Advanced Scenario Design

Leon Marrick (leon2m@sprintmail.com), assisted by Harlan Thompson (harlant@hawaii.edu) and others.

Please see Credits for details
This manual is designed to assist those with both a firm understanding of the map editor and of the Cheat menu used
in preparing scenarios to improve and polish their work. Novices are urged to read some of the excellent documents
for beginners found on the “Ultimate Civ2 Site”, and practice with a design or two before delving too deeply into
this document.
This is a long essay, but not even close to being comprehensive. Additions are welcomed.

Listing of Subjects:
1 How to tell a bad scenario
2. A few handy tips and tricks (the quick guide)
2a. Controlling unit obsolescence
2b. Controlling technologies
2c. Controlling the civilizations that appear in your scenario
2d. Calendar reform
2e. Making pre-industrial cities look correct for all viewers
2f. Certain sections of the Cheat menu often confused.
3. Conceptualizing your scenario: Recreating geography, history, economy, military affairs, and politics
3a. Military, Economic, Scientific, or Diplomatic?
3b. Historical/derivative or fantasy?
3c. Length
3d. Scale
4. Mapmaking: Getting the geography right
4a. Modifying off-the-shelf maps
4b. Making your own map
5. The rules file: How to get what you want from it
5a. Cosmic principles
5b. Civilization advances
5c. Structures
5d. Wonders
5e. Units (including barbarians)
5f. Terrain
5g. Civilizations
5h. Miscellaneous information
6. Brief discussion of other useful text files
6a. City.txt/cities.txt
6b. Labels.txt
6c. Game.txt
6d. Events.txt
7. Creating your scenario
7a. Establishing basic rules and limitations
7b. Setting up civilizations and barbarians
7c. Creating, furnishing, destroying, and transferring cities
7d. The human landscape
7e. Mobilizing forces
7f. Science, economics, and industry
7g. International relations
7h. Polishing your scenario
7i. Playtesting
8. Graphics
8a. Units.gif
8b. Cities.gif
8c. Icons.gif
8d. Terrain1.gif, Terrain2.gif
8e. People.gif
 9. Sound effects
9a. Units
9b. Structures and events
10. Writing the readme and briefing
11. Packaging and distributing your work
12. Listing of credits and citations

1) How to tell a bad scenario: The Seven Signs

a) Bad scenarios are two-a-penny; they seem to breed wherever not rigorously controlled. The following tip-
offs seem like no-brainers, but how ubiquitous they are!
i) An unfunctional scenario
The uploaded .zip file may be corrupt, or the Rules.txt file may have fatal errors. After zipping your
scenario for submission, unzip it, install it exactly as your instructions say, and make certain it works.
ii) A garbled readme or scenario briefing
Nobody has any excuse for not spell-checking his work, or for not making certain his audience knows
what the scenario is. Those writing documents in a second language had better make QUITE certain
they are comprehensible.
iii) A map mostly consisting of grassland
Clear evidence of lazy cartography. Their efforts to plop down patches of woods, hills, plains, etc.
merely amuse. Make very certain your geography makes the game either realistic (in historical
scenarios), faithful (fantasy scenarios based on another’s work), or amusing/fun/replayable (in your
own imaginary realms).
iv) By-guess-and-by-God terrain alterations
I have seen mighty cities with wilderness hinterlands, cities with no water supply or irrigation,
irrigation on swamps, mining in grasslands, city radii completely railroaded surrounded by utter
wilderness, ... And so on. The terrain alterations each civilization is granted in your scenario says a lot
about the economy of that culture. Properly used, you can recreate a living society for the amusement
of your audience.
v) Misspelled city names.
Some people use an atlas in their native tongue when naming cities. This is good, especially in
scenarios with protagonists speaking that language (There is a Catalan scenario that benefits greatly
from this.). Others, whose own language may not be English, use English to attract a wider audience.
This, too, is good, although extreme care is required. Some people can’t seem to decide which
language they are using. This is pathetic. Check out an atlas, and get a dictionary.
vi) No or inappropriate scenario limitations
I have suffered through scenarios that claimed to depict the Cuban Missile Crisis, only to get 10,000
Cubans on Alpha Centauri, scenarios based on the Pacific War that ended up with Zulus controlling
Polynesia (when Tokyo fell, the empire split), and scenarios covering the establishment of the Roman
Empire fought out with destroyers. Eliminate all ridiculous situations, except those you plan.
vii) Cities that riot, starve, sell off structures, etc. during the first turn.
Make certain your players start out with working civilizations (unless you specifically warn them to
expect otherwise). Always design in Deity level (and change at the last moment if desired).

2) A few handy tips and tricks

a) To make computer players actually make all the units you think you have allowed them:
Unit obsolescence is not entirely controlled by the technology that the rules files says makes the unit
obsolete. This is a source of problems for virtually all scenario designers, but the following should make
your task far easier. See section 7e for how to confirm success in this area.
i) There are two ways that a unit with a movement of one can become obsolete:
(1) discovering the advance that appears in the rules.txt file that makes it obsolete.
(2) allowing the unit in the Musketeers position to be built. No defensive air, sea, or land unit, with a
defense less than that of this unit, of any speed, can ever afterwards be built, by either a human or
a computer player of that civilization.
ii) There are four ways that a unit with a movement of two or more can become obsolete:
 (1) discovering the advance that appears in the rules.txt file that makes it obsolete.
(2) If a better unit, in that same unit usage category (attack, defense, settle, etc.), that also moves at a
speed of two or more is available. Applies only to ground units. Applies only to computer players.
The computer player determines which units meeting all of these conditions to build, from among
those you think it will, by looking only at attack and defense figures. Nothing else matters. A few
examples (note that “5a/1d” means an attack of five and a defense of one) should make this clear:
* 5a/1d and 4a/1d: Only the first is built. It does not matter how much you want the AI to
build the second, or what extra capacities you grant either unit. You may only get the
second to be built by setting either unit (or both) to air or sea, making the units’
purposes different, or giving either unit (or both) a movement of one.
* 2a/1d and 2a/2d: Only the second is built.
* 5a/1d, 4a/2d, 3a/3d: works the same as 12a/1d, 3a/2d, and 1a/11d: all three are built,
as those units with lower attacks (it does not matter how much lower) have better
defenses (it does not matter how much better).
* 6a/2d, 7a/2d, and 7a/1d: Only the middle unit is built, because it has the defense of
the first without the poor attack, and the attack of the third without the poor defense.
(3) allowing the unit in the Knights position to be built. No offensive air, sea, or land unit, with an
attack equal to or less than this unit, a defense less than that of this unit, and a movement of two or
more can ever afterwards be built, by either a human or a computer player of that civilization.
(4) allowing the unit in the Musketeers position to be built. See above.
iii) As you see from the above, this problem really isn’t difficult to understand or avoid. Just be careful
with the Musketeers and Knights positions and create similar land units with care.
b) To make it almost impossible for a computer player to gain a specific technology,
and extremely difficult for a human takes 1 step in versions of the game later than 2.4.2: set both
prerequisites of that advance to “no”. The tech cannot be traded or stolen.
i) In version 2.4.2 and earlier, it takes 7 steps:
(1) either set the tech paradigm so high it becomes unfeasible (for all civs), or set the governments
involved (for just a few) to fundamentalisms and change the loss of science to 100% and the
maximum science rate to 0% (Section 5a).
(2) This still leaves open stealing, so make certain no other civilization has anything they can steal,
forbid them to make diplomats/spies, or ask the human player to respect a “house rule”.
(3) But, if they take a city, and you have not forbidden tech through conquest (in scenario parameters
under the cheat menu), they will take any tech they like.
(4) But they can still trade advances, so make certain they have nothing anyone else has any interest in
(either no techs, or techs with a AI-value of zero) If you have the version with events, you can
forbid them to talk with other civilizations. Humans are trickier: sometimes self-policing is the
only answer.
(5) They can still beg or demand advances, but you can probably fob useless techs with high AI-
values off on them for the duration of the game, as long as the important techs are made
undesirable (section 5b).
(6) But they will happily learn new advances from goody boxes, until they gain Invention. Eliminate
these.
(7) Another possibility remains open: gaining advances through establishing trade routes. Either
forbid them to make caravans/freight, or clear their current research project (effectively setting it
to none).
ii) The only way that remains open is a sudden advance through getting a unit in gift from a human
player. This cannot be blocked, although self-regulation and adjusting attitudes works.

c) How do I make certain the civilizations I want to appear in my scenario actually do?
i) Go into the rules.txt file, pick the civilizations you want to appear in your scenario, and change their
names, leader names, attributes, titles, etc. to whatever you want.
 ii) Then, make certain each civilization you want has a different color (help on this appears just above the
civ list). Assign colors as desired.
iii) When setting up the game that will become your scenario, select seven civilizations (why all seven?
Otherwise the colors available are chosen randomly!) and the “choose computer opponents” option
under custom rules and choose the civs you altered.
iv) In making your scenario, destroy any civs not desired. Understand that they may come back into the
game if an empire splits, so think about selecting the “don’t restart eliminated players” option in
custom rules.
d) You can create your own calendar, within certain limitations
i) The key to calendar reform is altering the “Labels.txt” file. Near the very top of the list of words and
phrases are entries for “A.D.” and “B.C.”. When displayed in a game, dates can read “10 B.C.” or
“A.D. 10”.
(1) Islamic dates are trivial: Simply change “A.D.” to “A.H.”, for anno hegirae.
You can create an evolutionary timescale by changing “B.C.” to “million years BP”.
(2) You can go back to the very beginning of life, should you desire.
(3) Days of the month can be arranged, as long as the scenario ends before the month does (“January
45” looks odd): Change “A.D.” to the month you desire.
(4) With a little imagination, hours of the day also work. A scenario depicting Arnhem on the first day
of Operation Market Garden would begin at “10 o’clock” and end at “24 o’clock” (military time).
ii) I want to see a scenario about Revolutionary France with Years of the Republic and new-style months.
That would be very cool.
iii) Limitation of all dates
Because the largest number one can have as a starting year is 32767, the furthest one can go in the
future is 32767 AD (using yearly intervals) and Dec, 2730 AD (using monthly intervals). After this
point, if you use years, the calender switches to BC. and, if you use months, the calendar (months not
affected) goes into reverse. See next section for a way to exploit this.
iv) How to get months in the BC calendar
Julius Caesar died in 44 BC. You want your scenario to cover the ensuing chaos from March, 44 BC to
March 43 BC, using one-month intervals. You cannot do this with normal methods, but a little number
manipulation will get you what you want:
(1) Determine how many years BC (example: 44 years) your scenario began, and multiply that
number by twelve (12 times 44 is 528).
(2) Bring up the cheat menu and change the starting year (in scenario parameters) to 65534 minus the
number you calculated in step 1 (in our example, we would calculate that 65534 minus 528 equals
65006, and type in that number). Ignore any changes civ2 makes to the number you just entered.
(3) Set the monthly interval to -1 for one month per turn, -2 for two months per turn, etc., just as you
would normally.
(4) Set the game turn (in the main Cheat menu) to 0.
(5) If you have it right, your calendar should be close to, but probably not display exactly the date you
want. In our example, we now have a calendar that reads “Sept 44”, but Julius Caesar got knifed in
March. We have to subtract 6 months to go back to March, and therefore enter 65000 into the
starting year.
(6) As time passes, your calendar will add months normally up to Dec 44, then go to Jan 43. Welcome
to the world of BC months!
e) You can make your pre-industrial cities look correct
i) As you will discover by using the “Cheat” menu to switch the human-controlled civilization, only one
civilization in each game (the one initially chosen) is certain to have the correct pre-industrial city style
if played by a human. You have to live with all of your cities looking like Bronze Age Monoliths if
you do not play the initially chosen civilization. This can be remedied by:
(1) Making a copy of your savegame or scenario,
(2) opening up the file in Write (Do not use Word, etc.)
 (3) changing the second character before each leader’s name near the top of the scenario file to the
ASCII character in position one for classical cities, two for far eastern cities, and three for
medieval cities. Let me make this a copy-and-paste task for you by supplying you with the
characters:
(sorry the characters have been lost during format transfer)
(4) saving the file in text-only format, with the “SAV” or “SCN” suffix left unchanged. Macintosh
users may have to drag the resulting file to the Civ2 game, or restore the proper type and creator
information.
f) Certain sections of the Cheat menu often confused: What they really do
i) Change Terrain at Cursor
You may add any alteration to oceans that you can to land. Add the alterations first, then change the
terrain itself to ocean. Although mining and irrigation never have an effect (no matter what the rules.txt
file says), fortresses prevent units from dying more than one at a time, airbases still function, roads add
an extra arrow for cities with the Superhighways improvement, and railroads add 50% to shields,
rounded down (works with offshore platforms and King Richard’s Crusade).
ii) Edit King - Clear Patience
Makes that civ (if played by a computer player) open to diplomacy for a while.
iii) Scenario Parameters - Calendar options
See “Calendar Reform” for further discussion.
iv) Scenario Parameters - Toggle Total War Flag
If total war is on, the Senate is silenced.

