Some Questions

[Giant Squid]

1. I am making a scenario where the events require a certain unit to be able to paradrop. It only has to paradrop once in the game, but it's very important that it be able to do so. For the entire rest of the game, I want it to function like a normal attacking unit. However, no matter what I do with the role number, it stays in the city and defends. For some reason it works fine without the paradrop ability. Any suggestions?

2. This scenario is set in ancient times, and I want some of my units to be able to throw spears and arrows. I have given them "ability to carry air units" and have created some spear units on the square where they start which are air units of range 1. My hope was that the spear units would always land on the soldier unit and refuel until the soldier got near an enemy, in which case the spear would attack on a suicide mission. Unfortunately, this doesn't work when the computer uses them. The spear units just sit in the same place constantly and never run out of fuel. Meantime, the soldier's moved far away, so we have a spear sitting in the middle of nowhere. What can I do to make the game understand my system?

[techumseh]

GS, bad news I'm afraid. 1)Units with the para flag will go to a city and stay there, moving only by paradropping into an empty enemy city within range. 2)Land units with the aircraft carrier flag will not carry air units with them, as sea units with the flag will. And the AI has NO idea whatsoever about moving the air units to nearby land units with the flag. Sorry.

[WarVoid]

The scenario god speaks the truth.


Tho you could make airbases into weapons huts and load them up with spears and arrows. THEN the AI will move them. Make sure the missile flag is toggled for them tho.

[Kull]

The only way out of this bind is to create a "negative universe" scenario. Ocean is land and vice versa. I've seen something similar done in "ocean world" scenarios (Tecumseh's "Millenium 4" is a great example), but those continue to use the land terrain as the scene of the action. This would truly do the reverse. Some general coments on this type of scenario:

- The biggest problem is that you really only have one type of terrain available.
- And there won't be roads, railways, and most land improvement.
- You WOULD have "land" units (true subs) capable of carrying and using "spears" and "arrows".
- Cities won't be a problem since they would exist on size-one islands, and you could edit the ocean specials to look like fields, outlying villages, or factories.
- Your map could also contain hills, mountains, and forests that would be true land squares and thus inacessible to the "naval" units.
- If the ocean is portrayed as grassland, this would ensure that the cavalry and wheeled vehicles (as naval units) would have to stay in the lowlands where they belong.
- Give the helicopter capability to "multifunction" units. This lets these units operate on ALL types of terrain.
- Since Air and Naval units can't capture cities, some type of superparatrooper would have to be available. The AI will build it if you make it the default defensive unit.
- Theoretically you could use various air units too, but then your "spear carriers" would all have to be submarines instead of aircraft carriers.

Some interesting possibilities here, but probably only workable with a tactical type scenario. If you're planning on an empire-building R&D fest, this probably wouldn't work very well.

[Kull]

A few more thoughts:

1) If you ditch the air units, you could also do some pretty wild things with the "ocean". (The paratroopers would also now have to be "zero-move".....not sure if the AI would still use them properly in that case.)

2) "Trading Ships" (caravans) would now actually work!

3) "Sea Lanes" would become a reality (roads).

4) Deep water could have a different movement penalty than coastal, thus encouraging travel along the shorelines. Plus it would look different, which is cool.

5) You'd have to ensure that impassable land (mountain, forest, etc.) is never contiguous with this new "ocean" terrain, or else you'd see ships sailing through the "forest"

6) If you give these "ships" offensive powers, they would be able to conquer "coastal" cities, so think about that.

7) Goody huts (especially if invisible) would be a neat addition to this mix, but it would take a lot of thought to make them work correctly. If all the "ocean" terrain was actually mountain or tundra, that would keep cities from appearing. And granting invention to all civs would prevent them from generating advances. Pirates, Gold, and even "your" ships would be great, but the creation of units with "settler" powers (terrain altering, city building) would have to be avoided. I'm pretty that can be done.

8) Barbarian storms (air units) would work much better in this type of terrain, plus they would confine their attacks to "ships" and coastal cities. Very historical.

