If you have any tips and tricks for making mods, post them here. This includes reminders about files and settings, hidden effects of editor settings, useful or harmful bugs, etc. If we get a lot of helpful responses I'll see if a mod will sticky the thread.

One idea I have been promoting lately is the "renegade unit" concept that I found out from ocedius: If a unit has 0 def and HN set, it can exist in the same tile as a foreign unit. Also, if it is given bombard ability, it will bombard any incoming unit, even if it's friendly. This would be most effective and realistic with mines, IMO. You can read the gory details in this thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=97713)

And of course the classic: The arrows on the science advisor backgrounds are PART OF THE PICTURE FILE and do not automatically change when you move the tech icons. You have to manually edit the science_XXXX.pcx files. :D

Some other tips that come to mind that someone may want to explain:
1. When you add a lot of resources, there is some sort of bug that makes resources repeat after number 31 or something like that. Details?
2. Certain Global warming effects will not work, like converting between land and sea terrain. Does someone have the complete list?

Please post any other hints, tips, trips, bugs, etc that you think wil be helpful for beginning or advanced modders to know.

I always write down a lot when I'm modding a scenario, it helps with visualization IMO.

Giving improvements negative pollution might cause problems, it caused the game to freeze and stop responding (it probably doesn't know what to do)

Changing the 'border factor' is hazardous too for the same reason.

Think outside of the box ;)

Yeh, I write down everything, and even make Excel sheets for units and techs.

Somewhat obvious, but remember to use the AI strategy flags- the AI treats them like the words of God, and will only use units that have a flag. This can be a problem because sometimes you want to use a unit in a way that doesnt allow any flags.

Just found out the hard way: be cautious when giving stuff negative integers. Sometimes the game can't handle it.
It sometimes works, like for defense on terrain, but it can cause trouble.
So, if your game freezes, these are the ones that could be causing it.

Come on guys, waste a month, we are behind you! Just go through the forums, extract all the tidbits and anything else we need to know with all great ideas to boot. :lol: Alphabetize. Make easy for us to download and print! There, wahla we finally, finally have our modder bible we desperately would love to have. :goodjob:

Here is the last tip, I just gave a new modder: General Tab select none for barbarians if you really want no barbarian because once you mod out barbarians camps they still show up anyway, but this way they will be empty.

Start on a fresh Conquest Editor created map, for importing from CIV2 though possible is hazardous, not worth the hours you may end up throwing away!

Do you know exactly what it can't handle?

The AI will hunt down units with Hidden Nationality as if they are barbarians. This could be good or bad depending on how how you use your units.

I would rather everyone voluntarily post what they know, or else we might as well all go sorting through the forum looking for what we need :) If I get a lot of info I'll organize it in the first post and maybe make a downloadable collection.

Umm... worker rates only double once even if a civ gets two techs with this feature? Same for wealth production?

Coast tiles has produce disease for cities?

The AI will use Settlers with 2 MP even if they don't have Defense units that can go that fast.

The AI will not use land transports.

The AI also won't really use "King" units you may make if you want units that can be produced to upgrade to units that can't.


Also, has anybody noticed that the AI doesn't seem too keen on Cruise Missiles either??

Oh, I like this idea. It goes hand in hand with the thread I opened here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=99440) 'Course you probably already knew that. :mischief:

Actually that was my intent :D

If you make immobile land units, make sure you uncheck the "load" order. Failure to do so will cause the game to irretrievably crash whenever the AI tries to put a such unit in a transport, which it will do if given half a chance.

ahaha, I was wondering just how the arrows worked after messing around with some techs in a mod recently, and now I know, thanks! Does anyone know if there are any problems with giving improvements negative production?

ahaha, I was wondering just how the arrows worked after messing around with some techs in a mod recently, and now I know, thanks! Does anyone know if there are any problems with giving improvements negative production?

Before putting it in your mod or anything, I'd test it with a small test scenario if I were you. This could potentially freeze the game up.

Would limits count here? I just discovered that the maximum number of improvements and wonders is around 250. Haven't ran into any others. Except that resource bug which was mentioned already.

Before putting it in your mod or anything, I'd test it with a small test scenario if I were you. This could potentially freeze the game up.

Which reminds me:
ALWAYS TEST EVERYTHING!!!!! :D
I keep a biq called "tester", just a random 30x30 map with a few civs on it and I alter 1 rule and test it if I'm not sure what it will do. It's much easier to do this and play with it than to incorporate an untested idea into a mod and have to figure out what you did wrong when the game crashes.

Okay... in short... all of the unit features (minus A/D of course) work for Armies... so you can add HP, you can even make them able to Bombard... They can also carry only foot units, be wheeled, etc.

I also discovered that you can give Citizens negative values and that works. The game will apparently not crash. I haven't tried improvements yet, but from what I hear, they DO crash.

Here is some really good advice when editing stuff in a scenario:

DO NOT DELETE IMPROVEMENTS/WONDERS FROM THE LIST!!!!!!!!

