Editor wish-list

[Sir John]

Moderator Action: Please don't tell people how to download warez of Civ3 and/or PTW - or any other program for that matter. It is against the forum rules.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Ill just sum up the things I think is most important:

A way to edit the diplomatic relations..

Add\delete\copy buttons to all the things (copy should also copy the text in pediaicons, civliopedia and so on so that you didint have to to that manually)

Separate techtrees for each civ..

that was what came right from the top of my head (theres probably more, but I cant remember it..)

 

[Isak]

I'm sure if PtW sells well, Firaxis will keep on adding functionality to the game, but if it doesn't sell because people continually pirate it, they'll probably have to move on to something more profitable, like any other business.

BTW, you can already make different tech trees, at least in a limited fashion, using the Non-era tech setting as a prerequisite for some techs, and then only giving that tech to the Civ you want to be able to give the later techs to.

 

[yoshi]

In terms of the functionality of future CIV3/PTW updates, there is little in PTW that shouldn't have already been shipped with Civ3 (that includes the ever-glitching Multiplayer). As for the Editor, it is to limited by hard-coded parameters (Civ3's limitation of the air unit range to 12 is a good example); practically every aspect of the game should be modifiable thus allowing players to produce truely unique scenarios --which after all is what made Civ2 so successful.
Oh, and did I mention, INCLUDE EVENTS! One of the main reasons why Civ2 scenarios worked so well is because whatever the standard game couldn't do by itself, could just be triggered through an event (CREATEUNIT,RECIEVEDTECH,ect.)--think WW2 on a European map.

One thing that people may have forgotten to mention is the problem with resources that never run out or simply dissapear without warning. Resources require amounts ascribed to them and how much a civ gets per turn should depend on how many of that resource tile it has access to and its level of technological development. You should have to build special improvements over the resources in order to use them (e.g. Oil Rig for Oil, Lumber Yard for Forest). The reason for this is that resources and their aquisition has been one of the main driving forces of modern imperialism --something we are all quite familiar with these days.

But more realistically, something that should be changed and could be changed without difficulty is a specific maintenance cost for each unit as well as a limit on supplies to prevent units from wandering across the entire map at he beginning of the game (something the AI just loves to do). The former would make it very costly to forget about Inf. and man all your cities with Armour --nullifies the "why use one when you can use the other at little more cost."

But as has always been the case be it with CIV 1,2 or 3, the AI is what needs the greatest amount of improvement.

P.S. At the price Civ3 and PTW went for (considering the many faults of the products), can you blame people of low income for pirating?

 

[Marla_Singer]

Well, if someone knows how we can set up specific trade and diplomatic agreements before a scenario with PTW. I would like to know how. I really want to build some scenarios but I NEED THAT.

Moreover, there's still the problem linked to the fact that in Civ3 scenarios, whatever you do, civilizations don't know each other and the map can't be fully revealed.


By the way, I have other propositions but not only for scenarios, it would also be great for the game.

When we build an outpost, we claim the land around (like level 2 of a city). When we take over that kind of outpost, the new owner would directly own that territory. That kind of thing would need outposts that aren't destroyed when they are taken over... so it can be a problem. Well anyway it's just an idea.

Another thing is that in Civ3, we can find some holes (claimed by no one) in the middle of our territory (imagine 5 cities in a circle with a hole in the middle). Why wouldn't we be able to directly claim the land of the hole ? That would be more realistic to me.
Ennemy cities could still be surrounded by our cities, but only if they would have been founded before it was actually a hole.

With these things (the outpost with which we can claim lands and the solved problem of the holes), we could be able to make a realistic Soviet Union that is not overpopulated in Siberia. We would just build the cities on the southern border and outposts near the polar circles. It would become directly the huge Soviet Union we all knew. Wouldn't it be great ?

 

[Kentonio]

and the map can't be fully revealed.

Yeah the fact PTW fixed the Fogofwar edit that was possible with the original Civ 3 to reveal the map frankly sucks. I could fully understand why this would have been changed to disallow it in multiplayer games to prevent cheating but taking it away altogether just robbed mod makers of yet another tool.

Kentonio

 

[Joe A]

EASY FIXES/BUGS

When the editor is set to "weekly," and a starting year is set, time gets all screwed up. In 8 weeks you've gone from 1939 to 1944. If set to weekly it should at least say "February 7, 1980, February 14, 1980, February 21, 1980, February 28, 1980, March 7, 1980 and so on.

Make it possible to disable or edit the "Dawn of Civilization" screen at the beginning of the scenario. It is NOT the "dawn of civiliation" in most scenarios.

