Which mods should I use?

[Goon Bag]

I'm new to this game, and have seen screenshots on these forums where the information available (diplomatic, economic, etc) is much nor thorough, easy to access and easy to use.

It looks like this is a mod that most people are using.

so, what are the common/popular/recommended mods? I've seen mention of bug/bull/bat/buffy, but their faq's are sparce, and i'm struggling to find further information.

What mods should I look in to getting?

thanks

 

[GKey]

The BUG mod

 

[Goon Bag]

Can you please explain why?

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

(...with GKey, oopsie crosspost)

Absolutely. If you're playing BtS, then BUG is almost a requirement. It's ridiculously helpful. I'd say 80-90% of the regulars here in the Civ4 forum have it.

EDITS in response to Post 3:

BUG stands for BTS Unaltered Gameplay. There's about a thousand different mods you can download for Civ4- some tweak a couple small details of the game, and some are essentially a new game loosely based on the original. BUG, however, doesn't change anything about gameplay- what it does is add a tremendous amount of information. It basically organizes and presents info that you'd have access to but probably don't know how to look up. (Or even know that you should be aware of.) It can help you understand a lot about the game, even help you strategize. For instance, almost anyone here could tell you that you want to change to the Slavery civic very early in the game. I never really used it- I was such a n00b I was always in Serfdom- until I loaded BUG and it started telling me when I could whip a certain item and how much hammer overflow there would be. And that's just one of the bajillions of things it shows you.

Welcome to CFC!

 

[Goon Bag]

thanks TheMulattoMaker.

are there any other recommended mods apart from bug?

 

[lymond]

BUG/BULL is custom assets is the way to go for standard play. BAT is also very nice as it is BUG/BULL plus improved graphics in a stand-alone mod.

BUG/BULL in custom assets loads automatically any time you load the game. Any unmodded save can be loaded with this setup. In addition, saves created with this setup can be loaded without mods. Very popular for forum games for this reason. Otherwise, WB files are used for games.

Pretty much all the extra info you just mentioned above, OP, is related to the BUG mod. BULL is basically an extension of the mod that provides further UI enhancements and features. This is the reason you should get it. It's a great UI mod that does not change the base game.

Otherwise, there are tons of mods out there that change the game in many ways like fantasy mods, historical realism mods, etc. Visits C&C forum to view those mods.'

edit: oh...and BUFFY is the BTS HOF Mod created by the BUG team. It also has BUG/BULL plus HOF stuff. I would not use it for personal gameplay as it needs updating badly. However, it must be used or BOTMs and HOF games.

 

[lymond]

thanks TheMulattoMaker.

are there any other recommended mods apart from bug?

For standard gameplay, BUG/BULL is all you need.

If you are looking to change the game or expand it significantly, there are a lot of options that can be found here:

C&C

The Modpacks sub-forum contains the big mods/expansions.


Basically, it comes down to your personal preferences as you have fantasy mods, historical realism mods, and basically what amounts to several large expansion packs that enhance the game considerably. There are pros and cons to these mods.

RFC is always fun though (came with BTS, but get the latest version) Fall From Heaven and modmods is essential if you want a fantasy type game. You also have better ai mods.

 

[Goon Bag]

thanks lymond. it looks like i'll be getting the bug and bull mods.

What is the purpose of having bug and bull as seperate items?

you said that bull is an extension of bug. This implies that bug is a half-as-good version of bull.

Why would anyone want to use bug on its own?

 

[GKey]

Yes, as Lymond mentioned BUG/BULL are mods, that I believe majority of people here use. Dotmap tool included in BUG is awesome and alone makes BUG a must have. BULL will make it even better, you should be aware though, that it includes Unofficial Patch (which focuses on fixing design issues only, still may slightly alter your game).

EDIT: BULL (BUG mod dll) is enhancement to BUG. When you install BUG you will see in it's options screen some futures grayed out - these will be enabled with installation of BULL.

I experimented with separate installations of BUG and BULL. Don't remember what was exact reason, but BUG+BULL was the way to go (BUG works fine on its own, just less futures are enabled).

