I'm confused... stupid events! Help, please!

[Hendrik the Great]

I'm currently working on the events for my next scenario and I had this nice idea for an event.

Here's the backgroung: In the Byzantine Empire with the discovery of Canons, Canons were installed on the massive, if not to say huge and almost 1000 years old, City Walls of Constantinople.
The power of the canons was unimaginable, bullets of up to 1000kg could be fired by the largest and they could cause tremendous damage to any attacker. However, they was a small problem with them: They caused even more damage to the Walls of Constantinople.
The walls couldn't stand the force exerted upon them when the canons were fired and had to be expensively repair after every battle.

Here is what I have done to reflect this:
I created a special unit for the Byzantines that cannot leave Constantinople.
The idea is that every time a unit is destroyed by this special unit there is a penalty on the Byzantines who will loose money.

That's the event for this:
@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=ANYUNIT
attacker=Byzantines
defender=ANYBODY
THEN
TEXT
By using the powerful canons of Constantinople against the enemies not only
damage is caused to the enemy but also to the City Walls which were not build
to withstand such force. They have to be expensively repaired.
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=triggerattacker
amount=-80
@ENDIF

However, when testing this I came across some problems.

First of all there does not seem to be an eventstructure for ANTUNIT or something like that. Only for specified units.

Furthermore, I can only make an event that will be triggered by any Byzantine Unit, which is really not what I had in mind.
I would need to specify that this can only be triggered by the special unit I made.

Now I kind of have a problem...

I could specify that this will only trigger when certain units are destroyed. But that would be rather tiresome because I have about 55-60 new units in the scenario and it would use up to much event space.

But even if I did that it would still be triggered by every Byzantine unit that destroys another unit. And that would get very much on the Byzantine treasury...
Besides of being totally historicaly inaccurate...

So, does anybody have ideas of how to get around this? Please...

I would appreciate any ideas that might help my solve this.

[Djugashvili]

I think your stuck, Hendrik. Maybe you should just leave this out. I mean, how many people know anything about Byzantine-era canons? But if you insist, just ask Komrade Nemo, the God of Scenario-ism, and he shall shed some light on the subject.

------------------
"When You Kill One, It Is A Tragedy. When You Kill 10 Million, It Is A Statistic"
-Comrade Stalin

[Cam]

An 'off the top of my head suggestion'...

Why not consider making the cannon balls short-range nukes (e.g. move range of 4 squares). If you use it on land units the effect of shattering rock will cause devastation to the units and the terrain around the landing point of the cannon ball (incl. pollution). You can use the events file to give these weapons to the people of Constantinople alone through the 'create unit' using a 'received technology' trigger. The cannon itself could be represented by a Wonder within Constantinople. You should also be able to retain your 'change money' event if you wish, with the 'unit killed = cannon ball' trigger.

Hypothetically, you could give them say two or three cannon balls on the discovery of a tech such as 'Canons', and then create advances further down that branch of the tree called 'Cannon ball production' which will allow more 'create unit' events to occur, thereby replenishing the cannon's ammunition levels.
[This message has been edited by Cam (edited December 25, 1999).]

[Hendrik the Great]

That is a very good idea! It's very intriging. I had not thought about that yet I had just given the canon aerial status and a movement of one so there would not be any canons flying around Athens and the such.

Great idea...

However, if I make it a nuke wont I blow away myself if I drop it right besides my city? I mean if the Byzantines are human played I can warn them but if it is AI controlled it will just blow away itself.
Would an SDI in the city prevent that?

Furthermore, I would have to prevent Global warming somehow. I know there are ways but I cannot remember how exactly. S.th. with Solar Plants and Environmentalism, right?

The polution however could serve very well to reflect the damage caused by ongoing shelling. Just imagine how the surrounding fields must have looked like after a 6 month siege... Also it would show the negative effects of the city's canons.

I might run into troubble with my ships then however because I gave all of them the submarine flag to prevent shore-bombardment.
But there are ways around that.

But I think I would have to change the nuclear explosion graphic. Can that be done?
A big mushroom cloud would after all not fit into the time very well.

