Changing terrain types

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Whilst I'm sure this has been discussed here before, I'd like to ask about changing terrain type.

First off, I'm aware that (for random maps) there are things taken into account when the map is generated - so, for example, I couldn't really change the tundra (which I dislike) into (for example) steppes terrain as the tundra occurs at the poles and it wouldn't make sense for any other terrain type to be there.

However, I think that I could change marsh with some kind of different grassy terrain just with a simple graphic, altering the parameters of the terrain type in the editor -is that right? What might be a good replacement?

I'm not so sure about volcanoes though....is there any way to switch off their volcanic activity? What if I made the maximum eruption time zero?

 

[Joe Cool]

I think that marshes and jungles tend to appear together around the tropics, roughly speaking, but you should be able to replace them with another graphic. I think it might still be clearable, unsettleable, and disease-ridden though. And I'm almost positive there is a way to turn off volcanoes.

 

[Quintillus]

Marsh can be made non-disease-ridden, city-settlable, and passable to wheeled units in the editor, so changing it to something different should be possible. It also is already clearable, although depending on what you change it to you might want to disable that. Not sure off the top of my head what an especially good replacement might be, though.

As for volcanoes, I don't know of any way to stop them from exploding, although setting the maximum eruption period (in the Disasters! tab of the custom player info) to 100,000 will stop 90% of them from exploding, in theory. If you use my editor, you can set the maximum eruption period even higher (PROP tab), and though it hasn't been tested in-game, 100,000 seems to be a pretty arbitrary limit so you can probably get away with setting it to a few million, making the chance of explosion less than 1% over a 6000 year game. Adding a commerce terraform bonus to volcanoes will allow roads, and changing the flags will allow cities, etc. So, effectively, even if the max eruption period being 0 does not work (really not sure if it does or not), setting it ridiculously high should solve the problem most of the time. Maybe the less-than-1% eruption event can become an 'earthquake'.

 

[Leaven]

Here's a question about volcano's, what is it in the editor that tells that particular terrain type to erupt? I mean is it just the location of volcanoes in the list of terrain types? I doubt the game searches for a terrain called "Volcano" and makes it erupt. Do you want to have volcano's in the game but just not erupting, or do you want them to become something else too?

As for marsh, that could easily become something else but remember that the graphic for marsh is an overlay and doesn't work the same as the grassland-type terrains. That means that any existing grassland file you might want to replace it with would have to be modified a lot to replace marsh.

 

[Civinator]

Please don´t forget the great gift embryodead gave to the civ 3 community:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232267

He even made a biq with all LM-Terrain enabled, but at present I don´t have the link to it. So there are some not so known additional possibilities to introduce new terrain for fixed maps to C3C.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Other possibilities for terrain variation:
use one of the forest slots with a graphic that covers most all of the tile
use an lm hill or lm mountain slot similarly - the graphic can look completely different from the usual & can be enlarged enough to hide the hard-coded grassland underlay.

embryodead's method is not for the faint of heart since it requires hex editing. The biq is available in the OP:

Then, download my HexPak.zip.
...
However, inside the HexPak.zip, I've included Landmarks.biq that has all the new LM Terrain added already. You can edit their stats in the editor like any other terrain.
...
Note that in order to include this in your own scenario, you can import this part of the ruleset into another BIQ (File->Import->Rules->Terrain).

Quintillus' editor will likely have support for these other terrain types at some point in the future.

 

[Ares de Borg]

Please don´t forget the great gift embryodead gave to the civ 3 community:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232267

He even made a biq with all LM-Terrain enabled, but at present I don´t have the link to it. So there are some not so known additional possibilities to introduce new terrain for fixed maps to C3C.

Holy Moly! This offers totally new perspectives... and new plans for my Terrain Pack!

 

[Civinator]

Yes, but it must be used in combination with hex-editing.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Holy Moly! This offers totally new perspectives... and new plans for my Terrain Pack!

Yes, but it must be used in combination with hex-editing.

It would be nice to have a comprehensive terrain set. Even if some of the files were used for existing LMs or as alternates to the regular terrain for special scenarios rather than with the hex-edited options. There would still be a unified look.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

A quick update on the volcanoes in Civ III - the minimum value you can place in the field is 100, so 0 is a no-go .