Mars Scenario?

[Blake00]

Hey guys,

Has anyone attempted to make a Mars scenario for Civ 3 with scifi/martian map/story/units/cities/techs etc?

01/01/2021 UPDATE: Hunterkiller has release a new Mars scenario using Balthasar's work! (details of its making later in this thread)
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/mars-alien-invasion.28651/

ORIGINAL POST:
I've recently been collecting, playing and doing video tours of Civilization Mars scenarios. I always loved playing the Civ 2 one and now I've played and enjoyed the fan made Civ2 Test of Time and Civ4 Mars scenarios but I've been unable to find a Civ3 one in the downloads section here or at Apolyton.

I've found @Balthasar 's amazing Mars terrain here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/terrain-mars-terrain.523667/

Was blown away by his work however its just map only so me living in primitive huts running around with settlers and warriors doesn't really fit with Mars and I feel like I'm doing his awesome work a bit of a disservice haha.

I saw him mention his Barsoomian cities pack however as cool as it looks that doesn't really solve the problem as its just a couple of city skins for 2 civs..
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/frazetta-style-barsoomian-cities.551757/

Also so saw some talk of Command & Conquer and Alpha Centauri city conversion packs in these threads however all the links were dead and even if they did work it wouldn't solve the primitive and earthly units and techs problem.

If there's no scenarios made from Balthasar work then it would be great if there's some scifi game (can be any scifi really) Civ 3 conversion pack that could be combined with it.

Any one got an advice or tips on things I could try?

 

[Balthasar]

Give me a few weeks, and I'll be glad to have a Barsoom mod for you. I've got one started, just have some stuff to do to it...

Honestly, thought no one was interested!

 

[Blake00]

Give me a few weeks, and I'll be glad to have a Barsoom mod for you. I've got one started, just have some stuff to do to it...

Honestly, thought no one was interested!

Really?? OMG thank you so much that would be amazing!!

I don't mind what the scifi story and theme is.. as long as I'm not running around mars with default ancient half naked Civ 3 units living in straw huts instead of space cities haha. Then I can do a great tour video for youtube (which will get plenty of people interested!) to fill the gap in my Civ mars scenario video series.

If only I could mod Civ3 as well as I can mod Civ2, then I could do it myself without bothering anyone lol!

 

[Blake00]

Damn.. I was just about to PM @Balthasar to see how he was going and if he ended up having a go at a Mars mod using his awesome old stuff. Then I see this:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/balthasar-has-died.653951/

RIP mate.. thank you for your offer to create a Mars mod just for me. I think we all know it would have been awesome and beautiful!

And I would have made DARN sure a lot more people than just me would have enjoyed it too. Like I said above, I'm making a Colonizing of Mars in each Civ game video series as part of a huge Civilization in HD & mods video series I've been working on for 2yrs now. His mod would have been the missing link in the series as there's great Mars mods/scenarios for Civ 2, 4 and 5. I have no doubt that I and others would have loved it!

 

[Blake00]

Was thinking about this some more.. if anyone knows of a good general scifi Civ3 scenario that has you building dudes in space suits and hover tanks etc while researching scifi techs and building scifi looking cities please let me know.

If there's something out there has sort of has that 'colonizaing a new alien world' feel to it like the other Civ2 Mars scenarios, Alpha Centauri, dune etc but not too spacey (eg star trek & star wars) then I was thinking I could combine it (with the authors permission of course) with Balthasar's Mars terrain and map (replacing whatever terrain is in that mod with his as while I'm useless at Civ3 modding I at least understand the file/folder structures) and then post it here and dedicate it to him!

Something like... "Mars Now - A mod of the [insert found scifi mod here] mod for Civ3 - Dedicated to Balthasar".. I dunno.. just a thought!

Make a new mars themed custom title screen and some game start intro text with a tribute to him too..

 

[Blue Monkey]

I like your thoughts. Back when I was more active here I was in the process of creating a set of four Mars maps - various stages between a Mars with seas and a dry Mars. Balthasar & I had talked about using them for the Barsoom scenario or as a steampunk setting. They would also work well for a terraforming or post-terraforming colonization scenario.

While i don't have the time to develop a whole scenario myself, i'm likely to be a bit more active here as I work with Ozy on reviving his Eemian world scenario. If someone takes the lead & a Mars project develops I might be able to help with some pcx work as well.

 

[Blue Monkey]

As far as cities go - there are some Atlantis cities around here somewhere that look a bit high tech. Those might be suitable, at least as stand-ins.

