Major Bug in John Ellis' Bonaparte

[Kugelregen]

I wanted to post to try to address what I think is a major bug in John Ellis' otherwise amazing scenario, Bonaparte. If I have confused something and not found a bug, then I apologize for the post.

Anways, I refer people to the following website on scenario creation before I outline the problem:

http://sleague.apolyton.net/Guides/sldt_useunits.shtml

The problem is one that is often overlooked in scenario designing. Let me quote from the above link: "The computer will not build a ground unit under any circumstances when another ground unit with the same role (the number just before the prerequisite advance in rules.txt) and movement allowance (1 or 2+) is available with better attack and defense statistics. The computer ignores cost, special abilities, hit points and firepower."

Basically, Bonaparte has totally forgotten this quirky aspect of civ2. The only way to catch this is to go into the scenario, reveal the map, and check what the computer is able to build. For some reason, this bug does not affect the human player. What this means is that tons of the units in Bonaparte simply cannot be built by the computer. This includes Hussars, Dragoons, Cossacks, special units for the French, English, etc etc etc.

I tried going in and fixing the problem by making some units "air superiority" etc, but the problem was beyond my patience/skill. I have never made a scenario (no time) but just love to play everyone else's at apolyton and beyond!! If you guys could come up with a way to fix this problem, we could finally place this scenario where it belongs--among the greats!!

[techumseh]

This is a big problem for scenario designers. I had just raised it as part of this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=146489

I'd forgotten about Mike Daumen's tip. Unfortunately, I think we've gone backwards a bit on this. Bonaparte was designed as a multi-player game, so AI decisions were presumably less important. I did the same thing with my Roman Civil War scenario.

Now with PBEM games no longer popular, AI builds are again an important factor. I've been trying to retro engineer Roman Civil War as a single player scenario and finding the AI build to be a real problem.

Based on a quick re-read of Mike's tip, I'd say your best bet is to give the same attack/defense numbers to each cavalry unit, and vary the hits/firepower and movement to achieve similar goals. For those units in the musketeer and knight slots, using the air or naval superiority role should ensure that they are built at least occasionally.