Civilization III Usability Pack v. 1.0

By Alessandro Di Sciascio
adisciascio@hotmail.com

This modpack was the fruit of my personal experience with CivIII as a player.

One of my biggest gripes with CivIII was the inability to check out units, improvements, wonders while in the city screen deciding what to build next. You'd think this would be the one place where the Civilopedia is right there at your fingertips, but it's not.

But even if it were... do I really want to go through the Civilopedia to decide wether to build a swordsman or a spearman?

Quick, if your city is well protected and you want to build an additional unit that you're not sure wether you'll use for defense or attack, what do you build, a Spearman or a Swordsman?

Well, you could look at the stats, they're right there when you click... you see spearman (making up the numbers here) 1/2/1 swordsman 3/2/1 (the numbers are unimportant, you could use different units for our comparison) so obviously a swordsman would be the better choice!

NOT SO QUICK!

We're building this unit with no specific purpose... wouldn't you have picked the weaker spearman had you realized that later in the game you can upgrade him to a pikeman, then a musketman, a rifleman, an infantry and finally a mechanized infantry? Oh yeah... that swordsman... you can't upgrade swordsmen!

That one's solved... just keep reading. We'll call this POINT A

The next issue I had was... very little corruption, plenty of dough, nothing else to build ... do I build a courthouse? Sure! Why not? Right?

Say your corruption is 3 gold and the courthouse brings you 1back. That sounds fair, right? I mean, we have NOTHING ELSE TO BUILD! (this is just an example, of course)

WELL... a courthouse costs 1 Gold in maintenance. Everything else being equal had I known this, I'd prefer to go with wealth. (this is a silly example but other improvements cost more than 1 upkeep and may really not be worth building in the specific city given circumstances)

This one's solved... just keep reading. We'll call this POINT B

The next issue I had was ships.

Lots of ships, Frigates, Galleons, Ironclads, Galleys... you name it.

Heck, let's build a frigate, load it up with cavalry and go kick some butt!

Sounds like a decent plan, right?

IF ONLY FRIGATES CARRIED UNITS....

This one's solved... just keep reading. We'll call this POINT C

The next issue I had was wonders.

There are times when I've wanted to build a wonder, 'cause I can... now don't be jealous but all my folks are happy.... yeah, I hear ya "Stop Playing Chieftain, you Wimp!"

So what do I build... should I go with Copernicus' Observatory or the Great University? They both sound like good wonders, and who knows, maybe they both double the science from the city that built it.

THAT'S NOT THE WHOLE STORY

Copernicus' generates a whopping 4 culture points per turn. That's what you would want to go wih if you wanted culture to expand. You know borders expand with culture, right? Well... if you agreed with me so far, then guess what.... YOU'RE WRONG! ... sure Copernicus gives you 4 culture points per turn, but wouldn't you rather be reaping the Great University's 6?!?! But how would you know?!?!?!

That one's solved. Just one more issue, I promise... and yeah, this is POINT D

Finally, and this wasn't a huge deal, after all there aren't that many wonders that expire... but really would you think I'm an idiot for forgetting about the Great Wall's expiration and building that instead of Sun Tzu's War academy while being attacked by Romans and Egyptians?

Guess what... the darn Wall went obsolete some 20 turns after I built it.

And that one's solved. And that's how we get point E

Ok, you've read so far... here's the picture, then I'll explain next to and below it.

POINT A: How do I pick which unit to build based also on upgradeability?

Look at figure 2, specifically at the Longbowman, the Musketman and the Caravel. Notice that the Longbowman has a ZERO next to it? Guess what.. zero upgrade steps from Longbowan. For Musketman it's 3... Rifleman, Infantry, Mechanized Infantry. For the Caravel it's 2... galleon then transport.

POINT B: How do I know how much maintenance gold improvements require?

Look again at Figure 2, specifically the Palace and the barracks. Notice the brown (dark gold in my eyes <grin>) lines in the upper right hand corner of each one's icon? Count them! Two lines for Palace, one for Barracks (also one for Granary below) the lines correspond to the maintenance cost in gold. If you look at the palace, you may also notice a vertical blue line in the upper left hand corner... but don't get ahead of me here... that's point D!

Point C: How do I know which units carry other units, and how many they carry?

Look at the Caravel in Figure 2, notice that under the "2" that indicates 2 more upgrades there are 3 little lines? Guess how many units a caravel can carry. Now look at the catapult... count the little lines... right, ZERO, what did you expect?

Point D: How do I know how much culture an improvement or wonder generates?

Remember that lone blue line in the upper left hand corner of the Palace? Look at the Sistine chapel in Figure 1.... 6 blue lines... mmmm copernicus has 4 blue lines.... mmmm ring a bell?

Point E: How do I know if a wonder I may think of building expires?

Look at figure 1. Specifically, the Lighthouse... notice the 2 blue lines? Well you already know what those mean, right? Ok look to the right? See that RED "O"? Let's see... OOOOO...bsolete! That tells you a wonder may eventually become obsolete due to a discovery.

I hope you find this modpack useful, and realize that the tone in this *instructional manual* was intentionally quasi-insulting <grin>

INSTALLATION INSTRUCITONS

1. Backup your original files!

A. Go to your City Screen directory.
If you did a standard installation it should be: C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Art\City Screens
B. Create a new folder, call it whatever (BACKUP makes sense to me )
C. Copy (NOT MOVE) the contents of your City Screen directory into the BACKUP directory (for the purpose of this mod you really only need to back up the file named "buildings-small.pcx", but you might as well back them all up. That's my policy, when one file gets modded the whole directory gets backed up).
D. Go to your Units directory.
If you did a standard installation it should be: C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Art\Units
B. Create a new folder, call it whatever (BACKUP makes sense to me )
C. Copy (NOT MOVE) the file named "units_32.pcx" to your BACKUP directory , in this case I may suggest just backing up that ONE file, otherwise you'll be copying some 100MB of other files that are completely unaffected by this mod).

2. Copy the new "buildings-small.pcx" file from the directory where you unzipped this package (I assumed you unzipped since you're reading this) to your City Screen directory. And copy the new "units_32.pcx" from the directory where you unzipped this package to your Units directory.

3. Play!