 

[Goon Bag]

where do i download bull?

edit: found it

 

[lymond]

see here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274636

edit: I also recommend perusing around all the CFC forums to get a feel for it. There is a lot of good stuff around here and things are easy to find.

 

[The7Sins]

I vote for BUG as others have suggested.

I also suggest CIV Gold (the Mod not the game). It adds a ton of new Civs and leaders for existing civs. And for those that you do not like or want you can easily set them not to load in the game files on your hard drive before booting it up.
Also if you have the skills to do such I recommend combining BUG with CIV Gold. It makes everything extra fun.
Though note BUG's sister mods BAT and BULL can not combine with CIV Gold. I've tried everything but doing such always corrupts the Mod. So if you do this make certain to only get a version of BUG that contains only itself.

 

[Goon Bag]

thanks lymond and The7Sins

 

[karadoc]

I recommend my own mod. (this)

It includes all of BUG, and most (but not all) of BULL, as well as several other user-interface improvements and bug fixes. It also includes game performance improvements (as in CPU usage); lots of AI improvements; lots of bug fixes; and some changes to some of the poorly designed parts of the original game mechanics (eg. global warming).

It's essentially the same as standard Beyond the Sword, but more polished.

 

[W|M]

I recommend C2C (Cavemen 2 Cosmos) if you have an awesome computer, but if not, you should probably get AND (A New Dawn). RFC (Rhye's and Fall of Civilization - A mod which lets you play as an IRL country from 3000BC onwards, but there are limited choices as to what you can pick of course) and it's mod-mod, RFC:E* (Rhye's and Fall of Civilization: Europe) are pretty good too. TAM (The Ancient Mediterranean) is good if you're interested in Ancient history.

Note that many mods include BUG, Blue Marble, etc.

*There's also RFC:E++, which has several more additions such as a Holy Roman Empire mechanic.

 

[Crimson Phantom]

I'm a de-hard Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn player. I really can't stand to play vanilla or with any other mod anymore since playing it.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

No love for Legends of Revolutions? It´s basically the same to BtS as BtS was to Vanilla and Warlords, I can´t imagine going back to BtS. Also it includes most of BUG IIRC.

 

[Goon Bag]

There are millions of people that play Civ4BTS.

But there are only thousands that play [Insert Mod Here]

How do you guys feel about there being less discussion, less guides, less help, more bugs(?), and less of a community ?

 

[W|M]

How do you guys feel about there being less discussion, less guides, less help, more bugs(?), and less of a community ?

What do you mean?

 

[karadoc]

What do you mean?

He means that the players of any given mod are only a small subset of the whole community, and therefore they have access to fewer guides, less discussion, and so on.

Speaking for myself, I don't really care about getting strategy advice from other people. Developing and executing strategies is a large part of the fun of playing the game for me; so that doesn't matter to me.

-- 'Less of a community' is only really true if you're most interested in communicating about particular aspects of the game which are not shared between the modded game and unmodded game.

-- As for 'More bugs'; well, I know there is a tendency for new mod features to be accompanied by new bugs, at least for awhile; but I don't think that's an issue for the mods we're talking about in this thread. These mods have been around for a long time, and so I'm pretty sure they'd be quite stable. I can confidently say that my own mod (K-Mod) has far fewer bugs than unmodded game. Game stability is a top priority in my modding; and I've done a huge amount of work tracking down and fixing bugs from the original BtS code. Including fixing OOS problems in multiplayer games, crashes in the pitboss host, inconsistencies and unintuitive behaviour in the user-interface, and so on.
I can't really speak for the other mods, but I do know it's quite common for mods to include the "unofficial patch", which contains a bunch of well-known bug fixes. So, if all a mod does is use the fixes from the 'unofficial patch', and manages not to create any new bugs, then they are already doing better than the unmodded game.

So -- I feel just fine about being part of a sub-community. In my view, the community should build around the game they want to play. If the mods are better than the unmodded game, then that's where the community should go.