Scenario Guide & Templates

by Dick Knisely

Download this guide as word document: civ2guid.zip

Table of Content

• Introduction
• Getting started
• Leaders and Tribes
• The Technology Tree
• City Improvements
• Wonders of the World
• Governments
• Units
• Terrain and Maps

Introduction

Civilization II by MicroProse Software is an extraordinarily flexible game. Literally hundreds of changes can be made to the game by the user in order to customize it or create scenarios. But as you know if you’ve tried to do it, making a good scenario requires a lot of work and planning. This document began life simply as a collection of notes and forms I created as I went about planning and building a CivII scenario. Eventually I also realized that what I had what collected together was information that I’d never seen in one place before and that it might be useful to others. So here it is.

This document is not:

• A tutorial on CivII
• A strategy guide for CivII
• A step-by-step guide to scenario building
• A substitute for the help file within the Scenario Editor in the FW package
• Complete, exhaustive or (probably) 100% accurate

This document is:

• Aimed at people who want to create their own scenarios for CivII
• A supplement to the help files, especially for the stuff they don’t tell you
• A description of what you’ll need to do to build a scenario
• A big collection of ‘stuff’ you’re going to want while planning & building a scenario
• As complete as I had time for and as accurate as I could make it

Creating a scenario for CivII requires you to do considerable thinking and planning in advance. That’s really what this document is all about. During my own planning, I found I needed to constantly refer to the normal contents of RULES.TXT and I needed templates for the many, interconnected tables that are found in that file. That’s one thing that’s here. I found this information useful and I hope it helps you, too.

I have assumed that you know the game very well and are comfortable with editing RULES.TXT and the GIF files that define the various icons used. It also assumes that you have purchased and installed the Fantastic Worlds scenario pack and update to the game. If you haven’t, I highly recommend that you do so! Without it, making some of the changes described herein will still be possible, although more difficult. Besides, the new scenarios are great and provide a library of new resources and ideas to use in your own scenarios. In addition, the discussion of EVENTS.TXT is only accurate if you have the FW pack.

Getting started

First, a note about “modpacks”. You may see references to both scenarios and to modpacks. With the original CivII, scenarios weren’t supported very well and there was a need to distinguish a scenario as CivII knew it and a scenario which would require you to replace the game’s normal icon files and/or the game-defining .txt files. A modpack is a bundle of files that modify the basic CivII directory (a modification package) and which may, or may not, include a scenario file. With the release of the scenario CDs, CivII now supports scenarios much better and many of the changes that needed a modpack before can be done within a scenario. Indeed, those modpacks that include a .scn file can often be easily be converted to scenarios now. However, if the purpose of the modpack was to make changes in the way CivII operates when simply starting and playing a regular game, then you’re still dealing with a modpack and not just a scenario. The process of building a modpack is basically the same, but I’ll stick to a discussion of creating CivII scenarios. In any case, to create a CivII scenario means doing the following:

• Determine an overall “story line”.
• Build a map or select a pre-made one.
• Alter the various scenario setup parameters that define the tribes, units, technologies, and terrain among other things to suit your story line.
• Start a game using your map, then in “cheat mode” place units and cities where needed at the start.
• Set the scenario parameters, like victory conditions, the way you want them.
• Save the game as a scenario.

There, that’s “all” there is to it! Suffice it to say that it can be very challenging to get it all to hang together, but it can also be a lot of fun. Making a CivII scenario is a bit like assembling a jigsaw puzzle—but in this case, you can either select from a list of existing pieces or make new ones. The tables below contain a list of all the files you could include in your scenario. Your scenario doesn’t have to include all of them, but the more differences you want between your scenario and the default game, the more of them you’ll need.

Notes on these table

• The entry “optional, defaults” means that you can provide the file, but if you don’t, then the game will use whatever appears in the basic CivII game directory.
• The entry “optional” means just that—the game will use this file if you provide it, will not use a default for it if you don’t, and will run just fine without it.
• Items with a ü in these tables are those items most commonly provided with a new scenario.

Scenario Definition Files

Scenario Parameter (.txt) Files

Icon Definition (Image) Files

Other

Each of the sections that follow concentrates on one the elements that go into making a scenario. The normal game (default) settings are shown and there’s template to help you plan and create your changes. The templates are laid out so they’ll print conveniently if you want to work on paper forms, or you can use a cut and paste operation to pull out the templates and work with them in another document.

