BITTERFROST - Test of Time Version

[Catfish]

I think we've discovered the inspiration behind all of Curt's scenarios:

[Boco]

Make this part of the shield transparent, but add a masked area under it on your unit graphics.

'Sfunny. I was looking at something like that last night with units.bmp. Made the letter area the transparent purple-gray. Put a pink square in the unit icon. Worked great in the right orientation (Sprites would fix it for other orientations, right?).

The killer was with stacks. ToT staggers two keys on the map. The top one hides the bottom. That is until you make it transparent in the unit key. Please tell me I'm wrong.

Psst! The RR is a Mercator Projection, but I won't say whose coastline template I used.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Catfish
I think we've discovered the inspiration behind all of Curt's scenarios:

Damn right!

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Catfish

It's the same as yours! Or at least it was until I changed it a few moments ago. I tweaked the Native cities and lightened the civ colours for the Crusader Kingdom.

You're a serial tweaker!

(but a damned skilled one)

Originally posted by Catfish
In fact I'm stumped by most of the artistic decisions made by the ToT design team. S**t awful would be my crude, Australian description.

I would agree totally.

Originally posted by Catfish
- You left the receiver entries out of your "Hoard Chest" and "Fine Treasure" UnitKilled events.
- In the scenario intro (first turn), it says the Crusader Kingdom is in the south and the Bursar kingdom lies along the middle river. Is this from an old version? The Crusaders are in the NE and the Bursars are in the NW.
- I'd try halving the gold rewards for treasure and villages. I'm cashed up to the eyeballs.

I knew there was something fishy about the lack of dough from the hoards...

The new layout of the map corresponds with the world map for the Bitterfrost sequel...

I will say no more!

Originally posted by Catfish

- Irene the Maiden? Next there'll be Charlotte the Harlot.

What can I say?
I'm caught somewhere in time!

(the mid-1980's most likely)

Originally posted by Catfish
I've put cities.bmp and units.bmp (modified the village unit and changed the unit key) in the download. I've also made spelling and grammar corrections in events.txt, bitter1.txt and advice.txt. In case you're wondering about SpriteGen and its effects, I've included the files necessary to hide the health bar for the village and treasure units. These are static.spr, bitter1.scn (with the SPR override disabled) and rules.txt (with the SPR override disabled for said units).

You've done me proud!
These changes will really make the scenario shine.

That's a great many virtual beers I owe you, Catfish!

I have to admit, working with ToT again is great, I had forgot how many scenario options this program has got!

[Catfish]

More beta comments:

- There is no pollution in the scenario, yet there are pollution-specific city improvements. The pollution icon has not been blanked in icons.bmp, either – in fact you've made a custom one, which suggests a change of mind at some point in time.
- I'm not sure the walls terrain is of benefit to city defenders. Besiegers tend to sit outside cities (on the wall), thereby gaining a +100% defensive bonus. Since the movement cost is already 3, what about trying a defensive penalty of -50%, ie, defence value of 1? Stupidly, low defence terrain is still called "Normal" in the Civilopedia, so there'd need to be some other indication of the difference (Describe.txt?). I'd wager this would make these cities more difficult to capture, especially if there are few roads in the area. Just a thought.
- Need to remove the Settlers and Supermarket references for @NEWFARMLAND in game.txt. Should be Workers and Farmer Guild, respectively. Check other game.txt messages while you're at it.
- The Civilopedia looks a bit odd when the city improvements inherit the default **imp.bmp graphics from the Original game. Rather than adding a load of large improvement graphics to the scenario files, an idea might be to write a batch file that copies selected improvements from the Fantasy and, if renumbering is required, Original game directories into Bitterfrost's. Just run it on installation.
- Those cyan numbers (1-4) in the river mouth tiles (terrain2.bmp) are sometimes visible in the city screen. When you click on the city tile (in the city screen), the area below the diamond, for those tiles which lie within the city radius, is no longer covered by those tiles outside the city radius. This is illustrated in the attachment where I coloured the area below the diamond yellow for all terrain types. The screenshot shows before and after clicking on the city tile. To remedy this, I'd wipe those numbers out with magenta – save me posting new ones (sigh, gotta go update my site, too).

