New idea

I have an idea for something similar to capturing treasure or creating raw materials similar to the colonization scenario or AOI's raw materials. My idea is to create a unit (whales) or (seals) or both. These units would be flag units and would then be enslavable. When enslaved the enslave unit would be a barrel of oil which could then be transported to the capital and converted to gold in the treasury. To capture the whales (ocean unit ) you would have a special ship ( Whaler ) and only the whaler could capture whales.

I can create a civ called nature and have the whales and seals auto produced but since I am already using all the culture groups for other civs I can't use any of the five culture groups for city types.

I thought of using barbarians, but that raised another problem. The AI will send massive stacks of units to wipe out the barbarians and I don't think unit production of barbarian units is very controllable.

Anyone have any ideas how this can be accomplished?

Is what you are describing possible? Enslave is an option in the editor for the offensive unit, not the unit being enslaved. IE. a privateer has a 1/3 chance of making a privateer out of any enemy unit. If you make the whales the capture unit, then this means workers can't be captured. You're right about the barbarians, and also the barbarians will simply fortify in place any non-combat units.

Do you have a civ in game that is not a viable option for the human player? You could make the whales a hidden nationality unit belonging to that civ, and then make them immobile or give them a low movement rate to keep them from swimming to port. Or make a nature civ as you've described. But I think it would have to take the worker's place as the Capture unit.

You could also make a 'Red Horse Beer' unit, which is then captured by exporters and taken to the victory point location at my front door. I'd be grateful.

AnthonyBoscia said:

Is what you are describing possible? Enslave is an option in the editor for the offensive unit, not the unit being enslaved. IE. a privateer has a 1/3 chance of making a privateer out of any enemy unit. If you make the whales the capture unit, then this means workers can't be captured. You're right about the barbarians, and also the barbarians will simply fortify in place any non-combat units.

Do you have a civ in game that is not a viable option for the human player? You could make the whales a hidden nationality unit belonging to that civ, and then make them immobile or give them a low movement rate to keep them from swimming to port. Or make a nature civ as you've described. But I think it would have to take the worker's place as the Capture unit.

You could also make a 'Red Horse Beer' unit, which is then captured by exporters and taken to the victory point location at my front door. I'd be grateful.

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You are partially correct regarding the enslavement, or perhaps I should say you are correct about the enslavement. The whale unit would actually be a Flag unit. A/D would both be zero. It would be a "Capture the Unit - Reverse Capture the flag" application. The problem is, sea units can not transport sea units. The whale is a sea unit and even tho it is a flag unit, it can not be transported by another sea unit which the whaler is. Seals won't be a problem as they are land units. I am only using 24 civs in the mod so I can create a nature civ from one of the remaining eight civs.

Roger, that makes sense. Can the flag unit be an air unit? Then the whalers could be aircraft carriers.

AnthonyBoscia said:

Roger, that makes sense. Can the flag unit be an air unit? Then the whalers could be aircraft carriers.

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I did some testing and found out the Whaler WILL capture the whale and will load it. You can then return the whaler to a home port that has a VP marker and the appropriate gold will be added to the treasury.

I set up a civ, called nature. That civ can produce only one unit, the whale. I placed one nature city on an island and surrounded it with impenitrable reef units( reef units owned by nature civ) so that no civ can attack the city.
I am now testing to see if this city will produce whale units and put them to sea or if they will remain in the city.

You did!?! I was trying to do such a thing for a scenario, but wasn't sure how to at the time... In essence just what you described, to have sea units be captured and brought to coast city to be cashed in.. let us know if it works! That would be great.

tom2050 said:

You did!?! I was trying to do such a thing for a scenario, but wasn't sure how to at the time... In essence just what you described, to have sea units be captured and brought to coast city to be cashed in.. let us know if it works! That would be great.

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It does work Tom. Sort of. I created a civ and called it Nature. I am using Supa's great white shark http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=175159 as a test unit.


I am using Wyrm's Steam Frigate as the whaler with the capture Flag.

The Shark is the only unit available to the Nature Civ. I placed 3 shark units in the Nature City and one in the open Ocean.
Here's the city View:

As you can see the city is producing the unit.

I captured the Shark that was in the open ocean and returned it to one of my home port cities that had a VP Location marker and got the appropriate response with the additional gold being deposited into my treasury.

Now for the bad news. None of the shark units moved during the entire test period ( approximately 20 moves ).

I believe this is because the Flag Unit is selected in the Unit abilities box in the editor.

I have not yet tried to attack the city to see what happens to the flag units in the city.

Since you mention it Tom, I was thinking of asking you if you could make a whale unit, preferably a spirm whale?

The Guardian

I noticed in your screenshot for the shark, it had "requires escort" checked and "transport" was not checked. In special actions it had both "load" and "unload" checked. It also had 1 attack. Is that how the unit was in your test? If so, maybe those settings are the problem. Try unchecking the "unload" and the "requires escort" boxes. Units with the latter checked usually wont go anywhere without a friendly warship escorting them. If you just want to load the shark on another unit, it doesn't need "unload", that's for a unit carrying other units. Also check the "transport" box since the AI needs one of those boxes checked or it wont know how to use the unit. I assume the 1 attack is so the shark wont become a worker?

