It's a whole new game! (new:45 Units/33Techs/1Gov)

[omarshaheen]

This is the Conquests Version of the PTW Mod/Scenario "It's a whole new game!"


This scenario (and mod.) is an enhanced version of Civ III Conquests which should allow for more exciting and more challenging gameplay. The modification has 45 new units with loads of exciting new features, resources, as well as 33 new technologies with their associated buildings, and a new government system. The scenario itself (modified marla's world map) is set just before the industrial age, and benefits from all unit/tech additions, though those who reach the Modern/Future Era will have many surprises, not least of which are Future era units such as Annihilators, Cyborgs, Drop Ships,… (Just check your Civileopedia ) and totally new unit concepts that should make this balanced map a joy to play whether for single or multiplayer games.

To Install: Download ALL 9 zip files below, and UNZIP All files into the scenarios folder under your Civ III Conquests directory, the path for expansion should be as follows:
…\ CIV3\Conquests\Conquests\
Non of your original files will be replaced so you can answer yes to all prompts (they are all related to the new scenario folder).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Civ3_Expanded1_p1e.zip (Patched.v1e)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units1.1.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units2.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units3.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units4.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units5.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units6.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units7.zip
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Civ3_Expanded_Units8.zip

Upgrading from PTW Version:
Those who have the older version of this scenario need to download only the first file, but make sure expand the PTW version in your conquests directory before extracting the first file "Civ3_Expanded1.zip".

Remarks:
- Note: Loading and configuring the scenario for the first time takes from 20 to 40 minutes on an Intel PIV 2GHz mobile processor (That’s why you’re advised to save the game before you start playing). However, once configured the game will take less than 3 minutes a turn for AI moves.

- To edit the scenario settings: Run Civ3_Expanded.biq (Path above):
You can run this file using the CivIII conquests editor, in case you want to change some rules to suit your taste.

- Run Civilization III Conquests and choose Load “Conquest”: “CivIII_Expanded”

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The Making of this Mod/Scenario:
A long title, and a very long development time, actually this is by far the most time consuming scenario that I have ever built for a sequel of my favorite game. It actually took me about a year and a half! Though, of course I actually worked on it only a third of this period. I’ve been playing Civ. Since its first version (Early 90s) and ever since then new versions never seem to disappoint.
Anyway, when I started I had an idea for a scenario set in the beginning of the Industrial Era and extend into the modern era while having some new units and techs. Well that was my initial intention, yet eventually I ended up making a whole new modification to the game’s rules and techs with 45 new units, 33 new techs, 3 new Improvements, a new government system, and a handful of tweaks to make the AI much more challenging, and you be the judge.

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The Geopolitical Landscape:
This scenario contains most of the civilizations that shaped the world as we know it today. Each of these civilizations had a peak point some time back in history, to make a world wide scenario interesting and challenging for everybody I combined all the great civilizations which controlled the earth in the beginning of the industrial age. I also included some of the modern world nations such as Brazil, and Australia, in order to make the game more challenging and also to limit the power of some civilizations.
The size of each of these civs vary from 1 city to over 60 cities! but notice that corruption has very limited effect, that's why I decided to increase production cost of ALL units.
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General Rules:
I have noticed that the AI tends to use drastic measures which in many cases ruin the game, such as drafting huge number of citizens from cities when defending them, causing huge population losses, thus I simply removed the option of drafting citizens. I also tweaked several game aspects specifically civilization behavior to get AI controlled civs to behave in a manner that would make them more competitive. Of course if you don’t like the new behavior, you can tweak it as you please.
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Technologies: You don’t really get to play up till the modern era; actually in effect you’ll be playing in a future era once you discover the original default technologies defined in the game. The Middle ages have one extra technology, the Industrial Era has 9 new technologies and the Modern Era comes with 23 new technologies.
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Units: This is the real blockbuster! I’ll leave that as a surprise, so simply load the game and check your civiliopedia’s list to uncover what’s waiting for you with the discovery of new techs. I have to mention though that in order to make the new units more appreciated I changed some of the properties of the original units, basically making them more specialized. For instance, a Carrier has been modified to carry 3 air units only (instead of 4), while a nuclear carrier can carry up to 6 air units, and has a longer range.
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Cities: The number of cities is very large, actually it is 512 cities, so you cannot build any more cities (unless of course you raise an enemy city first!), Computer controlled civs. shall not produce any settlers, and shall not attempt to build any more cities (unless a city or more has been lost).


