[C3C] Minimalist mod: WildWeazel's Change Request v1.3

[Ozymandias]

My war against England was going well until I found that units cannot join armies. The army unit was left in an unusable state after tinkering with the idea of giving it an HP bonus instead of holding multiple units, which I'm still considering.

I haven't tried this yet, but I've been toying with the notion of having Armies be single Units with the joint effects of a "Combined Arms" Unit: the strongest A/D of one of each of the strongest A&D Units available at the time, plus Defensive Bombard (… lethal in ZOCs?) Of course, Armies can't be Upgraded - which is a matter I think I'll add to Flintlock's lengthy request list.

 

[Ozymandias]

That is the "..." menu and then "Change Discussion Thread". I'm 97% sure you can do this to your own resources (moderators can also do it to other resources):

View attachment 687409

I needed to ask Lanzelot to do something similar for me.

 

[Ozymandias]

There were plenty of factories prior to the use of electricity, among them the Whitworth and Armstrong armament factories in England, the Krupp works in Germany, the French armament works, and the factories producing steam locomotives and railroad iron. You might want to take a lot at the Report of the Gun Foundry in 1884, which can be found here: https://archive.org/details/cu31924030759785

I've taken to differentiating "Manufactories" (available with Replaceable Parts) from "Electrical Power Plants," with the Manufactories never being replaced nor gone obsolete (I simply consider their assembly lines to be upgraded as "Time Marches On.")

 

[Quintillus]

@Quintillus - I get all sorts of malware warnings (which I bypass) yet there's no file to be found on your "1.24 Legacy" link.

Thanks for pointing that out. It seems that none of the non-image/web page files are downloadable anymore for some reason, although I still see them and can download them when I sign in to my email account. In the meantime, I've attached that specify version to this post.

 

[Quintillus]

@Quintillus - I get all sorts of malware warnings (which I bypass) yet there's no file to be found on your "1.24 Legacy" link.

Which browser were you using by chance? I see the same issue (sans malware warnings) with Vivaldi, which is based on Chrome, but it works as expected in Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Netscape Navigator. My guess would be that Google is preventing the downloads as they are via http rather than https.

I may be able to send in a support ticket and get it sorted, but if Google is blocking it at the browser level, I'll probably have to just put a "Works Best with Firefox" sign above the list of old versions.

Update: Yeah, looks like Chrome and most of its cousins block http downloads. You can get them to work by right clicking and choosing "Save Link As". It will probably still give a warning (I don't use Chrome, so I can't say exactly what it will say), but can then be downloaded.

I needed to ask Lanzelot to do something similar for me.

I can also perform those tasks! You can ask either one of us.

 

[Ozymandias]

Which browser were you using by chance? I see the same issue (sans malware warnings) with Vivaldi, which is based on Chrome, but it works as expected in Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Netscape Navigator. My guess would be that Google is preventing the downloads as they are via http rather than https.

The malware warnings came in Microsoft Edge from both Malwarebytes and Kaspersky browser plug-ins.

I can also perform those tasks! You can ask either one of us.

 

[Quintillus]

Hmm... I can at least confirm that the download is in fact the editor, and once downloaded, Malwarebytes is returning it as clean. I'm a bit surprised you're still using Kaspersky, at one point I used it, but given its founder's KGB connections and the record of the Russian government over the past decade, I wouldn't trust it nowadays. ESET is my current preference, although I have to admit that the free sample of Norton that came with my laptop was actually not terrible.

WildWeazel mods, on the other hand? Highly trustworthy.

 

[Ozymandias]

Hmm... I can at least confirm that the download is in fact the editor, and once downloaded, Malwarebytes is returning it as clean. I'm a bit surprised you're still using Kaspersky, at one point I used it, but given its founder's KGB connections and the record of the Russian government over the past decade, I wouldn't trust it nowadays. ESET is my current preference, although I have to admit that the free sample of Norton that came with my laptop was actually not terrible.