In a multiplayer scenario game, if every civ is in the industrial age and in the editor a player marks that every civ has already discovered steam power, nationalism and, say, communism, the game starts every civ at the dawn of the industrial age, trying to discover nationalism.

Even if you try to solve this problem by going to the other editor screen and marking steam power, nationalism and communism as starting civilization advances for a civ, that doesn't get picked up in a multiplayer scenario game either.

In a multiplayer scenario game, if you edit government qualities in the editor, the changes don't show up. Thus, if you remove the despotism tile penalty in the editor, despotism still gets a tile penalty.

My paratrooper is invisible when he attacks.

My artillery and cannon units do not have a health bar, just a green dot at the top.

The editor won't let you place units within a city.

VITALLY NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS

Enable editor to reveal the map

Enable editor to add embassies, attitudes, alliances, trading, embargoes, war etc. and, make it so that how many turns a treaty, trade agreement or war lasts can be edited.

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS

Make food a tradeable commodity. For example, England almost lost world war ii because they had to import more than half their food and the German U-Boats were sinking US food shipments.

Require supply lines for military units. This could be done in one of two ways. One would be to have it marked on the map (the marking would look something like the current country boundries and could be enabled or not enabled), based on whether an enemy unit was between the unit to be supplied and a friendly city. A second way would be to simply require each military unit to be within so many squares of a road or railroad that leads to a friendly city (or, customizable by the editor, a fort or outpost). If the supply line (or road or railroad is cut), the unit's attack and defense strengths could each reduce by one per turn and/or every so-many turns (customizable by the editor), loose a hit point until they perish. With respect to overseas invasions, it will then become vital to quickly establish or invade a city (and with high quality units), or the invasion force will be in big trouble.

Even more ambitious would be to require motorized units to get to a road or railroad (or harbor or airport for ships and planes) that connects to a friendly city and some oil at least once every so many turns (cutomizable by the editor) or they run out of gas and can only move one square per turn. You could even create a new unit (gasoline truck) that could supply oil to other units in remote areas without roads.

Add a utility that enables an editor to import in a jpg and have it turn into a unit in the game, automatically changing the imaging (units_32) file and producing flc files etc. (okay, I admit this one is a big, big stretch, maybe just making it easy to add an image to the imaging file and automatically creating a default flc file would be good enough).

Notwithstanding these limitations, I have one scenario in play testing and two more in the early development stages.

 

[Isak]

Originally posted by Joe A
EASY FIXES/BUGS
Make it possible to disable or edit the "Dawn of Civilization" screen at the beginning of the scenario. It is NOT the "dawn of civiliation" in most scenarios.

You can edit those in the Script.txt

In a multiplayer scenario game, if you edit government qualities in the editor, the changes don't show up. Thus, if you remove the despotism tile penalty in the editor, despotism still gets a tile penalty

Despotism doesn't have a tile penalty in the DyP mod, so it must be something else that's not right.

My paratrooper is invisible when he attacks.

Eh - did you set the correct FLC's in the ini? The paratrooper needs an entry in the BUILD section of the ini, which will be the one used if he makes a paradrop.

My artillery and cannon units do not have a health bar, just a green dot at the top.

Are you sure these are bugs? We have cannons and artillery in DyP too and they have health bars - did you set them to have a negative HP modifier?

Enable editor to reveal the map

That would be nice, yes.

Enable editor to add embassies, attitudes, alliances, trading, embargoes, war etc. and, make it so that how many turns a treaty, trade agreement or war lasts can be edited.

Would be very nice too.

Make food a tradeable commodity. For example, England almost lost world war ii because they had to import more than half their food and the German U-Boats were sinking US food shipments.

It would be a nice feature too, but it isn't really an editor improvement but a game improvement.

Require supply lines for military units. This could be done in one of two ways. One would be to have it marked on the map (the marking would look something like the current country boundries and could be enabled or not enabled), based on whether an enemy unit was between the unit to be supplied and a friendly city. A second way would be to simply require each military unit to be within so many squares of a road or railroad that leads to a friendly city (or, customizable by the editor, a fort or outpost). If the supply line (or road or railroad is cut), the unit's attack and defense strengths could each reduce by one per turn and/or every so-many turns (customizable by the editor), loose a hit point until they perish. With respect to overseas invasions, it will then become vital to quickly establish or invade a city (and with high quality units), or the invasion force will be in big trouble.

Nice too, but beyond the scope of the editor. It would be a major game engine change, and so would the motorized units requiring oil or similar.

