Welcome to the Editor!

To get started, go to File -> Open, and select a BIQ to open. The editor will automatically load all required graphics, and you will then be able to edit any scenario properties, or the map."

When the editor starts in the future, tips pointing out features of the editor that differ from the Firaxis editor, or more efficient ways of using the editor, will appear here.

For now, you can choose File -> Open to open a scenario. Once you've opened a scenario, all the various rule section tabs will appear, including the map.

Nearly all features of the Firaxis editor are supported. Most are fairly easy to find, but a few may be in different places. Of particular note is that you right-click on a list of units/technologies/etc. to add/delete/rename, rather than having buttons for these. Screen space was at a premium on some tabs back in the day!

Custom Civ Colors

From the CIV tab, you can create custom civ colors by pressing the Edit Civ Colors button. This allows you to go beyond the default 32 colors that ship with Civ3, and create civ-specific colors limited only by your imagination and a choice of 16.7 million colors.

And if that's not enough? There are 35 palette choices per civ, affecting items ranging from the circle around the leader on the diplo screen to the city border colors, for 587 million possible colors per civ!

Deepwater Harbours

When painting Sea tiles on the map, you may optionally add Deepwater Harbors. These should be placed over coast tiles, and replace the coast with sea, but do not change the graphics. As the graphics do not change, it is recommended to also add a resource to the tile to give a visual indicator."

When combined with adding ships with the Wheeled attribute, and making Coast impassable to Wheeled units, this lets you create ships that will only pass along certain sea lanes.

Downloading Units

The Download Units button, on the right side of the Units Tab, allows you to download units from CivFanatics directly into your scenario. Decompression of the units, renaming the .ini file to match your desired name, and placing it in the proper location are all taken care of for you."

This works for single unit downloads (as opposed to unit packs), and uses 7-Zip on Windows to perform the decompression (which can be automatically downloaded for you). It should work with any unit in the Downloads Database.

In theory this could be extended to other Downloads Database items as well. If you'd like to be able to download more types of items (leaderheads, terrain packs, etc.), express interest in the thread!

Unit Filtering

The TECH and Unit tabs support filtering the units in the list by typing into the box above the list of techs/units. This goes far beyond simply filtering by name, and fairly complex queries, such as "ships with attack of at least 6 that are available to Persia" are possible."

To see the list of possible filters, and how to enter them, view the Help sections for these tabs.

Unit Re-Ordering

The TECH and Unit tabs support re-ordering the units in the list. To re-order units, click and drag the one you wish to move. As you move the mouse over another unit, that unit will be highlighted in a lighter blue than the one you are dragging. Releasing will move the dragged unit below the one with lighter blue highlighting, as indicated by the black line below that unit."

No More Arbitrary Limits

Some of the limits in the Firaxis editor are necessary due to the BIQ format, but others are arbitrary. This editor allows you to experiment with going beyond those limits. By default, a few items where it's known to be safe to go beyond these limits are enabled. However, you can enable this for more areas by going to Options -> Adjust Safety Level, and setting the limits to Exploratory or Minimal."

This allows possibilities such as negative-maintenance buildings, super-costly units or buildings... and possibly other aspects that no one has tried before.

Importing Maps from Images

The Map -> Import Map from BMP option allows you to import a map from a bitmap image. This is designed to work with sateillite imagery, although it should work with other raw sources of color-coded maps as well. It will ask you to map colors to Civ3 terrain types, and then automatically analyze the map and create a Civ3 map based on it, while observing Civ3 limitations such as no desert bordering tundra."

It does require that the BMP have specific dimensions, but these are relative to the Civ3 map size - you can import a map into any size of Civ3 map. The Map -> BMP Size Calculator option will help you with resizing your BMP file to a size the editor can work with. It likely will be rather large, but you won't need to keep the resized image after the import.

If the map doesn't look quite right on the first import, you can try again, and the editor will remember which colors you chose to map to which terrains, so you only have to enter those you wish to change on the second try.

Some manual editing of the map after import is to be expected (adding rivers and resources if nothing else, but likely some tweaking as well), but this is a great way to speed up the initial creation of a map if you have relevant imagery.

City and Leader Editing

You can paste newline-separated lists of cities or leaders into the city, scientific leader, or military leader lists on the CIV tab. After copying, click in the entry area, type Ctrl+V, and the copied entries will be added."

You can also rename cities or leaders by double-clicking them in the list.

Detecting Invalid Settings

The editor will notify you when you save if it detects settings that can cause problems in-game."

Currently, it checks for loops in unit upgrade paths, and the Phantom Resource Bug.

Wonderful Buildings

In the Firaxis editor, many building attributes are only available to wonders. In this editor, however, a regular building can have "wonder" attributes."

The effect of these when applied to buildings have not all been verified, and some may make more sense when applied to wonders. But if you want a regular building to require a victorious army? Go right ahead!