WildWeazel mods, on the other hand? Highly trustworthy.

Re: Kaspersky - (1) I don't have anything national-security worthy on my machines ( ) (2) I devised a genuinely unique way to safeguard passwords (45 years in IT & All That) (3) I also run regular Malwarebytes, PCDoctor, & CCleaner scans, with that last being 100% for the 1,000s of Trackers the others miss … plus Secure Boot and BitDefender. My only real concern would be the new firmware malware going around, but Secure Boot guards against that. Plus Kaspersky has some features I really like, especially its "Secure Money" browsing option.

 

[WildWeazel]

VM is back up, so I tried Liberica 8 for Windows and its installer couldn't even run. I'll have to try your 1.24 Legacy version next. What's it doing that openjdk doesn't provide anyway?

After fixing the Army I started another game as Japan that looks promising, but so far no great leaders. It took a few false starts to get this far and I even played one out to lose in 40 minutes. I forget how precarious starting locations can be on smaller maps.

I haven't tried this yet, but I've been toying with the notion of having Armies be single Units with the joint effects of a "Combined Arms" Unit: the strongest A/D of one of each of the strongest A&D Units available at the time, plus Defensive Bombard (… lethal in ZOCs?) Of course, Armies can't be Upgraded - which is a matter I think I'll add to Flintlock's lengthy request list.

Well, an "Army" unit cannot be upgraded, but what you're describing sounds more like a King unit. I don't think there's any requirement for the "Build Army" unit to have the "Army' flag.

 

[WildWeazel]

My second Japan game was getting interesting, but I found out I had screwed up the upgrade paths with all the changes to the medieval units. Japan had access to both Samurai and Medieval Infantry, which caused some strange behavior.

Ah, but there is. That was the initial feature of my editor (link in sig), way back in 2009 (but use the editor instead, various small improvements have been made over the years). Open two BIQs (ignoring the warning that opening two BIQs isn't recommended), choose the section(s) you'd like to compare, make sure the "English" box is selected, and export it to a file. It'll show the differences between e.g. units with the same name, but also the new units such as the Grenadier. ("English" means where possible it will say things like "Upgrades to Knight" rather than "Upgrades to 42" if 42 is the index of the Knight)

I finally got 1.24 with openjdk8 on Linux, and it worked- mostly. It's not able to load some pcx files that are not where it expects them to be (is it supposed to work with the Steam Complete edition?) and the BIQ comparison didn't use the English names which made for a lot of false positives around changed unit and tech indices. But I was finally able to see a diff, which led to finding, fixing, and documenting the issues below. One thing I can't make sense of this:

name: Iron Works
SmallWonderCharacteristics: 0 | 512

I don't know what that field means, and I can't see any difference between them in the editor.

Great feature, by the way! Your editor came out just around the time I stopped doing serious editor work, and I had never bothered to get it set up.

Anyway, that turned up several more issues:

• Medieval unit upgrades were all wrong
• Great Lighthouse did not become obsolete due to the removal of Magnetism
• Neither Musketman nor F-15 were available to America, from my abandoned use of the Minuteman
• Cannons didn't upgrade, due to removal of Hwach'a
• Charles V did not have the right settings for a king unit

and several more that I'd forgotten were my changes:

• Workers are foot units, so they can be airlifted by helicopter
• Ancient Cavalry have +1 attack instead of +1 HP, and upgrade to Knight
• Man-o-war does not enslave (??? apparently this was a bug in the original patch)
• Increased modern unit bombardment ranges: radartillery to 3, cruise missile to 6, tacnuke to 8
• Increased helicopter operational range to 8, which I reverted

In light of all that, I'll be restarting my playtest again and a 1.1 update will be coming shortly, now that I have much more confidence in the changes.

