Wolfshanze Civ4 BtS Modpack

[Wolfshanze]

I've been out of the Civilization mod business for awhile, but I was one of the first (the old Civ2 Fascist Patch mods were mine a long time ago). I had a request or two to post this work (which I was originally doing just for myself, so I'm not really promoting this, but rather sharing with those who may be interested in my vision of Civ4).

I'm getting a bit old to be doing all this fancy 3D model stuff, so I cleary (in advance) give all due credit to multiple folks in the Civ Fanatics community who have provided some excellent units of which this humble mod of mine contains. I claim zero credit to any of the 3D unit models in this mod! Having said that, let's get down to what this mod is/does:

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Civ4 Beyond the Sword Wolfshanze Mod
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This mod does many things... it lengthens the age of sail, as well as greatly expands upon the ship classes of the mid to late 1800s (between Ironclad Monitors and WWII-style battleships). Also, Hitler is now available to fight for or against as the German dictator during World War II and the swastika replaces the German cross (As a disclaimer, I do not support Adolf Hitler or his ideology). Many new units have been added, most of which are nation-specific... very little has been changed in game mechanics, mostly new looks or filling the gaps in the progression of units. I take ZERO credit for any of the artwork or units in this mod as the graphics are a collection of various authors in the Civ-Fanatics community. Also included is full support of the Civilopedia, which has been updated with complete backgrounds and histories of all the new units included in this mod. This mod is for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword only.


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Description
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Using the graphics made by Elhoim, kodzi, Hadrean, Snafusmith, GeneralMatt, Houman and a few others (I lost track, sorry). I created this mod with a blend of new units to cover the 1800s in naval warfare, and put Hitler into the game.


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New Units
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Prussian Grenadier
Prussian Musketeer
Prussian Rifleman
Royal Foot (British Rifle)
French Rifleman
Ironclad Cruiser
Ironclad Battleship
Paddle Steamer (transport)
Pre-Dreadnought
Destroyer Escort (WWI-era)
Dreadnought (WWI-era)
German Machine Gun
Cruiser (WWII-era)
Bismarck Battleship
Hood Battleship
Yamato Battleship
Wehrmacht Infantry
Waffen SS


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New Graphics
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Immortals
Transport
Settlers (various ethnic)
Euro Swordsman
Euro Horseman
Euro Axeman

a sampling of some of the new units

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Installation
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1. Unzip the file to your Sid Meier's Civilization IV\BtS\Mods\ directory.
2. Start up Beyond the Sword.
3. Go to Advanced-Load Mod.
4. Load the "Wolfshanze" mod.
5. You can now use all that is in this mod!

Download now updated to v1.1 (note v2.x is now recomended in other thread)


Download Mod v1.1 here.



COMPLETE FACELIFT ON THIS MOD... Go to Mod v2.x thread here.

 

[keldath]

very nice gd work

 

[Wolfshanze]

Thanks... always kinda upset that Civ4 went from ocean-going frigates to coastal-only ironclads to WWII era battleships... made no sense to me, there were PLENTY of ships inbetween Merrimac-style ironclads and WWII battleships, so I added ocean-going ironclads of the mid-to-late 1800s, pre-dreadnoughts and the WWI-era dreadnoughts... THEN you go to WWII Battleships. Oh, and I also added the Paddle Steamer as a transport between the Galleon and modern transport. The artwork for these missing ships comes from GeneralMatt, who made this mod possible... something I always wanted to do but lacked the talent to make the artwork... also the popular animated Adolf Hitler leader is in this mod for BtS, and a few other units got some unique units and looks (didn't change much in stats from the basic game... wanted the gameplay to remain basically the same, but with an added naval program, the addition of Hitler and some nice new unit graphics along the way)... for instance, never liked the European Axeman, Swordsman or "Horse Archer" (since when did Europeans ever employ massive use of "Horse Archers"?). I added some Norman-looking (chainmail-wearing, early dark ages) units to use for Swordsman and a sword-weilding "Horseman" unit to replace the "Horse Archer" for European armies (Horse Archer still exists for other nations).

 

[GeneralMatt]

Can't wait to try!

 

[keldath]

yeah,
i agree, the vanilla civ 4 lacked the use of ww1-2 naval shps.

but, thats where we modders come in

keep your mod going

 

[Laurencius]

Thank you for putting this together. I have been wanting to see these early industrial units in a mod.

 

[Laurencius]

I spent some time playing the mod and have enjoyed it quite a bit. It's fun to play either Germany, France, or England, since these civs have most of the units added to the mod.

Would it be possible to add some units for other civs like:

French and Chinese Infantry
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=235908

US Civil War Riflemen
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=215977

Flavored Rifles
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=228478

Russian Musketman
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=207760

WWII Red Army Infantry
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=222746

French Cavalry
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=205963

Khyber Rifles
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=201666

French Foreign legion
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173405

Infantry Japan
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=207910


I would add them, but I get a million XML errors when I try to do so.

 

[Wolfshanze]

I spent some time playing the mod and have enjoyed it quite a bit. It's fun to play either Germany, France, or England, since these civs have most of the units added to the mod.

Would it be possible to add some units for other civs like (those I listed)

I would add them, but I get a million XML errors when I try to do so.

Thanks for the feedback Laurencius... wasn't even sure if I posted it folks would play it, as there are so many mods out there.

