The last big official update to Civilization V [official site] came in 2013 with its second large expansion, Brave New World. Three years later, and almost six years after the game’s original release, there’s another big new release expected, but it’s not an official expansion. It’s the Community Patch Project (CPP; to be named Vox Populi on release), a community-made mod that overhauls and improves a majority of the game’s systems in an attempt to make Civilization V the best game it possibly can be.
I’m relatively new to the patch myself, having only discovered it in late 2015 thanks to the YouTuber Arumba, but by that time it had already been in the works for over a year. How did it come about? I spoke to CivFanatics forum user Gazebo, largely considered the face of the project.
“Back in 2014, I started a wish list of things I felt I had the c++ competency to design. The biggest features I wanted to implement were resource monopolies, late-game corporations, a new happiness system, and a random events system. Together, these aspects really do feel like an official expansion of civ. I also wanted the project to incorporate as many community suggestions, ideas, and criticisms as possible, as the combined brain power of the community is much more than I could ever hope to muster on my own!”
What the community have created is nothing short of amazing; a complete overhaul of Civilization V that completely revived my interest in the game long after I’d drifted away from the original. Although I can’t possibly go through every little thing that’s been changed (a complete changelog and guide can be found here) I’m going to at least give you the rundown of the major changes, the reason they’ve completely reinvigorated Civilization V for me, and how the game feels with the Community Patch Project installed.
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Wants and Needs: The New Happiness System
The biggest change to the CPP is the one that best summarises how it feels to play. The new happiness system is so much more organic, in depth and natural, and that feel ties into how the rest of the mod plays as well.
The old, static happiness modifiers are completely done away with and replaced with a system of needs which are evaluated on a city-by-city basis. Each city demands a certain amount of yields per population, and if they don’t get enough, they generate unhappiness based on how much they’re missing. This unhappiness feeds back into the global happiness system of course, and so multiple unhappy cities without enough happiness modifiers will lead to an unhappy empire.
The way the needs are named, though, feels more organic, and makes the system more than just numbers. Your citizens don’t cry out for “more culture” or “more science”, they complain about “boredom” and “illiteracy”. Got a city with a high illiteracy rate? Better build some Libraries and Universities. Citizens getting bored? Entertain them in the Amphitheater!
There are other sources of unhappiness too, such as being isolated from the capital (no city connections) and Religious Unrest (not enough religious followers), so it’s not just about managing a few percentages, it’s about actually making sure a city has everything it needs. Or as close to the ideal as possible.
I haven’t quite got the happiness system figured out yet. I understand it, mostly, but my empire always seems to be in some minor state of unhappiness due to a lack of money, or defenses, or this or that. I think mostly it punishes me for over-specialising, ignoring culture in favour of science for example, and that’s great! Now I have to choose between happiness and specialisation in a way that makes me feel less like a strategy gamer and more like a ruler.
Ignoring your population’s state of happiness isn’t wise. Besides the revolts that can occur at severe levels of unhappiness, even minor unhappiness leads to a loss of science and gold, while your units take combat penalties due to low morale. On the flip side, positive happiness can actually boost these numbers, so letting yourself drop too low is a double loss of resources. A wise ruler makes sure their citizens’ needs are met, or pays the consequences.
New Uniques for Everyone (Except Poland)
The more immediately exciting changes from the CPP are the adjustments made to each of the civilizations. I always thought that the way Civilization V handled Unique Abilities (UA) was exciting. Rather than the trait system of earlier Civ games, each Civilization now got to be truly unique with abilities based on its historical position in the world.
Unfortunately, a lot of the UAs ended up being either too one-dimensional, arbitrary or just plain unhelpful. Although you could often see what the intent behind them was, many required very specific scenarios to be worthwhile, or shoehorned you into strategies that you either weren’t comfortable with, or just weren’t possible given your position in the world. The CPP overhauls basically all of that, making every UA dynamic, interesting and almost always relevant.
The one exception is Poland, whose ability remains untouched. Poland was used almost as inspiration for the rest of the overhauls, and you can see its benefits reflected in almost everyone else’s new uniques. Poland’s extra social policy per era is relevant no matter what your starting position, dynamic enough to allow you to approach any victory condition, simple to use and effective throughout the entire game. Now every civilization can say the same.
