Civilization III: Worldwide

Anthony, I want to say “THANK YOU!” once again! :) I had a great weekend… mostly because I played a “Worldwide Prestige”! :) I spent almost a day to play to the end of the game and I achieved cultural victory near the turn 480 (year 192x).
My previous post brought more negative info and I feel a need to make this one more positive. :)


Minor issues to fix:
- civilopedia icons for Lusitan Spearman replaced with icons of Slavonic Spearman;
- “Letters Of Marque” improvement needs “Must be near water” + “Replaces all flag checked” flags;
- “Radio Station” seems too cheap – cheaper than any other building. Intentionally?


Performance issue:
Game worked slow enough on my PC starting from the 2/3 of era 2 – Core i7 2.8 GHz + 4 GB RAM. I see a reason of slow working playing “Napoleonic Wars Global”, but it’s interesting to me why it happened with your mod on a normal map. It didn’t happen with my own mod as well, even when I played it during testing on the huge map.


Fundamentals seems to fix:
I do not know exactly was it made intentionally, but some wonders don’t require pre-requisite city improvements – for example, a Great Library doesn’t require a regular library & a Newton University can be built without any scientific building (I mean university). Also a comment about the virtual “pre-requisite” should be placed into the Industrial Complex description – Complex produces an Artilleryman and if there’s no barracks in the city, this wonder becomes useless – it’s impossible to upgrade an autoproduced unit (Artilleryman) or to move a unit into the city with barracks. I know there cannot be 2 improvements as pre-req, so it’ll be good to place a reminder about barracks to the civpedia description, at least.
So, as I said, possibly such things were done intentionally and that’s I placed a word “seems” into the section title.


A personal observation about thousands of units:
Developing my own mod, I initially tried to put maximal amount of units in it. So I made tribal warriors-barbarians from Sandris for pre-historic times (era 1), I inserted ancient units for ancient times (era 1 again). And, you know, I found I can usually use only one kind of units per era. What I mean: let’s look at Medieval era – there player can find Dark Ages units + High/Late Medieval units (that’s what I meant saying “kinds of units”). But since player should produce & gather military forces for war, there’s no time to use DA and H/LM units – there’s a time to use DA or H/LM only (OK, with some small cross-additions). So modder can spend hours & days balancing unit lines power, and player won’t use a half of it. This fact is a hurt for modder and saying this I want to notify you for your future civ3-projects and Ares who said he has 1500+ units in his mod. Almost the same thing was done in the original game – strong gun-powder units appear at the end of the era 2 – beginning of era 3, when player got the flavor of fighting with medieval knights from the beginning of era 2. I’m almost sure, this fact was confirmed by play-testing.
So, summarizing – one kind of units per era is completely enough, but more can be available to choose between them, though.


Graphics features:
Units update feature – it didn’t seem to me a good idea to update a Republicano Tank on changing era 3 to era 4 – it was a Panzer IV (?, IIRC) in era 3 and became a Leopard (?) with the same stats on changing eras. This feature depends on the player’s taste – and it doesn’t go for me, sorry. Though, of course, I do support idea to update workers gfx. :)



Gameplay:
Once more many words, this time more constructive since I did feel a flavor and I know what can be done alternatively. :)

Naval barbarians – I met them, they do exist, but they seem too weak to bring problems. If I can give an advice, I would make them stronger. Not to be a man of words – in my own mod I use animals made by Tom as ground barbarians, and I use a Thunderstorm made by Tom as a naval barbarian. I made it as powerful as sails ships and the result of battle between Storm & galleon is unpredictable, but galleon has good chances to survive – while the ancient galley has no chances, so there cannot be a luck to make circumnavigation using the ancient galley.

Artillery – bombarded my ships and killed 2 ships of the line, I, damn, almost cried with the bloody tears! :) Didn’t see it was used on the ground – I had a war with Poles and they brought 2 cannons, but used them for the regular attack. So it happens, but seems too rare. It’s not your flaw, it’s just an AI design, we all know it.

Mercenaries – they, damn, can attack cities until the last defender. When the war is declared only. :) It’s a game design flaw, not yours. It seems laughable to me – units with the hidden nationality with the primal goal to disturb another player by their robbing action – and they cannot be used this way. :) Possibly, it can be hacked out, but I’m not sure.

