[TOT] Civitas: A modern ToT savegame editor

[TheNamelessOne]

As I hinted at in the ToTPP thread, I am working on a new editor for ToT saved games. This because the existing tools (CivCity and CivTweak) are 16-bit programs which do not run on modern systems.

At the moment I have compiled a working prototype which may already prove useful, so I'm uploading it here. It is, for now, only capable of editing cities.

Instructions: Extract the archive, run the executable, follow the on-screen instructions

Disclaimer: Since this is a prototype, and not very well tested, it might very well completely destroy any saved game you edit with it, so use at your own risk!

[edit]: removed the attachment because of the new version: v0.2

 

[McMonkey]

Fantastic. Thanks for this TNO. I have really missed CivCity. It's going to be a great boost to have it back in a new improved form. Will download and check it out over the weekend.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Thank you, and I look forward to trying this out!

 

[CurtSibling]

Excellent work! I noticed though, that any save game made using ToTPP will not load. Regular ToT CIV2 files seem to open, however.

 

[Noire Leblanc]

I successfully loaded a slightly-altered Extended Original game that did have the benefits of ToTPP (navigable rivers, for naval units up to the Destroyer, and custom resource locations) but found a different weirdness: a city that does have the ship flag, but does not have the coastal flag, can't seem to produce ships anyway. (Coastal improvements flag worked fine without the ship flag, though.)

 

[TheNamelessOne]

Excellent work! I noticed though, that any save game made using ToTPP will not load. Regular ToT CIV2 files seem to open, however.

Could you please attach one such savegame Curt, so I can see if there's a bug? It should work with ToTPP extended save files as well as regular ToT files.

A city that does have the ship flag, but does not have the coastal flag, can't seem to produce ships anyway. (Coastal improvements flag worked fine without the ship flag, though.)

Yes, to produce ships a city needs both the coastal and the ship flag set. This is a bit unintuitive, I agree. Maybe I should have the editor enable the coastal flag automatically when you select the ship flag?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

When first loading a save that has pre existing trade routes, every single one of them gets reset to one city, one commodity, occupying all three slots.

Also, I noticed a generate commodities checkbox. What does that option do?

For suggestions, would a bulk city edit be possible? It gets tedious in heavily populated games to make a single change to all of a tribe's cities one by one.

 

[CurtSibling]

Could you please attach one such savegame Curt, so I can see if there's a bug? It should work with ToTPP extended save files as well as regular ToT files.

Thanks, sir. Below is the save, which uses ToTPP v13.

 

[JPetroski]

Yes, to produce ships a city needs both the coastal and the ship flag set. This is a bit unintuitive, I agree. Maybe I should have the editor enable the coastal flag automatically when you select the ship flag?

Just curious about coding, as I know nothing about it...

So, we know it is possible to make it so only certain cities can build domain 2 units... In this new Civitas tool, would it possible to copy and tweak that code to make it so only certain cities could build domain 0,1, or 3 units?
If that is possible... Would it also be possible to make it so certain cities could only build domain 4-9 units?
And if that is possible... Would it also be possible to make it so certain cities could only build certain domain units with certain roles? (Attack, defend, air superiority, etc.)

There are so many scenarios that are dependent on either house rules, multiple Allied civs representing different branches, or "unbuildable" yet pre-ordered/queued units to accomplish things such as:

-having only air units built in certain cities
-having only certain "native" units (think sepoys/colonial troops) built in certain cities
-etc.

If it were somehow possible to use Civitas to assign certain cities as an airfield, or a colony, etc - that would be very, very welcome. Imagine being able to have the US army overrun a German airfield and only be able to build air units from it, or having Roman Legions only buildable where they were normally recruited, or even having a colonial empire have to bring in certain specialized troops from their homelands, etc. It would be a great tool.

Just curious if it is possible to copy and tweak that language for the naval units to blow the game open for other possibilities. This seems like more of a Civitas tweak than a ToTpp tweak since you'd need to use Civitas to edit the cities to make them unique.

Thanks for your efforts!

 

[McMonkey]

Love that idea JP. Would be so useful if it was possible.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi TNO,

As I indicated, I never had the opprotunity to use CivCity in the past so this new program will be a very welcome change. I like the sleek and elegant design of your screen (and can confirm for those interested that it is compatible with 64bit computers). I know I keep saying it but thanks so much!

I know that many of us probably have a list of things we would like to see, but as Curt indicated we should not flood you with them. I'm certain you already have your hands full with your current projects.

I will say though that I do like JP's idea (if possible of course).

Excellent work! I noticed though, that any save game made using ToTPP will not load. Regular ToT CIV2 files seem to open, however.

With regards Curt's reported issue, for my part, I tested the program with the scn from my current TOTPP project I can confirm that I don't appear to have a problem loading the file in CIVITAS.

 

[JPetroski]

TNO, are you ok with saying "no," or should we really just not ever add ideas to these threads?

What are your wishes?

 

[TheNamelessOne]

When first loading a save that has pre existing trade routes, every single one of them gets reset to one city, one commodity, occupying all three slots.

Could you please upload a file with this issue? I think there's a bug with the trade routes, but I couldn't reproduce it so far.

Also, I noticed a generate commodities checkbox. What does that option do?

It regenerates the city's trade commodities, but currently it is not very useful, as the game does this every few turns and every time you open the city screen already.

For suggestions, would a bulk city edit be possible? It gets tedious in heavily populated games to make a single change to all of a tribe's cities one by one.

Any bulk updates should be scripted in the Lua console in the game. This editor will not get scripting capabilities.

Thanks, sir. Below is the save, which uses ToTPP v13.

I have no problems whatsoever opening this file... . Are you sure this is the right one?

If it were somehow possible to use Civitas to assign certain cities as an airfield, or a colony, etc - that would be very, very welcome. Imagine being able to have the US army overrun a German airfield and only be able to build air units from it, or having Roman Legions only buildable where they were normally recruited, or even having a colonial empire have to bring in certain specialized troops from their homelands, etc. It would be a great tool.

Just curious if it is possible to copy and tweak that language for the naval units to blow the game open for other possibilities. This seems like more of a Civitas tweak than a ToTpp tweak since you'd need to use Civitas to edit the cities to make them unique.

Such a change needs to be done in tandem with a ToTPP feature. For instance, define unit lists in rules.txt, use Civitas to allow/disallow them to be built in certain cities, and ToTPP enforcing this when you press 'Build' in the city screen. This would definitely be a nice feature, I agree. I think this would be doable in a future release of ToTPP.

TNO, are you ok with saying "no," or should we really just not ever add ideas to these threads?

What are your wishes?

Feel free to add ideas, just don't go flooding the thread, keep it on topic, that's it really. If requests are impossible / too much work I'll certainly mention it.

 

[CurtSibling]

I have no problems whatsoever opening this file... . Are you sure this is the right one?

I have the civitas file in the same folder as the scenario.
With SAV files, I am getting "Access Denied", but it opens SCN file with no problems. So I would say that is OK for me.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

I've built a new version that fixes the problem with editing trade routes, and I've added the 'Rush buy' flag used in TOTPP (by the incremental rush buying patch).