Tanks though for the ideas! Keep them coming!

I know there is something else...but I forgot while writing.

Would the unit have to be placed in the original nuke slot?
(That is not what I forgot...I think)

Thanks again.
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited December 25, 1999).]

[Cam]

Hendrik,

Don't like the mushroom cloud? Worried about global warming? Not a problem - Plan B!

Before we get there, just for your info';

An SDI won't help as it won't protect you from your own nuclear missiles! The shot has to be fired so Constantinople is outside the blast radius or you will kill Constantinople's defending units.

Allegedly four Solar Plants will prevent the terrain changes of global warming on a medium sized map. I've got no proof to confirm or deny this, but it was said with some authority on an Apolyton thread some time ago.

Any player who's too lazy to clean up their own pollution deserves global warming anyway!

The nuke spot will affect the diplomatic messages that come up when dealing with other tribes as well as their attitude to nations who possess nuclear weapons. This can be used to your benefit in scenario building.

Plan B

Same basic concept, but no nukes. For arguement's sake, replace the nuke-like unit with a cruise-missile-like unit. Use the nuke spot but change the attack value to a number less than 99.

You can go into game.txt and amend the messages about nuclear weapons to something more appropriate regarding cannons. Also, the A.I. tribes should treat the Byzantines with a little more respect once they have the cannon ball unit (understood by the A.I. to be a nuke).

Every time a cannon ball is fired, there should also be a pop-up window!

You can still use your event:

@IF
UNITKILLED
unit=Cannon Ball
attacker=ANYBODY
defender=ANYBODY
@THEN
TEXT
By using the powerful canons of Constantinople against the enemies, not only damage is caused to the invaders but also to the frail City Walls that were not built to withstand such force. They have to be repaired at some expense!
ENDTEXT
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=TRIGGERDEFENDER
amount=-80
@ENDIF

As before, you can use the 'received technology' - 'create unit' combo to reload the cannon. The idea of using a zero-move one-off air unit for the cannon is also a good one.

One problem with this approach, there is a real possibility that the missile units may fly from city to city. The A.I. is particularly bad at this kind of thing, where its units don't often comply with the dictates laid out in rules.txt, so even if you have a missile movement range of say four spaces, the A.I. could ignore this constriction outright. Is the cannon a unique feature to Constantinople?

[This message has been edited by Cam (edited December 25, 1999).]

[ZhugeLiang]

You could just make a randome denominator event that says something like,

"The blasts from the great cannons of constantinople have weakened the the walls and they must be repaired"

deduct like 25-30 cash or what have you. It won't be as complext to execute as a restructuring of the nuke, although it may not be as historically accurate, it would pretty much represent what you want in scenerio terms.

[Hendrik the Great]

ZhugeLiang:
I had first thought using an random event however the scenario starts more than 100 years before the first canons were used so it would be a bit unappropiate to see such a message when there are no canons yet.

Cam:
I will try that thing with the Solar Plants.
I guess I'll just have to place one in every city to make sure.

Too bad SDI doesn't protect me from my own blast...

Yes, that unit is supposed to be unique to only Constantinople. No other cities.

I would have to make that canon ball a unit that can only be used once, wouldn't I? In order to get that event. Otherwise I would only get that event when this canon ball looses a battle and that wonthappen often.

[Cam]

Oh sure - use the 'destroyed after attacking' flag.

The more I think about it, the more I'm worried about using nukes, and perhaps a non-nuclear missile is the better choice...

However, still sticking with the nuke idea for a moment longer, I contemplated the prospect of you developing a ring of a distinct terrain type around Constantinople that could represent a safe 'drop zone' for the cannon ball (but that may be questionable in terms of realism). To explain, you could take a hardly-used terrain type such as 'glacier', and convert it into 'rubble', giving it a desert-like earthy colour with little rock images within it (edit 'terrain1.gif'). This rubble could be the area where hypothetically the cannon was first tested and as a result chewed up the land somewhat. Again, just an idea, but you'll probably have half the headaches if you went with a conventional missile instead.

