A new mod idea... is it possible?

primemover · May 30, 2003, 20:00

I am new to tile editing and stuff like that. But I have a few questions.

Here is the first questions:
Both the "goodmod" and the "city expansion" mod have inspired me to think about a vast terrain improvement mod that separates the concepts of climate (vegetation) and land type.

But as I understand what is being said in the goodmod slic comments, tile improvements are impossible outside the fog of war. Is this true? If so, are there any ways around this?

Locutus · May 30, 2003, 20:19

Well, I don't know by heart how Goodmod does it, but you could temporarily create 1 tileimp near an AI Settler with a vision range of 10000 (or whatever)...

Edit: or better yet, temporarily create a barb unit in the middle of nowhere, and then temporarily create a tile imp with a huge vision range on the same tile (prevents issues with the AI knowing more about the map than it should).

primemover · May 31, 2003, 02:47

hmm... some good ideas. but martin doesn't seem to use tile improvements... at least not graphics for tile improvements. also... I am wondering what martin means in his comments at the beginning of his code:

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//Martin Gühmann's GM1_Goods.slc v.1.6 for GoodMod //
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//This script file creates on every good tile an "good tileimprovement". //
//Unfortunatly I wasn't able to find a possibility to create on every good //
//a player independant tile improvement directly. It is also not possible to //
//create a tile improvement like a fort outside of the vision range of a unit.//
//My conclusion was to create first a Barbarian unit in the neighbourhood of a//
//good tile (it could be that on the good tile is a settler) and create under //
//the unit a border expanding tile improvement without an own graphic. My //
//obversation was that a tile improvement loose its owner if the borders //
//arround are deleted. So afterwards the first tile improvement is finished //
//on the good tile the actual good tile improvement is created and the frist //
//tile improvement is be pillaged. Unfortunatly the game crashes if you put //
//the creation of the second improvement and the deletion of the first //
//improvement into one event handler, therefore both events can be now found //
//in different event handler. //
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Locutus · May 31, 2003, 04:36

First, to simplify my previous solution, don't use a tile imp with vision range at all: the barb unit itself can be given a huge vision range as well...

Yes, Martin does use tile imps, but they are invisible. What he's describing in that readme is the following procedure (I think -- you'll have to ask him to be sure):

1. Create barb unit near good (for line of sight)
2. Create barb 'fortress' near good (for border)
3. Create a 'good tileimp' on the good (for food/gold/shield bonus)
4. Pillage the barb 'fortress' (removes border)

This leavs the good tileimp which, since it doesn't fall inside anyone's borders, doesn't have an 'owner' anymore (used to be owned by the barbs) and therefore the bonus it gives can be picked up by anyone who builds a city nearby.

Note that the 'fortress' is not an actual fortress but in fact a tile imp with similar effects but without a graphic (making it invisible on the main map). The same goes for the good tileimp, like I said before.

Though it needs testing, I realize now that this method could probably be made more efficient in one of two ways:
(1) Give all good tileimps fortress/airport-like qualities so that they can be placed outside borders, removing the need for a border tile imp.
(2) Failing that, create a single border tile-imp which has borders with a huge radius (ala the vision range I described above), so that you only need to create/pillage it once instead of once per good.

Immortal Wombat · May 31, 2003, 07:48

(1) would mean all the borders would remain in place throughout the game, so all the goods would be owned permanatly by the barbarians.

(2) would work, assuming the game would allow such an increase in radius.

A climate/terrain mod would be a feat, I can't decide whether any possible advantage to gameplay would make it worthwhile, but it's certainly possible.

Locutus · May 31, 2003, 08:04

(1) You sure? I'm not sure what would happen if your borders would expand over the tile imps...

Immortal Wombat · May 31, 2003, 08:56

I thought you couldn't put tile improvements inside anyone else's borders? So you wouldn't be able to use forts to join territory to connect cities by road and so forth.

If you have x and y wrap on, and your borders cover the entire map, do they disappear?

Locutus · May 31, 2003, 09:07

I was thinking of creating tile imps that can be placed outside borders but don't have actually cast borders over tiles themselves. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if this is actually possible (I thought the airport worked that way, but I'm not entirely sure). I guess that would need testing too.

If you have x and y wrap on, and your borders cover the entire map, do they disappear?

You wouldn't see them but they would still be there. Presumably.

Martin Gühmann · May 31, 2003, 16:40

Originally posted by Locutus
Yes, Martin does use tile imps, but they are invisible. What he's describing in that readme is the following procedure (I think -- you'll have to ask him to be sure):

1. Create barb unit near good (for line of sight)
2. Create barb 'fortress' near good (for border)
3. Create a 'good tileimp' on the good (for food/gold/shield bonus)
4. Pillage the barb 'fortress' (removes border)

This leavs the good tileimp which, since it doesn't fall inside anyone's borders, doesn't have an 'owner' anymore (used to be owned by the barbs) and therefore the bonus it gives can be picked up by anyone who builds a city nearby.

