[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[JHTX]

Crisis averted thanks for the help everyone

 

[JHTX]

Ok another question. I added another unit in hopes of making a second engineer type unit. Can someone help me figure out why the option to transform terrain is not being given as an option please. The unit can do everything the engineer unit can except for transform terrain. I am not sure if I need to change something with the unit or the terrain. Thanks

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

The transform ability is hard-coded to Slot 2. The ToT flag only affects worker speed.

Expanding transform-capable units would be a handy addition: it's potentially problematic in the Extended Original mod, where Colonists supersede Engineers and therefore disable terrain transformation unless you've stockpiled a workforce.

UPDATE: Clarified in Post #1491.

 

[Buck2005]

Ok another question. I added another unit in hopes of making a second engineer type unit. Can someone help me figure out why the option to transform terrain is not being given as an option please. The unit can do everything the engineer unit can except for transform terrain. I am not sure if I need to change something with the unit or the terrain. Thanks

In TOTPP you can definitely add an unlimited number of units that receive the engineer flag, capable of transforming the terrain. You need to add the line

; 00100000 unit acquires engineering abilities 1 - engineer

in the RULES file in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section.

In this post Prof. Garfield gives advice on how to do this:

Want to design a scenario, I have questions.

And just as I think I figured out what the problem was. :p I noticed digging through the rules that you gave every faction its own settler unit and made the default Settler and Engineer (Wizard and Necromant) civ-specific. I loaded up test.sav from this post, removed the 'Not _x' from all civs'...

forums.civfanatics.com

I used these settings and made for myself the required number of units with the engineer option. It definitely works.

 

[JHTX]

Ok so in column G if I read everything right it starts on the right and ends on the left. How may total digits should there be in column G? One of set rules I used had 13 digits, 8 digits posted above, my current rules that I copied from has 9 digits.

 

[JHTX]

So I have my colum G match

00100000 unit acquires engineering abilities 1 - engineer

With the exception of one more digit added to the left for navigable rivers (000100000). New unit still can not transform tundra like the regular engineer unit. Which now leads me to believe that something is wrong with my tundra settings.

Maybe I am missing something since I just getting back into this.

 

[tootall_2012]

The ability for engineers to transform terrain is only granted when its civilization has discovered the « Explosives » technology, otherwise it is limited only to building roads ( or railroads with the « Railroad » advance), mines/irrigation or removing pollution. It may also only build farmlands after discovering « Refrigeration ».

EDIT: and only if you have ‘granted’ the rights to do so in the @terrain section of the rules file for the terrain you want them to be able to transform.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Ok so in column G if I read everything right it starts on the right and ends on the left. How may total digits should there be in column G? One of set rules I used had 13 digits, 8 digits posted above, my current rules that I copied from has 9 digits.

The standard rules are 8; TOTPP Navigable Rivers flag is 9, and 10 through 13 are the Extra Settler Flags introduced in v0.16 (none of which control Engineer-specific functions).

With the exception of one more digit added to the left for navigable rivers (000100000). New unit still can not transform tundra like the regular engineer unit. Which now leads me to believe that something is wrong with my tundra settings.

Your settings are fine; Buck and tootall must know something I don't, because I have never been able to access the transform order with any unit other than the original Engineers. UPDATE: Clarified in Post #1491.

The ability for engineers to transform terrain is only granted when its civilization has discovered the « Explosives » technology

Technically this is linked to the Engineers' prereq advance and not Explosives specifically (as is the popup message).

 

[tootall_2012]

Technically this is linked to the Engineers' prereq advance and not Explosives specifically (as is the popup message).

Yes, you are right in your statement. I stand corrected.

Your settings are fine; Buck and tootall must know something I don't, because I have never been able to access the transform order with any unit other than the original Engineers.

I'd never tried to implement it before today on units other than those in the settler/engineer slots so I tried the following test with a scenario I'm currently playing:

I made the following adjustments in the rules.txt for the "Swordsman" unit in slot #4.

• Gave it the role 5 in the @units section and
• Set the bits 10 to 13 in the @UNITS_ADVANCED of the fourth unit to 0

@UNITS
Peasant,      Mat, 0,  1.,0,  0a,1d,  2h,1f,  4,0,  5, nil, 000000000000000
Constructor,  Rad, 0,  2.,0,  0a,2d,  1h,1f,  6,0,  5, Eng, 000000000000000
Warrior,      nil, 0,  0.,0,  4a,7d,  3h,2f,  4,0,  1, AFl, 000000000000000
Swordsman,    Rep, 0,  2.,0,  7a,4d,  2h,2f,  4,0,  5, Cmp, 000000000010100

...

