Realism Invictus

Walter Hawkwood

RI Curator
Joined
Nov 18, 2003
Messages
3,850
Location
London, UK


Realism Invictus 3.61
for Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword
This is the final major release for the long-standing Civilization 4 Realism mod. Realism mod for Civilization 4 was among the first gameplay mods for the game, and is still going strong today. Realism Invictus is the new name we adopted as we moved to Beyond the Sword expansion (just as we changed the name when moving to Warlords some years ago). Current version has spent over 10 years in constant development, and it is close to our final vision for what we wanted from Civ 4.

This means the development is mostly stopped and NO new features will be added. Please be aware that requesting changes/additions is pointless at this stage. The maximum extent of further changes that will happen is bugfixes and maybe a few visual tweaks.

For returning players: 3.61 is a very minor update over 3.6, containing mostly bugfixes and UI/UX improvements.

For those of you who still don't know what Realism mod series is about, here's a quick rundown of what our mod does. Realism mods are aimed at improving Civilization 4 in several aspects. Globally speaking, our main goals are:
Spoiler :
• More realistic feel. Original game is in many cases either oversimplifying things, or even plain wrong. A couple of classical examples are Persian "Immortals" (who historically had very little to do with how they are depicted in Civ4) and Roman "Praetorians" (unlike other legionaries, praetorians were never intended for taking part in military campaigns). Our goal was to enhance the historical feel by correcting those oversights. You will notice that many things, up to uniform details, are historically correct (or at least more correct, anyway).

• More diversity equals more fun. A civilization in Civ 4 was characterized by one unique unit and one unique building; basically, that was it – Aztecs were otherwise almost completely identical to, say, French. Moreover, many civilizations were limited to only one leader. We aim to make player's experience more unique each time, and all civilizations now have a unique terrain improvement, a sizeable set of buildings and units unique to them (actually, most units for every particular civilization will have some differences from their default counterparts) – and several leaders for each, in many cases with starkly differing personalities.

• Careful testing for better balance. We have been balancing the added features for literally years to ensure that tons of our added content function smoothly and give a balanced and rewarding gameplay experience both for beginner players (at lower difficulty levels) and for veterans wanting more challenge (at higher difficulty levels). We tried to accommodate for many different possible gameplay strategies and provide an enjoyable experience for each of them.

• A better-looking game is a better game. One of our main priorities when adding new content is ensuring its proper quality. We feel that over years it has resulted in our mod becoming one of the best looking ones out there.

• Community effort. While the mod itself is run by a relatively small team (of no more than five people at any given moment), it includes a vast assembly of things created by Civ4 great modding community, from individual art pieces to mod components. Likewise, we always tried to be an active contributor to the community.

