Civ5 Useful Programs

This page includes information on the Civ5 Modding Tools as well as links to other useful programs.

SDK

World Builder

The stand-alone world builder allows users to create and modify maps and scenarios for Civilization V.

Mod Buddy

An editor (IDE) for the XML and Lua elements of the game and allows for the creation, packaging, and uploading of mods. To use it, you have to install the Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated) Redistributable Package.

Installing ModBuddy Extensions

Nexus

A collection of tools to to work with the art in Civilization V.

Initial Look at Nexus, 3D Unit Art, and Reskinning

Fire Tuner

An advanced debugging terminal. It displays the lua output, provides an interactive console and can be simply extended with custom controls and tables.

Do not forget to modify your config.ini file: set LoggingEnabled, EnableLuaDebugLibrary and DebugPanel to 1. Also modify your usersettings.ini to set DebugMode to 1.

Simple Tuner Modifications

Text search tools

Since the documentation is sparse, you need a tool to quickly inspect the civ5 text files and search in all of them at once.

Notepad++

A great and renowned text editor with a search in all files feature (hit ctrl + shift + f). Used by many developers around the world. Download.

Textures

Dragon unpacker

Can extract the Firaxis packages (.fpk files). Download.

DDS Unpacker

Some DDS files have been compressed even further and look messed up if you open them in an image viewer. This tool rebuilds them. Download.

XnView

An images browser to get a quick look at all the DDS files to spot the one you're looking for. Download.

Mods

In-game Editor (IGE)

Add or remove units, cities, resources, change the terrain, trigger wars, etc. Convenient to quickly test your mod.