Test IV Time - The Alternative World 2016-10-05

[joelwest]

thanks joelwest for putting many effort on this mod to a fresh new look

I have downloaded your new improved biq and found out the small problem...

it's not the pediaicons.txt mistake indicated in your error message
... in the biq you misspelled the TECH_STATE_PROPERTY ..as.. GOVT_STATE_PROPERTY
in the civ advance (tech tree) tab of the C3C editor.

many interesting idea you had put on the mod when i play the mod

keep up the good work, friends.

I am glad you were able to figure out how to get the mod to run. You are my first tester since after doing the massive overhaul of your mod I had trouble getting it to run.

what follows is an outline of my methodology for making the add ons to your mod -

Spoiler :

1) units tab

Unit strength was a compromise. Initially I just blindly set all units to the same offense and defense just like in Civ 4. However unlike Civ 4 there is no way to give a unit a promotion, or to give it added built-in promo such as "+100% vs mounted".

I got around this by giving mobile units larger attack than defense and similar to Civ 4 disallowing them to fortify or sentry. However I later found out disallowing fortification forces you to give new orders to such a unit every single turn in Civ 3, so I went back to allowing ranged units to fortify and sentry so as to minimize micromanagement of units.

I spread out the unit max attack/defense values from level 4 spearman on up so that by the end of the advanced units tech tree the max attacks were four higher than in Civ 4. This change made the spearman to knight units more valuable each in their own right (if I calculated right).

It was wordier, but to remind a player of the unit Attack and Defense value since it does not correspond with either Civ 3 or Civ 4 (except for some of the earlier units before level 4 Attack/Defense such as the Archer) I used a "Attack.Defense" prefix along with a move/ranged prefix ["rX"] if the unit can move more than one tile [moving X tiles]. In the case of pure Attack or Defense units I added "A" or "D" to the initial prefix. (Examples units are scouts as pure defense and spies as pure attack.)

Unique units obviously needed to retain some advantage over their vanilla counterpart so I made sure each of them did - along the lines of Civ 4 if I could. I generally bumped up the attack, range, or defense by a total of at least two so as to make the UU clearly superior to its non UU counterpart. For example, a unit with a prefix of "09.07 r2" could be made a UU as 11.07 r2, 10.08 r2, 09.09 r2, 10.07 r3, etc. In some cases I gave additional advantages to a unit in moving swiftly through a given set of terrains. Those who want all the details will have to open the units tab of the biq of my add on scenario because I have yet to make Civilopedia entries that are linked to these UU changes.

I did not finish linking the King units to their Civ since I never play with that game option turned on, and I forgot which King is linked to which civ. In anyone who downloads my add on scenario does play this way, let me know and I will attempt to fix this.

My add on scenario adds the Grenadier, Trireme (from Civ 4 Warlords), and at least four animal barb units (including the humorous unit of Santa Claus). (I did not attempt to add the Civ 4 BtS units since I have yet to finish one of those games.)

2) terrain tab

Replacing forest tile with a cottage tile (in terms of tile output, the graphics have not changed yet) is my attempt to generate vastly more income in this mod. It is the only way I could see within the confines of the editor that a worker could be made to build wealth other than by connecting a resource such as gold that gives wealth. This may work fine in temperate climates (an option which I always chose to play) which have numerous forests/cottages at game start, but for those who chose desert or tropical climates at the game start will not have as many starting forests/cottages, and you cannot plant a forest on a desert tile.

I do not remember if a cleared jungle in Civ 3 is a grassland or a plains tile. In either case I believe a forest can be planted there, and so a tropical climate would not be as much of a disadvantage (only taking one more chop to cut down/improve) a desert climate.

BTW, POTTERY is the tech in my add on scenario to your mod that allows forest planting=potential cottage building since it is the tech in Civ 4 that allows cottages to be built.

(Sept 19, 2009 update - it turns out Civ 3 does not treat Forest as an overlay [like Civ 4 does] and hence forested hills remain hills for the purpose of tile stats. the correct tile graphics to update and the tiles where the cottage definition applies are for forested grassland, plains, and tundra [not hills or mountains]. see post #37 for updated files)

Along similar lines I attempted to add the Work Boat as a naval unit that can build coastal/sea roads and colonies in order to harvest offshore resources (as connected tiles in a city or colony). However naval units in Civ 3 cannot build roads or found colonies and land units (other than helicopters?) cannot travel into water terrain so the Work Boat had to scrapped and an Explore Boat used instead (at a slightly smaller cost in shields to build). Offshore resources in Civ 3 become available as a the town's cultural boundary expands to enclose such tiles.

3) improvements tab

In my add on scenario I modified the halls and workshops to work with all the appropriate associated gov types.

I added the "Ironworks (iron)" because there is no way other way of forcing Civ 3 to allow the building of a unique Ironworks using either the coal OR iron resource. If your city by some miracle has both coal and iron in its fat cross you can then build both the "Ironworks (coal)" & "Ironworks (iron)" small wonders in that fortunate city. However it is vastly more likely you will build separate Ironworks small wonders in different cities. These two parallel small wonders in tandem provide a much more likely production boost than is the case in vanilla Civ 3.

The watermill and windmill are worker tile improvements from Civ 4 lacking in Civ 3. To graft these two concepts into Civ 3 I made windmills an intermediate building between forges and factories, and windmills an intermediate building of the same type if the city is near water. (Two of my re-designed wonders provide all continental cities with one of these two improvements.)

Both a watermill and a windmill can be built if a city is near water. The factory "power" add-on building exclusion option ("Replace All Impr. with this Flag Checked") is NOT available to prevent this if this flag is to later prevent simultaneously producing coal plants & nuclear plants, etc.

