A few questions

1. how do you make an entirely new unique ability that no other civ has? i want to make 20% combat bonus near cities of your religion and oil improvements get +1 production and + 3 gold.

same with unit ability, how do you make something like a soldier that can convert people like inquisitors and gains combat bonus in desert (do i look in morocco file for the latter?)

2. what does the structure of the mod look like? i've looked at guides but none of them really show what you have to have in the mod to make it work. i'm pretty confused. i tried to replicate the folders made in guides but that made everything a cluster

3. how do you customize the art? i looked at guides, and again, they're not that good at explaining it imo.

Hi.
It depends on the UA you want to create. Sometimes it can be done simply by adding a dummy building or policy to your custom civ, other times you have to struggle against lua or even more complicated things.
For example, as far as i know the 20% combat bonus near cities of your religion requires a lua code to work: the percent bonus can be defined by creating a new promotion through xml or sql, but then you have to "tell" the game to activate this promotion only if the unit stays on the tile matching your condition, and that has to be done with lua.

The bonus on oil improvement, instead, can be added using a dummy policy. In particular you have to create a new policy via xml/sql, then using "Policy_ImprovementYieldChanges" you specify the details (improvement type, yield type, yield number).

You can make a missionary-soldier by specifying "true" or "1" near "SpreadReligion" xml/sql entry when you're creating the unit.

In general I advise you to download from the forum the xml data on buildings and units and to consult the modiki, the tutorials and all the possible references here in the forum and even scrutinise other modded civs to understand the structure of xml/sql and lua.

When all is done, you have to write down on modbuddy the files of your mod in order to have them loaded in the game. Look at Kael's Modders Guide, it explains everything.

I assure you that if you do this you'll be able to handle xml/sql in quite short time. In fact not long ago i was inexpert like you, i'm still a noob especially with lua, but now i'm about to finish my first civ (sadly with sh-t graphics) and i'm quite excited about this (god bless JFD with his clearly-written codes).

About the art, for the civ icon i followed this and for the leader/unit/building icon this, I found them very useful.
For the dawn of man, civmap and leaderscene I'm struggling, too. It's so hard for me to do the "collage method" for the leader explained here and there's no tutorial for the map edit: yeee, i found it here :3.
Anyway, you can post a request, but you have to wait for someone to do it.

ok thanks! i'll check that out'

edit: would inquisitor soldier work? an inquisitor would fit better with my civ idea.

also will the soldier stay alive once its spread religion or remove remove religion is used?

@issis - one of the most important things about creating a mod is to really test it.. test all possible scenarios you can think of to make sure it performs how you want it to.

Also, I highly recommend using modbuilder program by WHoward .. it will almost write all your XML for you once you pick the options (including religion), and it will make your unit icons for you, just drag and drop it into your mod. -- Make sure to close modbuilder before hitting "Build" in modbuddy, if you leave it open it will cause art files to corrupt.

The XML it creates will work in game, however you will most likely need to go in a tweak it to fit your needs, especially when it comes to adding in the art.

labriejp said:

@issis - one of the most important things about creating a mod is to really test it.. test all possible scenarios you can think of to make sure it performs how you want it to.

Also, I highly recommend using modbuilder program by WHoward .. it will almost write all your XML for you once you pick the options (including religion), and it will make your unit icons for you, just drag and drop it into your mod. -- Make sure to close modbuilder before hitting "Build" in modbuddy, if you leave it open it will cause art files to corrupt.

The XML it creates will work in game, however you will most likely need to go in a tweak it to fit your needs, especially when it comes to adding in the art.

Click to expand...

cool! thanks. this looks a lot easier to use. will look into it