Old Civ3 mods

[Pat.Bass]

Hi
I've no idea about mods or how they work or what has been done with civ 3 with them. I like Civ 3 a lot, I am trying to play Civ 2 ToT but the graphics have got very fuzzy on the units and terrain which I don't really like. The graphics on Civ3 are brilliant. Two things I didn't like at all was the lack of Spy Units and I think zone of control had disappeared (maybe). The money required to buy tech or resources to steal it was ridiculous when I started playing it the first time. Anyway are these things that have been fixed by people a long time ago ?
Thanks a lot. (I know the game is a bit old but Civ 1 and 2 are still very enjoyable and haven't been totally improved on as of yet I think)

 

[vmxa]

Test of Time was great. ZoC is in C3C, but only certain units have it. Spy units were thankfully removed in civ3. I do not think it would be good to have stealing be easier/cheaper. I loved Civ2, but it had so many broken elements, I never played it after Civ3 came out. Top unit wins and the whole stack is destroyed, WTH!

 

[Civinator]

Pat.Bass, welcome at CFC!

ZOC in C3C is working different from Civ 2 and Civ 2 TOT. It isn´t an absolute blocker of movement for a foreign unit as it is in Civ 2, but a free shot on a passing foreign unit, that is only available to certain units.

Both Civ 2 TOT and C3C have its unique advantages and I like both a lot. I have seen, that you have found the Civ 2 forums at CFC and were told about TOTPP. You should really update your Civ2TOT to TOTPP. You can find it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-test-of-time-patch-project.517282/page-69#post-16255099

TOTPP holds more than 80 patches for Civ2 TOT, among them the no-cd-patch and additionally the option of lua-programming. The completely ugly graphics of Civ 2TOT can be replaced easily by a lot of better graphics done by modders. The multiple maps of Civ 2TOT are ideal for my personal Science Fiction mod, as they add a 3rd dimension to gameplay, and the Civ 2 spies and agents are wonderful yedi knights in this mod. The Civ 2 ToT events (and much more lua now) allows your phantasy to create events in the game that are not possible with modding Civ 3, p.e. the appearance of black holes or super novas during a game.

On the other side Civ 3 has a cornucopia of wonderful animated units, while Civ 2 TOT has very big problems with animated units. So in theory it is possible to convert many Civ 3 units to Civ 2 TOT, Civ 2TOT holds the programming error, that only the attacking unit is animated. So in a Civ 2 TOT battle the attacking unit beats like mad on the defending unit while the defending unit stands staticly in the landscape until either the attacking unit or the defending unit dies. There exists no defense animation in Civ 2 TOT. Even worse in Civ 2 TOT are the missing unit-specific movement sounds. In Civ 2 TOT you only have a clack,clack, clack when moving a unit. Even with the lua programming the on-movement trigger is missing. You could change the clack-clack sound for movement to one different sound (may be foot marching infantry as it is provided with the barracks), but if your jet planes or ships are moving with a foot marching sound, this is not so good either.

Other shortcomings in Civ 2 TOT are only 7 civs in a game (so the barbarians in Civ 2 TOT are much more flexible than in Civ 3 and can capture and hold cities), missing borders and missing bombardment of units (so there is a weak substitute with lua for the bombardment, using the K-key). On the other side there is only a weak substitute by Civ 3 modders for caravans and the ignore-city-walls and pikemen flags are missing in Civ 3, as it is the wonderful Civ 2 helicopter.