If you do, and you have cities already placed with improvements/wonders, deleting one will cause them all to move one up.

When adding resources to terrain, determine whether or not you would still want that resource on the base terrain. For example, Fish in Marsh looks mighty funny when the swamp is cleared and the fish are 'swimming' in the grassland.

It's merely a matter of taste, but I like to at least have some logical explanation as to why a resource remains even though the terrain it was in is gone. For example, Fruit in the Jungle looks fine when you clear and irrigate it (You've planted farms of fruit trees) and/or plant forest.

Just a stupid, simple "tip" to help keep this great thread on the first page.

1. When you add a lot of resources, there is some sort of bug that makes resources repeat after number 31 or something like that. Details?

Could someone explain this further? I use alot of invisible resources and time delayed resources. It hasn't seemed to have any averse effects yet.

Oh, and uh, if you change the Production/food/commerce levels of a terrain type it shows the old values if you have the "display terrian's resource value" option. hope that made sense.

If you get an error like this:

Not found:
Scenario/Text/PediaIcons/ANIMNAME_
the game will now exit

it most likely means that you have an improvement which is set to spawn units, but is set to 'none'.

I recently created 2 new Civs. Everything is working fine with them right now except for the diplomacy screens. Instead of the normal diplomacy text I get when talking to the pre-made civs, I get some weird strings that go something like this:
$ player = Canadians

Any idea on what I can do to fix this? I'm guessing it involves editing the civilopedia.txt or some other file in that directory, but I don't want to edit those files any more without first getting some help...

I recently created 2 new Civs. Everything is working fine with them right now except for the diplomacy screens. Instead of the normal diplomacy text I get when talking to the pre-made civs, I get some weird strings that go something like this:
$ player = Canadians

Any idea on what I can do to fix this? I'm guessing it involves editing the civilopedia.txt or some other file in that directory, but I don't want to edit those files any more without first getting some help...

Nishdog, this is not a question thread. I want to limit it to helpful facts only. If you need help, start a new thread. :)

I recently created 2 new Civs. Everything is working fine with them right now except for the diplomacy screens. Instead of the normal diplomacy text I get when talking to the pre-made civs, I get some weird strings that go something like this:
$ player = Canadians

Any idea on what I can do to fix this? I'm guessing it involves editing the civilopedia.txt or some other file in that directory, but I don't want to edit those files any more without first getting some help...

Dishofdog, that equation you saw is referring the way Canadians are financially starved by one of the highest tax rates in the world, second only to Finland but with far less public spending to show for it. The $ sign actually refers to a negative integer so that when multiplied by the player, it results in a negative net worth for Canadians to represent maxed out credit cards and empty bank accounts.

:bump:

It has been tested to death, and there is NO reasonable way to make the AI use a land transport, due to the strategy flags.

Remember that no unit with a transport capacity can be transported- no airdrops from carriers :(

There is no way to unload a unit from an army. The army flag locks all units in.

For more info on Armies, see the new article in the War Academy.

If you want a unit to have defensive bombard only, you can set the range to 0, but you still have to check the "bombard" flag under Special Actions. Otherwise the unit will not bombard.

In C3C, rebase missions are limited to 4 times the operational range. AFAIK this cannot be changed.

A unit does not have to be an air unit to execute air missions. This can allow tactical strikes by covert ops on nearby tiles, teleportation, etc. (I have not tested this in depth, but I have made land units rebase and bomb)

I am going to do some testing later today to try out a new idea- combine stealth attack with air missions to see if I can make better precision strikes. If this has been done, somebody please slap me. ;)

If I have time I will also clear up the global warming issues- I can't find the old thread so I'll test all the combinations to see which effects work and which don't.



Oh, and one more tip: Never listen to anything scratchyfoot says :p ;)

If you want a unit to have defensive bombard only, you can set the range to 0, but you still have to check the "bombard" flag under Special Actions. Otherwise the unit will not bombard...Eh, no... The defensive bombard works. Adding the bombard flag just give the player the ability to bombard at zero range, which is non-sensical.

Hmm... it seems you're right, I assumed that was why my units weren't working.... apparently HN units don't use defensive bombard? Back to testing.....

If you want multiple resources with the same name but different look, you can use spaces in the name. That will technically give each resource a different name (for editor purposes) but will look exactly the same when you right click on the map.

For example, I thought it would be nice to have different types of "Game" bonus resource for different types of terrain. So, I have "Game" as the normal antelope looking animal for plains and floodplains, "Game_" (the "_" denotes a space) that looks like turkey for the Forest, and "Game__" that looks like a furry little bunny in the Arctic. :D

Don't use this option for Luxury Resources because each nuance of the same named resource will count as an extra luxury resource for happiness --unless this is what you want to do.

