Please be aware that MAC players will potentially be dealing with two separate sets of
issues in this Gotm18 game. MAC specific hardware and software issues should be dealt with separately
from all spoiler or game discussion issues. This is a significant courtesy issue that we ask all
MAC players to be particularly sensitive to because we do not want to disrupt the game play of
all the other players just because we are attempting to extend service to MAC community. The
counterside to this courtesy issue is that all game discussions related to the open Gotm18-Celts
game must be restricted to the Civ3-GOTM discussion forum and follow all the rules and procedures
that are in place for the GOTM games. Any discussions of any in-game aspects
of the Gotm18 game (MAC version or otherwise) which get opened in the MAC discussion forum or other
discussion forums, will be instantly closed and quarantined to avoid possible spoiler issues.
We are going to examine the issues associated with the in-game changes that upgrade your
MAC game from the standard v1.21g gameplay so that it will play like PTWv1.14 because these issues
will help you make sure that your understand the game and that you have chosen the correct version
to match your existing computer and software installation.
You must have Civ3 installed on a MAC OS computer and patched to v1.21g in order
to play this version of the game. This game version will not run properly in any version of PTW
or the PC versions of Civ3.
A
new civilization has been added
to your game and named "neoCarthage". The leader for neoCarthage is a
distant cousin of Hannibal and Mago
named Hannabaline and she bears a strong genetic resemblance to French country folk
who may have been decended from illegitimate children who were of the Carthaginian generals
when the crossed the French Alps during the second Punic War. To avoid confusion,
Hannabaline has purchased her armor from a different source than Joan.
The Unique Unit (UU) for neoCarthage
is the Spartan Hoplite which has identical (2/3/1) statistics to the Numidian Mercenary in PTW. The
Spartan Hoplite as a mercenary for Carthage is historically accurate in that the Carthaginians
hired experienced Spartans to train and improve their military forces. This unit comes to
us courtesy of CivFanatics member Kryten.
A
new civilization has been added
to your game and named the "Keltoi". The leader for the Keltoi is King
Brennus just like in the Play the World expansion pack. To avoid any possible confusion,
this King Brennus looks different from the Brennus ala PTW and also does not look like the
leaders of any other civilizations that may exist in your game. Brennus may share some
common parentage with your military advisor but there are no written birth records to
prove paternity. Part of your
download pack for this game includes the graphics and diplomatic interface text to support
allowing you to play games with the Keltoi and neoCarthage civilizations even outside of the GOTM
games. A basic xxxxxx.bic file to support these games will be released to all players after Gotm18
is closed for submissions.
The
Unique Unit (UU) for the Keltoi
is the European Swordsman which has identical (3/2/2) statistics
to the Gallic Swordsman in PTW. This European
Swordsman unit comes to
us courtesy of CivFanatics member UtahJazz7.
Significant and unique v1.21g upgrade change to bring you up
to v1.29f and PTW.
We have implemented a "Civ Specific Great Wonders" that can only be built
by Commercial civilizations but these do not seem to work reliably in the MAC version
of the software so they have been turned off for this game. To compensate for this
handicap, the commericial civs in you game each have access to one or two free, extra
workers at the beginning of the game to make sure that their road and commerce
infrastructure will alway give them the maximum benefits.
Significant and unique v1.21g upgrade change to bring you up
to v1.29f and PTW.
The tech rate research costs
in your game is increased by approximately 12% compared to what you may be
used to in Monarch difficulty level games that you have played in the MACv1.21g
version of Civ3 in the past. This major change that was
implemented after the last MAC patch is a change that the MAC community should move to universally
adopt via xxxx.bic modifications and effectively holds the AI research rates
constant while increasing or decreasing the human research cost rate by the inverse of the AI
cost advantage. This will have a signifcant impact on game progress if you are
unprepared to deal with change.
There is also a specific graphics "kluge" that needs to be
put in place for the MAC games to get around a hardcoded bug that exists in
all versions of the v1.21 Civ3 software. Please visit the MAC Tournament Discussion
forum and look for the Gotm18 Files setup thread to get the specific instructions
on how to implement this graphics "kluge".
