Do mods and scenarios work on macs?

[Peter25]

Hey,
I'm new to this site and was ecstatic that they had a mac specific forum. I have a couple of questions. First, do mods and scenarios made on PCs work on macs? I downloaded the 1.29 beta but the American Civil war scenario doesn't work. Second, how does this tournament thing work? Third, are there any plans for any of the expansion packs coming to the mac? Thanks.

 

[AlanH]

Welcome to the funny farm

Mods and scenarios should work across platform. You say you have the 1.29 beta (b2 I hope), so as long as they are not designed for the Play The World (PTW) version, which is PC-only, they should work.

The tournament is linked into the Game of the Month (GOTM). There's a trail of breadcrumbs to follow:

You read the pre-game discussion threads in the GOTM forum and they lead to a game announcement posted by Cracker. usually during the week before the end of the month. That sends you to a game instruction page on a different server, and you can download the mods and add-ons the team have devised for the next game. Now that they have started to supply these in a Windows installer you need to watch out for the special pack for Mac players which is just a zipped up folder of files you need to add into your CIv3 installation. I keep a separate copy of the Civ3 installed folder that I use with these add-ons. The add-on pack includes a URL in a readme that takes you to the .sav file for the starting posiiton, and that becomes available at the start of the month.

The tournament is the Game of the Month, played to a specified victory condition. For example this month it's a 20K culture in one city target. If you submit GOTM22 with this victory condition you are automatically entered for the tournament as well as GOTM. The tournament is judged simply on the date of victory whereas the GOTM has a complex scoring system to handicap all the different victory options to a level playing field. I think there will be additional games each month that are set up solely for the tournament.

Don't know about the expansion packs. There's been some speculation here-abouts that's left me completely confused. But that's probably just me

Hope this helps.

 

[Peter25]

I'm really interested in the GOTM, I just dl the gotm 22 stuff but can't open the save file because of an error reffering to a .ini and something about a worker art file, I shouldve copied down the text. Do i have to dl previous mods from other GOTM? thanks again.

I do have B2.

 

[Trixter]

Originally posted by Peter25
I'm really interested in the GOTM, I just dl the gotm 22 stuff but can't open the save file because of an error reffering to a .ini and something about a worker art file, I shouldve copied down the text. Do i have to dl previous mods from other GOTM? thanks again.

To answer your question take a look at the following quote from the GOTM22 setup page:

Again, if your are new to the GOTM games and/or did not play the Gotm21 Mediterranean Melee as Greece, then you should first read the webpages for that game and make sure that you have downloaded and setup your game to support Gotm21. The procedure for playing Gotm22 is an Add-On to the Gotm21 game pack.

So yes, you seem to have to d/l at least parts of the GOTM21-pack. Since I don't know which parts and for compability with future GOTMs, I suppose it'd be better to just d/l the whole GOTM21-stuff.
That would be everything you find here, where it says:

The Game Graphics for Gotm21 are divided into SEVEN pieces that you can download individually...

As far as I know you really have to d/l those packs individually cause the full-package-installer is an exe-file, so PC-only.
Additionally see crackers post here and d/l the attached zip-file for the last part.
That's the easiest way I know to get all the files. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[AlanH]

I think the GOTM22 download for Mac is only available as an extension pack. If so then you do need to go back to GOTM20 v1.29 , I think and download and install the full pack from that game, then install the Mac add-on packs for GOTM21 and GOTM22.

To check you are completely up to date you should finish up with the following add-ons in your art/leaderhead and art/units folders:

Extra races (based on my /art/leaderheads folder contents:

• Keltoi (BR.pcx, BR_sm.pcx)
  Vikings (files with Dal-Riada names)
  neoCarthage (HA2.pcx, HA2_sm.pcx)
  Ottomans (OttomanCrest files)
  Spain (SPA ... files)
  Minoans (Strathclyde ... files)

Extra units (based on my /art/units folder contents:

• arabian caravel
  azap infantry
  balkan dragoon
  defense
  eqWorker
  european swordsman
  f0g (with a zero)
  fanatic
  fog (not sure of the difference!)
  frankish axeman
  galleass
  galloglass
  medieval swordsman
  militia
  muslim caravel
  peltast
  persian mercenary
  pictish warrior
  separatist
  settler1
  settler2
  spanish missionary
  spartan hoplite
  squid
  treasure
  volcano
  wallcross
  worker1
  worker2

These are not all the files you need ( and I might have missed one or two ), just indicators of whether you have installed all the packs. There are essential text files as well, and a "resources storage" folder. You might be able to play any individual game with some items missing, but you'll probably then fail on your next GOTM, so it's best to get all the packs installed.

[Edit} Cross-posted with Trixter. It looks like he has the missing piece of the jigsaw - Cracker's post giving the GOTM21 Mac add-on link, so use both posts for the complete picture.

 

[Ricardo]

I am wondering what scenarios any mac people have succesfully downloaded, installed and tried out. Lately I barely have time to play the GOTM but it would be nice to know if any of you guys have found a good scenario or two that work well on the mac. (not just in theory... one you have actually played)

 

[AlanH]

Now that's a very good question