As an update, this scenario will certainly feature lua.
@Grishnach has been a tremendous partner and has done great work.
One feature we are both very excited about is lua will enable ranged units.
@CurtSibling had a question about this in another thread, namely how elegant it is. The answer is it is extremely elegant. You simply select a unit and then press a key (in our case, 'k'). Ammunition then shows up on the unit, and the unit loses movement points (to prevent ammo from infinitely appearing, although if you wanted it to for whatever reason, you could remove the MP penalty in your event). We have it set up so that certain units can acquire ammunition anywhere, and other units have to be on a specific type of terrain (in our case, a "prepared site").
This does take 2 unit spaces (one for the unit, one for the ammo) but with the 127 available in ToTPP, this isn't a huge issue. I'm actually tying up 8 units, because the following will have ranged attacks:
Baeleric Slingers ---> flings stones, can get ammo anywhere, loses 1/3 of its MP per each stone drawn, so it could shoot 3 times. Stones fly 1 space.
Cretan Archers ---> shoots arrows, can get ammo anywhere, loses 1/2 of its MP per arrow drawn. Arrows fly 2 spaces.
Scorpio ---> shoots scorpio bolt, can get ammo anywhere (might see if we can change this to open ground only, actually) and loses 1/2 of its MP per bolt (so it is mobile artillery). Bolts fly 3 spaces.
Onager ---> flings boulders, can only get ammo on prepare site, loses all of its MP per boulder (fixed artillery that can only shot once). Boulders fly 4 spaces.
All of these units have 0 attack and fairly weak defense. They need to be protected by other units. Their ammo is their strength. Their ammo ranges in strength (which I'm still working on the balance of) but what I'd like to achieve is stones will injure but not kill most units, arrows should badly injure most units, bolts should kill most units that aren't in cities and damage units that are, and boulders really should smash anything they encounter.
This same concept could be applied to naval shells, bombs from aircraft, or even bullets from infantry if you wanted to. The nice thing is, by making the ammo relatively weak, we should be able to effectively have attack sequences that don't necessarily kill either the attacker or the defender -- so consider the implications for a scenario about Trafalgar or Midway... Something that seemed almost too simple/quick under the old rules of civ is actually interesting with lua.
We are also trying to implement a check to see if there is a supply route back to a certain point for a unit to be able to draw ammo. This "should" be possible but we haven't implemented it yet.
And, of course, I'm sure the AI would be hopeless at this so I am only going to allow this feature for the Romans.
