New Patch Impact on Creators

[Joe R. Golowka]

The new patch gives mod creators some new options. Leathal bombardment will make it possible to create more specialized units. Seaplanes and anti-ship missiles can be simulated by making units that can kill ships but not ground units. We can create anti-tank planes that can kill ground units but not sea, etc. We can use the hp bonuses to simulate heavily and lightly armored units.

Now that government-specific buildings & wonders work right we can use them to make new governments very different from each other. The settings in the government tab give relatively few options for creating lots of truly distinct governments. Now you can take two governments with nearly-identical stats but give them different sets of buildings and they're now very distinct. One could make a culture-oriented government by giving it lots of culture generating buildings. You can do the same thing with production, corruption, science, etc.

These changes will also allow us to have wonders which enable the creation of other improvements/wonders. Have the wonder provide 1 wonder_effect building in each city and then have improvements which require wonder_effect. If made government specific we can do some very interesting things with this.

[Lemmy]

the problem is we have to make these governments ourselves, they should've been in the unmodded version of civ...

[Captain]

Re: New Patch Impact on Creators

Originally posted by Joe R. Golowka
We can create anti-tank planes that can kill ground units but not sea, etc. We can use the hp bonuses to simulate heavily and lightly armored units.

Good, I was thinking the same, but wondering if we would be able to have tank & mech inf-killer aircraft that don't kill regular infantry?

for mech inf, the vehicles boost movement and armour them from light attacks, but make excellent targets. infantry on their own are much harder to kill from the air than a tank.

And can we have a flag that lets the ships retaliate against the aircraft with SAMs?

Any ideas about whether - if we make infantry use 1 pop point - we can re-integrate them with a city later? I like the idea of drafting a huge defensive conscript army to defend in an emergency but being able to reincorporate them in society after the war is over.

I was thinking of copying all the units, and having them cost 1 pop point. Then you can pick between producing many "small" units, or large "mega" units with more hp. The small units would be better trained (+1 A/D) and so good for raising small manoever armies to scout, pillage and harass, whereas your main battles would take place with the pop cost megaunits. production heavy civs could pump out many small units like now, and production poor but pop rich civs could create larger but fewer units (without the pop-rush or draft penalty).

Or do you think this is redundant since it's somewhat accounted for in the army unit?

The gov't stuff is really cool too. I've been compiling a mod on excel for a while, mainly waiting for this patch instead of applying it to the last one. This way my mod will be completely consistent instead of patchwork additions. Should be good whenever I get that done. Maybe some time in May if I still have net access.

[hwinkels]

Game without legs

I'm outta here altogether. This game has no legs. Re-did my saved game editor twice and with no help at all from Firaxis.

That was no probelm. Know what the problem is? Civ III has no legs. It was fun.

This is my last post. Here's hoping for Civ IV.

Peace.

P.S. I hit "Spell Check" by mistake and got a message about the "advertising climate". Bite me, Apolyton.

[Ed O'War]

When I read the 1.21 readme, I got really excited about all the possiblities--h.p. bonuses for specific units, lethal land and sea bombardment, supposedly the ability to add additional resources and units. But then Firaxis disabled the Rename, cancel, a/d "bug" that allowed us to add new content. I just wanted to say that this "addition" really hamstrings modding. Oh Firaxian Gods, if you can hear me, please restore the ability to add units and new content (other than governments) to the editor. Thanks.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ed O'War
When I read the 1.21 readme, I got really excited about all the possiblities--h.p. bonuses for specific units, lethal land and sea bombardment, supposedly the ability to add additional resources and units. But then Firaxis disabled the Rename, cancel, a/d "bug" that allowed us to add new content. I just wanted to say that this "addition" really hamstrings modding. Oh Firaxian Gods, if you can hear me, please restore the ability to add units and new content (other than governments) to the editor. Thanks.

I dont believe they will! My bet is its slated for the XP. They were pullin our chains with the editor improvements with 1.21

[hetairoi22]

"Good, I was thinking the same, but wondering if we would be able to have tank & mech inf-killer aircraft that don't kill regular infantry? "-Captain

No you can't But if you gave Infantry a HP-bonus, you could increase the number of bombards needed to destroy them.

