Modding Q&A

[Civinator]

Anyways, my question here is how much lag am I saving by using 180x180 instead of 256x256 or even larger?

Nanuk, in my eyes this question can only be answered by yourself, as we don´t know the settings of your mod/scenario. Besides the factors you posted, another big factor for lags in turntimes can be the number of units on the map, the question if there are preset cities on the map or if the cities all must be founded and what terrain can be settled. Even dumb settings in unit stats can cause considerable extorsions of interturn-times.

So here are only some general thoughts about map sizes besides the question of lag times, that belong to the settings of the individual mod/scenario:

a) Random maps:

If a mod/scenario plays on random maps (no preset cities), each map size above 250x250 (depending on the percentage of landmass and settelable terrain) can run into the problem, that interesting parts of that map can not be settled, as the game runs into the 512 cities limit of Civ 3. Unfortunately the NCL-Patch (no city limit) seems not to work properly. At least in my test I run into memory problems of the game starting with city 543 and into a freeze of the game with city 557 (other civers came to the same conclusion about city 556 in earlier posts):

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/page-14#post-15439319
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/page-15#post-15440681
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/page-15#post-15441099
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/page-15#post-15444062

b) Preset maps:

Some great scenarios show, that even maps bigger than 250 x 250 are considered by many civers to be 'worth' longer turn times, among them
Rocoteh´s WW2 Global and my graphical update of that scenario (WW2 Global Gold), playing on a 360x306 world map. These scenarios use preplaced cities on the map.

I tried to use that map for a worldmap of my CCM mod with fixed city locations (but no presetting of the cities themselves) and fixed names for the cities, given by preplaced resources to those locations, but here I run into a limit of only 256 different resources allowed in C3C.

An in my eyes very clever solution for a preset 256x256 worldmap with preset starting locations, but no preset cities, is Yoda Power´s Giant Earth Concept Map (256x256). Unfortunately for a combination of my CCM mod with this cleverly designed worldmap there is an interference in using the wheeled flag for restrictions of unit movements. In the Giant Earth Map this flag is used more strategically in limiting the expansion of civs, while in CCM this flag is used more tactically for more interesting use in combat (especially against 'invisible' land units).

On the other hand there exist many great scenarios with 180x180 worldmaps, the most famous among them in my eyes is El Justo´s AoI.


c) Micromanagement during the player´s turn:

Another factor besides the lag in turntimes is the problem of loosing much time with the micromanagement of cities and units, especially in the later stages of a game. In fact in my testgames I´m frequently more annoyed by the time I´m loosing in micromanaging all my cities and units than by the inter-turn times of the game. An AI governor for those cities is not accepted by me and an AI general for the units even does not exist.


d) The situation of a worldmap for my mod CCM:

At present I´m experimenting with 'hybrid' versions (partly preset cities) of the 360x306 and the 180x180 worldmaps. I will also have a closer eye on Yoda Power´s Giant Earth Map (especially, if the movement barrier by forests can be replaced by something different).

e) Nanuk the situation for your mod in my eyes:

Nanuk, I show you here my thoughts about building a proper worldmap for my mod, but you must find the proper solution for your mod yourself. One thing is sure: Without Rocoteh´s decision to use a 360x306 worldmap for his scenario, there wouldn´t be many civers in later times, who love that scenario in that format. He did boldly go, where no other Civ 3 modder has been gone before.

 

[Nanuk]

I have made trade routes and city placement more strict, so this should cut down on the issue. I do have a very powerful computer and play this game still because it is a favorite, but still, any lag lost is a bonus. Thanks for the information, Civinator. I decided I will increase the map size to 256x256, anything smaller and the map is just not large enough for my ambitions. With the added restrictions to trade, diplomacy, an other AI factors, the game should still have less to compute per tile than standard. The trick now will be to find a balance so the AI isn't crippled for the whole game.

 

[Civinator]

The trick now will be to find a balance so the AI isn't crippled for the whole game.

... and you also have to adjust the unit settings to that map size. Per example aircraft with range 2 or 4 don´t make much sense with such a map size.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Ocean size is not a big deal for me, I decided I'll cut down on the Pacific since it's mostly unused space anyways, ...

View attachment 525034

So you're preventing cross-ocean trade - no trade via harbors for example?

 

[Nanuk]

So you're preventing cross-ocean trade - no trade via harbors for example?

Not quite. Trading over ocean tiles will not be enabled, but will be enabled over sea tiles. Sea trading will be severely restricted on the Earthlike version of my mod for select few lanes connecting East and West. Harbors will not allow trading over water, they will be used for some other things. To simulate the rise of globalism, commercial harbors will enable sea trading. Harbors will be restricted with strict building requirements, making only few coastal cities able to build them.

To go even further, Commercial Harbors will require a standard harbor, but also have some more added restrictions, so even fewer cities can build that. Making trade hubs strategically crucial. This means if a civ wants an overseas empire, it will need to pump them full of homemade troops and workers, connecting colonies to overseas cities and defending them from barbarians and other civs. This will help keep certain civs like in Africa and the Americas safer from Europe at least for a while, since in my Earthlike mod, the difficulty level is based on what civ you choose to play. Air trading will be completely disabled. Airports will serve only as a means to rebase units. This will cut down on the potential tiles that trading can be done over, reducing lag.