As was the case with previous versions, it is almost pointless to give a changelog – so much stuff changes between versions that it would be unreadable. Instead, here is an already traditional number rundown for all the stuff in our mod that can be counted or at least estimated:
Spoiler :
• Over 130 new techs across every era. All techs have voice acting.
• 21 new civics, 3 for each category. "Old" civics are also reworked, in many cases completely so.
• Over 80 new conventional promotions, including new promotions exclusive to naval units; this doesn't cover the traditions and doctrines, providing another 60 unique advantages to your units.
• Over 160 new leaders for playable civs (over 300 total, including releasable civs and scenario-only leaders), each with his own personality (3 of them has been since independently added to BtS).
• 7 new leader traits: Humanist, Political, Progressive, Seafarer, Administrator, Legislator, Conqueror and Agricultural, to make sure there are many unique combinations to try out. Every combination of positive traits has at least one playable leader with it.
• Leader drawbacks to flesh out the personalities of leaders even better. Now each leader has one negative trait in addition to two positive ones, from the list of 14 drawbacks.
• 8 new playable civs, fully fleshed out with tons of content available for them.
• 9 broad new unit categories (like Ranged Cavalry, Submarines, etc.).
• Over 50 new land unit classes (like Fusiliers, Hussars, Armored Cars etc.).
• Over 20 new naval unit classes (like Sloop, Gunboat, Dreadnought etc.).
• 12 new air unit classes (like Jet Bomber, Early Fighter etc.).
• Unique limited national units for each civ (more than 50 in total, since all civs have two or more).
• Unique limited world "wonder" units, 6 in total.
• Too many individual new units for me to even estimate their number, bringing both flavor and strategy differences for each civ (expect to field lots of different phalanx as Greeks and learn to love the desert as Arabs); around 3000 is a good estimate.
• Unique artstyles assigned to civilizations; many buildings change their looks according to the era and to the particular civ that built them, similar to what Cultural Citystyles does, but handled a bit differently.
• Over 70 new regular buildings to construct in your cities (Schools, Caravan Houses, Manufactories etc.).
• Around 30 new special industrial buildings used to convert some resources into other ones (ranging from smithing Bronze to producing Microchips).
• Over 40 new World Wonders to give you an edge over opponents.
• Over 40 new resources, some to be harvested, some to be produced by your industries.
• Several new terrain features, including never-seen-before naval features such as reefs and small islands.
• Unique great people; when a great person is born, expect to see his/her artistic rendition or photo and either find out his/her biography or to learn a quote of his/hers. 1917 total – imagine that for a moment!
• Deadly epidemics will devastate the cities of rulers that are careless with sanitation.
• A version of revolutions component, causing long-term instability for large empires.
• Great Generals can now found military traditions and discover Great Doctrines, increasing the combat capacity of your troops.
• Great Artists are able to create unique culture-producing Great Works with different effects each.
• Great Scientists are able to create unique scientific Great Works with different effects each.
• Great Merchants are able to create various resource-producing enterprises in Industrial era.
• Inquisitors can purge the heathen from theocratic cities.
• Slaves and serfs can start rebellions that you will have to put down by force.
• Unique stack aid bonus component: units will get significant aid bonus from combined arms tactics. Using diverse army composition has never been as beneficial before.
• Institute slavery, and capture slaves from combat – or free them if you're fighting a slave-holding nation, while you are not.
• No more pharaohs trading blueprints! Watch techs spread passively from neighbor to neighbor instead, as was really the case in history (you can use the old tech trading system if you prefer, though, as many major features in our mod can be toggled in custom games).
• World religions are starkly different from each other, each having its own unique drawbacks and advantages - from spread rates to denying specific resources.
• Place your faith into any of the religion-specific unique units; every religion has one, and they all serve different purposes.
• Every religion has two Great Wonders associated with it to further spice up religious development.
• Enjoy our custom-built World Map and bear in mind Realism Invictus was designed to be compatible with random maps, and many custom map generation scripts for even more replayability (and more unpredictable multiplayer games).

If you need more information than this list offers, you can read more on the main distinctive features of our mod in our manual, or ask a question in this thread or in our subforum here on CFC.

Frequently Asked Questions
Spoiler :


Q: What is Realism Invictus?
A: It’s a mod for Civ 4 Beyond the Sword. Sure, yeah, we know Civ 5 has been around like forever, and Civ 6 is already here as well. We decided that we have not yet done everything we wanted with Civ 4. We’re funny that way. And the fact that thousands of people still download the latest versions of our mod means we’re probably doing something right…

Q: Have you been around for long?
A: We sure have been. The first public version of Realism mod for vanilla Civ 4 was released in November of 2005, thus making the mod more than a decade old already, one of the oldest mods (probably the oldest mod continuously being developed) for Civ 4. From February 2006 the mod ended up in hands of Houman, who has been the team leader for a long while. From March of the same year, we are based on Sourceforge, and Sourceforge SVN repository has proven to be an excellent way of organizing our work. In December 2006 we ported the mod to Warlords, adopting the name “Total Realism Gold”. February 2011 saw the first Beyond the Sword release, along with another name change to “Realism Invictus”.

Q: I liked some element from your mod (piece of artwork, concept etc), and I want to use it in my own mod. May I?
A: By all means you should do it! Realism Invictus by itself draws heavily on the creations of other Civ4 community members, especially on CFC. We would be delighted if some part of our mod would help other fellow modders to create better stuff.

Q: I have a question/bug report/suggestion. Where do I go?
A: You can ask in our CFC subforum here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=202 or directly in this thread.

Q: I liked your mod very much. How can I help your team?
A: At this point, the active development of RI is basically over and as such there is nothing to help with (and basically no team to speak of). That said, you are free to develop your own modifications (“modmods”) for RI.

