Table of Contents

Foreword .............................................................................................................................................. 4
Note for Realism Invictus 3.4 players ............................................................................................................. 7

Before installing ................................................................................................................................... 8

Versions ......................................................................................................................................................... 8
Requirements ................................................................................................................................................ 8
Game settings ................................................................................................................................................ 9
MAF error ...................................................................................................................................................... 9

Different aspects of Realism: Invictus ................................................................................................. 11

Civilizations and leaders................................................................................................................................11
Civilizations .........................................................................................................................................................................11
Meet the new guys .............................................................................................................................................................11
Derivative civilizations ........................................................................................................................................................16
Leaders and leader traits ....................................................................................................................................................17
Leader drawbacks ...............................................................................................................................................................19

At the start of the game ................................................................................................................................20

Game speed, game options and difficulty ..........................................................................................................................20
Random Maps and the Scenarios .......................................................................................................................................22
Game interface ...................................................................................................................................................................23

Technological development ..........................................................................................................................23

Tech Transfer system ..........................................................................................................................................................23
Tech conquest .....................................................................................................................................................................24
Tech cost scaling .................................................................................................................................................................24
Tech tree and Eras ..............................................................................................................................................................24

Building up your cities...................................................................................................................................26

“Discontinued” vs “Obsolete”.............................................................................................................................................26
Yield modification ...............................................................................................................................................................26
Luxuries and your cities ......................................................................................................................................................27
Industrial buildings .............................................................................................................................................................28
Civic dependencies .............................................................................................................................................................29
The Ministries .....................................................................................................................................................................29
Craftsmen and production ..................................................................................................................................................30

Military aspects ............................................................................................................................................30

Land units............................................................................................................................................................................30
Naval combat ......................................................................................................................................................................32
Combat aid system .............................................................................................................................................................33
Logistics and overcrowding ................................................................................................................................................34
Unit costs and roles ............................................................................................................................................................34
National units......................................................................................................................................................................35
World units .........................................................................................................................................................................36
2
 Doctrines and traditions .....................................................................................................................................................37

Religious matters ..........................................................................................................................................38

Spread and missionaries .....................................................................................................................................................38
Religious shock....................................................................................................................................................................38
Holy cities and religious restrictions ...................................................................................................................................39
Religious structures ............................................................................................................................................................39
Paganism .............................................................................................................................................................................41
Free Religion and Cult of Personality ..................................................................................................................................42

Great People .................................................................................................................................................42

Great Artists ........................................................................................................................................................................42
Great Scientists ...................................................................................................................................................................43
Great Prophets....................................................................................................................................................................43
Great Merchants .................................................................................................................................................................43

Other aspects ...............................................................................................................................................44

Revolutions .........................................................................................................................................................................44
Barbarian civilizations .........................................................................................................................................................46
Epidemics ............................................................................................................................................................................46
Healthcare Advances ..........................................................................................................................................................47
Terrain.................................................................................................................................................................................47
Food production .................................................................................................................................................................48
Cultivation ...........................................................................................................................................................................49
National Improvements ......................................................................................................................................................49
Events .................................................................................................................................................................................50
Civics ...................................................................................................................................................................................50
Diplomacy ...........................................................................................................................................................................51
Espionage ............................................................................................................................................................................52
Corporations .......................................................................................................................................................................52
Dynamic Flags & Names......................................................................................................................................................52
Some multiplayer advice ....................................................................................................................................................54

Scenarios ............................................................................................................................................ 55
World maps ..................................................................................................................................................55
World Map (huge)...............................................................................................................................................................55
World map (large) ...............................................................................................................................................................56

Europe ..........................................................................................................................................................56
Triassic Period Earth .....................................................................................................................................57
Crusades era .................................................................................................................................................57
Crusades era: overview.......................................................................................................................................................57
Crusades era: regions and kingdoms ..................................................................................................................................58

The Deluge scenario ......................................................................................................................................60

The Deluge: overview .........................................................................................................................................................60
The Deluge: nations ............................................................................................................................................................61

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 63
Frequently Asked Questions ................................................................................................................ 64
Credits and thanks .............................................................................................................................. 69

3
 Foreword

Realism Invictus (RI) is the Beyond the Sword version of the Civilization 4 mod that was formerly
known “Total Realism” when it was being developed for Warlords expansion pack of Civilization
4. Our mod has been with Civ since the earliest days; it was, back when it was called just “Realism”,
among the first comprehensive modpacks seeking to rebalance the game.

For many years now, the mod continues its life and its evolution. Although it had its highs and
lows, it is still going strong today, and truly stands for what can be called a project of Civ 4
community (“Invictus”, Latin for “Undefeated” wound up being in our title for a reason!). Over the
years of its existence, it has given a lot to other Civ 4 community projects, and it has incorporated
even more of other people’s work. It was never intended, and could never happen, as anyone’s
personal project – at any given time of its existence, the mod had a team of several people working
on it, and it was always their collective vision that brought it forward.

Still, some time ago I felt that some fundamental explanations were in order, as I found myself
answering the same questions again and again. This foreword is my attempt to address this.

Over the many years the mod has been around, I have encountered time and again suggestions
and criticisms from players driven by the fact that “the main goal of this mod is realism”, and it is
easy to understand why – it’s been in the name this whole time! However, I fear that word tells a
wrong story to many people. This is the reason the following text was written. If you are only
interested in the gameplay features, you can skip to the next section. If, on the other hand, you
are interested in, if you will, philosophy of the mod, please read on.

The way I see it, we don't really want games (and our mod in particular) to be realistic. We want
them to feel realistic. Let me try to explain the difference...
4
Something is realistic when it closely follows reality. If we are talking about a game, there should
be a lot of mechanics and rules that work in the same way as IRL. But reality is not a game, nor
was it designed to be played. When one strives towards that ideal, what one gets in the end is a
simulation, not a game. It might yield interesting results, even have some predictive power and
scientific merit, but ultimately, it won't be a good game (or maybe even not a game at all).

A very good example of that occurred when someone asked me how I felt about Jared Diamond
(of “Guns, Germs and Steel” fame) and his work. Diamond's theories could actually be
implemented in Civ engine, if one tried hard enough. Would the end result be more realistic?
Definitely (even if some of his points are dubious, his theory still beats Civ 4 as a scientific theory
of historical process). Would it make for a good game? Most likely not, since his ideas are
deterministic. What that would spell for players? It would lead to a better simulation of reality,
while taking a lot of agency away from players, by having your final win/lose status basically pre-
determined by your starting location. A game that does this is not a good game.

Something feels realistic when it evokes the right feelings in the player, and it can be done by
vastly different means than being realistic. Why do people play Civ? I'd say, it is to feel oneself
leading a civilization through history, to experience what that might be. That said, I hope we can
all agree that actually leading a country is a lot of hard work, and often not very fun - what we
crave is the fun parts of ruling a country and experiencing history without all the non-fun parts.
We need wars and pitched battles, geographic discoveries, great works of art; we need to see our
cities grow, shaped by the way we rule them; we need to see our borders spread and our people
mastering new technologies. Do we need to feel the day-to-day tedium of government, such as
sitting through endless budget meetings, arguing with our ministers, editing the errors out of bills
and such? I doubt anyone plays to experience that. So what does it mean to feel realistic in this
context? I'd say it's mainly about the feelings of:

a) Progress. We need to feel that, plainly speaking, the thing that comes after feels cooler
than the thing that comes before. That is actually not as straightforward as it sounds. For
example, in a new unit, it is both the stats and the look that matter - it can't just be more
powerful, it needs to feel more powerful too. One rather realistic thing that likely needs to
be sacrificed here is the idea of simulating "dark ages" in any real depth. If you feel that
you are regressing instead of progressing, it may lead to a feeling that you've been
betrayed by the game you're playing, even if it is happening on a purely emotional level.

b) Accomplishment. Achieving stuff should feel rewarding. When you reach a certain point in
your game, you should feel that you're being rewarded for how smart and persistent you've
been up to this point. This point has least to do with the being/feeling dichotomy above,
but one should still keep in mind that the feeling of reward is not actually the same as
actually getting a reward. A better reward from a purely gameplay perspective would be
just a numeric stat increase. Why do we actually have spearmen upgrade to pikemen
5
 instead of increasing the power of spearman unit? It is because upgrading a 4 str spearman
to a better-looking, armor clad 8 str pikeman actually feels more rewarding than just
getting a +4 str to spearman. Likewise, getting a Great Person with a popup of his portrait
and his quote feels more rewarding (and actually more relatable, see below) than just
getting a unit with his name.

c) Relatability. The feeling of realism comes from us relating it in our heads to what we know
from real world history. This victory I just had over Persia feels like Marathon! This golden
age I started in Florence with my Great Artist? It feels like Italian Renaissance! This
continent my caravel just discovered? It feels like I'm discovering America! And that is
another huge difference from being realistic. Civ 4 in general and our mod in particular
makes good use of random maps to create alternative histories. Would, in a hypothetical
alternative Earth history, Greeks "starting" in the Amazonia still wear togas and fight as
hoplites? I don't think any sane person would argue they would. But if we dress them in
feathers and have them lead a hunter-gatherer life in jungle (which would be the perfectly
realistic thing to do), why are we even calling them "Greeks" anymore? They don't feel like
Greeks. They are no longer relatable as Greeks. Out of all three, this point is the most
contentious, as not only do different people relate to different stuff based on their previous
experience (unlike the feeling of accomplishment, for example, which is a pretty universal
reaction for a set of universal stimuli), but that point even manages to clash with gameplay
as well, the obvious example being again the same "jungle Greeks" - being a Greek civ
definitely hurts them from a gameplay perspective when they start in jungle, and yet
providing their phalanx with a jungle bonus instead of their normal one in this situation
would ruin relatability (my bronze-clad hoplites are better at fighting in jungle how
exactly?).

Those three together, I would call the "feel" of the game for shortness. I think by this time we
should be on the same page that the feel is composed in equal parts of rules, mechanics, look
and sound, "lore" (stuff like authentic-sounding names and such) and some other factors in
constant interplay with each other.

All that said, I return to my initial statement. Realism isn't always good for gameplay, that's almost
a given. But paradoxically, being realistic might also take away the feeling of realism, as I
hopefully illustrated above, when actual realism starts to clash with the feel of the game. Too often
I see people craving for more “realism” in the first sense - they want some elements of the game
to be more realistic, with no regard for everything else. And I kind of feel that they feel encouraged
by the word "Realism" in our name. If I could go back in time, I guess the name would be more
neutral now. I don't think we'll be changing it, since over the years it kind of became a recognizable
brand, but...

6
 Note for Realism Invictus 3.4 players
We know that many of the players who are reading this manual have been previously playing our mod in its different incarnations,
including the previous 3.4 version. While you will find most of the gameplay and design decision quite familiar, there are some
changes we would like to highlight. In this manual, many sections will have these smaller-font notes intended for veteran Realism
Invictus players, to bring their attention to the changes Realism Invictus 3.5 has when compared to Realism Invictus 3.4, of which
there are quite a few.

This is especially relevant for this particular version, as it introduces a whole new mechanic (revolutions/separatism), with lots of
moving parts.

7
 Before installing

Versions
This is version 3.5 of Realism Invictus. With each new release, we seek to improve significantly the
previous version and for this reason, our support is focused on the latest release. We have two
download options: Full and Light version.

The Full version is the download that contains everything that you might need to enjoy our mod
as intended.

The Light version contains no animated wonder movies (static pictures are used instead), no
custom music and no specific Great Person popups. It is otherwise a fully functional version, good
for people with slow connection, limited bandwidth or with limited space available on the drive.

Please note that full and light version both have the same system requirements and the same
performance; they are only different in the installer sizes and the amount of space they require.

Requirements
Since this is a mod for Civilization 4, all the requirements that apply to the game itself apply to
the mod too, of course. Still, due to the advanced nature of the mod, its requirements are a bit
higher than these of vanilla1 game. While the game itself can run on videocards not supporting
2.0 shaders, you will need a SM2.0-capable videocard to run our mod without trouble. This means
that we cannot guarantee that our mod will run on Intel onboard videocards (often found on
laptops).

In addition, due to much more content and functionality compared to vanilla game, it is hungrier
for RAM, VRAM and CPU performance. This is especially true for larger maps and for the bundled
scenarios.

Our mod is designed to be run on Beyond the Sword or Civ 4 Complete patched to latest available
version (3.19). Note that Civ 4 Complete ships without the latest patch and has to be patched after
its installation!

Our installer is designed to be compatible with Steam version of the game as well. Be sure to clean
your CustomAssets folder before (or after) installing – it is a common source of troubles with
mods in general.

1
“Vanilla” = core game without any mods
8
A common source of problems during the installation is Civ 4 located at a non-default install path.
In most cases, our installer can handle that, but when there are non-standard latin symbols in the
path or when Civ 4 is installed to Program Files or another protected folder, there can be problems.

Game settings
Generally, you are free to choose any game settings you are comfortable with, graphical settings
high or low depending on your performance. One important notice: our mod does not function
well with “Frozen animations” option, so it will be disabled with no way of activating it while
running our mod. You can turn it back on when you play other mods or unmodded game later.

MAF error
The memory allocation error (MAF error) is, unfortunately, the harsh reality we cannot really do
anything with. This is the error inherent in the game itself; moreover, it is not even Civ4-specific. I
encountered it while playing Half-Life 2 mods! Basically, this error happens due to the way 32-bit
operating systems handle memory. The more memory the system needs to allocate, the more
likely the dreaded Memory Allocation Failure is to occur. On 32-bit systems, in Civ4 it begins
happening when save game size hits 1 Mb.

There is no real solution for this error on 32-bit systems, although there are certain methods that
allow postponing it. Our mod incorporates a special solution called “Graphics Paging” that might
mitigate this issue, if not solve it outright. It can be turned on in game options, under graphics
section. Warning: only do it if you are already experiencing MAFs, as it can cause visual glitches
and instability. It is not recommended to keep it on all the time.

64-bit systems (and OSes: a 32-bit OS installed on a 64-bit system will have exactly same problems
as a 32-bit system) are much luckier here – for BtS, no action is required at all; you will simply not
run into MAF errors until your save games get ridiculously big (over 4 Mb). That size can only be
reached on largest maps late in game. If you do, the same advice as above regarding turning
paging on applies.

If you play our mod on 32-bit systems on larger maps, you will likely run into MAFs eventually.
The only permanent solution for those is upgrading to 64 bit; nevertheless, you can postpone
those until much later in game if you choose smaller map sizes and use graphical paging – late
enough for the game to be decided at that point anyway. If you have a decent 32-bit system,
there are certain methods that you can use to play without errors longer. For these, I am directing
you to CFC.

9
 Once again, to drive the point home:

If you run a 32-bit OS, and play a big map, your

game will crash, sooner or later.
If you run a 64-bit OS, you will probably not reach
that point.

10
 Different aspects of Realism: Invictus

Civilizations and leaders

Civilizations
We have done many things to ensure that every single civilization in Realism Invictus offers a very
different playing experience. This is done by introducing a vast amount of customization into all
playable civs. All civs in our mod have much more than one unique unit (UU), one unique building
(UB) and one or two leaders that they have in vanilla game. Civs are customized on many different
levels, and each one offers not only different visual flavors, but also somewhat (or vastly) different
playing styles. This also means that adding a new civ is a very labor-consuming task, and therefore
we only added a few thus far, but we are working on adding more with each version.

Our very approach to what a civilization is was somewhat different from that of the game’s
creators and of many fellow modders. Instead of regarding civilizations as fixed to a single
culture/locale/time period, we tried to treat a civilization as a continuum of cultures, influences
and nations that were centered around a particular geographic region from ancient times till
modern age – which, given Earth’s history, gives almost any place in the world a continuous
cultural heritage.

