C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 24

[general-jcl]

I second this. The AI is not handling flag units (in CCM 3 supply shipments) very well. Different to the quoted post the AI at least tries to escort flag units to the capital (the other methode in CCM to handle flag units without needing victory points on the map), but the AI completely fails to handle flag units that are produced in the capital. The AI is not able to move the flag unit outside the capital and than remove it escorted into the capital again.

In my Eldorado mod, there are also capturable bonus units (0 attack, 0 defense) whose purpose is to be dissolved in a city to speed up production. I'm not sure that the AI knows how to handle this type of unit either.

Other question: does the AI use non-standard terraforming units correctly (e.g. a unit that can only build roads, or a combat unit that can also build roads)?

 

[Civinator]

In my Eldorado mod, there are also capturable bonus units (0 attack, 0 defense) whose purpose is to be dissolved in a city to speed up production. I'm not sure that the AI knows how to handle this type of unit either.

I had tested this intensively long ago when creating CCM1 by an autoproduced unit with these settings that I named "Great architect". The AI didn´t use such a unit properly.

Other question: does the AI use non-standard terraforming units correctly (e.g. a unit that can only build roads, or a combat unit that can also build roads)?

In the current version of CCM 3 I set workers so they should not be able to create railroads and "superworkers" (steam rollers and bulldozers) which are able to build railroads. It is possible with C3X to give the terraform strategy even to units that have no complete set of terraforming worker abilities. On the first view the limitation for workers seemed to work correctly. It was not possible with the normal build railroad button to build any railroads by those "limited" workers. Than it was discovered, that the limited AI workers and even the limited workers of the human player were still able to build railroads with the "build railroads to a city-button". Therefore this setting is cancelled in the next version of CCM 3.

 

[general-jcl]

I had tested this intensively long ago when creating CCM1 by an autoproduced unit with these settings that I named "Great architect". The AI didn´t use such a unit properly.

In the current version of CCM 3 I set workers so they should not be able to create railroads and "superworkers" (steam rollers and bulldozers) which are able to build railroads. It is possible with C3X to give the terraform strategy even to units that have no complete set of terraforming worker abilities. On the first view the limitation for workers seemed to work correctly. It was not possible with the normal build railroad button to build any railroads by those "limited" workers. Than it was discovered, that the limited AI workers and even the limited workers of the human player were still able to build railroads with the "build railroads to a city-button". Therefore this setting is cancelled in the next version of CCM 3.

Thanks Civinator, you confirm the impression I had.
As for the first question, I hope Flintlock can fix it!

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

5. Information about defense bonuses on a tile. Is it possible to display information about defense bonuses on a tile when you right-click on it?
On tiles with cities - taking into account city defense improvements.
On tiles near a river - taking into account its bonus (in brackets).

I think this is a good idea. It would be helpful to know the defense bonuses in effect, especially when attacking a city. Also, it removes the need to remember all the different numbers, which can vary from mod to mod.

Transparency is always a good thing.

 

[general-jcl]

To come back to the problems of the terrains, there's also something odd. If you create hills in LM terrain (LMxHills.pcx) for desert or tundra environments, the game doesn't take the surrounding terrain into account and systematically places a Grasslands base at the foot of the hill, which completely ruins the aesthetic aspect (especially in the middle of the desert).
However, there must be a procedure that detects the context of the terrain, since it works perfectly with hill forests.pcx and hill jungle.pcx.

 

[Android Assembly]

I second this. The AI is not handling flag units (in CCM 3 supply shipments) very well. Different to the quoted post the AI at least tries to escort flag units to the capital (the other methode in CCM to handle flag units without needing victory points on the map), but the AI completely fails to handle flag units that are produced in the capital. The AI is not able to move the flag unit outside the capital and than remove it escorted into the capital again.

Which is I suppose more a symptom of the unintuitive way you need to handle flag units in the capital altogether. - making them possible to utilize without moving them out of and back into the capital might be a better all round system than teaching the AI how to move them out and in.

 

[MARK V]

3. Transport units. Is it possible to implement the ability to use transport units to transport only those units whose names will be specified in the list for the mod? For example:
Transport_1: Unit_1, Unit_2
Transport_2: Unit_3, Unit_4

Let me add that it would also be interesting to somehow divide units according to the space they take in the transport: Infantry, workers, settlers, cruise missile, etc. - 1; cavalry, wheeled units - 2; heavy armored vehicles - 3 or 4. This could be implemented by listing the units, that would be time consuming but qualitative, or by units's abilities (foot, wheeled, etc.), which gives less room for maneuver, but is most likely easier to implement.

