Rise And Rule Revisited (epic mod)

[stillbasicallyagoat]

Hi, I registered some years back as MeisterGoat, managed to lose my login credentials, and just re-registered to say that this is incredible.
Thank you so, so, so much for continuing this mod. I understand why people like the newer games, or Civ II - but III is gonna be my favourite for some time, seems to me.
And during my trinitarian re-install of DYP/RaR, I found out it's been continued?! With three sets of beautiful new terrain tiles... Wow, I don't know what to say other than amazing work.

For what it's worth, let me try to give back a little. No bugs to report other than what's been said by others so far.
I'll update if I find any.

On optional techs - I like them. Flavour, even if it's not 'optimal', is what separates games that I enjoy and play once or twice (Civ IV+) from those I come back to every three years (Civ III RaR).
Sometimes I like to rush optional techs just because, or research everything, or only use units from optional paths. I wouldn't be devastated if they were removed, but I'd be cautious about it.
I know the building hard limit is a real pain, but I think the illusion of choice/options is something that's overlooked a lot in games.

There's so many tweaks and fixes and neat things to comment on - I'm not around much, so just know that I'm awed you're doing this, thankful and rooting for you all 100%.
Best!

 

[Civinator]

stillbasicallyagoat, welcome back at CFC and thank you very much for your kind words about RARR.

The next version of RARR will come approximately at the end of this month (depending of Belofon not finding even much more errors see the next post).

 

[Civinator]

Thanks for kind words! However, there are still some errors to report.

1. There is no Modern Armor for Siam
2. Long Range and Strategic Bombers flavors haven't transport capacity of 1. This means that they can land on carriers.

Belofon, thank you very much for reporting those errors.

The Modern Armor for Siam is fixed now, but the option of landing many modern strategic jetbombers on carriers concerns many units and therefore is a big one, demanding to look into the settings of many of those planes. I will do my best to fix this problem.

Edited: The fix of the jet bombers, which could land on carriers, was not so time-consuming as I thought. I hope I have found them all. There were some among them, which also missed the doubled transport flags.

 

[stillbasicallyagoat]

Okay, knuckles cracked, first attempt at contributing a little...
I'm hoping to stick around a bit, maybe also give back.

First, the graphical stylings are just - lovely. Really aesthetically pleasing.

As a though, is it possible to split pollution from volcanoes/other possible disasters? Something that might fade 10-20 turns down the line, vs. pollution which sticks around until cleaned/treated?

Something that stands out to me, now that I've got quite a few years of strategy gaming under my belt...
I think that, if there's going to be a revision of the tech tree, more luxury/bonus resources being revealed - even late into the game - are a good use for techs.

One of the things I think every player likes is feeling that their worldmap is distinct. Even without considering pollution, if I'm not playing at 110% ( ;P ), I like to leave swamps and jungles around.
New farming tiles having distinct graphics is just - rewarding, and realising that I don't have access to a certain resource... That I might have to trade, threaten, ally, or forgo it? That's always great.
Or - perhaps I'm happy with my economy, and my people are happy, but someone comes calling at my shore...

So if you're trying to centralise some of the optional techs, and maximise the time certain units can be used, I feel that might be something to consider. Another thing - I can't say enough how satisfying it is to have certain resources keyed into certain continents/formations. There's just - so much that's so good about this mod.

Lesse, don't know if this is a bug because I think I forgot to enable VP, but it seems like my guys can only escort supply trains once. (I'll be bolding more useful info in case posts need to be referenced. Also, the limit refreshes when upgraded.)
Major Port can't seem to built in towns with fresh water. Hardly a problem, but I had a culture war going and I planned in advanced for that one point of culture, ahahahaha!

Just so good, regardless of what changes you decide on, I'll stick around to keep playing and try to help. Don't feel obligated to take my suggestions into account - they are provided as thanks, not as demands.
One last time, with feeling! Thanks for keeping this going!

oh! p.s. edit, is there a full guide for what generates pollution? townsize, effects, etc? Civilopedia is somewhat vague...