For example, Romans also include later Italian states like Milan or Tuscany, and modern nation-
state of Italy; therefore, the units you will see for a particular period will not be “fantasy Roman
legionaries of WW2”, but real Italian units of that age. Same goes for leaders – Mussolini is as
much a leader for Rome in our mod as Caesar is. Other examples also include Classical Greece /
Macedonian Empire / Byzantine Empire / Modern Greece and Egyptian civ that does not keep
“theme-park” ancient Egypt-like units for later periods, but correctly displays Hellenic then Arabic
influences as it progresses through the ages.

What’s new in 3.5: Almost nothing with regard to playable civs; but most other civs lost the special treatment they had (like
inability to build settlers and such), and now behave essentially the same as playable civs do, with the only exception of World
Map hunter-gatherer civs. There are three new derivative civs that can spawn due to revolutions component, in addition to all the
old ones: Brazil, Gran Colombia and Lithuania.

Meet the new guys

Realism Invictus (RI) has a long history. The playable civilizations somewhat reflect that: you will
quickly notice that we did not make most of BtS-added civs playable. For some of those, like
Byzantines or HRE, it will never happen, since they don’t match our vision of what a civilization
actually is (see above); one can say that these civs are already parts of other playable civilizations
in Realism: Invictus. Some others, we just did not have enough time to bring to a high standard
of what we consider a playable civilization in our mod, but this will certainly happen in the future.
Yet some others, while potentially interesting (Khmer, for example), lack enough material for us
11
to make them into an interesting and realistic playable civ, and are thus put on hold until we can
get more sources and ideas on how to make those civs more appealing. Two BtS-added civs,
Ethiopia and Mayans, are already fully playable. We have also included several other playable civs
of our own choice. Let me introduce those:

Armenia
The mountains of Caucasus have been inhabited for almost as long as human civilization exists; it
is believed that Noah’s ark landed on top of Mount Ararat after the Great Flood. What is certain
is that from roughly 1000 BC (“Urartu” is Assyrian exonym for Ararat) and to modern age, these
lands had their own indigenous culture, best exemplified by tri-millenarian history of Armenian
people.

Armenia has a long and difficult history. Situated on the crossroads of Eurasia, it was always the
destiny of Armenia to be the frontier between superpowers: Greeks and Achaemenid Persians,
Romans and Parthian/Sassanid Persians, Byzantines and Seljuks, Ottoman and Russian empires.
At times, Armenia was subjugated to one of its mighty neighbors; at times, it retained
independence for centuries and even carved out a substantial territory. Whatever the geopolitical
situation in the region was, one thing remained constant: Armenians, whether serving their own
kings, or the new regional superpower. Byzantine generals, Ottoman statesmen, Soviet ministers
– they all shaped the world history in their ways. As the melting pot of Eastern and Western
cultures, Armenian contribution to the development of both is often underplayed: Hellenism fused
with Zoroastrianism here, Mithraism was born here, and Christianity was first adopted by a
reigning monarch here.

Armenian civilization gives the player many opportunities for both peaceful and military
expansion. Armenian armies mix reliable heavy infantry with excellent, hard-hitting heavy cavalry,
all while backed by increased cultural output from their UB, the scriptorium. Armenia is probably
strongest early on, in Classical age, which corresponded to the greatest extent independent
Armenian kingdom achieved in our history. Their highland pastures provide more versatility to
hills early on, when windmills are not available yet.

Austronesia
Austronesian peoples, before the era of European colonialism, were the most widespread group
on Earth. The lack of attention this vastly important civilization gets in Western historiography is
only recently beginning to be remedied, and I am sure for most people reading this they would
not be an obvious choice for a civ. Let me try to show the reasoning behind it…

Austronesian history begins thousands of years ago, around 4000 BC, around the isle of Taiwan
(note to the perceptive: yes, they start elsewhere on our World Maps, to better stimulate AI
expansion along historical lines). From there, the Austronesians – the first known seafarers in the
world – launched an unprecedented colonization campaign into the islands of Southeast Asia, and

12
from there onwards to other parts of the world – the Pacific islands, from Hawaii to New Zealand,
and even to the isle of Madagascar. Austronesians were the truest thalassocrats in human history,
ruling over archipelagos and along the coastlines, controlling various trade routes of many
regions. With the arrival of Western colonialism, most of those island empires fell into European
dependency, but the Austronesian history is far from over. Indonesia has the world’s fourth largest
population, is often regarded among the more promising of the developing countries (“The Next
Eleven”), and is set to overtake Japan in terms of GDP by 2050 according to Goldman Sachs.

Austronesian civilization truly shines in island environments. Their early naval NU ensures their
ability to safely colonize over bodies of water earlier than anybody else (and is the earliest
available ship in RI!), and both their UB and NI are geared towards getting more food and
commerce from water tiles. Austronesia is probably not your choice for a big overland war,
though, as their land military, especially on attack, can be found a bit lacking.

Berber
Berber peoples of North Africa have been a part of the Mediterranean civilization exchange for
probably as long as it has existed. While other peoples, like Phoenicians or Romans came and
went, they did so against a constant backdrop of Berber locals watching them, learning from them,
resisting them. Both along the coastline and deeper into the desert, numerous Berber states have
existed across the ages. Even the eventual Arab conquest has done little to erase their cultural
identity, which persists to this day.

Berber lands were rarely united under a single ruler, yet they always shared a special bond and
distinct cultural identity. Across the ages, people of Berber descent like Jugurtha, St. Augustine,
Terence, Avempace, Ibn Battuta have made an impact not only on local, but on world culture as
well. Often falling under sway of Great Powers of the age, such as Roman Empire, Arab Caliphate
or Ottoman Empire, they nevertheless never assimilated and always strove to regain their
independence. Berber civilization is modelled after this succession of various North African states,
starting with ancient Numidia, and culminating with modern Morocco (while Carthage, who shares
the region with them, proceeds to be represented by modern Tunisia and Algeria).

Both Berber armies and Berber cities are well-suited for desert conditions. Their NI and UB
synergize well with oasis, and their unit roster offers powerful light infantry and light cavalry best
used at hit-and-run tactics and pillaging raids.

Dravida
I think most of people reading this have just encountered the word “Dravida” for the first time in
their lives. This mostly comes from the fact that history of Indian subcontinent is relatively
unknown to outsiders. Nevertheless, India is probably even less culturally monolithic than Europe
is – while most of Europe at one point in history was a part of Roman Empire, imposing its culture
on all its subjects, the first time Indian subcontinent was truly united under one state came only

13
in XX century. Before that, India was often much fractured, and at no point in time were the lands
of Dravida united with those north of Deccan plateau. Invaders came again and again to the North
– Aryans, Greeks, Sakae, Kushans, Arabs, Mughals – but, by virtue of both geography and fierce
resistance of the locals, never advanced southwards enough to reach Dravidian lands. Even later
European imperialists had a hard time subjugating the region, as troops of Mysore repeatedly
defeated invading British.

While the North could rely on overland routes, the sea was much more important for Dravidians
in all eras: Sangam ships traded with the Hellenic world and the Roman Empire, Chola traders
brought Hinduism to Southeast Asia. Prosperous states of South India gave birth to cultural and
scientific marvels; religious tolerance gave birth to diverse communities of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain,
Christian and Jewish believers.

What Dravida lacks in blunt hitting power, it makes up in other ways. Increased trade incomes and
quality navy can ensure an economic dominance, guarded by defensively-oriented infantry-
centric armies to ensure long-term dominance. It does not really have any exceptional period,
with a robust performance across all its history instead. Moreover, watch out for spices, because
Dravidians get very powerful bonuses from them via their NI!

Hungary
There are a lot of civs we already have in European region, and plenty more we could add. Why
Hungary? Why add another civ in Europe at all? Well, Hungary is special. It is probably the only
civ in Europe (at least until we add Finland) that doesn’t speak an Indo-European language and
doesn’t have either a Romano-Germanic, Celtic or Slavic origin.

Hungarians are relative newcomers to Europe. Magyar tribes first migrated to Pannonian plains
roughly 1000 years ago; in those times, Magyars (later to be known to their neighbors as
Hungarians) were a steppe nomadic people. Gradually, those nomads settled, adopted
Christianity, and Hungary became one of the most important kingdoms of medieval Europe.
Hungary lost its independence to Austria after a century of almost constant warfare against the
advancing threat of Ottoman Empire. Despite maintaining their language and culture, and
constantly struggling for freedom, Hungarian people only regained their independence after
Austrian Empire fell apart at the end of the First World War. Despite not having formal
independence, Hungarian artists, scientists, statesmen and engineers played a very prominent
part in European history of the previous five centuries.

Hungarian civilization undergoes a metamorphosis as it advances through ages. It first starts as a

cavalry-based semi-nomadic civilization, but by mid-Medieval era, its roster shifts to a more
traditional European style, with good balance between heavy infantry and cavalry. Despite shifting
away from their nomadic roots, Hungary retains very strong cavalry throughout the ages, and
their unique improvement additionally capitalizes on horses resource.

14
Poland
The first custom civilization added to Realism: Invictus, back when the mod was called Total
Realism for Warlords. Slavic peoples are one of the largest groups of peoples that make up the
humanity, both in terms of population and especially in terms of territory. It felt unjustified that
this large and quite diverse group was only represented by Russian civilization, and therefore we
brought in another Slavic civ.

Poland is the most prominent representative of Western Slavic branch. Unlike their Eastern and
Southern brethren, Western Slavs had historically more ties with Western Europe, the Catholic
Church and the Holy Roman Empire than they had with the Orthodox Christianity and the Eastern
Roman Empire. Poland’s geographical position has put it in peril a great many times throughout
its history, both from expansionist European powers to the West and from invaders from the East.
Nevertheless, for many centuries, Poland managed to not only hold its own, but to actually
prosper, at times being the largest state in Europe. Polish traditions of self-government, elective
power and collective decision-making are in a stark contrast with strict hierarchical traditions of
many of their neighbors.

Polish civilization offers a player a balanced and flexible playstyle, with good opportunities both
for an aggressor and for a builder. Poland is most powerful around Renaissance era, which is
remembered historically to be the Golden Age of Poland. Polish armies rely on excellent cavalry,
both heavy and light, and have otherwise a well-balanced roster.

South China
This civilization is an attempt to fix (or at least alleviate) one of the most common misconceptions
a Westerner has about Chinese history. It is very tempting for an outsider to see Chinese history
as the history of China, the one, the true and the only. In many historical eras, nothing could be
farther from reality. At many different points throughout its history, China was fragmented into
several independent states, more often than not each with culture as distinctive – or even more
so - as, say Spain and England (which, by analogy, we could happily call a “European civilization”,
along with Germany, Rome, Scandinavia and so on), numbering from two to dozens. Remarkably,
many of these divisions went along North/South geographical lines.

Therefore, South China is our attempt to show more of China’s diverse historical situations: the
Warring States period, Three Kingdoms, Southern & Northern Dynasties, the struggle between
Song and Liao, between Yuan and Ming, between Nationalists and Communists in XX century –
and a lot of others. While we understand that having two civilizations also limits us a lot (note, for
instance, the “Three Kingdoms” period above), but it is still much, much better than treating China
as a single monolithic entity throughout all of its history.

North Chinese roster, where it is different from South Chinese, draws upon Northern Dynasties,
Jin (Jurchen) Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, Beiyang Government and People’s Republic of China, while

15
the same units for South China are drawn, respectively, from Southern Dynasties, Song Dynasty,
Ming Dynasty, Nanjing Government and Republic of China.

Transoxiana
The ancient lands beyond Amu Darya (ancient Greek “Oxus”, hence “Transoxiana”) are among the
oldest cradles of civilization. Together with neighboring region of Khwaresm, various peoples and
states for have occupied these lands as long as civilized world keeps records, and likely longer
still. This is the place where Europe meets Asia, where Far East meets Near East – the land of the
Silk Road. For centuries and millennia, these lands witnessed the rise and fall of empires: mighty
Persia to the South, then Alexander’s empire to the West, then China and later Mongols to the
East, then Russians to the North. It gave birth to its own great conquerors as well, forging mighty
empires: Parthian kings, brilliant and ruthless Tamerlane, Indian conqueror and first great Mughal
Babur all hail from here.

Transoxian region is very important, yet oft overlooked when it comes to history. Once you get to
know it, it is hard to see why it should be like that: opulent cities and booming trade along the
Silk Road, great cultural monuments and important scientific discoveries, conquerors and
humanists who shaped the face of Eurasia – all that can be found here. Situated literally in the
center of Eurasian continent, the region both profited and suffered greatly from its location during
its long history.

Drawing from peoples of vast Central Asian steppes, Transoxian unit roster has some very good
cavalry, but its other units should not be overlooked either. While they usually lack a bit in blunt
power, a good tactician will find the mix of bonuses Transoxian roster has very appealing.
Transoxiana is at its strongest in late medieval period, at the age of Timurids.

Derivative civilizations
Derivative civilizations are a large subset of civilizations that are not playable through normal
means. They are not present at the start of any given normal game (though some are pre-placed
in some scenarios), but can appear by being released as colonies, by revolting if Revolutions
component is on, or by settling if Barbarian civ component is on. As a rule, they do not have a
National Improvement and only have one National Unit (you can see their corresponding sections
for more details) and usually only one leader.

They are not intended to be playable by humans, at least under normal circumstances (some of
them can be played in scenarios). These are variously civs on their way to becoming major playable
ones or being added for use in scenarios or introduced specifically for acting as liberated colonies
/ rebels.

16
Leaders and leader traits
A leader is a very powerful way of customizing how a civ plays. That is why we concentrated on
adding several different leaders for every civ available in Realism: Invictus. There are 5-7 leaders
for every civ, and each one will behave differently when played by AI and offer a different feel for
a civ when played by human. Indeed, Mongol hordes
led by Genghis Khan are very different from Mongols
ruled by learned and intelligent Ulugh Beg!

We tried to supply most leaders we included with

historical quotes for additional flavor. Unlike vanilla
Civ 4, leaders are represented not by animated
cartoon-style leaderheads, but rather by their
portraits or artistic renditions.

We reworked many leader traits present in game, and

introduced several new traits to give ourselves more
opportunities for mix-and-matching. Here is an
overview of what is available to a player (of course, all
the relevant information can be gotten from
Civilopedia (Pedia) in-game at any time):

 Administrator is one of the two traits that formerly comprised Organized. It provides +1
health per city and lowers pandemic chance, and gives a 25% bonus to the construction
speed for all the National Wonders (including Ministries!) and to worker speed.

 Agrarian is one of the new traits. It provides +1 food for all squares already producing 6
or more food, and lowers epidemic chances (see below for this aspect of the game) across
the empire, and allows for faster production of workers and food-related city buildings.

 Charismatic trait lost its free extra happiness (but still gets it from several buildings). -25%
XP required for unit promotions is also a very nice bonus. To compensate the loss of free
happiness, it gets a fancy new ability of +1 relations with all other leaders.

 Conqueror is another new trait. It provides experience to all types of cavalry (including
tanks later on) and a free promo to your siege units. It allows building knights without the
prerequisite civic. It also improves your rural logistics (see “Logistics and overcrowding”
section for more details).

 Creative trait now gives both +20% culture across the board and +1 culture per city, so
while early on you get less culture, later on the bonus from the trait can give you vast
amounts of additional culture if you invest in it (it also makes this easier, aiding in
construction of different culture-related buildings).
17
 Expansive now gives you +50% production for settlers and naval transports, as well as
courthouses, and +1 food from city starting plots. Leaders with this civic can both expand
quicker and financially support more cities, and in places less hospitable than normally
viable.

 Financial leaders get +1 commerce from every tile that already outputs 3 commerce, and
also get a discount on many cash-related buildings.