I did not figure out how to associate lumber mills with cottage/forest tiles. The only available building bonus for commerce is a "+50% tax" checkbox in the editor, and this is way too high when markets, banks, etc. are already available. Lumber mills could be used for boosted production, but windmills and watermills already perform this function (see above). I am however open to other ideas for the use of lumber mills.

I added some missing Great Wonders - Notre Dame, Broadway, Rock 'n Roll, & the Spiral Minaret.

It was hard if not impossible to accurately translate the Civ 4 affects of many wonders in the Civ 3 editor. I resorted therefore to one of the powerful features that IS available in the Civ 3 editor, namely making an improvement available in all (continental) cities. (NOTE: for religions I allowed the founding civ to get a temple improvement in ALL cities - and by default Civ 3 also makes this temple improvement in future cities that are built or acquired.)

Since these re-designed wonders have a property not part of either Civ 4 or Civ 3 I added the type of free improvement bonus to the end of the wonder's name.

I kept the Civ 3 concept of using Pyramids to produce free granaries since I could not figure out how to easily implement the Civ 4 Pyramids wonder benefit of granting access to all possible gov's.

Remember a "gov" in T4T is actually a set of Civ 4 civics, so granting access to all "gov's" actually grants access to ALL civics.

Considering how powerful such a benefit would be and the fact Civ 4 has no such "unlock all civics" wonder, a good case can be made that a later (at earliest medieval) era wonder should be the one that unlocks such a powerful benefit - if such a wonder is allowed to exist at all. A later release of my add on scenario may add such a wonder, but would it would involve MASSIVE coding and has the huge potential downside of totally unbalancing gameplay unless the shield cost is high enough for such a wonder.

4) units tab - camels

I am in love with camel archers, but do not deem it kosher (pardon my pun) to build such units without a civ having access to camels.

To make sure the Arab civ is not consequently hosed with a potential no chance of access to its UU that requires camels I set the appearance rate ("ratio") for camels to equal that of horses, and raised both to the equivalent PTW strategic resource allocation level for horses (12 such resources for a standard 100 x 100 map with 8 players and default world settings = an "appearance ratio" in the C3C editor of 212). (I also raised the appearance of elephants to this rate in case some civ needs elephants for its UU.)

A culturally linked starting location for the Arab civ near some desert tiles would put the odds in their favor, but to date no such pre-made map has been created and posted on this thread.

If anyone plays the Arab civ and has this problem (no deserts anywhere nearby on a land based map) let me know and I may chose to drop the requirement for the Arab civ to have access to camels to build its UU.

In that case the Arab civ would still have to have access to horses (to nonsensically build camel based UU's). Keep in mind the Civ 3 editor does not allow OR for resources, only AND. (For the same reason I had to chose Copper or Iron for the swordsman unit and "arbitrarily" chose Copper since so many later units require iron but few if any require Copper.)

5) worker jobs

I deleted those jobs not found in Civ 4 - airfield, radar tower, barricade, and outpost. The latter really hurt since that is an improvement Civ 4 sorely needs. The only compensation in Civ 4 for not having outposts is that some Civ 4 units can get an increased visibility promotion called Sentry. This Civ 4 promotion of Sentry can be simulated in Civ 3 by giving a unit the "radar" special ability when the unit is defined in the Civ 3 editor units tab. (I did give some units the radar special ability in my add on scenario to the T4T base mod, namely the scout, explorer, aircraft carrier, army, Quechua UU, Sherlock [spy], gunship, and explore boat)

Colonies are not allowed in Civ 4, but I found no way to turn these off in Civ 3.

6) citizens tab

I added the priest specialist per normal Civ 4 rules (one hammer, one coin). I added all of the "Great Specialists", but since Civ 3 provides no way of upgrading specialists and does not use Great Person Points, I did not implement any of these "Great Specialists".

I suppose they could be implemented with new techs or small wonders, but Civ 4 provides no clear direction on how to proceed.

7) civ tab

There are 31 possible civ's in Civ 3. Civ 4 has introduced 34 civ's in its original release and its two expansion packs. In my add on scenario I arbitrarily decided not to implement the Korean, Frankish (mislabeled the "Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne" in BtS), or Sumerian civs.

8) civ advances tab

Initially for this mod I added all the component civics in your mod as "free" techs once the enabling tech has been researched. This potentially made it easier to define new gov's since you do not have to associate the enabling tech with the civics type (except here in this tab).

However this had the undesired side effect of wasting a turn to research this free tech, and making this tech unavailable after the era in which is available ends (except by trade with another civ).

A better system is to only define such free gov enabling techs when necessary. It turns out due to the limitations of the Civ 3 editor this IS necessary if the civic/gov has more than one prerequisite tech. There are approximately five such enabling techs currently defined. As yes, they suffer the limitations I mentioned above (one turn wasted for "research" and they are not available except by trade after the enabling era ends).

what follows is an outline of my methodology concerning how Civ 4 civics combine together to form an overall Civ 3 T4T mod "gov"/"civics combo" -

Spoiler :

to keep track of all the "gov"/"civics combo" types available I used a code system to name them.

NOTE to non Civ 4 players - a Civ 3 T4T mod "gov"/"civics combo" type is formed as a combo of four Civ 4 civic trait types - gov, legal, labor, and economic. (the Civ 3 T4T mod is unable to use the Civ 4 fifth civic type of "religious" due to the limitations of what can be changed in the Civ 3 editor.)

the first part of the "gov"/"civics combo" type code has to do with how "mature" the gov is, and hence how resistant to propaganda and capture by other cultures it is. this is my own (arbitrary) opinion on this matter and no doubt just reflects my own gameplay patterns.

the four digit code that follows the name of the "gov"/"civics combo" type refers to the four constituent "civics traits" that make up the "gov"/"civics combo" type.