@UNITS_ADVANCED
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 10000000
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 0000010000000 ; Swordsman

Now when I activate the Swordsman and go to the Orders menu you see I can not only build a city, a road but also transform the woods terrain to a plains

If I want to deactivate some or all of these abilities I need to change the corresponding bits in the @UNITS_ADVANCED from 0 to 1. For example if I only want it to have the ability to a build a city I would leave the 12th bit as a zero and set the others to 1:

11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000,0000000000000000,0000000000000000, 1011010000000 ; Swordsman

I hope this was helpful.

 

[JHTX]

Thanks for the replies and info. I will give it a go testing out the 10-13 bits tonight.

 

[Knighttime]

Now when I activate the Swordsman and go to the Orders menu you see I can not only build a city, a road but also transform the woods terrain to a plains

View attachment 688301

@tootall_2012 In that screenshot, your unit can convert Woods to Plain using the "i" / irrigate command. But I think the discussion here was about the "o" / transform order, right? And although your menu shows an entry for "Transform to Grassland" it's grayed out and not selectable. However:

I tested a situation where the unit in the Engineer slot has a prerequisite of "no", meaning it will never appear in the game.
First, I confirmed that the basic Settlers unit in the first slot could not Transform terrain; the menu option was grayed out, and pressing the "o" key brought up the popup box saying "That function can only be performed by Engineers".
Then I added the Engineer capability to the Settlers unit type using the flag in column G of @UNITS_ADVANCED. With this in place, when I activated a Settler, the menu option was still grayed out -- but, when I pressed the "o" key, the Settler unit began to transform!

So, my conclusion is that giving a unit Engineer capabilities using column G of @UNITS_ADVANCED does give them the capability to transform terrain, but does not unlock the Transform menu option.

The ability for engineers to transform terrain is only granted when its civilization has discovered the « Explosives » technology

Technically this is linked to the Engineers' prereq advance and not Explosives specifically (as is the popup message).

Interesting... I didn't realize this either, but the documentation of the Explosives tech slot (ID 28) agrees:

Contrary to popular belief, Explosives does NOT inherently allow transformation orders or display the "New Order: Transform" message.
The ability to transform is inherent to unit in the Engineer slot of the RULES.TXT file. When this unit first becomes available the message will be displayed.

However, that documentation may have been written before TOTPP gave us the ability to add Engineer capabilities to any unit using column G of @UNITS_ADVANCED. Furthermore, it seems important to distinguish between "the ability of the unit to transform" and "the transform menu option being available" since (unfortunately) those are not always aligned.

I didn't do any further testing on this yet. But I wonder, does the menu option get unlocked for all units with Engineer capability, when the prereq for the second unit type is acquired, even if that second unit isn't a "role 5" unit at all? Does it matter how the prerequisite for that unit is acquired -- for example, what if it's given to the tribe via the Cheat menu, or via the Lua civ.giveTech() function? What if the prereq of the second unit is "nil" -- I suppose the popup message would never appear, but would the menu option be activated the entire game (for units with Engineering capability)?

One more note: TOTPP added a patch labeled in the launcher as "Transform requires tech" which allows you to set separate tech prerequisites to transform each terrain type. I haven't played around with this feature at all yet either.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

So, my conclusion is that giving a unit Engineer capabilities using column G of @UNITS_ADVANCED does give them the capability to transform terrain, but does not unlock the Transform menu option.

Ah, I was only going off the Orders menu and completely forgot to test if hotkeys bypassed it.

I didn't do any further testing on this yet. But I wonder, does the menu option get unlocked for all units with Engineer capability, when the prereq for the second unit type is acquired, even if that second unit isn't a "role 5" unit at all? ...

No, the menu order only appears once you have Slot 2's prereq (so 'nil' lists it from the start); like general worker actions, it's listed for all units even if they're not Role 5.

I did a quick test with Extended Original and the transform order is innate to appropriate unit(s), and isn't dependent on a specific tech or if it's listed in the menu. (The @NEWXFORM popup remains hard-coded to Slot 2.)