 Humanist leaders get +50% Golden Age duration, as well as +1 free commerce per city;
also, all justice-related buildings can be constructed quicker.

 Imperialistic gives you +100% Great General (GG) emergence and added happiness from
barracks. Leaders with this civic will likely find themselves as the recipients of more
doctrines and traditions (see below for that aspect of the game).

 Industrious now gives +1 hammer to all tiles that have 3 or more hammers, and also
boosts the construction of several production-related buildings. Now industriousness
impacts all aspects of a civ’s life, not just Great Wonders.

 Legislator is the other half of what was Organized. It still reduces civic maintenance and
also provides +1 production on city plot.

 Militaristic leaders get +3 XP for newly constructed melee and gunpowder units: now you
can choose the free promo they get for yourself! It allows building foot knights without
the prerequisite civic. Additionally, it improves both rural and urban logistics.

 Philosophical trait now offers only +50% Great People points (GPp) generation, but it aids
in construction of more research-related city buildings.

 Political leaders get +50% espionage point output and a huge +3 relations with other
leaders, as well as a discount on espionage-generating buildings.

 Progressive leaders get 50% discount on upgrading units and +5% research across the
board, and, of course, build all research-related buildings faster.

 Protective trait is largely unchanged from vanilla Warlords, offering free promos for
archery and gunpowder units and more Great General points (GGp) inside a civ’s borders,
as well as quicker construction of protective structures such as walls. The only real change
is improved urban logistics.

 Seafarer is a new trait in our mod. It offers all naval units a free promo increasing their
combat abilities, and +1 trade route in coastal cities.

18
  Spiritual is largely as you knew it: no anarchy and faster construction of all religious
buildings. Therefore, this trait and its gameplay value is almost unchanged.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant; a couple of leaders had their traits adjusted.

Leader drawbacks
In addition to two positive leader traits, each leader now has a drawback, reflecting his/her
weaknesses. Just as ordinary traits, these can dramatically affect your playing style – and you will
find that most AIs keep them in mind when formulating their strategies as well… Most of
drawbacks act as direct opposites to certain positive traits. Note that, in rare cases, it is possible
for a leader to have both a positive trait and its anti-trait! The leader drawbacks in RI are as follows:

 Anti-clerical: -1 happiness from temples. Local clergy offers no support to these leaders.
Temples are mostly useless for them.

 Barbaric: -25% culture. This leader never got any formal education, and sees little point in
all this fancy stuff “civilized” people do.

 Arrogant: -20% espionage. This ruler sees other rulers and civilizations as vastly inferior to
him, and often dismisses spy reports that show otherwise.

 Cruel: +20% XP needed for unit promotion. This ruler often treats his subjects as his little
playthings, especially at times of war – much less soldiers survive to actually see the
promotions for ridiculous feats he demands from them.

 Excessive: -10% gold. The extravagant lifestyle of this leader and his court puts a real strain
on the state budget.

 Fanatical: -25% Great Person birth rate. This leader judges the people based on their piety
first, and their other merits later. Some of the more controversial but talented people
choose to avoid his court.

 Foreign: -25% worker speed and worker production. This leader rules a people different
from his own. While the higher classes in the society are more open-minded, this can be a
problem for simpler folks.

 Idealistic: -5% strength to melee, archery and gunpowder units. This leader does not
believe in violent means of solving the conflicts, which isn’t exactly inspirational to their
troops.

 Isolationist: -25% foreign trade route income. This leader believes in self-sufficiency up to
the point of shutting off his borders to outside influences.

19
  Megalomaniac: -20% wonder production. Why settle for second best, if you can have it
all? This leader already sees himself as the ruler of the world, and spends additional effort
to commemorate himself with ridiculously huge projects.

 Poor commander: while this leader can have many talents, leading the troops is certainly
not one of them. -5% strength for recon, cavalry and armored units.

 Populist: +25% civic upkeep. This leader owes his success to popular support, and he has
to spend extra to keep it.

 Revolutionary: -2 relations with other leaders. This leader came to power violently and
thus lacks legitimacy in the eyes of other world leaders.

 Schemer: -40% Great General emergence. This leader can’t stop himself from trying to stab
every back turned to him, and views everyone else with inherent mistrust as well. This often
leads to purges in officer corps in an effort to put out the conspiracies to overthrow him –
real or imaginary.

 Temperamental: Recon, archery, melee and gunpowder units have less first strikes. This
leader’s impulsive behavior can ruin even the best laid out battle plans.

Remember that you can review the effects of your leader’s traits and drawbacks at any time during
the game via a tooltip displayed while hovering the mouse pointer over your civ’s flag in lower
right part of the screen.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

At the start of the game

Game speed, game options and difficulty

For your first game if you are not a veteran Realism mod series player, you should probably pick
a lower difficulty level to familiarize yourself with the aspects of the mod. As you get the hang of
it, the mod is balanced to be played at Prince-Emperor difficulty range, although of course both
higher and lower difficulties are available for players, especially relevant if there is a need to give
a handicap to beginner players in a multiplayer game.

Most game options for custom games are the same as in vanilla BtS. You will notice that Tech
Trading is off by default – that is because our mod implements an alternative Tech Transfer system,
where instead of exchanging techs via diplomacy, they are transferred from civ to civ via Open
Borders treaties. Turning Tech Trading back on does not break our mod, but if you do so, you
should probably turn off Tech Transfer, as the two are not meant to co-exist.

Some components of RI can be turned on or off in custom game menu. RI adds these new options:

20
 Tech transfer on/off. See above.

 Unit cost scaling on/off. Turns off an increase of unit production costs based on how many
you have built already. Remember that RI is balanced with this option being on in mind, so
turning it off will lead to much more units being produced.

 Tech cost scaling on/off. Turns off an increase of technology costs based on how many
cities you have. Remember that RI is balanced with this option being on in mind, so turning
it off will lead to much faster tech progress.

 Holy city migration on/off. This determines if non-state religion Holy Cities will migrate to
other civs. You can read more about that game mechanic in the religious section of the
manual.

 Protect Valuable Units on/off. This option changes the rules for which unit is considered
the best to defend with. When turned on, valuable units like great generals, national units,
units with lots of experience, and medics may be withheld in lieu of another unit even
though they have the highest odds of winning. This happens when another less valuable
unit has comparable odds, or the odds of winning are very poor. It does not affect actual
combat mechanics, only the order in which defenders are selected.

 AI plays to win on/off. If turned on, AI will be aware of different victory conditions available
and will choose a particular strategy focused on winning the game with the chosen kind of
victory. Whether to turn this on or off depends on your own playing style – whether you
yourself play to win or play for fun. If turned off, AI players will try maximizing their score,
basically always aiming at Time victory.

 Barbarian Civs on/off. If turned on, barbarians will be able to settle down, forming new civs,
if their presence in any given region is sufficiently large (and if there aren’t too many civs
in game already).

 Revolutions on/off. If turned on, all cities have a measure of separatism, influenced by
plethora of factors, which can lead them to starting a revolt and forming a new civ.

 Religious shock on/off. If turned on, founding a new religion will create a “religious shock”
around the new Holy City, purging all old religions.

 Dynamic civ names on/off. If turned on, civilizations’ names will reflect their actual civics
and historical development instead of being simply “… Empire”

21
  Dynamic civ flags on/off. If turned on, civilizations’ flags will change based on their civic,
leaders, current era and other circumstances2.

 Slave/serf rebellions on/off. If turned on, there is a risk of armed revolt when running
Slavery or Serfdom (not to be confused with revolt events that function the same way as
all other random events – and will only be active if actual revolts are off, no need to do the
same thing in two different ways).

The mod was developed and balanced for Realistic game speed, which gives an extended “epic”
scale to the games. Nevertheless, for players who are short on time, we also provide several other
game speeds that lead to faster-paced games. Still, for full enjoyment of all the features in our
mod, Realistic speed is recommended. Likewise, a longer playing speed is also available for those
who are in no hurry.

What’s new in 3.5: many more options to turn RI features, old and new, on or off.

Random Maps and the Scenarios

Another choice you have to make before starting the game is the map you wish to use. Realism
Invictus comes with three bundled scenarios, and a lot of our effort went into balancing those.

Their one drawback is actually caused by their very nature – all of them are huge, with many civs.
Therefore, any of them will strain your system, and older PCs will experience very long turn
loading times as the game progresses to more advanced eras. In addition, of course, the map is
fixed, and therefore, although it can be played and enjoyed many times (as our testing shows),
still eventually you will get used to it.

All these reasons may make you turn to random maps, and you will not be disappointed. Our mod
is designed to be compatible with most random map generators – both vanilla and player-made.
Moreover, RI now comes bundled with several popular scripts tailored specifically for use with the
mod. A couple of words of warning are in order, though.

Firstly, we have sometimes experienced that smaller Archipelago maps can lack some resources,
due to the simple fact that they do not have enough land to place them all; still, strategic resources
have never been reported as missing, and therefore these maps will definitely be playable.

Secondly, when you use a custom map generation script for the first time, to ensure that it is
working properly, it is much recommended to generate a map and inspect it with WorldBuilder,
to see if all resources have spawned properly and nothing is wrong otherwise. Some scripts do
not place custom RI terrain features (scrubs, marshes, reefs etc). It will not break the mod, but
several civs (like Aztecs, England or Japan) have national improvements (see appropriate section)

2
There is an unfortunate bug that we’re unable to fix so far that causes flags displayed on units to not change to
the new ones outright; saving-loading the game fixes the flags, and moving the unit usually does too.
22
that are dependent on those features, and thus will be somewhat weaker without access to them.
In addition, without fertile soils placed on the map, cultivation feature (see appropriate section)
will not work.

Lastly, we must warn you that no premade map for vanilla game or other mod will likely be
playable “out-of-the-box”. These maps will be lacking custom resources added by the game, some
of which (like sulfur) are critical for proper development of a civ. Most of the will just crash on
start, since they have a wrong starting amount of players specified. It is technically possible to
make almost any map work with RI, but it is quite time consuming.

You can get an overview of the scenarios that come with RI in their own dedicated sections.

What’s new in 3.5: one new scenario; read about it in the scenario section or just go play it!

Game interface
User convenience is a major concern for us; therefore, RI comes bundled with BtS Unaltered
Gameplay mod (BUG), which greatly improves user interface and, in our opinion, is absolutely
essential for any Civ 4 player regardless of any gameplay changes present. One of the nicer things
about BUG is that it is highly configurable. You can find the configuration options by clicking the
briefcase-shaped button on upper left of the screen.

Moreover, we introduced many of our own tweaks into user interface, and probably the most
important of them is the totally rewritten pedia, which is powerful, easy to use, presents a lot more
information and is better organized than the one in vanilla game. This particular pedia layout is
(so far to our knowledge at least) exclusive to our mod.

What’s new in 3.5: QoL features, such as interfaces and tooltips for the new Revolutions component, new icons for displaying on
city billboard (warning of epidemics, separatism etc,) and other small interface improvements.

Technological development

Tech Transfer system

Tech Transfer is a feature of Realism Invictus mod that is intended to replace an unrealistic aspect
of vanilla game that has civilizations diplomatically trading technologies – something that was not
there until at least mid-XX century. Historically, technological developments spread passively, and
all that the kings and governments could do was encouraging or preventing that process by
means of general diplomacy.

Therefore, in our new system, when a civ is researching a technology that another civ with open
borders to this one already knows, it gets an additional significant discount towards the cost of
that technology: 50% for first such civ and additional 25% for every next civ.

Open borders treaties, thus, become a very important decision with many possible implications
to consider. Since tech transfer process works both ways, if you have a tech lead, you will be aiding
23
tech advancement of other civs that have open borders with you – so you will have to choose the
civs you want to sign open borders with carefully, and also keeping in mind other important
aspects of having open borders with another civ: free passage of troops, trade routes and spread
of religions. Additionally, if your relations with another civ are high, you will get bonus culture
from having open borders, as your peoples exchange their cultural trends with each other.

Tech conquest
When you capture an enemy city in RI, you will get some progress towards a tech known by your
enemy but unknown by you. This may sound familiar to the veteran players who enjoyed the
previous installments of Civilization series, but this mechanic was cut from Civ 4. We brought it
back!

The amount of research gained is a percentage of that tech’s cost, and is dependent on the size
of the city, with a random factor. Large cities can give you a whole tech when taken, while cities
with population of 1-2 will give about a third of a tech.

Tech cost scaling

Technology costs scale with the amount of cities one has (unless that mechanic is turned off in
the custom game setup). Each new city a civilization owns increases its technology costs by a fixed
amount.

In practice, this means that larger and smaller civs with roughly equally developed territories
research at roughly the same pace, while under vanilla rules a bigger civ would almost always
research faster. This introduces additional incentive to pace your territorial expansion, and gives
more chances to smaller civs for resisting aggression of larger neighbors (where previously their
armies would usually be not only larger, but also more advanced).

Tech tree and Eras

You will quickly notice that we almost completely overhauled vanilla tech tree to suit the needs
of our mod. The number of techs is increased more than twofold, and every single technology
unlocks some benefits for your civilization.

Some aspects of technological progress are handled slightly differently from vanilla game: for
example, many strategic resources are revealed by techs much earlier than they really become
useful: this gives players time to secure them by the time first units/buildings requiring them are
unlocked by further techs.

Eras of technological advancement are no longer just cosmetic changes to your city art. As you
progress technologically, people in your civilization become more refined in their tastes and start
making increased demands – which, in game terms, means that each new era (except Classical)
brings one or more points of unhappiness and unhealth to all your cities. Because of that, it is not
really recommended to “beeline” to next era techs; the later you advance to a next era, the better
24
you are prepared for that. Therefore, it is also recommended that before advancing to a new era,
all your cities are at least 2 below the happiness limit – or they will become unhappy after you
advance into the new era.

It is a good idea to research most techs belonging to current era before pressing onwards to the
next era, unless you feel very confident about the happiness of your cities. This is also one of the
reasons why it is not recommended to start the game in advanced eras – not past Classical and
definitely not past Medieval: your cities will be very unhappy right from the start (especially on
higher difficulty levels) and you won’t have the economic/industrial base that you are assumed to
have when you advance to later eras naturally – although Advanced Start feature can help alleviate
this somewhat.

A fragment of the tech tree in medieval era

Information on techs belonging to certain eras is provided in the tooltip for any particular techs.
They are also color-coded for your convenience in the tech screen (you can see in the screenshot
above that medieval techs have a green underlay – this is an interface option you can toggle on
or off; if you don’t see the underlays, it is likely turned off); the color underlay can be toggled
on/off and the colors changed in the Interface settings menu in “Era Colors” section.

Note that the actual cost of techs is affected by the number of cities you have; bigger empires
have costlier technologies. This is in most cases not so severe a malus as to discourage the
expansion, but civs with smaller territories can now keep up in tech somewhat easier.

What’s new in 3.5: smaller tweaks, such as rearranging some technology prerequisites for a more logical progression.

25
 Building up your cities
When it comes to buildings and wonders you can construct to improve your cities, the first thing
you will notice is that there is a lot of new stuff. There are several important categories of buildings
that are not present in vanilla game, but are nearly essential to properly developing your civ in
Realism: Invictus. It would not be reasonable to cover each of hundreds of new buildings and
wonders in detail here, especially since in-game Pedia makes a good job at that, but we will try to
cover some of the broader categories here.

“Discontinued” vs “Obsolete”
There are two kinds of things that can happen to old buildings as technology progresses – they
can get either discontinued or obsolete. A discontinued building continues to do its job in your
cities; you just cannot build any new instances of it. Obsolete buildings stop working entirely.
Usually buildings get discontinued with a tech that gives you a better version of the building – for
example, forges are discontinued with the tech that brings blast furnaces. It then obsoletes with
(“upgrades into”) the newer building when it is built. This way you aren’t “punished” for
researching new technology by immediately losing the functionality of older buildings.