 

[Blake00]

I like your thoughts. Back when I was more active here I was in the process of creating a set of four Mars maps - various stages between a Mars with seas and a dry Mars. Balthasar & I had talked about using them for the Barsoom scenario or as a steampunk setting. They would also work well for a terraforming or post-terraforming colonization scenario.

While i don't have the time to develop a whole scenario myself, i'm likely to be a bit more active here as I work with Ozy on reviving his Eemian world scenario. If someone takes the lead & a Mars project develops I might be able to help with some pcx work as well.

As far as cities go - there are some Atlantis cities around here somewhere that look a bit high tech. Those might be suitable, at least as stand-ins.

Oh man, that would have been so cool! Seems so strange that other Civ games all have Mars scenarios yet some how Civ3 didn't get one, especially considering the awesome stuff Balthasar/Parker setup. Such a shame you and him didn't get to that stuff in the end.

Thank you for your offer. Thats great. My biggest problem is that I'm super busy with 6 friggin different Civ2 scenario/mods right now and my fans will tear me a new one if I add another project haha so I figured I'd knock down a few of them first before looking at this project idea and for now just focus on information gathering and collecting scifi mods for Civ3 that could be good to combine with Balthasar's maps. Second biggest problem is that I'm not a civ3 modder haha, am pretty darn good with Civ2 but have never tried with Civ3. I've played around with Civ3 mod file swapping so I know how switch terrains and alter text info etc so I figured that would at least get me started on trying to combine someones scifi stuff (with their permission) with Balthasar's mars maps. However no doubt its not a simple as 'just swapping some files over' so I'll need advice from Civ3 gurus on combining things properly when the time comes so gurus like you offering advice and help will be very useful!

Because of my limited abilities I figured I'd keep it simple.. no fancy scenario design or story etc.. just make a sandbox scenario (random start positions) using Balthasar's beautiful mars dry and mars wet maps combined with someones scifi units/cities/techs to replace vanilla ones (crediting whoever's stuff I use of course). Make a nice mars themed title screen with a little tribute to Balthasar on the top or bottom, maybe rename one of the imported Scifi rulers to Balthasar, write a turn one game start intro message similar to the Civ2 Mars now intro text but that also tributes Balthasar too. Play a game and see how it goes. Think I said above I'm making a series of Civ mod tour videos so naturally I'd do a cool video and tribute Balthasar there too.

So as for this early stage of collecting info and Civ3 scifi candidate scenarios and mods I've spoken with @Civinator here and PaGe over at civforum.de and have already got my hands on a few potentials. So far I've got (but not tested yet) these:

Alien Attack 1.7
Bigger Better Worlds
Dune
Escape of Zombie Island 2 - Remake (I just noticed this was made by Balthasar's friend @Vuldacon so he'll know right away whether it could be helpful, plus I was going to ask for your advice on this topic anyway Vuldacon)
Fallout v1.13
H.G. Well's War of the worlds
Space Opera (probably too spacey though, need land based scifi stuff not space ships)
Stargate - The Battle of Antarctica
Stargate SG-1 - The Battle at Dakara Beta
X-COM - Alpha-Stadium

 

[Blue Monkey]

One of the major differences between C2 & C3 modding is that in C3 there's no custom event triggers. People have done various workarounds, but nothing at all like that.

I'd suggest - as a starting point - that making a duplicate biq & folder of a C3 mod you like, swap out terrain, units, etc. so it looks like a Mars scenario. Don't worry about the specific map or anything. since it's a scenario you're already familiar with, you'll learn where certain files go and so on. And be able to think about what you would do differently in creating your own scenario.

 

[Ozymandias]

FWIW, original units for the mod (by SmokingMirror in 2005) can be found here - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-mars-mod-units-04-02-05.113535/ There have been many great sci-fi units made since then. Just go to the C3 SF Units d/l page.

 

[Blake00]

FWIW, original units for the mod (by SmokingMirror in 2005) can be found here - https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-mars-mod-units-04-02-05.113535/ There have been many great sci-fi units made since then. Just go to the C3 SF Units d/l page.

Oh wow!! Actual unit creations for a Mars mod.. this is brilliant! Thank you so much Ozy! And thanks for stopping by, stay healthy mate!

