I found a new way to mod

[trinitrotoluene]

What i found out is that you can directly mod the files by opening them with modbuddy. although you can't disable the mod or publish it, it works well, is easy and possible without being able to get the normal way to work. in particular what i did was make musketman and minuteman combat strength higher by opening up the CIV5units XML file and modify that.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to the main forums.
Because the tutorials subforum is only for tutorials, and this doesn't really qualify as one .

 

[Putmalk]

This is not modding; it's hacking. And not recommended at all since you risk damaging the core game files.

In addition, once the game patches you will lose all changes to the files.

Hacking your files is not a good idea.

 

[trinitrotoluene]

thanks for informing me.

 

[PawelS]

I don't think it's a bad way of modding, I used it successfully when I wanted to create a mod that can be played in hotseat (this was my private mod which wasn't released, and now it's not compatible with the current version of Civ5; Era of Miracles is developed as a normal mod using ModBuddy).

If you use this method, you should remember to make a backup copy of the original files, as well as your modified files, because they may be overwritten when a patch is applied.

 

[Pazyryk]

I've done this accidentally several times.

Just remember:

1. You can't distribute it (which is why it isn't really a mod).
2. You might break your core game. It's no big deal though because you can always reload it from Steam.
3. All your changes will disappear when Steam auto-updates after the next patch.

But there's no real harm in it.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Also, there's one other difference versus a true Mod:

> You can't NOT use it.

Mods can be turned off and on at will; you can play one game with my mod, then a game with Thal's mods, then an unmodded game, and back again without any conflicts. But if you're changing the core files, then this isn't really an option; you can revert your changes by getting Steam to fix the files, but there's no in-between. And if the file you've changed conflicts with what a mod you're using is trying to do, then it can break the game in a variety of ways.

Now, if the change in question is purely additive (adding a new asset definition to an existing file, like for custom sounds), then it's not so bad; the vanilla game would still work just fine, as would most mods. But if you're changing values in the existing XML entries, then you'll cause all sorts of other issues without any easy way to make sure you didn't break anything.

 

[PawelS]

All your changes will disappear when Steam auto-updates after the next patch.

Not all, only those made to files that are updated in that patch. This changes the game to a hybrid of your "mod" and the standard game, and possibly can cause a crash on game start.