New Mod: "Bigger, Better Worlds"

[DB_in_Omaha]

"Bigger, Better Worlds" C3C Mod

** 2005/08/15: NEW VERSION **

Download: 21.2 Meg ZIP File 19.8 Meg RAR File

This C3C mod provides larger world maps, significant tech tree additions and revisions (most notably in the ancient and modern ages), three new government types, over 40 new improvements and wonders (including small wonders unique to each government type and civilization strength), more than two dozen new units, some minor graphics refinements, and a variety of rules adjustments.

Though the mod has grown much larger than I originally expected, it remains my purpose primarily to enhance the game. "Bigger, Better Worlds" is meant to make the "Civilization III" epic game more interesting and challenging; unlike some of the other mods out there, though, it is not intended to be "an entirely different way to play." Of course, my intent notwithstanding, it seems to be developing in that direction, anyway. While much of what you know about and expect from the default epic game will still apply when playing BBW, much else will not. Be sure to consult the Civilopedia to learn the specifics of what's different.

LARGER WORLD MAPS:

The smallest map available in the mod is the default epic game's "standard" map, a 100x100 grid which supports up to 8 civs. The largest map available is a 220x220 grid, which supports up to 24 civs.

TECH TREE ADDITIONS AND REVISIONS:

"Bigger, Better Worlds" adds the following 19 technologies to the game: Adv Med Tech, Criminology, Cryonics, Deep Space Travel, Drama, Expert Systems, Gaia Theory, Improved Siegecraft, Libertarianism, Mining, Motion Pictures, Nanotechnology, Neural Interface, Oligarchy, Piracy, Sailing, Siegecraft, Theocracy and Vassalage.

The ancient age's tech tree (screenshot) has been extensively modified, in part to incorporate some ideas I liked from the various "Conquests" scenarios, and in part to allow each civilization strength to be attached to a unique starting technology. Agricultural civs now start with Pottery, commercial civs with Writing, expansionistic civs with The Wheel, industrial civs with Mining, military civs with Organized Armies, religious civs with Ceremonial Burial, scientific civs with Mathematics, and seafaring civs with Sailing. (Note that the irrigation and mining worker abilities are also now attached to techs. Neither is automatically known by your workers at the start of the game, unless you start with Pottery and/or Mining.)

Espionage has been moved from the industrial age to the ancient age, and the cost of espionage missions has been reduced. This should allow espionage to be a much more important and interesting part of the game.

The tech trees of the medieval (screenshot) and industrial (screenshot) ages have also been revised, though not as extensively.

The modern age's tech tree (screenshot) has been redone almost completely from scratch, to better reflect real-world technological development and to make it impossible to win a "space race" victory without first researching every technology.

NEW GOVERNMENT TYPES:

I've added three new governments to the game: Oligarchy, Libertarianism and Theocracy. I've also tweaked most of the other governments a bit. The Civilopedia is completely up-to-date, though, and I've provided a detailed "Goverment Stats" reference file, so everything you might want to know about them is readily available.

NEW IMPROVEMENTS AND WONDERS:

I've added 12 new improvements: Amphitheatre, Baths, Brothel, Coffee Shop, Geothermal Plant, Guild Hall, Movie Theater, Refinery, Smithy, Supermarket, Winery and Worker Housing.

I've added eight new government-specific small wonders: Arc de Triomphe, Bayeux Tapestry, Egalitarian Society, Hammurabi's Code, The Inquisition, Magna Carta, Soviet War Memorial and Statue of Liberty.

I've also added eight new strength-specific small wonders: Craftsmen's Hall, Enshrined Relic, Great Harbor, Homesteaders' Hall, Military Headquarters, National Breadbasket, Sages' Forum and Traders' Guild.

I've also added two new "generic" small wonders: Assembly Line and Slave Trade.

I've added 20 new great wonders: Area 51, Bacchanalia, The Curies' Lab, Dinosaur Park, Disney World, Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, Encyclopedia, The Gateway Arch, Grand Unified Theory (GUT), Gutenburg's Bible, Hollywood, Machiavelli's Il Principe, Mayan Calendar, The Plays of Sophocles, Scotland Yard, Solar System Colonization, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Taj Mahal and The World-Wide Web. (The Internet is now a small wonder which allows creation of the Web.)

As with everything else, of course, I've also tweaked some of the improvements and wonders which already existed in the game. Probably the most important changes are that the Great Wall and the Temple of Artemis no longer become obsolete, to prevent walls and temples from suddenly disappearing from your cities, and that the marketplace improvement now produces a flat two happy faces instead of increasing your luxury trade.

