Recommended Mods/AI Improvements/Other Q's

[RebelSchutze]

Probably redundant questions, but want to ask them in a different way and get answers for the (current year).

Are there other mods than C3X that can be run to improve a vanilla or custom scenario for Conquests that can also be run in conjunction with C3X? I have been using C3X for a while now and ofc it is great. AI is probably my biggest concern, I am a little bit less interested in UI, even those those changes can be really cool too.

For the past few years or so I have fiddled around with the scenario editor and am familiar with how to create scenarios, add units. What are the best strategies for improving AI tactics/growth/resource domination by editing scenario/unit rules?

Also some other random questions -
Is a 360 x 360 map actually render 129,600 tiles or is it reduced to 65,535? I'd rather ask than count myself.
What is your favorite/recommended overhaul mod? No judgement if you are repping your own work, I also like my own mods the best because they are the way I want to play, but I can also appreciate and be impressed by the work others do.
Can more than 31 players be added, and if so, without a UI overhaul?
On GOG I have no issues, except often when I take a city I get a game freeze - is this fixable? The only times I don't have the issue is when I raze the city or retake one of my own cities.

Since this is my first post on here - and I might end up going down the bajillion-hour modding rabbit hole like I did for Kriegspiel for CoH2 - I figure I might introduce my Civ background. I picked up Civ3 PTO in 2003 when I was six years old - I saw it in a catalog, thought it was cool because it had pictures of soldiers and war stuff, and had my mom order it for me on CD. All in all it's probably the game I have logged the most hours in and have stood the test of time (pun intended) and I have returned to it again on GOG after a long hiatus of mil-sim shooters and RTS games. I never knew Conquests expansion existed until just 2 or 3 years ago when re-bought the game so it was a pleasant surprise. I recently picked up Civ6 complete on Steam for sale, and although it looks real good, and seems to have more sophisticated mechanics, just doesn't quite touch the same itch, especially in terms of customizability and mod-ability.

 

[justanick]

Is a 360 x 360 map actually render 129,600 tiles or is it reduced to 65,535?

A 360 x 360 map has 360 x 360 / 2 = 64800 tiles. A 100 x 100 map has 100 x 100 / 2 = 5000 tiles.

 

[RebelSchutze]

A 360 x 360 map has 360 x 360 / 2 = 64800 tiles. A 100 x 100 map has 100 x 100 / 2 = 5000 tiles.

Appreciate it. I apologize if I'm lost on something, why is it divided by 2?

 

[justanick]

Appreciate it. I apologize if I'm lost on something, why is it divided by 2?

Open a map. In the top left there is the tile X:0,Y:0. Below it is the tile X:0,Y:2. There is no tile X:0,Y:1, but there is a tile X:1,Y:1. Odd X allows only odd Y and even X allows only even Y. So half of the (anticipated) tiles are missing by design.

 

[RebelSchutze]

Open a map. In the top left there is the tile X:0,Y:0. Below it is the tile X:0,Y:2. There is no tile X:0,Y:1, but there is a tile X:1,Y:1. Odd X allows only odd Y and even X allows only even Y. So half of the (anticipated) tiles are missing by design.

Much appreciated. I am calculating the civ start distances based on map area and the # of civs so it was something I was interested in knowing.

 

[Civinator]

RebelSchutze, welcome at CFC and good luck to your project!

Can more than 31 players be added, and if so, without a UI overhaul?

31 players (and the Barbarians) are the limit for Civ 3.

 

[tjs282]

...And @Civinator is being very modest by just answering that one little question, without mentioning his total-conversion epic-mod, CCM. Highly recommended.

 

[RebelSchutze]

...And @Civinator is being very modest by just answering that one little question, without mentioning his total-conversion epic-mod, CCM. Highly recommended.

I've checked it out! It's impressive work.

 

[Fergei]

In terms of "AI tactics/growth/domination" I would suggest the following basic changes in the editor:

i) disable Mutual Protection Pacts - encourages AI to pick more wars that are advantageous to them in the late game rather than becoming easily manipulated headless chickens in eternal war.

ii) increase capacity of all transport capable boats - making the AI effective at sea is well beyond my abilities, but by increasing transport capacity you make them much more of an amphibious threat and they are able to quickly transfer and re-form some of their doomstacks across water.

iii) change default difficulty settings to reduce starting units for the AI but improve their cost factor. This makes for a much more even challenge from the AI throughout the game rather than them leaping out to an early lead and becoming almost irrelevant the moment you have caught them back up

iv) create transitional government types with characteristics that lie between those default governments with war weariness and those without war weariness. An AI fluctuating between huge unit support of Fascism/Communism and low unit support of Republic/Democracy is a bit messy and can cause them to choose to just stick with the more violent options (to their detriment) as they prioritise unit support.

Plus (not from modding)

v) avoid exploits and limit your use of tactics/units that criminally undermine the AI (e.g, set a limit to your artillery use, don't use cheap units to block off land from AI settlers, limit the amount of times per era you will get an AI to join you as an ally in a war etc). When I resume playing I am going to increase the challenge by drawing up constraints on myself before I start a game, then having the discipline to stick to them. That will probably be the single biggest ways to improve the threat posed by the AI).