Add a utility that enables an editor to import in a jpg and have it turn into a unit in the game, automatically changing the imaging (units_32) file and producing flc files etc. (okay, I admit this one is a big, big stretch, maybe just making it easy to add an image to the imaging file and automatically creating a default flc file would be good enough).

Would you really want Firaxis to include a free 2D image to 3D image converter with a game?? I think their efforts are better spent elsewhere.

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Well, if someone knows how we can set up specific trade and diplomatic agreements before a scenario with PTW. I would like to know how. I really want to build some scenarios but I NEED THAT.

It can't currently be done in the editor, but you can save your bix, load the scenario as a MP game, play each player in turn till the diplomatic situation is what you want. At this point load it up as a single player game and play it. The big gotcha is that the AIs will make peace and war as they wish after this.

 

[warpstorm]

Originally posted by yoshi
P.S. At the price Civ3 and PTW went for (considering the many faults of the products), can you blame people of low income for pirating?

Thieves will always make excuses. Nobody needs to get stuff for free.

 

[Yurt]

I don't have time to read through nine pages so sorry if I repeat things:

-Ability to give more than 4 techs to civs for starting
-Set turn order
-Turn off pollution
-Make it so if you delete a unit, it doesn't screw up all the units you've already placed
-The cities in the editor appear Ancient even if the era is changed; fix this

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Advances ideas:

1. A "not" checkbox next to each required tech (prerequisite). This way, you can create either/or situations with the tech tree. If, for instance, you say that tech A requires not tech B, and that tech B requires not tech A, then if you research tech A, you can no longer research tech B and the reverse is also true. You have to make a choice. This is a simple example, you can make it much more sophisticated than that.

2. A tradable checkbox (default on). We can define whether each specific tech is tradeable or not or whether or not it will be discovered in goody huts. This means you are forced to research some techs. Also, techs in the "none" era can be defined as tradeable. So maybe each civilization can be given unique techs but they are bargainable.
One idea or use for this would be to only give some civs the ability to mine, others to irrigate, others to build roads. Maybe you only have two of the three abilities to begin with and the only way to get the third ability is to trade with someone.

3. Allowing a tech from the "none" era to be a prerequisite for techs in other eras. This way, you could define completely different tech trees for each civilization if you wanted to.

4. Making other things prerequisites for researching certain techs. eg: A certain number of a building, or a certain government has to be in power. If you added the "not" option, you could really make the tech tree complex
egs: You cannot research this tech once you have built 5 granaries and you must be a republic.
or: You must have 8 barracks before researching this tech and you cannot have a monarchy in power.

5. Allowing the minimum and maximum turns for each tech to be defined individually. If left at zero, it would use the general settings default.

6. Allowing more or less than 4 eras in a tech tree.

Time scale ideas:

1. Being allowed to define the units for each break. Eg: The first break may be in years, the next in months, the next in weeks.

2. Having a "days" unit.

3. Allowing more than 7 breaks.

General settings:

1. Most (if not all) of the options on the "General Settings" tab could be defined for each civilization. Imagine having one civ that has different city levels (eg: 7 and 15), another requires only 1 food instead of 2 per pop point but maybe has a higher min and max research turns, another only has a 9 cultural border level and so on. You would have to balance it all out but it would make civs really quite unique.

2. Alternatively, or as well, some of the "General Settings" options could be defined at each difficulty level.

3. Another alternative is to be able to define these settings for different government types.

It's a flat, round, oblong world:

Since, when creating a map, you can now choose to switch on or off X-wrapping and Y-wrapping, it should be easy to allow these choices for a random map; in particular, it could easily be an option on the main map setting screen rather than having to specify it in a mod.

Build either x or y:

I would also like to see the "not" checkbox option on the buildings tab for any prerequsite building. Then you can create a "build either this or that but not both" situation for each city; in other words, a real choice to make.

eg: I thought of having a forge building in the early stages of the game which increases shield production but that for each city you have a choice of either building a forge or a granary but not both.