 

[Civinator]

To simulate the rise of globalism, commercial harbors will enable sea trading...To go even further, Commercial Harbors will require a standard harbor, but also have some more added restrictions, so even fewer cities can build that

Nanuk,unfortunately trading over seas and oceans will not be enabled by a building, but by a tech. To clarify your post, I think in your mod the improvement 'commercial harbor' is the first building, that has the 'Allows Water Trade' flag. I have similar thoughts for the next version of CCM2, setting harbors to add only food to the city and to give ports the 'Naval Veterans' and the 'Allows Water Trade' flags. Unfortunately the city view of the building that opens seatrade additionally needs the Harbor pediaicons entry. So in the next version of CCM2 the port has to use the harbor entry and the harbor a different entry. I combine the use of the 'Allows Water Trade' flag and the 'Veteran Naval' flag to the same building as unfortunately the ' harbor' symbol that shows where I have to repair my damaged ships, is connected to the 'Water Trade' flag and not to the 'Naval Veterans' flag.

In the worldmap I´m working on, I found the easiest and best way to severly limit the number of ports (with water trade) is the need of a special strategic resource in the city radius. In my mod this will be the 'anchor resource'.

 

[Nanuk]

Nanuk,unfortunately trading over seas and oceans will not be enabled by a building, but by a tech. To clarify your post, I think in your mod the improvement 'commercial harbor' is the first building, that has the 'Allows Water Trade' flag. I have similar thoughts for the next version of CCM2, setting harbors to add only food to the city and to give ports the 'Naval Veterans' and the 'Allows Water Trade' flags. Unfortunately the city view of the building that opens seatrade additionally needs the Harbor pediaicons entry. So in the next version of CCM2 the port has to use the harbor entry and the harbor a different entry. I combine the use of the 'Allows Water Trade' flag and the 'Veteran Naval' flag to the same building as unfortunately the ' harbor' symbol that shows where I have to repair my damaged ships, is connected to the 'Water Trade' flag and not to the 'Naval Veterans' flag.

In the worldmap I´m working on, I found the easiest and best way to severly limit the number of ports (with water trade) is the need of a special strategic resource in the city radius. In my mod this will be the 'anchor resource'.

Yes, the tech unlock for ocean trade will not be enabled in the mod, only by sea trade. However, the building ability "enable trade over water" will not be enabled until commercial harbors are built. Harbors will allow coastal cities to grow to size 3 so certain cities will be metropolises before hospitals are unlocked. To simulate plagues and pre-20th century human overgrowth, I won't include recycling or mass transit, but will enable clear pollution early on. For Harbor there will be the requirement of near sea water, and near a river, and for commercial harbors there will be strategic resources required as well as a harbor. I may test requiring some for standard harbors as well, but I think this will severely cripple the AI, which the current requirements already do.

Another balance I was thinking of for America, since it will be the easy difficulty civ of the game (one of 3), was to start them on unsettle-able islands, forcing them to navigate to the Americas. This will simulate them having a late start, and also lag their progress so they don't just dominate the map every single game, but I have no idea how the AI will handle this yet. If it works, I may do this for a few civs. Not every civ will have settlers capable of expanding quickly, either. All settlers will be wheeled, some civs will have unique settlers that aren't wheeled. Only a few civs will have ships capable of transporting wheeled units pre-Age of Discovery.

I initially was going to disable all "produce veteran units" for airport/harbor/barracks, but these checks have some hidden features, such as for the airport, it is the flag needed to enable rebasing units.

How did you manage to enable city view for your game? I thought they were disabled after Conquests released.

 

[Civinator]

Another balance I was thinking of for America, since it will be the easy difficulty civ of the game (one of 3), was to start them on unsettle-able islands, forcing them to navigate to the Americas.

My worldmap starts around 1510 (shortly before the conquests of the Aztecs). The US are simply what will remain from the natives in North America, starting nearly one era behind the other civs, but will receive a very powerful boost in 1776 with the GW 'Declaration of Independence'.

How did you manage to enable city view for your game? I thought they were disabled after Conquests released.

CCM 2 is an expansion of the C3C mainfiles.

Spoiler :

City View Size 2 - Era 1:

City View Size 2 - Era 2:

City View Size 2 - Era 3:

City View Size 2 - Era 4:

 

[Nanuk]

Is there a tutorial for enabling city view? Or does it need to be done with an unofficial editor?

 

[Civinator]

Is there a tutorial for enabling city view? Or does it need to be done with an unofficial editor?

CCM 2 was done with the normal Firaxis editor 1.00. There is no tutorial, but simply read the post about the installation of CCM 2.

 

[Nanuk]

CCM 2 was done with the normal Firaxis editor 1.00. There is no tutorial, but simply read the post about the installation of CCM 2.