Attributes – a thing I criticized a lot in my previous post. OK, at the end of era 2 I got them. :) I must say, they absolutely cool to have. :) The only problem – I felt no reason & motivation to build them in era 1 and almost all the time of era 2. In era 3 I got their flavor in full, but I had to wait a long time, as you may see. :) That’s why, I think, there was no 2nd headshot post from Nihtantuel – he found this feature attractive, but, possibly, too late and I did the same, you see. And I changed an overall mark I put into my previous post – I’ll show it at the end of the current one. :)
And a couple of words of what I expected from buildings-attributes – I waited them to play more important role, not to be a sweet addition to the the city progress, but to be a thing which truly specialize a city.
An additional thought about Attributes I’ll say in the “Thoughts & ideas” section of the post a bit later.

Buildings – “buildings, buildings, buildings”, I recall. Yeah, there are a lot of buildings and this thing is one of not so positive. Tons of buildings is not always good. That’s the reason I dislike RaR extended mod, for example – there you can build bazaar, toll house, market, bank, central bank, national bank & finally Smith’s Trading Company within 2 eras. All these buildings serve 2 main goals – to get player money (1) and bring fun (2). (1) works properly (I didn’t know where to spend thousands of coins), but (2) becomes a pain – what a muthafuking hell it is??? Looking through the list of buildings with the same effect, you see no difference between them. And this list starts to annoy at some moment. So something close I felt about *coal mining, factory, powerplant, hydroplant. 4 buildings serve the same goal (productivity+) inside the short period of time – I would prefer the only one with the cumulative effect of all and, possibly, big value in shields. It’ll make buildings list more simply & shorter. And more clear. AI will count it too expensive?

Railway Station building – a great design, as it should be even IRL. :) So this one made me excited a lot. :)

Armies – strange, but China did not use its armies against me. They had a wonder autoproduced armies and I destroyed 3 army leaders when conquered a city with it. Simultaneously, Chinese had a number of swordsmen and had no horsemen, so, possibly, absence of fast units became a reason not to create armies?



Enough of analysis. A time for the sentence – an overall mark. :)
4.5 of 5, definitely!
High quality gfx? Yes. +1.
New interesting tech tree, buildings, units? Yes. +1.
Unique ideas & features you never seen before? Yes. +1.
Interesting & fun gameplay? Definitely yes. +1.
New game mechanics? Yes, but could be more, IMHO. +0.5.
So 4.5. Congratulations & THANK YOU, Anthony!!! :)

CCM mod & Napoleonic Wars Global scenario – examples of 5/5, IMHO - just FYI.




Thoughts & ideas:
Here I’ll post some thoughts about gameplay improvements I see. It’s a suggestions part, whether they worth to be done or not – up to you.

Attributes – possibly, it’d be interesting to play with improvements upkeep cost and raise it. I suspect this thing or a very similar one was done in the 1st release of the mod – according to the questions from Tom? It’ll force player to build attributes buildings earlier in the game and they will help to stabilize an economical part. So there’ll be no person to say attributes are useless and player can live w/o them easily. This will bring additional difficulty and interest. And a fun – the balance solution can be found! :)

Progressive buildings line – well, in this field I have a theory, not only thoughts. Of course, I could check it and tell concrete facts, but that time I was too tired of modding and I did nothing for a long time. There was no inspiration as well – and your mod brought it back. :)
I already talked about idea of not only progressive unit line, but of a progressive buildings line + city specialization. So I read an intriguing phrase in your post – “AI never builds them”. Could you, please, tell me what kinds of buildings AI definitely builds? I will compare it with my own experience and will tell you what I’ve got.
So, a theory. For example, you have a choice: you can build city improvement A or B. A brings you money, B brings productivity. A & B are excluding each other – the same to your attributes. A1 has an A as pre-requisite and provides features of A + something new = for example, money + happy face, and replaces A being built. The same B1. Sure, A & B “chains” cannot be in the city simultaneously – so the city specialized in money or productivity only. This brings an additional flavor to the game & makes it more difficult.
There can be more interesting thing – what if buildings will depend on the government type? :) For example, you can build a cathedral under Feudalism - it produces happy faces. But changing to the Theocracy, you can build a monasteries (cathedral as pre-req) & a Crusade great wonder (monastery as pre-req), which supports your army with horse knights with no upkeep payment.

