Colours

I feel the current colour pallette for the choice of civ colour is limited, with a lot of similar colours in it, so much so that it makes it hard to differentiate sometimes between two civs. However, I have now discovered that if two or more civs with, for example, yellow as their main and secondary colours, are selected to play against each other, it will allocate one of them to be yellow and then it will choose the first unallocated colour from the pallette for the other civ(s). The colour choice goes in the pallette order that is shown in the editor starting with red.

Perhaps you guys already knew this - but I didn't!!

I've chosen specific colours for a handful of civs, then set the rest to the same shade of blue. This way, at least I can tell the colours apart when I'm playing.

this is why when I play games with more than 10 civs, I put the color blind help on, to see who is who especially if its a huge world with all 24 civs

I always wondered what would happen in that case, but in my mod I tried to pick different colours for each civilization (with a huge effort and headache). There's also apparently a file with the civ colours in it that you can change to make them more varied (or tone down the flourescent ones), but I don't remember the name of the file, or where it is.

I'm so used to the colors by now that I would be totally confused if they changed on me.

The worst part of the colors is when you have the Mongols and Zulu/Egyptians on the same map... next to each other! For a few seconds, I thought I was in pretty big trouble, staring at the awesome might of the Zulu empire, but then I realized Shaka was just messin' with me, and he was sitting right next to the Mongols.

Both the Mongols and Zulu are usually lame ducks, so maybe they should combine forces....

Look in Civilization III/Art/Units/Palettes for a bunch of 1-pixel pxc images of each civ color. I'm pretty sure that changing the color of these changes the in-game colors. There was a thread in the C&C forum a few months back about this, and pdescobar tested something. I can't remember exactly, and I don't feel like hunting down the thread.

I did the same thing you did, Grandraem-- a different color for each civ. It makes it easier to recognize them, and I was sick of having light blue Americans, orange British, and pink French. I have 31 civs in my mod, and each has a different civ color. It was hard to decide who would get what color, for example I had difficulty deciding whether Rome or England should be red. In the end I made Rome red and England light brown.

I'm not sure if I'll ever change the colors. IMO there's already as broad a range as possible offered, given the number of colors needed.

I made this chart to help myself choose what color was best for what civ. Maybe it will help someone:

Just to clarify GEChallenger's response, the files are named ntp00.pcx through ntp31.pcx and it is the 70-pixel palettes on those 1-pixel images which actually define the civ colors, not the color of the pixel itself. And changing them (the palettes) does actually change the civ colors, although it's probably more trouble than it's worth for the average player. Some day, I'm gonna make a set of 32 which I like better than the defaults (there are some I simply can't tell apart), but not in the near future

The colours are obviously hard enough to distinguish for people with normal vision.
Thank you to Firaxis for implementing colour-blind help for those of us that can't tell red from green! I think this is the only game I remember playing which has a feature like this, and it is just one more great aspect of Civ III which elevates it above "just any old video game."

Originally posted by GEChallenger
I had difficulty deciding whether Rome or England should be red. In the end I made Rome red and England light brown.

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Wasn't purple the imperial colour in Rome? That would let you make England red.
Hey, I just like purple.

Play using the Aztecs and other dark green colored civs, and the Aztecs are purple.

Originally posted by Chieftess
Play using the Aztecs and other dark green colored civs, and the Aztecs are purple.

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Yeah, that happens in certain situations. The Aztecs, Japanese, Russians, and Carthaginians share only 3 colors between them (dk green, maroon, and brown.) So if all 4 are in a game, one of them gets shafted and winds up with the first unused color, which is normally that number 17 purple.

I only wish they'd kept red for the Barbarians.

I've only very rarely had problems with too similar colours, but in one game I had three civs in varying nuances of yellow next to one another. Since one of those was mine, it was rather annoying till I assimilated the other two ...

Arabs and Chinese, Egypt/Zulu and Mongols