Autosave

Power went out and you hadn't saved for awhile? Good news - the editor keeps auto-saves of your work, by default up to 10 auto saves, saved every 4 minutes. They are located in the editor's folder. This can be modified under Settings -> Autosave. They're also a nice fallback if you realize you really didn't want to make that most recent change you made, but already saved."

Map Settings

You can tweak a variety of map settings under Settings -> Map. This includes what layers are visible (montains, forest, etc.), whether the grid is displayed, and how sensitive the map is when drawing rivers."

Keyboard Shortcuts

A number of actions have keyboard shortcuts. Menus and submenus can be accessed via the Alt key, plus the letter of the menu which is underlined. For example, Alt+M followed by Alt+G will bring up the "Redistribute Bonus Grassland" option under the Map menu. Some menu actions have Ctrl-based shortcuts as well."

In addition, the map supports pressing "T" to select terrain type, "O" to select overlay type, and the 1, 3, 5, and 7 keys to select terrain radius, similar to the Firaxis editor.

Another useful shortcut is that after starting the editor, hitting the spacebar will open your most-recently-opened file.

More Intuitive Unit Icon Selection

Although you can still select unit icons by entering an index on the Unit tab if you wish, it's no longer necessary to do it that way."

Instead, you can click the "Select Icon" button above the icon, and select it visually from your units32.pcx file (including if you have a custom units32.pcx).

Low-End Modding

Does your cabin in the forest only have a computer with 64 MB of memory and Windows ME? That doesn't mean you can't mod Civ3!"

The first post of the forum thread has a link to the most recent version of the editor that will run on old operating systems. And while editing the map is fairly memory-intensive due to the graphics, if need be you can open the Settings, uncheck "Map Enabled", and restart to enable graphics-less rule editing, allowing the editor to run with very low amounts of memory.

Reducing Tedium in City Building

Tired of manually adding a building to every city, or ensuring all size 13+ cities have hospitals? There's a better way now. For buildings that should appear in most cities, you can go to Options -> Change Special Actions -> Set Buildings in Many Cities at Once."

This does what it suggests. You can easily add buildings to all cities matching certain criteria - size, being coastal, and being owned by a particular player or civ. You can always customize more from the Map tab, but this can speed up the initial build-out of buildings.

Moving a Whole City

Did you realize you should have placed that city one tile to the northeast, but already spent a bunch of time customize it and its units? Now moving a city is easier than moving your car!"

Go to the Map Tab, click on the city that needs to be moved, and choose the "Relocate city" or "Relocate city with units" option below its list of buildings. Then click on its new location on the map, and it will automatically be moved there.

Comparing BIQ Files

The BIC tab allows you to compare two different BIQ files, with the results being put in a text file. This can allow you to spot differences between BIQs more quickly than manually comparing various BIQ tabs."

To use it in this manner, open two files in the editor at once, check the "Compare Mode" option on that tab, and select which sections you'd like to compare. The select an output file, and click the Export! button.

Found a Bug?

Although undesirable, occasionally a bug may occur. In these situations, you can report the bug to the forum thread. Particularly useful in debugging it are the steps to reproduce it. Uploading the BIQ-in-progress can be very useful in debugging it, as many bugs only occur when a particular combinations of rules and actions are put together."

The editor also keeps a file called log.txt in its folder, which may contain additional information about any errors that occur. If you encounter a bug and wish to report it, it's worth checking the log.txt file for any errors near the end of that file, and uploading them to the forum. These can be very useful in pinpointing the cause of the bug.

TODO: Import Map from BIQ (also, note how it's different than in the Firaxis version, e.g. name comparisons)

The BIC tab allows you to compare two different BIQ files, with the results being put in a text file. This can allow you to spot differences between BIQs more quickly than manually comparing various BIQ tabs."

To use it in this manner, open two files in the editor at once, check the "Compare Mode" option on that tab, and select which sections you'd like to compare. The select an output file, and click the Export! button.

Opportunities to Improve the Editor

The editor has been evolving for the better part of a decade, and has a lot more features today than it did five years ago. There are a number of ways that you can help make it better."

One of those is testing the boundary conditions that have been unlocked in the editor. What happens if a unit has negative defence? Can you have a resource that provides food, but also provides negative shields? Many of these areas have not been fully explored, and a comprehensive study would be useful, and could be incorporated into the editor, setting useful but not artificially restrictive limits. I'd recommend focusing on one area at a time if you choose to explore this.

Other opportunities include writing code for the editor (likely the quickest way to implement your most-desired feature, if you have programming experience), and translating the editor so it's more usable across the world.

Finally, simply using the editor and providing feedback (both on what's useful, and what could use improvement) helps make it better. Many of the new ideas and features over the years have come from those making mods with it.