Q: I feel you treated some group/ideology/nation/religion unfairly in your mod. You give it too much/too little credit. :-(
A: We are VERY sorry you have come to this conclusion. We’re trying to be fair and to carry out a balanced approach to all the stuff. After all, this mod started as an attempt to correct some unfairness/onesidedness present in vanilla Civ4. If you think we should know your opinion, please share it with us at our forum (see above), and we’ll discuss it. We are always eager to discuss the reasons for our decisions, and as our experience shows, they are not always immediately apparent.

Q: Can I use a custom map with your mod?
A: No. Unfortunately, custom maps don’t work with RI, at least “out of the box”. The reason behind it is all the new resources we add that will obviously be missing on a map not specifically made for our mod and some dll changes (maximum number of players) that will cause normal maps to just crash at the start. If you have enough experience, you can make a map RI-compatible by creating enough empty “players” and placing all the appropriate resources on it by hand – if you ever do so, feel free to send it to us; we will likely include it in our next release. The only custom maps you can play RI on are the world maps that come with it and the Crusades, Europe, Triassic Earth and Deluge scenarios.

Q: Can I use custom map generation scripts with your mod?
A: Unlike the previous question, the answer is most likely “yes, you can”. The majority of map generation scripts, if they weren’t made specifically for some other mod, will generate perfectly playable random maps in RI. Of course, we haven’t tested every single script out there, but some of more popular ones, like PerfectWorld and Tectonics, can give you an excellent RI playing experience, better than the scripts that come bundled with Civ 4 (though their versions modified for compatibility with RI also come with the mod). We recommend you experiment and find the one that suits your needs. Moreover, some of the best random map generators out there were tweaked to better work with RI and are included with the mod since 3.2 version.

Q: Will you extend your mod to the future? There is so much cool stuff you could add…
A: No, extending the tech tree to the future is beyond the scope of our mod. As it is, even expanding it to the present is beyond it – currently it is considered to extend as far as roughly year 2000. That’s why we also aren’t including any contemporary leaders – they are simply beyond our scope. We strive to model human history, and contemporary events (and even more so hypothetical future events) have not become history yet.

Q: Will you add more civs? At least my favorite one(s)?
A: Not likely your favorite ones, and there are several reasons for it. While we try to add new civs, and there are already several in our mod, most of the more popular ones aren’t getting added for several reasons. First of all, our World Map is pretty cramped as it is, and will become even more so when we eventually add some BtS civs (not even all of these will make it in). Then, with the amount of attention every civ gets in our mod (leaders, units, Great People, etc.), it is a titanic job to add every single one – since it is not a matter of simply adding a couple of leaders, a UU and a UB. A “civ” that is considered a standard on CFC, for example, would look terribly incomplete in our mod, and would require much more work to blend in than what already went into its making. This also means that some potentially interesting civs will not be added at all, due to the fact that there is very little material available on them (the first example that comes to mind for that is Khmer). We have added several custom civs so far, and as you can see they are likely not the ones that would be your first choices. Lastly, but probably most importantly, it is unlikely there will be any major new additions to RI going forward, as 3.5 is the last major release. 3.55 featured only bugfixes, tweaks and balancing, and this is likely how it will be from now on.

Q: Why don’t you use animated leaderheads?
A: Once again, several reasons. The first and the strongest of those is that I’m the person responsible for adding these, and I don’t like Firaxis-style animated cartooney leaderheads. Ever since Civ 3, I always substituted them for beautiful works of art I could find. These painters are worth checking out! There are also two additional reasons that reinforce this principle: since I can make those static leaderheads myself, I am not bound to wait for someone to make me an animated leaderhead – and thus we can put in any leader I can possibly find, and you will notice that we have more leaders than most other mods. Lastly, static leaderheads eat up much less system resources. In a mod as big as ours, every little bit counts. –WH.

Q: Can you make it so that civs found cities in historic places and appear at historic periods? Rhye’s does it.
A: No, implementing these features (as well as some other stuff present in Rhye’s) would limit our mod to world map only. While we consider the work of Rhye to be a top-class mod, we are developing a more flexible product that is suitable for a broad spectrum of random maps. We will probably implement emerging new civs at some point in future though.

