Welcome to Dawn of Civilization

Leoreth · Sep 11, 2014

Dawn of Civilization
The spiritual successor to Rhye's and Fall of Civilization

Welcome to the main thread for the Dawn of Civilization mod. Rhye's and Fall of Civilization is among the most popular mods for Beyond the Sword. If you also think it has the best game experience, we already have one thing in common.

RFC is not in active development anymore, but in my opinion there are still many ways to improve on it to make it an even better history simulator and an even better game. In this way, Dawn of Civilization intends to become RFC's spiritual successor in continuing where it left off.

Already interested? Here's the download:

DOWNLOAD DAWN OF CIVILIZATION v1.17

In particular, among the goals of DoC are:

Representing parts of the world not represented by RFC
Improving on historical accuracy without sacrificing gameplay
Offering new content in the form of civilizations and victory types
Improving and optimizing existing RFC features
Adjusting base game elements to better suit a historical mod

Rhye's and Fall was created more with the intention of taking the normal BtS content into a framework that makes it a historical simulator. Dawn of Civilization looks beyond that and tries to make an even better history simulator by including content beyond what BtS offered. This is most evident in the inclusion of additional civilizations, but also in many rule and mechanic changes.

In my opinion, a good historical simulator always also has to be a good game. This is why perfect historical accuracy isn't the goal of DoC - playing this game is about making interesting decisions and seeing their impact on the world. So instead of forced or scripted historical events, DoC tries to include events and mechanics that encourage developments along historical lines without making them a certainty. DoC also isn't a kitchen sink mod - every feature included has to serve a clear purpose in improving historicity or gameplay experience.

All of this shows in the following main features of Dawn of Civilization:

Inclusion of Beyond the Sword civilizations that have been left out: Korea, Byzantium, Holy Rome
Many new, completely playable civilizations: Harappa, Polynesia, Tamils, Turks, Tibet, Indonesia, Moors, Poland, Italy, Mughals, Thailand, Congo, Argentina, Brazil and Canada
Certain civilizations can be reborn to create a completely new game experience: Persia returns as Iran, the Aztecs return as Mexico and the Maya return as Colombia
Completely new tech tree covering 141 technologies over 7 eras (based on and inspired by History Rewritten)
Included 31 new buildings and changed 20 existing ones
Included 87 new wonders and changed 20 existing ones
Included 11 new projects and changed 2 existing ones
Included 16 new land, 6 new naval and 2 new air units
Major changes and redesign of many existing units
Many civilisations have a second unique unit
Completely new selection of 42 civics from 6 categories
You can play from 1700 AD in a new scenario
Improved the interface in various ways by including the BUG mod
You can play on Epic or Marathon game speed thanks to embryodead's RFC Epic/Marathon modmod
Two new difficulty levels featuring stronger AI opponents
Almost every already existing RFC civilization will experience an entirely different game due to changes in their UP, new UHV goals or general starting situation and environment
Replaced Carthage with Phoenicia, starting in 1200 BC in the Levant
Different spawn dates: India (1500 BC), Japan (525 AD), Netherlands (1580 AD) and Germany (1700 AD)
Completely new civic system with a set of six more historical and universally applicable choices per category
New stability system with more transparent factors, gradual effects in the form of different crises, and improved performance
Diplomatic institutions overhaul: new rules and resolutions for the Apostolic Palace and United Nations, extended and optimized Congress mechanics
New religions: Zoroastrianism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Christianity is founded as the Orthodox faith, with Catholicism and Protestantism branching off through specific events (the Great Schism and the Reformation, respectively). All civilizations have their specific pagan religion in case no major religion is followed.
New religious spread rules, with religions gradually spreading around their holy city depending on historical spread in various regions on the map. Owner state religion can influence which religions can appear, and religions can disappear when the owner state religion changes
Improved colonization of Africa and Asia: building the Trading Company grants conquerors to certain civilizations, and Congresses can be used to settle empty territory
You can win through a new victory type, the Unique Religious Victory. Different victory conditions exist depending on your state religion. Without a state religion, you can still win the Polytheism (Pantheon civic) and Secularism (Secularism civic) victories
Expanded Space Victory that requires a chain of space projects and concludes with establishing a colony on Mars
Various map changes to accomodate other additions. In particular, China, India, Scandinavia and Canada have been completely redone
Cultural control spreads gradually to individual tiles
Inclusion of the SuperSpies mod: Spies acquire experience and promotions, Great Spies are created from Spy experience in the same way Great Generals are
New specialist and great person type: Statesman and Great Statesman
Female Great People with appropriate graphics
Many new leaderheads have been added for all civilizations to cover all eras
Additional requirements for wonders, such as civics, resources and religions, to enocurage their historical placement
The plague can't kill units anymore
The AI receives help in many ways so it can better create historical empires, especially for Greece, Persia, Rome, Arabia and Mongolia
Many small changes to improve balance and AI performance

