What have you changed?

[Calorman]

I don't really like to fiddle with games (even if there is an inbuilt editor for just that) but I've finally decided to give it a shot. First of all though I'd be interested to see what kind of things other players have tweaked, especially in the area of unit attack/defence values.

[Solver]

Same with me, don't enjoy changing games. I only did some very minor things:
Privateer attack = 2.
Army cost decreased. (To make Militay Academy useful).
Sun Tzu's Art of War cost decreased. (To make me want build it)
4 turn limit removed.
32 turn limit changed to 25 turns.
Greeks restricted from building Pikemen.
Added some city/leader names and strings for goverments.

Pretty much all, but I like this better.

[GodSpawn]

I've changed nothing.

[Skanky Burns]

Ive changed the graphics of certain stuff:
terrain, resources, smiley faces in the city (not the people, the smileys next to the luxuries), the palace background, irrigation, mines... Yeah, thats about it.

Oh, and i stoped the intro movie from playing ever again.
Was a nice intro, but couldnt be bothered watching it again.

But i didnt want to change any in-game settings as the patch would (and did) change everything back and also i wanted to play in the civ3 tournaments here, so i need original rules.

EDIT: added the intro movie thing

[Ecthy]

I haven't changed any unit stats... so far

what I have changed is city names and leader names.... and I'm going to change the names of Barbarian triebs as well, the buggers mispelled so many names

[Ixander]

Increased the mineral bonus for forest by 1 to make forest more popular, and made 'plant forest' a free worker job available straight from the beginning. The result is that the computer civs now prefer forest over everything else, keeping procreation slightly below roach level due to decreased food supply. And faster production speeds up gameplay a bit. And of course it looks lovely to see the world covered with forest.

Also allowed for tundra to be irrigated, resulting in two food. Also increased mineral bonus for jungle by 1 to make it an _almost_ feasible habitat, somewhat counteracting the problem of a jungle based starting location. Decreased jungle chop cost by a notch. And finally, I changed mountains to give 1 food like hills, but no commerce (IIRC).

Finally, I decreased corruption levels for (all) governments by a notch. No unit/combat changes for now except for upgrade paths where there were none.

[napalm010]

Some things I have changed:

1. Optimal # of cities (Standard size map) = 80
I like having the option of conquering large areas of map. Feel those conquered cities should produce something. Have found this also benefits the AI as well. The cities they conquer also produce for them. It is also balanced by not being able to build Forbidden palace till much later in game. Thereby increasing corruption in farflung cities to about 20-30% after courthouse/police station. This feels right for me with democracy.

2. All land bombard units given defense values and increased costs.
Catapult a0/d2/cost40 (added cost/defense from spearman)
Cannon a0/d4/cost100 (added cost/defense of Musketman)
Artillery a0/d10/cost150 (added cost/defense from Infantry)
Radar Artillery a0/d18/cost190 (added cost/defense from MechInf)
My way of dealing with no stacked movement. With these changes I no longer have to deal with trying to keep groups of defense land units stacked with land bombard units.

3. Made just about all units upgradeable to next era.
This is not realistic in some situations. But feels right for me in the game. It also makes Leonardos workshop a very nice wonder to have. Makes the AI civ hard to beat if they get it first. Additional benefit of removing obselete units from production queue.

4. Submarine and Nuclear submarine attack values +2.
Gives subs close to same punch as surface units of same age when attacking. Still very vulnerable on defense as I think they should be. Be warned, AI is very good at using subs to decimate your fleet and then disappear.

5. All unit hit points increased by 2.
Conscript = 4
Regular = 5
Veteran = 6
Elite = 7
This makes the chances of a more modern unit losing to inferior a little less. Still giving the older unit a chance to win though. I personally like the fact more modern units cant just run over older ones without being hurt. Also makes the land bombard units a little less devastating at damaging enemy units.


The following graphics mods are not in any order of which i like more or less. Just the order i found them in the forum so I could give the author proper credit.

6. Sn00py's BLUE WATER graphics mod.

7. Sn00py's Rocky not Red Mountains graphics mod.

8. m_m_x's mine graphic mod.

