Is there life after Civ2?

Captain Nemo · February 18, 2000, 01:18

I am putting the finishing touches to Red Front 1.4 and simultaneously upgrading 2194 Days of War to include the better graphics of RF... But that will be done in a few days, so I started thinking about my next scenario (if any) and wondering if there is still enough life left in Civ2 to justify the huge effort of putting together another scenario? Who would play it?
Are there any other games that support the kind of scenario-making that Civ2 allows?
What do you think?

William Keenan · February 18, 2000, 11:55

Many other games offer scenario building options, but none (IMO) have the scope that Civ2 has. So, why downgrade?

It will be a long time until we see civ3, at least a year or more. So that leaves us with civ2. Fortunatly there is still an uncharted frontier of civ2 left to explore: Test of Time.

February 18, 2000, 19:36

FW and MGE are dead, so use ToT!

Mao · February 18, 2000, 20:11

NEVER!!! FW FOREVER!

you could try a scenario about some other great land battles Nemo...Japanese vs. Chinese? Chinese have to hold out and survive for American aid?

Captain Nemo · February 19, 2000, 01:08

How about this scenario:

D-Day to Falaise...(Title: "Invasion!", "Overlord", "Second Front", "Ike's War")
Starts on June 6, 1944 with your invasion fleet off the coast of Normandy ends once you have routed the Germans and broken out of the Hedgerows of Normandy.
Designed for MGE hotseat play with the Human player controlling the "Allies" and "Allied Air Force" (Two separate civs to prevent the planes from landing in captured villages in Normandy)
Germans likewise split as Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe Civs.
Possibly a fifth civ "French Civilians" that would be "in the way" of the military operations.
A sixth civ could be ai-controlled French Underground (Maquisards) although they played a relatively small role in the early invasion.
The only way to land planes in France is by capturing a few key German airfields in France since the Allied Air Force civ would have only air units and could not capture cities.

Other key ideas:
Very strong defensive positions along the Coast of Normandy, including coastal batteries that can fire "missile" type units and invisible "floating mine" units.
Capital ships and LSTs set to 18 cost causes them to draw "missile" fire if they approach the beaches while smaller vessels (LCAs and LCTs) with lower cost can reach the beaches with less risk.

Dual defense line of "beach" terrain with low defensive value and "barbwire" terrain with high movement cost and low defensive value. Behind these lines strong German bunker type units, machine gun units, anti-tank guns etc...

No coastal cities except a few key harbors like Cherbourg & Le Havre to prevent Allies from easily bringing equipment and troops into Normandy. (All units have to be offloaded on the beaches)(Disable all settler/engineer functions from the menu)

One feature that I am not 100% sure would work: Set population food consumption to 0, make terrain produce no food (So city population would stay constant). Rename food "fuel" and set settler role for all motor vehicles (They all consume 2 "fuel") Create fuel "depots" terrain around British cities that would allow British cities to send numerous food/fuel convoys to France to support the units based in France. This would simulate the very complex logistics of supporting the invasion force across the channel.

Battle of the Hedgerows: a checker board of terrain with high defensive value and slow movement criss-crossed by terrain with roads and low defensive value. The allies could move along the roads but be exposed to deadly attacks from Germans in the hedgerows.
Scenario duration: 30 or 40 turns (Days) Objectives: to break out of the German containement and secure a harbor and airfields to support the advance through France to Germany.

British units would be very slow(Montgomery)

Allies would own the sky (Possibly could leave the Airforce ai-controlled to prevent it from over-achieving?) but be logistically difficult to operate (Fly from Britain to France in 2 turns then return in 2 turns so instant air support would not be available until the capture of local airfields)

German tanks would be very superior to Allied tanks and extremely costly to knock out without air support.

OK this is an outline, any comments? any additional ideas? Any better ideas?

Other options would be a German version of Red Front or a big scale battle of Stalingrad (The War of the Rats)

Does anyone have experience with ToT scenario building? What additional work is involved and what can be carried over from FW/MPG.

Sten Sture · February 19, 2000, 01:09

For what it's worth, I am a long time civ2 player, but only recently started playing scenarios... I can't believe how great some of these things are. It is absolutely the best kept secret in the gaming world.

If Hasbro was smart, they could do an EA Sports, give you guys a royalty and release a new set of scenarios every year.

Xin Yu · February 19, 2000, 01:25

Captain Nemo: I have no opinion now. After playing RF1.4 I'll know whether I want a more difficult scenario. Gee, your scenario is more addictive than the game itself!

February 19, 2000, 01:35

I have ToT building experience. I'm almost finished with a rather large WW2 scenario. ToT is much better for scenarios. There is so much more you can do with events such as flags and avi files. One of my favorites is that with ToT, you can specify how many units to create with a single event. If you wanted to create 20 of the same units with FW, you'd have to write out the same event 20 times, taking up a huge amount of space. Also, the events file is much larger for ToT. There are more units allowed in ToT, and the unit boxes are larger which allows for a greater amount of detail. Another great feature is the ability to include up to four maps in a scenario. Nemo, imagine if you could have used four maps in your 2194 days of war scenario. You could have a detailed map of europe and northern africa, a map of asia, a map of the pacific, and a map of america. Now that would be an intense scenario!

The extra work required for ToT would be to manually editing the rules and events text files. Carrying stuff over? You mean like you already started a scenario in FW and want to finish it in ToT? You can convert FW and MGE scenarios to ToT with a converter Angelo Scotto made. Michael Daumen converted his Great Game scenario to ToT and upgraded it.

ToT offers a lot more for scenario creation, and once some ToT scenarios start flowing out FW will be left in the dust. Its really sad that there are people like Mao who are too lazy to buy the game and they will try to hold back the progress of the civ community.