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"civics traits" CODE CHART

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four digit code, name of "civics trait", relative weight of "civics trait", enabling tech, col in Civ 4 gamechart of this enabling tech, the tech era of this enabling tech, details of special function(s) of this "civics trait"

no gov = Anarchy = 0000 -> catastrophic corruption, 1% base assimilation rate

gov type "civics trait"

1xxx Despotism, +1, N/A (starting gov type "civics trait"), +1 to legal type "civics trait" unit support, low war weariness, rampant corruption, only gov type "civics trait" with "tile production penalty" that makes third F C or S produced disappear

2xxx Hereditary Rule, +2, Monarchy, col 5, era two, low war weariness, +10 military police, problematic corruption

3xxx Universal Suffrage, +3, Democracy, col 12, era four, high war weariness, minimal corruption, +1% to base assimilation rate, after some reflection I decided to disallow the "gov"/"civic combo" type of gov type "civics trait" Universal Suffrage with labor type "civics trait" Slavery although I kept the stubs in the biq file (someone could easily add them back for their own mod)

4xxx Police State, +1, Fascism, col 15, era five, -1 to legal type "civics trait" unit support, no war weariness, nuisance corruption, forced resettlement (lose some population per city upon adoption), xenophobic (cities do not generate culture unless citizens are more than 50% of your civ's nationality)


legal type "civics trait"

x1xx Barbarism, +0, N/A (starting legal type "civics trait"), 3 unit support

x2xx Vassalage, +1, Feudalism, col 7, era three, 1 unit support per city plus 30 free (good civic for < 15 cities)

x3xx Bureaucracy, +2, Civil Service, col 8, era three, 2 unit support, free workshop (linked to exact Bur gov choice) available with +50% production and coin for capital city (only)

x4xx Nationhood, +3, Nationalism, col 10, era four, 3 unit support (good civic for > 15 cities) , draft two units (only civic that allows this)


labor type "civics trait"

xx1x Tribalism, +1, N/A (starting labor type "civics trait"), cannot hurry production, 100% max research

xx2x Slavery, +0, Bronze Working, col 3, era one, forced labor to hurry production (only civic that allows this), 50% max research, after some reflection I decided to disallow the "gov"/"civic combo" type of gov type "civics trait" Universal Suffrage with labor type "civics trait" Slavery although I kept the stubs in the biq file (someone could easily add them back for their own mod)

xx3x Serfdom, +1, Feudalism, col 7, era three, cannot hurry production, workers work 50% faster, 80% max research

xx4x Caste System, +2, Code of Laws, col 7, era two, paid labor to hurry production (?) (this civic is currently undefined for my add on scenario to this mod, and is likely to remain so considering the vast the number of "gov"/"civic combo" choices already available - unless someone makes a good case how coding it would improve gameplay)

xx5x Emancipation, +3, Democracy, col 12, era four, paid labor to hurry production (only civic that allows this), 100% max research, +50% tax hall free city improvement for all cities is usually available (linked to exact Emanc gov type - I disallowed this benefit for an Emanc combo with State property/Communism), +1% to base assimilation rate


economic type "civics trait"

xxx1 Decentralization, +0, N/A (starting economic type "civics trait"), pay maintenance on city buildings

xxx2 Mercantilism, +1, Banking, col 9, era three, pay NO maintenance on city buildings

xxx3 Free Market, +1, Economics, col 11, era four, pay maintenance on city buildings, "trade bonus" - each city tile generates an additional coin (if it is already generating at least one coin)

xxx4 State Property, +0, Communism, col 14, era five, pay maintenance on city buildings, gov civic corruption is overridden with communal level corruption (based on number of cities, not distance from palace), disallows Emancipation tax halls to be built for the Emanc/State Property "gov"/"civic combo" type

===================================

each of the above techs associated with enabling the various types of "civics trait" are required to be researched to end an era
except for Democracy, Fascism, and Communism

===================

I will now account for the eleven special cases where combined enabling techs are necessary to research a "gov"/"civics combo" type by era with the number of special cases in that era shown in parens

era one (0) - Bronze Working
era two (0) - Caste System

era three (4) - Feudalism, Civil Service, Banking
need special CIVICS tech to combine the three pairs of two, and one for combining all three techs.

era four (2) - Economics, Nationalism -> Democracy (not required for era advancement)
need pair of Ec and Nat, and pair of Ec and Dem

era five (5) - Fascism, Communism
need pair of both era 5 techs, pair of each of the two era 5 techs with Democracy since latter is not required for era advance,
and finally a pairing of Fasc, Comm, and Dem

NOTE:
for the 11 special cases of combined "civics trait" types listed above the CIVICS tech that enables this combo MUST first be researched separately for a single turn even though the research cost is free

all other "civics trait" types have only one tech required to enable it due to the mechanics of era advancement and hence do NOT require one turn to be wasted on researching a gov CIVICS tech

===================================

example "gov"/"civics combo" name

60 Mon Bur Serf Fr 2333 (Hereditary Rule, Bureaucracy, Serfdom, Free Market)

+2 Her Rule, +2 Bur, +1 Serfdom, +1 Free market = +6 total times 10 (scaling factor) = 60 starting "gov" name prefix

2xxx Her Rule, x3xx Bureaucracy, xx3x Serfdom, xxx3 Free Market combined together = 2333

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note, to play my add on scenario to the T4T mod you do not need to know all the above details for each type of "gov"/"civics combo", and at some point in the future these details will be available in the Civilopedia

however knowing what is given above will give you a rough relative rank to each "gov"/"civics combo" type (based upon its starting prefix) that you may be considering adopting.