3) Conceptualizing your scenario

You have an idea. You want to make a scenario out of it. Think before you design.
a) Military, Economic, Scientific, or Diplomatic?
The only scenarios that should require nothing but military skill are those depicting battles. If your design
permits it, and the scenario is of sufficient length, leave room for diplomacy, nation-building, and
scientific/cultural changes and advances. Do this, and all sorts of players will avidly play your creation, not
just conquer-the-world types.
b) Historical/derivative or fantasy?
There are two types of scenarios, historical and fantasy, with differing design requirements. People well-
versed in history recreate a past with scenarios that seem to make it come back to life, and people with
creativity do a splendid job of erecting new worlds. In between these two categories are those scenarios
inspired by somebody else’s creation, such as the Arthurian legends, or Tolkein’s works. This distinction
determines those areas of design your audience will grade your work on.
i) Historical scenarios must
(1) show an initial situation that is true to history and
(2) constrain the player in much the same way as the historical figures were. On the other hand,
historical veracity should never, never get in the way of fun value or replayability. If strict fidelity
is demanded, don’t bother designing under CivII - it was never designed for such requirements.
(3) Some of the most important questions you should have an answer to when creating a historical
scenario are:
* What could the most powerful military unit of each culture be expected to do?
* How quickly did economies grow (if you are not recreating a battle)?
* What were political relations between the civilizations like?
* How powerful was each civilization compared to the others?
* What importance did naval power/air power have?
* How difficult was it/would it have been to conquer a given town or region?
* How difficult was it to trade, communicate, or travel?
ii) Scenarios recreating fantasy worlds dreamed up by another person should follow the same rules as for
historical scenarios, except that it is more permissible to enhance the project with your own
 interpretations. When coming up with your own world, you have complete freedom. Just make it fun to
play more than once!
c) Length
i) The most important feature of any scenario is length in turns, because it determines the cardinal
question any player of civ2 has to answer: Am I playing a wargame, or an empire building game? A
scenario designer is in a position to decide this question for the player: There is no empire
development during a battle (see the scenario “Gettysburg”), and almost none in a campaign. During a
war (see the scenario “East Wind, Rain”), a certain amount may take place, and the re-enactment of a
historical period (see the scenario “Imperial Pride”) should allow a fair bit, but not enough to entirely
alter the world. Should you wish to depict the entire history of a civilization, development is central,
and warfare merely among the tools of diplomacy.
ii) Among the ways you can adjust the civ2 game to meet the needs of an expanded time frame is to:
* add more advances appropriate for that time period - this also adds color to your scenario.
* make it more difficult to gain crucial advances.
* increase the number of food (and possibly shield) rows (see section 5a).
* increase the cost of structures and (possibly) units.
* make it more difficult to modify terrain (see section 5e).
* make it more difficult to perform diplomatic actions, especially those that involve advances.
iii) It also should be mentioned that, the longer your scenario, the greater the chance for your audience to
become bored. I have noted a fair difference between Europeans and Americans here - no guesses as to
who likes what!
d) Scale
Few scenario designers make their maps too small. Know that large worlds (Naturally, small worlds have
the opposite effect in each case):
* allow for more detail. This is why they are so popular.
* make for longer games.
* allow empires to change their size more, given sufficient time. Everything dependent on
empire size, including science, is effected.
* make it more difficult, but more lucrative, to trade
* make exploration more time-consuming. and setting up embassies without using Wonders
more difficult.
* set a premium on units’ strategic speed (how fast an unopposed unit can cross terrain).
* make fuel limits more constraining. Increase them to restore a realistic range.
* make it more difficult to retain conquered regions far from support.
* make changes in power between empires take longer to effect, including conquest. The larger
your world, the better attacking forces should do against defenders (otherwise you will have
some extremely bored players)
* make it more difficult for a human player to compete in size with computer players, because
the more cities one has, the earlier citizens become unhappy in each one (see section 5a for a
fix).
* make it more difficult for computer players to compete militarily with humans, because they
have no conception of how to project force at a distance.
* reduce the ability of any one unit to change the game, whether altering terrain, attacking, or
defending. You should make it easier to alter terrain, unless you give players a lot of time.
* effectively reduce the quality of one’s transport and communications network, apart from
railroads (those available at the beginning of the scenario) and airports (which become vastly
more important). Try increasing the road movement rate.
* make corruption far more of a problem. This problem is only soluble by changing
governments, or allocating extra palaces.
4) Mapmaking
Every good scenario starts out with a solid map. One can either adopt/revise an already existing map (I collect
them for this purpose), or live dangerously and start from scratch. We will take each possibility in turn.
a) Modifying off-the-shelf maps
If possible, go with a pre-existing map and save hours and hours of tedium. Don’t hesitate, however, to
modify it. In the scenario “Imperial Pride”, an off-the-shelf map was tweaked quite a bit to meet various
requirements. Among the revisions you should think about making are:
i) rendering areas of the map owned by nations/peoples not represented in the scenario as useless as
possible, to avoid unrealistic expansion. You may also (when it comes time to build your scenario)
make these areas undiscovered, or even impassable (see section 5d).
ii) enhancing or reducing the development value of various areas, to differentiate rich and poor regions of
your world. Resource squares should serve those areas you want to be powerful, and be scarce in
places you want to keep poor. “Imperial Pride” found and used as many resources as possible to make
Europe and England strong. Adding swamps and forests to temperate regions, deserts to arid regions,
jungle and swamp to tropical regions, and polar climates to arctic regions are quick, realistic ways to
retard development. Likewise, spread grassland and plains (or hills, for industry) in the most favored
zones.
iii) altering the coastline to allow or deny nautical transportation, as appropriate.
b) Making your own map
You may also make your own map; a task fraught with peril, as many a sloppy effort demonstrates.
i) Reproducing a map (historical/alternate history scenarios that need a new map)
If you reproduce another map, use the following methods to start off right:
(1) with the map(s) you will draw upon in front of you, use your hands to create an imaginary
rectangle that just barely encloses the geographical area you are interested in. Many budding
cartographers enclose too large an area in their map, then make the map itself too large in a
desperate attempt to retain detail. Don’t make this mistake.
(2) Establish the four corners of your map and tilt the map in front of you until the rectangle you are
interested in is squarely in front of you (not tilted). This gives you a mental idea of what a good
job will look like.
(3) measure the width and the height of that rectangle. Example: 4 inches wide, 7 inches tall.
(4) to preserve the shape of your region in the map editor, multiply the height by two. Ours is not to
wonder why the map editor works oddly, just to deal with the problem... Example: a 4 unit wide,
14 unit high map.
(5) convert to the size of map you want, larger or smaller depending on your design (see the section
on scale, just above). Open the map editor and imput the numbers you decide on. Example: a 40
by 140 map would be about middle-sized.
(6) as soon as you enter the map editor, insure that your world is flat or round. Do this later, and a
scream of rage and frustration will likely escape your lips!
(7) Set the resource seed to something other then one (1), unless you want the resources to be
randomly placed whenever you use that map (seldom a good idea).

ii) Drawing your map (all scenarios that need a new map)
Instead of drawing the shapes of your continents in plains or (worse) grasslands, use the most useless
terrain type you can find (arctic works well in most cases). This helps you make complete maps, since
it is difficult to ignore a blotch of arctic in the middle of a desert.
(1) First, get the basic coastline established, using a broad brush. Use a 1x1 brush to add islands,
capes, bays, bulges, peninsulas, etc. Constantly check major coastline features against known
landmarks (the first ones you will have to measure distance from are the corners of the map itself,
and careful work will continually add others).
(2) Avoid simple coastlines, except when your map only covers a nation or less. It is amazing how
interesting a few island chains, a peninsula or two, and some bays can make a continent. See if
you have what it takes to make a second Europe; that is a deed worthy of praise!
 (3) When your coastline is complete, toggle the “coastline protect” option. Fill the map in with arctic.
Add lakes. Chart rivers. Crudely establish mountain ranges/hilly masses. Once you have done all
this, you have a solid skeleton to begin more detailed work.
iii) The details.
At this point, so varied are home-made maps that detailed guidelines would be worse than useless. A
few regularities, however, do exist in the real world - and should occur in your renditions of it. Always
keep the scale of your map in mind, since it will radically change what looks realistic to
knowledgeable players.
(1) Vary your terrain. Most mapmakers find it easy to plop down vast expanses of a single terrain
type, make maps where endless plains meet great mountain ranges, and totally bore everyone who
plays their creation. Design a beautiful world: add crags, fjords, buttes, pillars, fens, moors,
valleys, glaciers.
(2) Be wary of juxtaposing mountains and flatlands/ocean, and desert and arctic terrain/grasslands,
except if your map covers at least a substantial portion of the world, and your terrain is very
varied.
(3) Since rivers cannot be made within the scenario itself, and are only removeable there by changing
the terrain to ocean and back to land again, place them with especial caution.
Unless you really want to deny water for irrigation, or do not plan for civilizations in that area to
develop much, never leave too wide an expanse of map without some source of water.
(4) This note will guide you in making terrain for nations you are fond of: The most productive terrain
for a civilization is fertile (with grasslands), with patches of forest (for early industry) and some
hills (to ramp up shield production). It must have plenty of sea access (including canals if
possible), lots of varied resource squares (some peat or gold in the right place can do wonders) and
might benefit from mountains (for protection). And some rivers (for canoe travel and increased
trade), but not too many (it’s hard to put bridges over the things). In short, if you want to do well
by a civilization, give it a wide variety of terrain types.
(5) Understand also that, important as terrain is for development-oriented scenarios, it is critical for
wargames. It is surprising what a little rough terrain can do for a otherwise weak defense, or for
units that would be too slow elsewhere. More on this in the terrain alterations section (7d).
5) The Rules file
The second most important file (apart from the scenario itself) to the designer is the Rules.txt file, which
controls many of the variations you can make to the standard Civ2 game. For this reason, we will cover it in
some detail. It is as well to have the default rules file open while reading this.

