Bridges?

Does anyone on this forum remember a thread having to do with putting bridges in maps? Something about invisible cities maybe?

I tried the search, but no luck, if someone here could post the link, I would appreciate it.

Invisible cities can work as nearly everything -even as bridges.

But our experiment long ago was different. If I remember well, we tried to use an immobile preplaced ship with zero attack/defence that can be captured as a bridge, but the AI didn´t use it by loading the ship with a landunit and unloading it at the other side of the river.

Ah, I see.

kk, have to stick w/ invisible cities.

Thanks!

If the bridges you describe are to be preplaced, there is a terrain graphics fix that doesn't look bad. By manipulating the connecting tiles on a map of D.C., I was able to make fairly realistic looking bridges over the Potomac, in this example, near Roosevelt Island:



There's no reason that the bridge "Feet" couldn't be made to look like wooden or iron beams instead, or that a pre-placed resource couldn't be used to add other structures to it.

You would want to put the bridges on LM terrain tiles so that not every land mass connection results in a bridge tile.

also: when the bridges get longer, as with the one at the top of the picture, the graphic sometimes spans several files. I can explain that more fully if you need me to.

This looks awesome Balthasar. Now if you place a city with transparent citygraphics on such a terrain tile, even ships could cross that bridge. You can give that "invisible city" the name of the bridge.

Another methode to create "bridge-graphics" could be to use the road or railroad graphics in a special combination that is only allowed on the tiles with bridges. But this would need, that no unit has the pillage or bombard ability, otherwise the bridge would dissapear if one of the needed tiles would loose its road or railroad.

You can edit the gfx, using a coast square and superimposing bridge graphics like the terrain above.

Takhisis said:

You can edit the gfx, using a coast square and superimposing bridge graphics like the terrain above.

Click to expand...

Yes, that´s possible and there is even the possibility to place (transparent) cities in water-terrain if these bridges should be used for crossing land-units over it. But water-cities have their own rules that are not adequate to normal "bridge-situations".

If that terrain-modification would only consist of coastal-terrain, no land-units could cross those bridges.

Civinator said:

Yes, that´s possible and there is even the possibility to place (transparent) cities in water-terrain if these bridges should be used for crossing land-units over it. But water-cities have their own rules that are not adequate to normal "bridge-situations".

If that terrain-modification would only consist of coastal-terrain, no land-units could cross those bridges.

Click to expand...

Correct. You can allow the building of cities and even roads over water, but land units can't use them. So here's how I'd do it, incorporating Civinator's suggestions:

Let's use a New York map I've been working on as an example. I want to put in the bridges along the east river, especially the Brooklyn bridge. I start out by making normal land connections with LM Plains terrain:


As I start to find and modify the terrain files, I realize that there are more tile squares involved than I first expected. Moreover, I realized that I had to modify not just the lxpcd and lxdpc files, but also the xpcd and xdpc files as well. At least one of those little connector squares in the middle was found in the lxtgc file:

Here they are after customizing. I made a bridge (bonus) resource and bookended the Brooklyn bridge with it:

Finally, I add the invisible cities that will allow river traffic to pass the bridge and voila! a bridge that will accommodate both land and river traffic:

obviously, that bridge "resource" needs work, but you get the idea...

The downsides are:

1. You can't run boats under the bridge unless you 'control' (have a city on) it. Foot units and wheeled units can use it anytime.

2. You can't allow the terrain you use to make the bridge to be irrigated or mined. Damn! should have used LM Desert terrain instead. Live and learn...

3. All cities for every civ have to be invisible. That's fine for this map, but could be inconvenient for others.

4. Adding the city converts the railroad/highway underneath to look like regular road. It's not really a drawback, but something to keep in mind.

Here's an example of a modified LM terrain pcx for reference:

View attachment lxpgc.pcx


Whoop. Didn't mean to make a tutorial out of that post.....

Very nice Balthasar. Now you could even set the cityborders to transparency (the borders disturb a little bit) and than it is it.

Yeah.. borders disturb and the thing that bridges build units or buildings seems extremely weird.

Civinator said:

Very nice Balthasar. Now you could even set the cityborders to transparency (the borders disturb a little bit) and than it is it.

Click to expand...

Thanks Civinator. Other than to use a completely transparent borders file (easy enough), I don't know where one would turn them off in the editor.

AncientOne said:

.....and the thing that bridges build units or buildings seems extremely weird.

Click to expand...

Yeah; I tried every other option I could think of. Of course, if one wishes to deny them the ability to build units or buildings one only need require that a critical resource be within city limits in order that they can be built. Then put that resource everywhere except there. It could even be an invisible resource, so that the map isn't crowded with them.

On the other hand, the Brooklyn Bridge could plausibly build: a workshop that upgrades to a maintenance building, a museum, an office, a security system, traffic control, film contracts, and tourism facilities. It could, um, hire its own Apprentices, workers, cops, security guys, engineers and managers too... It could even have its own small wonder - after all, it is a cultural icon.

And of course if one were to do a wartime scenario, say, "The Bridge at Remagen" using this technique, the bridge could be "held" and "reinforced" with useful military engineering and units....

To avoid the building of units or buildings in the "bridge-city" the methode to set the "resource-in-city-radius" in my eyes is not the best methode as it only works for buildings - not for units.

So the tradenet around the "bridgecity" must be cut off, what can be easily done by setting the two LM-terrains at the edges of the "bridge-city" to "roads or railroads not allowed" and to place a few strategic "basic-resources", that are needed for every building and unit (these resources must´nt even be in cityradius) . Water- and airtrade (at least to the city) must be disabled.

If tradenet is cutoff, these could viewed as slow down times during traffic on a toll bridge.

To avoid the game crashing if no unit is available to be built, have it where the bridge city can build 'Bridge Maintenance', which would be a 999 shield unit... or it could do Wealth (a toll bridge ). Bridge Maintenance could have the disband option only, making it a filler for the bridge (the graphic could be a small pile of tools or something).

Tom

You can copy the graphics from Open TTD if you like the style, there's road and rail bridges if you like.

That would be a different project. For now, I made a new bridge out of tundra and set it to not allow roads. Then a cheat: I renamed xpgc to xtgc so that I don't have to remake the bridge connections. Finally I used a road terrain of my own to make the bridge. So here you have it: a bridge without any connection to the grid, and designed to stay that way.



Postscript: since the end is not connected to the nearest roads, I've used terrain to cover the end of the bridge. I suppose one could also use trees or hills in a different kind of mod.

Meanwhile, the bridge resource should allow a small assortment of bridge buildings, engineers, etc (see my post above) and a tourist stop for modest cultural gain.

Just remember that the bridge needs to be able to build at least one combat unit, otherwise the game will crash.

Then Bridge Security is necessary. On the other had it could be a troll.

Can the invisible cities function as a canal to connect two bodies of water together, say like the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea?

timerover51 said:

Can the invisible cities function as a canal to connect two bodies of water together, say like the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea?

Click to expand...

It sounds like it can do that, but I guess still only 1 civ would be capable of crossing the city canal (depending on who owns the city). Too bad cities can't be given hidden nationality.

Tom

Landmark Sea, lwSSS.pcx, could be used for Canal graphics for example and ships would be able to use the Canal to go from one Sea to another.