How good/bad is the editor in "Play the World"?

[siredgar]

How easy is it to create your own maps and customize things? Can you tell me how much the editor has improved?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, can you specify a civ's location when creating your own scenarios?

Any other comments would be helpful.

Basically, I don't intend on playing multi-player because I have a slow connection so I'm wondering if it's worth getting. I just want to play the new civs and try out the updated editor to create my own scenarios.

Also, can I play multi-player through a LAN connection if I know someone who also has the game? Is it any better than connections with random people on the Internet that way?

[siredgar]

Please don't vote if you haven't actually bought PTW.

[FNBrown]

I don't think there were too many noticeable changes from the Civ3 1.29f patch.

[WarpStorm]

There were numerous changes, but a lot of them are 'under the hood'. The most important was the implementation of scenario folders and search paths. This allows you to make/load scenarios without screwing up your install or copying files around.

In addition, most hard coded values have been made accessible.

Ability to make flat and toriodal (why?) maps was added.

Ability to change time scale was added.

There is also the ability to make a debug scenario.

To answer your question, yes, you can place civs, but you could in 1.29f.

The biggest things missing are the lack of ability to set diplomacy and to script events.
Most features from Great and Small Wonders are shared.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I can't vote in this Poll as I don't yet have PtW . However, from what I have read around the place I must, for the most part, concur with Warpstorm. That is, the editor has been significantly improved, but still lacks what I consider to be some VERY important features-namely diplomacy and events scripting-not to mention making Buildings pre-requisites for unit construction (apparently on the Firaxis Wishlist ). As you can also see in my own poll, I am greatly displeased by the fact that four of the MOST IMPORTANT flags for Great Wonders are not available for Small Wonders-a fact which has shot my Mod ideas to hell. Thus, if I were going to vote, I'd probably say good, but needs some more patching in the future and, given their excellent history on Patches, I look forward to this becoming a reality .

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[FNBrown]

Good point... one thing I would have liked to have seen was the ability to make small wonders provide free city improvements.

For larger empires, it would be nice to build the "Supreme Court" at home, and get courthouses in remote cities immediately upon their construction - thus allowing for productive cities away from home in a minimal amount of time.

Personally, I kind of hate having to build granaries, barracks, and temples in new cities late in the game - they seem soooo 1000 years ago, yet still essential for a modern city to thrive.

[WarpStorm]

Oddly enough, nearly any town of moderate size in the USA will have barracks and temples (I know mine does). Any farming area will have granaries. Not as 1000 years ago as you'd like to think.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Oddly enough, nearly any town of moderate size in the USA will have barracks and temples (I know mine does). Any farming area will have granaries. Not as 1000 years ago as you'd like to think.

True - however, city planners don't spend several years with the construction of barracks, temples, and banks these days. Any modern town with a population of 50,000 or more pretty much gets banks, churches, etc. all over the place.

Modern city planning should have more emphasis on modern improvements. City councils usually argue more about retractable-roof stadiums these days than they do over marketplaces and libraries.

I think there ought to be a point in the game where older improvements become commercialized and privatized, so that the municipal benefits exist, but it is no longer the function of the government to oversee them in minute detail.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by FNBrown
City councils usually argue more about retractable-roof stadiums these days than they do over marketplaces and libraries.

Don't you mean retractable-roof colosseums?

[WarpStorm]

In my town, the the city 'planners' argue over the placement of everything. While they don't fund the buildings themselves, they sure spend a lot of time (and my money) deciding what gets built where and when.

[Switch]

Maybe a Privitization tech or small wonder (although the wonder would need a better name), that would give any city of size 3 automatically free basic building, like barracks, granary, temple, and marketplace? Maybe a library too, though that might be pushing it. And maybe granary shouldn't be in, as there's already the Great Pyramids.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You could call it "Private Enterprise", or "Civic Minded Citizenship" or something like that!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Gangerolf]

always room for improvment

[Atahualpa]

I think the best addition to the editor is the use of search paths.
You can recreate the whole Civ3 Directory Structure in a Folder of your liking (default is the same name of scenario in the PTW Scenario Folder e.g.: Civilization III\Civ3PTW\Scenarios\yourscenario\ and yourscenario.bix in Civ3PTW\Scenarios) and add new units there.
Before you had to overwrite the default Civilopedia.txt and Pediaicons.txt. Thus any scenario (that alters these files) would conflict with any other that alters them too (or just if they use different units_32.pcx). Or if you changed civilopedia text for existing units, the text would be changed too in the default game.

I hope I understood that correctly, but now Scenarios and Mods should not conflict with each other anymore.
It is even possible to use other mods in your own mod by pointing the search path to a different mod. e.g. you point the search path of your scenario to a graphicsmod. All the graphics in that mod will be used instead of the default ones, while you can still play with the default ones as well when you start a normal game.

IIRC when Civ searches for a file in your scenario it uses the first path of the search-path if not found there, the next one,.. and so on. Therefor you need not put all stock-Civ3 files in your Scenario Folder but only the things that are new/different.


That makes it for me much more useful to do scenarios for PTW as the user is not forced to overwrite anything and it leaves his installation quite untouched.


ata

[WarpStorm]

I agree, Atahualpa.