- Joined
- May 5, 2005
- Messages
- 9,746
As this is my second post at CFC, I first want to say a big thank you to all the modders and creative persons at CFC, who gave me tons of good hints in modding in the past.
The background for this post is, that there are many good mods with fixed maps (like Rhye´s), where the A.I. founds their cities on the wrong places. If they are founded on the right place, then they have the wrong citynames. I am somewhat disturbed, if I see the city of Hamburg somewhere in the depth of Russia (and so on).
It seems no big problem to fix the settlers to found their cities on fixed places. You sacrifice a kind of terrain to become a cityspot-terrain (p.e. marsh) and set up the editor that this is the only terrain where the A.I. can build cities.
But what´s about the correct citynames in these spots ?
Maybe the invisible cities, that I have discovered in my Civ2-space-Mod can help:
In this mod I set all City-graphics to magenta and in the wall-fields I only put the graphics of a Koby forceshield. I did get individual planets (cities)with all the information of cities and when the planet did build a forceshield (citywall) then the planet on the map did show this. I will attache two screenshots to show what I mean.
This also works with Civ3. You set the city-graphics.pcx (p.e. rAMER.pcx for the American culture) to transparency (magenta) and let the A.I. settle on the prefixed cityspot. You get an "invisible city", where you can only see the cityborders, the information about this city and a unit in the city (if there is a unit in it).
I will add two more screenshots with an rAmer.pcx where I set the first citygraphics completely to magenta and what you see on the map, if such a city is founded on that cityspot (Invisible City1).
On the next step we place a strategic resource on this cityspot. If an invisible city is founded on that place, you can see this resource with all the info of the city. On that special resource you can write the correct name of the city. In this way you can create individual pictures for the cities with the correct names on the right place on the map. This "resource-cities" can get a citywall if you don´t set the citywalls in the citygraphic.pcx to magenta. When you set some special graphics in the citygraphic.pcx, then they will appear when the city is growing (this works like the renaissance city-icons in civ2, but is somewhat tricky). When the city is razed, the city will always stay with the correct name at the correct place. It only has size zero (If you don´t want the ruin-graphic you can also delete it).
I attache a screenshot, where the Americans did found the city of Massilia (a roman city-icon from Bebro/Civ2)) and next to that city the same resource with a worker on it. I think that the unit on top of the city-resource doesn´t look unesthetic and the name of the city can be seen clearly enough. The owner of that city is America. They founded their first city on that resource.
I hope, that the resources-overflow-bug wouldn´t be so dramatic, cause the cityresources are set to strategic and are automatically connected with the city when the city on that cityspot is founded.
Now you can combine this "invisible city" with the city-units in an old CFC-thread, or better you build your own city-units. This city-unit must be on top of the city-stack, so you can see the city-unit in the city-spot of the invisible-city. Therefore the city-unit should be immobile with a slightly higher defense then the best available defenders of that time (thank you emperor for helping here). That unique city unit should be produced by a building (let´s call it city-centre) with the special city-resource in its city-radius. Maybe we can use an air-unit to be on top of the city, too. Here I must make some tests. With air-units in the ancient time it would be no problem if the city-centre produces a lot of these city-units as they can all easily be destroyed by land-units. The city centre-building should go obsolete in each epoque so that there only one or two of these city-units can be produced, if the possibilty with the air unit on top (that can do nothing but have a defense, which is useless against ground-units) doesn´t work. Each Civ should be set that they favour to produce this building. In the next epoque you have a new city-center to build, that produces a new city-unit of the next generation. Maybe the old city-unit should be upgraded somewhere in the next epoque to a mobile unit to disapear "somewhere in the desert".
On these city-units you can write the correct name of that city.
A unit as a city has the advantage that it can be upgraded or that it can be replaced by an other unit with a different outlooking. It has the disadvantage, that it can be killed or captured.
With a city-unit with the city-name on it, you have the opportunitie to upgrade that city-unit and to chance the name of that city. With this methode you can let dissapear citynames of whole civilizations. May be, the name your city-resourc is showing on the map is "Byzanz", the city-centre-building produces a unique city unit "Byzantium", a new city-centre produces for the next epoque a city-unit "Constantinople" and another new building later the city-unit "Istanbul". (You could have the same effect with a king-city-unit, that no one can build and that upgrades with barracks, but you have a problem, when this unit is been killed and you have nothing to upgrade with).