So clearly @Smoking mirror was working on exactly what we're talking about here.. a Mars total conversion mod that would have gone perfectly with Balthsar's maps. I'm guessing he never finished it.. damn.. and he hasn't been on this site since 2006.. bigger damn! I wonder if he has email notifications on, I'll PM him to see if he bites.

.

 

[Blake00]

oh man just LOOK at this stuff.. he's been gone for so long we're super lucky his download links still work!

Man they were really mapping something cool out too..

Only Five Civilizations? You should have atleast Eight, preferably sixteen or more.

So, here are 16 Civilizations with UUs...

America- Jetpack trooper - I'd have it replace the elite soldier or something. And Paradrop.
Argentina- Gendarmeria -Similar to the Paramilitary trooper, since the Gendarmeria is a paramilitary force.
Brazil- Guerilla -a low tech but effective alternative to the Stealth Spy late in the scenario they use local survivalist knowlege and cheap tech to raid the enemy. Weaker that the stealth spy, about the same as the commando, but with both hidden nationality and stealth attack, as your idea for the indian Gureilla. You could probably get a better name from Civ Army.
China- Dragon Fire Rockets - A Replacement for the missle trooper that has a calliopie of small rockets and fires them in rapid succession.
France- Peacekeeper - A Replacement for the Riot gaurd with one of thoes big clear Riot police shields and a defensive bonus.
Germany- Neopanzer -An armoured vehicle as an alternative to the leviathan, smaller and faster than the leviathan but with good armour and guns. You know, your Original European UU. I can see why you made Europe as one civ, but to have more nations we should split 'er up.
Great Britan - Gyrospecter - A Helicopter kind of Unit It would have the same A.D.M. scores as the basic version but would have both invisibility and stealth attack. Helicopter units should be land units with the treat all terrain as roads flag.
India- Ashura Tank- Small, powerful tank armed with experimental weapons can convert into a Gun-Turret/Anti-Aircraft Gun, in which it stands upward, as Swoggy said. He had it have energy weapons, but I don't thinks so... sicne this would be more of a mid game unit.
Indonesia - Tentara - A Simple relacement for the Paramilitary with better weapons and training. The Tentara are Proffesional soilders.
Israel- Meir Cannon - A Large Self propelled Artillery piece that shoots a Special Cluster Munitions- High Bombard and Rate of Fire.
Japan - Amaratsu - A Techlogically advanced battle suit in the shape of a brillaint glden female. Would have some sort of (energy?) sword and a Gattling Cannon. Maybe an Elite Soilder replacement. Named after the Shinto Sun Goddess.
Korea - Myeongseong - Hopefully by the time man settles on Mars Korea will have been united. Taking the military technology of the North and the reasearch, technology, and Commerical Savvy from the South, the Koreans have put together the Myeongseong Tank, a levithan replacement. This would have a heavy energy cannon and maybe smaller gatling type weapons as well. Named after the last Ruler of Imperial Korea, Empress Myeongseong of Joseon, who was Assasinated by the Japanese in 1895.
Pakistan - Karachi Howitzer - An All terrain truck with a powerfull field howitzer on the back. This would be avilaible before other nations had fast moving artillery.
Russia- Junk Crossbow - As You said. But I would have it enslave to more Junk Crossbows. If it defeats an enemy in battle, theres all the scraps to make more weapons....
Saudi Arabia- Prospector - A Replacement or upgrade to the standard Work Vehicle. More expensive, but better at the woking thing, and has armaments to defend itself! Not great weapons, a small machine gun or two, but it won't get captured.
South Africa- Gazelle - A Scout Car replacement designed to better handle the flat but rough open terrain of mars. An extra move point.

He got a fare way into it too..

Well, many of the units are done, the terrain is mostly done, as are some of the terrian buildings, there are some city improvement buildings and some possible static leaderheads. Still a lot of work to be done, and the biggest biut will be pulling all of it together in to a working mod, but it is on the road to success.

.

 

[Blake00]

oooh and I've just discovered this actual mod thread for his work too:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/request-partners-mars-mod.112096/

ahh man there's so much here... they got quite far..

He did his own terrain (although I think I prefer Balthasars, plus he actually made a map whereas I don't think @Smoking mirror got that far.

Speaking of rough terrain I've got the hills and mountains working well. Hills are going to be uplands, mountains are going to be rocky outcropping while snowcapped mountains are going to be cratered upland. With all the extra landmark terrain options in Conquests I'm sure there will be a lot of options for improved terrain and vegetaion later in the mod timeline.
Heres the final terrain screen shot I'm going to post, there may be some smoothing to the mountain terrain before final release, but the next time you see it will be once the cities, roads, mines etc... are ready.

