Civ2 still surprises me!

[our_man]

I've had this game for 7 years and I'm pleased to say the old dog still has a few tricks left in her.

While playing Kobayashi's Pacific War scenario as the Japanese, I eliminated the Chinese player from the game. Now, one of the Chinese cities contains the Great Wall wonder, which unfortunately was obsoleted by the advance 'China', which the Chinese possessed.

I got the Chinese military presence has been eliminated from the theatre message; consequently when I closed the text box and moved the map with my cursor I noticed all my cities now had fortifications! The Great Wall was no longer obsolete!

It seems that the elimination of the Chinese civilization also removed the China tech from the game, thus rendering the Great Wall unobsolete. Pretty cool!

This also means for an ambitious scenario designer that there's a way to obsolete a wonder and reactivate it at a later date if he's willing to sacrifice a civilization slot.

Time to get back to the Bamboo Curtain!

[curtsibling]

Interesting!

Nice discovery, OM!
That is a useful tool, a dead wonder to act as a goal!
When the enemy civ is eliminated, then the wonder is alive!



I assume the scenario operates with the 'don't restart eliminated players' rule?

[Palaiologos]

It can't be.
Although i have encoutered weirder things before(civs getting eliminated in scenarios and getting their techs through the great library) this must be verified. What were the prerequistes of the China tech? "No, No" ?

If it stands then this our_man discovery constitutes a small breakthrough!

[our_man]

I'll do some checking guys.

[Alinestra Covelia]

This is a very cool discovery!

I'm thinking of using it for my Star Wars scen. The Empire would have "Cancel Statue of LIberty" tech and the Rebels would have the Statue. If they can defeat the Empire, they can once again rule the galaxy with multiple governments.

I see plenty more uses for this!

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by our_man
While playing Kobayashi's Pacific War scenario as the Japanese, I eliminated the Chinese player from the game. Now, one of the Chinese cities contains the Great Wall wonder, which unfortunately was obsoleted by the advance 'China', which the Chinese possessed.

I've checked the game I have in progress and, sure enough, all Japanese cities have city walls after the Chinese civ has been destroyed. Nice work in spotting the glitch. I'm looking forward to the cash influx from selling quite a few of the unneeded improvements.

In addition to the above, Kobi's Dainichi Sekai Taisen scenario apparently has other interesting glitches, one bad and one good.

A problem arises if the British have built Leonardo’s (Lend Lease) wonder and the Japanese subsequently capture it. The immediate upgrade of Japanese units works fine except that Infantry (not buildable by Japan) spawned by events in Taipei and Kobe are upgraded to Submarines (buildable by Japan). This can be tested in the Sept ’41 save that comes with the scen. I had to change events to spawn Infantry Japan rather than Infantry to avoid getting a fleet of subs in inland cities.

Also, if certain US units are killed, events spawn US units in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, even if the cities are in Japanese hands and are already garrisoned by Japanese units. This is something that I have never seen before, probably because designers are aware of possible problems with spawning units in cities which may be in enemy hands.

In this case, opening the city screen, shows only the spawned US units. Any Japanese units in the city are hidden and inaccessible to players. To regain control of of the Japanese units, the only recourse is to disband the US units. Of course, the unlikely result is that US units end up being used to help build Japanese units or improvements.

Depending on where there are open slots in the units table, it is also possible to get unit sequences like

US
JAP
US
JAP
JAP

in a city. These can be a real mess to untangle. The only clue that something is wrong seems to be that right-clicking on a city shows no units in the STATUS window on the main screen.

[techumseh]

It is possible in Test of Time to turn wonders off and on, through the use of the 'TAKETECHNOLOGY' event. Using a preset trigger, simply take the obsolete technology and the wonder works again. Give it back, and the wonder is turned off.

[curtsibling]

Your Roman Civil War scenario shows this kind of events feature very well.

[Harry Tuttle]

Very interesting. I would have thought that obsolescence techs would have stayed stored in the game file as being discovered rather than being just deleted.

