K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[VDNKh]

Is it possible to put this mod to work with the XXL World mod?

I looked over the mod real quick, merge K-Mod into XXL and then use the the 48 civ version of the K-Mod DLL here instead of the DLL that XXL World comes with. Just tested it, should work.

 

[Rawwwrr]

I looked over the mod real quick, merge K-Mod into XXL and then use the the 48 civ version of the K-Mod DLL here instead of the DLL that XXL World comes with. Just tested it, should work.

In folder with KMod copied files XXL and your DDL on 48 civ, all works. Спасибо.

 

[VDNKh]

In folder with KMod copied files XXL and your DDL on 48 civ, all works. Спасибо.

Just make sure that in the K-Mod mod folder, K-Mod.ini file, that "AllowPublicMaps = 0" Otherwise I think it might not use the correct map scripts.

 

[crullerdonut]

Hello. This is my first post on this forum. I just got back into Civ4 during the pandemic, and I recently installed K-mod, which is the first mod I've installed with this game besides the BUG mod. I'd like to detail some of my thoughts on it.
Overall, this is an awesome way to play Civ4. My complaints about it are fewer than my praises, so I'll get them out of the way first.

What I don't like:
My main complaint with this mod is that you can't just add it on top of the BUG mod that we all know and love; instead, it has its own version. I like to play Kerbal Space Program sometimes, too, and I'm used to that modding paradigm where you can basically just add, à la carte, almost any combination of mods you want. That's unfortunately not the case here. I have pretty much always played Civ4 with the BUG mod as soon as I found out about it, and I can scarcely imagine playing without it. So, when I installed K-mod, it was jarring to see this antiquated version of Civ4.
I found out that you can re-enable most of the features of the BUG mod manually, but this was an tedious chore to do--and an unnecessary one, I would say. I had to load Civ4 without K-mod, take screenshots of all the BUG options screens (I literally took pictures of my screen with my phone, actually), re-load K-mod, and manually re-enable the standard BUG settings. So, I have a suggestion: in the K-mod BUG options screen, please just add two buttons: "Change all settings to vanilla BUG settings" and "Change all settings to default". I imagine that this would be trivial to implement, but it would save new K-mod players a lot of hassle, especially when you consider that, evidently, the majority of Civ4 players use BUG. Presumably, other players out there are like me and would appreciate the convenience of this option.

On a related note, there are some options in regular BUG which are impossible to use with K-mod:

1. no option to re-enable the standard BUG scoreboard city-number reporting. If a player is used to knowing how many cities the AI opponents have as a rough estimate of their empire's size, why not give the player that option? If we can see everyone's score, why can't we see everyone's city number? Instead, with K-mod, it's as if you're always at war with everyone.
   
2. no option to re-enable the enhanced Espionage screen, so that you can see how many spy-points the AIs are putting against you
3. no wide-screen Foreign Advisor (F4) screen? At least it seems small to me.

What I do like:
I know that the improved AI is the crown jewel of this mod, but to be honest, I actually appreciated the balance changes even more. The more I play with K-mod, the more I wish I could ask some of the original Civ4 and BTS developers: "what were you thinking??".
In general, the balance changes made the game more fun to play because they present the player with difficult choices to make. Instead of playing the game the same way each time, I find myself actually giving things more consideration. Below are some of my favorite balance changes:

1. Serfdom: Without any exaggeration, the addition of the 1 to Farms and Plantations (but -1 from Towns) was a genius move. That one little change transformed this once nearly-worthless civic into something that's actually desirable in many situations. Previously, the only time I used Serfdom was with Spiritual leaders, and only during brief periods when I wasn't whipping or running Caste System. Serfdom might be run during Golden Ages by non-Spiritual leaders, but in vanilla, this is generally unwise since you're giving up your Great Person Points. But now with K-mod, at the stage of the game where you can use Serfdom, I find that I get about 40 base from Farms. This is so considerable that, unless I have a really good reason to use Slavery or Caste System, it's more profitable to just run Serfdom for most of the Medieval and Renaissance eras (unless I have the Pyramids to run Representation). Golden Ages with Serfdom are great now, since suddenly that 40 is 80 . Golden Age Caste System is still a good idea for the GPP, but Serfdom actually gives it a run for its money, now. Financial leaders also have an incentive to stay in Serfdom, since their riverside Farms get 3 much like riverside Windmills, but you're also not locked into Serfdom, either. Overall, this is such an amazing balance change because, even though it's a subtle change, it gives the player multiple viable options to choose from.
   
2. Lumbermills unlocked with Guilds instead of Replaceable Parts: This means that Lumbermills are actually useful during a critical stage of most games. Even with this change, Replaceable Parts is still a very desirable tech due to the +1 boost to Water- and Windmills, as well as being on the path to Rifling. Why didn't the vanilla devs do this in the first place? What were they thinking?
   
3. Vassalage: Previously, I would rarely use this Civic because Bureaucracy is just so much better in most cases, and typically by the time I get Feudalism, I've already had Civil Service for a long time. Pretty much the only time I ever used it is if I had a very poor capital. But now, it's actually a pretty good Civic to run if you're in a total-war mode (with most cities producing military units), since the dramatic opportunity-cost of not running Bureaucracy is somewhat negated by the -25% number-of-city maintenance. A very nice little change.
   