I really made this for myself, but got a few requests to post it so I did. Anyways, the mod is a work-in-progress... I have more I'd like to do with it, mostly adding more nation-specific looks (many like you suggest).

I posted the mod as-is now because I was at a "stopping point" that I figured I would play-test it myself in a full game, so I paused development, but yeah, I have more ideas I want to throw in there, including expanded tank warfare (from WWI to WWII and nation-specific tanks), along with a few of the units you listed above. I will get back in there and do more adds soon, then post an updated version once completed and playtested.

This version was 100% stable and I had just finished adding all the Civilopedia entries for the new units, so I went ahead and posted the version I'm playing myself right now. The main focus of THIS version was the expanded ironclad-to-WWI era of warships, which I'm very happy with the results. The next version will expand tank and air warfare and add more nation-specific looks.

 

[Madfox]

Nice work Wolfschanze. But I have a problem. The game crashes over and over again on my computer wenn I reach 1580/1600. Are there more people out there with the same problem?

Madfox

 

[Wolfshanze]

Hmmm... what version of BtS are you running?

I do remember playing the v3.00 BtS and one of my save games "got stuck" somewhere around that time frame... I was mad and thought I had a corrupted save file and lost my game, but I updated to v3.02 and the game proceeded-on normally without any problems... I played well into the 1940s without any problems using this mod and v3.02 of BtS (I don't recomend using v3.03 because the combat animations are broken with that version of BtS).

If you have v3.00 of BtS I recomend trying v3.02 (you can still find the file for v3.02... I really don't like v3.03).

Not sure if that's your problem or not, but it's worth giving a try if you are on v3.00.

 

[Madfox]

Thank you, I have version 3.03. I will try 3.02 and see what hapends.

Greetings, Madfox

 

[arstal]

This is great- I like how you added stuff and changed a few things and everything makes sense.

Some suggestions:

The Expanded Tanks- that sounds great.

I'd like to see some compatibility with Solver's events and AI fix mod- if someone can tell me how to combine all this into one mod- I'd give it a try myself

The One Area where I'd like to see a gameplay change- is there a good Air force mod yet that allows planes to work more like reality? I really feel the air units are kinda neglected.

You have a real winner already, I'll be keeping close track of this one to see where it's going- it's my favorite mod so far.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Thanks for the feedback... I appreciate the comments... expanded tanks is definately the next step (nation specific and more of them, including WWI). I may also get into the aircraft... Biplanes to WWII expanded (fighters, strategic bombers and tactical bombers).

It's all in the plans, but it's a lot of work to do a ton of XML... but it'll come!

 

[arstal]

It looks like for the aircraft- the Air Forces mod does that quite well, but loading it modular leads to a mess that involves the horse archers somehow (thinking your change to that messes it up)

As for the Tanks, it would be nice if a few tank techs were added- would also give people reason to build marines instead of just tanks.

There needs to be some way for Air Units to gain XP easier as well.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Hmmm... the only change(s) I did to Horse Archers was officially rename them "Horseman" and assign a euro-specific unit for the class (Norman Knight). Thought it was kinda stupid to have European Horse Archers... Europeans never really got on-board with the whole "Horse Archer" thing.

 

[Fanatic Demon]

Has your mod also incorperated several technological advances, like the Screw, Turret, Turbine, Naval Armor, Torpedo Belt?

 

[arstal]

I checked- it looks like while you get the error message- nothing else changed, so with a bit of work it could be thrown in as a start to the air units. Think you would just need an XML edit. Going to see if I can do it myself though I've never modded before.

 

[Wolfshanze]

Has your mod also incorperated several technological advances, like the Screw, Turret, Turbine, Naval Armor, Torpedo Belt?

At this time I have not altered or added any Civilization tech advances. All technologies remain the same as-in BtS, the only changes at present, are the addition of new units, and a couple of pre-existing units have had their tech requirements tweaked (as an example canons come earlier for instance, not later as-in BtS).

I've thought about doing something with the tech tree, but for the moment, I'm trying to keep this mostly on-line with the original BtS, but adding some missing units and/or adding more nation-specific variety to the units. My goal with this is not to completely overhaul Civ4 into something completely differant as others have done (certainly there are some great mods that do that), but rather to give you the "Firaxis" version of Civ4, with more nation specific units and to plug-in the holes on the tech tree (such as the missing ironclad fleets).

In other news, I've almost finished playing the mod I posted here... I'll get back on the adds I have planned soon.

 

[Wolfshanze]

I've just released v1.1 of this Mod... it's a small update over the original, but it is FULLY compatible with any Wolfshanze Mod save games you may have going, so it's worth a download.

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New in v1.1
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New graphics models for Pre-Dreadnought and Dreadnought.
German Panzer graphic changed from a Panther to Tiger-I tank.
Waffen SS no-longer gets Amphibious but gets Drill-II instead.
Naval tech tree cleaned-up a bit... you can't get Destroyers and Cruisers without
first getting Dreadnoughts now.
v1.1 is fully compatible with v1.0 (initial release) saved games.

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The new version is posted in the top-link. This is the LAST version that will be compatible with previous saved games... v2.0 of this mod will require a fresh start with a new game. Enjoy.

 

[arstal]

Noticed you still had the Military Academy bug from Vanilla.