[Col] Names.txt Alterations Discussion and Examples

[tuga2112]

Ive recently started playing col again and this time i decided to spice up things a bit by changing the game balance slightly and give myself better chances of a high score by adapting the Names txt file

Im curious to know what other people have done to this file to enhance their experience of the game.

In this set of modifications I have changed the Dutch to be Portuguese and gone from Orange to Green. (town names still the same)
wagon trains have 3 cargo capacity
frigates have 5 capacity
reduced slgihtly the volability of silver
upgraded 2 native factions to be 2 levels higher in advancement making it such that now theres 2 native factions in each advancement stage instead of the original spread of 1-1-3-3

I couldnt find anything regarding the amount of towns that each faction has, i would like to also be able to fine tune that. as from my expeirence the tupy are everywhere, but the arawaks have very few towns.

What have you guys modified in this file to bring up some enjoyment to your games ?

 

[AyCe]

I don't play with "mods" anymore, but I used to heavily modify the names.txt too!

I re-added the Teacher Skill to be buyable from europe, it's implemented in the game but unused (because it doesn't do anything other than maybe faster education).
I made arctic tiles yield very much. It might not have worked correctly, this might have been due to number overflow, I don't know anymore. (Reminds me of a bug I once had, where some forest tile would yield 101 (or was it 303?) tobacco every turn. Probably memory corruption too, though the machine I played on at that time was a Win95, so it might have been actual RAM corruption and not just the game bugging out.)
Changing colors of course!
Give every ship the man-o-war skin.
Also adding options in dialogs in game.txt and then discovering that they would not work (how could they, I just added some text after all).

I think the number of villages are random. I've seen all tribes have anywhere from 1 to ~20(?) villages. Pretty sure it's not affected by civ level or any other variable.
There does seem to be some logic though to place aztecs and inca preferrably in the west. This does not always work I think, but most of the time they will not be right at the east coast.


Sid Meier also wrote in his memoir book that modability was very important to Brian Reynolds. He opposed it, thinking "the players would just ruin the game balance for themselves and blame us!", but as we know now, this was the right choice!

 

[pavelbel]

I've removed Benjamin Franklin from FFathers. I think his function is overpowered and makes the game boring: it's always more interesting and challenging to play when everyone can declare war to you, or your king can make you do it (especially when you are not ready for it at all).