Civ III: Mods and other silliness
So, Sizz, have you attempted to play with the Civ III game editor?
I’m curious about it, since there are lots of mods that came with the Civ II Gold Edition that I got from a used game store. Does Civ III come with interesting mods?
I’d also be interested in knowing how much trouble it is to tweak some of the game units. For instance, the FAQs I’ve read suggest that the special units for the American and Russian civilizations are fairly pathetic (indeed, they regard the Russian Cossack as completely inferior to the unit it replaces).
An example of my thinking: would it be difficult to modify the F-15 unit (which isn’t characteristic of American IMO, anyway) into a Supercarrier unit (which is what really defines the modern American military). The Supercarrier would be similar to the regular Carrier unit, but it would have a transport capacity of 6 instead of 4.
Apparently the Cossack could also use some work. FAQ authors say that giving it +1 Defense compared to the regular Cavalry is a waste: +1 Attack or +1 Speed would be better. Furthermore, most civ’s can upgrade to Cavalry from Knights, but the Russian’s can’t. Apparently none of the unique units can be acquired via upgrade from a predecessor, but many of them can at least be upgraded to a successor that’s worth having: the Russians don’t even have that option. Is there any other historical Russian military unit that would be more characteristic of their culture in their “Golden Age”? If not, what would you do to “unbreak” the unit?
4 Comments so far
I bought my copy of CIV III when it was really new so it didn’t come with the henious collection of mods that the version of CIV II that you’ve got came with (I have that version of CIV II as well!). I really enjoyed the Dinosaur mod. That one was tons of fun.
To be honest, I haven’t played with the editor at all. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m lazy and modding CIV takes a lot of time in order to make a decent one.
I’m not particularly concerned about a full-scale mod; just a couple of unit changes. In CivII you can do that with minor changes to one file. I was thinking that you ought to be able to do much the same thing in CivIII.
One of the FAQs has a section (18) on editing and modifying the game. You can apparently edit the rules for units without affecting anything else.
Well, I don’t know if I’d want to tweak it too much. I never play the Russians OR the Americans. I usually play the Greeks or the Germans. Both have amazing “special” units. The Greek Hoplite gives the Greeks a decisive defensive bonus early in the game. Decisive enough for them to be able to establish a technological advantage because they don’t need to build tons of spearmen or pikemen in order to defend their cities. By the time that the Hoplite becomes obsolete, the Greeks should have a significant lead over and above any other civilization.
As for the Germans, they’ve got the Panzer and the Panzer rocks. Seriously. It’s probably the best special unit out there.