How good/bad is the editor in "Play the World"?

[siredgar]

How easy is it to create your own maps and customize things? Can you tell me how much the editor has improved?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, can you specify a civ's location when creating your own scenarios?

Any other comments would be helpful.

Basically, I don't intend on playing multi-player because I have a slow connection so I'm wondering if it's worth getting. I just want to play the new civs and try out the updated editor to create my own scenarios.

Also, can I play multi-player through a LAN connection if I know someone who also has the game? Is it any better than connections with random people on the Internet that way?

[siredgar]

Please don't vote if you haven't actually bought PTW.

[FNBrown]

I don't think there were too many noticeable changes from the Civ3 1.29f patch.

[WarpStorm]

There were numerous changes, but a lot of them are 'under the hood'. The most important was the implementation of scenario folders and search paths. This allows you to make/load scenarios without screwing up your install or copying files around.

In addition, most hard coded values have been made accessible.

Ability to make flat and toriodal (why?) maps was added.

Ability to change time scale was added.

There is also the ability to make a debug scenario.

To answer your question, yes, you can place civs, but you could in 1.29f.

The biggest things missing are the lack of ability to set diplomacy and to script events.
Most features from Great and Small Wonders are shared.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I can't vote in this Poll as I don't yet have PtW . However, from what I have read around the place I must, for the most part, concur with Warpstorm. That is, the editor has been significantly improved, but still lacks what I consider to be some VERY important features-namely diplomacy and events scripting-not to mention making Buildings pre-requisites for unit construction (apparently on the Firaxis Wishlist ). As you can also see in my own poll, I am greatly displeased by the fact that four of the MOST IMPORTANT flags for Great Wonders are not available for Small Wonders-a fact which has shot my Mod ideas to hell. Thus, if I were going to vote, I'd probably say good, but needs some more patching in the future and, given their excellent history on Patches, I look forward to this becoming a reality .

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[FNBrown]

Good point... one thing I would have liked to have seen was the ability to make small wonders provide free city improvements.

For larger empires, it would be nice to build the "Supreme Court" at home, and get courthouses in remote cities immediately upon their construction - thus allowing for productive cities away from home in a minimal amount of time.

Personally, I kind of hate having to build granaries, barracks, and temples in new cities late in the game - they seem soooo 1000 years ago, yet still essential for a modern city to thrive.

[WarpStorm]

Oddly enough, nearly any town of moderate size in the USA will have barracks and temples (I know mine does). Any farming area will have granaries. Not as 1000 years ago as you'd like to think.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Oddly enough, nearly any town of moderate size in the USA will have barracks and temples (I know mine does). Any farming area will have granaries. Not as 1000 years ago as you'd like to think.

True - however, city planners don't spend several years with the construction of barracks, temples, and banks these days. Any modern town with a population of 50,000 or more pretty much gets banks, churches, etc. all over the place.

Modern city planning should have more emphasis on modern improvements. City councils usually argue more about retractable-roof stadiums these days than they do over marketplaces and libraries.

I think there ought to be a point in the game where older improvements become commercialized and privatized, so that the municipal benefits exist, but it is no longer the function of the government to oversee them in minute detail.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by FNBrown
City councils usually argue more about retractable-roof stadiums these days than they do over marketplaces and libraries.

Don't you mean retractable-roof colosseums?

[WarpStorm]

In my town, the the city 'planners' argue over the placement of everything. While they don't fund the buildings themselves, they sure spend a lot of time (and my money) deciding what gets built where and when.

[Switch]

Maybe a Privitization tech or small wonder (although the wonder would need a better name), that would give any city of size 3 automatically free basic building, like barracks, granary, temple, and marketplace? Maybe a library too, though that might be pushing it. And maybe granary shouldn't be in, as there's already the Great Pyramids.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You could call it "Private Enterprise", or "Civic Minded Citizenship" or something like that!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Gangerolf]

always room for improvment

[Atahualpa]

I think the best addition to the editor is the use of search paths.
You can recreate the whole Civ3 Directory Structure in a Folder of your liking (default is the same name of scenario in the PTW Scenario Folder e.g.: Civilization III\Civ3PTW\Scenarios\yourscenario\ and yourscenario.bix in Civ3PTW\Scenarios) and add new units there.
Before you had to overwrite the default Civilopedia.txt and Pediaicons.txt. Thus any scenario (that alters these files) would conflict with any other that alters them too (or just if they use different units_32.pcx). Or if you changed civilopedia text for existing units, the text would be changed too in the default game.

I hope I understood that correctly, but now Scenarios and Mods should not conflict with each other anymore.
It is even possible to use other mods in your own mod by pointing the search path to a different mod. e.g. you point the search path of your scenario to a graphicsmod. All the graphics in that mod will be used instead of the default ones, while you can still play with the default ones as well when you start a normal game.

IIRC when Civ searches for a file in your scenario it uses the first path of the search-path if not found there, the next one,.. and so on. Therefor you need not put all stock-Civ3 files in your Scenario Folder but only the things that are new/different.


That makes it for me much more useful to do scenarios for PTW as the user is not forced to overwrite anything and it leaves his installation quite untouched.


ata

[WarpStorm]

I agree, Atahualpa.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by Switch
Maybe a Privitization tech or small wonder (although the wonder would need a better name), that would give any city of size 3 automatically free basic building, like barracks, granary, temple, and marketplace? Maybe a library too, though that might be pushing it. And maybe granary shouldn't be in, as there's already the Great Pyramids.

