Imperialism 1870 v2.0 PBEM

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by PinkyGen
I can put the .exe in a different folder than in my regular civ2 directory, and still have it work? Cause otherwise I don't want to constantly change it back and forth whenever I load this PBEM.

This is why I dont want to do it either.

And who is John Doe, why does this have to be so secret?

Tell us who it is or forget it.

[JamesJKirk]

I already posted my turn, on the last page, it's Darius' turn

[Darius871]

Originally posted by conmcb25
This is why I dont want to do it either.

Of course you would just put the .exe in a separate file and use it only for this PBEM. How did you think we'd do it?

Originally posted by conmcb25
And who is John Doe, why does this have to be so secret?

Tell us who it is or forget it.

He wasn't quite certain of the legality of editing it and didn't want to take the risk, so asked that he remain anonymous. Personally I don't see any risk in what he's doing but I'll respect his decision, so let's just say you know him very well. If you really need to know just IM me, and don't post it on the boards.

[Darius871]

Good news gentlemen!!!

Yaroslav (since this time he's not editing any Microprose property he let me say who it was) has found a way to edit the .net file to change beaker progress from trade routes. On this thread the idea came up, and he applied it to this game. As many of you know, the number of techs that your civ has determines the number of beakers you'll need to gain to discover a tech. It turns out that through hex-editing, you can change the number of techs a civ has without changing the techs it actually has. In other words, you can take a civ with 20 techs and 'trick' the game into thinking it has 95, so the civ has to get more beakers per tech.

Yaroslav did exactly this, and my tests show it worked perfectly. I started a game with the original .scn, and moved a machinery caravan from New York to Dublin, which demands it. Then I did the same thing with the edited .scn where each civ has 75 extra techs. Eureka!



This is exactly what we were looking for: it changed the amount of beakers gained by the route, while the amount of gold gained remained the same! Feel free to test it yourselves:

Route Test, Unedited.sav
Route Test, Edited.sav

He has edited the German .net in the same manner (click here if you want to test) so that the first players won't have to replay, so I need to know your positions before I play on. Considering the successful tests (and that Gerben and Steve trust Javier's skills firsthand from working on the CivDip project), I don't know how anyone can oppose this. Just to be sure though:

conmcb25: For
Germanos:
Darius871: For
JamesJKirk:
Pinkygen: For
academia:

Oh btw, YAROSLAV IS A GOD!!!

[PinkyGen]

Originally posted by Darius871


Oh btw, YAROSLAV IS A GOD!!!

Hail Yaroslav!

[conmcb25]

So we just play the next .net file and its changed?

If that is so I dont have a problem with it, I just didn't want to mess with extra .exe files.

Answer this then Ill vote

[yaroslav]

Yes, play the .net file with the standard EXE file

[Darius871]

Originally posted by conmcb25
If that is so I dont have a problem with it, I just didn't want to mess with extra .exe files.

Didn't you say last night that you were cool with it as long as Javier did it? (not that it matters now)

[germanos]

Well, this is quite a feat, and let me first congratulate Darius for being such a persistent bugger and get the project done

It surely seems that this approach can level some of the awkward tech-acquiring that can, and has been, done in the previous versions of this scen.

Me being on the short end of the stick here, I do have a question though:

How will we determine the 'new' tech 'amount' each civ has?
Surely, the increased tech number does also affect the 'regular' research rate, and for some reason (that I can yet not fathom) Exile gave Japan the 'Meji restoration' Wonder so Japan would at some point be able to catch up with the major Imperial powers.

Now, as Japan has the effectively lowest tech 'amount' of all civs, an increase by 75 will affect Japan more then it will affect civs with a higher tech count.
(for example: US has 20; +75= 375% increase
Japan has 15; +75 = 500% increase)

Does Yaro's approach accomodate for this? Reding your decription of the work done by Yaroslav, different increases for different civs definitely seem to be an option.


For now, I'll hold my vote.

@ Yaro and Darius.

[yaroslav]

I don't have problems modifying the number of techs in a different way for each civ, only tell me what you want

[Darius871]

Originally posted by germanos
Surely, the increased tech number does also affect the 'regular' research rate

It certainly does. Rather than affecting the amount of beakers gained from a trade route, it affects the number of beakers that need to be gained in order to acquire the tech. Therefore, the beakers gained in your cities are also affected. You don't make any more or less beakers, they just become less valuable.

Originally posted by germanos
Now, as Japan has the effectively lowest tech 'amount' of all civs, an increase by 75 will affect Japan more then it will affect civs with a higher tech count.
(for example: US has 20; +75= 375% increase
Japan has 15; +75 = 500% increase)

1) If I understand the process correctly, the less advanced civs would benefit from this imbalance. If anything that's fair as it gives them a chance against the more advanced civs.

2) The math you used doesn't seem correct: 95 is only 5.6% higher than 90, meaning that the civ with 15 techs would only research 5.6% faster than the civ with 20 techs, although I could be wrong.

3) Since alliance members will inevitably give techs to one another, within 2-3 turns we'll probably all have the same number of techs anyway.

[germanos]

Originally posted by Darius871
3) Since alliance members will inevitably give techs to one another, within 2-3 turns we'll probably all have the same number of techs anyway.

I'm not sure if tech trading will be allowed. To me the two things appear to be seperate things altogether

On the math:
Yeah, I have no idea either which party would benefit the most. But it seems logical (it's 1 AM here) that an increased tech cost, determined by an standard increament would benefit the party for whom the increament is the lowest in relation to its original rate.

But I could be very wrong here .

[yaroslav]

The increment in tech cost, is course, lesser for the civ with the most tech, but as it started with the bigger tech cost, I think it pays off... (however, it's also 1AM here -same timezone for NL and Spain)

[germanos]

Good night Yaro

I'll do some math in the morning, with a good espresso at hand .

[yaroslav]

well, tell me what number of techs you want to give to every civ and I'll do...

good night