Ancient age worker trade cost has
been increased by a factor of four (4x) to make it more expensive to buy most
ancient age workers. This feature has been implemented by virtue of an equivalent unit called
the "eqWorker" that is used identically to the existing worker unit in the game. Any workers or
settlers that you capture will be eqWorkers. The only feature that is disabled for eqWorkers
is the ability to disband the workers to harvest shield value. You may still join them to
towns and cities to add citizens to your population.
The improvement of the
"Stock Exchange" has
been added at a cost of 200 shields and maintenance of 3 gold per turn and increase your
uncorrupted tax output by 50%. You must have a Bank in the town and already have discovered the
technology of
"The Corporation" in order to build a Stock Exchange.
The small wonder of Wall
Street has been relocated to require that you have already built five stock exchanges before
Wall Street can be enabled.
The great wonder of "The Internet"
has been implemented exactly as featured in PTW; costs 1000 shields and coincides with the
discovery of Miniaturization. This wonder gives you a Research Lab in every city on the
continent and has not been extensively tested for secondary impacts on culture and pollution.
You will note that the architect for the Internet Building may have gone to the same school as
the architect for the UN.
The improvement of "Civil Defense"
has been implemented exactly as featured in PTW; costs 120 shields to build, has a maintenance
cost of 1 gold per turn, and requires a barracks prerequisite in that city. This improvement adds
a 50% defensive bonus in that city. Civil Defense is available with the discovery of Radio.
PTW implements an improvement called
Commercial Docks that cannot be exactly duplicated, but all civilizations in your
game have been provided with the ability to build "Ports-of-Entry" as equivalent game
features. Ports of Entry function differently from Commercial Docks but can produce an
equivalent impact on game play. Ports of Entry are small wonders that increase the uncorrupted
tax output in selected coastal cities by 50%. Each civilization only has access to build 4
of these Ports of Entry and they require a progressively increasing number of harbors in your empire.
You will need 2, 5, 8, and 12 harbors respectively to enable the Ports of Entry. Technically you
could build all 4 of these features in the same coastal city, but this exploit is
not allowed for the human player and can be detected in the game replay.
PTW includes two new units (Mace and Rambo) that
allow for upgrades of the ancient age units of swordsmen and archers/longbows. This upgrade
sequence seems to reduce the need for strategic decision making and also may not be
effectively programmed for use by the AI in Single Player games. This upgrade
sequence has been converted to a game setup preference and was turned off in
all versions of Gotm17-Carthage and Gotm18-Celts. The option to upgrade Swordsmen and Longbows
is turned on for all civilizations in Gotm19-Ottomans, Gotm20-Spanish and Gotm21-Melee.
The
"Outpost" feature of Multiplayer is disabled and does not appear in any version of
the GOTM Games.
Two features of PTW that are not incorporated
into the V1.29f equivalent game at this time are Radar Towers and Airfields.
Not including equivalent options for these PTW features
at this time is designed to provide better testing
of the differences between a game that includes the features versus a game that does
not include the features. Our initial testing indicates that these features have no value
in Single Player game score except in those cases when a player may be avoiding an impending
defeat late in the game. Players who are in command of a balanced game will probably obtain
no scoring or victory timing advantage from these features.
War Mobilization that normally
becomes available with Nationalism has been disabled to prevent a game killer exploit.
All of these features are built into your game and you need not do anything
special to make them function during game play. If you would like to
discuss the details
of implementing the Single Player features of the PTW Expansion Pack, we have an open
discussion thread for those topics in the Civ3 GOTM discussion forums.
Loading the Graphics Packages
Your graphics installation process is identical to the Civ3v1.29f procedures
and uses all the same files including the same text files to support game play.
Please make sure that you have all four of the
pre-requisite graphics packs properly installed before you attempt to load and play the game.
Beginning Play for Gotm18-Celts
Prior to April 1st, when you download the Gotm18-Celts(Keltoi) game pack, you will have
all the components that you need to setup the game but you will not have the starting save game file.
