Controlling the Robot

[Peter Triggs]

OK, I think I've got possibly a great idea for diplomatic alliances but I need help with it. You know how if you're at war with someone, your ally will join in. But it seems to me that more often than not they just get in the way. So, we were talking about \attach, \detach, and the corresponding functions AttachRobot and DetachRobot the other day and it occured to me that maybe it's possible to use these functions to let you take control of your allied civ when you're at war with a joint enemy. You get to be 'Commander in Chief' of the allied armies. But I haven't had any luck with these functions so far. Anybody got any ideas how to implement this?

[Locutus]

Here's a very relevant excerpt from the Human-human diplomacy thread that IW just bumped int he General forum (Dale was trying to bring Hotseat back through SLIC, not realizing that Hotseat was already possible):

Dale's post:

Unfortunately, my idea didn't come off. It centered around the fact you can turn the AI off for a civ, and back on. On the weekend I gave it a go. What I did was prompt on the first turn "Is this player a hotseat player?" with a yes/no selection. If yes I would turn the AI off for that civ. Then for each turn I checked that flag to see if it was 1 (hum) or 0 (ai). If '1' then I would run a routine which popped up a msg "Player X's turn" and yeah. I tried it to limited success. It did actually stop on player 2's turn, pop up the notification of that turn, and then open up the screen for me. The only problem I found was that I couldn't do anything. It was like normally trying to look at the AI's units/cities. Only the info from spies or terrain info. There must be another flag to set, my thoughts run along the IsHumanPlayer settings. You know how ya check IsHumanPlayer(g.player)? Maybe it's related to that but can't find anything on what the actual FLAG is.

My response:

I figured that you might be looking into that, never gave that option much of a chance myself. In CtP1 those Attach- and DetachRobot funtions were used in the tutorial to disable the AI until the human player was ready for it. I can't imagine any way of using it to change control of the human player to another civ. As far as I can tell, the only option that even has the slightest chance of succeeding (though I still find it unlikely), is to not only detach the AI, but also attach an AI to the current civ of the human player, that might force the human into the only non-AI controlled civ. If that doesn't work, I don't think it's possible at all to make the human change civ (other than through the cheat menu). If you ask me, the only use for those functions is in scenarios: e.g. one might make a colonization scenario and disable all Native American civs until the Europeans actually land to prevent FE the Aztecs from taking over the entire American continent before Europeans can even get there.

I hope I'm wrong but I'm afraid what you want is simply not possible...

[The Big Mc]

it might be me here but I think you are all going around this the wrong way instead of just un attaching the robot you may just want to take over the civ. keep the cites and units in an array or to and at the end of the war just rebuild the civ from the stored components and if any units have merged to make an army with a few of your units just pull them back to there city.then just put in a couple of variables and values which will allow the other civ to quit the war when it wants to.

[Immortal Wombat]

1-Will you be my ally?
2-Yes
1-Thanks
1-Go to war with player 3
2-Ok
1-Wahoo, more units
*disband, disband, disband*
*position home troops*
*set sliders to max unhappiness, PW to 100%*
*un-ally*
*attack former, and now defenceless ally*

[The Big Mc]

ha ha

that's were some slic would come in to stop you crossing the borders with to many troops and a bit more to stop you disbanding there units show a bit of vision please