A large reason that the CPP feels so fresh is that it allows you to diversify without punishing you for the decisions you make. In fact, as the happiness system proves, it even punishes you a little for not diversifying. Everything is tied to everything else. Now there are multiple paths to the same victory, and good reasons to invest in almost anything. The new unique abilities are great at capturing that sensibility while still being genuinely unique, interesting and diverse.
As well as the changes to abilities, each civilization has been adjusted to make sure that it has at least one Unique Unit and either a Unique Building or Improvement. A lot of the old one-dimensional civilizations were made even more one-dimensional due to lack of a unique building. If you aren’t going to war, a special unit is kind of useless, and having two is even worse. Now, if you’re a pacifist, you’ll still have something to build that should help you out in some way.
Of course, many of these units, buildings and improvements have been adjusted to match the feel of the CPP, so they’re diverse by themselves, and often help create a secondary goal for each civilization. Even if your unique ability hasn’t come into play much, your unique building or improvement might help catapult you towards your victory condition if you use it right.
Victory Conditions
The victory conditions themselves haven’t been overhauled (much), but winning the game certainly feels like a very different task nowadays. The focus on generalisation helps a lot with that. It’s not that you don’t have to specialise to win any more. Rather, you can’t specialise as much so victory comes less quickly and often with less overwhelming unbalance as in the base game. Gone are the days of launching a rocket to Alpha Centauri without ever researching the Rocketry technology, or buying out all the City States just before the game-winning UN Diplomatic Leader vote.
The technologies needed for the science victory come right at the end of the tech tree, so you actually need to research everything in order to win through science. Tourism comes from a wider variety of sources, and trickles in throughout the game, giving you a chance to be ready for a sightseeing revolution when tourism really kicks off in the Modern era. The World Congress requires more steps to reach the Diplomatic Victory, not to mention that city state diplomacy is completely overhauled. Resistance to your military becomes naturally stronger the more enemy capitals you hold.
These aren’t the reasons that victory in the CPP feels so different than the base game though. They’re just balance changes. Victory itself is changed by the path to victory. You’re no longer tied down, from the beginning of the game, to focusing on one specific victory type and then half-praying that you have the tools you need to reach it. Some civilizations will still naturally favour one victory or another, but there’s enough variety in their abilities – and in the gameplay, tech tree, buildings and other options available – to offer you multiple paths to victory every game. Sometimes you won’t even need to decide what you’re doing until much later in the game, because you’re naturally hedging your bets anyway.
This is core to what makes the CPP special. You’re no longer playing a game with a specific, pre-planned path to victory. You’re building and managing an empire, steering it roughly in the direction you need it to go but ultimately unsure of what exactly will happen. Victory isn’t just a choice you make, it’s an organic growth of your civilization, a natural conclusion to your story. This is exactly what Civilization has always meant to me. With the Community Patch Project, Civilization V finally reflects that, bringing flexibility to your rule.
Those major changes to the way the game functions are backed up by extensive changes to AI and balance that tweak just about every element of the game.
The Community Patch Project is unofficial and entirely fan made. It’s still undergoing tweaks and changes, but it’s hoped that it will be considered complete and finalised as Civilization V: Vox Populis this summer. If you want to try it out in the meantime, head on over to the Community Patch Project forum on Civ Fanatics. To run it you’ll need Civ V with both major expansions (Gods and Kings, Brave New World), all of the leader DLC and the Ancient Wonders DLC.
1. Mod version (i.e Date - 4/23): 4/30
2. Mod list (if using Vox Populi only, leave blank):
3. Error description: So my buddy and i have been playing 2 vox populi multiplayer games vs AI and they both desynced then crashed at around turn 100 using two different modpacks (4/30 version and the one before that) using no additonal mods just the vox populi modpack. When we try to reload the game it crashes after having loaded. We were able to play multiplayer a few vox populi versions back (with just a lot of desyncs sometimes but never any crashes).
4. Steps to reproduce (optional):
Supporting information:
Please note that you can attach .zip files by dragging-and-dropping them. If possible, zip up all supporting data and post that way.
Please note that you can attach .zip files by dragging-and-dropping them. If possible, zip up all supporting data and post that way.