9. Zeb_Fisher's grassland irrigation graphics mod.

10. soufie77's tidier railroad graphics mod.

[Barnacle Bill]

To address the matter of "tanks losing to spearmen", etc... I basically multiplied all unit attack, defense & bombardment factors by a multiplier for the "combat era" in which that unit properly exists:

Pre-gunpowder: 1 (i.e. no change)
Early Gunpowder: 2
Steam Age: 3
20th Century: 4

To eliminate the annoyance of excessive corruption & pollution, I gave every city improvement the attributes "Reduces Corruption", Removes Pop. Pollution", "Reduces Bldg. Pollution" & set all of them to Polution = 0. Note that this does not "turn off" pollution & corruption, but it greatly reduces them down to a level I can tolerate. For example, instead of several new pollutions per turn I get one new pollution every 3-4 turns.

I changed the AI strategies for Musketmen, Riflemen & Infantry to be both Offense & Defense, in the hopes that this would get the AI to stop building pre-gunpowder offense infantry units once it gets gunpowder.

I gave every unit in the game which does become obsolete (including UU's) something to upgrade to, in the hopes the AI would use it & I'd see fewer mixed AI forces of spearmen & tanks.

I turned off "can see submarines" for everything except Nuclear Submarines, increased the speed of Nuclear Submarines to equal the best of other madern ships, and raised the attack/defense of Nuclear Submarines to equal the defense of a Battleship so it has a 50-50 chance of sinking a battleship or another Nuclear Submarine, better than that against any other sort of surface ship. Not the ideal solution, but the best I think that can be done with additional code changes from Firaxis - new flags like "defense doubled against submarines" or "defense halved against submarines" or "defenseless against submarines", seperate attack/defense factors for ASW warefare from those used in naval combat, something like that.

[Moraelin]

Personally I've moved the unit strengths on an exponential scale, to put the "anti-tank spearmen" syndrome to rest. (Suprisingly enough, the AI also seems to understand better that in needs moder units now.) Gave more units the ability to bombard weakly, mostly so they can be correctly used for support. Made citizens and improvements harder to destroy with catapults. Increased the movement range for destroyers. Made barbarians tougher. Fixed some resource requirements. (So tanks are made of steel, not of bubblegum.) Etc.

You can see the whole list of changes if you look in the Files forum for the Exponential mod. (And/or the Cheat mod, if that's your thing.)

[Calorman]

[SIZE=1] Fixed some resource requirements. (So tanks are made of steel, not of bubblegum.)

Haha, I think I know what you're talking about. In fairness though the tank's treads are made from rubber. I think they just simplified the resources needed for many units for balance purposes (such as not having access to several different resources) . I mean, you don't even need iron to build battleships, just oil.
But then you have strange things such as Infantry and marines requiring rubber to be built. What the hell can that be rationalised as being for?

[Moraelin]

Erm. REAL Tank's threads (as opposed to toy tanks) are made of articulated steel segments. In fact a desperate stopgap measure in WW2 to increase some tanks' armour, in face of the ever increasing armour penetrations of enemy tanks and AT guns, was to hang segments of thread all over the tank's front part.

But then the screwed up resources have been discussed to death already in other threads, so I'll try not to hijack this thread too :P

[Jumping Choya]

Hmmm....maybe there's a thin rubber coating on the trigger so it's more comfortable? Or maybe they have a rubberized butt plate? Or maybe they're using rubber bullets?

[Code Monkey]

Changes I've made that are staying:

Regent is the default for optimal city percentage and changes in the number are capped at 5%, e.g. Chieftan gets 110%, Monarch 95%, Deity 85%, and so on. It didn't make any sense to me that at the difficulty that's supposed to be the standard that there was already a 10% penalty for optimal city number. Dropping deity down to 70% just seemed like tying one hand behind your back "just because".

The U.N. reduces war weariness in all cities like Universal Sufferage. It gives the wonder some purpose beyond diplomatic victory and fits with the role of the U.N. U.N. sanctioned military aggression is generally accepted throughout most of the world.

