Specific Era *searched, perhaps not hard enough*

[JimRush]

Greetings,
It feels good to be back on the throne. I have been messing around in the editor and I was curious on how to create a certain scenario. Spent an hour or so searching to no avail.

My questions.

1. How do I set a scenario to be in a certain era? For example, I want my game to be only in the medieval era, or industrial era etc.
2. Once I have set my game to only take place in the industrial era, how do I still allow the game to "randomize" new world maps for me?
3. Where should I download mods with the Steam version?

Thank you very much!

-Rush

 

[Ozymandias]

Probably the easiest way to avoid earlier eras is to give them each only one tech, and preassign these to your starting Civs.

If you don't want to mess with the Tech Tree, go into the Editor, under "Scenario" select "Custom Player Data," then go to "Scenario" / "Scenario Properties," select the "Players" tab, and give away techs to your heart's content.

Cheers,

Oz

 

[T-mun]

You can also select directly the starting Era for each civ (player data). Sticking to that era is a bit more tricky since Civilizations games are based on technological progress. Still it can be done by giving the latest techs a very high cost that would require many years of useless research.
Question 2 is not a problem, you can modify the rules without attaching a custom map. Question 3 I have no idea since I don't use Steam. I guess it works like all other versions (put them in the Scenario folder).

 

[Big Bopper]

1. How do I set a scenario to be in a certain era? For example, I want my game to be only in the medieval era, or industrial era etc.

You can do this by creating a non-era tech (it will be automatically assigned to non-era, when you create the tech). Fill the civilopedia entry box with an entry of another tech (ie: TECH_Bronze_Working) to avoid a crash. Then assign this tech as a prerequisite to every tech you don't want to be researched.

 

[Mopean]

I have the steam version of the game,
go to your Steam directory, -> steamapps -> common -> sid meier's civilization III -> conquests -> scenarios. That's where you'll put most mods. If you're getting a mod that's not for Conquests, then you just put it in its respective expansion folder.

 

[oris1024]

I'm searching for the same thing as the poster.

You can do this by creating a non-era tech (it will be automatically assigned to non-era, when you create the tech). Fill the civilopedia entry box with an entry of another tech (ie: TECH_Bronze_Working) to avoid a crash. Then assign this tech as a prerequisite to every tech you don't want to be researched.

Tried this in vanilla civ3, but when selecting the dummy (non-era) tech as a prerequisite for another tech in another era Civ3Edit blocks it throwing a message:

my-non-era-tech cannot be a prerequisite for Rocketry because it is not available in the same era

 

[timerover51]

Greetings,
It feels good to be back on the throne. I have been messing around in the editor and I was curious on how to create a certain scenario. Spent an hour or so searching to no avail.

My questions.

1. How do I set a scenario to be in a certain era? For example, I want my game to be only in the medieval era, or industrial era etc.

As Oz said, go to the Scenario Properties, and under Player Data, give all of the techs for the earlier eras to the civilizations you want in the game. If all 31 are possible, the set all 31 that way.

To keep them in the desired era, you can play with the tech tree, but as I do not like to do that, I have a couple of other ways. One way is simply make all of the more modern units that you do not want in the game unbuildable by any of the civilizations. That is done using the Units menu on the Editor.

The other way requires that you first generate a custom map for your scenario. Then add a strategic resource to the game, and put it on at least one 1-tile mountain island in the middle of the ocean, and make that a requirement for all of the units and buildings that you do not want built. That way, the AI keeps madly researching away for all of these useless buildings and units.

2. Once I have set my game to only take place in the industrial era, how do I still allow the game to "randomize" new world maps for me?

If you want only to have your scenario take place in the Industrial Era, then make all of your rule changes to units, buildings, and techs, then save that as a custom .biq file with a blank ocean map, labeled say, Industrial Era Only Mod. Then open that file in the New Game menu, and set your world parameters there. Viola, a new random map. However, if you do that, you cannot use the unique resource as a way of limiting units and buildings.

3. Where should I download mods with the Steam version?

I have no idea there, as I have discs for both my Mac and Windows computers.

I hope this helps and let us know here how things worked out.

 

[oris1024]

To keep them in the desired era, you can play with the tech tree, but as I do not like to do that, I have a couple of other ways. One way is simply make all of the more modern units that you do not want in the game unbuildable by any of the civilizations. That is done using the Units menu on the Editor.

That's something obvious i've overlooked - thanks for the idea

Can't help but wish city improvements could be disabled the same way. That wouldn't cripple the AI like the "creating an inaccessible required resource" workaround does. Although it's a pretty creative idea, but it makes AI waste good portion of its resources on research while i dump all of my resources into production = armies = easily ploughing through half-producing AI = not so fair/fun.

Don't know if this helps the OP, but i guess i'll be looking into what light modding might shine on this.

 

[timerover51]

That's something obvious i've overlooked - thanks for the idea

Can't help but wish city improvements could be disabled the same way. That wouldn't cripple the AI like the "creating an inaccessible required resource" workaround does. Although it's a pretty creative idea, but it makes AI waste good portion of its resources on research while i dump all of my resources into production = armies = easily ploughing through half-producing AI = not so fair/fun.

