Do you think that is possible a Community-made "Deluxe Edition" for Civ3?

[MusashiX 96]

Seeing the enormous number of mods for Civilization III for add more historical civs, and knowing that currently we see games that are modified to have much more content than they had in their time, the question came to me as to whether it is possible to add without replacing an existing civilization of the game.

Please, don't see this as "We have to make this a reality", but rather as "Is it feasible?"

 

[Civinator]

This question is nearly as old as C3C. Here you have a link to a post with an answer and several additional links:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ts-now-available.377188/page-62#post-15999729

 

[Quintillus]

This is not feasible, but we have to make it a reality.

That probably needs a bit more explanation. Civinator is correct, of course, as technically there is a hard limit of 31 civs (plus barbarians) that cannot in any remotely feasible way be bypassed.

However... we've been living in that box for a long time now. What if we reimagine the box?

If the goal is "a mod for Civ3 that expands the game by adding a bunch of new civilizations", that could that be indirectly achieved.

Create an illegal-for-Civ3 BIQ that includes additional civilizations. Include the various assets (leaderheads, unique unit graphics, Civilopedia entries) required for all those civilizations in the mod. And include a utility program that lets the user choose which of those civs (up to 31) they want to include in their game, including a "choose randomly for me" option. The utility program would create a legal-for-Civ3 BIQ that includes only those up-to-31 civilizations.

How to create such an illegal BIQ? @Quintillus has created a scenario editor that doesn't enforce the 31-plus-barbarian civ limit, or follow the trick Virote_Considon mentioned in this post (thanks to Civinator for linking to that one previously).

Then it's just a matter of creating that utility program, which sound like a perfect use case for the "Civ3 Shared Components" library that I created as part of that editor.

So if you do want to make it a reality... I don't have the bandwidth to curate all the leaderheads/city lists (I believe georgestow made a list of city lists at some point)/unique units/etc., but if you have the motivation and time to do that, I probably could create the utility program to take a way-too-many-civs BIQ and make it into a legal BIQ.

 

[MusashiX 96]

Outside of programming, perhaps the most complicated part is choosing which additional civilizations would be in.

As I mentioned, the list is huge even if we discard the fantasy ones. We have civilizations that ended up appearing in later games, and civilizations that would be interesting to have in a future installment.

Added to that, it would also be a challenge to try to contact the users who made those mods to see if they can be used (And in several cases, even polish them in some aspects). From the most prolific to the most occasional, it is difficult to know if they are still active to request those permits. As for new civs that doesn't have mods, would be made from scratch.

 

[Civinator]

Please don´t forget, that Flintlock is working on era-specific civ names and may be era-specific leader names:

C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More

Speaking of naval air defense is it possible modify the game so we can two have two different sets animation or more for ships AA attack? Currently I like the AA flak for WWI-WW2 and the missile aa for Cold War but we have mods that span both eras so it would nice to be able to use both...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[dragonprobably]

However... we've been living in that box for a long time now. What if we reimagine the box?

---------------------

Create an illegal-for-Civ3 BIQ that includes additional civilizations. Include the various assets (leaderheads, unique unit graphics, Civilopedia entries) required for all those civilizations in the mod. And include a utility program that lets the user choose which of those civs (up to 31) they want to include in their game, including a "choose randomly for me" option. The utility program would create a legal-for-Civ3 BIQ that includes only those up-to-31 civilizations.

---------------------

Then it's just a matter of creating that utility program, which sound like a perfect use case for the "Civ3 Shared Components" library that I created as part of that editor.

So here's an idea: What if instead of a software solution to this we used a hardware solution? A "Game Genie" of sorts, maybe made with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino.

There would be a lot of problems with this, though: The overlap of the hardware modders and Civ3 modders is probably not the great, this could potentially not even be feasible with available hardware, and it could potentially damage your computer.

 

[timerover51]

Please don´t forget, that Flintlock is working on era-specific civ names and may be era-specific leader names:

C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More

Speaking of naval air defense is it possible modify the game so we can two have two different sets animation or more for ships AA attack? Currently I like the AA flak for WWI-WW2 and the missile aa for Cold War but we have mods that span both eras so it would nice to be able to use both...

forums.civfanatics.com

If he needs help with that. let me know. Given my history library, I can cover a fair number of civilizations, and I have been customizing leader names for years. Some countries are easier than other, however. Israel for one is great for the Ancient Era, relatively blank for the Medieval Period, has some in the Industrial Era, and a ton in the Modern Era. Rome and Greek are similar to Israel, while the Byzantines are pretty much locked into the Medieval Era, having been conquered by the Ottomans in 1453.

