Civ1 clone in Civ3

[Blake00]

Glad to see this project is still aliveish. Sadly I had no luck finding a copy of Matrix's Civ1 terrain for Civ3 mod. Even he doesn't have a copy anymore sadly.

 

[Theov]

I do intent on picking it upagain around Chinese New Year if time permits.

In the end, I plan on making two versions:

1: Civ1 Bones (a close-as-possible Civ1 clone)

2: Civ1 Conversion - a game that plays like Civ1, but with expansion made possible by using the Civ3 engine/editor. It would be a 'what if' Civ1 conversion that adds possibilities that weren't available when Civ1 was made.

 

[Theov]

It's been a while, but I have a 4-day weekend, so I'm planning to continue this project.
But I could use help with the tech tree.
See the .biq attached.

I've been using Tristan's tech tree because it makes sense and suits the civ3 engine better. I don't want to cram everything into one era.

I have almost completed the Tech Tree - the ancient and middle ages are alright. Now I have to finish the Industrial and Modern eras.
I think the modern era is alright, but Flight (and what comes after that) should go to the modern era too.

The tech trees are below (don't look at the arrows - this is not a graphics mod, yet. .biq only)

I think when all the techs are in place, I'll quite heavily use 'not needed to go to next era' flags for dead-end techs.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[tjs282]

The Industrial looks very bare (only 12 techs?!), and the Ancient looks comparatively crowded (25).

If I counted right, there's 67 techs in Civ1, and (IIRC) there are about 17 'tiers' of techs when all dependencies are taken into account (e.g. if TechX requires a 1st-tier and a 3rd-tier prereq, that would make TechX 4th-tier) -- whereas Tristan's tree shows only 12 tiers (I had to search for Combustion for a long time, since it's shown 'later' than Automobile and Flight!). So it would make sense to me to aim for roughly 17-18 techs and 4 tiers per era.

As concrete suggestions, I'm thinking Feudalism, Chivalry, Astro, Eng, and Banking should all rather be Medieval techs, and Industry and Rails (and probably also Steam Engine) should move to the Industrial -- with Computers ( and also Electronics?) being moved to the Modern.

I'd also disagree with having Automobile and Flight in the Modern Age: I think they should both be moved back, to become the ultimate techs of the Industrial -- and Philo should definitely move back to the Ancient Age!

I think when all the techs are in place, I'll quite heavily use 'not needed to go to next era' flags for dead-end techs

I think only those techs which genuinely lead to nothing else (e.g. Chivalry) should be marked as not necessary for era advancement. Any early techs which are prereqs for techs in later eras should be considered essential, otherwise you could have a situation where a Civ could learn e.g. Physics, or even Computers, without ever having mastered Mathematics!

 

[Theov]

The Industrial looks very bare (only 12 techs?!), and the Ancient looks comparatively crowded (25).

If I counted right, there's 67 techs in Civ1, and (IIRC) there are about 17 'tiers' of techs when all dependencies are taken into account (e.g. if TechX requires a 1st-tier and a 3rd-tier prereq, that would make TechX 4th-tier) -- whereas Tristan's tree shows only 12 tiers (I had to search for Combustion for a long time, since it's shown 'later' than Automobile and Flight!). So it would make sense to me to aim for roughly 17-18 techs and 4 tiers per era.

As concrete suggestions, I'm thinking Feudalism, Chivalry, Astro, Eng, and Banking should all rather be Medieval techs, and Industry and Rails (and probably also Steam Engine) should move to the Industrial -- with Computers ( and also Electronics?) being moved to the Modern.

I'd also disagree with having Automobile and Flight in the Modern Age: I think they should both be moved back, to become the ultimate techs of the Industrial -- and Philo should definitely move back to the Ancient Age!

I think only those techs which genuinely lead to nothing else (e.g. Chivalry) should be marked as not necessary for era advancement. Any early techs which are prereqs for techs in later eras should be considered essential, otherwise you could have a situation where a Civ could learn e.g. Physics, or even Computers, without ever having mastered Mathematics!

You are not wrong about Combustion, that 'appears' late but is needed much earlier.

I though I had a solid design when I started making it but as you pointed out, the tree now is very start and end heavy.

Thanks for you feedback, I think evening it out with 15-20 techs per era is a good idea.

Agreed about some Medieval techs. The steam engine could be a good tech at the end as a requirement to advance to the next era, instead of a start of a new one.

But I will see. Thanks for you help, they are really good ideas.

 

[tjs282]

I just ran a game using the .biq in your first post (as of 26.2.22). Found a few (more) issues in the game, so went poking around in the Editor.

Several terrains that should allow roads, didn't: Plains, Mountains, Tundra, [Volcanoes]. Likewise, Hills could be irrigated in CivDOS (gives +1f), but this has not yet been enabled in the Clone.