 

[Quintillus]

I finally got 1.24 with openjdk8 on Linux, and it worked- mostly. It's not able to load some pcx files that are not where it expects them to be (is it supposed to work with the Steam Complete edition?) and the BIQ comparison didn't use the English names which made for a lot of false positives around changed unit and tech indices. But I was finally able to see a diff, which led to finding, fixing, and documenting the issues below. One thing I can't make sense of this:

That is probably the best write-up of the practical use of the BIQ Compare feature I've seen yet - including my write-ups of it! I should add a "Tips & Tricks" item on using the BIQ Compare feature to spot potential unintended changes.

PCX files should be findable on the Steam version; I use it with the CD version on my old desktop, but the Steam (and sometimes GOG) versions on my current laptop. It should also be able to account for file paths on Linux (there was/is an issue with Wine versions on Mac, but that's Mac-specific as the file structure on the Aspyr Mac release is different). I've tried the CD version on Linux but not specifically the Steam version on Linux, although just as likely is that there's a bug that was fixed between 1.24 and 1.48. Updating the legacy version to be more up-to-date is something I almost completed in March, but my personal goal of an April 1st release date for the update slipped by. Which I suppose means my question is, did it give an error message (either in the UI, or in the log.txt file) about where it was searching for the PCX files that it didn't find. It should at least put in the logs where it was searching, which usually gives a good hint of why it couldn't find it.

name: Iron Works SmallWonderCharacteristics: 0 | 512

Yeah... that is printing out a bitfield. 512 in Small Wonder Characteristics means "required goods must be in city radius", so this means that in one of the two BIQs being compared, it wasn't required to be in the city radius, and in the other one, it was. (I also checked the documentation to make sure that's what 512 really was, it's not just the best-guess based on what would make sense)

Looking at the code, it looks like it should have also printed something like:

  GoodsMustBeInCityRadius: false | true

Below the SmallWonderCharacteristics?

If so, I should probably remove the 0 | 512 and instead put something like, "Differences listed below"; if not, that is a matter for investigation.

 

[WildWeazel]

WWCR 1.1 is here!

New changes

- Internet requires Computers instead of Miniaturization
- Reverted Helicopter operational range to 6
- Created a clean scenario folder "wwcr" to avoid conflicting with patch_suggestion

Bug fixes

- Removed references to Minuteman unit from Civilopedia
- Removed Korean units
- Restored Army capacity to 3
- Corrected Middle Ages unit upgrade paths
- Restored The Great Lighthouse obsolesence at Navigation
- Restored availability of Musketman and F-15 units to America
- Restored Cannon upgrade to Artillery
- Corrected Charles V King unit settings

 

[WildWeazel]

WildWeazel updated WildWeazel's Change Request with a new update entry:

v1.1 Beta Update

v1.1 April 2024

New changes

- Internet requires Computers instead of Miniaturization
- Reverted Helicopter operational range to 6
- Created a clean scenario folder "wwcr" to avoid conflicting with patch_suggestion

Bug fixes

- Removed references to Minuteman unit from Civilopedia
- Removed Korean units
- Restored Army capacity to 3
- Corrected Middle Ages unit upgrade paths
- Restored The Great Lighthouse obsolesence at Navigation
- Restored availability of Musketman and F-15...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[WildWeazel]

My new game (still Japan) on 1.1 is going well. I'm in the middle ages and no issues so far, but I haven't yet hit the tech tree changes.

 

[WildWeazel]

aaaand 1.1 is broken. The Grenadier animations can't be found. But the thing is this was working before. I made a test scenario with a Grenadier starting unit and it was fine. It must have been when I changed the search path to use the new folder name.

So, can someone remind me the proper way to reuse specific files from the Conquests? When I was building the mod I tried different search paths, but could never get it to only load the unique files from the Napoleonic scenario, even if I explicitly listed the parent folders first. So I ended up creating a redundant unit folder and ini file with relative paths to the original media, and those are now apparently not matching up with the search path.