I created a terrain set for the \Art\terrain folder.

it is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen to make Civ 3 terrain as bright and legible and Civ 4 like as possible.

the complete 9 MB terrain file set ("Joel's Terrain") is in the Civ 3 terrain graphics download section -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7341

this terrain pack does not include the mansion for forests on hills replacement file since that is specific to this mod. that file and the rest of the files for my add-on scenario to this mod are posted in the Civ 3 mod pack download section -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=14

UPDATE Sept 19, 2007
it turns out forests in Civ 3 are NOT an overlay like in Civ 4, so forested hills remain hills in terms of tile stats. hence the tiles to be visually updated to reflect the new cottage stats for forests are grasslands, plains, and tundra (not hills). these update are at the end of post #35

==========================================

If you have a dial up connection you may prefer to download these files piecemeal from the following file sets.

This is the first five of the 32 zipped files.

The first file has been replaced with a playable biq file since original posting.

As I update the biq I will put the updated biq file here. This file is needed to get the latest rules and scenario changes I am adding to this mod. NOTE: this biq is now frozen since I later completed an entire add on scenario.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - biq & contributors.zip

View attachment Terrain - craters to goodhuts.zip

View attachment Terrain - grassland forests to hill jungle.zip

View attachment Terrain - irrigation DESETT to LMForsts.zip

View attachment Terrain - LMForests-old to LMMountains.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files six to ten of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - lwCSO.zip

View attachment Terrain - lwOOO.zip

View attachment Terrain - lwSSS.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxdgc.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxdgp.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files 11 to 15 of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - lxdpc.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxggc.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxggc-old.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxpgc.zip

View attachment Terrain - lxtgc.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files 16 to 20 of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - lxtgc-old.zip

View attachment Terrain - Marsh to Mountain Forests.zip

View attachment Terrain - Mountain Jungles to Mountains-snow-waterfall 1.zip

View attachment Terrain - Mountains-snow-waterfall 2 to polarICEcaps-final.zip

View attachment Terrain - pollution to TerrainBuildings.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files 21 to 25 of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - TerrainBuildings-Ares de Borg's to Volcanos forests.zip

View attachment Terrain - Volcanos jungles to waterfalls.zip

View attachment Terrain - wCSO.zip

View attachment Terrain - wOOO.zip

View attachment Terrain - wSSS.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files 26 to 30 of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - xdgc.zip

View attachment Terrain - xdgp.zip

View attachment Terrain - xdpc.zip

View attachment Terrain - xggc.zip

View attachment Terrain - xhills.zip

 

[joelwest]

Here is the \Art\terrain I replaced yours with. It is a compilation of popular graphics modders like SnOOpy adapted to what I felt looked best on my own computer screen.

This is files 31 to 32 of the 32 zipped files.

Spoiler :

View attachment Terrain - xpgc.zip

View attachment Terrain - xtgc.zip

 

[Stargate]

you can find it at civ3 editor , Civilization Advances tab , State Property civics (last tech input), Civilopedia Entry , GOVT_State_Property. It's should be type as TECH_State_Property to get the mod running. All the three biq you had post in the forum also got this same small mistake.

thanks for the info, joelwest
1. by the way , the new civics systems is very interesting, to make a tech as a civics ... why i never think of that.
2. can i know, where you got the units Grenadier and Trireme from?
3."POTTERY is the tech in my refinement of your mod that allows forest planting=potential cottage" .... i give 100% agree this improvement on the mod
4. Work Boat as a naval unit that can build coastal/sea roads and colonies in order to harvest offshore resource ... i miss this 1 too
5. 27 halls and 27 workshops is use for the every type of combined civics with
a. Bureaucracy give +50% commerce in capital hall that have a hall for commerce.
b. Emancipation +1 hammer from workshop that have a workshop for +1 hammer.
the civics combination can turns off the hall and workshop is switch to another civics combination ( in theory ) and need to make a new 1 for it.
6. Ironworks (coal) & Ironworks (iron) small wonders ... great concept
7. watermill and windmill (original mod) as building ... me thinking the same.
which wonder got watermill and windmill ?
8. There are 31 possible civs is for later expansions ... i dont want to delete it and put it available again... just to turn off as default to look same civs as civ4 got.

thanks for make many effort to upload terrain map on the forum, i will look into it

 

[joelwest]

you can find it at civ3 editor , Civilization Advances tab , State Property civics (last tech input), Civilopedia Entry , GOVT_State_Property. It's should be type as TECH_State_Property to get the mod running. All the three biq you had post in the forum also got this same small mistake.

thanks for the info, joelwest

2. can i know, where you got the units Grenadier and Trireme from?

the Grenadier shipped with Civ 4 from the very start. it was designed as a counter to the otherwise very powerful Rifleman unit.

the Trireme shipped with Civ 4 Warlords. It is slightly more powerful than a Galley, but does not have transport capacity. the Caravel replaces both the Trireme and the Galley when it becomes available.

