Change starting Era

Hi there!

I have a question. How do you modify a scenario biq file in order to start the game in a different Era than the Ancient one.

I am currently playing CCM mod and I want to start a new game, but I'd like to start in the Industrial Era, or medieval at least. Ancient one is just too boring...

Any help here? Is there an easy way?

Thank you in advance!

Moderator Action: Moved to main C&C forum as that is where questions belong. Good luck with your issue.

Hi Inoé,

open the biq in the editor, go to Scenario Properties/Players and choose the Era for Player 1 (you can just click Alt+Enter when the biq is open in the Editor).

That's the easy part. Because then you will start in an other era with a few small cities, which means very few income and research. It is going to take years for you to research a tech and build units, because later technologies and units are costly.

Good luck to you and hope it helps.

EDIT: you can also go to the CCM thread and ask questions there, people will surely help you.

Hi Inoé,

additionally to the post of T-mun the following points must be taken into account when using an editor for changing the starting era and settings in CCM:

The first question is about the editor you should use for that operation.

If you use the editor 1.03 of Firaxis, coming with the last patch for C3C, each game will loose the option to produce scientific great leaders due to a bug in that editor.

The editor 1.00 of Firaxis, coming with the unpatched C3C doesn´t hold that bug, so it is suited better for changing settings in C3C single player games.

But even Editor 1.00 holds the following problem when modding CCM, as CCM holds 31 civs in gameplay:

When using the Firaxis editor, that editor automatically changes the number of civs in the mod from 31 back to 24. So the following steps for changing settings in CCM with a Firaxis editor are needed:

1. Registry Scenario\Scenario Properties: Set the number of players to 31
2. Registry Scenario\Scenario Properties\Players:

Here you can set the starting era (and also the government when starting and the starting treasure for each civ).

a) Set the initial era for player 1 (who is set as the human player in CCM) to the era you want (in your case the industrial era), like T-mun described it.

b) Set the starting era of the other players to the same era (otherwise only you will start in the industrial era, but all other civs will still start in era 1). If the editor offers you only 24 instead of 31 civs, you have forgotten step 1.

c) You have to add the additional starting nomadic settler manually again to each one of the 31 civs in the Registry Scenario\Scenario Properties\Players in the starting units as the editor switches that setting also back to the standard settings.

Well that´s a lot of work if you aren´t used to handle a Firaxis editor.

So in my eyes it´s better to use the editor of Quintillus, that can be found here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9541179&postcount=1

as this editor keeps the setting of 31 civs and the starting units and additionally the option to create scientific great leaders. To run that editor you also have to install Java.

Good Points and Well Stated Civinator