Firaxis Site UPDATED with CIV IV!!!

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I meant no value is unchangeable, not that there were no limits to the values you could give units.

Oh, wait, so are you saying I can mod the attack value AND the defense value AND the shield cost of all my units?! Wow, that's fantastic!! I would never have dreamed of such a thing being possible!



The only values that are changeable in Civ3 are the ones Firaxis was good enough to put in the editor and make available to the player. There are plenty of values that aren't in there or that have odd limitations. E.g. you cannot change railroad movement, or the total frequency or number of resources on a random map, a city improvement requirement for units, etc, etc. You cannot give anything (or nothing I've tried, which granted is not nearly everything) negative values. And you cannot move around the abilities of world wonders, small wonders and buildings outside their own class -- by that I mean e.g. give a great wonder ability to a small wonder (things like that would be the bare minimum to expect if you can "wildly edit" them as you said).

That's the whole problem with Civ3 modding: you can only do the bare minimum, only those handful of options that the editor gives you.

For example, you can't give negative movement to things in any game AFAIK - it's nonsensical. And it is possible to have units move on land and water.

When did I mention negative movement? Negative values are not always meaningful, just because you can think of one nonsensical situation doesn't render the concept nonsensical entirely. Useful negative values could be: buildings/wonders that give negative culture, or units that have negative upkeep, resources that give negative production, negative defense bonus for certain terrain types, etc. To the best of my knowledge Civ3 does not allow any of those things. It's no coincidence that allowing negative values for various situations regularly pops up on Civ3 patch/XP request lists...

In CtP(2), can you give units complex or imaginary attack values? See! Too much hardcoding

Give me even a single practical example of how complex numbers would actually have any in-game use I'm not asking for ridiculous things here, just practical stuff that I know for a fact is useful, from my personal experience with CtP and other games (even a little of Civ3).

And it is possible to have units move on land and water.

Not in Civ3 vanilla and PtW it wasn't. And according to the BIQ file info, not in Conquests either (but the documentation about that might be incorrect, I haven't actually played that game; if so, I stand corrected). Units can only have a single class: land, air or water. Making e.g. a Hovercraft or CtPesque Fusion Tank is not possible in Civ3.

Go complain to MarkG about the names in the C3 downloads section, and post a thread in the C3-editing forum about how they shouldn't call all their stuff "mods".

I never said they are not mods. But Civ3 mods compare to CtP2 mods the ways the star player of my local 7th amateur division football club compares to Zinedine Zidane. They're both star players, but there's a rather significant difference...

And I don't run CtP mods because CtP2 doesn't seem to WORK on XP. Mods certainly don't.

CtP1, CtP2 and all mods in my experience run smoother on WinXP than on any other OS. WinXP even fixes some minor 'bugs' that bothered other versions of CtP (e.g. sorting related issues, since WinXP's default sorting algorithm, which the CtP games and modmaker tools sometimes use, is better than that of older Windows versions).

[Solver]

CtP2 works on XP very well, and so do mods. Heck, some have ran CtP2 under Linux...

I'm not very familiar with Civ3 modding, but I'll have a crack at this: Can I make a unit that moves on both land and water? Can I make a city improvement that reduces corruption? Can I create a government that is immune to more than one spy action? Can I have a civilization advance with a negative cost? If I'm not very much mistaken the answer to all these questions is a big fat no.

Locutus is right on this one, except the move on both land and water part, which can be done in Civ3.

Mods are things that overhaul the gameplay, or even are a different game. To take a look at different genre, FPS - look at Counter-Strike. It's just a mod for Half-Life. Changes everything. In CtP2, Cradle is a mod - it doesn't just add new units or techs, it changes most game rules, adds new feautures in military campaigning, in city building, new limiting factors... in a word, new gameplay elements. Something no Civ3 mod can do - adding units isn't adding gameplay elements. So what if I go into the Civ3 editor and give Marines more attack. Is that a mod, then?

There were some really good C2 scenarios, for example some Star Trek and a LOT of good WW2 scenarios, but there are also a lot of things for scenario editing you CAN'T do in C2 that you can in C3. For instance, the Age of Discovery (or whatever it's called) Conquest would have been impossible in C2.

I don't know about the AoD scenario, so no comment there... but looking at WW2 scenarios, I remember that way back in 2001, one of the main complaints about Civ3 was that a WW2 couldn't even be MADE in that game. While Civ2, actually, shipped with a WW2 scenario. Civ2 is 1995, and had an event scripting languge, a great achievement for that time - though sure it's primitive compared to SLIC. Civ3 is a 2001 game, that is, after Half-Life, after Quake 3, after Starcraft - after many other games that had support for game-overhauling mods, and it wasn't until much later that Civ3 even gained rudimentary scenario creation abilities. And games with slightly modified rules are, at best, a more complex variation of scenarios.

