CCM1 (epic mod)

[Takeo]

Thanks for the update!

Waiting with much anticipation!!!

 

[Civinator]

Hello Civinator:

Having already tried a few other epic Civ3 mods/conversions, I am very interested in CCM (currently lurking the LKT CCM-SGs), because it looks awesome I know you're working on v.2.0, but I'd be happy to play v.1.8 in the meantime. However, I appear to have a problem with the CCM Betatest.rar mainfile hosted at Civforum.de. I've tried downloading it twice now, and both times, the archive-file I get in my Downloads folder is only ~740 MB (rather than the reported 759 MB).

And when I try to extract that archive using 7-Zip* (on a Win8.1 machine), I only get about half(?) the CCM-files, before 7-Zip reports a 'possibly broken archive'. That is, with respect to your installation-instruction screenshot, the extraction stops dead at the .../CCM/Art/Units/M551 Sheridan folder (no further unit-information from Ma to Zz, no .../Art/VictoryScreen, .../Art/WonderSplash or .../Art/WorldSetup folders, and no ../CCM/Sounds or /CCM/Text folders either). The CCM 1.8 betatest .biq will fire up, but of course it then immediately crashes.

Assuming that Something Bad has not happened to the mainfile at civforum (I hope not...?), I can only conclude that I'm doing something wrong (most likely) -- but what? (rhetorical). The first post of this thread refers to a CCM betatest.zip (which might play more nicely with 7-Zip than the .rar?), but I couldn't find it quickly in the civforum.de CCM thread: it's not linked in the first post, nor did I spot it in a quick scan through the first 5-6 pages. If it's still available, could you point me to it?

*

Spoiler :

FWIW, I tried to install and use WinRar on previously DL'd .zip and .rar files, but couldn't seem to get it to work properly, which is why I tried 7-Zip instead: 7-Zip worked fine with the various archives for Rhye's Mod, LKT's Earthmap and Civ3 WorldWide (off the top of my head)

Today I corrected the the wrong build-sound-files in the last CCM betatest upload (version 1.8) and also attached a "Steam-Patch" for the labels text file for those civers, who must use the Steam version of Civ Complete.

tjs282, first I tried to use the zip-software attached to win10 to avoid the problems you posted above. Unfortunately here I received the error message that some files can not be zipped with that program, per example the wondersplash Prophet´s temple (because of the "´" in the name of the file). May be this is a part of the problem you described above. In the next version of CCM I will avoid such names. I don´t have 7-Zip, but I can remember, that I was not able to unzip some unit-files, that delta_strife had done with 7-Zip and sent to me some time ago.

In the current version 1.8, I refrained from such renamings as this could cause some irritations between players who use different versions of CCM 1.8. I used the best level of quality for raring these files, I had no problems with downloading and unraring the mainfile and I hope you now can unrar these files, too.

 

[tjs282]

Today I corrected the the wrong build-sound-files in the last CCM betatest upload (version 1.8) and also attached a "Steam-Patch" for the labels text file for those civers, who must use the Steam version of Civ Complete.

tjs282, first I tried to use the zip-software attached to win10 to avoid the problems you posted above. Unfortunately here I received the error message that some files can not be zipped with that program, per example the wondersplash Prophet´s temple (because of the "´" in the name of the file). May be this is a part of the problem you described above. In the next version of CCM I will avoid such names. I don´t have 7-Zip, but I can remember, that I was not able to unzip some unit-files, that delta_strife had done with 7-Zip and sent to me some time ago.

In the current version 1.8, I refrained from such renamings as this could cause some irritations between players who use different versions of CCM 1.8. I used the best level of quality for raring these files, I had no problems with downloading and unraring the mainfile and I hope you now can unrar these files, too.

Thanks for doing that, Civinator -- I will have another go at downloading it within the next week or so (after the family have gone home, and after I've figured out how to repair my -- currently bollixed -- Civ3 installation). I will let you know how I get on.

ETA, some days later...:

No go, I'm afraid. I just DL'd your new CCM-betatest.rar file (uploaded to CivForum at the beginning of January) and my installation of 7-Zip (actually, the freeware '7-Zip Opener') again failed to fully extract it. And again, the unpacking-process stalled at the .../Art/Units/M551Sheridan/ folder (I got 949 MB worth of the CCM files in total).

