Deactivating settlers, Help needed

[Captain Nemo]

Yes, everyone needs help from time to time...

I have read or heard of scenario makers deactivating some of the human controlled settler unit's abilities, for example still allowing it to build roads but not to settle cities, through editing the option menu (The AI will still use the full range of abilities).

I have tried several approaches but have not succeeded. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Civfan]

in the game.txt you should be able to delete the build city function. I believe thats how it was done.

[Xin Yu]

Hummmmm, what are you aiming at, Captain Nemo?
[This message has been edited by Xin Yu (edited April 20, 2000).]

[Hendrik the Great]

I'm sorry to tell you but I don't think it can be done. I tried both the game.txt and the menu.txt and you will be able to remove the option of giving it a name. (When I did that it was funnily named Hills by the computer...)

However, it is not possible to remove the ability. I even put he changed files in the main directory and it was the same with the game.txt. When I put in the menu.txt Civ II crashed immediately.

When you remove the entire option for naming a city. The game automaticly uses the file in the main directory. As said changing that one too doesn't help either.

Btw, there is no option for founding cites ih the game.txt. I searched for it several times by hand and let the computer do some looking. Nothing. Just options for naming and renaming and the such.

There is one line in the menu.txt that says found city and also detemines the letter to use for that.
I haven't tried changing the letter to anothe. But I don't think it would help to solve the problem. Perhaps use a letter no one usually has on their keyboards and seee what happens...

Playing around with the menu.txt is not recommandable. It will crash the moment you remove a line or even just the letter that determines the letter one has to push for it.
You should be able to rename the orders there though(like "build" to "construct" i.e.) without trouble.

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[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited April 20, 2000).]

[blackclove]

I had been looking for this, too, with no success. I had wanted to have engineers and settlers having separate functions, but couldn't get it to happen. You may just have to tell the player not to found cities until a certain event happens or something.

[Paul Hanson]

I tried this a few months ago. It`s impossible as far as I know. IT`d be handy if someone found a way to do it though...

[Xin Yu]

Phew!

[Xin Yu]

Cities cannot be built next to each other. You can use this to ban the engineers from building cities on certain area. As far as RF is concerned, put fortified positions next to cities and have their host city to be the cities next to them.

Have an allied civ put a size 1 city somewhere(representing impassible area) will prevent you from building cities next to it.

[St Leo]

The AI algorithm doesn't build cities on terrains that are normally hostile, like the Glacier slot.

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St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
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[Hendrik the Great]

Excelent idea! It does indeed work. I think Mercator did this in his "Orbis Terrae" scenario. It works well with the glacier and tundra slot. Perhaps swamp and jungle as well.

If you want the AI to found cities somewhere then simply put plains or best grassland there. But I guess you knew that...

[Stefan Härtel]

AI settlers build cities only on empty terrain squares, which means they won't settle on irrigated terrains, roads, airbases or fortresses (which is stupid).

I don't know how to prevent the human player from building cities. Xin Yu's idea makes sense, but this propably won't work correctly.
The only possibility I would see would be to try creating some sort of a "second ocean", though this should be fairly impossible. You could try putting polluted squares on ocean squares you put where you don't want cities to be built, and put in immobile naval units, or unattractive land squares like glaciers so the units can still pass. Looks odd on the radar map, but I don't think that will matter too much.
Maybe I can think of something if you can tell me what scenario this is supposed to be for. Red Front 1.5?

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[This message has been edited by Stefan Härtel (edited April 20, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Stefan Härtel (edited April 20, 2000).]

[Captain Nemo]

This looks like a problem... I had been able to remove even the options from the menu but the "B" command still works. BTW when you remove the text in the labels file the "stack" just becomes offset and the following text in sequence is used. But the game crashes when looking for the last entries in the file if the total length of the file has been shortened...
I wanted to prevent the human player from building cities so the AI tricks won't work (Anyway I would just prevent the AI from having settlers).
What happens when you reach the 255 max cities? If 255 has been reached and a city No. 255 exists will it prevent building more cities even if some cities have been destroyed? Could I build a bunch of invisible neutral cities until the count is reached and locate them in a corner of the map? Can a city exist on an ocean square?
I also wanted to remove other capabilities though not as critical (J, I, M, E etc...)

The key is that I want the units to act as military units but eat 2 food per turn. I hate having "House Rules". In this case I could remove Cst, Rad and RR, prebuilt X invisible neutral cities (=Total 255)out in the ocean and make the road/irrigation/mining time factor horribly long...

This is NOT Red Front version 1.941 although that will be coming in the future. This is something else...

[Michael Daumen]

I think the decision to build a city also takes rivers into account. In Great Game testing I frequently saw cities built on plains-with-river squares.

Could the text change be in labels.txt? That's where the list of unit orders is, no?
[This message has been edited by Michael Daumen (edited April 20, 2000).]

[PolarisGL]

Captain Nemo:

Ok, here is an idea. You go into the rules.txt and make it so roads have no affect, as in they don't do anything. You then edit the graphics to all "pink" in a graphics editor, so roads won't show. Then, whoever wastes time on building them would be labeled one who didn't read the readme.

For the AI, use railroads because the AI will always build railroads over roads when they get the chance.

This is an idea, I have not personally done it yet, but I hope it helps you.
[This message has been edited by PolarisGL (edited April 21, 2000).]

[techumseh]

I think St. Leo has it. When building your map, substitute tundra for grassland and glacier for plains. Then change the images and edit the rules text to give them the same factors as grass and plains. You lose the use of 2 terrain types (grass and plains), although they can still be used where you want the AI to build cities or under and adjacent to existing cities.