Quests in Civ 4

[Sovereign]

Hi all,

Here's another question thread from good ol' me! I was wondering about the Quests stuff in BTS. I want to know if there's any way to make them more likely to happen, or occur more frequently?

In the past several games, I've gone all the way from 4000 BC to the modern age with no quests at all. I know many quests become obsolete or "failed" when I hit the Industrial or Modern age. I want to know if there's any way I can have at least one or two quests to occur guanatreed in each game, instead of several games in a row with *no* quests whatsoever.

[snoopy369]

You can edit the events xml file, and make them appear more frequently in games, I think ... there's a percent chance of them being available in any give game, and you can up that.

I know that your playstyle affects quests being available - I don't recall exactly what it is that does that, though, in the sense of 'what playstyle makes more quests available'. I imagine it's making some of the buildings/units needed for the various quests. Really, just look at the requirements for the quests, and hit those as often as possible - and remember that every civ gets a chance at each quest, and only the first to meet the requirements gets the quest text (all civs can win it, but only that civ gets the notification).

[joncnunn]

Actually in most cases what you need to increase your chance of getting guests without changing the XML are:

1. Finish every era before starting a new one. Many quests expire at era boundaries, so staying in the ancient era longer gives you more of a chance to be given ancient quests.

2. Establish any state religion. There's at least three quests (and a few events) that require one. While I'm not aware of any quest requiring you not have a state religion.

3. Only build X -1 of several unit types & X - 1 of several building types. Many guests are build X unit types/ X building types and if you already have met the requirements you won't be given that guest unless your playing the CD version of BTS unpatched.

4. Build (or conquer) lots of cities. Many of the build requests require a large empire to have X cities to place them in at all.

[Sovereign]

Last night about 30 minutes of gameplay after I posted this thread, I got hit with *two* quests. The harbor quest and the library quest.

In this game, I didn't build any buildings at all except wonders and a couple of forges. Maybe 1 or 2 other buildings in Philadelphia (I'm playing the USA) like a marketplace and theater, forgot which. I wonder how many quests I can have per game? Can I theoretically get like 10+ quests by not building anything in my cities except 2 warriors each, then workers, work boats, and settlers?

Are there any quests that start up in the Industrial or Modern era? Just curious.

[joncnunn]

Yes, I'm aware of two; both require you found a corporation.
One of them is spread it to X cities.
Another is aquire all unique resource types used by the corporation.

[Blaupanzer]

There are also a myriad number of unit quests. Build 9 of unit type X. These occur from axes to riflemen at least, maybe more. Some quests I ignore, like build 9 coliseums. Unless this is the civ's special building, I seldom build coliseums.

I have had 2 quests going at once several times, but only once (in a few hundred games) have I had 3 live at once. I did get a total of 4 in one game, but some had ended in terms of the era before the others began.

[Sovereign]

Here's the coliseum quest text from the XML file. Which field do I change the number in to make it a guanatreed event with somewhere around 90% - 100% probability of happening on any given turn?

