New and Modified Scenarios

[Martin the Dane]

Thanks for the comments Mark, I have a few ideas as how to thinn and spread out the messages, but befor I start doing a lot more, I have a few questions.

First:
What's the difference between the old and new scenario model? And what would the impact on on the scenarioes be?

Second:
ROI? As far as I can see ROI is not available in Dawn. How is ROI enabled/disabled?

Third:
Do I understand you correctly in that replacing the new (Testbed 7.6) .xml-files with the old ones (Testbed 7.5) will give me the new scenario model? My version of Dawn is a heavely modified version of the one in Testbed 7.5

[Richard Bruns]

I have produced Clash Testbed 7.6.1 and uploaded it to:

http://paws.wcu.edu/rb22393/clash/Clash_7-6-1.asp

This version includes both Martin´s new Dawn scenario and the modifications made by Richard to all of the other scenarios. Since Dawn includes all data as part of the xml file, these do not conflict in any way. Nothing has been changed, except that the unit pictures in Dawn now work with the new images.xml file.

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks Richard, I hadn't been sure if you had unified tech for Dawn or not. Good that no work has been lost. I'll check out the new version as soon as I've got time.

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
What's the difference between the old and new scenario model? And what would the impact on on the scenarioes be?

Hi Martin. I expect the info is in the readme for Richard's Testbed 7.6.1. If not, he says in the Testbed 7.5.1 thread what the differences are. Please ask again if those don't answer your questions

ROI? As far as I can see ROI is not available in Dawn. How is ROI enabled/disabled?

There is a switch in the buidlingorders tag called "minimal/" that makes it happen. It can easily be disabled during a game, we just need to have an event type that does it.

Do I understand you correctly in that replacing the new (Testbed 7.6) .xml-files with the old ones (Testbed 7.5) will give me the new scenario model? My version of Dawn is a heavely modified version of the one in Testbed 7.5

Probably simpler now just to take Testbed 7.6.1 that Richard put out.

[LDiCesare]

One thing that is in the new package, and that you can see in the Carthado delenda scenario I put in is the ability to change an ai (in fact, you can also change the player's) build orders. So Carthage can switch production to elephants or siege engines based on some event. I don't remember who asked for that, but someone did.

[LDiCesare]

On Military unit progression

I just (re) read Rodrigo's paper on military history on the web page, and here are a few thoughts about military units that could become available with the corresponding techs, some techs coresponding to culture things:
Warrior (club/spearmen) no prereq
Archer (small prereq)
Chariot - horses, bronze working (metallurgy) - horses knowledge should come from contact with nomadic civs, or a civ should be nomadic in order to learn horses tech in the first place. There could be a simple duality between agriculture and horses as a starting tech. Nomad units can move population around anyway.
Phalanx - bronze working (metallurgy), mortal combat - mortal combat would be active only for certain civs, and spread as fights against these are fought. For instance, aztecs wouldn't know that tech (they just make prisoners, which they later sacrifice)
Mounted archer - horses
Legion - metallurgy, military tactics, mortal combat
Heavy cavalry - horses, metallurgy, mortal combat
Catapults/siege engines - masonry, enables siege tactics
Cannons - gunpowder, siege tactics - siege tactics is a big helper of early gunpowder, enables cannon making
Muskets - gunpowder, cannon making - you can't make muskets if you can't make cannons?
(Modern units)

Our scenarios don't go that far, but I thought it worth to pop that up as scenarios rely on the tech tree and units.
In particular, we could maybe see by events (like losing one city to an adversary who has one tech enabling that tech) we can simulate some of these unit progressions? Ultimately enabling a tech by contact with another civ should be coded, not scripted, but I am not there yet.

I'd also like to point out that in the original military.xml file, there are skirmisher elements in almost all units, which have the skirmish order available. They do make a difference in fights, as they allow better manoeuvering. The units shouldn't be rid of them simply because they have less punch than other elements.

[Martin the Dane]

There is a switch in the buidlingorders tag called "minimal/" that makes it happen. It can easily be disabled during a game, we just need to have an event type that does it.

Can I write an event to remove it, or is it the event code that needs to be added?

I'm curently looking into the possibility of making the Dawn scenario use the standard files. What might make this possible is that there now are units with 500 men.