 

[Chalito]

These are all great ideas for AI fair play!!! Some additional constants I put on myself…

1. My Naval ships never bombard other ships, we just attack! Only because the AI Navy never bombards other ships, unless in Harbor.
2. The AI will pillage terrain, but will never bombard terrain. So I do the opposite by only bombarding enemy terrain,, but never pillaging.
3. I never use captured Artillery, keep in mind I use the C3X mod, so there’s lots of them. I disband them all upon capturing.
4. I try to keep my Artillery stacks equal to what the AI is bringing.
5. I’ve experimented with Invisible Transport ships and I like it, as the AI can no longer telegraph its moves. Forces me to build a Navy, as I make some of these See Invisible.
6. In a scenario with Air units, I will only escort Workers with AA units.
7. I never restart no matter how bad of a blunder I commit. I used to restart all the time back in the day, but it is much more enjoyable to try to challenge one self!

On another note, I so badly want to play CCM, but I know I’ll never have the time to really play it out. Maybe one day!

 

[Fergei]

These are all great ideas for AI fair play!!! Some additional constants I put on myself…

1. My Naval ships never bombard other ships, we just attack! Only because the AI Navy never bombards other ships, unless in Harbor.
2. The AI will pillage terrain, but will never bombard terrain. So I do the opposite by only bombarding enemy terrain,, but never pillaging.
3. I never use captured Artillery, keep in mind I use the C3X mod, so there’s lots of them. I disband them all upon capturing.
4. I try to keep my Artillery stacks equal to what the AI is bringing.
5. I’ve experimented with Invisible Transport ships and I like it, as the AI can no longer telegraph its moves. Forces me to build a Navy, as I make some of these See Invisible.
6. In a scenario with Air units, I will only escort Workers with AA units.
7. I never restart no matter how bad of a blunder I commit. I used to restart all the time back in the day, but it is much more enjoyable to try to challenge one self!

On another note, I so badly want to play CCM, but I know I’ll never have the time to really play it out. Maybe one day!

Ooh, I will have to look at invisible transport. That was not on my radar.

 

[Chalito]

Ooh, I will have to look at invisible transport. That was not on my radar.

Be aware, that you will not see the enemy disembarking on the AI’s turn, so in time of war you have to keep scanning you coastal areas for enemies.

 

[Civinator]

Be aware, that you will not see the enemy disembarking on the AI’s turn, so in time of war you have to keep scanning you coastal areas for enemies.

This is interesting if it is really happening, because otherwise, when an invisible unit disembarks from a visible ship, the normally invisible unit can be seen for a very short time when entering land (frequently noticed with the invisible units in CCM).

 

[Fergei]

Maybe it depends on whether you show enemy moves?

Back to the drawing board for me as I ended up losing a ship to an invisible barbarian galley and then Mursilles of the Hittites (who else) declared war on me with an invisible galley or caravel and sank 3 settlers. Yet I want to keep galleys with an attack point to maintain a naval barbarian threat.

I suspect the simplest thing will be to replicate transport ships with invisible equivalents for the AI only whilst the barbarians and myself keep the default ships. Definitely worth more experimentation to keep war time a bit more tense.

 

[Civinator]

Maybe it depends on whether you show enemy moves?

This can be. I play with all animations animated.

 

[Buttercup]

Of all my decades playing the game, my biggest gripe, and the thing which sours me the most about playing beyond the Medieval era, is that there's no pop-up at the start of your turn upon the generation of a new citizen.

The game invariably automatically puts the new Citizen to work in an unroaded Forest and automatically uses up that's turn's tile intake with it's own automatic choice. I've tried all of the various Governor features and none of them provide an acceptable solution.

You get pop-ups for all kinds of things, but the game is obsessed with moving your Citizens around upon Border expansion and just dumping new Citizens wherever it likes upon generation.

Micromanaging this is irritating even when you only have a couple of towns, but when you have 16 it's bloody infuriating trying to remembereach tuen which town grew one more citizen this turn. Then going into the town and manually moving the Forest tile onto the food tile.

I'm aware the basic recommended mod Civassist or whatever it's called can do a lot of the remembering for you, but I don't believe it gives you the interturn pop-up, so you can make sure that tile is worked properly from the moment it's active and you still have to search out the town once your turn starts proper?

Man, it's so desperate when you're pumping out Settlers and Workers and every single time you have to go back in to the town and rearrange every freakin' tile because the game is so desperate to play itself that it can't even provide the ability for the human to say where to put its own Citizens.

A population pop-up just like the New Building pop-up would make sooooooooo much difference to actually enjoying the micromanagement of any empire.

And that's before you even get to a Wouldn't It Be Nice if there was a warning pop-up after you click end turn advising you that [insert city] currently has more unhappy Citizens than Happy, are you sure you wish to continue with your end turn.

 

[tjs282]

And that's before you even get to a Wouldn't It Be Nice if there was a warning pop-up after you click end turn advising you that [insert city] currently has more unhappy Citizens than Happy, are you sure you wish to continue with your end turn.

I'm gathering that you haven't installed Flintlock's patch yet, then?

Because that too, already, has happened...

 

[Buttercup]

I'm gathering that you haven't installed Flintlock's patch yet, then?

Because that too, already, has happened...

And, oh jeez, you go into the town that rebelled only discover that it rebelled because the AI put a new citizen onto an unroaded Forest tile and simply moving the Citizen to a gold rich coastal tile immediately makes the town content again. Oh man, if only it didn't automatically choose tile placement...

 

[Civinator]

Man, it's so desperate when you're pumping out Settlers and Workers and every single time you have to go back in to the town and rearrange every freakin' tile because the game is so desperate to play itself that it can't even provide the ability for the human to say where to put its own Citizens.

This is another argument for the autoproduction of settlers and workers.

 

[Lanzelot]

BTW: should I move this thread into the Modding Forum, rather than "General Discussions"?