@ All:
Personnaly and in the name of the Team, i want to thank all those who help us to remove the bug and to balance the mod. It was a big help. Thx.
Hian the Frog
Hello TR Team,
Long time Civ player here with several years of experience with Civ 1-3. Although you are currently fixing bugs I thought that it might still be of interest to gain yet another player's perspective on your work. After many busy years I now decided to finally try out Civ 4 and stumbled upon the Total Realism mod. Distinct civ differences, correct starting positions, a large map and a long game have always been primary interests, and so this mod seemed almost too good to be true. Downloading it at once I sat down to build the perfect India that could have been in a 24 civ world. I could play until c:a 1680 AD at which point the game always crashes and no fix seems to work (using Warlords 2.13). Still, it was a terrific run and allow me to summarize my experiences of the mod:
ECONOMY - It seemed possible to have a functioning economy with 17 cities and a reasonably large army at 50% tax rate. Very few military buildings, however, but sometimes, as the drain on the economy was too large, a few major cities could switch to Wealth production which was a good temporary fix. I had, at least, a Marketplace in every city and a Grocery in some. I believe that it was a good choice to put costs on military improvements. Economy was reasonably challenging and demands some planning by the player, which is good. The trade bug in the diplomacy screen where you obtain goods from the computer against nothing was weird, but I saw that as my rightful share in comparison to all the cheating that the computer does!
SCIENCE - The tech tree is just wonderful. So many goodies to develop and use. However, it seems that obtaining the technologies at around 50 % science rate was too slow. Although it was a goal, I never managed to get ocean faring ships to reach America before the game crashed in 1680 AD, as there were so many other useful techs to research. Still, I'd, in fact, have gotten my first Caravel in 3 more turns, hahah!
The computer players were behind me in tech with me being number one in score. It would seem that the rate of obtaining technology would need to be speedied up somewhat if a player is to be able to enjoy every aspect of the mod.
IMPROVEMENTS - It was just perfect to start the game in the stone age by building a Storyteller's Circle! The enormous amount of cool buildings really put the micromanagement into this mod, which thus started to feel like a nice mix between SimCity and Civilization. Nothing negative to report here!
WARFARE - Each civ having unique units, and lots of them, is fabulous and adds depth and feeling to the game. Cities are relatively easy to defend, but with some effort and practice they can be overcome and conquered. Continuously getting new military units for all uses gives a sense of history slowly getting forward. Warfare against the computer could be very challenging and there were times I was unsure if India could even survive, but it did, and, eventually, it became seemingly unconquerable. War Elephants were powerful, although a single horse never existed in India since the only willing seller, my best friend and ally (formerly worst foe in a 1500 year long war), Persia, was only willing to sell some against Ivory, Gems and Copper! This does raise the question that it might be too hard to get positive diplomatic points with the AI as they never ever forget a sleight. Warfare was fun, but unfortunately I never got to try out all the nifty modern tech. Very few units had somewhat dubious stats and could possibly be slightly rewritten.
RELIGION - Ah, yes, my intention was to unite the world by Hinduism. I got the holy city and spread it through Swamis the best I could. Some resisted very hard, while others did not. The game ended with seven buddist civs and seven hindu civs, the rest being everything else in small doses. Zoroastrianism spread surprisingly well and fast in Europe where it was developed, and this seemed a little unrealistic. Promoting religion to the warmongers was challenging as many Swamis got the axe instead of a warm welcome.
The Inquisitor and religion-related wonders made the day. I felt that religion was what worked best in this mod.
GRADE - Summarizing I'll have to give the mod an A
Very well done, keep up the good work, and looking forward to the BtS version!
/ Peter Masterman
Thank you!