- Log files (always attach your Logs folder, located at My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5. Make sure you have enabled logging before experiencing an error! Go here to find out how: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487482):
- Save game (always attach a save that was made a turn before the error; located at My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ModdedSaves):
- CvMiniDump.dmp file (attach if experiencing a game crash. Located at Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Sid Meier's Civilization V):
- Screenshots (optional):
I've had this happen a few times, where going to war caused some nations call me 'dishonorable' and some others not being affected by my decision to go to war. I can't find a pattern as sometimes there are nations that were affected despite having shown favor to me or even if we shared the common enemy. Is there a pattern here to keep every other civ friendly when I go to war?
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5 Answers
Good question. I've been playing on Prince level and I would like to suggest some principles that may help you to go to war without getting everyone else displeased. As you know, going to war can be very beneficial but also: Hostile/Guarded Civilizations are next to impossible to trade with.
You may be able to go to war without diplomatic penalty by signing a Defensive Pact with a friend, and then paying the leader that you want to go to war with, to Declare War on your friend. However the very act of Declaring Friendship nearly always results in getting just about everyone else displeased, precisely what we are trying to avoid.
You can Declare War freely if you pay everyone else to declare war on him/her first.
Declaring war, on an map filled with islands, at the beginning of the game as soon as make first contact with other Civilizations is OK. Nobody will accuse you of warmongering, like they do later.
However, the big problem is this: you go to war, you demolish them, you don't commit genocide (because that will get you accused of warmongering by everybody). Instead you leave them a little runt of a village on some lonely tundra. You even sign a peace treaty whereby they give you a couple thousand gold and Furs. Everything seems fine. Is everything fine? No! First they will Denounce you. Then they will go around making Declarations of Friendship with as many other Civs as they can. Then the other Civs will start Denouncing you. In the end most other Civs are Hostile/Guarded.
To get around this, I've been trying to sow the seeds of discord, e.g. I declared war on America and Suleiman as soon as I met them at the beginning of the game. It took ages for me to beat Suleiman and in that time America had made Friends with India, Arabia and Siam. So I paid India, Arabia and Siam to Declare war on America. They only stayed at war for a relatively short time, but I it seemed to sour relationships enough, to stop America poisoning everyone against me.
You can also steal Workers from your enemy and march them over to Barbarian camps whereby they will be captured. Then when your enemy begs for peace, and you accept, immediately sack the Barbarian camp, and return the worker. This will create the green 'You freed their captured citizens!' pacifier which often is enough to prevent them Denouncing you.
It is also worth noting that your enemy can only Denounce you (and thereby turn everyone against you) once you have made peace with them.
(I also played one game where I sacked a City-State and Siam Denounced me as a warmonger, but then reloaded the auto-save and sacked the City State again + also paid Siam a stack of gold. And then they didn't Denounce me.)
So not only is it possible to declare war on Civs without diplomatic problems you can also commit genocide with impunity, through the Wonderful Use of Genocidal Proxies!e.g. after capturing all but 1 city from your enemy, pay a nearby Civ to declare war on your enemy, (perhaps also gift them 1 or 2 Longswordsmen), then hammer the last city of your enemy yourself with your navy until their green city defence bar is at zero. Then wait..eventually...the last city will be captured, (and everyone will dislike/denounce your mercenary Civilization for doing the dirty deed).
In general, paying other Civs to Declare War, will sometimes convert Neutral Civs to Friendly status (in fact it seems it may also sometimes make your enemy Friendly after he/she sues for peace)
My 10 point plan for keeping everyone Friendly is as follows:
- Never Declare War, (instead annoy your enemy until he/she Declares War)
- Refuse Peace, (until you have had your way with them - because it will be hard to go back to War)
- Don't Commit Genocide, (don't kill their last city or murder City States)
- Never Declare Friendship (their enemies won't like it + your 'friend' will demand gifts + usually if you refuse then he/she will Denounce you)
- Never Denounce leaders (even if you want to go to War, his/her friends won't like your Denunciation)
- Respect others space (don't build cities near them or buy/steal land from anyone unless you are trying to annoy them into Declaring War. Culture bombing civs is not ok, culture bombing City States is OK, even if they are allied with a Civ)
- Be a little wary of peace treaties that give you 20 new puppet cities as it may occasionally bring a Denounciation through the 'They believe we are building new cities too aggressively!' trigger.