Starting at the top, we see some game and file information. Every message line begins with a semicolon, which
means “ignore everything after me and before a return”.

a) The Cosmic Principles

The cosmic principles follow. We will take them in turn.

* Raise the road movement multiplier to increase the value of roads (and thus decrease the
relative value of rails) for transportation, as well as making the world easier to transit. Also
changes the cost of movement for alpine troops, and for any units traveling along rivers.
Useful for big maps.
* Lower the 1 in # chance (by raising #) for triremes to be lost to make them compete better
with caravels.
* The amount of food it takes to feed one of your citizens is of cardinal importance. Change
with caution. Changing this figure to one is seldom a good idea, but raising it to three is a
powerful way to avoid cities growing too rapidly.
* Raise the # of rows in the food box to avoid cities growing too rapidly in scenarios that stretch
time out (I learned how realistic that made some games by playing a scenario set in the 14th
century). A similar rule applies for shields. The maximum useful figure for either number is
20.
* Change the # of food settlers eat to very quickly make settlement and land alteration more or
less difficult.
 * Raise or lower the city size for first unhappiness to make it more or less easy to keep your
citizens out of mischief respectively. Changing the riot factor based on number of cities can
quickly change the whole scenario. Raise it, and even a primitive government can found and
develop new cities without fear. Lower it, and starting new settlements from scratch becomes
both difficult and expensive. “Imperial Pride” lowered it slightly, to stop a human player from
expanding too rapidly in unsettled regions. NOTE: when extremely unhappy people (the
black-clothed chaps) start appearing, structures that cause people to become content become
far less useful, and entertainers/luxuries vital. This makes an established city in fertile terrain
quite governable, but severely limits new towns with infertile hinterlands.
* Raising or lowering the city size limitations without aqueducts and sewer systems makes
these improvements less or more useful.
* You may alter the tech paradigm to allow a faster or slower rate of tech advances in the rules
file, or in your scenario. The latter takes priority. This is one of the two most important ways
of preventing unrealistic technologies from being discovered (the other involves editing the
techs themselves, see below).
* Raise the base time for engineers to alter terrain to make it less easy to cut mountains down to
plains, or lower it to make it easier.
* You may make monarchies, communist states, and fundamentalist regimes more or less
militarily effective by altering the number of units they support for free.
* Should you want to make communist states suffer corruption, you may raise the distance from
a palace that this government is equivalent to. This is one way to tame a large civilization.
* Fundamentalist states can be rendered more or less scientifically progressive by altering the
percent of science lost and the maximum effective science rate. See section 2b.
* You may increase or decrease the penalty for changing a city’s production type by altering the
next number. Set it too low, however, and players will build Wonders by buying
Manufacturing Plants first.
* The maximum distance a unit can paradrop from a friendly airfield or town may be altered.
* Finally, the time it takes for a ship to make it to Alpha Centauri may be raised or lowered.
One could even design a scenario requiring the protagonist to force his enemies’ ships to
return to Earth, in which case playtesting various figures would be crucial.

b) Civilization Advances
Most scenarios benefit greatly from a customized tech tree. Not only can you control how technologically
advanced a nation is, you can differentiate cultural biases and predilections. The scenario “Arabia Awakes”
adds a lot of background color this way.
i) Basic warnings
The next section of the rules file allows you to alter certain aspects of civilization advances, and make
your own technology tree. Be warned: simple errors here can take a lot of time to debug and put right
(the messages the game puts out when it finds an error in the rules files are terse at best - and quite
frequently nonexistent). After a while, most of my tech trees start to remind me vividly of rat’s nests.
On the other hand, the rewards for getting this section right are considerable. Type two/three-letter
identifiers with caution and double-check each one. Do not make a technology loop (tech A needs tech
B needs tech A).
ii) General good ideas
To avoid a advance being traded or stolen (in versions after 2.4.2 only), appearing in the on-line help,
or on the science minister’s report, set its prerequisites to “no”s. To help avoid its being trading or
demanded in earlier versions, give it an AI-value of zero.
iii) Removing technologies from the tech tree
If you want to cut off technology at a level you consider reasonable, while still allowing advances, you
must cut the links between techs you allow and every tech you don’t want. This takes careful work. It
is recommended that you back up your work at this point, consult the paper chart of technologies
included with the full installation, star every tech you want removed (after the semicolon!), rename
both of their prerequisites to “no”, and use the in-game “Cheat Menu” option “Advance Tech” to guide
a civilization, step by step, through your altered tech tree. Add the professional touch: connect your
new tree to the advance “future technology”.
iv) Altering the tech tree
If you want to alter the tech tree, without necessarily truncating it, ever greater possibilities for disaster
loom. It is strongly recommended that you draw your tree out on paper before hacking away at the
rules file. Again, playtest using the above method. I speak from bitter experience; it took me an
embarrassing amount of time to make my first in-house tech tree work properly.
v) The AI-value of technologies
You may alter how the computer player values advances in this section, which can be quite useful. In
the scenario “Imperial Pride” the Traditionalists will ask for various useless techs, ignoring
Industrialization until (I hope) long after the scenario ends. In “Arabia Awakes”, computer players are
made to act historically by the same method.
vi) Special Technology Features
Take advantage of special technology features, based on the advance’s position in the technology list.
Apart from those allowing governments, changing pollution, changing demographic figures, or altering
citizen icons (see section 8e), they are:

* Automobile works with Electronics to change city pictures to the modern style.
* Bridge Building allows settlers/engineers to construct roads in river squares.
* Ceremonial Burial allows temples to make one person content*. (see note below)
* Construction allows the building of Fortresses.
* Communism reduces the effectiveness of Cathedrals and makes more partisans appear.
* Democracy allows Courthouses to make one content citizen happy under a democracy.
* Electronics improves the effectiveness of Coliseums and works with Automobile to change
city pictures to the modern style.
* Fusion makes Nuclear Plants entirely safe and adds 25% to spaceship thrust.
* Guerrilla Warfare makes a civilization much more difficult to conquer, since all captured
cities henceforth produce many more partisans (note that other techs allow a few partisans to
appear). Allocate with care; a civilization representing a state with no popular support should
likely not have this advance.
* Gunpowder sells all barracks, and increases their maintenance cost by one.
* The Industrialization advance changes city pictures to the industrial style.
* Give a civilization Invention, and they will not gain advances from goody boxes.
* Map Making allows you to exchange maps with computer players if they also have this
advance.
* Mobile Warfare sells all barracks, and increases their maintenance cost by one (this adds to
Gunpowder’s effect, not replaces it).
* Monotheism allows Cathedrals to make three people content*. (see note below)
* Mysticism improves the effectiveness of temples.
* The Nuclear Power tech allows ships to move one extra square.
* Both Navigation and Seafaring reduce the chances of triremes floundering.
* Philosophy grants a free advance to the first civ that discovers it.
* Radio allows settlers/engineers to construct airbases.
* Railroad allows settlers/engineers to build railroads. All city squares are upgraded to railroad.
* The Refrigeration advance instantly improves all city squares to farmland, and makes it
possible to double-irrigate land.
* Theology improves the effectiveness of Cathedrals.
* Trade makes it possible to discover what cities want what trade goods.
(2) NOTE - You may easily change Cathedrals and Temples so that they require different advances to
construct, but I know of no way to change the technology that makes them work! Temples are
 useless until Ceremonial Burial and Cathedrals, until Monotheism (if Mysticism and Theology are
not developed first). Oddly enough, Coliseums seem to work with no advances at all.
vii) User Defined Advances
In addition to User Def Tech A, B, and C, plus those added in more recent versions of the game, one
may use the “plumbing” slot as an additional user defined advance.

c) Structures
The only alterations to structures the rules.txt file allows you to make are those to the name, cost,
maintenance, and prerequisite advance. Given the wide variety of effects structures have, this is quite
enough to customize your scenario significantly. By controlling who can build what structures, for what
price, paying what maintenance fee, you can fine-tune how expensive it is to:
* relocate your homeland (Palace).
* increase industrial production. Islands can be made great industrial powers with the help of
the Offshore Platforms structure, possibly renamed to “Imported Raw Materials”, or some
such name.
* improve the economy (apart from the obvious structures, fundamentalist states can also build
Temples, Cathedrals, and Coliseums to boost revenue)
* increase the rate of technological advance
* allow islands to support large cities (Harbors are extremely important in maritime scenarios,
and one may sometimes desire to make them more costly.)
* reduce pollution (if you haven’t simply eliminated it) and prevent global warming (Solar
Plants).
* keep your citizens content
* allow a city to grow larger than a certain size
* defend cities (City walls may sometimes profitably be made more expensive, should you
think a clever player would otherwise create an unconquerable empire. Be careful with SAM
batteries; they make most air units obsolete.)
* increase food production (Supermarket), and increase the local rate of growth (granary)
* churn out veteran units
* airmail units from one side of the globe to another (airport). Be warned: clever players of your
modern scenarios can get vast quantities of gold and science by airlifting freight units to
distant airports, then railroading them to large foreign cities.
* increase arrow production (Superhighways).
* protect against nuclear attacks (SDI Defense).
* control corruption/make cities less easy to bribe (Courthouse).
ii) Low-capacity Railroads
Since railroads allow any number of units to instantly travel to any square connected with them, I once
used two airports, each renamed “Railroad Terminus”, to simulate a low-capacity railroad (in the
scenario “Arabia Awakes”). Note that units transported this way can be stopped by fighter planes, so
(if you think it worth including the file), alter the “game.txt” messages to more appropriate statements.
iii) Harmful structures
Is a civilization getting too rich for your liking (especially troublesome with fundamentalist states)?
Give it a structure, with no other function in your scenario, that costs a ridiculous amount to maintain.
AI players can’t tell the difference, and human players can be warned/asked to respect a “house rule”.
Make certain the structure is impossible to build, or an AI player might just run its economy into the
ground.
iv) No known way to build unique structures
While units that can only be built by certain civilizations can be designed by setting the prerequisites
of the technology required for them to be built to “no”, this method does not work for structures,
Wonders, etc., as these items require an advance on the tech tree to be built.
d) Wonders
Some scenario designers have gone one step further and customized their wonders. While structures take
careful technology/prerequisite tweaking to yield benefits only to some civilizations, and offer the same
benefits to any city (no matter how valuable or worthless you think that city should be), wonders are
generally specific to a single civilization, and often to a single city. This can allow a small but industrious
civilization to effectively compete. The following refresher will likely spark a brainstorm or two:
* make a civilization more contented (JS Bach’s Cathedral, Michelangelo’s Chapel, The Oracle,
the Hanging Gardens, Cure for Cancer).
* make a civilization naturally grow faster than its competitors (the Pyramids).
* make a city a formidable trade producer, especially combined with high-tech structures
(Colossus)
* make a nearly unbeatable maritime power (the Lighthouse or, to a lesser extent, Magellan’s
Expedition) For example, if one nation’s fleets knew how to ride out storms and another’s
didn’t, the first would be given the Lighthouse and the fleets in question made subject to loss
at sea.
* make certain a civilization never falls too far behind in technology; useful for small empires
you want to keep advanced (Great Library).
* make a civilization a conqueror’s nightmare (Great Wall).
* simulate a warrior people (Sun Tzu’s War Academy).
* create the “Workshop of the World” (King Richard’s Crusade). Add this wonder to a Japanese
city, for example, and the tiny island group can have a industrial presence equal to what it is
in the real world.
* allow perfect knowledge of trade deals and wars among other civilizations, and maintain a
fairly good picture of how well one is doing in the world (Marco Polo’s Embassy, United
Nations)
* allow a nation to get away with murder (Great Wall, United Nations).
* allow far easier establishment of new cities for a human player playing a civilization
(Michelangelo’s Chapel).
* in every city that doesn’t need the normal effect, effectively permit a Democracy to field one
army (two, with Woman’s Suffrage), and a Republic, three, without unhappy citizens (JS
Bach’s Cathedral, because Wonder effects are applied after absent soldier effects) This allows
you to set up a civilization with a militarily powerful, representative government.
* greatly increase knowledge production in a city/make that city more vital to the possessor
civilization’s science advance rate (In my version, 2.4.2, Copernicus’s Observatory doubles
knowledge production and Isaac Newton’s College merely adds 50%. Is it the same for you?).
* make a city immune to disorder/allow it to field armies without happiness penalties under a
representative government (Shakespeare’s Theater) This is especially useful for planes and
missiles.
* simulate a civilization that always has the finest military hardware (Leonardo’s Workshop).
Playtest vigorously if you change the units section of the rules file.
* simulate a civilization with an extraordinary cash flow (Adam Smith’s Trading Co.). Note that
this wonder is most useful for large civilizations, so use it carefully.
* recreate a sudden jump in science by a single civilization (Darwin’s Voyage).
* allow a civilization entire governmental flexibility, if government switching is allowed
(Statue of Liberty).
* force a sudden improvement in world opinion of a nation, or simulate unusually good
diplomats (Eiffel Tower).
* make a representative government a far better conqueror (Woman’s Suffrage).

