Sengoku Jidai v3 ToT

[fairline]

Originally posted by Timoleon
Fine. I got transferred back to Athens recently.
I'm on leave, going to Prague tomorrow.

Prague's great - you'll love it. It was snow-covered when I went which made it look fantastic

Stupid "Monday car" Golf's engine died on me finally.
I d'rather get a cheap FIAT or a Hunday next time VW sucks in every possible way,in terms of engineering.Overengineered dysfunction.

German technology my brass
A Toyota would be a wise choice.

Go for the Toyota. Not the Hyundai

Great graphics,btw.

Thanks mate

[fairline]

Originally posted by Boco
Tres bien, JusteLigne! Ise appears to be in for a charming visitor!

Mercy mon amy

Wasn't this scenario a winner or runner-up for a SL contest?

Yep, I think Koby won it. DV was penalised as the theme of the SDC was the age of colonialism and naval warfare IIRC. Would have easily won if the theme had been feudal Japan!

us behavior may run in the family. I think this sickness was more a case of soon-to-be Boco-ette wreaking havoc on Mom's hormone balance.

Hey Congrats Dave! When's the little blighter due?

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Boco
I think this sickness was more a case of soon-to-be Boco-ette wreaking havoc on Mom's hormone balance.

Congratulations.

[AGRICOLA]

Bump & back to on-topic.

I downloaded both the MGE (for the Readme) and TOT versions of the scen. The TOT version looks excellent after fairline's conversion and significant updating by him and others. I'm about to start playing it . . . . after some major surgery to unit movements.

At the risk of getting dumped on from great heights by all and sundry (fortunately cows can't fly ), here are my objections and the fix I'm implementing.

1. There appears to be a disconnect between:
- 1 year turns
- a huge 223 x 249 map where the actual size of squares is only 6.5km x 6.5km
- typical ground unit cross-country movements ranging from 1 - 2 squares per turn (6.5-13 km per year )
- a road movement multiplier of 9 that produces reasonable ground unit movement of 9-18 squares per turn (60-120 km) but results in unrealistically small maximum naval unit Mv of only 12 squares (90 km) per year. In the 1500's, the Japanese may not have been the world's greatest seafarers but they certainly were not complete landlubbers either.

2. I made the following changes:
- road movement multiplier = 2
- ground unit Mv 4 for foot sloggers and Mv 9 for cavalry
- naval Mv 36 for transports and 42 for warships
- all terrains have a move cost = 1
Japan's forests are not jungle that one has to cut one's way through and its mountains are not the Himalayas.


Comments & suggestions?

[McMonkey]

We have been playing a miltiplayer game of Sengoku Jidai for some time at Civ Webring for some time so it will be interesting to see what improvements you make. I did make a modified version called Sengoku Jidai Redux which was designed as a multiplayer friendly version and had the following changes:

CHANGES:

The whole map is revealed
I can see no reason for having the map covered up. The Clans would have known the geography of Japan by this date.

All cities have Castles
This is mainly done to avoid border cities being eradicated by constant warfare.
Castles cost 0 gold
If a Castle is destroyed when a city is captured it can be quickly rebuilt.

Faster ships and traders
This is to promote trade in the multiplayer game. As the ground units move so quickly it seems to make sense.

Extra forts
This defines territory borders and, IMHO, allows for more mobile operations in a non-stackable game.

More Units
Each nation has at least 40 extra units, including ships and Peasants. This should allow Daimyos to be used from turn one as there are no more easy targets. I hope it will lead to a more interesting gameplay as everyone can divise an offensive strategy from turn one without leaving their cities dangerously weak.



-------

We haven't played this multiplayer version yet so I could still make more changes. I did think about making the whole landmass stackable. I also thought that the low move rate/high road multiplier made the rest of the map almost unusable and restricted operations to the road and river network. Any changes that allow more tactical use of terrain is good in my book.

