As some of you might have noticed, I generally refer to Civ3 Editor's "On-Line Helpless". To put it kindly, it's full of mistakes and omissions. My hope is that we collect our combined knowledge of the Editor's malfunctions, eccentricities, etc., into one place.
I'll begin with a list of what I know; much info is from other threads and I apologize in advance for not being able to give credit.
I also hope we can have a STEP TWO, which will consist of ways we've found to use the editor to better simulate events (e.g., simulating helicopter gunships by making them land units with All Terrain As Roads, Paradrop, Amphib; etc.).
But first things first, page by page:
1. “Scenario Properties”
2. “Civilizations"
“Civilization Advances”
“Units”
Some initial miscellany regarding Units:
“Advances”
“Governments”
“Improvements & Wonders”
- And that's all for now folks. PLEASE add to this thread! (1) I don't mind being wrong and will happily correct and (2) I'll do my best (with limited time) to keep as much as possible updated in this first post (although I did learn the limits of such maintenance in a forum format the hard way with my Research URL thread).
MISCELLANEOUS
A "Study On Teleportation" can be found here.
NOTE: CHANGES & UPDATES WILL APPEAR IN DARK BLUE
Happy Modding,
Oz
I'll begin with a list of what I know; much info is from other threads and I apologize in advance for not being able to give credit.
I also hope we can have a STEP TWO, which will consist of ways we've found to use the editor to better simulate events (e.g., simulating helicopter gunships by making them land units with All Terrain As Roads, Paradrop, Amphib; etc.).
But first things first, page by page:
1. “Scenario Properties”
- For “City Elimination”, the Helpless states, “When checked, if a city is captured it will be destroyed (razed), leaving ruins behind.” Evidently incorrect; I’ve been told that this means a Civ is wiped out if a single city is eliminated.
- Azmorg has discovered, the hard way, that Civs in Locked Alliances at war with other Locked Alliances won't build Settlers. AMMENDED BY SUPA: That's not right, actually. Civs in Locked Alliances and at Wars with other Locked Alliances will produce settlers. Less than usual, and even less if the war front is near, but they will.
2. “Civilizations"
- The documentation states that "Shunned" and "Favorite" Governments refer to that Civ's choice for its own Gov choices. Evidently, it impacts both which type a Civ will choose for itself AND how it will react to another Civ with that type.
- “Aggression Levels” of “4" and “5" seem to have equal effect.
- Checking more than about 3 or 4 “Build Often” or “Build Never” overwhelms the AI (i.e., it ignores the choices entirely).
- Dan Magaha of Firaxis has provided “A quick and dirty explanation of Diplomacy.txt”. (I’m not certain how applicable it still is, but in 2002 Pesoloco wrote an editing program for Diplomacy.txt which can be found here.
- The mechanics of Flavors can be discovered here.
“Civilization Advances”
- According to the Helpless, "Note that advanced technologies may be given as ‘free techs’ but a civilization will not receive them until all required prerequisites have been fulfilled." Apparently incorrect: the AI Civ will receive the tech immediately and even be able to trade it. Nukes against Spearmen anyone?
- "Disables diseases from flood plains" does not work.
“Units”
- Units with a bombard range of 0 will use their Bombardment Strength for defense, but will only inflict 1 HP of damage no matter what you set the rate of fire as.
- For the AI to properly use Workers, ALL “Worker/Engineer Actions” except the last four must be checked. In C3C, SUPPOSEDLY the AI will use a “regular” unit with less actions selected if it also has the “Offense” strategy checked. As near as I can tell, if a unit has both “Offense” and “Terraform” checked, the AI will assign ONE AND ONLY ONE of those strategies to each unit of that type built, on an individual basis.
- Units that can trigger a GA can't go obsolete if you've not had a GA.
- A unit with hidden nationality and "0" defense can't be attacked. It can attack, it has HP, and it otherwise acts like a normal unit, but if another unit tries to attack it, nothing happens. Both units remain unscathed, in the same tile. (At last a citation: Weasel Op found this one.)
[*]RS74 has discovered that naval units can be rebased onto an airfield and CAN HEAL, so its like having a naval base.
Some initial miscellany regarding Units:
- “How To Carry Cruise Missiles on Naval Vessels” can be found here.
- How Naval Air Defense versus Bombers works can be found over here.
- How the AI chooses unit to defend with is here.
- Assigning a “Road/Commerce” value of “0" means that a road cannot be built in that tile type - and especially note that the regular and LM terrains can have different values!
- Here's a “List of functional global warming terrain transformations”.
[*] And here's Supa's version, complete with a well-organized table of transformations.
“Advances”
- Airlift and Airdrop are enabled by the Veteran Air Units flag (Not the Air Trade flag), and from airbases (hardcoded). The unit itself also must have the appropriate flag(s).
- What will the AI research next?
- Here's the AI Research Cost Formula.
- And Everything about Corruption in C3C.
“Governments”
- The "OFF" button for "Corruption & Waste" doesn't work.
[*]Immune to: "Build An Embassy" does not work. - See Post 39 for an explanation of how the AI chooses Government types.
“Improvements & Wonders”
- Just a quick note - It’s having a “Bombard” value (not a “Defense” value) which causes an Improvement to disappear when a Town grows to a City.
- The documentation states that the "rendered obsolete by" option is only available if the "wonder" category is selected. This is incorrect. (Thanks to Logitech )
- And that's all for now folks. PLEASE add to this thread! (1) I don't mind being wrong and will happily correct and (2) I'll do my best (with limited time) to keep as much as possible updated in this first post (although I did learn the limits of such maintenance in a forum format the hard way with my Research URL thread).
MISCELLANEOUS
A "Study On Teleportation" can be found here.
NOTE: CHANGES & UPDATES WILL APPEAR IN DARK BLUE
Happy Modding,
Oz