SLIC and Obsolete Units

[skorpion59]

Anybody know what happens when you build an obsolete unit via SLIC?

Lets say you add 3 pops and build a warrior when every new city is established. What happens 1000 years later when the warrior is obsolete?

[TP]

Scorpion59,


There are 2 sub-questions in this question - let me try to answer both of them:

Q: What happens with a warrior unit built via SLIC after the warrior unit has gone obsolete ?

A: CTP does not recognize how a unit has been "born" into the game world, i.e. whether it has been naturally built, built via rush-buy or created via SLIC. Thus, a unit built via SLIC will behave as any other unit in CTP when it is obsolete. In the warrior example, this means that the warrior will still be in the game as long as you don't disband him or he gets killed.

Q: What happens when building a warrior via SLIC at a point in time when actually warriors are already obsolete ?

A: The warrior will be created even though warriors should not be able to be built anymore. In my point of view, this is not a bug (so don't start banging Activision on their heads too early). The reason is that SLIC is a programming language which gives the users a lot of degrees of freedom, i.e. it is their choice what they want to do. Of course, you can avoid this effect of getting a warrior in the diamond age. Two ideas from my side which are both possible to do via SLIC (there may be even more solutions):
a) Disable the trigger responsible for creating warriors as soon as bureaucracy is known to a player.
b) Work with IF-THEN statements. Check in the IF-part whether a specific advance is already known to a player and give the respective (i.e. logical) unit to be created in the THEN-part.

Of course, all of the above is applicable to any type of unit.


Hope this helps,
TP

[This message has been edited by TP (edited December 10, 1999).]

[skorpion59]

TP,

Thanks for the info and the ideas. I hadn't thought about the IF..Then route and that seems the most logical.

Don

[Dreamer]

Just happen to browse thru the old messages. Hey! skorpion59 I got a slic trigger that anwser to your question.

Not so nice to post the long script here as it got nested if-elseif-else functions, but you can drop me a note and I shall email you the script.

[Locutus]

Dreamer,
I'm interested in your SLIC-function (and any other you might have that I might not have already). Could you email that to me? TIA.

Locutus

[WesW]

Guys, I need a couple of triggers for the Modern mod.
1)A trigger that would have sea cities, and space cities too, if possible, start with a pop of three, and a Machine Gunner.

2)A trigger for a Wonder that would act like an ancient National Shield. It would have give each city the city walls improvement, ala the Great Wall in civ 2. Actually, I would rather a way be found to put this in the wonder text as a regular Wonder, so if anyone can do that, please send me your files.

[Locutus]

WesW,

Here's the trigger to get space and undersea cities start at size 3 and a machinegunner (although the machinegunner in space-cities doens't work properly yet, I'm still working on that):

trigger 'Locutus_TP_Slamp_CreateSpace/UnderseaCities' when (city.built) {
	if ( IsUnderseaCity(city) | | TerrainType(city.location) == 13 ) {
		AddPops(city, 2);
		CreateUnit(g.player, UnitType("UNIT_MACHINE_GUNNER"), city.location, 0);
		}
}

I'll see what I can do about your second trigger in the weekend.

Locutus
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited January 01, 2000).]

[WesW]

Thanks, Locutus. Now, if we can combine the new size with MikeH's efforts to create units with zero mobility in cities upon founding, we would really have something.

[Locutus]

Yeah, I know. I was working on the same thing as Mark but he just beat me to it Oh well, as long as it works. Now I can start on something different, such as your Great Wall. I'm afraid it won't be as easy as I had hoped, I'm not even sure if it can be done at all. The easiest way to do it would be creating a city wall in every city when someone has the Great Wall, but as you might know it isn't possible to create city improvements through SLIC. So some alternative needs to be found, but I don't see a solution right now. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Locutus

[Locutus]

It's a nice trigger but have you tried it in space cities? The units are placed on earth under the city instead of inside it in space, so it can't be used like this. But apart from that it's very nice, although it might be nice not to give these units only to human but also to AI-civs. It wouldn't be really fair like this, the AI is enough in the disadvantage as it is.

[Dreamer]

If you like more challenge by giving these advantage to the AI, all you need is to remove the IsHumanplayer(g.player) code and replacing all g.player to player.

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited January 02, 2000).]

[Locutus]

It works in space-cities with you? I will try this out immediatly. I've tried to get this space-city thing to work for weeks! I might save me a lot (more) frustration. Thanks for that (if it does work now).

[Dreamer]

Sorry Locutus you are right, it does have problem with space cities.

After seeing your last message, I went to reconfirm the script with a new game and it does create unit on earth under the space city. Looks like the problem is on the city.location.

On a 2D map addressing we use x,y coordinates, but in this case with space locations are we talking about x,y,z? Can anyone confirm this?

[Locutus]

Grrrrrmmm.... Now you tell me. I went trough almost an hour of intensive testing to come to that same conclusion

No, no kidding. I don't really mind, it's all in the game. You're right about that 3 axis thing, the only problem is, I don't see how to use that 3rd axis. Right now I'm experimenting with giving orders: creating a spaceship, getting units aboard, moving into space, destroying the spaceship. It's all getting very complicated and I'm not even sure if it'll work, but I don't see an alternative.

Locutus

[Dreamer]

I have tried using the Editor and grant all advances to myself and manually create units into the space city ... guess what, no units are able to be created except those space units.

This looks quite similar to my other trigger on sea units to be placed into my capitol city on land. SLIC treat the tile square as a space tile regardless of you having a city there.

Maybe I should change the script to create space fighter rather then storm marines. Will let you know later if it works.