I think this is an excellent idea....

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by siredgar
MOST IMPORTANTLY, can you specify a civ's location when creating your own scenarios?

This can be done in the editor for 1.29f.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

I have to say that "privatization" doesn't provide free facilities to anyone. A "New Deal" wonder would be a good idea to accomplish this infrastructure-building task late in the game.

What privitization does in real life is not create social institutions, but rather, privitizes currently existing ones... which are then sold if they're not profitable or valuable enough.

It would be good to represent privitization in Civ... perhaps democracies and anarchies could have a percentage chance of being seized control by an oppositional senate / decommissioned gov't planners à la post-Soviet Russia, who then "privitize" various non-productive elements in your empire, just as improvements are often destroyed during rioting. This would leave you with less money to pay per turn, but the improvements would be gone. Much more accurate to what privitization does to countries, both rich and poor, today... destroys them but balances their budget.

[Raion]

Well, scripting and rules.txt files did not come out for a couple of years, when scenarios became the big thing, in the next expansion pack -- with Civ II. Then the "Watch the computer AI play themselves" - Cheat mode came out, and the scripting and such.

It is going to be a lot of work, but I think one could use the same graphics and just rename some Wonders, doing about the same things and change it around that way perhaps! Have not dealt too much with the editor yet, myself -- but then -- where else and what game even has that in it. Adding units and graphics and such.

You get quite a bit already, so until the next expansion pack, 8 new Civ's and terrain graphics, help, and the extra units. all add to the editor.

New Civ's and such also.
Civ II was same way!

Please Sid, Please, Firaxis, Please, please, please, please, please, please!

Can you say 'please' fast six times??



I am a microbe!

[Raion]

So, I could not vote, unless one thinks it should be a patch, but then, some of the scenarios by people started to be included in the Civ II game, later, when the scenarios expansion came out.

So, I don't see something to vote for up there???

Good, but extras, added, to next expansion pack of game, of scenarios, for the editor and scenario making even better of the game for scenarios, for the game!!!

[Spiffor]

The editor is pretty solid in PtW, even if there aren't many spectacular changes since 1.29f (which already allowed to place specific starting locations, to place and edit cities, to place units etc.)

The big deal is that 'scenario properties' now works.

You can change the timeline any way you want :
- set the starting and ending date
- set how many time units a turn lasts (i.e you can have every turn of your renaissance scenario last one year)
- rename the time units (for you prehistoric scenario, you might want to rename 'years' into 'moons' or something flavoury like that) ; years, months and weeks are alrady built-in.

You can force players / AIs to play some specific civs, and force rules.

I didn't try the scenario folder thing yet, so I cannot speak about it.

Gotta love how they removed some hardcoded limits. Your air units can now go further than 8 tiles !

If you didn't follow what happened when 1.29f came out in July, here are the other things you can do (which you couldn't when Civ3 first came out) :

-set fixed starting positions
-place and edit cities/units on the map
-give specific techs to specific civs
-look at the beautiful minimap
-mod individual units so that they have more or less HPs (if you dislike having warriors with the same amount of HP as battlecruisers)
I don't remember other good things 1;29f did on top of my head.

Overall, the Civ3 editor is now a complete rules editor, which allows much more flexibility that what you could imagine in Civ2's rules.txt.
However, the lack of scripted events, and worse, the lack of premade diplomacy means it is impossible to make historical scenarios for now.

I've read somewhere another expansion is in the works. I wouldn't be surprised if it adresses the editor and the scripted events.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by Spiffor
The editor is pretty solid in PtW, even if there aren't many spectacular changes since 1.29f (which already allowed to place specific starting locations, to place and edit cities, to place units etc.)

The big deal is that 'scenario properties' now works.

You can change the timeline any way you want :
- set the starting and ending date
- set how many time units a turn lasts (i.e you can have every turn of your renaissance scenario last one year)
- rename the time units (for you prehistoric scenario, you might want to rename 'years' into 'moons' or something flavoury like that) ; years, months and weeks are alrady built-in.

You can force players / AIs to play some specific civs, and force rules.

I didn't try the scenario folder thing yet, so I cannot speak about it.

Gotta love how they removed some hardcoded limits. Your air units can now go further than 8 tiles !

If you didn't follow what happened when 1.29f came out in July, here are the other things you can do (which you couldn't when Civ3 first came out) :

-set fixed starting positions
-place and edit cities/units on the map
-give specific techs to specific civs
-look at the beautiful minimap
-mod individual units so that they have more or less HPs (if you dislike having warriors with the same amount of HP as battlecruisers)
I don't remember other good things 1;29f did on top of my head.

Overall, the Civ3 editor is now a complete rules editor, which allows much more flexibility that what you could imagine in Civ2's rules.txt.
However, the lack of scripted events, and worse, the lack of premade diplomacy means it is impossible to make historical scenarios for now.

I've read somewhere another expansion is in the works. I wouldn't be surprised if it adresses the editor and the scripted events.

Excellent summation. I would also like a little more flexibility with regards to traits that can be assigned to great/small wonders, and an easier way to plug custom units, resources, wonders, tecnologies, and city improvements into the game. Right now, it can be done, but it's hardly intuitive for those of us who just want to point-and-click our modifications into the game.