[Solver]

E.g. you cannot change railroad movement, or the total frequency or number of resources on a random map, a city improvement requirement for units, etc, etc.

Minor correction: you can change frequency of appearance of a strategic resource.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Solver
Locutus is right on this one, except the move on both land and water part, which can be done in Civ3.

Okay, it's a little off-topic (but then again, so is this whole discussion ), but can anyone tell me how (or point me to a guide)? I've never been able to (and I've seen it on XP/patch wishlists so I'm not the only one)...

Is that a mod, then?

Yes, it is actually. But see my comment regarding Zidane and amateur football

Minor correction: you can change frequency of appearance of a strategic resource.

A specific resource, but not all resources. In total, there's a hardcoded limit of about 5% of the map being resources. You cannot change this, e.g. to give every single tile a resource. In CtP, there's 1 resource per box, where box size can be defined (and made 1x1 if you want). Civ3 has nothing remotely comparable AFAIK.

[Solver]

Well, I once did something similar to a water/land unit in Civ3, though I agree it wasn't as good as specifying MovementType:Land and MovementType:Sea in units.txt in CtP2. But basically, giving a unit air movement without the immobile flag seems to achieve the goal, partially at least. Though then there's the drawback of the unit in question not benefiting from roads, which is bad if it's not a helicopter or something like that.

A specific resource, but not all resources. In total, there's a hardcoded limit of about 5% of the map being resources. You cannot change this, e.g. to give every single tile a resource. In CtP, there's 1 resource per box, where box size can be defined (and made 1x1 if you want). Civ3 has nothing remotely comparable AFAIK.

Yeah, that does seem correct, although I don't know if that has been changed in Conquests expansion - I don't think it has, though.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Solver
Though then there's the drawback of the unit in question not benefiting from roads, which is bad if it's not a helicopter or something like that.

So it doesn't move over land OR sea then, it moves through the air. Having the usual terrain/road/railroad bonuses and possible shallow/deep water restrictions is a rather essential component...

[Solver]

Agreed. I don't know, though, maybe someone has done that somehow, I admit that I don't have nearly enough experience with Civ3 modding to state for sure it's impossible.

[Civrules]

Originally posted by Solver
I went there during the hours when Apolyton was down .

No, you were there because it has more information.



Whatever is not correct is always fixed there. That's why I have info on the bottom of the page through which you can contact me (in three different ways) in case something needs editing.

[Solver]

You wish . I appreciate your work on the list though .

[Civrules]

Originally posted by Solver
You wish . I appreciate your work on the list though .

Thanks.
I am also looking forewords to the new info that should be coming this month. Should be a lot more detailed about the game.

[Solver]

There's this stupid deal with exclusive rights... some companies have given magazines exclusive rights on first info and can't say much until the magazine gets published, I hope it's not the case with Civ4. Like, Bethesda gave GameInformer an exclusive first info about Oblivion, Ensemble Studios gave PC Gamer exclusive rights for AoE3.

Hopefully Firaxis are free to release info. My best hope is for them to set up civ4.com this month.

[Civrules]

Originally posted by Solver
There's this stupid deal with exclusive rights... some companies have given magazines exclusive rights on first info and can't say much until the magazine gets published, I hope it's not the case with Civ4. Like, Bethesda gave GameInformer an exclusive first info about Oblivion, Ensemble Studios gave PC Gamer exclusive rights for AoE3.

Hopefully Firaxis are free to release info. My best hope is for them to set up civ4.com this month.

Yeah, I'm also very hopeful that Civ4.com will get an update this month as well.
It may be a long time ago, but remember that Civ3.com was also launched January 8th, 2001.
If Firaxis is indeed free to give out info at times of their choosing, then it's much better news for us.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by CivR
It may be a long time ago, but remember that Civ3.com was also launched January 8th, 2001.

No it wasn't. Civ3.com was opened sometime in the summer, August or something. What you're referring to was the opening of the Civ3 section on the Firaxis website (http://www.firaxis.com/civ3 -- dead now). Very similar of course, but not quite the same: civ3.com had features like designer diaries, weekly screenshots, 'meet the civs', some daily quiz thingie, fansite listing, etc; the Firaxis site was basically just a short summary page and a FAQ with the usual PR (non-)info. I suspect the latter is what we may see this month as well for Civ4.

Edit: typo

[Civrules]

True, but I said it because this sounded convincing when I first saw it today.
They should have said something like "minisite," not "website."

[Heresson]