The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
Case, as the previous questions are addressed to you, I'm very hesitant about interjecting that it would be great to also hear from Boco about the complex transporter relationships he has developed for El Aurens . . . . . transporters that work one way all the time but only once per turn the other, transporters that behave like airlifts between maps, etc.
Originally posted, hopefully in jest, by Case
Damn you, you're making me look at this stuff again.
[ ]Damn you too for keeping under a bushel basket the fact that you developed brilliant, useful, original answers to questions that everybody else didn't even think to ask until years later. And yes, the WTF moments in CivII are definitely the mothers of invention.[ / ]
Having thoroughly browsed through your website, both admiring the extraordinary LOTR artwork and following up tech tips, may I inquire if and when your LOTR might see the light of day?
Excerpts from the Manual of the Civilization Fanatic :
Money can buy happiness, just raise the luxury rate to 50%.
Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of great empires.
Originally posted by Catfish
That could be your problem. Large continents seem to put the AI in explore mode. When they're down to 2x2 it doesn't leave them with many choices. Can you carve up some of your continents or do you have too many already? Are there any other tribes on the same continent? You don't want that. Do the units have any orders?
I suspected continent size was a factor when I saw Turks leave a smaller continent for the main map more readily. As for the questions: yes/no; no; no. Solving this might make things harder for the player, but as I recall, Agricola was asking for just that.
Originally posted by Catfish
Case, as the previous questions are addressed to you, I'm very hesitant about interjecting that it would be great to also hear from Boco about the complex transporter relationships he has developed for El Aurens . . . . . transporters that work one way all the time but only once per turn the other, transporters that behave like airlifts between maps, etc.
Got the idea from Catfish. There is a convoluted sequence to make one-way transporter terrain improvements without hexing, but I found hex-editing simpler. Basically on the departure map A, there is a transporter terrain improvement at square x,y. On the arrival map B, there is a city on the same square x,y. Departing via the terrain improvement costs no mf's. You simply type 'n' and end up in the city. Can't go back...well mostly that's true. If you type 'n' in that city after your arrival, you will get the pop up listing all cities with the transporter city improvement. I got around that by mentioning in the appropriate Game.txt dialog that inflamed tigers enraged by Biro attacks would inflict a slow death on you should you try hop maps illegally.
It's easier to visualize simply by trying it out in EAv2. Crank up the scenario, go into cheat mode, create an RE/Works Coy on the OOB map, move to an anchor square, and press 'n'.
To check how a city transport improvement works, give the Allies the "Rare Improvements" tech, cheat build the Cook Steamers improvement in each of Wadi Halfa and Khartoum, plop any unit (any domain) in each of these cities. Activate the new unit, and type 'n'. Only one city should show as a destination. Once you go there, that linking route is used up for the turn. Try to move between the cities again, and you get a bureaucrat advising you to plan better.
Originally posted by techumseh
One way transport sites? Are such things possible?
I stumbled on the idea when I found that co-ordinates weren't being cleared when transport sites were deleted using the 'Change Terrain at Cursor' option. Failing that, I reckon I would've eventually arrived at that point through hex editing. I guess there are 3 categories of one-way transport sites:
1. Ones with nothing on the destination tile. Select the 'Change Terrain at Cursor' (Shift+F8) option in the Cheat menu and create a transport site. Use the same process to delete the destination tile. Done.
2. Ones with a non-functioning transport site on the destination tile. Can use the following method (posted at CFC over 3 years ago):
Create a transport site linking map 2 to an impassable terrain tile in map 3. Delete both sites. At the same (x, y) coordinates, create a site on map 1 that links to map 2. This will allow access to map 2. However, the original attributes of the map 2 site will not be cleared – it's still linking to the impassable location in map 3. Therefore, map 1 → 2 is allowed while 2 → 1 is not.
3. Ones linked to city tiles. Easy if you haven't already created your city. Just delete the transport site from the destination tile and build a city there. You can't build a transport site on a city. If a city is already present and it's too much hassle to remove and restore it, you've got some hex editing ahead of you. It might be simplest just to temporarily remove the city bit from the 2nd byte in the city's terrain tile entry and then create the transport site normally. One caveat: if the city is unoccupied, it's possible for units of another tribe to enter via the transport site - but the city won't change hands.
