Something VERY unusual

[Kull]

Just when you think you've seen it all, Civ2 does something absolutely unheard of:

Two units fight, neither dies.

That's right, one unit attacks another, and at the end of their turn, BOTH are still on the board.

This happened during my latest scenario, and at first it was a major annoyance. The scenario is totally Event driven, and this happened at several points in the game, seemingly at random. Some events happened normally:

Unit A attacks unit B, B dies and stuff happens.

But almost as often:

Unit A would attack B, stuff would happen (meaning that Civ2 thought that B was dead), except at the end of the Event, B was STILL THERE! The strength was zero (a completely black health bar), but the darn thing still lived.

My scenario was basically at a standstill, and then I realized how totally unusual this was. Wouldn't it be great if this could actually be incorporated into scenarios as a FEATURE! For two days I tried everything, and then a few hours ago I discovered the cause:

An Event triggered by UNITKILLED that also includes the CHANGETERRAIN action does not remove the trigger unit from the game!

I carefully watched what happens during several Events triggered by UNITKILLED. The first thing is that the "dead" unit loses all health, but stays in place. You can see this quite clearly when a text box appears. Drag the box to the side and you'll see the unit still in position. Apparently the CHANGETERRAIN action somehow "resets" the game, such that incomplete actions (like removing the dead unit) are left unfinished. CHANGETERRAIN must be a very powerful command. During the making of "Seeds of Greatness", I discovered that it will sweep away all Barbarian units on the board unless there's at least one Barbarian-controlled city in existence. I wonder what other unusual things it's capable of?

Anyway, I thought you developers out there would be intrigued by this new wrinkle. Another trick for the scenario-creation toolbox!

[Mao]

Does the CHANGETERRAIN effect the same square that the UNITKILLED target is on?

Congrats too! You have invented the God unit!

[Kull]

In this case, it was always terrain someplace else on the map. I bet if you do CHANGETERRAIN beneath the triggerunit itself, THAT would probably kill it!

[Mao]

Yeah, IIRC if you use CHANGETERRAIN on a square a unit is in, the unit disappears, like in that El Dorado scenario with all the mudslides and things, but the AI doesn't recognize it as dead...I think we've drawn ourselves into a nice little paradox here

[DarthVeda]

Wow! That is interesting... imagine... units that can fight TWICE.

HOLY CRAP... imagine if one side was allowed this ability whenever their units fight, but the other was not... they would be very powerful if they retreat properly...

Thanks... I think I know how to use this... if it works correctly you'll see it in Kyokujitsu!

[Civfan]

kool...

[Kull]

A couple other things I forgot to add:

1) If the triggerunit is the defender in a stack, the other units in the stack WILL disappear. Unless the stack is in a fortress.

2) If the AI controls the event (i.e. the computer owns the triggerunit, attacks with it, and dies), the unit apears to survive but very weird stuff seems to happen afterwards. That's not very helpful but I've only tested a couple events in this category . One involved an AI missile unit and the other an AI naval unit, and the "weirdness" may be driven by their large movement allowances. Most of my event testing involved human controlled units attacking AI triggerunits.

3) I haven't tested AI units attacking and killing human-controlled triggerunits, but suspect the results would be "normal" (i.e. both units still "alive") I also haven't tested attacking units with multiple moves and high firepower factors...that might change the outcome.

[Mao]

If you don't have the CHANGETERRAIN on JUSTONCE, can't you have the unit live forever?

[Kull]

Good question...and the answer is...no?

Hmmm curiouser and curiouser. Well, after running some more tests I now have a much better understanding of what's going on:

The CHANGETERRAIN action must affect a terrain square which HAS A UNIT ON IT!

As Mao mentioned earlier, CHANGETERRAIN doesn't "really" kill the unit on that square...the AI still believes it exists. So perhaps this simultaneous killing of two units on two different squares confuses the AI such that only the second one to die is removed.

When you "kill" the unit a second time, the CHANGETERRAIN now occurs in a square devoid of units, so there is no confusion, and the unit both dies (because the event DOES trigger again) and is removed.

I guess this won't lead to truly immortal "God Units", but there may still be some interesting applications. For example, you could extend the "immortality" into other turns if there was also an event which placed units on the appropriate square every turn (perhaps something invisible and with a movement of zero). So if the (lesser) God Unit was attacked only once per turn, it theoretically COULD live forever!

[Mao]

So we can have an invincible unit? Excellent!

Maybe this could be used in scenarios to represent such things as airbases which can get a second life?

[DarthVeda]

Looks like I won't be using it after all...

[Mao]

You're still editing Kyokujitsu Veda? I thought it was up the playtesting phase?

[Allard HS]

Wow!!!!! This is great!!! A new discovery. A great new discovery which will allow a lot of new things.

If I understand everything correctly, I have added a few options, to make this vague discovery a bit more usable and concrete. Forgive me, Kull, to "steal" your idea, but I thought if it wouldn't be put this way, nobody'll use it.

So, you can this way create:
1- King units that have 2 lives.
2- King units that have 3 lives.
3- God units that have unlimited lives.
4- An unconquerable city (Konstantinouple?)
5- Human sacrifice to save the King's life.

Let me try to explain my points. It seems totally logical.

2- Make 2 events. The first one is always valuable, the second one JUSTONCE. The triggered unit MUST be unique (a hero, a king).
Make the first event: "unit killed => terrain (in corner of map?) changed". There must be a unit built there of course.
Make the second JUSTONCE event: "(same) unit killed => (same) terrain changed, AND create a new unit within that destroyed terrain." That new unit, obviously, would need to be unmovable, useless, and not-human controlled (not barbarian either, since it would get destroyed at the changeterrain anyway. Not sure about that though)

What this does is: trigger unit deleted, so the unit is drowned in the corner and gives his life for the King's life.

Normally, the King would still be alive, but next turn he would get killed, perhaps even by the same unit that killed him earlier. Now, however, thanks to the second event, that repeats the same action, which makes no difference, a new unit is automatically placed there, so next turn, he is again deleted by EVENT no1. Event no2 can however only be JUSTONCE, not JUSTTWICE or JUSTTHRICE, so the King can only have 3 lives this way.

3- as you can already foresee, delete the first event of these two, and remove the JUSTONCE of the second.
This produces a new unit in the corner every time the unit is deleted.

4- place a god unit in a city. If this works the same as in normal squares, you have an untakable city. Untakable, until the events are changed, via event switching.

5- Make a part of the map a different terrain type (like black, or so), which will be the terrain used to kill if the King should die. Make sure you always move a unit there to sacrifice for the King. Can only work if the King is human-controlled. If there's no unit standing there, the King dies, if there is, the unit dies instead of the King. How romantic....


Of course, there's still always an option to just create a new unit of the same type on some (variable) location (Red Front), when the unit is killed. This has the advantage that it is full health, and you can give 2 or 3 units for 1 unit killed.
[This message has been edited by Allard HS (edited August 10, 2000).]

[Steve Clark]

Kull, I have been espousing your superb Seeds of Greatness scenario all over the place and now with this latest discovery, I revere you.

[Mao]

Let those who say Civ2 is dead eat their words!!!

[Kull]

Thanks Steve. But it is, after all, only a game. Thank you too, Allard, for some interesting implementation ideas. I suspect there's a lot more that people will be able to do with this, once it's investigated in greater depth.