Cicero1747
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2016
- Messages
- 5
Hello All! I have a couple of questions for scenario experts, both about Civ2 and possibly about other games. I think this is the right forum to ask in! Any help is appreciated. Here are the details:
I am interested in making a Mars scenario; I was inspired by the ideas in both Mars NOW! from FW and by E.R. Burrough's John Carter series, with some other science fiction thrown in. Originally I planned to make it in FW or MGE, but I have been having serious doubts recently due to hardcoded limitations of the game, among other things, and I was wondering if this is even the right game to do it in! Here are the features of my planned scenario:
-Events that are both mundane (i.e. giving random units to factions) aand epochal (so and so got conquered!) , along with plenty of flavor text. I like story, and I like each faction to feel like it is special and fun, so everyone gets events, either through a large event system or through faction specific events a la Barron's Earth ATtS.
-Special units that are available either through fulfilling conditions, or capturing them, that either give a military advantage to the controlling faction (unit) or some other advantage (wonder, tech, money, etc.) that makes them strategic, similar in a few ways to Master of Orion 2's leaders or the "Heroes of Beckhorn" scenario's heroes, but with a more complex relationship, i.e. some heroes would die rather than be captured, some will be ransomable, and some will switch masters very smoothly, while any loss of a hero results in a big penalty. Also, some heroes, represented by wonders, are willing to switch sides (like Dr. McMasters, a lady who cares more about performing her research and getting paid VERY well for it; she may be sympathetic to different causes, but in the end, if her lab is conquered, she does WHATEVER it takes to ingratiate herself with the conqueror so she can continue to thrive), while others will get obsoleted by captured by some factions, but not obsolete if conquered by others (for example, "Atlas Shrugged," representing the monetary power of the League of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs, gets obsoleted if conquered by any of the ideologues (which tend to be anti-capitalist), but if conquered by the Americans, switches sides, feeling that working for them is still potentially profitable). This allows for a more character and story driven game, but I am unsure if I can even do a fraction of this with Civ 2...
-very large and detailed map: I want this to feel like MARS, not a tiny little world, and as such, am interested in the ability to make a detailed map with different terrain types that feels like it has vast distances to travel across, a world that is both surveyed yet entirely foreign, where getting skimmer or rover tech thus becomes a priority if you ever wish to go anywhere! Obviously, this also includes a variety of terrain types that I can set special rules to, both for movement and for what resources they produce.
-Terrain...this is a biggie. Different types of terrain are somewhat important, but more as gradations of each other. My general philosophy behind this is the idea of a world with no plantlife but which has scattered small prefab biomes "seeded" by the colonial powers, and these are the only ones that it is practical to build a city on, as any other location will result in starvation. No terrain, due to the lack of life on Mars, produces food, but most produce some form of production (minerals) and commerce (selling said things to Earth; this bonus would improve if you get trade corridors to a starbase). Most terrain can eventually produce food, but not in an explosive way, just at a subsistence level with slow growth, representing that the population in each base will only grow if there are enough resources, and immigration is a limiting factor. Part of the idea is that the icecaps have been melted (so actual water is present), thus irrigation is possible using cold-resistant plants, but the ultimate goal is to grow forest, which Mars had in the very distant past, which will complete the terraforming of Mars to habitable by injecting enough oxygen into the atmosphere to warm it up somewhat. Obviously, there have to be different levels of farming possible, and having it so that your commercial routes (i.e. roads) give more trade once you build them (one thing I hate about civ2: railroads give a minor production boost but no trade boost. Seriously???? Commerce benefited the most once you got out of dirt roads since you could now transport trade goods much quicker, on paved or railroad!). I use two general ideas for my terrain modeling: First, terrain means something more than simple resources or defense, and needs to give large benefits when you improve it; in this sense, I loved Bitterfrost, with its idea of improving iceland all the way to richland; this would be a cool mechanic, but I am potentially limited by the total types of terrain I can have. The second philosophy is that, like some of the "modern" scenarios (I am thinking Vendetta or Blood and Steel), terrain would give more resources than the base game, and some terrains are HUGELY more useful than others, like oil was in those two scenarios: I want Biomes and Ancient Ruins to be the best spots in the game!
-A single map is okay, as there isn't much to do on Mars' tiny moons, though some underground areas representing ruins, might be nice, but is by no means essential.
-A detailed tech tree, with plenty of both shared and unique units and faction specific as well as general wonders and even improvements.
-At least seven unique, playable factions, each distinguished by their origins, tech, military focus, etc. Though all factions share a terrestrial origin, they are radically different in their ideology, military skills, and reason for being on Mars, and victory can only be achieved by either subjugating or conquering each colonial faction.
-Graphics have never been that important to me, but in this instance, it is critical to be able to have a red planet (dur!) and units that look visually unique from each other either in design or through manipulation of the color scheme.
So, any ideas on which game would work best for this idea, if any? Honestly, I had thought it might almost be better suited to become its own game with its own rules, but I have no programming experience and wouldn't know where to start, lol.