Mercenaries – yeah, I got the idea about them. Once I thought about trading workers – you can take them from the other civ on the peace treaty. So, possibly, you can trade with a Mercenary civ buying troops? Well, yes, but only 2nd unit from the units_32.pcx can be traded. Oh what a disappointment. So the idea is to create a small non-playable civ with the mutual protection pact (locked alliance) and it’ll have no possibility to build settlers to expand. Even w/o possibility to build cultural buildings (only productive & financial) – so it won’t take anybody’s city with its cultural influence and cannot be taken, as well, since it’s a capital. Yes, this civ won’t trade you mercenaries, but if you will supply them with resources, they’ll bring their units into fight on your side. Don’t laugh of me, please – I do understand it’s an approximate imitation, but it’s better than nothing at all, I suppose. It’ll require some additional work from modder, but it’ll bring a new mechanics to the game and with the proper realization – a lot of fun. :)
Possibly, this idea reminds cities-states from Civ5 (oh, I don't like this game in its current state), but these small civs give you no tasks (only when they ran into the trouble - but to protect them or not is up to you) to complete and just help you. And, of course, no annoying "We are no longer friends, give them something to be closer to each other" - what a shet.



Some additional and possibly useful info:
Currently I design a huge world map 362x362 size - some kind of re-design of the world map by... TETurkhan? It was used for a Napoleonic Wars, WW1 & WW2 Global scenarios. I downloaded all top maps from the database, but the same problem remains in every - a small Europe. I made it 1.5-2 times bigger than on the TETurkhan map and it seems to be pretty well if you choose only major euro civs to play on it. So if there'll be a person who wishes to adapt Worldwide to the world map, I have something to assist with. The only thing – I don't know how soon I will complete it (Americas to be done + Africa small adjustment, the rest is done) and I don't want to be forced. So that's all about additional and, possibly, useful info.



So, once again, thank you for the mod, Anthony!



And for any reader. It’s definitely worth playing this mod. But, please, don’t be too hurry – you will have a pleasure, just wait. Don’t tell me you tired of waiting – it’s a worst thing ever, I do know, but it’s worth, I say once again! :)
 
Now that's a post.

Errors: The Letters of Marque fix is in the update in Post 1. The radio tower is indeed very cheap; its purpose is to allow your cultural borders to expand fast in newly conquered cities (propaganda).

Performance: Everything runs slow on my computer. I didn't want to utilize any of the tricks like micro-zoning to speed up game time. They work great for scenarios, but I didn't want to lose trade as it was originally programmed. Wish this game had Civ 2-style trade routes and caravans.

1000's of units: It's just the way I like it. I enjoy the mini-eras and the iterations of units. Everything in the game has been constructed around this. I don't mind having a gunpowder civ fighting a medieval civ, I just tried to reduce the variety of eras within each civ's army. For example, the modern AI army in a regular game that includes stacks of infantry and longbowmen.

Buildings: If you think there are too many now, you should have seen the laundry list in my first test version of 'Prestige Worldwide'. :) I agree with you; I don't like huge amounts of buildings. They get redundant and they weigh the AI down with maintenance costs.

Thanks for playing and all the interesting and well-presented feedback! When you're finished your mod, you'll need to put it up here so we can take a look. :)

So what's next? I have a bunch of ideas that will simmer as I take a long break from this mod. I was going to post them but why ruin the surprise? I know which civs I want to finish up with, and have some new ideas cooking including building chains (like you mentioned) and the return of unique units. Fingers are crossed that we can continue to see great new units from our creators that can make these civs possible. I'm especially interested in what Shiro's been working on, and hopefully we'll see Sandris' Indian and Mongolian lines, and maybe some other surprises. But this is all for later...I'm busy making a war right now.
 
A couple of things. First, the Letters of Marquee attribute an be built in all cities, so you end up with the AI having a bunch of landlocked privateers. Also, I tried out CCM, and really like the no military alliance feature, as it makes things alot more simple. I tried to invade a 2 city civ, and what should have been a simple invasion turned into a world war as the civ signed a bunch of military alliances the turn before it was wiped out. Just my 2 cents.
 
