Advice for a rookie scenario designer

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by fairline
- 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.

I think you can´t place where you want, you just can edit the "resource seed" in the editor, which leads - I believe - to other randomly chossen locations for resources (I never tested it)

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

Open the cheat menu in Civ2, there is an option to delete the villages

What's the limit for FW events?

"Officially" 32kb, but in reality it depends a lot of the structure of your events.txt - some commands use more space than others. Most scns I´ve have seen use events files of 15 - 20kb. If your file is too large, the scn does not start, but will create a cryptic error - if your file is around 20kb, delete some events and look if all works then.

A nice method too save events space is to "mix" commands (triggers) in one event, even if they are not related to eachother. For example if you want three events, let´s say 1) for creating a unit, 2) for changing money, 3) for a text display, write all these three triggers into on IF - ENDIF event, instead of three single events, this saves space.

Here´s an example:

@IF
TURN
turn=251
@THEN
TEXT
135 BC: Slave´s revolt in Sizily!
ENDTEXT
CREATEUNIT
unit=Slaves
owner=Barbarians
veteran=yes
homecity=none
locations
54,90
endlocations
GIVETECHNOLOGY
receiver=Phoenicians
technology=30
CHANGEMONEY
receiver=Romans
amount=-200
@ENDIF

This event has four triggers: TEXT, CREATEUNIT, GIVETECHNOLOGY, CHANGEMONEY, you don´t have to waste four IFTURN=251 events for every trigger. The only limit is that you cannot have triggers of the same type in one event (eg. you cannot give money, or create troops for several civs without using several events)

Edit: FMK was faster

[klesh]

I beat you!!! , but now I am all thinking of goody huts....

Starting a new thread...

[fairline]

FMK. BeBro: thanks for the tips - very useful

I think I'm going to need multiple events files if I include everything I want. Presumably, I need to reset the event turn number to zero whenever I use delevent and introduce a new events file.

One more question - has anybody replaced railways with a second set of roads? I want to have standard roads as the Celtic pathways and railways as Roman roads; however, I don't want the Roman roads to be infinite speed railways - I want them to just allow faster travel than the standard roads.

[Mercator]

I'm not sure, but I don't think so... The number simply refers to the turn number in the game, and that doesn't change when clearing the events.

Another thing about the settler-type units... I don't think they can pillage either.

About the resources... You can't add them at will, but you can suppress them (using MapEdit ). So you can customise the pattern just a little bit.

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?

Affirmative.

[fairline]

Thanks, Mercator.

One more question - has anybody replaced railways with a second set of roads? I want to have standard roads as the Celtic pathways and railways as Roman roads; however, I don't want the Roman roads to be infinite speed railways - I want them to just allow faster travel than the standard roads.

Anybody know if this is possible?

[El León]

It just occurred to me that a way to do this without the romans going from the black sea to gibraltar in one turn is to:
1. make RRs unbuildabe (don't give anyone the RR tech)
2. Place them sparsely with the cheat menu, but always in pairs, along "roman" roads. Speed will be faster, but still limited.
3. Make both road and RR graphics the same to avoid ugliness.

Only disadvantage is that you cannot have roman roads except those at the beginning. Unless...

Can you use the changeterrain event to add land improvements? Can't remember just now.

[Exile]

El Leon; I've already done that. In Imperialism 1870.

Fairline; I've already tried to do just what you're suggesting, using every trick I can think of short of altering code. No luck.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Exile
Fairline; I've already tried to do just what you're suggesting, using every trick I can think of short of altering code. No luck.

Oh well, looks like another idea that's a non-starter.

Thanks to all for the tips

[techumseh]

It is possible to use one of the multi-cell terrains (forest, hills, mountains) as a road terrain. You can set it's movement to 0, thereby making it similar to railways, or 1, and set higher movement costs for the other terrain, with a corresponding increase in the movement rate of units.

Roads can connect at the corners of the terrain diamonds, while roads as terrain cannot - they only connect along the common side of two diamonds. Therefore, the road graphics will have a zig-zag look on the map. Also, the moveunit command has no clue how to use zero movement terrain.

[Henrik]

Terrains can also be given partial movement costs by inserting the same values that get you partial movement points for units.

[AroSch]

Originally posted by El Leon
1. make RRs unbuildabe (don't give anyone the RR tech)
2. Place them sparsely with the cheat menu, but always in pairs, along "roman" roads. Speed will be faster, but still limited.
3. Make both road and RR graphics the same to avoid ugliness.

Only disadvantage is that you cannot have roman roads except those at the beginning.

And if this roman roads will be destroyed (pillaged), you never could build them again...
I once planned to use this effect for simulate winds and currents(?), but it was be pillaged by barbarians. Winds pillageed! ...

[El León]

I once planned to use this effect for simulate winds and currents(?), but it was be pillaged by barbarians. Winds pillageed

And I thought their irrational attacks on merchants were barbaric! Those poor winds and currents.


Anyway, an effective combo of the tecumseh and exile ideas would be to make some terrain transformable into "roman road" (0 movement terrain) (i.e. plains and/or grasslands), but not forests and mountains.
This way, the romans cannot transform all of europe into one huge railroad, but it will help get them across open terrain quickly, while halting at hills, mountains, forests, swamps, etc. Also, the planning may be such that the corner connection problem can be avoided by placing the untransformable terrain at convenient places...

[Exile]

Reluctantly . . .

I was gonna save this idea, but then it seems someone's used it before me so . . .

In order to minimize the use of the engineer unit (in the engineer slot), you can elect to start the scenario with only one engineer unit for the Romans. Set up an event so that if it is ever killed, another will be created at the coodinates for either Rome or Constantinople. Don't allow the engineer unit to be built in any other way.

[fairline]

Originally posted by techumseh
It is possible to use one of the multi-cell terrains (forest, hills, mountains) as a road terrain. You can set it's movement to 0, thereby making it similar to railways, or 1, and set higher movement costs for the other terrain, with a corresponding increase in the movement rate of units.

I've tried a variation on this: I used the mountain slots for Roman roads, but gave them a movement value of 171 (see the tips section of Kull's site). As suggested by Henrik this gives a movement value of 1/3 (same as standard roads), so I reduced the standard roads movement multiplier to 2. The only problem is I need all the normal multi-cell slots for their original pupose....

I've decided instead to give Roman units a movement value of 172 (1 1/3) as Kull indicates in his tips section, and have only one road type.

In order to minimize the use of the engineer unit (in the engineer slot), you can elect to start the scenario with only one engineer unit for the Romans. Set up an event so that if it is ever killed, another will be created at the coodinates for either Rome or Constantinople. Don't allow the engineer unit to be built in any other way.

Exile, I intend to make legionaries/'combat engineers' unbuildable, but reinforced by events on the date when new legions arrived in Britain

[St Leo]

It is possible to use one of the multi-cell terrains (forest, hills, mountains) as a road terrain.

Such Roman Road graphics may be found inthis scenario.