As noted above, the file RULES.TXT is the key file for CivII. For the most part, the entire file can be thought of as a series of tables, which is how they’re presented here. Most of these tables are fixed in the number of rows they contain—you can alter the content of the table but you can’t make it longer or shorter (fewer rows or more rows). If you try, the game will sometimes ignore it and sometimes crash. Because of this, the rows of the tables are often referred to as “slots”.

Leaders and Tribes

Default CivII Leader Characteristics Table from rules.txt.

Notes: City Styles: B=Bronze Age, M=Midieval, E=Far East, C=Classical

Attack Column Values: *** *** A=Aggressive, R=Rational
Expansion Column Values:*** E=Expansionist, P=Perfectionist
Civilized Column Values:*** * C=Civilized, M=Militaristic
************** * * * * * * ** ************* “-” indicates the leader is neutral on this characteristic.

Only one civ from each color set may appear at any one time

The Technology Tree

A core element to CivII is the ability of the player to discover new technology over the life of the game. While it is possible to set up a scenario where advances in technology do not occur (the WWII scenario is one) these are the exception and generally less interesting.

The advances table (@CIVILIZE) in RULES.TXT is arguably the key element in the entire game. Changes here let you completely reshape the scenario, but getting it all right and connected properly with the other tables discussed later is not easy if you intend to make many changes at all. A few hours of thoughtful planning now will save you days later of trying to figure out why the scenario doesn’t work the way you had intended.

What you can and cannot change

Generally, you can change just about everything in the advances table except the abbreviations. Unfortunately, the abbreviations in that section of RULES.TXT are not data items—they’re just comments, so changing them will do nothing except confuse you greatly. Apparently, the abbreviations are “hard coded” into the game. So this abbreviation is what you must use in the other tables to refer to this slot in the table, no matter what you’ve decided to put here.

Generally, you can change just about everything in the advances table. Not all the table entries need to be used, but the table must remain 100 rows long.

A word of warning : many advance table slots have unique characteristics “hard coded” to them. As you plan out your new technology tree, think about what the advance you’re changing does in the normal game. If you can’t change what it does within Rules.txt, then there’s a good chance that your new advance will retain that characteristic whether you want it or not.

The table below is probably not complete, but here are ones I’ve documented:

Default CivII Advances Definition Table from rules.txt

CivII Advances Table Notes

AI Value = Basic value at which computer players view this advance (used in 
 determining which discovery to pursue, which to acquire during 
 exchanges, and value of gift during diplomacy).

Modifier = Modifier to AI value based on the "civilized" aspect of a leader's
 personality. Positive values increase value for civilized leaders,
 decrease it for militaristic. Negative values vice versa.

Preq1, Preq2 = Prerequisite advances required for this one. Every advance must
 have two prerequisites. Enter “no” to both prerequisites and that
 advance will be ignored.

 Epoch = Historical period. Only impact is the way the game will categorize the advances. 
 0 = Ancient 
 1 = Renaissance
 2 = Industrial Revolution
 3 = Modern

Category = Knowledge category. Determines which icon from ICON.GIF is used for it.
 0 = Military
 1 = Economic
 2 = Social
 3 = Academic
 4 = Applied

 Abbr = Advance abbreviation. Two or three characters used to refer to this advance
 inside the other tables. Do not alter—must match exactly in other tables.

 Special = The column which numbers the advances does not appear in the table. However,
 it is this number that is used in the EVENTS.TXT macro language to indicate
 which advance is involved in the event.

Scenario Advances Table Template

Remember: this table interacts with the Units, City Improvements and Wonders tables. The Abbreviation for the advance that allows the unit, the Wonder or the city improvement appears in that table and the entries here and must match.

City Improvements

The content of this table (@IMPROVE) is completely changeable, although it may not have the impact on the game you would like. You can rename any or all improvements and change all the characteristics in the table. In addition, you can remove an improvement from the scenario for some players or for all by simply giving it a prerequisite advance that either some or all players cannot achieve. If, for example, you changed the Marketplace so that it required the Plumbing advance, then in the default game, that would effectively remove the Marketplace as an allowed improvement since Plumbing cannot be discovered.

However, you cannot change the function of any improvement in any way . For example, if you use the 5^th slot in the table in your scenario, then no matter what you named that slot in the table, it will function like a temple does in the normal game.

City Improvements Table from rules.txt and Scenario Template

Wonders of the World

General

This is actually part of the @IMPROVE table in RULES.TXT, so like the city improvements, the Wonders may be renamed but the effects shown below cannot be altered. If that “slot” is used, then whatever appears there will have that effect. However, by manipulating the advances table you can control if and when they appear in the game.