Doubled the cost of the Intelligence Agency and gave it the reduces corruption ability of a Forbidden Palace. Historically, nations have used such an agency to spy on their own people as much if not more than foreign powers. It won't let you turn a continent across the ocean productive due to the cost but it gives you a mid-late game way to ameliorate corruption within your main empire.

Removed the requirement of a victorious army for Military Academy. Armies are too expensive and of limited use to be forcing someone to waste a leader just to build an army at some point in the game. If your civ hasn't figured out how to organise its troops into an army by the time of Military Tradition, it needs to go back to flint axes. You still need to decide if you're going to blow the leader in the early game but it allows everyone to have late game armies if they want.

Banks reduce corruption in their city - if a centralised network of money keepers doesn't help cut down on corruption, what does?

Irrigating Flood Plains gives +2 instead of +1 food. It allows some growth to desert cities and emphasises their importance in the development of civilisation.

Mining a mountain gives +3 instead of +2 shields - hills shouldn't be better than mountains, in standard rules they produce as many shields and a food.

Although I've kept the requirement that nothing upgrades to a unique unit, just about everything upgrades to something more or less logical. Cleans up the build list and forces the AI to adapt.

Non-sail ocean craft have movement increased 50%.



Changes I'm playing around with:

I'm playing around with tweaking unit stats and costs such that, with a few exceptions, they keep their same relative strengths within their era but are stronger against older units. On the other hand, costs are based on a stat based formula (which probably needs some more tweaking) so that many older units are cheaper and more recent units are much more expensive. So, a tank takes far less damage against older units (still not impossible, though) but costs over twice what it does now. I'd post actual stats but this is one I'm still heavily playtesting - it's hard to get the numbers and cost just right.

Added a cost factor to fast units to semi-balance out their retreat ability. Added a price reduction factor for each strategic unit required to build a unit.

Marines and paratroopers can do more than stand around and look pretty - whose bright idea was it to make special forces units with an 8 and 6 attack respectively at the same time the standard defense goes to 8 & 14? I particularly love the marine as is - yes, it can attack amphibiously, if someone is defending a coastal city with spearmen.

The only 3 move unit in the game prior to modern armor is the Chinese Rider, cavalry has been changed to a 2 move but has attack boosted to 8 (makes sense in terms of other strength/defense changes).

Rifleman and Infantry (with improved stats) are both offensive and defensive so that the computer has something to build (important since longbowman upgrade to rifleman).

Transports are lower in cost. The helicopter only costs 70 and has been boosted to carry 4 foot units. Carriers, even with increased stats, are cheaper than in the original rules - why exactly do I have to pay nearly as much as a battleship for a ship that can barely defend itself and can't attack?

Naval bombardment has been boosted to give them a stronger role but costs are much increased. This one might be too strong, I'm waiting for the industrial/modern era to see.

Aerial bombardment for modern era aircraft has been boosted. Like naval, might be too strong, will wait and see. As it was, jet fighters were nearly useless except for interceptions (I gave them bombard 4). The F-15 received a bombard 6 and a 10 attack - now it really is king of the skies which is what such a narrow UU should be. The stealth planes are the ones that stand the biggest chance of being too powerful, will have to wait and see. Bombard is tricky, too low (e.g. the 2 of jet planes) and you can never hit anything, but too high and it becomes trivial to destroy everything from afar.


I'm testing 1f/3s for forests. I'm trying to decide if it's in any way balanced - forests are very strong defensively (slow down all enemy units in your territory) and at 1f/3s it outclasses or matches everything except hills, mountains, and the grassland with 2f/1s as its base production after you mine and rail them. It definitely speeds up early-mid game development, cuts down on micromanagement, and makes the map prettier, but it also seems to alter a delicate production balance through the ages that existed before.

I'm testing having forests give more than 10 shields when you clear them - now that clearing is a once per square per game bonus, it's not possible to abuse. 10 shields is a decent amount of shields in the ancient era but completely worthless in the industrial and beyond (particularly with my increased costs). Currently testing 20.

