Custom Civ II Mod -- Help?

[Dabsdye98]

Hey, guys. First time poster here.

Before I go into details, let me give you some context. The whole idea originally sprung from an idea that me and my bros had to create a game for the different countries in our NationStates region. We do a lot of Roleplaying, and this sort of thing really got everyone interested. However, i've run into a few problems.

What i'm aiming to do is simply replace the default civs/names/etc from the defaults to the 'New' countries, E.G. Germany would be replaced with 'Velburg' (A Germany-like country in the region), and so on. All I aim to do is mod the default files to replace the default civs themselves, rather then making a full Scenario, so that the map can still be randomly generated and I don't have to go to the trouble of mapmaking (A long and difficult process). I've figured out how to change names/AI parameters in the rules.txt file, but I can't seem to find the file containing City names (So I can change the default 'German' city names list to the one for the country that's replacing it). I've looked around on the web and skimmed over the directory myself, but I couldn't seem to find anything on this in specific.

Also- For Editing/Changing civs, is there any other important things I need to know or files I need to change? I don't want to run into errors or inconsistencies with negotiation screens or what-not, if I can help it. Right now, i'm only aiming at modding the civs themselves, but if anyone also has resources relating to modding Techs (Changing names/graphics) or where I can find them, anything helps.

Thanks! Hope to hear from y'all soon.

 

[Blasph23]

There should be a file named CITY.txt.
It contains all city names related to all available civilizations.
If it's not there, perhaps your version of the game doesn't have it, though you mentioned playing with your brothers so you must already have Civ 2 MGE.

As for other parameters that govern how civilizations behave - there is a section in the RULES.txt at the bottom of the file that determines behavior for the AI controlled civilizations. If humans play them however, that part is rather useless. In the same area of rules.txt file, there is also a section that has all the titles of rulers for each civilization, depending on gender and form of government, all can be modified.

WRT technologies - when I modify my civ 2 scenarios I usually manually do the work with txt files. Technologies have values assigned to them that determine how aggressively AI civs pursue them as well as which historical epoch they belong to.
You can change these parameters, names and prerequisites without any editors other than windows notepad (assuming you're running it on windows).
Depending on how militaristic/expansionist etc a given civ is, different techs will have priority over others. This again mostly relates to AI controlled civs as humans will typically do things in their own unpredictable way.

Tech icons and all other elements of graphics (like terrain, units, cities) can be changed by editing the ICONS.gif file and all other *.gif files, it's pretty clear what graphics they contain once you view them.
I strongly suggest however to search the scenario league subforum for a way to preserve color palette or you will inevitably run into issues with grey background and what not.
I use GIMP instead of MS Paint and it's generally agreed that GIMP preserves the old type of gif/bmp color palette that Civ used back in 1996. Paint seemed to work just fine under Win XP but not so much under later releases.

There are some other measures to avoid or eliminate problems with unit/city/tech background colors but that's a story for a separate thread. It's best to just make a copy of all the graphic files and experiment with them yourself, it's not a very complicated work. I'm a terrible graphical artist but I managed to mod a lot of stuff manually myself and it looked surprisingly good in-game.

 

[Dabsdye98]

Thanks for all the help. I've found and edited both those files to my liking, but now the Game crashes every time I try to found a city with an edited civ. To help you understand what i've done, i've essentially replaced each civ with a custom civ in the same area, as well as city names in the CITY.txt file. I've isolated the problem to that fact in specific (Re-extracting the Zipfile and renaming the original to have 'two' copies, one control and one edited) but I can't seem to get around it without creating a full scenario.

Speaking of that, I wouldn't be against making a scenario instead, but it'd be a lot more difficult (As I see/understand it) for me to pull it off; especially considering the fact I can't/don't know how to edit civ names/parameters anymore without breaking the game or creating a .scn file. I've found very little resources for Civ II scenarios in regards to changing civ names or editing civ parameters/AI in the scenario itself. I've taken a look around several scenario files and it's my understanding all of that kind of info is in the .scn file, a Pandora's box I can't open (Not even notepad++ will read it, and none of the default civ programs with the game will load it or allow me to edit it). I'll take another look around the web for programs and resources, but if anyone has a solution, it'd be very much appreciated.

As for artwork and tech-changing, that's second on my priority list. I'm perfectly happy with adding them later once I get the basic components finished and make the mod playable. As far as I see it, the rest is fluff I can do after I finish.
I've found several resources through this site (Thanks CivFanatics!) for artwork and terrain, but I've not a clue as to install them. I assume I replace the default file with an edited/replaced version {Default art replaced with custom art}?
Thanks for all the advice for artwork. I'll certainly put it to good use once I get tyhis problem hammered out. As it stands, I can't make progress until it's solved or I find a way around.

(I run Windows 7 x64 bit, top of the line PC I custom built myself. I've installed the Win7-64bit patch already into both the 'Modded' and 'Control' Civ folders as I mentioned earlier before starting, so I shouldn't be running into problems. I hope.)

EDIT:
I've found the program i'm looking for (Civ II Tribe Editor by nylz) but i'm missing the DLL File. Apparently, Windows 7 comes unequipped for back-compatibility, for some reason. I've emailed the guy after a two-hour long Odyssey of web archives, '90's internet, and possible malware, to no avail. Maybe this will get me somewhere, but if anyone has a more permanent fix, it's greatly appreciated. For the record, it's VB40032.DLL. I've tried compatibility mode and re-downloading Microsoft Virtual Basic 4.0, but neither has worked.)

 

[Blasph23]

I have never needed anything other than a notepad to modify *.txt files.
You could upload the modified file that causes the error you mentioned, I'll take a look it it.

As for AI civs and modifying them:

There are two ways to do that - one is related to dynamic values, one to static.
Static values for civilizations are all in the rules.txt. They determine how each civilization pursues technology, how it builds its cities, units, improvements etc.
You can't modify that directly, only through the flags. Here's a sample:
@LEADERS
Caesar, Livia, 0, 1, 1, Romans, Roman, 0, 1, 1, 1, Dictator, Dictator, 2, Imperator, Imperatrix

All the numbers, their meaning and range are explained in the info above, within the rules.txt file.

The second way is through scenario creation. It determines past relations between civilizations, their mutual animosities, technologies discovered, existence of contact between given civs and their desirability (or lack thereof) of vengeance to right some perceived past transgressions. All of this is edited through the cheat menu and then saved as scenario, so the only way to modify that is to run the civ2 proper and load up a scenario. If you can't load it, it was probably created with a different version.