A few possibilities, for example:
- there are 4 kinds of hills (normal hills, LM hills arrived with Conquest, wooded hills that use hill forests.pcx and jungle hills that use hill jungle.pcx).

It would be nice to make it possible to cut down forests and jungles on hills and mountains so that they turn into regular hills and mountains. But logically, this should be accompanied by decreasing of the defense bonus and, of course, of the tile productivity, which is already hardly to implement in a simple way as I think.

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

Let me add that it would also be interesting to somehow divide units according to the space they take in the transport: Infantry, workers, settlers, cruise missile, etc. - 1; cavalry, wheeled units - 2; heavy armored vehicles - 3 or 4. This could be implemented by listing the units, that would be time consuming but qualitative, or by units's abilities (foot, wheeled, etc.), which gives less room for maneuver, but is most likely easier to implement.

I agree with this concept. It would make sea transport more strategic and realistic.

I also think that bombers should take up more space than fighters or helicopters on an aircraft carrier.


[EDIT]: I have an idea. What if the space required for each unit could be set in the Civ 3 Editor? There is a field called "Transport Capacity", which is normally used for the opposite, to set how many units can be loaded onto a transport. But that field is never used for normal units, so it's free and available to use. As long as you don't set the "Unload" flag or give them the "Transport" role, as far as I know, the units will behave normally (haven't tested this, though). So for example, if the Transport Capacity field is set to a value higher than 1, then that is how many slots this unit will occupy in a transport. If set to 1, or left at the standard 0, then the normal 1 slot is required.

By the way, this can also be used to ban certain units from being transported. For example heavy bombers on an aircraft carrier. Just set the number higher than the transport's total capacity, and it won't fit.

 

[MARK V]

I had tested this intensively long ago when creating CCM1 by an autoproduced unit with these settings that I named "Great architect". The AI didn´t use such a unit properly.

In the current version of CCM 3 I set workers so they should not be able to create railroads and "superworkers" (steam rollers and bulldozers) which are able to build railroads. It is possible with C3X to give the terraform strategy even to units that have no complete set of terraforming worker abilities. On the first view the limitation for workers seemed to work correctly. It was not possible with the normal build railroad button to build any railroads by those "limited" workers. Than it was discovered, that the limited AI workers and even the limited workers of the human player were still able to build railroads with the "build railroads to a city-button". Therefore this setting is cancelled in the next version of CCM 3.

Sorry for the small offtopic, literally a small question also related to CCM3. The mod has more than 82 technologies and the 82 techs bug does not apply to it. This bug has already been fixed in C3X? I just did not find a mention of it in scenario.c3x_config.ini.

 

[Civinator]

Sorry for the small offtopic, literally a small question also related to CCM3. The mod has more than 82 technologies and the 82 techs bug does not apply to it. This bug has already been fixed in C3X? I just did not find a mention of it in scenario.c3x_config.ini.

This is the first time I hear of a 82 tech bug in Civ 3. Can it be that you mix this up with a problem of Civ 2 ? As far as I know Civ 3 is not haunted by such a bug - or I was lucky in more than 20 years playing Civ 3, that such a bug did never play havoc with my mods.

 

[robotlincoln]

Is there any way to make global warming alter terrain tiles to their LM equivalent? Seems like a clean way to lower terrain tiles' productivity following climate change without running into the C3C terrain convertibility issue.

The only way I can make climate change work meaningfully as it stands is to have grasslands turn into marshes, which lowers food output and increases disease risk in a civ's most populated regions, and which absorbs a lot of workers through constant Clear Wetlands jobs. This works reasonably well, but I'd really like to also be able to, for example, make Flood Plains unproductive or impossible to irrigate, lower plains' productivity, etc.

 

[MARK V]

This is the first time I hear of a 82 tech bug in Civ 3. Can it be that you mix this up with a problem of Civ 2 ? As far as I know Civ 3 is not haunted by such a bug - or I was lucky in more than 20 years playing Civ 3, that such a bug did never play havoc with my mods.

When I was researching the game's modding potential, I found this very old comment and in order to avoid wasting time on errors, I decided to make sure about it. So it's no longer relevant for some reason?

From what I have seen in the game, it seems like a fairly complex affair (frankly, the more I edit civ3, the less impressed I am by Firaxis, it looks like such a hack job, in terms of how much stuff is hard-coded and how hard it is to make even the slightest of changes. It just runs contrary to most everything I've been taught in regards to programming. Modularity! Error checking! Text first, Code later. blah blah blah blah.)

SO anyways...

You have the Art\tech chooser\Icons folder
The small icons are assigned based on the number you give the tech in the editor. All is dandy so far. The large icons instead of referring to this same number for their respective assignment go through the most assinine scheme I've seen.