This files will not be available until April 1st to help us avoid risk of spoilers while
allowing players to freely discuss what they think the game announcement means
and how they expect to use certain strategies in the game. If you would like to carefully read
the Gotm18-Celts(Keltoi) game announcement, then you may participate in the
Pregame Discussion thread in
in the CivFanatics Discussion Forums. Once you open the starting save game file to begin play,
you must either be very careful not to spoil the Pregame discussion or you must choose to
no longer participate in the Pregame discussion in any way. This is a player courtesy to
all the other players who may not have started their games and who do not want to have their games
spoiled or disrupted in any way by release of any information about the surprise
features of the game.
If you need any assistance with getting your game to play or if you have any questions
about what you may post or discuss about the Gotm18-Celts(Keltoi) game, you may contact a knowledgable
GOTM staff representative by email at one of three email addresses:
gotm@civfanatics.net
gotm_submit@civfanatics.net
quick_start@civfanatics.net
You may not post any messages or questions related to internal content of the game
in any public discussion forum outside of the Civ3 Game Of The Month discussion
forum on CivFanatics.com as long as the game is open for play by other players. This
prohibition is designed to protect you and other players from inadvertent spoilers or
leaks that could disrupt your enjoyment of the game.
You may freely discuss features of the games, strategy, and tactics in the spoiler discussion threads in the Civ3 Game Of The Month discussion Forum when those discussions
have been opened by a moderator and when you meet the tests of being far enough along
in your game to join in the discussion of events that have already taken place. Spoiler discussion
threads ARE NOT designed to provide you with tips and cheats to help you play your current game.
Gotm18-Celts is a large format Pangaea game.
This means you can anticipate little or no separation of landmasses by intervening
bodies of sea or ocean. The first spoiler discussion thread will
not open until April 5th, 2003 and this initial discussion will require that you have full possession
of the world map and contact with all the Rival civilizations in the game and you must have entered
the middle ages.
We want you to plan ahead for this first discussion break and try to preserve save files and/or
screenshots that correspond to the time periods just before and just after events when you make contact
with new civilizations. For some players these contacts will be direstc encounters and
for other players they will be sequences of contact trades and/or map trades.
Try to save map views of the world immediately before
you gain contact with any of your rivals and then immediately following any events where
contacts or maps or partial maps of the world may be traded.
The discussion of these parts of the game may be exciting and very enjoyable as you unveil sections of this world
where your Celts and Keltoi can thrive.
ny
players who carefully document how their world map unfolds
by using images of
maps and minimaps and then present their experiences in the second discussion phase will
be individually acknowledged with "player's choice" recognition in the Gotm18-Celts results
and the GOTM Staff will carefully review these player contributions to select players who may be
eligible for the own personal GOTM Player Profile page as well as recognition in a news announcement
on the frontpage of the CivFanatics web site.
Quick Start Challenge: If you would like to participate in the optional QSC
portion of the GOTM competitions you will need to prepare a timeline of events covering the details of your game and your decisions up to the end of the 1000bc turn. To particpate in the QSC, you must submit your timeline and a copy of your 1000bc save file to
quick_start@civfanatics.net prior to April 20th, 2003.
If you would like more details on how the QSC event is processed as a separate competitive learning
event, you may view
the QSC Information Pages.
Good luck in playing Gotm18-Celts(Keltoi) and we hope you find the game and enjoyable
and exciting opportunity to share your Civ playing experiences with other CivFanatics. If this
is your first GOTM experience, please take sometime to browse the Civ3 GOTM website on CivFanatics and
familiarize yourself with some examples of past GOTM games so that you will be more familiar with
how the games are conducted and how some of the procedures work to provide you with a quality
and enjoyable gaming experience.
Remember that discussing and sharing your experiences in the GOTM games are an important part of what
continues to make the GOTM on Civfanatics one of the premier Civilization gaming
experiences in the world. Here is a link to the discussion thread in the MAC support forum on
Civfanatics where you can download find links to MAC file format copies of the files required to play
Gotm18-Celts(Keltoi) in the MAC OS versions of Civ3:
Civ3 for Macintosh
Your 1st visit to
Code of Conduct
Classic 37 - Iroquois
Submit by December 15