I really like Sengoku Jidai, but it feels a bit like an unfinished piece of work. I think it deserves a bit of an update to incorporate some up to date ideas. Also with ToT the event problems could be fixed.

[AGRICOLA]

It seems that we are tracking on the need for modifications to Sengoku Jidai v3 ToT.

The biggest problem is definitely the road movement multiplier = 9. I don't see why the developer uses it because with a RMM = 2 one can easily duplicate all the ground unit movements in the download.

Speaking of downloads, I tried and failed to download your Redux. I was interested in the Rules file to see if I can adopt or adapt some of the changes that you have made. Any chance of you e-mailing it to me or attaching it to a post?


The most contentious of the change I've made is probably the move cost of 1 for all terrain types.

As I see it, CIVII was designed for play on maps where the size of cells is measured in hundreds of kilometers. For example, if one stays within the 10k cell limit for a map, one can draw a pretty fair map of a round world on a 50x200 map. On such a map 100 corner to corner cells encircle the world at the equator. The circumference of earth is ~40,000 km. Consequently, the E-W dimension of cells is 400km.

Examples of this are the DISCOVER scen that is bundled with MGE and has 530km x 340km cells and curtsibling's DICTATOR (by far the best, and largest, world map that I have encountered) that has 310km x 210km cells.

With such large cells or cells that have dimensions of tens of km, I have no problem with units requiring a year to traverse a single mountain or forest cell. But I do have problems with units needing a year to cross a 6.5km x 6.5 km cell, no matter what the topography or vegetation. Units will be slowed down a bit but not held up for a year. That is my reasoning for making the move cost = 1 for all terrain types in Sengoku Jidai. It really doesn't make all that much difference because as you point out, there is a complete road system


You may want to make the following changes to the downloaded Game file. The first two changes improve popups. The third change is to correct a line that is needed for TOT but is missing in @HOCKTHIS.

@PRODUCTION
@title=What shall we build in %STRING0?
@width=550
@listbox
@button=Auto
@button=Help


@REPORTFOREIGN
@width=800
@title=Foreign Minister
@listbox=7
@button=Check Intelligence
@button=Send Emissary
Sire, our power is %STRING0 and our reputation is %STRING1.


@HOCKTHIS
@title=Sell City Improvement
Do you want to sell your %STRING0 for %NUMBER0 koku?

Sell it.
Sell %STRING0 from all cities for %NUMBER1 koku.
Never mind.

[McMonkey]

Just tested the SL download and it was working fine for me. I e-mailed you the zipped up file anyway

I see your logic about movement speeds, but I think mountains and swamps should have a higher move cost to represent their barrier effect. If an army can bypass the enemies defenses by making a slow and arduous slog over a mountain range or through a swamp then good on them. To just allow them to zip through this hard terrain may be feasible but I think it would detract from the game play side of things.

A lot of things in Civ2 are compromises between realism and game play. I agree we should always be looking for innovative ways to improve things and not just follow what has come before because it is traditional. I guess the only way to find out is to try it.

[AGRICOLA]

Thanks for the file.



This scen has serious problems.

I've played 20 turns, and encountered the following difficulties:

1. Events needs NOSCHISM

@IF
NOSCHISM
DEFENDER=ANYBODY
@THEN
@ENDIF

When I captured the Hojo capital, the clan split in half. One half was the "Persians".


2. I cannot tell for sure whether this is on purpose or is an error in Rules.

Samurai Archer I, Exp, 0, 9.,0, 2a,3d, 1h,1f, 4,0, 0, nil, 000000001000000
Samurai Archer II, Fli, 0, 9.,0, 3a,4d, 1h,1f, 4,0, 0, Exp, 000000001000000
Samurai Archer III, nil, 0, 9.,0, 4a,5d, 1h,1f, 4,0, 0, Fli, 000000001000000

This is the normal pattern of prerequisites and expiry techs for all but one set of I, II, III units. Discovery of the tech for the next higher level units makes the preceding lower level units obsolete and unbuildable.

