While I was in college my favourite game by far was Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. Recommended by a fellow student, I fell in love with it instantly. The strategy game had a level of depth that was unprecedented for me until then. I especially enjoyed playing the game with friends at LAN parties.
Civilization IV and its expansions Warlords and Beyond the Sword were bundled with a number of official scenarios. These mods often brought new technologies, civilizations, units, buildings, religions, etc. to the table. For instance, the scenario “Alexander the Great” added a number of classical fighting units like the peltast, the scenario “Chinese Unification” added a couple of resources like tea and jade, the scenario “Genghis Khan” added some new civilizations like Poland and Hungary, while the scenario “Next War” extended the technology tree far into the future.
I found it a shame that these additional features could not be used in the base game. As a result, it was by definition not possible to combine features from different scenarios or mods: you could not play as Judea (from the scenario “Greek World” ) in the same game in which you could also build the wonder the Big Ben (from the scenario “Road to War”).
In order to get all this extra content in the base game I decided to build a mod myself with the languages Python and XML. The aim of the mod: to extract as much content as possible from the scenarios, the games Civilization I, II, III (and later even V) and the spin-off Colonization, and then integrate this content into the base game of Civilization IV. By doing this I hoped to create the ultimate, most complete Civilization experience.
The project became known as the “Extra Mod” and was in development between 2007 and 2011. To my delight, it became a quite popular mod among the general public.
Check out the thread of the “Extra Mod” on the fan forum CivFanatics here.