I'm testing having grassland give +2 food instead of +1 when irrigated. The idea was to discourage grassland mining but I'm not sure this one's a good thing. Cities are growing very fast with it and the AI is going crazy with irrigating grassland. If it doesn't start mining or planting forests at some point I'm going to wind up with an AI that has maximum size cities with no production.

Jungle will produce 1 or 2 shields (still not decided). People have been harvesting lumber from jungles as long as there were people with wood cutting tools - I don't know where they got the bright idea to dump a disease causing terrain that doesn't do anything for anyone in the game but I mean to do something about it



Changes I'm contemplating:

Making tundra irrigable.

[player1]

I have only added my Skycraper MOD (which changes city view screen, graphic only).

Reason:
I want to be compatibile with other players who play unmoded.

Also, I want to actually discuss in strategies forum.
Pretty impossibile if you chage game too much.

I doubt that any MOD for Civ3 will be so much popular to become more used than original game.

Plus, game will have more patches, so it will probably be moded by FIRAXIS.

Civ2: Fascism MOD (popular, but more for scenarios then in random game)

CTP1: CD-mod, MedMod (both played much more then original game)

CTP2: MedMod, Cradle, Apolyton Pack (all played more then original game)

Civ3: Who knows

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by player1
I doubt that any MOD for Civ3 will be so much popular to become more used than original game.

Plus, game will have more patches, so it will probably be moded by FIRAXIS.

This is very true and I expect to reevaluate any changes I make after each and every patch (particularly since it looks like unit tweaking will be one of the main points to the next patch).

OTOH, this is a single player game only at this point and, for me, will be 98% single player game at any point. None of my changes (with the exception of forest and grassland) have had any real change so far on the major game mechanics, just minor smoothing effects and that's a good thing to me.

[Qnuc.dk]

some mods... all DL from this site! which definitely are bonuses!

wonder splash info (better than the original?!)
resources icons (easy to spot strategic resources)
ppl mood smiley icons
irrigation graphic (better that the original?!)
more city names (no more new Berlin or Berlin 2 cities)
tidier railroad (no more sea sick)

and made units upgrade-able (no more silly legions in 20th century from the AI)


I looooove mods
Now only waiting for scenarios/campaigns/missions map
(common Firaxis, help us, better or new editor please )

[Jaybe]

Under Difficulty Levels I changed Attack bonus against barbarians to 0% at Regent level and above, reduced it substantially at lower levels.

Other than using a bunch of SnOOpys graphic mods, that's it.

[Jurassic Joe]

I haven't changed anything.

Tank treads do have rubber in them. Each section of track has a block of rubber on it. I was in 1st AD in West Germany 85-90. Your right they did put sections of track on the front of the shermans to blunt the effect of the panzerfausts.

[Bambul]

I've redone the unit tree a bit. Longbowmen and Swordsmen go to Riflemen, UU are uncluded in the normal tree, wooden naval units, ironclads, subs and destroyers become obsolete (though can't be upgraded) and stealth fighters were removed alltogether. This was mainly so I didn't get 15 build options for units only, in addition to wealth, palace, power plants, wonders and any buildings that a city hasn't built yet.

Man-O-Wars and F-15's were reaplced by US Marines and SAS (both identical stats, use Marine graphic, Marines with Amphibious Warfare, SAS with Adv Flight). Mainly because air and naval units seemed a bit trivial for UU, gives Civ's an easier chance of trigering a Golden Age. They are both special forces, 10/10/1 (I also upped Marines and Para's a/d by 2 each), paradrop and amphibious attack, can see 2, move all as road (so can't use rail but thats not their design).

Some graphics changes.

Wealth is now 6shields/gold, 3s/g after Economics.

Musketmen are 2/5/1, cost 40, Musketeers are 3/5/1. Infantry move 2. This reduces Cavalry win ratio with Musketeers and disallows retreat with infantry, infantry also becomes a good all-round unit (10 defence, 2 move, same attack as Cavalry).

Military Academy doesn't need an army.

Thats all I can remember off the top of my head. They are all personal preferences/tweaks.

