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Civ Crucible is a personal mod that has been in sporadic development since DF 40d. Starting out as a spiritual successor to the Civilisation Forge[www.bay12forums.com] mod of yore, it has since evolved into encapsulating a lot of random tweaks to the vanilla game that I find indispensable, which draws parallels with tweak collections like Dwarf Fortress Revised[www.bay12forums.com] and Modest Mod[www.bay12forums.com]. Now that the game has entered a new era, these are now being packaged up and released to the public.

The entire mod is split into two main parts:

• Civ Crucible Core - This module contains all the gameplay tweaks, fixes, optimisations, raw completions, and other random things that pertain to the vanilla game. See the mod description to learn more about the specifics. As a graphics user, you will generally be able to use this module alone with no problem. Eventually, this module will contain any common definitions needed in the other modules. There aren’t any of these dependencies now and I endeavour to keep them to a minimum but there may be points where I can’t and would rather not flood the Workshop with a thousand compatibility patches to achieve it.
  
• Civilisations - The original meat of the mod. Currently consisting of six new creatures and seven entities with more on the way, these civilisations add new trading partners, enemies, and more life to world generation. The new module system allows you to mix and match these to your heart’s content.
  
  • Korriks (playable) - Semi-intelligent kobold-kin at the dawn of their metal age
    
  • Undines - Water spirits that are the life of the party
    
  • Rakshasas - Honour-bound warriors sending raiding from the desert
    
  • Hiisi - Reclusive knowledge seekers studying from frozen vaults
    
  • Leshy - Stoic forest spirits cast from their homes doing anything to survive
    
  • Kappa - Polymorphic semi-reptilians building rowdy communities in the marshes
    
    
  • Deep Dwarves - Progenitors to modern dwarves launching attacks from the caverns

Additional optional modules will no doubt be coming down the line for new plants, creatures and industry overhauls.

Note that I have no intention to do graphics. I am an ASCIIvangelist through and through. Please read each individual module's description to find out which ones are vanilla tweaks and are safe to use, work well with default placeholders, or won't work for graphics users.

Rather than listing features it may be easier to describe what Civ Crucible aims to do. This mod is for you if you align with any of the below items:

• Difficulty - Civ Crucible aims to bring back the heinous difficulty of DF’s Boatmurdered heyday. Wildlife have been buffed within reason while food is less abundant. New behaviours have been thrown in to keep experienced players on their toes. New playable races may be carnivores or have other alternate food production and offer other challenges to the player.
  
• Completion - Toady has left a few notes peppered around the raws for things that should be implemented. This mod aims to fill those gaps and more to iron out issues, oversights and add variety to the game without even needing to add new content.
  
• Industry - DF has a lot of different skills, some of them only marginally explored or useful. While not much can be done about potash making, the mod aims to bring more depth to different industries, add more capabilities and make them an engaging part of your fortress.

As for the new races, they follow a number of internal rules:

• Folklore not fantasy - Candidates for new civilised creatures were picked from folklores all across the world to avoid doubling down on western European fantasy too much. While extra layers of flavour may take some inspirations from popular media, they try to not be too overt.
  
• No derivatives, no beastmen - Vanilla DF has animal people pretty down pat and elf variations are lazy. Sentients will have certain gimmicks to set them apart gameplay-wise but will generally fall into the category of medium-sized, mostly-hairless humanoids.
  
• Populate the map - Areas like wetland, tundra and desert will never be colonised by the default entities, and can often make up massive swathes of the map leaving players wondering where everyone's gone. By spreading new entities out into these wildernesses, it will ensure you’ll likely have more than one partner in the region to trade or contend with.
  
• Gameplay and worldgen focus - Entities are designed to double-down on particular aspects of core DF gameplay. They may be born wanderers or erudites or musicians which have large roles in world generation. Generally, the more they integrate with the vanilla feel of DF the better.