Allard HS · February 19, 2000, 07:00

quote:

Designed for MGE hotseat play with the Human player controlling the "Allies" and "Allied Air Force" (Two separate civs to prevent the planes from landing in captured villages in Normandy)

I wouldn't use MGE if I were you. FW offers all MGE has to offer but is much more widely used. Same for ToT. And if you want many people to play it, use FW!
You can also use Hotseat in Fantastic Worlds, which works fine (even better than the hotseat in MGE). One hint: go to hex offset 2F and change the number to FF or to anything you want.

For the rest it sounds great, but wouldn't it be time for... something different? The Bayeux idea you had in another thread seems great..

Hendrik the Great · February 19, 2000, 07:22

How is it possible to play FW Hotseat? I would realy like to know that!

Allard HS · February 19, 2000, 07:29

I just told. Go to hex offset 2F of any saved game, then change it to the player you want to play (FF for all).

Hendrik the Great · February 19, 2000, 10:32

Sorry. Wasn't paying attention.

Where can I get a hex editor?
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited February 19, 2000).]

Panda · February 19, 2000, 11:19

Hendrick, the best hex editing program I've yet seen is Hex Wizard, which you can find at: http://members.xoom.com/Hexwizard/index.htm

It has the advantage of being as powerful as commercial programs yet absolutely free

Hendrik the Great · February 19, 2000, 11:26

Nice site. Downloading...

Thanks a lot!

Captain Nemo · February 19, 2000, 23:11

Allard:
Thanks for the tip about MGE versus FW... If I decide not to try ToT, I will definitely use FW rather than MGE since the Hotseat play is possible.
Regarding "time to try something else", I agree with you in principle, however the work involved with doing something completely new would be massive compared to making another WWII scenario. My thoughts were that I have 60-70% of the units needed for another WWII scenario, as well as the historical knowledge needed to do it. With a modest time investment I could add a good entry to the WWII scenario collection. The Bayeux idea is so massive that it would probably die in process (I am realistic about the time needed to get something like that going). I'm not going to announce 10 different scenarios and not complete them like so many Civ2 creators do and I would rather do something modest that will go ahead than throw 100's of hours at an unrealistically complex venture.

BTW, Allard did you get my E-mail about posting Red Front 1.4 on CSC? I didn't get an answer.

Archangel:

Some additional ToT questions:
Can Civ2 units be reused in ToT? Can terrains/cities/improvement icons be reused in ToT? Are there any new graphics required?
Can the events drop units at variable locations? (Fx where a previous unit has been killed?) How many unit slots are available? Are there any extra terrain slots? Any special terrain specifications like making additional water terrains or impenetrable terrain? What is required to make animated units? How big is the max event file?
How are the 4 maps tied together (Can units move from one map to the next?)
I have many more but enough for this time.
[This message has been edited by Captain Nemo (edited February 19, 2000).]

Michael Daumen · February 19, 2000, 23:44

[quote]Originally posted by Captain Nemo on 02-19-2000 10:11 PM
Some additional ToT questions:
Can Civ2 units be reused in ToT? Can terrains/cities/improvement icons be reused in ToT? Are there any new graphics required?

ToT works virtually the same as Civ2 in terms of what can be replaced. The only measurable benefit is using bmp images which allows for deeper color.

Can the events drop units at variable locations? (Fx where a previous unit has been killed?)

The Create Unit event can include a modifier randomizing the list of locations, but I didn't think it worked when I tested it.

How many unit slots are available?

About 18 more I believe.

Are there any extra terrain slots? Any special terrain specifications like making additional water terrains or impenetrable terrain?

No more terrain slots, but you can make terrain impassable to ground units.

What is required to make animated units?

Don't know

How big is the max event file?

100Kb

How are the 4 maps tied together (Can units move from one map to the next?)

You can move from one map to the next but as they are "stacked" upon eachother it takes some fancy footwork to make a scroll of several maps.

You may have better luck posting in the ToT forum.

William Keenan · February 20, 2000, 01:22

There are 80 units in ToT. There are new unit special abilities like invisibility, unbribable, damage override for helicopters an more.

There are no extra terrain slots, however each terrain slot has 3 images. Any type of terrain my be flagged as impassable (no more tricks with invisible units). There is also a new unit ability to pass impassible terrain.

Event file can be 100k. Event triggers have been greatly expanded in ToT. There is now no limit to the complexity of an event trigger. For more information read this.

Multi-maps can be used in historical scenarios, for more information read this.

February 20, 2000, 18:31

Thanks guys for answering questions. About terrain, there are more slots, sorta. Of course theres three slots for each terrain, so for example you can have 3 different looking grasslands. But each map requires its own terrain file. So what you could do is in a world map, you can have plains for the american map, steppe for the european map, and savannah for africa, and they would all be in the corresponding slots in the terrain files. The graphics for each one could be different as well.

BTW, the random location modifier does work, and it's very useful.

klesh · February 28, 2000, 16:44

Captain Nemo,
Thanks to your tips in Loki's post, I just beat RedFront for the first time without cheating. It got so big, I didn't bother invading Norway because many cities had nothing to build but units...
Can't wait for 1.4, where can I find it once released.
I like the Stalingrad idea. Making a scenario that takes place inside a city would provide countless oppertunities for innovative ideas. Or the fight for Berlin...Soviets come with massive numbers only to find Germans dug in all over...
A German "GreyFront" would be nice, but there are tons of German scenarios... you should keep on the cutting edge. IMHO you make the best scenarios out there, and I can't wait to get my mind blown again. Keep it up.