Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword Windows, Mac, RTX game

As the venerable Civilization IV mod is closing on 20 years, we're happy to release the 3.6 version that focuses on giving the gameplay, visuals and engine of the mod a much-needed tune-up and a fresh coat of polish. The AI should be smarter; the mod should look better at modern resolutions, be easier to use and be more stable and better balanced across the board.

• New main interface layout with way larger minimap (at modern resolutions it was far too small to be useful). New layout kicks when there is enough screen real estate (screen width over 1440 pixels)
• Foreign advisor screen now scales to screen resolution and adjusts font sizes; if there are too many leaders, relations screen will position them in two semicircles instead of one
• Military advisor screen now scales to screen resolution
• Civics screen now scales to screen resolution and adjusts font sizes
• Dawn of Man screen text now fits without scrolling
• When a particular civilization is selected in pedia, unit pages and unit upgrade chart will use its unitstyle, and unit page will show the real upgrade units for this particular civ, instead of generic ones
• Leader splash in pedia now has the same aspect ratio as the one in in-game diplomacy screen, no longer squished
• Changed the default font used by the mod to Segoe UI (natively comes with all Windows versions starting with at least 7); its anti-aliasing actually works and generally it scales better
• Reduced font sizes where adjusting interface proportions was not an option (like the plot/unit stack tooltip, which we can't make wider or civic descriptions where there's limited space) so that more text can be visible
• Adjusted interface proportions in a lot of other cases where the text didn't fit/overlapped before; the UI seems to fit together much better now
• Added smaller fonts theme file that should work better for people playing at low resolutions (though the default theme shouldn't have any particular problems either)
• Minimap should render at a better resolution now, looking more detailed for bigger maps
• Symbols for yields of >10 should now be more visible
• Building list in city screen now sorted alphabetically, separating limited buildings and wonders into their own categories
• New, more user-friendly unit naming scheme that includes unit class in the unit name
• Building/wonder pedia page now shows the probability of the wonder being destroyed on conquest
• Reworded pedia to reflect the fact that resources aren't lost when converted to other resources in buildings, plus added a hint that states it directly
• Added inflation line back to economic advisor (hope it doesn't cause MORE confusion, as inflation is already rolled into other costs)
• IDW and ahead of time tech costs now selectable game options; deselecting those removes all the relevant UI elements too
• When IDW on (and it is on by default), a tooltip on a city tile shows the probability of an irregular unit spawning when defenders depleted (or show the reason why there won't be any)
• Separatism action effects now point to relevant civics / wonders in pedia

• AI should now assess separatism threats and assign additional weight to espionage based on current situation
• Reduced AI weight for Planned Economy, so late game should be less of a commie-fest
• AI should now use ranged-capable siege units both offensively and defensively
• AI should no longer disregard Holy War doctrine
• AI now takes into account resource use for speeding up unit construction (which among other things means it now assigns non-zero value to naval supplies)
• AI should now properly use slaves to hurry buildings (previously would only want to hurry wonders, which is suboptimal, as it led to slaves sitting in the cities 90% of the time)
• Fixed a critical bug (or rather lack of code) in AI Open Border logic. Now all the tweaks advertised before should ACTUALLY work. Playtesting shows a much more consistent behaviour (and UI message of AI willing to sign open borders no longer lies)
• AI should value established open borders more than before, less flip-flopping
• AI should no longer disregard limited buildings (such as weaver) nor art eras