:goodjob:

And of course CK's spaces works exactly the same for units; I have 4 or 5 different Spearmen in my mod. :)

Another obvious one I forgot to mention:
BACK UP YOUR FILES!!! This is usually more of a convenience thing, especially with graphics, but the last thing you want to do accidentally overwrite the civilopedia you have worked on for weeks with the R&R version you just downloaded. (not speaking from experience here, but I can imagine ;) )
This is really helpful with graphics- I don't know how many hours I've spent digging through C&C for terrain improvements I overwrote and then decided I still wanted....

Weasel, it's better to make scenarios than modding the original folders, thus you can keep different gfx in different scenarios. :)

True, but I meant replacing the standard game graphics, not just for a scenario. I used to find a terrainbuildings file I wanted and overwrote the old one instead of changing the original to "terrainbuildings_orig".

If you have sacrificable units, the amount of culture points gained by the sacrifice is equal to the cost of the unit in shields. They don't tell you that!

If you have sacrificable units, the amount of culture points gained by the sacrifice is equal to the cost of the unit in shields. They don't tell you that!


Wow... I never knew that!

:bump:

I was hoping to get more input in thist thread :( I'll put a link in my sig and see if anybody else has somethng to share.

Here's another trick I just found in the Peloppenesian War scenario thread:
If you join a no-nationality unit to a city, the new citizen is always unhappy.

:bump:

It has been tested to death, and there is NO reasonable way to make the AI use a land transport, due to the strategy flags.

Remember that no unit with a transport capacity can be transported- no airdrops from carriers :(

There is no way to unload a unit from an army. The army flag locks all units in.

For more info on Armies, see the new article in the War Academy.


... but I believe you are able to disband individual units from armies, in order to make room for new ones, correct?

I don't see how, since you can't select individual units in an army... time for testing :p

Maybe it's flogging a dead horse, but anyone who wants some way-too-intense sense of what the AI will build can look here. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=62138&page=1&pp=20) :D

-Oz

And yet you've still not compiled all of the info, ozy... :shakehead

I'm working on a WWII scenario. And to make civs "neutral", you can...

...uncheck "Enables Military Alliances", "Enables Mutual Protection Pacts" and "Enables Trade Embargoes".

...and add a immobile defense unit that is the only military unit which the "neutral" civ can build. So it cannot attack other civs, but it can be attacked by other civs. :(

And yet you've still not compiled all of the info, ozy... :shakehead
:lol: It's on my huge "to-do" list ...

Abraxas,

Oz

Is there a quick way to add arrows to the tech tree?

See the first post. Kal-El made a graphics pack a while back with lots of pre-made arrows to paste on. It should be in the tutorial or utilities forums.

If anyone knows what global warming effects work, please post them. I can't find the old thread anywhere, and I don't really want to test all that.

Germany could have had jetfighters a lot earlier, but Hitler didn't like it :)
I've tried to come up with a way to similute this kind of what if thing in civ, here's the idea:

Make a tech called 'Hitlers stubborness' for example, and make it really really really expensive and require a (era none ) tech that only Germany has and possibly another tech to have it at a certain point in the techtree :)
The tech right after is 'jetfighters', so if you go through the trouble of researching the tech / convincing hitler ;) you can have Me262's earlier :)
A bit further in the techtree, there is another tech which gives one bonus tech ( or more ), so you can get the 'hitlers stubborness' for free.

Some more fiddling with era non flags and voila :)

Not sure if it has been posted or not but you cannot build units if they are dependant on a non-era tech.
2 possibilities then :

- make the units not need a tech and try to use the UU principle.
- put the tech in the former era (if possible)

Zeek, have you actually tried that? Techs can only have prereqs from the same era, so the no era tech thing wouldn't work. No era techs have to be available at the beginning.

Zeek, have you actually tried that? Techs can only have prereqs from the same era, so the no era tech thing wouldn't work. No era techs have to be available at the beginning.

I can have a tech from another era as prerequisite for a tech :confused:
The only thing you can't is have a tech require a tech from a later era :)

Haven't really tested it ingame, but theoretically, it should work :p

Prereqs have to be in the same era unless it's a no era tech. So a later tech can require a no era tech, but a no era tech can't require a tech from an era. I just tried it in te editor and it won't let me.

Prereqs have to be in the same era unless it's a no era tech. So a later tech can require a no era tech, but a no era tech can't require a tech from an era. I just tried it in te editor and it won't let me.

Well then, that isn't what I proposed either :)
The tech 'hitler' is in some era, and requires a non era tech that only the germans have :)
That hitler tech then gives the next normal tech, 'jetfightersI'
After a certain time in the techtree there is a tech called jetfightersII or something that signifies that hitler isn't stubborn any more, which gives one bonus tech, which you should use on 'hitler', if you don't, you're pretty dumb :p

The hitler thing is just an example

In that case the Germans would be the only ones who could research jetfightersI.

In that case the Germans would be the only ones who could research jetfightersI.

Hm, yeah :)

But if you have the Me262 in your game, you can just let the other jetfighters come with a different tech ;)