NEW UNITS:

"Bigger, Better Worlds" adds 29 new units to the epic game: Airship, APC, Assassin (produced by Machiavelli's Il Principe), Balloon, Bombard, Continental Marine, Corsair, Covert Operative, Crossbowman, CyberPlane, CyberTank, Early Tank, Emissary, Fire Catapult, Galleass, Hover Artillery, Hover Tank, Missionary, Modern Infantry, Ocean Curragh, Prophet (produced by Enshrined Relic), Sabre Guard, Secret Agent, Shadow Infantry, Siege Tower, Spy, Terrorist, Trireme and Tyrannosaurus (produced by Dinosaur Park).

The Emissary, Spy, Secret Agent and Covert Operative units can operate invisibly and have stealth attack capability. As I noted above, espionage in various forms should be much more a part of the game, now. The Assassin is a Spy with hidden nationality.

The Missionary's nationality is also hidden; after all, a missionary ostensibly works for God, rather than for any human leader. It's useful for "converting" (either peacefully or forcibly) the workers and settlers of other civilizations.

The Terrorist unit is a "homicide bomber," essentially a human cruise missile with hidden nationality. I added it to reflect an unfortunate but undeniable element of modern warfare.

Settlers now cost 40 shields and three population points, and can't be built until you've researched The Wheel. Similarly, workers now cost 20 shields, and some worker actions (most especially clearing forests and wetlands) take longer. The settlers you start with cannot enter any terrain tiles other than grassland, plains, flood plains and hills, unless following a road. (An upgraded settler unit is available in the medieval age to eliminate that restriction.) Finally, citizens in your cities require three food each, rather than two. These changes were made to slow initial expansion.

With the exception of workers and scouts, none of the units available in the ancient age can move into desert, forest, jungle, mountain, tundra or wetlands tiles. Just as civilizations can be isolated in the early game by virtue of being located on islands, civilizations can now also be isolated by impassible terrain.

All of this adds up to make the early game much more varied, and at least in my own view, much more interesting. Whereas in the default epic game, AI civs all tend to develop initially at roughly the same rate, in BBW, many things -- starting terrain, strengths, available resources, research choices and simple luck -- can make big differences. Some civs will develop rapidly, some will develop slowly, some will stagnate and, yes, some will actually self-destruct, leaving only ruins for others to find and wonder about later.

Various other modifications have also been made to units. Perhaps the most significant changes are that spearmen, pikemen and early gunpowder units now have more balanced attack and defense capabilities, and that archers and crossbowmen have taken over as primary defensive units. As I said in reference to governments, though, the Civilopedia is up-to-date, and I've also provided a detailed "Unit Stats" reference file, so you shouldn't have any trouble figuring out what's what.

GRAPHICS REFINEMENTS:

All civilizations have consistent and unique colors. No more "maybe this color, or maybe that one" nonsense. There are 32 available civilizations, and 32 available colors. So who needs alternates? And speaking of civilization colors, the citizen heads you seen on your city screens and on your domestic advisor's display now include color-coded "smiley faces" to make it easier to tell at a glance how happy they are and which civilization they're originally from.

Strategic and luxury resources display on the map with small shields and smiley faces, respectively, to make them easier to spot quickly. And there are now twenty-seven strategic, nine luxury and eighteen bonus resources. (The city display screen has been modified to allow display of all nine luxuries, though I can't change the fact that only up to eight will affect the city's happiness.)

I've also given the boxes on the tech trees a cleaner look.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

(Check the actual "Read Me" files for these!)

-- Darryl C. Burgdorf

[DisruptiveIdiot]

There's a problem when playing the game : There's a civilopedia error pertaining to the Ampitheatre entry. Fix it I want to play roar!

Edit : Also tundra and desert not supporting cities makes some problems arise; such as oasis' and incense being unavailable and tundra with game is useless. Plus it leaves no explanation for desert countries and eskimoes

[DB_in_Omaha]

There's a problem when playing the game : There's a civilopedia error pertaining to the Ampitheatre entry. Fix it I want to play roar!

What error, exactly, and when did you encounter it? I'm not getting any errors....

Also tundra and desert not supporting cities makes some problems arise; such as oasis' and incense being unavailable and tundra with game is useless. Plus it leaves no explanation for desert countries and eskimoes

Tundra and desert tiles can still be within a city's radius, and thus, the resources can still be available. But you're probably right in a more general sense, as the other changes I've made to tile food production and population food consumption will probably make desert and tundra cities pretty unpopular without the need to actually prohibit them.