Screenshots:

Spoiler :

A complete list of all features can be found here.

I hope you have fun playing this mod! If you have bugs to report, ideas to improve the mod, or any feedback at all, you're welcome to participate here in the development forum. I'll follow up with a list of places to go around here.

If you enjoy the mod and want show your appreciation and support, you can buy me a coffee on ko-fi:

(I develop the mod in my free time, so you're not funding its development this way. You're literally just buying me a coffee! Or probably something similar of equal value, I'm not much of a coffee drinker.)

Leoreth · Sep 11, 2014

Dawn of Civilization Modules

Along with the core mod, you can install additional modules for DoC. These modules contain several aesthetic improvements, such as game graphics, sounds and interface changes. Their modular nature allows players to install them based on their preferences. The modules are included in the installer that can be downloaded from the above link.

If you are not interested in the modules at all, you can also download the DoC Core Installer. It only comes bundled with the core mod and therefore is only half the size to download. If you don't like installers, here is the RAR.

Blue Marble terrain graphics for DoC | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

An adaptation of the popular Blue Marble terrain graphics mod by ColdFever for DoC. I have slightly modified the standard Blue Marble terrain by keeping the typical hill texture from RFC.

Varietas Delectat and Ethnic City Styles for DoC | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

Varietas Delectat by avain is a mod providing civ specific art for units and cities for all civilizations present in Beyond the Sword. In this module, I have adapted this feature to DoC and extended it to all new civilizations added here. In some cases, that means that a new civilization shares the art styles of an existing one: for example, Thailand shares the Khmer art styles. I have also changed several specific unit art types to better fit the context of this mod.

In addition, ethnic city styles are more dynamic in DoC, and besides civilization and era can also be determined by other factors such as present religions and previous owners. In particular, an algorithm is included that assigns appropriate city styles to independent cities based on their location.

A more detailed description and general discussion can be found in the dedicated thread HERE.

Caution: the VD module is only updated with every major version release and is very likely to become incompatible with subsequent Git changes. Use is therefore only recommended for the packaged release.

Soundtrack Module | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

The soundtrack module addresses the Eurocentrism in the default Beyond the Sword background music. In particular, the Christian chants during the Medieval era break immersion when playing a civilization with a different religion. With the soundtrack module, the music in various eras now depends on the state religion, making use of some tracks included in BtS and some additional ones bundled with the module. In addition to the default soundtrack for Christian civilizations there are now soundtracks for the Middle Eastern (Islam/Zoroastrianism), South Asian (Hinduism/Buddhism) and East Asian (Confucianism/Taoism/Buddhism) religious groups. For civs without a state religion the Classical Era soundtrack extends into the Middle Ages.

HUD Color Module | Git Repository | Download as ZIP archive

This module simply changes the HUD color of the mod to dark gray.

Forum Navigation

Discussing the Mod
General discussion of the mod, including recent changes, takes place in this thread. This is literally the thread for everything DoC related without a dedicated thread (and not worth creating its own thread).

Update Log
I will use this thread to announce new changes made available to the Git repository.

Suggestions and Requests
If you have an idea on how to improve the mod or if there is something you've always wanted to see in RFC, this is the place to suggest it. Every idea is welcome and I appreciate when people like the mod enough to see their ideas in it. Please don't expect me to reply to every suggestion, however. Maybe I have already addressed the idea in one way or another in the past, maybe I am currently considering it without having anything to say (me considering stuff takes place at the back of my mind and can take months), maybe I have already similar plans that I don't want to reveal. In any case, don't take my silence as indication in whatever direction.