So playing as a scenario, it is not possible to have city view, it has to be played through the main folder?

 

[Civinator]

So playing as a scenario, it is not possible to have city view, it has to be played through the main folder?

Yes, so it is.

 

[Nanuk]

Thanks for the info. I guess the random map version of AGoN can be a main plug. Lots of extra work, but nostalgia makes it worth it. I remember constantly checking the city view in-between turns when I first played Civ 3 as a kid.

 

[Blue Monkey]

When seeking a trade route the AI tries every possible sequence of connections. Even limiting it to coast & sea tiles, that is a lot of combinations to check. Trade over water adds a lot to between-turn time. There is a workaround using air trade but calling it & using graphics of harbors, but I don't remember the details.

 

[Zefyrinus]

Tell me if I've gotten this right. If in a scenario you make settings for players to receive VP from wonders/techs/killing units/capturing cities/VP locations, but then start a game and uncheck the box for VP scoring, you will still get VP for wonders, techs, etc, just not for occupying VP locations? So the player cannot simply decide to play with or without victory points; if there are settings in the scenario for getting VP through wonders etc, then the player can't turn off that rule?

 

[Zefyrinus]

Another question, I hope someone can answer this. I made a small wonder called Spymaster's Quarters, which is the same thing as an Espionage Center. But I made it culture specific, so the graphics change depending on the player's culture group. Except I don't know what to do about the wonder splash. Is there a way to have different wonder splashes depending on the player's culture group?

 

[Civinator]

Tell me if I've gotten this right. If in a scenario you make settings for players to receive VP from wonders/techs/killing units/capturing cities/VP locations, but then start a game and uncheck the box for VP scoring, you will still get VP for wonders, techs, etc, just not for occupying VP locations? So the player cannot simply decide to play with or without victory points; if there are settings in the scenario for getting VP through wonders etc, then the player can't turn off that rule?

The preset victory conditions of a mod/scenario can be set completely customizable for each started game by activating in the editor for that mod/scenario both the Default Victory Conditions and the Default Game Rules in the Scenario Properties registry.

When none of these boxes (as in the screenshot above) or only one of them is enabled, you receive the listed options for that game in the starting menue when selecting a civ, without any possibility of changing them at the start of the game. When you click at the button 'Game Limits' in that screen while starting the mod/scenario, you only get a fixed list of the conditions of the game without a possibility of changing them for the individual game you want to start.

When both Game options in the Scenario Properties registry of the editor are enabled, additional boxes for manually enabling/disabling options of the game and a new button for 'Default Rules' are added to the starting menue when selecting a civ for the game. Per example in the next screenshot, the option 'Victory Point Scoring' is manually disabled for the game that should be started.

When additionally clicking on the button 'Game Limits', a list with the conditions for that mod/scenario appears, where each individual component of these conditions can be selected and customized.

By clicking on one of the individual conditions, a new window opens, allowing to change the value of that condition for the game that should be started.

After changing the value of the victory point location to zero in the example above, the new list for the starting condition of the next game is looking like that:

I found this result, while trying to find an answer to the question of a CCM2 player in that post: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/page-12#post-15358956

Another question, I hope someone can answer this. I made a small wonder called Spymaster's Quarters, which is the same thing as an Espionage Center. But I made it culture specific, so the graphics change depending on the player's culture group. Except I don't know what to do about the wonder splash. Is there a way to have different wonder splashes depending on the player's culture group?

I´m not aware of a possibility to attache different wonder splashes to a building with culture specific settings. In such a case I combine different images for each of these cultures in a single splash. Per example in my mod CCM the GW 'Holy City' can be built by different religious culture groups and this is the splash for that wonder:

 

[MeteorPunch]

I'm working on a random map mod and I'm trying to make it so that certain strategic resources only spawn 1 total on the entire map. If you go in the C3C Editor with the standard game and rules, and then go to Resources and put the appearance ratio for a strategic resource at 1, only 1 will spawn on the entire map. For some reason in my mod I can't have less than 2 of each strategic resource.

I've tried adjusting every variable I can, deleting all/some of each resource type, nothing seems to do the trick.

 

[Civinator]

I'm working on a random map mod and I'm trying to make it so that certain strategic resources only spawn 1 total on the entire map. If you go in the C3C Editor with the standard game and rules, and then go to Resources and put the appearance ratio for a strategic resource at 1, only 1 will spawn on the entire map. For some reason in my mod I can't have less than 2 of each strategic resource.

I've tried adjusting every variable I can, deleting all/some of each resource type, nothing seems to do the trick.

One possible reason for such an effect could be, that when playing a game, the settings in your modded biq (appearance ratio=1) are overwritten by different settings of the appearance ratio in an older biq with the same name, sitting in the Virtual Store of your pc.

 

[MeteorPunch]

That might be too technical for me.

All my .biq files have different names: 126, 127, 127A, 127B, etc.

I tried on both my modding PC (Windows 7 Pro) and gaming PC (Windows 10 Home) with no luck.