4. Environmentalism: Without even talking about the new Global Warming mechanic, the best change is the removal of the crippling +25% Corporation maintenance penalty. In vanilla BTS, basically the only time you'd ever run Environmentalism (beyond being forced to by the UN) is briefly during the initial Industrial age after you've built Factories and Coal Plants, and that's only if you happened to beeline Medicine in order to get Sid's Sushi, and only if you're waiting for a Great Merchant. Once you've gotten any Corporations, though, it was suddenly a worthless civic unless all you wanted to do is send corporations to other Civs to make off of them. Even then, I only ever switched into Environmentalism if I was playing a Spiritual leader, and only rarely did that brief window of opportunity coincide with a Golden Age with other leaders. It was perhaps marginally useful during the build-up to running State Property, also, but only if you had a lot of Windmills for some reason. Now, whether or not to run Environmentalism is actually something that's worth some consideration.
5. Non-Sushi-or-Mining corporations are now useful for once. In the last game I played, I happened to get an unlucky 14%-chance Great Artist, which would normally have been useless to me and a huge bummer. But, I had the Corporation tech, and, most importantly, Civilized Jewelers doesn't compete with Mining Inc. anymore! So, I actually could use it along with Sushi and Mining. What a great thing.
   I actually do appreciate the slight nerf to Sushi by putting it further back into Refrigeration. This was a necessary nerf.
   Another great change is to put Standard Ethanol earlier, with Combustion. In vanilla BTS, if you found out that you had no Coal or Oil, you were basically up a certain creek without a paddle. It meant that you basically needed to go to war, but how could you do that if you couldn't even build powered factories or Tanks or modern ships? Wait for Plastics? Good luck with that. With this, you actually have a glimmer of hope.
   One suggestion I do have, is that Workers should be able to build Railroads with Standard Ethanol-produced Oil. Otherwise, if you're in that bad situation, you can't even build railroads, and that just cripples your Production due to un-upgraded Mines and Lumbermills (and your Quarries I guess). This would give the player the choice to found Standard Ethanol in a place where they don't want Sushi later on, just in order to build railroads.
   (EDIT: I just found out that this is already the case, but such railroads can only be built within the Big Fat Cross of a city which has Standard Ethanol. This is much less powerful, because it forces you to spam Std.Eth. to every production city and thus deprives you of Sushi and Cereal. However, this might be the only real time that Std.Eth. domestic spam would be worth it, and it presents an interesting situation: the food-or-fuel choice actually mirrors the conundrum with biofuels in the real world. Thus, the craziness of the Std. Ethanol solution, and the painful trade-off, would reflect the desperation of the moment in a game with no Oil or Coal. On the balance, I think that this Big Fat Cross railroad limitation is a good compromise. I just wish it were better documented.)
   
6. I very much like that Watermills get +1 immediately with the other +1 coming later with Electricity, rather than getting nothing until +2 with Electricity. This tiny change makes Watermills way better for the majority of the game (when it actually matters), especially for Financial leaders. They're viable for a longer part of the game now. Why did Firaxis design it the way they did with +2 at Electricity? Did they think that Watermills were too OP or something? It's senseless, and I'm glad that K-mod fixes it.
   
7. A small change, but still: Lumbermills and Forest Preserves getting +1 from being on corners of rivers. Seriously, what was Firaxis thinking? I would classify this as a flaw in the vanilla game, or an oversight. Thanks for fixing it.
8. Leadership giving revolt protection: This is another one of those things that gives players a decision to make: "should I keep my General with my stack, or should I put him on this city for revolt protection?" I like this little change; it gives you something to think about.
9. Being able to pillage your own roads. This is important when you're trying to get your Forest Preserves to spread, since your ever-so-helpful Trade-Network Workers will always ruin it for you. I have no idea why this is impossible in vanilla. I'd consider it another oversight that K-mod has fixed.
10. Nuclear plants no longer being dangerous time-bombs (or, at least, not as much) that were rarely worth the risk of using. The worst thing about this in vanilla was that you didn't even get a message telling you which buildings got destroyed or what happened to the population. There wasn't even any documentation of the mechanic in the Civilopedia, and I had to run tests myself. I think that's enough evidence for me to suggest that this was a rushed, poorly-implemented mechanic. Thank goodness it's fixed.
11. +10% with Scientific Method. This makes the transition to Scientific Method just a little more bearable, especially if you have a bunch of the obsoleted Wonders.

Some other suggestions I would like to see:
I don't know if this mod is still being developed, but still, I think there are some more things which deserve some attention.

1. Forest Preserves, even with the extra +1 buff, are still a poorly-implemented part of the game:
   In particular, Forest Preserved Jungles (and, by extension, Jungle-based National Parks) are basically not viable. I think that Forest Preserves should give Jungles +1 and an additional +1 . This way, they would be almost on par with Forest Preserved Forests, except that they substitute 1 for 1 , and that they still give instead of . This would give players some incentive to keep Jungles around (beyond just Global Warming mitigation), rather than always just chopping them all down, but I also think they wouldn't be OP. They'd be something to think about for Financial leaders, that's for sure. Jungle-based National Park cities would still be challenging to implement in a game because you can't make Lumbermills to facilitate building the NP and then convert them to Forest Preserves, but at least it'd be a viable option to think about it you used Universal Suffrage. Jungles would be situationally useful for once, and I think that's what's important.
   There needs to be an additional Option in the main Options screen which prevents automated workers from chopping down Jungles, in addition to preventing them from chopping down Forests. (K-mod may have already fixed this, I'm not sure).
   Additionally, forest spreading is a mechanic that never fails to disappoint. I'd say that Forest Preserves' forest-spread chance needs to be multiplied by a factor of 2 from what it is now.
   Additionally, from a test I've done, I don't think that forests can ever spread onto a tile where a unit is located (at least it was in vanilla). This is a bug as far as I'm concerned, and I wish that K-mod would fix it.
   