Of course, I've already noticed a need to tweak things there a bit more. I found myself earlier this morning with a starting city that wouldn't rise above size 2 until after I'd moved out of despotism. It made early expansion rather difficult, since I couldn't build any settlers.

Thanks for the feedback, by the way. Any comments or suggestions are welcome!

-- Darryl

[DisruptiveIdiot]

This is the error :

[DB_in_Omaha]

You're getting that error because the game can't find the right scenario folder. Apparently, you've saved the scenario file and the scenario folder with different names. They should both be called "Bigger, Better Worlds"....

-- Darryl

[DisruptiveIdiot]

Ah I see what I did wrong, I'm real eager to test this out

[DisruptiveIdiot]

Hey... 3 food per pop is INSANE! You can't expand early unless you start with irrigation! Its just crazy.

[DB_in_Omaha]

Hey... 3 food per pop is INSANE! You can't expand early unless you start with irrigation! Its just crazy.

Food production in several tile types has been boosted, and there are a number of resources that add food, as well, so it's quite possible to have a starting city that can grow beyond size 2 even without irrigation, and even under despotism. But you may need to look around a bit; building a city in your starting tile may or may not make sense.

I may still change the food consumption back, though; the idea behind the change -- slowing down initial growth -- is one I still want to implement, but this may not be the best way....

-- Darryl

[Antiochus VII]

I'm impressed! I haven't gotten a chance to play all the way through obviously, and it'll take some time to see if the food-per-pop changes balance (I started as AGRICULTURAL in floodplain with forest nearby and had a REALLY quick start to growth) so it may need some terrain tweaking, etc for balance judging from those earlier comments about not getting started at all without irrigation.

I skimmed the tech trees, l like the overall additions and will try to actually play through to see how the game balance/flow is affected.

By the way, I especially like the additions to the Ancient Age (espionage, mining to push back bronze working, etc.) and at the very end of Modern Age to give a little "future" feel. Have you considered an expansion to the Medieval Age to differentiate the gradual introduction of gunpowder? I always wanted the flow to be more like...

ALCHEMY (gunpowder, greek fire) - Dromond, Fire lancer(CH)*, Rocket(CH, KO)

METALLURGY - cannon

FIREARMS - musketeer


*Dom Pedro just released this unit by the way - YAY!

[EL_OSO]

Originally posted by DB_in_Omaha


Food production in several tile types has been boosted, and there are a number of resources that add food, as well, so it's quite possible to have a starting city that can grow beyond size 2 even without irrigation, and even under despotism. But you may need to look around a bit; building a city in your starting tile may or may not make sense.

I may still change the food consumption back, though; the idea behind the change -- slowing down initial growth -- is one I still want to implement, but this may not be the best way....

-- Darryl

Check out Rhye's of Civilization for slowing down growth. I'm sure if you asked him nicely and gave him credit, he'd be more than happy to let you use his method. He initially had it set up for 4 population in ancient times for a settler then changed it to 3 population but increased the shield cost to 120 shields. Settler costs vary by the tech age you are in as well.

I just started playing this mod and like it so far. It'll be even better once you have all the graphics added. At first I thought my tech slider was busted but confirmed that it was intentional in the editor.

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by Antiochus VII
Have you considered an expansion to the Medieval Age to differentiate the gradual introduction of gunpowder? I always wanted the flow to be more like... ALCHEMY (gunpowder, greek fire) - Dromond, Fire lancer(CH)*, Rocket(CH, KO) METALLURGY - cannon FIREARMS - musketeer

I'm not quite sure I understand your request. The dromon is an ancient era unit, and I'm not sure "Greek Fire" really had much to do with gunpowder, anyway. Cannons are already available with the metallugy tech, separate from musketmen, which are available with gunpowder (which would seem to serve the same purpose as your "firearms" tech).

Also, I couldn't find the "fire lancer" unit you mentioned.

-- Darryl

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by EL_OSO
Check out Rhye's of Civilization for slowing down growth. I'm sure if you asked him nicely and gave him credit, he'd be more than happy to let you use his method. He initially had it set up for 4 population in ancient times for a settler then changed it to 3 population but increased the shield cost to 120 shields. Settler costs vary by the tech age you are in as well.

I've played with various ideas a lot this weekend, and I ended up here.

I'm putting food consumption back to 2, and resetting tile food production back to the defaults. (I'll probably disallow irrigation of deserts, though; I really dislike the idea that an agricultural civ can irrigate deserts and make them just as productive as irrigated plains.) I found that in some situations, my change actually *INCREASED* early city growth, which was obviously not what I wanted.

I'm not going to use a set of different settler units as Rhye did, but I like the idea of increasing the population cost from 2 to 3, and will very likely borrow it.