I'm beginning to suspect that my problem may actually result from a deliberately inbuilt (but unadvertised) limitation of the '7-Zip Opener': if the test-version will only unpack, say, 1.0 GB in a single run, then it would work fine for smaller archives, but choke on unpacked-total-size-equals-2-GB-plus monster-files like CCM.

(Although if I'm right, this does seem like rather a self-defeating method of persuading potential 7-Zip users that the full version is worth having... )

Edit to the Edit:

I just DL'd 'RAR-Opener', a freeware specifically intended for unpacking RAR-files (from the same developer/publisher as 7-Zip). This App also failed when it reached the Sheridan Art-files, but I'm not sure whether that repeated result implies a problem regarding the integrity of the .rar file, or rather that I should try using a paid-for archive-extractor instead.

So (Civinator, or anyone else following this thread) I would like to ask: What App did you use/would you recommend (for a Win8.1 system), to extract the CCM-mainfile?

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

Yes, now that I'm looking around, I just found that myself to fix the LOTR mod. There is a one-line difference post-patch in steam. The word "Unknown" needs to be inserted on a line between the words "ping" and "host" in the labels.txt file.

 

[Civinator]

I just DL'd 'RAR-Opener', a freeware specifically intended for unpacking RAR-files (from the same developer/publisher as 7-Zip). This App also failed when it reached the Sheridan Art-files, but I'm not sure whether that repeated result implies a problem regarding the integrity of the .rar file, or rather that I should try using a paid-for archive-extractor instead.

So (Civinator, or anyone else following this thread) I would like to ask: What App did you use/would you recommend (for a Win8.1 system), to extract the CCM-mainfile?

* I don´t have Win 8. I have Win7, Win10, WinXP, Win 98 and Win 95 - but not Win 8.

* The best program to open winrar is winrar. For a trial-phase of 40 days it is free. Here are some German downloadlinks for winrar:

- 64 bit: http://www.chip.de/downloads/WinRAR-64-Bit_37666786.html
-32 bit: http://www.chip.de/downloads/WinRAR-32-Bit_12994655.html

 

[tjs282]

* I don´t have Win 8. I have Win7, Win10, WinXP, Win 98 and Win 95 - but not Win 8.

* The best program to open winrar is winrar. For a trial-phase of 40 days it is free. Here are some German downloadlinks for winrar:

- 64 bit: http://www.chip.de/downloads/WinRAR-64-Bit_37666786.html
-32 bit: http://www.chip.de/downloads/WinRAR-32-Bit_12994655.html

Got the 64-bit English version directly from www.rarlabs.com. Took a bit of fiddling about (and cocking up, to be honest), but ... iiiiiiiit's working !!! Yeeeeeaaaaah! At last!



(At least for the moment)

I made the same mistake as for my first run at Worldwide though: I picked a Tiny 70% Continents map with all-Random opponents, but only disabled half the AI-Civs at the start-screen -- not nearly enough. It's only 3500 BC, and Smoke T'Kippah (sorry) of the Mayans can already see at least 3 other Civs' borders/capitals, practically on his doorstep. War is coming soon...

At least it's only Monarch -- I shouldn't get too badly d, right? Right...? Yeah, right.

 

[Civinator]

Great that it works now. Please forget the tiny map. CCM is for big maps. Take the biggest or at least the second biggest map -best with 31 players - otherwise you will not have much fun. The movement adjustments are for big maps and you need some rivals when competing for worldreligions, religious wonders and so on.

 

[Civinator]

The end of the houseboat bug ?

Today I made a testgame with the next version of CCM and the Antal4-patch - and a remarkable war between Canada and Germany. There was an interesting situation with units of three civs in one tile that I documented here.

But the most interesting situation came at the end of the war. Canada had only two cities left. One of these cities was a harbor city. A Canadian wargalleon that escorted a Canadian merchant ship sunk my wargalleone that observed the Canadian harbor. Three turns later I conquered both remaining Canadian cities. As no screen popped up, that I have defeated the Canadians, I know now will come that evil ctd by the so-called "houseboat bug". But what happened?

No cdt, but I was able to talk with the Canadian leader. He had no more cities, but still 320 gold. I made the following screenshot (and inserted the zero sum sign at the place in his city list):



May be it´s too early to say, that the houseboat bug is fixed, but to avoid the surely imminent ctd after the capture of the last city of another civ with a settler of that civ on a ship is so remarkable, that it could be, that Antal1987 in his patch fixed more problems of C3C that he was aware.