NB this plan doesn't work all the time - it does help but the game is geared towards war, like walking on egg shells. However since following this plan + paying other civilization to Declare War on my enemies, I have had all 11 other Civilizations on Friendly status (currently I have all Civs Friendly with 2 completely destroyed by proxies and the other 1 Guarded on a little one hex island, but not Denouncing me).
Generally, it rather helps to understand the reasons behind the disposition of each Civilization:If you click the Diplomacy button at the top-right of the screen, it will show a list of any other Civilizations that you have met. By each of these is their current disposition towards you: Neutral, Friendly, Hostile, Guarded and Afraid (btw the last of these is rare, only appearing if you get the white 'They fear your might' trigger).
By hovering the mouse over the disposition of each civilization, you should get some reasons for their current disposition, (the following lists are probably incomplete):
Pacifiers/reasons for friendship (green):
- 'You freed their captured citizens!'
- 'We have made a public Declaration of Friendship!'
- 'We have Denounced the same leaders!'
- 'They desire friendly relations with our empire.'
- 'We have made Declarations of Friendship with the same leaders!'
Triggers/reasons for hostility (red):
- 'They asked you to stop attacking a City-State friendly to them, and you ignored them!'
- 'They asked you to stop buying land near them, and you ignored them!'
- 'They believe you are a warmongering menace to the world!'
- 'They believe we are building new cities too aggressively!'
- 'They believe you are trying to win the game in a similar manner to them, and they don't like it!'
- 'They covert lands that you currently own!'
- 'They have denounced us!'
- 'They suspect we might be a threat to them.'
- 'We have denounced them!'
- 'We made a Declarations of Friendship and then declared war on them!' (sic)
- 'We made a Declarations of Friendship and then denounced them!' (sic)
- 'You are at war!'
- 'You are competing for the favor of the same City-State!'
- 'You built wonders that they coverted!'
- 'You demanded that they not settle near your lands!'
- 'You have attacked City-States under their protection!'
- 'You have Denounced a leader they made a Declaration of Friendship with!'
- 'You have declared war on leaders you've made Declarations of Friendship with!'
- 'You have Denounced leaders you've made Declarations of Friendship with!'
- 'You have gone to war in the past!'
- 'You have made a Declaration of Friendship with one of their enemies!'
- 'You made a promise to join in a cooperative war against another empire, and then broke it!'
- 'You made a promise to move your troops from their borders, and then broke it!'
- 'You made a promise to stop expanding near them, and then broke it!'
- 'You made a trade demand of them!'
- 'You refused a request made by this player after making a Declaration of Friendship!'
- 'You refused to move your troops away from their borders when they asked!'
- 'You stole their territory with a Great Artist!'
- 'Your friends found reason to Denounce you!'
So it seems like there's 5 times as many ways to provoke hostilites with a leader as there are ways to make friends with him or her. Gifts usually don't seem to count for much. However, (as i said before), if you publicly Declare your Friendship, then the Civilization that you are 'Friends' with, will demand the odd gift, and if you don't agree then they will probably Denounce you, leading to 'Your friends found reason to Denounce you' affecting all Civilizations. To be honest, I am beginning to wonder: Are Declarations of Friendship worth it?
Overall, diplomacy is very opaque in Civilization 5. I have some ideas, but they are speculation. Since there aren't any more certain answers, I'll post them in the hopes that someone can find a reference proving or disproving them. Please consider them theories to be tested.
I recall reading that nations (and/or city-states?) get nervous if you keep going to war with and conquering your neighbors (nations or city-states). Unfortunately, I can't recall where I read that.
Further, I know for sure how things worked in Civilization 4, and they may well have repeated the same mechanics. In Civilization 4, other nations don't like when:
- you declare war by attacking/trespassing (rather than on the diplomacy screen.)
- you declare war on a nation you have trade agreements with, especially after just making them.
- you declare war on their friends.
- you are clearly ahead of other nations.
- you use nuclear weapons (I know this one is in Civilization 5)
Overall, remember that all the Civilization games are at least loosely based on how the real world works. If another nation thinks you're dishonorable, you can always just ask yourself 'What have I done that another nation would consider dishonorable?'
