[We the People] Mod overview

[Nightinggale]

​

In the year 1492, Europeans discovered new unclaimed land. People saw opportunities, took possession and started to build their dreams. As time passed, more and more colonies showed up. All started out with hard work, struggled to keep going and some failed, lost everybody and fated into history as a tale of the old times. Others survived, grew, became more and more attractive and popular as time passed. Eventually disagreements with the founders became so strong that independence and self governing were declared.

In the year 2008, the whole process started over. Civilization 4 Colonization was released and a giant land of unclaimed modding opened up. Multiple mods started up, but building your dreams turned out to be hard and many died out completely. Of the few, which managed to stay alive and active for years, one split up due to disagreements of the goal. This one rebel has now suffered the same fate with disagreements about ideology and direction of development and has split up. This time it's different though because the split also meant the death of the old mod.

In the year 2018, We the People of the modding community have declared a new mod as our own. It has more to do with ideology than it has with leadership. We want freedom of expression of ideas and freedom to build your ideas and bring them to life. Disagreements about direction of development should be resolved with debate and hopefully result in everybody agreeing.


We are a group of 4 programmers, who have forked the now dead Religion and Revolution mod and intend to turn it into a community developed mod. This means we are very open to outside ideas and contributions. We also welcome new team members.

Where to download releases​

GitHub release page.

Where to get the source code​

GitHub git repository

What is the plan​

We have an issue tracker. An issue can be a new idea, bug or anything else, which would require a change in the mod. Tickets can be tagged and viewing can be filtered on tags, meaning it's not a mess to have everything in one place.

Since we are all programmers, the current plans tend to be technical minded and a number of them will not be directly visible to the player. Examples of this would be preventing future bugs, increase performance, make it harder to break savegames between releases and so on. The AI has been neglected for quite a while, which is also something we have on the todo list.

There are also ideas about change of gameplay. Feel free to contribute with your ideas. In fact we want the ideas to be the ideas of the community and not just our own ideas.

I want to help​

We have a list of ways to contribute. Some ways require skilled people while others are as simple as playing the game and report bugs. While we would like help with all tasks, the unskilled tasks are actually more important than first meets the eye. For instance right now if the help text for something needs to be rewritten, it means a programmer has to stop programming to write it. If somebody else would do it, it would free up the programmer to work on the next great feature.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

This looks really great. I wonder if Ideology will be a gameplay element in this mod?

 

[Drakarska]

Wow NG, nice to see you back. I thought for sure you left for good. Can't wait to see what you and the Fellow WETP Gods can come up with

 

[Nightinggale]

Version 2.7.1 released. Backward compatible with savegames from any 2.7.1 beta and RaR 2.7. Being mainly a bugfix release, upgrading is highly recommended.

Changelog: (relative to RaR 2.7)
2 new (minor) features.
10 AI improvements
40 bugfixes
A few more changes, like code optimization.
Full changelog:

Spoiler :

Version 2.7.1

Improvements:
- #83 Clicking on the colony plot in the colony screen allows changing which yield to produce.
- #199 Double click a unit in garrison now brings up choose profession.

AI improvements:
- #17 automated coastal ships now pick routes as ships, like going between islands instead of competing against land transport.
- #171 Fixed a mistake that would have the AI consider the cities on its own team as being possible victims. Removed a cheat so that the AI has to have revealed the target city.

Fixes:
- #2 Native haggling exploit fixed: natives will no longer automatically accept haggles with replaced / added items.
- #23 typo: Priate Map fixed
- #26 Forts are upgraded by UNITCOMBAT_GUN or UNITCOMBAT_SIEGE, not just Colonial Militia.
- #26 Forts no longer upgrades from being worked on by a colony, only by placing military units on it.
- #40 Worldbuilder issue making very difficult to set diplomatic attitudes fixed.
- #51 Fixed case where AI could turn stone into lumber (copy paste error)
- #73 Shipwrecks no longer appear under ice.
- #86 The Domestic Advisor: Native tab now allows sorting by the goods the indians want.
- #87 Hurry production fails if there isn't warehouse space.
- #96 The Domestic Advisor: native tab now shows natives that you have discovered, but not yet talked with.
- #156 1 plot colony radius allowed colonies to be placed too close, even next to each other in some cases.
- #164 Out of sync GameFont ids resulted in wrong mission icons in Domestic Advisor.
- #172 Remove meaningless assert checks. (Being short on money is completely legitimate and not an error )
- #178 CvPlot::updateWorkingCity() now updates cache for CvPlot::hasYield() if the city change.
- #190 Colonies used human player for culture spread threshold instead of colony owner. Spain has a discount.
- #190 Fixed network desync related to culture spread if a human player is Spain.
- Crash if a colonist is on land on the edge of the map (founding code didn't take map edge into account).
- Combat (game) freezes when defeating the last unit of a (European only?) player.
- Colony import all/auto export all buttons now works again (broke in RaR 2.6)

