Tech limits

[ahenobarb]

I have asked this before, but I made a breakthru last night...

I managed to get Civ Fantastic Worlds to allow me to utilize all the squares in the unit.bmp (or .gif) file in the game by just adding new lines to the end of the units in the rules.txt. Ka-Plah!! 8 more units! (or 6 I forget off-hand)

I can also add new techs by just tacking them on the end of the tech list in the rules.txt. However, and this is the issue, they can only function in the game (so far) if they are "nil,nil" or "no,no" and hence useless. Does anyone know a way around this limitation. The problem seems to be that when you put "U4" as a prerequiste for an existing technology, Civ catches cold and shuts down. I tried giving it a purely alphabetic name, but no luck. Given that I had been informed you couldn't use all the squares, I believe somehow this should be possible. But if anyone else has beaten their head against this brick wall, please spare me the effort.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Warrior Code, 4,-1, nil, nil, 0, 0 ; War
The Wheel, 4,-1, Hor, nil, 0, 4 ; Whe
Writing, 4, 2, Alp, nil, 0, 3 ; Wri
Future Technology, 1, 0, FP, Rec, 3, 3 ; ...
User Def Tech A, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; U1
User Def Tech B, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; U2
User Def Tech C, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; U3
Extra Advance 1, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X1
Extra Advance 2, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X2
Extra Advance 3, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X3
Extra Advance 4, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X4
Extra Advance 5, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X5
Extra Advance 6, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X6
Extra Advance 7, 3, 0, no, no, 0, 0 ; X7

;
; Above 11 tech slots (U1 to X8) allow you to define your own
; civilization advances if desired. Supply the name, the AI
; value, and the prerequisites.
;
; Then use the "U1", "U2", etc.
; identifier to incorporate it into the tech chain as a
; prerequisite for other techs, units, city improvements.
;


The above is an excerpt from the rules.txt of the MGE version of Civ2 (Multiplayer Gold Edition) -I don't know much about FW, but if the game is built pretty much the same, you should name the extra advances with the X5 lable for instance. But if I remember correctly, there is some issue with how many extra techs is available with FW, that there is not so many as with MGE.

However, I have noticed strange behaviour, even with the classic Civ2, when playing around with the extra "userdefined" techs.
I usually use these only for "hidden" purposes, or techs at the very end of the tech tree. I don't think they were really meant to be preq's for other techs.

-Otherwise, always use the variables like "AFl" or "War" or "U1" with correct upper or lowercase, as the game is very sensitive in this regard. You will usually get an error message if you misspell some of these. More dangerous is it to make a tech-loop (tech a needs b and vice versa) -then the game will crash for sure when it encounters this problem.

Hope this helps,

Yours Truly,
Morten

------------------
"A handful of might, works better than a bag full of right!"
Max Stirner (1806-56)

 

[ahenobarb]

Great! Thanks Morten, I plugged in X1 and sure enough it worked!