My public Civ3 mod idea

I've been checking out a few mods and I had an idea for a mod inspired on Balthazar's Mars mod, and someone's solar system's terrain (he did not leave his name in the zip)

The Idea

I had the idea of making a mod with planets. These are different kinds of planets though. Instead of making 1-4 tile worlds I will generate a super massive map and fit it with 4 worlds. I will have Earth, 1 mars like world, and 2 more, but they will be actual maps, spherical shaped within a gigantic map separated by deep space.

World composition

-The worlds will have an internal water source only and will look like regular water. I'll choose the coast water for this.

-The sea will be replaced by a layer called 'orbital' space which will be some tiles in width and surround the entire planet. Will use different graphics.

-The ocean will be replaced with 'deep space'. Will have different graphics.

-Earth will look like earth, I will use Balthazar's mars terrain for Mars

-The remaining 2 still need to be worked out, but I plan to use the 'Hell Terrain' for one with lots of volcanoes.

The mechanics of space

-Naval ships will be only allowed to use water (coast). These ships will not jump into orbital space (impassable to wheeled).

-With the advent of space flight satellites will be the first to enter orbital space, followed by other early orbital ships which will greatly increase their movement as they navigate around the planet (AI compliant based on previous knowledge). These ships will strand in deep space if they attempt to jump it (Sinks in ocean).

-With the advent of Ion drive ships that would have otherwise become stranded and lost in deep space will be able to finally go for deep space travel. However progress is slow in the vast emptiness of space. You must find paths of orbital space that surround big stellar objects in order to move faster to your destination/exploration.

-With the advent of Hyper drive the rules change. You are now able to travel deep space efficiently. It is still a good idea to use the orbital space lane as it boosts your speed still, but you are no longer fully limited to it.

-With the advent of Warp drive the rules change yet again. You are now able to bend space and time, and blast the space surrounding your ship faster than the speed of light and get to your destination in a mere instant. Due to the nature of this very complex technology only a massive particle accelerator reactor found only inside a capital ship is able to do it. Jump with care as you never know what you'll find on the other side and these are very expensive ships.

The good news is the reactor is powerful enough to keep the portal open, allowing ships left behind to teleport to the capital ship (human side) as long as it has power. AI is too stupid so I will make up for it some other, similar way.

The gameplay

-Players will be segregated in planetary groups. People from each planet will be completely unaware of what is going on over the other planets until late game when they finally make contact.

-It's basically the full spawn of a normal conquest game with a beyond earth theme end game bonus. Think conquering your planet is good enough? Try conquering the galaxy. Better yet try to survive a sudden unknown advanced martian invasion 'war of the worlds' style. At that point your goal is surrendering and buying time.

Specs

-There will be 4 groups of 8 nations (one with just 7).

-Races will be Humans, Martians, Groxz, and Greyz.

-Might add minor races that occupy small planets rich on resources if 8 nations per planet turns out to be too much. (happy colonizing)

- Will try to implement my new naval/spaceship fighting system for modular ships, or
the most I can, which involves:

-Sensor targeting modules =For detecting the invisible.
-Defensive targeting modules=For shielding
-Offensive targeting modules =For attacking.
-Radar targeting modules =For detecting long range attackers.

After all who wants to see their prized ships dying in 1 turn after all the hard work done to build them?

I will get started and organize my ideas. Unfortunately I suck with graphics so I will need some help having all the mentioned terrain resources coastal land tiles adjusted to the same universal water color that will be used.

Wow, looks like a mod of my dream (actually I did one like this years ago but it didn't work well). And I am also interested in space tiles with standart terrain not planets as I work on a scenario with such concepts. I'm planning to use terrain from Star Wars Mod http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=378098

but it's not exactly what I'd like to have. Probably, you could find it useful too until somebody make something better

Sounds like an interesting idea and a nice mix between the single-planet-ness of Civ3, and the tiny-planet-with-one-civ-but-tons-of-space of Galactic Civilizations. I'd be interesting in seeing how it works.