 

[Quintillus]

Outside of programming, perhaps the most complicated part is choosing which additional civilizations would be in.

As I mentioned, the list is huge even if we discard the fantasy ones. We have civilizations that ended up appearing in later games, and civilizations that would be interesting to have in a future installment.

Added to that, it would also be a challenge to try to contact the users who made those mods to see if they can be used (And in several cases, even polish them in some aspects). From the most prolific to the most occasional, it is difficult to know if they are still active to request those permits. As for new civs that doesn't have mods, would be made from scratch.

The default practice at CFC is that if you share your work here, others are free to incorporate it into their mods. Giving credit is certainly to be encouraged, but other than a few rare cases where someone has requested otherwise, the default is to assume you can incorporate creations into your scenarios/mods; otherwise, as you note, creativity could rapidly bog down into nothingness due to fluctuating activity levels.

The list is huge. I'd probably start by making a list of "who's missing?" perhaps guided by civs present in other versions of the game, and then see if there's an a corresponding leaderhead.

So here's an idea: What if instead of a software solution to this we used a hardware solution? A "Game Genie" of sorts, maybe made with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino.

There would be a lot of problems with this, though: The overlap of the hardware modders and Civ3 modders is probably not the great, this could potentially not even be feasible with available hardware, and it could potentially damage your computer.

That sounds a lot more complicated to me, but that may be because I'm a software developer and not a hardware developer. It would also add costs for everyone who wanted to use it.

 

[MusashiX 96]

The default practice at CFC is that if you share your work here, others are free to incorporate it into their mods. Giving credit is certainly to be encouraged, but other than a few rare cases where someone has requested otherwise, the default is to assume you can incorporate creations into your scenarios/mods; otherwise, as you note, creativity could rapidly bog down into nothingness due to fluctuating activity levels.

The list is huge. I'd probably start by making a list of "who's missing?" perhaps guided by civs present in other versions of the game, and then see if there's an a corresponding leaderhead.

My first option would be Simón Bolívar's Venezuela, made by CivArmy s. 1994. Is my country; and although I feel that this mod would need some adjustments, I think it should be there.

For another modern South American civs, José de San Martín's Argentina and Pedro II's Brazil. And to complete my options for South America, Lautaro's Mapuche.

As the last options I have, I think it would be interesting to have are Navaho, Lithuania, Powhatan, Phillipines, and Benin. I leave it here since I think that among all those interested, we can build together the "Who's missing?" list.

 

[timerover51]

I would add Israel.

 

[WildWeazel]

Hi @MusashiX 96 and welcome to CFC!

Just based on your title and original question, I wanted to point out a few big-picture things:

Civ3 is great for modding thanks to its scenario editor, data-driven rules, and relatively accessible assets. As such it has a huge library of custom content, maybe the biggest in the series, and many big mods with lots of that new content.

however...

The flip side of approachable modding is that it's not all that powerful. It's easy to swap out content, but pretty much limited to that. We've been very clever with our tools over the years, but there are hard barriers. The game was made with a lot of hard-coded limits and assumptions, and predates things like SDKs and DLL loading that modern gamers expect as "mods". Civ3 is also a long-dead game in legal limbo, and there is no hope that the developers will ever attend to it again.

however...

As already mentioned, C3X and the editor by Quintillus allow us to do some things that the game was not intended to do. C3X is more along the lines of a modern mod that actually changes the behavior of the game. The concept of a larger library of civs from which we can extract a playable BIQ is intriguing, and something I had thought about before but didn't realize we may already be halfway there. (For the record @Quintillus I'd be very interested in that for my next mod) But even with these powerful tools, we are still quite limited in many ways. The structure of the game makes it impractical to even hack many things, particularly the max/number of things, despite those often being the most wished for. We can't increase the number of civs, culture groups, eras, buildings or terrain types, cities, map dimensions, and more.

however...

Frustrated by those limitations, we've had several attempts to recreate the whole game or something very much like it ourselves. None have panned out so far, but I am currently leading a promising team effort to build such a game in the Godot Engine. It's still in the early stages of development, but "C7" aims to provide full mod compatibility with as many civs as you want and lots more.

 

[MusashiX 96]

So your idea is create a Civ-like game from scratch instead of a Content-extend mod. Sounds interesting.

Users who see this comment, Do you like the idea of redirecting this into a Civ-like game, or do you prefer to maintain the challenge of extending the content?