Making Monaco Civ; Need Art, LUA, and overall guidance

I am attempting to make a Monaco Civ. Below are the details (although they can of course be tweaked, and almost certainly will be).

Leader: Rainier III

UA: Playground of the Rich and Famous
Receive tourism and culture equal to 1/10th of your GPT. Great people cost no maintenance.

UU: Prince's Carabinier (Rifleman replacement)
Has a promotion that allows it to repair pillaged tiles. Movement between sea and land within your borders only costs 1 movement point. +10% combat strength within your borders.

UB: Monte Carlo Casino (Replaces Hotel)
Adds a base +4 tourism, which doubles to +8 if you have 4 or less cities. Increases city's gold output by 10%.

This is my first mod, so I need a lot of help on this. I've read through Kael's guide and other tutorials countless times, but am still very much overwhelmed by this. As such, I need some help. The LUA and Art are very much out of my league right now, so I'm looking for someone (or multiple people) who would be willing to work on those for this civ. I also need a mentor in general on this one, to help me transition into the complex world of Civ modding (figuring out how to organize and manage something as complex as making a new civ). I am greatly appreciative of anyone who would be interested in helping a first-time modder out. Please let me know here if you would be willing to help with any of the aforementioned things.

Welcome to the wonderful and frustrating world of modding! Congratulations and condolences.

One of the best ways to learn is to examine the code for existing mods to understand how they work. This post is also a great guide.

You will need Lua to execute a lot of ideas; I'll leave that for others to guide you on as I am a novice myself. The Carabinier ability is pretty easy through XML. Simply drop this code in your file:


As far as artwork, that is a big request. There are some who are willing, but don't expect to be overwhelmed by the number of requests. It would be helpful to start gathering some base images to build off of.

Thank you so much for that. I'm still trying to figure out how to determine what can be done in XML, and what needs LUA. From what you posted, I think I might have an idea, but tell me if I got this right. Is it that things that just use actions already in other civs can be done in XML, and those that introduce mechanics not found in preexisting civs need LUA? And for something like my UU, which has both preexisting mechanics (additional combat strength within your borders, repair pillaged tiles) and new mechanics (able to move between seas and land for 1 movement point, but only within your borders), would I do part in XML and part in LUA? I realize some of these questions may be incredibly stupid, as I still don't understand the modding process entirely, so it's possible that I just asked something ridiculous without realizing it. If so, I apologize, and please have patience with me. But am I on the right track with that line of thinking?

Pretty much nailed it. Everyone starts off new, so at least you're trying to understand how stuff works instead of looking blindly for code.

XML's limitations are generally down to whatever the game's basic Civs can do (with a few exceptions related to unused XML tags.) Sometimes the XML that allows a Civ to do one thing may be substituted for another effect, but sometimes they're also hardcoded to only accept whatever it was Firaxis needed it to do for a particular Civ.

Lua is generally where you want to do more dynamic stuff that isn't really done in the base game. and from that you'll need to take a look at all of the various hooks and methods available to modders to use.

Some people will bring up SQL as well -- this is a more direct interpretation of XML (the game's XML serializer translates XML into SQL internally, I believe.) SQL essentially allows you to do everything XML can, but it also has the advantage of being able to modify the database tables and structure itself. However, I feel it's quite a bit of an advanced area of modding since you could definitely break the game accidentally with it.

ruhrgebietheld said:

Is it that things that just use actions already in other civs can be done in XML, and those that introduce mechanics not found in preexisting civs need LUA?

Click to expand...

Sort of. In fact there are three languages you can use in CivV for doing things:
1. LUA is a scripting language for programing new functionalities which don't exist in default game.
2. While XML is markup language and is used mostly for manipulating things in game's database (remove, add, update data). The other function of XML is to organize data for display (UI).
3. But there's also SQL, which in fact is better in the long term for manipulation of data in game's DB than XML, but most modders start with XML for that and stay there.

One additional note: you may want to proceed on stages. Get your civ up and running, using only unique units/buildings from in-game civs (along with the games art files). Then, add your unique elements one at a time. This will save you some frustration when things don't go well; there are fewer pieces to troubleshoot.

Logging is critical to modding, and knowing how to attach a mod for trouble shooting is also helpful.

As someone else mentioned, you have a sensible approach at this point instead of blindly jumping in, that will serve you well!

Okay, so it's been a couple weeks since I commented on this, and I haven't made nearly as much progress since then as I had hoped. I ran into an issue that I was afraid that I might. Due to a medical condition, I suffer from a form of partial short-term memory loss. I was hoping that it wouldn't impact me too much with learning how to mod, but it's proven to be a much bigger problem than I expected. I'm having immense difficulty remembering all the different steps, and organizing the project overall. I've read and re-read tutorials incessantly, but I'm only retaining part of the information once I go to actually mod, no matter how many times I read the tutorials. Would anyone be willing to mentor me step-by-step in creating this civ, since I've come to realize that my stupid medical condition is getting in the way of me teaching myself how to mod? I apologize if that's too much to ask for. If it is, I would be more than happy if someone would be willing to just let me observe the process of them making a mod civ. Would anyone be willing tomentor me in either of those ways? If not, I totally understand, but I figured I should at least ask before shelving my attempts to starting modding.