The sole exception is the following. If a player discovers the prerequisite Exp tech for Samurai Archers II, Cavalry Archers I become obsolete and unbuildable. To match the pattern that exists elsewhere I Rules, the obsolescence tech for Cavalry Archers should probably be Hor.

Cavalry Archers I, Exp, 0, 18.,0, 2a,3d, 2h,2f, 9,0, 1, FP, 000000001000010
Cavalry Archers II, Lab, 0, 18.,0, 3a,4d, 2h,2f, 9,0, 0, Hor, 000000001000010
Cavalry Archers III, nil, 0, 18.,0, 4a,5d, 2h,2f, 9,0, 0, Lab, 000000001000010

I actually encountered this dead end when I researched Samurai Archers II and then tried to but could not research Cavalry Archers I. Perhaps someone can figure out what the developer intended.


There are also some other "interesting" items in Rules, such as:

No-Dachi Samurai I, CA, 0, 9.,0, 5a,2d, 1h,2f, 5,0, 0, CA, 000000000000000


3. I am starting to doubt whether the MGE version of this scen was ever seriously playtested. The following problem occurs if the AI plays the ODA clan in the MGE original (either in a single or multiplayer game) as well as in the TOT conversion.

On turn 20, I captured my first ODA clan city. Nothing unusual in that except that I captured 4548 koku, 1,500 more koku than I had earned from all sources in the first 19 turns of the scen. The number was so ridiculously high that I investigeted the financial situation of all clans.

On turn 20, all clans had normal incomes and, excepting the ODA, had 30-644 koku in their treasuries. The ODA had 39,000+ in their strongboxes. There is nothing in Events to account for this amount of treasure. So, I checked the saves for the first 8 turns and found the following:

TURN KOKU
1 - 500
2 - 569
3 - 6,582
4 - 12,802
5 - 22,108
6 - 31,354
7 - 39,185
8 - 39,339

As I said, this happens only if ODA is an AI clan. If a human plays ODA in either a single or multiple player game, the above does not happen.

Very reluctantly I would guess that the MGE .scn file has been corrupted somehow.



MY GAME

I made the following changes.

When I compared the scen map of Japan to a map from an atlas, it is clear that the map is excellent and accurately drawn. However, from the atlas, it does appear that the land at the top of the map is part of Hokkaido and that there should be an E-W sea passage between Honshu and Hokkaido. I changed cell [216,0] to ocean so that it is possible to circumnavigate Honshu.

In Rules, I settled on road multiplier = 1. This let me duplicate the road movements in the original as well as pick sea movements appropriate to the scale of the map. Also, I implemented your suggestion of different move costs for different terrains. I've attached a copy of the Rules that I'm playing with.

I may have been a bit generous with ship Mv.

[McMonkey]

I have a map in progress from a while back of Japan. It is big but nowhere as big as the one in the game. I was thinking about a Shogun scenario which would include Korea as a playable nation. However the map would be a good scale for a modified version of Sengoku Jidai and would solve a lot of the movement issues. Just throwing this idea out there.

[Catfish]

@AGRICOLA:
I converted this scenario to ToT a few years back and uploaded it to CFC last year. I fixed the game.txt issues you listed, however, as I've never played the scenario, I never encountered the problems you listed in your last post.

1. Events needs NOSCHISM

I'll add that.

2. I cannot tell for sure whether this is on purpose or is an error in Rules...

...I actually encountered this dead end when I researched Samurai Archers II and then tried to but could not research Cavalry Archers I. Perhaps someone can figure out what the developer intended.

I'll go with typo.

There are also some other "interesting" items in Rules, such as:

No-Dachi Samurai I, CA, 0, 9.,0, 5a,2d, 1h,2f, 5,0, 0, CA, 000000000000000

Same again.

