Modding Q&A

[Oni Ryuu]

Can someone tell me which file the airfield graphic is in?

 

[tjs282]

Can someone tell me which file the airfield graphic is in?

In my installation, it's in the .../Civ3/Civ3PTW/Art/Terrain/ folder: x_airfields and detect.pcx. There's also a 'x_airfields...shadows.pcx' file

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Thanks tjs282. I didn’t think to check the PTW folder. That would have drove me crazy.

 

[r16]

...
This would work, but you have to be aware that this upgrade line will preferentially give you Gold Horsemen over Iron Cavalry. In a situation where, if you have already built 10 Gold Horsemen, then lose your source of Gold, so you have to revert back to Iron Horsemen. As you advance to Chivalry, you are supposed to build Iron Knights, but your Gold Horsemen can't upgrade to Iron Knights, as they are farther along the upgrade tree. If Gold Horsemen are that much more preferential than Iron Knights, this will be a good method. However, if you want Gold Horsemen to turn into Iron Knights if you run out of Gold, I will recommend you to use this tree:
...

thanks for the answer . Both Iron and Gold Horseman would be exactly same , different only in the graphics . And Gold and Iron , for the purposes of discussion , would not appear on the same island or limited area of use . But as the player discovers the intentionally delayed means of trade , the seperate lines should converge into one . ı played the Lords of the Mods extensively and once added the Dwarf techs to Isengards . Being able to produce both units simultaneously makes a mess of the Build screen .

 

[r16]

The problem starts more early: When the AI tries to load the immobile land-unit on board of a ship this will result in freezes or at least in delays. So you should never give the load-flag to an immobile land-unit.

would that work if it was meant only for the human player ? Say ı load my unmoving fortifications on a ship and sent it to a different port ? Or maybe carry it overland by a caravan ? And there's no such units in the roster for the AI ?

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Yes, and this is how I’ve employed it in my game Tradable goods description. I’d also make a note warning the player about the crash hazard. Remember that if anything engages the transport unit on land; it would effectively make the fortification a mobile defensive unit.

 

[r16]

thanks for the clarification . Anything and everything for the human player in my mods and would help .

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Has anyone tested whether one of the custom editors will allow you to have a normal city improvement that allows you to build nukes? I’m told that if you set it to a small wonder, nukes would only be buildable in that one city. I want to be able to produce nukes in any city that has the improvement without doubling-up on small wonders. I’m trying to limit the availability and desirability of nuclear weapons.

 

[Bluemofia]

If it is set as a SW, it can be built in any city, not just the one with the SW. It does limit it to the civ which has built it though, and each civ needs to build it before building a nuke.

If you are not using armies, have you tried mixing it with the army flag? Armies need to be built in cities which have a build army flag (SW or GW only in the base editor, but maybe it is possible with one of the custom editors to set it to an improvement).

 

[Oni Ryuu]

I didn’t realise that being set as a great wonder allows everyone to access nukes as long as one player has built it. That’s probably because I’m always the first to build it and the last to use nukes.

I use separate infantry and mech armies that upgrade with each age and I’ve increased their accessibility to 1 army per city. They’re not as advantageous as I make them sound (because of ‘army killer’ weapons like VX gas and SCUD-D’s exploiting an army’s collective health) but they are a key feature.

I’ll try and get some testing done today but it’s likely to have the same result as the longevity test.

 

[Civinator]

I didn’t realise that being set as a great wonder allows everyone to access nukes as long as one player has built it.

This is the normal setting of Civ 3. The Civ3ConquestsEdit is correct when writing about that function: "Enables nuclear weaponry for all civilizations in the game. Note that if this ability is assigned to a Small Wonder it only enables nuclear weaponry for the Civilization that builds the Small Wonder."

Now some words about autoproduction of nuclear weapons by buildings:

Nukes can be autoproduced by Great and Small Wonders. If these wonders need a resource as a perequisite (p.e. uranium), the wonder must have access to that resource when the nuke is produced. The setting as wonder allows only one facility for the autoproduction of nukes in a civ by that wonder. I had not tested a setting when a great wonder provides multiple small wonders that can autoproduce nukes to a civ on the complete map or on a continent, or if there are more wonders that can autoproduce nukes for a civ.