Q: Why are the cardinal directions in the Crusades Era map so confused?
A: The Crusades Era map is based on a genuine medieval map of the world, and reflects all its peculiarities. Of course, the map is not 100% geographically accurate, and even contains some fictional places (believed to be real by the authors of the map back when it was made). The issue with cardinal directions though is a simple case of cultural dissonance: medieval European maps were made with East, not North being the “top” of the map, as this direction was considered to be holy.

Q: Why did you turn off tech trading?
A: We have implemented tech transfer component instead. If any civ you have open borders with knows the tech you’re researching, you will research it much faster. We feel it does a better job at simulating tech spread than Civ4 default “tech trading” (which really only happened from late XIX century IRL). You can turn tech trading back on if you don't like that feature, but then don't forget to turn our Tech Transfer component off in the game options, as the two aren't meant to function together.

Q: Why is AI cheating so much? Can it not play fair?
A: This is a complex question to answer, actually. Firstly, did you feel that AI was cheating in vanilla Civ 4? Because it was, and massively so, if you played on any difficulty level above Noble. And it is a good thing too, or it wouldn’t have been able to provide you with enough challenge to entertain you. Compared to vanilla, AI actually cheats less in RI. You are welcome to compare the difficulty-level related bonuses in vanilla and RI xml for yourself. Secondly, if you feel that because you’re playing the same difficulty level as you were used to in vanilla and losing, then I suggest just lowering the difficulty a bit – AI doesn’t cheat more, but it is certainly smarter and more aggressive than in vanilla, so until you firmly find your legs with the mod, it is suggested that you play on lower difficulties.

Q: Why do you release new versions so rarely?
A: Well, we are a team of perfectionists, and we like to ensure that everything is as complete as we can before we release a major version. Therefore, we only release major versions once every half a year or so. That doesn’t mean that you are locked out from whatever we are currently doing: everyone can check out our latest internal build from our Subversion (SVN) repository, which will provide you with exactly what we ourselves have at the moment, and you will be able to keep it up-to-date. Our forum has a handy guide on how to do that: http://www.realism-invictus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=825. But please keep in mind that this IS an internal build not intended for release. While we try to provide support to users playing our SVN versions, please remember that they are essentially betas. And please remember the revision number you’re playing (BTW, it is a very bad idea to update your SVN revision during an ongoing game – more often than not it will render your current saves unplayable, and even if it doesn’t, it can cause all manner of strange side effects). At this point, no new major versions are expected to be released in the future.

Q: Do you need beta testers?
A: Yes, we do. See the previous question on how to get your hands on our latest internal build, and play it! Then report your finds to us on our forum, and that’s that – you are helping us. We really appreciate this kind of help. Any major bugs found will still be fixed, even if no major releases are planned anymore.

Q: Where can I get more info on how stuff works and advice on how to play your mod?
A: We have a manual - not too detailed, but designed to give you a basic understanding of all the mod's significant features. This post contains a link where you can get its pdf version. Also, in-game hints have been rewritten to provide useful RI-specific advice (and if you didn't know, you can read all hints in the Pedia!).

Information for fellow modmakers

We always felt our work to be a community effort, and as such we would very much like to give back to the community as well. Our mod has tons of stuff incorporated into it, and much of it can currently only be found in it - we'd like that to change. Releasing all the units, buildings etc. from the mod separately on CFC is not an option, not only due to the sheer amount of separate items but also due to the fact that our own involvement in its different bits and pieces varies greatly - from making stuff from scratch to redoing the textures and reshaping the models to even simply resaving stuff in a more efficient way (say, removing unused alpha channels in textures).

Therefore we urge you all to thoroughly pillage our mod for content. I can assure you, even if you already saw this particular unit/building/improvement/whatever on CFC, please take your time to compare, and in over 80% of cases, you'll find that our version has been improved in some aspect. You can use any of our stuff without asking, but it would be nice if you informed us, just so we can enjoy the fact our work is being appreciated by the community.

32-bit Disclaimer

If you have a 32-bit OS, you will not be able to successfully finish a World Map game. 32-bit OS memory handling is such that after the savegame size exceeds a certain size, the game starts to randomly crash from Memory Allocation Failure (MAF). There is no way to prevent this from happening sooner or later if you are playing World Map on a 32-bit OS. There is nothing we can do with this sad fact, as it is inherent in 32-bit architecture itself and the way Civ 4 engine works with it, and there is no fix for that available to a modder. Only play World Map if you have a 64-bit OS (or are content with playing roughly until the Medieval era on a 32-bit OS)! Please restrict yourself to playing random maps if you have a 32-bit OS, and remember that the smaller the map size, the lower the probability of MAF.

