Aargh, unique units. . .

[Michael Daumen]

Has anyone had success in restricting units with the same prereq to specific nations (say for example, the Vikings get a longship and the Romans a trireme with Mapmaking)? It doesn't seem to work unless the prereq is also restricted. But what's the point? I could do this the old way without much difficulties.

[William Keenan]

Yeah I have used it and it has worked fine for me. Would you like to send me the rules.txt

[Bizmut]

The way (at least it works for me) is to edit the RULES.TXT file in the section @UNITS_ADVANCED (near the end of the file), each of those line is the continuation of each line in @UNITS section...
The first 8 digit number is the availability of that unit to each tribe COLOR...
Those colors are 8 for the first digit and 0 (Barbarian) for the last digit...
Or more simply 876543210....
If any of those digit is set to one(1), every tribe with the relative color will be able to build that unit type, if it's set to zero(0), every tribe with the relative color WON'T be able to build that unit type...

Bismuth

[Michael Daumen]

Wm, if you wouldn't mind . . .

To test how it worked I changed the settlers flag (but left the prerequisite nil), and restricted it to one civ. All the other were still able to make them. So I thought, OK, set the prereq to Pottery and try it - same result.

[Bizmut]

Then the problem MUST be somewhere else...

Are you editing the right Rules.txt file?
There are THREE of them:
one in ExtendedOriginal directory
one in Original directory
one in Civ2's root directory (same directory as civ2.exe)

The good directory is the Original directory... (unless you know otherwise obviously )

Civ2's root directory isn't used (I beleive) it's just staying there has a 'ghost' from ancient Civ2 versions...

Bismuth

[William Keenan]

I have found that ToT does not reload changes to the rules.txt unless you recreate .scn file. Like FW did with events, except there is no delevent.exe program to fix it.

Before you do anything else recreate a new scenario file with your altered rules.txt from the base game. If the new game works correctly with the altered rules.txt then you know that the problem is that the file is embedded.

Let me know what happens, Michael.

Bizmut ... good advice, but Michael is much to experienced to make newbie mistakes like that.

[Michael Daumen]

So just reloading a saved game won't do the trick? That's too bad, since loading a scenario every time advances city production, light bulb acquisition, et c.

But thanks for the tip - I'll try it.

PS Bismuth, if I have the rules.txt file in my scenario folder, that's the one the scenario will use, right?

. . . . time passes . . . .

OK, I saved my current template into a scenario, then tried out the scenario. None of the advanced unit flags work at all. How did the file get embedded? How do I get it unembedded? Why do some of the changes to rules.txt I make (ie basic unit stats, tech tree) still work?

[This message has been edited by Michael Daumen (edited January 05, 2000).]

[DarthVeda]

If you can't get units to be built by a specific civilization, realize that the limiters are NOT I repeat NOT in RPN

00000000

First is Barbarian
The last is one of the Civs (check leaders)

John was on crack when he wrote that they were in RPN in the strategy guide

Otherwise it should work. Any other changes (like unit stats and names) will be loaded up when you reload your scenario. (Load as savegame... I mean, then save as scenario)

And as far as I know, the old delevents.exe file works on ToT save games. (At least it seems to).

[Michael Daumen]

Nope. I changed all the flags for good measure and they still didn't work (right now I'm primarily dealing with the impassable terrain override).

[Michael Daumen]

Same thing for the tribe limiters.

Wow, looks like Dracon is more frustrated than me. His Aargh is even longer.
[This message has been edited by Michael Daumen (edited January 06, 2000).]

[John Possidente]

Examine what Mick did in the Midgard & Fantasy games with the technology "Beast Dominion" and the units linked to it. That might help.

(Good crack, too, BTW. )

[Miner]

Errr, I don't know if this is related, but after I save a (ToT) scenario and then edit rules.txt the changes don't appear to be picked up by the scenario!

[DarthVeda]

Hmmm. I could always get the unit stats and stuff to change. The only stuff that acted funny was the tech limiters.

John, why is ToT being so indiscriminate with what works and what doesn't? It doesn't make any sense

[William Keenan]

Unlike previous versions of civ it seems ToT does not reload the rules.txt when the games is loaded. John, could we get a utility program similar to delevent.exe that removes the embedded rules.txt in ToT saved games?

[John Possidente]

This is odd, because during development I changed things all the time and never had to re-create the scenario to get files to reload. Let me ask Mick if he ever ran into this and what he did to get around it.

Unfortunately, the chances of getting the in-house programmers back onto this now are pretty slim. They're deep into their next projects. (It has been nearly six months, after all, and if we don't jump right on the next thing, the next thing will take too long to release.)