Can we change Civ attributes?

[Steve Clark]

Would it be a correct assumption that one can change any civ's attributes in the rules.txt file (or whatever it will be called)?

Do the wonders that trigger the Golden Age automatically change with them, or are they also editable in the txt file? For example, if Militaristic = Art of War and Industrial = Hoover Dam for the Chinese, what if I want to put in Economical = Adams (hypothetically, I don't know what an economical wonder would be). Also, what can I make this change, Industrial = Darwin instead of Hoover Dam?

In other words, are all of the attributes that affect the Golden Age editable? This would open up possibilities for making harder challenges, like changing all of the civ attributes to militaristic expansionists, except for the one you play with. Also, this would mean that you can control when the AI goes into a Golden Age. Do you think that these would be possible?

[Dauphin]

It can't be that difficult to change if Firaxis have just changed the attributes of some civs almost "on a whim".

[Gramphos]

Yes, we will be able to do that with the editors. We can set all attributes for all civs if we want to, or just one per civ. I don't think we can add abilities (create new one to set), but I might be wrong.

[Melios]

I know you can make custum civilizations with these. I don't know what all you can modify but I'm sure some of the more basic things like default names (leader, capital, etc.) and default Civ-Specific abilities. Certainly not a new "ability;" those are probably hardcoded.

It would be interesting to see how unique units are handled with this.

[Sirotnikov]

I think the Civ attrbutes should be changed only for scenarios and modpacks.

I don't think anyone can really compare his score and progress, if he tweaked the game to have only one good Civ....

[PGM]

Yes we certainly can. This game will be HIGHLY customizable. And Firaxis said that the way to do it is much more user friendly this time around.

[Edward]

A "user friendly" interface has the potential to be dangerous. There's a difference between:

1. Put all the variables used for tweaking and customization into somewhat cryptic text files. Players discover these files and unravel how some abilities are hard coded to unit slots, what the different variables do, reverse engineer the game mechanics, etc.

and

2. No text files. All the customizable variables are hidden in source code and machine-readable files. Anything you want to change must be on the list of things Firaxis had time to make a neat graphic user interface for.

From civ3.com's "Ask the Civ Team"
To that end, we'll be developing extensive tools for scenario and mod creators to use which will allow them to create whatever they can think of.

It's a little scary that they're going to "eliminate the need" for us to muck around with text files. Although I guess to an optimist, the above quote says we can customize even more features and do so even more easily.