[Modmod]Sunset of Civilization

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DOWNLOAD LATEST RELEASE VERSION HERE​

Welcome to my little pet project, a modmod trying to improve upon Dawn of Civilization in whichever way I see fit. The current version is 1.1. It is up-to-date with DoC 1.16.2.

I have made too many little changes and tweaks in almost every area of the mod to count, so here's a broad overview of the biggest changes:

• Culture is now more useful than ever! In addition to boosting Great People birth and trade route yield it is now also pooled on a civilization-wide level to launch Golden Ages whenever certain thresholds are met. These thresholds increase at a roughly exponential rate and also take factors like your current era and number of cities into account. The first ever Golden Age a civilization experiences brings along a free stack of about a dozen units to help cement their rise to power.
• Units move faster along rivers after the discovery of Sailing but get slowed down when crossing them if they are not Amphibious or ignoring Terrain Movement Penalties. Military Units have more moves in general, with only pre-modern Siege Weapons still having only a single move. Railroads and Highways allow units to move a whopping 20 tiles per turn, that's from coast to coast in the Americas. Helicopter Gunships don't receive any bonus from routes, but can be airlifted regardless of Airport presence.
• Founding a city atop a forest grants a one time hammer boost in it. Founding a city on top of an improvement yields a lump sum of gold and makes the city start off with extra population.
• Capturing workers is again always possible, the Slavery civic just grants a 35% chance of turning defeated military units into workers.
• Losing a fight you had more than 90% chances of winning now results in your unit retreating instead of dying.
• Pillaging an improvement heals a unit as if it had just been promoted if it was damaged.
• Improvements on features (forest, rainforest, jungle) now no longer remove the feature's defense bonus
• Female Great People now have the actually female voice acting from the BAT mod. (all in English I'm afraid, but I figure that's less immersion breaking still)
• Pagan Temples are now only blocked by Christianity, Islam and Secularism.
• Estates provide a free Specialist per (Slave) Plantation, Civic Squares per Town.
• Most National Wonders yield +1 Production for a given Specialist Type.
• Number of Cities maintenance cost now scales with era.
• A giant modern metropolis is no longer satisfied with being protected by a single Warrior. As cities grow in size they require more and/or better units to not become afraid from the lack of military protection. As a rule of thumb the sum of all stationed units' garrison values should not fall below the population size to keep the peace. A unit's garrison value is now displayed in its tooltip and Civilopedia page; some buildings such as Barracks and Walls reduce a city's need for military protection to free up units.
• Cities can now riot if they are starving or unhappy, and even declare their independence if they riot a second time for the same reason if there hasn't been a civics change or Great Statesman action in the meantime regardless of overall stability of the civilization.
• The City Garrison Promotion line helps decrease the likelihood of a riot breaking out, this also applies to conventional culture revolts.
• Distillery now provides a free Wine resource.
• There is a chance of independent cities appearing on Corsica and Crete.
• Moved some tech requirements around so no tech requires a tech that is on the same or later column.
• Monasteries provide a flat +1 Bonus to Research instead of a modifier.
• Added a Persian conqueror event against Mesopotamia and Egypt in the late 500s.
• Immigration into the New World has a chance of spawning a Worker if it occurs before 1950.
• The AI now has two new diplo modifiers for being gifted units, one for civilians and one for military, "We are grateful for your economic support." capped at +4 and "You have supplied us with weapons." capped at +3 respectively.
• Civilizations (including the human player) are more likely to collapse to core instead of entirely after the discovery of Nationalism.
• Industrial and later cities now start with even more buildings.
• Grenadiers have been moved back in the tech tree to Scientific Method and had their strength decreased accodringly. They are now supposed to be a counter against Arquebusiers and Musketeers instead of Riflemen.
• The Varietas Delectat module, which had been standard issue for the initial release version, has been removed entirely because it caused weird graphical issues for cities and improvements. On the plus side this means the mod loads a lot faster now, but if you care about beautiful unit graphics a lot this is obviously bad news for you. My apologies.

