I recently converted a set of CivIII animations to sprites (see a link in my sig) and perhaps some of my experiences might be useful. So here it is: a “how to convert CivIII gfx to HoI sprites” walkthrough:

1. Pick one of the CivIII graphics. A decent and fairly complete list is located here. Download it and unzip it anywhere you like.
2. Download FLICster and install it somewhere.
3. Open FLICster. It will tell you it cannot locate CivIII directory, but simply ignore it. Then click File > Open… > and navigate to where your CivIII graphics is unpacked.
4. You’ll see several .flc files, along with some other files you can simply ignore. Open the file named run.flc
5. A multi-tabbed window will open. In the “View Animation” tab you can check if the animation is the one you were searching for. If so, go to “Export” tab.
6. Click “Export Type” and change it to “Multiple Filmstrip PCX”. Also uncheck the “Border” box.
7. Leave the rest of the options unchanged and click Export.

You’re done with FLICster. You can safely close it now and open some graphics edition software. Photoshop is nice, but GIMP would do just as good. I use it and never had any problems with it.

Achtung Panzer!

A FAQ is located in this forum thread, be sure to check it out before you ask me any questions here

1. Navigate to where Flicster unpacked your CivIII animation. You’ll see 8 .pcx files, each with a direction marked by a symbol. Looks familiar? That’s almost the format we need for HoI, so most of the work is already done.
2. Open any one of them. You’ll see a long, HoI-like strip with frames of our animation. Usually around 16 frames, though the number might differ. Looks familiar?
3. First pick the selection tool (shortcut “R”) and choose some absurd pre-fixed length (longer than the strip itself, usually 5000px is enough). To choose the height you’ll have to count the frames and make them square. Ie. if the CivIII strip is x*136px long (with x being the number of frames), then it would have to be 136 high as well. Type those dimensions in tool options, point the cursor to the upper left corner (0,0) and select the area. Once the area is selected choose the Crop tool and… voila. Double-check that the strip is indeed precisely <No. of frames>*<width of frame> by <width of frame> size, precision is paramount here.
4. Then change the type of the image to RGB. That’s important since we’ll use a different palette than the one pre-coded. Now change back to 256 colours and make GIMP generate a 256-colour palette for you. The image itself should not change at all.
5. Open the palettes dialog (“Dialogs -> Palettes” or “Ctrl-P”), right-click the new window and select “Import palette” and import a palette from the Image you have currently opened. Let’s say you named it “Fighter” – and a new “Fighter” palette is now available through the Palettes window.
6. Double-click it and edit the first two colour tiles precisely the way Sekinoss suggests here.

Hearts of Iron 2

That’s about it. The rest of the procedure is already explained in Sekinoss’ tutorial. Just let me know should you have any problems – or need some help. Should you still have problems, I’ll explain the entire procedure in more detail.