* simulate the “Arsenal of Democracy” (Hoover Dam).

 * turn your scenario into a nuclear lobbing, planet warming, all-polluting madhouse (the
Manhattan Project).
* make a democracy much more likely to keep fighting (without using the “Total War” option)
(United Nations).
* cause the entire map to be revealed after the beginning of the game, and (unless carefully
controlled) make the primary focus of the game the space race (Apollo Program).
* make a civilization, especially a large one, gain advances far more quickly (SETI Program).
ii) This list has been memorized by 90% of civ2 players, so why did I write it down? Answer: Unless you
remove them from play, by either destroying them or setting their prerequisite advance to one no
civilization will gain (such as “no”), your players will have to deal with the effects of any and all
Wonders pre-allocated or built. I have played many a sloppy scenario that allowed all Wonders to be
built, and sometimes even provided bundles of cash for the purpose. Control Wonders carefully!
e) Units
Most scenario designs require at least some alterations in the Units section of the rules.txt file, and many
totally revamp it. Most designers seem to have made this area of their scenarios work fairly well, although
some tips might help.
i) Effects of a unit’s position in the list
Each position in the unit list is (always) associated with a icon and (in some cases) associated with a
sound (see section 9a). A few also have special, unalterable features, including:
* Engineers - the only unit position capable of double-speed land improvement and
transformation.
* Musketeers - see section 2a. Use this position with caution.
* Fanatics - the one unit that can only be built by a fundamentalist state. Use this position to
firmly fix a special unit to the fundamentalisms in your game.
* Knights - see section 2a. Use this position with caution.
* Spies - the only unit capable of spy-enhanced diplomatic functions.
* Nuclear Msl. - changes diplomatic messages, may change computer player behavior. “OUR
WORDS ARE BACKED WITH SMURFETTES!”
ii) Number and type of units available
When designing units from scratch, try to give human players a reason to build each unit; the best
attackers, best defenders, and fastest movers should either leave room for weaker units to compete in
certain situations, or be very expensive. It is seldom necessary to give any civilization a choice of more
than about eight or ten units to build at any one time. Unless you are careful, more than might confuse;
players will pick favorites and build them exclusively. Units do not always have to improve or get
cheaper as one advances tech. Consult the fascinating scenario “economy” for tips here.
If you want a civilization operated by the computer to build large numbers of a useful unit type,
consider creating two or more units of that type with identical icons and capacities. Harlan Thompson
does this to good effect in his scenario “Viking Age”.
iii) Unit Speed
See to it that units move at speeds appropriate to the length of the scenario and the scale of the map.
Too fast, and the human player will stage a blitz. Too slow, and he will get frustrated. I am reminded
here of a certain scenario covering the Saxon wars in 9th Century Britain. The map was big, every city
had city walls, the roads were as bad as they were historically, and units moved at a snail’s pace. A
superb design, but dead boring. Ships (in particular) move quite rapidly in my scenarios to represent
the extraordinary flexibility of sea power.
iv) Unit Cost
Any buildable unit that costs 190 shields or more can, in certain situations, be bought for negative
gold. Try to avoid giving your players “money for nothing” this way.
v) Nuclear Units
Set the attack of the unit to 99.
Barbarian Nuclear units (plagues, famines, etc.) can also be included in your scenario, but (for some
odd reason) do not function unless you set their usage catagory to “3”.
vi) Units that cannot move
Units that cannot move can serve as impassable terrain (with some designs), or fixed defenses
(difficult-to-conquer mountains, etc). Note that any unit that cannot move can complete no action; if it
is unfortified at the beginning of the game, it will stay that way. If not in a city, an AI player will
immediately unfortify these units (it tries to move them), so do not give human players an advantage
by fortifying them. If they start out in a city, these units can travel on ships between ports.
vii) Submarines
Adding the submarine capacity to an air, ground, or sea unit has a number of effects - and opens up
many possibilities. Any submarine unit can be attacked by any unit that manages to find it, regardless
of other limitations, except in three situations:
* units with an attack or movement of zero cannot attack, even in this case
* ground units cannot attack units over water
* submarine units cannot attack units over land
(2) If you give an air unit the submarine capacity, it can attack sea and ground units over water, and
no unit over land. If it has the fighter ability it can attack air units only over water. This makes it
possible to make Torpedo Bombers that do a number on Battleships, but cannot influence affairs
on land. Computer players do not use this unit at all well (they often end up stuck near cities). If
this unit is over land, it generates a ZOC, making it easy to find with ground units.
(3) Ground units with the submarine capacity cannot attack any ground, air, or sea unit, even when it
claims it has the fighter ability, when operated by a human player. When operated by a computer
player, they can. Since they generate a ZOC, they are also easy to find.
Naval submarines are more familiar. If you make all your ships submarines, you can prevent shore
bombardment. Just make a lot of units able to see them and rename the “Navbttle” sound to
“Torpedos”.
viii) Helicopters
Civ2 thinks all air units without fuel limits are helicopters. Regardless of unit position, these units may
be attacked by ground and sea forces, can capture cities, and lose strength each turn when not in a city
or airbase. If you want air units without fuel limits, but do not desire them to have all of these features,
the best you can do is to set the number of turns they can fly without refueling to 250 or so.
ix) Units that cannot be built, including unique units (generals, etc.)
Units that are only allocated at the beginning of the game and cannot be built can be implemented, by
setting their prerequisite advances to one no civilization will get. There are two good ways to do this.
* If you are prepared to sacrifice a technology to keep the unit in the on-line help:
* create a tech with prerequisites both of “no”,
* create another tech with prerequisites of “nil” and the first tech’s two/three letter identifier
* All units requiring the second tech will appear in the on-line help. They cannot ever be built,
unless you allocate either tech to any civilization while setting up the scenario.
* If you are prepared to sacrifice convenient information on the unit to save a tech:
* create a tech with prerequisites both of “no”. Do not give it to any civilization. Use it for all
units you never want to be built.
* Do not set the advance that makes these units obsolete to anything other than “nil”, unless you
want the computer player to disband them when they discover that tech.
x) Units that can only be built by - or forbidden to - certain civilizations
In version 2.4.2 or earlier, because any advance can be traded or stolen, including those not on the tech
tree, you have to decide what is more important to you.
(1) If you want to make certain a civilization can build a special unit:
Only give that civ the tech, and give that advance an AI-value of zero. Although that civilization
will always be able to build the unit, other peoples will also, if they get the advance in trade or
diplomacy. See section 2b for more information.
(2) If you want to ensure that, come what may, a certain civilization cannnot ever build a special unit:
Give it the tech that makes it obsolete, and give that advance an AI-value of zero. If, however,
civilizations that can build this unit discover this advance, or get it through trade or diplomacy,
 they will suddenly be unable to make more of these units, and computer players will even start
disbanding them. See section 2b for more information.
xi) If your players use versions of the game later than 2.4.2, your task is far easier. Use either of the two
procedures for making unique units, except that you would assign the advance needed to build the unit
as you build your scenario.
xii) If you want a civilization to have to research the advance needed to build a special unit, and you do not
set their research project to this advance when setting up your scenario, then you would:
(1) insert that technology into the tech tree as you would normally
(2) give all other civilizations an advance that makes that unit obsolete.
(3) After doing this, change both prerequisites of the second tech to “no”s.
(4) Set the AI-value of the second tech to zero, so players with versions 2.4.2 or earlier are not too
bothered by it.
xiii) Impassable terrain (available only in some game designs)
If your game has no units that can attack air units, you can include impassable terrain:
(1) create a unit similar to the following (name), nil, 1, 0.,0, 0a,40d, 10h,10f, 5,0, 1, (impossible tech),
000000000000000. what this does is make an unbuildable air unit. Sadly, the computer is so
deranged that any unit that can attack air units will attack any air unit, no matter how tough,
blocking its way to a city. I field tested this idea with stealth fighters, only to see the AI make
constant suicide runs.
(2) change its icon to that of some terrain and make its shield as inconspicuous as possible (see
section 8a).
(3) place them where you want impassable terrain
(4) you may want to alter the message in the game.txt file that appears when a unit is told it cannot
attack air units
xiv) Invisible units
See section 8a for more detail.
xv) x2 defense versus horse
Is actually +50% defense against all units with a movement of two. Only seems to work using units
with one strength point each (like pikemen); when I tried using units with more, I found that the
attacker somehow manages to work around this ability as the battle continues.
xvi) Amphibious units
Are good to include if your scenario includes single-square islands with cities on them. The computer
player uses both these and paratroopers better than it does most unit types, so adding them is AI-
friendly.
xvii) Discussion of Barbarians
The only scenarios that will have no barbarians are those that allow them only for villages, then delete
all the goody boxes. Otherwise, it is a good idea to know what barbarians appear when, to avoid Storm
Deities or Star Destroyers from wiping out your infant civilization. The following information is
adapted directly from the document “Advanced Scenario Making Ideas”, by kind permission of Harlan
Thompson:
(1) Piratical Barbarians
* Early: Archers + Triremes
* Middle: Crusaders/Knights + Caravel
* Late: Dragoons +Frigate
(2) Frontier Barbarians
* Early: Legion (villages only) + Horsemen (uprising only)
* Middle: Knights (villages only) + Elephants (uprising only)
* Late: Cannon + Musketeers
* Modern: Artillery + Partisans, Fanatics
 (3) See section 7b for more information on barbarians.
f) Altering Terrain
This section of the rules.txt file, coupled with graphics alteration if necessary, allows you to make any ten
land terrain types you desire. There is only one kind of ocean; it is always impassable to land units and
navigable by ships. You may control the defensive bonus of the terrain, the movement cost, and how many
wheat, shield, and arrow icons the terrain produces before improvement, the difficulty and effect of land
improvements, mining, transformation, and the most primitive government under which the computer
player will perform any land alteration command. You may not (as far as I know) change how long it takes
to build roads/railroads, whether roads adds arrows or not, and how interested the AI players are in making
roads/railroads. Although ocean terrain may be altered to land, irrigating and mining it never have an effect.
i) Several Possible Terrain Types - to demonstrate the possibilities
* A tactical-level depiction of Flanders, 1917 might do very well to include shell craters. Since
there are no deserts in Flanders, we would change the desert terrain to:
Shell Crater, 3,1, 0,0,0, no, 0, 0, 0, no, 0, 0, 0, no, ; Drt
We now have a terrain useless for development, that cannot be improved, difficult to move
through (cost: 3), and dangerous for defenders (1 => defensive strength is halved).
* Head east to Russia, and Germans in April, 1942 would have to contend with mud. Since mud
ruins roads, use a terrain that takes a long time to put a road over (Mountains or Glaciers
would do nicely), and change it to the following (assuming we use Glaciers).
Mud, 2,2, 2,0,0, yes, 1, 5, 1, no, 0, 0, 0, no, ; Gla
This terrain is similar to grasslands without shields, but is a bit more difficult to wade
through.
(2) Allowing players of your scenarios to change coastlines
You have an idea: “What if I made a Dutch scenario that included reclaiming land from the sea?”
or “What if I wanted to recreate the North Sea oil bonanza of the 1970s?” You can do this
(although AI players will not take advantage of these opportunities) by:
* making it possible to change oceans to another terrain by some command (mining, irrigation,
or transformation)
* In the scenario itself, putting a settler/engineer on a transport, and issuing the appropriate
order every turn until the job is done. You can also make your engineers fly, or swim.
This method can also be made an effective way to simulate the release of pent-up forces,
without using events. Although computer players will not initiate any changes to ocean
terrain, they will continue actions that you start, if you make it reasonable for them to do so.
So, twenty turns into a hard-fought war, an island full of reinforcements could suddenly
develop a bridge...
(3) This is followed by twenty land resources, two for each terrain type, and two ocean resources. You
may tweak the defensive bonus of the terrain, the movement cost, and how many wheat, shield,
and arrow icons the terrain produces before improvement individually. You may not (as far as I
know) give Grasslands special resources.
(4) Exact control of resource placement
Are you frustrated by the placement of resources on your map? One way to place resources as
close together or as far apart as you like is to:
* remove all the resources of the terrain(s) you want to alter, by renaming it and reducing its
bonuses to that of the standard terrain, and changing graphics accordingly.
* Give each of the resources you deleted their own terrain type. Clearly, there are early limits
on how many resources you can afford to treat this way...
(5) Creating unique resources
How would you simulate the towers of Barad-dur (Tolkien’s work), the Al-Gawar field (among
the biggest oil fields ever found on Earth), the Mountain of Silver (the fabulous Peruvian silver
source that fed Spanish coffers for centuries), or the Cornucopia (the legendary, ever-abundant
goat’s horn)?
(6) Rename a resource, alter its attributes as desired, place only one in the world, change its icon to
something suitable, and make certain no settler/engineer can irrigate, mine, or transform any
terrain into it. If appropriate, place a city taking advantage of the resource, or let explorers find it.
 How’s that for an exciting exploration scenario? Naturally all this terrain hacking will only
confuse players if you don’t alert them by changing the terrain icons.
ii) Avoiding a Civ2 bug
If you want to forbid the transformation of terrain, do not set the terrain type that that terrain is altered
to to “no”. Have the terrain change into itself instead. See section 7b, “Adding rivers after you start
designing your scenario” for why.