• Moved Pistoleer and rural logistics bonus to Cavalry Tactics
• Made longbowmen roughly 20% more expensive
• Early tanks now have a bigger attack bonus against gunpowder units. While the WW1-era tanks had their issues, they really were weapons that revolutionised warfare, not as useless as they were in RI
• Buffed the last emplaced artillery and moved it further in the tech tree
• XIX century artillery can now upgrade to both light and heavy WW1 artillery, not just heavy
• First promos in Gun Battery, Main Calibre and Torpedo line all enable multiple attacks per turn; should make late naval combat more decisive
• Moved Marines earlier in the tech tree
• Moved most Missionaries further into the tech tree
• Moved Helepolis to Siegecraft from Mathematics (used to be available far too early and was quite an overkill at that time)
• Infantry, Late MG and Marines now additionally require Radio
• Melee and mounted traditions now also go obsolete at a certain point, for consistency with the archery one; neither should really be useful by that point
• Machine guns had their defensive bonuses increased
• Buffed advanced gunships to be more obviously superior to regular ones
• Biological warfare missile is no more (the unit was never on realistic side)
• Both unique cannons (Great Bombard and Big Bertha) do much more collateral damage
• All medium tanks and MBTs now have a bonus against armoured units (to make them deadlier to light tanks and a more likely counter to themselves)
• Late-game naval transports now able to attack (at the very least for consistency with earlier transports), enabling certain promos that were only available to attack-capable units. OTOH, Pirate Hunter line no longer available to them
• Desert and Winter combat promos now in line with Forest and Hill line - both levels grant both attack and defence in respective terrains. Still only two levels, as unlike hills and forests, these don't grant an inherent defensive bonus to overcome
• Shock 3 now gated by Armor Crafting, while Flanking 3 moved to Stirrup
• Added several new flavour units that I honestly thought I added a while ago
• air unit promotions greatly overhauled, with several new promotion lines
• Nerfed strength bonus of Trained Archers doctrine a bit
• "Only defensive" no longer precludes units from having access to collateral damage promotions; Barrage promotion line is back for Siege units!
• All spies now use the same unit button, so it is no longer possible to guess the nationality of a caught spy by the button art

• Changed air interception formula. In vanilla, there are two fixed probabilities (intercept and evade) that don't interact with each other - a unit with 70% intercept has a 70% chance to intercept ANYTHING and a unit with 50% evade has a 50% to evade ANYTHING. Now, these values are tested against each other; this makes both plane and anti-air defence generations much more relevant - an advanced anti-air system or interceptor is almost guaranteed (capped at 95%) to shoot down outdated planes, while advanced planes can run circles around older anti-air systems. Therefore, instead of Evasion Probability and Interception Probability, there are now respective Powers that can go way above 100%. The probability is calculated as Intercept Power minus Evade Power (say, Intercept of 475% and Evade of 400% would yield 75% interception chance).
• Rebalanced interception and evasion power across the board in line with this change
• Strategic bombers (especially advanced bombers) have their range greatly increased, and their cost increased to compensate
• Base visibility range of recon mission lowered, but can now be increased through vision range promos (which are now also available to air units)
• A promotion line to increase interception power is now available to not only air units, but to any interception-capable units, air, land or naval
• Enabled the code that puts per tile limit on air units (was there since BtS port, but never put to work); in line with vanilla 4 base per city/fort + 4 with airport + 4 with airbase
• Tactical bomber unit line no longer upgrades to advanced bombers; new end-line unit class, UCAV, with several flavour units
• All kinds of air missions except for recon (tactical, strategic bombing, dogfights) now yield experience

• Glassworks (previously annoying and rather meaningless) completely redesigned. Now also a Great Merchant-specific production building that outputs a luxury resource, Glassware. Gets shiny new artwork, culture-specific. Glassblowing now a late classical tech (better matching historical timeline), prerequisites redone accordingly. Notre Dame obviously no longer requires a Glasswork. Luck of Edenhall effect changed to providing 1 Glassware.
• Moved Tsukiji Market to Ship Rigging
• Eiffel tower now grants 2 relations with all civs when built
• Gazprom now grants +50% enemy war weariness
• Buffed production bonus of Crystal Palace
• Cristo Redentor now additionally grants global and local happiness, makes sense to build for Spiritual leaders too
• Significantly increased the cost of Observatories
• Moving Palace now destroys all the buildings that have it as a prerequisite
• Ironworks now called Foundry, buffed its production bonuses
• Buffed all bonuses of Grand Arsenal, additionally provides one free craftsman
• Statue of Zeus loses Gems as a production bonus, both ivory and gold buffed to 50%
• Moved Laboratory to Modern Physics
• Potter workshop no longer discontinued with Glassblowing (no longer has a reason to be)
• Radically increased the costs of all late-game buildings (except for the production-related ones), space ship parts and wonders to compensate for rapidly increasing production outputs
• Steel is now useful for constructing Eiffel Tower
• Marble now useful for constructing city squares and cathedrals
• City square now the first building in Printing Press line, providing +10% culture and commerce
• Sakura Garden is now a flavour Grocer instead of flavour City Square; other flavour City Squares adjusted in the same way as the default one
• GP bonus moved from City Square to University; moved some research bonus and Scientist buff from University to Observatory
• Buffed the rest of Printing Press line somewhat
• Humanist no longer gets bonus to Clinic/Hospital production, gets the bonus to Printing Press line instead
• Moved certain flat outputs from buildings themselves (Grocer, Workshop/Manufactory, School, University) to Clock Tower; this is now the purpose of Clock Tower, which loses all the other bonuses
• Monuments now upgrade to Theatres instead of City Squares, lose everything but 1 culture
• Opera significantly buffed, but made a limited building requiring a number of Theatres
• Replaced/buffed effects of several Great Works of Art, changed a couple to different ones
• Trading Posts now upgrade to Retail Stores; Retail Stores therefore get all the Trading Post happiness effects
• Moved happiness effect of Clothes from Retail Store to Fashion Designer
• Fashion designer now a more direct upgrade of the tailor

