Changing a Civilization’s Building Set

Article written by Vardamir
Published on 03-17-2017; updated on 03-21-2017
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Especially with the release of new DLC, there is some dissatisfaction with the architecture of a few civilizations. Particularly common are wishes that the Vietnamese used Chinese buildings and that the Spanish and/or Byzantines shared the Italian architecture. Fortunately, they can be changed quite easily with just a bit of data editing.

Note: This article is about changing the use of existing graphics, not adding new ones. For that subject, see TriRem’s article

As with most modding tasks, you will need Advanced Genie Editor.

Opening AGE will show you a screen much like this:

AGE Opening Screen

Select a building from the list of objects on left, then turn your attention to the civilization dropdown box above it (blue circle). As you select different civs, various data and the graphics shown in the slp viewer will change.

AoK stores unit data (including buildings) separately for each civilization, with assorted graphic data that varies for buildings, ships, and a few units. However, you don’t need to know all the specifics since AGE comes with a powerful copying tool:

Ensure the “Including graphics” box is checked (green underline), then select only the civ(s) you wish to copy to, in this case the Vietnamese (red underline). There’s a bit of ambiguity in some cases, as Vi stands for both Vikings and Vietmanese, which you can resolve by comparing to the civilization dropdown, which lists the civs in the same order. Set the civilization dropdown to the source you wish to copy from, here, the Chinese.

It’s now just a matter of selecting the all the buildings you want to copy. This is made much easier by setting the type filter (black circle) to type 80, so only buildings appear on the list. Once it is active, you can select almost everything in the list without concern, though you should not select the Wonder or Monument:

Copy Buildings

Hit the Copy button (red circle) after you’ve selected everything, then save your work. The Automatically box will have to be unticked before the button becomes available.


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