Adding New Techs to CIV 2

[worcesteradam]

Hello.

I have never edited civ before.

what i wanted to do was add some new techs on the end of my standard CIV2 tech ladder, that have come up in the real world.
things like electromagnetics, nanotechnology, weather weapons etc.

i am just wondering whether it is going to be possible to add in new technolgies that i can create or whether i would have to replace those that are already there, such as the future tech things.

[Mercator]

Yes, you have to replace existing ones. You can use the User Def Tech A/B/C (and Extra Advance 1-7 if you have Fantastic Worlds or later) for that. There's also the Plumbing tech that isn't being used.

Don't touch the Future Technology. When you're editing the tech tree, you have to remember 2 things: There must always be a path to the Fuure tech available, and it can't have any loops.

Oh, and another thing, everything after a semi-colon is a comment. That includes the 3 letter abbreviations at the end of the tech tree lines. They are there only for information. The abbreviations are hard-coded. You can not change them.

[kobayashi]

M,

You can have loops under the right configuration. This was first demonstrated in one of the FW scenarios, can't remember Midgard or Masters of Magic. As I recall, each tribe started off on a different part of the loop.

W,

Don't fiddle with the main directory files if you don't want to reinstall later. Run a normal game and then activate scneario mode to save in a seperate folder.

[Elok]

Eh, the thing in MOM wasn't a loop, strictly speaking; each tribe started with one advanced technology which could be researched by the others, if they felt like taking the time. You can loop some things (Merc did a brief experiment for me, months and months ago, showing that you can have three units upgrade in an endless loop), but not technologies, Civ2 would throw a fit every time you opened the pedia or the science advisor, etc.

[kobayashi]

touche

[Boco]

Originally posted by Elok
Merc did a brief experiment for me, months and months ago, showing that you can have three units upgrade in an endless loop

Is there a link to this test?

[Elok]

Originally posted by Boco
Is there a link to this test?

I believe I entitled it something like "Yo-yo obsolescence," but there's no need to look, it's a fairly useless gimmick. Basically, you give a civilization techs A, B, and C, with tech A giving you unit A, tech B upgrading unit A to unit B, and tech C upgrading unit B to unit C. Unit C is in turn made obsolete by tech A, and so if the civ is given Leo's Workshop the units will get shuffled around every time the civ researches something. There's one trick to it that Mercator had to fix to have it work; I think you had to do something special involving the musketeer slot or some such to get the computer to upgrade "uplist," which it normally doesn't like.

It sounds like a fun trick (I thought it could be used to make shapeshifter or werewolf units for a fantasy scenario), but it has the major weakness that, every time you discover something, you'll get a billion "Unit A production in city X upgraded to unit B," and so on for units B and C. It gets very annoying. I'd only use it for a computer-controlled civ, assuming it didn't cause problems with the AI, or for a civ that had very few cities.

Note that, if you try this, it's important NOT to have techs A, B and C link to each other in a loop. That will crash the game. Civ2 doesn't care if techs lead to each other to determine obsolescence and upgrading, it apparently only looks at domain, role, unit slot, and the techs named for obsolescence. That fact has much more promise for abuse than the yo-yo technique. I haven't tested this, but I imagine you could upgrade units into very different forms, such as turning a fighter into a Nuke, which might not even require Manhattan Project. This can also be neatly abused with diplomats, allowing the "naturalization" of bribed foreigners if you so choose. Or you could bribe a cheap enemy unit that upgrades into something ridiculously expensive, which you can disband for production bonuses. And so on. This is a relatively recent brainstorm of mine, and if I ever finish another scenario I'll try to use it inventively.

[Mercator]

Elok

Found it in the archives:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96841

Edit: Bah! I just go through all the trouble of finding the thread and then you say it's useless.

Elok