[C3C] Conquests of Might and Magic III (CoMM3 Epic)

[Nathiri]

Apologies... first time trying to mod CIV3. What parts in labels.txt need to be changed? Is there a link in the forums to a general civ3 guide?
First two attempts to install have failed, probably my fault

When civ3 online servers were migrated to steam, steam updated civ3 copies to have an extra line 'Unknown' between the lines of PING and Host, which caused many custom labels.txt to appear out of order on steam civ3 copies. It can easily be fixed by editing the mod's labels.txt in the Text folder and add this additional line in the same spot. When you use a hacked exe though like No Raze patch or Antal's patches, it reverts the version so that it recognises the amount of lines that were used previously. So a steam labels.txt looks out of order for it. So if you do launch the game through a hacked exe, then you dont really need to edit the labels.txt in the mod, as it will look fine with the one people give.

However some mods (like CCM) include a steam fix if you just do a file switch by renaming the steam one to labels.txt and the original to something else.

 

[Blake00]

@tom2050 WOW!! This is amazing. As a huge Civ and Heroes of Might & Magic fan I'm stunned I hadn't heard about this!! Am downloading now and am gonna share this on some HoMM forums too!! This has got to be one of the most largest comprehensive total conversion mods for Civ3 I've ever seen as it barely even resembles Civ3 anymore which is a truly amazing achievement! Thank you so much for creating this!!!

I think you need to start using imgur for ALL your image hosting lol. As I'm noticing that every single one of your non-imgur screenshots in this thread and most of the screenshots in your old CoMM3 thread are gone/dead links. It's a shame as it means a lot of people don't get to see your amazing work and may not bother to check it out!

Have you considered making a ModDB Page? I've made a few lately for my mods and have been stunned with how much attention it brings from fans and media to your work. They'll host your downloads (including huge files like yours), your pictures (so you won't even need places like imgur), your videos.. everything! Then you can link to those pictures here at CivFanatics and they won't disappear lol! It also allows you (& fans) to post news, 'making of' or 'feature tour' articles that if approved by their admins end up on the front page of the site for thousands of people to see.

Would be awesome to have another place attracting people to your awesome work. I'm happy to make it for you if you're too busy as I find it easy now! I've made (with creator permission) Moddb pages for a few projects that aren't mine to ensure they get more attention and most importantly never get lost! The most recent one I've made was for PsiCorp's Civ4 Babylon 5 mod HERE .

I run a retro gaming website and youtube channel that contains both HoMM & Civ sections so I plan to do a big tribute to your project as well as making a big tour video showing off your amazing work to the world!

EDIT: Btw using the latest version of 7zip I got your download file down to 630Mb. That's 183 less than the Rar file and 289 less than the Zip file!

 

[Blake00]

Alternative Install option:
If you're playing other Civ3 mods like I am and don't wish to be switching files around and you've got plenty of hard drive space to burn then just make a copy of your entire Civ3 install folder and then install the COMM3 mod over the top of that copy. I was able to do it with my steam copy of Civ3. I went into my steamapps common folder and found the 'Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete' folder and hit copy and paste to make a 'Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete - Copy' folder, then followed the COMM3 full install instructions and installed it over the copy install (not the original), if I run the copy conquests exe it whinges about the steam api but the game still starts haha, if you run the COMM3 exe (which you have to for the mod anyway) it appears to bypass steam entirely heh.

Results of test run:
This mod at least initially appears as nothing short of a friggin masterpiece! I've never seen Civ3 altered so much in my life. Almost every part of the game is altered. New intro ripped from Heroes of Might & Magic 3, new menu image & music from HoMM3 (although I got a black screen at first but clicking seem to stop it), entirely new world/terrain graphics from HoMM3, your palace upgrade screen is now the HoMM3 city screen slowly getting built (different ones for each race if you switch the files), the city sky view screen is now a map of Erathia, all gui & menus have been given a HoMM3 look, all cities/units/techs have been changed to HoMM equivalents, and the Civ3 soundtrack is replaced with HoMM3s. It really feels like HoMM3 but with the freedom and sandbox goodness of Civilization. Also I like how you can go above the original race count with 'castle 2' 'inferno 2' etc.. got me fantasizing about playing an epic 31 player HoMM3 style Civ game on a huge map haha.

I'm gonna play the hell out of this in the near future and will prob do a video too!

Downloads:
Good news guys. I spoke with Thunderfall & the other admins about this and they gave me a higher upload limit.

So I've repacked @tom2050 's Conquests of Might & Magic files (with pedia icons patch fix applied) with 7zip down to a grand total of 630mb (183mb less than the original Rar file and 289mb less than the Zip file!) and uploaded a copy of the mod to CivFanatics servers to preserve his work. Should tom2050 return to CFC he can modify his original post download link for this mod to link to here instead of the long gone one. EDIT: As part of the dead mod link rescue/replacement project I'm working on with Quintilius he & I have edited the original thread post's download link for this mod to link to here too since his mega nz links are starting to fail (as predicted below).
https://www.civfanatics.com/users/downloads/civ3/COMM3Civ3.7z

I'd still love to make a ModDB page for this mod as it will bring this mod a lot of attention but I don't really want to do it without @tom2050 's permission! But anyway, at least now we have a safe mirror copy (I don't trust his current mega upload copies as they usually disappear after a couple of years hence why we've lost so many mods here) so as long as this site lives @tom2050 's amazing mod will never get lost.