2. Settled Great Prophets should get +1 from the Angkor Wat just like Priests. Not a big change, but seriously: why is this not the case?
3. The tooltip in the Science Advisor, and the Civilopedia, should mention that the Apostolic Palace gives +2 to AP-religion buildings. As far as I know, this critical effect is entirely undocumented in the game. (Was it a last-minute addition?) When I first noticed it happening, I had to Google it, and I'd guess that's the way that most players found out about it, too, other than word-of-mouth. (While we're at it, it would be helpful to mention in the Civilopedia that Windmills can only be built on hills, and that only 1 Watermill can be built per tile-length of river.)
   
4. I think that Courthouses should allow the player to run 2 Spy Specialists in that city, rather than just 1. Right now, if you find out that you need to run a Spy Economy early on, but you didn't build the Great Wall, and you already have 1 other Great Person out... then I'm sorry, but you just can't do it. For a viable Spy Economy, you need a Scotland Yard, and for that you need a Great Spy. But good luck waiting 67 turns with a city running 1 single spy specialist, if you already got a Great Person out. I believe that the reason why the Library allows 2 Scientist Specialists, is the same reason that the Courthouse should allow 2 Spy Specialists: so that you can actually get your desired Great Person out in a reasonable amount of time.

Conclusion:
In general, I think that K-mod is great. The much-improved AI has given me many moments where I say to myself "wow, that was actually smart of them". But, I think that the numerous balance-changes are the best part of this mod. Although the loss of some BUG features is regrettable, I think that the balance changes improve the game to such a degree, that I will play Civ4 BTS with K-mod from now on. If you read this, karadoc, thanks for all your hard work and dedication. It's much-appreciated

 

[keldath]

crullerdonut hi to you,
welcome to fanatics.

im afraid karadox, has not been seen for a long time.
he created in my opinion the most stable best ai mod.

fortunately, other gifted modders took kmod and continued its development.
i would highly recommend for you to check these mods:

-Advanced Civ : ai, fixes, speed and minor adjustments - mostly no gameplay changes.
-civ4 reimagined : mostly same content but with many fixes and some changed game play features.
-realism invictus: one of the oldest still worked on mods - a magnificent expansion of civ4.
-Doto : my mod, based on advanced civ - includes some more gameplay options.

there are more mods of course which are also great.

have fun.

 

[crullerdonut]

keldath,
Thank you for your reply, and your hard work at continuing to develop this great game

I'm not so much interested in mods which add content; instead, I'd rather install something which makes Civ4 BTS into what it should've been in the first place.

I think that I'll install Advanced Civ for my next game, since it looks like it mostly picks up where K-mod left off. It looks like one of the biggest adjustments I'd have to make is the requirement to sight out foreign cities before getting , but that's a challenge I'm willing to take. The significant nerf to Financial is also notable, since it devalues riverside Windmills, K-mod Watermills, and K-mod Serfdom Farms, though the latter might be so OP (especially during a Golden Age) that it's a necessary balance change. I've never built Wonder fail- in multiple cities because I've always considered that a cheap exploit, so I'm not bothered by that change. However, moving Civilized Jewelers back to Mass Media is sad to me.

I don't want to ask too much, but I hope that its developer, f1rpo, will consider the suggestions I've made and maybe even implement them someday, if they haven't been already:

• button to enable default BUG settings
• jungle Forest Preserves give additional +1 +1 from what K-mod gives already (in other words, jungle Forest Preserves give, altogether, +1 , +2 , +1 with river, +2 with Environmentalism , +1 , +1 specialist with NP); also, make 2x forest/jungle spread rate from Forest Preserves compared to what it is now. This way, jungles are actually worth consideration, and jungle-based National Park cities are viable, and forest-spread is less disappointing.
  
• Courthouses allow +2 Spy Specialists instead of only +1, which would give the player a viable choice between Academy economy and Scotland Yard economy in the Classical age, without having to make that decision on Turn 0
  
• Settled Great Prophets get +1 from Angkor Wat
• Add Civilopedia and Science Advisor Tooltips to document +2 Hammer mechanic from AP, and to document that the K-mod behavior of Standard Ethanol giving Oil to Workers so that they can build Railroads within those cities' limits

 

[keldath]

hey there,

yes your not the only one who likes civ4 content as is. thats advciv intent mostly.

luckily, f1rpo is a very nice modder.
i suggest you run a game and gather your notes as you go, he would love to get feedback including what you wrote in the list.
i promise you will not regret.

cheers

 

[drewisfat]

Heyyyy don't be like that. Just cuz Karadoc hasn't changed the mod in a few years doesn't mean it's obsolete. BTS hasn't changed in over a decade! I still play both!
I also like most of the kmod balance changes, but that's because Karadoc made mostly *safe* balance changes, that is he buffed things that were widely agreed on as useless (Duns, Serfdom, lumbermills, etc.) and he didn't dramatically buff them.
Advciv's balance changes are, put politely, "questionable".
Many *safe* KMOD balance changes are reverted (civilized jewelers, musketeers, duns, assembly plant).
Intentional KMOD changes (AI can whip multiple units a turn; AI's hyperaggression) are removed. I don't see how it can be called a successor mod when it is so philosophically opposed to the original.
And I almost take it personally when someone labels failgold, worker steals, prechopping, and chopping neutral forests as "exploits" to be removed.

