Firaxis Editor Tools - Let's help them by telling them what we want.

[Pyrodrew]

Wish List Continued...

1. Ability to place pine forest (or regular forests) in tundra like the random map editor does. If anyone already knows how to do this let me know.

2. Ability for resources to be randomly placed down (or replaced down) while in the editor. Bonus resources could be given the option for appearance & disappearance ratios too.

3. Allow for more Extreme Worlds to be generatored from the map editor, where perhaps glacier or desert covers 1/3 of the world. Give us the option to select the % for how cold/warm & arid/wet the world is. Water % should vary more as well (30% to 90%). Allows more variety & challenge. Doing it yourself in the editor ruins the experience since you get to know what the map looks like & that takes time.

4. Ability to add Glacier (and their few resources) & have the Glacier blend in with the other terrains as in Civ2 (see problem with C3 Glacier below).

Thanks.

[open air]

standard resources (game, gold, ect...) and strategic resources (iron, hourses, ect...) should be editable...

ie: placable in the editor... change graphic... and name... change units that require...

[Faeelin]

Faeelin

the potential for scenario construction that SMAC had.

[Shadowstrike]

The biggest "flaw" per se is the inability to place units/cities/improvements on the map from the editor, followed by the lack of a event language. Still I'd rather see Firaxis get out bugfixes for Civ3 in the first patch, and add the scenario tools if possible in the first or second patch. As long as its before Christmas, I'm happy..... or probably content..... OK, resisting.... (I've been playing this game too much).....

Must build temple......

[Plutarck]

When doing some mod'ing I find it rather annoying to have to manually edit the Civilopedia contents. While the unit stats are automatic, which is nice, there should be a way to edit the Description and the unit "history" (the text that appears when you click the button under it's picture). Same goes for advances and governments.


In the Random Map Generator it should be at least possible in the Editor to fine-tune the occurance of certain tile types along with rivers. That way we could actually smack down the annoying Jungle Fever the auto-generator suffers from, and allow rivers to pleasantly be far less rare (or far more rare, should the type of scenario demand it).

[Immortal Wombat]

Sssssssscripting language!!

Other than that, open the CtP2 files, see how adaptable they are, adding reference to individual inter-linked text files, adding graphics as separate files so there are effectivly no limits.

From what I have seen of "the Editor", there seems to be plenty of flags, but the constraits of "changing rather than adding" will piss me off immensely.

FIRAXIS: think adding, not changing!

[Hoek]

Some helpful things that have not yet been mentioned:

1) Since the game operates on a territory basis, like SMAC, it would be good if we could define territories prior to laying out cities (which we should be able to do also). This would allow us, for instance, to put cities in their proper location without having to worry about how borders will change.

2) Along with that, scenario makers should be able to disable certain aspects of culture rating (such as expanding borders) and fine-tune other aspects of the economy, and such (it would be nice to create trade rate imbalances and such)

3) Do not release just one patch. If there is a good dialogue between the community and the designers, it would be great to see regularly updated and tweaked patches

In designing an editor, the designers should understand what scenario-makers are looking for: greater control over aspects of the game. The reason that the scripting language is so heavily demanded is that it gave scenario makers a great deal of control over the flow of the scenario. Unlike a "clockmaker" scenario, where only the groundwork and starting situation is laid out, events allowed scenario creators to more fully bring their vision of a scenario into being. With the new features of Civ III, we will probably have less control over graphics, but we could (i emphasize COULD) end up having better influence over scenarios if the designers come up with a good editor.

[Hoek]

Ooo, also, I would like to see diplomatic triggers. In other words, I want the ability to activate alliances during diplomatic talks. If the U.S. demands that Russia remove Nukes from Cuba, and the Russians refuse, that should be enough to trigger various alliances to be activated.

Another thing: allow scenario makers to design more espionage options (or eliminate some). It would be helpful to have a wider set of options given to us by the designers, but it would be the most helpful if we could be given the capability to design our own espionage.

I'd also like to see some disaster events. For instance, I'd like to be able to trigger epidemics, nuclear accidents, brownouts, that kind of thing.