[Palaiologos]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Also, if certain US units are killed, events spawn US units in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, even if the cities are in Japanese hands and are already garrisoned by Japanese units. This is something that I have never seen before, probably because designers are aware of possible problems with spawning units in cities which may be in enemy hands.

In this case, opening the city screen, shows only the spawned US units. Any Japanese units in the city are hidden and inaccessible to players. To regain control of of the Japanese units, the only recourse is to disband the US units. Of course, the unlikely result is that US units end up being used to help build Japanese units or improvements.

in a city. These can be a real mess to untangle. The only clue that something is wrong seems to be that right-clicking on a city shows no units in the STATUS window on the main screen.

That "problem" is well known to scenario designers i believe. It can be used to simulate uprisings or whatever. The true solution around it is to make the created units be supported by the city they are meant to appear into. If it is in enemy hands then no units.

You can change the unit support in the events file.

[our_man]

[SIZE=1]Also, if certain US units are killed, events spawn US units in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, even if the cities are in Japanese hands and are already garrisoned by Japanese units. This is something that I have never seen before, probably because designers are aware of possible problems with spawning units in cities which may be in enemy hands.

In this case, opening the city screen, shows only the spawned US units. Any Japanese units in the city are hidden and inaccessible to players. To regain control of of the Japanese units, the only recourse is to disband the US units. Of course, the unlikely result is that US units end up being used to help build Japanese units or improvements.

Are they exclusively naval units? I think the bug only applies to sea domain units. I remember a similar problem with American freighters in 2194 days.

[Elok]

I've often wondered about this, actually. I always just assumed it was hard-coded though.

On a related note: if only one civ has Mobile Warfare, and it's not learnable, will wiping that civ out make barbarians appear at sea again? If that civ was the only one with Gunpowder, would the barbarians regress?

[techumseh]

Event created units should NOT be appearing in enemy controlled cities. It's not that designers are that careful, it shouldn't happen.

[Case]

Originally posted by techumseh
Event created units should NOT be appearing in enemy controlled cities. It's not that designers are that careful, it shouldn't happen.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Do the Japanese cities have garrison units in them when the US units pop-up?

As an aside, another reason not to create units inside cities is that the AI tends to fortify them there, even if they're offensive units.

[AGRICOLA]

Oh, ye of little faith.

OK, it's been said that a saved game is worth a thousand words. The attached Dec '41 save of the start of the Japanese turn illustrates what I have been talking about. If you don’t already have it, you can download Kobayashi's Dainichi Sekai Taisen v2.0 scen from

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/DST2g.zip

and follow the usual procedure of unzipping the scen files into their own folder.

Among the events which cause problems are the following:
If Japanese kill US Cruiser, US gets Merchant Marine (Freighter) in Okinawa.
If Japanese kill US WWI BB, US gets sub in Sydney.
If Japanese kill US Merchant Marine, US gets US Marines in Iwo Jima.
If US gets Helldiver tech, US gets Helldiver in Okinawa every turn.
If Japan gets Oil Embargo tech, US gets US Marines in Okinawa every turn.


SIMPLE DEMO
1. Start up MGE and load DST.scn .
2. Save game (X.sav or whatever).
3, Disband both units in Okinawa. Everything is normal.
4. Load X.sav .
5. Use CHEAT to create a US Cruiser amidst Japanese subs west of Iwo Jima.
6. Sink the Cruiser, thereby starting war with Allies.
7. Disband the two Japanese units in Okinawa,
8. Houston, I do believe that we have a problem.

LESS SIMPLE DEMO
1. Copy the attached Dec ‘41 save into the DST folder, load and check the following cities . . . . Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Sydney.
2. Everything should be normal. Right?
3. Disband the Japanese Infantry Japan in Okinawa. Surprise! The Helldiver and US Marines were spawned during the preceding US turn.
4. Quit and reload the Dec ’41 save.
5. Northeast of Midway, I have created a US WWI Battleship, 2 Cruisers and 3 Freighters. Sink them using units in Midway.
6. Check Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Sydney.
7. Disband the US intruders to get at the Japanese units or disband or move Japanese units out of the cities to reveal the US units.