The AI is still using Legions as town-defenders, and not building Phalanxes. This would appear to be because all military land-units lacked the "Capture" unit-ability, which in turn prevented them from being assigned an AI-Strategy other than "Explore". Allowing mil-units to Capture doesn't matter here, because Settlers (and the "bombard"-units) have D=1, which means they will die if they lose a fight.

And since you've removed Airports/Airfields from the game, giving mil-units the "Airlift" flag seems a bit pointless!

(Can't remember if enemy-/barb-units would pillage tile-improvements in CivDOS. I think they could, but I don't like it...)

CivDOS resolved all combats in 1 round, so combat-experience for the basic levels (Conscript to Reg) could/should therefore be reduced to 1HP (Vets + Elites could maybe have 2 HP, to mimic the +50% bonus to A/D that CivDOS gave Veteran units). This shouldn't cause any difficulties for the Civ3-AI; it has no problem with using redlined high-A units (e.g. Chariots) for 'easy' attacks against e.g. full-health reg Militia-units!

The Computer opponents are building Settlers and founding new towns, but not improving their tiles -- not even with roads (which meant I was already out-researching them before I'd learnt Monarchy!). This appears to be because the Settler-unit does not have all Worker-jobs available, so (if using the Firaxis Editor) cannot be given the "Terraform" AI-Strat.

I fixed that, but made all Worker-jobs which were/are not used in CivDOS (Barricades, Airfields, Radar Towers, Outposts -- missed any?) dependent on the Strategic resource ("Unobtanium") -- which still needs to be added to your .biq.

(In my copy, I have set Unobtanium to appear in Oceans with probability 1 -- i.e. only a single instance on the entire map -- and zero disappearance probability, using the Alu icon, and attached to the PRTO_Aluminum entry for now. Once you've added the Unobtanium, you can also use it as a prereq for all the buildings you need to disable)

Lastly: If a Citizen is converted to a Clown, the Happyfaces appear on the city-screen, but the Clown-graphic (still) does not -- until you switch the Specialist to a Taxman (and when you then switch the Taxman to a Scientist, the Taxman-graphic shows up instead of the Geek!). Similarly, when you look at the F1 city-list, Clowns are invisible there too, which is a wee bit annoying because it makes any town-with-a-Clown(s) look smaller than it is. Still not sure why this is happening though.

 

[tjs282]

This appears to be because the Settler-unit does not have all Worker-jobs available, so (if using the Firaxis Editor) cannot be given the "Terraform" AI-Strat.

I fixed that,

Errmm... no, I didn't In fact, I appear to have broken it rather badly.

I started another game with my tweaks to your .biq. My exploring Militias met an American Settler while out popping Huts. Figures they were on their way somewhere, we swapped a tech -- and shortly afterwards I got the message "The Americans have been destroyed!". Later on I got similar messages for the Babs, Zulus and Aztecs ("Wow, those Volcanoes must be pretty fierce...").

Eventually finished exploring my entire Continent (Standard map), and found not a single Civ -- not even ruins -- anywhere. Started a new game using a DEBUG .biq, let it run for 5 turns or so. Not a single AI founded their capital, or even moved their starting Settler.

It would therefore appear that giving the Settler-unit both the "Terraform" and the "Settler"-strat results in AI-paralysis (or maybe it's using the initial Settler as a Worker...?). So it looks like the Clone does indeed need a "Worker-Settler" in addition to the "Settler-Settler" (or 2 Settlers to start, so that it can assign one strat to each of them)...

 

[Theov]

Errmm... no, I didn't In fact, I appear to have broken it rather badly.

I started another game with my tweaks to your .biq. My exploring Militias met an American Settler while out popping Huts. Figures they were on their way somewhere, we swapped a tech -- and shortly afterwards I got the message "The Americans have been destroyed!". Later on I got similar messages for the Babs, Zulus and Aztecs ("Wow, those Volcanoes must be pretty fierce...").

Eventually finished exploring my entire Continent (Standard map), and found not a single Civ -- not even ruins -- anywhere. Started a new game using a DEBUG .biq, let it run for 5 turns or so. Not a single AI founded their capital, or even moved their starting Settler.

It would therefore appear that giving the Settler-unit both the "Terraform" and the "Settler"-strat results in AI-paralysis (or maybe it's using the initial Settler as a Worker...?). So it looks like the Clone does indeed need a "Worker-Settler" in addition to the "Settler-Settler" (or 2 Settlers to start, so that it can assign one strat to each of them)...

I hope tonight or otherwise tomorrow I can work on this.
Yeah, I have added a worker unit, because multi task settlers (found cities and terraform) just doesnt work for the civ3 ai. The workers can still be the same price.

I will need to look at the tech tree.