Terrain will be a bit of a challenge, as it isn't possible to have 4 sets of completely different terrain. You can use the landmark terrain files to get essentially 2 unique sets, and since the terrain for each planet will be separate, you don't need to worry about the landmark terrain matching up with the non-landmark (just the orbital space). So you could use the standard terrain for Earth, and then use Balthazar's for Mars by renaming those files to the landmark ones instead of standard. But to get two more sets, you'll have to use some clever substitutions within those sets, and that could be pretty complicated since the graphics don't line up 1:1 with the tiles (see http://www.civfanatics.com/sotd/sotd99.jpg for a good illustration - the red grid is graphics tiles, the black is in-game tiles). Possible with work, plausibly, but to do so you'd likely have to reduce the variety of terrain on each planet. One gets grassland-desert-mountains-jungle-marsh, the other gets plains-tundra-volcanoes-hills-forest or something like that.

Fortis1 - It looks like the Star Wars mod is no longer available, since RapidShare closed a few months ago. Do you happen to still have it? I have the Star Trek Mod locally, but not the Star Wars mod.

Fortunately I have them. Since SheepMonster is offline since 2013, I think there's no problem in re-uploading it.

Thanks for the interest guys. Do you know of any tool where I could draw spheres into a map? I'm doing it manually and well it's taking me a while. I just decided 180x180 was too small and I'm redoing it all.

I'd like to have perfect grassland spheres, then craft my 4 different maps in it.

For the terrain I was thinking more along the lines of this:

1- A grassland sphere that connects to the same water.
2- A plains sphere that connects to the same water.
3- A desert sphere that connects to the same water.
4- A tundra sphere that connects to the same water.
5- As for vegetation isnt there a different pine tree per plain, grassland, and tundra? They will never touch each other in my mod, so I think I could change the vegetation applying to each to look different. This way you could also plant and get the tree graphix for that terrain. Heck even forests and make them all look like their own world. I'm gonna do some copy and paste to test it out. I dont see why i shouldnt work as long as they only sit next to their kind.

6-I will explore hills, mountains, volcanoes and see what I find I can do.
7- That leaves me with choosing a universal terrain to act as the mountains in all land masses. Could the snow capped mountains with a different graphic.
8-For rivers I really wanna use Balthazar's dry rivers lol. I'm thinking to make bonus resource with 3 additional river graphics, and paste it on top of the dry river to change its color. I think rivers overlap most things. Can I overlap something on a river? Lets say i got this resource shaped as a river and colored with water. This way the river acts like a river but it changes its color depending on the resource overlapping it.

I will Adjust food accordingly, give each land its unique bonus (production, food, tax, or resource) and balance them all accordingly to make for a somewhat even play wherever you spawn.

Any input will be appreciated.

UPDATE:

Well I didnt know each LM had its own graphic. I thought LM graphics were limited to the 3 found in the conquests file.

I see that in Balthazar's Mars mod he created some pcx files such as LM Volcano, Volcano unreformed, and they appear in game. Conquests did not come with a LM Volcano. I did not find a Txt file instructing the game to find LM Volcano. How can I make a new LM pcx that does not exist in game and make the game read it?

Please help if you can.

And I see what you meant Quint. I'm gonna see if I can identify the tiles I need.

UPDATE:

In the mean time I've figured out how to have multiple mountain graphics, and hills by combining them with forests, and jungles. All I did was place the mars hills and mountains on all worlds while keeping the base tiles all of the same graphics for now, using the different tiles to make them look like they should.

-Desert planets have no initial vegetation, so it looks red and dry.
-Plains planets have jungles next to their hills and mountains activating the plains graphics. Not so green not so dry.
-Grasslands have forests next to their hills and mountains activating the grasslands graphics. Very green and lots of forestation.
-Frozen worlds use snow capped mountains. I'm on the process of using my first LM terrain for the frozen world's Hills.

