A NEW WAY FORWARD

[Ozymandias]

OK, my co-conspirators, my thoughts are as follows:

First, WE NEED A SINGLE .EXE. This is why I've been attempting to "nudge" @Flintlock & @Puppeteer yo, whatever extent possible, "coordinate" their efforts. I've come to (I think) how their approaches differ: @Flintlock seems to be more on a journey of discovery more lone he lines of Jules Verne's Journey To The center Of the Earth.

1. That being said, whenever #Flintlock and @Puppeteer are ''done," we absolutely need to have their work integrated with antal1987's existing patches.
2. I perfectly understand how (especially) Whiz Kid coders loather deadlines, BUT:
3. We absolutely must have an integrated set of roll outs or, well, frankly, are simply collectively, "twiddling our thumb."
4. This REQUIRES splitting up our Wish Lists once again: We must let them figure out where those (to use an IT phrase which I hope isn't so antique as to be unintelligible) "logical break points" are, factoring in for 'integration.
5. I cannot emphasize enough that these are our ongoing "deliverables," letting everyone know what we're doing, and that we can do it.

Added to that, any possible of constructing .dll equivalents (or better yet, "old fashioned" APIs for @Quintillus to ply around with) are even better.

Next, if it can done (Attend ye this, ye mighty coders!) IF we can make a new map (full component sets; tiles fully compositable with all existing game assets) then we are 90%+ on our way (I'll happily spell this out, if it's doable.)

Lastly, @Quintillus' editor should be the "gold standard" to use for all compatibility tests

 

[Flintlock]

That being said, whenever #Flintlock and @Puppeteer are ''done," we absolutely need to have their work integrated with antal1987's existing patches.

Integrating my work with Antal's is a major chore because it would require redoing a lot of analysis on whatever EXE Antal used as a basis for his changes. An alternative would be to go the other direction and integrate Antal's work with mine, but there the problem is that, AFAIK, he never documented all the changes he made. A few months ago Tsubasanut sent me the addresses of some of Antal's patches and I already integrated his fix for the Civilopedia pink line bug, and maybe some others that I'm forgetting. But that list wasn't complete as it was at least missing what he did to increase the city work radius to 3.

 

[Ozymandias]

Integrating my work with Antal's is a major chore because it would require redoing a lot of analysis on whatever EXE Antal used as a basis for his changes. An alternative would be to go the other direction and integrate Antal's work with mine, but there the problem is that, AFAIK, he never documented all the changes he made. A few months ago Tsubasanut sent me the addresses of some of Antal's patches and I already integrated his fix for the Civilopedia pink line bug, and maybe some others that I'm forgetting. But that list wasn't complete as it was at least missing what he did to increase the city work radius to 3.

It need not be comprehensive ( and I would very much appreciate @Civinator's and @Vuldacon's input here) but I suspect that Skyer2 's No Raze Patch just might be the single most popular patch of all, followed by sYn and Knuckles "No more City Limit" work - and, of course. antal1987's concatenations of the Civ3_NoRaze_NoPollution, & Civ3Conquests_NoRaze_NCL_NoPollution. It is worthy to note that they were taking quite compatible approaches.

I'm guessing that next in line might include antal1987's:

• City Tiles Limit (more Tiles which can b worked by x city.)

He also speculated about getting more Food, Shields, and Trade out of a Tile HERE.

I've also not heard much about his. "Infinite Golden Age and Science Age" patch; ditto now, "Civ 3 calculates corruption."

As an aside, he also discovered that the following game limits are hard coded:

• # of Civilizations
• Culture groups limit
• Max Improvements

@Flintlock gave us:

• Stack worker buttons
• Skip repeated popups asking to replace a tile improvement
• Enable free improvements from small wonders
• Stack bombard
• Disorder warning
• Detailed city production info
• Option to limit railroad movement
• Removed unit limit

HE ALSO FIXED THE SUB BUG!! (or, as he put it, "AI pathfinding collides with invisible units.") ...

