Civ IV Reference Charts

[Michelangelo]

@Keraunos,

Actually, some of them are already incorporated in 1.6a (see post #129) like influence on building/tech costs.

I'm planning on adding more functionality to it in the futere.

 

[Jensen]

Hi there!

Since I'm interested in a Walords-compatible reference I started to modify this great reference. Until now I managed to update the Civilization Characteristics chart and changed the title picture.

I have little experience with Excel functions, no experience at all with macros and additionally I use Open Office 2.03 instead of MS Excel. So I stopped work for now to see if I messed up the reference or if I did something good.

For example, I didn't manage to get a word-wrap at the end of one leader's trait benefit in the column Trait Benefit.

Please have a look at this work and don't hesitate to comment on that. Maybe someone more experienced could comment on functions and macros. Michelangelo offered his help which I would appreciate.

Some advise for everyone planning to work on this as well: Civfanatic's Warlords Overview is not correct in every fact. For example, according to Civilopedia the Americans' Unique Building replaces the supermarket but Civfanatics says it replaces grocer. That's hell of a difference!

I hope I didn't stumble over any mistake like that myself. I realized that even Civilopedia has its drawbacks: If you have a look at "Game Concepts"/"Leaders" you won't find any of the new leader traits.

Enough words, now it's your turn to comment.

Jensen

PS: Unfortunately I cannot attach the file though it is a .zip. Thus I uploaded it to my private web server. Please download here.
I'd appreciate help on that, too.

 

[Michelangelo]

@Jensen,

Great thing you are willing to take this up. I've tried downloading from the link but it doesn't work. "http://forums.civfanatics.com/lupo.servercounterstrike.com/warlords.zip" also looks like a strange location. Typo???

Do you own Warlords? I usually just go in game, look at the XML files and so to get the info I need.

IIRC someone also tried adding stuff with Open Office and we experienced compatibility problems.

The macro is used to get the coloring right. I made it, so I should be able to help with implementing it.

I've some idea what changes that are made in warlords and think it would be best to either create a seperate reference file for warlords or giving it it's own sheets in the same reference. I the differnce isn't worth an extra sheet, it should be displayed in such a way that you can still see the difference between 1.61 and warlords. But I would be happy to take a look at it if you can change the file.

 

[Michelangelo]

BTW to upload a file you can use the manage attachment button in the post editor or the file upload function at the bottom of every forum page.

Good luck with it.

 

[Jensen]

Hm... my URL at the message is correct: http:/lupo.servercounterstrike.com/warlords.zip

BUT the forum somehow added this forums.civfanatics.com.

If I try to upload the file with the "Attach Files" button at the bottom of my message's edit screen I get the message:

Upload Errors
warlords.zip:
Invalid File

Jensen

 

[Jensen]

Whooho! I got the file uploaded with the button at the bottom of every forum page:

Download here

I'm excited to hear your comments.

Ah, and to answer your question: I own Warlords, yes. Hm, XML would do I guess. I'll keep that in mind for further work on the reference.

Jensen

 

[Michelangelo]

Yep, downloaded it and looked at it.

As I mentioned before my preference would be to somehow keep the new warlord info seperated if possible so the reference can be used by 1.61 players as well as warlords players. If existing values also change I think it would become difficult to do so and a seperate reference is in order. What your idea on this?

The coloring you can do by copying the formats only from an existing row. It should work, at least it does here.

 

[Jensen]

Since they changed about half of the leaders' traits at least the Civilization Characteristics chart should be completely remade (as I've done). I think it wouldn't fit a page if you describe every leader's trait benefits in one page - you'd have to write up to four benefits in this column.

You could make the file "switch-able": Like the difficulty level you could switch the game BUT I, for example, want to print the reference which would be more difficult if you have two versions in one (I even consider this difficulty-switch a bit annoying, but I just keep it default).

I think we should just add a new Civilization Characteristic chart and try to "squeeze" everything else in the already present charts. Can't be that hard, eight units, three wonders, some new promotions for the general. Am I missing anything?

The Warlords-only facts can be colored in some bright color (suitable for black-white printing).

No new technology, no new terrain or ressources.

We need a new chart for the unique buildings, though. They won't fit into the existing city buildings chart.

I'd like to know where I can get the upgrade cost for the units. Which XML is it? But don't mind if you don't know, I can try to look that up myself.

What about this Open Office compatibility issue? Is everything still fine in MS Excel as well?

Jensen

 

[Michelangelo]

Since they changed about half of the leaders' traits at least the Civilization Characteristics chart should be completely remade (as I've done). I think it wouldn't fit a page if you describe every leader's trait benefits in one page - you'd have to write up to four benefits in this column.

Agreed, but the old one should be included then as well.

You could make the file "switch-able": Like the difficulty level you could switch the game BUT I, for example, want to print the reference which would be more difficult if you have two versions in one (I even consider this difficulty-switch a bit annoying, but I just keep it default).

Can you clarify your small annoyance a bit. My idea was to have it standard and have the modifiers listed relate to the standard settings. This is also the best for printing I think. If someone wishes he/she could change a setting and watch the changes. I agree that this isn't very good for printing, but that was never the intention. If you have any other ideas, please tell me.

I think we should just add a new Civilization Characteristic chart and try to "squeeze" everything else in the already present charts. Can't be that hard, eight units, three wonders, some new promotions for the general. Am I missing anything?

Agreed. All costs stay the same???

The Warlords-only facts can be colored in some bright color (suitable for black-white printing).

Agreed, we can add an extra small column that is colored. It should stand out enough.

No new technology, no new terrain or ressources.

