[MOD] The Authentic Colonization (TAC)

[Commander Bello]

I know some tribes are more aggressive than others, but there's something fundamentally wrong with portraying the natives in general as nothing more than a huge latent menace that has to be eliminated sooner or later. There's precious little that can be done to appease them, and European expansion gradually and inexorably angers them. Who knows, maybe I should actually trade with them instead of just dealing with the King.

There are many ways to befriend the natives.

1st: Trade
Invest some money into trading goods and trade them. This will give you resources or - in many cases even more valuable - food at low prices. If you can afford it, don't have the natives pay the whole price, but ask for less - and in turn, give them more than what they ask for. This will improve your relationships.

2nd: Missionaries
A mission in native village will make them less annoyed about the spreading of your "culture". As soon as you acquire an "experienced missionary", build a school somewhere and put a student in it. Even if a missionary cannot be trained in the (basic) school, it will preserve the knowledge for later use. Have the missionary working in your city for at least one complete turn to make sure that his knowledge is kept. Then send him out to the native's settlement at which you expect the hightest rate of your culture to be inflicted.

And finally, if all of this does not help, keep in mind that we are in the time of colonization. War actually is a means of politics.
An early war can give you space for some cities to produce bells without going into conflict with the natives anymore.
Actually, war in the context of the game can be an investment into future development. Maybe this is not very "civilized" - but it is effective.

 

[orlanth]

Yes, it's not a fault of TAC that the Natives can be dangerous, many people find it adds a welcome challenge. But I understand it can sometimes seem very random whether to get raided or gifted.

In games of both TAC and RaR, I often find that relations with Natives and especially your King will get "stuck" at a maximum value (sometime max positive but most often max negative), so that there seems no point in trying to influence the relation (ie no real benefits from "good" acts or avoiding "bad" acts since the relation is simply permanently maxed out in one direction, so there's no impact from further worsening or strengthening). I'm not sure of the exact mechanisms behind raids and RaR diploevents, but it seems there's a quite big random component that the player can't influence and they don't always check or affect diplomatic relations as much as one would expect.

Maybe a good way of rebalancing extreme relations would be to let things like raids, gifts, and RaR diploevents happen at an extreme relations value, then readjust relation slightly in the other direction. In this way reaching extreme positive relation would give you a benefit, then readjust relation slightly lower. Reaching extreme negative relation would give you a detriment, then readjust relation slightly higher. That could add as an automatic rebalancing that prevents getting permanently stuck at one value and makes efforts to manage your relations more meaningful.

 

[Lord Shadow]

There are many ways to befriend the natives.

1st: Trade
Invest some money into trading goods and trade them. This will give you resources or - in many cases even more valuable - food at low prices. If you can afford it, don't have the natives pay the whole price, but ask for less - and in turn, give them more than what they ask for. This will improve your relationships.

2nd: Missionaries
A mission in native village will make them less annoyed about the spreading of your "culture". As soon as you acquire an "experienced missionary", build a school somewhere and put a student in it. Even if a missionary cannot be trained in the (basic) school, it will preserve the knowledge for later use. Have the missionary working in your city for at least one complete turn to make sure that his knowledge is kept. Then send him out to the native's settlement at which you expect the hightest rate of your culture to be inflicted.

And finally, if all of this does not help, keep in mind that we are in the time of colonization. War actually is a means of politics.
An early war can give you space for some cities to produce bells without going into conflict with the natives anymore.
Actually, war in the context of the game can be an investment into future development. Maybe this is not very "civilized" - but it is effective.

Thank you. It seems I was largely mistaken about the natives, and overestimated their AI thinking I'd need huge defenses everywhere because they'd be smart and devious enough to rush past heavily defended settlements to hit the weaker ones. That's not a snipe against the mod's AI work, mind you: their strategic short-sightedness is balanced with their numbers.

I honestly apologize for all complains born out of ignorance.

However, I still maintain that the diplomatic screen should be more informative about things that benefit or damage relations (i.e. +X "We understand your culture better thanks to your missionaries."). I didn't know about missions pacifying the natives, and saw them purely as a tool to get converts so I didn't establish many.

But given this mod won't be updated any further, is there any way to add new + and - strings to the diplomacy screen without delving into the .dll files? Probably not, if there's no specific variables for things like benefits from missions and opportunism due to weak military.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Um, one more question. I was under the impression flags (and possibly soldier uniforms) changed upon revolution. Isn't that so? There's rebel flags in the mod's folder, at the very least.

But I just declared independence, and my flag and soldiers look the same...