It would also be nice to control land improvement benefits more. For instance, we should be able to tinker with various improvements (or be able to add improvements of our own). If we could add improvements, that would be super! We could make suburb improvements, and such...it would be neat.

[Pyrodrew]

AI Brain

After seeing some flaws within how the AI does it's Diplomacy (see my thread AI Diplomacy Flaws) I definitely want to be able to choose/select how much the AI values things when they are in a negotiation. There could be some basic default numbers that we could use as reference, but we should have an option to raise or lower these values as well as select what the AI won't buy and won't sell. Any other options allowing us to alter the AI brain would be great.

[Pyrodrew]

1.Peace/War Locks. We should have the ability to not only say which civilizations are at Peace & War with each other when the game starts, but also the ability to lock those conditions in for the entire course of the game. This would be good for Military Alliances as well.

2.Unit Wonders - An ability for units being "1-of-a-kind". Thus if someone wanted to make a Camelot scenario & when a certain knowledge (tech) was discovered they could summon Merlin. But if Merlin is given this "1-of-a-kind" ability it would allow it so only 1 Merlin would exist.

[Hoek]

Everything in Fantastic Worlds should be included, but some things should be tweaked.

For instance, there should be a "change unit" option that would modify all existing types of unit for a civilization...a sort of leonardo's workshop option

There should also be a "create city" event that would give us more power to guide the course of a particular civ's expansion

There should also be an option of forcing a civilization to split and specifiying which cities would split to whom

In addition, creators should have the option of setting queues for cities we create

[Plutarck]

On just about all of the "flags" there is no real customization possible. For instance you can tick the flag Reduce Corruption...and that's it.

Most flags would benefit from greater customizability. For instance I want to make a Temple decrease corruption a little, Police Station reduce it more, Courthouse do it quite a bit, and the wonder Chichen Itza to do it even more effectively!

The problem now is there is one single flag, and to make it worse Reduce Corruption isn't even a great wonder flag possability! It's ok if that's not possible in the editor, but at least with the scripting language or in text-files it could be editable.


Like someone above said, what all of us mod/scenario makers want can be summed up in one sentance:

We want more control.

We need to be able to make little changes here and there, which is how a true "artist" goes about the craft of mod-making. It is not the big changes which make the mod special and the game more enjoyable so much as the little tweaks, which together add up to an altogether different and more enjoyable experience.

Giving us nothing but 1 "replace" flag and less than a dozen checkboxes to control what happens is like handing Di Vinci a cutip and telling him to "have at it".

Sorry, but there is only so far we can go with a cutip. *squeak, squeak*

[Shadow99]

I want only 1 thing... The ability to 'add':
governments
eras
units
civ advances
civilizations
terrain
resources
& improvements.

The biggest thing I wanted to do was stretch out the early indutrial age by adding biplanes & a few more techs, create new 'air units' like the attack heli (cobra/apache/etc gunships), add in some more unique units as well... Like the German 'Air Ace'/'Barnstormer' Biplane, American 'sniper'/true rifleman (ala war of independance), French machine gunners, & more... But using the editors I can't add units... I (currently) don't even want to change graphics, just the stats & abilities to create a new unit...

Also I'd like you to think about Civ specific wonders (aka only 1 civ can build a certain wonder). This could make a Civ more than just a combination of special unit type X, features Y&Z, & initial tech a/b/etc...

I do like the above idea fo custom '1 of a kind' units though...

Come on Fraxis you know I haven't put down CIv 3 since last friday night!
Give a guy a bone, Please?

[TheDarkside]

SCRIPTING LANGUAGE
otherwise, how can you even make a "MOD" ?? After all MODign a game means well... MODifying it! Not just altering a few unit attributes!!! That's ELEMENTARY!

No seriously, without scripting language or ways to handle events uniquely you cant make mods. And the ability to alter ANY variable without silly limits (i.e. did you know you cant make techs take longer then 32 turns to research?!?) and no more of these flags for everything!! (i.e. I don't want that little flag that says "reduces corruption" whien you edit a courthouse, I want a text box where i can give the courthouse effectiveness a value _I_ want! CtP:2's SLIC was very nice, id be very happy with something like that, but of course, expanding on it would be even nicer! I've got so many cool ideas for mods but they just cant be done with the tight bindings by the current editting capabilities...