ArmoredKing said:
the Letters of Marquee attribute an be built in all cities, so you end up with the AI having a bunch of landlocked privateers.
Anthony said:
The Letters of Marque fix is in the update in Post 1.
Just an answer, it's already done, I used a .biq from downloaded archive as well instead of downloading a new one w/corrections from the post #1.


ArmoredKing said:
I tried to invade a 2 city civ, and what should have been a simple invasion turned into a world war as the civ signed a bunch of military alliances
Well, it's a matter of taste & what you want from the game. For example, I don't like this because
it makes things alot more simple.
I don't want things to be "over-complicated" too, but it should be interesting - I have to think & then do. :)
 
AK-84: As Wolfshade posted, the correction for the Letters of Marque is at the end of Post 1.

Also, as pointed out, the military alliance is a matter of taste. Personally, I love the chaos that develops from all the alliances that degenerate the world into war. If you would like to remove this feature, it can easily be done under the technologies section in the editor. I can give you step-by-step instructions on doing that, if you like.
 
I ran into the same problems again like before. I played as the Persians and had the same thing happen where I would build a Qajar cavalry but it change over to an irregular. Also when I was able to build the Qajar cavalry it said it could upgrade to an irregular. Is this intentional? Same thing happened when I played as the British but this time had the build when I wanted a horseman build me a bowman. When I was able to build a British horseman upgrade it said I could to a bowman. Is this intentional as well? If not and I know you are busy with a lot of other bug fixes but you should definitely take a second look at the upgrade paths of units.
 
Scott, can you post a copy of the .biq file here? You just have to zip it and attach it to a post. Also, has this problem continued to occur even if you downloaded the most recent version of the game in Post 1? I'm not sure what's causing this issue for you. In my copy, the cavalry units you mentioned upgraded correctly. Also, I don't know why the game would change your city builds after you've chosen them.

Has anyone else had issues like this? I played full test games as the French, British, and Persians and did not see this issue once. Hopefully we can isolate what the problem is so the game isn't unplayable for you.
 
Yes, I had. I tried to build amount of Spanish Hussars but city production switched to irregular automatically (I switched it back to hussar manually in every city). Since I knew hussars won't be effective in defense of newly conquered cities, I built 4 or 5 of them and continued with infantry - that's why I just forgot about this fact.

It seems this "issue" (it may be not an issue) depends on the "auto upgrade" - when medieval swordsman becomes available to build, it automatically replaces ancient swordsman (same resources needed) in the city production list, probably, here the same thing - hussar should replace irregular (or vice-versa), but for some reason it's still possible to build both units (required resource is the key?).

Unplayable? :) It's a too small detail to make the game unplayable.
 
Yeah, this is a problem. It may be related to the required resources, but in any case the irregular was supposed to be unbuildable. I heard that this was an issue with king units so some changes are in order. Also, warriors should really be upgrading to archers, not swordsmen.

I'm working straight through the weekend but within the next couple weeks I'll revisit this. Hopefully I can make a relatively simple fix.
 
Scott, can you post a copy of the .biq file here? You just have to zip it and attach it to a post. Also, has this problem continued to occur even if you downloaded the most recent version of the game in Post 1? I'm not sure what's causing this issue for you. In my copy, the cavalry units you mentioned upgraded correctly. Also, I don't know why the game would change your city builds after you've chosen them.

Has anyone else had issues like this? I played full test games as the French, British, and Persians and did not see this issue once. Hopefully we can isolate what the problem is so the game isn't unplayable for you.

Yea I do not know how to do a WinZip conversion but like Wolfshade said its not just me and probably is a common problem. Not a debilitating problem but just an annoyance. And I also downloaded the most recent full version. I even downloaded the 2.1 patch just to make sure it was fully updated and had the same problems.
 
First of all: Respect and hats off! It's an amazing mod. I just wanted to test it and ended up playing almost half a day. I play on a huge map with 24 civs on emperor difficulty. First I was a little shocked, when almost all other civs declared war on me and made military alliances. But it was quite funny. But sometimes the AI is really confusing. First it made an alliance with me against some other civ, but then it attacked me the next turn. Is this behavior intended?