Designer: Omar Shaheen
omarshaheen@hotmail.com



All rights reserved (May 2004)

 

[omarshaheen]

Some Screen Shots:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=55441&stc=1
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=56238&stc=1

 

[Mobilize]

Thats odd, I could of sworn I had replied with a long ol' post.

This scenario looks extremely interesting through the editor. A lot of future units and a lot of naval units. How come there isn't a whole lot of pre-modern/future units?

Also another question, where is Egypt.. it's in the civilization list but I don't see it there..

I would reply with a whole lot of suggestions, comments, etc.. but it's 2am.. I'm tired.

 

[omarshaheen]

Pre-Industrial units are covered by the game manufacturers through different scenarios, the concept of this scenario/mod is to take the game to a whole new level of entertainment, using common tech/unit concepts from other games and sci-fi movies.... Sort of a real extension for the game into the future era.
You can play by one of 24 civs. Egypt had been part of the Ottoman Empire in 1780, both Egypt and the Ottoman empire are embedded into a custom civ including the rest of the Islamic Terretories at the time, thus the name "Islamic World". I have to say though that I have favored game play over historical accuracy, so you'll find quite some historical "modifications" introduced to make the game more challenging. (Check the US map to get a sense of what I mean)...

 

[LuckyOrDead]

All leaders in the game are named Mohammed Ali

When I build a Trebuchet I get a missing file error

The crash was a pain after waiting 20 minutes for the game to load

But over all the mod looks great... The new unit look so cool.

Another question, why are most of the better resoures not already mined and have no road to them?
Is it stop/slow production of good units a few turns?

 

[omarshaheen]

Patch1:
- Missing file errors solved (pediaicons.txt file updated)
- Crash will not occur if you epand this patch to your Conquests directory (this will replace some files).
- The point is to avoid anyone rushing to war in the early turns of the game, but you're right, it could be better to have all resources connected.
Other Fixes in this patch:
- Missmatch in some leader heads fixed.
- Adjusted unit cost (it was too cheap at first because shield cost is not multiplied by 10 in Conquests)
- Removed two Units: Annihilators (6000 Shield) and Heavy MechWarriors (2400 Shield).

Unzip to your Conquests Directory:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=59807

 

[omarshaheen]

Everybody, I tried hard to find a solution for the remaining two units, and I think that I could say that I have finally managed to balance the equation. Now you can use this patch (1b) if you want to enjoy playing with Annihilators and heavy mech. Warriors, they are quite awesome units after all
Actually to solve the mystery of their high shield value without affecting other units I resorted to introducing two new buildings (Mech Lab and Annihilator Production Facility), these buildings require high maintenance and will produce these units on regular intervals, such that the unit cost in shield is interpreted into Gold (Number of turns required x Maintenance cost of facility).
If you don't find them interesting then you don't need to restart your game again because this is the only modification in this patch.

As usual Unzip file to your conquests directory.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=59924

 

[POLM]

Looks very fun and interesting, just downloaded it, and is ready to play....

Just 1 proplem... all the leaders are still called mohamed ali :S

But it looks very fun

EDIT: Just 2 more things... the game starts in 1780, so you should rename Norway to Denmark, and give them Copenhagen as their capital....

And why are all the civs Commerciel and Expansionist? I know that all civs were expaning, but the you dont have much use of this trait when the hole world is settled.....


Just my 2 cents...

 

[omarshaheen]

It seems that there is some sort of bug, I can't explain why the correct names won't appear when selecting your civ., but don't worry ALL civs will have the correct names in the game itself and that's what matters

About Denmark and Norway, I think you're right! but I must give the Germans a certain bulk of cities to make them competitive on a global scale, that's why Denmark was left out... The problem is that they don't have enough coastal cities, and that's why I had to give them Copenhagen.
I chose to make all civs Commercial-expansionists because I simply wanted to limit (as well as standardize) the bonuses for all players of the scenario, that's why no body will have anything special, for the same purpose the Golden Age has been reduced to 2 turns only! that is because some Civs will inevitably start into their Golden Age immediately, which is of course not fair to other players/civs.