A user-suggested fix around the poor memory management of Civ 4 that seems to be working for people and prevents MAF crashes involving a third-party piece of software:
For the memory problems/crashes, I think I found a solution that works for me. It was suggested for another game, but works well here to. The app is called Process Lasso from Bitsum. It runs in the background and monitors/optimizes all the process that are running on your PC. It manages the priorities to keep background processes from hogging the CPU from foreground processes.

One feature it has is a thing called Trim. It will execute a Trim to have certain processes release memory at designated conditions. The other feature is Process Watchdog. This is a tool to monitor a specific process and take certain defined actions when defined conditions occur.

For Civ 4, I have a Watchdog set to Trim the working set memory whenever it exceeds 825Mb. I have not had an in-game memory problem ever since. The only problem is when I try to load a saved game from a running game. It crashes me to the desktop, but then I just restart and load the saved game fresh.

And I'm playing the historical scenario with 55 Civs and the Huge Earth map. I'm currently in game year 1781 and my save game file is 6,148kb.

Troubleshooting checklist

If you experience crashes/weird behaviour that clearly should not be there, please consult the following checklist to make sure you have everything in place for the mod to work correctly.
Spoiler :
This contains the most common problems people have with the mod. Please ensure that:
• You are not running MacOS. Mods with custom dll don't work on Mac.
• Your video card supports the mod. Note that the mod is more demanding to video hardware than Civ 4 itself. As a rule of the thumb, Intel onboard video chips are insufficient to play the mod. Most ATI and NVidia cards that can run Civ 4 will not have problems with the mod either.
• Beyond the Sword is patched to the latest version.
• If you have a 32-bit OS, you will get Memory Allocation errors sooner or later. To get them later rather than sooner (depending on your specs perhaps even later than the time it takes you to win/have enough fun), you may apply the MAF fix. Also see a fix posted above in the 32-bit disclaimer section.
• The mod is installed to correct path, that is "Beyond the Sword/Mods/Realism Invictus". Do not rename the folder of the mod to anything other than "Realism Invictus".
• CustomAssets folders are clean. Any files in those folders (including components like BUG and BULL) will interfere with normal functioning of the mod.
• If you get a C++ error when you try to start, you should download and install Visual C++ Express.
• If you crash starting a custom game, try starting via "Play now". If it starts normally, then try starting custom game again, maybe changing some options. It will start normally after a few tries, and won't crash anymore.

Credits and thanks
Spoiler :

Team members who worked on the current version:
Walter Hawkwood (UK)

Former team members (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum or on CFC):
12monkeys (Germany)
AbsintheRed (Hungary)
Anaztazioch (Poland)
Ankenaton (USA)
charly1977 (Germany)
Cruel (Brazil)
el_zozo (France)
Hian the Frog (France)
Houman (UK/Persia)
israfil (Canada)
jaynus
Josh (USA)
Kristine
Mexico (Slovakia)
Nightravn
Phatlip
PTFeilong
Tahnkout (Turkey)
Vitez (Poland)

Thank you very much, for without your input, Realism Invictus would never get where it is today!

Very special thanks to people who have contributed their work directly to our mod, by helping develop some of its specific parts (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum or on CFC):
Arian (Netherlands)
AspiringScholar (USA)
Bakuel (USA)
ChaffCommander Coffey
Dertuek (France)
Jinzor (UK)
Lib.Spi't
MatteM (Sweden)
MightyToad
Nanto
NiRv4n4
ostar
Palaiologos (Greece)
Routalempi (Finland)
Stolenrays
Ungomma (Russia)