This is actually a bug, of sorts. Clicking on the city tile redistributes your workers within the city radius, according to the AI's efficiency model. This also requires a screen refreshment of these tiles. However, you see the area below the diamond (in fact anywhere where it overlaps), because the game fails to refresh the outer tiles.

Originally posted by Boco
Psst! The RR is a Mercator Projection, but I won't say whose coastline template I used.

Ha!

[Catfish]

Originally posted by curtsibling
You're a serial tweaker!

It's a disease. There's more in my last post. Nearly a simultaneous posting - Apolyton rejected my attachment because it was 802 pixels wide (the limit is apparently 800).

Those liches of yours aren't also inspired by one Eddie the 'Ed, are they?

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by curtsibling

What can I say?
I'm caught somewhere in time!

(the mid-1980's most likely)

At least those years were not wasted...

I must admit you're not the only one: I actually feel like we're kind of Blood-Brothers...
(See, I did evolve a bit: this title belongs to the current century! )

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Boco
The killer was with stacks. ToT staggers two keys on the map. The top one hides the bottom. That is until you make it transparent in the unit key. Please tell me I'm wrong.

I'll look into it...

Psst! The RR is a Mercator Projection, but I won't say whose coastline template I used.

Originally posted by Catfish
Ha!

*cough*

Stop threadjacking Curt's thread!

[curtsibling]

@Catfish:
I'll have a look at fixing those concerns, thanks for bringing them to my attention!

@Cyrion:
LOL!
This thread is beyond a New Frontier!

@Mercator:
Worry not, all this info is of great interest to me, discuss away!

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Catfish
- Irene the Maiden? Next there'll be Charlotte the Harlot.

Originally posted by Cyrion
Too bad you didn't post at 23:58...

Originally posted by curtsibling
Well spotted, you 'Troopers!'

Originally posted by curtsibling
I'm caught somewhere in time!

Originally posted by Cyrion
At least those years were not wasted...

I must admit you're not the only one: I actually feel like we're kind of Blood-Brothers...

Originally posted by curtsibling
This thread is beyond a New Frontier!

It seems I've started an avalanche. (Runs to the hills )

[curtsibling]

And it will continue From here to Eternity!

*ponders about making an Iron Maiden scenario*

[Catfish]

More play-testing comments (this will probably be the last for a while):

- As the Crusader Kingdom, I managed to score the "Distrust for Crusaders" tech from the Coven. This, of course, is the obsolescence tech for all the Crusader units. To tighten up tech trading/stealing and unit production, I'd make use of Civilize2/Leaders2 and the "tribe may build mask" in the Advanced Units Fields. Now that you've already created your scenario .sav game, it will be a time-consuming task adding modified Civilize2 and Leaders2 data to the scenario, although not too difficult – you've just got to isolate the restricted techs, and write an event for each one and the relevant civ/s. See this article.
- You need to change the partisan sound – it's currently the default gunfire (for skeletons!).
- The Zatarn lack the "Town Defence" (Bro) tech required to produce their main line of infantry units. As a result, in my game, they were doomed from the start.
- Bleakdale, Doomridden and Var'kutia are all producing Workers on the first turn of the game, instead of their unique units.
- Is there meant to be a fortress at 119,109? I got a nice freebie there.
- You have two techs called Monotheism; one is actually its own prerequisite (Las).
- It seems odd to me that the Bursars (merchants) get the prerequisite tech for the cleric and the Crusader Kingdom gets the prereq for the hired thief and not vice versa – both units have the diplomat role.

I played a game as the Crusader Kingdom through to the end at King (default) level. Like you, I wondered why nothing happened when I destroyed treasure units. I searched the events file and found the incomplete entries. These I repaired; then I ran delevent.exe and continued playing. As a result, I was dripping with gold – so I guess the outcome of the test was somewhat marred. Taxes were set to 0 – I didn't bother trading. Units and improvements were frequently rush-built. Science was maxed out. I bribed or killed just about every hero on the map – these then became the spearheads of all my attacks. I required no siege – paladins, heroes and thieves were all I used. In the end I cleaned up pretty comprehensively. The hapless Zatarn were wiped out by barbarians pretty early in the game and the Ghostkin were ineffective.

