplay-wise I think some civs might need a little rebalancing, but I've got a rather bad head for that sort of thing, so there's not much I can suggest.

I absolutely love the regime system! It adds some wonderful nuance to the game and makes choosing civics feel more important in terms of narrative as well as mechanics, especially coupled with the dynamic civ names.

(On a more personal note, I like that you've split the "Native American" empire into three civs-- that was always a pet peeve of mine. )

In short, this is an elegant, entertaining mod. You've added some awesome features without cluttering up the game unnecessarily, which is all too rare in modding. I'll be watching your future projects with interest!