HistoriCanada Modpack for Civ3: Episode 1

[Thunderfall]

BitCasters, a media and gaming company, has released "Episode 1: The New World" of HistoriCanada, an ambitious Civilization III modpack about Canadian history. Development of this modpack is sponsored by the Canadian government and Canada's two national history foundations.

The modpack can be downloaded for free and requires Civ3 Conquest v1.22 or Civ3 Complete to play. Here are the features:

• this scenario plus another two on the way, covering 400 years of Canadian
  history.
• Original soundtrack and hundreds of original art assets
• 17 civilizations including the French, English, Iroquois, Algonquin and more
• 600 new Canadian Civilopedia articles
• 50 original units including Native warriors, British Redcoats and U.S. Cavalry
• 40 great wonders, from the Bill of Rights to the Grand Trunk Railroad

It should be noted that a couple of modders (aaglo, Darklord, Wyz_sub10, C.Roland & BeBoy) from the Civ3 modding community created some artwork for the modpack.

The modpack's primary audience are history teachers and high school students in Canada, but all Civilization fans should find it interesting too. Check it out!

NOTE: This news post was first posted back in February, but they were not fully ready to distribute the mod at that time.

 

[Ranbir]

I can only say wow, looks very impressive.

If only it was India in the 17th/16th Century >>

 

[pat4]

Will modpacks affect my normal game-play.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

No, they shouldn't, provided you have installed it correctly.


Well boys (and girls ) it looks like another night for me to skip my German class in order to play Civ.

 

[diablodelmar]

I wonder why it wasn't made for the more recent Civ. Then it would have reached more people. I presume it was for propaganda purposes (or at least to promote Canada in some way, if propaganda is too strong a word).

 

[Fanaza]

I wonder why it wasn't made for the more recent Civ. Then it would have reached more people. I presume it was for propaganda purposes (or at least to promote Canada in some way, if propaganda is too strong a word).

Propaganda isn't a strong word, it's an outright wrong word in this case. Think a bit more before you speak.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder why it wasn't made for the more recent Civ. Then it would have reached more people. I presume it was for propaganda purposes (or at least to promote Canada in some way, if propaganda is too strong a word).

The mod is primarily for use in Canadian schools, and the older game is more likely to actually work on a school computer lab system than is Civ IV.

 

[dojoboy]

Zipped files for the mac version please?

 

[pat4]

how do you install mod packs

 

[Macezek]

Sounds interesting... I remember when it was put up for download and then removed. Lets see how much I can twist Canadian history around... muahahahaha

 

[bobT]

I wonder why it wasn't made for the more recent Civ. Then it would have reached more people. I presume it was for propaganda purposes (or at least to promote Canada in some way, if propaganda is too strong a word).

I think this was answered nicely. Since the school system is the main target of the Mods, it was decided that an older version would be much more universal than attempting to use CIV. In the future that may change but as it stands now, our goal is to provide a tool to anyone with a PC. Hopefully we come close.

Unfortunately we dont have a MAC version, but if you PM me, and let me know what specs you would need for a directory path, maybe we could do something in the future.

Installing the MOD is pretty easy provided you know what game version you have. There are two versions offered. One is for those of you who own Civilization III and the add-on expansion Conquests. This must be using the 1.22 patch as well. If you have that setup, you would download and run the Conquests installer.

If you have Civilization III Complete, you would download and run the Complete Installer.

It must be noted that our Civilization III Complete Installer was built based on the Firaxis Games Civilization III Complete package. With that in mind the installer points to the following default path.

c:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Civilization III Complete

If you have that path on your system, DO NOT ALTER anything at all. The installer will take care of everything for you.

If you have the Atari Complete package, you will need to make one small edit when prompted.

When you run the installer, it will prompt you to accept the install path. The path you will see is listed as above.

When this prompt comes up, change your path to point to the Atari folder, rather than the Firaxis game folder.

C:\Program Files\Atari\Civilization III Complete

NOTE:

Before you edit any install path at all, make sure that the game path is exactly the same as what you enter in your edit. All you need to change is any part of the directory tree BEFORE the Civilization III Complete folder.

eg. If you installed Civ to some random folder on your system in program files, you would do something like this.

c:\Program Files\MyCivStuff\blah blah blah\Civilization III Complete

If you place anything at all after Complete, the installer will not place files properly.

This will not change your base game. Once installed, you will find the mods under your civ content button when loading the game.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

That is very cool! Too bad I only have Civ 4

About the propaganda thing: This really isn't propaganda, since it isn't trying to influence how you think about Canada. Now, if it were "Canada is number #1! Go Canada!" that would be, but this is for educational purposes. If they made the same thing, which I'm sure already exists, for America, would you call it propaganda? I wouldn't.

 

[thenooblet22]

I wonder how/why the Canadian government (a bit broad I guess) would support a Civilization mod

 

[Ball Lightning]

One word: wow!

 

[DBear]

The original Canadian mod I downloaded in February looked good and didn't seem to have any problems.

 

[Boyd]

I wonder how/why the Canadian government (a bit broad I guess) would support a Civilization mod

probably because we in Canada like to put forward our presence in the world through less assertive means than others.

this looks like it will be great but i will have to follow the above suggestion to dojoboy and pm my mac specs.

have fun learning about the great white north gang (and we hit 15c here today and the snow is almost gone from the mountains).

 

[Corvex]

I think that this is actually an extremely clever way to teach history, and my hat goes off to the person who thought of this.

 

[TheBoatman]

I wish government of my country did this. Any screenshots?

 

[morikaweb]

Cool idea, just wish my government would be as enthusiastic in funding health care, schools, updating/mantaning infrastructure, ect as they are in making games.

 

[dojoboy]

Unfortunately we dont have a MAC version, but if you PM me, and let me know what specs you would need for a directory path, maybe we could do something in the future.

It's okay, we understand Canada may not have the resources for such development. [This is a joke, just teasing our northern neighbor.]



The real issue is the incompatibility between the PC & Mac versions, not the directory. AlanH, who is on staff here, would be a great resource for you. As he says,

The long answer is that the SDK is just a bunch of C++ source code, so theoretically it can be made to compile on a Mac to create a DLL. But the DLL would not know how to interface to the rest of the Mac OS unless the code was modified substantially, and there would be no way for the Mac version of Civ4 to talk to the resulting DLL, as the standard DLL code has been integrated into the Mac Civ4 application. So the necessary hooks have not been created for Mac Civ4 to talk to an external custom DLL.