Expiration

@ENDWONDER is actually a separate table in Rules.txt for defining when/if Wonders expire, but for convenience I’ve included it as a column in the tables below. Again, be sure the abbreviation for the advance matches the entry in the Advances table.

Icons

Note that the icons used for the wonders are contained in ICONS.GIF and these may, of course, be altered as well. The icons are simply used in order—1 ^st icon for the 1^st slot and so on.

Planning Sheets

Ancient Era

Medieval Era

Industrial Era

Modern Era

Governments

General

The table shown here is actually a collection of entries scattered around in various places of RULES.TXT as well as items which don’t appear in any of the editable parameter files. Most of the ones you can change are in the @COSMIC part of RULES.TXT or @GOVERNMENTS area.

Overall, the scenario designer really doesn’t have as much flexibility here as elsewhere. The most basic change is to change what name is given to each government type and this you can do freely. However, many characteristics in the first table will remain associated with that slot in the table no matter what it is called. A few items are changeable for some, but not all governments—see the second table below.

Fixed characteristics and/or default:

Governments

Scenario Planning Sheet.

This table is an attempt to show you what characteristics you can change. If a cell is blank, then you can change what goes here—usually in the “Cosmic” section of RULES.TXT. If a cell is filled in, then its value is fixed and cannot be altered.

Note that in addition to the above, the following cannot be changed and will remain associated with the specific government slot regardless of how it is named.

1. Republic and Democracy: Units in a fortress within 3 squares of city do not cause unhappiness.
2. Democracy: each missile, helicopter, or bomber unit (actually any unit occupying those slots in the Units table) causes 2 unhappy citizens regardless of where placed on map. See units table also.
3. Fundamentalism: Cities do not generate any waste or corruption.

Units

Introduction

After the Technology Tree (the Advances table), the most critical thing to the “feel” of a CivII scenario is what units exist and how they function. The units table in RULES.TXT and the matching icons in UNITS.GIF, together, define the character of every unit that will be in the game. Considerable flexibility exists in how you set this up, but here are some fundamental things to keep in mind:

• Units become available as a result of the needed technology becoming available to a civilization. If you’ve set up the technology tree so that some advances are never seen by one or more civs, then they’ll never see those units either.
• You don’t have to actually use them all, but the table needs to have all 62 slots with something in them. (Sometimes shorter tables work and sometimes they don’t.)
• You don’t have to use them, but you cannot change the special characteristics available via the bitmap assignments—that is, you’re not forced to give any unit amphibious assault abilities, but you can’t decide to define a new characteristic in place of amphibious assault just because you don’t need that one.
• Make sure the abbreviations in the “Made obsolete” and “Preq” columns match an entry in the Advances table.
• Be careful about how you combine special characteristics--the domain, range values and hold values. It’s easy to set up units that won’t function the way you’d expect or even function at all, especially when the computer is controlling the unit.
• As indicated in the table template, take special note of the table slots which have predetermined characteristics. These characteristics will be associated with any unit in that slot whether that makes sense or not. Pay particular attention to the engineer and spy slots in the table.

Unit Sound Files.

Every slot in the @UNITS table has one or more sound files associated with it. You cannot alter the name of the sound file(s), or how those files are used. (e.g., The unit occupying slot #27 in the units table will always use “biggun.wav”.) Furthermore, since a number of units are all assigned the same sound file, this means that if you change the sound file for one you changed it for all. It also means that if, for example, you changed the default Pikeman unit to become an advanced jet bomber, it’s still going to sound like a sword fight or else the Phalnax and Legion are going to sound like jet aircraft, since all of these share a sound file called “swordfgt.wav”.

However, you can delete a sound file to prevent such a conflict, since if no file with the expected name exists then the game simply ignores it and continues. And, of course, the game has no way to know what’s actually in that sound file—any valid file with the right name will be played, so you have flexibility to alter the existing files or make new ones with a wave file editor and then attach them to your units.

As noted in RULES.TXT itself, any units that you assign to the extra slots also can have an associated sound file—Custom1, 2, 3 or Extra1 through 8.

Unit Icons

How the unit appears visually on the map is also determined entirely by the position in this table. The unit occupying slot #27 in the table will always use what ever is the 27^th icon contained in UNITS.GIF. Creating and editing icons is outside the scope of this paper, but with the new editor in the Fantastic Worlds update, it’s no longer the chore that it used to be.