 

[keldath]

Oh sorry,
I didnt tag kmod as obsolete, it is still great as it is.
Different modders had thier own vision and they used kmod as a starting platform as it is.

If you want,
Advciv has a plane kmod version with just core code bugs(which were untendend in the 146b).

Anyway,
I hope you keep playing civ4 anyway you enjoy it friend.
I just wanted to open some other options and to welcome you here.

 

[f1rpo]

Heyyyy don't be like that. Just cuz Karadoc hasn't changed the mod in a few years doesn't mean it's obsolete.

Fully agree. K-Mod doesn't obsolete BBAI either (especially not Better BUG/BAT AI, which have BULL onboard).

And I almost take it personally when someone labels failgold, worker steals, prechopping, and chopping neutral forests as "exploits" to be removed.

I guess what has contributed to almost causing offense here is a bullet in the AdvCiv manual that says "Various changes in the spirit of K-Mod, especially to rules and AI behaviors that are easy to exploit in BtS; e.g. can't steal Workers." In any case, it would be fair to take me to task for that. I'll try: "Various changes, especially to rules and AI behaviors that are easy to take advantage of in BtS; e.g. can't steal Workers."
It was mostly careless writing on my part, but your post has also reminded me how careful K-Mod is not to invalidate BtS strategies (tedious or weird as they may be).

The significant nerf to Financial is also notable, since it devalues riverside Windmills, K-mod Watermills, and K-mod Serfdom Farms, though the latter might be so OP (especially during a Golden Age) that it's a necessary balance change.

I primarily want to discuss K-Mod in this thread. So let's say the question is whether the Financial trait should boost riverside Farms in Serfdom and, if not, what could be done about it. I don't really see the Golden Age angle because that's +1 commerce on each tile with at least 1 commerce; so Serfdom should only make a difference on non-riverside Farms. Financial trait + Serfdom is imo awkward because it portrays medieval farms as commercial hubs (same as Oasis with Financial trait). Moreover, I don't approve of making a powerful trait – and the AI leaders that have that trait! – more powerful. My solution has been to grant 1 extra commerce only on tiles with a total commerce of 3 or a natural commerce 2. It's hardly an elegant change – fairly complicated – and it nerfs the trait beyond the interaction with Serfdom – which I welcome but might be undesirable in the context of K-Mod. I can also see that making Cottage the only improvement to benefit from Financial will lead to more Cottage spam, which isn't very interesting.
Old post by the lord of the manor on this subject:

Spoiler :

I think it's fair to say that the Financial trait universally powerful. ie. it's powerful in all stages of the game, and it's not situational, and it doesn't really need the player to do anything special to leverage the bonus from it. I've often thought that it would probably be more balanced with the other traits if it only gave a boost to tiles with 3+ rather than 2+ (and it could then have faster production of banks or something like that to compensate for the massive nerf). But... well I generally lean in favour of not changing stuff, and I figure it doesn't really matter if not all the traits and civs are equal. Some people enjoy deliberately choosing weak leader and stuff like that... so I'm not sure, and I don't intend to change it in the near future. Incidentally, I reckon the Cultural trait is probably top-tier in K-Mod. I sometimes think that maybe it should lose it's production bonus to colosseums, since colosseums have been buffed and culture in general is much more important - but on the other hand, it's probably still not more powerful than Financial anyway!

Incidentally, on the same page, there's a post addressing this request:

(While we're at it, it would be helpful to mention in the Civilopedia that Windmills can only be built on hills, and that only 1 Watermill can be built per tile-length of river.)

Spoiler :

I can't think of any viable way to communicate the secret info about the watermill placement, or fix the problem of it being dependent on build order. I think the cottage thing can be easily fixed. I'll look into that a bit later. Cities spreading irrigation... you're right that it's 'secret', but I can't think of a good way to communicate that. Perhaps it should be in one of the loading tips. That's where a lot of hidden mechanics info goes. (By the way, cities on desert do spread irrigation. That's a useful trick sometimes when it would otherwise be impossible to irrigate particular areas.) -- You're right about the cottages on tundra, and again it is not communicated by the game; but I think it's wrong to single that case out. Here are some more things: mines can only be built on hills unless there is a mineable resource. Windmills can only be built on hills. Cottage can be built on grass hills but not plains or desert hills, etc. In general there are a heap of different conditions for each improvement. Perhaps the conditions should be listed in the civilopedia, but for me that's pretty low priority because it's pretty easy to pick up just by playing the game, and it isn't very important if players don't know it. The city irrigation thing is not so obvious though, and it can sometimes be important for planning farm placement and city placement...

