any way to prevent time passage when editing scenario?

[John Thornburgh]

To edit a scenario, you have to "begin" it as a game then turn on cheat right?

My problem is that when I do this, time passes, so that the scenario slowly alters itself each time you save & reload it.

I know you can prevent most effects by starting the scenarior as the civ that moves first. But even so, for that civ, it collects taxes, produces shields, etc.

Resetting the money is easy enough, but if it has many cities, resetting the shields, etc. is a pain.

Is there any clever way around this?

Thanks!

[Exile]

I don't know what version you use, (I own MGE), but if you are only editing 1.)units, 2.)techs, 3.)terrain, and 4.)city graphics, you don't need to save as scenario, which does push the turn count up by one. If you hit the cheat button, make the changes, then quit the game, it will save the changes and the turn won't advance in the scenario. If you need to edit players' techs, alter the event file, or otherwise play w/the scenario parameters, you will need to "save as scenario" to save your changes, and that WILL move the turn forward. This is the rule I use, and it works, but no idea why. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than myself could explain that to both of us. If you've got MGE, chances are it will work that way for you too. You could try it just to see if it does. I have discovered no easy way to readjust everything the way it was on the previous turn.

Salutations,
Exile

------------------
Lost in America
"a freaking mastermind." --Stefu
"or a very good liar." --Stefu

[Snog]

Here's an idea that I don't personally use:

Set all the cities for the first civ to be building something that will never get built. For example, a building that has already been built in that city; a wonder that has already been built; or capitalization.

Then fix up the rest of the game until it is finished, and when you are satsified, go back to the first civ, edit its money, technologies, technology progress & goal, and all the cities' productions and goals. That will be the one and only time you will have to do that.

--

The reason I don't do that myself is because I test the scenario a lot, and I would need to change the productions back to normal before each test, anyway. To change all the productions back to zero quickly, I often use the civcity utility. It lets you edit .scn and .sav files. Admitted it's still a pain; but using it, you can usually change 20 cities in a minute or two, so it's not so terrible.

Maybe someone should add an option to civcity to reset the production of all of player #1's cities to zero, for scenario testing purposes.

--Snog

[Snog]

What Exile said is important, too. Find out what you can and can't change without actually hitting the "Save as scenario" option. Some of the online editors will save the changes as soon as you exit the window; you won't even have to use "save as scenario." Other changes can be done by editing .txt files, or by editing the .scn file with civtweak or civcity.

--Snog

[Snog]

Very useful tip:

I just found out I was using civcity 1.0. Version 1.1 is supposed to include a batch routine for resetting all city production boxes to zero. That might be the answer you are looking for.

The civ2 ziggurat hosted by sidgames contains a broken link for ver. 1.1 that's why I only had 1.0 in the first place.

Instead, get it here:
http://users.sgi.net/~harden/civcity.html


--Snog

[This message has been edited by Snog (edited January 15, 2001).]

[Henrik]

I allways use a save file as well as a scenario. I save like a normal game (called: work.sav or whatever), the changes are still there, then I save as scenario. Whenever I want to edit the scenario I load the savefile, make the changes and save. Then I save as scenario to. This way the scenario will not advance a turn every time I load the file (scince I load the save file instead of the actuall scenario).

[Snog]

Great idea, Henrik

[John Thornburgh]

Thanks everyone for the tips -- some really good ideas! John