An idea 2

[Heresson]

A point have to be made: using this seems to have sense only in a scenario where there aren't many civs, or/and aren't many cities.
It can be combined with Jesus M's idea of mercenaries, and then, it can make a quite docent idea.

OK. What I was thinking of for some time is a game, in which You can't build military units. At all, or almost at all. Real units are being created by events. Another ERS system variation? Perhaps, but not quite. The idea is that some lands, represented by some cities, receive by events specific units (or recruits, if You combine this with ERS). Lets say there's a civ Amakakonia and civ Bekekenia and a Qurqur city. There are two events. One creates an Amakonia-civ Qurqur warrior in the city, and nowhere elsewhere, the other creates a Bekekonia-civ Qurqur warrior, in this city, and no-where else. The idea, when I come to think about it, is a bit like Heroes of Might and Magic.
What does it all mean?
It means that whoever owns the city will get the unit -specific to that city or not. Now, we can cover the map with several Qurqur-like cities with events for each of them, and I think it would be an interesting game. I'll use the idea someday, but not now, so perhaps some of You will find it interesting.

[Palaiologos]

If i am not mistaken Bekekenian units created in Qurqur while under Amakakonian control are not lost but rather will accumlate and appear all at once when Qurqur falls into Bekekenian hands.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Palaiologos
If i am not mistaken Bekekenian units created in Qurqur while under Amakakonian control are not lost but rather will accumlate and appear all at once when Qurqur falls into Bekekenian hands.

Does it really work like that???

Now that would be a problem for this scenario, but would provide a REALLY interesting basis for others: it could make really vital for a civ not to loose a precise city if they don't want to see hordes of enemies pour from it later!!

I can already imagine many uses for that

[Heresson]

I don't think it works like Paleolog written.
The Bej\kekonian units will not accumulate in Qurqur, they will appear every turn if Bekekonia owns the city.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Heresson
I don't think it works like Paleolog written.
The Bej\kekonian units will not accumulate in Qurqur, they will appear every turn if Bekekonia owns the city.

That's what I thought too, but I didn't test it!

Too bad, it could have been useful...

But the other way allows other uses, so no prob!

[Heresson]

btw, I like your avatar. What is it, exactly?

[Cyrion]

If you mean mine, it's the Luggage: a animated (and bad-tempered) coffer which appears in Terry Pratchett Discworld fantasy novels!

If you don't know this series, well I should release a scen based on it in 1-2 weeks, so download it then and take a look

[Heresson]

What is a coffer?

[Heresson]

It looks cute whatever it is

[Elok]

Whatever a coffer is, I imagine this "luggage" character would be no match for the undead no matter how mean he is. A coffer can't stop coffins.

That was really bad, huh?

[Nylan-Nolan]

Yeah, it was.

[NikolajRomanov]

I use this idea in my scenario. Units wich are created at an already occupied placed are lost. I think this counts for units which are created in citys too.
I use this event to simulate the vassalisation of certain nations and to balance the nations armys.

[Varwnos]

i didnt exactly understand what your idea was about, since an event created unit ofcourse cannot have a variable "owner" parameter according to who owns the city, so even if you conquer the city the result would be that you can just disbant the enemy units, which can get a bit boring if this has to be done in every turn. i am using mercenery armies in my scen (Empire of Thessalonike) and just balance them by having negative effects each time a unit that is given through events (they are special, can't be built regularly, apart from one) is destroyed. This way the player wont just feel at ease at using just the free-given mercenery units also it is a good way to keep a balance of power, since losing many battles leads to revolts back home. however the lack of an event option to create units not in a certain squre but at random near the remaining cities of a nation, makes the extensive use of event-created units a bit boring if an enemy has already conquered the part of the land where they appear.

[Cyrion]

Varwnos: yes, you can use a kind of "variable owner parameter"! Let me illustrate what I mean with an example!

In the events, you put two separate events :

1) @IF
TURN
turn=-1 ;means every turn
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
unit=Treacherous Traitors
owner=Evil Civ
veteran=yes
homecity=NONE
locations
58,88 ; coordinates of the desired city
endlocations
@ENDIF

2) @IF
TURN
turn=-1 ;means every turn
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
unit=Brave Partizans
owner=Nice Guys
veteran=yes
homecity=NONE
locations
58,88 ; coordinates of the desired city
endlocations
@ENDIF

And now, how does this work?