As indicated above, using the 'Change Terrain at Cursor' menu to delete a transport site doesn't properly clear it from the SAV file. To properly remove a transport site from your scenario, get a unit to pillage it.
Originally posted by AGROPOGON
Damn you too for keeping under a bushel basket the fact that you developed brilliant, useful, original answers to questions that everybody else didn't even think to ask until years later.
I haven't been hiding anything. There've been discussions about some of these things in Boco's El Aurens threads and also over at CFC with guys like Boco, Mercator, Yoshi, The Person, some Wobbegong character, et al.
Originally posted by AGORAPHOBIA
Having thoroughly browsed through your website, both admiring the extraordinary LOTR artwork and following up tech tips, may I inquire if and when your LOTR might see the light of day?
Someone asked me that earlier this year and I'm afraid to say I haven't touched it much since then - one playtest, tweaked some terrain, plus some brief testing of Elys' double events memory patch (which crashed and was subsequently pulled). I don't do much Civ2 these days. The mechanics of the scenario are complete. It's a process of refinement. The graphics are done, except for about a dozen placeholder units. The sounds are done. The Readme needs completion. Don't know when I'll resume work on it.
Originally posted by Catfish
Something you should consider when using the Count parameter and the Randomize modifier with CreateUnit: if a unit cannot be created, due to the presence of another tribe's unit/city or impassable/ocean terrain, the event action will abort at the first hurdle. For example, say you have a CreateUnit event where Count = 2, and the first 8 locations are vacant land squares and the last 2 are occupied by another tribe. There is a 20% chance that no units will be created at all and a 16% chance of just one spawning - you'd expect 4% and 32%, respectively, if things were working properly. If the Count value is large, you could put a significant dent in the AI's reinforcements by capturing only a few of its spawn cities.
I have found that the above is definitely true for units spawned for a human civ but maybe not for an AI one.
The situation was straightforward. The AI civ was due to receive a total of 38 spawned units in 6 cities [A, B, C, D, E, F]. All spawning events used both COUNT and RANDOMIZE. All unit types had the same sequence of spawning locations:
A
A
A
B
B
B
C
D
E
F
I was congratulating myself for having captured cities A, B, C, D and E. I was not expecting very many units to show up in F. WRONG . . . . as usual! The whole mob showed up in F. So much for the best-laid plans of men and mice.
Could someone doublecheck this? If true, it would greatly simplify setting up a reactive AI defence.
I think I see what's happening. The order of the blocked tiles in the locations list is significant - although you wouldn't expect it to be when using the Randomize modifier. I'll explain with some examples (see below). Say we want to distribute 100 units randomly over 10 tiles. If all tiles are clear, we can expect an average of 10 units per tile (Example 1). If we then block (with units, cities, ocean, or impassable terrain) the first 5 locations in the list, we'll get a distribution like Example 2. Whenever a location is blocked, the next one in the list will be selected, just like the event sans Randomize. As a result, all the units that would've spawned in the first 5 locations, had they been clear, will be shunted down to location 6. Similarly, if you block the first 9 locations (Example 3), all 100 units will spawn in location 10. Alternate states and you can get something like Example 4. However, when locations at the bottom of the list become blocked, you run into problems (and funnily enough that's how I tested it before - and that's how it affected my scenario). It is when there are no clear locations available in the list below any blocked tile that the whole CreateUnit event aborts. If you block the last 5 locations, then the distribution will look like Example 5. I guess I'll take another look at the location entries in WotR.
Great analysis. It shows how a developer can judiciously select the sequence of spawning locations so that players need to capture all spawning locations in order to prevent spawning.
By the way, this all started when Freddy the Great stood on the ramparts of Vienna, saw a vast, battle-crazed horde of Austrians approaching along the Budapest road, and asked the immortal question "WTF is going on?".
Excerpts from the Manual of the Civilization Fanatic :
Money can buy happiness, just raise the luxury rate to 50%.
Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of great empires.
Originally posted by AGRICOLA
It shows how a developer can judiciously select the sequence of spawning locations so that players need to capture all spawning locations in order to prevent spawning.
It shows that a player can hurt an opponent most by blocking the location at the bottom of the list and working upwards. The larger the count value, the greater the impact. It's up to the designer to prevent this - or even encourage it.
Tweet
Comment