WillfulWizardWillfulWizard11.5k55 gold badges5656 silver badges7979 bronze badges
Related to WillfulWizard's answer, the other night I was preparing for an attack on Siam by bringing up my troops to his border. The turn before I was about to attack, the diplomacy window popped up and he asked me about the troops massing on his border. Since I was about to attack anyway, I clicked the option that declared war. His response was something about 'I appreciate your honesty'. So it stands to reason that if I had denied that I was preparing for war, but had then declared war shortly thereafter, other civs would've been less likely to trust me in the future.
In general, if you're trying to preserve your reputation, don't accept any deals with someone you plan to attack, and declare your attack openly.
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One of the other keys things to remember when you are going to war is pact of secrecy. I've read heaps of reports that say they are useless but that is incorrect. If you have a pact of secrecy with, say, Washington, and against Montezunma, and you declare war against Montezuma, then your relationships with Washington will not be harmed. It took me a few games to confirm this, but i am sure im right.
Unfortunately, most of the time you cant ask for a pact of secrecy, you have to be offered it. This is a shame but unavoidable.
And one other thing. IF you make someone else hate you and then declare war on you (just tell them they cant settle cities near you, and demand heaps of stuff off them) then your relations are not damaged as badly as if you declared the war yourself.
Gee
The flip side of this is that if you nurture relationships with city states (not civs), they will declare war on anyone you declare war on. These favorable relationships also help you in other ways: I had free food in all cities, and the city states actually doubled my science and culture capacity. I hit future age when other civs were only entering modern age.
I just won a game by UN vote and when I declared war on Japan, 9 other city states jumped in on my side. Several shared a border with them, so they started attacking cities.
Unfortunately, one city state had a unit grouped up with mine against a city, and after I had brought it's health down, their unit struck the final blow and stole the city out from under me!
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I’ve been playing Civilization long enough to remember building gaudy palaces that combined Arabic minarets with Ionic columns, and the sight of pixel-drawn Stalin grimacing at me with his retinue of Asiatic advisers. But after 20-something years and untold in-game millennia, I’ve finally begun to feel its insatiable fantasy of empire-building subside. Luckily, total overhaul mods exist.The Civilization VI expansion, Rise & Fall, just didn’t speak to me; it felt more like a pacing patch-up than an attempt to 4Xify the most fascinating aspects humankind’s evolution. I don’t want passive point systems posing as Dark/Golden Ages, or a cast of doe-eyed governors being all bloody nice and functioning like a sort of diplomatic A-Team. I want revolutions and uprisings, fraught diplomacy and assassinations, corporations and insidious neo-colonialism. I want all these things colliding, systemically creating those mad moments that tilt the axis of history (like that bloke who shot Franz Ferdinand while buying a sandwich).
So instead of grafting away at a Civ game that feels too comfortable and sanitised, I sought out three of the biggest community mod projects for previous Civ titles that, in their own ways, make the stone-space-age journey compelling again, layering the game with systems and mechanics that really try to capture some of the drama of humankind’s evolution.
Note that you’ll need the full versions of the given Civ game to run these.
A New Dawn – Civilization IV
Work on A New Dawn began in 2009, when it was billed as “a new expansion” to Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. Really though, those modders were just being modest, because there’s so much more on offer here.
A New Dawn is brimming with new and overhauled leaders, techs, rules, AI and buildings, but what’s really fascinating is the mindblowing number of tweaks you can toggle for each game you play. It’s basically a Civ toy box: you can spill out features like assassinations, bribe missions, breakaway states, barbarians turning into fully-fledged civilisations, you name it, then smash them all together and throw yourself into the chaos that ensues.
One of Civ IV’s most maligned features, the “stack of doom” (where 30-strong AI unit stacks could mindlessly steamroll you through sheer volume), has been addressed, too. You can limit the amount of units per tile to whatever number you like, and actually enable ranged attacks for ranged units too, imbuing the game with some of that more satisfying combat depth of Civs V and VI (with the obvious caveat that Civ IV wasn’t really designed around this kind of combat).
