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Calypso's Recolored Civilizations

Do you sometimes struggle to make out city names for certain Civilizations? City banners hurting your eyes? Did you, like me, play many 100s of hours of Civ V and never got used to black on red Barbarians? Regret some of the ways Civilization colors were changed with the introduction of Gathering Storm?

Unsatisfied with other recolor mods I found, I slapped together my own:


As I recolored Civilizations, I had the following goals in mind:
- Change color schemes that have problems with text legibility or are straining to look at.
- Generally revert color schemes of Civilizations added before Gathering Storm back to their original appearance.
- In certain cases, adjust color schemes for familiarity based on color schemes used in previous titles.

To this end, most Civilizations have received at least minor adjustments. Every pre-Gathering Storm Civilization has been tweaked to bring back colors used before the implementation of the jersey system. Some have been tweaked further to enhance readability of city names (e.g. Arabia, Georgia, Macedon). Other colors have been desaturated to make them easier on the eyes (e.g. Brazil, Poland). A few I though would be most recognizable using their colors from Civilization V (e.g. Netherlands, Ethiopia, Sweden). Leaders who can lead multiple Civilizations (Eleanor) or take on one of multiple personas (Teddy Roosevelt and Catherine de Medici) have also been condensed to a single color scheme between their variants.

A screenshot above shows the changes made (or not made) for all major civilizations, though Barbarians, Free Cities, and Militaristic City-States have also been changed.


Don't like my recolor for Poland? Miss black on red Barbarians? That's fine, it's cool. You can manually disable recolors you don't want by editing your local download of the mod. Simply direct yourself to the mod in your Steam Workshop folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\workshop\content\289070\1611475891), open the folder "XML", and open the SQL file for the specific Leader you want to change using any basic text editor (remember that colors in Civilization VI are linked to Leaders, not to Civilizations themselves). Just add a pair of hyphens ("--") to the beginning of all lines to comment them out, preventing any recolors from being made. If you want to design your own colors, find the "NewColors.sql" file and edit the RGBA values for Leaders' primary and secondary colors.

If I update the mod and you are subscribed to receive any changes (which I would greatly appreciate), my updated files will replace your local edits, so consider keeping a backup of any edits.


As this mod updates color schemes for all Civilizations, other mods that update these color schemes will be incompatible. Your game should load, but the order in which the mods were loaded will decide what colors you see.

Although this mod changes color schemes for DLC Civilizations, it does not require these DLCs. This mod is set to load after any DLC has finished loading.


This mod is not set to affect saved games. Games started with the mod may be continued without it. Games started without the mod may be continued with it.


Originally I also intended to use this mod to disable the jersey system (especially for single player matches). Though this mod removes alternate color schemes for all Civilizations, previously this did not actually prevent the jersey system from trying to change a Civilization's colors if a color conflict was detected. In recent updates, I have noticed the jersey system to be less prone to make color changes than it initially was, but it is still possible that you will observe Civilizations that have been changed to one of the fallback color schemes, especially in large games.


Have any feedback for the mod? Think I overlooked a Civilization/Leader whose colors need tweaking? Let me know in the comments below. I'm open to revising my recolors or adding new ones. Just remember that everyone perceives color a bit differently, so it's a bit tricky to come up with colors that work well for all.