 

[omarshaheen]

After testing this scenario, I found that it still needs some tweeking, This Patch (1c) tackles the following issues:
1- Corrects the Industrial Era Tech map.
2- Scales Unit Cost to be more realistic (for high cost units).
3- Redistributes Oil resources in accordance with the proven oil reserves of the 20th century.
4- Boosting the strength of Portugal adding one more super power. Now there are 12 Super powers with various levels of strength, but generally speaking you can win with any of these civs: America, Russia, England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Japan, China, Islamic World, Canada.
5- Turn Limit has been pushed to 1000 to allow for the completion and utilization of the future era techs, and units.
6- Increased the cost of building Settlers to 500 shield to limit the addition of new cities (Though AI will still build new cities!).

Scenario Testing Results:
It took me 3 days to reach the year 1880 (100Turns), few turns ago, and despite strong trade links all hell break loose and the world was divided into two blocks! ; East (Islamic World and Russian), and West! (England, Spain, and Germany), the rest are still neutral. I have noticed that a time delay is introduced whenever a city’s ownership is transferred, or a trade link is destroyed, this was quite noticeable lately with all the destruction and invasions going on all over the globe. Over all I DID enjoy my first experience with my own scenario! Though I have to say that you MUST have at least a PIV 2GHz to play it, and you should have something else to do whenever the computer goes into compiling a lengthy turn.
Patch Link (Expand to your Conquests Directory): http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Civ3_Expanded_Patch1d.zip

 

[omarshaheen]

After finishing the industrial era, I decided to add Just a couple of quick adjustments:
- Fixed Happiness for Al Azhar Wonder
- Prohibited building Cities on Tundra (this should help greatly in decreasing waiting intervals due to AI building useless cities on Tandra all the time).

Patch Link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=63633

 

[keewa]

Wow, quite a work.

I didn't get myself to try the map yet, but I like all these new units and stuff. The civilopedia is awesome, with all long descriptions, I always liked to read them in Civ3, quite a natural way to learn things about history (not exactly history in this case

But I'm still having a feeling that this mod is focused way too much on military. A lots of different units available in the same time, like 10 different types of tanks...
And there are also some typos in the civilopedia, but I cannot remember where, I only know there is mispelled 'knowledge' in the first line under the "mass media" entry.

hope you can accept criticism...

 

[omarshaheen]

Certainly, I would humbly accept any criticism! I am definitely not perfect
The intention of having too much diversity for military units is to create a corresponding diversity on battlefields throughout different eras, such that civs. that are technically in the same era would still have some differences, where those for instance focusing on development of specific technologies will get more specialized units related to those techs. But I have to admit it is more biased to a conquest style victory, but that would probably have more to do with me being an old player of the game, I'd say that I haven't really grasped the idea of anything but the old style conquest victory
I will try though to have more buildings and a variety of ideas for expanding the concept of future techs beyond their military significance, but I think that would probably have to wait until Civ4 is released.

 

[sfenick23]

Hi Omar,
I just finished winning the scenario...nice job, I really enjoyed it. More on the suggestions phase, though....all of the leaders are named "Omar Shaheen."

 

[omarshaheen]

Congratulations!!!

You're the first to finsih the scenario! It's a long and challenging one so you must be a dedicated CivIII fan.
I am really surprised that you've had this leader names problem, because I have tested the latest version of the scenario and I did not see this problem, I am not sure if you have updated your scenario version, But I will download the current version to rule out any possibilites, and by the way, you might have altered something in the scenario file, this is one thing that could have caused this problem.
Anyway, I was just wondering if you had to endure long waiting intervals between turns as the scenario entered the future era, because believe it or not I still haven't played the future era yet!!! (and yes I know what I'm missing! I did design that thing after all )

Thanks for your feedback...