Two other questions about Civ 2 specifically, while I am at it:
So I am going back and trying out some older FW era scenarios (e.g. Barron's a time to stand), but with the twist that I am altering many of these to increase the event count and improve the story flow, along with some unit corrections, etc. I have access to FW, MGE, and soon, ToT. Now, using FW, as I originally intended, is out of the question; not only am I increasing the size and length of the events file to crash-worthy levels, but the civipedia in FW drives me nuts! Now, I was considering using MGE, but there are a few problems. While the events work as intended, the city objectives system is thoroughly messed up, which makes a scenario using objectives aggravating, especially since I WANT some cities to be of more worth than others, and I use the objectives to remind me which cities have importance in this storyline (e.g. If I am the rebels, I want to defeat the Terran Alliance, so getting any of the mutant or NER cities is a waste of time and makes no sense). Problem two is the hostile AI, which, to be fair, I used a patch on these forums to fix. Problem three...well, it doesn't matter for some scenarios, like Visigoths, but in Barron's Earth, in my heavily revised storyline, Mars has much more weighted importance, and it would add a lot of depth to have a secondary map for Mars along with a third one representing Earth's orbit to simulate space battles for a few of the factions, and this necessitates both a lot of work for me and a conversion to ToT. Finally, in some cases, it would be nice to have some extra units, but I am limited by the base Civ2 game, obviously. Ultimately, my biggest complaint with Civ2 has always been that the scenarios do not always have the payback I desire, either in story or gameplay, so I am forced to edit scenarios in order to make them work in a fashion that justifies the time investment I make with any game; for this kind of investment, which version of Civ2 would you recommend?
Finally, a specific scenario design question, using two scenarios as examples: one of my favorite alternate realities of all time, CurtSibling's Vendetta (original), which is so fascinating that I have written stuff set in that reality (!), and Jesus balsinde's Visigoths v2. Now, both scenarios seem to have opposite rules on pollution, which puzzles me exceedingly. In Vendetta, pollution appears all the time, at least when you nuke, but when the message for global warming appears (anti-nuke protests), there is NO climate change at all; all squares appear to stay the same, and in my multiple play troughs I never noticed any terrain changes. In Visigoths, however, pollution is disabled (1 in special rules settings), and indeed, the black death (nukes) strikes and there is no resultant pollution, though inexplicably, the terrain improvements still disappear (grrr), which doesn't seem to happen in Vendetta! However, when the global warming message appears (?!?), "plague everywhere," then suddenly there is massive terrain change everywhere. Now, I can see some improvements falling into disrepair, but a pathogen isn't going to cause climate change! So my question is, how do I prevent this? Clearly, Curt managed to do so, and presumably others as well, but I cannot see where I would alter that particular setting either in Civ2 or in the rules or game files. What am I missing?
Thanks so much for your help!
Cicero1747
I am interested in making a Mars scenario; I was inspired by the ideas in both Mars NOW! from FW and by E.R. Burrough's John Carter series, with some other science fiction thrown in. Originally I planned to make it in FW or MGE, but I have been having serious doubts recently due to hardcoded limitations of the game, among other things, and I was wondering if this is even the right game to do it in! Here are the features of my planned scenario:
-Events that are both mundane (i.e. giving random units to factions) aand epochal (so and so got conquered!) , along with plenty of flavor text. I like story, and I like each faction to feel like it is special and fun, so everyone gets events, either through a large event system or through faction specific events a la Barron's Earth ATtS.
-Special units that are available either through fulfilling conditions, or capturing them, that either give a military advantage to the controlling faction (unit) or some other advantage (wonder, tech, money, etc.) that makes them strategic, similar in a few ways to Master of Orion 2's leaders or the "Heroes of Beckhorn" scenario's heroes, but with a more complex relationship, i.e. some heroes would die rather than be captured, some will be ransomable, and some will switch masters very smoothly, while any loss of a hero results in a big penalty. Also, some heroes, represented by wonders, are willing to switch sides (like Dr. McMasters, a lady who cares more about performing her research and getting paid VERY well for it; she may be sympathetic to different causes, but in the end, if her lab is conquered, she does WHATEVER it takes to ingratiate herself with the conqueror so she can continue to thrive), while others will get obsoleted by captured by some factions, but not obsolete if conquered by others (for example, "Atlas Shrugged," representing the monetary power of the League of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs, gets obsoleted if conquered by any of the ideologues (which tend to be anti-capitalist), but if conquered by the Americans, switches sides, feeling that working for them is still potentially profitable). This allows for a more character and story driven game, but I am unsure if I can even do a fraction of this with Civ 2...
-very large and detailed map: I want this to feel like MARS, not a tiny little world, and as such, am interested in the ability to make a detailed map with different terrain types that feels like it has vast distances to travel across, a world that is both surveyed yet entirely foreign, where getting skimmer or rover tech thus becomes a priority if you ever wish to go anywhere! Obviously, this also includes a variety of terrain types that I can set special rules to, both for movement and for what resources they produce.
