A: It’s a mod for Civ 4 Warlords. Sure, yeah, we know BtS has been around for some time already, and most mods are made for BtS. Well, we decided that we could take our time and release the last version for Warlords that we are satisfied with. Yep, this version, and if you are reading this, it means we were successful. This also means that you can now safely assume that we’re developing Total Realism for BtS (“Total Realism Platinum”, I guess).
A: We sure have been. The first public version of Realism mod for vanilla Civ 4 was released in November of 2005, thus making the mod almost 5 years old already (:eek:), one of the oldest mods for Civ 4. From February 2006 the mod is in hands of Houman, who has been the team leader since, and still is. From March of the same year, we are based on Sourceforge, and Sourceforge SVN repository has proven to be an excellent way of organizing our work. In December 2006 we ported the mod to Warlords, adopting the name “Total Realism Gold” and it has been developed for Warlords ever since. 2.4 will be the last Warlords version, as the work on BtS port is already underway.
A: Lots and lots of stuff. For a long answer, check the summary of the mod or read the manual. It can't all be summed up in a sentence or two.
A: By all means you should do it! Total Realism by itself draws heavily on the creations of other Civ4 community members, especially on CFC. We would be delighted if some part of our mod would help other fellow modders to create better stuff.
A: We have a forum specifically for those needs. We invite you to visit Civ4.houmie.com for all your TR community needs. We leave no post unanswered! If you are having trouble accessing our forum, you can ask in our CFC subforum here: Forums.civfanatics.com
A: Well, first of all, if you have any specific skill, ranging from C++ to audio recording, anything that you think could be useful to TR, you can join our team. Basically, that is how we get team members – all of us, including myself, were at one moment just fans who offered their help in working on the mod. If you don’t think you have any skills valuable to the mod, you can just play it – every player who shares his/her impressions, voices suggestions, reports bugs is an asset to the team. They help improve TR almost as much as any team member. Also keep in mind that you CAN’T give us money for our work, because TR is strictly non-commercial. We have no account for donations and aren’t going to get one. You may, however, buy a team member a drink if one happens to be in your vicinity (the chances of which are quite good, since we have team members in many countries – see the credits section).
A: We are VERY sorry you have come to this conclusion. We’re trying to be fair and to carry out a balanced approach to all the stuff. After all, this mod started as an attempt to correct some unfairness/onesidedness present in vanilla Civ4. If you think we should know your opinion, please share it with us at our forum (see above), and we’ll discuss it.
A: No. Unfortunately, custom maps don’t work with TR. The reason behind it is all the new resources we add that will obviously be missing on a map not specifically made for our mod. If you have enough experience, you can make a map TR-compatible by placing all the appropriate resources on it by hand – if you ever do so, feel free to send it to us, we will likely include it in our next release. So the only custom map you can play TR on is the world map that comes with it.
A: Unlike the previous question, the answer is most likely “yes, you can”. The majority of map generation scripts, if they weren’t made specifically for some other mod, will generate perfectly playable random maps in TR. Of course, we haven’t tested every single script out there, but some of more popular ones, like PerfectWorld, can give you an excellent TR playing experience, better than the scripts that come bundled with Civ4. We recommend you experiment and find the one that suits your needs.
A: No, extending the tech tree to the future is beyond the scope of our mod. As it is, even expanding it to the present is beyond it – currently it is considered to extend as far as late 1980’ies. That’s why we also aren’t including any contemporary leaders – they are simply beyond our scope. We strive to model human history, and contemporary events (and even more so hypothetical future events) have not become history yet.
A: No, and there are several reasons for it. First of all, our World Map is pretty cramped as it is, and will become even more so when we eventually add BtS civs (most likely, not all of these will even make it). Then, with the amount of attention every civ gets in our mod (leaders, units, Great People, etc.), it would be a titanic job to add even one – since it is not a matter of simply adding a couple of leaders, a UU and a UB. A “civ” that is considered a standard on CFC, for example, would look terribly incomplete in our mod, and would require much more work to blend in than what already went into its making. We have added one custom civ so far (Poland), and believe us, we wouldn't like to go through that agian.
A: Once again, several reasons. The first and the strongest of those is that I’m the person responsible for adding these, and I don’t like Firaxis-style animated cartooney leaderheads. Ever since Civ 3, I always substituted them for beautiful works of art I could find. These painters are worth checking out! There are also two additional reasons that reinforce this principle: first of all, since I can make those static leaderheads myself, I am not bound to wait for someone to make me an animated leaderhead – and thus I can put in any leader I can possibly find, and you will notice that we have more leaders than most other mods. And lastly, static leaderheads eat up much less system resources. In a mod as big as ours, every little bit counts.
A: No, implementing these features (as well as some other stuff present in Rhye’s) would limit our mod to world map only. While we consider the work of Rhye to be a top-class mod, we are developing a more flexible product, that is suitable for a broad spectrum of random maps.
A: We have implemented tech transfer component instead. If any civ you have open borders with knows the tech you’re researching, you will research it much faster. We feel it does a better job at simulating tech spread than Civ4 default “tech trading” (which really only happened from late XIX century IRL). You can turn tech trading back on if you don't like that feature, but then don't forget to turn our Tech Transfer component off in the game options, as the two aren't meant to function toghether.
A: We have a manual - not too detailed, but designed to give you a basic understanding of all the mod's significant features. You can get it here: Forums.civfanatics.com Also, in-game hints have been rewritten to provide useful TR-specific advice (and if you didn't know, you can read all hints in the Pedia!).