 

[raystuttgart]

I was under the impression flags (and possibly soldier uniforms) changed upon revolution.

Nope, that does not happen.

It is one of the many small features of Original Colonization (1994) that were left out in Civ4: Colonization (2008).
TAC also does not have that feature. (RaR does not have it either.)

 

[Lord Shadow]

That's very unfortunate. It really breaks the immersion to have identical soldiers (redcoats vs. redcoats, in England's case) fighting each other under very similar flags. And it's strange, considering this mod is based on AoD II, and one of the changes there was...

* Added new tag in Civ4CivilizationInfos.xml: RevArtDefineTag - what the Civs art definition is changed to on revolution
* Added revolution flags for all Civs (England - BetsyRoss, France - Quebec, Spain - Argentina, Netherlands - Netherlands Antilles, Portugal - Brazil)

But since TAC is done, I'll move further comments to the RaR subforum.

 

[raystuttgart]

And it's strange, considering this mod is based on AoD II, and one of the changes there was...

TAC is not based on AoD II.
Only a few selected features of AoD II have been ported to TAC.

 

[Zeppelin4]

I would like to try this mod but after install it will not startup. It gives me a Mod Error saying :

Mods\TAC 2.03_final\ is an invalid mod directory. ignoring.

Any help?

 

[Commander Bello]

I would like to try this mod but after install it will not startup. It gives me a Mod Error saying :

Mods\TAC 2.03_final\ is an invalid mod directory. ignoring.

Any help?

At the moment, I don't have any clue. Nevertheless, did you install your Civ4:Col from CD/DVD or via Steam?

 

[Zeppelin4]

^^^ My install is from Steam. I'm running Windows 7 64bit.

The mod installed to...Documents\My Games\Civilization IV Colonization\Mods\TAC 2.03_final\

Update:

Colonization installs to C:\Games\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Civilization IV Colonization.

 

[Commander Bello]

Sorry, I don't have any experience with Steam, but then I would have to ask you to give us the complete installation path (for both, the game and the mod).

As far as I know, Steam installs all games in some obscure subdirectories. The mod folder must be a subdirectory of the installation directory.

 

[Zeppelin4]

I updated my post above.

 

[MaCross TAC]

Hello Zeppelin4,

first delete the installed mod directory under Documents\My Games\Civilization IV Colonization\Mods\TAC 2.03_final\.

Then navigate to your installation folder of Colonization, C:\Games\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Civilization IV Colonization and create a subfolder called mods. You should now have C:\Games\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Civilization IV Colonization\mods\.

Now download the manual installation files here: http://download.civforum.de/civ4col/TAC/INSTALL_MANUELL_TAC 2.03_final.zip and unzip into the above folder.

The directory should now look like this C:\Games\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Civilization IV Colonization\mods\TAC 2.03_final\...

Start the game and try if you can load the mod.

 

[Zeppelin4]

A manual install to the game folder did the trick. Thanks for the help.

 

[MaCross TAC]

You're welcome. Great that it works now. Have fun with the mod!

 

[Yamato]

I can't seem to get TAC to work either. I recently removed Col and all the mods and reloaded Colonization (it is an up to date version with all patches) and I tried to put TAC on. I followed the above instructions, with the manual install to the mod directory in the colonization directory, but this is what I get when I try to load the mod

Failed loading XML file xm\GameInfo/Civ4EuropInfo.xml
Element content is invalid according to the DTS schema

Anyone with any ideas?

Ignore above, my Colonization "check updates" was not working right. It would download the update, but not install it. So now that I've manually installed the f version, everything works well now.

 

[raystuttgart]

So now that I've manually installed the f version, everything works well now.

The official patch 1.01f is needed by all new mods.

 

[Achiever]

Hi everyone. In what could be the reason? At the "evangelist" (english nation) is not possible to establish a mission (there is no icon "Establish Mission <M>"), the second time as a "missionary" (free colonist) in all ok.

 

[raystuttgart]

At the "evangelist" (english nation) is not possible to establish a mission (there is no icon "Establish Mission <M>"), the second time as a "missionary" (free colonist) in all ok.

Well, I can only guess.

But that sound like the Unit "Evangelist" might not have had the Profession "Missionary".
Unlike Civ4(BTS) which knows only Units, there is Units and Professions in Civ4Col.

Screenshots or savegames could help to answer that question.

 

[Achiever]

Well, I can only guess.

But that sound like the Unit "Evangelist" might not have had the Profession "Missionary".
Unlike Civ4(BTS) which knows only Units, there is Units and Professions in Civ4Col.

Screenshots or savegames could help to answer that question.

Thank you very much.