Graphics:
- #158 Reintroduced the pre 2.7 loading screen
- #174 Pick a random loading screen each time a screen is displayed (currently the list has just one file)

Changes affecting xml modders:
- Domestic Advisor can display GameFont characters when using a debug DLL.
- #92 Custom house overhaul, moving settings from DLL hardcoding to xml.

DLL modding changes:
- #54 xml missing & on a local reference to an xml info class will now cause a compile error. Crashes from this issue are time consuming to track down.
- #190 Added network sync logging/debugging tool to track down causes of OOS.

Bugfixes from RaR (after 2.7, not released in stable before, all made by WTP members)
- BUG22: We only allow ships to sail to Port Royal if all units in the group are allowed to do so
- BUG23: Pirates and other non-animal "barbarians"/wild-animals will no longer result in a warning about animals
- BUG24: Citizens will no longer seem to disappear if re-assigned (by double clicking) to a plot with no apparent economic value. Removed testing/debug code.
- BUG25: Disable the European peace DLL event if the game option always war is enabled
- BUG26: Fixed the city import/export dialog issue (maintainLevel and importLimitLevel got swapped in the network code)
- BUG27: Fixed the coastal ship teleport / chain capture bug (units were allowed to jump to enemy cities)
- BUG28: Adapted from K-mod. Fixed an issue in getBestDefender that could make the AI think that a unit inside a transport was a valid defender. Additional optimizations (by refactoring some of the functionality into a separate and more effective hasDefender()
- BUG29: Fixed issue that caused the foreign advisor screen to draw red lines even though the players were at peace
- BUG30: The info screen demographics and graphs now only include the European players. The animals, church, kings and natives are excluded.
- BUG31: Native players that are in a permanent alliance with Europeans will not be shown as the owner FFs
- BUG32: The king will no longer offer civilians\colonists (e.g. doctors) when requesting military help
- BUG33: Ships that enter the map after returning from a port will no longer risk being placed on impassable terrain (e.g. ice)
- BUG34: Attempt to fix the issue where a wagon carrying sheep exceeded the import limit of the city, causing the excess to be taken to the capital (which did not even import the yield in question)
- BUG35: From K-mod: "Fixed a group pathfinding bug in the original bts code"
- BUG35: We will no longer attempt to make peace with ourselves!
- BUG36: Imported several fixes from K-mod: (list of 7 items not included here)
- BUG37: Adapted from K-mod. Fixed the issue that causes the wrong odds (due to selecting the wrong defender) to be displayed if units from different players were on the same plot
- BUG37: Fix strange divide by zero bug in CvPlayerAI::AI_transferYieldValue. It's weird that this happened so I am adding an assert to help detect issues caused by variables unexpectedly having negative values!
- BUG38: Adapted from K-mod, alberts2, DarkLunaPhantom. Various fixes concerning "Typos, order of operations mistakes, memory leaks, missing initialisers, style changes."
- BUG40: Adapted from K-mod. Whenever we check the attitude towards our own team, we're always friendly
- BUG41: Adapted from K-mod \ Unofficial patch. CvUnit::healTurns and CvUnit::canHeal - Now handles damage and healing from plot features (thanks LunarMongoose)
- EXP2: The cap on negative attitude from requesting military help from the king has been lowered to prevent players from permanently being able to buy discounted military units
- EXP3: If war is declared on another European nation, the aggressor will receive a major diplomatic attitude penalty with its king as well
- EXP4: To receive revolutionary support, we now require the player to be on good terms with the potential supporter's king as well
- EXP5: AI players fighting the revolutionary war will no longer consider a bribe to sign peace with their king. Also they will no longer reply with the "we'd love to, but you would have to ask them" nonsense
- GAME1: African slaves now have the same restrictions as native slaves with respect to allowed professions
- OPT3: From K-mod: "Made some minor efficiency improvements to CvUnitAI::AI_promote"
- OPT4: From K-mod: Disabled some obsolete BtS code.
- OPT5: Adapted from K-mod. Blocked most python callbacks and recoded those who only had a python implementation in C++. The callbacks can be reenabled in XML.
- OPT6: Optimized and refactored CvSelectionGroupAI::AI_tradeRoutes / CvSelectionGroupAI::AI_getYieldsLoaded. Added a helper CvSelectionGroupAI:rocessTradeRoute
- NOCHEAT1: Slaves and prisoners may no longer found cities (XML must be updated to disallow)
- ACO1: Implemented a modified version of PieceOfMind's Advanced Combat Odds modcomp for BTS that supports the limited combat rounds feature in RaR
- AI14: Prevent the AI from purchasing smuggling ships when offered since it doesn't know how to put them to use
- AI15: Tweak AI to produce less coastal transports and more wagons
- AI16: Block AI from producing YIELD_CANNON
- AI17: Restricting the UNITAIs considered by great generals / admirals
- AI18: Adapted from K-mod. AI explorers will now try to make contact with mapped but unmet players. Added missing const.
- AI19: By mistake I had broken CvPlayerAI::AI_needsProtection by omitting to return true when a transport needed protection.
- AI20: Added isProfessionalMilitary() mainly to prevent the AI from having units with GGs attached join cities.
- AI21: Prohibit the AI from ever exporting tools, blades, muskets and cannons to Europe. We can make the logic more refined in the future but for now the AI needs strict hand-holding
- EVENTS3: The WHALING event is no longer recurrent since the event's logic cannot handle it correctly

