A different approach to making EXPLORING more of a task.

[SMIFFGIG]

Dale for his AoM mod has come up with a good idea on how to make exploring more of a task and not just a standard thing that is done by the player in an unrealistic fashion.
He proposed making unit maintainance cost significantly higher when not in your civilizations or and allys territory. With the exception of certain new units that he plans to add to the game (Conquistador being one i think)

well i have though of another method that some mod makers may prefer however I am not sure if it is possible.

- When a unit is moving into a tile with shround on it (an unexplored tile) it takes significantly longer to move onto that tile compared to what it would usually, however there will be exceptions (thinking of when civ3 units are converted) eg conquistador and explorer.

This would certainly make early map exploring more of a challenge and the maps would look more how they should of that time period, it would probably make exploring more fun (with goody huts. IW's natural wonders and Pedrunns barbarian encampment) im thinking ahead here when all these mods are combined. It would also make map trading more precious and the ability to steal maps and/or partial maps alot more worthy (something i suggested and pedrunn is working on [I think ].

Can it be done ? If so which idea do you think would work better ?

Either way the problem can be addressed and i feel weary of even calling it a problem when compared to CIV3's PROBLEM with this issue (BIG PROBLEM which I highly doubt can be addressed)

[Pedrunn]

It would also make map trading more precious and the ability to steal maps and/or partial maps alot more worthy (something i suggested and pedrunn is working on [I think ].

Actually, there isnt much to do here. The code couldnt be simpler. A picture for it would be the hardest!

Can it be done ? If so which idea do you think would work better ?

Surw we just need to increase all units movement in the unit.txt (I am smelling CTPedit here) and remove movement points of the units if it is in unclaimed territory.
And/or add movement if it is in its own/other civ territory.

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
Surw we just need to increase all units movement in the unit.txt (I am smelling CTPedit here) and remove movement points of the units if it is in unclaimed territory.
And/or add movement if it is in its own/other civ territory.

That's for the territory method, is it possible to determine whether a units explored at all on a given move?

[The Big Mc]

Well pedrun you could have give him some pointers (this is for a newbie to slic so don’t be offended as I don’t know what your slic abilities are like.

Well here goes start by selecting a unit order one that is not used much.

Then go to apolyton and get the destructions on how to put together slic comments
Then in the documentation there is a swap map event so put that in like

Like
Handelevent(orderx) “steelmap” {
Int_t tmpplayer;
Int_t tmpplayer2

Tmpplayer1 = unit[0].owner;
Tmpplayer2 = city[0].owner;
Then in the documentation there is a swap map event so put that in like
Event:------------(tmpplayer1,tmpplayer2);

Return stop;
}

there’s a few bugs as I am away from ctp to test it but that should be the basis

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
That's for the territory method, is it possible to determine whether a units explored at all on a given move?

It is no problem to determine if a unit is in home territory, in unclaimed territory or in foreign territory.

Just use the MoveUnits event and this code will return the current owner of the current location.

Owner = CellOwner(army[0].location);

Owner will be -1 if no one owns the location, equal to army[0].owner if the unit is at home and everything else will mean the unit is in territory of other civs.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

But that doesn't say if the cell was newly-explored or not. Which, AFAIK is impossible to determine, except by adding every location to an array once it has been explored. But then this might be extremely hard to handle map-swaps.

In my opinion, making it harder to walk through unexplored terrain isn't a particularly good thing. I'd just sit where I was, and wait for the AI to come find me, and then map-whore to all the rest.
Discouraging exploration hurts the AI more than the human. We can adapt.

[Pedrunn]

I guess, IW and J, you guys are missing that if a unit is in a location it has to be explored.

[Immortal Wombat]

Yeah, and the tiles around it too. But then you need an array for every player, storing every single tile on the map, which is either 1 (explored) or 0 (unexplored).

Unless you set it up so that the tile a unit is in is "explored". But then it is never moving into unexplored territory, and the whole exercise becomes pointless...

[Dale]

Also, when thinking of CTP2 units, we're looking at a brigade level with scouts, trackers, cartographers, etc. They'd already have a good idea of the land-flow before the main unit arrived, which means they aren't really slowed down at all.

But I do agree too that limiting exploration too much will hurt the AI too much.