Here you can see forges getting discontinued with Crucible Steel to be replaced by Blast Furnaces.

Yield modification
One of the effects that wasn’t there in vanilla Civ 4 is the ability of buildings to modify yield outputs
of everything – terrain improvements, specialists, even other buildings. For instance, all temples
now give +1 gold to priests, sawmills provide +1 production to lumbermill improvements within
city radius and Roman Castrum (their new UB) provides a yield bonus to three different other
buildings!

Of course, wonders now also make good use of these abilities. You will find that many wonders
have new effects along those lines.

26
 Pyramids are an example of one such reworked wonder; they provide significant bonuses to pagan temples.

Luxuries and your cities

In vanilla game, as soon as luxuries are hooked up by a terrain improvement and a road, your
cities start getting happiness. Very few luxuries work this way in Realism Invictus (the only
exception that immediately comes to my mind is tobacco). Most luxuries will only have an effect
if you construct a specific building in your cities. Same goes for most health-related resources as
well.

This has an important implication that your cities will start with a low base happiness even if they
are connected to your trade network from the start – you will have to build up their happiness
infrastructure. This also means that you will probably have significant problems managing the
happiness of a large city that you took from your enemies.

Buildings such as this Jeweler are required to harness the potential of your luxury resources – and they almost
always offer additional benefits too!

For example, gold bars are not by themselves doing anything for the local population – but if you
construct a jeweler, he provides a way to turn this gold into jewelry that provides happiness to
the population. Such buildings should be individually constructed in every city and provide
benefits only to the city that they are built in.

27
Also note that many resources are revealed much earlier than the buildings required to actually
utilize them in a useful manner. That is intentional: it gives you time to scout out the resources in
advance and have them at hand by the time you need to use them.

What’s new in 3.5: only minor rebalances this time.

Industrial buildings
This category is totally new compared to vanilla game. These buildings take one or more resource
and convert it into another one. For example, a steel mill takes one iron and one coal and turns
them into one steel. These output resources are treated just as those harvested on the map – all
your cities connected to the trade network will benefit from them and you can trade them via
diplomacy.

Both strategic resources and luxury resources can – and indeed should – be produced that way.
From early industrial era on, you will not be able to have a modern military that is not backed by
steel mills, armament industries, artillery yards and other such buildings. Likewise, many luxuries
and even some health resources are only available through the industrial system.

You could trade excess coal and iron away, but a better strategy would be to build a Steel Mill and get the benefits
it provides to the city, while selling away the steel it outputs instead

Input resources are not “consumed” by these buildings and can still be used to construct units
and otherwise benefit your civ. The reasoning it works that way is quite simple really, come to
think of it, and comes from the way that resources were initially implemented by Firaxis: if one
iron can be used to construct an infinite number of swordsmen, why can’t it be used to construct
infinite swordsmen and to make enough steel to construct infinite ironclads?

Still, if you have more than one instance of a prerequisite resource, you will have to construct
more than one instance of that industrial building to get multiple output resources. Let me stress
this again: the buildings do not consume resources away! One unit of coal can power one steel
mill (with iron) and, at the same time, one brick factory. You are not faced with a choice of directing
your resources down one of the several different production paths (mostly because we do not

28
trust AI to make wise choices there) – you can put every resource you have to all the possible uses
it has simultaneously.

What’s new in 3.5: Naval workshops moved much earlier in tech tree, so that Naval Supplies are meaningful for a longer while.

Civic dependencies
Several buildings and wonders in our mod require specific civics to be constructed and to be
operational. They are usually a means to “augment” a civic and extend its effects. Some civic-
related buildings have drawbacks as well as advantages, and thus a player can choose to construct
or not to construct those. If you switch out of that civic otherwise, the buildings and wonders will
stop functioning.

As you can see, Guild Monopoly enables you to construct Guild Halls and the Hanseatic League

A special case of that is Monarchy – it enables a number of “buildings” that represent different
kinds of monarchies throughout history and depend on civics of Legal category to function.
Effectively, these “buildings” depend on two civics at once.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

The Ministries
The ministries are special national wonders that become available later in game. Their aim is to
lessen the amount of micromanagement for the player: each ministry provides the benefits of
some basic building (sawmill, school etc.) to all the cities of a civ, so you do not waste time
constructing them in each city. They do not provide any additional benefits, so they should only
be constructed if you have several undeveloped cities that can benefit from their effects.

Each ministry costs as much as 5 instances of the building tied to it

29
Note that ministries are affected by the same traits that provide bonus construction speed to the
buildings they provide. Also note that due to abundance of different national wonders in Realism:
Invictus, we have lifted the limits on national wonders per city; you can build as many as you like
in any one city.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

Craftsmen and production

There is a new class of city specialists specific to Realism: Invictus, the craftsmen. They are a
keystone of the big production rebalance we did that we feel captures well the advancement of
production technologies and accompanying social changes throughout history.

In Realism: Invictus, there are almost no buildings that provide %production bonuses to cities, in
contrast with vanilla Civ 4, where factories and such directly increased city production. Likewise,
the workshop terrain improvement that allowed you to increase the production output of flat
squares is gone. Instead, almost all extra production the cities have as time advances comes from
craftsmen.

At the start of the game, cities can have few craftsmen, and other specialists often offer better
bonuses, especially since the craftsman is the only specialist that doesn’t output Great People
points (in this way, treat them more as city population working an invisible map square that
provides only production output). Yet, as the technology advances, craftsmen benefit from
numerous bonuses that increase their production output and buildings that create new craftsman
slots.

As agriculture improves, more and more citizens can be reverted from working the fields around
the city to working in the factories as craftsmen, increasing production output. Where at the
beginning of the game, most of your population will be rural (that is, working the map squares
around your cities), as time goes, more and more people will instead work inside your city.

A flatlands city surrounded predominantly by farms is no longer doomed to always have low
production: in time, it will be able to sustain a big population of factory workers, shifting the
production center of your empire from those hilly regions…

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant, though Warehouse is now a craftsman-related building.

Military aspects

Land units
Our mod vastly broadens the range of different units available to players. Even those units that
are nominally the same as in vanilla game are very likely to occupy different niches from the ones
they had in vanilla game. A quick overview of what will be at your disposal:

30
 Heavy/line infantry. The most straightforward type of units available to the player. These
units will likely constitute the core of most armies, and are pretty universal on the
battlefield, having few particular weaknesses and strengths. Initially these will be melee
units, probably the least changed compared to vanilla game: axemen, swordsmen, men-
at-arms (macemen) etc. Later they make a transition to gunpowder line, starting from
fusilier (note that fusiliers aren’t the first gunpowder units available to players – but earlier
arquebusiers are weak on defense, and are closer to archery units in their tactical
applications).

 Light infantry units. These units are cheaper and weaker than heavy infantry; they are
poorly suited for defense, but their mobility and withdrawal chances make them well-suited
for skirmishing from a besieged city or in open field and for scouting. Also, since they
require no resources, they will be available to you regardless of your economy and
infrastructure. One more notable feature of light infantry is the fact that they, like settlers
and workers, use excess food in addition to hammers when they are constructed.

 Recon units. Recon units handle scouting/skirmishing tasks in your army. They generally
should not be expected to engage heavier infantry or cavalry one-on-one in open field and
to defend cities, but they are able scouts and can soften enemy troops before your main
force attacks. Later recon units can become powerful specialized units for infiltrating enemy
territory and holding key terrain points.

 Archery units. Most of the time, archery units are only suitable for defending key positions,
like cities, hill forts etc., but are poorly suited for attacking cities and field engagements.
One thing to note: most of the civs are designed in such a way that they will only have
powerful crossbowmen or powerful longbowmen (and indeed are not even guaranteed to
have both). Civs that have good longbows, like England or Korea, can use longbowmen for
most applications, like assaulting cities.

 Charge cavalry. Charge cavalry is the cavalry that relies primarily on the brunt force of
their charge when they are deployed, whether they are armed with lances like knights, or
have gunpowder weapons like later cuirassiers. It is mostly heavy cavalry, but light cavalry
that lacks ranged weapons such as bows can also be considered charge cavalry. This kind
of cavalry requires some skill to use properly. Although some of them are very powerful
(and expensive) units, there are many tactical situations where they will be slaughtered by
weaker units. The application where they are especially awesome involves, of course, level
terrain outside cities (or cities that have had their defense brought down to zero). Heavy
cavalry does small amounts of collateral damage when attacking, but gets severe penalties
when attacking fortified cities.

31
  Ranged cavalry. Ranged cavalry is the predominantly light cavalry armed with some form
of ranged weapon (bows or firearms; later “ranged” also includes light lancers, due to the
fact that their harassment tactics is more in line with how true ranged cavalry works) that
prefers to engage enemies from range, avoiding direct confrontation. These units are very
special, and you will learn to love them when you have them and hate them when they are
used against you. Despite not having defensive bonuses, like all cavalry, ranged cavalry is
very hard to wipe out due to outstanding combination of mobility and bonuses against all
melee units (including heavier cavalry). In field engagements, ranged cavalry can devastate
enemy stacks and retreat unscathed. In addition to basic horse archers, formidable on their
own, several civs, like Mongols, later get improved horse archers that can prove extremely
devastating against pre-gunpowder armies. The civs that do not have improved horse
archers later get early gunpowder light cavalry. The age of horse archer dominance on the
battlefield ends with the arrival of gunpowder weaponry, but later on light cavalry still has
its uses as raiders and scouts. Sometimes civs that do not have advanced horse archers
also get access to medium cavalry (considered charge cavalry, not ranged), which is a nice
all-round battlefield tool, cheaper and less specialized than heavier knights, and very good
against ranged cavalry.

 Siege units. Siege units work much differently from vanilla game. Rams of all kinds have
almost no strength, so they are close to useless in direct combat – the only real use they
have is bringing down city defenses. Later catapults and trebuchets can more or less
successfully attack units, but can’t bring them down all the way to 0%. Gunpowder artillery,
starting with bombards, can perform ranged strikes on enemy units instead of a head-on
confrontation. Generally, they will not be able to kill enemy units that way (functionally this
is very similar to how bombers work). They will still defend in the classical manner if
attacked. Also, there is now a separate class of immobile heavy artillery that will be
emplaced in cities – with their ranged attacks, these guns can attack any besieging forces.

 Armored units. Despite being very similar to vanilla game, armored units have an
important difference: they cannot capture cities. So you have to follow your blitzkrieg
breakthroughs with infantry if you want to actually gain territory.

What’s new in 3.5: no radical changes, but many more flavor units.

Naval combat
Naval units have also been significantly reworked in our mod. Although early naval combat is very
much similar to vanilla game, starting from Renaissance onwards it gains in complexity, with
different classes of ships each having different niches in combat. This brings it closer to “rock-
paper-scissors” of land combat. Capital ships, expensive and devastating, can be vulnerable to
torpedo boats, which are, in turn easily countered by destroyers, etc., etc.

32
 Several new ship types available in Realism: Invictus:
Kogge, Sloop, Paddlewheeler, Steam Frigate, Electronic Countermeasures Destroyer.

A notable impact that naval combat can have on land is the shore bombardment effect capital
ships starting from Ship of the Line have. Enemy land units on coastal tiles adjacent to a capital
ship will have their combat effectiveness significantly reduced, representing the effects of artillery
shore bombardment. Battleships are, of course, most effective at this, and, while they might be
too expensive to form the core of your fleets, having at least one of those in your fleet for aiding
your ground troops is a good idea, when planning to have an overseas military campaign.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

Combat aid system

To represent the effect of combined arms,
Realism Invictus has a system of combat aid
bonuses. All combat units present in a stack can
provide each other with bonuses depending on
their type and combat strength. The amount of
aid is decided on combined strength of all the
units of that type in a stack compared to the strength of that unit. For 100-200%, 200-300% and
>300% difference, levels 1, 2 and 3 of aid respectively will be administered.

Therefore, it is wise to keep several different types of units in any given stack, because then each
of them will be getting several different aid types. Sometimes, it is wise to bring some units along
even if you do not intend to use this in combat, just for the aid they provide.

Although most naval combat units do not provide aid, there are some late-game cases where
combat vessels provide useful aid to other ships. In addition, naval vessels that carry cannons
(starting with frigates) are able to provide shore bombardment detriment to enemy land units on
adjacent coastal squares, of several different magnitudes depending on the guns that particular
vessel carries.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

33
Logistics and overcrowding
In vanilla Civ 4, you could stack an infinite amount of units on one square without any negative
consequences. This is colloquially known as “stack of doom”, and is a common cause of discontent
for civ players. We in RI team have our own take on the problem.

As more and more units gather on a square, progressively worse penalties start applying to them.
This makes each individual unit in such a stack much less capable.

All info on logistics is readily available through interface and tooltips

The amount of units that can be on one tile without any penalties is your logistics value. Your
logistics is divided into urban logistics, which applies inside cities, and rural logistics, which applies
everywhere else. Usually urban logistics value is higher than rural, but both these values can be
modified by traits. As time passes, some technologies raise your logistics, allowing you to field
bigger armies without penalties.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

Unit costs and roles

Unit costs in Realism Invictus are not fixed. Each combat unit built increases further costs of similar
units by some amount (light/weak units usually less than specialized/elite ones). One should
consider this effect when creating armies – building 5 units of three different types is often much
better than building 15 of one (even when it is the strongest one). It is now significantly harder to
have an army composed of a single unit type.

The prices are calculated based on unit roles. For instance, archers, composite archers,
crossbowmen and longbowmen all belong to the same role, “Ranged Support”, and this means
that each new unit of this role built increases the costs for all units of this role. This has a side

34
effect of keeping unit upgrade costs fixed, if not upgrading unit to a different role. Things get
more complicated (and usually costly) if a unit is upgraded from one role to another, but this does
not happen often.

A unit can have more than one role – then it increases the costs of all the roles it has by an equal
amount. One of the roles may be shared with other units, while another is not. For example, both
Tactical Bombers and Strategic Bombers are Bombers, but each has another separate role. This
means each built Tactical Bomber will increase the cost of new Strategic Bombers as well, but not
as much as it increases the costs of new Tactical Bombers.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

National units
Building upon unique unit idea of vanilla Civ 4, Realism Invictus introduces the concept of national
units. Every civ has two civ-specific national units: powerful and/or unconventional units available
in limited quantities.

These units are not “replacing” any regular unit, so they can be unlocked by techs that do not
provide any units to other civs. If a civ has two different national units, available at different eras,
the allowed quantity for both will be cut in half.

National units, in addition to conventional aid bonuses that every land combat unit provides, also
either inspire friendly units in the stack by their presence (providing additional “Inspiration” aid
bonus on top of other aids), or frighten the enemies (giving them “Fear” detriment that negatively
affects their first strikes). It might be useful to keep your NUs around even after they become
obsolete as a fighting force, for the sake of the aid alone.

One of Polish national units is the awe-inspiring Winged Hussar

Some national units will have unique units they can upgrade to. These units won’t be as powerful
and distinctive as NUs – generally on par with regular units of their age – but still they can offer

35
interesting opportunities. For instance, Persian Immortals, a heavy infantry unit, can upgrade to
heavy cavalry later. These are not “true” NUs, and don’t count in NU limit calculations outlined
above.

Bear in mind that although all national units are powerful, that does not mean that all non-national
units are just expendable decoys. Most civs also have powerful or at least above-average variants
of regular units that can be used just as effectively. For example the famous Mongol horse archers
will likely be instrumental for most their conquests in any given game, but they are not national
units – they are not limited in numbers.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

World units
Another new concept in Realism Invictus is the concept of World Units. There are 6 such units, 1
for every era after Ancient, plus one extra for Industrial. These units basically act as World
Wonders, in that there can only be one instance of any such given unit built per game. They are
understandably more expensive than regular units, and usually pack more punch at what they do
as well. These go as follows:

1) Classical Era: Helepolis (“the Taker of Cities”). A giant mobile siege tower, originally built by the
Greeks in IV century BC, the biggest siege tower ever constructed. Beware of its terrain restrictions!
You may want to bring some workers to chop those forests along its path.