But what happens when such a city get´s conquered ? My first idea to use the capture-option for a worker-city-unit to get a new captured-worker-city-unit "City in transition" or something like that, doesn´t work. The city-unit must be slightly ahead in the defense and it seems, that the capture-function only works with units on zero-defense. If I put the city-unit on zero-defense it would not appear on top of a city-stack.
So the city-unit with a defense greater than zero "dies" when the city is conquered.
What has the story with the named city-units to do with this invisible cities, as you can do all this things about city-units without cleaning your city-graphics to magenta ??
Without invisible city-unit you will see the normal city-icon (like rAmer.pcx ) when the city is captured. But you get the wrong cityname on this place until the next city-unit is placed here by the city-center. Mods with preplaced cities on the map owned by a civilization (like Teturkan 1) don´t have this problem as the city always belongs to a civilization and carries the correct name on the correct place. But these mods have the same problem too, when the city is razed and the A.I. builds a new city on that map (with a completely wrong name).
There are two work-arounds to solve this problem.
The first methode: You have a completely invisible city over the city-resource. Than you have the city resource with the original name on it as the city.
The second methode: You don´t wipe out the whole city-graphic (like rAMER). You only set special parts of that city-graphic to transparency (magenta). Than only the parts of the underlying city-resource, where the city-graphic is set to transparency, will appear in your original city-graphic. This could be the cityname, which stands on the resource (so the correct city-name is fixed on the right spot of the map but may be not up to date) and this could be some individual buildings that appear in the common city. But when I tested this methode I had problems, that the graphics from the resource did pass the citygraphic in a still existing citygraphic (liker rAMER.pcx) where only some parts are set to transparency (magenta).
For both work-arounds to solve the problem with the killed city-unit and a fixed city-name on the right place on the map on a settler-spreading mod (like Rhye´s) the "invisible city" helps.
The problem is: When the A.I. creates a city on the fixed cityspot (p.e. Washington) then there is in almost every case a disharmony between the correct Cityname in the resource or city-unit and the city-information-box under the resource. For example the cityresource shows on the correct position of Washinton the correct name "Washington", but under the city in the cityinformation-box stands quite a different and wrong name (p.e. Vancouver or Shanghai or something like that instead of Washington).
One workaround on this problem is, that you set all citynames of a civilization to x, xx, xxx, ; stars or other ornaments. In the cityinfo-box under the city-resource of Massilia you don´t see the name "Washington", but only stars. If you use the spacebar for giving a name to that city in the civilization-editor, you would see dots.
Another methode that could be helpful with a city-unit in the city is, that the city-unit overlaps the part of the city-info-box which contains the wrong city-name. To see that this is possible, I attache a city.flc of Istanbul where the overlapping part without the cityname is set to transparency. This is a prototype where the overlapping part must be coloured and reduced. As the normal citynames differ in the number of letters there must be a great flexibility to cover all citynames of all civilizations. Here an other hint of emperor could be useful. If you completely wipe out all city names of a civilization the A.I cities only have names like "New,2,3, New2". That means that there are less letters to deal with and therefore you have a smaller bandwidth, the overlapping city-unit must cover.
But maybe there are better possibilities to solve the problem. So my question is, how can this wrong writing (p.e. Vancouver instead of Washington) in the citybox of the resource-city disapear ? Is it possible to change the scripting of the cityname to transparancy so you can´t see the wrong name of the A.I. city on the map in the city-info-box ? Or to chance the colour of the city-info-box to the colour of the writing ? Firaxis must have hidden the colour for writing in the Info-box and the colour for the infobox somewhere in the interface-passage.
I wonder, why I have never seen any mods using these city-units (and city-resources) to replace a city-graphic. With this methode you can chance all citynames of an ancient civilzation (p.e. Rome) to the modern names of the present europeen countries and so on. If you connect the city-resource with a special wonder, than it´s not enough to research the special tech for building this wonder, but you must own the place of this wonder too. So you can get a more precise historical feeling about the map you are playing with and tough fights to get the place, where you can build the Great Library, the Liberty Statue and so on.
