Revised City List

[Cassius Critzer]

There doesn't appear to be a comprehensive city list to use on huge maps. Since I have the time, I will post a generic list of city names first which can be easily renamed within the game but preventing duplication. It will follow the following format.

Example
The Sioux have used up their first 20 names and the next one will be Sio21, then Sio22, and so on.
The Chinese likewise will have the nomenclature of Chi21, Chi22, and so on.

The second attachment will take longer. I will use the Internet to gather city names though some are rather easy to compile while others are obscure. For the sake of not being overly concerned with using esoteric names out of the pages of forgotten history, and not being overly obsessive compulsive if that was actually a Zulu name, then I will use modern names from the relative region based upon the starting location. However since I do enjoy history I will include original names when I can find them, although with indigenous people like the Sioux there were originally 10,000 tribes and who is to say that a particular settlement began as a Sioux name. Obviously I will choose from several tribes so places like Cahokia will show up.

In the USA certain cities have used loan words from various Native American, Mestizo, or Hawaiian settlements so there is blurring in nomenclature based upon history and colonization.

Since some indigenous names use unique characters or dashes, then I will sometimes use the translation, which is what the game designers elected to do. A settlement might be translated into Black Water or Flat Belly or named after a chief or elder.

Since there is no Australian civ or others in the Pacific Rim, while others are represented,then the additional names will reflect those civilizations. In the second release I will include Pacific Rim cities to facilitate reducing duplication.

I am limited by the forum rules to upload the updated city.txt file unless moderation approves it. It may take a month to compile 75 city names per civilization as that would include over a thousand settlement names.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

As far as I know, while there are several unofficial patches to various versions of Civ 2 (ToT and MGE gold), only one patch increases the total number of cities beyond 255.

If unpatched or unable to run the patch (as I am since I am using a Wine emulator), then if you have seven civilizations then each of you can only make 36 due to limiting new city creation. Talk about a just cause for global war! 255/7 = about 36. Thus huge maps become superfluous because major area will be unlikely to be colonized.

So your options are less opponents, adjusting the ai personality to perfectionists instead of expansionists, and perhaps using a scenario editor and designating the cities at maximum, and perhaps making the engineering unit to be so expensive as to be neglected by the ai, or even configured so a special kind of unit merely maintains the infrastructure in cases of pollution and pillaging by the enemy.

I would bet the settler and the engineer are hard coded so they must be in the unit list even if disabled by technology or by high costs.

Which actually could be an interesting scenario or mod as battles might take place away from cities, or neutral zones might be in effect where clashes occur. It would mean carriers as mobile platforms would be crucial, airbase location, and fortresses would all have to be carefully thought out.

If you are patched so you have no such limit, then when I upload the list you can probably use the seventy five to a hundred names (per civ and including extras so 23 civs times 75 =1725 names with only a maximum of 7 civs actually being used) to colonize to much larger numbers. I would estimate on the huge Kozhin Earth map(in the download section) I am using that Africa alone might have 50-60 cities thus theoretically 700 might be maintained in the larger landmasses including terraforming Greenland. If food use in the cosmic settings is set to 1, then tiny islands could with all port upgrades maintain population in excess of 25 even supporting units in the field. Thus 800 cities might be maintained in total if including the diverse land masses of Indonesia, Micronesia,.New Guinea, Cuba, Hispanola and Iceland, etc. Hawaii is of such strategic importance that it necessitates it being at least an airbase but probably a city on Oahu. I would bet Madagascar would also be used. Parts of the Bering Strait too.

Thus the revised city list, especially in version 2 would be very helpful.

 

[Noire Leblanc]

[....]I would bet the settler and the engineer are hard coded so they must be in the unit list even if disabled by technology or by high costs.[....]

Settlers and Engineers aren't hardcoded to always be available, although I believe the unit in slot 1 (Settlers conventionally) is indeed special in that it's what's given to all players at the start of a new game.

You could also just change any units with role 5 (Settler) to basically any other role. It is not, however, possible to decouple improvements from city creation in Civ2.

Many slots have special hard-coded properties in Civilization 2 up through MGE; the special abilities of Engineers (faster work, transform), Freight (worth more), Fanatics (only buildable under Fundy), Partisans (the bonuses against noncombat units), Spies (spy options) and Nuclear Missiles (require Manhattan Project) are all hardcoded to slots. The barbarian unit spawns are also tied to slots, even in TOT to my understanding (though TOT unbinds most of the other special properties by sticking them in UNITS_ADVANCED.) There's a comprehensive discussion of it somewhere around here but I can't seem to find it at the moment. (When I do I'll edit in a link unless someone else gets to it first.)