Stuff I've learned about scenario building

[Alinestra Covelia]

This is a list of problems I've had (or am currently having) with scenario building. I'll post them here in case anybody out there is still building scenarios and wants to chip in. Also in case anybody out there wants to learn, but encounters the same problems I did.

1. Scenario starts off with a territory/wonder victory imminent. You want to deactivate the territory or wonder victory.

I wasted weeks looking through the script functions list trying to find out what command deactivated the territory or wonder victory conditions. Turns out I was looking in the wrong place.

Go to the scenario editor and click on the Scenario tab, and change the Game Rules drop down menu to "custom". This will bring up the Territory Victory and Wonder Victory drop down menus to the right. Set them to whatever you want (in this case, "no territory victory" and "no wonder victory" respectively).

[Alinestra Covelia]

2. Gifting nations technological advances at the library and elsewhere.

As far as I can tell, the gain_tech(int, string); command can be used to gift a nation any type of research. This has worked for library research, as well as Tower research (attrition, etc.), and even Senate government types.

This used to give me a lot of problems in trying to force a government type for a nation. Turns out the correct language is:

gain_tech(1, "Despotism");
gain_tech(1, "Monarchy");
gain_tech(1, "Socialism");

[Alinestra Covelia]

3. Making tech off limits to a nation.

Conversely, the disable_tech(int, string); command will prevent a nation from ever researching it. I believe in the case of library, Tower, Temple (etc.) buildings, the box will be permanently greyed out, as though you don't have the pre-requisites to research them.

In the case of Future Technologies (Missile Shield, World Government, Global Prosperity, and A.I.) on the technology shortcut at the top of the screen, those buttons will not be blacked out. They will in fact be lit up but you still can't research them.

disable_tech(1, "Information Age");

This will mean the nation in Player 1's slot will never be able to research Information Age. By the same token, he will never be able to build or research anything that requires Info Age beforehand.

[Alinestra Covelia]

4. Making units and buildings unavailable to a nation.

I have not gotten this to work the way I think it should, but I have managed to find a somewhat clumsy workaround.

The way that doesn't work but looks like it should work:

There's a command disable_type_by_tribe(int, string); which looks like it should be quite versatile. However, I have not gotten this to work properly. The argument structure I'm using looks like this:

disable_type_by_tribe(1, "Howitzer");

The way that I work around this, clumsily:

Buildings and units in the game can have up to three pre-requisites, although normally they only actually use two. It's possible to give all the restricted units and buildings a certain prerequisite (say, Information Age) and then to make Info Age unavailable for that single nation.

To change requisites, go to the scenario editor and highlight the unit or building you want, and then click edit. Drop down menus will allow you to fiddle with the prerequisite techs.

E.g. I'm writing a scenario where I want the defending army to be a little backwards, technologically. I want them to be unable to build Airfields, Missile Silos, and all the units that come with them. Additionally, I want them to be able to build Factories, but unable to build Howitzers specifically.

I thus set the defending nation as being unable to research Info Age, and then I set Airfields, Missiles Silos, and Howitzers to require Info Age to build. The net effect of this is to allow everybody else to build Airfields and Missile Silos. Note that nobody can build Howitzers! They are not available until Info Age, at which point they're already obsolete and have been taken over by Rocket Artillery.