Edit: typos
[This message has been edited by Kull (edited March 11, 2001).]

[Captain Nemo]

My experience using missiles units:
If you make the missiles land units they will move around however not with the spearmen.
I agree with the fact that the AI can't figure out how to land missiles on land-type "carrier units" (Actually the AI can't use carriers at all) Subs leaving port with missiles onboard is the only air/naval combo that the AI uses reasonably well (Carries missiles to within target range then fires them) and he only does this with Nuclear missiles never cruise missiles. After opening many games in progress in Cheat mode I have yet to find an AI-controlled Aircraft Carrier with planes onboard or a Sub with cruise missiles.
The only use for non-nuclear missile units under AI control would be "fixed defenses", ie cities. In Second Front I confined the missiles to a few AI-controlled cities and by using a separate Civ for this function I prevented the AI from moving the missiles around to nearby cities. By only giving that Civ the ability to build missiles I insured that they "restocked" on missiles and finally by designing special cities for the Civ you can make them look like units rather than cities. (I made some looking like coastal artillery and some looking like V-1 launching ramps)
This might be useful in scenarios where the missile launching units can be stationary. For example a Civil War Battle scenario could have a fixed artillery (Cities) in each battle line. A Roman scenario could have fixed Ballista Towers defending borders or cities.
As to the moving launchers I spent an incredible amount of time trying to make it work for a Gulf War scenario (SCUD launchers) and was totally defeated, I am sorry to say.

[kobayashi]

Have you considered a checker board system with ocean intertwined into land. Then you can have some roads and other terrain improvements. (incidently a road will stay there if you change the underlying terrain to ocean but it can't be used by land units). I used that quite successfully to simulate orbital defense platforms. Only problem is than the land unist will not be able to attack the sea units.

quote: Originally posted by Kull on 03-11-2001 05:31 PM 2) "Trading Ships" (caravans) would now actually work!

This does not work. A caravan will try to attack if it arrives by sea.

Another problem will surface once you figure out how to get the spears to be carried by the spear carriers. AI Missiles will be fired at very few targets - like units with relatively high hit points / battleship type units. So all your units will have to be arranged to make the intended targets tasty to the spears.

[Kull]

Kobayashi: I should have been more specific. The first post discusses things that could be done if "land" is really ocean. The second post assumes you want to add "oceans" (actually land) to that map. Thus the "Trading Ships" would work since they really ARE land units! "Shipping Lanes" (roads) would work for the same reason.

As to sea units carrying missiles and actually using them, this could work too...even for the AI. While playtesting a soon-to-be released scenario, the author and I discovered the trick to getting AI ships to fire missiles:

1) If the costs are calculated properly, enemy ship-borne missiles will attack coastal cities pretty regularly. This is not too unusual, and has been featured in some scenarios.
2) The AI will also shoot "spears" at you from within it's cities. This trick is fairly mature. The best example is Nemo's use of Coastal Guns in the Second Front scenario.
3) The real discovery is this: AI ships won't move and then launch. BUT, if you end your turn next to an AI ship carrying missiles....it will fire them at you at the start of it's turn. Now this little trick has rather limited utility in most naval games since only bad luck or carelessness will cause a human player to do something that dumb. However, in our hypothetical ancient world scenario things would be different. The human "land units" (ships) will have a move of only one or two, so it's very likely that your spear carrying hoplites would march up next to an AI hoplite, similarly armed. If the AI unit survives your spear attack, on the next turn he'll definitely shoot right back!

[CyberChrist]

quote: The human "land units" (ships) will have a move of only one or two, so it's very likely that your spear carrying hoplites would march up next to an AI hoplite, similarly armed.

Please notice that ALL ships will have a minimum move of 2 when damaged - even if they are only granted a move of 1 when at full health.

[kobayashi]

quote: Originally posted by Kull on 03-13-2001 02:53 AM ..the author and I discovered the trick to getting AI ships to fire missiles: 1) If the costs are calculated properly, enemy ship-borne missiles will attack coastal cities pretty regularly. This is not too unusual, and has been featured in some scenarios. 2) The AI will also shoot "spears" at you from within it's cities. This trick is fairly mature. The best example is Nemo's use of Coastal Guns in the Second Front scenario.