It first assumes there are n techs. Where n = icon number of Writing. It then alphabetizes the techs (including "The" prefix in their name). Starting from the last tech, in this case writing, it will go down the list of icons available, all of which are numbered up to 82. Then starting from n it will make linked list of sorts for every small icon to a specific large icon.

So, say you add one tech.

n = 81
Start of large icons = 82-writing-large
It begins making the linked list"
81-warrior code-small gets linked to 82-writing-large
80-theorygravity-small gets linked to 81-warrior code-large
and it goes on and on like this.

Then every time the civilopdia shows the tech list and you click on a particular tech with a specific icon it will show you the large .pcx file that was linked to that icon.

What this means is you currently cannot add more than 82 techs.
And if you do have 82 techs it means they will all have the same blasted icon. Each new tech you add reduces your icon selection by one, so adding a few techs can probably be managed by careful reselection of the icons taking into account the new n value. As well as by renaming the small icon files to match the new n value. So if you add three new techs you lose three icons. You can go about renaming all 79 files so that you end up with 79 icons that will line up, but I leave that entirely up to those with too much time on their hands. Alternatively, one could write a small application that might be able to do this.

Ideally, it'd be great if Firaxis fixed this silly implementation.

EDITED some incorrect stuff out...

Anyways, hope that helps.

 

[tjs282]

That post is from March 2002, about the time when Civ III Vanilla was first released in Europe (6 months after the North American release, per Wikipedia). And yes, a lot of the Vanilla patches were about fixing bugs in and adding functionality to the Editor. So the problem described was almost certainly patched out, possibly before even PtW came out (Oct 2002), let alone Conquests (Nov 2003) or Complete (after the final patch for Conquests, i.e. sometime in early 2004).

 

[Android Assembly]

When I was researching the game's modding potential, I found this very old comment and in order to avoid wasting time on errors, I decided to make sure about it. So it's no longer relevant for some reason?

Oh, yeah, that was a Civ 3 vanilla quirk - it comes up in the really old mods you can see them sharing icons (DYP I think?) but it hasn't been a thing since the expansion.

- For one, there are 83 techs with conquests, but there were 82 with vanilla (conquests added ironclads and facism but removed radio) - you can also see in the biq editor that ironclads and fascism have different data in the (now unused) icon value.

 

[Chalito]

Got a new laptop with Windows 11, got Civ 3 to run properly, but cannot get C3XTo install. I’ve opened the install.bat file with “Run as Administrator”. The black window pops up and disappears real quick without getting the message that it has been installed.
Any other ideas, or experience with this?

 

[Civinator]

Got a new laptop with Windows 11, got Civ 3 to run properly, but cannot get C3XTo install. I’ve opened the install.bat file with “Run as Administrator”. The black window pops up and disappears real quick without getting the message that it has been installed.
Any other ideas, or experience with this?

I had no problems with the installation of C3X on my new win 11 pc. Have you installed the GOG or steam version of Civ 3 Complete ?

 

[Flintlock]

C3X version 23 Preview 1 is done. It's on GitHub like the preview versions always are. Its major addition is the AMB editor, which I created a thread specifically for here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/amb-sound-editor.698491/.

Got a new laptop with Windows 11, got Civ 3 to run properly, but cannot get C3XTo install. I’ve opened the install.bat file with “Run as Administrator”. The black window pops up and disappears real quick without getting the message that it has been installed.
Any other ideas, or experience with this?

You should try opening a command prompt, navigating to the C3X folder, then running INSTALL.bat from within the command prompt. That way you'll be able to see any errors generated. Otherwise it closes immediately when there's an error and you don't get a chance to read it.

 

[Chalito]

I had no problems with the installation of C3X on my new win 11 pc. Have you installed the GOG or steam version of Civ 3 Complete ?

I have the GOG version. I haven’t had to do anything to the computer to run Civ 3, other thsn writing the typical Video Mode, Keep 1 Res stuff on the typical .ini file.

 

[Chalito]

C3X version 23 Preview 1 is done. It's on GitHub like the preview versions always are. Its major addition is the AMB editor, which I created a thread specifically for here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/amb-sound-editor.698491/.


You should try opening a command prompt, navigating to the C3X folder, then running INSTALL.bat from within the command prompt. That way you'll be able to see any errors generated. Otherwise it closes immediately when there's an error and you don't get a chance to read it.

What do I need to type on the Command Prompt to run the install.bat? Pretend like I’m a person with very little or knowledge on the subject sir.

 

[Chalito]

Okay, I googled it and typed the stuff on the lower pop-up. The last prompt just created another another pop-up, the one on top. Am I close?