Aeterna Civitas III

[Rand al'Thor]

Civ2Unlimited developement thread, post #40 http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=205794

[AGRICOLA]

I am aware of the development thread, but am concerned about those who want to download the utility but are not aware of the thread. Wouldn't they look for it in the two most logical places, SL and CFC?

[Rand al'Thor]

Absolutely yes, i agree with you. But i think this wasn't done because the tool is considered "in developement"..i guess.

[AGRICOLA]

You're right. In view of the fact that Elys has not posted on the civ2unlimited thread since Feb 2007, it seems likely that his development version is the best we are going to have. After a month of using it, it seems to work just fine.

My expectation is that in the alpha and later versions of Aeterna Civitas III, Mc Monkey will include the Civ2Unlimited source file in the zip.

[McMonkey]

Yes, I will include Civ2Unlimited with the scenario download. It has worked perfectly for me too and has been very useful in multiplayer games where unit numbers often exceed 2048. The no-cd option is very handy too!

Progress on all my Civ2 projects has been extremely slow over the last few weeks due to a bout of lethargy. This may be due to the onset of winter, I don't know. I have decided not to give myself a hard time about it (making scenarios is a hobby after all) and have been taking a little break. I will return to this an other projects as soon as my batteries are recharged

[techumseh]

McM and AGRI: Maybe I should use this in my American Civil War scenario, since it's multi-player and on a giga-map. Any advice?

[AGRICOLA]

McM and AGRI: Maybe I should use this in my American Civil War scenario, since it's multi-player and on a giga-map. Any advice?

I'm now on turn 136 of the scen and have experienced no technical difficulties with the program as long as I remember to use the unlimited version of Civ2.exe whenever I load the game.

However I've had to change unit parameters in rules because a gigamap and units with 3 squares/turn road movement do not make for reasonable game play. 6 squares/turn is about as slow as land units should be.

The problem is the Roman siege train (artillery in more modern civs). After extensive checking on the net, I was unable to find any definitive info on siege train movement. However, I could infer that it and the legions probably moved at more or less the same speed because some siege engines were an organic part of each cohort and because there are several instances of Roman generals (Mark Anthony, for one) screwing up by becoming separated from their siege train which was then ambushed and destroyed, thereby effectively ending the campaign.


I'd say that you can safely go ahead and use the Civ2unlimited.


Be careful of one thing that may or may not be unique to the unlimited version.

In ACIII, the prerequisite tech for Supermarkets is tech 92, one of the user defined techs. In ACIII, Tech 92 cannot be researched, it is given by events. When the Romans receive it, it appears on their list of discovered techs. However, they cannot build the Supermarket improvement.

When I changed the prerequisite tech to a tech <89 and modified events accordingly, everything worked properly.

Don't know whether this is true for TOT or just the unlimited version.

Good luck with your scen.


P.S. So far, the honorable St Caesar has received 90+k gold from his grateful neighbours. Brian, you have made me see the light and set me on the path of righteousness.

[McMonkey]

I have picked up this project again and I have started to add some events such as Slave Revolts and Rebellions by the Legions. I tested the Rebel Legion unit/event and it worked a treat. Twelve Rebel Legion units created near Rome managed to empty the city in a single turn (these units have very good attack stats and decent defensive ones) and demanded a ransom of nearly 1000 to go away (I may remove the option to pay them off!). If I tell them where to go they capture the city and then head off in all directions to wreak further chaos, just as I wanted.



I tried out my new Slave Revolt unit (same stats as the Rebel Legion) but the event panned out a little differently. Instead of creating 12 units on one square they only three units appeared but they were on the three co-ordinates I put in the event. I must have left out the randomize command in my first test. What I would like to know is now to randomize the square the units appear on but ensure the full count appear. Here is the event:

;*Servile War, First 135-132 (Turn 146-149)
@IF
TURN
turn=0
@THEN
JUSTONCE
TEXT
A slave revolt has broken out in Sicily. 70,000 misstreated slaves led by Eunus ravage the land!
ENDTEXT
CREATEUNIT
OWNER=Barbarians
UNIT=Slave Revolt
COUNT=12
VETERAN=no
HOMECITY=NONE
randomize
locations
132,158
134,156
134,160
endlocations
@ENDIF

As it happens I quite like the way they spread out and I may make use of this in the events, but I would like to understand how to do it the other way too.