 

[Twinkle85]

Awesome to see this project being continued. I look forward to trying it out.

 

[scottfreitas]

'Tis indeed truly awesome to see R & R continuing. No gaming company as of yet has introduced a better "colonize the Americas" game than Civ 4: Colonization, with Religion and Revolution slash We The People modded onto it. Steam shows me with over 2400 hours /played on this game-pretty much all of it mod versioned, mostly R & R.

I hope you guys NEVER get tired of working to improve this monumental game!

And thanks much for all of your dedication and hard work.

 

[XSamatan]

How wonderful that you decided to continue this modification! It is the pinnacle of CivCol and drives on TAC's strengths. Keep up the good work!!

 

[Thomazml]

Hey, I had to create an account in this forum just to say it's awsome that you guys are still improving Civ4:Col. I loved TAC/R&R, but some bugs allways get me. A question: do the team has a twitter account/etc.. where we can follow the mod's progress, or only here in this forum?
PS: I'll like to offer to translate the mod to PT-BR =)

 

[Nightinggale]

do the team has a twitter account/etc.. where we can follow the mod's progress, or only here in this forum?

There is the forum and the issue/ticket system on GitHub. We are still looking for more team members as we are limited by the fact that we are all programmers. This means anything we do will take time away from programming tasks. If we also had non-programming members, then we could do other stuff too without slowing down the programming efforts.

I'll like to offer to translate the mod to PT-BR =)

Sounds good. I have a plan, which makes it easier to add a new language, but it has been low priority because without translators, the need has been minor. I guess this means I need to rethink some priorities.

 

[Nightinggale]

Version 2.7.1.1 released. Contains only bugfixes for 2.7.1 and no new features at all.

Changelog:

Spoiler :

Fixes:
- Bug in choose profession GUI, which could result in the popup window showing up each turn in multiplayer
- AI players no longer have free custom houses
- Natives now store production from more than one turn (related to the custom house issue)

 

[HermanHeydt]

Fantastic to see this project continuing the legacy of RaR.

Thank you for this! Gonna make this Christmas so much better

Will be happy to help out some in august when my job allows for it.

 

[andbruu]

Have been playing RaR for some time, and just assumed there would be no more development. But yesterday I discovered WtP, and I must say that it already have improved the game a lot, even if the changes might seem minor.

I hope you can keep it going, and add even more stuff.

I just have two comments regarding my experience:
1) On the EU port, I have a crown with a strike where I assume there should be a gold icon.
2) If I could get an expected income per turn from taverns and/or domestic market, as a sum of all my settlements, that would be great.

For now I am happy with the fixes and minor improvements.
In the long run, I hope for a rework of the trade-route setup, as I seem to spend quite a bit of time on it now.

Unfortunately my programming and artistic skills are limited, so I have very little aid to offer.

Thank you for moving forward with a great game.

 

[Nightinggale]

the changes might seem minor.

That's not surprising considering so far the releases have more or less been bugfixing releases. Changes, which can make it problematic to load savegames are intentionally not included in the releases as the goal is to fix bugs in existing games. Releases for new features comes later.