Thank you for replies.
Civinator/Blue Lion
The background for this post is, that there are many good mods with fixed maps (like Rhye´s), where the A.I. founds their cities on the wrong places. If they are founded on the right place, then they have the wrong citynames. I am somewhat disturbed, if I see the city of Hamburg somewhere in the depth of Russia (and so on).
It seems no big problem to fix the settlers to found their cities on fixed places. You sacrifice a kind of terrain to become a cityspot-terrain (p.e. marsh) and set up the editor that this is the only terrain where the A.I. can build cities.
But what´s about the correct citynames in these spots ?
Maybe the invisible cities, that I have discovered in my Civ2-space-Mod can help:
In this mod I set all City-graphics to magenta and in the wall-fields I only put the graphics of a Koby forceshield. I did get individual planets (cities)with all the information of cities and when the planet did build a forceshield (citywall) then the planet on the map did show this. I will attache two screenshots to show what I mean.
This also works with Civ3. You set the city-graphics.pcx (p.e. rAMER.pcx for the American culture) to transparency (magenta) and let the A.I. settle on the prefixed cityspot. You get an "invisible city", where you can only see the cityborders, the information about this city and a unit in the city (if there is a unit in it).
I will add two more screenshots with an rAmer.pcx where I set the first citygraphics completely to magenta and what you see on the map, if such a city is founded on that cityspot (Invisible City1).
On the next step we place a strategic resource on this cityspot. If an invisible city is founded on that place, you can see this resource with all the info of the city. On that special resource you can write the correct name of the city. In this way you can create individual pictures for the cities with the correct names on the right place on the map. This "resource-cities" can get a citywall if you don´t set the citywalls in the citygraphic.pcx to magenta. When you set some special graphics in the citygraphic.pcx, then they will appear when the city is growing (this works like the renaissance city-icons in civ2, but is somewhat tricky). When the city is razed, the city will always stay with the correct name at the correct place. It only has size zero (If you don´t want the ruin-graphic you can also delete it).
I attache a screenshot, where the Americans did found the city of Massilia (a roman city-icon from Bebro/Civ2)) and next to that city the same resource with a worker on it. I think that the unit on top of the city-resource doesn´t look unesthetic and the name of the city can be seen clearly enough. The owner of that city is America. They founded their first city on that resource.
I hope, that the resources-overflow-bug wouldn´t be so dramatic, cause the cityresources are set to strategic and are automatically connected with the city when the city on that cityspot is founded.
Now you can combine this "invisible city" with the city-units in an old CFC-thread, or better you build your own city-units. This city-unit must be on top of the city-stack, so you can see the city-unit in the city-spot of the invisible-city. Therefore the city-unit should be immobile with a slightly higher defense then the best available defenders of that time (thank you emperor for helping here). That unique city unit should be produced by a building (let´s call it city-centre) with the special city-resource in its city-radius. Maybe we can use an air-unit to be on top of the city, too. Here I must make some tests. With air-units in the ancient time it would be no problem if the city-centre produces a lot of these city-units as they can all easily be destroyed by land-units. The city centre-building should go obsolete in each epoque so that there only one or two of these city-units can be produced, if the possibilty with the air unit on top (that can do nothing but have a defense, which is useless against ground-units) doesn´t work. Each Civ should be set that they favour to produce this building. In the next epoque you have a new city-center to build, that produces a new city-unit of the next generation. Maybe the old city-unit should be upgraded somewhere in the next epoque to a mobile unit to disapear "somewhere in the desert".
On these city-units you can write the correct name of that city.
A unit as a city has the advantage that it can be upgraded or that it can be replaced by an other unit with a different outlooking. It has the disadvantage, that it can be killed or captured.
With a city-unit with the city-name on it, you have the opportunitie to upgrade that city-unit and to chance the name of that city. With this methode you can let dissapear citynames of whole civilizations. May be, the name your city-resourc is showing on the map is "Byzanz", the city-centre-building produces a unique city unit "Byzantium", a new city-centre produces for the next epoque a city-unit "Constantinople" and another new building later the city-unit "Istanbul". (You could have the same effect with a king-city-unit, that no one can build and that upgrades with barracks, but you have a problem, when this unit is been killed and you have nothing to upgrade with).