 

[Belofon]

Continuing with errors and (mainly) suggestions:

1. An arrow from Map Making to Mercantilism is absent.
2. Some unit entries in Civilopedia have blank descriptions:
   
   
   
   
3. If player uses language other than English (etc Russian) in classic Civilization, several entries (some spaceship parts) in RARR will use this language as well.
   
   
   
   
4. In their current state, early bombers are pretty much useless in comparison with airships. They have less bombardment power, less operational range and they can't land on carriers, use recon nor detect invisible units (while opening on the same tech and having same defence). In exchange, they cost 10 shields less, which doesn't matter anything in Industrial Ages.
5. Currently, the accelerated game types are broken. Many leaders were either replaced or renamed (which doesn't correspond to regicide), while victory points are gained by 1 point from victory locations (which doesn't spawns) and by 2 points from shiplements (and no other way).
6. Are there any plans to translate RARR to other languages?

 

[tjs282]

oh! p.s. edit, is there a full guide for what generates pollution? townsize, effects, etc? Civilopedia is somewhat vague...

There was a recent discussion about global warming and pollution in the main Civ3 forum, here.

I'm not sure what happens in RARR, but I do know that @Civinator has modded CCM so that most (tile)pollution doesn't happen at all.

Most of the 'polluting' Building-types (Factories etc. in Firaxis-Civ3), instead add unhappiness in CCM.

Population-pollution is hardcoded to occur only when a Settlement reaches 'Size3' (i.e. Pop13+ 'Metropolis' in Firaxis; needs a Hospital); but no building in CCM has the Editor-flag 'Allows town to grow to Size3'. Instead, there are are only Size1 'towns' (max. Pop6 in Firaxis, Pop10 in CCM) and Size2 'cities' (Pop7-12 in Firaxis, Pop10+ in CCM; needs freshwater or 'Duct), so population-pollution is completely avoided.

The only possible source of tile-pollution in CCM is therefore Volcanoes.

 

[XTC]

The only possible source of tile-pollution in CCM is therefore Volcanoes.

And usage of atomic weapons?

 

[tjs282]

And usage of atomic weapons?

Oh, yes, and that Thanks

 

[Civinator]

stillbasicallyagoat, thank you very much for your input about RARR.

As a though, is it possible to split pollution from volcanoes/other possible disasters? Something that might fade 10-20 turns down the line, vs. pollution which sticks around until cleaned/treated?

Unfortunately with Civ 3 such a setting is not possible. In Civ 3 you can only have pollution or no pollution.

Something that stands out to me, now that I've got quite a few years of strategy gaming under my belt...I think that, if there's going to be a revision of the tech tree, more luxury/bonus resources being revealed - even late into the game - are a good use for techs.

Civ 3 has the problem, that you can only have up to 31 luxury/strategic resources without running into the phantom resources bug - and these 31 strat./lux. resources must be distributed well in the editor (edited: they are 32 resources, but they count from 0 - 31). In RARR you currently have 27 strat./lux. resources, so some more would be possible. In the old RAR biqs - so only holding 27 of those resources - you have the phantom resources bug with the bad placed luxury resource 'Natives', that causes to show up a luxury resource in the luxury-small file of the cityscreen, that is not connected to your city. I changed that problem by setting the 'Natives'-resource to a bonus resource, so that resource itself was never used in RAR. My guess is, that it should have been set to be the Default Money Resource in the general settings of the editor, but that setting was never done.

In the next combined resources file for CCM2/RARR the settings for those resources is done to avoid the phantom resources bug and the 4 additional strat./lux. resources could be activated easily in the editor.

Spoiler :

Lesse, don't know if this is a bug because I think I forgot to enable VP, but it seems like my guys can only escort supply trains once. (I'll be bolding more useful info in case posts need to be referenced.