[Calorman]

Thanks for your opinions guys. It seems that msot people agree that the naval units are a bit slow and submarines are woefully underpowered (though I'm not sure if making them as powerful as a battleship is really fair is it Barnacle?).
I also like the idea of making marines a bit stronger since they can't do much as is.
Since I don't use helicopters at all in their designed capacity I must just tinker about with those to.

I also like the ideas for reducing corruption (especially the centralisation of banks code monkey) since this is something of a game killer.

BTW Moraelin, I got to speak with my dear old dad and he told me that the caterpillar track itself was made of metal but the treads on the outside were most definetly made of extremely thick, hard rubber. I think you misunderstood me and thought I was talking about the track, not the treads.

[cassembler]

1) made tundras equivalent to plains (irrigation and all)
2) added up to 16 civs to any map size
3) attempted to remove roads from hills and mountains, but failed miserably...

[Spiffor]

What I changed :

Governments :
Made monarchy pop-rush its buildings. Now I can consider switching to Monarchy. But I don't do it always. Democracy is not immune to propaganda anymore. Communism can draft 3 citizens, and have 5 military police. I did this because i found Republic/Democracy far too powerful, and the IA never got out of this path. Now I can see commies all over the place.

Civs :
Changed English into red and Romans into Orange. Changed French into white and barbarians into pink (good way to get rid of this hoorible pink), removed the "s" from Lyon and Marseille.

Units :
Doubled the HP of all units. The results are more like expected (i.e Tanks won more often against spearsmen ). Doubled all artillery rate of fire as well.
Early ranged units (until musketmen included) have a one range / one rate of fire bombard, with their attack rating as bombardment rating (a longbowman bombards with a force of 4). So they have a free shot wen attacked. As almost avery more modern unit is ranged, this advantage has no more meaning after gunpowder.
Doubled the speed of all ships. Now they are useful.
Upgrade longbowmen swordsmen, legions and immortals to riflemen. Upgrade frigates / privateers / man'o'wars to destroyers. Upgrade ironclads to battleships. Upgrade Cavalry to Tank. I didn't like being able to produce Swordsmen in the modern era, and I didn't like seeing such old units at the AI's

People :
Taxmen are now called merchants and produce 2 money per turn. You have to discover currency before you can have merchants.
Scientists now produce 2 science, and need education to exist.

Techs
You may now trade contacts after discovering radio.

Improvements :
Airports now produce +50% money.

I'm very happy with the editor... now that I'm used to the idea making scenarios is impossible. It is possible to customize many things, and the AI understands it well, as much as normal Civ3. They even use their boosted Triremes much better than I do, and I have at last modern units only waiting for me in enemy cities.

[Code Monkey]

A general observation: I see a lot of people mentioning that they make it so a unit becomes obsolete but doesn't upgrade. There is a problem with this: it doesn't work to stop you and I'm not certain if it stops the AI either. You can upgrade any unit that's been pointed to upgrade to another unit whether "upgrade unit" is checked or not by using shift-U (the upgrade all command). This will invoke any "valid" upgrade for that unit.

If only you can get around it by doing so, fine, control yourselves and all is fine, but if it doesn't stop the AI then you might as well upgrade too. OTOH, depending where your opinion of the AI is, you might want to give them this handicap. Personally, I have no problem with upgrading anything and everything because I view it as allocating funds for buying new equipment for the existing military.

Another observation that ties in with something Dan Magaha said in another thread, balancing changes to combat values gets tricky because bombard issues. City improvements become more vulnerable as bombard strengths of units are increased (I've seen people mentioning increasing all stats exponentially ). I see in the editor there is a place to give each improvement a bombard defense rating - does anyone know if this is the same equivalent as a unit's defense, or, for that matter, does anyone know how the city bombardment mechanics work? In my own personal mod there's an effective ceiling for unit defense at 28 for mech infantry along with a bombard max of 24 for Radar Artillery because I'm afraid to go much further for fear of turning bombardment into a weapon of mass destruction on city improvements.

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by Spiffor
People :
Taxmen are now called merchants and produce 2 money per turn. You have to discover currency before you can have merchants.
Scientists now produce 2 science, and need education to exist.

