What rules do you like to play with?

[antimony]

Do you just want to adjust the costs of later era techs, or something more dynamic than that? In particular do you want to increase the cost of say assembly line by a fixed amount or to a different amount based on turn number?

 

[Core Imposter]

Do you just want to adjust the costs of later era techs, or something more dynamic than that? In particular do you want to increase the cost of say assembly line by a fixed amount or to a different amount based on turn number?

At the moment I just want to tweak the tech costs to make them rise as the game progresses. Using an original BTS 3.19. So maybe slice up the tech tree into eras and increase the costs by a percentage every time a civ enters a new era?

On second thought, I really would be happy to just edit each tech individually. Is this something that a non-programmer can hunt and peck his way through the code and do?

Seems to me that there should be a screw somewhere that I could tighten up and do this very thing.

 

[Core Imposter]

Oh Lawd. I did some googling, and it looks like I need to be a computer engineer.

I still seem to have a memory of someone making a tool to do this. I'll keep looking.

 

[Core Imposter]

Ah hah!

Technology cost editor released

EDIT 2007/07/27 Reworked the tool (v1.1) to work with all official Civilization 4 expansions (Warlords, Beyond the Sword) and mods. You should still note that the tool defaults to the original Civilization IV Civ4TechInfos.xml file when launched from the main program folder. Navigate manually...

forums.civfanatics.com

Now, I haven't read up on this yet. Odds are good I will break something trying to use this tool.

 

[antimony]

Looks like it would work for you, maybe just make a copy of the original .xml file in case you want to revert later?

 

[Core Imposter]

Looks like it would work for you, maybe just make a copy of the original .xml file in case you want to revert later?

Well. Reading the thread this tool was in play back in 2006-7 but a couple people trying to use it ran into problems circa 2010 and 2013. Windows now is not the windows then and while my setup runs perfectly, I am a bit apprehensive about trying this tool today.

 

[Core Imposter]

But this brings to mind another question. I am running Civ IV on Windows 10. I noted that Microsoft is going to end support for 10 next year. When I upgrade to Windows 11 will my Civ IV continue to work properly? I note that some (most?) who are playing Civ IV are using Steam. I have never Steamed. All of my games are still loaded via disk.

Edit: I will probably just retire the machine; I have several games on there and actually a backup machine as well. At my age preservation of the things one values is just as important as moving forward into new stuff.

 

[Nick723]

I don’t know the case for windows (still on windows 10 myself), but I do know when I upgraded MacOs civ stopped working on my Mac!

 

[Core Imposter]

I don’t know the case for windows (still on windows 10 myself), but I do know when I upgraded MacOs civ stopped working on my Mac!

Yeah, this is what I am afraid of. It's out there somewhere in some future upgrade. I have a whole cabinet of games on disk, from the original Doom to whatever. Trying to hang on to those old games and keep a machine for them to run on- it's tough.

BTW, with all this talk of seven and the similarity of Firaxis's competition, I was remembering a 4X game called Imperialism. Those old games were ok. But of them all Civ IV is the one I want to keep running.

I took a look at the html files. I should be able to just manually adjust the tech costs. I don't see why that would not work.

 

[user330977]

I would consider looking into getting a GOG copy. It differs from Steam in that you don't need a client and can download and keep the game completely offline with its own separate installers. I know it's not the same as having physical media, but it's completely DRM free and will work on modern machines.

 

[mycophobia]

Seconding grabbing the GOG version. I have a "Civ 4" folder that's fully portable, I can just copy it anywhere and run it, no muss no fuss.

I'm back on Warlords again, because it tends to run better than BTS but mainly cuz I don't really know what the End of Espionage mod really does behind the scenes, if it's breaking anything, etc. There's plenty of depths I've yet to plumb in this iteration so I reckon if I ever get tired of it I can bite the bullet and play the one everybody else plays, but that's a ways off I think.