Yes, your guess is correct. The escort unit 'is freed' from its burden, when the supply unit was brought to the capital and that unit is transformed into gold. If you don´t have VP-scoring enabled, this function cannot happen, even not to the escort unit.

Major Port can't seem to built in towns with fresh water. Hardly a problem, but I had a culture war going and I planned in advanced for that one point of culture, ahahahaha!

That building has the 'allows city size 2-flag'. This flag (and the 'city size 3-flag') mostly trigger more problems than they are useful.

oh! p.s. edit, is there a full guide for what generates pollution? townsize, effects, etc? Civilopedia is somewhat vague...

Here tjs282 has mostly answered your question. There are three categories of pollution: Population pollution, building pollution and other pollution (Volcanoes, Nukes, Meltdown). The first two categories can be avoided by not allowing size 3 cities, setting buildings to negative pollution and of course using the standard settings in the editor for diminuishing those kinds of pollution. The third category can not be be avoided, when it was triggered in the game. For Global Warming the effects can be calmed down by setting the terrain to transform to itself.

As tjs282 posted, in my mod CCM I used these methods, as I think pollution is an 'unfun' element in playing Civ 3. In RARR I respected the settings of the original creators of this mod and didn´t do any changes to these settings.

 

[Civinator]

An arrow from Map Making to Mercantilism is absent.

Yes, that´s true. I think the original creators of RAR (and me too) have simply not found any good place to draw this arrow. When looking at the techtree, I think Map Making is not needed as prerequisite for the tech Mercantilism - and with the current setting the arrow from tech Map Making to the tech Ship Building wouldn´t be needed, too. May be it is the best to delete tech Map Making as a prerequisite for tech Mercantilism. Belofon, thank you very much for reporting this problem.

Some unit entries in Civilopedia have blank descriptions

Yes, this is also true. Doing the descriptions for thousands of units in the civilopedia is a terrible time-consuming job and I think a civer can only imagine about the amount of time, that is needed for such a project, if he has done such a job himself. May be there will come a time when the unit decriptions of CCM2 can also be used in RARR, too. In the cases of the empty unit description entries of RARR, the original creators set the link for a description of these units, but it seems they didn´t have the time to write those descriptions. May be it is worth a try to delete some of those links in the RARR civilopedia and to see, if now the description of the expanded mainfile for this unit in the combined CCM2/RARR upload will pop up.

If player uses language other than English (etc Russian) in classic Civilization, several entries (some spaceship parts) in RARR will use this language as well.

I have no idea, how to solve this problem. It sounds to me like a suboptimal programming of Civ 3.

In their current state, early bombers are pretty much useless in comparison with airships. They have less bombardment power, less operational range and they can't land on carriers, use recon nor detect invisible units (while opening on the same tech and having same defence). In exchange, they cost 10 shields less, which doesn't matter anything in Industrial

Belofon, thank you very much for pointing me to this silly setting I have done.

The Zeppelin now appears with tech 'Internal Combustion', has no additional hitpoint, cannot land any longer on carrriers (the ballon now, too) and the defense value of that unit now is set to 1. The arrows from the flight tech in the advisor screen were enlarged. I hope, I don´t forget to write the changed entries in the civilopedia.

Currently, the accelerated game types are broken. Many leaders were either replaced or renamed (which doesn't correspond to regicide), while victory points are gained by 1 point from victory locations (which doesn't spawns) and by 2 points from shiplements (and no other way).

I never cared about the accelerated game and a fix here has only a very low priority for me. For the use of King-units I have a complete different and in my eyes much better vision (as you can see in my CCM2 mod) and many of the other game limits can be adjusted manually in the next version of RARR.

Are there any plans to translate RARR to other languages?

As posted above, to do such a work is an incredible time-consuming job. There exists an in most parts working German version of RARR at civforum.de,
but this was only possible, because goethe, the boss of that German civ site, has written a German version of RAR 1.03 many years ago and I could use his work (so some parts of the game I would have translated different). Aditions of RARR, that were not in RAR, are mostly not included yet in that translation, as this is a matter of not available free time for such a job.