• American civ gets a line of 4 US Marine Corps units starting with WW1-era; regular Marine-slot unit for the US is now, ironically, therefore not a marine
• New NU for America - Gatling Gun (replaces Native Scouts). Early machine gun, should offer some very decent protection
• Armenian NU no longer upgrades to a knight, but to a unit with functionally identical stats but not civic-dependent
• Moved Celtic Fortified Monastery to Fortification tech
• New (mini)NU for Egypt - Sherden Guard. Upgrades to Galatian Mercenaries, forming a nice NU upgrade line to medieval era. Like medieval Saqaliba, not much better than contemporary units stats-wise, but still gets free promos
• Nerfed Greek and Dravidian irregulars a bit
• Mayan Pet Kot now correctly only buildable in jungle (used to be available on resources that CAN spawn in jungle, like Tobacco)
• Russian NU Gulyay-Gorod redesigned to better reflect historical usage. No longer able to bombard cities or cause collateral damage; now moves 2 and able to attack (though still primarily a defensive unit), strength buffed to 9. New scratch-built model (and animations; took forever to get right)
• Russian ancient republics for leaders with St. Petersburg as a capital now called Ladoga Veche Republic (in line with the principality)
• Buffed Scandinavian NU Archipelago Frigates and made them buildable earlier
• Since Spain has a national unit that perfectly fills the explorer niche, Spanish explorer is now something different - rodelero, a recon unit with different strength and weaknesses compared to traditional explorers
• Redid a lot of leaders' favourite civics, to give a more balanced distribution, as well as to represent Animism and Confederation, which weren't anyone's favourite before. Thanks arythm1a for contribution!

• Europe scenario: added Tatar civ to the East of Russian start, to make the amount of land available to Russia somewhat less infinite. Added lots of additional resources to the "New World" to make settling it more appealing; it is now always at least two ocean tiles away from the Old World, so it can't be reached before the Renaissance techs
• Buffed one-city civs in Crusades scenario (and Mongols, though they still disappoint)
• Huge World Map now has a much less steep per city research penalty, given how with its resource density it's much more viable to stay small anyway
• Pasture event now gives cart path instead of road
• Reduced direct impact of War Weariness on separatism from 100% to 10%
• The End of History separatism modifier only kicks in when there's half the starting independent civs left; with better separatism management it was far too easy to trigger the modifier intended strictly for the endgame
• Halved the chance for barbarians to settle (should take longer) but increased the radius for additional cities joining; should result in fewer, more powerful barbarian-derived civs
• All routes now take significantly longer to build, both natively and in various terrain features, especially jungles and swamps
• Mines, quarries, pastures and timber camps benefit more from Industrial techs
• Electric railroad became Highway. Better visually distinct from railways, now requires Globalization tech, fuel and cars. Movement cost and other stats the same
• Mechanized farms take twice as long to build
• Reshuffled the whole tech tree to be more logical: 1) All tech in a given column cost the same; 2) Only techs earlier in the tech tree can be prerequisites for later techs; 3) Generally a more compact layout
• Moved around some tech prerequisites a bit; certain techs that gave worker speed now give worker chop output bonus (with worker speed generally moved later in the tech tree)
• Certain techs moved to different eras so that all techs of a certain "tier" in the tech tree belong to the same era (the number of techs per each era remained unchanged)
• Confederation civic now has access to the same Bribe effect as Republics when dealing with Separatism
• Moved Working Class to Labor Specialization (so as not to have 2 civics on one tech)
• Reworked Civil Service: now it's all about production. Lost -10% military unit production; local bureaucracy loses maintenance, gets 1 craftsman; central bureaucracy loses old bonuses, gives local bureaucracy everywhere (great civic for mid-game colonial empires!)
• Feudal Aristocracy loses -25% GP
• Halved unhappiness penalty from not having Labour Union
• Added some base health/happiness to Welfare State
• Clothes now give +1 base happiness

