Trying to make Civ more realistic

[Sirrvs]

You know how countries in the game are able to create huge armies and yet the size of the city remains the same? I think maybe there should be an additional cost per unit like maybe have it take up one food or even better, reduce the size of the city by one each time a unit is created because all those men have to come from somewhere, hehe. Anyway, do you guys know where I can edit the code for that or if it exists at all? Thanks!

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

You may want to try the Civ2-Creation forum for this question - the scenario wizards have probably come up with a way to do what you're suggesting (although I have no idea if anyone's cracked that part of the code).

[Gatekeeper]

I try to make Civ more realistic by limiting myself to only two or three ground defensive units per city (and an air unit when they become available), and the offensive units can never exceed the city size. Furthermore, I then station those offensive units in "bases" (fortresses) outside the city.

That gives the AI a shot of taking a few cities, in my experience, and making the overall game even more enjoyable (and hair-pulling) than it already is.

Gatekeeper

P.S. I've also altered the code in the RULES.TXT file, adding a few units and tweaking the abilities of others.

[Sirrvs]

Yeah I'm sort of trying to do what you did. I've made the city defenses and the barracks, airport and port facilities much more expensive in order to allow the more economically powerful nation to have higher quality armies. But I'm still looking for a way to make the population reflect the number of troops that can be recruited.

[DSquared]

If you gave the units the 'settle' role (5) in rules,txt, then they would do as you say, but then you would get funny things like elephants building roads, and the AI would probably break and not do anything but build cities and improve terrain.

[Gatekeeper]

Sirrvs:

Linking population to troops sounds like an issue involving hard coding, and I'm not sure anyone has cracked that yet (legally, anyway). There's a petition under way to get the Civ II source code released; I believe it can be found (and signed, if you wish) in the Civ2-Creation forum.

Gatekeeper

[Scouse Gits]

IIRC there are some of the WWII scenarios that use the 'food box' to represent fuel and thereby limit the aggressiveness of the participants - but you would have to seek them out yourself

Stu

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
I try to make Civ more realistic by limiting myself to only two or three ground defensive units per city
.

Except for several cities at the boarders, and sometimes not even there, I usually have one long time obsolete unit quarding mine cities (and sometimes no forces are present at all) up to the times when I can build those mechanised infantry units - then, I have one mechanised infantry per city usually...

[Gatekeeper]

You're not challenging my manhood, are you, Heresson?

At any rate, I do things the way I do because I let the AI grow to the point that it actually gives me something of a challenge, which is in the modern age. If I had one obsolete unit guarding my cities (or even only one modern unit), I'd be up a creek when the inevitable mass surprise attack comes.

Gatekeeper

[Heresson]

I am "yp a creek", actually. I'm hopeless at fighting in non-scenario games. I just try o keep peace and bribe cities

[Sirrvs]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Sirrvs:

Linking population to troops sounds like an issue involving hard coding, and I'm not sure anyone has cracked that yet (legally, anyway). There's a petition under way to get the Civ II source code released; I believe it can be found (and signed, if you wish) in the Civ2-Creation forum.

Gatekeeper

Signed the petition a long time ago.

Now I'm trying to accomplish this thing by increasing the unit cost. It'd be nice to increase the support cost of the units but I can't find that anywhere. All these kinds of options would theoretically only be in the rules.txt right? Everything else is just about the images and the text boxes...the look of the game.

We'll see how this works when I mulitply the cost of units, hehe. It's ridiculous how every city has troops in it. Even in ancient times armies weren't just sitting inside the city walls waiting for an attack. They only had a few of them placed in strategic locations of the country right?

[Gatekeeper]

Hmm. I guess that hadn't really crossed my mind. I like realism, but I have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise the headaches will never go away.

If you want to have a bit of fun, lower the cost of cruise missiles by 10 shields or so. I did that to my copy of Civ II and, voila!, the AI went from stockpiling the things (up to 10 to 15 per city) and using them only against ships to not stockpiling them so much, but using them more readily against ships, armored divisions, spies and even port cities! My copy is the Macintosh version, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work on the PC version as well. You can lower the cost of the missiles in the RULES.TXT file ...

Gatekeeper

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Sirrvs

We'll see how this works when I mulitply the cost of units, hehe. It's ridiculous how every city has troops in it. Even in ancient times armies weren't just sitting inside the city walls waiting for an attack. They only had a few of them placed in strategic locations of the country right?

It's something a pair of scenario makers tried to accomplish.
Me in Komnenai and Mamluks through event-recruit-system, which made it haaard to get valuable units,
and even more it was done in Age of Crusades (or what was the title) scenario, in which it was done through emphase on special units.

[Sirrvs]

Hmm, is it me or does the AI cheat? I multiplied the unit costs by 5 and yet somehow the other civs seem to produce units at the same rate.

[Elephant]

At King level production costs are the same; at Emperor the AI's rows are decreased by one shield each, at Deity it is two shields. What difficulty level were you experimenting with?