Would this Civ4 Air Combat change possible?

[Lawrie]

Hey guys,

I was playing Civ2 again on me ol' netbook while I was on my travels (it spared my sanity on some long commuting trips haha!

Anyway, straight to the point, the air combat (for fighters and bombers) still feels more intuitive and fun to control and attack with than the (what feels to me) abstract air combat of Civ 4, and the extra micromanagement (of limited planes per city etc.)

Is it in theory possible to edit aircraft (perhaps making them like gunships in the unit editorbut unable to capture cities) or via python to recreate the air combat system of civ2? Would this be immensely difficult for a python coder on the forums (if they ever felt inclined to!)

Just wondering chaps

[DuskDancer]

I know you can make them (aircraft) DOMAIN_LAND to make them more like Gunships...you can also edit the planes' XML to make this:

<bNoCapture>1</bNoCapture>

(Makes sure aircraft can't capture cities.)

<iAirUnitCap>0</iAirUnitCap>

(Makes sure aircraft don't use up city air unit cap space - yay for stacks of doom!).

Never played Civ2 so I don't how to make it "more like Civ2", but that should help. Bonne chance!

P.S: You said "chaps", but what about "chappesses?"

[The_J]

Doing that will mess pretty bad with the animations (if it works at all).

[DuskDancer]

If you edit an air unit to DOMAIN_LAND, you WILL need to change the Civ4ArtDefines_Unit.xml for each air unit you change to read thusly:

<bActAsLand>0</bActAsLand>
<bActAsAir>1</bActAsAir>

...and you will also need to edit the animations to make it appear in the air. I don't remember all of how to do that.

[Lawrie]

I'll check out the unit editors to see if thats possible - thanks DuskDancer (chappette! hehe

In Civ 2 air combat would see 'fighter aircraft' act a bit like gunships (except over land/sea) and bombers would end their movement immediately after one attack, thus making them have to wait until the next turn to move back to a friendly city before commencing another attack.

Thus the aircraft units that didn't return home (either in a single turn for fighters, or in the subsequent turn for bombers) would run out of fuel and well crash.

It made for a simple air combat mechanism that i would love to see implemented into civ4 in the same way if possible. Im just wondering if it might be possible to code in python?

[DuskDancer]

Dunno about Python. I'm as useless as it gets when it comes to scripting - except for map generation, because apparently I can still do math percentages (never thought I'd use 4th-grade math again! lol).

"Chappette"...that's funny.

[The_J]

Would be possible, but it would also be awful for the performance and for the AI, so...not really possible, would cripple the game too much.

[Lawrie]

Ah righto the_J i'll maybe just experiment a little with the unit editor, but hey thanks for answering and giving a heads up!

[TrentonC]

I would love to see this were this project has gone, any updates