-Terrain...this is a biggie. Different types of terrain are somewhat important, but more as gradations of each other. My general philosophy behind this is the idea of a world with no plantlife but which has scattered small prefab biomes "seeded" by the colonial powers, and these are the only ones that it is practical to build a city on, as any other location will result in starvation. No terrain, due to the lack of life on Mars, produces food, but most produce some form of production (minerals) and commerce (selling said things to Earth; this bonus would improve if you get trade corridors to a starbase). Most terrain can eventually produce food, but not in an explosive way, just at a subsistence level with slow growth, representing that the population in each base will only grow if there are enough resources, and immigration is a limiting factor. Part of the idea is that the icecaps have been melted (so actual water is present), thus irrigation is possible using cold-resistant plants, but the ultimate goal is to grow forest, which Mars had in the very distant past, which will complete the terraforming of Mars to habitable by injecting enough oxygen into the atmosphere to warm it up somewhat. Obviously, there have to be different levels of farming possible, and having it so that your commercial routes (i.e. roads) give more trade once you build them (one thing I hate about civ2: railroads give a minor production boost but no trade boost. Seriously???? Commerce benefited the most once you got out of dirt roads since you could now transport trade goods much quicker, on paved or railroad!). I use two general ideas for my terrain modeling: First, terrain means something more than simple resources or defense, and needs to give large benefits when you improve it; in this sense, I loved Bitterfrost, with its idea of improving iceland all the way to richland; this would be a cool mechanic, but I am potentially limited by the total types of terrain I can have. The second philosophy is that, like some of the "modern" scenarios (I am thinking Vendetta or Blood and Steel), terrain would give more resources than the base game, and some terrains are HUGELY more useful than others, like oil was in those two scenarios: I want Biomes and Ancient Ruins to be the best spots in the game!
-A single map is okay, as there isn't much to do on Mars' tiny moons, though some underground areas representing ruins, might be nice, but is by no means essential.
-A detailed tech tree, with plenty of both shared and unique units and faction specific as well as general wonders and even improvements.
-At least seven unique, playable factions, each distinguished by their origins, tech, military focus, etc. Though all factions share a terrestrial origin, they are radically different in their ideology, military skills, and reason for being on Mars, and victory can only be achieved by either subjugating or conquering each colonial faction.
-Graphics have never been that important to me, but in this instance, it is critical to be able to have a red planet (dur!) and units that look visually unique from each other either in design or through manipulation of the color scheme.
So, any ideas on which game would work best for this idea, if any? Honestly, I had thought it might almost be better suited to become its own game with its own rules, but I have no programming experience and wouldn't know where to start, lol.
Two other questions about Civ 2 specifically, while I am at it:
So I am going back and trying out some older FW era scenarios (e.g. Barron's a time to stand), but with the twist that I am altering many of these to increase the event count and improve the story flow, along with some unit corrections, etc. I have access to FW, MGE, and soon, ToT. Now, using FW, as I originally intended, is out of the question; not only am I increasing the size and length of the events file to crash-worthy levels, but the civipedia in FW drives me nuts! Now, I was considering using MGE, but there are a few problems. While the events work as intended, the city objectives system is thoroughly messed up, which makes a scenario using objectives aggravating, especially since I WANT some cities to be of more worth than others, and I use the objectives to remind me which cities have importance in this storyline (e.g. If I am the rebels, I want to defeat the Terran Alliance, so getting any of the mutant or NER cities is a waste of time and makes no sense). Problem two is the hostile AI, which, to be fair, I used a patch on these forums to fix. Problem three...well, it doesn't matter for some scenarios, like Visigoths, but in Barron's Earth, in my heavily revised storyline, Mars has much more weighted importance, and it would add a lot of depth to have a secondary map for Mars along with a third one representing Earth's orbit to simulate space battles for a few of the factions, and this necessitates both a lot of work for me and a conversion to ToT. Finally, in some cases, it would be nice to have some extra units, but I am limited by the base Civ2 game, obviously. Ultimately, my biggest complaint with Civ2 has always been that the scenarios do not always have the payback I desire, either in story or gameplay, so I am forced to edit scenarios in order to make them work in a fashion that justifies the time investment I make with any game; for this kind of investment, which version of Civ2 would you recommend?
Finally, a specific scenario design question, using two scenarios as examples: one of my favorite alternate realities of all time, CurtSibling's Vendetta (original), which is so fascinating that I have written stuff set in that reality (!), and Jesus balsinde's Visigoths v2. Now, both scenarios seem to have opposite rules on pollution, which puzzles me exceedingly. In Vendetta, pollution appears all the time, at least when you nuke, but when the message for global warming appears (anti-nuke protests), there is NO climate change at all; all squares appear to stay the same, and in my multiple play troughs I never noticed any terrain changes. In Visigoths, however, pollution is disabled (1 in special rules settings), and indeed, the black death (nukes) strikes and there is no resultant pollution, though inexplicably, the terrain improvements still disappear (grrr), which doesn't seem to happen in Vendetta! However, when the global warming message appears (?!?), "plague everywhere," then suddenly there is massive terrain change everywhere. Now, I can see some improvements falling into disrepair, but a pathogen isn't going to cause climate change! So my question is, how do I prevent this? Clearly, Curt managed to do so, and presumably others as well, but I cannot see where I would alter that particular setting either in Civ2 or in the rules or game files. What am I missing?
Thanks so much for your help!
Cicero1747
