Modding Q&A

[Oni Ryuu]

The landmine unit was totally ineffective.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Is it worth changing the craters graphic to landmines and only allow minelayer units to create craters. I have no idea if craters can be set to a negative defence bonus but I know that they increase the movement cost and remove the terrain improvement. I know just building road will remove the craters but it’s another way to slow the enemy down. If anyone has any applicable information on craters I’d like to see how plausible this is.

 

[tom2050]

Here was an old thread on craters, i read through it, most of it is accurate for C3C..
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/craters.101921/

That is an interesting idea, to have a minelayer bombard do that and show a minefield. Although that minefield crater graphic wouldn't be functional to blow units up, it would slow down movement and acts kind of like pollution does. Along with that, maybe have the minelayer enslave an immobile "minefield" unit set to defense. If you give that immobile minefield unit the ability to pillage, it could pillage improvements, and I believe the AI will actively use it to do so.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Hi tom2050, thanks for the reference. I went through the thread and couldn’t find any practical information. Do you remember what kind of movement penalty it is for craters (set number, double terrain, uses all moves)? I’m fairly confident that we’ll be able to change the graphics but; the only way I can imagine altering the stats for craters is if they have a relationship with another (adjustable) feature of the game.

It’s beginning to look like a job for more testing.

 

[tom2050]

I think it just removes the road / railroad movement bonus, so the underlying terrain would apply. But if i remember, bombard will destroy a road first anyways. If you build a road on top of a cratered land, I cannot remember if that clears the crater or not.

Yea, may need to test!

 

[tjs282]

I think it just removes the road / railroad movement bonus, so the underlying terrain would apply. But if i remember, bombard will destroy a road first anyways. If you build a road on top of a cratered land, I cannot remember if that clears the crater or not.

In the epic-game, bombardment of an empty tile (or a tile with a redlined unit(s) if bombard=non-lethal) removes Rails on the first hit, then Roads+Mines/Irrigation on the second hit (leaving Craters if that flag is set for that bombard-unit), then Fortresses (possibly also Radar-towers, not sure) on the third hit.

And yes, IIRC, re-building a road over the Cratered tile, also clears the Craters (same as for roading over town-ruins).

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Thanks guys. I take it you didn't find any information on movement cost?

 

[Jorsalfare]

Craters and ruins are just visual overlays on tiles without improvements. They doesn't affect the movement rate (or food/shield/gold production) for the tile. Building any improvement will remove the crater/ruins from that tile.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Thanks Jorsalfare. That's the info i needed but it means that we can't use this method for mines.
I'm all out of ideas for now.

 

[Jorsalfare]

Just an idea.... What if your landmine in addition to HN, immobility and invisibility has cruise-missile flag? With range=1 it would be able to target neighbouring tiles. It would be a one-shot weapon like a landmine, and would consume one whole movement point from the attacker, and possibly also inflict some damage. A stack of such "landmines" would severly hamper an enemy advance. I don't know if AI would build and use such a unit, though, but fuad posted some results of tests with an enslaved unit with cruise-missile flag, and he says AI uses them very well.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Having hidden nationality and zero health seams to remove the “defensive bombardment only” and “zone of control” features from the unit.

The point is to stop, slow or restrict the movement of an entire (land based) army.

Fuad’s missile is basically the same as the roadside bomb. I couldn’t find a role for them (other than as an impractical secondary unit) so haven’t included them In my game.

A unit needs to be immobile but deployable, semi-permanent, able to damage several units (in 1 turn so no forlorn hope like with none ZOC artillery) and defensive bombardment only.

I’m rethinking the idea to make fortresses and barricades negative tile bonuses.

Fortress - Landmines
Barricade - Devils Playground

You can fill the map with then (land and sea, I think), they slow and weaken the occupying units, workers and military units can build them and they can be restricted to a resource.

If anyone's willing to do the graphics this is the layout.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Does anyone have any generic era splash pcx files? I'm still using paint and it alters the image when it saves usually messing with Civ transparency colours.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Does anyone have any generic era splash pcx files? I'm still using paint and it alters the image when it saves usually messing with Civ transparency colours.

Not sure what you mean by "generic". But if you can post the images you want to use (RGB mode is fine) I can convert them for you.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

HI Blue Monkey
Sorry, I meant Science Advisor (tech screen). The original Civ ones or any none-themed ones are fine; I just need them without guiding arrows. I’m not interested in adding my own tech arrows.
If you’re still happy to help, I’ve attached the original Science Advisor PCX’s.
Download

 

[Bluemofia]

I believe I do, or at least I have made a pretty convincing looking C&P hack.

I'm traveling at the moment, and don't have access to my files, otherwise I would have sent it to you, but I do recommend either upgrading from paint, or adding a pallet modifying tool to your kit, if anything so you have a much greater control over the pallets rather than defaulting to the standard 256 color scheme.

I personally use Irfanview, and I use that as the main pcx viewer. If I need to do anything specific with it, I export it to a .bmp file, export the pallet, do whatever modifications to the .bmp in paint and save, open it up in Irfanview, and re-import the pallet.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Thanks Bluemofia. That’ll be quite useful.

I decided to make the landmine graphics. They’ll do until I know that negative stats work.

Download

 

[wuhjah]

Maybe these can work until you get something more suitable. (I'm not sure whether your terrain buildings file was game ready or not. I didn't test it, but just set the palette in case that's what you were needing.)

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Hi wuhjah.
I tested the graphics for the TerrainBuildings.pcx earlier without any problems. I haven't tested the effects of applying negative bonus stats yet.
The blank science adviser screen is much appreciated.
Thank you

Edit: It looks much better now.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Does anyone have a program or method to reorder your list of units (tech’s, buildings etc. would be nice) in the editor? It takes about 10 days to manually retype all of the information from scratch and it’s horrific.
.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

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