The Road to Empire: Preview

[Case]

Originally posted by Spanky
But I'm thinking of maybe putting it up for public use. Any suggestions which sites I should mail it to?

Civfanatics will host it, and Mark G says that Apolyton is still accepting Civ 2 files

[Spanky]

Thanks!

I mailed my current version to Mercator, who said he'll be putting up on his new site, but I've decided to wait a little with the rest, since I've realized it shouldn't be too difficult to create an improved version with a larger Pacific.

Now, a question to all you wise and experienced creators out there:

Is this just wishful thinking, or could I actually extend the current map I'm using without having to reposition all my cities, units and infrastructure?

The thing is, I've never used any of the third-party map editing utilities out there before, but it seems that MapCopy allows you to write new map information into a .sav file, while MapEdit permits you to alter the dimensions of an existing map.

The map I'm using has its 0-meridian going right through the pacific. Which means in theory, if I merely add some more tiles to the east of where the map currently ends, none of the cities or units currently in the .sav should need to alter their coordinates.

Can anybody confirm that this is possible?

[Spanky]

Well, I've fiddled around with MapCopy for a while now, and it doesn't seem like you can extend the playing area of a .sav file by any simple means. I even tried hex-editing the areas that define the map's surface, even that of the radar map (the "map header" block mentioned by Allard Höfelt). Looks like the problem is that every single tile on the map has it's own addtional data portion describing things like improvements, whether occupied by a city, and so on, and hex-editing all that would take ages. As always: please prove me wrong.

A second impasse has come up while working on the Events file:

Some of you will no doubt tell me "I could have told you so": the "unitkilled" command doesn't work as well as it might.

Here's the problem:

For India and Africa respectively, killed Sepoys / Colonials units are supposed to be replaced through a "createunit" command in the Events file. Since potentially, any civ could own such units through another routine described further up in this thread, I had intended to state "anybody" when the program asks for both attacker and defender in a "unitkilled" situation, and have the created unit's nationality be "triggerdefender". So far, so good in theory, but in practice, the "anybody" command seems to apply only to the first unit killed. After that, the events routine applies only to situations exactly like this first case. For example: If the first Sepoys unit killed in the scenario is British, attacked by the French, then any further replacements will only occur for British Sepoys killed by the French.

Not being able to use the "anybody" command, I would have to create 7x7=49 events for the Sepoys alone!! So again, unless anybody here knows any better, it looks like I'll have to drop that idea, which means that each civ will probably still get auxiliary, localized units in the game, but will have to use them primarily for defense, since they can't replace them... Too bad, since recreating something like the Indian Army or French Senagalese in Europe during the Great War would have been cute.

On the tech tree front, however, things seem to be going smoothly (thanks to all concerned for the advice). I've even come across one or two new ideas.

[our_man]

Spanky, I can't seem to think of any way around creating new units using the "unitkilled" command. I tried what you're doing now for one of own scenarios and I could never get it to work either.

Maybe you could create new infantry units using the "randomturn" or "turninterval" commands. It's not exactly what you're looking for but it's the best solution I found.

[ravagon]

Unfortunately that sounds very much like the triggerattacker bug whereby the buffer is not cleared after the trigger. I didn't know it did the same thing for triggerdefender as well. Otherwise you probably could have gotten away with just seven events.

This isn't one of those situations where you could just substitute HumanOrComputer (or some variant thereof) is it? Don't have my manual with me right now.

[Spanky]

Thanks for your suggestions, guys! Although I had thought of the constant generation solution myself, I'll give them (another) try. First, though, I'm going to make sure I can fit all the citytaken events in.

I've just about finalized the concept for trade items:

Like I said, I'm going to distribute supply and demand according to geographical criteria, using Gothmog's CivCity. I've updated my original concept, though, in that I'm going to greatly reduce the available items, at least on the demand side. My preliminary list consists of Oil, Precious Minerals and "Exotic Goods". There are several reasons behind this:

a) differentiating between manufactured goods and raw materials would not account for potential industrialization in certain parts of the world

b) reducing the number of items in worldwide demand would make these all the more valuable, and

c) selective distribution of these items would make certain parts of the world more valuable to possess than others.

Oops, gotta go. To be continued!

[Spanky]

Back again.

Well, it seems like "Oil" won't be making the list after all. It would have had to be implemented in a similar way to the original game, in that demand for it would only arise at a certain date, with the introduction of the "Industrialization" tech. But there are two arguments against this: One, oil only actually became significant historically some time after the invention of internal combustion, I'd say probably with the mass-production of the automobile and, of course, the mechanization of armies. Second, I'm using the "Industrialization" tech slot for my neo-classical city style. I tried to use the "Uranium" trade item slot instead, which is supposed to be activated by "Nuclear Fission", but that didn't produce any results. Lastly, I guess omitting "Oil" wouldn't be too much of a loss, given the time-frame of this Scenario.

On the positive side, this frees up a slot on my universally demanded items list. This has opened up a new possibility: splitting "Exotic Goods" up into Tropical Goods and Oriental Wares on the one hand, and adding Western Goods on the other. This way, there would be roughly three regions of the world, each one demanding the goods of the two others.

My chief concern is making the possession of colonies attractive. Although the standard theory goes that the age of imperialism was a result of capital looking for new markets and outlets for investment, the civ2 engine works somewhat against that, since trade between a civ and a potential colony is actually more lucrative when the former doesn't conquer the latter. But I think it would be an acceptable simplification to have cities in Africa and southern Asia supply items not available in the west, but widely demanded by the other powers. This way, acquiring them as colonies would be required in order to build merchants that could supply the motherland as well as the rest of the world with their products.

The "goods" term is deliberately non-specific, and meant to cover anything from raw-materials like tin and rubber, to manufactured items like ceramics, furniture and textiles. Since the items supplied can't be changed in-game according to the level of industrialization achieved in a city, I think this is the best solution. On the other hand, I will try to make caravan units expensive enough in order to favor industrialization.

The term "Oriental" is also quite vague, and therefore very handy, in my opinion. It will cover cities as far apart as Tangier, Dar es Salaam, Bombay and Osaka.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Spanky
Well, I've fiddled around with MapCopy for a while now, and it doesn't seem like you can extend the playing area of a .sav file by any simple means. I even tried hex-editing the areas that define the map's surface, even that of the radar map (the "map header" block mentioned by Allard Höfelt). Looks like the problem is that every single tile on the map has it's own addtional data portion describing things like improvements, whether occupied by a city, and so on, and hex-editing all that would take ages. As always: please prove me wrong.

I could give it a go if you like (hexediting the map in, that is). I'm probably more familiar with the file format than you. If you could e-mail the savegame today I might finish it before the end of the weekend, otherwise I can't make any promises...

[Spanky]

Thanks, Mercator, I really appreciate the offer. Just finished editing in all the trade items, and a copy is on its way. Hope you succeed!