Bug Reports and Technical Issues
If you have found a bug, if something doesn't work like it looks it's supposed to, or if the mod plain out crashes, you can report it here. This thread is for problems of this kind for both the currently released version and the current SVN development version. I can also help you there if the mod won't load for you or you have similar technical problems.

Forum Thread Index
This is an index of various other forum threads that have information on various subjects. It's also locked and not open to discussion, however on request I will include posts maintained by other users there.

Leoreth · Nov 21, 2015

Access to the Development Version

Are you tired of waiting for the next release to download, or are wondering what new features everyone is talking about? Then you might want to take a look into the current development version of the mod.

This works through a versioning system called Git, which hosts an online repository that contains copy of my current development folder. Every change I make will be uploaded there (called a "commit"). You can get your own folder that is synched up with this repository, so you can get these changes through a simple action ("pull").

The DoC Git repository is available HERE.

Downloading from Github directly

You can always download the most current state of the development version as a ZIP file HERE.

Note that you always have to download the entire mod again even for the smallest changes. I therefore recommend you properly set up your Git repository as described below, so that you can update your mod more comfortably and much faster.

Setting up your local repository

Spoiler :

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/dguenms/Dawn-of-Civilization.
6) You also have to change the "Directory" entry so that it ends in ".../RFC Dawn of Civilization" instead of ".../Dawn-of-Civilization".
7) Wait for the download to complete.

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".

Spoiler An alternate way to setup and update without Tortoise :

The download is rejected because of insufficient permission
This is a problem on your side, the online repository is public. Likely you don't have permission to create a new folder in the directory in question. In that case, try to do the checkout in another folder (desktop) and move it to the Mods folder afterwards.

The online repository is not available
GitHub is very reliable, but downtime is not completely out of the question. Please be patient and try again later.

Updates don't work because of a conflict
Conflicts mean that a local file has been changed somehow. The conflict arises because the Git client cannot decide between the local change and the change about to be downloaded. Since you likely want my change, this can be solved by deleting the files in conflict. They can be identified by the yellow or red (instead of the usual green) symbols. The update will restore all deleted files.

Can I keep my normal version of the mod while using the Git version?
Yes, just rename the other folder to something else in the meantime. The mod you want to play always has to be called "RFC Dawn of Civilization" to work.

I downloaded the Git repo as a ZIP file, now when I try to start a scenario it quits with the message "failed to read world builder file"
This may affect one or more scenarios and is unfortunately a consequence of how Github creates its ZIP files, so I cannot do anything about it. To fix the problem, get Notepad++ and open the scenario file ("open with Notepad++"), then choose Edit -> EOL Conversion -> Windows.

Please note that development version means development version. Think of it as a public beta. New updates may introduce bugs, some of them critical. Updating can also break the compatibility with save games from a previous revision. You are using this at your own risk, and I will not always be able to immediately take care of these problems.

You can always return to a more stable version by using the "Git -> Checkout/Switch" option in TortoiseGit. In the following prompt, select "Commit" and then click the "..." button next to it. This will bring you to a dialog where you can select the commit to revert to.

Using Git to contribute

One of the advantages of Git is that hosting on Github comes with several additional features which could help the mod development. Unlike pulling updates, as far as I know all of the following require you to have a Github account.

Issue Tracking

Github offers an issue tracking system, which can be found here. I will try to catalogue bugs and problems reported for the mod here. You can also raise an issue there yourself, although I would ask you to also quickly link to that issue in the Bug Reports thread to allow community discussion if necessary. The advantage of this feature is that you can get a better overview which problems I am already aware of, what I am working on right now, where I need save games etc.

Community Wiki

GitHub also comes with a free wiki page (here) and we could make use of that. Think of the old RFC wiki where besides general information about the mod, people could also share strategies. I don't think I will have time to contribute much, but I invite everyone do write and edit articles there.

Pull Requests

One of the most important advantages of Git is the ability to start pull requests. What does that mean? It means you can implement changes to DoC yourself and then ask me to approve them and integrate them into the mod!

I don't see people around here develop proper features in C++ or Python (I'm not stopping you though). But there are many things about DoC that can be improved with very little programming knowledge. For instance, game texts can be added or improved. Same for entries to the dynamic game aspects like city names, GP names, civ names. I'm sure people can come up with other things.

