Limits imposed by the game

[Michel]

I have been reading up on some of the information posted in this forum and all of the MOD files. From what I can gather, the game imposes a limit on the number of units, improvements and wonders that can be used. After locating 'Mark The Dane's' (I hope this is right) ZFS reader, I was able to quickly scan through the lists of files contained within. As far as I can tell, if you were dedicated enough and were capable of changing ALL of the text information required, you could conceivably expand the game without limits.
My interest in the creation aspect of the game has come about because of frustrating lists and wanting to create my own city list for Canada. Also, I might be able to finally develop some ideas I have had to improve the game, to suit my wants.
Any help from experience creators will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Grandpa Troll]

You are hereby welcomed by me! To our little corner of Scenario making.

I will say this, you can add as many city names you want, I believe, because I have had 300+ at one point, now thats a lot of naming!!

I believe all you need to do is go to 2 different files, one in the "Default" gamedata called "civilization" (Here is my exact path)

C:\Program Files\Activision Value\Civilization-Call To Power\ctp_data\default\gamedata\civilization

and simply add a new line for each city to this: (The Canadians are #34, toward bottom)

CIV_CITY_NAME CANADIANS_CITY_30

when you add the next line it will be this:CIV_CITY_NAME CANADIANS_CITY_31

then the next will be this:

CIV_CITY_NAME CANADIANS_CITY_32

and so forth.

Then to actually "NAME" the particular city go to this path:

C:\Program Files\Activision Value\Civilization-Call To Power\ctp_data\english\gamedata\civ_str

CANADIANS_CITY_30 "Head Smashed In"
the next would be something like:




CANADIANS_CITY_31 "Tuke"

Then the next would be:

CANADIANS_CITY_32 "Rush is a great Band"

Note that all I did was change the number of the next city and the new city name.

Keep spacing correct so as to not crash!

I hope this was a little help!

Have fun and allways remember to make a back up of files, helps if you get to messed up accidently!

A little change at a time my friend! Just a helpful word from someone whom got cockey and did a bunch and couldnt figure out where he screwed up!

~Peace~


Troll

[Grandpa Troll]

Oh yeah, also, to avoid too many cities penalty, go to govern.txt in same directory as civiliation where we rename the amount of cities, and open up the govern.txt files and look for a line that says (IN EACH GOVERNMENT!)

TOO MANY CITIES THRESHOLD followed by a number

I have mine set to 1000, although I rarely go past 300+, gets so tedious!



Have a great day!


Troll

[J Bytheway]

There is a limit of 64 wonders and a similar limit of 64 improvements (though if you're cunning you can exploit this limit to your benefit). AFAIK there is no limit of significance on anything else, though numbers to watch out for are obviously 64, 128, 256...

[Martin Gühmann]

There is another limit for city, unit, effect and good graphics you can only put 200 of each type into one mod. And unfortunatly it is not so obvious like John mentioned. For the other limits: Of course for all the things in the game is a limit, it just had to be high enough so that no one will encounter it.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
There is another limit for city, unit, effect and good graphics you can only put 200 of each type into one mod. And unfortunatly it is not so obvious like John mentioned. For the other limits: Of course for all the things in the game is a limit, it just had to be high enough so that no one will encounter it.

So you can only have 200 special, differen names?


(Scratching head)

I really thought I had named and used 300?????

Oh, well, I also thought I found the lost city of Atlantis

[Michel]

Unless I missed something 1 year ago, my city names loop after 30, like every other civ in the game. I sat down and went through a small Canadian road map and selected as many of the largest cities as possible. I managed to get 110 names, which included all of the major capitals in the country and various provinces and territories. (The list that Activision provided was way out there!)

Thanks to everyone for there help and advice. Even though I am not getting ready to create a lot of new items for the game, this will at least keep me grounded, for the time being.

One other thing: the game tries to run for something like 500 turns +/- X (varies with difficulty rating). Is the only check to year 3000 as listed in one of the files? If so, then I know that I am going to change how the years fly by after the year 2100 in 4 and then 10 year increments. I know that it is essentially cheating, but it seams strange that it takes more years (not turns) to crank out the same unit later in the game.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Michel
Unless I missed something 1 year ago, my city names loop after 30, like every other civ in the game. I sat down and went through a small Canadian road map and selected as many of the largest cities as possible. I managed to get 110 names, which included all of the major capitals in the country and various provinces and territories. (The list that Activision provided was way out there!)

Thanks to everyone for there help and advice. Even though I am not getting ready to create a lot of new items for the game, this will at least keep me grounded, for the time being.

One other thing: the game tries to run for something like 500 turns +/- X (varies with difficulty rating). Is the only check to year 3000 as listed in one of the files? If so, then I know that I am going to change how the years fly by after the year 2100 in 4 and then 10 year increments. I know that it is essentially cheating, but it seams strange that it takes more years (not turns) to crank out the same unit later in the game.

Correct, you will need to manually alter the names

As for turns, go to diffb.txt, same file path as civilization (The default file)

You can change years per turn and then the game will go much more slower, as in amount of TOTAL Turns.

Also, when you get toward end of science exploration, you know "Future Sea 8 and so forth, I turn my science OFF, as in the counter so all my money is going to the coffer instead of into research associated costs, because at that time you will need for upkeep.... UNLESS.. you should decide to reward your fine citizenry by REDUCING your maintenance costs!!

Just a suggestyion is all!!

[Peter Triggs]

CANADIANS_CITY_30 "Head Smashed In"

I've often wondered if the programmer who put that in was a hockey fan, liked Canadian beer, or really was thinking of the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead, Manitoba.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs


I've often wondered if the programmer who put that in was a hockey fan, liked Canadian beer, or really was thinking of the Rural Municipality of Brokenhead, Manitoba.

Thats why I suggested Tuke and something about Rush {one of my Favorite Bands!! }..but thats a definite distinctive name, the one you are referring to

Oh well,

I would have thought they could have had a better suggestion than that!!

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Troll
So you can only have 200 special, differen names?

No, the limit is on city graphics - you can only have 200 different sprites (pictures) used as cities.

[Grandpa Troll]

~Whew~

Thought I was losing me memory..

I remembered naming 300..ok

Off we go!

Back to working scenario time!

[mandarin]

Hey troll.....seen you in the server lobby a couple of times...

Gotta agree with you Rush is an alltime fav of mine....whew headrush with peart,lifeson+lee!

But...you ever heard of a German band called Eloy...go take a listen and marvel....gr8 stuff

Right...and now back to the topic...im starting to look into this mod stuff more seriously....looks very powerful and ill see what i can come up with in time...

For now its back to ctp straightlaced version to find some more weaknesses/improvements/strategies if you get my point.

Im hard pressed at spendiny my time in figuring how the AI works and improving it than playing the game!

Sad not enough hours in a day....and then the g/f wants her slice too

Cheers folks