Terrible News Indeed!

[fairline]

Just replayed all the way through again D. - I had forgotten how superb this scenario truly is The new terrain is excellent, BTW; for what it's worth, i like the existing 'koh' graphic.

Couple of things cropped up: I transferred a bedouin to the western desert via the Dera gap and used one to bribe a Mujahid - this was promptly upgraded to a gunboat next turn which looked a bit incongruous in the middle of the desert Also, didn't you used to have a trigger on the destruction of the Dar El Hamra bridge to give more bedouin? These nitpicks aside, this has got to be my favourite civ scenario

[Boco]

Your virtual money's in the mail

Haven't you heard of HMS Cunning Desert Plan?



Oops! That 'upgrade' is debris from some unit slot swaps made long ago!

Dar El Hamra worked the last time I tried. After a short random delay, the Bedouins appear in Bir Jaydah or Wejh only. They also will not appear if Larry or Faysal has been eliminated. If you have a save file, send it over.

[Boco]

Don't forget St. Leo

I failed to mention that I've used St. Leo's cities and minerals. Both can be seen in this gratuitous screenshot. St. Leo, your rocks terrain! Break the rules and build a city to find another St. Leo contribution.



@SCDARS. I'm building up a big IOU to you. That xml code was generated by MS Visio. While I can make a few minor changes to it, I don't know how to make it accessible to other browsers (it doesn't work in Opera v7 either). Trust Microsoft to generate code specific for MS products. Despite that shortcoming, I think I'll stick with the Visio-generated chart. It's light years beyond anything else I can make. I'll update the Guide and readme to mention the browser requirement.

I'm working to add terrain and unit pages to that file. Unfortunately, it'll be several days before that's complete.

[Boco]

I probably won't post another patch for several days. Meanwhile, if you want, make the following substitution in @UNITS of Rules.txt.

Original:

Gunboats,       CA,  2, 4.,0, 4a, 6d, 3h,2f, 18,1, [U][B]1[/B][/U], Amp, 000000000000001

Corrected:

Gunboats,       CA,  2, 4.,0, 4a, 6d, 3h,2f, 18,1, [U][B]3[/B][/U], Amp, 000000000000001

Btw, how do you make strikeout text in a poly post?

[Catfish]

Originally posted by SCDARS
Furthermore, a chart or summary with the terrains (especially impassable/passable) would have accelerated the start. Now I wouldn't need it any more, but I think anyone beginning the scenario would use it. For a units view I think the override impassable/passable property (which is NOT mentioned in F2 screen) would be most important, too.

In the scenario I'm working on, I'm putting this type of information at the end of the describe.txt entries as a series of bulleted points. Would this be too much of a pain to reference? I've also considered creating some kind of units chart in the documentation.

Originally posted by Boco
Btw, how do you make strikeout text in a poly post?

<strike>
</strike>

I thought I was done with the EA terrain until someone saw it on my monitor. It produced the following exchange:

"What's all that snow doing in the desert?"
"It's not snow, it's cloud!"
"Then what's all that cloud doing over the Sahara? They'd love it."
"It's unexplored."
"Isn't unexplored usually black?"


What about some kind of Middle-Eastern mosaic? Or have you already tried something like this? The gratuitous screenshot, below, shows a tile converted from Bernd Brosing's Cross and Crescent scenario used as unexplored terrain.

[Boco]

Tried more things than I'll admit, including a calligraphic design. Got tired of most. Yours looks good, though I might play with the white border around the design.

In the end, my favorite is a 10-15% darkened version of the desert. Virtually all of the unexplored in EA is desert. To Western eyes, the unexploted desert was a featureless sea of sand. I guess we're too stubborn to stick with black.

Pedia entries under "Game Concepts" or "Governments" is an excellent idea! In your scenario does it fit on one screen?

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Boco
In the end, my favorite is a 10-15% darkened version of the desert.

How about greyscaling that? Ocean and desert are both rather wavy, so that would probably look OK for both land and water. Then again, that will start to look an awful lot like the regular black.

[Haroog]

Whoops DL

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
Pedia entries under "Game Concepts" or "Governments" is an excellent idea! In your scenario does it fit on one screen?

I actually meant at the end of each entry in describe.txt (nothing flash about that), not at the end of the file. You can add new entries to Game Concepts, but you'll run into a number of problems if you try altering the Governments screen - either changing government names or adding new entries. Anyway, is this what you mean? Or are we doing our level best to confuse each other?

Originally posted by Boco
In the end, my favorite is a 10-15% darkened version of the desert.

Yeah, well that's what I've decided to go with. Back to square one, eh? This gratuitous screenshot (the last, I swear ) shows the unexplored desert at -10 brightness. The zoomed map shows the NW corner with some of the unexplored area removed. That region doesn't look quite as odd now - and this helped change my mind. Would revealing those tiles affect gameplay?

[Boco]

Geographically, some bits of Anatolia and Cyprus should be on the map, but it's only Aab. Since I took the trireme flag off the naval units, I figure its only a matter of time before some d**n fool creative player goes up there to wreak havoc. Most of the Impassable Terrain is homed to El Ottok and Bir Es Gu'ud, which lie in that neck of the woods. Mosul's also there along a Turk engineer to prevent the destruction of the Ottoman and Iraki Turk civs. I can use Kobayashi's trick to make them invisible invincible sea cities, and protect the engineer with a Terrain unit.

