New units

[Morgoth]

Nordicus, Wes
Rather than continue the AI and diplomacy note I thought I'd start a new one here for units.

Nordicus - I think earlier on in the above mentioned thread it talked about spies and secret agents. I'd suggest the unit I'm creating is called a spy and the existing one is a secret agent - and well done you got the time period exactly right.


As well as the spy I've got the models ready to make an Egyptian spearman, A cog and about half way there with a carthaginian style noble cavalry. I've just been busy on other things but shoul churn out the sprites for these in the next couple of weeks or so.

Reason why I based the spy on a 17th century type figure was because I wanted to create an early muskateer (matchlock armed as in 30 years war/English civil war period) and can reuse most of the model.

[WesW]

Thanks for the support, Tom.
When do you think you will have the new spy ready?
See the Interceptor & Cleric poll thread over in the General section for more info on how I plan to use the unit.
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"Remember Salzburg!" -Austrian Premiere

An email from Timothy Pintello:
"Could someone other than Nordicus e-mail me any files that he has attached to his e-mails? I am able to get the text of Nordicus's messages, but not anything that he attaches to them."

My reply:
"Don't worry, Tim, Nordicus's messages don't have any meaning attached to them."
[This message has been edited by WesW (edited November 22, 1999).]

[Nordicus]

Morgoth:
Geez, how many Toms do we have working on mods and such??? My name's Tom, yours is too, TP's is...who else? There's one more, I think....

Yeah, no, I think the names are good--I got confused (pretty common), thinking that the Spy spy will be called a "Spy," where the new one (which is now the old one or older one) will be called a "Secret Agent." That seemed a bit off to me.
It's the other way around--good. Sounds good.

I like some of your ideas there, too.

For a while now I've been thinking of a new settler unit, a modern one (well, actually, two--one something like the Civ2 Engineer, for the modern+ era, and one, I dunno, from the 12th or 13th centuries), but I don't want to flood you with ideas
I just hate looking at Phantoms (or even interceptors) drifting over these units that look like hippies that just got out of the shower, wearing a dirty towel Well, you know what I mean. Even just a pair of pants would be nice, the poor things!
Any thoughts on that?

(BTW, have you checked out the thread on civ-specific units?)

N.

[Morgoth]

Nordicus, Wes
I've been following some of the threads but not in that much detail. Basically I've been trying to work (not got that far) on a scenario of my own. I've been trying to put together the framework for a longer game with more units discoveries etc. This will then let me start to focus on which units I need.

I've been drawing up a chart (using Word) whcih shows the discoveries and units. I think I'm pretty well there on most of the units I want (not making them just deciding what I 'may' want). However still trying to work out the other items eg building etc to have. If you're interested I could send you the charts and you could let me have any input. I'll probably add the new 'spy' into it.

I'm not a fan of wonders so I'm not sure whether I'll add them in or at least I might add them in but change their function ie They're really all tourist attractions so should help gold rather than make people happy for example (I'd love to know how 'happy' everyone was about building pyramids!) and the thought that you can build one only and noone else would build another doesn't really fit (but does support my tourist theory - everyone likes the originals best!).

Not sure I'll do any new settler type units yet. I know they don't make sense later on but if its just for 'looks' its not really worth the effort- on the other hand a little wagon train or something may be more applicable.

One thing I'd like to do in my scenario is upgrade buildings eg go from a money lender to a city bank and maybe to a corporate bank. This idea was mentioned in ealier threads and what I want is to upgrade the building so it has the advantages but you don't need to build a completely new building - Can this be done in Slic?

Wes - I'll try and finish off the spy this weekend and post. It's basically just a bit of fidling until I'm happy with the pose and then creating the sprite.By the way does anyone know how to automate anythign in Paintshop pro? The real tedious bit is creating the shadows. All I want to automate is calling up a file, selecting a predetermined colour, change that colour to black, slecting all the unselected bits and clearing that (making it white) and saving. Its just that for a basic set of movements and animations you do this a hundred or so times. Its only about 6-8 keystrokes total per file but it just takes time - and its boring!

[Nordicus]

I thought you away somewhere, Morgoth (I'm gonna call you that from now on if you don't mind, cuz when I call you Tom, it feels like I'm talking to myself, and I do that enough out loud ), because I missed your last post. I thought it was at 3 after my last one. I musta been on painkillers or something. Anyone, I exactly no time to comment right now, so this, so I don't forget again, is one helluva long *bump*

Later.

T.

[Locutus]

Nordicus:
I agree with Morgoth that upgrading the settler just to make it look better is not really worth the effort. Wouldn't it be a good idea to put some extra functionality to this new unit, like if it founds a city, the size of this city would three instead of one?

This way cities that are founded later on, would have a better change to actually grow out and become large and important. In my games, the newer cities are almost automatically the smallest, where in reality newer cities can rapidly grow out to be enourmas (USA, Australia, Latin-America, etc.)

[Ray K]

A more realistic solution would be for the tile improvements to become more efficient for advanced cultures.

So while stone-age and industrial-age cities both start at size 1, the industrial cities will grow much faster because they receive more food from their farmlands.

In fact, it should be straightforward to create more efficient versions of each tile improvement for each "age" in the game. I think that would achieve your goals while making the game more true to historical reality.

[WesW]

I don't *think* you can change the size of the city the settlers found. Does SMAC have this option? I can't remember.
TP allowed you to move settlers into small cities and add themselves to its population in his mod. I think this would most closely fit the growth of the American cities.

As for tile improvements, this is what the advanced forms are for- to increase productivity of the squares. They cost more, but that's life for you.

[Ray K]

Sure you can. Try this SLIC code:

trigger 'GrowCities' when (city.built)
{
AddPops(city,3);
}


This would get triggered anytime a city is built and would add 3 to its population.

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"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind... Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always triumph."

[Nordicus]

Locutus:
I was thinking of Civ2's "engineer" unit for doing more stuff--like Ray has in slic there (hey, thanks), but realism is important to me too. Anyway, I'll maybe think about it later--renaming the "settler" unit something else ("hippy in a bath towel"? ), and a "settler" for maybe the 1300s or 1400s to maybe 1900, then perhaps use the "engineer" after.

[Morgoth]

Nordicus
Just to let you know. I posted the spy sprite to Wes today. Only done the movement bits and the other files (TGA,AVI) so far. Should be able to add the death and fight scenes later this week so by next weekend I should have it completed and will also post it to Markos/Dan.

[WesW]

RayK, could you, or anyone else that cares to, follow up on having cities start with more than one pop?
Find out how to have this kick in when a certain date, turn, or advance is reached?

Also, find out if you can have cities begin with improvements in them, especially happiness and/or growth improvements.

This would be especially useful with sea and space cities, and may solve some problems with growth and development that have been discussed in the Interceptors poll, among other places.

[Nordicus]

Morgoth, sounds good, man.

If we need a wav file for him, lemme know, I have a bunch, I'm sure something will do.

trigger 'GrowCities' when (city.built)
{
AddPops(city,3);
}

This would get triggered anytime a city is built and would add 3 to its population.

Well, this may work, but it doesn't specify what unit it is that's puting down a city....

[skorpion59]

But you wouldn't want it by unit would you? Don't you want 3 added to every city whether it is land, sea or space once the time (date, round or advance) is reached?

[WesW]

Well, if we *could* specify the unit, it would certainly give us more options. If not, then have the effect kick in for all cities founded after a certain point.