2) Medieval Era: Great Bombard. This unit represents several pieces of early artillery, with huge
calibers even for modern standards. The two most well-known pieces are probably the Tsar
Cannon, holding the record for being the largest bombard in the world, and the Dardanelles Gun,
that was cast for Mehmed II and still present for duty more than 340 years later in 1807, when a
Royal Navy force appeared and commenced the Dardanelles Operation.

3) Renaissance Era: Armored Carrack. The Knights of St. John launched the original ship, and it
was a truly magnificent vessel. Its hull was armored with metal plates, it carried enough guns and
crew to take cities and rout flotillas on its own (both are recorded facts of this ship’s biography),
and it even had its own smithies, windmills and gardens aboard!

4) Industrial Era: Heavy Siege Howitzer. XIX and early XX centuries were all about bigger guns.
Until the advent of tanks and planes revolutionized the warfare, the big war-deciding weapons
were the artillery guns, both on land and at sea, mounted onto grand warships. This unit, modeled
after German-made WW1-era “Big Bertha” is the ultimate artillery piece.

36
 The heaviest artillery you can get

5) Industrial Era: Zeppelin. A Zeppelin was a type of rigid airship named after the German Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th
century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. After
the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to
refer to all rigid airships. During World War I the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins
as bombers and scouts, killing over 500 people in bombing raids in Britain.

6) Modern Era: Superheavy Tank. Every great power of WW2-era toyed with the idea of
superheavy tanks; most sides even launched their first prototypes. The war was over before most
of those saw real combat, but we give you an opportunity to see how they would fare if deployed
in time to have a real impact.

Doctrines and traditions

Doctrines and traditions are a major overhaul of how Great Generals (GGs) work in game. You can
no longer settle Great Generals in your cities, giving newly built units obscene amounts of free
experience. Instead, they are able to establish military traditions and create great doctrines.

Traditions, once established, provide a small bonus to all newly constructed units of a particular
type. They act as national wonders, meaning that any amount of civs can have the same tradition
simultaneously. There are no special prerequisites to be able to establish a tradition, except for
being able to construct units of a given type. Traditions exist only for land units.

Doctrines, unlike traditions, work as Great Wonders. Any given doctrine can only be founded by
one civ in any given game, and will benefit only that civ. Like traditions, doctrines affect a certain
type of newly constructed units. Unlike traditions, doctrines provide no immediate benefits, but
instead unlock a new line of promotions, which are generally much more powerful than
37
conventional promotions. Doctrines are unlocked by specific technologies, and thus it can be wise
to save one great general for a doctrine you are planning to found as soon as you research its
tech. There are different doctrines available for many kinds of units, from ships to helicopters.
Most doctrines, except for end-game ones have a limited lifespan, and will eventually go obsolete.
The promotions that your units have already acquired will go nowhere, though.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

Religious matters
We have reworked religions extensively in Realism: Invictus. Now they are no longer one-size-fits-
all creeds that are only different due to different flavor graphics. Each religion now has a different
feel and plays completely differently. Moreover, Confucianism (which is not a religion at all) was
replaced with Zoroastrianism, a faith that was at a time very influential in Middle East and a major
influence on the development of Abrahamic religions.

Let us have a look on several aspects of different religions as they currently are in Realism: Invictus:

Spread and missionaries

The way all religions spread at the same rate in vanilla game, the world was almost invariably
dominated by the religions that were founded first – in other words, the world was almost always
split between Judaism and Hinduism, and other religions were regional at best. In Realism:
Invictus, religion spread speed is inversely proportional to the time that religion is usually founded.
Therefore, Judaism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism have it slowest, while Christianity and Islam are
lightning-fast spreaders.

Additionally, earlier religions no longer come with pre-enabled missionaries. Their missionaries
become available at later techs (although not later than late religions are founded). Also, earlier
religions can simultaneously have less missionaries than later ones, and those missionaries are
more expensive. Please note that Monasticism or monasteries will not enable you to build the
missionaries until you have the proper tech that enables them for your particular religion! For
Christianity and Islam this is not an issue, since their missionaries are, as before, available as soon
as the religion is founded, but for all other religions their missionaries come with a later tech.

Islam has one unique feature: it spreads by conquest. If an Islamic civ captures a city, it
automatically gets Islam spread to it. Its founder is also awarded a substantial amount of
Mujahedeen, so some early conquering should be easier.

Religious shock
If this feature is not turned off, founding a new religion will trigger a “religious shock”, wiping out
all religions in the cities surrounding the new Holy City. The later in game the religion is founded,
the bigger radius of the shock zone.

38
While this does not automatically spread the new religion to those cities, this feature gives new
religions founded in places with large religious presence from older religions a fighting chance;
generally, this leads to a more fluid religious scene.

Holy cities and religious restrictions

There is now little to no incentive in founding more than one religion; although having multiple
religions is still a positive factor under Free Religion, all other civics will somehow penalize you for
religious disunity in your lands. You will never be able to construct and operate temples and other
religious structures of your non-state religion, and you will likely not be able to hold onto Holy
Cities of a religion you have not adopted as your official one. If there is at least one civilization
that follows that religion, the Holy City will eventually migrate to its territory. Note that if you have
constructed a shrine in it using a Great Prophet, it will be destroyed! Running Free Religion
prevents non-state religion Holy Cities from migrating.

Religious disunity can be fought under Theocracy, which allows you to conduct inquisition in your
cities, purging them of non-state religions.

Islamic civs do not get health from swine and happiness from wine and alcohol

Many religions also have some restrictions that are placed on their followers. For example,
followers of Judaism and Islam do not eat pork, and they will never get any health benefits from
tapping swine resource. All such restrictions are properly represented in Pedia, for your
convenience. Also, note that many of those are counterbalanced by some other advantage.

Religious structures
Although all religions still have the basic temple-monastery-cathedral-shrine building line, each
particular religion provides unique advantages or drawbacks for its buildings. Please note that
gold bonus from Shrines no longer scales to the number of cities that follow a particular religion
– it is now a fixed amount.

39
New to these lines are Great Temples, which are World Wonders constructed by Great Prophets
(like Shrines) providing additional use for Prophets once you have constructed the shrine. The
effects of these Great Temple vary greatly from religion to religion (see below).

There are also Holy Places, which are constructed the traditional way, but require you to have a
certain number of cathedrals beforehand, so you have to put some effort into furthering your
state religion before you can construct them. All Holy Places work almost the same way: each of
them provides “Blessed” promo to units constructed in that city (+5% strength) and give one type
of specialist a bonus.

Remember also that instead of going obsolete, monasteries are simply discontinued – no reason
to delay your scientific progress in fear of losing their bonus.

 Judaism has temples (synagogues) that additionally serve as places where business
matters are discussed, thus providing commercial benefits. Their Great Temple, Qumran,
provides additional research benefits to all your cities by promoting Jewish scholarship.
With the Ark of Covenant, Jewish scientists get +1 production. Their great synagogues
(cathedrals) give +1 happiness with gems.

 All religious structures of Zoroastrianism are more expensive than their counterparts,
but provide more culture. Their Great Temple, Adur Farnbag, additionally increases this
bonus for all cities. With the Hall of Hundred Columns, Zoroastrian artists provide +1
commerce. Zoroastrian Fire Temples (cathedrals) give +1 health with spices.

 Hindu temples provide happiness from cows (since they are restricted by their religion
from drawing health benefits from them, this essentially makes them a luxury resource)
and health from spice. Their Great Temple, Kamakhya, provides additional health and
happiness for the continent it is located on. Vijay Stambha – the Tower of Victory – provides
additional +1 production to citizen specialists. Mandir (cathedral) gives +1 happy from
cows.

 Buddhist temples provide healing for military units, their Stupas (cathedrals) can inspire
awe in population with their sculptures (resulting in additional happiness from stone and
marble), and their Great Temple, Pha That Luang, heals units extra 20% Damage/turn and
gives +2 happiness with gold. With Bamyan Buddha Statues, Buddhist priests get +1
production (especially powerful when coupled with Angkor Wat).

 Taoist temples and Pagodas (Taoist Cathedral) provide not +1, but +2 base happiness (this
compensates for the fact that Taoism draws no happiness from gold, silver, gems and
pearls, which makes Taoism ideal for civs poorer in resources), and gives +1 health with
hemp. Their Great Temple, the Temple of Heaven, increases Great Person birth rate
throughout the civilization. The School of Confucius grants all scientists +1 production.
40
  Christian temples provide unhealth due to regular meetings of large crowds, but also
provide a small productive bonus due to public works. Christian Great Temple, Mont St.
Michel, provides additional happiness from monasteries, representing the strength of
Christian monasticism. With St. Peter’s Cathedral, all Christian priests bring in an additional
+1 gold. The Christian Cathedral gives +1 happiness with wine.

 Islamic temples serve as hubs of pan-Islamic commercial network, providing extra trade
routes and also additional happiness from gold and incense. Their Great Temple, the Kaaba,
turns the city into an unbelievable commercial hub. With the Spiral Minaret, Islamic
merchants enjoy +1 production. Mosque (cathedral) gives +1 happy with gold.

 Solar Cult temples and great temples (cathedrals) reinforce the authority of rulers,
lowering city maintenance. Great temples provide additional +1 happiness with gold. The
Platform of Eagles and Jaguars, increases military unit production and reduces war
weariness, while raising it for enemies. With the Temple of the Moon, all engineers get +1
production. Solar Cult is the only religion to have a flavor version – many civs in
Mediterranean region will refer to it as the cult of Sol Invictus instead, with different names
for wonders, buildings and units, but the same effects; same goes for African and Middle
Eastern civs and Atenism, and for Oriental civs and State Shinto.

 Orthodox Christianity is only available in the Crusades scenario for now. It is a special
religion in that instead of providing gold with the Great Shrine, it gives +5% gold to
temples, thus awarding the city owner instead of the owner of the Holy City. Hagia Sophia
is now Orthodox Great Temple, providing additional culture from religious buildings.
Mount Athos Monastery gives +1 production to priest specialists. Orthodox Cathedral can
turn two citizen in priest and gives +1 happy to gold or incense. There is no way to found
Orthodox Christianity in regular game.

Paganism
One more important religious aspect that was not there in vanilla game is paganism. Every civ has
a pagan religion associated with it, represented by pagan temples giving different bonuses. These
bonuses can be further augmented by some civics and wonders, thus making sticking to paganism
a viable choice instead of adopting a major religion as soon as one is available to you. In particular,
Pyramids, Stonehenge and Statue of Zeus are geared specifically towards a pagan civ, and will not
provide any significant benefits to non-pagan players.

Especially if you manage to build one or more of the above wonders, and you have a pagan
temple with bonuses that are to your liking, sticking to Paganism for a long while can be a very
viable tactic. Eventually, though, you will likely have to switch to one of the major religion, as
pagan temples go obsolete in Medieval era.

41
Free Religion and Cult of Personality
One thing players should be aware of is that all religious buildings now require their religion to
be constructed and function. Therefore, under late-game civics of Free Religion and Cult of
Personality, you will not be able to construct any religious buildings. This is very much intentional,
as it represents the secular outlook of many modern societies, where religion is no longer a matter
of state and the suppression of religion in totalitarian countries with strong leader cults,
respectively.

Instead, if you adopt Free Religion, you can create Religious Communities in cities to better
capitalize on your religious diversity, with unique effects for each religion, in addition to +1 culture
from each:

 Jewish community provides +25% foreign trade route yield.

 Zoroastrian community gives additional +10% culture.

 Hindu community reduces war exhaustion by 25%.

 Buddhist community gives +1 research and heals wounded units.

 Taoist community provides +1 health.

 Christian community gives +2 production.

 Islamic community provides +1 trade route.

 Solar cult community lowers the city maintenance by 10%

 Orthodox community increases military unit production.

In addition, every community allows the construction of a representative of the respective religion.
Representatives function as missionaries, but are more limited in number and more expensive.

What’s new in 3.5: Religious Shock mechanic has been introduced. Also, indirectly, since the new Animism civic disallows a state
religion, it alters early game religion interplay quite significantly.

Great People
Several kinds of Great People and their abilities were significantly reworked in RI. Some of their
abilities were taken away, to be replaced by somewhat more involved mechanics. Changes to
Great Generals were covered in “Doctrines and traditions” section above; here are some changes
to other kinds of Great People.

Great Artists
The immediately noticeable thing about Great Artists in Realism Invictus is that they can no longer
create a Great Work (or “Culture bomb”, as it is colloquially known among players). Instead of this
42
big one-time culture boost, a variety of specific Great Works of Art is available to them. Those
works not only provide the cities they are built in with a steady income of culture, but also have
additional beneficial effects (more often than not culture-related).

Note that the particular works your Artists are able to create are determined by the Art Era you
are in. Art eras are successively constructed as they are unlocked by technology and construction
of required buildings, and increase your total cultural output, in addition to unlocking new Works
of Art.

Great Scientists
Like Great Artists, Scientists are able to create a variety of Great Works of Science, providing
additional utility to this GP type. The effect of Academies they create were reduced somewhat to
compensate.

Unlike Works of Art, the available scientific works are updated automatically as your technology
advances, six available each scientific era (except for industrial, which has twice that amount). They
get obsolete after two scientific eras.

Great Prophets
As outlined above in the religion section, Great Prophets have utility beyond building Great
Shrines in that they are also able to construct Great Temples.

Great Merchants
Great Merchants, in addition to their existing abilities, have extended utility in Industrial-Modern
eras. They are able to create enterprises – national wonders that provide your civilization with
otherwise hard to come by resources. There are three types of enterprises a merchant can
construct: a car factory, a pharmaceutical company and a movie studio.

A car factory provides you with Cars – a strategic resource that provides your troops with mobility.
Infantry can be Motorized and Mechanized with cars, raising their movement rate.

A pharmaceutical company provides you with Pharmaceuticals – a health resource that give your
civilization (or whoever you decide to sell them to) extra health.

Likewise, a movie studio gives you Hit Movies – a happiness resource you already know from
Hollywood wonder.

All three of the enterprises have their own World Wonder counterparts as well (Ford Motor
Company, Bayer AG and Hollywood respectively), which are the only ways to get these resources
without expending a Great Merchant.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

43
 Other aspects

Revolutions
We implemented an experimental version of Revolutions component for 3.5. It is not directly
based on any of those already available in other mods, though it is a distant cousin of Platyping’s
python Revolutions.

What this component does is it gives each city a measure of separatism that is dictated by plenty
of in-game factors. If the resulting measure of separatism is over 10%, the city has a chance each
turn equal to its separatism to first begin rioting, and if the riots are already in effect, to outright
declare independence (along with other nearby similarly inclined cities), with the actual chance
each turn being equal to the measure of separatism. Note that while a city with a positive
separatism below 10% cannot declare independence on its own, it may join other revolting cities
when they declare theirs.

When a city first begins rioting, the player is offered to deal with the separatists; the methods for
that vary greatly depending on the government civic that the player is currently running, ranging
from bribes to oppression, but they usually carry certain drawbacks with them. If/when separatism
level in a city drops below 0%, riots are removed.

If those measures are unsuccessful, either a new civ will declare independence, the city reverts
back to its original owner, or to barbarians (if both previous options are impossible), expelling all
the stationed troops and possibly dragging along any other cities with positive separatism (the
closer they are to the revolters, the higher the chance). As mentioned above, other cities may opt
to join the rebellion if their separatism is positive (even if it is below 10%).