Some civics have been tweaked as well:

• Republic gives Double Production Speed for Harbor and Levee
• Democracy gives Double Production Speed for Courthouse, Civic Square and News Press as well as +3 Happiness in the four biggest cities
• Vassalage gives Double Production Speed for Barracks, Stable, Castle and Smokehouse instead of extra happiness in biggest cities
• Centralism gives Double Production Speed for Constabulary, Post Office, National Gallery and National Theatre; +40% Culture in capital in addition to Production and Gold
• Revolutionism removes unrest upon city capture instead of faster unhappiness decay
• Caste System provides extra health in all cities and extra happiness from rainforests
• Instead of removing unrest upon city capture Totalitarianism now has faster unhappiness decay and prevents cities from rioting over unhappiness or starvation
• Redistribution yields +1 Extra Commerce for Cottages and Hamlets
• Theocracy instead of Tolerance allows training Missionaries without Monasteries
• Tolerance grants extra culture in all cities instead of only the capital
• Colonialism gives Double Production Speed for Trading Company

Finally, some UHVs were completely overhauled:

-The first Argentinian goal is now about acquiring gold from trade by 1930.
-The English colonization goal has its first check in 1860 for the colonies itself and a second check in 1920 for the Cape to Cairo Railway.

Plus lots and lots of minor bugfixes, tweaks and adjustments! I am confident in boldly declaring that this is at this time the best available version of Dawn of Civilization, and for that matter, Rhye's and Fall of Civilization! Don't believe me? Well, there's only one way to find out:

DOWNLOAD LATEST RELEASE VERSION HERE​

If you want to work as an unpaid beta-tester stay up to date with future changes as I work on them, feel free to link up with my development version:

Spoiler How to :

You set it up like so:

1. Download and install Git for Windows.
2. Download and install Tortoise Git.
3. During the installation, you will be prompted for a number of settings. Most of these are only relevant to developers, since you only want to use Git for access you can simply accept the default values.
4. Right-click on your Beyond the Sword\Mods folder and choose "Git Clone".
5. In the prompt, enter the following as "URL": https://github.com/Imperator-Knoedel/Sunset.
6. Wait for the download to complete.
7. Your folder is on the current state of the online repository and you are ready to play. To get new changes, simply right-click it and select "Git Pull".

If you encounter any problems, glitches or bugs you are welcome to inform me of them and/or ask me for help, and I'll try my best to fix them.

For posterity's sake I also included the source code for the initial Release version in this post.

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So, I'm sure you people all have lots of burning questions. I would like to create a FAQ to address them, but calling it FAQ (for Frequently Asked Questions) isn't really that appropriate if the whole point of it is to pre-empt questions you might have before you can actually ask them, so nobody ever gets to ask them in the first place, let alone frequently. That's why instead you get:

QYPWTABIAATH (Questions You Probably Wanted To Ask But I Already Answered Them Here) :

What version of Dawn of Civilization is this mod based on?
1.16.2, at the time I am writing this the most up-to-date version there is.

Can I use Blue Marble, Varietas Delectat and the soundtrack module with this modmod?
Yes to all except Varietas Delectat, in fact they should all already be included in the installer as well as the Github Repository. Varietas Delectat unfortunately caused some weird graphical glitches that I was unable to fix, so I decided to cut it out.

Why not just update Dawn of Knoedel instead of starting over with a reboot that's mostly just carrying over stuff from your old mod anyway?
Because I like puns and dislike myself, so there was no way I would miss this opportunity after it formed in my brain. Also, like I said in the OP, this time I want to take a more organized approach, with proper release versions and a clear plan and focus for each release version.