I will drastically change the looks of the forestation for each planet. With minimal work it is already looking very different from planet to planet. I can't wait till I start messing with the core tile pcxs.

Good thought about the plains/tundra/grasslands forest files - that will help a lot with diversity. The river-resources idea is a good one too, that I think should work. Another option there is the Flood Plains graphics - those can be different than the river ones (although that would only allow two different graphics).

Snow-capped will help with mountains. I think I tried adding a custom volcano landmark PCX file and it didn't use it when custom-volcanoes were enabled in my editor (where you can make landmark any terrain), but it's been a few years so I'm not sure about that; might be worth trying it to see if it picks it up.

It sounds like you may have finished up the circular worlds, but if not, you probably could use the import-from-BMP option in my editor (or BMP2BIC, if the size you want is one of the ones it supports) to do that. Make a BMP in your favorite editor of appropriate size ratios, add the circles of different colors (corresponding to terrains) in the areas you want them, blow it up to the size the editor requires, and then map the colors to terrains - probably would get it off the ground quicker than painting everything.

Looking forward to seeing what you wind up with - sounds like you're off to a good start so far.

This is very very early, but I made some changes and this is so far what I got playing with the forests and jungles around.

I saved the snow capped mountain graphic for the Volcanic world. I'm thinking to use the reverse global warming I was talking about in another thread and have jungles pop out everywhere.

With my settings Jungles+hills/mountains=Ice. Just like in real life. Global warming causes the cooling of the planet actually. It could spark an ice-age. It will basically simulate weather even if it has no impact on your production, thought I could probably fix that later on.

Im still looking for better hills on my forest world. Not that they look bad, but I want them to be a little more noticeable. I also need different base tiles.

Also I had no clue about the flood plain river. I could basically turn floodplain into lava for my volcanic world then lol! Awesome.

Im changing the forests as well so they look more alien. Does anyone know if the base terrain for jungle is always grasslands? Could it be tundra instead?

Ugh!!! I'm having issues with the LM terrain. Why does LM trigger the wrong LM terrain? LMHill is instead painting LMForest.

Take a look at my LMHill.pcx. Just why? I've always had the same result since I bought conquests for the first time. I look at other people's mod and there is nothing I'm not doing.

My LMHill is not loading, instead LMForest is loaded, and with colors all messed up.

UPDATE:

I get it. Im gonna make a thread about it. For some reason LM terrain is all out of order in my editor. LMTundra triggers my LMHill. It was never my fault lol.

ı was once working on a single planet where the aliens and the like arrived for ground combat and settling . Would definitely like to be able use any graphics after crediting their makers .

if any use ı have been able to edit mountains into space to limit one planet thing . Using snow capped mountains only for the planet .

Ok this is my progress on the planets so far. I yet gotta get some more LM terrain graphics, but its looking more and more like 4 different planets.

I opted to use Balthazar's base tiles as the grassland was good at blending in with the volcano world.

Still need:

1- Different crops for Volcano world, and martian world.
2- A whiter snow from one of Balthazar's winter terrain.
3- A blue water for all worlds.
4- Blend in the dark sky with the water (lots of mofo work)

That's pretty cool!

I'm almost done setting up my atmospheres. Global warming is no longer what it was. It is now terraforming, and helps to transform volcanic worlds into more habitable zones, and reforesting all other non-volcanic planets.

Only grasslands tiles, marsh and jungles are affected. The initial wave of trees on Lush and Frozen worlds will be LMforests with inferior values to the normal forest, while on the other hand Mars will have the better trees, but a less resourceful planet, and it goes like this:

-Jungles=dry cracks on volcano worlds.
-Marsh=fire cracks on volcano worlds.
-Jungles have a grassland base terrain that doesn't really look like one.
-Hill and mountain natural forms is that of my planet mars.
-All planets have this same hill and mountains except for the frozen world.
-Marshes and jungles will be very difficult to clear off the map. They will require a high number of turns.
-Forests take normal time to chop down.