 

[ThERat]

Let us test this truly great news

 

[Takeo]

Let us test this truly great news

I second that!!

 

[Civinator]

It´s still too early for such tests. So the civilopedia entries for the land- and airunits and most buildings are finished, there must be made the civilopedia entries for many of the modern ships and some fixes with entries of buildings. I also reflect to enlarge the chain of the new camel units with the new units done by Balam A and to change some era-leaders to the new leaders done by Shiro and some of his flags.

The main reason why it´s too early for such a test is, that I must have an idea about the performance of the late game of the next version of CCM with the power of the new PC processors. In the last screenshots you can see in the minimap, that the game is now in era 3 in the year 1784. What you don´t see is, that my test game is played on a 250 x 240 map with 31 civs and a fully enabled standard Civ 3 seatrade on my new PC with a an Intel 4,01 GHz processor (that I can overclock up to 4,4 GHz). Until now I have no problems with the interturn speed of the game and these settings. But I must see what will happen with the game speed in the late game with land actions on all continents and if it is a good idea to offer such a version with a normal Civ 3 tradenet for high speed PCs (beside a version with the normal CCM cuts in the tradenet for lower power PCs).

As said, until now there are no speed problems and the game is incredible fun, but I have to see what will happen with game speed in a normal game in late era 4 with these settings and a strong processor.

 

[tjs282]

It´s still too early for such tests. So the civilopedia entries for the land- and airunits and most buildings are finished, there must be made the civilopedia entries for many of the modern ships and some fixes with entries of buildings.

Just off the top of my head, based on what I've done/seen so far in my current game, might I also suggest (if possible and not already done) that

• (If you want the names to be English, then) The nationality of barb-units converted into Slaves should be 'Barbarian' rather than 'Barbarisch'
• Similarly, the 'Merchand' Specialist -- renamed from Tax-Collector, I believe? -- should be 'Merchant' (reported by KingColtrane way back on p.2 of this thread, and still not fixed, tsk-tsk, you slacker... )
  
• The 'Trainings Chariot' should be renamed to the 'Training Chariot'
• Various unit- and building-names containing what Terry Pratchett called "greengrocer's apostrophe's" could also be edited accordingly
  Spoiler :

  If 'greengrocers' is read as a collective noun (ending in 's'), both of PTerry's examples are -- deliberately -- grammatically wrong: the first, 'possessive' apostrophe should follow the 's', not precede it; the second apostrophe is just plain unnecessary, because they're never used to pluralise nouns. (I love TP's work, and I copy-edit for a living -- I can't help being anal about this stuff, sorry! But I would need to be sitting in front of my Civ3 comp/ scouring the CCMopedia, to be more specific as to which building-names need editing)

I also discovered that -- even though Armies are not buildable in CCM -- when an MGL arrives in a town, the two Leader-action buttons, 'Create Army' and 'Hurry Production' (still) appear. If the (potentially misleading) appearance of the 'Create Army' button is fixable, it might be useful to other new CCMers (if such creatures exist?) to fix it.

Spoiler :

Fixing this might also prevent the AI from making a bad choice... Just to see what would happen, I (saved my game and) then clicked the 'Create Army' button. I didn't get a CTD, but did find a possible bug: the newly-built 'Army' still looks like a leader, and gets the next(?) civ-specific MGL's name, but can now ONLY 'Create Army' -- the 'Hurry Production' button disappears, at least for the rest of that turn. (I didn't click the 'Create Army' button again, nor did I play any further before reloading; but I do still have the save, if you want to experiment?)

But these very minor niggles aside, I'm having a lot of fun with this mod -- yes, even on a Tiny map! (Re. your earlier comment) I do understand that CCM is primarily intended to be played on Large+ maps -- that's one of the main reasons I'm so interested in this mod -- but for a test game, a Tiny map does allow a quicker run-through of the entire tech tree. Rest assured, my future 'proper' CCM games will definitely go Large (or Huge), if for no other reason than to give the AI-Civs a better chance of survival/expansion.

Spoiler :

So far, the Egyptians, Nubians and Greeks haven't had quite as much fun as me (in that order). Right now, the Indians are faring badly as well, and (even if they don't realise it yet) both the Arabs and the Israelis are next on my hit-list (I'm not anti-semitic, I'm xenophobic!)