g) Civilizations
Many of the changes possible in this section of the rules.txt file can also be adjusted within the scenario
itself. Some, however, can not. The first section covers generic titles for the leaders of the seven
government types. This is followed by instructions, then the actual civilization list appears. We will take
each alterable feature in turn:
i) Leader names can be altered within the scenario, or they can be pre-set for random games as well here.
ii) Seven colors are assigned to civilizations; each game may only have one of each. Read section 2c to
use this feature to your advantage, and section 8b to alter the colors.
iii) The appearance of cities of a preindustrial civilization to other cultures follows. Read section 2e to
control the appearance of your own cities.
iv) The noun and adjectival forms of peoples’ names and their national characteristics are self-
explanatory. Resist the temptation to fit in a nation’s name somewhere here.
v) Last in each row are replacement titles for leaders of that civilization under certain governments. I
eventually figured out that, unless the noun form of a people’s name is different in the scenario than it
is in the Rules file, the generic titles will always be used.
h) Miscellaneous tweaks
Good scenarios makers take care of the details. Altering the default trade goods to commodities more
appropriate to your world helps convince your audience that they are playing a game worth keeping. The
same applies to changes in orders, difficulty levels, and attitudes. Limit your names to roughly the length of
the longest default one of that type.

6) Other useful text files

Although the most important, the rules.txt file is not the only useful text file for scenario makers. Others include
“Labels.txt”, “Game.txt”, and “Events.txt”. Some scenarios use other files; one could even change the menu
text to be more consistent with one’s design.

The versions of the game shipped with the “Conflicts in Civilization” and “Fantasy Realms” CDs make a
number of changes to how certain text files are treated. Always include a copy of “pedia.txt” in your .zip file,
because newer versions of the game use it to update the online information about units, Wonders, etc.
a) City.txt/Cities.txt
Apart from rules.txt, the cities.txt file is the most frequently found text file included with uploaded
scenarios. Although safe and easy to modify, this file has a few quirks which are as well to cover:
i) The listing of civilizations is the same in Cities as it is in Rules. You change the city names for a
civilization by scrolling to that civ’s position, insuring that the noun form of the people’s name is the
same in this file as it is in the rules.txt (not the scenario itself), and renaming the cities (as mentioned at
the top of the file, count the number of characters you type carefully).
ii) Do not type certain characters, such as “&”. Do not delete civilizations completely.
iii) After you have done that, and once your scenario is complete, you should then build a new city for
each civilization and confirm that it is given the correct name. Odd how complicated that can be...
b) Labels.txt
Lables.txt must be manually replaced in the Civ2 directory for those using the Conflicts in Civilization CD.
Those using the Fantastic Worlds CD must remove them from the scenario directory before the scenario
will run. Make certain you warn your players about this.

Open up the “Labels” file and scan down it. Among the items I can see a use for changing are (from top to
bottom):
* “B.C” and “A.D”. See section 2d for more detail.
 * “Attila”, the leader of the barbarians
* “River”. One might conceivably change this to “Lava Flow”.
* Various land improvements
* “Village”, “City”, and “Zoom to City”. At least one scenario I know of (Aliens versus
Predators) has changed these to “Colony” and “Zoom to Colony”, etc.
* “wise men” - why not “wise women”?
* names of commands
* “Tithes”. The Fascism Patch has altered this to “seizings”.
* Various diplomatic messages and states. Some may not be appropriate.
* Names for ship parts. No one I know of has explored the possibility of building something
other than a spaceship out of various parts...
* Words describing relative power and honor
* names of governments. I find it often helpful to alter these.
* “Top Five Cities” might be renamed “Top Five Colonies”
* “Ign. City Walls” and “x2 versus horse” are often not quite accurate
* and plenty more possible changes...
c) Game.txt
Game.txt must be manually replaced in the Civ2 directory for those using the Conflicts in Civilization CD.
Those using the Fantastic Worlds CD must remove them from the scenario directory before the scenario
will run. Make certain you warn your players about this.

This file controls most of the messages you will see throughout the game, from starvation notices to offers
of gold and knowledge for peace. If you make extensive changes to structures and advances, you might
consider issuing the “find and replace” command to replace all occurrences of a changed item. You can add
a lot of realism to your scenario with a bit of imagination.
d) Events.txt
Sounds neat, but since I lack the Conflicts in Civilization CD, I know nothing about it. It sounds as though
it’d be great for adding historical color and retaining game balance. I do, however, offer the following
information about bugs and methods directly adopted from Harlan Thompson and Aleksei Andrievski’s
document “Advanced Scenario Making Ideas”, or from further information by Harlan Thompson.
i) The length of the events.txt file is limited
After a given number of lines, the computer ignores all further instructions.
ii) Be careful when subtracting money
The computer thinks that $100 minus $150 equals roughly thirty thousand.
iii) The Command MoveUnit
Harlan Thompson knows of no example of this working.
iv) JustOnce and random turns don’t mix
You can make an event happen only once. You can make an event happen randomly. You cannot do
both with the same event.
v) TurnInterval
Appears to be buggy.
vi) Making Caravan Units
Not possible through events.txt
vii) A way to really mess up unit placement
If you place a unit at a location with one even and one odd coordinate (such as 41, 40), the unit will be
misplaced. It cannot be seen, it can enter any city regardless of defenders, and the map will go through
convulsions every time it moves. You have been warned.
viii) Ensuring that two civilizations remain forever at war
First, set the two civs you want to be at war, at war. Then prevent them from ever talking with this:
 * @IF
negotiation
talker=bloods
talkertype=humanorcomputer
lister=crips
listertype=humanorcomputer
@THEN

@ENDIF
* And repeat with the two civs reversed (talker and listener)
* Do not forget the blank line between @THEN and @ENDIF
ix) Adding barbarian units
The events editor in Fantasy Worlds is not capable of adding barbarian units, but you can still create
them manually.

