Retain Advanced Setup - Game to Game?

[jsurpless]

Is there any way to not have to modify the Advanced Setup each and every time?

The other "normal" settings are retained, as one tries to find a non-horrible starting location...

[AlanH]

Have a look at the Game and User settings in ~/Documents/Aspyr/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/config.ini


I haven't tried it, but maybe you can edit these to change some of the defaults.

[jsurpless]

I found this posting on the General forum but am having trouble getting it to work...

Remembering Advanced Settings

Any thoughts?

[AlanH]

I've tried the config.ini approach, and it doesn't seem to have any effect for me. However, the following worked:

Open the following file in a text editor - TextEdit, BBEdit, TextWrangler ...:

~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/sid meier's civilization v/assets/Gameplay/XML/GameInfo/CIV5GameOptions.xml

It contains 17 GAMEOPTION_XXX tags. One for each of the 14 Advanced Setup checkboxes, and three more*.

Find the GAMEOPTION tag that you want to set enable. For example GAMEOPTION_NO_BARBARIANS, and add a <Default> line:

        <Row>
            <Type>GAMEOPTION_NO_BARBARIANS</Type>
            <Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_BARBARIANS</Description>
            <Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_BARBARIANS_HELP</Help>
            <Default>1</Default>
        </Row>

Restart Civ5. When you go into Set Up Game, that Advanced Setup option should now be set.

*It's interesting that there are three more options in that file than are shown in the Advanced Setup screen: ALWAYS_WAR, NO_CHANGING_WAR_PEACE, and LOCK_MODS

[jsurpless]

Great, that did the trick for the options...

Now, is there any way to get it to remember which Civ and such I last selected (similar to not using advanced setup)?

To aid in re-generating a map, a la Civ 4?

[AlanH]

I just found the above by following my nose through the links you pointed at. There's another Options XML file, but it only sets up defaults for the main Options screen. I can't see any equivalent XML file for the other game parameters. Do you believe it's possible to have a default civ/leader?

[jsurpless]

Originally Posted by AlanH

I just found the above by following my nose through the links you pointed at. There's another Options XML file, but it only sets up defaults for the main Options screen. I can't see any equivalent XML file for the other game parameters. Do you believe it's possible to have a default civ/leader?

What I mean is that, if one doesn't use 'Advanced Setup', the game remembers the last configuration...

[AlanH]

Well, that means it saves it somewhere. Chances are that's in a .ini file.

I already suggested looking at config.ini. Did you try that? It includes the following entries:

[UserSettings]

; Last Civilization Played
LastCiv = -1

; Last Game Speed Played
LastSpeed = 2

; Last Map Type Played
LastMapScript = Assets\Maps\Continents.lua

; Last Map Script Was Random
LastMapScriptRandom = 0

; Last Map Size Played
LastMapSize = 3

; Last Map Size Was Random
LastMapSizeRandom = 0

; Last Map Type Was Earth
LastMapWasEarth = 0

; Last Game Difficulty Played
LastDifficulty = 3

Try setting the LastCiv value to something other than -1. The numbers to choose are the indices of the <Civilizations> rows in the file ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/sid meier's civilization v/assets/Gameplay/XML/Civilizations/CIV5Civilizations.xml

I changed it to 1, and when I started Civ5 and selected Setup Game, it came up with Arabia selected. Arabia is the second civ in the list in that XML file - #1 if you start counting at zero. I suspect the other values will work the same way.

[jsurpless]

Originally Posted by AlanH

I've tried the config.ini approach, and it doesn't seem to have any effect for me. However, the following worked:

Open the following file in a text editor - TextEdit, BBEdit, TextWrangler ...:

~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/sid meier's civilization v/assets/Gameplay/XML/GameInfo/CIV5GameOptions.xml

It contains 17 GAMEOPTION_XXX tags. One for each of the 14 Advanced Setup checkboxes, and three more*.

Find the GAMEOPTION tag that you want to set enable. For example GAMEOPTION_NO_BARBARIANS, and add a <Default> line:

        <Row>
            <Type>GAMEOPTION_NO_BARBARIANS</Type>
            <Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_BARBARIANS</Description>
            <Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_BARBARIANS_HELP</Help>
            <Default>1</Default>
        </Row>

Restart Civ5. When you go into Set Up Game, that Advanced Setup option should now be set.

*It's interesting that there are three more options in that file than are shown in the Advanced Setup screen: ALWAYS_WAR, NO_CHANGING_WAR_PEACE, and LOCK_MODS

Any thoughts on how to do this for Gods & Kings? This doesn't appear to work any more...

[AspyrRyan]

Hmm, I thought this was working auto-magically. It's certainly not full resetting like the PC does for me. Are there particular settings that aren't saving for you?

[AlanH]

Don't forget that the assets are now embedded in the application bundle, so any editing of game options will need to be done inside that bundle/package.

The new save format for Civ5 under the latest patch uses text keys instead of index numbers to identify various things like the civs that are in play. That may have affected the way these settings work, as well.

[jsurpless]

Originally Posted by AspyrRyan

Hmm, I thought this was working auto-magically. It's certainly not full resetting like the PC does for me. Are there particular settings that aren't saving for you?

Save Promotions, Policies, Start Bias

[jsurpless]

Originally Posted by AlanH

Don't forget that the assets are now embedded in the application bundle, so any editing of game options will need to be done inside that bundle/package.

The new save format for Civ5 under the latest patch uses text keys instead of index numbers to identify various things like the civs that are in play. That may have affected the way these settings work, as well.

In the app bundle? My Civ 5 is only 45K?

[AlanH]

Where did you find that 45K file? Perhaps it's just an alias?

[jsurpless]

Originally Posted by AlanH

Where did you find that 45K file? Perhaps it's just an alias?

This is just the application 'Civilization V' that Steam puts on the desktop

[AlanH]

That isn't the real application, it's a shortcut to the actual application. The application is at /Users/[your_user_name]/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/sid meier's civilization v/Civilization V.app, and it weighs in at 6.4 GBytes on my system.

[KWagle]

Originally Posted by AlanH

Don't forget that the assets are now embedded in the application bundle, so any editing of game options will need to be done inside that bundle/package.

I'm poking around inside the bundle, and can't find any likely candidate file. :-(

[Starfire]

For God and Kings, use
<Default>True</Default> or
<Default>False</Default>

[Starfire]

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\sid meier's civilization v\assets\Gameplay\XML\GameInfo

GameOptions.xml

Some options, like "Always War", are hidden via <Visible>0</Visible>. Just change this to <Visible>1</Visible> and you can set that options like the others.