Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

Concerning the editor and mods that come with CivIII Complete (hopefully okay to ask that here): for whatever reason, any sort of 'later start' pre-packaged mod I try ('Medieval Start' 'Industrial Start' etc) or make with the ed always starts me in Cavemanland, which is what I'm trying to skip. I bought the download from GOG if that changes anything. Probably doing something wrong.

edit- I guess the Warriors/Workers etc were throwing me off in Medieval. Didn't think they'd still look the same (to my poor eyes) at that point in the game. And the year at beginning says 4000 BC, but tech is more advanced.

 

Hi Civinator. Thanks for answering.

256 buildings per city? For once the game designers have been quite accommodating. I think I confused the computer by making a building equivalent to a hospital require an aqueduct preventing cities that have river access from constructing that improvement.
I didn’t know that cities retain unusable buildings. Good to know.

P.S. Sorry for my late reply.

 

It's not that you're doing something wrong, but more that your expectations are, shall we say... overly optimistic? The GOG-version works fine (for Conquests anyway, still no PtW executable, mumble, grumble...)

As you've discovered, starting in a later era simply gives every Civ all the techs (and associated abilities) from the previous era(s). However, this option was primarily intended to ease creation of Scenarios which use a customised map, with resource-locations preset, and cities, terrain improvements, and/or units preplaced; it was not really intended to be used (without further modification) for epic games, because...

• With each new era, the tech-/unit-costs have been scaled on the assumption that you have successfully used the previous era(s) to expand/ develop your empire sufficiently to afford these higher costs; jumping into an epic game at the start of a later age (with only a Settler+Worker at your disposal, and no infrastructure, without a customised map and/or preplaced units) actually makes building/researching things harder than starting from scratch, and...
• Just because you've 'learned' the previous-era techs, doesn't mean that you'll be able to build all the shiny new things immediately: you'll still have to spend multiple turns expanding up to and hooking any needed Strategic Resources. And simply removing resource-requirements might be a bad idea for higher difficulty-level games, because...
• At difficulties above Monarch, in addition to their Settler(s)+Worker(s), the AI-Civs start the game with increasing numbers of the best Defensive/ Offensive units that they can currently build (either generic unit-types, or UU-equivalents): I would expect that later-era starts would therefore start with your opponents (much) better armed than they would have otherwise been, e.g. starting in the Medieval would give Spears and Archers to all the AI-Civs (instead of only the SCI- and MIL-civs, respectively) -- or Spears and Swords (or GSwords, or Immortals, or Legions...), if you've removed the Iron requirements

FTR, of all the units included in the epic game, only the native Workers' appearance gets auto-updated, at the beginning of the Industrial Age (or more correctly, at the beginning of the third age in any game, since the 'Industrial Worker' animations also appear late in the 'Mesopotamia' Conquest, which I'm pretty sure was unintended...). Other unit-appearance 'updates' are expected to happen via unlocking new techs, hooking up new resources, and then disbanding/rebuilding or upgrading existing units into new unit-types. Some of the buildings (e.g. Harbours, Barracks) and terrain-improvement graphics (e.g. Colonies, Fortresses) also auto-update with era-changes. I assume that the extra unit-animations were only provided for the Workers, so as to minimise the Civ3 programmers'/artists' workload, since making auto-updating versions of early units, just for the purposes of making later-era epic-game starts prettier, would have meant a lot of additional (and arguably unnecessary) work.

That said, thanks to the collective generosity of the many Civ3-modders, it is possible to get more units to auto-update their appearances, although you would need to find and download such unit-animation files and install them yourself. For example, CFC-user @Plotinus created/ assembled a collection of various Worker animations (e.g. generic Medieval Age Workers, Asian Workers wearing coolie-hats, chain-gang Slaves wearing prison-uniforms, among others). (Caveat: this would require over-writing the existing epic-game Art-files, so be sure you know what you're doing, and/or make backups first).

Or you could DL a mod in which all that hard work has already been done. For example, @AnthonyBoscia's 'Worldwide' mod includes multiple flavour-units which auto-update with new techs/eras, and I believe Civinator's 'CCM' mod does as well (currently at v.1.8; v.2.0 should be going into beta-testing 'real soon now'...)

 

I doubt it will be harder. If you start in the industrial age you can still build cheap warriors while you lack iron. Starting in a democracy instead of despotism will greatly help your civil build up due to lack of despotism penalty, 50% lower distance corruption, commerce bonus and the ability to use cash for rushing. This all makes it much easier than starting from scratch.