Cities under risk will display separatism symbols on their name billboards – yellow background if
separatism is between 0 and 10%, orange if it is above 10% and red if the city is rioting.

Yellow background shows the city has separatism below 10%

The negative factors increasing separatism of a city are:

 Unhappiness (the single most powerful factor)

 Unhealthiness
 Wrong religion (for each wrong religion; also for lack of state religion)
 Foreign culture (which can also determine the actual revolter civ)
 Rioting

44
  Amount of population (which means larger cities are harder to keep in line)

In addition, those negative factors can be modified globally by the civ in question having a high
war weariness or being ahead of everyone else in score or military power3.

The positive factors reducing separatism are:

 Certain civics
 Military occupation (the initial “grace period” after the city has been conquered)
 Military presence
 Espionage generated in that city
 Effects of dealing with rioting
 Some buildings, such as palaces and jails

An additional powerful positive global modifier only comes into play relatively late, if ever. When
the total number of alive and independent (non-vassal) players drops below half of the initial
number, and one player is at least 50% ahead of everyone else in score, the “End of History”
modifier kicks in, reducing separatism by -100% per each fewer civ below the threshold (capped
at -90%). This can quickly offset the mounting penalties for being ahead in score and power, and
for a player going for conquest victory this should make the late-game cleanup less tedious.

All factors affecting separatism can be seen in the tooltip

As time passes and technologies advance, the relative weight of particular factors influencing
separatism changes. The “definition of sovereignty” depends on the average era for all in-game
civs (except for barbarians), unless one civilization is two or more eras ahead of said average (in
which case it will be the driving force for the change). Generally speaking, separatism becomes
harsher as the eras advance (though of course the arsenal of instruments for dealing with it also
increases).

3
If this seems counter-intuitive to you, outside of gameplay reasons this can be interpreted as lack of viable
external enemies that would otherwise create a pressure for greater solidarity in the society. In the absence of
external existential threats, internal problems come to the fore, among which the grievances of national minorities.
45
 Each era has its own challenges

The rundown of factors influencing separatism in a given city can be seen in the tooltip of the
separatism bar in the city screen. Additionally, a summary of separatism for all cities, as well as
the global modifiers, can be accessed at the special Separatism Advisor screen, available through
a button in the upper left corner. If the game option for revolutions is turned off, all interface
elements concerning revolutions and separatism tracking will be hidden.

The AI is aware of factors causing separatism, and will try counteracting them. Do not expect AI
to be brilliant at that though – the evaluation is somewhat simplistic, and having this component
on is probably a net benefit for human players.

NB: a lot of checks need to be made each turn by the revolution code. This means that when
turned on, this game option has a noticeable performance impact.

What’s new in 3.5: this component is all-new for 3.5.

Barbarian civilizations
Unless this is specifically turned off in custom game settings, the barbarians, upon reaching a
critical amount of cities and population, can settle down, forming new civilizations. This civilization
will include all barbarian cities and units on a given landmass where the barbarian presence was
the highest.

The actual critical threshold that barbarians need to cross to be able to settle down is dependent
on the number of civs already in game and the number of civs already created this way.

Since in some scenarios there are a lot of pre-placed barbarian cities, those scenarios will generally
have Barbarian civ component turned off, to prevent all of the map’s barbarians from immediately
settling down from the get go.

What’s new in 3.5: this component is all-new for 3.5.

Epidemics
Deadly epidemics can strike cities that neglect sanitation. Each city at any time has an epidemic
chance indicated in the city screen. Unless that chance is zero, an epidemic can hit a city, killing
its population each turn until it ends.

There are many factors that influence epidemic chances: epidemics can be induced by
surrounding terrain (flood plains, jungle and swamps), by contact with other epidemic-hit cities,
by unhealthy population, etc. You can always review the factors affecting epidemic chances in a
city through a tooltip that appears when hovering mouse pointer over the epidemic chance.
46
To counter epidemics, you have to research medical techs and build medical/sanitary structures
in your cities, keep the population healthy and especially get rid of unhealthy terrain (flood plains
can’t be removed in any way, so a city having many flood plains in its radius needs special
attention regarding epidemics).

You can get a detailed tooltip if you hover your mouse over epidemic chance indicator in the upper left part of the
city screen

Epidemics can never reduce a city’s population below 4, but they can start in such cities and, while
not reducing the population of their original city, they can spread to other cities from there. Also,
a city experiencing a epidemic will suffer a drop in its commerce and productivity for its duration,
so even a city of size 4 or less will be hurt by epidemics.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant; in general, the system has been slightly rebalanced. Cities show an epidemic symbol on
their billboard if the epidemic chance is above 0%.

Healthcare Advances
Starting with Renaissance era, healthcare advances will be available to you. These big projects
raise total health and lower epidemic chances across your empire, which is crucial as the
population keeps increasing. They are not cheap, but are worth it in the long run, as they enable
your civilization’s population to grow further.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

Terrain
Terrain-wise, we tried to keep changes in our mod somewhat limited. There are no new terrain
types, and most changes are concerning terrain features. Mostly, this was done to keep it
compatible with most random map generation scripts out there. There are several new terrain
features that were added to our mod: marsh, savannah, hot springs, reefs and islands.

Marshes are nasty pieces of terrain that rarely contain useful resources, negatively impact health
of neighboring cities while providing almost no yields and, unlike most other terrain, negatively
influence the defensive abilities of units that stand in them. This provides what probably is the
only real positive use for marshes: luring enemies there to slaughter them more efficiently.
Marshes can be drained with sufficiently advanced technology.
47
Savannahs are sparsely wooded areas near equatorial latitudes that work as “light versions” of
forests. They offer a modest defensive bonus, can be chopped for production, etc. No resources
are exclusive to savannahs, and almost no resources will spawn there normally.

Hot springs are a rare terrain feature that can be found at extreme latitudes. In later eras, one can
exploit them to create balneological health resorts on them, providing health and happiness to
their populations (and additional benefits to Germans, whose version comes earlier and is more
powerful).

Reefs and islands are water features – something that was completely absent in standard game.
Reefs are a nasty feature that will slow down and damage passing ships; try using them to your
advantage, as reefs close to your borders can give your fleets a good defensive chokepoint. A
special promotion available to naval units allows them to ignore the damage from reefs.

Islands feature represents pieces of land too small to count as one full land tile in Civ 4 terms; it
is still considered a water tile – ships can cross it, while land units cannot. Islands offer a moderate
defensive bonus to ships, a fact which potentially adds a bit more depth to naval engagements.
Cold climate islands provide 1 more food than temperate ones, mostly for gameplay reasons,
since they will usually spawn near much less hospitable terrain.

When it comes to improvements, you will notice that there are a lot of them – and more, they
tend to increase their outputs with certain techs and buildings. Some of them will be covered in
more detail in the following sections. Take a special note of the fact that certain buildings in cities
can improve the yields of your improvements – indeed, some of them (lumber mill, for example)
will be pretty useless if you don’t build those buildings.

One important distinction from vanilla BtS in our mod is the route system. Roads no longer get a
magical movement bonus as soon as some tech is researched. What you’ll get now is a new
improved route type that you will have to lay down with your workers. Railroads worked this way
in vanilla Civ4 – now there are several consecutive route types, and most require a resource to be
constructed. To build quality paved roads you will have to have access to stone (or brick from
brickworks)!

What’s new in 3.5: if you are running Animism, jungle can actually be quite a boon in early game.

Food production
A very important change that you should notice is that each citizen now eats 3 food. Most terrains
and non-farm improvements have their food yields unchanged – so where does the food come
from?

The answer to that is that farming (and fishing, where it applies) is now a much more important
part of gameplay. Historically, much of the success of any given civilization was dependent on its
agricultural effectiveness; until XIX century more than 90% of people everywhere were enrolled in
48
food production. In contrast, in vanilla Civ 4 and earlier versions of our mod, a city – or a whole
civilization indeed – could easily prosper without building a single farm, except for tapping crop
resources, and farms were one thing that a player cared least of all when losing to pillagers.

With our new balance, farms (and fisheries) become essential for the growth of your cities, and
there are many factors influencing their effectiveness. Your food production early on is fairly
inefficient, but as technologies advance, your farms will become more effective – and sometimes
you will have some harder choices laid out before you.

Early on, if you have enough cattle resources, you might opt to forego agriculture as a whole,
switching to Pastorial Nomadism civic, which severely enhances your pastures while making your
farms almost useless. It is not likely that you will want to stay that way for long, though, since
farms will likely be your main food source later. Some civs have special national improvements
that allow them to viably cling to Nomadism for a much longer time than most others.

Slavery is now first and foremost, as it was historically, about food production: when it first
becomes available, slave farms are the most effective way to produce food. Their major drawback,
though, is that they do not benefit from technologies, so by about Medieval era, food production
on regular farms becomes just as efficient – and with Serfdom even more so.

Another transition occurs around Industrial era – new Mechanized farms become available. These
do not benefit from Serfdom the way normal farms do, but as time goes, they become much more
efficient through technology and special buildings, like fertilizer factories. Eventually they outpace
normal (even Serfdom-powered) farms in terms of food production, so at some moment you will
be willing to abandon now-useless Serfdom in favor of other civics.

Other improvements will also increase their effectiveness with technology and certain civics, but
things are much more straightforward with those, so I will not be going into details here.

What’s new in 3.5: mechanized farms no longer “discover” new crops.

Cultivation
Cultivation is a method of getting crops you do not have in late game, or simply getting more
food. There are special “fertile soil” tiles that should be placed at map creation. Not only they
provide +1 food, later on they can be used to create an instance of a crop resource (corn or rice
on grasslands, wheat or potato on plains). Some civs also have their specific cultivation techniques
that allow them to create additional resources (see below).

National Improvements
One very significant addition you have to know about is that every playable civilization now has a
unique improvement only they can build. These improvements vary greatly in their effects, ranging

49
from things that can be constructed almost everywhere (like Mongol Grazing Grounds) to things
that greatly improve one specific resource (like Ethiopian Coffee Plantations).

Some of the improvements allow civs in question to make good use of features that would be
detrimental to all others (for instance, Aztecs can improve swamps and turn them into useful tiles)
while yet some other allow their civs to use certain terrains in unconventional ways (for instance,
Incas can basically build their farms on hills).

Some powerful improvements are dependent on one particular resource – examples include
France, whose improvement depends on wine, and Dravida, dependent on spices. In those cases,
to avoid being 100% luck-based, from Botany tech civs in question are able to cultivate their
required resource (see above if you want to learn more about cultivation):

Carthage Dyes Andosol

Dravida Spice Andosol and Chernozem
Ethiopia Coffee Andosol
France Wine Chernozem

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant, except Germany getting a new NI based on hot springs, Transoxiana getting a new NI
based around luxury resources, and Dravidians actually being able to cultivate their spices.

Events
As Beyond the Sword has introduced the event system, our mod now takes a limited advantage
of that. We did not introduce any new events, but existing ones were extensively tweaked to match
the realities of our mod. Some were even deactivated, as they no longer made sense: for instance,
Rifled Artillery is now a tech that everyone can research, and representing it as an event was no
longer necessary. Some events now work better thanks to stuff that was already in our mod;
barbarian-spawning events will now, for example, spawn appropriate flavor units for that
particular barbarian tribe.

What’s new in 3.5: some more fixes to event triggers and effects.

Civics
There are many new civics to use in Realism Invictus mod, and even most of old civics are reworked
in some way. Each civic category now has 8 civics in it, and they don’t necessarily form a linear
progression – newer civics are not always better. In fact, in some cases you might want to stay
with some of your initial civics throughout most of the game.

AI leaders are also aware of this, and will try to choose a civic combination that most fits their
playing style; in any case, you won’t see them blindly adopting all new civics they come across,
and you aren’t advised to do that either. Many civics can drastically alter your gameplay style, and
are not applicable to all situations and playstyles.

50
Note that there is a significant side effect to running Slavery or Serfdom: rebellions. These revolts
may occur near any of your cities as long as you have those civics (unless you turn this feature off
in custom game options). The strength of rebel units roughly corresponds to your military
technology – some key military techs (for example, Flintlock Musket) cause the rebels to become
stronger. As a rule of a thumb, the tech that gives you better irregular units (shortswordsman,
levy, irregulars etc.) also buffs rebels.

What’s new in 3.5: new civic, Animism: specifically tailored for civs starting with lots of jungle. Slave/serf rebellions can now be
turned off.

Diplomacy
Generally speaking, diplomacy is rather unchanged compared to vanilla Civ 4, but 3.5 introduced
some significant changes as well as quality-of-life features.

The most significant practical difference is the overhaul of previously barely functional diplomatic
modifier for being ahead of another civ. Now starting with being 25 points ahead and up to being
more than 50% ahead in score, a civ gets a diplomatic “ahead of us” penalty from its inferiors. The
amount of penalty is based on the personality of the leader.

51
Speaking of which, one very significant feature also introduced in 3.5 is the ability to see in pedia
the description of parameters that influence a leader’s personality. The players can now use the
pedia to easily estimate what to expect from AI leaders (to our knowledge, this is the first time in
all Civ series a detailed AI personality information is made available to players in-game).

What’s new in 3.5: all above-mentioned tweaks are new to 3.5

Espionage
Espionage is another BtS-specific feature that found its cozy place in Realism: Invictus. While we
did not touch the essential nature of espionage compared to vanilla BtS, we implemented a lot of
additional content for it. There will be several new espionage-associated buildings that will help
you generate more espionage, and even a couple of new espionage-oriented wonders. Espionage
is fun!

Note also that if you play with revolutions on, espionage gets a new important role in the game
as it’s one of the major factors keeping separatism at bay (and espionage missions can be crucial
in provoking it in your opponents’ cities).

What’s new in 3.5: spies are reverted to how they were pre-3.4.

Corporations
Corporations are yet another BtS-introduced feature and as such were not an integral part of
Realism mod before that. We saw no easy and realistic way to integrate them into our mod, and
in our BtS release they are simply disabled. We have a whole other system for industrial-era
economy and resources, so corporations are somewhat redundant for RI.

Dynamic Flags & Names

If appropriate game options are turned on, civilizations change their names and flags during the
game according to the situation. This is a purely cosmetic feature meant to enhance the gameplay
flavor, but not to affect the balance in any way.

Flags and names are, whenever possible, taken from historical context of those civilizations. If no
appropriate historical context exists, generic names like “… republic” will be used, and the most
plausible flag (if not of a state, then of a political party or other entity) will be used. The main
factors are civics from Government category (plus Planned Economy for communist names/flags):

 Tribal union – various starting names and flags represent tribes before actual statehood
develops. Flags are obviously not historically accurate, as prehistoric societies were not
known for their colorful heraldry, but usually feature prominent national symbols or
otherwise appropriate imagery.

 Autocracy – all empires end up here. The name will have the “… empire” format, with the
appropriate flag.

52
  Republic – not only republics, strictly speaking, but all ancient entities that were not
centralized monarchies in nature are lumped here. Leagues of city states, ancient republics
of all kinds, even confederations between several monarchies can be found here.

 Monarchy – non-imperial, and usually limited (elective, constitutional etc.) forms of

monarchy can be found here.

 Theocracy – theocratic forms of government, where they were historically available (which
is surprisingly often), or else national churches where applicable

 Democracy – non-federal modern republics end up here. As a modern civic, expect to see
relatively modern flags

 Dictatorship – modern non-democratic non-leftist forms of government. Usually military

dictatorships or fascist states.

 Federalism – as opposed to Democracy above, federal republics can be found here.

 Planned Economy – irrespective of government civics, if you’re running Planned Economy,

you will have a communist(ish) flag and name.

