Editor Documentation Errors

Ozymandias

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As some of you might have noticed, I generally refer to Civ3 Editor's "On-Line Helpless". To put it kindly, it's full of mistakes and omissions. My hope is that we collect our combined knowledge of the Editor's malfunctions, eccentricities, etc., into one place.

I'll begin with a list of what I know; much info is from other threads and I apologize in advance for not being able to give credit.

I also hope we can have a STEP TWO, which will consist of ways we've found to use the editor to better simulate events (e.g., simulating helicopter gunships by making them land units with All Terrain As Roads, Paradrop, Amphib; etc.).

But first things first, page by page:

1. “Scenario Properties”

  • For “City Elimination”, the Helpless states, “When checked, if a city is captured it will be destroyed (razed), leaving ruins behind.” Evidently incorrect; I’ve been told that this means a Civ is wiped out if a single city is eliminated.
  • Azmorg has discovered, the hard way, that Civs in Locked Alliances at war with other Locked Alliances won't build Settlers. AMMENDED BY SUPA: That's not right, actually. Civs in Locked Alliances and at Wars with other Locked Alliances will produce settlers. Less than usual, and even less if the war front is near, but they will.

2. “Civilizations"

  • The documentation states that "Shunned" and "Favorite" Governments refer to that Civ's choice for its own Gov choices. Evidently, it impacts both which type a Civ will choose for itself AND how it will react to another Civ with that type.
  • “Aggression Levels” of “4" and “5" seem to have equal effect.
  • Checking more than about 3 or 4 “Build Often” or “Build Never” overwhelms the AI (i.e., it ignores the choices entirely).
  • Dan Magaha of Firaxis has provided “A quick and dirty explanation of Diplomacy.txt”. (I’m not certain how applicable it still is, but in 2002 Pesoloco wrote an editing program for Diplomacy.txt which can be found here.
  • The mechanics of Flavors can be discovered here.

“Civilization Advances”

  • According to the Helpless, "Note that advanced technologies may be given as ‘free techs’ but a civilization will not receive them until all required prerequisites have been fulfilled." Apparently incorrect: the AI Civ will receive the tech immediately and even be able to trade it. Nukes against Spearmen anyone?
  • "Disables diseases from flood plains" does not work.

“Units”

  • Units with a bombard range of 0 will use their Bombardment Strength for defense, but will only inflict 1 HP of damage no matter what you set the rate of fire as.
  • For the AI to properly use Workers, ALL “Worker/Engineer Actions” except the last four must be checked. In C3C, SUPPOSEDLY the AI will use a “regular” unit with less actions selected if it also has the “Offense” strategy checked. As near as I can tell, if a unit has both “Offense” and “Terraform” checked, the AI will assign ONE AND ONLY ONE of those strategies to each unit of that type built, on an individual basis.
  • Units that can trigger a GA can't go obsolete if you've not had a GA.
  • A unit with hidden nationality and "0" defense can't be attacked. It can attack, it has HP, and it otherwise acts like a normal unit, but if another unit tries to attack it, nothing happens. Both units remain unscathed, in the same tile. (At last a citation: Weasel Op found this one.)
    [*]RS74 has discovered that naval units can be rebased onto an airfield and CAN HEAL, so its like having a naval base.

Some initial miscellany regarding Units:

  • “How To Carry Cruise Missiles on Naval Vessels” can be found here.
  • How Naval Air Defense versus Bombers works can be found over here.
  • How the AI chooses unit to defend with is here.
“Terrain”

“Advances”


“Governments”
  • The "OFF" button for "Corruption & Waste" doesn't work.
    [*]Immune to: "Build An Embassy" does not work.
  • See Post 39 for an explanation of how the AI chooses Government types.

“Improvements & Wonders”
  • Just a quick note - It’s having a “Bombard” value (not a “Defense” value) which causes an Improvement to disappear when a Town grows to a City.
  • The documentation states that the "rendered obsolete by" option is only available if the "wonder" category is selected. This is incorrect. (Thanks to Logitech :) )

- And that's all for now folks. PLEASE add to this thread! (1) I don't mind being wrong and will happily correct and (2) I'll do my best (with limited time) to keep as much as possible updated in this first post (although I did learn the limits of such maintenance in a forum format the hard way with my Research URL thread).

