Advice for a rookie scenario designer

[fairline]

Is there a good 'idiot's guide' to scenario design posted somewhere? Having tinkered with other people's scenarios for a year or so now (mainly replacing unit graphics and stats, and some minor tech tree tweaking), I want to have a go at a scenario from scratch.

I've got a couple of ideas for subject matter: the Romans in Britain, The Wars of the Roses, The English Civil War, the Roman/Dacian wars or the Zulu Wars. Have any of these been covered before?

[H Tower]

at CFC in the civ2 scenario creation forum there is an idiot's guide to scenario building, i think. and there should definitely be some resources on the scenario league webpage. http://sleague.apolyton.net/

[techumseh]

Here is a self-help thread from CFC., available here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...threadid=21649

I recommend the paper 'Advanced Scenario Design' by Leon Marrick, followed by the tips section of Scenario League. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them. Good luck.

[fairline]

Thanks for the help guys

[fairline]

There's a lot of useful tips out there - one thing I couldn't find an answer to, though, is can a fighting unit have engineer ability? I'm aware that it will need to be placed in the engineer slot and given 'settler' ability, but what will hapen if you try to fortify - will it build a fortress or fortify itself?

I want to give Roman legionaries the engineer ability as they were the ones who constructed the roads and fortifications in the empire.

Also, can I give the AI settlers but restrict their ability to build new cities?

[Prometeus]

In colonies 3.12 by John Ellis, Refugees-Partisans have settler abilities, but only self-foritfy once - and only when they pop-up once a city is taken. I think Engeneer units have no self-fortify possibilities, sorry. I planned to use them for a WAS "Sappeur" unit, but never worked out properly...

[techumseh]

Originally posted by fairline
There's a lot of useful tips out there - one thing I couldn't find an answer to, though, is can a fighting unit have engineer ability? I'm aware that it will need to be placed in the engineer slot and given 'settler' ability, but what will hapen if you try to fortify - will it build a fortress or fortify itself?

Yes, you can, and the unit will attack and defend normally. (This was pioneered by Harlan Thompson for the dwarves in his 'Lord of the Rings'.) You don't need to place it in the engineer slot, just give it the settler flag. If you give it the 'fortify' command, it will build a fortress.

Also, can I give the AI settlers but restrict their ability to build new cities?

No. That part is hard-coded, I'm afraid. And the AI will use a combat engineer as a settler, not as a combat unit, so you may want to restrict their use to human controlled civs.

[St Leo]

You can restrict the AI ability to build cities by not using the default plains and grassland terrain slots or by hacking the map and setting the fertility flag of all tiles to 0.

[Stefan Härtel]

A lot can be done by placing "house rules". As a matter of fact, that's the only possibility. The scenarios I know of that have combat units with settler abilities, apart from the ones mentioned, are Seeds Of Greatness by Paul Cullivan, Second Front by Capt. Nemo and my very own Sons Of Heracles. In all three scenarios, this was done to reflect different things; armed settlers in SoG, the unability of fortification for vehicles in SF, and the Spartan population shortage in SoH.
Please keep in mind, that outside of cities, settler-type units can't be fortified, and I don't know if this is so appropriate for Roman legionnaires (except if you want to build a new city for every single fort they built).

[fairline]

Thanks for the info guys.

You don't need to place it in the engineer slot, just give it the settler flag

Techumseh, I thought that only settlers in the engineer slot had the engineer's extra building speed and terrain transformatio abilites? is there another way of distinguishing between engineer and settler attributes?

Stefan, I think you're right - I need the legionaries to be able to self-fortify and build fortifications independently, so it's back to the drawing board on that idea. However, if it's possible to increase the 'build fortification' speed I guess I could have them build forts instead of fortify. Could end up with a lot of forts, though.

You can restrict the AI ability to build cities by ..... hacking the map and setting the fertility flag of all tiles to 0.

Leo, I guess this will also effect the human-controlled settlers ability to build cities? I want the human player (Romans) to be able to settle new cities, while restricting the AI (various British tribes) to just irrigation, etc. In the time-frame of my scenario (c.40AD - 120AD) a huge amount of Roman towns were established in Britain, while there were no new Celtic settlements.

[Stefan Härtel]

Well, you could create two legion units, one with the settler/engineer abilities, the other without, but both with similar pics and combat stats.

[St Leo]

Leo, I guess this will also effect the human-controlled settlers ability to build cities?

No, humans can build cities on anything. The fertility flag just keeps AI's city placement moderately intelligent.

Could someone who knows more (Mercator? Gothmog?) chime in?

[fairline]

You may have something there, Stefan. However, I wanted to force the player to choose between using non-buildable legionaries to either fight or build roads. More specifically I wanted to stop the player from using them to defend cities and use weaker buildable auxilia as defenders.

More dumb questions:

- How do I place resources where I want on a map? Ive already chosen and edited a map from Mercator's site which is suitable for my scenario, but I want to place tin, coal, iron, lead and pottery resources in historically correct locations.

- How do I get rid of the damn goody hut things without sending a unit round the map to open them?

- What's the limit for FW events?

[Henrik]

Actually once I made catapults settlers by misstake and as I recall the computer used them both for attacking and settling (quickly electing them the universal unit, not building anything else than catapults, soon filling the rather large europe map I was playing on).

[klesh]

Originally posted by fairline
More dumb questions:

- How do I place resources where I want on a map? Ive already chosen and edited a map from Mercator's site which is suitable for my scenario, but I want to place tin, coal, iron, lead and pottery resources in historically correct locations.

- How do I get rid of the damn goody hut things without sending a unit round the map to open them?

- What's the limit for FW events?

-Resources are 'placed' by the computer with whats called the resource seed. It is a number that you enter in which sets the hardcoded pattern for terrain specials. The only thing you can do to get them, where you want is to adjust the seed, and look. Trial and error. Sometimes you'll get a section fo the map to look okay, whislt another is a bit off. You just have to find a happy medium. I believe the resource seed can only be set in the map editor? Not positive there.

-There is also a option under scenario parameters for wiping and resotring all goody huts.

- Not sure, smnaller than MGE. It depends on what type of events ytou are using, you can pack alot of small events into the samel size file as a few bigboys.

Hope that helps a little.


-FMK.