ZhugeLiang's suggestion's quite workable too. If the Byzantines lose a unit in war that stems from a technology half-way down the tree, you could then implement the proposed event without causing it to occur from 'Day One'.

Anyway, if you adopt these suggestions, 'great', and if you can conjure up an alternative approach that you think works better yet - 'terrific'. That's what it's about - imagine, test it, and where successful, use it!

[Hendrik the Great]

I decided to play a bit around with the events and I also tested the destroyed after attack flag here is the result:
Nothing, nothing at all happens. I just loose one unit for one of theirs. The event is not triggerd because Civ does not seem to understand that the attack unit was killed.
The destroyed after attack flag does not help here either.

Maybe I will somehow adapt ZhugeLiang's idea.
I have noticed that in order to trigger the event the canon ball unit would have to be the one that is attacked and killed.
As I wrote in an above post I cannot determine that the event is only triggered when any unit is killed by the canons of Constantinople.

Just another idea: Which unit is always choosen first in order to defend a city?
The unit with the highest defense value, the one with the most Hitpoints, with the most Firepower or the one that does combine most of the above?
Because then I believe I could turn the event around and place an immobile canon in the city, it would then be attacked and if the attacker looses the event could be triggered.
But that is one of the head idea.

You wrote:
"If the Byzantines lose a unit in war that stems from a technology half-way down the tree, you could then implement the proposed event..."
The idea of the event was that not the Byzantines lose a unit but the attacker who has made camp outside the city and would be attacked by the canons which had quite an range for their time.
This way the event is supposed to work.

However, I will go one trying things out.

[Cam]

Errr... ummm... yes, err... so it seems: Apparently you can't trigger a 'unit killed' event with the 'destroyed after attacking' flag on after all (red face, red face). Geee, that nuke idea minus the 'change money' event is looking better after all! Sorry 'bout that - I wasn't aware of this quirk until now.
[This message has been edited by Cam (edited December 26, 1999).]

[Michael Daumen]

Make a nuke without the destroyed-after-attacking flag. The unit works like a regular nuke and is destroyed along with everything in the spaces adjacent to the explosion, NOT from the flag. And as an added bonus your ships won't be able to carry them, since they are now closer to bombers than cruise missiles. Give them a range of 2 and be sure to explain in the readme that the cannons should be detonated one space away from Constantinople. And keep them rare, since one will take out a lot of enemy units!

Your scenario sounds neat, let me know when it is ready.

[Hendrik the Great]

Sounds nice. And I still have one unitslot availible so I'll give it a try.

However my events file is kind of filled up to the limit but maybe I can still squeeze it in. I think there is room enough left.
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited December 29, 1999).]

[Civfan]

Another aproach to this problem could be to use a unit called walls/cannon. The walls/cannon unit could have a strong hit point factor of something like 2 with a defence of 10. The unit would look someething likee this. Wall 0a 10d 2h 2p. Once an enemy unit attacks the walls unit in the capital, it would be destroyed unless it is a powerful unit with an attack factor of 15 and firee power of 3. If the wall/cannon unit is destroyed, you can use the events to create a new wall unit. A problem you guys might be thinking is the capital would be impossible to capture. Solutions. Use a tech to make the unit obsolete after a certain time has passed say 1435A.D. or change the event. "use a second event file and leave the event out" Also when the wall/cannon is destroyed and a new one is reeplacing it, you could minus the money.

[Hendrik the Great]

Great! I never would have thought I'd get so many neat ideas. You people are just amazing.

So, now I have two more things to try out.
Sounds like I will have a lot to do today...

I already have a strong defense unit for the city so I can simply adapt it. However it looks very much like that I will have to begin a second events file for the scenario; it is, well, kind of full by now and there are still a few important events missing in it. Which sparks an idea... I could make the Bulgarians(Barbarians) invade Greece after all.
I did want to be finished soon but I guess it might take one or two more weeks with all those new events and ideas.

[Hendrik the Great]

Michael I tried what you proposed and it did not work. The computer does not recognise the unit was killed, it just is not there anymore. But it was worth a try...