Customization Questions: Traits, worldbuilder, misc stuff

[CharlesC]

I loved Civ 4 and just bought Civ 5, which looks even better. I do have a few questions though.

1. In Civ 4, you could customize the civilizations by going into the Civilization Traits folder, open it with notepad and make changes. Can something similar be done with Civ 5?

2. Civ 4 had a World Builder feature so you could change terrain. Does Civ 5? If so, I can't seem to find it.

3. Is it possible to skip the overly long intro? After a few dozen times, I imagine that it will get very boring.

Thanks for any help,

Charles

 

[Kasdar]

Ok to answer your questions.

1. yes but you should probably read http://kael.civfanatics.net/files/ModdersGuide.pdf to get a better idea of how modding should be done in Civ 5

2. The World Builder is separate from the game in Civ 5 so you cant modify the map on the fly anymore. you need to download it from steam

3. yes there is an option in the UserSettings.ini located in your My Games\Civilization 5 folder , open the file in notepad and change SkipIntroVideo = 0 to SkipIntroVideo = 1 then make sure to save

 

[Spatzimaus]

2. Civ 4 had a World Builder feature so you could change terrain. Does Civ 5? If so, I can't seem to find it.

In Steam, go to Library. Change the small "All Games" selector to "Tools". Scroll down, and you'll see "Sid Meier's Civilization V SDK". Download and install that; it'll probably ask you to install a couple bits of software from Microsoft, and you'll have to agree to that for this to work.

The SDK includes four components: ModBuddy (which is the main tool for editing mods), WorldBuilder, Nexus (the asset extractor tool), and FireTuner.

FireTuner deserves special mention; it's both the primary debugging tool for modders as well as the "cheat" engine that allows you to place units, resources, etc. on a game already in progress. But to enable FireTuner, you need to go into your config.ini file (in the same place it stores your save files) and edit "EnableTuner" to be 1 instead of 0.

3. Is it possible to skip the overly long intro? After a few dozen times, I imagine that it will get very boring.

You can disable it, as Kasdar pointed out, but there's two things you should know:
1> It's not just delaying your game arbitrarily. That's a loading time; if you disable the movie, you'll just have a black screen for however long it takes to load the game. Faster computers can get through this pretty quickly, but slower machines can take even longer than the movie ran.
2> Just hit ESC when the movie starts and it'll abort to the main menu as soon as all of the loading is done.

 

[CharlesC]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Two more questions:

1. How do I download that info from Steam?

2. I just purchased Civ 5, so presumably I have all the patches. Am I correct in presuming that?

Charles

 

[Spatzimaus]

2. I just purchased Civ 5, so presumably I have all the patches. Am I correct in presuming that?

The version on the DVD is significantly out of date, but Steam auto-patches your games for you. So when you installed, it probably took care of all of that for you, and if not, it'll do it the first time you try to start up the game.

 

[CharlesC]

Thank you so much!!!

 

[CharlesC]

I have read the Modder's Guide pdf. Being a beginner, I found it rather unhelpful. Is it possible to get a step-by-step guide to change a leader's trait?

1. Go to this site.
2. Go to this folder, and here s how to get there.
3. Take this route to get to this particular sub-folder.
4. Open this document using this program.
5. I believe that this is where the Modder's Guide comes in, but if I am wrong, please tell me the interim steps.

Thank you again,

Charles

 

[Spatzimaus]

I believe that this is where the Modder's Guide comes in, but if I am wrong, please tell me the interim steps.

XML modding does not work that way. You don't edit existing files; you create a NEW file, named whatever you want, that has the appropriate Update lines in it. Or, if you're adding new content, the appropriate Row entries for the new units/whatever.

For instance, let's say I wanted to make the Modern Armor have 70 strength instead of 80. All I'd write is:

<GameData>
  <Units>
    <Update>
      <Set Combat="70"/>
      <Where Type="UNIT_MODERN_ARMOR"/>
    </Update>
  </Units>
</GameData>

Compile it in ModBuddy, and run. That's it. No editing existing files, just this sort of thing. What the above does is says, when the game is compiling the SQL database at runtime, go through the Units table, find any entries with Type equal to "UNIT_MODERN_ARMOR" (there should only be one match), and change their Combat value to 70. All other table entries remain unchanged from their default values.

If you read through that modder's guide and didn't understand it, then go read it again. It's not going to get any easier. The only thing that guide doesn't cover is the VFS system, which doesn't apply to XML modding. Once you've read it a few times, try making a simple mod of your own. If it works, move onto something tougher; if not, then ask on this board, attaching your files so we can check your work.
I'd also recommend downloading a few larger mods that you know work. Looking through their files should give you a good idea of how things are supposed to be.