Localized Conflict Trigger

[Patine]

I've got quite the dilema here; I've got an Early Cold War scenario in the works (a predecessor to my Late Cold War scenario) which is on a global scale from 1955 to 1964 (monthly turns, of course). I want to trigger the Second Arab-Israeli War to occur in mid-'56, between Israel and Egypt with France and Britain supporting Israel. However, the way I've arranged players, there's a NATO and Allies player (including France and Britain), a Moslem player (of which Egypt is just one country), and a Afro-Aasian player (including India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa, on top of Israel) to deal with in that regard (as well as Warsaw Pact, Latin American, and Capitalist and Communist East Asian players, for those who are curious). I want Israel, Egypt, France, and Britain to be involved without the whole of the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and North Africa going up in a major conflagration. Is there any way I can do this?

[jeibel]

In a quick think you can if you use multiple event and rules set covering the various conflicts, and for example you set the movement for the various unit dislocated in 'peaceful' areas to be static (and perhaps unconquerable, very high DEF and HP), and the desired stats for the unit in the warring territories. This you can change as you swap the various file around.

E.G. :
before the israeli-arab conflict all 'egyptian infantry' unit are 1/18/0 9/6 but, do not cost much. they can only be built in egypt, and if a player change the production he will no loger be able to build the national infantry.
the same will be true for the national infantry of various country.
(israel,south america, usa, uk, etc.)

you may make the players able to build other kind of units, such as artillery, tanks bomber and so on, and by varying their stats, you can decide which area they will be able to conquer once war comes around.

to make it more clear: when the war comes around the various mational infantry wil revert to normal 6/6/1 2/1 unit or whatever you want them to be. so the cities wil be conquerable and israel can use all their tanks to whoop egypt,
or the usa wil be able to bomb suez flying their plane there but NOT to attack venezuela, since the infantry there is still unbeatable.

another idea is to have most unit be static until rules set change, however make the cities in the area of conflict be able to build otherwise unavailable moving units, whose production will be forfeited if the cities change production

however i think the first solution is more effective as it allow you to change the focus of conflict to different areas as you change rules sets

Hope this help forgive the bad writing!

[Mercator]

But that would kind of counter the global scale of the scenario. You'd end up with a world-scale scenario where you can only play in one theater war at a time.

Not only that, you'd have to make different units for each theater. That would, again, inhibit the global scale of it and cost valuable unit slots. And what would happen if the AI/people started moving their units around between conflict areas? Or use the production might of the entire civ to speed up production of the buildable units (e.g. by using Capitalization or trade units)?

It's still an interesting idea though.


I do have another idea, but I don't know how workable it is, or how much effect it will actually have. I think you can (ab)use the land body counter for this.

Each land body/continent is assigned a number. You can see it when you right-click on a square. It's the number after the tile coordinates. You could hex-edit the continents so that the middle-east, and possibly other conflict areas as well, get a continent number separate from the surrounding land. That should fool the AI in thinking that it's a separate continent. I'm not entirely sure how that will affect its behavior to engage in a war across continent borders though.

[Elok]

Just generating some barbarians outside Jerusalem won't do? As I understand history, the Israeli army beat them and all other invasions like an army of redheaded stepchildren, so it's not like having a whole empire hurled at them. It's the decades of terrorism that have been giving them the real trouble. But maybe I'm misinformed.

Wait a minute. On further reflection, India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, and the muslim and non-muslim regions of Africa have never really been buddy-buddy, have they? Wouldn't general aggression between the two powers throughout the scenario fit the historical mold, even if it's not precisely chronologically correct?

[jeibel]

You're certainly right about that: it would make it a sort of global-tactical scenario.It was just a quick thought and i think it's the one effective way to do it that i came up with.

BTW Mercator i'd like to know a couple of things about land-mass numbering and i hope your monstrous expertise can help .

As of this day AFAIK the only scenario using land-mass voodoo is Crises of the New World Order, a truly excellent scenario whose example is sadly not followed. The difference is especially important in the field of trade.

If i understand it right, andrew livings made first the separed continents (different land mass number), then conncted it by hex-hediting. (how to do this is beyond my imagination)
Let's suppose i want to do a scenario with a lot islands, most of them 1-tile: the land mass numbering would soon screw up.
Is there any way i can drew up the various archipelagous as continents (large islands distributed evenly so that islands belonging to the same archipelagous would have the same l-m-n)
and then divide each archipelagos into tinier islands but mantaining the same l-m-n for the group?
help would be greatly appreciated !

[Mercator]

Yes, I have plenty of theoretical knowledge, but I know little about the actual practical effects in Civ2. I'm not much of a scenario player.

What you want is kind of the reverse of Patine's case, and quite a bit easier too. The land mass numbers are only assigned when the game is started. So, simply draw your map in the map editor and connect the islands together with land bridges (with an easy to distinguish terrain type). When you have started your game on the map, remove the connecting land squares through the cheat menu.