Just a thought

H22

[SpencerH]

Re: Patch Impact on creators

Since I can no longer add units I'd say the impact is pretty poor (despite appearing excellent on wednesday).

[Captain]

Originally posted by hetairoi22
"Good, I was thinking the same, but wondering if we would be able to have tank & mech inf-killer aircraft that don't kill regular infantry? "-Captain

No you can't But if you gave Infantry a HP-bonus, you could increase the number of bombards needed to destroy them.

Just a thought

H22

Hmm, good idea... but i was also thinking of raising HP's for armoured units like tanks! so that would just cancel out. looks like there's no solution yet - except maybe to go to CtP2.

well, at least there's a hacked editor out now. I was pretty disappointed when i first heard they removed the add/delete function. good work jimmyh, and also gramphos! your tools are what firaxis should have been providing in the first place.

i mean, i understand company constraints and firaxis did set up the framework, but how is it two regular guys (albeit very talented ones) can do this in their spare time and firaxis' paid employees can't even do the same while being fulltime?

[SpencerH]

Now that I've figured out my stupid error with adding units with the new hacked editor, I think that 1.21 will be a huge leap forward for some elements of mod-ing. The ability to add more strategic resources and modify HP to individual units will allow us to add a boatload of variation to the game.

[Smoking Mirror]

The problem with every bodies suggestions with how to use the HP bonus so far is every one wants to use it to reflect armoured units. If you use it to reflect a combination of experience and numbers you can get a realy realistic combat system.
If you have a standard of cinscript 2 regular 3 veteran 4 elite 5, just like in the regular game. Give infantry more hp th reflect just how many of them there are but low stats to show how easy they are to kill. Give armoured units such as tanks lw HPs but high attack and deffence values to show that there is not very many of them, but individualy they are difficult to kill.
for example
German infantry- attack 8 defence 6. HP bonus +1
(conscript 3 regular 4 veteran 5 elite 6)
Panther tank- attack 12 defence 8. HP bonus +0
(conscript 2 regular 3 veteran 4 elite 5)
Tiger II tank- attack 14 defence 12. HP Bonus -1
(conscript 1 regular 2 veteran 3 elite 4)

Artillery could also be fixed for an anti tank or anti infantry role;
Machine guns- bombard strength 4 range 1 rate of fire 5
88mm cannon- bombard strength 12 range 2 rate of fire 1

The machine guns would be great against the infantry (kill ratio of 33% on normal terrain, and able to kill up to 5 HP in one turn) But would be almost useless against the tiger II (even on open terrain only a 12.5% chance of killing a HP each shot)
The 88mm cannon would have more of a chance agianst the tanks, but would only be able to kill on HP of infantry per turn, you would need four 88's just to kill a regular infantry.

(note, rate of fire is the number of shots, all taken at once that a artillery peice can take agaist a single target. they cannot be spread to multiple targets).

When deffending (the free shot the artillery can take at aproaching attackers) the 88mm would be more usefull, cos the free shot always has a rate of fire of 1 regardless of the stats.

[SpencerH]

Smoking mirror

Thats exactly the type of thinking I'll be employing in my mods. It can make for huge variations in units compared to the original.

[W.I.N.T.E.R]

Problems with Patch

Has anybody here got an idea on how to re-enable bic file stat changes to change the setings in savegames ???

Cuz this is sth the new patch brought along

[SpencerH]

Re: Problems with Patch

Originally posted by W.I.N.T.E.R
Has anybody here got an idea on how to re-enable bic file stat changes to change the setings in savegames ???

Cuz this is sth the new patch brought along

Your 1.17 bic file mods should work with 1.21. I cant say definitely since I havent played a game with my old mod in 1.21, but they can be opened in the new editor and changed (add HP to units etc).

[W.I.N.T.E.R]

Yeah- that works one way (1.17 to 1.21) but backwards (since I had already updated) I cannot change the settings for the safegame with the old patch on- I wanted to start my (patched 1.21) sav with the 1.17 version active so as to edit my safegame, but it wouldnt open