Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[r16]

am pretty sure ı saw a post about a Russian site that has a lot of Civ lll downloads . Last night . This morning ı can't locate it . Anyone else seen that ?

 

[tjs282]

am pretty sure ı saw a post about a Russian site that has a lot of Civ lll downloads . Last night . This morning ı can't locate it . Anyone else seen that ?

Was it a new post? And was the linked site potentially dodgy (e.g. allowing download of actual game-files, not just mods)? Because if yes to both, the post was likely removed due to CFC's zero-tolerance policy on piracy.

If it was an old post — and a legit modding site — we'd need more information, like... do you remember which subforum you were looking at? Or maybe, who made the post?

 

[Samson]

That reminds me of a question, is the No Raze patch, that is a version of the C3Conquests.exe file A) safe (ie. not malware) and B) legal (ie. not an unauthorized derivative work)? I mean the one that is included in say the star wars mod?

 

[r16]

pretty sure it was some Civlll collector of things ; came up in the latest 5 posts over the entire CFC that you see on the page you see after logging out . Was a Russian site , with so many things that it would be ineffective to describe the contents , used dep ositfiles as the storage medium , which is accessible in Turkey but the browser had warned the original poster about risks . Would have saved the page if at the webcafe but late at night with the tablet is not the thing for that .

 

[tjs282]

That reminds me of a question, is the No Raze patch, that is a version of the C3Conquests.exe file A) safe (ie. not malware) and B) legal (ie. not an unauthorized derivative work)?

AFAIK, the various NoRaze patches are all safe (is the one supplied with SW:TMA @Antal1987's v.4 patch?), but they are also all unauthorized reverse-engineered end-user hacks of a conquests.exe, i.e. 'illegal' in that they were never issued/ approved by Firaxis. TBH, I'm not sure why the DL-links remain available on CFC (maybe because the patches themselves are useless without the rest of the game-files...?).

These days, though, I rather use @Flintlock's patch-system — mainly for the GUI-, gameplay- and AI-improvements it offers (tiles show chop-status; units can be issued collective orders per stack, rather than individually; AI-Civs now use Armies and Artillery much more effectively) — but it also has the flexibility to include a NoRaze setting.

 

[Samson]

@Flintlock's patch-system

Thanks, any chance of a linky? I have failed with the sites search.

 

[tjs282]

Thanks, any chance of a linky? I have failed with the sites search

I was editing my post to add it when you posted. Now done.

The Discussion thread is here.

Should be noted that this patch is (so far) only compatible with the GOG/Steam (i.e. no CD-check) version of the .exe

 

[Laurana Kanan]

am pretty sure ı saw a post about a Russian site that has a lot of Civ lll downloads . Last night . This morning ı can't locate it . Anyone else seen that ?

The site was under review by staff for possible threats/CFC rule violations. It has been restored now, with a disclaimer.

 

[r16]

thanks .

edit: Especially after locating the thread and the warnings there in .

 

[Johann khan]

Hi everyone, is there such thing as work boats or reaping the benefits of sea resources aside from just working the tile?

 

[Theov]

Hi everyone, is there such thing as work boats or reaping the benefits of sea resources aside from just working the tile?

In order to get benefit of the tiles you just have to work them.
No special actions are needed.

 

[Civinator]

Johann khan, "working" working boats as in Civ 4 at present are not available in Civ 3, even not for developing sea tiles. The development of sea tiles in Civ 3 is done by buildings. So in theory working boats could be set in Civ 3 too, the AI is destroying them from time to time without a noticeable reason. The option to give the AI better values for producing and keeping them now is available with the last version of the Flintlock patch, but until now no such mod is existing.

It is good to see these things as you do and to detect them, as this can also be a good source for reminding the programmers who are working on a new version of Civ 3 to reflect about it. The use of strategic and luxury sea resources at present is not possible in Civ 3.

Edit: Added to the request thread for a future version of Civ 3:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/feature-requests.674449/page-4#post-16225721

 

[Johann khan]

It was counterintuitive to me that by just building a road I got access to horses? I'm not sure if it was the case but I thought I had to build a pasture. All I know is that I had the resource connected as I could see it on the cities. It was interesting not see rivers on continents 70% water map.

Lastly, how does someone know if the mod its installed, is there any sort of indication once the game starts?

Thank you for your time.

 

[tjs282]

It was counterintuitive to me that by just building a road I got access to horses?

Yes, that is how the Strategic- (and Luxury-)resource model works in Civ III.

To be able to build the units and buildings which require them, your towns must be connected to Strategic-resources via your "trade-network":
— By roads (if the resource is inside your borders)
— From Colonies, with a road to your territory (if the resource is still in unclaimed territory on your landmass)
— Via Harbours if (the resource is on a different island, and) you have all the tech(s) required to trade across all the intervening water-tiles; note that you can also use Harbours in towns controlled by friendly AI-Civs

But you can only trade resources with other Civs, if those resources have an uninterrupted trade-network connection to your Capital

I'm not sure if it was the case but I thought I had to build a pasture.

If you are playing the default Conquests game, there is no such building as a "Pasture"*. If you are playing a mod, you would need to specify which one.

*Unless you mean that the Worker should also irrigate the tile...?

It was interesting not see rivers on continents 70% water map.