 

Which is why I wrote this bit:

...because, even modding the .biq for an Industrial start gives you immediate access to the Democracy tech, you would still need to further modify the .biq in order to start an epic game in that gov. If you didn't edit the .biq to start in Diplomacy, you'd then have to choose between building up basic infrastructure under Despotism and then switching (but at least the Anarchy period should be minimal, if you did it with only a few cities built...), or one of your first actions -- like within the first 2-3T -- would have to be revolution to eliminate the Despot-penalty as early as possible.

(I assume the latter -- even with zero free unit-support from your newly Democratised capital -- would still be a better choice, especially at the higher levels? The AIs will almost certainly revolt en masse at the start of such a game, since they won't be at war -- and their free-unit allowances at Monarch+, and restricted Anarchy-periods at higher levels, would mean that going Democratic immediately won't hurt them. But whichever course is chosen, while the human waits for his Anarchists to settle down, the Emp+ AI-LBMs may be coming...)

All of the above also applies with a Medieval start and Republic, but at least that gov-type supports some free units for the human...

 

Oni Ryuu, the 256 types of buildings-limit in Civ 3 is for the game. In the best case there can be the 256 buildings in one city, as the palace can only be founded in one city. As there are other flags that link buildings to special conditions (for example coastal or some special resources as a perequisite, there are normally much less buildings possible for a city than the maximum of 256 that is allowed in the game.

Here is the building list of the next version of my mod CCM as an example:

 

Impressive list, now I can confidently expand on my own improvements.
After I’m happy with my mod I intend on trying your CCM and RARR mods.

Thanks for the help.

 

I have 3 questions:
1.If a forest is cleared and is planted again a forest in that tile,how many turns need to wait to clear that new forest to obtain 10 shields,depends by era ?
2.I had a soft from here to calculate combat odds in Civ III,link saved but now after server of CivFanatics changed link not working.Where can find after changes that soft or other to see the odds ?
3.I asked before about this,in Civ II can see the map simple with editor/cheat mode,in Civ IV with Ctrl W.In Civ III can't,just with Civ3 MultiTool of Gramphos but this not working in Windows 7 and in XP more times errors.A solution to see the map before to play,other programs,in Civ IV can play a map without oil example,will have sure iron,horses,can destroy a civ or to take terrain to have oil,but in Civ III without coal for railroads,RUBBER,oil is very hard ? I play huge maps always=more time spent...

 

I think it is never.

 

No, Samson's right. You can only get the shield-bonus once per tile. Pretty sure this was patched in sometime during the original Vanilla version, to stop players from using Worker-stacks to repeatedly plant and chop all the flat tiles round a city for instant (or at least, much quicker) building-completion.

Not sure which software you mean, but CivAssist has a combat-calculator function (right-click within the 'World map' screen), if you can get it to work under whichever Windows version you're now using (works fine for me in WinXP and Win8.1).

Civ3 has no way of doing that in-game, no -- at least not until you get Satellites.

If Civ3 Multitool doesn't run on your machine, have you tried simply using the Editor to open a newly-generated 4000BC.sav? (Not sure if that's possible -- maybe one of the GotM designers could answer that question...?)

Even if the Editor won't open .sav files, you could certainly use it to open the original 'conquests.biq', generate (or design) a Huge map, randomise the resource-placement (not sure if you'd also have to set civ-starting locations -- but you can get the Editor to randomise those too), then save that .biq as a Scenario where the map starts off visible; you can then play that Scenario via the 'Civ Content' menu on the start-screen.

Regarding (Strategic) resources: Having randomly generated a map in the Editor, you could even check the (randomly-distributed) resource-positions, and then assign a 'good' starting-point to the Civ you want to use, ensuring that you'll have guaranteed access to the StratRes you can't live without (at least until they disappear -- but you can also fix that in the 'Resources' tab, by setting 'Disappearance Probability = 0' for some/all StratRes). You can also increase the 'Appearance Ratio' of resources; that way, you can get more occurrences of each StratRes per each civ on the map, which in turn means that your civ is more likely to have at least one of each resource accesible on your Continent (Luxury-resources tend to cluster though, so you're not guaranteed access to all 8 LuxRes).

Remember though: Any games played using a (EDIT) modified .biq (/EDIT), don't get recorded on your high-score list.

If the above sounds too much like cheating (or if you want to be able to record the final score), then you might want to try the 'MapFinder' utiility, which the CFC HoF-players use to find good starting-locations for their games. It works in conjunction with C3C's random-map generator, to produce multiple 4000BC.sav files with user-preset conditions (e.g. lots of Cows, near a river!). I prefer to play all-Random games, so I've never used this utility myself, and am not sure exactly which search-parameters can be specified, but if it allows you to specify a start with, say, Coal in the vicinity/on your Continent, you could then play a fully randomised game, which allowed you to explore your new world, while still being sure that you'd definitely have Coal (or whatever) available after you research the relevant tech.