-- Darryl

[Antiochus VII]

Just to clear up what I was referring to (and I was just illustrating an expansion, not really requesting anything exactly) was a slight expansion on the lines of the other ones you had already done to correct and expand the medieval research tree.

In reality early explosive or 'chemical' weapons such as gunpowder and greek fire (I know the dromond is an 'ancient' unit but the use of Greek Fire it portrays was 7th-8th Century in origin) were stumbled upon indirectly (through 'ALCHEMY' - i.e fairly UNscientific experimentation a precursor to invention in my own mods) and put into use far before cannons which in turn far preceded any effective musket, etc. With the flavor units available it would be possible to include such an expansion and correction.

Oh, Firelancer is in Battlefield Asia not by itself so it'd be hard to find. Sorry about that obscure reference.

[Lachlan]

No DB ! Keep the consuption of 3 food !

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Great Mod, along the lines of Ak47's Missing Links. I love mods like this.

You may want to expand upon the Age of Sail in the Medival Age(the age of sailing ships)

For instance, maybe an early medival warship, the Cutter, should be introduced, which upgrades to Frigate.

Also maybe one additional tech, advanced Naval Tactics, which would net the heaverer Ship of the Line(a more powerful, more expensive, larger frigate), this unit would later upgrade to the Battleship,(or perhaps a Heavy Ironclad could be introduced as a "Missing Link" unit) kind of like the Frigate upgrades to the Ironclad(optionally) and then the Destroyer.

[Amesjustin]

Playing the Dino version - (as the dinos, of course).

Great job so far. I like the 3 consumption for growth and settler creation - Optimator has that (with heavier food production from terrain, mass bonus resources, and irrigatable terrain having variable bonus when irrigated).

Do you plan on continuing to expand this mod?

[DB_in_Omaha]

BBW 1.10 is now available. Changes are as follows:

- Re-enabled city building on desert and tundra tiles.
- Set food consumption per citizen back to 2.
- Reset tile food production numbers back to defaults, but disallowed irrigation of desert tiles, and disallowed mining of desert and tundra.
- Raised shield cost of settler to 60, and population point cost to 3.
- Raised shield cost of worker to 20.
- Increased time needed for mining (now 18), irrigating (12), building railroads (18), planting forests (24), clearing forests (24) and clearing wetlands (32).
- Tweaked unit stats to mimic many changes from "Patch Suggestion" mod.
- Increased naval unit movement rates by one-third to allow for the fact that the mod's maps are larger.
- Added improvement prereqs to numerous wonders, in part to encourage AI to build more city improvements.
- Added "production" to "build often" lists of all civs that didn't already include it.
- Decreased optimal city number for each world size by about one-third to discourage huge, sprawling civs.
- Added Machiavelli's Il Principe wonder. (Rufus T. Firefly's splash art was just too good not to use!)
- Added assassin unit, essentially a spy with hidden nationality, to be created by the new wonder.
- Moved Art of War from Espionage to Code of Laws.
- Moved Carrier from Mass Production to Advanced Flight.
- Made Rocketry a prereq for Synthetic Fibers, to make it impossible to build stealth fighters without being able to build jet fighters.
- Added new territory border graphics.

[DB_in_Omaha]

Originally posted by Amesjustin
Playing the Dino version - (as the dinos, of course).

Of course. I have a sneaking suspicion that hardly anyone is every going to play the dino version to play *against* the dinos.

Great job so far. I like the 3 consumption for growth and settler creation - Optimator has that (with heavier food production from terrain, mass bonus resources, and irrigatable terrain having variable bonus when irrigated).

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the three food consumption to work in a way I liked. The only way I could prevent *very* quick stagnation of most city growth without absurdly increasing food production and thus defeating the whole purpose was to get rid of the tile penalty under despotism, which I really didn't want to do. And the change, believe it or not, while slowing down city growth in many cases, actually *increased* a city's growth rate in others.

So I opted to go a different (and more direct) route to slow down initial expansion. Settlers are more expensive.

Do you plan on continuing to expand this mod?

Yep. No guarantees as to how fast I'll get updates out, but I do plan to keep working on it, and I'm making notes of the various suggestions offered here.

I'm not really interested in creating "a whole new game" the way some of the large mods do, but I'm having fun revising C3C a bit to make it play just the way I want it to.

-- Darryl

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I think making "a more fun civilization expierence" as you put it Darryl, is a pretty good approach, I mean, how many DyP and Steph mods does there have to be?

PS: I'll play against the Dinos, I enjoy a challenge!

[Lachlan]

I'm against your rules back for food