BTB's Civilization III: Somewhere In Time

[BTB]

http://ngplus.net/index.php?/files/file/47-btbs-civilization-iii-somewhere-in-time/
http://ngplus.net/index.php?/files/file/46-btbs-civilization-iii-somewhere-in-time/


The recent re-release (or something to that effect) of Civilization III on Steam or some horsehocky has prompted me to blow the dust off of one of my earliest modding projects and clean it up for an official release. If you've ever played Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World (doubtful, but a man can hope), you know what to expect with what I've done to the game.

Since this is the place where people actually know stuff about this game, the thing that would probably most interest you is the Readme, as it will explain all of the reasoning behind my changes. I also have a quick reference spreadsheet that can be helpful, but otherwise the Civilopedia should do its job and tell you everything that you need to know (I did mention that I re-wrote the entire Civiliopedia from scratch, right?).

Thanks to everyone who checks this out.

 

[Nathiri]

Could you not put a little more about it? Also, did you not want to put it in the downloads database?

 

[Civinator]

BTB, great that you are back again!

If I remember well, many years ago, you created a mod for vanilla Civ 3, where the techtree was constructed from the opposite end than normal (from the future to the ancient era) that allowed to use techs of earlier eras as perequisites for techs in later eras. This was the work of a genius!

So I´m really interested in your current mod.

 

[Theov]

BTB, great that you are back again!

If I remember well, many years ago, you created a mod for vanilla Civ 3, where the techtree was constructed from the opposite end than normal (from the future to the ancient era) that allowed to use techs of earlier eras as perequisites for techs in later eras. This was the work of a genius!

So I´m really interested in your current mod.

which one is this??

 

[BTB]

Could you not put a little more about it? Also, did you not want to put it in the downloads database?

I fully intend to (to both of your questions). Like I said, most of what y'all are going to want to see is in the Readme, which I need to finish up writing today. I made this post last night right as I finished writing the Civilopedia, and I was le tired.

BTB, great that you are back again!

If I remember well, many years ago, you created a mod for vanilla Civ 3, where the techtree was constructed from the opposite end than normal (from the future to the ancient era) that allowed to use techs of earlier eras as perequisites for techs in later eras. This was the work of a genius!

So I´m really interested in your current mod.

I remember you as well, my friend! This mod and that mod are one and the same, just with a few years' worth of extra polish and a *****in' new logo. I must remember to include you in the credits as I believe you provided a lot of crucial information to me early on.

 

[Civinator]

I cannot remember, if I have delivered such a lot of crucial informations at that time, but I remember your outstanding creativity with the techtree. BTB, is your polished mod also only for Civ 3 vanilla? As I still can start Civ 3 vanilla, I will give it a try when I have finished the work to give CCM2 to the public before christmas.

 

[BTB]

It is for vanilla, yes.

 

[Civinator]

which one is this??

The Civ3Mod. Attached is a screenshot showing the special settings of the techtree with techs from a lower era of the techtree as perequisites of techs of a more modern era.

It is for vanilla, yes.

BTB, other than many modders prognosted at the time far ago when you posted your great mod, it is possible to transfer it (and even mod it more) to C3C.

Attached are two C3C biqs, a normal biq and a Debug biq. I enlarged your Civ 3 vanilla settings, so all 31 civs now can be played (but I limited it to 24 civs in the largest map due to the small map size). I set the units and buildings to normal C3C settings (in most cases), as this versions could interest some other active modders, too - but I let untouched your techtree. Your special settings of the techtree are still working in those biqs. When using the Debug biq you can see, that now even the marsh terrain is included.

Simply place the two biqs into your C3C scenarios folder and start them as normal scenarios.

Edit: Here are two screenshots of the techtree of the C3C version that is attached to this post:





I think it wouldn´t be a big problem for me to convert your whole mod (without the civilopedia text works) to C3C.

 

[Bluemofia]

The Civ3Mod. Attached is a screenshot showing the special settings of the techtree with techs from a lower era of the techtree as perequisites of techs of a more modern era.





BTB, other than many modders prognosted at the time far ago when you posted your great mod, it is possible to transfer it (and even mod it more) to C3C.