The water-percentage refers to the (approximate) proportion of the map taken up by Coast, Sea and Ocean tiles, i.e. "70% water" = "30% land".

I am not sure if it is possible to increase the number of rivers generated on a Random map. The "Humidity" setting (Dry/Normal/Wet) at the setup screen affects how well vegetated the map will be (i.e. number of Forest + Jungle-tiles; possibly also Marsh-tiles), but I do not know whether that setting also affects the number of rivers.

Lastly, how does someone know if the mod its installed, is there any sort of indication once the game starts?

Again, that depends on which mod you are talking about?

Nearly all Civ III mods consist of a ruleset (.biq) file, plus any required additional folders containing any added units, artwork, text and/or music. However, these are (usually) run using the same executable as used for the base-game, and the save-files for mods do not look significantly different to the unmodded game versions, i.e. their default filenames will still be of the form "[Leader-name] of the [Civilization], [Game-date].sav".

Mod-files (.biq and other files) would usually be saved in the ../CivIII/Conquests/Scenarios folder. Mods stored here are accessed through the "Civ-Content" option on the first menu-screen.

Some modmakers ask that their mod be installed in the ../CivIII/Conquests/Conquests folder instead; such mods (e.g. "The Ancient Mediterranean" — or "TAM" for short) are then accessed using the "Conquests!" option on the menu screen (on a standard installation, this folder/option usually only gives access to the single-player historical "Conquest" mods prepared by Firaxis).

To the best of my knowledge, only the latest version of @Civinator's massive "CCM" (and "RARR") epic-game mod(s) is designed to be installed in/ over-write the base-game files in the ../CivIII/Conquests/ folder. If CCM has been installed as instructed, then this mod will start when you select "New Game".

That said, CFC-user @Flintlock has also recently been developing bug-fixing and GUI-improvement patches for the Firaxis game-executable. If you have installed his patches as instructed, his modded executable will be used to run the base-game (or any mod) instead of the unpatched executable from Firaxis. You will be able to see if this patch is running due to the slight changes to the interface (e.g. right-clicking on a terrain-tile will tell you whether it has already been "Chopped" for the Forest-shield bonus).

 

[Johann khan]

By the 70% water I just meant that I went with de facto settings and did not adjust any of them, I did not implied a correlation between the water settings to the amount of rivers.

Yes, that one is the one in question, made by Flintlock. Thanks for the help!

 

[Takhisis]

Hi everyone, is there such thing as work boats or reaping the benefits of sea resources aside from just working the tile?

Not in the epic (unmodded) game, nor in the Firaxis-made conquests, but if you want to tinker with the editor you can modify sea tiles' settings so they can have resources (e.g. oil) and pre-place roads onto them and/or try to build ‘sea worker’ units.
One major problem is that the AI doesn't know what to do with them. It's jsut that: it isn't programmed to use them so it won't. The same goes for land units with a transport capacity. It'll just use them like battering rams.
Another is that roads are set to give land movement bonuses (which you can modify in the editor), but, of course, they don't give movement bonuses. You can still link resources on sea tiles to land-based cities. The road graphics do look awful, btw, on water.

It was counterintuitive to me that by just building a road I got access to horses?

Not really. Civ3, especially in the prepackaged ‘epic game’ version, is meant to be seen on a grand strategy scale, which is why, e.g., units only have one defence and one attack stat and terrain as a whole modifies the odds a bit but you never deal with formations. Turns never last for less than an in-story year.

So bulding a road, which takes several turns and/or several workers, but never fewer than one of each, can easily be interpreted in ‘story’ terms as actually linking the entire district which the tile represents to a trade network.

 

[Johann khan]

I never enjoyed those hyper abstract interpretations of things because the games cannot make sense with their sense of time. But it beats civ 6 tho! ^_^

 

[Johann khan]

Are there any rules of thumb in terms of resource cost for trading with the AI? Also, how do you determine when its better to rush a tech for trash wars against AI or just trashing the AI when dowing for lands with strat resources? I ran into a predicament last night, on which I could not determine the best outcome when dowing for resources as I had none. I was not sure if it was better to out tech and use trashy units or to try to do it in the current era. I did built my military and attacked on the same era as them and got the worse as their ecos were more dev than mine mostly due to land (i was stuck on a small continent).

I am basically trying to assess the possible situations to counter the strat resource deficiency. In 6 you beeline to and kill them with xbowmen, in 4 you zerg and pillage and catapult your way into victory (pun intended). In 5 you just trade for the resources and counter attack. Here AI seems more intelligent as it does counter attack after the initial operation and does not simply toss their units to a city.

 

[Takhisis]

AI seems more intelligent as it does counter attack after the initial operation and does not simply toss their units to a city.

This really depends on whether it has do ‘defend’ a crapton of wonders in its core cities. In a continents/pangæa map that can be a nightmare, because they just pile up defensive units onto their wonders and let you conquer everything else yet stay at war with you, won't yield any land for a peace deal beyond that which you already hold, and will maybe launch the occasional laughable counterattack.

 

[Johann khan]

Which really speaks for the quality of 3 imo. I am assuming that you are aware that I am being very broad and general with these statements as all AI are subpar. We are just splitting hairs....well, I am.