I also think, those city attribute buildings are quite interesting. But sometimes it's confusing, which attribute replaces which. For example I have a guild in a city and build a major sea port. The port replaces the guild. Fine. But I can also build a letters of marque in the same city and this replaces nothing. So I can have two attributes in one city. (P.S. I really like the privateers with the jolly roger!!)

Then I did not yet find the tech, which allows trading of world maps. I'm in the late enlightenment age and checked all the available techs there and the first few in the industrial age. I could not find it. Maybe I'm blind? Or maybe world map-trading is not possible?

Then sadly the upgrade options for mercenary units or units you get from attributes/wonders are not listed in the CivP. For example there is no information for the German Mercenary Crossbowman.
 
Thanks for the post, Nad. A few answers for you.

The AI's behavior is not (and really cannot be) altered much from the original game's. The early AI military alliance seems to happen if you are not powerful enough and they think they can bully you. Be advised, the AI rates offensive power much higher than defensive units. More info should be available on that in the regular game forums.

The Letters of Marque has been a real pain, hasn't it? I looked and sure enough, it still doesn't have the proper flag checked. The other attributes should be done properly. The pirate ship is aaglo's, and like all his ships, it is incredible.

Map trading is available with the discovery of Espionage in the early industrial era. I was very happy with this move. It really makes you get out and explore, and monks are well suited to that task.

I'm not sure about the upgrade options you mentioned. The correct upgrade will usually only show if you are playing the civ whose units you are looking at. The merc German crossbowman, for instance, shows up fine in my civilopedia. Would you mind specifying which improvements don't have entries?

Thanks for the comments and hope it was fun.
 
I didn't know, that the AI behavior is "as intended". Maybe I did not notice, because I play at emperor level for the first time. I always played at lower level.

So it seems, that I didn't check far enough in the tech tree. I did not check espionage and of course was used to the fact, that map trading was available very early. Thanks for the info.

I made a mistake about the upgrade. It wasn't the German mercenary crossbowman. It was the Hospitaller Spearman. There the upgrade-option is missing in the CivP. I only noticed randomly, that I can upgrade this unit to Knights of St. John (I think).
 

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Nad, are you playing as one of the Western Christian civs? Civ III only shows what the unit you are looking at will upgrade for your current civ. It's not a problem in normal Civ II but is when you have multiple unit lines. As someone pointed out on this thread, this could be circumvented by putting the upgrades individually in each civilopedia entry, but that's a great deal of time consuming work. It's something I might do when I eventually round this mod out, perhaps next year.

Emperor's a bit tougher, I suppose? I usually play on Prince or King so I can screw off a bit more.
 
AnthonyBoscia, I must say that this is a great mod and has provided me with some serious fun. However, I am starting to run into a few problems. The game year is 1800ish AD right now and I, as the Spanish, am rampaging across a huge archipelago map. The problem lies in 2 civ-specific wonders for my civ. Escorial and Don Quixote both are coming up with civilopedia errors. I'm not sure if it is just Spain or if it could be some other countries industrial age wonders?
 
Glad to hear it's going well, Theo. Do you know which specific civilopedia errors it comes up with? IE. Wonder splash, city graphic, etc. There had been a mistake in the original version where all graphics files were correct but the Spanish and Arab wonders had accidentally been erased from the biq. But this would be the exact opposite of what's wrong in your game. Would you be able to post a picture? Thanks.
 
Yeah, looks like it's missing. The Tactical flc is in the Spitfire folder, though. So, if you go to:

Worldwide>Art>Units>Spitfire

you'll find it in there. Just make a copy and dump it into:

Worldwide>Art>Units>A-10 Thunderbolt II

You should be able to resume with your existing game. I'll make a corrected folder for Post 1 as soon as I can. Thanks for spotting that, Dave. Sorry for the charlie fox.
 
I just downloaded the mod and I must say, it looks great. I have two issues, however.

1: By the mid to late game I had so many auto produced units it wasn't funny. I didn't even have to build armies than, they came automatically, frequently annoyingly so. I spent more time disbanding excess units in the late game than actually doing anything. I would be great to be able to turn auto producing buildings "off" when you don't need the units.

2: You cannot win a space race victory. I got all the tech, resources, and infrastructure to build the parts but the "last two" wont build, specifically mission to mars and renewable energy. I had everything for them and the game wouldn't let me build them.
 
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