Attached are two C3C biqs, a normal biq and a Debug biq. I enlarged your Civ 3 vanilla settings, so all 31 civs now can be played (but I limited it to 24 civs in the largest map due to the small map size). I set the units and buildings to normal C3C settings (in most cases), as this versions could interest some other active modders, too - but I let untouched your techtree. Your special settings of the techtree are still working in those biqs. When using the Debug biq you can see, that now even the marsh terrain is included.

Simply place the two biqs into your C3C scenarios folder and start them as normal scenarios.

Edit: Here are two screenshots of the techtree of the C3C version that is attached to this post:





I think it wouldn´t be a big problem for me to convert your whole mod (without the civilopedia text works) to C3C.

Civinator, what was done to make the techs able to require cross-era techs? When I use the regular editor, it throws an error if you try to select a tech from a different era (other than era None).

 

[Civinator]

Civinator, what was done to make the techs able to require cross-era techs? When I use the regular editor, it throws an error if you try to select a tech from a different era (other than era None).

As written in my first post in this thread, the techtree was constructed from the opposite end than normal (from the future to the ancient era) that allowed to use techs of earlier eras as perequisites for techs in later eras. This was the work of a genius -and this genius is BTB, using the Civ 3 vanilla editor .

So it´s the best, that BTB explains it himself. That´s why I set a link in the post you quoted, to the thread where his work was discussed (so BTB later started similar threads with updates of his work). Please read especially that post of BTB: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...tweaks-for-purists.201239/page-2#post-5032806

So the C3C biqs I posted above were done as following:

1. BTB created a Civ 3 vanilla techtree with the Civ 3 vanilla editor in the manner he explained in the linked post.

2. The C3C conquest biq was opened with the C3C editor (1.00)

3. The modded Civ 3 vanilla techs (and the techtree) was imported to the opened C3C conquest biq with the C3C editor.

In a 4th step some buildings and units were changed to their positions in the C3C Conquest biq and the biggest mapsize was opened to 24 civs to demonstrate that this biq can be normally modded with the C3C editor. I didn´t touch the imported techs.

 

[BTB]

Well, now that my ego has been over-inflated...

I never did think that what I did could be properly imported into C3C (in fact, I'm pretty sure I tried). That said, the only aspect of working with C3C is the engine changes to the corruption model. As for everything else, I prefer vanilla Civ3 since I approach modding with the belief of "less is more" and have some pretty strong beliefs about what C3C did with the overall game balance (inspired in part by reading this article: http://www.sullla.com/Civ3/conquestsed.html ).

Of course, everyone here is absolutely welcome to use my work to do what they wish with C3C, and I'm honored to have contributed to the community in the small way I could.

I intended to have my Readme finished by today, but my friends came over yesterday to make me Thanksgiving dinner, so that kind of fell by the wayside. I'll post it here when I'm done.

 

[BTB]

All right, here we go...

http://btb2.free.fr/mods/civ3/Readme.html
http://btb2.free.fr/mods/civ3/QuickRef.xls

 

[Civinator]

BTB, thank you very much for all your work

BTB, where is the bic? So here I can only report about a problem when trying to start your last civ3mod.bic in Civ III Complete: After replacing the Civ3mod.bic in Civ 3 vanilla with your modded bic, Civ 3 vanilla is still starting, but it doesn´t load the game. This happens with both versions of Civ III Complete that are installed on my pc (Civ Chronicles and the GoG version). On the other side your civ3mod.bic can be opened in the C3C editor without any problems.

Some words about the linked article from Sulla about C3C:

It is great that he wrote such a long article - but one should never forget, that this article was written from the sight of a poor and helpless 'only-player' - not from the sight of a powerful C3C modder. Most of Sulla´s complaints can be solved by a modder with one click in the editor ( and the real problem with the wrong AI routine of land artillery units even exists in Civ 3 vanilla). I used Soren Johnson´s thoughts about Civ 3 in the Civ 4 handbook and additionally also Sulla´s article for some of the changes that I had to do in my C3C mod CCM. It is significant, that Sulla doesn´t mention anything about enslavement and stealth attack (o.k. here even nearly all C3C modders didn´t understand for many years how this feature is working properly). The autoproduction, that was set very 'unlucky' in standard C3C in my eyes is the feature I like the most in the changes that were done in C3C when used properly in a modded game. It allows to add some heavy and 'superheavy' units to the game in small numbers that otherwise would be produced by the AI and the player 'over and over': With autoproduction (in small numbers) there is a place for 'Tiger tanks ' (and so on) additionally to the Civ 3 tanks in the game. For a modder the additonal features of C3C always are a plus compared to less features in the vanilla game. In the worst cases the C3C modder can disable those features (per example lethal land bombardment or armies), but I never want to miss heavy units, enslavers, priests and lawyers any longer in my civ games. It´s surprising, that Sulla -especially as he was a betatester and should have noticed this - never mentioned the only real advantage of Civ 3 vanilla over C3C in his article: In Civ 3 vanilla the submarine bug was fixed, in C3C that bug appeared again and was never fixed.

So all in all in my eyes for a modder C3C is the best version of Civ III and even here it is possible, to use the thought 'less is more' when needed.

 

[BTB]

If you're looking for all of the files, they'll be in the download. Everything is linked to from here: http://btb2.free.fr/mods.html#civ3

Unless I'm misunderstanding you and that's not what you're asking, which is altogether possible since I'm tired as hell and about to fall asleep at my keyboard.

 

[BTB]

Ok, just woke up and re-read your post. Regarding Sulla's views on C3C... you are somewhat right. A modder can fix a lot of the issues he mentions, but not all of them as many of C3C's changes were made to the game engine itself. The changed corruption model, the new bombardment priority rules, scientific leaders being separate from military leaders... there's a lot of changes it made to vanilla that one simply cannot undo in the editor.

 

[Civinator]

Ok, just woke up and re-read your post. Regarding Sulla's views on C3C... you are somewhat right. A modder can fix a lot of the issues he mentions, but not all of them as many of C3C's changes were made to the game engine itself. The changed corruption model, the new bombardment priority rules, scientific leaders being separate from military leaders... there's a lot of changes it made to vanilla that one simply cannot undo in the editor.

BTB, thank you very much for the link to the bic and the other needed files. I will have a look if I can start your mod on my versions of Civ III Complete as soon as I have the time for it.

About the scientific leaders: Even they can be modded. The easiest way to disable them, is to open the Conquest biq with editor 1.03 (the C3C editor after the last patch) and replace the original biq, as with that editor scientific leaders are completely broken. Even with editor 1.00 the scientific age is not working in reality. This bug was fixed much later by Antal1987.

I prefer the changed corruption system of C3C and the new bombardment priorities (so I have disabled active landbombardment from nearly all landunits in my mod and replaced them with another system, that unfortunately also isn´t perfect). Other features that were not included in Civ 3 vanilla, that I like a lot, are the grouping of units in movement and the option to give each unit individual names.

 

[Civinator]

BTB, I have installed your mod in my GoG version of Civ III Complete, and I was able to start it without any problems. Beneath your great work with the techtree, that makes your mod unique among thousands of Civ 3 mods, I also like the shortcuts of worker jobs written in the civilopedia entries of the worker jobs, I think I will use this for my C3C mod, too.



In your techtree of era 1 I noticed a very small glitch: The specialist shown in the techtree is not the taxman but a scientist:

 

[BTB]

Oh, nice catch! I'll fix that up for the 1.0 release.

Also, it's been reported that NGplus isn't letting you download my mod without being logged in... I will take a look into that, as well.

 

[BTB]

All right, I've got a proper version 1.0 ready to do. Aside from fixing the aforementioned taxman icon, I've fixed the incorrect number of moves on the English Manowar, cleaned up a few minor typos/omissions in the Civilopedia, and fixed an issue where the "splash" you'd get for finishing a wonder would be wrong (and if you built the Pyramids, it would crash the game). I also added a version number so you can keep track of things. I'll upload this as soon as the Ngplus admin figures out how to properly categorize my mod so that non-registered users can download it.

 

[BTB]

EDIT: everything should be good now.

Everyone who downloaded the first version please do get the update.