Can you mod an existing game?

RedBird · July 17, 2002, 23:25

I have seen posts that have said you can mod an existing game, and posts which have said you can't. Personally, I have not been able to successfully mod an existing game.

For example, seeing the suggestion of making Swordsman upgradable I promply edited my civ2mod.bic file to upgrade Swordsman to Musketman. In the editor I used File->Open and got the civ2mod.bic file. When I was done I saved.

In my existing game I still cannot upgrade Swordsman, but I can upgrade them in a new game.

That led me to believe that mods only affected new games, but someone just said that they've modified an existing game.

Am I doing something wrong, or what?

Willem · July 17, 2002, 23:36

No, as of patch 1.21f, the rules are imbedded in the save game, so that any changes you make will only take effect if you start from scratch.

RedBird · July 17, 2002, 23:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Willem
No, as of patch 1.21f, the rules are imbedded in the save game, so that any changes you make will only take effect if you start from scratch.

Ahhh. "as of patch 1.21f". That explains it. Thanks.

Willem · July 17, 2002, 23:56

Quote:

Originally posted by RedBird

Ahhh. "as of patch 1.21f". That explains it. Thanks.

Yeah, I kind of figured it would.

Coracle · July 18, 2002, 00:30

My experience is that, after downloading maps from the Civ site, my modded values do NOT work either. If I use a new map to try to keep things less tedious I am stuck with Firaxis' dopey values. Unless that has changed lately somehow.

reefer addict · July 18, 2002, 01:39

if you want to use your rules on a created map you just need to go to the editor, open the map you want to use ( found in scenerios ) and un-check the custom rules flag. works for me!

RedBird · July 18, 2002, 01:44

Quote:

Originally posted by reefer addict
if you want to use your rules on a created map you just need to go to the editor, open the map you want to use ( found in scenerios ) and un-check the custom rules flag. works for me!

Maps are .bic files too, right? So this is not applicable for a .sav file?

reefer addict · July 18, 2002, 01:49

saves cant be modded, atleast i havent found a way yet.

Nubclear · July 18, 2002, 02:18

Quote:

Originally posted by reefer addict
saves cant be modded, atleast i havent found a way yet.

Isn't there some hack out there that can directly affect a save file?

RedBird · July 18, 2002, 03:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
Isn't there some hack out there that can directly affect a save file?

You mean *besides* Gramphos' C3MT ?

C3MT can't be lived without, but it still can't change rules. It's great for modifying existing units on the board, but not for things like new unit mod's, or rule changes.

EDIT: What am I saying?!? It's great for new unit creation too (or so I hear, I haven't used it yet, but it has a "Unit Creation Wizard"), but this is not for creating new units or rule changes in a .SAV file.

EDIT 2: I just found the "Export to BIC" and "Import from BIC" buttons in C3MT. I exported my current game, made some mods, and then imported and saved to .SAV. This kind of worked. When I started up the modded game it did load, I saw my map, my cities and units were present, and at least some forms of the mod's were present (I'd modded most of my city improvments to reduce corruption [this seemed to be present], and modded Longbowman to upgrade to Musketman [this did not seem to be present]). However my culture was a negative number (though apparently very high since all my cities expanded their culture when I started - I suspect some sort of overflow error, but I don't know the code at all so I really don't know).

I chose not to play it out since the negative culture scared me.

So whether or not you consider this being able to mod saved games depends on how brave you are at playing semi-broken games.