a very byzantine change of plans

[Varwnos]

glad to have inspired you to make daroe 2

hm, by setting building parametres i meant how do i determine what effect a building has? for exmple that the building makes more citizents happy, or generates more shields etc

i made the tech tree, at least the military one!

i couldnt make the empire of thessalonike that much different from the empire of nicaea, but the nicaeans have a special unit from the start (nicaean psilos or something) and can build an ottoman mercenary. although the ottoman mercenery is meant to trap the ai, since it costs very little, has reasonable power, but if killed barbarian ottomans are generated near Nicaea heh (satanic laughter) The empire of Thessalonike on the other hand can "balcanise", building balcan units.

ps: there are ofcourse special techs, for the ships mostly, and the empire of thessalonike can only gain tech "galleys" if/when it takes Thessalonike


***note*** i couldnt upload the new tech tree, so i will post it in another post...

[Varwnos]

btw you never answered which one of the two combat animes you prefer they were made from editing the st. Demetrios (i am pretty sure it is st. Demetrios at least) unit found in Fading Lights

[Varwnos]

Also i will need to ask (i had asked it months ago, but dont remember the answer ) how you can make the ai refrain from founding new cities. some command that makes the ai view all squares as zero fertility squares

[Varwnos]

the tech tree i think its quite nice

[Elok]

You don't really set building powers at all in that sense; whatever is assigned to the library slot will act as a library, whatever fills barracks will be a barracks. You can only alter the prerequisite, cost, and upkeep. With the important exceptions of the temple and cathedral; if you don't have ceremonial burial or monotheism, respectively, they will not work at all, even if you have mysticism (which normally increases temples' effectiveness), or the tech you set for their prereqs. And you can alter the threshold blocked by the aqueduct and sewer system under "cosmic principles," at the top of rules.txt. That's about it, I think.

[Varwnos]

Hm, i have another question, my barbarian cities dissappear by themselves :| (due to starvation) how can i avoid that? is there any way to make barbaric cities use irrigation squares in a more reasonable way?

other than the settler infertility issue, and the barbarian cities, the scen is almost ready for beta-testing

[Heresson]

Originally posted by varwnos
btw you never answered which one of the two combat animes you prefer they were made from editing the st. Demetrios (i am pretty sure it is st. Demetrios at least) unit found in Fading Lights

That's Constantine Dragases according to a book I found it in. But I've made St Demetrios unit as well, for Heraclius.

[Varwnos]

Can you post your st. Demetrios unit?
he was a roman officer, so the uniform made me think it was him

[Varwnos]

hm, after playing (again, after a year or something) basilde's amazing scen about the 30 years war, i decided not to have a real tech tree, since having the bulk of the units available from the start has its own charm probably i will have some stuff like the epirotans needing to conquer Ochrid so as to balcanise etc

[Hendrik the Great]

>>hm, by setting building parametres i meant how do i determine what effect a building has? for exmple that the building makes more citizents happy, or generates more shields etc

Elok already answered it. Though what you can do is to make these buildings target for pillage. How? Give some buildings to cities that cannot be build. Have their construction cost set to 500 or 5000 smth like that. An set the upkeet cost to 0. That way the AI is very unlikely to ever demolish the building. The gain? if the human player takes the city he can sell(pillage) the building for cash. Ofv only useful if the building has no immediate use for the player other than being sold.

>>btw you never answered which one of the two combat animes you prefer they were made from editing the st. Demetrios (i am pretty sure it is st. Demetrios at least) unit found in Fading Lights

Me? I have no preference here. I don't like either of them very much.

>>Also i will need to ask (i had asked it months ago, but dont remember the answer ) how you can make the ai refrain from founding new cities. some command that makes the ai view all squares as zero fertility squares

You want the easy or the hard way?

Easy. Don't give them settler or enginners.

Bit harder. Raise the build cost of them to extremes. Also make settles require a lot of food to sustain. make them very weak units with defense 1 or even 0. one move only. This needs testing as I cannot predict how gladly the AI will keep building units that will only be done after 20 or 50 turns.

Hard. Make the Terrain unpreferable to settle on. How? Lots of Hard work. The AI is very unlikely to settle on desert, forest, hills, mountains, tundra, glacier, swamp or jungle. Basicly anythhing that is not grassland or plains. there are exceptions though. Solution? Only have grassland and plains where you want the AI to settle. The other terain you change to the ones the AI dont like and give them the same values as the normal grassland or plains or whatever. Ofc, this means sacrificing 1 or 2 terrains AND you need to totally rework the map. Considerng the far progressed SCN this wont be any fun at all.

