city name sharing

[civ2_allnighter]

I am a novice Civ2 player. I am certainly not advanced in the programming of the game or in scenario creating, though I do own the Gold Edition. There is something that always annoys me when I have a game when many large empires, and that is the city name sharing. It seems like every time there are 4 "Naples" or 3 "Issus", etc... all owned by different nations. I went to the city.txt to try to alleviate this problem and found that it seems that all civilizations, when they have used their own city names all dip into the same "EXTRA" pile of city names. Is there a way to fix this, for example, make it so once one city name in the EXTRA pile is used, it can't be used by any another computer-controlled nation. Or is the only way to fix the problem is to add extra city names to each nation's pile? (so they won't have to dig into the EXTRA pile so early) Please help.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

You'd need to edit the default names of each civ in order to fix your problem.

 

[Mercator]

Or is the only way to fix the problem is to add extra city names to each nation's pile?

Yes indeed.

 

[jadelicia]

Is there a limit to how many cities you can add to each nation's list?

 

[la fayette]

Upper limit = 255

(but who cares ? )

 

[jadelicia]

Does it wreck the game if you go over 255?

 

[Specialist290]

I think you can list more than 255 names per civ, but since you can't build more than 255 cities, it would kinda be pointless...

 

[jadelicia]

I see Thanks!

 

[Mercator]

Nope, that's not true...

First of all, cities can get destroyed, so you can end up using more city names than then are cities.

Secondly, Civ2 can't handle more than 254 city names per civ (that includes the number of cities in @EXTRA). If you give a civ more than 254 names, that has 2 consequences: (1) Any names beyond the 254th name will be ignored, it will go back to the start of the list again, (2) the 255th city will be named after the city civ section (e.g. "@ROMANS" for the Romans), which doesn't look very pretty.

But, no, Civ2 won't crash. The worst things that can happen are that some of your city names will remain unused and that you may get cities called "@ROMANS" or "@AMERICANS".

 

[jadelicia]

I see. Can you add another civilization with its own cities too? What is the limit on this?

 

[jadelicia]

Does anyone know what the @Barbarian section is in the city.txt?

 

[Specialist290]

That determines what name(s) the barbarians use when they give you the "give us money or else" message for an undefended city. I read somewhere that it always uses the same name when threatening the same city, but I don't think I remember how the name is chosen in the first place.

 

[ElephantU]

I see. Can you add another civilization with its own cities too? What is the limit on this?

Civ2 has a limit of 7 other civs in any one game, with the Barbs as an "8th civ". In the RULES.TXT you can substitute a new civ for one of the 21 existing ones (3 alternates times 7 slots); the Arabs and the Incas are below the Sioux as examples but they are not active - you have to pull out one of the 21 and substitute their numbers to get it to work right. Be careful to save a backup copy of RULES.TXT before you mess with anything...

 

[jadelicia]

Yah...that sounds risky. So, when you custom make a civ, how does it determine what numbers to give it?

 

[geofelt]

There are alternate city.txt files around. I have attached one that I use that has increased the number of names for the romans and americans. If you use either civ, you are unlikely to use one of the extra names. Does anyone know of a city.txt that has an expanded list for more civs?

 

[ElephantU]

Yah...that sounds risky. So, when you custom make a civ, how does it determine what numbers to give it?

Right above the listings of 21 default civs is a code explanation section that starts with semicolons. The only number that must be reused from the civ you remove is the "Color Set (1-7)", the rest you can choose from the listed ranges (male/female names, city style, attack/expand/civilize, govmt, etc).

 

[jadelicia]

@geofelt: I'm currently working on expanding mine. I can put it up when I'm done for you, if you want it.

 

[Mercator]

I think it should be possible to add whatever civilizations you want in your CITY.TXT, but they will only be used if the same civilization name (the same as the @-line) is found in the RULES.TXT @LEADERS section. The rules only have place for 21 civs.

 

[jadelicia]

There's no way to make the rules except more than 21 civs?

 

[ElephantU]

"accept"? correct. 7 slots times 3 alternates. But with alternative copies of modified RULES.TXT any one game can have 7 completely different civs, with 14 "restart" alternatives. Some scenarios have been designed around that, such as different tribes within the British Isles.