In practice, for all playable civs, the flags and names are also influenced by other factors, such as
particular leaders (Brian Boru’s Celts will be a High Kingship of Ireland where Robert Bruce’s will
be a Kingdom of Scotland), game era (medieval England will use age-appropriate quartered flag,
while in later eras the same civics will display the Union Jack) and a various combinations thereof.
Derivative civs will generally only use generic dynamic names, and their flags will only change
based on the game era, but not on other factors. A vassal civilization will always use a generic flag.

Flags will usually have a vertical format in early game, but will gradually switch to horizontal format
hanging sideways around Renaissance/Industrial era – when modern horizontal flags became the
universal worldwide norm.

There is an unresolved annoying bug of Civ 4 engine where units’ flags are not all updated at once
when a civ flag is updated. This can be quickly resolved by saving/loading, or otherwise usually
resolves itself when the unit in question is moved.

NB: what this means in practice is that if you play with dynamic flags, you will likely see at least
some historical fascist/communist imagery. If this is not acceptable to you or illegal in your
country, please turn this game option off.

What’s new in 3.5: this whole functionality is 100% new in 3.5.

53
Some multiplayer advice
Realism Invictus should be stable in multiplayer. In several test multiplayer games, one run until
mid-Industrial era, we did not run into any Out-of-Sync errors. Nevertheless, we had reports of
OOS occurring between several players with different OS’es (though don’t take that as a guarantee
of errors – some of our games featured a Win7 system playing with WinXP system with no
problems). Make sure the host has the most powerful and stable (preferably 64-bit) system. Also,
running a pitboss server leads to much more stable multiplayer games.

Remember that for Direct IP play, if using Steam version, you will have to revert to original non-
steam Civ 4 by selecting a “beta” in Steam (Properties->Betas). This is, in practice, not a beta, but
rather the definitive pre-steam version of the game, which has Direct IP play enabled and generally
works better with mods.

54
 Scenarios

World maps

World Map (huge)

The first scenario we developed for Realism Invictus when it was ported to BtS. This map is really,
really large – it is much larger than the maps “huge” random map setting generates. It is also
distorted a bit from strict geographic proportions, mainly to accommodate more civs in Europe
and Middle East – otherwise it would be too crowded there.

Another factor that adds to its immenseness is that it features 55 civilizations. Many of them are
not playable: these civs represent local uncivilized tribes, semi-barbaric states and influential local
kingdoms (somewhat like city states in Civilization 5). None of minor civilizations are able to
expand, at least initially, but if any of those advance to Renaissance era, they will be able to build
settlers just like other, major civs do. Also, nothing stops them from capturing cities settled by
others.

East coast of North America at the start: tribal territories

These minor civs advance come in two flavors:

55
  Uncivilized factions. These are basically flavor barbarians meant to represent local tribes
without any real united statehood behind them; they will always be at war with all players.
They hold many cities from the start, covering a lot of territory, but their tech progress is
very slow. Therefore, they will grow less and less of a threat as the game advances. They
should be seen as natural areas of expansion for their neighbors. They are unable to expand
except via conquest, and their ability to work their territories is quite limited. Their unit
roster is also much simpler than that of playable civs, missing most of the fancier unit types.

 Semi-civilized factions. These civs hold two-three cities from the start and can conduct
meaningful diplomacy. They also progress at a somewhat slower pace than regular civs,
and their unit rosters are also quite basic at the start, but as they advance in techs it will
become more and more similar to that of regular civs. Their ability to expand is also limited,
but if they survive until Renaissance, they will be able to build settlers.

Warning: due to the immense size of this map, it is not recommended that you try to run it on
anything but modern powerful PCs and only on a 64-bit OS. In late game, it will run very slowly
even on those. If you are not prepared for long waits between turns (several minutes in late
game!), you should probably select a smaller map instead. If you have a 32-bit OS, you may not
even be able to start this map.

World map (large)

This is a smaller world map we previously used in Total Realism mod for Warlords. It was
specifically brought back so that the players would have an option to play on a world map that is
not as demanding on their hardware. Please note though, that even while this map runs
significantly faster than its huge cousin, it is still more taxing than most random maps you’ll be
able to generate. Some minors are absent from this map, due to simple lack of space for them,
but all civs playable on huge are present here as well.

What’s new in 3.5: city states are now normal civilizations, without any special treatment.

Europe
European map for RI is a close relative of the World Maps; it also comes with certain pre-placed
barbarian cities, and lets players select some of the civilizations not usually available in normal
games.

As this map focuses on Europe and the Mediterranean region (with North Africa and Middle East),
it lacks Far East and the New World. Since certain resources shouldn’t normally be present in the
Old World, it includes several empty “islands” near the Western edge of the map, representing
potential New World colonies for those civs that are able to reach them.

56
 Triassic Period Earth
This is a fantasy map that places classical RI civilizations on Earth map of late Triassic Period
(Rhaetian Age, for you paleogeology buffs out there) – the original Pangaea! All civilizations’ starts
are placed at the spots roughly corresponding to their starts on contemporary Earth (which, when
accounting for continental drift, leads to some surprising neighbors!).

In addition to all the major playable civilizations, we have placed several of the better-developed
derivative civilizations as playable on the map, so the players can interact or even play as them
(though all the usual limitations of derivative civs apply – they don’t have any National
Improvements and only one National Unit per civ).

This map has almost no landmasses other than the vast supercontinent that will later divide into
all the continents we know and a bit of islands off its coasts here and there. Large amounts of
unclaimed land, especially in the Southern Hemisphere part (later to be known as Gondwana),
lead to a lot of barbarian activity, which makes some civs’ starts much more challenging – but on
the other hand, the central part of the map is pretty crowded, and, while safe from barbarians,
offers very little room for peaceful expansion.

Crusades era

Crusades era: overview

This map, unlike the world maps included in our mod, focuses on a specific period in Eurasian
history. It covers 420 years from 1110 AD, the era of Crusades, Mongol conquests, and the birth
of the Renaissance. There are several scenario-specific changes that you will not encounter
elsewhere.

Firstly, there is a nemesis system. Since the starting situation, unlike our World Maps, reflects a
historical situation with a significant past behind it, to simulate that, we gave almost all civilization
one or more nemesis. Such civs will never be able to have decent diplomatic relations, and will be
a constant threat to each other. There is no way to get rid of that modifier, other than eliminating
the civ in question.

Secondly, there is Orthodox Christianity. This is a very specific religion that is (for now) inaccessible
outside the Crusades scenario. Unlike other religions, Orthodoxy relies on autonomous churches;
instead of providing gold to their Holy City, each Orthodox city provides gold to its owner via the
temple.

Thirdly, the Mongols are a special-case civ that is designed to be AI-controlled. They get a lot of
bonuses ordinary civs lack, and, despite lacking in techs, will conquer large territories. If you start
in China, be sure to get ready, as Mongol hordes will come for you. A start with any civ bordering
Mongols is probably the hardest you can get in this scenario.

57
Note that, while the scenario was designed to try and accurately depict the historical situation in
1110 AD, we had to make some concessions to both playability and plausibility: for instance, the
very same Mongols shouldn’t start their rampage for another 100 years from the start, but AI
would be too inefficient a conqueror if held back another 100 years, and if Aquitaine were free at
the start as it should historically be, there would be no in-game way to bind it to England later.
Likewise, we did not represent some separate entities due to the simple fact that we ran out of
civilization slots. Therefore, while we are aware that, for instance, separate Aragon is a good idea,
to add it we would have to remove someone else.

The scenario is won by whoever has first score at the end, in 1530 (with the exception of Mongols,
who will, if left unchecked, always lead by a large margin in the end – but they are a special case
civ and are ignored when the winner is calculated). Obviously, for some civs this will be much
easier than for the others, so the actual difficulty of this scenario is primarily determined by
whomever you choose to lead to victory.

The map is based on a surprisingly detailed and complete medieval Mappa Mundi, which
introduces a new twist to the familiarity with Earth’s geography most players tend to have. While
the outlines of the world as we know it are guessable, it still leaves a pleasant deal of surprise for
an explorer. The map also has several “Easter eggs” to find for those who dare to navigate the
high seas (especially if you don’t spoiler it for yourself by examining it in the WorldBuilder).

By the way, having north to the right of the map instead of the top was customary those days.

Crusades era: regions and kingdoms

Some highlights for players who would like a primer on the historical situation they are facing:

 Byzantine Empire: due to the efforts of Alexios Komnenos, the empire has somewhat
recovered from a disastrous defeat from Seljuks in 1071. Not a lot of ground has been
regained since, but the Empire is now in a good shape to start reclaiming what has been
lost. You start with excellent territory and are #1 in score, so basically all you have to do to
win is keep this up. This will not be a walk in the park, though, as you will not find any
lasting friends anywhere, and your enemies are among the most powerful there are.

 Crusader kingdoms: Kingdom of Jerusalem and Principality of Antioch are both facing a
grim situation. They are threatened from all sides, and there is hardly anyone willing and
able to provide them meaningful help. Still, they start with formidable armies, and what
some see as threats can become an opportunity if you are able to topple the Fatimids, the
Seljuks or maybe even the Eastern Roman Empire. Armenian Cilicia can also be considered
a crusader state, and it is able to provide even more challenge as its starting position is
even more dangerous.

58
 Muslim Middle east: the Fatimids and the Seljuks are the two major powers in the region.
The Fatimids are probably the easiest overall civ to win with, as their position is relatively
safer than that of the other “big boys” of the scenario. It is quite possible that you will be
able to win just by defending your borders and building up peacefully. If you are playing
the Seljuks, beware – the Mongols will likely come after you in the second half of the
scenario. There is also a number of smaller Muslim states in the region for those who want
more challenge.

 Holy Roman Empire: just as in Byzantine case, you start near the top, and your position is
central, presenting you with opportunities and threats wherever you turn. Keep in mind
that you will likely need to bring down both Byzantines and France to feel safe. A good
idea would be reining in the popes as soon as possible.

 France: the second powerful player in Europe. Seek opportunities wherever they arise –
participate in the Reconquista, subjugate England, meddle in Germany or Italy, or even go
on a private crusade. You will probably have to bring down one or more of the major
players who threaten your hegemony…

 The British Isles: a tangled web of old rivalries, with a measure of outside threats as well.
Scotland, Eire, England, Gwynedd – whoever you choose, you will have enough knives
pointed at your back. Due to the fact that Mappa Mundi this scenario is based upon was
made in England, this is the most detailed and upscaled region of the map. A fun self-
imposed challenge for the Irish player is to try retracing the voyage of St. Brendan and find
the Garden of Eden (yes, it is possible if you have carracks and are sufficiently determined!).

 The Iberian Peninsula: Reconquista is just starting. The kingdoms of Castille, Leon, Galicia
and Aragon (represented by a single civ) and soon-to-be-kingdom of Portugal have a clear
goal ahead of them: reclaim Iberia. Conversely, as Almoravids you will start very powerful,
but you’ll have to deal with invading armies of various Christian entities. A fun self-imposed
challenge when playing Spain is to colonize America by the end of the scenario.

 Eastern Europe: Poland and Hungary are both stuck between two larger neighbors. It is
probably not wise to engage them one-on-one, but if you wait for the right opportunity,
such is when they are engaged on other fronts, you may well claim your share and become
a major power.

 Scandinavia and Rus: Scandinavian kingdoms are in a rare position that basically allows
them to freely choose their own targets. They are relatively large, and their natural isolation
ensures that there are no immediate threats to them. Kievan Rus is experiencing its
historical golden age at the start, and if it manages to eliminate the immediate threats (first
of all the Cumans), it has a good shot at winning.

59
  Africa: Makuria and Ethiopia in the East both challenge Fatimid supremacy in the region. If
either of them triumphs, they could become a new dominant power on the continent.
Mali’s relatively isolated position is both their asset and disadvantage – the ability to
expand freely can be the key to winning, but at the same time, measures should be taken
to establish trade contacts with Europe and Asia.

 Indian peninsula: India is on the brink of Islamic invasion. Ghurids are ready to carve
themselves a sultanate out of Rajput territory. Further south, Chola empire is seeking to
expand its influence. Whichever side you choose, the fight will be brutal, but the rewards
will be great.

 Far East: Mongols dominate this region. While China is currently split in two, whichever side
you choose your most significant problem will still be the Mongol hordes. Japan is living
through one of the calmer periods in its history, and its geographic location protects it
from Mongol invasion better than other civs in the area. The Mongols should be treated
more as a force of nature than as a regular civ; try to use them to your advantage, preying
on civs they hit, grabbing a city or two. Due to starting close to Mongols, civs in this area
are among the hardest to play.

What’s new in 3.5: nothing significant.

The Deluge scenario

The Deluge: overview

This is another RI map that focuses on a particular historical period. It also has a less global scope
to it, covering only the Central Europe. It covers the years 1648-1728, a period that brought drastic
changes to geopolitical balance in the region, saw empires rise and fall, and generally is a very
interesting era and region to depict.

Thirty Years War is over, and Western Europe is just beginning to recover from this calamity. From
the war, a new (and rather unexpected at the moment) power was born in the North – kingdom
of Sweden. With its powerful army and newly acquired European holdings, it seems ready to
continue its expansion, and Central Europe seems to be just the place for it. Meanwhile, trouble
is brewing within Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the local hegemon – its Orthodox are in open
revolt under the banners of Cossack hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky and seek to establish self-rule.
Further to the East, vast Russian Tsardom is recovering from catastrophic Time of Troubles, and
powerful Ottoman Empire is contemplating another push into European heartland…

Like the Crusades scenario, Deluge is won by whichever civ having the biggest score at the
scenario end. Unlike the Crusades, though, there are five Great Powers of the era whose strengths
are roughly equal (Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, Russia, Ottomans and Austria), and several second-
tier nations that can catch up to them in skilled hands.
60
Since the scenario depicts only a part of the world, several resources (such as New World crops
or elephants) are not generally available on the map. However, to simulate the contacts with other
parts of the world, two special civs are used – Far East and New World. They can’t be reached by
units (nor can they reach you), but are able to trade resources not normally available otherwise.
Also, note that to trade with the New World, you have to research Merchant Adventures first.

Also, note that many civilizations start with special buildings pre-placed in their cities to likewise
simulate off-map interactions, such as ongoing colonization of the Urals for Russia or Egyptian
resources for Ottomans. These are basically “special abilities”, and most civs have one.

Like in Crusades scenario, many nations have diplomatic penalties against each other,
representing established feuds. They are usually not as strong as in Crusades case, but
nevertheless serve as a good indicator of the side that you should expect trouble from.

The Deluge: nations

 Poland-Lithuania: you start at the peak of your power, but your central position
surrounded by powerful competitors on most sides means you need to prepare to fight
to keep your lead. Your country is religiously divided between Catholic and Orthodox,
and you also have the breakaway Cossacks to deal with. I'd say your hands are going to
be rather full the next 80 years or so...

 Sweden: Thirty Years War has left you with a large and modern army, and some
possessions around the Baltic. Could this be a jumpstart to forming Swedish Empire that
will dominate the region? Remember that your starting territories are rather poor (even if
Sweden proper is well developed), and your initial advantage will start to fade if you do
not move quickly.

 Russia: you enjoy the second largest territory in this scenario at the start. The problem is,
it is almost totally undeveloped, and your economy is in shambles. It is probably a wise
idea to build up a little before trying to expand, but keep in mind that your sprawling
lands put you at a disadvantage when it comes to catching up in tech.

 Ottomans: knocking at Vienna's gate, you are an empire in its prime. With the largest
territory, many vassals and a safe hinterland, this is probably the easiest start in the
Deluge. However, bear in mind that due to your size, the Western powers will likely out-
tech you in the end.

 Austria: you start with a well-developed core territory and a big vassal, but Ottomans will
likely be a source of major trouble for you. Are you prepared to deal with their invading
armies?