... Along with:

• Science age beakers not actually awarded
• Pink line in Civilopedia

And, as an added touch: "Stealth attack activates even when there's only one target."

...Wow. Apologies, gents. I'm having a Life "Real Life" summons to "reality," so I must sign off.

Cheers,
z

 

[Civinator]

and I would very much appreciate @Civinator's and @Vuldacon's input here

I think integrating Antal's work into Flintlock´s work is the best path, but it should always be considered, that not all that can be achieved, can be useful when playing or modding C3C and therefore integrating or creating parts, that will not be used (or only have a very small chance to be used) by modders, would be a waste of time, considering the real use for a future C3C. Of course the personal success in achieving something new is untouched from these reflections.

A very good example for this problem is the enlarged fat cross for cities, that was achieved by Antal1987. At a first look this sounds like a very promising innovation for C3C. But it changes the complete settings for nearly all functions in C3C. Is it fun, if everything can be produced and researched in nearly all cities in one turn ? The answer I gave to myself is: This is no fun. In this case something less in reality could be much more. I used this point of view a lot in the CCM mod, per example for restricting the production of settlers, workers and the most powerful building in Civ 3, the barracks.

A massively enlarged capacity of cities in production and commerce by the enlarged fat cross would need to find a new balance of nearly the complete game, from production costs for thousands of units up to research costs for all later techs - and I think this is way above all the time I have and will use for modding Civ 3. May be there will be some modders to do this - but in all the years this option by Antal1987 is existing, no modder even tried to use this function.

So it could be a good idea in not wasting time by developing options to overcome limits in C3C, that will hardly be used in mods or scenarios. Here should be a focus for overcoming limits, where modders have concretely posted, that they would need to overcome such limits for a described reason. For me this would be to overcome the limit of 256 types of resources in C3C. I have a worldmap with preset city locations and the name of each city is shown by a resource nearby of a city. The normal city names will be reduced to a 'kind of postal code' from one to 512. This methode would allow, that cities will be founded at their correct locations with their correct names. So I would need 512 types of resources alone for the city names. Many of these resources are still created, but when placing them on the worldmap, I touched that 256 resources border in C3C.

Another case are options that will bring benefits for the gameplay in Civ 3, but on the other side can cause a lot of trouble in the game play. One example is Antal1987´s minimum distance between cities. It is great fun to cross an isthmus by a small chain of cities, that are built one at the side of the other and therefore forming a canal where ships can cross a continent. On the other side to build a city directly next to the city of another civ is a very bad idea for the game play. If there are barracks inside this "invasion-city", the AI in nearly all cases has no real change to survive the attack of the human player.

Flintlock, as you posted you are currently working on an adjustable minimum distance for cities, please take into consideration, that a minimum distance of one to the next city (meaning founding a city directly next to the tile of an existing city) can be a lot of fun when creating canals, but can be a horror when attacking other civs. So, if possible, a distance of 1 between cities should only be possible when founding a city next to a city of the same civ, but never when bordering to a city of another civ.

Ozy, in your list, I think especially one modder is missing: Jimmyh : https://forums.civfanatics.com/search/167195439/

He not only created a special editor for Civ 3 Vanilla, but also an "indieciv", following some of the same reflections as we are doing them in this forum.

If you want to have a closer look at his indieciv, you have to hurry up, as the site, that is hosting his files and thoughts, will be shut down after July 1st, 2021.
You can find the files here:

https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=indieciv
https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=indieciv

 

[Vuldacon]

So, if possible, a distance of 1 between cities should only be possible when founding a city next to a city of the same civ, but never when bordering to a city of another civ.

I totally agree with this and if there is a possibility to increase the number of Resources, that would greatly help.
I especially would like to have more resources than 32 (Strategic, Luxury) that can be used as Requirements to Build things. The current limit severely affects the ability to Require a Resource for Later Game Units, etc...

...I wonder if a patch could be made to allow Bonus Resources to to be traded and used as Requirements to Build things or if that would also cause problems.

 

[Ozymandias]

For the record, I agree on every point - and the reasons behind each - which Civinator has made.