version III • what's new?
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Downloading and installing
2002-03-07
I feel like an idiot, because I forgot to include units_32.pcx
in the last installment. Since I haven't added any new units this time, those of you who don't wish to download the main mod file again can just nab the missing file. Right-click, save target as.
So what's new this time? To sum it up, seventeen new buildings. Chichen Itza now rests on monarchy because I never see the point of researching and using that form of government -- the Republic is just too close. So rather than messing with Republic, monarchies can build this wonder which acts like a courthouse in every city. Fundamentalism is a new government form, though it doesn't have much in common with the gov from Civ II. Under this government you can build Churches which acts like a second courthouse -- and even fool your subjects into believing a Second Coming has happened to put a Church in every city.
The Harbor improvement has been split into three improvements, because I felt like it. Harbors now allow trade over water, while Docks increase food and Ports produce veteran ships. Universities have been bumped to Scientific Method and replaced with Schools. Because this creates too much science when the player has researched Scientific Method, all techs beyond it have been burdened with a 50% higher cost. See below for the exact chart. Gas Plants produce an additional 25% shields regardless of any other improvements, and so this prompted my new strategic resource -- natural gas, found in Desert and Tundra. Hotels increases commerce by 50%, and while these two improvements are as important to adjust game balance with as the School... well I'll leave that for my next update which (pray to God) won't happen until Firaxis releases their next patch, which should allow us modders to choose other commerce and science bonuses than a strict 50%-or-nothing. It would be kinda cool to have five buildings generating a total of 25% extra gold, rather than just one.
Stables give a 25% defensive bonus, cumulative with city walls. Printing Press is more profitable to research with the Newspaper building - it helps protect against propaganda. Oh yeah, while I'm at it, seven of the seventeen buildings have individual art either depending on Era or Culture group. Neat huh? Feel free to take the icons for your own mod, but please link to me.
I have changed the world sizes around. Tiny have been knocked off, and every other size moved down a notch; i.e. Tiny is now 80x80, 6 civs, 9 distance, 18 cities, tech rate 90 while Huge is 256x256, 16 civs, 32 distance, 128 cities, tech rate 375. I hadn't noticed that any added sizes became hidden, so I'm probably the only one who knew I had added a Giga size setting ;-) Due to a misunderstanding I gave units which were intended to be invisible the Stealth ability, when they should have the Submarine ability. Stealth only increases the unit's chance of avoiding interception, it turns out. Thanks to someone for giving me that tip.
SS Docking Bay moved to Mecha; SS Thrusters moved to Adv. Robotics. No reason :-P Actually I just wanted to spread out the spaceship parts. It's a bit more challenging now!
Due to a silly mistake by me, some resource requirements got mixed up, like Railroad requiring Timber. I just wanted to tuck my strategic resources after the default ones. Here is a tried-and-tested tip: Never change the place of ANYTHING! Not only was I forced to go through every single unit and change the resource requirements to what they were supposed to be, but I made a silly mistake like that. Well, seeing as I accidentally held back units_32.pcx I guess no-one could have noticed :-P Please let me know if something is wacked with this mod as well, and thanks to everyone on Civfanatics who keep me on my toes.
2002-03-04
Four new wonder splash screens have been added. The zip comes with a full readme file. Wanna know how to make your own splashes?
It has come to my attention that keeping Writing's tech icon #82 after new techs have been added causes the game to crash. That's been fixed.Also, building phalanxes won't crash the game anymore.
The units and their graphics are now on a separate page. There are fifteen new units, from Japanese battleships to landmines and spy satelites. A lot of errors have been fixed, and the civilopedia is even better than before. There are many more unit icons and some have been revamped.
* Installing over previous version:
Works great, but note that the PC Frigate is now called Perry Class Frigate, i.e. you need to rename that folder. You don't need to do anything else to your previous version, assuming that you download the new main mod file and overwrite everything. Units that are new to version III have bold links on the unit page.
