Questions about Buteo fliers and huts (fantasy game)

[tobyr]

(1) Why do goody huts in the clouds never (I think) yield nomads, cities or mercenaries to te buteo? (You DO get advances galore.)

(2) Why can't buteo fliers open goody huts on the surface? The cosmic rules.txt section says that helicopters can open huts. Aren't helicopters "fliers with range zero", which is what hawkmen, eagles (etc) are? How can the game tell they are not REALLY helicopters?

These questions have two edges -- literally how do the rules make this happen, and how would i change the rules to make things different in a scenario -- and, WAS THIS REALLY INTENDED, to be fair to the buteo? it's quite frustrating getting them going with these hut limitations, though it certainly can be done.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[William Keenan]

(1a) Settlers (nomads) are not allowed on the sky or undersea maps. See the @UNITS_ADVANCED section of the rules.txt.
(1b) Prior to the discovery of the Weaponry tech the odds of getting a mercenary from a goody hut on the sky map are 1/3 the chance that they would be on map 0. If a mercenary is recieved it will be a B Halkman. After the discovery of Weaponry there is no chance of getting a mercenary from a goody hut on the sky map.
Are you curious how I know this? http://sleague.apolyton.net/Guides/sldt_barbtechs.shtml .

(2) Good question. I'd like to know too.

[Miner]

The answer to 2)has been mentioned elsewhere on this forum although I cannot remember which thread, feel free to trawl.

Each map has a number indicating wether it is a "land" map, "sea" map, "air" map etc.
If the map is an "air" map then helicopters/birdmen whatever can open huts.
If the map is a normal Civ2 "land" map then the huts just disappear. These numbers are
in a text file and so could be altered, although which file it is I don't know and wether this will have consequences on the AI I don't know.

[John Possidente]

We went out of our way to add this. In early versions of the fantasy game, it was a balance problem; the Buteo units could fly around with their big movement allowances and gather up all the huts from both the cloud and surface worlds before anyone else had a chance. It gave them a big advantage and made the game less fun. So we decided to let them have their cloud huts, but take away their ability to swoop down and collect from the surface.