Gold Gulch Playtest!

[Cyrion]

OK, first of all, I need to complain: Harry, your scen is depriving me of my (much needed) sleep...

I kept on playing from the same game I started (with the 24th of September corrections, but not the others) and everything is proceeding very smoothly!

I started the game at the Prince level, instead of Deity, as I originally intended to play only a few turns before I started my "real" game...
At the beginning of the day ten, I am the only one to have colonized the south side of the river (and, needless to say, I occupy all the good land there).

I only have 7 cities (3 north, 4 south) as I never saw the need for more, as they are all between 12 and 19, and very productive.

I was too lazy to change from Monarchy, but even with that, I have been discovering 1 tech a turn for the last 15 turns.

I guess I could easily grab the other saloons with my bribed US Cavalry, but I chose to take the train to Chicago! (which should be done soon...).

It would be nice if you could customize the spaceship part of the scen, even if that would probably mean too much work for the result you could achieve... CHanging the SS parts name in the building list should be doable though

Anyone here knows how to change the spaceship picture??

Anyway, I really like the way the settlements develop around the core area, I think it works pretty much as you wanted!

BTW: I just got Calamity Jane and Hickock. They were a surprise! Wouldn't putting a hint about their related tech in tehir unit description be a good idea? Unless you prefer the "surprise" side of it??

Anyway, thanks for a good night of gaming (and a bad morning at work )

[:) Smiley]

Hmm, I let the rat problem get out of hand, and now there are storefronts everywhere!

[:) Smiley]

Vermin now outnumber people 100 to 1 in Gold Gulch!

[:) Smiley]

And plenty of externminator shops have set up across the water

[Harry Tuttle]

@ Cyrion: Thanks! I'm glad that you had such a bad nights sleep.

I hope to make the spaceship DLL into a Train picture to simulate the Train to Chicago for the release. As for the special characters, I like to think of them as easter eggs. There are a few more out there, so keep looking.

@Smiley: Hahahahahahaha! Yes, the pollution trigger needs to be hexed out before the scenario is finished. Now did this happen because of population or did you plant some plague rats a few times to often?

[Harry Tuttle]

I think I found a solution to the pioneer payoff problem. What if the pioneers pop up with a distant Sioux city as their origin. A saloon player bribes the pioneer and has them caravan it over to one of the saloons. Caravan completes a trade route, has a high payoff. Of course, I have to test this.

[germanos]

Sounds like a fine idea

[:) Smiley]

The first two bouts of global warming came from the high population and production. I found this potentially useful, so unleashed some rats.

It should work the other way around- too many rats, people leave town. Global warming changes:

Inland Grassland-->Plains
Inland Plains-->Desert
Coastal Grassland/Plains-->Swamp
Coastal Forest-->Jungle
Inland Forest-->Plains

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Smiley
The first two bouts of global warming came from the high population and production. I found this potentially useful, so unleashed some rats.

It should work the other way around- too many rats, people leave town. Global warming changes:

Inland Grassland-->Plains
Inland Plains-->Desert
Coastal Grassland/Plains-->Swamp
Coastal Forest-->Jungle
Inland Forest-->Plains

Well the problem with that is the terrain conversions upon global warming are determined by the Civ2 engine alone. Also, since the majority of my terrain tiles represent buildings I can't just change the tiles around to make pollution work. For the finished game, I hope to have one of the hex wizards stop global warming entirely. Pollution will still occur and reduce terrain tile values, but won't cause a map wide catastrophe.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
@ Cyrion: Thanks! I'm glad that you had such a bad nights sleep.

Now that's not nice!

I hope to make the spaceship DLL into a Train picture to simulate the Train to Chicago for the release. As for the special characters, I like to think of them as easter eggs. There are a few more out there, so keep looking.

I must admit that's the train picture was what I didn't dare hope for in this instance!

As for the "easter eggs": I'll keep looking for them in my game : this one is nearly over, and I won't need them on the train to Chicago...