Great, especially the technology part is this is very labour intensive.

We need a new chart for the unique buildings, though. They won't fit into the existing city buildings chart.

Agreed, but as goes for the leader page the old one should be included then as well.

I'd like to know where I can get the upgrade cost for the units. Which XML is it? But don't mind if you don't know, I can try to look that up myself.

Don't know, this was provided by Kroym it think. I would start though on the units.xml combined with the handicap.xml and worldsize.xml.

What about this Open Office compatibility issue? Is everything still fine in MS Excel as well?

This version looked good, exept for a small row-coloring problem. Oh, and after taking a look at the tech-chart, the lines are all messed up. Now I remember this being the problem before. However if this is the only problem I can merge any additions you make into a excel version from within excel and so preserve the correct formatting.

Jensen

 

[Jensen]

Can you clarify your small annoyance a bit. My idea was to have it standard and have the modifiers listed relate to the standard settings. This is also the best for printing I think. If someone wishes he/she could change a setting and watch the changes. I agree that this isn't very good for printing, but that was never the intention. If you have any other ideas, please tell me.

Maybe I got it wrong: I think this difficulty switch will adjust unit/building cost (meaning hammers here) and technology cost (bulbs or test tubes, respectively). But if I just want to have an overview I don't want to have that special information for every imaginable case. I for myself want the standard values and just anticipate some rough calculations about modifiers by difficulty, world-size and speed.

And btw: I just wanted to test these switches. In my charts the cost for every tech, building and unit is just zero. :-( Haven't noticed that before since I had an older version until yesterday.

However, v1.6 from Apr. 16th, 2006 works just fine. It has no switch at all. Seems Open Office users are just left out here. :-/

All costs stay the same???

I think so, but I noted down to check this. I'll work on it this evening I think.

Since you offered to keep an eye on the layout anyway could you please just add my newly created chart into the reference and just release it (perhabs marking it beta)? So every interested player could have a look.

And for further work maybe I just make the new charts (either new or out of the old ones as stated above) and you add it to the reference? We'd be sure to have a working version then.

...except for this difficulty-switch thing here. Hm.... What a pity this doesn't work in Open Office. I'll have a look at it and google around a bit. Maybe I'll find something. Just for printing purpose I could use MS Office at work, but it's sad indeed for home usage.

Personally I'd rather use no MS Office specific funtion anyway just to make no one tempted to copy this software illegally. Personal experience makes me believe most Office users didn't purchase it. But I know this is just my two cents and it's too late by now.

Yours,
Jens

 

[Jensen]

OK, here's what I've done:

First of all I used MS Office 2003! I see beautiful colors now... didn't see them in OO.

I inserted my Open Office made Civ 4 Warlords Civilization Characteristics chart. Changed names of both civilization charts to something hopefully reasonable. Worked fine.

I inserted my Open Office made Unique Building chart (new). I have static costs here since I haven't managed to understand your functions yet. Maybe you could....

I inserted the two new Warlords non-unique buildings in the city buildings chart. I colored them to clarify the difference. But I couldn't manage to color that cell at the bottom of the chart. It is colored by default because it's a "yellow" row, but why can't I give it another custom color? I was lucky that all inserted buildings got a non-colored row.

However, download and comment please: http://lupo.servecounterstrike.com/civ4.zip

(I don't want to upload all my beta files so I use this way to post my "nightly-built")

Jensen

 

[Jensen]

Two things I forgot to say:

I used Michelangelo's v1.6a and just inserted my own new stuff with MS Office. This way I hopefully prevented damage to functions, macros, graphics and so on.

Opening the file I get a message saying this file is connected with external data from another file. What to do about it? I didn't notice I did connect anything.... How to fix this?

Jensen

 

[Michelangelo]

I've looked at it and it was great. I've send you an PM with an update. I think it better to post intermediate versions that way to not clutter the forum with a lot of versions.

 

[floppymoose]

apologies if I've missed it somewhere... are there Warlords updated pdf files of the reference cahrts available?

 

[Jensen]

are there Warlords updated pdf files of the reference cahrts available?

Not yet, we're working on it.

And btw: There is no PDF until now. Has there ever been one? (I've missed page 3 to 6 of this thread myself.

However, I'd already thought about crating one since I'm an Open Office user and wouldn't be able to open the file correctly (like seeing no cost at all).

Jensen

 

[floppymoose]

The original charts (pre-Warlords) that I got were in pdf form. See the second link in post #1 of this thread.

 

[Jensen]

The original charts (pre-Warlords) that I got were in pdf form. See the second link in post #1 of this thread.

Yes, you're right.

 

[Michelangelo]

I'm glad to upload the new version, now including the Warlords expansion pack.

Special thanks go out to Jensen as he has compiled all the new data concerning Warlords.

Changes:
- Included warlord data to buildings, units, wonders, civilizations, upgrades, promotions
- Updated technology flowchart to include warlords.
- Added modifier-based cost to unit- and unitupgrade tab
- Included errors reported earlier in this thread

TODO:
- Promotion chart to include warload-lead unit promotions
- Fix errors reported here

Here it is, XLS and PDF

Civ IV+WL Reference Charts v1.61+W(PDF).zip

 

[Jimdigriz]

That's great!

The PDF version is not downloadable though - coming up with an error.

And I havent got Excel so I can't load that one!

 

[bolt144]

The Excel chart looks good, though I found that cost functions don't work when you change things like Game Speed.

Also noticed a couple of other things like the UU strengths have not been updated. Cossacks are now 15 and Redcoats are 14. Might be a few other changes with them too.

Thanks for working on it!