But what happens when such a city get´s conquered ? My first idea to use the capture-option for a worker-city-unit to get a new captured-worker-city-unit "City in transition" or something like that, doesn´t work. The city-unit must be slightly ahead in the defense and it seems, that the capture-function only works with units on zero-defense. If I put the city-unit on zero-defense it would not appear on top of a city-stack.
So the city-unit with a defense greater than zero "dies" when the city is conquered.
What has the story with the named city-units to do with this invisible cities, as you can do all this things about city-units without cleaning your city-graphics to magenta ??
Without invisible city-unit you will see the normal city-icon (like rAmer.pcx ) when the city is captured. But you get the wrong cityname on this place until the next city-unit is placed here by the city-center. Mods with preplaced cities on the map owned by a civilization (like Teturkan 1) don´t have this problem as the city always belongs to a civilization and carries the correct name on the correct place. But these mods have the same problem too, when the city is razed and the A.I. builds a new city on that map (with a completely wrong name).
There are two work-arounds to solve this problem.
The first methode: You have a completely invisible city over the city-resource. Than you have the city resource with the original name on it as the city.
The second methode: You don´t wipe out the whole city-graphic (like rAMER). You only set special parts of that city-graphic to transparency (magenta). Than only the parts of the underlying city-resource, where the city-graphic is set to transparency, will appear in your original city-graphic. This could be the cityname, which stands on the resource (so the correct city-name is fixed on the right spot of the map but may be not up to date) and this could be some individual buildings that appear in the common city. But when I tested this methode I had problems, that the graphics from the resource did pass the citygraphic in a still existing citygraphic (liker rAMER.pcx) where only some parts are set to transparency (magenta).
For both work-arounds to solve the problem with the killed city-unit and a fixed city-name on the right place on the map on a settler-spreading mod (like Rhye´s) the "invisible city" helps.
The problem is: When the A.I. creates a city on the fixed cityspot (p.e. Washington) then there is in almost every case a disharmony between the correct Cityname in the resource or city-unit and the city-information-box under the resource. For example the cityresource shows on the correct position of Washinton the correct name "Washington", but under the city in the cityinformation-box stands quite a different and wrong name (p.e. Vancouver or Shanghai or something like that instead of Washington).
One workaround on this problem is, that you set all citynames of a civilization to x, xx, xxx, ; stars or other ornaments. In the cityinfo-box under the city-resource of Massilia you don´t see the name "Washington", but only stars. If you use the spacebar for giving a name to that city in the civilization-editor, you would see dots.
Another methode that could be helpful with a city-unit in the city is, that the city-unit overlaps the part of the city-info-box which contains the wrong city-name. To see that this is possible, I attache a city.flc of Istanbul where the overlapping part without the cityname is set to transparency. This is a prototype where the overlapping part must be coloured and reduced. As the normal citynames differ in the number of letters there must be a great flexibility to cover all citynames of all civilizations. Here an other hint of emperor could be useful. If you completely wipe out all city names of a civilization the A.I cities only have names like "New,2,3, New2". That means that there are less letters to deal with and therefore you have a smaller bandwidth, the overlapping city-unit must cover.
But maybe there are better possibilities to solve the problem. So my question is, how can this wrong writing (p.e. Vancouver instead of Washington) in the citybox of the resource-city disapear ? Is it possible to change the scripting of the cityname to transparancy so you can´t see the wrong name of the A.I. city on the map in the city-info-box ? Or to chance the colour of the city-info-box to the colour of the writing ? Firaxis must have hidden the colour for writing in the Info-box and the colour for the infobox somewhere in the interface-passage.
I wonder, why I have never seen any mods using these city-units (and city-resources) to replace a city-graphic. With this methode you can chance all citynames of an ancient civilzation (p.e. Rome) to the modern names of the present europeen countries and so on. If you connect the city-resource with a special wonder, than it´s not enough to research the special tech for building this wonder, but you must own the place of this wonder too. So you can get a more precise historical feeling about the map you are playing with and tough fights to get the place, where you can build the Great Library, the Liberty Statue and so on.
Thank you for replies.
Civinator/Blue Lion
