More than 2 unique things

[abandag]

If you have more than 2 unique things for your civ (say 1 Unique Unit and 2 Unique Buildings), will only 2 still show up on the "Choose your civ" screen and the "Dawn of Man" screen? I'm pretty sure only 2 show up, but I've never actually been in a situation where I could test that, but I'm thinking in one of my upcoming projects the situation may come up.

If only 2 show, what can I do to ensure that the 2 I want to appear are the ones that do? Is the order you have them in XML or the order you activate them on the actions tab important here?

Any tips you could give me about this would be appreciated.

 

[TheManFromMars]

Hello there,

If you have more than two Unique things then yes, only two show up on the Dawn of Man screen or on the select-civ screen. What dictates it is the order they are put in the XML I believe (fairly sure I've tested this) but it is controllable. If you have 3 Unique things it's totally controllable, if however you have 4 or more I think you will only be able to see the two buildings or two units, not mix and match, since they come in two separate class overrides and one must take priority.

They will however all show up in the Civilopedia entry under your Civ - unless you hide it using a pseudo-tech, but that is another story.

Hope that helps
-Mars

 

[Nutty]

It's units first, then buildings, then improvements. You can change the order via mod for the Dawn of Man screen, but not, unfortunately, for the Choose your Civ or the Civilopedia.

 

[Pouakai]

There is also This UI modification by Whoward that allows for more than two Unique Components per civ

 

[abandag]

OK, so on the DoM screen, they show the units first, then the buildings. But in the XML, Building Class Overrides come first, then Unit Overrides. Also with America's UUs, the Minutemen is shown first, then the B17, but in XML it is opposite. Does this mean that the things that are entered in last in the XML show up first in the DoM and select-a-civ screens?

If so, do you think it would be workable to list UnitClassOverrides or something twice? For example if you technically have 2 UUs and 1 UB, but you don't really want one of the UUs to show up on the DoM screen for whatever reason, could you put the one you don't want shown on the top of the XML in one UnitClassOverrides, then the UB, then have another UnitClassOverrides with the one you do want shown? Think this would work in helping you manipulate which things were shown?

@Pouakai--Thanks for the link! But sometimes you don't want everything to show. For example, one of my ideas for a new civ is a trait where they get a bonus for building National wonders (Beyond the bonus they already get from the wonders themselves). I don't know lua at all, so the best way to do that for me would be to replace all the National Wonders for that civ with Unique ones that will give the bonus I want. I wouldn't want those to show up in the DoM screen, because they're actually part of the trait rather than a normal Unique Building. In game they would still be called National Epic or whatever (I would have to change the name in XML, but in-game the names would be the same).

Anyway, thanks for the replies. They have helped.

 

[TheManFromMars]

Hm honestly it'd look a bit messy I think as they would all still show up in the Civilopedia under your Civ.

Best thing to do is create a pseudo-tech that can't be researched but is simply 'in-the-game' and grants the building of a building that gives the desires bonus or unlocks these duplicate National Wonders you are after. If it is the former you'll have a tech show up in the civilopedia and a building, but they can be placed at the bottom of the list out of the way. If you choose the latter, all the buildings will show up, probably right underneath their real life counterparts.

If you explain in detail what you are trying to achieve I could have a look for you.

-Mars

 

[Putmalk]

Hm honestly it'd look a bit messy I think as they would all still show up in the Civilopedia under your Civ.

Best thing to do is create a pseudo-tech that can't be researched but is simply 'in-the-game' and grants the building of a building that gives the desires bonus or unlocks these duplicate National Wonders you are after. If it is the former you'll have a tech show up in the civilopedia and a building, but they can be placed at the bottom of the list out of the way. If you choose the latter, all the buildings will show up, probably right underneath their real life counterparts.

If you explain in detail what you are trying to achieve I could have a look for you.

-Mars

That doesn't work - every civ gets that tech if you start the game an era ahead of it.

 

[TheManFromMars]

Putmalk - Are you sure? I'm sure I did that for a Civ and it worked just fine, maybe I granted it to the Civ at the beginning I'm not sure, but I never ran into problems. It was a future era tech I think but it granted a building that facilitated a trait for me at the start of the game. I'm sure I playtested it and no other Civ was able to replicate it. Meh could be wrong, I'll have to recheck.

 

[Putmalk]

If it's a future era tech and you start someone out with it, they begin the game in the Future Era.

And yes, I'm sure.

 

[Tomatekh]

The cleanest way to do it is actually take Thal's lua from civ up that allows you to make buildings invisible in the city list, and trystero49's lua from here which let's you make them invisible in the civlopedia. (I'm pretty sure there's also an XML tag already programmed in that let's you do the same with units). If you don't want to mess with Lua, then you have no choice but have a random buildings in the civlopedia.

I don't really do this because I don't really care if they show up in the civlopedia (and sometimes I like to use the civlopedia entries). Though then I usually create a fake future era tech to store the buildings just to make sure they get pushed to the bottom of the civlopedia. You can use traits or lua to give them the buildings from the tech (but not the tech itself) and they won't start in the future era. However, you can't use a future tech to give specific things (like say being able to establish open borders, or change improvement yields) as that would actually require giving the tech itself and then starting someone in the future era. (Though, then I think you can use lua to reset their era, but I'm not sure if they would then progress normally / how spy acquisition would work).

 

[TheManFromMars]

What Tomatekh is saying is what I did I think, fairly certain nobody else can build my unique building trait thing in the game and it works fine, that is what I was suggesting he could do, perhaps I explained it poorly - after all I set this up ages ago and haven't looked at it in a while.

-Tomatekh, thanks for the lua link, I'm quite interested in using that actually.

 

[abandag]

Again, thanks for the replies and good suggestions.

I'm not really concerned if they show up in the Civilopedia. These mods I'm making are mainly just for me, and maybe a few friends who also play Civ. I don't really have any intentions of publishing them, at least not until I learn how to make some decent looking icons and symbols for my civs, units, buildings, etc.

I also don't particularly care if the XML is messy. Again, it's just for me, so as long as it works the way I want, what does it really matter if it looks messy? If it causes some problems like, oh, crashing the game or something, well, that's another story. But if just adjusting the order (even if it means putting certain tables in there twice) will work without causing in-game problems, then that's what I'll probably do. It sounds like the easiest way to get what I want. Maybe not the cleanest or most ideal way, but easiest for me.

If you don't want to mess with Lua

It's not that I don't want to use Lua, it's that I don't know how. I'd really like to learn Lua someday. I think it would really open up some options for me. But I'd know that I feel up to learning it right now. I've read somewhere here on the forums that there aren't many good Lua tutorials/guides for Civ5.