[Rand al'Thor]

I'm glad to hear you picked up the project. Personally i can't wait for a real single player experience in your Aeternas Civitas Setting since it's the most beautiful roman era scenario for me.

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the encouraging words Rand. I'm contemplating releasing a trial version but there are still a few bugs I want to iron out and a few events I want to add. I wont get too precious about it though as I'm sure that even when I think its finished players will throw me a ton of things to fix. Everything is planned out, its just a case of ploughing through it all. I will endeavour to get a alpha test version (that is the initial test right?) out by the end of the week. AGRICOLA gave me a VERY detailed and comprehensive playtest report last year and I want to try and address all of the issues he raised before I release ACIII.

[McMonkey]

I really want to finish this scenario off. I know what needs to be done but every time I sit down to work on it all my energy seems to drain away. There are so many distractions around when you don't feel like putting in the graft. I will keep plugging away and I will get there eventually!

One think that Agri mentioned in his playtest feedback was that he had left Syracuse as a trade destination city. I have been thinking about this and realised all the trade should flow into Rome. So how do I make Rome the optimum payoff destination. It is not as simple as just giving it loads of trade shields as other cities will have payoff advantages, such as being foreign/distant/overseas etc...

Simple solutions would be to give Rome Superhighways and the Colossus but I'm not sure this will be enough to beat other cities trade payoffs. I did think about using a terrain to be a super trade square with massive arrow output. This would mean recycling an existing terrain, probably Marshland, which would take a lot of time and effort. One advantage of this method would be I could add an event later in the game to change terrain to this super trade square and make that city much more important.

If anyone has any bright ideas on this please let me know.

[AGRICOLA]

One think that Agri mentioned in his playtest feedback was that he had left Syracuse as a trade destination city. I have been thinking about this and realised all the trade should flow into Rome. So how do I make Rome the optimum payoff destination. It is not as simple as just giving it loads of trade shields as other cities will have payoff advantages, such as being foreign/distant/overseas etc...

The following is an excerpt from the Great Library article on trade:

"Step 4) Apply the TwoContinentBonus. If the two cities are located on different continents (i.e. they have different continent numbers following their X,Y coordinates in the location field) then double the Base Payment derived in step 3.

Step 5) Apply the SameCivPenalty. If the two cities belong to the same civilization, then halve the value from Step 4. (Remember when doing this division by 2 to discard any remainder.)"

I don't see how you can circumvent the above unless you:

1. Have a house rule against re-homing caravans.
2. Have a terrain type (Hills of Rome?? ) that only occurs around Rome and contains springs of Aqua Vita, the elixir of life. Transforming Hills of Rome to Roman Springs (+99? trade arrows) is required to collect the priceless water.

This should provide enough trade arrows to overcome the two continent bonus and same civ penalty.

I used the last save from my playtest to try it and it seemed to work.

[Cyrion]

Maybe you could Hex-edit the Roma square so that it seems to be on an continent of its own: this combined with a lot of arrows for Roma would make it the place to trade with.

I don't know how to do it, but it doesn't sound too complicated

Maybe an Hex-editing specialist can confirm?

[Harry Tuttle]

Like change the continent number for Rome and Syracuse, making Syracuse the same as Europe but Rome different? Could work.

[McMonkey]

Thanks for the idea Agri, it has inspired me to a simple solution. I have no special resources assigned to the Marble terrain. If I put a Marble terrain square to the south east of Rome where there is a hill with wine on it now, I can have a special resource which will have 99 (or whatever amount) trade. Then all I need to do is check the map for any other cities with Marble with a special resource on it within their city limits and change it. Quick and easy fix. Thanks.

Hex editing Rome to be on its own continent also sounds like a great idea too. I have no idea how to do this, can anyone assist me?

I have no specific gripe with Syracuse. It was just the best destination for Agri if he re-homed his traders in Rome. What I'm doing now is reversing this so that all trade flows into Rome.

Thanks guys!

[AGRICOLA]

I don't know how to do it, but it doesn't sound too complicated

Indeed . . . . it took me only an hour to find the one %!@)%? byte that needed changing in a 632 kb file.


I ran a series of tests to determine what was possible.