Inevitably, the breadth of new systems and all the permutations they bring can make for a volatile experience. A new “empire stability” system, affected by your decisions like government types and policies, makes a discontented homefront as much of a threat as outside enemies. During one game as Venice, I enacted a policy to nurture a Noble class, figuring that the Venetians could use a bit of silver-spoon snobbishness – you can’t just roll around in the mud worshipping rocks forever. My noble intentions caused one Enrico Dandolo to foment discontent and call for change, which me and my noble chums – nomming on caviar and popping champagne bottles with sabers – dismissed. The next turn, hordes of elephant riders popped up around three of my cities, stomping my complacent defences immediately, and leaving me as little more than a City-State while Dandolo took over Venice.
Maybe this kind of stuff is too batshit for a mainline game – with all its attention to balance and fairness for a mass audience – but for a jaded Civ veteran like me it was exhilarating: a divisive policy change, an upstart leader, a fallen empire. A vicious domino-effect where each piece is bigger than than last one. How brilliantly, infuriatingly historical.
All this may make AND sound overwhelming, so I should stress that it has plenty of more friendly features. Helping to keep games balanced, technologies spread between civilisations via borders and trade routes. There is also a flexible difficulty option, which rubberbands the game and makes it easier for losing players to keep up (great for keeping long multiplayer games interesting).
I love all the tonal touches too, like how your civilisation will be called a “City-State”, “Tribe”, “Empire” or whatever depending on your policies, or how taking over a city assimilates it’s unique units. Like history itself, AND is fluid, always shifting and presenting unexpected opportunities to spread your borders, while adding layers of intrigue and internal politics that threaten to undermine your own.
How to get it: Grab the installer here. It comes with a proper launcher and auto-updater and everything.
You can also get the AND Mega Civ Pack, which adds over 100 new civs and leaders to the game. All these leaders are reskins of existing leader models, so they’re fully animated. Be warned that this does include Winston Churchill in redface as Native American “Chief Winnemucca” (which is probably the kind of thing he would’ve done at the annual Chequers Halloween Party).
Vox Populi – Civilization V
Since when was Sweden so damned obdurate? I’d been chipping away at its defences for a good couple of hundred years (a mere swing of a blade as Civ conflicts go), but the Swedes are scurrying in and out of combat like a well-trained guerrilla force. So caught up am I in this tactical headache that I fail to spot a Swedish taskforce flanking my entire empire to attack from another side. Then, their whole army insta-heals as a Great General spawns – Sweden’s unique empire trait in Vox Populi.
For the first time in years, the AI in Civilization outsmarted me, and it felt kind of good! I yielded, accepting defeat not just in the war but the whole doomed game, and started afresh – that little bit wiser to a much wiser game than the Civilization V I remembered.
Civ 5 Vox Populi Dlc
When Firaxis lauded the modding community for inspiring elements of Civ VI, we can surmise that they were really talking about Vox Populi (formerly known as the Community Patch Project). Improved city-state diplomacy, adjacency bonuses, a Machiavellian espionage system that lets you carry out assassinations like Putin and steal paintings like Mr. Bean traces of all these things are smattered throughout Civ VI.
But unlike Civ VI, Vox Populi doesn’t shy away from more ruthless systems too, restoring Civ IV features like vassalage (letting you become a true colonial overlord) and corporations. The Corporations system is particularly well handled, giving you a monopoly over a resource if most of the world’s supply is in your hands. Each resource grants unique bonuses for monopoly holders, and can later be used to create corporations, complete with preset pun names and franchise outlets in rival cities. It makes luxuries a little more than just Happiness generators. Speaking of which, Happiness is no longer a universal happy/sad face icon, but works on a by-city basis, with poverty, boredom and crime all feeding into it.
Vox Populi is sparing with its new features, keeping games more elegant and orderly than its wild-eyed cousin AND; each changed system and rule fits neatly within the Civ V framework, and experienced players are unlikely to get wiped out by some freak vagary of history. That’s not to say that the world feels staid though; City-States are no longer just laying around to be wooed by you and have their own agendas and conflicts, while neatly presented ‘Events’ let you make choices that will have lasting consequences. As well as adding depth in all the right places to, Vox Populi evoked a sense of wider narrative in a Civ game that had previously been known as feeling a little cold.