• Lots of leaders get new portraits; leader buttons should match their portraits better too
• Converted a lot of generic flavour units with no stat differences to artstyles instead
• Changed Alamut splash to no longer refer to Assassin's Creed game; kinda undermined its historical roots
• Updated name, description and graphics for Eirik Raude
• Remade a lot of tech, building and unit buttons
• Improved textures and layouts of various farms, should now have more visual variety and generally look better
• Improved looks of terrain and terrain features (in particular, fertile soil should now be more distinct and no longer just look like dirt patches)
• Tweaked saturation levels for lots of flags, redid some of the worse ones
• All WW1 cavalry now uses WW1-era guns, distinctive from earlier cavalry
• New main menu music, licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License from Kai Engel
• New main menu artwork (based on works of MC Escher) and loading screen
• Expanded pedia entries for some leaders and units
• Renamed Abu Bakr II to Muhammad ibn Qu, as the former never existed (those intrigued are welcome to read the pedia description)
• Renamed Kahina to Dihya (the former is an Arab nickname for her)
• Medical advances no longer displayed as actual buildings in the cities (consistent with Ministries, Doctrines/Traditions and other such "buildings")
• Bilge Khagan now Buddhist instead of Hinduist
• Renamed lots of techs and unit classes to more logical and historical alternatives
• Upscaled resource buttons; for something that spends a lot of time on-screen, they were far too blurry
• Changed the looks of bauxite resource to actually resemble bauxites
• Fertile soil no longer looks like a simple dirt patch, should be more visible, especially when farmed
• Warehouses and storyteller circles get new art past ancient era, culture-dependent
• Added an intermediate plantation look for Industrial era
• Japanese and Austronesian unique water improvements now also have industrial-modern looks
• A very major visual facelift of XVIII-XIX century units (especially line infantry, grenadiers and cuirassiers), as well as lots of other units across the ages
• Removed 0AD soundtrack (it didn't fit the ancient era anyway) and reverted all era-dependent soundtracks to vanilla BtS

• Totestra should now actually place scrublands and savannas
• Corrected some wrong strategy entries, added new and expanded a lot of existing ones
• Removed Ministry of Tourism as it no longer serves a point
• Several fixes and tweaks from the more recent version of K-Mod that was never merged:
  - Fixed a reported CTD
  - Fixed potential culture overflow
  - Fixed barbarian city placement on new landmasses (was totally random, disregarding actual city spot values)
  - Barbarians now subject to the same handicap levels as other AI civs
  - Barbarian territory now also shown on minimap (no idea why it wasn't in vanilla)
• All animations now should correctly support blood
• Removed the broken mission to choose desired tech for a GP
• Fixed Great Prophets showing wrong future techs in the Tech screen
• Fixed Agricultural Machines tech quote missing a voiceover
• Numerous fixes for unit models & animations
• Splashes are now correctly displayed for art eras (they were made long ago, but never worked before)
• Fixed some reported reproducible CTDs
• Fixed scrollbar position in the city screen (when the build queue is long enough for it to appear)
• Fixed industrial and food plantation never updating past ancient looks
• German flamethrowers no longer require the types of guns that are guaranteed to be unavailable when they are researched
• Transport helicopters for mechanized units should now scale as all other units
• Reworded pedia to reflect the fact that resources aren't lost when converted to other resources in buildings, plus added a hint that states it directly
• City bombardment and ranged attacks now use different hotkeys (B and Shift+B)
• Civs that aren't Germany no longer get Autobahn on their city tiles
• Deluge scenario works again
• All scenarios except for Crusades and Deluge now allow choosing game speed in custom options (used to ignore the setting)
• Ahead of time penalty now understands increments of less than 100% (previously rounded 50% down to 0)
• Default carrier no longer moves in reverse (the second time an RI default unit has mistakenly been set to reverse!)
• Fixed a python error when moving a city in Worldbuilder
• Fixed Dortmund being on Transoxian city list
• End-of-history texts for Revolution correctly reflect the current status quo
• Some fixes to German translation (thank you ederl)
• Spain can no longer capture their unique slaves that were otherwise removed
• Added Big and Small to compatible map scripts
• Moved some more common textures to shared folder , which allowed deleting a lot of identical instances
• Removed lots of unused files
• A major optimization of all unit/building model files

Some screenshots from RI 3.6 showcasing new interface: