Ultimate solution to load AI ships

[kobayashi]

This is an age old problem facing everyone. You can't spawn land units at sea so how can you get the Ai to cooperate and load their troops onto troop ships? In my DST scenario, I used a single tile island city where US troops and troopships were spawned. This was not that efficient but at least it got more GIs onto the ships then normal. Not nearly as many as I would have liked though.

For War of the Ring I needed to get Cosair Pirates onto their Blackships, leading to a revisit to the problem. After lots of experimenting, I've come up with what I think is the definitive solution the problem.

Create an island in the middle of nowhere. Create tons of AI units on that island manually with home city set to none. Change the island to ocean using the cheat menu and the AI units will automatically sleep. When the scenario is running, have events triggering troop ship spawning on the same spot. Sleeping troops always board a ship so Voila, the troop ship is automatically loaded.

[AGRICOLA]

That is absolutely, positively brilliant!!

I wonder, would a GOTO from the spawning location to a specific target work?

[our_man]

Very obvious (I'm amazed I never thought of it), but very, very clever.

[AGRICOLA]

I just thought this one through to its logical end. If the create island, create units, destroy island sequence works as outlined, then it should be possible to create an entire invasion fleet on ANY ocean square (occupied or not occupied) in a single turn.

I think that the sequence of events in the events file would have to be as follows:
1. Pick the square and create an island.
2. Create the various ground units.
3. Change the island back to ocean.
4. Create air and naval units, including an appropriate number of transports.
5. Give the stacked units an appropriate GOTO.

Kobi, IMHO, you have opened a Pandora's Box of possibilities for designers.

[AGRICOLA]

One more idea. By incorporating a flag to trigger the sequence of events, it should be possible to reuse the sequence a number of times during a scen.

This could be particularly useful in a Pacific war scen where an American invasion force spawned somewhere in the South Pacific might be used in the Solomons, at Tarawa and in the Marshalls. A second spawning location, somewhere north of the Marianas, could be used for the Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

In the same way, there could be a single Japanese spawning location that might be able to handle the Philippines, Malaya and the East Indies.

[Cyrion]

Re: Ultimate solution to load AI ships

Originally posted by kobayashi
Create an island in the middle of nowhere. Create tons of AI units on that island manually with home city set to none. Change the island to ocean using the cheat menu and the AI units will automatically sleep. When the scenario is running, have events triggering troop ship spawning on the same spot. Sleeping troops always board a ship so Voila, the troop ship is automatically loaded.

Interesting, but I see 2 problems with that:

1) I believe that if you change terrain with the cheat mode, it destroys the units on the square (not 100% sure)!
Solution: modify your rules file to make all the units you want to create sea units, create them, and modify your rules again to make land units! so you don't need any change terrain!
Or can't you simply manually create land units on water?

2) afterwards, you'll keep your units "floating" on the ocean until you need them, which might be unpractical if some foreign naval units might come close to them...

[techumseh]

I'm not sure I understand this, but in my experience, a change terrain event always kills the units and cities on the affected tile. Or is there some bug?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by techumseh
I'm not sure I understand this, but in my experience, a change terrain event always kills the units and cities on the affected tile. Or is there some bug?

An event, yes, but I think Kobi meant changing it manually at the start of the scen, and then letting the land units float on the sea until needed!

But even then, as I said, I believe that the "manually done" change terrain will destroy the units!

What Agricola summarized won't work: units will be destroyed by the change terrain event

[AGRICOLA]

@Cyrion & techumseh
Spoilsports!

afterwards, you'll keep your units "floating" on the ocean until you need them, which might be unpractical if some foreign naval units might come close to them...

Stack a special D=99 and Mv=0 naval unit with them. Alternately, surround them with an impassable coral reef that only Blackships can cross.


Actually, Kobi, while setting up the scen, couldn't you create transports and ground units on a handy land mass and sail the ships to the desired, stackable location. Then use an enemy ship to sink the transports because simply disbanding them seems to destroy the ground units. That should leave the ground units floating in the ocean where they can be picked up when needed. If necessary, put the ground units to sleep.

I just tried this sequence and it seems to work.

EDIT:

But even then, as I said, I believe that the "manually done" change terrain will destroy the units!

You are correct. I tried it.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
@Cyrion & techumseh
Spoilsports!

Exctly my thought when you slaughter the AI while testing a scen...

Nonetheless I might need your help to test a small thing soon, if you agree?

Stack a special D=99 and Mv=0 naval unit with them.

An obvious solution I was too dumb to find myself...

You are correct. I tried it.

Thought so...

[Palaiologos]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
You are correct. I tried it.

No it doesn't. I just tried it my self. You can also manually create land units directly on an ocean square.

[GhostOfDisco]

Hmmm... for my US Civil War 2013 scenario (the Chinese don't like it when you take their ally's Pacific ports) I did the "city" thing (Neutral cities for the spawn points - with a civ appropriate unit in the city so spawning may occur.) Mayb e I'll have to try your way, if for nothing else than experiment.

[AGRICOLA]

First of all, Kobayashi's method DOES work. Units on an island are NOT destroyed when the island terrain is changed to ocean, either through events or manually.

I just created an island at 273,3 with 4 Panzergrenadiers on it in Dictator VI and added the following event

@IF
TURN
turn=28
@THEN
CHANGETERRAIN
terraintype=10
maprect
273,3,273,3,273,3,273,3
JUSTONCE
@ENDIF

After DELEVENT etc., the event executed properly. At the start of the next turn there were 4 Panzergrenadiers floating in the ocean.


@Cyrion
Sure, let me know when the time comes.

[curtsibling]

Would the order in which the events are scripted make a difference, like if the CREATEUNIT came before CHANGETERRAIN?

[AGRICOLA]

Good thinking. I've been using your scen as a test bed for the last hour to try to sort out the various results, opinions and observations. Yes, the order of events matters very much.

Ground units survive a CHANGETERRAIN from land to ocean but air and naval units do not.

The following events were added to Dictator VI:

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
CHANGETERRAIN
terraintype=1
maprect
273,3,273,3,273,3,273,3
JUSTONCE
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
JUSTONCE
CREATEUNIT
unit=Grenadiers
Count=4
owner=Third Reich
veteran=no
homecity=none
locations
273,3
endlocations
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
CHANGETERRAIN
terraintype=10
maprect
273,3,273,3,273,3,273,3
JUSTONCE
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
JUSTONCE
CREATEUNIT
unit=Freighter
Count=2
owner=Third Reich
veteran=no
homecity=none
locations
273,3
endlocations
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
JUSTONCE
CREATEUNIT
unit=Super Battleship
Count=1
owner=Third Reich
veteran=no
homecity=none
locations
273,3
endlocations
@ENDIF

@IF
TURN
turn=2
@THEN
JUSTONCE
CREATEUNIT
unit=Bomber
Count=1
owner=Third Reich
veteran=no
homecity=none
locations
273,3
endlocations
@ENDIF

The second CHANGETERRAIN must come before the naval and air units are created. Otherwise they do not survive.

There is one other oddity. The events call for 4 Grenadiers to be created but only 3 are present after the event. I also tried creating 8 and ended up with 7.

Anyway, here are the bare bones of an events-generated invasion task force.