My test run screenshots:

 

[stachnie]

Good job. I rarely play Civ III now but if I do, I play it with COMM almost exclusively.

 

[sirati97]

when i try to download this MEGA says the files were removed

 

[Blake00]

when i try to download this MEGA says the files were removed

Considering @tom2050 's original big CoMM3 mega rar and zip downloads still work fine for me and only 2 posts above yours I posted an alternative recompressed working download for CoMM3 hosted here at CFC lol, I'm guessing you're talking about one of the other extra addon/bonus downloads in his old post.

Sure enough I can see those extra ones are no longer working which makes me wonder how long until his other far more import main downloads stop working.. sigh. I've tried messaging Tom2050 about updating his post to use my CFC link and to also setup a mirror at ModDB but he's still MIA. EDIT: Now I'm staff member so I've fixed it myself lol.

Anyway that lone Biq download doesn't really matter as it already comes in the main CoMM3 download however I see his pedia icons patch fix download has also broken which is not good as that is definitely important! Fortunately I still have that file and have attached it to this post. I've updated the download in my previous post to have this patch already applied now too.

 

[Blake00]

Made some interesting discoveries over in another thread HERE.

I found Rhye's awesome underworld terrain set and started thinking how it would be cool if it was combined with Tom2050's HoMM3 scenario here to make a hell based spin off scenario as Rhye's terrain is quite similar to HoMM3 hell terrain.







HOWEVER I then discovered that Tom has actually made his own hellset using imported HoMM3 terrain!!!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/hell-terrain.14927/

So he's already done all the work nearly lol! I wonder why he didn't mention this extra terrain set in his top post in this thread and make a bonus spin off version of this mod using the hell set. I'll have to do some experimenting and see if I can make one up. I think I like Rhye's lava ocean and rivers above more though so might do some mixing and matching. The HoMM themed special resources from Tom's HoMM3 scenario will take care of all the cows and whales etc below too haha.

 

[vmxa]

Also reminds me of some of the Kings Bounty maps.

 

[The Lombard]

Amazingly flavourful mod. Really interesting gameplay quirks as well. With all the buildings that autoproduce units it leads to massive wars. I think that the teleport, town portal and dimension door type transport spells are perhaps a little powerful in the hands of the human player, it makes mass reinforcement instantaneous. If I have 10 dimension doors that's 30 units I can transport+rebase around the map in a single turn. Maybe it makes warmongering at the highest difficulties more viable though, I don't know. I've played about half the town types so far, they all feel pretty different. Fortress and Dungeon are great, anything that lets me field loads of monsters gets my vote.

 

[Gelandred]

I want to contribute some experiences with the Steam version of Civ3 and the full install of the mod (not the scenario install).

• Follow the FULL Installation (overwrites your Main Conquests directory) in the original post. Do not follow the procedure described in post #7. With the post #7 variant the game will hang immediately (vanilla and modded).
  
• Important! Use the download link provided by Blake00 in post #44. With the older version in the original post the game will not initialize (or use patch from Blake00 in post #47 with the older version).
  
• No need to modify the file labels.txt in folder Text. Vanilla and CoMM3 need slightly different versions of this file. (The mod package contains a file SteamPatch.txt with a hint to change it; this is not neccessary.)
  
• You can not start CoMM3 from the Steam client by clicking Play on the standard library entry for Civ3. This will always start Civ3Conquests.exe which can not run CoMM3.
  
• Do not delete the executable Civ3Conquests.exe. Keep it parallel to Civ3Conquests_p4 COMM3.exe. Otherwise Steam would do an automatic repair run after some time.
  
• Additional setup for easy switching between the mod and vanilla:
  • Create a folder _BACKUP and within this folder a folder _CoMM3ModFiles_BACKUP
    
  • COPY the patched folders Art, sounds and Text as well as the file conquests.biq from the main Conquests folder into _CoMM3ModFiles_BACKUP.
    
  • Create additional folders _CoMM3ModFiles and _ConquestsOrigFiles within the main Conquests folder.
    
  • Copy or move the files from the full install procedure in CONQUESTS_ORIGINAL_FILES into _CoMM3ModFiles. The backup of the original vanilla files is not so important as the Steam repair option may bring the originals back. If you have moved the files you may delete CONQUESTS_ORIGINAL_FILES.
    
  • Go to the Steam client. In the topmost menu select Games and then Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library.... Click BROWSE... at the bottom of the Dialog (no need to wait). Navigate to the Conquests folder and select Civ3Conquests_p4 COMM3.exe.
    