MISCELLANEOUS

A "Study On Teleportation" can be found here.

NOTE: CHANGES & UPDATES WILL APPEAR IN DARK BLUE

Happy Modding,

Oz
 
ShiroKobbure said:
Will a civ prefer its favorite gov and react bad to civs with its shun goverment? Or does it have no effect on choosing a gov for the AI?

It has no effect whatsoever on what type of Gov a Civ chooses for itself.

-Oz
 
ShiroKobbure said:
what does effect the type of goverment the civ chooses?
Do the civs stay in dictatorship?

As far as I can tell, the AI will almost always choose a Gov with a lower Corruption value (notice that the "vanilla" Govs go in lockstep from best to worst). I do admit I'm not certain what other factors come into play or why the AI ever chooses Communism.

-Oz
 
ozymandias said:
...Questions:

1. Has anyone ever noticed the "Build Often / Never" option actually working?
I think it has a slight effect, though not very big. Like, if you set "build Artillery often" you might see some artillery... not that the AI can use them, of course, but still.

ozymandias said:
...2. What does "Continental Mood Effects" actually do?
It's poor wording of "This continent only".


ozymandias said:
...3. According to the Helpless, re: Corruption & Waste for Gov types, "Minimal is the lowest possible value; communal is the highest." Has anyone noticed Communism being worse than Anarchy?
Communal just spreads the corruption over all the cities, so that wording is wrong, I think. And of course everything beats Anarchy, when nothing (except citizens and farming) works.
 
mrtn said:
I think it has a slight effect, though not very big. Like, if you set "build Artillery often" you might see some artillery... not that the AI can use them, of course, but still.

So, we don't really know if it does, or -- if the effect is indeed slight, does it ever have any actually effect on a game's strategy or outcome?

mrtn said:
It's poor wording of "This continent only".

What the Helpless says is, "If selected, Happy/Unhappy faces affect entire continent instead of only the city the improvement/wonder was built in." Has anyone ever actually noticed this, especially the "Unhappy faces" part:confused:

mrtn said:
Communal just spreads the corruption over all the cities, so that wording is wrong, I think. And of course everything beats Anarchy, when nothing (except citizens and farming) works.

I agree about the Corruption being evenly distributed, but at what level? (Again, surely not at "Catastrophic" as the Helpless would suggest).

- And yet another question of my own my friend (OK, borrowed from another thread): How do you stop the razing of cities without mucking around with Culture=0 Wonders?

All The Best,

Oz
 
LizardmenRule! said:
The level of corruptin experienced in Communism depends on the size of your empire:

small empire=low corruption, large empire=high corruption

I dont know how corruption levels are determined tho

You're implying that there's a tie between the corruption level of Communism and the OCN. Any ballpark ideas on quantifying empire size and corruption level?

Thanks,

Oz
 
Perhaps it takes its base from problematic corruption or something, then divides it evenly between the cities.

so it applies problematic corruption to your empire, adds up all the waste/corruption there is then divides it by the number of cities, and each city experiences this amount of corruption.

your capital still experiences no corruption, i think

of course this is just an idea, i dont really know how it would calculate it
 
ozymandias said:
...What the Helpless says is, "If selected, Happy/Unhappy faces affect entire continent instead of only the city the improvement/wonder was built in." Has anyone ever actually noticed this, especially the "Unhappy faces" part:confused:
...
I've never checked that helpfile bit, I just know that if you have a wonder that puts a marketplace in all cities, with "Continental Mood Effects" checked, then you only get free marketplaces on one continent.

:borg: Ignore the helpfile, and listen to me, instead. :borg:
 
mrtn said:
I've never checked that helpfile bit, I just know that if you have a wonder that puts a marketplace in all cities, with "Continental Mood Effects" checked, then you only get free marketplaces on one continent.

:borg: Ignore the helpfile, and listen to me, instead. :borg:

Ah! See: another Great Mystery cleared up. Thanks Martin :goodjob:

-Oz
 
ozymandias said:
1. Has anyone ever noticed the "Build Often / Never" option actually working?
I don't know about build often, but build never is the real deal. I once tried it with settlers and the AI did ever expand to more than one city.
 
When testing the Anno Domini mod, I had the "build often" flag checked for offensive land units for militaristic civs. The map was overrun with units until I later unchecked it, when a more sensible number of units were built by the AI.
 
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