 

[HAWKMAN812]

** Add tile improvements like:
-Canals (very limited as far as size and very costly)
-Power Plants and Power Lines (modern cities need power, force bases and outpost to have power lines)
-Naval and Army Bases (zones of control)
-National Parks (Right click and mark as parks, increases happiness in all the cities)
-Suburbs (increases poplation and commerce to a city)
-Industry Parks (increases sheilds to a city)
-Commerce Parks (increases taxes)
-Farms produce food outside the city's radius (but in the boarders. Farm levels, maybe linked to the eras or advances. All of the poplation is added into the national production and figures)

**Boarders: (different from the current culture boarders)
-Allows the players to set the boarders. Use the grid from the editor as a system. The player can right click and choose to clim the square. If another civ has already climed it, no one build on it until problem solved. This will allow the player to control the size of the nation. Set a limit to the number space a square has to be away from a city or zone of control improvement. Will force battles for land and resources and force the player to build army and naval bases to control areas they have won.
-Allow players to lease land to other players for bases. (20, 50, 100, or unlimited turns) for gold, etc.

**Units
-Player can give non UU units to other civs for gold, leases, etc.

**Land:
-Civs can buy and sale land, but the culture boarder remains.
-Stop the culture boarder and any new national boarder system from going out into the sea.
-cannot see around the boarder without a outpost, radar station, zone of control base connected to power lines. (allows disconnection of power for sneak attacks)

Trade:
-more automated. like food and luxuries ( set prices and other civ buy and sale with your people)
-add tourist ( National Parks, Wonders, National wonders, etc.)
-the list that come out ranking civs, higher your civ ranks, higher the tourist bonus. ( add lists like: entertainment, etc.)

Add these to the game and the editor for more fun and game play. thanks for reading.

 

[Balrog]

I have 3 suggestions:

The ability to set the diplomatic rules in the editor.

Additional feature in the game: Full Alliance. It could last forever, unless some of the 2 sides will decide to break it.

Additional option for the editor: Full Alliance flag. This should force the AI to NEVER break the alliance. This way we could make decent ww2, LotR or other scenarios.

 

[Nahuixtelotzin]

My own 5 cent:

*Make it possible that normal improvements get obsolete - like slave quarters being obsolete with "Abolitionism".

*Same for Small Wonders

*Make the effects for Great Wonders also possibly available for Small Wonders (like gain Granary in all cities...). Could be very useful in some scenarios and I can#t see the reason why it has not been done.

*Make an option for "allows the OWN civ to build nuclear devices" for small wonders.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Add a building requirement option for units. So, for instance, certain military units could not be built until you had a Barrack etc. (NB: Most civ-type games like this must have buildings present before units can be produced as standard.)

Add an optional minimum population requirement to enable for some buildings to be built. So, for instance, you may not be able to build a Library until you have a population of 3. (This idea came about when I started working on a Colonization immitation mod. You need a pop of 3 to build a stockade, lumber mill, 8 to build a college etc).

Also, allow a starting unit to be a sea unit. I would like to start a random map with a boat containing a settler and worker on board, somewhere at sea.

 

[The Rusty Gamer]

Also, an optional second tech requirement for buildings. Allowing this would make it easy to make improvements unique for each civ, with one of the techs been given at the beginning of the game and being in the "None" era.

BTW, ARE FIRAXIS STILL READING THESE SUGGESTIONS?

 

[Student Driver]

my biggest beef is the gobal warming, id like to turn it off

 

[Risbinroch]

I really didn't bother to read all this, so excuse me if some of this has allready been mentioned, and some most like has:

1. Set up diplomatic relations and how long they last, for the entire game, for x numbers of turns etc.
2. Government specific units, building specific units (perhaps it's possible even now?)
3. Much easyer to add units, without altering the txt files, pediaicons and civilopedia.
4. Easyer to add leaderheads: why not just gif or jpg? Add them up in the editor...
5. Beeing able to add as many civs as you wish, though you still is able to use "just" 31 in game.
6. Easier to add almost anything, like resources. Firaxis should release a gigantic: resourses.pcx with the game.
7. Beeing able to limit movement on railroads...
8. Beeing able to set a unit obsolete with the discovery of a tech, not beeing able to upgrade, but can't be built anymore (perhaps this is possible and there is a workaround?)
9. MUCH easyer to change the tech tree... Even adding new Eras.
10. Beeing able to set off ability to raise cities... Haven't really happened that much IRL, at least not in modern times..

 

[Lord Ed McManus]

I want to put in certain UNIT types for government...

Fascism - Secret Police
Democracy - SpecOps
Communism - Political Officers

I havn't though of what i would put in for the old ones but i considered the modern governments should be a little more fun and more appealing to pick fascism or communism at certain times during the game. Is there a way to limit units to the CIV's CURRENT government.

 

[Student Driver]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH! ONE MORE THING

Look I understand that units will not move on enemy railroads like on your own, makes sense, you dont have access to their trains, but why not on their roads?!! Makes abosolutely no sense. I would like to change that.