Favourite (and innovative) scenario concepts

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by William Keenan

What is the effect of negative bonuses for terrain?

You can control the maximum size of cities by planting the right number of negative bonus squares - the same way you use zero bonus tiles.

In addition, it introduces the concept of trading off one type of bonus for another - like paying money fro extra food. And it forces players to do terrain improvements / transformations even if they normally don't.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by ravagon

Star Trek - Dominion War (Kobyashi) - use of terrain types (ie: Ocean) and change terrain effects to isolate the various civs .........

I was probably not the first to do the above...

but just wondering, was I the first to

1. use a checkered land sea pattern (to simulate the Cardie orbital battle stations in the Chin'toka camapign)?

2. Have more than one map (the search for the aliens inside the wormhole) at a time in the same game?

[Prometeus]

Originally posted by ravagon


So does anybody know the limits of this "neutron bomb" effect? ie: At what attack rating (below 80?) does it come into play? and does it scale up towards a full "nuke" at attack 99 or does it suddenly jump after 98?

Time to have a play ...

Haven't playtested it adequately, but the attack scale seems to be this:

<80 --- conventional weapons attack values

80-84(?) ----- Neutronic nuke bomb - destroys all of enemy units, diminished pollution and changes terrain

>80-84(?) to 99 full nuke effects - same as above except for pollution.

Both of this value attacks need Manhattan to be builded and Rocketry to show up.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Prometeus


Haven't playtested it adequately, but the attack scale seems to be this:

<80 --- conventional weapons attack values

80-84(?) ----- Neutronic nuke bomb - destroys all of enemy units, diminished pollution and changes terrain

>80-84(?) to 99 full nuke effects - same as above except for pollution.

Both of this value attacks need Manhattan to be builded and Rocketry to show up.

I've tried this in ToT, MGE and FW, using a variety of factors from 80-99. In none of my experiments did I get the results listed above. It's just a powerful cruise missile. Has anyone else been able to duplicate Prometeus' results?

I'm puzzled by your results, Prometeus. Can you give us more details?

[Prometeus]

Unfortunately, no. These are the only data i got, but trust me if i say it worked on my PC. As i said before, i tetsted it only once. Maybe was just a lucky shot.

[ravagon]

Prom,

You weren't, perchance, using the nuke "slot" for testing this were you?
Maybe it won't work for any other ...

[Mercator]

I tested your nuke thing too with FW and ToT (in the nuke slot), and I really didn't get anything out of it.
The nuke effect works for attack values 99 - 127. Anything below 99 works just as a normal unit.

The attack value is a signed byte, so as expected at 128 the attack value flips over to -128. Unfortunately that doesn't give any nice effects (like adding health to an attacked unit), it just counts as attack strength 0 (although you don't get the "you can't attack" type message settlers etc. give.

You can increase the attack value practically infinitely, but only the remainder of division by 256 is taken into account... E.g. 890 % 256 = 122, which is a nuke.

Did you perhaps try it with pre-2.42 Civ2? That's all I can think of...

[Prometeus]

Definitely it seems that was a lucky shot, if it doesn't work on your PC. I used the first extra unit slot. Maybe it'as only a weird bug of that ol'scen. As i said before, there were no nuke weapons with more then 80 attack value - read my previous posts to see the whole matter for that Gundam project scen. I abandoned it because Marvel Italy sued me to used name and graphics, so i lost interest on it and destroyed everything...

Anyway, that bug was really interesting... If someone wants to investigate the neutronic bomb mistery, that's all the data i can tell you .

I feel like Maiorana... Who wants to be the newest Fermi? Currently I'm too busy on my S... ahem, nevermind.

[DarkCloud]

The underdark scenario was fairly good
You fight the dungeon creatures and try to get to the surface

[Prometeus]

Hey, ask Gelvan!!! He got the same results as me. Just wondering if he has something changed or not.

It's interesting about comparing two points of view.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by kobayashi
Was Mr Temba the first to use
...
negative bonuses for terrain
...

How can it be accomplished? I tried to edit grassland to -2,-1,0 and it works as 0,0,0 . Shall I use 255 or what?

[Elok]

Grassland is a special case which ignores most instructions. Try it with plains. And he means for special resources, BTW. You can't have a terrain "produce" hunger and corruption that I know of, but you can have a special resource produce less than the normal square of that type.

[curtsibling]

On topic,

I would say that Favourflight produced some of the most stunning graphic effects in his Return of the King scenario.

