Add a City to a map!

[ahenobarb]

Anybody figure out how to add a "city" to a map, instead of just a start position? This was possible in cheat mode in Civ II, but seems to be missing from Civ III. Perhaps Firaxis want me to buy an updated version that allows this, later?

Hmm, now that might be a way they would make more money ... Very tricky!

 

[Gramphos]

There is no way to do this with the included editor, and as far as I know the BIC-format doesn't support cities.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Well, I was thinking of a way to do that. But you need Civ3CopyTool for this one...

1) Make a map
2) Note all the coordinate for all the would be cities for every single Civ that you plan to have in the game
3) Start a game by choosing a Civ
4) Use CPF so that all Civ starts at the correct position
5) Move a turn so that all the settler will settle and found the first city.
6) Save the game
7) Use Civ3CopyTool to place a second settle for each Civ at a new coordinate for the next city
8) Move a turn so that the settler will settle and found another city
9) Repeat 6-8 until you have all the city you want

I believe this will work as long as the coordinate you place the new settler is reasonable for settling and founding of a city (The AI usually will settle and not move their unprotected settler )

This is a bit tedious but I believe you can actually make a workable scenario. What do you think?

 

[KloePoek]

hmmm possibly...

i was wondering, if there was a way you could change the active player (is this saved in the bic file or in the save file, it must know which civ is the player civ

you could place a civ's settlers at the right places, build, then change players and repeat... would you plz try the trick of settlers immedeately settling, cos i got no time atm(it does do this at the beginning, they place their settler at the most rediculous places while there are much better places 2 squares away)

if this is true, then we could make the first true scenario's! good work darksheer

 

[ahenobarb]

I descended into hexeditor hell and had some success. I managed to change plains to Desert with the hexeditor (5 changes). I know you can do that in the map editor, but I wanted to test the principle. I then started a game and saved it before I founded a new city, then again after. there are 94 difference in the relevant section of the .sav file, which will take some time to sort out.

For non-newbies only: What I have learned is this, if you look through a .sav or .bic file you will find at the bottom sections of data about your cities (in the order they are founded), however the location of your cities on the map are not stored here. Rather that information is stored in the lengthy section above regarding the "Tile", i.e. the spaces on the map. To reduce complexity I used a 16x16 space map (the smallest allowed -- and man it creates some annoying problems in play testing), to give me 256 "tiles" to deal with. The tiles seem to be listed in pairs with the first one shorter than the second (I don't know what this means). It's not much, but over time it may yeild some good things.

 

[Gramphos]

From what I know about the SAVs I can tell that the CITY-sections holds where the name of the city is. The tile secion holds where the graphic appear, and where the citizens work. I've not sorted everything out yet.