Here's how it works:
1. Get yourself a Github account
2. Go to the DoC Github page.
3. Click "Fork" (rightmost button next to the title). Not sure if this applies if you only have your account and are not a member of any organization, but if you are asked, you have to select the account that should fork the repo.
4. You are taken to your fork of the DoC repo. This is like my own copy of the repo, except that you can make changes to this one!
5. Clone your fork in the same way you cloned the original DoC repo (see above).
6. Edit your local copy in whatever way you want.
7. Commit your changes: select "Git Commit" in the TortoiseGit context menu. Think of commits as little packages that contain your changes: in the following dialog, you can select the files you want as part of your commit and add a message. If you don't care about this, just finish your work and put everything into one huge commit, I don't mind.
8. Push your commits: unlike in SVN, commits stay on your local machine (this has the advantage that you can make them without internet connection). Select "Git Push" to upload them to your remote repository.
9. Your fork is now different from the main DoC repo. You can create a pull request to ask me to incorporate those changes. To do that, click the green "Compare, Review, Create a Pull Request" button left of the Branch button in your fork. The right branches should already be selected. Github should show you the differences and hopefully tell you that they can be merged (otherwise, look below). If everything else looks fine, create the pull request.
10. I will be notified about your request (you can see all ongoing pull requests here). Sometimes before agreeing to merge your pull request, I might ask you a few questions or ask you to make some changes. Github includes a very useful and intuitive conversation feature for that. If I'm satisfied, I will select merge and you are suddenly a contributor to DoC!

If that seems like much, don't be dissuaded. I'm just very thorough in my description. Once everything is set up and you are used to it, it is only a few quick steps.

Of course, you can also do all of this with the other DoC related module repos.

What do these branches mean?
There isn't that much difference between branching and forking, except that branches are owned by the same person and forks are owned by a different person. There is always a default branch, which is by convention called "develop" (or sometimes "master", usage varies). For DoC, "develop" is the true "current state" of the mod. It's where you should clone from and create your forks from (this happens by default already). Large teams that work on the same repo use branches so people can independently work on different features without getting in each others way with conflicting code changes. I will also sometimes make use of this, for example to create a branch to work on a larger feature that I later merge back into "develop" in its entirety. An advantage of this is that I can always switch back to develop to do things like open save games to fix bugs. You can also create branches in your fork. Just always ask to merge back into develop of the main repo.

What does it mean when Github tells me my pull request cannot be merged? What can I do about it?
Imagine the following: you fork DoC and start to work on your feature. In the meantime, I have also made some changes to the main repo. Some of these changes have affected the same files. In this case, Git will attempt to merge these files, but this isn't always possible automatically. If it isn't, there is no way for Git to decide which changes to include. In other words, the two branches are unmergeable.

Traditionally, it is up to the person making the pull request to make sure it is mergeable. You can do that by applying all missing commits from the main mod to your branch/fork. This is usually more complicated. Merging merge conflicts is the hardest aspect of working with Git. Feel free to contact me for help if you run into such a situation. Fortunately, with the most common types of edits we should not run into this problem very often.

Is there a more convenient way to develop with Git?
Personally I find for committing and pushing changes, Github for desktop is more convenient than TortoiseGit. It gives you a GUI where you can add your repo and can always see changed files and easily commit them and synch up between the remote and local repos. It's all a matter of taste of course, whatever works best for you.

Using Forks for modmods

Forks aren't just useful for pull requests. You can also treat them as the repo for your own DoC modmod. This is useful whenever you want to do something that I will not include in DoC proper for whatever reason. The only thing you have to take care of is remaining up to date with the base mod (if you want, but usually you do at least from time to time).

It is possible to just pull develop of the main repo into your fork, but I would discourage that. Instead, you should use one of the integrated Git solutions to that problem. "Git Merge" will basically do the pull and apply all differences in one big additional commit on your fork. "Git Rebase" will cause your repo to "pretend" that all your changes were made on top of the current, most up to date state of the main repo. The latter is usually a bit more work, but looks nicer in the commit history. In either case, conflicts can arise and have to be resolved as above. I trust you to figure this out on your own, if you run into problems just contact me.

Welcome to Dawn of Civilization

Leoreth

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