That might help, though I seem to remember reading somewhere that flag units might be programmed to remain stationary no matter what is otherwise set.

Indeed, the AI isn't moving it because it has no AI strategy set - they don't even know what they can do with it! You want to keep the "unload" flag, and set it as a transport. Since it can't actually transport anything, when it feels like it has enough of them, the AI should use them to explore the map.

The AI will move flag units which AREN'T set as flag units in the AI strategy. "Requires Support" is also something which doesn't affect the AI's movement of units (this is what has been checked here, not "requires escort" )

Virote_Considon said:

Indeed, the AI isn't moving it because it has no AI strategy set - they don't even know what they can do with it! You want to keep the "unload" flag, and set it as a transport. Since it can't actually transport anything, when it feels like it has enough of them, the AI should use them to explore the map.

The AI will move flag units which AREN'T set as flag units in the AI strategy. "Requires Support" is also something which doesn't affect the AI's movement of units (this is what has been checked here, not "requires escort" )

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Thanks Virote I'll give a try and let know how it goes.

Virote_Considon said:

The AI will move flag units which AREN'T set as flag units in the AI strategy. "Requires Support" is also something which doesn't affect the AI's movement of units (this is what has been checked here, not "requires escort" )

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Thanks

Yeeaaaas, it's working fine now. Thanks again Virote. Now, if I can get Tom to make that whale unit for me ........ Oh Tom,

So the AI uses them as well with the new settings? As long as the AI does something with them, even if it's solely to bring them back to town (which in my scenario all have VP locations), I am more than ecstatic about that! I can make those units you requested in PM, and whale..

tom2050 said:

So the AI uses them as well with the new settings? As long as the AI does something with them, even if it's solely to bring them back to town (which in my scenario all have VP locations), I am more than ecstatic about that! I can make those units you requested in PM, and whale..

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Yes I've tested them and they seem to be working OK. I haven't tested them thoroughly with the AI yet. I have one more test to do. I want to test them with Attack strength and zero defense to see if they will work that way. If that works, you can force inter-action between the AI and the Flag unit.

Virote was correct. With the settings he mentioned the Flag Unit will go into explore mode. I have also given the nature civ offensive units with zoc. and set their aggression level to the max as well as setting all flavors to zero. Diplomacy level is -1 and they are militaristic/expansionist. I will see how this works.

Oh and thanks, for making the units, can't wait to see them.

Just to note, I think the "diplomacy level" which you've set to -1 would not actually be related to how the AI acts - if it's the value near where you enter the Civilopedia key and culture group, then that just affects the text they speak when in diplomacy, from the diplomacy.txt file.

A setting of -1 means that it uses the text one less than its position in the editor, which would be better explained in the following example:
Rome is the 2nd civ in the editor (after, of course, the Barbarians). If it has a value of -1, that means it uses the first line(s) of text in each situation (since -1 compared to 2nd would be first). I don't think -2, etc., work though. If you want to assign this more precisely, enter the specific number, although of course it'll start with 0 being the first line(s). Dear God, that was a horrible description, and a horrible example, but I hope it helps

Also, flavours don't affect diplomacy either.

EDIT: If you want to make them really aggressive, just give them loads of really powerful units, which can't move anywhere. Make sure they can't load onto any transports (using stuff like the tactical missile flag, or maybe by letting them transport units themselves), otherwise the always-genius AI will try to load the immobile units into the transports, causing the game to freeze...

Can the same be done on land for a sort of 'Nomads' scenario?

Kinda, but only if they're pre-placed, because it doesn't ever actually build units flagged with "Explore", though it will use them if it has them. The only units it'll both build and use to explore are combat units, which of course can't be captured.

Virote_Considon said:

Just to note, I think the "diplomacy level" which you've set to -1 would not actually be related to how the AI acts - if it's the value near where you enter the Civilopedia key and culture group, then that just affects the text they speak when in diplomacy, from the diplomacy.txt file.

A setting of -1 means that it uses the text one less than its position in the editor, which would be better explained in the following example:
Rome is the 2nd civ in the editor (after, of course, the Barbarians). If it has a value of -1, that means it uses the first line(s) of text in each situation (since -1 compared to 2nd would be first). I don't think -2, etc., work though. If you want to assign this more precisely, enter the specific number, although of course it'll start with 0 being the first line(s). Dear God, that was a horrible description, and a horrible example, but I hope it helps


Also, flavours don't affect diplomacy either.

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Thanks again Virote. Regarding the example, I guess we both have warped minds, cuz I understand exactly what you mean!

EDIT: If you want to make them really aggressive, just give them loads of really powerful units, which can't move anywhere. Make sure they can't load onto any transports (using stuff like the tactical missile flag, or maybe by letting them transport units themselves), otherwise the always-genius AI will try to load the immobile units into the transports, causing the game to freeze...

Click to expand...

I have the reef unit set up with A/D of 1000 ea. Its a sea unit and immobile. can't be loaded into a ship.

If you want the whale units to wander, would automatising them (with 0 worker strength) be any good?