3."POTTERY is the tech in my refinement of your mod that allows forest planting=potential cottage" .... i give 100% agree this improvement on the mod
4. Work Boat as a naval unit that can build coastal/sea roads and colonies in order to harvest offshore resource ... i miss this 1 too

I imported a naval graphic and attempted to mimic the Civ 4 Work Boat. unfortunately this is NOT possible. as soon as a offshore resource is within the cultural borders it is accessible - unlike on land where a road or river is necessary.

it also turns out ONLY land units can build roads or colonies, not naval units, but land units (other than helicopters?) cannot enter a naval tile.

in the downloadable copy of my add-on scenario I have replaced the work boat with an "explore boat". this new naval unit imported solely for this mod (this unit is not in either vanilla Civ 3 or Civ 4) predates the galley and trireme and allows for strictly coastal exploration - which a work boat in Civ 4 can also do if it is not used up connecting a naval resource. UPDATE Sept 19, 2009 - New biq posted at the end of post #35 adds radar capability to explore boat

5. 27 halls and 27 workshops is used for the every type of combined civics with
a. Bureaucracy give +50% commerce in capital hall that have a hall for commerce.
b. Emancipation +1 hammer from workshop that have a workshop for +1 hammer.
the civics combination can turns off the hall and workshop is switch to another civics combination ( in theory ) and need to make a new 1 for it.

my add on scenario fully implements bureaucracy halls and emancipation workshops as you originally intended them.

however I chose to disallow emancipation workshops if that labor civic trait is combined with the economic civic trait State Property/Communism.

the Civ 4 workshop tile improvement has eluded me to date since I have already modified the forest chop and replant improvement to simulate Civ 4 cottages. I suppose I could alter the jungle chop and replant, but this is again would be climate specific at the start of a game. UPDATE Sept 19, 2009 - new biq posted at the end of post #35 has cottage and workshop as bonus resources. unfortunately in Civ 3 you cannot control the occurrence rate of bonus resources so very few of these will appear due to the large total number of bonus resources. the cottage like forest tiles (on grassland, plains, and tundra) will in most cases far outnumber the cottage bonus resource tiles

6. Ironworks (coal) & Ironworks (iron) small wonders ... great concept
7. watermill and windmill (original mod) as building ... me thinking the same.
which wonder got watermill and windmill ?
8. There are 31 possible civ's is for later expansions ... i don't want to delete it and put it available again... just to turn off as default to have same civ's as with Civ 4

thanks for make many effort to upload terrain map on the forum, i will look into it

the terrain in your base mod is from Rhye's original (dark) terrain. it is much darker in general than SnOOpy's or the other contributors I listed. since I like lighter colored terrains and such terrains look more like Civ 4 (to me), I now offer a replacement terrain to download -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7341

in some cases two pcx files were both good, so I kept a few spares around.

here is the link to my complete add on scenario download in the Civ 3 modpack section -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7342

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to continue to improve the look and feel of this mod to mimic Civ 4 we need to change the default symbols for the food and shields to the Civ 4 symbols of bread and hammers (in the Civ 4 larger size relative to the tile grid). the tnt.pcx file in the terrain folder is the one for bonus shields

UPDATE Sept 19, 2009 - deleted all but second row from top of Cordy's tnt.pcx file. this is the row for grasslands with outcrops. all the other rows (grassland with no outcrops, plains, and deserts) contain no new info and so were deleted

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it would also be nice if the resources.pcx was altered so as to place a white circle with a black ring under the resources. this would make the resources look like the floating bubbles in Civ 4.

in the current version of my add on scenario to your base mod I use the resources.pcx file with blips in it. unfortunately that modder did not extend the set of icons to include the new Civ 4 icons, so some icons had to be duplicated to use his file. nevertheless this is the best resource graphic file I have found to date that has been developed for Civ 3 and looks somewhat similar to the Civ 4 floating bubbles for resource icons

UPDATE Sept 19, 2009 - finally figured out how to use Irfanview to update resources.pcx to have black abbreviations inside of white bubbles. need to save and re-import palette to do this. also there is a paint toolbar in Irfanview. all the resulting updated graphics plus the updated biq are at the bottom of post #35

joelwest

 

[joelwest]

thanks for the info, joelwest

1. by the way , the new civics systems is very interesting, to make a tech as a civics ... why i never think of that.

the downside of having a zero cost civic or great wonder is that it still takes one turn to build it, so neither is "automatic".

the free (one turn) civic techs do not currently appear on your illustrated tech tree (since I added it after you finished your mod).

in my original biq that updated your mod if a player fails to take the one turn to complete the free civic enabling tech in the era it first is available, he is no longer is presented with the chance to research it, only the possibility of getting by trade with other civs.

the current downloadable biq in my add on scenario fixes this by only requiring this turn to be wasted if the new civic trait requires at least two techs. see full discussion of this in the updated spoiler in post #49.

8. There are 31 possible civs is for later expansions ... i don't want to delete it and put it available again... just to turn off as default to look same civs as civ4 got.

I made a correspondence between the eight C3C civ traits and the eight Civ 4 vanilla civ traits.

See spoiler below for more details.

Spoiler :

I rank the eight Civ 3 traits best to worst as follows -

Civ 4 civ trait/Civ 3 civ trait
1) aggressive/militaristic
2) industrious/industrious
3) creative/seafaring
4) philosophic/scientific
5) financial/commercial
6) organized/agricultural
7) expansive/expansionist
8) spiritual/religious

this no doubts reflects my own style of gameplay.

==========================

what follows is a discussion of how I assigned these civ traits in my original revised biq. see spoiler later in this post for current civ trait assignment.