The "one round" combat is just an animation thing, isnt it? If you turn off animations, it becomes a one round battle. Having 3 HP for vets is a 50% increase from 2.

Yeah I need to make hills be irrigateable (?).
And need to look at the road issue.
Thanks.

 

[tjs282]

Unless you've already tested this (?), another possibility just occurred to me.

The problem I noticed, where the AI apparently can't 'decide' which strategy to employ with its free Settler-to-start, might actually only apply to game-start? Whereas for handbuilt Settlers, it might well be able to assign a strategy, just as it already does with dual-use Off/Def units like Rifles + Infs (in the epic-game).

So yet a third option (although also moving slightly away from a 'strict' Civ-clone) might be to keep the multi-strat Settler-units, but replace the starting-unit with a non-buildable "Civ-Founder" unit which can only Settle.

The "one round" combat is just an animation thing, isnt it? If you turn off animations, it becomes a one round battle. Having 3 HP for vets is a 50% increase from 2.

That is true, but I find turning off the animations, especially over the interturn, to be more confusing, since I can't see what's happening to my units.

And yes, I already bumped the HP back up to 2 and 3 for Conscripts-Regs and Vets-Elites, respectively!

 

[tjs282]

Did you have any plans (or at least thoughts) about including Diplomat- and/or Caravan-units into the Clone? Because I had a couple of ideas there...

I fondly remember using Diplomats extensively in CivDOS, to locate and subvert Barb-units (and also AI-units, when i could afford it!). So maybe that could be simulated by a CivClone-Diplomat (using the Abe Lincoln King-unit graphics, just for the top hat!), with e.g. A.D.M=3.0.2 (+ Invisible?) and the ability to enslave a basic unit which would then be upgradeable through that unit-line, i.e. the upgrade-cost would be the Civ3-equivalent of the Civ1 bribe-gold (and would increase as the more expensive units were unlocked). This would however require all units in the desired upgrade-line to be given the 'Upgrade' ability in addition to their 'Upgrades to [Unit]' quality.

Obviously, Civ1-style Trade-routes between cities aren't applicable in the Civ3 engine. But maybe we could still have Caravans, to be used 'internally', to add gold to the Palace treasury (cf. 'Treasure' units in the Age of Discovery Conquest), and/or disband-shields to a build-in-progress (but not a Wonder -- unlike in Civ1!). To prevent them being too exploitable, their supply could be limited by making them autoproduced, e.g. by Markets (and later also Banks?)

 

[Theov]

Unless you've already tested this (?), another possibility just occurred to me.

The problem I noticed, where the AI apparently can't 'decide' which strategy to employ with its free Settler-to-start, might actually only apply to game-start? Whereas for handbuilt Settlers, it might well be able to assign a strategy, just as it already does with dual-use Off/Def units like Rifles + Infs (in the epic-game).

So yet a third option (although also moving slightly away from a 'strict' Civ-clone) might be to keep the multi-strat Settler-units, but replace the starting-unit with a non-buildable "Civ-Founder" unit which can only Settle.



That is true, but I find turning off the animations, especially over the interturn, to be more confusing, since I can't see what's happening to my units.

And yes, I already bumped the HP back up to 2 and 3 for Conscripts-Regs and Vets-Elites, respectively!

The AI doesn't seem to use Settlers as Workers in the original file, so I have added a Worker unit - the same as a settler, but now it does the worker jobs... however... the flag somehow requires you to also select the "build colony" flag.
This is not a huge problem, because the game doesn't have strategic resources (other than unobtanium, which is found in the ocean) but, it just made my eyebrows go up a bit.
BTW, I didn't notice that the file was already downloaded more than 70 times. I hope everyone knows it's a work in process
While playing I found out the AI found their cities, and then expanded, so I didn't see what you saw.
I also saw volcanoes were set to 100. Which means that every 100 years there will be an eruption - so that's why they were erupting all the time. I've now set it to 100.000 which means that there probably will be far fewer eruptions If you like them: the base game has it to 5000 - which means it will probably erupt once a game
I should prob set it at that as to mimic civ1 disasters ...


Anyway.
I have cleaned up the tech tree - along with some of your suggestions. Thanks.
I need to check if everything is 100% ok, probably not, but I'll get to that later.
The costs also need to be adjusted - I haven't done that yet either.


Since this is not a graphics mod, the leaders are still the Civ1 leaders.
I'm not going to re-name the Russian leader Catherina into Stalin... that will be another version of this mod.

Somehow, after building the first city, the game asks to build a blank unit - I don't know what's up with this.

I made the regular military units 2HP and the Vets 3HP.


Do do list:
- clean up the improvement list
- see what's up with the disappearing entertainers
- Tech Tree: check all requirements
- Tech Tree: fix the costs of techs
- see if there's a way to implement Diplomats and or Caravans.
- look at the air units
- ...