Or are we doing our level best to confuse each other?

Huh?

In this case I'm thinking of concise summary entries covering multiple units. E.g. units that can enter impassable terrain. When I have some time, I'll experiment with placing extra entries under Unit Types in the Civilopedia. If they won't fit there, I'll sub them for one of the less useful entries under Game Concepts. On the other hand, the Visio-derived player aid charts for terrain and units is coming along, so I may just put a reference to the html file in the Civilopedia. Too bad I can't hyperlink it.

Btw, I've wondered about creating a two map version in which the second map simply holds reinforcements, but my experience is strictly 2D. If I put a ton of Sanusi units 'under' Matruh, surrounded by ocean with an appropriately configured transport site and Matruh falls to the Sanusis, could they enter the primary map? Would the AI have the sense to send them there? It seems like you could save a lot of event space by stashing armies offmap.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
If they won't fit there, I'll sub them for one of the less useful entries under Game Concepts.

You shouldn't need to substitute any of them. Just add more.

Originally posted by Boco
Btw, I've wondered about creating a two map version in which the second map simply holds reinforcements, but my experience is strictly 2D. If I put a ton of Sanusi units 'under' Matruh, surrounded by ocean with an appropriately configured transport site and Matruh falls to the Sanusis, could they enter the primary map? Would the AI have the sense to send them there? It seems like you could save a lot of event space by stashing armies offmap.

This sounds strangely familiar. Actually, I've implemented stuff like this, but have yet tested its effectiveness. Are you referring to transporters (the city improvement) or transport sites (the terrain improvement) or whatever?

You could change unit transport relationships when the city is captured, but this would apply to unit type, irrespective of owner. If the human player gains access to any of those types of units, they will also gain access to the 2nd map. As far as I remember, the AI uses transport sites freely. One problem with using transport sites that are detrimental to the human player's cause, is that he/she has the sense to pillage them (and the less house rules, the better). Alternatively, you could change native transport settings, in which case they can spring up all over the joint - or at least within the area of the "island" on map 2.

A further alternative would be to place a transporter in the map 2 cities and one in Matruh. When in possession of the Sanusi, the transporter in Matruh would allow access to and from map 2. Immediately, I see two problems here: firstly, I don't know how well the AI makes use of such sites (and you only get one use per turn) and secondly, when the city is in the human player's hands, they'd be sure to sell it off.

[Boco]

I think about 3 links in Describe.txt appear to be hard-coded. I'll post examples later. Have no idea about whether there's a limit on numbers of entries in each link list. I'd guess there's none or its 128.

I didn't think that this would be a complete fantasy to you, Catfish. Matruh is in 28,46. I was thinking of putting many Sanusis on 28,46 in map 2, where it is a 1 square island that contains a transport site. No Transporter in Matruh or anywhere else on map 1.[list=1][*]Could the Sanusis move into Matruh once it was liberated from the Allies?[*]Did I overlook something basic? [*]Would the AI have sense to do so? [*]Would it need/heed a MoveUnit goad? [/list=1]
If 1 & 2 are yes, no, then I'll set something up to test 3 & 4. If the idea works, I'd place Sanusis on 1-square islands under almost all Egyptian cities. I'm hoping that in the case of a Sanusi 'reward army' of 3 unit slots, a single CityTaken/MoveUnit would replace 3 CityTaken/CreateUnit events.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
I think about 3 links in Describe.txt appear to be hard-coded. I'll post examples later. Have no idea about whether there's a limit on numbers of entries in each link list. I'd guess there's none or its 128.

I haven't had any problems adding new entries to Game Concepts. My guess for the maximum would be 128 as well.

Originally posted by Boco [list=1][*]Could the Sanusis move into Matruh once it was liberated from the Allies?[*]Did I overlook something basic? [*]Would the AI have sense to do so? [*]Would it need/heed a MoveUnit goad?[/list=1]

Answers:[list=1][*]Under normal circumstances, no, but technically, yes. When you create a transport site, it is placed on both maps. You can't place them on cities. However, you could disband the city first. Create the link (cheat menu). Delete the site on map 1. Replace the city and you have one of those fancy one-way transporters I described over at CFC. Edit: The one-way factor would also eliminate the problem of changing initial transport relationships and unit type ownership (see above).[*]No, as far as I'm aware, this type of stuff hasn't been tried before. [*]Good question, but I believe so. I'm gonna find out soon enough, anyway. [*]That all depends on the answer to 3.[/list=1]

[Boco]

When you create a transport site, it is placed on both maps.

That was the missing link in my mind.

Good question, but I believe so. I'm gonna find out soon enough, anyway.

And post? I won't be able to test this myself before the weekend.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
And post? I won't be able to test this myself before the weekend.

That'll probably be the case for me, too. Until you asked these questions, I didn't actually think of using a one-way transport site underneath a city (which changes hands). So . It's the best solution, because it eliminates all of the problems I listed earlier - I'm pretty confident that the AI will use them correctly (it's just the transporters I have my doubts about). The concept of all these Arabs waiting patiently in their holes, only to come pouring out when the city is captured is hilarious.