 

[stillbasicallyagoat]

Oh, wow, thank you so much, everyone. Just finished two concurrent games with my fave civ, Cleo, at the lowest and highest difficulties. Probably Rome, Ethiopia, or Carthage next...
Agricultural is so much fun when you get rolling. You still have to be able to irrigate, ofc, but, it's just fun. And industrial is probably my favourite trait. Anyway...

There was a recent discussion about global warming and pollution in the main Civ3 forum, here.

Hey, thank you. This is really helpful. I love global warming looming like the sword of damocles, but pollution must be insanely bad for non-industrial civs. I could manage it with my veritable army of workers, but I understand why the changes were made in CCM. Which leads me to...

Civ 3 has the problem, that you can only have up to 31 luxury/strategic resources without running into the phantom resources bug - and these 31 strat./lux. resources must be distributed well in the editor.

Everything about this is fascinating, I never knew that phantom numeration bugs extended to resources as well. : ( Sorry to hear that it's another issue to mess with, but thanks for going over things with me. I'll try to catch up so you won't have to repost things from before I came back, but - it really is appreciated.

As tjs282 posted, in my mod CCM I used these methods, as I think pollution is an 'unfun' element in playing Civ 3. In RARR I respected the settings of the original creators of this mod and didn´t do any changes to these settings.

I understand this view; for me, I want pollution to be present, but I feel like there must be a better way of implementing it. Like... If we had more buildings, a chain 'mineral-poor soil', 'nutrient-poor land', 'inhospitable conditions' that provide penalties to shields, food, and then commerce/growth would be interesting, with local pollution removing the buildings over time... But I don't think that's possible in Civ III. Hmnnnn... Anyway, thank you for respecting the original mod. Even though it's frustrating, I somewhat agree with them, though I also agree with you that it's an 'unfun' element. That might sound waffle-y, but I'd defend it is 'an element I feel is important to the feel and gameplay of the mod, but which really could use a revamp.'

All that said, I must check out CCM2, too, huh?

Finally... I'd be willing to write provisional entries for the blank entries Civilopedia, if it would help out in some way. I feel it's probably pretty low priority, but I'll do whatever I can to keep the spirit going.

 

[Belofon]

Some additional errors:

1. Just like Siam (as I reported before), Tibet haven't Modern Armor.
2. There is no Asian Riders (Asian flavor of Hussars) for Siam.
3. Asian Line Infantry have 6 defence instead of 4.
4. This is by far the strangest error that I've ever encountered in Civilization. During hotseat game I made a military alliance with another hotseat player and on the next turn I've found myself in war with this player (though I didn't declare war by neither of these players), while millitary alliance was still active:
   
   
5. Millitary Academy requires a victorius army.
6. The Corporation is prerequisite for Unionization, though The Corporation is prerequisite for Refining (which leads to Mass Production).
7. Newton's University trigger a Golden Age to Persians (millitary/industrious)
   

   Finally... I'd be willing to write provisional entries for the blank entries Civilopedia, if it would help out in some way. I feel it's probably pretty low priority, but I'll do whatever I can to keep the spirit going.

   In this case, I'd be willing to work on translation of RARR to Russian language. I feel it has even less priority than Civilopedia entries and requires a lots of time (several months at least, I guess), but this certainly will be useful. Also, my Civilization experience began with RAR, so I'd be delighted to take part in work on its mod-mod.

 

[Civinator]

Belofon, sorry for the delay in the answer (caused by RL reasons) and thank you very much for your additional error reports. I will have a look on them as soon as I have some free time for it.

In this case, I'd be willing to work on translation of RARR to Russian language. I feel it has even less priority than Civilopedia entries and requires a lots of time (several months at least, I guess), but this certainly will be useful. Also, my Civilization experience began with RAR, so I'd be delighted to take part in work on its mod-mod.