[Patine]

Thanks for all the advice (I think I understood it all). I think maybe either using well-placed barbarians or risking a great conflagration would be the most direct way of handling the affair, as I think Mercator's right that theatre-specific unit swapping defeats the purpose of the grand global perspective I intend (I just want certain key wars to break out, not to totally strait-jacket players. I don't know really how this land body/continent editing thing works, though if Mercator or someone else can explain exactly how and how it can be applied in this case, I may be willing to give it a try.

[Patine]

Though, come to think of it, the theatre system might not be that bad, as it would allow the beginnings of the Vietnam War between the Capitalist and Communist East Asians, the first two Indo-Pakistani wars between the Moslems and Afro-Asians, and the Cuban Revolution between the Latin Americans and probably the Warsaw Pact, among other conflicts between 1955 and 1965 to be fought out more accurately. I guess I have to weigh historical merit and freedom to wage a global campaign. Any advice on which is more attractive?

[jeibel]

Ok i came up with another idea tonight (it's amazing what your brains do to avoid studying! ). It's kind of old fashioned, and it's certainly not the best, but perhaps it can spark new solutions.
Basically you do as the great Nemo did in Red Front and Spartacus, you use super defensive / impassable units to seal out the various theatre. You can make them look like fortifications, or invisibles if you don't want to screw up the map outlook.
The advantage of this method is that it eats up only one unit slots, and it requires no files swapping.

There are many ways this can be done, i came up with these:
-distribute the fortifications along the border you want to seal out, not in cities so they can't be rehomed. I don't mean every single border, so that the player has the freedom to attack unprotected area even if there is no conflict trigger.
-you either home the fortifications to cities in front of them (not sealed out by the fortification) so that when war comes along the conquest of the first cities trigger the gradual collapse of the border. The way Nemo did in Red Front. Depending on the scale of the map, however, this may be unfeasable due to lack of detail.
-or you home them another way, a bit more tricky, and that screw up the map a little bit. basically the idea is to reserve some far away places as trigger area. You put up 1-sized, empty cities in the North pole, Siberia, Canada or other god-forsaken places to act as trigger, deployed in this way:

XXXX where X are impassable units, and C is the city.
XC X The fortification along the border are all homed to these
XXXX cites, that are otherwise unreacheable. When war breaks
out,create a unit in the blank space. when the city is conquered the border will collapse and the trigger city disappear.

I think that this method don't strait-jacket the player since the border unit should be destroyable using nuclear weaponry. In this way if one wants to go along the historical course he has the chance to do so and have an easier time, while if he wants to rush things he will have to risk global nuclear conflict. Which is IMHO desiderable and in line with the scenario's era.On the same reasoning you could put up super defensive unit in cities to keep war out of certain key places. For example outbreak of conflict in europe, or invasion of the mainland of any of the superpowers would certainly have meant full scale nuclear war.

Thanks for your patience and have fun.
A big thanks to you, Mercator, your help was GREATLY appreciated. you are so

ciao

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Patine
I don't know really how this land body/continent editing thing works, though if Mercator or someone else can explain exactly how and how it can be applied in this case, I may be willing to give it a try.

I just rediscovered today that you can use MapCopy for that. Edit a new copy of the same map you use in the scenario and make an island out of the Middle East, encompassing the land area you want to see involved. You can do that for any other conflict areas there may be. Before you save the map, analyze it ('n').

Now use MapCopy to copy the body counter data from that map to your scenario/savegame. This ought to do it:
mapcopy map_name sav/scn_name -s -t -f +bc

(mapcopy is a command-line program, you have to enter that on the command-line. CD to the mapcopy folder and then specify the full paths of the map and savegame)

That will copy only the land mass counter from the map to the savegame, turning the Middle East into a separate continent. I'm not sure what the AI will think about the in-between squares though (i.e. the squares you turned into Ocean on that map to separate the contintents), because those will have a separate body counter as well.

But this is easy enough to do. If you're not sure yet, you can always try it out on a copy and test on that copy what the effects really are.

Originally posted by jeibel
A big thanks to you, Mercator, your help was GREATLY appreciated. you are so

Thanks!

[Patine]

Here's the current working copy of the scenario (that is, no readme, introductory text, sound, or any but the most basic triggers) for you to look at. Tell me where you think border units should go (and what current unit slots should get them and unique national units instead of what they currently have), how triggers could work, what areas should be made into separate 'continents' for theatres of war, and any other comments you may have on it.

[jeibel]

Aaaaaghh !!! if thath's for me, i'm at the university and won't have a computer with civ 2 in a week or so !!! Not to mention the 2 exams in the next 2 days !!!
If that's not for me, i'm ashamed of my presumption

[Patine]

It was actually for you, Mercator, and anyone else interested. Let me know what you think if you find time and a computer with Civ 2 anytime soon. I'll be around.

[Mercator]

I'd love to help, but I'm useless at playtesting scenarios and I don't know anything about the Cold War. Perhaps you should create a more obvious "playtest thread" to get more attention (or I could rename this thread).

Deciding where continent divides or border units should go is not so much a matter of the technical implementation of those, but more something about the historical details of the period...

[Patine]

Sorry I took so long in responding, Mercator. I think I'll just start a new thread to get playtesters to check out this scenario. Thanks for your help on continent numbering.