A hexing question

[techumseh]

Is it possible to hex edit a Sav. file to add fortresses to every square including ocean squares? It's a giga map and the cities are already placed. Please help! Thank you.

[DarthVeda]

I should point out to you that the AI will pillage any fortress it gets its hands on in your territory.

[Henrik]

Not necesarily that is not my experience playing Bonaparte2 (where every tile has a fortress except for the mountains, I think that was done manually though)...

[techumseh]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
I should point out to you that the AI will pillage any fortress it gets its hands on in your territory.

The AI on my territory? Is this some kind of joke? Seriously, if someone can come up with something, I'd be very grateful. It's a made for multiplayer project so AI pillaging shouldn't be a problem.

[techumseh]

Actually Henrik raises a good point. Does the AI pillage forts, or does it occupy them?

[winterfritz]

Also speaking from my Bonaparte II experience, the AI only very occasionally pillages them. Having fortresses in ocean squares can lead to to other strange effects though; the AI often ends up with land units fortified in the ocean because their transport sunk without them.

[Boco]

Tec, is this ToT or MGE?

If it's ToT, then DV, is it within your wizardry to write a CSPL program to do the hex-editing? Maybe even ask whether to put fortresses in sea squares? We could ask Angelo, but I suspect that his mind is currently overloaded with physics. Making all-fortress maps has been an occasional request of many designers.

[techumseh]

Why it is ToT. Quell surprise! Hey DV, how about it?

[DarthVeda]

Hex editing is not my cup of tea... especially in programming languages.

Besides... every map is highly variable; there's no way I could know where each tile's terrain bit is (especially because I can't even operate a simple hex editor on the save files correctly).

It is my experience that AI units pillage anything they can.

Hey tech, since you are working in ToT, you should consider airbases instead of fortresses. They don't provide extra trade, protection, or movement but they do prevent multiple units from being destroyed in a single strike. (This would only work if your scen doesn't have air units).

[DarthVeda]

additionally... you can then use the fortress for an actual fortress.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
Hey tech, since you are working in ToT, you should consider airbases instead of fortresses. They don't provide extra trade, protection, or movement but they do prevent multiple units from being destroyed in a single strike. (This would only work if your scen doesn't have air units).

Airbases counts as Railroads, atleast in all other versions of civ 2, which is why people haven't used it for stackable squares.

Originally posted by winterfritz
Also speaking from my Bonaparte II experience, the AI only very occasionally pillages them. Having fortresses in ocean squares can lead to to other strange effects though; the AI often ends up with land units fortified in the ocean because their transport sunk without them.

Only the barbarian AI fortifies units in ocean tiles in my experience (and then only one or two naval units near the start).

[DarthVeda]

*cough* I already stated that the Airbase in ToT doesn't work like a rail road or even a road.

[Henrik]

Bah

What about farmland then? (which it also acts as in the other versions).

[DarthVeda]

No. It gives no bonuses of any kind whatsoever. A little further testing has shown that the movement remains affected only by the tile's original movement or any improvements aside from the airbase.

And yes, they do prevent any other units on the tile from being destroyed and dying in a big pile death.

So in summation, Airbases in ToT provide the perfect way to remove stack-death.

[techumseh]

I have considered using airbases, but this for WWII, so it would have an unfortunate effect on military aviation! I experimented with transporters as well, but they don't create the stacking effect.

I've been looking at Allard's hex-editing document, and despite the fact that I know next to nothing about hex-editing or programming, I think it should be possible to come up with a program to convert a map to all fortresses, or all anything.

Mercator's MapEdit can already do something similar. If you select a "filler" terrain, you can add rivers to every square of that terrain with one click of the mouse. So why not fortresses?