Mod recommendation please

[JiM_cz]

Hi guys, I've played civ4 countless times and I still like it. But I haven't played any mod yet. Which one would you recommend? I'm not really into fantasy so the only one I've heard about - fall from heaven, wouldn't probably be my cup of tea.

Thanks for any tips.

 

[Staler87]

Realism Invictus. I've tried most of the major improvement mods and RI gets it right. You could also try civ VI, but that one changes a lot (from the base game) and will probably be better after a couple years.

 

[lymond]

BUG/BULL and BAT are very nice for unaltered base game. I'm sure there's still a lot of fun to have with the base game, especially with the info these mods provide.

As mentioned above, RI is good. RI and Caveman to Cosmos are kitchen sink mods that add a ton to the game. However, it should be noted that these are resource intensive mods.

If you look historical gameplay, you might want to check Pie's Ancient Europe. Mod is obviously more focused on a specific epoch but also adds a ton of new features to the game. Really fun gameplay here.

While you mention that fantasy is not your thing, you still might try Fall from Heaven. While there is a "campaign" mode with some story elements, you can certainly just roll random games. FFH contains a lot of unique elements that you might enjoy, and while some of that certainly includes magic, it is quite fun to use that magic in both combat or even improving the terrain.

Although not as familiar with it myself, ROME(AND) appears to have always been quite popular. It's another basically kitchen sink mod, but I don't believe it is quite as resource intensive.

If you like playing on Earth maps, the GEM mod provides a very large Earth map as well as some tweaks, and includes some other mod components like RevDCM, which contains a tweaked version of BUG.

Plenty of other mods exists, so I encourage you to read through the Mods subforums to see what you might like.

 

[keldath]

You can try my mod,
Dawn of the overlods, lite on the system, no kitchen sink, lots of content with kmods ai.

 

[f1rpo]

From just a few months ago (thread):

[...]To give you a better overview of what the modding community has to offer let me categorize mods I know about like so:

Spoiler :

Minor mods - Improving performance or interface or AI etc. without actually adding much in the form of more buildings/units/civs etc.:
*BUG/BULL/BAT (just interface improvements, doesn't affect gameplay itself)
*Kmod (lots of under the hood changes and balance improvements, the best AI possible)

Major mods - adding various more stuff and possibly game mechanics:
*Legends of Revolution (styles itself as an unofficial expansion pack, basically what Warlords or Beyond the Sword did to the Vanilla game, adding some more units, buildings, wonders, civs, a few game mechanics etc.)
*Realism Invictus (this mod be big yo)
*Caveman to Cosmos (beware, this is like really really really humongous, like you have to spend a few thousand years as cavemen trying to discover fire before you even settle your first city)
*History Rewritten (I never actually played this one)
*Vincentz Infinite Projects (dito)

Historical mods - mods that attempt to emulate history on maps of real parts of the world or Earth entirely:
*Pie's Ancient Mediterranean (THE mod for when you want to relive the glory of Rome, or really any ancient civilization around the Mediterranean.)
*Road to War (I think it's bundled with BtS, but some modders in this forum have further improved it. Basically replay World War II.)
*Earth 2010 (or 2012? Or 2015? I don't even know anymore at this point, but somewhere on this forum is a mod or several with an accurate map of the world we live in today.)
*Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (This is the big one. It even came shipped with BtS, and it has spawned a bazillion modmods. Replay history on an accurate Earth map where every civ spawns at the right historical date and location. I recommend the Dawn of Civilization modmod (or my own personal modmodmod for it) for basically being the same but a lot better, fixing bugs and adding more content. There are also other modmods like RFC Europe or Sword of Islam, which utilize RFC's core mechanics but focus on certain geographical areas instead of the entire world at once.)

Total Conversion mods - for when you just want something completely different:
*Final Frontier Plus (Final Frontier came shipped with BTS, Final Frontier Plus fixes its bugs and improves it in other ways as well. Basically it's Civilization IN SPACE, where instead of cities on a planet in the past you control star systems in a galaxy in the future.)
*Planetfall (basically a remake of Alpha Centauri)
*Fall From Heaven II (A must have if you are a fantasy aficionado, and even if you are not, it is still extremely impressive for its immersive gameplay. Magic, gods, vampires, dragons, dwarves, elves, demons, I don't even know where to start. You can literally play a god! Like RFC it has a ton of modmods improving it further. Personally I recommend at least the More Naval AI modmod for balance, gameplay and AI improvements, and Magistermod for more immersively bringing the vast lore or Erebus to the player.)

If I didn't have my own mod to test and develop, I'd try this recent one:
Civ4 Reimagined

 

[lymond]

^^^oh yes, how could I forget RFC. Besides FFH, it's probably the mod I've played the most over the years. And Dawn of Civilization is definitely a nice modmod to add to it, giving you more civs to play on the map. While RFC is a historical mod, and probably does more than any mod to replicate history, it is also a rather deep mod with a scripted map. It should be noted that RFC provides Unique Historical Victory (UHV) conditions for each civ, so it can play quite different than the vanilla game. Each civ has 3 UHV conditions that give you a victory when all are completed. Completing 2 of them gives you a golden age. Some of them are quite challenging. Also, for some of the ancient civs, you can wrap up a victory for one and then switch to another civ - and civs do actually spawn on the map according to their approximate eras. So, for instance, if you start at 4000BC, you will just have civs like Egypt, India, Babylon and China on the map. Then later on Greece, Rome, Persia spawn and so on.

 

[Nordic Civ]

BAT mod 4.1 with new leaders.

I am looking for a better map script though.

 

[JiM_cz]

Thanks guys for all your suggestions. I've started off with RI and it looks really good. Later I'll have a look at the the other mods.

 

[keldath]

Great mod realism, have fun.

Hope you try my small mod someday

 

[Ricci]

Yeah! I will insist on BAT 4.1 for the best BTS experience. Kmod already changes to much to consider it pure BTS; but great AI, improved combat even towards the Better AI mod (attached to BAT 4.1 this is).