[Trachmyr]

In addition to the x2 defence vs. Mounted, I'd also like a tag for x2 defence vs. foot soldiers (For archers!).

As Plutark mentioned, the ability to alter the civlopedia from the editor would be awesome.

More choices for the goverment editor... such as a "Maximum Corruption %" that makes corruption/waste % > Max, = max. IF the city is connected. The ability to use "Martial Law" (kinda like nerve stapiling) for the next 10 turns reduce # of unhappy/happy citizens by # of military police (in addition to normal effect) (or # unhappy if less). More variations of Communal corruption rate (or make it a special condition available to all corruption rates).

I want the ability to allow cities to move surplus food from one city to a city with a shortage that it is connected to. This can be a goverment special ability. Ho it works is simple, if there is a shortage in one city it takes food from a connected city that has a surplus. Food is given to those with the greatest shortages first, in a tie the older (appears first in the list) city gets surpluses first. Food is taken from cityies with the biggest surplus, if a tie it takes food from the bigger cities, or if still a tie then from the younger (appears last on the list) cities. Call it Centralized Food Network or something.

I want to be able to make multiple techs allow resources to appear.

I want to allow certain techs/improvements remove the need for certain resources... i.e., Fuel Cells remove dependancy on Oil.

I want to be able to put cruise missiles on nuke subs, aegis and carriers.

Allow us to increase the operation range of aircraft to greater than 8.

A improvement ability that allows unlimited airlifts.

Allow us to determine the effects (food/commerce/production) of rail for each terrain type and improvement... so we can give +1 shields to rails in farms if we desire.

Allow us the ability to control what terrains can cause damage/disease.

Allow us to create more types of "bonus" terrain types... Bonus tundras have +1 shield/ bonus forrests have +1 food/ etc.

Allow us control over new terrains/tile improvements and terraforming... plus allow us to enter individual stats for each forest type and choose which terrain they can appear on (i.e., Tropical Forests only on grasslands)... and the way they appear in random maps.

The ability for some units to retaliate vs. air strikes.

A unit ability that gives it double normal fortify bonuses (+50% instead of +25%), and a unit ability that gives no fortify bonus when the command is given (useful for many ships).

Allow us to add new road types (Highways or mag-lev).

Allow us to make some terrains that you can't build roads on... while keeping the ability to build a road but no bonus commerce.

Allow us to make specialists create commerce in addition to tax/luxury/science. This commerce is split by your settings and is affected by any city improvements built and corruption. And a government ability that doubles the commerce (not luxury/sci/tax) produced by citizens. Same goes for food and production.

Airbases, outposts (Like a fort, but no defence bonus but increases sight radius of unit by 1 square (still not over mountains), gives 3 sight on hills/mountains) and Radar stations.

Sight radius stat for units.

Units that treat all as road should still get RAIL benefit.

Controls over the number of food needed for pop growth.

Control over the # of shields from disbanding

The ability to add more bonus resources (more strategic/luxury would be nice too, give us room for 12 of thoose).

Allow Offsore Platforms to "gain access" to coastal oil if it appears anywhere in the city view. Or to allow workers in transports to create a colony on this oil (looks like an oil rig).

FiX nuke plants so they can use fresh water or salt water (would be nice if they were seperate tags)

It would be nice if firaxis created an ART RESOURCE for the editor with ready to use units (full animation), heads, and more and released it with the expansion pack.

Let us choose which tech allows irrigation w/o access to fresh water.

A tag that determines if a bombarding unit can 1) Kill Land Units, 2) Kill land units in fortress/city, 3) Kill Naval Units (otherwise it can only reduce it to 1 HP)

An Escort Bomber Air mission

The ability to start a civ with an extra unit.

The ability to give Military civs the ability to support 25% extra troops for free or reduce the cost of units by 20%. And the ability to modify (and add) other civ charistics.



That's all I can think of for the moment