You keep saying you want more structure, but how can you guarantee that you don't just stop developing again for months at a time, abandon the project, and then start yet another mod two years from now?
Because this time I have a Five Year Plan! Or, well, a plan in general. For starters, I won't even bother trying to stay up-to-date with the development version of the main mod. I'll only merge Dawn of Civilization back in after each real proper release, so 1.17 features will only be in Sunset after 1.17 is actually out. Furthermore I will try to keep each of my own releases focused on a certain area of the game instead of spreading out all over the place and losing oversight. For instance, there will be one release focused on units, which will rebalance the roster a bit, maybe add a few new units, add range bombardment etc. Another release will be focused on buildings, a few now and then will only focus on merging in DoC features after a proper release etc. See below for what I have in mind specifically.

So what are these plans you have for the future?
I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader!

Now that I have finally absorbed DoC 1.16.2 in all its glory into my own opus, it is finally time to take the next big step! I shall bring you something new, something bold, something unprecedented, something unexpected, something that's never been done before in this mod forum:

A grand restructuring of the entire tech tree!

But wait a minute, wasn't that the big feature of Dawn 1.15? How come you want to do the same thing again?

Because I'm not happy with the new tech tree. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't happy with the old tech tree either, but I figured Leoreth and whoever else worked on it would do a good enough job with the new one. Well, in my opinion they did not. Many of the same issues that bother me are still there (such as some techs requiring techs that are in the same column, which is especially egregious in the late game). It seems to me that historicity and user friendlyness were sacrificed on the altar of some lofty aesthetic goal, that is a strict 3 columns exact same number of techs per era rule. Since I couldn't care less for aesthetics, I'll re-organize the whole thing top to bottom, left to right until it makes good enough sense in my eyes.

Any other big surprises you want to spring on us?
Yes. The Legitimacy civics category is going to be transformed like so:

Tribalism/Authority/Traditionalism:
Starting Civic, no effects

Imperial Cult:

• Represents: Empires that treat their ruler as the king of kings, as a god-like being that rules everything. Other civilizations are considered barbarians that may or may not pay tribute to the one true emperor, but can certainly never be on the same level as the one great civilization.
  
• Unlocked by: Some Tech in the Ancient Era, possibly Priesthood, Ceremony or Law
  
• Possible Effects:
  • High Upkeep
    
  • No Foreign Trade Routes or some other penalty to trade
    
  • +1 Happiness per Military Unit Stationed in a City
  • +50% Extra Experience Gain within Cultural Borders
  • +100% Domestic Great General Birth Rate
  • Great General Threshold is reset when the Palace is moved
  • +2 Food from Paddy Field
  • +25% Production in Capital
  • Double Production Speed for Monument
  • something useful for civs with many cities and few or no trade partners
  • Cuts all Trade Route Yield Modifiers in half (both positive and negative, e.g. Redistribution would only decrease trade route commerce by 12,5% instead of 25%)
  • Maybe all negative modifiers from civics are ignored entirely and give other fitting civics than Redistribution some negative modifiers as well?
• Civs that should run it: Ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, maybe Persia, Imperial Rome, Byzantium, possibly Japan
  
• Should synergize with: Despotism, Monarchy, maybe Elective, Redistribution, Deification, Isolationism
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Republic, State Party, Democracy, Individualism, Egalitarianism, Secularism, Nationhood, Multilateralism

Aristocracy:

• Represents: Pre-modern civilizations with a ruling class of nobles. May be a feudal patchwork or a state with a central government, but if it's the latter the king or emperor is relatively weak as the real power lies with the nobility.
  
• Unlocked by: Some Tech in the late Ancient or early Classical Era, possibly Law, Riding, Philosophy or Politics
  
• Possible Effects:
  • Medium Upkeep
  • +1 Production from Farm
  • Double Production Speed for Castle, Library, Market, Stable, Theatre
  • +1 Happiness from Castle, Library, Market, Stable, Theatre
    
  • Its main benefit compared to Imperial Cult should be the ability to have foreign trade routes, so it doesn't actually need to be that good on its own as it shouldn't really be competitive with later civics anyway.
• Civs that should run it: Republican Rome, Phoenicia, Greece, Medieval Europe, really all civs before the Renaissance era that aren't supposed to run Imperial Cult.
  