Special thanks go to the people who have provided a great deal of help to us testing our mod and giving us lots of useful feedback (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum, with the country where the user chose to specify it):

aantia
Ahnarras
AntmanBrooks
Ambassador
amrod (Hungary)
arizzi
arythm1a
aod (Brazil)
awh1979
BareJag (Finland)
buck_beach
Burebeesta
cfeyyaz (Turkey)
CivEikka2
civman110
Darkphoenix
Deder
ederl
Erfeo
eXalted
Fantasieprodukt
Freakwave (Netherlands)
gforce (Canada)
HannibalBarca (France)
haroon
Harrier (USA)
Iamwinterborn
Ignacio (Argentina)
Jayman1000
JohnCarterOfMars
Jure
Lord Brooks
Matsuda123
Mus_musculus
Narxysus
nicrolyte (USA)
paichtis
pecheneg
pioswa
PKSRoman
plasmacannon (USA)
riesscar
rkade8583 (USA)
sami_snow
Sathar (USA)
sazhdapec
Shimicakan
Shuikkanen (Finland)
Sinaherib (Russia)
Snowygerry (Belgium)
spleskan_kur
SR-71 (Spain)
Sukkels88
Sword_of_Geddon (USA)
Taylor (Cuba)
teks (USA)
Terkhen
TheBirdMan (Denmark)
ThirdOrbital
Tingyun
tmk
RonZeroRange (USA)
vamperium
VenGence (Canada)
Watermelon
[Y]
Zap0
zoob (Germany)

Thank you very much, for with your help, innumerable bugs were found and fixed, and the mod was balanced in a way that would not be possible without your input.

We would like to thank the following CFC members whose work was included in our mod or otherwise helped it grow (due to the length of the list, I am certain that we couldn’t list everyone; the mod is a genuine product of Civ4 modding community):

abbamouse, AchillesZero, AlazkanAssassin, ambrox62, Aranor, ArdRaeiss, asioasioasio, baal_isidro, bernie14, Bhruic, C.Roland, Cafegio, Chalid, Cham, Chamaedrys, charle88, Chugginator, coffee_junkie, ComG, dacubz145, danrell, Deliverator, Deon, Dom Pedro II, embryodead, ermelinho, esnaz, Expositus, f1rpo, Frontbrecher, GarretSidzaka, GeneralMatt, Hell's Angel, heroes182, Hunter, Janboruta, Jinzor, JustATourist, Kathy, krowtrobot, LittleRedPoint, Master Lexx, MaxRiga, Mumin, Mylon, naf4ever, nautil, Nevermind, Nicholas Hawkwood, NikNaks93, Notarzt, Optimizer, Patricius, Ploeperpengel, Polycrates, Rabbit White, Ramzay1945, Refar, Robo Magic Man, RogerBacon, sepamu92, Sevo, seZereth, sharick, Snafusmith, Snaitf, Stone-D, SupremeOverlord, Thalassicus, The Capo, The Conquests, TheFourGuardian, TheLopez, tlucky4life, Tremo, veBear, villo, Von Zeppelin, Willowmound, Wolfschanze, Xenomorph, zenspiderz, Zerver, Zuul, zwei833.

Additional thanks go to the creators of BUG mod: Alerum68, Cammagno, EmperorFool, NikNaks, Ruff_Hi and everyone else credited in-game in BUG section.

Additional thanks go to the creators of PerfectMongoose map script for Realism Invictus: Rich Marinaccio, aka Cephalo (original creator), LunarMongoose (adapting for Civ 4), Antmanbrooks (tweaking for RI).

Additional thanks go to the person responsible for countless interface improvements adopted by RI: Platyping

Some artwork was taken from the following games:

0AD,

Age of Empires 3,

Age of Mythology,

Anno 1404,

Anno 1701,

Axis & Allies,

Blitzkrieg and other Blitzkrieg Engine games,

Cossacks 3,

Crusader Kings 2,

Crusader Kings 3,

Empire Earth 2,

Empire Earth 3,

Empires: Dawn of the Modern World,

Endless Legend,

Europa Universalis: Rome

Europa Universalis 3,

Europa Universalis 4,

Grand Ages: Rome,

Hearts of Iron 3,

Hearts of Iron 4,

Humankind,

Imperator: Rome,

Knights of Honor II Sovereign,

Kohan 2: Immortal Sovereigns,

Making History,

North and South Pirates,

OldWorld,

Rebel Inc.,

Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War,

Rise of Nations,

Sid Meier’s Colonization,

Sid Meier’s Pirates!,

Sid Meier’s Railroads,

Supreme Ruler Ultimate,

Tanktastic,

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind,

Victoria 2,

Wargame: Airland Battle and other Wargame titles,

Wind of Luck,

World of Tanks



Additionally, many units are directly based or inspired by these user-created mods to Total War, C&C: Generals, Blitzkrieg, Cossacks 3 and Mount & Blade game series:

Broken Crescent,

Brytenwalda,

CSLA,

Europa Barbarorum,

European Wars,

Kosovo Sunrise,

Lithuania Mod,

Magyar Mod,

Napoleonic: Total War,

Ogniem i Mieczem,

Peace Mission,

Rome Total Realism,

Rusichi,

Stainless Steel,

State vs Country,

The End of Days,

Visual Reality Mod,



Special thanks to Loner and Avar from Cossacks 3 forum, King Louise Assurbanipal from Total War Forums and ZoldGorynych from Sich: Total WarS forums.

The main menu theme of this mod has been created by Kai Engel and is licensed and used in RI under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

Downloads

Note that Sourceforge has many different mirrors, and if you think your download is too slow, try switching to another (it offers you this option when you click the download link). Please don't forget to apply the hotfix after using the main installer!

Full version (download link)
This is the download that contains everything that you might need to enjoy our mod as it was intended. Manual also included in the download.

Light version (download link).
This version contains no animated wonder movies (static pictures are used instead) and no specific Great Person popups. It is otherwise a fully functional version, good for people with slow connection or limited bandwidth.

Manual (download link).
A link to pdf file of the mod's manual.

SVN version:
If you wish to try out the current developer build, you can check it out of a subversion repository. Here is how you do it:
Spoiler SVN instructions :
Instructions

These instructions assume that Tortoise SVN has already been installed. You may use any SVN client you wish.
This mod requires Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword with patch 3.19 to be installed.

  1. Create a Realism folder at this location:
    ROOT CIV FOLDER\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Realism
    (substitute "ROOT CIV FOLDER" appropriately)
    (IMPORTANT: the name of the target folder should be "Realism", as otherwise stuff might not work correctly)
  2. Right click on the newly created Realism folder and select "SVN Checkout". A checkout window will pop up. The appropriate settings are listed at the bottom of this post.
  3. Select OK. The Realism for BTS mod will be downloaded from the server.
  4. Start the Realism mod from BTS like you would any other mod.
You may also pack your art assets if you'd like to improve your startup times. This can be a tricky process but if you'd like to try it you can follow the instructions.

SVN Checkout Settings

URL of repository

Code:
https://svn.code.sf.net/p/civ4mods/code/realism/bts/trunk/mod

Checkout directory
(The folder you just created is automatically selected)

Omit externals
No (not checked)

Checkout Depth
Fully recursive

Revision
HEAD revision

Note that since it is a dev build, some features can be incomplete, some content missing or behave itself in unintended ways etc. Also remember that unless specifically instructed otherwise, you should NEVER update SVN in the middle of an ongoing game. New revision = new game. If you disregard this, your game will behave absolutely unpredictably; please DON'T report any bugs if they happened to a game that you updated - those most likely have nothing to do with RI.
 
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Congratulations on the release!
Downloading it now, I can't believe I was hoping to get some stuff done today. Oh well.:mischief:
 
I'm working on India, I'll probably release the Hindi/non-Muslim unit packs first. You can expect something in three or so weeks, I'm aiming to be finished them by the end of February.
I'm a bit embarrassed because I was hoping to finish them before the new release, but I haven't had a lot of time to finish them off.

BTW, I'm playing with Arabia on the world map right now! :D
 
Since this world map is new to our mod, it is still somewhat rough around the edges when it comes to balance; tweaks to the map will probably be our biggest task for 3.1 - I am running a hands-off test as I am writing this.
 
I wanted to report this in the mod forum, but it's not clear which forum I should go to for this: Total Realism? I don't see any RI discussion there.

At any rate, I just installed this, and am trying to give it a whirl, but I'm consistently crashing to desktop with a runtime exception while the world map is being generated (the same spot every time). Vanilla BtS is fine; I'm playing with the steam version.

If I start it with RI's World map, the runtime exception hits early on. If I start it with another random map, I CTD only at the very end of the setup progress bar.

Windows 7 32-bit
Updated Nvidia drivers
2G memory

*EDIT*

Looks like a memory issue. I can play with a large map, but nothing larger.
 