The following parameters were used for the tests:

Unit = Merchant
Home City = Carni (On landmass #2. Carni is approximately twice as far from Roma as from Syracusae but a Merchant can reach either one in one turn
Commodity = Dye (the least valuable)
Delivered to:
1. Roma2 (Roma on landmass #2 . . . . as in scen)
2. Roma34 (edited Roma on landmass #34)
3. Syracusae (On landmass #54)
Trade arrows in Roma:
1. 152 (As in scen)
2. 665 (Marble terrain changed from 6 to 50 trade arrows in rules . . . Roma has 6 within its ZOC)


TEST I . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 152
Carni => Roma2 = 122 gold
Carni => Roma34 = 184 gold
Carni => Syracusae = 292 gold

Comment: Changing Roma's landmass increases payout by 50% but it is still smaller than from Syracusae.


TEST II . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 665
Carni => Roma2 = 536 gold
Carni => Roma34 = 804 gold
Carni => Syracusae = 292 gold

Comment: Probably similar to what McMonkey wants. However, as the following tests show, there is always a fly in the ointment.


TEST III . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 152
Roma2 => Syracusae = 1,026 gold
Roma34 => Syracusae = 1,026 gold
Taxes @80% in Roma = 260 gold

Comment: It's a well balanced scen with theses numbers.


TEST IV . . . . TRADE ARROWS IN ROMA = 665
Roma2 => Syracusae = 4,074 gold
Roma34 => Syracusae = 4,074 gold
Taxes @80% in Roma = 1,082 gold

Comment: The fly in the ointment. The happy inhabitants of Roma will be churning out Merchants as fast as they can, sending them to Syracusae and living very well of the proceeds. Why bother working hard to train Legions and build Catapults.

To designers, these numbers may be a bit excessive; to players they are absolutely perfect.



@Harry Tuttle
There are other good "trading" cities on Sicily.

@McMonkey
As you can extrapolate from the above results, increasing Roma's trade arrows from 152 to 201 (only 1 square increased from 50 to 99), will not do the trick.

I can do any hexediting of landmasses that you need. If you want to try it yourself, Roma's landmass number (02) is at offset 371,427 in the .scn and all .sav files. I picked landmass=34 (22 in hex) because it is used for only one single-square island.

You absolutely, definitely need the house rule that forbids re-homing Merchants.

[McMonkey]

Thanks a million Agri. I'm useless at working this sort of stuff out so this is a big help! I will have a good think about which combination works best but I think I can use this system as long as I ban re-homing of traders. This is a pretty standard house rule for most scenarios so it shouldn't be a problem.

[McMonkey]

Agricola
I have been experimenting with this and I tend to agree with you that Test II's results work best. I have made two special resources on marble squares 99 trade each (pity that seems to be the maximum) but this only gets Rome up to about 220 trade in total, still not enough to make it the premier destination. I may have to take your advice and use the marble terrain to boost the trade output but I would like to avoid this if at all possible as I want to use marble to make key cities around the map more productive.

By giving Rome Superhighways, the Colossus and three OK trade routes I can get the output up to 280 arrows. If you wouldn't mind changing Rome to landmass #35 the additional 50% should get output up to 420 arrows, which I think will beat Syracuse by a fair margin, certainly early on in the game. I don't necessarily want every single trader to go to Rome. If there is a decent size city that demands a product then why not trade there. I just want the majority of trade to flow back to the heart of the Empire.

I'm going to have to raise the tech paradigm to compensate for all that extra trade output in Rome. It has already gone from a tech every 10 turns to one every 3 turns at the start of the scenario. This is the side of scenario design I don't enjoy so much, all the number crunching and balancing. I'm much happier building maps and placing cities!

I'm afraid I don't know where to begin with hex editing and I have too many other things to sort out for this scenario to start learning right now. Would you mind doing the honours?

I had to post the save in post #125 of this thread: ACIII save

I could not work out how the hell you upload attachments here nowadays!

[AGRICOLA]

I fell asleep at the switch on this one. Just checked this thread for the first time since Jan 22.

File has been hexedited and e-mailed to you.

[McMonkey]

Thanks Agri, that's appreciated. I'm really busy this week anyway so I'm just doing little bits to the scenario here and there. I can't wait for a day or two off so I can just relax and do some scenario design!