Modding Civ V

Hey all, I'm new to the whole modding community. Whilst I'd like to create a mod, my lack of LUA and scripting knowledge dictates that this is impossible with my understanding of the whole thing (Which is basically zero). Is there anyone out there who could help me out? I'm not asking you to make the mod for me, just to direct me on how to do it myself. Anything helps! Thanks!

Moderator Action: Welcome to Civfanatics! The Modding Tutorials and Reference sub-forum is for completed tutorials and references guides. Any request for help should go in the main Creation and Customisation forum, which is where I've re-directed this.
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Best way is to jump right in... I started from scratch not too long ago.

Choose a task... what do you want to do? Then learn the necessary skill set.

For example:

Task... I want to create a civilization.

Look at other mods that add civilizations. Look at Firaxis civilizations. Read the tutorials. You can do it without lua... just xml.

Get that working. Then tinker... want to change the artwork? There are tutorials for that. Try. Not working? Ask the forums for advice.

Pretty soon, you're new civ starts to look pretty good.

Next, tackle some other short term task. Maybe change the trait of your civ using lua. Again, check out the mods for examples of what you want to achieve. After a while, you'll learn enough to make a convincing lua based trait.

Anyhow, the skills do not arrive all at once. Learn and do incrementally. There are many examples out there (and growing in number) and some very useful tutorials to learn basic tasks.

Good luck and happy modding.

I'm no good at tutorials, but if you read Kael's modding guide, it should help you a lot.

However, the guide IS outdated, so you'll need to find out some stuff on your own (or by asking more competent people than me). If you want to make new civs, the easiest way IMO is by editing these files to suit your needs.

As Craig_Sutter said you're going to want to start small and slowly expand the scope of your efforts. I would not recommend trying to make a new civ as your first mod. Making a new civ require understanding a half dozen or so interrelated tables and has a couple of gotchas (ei: forget to create spy names? Everything works fine until Renaissance era, then crash).

The simplest location to start is buildings. Look at the Buildings and BuildingClasses tables. Try changing an existing building or creating a new one. Units are also relatively simple, but they require knowing Units, UnitClasses and Promotions.

When Civ modding there are many constraints. Many ideas you can come up with will be difficult or impossible to implement (without modding the DLL). Until you learn what can and can't be done you'll want to make peace with the notion that you won't always be able to implement the effect you want.

I made a list of useful tutorials a while back for someone else...\

AgressiveWimp said:

Kael's modding guide (The best, IMO)

The Newbie's Guide to Modding Civ5

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How to Add a Building: Entry Level (If you're planning on using a UB for your civ)

Add a new unit in the game (using SQL) (for your UU; personally I prefer using XML over SQL but that's up to you)

Making a custom leader use custom music (You should probably skip this your first time around, just to make sure you can do the basics first

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If you're planning on doing your own artwork:
Irkalla's "Firaxis-Like" Civilization Icon Tutorial

Leugi's 2D Leaderscreen Collage Hints (Some pretty intense artwork right here)

Sukritact's Cartography Outline

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But of course, there are many talented artists on the forums that would almost certainly be willing to do artwork for you, though I find it to be more gratifying to do it myself.

And there's many more tutorials here: Civ5 Modding Tutorials & Reference Forum
(NOTE: This is not a place to ask questions but a place to post a finished tutorial.)

Click to expand...