I also appreciate that a larger map would allow everyone more numerous/ optimal city-sites for those precious auto-produced Settlers in the early game.

Spoiler :

City-placement has been quite non-optimal in my test-game, partly due to the (over)crowding, partly due to unSettle-able terrain (thank-you that Jungle isn't one of them!). At least 3 of my cities were/are mis-placed, but (without reloads) I'm pretty much forced to keep them, because I can't afford to raze/replace them yet, and it will be a long time before I can Worker-shrink/ Settler-abandon them

Spoiler :

One placement was poor with hindsight (on a small peninsula CxxxxC SW from Chichen Itza: lots of Coast, but several land-tiles now unreachable from any town), one was an early mistake (planted on a Hill for D-bonus and to maximise irrigable area in a mostly high-altitude landscape, but 1 tile off the coast and CxxC, 4WSW, from Memphis), and the last placed CxC, 2NW, from Thebes, in the expectation of razing that city on capture (but then the Egyptians completed ToA during a Wonder-cascade shortly afterwards, ensuring that their city survived the demise of their nation).

Not being able to build Settlers and Workers by hand is only one of the major changes from C3C I'm having to get used to in CCM, but at least I knew about that in advance (and my Enslavers and Jav-throwers have been very busy!). Some of the more obscure changes have caught me more by surprise though, e.g. when I researched and switched to Monarchy, the massively increased unit-support costs (3 gpt per unit?!) came close to bankrupting me over the following ~10T; my anarchic pop-losses (which I expected), and the 70% rate-cap under Monarchy (which I didn't expect, but probably should have) both also played a major role in my temporary financial embarrassment. This is not a complaint about those changes though -- all the above are good, for more 'realistic' gameplay, and improved AI-economic health.

Spoiler :

When I hit the revolution-button, I had ~12 towns -- including captures -- at Pop4-7, which would be fine for the first gov-switch on a Std-size (100x100) map in normal C3C. But for CCM, I'm guessing I switched too early, and/or (over-)invested shields into units (per standard Despotic C3C-tactics) rather than (TAX%- and LUX%-boosting) buildings. My funding issues have gone away now though, with the more backwards Civs paying GPT for my techs/ resources (or promises to leave them alone -- at least temporarily!)

UnHappiness is also becoming problematic: with LUX%=10% or 20%, I still need(ed) Temples(!) in my larger towns (the ToA-boost being only reason that Thebes is still standing), because I'm having difficulty acquiring additional Luxes -- are these scarcer than in C3C, and/or unlocked by (Middle Age+) techs that I don't have yet?

Spoiler :

Even with around half(?) my Continent already under my control, I only have Dyes within my borders, and even though I have contact with every remaining Civ on my Continent, no-one seems to have any spare Luxes to sell yet. Maybe I shouldn't have bought/enSlaved all their Workers...? Not to worry: once I've taken their land as well, I'll be able to improve it myself...

 

[Civinator]

I'm having a lot of fun with this mod -- yes, even on a Tiny map!

tjs282, thank you very much for your kind words about CCM and your constructive feedback! The C3C random map generator frequently generates much better worlds with the bigger map size.

I also discovered that -- even though Armies are not buildable in CCM -- when an MGL arrives in a town, the two Leader-action buttons, 'Create Army' and 'Hurry Production' (still) appear. If the (potentially misleading) appearance of the 'Create Army' button is fixable, it might be useful to other new CCMers (if such creatures exist?) to fix it.

tjs282, that´s an interesting suggestion and I think this could be fixed by setting the 'Create Army' button to transparency. I will make a test.

UnHappiness is also becoming problematic: with LUX%=10% or 20%, I still need(ed) Temples(!) in my larger towns (the ToA-boost being only reason that Thebes is still standing), because I'm having difficulty acquiring additional Luxes -- are these scarcer than in C3C

Yes, it is intended that the players should use the happiness buildings in CCM - there must be a reason why they are in the game.

Just off the top of my head, based on what I've done/seen so far in my current game, might I also suggest (if possible and not already done) that

• (If you want the names to be English, then) The nationality of barb-units converted into Slaves should be 'Barbarian' rather than 'Barbarisch'
• Similarly, the 'Merchand' Specialist -- renamed from Tax-Collector, I believe? -- should be 'Merchant' (reported by KingColtrane way back on p.2 of this thread, and still not fixed, tsk-tsk, you slacker... )
  
• The 'Trainings Chariot' should be renamed to the 'Training Chariot'
• Various unit- and building-names containing what Terry Pratchett called "greengrocer's apostrophe's" could also be edited accordingly

"Barbarisch" was an overlooked relict of the adjective in the original German biq, that was the base for the first versions of CCM. You were the first who noticed it. In the next version this error doesn´t exist, as that version is based on the English biq.