 

Thanks much,but:
1.I played few maps last year,C3C 1.22.In a map I have Replaceable Parts and more new forests planted quick.More workers automated,thinking they will know what forest is 'ready' to clear.More new forests cleared for nothing,but too more cleared with good result after maximum 10 turns ,10 shields..I have saves,can prove this.
2.I use CivAssist,now I see that function,Ctrl Y,thanks.Now I have some Zulu impi in my territory,just retreat,retreat odds..
Previous soft I found it in a thread here,I don't remember who is the author unfortunately.If my memory is good,I think that program was maked before Conquests,I don't saw odds for privateer and other new units.
Evrika....,I found now with Google version 2.52e of that soft:
http://tokyocoolciv3.web.fc2.com/civ3PTWCombatcalce.htm
3.I don't play Civ III GOTM,just Civ II,I play C3C just for fun and in 2016 in XP I used C3 MultiTool,but now can't,errors,I don't know why...,maybe is missing a dll.Can't open the starting save 4000 BC with editor,other CFC member too recommended me to open with editor 4000 BC when I asked too about C3MT errors.
In 2016 having C3MT functionally I tried to generate a map with resource seed known from CivAssist,but new map generated more different,I saw all map making .biq 4000 BC save with C3MT.

 

Now I reinstalled C3MT v 1.12.6 from Gramphos page in Windows 7 and is OK,can use,maybe this version is updated.

 

I must admit, I seem to recall getting 10 shields from forests I've planted myself. Not sure what the criteria is though. Seems like something that would be fun to test out with some simple trial and error.

 

You can certainly get chop-shields from newly planted forests, but (AFAIK) only if that tile has never previously been harvested (neither by you nor -- I believe -- by the AI). The earliest version(s) of Vanilla did allow repeatedly lumberjacking a tile(s) for infinite shield-harvests, but this was of course exploitable. I'm not sure exactly when it was patched out, but it was no longer possible in Vanilla 1.29 (was that before or after the PtW release?).

The 64,000-dollar question is, whether the 'already chopped' tile-status ever resets? Catalin seems to be saying it does, but I'm 99.999% certain that's not true. You don't need trial and error to check/test which tiles are (still) available for lumberjacking, either -- the CAII WorldMap shows this as well, either with partly transparent [red] circles on the map itself, and/or by selecting a specific tile (the tile-info below the map will note whether or not that tile has been shield-chopped).

Spoiler :

There is/was also a diagram floating around somewhere on CFC showing where the chop-shields will go. I think I saw it in Cracker's(?) article re. Forestry ops, but since the various forum/software migrations that article no longer seems to be available. (IIRC, basically, chop-shields go to the first city encountered in the Forest-tile's 'BFC' which is not building a Wonder or Wealth, searching the inner 8 tiles first, clockwise 1N to 1NW, then the outer 12 tiles, clockwise NNE to NNW)

EDIT: Here is the diagram. I was remembering the layout right, but the diagram itself is slightly wrong, as detailed further down that page. The first tile checked is 1NE from the Forest-tile, and 1N is the last tile checked in the 'inner BFC'

 

Thanks,interesting about forestry operation thread and diagram.About 99,999%,I'm sure 90%,new forest planted in a tile having a forest harvested early in game produced 10 shields after more years,age changed,Replaceable Parts,etc.Usually I plant forests in plains tiles,not mines maked, for this reason,and I saw my automated workers producing 10 shields.But still is 10 %..Will verify in my new map,have more new forests in plains tiles,forests over plains before,will makes notes about tiles,if were forests.

 

I’ve heard somewhere that defensive buildings aren’t cumulative. Can anyone confirm this?
It’d make a main feature of my game pointless.

 

@Oni Ryuu Defensive bonuses for buildings are not cumulative. For example, a 30% + 60% bonus building does not equal 90%. Only the highest bonus is used the other is ignored. However, you can simulate a cumulative effect by giving the second building a 90% bonus.

 

Hi Laurana Kanan
Thank you for answering. That’s pretty deflating. I’ve set-up my game to use permanent and temporary defensive buildings. I’ll have to think of a work-around.

 

Curious: do you know if similar logic applies to the 'doubles Worker-speed' tech-flag? i.e. there's no point giving it to more than 1 tech, because applying it to 2 (or more) techs won't then get your Workers sped up by a cumulative factor of 4 (or 8, or 16, or ...)?

 

Does this include Sn00py's Terrain mod? I've been using that recently to better distinguish Sea and Coast tiles, and for general aesthetics. If so, then I'll have to fall back to the epic game if I want to beat my own high score.