7) Creating your scenario

a) Establishing basic rules and limitations
You have come up with a neat idea, made your map, and edited various text files. Now it’s time to actually
create the scenario itself. As you open the Civ2 program, and run through the various screens to customize
your game, be aware that some of the decisions you make now cannot ever be undone, save by starting over
with a blank slate. In general, choose the “Deity” level to build your scenario in - doing so makes you far
more likely to make a functional civilization at any level of difficulty. As mentioned in section 2c, always
choose seven starting civilizations to retain absolute control over which ones are included in the scenario.
Barbarian activity should be non-existent for a Gettysburg scenario, but commonplace in a post-nuclear war
scenario. Always customize your rules; these cannot be changed later, so choose wisely! In virtually all
scenarios you will want to select the other civilizations, and often you would not allow spaceships to be
built. If you wish to avoid civil wars (empires spitting up into factions), you would make certain that
eliminated players cannot be resurrected. Scenarios using flat worlds are far more common than those with
round ones. When the next screen pops up, in order to avoid the computer player building cities you do not
want them to, always choose a civilization at the top of one of the three listings of civilizations - Romans,
Russians, and Celts with the standard rules. This means you get to take your turn before any of the
computer players can build cities in awkward locations.
Let’s reveal the entire map and get busy!
b) Setting up civilizations and barbarians
i) Basic tips
Your scenario will require your players either to become generals, nation-builders, or both. This
fundamental division decides whether you should focus on relative military or economic power. The
best scenarios allow the player to choose several carefully thought-out civilizations, each requiring
different skills to win with. If one is found too easy, another will then challenge and amuse.
As you make your scenario, you will often change the human player. Make certain the “Always wait at
end of turn” option under the Game menu item “Game Options” is checked. Save constantly, always
under a new name (I created 31 savefiles making “Imperial Pride”.). It is amazing how much time one
press of the Return key can waste...
If your scenario is lengthy, use the “Demographics” and “Tax Rate” screens extensively to make each
civilization as powerful, progressive, populous, and prosperous as your design calls for.
ii) Control real estate
The more opportunity your scenario allows for empire development, the more important it is to control
uninhabited/undefended areas. If you give your players more than about a hundred game turns before
the scenario ends, and permit them to make settlers/engineers, account for every square inch of real
estate.
iii) Goody boxes
Be careful with goody boxes. They can very quickly become the driving force in a scenario.
iv) Exploration
If you do not reveal the world at the beginning of the scenario, you are faced with the lengthy task of
establishing what areas each civilization has explored. If you must reveal large areas, create a
temporary rules file with a unit similar to Helicopters, but with an enormous speed. To keep your
 civilization’s casualty list accurate, prevent units from crashing during this process. Ensure that all
cities, including barbarian ones, can see enough of their hinterland to feed themselves.
v) Setting up governments
Two schools of thought governing what governments should be assigned to civilizations compete for
your consideration. The first requires you to give them whatever governmental type they had in reality.
The other requires that you assign the civ2 government that corresponds most closely to your reading
of that nation’s economic, diplomatic, and military capacities. I recommend adopting the latter. If you
do so, however, alter the “labels.txt” file (see section 6b), and the rules.txt file (see section 5f) to
ensure accurate government names and leader titles.
vi) Making certain that new Wonders can be built
Insure that Wonders are not counted as objectives.
vii) A way to make sure that a specific city cannot produce Partisans when taken
Have it change hands as you build the scenario, since a city does not produce partisans when
conquered a second time by a given civilization.
viii) Adding rivers after you start designing your scenario
It has long been thought that rivers could only be created in the map editor. Now, thanks to LeMay and
Harlan Thompson, this is revealed not to be the case. To create rivers:
* Open up the rules.txt file and change the base time for engineers to transform terrain in the
cosmic principles section to zero (0). Also in the rules.txt file, temporarily change the terrain
that all the terrains you plan to alter are transformed into to “no”. After you have finished
making rivers, change them back.
* Create three (or more on other terrain types. For example, mountains take eight) engineers on
each of the squares you want rivers to appear. Lastly, create any unit of that civilization off to
one side (see next step for why).
* Select the unit off to one side, and give it any order. This “initializes” the method, and tells
the program that all future sets of engineers will be making funky terrain. Without using the
mouse, issue the “o” (transform) command to engineers on the squares you want rivers to
appear on as they start blinking in turn. As the third engineer on a desert, plains, or grassland
square (or more on any other terrain) receives the transform command, the terrain will turn
into a odd river/coal/desert combination.
* To restore the proper terrain type, simply use the cheat menu to alter terrain. All the funny-
looking graphics will disappear, but the river will remain.
* For a happy moment, I thought that this method could be exploited to create resource squares
in any location I wanted. Sadly, my hopes were dashed (by various limitations and
mismatched or missing graphics).
ix) Barbarians
Because barbarian cities and units are a superb way to simulate minor powers and limit the undefended
territory in your game, a few notes about them are in order. All this information is provided by Harlan
Thompson.
* If you’re not careful, barbarians and their cities can be cheaply bribed. You have three ways
to make them more resistant: Build Courthouses, Palaces (set these structures’ prerequisites to
“nil”, then cheat-build them) to up the cost of bribing a city. Add money to the barbarian
treasury (build and sell off structures) to make all cities and units more costly to bribe.
Because barbarians throw their money around, use the events available with more recent
versions of the game to top off their funds every so often.
* You can also raise the shield cost of barbarian-only units.
* Barbarian cities can only make the unit that conquered them. If the barbarians own enough
cities in your scenario, they will stop producing units to raid their neighbors. If this is a
problem in your scenario, use the events.txt file (if your version has it) to make them appear
every so often.
* Barbarian units obey simple rules.
* Barbarian settlers found no cities and eventually disappear.
* Other land units wander around, searching for units to kill and cities to sack, whether
wounded or not.
 * If it finds a fortification, it will occupy it indefinately and if it is an attack unit, it will charging
at all units that end their turn next to it
* Sea units will never attack other ships unless they are carrying troops, or perform shore
bombardment unless they have no other way to land their cargo.
* Air units, for reasons unknown, act like land units (don’t cross water, stay in forts).
* See section 5d for a table of what barbarians appear when.
c) Creating, furnishing, destroying, and transferring cities.
Cities are the center of all scenarios other than those depicting a single battle. They are easy to create, and
almost as trivial to destroy or hand over to another civ.
i) Creating Cities
Those unsure how to create cities are referred to a beginner’s guide.
ii) Furnishing Cities
* Cities (even barbarian or primitive ones) can be quickly furnished with structures by using the
“copy other city’s improvements” under the “edit city” option and selecting a city you have
previously set up. You may manually add improvements the civilization cannot construct
normally by either setting the tech to build of the improvement to “nil”, or temporarily giving
the civilization the tech.
* You may give a civilization as many palaces at the beginning of the game as you like; this
permits you to fine-tune corruption and waste, especially in far-flung empires.
* In short scenarios, be very careful what improvements you give an empire that might be
controlled by a human player; anything not both urgent and vital will be sold for cash. It is
particularly inappropriate to give cities every possible structure.
* Be stingy with airports on large maps, miserly with pollutant-reducing structures in scenarios
that forbid pollution, tight with temples and the like to Fundamentalisms, and chintzy with
Police Stations in cities controlled by non-representative governments.
* Make certain you account for each and every Wonder. Either destroy it, allocate it (with or
without making it obsolete), forbid its ever being made, or playtest games to see who reaps
advantages from in practice. Try setting the prerequisite advance of Wonders you want to
exclude to “no”, rather than irreversibly destroying them.
iii) Destroying Cities
A city may be destroyed by
* reducing its size to one
* putting a weak defender in it (you can even get very clever and use a barbarian, to avoid
cluttering up the casualty list),
* switching the human-controlled civilization,
* creating a attack unit of the second civilization and,
* attacking the city. This is really helpful if you want to change the terrain under a city.
iv) Transferring cities
Transferring a city to another civilization merely involves moving a unit of that civilization into the
empty city. Make certain the city size is not zero or negative. Creating barbarian cities, however,
requires you to take at least two game turns to design your scenario (which means shields accumulate,
civilizations interact unpredictably, etc.). Create the city and leave it empty. Create a barbarian unit of
the type you want the city to produce next to it. When you are certain you are ready to end the game
turn, do so and watch the city get conquered. Try not to have too many barbarians running around - it
gets tedious.
v) Special notes on port cities
You can create a coastal city unable to make ships or sea improvements. You can create inland cities
that think they are ports. How? The only time the game can realize a city is a port or not is when that
city is created.
vi) Special notes on cities of size zero
Unless you own it, or the entire map is revealed, cities of size zero are invisible. Units in such cities
 still generate a ZOC. Moving one of your units into such a town will generate an error message, but
clicking “ignore” will allow the game to continue.
d) Creating the human landscape
This is an area often skimped on, yet it is of cardinal importance in every scenario.
i) In scenarios depicting a battle, campaign, or war, railroad links between cities should be thought about
carefully. When you connect point A and B by rail, you essentially reduce the distance between them
to zero. It’s the equivalent of setting up a transporter room in each burg (“Beam me up, Scotty!”). Use
roads, put units in fortresses, make barriers: in short, do something to prevent a skilled human player
from romping all over his computer opponents. Same story with city hinterlands: Railroads make it
easy to suppress partisans.
ii) Apart from railroads, most scenarios would do well to add more alterations to terrain, simply in order
to let the player know how prosperous, industrious, and advanced a civilization he commands. A
cluster of cities surrounded by intricately worked homesteads sends a powerful message: so does a
desolate, wilderness landscape. If the cities of a single nation are widely separated, you may have
made your map too big.
iii) The cost of changing the landscape should be carefully considered; you may raise it by increasing the
cost of settlers/engineers and the amount of food they consume, and upping the time required to
irrigate, mine, and transform.

