New to Civilization 4

[Kanados]

As the subject says I am new to Civilization 4 but a veteran player on the overall series. Started with Civ 2 and spent countless hours on that game including modding the game as much as the game allowed you. Continued with Civ 3, and same thing I spent so many hours playing and modding the game. I decided to skip Civ 4 due to life circumstances and I remember I hated the graphics when it first came out. Got back with Civ 5 and lastly with Civ 6. Civ 5 and 6 are okay the first 50 games but they get pretty repetitive and boring due to the AI been so incompetent using all the features that come with both games. Yes mods add some quality but again it's limited. Overall my ranking goes Civ3 > Civ 2 > Civ 5 > Civ 6.

Couple of weeks ago I decided not to pull the trigger and purchase Civ 7 which I was very hyped about but patently waited for reviews and gameplays and led me to think Civ 7 is not complete to my liking yet. This bring us to Civ 4 which was on sale, it was less than $10CAD and decided to give it a try (includes all expansions). So far I am having a blast and kind of kicking myself for not trying it earlier, WHAT A GAME! I want to ask the community a few questions. Note that I have read a lot of the Civfanatics Civ4 discussions, I do like mods but first I want to experience the base game, I am very patient that way.

I am currently playing Civ4 BtS with BUG and BAT mods. What should be next step? I really don't want to get into Realism Invictus or similar mods quite yet as they alter the AI and gameplay too much from the base game. I want to gradually experience such changes. I was thinking Civ4 BtS with the Extra mod. The Extra mod doesn't change any gameplay/rules it only adds techs/units/buildings/resources etc. By the way the link to the Extra mod download is broken does anyone have any other link for the download? Is there any other mods that adds techs/units/buildings/resources etc. without changing the AI and gameplay?

Another two mods that I want to try later on are History Rewritten and Diversica. Both look good and not to complicated , I like how Diversica adds so many units like early jets fighters, early tanks and other units, I love stuff like that that fill in the gaps. Is there any other similar mods?

Much later on I need to try Realism Invictus. Very popular mod and still kept up to date.

One last question. Is there a mod that provides production when cutting jungles just like cutting forests? I can't find anything online and I am not quite ready yet to invest time on trying to create mods.

 

[f1rpo]

I had this link stored for the Extra mod. Seems that the MediaFire download in there is still intact. Diversica supposedly includes RevDCM, which in turn includes Better BTS AI (BBAI) and even parts of K-Mod - which is a step farther removed from the original AI than BBAI. The novel features (Revolutions, Dale's Combat Mod, Super Spies and others) might be optional. So RevDCM is a pretty substantial mod by itself, but the Diversica thread makes it sound like RevDCM is used only as some sort of technical framework. Maybe they've downsized RevDCM somehow or modularized it further, but I doubt it. History Rewritten and Realism Invictus both include K-Mod (but I understand that this is only a deal breaker for the time being). Mixed content packs (as opposed to e.g. extra civilization/leader packs or Platyping's wonder packs) without BBAI are rare, I think. Mods that were created before BtS or even before the AI source code was released couldn't possibly include BBAI but have mostly vanished.

Probably some larger mod featuring a balance overhaul lets jungle chops provide production (should just be a matter of changing a few XML values in Civ4BuildInfos.xml to make it mostly work or even enitrely), but I couldn't name a mod that does this.
edit: grammar

 

[Kanados]

Appreciate the feedback and thank you for the link. Yes the jungle chop and no hammers in return bothers me, it needs to be at most 10 hammers which is half the forest amount. And with Mathematics increase it to 15 hammers.

 

[War Master in Training]

I have considered the balance choice of jungles being really bad as an interesting and effective choice (it is completely fine if you dislike it and want to play differently, but I think it is worth discussing). Ironworking is expensive early on, but it would be a lot easier to get early if it increases output. Jungles usually guard otherwise very nice city locations with lots of grass, rivers, and resources, which gives players the interesting choice of quickly claiming the difficult-to-improve land for later or hoping that no one else claims it first. It would be very interesting to try playing with 10 per jungle though. I think the ripple effect would change a lot of strategy.

 

[Kanados]

@f1pro do you by any chance have any idea when I start the extra mod everything seems to work fine with the exception of the technology tree is not showing the techs

 

[f1rpo]

Strange, when I try the MediaFire download now, I get "Permission denied." Hard to imagine that it worked for all those years, and just now ... Maybe a temporary issue. Edit: Working again now (Mar 20).
Anyway, looks like an uncaught Python exception that cuts the rendering of the tech tree short. If you set LoggingEnabled to 1 or HidePythonExceptions to 0 (or both) in My Games\Beyond the Sword\Civilization IV.ini, you might be able to get the file and line that throws the exception and a stack trace. When using logging, that info goes into My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs\PythonErr.log, with unhidden exceptions, there should be a popup (or multiple) in the game (if there's indeed an exception upon opening the Tech Advisor). For copy-pasting, the log will me more helpful. Doubtful that the advisor screen itself has been modified, maybe some XML data that it can't process correctly.