i want a game that cannot advance technologically past the medieval era. how can i do this?

There are XML files that affect the way the game acts. The one that does this for technology is Civilization IV\Assets\XML\Technologies\CIV4Techinfos.xml. In there you will find text that looks like this:

<Type>TECH_BIOLOGY</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<Help/>
<Strategy>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY_STRATEGY</Strategy>
<Advisor>ADVISOR_SCIENCE</Advisor>
<iAIWeight>0</iAIWeight>
<iAITradeModifier>0</iAITradeModifier>
<iCost>3600</iCost>
<Era>ERA_INDUSTRIAL</Era>
<FirstFreeUnitClass>NONE</FirstFreeUnitClass>

So this is for Biology, I just picked that at random. You can see that it is a industrial era tech. If you change the cost from 3600 to something outrageous, say 10000000, that should effectively shut down getting that tech. I would just go to the end of the medieval techs, search for iCost, and paste in a big number on the rest of the techs.

My guess though is the AI will not stop researching even though it is hopeless, since they only ever really try to win via the space race.

awesome thanks. so, how do i change this so that it won't affect other games if i don't want it to?

awesome thanks. so, how do i change this so that it won't affect other games if i don't want it to?

You would need to make a mod. That way you load the changed file only when you want to use it. I believe that you recreate the Assets folder structure under your mod name folder and put your changed file in there. However I'm not an expert on mods so I may be wrong.

I suggest you ask questions in the Civ4 Creation and Customization forum. There are lots of expert modders there, and most of them don't even know this forum exists.

I haven't tried this, but I thought you could limit the game eras when you select a custom game through the regular game menu?

You can start later in a later era, but you can't do it the other direction.

You can start later in a later era, but you can't do it the other direction.

Well that's silly! :) Anyway, thanks for the info...

What would you want to do? Shorten the game, or just stop research beyond a certain tech level?

just want to stop research beyond the middle ages. i can't figure out how to change the values. when i play i need the disc in the drive and that isn't writable is it? what am i doing wrong?

The disk in the drive is just to ensure that you own the game. You don't run the software off the disk .. or you shouldn't.

The data files are all in the /Civilization IV/Assets/folder wherever you installed the game. Mine is in /Applications/. Edited versions of the data files are stored in a /Mods/ folder. There are two of these. The best one to use is ~/Documents/Civlization IV/MODS/.

Modding is not trivial. If you are not confident then I would recommend that you post a request in the Civ4 Creation and Customization forum, asking if someone can do what you require.

There are XML files that affect the way the game acts. The one that does this for technology is Civilization IV\Assets\XML\Technologies\CIV4Techinfos.xml. In there you will find text that looks like this:

<Type>TECH_BIOLOGY</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<Help/>
<Strategy>TXT_KEY_TECH_BIOLOGY_STRATEGY</Strategy>
<Advisor>ADVISOR_SCIENCE</Advisor>
<iAIWeight>0</iAIWeight>
<iAITradeModifier>0</iAITradeModifier>
<iCost>3600</iCost>
<Era>ERA_INDUSTRIAL</Era>
<FirstFreeUnitClass>NONE</FirstFreeUnitClass>

So this is for Biology, I just picked that at random. You can see that it is a industrial era tech. If you change the cost from 3600 to something outrageous, say 10000000, that should effectively shut down getting that tech. I would just go to the end of the medieval techs, search for iCost, and paste in a big number on the rest of the techs.

My guess though is the AI will not stop researching even though it is hopeless, since they only ever really try to win via the space race.


i go to this directory and click on Civ4Techinfos.xml but then something called omnioutliner opens up and i have NO idea how to find the techs there...i don't even know what it is. and i don't see any xml at all...just a bunch of appearance prefs and stuff like that in omni but not for civ 4.

The disk in the drive is just to ensure that you own the game. You don't run the software off the disk .. or you shouldn't.

The data files are all in the /Civilization IV/Assets/folder wherever you installed the game. Mine is in /Applications/. Edited versions of the data files are stored in a /Mods/ folder. There are two of these. The best one to use is ~/Documents/Civlization IV/MODS/.

Modding is not trivial. If you are not confident then I would recommend that you post a request in the Civ4 Creation and Customization forum, asking if someone can do what you require.

hmm....how come when i try to play the game without the disc in the drive it asks me to insert the disc?

Open it in TextEdit. Omni Outliner is not a simple text editor.

hmm....how come when i try to play the game without the disc in the drive it asks me to insert the disc?

Because if you don't insert the disk it doesn't know that you have it. It's a copy protection measure.

ok well help clear this up for me please. i need the disc in when i open the game, but then i should take it out?

ok and the only place i can find the civ4techinfos.xml file is in 'civilization IV' but only when the disc is in the drive. how am i supposed to edit it if i take the disc out?

You can take the disk out or leave it in once the game is running.

But if the DVD is the only place the file exists then you haven't installed the game. You have to copy the entire Civ4 folder from the disk to your hard drive, not just the application file. Just drag the folder from the DVD to /Applications/ to copy it. Then double click the copy on your hard drive to start it.

Modding is not trivial.

So I've found... and I had you to do most of the work for me (and the lovely people who thought up CivGold, of course). ;)

ok how about scenarios? there are surprisingly few included with the original game and i haven't ordered warlords yet....(stupid christmas)

i loved the north africa campaign and i am currently spreading roman goodness throughout the world in the greek one but after that i will have no more. the american revolution doesn't really interest me....unless i play as the brits maybe. is there some place i can find scenarios for the mac? everything i look at is pc only. i am getting very close to ordering a dell which will put me off from buying a mac pro for a bit longer. yes i know that you can run windows on your mac but from what i hear there is a performance hit, the hardware for the pc would be cheaper, and i want to use the mac pro for audio production exclusively unlike what i am currently doing with my powermac.

ok how about scenarios? there are surprisingly few included with the original game and i haven't ordered warlords yet....(stupid christmas)

i loved the north africa campaign and i am currently spreading roman goodness throughout the world in the greek one but after that i will have no more. the american revolution doesn't really interest me....unless i play as the brits maybe. is there some place i can find scenarios for the mac? everything i look at is pc only.
Most scenarios need some tweaking to adapt them for the Mac, but if they don't use a custom CivGameCoreDLL.dll file then it should be do-able. Which ones have you looked at and rejected as PC-only?

i am getting very close to ordering a dell which will put me off from buying a mac pro for a bit longer. yes i know that you can run windows on your mac but from what i hear there is a performance hit, the hardware for the pc would be cheaper, and i want to use the mac pro for audio production exclusively unlike what i am currently doing with my powermac.
There's no significant performance hit if you run Windows in BootCamp. It doesn't know there's a Mac in the background. The only issue I'm aware of is that the use of fully buffered RAM in the Mac seems to get the geeks excited.

However, the Mac Pro is one of the fastest "desktop" PCs you can buy, and last time I looked it was significantly cheaper than the equivalent hardware config from Dell. Of course, you don't *need* that powerful a PC to run Civ4. The beauty of a Mac is that it will run any OS. A Dell won't run OS X.