 

[Civinator]

In 2008 I made a tutorial in a German civ site about the kind of search paths you are using in your mod for including units, that are only in the conquests and not in the normal Civ3 unit pool. Here is the example with the musketman of the Napoleonic Europe conquest for a mod/scenario in the Civ 3 Content folder:

[Speed]
Normal Speed=225
Fast Speed=225

[Animations]
BLANK=
DEFAULT=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryDefault.flc
WALK=
RUN=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryRun.flc
ATTACK1=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryAttack.flc
ATTACK2=
ATTACK3=
DEFEND=
DEATH=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryDeath.flc
DEAD=
FORTIFY=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryFortify.flc
FORTIFYHOLD=
FIDGET=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryFidget.flc
VICTORY=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantryVictory.flc
TURNLEFT=
TURNRIGHT=
BUILD=
ROAD=
MINE=
IRRIGATE=
FORTRESS=
CAPTURE=
STOP_AT_LAST_FRAME=

[Timing]
BLANK=0.500000
DEFAULT=0.500000
WALK=0.500000
RUN=0.500000
ATTACK1=0.500000
ATTACK2=0.500000
ATTACK3=0.500000
DEFEND=0.500000
DEATH=0.500000
DEAD=0.500000
FORTIFY=0.500000
FORTIFYHOLD=0.500000
FIDGET=0.500000
VICTORY=0.500000
TURNLEFT=0.500000
TURNRIGHT=0.500000
BUILD=0.500000
ROAD=0.500000
MINE=0.500000
IRRIGATE=0.500000
FORTRESS=0.500000
CAPTURE=0.500000
STOP_AT_LAST_FRAME=0.500000

[Sound Effects]
BLANK=
DEFAULT=
WALK=
RUN=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantRun.amb
ATTACK1=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantAttk.amb
ATTACK2=
ATTACK3=
DEFEND=
DEATH=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantDeath.wav
DEAD=
FORTIFY=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantFortify.wav
FORTIFYHOLD=
FIDGET=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantFidget.wav
VICTORY=..\..\..\..\..\Conquests\Napoleonic Europe\Art\Units\Musketman\NapoleonicInfantVictory.wav
TURNRIGHT=
BUILD=
ROAD=
MINE=
IRRIGATE=
FORTRESS=
CAPTURE=
TURNLEFT=
STOP_AT_LAST_FRAME=
[Version]
VERSION=1
[Palette]
PALETTE=

Please note, that this tutorial was done before Civ 3 Complete appeared. May be with Civ 3 Complete there are easier paths for including such a unit in a C3C mod/scenario.

 

[WildWeazel]

Here is the example with the musketman of the Napoleonic Europe conquest for a mod/scenario in the Civ 3 Content folder:

That's the technique I used, except that I had only one parent level in the paths, probably from when I was putting Conquests itself in the search path*. It's working now with a corrected relative path (and you know, I don't think it ever occurred to me that the image in the production box is the first frame of the unit animation) but it just seems awkward to have to do this instead of reusing the whole unit directory as-is. I guess that's another area for C7 to improve upon...

*I understand that the search path is greedy, loading the first file it finds of a given name and only continuing down the path and on to the default paths if it's missing. But I really want to do the opposite, load all of the default files and only look in the search path for those not found. So I tried a few combinations including ".." and "../.." in the path before Napoleonic Europe, hoping to force it to load all of the default files first, but I couldn't get it to work. It would either not find something at all, or load the other NE files.

 

[Civinator]

I only wanted to show you the problem in the "technique" you have used and what should be changed when using that "technique".

 

[WildWeazel]

The fracking musketmen are upgrading to grenadiers

v1.2 coming shortly...

 

[WildWeazel]

WildWeazel updated WildWeazel's Change Request with a new update entry:

v1.2 Beta

Bug fixes

- Corrected Musketman upgrade to Rifleman
- Corrected Grenadier unit file paths

Read the rest of this update entry...