modding advice

[noto2]

hey all. I want to mod the game, but I don't want to get carried away. I did it for Civ 3. I changed some things in the game that I found boring (like pollution and global warming) but tried to leave most of the game intact. I don't want to make a big, elaborate mod for Civ4 (yet) right now I just want to tweak some things. Specifically, I just want to change things that I think teh developers didn't put much thought into and didn't test enough. An example - the Celtic UU and UB. They are practically useless (perhaps somewhat useful in MP, I'm not sure). So it should be fairly simple to change things like that, right? I don't want to change game mechanics, just tweak some of the units and buildings.

 

[General Tso]

One important rule - never alter the original game files. You can get around this in a couple of different ways. I prefer making my own mod folder within the "Mods" folder. If you copy any XML or Python file to the appropriate folder in your mod folder your file is used instead of the normal game file. Try looking at some existing mods to get some ideas.

You can break Civ4 modding down to three levels of difficuly.

1. Editing XML Files: This is the easiest. You just change values in the various XML files. For example changing IMove for a given unit from 1 to 2 will give it a movement rate of 2. The XML files are located in Assets\XML.

2 Editing or Creating Python Files: This is more difficult, but allows you to considerabley more. You need to know how to program in Python to do this. The Python files are located in Assets\Python.

3. Editing or Creating SDK Files: This is a lot more difficult, but allows you to change anything not located in the original game executable (I think). You need to know how to program in C++ to do this.