For now however I think that ther terrain will be;
Desert > sandy deserts, mostly black sand.
plains > Lightly cratered terrain.
Grassland > relativly smooth terrain.
Hills & mountains > Hopefully I can get these to look like two different height highlands.
Snow capped mountains > if the above works out ok these will be large craters or volcano mouths in the highland.
Swamp > shouldn't be too difficult to make these in to crazed canyons
Jungle > large craters
Forest > will probably use this to start with as rocky uplands to give the southeren highlands more veriaty.
Coast/sea/rivers > frozen surface water.

This version, however, has no aftereffects, this is a raw capture from CIVedit. This is the hardest parts of the first eras graphics done. Hopefully the add on terrain such as swamps jungles etc... should be fairly easy, just a matter of some BMP brush action. The hills/mountains etc... may be a little more difficult.

Looks like he posted his terrain the downloads attached this post below. What make his interesting is that he's done some city textures which could be added to Balthasar's stuff.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/request-partners-mars-mod.112096/page-7#post-2618524

@GRM7584 (also been gone for years sadly) did a big set of pedia icons (they look cool and are still available):

I whipped up some scifi pedia icons and I plan on doing more.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=115346

Oh man he even got some mars themed preliminary leader portaits done but sadly there's no downloads for the animations.

I've not made any decisions on wonders yet, some of what you see from KSR mars trilogy will not be in the first scenario. For instance it will be too early for the space elevator.

I'm thinking of themed wonders;
Teraform wonders
Mohole (big hole in the ground that lets out geothermal heat).
Black dust on the polar caps.
Orbital mirrors (focused on the polar caps).
Engineered plant life (widely distributed).
Chemical coctail factories (let out green house gasses).
etc...

Each would be called a different initiative number, such as Initiative #1 moholes, and would perhaps be small wonders. Each would require the previous one in the city, and would eventualy alow the building of a great wonder that would allow the UN victory.

Military wonders
Equatorial launch silos
Phobos military base
Demios military base
Surface photography
Urainium reprocessing.
etc...

Again they would be small wonders that lead to a great wonder that allows nuclear missiles to be built (or spawns ICBMs)

Medical wonders
Human genome project.
Cybernetic replacements (would spawn martian veterans).
Genetic modifications
Memory copy technique
Replacement organs
etc...

This would be quite a short theme and would give the one who completeed it first access to the longevity treatment or ectogene cloning that would give two citizens each time the city grows and would allow the city to grow to metropolis size ahead of time.

Perhaps the first few wonders would be small wonders alowing a race between civs, but the later ones would be great wonders meaning that if you wanted to prevent someone winning the teraforming race you would have to destroy the cities that house thier required great wonders.

I've had a go at adding some individual details to the leaderheads, I may make them static to start with just so they are available for early testing;

Here's his final post.. he moved.. and clearly that was it.. project dead..

Looks pretty cool, I'm moving to Leeds tommorrow, So I have to begin work on the mod all over again (I'm thinking of switching to blender or 3ds max, so may take a while to get in to the swing of things, but I imagine he'd make a good place to start...

The only sucky thing about these great findings is that they are of course scattered resources that requires a skilled Civ3 modder to insert into the game. That's why I was looking for more of a completed scifi scenario where all the units, techs, wonders, cities etc have already been mappped out, finished, linked and so it would just be a matter of switching out the terrain, inserting Balthsars maps and then changing a few names and text here there.. all mostly within my Civ3 noob abilities haha! Plus less time consuming as I'm already buried with so many other Civ mod projects lol.

But nevertheless I've download all of his unit files and those pedia images and added it to the resource collecting I'm building up for this.

.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Thank you for both the previews & the links! you've helped a lot of people - including some of us who've been around a while but never seen them.

 

[Blue Monkey]

If you want to include indigenous Martians: Tom2050 made enough Tharks for a unit line. Same with Selenites by Supa. Even apart from that, don't limit yourself by too narrow of a search. There's a War of the Worlds scenario with units by Wyrmshadow - sure they're listed as Martians but you can change the names, make them late-era units for colonists, etc. do the same for units from other sources. The steampunk project used Tesla weapons (forget the maker) & other sorts of things you might find useful. Vuldacon & others have made robots ( there's at least one in EFZI ). There are quite a few oddities around (*cough* carnivorous tree*) - if you are looking for meteor strikes, sandstorms, etc. there are units around here somewhere.