• Should synergize with: Monarchy, Republic
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Despotism, maybe State Party, Democracy, Egalitarianism, Secularism

Conservatism/Absolutism/Authoritarianism:

• Represents: Absolutism and authoritarian right wing governments that are not fascist.
  
• Unlocked by: Statecraft maybe? Definitely in the Renaissance era.
  
• Possible Effects:
  • Medium Upkeep
  • +50% Gold, Culture and Espionage in Capital
  • +10% Building Production with State Religion
  • Double Production Speed for National Gallery, National Theatre
    
  • -1 Commerce from Town
• Civs that should run it: pre-revolutionary France, Imperial Russia, really most of Europe until the 19th century, some Latin American civs
  
• Should synergize with: Monarchy
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Egalitarianism, Secularism

Liberalism/Liberty:

• Represents: Parliamentary democracies which guarantee individual human rights and probably have a constitution.
  
• Unlocked by: Some Tech in the late Renaissance or early Industrial era.
  
• Possible Effects:
  • Medium Upkeep
  • +2 Commerce from Villages, Towns (stolen from Individualism which has its upkeep reduced to low in compensation)
  • +1 Gold per Specialist
  • +1 Happiness from Great People Buildings (Academy, Stock Exchange etc.)
  • +25% Trade Route Commerce
  • Double Production Speed for Central Bank
    
  • Something related to trade, cottages and/or great people
• Civs that should run it: USA, Western Europe starting in the late 18th century
  
• Should synergize with: Democracy, Individualism, Egalitarianism, Free Enterprise, Tolerance, Secularism, Multilateralism
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Despotism, Slavery, Manorialism, Caste System, Totalitarianism, Redistribution, Central Planning, Deification, Theocracy, Conquest, Tributaries

Fascism/Fraternity/Purity/Harmony/Racial Supremacy/National Supremacy/Collective Supremacy/Supremacy:

• Represents: Fascism, duh.
  
• Unlocked by: Some Tech in the early Global Era
  
• Possible Effects:
  • Low Upkeep
  • Free Military Unit Upkeep for X Units
    
  • +1 Experience for All Military Units
  • No Unrest on City Capture
  • No Instability from razing cities but increased instability from religious and national diversity
  • something related to military and conquest
  • +10% Food in all cities
• Civs that should run it: Germany, Italy and Japan during the first half of the 20th century when they are going for their respective conquest UHVs
  
• Should synergize with: Despotism, State Party, Totalitarianism, Conquest, Nationhood
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Democracy, Individualism, Egalitarianism, Tolerance, Multilateralism

Communism/Equality/Collectivism:

• Represents: Proletarian dictatorships that seek to abolish capitalism and establish a new global socialist order based on the principles of Marxism.
  
• Unlocked by: Some Tech in the late Industrial or early Global era
  
• Possible Effects:
  • Low Upkeep
  • +15% Production in All Cities
  • +1 Production from Workshop, Lumbermill
    
  • +1 Happiness from Factory, Industrial Park
  • Double Production Speed for Ironworks, National College
  • Research and espionage boosts?
• Civs that should run it: literally everyone Russia and China in the 20th century
  
• Should synergize with: State Party, Totalitarianism, Egalitarianism, Central Planning, Secularism
  
• Should NOT synergize with: Monarchy, Republic, Elective, Slavery, Manorialism, Caste System, Individualism, Merchant Trade, Free Enterprise, Clergy, Monasticism, Theocracy

Also I might rename Individualism to Meritocracy and Tributaries to Vassalage.

 

FTFY

 

Nobody cares, you nerd!

 

Just a heads up, this mod shares zero revisions with DoC so merging this into other mods would have to be completely done by hand.