The only problem I se right away is that I'll have to create a Barbarian version of both Mob and Warriors, and I'm not sure if I'll have to redeclare the elements to make sure there are no problems:

from dataformat.html
Note that you should be careful not to define military elements in a scenario file which default to elements defined in another file

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Martin the Dane

Can I write an event to remove it, or is it the event code that needs to be added?

Event code needs to be added to do this during the game. To see what ROI looks like in Dawn though, you could change "minimal/" to "standard/" (The standard one is what is used in all the other scenarios) and then you will get all the orders and ROI also. That is too complex for Dawn when we release it officially , but for testing and figuring out what to say about ROI it should be fine.

I'm curently looking into the possibility of making the Dawn scenario use the standard files. What might make this possible is that there now are units with 500 men.

If you think you can do it, that would be good. But if things start to break down I would put it off for now.

The only problem I se right away is that I'll have to create a Barbarian version of both Mob and Warriors, and I'm not sure if I'll have to redeclare the elements to make sure there are no problems:

You could use the same units as the player and just have lots of them organized into task forces. That seems easiest.

[Richard Bruns]

I will certainly try to take advantage of the ability to change build orders. Mostly these will be techevents, so the AI builds new units if it gets them.

My tech tree is quite close to that list of prerequisites and helper techs.

The only reason skirmishers are left out is that I don't have any pictures for them. I had already coded tham and added them to the xml before I realized the lack of pictures, and I had to take them out again. I'll hunt for pictures and add them back in if I find anything I can use.

Martin, Clash 7.5.1 had a version of Dawn that used the standard units, and was balanced properly with those units. Do you want me to send that file to you? By the way, it is not necessary to have barbarian versions of the units, as that file shows. The barbarians can simply have the standard units.

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Martin, Clash 7.5.1 had a version of Dawn that used the standard units, and was balanced properly with those units. Do you want me to send that file to you? By the way, it is not necessary to have barbarian versions of the units, as that file shows. The barbarians can simply have the standard units.

Yes please mail it to me, I have looked for it among the files I have, but have not been able to find it. All the verions I have, use their own version of elements and units.

[LDiCesare]

The only reason skirmishers are left out is that I don't have any pictures for them. I had already coded tham and added them to the xml before I realized the lack of pictures, and I had to take them out again. I'll hunt for pictures and add them back in if I find anything I can use.

You can put skirmisher elements in a unit. A unit doesn't have to be made of a single type of elements. There should be some scouts in almost all armies. That way, you don't need an image.

[Richard Bruns]

I wanted combined arms decisions to be the player´s choice, not the scenario designer´s. Eventually we should have something like a unit building workshop, where the player builds up army units from elements. That way there wouldn´t need to be any units defined in the files, except a few defaults.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
I wanted combined arms decisions to be the player´s choice, not the scenario designer´s.

Hi Richard. I think Laurent's approach is better. First it makes individual units not be hamstrung by being too one-dimensional, and thus losing combat effectiveness. Second its the way brigades and such work in the real world. To finetune overall number of skirmishers or scouts in an army you certainly could have dedicated skirmishing/scouting units that could be added in addition to the normal scouting strength of a unit.

Eventually we should have something like a unit building workshop, where the player builds up army units from elements. That way there wouldn´t need to be any units defined in the files, except a few defaults.

The workshop is definitely the way to go, but I think that doesn't reduce the need for a full complement of detailed units. Having just a few defaults would be completely inadequate in my mind. Then the player would be Forced to use the workshop rather than using it just when they wanted to do something different and creative. I'd call that MM to be avoided.

What do others think? Anyway, further discussion should migrate to the military thread IMO.

[Richard Bruns]

Do we have any world maps for Clash? I tried to make one of my own, but it was absolutely horrible.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Do we have any world maps for Clash? I tried to make one of my own, but it was absolutely horrible.

We have none so far. But I think any world map worth calling such will have too many squares to work well with the current code. Until we figure out why Attila runs so slowly and fix it, this seems premature to me. . .

[LDiCesare]

I tried to make a map of (just) Europe, and it really has to be very big in order to show details like the English Channel... The file might even clutter one zip or another (Europe.xml). We'd better see how the game scales AND make a map editor before tackling real world map. I love vi, but drawing the map by hand and populating it by hand is really not user-friendly.