Roads/Railroads and WAR

[Tamerlin]

I would like to disable something that I have some trouble to call a feature, the fact that a player (whether it is an AI or a human player) don't benefit from the increased movement of roads and railroads in ennemy territory.

Besides the fact I don't think it is realistic (with such a rule, Germany conquers France in one hundred years and WWII takes 500 years), this "feature" is a real fun killer as far as I am concerned as military campaigns are ridiculously long with this system (this is my two cents of a euro opinion of course).

Does someone knows if this "feature" can be disabled and how this can be achieved.

[phlucas]

I do not know how to disable it completely, but maybe it suffices to enable road usage with Combat I? Then, set bEnemyRoad to 1 for PROMOTION_COMBAT1 in XML\CIV4PromotionInfos.xml.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by phlucas
I do not know how to disable it completely, but maybe it suffices to enable road usage with Combat I? Then, set bEnemyRoad to 1 for PROMOTION_COMBAT1 in XML\CIV4PromotionInfos.xml.

Thanks for the answer phlucas, I am not sure about the way I have to proceed but I appreciate your reply and the hint. I guess I have to learn a bit more about the way CivIV can be modded.

[Tamerlin]

OK, I have looked at the files located in my CivIV folder and I guess that we are talking about the following xml file :

CIV4PromotionInfos.xml

... which is located here :

HDD:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\Units

I have looked at the other promotions and I have a question. Do I have to change every promotion and set bEnemyRoad to 1? If not, would a new promotion void the previous advantage?

[Tamerlin]

I think that I can also obtain the same result if I give the Commando promotion to each military unit.

Thanks again phlucas, your answer gave me a lot of hints.

[snoopy369]

It's pretty simple to mod the game with every unit having Commando 1 by default... PM me if you need to know how to do this

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by snoopy369
It's pretty simple to mod the game with every unit having Commando 1 by default... PM me if you need to know how to do this

It's very kind of you snoopy369, I will try to do it myself before asking for some help.

Thanks again for your proposal...

[Tamerlin]

I have decided to change each unit (to the exception of Animals) by adding the line in bold :

(bMechanized)0(/bMechanized)
[B](bEnemyRoute)1(/bEnemyRoute)[/B]
(UnitClassUpgrades/)

I now have to test the changes.

I have a last question, as this promotion is no more useful I would like to remove it it from the game, I suppose that simply removing it from the CIV4PromotionInfos.xml file is not enough. What are the other changes I have to make?

[Solver]

Which promotion would you like to remove, Commando? You'd better leave it anyway, it just won't be used.

Be warned, though. If you allow all units to use enemy roads, the AI will be hosed. Not completely, as they will be able to pull off some good offensive moves, but the AI defenses will be hosed.

[Tamerlin]

Hi Solver,

I understand what you are suggesting but the problem is that this "feature" inherited from Civ3 is a real fun killer as far as I am concerned.

I agree though, Civilization is not a wargame. But because of this said feature I found the military part of the game particularly boring, mostly because military campaigns are lasting for hours and hours, which is not very interesting in a Civ like game.

I will test the game with "enemy route" enabled and see if the AI defenses are broken. If they are so to the point that the game is no more interesting I will raise the difficulty level, and if this is not enough I will go back... to CtP2.

[Tamerlin]

Enabling movement on enemy roads and railroads was more tricky than expected :

First, adding the line (bEnemyRoute)1(/bEnemyRoute) generated a lot of errors.

I thus decided to give every land unit the COMMANDO promotion, I added the following lines at the end of each UnitInfo text :

(FreePromotions)
				(FreePromotion)
					(PromotionType)PROMOTION_COMMANDO(/PromotionType)
					(bFreePromotion)1(/bFreePromotion)
				(/FreePromotion)
			(/FreePromotions)

It would have been too easy, these lines generated some errors until I realised siege engines were not allowed to earn the COMMANDO promotion.

I thus made a few changes to the COMMANDO (PromotionInfo) in the CIV4PromotionInfos.xml file:

- (PromotionPrereqOr1) changed to NONE

- Lines added at the end of the (PromotionInfo) in order to enable COMMANDO for SIEGE engine units (catapult, cannon...) and non fighting-units (settlers, workers, prophets...).



I still don't know if it works adequately but there is no more XML error.

Thanks for your help.

[snoopy369]

Yeah ... the XML errors from the first attempt are caused by the fact that your XML no longer fit the template that was expected - in XML you can't add new lines, without recompiling the DLL.

It sounds like your second method is the right way to go, let us know

[Tamerlin]

Thanks for the tip Snoopy369.

About the little modifications themselselves, I don't think I will have the time to test them before... end of August.

Whether I can test all this earlier or not I will let you know about the result.

Thank you all.