 

What can I say, deep in my heart I'm a technically illiterate grandma.

 

I'm trying to merge the cultural golden ages into a particular mod I'm working on privately but am afraid of missing some code while trying to pick the cultural golden age code out of the rest. By any chance, do you have a list of files and terms I can search to find the cultural golden age code?

 

I once uploaded a minor mod with only this feature here. I commented all lines I changed with "KNOEDEL" or if it's several lines at once with "KNOEDELbegin" (or was it KNOEDELstart?) at the beginning and "KNOEDELend" at the end. You can also run a Winmerge comparison between the Vanilla BtS code and the source code there to be sure.

However, I didn't update that version in ages, so there are two features missing: The threshold increasing based on era and number of cities and Great Artist culture-bombs being added to the counter, the latter of which should only be a single line IIRC.

 

Is my tech progression as Mughals atypical? I'm asking because people often write here about them how they have bad modifiers for industrial and later ages, yet I'm on par with European civs in tech and have the highest score (and I won the UHV). Is it because I'm playing at Regent and the difference only becomes appearent on higher difficulties?

 

Why?

 

Just read the text of the quote box carefully. Perhaps you should consider playing at some other difficulty level?

 

The Mughal Emperor is playing the Mughals on Regent.

 

Oh sorry for getting touchy then, I deleted the message because it was dumb. But seriously, what's the general experience when it comes to tech progress of non-Western nations? I ask because some people say how bad it is yet I didn't experience it so.

Regent is not the highest difficulty, but I'm not exactly a civ expert, I used to play unmodded Civ (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) always on Warlord and shamefully, sometimes even lower, and I haven't played Civ IV for literally years.

 

For a lot of the countries with poor modifiers, you should be able to reach parity with the nations with good modifiers (e.g. the Euros) if you are successful in expanding and developing your empire. As examples, in your Mughal game I'm guessing you had the entire subcontinent colonized, with every tile improved, and well developed cities, at a minimum. The Indian subcontinent is very, very good land on the map. It'd be unfortunate and overly railroading if you could not compete against the Euroes with such conditions.

However, try out a game as Britain or France, and if you're doing well, you absolutely obliterate the competition in tech, not simply meet parity. I'm talking like you're fielding Destroyers and making 5,000 beakers/turn when the Americans spawn. The same is true when one takes classical civs like Greece or Rome into the Medieval Era in the 3000BC start. There's even some really obscene China games out there, albeit the conditions which allowed for the Chinese snowballs to materialize have been made more difficult in recent revisions.

Long story short, I highly encourage you to give England or France a try and to see what the difference in modifiers can feel like. No matter the civ, for a dedicated and skilled human player, modifiers will not stop you from getting to the top of the scoreboard or reaching tech parity or leads, but when you play a civ with good modifiers, the experience is quite different.

 

I did win as England with the spaceship, but wasn't really so far ahead (and ironically, my main powerhouse as England was actually India and China). Yes, I got the whole subcontinent colonized, the culture also helped, however England in my Mughal game have failed so hard they're actually a vassal state of Germany. They got me the first time, so I reloaded and prepared for their arrival and defeated their doomstacks so hard that their civilization actually collapsed and only respawned later! I posted the save, England only has their home isles there. I actually won the UHV with Mughals, only continued playing them to see how far I get. It is true though my England game was my SoC game first though.

Another factor might be avoiding mass wars. I only fought Iran and Khmers while Euros seem to declare a multi-sided war against each other every 5 turns.

I see Euros have a tech advantage, so what's their disadvantage and other civ's advantage?

 

Isn't their starting point bad and low available space until you colonize?

 

The euros are lacking in (happiness) luxury resources...

Which are mostly regarded as exotic and luxury, because they were not available in Europe.
I mean, there are banana resources in the tropics. While pears and apples seemed to be too ordinary to implement in the game.