As far as I remember, the story for the autoproduction of nukes by normal buildings is different from the autoproduction of normal units by these buildings. Normal buildings are not able to autoproduce nukes, even if a great or small wonder exists for that civ that allows the autoproduction of nukes.

 

[r16]

this was the thing ı hated about the Manhattan Project , nice to learn that .

 

[Blue Monkey]

Vuldacon has somewhere described situations where auto-production leads to units being "prebuilt" then actually being produced and placed on the map as a group when a specific condition changes. I cannot remember specific details of the mechanics so i don't know if it is a tech being discovered, access to a resource, or something else. Sudden appearance of a zombie horde might be a desirable part of a scenario design, but perhaps a civ instantly getting a whole arsenal of nukes may not.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Has anyone tried this setup for landmines?

Immobile, invisible, nationless, artillery (no HP), ZOC, airdrop.

The nationless attribute combined with zero hit points makes it so all nations can enter the tile without combat or enslavement. It can be deployed near a city or an airfield and only the owning player would be able to remove them.

 

[Bluemofia]

No, I don't think anyone's tried out that exact combination.

People have tried out immobile, airdrop artillery, but they had defensive values and the AI will build tons of them but not really paradrop them. They haven't combined this with zero defense, and primarily relying on ZOC or bombardment, mostly because the zero defense hidden nationality trick was discovered much later, and the idea that landmines are supposed to deny an area, not cause attrition by units moving past (not saying that it's a bad idea, just that once people have an impression of it, it tends to stick ).

I think the main reason people haven't looked into it, is that the AI behaves badly with them (With zero defense HN units, the AI will preferentially target them, because they think they are free workers to capture, so if you have a pair of them next to each other, the AI will waste turn after turn hopping back and forth between the two), but since this is a human player mod, it might work. Maybe if you also gave the land mine a bombardment range of zero, they can also attack enemy units on the same square they are on.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Will it cover all nine tiles (occupied and adjacent) with zero bombardment range and zone of control?

I did consider giving the barricade terrain improvement negative stats. Entering a barricade tile wastes all of a units moves holding it/them there with a 90% reduction in defence. the AI occasionally uses forts and i can't remember seeing any enemy barricades so it shouldn't cause confusion. The landmine unit is more practical because an unoccupied barricade would need to be bombarded only once to turn that minefield into a fortress. You could give both negative stats and call barricades devils playground but i can't predict how the AI would interact with negative terrain improvements.

 

[Bluemofia]

No, zero bombardment range only hits the tile it is on. If you want to shoot the adjacent tiles, you want bombard range 1. Zero bombardment range It typically is used for defensive bombardment, but with the bombard option unchecked. If you give it zero bombardment range, and give it the bombard ability, it can shoot the tile it is on, and only that.

Zone of Control only shoots at passing units, so if I move past the unit with zone of control, I have a chance of taking damage, but it's not consistent, and it cannot kill units as far as I know. You can move to an adjacent square, and then move to a non-adjacent square, and not suffer ZOC fire.

I haven't tested it before with a hidden nationality unit shooting enemy nationals on its own tile, so I don't know how this will work, but when you bombard the tile you are on, you can destroy the improvements that way.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

you can destroy the improvements that way.

I think you got a little confused, I proposed two separate incompatible ideas (unit or barricade) to incorporate something like landmines.

 

[Bluemofia]

No, I got it. I was just expanding on the unit method, rather than the barricade/fortress method. The zero bombardment range thing hasn't been tested too much from what I understand, because I don't think people tried it with HN, defenseless units, so I don't know if it will shoot the units it is sitting with, or ignore them and only destroy the improvements via bombardment.

As for the barricade method, I haven't seen the AI use them, but I do see Fortresses at chokepoints. It seems straight forward to test, so if you want to use that method, go ahead.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

I'll do some tests and get back to you with my results.
It's so hard to think of a way to have a practical method for including landmines and sea-mines in the game; especially for mod's.