On turn 20, all clans had normal incomes and, excepting the ODA, had 30-644 koku in their treasuries. The ODA had 39,000+ in their strongboxes. There is nothing in Events to account for this amount of treasure. So, I checked the saves for the first 8 turns and found the following:

TURN KOKU
1 - 500
2 - 569
3 - 6,582
4 - 12,802
5 - 22,108
6 - 31,354
7 - 39,185
8 - 39,339

As I said, this happens only if ODA is an AI clan. If a human plays ODA in either a single or multiple player game, the above does not happen.

I get the same.

* Oda tends to bribe A LOT when in singleplayer.

Still not sure what does this. Probably has something to do with zero cost units.

It does appear to be the result of the way the AI handles building zero (128) cost units. It might be better to simply change the cost of the P Yari Ashigaru to 10 shields (the standard minimum). It looks like the Imperial Guard and the Daimyo were given the same cost to increase their bribe amount to 15 000 gold. In the ToT version, the same could be achieved by setting a minimum bribe in the Advanced Units table. That would remove the disband bug.

[AGRICOLA]

@Catfish

Thank you for taking the time to check out the trouble spots and your explanations of probable causes.

I have already corrected the probable typos and the other simple problems.

I will also make the changes you suggest.

It might be better to simply change the cost of the P Yari Ashigaru to 10 shields (the standard minimum). It looks like the Imperial Guard and the Daimyo were given the same cost to increase their bribe amount to 15 000 gold. In the ToT version, the same could be achieved by setting a minimum bribe in the Advanced Units table. That would remove the disband bug.

Creating and maintaining a huge ODA clan treasury may enable them to bribe at will but is actually self-defeating. Because of its zero cost, the ODA build only P Yari Ashigaru, a unit that has A/D=2/2 and is next to useless for defending cities against more powerful units. Capturing their cities is child's play, especially the two shoreline ones whose size is not decreased by successful warship attacks. Once taken, the cities can be left ungarrisoned in the hope that the ODA will retake them so that the process can be repeated. In a scen with very limited income, a player gaining repeated windfalls of 4000+ kokku is a recipe for destroying the balance of the scen. It is too good a scen for that.

Thanks once more for your excellent advice.

[Catfish]

Thank you for taking the time to check out the trouble spots and your explanations of probable causes.

Thanks for posting the bugs. I can apply fixes to the version I uploaded.

Creating and maintaining a huge ODA clan treasury may enable them to bribe at will but is actually self-defeating. Because of its zero cost, the ODA build only P Yari Ashigaru, a unit that has A/D=2/2 and is next to useless for defending cities against more powerful units. Capturing their cities is child's play, especially the two shoreline ones whose size is not decreased by successful warship attacks. Once taken, the cities can be left ungarrisoned in the hope that the ODA will retake them so that the process can be repeated. In a scen with very limited income, a player gaining repeated windfalls of 4000+ kokku is a recipe for destroying the balance of the scen. It is too good a scen for that.

Yeah, I'd change the cost of P Yari Ashigaru to 1 and test the revised capability of the Oda clan in AI hands. Can't have the human player using AI cities like ATMs.

It looks like the Imperial Guard and the Daimyo were given the same cost to increase their bribe amount to 15 000 gold.

Looking at it again, I'm not quite sure why the Imperial Guard is given a cost of 128; they cannot be built and the only ones I can see are located in the Barbarian city of Yamashiro at the start of the scenario (as the Readme states). No additional units are created by events and they cannot move, so none of them can be bribed individually. However, they've been assigned the 'ignore walls' and 'ignore ZOC' flags, suggesting that perhaps they were mobile in an earlier version.

[Cyrion]

@Catfish
...Capturing their cities is child's play, especially the two shoreline ones whose size is not decreased by successful warship attacks. Once taken, the cities can be left ungarrisoned in the hope that the ODA will retake them so that the process can be repeated. ...

Typical example of Agri's not conventional tactics!

I always wonder how you find them...