The Harpies are buggered (at least for the AI). They've barely got any room to expand, being cornered by Ancients, Bursars, Zatarn and barbarians. Usually they are overwhelmed by the Zatarn (expanding very aggressively with "Town Defence" – my observation in Cheat Mode with no human player). The Bursars frequently are eliminated by the Witchkin, which in turn, are well protected to the SE by rugged terrain. The Crusaders are also very well protected by terrain, having only to deal with barbarians in the early part of the game. The Ghostkin – well they're just admiring the nice 15-bit countryside.

If you want the Ghostkin to have an influential role in the game, they need to be strengthened. As it stands, they are vastly underpowered. In my game, I waltzed into Doomridden with one veteran hero unit, took out the Lich King in the city and the undead were history. Give him better stats for starters. In fact, some of the other undead units could do with a boost as well. Yes, they're cheap. Yes, they get freebies (events). However, most couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. They need to be tweaked until the balance is right.

The Ghostkin also have no settler unit, currently relying largely on "reanimated units" (via events) at Doomridden for many of their troops. Therefore, consider giving them a few more cities at the start. Failing that, give them some barbarian ones to capture nearby. Currently, they've got one city stuck in the middle of nowhere. They need to be pushing into the rest of the map in force. By the time the human player gets around to dealing with them (assuming they're AI), their meagre forces are scattered around an empty SE of the island and they're easy pickings. If they're allowed to get a foothold on the edge of another civ, then perhaps they can capture the cities required to produce more units. Maybe this will produce a snowball effect, with many units also being "reanimated" at Doomridden. This remains to be seen.

BTW, I noticed that you're using the Anybody parameter for your "reanimation" events. Almost certainly the first losses will come courtesy of the barbarians. You've got more events space. Why don't you write a separate UnitKilled event for each civ?

Have you considered giving the spectre the "invisible until attack" flag in the Advanced Units section? I think the cheating AI is unaffected by this ability, but the human isn't.

To assist the survival of the Harpies, westward extension of that section of the island by half a dozen or so tiles might be an option. Protect their capital with some mountains or put it on a small island or peninsula. It's very vulnerable at the moment.

The minimum bribe amount needs to be lifted for hero units. Never once did the AI try to bribe any of my heroes. It was all one-way traffic and I gained a small army of super units at little cost. They're very affordable even without all of my bonus cash. It's possible they're overpowered - try making them more difficult to obtain before doctoring the stats, though.

There's a small strip of land to the south of the main island. It can become extremely congested with Urzit Native barbarians. I'd suggest changing 85,129 from ocean to thawland. This creates a second connection to the mainland (providing an outlet for the barbarians) and still allows the passage of ships.

Consider banning the Construction tech. Use a spare (you've got that second Monotheism) and call it Construction. The mass fortress building by the AI is a blight on the landscape, and usually only ever benefits sieges by the human player.

Finally, I conducted a little experiment with fertility values, using MapCopy and a little hex editing. I gave richland the same fertility values as thawland and hearthland (grassland/plains), so that the AI would be encouraged to build. Mostly this affects the Zatarn and the Bursars. You can basically make any terrain type fertile if you wish. I've attached the .scn file, if you want to take a look. It also includes the following changes:

- tile 85,129 changed to thawland.
- Zatarn given the Town Defence tech.
- Cities are producing correct units in the first turn.
- Fortress added to 119,109.

[curtsibling]

Good pointers, Catfish!

I'm at Uni right now, but as soon as I get home, I will address these bugs.

The forbidden techs are of the most concern, I think I may have forgotten to make them no,no preqs.

Also the game.txt is now fixed.

I look forward to grabbing this updated scn file.

Many thanks, mate!

[Catfish]

Originally posted by curtsibling
The forbidden techs are of the most concern, I think I may have forgotten to make them no,no preqs.

Yeah, all of the "Distrust" techs are "no,nil" and should be "no,no", but I don't know about the rest. There may be some researchable techs that require restriction via Civilise2/Leaders2.

[curtsibling]

I'm assuming everything that works in MGE will work too in ToT.

These bugs are a product of the transfer between the two formats...

Damn!

Why didn't Microprose make the two Civ2s more compatible?