As for settings it's just no vassals, otherwise all defaults including a random leader for me. Currently playing at Prince but I'll likely move up to Monarch soon. I do have a couple of self-made modifications that don't affect game mechanics in place:

- Music is reverted to how it was in vanilla Civ 4. I never liked how they moved the Classical era music back to Ancient and just crammed in some random Civ 3 tracks for the Classical era.
- A pop-up appears whenever a city grows allowing me to zoom to its city screen if desired. Extremely convenient! You can find that here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/city-growth-pop-up.691711/
- An "anxiety-free scoreboard" which just takes the little leaderboard, removes the score component, and makes it so the ordering is static, i.e. the leaders don't move around based on their current score. It's useful as a mini-diplo menu and I can still check demos/stats as desired, but I don't get the added per-turn anxiety of "ugh I'm still behind, oh no this guy's climbing," etc.
- Revised year scaling for standard speed. It's the same amount of turns (460) but I made it so turn 100 is 1 AD, turn 190 is 1800 AD, and turn 240 is 1900 AD, meaning the game ends at 2120. So 40/20/2/1 years per turn for 100/90/50/220 turns respectively. It better follows the usual pace of a tech leader in terms of real-world years so people aren't trying to build spaceships in the 1700s or whatever. By turn 260 the tech leader is probably at least firmly in the industrial age so that being the turn of the 20th century makes sense to me. I don't think this is anything but a cosmetic change, or at least the one game I've finished with this and the one I currently have in progress seem to be normal.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I don’t know the case for windows (still on windows 10 myself), but I do know when I upgraded MacOs civ stopped working on my Mac!

That is one of the reasons that I stopped "upgrading" MacOS many versions ago and I also run CIV for the mods in a virtual machine inside MacOS on Windows 7. I like how all my software works and see no need to "upgrade" because Apple and Microsoft want to keep making money by selling me changes. I have a more recent MacOS on a seperate computer solely to access websites that won't work with the older OS. I have looked at some of the new versions of the software that comes with the newer OS and I think it is vastly inferior to the older versions, a clear case of choices removed so that the user has to do it the company way.

And to stay on topic: I like to play on Marathon with huge maps, vassals off, random events off, and climate change and nuclear missles disabled. I am a builder and usually only go to war against AIs that attack me, in which case, for the most part, I kill them off completely. On the occasions that I choose a military victory, I like to wait until the modern era to declare wars. I also enjoy the naval aspect and always choose a map type with multiple land masses. No Pangea for me.

 

[Fippy]

I would consider looking into getting a GOG copy. It differs from Steam in that you don't need a client and can download and keep the game completely offline with its own separate installers. I know it's not the same as having physical media, but it's completely DRM free and will work on modern machines.

Are you sure it's still like that?
Galaxy is always launching when i start my games now. But i'm prolly missing something.

 

[mycophobia]

You should be able to get a "backup offline installer" if you own the game. I've never had to install Galaxy for anything.

 

[Lennier]

I don’t know the case for windows (still on windows 10 myself), but I do know when I upgraded MacOs civ stopped working on my Mac!

I have a Civ IV Mac and a "family stuff" Mac. I keep the latter updated.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I used to have a Civ IV only machine but GOG has allayed my fears somewhat. I still install from a CDROM, well a virtual one.

As for settings I only play Hall of Fame and like Marathon Time games

 

[user330977]

Are you sure it's still like that?
Galaxy is always launching when i start my games now. But i'm prolly missing something.

You don't have to download the Galaxy client for anything. Just download the installers direct from the GOG website. I believe it's a strict GOG criterium that all games on the site must be playable offline with separate installers.

 

[mycophobia]

I've been trying out various map scripts after just running Fractal or Continents all the time and I think I found a new favorite setting:

Archipelago
Low sea level
Rocky climate
Snaky continents

The snaky continents and low sea level give substantial but not overly huge landmasses and the rocky climate compensates for the overall narrowness of the land in terms of production so you don't have to whip quite as hard. These settings on Standard size yield a kind of unpredictable Civ 1-like map, which for me is quite appealing.

 

[Luke1195]

Can someone point me to the simplest way to scale the tech costs? I want to increase tech costs as the game proceeds to enable as much play with as many units as possible. I have in the back of my head that someone might have made a utility to things like this.

The simplest way to edit the tech costs is to edit the file CIV4TechInfos.xml.
You can change each tech's cost in the iCost modifier.
For example, for my mod, I increased Optics' cost from 600 to 1200 beakers, since I also made it a Renaissance tech, and 1200 beakers is the minimum cost seen for Renaissance techs.

 

[Core Imposter]

Thanks Luke. I guess that's what I going to do.

I was wondering, I guess there is no way to do it, but it would seem that tech costs should scale down based on how many civs knew them to keep the ones in the stone age from staying there forever.