Don't know if this helps the OP, but i guess i'll be looking into what light modding might shine on this.

What you can do there is require a specific building to be present for the improvements to be built, like putting them all in the city with the palace, but requiring a resource to be present within the city radius, and make sure that resource is not there. That does require a custom, to a degree, map. Or require two resources that are in totally different types of terrain, like Tundra and Jungle.

 

[oris1024]

Right after my previous post had a brilliant(or stupid?) idea - of just deleting the improvements and wonders from the improvements tab. Then, deleting the techs and units from their tabs for all eras except ancient.

Only inconsistent thing i noticed in the gameplay was the visibility of coal, oil, rubber, etc + the "build railroad" ability becomes available to workers once i built a road to coal. I haven't finished my first game yet to see if anything else might be wrong.

I'm figuring the railroads and the resources can be taken care of by simply deleting future-era resources from the resource tab - will try it later.

But this brings me to a new question - why bother with the workarounds such as setting ungettable prerequisite resources to improvements if these improvements can just be deleted? Unless there's some undesirable effect that deletion has that i'm not aware of

 

[timerover51]

Right after my previous post had a brilliant(or stupid?) idea - of just deleting the improvements and wonders from the improvements tab. Then, deleting the techs and units from their tabs for all eras except ancient.

It might help if you would state the era that you want to have the game take place. From the sound of it, you want it to remain in the Ancient Era. If that is the case, then you should be using the Rise of Rome scenario as the basis for your mod, and save yourself a lot of work.

Only inconsistent thing i noticed in the gameplay was the visibility of coal, oil, rubber, etc + the "build railroad" ability becomes available to workers once i built a road to coal. I haven't finished my first game yet to see if anything else might be wrong.

If you are still getting the "build railroad" ability, then somehow the Steam Power tech is still active.

I'm figuring the railroads and the resources can be taken care of by simply deleting future-era resources from the resource tab - will try it later.

Optionally, set them for to require a future, unreachable tech for them to appear.

But this brings me to a new question - why bother with the workarounds such as setting ungettable prerequisite resources to improvements if these improvements can just be deleted? Unless there's some undesirable effect that deletion has that i'm not aware of

That is done is some of the scenarios, but those also have specific data and art files with them. I have not tried to delete any buildings, resources, or units as I do not want to have problems with the Civilopedia file.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

That is done is some of the scenarios, but those also have specific data and art files with them. I have not tried to delete any buildings, resources, or units as I do not want to have problems with the Civilopedia file.

You wouldn't have any issues. If an item is in the civilopedia file, but not in the game, nothing is displayed. In order for a civilopedia entry to be in the game/mod, there needs to be a pointer to it from the editor in the "civilopedia entry" field.

 

[timerover51]

You wouldn't have any issues. If an item is in the civilopedia file, but not in the game, nothing is displayed. In order for a civilopedia entry to be in the game/mod, there needs to be a pointer to it from the editor in the "civilopedia entry" field.

I do most of my Civ3 playing on a Mac. My experience is that if everything is not exactly correct, the scenario will not run. It might run fine on my Windows Laptop, but not on the Mac laptop. As I like things to run on the Mac, I do not tamper with the Civilopedia or anything that uses it. Windows handles files totally differently than the Mac OS.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I do most of my Civ3 playing on a Mac. My experience is that if everything is not exactly correct, the scenario will not run. It might run fine on my Windows Laptop, but not on the Mac laptop. As I like things to run on the Mac, I do not tamper with the Civilopedia or anything that uses it. Windows handles files totally differently than the Mac OS.

Now that I didn't know...

Out of interest, does the editor still have the same "civilization entry" field? I was wondering if you'd attempted to delete an item in the editor just to see what happened?

I honestly know nothing about running Civ III on a Mac and respect that you do.

 

[timerover51]

Now that I didn't know...

Out of interest, does the editor still have the same "civilization entry" field? I was wondering if you'd attempted to delete an item in the editor just to see what happened?

I honestly know nothing about running Civ III on a Mac and respect that you do.

I use my Mac Laptop under Parallels to do editing, or my Windows Laptop, although under Windows 7, most of the overlays do not display in the editor for Conquest, although they do display in the editor for Play the World and the basic game. I have used Steph's editor for map enlargement and checking units, but it has a couple of quirks to it. I have used Quintillus' editor for the Mac, but is does some odd things with the Barbarians that I am still working on figuring out. Based on that, I tend not to experiment with deleting things.

With painstaking work, I have added the War Elephant to the Carthaginians as a Unique Unit, and managed to substitute the Liberty Ship for the Standard Transport in one of my WW2 Pacific mods, but that is the extent that I have played with adding units. All that was done using the Windows editor. The only editor for the Mac before Quintillus was the one that came with the MacSoft version of the basic game, which was the buggiest piece of software that I have ever used.