  • Select the new entry in your library and right click (or click on the gearwheel button Manage in the game detail window on the right). Select Properties... and rename the title to Sid Meier's Civ3 CoMM3 or similiar. That's all. Now you can start CoMM3 diectly from Steam.
• If you want to switch between vanilla and the mod simply move the patched folders Art, sounds and Text as well as conquests.biq from the main Conquests folder into _CoMM3ModFiles. Then move the content of folder _ConquestsOrigFiles into the Conquests main folder. Start vanilla with the default Steam library entry for Civ3. To reenable CoMM3 move the files in the opposite way and use your newly created Steam entry.
  
• If you are accidently clicking the wrong Steam entry you can check this by a misalignment of the main menu entries after game start. When clicking on Preferences and the opened dialog is not preferences you have started the wrong variant. Simply close the game and use the other Steam entry to start the active variant.
  
• As Civ3 does not seem to have any DRM (similiar to other old games like Total War Shogun 1 and Medieval 1) you can start both variants without Steam by running the appropriate .exe file directly. When starting Civ3Conquests.exe you will get an error message that Steam init failed, but it can be ignored.

 

[Nathiri]

Good breakdown. I have mine set up like this from the beginning:

My .bat files do the switching for me .

 

[Blake00]

Civ3 isn't exactly a huge game so I took the lazy route and just made a copy of my entire Civ3 folder in my steam apps area and put CoMM3 over the top of the copy. I get the 'Steam init failed' message but as Gelandred said you can ignore it. Plus I 'think' if you already have steam running that stops the error and works correctly (ie counts the hours to your playtime total) but it's been a while so I can't remember that one for sure.

 

[Hazem]

Hello all and special thanks to the maker of this mod I ma playing it right now on elite difficulty and streaming it on www.twitch.tv/moorskn8 welcome all

 

[boho]

Obviously it's been quite awhile since there's been any activity, but would anyone know how to re-enable Culture Flips for this mod? I'd actually greatly prefer that mechanic to be intact, especially in a mod like this where the only alternative is to crank units out for the first 100 turns.

I've tried editing the BIQ but the vanilla editor causes 400kb of data in the BIQ to vanish.

 

[Civinator]

boho, please have a look, if in your editor the compressed "bic" option is activated. If this should be the case, please disable that option, than enable the culture-flips and compare the sizes of the biqs. If there should still be a big difference in the sizes of the biqs, I will do a biq with an enabled culture-flip for you with the Quintillus editor.

 

[boho]

Wow, I never expected such a quick response on such a Necro'd thread!

I was actually able to make the edit without issue now that I disabled compression, so no need to make a new BIQ on my account. Thanks!

 

[Civinator]

boho, you are very welcome. tom2050´s great work is not forgotten.

 

[boho]

Some 2023 impressions/discussion:

This is one hell of an artistic effort - I don’t think I’ve found anything that’s not materially loyal to Heroes - and really does come close to a HoMM/Civ hybrid in a way that the Master of Magic branch of 4x-es never could. Creature generators give the mod the feel of the more wargamey HoMM, while traditional Civ tile management gives it a nice layer of depth for builder gameplay.

The core problems within the mod comes from Civ3 itself. Mechanically it both suffers and benefits from Civ3’s jank - Civ3 is the last Civ where a Spearman can kill a Tank, and CoMM3 proudly continues that tradition with Tier 4 Crusaders falling to Tier 1 Familiars, or equally farcical combat outcomes by Heroes standards. It’s both infuriating and endearing - something I simultaneously loathe despite it also being what brings me back for more.

I have less positive things to say about Magic and the AI. Since CoMM3 doesn’t do any custom code edits, Magic is essentially just air power, or occasionally ground troops that can do a normally common but restricted in CoMM3 action like pillaging. Magic still bends and breaks the rules, as all good Magic systems do, but some of the Heroes spells probably should have been benched or abstracted out. Visions being a recon plane is clever, but I still have no clue what Counterstrike, Sorrow, or Shield even do, if I’m even using them right. Whenever I use magic I find myself wishing CoMM3 was done in Civ4.

The AI is still Civ3’s, so you can expect extremely neurotic endless war until you have one more unit than them and opponents that will gleefully and instantly trade away any tech advance - except to you. I intend to edit the BIQ to make all core Creature techs untradeable for this reason: not only does it just not make sense that a faction halfway across the world figuring out how to train a Chaos Hydra means the opponent in your back yard figures out how to summon an Archangel a turn later, it makes research feel punitive - something YOU have to manage, but the AI can safely ignore.

 

[Civinator]

Most spells are explained in the civilopedia of that mod, when looking under units. Per example, when looking for the spell "Counterstrike" in the units sector of the civilopedia you get the explanation, that it is "cruise missile orientated":

 

[Blake00]

Whenever I use magic I find myself wishing CoMM3 was done in Civ4.

I'd love a HoMM mod for Civ4! Found an old thread a while back where someone was talking about making one but it never got past the planning stage sadly. A modified version of Civ4 Fall from Heaven in the HoMM universe would be cool.

Since CoMM3 doesn’t do any custom code edits, Magic is essentially just air power

Yeah sadly I had to make the same sacrifices in my HoMM2 mod for Civ2. Just one of those things when you can't or don't know how to mess with the game's code.