Now this I like. Off to my editor again

[muppet]

Originally posted by Jumping Choya
Hmmm....maybe there's a thin rubber coating on the trigger so it's more comfortable? Or maybe they have a rubberized butt plate? Or maybe they're using rubber bullets?

That's It!!

That explains why they lose so often to spearmen.

You see... the combat is balanced....

[Moraelin]

Hmm... Well, as you've probably noticed by now, my native tongue isn't English. Or even vaguely similar for that matter. I guess I've been using the term "thread" for a different part of the tank. So which part is the thread and which part is the track, please?

[Libertarian]

Your native language isn't English?

[...bowing and scraping before a great man...]

[Calorman]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Hmm... Well, as you've probably noticed by now, my native tongue isn't English. Or even vaguely similar for that matter. I guess I've been using the term "thread" for a different part of the tank. So which part is the thread and which part is the track, please?

Thread is the wrong word to use. You should be saying tread which refers to the part of a shoe/wheel/tire etc that comes into contact with the ground (to tread is to step somewhere). Thus, tank treads are the rubber bits on the outside that touch the ground and the caterpillar track is the big long bicycle chain-like thing that lies underneath (and moves around the tank wheels).

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Calorman
It seems that msot people agree that the naval units are a bit slow and submarines are woefully underpowered (though I'm not sure if making them as powerful as a battleship is really fair is it Barnacle?).

Real life isn't fair... it's real.

A battleship's only defense against a WWII submarine was to go fast & zig-zag to try to make it hard for the sub to get into position to take a shot. Most of the armor is above the waterline and doesn't help against torpedoes. It has absolutely no ability to fire back, or even know it is under attack until the torpedo hits (unless lookouts spot the torpedo wake, which late war torpedoes already got rid of). It did take a lot of fish to sink a battleship, though. So, BB's needed a bunch of destroyers milling about hoping to catch the sub before it shoots, and sink it or chase it away before it can finish of the BB that any hits from the first torpedo spread probably slowed down a lot. Not many BB's got sunk by subs, but a lot of them got crippled and sent back to port for months.

With modern (nuclear) subs, none of that even helps anymore. Subs are as fast or faster than any skimmer. Tordedoes are both wire-guided and acousitical homing, so zig-zagging doesn't help. Torpedoes have bigger warheads and are designed to explode under the target, where the water density magnifies the explosive effect. Ships up through medium size just break in half. A fairly small number of fish would do for a battleship. Modern surface ships designed as ASW escorts have very little chance of nailing a nuke sub (personal experience from naval excercises in the 1980's). The best chance you have (born out in actual naval tactics) is to send your own subs in before your skimmers to clean out any enemy subs in the area, because nuke subs are much better at killing each other than anything else is at killing them. This is what I was trying to model, and I think I did it as well as possible given the limitations of the current Civ3 editor & combat system.

Originally posted by Code Monkey Another observation that ties in with something Dan Magaha said in another thread, balancing changes to combat values gets tricky because bombard issues. City improvements become more vulnerable as bombard strengths of units are increased (I've seen people mentioning increasing all stats exponentially ). I see in the editor there is a place to give each improvement a bombard defense rating - does anyone know if this is the same equivalent as a unit's defense, or, for that matter, does anyone know how the city bombardment mechanics work? In my own personal mod there's an effective ceiling for unit defense at 28 for mech infantry along with a bombard max of 24 for Radar Artillery because I'm afraid to go much further for fear of turning bombardment into a weapon of mass destruction on city improvements.

Modern warfare is hugely destructive. In WWII, the cities that actually got fought over looked like they had been nuked by the time it was over. Today, the average artillery shell is almost twice the diameter as in WWII (203mm vs 105mm), which greatly increases the size of the explosive charge (and the explosives are more potent). Tank main guns have undergone a similar escallation (120mm vs 76mm). A 1950's vintage F-4 Phantom FIGHTER carries a bomb load equal to a WWII B-17 heavy bomber. If you ever have two first world armies fighting Stalingrad-style over a city...