How to: Create a Buildable Leader, Create a General

Zippo

Knight of the Round Table
Joined
Nov 16, 2001
Messages
94
In this thread I will explain how to create a buildable Leader and also how to create a General (new unit)

[EDIT]In order to do these changes, you have to download the hacked editor. It's available in the files area threads[/EDIT]

How to Create a Buildable Leader
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This isn't really that hard, but there is one trick that you must pay attention to.

1) Backup your civ3mod.bic file (if you haven't already).

2) Open up the civ3mod.bic file for editing.

3) Click the Edit button on the toolbar and select the Units tab.

4) Select Leader in the menu.

5) Change the Shield Cost field to something appropriate (I chose 40 in order to make it difficult to create leaders, otherwise you will have a ton of armies all over the place).

6) If you want, choose a Prerequisite (I chose Military Tradition).

7) You could also play with the Moves, Attack Str. & Defense Str. fields (the leader CAN attack, but there will be no animation). I left Attack and Defense at 0 because the only reason to have them is if you're out in the open and that's not really the purpose of the Leader, especially since you are building him in your town.

8) Now here comes the tricky part, and it's VERY important. You MUST go to the General Settings tab and change the Battle-Created Unit to something OTHER THAN Leader. For some reason, whatever unit you choose to be your Battle-Created Unit cannot be built in ANY cities (this included your competitors)! So choose whatever unit you don't want and you're done! OR, see below for a suggestion on how to set up a replacement Battle-Created Unit


How to Create the General
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I came up with the General to replace the Leader as the Battle-Created Unit. The General is a combination of the Leader and the Horsemen.

OK to do this you don't even need to create a new unit. You can get away with simply changing an existing unit. However, for simplicity, I added a unit.

1) Go into the Civ3\Art\units directory and select the Horseman folder.

2) Copy & Paste into the same directory; this should create a folder name Copy of Horseman.

3) Change the name of the Horseman folder to General.

4) Go into the General folder and change the name of the Horseman.ini file to General.ini.

5) Leave everything else alone.

6) Go back to the units directory and make a copy of the Rider folder. As before, this should create a folder called Copy of Rider.

7) Change the name of this folder to Horseman.

8)Go into the folder and change the Rider.ini file to Horseman.ini.

9) Open the civ3mod.bic file for editing.

10) Click Edit on the toolbar and go to the Units tab.

11) Find the Horseman and change the icon to 56 (Rider).

12) Click Add and type in General. You've now created the General, but you have to assign attributes.

13)Change the icon to 11

14) Make sure shield cost is 0.

15) Set move to something reasonable (I chose 4 but may change it later).

16)If you want, you can assign Attack Str. and Defense Str. This will set it apart from the Leader and since you're using the Horseman's .flc animations it will even LOOK like it's attacking!
Anyway, I chose 3 for now but might increase it later.

17) Under Unit Abilities click on Mounted.

18) Under Available To: click on Rome then scroll to the bottom, hold the Shift key, and click on England.

19) Now under Special Actions, check Load, Airlift, Pillage, and Build Army.

20) In the Civilopedia Field type in PRTO_Horseman, or create your own Civ pedia entry and use that (I was satisfied without a new civpedia entry).

21) Finally, under the AI strategies, check Offense (or Defense).

[EDIT]
22) Go to the General Settings Tab and change the Battle-created Unit to General

23) Save your changes and you should be good to go!
[/EDIT]

<B>If you have trouble with any ofthis, post here with details and I'll see what I can do!</B>
 
Zippo - By doing this, is the rider eliminated?

I like the idea of the General. Can it be made to form armies but not rush-build wonders? That seems more balancing to me.
 
The rider is not eliminated. Your new horsemen just have the same icon and graphics.

Yes you can make the General not be able to rush production.
 
Ah! Now I get it. Thanks. Its all in the editor.

I think Im going to leave the leader as is, and make a buildable General that can form Armies but not rush Wonders.

Good work Zippo.
 
Yes, so long as it's word-for-word (you can take out the [EDIT]/[/EDIT] marks I put in there, as well as the post here for questions line at the bottom), includes a link back to this thread, and credits me as the author. (i.e. Zippo at civfanatics.com)
 
Hi... first i wanted to thank zippo for the help... some thing you have to add is that you must add in the pediaicons.txt the info for General so you dont get the fuzzy image.

#ICON_PRTO_General
art/civilopedia/units/11horsemansmall.pcx
art/civilopedia/units/11horsemanbig.pcx
end of units


The url isnt working for your knowledge heardie
 
I forgot to ask you something. What can i do if i want to add a brand new image for general? and how many "shields" should i go for? i got it at 30 (same as palace for the unknowledged).


Someone out there could do me a nice General icon? not the animation, just the "static" ones (civilopedia, tech tree, etc)
 
You have relatively few options here.

Creating a brand new image is not easy! Trust me, I am trying it at the moment and it's tough. Anyway, the easiest way would be to plan on only doing one animation with only one image for each of the 8 directions. THEN, you could just use that one still .FLC file for all your animations. In other words, your General would always look exactly the same regardless of what action it's doing or which direction it's moving. If you choose to do this, you can just download any image you like and adapt it appropriately.

Of course, this is kind of boring, and at the very least you probably want your unit to face in the right direction. Well now new artwork becomes exponentially more difficult... you have to have 3 dimensions, thus, it's hard to make everything look right.

I'm working on new artwork, and if I get it done I'll let you all know how I did it.
 
I'm having a problem with two created units ... if I simply copy other units with Civ3Copy it works okay, if I use Add in Civ3Edit ( hacked ) the units crash. Unfortunately, since I am doing a scenario I need to have a map, and if I load in the .bic file to Civ3Copy, it gets a TERR error. I don't know why ... I have no terrain modifications.

The only error I seem to be getting is with two units I created. it
should be pretty easy ... create a unit folder under /art/units with a
unit.ini file pointing to whatever .flcs ( from another unit ) you
happen to want to use. Then add PRTO_ info in the pediaicons and
civilopedia files.

I've done it other times with no problems. However, I added two
units for a scenario I am doing, and to test them I took out the
advancement requirements and set the shields to 1 so I could build
them right away and make sure they okay.

It crashed right away. I made sure the unit values and
pediaicons/civilopedia info were the same as a warrior this time, to
keep it simple. Still it crashed.

So I went back and took them out and tried to create them through
Civ3Copy Tool ... I got a 'mismatch' error which was solved when I
stopped loading in the map ... but without a map the scenario doesn't
exist.

I can load this thing up and play it fine when I don't have these two
units being built yet ... this leads me to think there's something
missing it is trying to read, but other than a unit folder with a .ini
file in it, and entries in pediaicons and civilopedia, I don't know
what could cause it to crash ... especially since I have added in
units successfully before. The Wonders, resources,civs and
improvements haven't caused anything to crash.

Thanks,

H
 
Hank, if the steps you stated in your post are all you did, you missed a step. You have to add an entry in the PediaIcons file called ANIMNAME (down by the bottom, past WONDER SPLASH etc.)

I created Slavemaster by using the flc files for Inquisitor then added

#ANIMNAME_Slavemaster
Inquisitor

It works.

As for making your own unit graphics, you need the INI files and stuff, so this is just the lazy man's way. But you do need an ANIMNAME entry for all units.
 
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