e) 7e. Mobilizing forces

i) Number of Units
How many units you gave each civilization at the beginning of the game, and where they are located,
can make a great difference to the pleasure your audience derives from playing your work. Playtesting
is crucial here, since you may sometimes want to recreate Pearl Harbor - or create an initial balance of
power. Since you can control the order in which nations move (see “Tidying your Scenario”, below),
there is no excuse for unplanned massacres on the first turn.
Be wary of creating too many units, for two reasons: Firstly, a skilled human player, given a critical
mass of offensive units, can conquer any opposition. Secondly, excessive initial units leads to bloody
stalemates between AI powers which, given that the computer is blissfully innocent of any offensive
tactic other than “kill everything between me and my target city”, does not make for exciting scenarios.
ii) Fine-tuning Offensive Capacity
You may fine-tune the ability of an army to take the offensive in the first turn of the game by moving
units off roads/rails, placing them far away from the action so they appear as reinforcements, and
hitting the space bar to end that unit’s turn (cannot move or attack first turn). If going first would
otherwise be too great an advantage (no genuine tactical/operational surprise is intended), this last
method makes for a far smoother, more realistic opening to a war. For example, if the Japanese go first
at Pearl Harbor, most/all of their units should move. If the Americans get to go first (they have ten
minutes to brace for disaster), very few of their units should move (a destroyer or two to kill the midget
subs, perhaps, but no planes).
iii) Pre-Set Go To Locations
You might often find it helpful to give units pre-set locations towards which they are to travel. I am,
however, not certain that this is an effective way to get the AI to attack a certain city.
iv) Confirming that computer players will build the units you want them to
In the Hints and Tips section, we covered how to make computer players actually make the units that
you have given them the tech to. You find errors and confirm that you have solved this problem by:
* revealing the entire map (command found on the main cheat menu)
* ensuring that the human player is currently operating another civilization than the one you
wish to inspect
* opening up a city window for that civilization, and confirming that the computer recognizes
all the build options you think it should.
v) Unit Cost
And a last note: I know from bitter experience (correcting the first version of “Imperial Pride”, playing
bunches and bunches of other scenarios) that the most powerful/versatile units at sea, on land, and in
the air are seldom made sufficiently expensive. Don’t make this easy mistake!
f) Science, Economics, and Industry
i) Technology
This is among the most time-consuming areas of scenario design to get right. It is as well to think
clearly from the beginning.
* You can start off right. With proper editing of the rules.txt file, you have all the tools you
need to create civilizations with the exact mix of technologies you desire. When assigning
advances to civilizations, avoid giving cultures you wish to keep relatively primitive
technologies that advanced nations don’t have. A human player can quickly defeat the
scenario design this way. If you want to give primitive civilizations units advanced ones
cannot build, set these units’ advance-to-build to one all parties have, and the advance that
makes them obsolete to one only some civilizations have. You may also give civilizations
advances not on the tech tree, force them to develop a delaying tech, or set their research
project to one they ordinarily would not be able to do.
* Good luck staying that way... (only applies to those with version 2.4.2 or earlier)
However, you do not have any cost-free ways to keep civilizations from getting advances you
do not want them to have. Any technology may be traded, stolen, or demanded, including
those not on the tech tree. A list of suggestions to ameliorate the problems this game
limitation may cause - and their costs - follows:
* forbid civilizations to speak with each other using events. The costs of this are obvious, and
both you and your players must have the Conflicts in Civilization CD, no sure bet.
* adjust diplomatic attitudes and lower reputations.
* Set the AI-value of advances to want to keep special to zero (see section 5b). Use this method
extensively.
* Grant a bunch of useless “filler” technologies to advanced civilizations. If you set their AI-
values relatively high, computer players will trade or demand them first. Also, they make it
less likely that a computer player will steal an important tech (but not impossible!).
* Adjust the tech tree and unit/structure prerequisites to reduce the damage done by any one
tech changing hands, or lump all the differences in civilizations together in a few vital techs
and concentrate on guarding them.
* make diplomatic units more expensive, or even forbid them. This makes your scenario less
well-rounded (not a problem with all designs).
* You do not need to have only one technology tree. Try making a separate one for each basic
style of civilization. Give each culture their own base tech, then set the prerequisites of that
advance to “no”s, set its AI-value to zero, and make every further advance for that cultural
type require this base advance. This is a superb way to limit damage done by trading or
(unless you get very unlucky) stealing. See the scenario “Aliens and Predators” for effective
usage of a similar method.
* Ask players to respect “house rules”. Does not control computer players. Use sparingly;
although they are very effective, players might not follow them - or even take the time to read
them. You could try altering the file “game.txt” to provide on-screen warnings, but some
think this a little too nannyish.
* Money and Trade links
* The majority of scenario designers shaft their hapless players with nearly unfunctional
economies (some that could not even pay the bills, no matter how high one set taxes), then
lurch over to the opposite extreme and give them a ridiculous sum of money to start out with.
Given enough time, a human player in a modern scenario can totally transform his economy
by massive investments in trade links. By taking fifteen or twenty minutes to set up a trade
network, you can:
* Improve historical veracity, or make a fantasy world more full-fledged
* Give your players an economy that works, right out of the box, and
* If you calculate science advances and the cost of items based on this improved economy,
make it less trivial for a human player to jump-start his empire.
 * Never neglect food caravans. For example, a scenario depicting the Atlantic in 1500 might
have a city, representing the rich fishing off Newfoundland, supplying both Portugal and
England with food. But there are downsides; not only do food caravans take food away from
donor cities, they also use up valuable trade routes (I personally find this rather frustrating).
The only positive feature of food and trade routes using the same slots is that you can
deliberately crowd out new trade routes for provincial-minded peoples.
Sometimes, though, you just want to add food to a city’s larder without setting up a food route
(maybe you want it to grow rapidly). This can be done:
* Set up a temporary city of any civilization and set the human player to that civ.
* Make trade units next to cities to want to have full larders, set their home city to your
temporary city and their load to food, and move them into the burg.
* To remove all the trade routes you set up, destroy the temporary city.
ii) Industry
When designing a scenario of any length, careful attention both to the initial shield production and the
potential for growth - of each civilization will yield a balanced scenario that effectively accomplishes
your original plan.
* There are many ways to improve the relative industrial production of a small, concentrated
civilization, including carefully placed resources, unique structures, certain Wonders, and a
more highly developed hinterland.
* Many scenario designers prohibit pollution, especially in tactical-level scenarios. This is not
appropriate for most lengthy games, because it tames even a skilled human player, putting the
computer players back in competition.
* Note also that wealth is vital for both human and AI players’ industry. Humans perform rush
jobs by buying units or structures, AI players add extra shields every turn if (among other
factors) they have money to spend.
g) International relations
If it is one area in which the computer players truly have minds of their own, it is in international relations.
i) For a short game depicting a battle or invasion, it is generally appropriate to set the parties’ treaty
relations to “War” and “Vendetta” (which makes a player think the other has mounted a sneak attack).
As time passes, though, only scripting events will keep them fighting. Hard as it is to get them to fight
the foe intended, it is quite impossible (again, without events) to keep the computer players at peace
with each other. I have frequently seen an alliance broken on the first turn, and a shooting war break
out by the second. Even attitudes can change very quickly. Do your best; I have no silver bullets to
offer (except possibly those available through events.txt).
ii) Adjust reputations like the important things they are. The lower a civilization’s reputation, the more
difficult it is for a human player to accomplish any diplomatic goal. Throw realism out the window
here, because this area is too important to gameplay to compromise. A reputation of zero is “spotless”
and one of seven is “Atrocious”.
iii) Human player access to diplomats - and especially spies - must be considered, since they can guide
forces around enemy ZOCs, investigate cities, steal tech, ruin city walls, and (the most devastating
move of all) capture cities and every unit in it intact. Pre-allocate, price, and place these units with
caution.
h) Polishing your scenario
When you are ready to playtest your scenario, take the following steps to polish your scenario, and avoid
defeating your design:
i) Make certain that all the players have the treaties and attitudes towards each other that they should. If
you have made them engage in combat of any kind, or even allowed them to meet, your original
settings may have changed (use the diplomatic advisor).
ii) Set the funds on hand to a reasonable quantity. Amazing how easy it is to forget this.
iii) Make certain that the rate of taxation covers the budget for all civilizations. Raise or lower as needed.
iv) See to it that no cities are undergoing riots (use F4). Check cities only when human-controlled - the
computer player has very different rules governing unhappiness.
v) Set the accumulated lightbulbs to zero, or another appropriate number (if you have created any trade
links).
 vi) Change city production to something reasonable (to lighten the load on your players), and make certain
that no city can be easily conquered on the first turn, unless the scenario design dictates otherwise. See
to it that no city has been ignored (so many scenarios I have played have size 1 cities that should be
much larger, that the designer apparently forgot). Insure that computer players can build what you
think they should.
vii) Set the map view to “No special view”. No matter what civilization a player plays, he will then be
certain to get the appropriate view.
viii) Set the human player to the nation you want to go first when the scenario begins. In a WW2 scenario
in Europe, for example, the Germans should always attack the Poles, not the other way around.
ix) If your scenario has a fully revealed map, go into scenario parameters and select “Reveal whole map”.
This avoids the unsightly lapses in intelligence common to beginners’ scenarios. If your scenario does
not show the entire world at the beginning, update the display as appropriate by moving temporary
units around.
x) Double-check your calendar and your scenario parameters, save the game as a savefile (always do this,
and use it when you want to make changes), then save the game as a scenario (you should never need
to alter the scenario file once made. Just junk it if you don’t like it and make another).

i) Playtesting
i) How long and how thoroughly you test your scenario depends on how proud you are of your work.
The more effort you put into making the design a reality, and the more unusual/interesting features
your scenario includes, the more time you should spend debugging. Search for the following common
problems:
* AI or human player expansion into areas you think should be off-limits, or excessive empire
development in a wargame.
* Rogue Wonders.
* Weird techs being developed
* Over-powerful units
* Any civilization with an economy, science base, industrial potential, or military strength that
is too weak or powerful to fit your design. This is common with civilizations of widely
varying sizes; tame the strong and enhance the weak, unless you plan for human players to try
and win with the weaker power.
* A simple, brutally effective tactic that wins the scenario easily
* Excessive slaughter of units on the first few turns, or excessive capture of cities early in the
scenario (or the opposite: a defense that exacts too high a toll in units and player fortitude).
* A game pace that seem to you too fast or slow
* the possibility of getting too much money through trade, selling infrastructure, conquest, or
tribute
* Always look for opportunities to add fantasy or historical color to your project. Expect to go
through several rounds of scenario neatening, playtesting, and further alterations. Always
keep your savefile (I call it a “template” file, because I can spawn off scenario files from it)
up-to-date.

8) Graphics
Graphics really help involve your players in your creation. If you can, do your best to alter those that need
changing, even if you cannot make them from scratch. Many, indeed most, people are not graphic artists; the
following information is designed to help you get the job done with a minimum of fuss (if not always with the
cleverest or most flexible methods). When playing with graphics, I use an mediocre program called Paintshop
Pro. I don’t like it, I wouldn’t dream of promoting it, but it does eventually give me the .GIF graphics I want.
One may download a shareware version, good for 30 days before registration, from any number of locations;
issue a search command for “Paintshop Pro” or “pspro30”. If you are not capable of making decent pictures
from scratch (I am not), don’t despair. You can accomplish an amazing amount with a large graphics library,
plus recoloring/cutting and pasting. Among the Photoshop features many find helpful, and would well repay
learning about in the online help, are “resize”, “color replacer”, and the “magic wand” selection tool with
various tolerances. When using other people’s graphics, I strongly urge not merely retaining any signature
present (most designers do this), but mentioning each and every source in your readme (so many neglect this
responsibility).

a) Units.gif
i) After the scenario file and Rules.txt, Units.gif is the most frequently altered file that actually changes
some aspect of the game. Open the standard file, and one will see 54 unit icons associated with a
position in the unit list (of which the first 51 appear in the unaltered game), followed by the barbarian
leader figure, some blank boxes, and two oddball unit pictures. Inside each light green-bordered box
are magenta and grey (sometimes also appears purplish) backgrounds, and a unit icon. Bring up the
palette, and you will discover that green, magenta, and grey(purple) are the last three colors shown;
CivII automatically makes them transparent when displaying units on screen. The unit itself is
positioned above the two lower edges of the magenta diamond in the center of the box; any parts of
your icons that drool below them will be chopped off.
ii) Be careful when editing the grey(purple) background, because Photoshop has a tendency to mistake it
for straight grey, which is not transparent. Use the Copy and Paste commands, or simply use magenta
for transparent areas (Photoshop never mistakes this color when using the standard palette). If you alter
cities, use the foreign minister to quickly see if you have made a mistake in this area.
It is strongly recommended that you always alter a copy of the units.gif file, rather than trying to make
your own graphics file from scratch. Avoids palette complications, for one thing.
iii) Cutting and pasting icons is straightforward - except for one problem. Many collections of units have
grainy purple backgrounds that were formed when one palette didn’t quite match another. You have to
manually replace any such areas with any of the last three palette colors, or get a odd-looking haze
around any affected units when playing the game.
iv) The blue dots in the green border lines above and to the left of each unit control the position of the top-
left corner of the ownership shield. Make certain that the shield does not extend below the lower edges
of the center magenta diamond. Confirm, as you play the scenario, that you can see enough of the
shield damage line and the ownership color to easily determine the status of both (some custom units
violate this rule, make certain yours don’t). Keep the shield far away (five pixels minimum) from each
edge to produce pretty unit movement and stacking displays. When selecting unit pictures for moving
or copying, never include the bottom or right green border lines in your selection - you will mess up
the shield positions of the unit’s new neighbors.

b) Cities.gif
Most of the rules outlined above also work here, with the single exception that each city box has two dots,
one orange, one blue, in both the top and the left borders. The blue dots control the location of the base of
the flagstaff, and the orange dots the top-left corner of the number box that indicates city size. When using
the variant modern city icons, try not to let too much of the population size indicator extend below the
magenta diamond; a cropped number box looks awfully tacky when playing a scenario.

At the bottom of this file appear ownership flags (barbarians, then each civilization color in turn), icons for
fortified units, fortresses, empty and occupied airbases, and two variant cities. You may alter the colors of
civilizations by adjusting flag colors. Change the fifth pixel from the top and the fourth pixel in from the
left on the top (large) flag to alter shield colors and the number box on cities, and the colored line above the
top flag to change the color of city names and their display on the “world” window.

c) Icons.gif
i) In Icons.gif are icons for:
* every structure and Wonder,
* civilization advance era and type
* pollution, riots, and explosions,
* industry, arrows, food, available or lost through waste/corruption/hunger
* science and global warming indicators
* what borders terrain diamonds have when “show map grid” is activated, and whether
 * city radii are
* especially marked
* various backgrounds, arrows, etc.
ii) Editing any of these is not particularly difficult; just remember to keep them the right size.
d) Terrain1.gif, Terrain2.gif
i) Terrain1.gif, since it controls the appearance of all terrain except the foreground of mountains, hills,
and forests, and all resources, is often altered. The left side of the file is taken up by four columns of
icons, each controlling some aspect of every terrain; going from left to right, they depict one or two
variations of the terrain in their row, and the two possible resources associated with that terrain
(grassland has no special resources). Note that magenta becomes transparent. Some terrains’ (forest,
hills, and mountains) primary icons are located elsewhere; each of these has a background diamond
shown instead.
ii) You may alter how the appearance of terrain alters when it is irrigated, farmed, mined, polluted,
railroads, has goody boxes or roads on it, or has a resource shield (for grassland). Modern scenarios, in
particular, demand a rather different appearance for roads. All other icons are variants, included to
expand your options.
iii) Terrain2.gif controls the appearance of tile connections, rivers, forests, mountains, hills, river mouths,
and the “softening” of coastlines.
e) People.gif
Controls the appearance of city dwellers in ancient times, after one’s discovery of Invention and
Philosophy (requires both), after one’s discovery of Industrialization, and after one’s discovery of
Electronics. From left to right they represent joyous men and women, content men and women, unhappy
men and women, angry men and women, entertainers, tax collectors, and scientists.