Sorry, I don't know how to make arrows in the tech tree, I hope you can make sense of things regardless. Medicine now lets you build a Sewer System which reduces pollution from shields, in response to most player's distaste for the pollution feature of the game.
There are some new advances. I didn't give them too much thought, they are primarily vehicles for units and such. If anyone has suitable descriptions lying around for the advances, please send them to me and I'll update the mod (and credit you).
Criminal Justice is the only new advance in the Ancient Era, and it lets a civ build the new Chichen Itza great wonder.
Armored Navy. I thought Frigates had too short lifespan, so this advance holds Ironclads. It also lets England enjoy their dubious UU a while longer.
Fascism grew out of industrialization and yes, it lets you play with this government.
Covert Ops lies after Espionage and lets you build the wacky sniper unit.
Other advances are placed in the modern era and holds some cool units to spice up the endgame.
| Rocketry » |
Adv. Rocketry »
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Mecha
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| Synthetic Fibres » | |||
| Robotics » |
Adv. Robotics »
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A. I. »
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| Smart Weapons » | |||
There are a lot of new resources in the game, each with its own icon and civilopedia entry. Copper has become a necessity to build early Ancient units, while good-quality timber is a must for making any advanced wooden ships past the galley. Don't worry though because both copper and timber is quite easy to find. The really powerful, Terminator-II style stuff needs Tungsten. Schools in this case are incredibly rich fishing grounds. Oasis don't act as a source of freshwater, because it's not possible for me to specify that.
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Bonus
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Luxury
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What comes where? Coast Fish, salt, seaweed For a detailed breakdown of the resources, see my "How to play with sixty resources" tutorial. |
| Banana 2/0/0 Mineral 0/2/0 Oasis 2/0/1 Walrus 2/0/2 Bloom 1/0/0 Tea 0/0/2 Apple 1/0/0 Pear 1/0/0 Melon 1/0/0 Orange 1/0/1 Lemon 0/0/1 Cherry 1/0/0 Strawberry 1/0/1 School 3/0/0 Calamari 1/1/1 Oat 2/0/0 Potato 2/0/0 |
Jade 0/1/2 Cotton 0/1/3 Wool 1/1/2 Coffee 0/0/3 Tobacco 0/0/2 Salt 0/0/3 Sugar 1/0/1 Beer 1/0/2 Whiskey 0/1/3 Pearls 0/0/4 |
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Strategic
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Ruins 0/0/1 (Food/Shields/ |
Currently there are five new buildings in M3. There's a Sewer System available with Medicine, which is the only actual building; the rest are wonders. Chichen Itza (Great) can be built at the end of the Ancient era and acts as a Courthouse in every city on the continent - but at the same time it makes people unhappy. Starbucks (Small) boosts commerce by 50% in the city that builds it... but to build it, a nearby source of Coffee is needed. Ever gone to war over coffee before? ;-) Waterfarm (Small) requires access to a very scarce resource - seaweed - but will harvest an extra food from each water tile. A national Museum (Small) can be built if ruins are discovered and your civilization has made a large investment in universities. The only difference between these and old buildings are that they don't appear in the birds-eye view of the city. The graphics for the birds-eye view is hardcoded.
Industrialization allows research into (the tech) Fascism and its associated form of rulership. As the civilopedia says, A fascist goverment plays like a combination of Communism and Democracy while not being as good as either in their particular way of life. You can't have a higher research rate than 80%, but on the other hand your civilization is immune to Steal Technology. There is some war weariness, on the other hand you can 'pop-rush'.
Robotopia is defined by ethical slavery, where advanced robots - mechas - perform the brute labor that men previously had to endure. The bliss enjoyed by your subjects is superior to anything society has offered before, ensuring a stable and thriving government. Under this government, each unit costs two gold to support and research is hurt badly.
Civilization III have lists of names that it uses to name the cities of civs in the world. You have noticed this when the game suggests a name for your newly-founded city. However the makers of the game created lists that are very very short, sometimes not even having a dozen city names in the list, so if you're playing on a big world you're likely to see towns named "New Hamburg" or "Paris 4".