The use of mountains as units, and the visual design was mind-blowing.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Elok
Grassland is a special case which ignores most instructions. Try it with plains. And he means for special resources, BTW. You can't have a terrain "produce" hunger and corruption that I know of, but you can have a special resource produce less than the normal square of that type.

It doesn't look that it is reduced to specials: Kobayashi says it can be used to control city size:

Originally posted by kobayashi
You can control the maximum size of cities by planting the right number of negative bonus squares - the same way you use zero bonus tiles.

In addition, it introduces the concept of trading off one type of bonus for another - like paying money fro extra food. And it forces players to do terrain improvements / transformations even if they normally don't.

[Thoddy]

AI and human detection

events.txt
;example
;Human detection repeat for every civ
@IF
Negotiation
talker=Russians
talkertype=Human
listener=anybody
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
justonce
GiveTechnology
technology=0
receiver=Russians
@ENDIF

;AI detection
@IF
Negotiation
talker=Russians
talkertype=Computer
listener=anybody
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
justonce
GiveTechnology
technology=95
receiver=Russians
changemoney
receiver=Russians
amount=20000
@ENDIF

the huge amount money is also used to improve AI research abilities amounts over 10000 increase speed of research significantly

rules.txt
@CIVILIZE
Human,-------------0, 0, Cur, Cur, 3, 1 ; AFl 0 not reseachable Tech 0
not researchable,-0, 0, no, no, 3, 0 ; Cur Tech 20
AI,--------------------0, 0, Cur, Cur, 0, 2 ; X3 Tech 95 not researchable

All three techs are not researchable and tradeable but all the following techs are fully tradeable (only Civ2-Multiplayer) ; techs following a no,no tech cannot be researched

the techs enable special techpaths to both - human and AI players, thus requires, that you also forbid trading technologies between AI and human players via changing game.txt.

Separate techpaths also prevents AI from wasting shields for recycling centers and mass transits, since smokestacks within AI cities have no effect, so give the prerequisit tech only to human players.
In this way you can also prevent human player getting the high productive forms of gouvernments. Thus restricts large scale productive advantages every experienced human player has.

this feature is implemented in my upcoming scen, but I need some help for fine adjustment
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=99230

Some other specials:
for instance pollution used as anti war demonstrations

[techumseh]

I've experimented with this too - trying to find a technique which automatically detects which civ is played by the human player and delivers either something for the human player only or for the AI civs only, such as a tech or special units. The problem is that this trigger also automatically cuts off negotiation between the civs. Have you found a way around this?

[Henrik]

Lol I thought I'd read this thing before! I just realized it was bumped from 2002!

[Art of War]

Originally posted by Prometeus
I wonder if anyone published these infos here.

I got a "neutronic" bomb by setting nuclear weapon attack value to 80. Same effect, diminished pollution casualities. Very nice, have to try it.

I did this in the very first scenario i started production on, back in may of 2002, Harry Turtledove's Colonization. I gave the nazi's a short range "mini" nuke with attack of 75. Never got released, though..can't seem to finish them.

[Thoddy]

Originally posted by techumseh
I've experimented with this too - trying to find a technique which automatically detects which civ is played by the human player and delivers either something for the human player only or for the AI civs only, such as a tech or special units. The problem is that this trigger also automatically cuts off negotiation between the civs. Have you found a way around this?

I found this too; it was annoying.
I afraid the only way is to switch to another eventsfile after all civs get their "identification".

[Alex Woehr]

If you have ToT you can just use the Negotiator to immediately negate the Negotiation trigger:

@IF
Negotiation
talker=(civ name)
talkertype=Human
listener=(other civ)
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
JustOnce
GiveTechnology
technology=(tech #)
receiver=(civ name)
Negotiator
who=(leader #)
type=talker
state=clear
@ENDIF

In the above statement, the type= parameter should be talker in one Negotiator action and listener (for the same civ) in another, talker allowing the civilization to initiate a talk with whomever he or she wants and listener allowing the civ to receive a talk from whomever wants to talk to that civ. Unfortunately, there is no way to change individual negotiation settings, though. There might be another way to do this (ie with talkermask and listenermask).

[techumseh]

Interesting. Have you tried it out?

[Alex Woehr]

No, actually, I just saw it in the manual.