I think I found a solution to the pioneer payoff problem. What if the pioneers pop up with a distant Sioux city as their origin. A saloon player bribes the pioneer and has them caravan it over to one of the saloons. Caravan completes a trade route, has a high payoff. Of course, I have to test this.

Not sure I understood what you intended, but if I did, it doesn't work that way!

If you bribe a caravan, it's city of origin changes, and becomes:
- NONE if the closest city is not yours
- your closest city in other cases

Now, what happen if you deliver a NONE caravan? yor city just establish a trade route with itself, I think (but I don't know what the engine takes as the distance between the 2 cities, so maybe the pay-off can be high??).

So I believe the solution might be not as good as you hoped...

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Cyrion
So I believe the solution might be not as good as you hoped...

Arrgh. Well, I hope your mistaken, but probably not. I could have the pioneers pop up already owned by a civ, and then have it be a game of "get away from the prostitutes".

I was going to check out the bribery idea last night but I decided to focus on the anybody events problem. We'll see what happens today.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle


Arrgh. Well, I hope your mistaken

So do I!

But sadly, for once I think I'm not...

[Harry Tuttle]

Ok, I need some advice. I'm going to try and free up some event space so I can fit in the multiple events to cover for the ANYBODY problem and keep the number of event files to a minimum. Here are my thoughts:

Should I eliminate...

1) Long Horn killed event - These units are trade units early in the game that can be built by the saloon players after a bit of research. They closely resemble the cattle which can be rustled in the pen to the east. They have an event that if they are killed the attacker gets 100 bucks. It's a nice incentive and adds a bit of strategy to the idea of using caravans early on, but it's not really needed.

2) Indian Treaty killed event - Kill an Indian Treaty unit which are located in the Sioux camps and the Sioux get 1000 bucks. It's nice in that it penalizes a player for trying to knock out the Sioux, but in reality the Sioux can't build a whole lot of units anyways as they do not have any high yield terrain around them.

3) Pioneer killed event - Kill a pioneer and the attacker loses 100 bucks. Its supposed to depict the necessity of getting more people to come to the valley, but it's not that big of a penalty. Plus, I might just have the new pioneers slaved to the civs as they pop up.

The "animal created" events have all been turned to turn interval events. Don't be surprised if you need to do some hunting up in those hills once and awhile to clear out the zoo.

[:) Smiley]

How about some gold for killing animals? "That snake ought to bring in 50 gold for our snake oil business."

[Cyrion]

Answers and problems

^@Smiley: Harry is looking for events to suppress, not for ones to add

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
1) Long Horn killed event - These units are trade units early in the game that can be built by the saloon players after a bit of research. They closely resemble the cattle which can be rustled in the pen to the east. They have an event that if they are killed the attacker gets 100 bucks. It's a nice incentive and adds a bit of strategy to the idea of using caravans early on, but it's not really needed.

Not needed in SP, but might be nice strategically in MP

2) Indian Treaty killed event - Kill an Indian Treaty unit which are located in the Sioux camps and the Sioux get 1000 bucks. It's nice in that it penalizes a player for trying to knock out the Sioux, but in reality the Sioux can't build a whole lot of units anyways as they do not have any high yield terrain around them.

I guess you can easily suppress this!

3) Pioneer killed event - Kill a pioneer and the attacker loses 100 bucks. Its supposed to depict the necessity of getting more people to come to the valley, but it's not that big of a penalty. Plus, I might just have the new pioneers slaved to the civs as they pop up.

YOu can suppress this, as anyway 100 bucks aren't much compared to the money you can make in this scen!

And I have a suggestion about what you can do with the pioneer: why not make it a settler unit (and remove the "wagon" you can build); that would make bribing pioneers the only way to expand until you can build laborers (and then, maybe, giving 1-2 wagons from the start to each civ, so that the rush to grab the new land begins at once). What do you think about that??

And now about the problems: I noticed yesterday that some units behave strangely (or that I maybe didn't understand their purpose...); I'll check that tonight and hope to post a detailed explanation+solution then!