The spelling of merchant was fixed - but unfortunately only for the next version of CCM. When King Coltrane posted that report, I never thought, that the old biq would be in use for such a long time.

The 'Trainings Chariot' is a special case, as I had to find a fitting word for something that didn´t exist in history. The 's' was influenced by German words like 'Trainingsanzug' and 'Traingshose', but I always had a feeling that there something must be wrong - on the other side I didn´t want to waste much time with that problem. When looking in my 'Weyers Flotten Taschenbuch' I see, that the term for the AX is 'training ship' and therefore your suggestion fits much better for that historically not existing unit. I will rename the unit to 'Training Chariot'. Thank you very much for this hint.

Apostrophes, French accents, German umlauts and so on are always very problematic when compressing the biq and other files of a C3C mod or scenario. The last proof was when I tried to create a CCM-zip for you with the Win10 zip-program and this program refused to work with an apostrophe in a wondersplash. May be it´s the best to ignore them completely.

 

[jlvfr]

The 'Trainings Chariot' is a special case, as I had to find a fitting word for something that didn´t exist in history.

Try "training wheels"

 

[tjs282]

The 'Trainings Chariot' is a special case, as I had to find a fitting word for something that didn´t exist in history. The 's' was influenced by German words like 'Trainingsanzug' and 'Traingshose', but I always had a feeling that there something must be wrong - on the other side I didn´t want to waste much time with that problem.

Quite understandably, considering the huge effort entailed in putting CCM together...

When looking in my 'Weyers Flotten Taschenbuch' I see, that the term for the AX is 'training ship' and therefore your suggestion fits much better for that historically not existing unit. I will rename the unit to 'Training Chariot'. Thank you very much for this hint.

You're welcome. I did go poking through the CCM Civilopedia.txt later on that day, and found that I will also later be able to build an Arsenal to auto-produce a 'Trainings Launcher' which might similarly be re-named (under "#PRTO_Traingslauncher" -- there are also multiple {comments} noting the latter mis-spelling, but I think this doesn't matter so much, since all the links for the Arsenal and all the civ-specific rocket-launchers use it anyway)

 

[Civinator]

I did go poking through the CCM Civilopedia.txt later on that day, and found that I will also later be able to build an Arsenal to auto-produce a 'Trainings Launcher' which might similarly be re-named (under "#PRTO_Traingslauncher" -- there are also multiple {comments} noting the latter mis-spelling, but I think this doesn't matter so much, since all the links for the Arsenal and all the civ-specific rocket-launchers use it anyway)

I will see what the auto-correction function here can do. Unfortunately this will cause another delay with the next version of CCM.

Try "training wheels"

You mean something like that :

 

[Civinator]

Here you can see some of the new resources in the next version of CCM. The Nazca Line resources yesterday were done by Pounder and in my eyes he did a very good job. Pounder thank you very much for doing them! These resources can only be seen and give a small bonus to civs of the Mesoamerican culture group and are needed for balancing reasons. In the screenshot you can also see the new spices resource icon.



With the civilopedia I´m now doing the modern era submarine and missile ship entries and than we can start the test of the new version of CCM.

 

[jlvfr]

Ok... those lines are awesome, congrats to the author. What do they do ingame?

 

[Civinator]

Ok... those lines are awesome, congrats to the author. What do they do ingame?

They give a little bonus of 1 shield and 1 commerce on that tile to the civ.

 

[Civinator]

As Bluemofia found a way to connect even the concept entries in the civilopedia with individual images, I´m now rebuilding the game concepts in the civilopedia of CCM to a table of content of this mod with chapters and the following entries that are in that chapter.




The start of each chapter can easily be found by a special individual image. For example chapter 1 explains the special concepts of CCM. The single special concepts of CCM are listed below the chapter headline, irrespective of the alphabetical first letters of keywords. I hope it´s no longer a matter of luck to find the right keyword among hundreds of keywords in the concept section of the civilopedia.

In chapter 2 you find the methods to do your CCM game faster, from increasing the game speed up to the hotkey commands ... and so on.