Belofon, I think many Russian civers would be very pleased, if a Russian version of RARR would exist and of course you have my 'blessing' to do it - but it is a really very time consuming task. If I remember well, goethe needed more than one year for the German translation of RAR.

 

[Civinator]

Finally... I'd be willing to write provisional entries for the blank entries Civilopedia, if it would help out in some way. I feel it's probably pretty low priority, but I'll do whatever I can to keep the spirit going.

stillbasicallyagoat, sorry for the delay in the answer. For nearly all of the industrial and modern units there exist detailed C3C civilopedia entries in my mod CCM2. The description parts of those CCM2 civilopedia entries must only be copied and pasted into the blanc description links of the RARR civilopedia, but if you really want to do this, you should wait until the next version of RARR (using heavily the CCM2 expanded mainfile) is released.

Here is an example of the description of the Gangut Class in the CCM2 civilopedia:

 

[Node60]

Belofon, I think many Russian civers would be very pleased, if a Russian version of RARR would exist and of course you have my 'blessing' to do it - but it is a really very time consuming task. If I remember well, goethe needed more than one year for the German translation of RAR.

There is a Russian version of RAR that can be taken as a basis.

 

[Civinator]

There is a Russian version of RAR that can be taken as a basis.

Node60, this is a great hint for everybody who wants to translate RARR to a Russian version, as this would reduce the time for such a translation enormously. Remembering my experiences with using the German translation of RAR for using it in RARR, RARR should mostly run with the existing Russian version of RAR and only the units that were added new to RARR, compared to RAR, must be added. At least these were my experiences when doing a German translation of RARR. Without the missing descriptions of those newly added units this could be done in a very short time.

 

[Civinator]

Belofon, I had a look into the RARR biq about your error reports:

1. Just like Siam (as I reported before), Tibet haven't Modern Armor.

Thank you very much for reporting that error. The error is fixed now.

2. There is no Asian Riders (Asian flavor of Hussars) for Siam.

Again, thank you very much for reporting that error. The error is fixed now.

3. Asian Line Infantry have 6 defence instead of 4.

One more time, thank you very much for reporting that error. The error is fixed now.

4. This is by far the strangest error that I've ever encountered in Civilization. During hotseat game I made a military alliance with another hotseat player and on the next turn I've found myself in war with this player (though I didn't declare war by neither of these players), while millitary alliance was still active:

In my mod CCM, military alliances are disabled. May be one of the civers in this forum can give a proper explanation how this can happen.

5. Millitary Academy requires a victorius army.

At present I cannot see any error here. Armies in RARR can be built by transforming MGLs.

6. The Corporation is prerequisite for Unionization, though The Corporation is prerequisite for Refining (which leads to Mass Production).

Thank you very much for reporting that error. The tech 'The Corporation' is deleted as a prerequisite for tech 'Unionization' in the next RARR biq. The arrow graphics of the techtree must still be reworked.

7. Newton's University trigger a Golden Age to Persians (millitary/industrious)

This GW has only the scientific trait. So I don´t know how it should trigger a GA for Persia.

 

[Theov]

Belofon, I had a look into the RARR biq about your error reports:

This GW has only the scientific trait. So I don´t know how it should trigger a GA for Persia.

Maybe he captured a wonder that would trigger a GA for his civ before.
If you build a wonder then yourself, a GA is triggered.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/strange-triggering-of-golden-age-with-wonders.86585/

 

[ynot56]

On optional techs. I like them.
Republic is my government of choice.
Stirrup is often passed up, but is sometimes valuable.
Encycequivalent of the lopedia can be a great equalizer if you are behind in tech.
Taj Mahal is very nice.
Supreme Court is virtually indispensable, really reducing corruption.

On other notes: The french equivalent of the bazooka infantry has the wrong defense.

 

[Izengrimm]

The next version of RARR will come approximately at the end of this month (depending of Belofon not finding even much more errors see the next post).

Greetings! So, do we have the next RARR already?