Here is how terraforming will affect each planet:

Human Planet

Heating the planet

-Cutting trees in proximity to hills/mountains will cause the planet to gradually heat. Green hills/mountains will become brown. This is unintended terraforming due to a civs limited knowledge.

Cooling the planet

-Planting forests after the technology has been discovered will cool the planet. Brown hills/mountains will turn green. Planting forests (terraforming) is not easy and it takes a lot of turns.

Grayz Planet

-Just like the Lush human planet, except that this planet is white and it's so far from its sun that you can't make it any warmer. As a result the planet will always look frozen. Think of it as a white earth with different bonuses/strategy.

Martian Planet

Heating the planet

-The planet is already heated due to a volcanic cataclysm that slowed the planets core and damaged its atmosphere, and lost atmospheric pressure. As a result finding water is becoming an increasing challenge as it keeps evaporating at an increasing rate. Holding on to remaining trees might be a good idea until access to water is found for irrigation.

Cooling the planet

-When the technology is discovered, planting trees (terraforming) the same way as on Earth will give hills/mountains a greener color. However due to the composition of the land you will also get martian style trees.

-After sufficiently advanced terraforming technologies have been researched terraforming in a big scale will be possible. The planet will reforest itself over time, become slightly greener, and possibly some water bodies will appear.

Groxz Planet

Heating the planet

-You can't its hell in there.

Cooling the planet

-This is the most terraformable planet and will drastically change if you put some effort on it.

-The Groxz managed to live in it, and in the galactic age thier potential goes up dramatically. Burnt cracks turn go 'grasslands' making burned hills/mountains brown, then green as you plant, or terraform the planet.

-Fire dissipates as it leaves behind 'grasslands' ready to be harvested.

This is an evil civilization and the bonuses will help their conquest cause.

So far this is what I've got, but I'll keep adding and changing.

UPDATE:

I've made a great deal of progress with the graphics. The terrains are sort of interconnected like a web. While they all look different they come from the same source.

One way you can see this is when you fire a nuke at a square. Green lands turn brown, snowy lands turn brown, burnt lands turn brown, brown martian land stays brown lol.

I achieved this by manipulating the forest/jungle graphic effects when paired up with hills, mountains, and volcanoes along with a different base terrain for each landmass (grasslands, plains, tundra, desert)

The results are spectacular. Will be posting pictures soon. Also does anyone know of a irrigation to match my burnt world in the pictures above? I found better matching ones for the other worlds, but nothing for the burnt world yet.

Update:

This is the terrain I'm gonna use to layer my planets:

-6 different kinds of trees
-4 different irrigation
-7 different hills
-4 different mountains
-3 xtras:
-Burnt cracked ground
-Lava
-1 pending as I'm not done with it. It could become a 3rd 'road' type I'm not sure.

Now I will start work on:

-Grasslands
-Plains
-Tundra
-Desert
-Coast
-Sea
-Ocean

And uhmm yea I did not make these. I'm just using them as in a different way, editing the image to fit my needs. This is a terrain compilation. The mechanics behind in the scenario however are my ideas lol.

Looks pretty nice!

good projects,
could be from Settlers II. would be a Interresting terrain yield

Wotan49

Looking a bit like civ2 to me. But still good work!

Terrain update:

New tile border, and new snow. Finally work on sea and space will begin.

I forgot to mention the new water. You know what annoys me? The base terrain for mountains, hills, and jungles. I've decided to stick with the dirt looking graphics from Balthazar since it is the less problematic on my lava world. The base dirt terrain doesn't look that bad on dry lava worlds. It's my best shot right now as that is the same terrain as my grasslands, and since they are linked I cannot change it.

ı would really appreciate if your work could result in a seamless transition between coasts and whatever tile you will use as space .