How to get it: Like all good things Civ, Vox Populi lives at Civ Fanatics. To play it in multiplayer, you need to also grab the Community Patch Project modpack.
Realism Invictus – Civilization IV
With its focus on historical veracity, you get a sense that Realism Invictus was created by robed scholars, ghosting through cavernous libraries by candlelight in search of leather-bound tomes about forgotten civilisations and ancient warfare. Indeed, the 71-page manual expatiating on the philosophy behind the mod and the historical reasoning behind every mechanical change gives those chunky Civilopedias you used to get with boxed Civ games a run for their money.
The roster in Realism Invictus is completely overhauled, with each civilisation represented by a wealth of redesigned buildings that reflect its heritage, and culturally appropriate units (so no more Native American-type Scouts inexplicably being used by Central Europeans). With more unique units and more drastic leaders traits, RI is unusually asymmetrical as Civ goes, bolstered by the fact that empires tend to thrive when they actually did in history (so England, Portugal and other colonial powers get their best units and buildings in the Industrial era, while the new South China civilisation has early advantages). In a bit of a throwback to Civilization II, animated leaders have been replaced by regal old-timey portraits (though I’m fairly convinced that the image for South China’s Sun Quan is from Dynasty Warriors).
Culture and technologies spread in new and natural ways (invasions, trade, borders), while resources have a nice new slant too, in that you can use special buildings to combine resources to create new ones, forcing you to think more about your production line.
Combat in RI is filled with nuances. Units on coastal tiles, for instance, will get debuffed if there are late-era enemy ships adjacent to them, quietly reflecting the effects of shore bombardment. Stacks still exist but are more considered, rewarding unit variety and punishing excessive stackage with debuffs in the form of ‘Supply Problems’. RI isn’t averse to a few flights of historico-fantasy either, chucking in the brilliant idea of World Units: Wonder-esque super-units for every era that can only be built once per game (like Helopolis the badass siege tower).
Civ 5 Vox Populi Multiplayer Mods
Realism Invictus feels more introspective than the other mods listed here, its overhauls creating a slower-paced but still very /well/ paced game. Instead of blasting you with a world of new systems (it even removes some, like corporations), it makes sensible wholesale changes that always keep the looks, functions and historical chronology of things in sync with how they were in the real world.
Vox Populi Minecraft
With its focus on flavour and immersion, RI is as close as Civ’s ever been to historical simulation. To that end, if you want to just drift through history and not worry about the end-game, you can remove victory conditions and rewire the AI not to play towards a particular victory type. The core Civ loop that makes the series such a perennial joy to play is still there of course, but RI’s achievement is that it makes all the little things so thoughtful and involved, thereby pushing the dry number-building that governs the series into the background where it belongs. Firaxis, take heed.
How to get it: Realism Invictus is so fancy that it actually has its own website, where you can grab the latest version. Get the PDF of that mega-manual too while you’re there, print it, and plonk it on the toilet cistern.
_1. As of July 19th
_3. I've been trying to start a multiplayer game in Civ V with Vox Populi mod on ( with EUI ) and for every game I've tried to see if it had changes like corporations , it only had the BNW civilopedia and tech tree . On the other hand , when I first installed VP and tried to run a multiplayer game , the corporations overview would pop up but would not close. I cant tell what Im doing that is causinf both issues. Im using the modpacks only
_4. I never had a CTD , so I didnt think to check any logs or minidumps when CBO wasn't working. However for my second issue where the corporations overview wouldn't close I tried to replicate it in single player and I managed to , and searching around in the mods menu it said that I couldnt run C4D with CBO , but I could run a different Civ 4 Diplomacy mod with it . Im not at my computer right now so I dont know the exact name. My next try will be to install no EUI
Supporting information:
Please note that you can attach .zip files by dragging-and-dropping them. If possible, zip up all supporting data and post that way.
Please note that you can attach .zip files by dragging-and-dropping them. If possible, zip up all supporting data and post that way.
- Log files (always attach your Logs folder, located at My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5. Make sure you have enabled logging before experiencing an error! Go here to find out how: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487482):
- Save game (always attach a save that was made a turn before the error; located at My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/ModdedSaves):
- CvMiniDump.dmp file (attach if experiencing a game crash. Located at Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Sid Meier's Civilization V):
- Screenshots (optional):