Congratulations to your mod! Too bad, that it can't run on a Mac, but it's already fun to browse through your unit art folder using NifSkope… I was surprised by the new (new to me at least) versions of Polybian legionaries, apparently inspired by Total War. I'd be glad to credit the creator, when I'm using them. Who did them?

The Drawback feature accompanying leadertraits also reads interesting. Does it require SDK or Python, only?
 
This mod really looks great.

Is it compatible with Dale's Combat Mod ?

If not do you have plans to include the ranged attacks and bombing missions ?
 
Congratulations to your mod! Too bad, that it can't run on a Mac, but it's already fun to browse through your unit art folder using NifSkope… I was surprised by the new (new to me at least) versions of Polybian legionaries, apparently inspired by Total War. I'd be glad to credit the creator, when I'm using them. Who did them?

That'd be me. :) They were done some time ago; I remember Total Realism 2.4 already having them.

The Drawback feature accompanying leadertraits also reads interesting. Does it require SDK or Python, only?

Wasn't me who coded those, but mostly they are just inversions of regular trait effects, which doesn't even require Python, just putting negative values into XML. The bits that required coding concerned drawbacks that were opposites of some custom positive traits.

Is it compatible with Dale's Combat Mod ?

If not do you have plans to include the ranged attacks and bombing missions ?

I don't think it's immediately "compatible" with any other mod that has a custom dll. We will consider integrating Dale's in the next versions, but no promises here. Already tried that once a couple of years ago, and it caused lots of trouble back then - but I guess the combat mod itself also came a long way since then.
 
Very much looking forward to trying this out, but--slow download. 60KB/sec? I'm looking at close to 2 hours, here. Normally I get anywhere from 200KB/sec up to over 1 GB/sec. You might want to consider a second download source, as well.
 
The Drawback feature accompanying leadertraits also reads interesting. Does it require SDK or Python, only?

It needs some coding. :sad:
Some drawbacks, such as "Isolationist" or "Reckless", need some coding.

Of course, you have to add all these new traits on the Trait XML sheet too.
 
Downloaded full version three times - it lets me run through the setup options but can't read any files - I choose skip just to see and it can't read the next file. I'm trying the light version now.

Lite version doesn't work either. I don't think they are corrupt downloads. I use Windows 7 64bit - tried the install both as administrator and not. The installer was not able to detect the path, which is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword

I do have version 3.19

The exact error message is "Error opening file for writing"
 
Full download finally finished, just shy of 2 hours. Meh.

Installed easily on WinXP. Loaded quicker than one of my 2 faves, RoM: AND. Chose huge map with custom continents, 6 players in all. Launched smoothly, no problems. If you're having crashes, try lowering the number of players, as well as the size of the map.
 
Very much looking forward to trying this out, but--slow download. 60KB/sec? I'm looking at close to 2 hours, here. Normally I get anywhere from 200KB/sec up to over 1 GB/sec. You might want to consider a second download source, as well.

SourceForge has lots of mirrors; you should have probably tried another one.

Downloaded full version three times - it lets me run through the setup options but can't read any files - I choose skip just to see and it can't read the next file. I'm trying the light version now.

Lite version doesn't work either. I don't think they are corrupt downloads. I use Windows 7 64bit - tried the install both as administrator and not. The installer was not able to detect the path, which is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword

I do have version 3.19

The exact error message is "Error opening file for writing"

Have you tried running the installer with admin rights?
 
SourceForge has lots of mirrors; you should have probably tried another one.

Might be more effective if you put such a link in your first post, along with a comment along the lines of "Download link too slow? Try this one," etc. Just a thought. Might bring in a few more users, but in any case, that's up to you.
 
Downloaded full version three times - it lets me run through the setup options but can't read any files - I choose skip just to see and it can't read the next file. I'm trying the light version now.

Lite version doesn't work either. I don't think they are corrupt downloads. I use Windows 7 64bit - tried the install both as administrator and not. The installer was not able to detect the path, which is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword

I do have version 3.19

The exact error message is "Error opening file for writing"


Exactly the same problem here...
Please check out the atachment.
I am administrator and have UAC disabled ;)


P.S. regarding download time - I was able to donwload from the main mirror with average speed of 1,4 MB/s today at 15:00 CET
 

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