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Bionicle: Mata Nui Matoran Villages

In the time before time, the Great Spirit descended from the heavens, carrying your people, the ones called the Matoran, to this island paradise. They were separate and without purpose, so the Great Spirit blessed them with the three virtues: unity, duty, and destiny. They embraced these gifts and, in gratitude, named their island home Mata Nui, after the Great Spirit himself.

This mod contains six custom civilizations based on the Matoran villages on the island of Mata Nui from Bionicle, each under the leadership of their Turaga village elders. Play as Turaga Vakama's Ta-Koro, Turaga Nokama's Ga-Koro, Turaga Matau's Le-Koro, Turaga Onewa's Po-Koro, Turaga Whenua's Onu-Koro, or Turaga Nuju's Ko-Koro.

If that's not enough to satisfy your Bionicle nostalgia, also included is a custom-made map of the island of Mata Nui! This map is packaged with a scenario to place the six villages in their lore-accurate locations without any pesky city-states clogging up the land. Or, feel free to play on the map with your favorite civ from the main game, whatever boats your float.

All six of these civilizations feature custom icons and music taken from Bionicle media through the ages. City names are from locations around Mata Nui. Spies are Matoran villagers.

The strategic view icons are not implemented, sorry to the SV users! I hear there are literally dozens of you out there....

Requires BNW.

This project is not affiliated in any way with The LEGO Group.

Notes for the real Bionicle knurds: These civs are based on the Mata Nuivillages as they existed in 2001 before the arrival of the Toa. This mod is based mostly on the villages as depicted in the Mata Nui Online Game from 2001, with some minor additions from later years. Lore and descriptions draw from the Bionicle Encyclopedia as well as MNOG, MNOG 2, the Bohrok Animations, and various books and comics.


UA: Fires of the Mangai – Plantations produce +1 Production. Free Walls in captured cities.
UU: Guardsman – Replaces Warrior. +15% Combat Bonus while defending. Before engaging in melee, this unit launches a volley of discs. These abilities carry on through upgrades as promotions.
UB: Lava Moat – Replaces Castle. Provides increased defensive strength. Enemies capturing this city plunder no gold.


UA: Bounty of Naho Bay – Free Lighthouse in all coastal cities upon foundation.
UB: Telescope – Replaces Observatory. +33% Science. +1 Culture. Can be built in all coastal cities.
UU: Fan Boat – Replaces Ironclad. Cheaper and more mobile in deep ocean, and requires no special resources to build.


UA: Drums of Le-Koro – Land units move double speed in forest and jungle.
UU: Gukko Force – Replaces Triplane. Increased range and starts with Air Repair promotion. Requires no special resources to build.
UB: Le-Koro Band – Replaces Musicians' Guild. Allows two extra Musician specialists. +25% of the Culture output of this city added to Tourism. +25% Tourism output from this city's Great Works.


UA: Path of Prophecies – Quarries produce +1 Faith and +1 Culture.
UB: Path of Prophecies – Replaces Palace. Has an engineer slot and produces one point towards Great Engineers.
UB: Kolhii Field – Replaces Coliseum. Costs no maintenance and provides 1 extra Happiness.


UA: The Great Mine – Mines produce +1 Gold.
UU: Ussalry – Replaces Cavalry. Stronger, retains defensive terrain bonuses, and requires no special resources to train.
UU: Boxor – Replaces Great War Infantry. Takes no terrain movement penalties and gets a combat bonus in rough terrain. It earns 50% of opponent's Combat Strength as Science from kills.


UA: Wall of Prophecy – After researching Writing, every city produces +2 Culture. +2 Food from Snow tiles.
UB: Sanctum – Replaces Temple. Has a Scientist slot and costs no gold to maintain.
UI: Flag – Requires Trapping. Can be built on Tundra and Snow tiles. +1 Production and +2 Faith. +2 Science after researching Navigation.

1. Hit "Subscribe" above.
2. Launch Civ 5. You should see a download start.
3. If the mod appeared in your Mods list, you're good to go! Otherwise, you've encountered a known bug with Steam. To solve this:
4. Go to Your "My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS" folder. There should be a .civ5mod file there, and also maybe an empty folder.
5. Using 7zip, winrar or another similar program, extract the contents of the .civ5mod file to My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/MODS/<name of this mod, should be the same as the name of the .civ5mod archive>
6. The mod should now load into in your mod list. Delete the .civ5mod archive. Enjoy the mod!

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, etc., please let me know! This is my first mod, and I really want to make sure it works for everyone, so I'll try to get to all of your feedback.