Maybe I had better address the other requests in the AdvCiv thread or privately. In short, 1), 2) [Jungle Preserve, Angkor Wat] and the BUG option presets look like too much effort for what they'd accomplish, 3) [AP game text] is already implemented in AdvCiv, 4) [Courthouse] – not sure; at least it's very easy to do. As you probably know, you can do it yourself by changing one number in Civ4BuildingInfos.xml. On that note, worker stealing is equally easy to toggle on and off. That's not to say, of course, that it's moot to propose and discuss XML changes.

 

[drewisfat]

Serfdom is certainly not "too good" in KMOD. This is simply because it still shares a civic tree with two powerhouse civics: slavery/caste.
FIN is not better than PHI or IND in base BTS. At most, it's easier to leverage than the other two. When I think FIN I still think cottages in KMOD, unless I'd be unable to whip much. And KMOD indirectly nerfed FIN by teaching the AI to pillage cottages. I'd agree the trait most significantly buffed is CRE, because due to the culture changes without CRE your border cities tend to get absolutely swamped by AI culture. I don't think that's too big a deal, it pushes CRE up into top tier but it's not in the top tier by itself.
Serfdom, even with FIN, is *not* a strong play in a golden age. Golden ages don't buff food, which means you typically want to starve cities during the GA, not run a bunch of farms. More importantly though, you almost always want to be in caste system and run a bunch of specialists in some cities while in a GA.

@fr1po

Spoiler :

It was mostly the fact that they were removed and not a lingo issue lol. But ftr you did call at least failgold a loophole/exploit in the manual ^^. I tryhard, it's ok to not try to appeal to me. But I would be very interested if you have basically a version with the default KMOD balance changes, deity still at two settlers, etc., but with improved coding/UI features from BUG.

 

[crullerdonut]

f1rpo,

Thanks for your detailed reply.

I guess what has contributed to almost causing offense

I don't think it's necessarily the wording which causes issues, but the removal of possibilities. I personally don't find myself stealing Workers often, but it's nice to have the option in dire need. For me, what makes Civ 4 so compelling is that there are so many viable strategies to choose from at every stage, so that one has hope to climb out of even deep holes. That's why I find the emergency use of Standard Ethanol in the case of lacking Oil and Coal to be so compelling: it's a very rare strategy, but it still offers hope in those difficult situations. On the other hand, for each one of those niche or desperate strategies which is removed, the game becomes incrementally more impoverished.

Serfdom should only make a difference on non-riverside Farms

I always seem to find myself on poor land with hardly any fresh water, and so I end up doing lots of chain irrigation, with the vast majority of Farms being non-riverside. In this case, a Financial K-mod Serfdom Golden Age is very powerful, so I figured that was your reason for nerfing it. I was just thinking aloud on that matter, though.
EDIT: Never mind on K-mod Serfdom Financial Civil Service Farms being OP. I tested it out, and I never realized that Golden Ages don't interact with the Financial trait, but simply tack on +1 at the end, so that 1 yields are still only 2 during GAs, even with Financial leaders.

Financial trait + Serfdom is imo awkward because it portrays medieval farms as commercial hubs

In my view, if Financial K-mod Serfdom Farms are awkward in terms of historical accuracy, then so are stretches of Financial Coast. I personally value impact on gameplay more than historical relevance. After all, Civ 4 has always been about stone-age Warriors with wooden clubs garrisoned in Renaissance-era Cities

BUG option presets look like too much effort for what they'd accomplish

If it is the case that many Civ4 BTS players play primarily with minimal modifications, i.e. BUG/(+BULL), then jumping to something which ostensibly already has those features--only to find them lacking--is jarring, or even disappointing. It's possible to almost restore the usual BUG experience in K-mod, but as I wrote in my first post, it's a tedious experience, costing about 10 minutes of taking screenshots and carefully changing options manually. That's a big barrier to entry for a lot of people, so it seems worthwhile to me, at least, to make it easier for such people to try the product.

Regarding the missing in-game information on improvements, I humbly offer these simple fixes:

• For cities spreading irrigation, under the Civil Service Technology, under Special Abilities, add the entry: " * Flatland Cities spread irrigation"
  
• For Windmills, just add an entry to Effects " * Can only be built on Hills", just like how it already is with Farms
  
• For Watermills, just replace the Effect " * Requires River" with " * Limit one per tile-length of River"
  
• For Cottages on hills, just add the Effect " * Can only be built on tiles with at least 1 ", which succinctly and accurately explains the possibility of building Cottages on grassland-hills, plains-hills-Sheep, or (fresh water)-tundra-hills-Deer, and the impossibility of doing so on plains-hills.
• Similarly, for Workshops, add the Effect " * Can only be built on tiles with at least 1 ", which explains why they cannot be built on Ice terrain.
  
• For Farms/Cottages/Workshops on Tundra, just add to the Base Terrain entry for Tundra, under Special Abilities, the entry: "Farms, Cottages, and Workshops require fresh water" (This is also technically true for Desert and Ice as well, but this is perhaps an unnecessary complication for the in-game help because such Cottages/Farms/Workshops require Food resources which do not spawn on Desert/Ice tiles under standard conditions)
• For Mines on Hills, there's no room in the Mine improvement page. So, under the Base Terrain entry for Hill (available in Sevopedia only?), replace the incorrect Special Abilities entry " * Cannot build cities here" with " * Can build Mine without Mine resource" and " add * Can build Windmill"

Can I ask why Forest Preserves giving Jungles an additional +1 +1 would be technically challenging to implement? I am not familiar with how that part of the game works under the hood. Is there a way to do something like pseudocode:
if is.jungle { add.yield(1,0,1) }
or does it work totally differently?