I found that the Civ 3 combos (using above ranking
1 to 8) of 2/3 and 2/4 did not exist. to make the game
more interesting I changed the Egyptian civ traits from
the Civ 4 vanilla default of 3/8 to 2/3, and the Arabian
civ traits from the Civ 4 vanilla default of 4/8 to 2/4.

the other four high value civ trait combos according to
my ranking are France 1/2, Mongol 1/3, Greek 1/4,
and German 3/4. other civs may have better Unique
Units than the UU's for these six civs with high value
civ trait combos (according to me).

since I knew the name and Civ 4 properties of their Unique Units (UU's) this allowed me in my original revised biq to add eight more playable civs to the eighteen originally in your mod.

the eight new playable civs are Babylon, Zululand, Vikings, Ottomans, Khmer (with Korean leaderhead), Ethiopia (with Hittite leaderhead), Netherlands, and Maya.

the remaining five civs (Iroquois[with Civ 4 Sioux chief], Celts, Carthage, Portugal, & the Byzantines) were skipped because at least one leader trait for all their defined leaders was part of the Civ 4 Warlords expanded set of civ traits (and hence cannot be matched to the eight C3C traits in a one to one way).

in my add on scenario to your mod (now fully available for download) I have assigned Civ 4 traits to all 31 possible civs that Civ 3 allows. unfortunately for these purposes Civ 4 to date with the Warlords and Beyond the Sword expansion packs now has 34 civs, so I had to pick three civs to skip.

see spoiler below for all the details -

Spoiler :

what follows is a discussion of how I assigned civ traits to the 31 max possible civs for Civ 3.

first, with eight traits taken two at a time with order not mattering, there are

(8 x 7) / 2 = 28 possible combos. if I assigned one to each of the 31 max possible civs, I would still have three duplicate assignments.

my prior spoiler gives the rank order I assigned the civ traits from one to eight.

of the 28 possible combos I decided the six most valuable ones were the combos of 1/2 (mil/ind), 1/3 (mil/seafaring), 1/4 (mil/scientific), 2/3 (ind/seafaring), 2/4 (ind/scientific), and 3/4 (seafaring/scientific). deciding to have two civs for each of these six civ trait combos had the side effect of eliminating three of the 28 possible combos since there were only three duplicates to spare.

I found that the Civ 4 leader assignments had duplicates of the powerful 1/5 (mil/commercial) and 1/6 (mil/agriculture) civ trait combos, so I added these to the duplicate list and raised the civ trait combo skip list from three (see above) to five. I then picked the five weakest civ trait combos to skip based upon my one to eight rank ordering of civ traits discussed in the previous spoiler. so I ending up leaving out civ trait combos 5/7, 5/8. 6/7, 6/8. and 7/8.

this left me with coverage for 23 of the 28 possible C3C civ trait combos, with the six most powerful combos duplicated, and with two additional powerful duplicates.

I tried to follow the strongest (based upon my ranking) Civ 4 leader traits as closely as possible given the above constraints. where I was forced to bump up a civ trait to achieve the overall result outlined above, I noted this in the civ's name, i.e. Arab (+6) means the strongest Civ 4 Arab leader was 4/8 and I bumped up the 8 by 6 to a trait of 2 for a net result of 2/4.

the civs I decided to skip were the Koreans, the Franks (mislabeled the "Holy Roman Empire" of Charlemagne in BtS), and the Sumerians. (the Franks had two Warlords civ traits, and so the assignment of traits by me would have been entirely arbitrary anyway.)

until I add replacement leader head art the following civs will have a split personality - the Khmer civ is using the Korean leaderhead, the Ethiopian civ is using the Hittite's leaderhead. the Sioux and Iroquois are combined to form a joint North American natives' civ.

however I know somebody must be dieing to play one of the three Civ 4 civs I skipped so the unique unit folder has been included in my add on scenario. it will up to such a person to change the biq file to add the missing civ they want. changes will also have to be made in the units tab of biq file to make the UU researchable (I currently have it set to the unresearchable dummy tech "_ABC") and to disable the research (set it to the "_ABC" tech) for the UU of the civ being replaced.

here's the final result of all of these assignments and changes -

traits civ(s) * = strongest combos
---------------------------------------------------
*1 2 France, Russia
*1 3 Mongols, Celts
*1 4 Hellas (Greece), Sioux/Iroquois
1 5 Inca, Viking
1 6 Japan, Babylon
*2 3 Egypt(+5). Rome(+4)
*2 4 Arab, Maya(+3+3 replaced both civ traits)
2 5 China
2 6 America
*3 4 Germany, Khmer(+3)/Korea
3 5 Dutch
3 6 Ethiopia/Hittite
4 5 England
4 6 Byzantines(+4)
5 6 Carthage
===================
weaker civs below
===================
1 7 Zulu
1 8 Aztec
2 7 Portugal
2 8 India
3 7 Persia
3 8 Mali(+2)
4 7 Ottoman(+2)
4 8 Spain(+3)
===================
skipped civ combo traits below
===================
5 7
5 8
6 7
6 8
7 8

regarding my new terrain compilation for use with your mod, I like the bright colors, but I still cannot "see" a resource until I accidentally connect it to my empire via a road. I am now using the blips version of resources.pcx file to help solve this problem.

my compilation of terrains is now available in the terrain graphics section of this website -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downlo...o=file&id=7341

=================================================

the most surprising thing about my current rule settings is that delaying the capacity for a civ to have an entertainer (and hence the ability to give a city some instant happiness to prevent rioting) until the early tech Priesthood throws alot of cities into utter confusion starting around pop 4 or 5 (including my own cities). I captured a size 4 city and was unable to quell the riot until I finally researched the tech (Priesthood) that allows an entertainer.