==================================

"EventTriggerInfo"
"Type"EVENTTRIGGER_SPORTS_LEAGUE"/Type"
"WorldNewsTexts/"
"TriggerTexts"
"TriggerText"
"Text"TXT_KEY_EVENT_TRIGGER_SPORTS_LEAGUE"/Text"
"Era"NONE"/Era"
"/TriggerText"
"/TriggerTexts"
"bSinglePlayer"0"/bSinglePlayer"
"iPercentGamesActive"25"/iPercentGamesActive"
"iWeight"500"/iWeight"
"bProbabilityUnitMultiply"0"/bProbabilityUnitMultiply"
"bProbabilityBuildingMultiply"0"/bProbabilityBuildingMultiply"
"Civic"NONE"/Civic"
"iMinTreasury"0"/iMinTreasury"
"iMinPopulation"0"/iMinPopulation"
"iMaxPopulation"0"/iMaxPopulation"
"iMinMapLandmass"0"/iMinMapLandmass"
"iMinOurLandmass"0"/iMinOurLandmass"
"iMaxOurLandmass"-1"/iMaxOurLandmass"
"MinDifficulty"NONE"/MinDifficulty"
"iAngry"0"/iAngry"
"iUnhealthy"0"/iUnhealthy"
"UnitsRequired/"
"iNumUnits"0"/iNumUnits"
"iNumUnitsGlobal"0"/iNumUnitsGlobal"
"iUnitDamagedWeight"0"/iUnitDamagedWeight"
"iUnitDistanceWeight"0"/iUnitDistanceWeight"
"iUnitExperienceWeight"0"/iUnitExperienceWeight"
"bUnitsOnPlot"0"/bUnitsOnPlot"
"BuildingsRequired/"
"iNumBuildings"0"/iNumBuildings"
"iNumBuildingsGlobal"0"/iNumBuildingsGlobal"
"iNumPlotsRequired"0"/iNumPlotsRequired"
"bOwnPlot"0"/bOwnPlot"
"iPlotType"-1"/iPlotType"
"FeaturesRequired/"
"TerrainsRequired/"
"ImprovementsRequired/"
"BonusesRequired/"
"RoutesRequired/"
"ReligionsRequired/"
"iNumReligions"0"/iNumReligions"
"CorporationsRequired/"
"iNumCorporations"0"/iNumCorporations"
"bPickReligion"0"/bPickReligion"
"bStateReligion"0"/bStateReligion"
"bHolyCity"0"/bHolyCity"
"bPickCorporation"0"/bPickCorporation"
"bHeadquarters"0"/bHeadquarters"
"Events"
"Event"EVENT_SPORTS_LEAGUE_1"/Event"
"/Events"
"PrereqEvents/"
"bPrereqEventPlot"0"/bPrereqEventPlot"
"OrPreReqs"
"PrereqTech"TECH_CONSTRUCTION"/PrereqTech"
"/OrPreReqs"
"AndPreReqs/"
"ObsoleteTechs"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_RADIO"/ObsoleteTech"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_REFRIGERATION"/ObsoleteTech"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_PLASTICS"/ObsoleteTech"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_SATELLITES"/ObsoleteTech"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_ADVANCED_FLIGHT"/ObsoleteTech"
"ObsoleteTech"TECH_ECOLOGY"/ObsoleteTech"
"/ObsoleteTechs"
"bRecurring"0"/bRecurring"
"bTeam"0"/bTeam"
"bGlobal"0"/bGlobal"
"bPickPlayer"0"/bPickPlayer"
"bOtherPlayerWar"0"/bOtherPlayerWar"
"bOtherPlayerHasReligion"0"/bOtherPlayerHasReligion"
"bOtherPlayerHasOtherReligion"0"/bOtherPlayerHasOtherReligion"
"bOtherPlayerAI"0"/bOtherPlayerAI"
"iOtherPlayerShareBorders"0"/iOtherPlayerShareBorders"
"OtherPlayerHasTech"NONE"/OtherPlayerHasTech"
"bPickCity"0"/bPickCity"
"bPickOtherPlayerCity"0"/bPickOtherPlayerCity"
"bShowPlot"0"/bShowPlot"
"iCityFoodWeight"0"/iCityFoodWeight"
"PythonCanDo"canTriggerSportsLeague"/PythonCanDo"
"PythonCanDoCity/"
"PythonCanDoUnit/"
"PythonCallback/"
"/EventTriggerInfo"

(NOTE: I replaced all the < and > with " marks to bypass the coding conflict that < and > causes in forums and discussion forums)

===============================

I would alse like to know where I can change the start and ending eras for the quests. So I'll be able to enjoy and do any quest in any era (doing Ancient Era quests while I'm in the Modern Era for example). That, in addition to knowing which value to edit or change to have a guanatreed quest occurrence would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

[joncnunn]

Well, I think you'll first need to change the iPercentGamesActive to 100% to give it a 100% chance of being in the game.

Next I see it already has an "iWeight" of 500 which I think may actually already be realtively high. But to get it to 90%+ add up all the other "iWeights" and then make this one 9 times that total.

Then if you don't make any other changes as each player discovers Construction on turns they get an event/quest at all they'll have a 90%+ chance of being given that quest until they are given it. They then have until they enter the modern era (or someone else completes it first) to complete it.

[snoopy369]

You don't need it to be 90%-100% for any given turn. I suspect that if you up the iPercentGamesActive to 100% you'll see it in every game at some point (or some civ will, at least). 500 as weight is plenty high.

To adjust the eras, change the orPrereqTechs to some other tech, and change the obsoleteTechs to some other techs. The former adjusts when it is available (or=any of this list, and=all of this list, or+and = any 1 of the or list plus all of the and list, just like the techtree works); the latter adjusts which techs make it obsolete/unavailable (note that it is not actually 'era', though those techs do define the era - for some reason they didn't use the actual era.)

[BigFree]

How do you make "all" events happen more often?

I normally see about 10 events per game.

Also, how do you make more quests appear?

[joncnunn]

That's in a different file entirely. I'm not sure which, one of the other threads may mention it though.

Keep in mind though that events happen all the time that you don't get notification of.

Some examples:
For The tied to tile events, if you never explored the tile, you'll never heard about it.

For the tied to city events, if you never saw the city, you'll never hear about it either.

And when an opponent has been given a quest you won't hear about it (until/unless he completes it).

Originally posted by BigFree
How do you make "all" events happen more often?

I normally see about 10 events per game.

Also, how do you make more quests appear?

[snoopy369]

I believe "all" events is in GlobalDefines.xml, if i'm not wrong (in the main XML folder).

Quests are simply a subset of events, as far as I know, so if you increase their individual frequency (as an event) and the frequency of all events, quests may appear more frequently (as long as you qualify for them).