 

[sfenick23]

Hi again, and sorry so long for the delay in responding. I should explain that when I had posted about beating the scenario, I beat it via the "victory point" win, which I recommend avoiding, since it is too easy to win and shortens the game. After winning, I continued to play so that I could see the cool units later in the game (namely the Terminators and Mechs). I ended up conquering the world in just under 350 turns using the Americans. Here are my findings:
1. First off...great job! Kudos to you Omar, this is a GREAT scenario, and I highly recommend it to all.
2. The game does take a long time to finish, because the turns take a while to complete, even on a fast machine. There is a problem with killing off the last king in a given country (towards the end) in that the computer takes so long to to whatever it is doing that it will sometimes freeze. I countered this by killing all the kings for a country except the last one, then taking all of that country's cities before killing the last king.
3. You might consider making more units upgradeable...this is especially true for tanks, artillery, boats, and planes. For instance, I think you should make mech infantry upgradeable to cyborgs to robotic infantry to terminators. I would also make the armor upgradeable in some way. I ended up having a LOT of armor units that were obsolete that might have been usable had they been upgradeable. Same with mech infantry once I got cyborgs, and cyborgs once I got robotic infantry and terminators. Maybe make long-range artillery upgradeable to the higher grades (and have the higher grades still have the extended range.) This wasn't as much of a problem with artillery for me, since I pretty much stopped using artillery once I got Mechs. Also, you should make it possible to build units like the Annihilator and heavy hover tanks. I got the impression that the only way you could get these units is via the buildings that automatically produce them. I absolutely LOVE the new units, but it would be nice to be able to upgrade to them, it just seemed that upgradeability was lost after a certain point.
4. I liked your treatment of wonders. There are only certain wonders to be built, and the rest you get through conquest....good call! It made it easy to concentrate on conquest, since I didn't build many wonders. It also meant that the wonders that I built were actually useful.

Once again, great job on this...I absolutely loved this scenario, though my wife HATES it (since I have been playing it for so long now!)

 

[omarshaheen]

First of all give my sincerest apologies to your wife, I know how frustrating it could be for someone to watch you play this game, you just simply get so immersed in the action and thinking that people just get frustrated! I can not stay that long on civ games any more (except every now and then), but I still enjoy creating scenarios. One solution though could be for her to join you on some multi-player games! (But be careful I don’t know if this suggestion will help )
Please try to make it up for her. I’m not married, however, I know how frustrating people get because of loosing someone to this game.

Secondly! Thank you very much for the kind words, I really admire your dedication to the game, I was wondering though if I may clarify why I did not allow many units to be upgradeable as you advanced through the scenario.
Actually the main concept is that you should invest a lot of resources for your upgrades, This is really a fact of life, just imagine what would the Americans do with the M1 Abrams tanks available today if they were to adopt nanotech shielding for their new units,… obviously the old tanks shall be sold to some other country, that, is the equivalent to disbanding, because it really doesn’t shorten the path for the building of new tanks.
Due to the change in the materials used to build units, as well as my intention to make it difficult for any country to sustain a technological edge over its rivals on the battlefield (unless it really spends a lot!) I decided to make most modern age units un-upgradable. I know its not practical in a game-play sense but I think that it should really add to the challenges of the game. Though I really do appreciate your insight.

Thank you sfenick23

 

[sfenick23]

Omar,
Ok, I can understand your reasoning...it does make things a little more challenging. Nice job once again!

 

[Silica_Pathways]

Very nice scenario, i'm close to the end, but... i'm having big war weariness problems, but in goverments there's no fascism to choose Fascism is one of default C3C government types, why have u excluded it in this scenario ?

 

[omarshaheen]

First of all make sure that you're running the latest version of this scenario (Al Azhar building could contribute to unhappines in your cities if you have an older version).
For the latest version: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=63633

About Fascism, I did replace it with the "Islamic" government type, the reason I "replaced" instead of "adding" is because I initially worked on a scenario editor that did not support adding technologies, and I imagined that the least appealing gov. type (in the Ind-mod era) would be fascism, but it should have been despotism instead. I apologize however for not adding it once more when it became possible with newer editors.