I need feedback on whether delaying entertainers until the Priesthood tech is a good idea. this gameplay feature does not correspond that closely with Civ 4, but it does make the game more interesting.

in the game I played the AI was clueless that either researching and founding a religion (Great Wonder) or rapidly researching to get to the tech that enables entertainers (Priesthood) was the only way to get bigger more productive cities (where rioting could be prevented with either entertainer or temple happiness).

playing as the French I did not start with Mysticism, so I did not originally try to found any of the three easy early religions. however after a while I noticed the religions had not been founded by the other civs, so I ended up founding all three early religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, & Judaism).

 

[joelwest]

thanks for the info, joelwest

3."POTTERY is the tech in my refinement of your mod that allows forest planting = build cottage (forest redefined cottage like as 1 Food, 3 Coin)"
.... I 100% agree with this improvement on the mod

7. watermill and windmill (original mod) as buildings that are forge upgrades and a prerequisite to a factory (not tile improvements as in Civ 4)
... I think the same.

which Great Wonder grants free watermills and windmills?

I used continent wide city improvements for redefined Civ 4 Great Wonders that could have no Civ 3 equivalent, ie increased Great Person Points, etc.

I did this because the Civ 3 editor allows this to be defined for any of the techs on the tech tree and hence is quite customized for each Great Wonder (unlike one of the limited number of checkboxes for a specific gift to a civ).

the current list of Great Wonders and their usually all cities on the same continent city improvement -

Spoiler :

Pyramids granary
Great Wall free walls
Sistine Chapel theatres
3 Gorge Dam hydro plants
Parthenon libraries
Stonehenge monuments
Hagia Sophia forges
Angar Wat courthouses
Taj Mahal windmills
Eiffel Tower broadcast towers
Space Elevator watermills
Hermitage markets
Statue of Liberty banks
Hanging Gardens aqueducts
Spiral Minaret coliseums
Chichen Itza castles

note:
the Oracle Great Wonder is more powerful in the T4T mod than in Civ 4 since it gives TWO not one free techs. (this was the only checkbox in the C3C editor available to give a civ free techs.)

however the first tech is the one you are currently researching, so be careful what you research the turn before getting the Oracle.

ideally it would be the most expensive tech you can research (and want), and only the research will only be started the turn before the Oracle is finished in order to maximize the gift in beakers from the Oracle great wonder.

 

[joelwest]

I have added the details of my gov naming system in a spoiler in post #41.

I did not list all the characteristics of each civic though I may do this at some point. (I determined the characteristics of each gov by comparing the settings for each gov in the gov tab of the Civ 3 editor.)

I have renamed the Emancipation and Bureaucracy city improvements to reflect which gov is associated with them. The Bureaucracy capital workshop is now a small wonder to prevent gameplay exploiters from moving the capital around to gain more of these workshops.

========================================

One thing that is confusing me is that I have found no apparent benefit to adopting the Caste System civic. It appears to do exactly the same as Tribalism. ie 100% worker rate and cannot hurry production. The fact that very few of the govs you created used Caste System also leads me to believe this.

Please let me know if Caste System does something in your mod other than what Tribalism (the default labor civic) does.

 

[Stargate]

One thing that is confusing me is that I have found no apparent benefit to adopting the Caste System civic. It appears to do exactly the same as Tribalism. ie 100% worker rate and cannot hurry production. The fact that very few of the govs you created used Caste System also leads me to believe this.

my version of Caste System is created extra after found out between:
Universal Suffrage that can spend gold to finish production (CIV4) and Slavery that can sacrifice people to finish production (CIV4) which this combination is cannot co-existed in the T4T mod.
So i make the Caste System with combination of communal corruption (State Property) and two commerce will produce an extra commerce (Free Market) together with Universal Suffrage that can spend gold to finish production and 3 Legal Civics.
my Emancipation is +1 hammer from workshop. just a substitute for it.
In your mod Universal Suffrage can spend gold to finish production are change to Emancipation are alternative way, than the Caste System are not needed in your mod. 4 civics with 4 types for choosing is good already.

the current list of Great Wonders and their usually all cities on the same continent city improvement -

Spiral Minaret coliseums ,Taj Mahal windmills ,Parthenon libraries ,Sistine Chapel theatres all agree. some i want to follow CIV4 setting.
Space Elevator manufacturing plant and Hollywood ,Notre Dame, Broadway, Rock 'n Roll are not redefined the wonder effect yet.

how do you like the new terrain? I like the bright colors, but I still cannot "see" a resource until I accidentally connect to my empire via a road.

great, the map is quite bright and have some kind of white stone or village ..i think.

the eight new playable civs are Babylon, Zululand, Vikings, Ottomans, Khmer Ethiopia Netherlands, and Maya.

your want to make a complete package is quite stunning.

I need feedback on whether delaying entertainers until the Priesthood tech is a good idea. this gameplay feature does not correspond that closely with Civ 4, but it does make the game more interesting.

entertainers can enable on the start or early tech (example mysticism) are acceptable to me because civ3 game play are different.

I deleted those jobs not found in Civ 4 - airfield, radar tower, barricade, and outpost. The forest planting=potential cottage is can generates commerce.

i agree your new version in this mod, there are optional. The civ3 editor are preset road to have movement and commerce and forest is for forest, really can change it?

to continue to improve the look and feel of this mod to mimic Civ 4 we need to change the default symbols for the food and shields to the Civ 4 symbols of bread and hammers.

can feel of the civ4 graphic if it can change, i didn't had the info on it yet.

 

[sercer88]

Hey, Stargate and Joelwest!

I downloaded this mod probably almost a year ago and was a little disappointed (now I realize I had it coming My expectations were a little bit too high...)