1) On the EU port, I have a crown with a strike where I assume there should be a gold icon.

Apparently a GameFont issue, though the real question is what is causing it. Are you sure you copied the DLL file into assets?

The good thing about GameFont issues is that they themselves are cosmetic only and will not affect gameplay at all. The question is if the cause will also cause other bugs. Also they can be quite annoying.

2) If I could get an expected income per turn from taverns and/or domestic market, as a sum of all my settlements, that would be great.

Several people have mentioned how useless the message spamming is. I imagine something like providing a total as a message, meaning only one or two messages and then detains can be granted elsewhere, like the domestic advisor. Yes we do know this advisor is slow and a fix/code redesign is planned.

 

[andbruu]

That's not surprising considering so far the releases have more or less been bugfixing releases. Changes, which can make it problematic to load savegames are intentionally not included in the releases as the goal is to fix bugs in existing games. Releases for new features comes later.


Apparently a GameFont issue, though the real question is what is causing it. Are you sure you copied the DLL file into assets?

The good thing about GameFont issues is that they themselves are cosmetic only and will not affect gameplay at all. The question is if the cause will also cause other bugs. Also they can be quite annoying.


Several people have mentioned how useless the message spamming is. I imagine something like providing a total as a message, meaning only one or two messages and then detains can be granted elsewhere, like the domestic advisor. Yes we do know this advisor is slow and a fix/code redesign is planned.

Yes, I have copied the 2 plot dll to assets. As you said, its not a real problem, just something I noted. Have not encountered a bug in 12-ish hours on the same game (huge map, marathon) - granted, I might not have noticed a bug, but nothing obvious.

Perhaps the income sum could be displayed on the gold mouse-over, along with crosses per turn, rebel % and great general.

 

[shahballs]

Hi guys, thanks for the continued work. Maybe not the best place to post, but where can I link with other players for a multiplayer game?

 

[smallfry]

- BUG34: Attempt to fix the issue where a wagon carrying sheep exceeded the import limit of the city, causing the excess to be taken to the capital (which did not even import the yield in question)

What does "attempt" mean here? Is the bug solved, is it solved but unclear if the solution works in all circumstances or did the attempt fail?
I am asking because this bug stopped me from playing as it broke my games.

 

[Regul]

Has anybody installed this mod on Linux with Proton? Would be nice to get some help.

 

[scottfreitas]

The last three posts, dating back to early April of 2019, have gone unanswered.

Sup? Is WTP still an active project, or has it been abandoned?

 

[Nightinggale]

We are still around. The problem is that (speaking personally) I don't know what to answer to those questions and apparently nobody else knows either.

Where to find people for multiplayer? I want to know the answer to that one too.
I can't remember what BUG34 was and I didn't write "attempt" meaning I can't answer with confidence. I sure hope we finally got that part of the game fixed though.
"Linux with Photon".... I don't even know what Photon is.

Now if people would just ask questions where I feel like I have a fair chance of answering, then I will try to answer

 

[scottfreitas]

Lol. Okay. Glad you're okay and WTP is still alive and well...

Isn't it amazing to think how much money Firaxis could earn if they would re-release "Colonization" today, in 2019, with the entirety of "We the People" included as part of the base game, and just a few added bug fixes/tweaks by Firaxis devs?

Legally, they could do it. I mean, i'm sure every modder reads the ToS usage agreement, right?

Fact is, any and every mod made for any game which allows mods is legally the property of the game developer.

I don't think anyone who has worked on TAC, R&R, or WTP would mind at all if Firaxis re-released the game with all their modded content included. Particularily if Firaxis credited them by name...

Still, for whatever reasons(s), we know it'll never happen.

I don't believe Firaxis will ever revisit the Colonization franchise, either. Too many uptight, loud-mouthed, SJW leftists around today who would stupidly (and unimaginitively) claim that colonization itself was an inherently evil practice, despite the fact that in reality the Africa we see today--with skyscrapers, airports, etc--would not exist if not for colonization. Africa would instead be a nation of grass and mud huts, endless tribal warfare, and brutally short lifespans for everyone who lived there.

Thanks for all your hard work, Nightingale and the rest of you. I have played more hours of Colonization by far than any other game in my entire life. And almost 100% of that play time began with the addition of TaC, followed later by R & R and eventually WTP.

You took what was a crappy, bare-bones cash-grab remake of a beloved classic 90's game and made it bigger and better than even the original.

THAT took talent.

And lots of it.