Tooting my own horn a bit, i made some tech icons for generic science fiction uses. many others have as well. Get your project going & you'll find many people here who'd be happy to help out with making things such as icons, splash screens, etc. that are not as time consuming or complex as creating units from scratch.

 

[Blake00]

Thank you for both the previews & the links! you've helped a lot of people - including some of us who've been around a while but never seen them.

Yeah it breaks my heart that Smoking Mirror never finished his work. He was obviously a super talented 3D animation and unit artist. Can only imagine just how awesome his scenario could have been.

If you want to include indigenous Martians: Tom2050 made enough Tharks for a unit line.

Ahh good old @tom2050 .. man do I wish he'd come back to this place. I've been wanting make a ModDB page for his AMAZING Heroes of Might & Magic 3 Civ3 mod but I'm not comfortable with doing it without his permission.. so I sit.. and I wait..

Is that here? @Vuldacon just sent me this link so hows that for timing haha. Can't seem to find martian but he does have a Barsoomian section with some interesting stuff.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/toms-unit-factory.337491/

There are quite a few oddities around (*cough* carnivorous tree*) - if you are looking for meteor strikes, sandstorms, etc.

That stuff is probably way beyond my skillset but jeez it would be good to have as of course even the Civ2 Mars scenario had meteor strikes and sandstorms that changed the map.. was awesome (except for that time in ToT Mars my capital & all its wonders got wiped off the map thanks to a meteor haha).

SCORE! Now this has got to be super rare! I've been asking around in other Civ forums to see if I get any bites on Mars stuff and sure enough someone's found something. Over at the Realms Beyond Civ forum a kind fellow there has given me a Russian Mars scenario!!!! I've downloaded it and oh man there's a full set of custom mars units, buildings, techs, even terrain (although it doesn't look as good as Balthasar's or Smoking Mirror's, although that could be pcx colour errors). Only problem is its pedia and scenario text files are unreadable gibberish as my notepad can't read Russian and I suspect very bad things are going to happen when I try to run it in my english Civ3 haha. But still its units and buildings etc could be very useful. There's a word doc (which I've translated to English) containing an Author email I might try.

This seems to be the only mention of the scenario on a Russian Civ blog site here:
http://www.civ-blog.ru/civilization-3/mod/мод-марс/

They've got a nice picture there though..

Oh and also a while back while digging through some of Balthasar's old Mars convos I found some links to some city images that could be useful too so I'll attach them here for safe keeping haha. Vuldacon also recommended that I chat with @Kyriakos as apparently he's da man for custom cities and buildings too.

The resource gathering continues..

 

[Blue Monkey]

For weather units start with Rhodie's stuff. It's possible to have "Nature" as one of the civs. You can do things like surround the capital and other cities with impassible terrain (no way eliminate nature), make units paratroop (to get them out of cities), use the submarine bug to trigger storms, ...

 

[Vuldacon]

Blake00... You might want to take a look at some Units from My Game EFZI2 Elite. There are previews for Units here at Civfanatics.

A few Possibilities:
Colossus (The Toxic Colossus would probably look better on the Mars terrain as it has more Green tint coloration)
*Toxic Colossus
*Skreech (Weird Critter- half Animal, half Insect)
Killer Hornet (I would use the Non Civ Colored Unit if wanted)
*Nasty Horror (Giant Reddish Spider) and there other Giant Spiders, Green and a Spitting Spider)
*Annihilator (Good Laser Cannon)
*Tornado (You don't need to use the Animations that show the Cow being sucked in)
*HazMat Worker and Jake (Off White Suite HazMat Worker)
*Alien (I made a Light and Dark Alien... I use the Dark Alien as My Terrain is Dark.)
*Alien Egg Plant (Mean Unit if set correctly)
Croaker (if you want a Giant Toxic Toad)
Giant Crab (not sure Mars can use a Giant Crab but possible)

Also keep in mind that Units can be Re-colored to fit terrain better.

When you seriously begin to work on the Scenario, I can Help You.

I know you are currently overloaded with work and I am also working on many things and I hope to get finished with what I have started as soon as possible.

 

[r16]

wannabe scenario maker with feeblest of skills subscribes .

 

[Ozymandias]

wannabe scenario maker with feeblest of skills subscribes .

"Do not try - do!" - either Yoda or somebody else