9) Sound Effects
Do your best to edit the unit list in the rules.txt file so as to require the smallest possible number of new sounds
- they take a lot of time to download. All sound files are .wav 8 bit mono, at 22 Mhz.
a) Unit Sounds
A list of what sounds belong to each unit position and type follows (sounds have stars after them if they are
associated with certain positions in the unit listing) “
* Aircombt - Air units (not stealth) attacking other air units
* Biggun - Shore bombardment and naval battles, first part (played more than once
if the battle lasts a while) for all units other than Destroyers, Cruisers,
Aegis Cruisers, and Battleships
* Boatsink - a Trireme-type ship lost at sea
* Catapult* - Catapult
* Cavalry* -Cavalry, Dragoons
* Custom1, 2, and 3* - Unique sounds for extra units 1, 2, and 3
* Diesel* - Freight units
* Divcrash - A Fighter or Bomber shot down
* Divebomb - Fighter or bomber (not stealth) unit making a ground attack
* Elephant* - Elephant
* Engnsput - A fighter or bomber (not stealth) crashing through lack of fuel
* Fire---* - First part of sound for Cannon, Artillery, Howitzers
* Helishot – Helicopter
* Infantry* - Musketeers, Riflemen, Partisans, Alpine Troops, Paratroopers
* Jetbomb - Stealth Fighter or Stealth Bomber making a ground attack
* Jetcombt - Stealth Fighters attacking air units
 * Jetcrash - Stealth Fighter or Stealth Bomber lost in combat
* Jetsputr - Stealth Fighter or Stealth Bomber crashing through lack of fuel
* Largexpl - Ship attacks, second part (if either side won easily, this sound plays
instead of the second repetition of Navbttle or Biggun) and end of
Armor, Cannon, Artillery, Howitzer sound effects
* Mchnguns* - Fanatics, Marines, Paratroopers, Mech Inf.
* Medexpl - Structure destroyed by diplomat or spy
* Medgun* - Second part of Cannon, Artillery, or Howitzer sound. First part of Armor
sound. Repeats to end of battle.
* Missile - Any non-nuclear missile
* Navbttle* - Shore bombardment and naval battles, first part (played more than once
if the battle lasts a while) for Destroyers, Cruisers, Aegis Cruisers, and
Battleships
* Nukexplo - Nuclear weapon strike
* Spysound - Most successful diplomat or spy actions
* Swordfgt* - Warriors, Phalanxes, Pikemen, Legions
* Swrdhors* - Horsemen, Chariots, Knights, Crusaders
* Torpedos - All naval submarine attacks (land or air units not effected).
ii) If a unit has its movement domain changed, the default sounds are:
* Swordfgt - for land units.
* Helishot - for air units with no fuel limits attacking land or sea units.
* Engnsput, Divcrash, Divebomb, Aircombt - for air units with fuel limits that replace the
Bomber or earlier in the unit list.
* Jetsputr, Jetcrash, Jetbomb, Jetcombt - for air units with fuel limits that replace the Stealth
Fighter or later in the unit list.
* Biggun - for naval units other than Destroyers, Cruisers, Aegis Cruisers, and Battleships.

b) Structure and Event Sounds

* Aqueduct - Aqueduct built
* barracks - Barracks built
* bldcity - New city built
* bldspcsh - Spaceship part built
* cathedrl - Cathedral built
* cheers1, 2, and 3 - All structures without a specific sound built
* civdisor - Civil disorder
* druma0 to drumcy - Various responses during negotiations
* fanfare1-8 - Starting diplomatic negotiations
* guillotn - Guillotine (when you conquer the world)
* movpiece - Move a unit
* neg1 Invalid choice (such as selling the Palace)
* newbank - Bank built
* newgovt - New government
* newonder - Wonder built
* pos1 - Buying production
 * sell - Improvement sold
* stkmarkt - Stock Exchange built

*
10) Writing the Readme and Briefing
* The Readme
ii) Every scenario should come with documentation, if only to prevent a player new to scenarios
overwriting his original game files. If you write in a second language, take extra time to make certain
you are clear. Do not write in Word format - use RTF if you want pretty effects. Readmes should
contain the following information:
* installation instructions
* A brief description of the scenario theme and of the world the player is about to enter. You
may write a short, effective blurb, then provide one or even several paragraphs of background
information.
* A list and brief descriptions of changed units, structures, technologies, terrain types, science
advances, and parameters
* Information on strange or unusual situations that might arise and frustrate the player (events
intended to be surprises, obviously, need not be mentioned).
* Credits for pictures, sounds, ideas (if explained to you in, say, a readme or FAQ), and maps.
Cite your sources!
b) Effective add-ons include design notes and scoring instructions.
c) You may also include a listing of the contents of the .zip file, if sufficiently complex.
d) The Briefing
A text file with the same name as the scenario will be loaded with it. Clearly and concisely written, it may
whet your player’s appetite. Anything above a paragraph (or blurbs on individual civilizations) should go in
the readme. How to format this file so as to make it show up well on screen is not immediately obvious, so
a few notes might be useful:
i) To insert spaces: Add underscores “_”.
ii) To insert a return: Press return, followed by a carat “^”.
iii) To center a line: Add two carats “^^”
iv) To bullet all text lines that follow: Press two returns.
v) To add a unit picture
(1) Choose a scoring protagonist (using the “Edit Victory Conditions” submenu in the “Scenario
parameters” option).
(2) Select a unit of that civilization, make certain the unit itself is blinking, and save the scenario.
(3) That unit’s picture (without the shield) will appear in the briefing.

vi) To save time, modify a pre-existing briefing file.

11) Packaging and distributing your work

a) For PCs: These steps get the job done, but are intended for novice zippers only. Experienced people may
want more control. Winzip is sufficiently simple as to require no explanation.
i) Obtain a zipping utility. Pkzip and pkunzip can be located on the Internet by issuing a find command
for either name in your internet browser. You may also try Winzip.
ii) Either rename all your text, sound, graphic, etc. files or move them into a separate folder to prevent
players unzipping your scenario into their main civ2 directory and overwriting all their standard files.
DO NOT include a line in your readme that says in effect “Oh, now that you have already overwritten
everything, know that you should have moved your files before unzipping this readme.”. Outrageous!
 iii) Collect all the files you want to bundle into a separate folder (I assume in the following command that
you name it “newscen”), move that folder to the C: drive, and issue the DOS command
pkzip C:\newscen.zip c:\newscen\*.*
b) Where you replace “newscen.zip” with whatever name (eight chars or less) you desire, plus “.zip”. You
now have a .zip file ready for testing and uploading.
i) Test your zip file and documentation; do not skip this step. Set your civ2 game up as originally
installed from the CD, move your zip file to either the Civ2 directory or your decompression folder and
unzip your file (go back and repeat steps 2 and 3 if it doesn’t work perfectly). Read your directions,
and attempt to install and play your scenario by following them to the letter.
ii) If all this works, upload. Always include a one-or-two line description for the convenience of the site
manager.

YAY! YOU’RE A DESIGNER!

12) Credits and Citations

a) While many of the concepts presented above have been collated through playing scenarios that made them
work, or painful trial and error on my part whilst trying to implement a design, other ideas I learned directly
from reading other people’s works or by getting e-mail suggestions.
b) “Advanced Scenario Making Ideas” and Harlan Thompson’s suggestions
Harlan Thompson and Aleksei Andrievski’s document “Advanced Scenario Making Ideas” is the most
valuable reference work I draw upon. The following topics include thoughts first found in, are inspired by,
or are directly adapted from, sections in that document, or from extra tips provided by Harlan Thompson:
* all information on barbarians, unless otherwise mentioned
* additions to the special features of advances
* settlers altering ocean to land and vice versa
* confusing the computer player about port cities
* unit obsolescence
* how to make nuclear units and the diplomatic effects of the Nuclear Msl. unit slot.
* corrections to the default sound effects of air units, default naval sounds
* the exact pixel location to change to alter civilization shield and city number box colors.
* warning about rivers
* warning about AI use of torpedo bombers
* warning about unit cost
* warning about setting the resource seed
* much of the helicopter information
* adding extra copies of units you want the computer to build lots of
* cities of size zero
* making certain new Wonders can be built
* structures and Wonders cannot be limited by using the “no” method
* A way to make sure that a specific city cannot produce Partisans when taken
* and all information (unless noted below) about either of the updates to Civ2

c) Other Sources of Ideas

i) Submarines
Michael Daumen’s suggestions made it possible to comprehensively discuss their limitations,
 advantages, and effects. The scenario “Honor, Blood, and Steel” taught me about torpedo bombers,
and Harlan Thompson warned me about them.
ii) Impassable Terrain:
The scenario “Dagor Bragollach”, written by Brian Reynolds, includes them, and my information on
how to make them comes directly from the background file included with the game.
iii) Briefing File Editing:
The scenario “Tokugawa” taught me most of what I present, and Allard Höfelt contributed the
information on adding unit pictures.
iv) Shield Placement:
Again, the scenario “Dagor Bragollach”, whose creator mentioned that Harlan Thompson taught him
the trick.
v) Several neat tricks with text files:
The scenario “Aliens versus Predators”, created by Paul Heron.
vi) Adding rivers once you have started making the scenario/how to avoid creating unnatural terrain
A post by LeMay on the Ultimate Civ2 message board explained how to create rivers and avoid the
creation of unnatural terrain. Harlan Thompson turned this knowledge into a practical method and
made it known to me.

d) Citations
“Dagor Bragollach”, filename Dagor402 - The Battle of Sudden Flame - probably the most extensively
rewritten scenario ever uploaded, this game is state-of-the-art in several ways.
“Economy”, filename economy - a highly inventive take on the modern business world.
“Aliens and Predators”, filename avp20 - I know of no scenario/modpack that alters the CivII game quite
so much, nor any designer with a better understanding of text files.
“Heptarchy”, filename Heptrchy - A detailed but slow-paced scenario covering the conquest of Saxon
England by Egbert of Wessex
“Catalan Scenario”, filename Catars - an extremely effective depiction of the western Med in the 14th
Century
“Honor, Blood, and Steel”, filename hbs - Its map has the ugliest shorelines I have ever seen, but I owe
what I know about torpedo bombers to it.
“Gettysburg”, filename Gettysburg - this is about as good as it gets for Civ2 tactical warfare
“East Wind, Rain”, filename ewind120 - a superb scenario that truly sets an example
“20th Century”, filename 20thcent - an effective tour of our own century
“Viking Age”, filename vikings - lets you truely understand what “preserve us from the Norsemen” really
means.
“Imperial Pride”, filename ImpPride - Leon Marrick’s own scenario.
“Arabia Awakes”, filename Arabia - Another of Leon Marrick’s scenarios.

Version Stamp: Ver. 1.9