Skyrim - Civil War Overhaul Mod

Couchpotato

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A talented modder called ApolloDown has restored cut content based on the civil war that was cut from Skyrim before release. The mod can be downloaded from the nexus.

I have painstakingly restored the civil war in the spirit of what Bethesda intended, before they decided to ship the game half-done. This feature restores battles for Morthal, Markarth, Falkreath, Fort Greymoor, Dawnstar, Riften, and Winterhold - and puts them all back in the game.

Skyrim's civil war is a much bigger animal than you could possibly imagine. The underlying framework of the civil war was designed to be a completely dynamic series of campaigns for holds, incorporating elements of strategy and diplomacy to bring your opponent down. In the planned version, it's my guess that the designers were going to create some kind of map menu for the player to decide which hold he wanted to hit next, and allow the enemy to counterattack as well. Regardless, each hold was to be won by doing up to TWELVE RADIANT QUESTS, as opposed to up to TWO in vanilla skyrim.

There were quest rewards, series of dialogue, and it was far more dynamic than any other kind of radiant quest in Skyrim. Dialogue was recorded, scenes were created, and scripts were set up. Somewhere along the line, likely in the last stages of development, the devs look like they ran out of time and could not complete the dynamic campaign. So what they did was hardcode the gears of this radiant masterpiece to ONLY allow a very limited set of quests that operated entirely linearly.

Just let that soak in for a sec. The civil war is nothing more than a facade.

Therefore, in order to restore the civil war, I have certain challenges that I must constantly fight off:

1) Rebuilding broken parts - Much of what is behind the civil war is epically huge and dynamic and prone to bugs. It has also NEVER been updated by Bethesda. That means I have the work of multiple patches ahead of me for every new function I use.

2)Building parts that weren't complete - Much of the coding and quests for unused material looks like one day the devs just got up, went out to get a pizza, and never came back. This is probably the easiest thing to fix, because I already know where they were headed, and am basically already there, with a few holes to fill in.

3)Building things that were referred to, but never built - This is pretty easy for me to do, as it gives me total creative license on how to use the assets that were left behind. Unfortunately, I need to get the basic framework solid first before I spend my time adding to its accouterments.

4)Tearing down the "vanilla civil war" - The vanilla civil war is a problem, because all it really is is the hardcoding of the dynamicism of the original design. To put it in car terms, Bethesda decided to only let the car go one way. A normal person would say, "Let's just use one of those U lock things to hold the steering wheel in place." However, Bethesda, wanting to make it absolutely error proof (I assume to keep the console kiddies happy), decided to BLOW TORCH THE AXLE TO THE FRAME AND TEAR OUT THE STEERING WHEEL. Then let a family of badgers nest in the hole left behind by said steering wheel, because badgers. This is the hardest thing to work against in making this mod, because while I can just flip a switch and turn on a quest, it usually breaks EVERYTHING when it runs up against the vanilla civil war.
More information.
 
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This is very strange. So, instead of finishing this incredible part of the game, they went on to DLC and patches. Too bad. I like mods but this really sounds like it could have been epic if Bethesda had finished it.

Has anyone played this yet and does it feel like part of the game or tacked on?
 
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This is very strange. So, instead of finishing this incredible part of the game, they went on to DLC and patches. Too bad. I like mods but this really sounds like it could have been epic if Bethesda had finished it.

Has anyone played this yet and does it feel like part of the game or tacked on?
It works with a few occasional hiccups sometimes. It also needs a little more balancing.

Just remember to start a fresh game and use the script extender or you will have problems. As he said the content was all there just never finished.
 
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This looks so good… One of my main gripes with Skyrim was how unreactive/boring the main quest line was. It might be worth revisiting once the kinks get worked out of this mod.
 
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Wow. This project seems far too unstable right now for me to be tempted into firing Skyrim up again just for this mod, but it has amazing potential to revitalize a woefully under-developed gameplay and plot device for Skyrim. I personally never finished the Civil War questline because of how lackluster and non-dynamic it was. I hope the leader of this project stays dedicated to making this mod stable, or finds extra volunteers with experience working on ambitious mods to fully pull this off.

Also, it's very refreshing to see a mod that isn't purely aesthetic. I was worried that Skyrim's mod scene would never have the great overhauls or gameplay additions that previous Bethesda games had. Hopefully there will be more promising projects like this one to add substantial reasons to replay the game and keep Skyrim alive - after all, it may be another 5-6 years from now before we see another Elder Scrolls!
 
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Wow, nice… Something more to look forward to for my inevitable replay. I'm waiting for all the greatest mods to settle down and become truly stable. I don't expect that to happen for another year or so. So I have to be patient about it.

Once I feel comfortable everything works well together - I'll probably take a couple of weeks off for a thorough experience. Preferably during winter season ;)
 
means I have the work of multiple patches ahead of me for every new function I use.
Patches, patches everywhere.
 
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Yes, with a game as huge, flexible and open as Skyrim - it's a shock that things that aren't implemented in the actual release might cause problems.

I mean, how hard can it be, right? ;)
 
Reminds me a bit of the Orcs vs Humans in Gothic 3. That game took years of work by the community to make it playable.

I can see why this was cut, because implementing it would be a nightmare and it is not like Elder Scrolls games aren't already buggy enough.
 
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