[Thoddy]

I know. But there were less than a hand full of people interestet in such a scen, that I stop further development of an existing ToT scen. check this link
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=42742

[Mercator]

I tried that Alex, but it doesn't work... Well, it does for "human-detection", but diplomacy is still impossible that way.

The listertype/talkertype automatically disables negotiation, even with the Negotiator action. The Negotiator only works in combination with the listermask/talkermask, but you can't identify the human player with that.

Plus, why waste a technology? It's much better to use flags for this. You could use one flag to mark human civs.

And another thing, you could use the TriggerReceiver "variable", to let the actions apply to the civ initiation the talk...

But again, this can only work if you don't mind turning off diplomacy.

[techumseh]

Merc, the challenge is to have a scenario in which more than one civ is playable, and have the events automatically detect which civ is being played by the human player once the scenario is begun, so that specific events can be triggered for the human civ only. Are you saying this can be done by flags?

[Mercator]

Well, not really... The Negotiation event is still the only event that can detect human players.

That means detection can't be done right at startup, only when the player(s) try to engage in negotiation. But in doing so, you also turn off negotiation in the first place.

The only thing I was saying is that, instead of technologies, like Thoddy did earlier, you could use flags to mark the human player... But you first have to find a way to actually detect them. Flags are only a way of storing the information.

Ahem... And you can ignore what I said about TriggerReceiver. It doesn't work.


EDIT: This would be how you could use flags to store which civ is human. The Negotiation thing would have to be repeated for all civs.

Opening the foreign minister screen is enough to trigger this event (as long as you know other civs)... Diplomacy would be disabled though.

@INITFLAG

@IF
Negotiation
talker=Americans
talkertype=Human
listener=AnyBody
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@THEN
Flag
continuous
who=Americans
state=On
flag=0
@ENDIF

@IF
Turn
turn=5
@AND
CheckFlag
who=Americans
flag=0
state=On
@THEN
Text
The Americans are human.
EndText
@ENDIF

But I'm not sure if this is really commendable, especially if there are a lot of differences in events for different human civs.

A setup batch file would be much easier in that case... As BeBro did in Imperium Romanum for example (see my example in the file switching thread).

[William Keenan]

Originally posted by Mercator
Well, not really... The Negotiation event is still the only event that can detect human players.

That means detection can't be done right at startup, only when the player(s) try to engage in negotiation. But in doing so, you also turn off negotiation in the first place.

Opening the foreign minister screen is enough to trigger this event (as long as you know other civs)... Diplomacy would be disabled though.

Code:

@INITFLAG @IF Negotiation talker=Americans talkertype=Human listener=AnyBody listenertype=HumanOrComputer @THEN Flag continuous who=Americans state=On flag=0 @ENDIF @IF Turn turn=5 @AND CheckFlag who=Americans flag=0 state=On @THEN Text The Americans are human. EndText @ENDIF

This may get around the problem. I've not tested it yet.


@IF
Negotiation
talker=Americans
talkertype=Human
listener=AnyBody
listenertype=HumanOrComputer
@AND
CheckFlag
who=Americans
flag=0
state=Off
@THEN
Flag
continuous
who=Americans
state=On
flag=0
@ENDIF


Alternately, the listener could be a single civ that no one is allowed to communicate, like the Hodad in the Aliens scenario.

Another musing, would barbarians be usable a the listener?

[Mercator]

Your alternative event works the same, diplomacy is still off. I didn't expect it would get around this, because the @AND actually just creates two different event structures, one for each trigger (and something that links the two as well, I guess).

The barbarians idea doesn't work either. Diplomacy is back, but human detection now fails (probably because the Negotiation event is never triggered in the first place with Barbarians).

Your second idea works, though. I imagine that would work well especially if you already have an isolated civ anyway. Like the Hodads example you gave, or say, a Neutral civ in a WWII scenario.

[:) Smiley]

It is probably easier to have different sets of events.txt for multiple human-playable civs. I think this is used in a number of scenarios.

[Thoddy]

The diplomatic problem was the same as I found in my further feasabilty study.

idea.

1) create flags for all civs (this flag remains 1 until the civ has been communicated with somebody)

2) use a combined checkflag and negotiation trigger
to check for human
give human technolgy or (human) flag to this civ
set flag (1) to zero

3) use a combined checkflag and negotiation event to check for AI
give AI technology or AI-Flag to this civ
set flag (1) to zero

I hope the checkflag part will prevent the event from disabling diplo screen.