I did exactly the above method in my scn Vikings: Scross the Oceans after experimenting with where the AI would settle and where not. They will never ever settle on glacier or mountains. The rest is extremely unlikely, with very rare exceptions.

I dont know of any other way of stopping the AI from setling in certain areas except not allowing them to go there by inpassable terrain(0 move air units).

You could also play around with the distance from capital thing and the corruption size. It might have an influence on founding new cities.

I cant remember if there is a way to make the AI believe it has build so many cities it needs no more...experts, any thoughts?

>>Hm, i have another question, my barbarian cities dissappear by themselves :| (due to starvation) how can i avoid that? is there any way to make barbaric cities use irrigation squares in a more reasonable way?

A trick I used in my first scn called the fall of the kraikia empire: Send food caravans there that have NO home city. They will establish food surplies that will come from "no where". Ofc you need to adjust the city size afterwards.
Apart from irrigation you can change the government form of the barbarians from despotism to lets say Democrazy or anythng else you like to have. Yes, thats possible with some nice tool made by...uh...someone help me out here cant remember. Its called CivTweak or smth like that I think. Anyways, with beter government they will also have the advantages/disadvanteges to some small degree, among them using grassland terrain as anyone other civ.

Also, I tend to equip all barb cities with basic building like granry, harbor of coastal, courth house(makes it harder to bribe), etc.

Hopes this helps.

[Varwnos]

ty
well the scen was almost ready for beta release, but then i dled basilde's scen about the 30 years war, and now perfectionism has kicked in.... so it will take another month.... i am making new units and reworking the old ones as well!

[Heresson]

I will post it later.
St Demetrius was a very bad guy actuallty, not letting my Slavic kinsmen into Solun - Thessaloniki

[Varwnos]

I reworked most of the units (or rather all) and they are better, previewsly many of them looked like utter crap!

the stupid fw editor doesnt allow me to make barbarian units through events, and moreover when i manually change the owner of a unit to "barbarians" it changes it back to some playable nation :| anyone know how i can work around this? perhaps i could change the "game" file or something?

here is a pic of some of the changes

currently i am placing more buildings etc, and thinking of what the tech trees will be like. Oh, another problem is that when i try to make some units availdable they take the position of other, previously available units. Perhaps they are in the slot of the "barbarian" unit, or something like that?

probably in 2 weeks i will make a beta version available, if those problems are solved to my satisfaction.

to Heresson: having st. Demetrios as a unit (obviously a 0 movement unit) was a nice idea, since Thessalonike never fell to the slavs

[Hendrik the Great]

Only use a plain text editor to make the events.txt! The problem you encountered can be avoided by the file delevent.exe into your scn folder. Then, BEFORE opening the scn, move the *.scn file onto it. it will delete all events saved inside the *.scn file. because thats were the editor will also save them to.

Also, are you sure the Barbarians have the same name in the rules file as in the other game files? They need to be identical for safest usage.

About units:

I think there is some great guide about it someplace at the Scneario League site. I will explain it here in short.

Imagine 2 units. Attack/Defense/Move
Unit A: 8/5/3
Unit B: 6/6/2

Both will be built be available. They have different advantages. A attack, B defensive.

Unit A: 8/5/3
Unit B: 7/4/3

Unit B will not be built. A is better in every sense.

You CAN get both to be built IF their "role" in civ is different. I.e. one is definded as attack and the other as defensive unit or trade unit, etc.

That's one of the flaws I foind in Daroae btw, some units wont be built.

The unit slows ALSO play a role here. I really advise reading through the design guide at Scenario League!

I see you are using the flags I made for some of the civs, cool!. :-)

Edit: Typos...

[Elok]

As an addendum to Hendrik's post, I want to point out that the AI does not discriminate between speeds over one, at least for ground units. It will judge a unit with stats of 8/5/2 as superior to 8/4/8. It ignores special flags, HP and FP entirely.

[Varwnos]

ty
as i am saying in my other thread (the beta release) all that i need now is someone to tell me how to make a workable title.gif! so share your knowledge!

[Varwnos]

(double post!)

[Elok]

I know nothing about those, I'm afraid. But if worse comes to worst, you could release the scenario as is with a "title.gif still needed" note in the readme. Everyone tells me that the graphics geniuses are more than willing to lend their talents to improve scenarios they know and love.

[Arthedain]

check out the The Graphics Workshop thread. I think Curt made a tutorial there

[Varwnos]

The thing is that my primitive paint program doesnt have a load palette option.... Here is the title.gif, can someone load the civ2 palette on it and re-post it? it is the only thing remaining to do before i can upload the beta version of my scen, so do take the time to do it