Yes that is basicly how it does work. Except that the Barbarian Bomber has to be disbanded afterwards, everythink should be in.

Originally posted by Locutus
Note that the 'fortress' is not an actual fortress but in fact a tile imp with similar effects but without a graphic (making it invisible on the main map). The same goes for the good tileimp, like I said before.

Actual this auxiliry tile improvement has the same features like the actual fortress, but it can also be build on water, that saves one tileimprovment.

Originally posted by Locutus
Though it needs testing, I realize now that this method could probably be made more efficient in one of two ways:
(1) Give all good tileimps fortress/airport-like qualities so that they can be placed outside borders, removing the need for a border tile imp.
(2) Failing that, create a single border tile-imp which has borders with a huge radius (ala the vision range I described above), so that you only need to create/pillage it once instead of once per good.

Actual the whole process can be more efficient. There is no need for a border tileimp, one of these flags in the tileimp gives borders and the other flag makes it possible to place it outside borders, unfortunatly I did not tried it on my own. So this means I just have to place the bomber.

Originally posted by Locutus
(1) You sure? I'm not sure what would happen if your borders would expand over the tile imps...

Well that would look a little bit crappy. You place your city here with a border radius as big as your city radius. Everything within the city radius is owed by the city owner, everything outside by the tileimp owner.

Originally posted by Locutus
You wouldn't see them but they would still be there. Presumably.

Move the cursor over the territory and you can see in the status bar who the owner is. No need to see the borders.

For the airport: AFAIK it doesn't give borders and can't be placed outside of your borders.

-Martin

Peter Triggs · May 31, 2003, 20:51

Martin,

Actual the whole process can be more efficient. There is no need for a border tileimp, one of these flags in the tileimp gives borders and the other flag makes it possible to place it outside borders, unfortunatly I did not tried it on my own. So this means I just have to place the bomber.

You might want to have a look at GodMode(on/off). I wrote some stuff where initially I used your Bomber technique, but then found that I could do it more efficiently by turning GodMode on and off. This was awhile back and I remember trying to adapt it to your GoodMod code but I could only get half-way with it.

Maybe it was the flags in tileimp that stopped it from working properly.

The Big Mc · June 2, 2003, 12:29

Right I have some experience on this with my ruin mod. To start with it an ai or player territory expands because of city growth any tile imp changes hands.

Two if using slic on the first turn you place random forts around the place these when placed on land owned by a player cancel his territory out however they keep on working the land regardless of who owns it.

primemover · June 24, 2003, 23:35

Wow... I can see this thread has grown a bit in my absence. Thanks for all the ideas!! You are right IW... The benefits of such a mod would mainly be eye candy, variety, and realism. Wether those are worth it... I will have to see. For one thing, I do not really know much about doing all this stuff yet. I am still getting the hang of units, sprites, etc. I am currently working on other ideas... when I come back to this to really see if I want to do it I will decide.

A few new curiosities that discussion has generated that might spark other ideas:

1. Big MC has mentioned expanding territory with slc. I didn't know that was possible. Can it be done by calling a routine? or do I have to build an "invisible fort" to expand it? (I always hate having little "holes" in my empire because I have built my cities spaced out to maximize available resources in the area. I have wanted for a while to write a little routine to fill them in. Your Routine, Big MC might do just that!)

2. So you can use SLIC to turn God mode on and off? I would be afraid that I would see the map if I did that... I hate seeing the map before I explore... how would I get around that?

Martin,
My current curiosity about the goodmod is that it doesn't use the tile file (which I thought contains all tile improvements) so I am not quite sure how the graphics are used.

Matthew

Martin Gühmann · June 25, 2003, 11:42

Originally posted by primemover
Martin,
My current curiosity about the goodmod is that it doesn't use the tile file (which I thought contains all tile improvements) so I am not quite sure how the graphics are used.

Matthew

You mean graphics for tile improvements? In GoodMod there is no new graphics of an tile improvement. The graphics are those of the goods and the graphics of the goods are contained in the good sprites. The tile improvements gives the goods just some terrain boni.

-Martin

The Big Mc · June 25, 2003, 15:11

My routine generates ruins that are all. However latest research now indicates that it is not the most efficient code in the world.

what I should have done and this will be done in the next modification is to give the barbs a wonder with the same flag as the glob sat as this wonder allows you to build fortes anywhere it also gives a bit more spice to the barbs.