Now that I see some work on it...is there anything I can do to help? It seems you have done a whole bunch of work on it, and it is looking great (I really like the idea to replace forests with cottages...that's a great move, I think.)

I guess I just want to see how close Civ III can come to its more recent counterpart.

Oh, and I only have experience in Civ IV vanilla...so...no Warlords or BtS help here...

 

[joelwest]

Now that I see some work on it...is there anything I can do to help? It seems you have done a whole bunch of work on it, and it is looking great (I really like the idea to replace forests with cottages...that's a great move, I think.)

I found some terrain files on this forum and may eventually substitute a building for the forest so it is clearer that a cottage exists. My current downloadable add on scenario replaces the default forest hills terrain with a mansion, but this is a cosmetic (and misleading) change only. For some reason Civ 3 interprets such terrain as hills, and so "cottages" do not exist there (in terms of tile resources). To make a real change I need to get the mansions (or other suitable cottage representation) grafted onto the "forest grasslands" and "forest plains" graphics.

UPDATE 2009 Sept 19 -
it turns out forest tiles are not considered overlays in Civ 3 like in Civ 4, so forest hills are still hills as far as tile stats are concerned. the tiles needing visual update are forests covering grasslands, plains, and tundra. these files are included in a graphics update at the end of post #35.

=============

I am still debating whether to do away with forest chops since there is no equivalent in Civ 4 to tearing down cottages for (shields/hammers) profit.

this would of course ruin the day of all the forest rush choppers out there. in compensation I could raise the production of the forest/cottage to one more coin.

any comments?

===========================

the most noticeable absence to date in my add on scenario to this mod is a lack of a substitute for the Civ3 resource.pcx file to make the resource graphic tile representation more Civ 4-like. I currently am using the blips resource.pcx. This has the undesirable side effect of limiting the total resource images since that file was not designed with the full set of Civ 4 resources. As an example I am now have the resource image for gold represent gold, silver, stone, and marble. While confusing this is an overall better graphics system than the default Civ 3 resource presentation system.

a white circle underlay with a black ring under the resource but on top of the background color would approximate the Civ 4 floating bubbles.

there are versions of resource.pcx with 36 resources
View attachment resources(36 types).pcx

and with 95 resources
View attachment resources(95 types).pcx

as well as a version using blips and small circles to give added info
View attachment resources(with blips).pcx

the latter is what is used in my current add on scenario to T4T.

my suggestion amounts to an improvement on the the blip idea. ideally the improvement would eventually be extended to the entire 95 resource set to make this Civ 4 clone as extensible as possible.

UPDATE 2009 Sept 19
solved problem of using Irfanview to do update of pcx files for Civ 3. it turns out you need to save the palette and then re-import it after making your modifications. this gets rid of the purple blotch problem that can occur without such palette manipulation. the new resource.pcx file is included in a graphics update at the end of post #35. the resolution of Civ 3 is not high enough to use an overlay graphic for food, hammer, and coin (commerce). some modders used blips instead, but these are hard to read since they are so small

===========================

less important but also needing improvement is a replacement for tnt.pcx that shows hammer and food (like in civ4).

here is what the original looks like
View attachment tnt-old.pcx

here is what a modder named Cordy came up with as the best replacement I have found to date
View attachment tnt-Cordy's.pcx

Cordy chose to use terrain enhancement rather than hammers and food icons.

UPDATE 2009 Sept 19
took Cordy's tnt.pcx and deleted all but the second row which is for grasslands with outcroppings (and hence one extra shield). the other rows did not add any info to the tile so I deleted them

==========================

I recently posted a complete set of my compiled brighter terrain (instead of the pieces posted previously in this thread, the 9 MB of files are available in a single download) in the Civ 3 terrain download area -

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7341

=========================================================

complete download of my add-on scenario is now available at -
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downlo...o=file&id=7342

or directly at -
http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads...-build-17X.zip

just the latest updates is available at -
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downlo...o=file&id=7344

or directly at -
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downlo...=7344&act=down

 

[sercer88]

Is there a pcx editor anywhere? I searched c&c forum, but didn't find any...

 

[AznWarlord]

I've got like 10 minutes downloading time, I'm not big with mods but I might like this one.

Just one thing - I find Mamluk a better term for Camel Archer.

 

[joelwest]

Hey, Stargate and Joelwest!

I downloaded this mod probably almost a year ago and was a little disappointed (now I realize I had it coming My expectations were a little bit too high...)

Now that I see some work on it...is there anything I can do to help? It seems you have done a whole bunch of work on it, and it is looking great (I really like the idea to replace forests with cottages...that's a great move, I think.)

I guess I just want to see how close Civ III can come to its more recent counterpart.

Oh, and I only have experience in Civ IV vanilla...so...no Warlords or BtS help here...

I recently posted a complete set of my revised terrain (instead of the pieces posted previously in this thread, the 9 MB of files are available in a single download) in the Civ 3 terrain download area -

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/joels-terrain-ver-1-1.7341/

================================================

complete download of my add-on scenario is now available at -
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/test-iv-time-complete-addon-scenario-by-joelwest.7342/

or directly at -
http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/modpack/Civ3-T4T-add-on-build-17X.zip

just the latest updates is available at -
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/test-iv-time-joelwest-addon-scenario-update.7344/

or directly at -
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/test-iv-time-joelwest-addon-scenario-update.7344/download

 

[Stargate]

Thanks joelwest,

I had put "first five of the ten pack set of unit graphics with revised biq" to the Test IV Time forum first page for easy find download.

 

[sercer88]

So, you just download them into your Art/Units file? (inside of Test for Time?)
And, has the biq changed any (I have v1.0)