Every turn when the city built on 58,88 (I neglect the case where the city is razed on purpose!) is in the hands of the Evil Civ, they'll get a Treacherous Traitors unit there.

And Every turn when the city built on 58,88 is in the hands of the Nice Guys Civ, they'll get a Brave Partizans unit there.

The same would be true with an occupied square! An unoccupied square would work with the 1st event (and the square would then be occupied by the newly created unit for the second event...)

Hope that it is intelligible...

[Varwnos]

Wow! i didnt know this Certainly it is one of the coolest exploits i have seen But what happens if:

-A third civ has conquered the city

-Barbarians have conquered the city

-one of the two units has barbarians as its owner

i am very interested in hearing your reply

[Cyrion]

Here is (if I am not mistaken ) how the create unit events work:

The event creates an unit on the desired spot, if:
1) the terrain allows it: you can't create a land unit on ocean (even if you create a transport underneath before! )

2) the square is not occupied by another Civ (or barbarians); by occupied I mean with a unit, or a city in foreign hands!

So in my case above, you have

- if third civ has conquered the city: the 2 events see the square as occupied, and so no unit is created in it

- if barbarians have conquered the city: works as with 3rd civ

- one of the 2 units has barbarians as owner: works as if it was another civ; so, creates the barbarian unit if the square is empty, or there is a city in Barbarian hands

Hope this answers your questions

[Varwnos]

Very interesting! But i think that you might be wrong in one of your points, i think that if you use the command changeterrain you can have enemy units appearing in a city, since that is what is happening in Heresson's fding lights, latin ships appear in a city even after the byzantines have taken it. that was why i was sceptical about your remarks but i will use them with my scen now (the rebel cities can use some units from time to time)

[Cyrion]

The change terrain has some (bothering) side effects (some barbarians disappear, even if they already have a city, for instance).

But I never saw what you wrote about other units appearing in a city controlled by another civ! Which doesn't mean it's not happening, though...

Maybe you should try it?? (and of course report the results in this thread )

[Elok]

Ideas in the same vein:

Put an unbuildable "superhero" unit in the settlers slot. Change game.txt accordingly, and you have dramatically increased the value of goody huts.

Give the player six research options leading to various bonuses, use fundamentalism to kill all scientific progress, and make Darwin's Voyage available to build by events.txt after completing a certain task. The player has an interesting choice ahead of him: "do I want to get the super-soldiers and the engineers, or the money-generating cathedral and the Pyramids? Or the super-soldiers and the Pyramids, or..." Might make for good replay value in an otherwise X-COMish tactical scenario.

[Heresson]

A variation of the idea;
an event giving x tech to any civ that conquers the city (or does something else, we may experiment here)
and second event (receivedtech) creating the unit.
That way, You don't have to make an event for each civ, just 2 event slots are needed.

[Heresson]

oh, and darwin voyage is indeed an interesting wonder for scenario purposes. Once I thought about a scenario about partages of Poland, in which DV would play a central role.

[Elok]

I figured I couldn't possibly have been the first person to have thought of it, yeah. I really like the idea of having two choices you have to live with, good or bad, till the end of the game.

[Varwnos]

i use the receivetech (or what it was) command in two events in my scen, and basically so as to give the nicaean empire the option to build ottoman mercenery units, which they do, infact after they get the tech they build them in great numbers. in theory this was meant to trap the AI nicaea and make it collapse by itself, since by another event each time an ottoman mercenery is killed three others owned by barbarians appear in the map near some nicaean city. however nicaea mostly faces collapse due to earlier events, and so far in my games it has gone to a counter-offensive with the ottoman units. however my scen ends in 1380, so this isnt that bad i guess

[Heresson]

Mine idea in the partages of Poland scn was simply to have Poland very weak, with very bad gouverment, and give it a chance, either if it manages to research one tech, or simpy by giving a proper tech to it in a proper time, to build the wonder, thus giving it a chance to receive some really valuable stuff that could turn it into a strong state - but the moment You get the proper tech, all your neighbours would declare war on You and probably crush You before You can build the wonder, reorganise and stuff. Generally, the idea is simple - by trying to make things better, You eventually make your state fall. Just as it was in reality. Of course, You could research wrong tech and never have a chance of changing anything.

[Varwnos]

This is the ussual problem with wanting to focus too much on one or two nations, you can only do it by making the others very easy and thus not fun for play. Balance on the other hand comes with the cost of not being as historical as you might want to be
btw Heresson when will you take a look at my scen? i mean i am still waiting!