As for Courthouses allowing +2 Spy Specialists, I was just wondering if you thought if that change would be cause any harm to the balance of the game whatsoever, and whether you think that the ability to switch into a viable Classical-era Spy Economy with a Scotland Yard is a valuable thing.

Thanks for your consideration
EDIT: Added detail that Workshops, too, require there to be at least 1

 

[Leoreth]

Fully agree. K-Mod doesn't obsolete BBAI either (especially not Better BUG/BAT AI, which have BULL onboard).I guess what has contributed to almost causing offense here is a bullet in the AdvCiv manual that says "Various changes in the spirit of K-Mod, especially to rules and AI behaviors that are easy to exploit in BtS; e.g. can't steal Workers." In any case, it would be fair to take me to task for that. I'll try: "Various changes, especially to rules and AI behaviors that are easy to take advantage of in BtS; e.g. can't steal Workers."
It was mostly careless writing on my part, but your post has also reminded me how careful K-Mod is not to invalidate BtS strategies (tedious or weird as they may be).

That's not how I would have reacted, but it does shed some light on how karadoc worded his changes and what kind of perspective on the game it reflects. Interesting to think about.

The word "exploit" has no objective definition. It's always a subjective decision on the part of the developer and the player if something is a valid strategy or an exploit. I think if you decide to remove/penalise/limit an existing strategy you should be upfront about why. People who push strategies to their limit, especially when abusing AI weaknesses, shouldn't be so thin skinned about being called exploiters.

1), 2) [Jungle Preserve, Angkor Wat] and the BUG option presets look like too much effort for what they'd accomplish

Not that I want to talk you into implementing specific features, especially since I don't care about that one, but have you looked into intercompatibility between the BUG settings files for AdvCiv and plain BUG? Even if you don't want to add interface support it sounds like 90% of the problem could be solved if players could copy their settings file between mods at least.

I don't think it's necessarily the wording which causes issues, but the removal of possibilities. I personally don't find myself stealing Workers often, but it's nice to have the option in dire need.

I think the concern with worker stealing, or at least the "exploit" aspect of it, is specifically worker stealing in the early game. Gaining an extra worker right at the start is incredibly powerful, losing your only worker is incredibly cripping, and causes a runaway effect that perpetuates throughout the game because you can further use this power differential with your neighbour during the game.

In my mod I gated worker stealing behind a civic (Slavery) but that was partially for flavour reasons. I think gating worker stealing behind a (e.g. Classical era) tech instead would also be fine balance wise.

In my view, if Financial K-mod Serfdom Farms are awkward in terms of historical accuracy, then so are stretches of Financial Coast. I personally value impact on gameplay more than historical relevance. After all, Civ 4 has always been about stone-age Warriors with wooden clubs garrisoned in Renaissance-era Cities

It's funny that you mention this right after the discussion touched on exploits, because I am considering a rule change myself that prevents obsolete units from providing city happiness.

Can I ask why Forest Preserves giving Jungles an additional +1 +1 would be technically challenging to implement? I am not familiar with how that part of the game works under the hood. Is there a way to do something like pseudocode:
if is.jungle { add.yield(1,0,1) }
or does it work totally differently?

I don't think he meant challenging, but rather tedious. Your pseudocode isn't accurate in the sense that improvement effects aren't implemented directly in code, but rather are defined in XML. I assume f1rpo would only consider implementing your suggestion in such a way that it is also represented in the XML, instead of being hardcoded in the DLL. This means that the XML needs to be extended in general with some kind of "yield change in combination with feature" attribute (because just making it jungle would also be arbitrary). Then you'd add additional code for parsing the XML, applying the yield change to a plot when the improvement is built on it, you would also have to at least add specific text to show up in the civilopedia and tooltip to for the improvement when it has this effect, and potentially on the tiles themselves to show how their yields are generated. Maybe I'm forgetting something but those are already a lot of steps for a one off change.

 

[f1rpo]

On BUG options:

Spoiler :

Not that I want to talk you into implementing specific features, especially since I don't care about that one, but have you looked into intercompatibility between the BUG settings files for AdvCiv and plain BUG? Even if you don't want to add interface support it sounds like 90% of the problem could be solved if players could copy their settings file between mods at least.

That would also help players who have already customized their BUG settings. I would expect that the BUG .ini files could indeed simply be copied; iirc the parser is pretty tolerant. Maybe I'll try it at some point; anyone can test it though. I think the recent versions of BUG keep their .ini files in a folder UserSettings inside the mod folder. K-Mod has them in My Games\Beyond the Sword\K-Mod\Settings. If that works, one could even try letting both mods share the same .ini files through, I guess, some edits in BugPath.py. Some BUG options really don't make much sense in K-Mod. Right-click behavior for the commerce sliders makes the 0/100% buttons superfluous; similarly, there isn't much of a point in enabling absolute building effects when K-Mod will always show that info via Alt key. City counts on the scoreboard aren't much help in K-Mod. Perhaps there some more examples where just copying the BUG default isn't ideal. (There certainly are further examples in AdvCiv.) Still, including instructions for importing BUG settings in the installation instructions seems worth considering.