Can you be more specific about 'calculating the costs properly'. This is really something I've been dying to know. In my Dominion War scenario, the AI only fires torpedoes(i.e. spears) at the Shield unit (where ever it is) and the Sovereign (only when it is in a fortress). I always thought it was somehow related to the hit points, it never occured to me to think about costs. Stats are listed below:

Shields = 0m,0a,5d,7h,2f, cost14, sea domain
Sovereign = 2m,9a,7d,3h,3f, cost14, land domain

There was no sea to speak off in myscenario. Do your calculations only apply to:

ships firing at ships at sea?
ships firing at ships on land?
ships firing at anything on land?
cities firing at ships at sea?
cities firing at ships on land?
cities firing at anything on land?

thanks for any advice on the above.

[Captain Nemo]

I did not see a problem with AI missile use (IE firing from cities at any units) but rather a problem with the AI moving the missiles by ship at all. If the AI starts with ships carrying missiles it will work but Cruise Missiles are otherwise limited by the AI to a city defense role.
The Cruise missile attack is triggered only by relative cost of the units. In the original Civ2 game the Cruise Missiles are expensive so the AI will use them only against the most expensive units in the game: Battleships and Aircraft carriers.
In my experience there is nothing that confines them to sea use. If they cost 10 they will attack just about anything...
My V-1s (Cost 10) in Second Front flew across the Channel and attacked Infantry (Cost 20) in cities or in the open. By adjusting the range and relative cost you can get the AI to attack whatever you want, selectively and completely reliably. You could for example make canister and explosive shells in an Civil War scenario and give the canister short range and a cost of 10 so it will attack cheap infantry units and the explosive shells a cost of 30 and long range so it will only attack enemy artillery costing 60 or more.
My guess is the relative cost to attack is 2-to-1 but there may be also some probability figure in there.
I have not tried "SAM missiles" since I discovered this (Fighter flag + missile flag set) but all the other combinations I have tried worked flawlessly, that means that the AI expended EVERY single missile in range meeting the cost criteria until exhausting either the missiles or the targets.

[Henrik]

Hmm... It appears the AI is actually good at handling certain stuff , too bad that it mishandles more stuff than it handles good
This was some very usefull info...
I use a barbarian randomly generated land missile unit in my scenario, will the same rules apply for a land missile?

[Captain Nemo]

I think it does... I used German suicide squads with Panzerfaust in the endplay of Red Front and they did attack everything in sight like tanks and even the "rubble" units that were virtually indestructible.
Note that air missile units do not travel like regular planes: They "paradrop" from their home city to a square adjacent to their target then attack... The land missile units will travel out of the cities and I am not sure they will attack in that mode but they will definitely attack from their city when the enemy gets close enough.

[klesh]

Well, PolarisGL had something simmilar in his Gettysburg scenario. I believe it was artillery pieces that were carriers, with cannonball missles. IIRC, There were some unmoveable (perhaps heavy) artillery, and then moveable ones as well. However the moveable ones wouldn't carry the cannonballs with it, rather they would stay behind as noted earlier. So it became tedious to move a cannon 1 square and then move 3-4 "shells" into the cannon afterward. But it was useable. Since the cannon was move 1, there should've been a problem if they became injured and were given a "damaged" 2 move, but I suppose you can reduce this anomoly by making the cannon itself have a weak defense ie: they will always be killed.

Alas, sometimes it is just unworkable. Awhile ago, before I had this knowledge, I suggested to Nemo that he make the Rangers in SecondFront carriers and give them pineapple grenades to soften up defenders on the beach. But this bring the problem of how a Ranger with 1 or 2 grenades makes it off a landing craft etc. The grnades would probably stay behind. And now that I think of it, I don't even know if you could put a land unit with the carrier flag into a "transport" type ship?

So, I am just blabing. Sorry, I can't offer any solutions