61
  Brandenburg-Prussia: in the land of sprawling empires, you are a shining beacon of
efficiency - small, well developed, with powerful armies. You will likely keep ahead in tech
as well - so why not try carving an empire of your own out of Central Europe?

 Zaporozhian Host: you are definitely not a minor power, but your start is probably the
most challenging one. Not only do you start at war with a major power, but even after
that, you will likely find no friends among your neighbors. However, pick your fights
wisely, and you may yet rise to greatness!

 Denmark-Norway: you are mostly a spectator to the troubles in Central Europe, but your
relatively large, safe and well-developed territory allows you an opportunity to become
something more, if this is what you desire...

 Venice: your heyday is already gone, and the Ottomans, whom you start at war with,
threaten what remains of your trading empire. Yet, Venice is still a rich commercial hub,
and your fleet is still formidable. Do you have what it takes to make a comeback?

 Other nations: there are several other minor nations starting with one-two cities each.
While they may be fun to play with in skilled hands, they stand little chance of actually
winning the scenario. That said, experienced players might find the challenge interesting…

What’s new in 3.5: this scenario has been tweaked slightly, but Is mostly the same.

62
 Conclusion

Despite being over 60 pages long, this manual is by no means exhaustive, and does not pretend
to tell you everything you need to be an expert Realism Invictus player. It is here merely to give
you an idea of what to expect. The best way to get the hang of all features is playing anyway. If
you are struggling with some aspects of gameplay or want to share your own tips and strategies,
please come visit our community:

Realism Invictus forum: http://www.realism-invictus.com/forum/

Realism Invictus thread on CFC: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/

Realism Invictus section on CFC: https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-realism-invictus.202/

Thank you for reading it and I hope you have found it helpful. Now go play!

63
 Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Realism Invictus?

2. Have you been around for long?
3. I liked some element from your mod (piece of artwork, concept etc), and I want to use it in
my own mod. May I?
4. I have a question/bug report/suggestion. Where do I go?
5. I liked your mod very much. How can I help your team?
6. I feel you treated some group/ideology/nation/religion unfairly in your mod. You give it
too much/too little credit. :-(
7. Can I use a custom map with your mod?
8. Can I use custom map generation scripts with your mod?
9. Will you extend your mod to the future? There is so much cool stuff you could add…
10. Will you add more civs? At least my favorite one(s)?
11. Why don’t you use animated leaderheads?
12. Can you make it so that civs found cities in historic places and appear at historic periods?
Rhye’s does it.
13. Why are the cardinal directions in the Crusades Era map so confused?
14. Why did you turn off tech trading?
15. Why is AI cheating so much? Can it not play fair?
16. Why do you release new versions so rarely?
17. Do you need beta testers?
18. Where can I get more info on how stuff works and advice on how to play your mod?

 Q: What is Realism Invictus?

A: It’s a mod for Civ 4 Beyond the Sword. Sure, yeah, we know Civ 5 has been around like
forever, and Civ 6 is already here as well. We decided that we have not yet done everything
we wanted with Civ 4. We’re funny that way. And the fact that thousands of people still
download the latest versions of our mod means we’re probably doing something right…

 Q: Have you been around for long?

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 more than a decade old already, one of the
oldest mods (probably the oldest mod continuously being developed) for Civ 4. From
February 2006 the mod ended up in hands of Houman, who has been the team leader for a
long while. 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”. February
64
 2011 saw the first Beyond the Sword release, along with another name change to “Realism
Invictus”.

 Q: I liked some element from your mod (piece of artwork, concept etc), and I want to use it
in my own mod. May I?

A: By all means you should do it! Realism Invictus 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.

 Q: I have a question/bug report/suggestion. Where do I go?

A: We have a forum specifically for those needs. We invite you to visit http://www.realism-
invictus.com/forum/ for all your RI community needs. We leave no post unanswered! If you
are having trouble accessing our forum, you can ask in our CFC subforum here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=202

 Q: I liked your mod very much. How can I help your team?

A: At this point, the active development of RI is basically over and as such there is nothing
to help with (and basically no team to speak of). That said, you are free to develop your own
modifications (“modmods”) for RI.

 Q: I feel you treated some group/ideology/nation/religion unfairly in your mod. You give it
too much/too little credit. :-(

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. We are always
eager to discuss the reasons for our decisions, and as our experience shows, they are not
always immediately apparent.

 Q: Can I use a custom map with your mod?

A: No. Unfortunately, custom maps don’t work with RI, at least “out of the box”. 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 and some dll changes (maximum number of players) that will
cause normal maps to just crash at the start. If you have enough experience, you can make a
map RI-compatible by creating enough empty “players” and 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. The only custom maps you can play RI on are the world maps that come
with it and the Crusades, Europe, Triassic Earth and Deluge scenarios.

65
 Q: Can I use custom map generation scripts with your mod?

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 RI. Of course, we haven’t tested every single script out
there, but some of more popular ones, like PerfectWorld and Tectonics, can give you an
excellent RI playing experience, better than the scripts that come bundled with Civ 4
(though their versions modified for compatibility with RI also come with the mod). We
recommend you experiment and find the one that suits your needs. Moreover, some of the
best random map generators out there were tweaked to better work with RI and are
included with the mod since 3.2 version.

 Q: Will you extend your mod to the future? There is so much cool stuff you could add…

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
roughly year 2000. 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.

 Q: Will you add more civs? At least my favorite one(s)?

A: Not likely your favorite ones, and there are several reasons for it. While we try to add new
civs, and there are already several in our mod, most of the more popular ones aren’t getting
added for several reasons. First of all, our World Map is pretty cramped as it is, and will
become even more so when we eventually add some BtS civs (not even all of these will
make it in). Then, with the amount of attention every civ gets in our mod (leaders, units,
Great People, etc.), it is a titanic job to add every single 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. This also means that some
potentially interesting civs will not be added at all, due to the fact that there is very little
material available on them (the first example that comes to mind for that is Khmer). We have
added several custom civs so far, and as you can see they are likely not the ones that would
be your first choices. Lastly, but probably most importantly, it is unlikely there will be any
major new additions to RI going forward, as 3.5 is the last major release.

 Q: Why don’t you use animated leaderheads?

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: since I can make those static leaderheads myself, I am not bound to wait for

66
 someone to make me an animated leaderhead – and thus we can put in any leader I can
possibly find, and you will notice that we have more leaders than most other mods. Lastly,
static leaderheads eat up much less system resources. In a mod as big as ours, every little bit
counts. –WH.

 Q: Can you make it so that civs found cities in historic places and appear at historic periods?
Rhye’s does it.

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. We will probably implement emerging new civs at some point in future
though.

 Q: Why are the cardinal directions in the Crusades Era map so confused?

A: The Crusades Era map is based on a genuine medieval map of the world, and reflects all its
peculiarities. Of course, the map is not 100% geographically accurate, and even contains some
fictional places (believed to be real by the authors of the map back when it was made). The
issue with cardinal directions though is a simple case of cultural dissonance: medieval
European maps were made with East, not North being the “top” of the map, as this direction
was considered to be holy.

 Q: Why did you turn off tech trading?

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 together.

 Q: Why is AI cheating so much? Can it not play fair?

A: This is a complex question to answer, actually. Firstly, did you feel that AI was cheating in
vanilla Civ 4? Because it was, and massively so, if you played on any difficulty level above
Noble. And it is a good thing too, or it wouldn’t have been able to provide you with enough
challenge to entertain you. Compared to vanilla, AI actually cheats less in RI. You are
welcome to compare the difficulty-level related bonuses in vanilla and RI xml for yourself.
Secondly, if you feel that because you’re playing the same difficulty level as you were used
to in vanilla and losing, then I suggest just lowering the difficulty a bit – AI doesn’t cheat
more, but it is certainly smarter and more aggressive than in vanilla, so until you firmly find
your legs with the mod, it is suggested that you play on lower difficulties.

67
 Q: Why do you release new versions so rarely?

A: Well, we are a team of perfectionists, and we like to ensure that everything is as complete
as we can before we release a major version. Therefore, we only release major versions once
every half a year or so. That doesn’t mean that you are locked out from whatever we are
currently doing: everyone can check out our latest internal build from our Subversion (SVN)
repository, which will provide you with exactly what we ourselves have at the moment, and
you will be able to keep it up-to-date. Our forum has a handy guide on how to do that:
http://www.realism-invictus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=825. But please keep in mind
that this IS an internal build not intended for release. While we try to provide support to
users playing our SVN versions, please remember that they are essentially betas. And please
remember the revision number you’re playing (BTW, it is a very bad idea to update your
SVN revision during an ongoing game – more often than not it will render your current
saves unplayable, and even if it doesn’t, it can cause all manner of strange side effects). At
this point, no new major versions are expected to be released in the future.

 Q: Do you need beta testers?

A: Yes, we do. See the previous question on how to get your hands on our latest internal
build, and play it! Then report your finds to us on our forum, and that’s that – you are
helping us. We really appreciate this kind of help. Any major bugs found will still be fixed,
even if no major releases are planned anymore.

 Q: Where can I get more info on how stuff works and advice on how to play your mod?

A: Well, you are looking at the manual that tries to help you with that. Also, in-game hints
have been rewritten to provide useful RI-specific advice (and if you didn't know, you can
read all hints in the Pedia!). And of course feel free to drop by our forum and simply ask! We
love talking to people ourselves, and there’s still a very active player community.

68
 Credits and thanks

Team members who worked on the current version (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our
forum):

 AbsintheRed – Ambrus Nagy (Hungary)

 Josh – Josh Sjoding (USA)

 Walter Hawkwood (Russia)

Former team members (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum or on CFC):

 12monkeys (Germany)
 Anaztazioch (Poland)
 Ankenaton (USA)
 charly1977 (Germany)
 Cruel (Brazil)
 el_zozo (France)
 Hian the Frog (France)
 Houman (UK/Persia)
 israfil (Canada)
 jaynus
 Kristine
 Mexico (Slovakia)
 Nightravn
 Phatlip
 PTFeilong
 Tahnkout (Turkey)
 Vitez (Poland)

Thank you very much, for without your input, Realism Invictus would never get where it is today!

Very special thanks to people who have contributed their work directly to our mod, by helping
develop some of its specific parts (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum or on CFC):

 Arian (Netherlands)
 Bakuel (USA)
 ChaffCommander Coffey
 Dertuek (France)
 Jinzor (UK)
 Lib.Spi't
 MatteM (Sweden)
 Nanto
 NiRv4n4
 ostar

69
  Palaiologos (Greece)
 Routalempi (Finland)
 Stolenrays
 Ungomma (Russia)

Special thanks go to the people who have provided a great deal of help to us testing our mod
and giving us lots of useful feedback (in alphabetical order of nicknames on our forum):

 Ahnarras  Narxysus
 AntmanBrooks  nicrolyte (USA)
 Ambassador  pioswa
 amrod (Hungary)  plasmacannon (USA)
 arizzi  riesscar
 aod (Brazil)  rkade8583 (USA)
 awh1979  sami_snow
 BareJag (Finland)  Sathar (USA)
 Burebeesta  sazhdapec
 cfeyyaz (Turkey)  Shimicakan
 civman110  Shuikkanen (Finland)
 Darkphoenix  Sinaherib (Russia)
 ederl  spleskan_kur
 Erfeo  SR-71 (Spain)
 Fantasieprodukt  Sukkels88
 Freakwave (Netherlands)  Taylor (Cuba)
 gforce (Canada)  teks (USA)
 HannibalBarca (France)  Terkhen
 haroon  Tingyun
 Harrier (USA)  tmk
 Iamwinterborn  RonZeroRange (USA)
 Ignacio (Argentina)  vamperium
 Jayman1000  VenGence (Canada)
 Lord Brooks  [Y]
 Matsuda123  zoob (Germany)

Thank you very much, for with your help, innumerable bugs were found and fixed, and the mod
was balanced in a way that would not be possible without your input.

We would like to thank the following CFC members whose work was included in our mod or
otherwise helped it grow (due to the length of the list, I am certain that we couldn’t list everyone;
the mod is a true product of Civ4 modding community):

abbamouse, AchillesZero, AlazkanAssassin, ambrox62, Aranor, ArdRaeiss, asioasioasio, baal_isidro, bernie14, Bhruic,
C.Roland, Cafegio, Chalid, Cham, Chamaedrys, charle88, Chugginator, coffee_junkie, ComG, dacubz145, danrell,
Deliverator, Deon, Dom Pedro II, embryodead, ermelinho, esnaz, Expositus, f1rpo, Frontbrecher, GarretSidzaka,
GeneralMatt, Hell's Angel, heroes182, Hunter, Janboruta, Jinzor, JustATourist, Kathy, krowtrobot, LittleRedPoint,
Master Lexx, MaxRiga, Mumin, Mylon, naf4ever, nautil, Nevermind, Nicholas Hawkwood, NikNaks93, Notarzt,
Optimizer, Patricius, Ploeperpengel, Polycrates, Rabbit White, Ramzay1945, Refar, Robo Magic Man, RogerBacon,

70
sepamu92, Sevo, seZereth, sharick, Snafusmith, Snaitf, Stone-D, SupremeOverlord, Thalassicus, The Capo, The
Conquests, TheFourGuardian, TheLopez, tlucky4life, Tremo, veBear, villo, Von Zeppelin, Willowmound, Wolfschanze,
Xenomorph, zenspiderz, Zerver, Zuul, zwei833.

Additional thanks go to the creators of BUG mod: Alerum68, Cammagno, EmperorFool, NikNaks, Ruff_Hi
and everyone else credited in-game in BUG section.

Additional thanks go to the creators of PerfectMongoose map script for Realism Invictus: Rich
Marinaccio aka Cephalo (original creator), LunarMongoose (adapting for Civ 4), Antmanbrooks (tweaking for RI).

Additional thanks go to the person responsible for countless interface improvements adopted by
RI: Platyping

Additional thanks go to the author of Marcus Aurelius portrait used in RI: JLazarusEB.deviantart.com

Some artwork and music was taken from the following games (every single of them is very nice,
so give them a try!):

 0AD,
 Age of Empires 3,
 Age of Mythology,
 Anno 1404,
 Anno 1701,
 Axis & Allies,
 Blitzkrieg and other Blitzkrieg Engine games,
 Crusader Kings 2,
 Empire Earth 2,
 Empire Earth 3,
 Empires: Dawn of the Modern World,
 Endless Legend,
 Europa Universalis: Rome
 Europa Universalis 3,
 Europa Universalis 4,
 Grand Ages: Rome,
 Hearts of Iron 3,
 Hearts of Iron 4,
 Imperator: Rome,
 Kohan 2: Immortal Sovereigns,
 Making History,
 North and South Pirates,
 Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War,
 Rise of Nations,
 Sid Meier’s Colonization,
 Sid Meier’s Pirates!,
 Sid Meier’s Railroads,

71
  Supreme Ruler Ultimate,
 Tanktastic,
 The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind,
 Victoria 2,
 Wargame: Airland Battle and other Wargame titles,
 Wind of Luck,
 World of Tanks

Additionally, many units are directly based or inspired by these user-created mods to Total War,
C&C: Generals and Mount & Blade game series:

 Broken Crescent,
 Brytenwalda,
 Europa Barbarorum,
 European Wars,
 Lithuania Mod,
 Magyar Mod,
 Napoleonic: Total War,
 Ogniem i Mieczem,
 Peace Mission,
 Rome Total Realism,
 Rusichi,
 The End of Days,
 Visual Reality Mod,

Special thanks to King Louise Assurbanipal from Total War Forums and ZoldGorynych from Sich:
Total WarS forums.

Parts of the mod created by the Wildfire Studios (the makers of 0AD) are licensed and used in RI
under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

72