Modifying small wonders and resource distribution...

[Fenris]

I love Civ3, but I hate a few bug...ahem...features:

1) Without a Great Leader, you can't build armies. That's fine for early civilizations, but by the time you're up to the Middle Ages, it should be possible to do so. Hell, look at the Swiss: They've got a pretty good army despite not having gone to war in generations. It doesn't make sense from a reality standpoint or a game standpoint. I don't particularly enjoy heavy military scenarios, but having an army or two would be great from a defensive POV. I can't imagine a 20th century country without an army of some sort.

2) Some crucial resources are too scarce and the resources tend to be bunched up together (the problems is far worse on the larger maps), so one corner of the board will contain all the saltpeter, another will have all the iron, another the coal and another the horses.

As such, I'm trying to tweak the game with the Civ3 editor. It's wonderful that they included it, even tossed in some docs, but I'm stumped.

On the resources issue, I've found that increasing the hell out of the resources tends to scatter them a bit more, but I'd rather just have them better scattered (except for saltpeter, which there's too little of). Anyone know a way to change distribution of resources? (I understand why the trade goods are bunched together from a game-standpoint, but if a civilization doesn't have iron or coal, it can't win and I don't want to play a game that I don't have a chance of winning.)

On the army problem: here's what I've tried: I've tried assigning the value "Allows armies to be built without a leader" to the small wonder "Forbidden Palace", in hopes that the Military Academy's requirement of "Requires a successful army to build" was connected to the small wonder, not the result. No luck. After building 8 cities on a normal sized map, I didn't get the "Forbidden Palace" option anymore. Apparently, what I've done is requrired that there be a successful army for the "Forbidden Palace" to be built.

And trying to attach the "Allows armies to be built without a leader" to barracks creates a pretty spectacular (and repeatable) crash.

Does anyone know if/how to change the prerequisites for a Small Wonder? (So that, for example, you can build the Military Academy when you have 8 cities under your control)

Fenris

 

[Kiki]

Ancient units built armies before in real life. Look at the Romans.

But Firaxis definitly needs to help improve the editor. I would love to build an army (even if only 1 if you have ancient times) rather than wait for a leader.

 

[Kino]

On the Leader/Army issue, have you tried altering units? Specifically, have you tried giving other units the "Build Army" Special Action? You could turn this on for a few select units (civ unique units, perhaps), allowing a few buildable units to make armies.

 

[slothman]

I'm thinking of making the great leader really expensive like 1000 or 2000 shields. You could still make armies possibly but rushing wonders would be less cost effective.

 

[GIDustin]

I believe that the resources are bunched up and thrown randomly was mainly to make it so you HAVE to trade with other civs in order to survive. I, actually, like the fact that I have the saltpeter monopoly because I can charge extremely high prices for it

 

[Fenris]

Originally posted by Kino
On the Leader/Army issue, have you tried altering units? Specifically, have you tried giving other units the "Build Army" Special Action? You could turn this on for a few select units (civ unique units, perhaps), allowing a few buildable units to make armies.

Good idea, but didn't work. It either crashed the game, or when I tried to let warriors build armies (to test...I know how unbalanced that would be) it didn't allow me to build warriors at all! Apparently there's some sort of flag that has to be triggered before you can have an army and the editor doesn't give the option of flipping that switch, so to speak.

I also tried to replace the starting worker with either a Leader or an Army. They end up with a scout's stats (0/0/1)nd neither works (You can't stack units on the army and the leader can't rush wonders or build an army.)

Sigh.

This blows my cool scenario idea. There was an old SF book called "A Hawk Among Sparrows" about a Viet-Nam era jet pilot who, along with his plane ends up in WW1. I had an idea for a game where you had one single super-unit (a tank or something) to start with. But if the tank ends up with (0/0/1) statistics, what's the point? (I don't know that it will)

Fenris