This mod expands the lists of names so much, it is very unlikely a game will use all of them. The lists are based on another mod, and I've left the lists for the three extinct cultures (Babylon, Aztec, Iroquis) alone. The other 13 civs have seen their lists expanded with modern city names for their particular culture.
Tax collectors (available with Banking) and Scientists (available with Education) each produce 4 gold and 4 beakers, respectively. The Mod with no name reasoned: Since each pop point "costs" two food to maintain, this makes them profitable again, as opposed to being essentially leeches. It also sets up the possibility of viable specialist cities again, and prompts city growth beyond 20. Again, more strategic choice, which is the essence of the game.
The same mod preached that: Gachnar's HP scale (3/4/5/7) has been adopted. Note that in addition to that basic change, the RoF of all artillery pieces has been doubled (making artillery slightly more effective than it was before, since unit HP's have not quite doubled). That makes good sense to me.
Chemistry neutralizes Great Wall. Used to be Metallurgy.
Medicine removes disease from Flood Plain. Used to be Sanitation.
Artillery is now available with Steel instead of RP. As they say, Replaceable Parts is already too good, and this seems like a nice place (for it). The ideas that Radio should be required for Airports and Pentagon, whose requirements decrease to 2 armies; radio is required to coordinate large armies, after all. It also places the small wonder in the right time period.
Armies now cost 500 shields from 400, but they have Zone of control as well as the Blitz ability. The latter means that an army of Cavalry can attack up to three times in one round. This makes armies worth creating and building! The mod with no name had similar ideas, so did others.
Golden ages now last for 40 turns.
Citizens now only require 1 food to live. Hence hills, coast and sea tiles now generate 0 food. A harbor will cause coast and sea tiles to generate the 1 food necessary to sustain a population point. Tundra doesn't generate food either, but if you forest it it will sustain a population point (which is actually better than what it used to). Building a mine will add two shields instead of one -- making it equal to forestation from a production point-of-view.
| Submarine: 4 Nuclear Sub: 5 |
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| Ironclad: 5 Destroyer: 6 Transport: 6 Battleship: 7 |
Carrier: 7 PC Frigate: 8 AEGIS Cruiser: 9 AEGIS Destroyer: 10 |
Naval Speed
A lot of people have yearned for increased movement of naval units. Right is a chart of naval movement in M3. Ancient through Renaissance vessels (galley to galleon) retain their movement, because exploration is fun in those days, and sending out 20 galleons clears the map in a couple of dozen turns. Subs are a special matter, they don't go very fast in reality.
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Industrial Age Atomic Theory -- from 200 to 300 |
Modern Times Rocketry -- from 240 to 360 |
1) Find out what number your building has in the "Improvements and Wonders" list of the Civ3 Editor. Your first one is probably number 74 -- the first building after the ten spaceship components. Mine is number 75 because the first building I added was a Sewer System, which is an improvement and not a wonder.
2) Create an image exactly 320 pixels wide and 320 pixels high.
3) Decrease its color depth to 255 colors. Did the decrease cause your image to use less than 255 colors? That has created problems for me. Find out how many colors the image uses, then decrease the number of colors used to that number. Edit the image's palette and set the very last color to RGB: 255,0,255 or HTML: #FF00FF. The hot pink color Civ3 uses for transparancy. Making it routine to set the hot pink color will save you problems in the long run.
4) Save the image to CivilizationIII/Art/Wonder Splash or wherever you want, and alter the pediaicons.txt to point to your wonder splash. An example is posted below.
#WON_SPLASH_61
art\wonder splash\SDI.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_62
art\wonder splash\intell.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_63
art\wonder splash\Battlefield Medicine.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_74
art\wonder splash\My cool wonder.pcx
Missing the install information? I moved it here
Please email me with any comments, complaints, bugs or anything else you feel like telling me.