[...] in the K-mod BUG options screen, please just add two buttons: "Change all settings to vanilla BUG settings" and "Change all settings to default". I imagine that this would be trivial to implement, but it would save new K-mod players a lot of hassle, [...]

I guess how I'd go about it would be to generalize the mechanism for default values so that there can be multiple default values for every option. That might've been almost trivial for the BUG developers at the time, who knew their own software design inside out. For me, it would be rather daunting. Not holding my breath for someone else to do this either.

In my mod I gated worker stealing behind a civic (Slavery) but that was partially for flavour reasons. I think gating worker stealing behind a (e.g. Classical era) tech instead would also be fine balance wise.

Strange that this has never occurred to me ... I recall a post of yours about making the AI a bit more vigilant about surprise attacks on its workers, and that didn't seem so difficult to implement either. I'd still like to prevent scores of workers from getting captured in cities toward the end of a war; because there usually isn't enough work for them. Or probably there is something of marginal worth for them to do, but figuring that out turn after turn is very tedious. Letting the AI scrap workers when a city is (all but) certain to fall might work (easy to implement in AdvCiv); not sure how easy this would be to circumvent by holding units back.

On XML tags:

Spoiler :

I don't think he meant challenging, but rather tedious. [...] Maybe I'm forgetting something but those are already a lot of steps for a one off change.

The worker AI would also have to be aware of the extra yields. Probably just one line in CvCityAI, but I'm not sure where exactly. So, yeah, I wouldn't hardcode the ability in three different places (CvPlot, CvGameTextMgr, CvCityAI), would have to be a new XML tag. And maybe a loading screen hint and maybe this:

There needs to be an additional Option in the main Options screen which prevents automated workers from chopping down Jungles, in addition to preventing them from chopping down Forests. (K-mod may have already fixed this, I'm not sure).

For the Angkor Wat idea, I'd just change the semantics of the <SpecialistYieldChanges> tag. Would also involve a small game text change and AI change though. And any change needs to be documented, at least in the release notes. In this case (Angkor Wat), it's really not important that players are aware of the change; that's what I like about it (and, conversely, the main reason why I don't like a few of the *safe* K-Mod balance changes; more stuff to learn about). I think the effort of adding or changing XML tags becomes more reasonable when making a bunch of similar changes at once.

[...] ftr you did call at least failgold a loophole/exploit in the manual ^^.

Failgold from multi-queueing, ftr.

Never mind on K-mod Serfdom Financial Civil Service Farms being OP. I tested it out, and I never realized that Golden Ages don't interact with the Financial trait, but simply tack on +1 at the end, so that 1 yields are still only 2 during GAs, even with Financial leaders.

Oh, that's what you meant. I didn't even think of that possibility.

In my view, if Financial K-mod Serfdom Farms are awkward in terms of historical accuracy, then so are stretches of Financial Coast.

How do you mean? Coastal commerce is arguably not a great way to represent naval trade, especially since the game also uses trade routes to capture that more explicitly, but reinforcing that notion doesn't really make matters worse to me.

I personally value impact on gameplay more than historical relevance.

I like to try having it both ways. (In this regard, not as a life motto.)

As for Courthouses allowing +2 Spy Specialists, I was just wondering if you thought if that change would be cause any harm to the balance of the game whatsoever, and whether you think that the ability to switch into a viable Classical-era Spy Economy with a Scotland Yard is a valuable thing.

I don't have a qualified opinion; I'd be interested to hear other's. To me, the redeeming quality of the espionage system is that one can largely ignore it. Not sure if that extra Spy slot would make it harder to ignore.

Regarding the missing in-game information on improvements, I humbly offer these simple fixes: [...]

That's helpful; thanks. A lot of missing improvement help text doesn't mean that none should be added. Some of that probably shouldn't only appear in Civilopedia but also in hover text e.g. on the Windmill button on the tech tree/ splash screen. I'd have to look it the current help text for specific feedback.

 

[crullerdonut]

Even if you don't want to add interface support it sounds like 90% of the problem could be solved if players could copy their settings file between mods at least.

That still would've saved me ten minutes of my time, if 1. it were possible, and 2. if I were made aware of its possibility, and instructions on how to do it.

In my mod I gated worker stealing behind a civic (Slavery)

I really like that idea. It makes sense in terms of balance, because it prevents players from causing outsized gain/harm in the very opening moments of the game. But, if a player wants to do it, it still can happen very soon, especially if you start with Mining. And during later wars while capturing entire enemy civilizations, you could still get the captured Workers if you really wanted them. It'd be very easy to advertise this behavior too: the F3 Civics Screen has plenty of room for another entry, " * Can capture enemy Workers"

I'd still like to prevent scores of workers from getting captured in cities toward the end of a war; because there usually isn't enough work for them

I generally prefer to vassal my enemies rather than conquer them outright, so it's somewhat rare that I find myself conquering a final city with 6 Workers or whatever. But, I did play a game where that happened. At the time, I was also engaging in colonization of a remote continent, to which I then granted independence; it ended up becoming Churchill's England. I rounded up a bunch of those extra Workers, shipped them over to the colony, and gifted them to Churchill. At the time, I imagined that they were convicts that I sent to Australia But, this situation would have made even more sense if Slavery were a requirement. A little gruesome, but hey, pretty historically accurate.

How do you mean?

[with regards to K-mod Serfdom Farms]
In terms of balance, I think that the main feature of coastal cities (especially if on a peninsula or island) is that they are -poor, but generally fairly - and -rich. So, a Financial K-mod Serfdom city with lots of farms would generally be pretty similar.
And in terms of historical relevance: well, as you say, with coastal cities, their trade is already represented by Trade Routes. I've never really given it much thought as to why a coast tile should get 2 , but I do know that when a water tile is worked, it gets a little boat on it. So, I've generally just imagined that those tiles were fishing areas without particularly rich seafood concentration. As for the 2 , I guess that maybe those fishers are selling the fish at unseen markets on the coast. And if that's the case, then Serfdom Farms can be selling their produce at unseen Farmer's Markets on the Farms.

That's helpful; thanks.

You're welcome By the way, I've been doing some work over on the Civilization Wiki. I overhauled the Resource page there https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Resource_(Civ4) into something that I think is useful to me and others; I've also been improving some of the Improvements pages, like Farm and Cottage. I plan to compile all the various Improvement information into a unified table, similarly to how I did it on Resource. Anyway, I'm bringing it up so that maybe you will find inspiration on ways to phrase in-game help.

 

[Leoreth]

I really like that idea. It makes sense in terms of balance, because it prevents players from causing outsized gain/harm in the very opening moments of the game. But, if a player wants to do it, it still can happen very soon, especially if you start with Mining.

True, I was really only using my own mod as an example. There it's more a strategic choice to go for Slavery over other options instead of a delay, and Slavery is less of an obvious choice of civic than in vanilla because the pop hurry has moved to a civic that competes with the Monarchy happiness effect. I mainly wanted to illustrate that it's possible to deal with the strong benefits of worker stealing without removing it completely, either by giving it an opportunity cost, or delaying it until it is not quite as powerful anymore.

 

[f1rpo]

Importing into K-Mod by copying .ini files seems to work, mostly. The letter 'F' in the scoreboard display string was changed to '!' by K-Mod, so the refuse-to-talk indicator will be disabled after importing. The K-Mod default settings can always be restored by removing the Settings folder; K-Mod will then recreate it with the K-Mod defaults at launch (actually not until starting or loading a game I think).

I've never really given it much thought as to why a coast tile should get 2 , but I do know that when a water tile is worked, it gets a little boat on it. So, I've generally just imagined that those tiles were fishing areas without particularly rich seafood concentration. As for the 2 , I guess that maybe those fishers are selling the fish at unseen markets on the coast. And if that's the case, then Serfdom Farms can be selling their produce at unseen Farmer's Markets on the Farms.

Trade routes were a novelty in Civ 4. Traditionally at least, trade was represented by coastal yields:

Ideally, you want to locate cities in areas that offer a combination of benefits: food for population growth, raw materials for production, and river or coastal areas for trade.

OK, it could be fish trade. As a complete aside: I had no recollection of the written tutorial in that manual:

If you continue along the coastline as instructed, you eventually meet your nearest neighbors, the Sioux.

I'd prefer that over programmed tutorials that refuse to advance unless the player follows every instruction. Requires a printed manual though.
Also aside: I like to imagine that farmers on the coastal plain provide most of the food. Despite the graphics suggesting otherwise. This doesn't help me cope with 6-food Ocean Fish though.

By the way, I've been doing some work over on the Civilization Wiki. [...]

 

[Jerrymander]

Civ 2 was odd. Trade was a tile yield that only naturally spawned on water tiles. Rivers added a single instance of trade. Roads also added a single instance of trade, which lead to the road-everywhere phenomena that became a mainstay of the series. Trade routes also existed, but were completely separate and abstracted to the names of resources your city made. These seemed random to me.

Given that mobility enhancing improvements increased the trade tile yield, trade is supposed to represent the ability of your civilization to transport goods from one place to another. Ships are especially useful for this... obviously.

 

[noto2]

It's been a very long time since I've played civ 4. I played civ 5 for a while but the AI was never competitive as it can't fight 1UPT rules. I really dislike Civ 6. Everything about it is just really awful and boring to me and I disagree with basically every design decision in it. I've been desperately trying to find something else to play. I probably can't get back into civ 4 just because I really played it out, but Kmod was a godsend. I have many fond memories of playing all weekend with kmod. I wonder what Karadoc is up to now? My dream is that he is making his own indie game or he got hired by some dev to work on the AI and balancing of a new 4x.

 

[rbj2001]

Hello all. I'm an old-time Civ 4 player, long since lost my original Civ CD, so bought Civ 4 Complete on Steam yesterday for a game or two over the holidays.
BTS works fine, but I can't get K-mod running. When I start a game with the mod, first thing it shows is the Technology Advisor, which is blank, no techs showing at all. Then, there is no UI in the game, until I Ctrl-tab out and back in again. The UI now appears, but is missing the scorecard, and the Tech Advisor still shows no techs when I click it.
I've tried the advice here https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/k-mod-far-beyond-the-sword.407049/page-147#post-15166852 suggesting using the "original_release_unsupported" beta, but it doesn't help.

The version of K-mod I got was from github https://github.com/karadoc/Civ4-K-Mod. It unzips to a folder called "Civ4-K-Mod-master" - I tried renaming this to just "K-mod" - no help.

Has anyone managed to get K-mod working with Steam version? Any more suggestions? I'm desperate!